Hi, Cristi!
Good to see you around, this year. I'll be sure to read your essay and come back here.
Regards,
Chidi
The "I" and the Robot by Cristinel Stoica
Hi Chidi,
Good to see you too. Look forward to discuss more about our essays.
Best regards,
Cristi
Dear Author Cristinel Stoica
An analysis and arguments very interesting for demand of freedom.
10 points for freedom .
Hải.CaoHoàng
Dear Hải.CaoHoàng,
Thank you for reading and commenting my essay.
Best regards,
Cristi
Hi Cristinel,
Very nice essay. I wish I had taken note of it earlier given how relevant it is to the themes of my own.
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2063
I would ,however,take issue with two of your statements:
"Often, ideologies trying to build an utopian world for mankind, failed really badly. When people didn't care about the ideals promoted by an ideology, they were considered enemies of the good intentions of that ideology, and were repressed. Ideologies fail because are based on idealization of man, a simplified model that is supposed to work, like a bed of Procrustes."
"The origin of any ideology that pursues an utopian dream relies on some assumptions about what people need most. Since people are different, they may feel that they need different things. Ideologists of various utopias often see those not sharing their dreams as being evil.They are afraid that opposition and criticism are obstacles in their way to Utopia. This fear makes them try to be more and more in control, at any costs, so they end up building a
dystopian, repressive world."
In my own essay I try to break what I believe to be this artificial connection between ideology and Utopia. As just one example, I wouldn't accuse Nazism of an "idealization" of mankind, or rather, it wasn't the exhalation of mankind that was Nazisms' problem but that it demonized and treated like animals the bulk of humanity.
Utopia is different than ideology in that it is often just an attempt to realize human ideals such as peace, equality or justice. Robert Owen was trying to reform the world not to reduce everyone to a cog in an ideological narrative of the end of history. A Utopian group like the Shakers were some of the world's first and most vocal abolitionists. Same goes on the issue of gender equality.
Plato's much aligned Republic was actually a great improvement morally speaking on the violent world of the Greek polis.
Utopia is just about ideals shared among human beings which is not a threat to diversity. We all want peace, justice, equality. If they can be accused of over-determining human social roles this is in part a consequence of designing society from scratch.
In other words, we need to stop associating the desire for an ideal society with violence and dystopia otherwise we will have no star to guide and pull us as we lurch towards justice.
Best of luck,
Rick Searle
Hi Cristinel,
Very nice essay. I wish I had taken note of it earlier given how relevant it is to the themes of my own.
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2063
I would ,however,take issue with two of your statements:
"Often, ideologies trying to build an utopian world for mankind, failed really badly. When people didn't care about the ideals promoted by an ideology, they were considered enemies of the good intentions of that ideology, and were repressed. Ideologies fail because are based on idealization of man, a simplified model that is supposed to work, like a bed of Procrustes."
"The origin of any ideology that pursues an utopian dream relies on some assumptions about what people need most. Since people are different, they may feel that they need different things. Ideologists of various utopias often see those not sharing their dreams as being evil.They are afraid that opposition and criticism are obstacles in their way to Utopia. This fear makes them try to be more and more in control, at any costs, so they end up building a
dystopian, repressive world."
In my own essay I try to break what I believe to be this artificial connection between ideology and Utopia. As just one example, I wouldn't accuse Nazism of an "idealization" of mankind, or rather, it wasn't the exhalation of mankind that was Nazisms' problem but that it demonized and treated like animals the bulk of humanity.
Utopia is different than ideology in that it is often just an attempt to realize human ideals such as peace, equality or justice. Robert Owen was trying to reform the world not to reduce everyone to a cog in an ideological narrative of the end of history. A Utopian group like the Shakers were some of the world's first and most vocal abolitionists. Same goes on the issue of gender equality.
Plato's much aligned Republic was actually a great improvement morally speaking on the violent world of the Greek polis.
Utopia is just about ideals shared among human beings which is not a threat to diversity. We all want peace, justice, equality. If they can be accused of over-determining human social roles this is in part a consequence of designing society from scratch.
In other words, we need to stop associating the desire for an ideal society with violence and dystopia otherwise we will have no star to guide and pull us as we lurch towards justice.
Best of luck,
Rick Searle
Dear Rick,
Thank you for the interest in my essay, and for defending so well the contrary of a viewpoint I raised. I think it is great that, if I forget to be balanced, the readers can help me with this.
In the text you quoted, by "idealization of man" I meant "a simplified model that is supposed to work, like a bed of Procrustes". I hope this clarifies your issue.
I haven't read yet your essay, but I see now from it and from your blog that you are interested so much precisely in utopia and dystopia, so definitely you are more at home with these topics than I am.
I agree that utopian ideas have an important positive side. People need to trust their future, they need to try to improve the present, and this may require a belief or hope in a better state.
This being said, my point is that it is in the human nature to try to explain the failure to reach an objective, especially a social one, by the fact that others don't care about it or even oppose it. I can see this in the discussions in politics, religion, human rights, global warming, etc. Would it be too strong the claim that at the root of any large scale act of repression or violence, there is the idea of the aggressors that the things ought to be in a certain ideal way, and the victims are to be blamed if the things are not like this or if they seem to endanger their ideal?
Best regards,
Cristi
Cristi,
"Would it be too strong the claim that at the root of any large scale act of repression or violence, there is the idea of the aggressors that the things ought to be in a certain ideal way, and the victims are to be blamed if the things are not like this or if they seem to endanger their ideal?"
Very interesting question. I am not sure how to shake out how violence is used as the worst form of "tool" to create the future rather than being used as a means to reach some "ideal". The slave system of the 18th-19th century was extremely cruel and violent, but it had nothing to do with "ideals" just shaping the world to fit exploiter's interest by force. Again it was the dehumanization of the other that justified such violence. Ideal can't just mean some yet to be realized future state. Can it?
Rick,
You are right that "it was the dehumanization of the other that justified such violence".
Thanks, very interesting!
Dear Cristi,
Let me say congratulations on your last outing. As for differentiating between the "I" and the robot I agree with you that:
"Until we will have an explanation of what we are, let's just accept our existence as an axiom, and see where this takes us."
So here is the core axiom/thesis I present:
an "I" is an elementary quantum of action or (more generally) a natural unit, and vice versa. In classical or intuitive terms this would be what we mean by an "observer" or "reference frame" (in GR it's perhaps a "space-time", in the Standard Model of particle physics it is probably the "virtual exchange" between observables/particles).
This goes to say that we are each our own "universal constant" (think, "invariance"; "conservation law"; "phase space").
So at last, quantum gravity is a fractal landscape, some will say it is "foamy".
I invite your esteemed critique.
It is well said: "No ideology, no religion, no science or technology can help you be free, if you let others think for yourself. The antidote is critical thinking." - Stoica.
Best Regard,
Dear Chidi Idika,
Thank you for the interesting comments. You say "an 'I' is an elementary quantum of action or (more generally) a natural unit, and vice versa." Indeed, the question is whether the "I" is reducible to something else, or if it is irreducible, perhaps similar to the quantum of action.
Best regards,
Cristi
Hi Cristi,
I finally read in more detail your essay and like it very much. First it was a good touch to leave a disclaimer under the abstract (something I should have done). This is not my area (but then again no one is really an expert in this i.e. how to structure humanity) and one of the bad features of physicists/scientists is they tend to think they know more than what they do once they step outside their area. What I have found is that sometimes physicist/scientists can bring a new perspective to some non-science question, but also often times they can fail badly to understand some aspect of this other area/field since it is not their area/field. Anyway it's always a good policy to be cautious when beginning to look into another area hence the disclaimer is a good idea.
Second you make statements against fixed ideologies (this is in the section "What humans need most?"). This I strongly agree with. People commit to some ideology to such a degree that when evidence arises to the contrary they ignore this. In addition to the examples you gave (Nazism, antisemitism, communism, racism, etc.) there is the example of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. Pol Pot believed so strongly in some alternative form of agrarian communism/socialism that he damaged Cambodia and its people to such an extent that they are still recovering today. And their was ample evidence that as he was turning Cambodia into a "farmer/proletariat paradise" this was absolutely the wrong thing to do. But he was so invested in this path that any evidence to the contrary had not impact on his thinking (such as it was).
In the section "Education without manipulation" you make the important point (and again one which I agree with) that education, especially critical thinking skills, are important if we are to have a good, robust society. However, this may be difficult to achieve in practice or rather it m ay take a long time and require that one learn critical thinking skills from different teachers. The example I have in mind is a colleague of mine at the university who teaches our critical thinking course (he takes the students through why one should be skeptical of Big Foot, Dragons, bogus medical treatments, money scams, etc.) And I think he does a good job at this (although all the examples he uses are so obviously and easily refuted it doesn't really push the students. But recently he wanted our department to adopt a math remediation program (our intro students are often very weak in their math skills) for all introductory calculus based classes. He had some vested interest in the particular program he was advocating. After running this program for two semesters and then comparing the final grades to the three semesters beforehand but without the math remediation program he claimed incontrovertible proof that this program worked and we should adopt it (at a cost of $30 to each student). However in looking at his data there shift in grades for the two semesters with vs. three semesters without was less that half a standard deviation -- so as far as I could tell this "effect" was just noise. Further there was one semester without the math program where for some unknown reason the grades were low. If one took out this semester there was no effect. Or if one ran this one semester without the program against the two "regular" semesters without the program the effect (such as it was re-appeared). Anyway teaching critical thinking is important even for (or maybe better *especially* for) professors/teachers, since once some kind of self interest comes into the picture people start to lose objectivity.
Finally I like the quote by Buckminster Fuller on work/making a living.
Anyway great essay. I enjoyed it very much. Best of luck,
Doug
Hi Doug,
Thank you very much for your kind and helpful comments. I agree with all of them, and I find particularly important what you pointed out about critical thinking. I agree that, for some reason, it is not well mastered even by some of those teaching it, or those claiming they rely on it. One can hear people using critical thinking to support any kinds of ideas, from young earth creationism to any political orientation to any sort of paranormal ideas and conspiracy theories. In the example you gave, there was a misunderstanding of how statistics works, which someone who is more prepared in this area can see easily. Maybe in most cases the mistake is visible for someone who knows better, but, as in the case of the common fallacies, a wrong argument can be accepted too easy by many. In math and logic, it is more rare to find people misusing arguments, because we can verify them anytime anywhere, with just pen and paper. But even in math and logic people may misuse arguments once in a while, so I would expect that in the case of critical thinking this happens more often. However, I would expect that if it spreads more, and people become more aware of its tools, they will become more and more immune to fallacious arguments. At this point, I would expect that if the majority would know even the basics of critical thinking, the improvement would be significant, but perhaps I am too optimistic. Another downside may be that people will become more heated in debates, because they may think that if they know a bit of critical thinking they are always right. Thanks again for your comments. I liked your essay very much, and I wish you good luck with the contest.
Best regards,
Cristi
[deleted]
Hi Cristinel.
lots of great thoughts, what is it to be human?, the importance of man, consciousness and happiness. You have written "Our evolution continues, and everyone should be free to find and follow their own path, while happily allowing others to follow theirs." It sounds really good but isn't there a problem when different ideologies or lifestyles are mutually incompatible.Can cyborg supermen live at peace with neo-feral humanity and/or Borg-like hive mind post humans and/or ordinary un enhanced people? Can neo nazis live peacefully with socialists and/or with anarchists? It may be that we are moving from old kinds of division to new kinds, that will not bring tolerance.
If "I" is just a program run on the brains wetware does it make a difference to the value of mankind? Can synthetic intelligence in human form have have human rights, what if it isn't in human form but is a simulation of a human mind? Cristinel, I find it all bewildering and a bit frightening.
Quote"You have brains in your head.You have feet in your shoes You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street." Dr.Suess
Yes its great to have the freedom to decide where to go but I'm afraid history shows people have often gone down the not so good streets.
Good luck, Georgina
Hi Georgina,
Thank you for the comments. You said "You have written 'Our evolution continues, and everyone should be free to find and follow their own path, while happily allowing others to follow theirs.' It sounds really good but isn't there a problem when different ideologies or lifestyles are mutually incompatible." I share your worries, but I don't understand your point. Are you saying that tolerance is a problem, because there is intolerance? I don't understand.
Best regards,
Cristi
Hi Cristinel,
Great essay! It is well argued, and beautifully written. Good luck in the contest.
Best regards,
Mohammed
Hi Mohammed,
Thank you for the nice comment. I look forward to read your essay. Good luck in the contest!
Best regards,
Cristi
As an author, I scored you a 10.
Concurrently Maximizing Freedom while also Maximizing Security is essential if we are going to pursue and use space/time manipulation tools. Any secret will be available, anyone anywhere can be remotely killed ...
DARPA QUEST currently is making many billions of dollars available for the development of quantum physics related tools.
I only know of one method of two systems that together provide a system that supports both Freedom and Security without having to give up one to have the other.
Top/Down ethical monitoring and enforcement
(ethical qualified doctors of science and philosopy elected as Representatives of their State's Constitution to build NSA monitoring systems and monitor that the information collected is consistently applied to all peoples and corporations):
http://eliminate-all-corruption.pbworks.com
Bottom/Up broad ethical consideration "capacity"
(teaching Common Sense):
http://www.ua-kits.com
Common Sense =
Self-esteem (social group skills) Logic Predicting Consequences
If someone has an equally viable alternative to eliminate all corruption, I would like to hear your perspectives.
Corruption = unethical allocation of resources and/or opportunities
in a legal system that enforces ethics
Corruption = illegal allocation of resources and/or opportunities
Treason = intentional weakening of security to promote unethical allocation of resources and/or opportunities
Racketeering = any coalition that intentionally promotes illegal allocation of resources and/or opportunities