Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Change is turbulent, but the macro-trend is on-point, and I trust society to figure shit out as we go
A critical point here. As opposed to the facile "best possible world" thesis that I think is associated with Leibniz, I tend to see the world as oscillating around the optimal, infinitesimally homing in on it, hyperextending here and relapsing there, etc.

Which isn;t to say this is a viewpoint that cannot be revised or updated, but it certainly isn;t the same as saying that things are the way they are because this exact permutation is the optimal one and never veers into the suboptimal.
 
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Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
And "the optimal" doesn;t need to be conceived of as some theologically transcendent parameter of the cosmos, but can be understood as a socially, stochastically defined teleology.
 

sus

Well-known member
Or society as brain

Too much structure, you can't change anything, you can't adapt

You need it to be plasticky, to stay forever youthful. Constantly forging new connections, trimming off the old, etc.

Disruptions to its continual annealing
 

sus

Well-known member
And our sense of what is "optimal" is always changing, soo....

We could devise some meticulous picture of a perfect world and once we got there we'd be like, OK, there are some serious issues

Not just because "the best-laid plans..." (sure, reality is infinitely detailed, so even the best designs will always require adjustment upon real implementations) but because living in that world will change our priorities
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
An old site mate wrote games that allowed her to retire at 40. She had a major drug cornucopia that rivals anything you’ve seen on the screen. 2 mini suitcases loaded with heroin and opiates. She frames that part of her life as questioning daily how to operate in a world of psychopaths, how to play that specific range of games where power trips and shaming were constant. Not just one company but across the board (mid 80’s home comp boom and 90’s dotcom)
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
And our sense of what is "optimal" is always changing, soo....

We could devise some meticulous picture of a perfect world and once we got there we'd be like, OK, there are some serious issues

Not just because "the best-laid plans..." (sure, reality is infinitely detailed, so even the best designs will always require adjustment upon real implementations) but because living in that world will change our priorities

Do you, too, sense a zen to be reached here, by virtue of the complexity? An infinite pathway of defining roadmaps, progressing through them, redefining them midway, ad infinitum?

It seems maddening, from a perspective of closure-craving, of reaching some immutable utopia. Such a perspective strikes me as naive conceptually premature, but I could be missing something.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Only if we fail to render public welfare capitalistically viable, which is admittedly a profound task, but we are profound constructs.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
If the most capitalistically viable societal permutation involves sedentary and monotonous [but more importantly unfulfilling] existences for the 99%, if no better alternative is realized, no better pathway for profit, then yeah I'd say the totalitarian surveillance state is to be expected.

edit: bracketed text
 
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Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
And that seems more or less guaranteed, so long as the voices/advocates of the 99% remain obstinately allergic to capitalism.

edit: but not all of them are.
 
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sus

Well-known member
Do you, too, sense a zen to be reached here, by virtue of the complexity? An infinite pathway of defining roadmaps, progressing through them, redefining them midway, ad infinitum?

It seems maddening, from a perspective of closure-craving, of reaching some immutable utopia. Such a perspective strikes me as naive conceptually premature, but I could be missing something.
Can you imagine if the opposite were true? Humanity reaches an optimal point and settles there?

It's bleak. We'd probably just kill ourselves.
 

luka

Well-known member
Then--this is all what you say--new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the "Palace of Crystal" will be built. Then ... In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a sudden, A PROPOS of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: "I say, gentleman, hadn't we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!" That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he would be sure to find followers--such is the nature of man. And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one's own interests, and sometimes one POSITIVELY OUGHT (that is my idea). One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy--is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply INDEPENDENT choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.
 
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Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I generally think of our environment of automated intelligence as being a heightening platform rather than a sort of suffocating plenum. That is, I think the opportunity for human creativity is limitless, that there will always be both a known unknown and an unknown unknown, and that the latter is infinite.

Automated intelligence will replace our cognitive agency in some cases, and enable it to reach further in others.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
That said, I think the alienation of the luddite needs to be anticipated and preemptively remedied before it becomes socially enflamed and threatens further advancement. All in the interest of mitigating destruction.

And virtually everyone becomes a luddite at some stage of some front of technological advancement, which isn't to say that they oppose all fronts of such advancement, just those they they feel encroach upon their dignity or drain life of its wonder.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
The parochiality of normal humans is to be reckoned with, not ignored. That said I tend to think the scope of the normal human expands over civilizational development, if even discontinuously.

Look ahead. What do you see? Is it not rational to account for this preemptively?
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
And the widening of this scope also seems to entail the consumption of different accounts of the same phenomena, consistency being negatively correlated with proximity to some extent, hence the prevalence of disinformation and the partisan accusations of such.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Then--this is all what you say--new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the "Palace of Crystal" will be built. Then ... In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a sudden, A PROPOS of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: "I say, gentleman, hadn't we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!" That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he would be sure to find followers--such is the nature of man. And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one's own interests, and sometimes one POSITIVELY OUGHT (that is my idea). One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy--is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply INDEPENDENT choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.
What is this from, by the way?
 
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