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Put another way, society and culture are things that are essentially imaginary. They take place in the mind, and I doubt society or culture could organize itsel
by nescioquid 4y ago
Put another way, society and culture are things that are essentially imaginary. They take place in the mind, and I doubt society or culture could organize itself without some shared imaginary space strewn with personifications and myths. Take that away and society and culture become impossible.
Your unease is more warranted for things like evolution, which does not depend on a shared imaginary space.
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago>Put another way, society and culture are things that are essentially imaginary. Where did you get that from GP's post? They're simplying saying not to anthropomorphise societal systems.
- nescioquid 4y agoI meant that the qualms he was enumerating could simply be restated this way, and my only addition here is that these societal/cultural things all are essentially imaginary (and depend on anthropomorphism and metaphor), unlike something like evolution. Apologies for my phrasing.
- ewzimm 4y agoI like this explanation, but I might say abstractions are mutually translatable in a society. People having similar ideas is convenient but not necessary. I could imagine a society where everyone thought differently but used AI as a universal translator to make their ideas and personalities compatible. Maybe you wouldn’t consider it a real society if they depended on machine translation, but we’re partially there already. It would still be a collection of minds with their own identities and intentions coordinating through an abstraction.
- ewzimm 4y agoEvolution depends on multiple minds coordinating. A virus’ fate will be decided by thinking people eventually. It’s not fair to talk about something as broad as evolution if you only focus on the early period where determinism is easy to represent with math. The process involves intentions as much as anything.