Hi Ray, No problem, I'm always grateful for feedback. I answer about A) our rational capacity, and B) polysemy.

A. Well, you must admit we're not completely devoid of reason. I try to assume only what we actually have. (Please see my answer D to Toby's post of May 22, and Jeff's of May 26.) In engineering, math, science, humanities, and other fields, we managed over the centuries to make some progress that required reason. What I suggest is to get in the habit of applying some of that to the steering problem.

B. I guess we'd use existing, standard solutions for polysemy, which would therefore depend on the context. A legislative consensus would employ legalese, for example; a planning consensus, the appropriate technical jargon; and so on.

I answer on the surface, but maybe you've a deeper problem in mind? If so, please re-phrase your questions.

Mike

Dear Michael Allan,

I'm not sure I would define reason as the supreme value, but it's a good working premise.

We agree on (M2) promoting a maximum of personal freedom compatible with equal freedoms for all.

Your M1 relates to collectives and I have more problems with "collective", which, while really existing, is an abstraction that has different order of reality from the individual. I live, eat, breathe, experience, think, create, etc. etc. The "collective" is a very different entity. If it is like a beehive, it is the overwhelming reality, almost a hive mind. If it is humanity, it is approximately 8,000,000,000 humans, very different from the hive. My essay focuses on maximizing personal freedom and warns about a "collective" based on two classes.

I like your statement:

"But people are numerous. They can explore many paths simultaneously; so that, if a given action does not reduce anyone's freedom to act, then it can hardly reduce the likelihood of eventual success. Success depends on opportune discoveries to which the formal theory is blind"

Very nice. Douglas Singleton and I have both applied physical theories as metaphors to say the same thing.

Also like your image of the individual as hero, hand on the tiller,... and I like "a recombinant text allows for, but cannot in itself formalize and express a consensus."

I'm not sure I've absorbed your "transitive voting" but I have spent quite a bit of time trying to design systems whereby an individual's vote is related to the effort and expertise that an individual has invested in understanding the issues being voted on. Like you, I believe this is best implemented by some formal system that is blind to individuals, while somehow measuring effort and expertise. This relates to your "public sphere" on page 5.

I do like "in all such instances, the first demand of reason will be the question, Why? From what cause and what purpose would we execute this plan? Or enforce this law?"

Excellent!

I also think that a mythopoeic perspective is appropriate, although I am unsure that a 'guideway' to make myth is. Loren Eisley was a good "mythopoet" without guideway.

I am of the opinion that myth as you define it is more likely to arise from individual (Jesus, Buddha, Einstein,...) and be refined and reinforced by a collective.

Thanks for putting the amount of thought that you have into such systems and let me encourage you to continue to do so. I hope you will have time to read and comment upon my essay.

My best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Michael,

    I found your essay ambitious and complex. You certainly have put a lot of thought in optimizing the process of consensus-building, which is vital, of course, if humanity is to successfully steer the future! I am not sure I was able to follow all the intricacies of your arguments and of your diagrams, but this is certainly due to the limitations of a 9-page essay.

    I particularly liked your opening paragraphs, where you explained how the limit of light speed and the huge distances between star systems form a barrier to extinction events: it is an often encountered statement that humanity will never be safe from extinction before it colonizes other star systems, but you have presented this idea in an original and interesting fashion.

    I also like the way you framed your discussion about optimal consensus-building around the larger theme of "mythopoeic overguidance". I fully agree with you when you say that "the future of humanity is necessarily a mythic construction, our ultimate existence hinging on our ability to invent and evolve a story so convincing it becomes immortal." Your reminded me that the power of myth is one of the important aspects that must be taken into account if, like I propose in my essay, we are to construct a successful Futurocentric Education Initiative.

    Good luck in the contest!

    Marc

      Hello Michael,

      If I can get to your essay this week, I will of course give you an honest appraisal, as that is my standard approach. That is all I can promise at this time.

      All the Best,

      Jonathan

        But now I see that I failed to properly answer your point (A), and neglected entirely to answer your point on non-expert voters (D). I try to make amends:

        A (cont). Here I follow your suggestion of describing M1 in terms of a real actor ("morality relates personal action to a universally collective end"). When I take a moral stance in regard to a situation, I thereby relate the action of some individual (could be me, or someone else) to a goal that is universally shared. To consider the situation in a moral light (right vs. wrong) is to draw a line saying, "This personal action is related to that universal end."

        D. You say, "I'm not sure individuals should be voting on specific technocratic legal details beyond their expertise."

        But a vote outside the legislature is just a form of speech. And if "should" is moral here, then principle M2 applies and requires us to maximize personal freedom (p. 2), including freedom of expression in regard to legislative details. So we appear to be morally bound to allow each individual to vote on such details wherever, whenever and however he/she wishes, wherever that is feasible.

        Mike

        You're welcome, Edwin; thanks in return. I spoke in these forums already with Douglas, but I'm unsure whether he sees the similarity in our approaches. Anyway, here I answer about A) "collective"; B) votes based on "effort and expertise"; and C) the need for the overguideway despite the overguide being an individual.

        A. I employ "universally collective" only in the technical sense of a property that applies to all elements, or to the whole set. So the possible ends of humanity are "universally collective" because they apply to the whole; as with the end of extinction, for example.

        I agree we shouldn't think of the collective as a kind of subject "writ large" (Habermas). Robert de Neufville neatly dismisses that notion in his essay, "if humanity were a single person... [steering] would be relatively easy." (p. 5)

        B. About "systems whereby an individual's vote is related to the effort and expertise that an individual has invested". That's an interesting problem. I'm curious how other designers would approach it. We've sketched something (Christian and I) that we call the "resource accounting framework" (RAC). To understand the basic idea, you need only recall how votes flow "like raindrops down the branches" of those trees I draw (e.g. p. 4), and how they aggregate in the lower branches and roots to reveal the picture of consensus and dissensus. Now just add resources that flow along with those votes, as though dissolved in solution. By resources I mean things like money, materials or labour (including expertise) that are contributed or pledged to the issue. For what little documentation we have on this, see Resource accounting framework and Account.

        Here the crucial thing to know (not mentioned in the essay) is that the individual viewer of the guideway (forest) is free to filter and re-weight the currently flowing votes (and resources) as he/she pleases in order to yield a personalized view of the on-going results. Such freedom is possible only because the guideway is a purely informative system, not a decision system. The guideway itself outputs no official results. Decisions (if any) are always separately ratified in an external decision system, which is usually simpler in design. Still, there's no reason why it couldn't borrow some of the RAC infrastructure and bring resources directly into the decision.

        C. I too think the myth-making overguide will most often be an exceptional individual, rarely a team of two or more, and certainly never a collective "hive mind". But I suspect the scale of this individual's contribution will often be unrecognized at the time. And crucially each person must remain free to step into the role of the overguide, which must always be open and informal. (In this sense, the system engineer blindly sees each person as the overguide.)

        But the formal overguideway is still needed for the sake of maximizing everyone's freedom. The mythic destination must be chosen according to "the unforced force of the better argument" (Habermas), which means a consensus formed in rational discourse. Only then can we effectively steer humanity via all those normative guideways and decision systems (fig. F9) and do it without force. By following the overguidance freely and with eyes wide open, one cannot be steered, but must oneself be steering. (In this sense, each person actually is the overguide.)

        Mike

        Thanks, Marc. I wish I could've made the technical descriptions a little less dense, but I'm happy the main ideas came through. They haven't been exposed to critique before, which I think they need. So I'm working to give them room to breathe by rewriting the essay as three separate papers.

        I've added you to my review list and look forward to reading your own entry. - Mike

        Thanks Jonathan, I couldn't ask for more. If you do find time, then please leave me at least D-Day itself to read your own essay.

        Hoping for your speedy recovery, - Mike

        Mike -

        Thanks for your comment on my essay - I hope my reply is helpful.

        I found your essay difficult to follow and perhaps unnecessarily complex, but my sense is that the tools you are suggesting, reflecting an integration of game theory, media and social dynamics, may be extraordinarily useful and practical in working towards a positive future for humanity. They deserve further investigation. I did not feel, however, that your background and analysis leading to the proposed tools was well grounded. I felt there was a forced formality to the P1 - P2 and M2 - M1 - M0 sections that, for me, interfered with the more convincing "poetic" elements of your essay. Also, I tend to disagree with some of your principles. P1 (limit of speed of light), for example, appears not to be fundamental according to findings in quantum physics (what Einstein famously called "spooky action at a distance."). There are forms of communication that are not constrained by the speed of light. P2 is also a principle which seems limited - if you accept that the human experience is something that includes both reason and emotion, and potentially transcendence.

        I would also suggest that the process of moving from your principles to the moral postulates is not one of deduction, but draws heavily on analogy and inference. I always felt that Kant was often guilty of such overstatement. Inference is fine - we just need to be honest about it.

        The strength of your essay was in the mythopeotic framing of the issue - and in the very practical suggestions you are making for improving our social decision making. I was not able to understand all the technicalities of your proposals, but would like to spend time trying to learn more. Is Habermas the place to start?

        Thanks - George

          Dear Mike,

          I like your essay. It is well written, well informed, well illustrated. I find interesting the connection between collaborative technology and freedom. This offers a fresh perspective on the relation between individual freedom and collective. One question, which is not related. Good luck in the contest!

          Best regards,

          Cristi

            Thanks for your response Mike, I just want to dig a bit deeper into the questions...

            A) I agree, we are not completely devoid of reason. When we can abstract away the emotional connotations, as in math and the study of physics, we are able to be rational. But, as the "global warming" deniers illustrate, even something as purely rational as the physical phenomena of the greenhouse effect involving CO2 in the atmosphere can be overlaid with emotional overtones. Generally areas that are threatening or embarrassing are prone to "irrational" defensive reactions. Suggesting that we "get in the habit" of applying that to the steering problem is great, but it is not "actionable". The question I have is "what exactly and specifically should be done to ensure that we "get in the habit" of applying rationality to the steering problem." Having worked on many engineering projects I know that "fix it" is not a useful suggestion. Determining what needs fixing and exactly how to fix it is the difficult part. So, how should we ensure rationality?

            B) "Solutions for polysemy" implies that it is a problem. I actually see it as a "feature", as we say in engineering design. Reducing polysemy to a single meaning would take away its power. The "problem" is acknowledging and valuing the multiplicity of meanings and then structuring action that embraces them all. Legalese and technical jargon are reductionist, referring, as Roland Barthes said, to the "Author God", who can impose a unitary meaning. It seems to me that we must accept multiple voices and meanings, e.g., that profit motivations are strong, that caring for Earth's climate and ecosystem are valuable, that meeting human needs are critical, and that efficiency of production is desirable, etc. While some may see these as contradictory, a dialogic perspective will see that there is value in all of them, but that allowing any to dominate would be dysfunctional. So my question is, how might you incorporate this perspective into your suggestion?

            Thanks,

            Ray

            • [deleted]

            • Post #117

            Hello Mr. Allan,

            This is Margarita Iudin

            I read your essay without rating it. I stopped rating essays because I feel confused about how the authors rate each other.

            Before I read your essay I liked how you organized your comments. Now I want to say you that you submitted very good essay.

            These are my remarks

            1. the essence of humanity, words, just words

            2, E. Kant moral values, reason, it is always good to mention Kant

            Mythopoeic overguidance, sounds heavy, even negatively, why?

            Mythopoeic

            I remember once I encountered the word mythopoetic in relation to Einstein

            4. What laws of nature do you mean?

            5. endless continuum of rational being

            what about escaping from the physical body, destruction of the body, cleansing and rebirth of a soul I am not sure we understand each other

            6. procedural theory, procedures, software computing terminology

            7 Strange understanding of what freedom is

            Seems to be a flight of imagination

            8 a primitive scheme of voting,

            preliminary, because all of them would be preliminary

            In TDSB school grade 10 students learn about 3 levels of the Canadian government and that the voting as an important feature of democracy

            The voting procedures may work properly, democracy itself does not work

            Where are the responsible citizen-voters ? Why voters are unable to make competent decisions?

            Think about the voting in Ukraine

            8 I like your approach to myth and storytelling

            http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2096

            Imagining the future humanity by Margarita Iudin

            Please read my essay on your convenience and share your opinion.

            Good luck,

            M Iudin

              You're welcome, George, but I don't understand your own critique. I'm probably your only source on the subject of mythopoeic overguidance and tree-form guideways, as I think nobody else works on this technology. And this is my first attempt at an intro. But I'm happy to answer your questions if you've any... I've some for you, please:

              You're the first to dismiss the moral theory tout court and I don't understand your reasons. Can you point to a particular fault? You imply that the prohibition against faster-than-light communication (P1) cannot stand because some other theory is indifferent to whether it does or not. But that doesn't make it likely to fall. We've plenty of empirical evidence of communication at and below light speed, but none faster. Or where is the evidence? Or the consensus that it's likely to be forthcoming?

              Or please explain in a few sentences why the other premise (P2) is unlikely to stand. How is emotion more likely than reason to be the supreme value in the universe?

              Or point to a particular logical conclusion (whether deduction or inference) that's invalid, and briefly explain the error or omission you see. Without such an explanation, I cannot understand why you dismiss the theory. Please also see the summary of past critique that I've answered. - Mike

              Thanks Cristi, good luck in return.

              Did you have a question, or was that a typo?

              Mike

              Typo. I had a question, but I realized the answer is implicit in the essay.

              Best,

              Cristi

              You're welcome, Ray. I expand on my answer to A, but am stuck on B.

              A. As a naive undergraduate in science, I was disappointed to learn that scientists are no better than anyone else. They've the same faults as others, including a tendency to irrational behaviour. Whatever makes science a rational pursuit, therefore (which by and large it is) cannot be the scientists. Nor the experimental method, because non-experimental fields of scholarship proceed on a more-or-less rational basis, too. What they all share in common is a process of validation that works through a public discourse of peers and a general expectation of rationality. Somehow the cream rises to the top in that kind of bottle.

              If it works for scientists, then I feel confident it'll work for any other broad swathe of the population. I defer to Habermas on this, as he's my authority on the public sphere (the bottle I speak of). I haven't yet expanded my reading much further.

              Irrational bottles exist, too. A modern election run through the mass media is an example of a process that tries hard to bring out the worst in people. But those people aren't the problem. They've as much capacity for both rational and irrational behaviour as scientists. Give them the same access to the public sphere, therefore, and they'll be just as protected from sources of manipulation, such as the mass media and its "emotional overtones". The public sphere is essentially impenetrable to force, and critical of force. So this is what I propose.

              B. You say polysemy isn't a problem, but an opportunity. The only problem then is my unfamiliarity with it; I'm uncertain how to take advantage of the opportunity. Maybe in the mythopoeic overguideway where the text is likely to be aesthetic in its form, and logic (plot, character development, etc.), as myths generally are. These aspects will be largely the work of artists, of course. I imagine they'll employ polysemy to its full effect, as they're the experts on that kind of thing.

              Otherwise I'm uncertain how to take advantage of it.

              Mike

              Thanks Margarita, good luck in return. I like your forthright style, but your critical points are too terse for me to answer. I'll try to answer your questions first:

              2. Mythopoeic overguidance is a heavy technical term, I agree. But otherwise it doesn't sound negative in English, at least not to me.

              4. By "laws of nature" (p. 2), I mean the physical contraints of nature that enforce the limit of light speed, which I assume cannot be breached (premise P1).

              8. I agree that electoral voters could be more competent in their decision making. The answer my thesis gives is roughly, "they're incompetent because they're not making use of the public sphere". Before making an electoral decision, they should be talking in public and agreeing on what the decision ought to be. Armed with that knowledge, it will be easier for them to make the right decision on election day, of course. But I doubt they can make use of the public sphere without the support of guideways, which is the technical part of my proposal.

              If you could expand on one of your critical points, explaining in a few sentences what you think is wrong, then I'll try to answer further. - Mike

              Mike,

              Thanks for that response; you've answered my key questions. And thanks for the links to the Resource Accounting Framework. I've also read your other comments elsewhere and appreciated them.

              And I do think that we are ready for and not very far away from the next myth that will arise to give meaning to what seems to have become for too many a meaningless life.

              My best wishes for success in the work you're doing.

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Hi Mike,

              Thanks for your response. In response to a), I read somewhere the criteria for situations where "wisdom of the crowd" works and where it doesn't. I think that might help clarify the "somehow cream rises to the top". For B), there is an excellent online guide called "the beginners guide to semiotics" that you can google to learn more about the topic. I also heartily recommend Bakhtin and Roland Barthes. And, if you want some real mind-blowing (as in, your head will explode trying to understand it - it's OK, I don't mean that literally) stuff you can read some of Julia Kristeva's work.

              Thanks for the conversation, and I hope that you have gained as much from the comments from others and their essays as I have.

              Best wishes,

              Ray

              Interesting and excellent Michael,

              I need to get some sleep, but I will comment on the morrow, or so. There are limitations to how extensively this idea could be implemented, but it's a good step toward a systematic solution. Best of luck.

              Regards,

              Jonathan