5 ms·

People fall into rituals and procedures for reasons that are not necessarily obvious to them. Why should we expect to be able to determine what is and isn't "bu

by Radim 8y ago

People fall into rituals and procedures for reasons that are not necessarily obvious to them. Why should we expect to be able to determine what is and isn't "bullshit"? Wouldn't you need to know where the whole endeavour ends up, before you can pass such definitive judgement? I'm not questioning any individuals feelings (your job may certainly feel like bullshit to you), but whether something is sustainable and makes sense on a larger, super-human scale (organization, society, species) is tough to determine by any single actor. It's typically left to be played out and then (hopefully) analyzed and learned from. Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, by how well they reduce energy gradients across time, not by what the individual actors wishes or feels. If a drone-like society turns out to be the most efficient in this sense, full of silly rituals which nevertheless make it more cohesive / stable / whatever, then that's where we're headed. Even though it currently doesn't seem that way, with individualism, science and articulation scoring some spectacular victories.

IanSanders 8y ago
>Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, by how well they reduce energy gradients across time, not by what the individual actors wishes or feels. I disagree. Look up game theory and tragedy of the commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons >term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action. >Although common resource systems have been known to collapse due to overuse (such as in over-fishing)... Especially check the "examples" section
- Radim 8y ago
  I am familiar with both; what's the connection in particular? That patterns organize along least-energy principles and propagate by extracting resources from surrounding energy gradients is almost a tautology. I'm genuinely curious what you're disagreeing with.
  - IanSanders 8y ago
    I disagree that people and societies organize by efficiency and how well they reduce energy across time. In fact the two almost contradict each other. People organize based on individual/egotistical "efficiency", and not the efficiency of the system/society.
    - Radim 8y ago
      Thanks. Then we're in disagreement :-) For me, people are a part of the whole system, following the same rules as everything else in the universe. No special exceptions, no "get out of jail free" card. (by the way, it's reducing energy gradients—differences between here and there, doing work—not energy itself)
ramblerman 8y ago
> Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, This is meaningless if you leave out the goal though. Efficiency for what, food distribution? What's the function around which we are optimizing.
- Radim 8y ago
  The answer is literally the part after the comma you left out. Entropy maximization.
  - ramblerman 8y ago
    > Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, by how well they reduce energy gradients across time. Reducing energy across time is just a rewording of efficiency. It's still not a goal in and of itself, at least not in the context of a society. Going to the moon was not reducing energy gradients across time, nor 'entropy maximization' as you have reworded it.
    - Radim 8y ago
      What makes you say that? Yes, it is a goal. In fact, it appears to be THE goal, whether our human perspective likes it or not. Societies follow the same optimization principles as everything else. If the topics of self-organization, similarity across scales and sustainability interest you, check out Geoffrey West's work at https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west (among a lot of others).
BlackFly 8y ago
Except that we know from history that people invent superstitions and act upon those superstitions. Look at all the effort that was wasted telling people to turn off cell phones in flights. Once electronic devices became ubiquitous and there was push-back from passengers, they finally had to admit that if the electronic interference of a handheld device was enough to interfere with onboard instrumentation, natural atmospheric electricity would have rendered flight impossible. The security theater at airports is still ongoing and equally superstitious. In the case of the OP, the author is pointing out that there is no authoritative test that actual medical doctors can do, so the doctor is not adding any authority to the check. The business is incorrectly ascribing authority to a doctor to form the basis for a prohibition. There is enough information there to pass judgment.
ctlby 8y ago
Very nice Burkean argument. There's a fascinating related example of what you describe: cassava [1]. Proper preparation of this staple food involves multiple steps over multiple days. Few of the steps serve an obvious purpose, yet omitting any of them has deadly long-term consequences. What appear to be "superstitions" or "rituals" to the individual performing them are anything but. [1] http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smarter-than-you-are.html http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smar...
everydaypanos 8y ago
I still have a hint that the larger and super-human scales that you refer to also lack a meaningful architecture in them. They don’t have something in them that would make a thinking sentient being like us(or me) find joy in participating. That bettering of efficiency in super-human collections of stuff seems just like any other organization-it just strives for survival aka efficiency in a boring meaningless way.
- Radim 8y ago
  I wouldn't single out "sentient beings" as any kind of exception, just because we're aware of that "homunculus between our ears" whispering to us at all times. Our self-awareness and knack for introspection through language, as special and precious as it seems, may be just another way to optimize more efficiently. It allows us to anticipate and avoid local minima (famine, extinction, loss of knowledge, ossification aka boredom aka overfitting) across larger spans of time, in a rather cool and unique way. It makes us see farther, walk straighter with fewer detours, tap into juicier gradients, appreciate art and novelty. But it doesn't take us outside the entropy race, outside the laws of nature. "Boring and meaningless" is entirely in the eye of the beholder. How would you even conceptualize "boring" or "meaningless", for a structure that breathes and reacts in human generations instead of seconds? What is "bullshit" to a cell or an atom that lacks such linguistic sophistication? If you want a truly universal objective metric, a stable direction for "up" and "down", it's hard not to go with long-term maximization of entropy.
3minus1 8y ago
> Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, by how well they reduce energy gradients across time You'd probably like the Selfish Gene by Dawkins. He makes a strong case that societies evolve very differently from cells/species. Edit: Thought I'd provide an example. Suppose there is a herd of animals hunted by a predator. Imagine it was possible for a single member of the herd (maybe the oldest/weakest) to sacrifice itself and save the rest of the herd from taking additional casualties. From the perspective of the herd, it's the best option for longterm survival, "reducing energy gradients", as you say. However, that would not happen. You generally don't see animals purposely sacrificing themselves for the good of the larger group. There are some exceptions (e.g. bees) but Dawkins very convincingly argues it's not for the good of the group.
- Radim 8y ago
  This smells of false dichotomy. Does a suicide terrorist choose to die for his individual "good" (sic), or for his ideology = the "group good"? In reality, an "individual" and his social context are inseparable. You and your environment are one, the separation is entirely linguistic, devised by that talking homunculus between your ears. "Individual" and "society" are just words that suppress some nuances of physical reality in favour of a more actionable world representation; a useful skill that evolved over time, not a fundamental property of the universe. Physically speaking, there's no such thing as a gene, animal or society: they're useful language abstractions, simplified models of the world that exist in your brain and that we learned to encode/decode across brains. You don't even need suicide terrorists to illustrate this non-separation. Why do individuals (genes, animals, societies, whatever) die at all? Wouldn't you choose to live forever, instead of dying on the altar of "reproduction and evolution"? Who gives a shit about evolution, at their own level of survival? And yet, as far as we know, all individuals go out of business, across all levels of complexity. Death is a strange "unselfish choice" they all make, if you accept this artificial separation. It's precisely your "a single member of the herd (maybe the oldest/weakest) to sacrifice itself and save the rest of the herd from taking additional casualties"! It's the same principle in action. From the universal perspective, the "herd" is a net decrease in free energy, and something's gotta give for the show to go on. They must all obey the laws of thermodynamics. In order to increase entropy over ever larger spans of space and time, local pockets of orderliness have evolved that we call life (matter, culture, whatever). These pockets trade a local temporary decrease in entropy for a long-term global increase, cf Maxwell's demon. A global net acceleration, rather than an exception.
wingerlang 8y ago
There's a term for this. Chestertons fence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

by Radim 8y ago

IanSanders 8y ago

>Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, by how well they reduce energy gradients across time, not by what the individual actors wishes or feels. I disagree. Look up game theory and tragedy of the commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons >term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action. >Although common resource systems have been known to collapse due to overuse (such as in over-fishing)... Especially check the "examples" section

Radim 8y ago
I am familiar with both; what's the connection in particular? That patterns organize along least-energy principles and propagate by extracting resources from surrounding energy gradients is almost a tautology. I'm genuinely curious what you're disagreeing with.
- IanSanders 8y ago
  I disagree that people and societies organize by efficiency and how well they reduce energy across time. In fact the two almost contradict each other. People organize based on individual/egotistical "efficiency", and not the efficiency of the system/society.
  - Radim 8y ago
    Thanks. Then we're in disagreement :-) For me, people are a part of the whole system, following the same rules as everything else in the universe. No special exceptions, no "get out of jail free" card. (by the way, it's reducing energy gradients—differences between here and there, doing work—not energy itself)

ramblerman 8y ago

> Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, This is meaningless if you leave out the goal though. Efficiency for what, food distribution? What's the function around which we are optimizing.

Radim 8y ago
The answer is literally the part after the comma you left out. Entropy maximization.
- ramblerman 8y ago
  > Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, by how well they reduce energy gradients across time. Reducing energy across time is just a rewording of efficiency. It's still not a goal in and of itself, at least not in the context of a society. Going to the moon was not reducing energy gradients across time, nor 'entropy maximization' as you have reworded it.
  - Radim 8y ago
    What makes you say that? Yes, it is a goal. In fact, it appears to be THE goal, whether our human perspective likes it or not. Societies follow the same optimization principles as everything else. If the topics of self-organization, similarity across scales and sustainability interest you, check out Geoffrey West's work at https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west (among a lot of others).

BlackFly 8y ago

Except that we know from history that people invent superstitions and act upon those superstitions. Look at all the effort that was wasted telling people to turn off cell phones in flights. Once electronic devices became ubiquitous and there was push-back from passengers, they finally had to admit that if the electronic interference of a handheld device was enough to interfere with onboard instrumentation, natural atmospheric electricity would have rendered flight impossible. The security theater at airports is still ongoing and equally superstitious. In the case of the OP, the author is pointing out that there is no authoritative test that actual medical doctors can do, so the doctor is not adding any authority to the check. The business is incorrectly ascribing authority to a doctor to form the basis for a prohibition. There is enough information there to pass judgment.

ctlby 8y ago

Very nice Burkean argument. There's a fascinating related example of what you describe: cassava [1]. Proper preparation of this staple food involves multiple steps over multiple days. Few of the steps serve an obvious purpose, yet omitting any of them has deadly long-term consequences. What appear to be "superstitions" or "rituals" to the individual performing them are anything but. [1] http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smarter-than-you-are.html http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smar...

everydaypanos 8y ago

I still have a hint that the larger and super-human scales that you refer to also lack a meaningful architecture in them. They don’t have something in them that would make a thinking sentient being like us(or me) find joy in participating. That bettering of efficiency in super-human collections of stuff seems just like any other organization-it just strives for survival aka efficiency in a boring meaningless way.

Radim 8y ago
I wouldn't single out "sentient beings" as any kind of exception, just because we're aware of that "homunculus between our ears" whispering to us at all times. Our self-awareness and knack for introspection through language, as special and precious as it seems, may be just another way to optimize more efficiently. It allows us to anticipate and avoid local minima (famine, extinction, loss of knowledge, ossification aka boredom aka overfitting) across larger spans of time, in a rather cool and unique way. It makes us see farther, walk straighter with fewer detours, tap into juicier gradients, appreciate art and novelty. But it doesn't take us outside the entropy race, outside the laws of nature. "Boring and meaningless" is entirely in the eye of the beholder. How would you even conceptualize "boring" or "meaningless", for a structure that breathes and reacts in human generations instead of seconds? What is "bullshit" to a cell or an atom that lacks such linguistic sophistication? If you want a truly universal objective metric, a stable direction for "up" and "down", it's hard not to go with long-term maximization of entropy.

3minus1 8y ago

> Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, by how well they reduce energy gradients across time You'd probably like the Selfish Gene by Dawkins. He makes a strong case that societies evolve very differently from cells/species. Edit: Thought I'd provide an example. Suppose there is a herd of animals hunted by a predator. Imagine it was possible for a single member of the herd (maybe the oldest/weakest) to sacrifice itself and save the rest of the herd from taking additional casualties. From the perspective of the herd, it's the best option for longterm survival, "reducing energy gradients", as you say. However, that would not happen. You generally don't see animals purposely sacrificing themselves for the good of the larger group. There are some exceptions (e.g. bees) but Dawkins very convincingly argues it's not for the good of the group.

Radim 8y ago
This smells of false dichotomy. Does a suicide terrorist choose to die for his individual "good" (sic), or for his ideology = the "group good"? In reality, an "individual" and his social context are inseparable. You and your environment are one, the separation is entirely linguistic, devised by that talking homunculus between your ears. "Individual" and "society" are just words that suppress some nuances of physical reality in favour of a more actionable world representation; a useful skill that evolved over time, not a fundamental property of the universe. Physically speaking, there's no such thing as a gene, animal or society: they're useful language abstractions, simplified models of the world that exist in your brain and that we learned to encode/decode across brains. You don't even need suicide terrorists to illustrate this non-separation. Why do individuals (genes, animals, societies, whatever) die at all? Wouldn't you choose to live forever, instead of dying on the altar of "reproduction and evolution"? Who gives a shit about evolution, at their own level of survival? And yet, as far as we know, all individuals go out of business, across all levels of complexity. Death is a strange "unselfish choice" they all make, if you accept this artificial separation. It's precisely your "a single member of the herd (maybe the oldest/weakest) to sacrifice itself and save the rest of the herd from taking additional casualties"! It's the same principle in action. From the universal perspective, the "herd" is a net decrease in free energy, and something's gotta give for the show to go on. They must all obey the laws of thermodynamics. In order to increase entropy over ever larger spans of space and time, local pockets of orderliness have evolved that we call life (matter, culture, whatever). These pockets trade a local temporary decrease in entropy for a long-term global increase, cf Maxwell's demon. A global net acceleration, rather than an exception.

wingerlang 8y ago

There's a term for this. Chestertons fence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)