An end to steer by, and a means by Michael Allan

Dear Michael,

I like that you seek to objectify morality.Your essay is quite detailed. This means you have in your mind a specific picture of the "myth making process". Among other things am concerned to know:

What is your physical definition of this myth? Is it as some manifesto or some actual physical impetus/potential or do you use myth as in "spirit of the law" vis-à-vis "letters of the law"? I wish you showed more directly the connection that your model has with the speed of light, as you suggest in the begging.

I struggle for some intuitive picture of the process you speak about. There has to be one, find it. It may be the system of fluid flow in a tree or the system by which weather conditions recur, you may even subsequently further idealize this situation. But it helps if one can point to it.

Your fundamental assumption seems to be that reason is supreme but it seems to me that most individuals and by extension collective or "democratic" decisions are taken more on the basis of feeling than on the basis of cold analytic reason. It suggests to me that what we call ego or cultural/national pride or identity might just already represent this myth of yours.

Put in the economist's world view: choice is a function of means, there is not such a thing as 'the unforced force of the better argument'. Economic entities are as well political/legal entities--as good as any individual human, even more.

Also you say: "the first demand of reason will be the question, Why?" But between humans there is probably never a straight forward answer to the question "why" (especially when you factor in that motives can be entirely ulterior and then camouflaged); actually I see the scientific method as the closest machinery man has for devising such a working consensus.

All this granted, wouldn't it be more useful to secure one real life example of your myth making process (so we can perhaps seek to reverse-engineer or idealize it)?

All the best,

Chidi

Hi Mike,

Warm greetings, fellow FQXi thinker. I just found your newly added note about myself and other authors implicitly declining your invitation. However, implying any lack of enthusiasm regarding your invitation was not my intention; I do gladly accept it. I had been wanting to have something substantive to add about your paper before contacting you, for I had planned to accept it from the beginning, but that can wait until my next post.

Aaron

I see we both like the finite speed of light. It would indeed make the imposition of imperial rule over interstellar distances a difficult feat. I am not so sure about its ability to act as a barrier for death, though. Even disregarding exotic possibilities like vacuum decay, I can imagine things like paranoid aliens sending out "grey goo"-inducing von Neumann machines to "pacify" their galactic neighbourhood - you know, just in case...

Your derivation of a moral theory which, in practice, requires our continued existence, is a more detailed kind of argument than I felt comfortable constructing. No matter what we want to achieve, we need to exist in order to achieve it (unless it's non-existence, which can be trivially arranged); that's enough for me. Your argument for maximization of personal freedom as the best search strategy for optimal strategies is neat, and might tempt me to reconsider my minimalism, but then I would also have to come to grips with your "mythopoeic overguidance". Maximal personal freedom subject to such "overguidance" sounds suspiciously like "you can have this car in any color, as long as it's black". I certainly wouldn't want to be in charge of the required indoctrination, even less subject to it.

Still, I guess the main reason some readers seem to have reacted badly to your essay is the detailed discussion of your steering system. It has clear geek appeal, and I might actually return to it later and think of possible technical applications (machine learning?). But the thing is, it seems to assume familiarity on the reader's part with pretty obscure topics. I now know what "transitive voting" is, but I had to Google it up (oh the shame!) and the first good link was to an article in Proceedings of the 5th ACM conference on Electronic commerce. OK...

After several pages detailing of your steering system, I am left with the impression that this is a pretty complicated political construction designed to replace existing governments, parliaments etc. Basically a draft for a new constitution, to be applied to all of humanity. Certainly ambitious, but not very realistic. I think I'll stick with my simpler version of freedom, aided by the ability of future space settlers to thumb their nose at overbearing bureaucrats a few light hours away.

This is a very interesting essay, Mike. As someone whose professional training is in political theory, I love how you ground your argument in Kant and Habermas. But I also think you--understandably, given the topic--cover too much ground to really make the points you want to make.

Your essay was hard for me to follow at times. There is certainly nothing wrong with reasoning abstractly, but your reader has to be able to understand the concrete implications of your claims. It wasn't clear to me, for example, what it means for the M1 span to "attach to personal action" or "extend into the endless continuum of rational being". In what sense does one abstraction "attach" to another? And what is the precise meaning of a "continuum of rational being"? One thing that would have made it easier for me is if you made real actors rather than abstract ideas the subject of more of your sentences. Of course, I would say thing same thing to Kant or Habermas...

I think recombinant text may be a fantastic idea. We certainly need procedures for making better, more democratic decisions. But I don't think you managed to show that the need for it follows syllogistically from the basic tenets of nature and morality (I don't actually think you have to show recombinant text is logically necessary to make a convincing argument for it). In general, I thought you made a number of logical leaps from abstractions whose operational meaning wasn't clear to me--like "reason is the supreme value"--to very specific conclusions.

It would have helped me if you had explained more clearly up front what kind of texts we should recombine and why. If we are talking about laws, I'm not sure individuals should be voting on specific technocratic legal details beyond their expertise. If we are talking about collective myths, I'm not sure that a myth can function as a guiding myth if it is explicitly socially constructed. It also would have helped me if you had defined the role of a guide clearly when you first introduced the concept.

Nevertheless, I learned a lot from your essay. It was well worth reading. Good luck in the contest, Mike.

Best,

Robert de Neufville

Hi Mike,

I read through your essay and if I remember your statement correctly you had said your essay contained a method for choosing a "path" or for coming to some kind of consensus. I'm not sure if I understood everything (the figures do help here) but you are presenting some iterative process whereby people are able to cross check and come to some common conclusion. The diagrams do have a flavor of trying out many different approaches to a questions and cross checking to come to some conclusion. Anyway I liked the idea. One suggestion -- would it be possible to try out this process on a small scale one some test question for which the conclusion is "known" n order to test if/how the procedure works in practice? In other words run the process through a test to see how it does.

At the end of the essay (and this is also mentioned in the beginning) you mention the use/power of myth. I didn't clearly follow the segue here, but in general I think myth does have a powerful but specific role to play in human culture. Actually in this regard you might be interested in works by Joseph Campbell who studied the role of myths in various cultures. Also Carl Jung's archetypes are in this direction (I think) so you might find this interesting as well.

Anyway a good essay. Best of luck.

Doug

Hi Michael

I love your long-term perspective of the survival of humanity/the biosphere and extinction events. I found this the most interesting part of your essay - it would have been great to have read more content on this.

You also include some moral philosophy and an extremely detailed set of mechanisms by which consensus can be formed (which you suggest achieve the goals of your moral philosophy of freedom etc). Here's a few things I was thinking while reading:

-Your moral philosophy hinges on Kantian idealism which you only spend one sentence on. I would have been interested to hear more about why you chose Kant in this way. After all, Kant is one more difficult reads of the major philosophers.

-Under Habermas' formulation, consensus achieved via rational discourse would seem to be destroyed where difference of opinion are a result of differences in values, rather than incomplete processing of facts. Do you see this as a problem?

-You equate rationality as the central moral end. Myself, I tend to view rational knowledge as a preqrequisite of morality, though distinct from morality itself. Here's my reasoning:

http://citizenearth.altervista.org/moralityreliesonknowledge.html

-My essay entry raises the issue of vastly cheaper rational beings (AI) being created specifically to manipulate the moral reasoning of humans. If your formulation of morality is based upon the 'rational being' as the basic moral unit, then would it follow that in the event of cheaper more energy efficient AI rational beings that this morality would be compatible with the extinction of our species through replacement? Ie. AI rational beings are presumably better at perpetuating 'endless continuity of rational beings' as you describe? I'd probably favour "endless continuity of genetic life and humanity" in that case :)

-Your consensus system is quite wonderful! However, how can you deal with a situation where the assessment of a policy required expertise or specialist technical knowledge is required, and where the consensus position is actually a course of action that invites a non-obvious danger or problem?

-Your consensus system is also very complex, and your description introduces a very large amount of jargon that I found a little difficult to follow in the latter parts of the paper. I'm not sure how you could solve this as simplification of the system itself could risk breaking it.

I hope I am not too negative, I can see a great deal of thought has gone into your entry. Thanks for a wonderful thought-provoking essay! I hope you have a chance to check out and rate my own entry at some point, and feel free to email me if you want to talk further for any reason!

Mike, this is a very beautifully written essay, and very beautifully illustrated as well. The main ideas about voting and consensus-building are also very similar to ones that occurred to me some years ago, and I think potentially very important.

Unfortunately, the writing is almost too beautiful; the way you weave your thoughts together makes it difficult to follow the mechanics of the voting scheme and what it is trying to accomplish - and this despite the fact that the basic ideas are very similar to ones I formulated myself (but have never written down). I would recommend laying out the mechanics in a very structured, bare-bones way, then discussing how it works, rather than introduce it through a rich discussion as you have done here.

I haven't followed what has been happening in this area and would like to learn more about work on these voting systems.

I had some quibbles with the general philosophizing of the first two pages:

I don't think the light speed limit is a bar to interstellar warfare; it is almost certainly a bar to empire in the classic sense, i.e. the pooling of economic output and its channeling to a governing and military structure, but it is not a bar to hostile colonization by species or families that seek to expand for whatever reasons (e.g. that evolution has conditioned them to).

I have a rather simple understanding of what it means to be human. It is to be an animal of species Homo sapiens. Nothing more, less, or else. I don't believe there is an essence of humanity, and I think the notion that there is one is dangerous, because it suggests that something other than human beings could be imbued with that essence.

As you might guess, I am very concerned with the prospect of extinction.

I would not say reason is the supreme value; life is. Reason exists to serve the interests of life, and if it fails to do so, or becomes a threat to life, then life must be prioritized. In most cases reason is not actually in conflict with life as a value, but if reason is emphasized as a value in itself, let alone the supreme one, then the potential for such a conflict exists.

The same for "personal freedom" which is more often actually in conflict with life, especially of others or of the community. When you make "personal freedom" your (second?) highest value, my Libertarian detectors go off. I'm all for freedom but some people equate it with state enforcement of capitalist property constructs by which humanity can well be enslaved.

I haven't read Habermas but your "discourse principle" which is effectively a "consensus principle" is contradictory to the principle of democracy under which community actions can be taken which are not consented to by all. Action may be necessary which may go against the interests of individuals or minorities and in many cases no amount of discourse will ever resolve this.

So, there you go.

best reasonable wishes,

Mark

Dear Michael,

Here is my attempt to honestly and critically analyze your essay:

First, what I consider to be the strong points:

1. The visual presentation of the essay is excellent, the diagrams are a pleasure to look at

2. Your writing style is captivating and at times I would consider it lyrical

3. You present novel connections between concepts that most people would probably consider either not or at most very tenuously connected to each other.

4. You present some imaginative ideas, and you present them in some detail.

Now on to my criticism:

1. I did not understand why there is a dichotomy between an eternal retelling of a mythic story and extinction. Normally I would interpret something like this at most metaphorically (using the retelling of the mythic story as a metaphor for survival), but it seems you mean it in a much more literal sense. But then, why can one not use something else to "stand in" for survival to create a similar dichotomy (or even more than one alternative, so that the dichotomy becomes multiple choice)?

2. I did not understand the sentence: "Life

could radiate across that barrier (just), but death could not." I would have thought that the same speed limit applies to both the propagation of life and of death throughout the universe.

3. I did not follow the justification for P2 (obviously, a justification is not needed for a postulate, but it is helpful in understanding your perspective)

4. Your argument for constructing table 1 seems to aim to emulate the process of deductive logic, but I did not see any logical sentences which show how one can formally deduce the conclusions from the premises.

5. I did not follow the chain of reasoning from the table to the concrete implementation of the schemes you present. Perhaps it would have helped to include a formal derivation in the technical endnotes.

6. Your "recombinant text method" seems to presuppose that a text already exists. Under this system, how does one go from nothing at all to a particular text? How do you handle situations in which a text is modified by, say, author x, then by author y who makes a modification with which author x would disagree, and then by author z who builds on the modification of author y to make an argument with which author x agrees?

7. Perhaps I am too cynical, but I suspect that even with a scheme like your third invention, people may find ways to manipulate the system. The obvious mechanism is for a person to "identify" with a particular pipe position and then to attempt influence others to vote for it.

8. I did get lost in the mythopoeic guidance section. It occurred to me that possibly a (narrated?) animation might illustrate the ideas much more effectively. The concepts may be too high level for the general population to understand, and this may present a major obstacle to general acceptance.

I hope you found my attempt useful.

Best wishes,

Armin

Dear Michael Allan

I met you in essay of Georgina Parry

Unfortunately your essay beyond of ability automatic translation so I only see the presentation.

Maybe it's your thoughtful and conscientious very admirable .

10 points are worthy for that - Hải.CaoHoàng

Hi, Mike. Thanks for your recent comment on my paper, I'm looking forward to reading more!

You said "You imply that two species of rational being are mutually exclusive, but why?"

My main suggestion is that a system that selects for 'rational being' will probably result in gradual human extinction, simply because AI and other technologies will likely be more rational and more efficient than humans. This becomes an issue only in the context of competition, such as for energy resources, but this seems higly likely if AIs multiply due to either self-replication or the needs of commerce or industry.

Therefore I wonder if a bettter system/moral principle might be the continutation of life and humanity, which implies the continutation of rationality (and probably the development of safe AI), but as a means rather than as an end?

Michael,

That is a very interesting and well thought out plan. I think though that you really need to step back even further to get a more complete picture and some of these issues might fall into place of their own accord.

For one thing, humanity shouldn't be an end in itself, but one more tool, one more bridge between what came before and what will come after.

One of the essential fallacies running through western thought is that the ideal constitutes an absolute, but in fact it is a simple collection of preferred characteristics. The absolute is a ground state. The universal state of oneness is not a singular entity, one, but the median in which all positive and negative cancel out. The flat line on the heart monitor. As such, it is the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. In order to project ourselves upward, we necessarily have to push downward. And we do that as best as possible and it is a process of expansion and contraction. This dichotomy manifests both aspects of how we progress, as expansion is forward, but unfocused, while the contraction stage draws inward and back, but consolidates down to that which is most stable and focused. This is the political dichotomy of liberal and conservative, in that liberalization is an encompassing expansion of energy outward, while conservatism is a distillation of the lessons learned and the rewards gained. In nature it's the dichotomy of spring and fall. Since this manifests on the personal level as birth and death, we need to put it in a broader context of the full cycle. We exist as manifestations of the energy propelling us forward and the structural integrity holding us together. As the energy continues to push and thus stress the form, eventually it breaks down and is replaced by a newer form that often grew up as a patch over the weaknesses of the prior form, since that is where the energy was most expansive. So it is not a straight line, but a lot of bouncing around on the level of the particulars, with the larger manifestations best expressed thermodynamically, like waves across a medium of parts jostling each other.

Our awareness is like that energy constantly pushing forward, while the thoughts it generates are the forms which coalesce and then recede in its wake. Memory is our ability to be able to construct coherent streams of these thoughts, collectively known as history and as you point out, myths.

One of the themes I keep pushing, to the frustration of some, is that we look at time backwards. As one of those individual points of reference, we experience change as a sequence of encounters and events and so we model time as the point of the present moving along a vector from past to future, which physics further distills intellectually as measures of particular durations to use in its math models. The basic larger reality is that it's the changing configuration of what is, that turns future into past. Probability into actuality. Tomorrow into yesterday. This makes it much more like temperature than space.

Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. With temperature we think of the collective effect, yet it consists of a multitude of individual velocities/amplitudes, but with time we think of those individual changes and measure their frequency, but cannot decern the measure of the universal rate of change. That is because, just like with temperature, it is a cumulative effect of those many actions.

Now our minds are composed of two sides, with the left described as a linear processor, responsible for rational, linear, causal logic, while the right is considered a parallel processor, responsible for emotion and intuition. Essentially they function as a clock and a thermostat. Like time, the serial function takes one step at a time and derives a causal route. The right side functions much more as a scalar process, with all the information available pushed into it and the response as what rises to the surface, like that wave through the medium, or the whistle of a boiling pot. Sometimes it results in insights and connections and other times it will boil over with frustration and anger as a response to too much input, or boredom from too little.

Now this relation is fundamental to our existence as mobile organisms, since we must first process a larger context and then proceed to navigate a path through it. Plants, on the other hand, don't move, so they function primarily as thermostats, with a very residual need for any serial processing.

This then goes back to that relation between expansion and contraction, as the expansion is much more a thermodynamic, non-linear process, while the contraction, on the intellectual level, is to consolidate that narrative sequence of connections necessary to derive a sense of order for our linear selves and thus project a subsequent course. The problem is that sequence is not necessarily causal. Each event is composed of input coming from all directions, while we only approach it from one direction. One rung on a ladder isn't the cause of the next, nor, in a wholistic sense, is one footstep on the ladder cause of the next. Causality is energy transfer. So one day doesn't cause the next, rather the sun shining on a rotating planet causes this sequence of events called days. Which come into being and dissolve, ie. go future to past. Yet because our rational function is necessarily linear, we try to impose this sequencing onto the larger reality and so our sense of order grows from prior, less informed states, as the basis for future input and observations and so we keep imposing models onto reality which she only partially considers. Then to compensate, we make them more complex, because one doesn't question the myth.

Eventually though, the pot boils over and all our stories melt into on big origin myth for the next leg of the big expansion cycle. So it ultimately is only the energy which is conserved and yet it must continually manifest form, but keep changing it, so energy goes past to future forms, as these forms go from being in the future to being in the past. Without action, nothing exists, but with action, nothing exists forever.

Regards,

John Merryman