Suspended's thread

[Clinamenic]

Re: Clinamenic's comments, I agree I think there's more leeway than people think for offramping sociopathic tendencies into practice of cooperative, positive-sum long-termism by pointing out that it is actually in their benefit. There are certain domains of relative anonymity and low personal accountability where sociopathy is a winning strategy, but in many areas of life, it's self-defeating: the narcissist or sociopath-lite winds up in hell by following short-term selfishness in a society that closely polices for defection.

Very well put, but I'm having trouble with the phrase in bold. Are you saying our culture tends to reward sociopathic defection or punish it? I agree that it is effectively a fit strategy in certain circumstances.

 

[Clinamenic]

Like in finance, by and large, where compassion is manifest largely as a liability.

 

[woops]

Stan's gone greek

 

[Clinamenic]

Greek?

 

[Clinamenic]

And I also think your brand of game theory can work from an inverse perspective: from a perspective of social systems design, rather than a perspective of navigating social systems that you find yourself in. I'd imagine this inverse perspective would lend itself to your work in DAO tooling.

 

[Clinamenic]

In this way, you arguably embody the trend of philosophy being funneled into an operationalized cybernetics.

 

[sus]

Very well put, but I'm having trouble with the phrase in bold. Are you saying our culture tends to reward sociopathic defection or punish it? I agree that it is effectively a fit strategy in certain circumstances.

Watches closely for it and punishes it. You just can't get away with a lot of shit, at least if you're hooked into a social graph. People notice and update if you do slimy stuff, they start feeling like they can't trust you. Your expiration date is months or years before you've burned all your bridges. etc

 

[sus]

In this way, you arguably embody the trend of philosophy being funneled into an operationalized cybernetics.

Yeah I basically think these ideas are a natural extension of cybernetics, a path it didn't take: https://suspendedreason.com/2022/01/17/acim-is-a-natural-extension-of-cybernetic-theory/

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah I basically think these ideas are a natural extension of cybernetics, a path it didn't take: https://suspendedreason.com/2022/01/17/acim-is-a-natural-extension-of-cybernetic-theory/

Very interesting:

I am defining communication then—and expression and representation generally—as the intentional alteration by a servo of another servo’s inputs (feedback) in order to alter and control its outputs (behavior).

 

[Clinamenic]

Not unlike Dion Fortune's alleged definition of magic: "Magic is the art of causing changes to take place in consciousness in accordance with will."

 

[Clinamenic]

One intelligence intelligent system non-randomly affecting the impression made on another intelligent system, so as to effect the latter's behavioral response to this impression. Only in the definition of magic, it can be reflexive. Although maybe you'd say your definition of communication can be reflexive, i.e. someone informing their own behavior.

 

[Clinamenic]

That magic definition is logically similar to your definition of communication, only its specific to conscious systems.

 

[luka]

what i keep coming back to Gus is that if you have an understanding of communication as manipulaiton and so on how come you're not very good at it? it makes it feel like an alien trying to understand humans from the outside rather than a human trying to explain how it feels from the inside

 

[sus]

One intelligence system non-randomly affecting the impression made on another intelligent system, so as to effect the latter's behavioral response to this impression. Only in the definition of magic, it can be reflexive. Although maybe you'd say your definition of communication can be reflexive, i.e. someone informing their own behavior.

Yeah and so we all are hip to "impression management," either in our own life experience or Goffman's writings. That we care about and regulate the mask, etc.

The key that at least the early works of Goffman's miss (I haven't read his later, 80s-90s stuff) is that this impression management is always contextual to the game at hand. So while a general principle of appearing more intelligent, attractive, witty etc seems appealing to argue for, we get in caught in games where we play humble, downplay our endowments, etc!

So the impressions we try to foster are always contingent on the kind of game played, i.e. who the other agents are, what our goals are, etc

A "game" in my factoring is just an interaction between an agent and an environment (which includes other agents). The agent has goals, preferred states (like "food in my belly") and these goals turn the environment into a landscape of affordances and obstacles.

 

[sus]

what i keep coming back to Gus is that if you have an understanding of communication as manipulaiton and so on how come you're not very good at it? it makes it feel like an alien trying to understand humans from the outside rather than a human trying to explain how it feels from the inside

Yeah I'm barely interested in this whole "inside" business, I think it's a giant illusion that evolution and culture have bred, in order to get what it wants out of us

It's like a false image that, when we interact with it, trying to get what we want, ends up getting it what it wants

 

[sus]

Consider a bee, dancing for another bee

The standard evolutionary explanation is that the bee dances to communicate the location of a potential nest location. We came to this explanation because a bee does it whenever it stumbles upon a good nest location, and after the bee dances, all the other bees go to that location and check it out. Pretty watertight.

But we must consider that, from the inside, the bee dances not to communicate the location of a nest, but for the joy of dancing

 

[luka]

but does the fact your not very good at it not suggest that your understanding of it is faulty? i'd trust a master manipulator on the topic of manipulation.

 

[Clinamenic]

Consider a bee, dancing for another bee

The standard evolutionary explanation is that the bee dances to communicate the location of a potential nest location. We came to this explanation because a bee does it whenever it stumbles upon a good nest location, and after the bee dances, all the other bees go to that location and check it out. Pretty watertight.

But we must consider that, from the inside, the bee dances not to communicate the location of a nest, but for the joy of dancing

Yeah this interpretation, which I largely share, can lead one to the conclusion that consciousness itself is an evolutionary spandrel of extropy.

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah this interpretation, which I largely share, can lead one to the conclusion that consciousness itself is an evolutionary spandrel of extropy.

Which may predispose one to a terminally apathetic reading of human affairs.

 

[Clinamenic]

but does the fact your not very good at it not suggest that your understanding of it is faulty? i'd trust a master manipulator on the topic of manipulation.

Here I can relate, in terms of venturing far enough from the socionormal tribe that one's dispatches come off as removed, aloof - in our cases, academic - etc.