Michael,

Speaking of myth and reason seems incongruent though myth is certainly part of our current culture, religion carrying a great deal of weight in decisionmaking. But we do separate reason and faith in our world. Does the myth have to support the reason and steering applications and consensus building.

I have a vision too that might require myth and reason:

Humankind and the material world around us is the stuff of stars. It is fitting that, like stars, living and dying, we recycle that stuff, giving more substance to those that follow. Our lives have always been a quest to find life's origins, a pursuit often sidestepped by hubris we collect on the way. We find a future by finding ourselves and understanding our world, a world that grows as we mature.

Real growth speaks to vision, to imagination, to working together, and to using resources wisely. For example, a comparative modicum of NASA funds ($446M) is earmarked for discovering Earth's birth process - and its parents, so to speak. The Dawn probe is looking for answers by studying the proto planet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Understanding Earth's origins and adding to our knowledge of the Universe can only embolden our commitment to preserving Earth's life lines.

Jim

    Thanks for these questions Armin, and the chance to explain. I answer in two posts. Here's a summary of the first: 1) I explain the literal necessity of endlessly retelling the myth; 2) I explain how "Life could radiate... but death could not"; 3) I further justify the premise of a supreme value on reason; and 4) I suggest that answers 2 and 3 may help you follow the theoretical deductions.

    1. Yes, I mean this literally - "The essential, material practice of rational being is the perpetual telling and retelling of its own, immortal myth" (ab.) - not figuratively. For an interstellar network of civilizations to maintain a slow expansion into the galaxy and beyond, it must constantly remind itself of the reason for this expansion. This requires an endless telling and retelling of its own myth (where we come from and where we are going). Suppose this retelling stops. Then the reason for expansion is lost, and with it the assurance of expansion and hence of survival. You see, barring a fluke of the universe, rational being cannot be maintained in a continuous line without a modicum of interstellar expansion (p. 9); distance and the limit of light speed combine into an effective extinction barrier only when we maintain a sufficient dispersal across that barrier. So the retelling of myth is necessary to rational being.

    I'm not sure I understood "stand in". Please repost if you still have a question about that.

    2. "Life could radiate across that barrier (just), but death could not." (p. 1) You counter that death too might radiate and "undo" life, but death is a relatively poor self-radiator, self-propagator. Picture an interstellar network of civilizations expanding from the Sun throughout the Orion Spur and beyond. I claim that no mode of extinction could feasibly expand in pursuit and destroy all those civilizations - like a perfect interstellar plague, or a galactic earthquake. While that sort of hazard is conceivable, it's not plausible (see my reply to Tommy, May 1, A).

    3. "(P2) Let reason be the supreme value." I justified this premise in the text (p. 2) by its utility in expanding the moral argument to its proper scope. Here I agree with Kant that an ethics co-extensive with humanity would make no sense.

    A further justification might hinge on our desire to exist. Nature (P1) allows rational being the choice of existing forever in a continuous line, a choice open to no other form of life. We alone can choose between rational being and non-being. If we choose rational being (and why wouldn't we?), then it makes sense to interpret this choice as a supreme valuation on reason, because reason is the basic difference between rational being and non-being.

    I think this premise is strong, though the strength isn't immediately obvious. An artist could show how reason is alive in the mutual gaze of mother and child, and this alone might carry the day (as it carried much of Christianity). A narrow objectivity would see these two as dumb machines, but there's another view, the necessity of which is felt by everyone. Kant's insight helps here. He explains how freedom is subjectively necessary to reason despite its objective impossibility in nature (4:446-63). "Reason must view herself as the authoress of her principles, independently of alien influences, and must consequently, as practical reason, or as the will of a rational being, by herself be viewed as free... From this stem all judgements about actions such that they ought to have been done even if they were not done." (4:448, 55)

    So I think reason offers a strong, defensible value-premise in moral theory.

    4. Given my answers above (2, 3), it might now be easier to follow the deduction of M0 from the two premises, and thence M1 and M2. The arguments are there, just (as Robert implies, and I admit) much condensed. - Again, thanks for the chance to explain.

    (continued in next post)

    Continuing from previous post: 5) I outline the essay structure; 6) I explain details of recombinant text; 7) I reiterate the purpose of pipes; and 8) I agree the rationale for overguidance should be more graphic, and offer a kind of picture.

    5. For each principle in theory (M2, M1, M0), I devote a separate section of the essay to the corresponding practice; 3 sections in all. That's the gross structure of the essay, which I should've emphasized better. Does knowing this help?

    If not, please be specific about where you're stuck. See also my answer to 7 below.

    6a. One creates a recombinant text (a population of drafts of size N) just by writing something down as the first draft. As I mention to Robert (May 3, C), the pattern of a recombinant text is pretty much synonymous with that of literary freedom. So you write down your idea of the plan, or whatever, in your own draft (N=1); then I write down my idea (N=2); and so the population grows from scratch.

    6b. You have authors X and Y modifying the same draft, as in a wiki. But a wiki is not a recombinant text. In a recombinant text, each author would normally modify his own draft and therefore the conflicts you mention would not occur.

    7. Actually, it would be quite normal for a person to identify somewhat with a piped position (say a downstream draft) and advocate or campaign for it. She might even be elected the pipe minder of that draft, a kind of administrator. But because the draft is piped, she can simultaneously draft her own personal version of the text upstream, which might differ on key points. So the pipe is basically a device to prevent a candidate (one who receives votes, as anyone might) from being trapped downstream by her own voters in "a position that is not properly her own" (p. 4). It isn't a device to prevent identification or advocacy.

    So here maybe is an instance of what you were looking for in 5 above - a "chain of reasoning from the table [here the principle of personal freedom M2] to the concrete implementation [here the device of the pipe that frees]" - evidence that the theoretical principles M1 and M2 are implemented in practice as an actual steering mechanism.

    8. You suggest something more graphic and concrete is needed to explain the rationale of overguidance (pp. 7-8). I agree. It's actually a simple concept at heart, and I should've emphasized this. So picture an analogy for the plain guidance of laws, plans and other norms in modern society (i.e. an incomplete steering mechanism) as a long and arduous journey that we undertake, on the order of the D-Day invasions, or the Apollo missions, but without any idea of the destination. Feel the senselessness of that, the difficulty of justifying the tremendous effort and maintaining the necessary morale. Enter the idea of overguidance, "Let's agree where we're going and why."

    It seems obvious, but I think modern society was born blind in this particular eye. When we threw out the logic of Christianity during the Enlightenment (in Kant's day), we threw out the baby with the bath water. There's much in it that we still can't dispense with.

    Mike

    You're welcome Ross, thanks in return. - Well, I'd simply defend the premise of a supreme valuation on reason. The full realization of that value requires an interstellar network of civilizations, something that can only be strengthened, never weakened, by the addition of other civilizations, human or non-human. This I argue in the essay and in the comments.

    To the extent your hypothetical AI-creatures are more rational than we, I feel we've less cause to fear them than ourselves, even if we're all crammed into the same local niche. Genocide is never a rational response to competition, only a sign of mental weakness or collective insanity.

    I'll re-read your essay shortly and see if I can't think of a question or two for that gentle interviewer to ask. - Mike

    Hello again, Hai. Here's a text version of my essay. I hope it's easier to translate.

    Thanks very much for your generosity. I've added you to my review list. I'll be to comment on your essay shortly. - Mike

    John, I don't claim humanity's 'an end in itself'. Maybe you've confused me with someone else? - Mike

    James, while I agree Earth's origin is a mythic theme, I don't understand why you confront me with faith and religion. 'Myth' I describe (p. 1) and define (p. 7) as a normative story of "where we come from and where we are going", one that's backed by rational discourses in the public sphere. Are you confusing my essay with someone else's? - Mike

    Michael,

    Years ago, I ran a successful consulting service that helped author an organization's story with the objective of the story being to encapsulate culture, tradition, goals and aspirations that would rally both insiders and outsiders. So, your idea of steering with a myth intrigues me to no end. I would love to find a way to make your idea real.

    Inventing a story so "convincing it becomes immortal" is easy to say, however, than do. The easy part I found was the history if it was well documented and recent. The future was another question altogether due to one overriding consideration: The different places different people were coming from - this seems to be the same as what you imply in seeking "consensual norms." We tried all sorts of voting patterns to build consensus but, while everyone agreed on the very far long term, the closer we looked the more the differences. Your legislative example seems to depend on a majority agreement and may work but we were seeking 90% agreement.

    While I totally subscribe to your idea of a myth steering, almost automatically, to an acceptable future, I am concerned about its implementation. Any concerns on the implementation of your model?

    I look forward to your comments on my essay here.

    - Ajay

      Thanks for the explanation, Mike. I'm glad if my comments were at all helpful. I would love to talk more about this with you. I don't have time right now, but I hope we can pick up our conversation some time in the future.

      Best,

      Robert

      Michael,

      " An end to steer by,...

      The material principle of the theory (M0, Table 1) follows almost directly from the two premises: while the laws of nature (P1) enable rational beings to assure themselves of a continuous existence, as opposed to extinction, that same continuity would also be necessary to fully develop and realize the supreme value (P2). So we take that continuity as the material end of morality. Here we are treating morality as a purposeful, constructed facility on which the full weight of our most cherished value may come to rest. Thinking like engineers, therefore, and wary of failure, we must now design a structure to bear that load."

      Guess then I read too much into what you were writing. Sorry.

      Regards,

      John

      No problem, John. You correctly identify the end as "M0". But M0 isn't defined as "humanity", nor could anything "come after" it. - Mike

      Hi Michael,

      I know you're waiting until you have an opportunity to comment on my article again and rate it. You will see that I'm putting the following postscript on everyone's page, so I thought I would also share it with you. It is especially pertinent in your case because you're the expert on voting systems. (That was my favorite part of your article so far, I really learned a lot.) Have a good one.

      Warm regards,

      Aaron

      P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate the essays of authors who tell me that they have rated my essay:

      10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

      9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

      8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

      7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

      6 - slightly favorable indifference

      5 - unfavorable indifference

      4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

      3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

      2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

      1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

      After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

      The following is a general observation:

      Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)

      Michael,

      "(M0) Morality purposes the endless continuity of rational being"

      Rationality is a process, of decision making, not a stable destination. Proposing it as the highest good also assumes good as a form of unambiguous ideal. While our religious and cultural models treat good and bad as some form of cosmic dual between the forces of righteousness and evil, they are actually the biological binary code of attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. What's good for the fox, is bad for the chicken and there is no clear line where the chicken ends and the fox begins. Then, like computer programing, lots of these binary choices add up to the larger reality. Not only are there many shades of grey, but all the colors of the spectrum exist between black and white.

      So then when we get into a rational process of decision making, what might be a good at one level, even lots of goods added together, can equal a bad on another level. Such as when we have an economy based on growth in a finite ecosystem, the result is a bit like those bacteria racing across the petri dish. If you were to really pick apart the decision processes people make, they chose that which is beneficial to themselves, because if they didn't, someone else would take advantage of the opportunity.

      As you recognize, top down proscriptions and prescriptions don't work, but simply inspire people to want to keep climbing to the top to be in the position make such judgements, so it does have to be some form of bottom up decision making process. I just think that; One) we need to recognize there will always be winners and losers and if there was a sense that losing a conflict wasn't terminal, nor winning one absolute, then it would be a more organic process, in which the layers of options and results tend to settle to their levels, rather than a mechanistic result, where a one, or a few winners dictate to the rest.

      Also; that the only real end result that matters is maintaining a habitable planet. I think the entries advocating for extra-terrestrial solutions really don't have a firm grasp on the realities of the size and inhospitality of relatively empty space. We haven't been back to the moon in half a century and are mostly cluttering up low earth orbit with a lot of junk.

      Regards,

      John

      PS, Here is an interesting essay, comparing eastern and western logic.

      Dear Mike

      I am very pleased with your suggestion and would be very grateful if you give me another translation to recognize the shortcomings that I have made.

      I did see copies of your text - I would love to look forward to establish a regulation for your future and especially: "Maximizing PERSONAL FREEDOM: Necessary Inventions" - you'll find it at "The Optional" in my essay.Attachment #1: 1_NHIM_V_BT_BUC_V_GII_PHP_TNG_TH_CHO_TNG_LAI.pdf

        Thanks Aaron, Please go ahead and count on my vote. Toward the end of the month I'll be voting for all the essays on my review list, which includes yours. I've kept the timing deliberately vague in order to avoid issues of vote disclosure. - Mike

        If you don't mind John, I added you to my review list. I'll read your essay shortly.

        You say my "endless continuity of rational being" is a process and therefore not a stable destination. But the qualifier "endless" makes it stable in theory. Are you claiming that an endless continuum cannot be realized as a practical matter? Please explain. - Mike

        Thanks Ajay for the thoughtful review. Here I explain the feasibility of consensus.^* The kind of consensus we're after is defined by the validity criterion (D, p. 3) as a text (myth, law or plan) to which all affected persons can in reason agree. Put like that, you'll see it's easy to obtain a starter consensus. The example I give for a mythic text is (p. 8), "We want to create a better future for ourselves and our children."

        Nobody could reasonably disagree with that; or, if they do, we just erase the part they disagree with. The only problem now is to take that trivial starter consensus and evolve it into something less trivial and more actionable while still holding onto the consensus. My essay describes some of this from the vantage of the individual guide (G, p. 8), but here I offer a more general and graphic description. Picture that starter text ("better future") sitting on the forest floor as the root draft. Above it picture a horizontal series of more substansive drafts ("better future by flying into space", "better future by letting folks play with science", etc) as the lower branches of the tree. Above each branch, picture sub-branches of yet more substansive drafts. And so on, out to the leaves. The tree now encodes a complex set of alternative paths along which the trivial consensus of the root might evolve toward a more substansive text.^** Guiding its actual evolution is the public sphere above the leaves (figures F6, F9) whose rational discourses constantly mull the overriding question, "By what path could the text evolve without ever losing consensus?"

        It then evolves by path selection, step by step, till there emerges in the lower branches the fruit of the process, which is either a) the sought for substansive consensus, or b) a clear dissensus together with a mutual understanding of why consensus has failed. There's also the possibility c) of a given forest dying. The mythic forest would always be the last to go, it alone having the potential for immortality; and the essay ties its fate to that of all rational being in the cosmos.

        Mike

        * I take the feasibility of consensus as your "implementation" question. Please correct me if you meant something else.

        ** Here I simplify the tree's internal structure and gloss over the mechanics of its evolutionary stepping. For more information, see: 1) figure PS; 2) my April 27 post to Doug's essay; and 3) Doug's April 30 post to my essay, and my reply there.

        Mike,

        I've now read your essay a 3rd time and must admit I still struggle to genuinely understand your thoughts (the 1st was speed reading so doesn't count as yours is as immune to skimming as mine).

        I somehow miss the jump from the limitations of c to populating the stars (all of which I agree with) and also reliance on myth. As an astronomer I'm very happy with concepts of distance and light speed limitations but I use the word myth quite often to describe current paradigms of astronomy and physics which we require to shed, so I myself suffer subconsciously from omnipresent preconceptions.

        From seemingly (to me) more pragmatic and empirical foundations I've produced a conventional paper on a cyclic galaxy sequence and cosmology the evidence of which, if studied carefully, implies a very long term (infinite in fact) cyclic process of re-ionization and renewal where we have and will constantly be turned over and mixed with fresh material as garden soil and plants. I'd like to feel morality in one iteration influences the form and intelligence of the next sentient being any one of our brain cells may next become part of (after part of countless billions of suns and rocks between).

        But only myth supports such a hypothesis. I wonder if some complex proton oscillation patterns may hold information of previous cycles? - It's really only a better evidenced 'multiverse' theory, but those who hold more mundane myths may well sent the men in white coats to drag away those with different myths! I wonder which sounds more credible to you?

        Best wishes

        Peter

          Mike,

          I've now read your essay a 3rd time and must admit I still struggle to genuinely understand your thoughts (the 1st was speed reading so doesn't count as yours is as immune to skimming as mine).

          I somehow miss the jump from the limitations of c to populating the stars (all of which I agree with) and also reliance on myth. As an astronomer I'm very happy with concepts of distance and light speed limitations but I use the word myth quite often to describe current paradigms of astronomy and physics which we require to shed, so I myself suffer subconsciously from omnipresent preconceptions.

          From seemingly (to me) more pragmatic and empirical foundations I've produced a conventional paper on a cyclic galaxy sequence and cosmology the evidence of which, if studied carefully, implies a very long term (infinite in fact) cyclic process of re-ionization and renewal where we have and will constantly be turned over and mixed with fresh material as garden soil and plants. I'd like to feel morality in one iteration influences the form and intelligence of the next sentient being any one of our brain cells may next become part of (after part of countless billions of suns and rocks between).

          But only myth supports such a hypothesis. I wonder if some complex proton oscillation patterns may hold information of previous cycles? - It's really only a better evidenced 'multiverse' theory, but those who hold more mundane myths may well sent the men in white coats to drag away those with different myths! I wonder which sounds more credible to you?

          Best wishes

          Peter