The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Fixing and making things, what tools to get and what skills to learn, ...
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Ego
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Ego »

jacob wrote: It is likely that I will change my mind [of whether that's bad] when some program passes the Turing test. My concern is that this might not happen exclusively because computers get smarter but also because humans are getting dumber.
:lol:

I was being facetious about algos solving the problem. Though, now that I think about it, I guess it depends how you define the problem and how you define dumb.

Digital maps make us less aware of our surroundings...
http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com ... 349#p92662

Kids born today will probably never drive a car. Self driving cars will make the route between home and the grocery store as mysterious as the route between JFK and LAX. The system hiccups and they will have no idea how to get home. If we apply this phenomenon to just about everything we do, what level of learned-helplessness and learned-ignorance/stupidity will we see in the future.

So, knowing this is on the horizon (already here) how do we deal with it? I avoid digital maps because I don't want to lose the ability to navigate. But there is a cost to doing so. I stopped to ask directions in LA recently and the guy looked at me as if I were an idiot. In order to maintain our autonomy will we have to become Luddites?

Today we do crossfit because regular life lacks physical challenge. What will mental, emotional and psychological crossfit look like?

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: So, knowing this is on the horizon (already here) how do we deal with it? I avoid digital maps because I don't want to lose the ability to navigate. But there is a cost to doing so. I stopped to ask directions in LA recently and the guy looked at me as if I were an idiot. In order to maintain our autonomy will we have to become Luddites?
Yeah, probably we all should become 80/20 Luddites. Pick your personal mix. Look around you now. Focus on any random object in your domain. How was it made? How does it function? Where did it and all of its components come from? How did they get to where they are now? These aren't questions like "Do dogs have souls?" These are questions that can be answered, but we don't have the time to answer, so we accept our own ignorance and trust that there are safeguards in place that will protect us.
Today we do crossfit because regular life lacks physical challenge. What will mental, emotional and psychological crossfit look like?
A body conditioned/processed by crossfit is like a tofu hotdog. I don't want the tofu hotdog equivalent of mental, emotional and psychological conditioning. Of course, I also seriously don't want the Dollar Store cheez puffs equivalent of physical, mental, emotional and psychological conditioning/processing. My preference would be to not be conditioned or processed at all in alignment with any regimental, institutional or corporate standards.

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Ego
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Ego »

I was thinking in terms of the crossfit philosophy rather than crossfit itself. Constantly varied, functional movements performed at high intensity.

Regardless of whether you agree with the how they translate that into action or not, what would you do to achieve a broad base of functional skills for mental, emotional and psychological anti-fragility?

IlliniDave
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
IlliniDave said: Is it the behavior that is complicated, or the attempt to analyze it?
Top
Complex and complicated are not synonyms.
Complicated
adjective
1.
composed of elaborately interconnected parts; complex:
complicated apparatus for measuring brain functions.

2.
difficult to analyze, understand, explain, etc.:
a complicated problem.

My only point is something like sitting alone, quietly, almost meditatively in the Zen sense, next to a river is very simple behavior. It does not require warring quadrants of maturity and gender or anything like that.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by jacob »


BRUTE
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:My preference would be to not be conditioned or processed at all in alignment with any regimental, institutional or corporate standards.
a human completely devoid of outside influence would likely never mentally develop beyond infant status, would they? everything in humans is conditioned or processed by something external.

edit: that stuff about zone 2/3 - is 7Wannabe5 asking brute to only eat food grown within biking distance? brute doesn't even have a bike, and is about 200 miles from where he woke up this morning. unlikely to happen. food production is one thing that brute really likes to outsource. he enjoys the food preparation part much more than managing hordes of wild beasts.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by cmonkey »

Ego wrote:Kids born today will probably never drive a car.
A pretty bold suggestion and I tend to agree with it but not for the reason you believe. Grand kids perhaps. Self-driving cars have replaced flying cars after everyone figured out that wouldn't work. There is nothing beyond a few dog and pony shows put out by a couple of "super smart" companies to suggest they will be here on a mass scale within our lifetimes.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by FBeyer »

Ego wrote:
FBeyer wrote: Flow is simply what PosPsy call that small area where your skill level corresponds well with the challenges presented to you. There is no meaning associated with it.
I believe it is easier to enter the flow state when I am doing something that provides some meaning or purpose to life.
Seligman cautiously tried to define the good life among three major components:
The Pleasant Life, The Engaged Life, and The Meaningful Life.

Pleasant: emotions and physical relations. Things like shopping, sex, food, music, hiking in nature, etc. Anything where the experience gets better with proper spacing (to avoid hedonic adaptation), mindfulness and/or savouring it with others.

Engaged: Flow... Begin deeply immersed in something you can do, something you can relate to in a way where you are productive and mentally stimulated.

Meaningful: applying the core strengths of your personality to engage in something you believe is larger than you. Something you feel has a lasting purpose.


I just think you feel better when you are simultaneously doing something Engaging (flow) and Meaningful (altruistic purpose).

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Dragline »

cmonkey wrote:
Ego wrote:Kids born today will probably never drive a car.
A pretty bold suggestion and I tend to agree with it but not for the reason you believe. Grand kids perhaps. Self-driving cars have replaced flying cars after everyone figured out that wouldn't work. There is nothing beyond a few dog and pony shows put out by a couple of "super smart" companies to suggest they will be here on a mass scale within our lifetimes.
Yeah, I don't see this happening anytime soon in the US except on a very limited basis in some kind of "model community", largely for legal and cultural reasons. (Commercial trucking from depot-to-depot along major highways might be different.) It would be more likely to occur in modern places with strong governments like Singapore, Dubai or one of the newer cities in China. The key to making it work is really banning most human-driven cars and trucks in a given area and then normalizing all the streets in some machine-friendly manner.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

IllinDave said: My only point is something like sitting alone, quietly, almost meditatively in the Zen sense, next to a river is very simple behavior. It does not require warring quadrants of maturity and gender or anything like that.
I applied a psychological model because in addition to mentioning the act of sitting by the river in communion with nature, you used the word "melancholy" to describe your state and the word "hid" to describe your behavior. Prior to Freud, one of the cures commonly prescribed for depression was "novel sights involving nature." For instance, a doctor might tell a patient to spend time at a zoo observing the animals. So, given the context of feeling "melancholy" and desire to "hide", it is difficult to not interpret the simple act of sitting by the river communing with nature as a method towards "self-soothing", and in the semi-ridiculous psychological model I like to use, a person who has the ability to "self-sooth" is a person who has the ability to "mother himself" or apply his own adult feminine energy to his own juvenile feminine energy. IOW, along the emotional/sensual or "feminine" spectrum, the ability to "self-soothe" is roughly analogous to the ability to apply "self-discipline" along the active/directed "masculine" spectrum.
BRUTE said: a human completely devoid of outside influence would likely never mentally develop beyond infant status, would they? everything in humans is conditioned or processed by something external.

edit: that stuff about zone 2/3 - is 7Wannabe5 asking brute to only eat food grown within biking distance? brute doesn't even have a bike, and is about 200 miles from where he woke up this morning. unlikely to happen. food production is one thing that brute really likes to outsource. he enjoys the food preparation part much more than managing hordes of wild beasts.
I agree that external inputs are necessary. I was just posturing rebel for a moment.

The reason why I suggested the exercise in adherence to the rules of strict Perma-culture Locavore Frugality is that I have found attempting to adhere to these rules extremely challenging and revealing. Complex systems can be created by re-iteration of simple rules. One thought that sprang to my mind because I am frequently considering perma-culture is that the way we apply the word Nomad on this forum is not even vaguely in alignment with the economic model of a primitive Nomad society. Nomads generally travel with domesticated animals in pursuit of pasture or following wild animals in pursuit of pasture. A person traveling around and out-sourcing food is not a Nomad, and in a way that is roughly analogous to how a tofu hotdog is more like a cheez puff than a soybean. Many farmers in Michigan grow soybeans. Very few organic gardeners in Michigan grow soybeans. Very few farmers in Michigan process or consume tofu. Quite a few organic gardeners in Michigan consume tofu, but very few process it.

IMO, self-driving cars will just be a short-lived intermediary technology that will naturally lead to a sort of modular train system where most people will just own or lease or pay to occupy private passive motor-less cars in the chain. I think cars are stupid, and I didn't get my license until I was 32, so I don't think it is a huge deal if the skill of driving a modern car is lost.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
IllinDave said: My only point is something like sitting alone, quietly, almost meditatively in the Zen sense, next to a river is very simple behavior. It does not require warring quadrants of maturity and gender or anything like that.
I applied a psychological model because in addition to mentioning the act of sitting by the river in communion with nature, you used the word "melancholy" to describe your state and the word "hid" to describe your behavior. Prior to Freud, one of the cures commonly prescribed for depression was "novel sights involving nature." For instance, a doctor might tell a patient to spend time at a zoo observing the animals. So, given the context of feeling "melancholy" and desire to "hide", it is difficult to not interpret ...
Oddly, I find it very easy not to do such interpretation, which is sort of back to where I dipped my toe into this thread (someday I'll learn). It's not so much a matter of searching for the way forward in the name of reinvention as it is refraining from fitting everything into a construct that reinvention would leave behind. Sort of a twist on the old 'do not seek the truth, just drop your opinions' proverb.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:The reason why I suggested the exercise in adherence to the rules of strict Perma-culture Locavore Frugality is that I have found attempting to adhere to these rules extremely challenging and revealing. [..] Nomads generally travel with domesticated animals in pursuit of pasture or following wild animals in pursuit of pasture. A person traveling around and out-sourcing food is not a Nomad, and in a way that is roughly analogous to how a tofu hotdog is more like a cheez puff than a soybean.
brute doesn't doubt that adding strong restrictions to his diet will make it more challenging. he's not sure what would be revealed except technical details like "brute doesn't like stepping in cow poo".

good point about the nomads. in that sense, "digital nomads" are really more like traveling salesmen, often without the sales. brute's idol is Ryan Bingham from the movie Up in the Air. business class samurai.
7Wannabe5 wrote:IMO, self-driving cars will just be a short-lived intermediary technology that will naturally lead to a sort of modular train system where most people will just own or lease or pay to occupy private passive motor-less cars in the chain.
yea, apparently Uber's whole business model won't be profitable until they get to self-driving cars. until then, it's just a giant market share ponzi scheme.

for 99% of car usage, renting/leasing is just fine. the only reason most humans even own cars is because the logistics of getting the empty car to the humans in need of travel required an additional human. after that it's just a distribution problem, which the internet has long solved (matching available cars to customers).

then there's the 1% of drives that are joyrides. maybe these will go the way of horse riding.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by jacob »

Ego wrote: Kids born today will probably never drive a car. Self driving cars will make the route between home and the grocery store as mysterious as the route between JFK and LAX. The system hiccups and they will have no idea how to get home. If we apply this phenomenon to just about everything we do, what level of learned-helplessness and learned-ignorance/stupidity will we see in the future.

So, knowing this is on the horizon (already here) how do we deal with it? I avoid digital maps because I don't want to lose the ability to navigate. But there is a cost to doing so. I stopped to ask directions in LA recently and the guy looked at me as if I were an idiot. In order to maintain our autonomy will we have to become Luddites?
Luddite-wise, the key is to resist the algorithms. Personally, this can be done by deleting cookies, blocking tracking (ublock, ghostery, random agent spoofer), and reading a wide selection of sources. In particular, getting away from the filter-bubble (in which news algos present you articles while trying to get you to Like and Share them) helps, Reading books is a huge differentiator (60% of Americans haven't read a single book in the past year---and admitting to this is not shameful at all).

The problem with this is that only focusing on your own skills in that regard tends to isolate you. It's all fine to be crossfit but one still has to live in a society where sidewalks and bicycles are being replaced with roads because everybody else chooses an unfit lifestyle that requires and demands that one drives a car. Similarly, Luddism isn't unless one wants to attempt to live completely outside a society despite that it increasingly looks and feels like Idiocracy. The problem is that the perception is mutual. The guy thinks you're an idiot because you aren't navigating by smart-phone. You aren't talking his language (<- choices, way of thinking, lifestyle, product consumption, ... ) thus resulting in this problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCIo4MCO-_U ...

The facts/contextual frameworks acquired by reading/thinking won't work/translate when interacting with a society where facts are disregarded; where a fun "infopgraphic" is expected to be at hand so that people don't need to study/think (busy busy lifestyles, you know); and important questions are settled by "style".

The problem here is that living in an Idiocratic world effectively demands that one balances two different frameworks at the same time. First one has to understand and be able to use the correct framework along with objective facts. However, it is no longer enough or even encouraged to just communicate that understanding. Instead one has to translate it and communicate it in some kind of fun and personable style that "folks" can relate to. Of course that language is vastly inferior when it comes to dealing with an accurate/precise reality or almost any level of complexity (anything that involves combining more than two different conceptual ideas). In addition, the added complication adds another cost to a zero-sum problem of "what should one spend their time on". "Stupid" does exact a toll in the form of the inefficiency of making inferior or, well, stupid decisions.

Maybe if techmology finds a way to directly read the emotional impact that certain words or styles have on people in an idiocratic world, it's possible for algorithms to actually handle the low levels of complexity that needs to be communicated to the average person in such a world. Not because algos are getting smarter, but because people's behavior are getting tuned down to the simpler level of complexity that algos are capable of handling. I think we're somewhat heading there (maybe the ultra-democratic feedback system leads to a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy). It's already clear how TV has settled on a few recipes or scripts for making series and newscasts that have been proven to be functional. Popular nonfiction books also have a formula: They're edited for a 6th grade reading level with bigger than average fonts (compare to a book from 25 years ago or a modern monolog) and only contain a few original thoughts lest too many readers complain that the text is too small, that nobody uses words like "thus", or that there's too much information in the book. The current election shows how democracy works when brazen disregard for facts becomes the norm.

Facebook is a good example of a first step in terms of influencing the pursuit of a dumbed down intellect with their introduction of 5 or 6 different "reactions". It used to be that people could just "like" or "ignore". Now people can "happy, sad, laugh, ... " Shining by its absence is the much requested "dislike" or "this is retarded" reaction. Effectively, and in a very big brotherly or newsspeaky way, people aren't allowed to talk "or react" in a way that questions the underlying foundation of the system which is essentially about generating advertising dollars. But I digress. My point is that one can use these reactions to tie consumer reactions to product words and thus start controlling people's reactions (filter bubble) algorithmically. IOW, you no longer need somebody with a brain to understand or relate to newsfeed consumers. They've successfully trained an algorithm to serve them just the right concentration of puppy dogs and political memes which they take in passively or at most "react" to thus propagating the system.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by J_ »

@Jacob@Ego: Are those looks in the future so pessimistic? Ar'nt you both too fond of your understanding how society works?
Look what kind of President and first Lady there are now... gifted people with knowledge and talent to be a guide in the USA.
America can survive a reign with unqualified persons as president, I think. I see your point of the bad influence of media.
But is angst not overtaking your prophecies?
Last edited by J_ on Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

IlliniDave said: Oddly, I find it very easy not to do such interpretation, which is sort of back to where I dipped my toe into this thread (someday I'll learn). It's not so much a matter of searching for the way forward in the name of reinvention as it is refraining from fitting everything into a construct that reinvention would leave behind. Sort of a twist on the old 'do not seek the truth, just drop your opinions' proverb.
Hmmm...well, my punk response would be something along the lines of "Buddhism-schmuddhism", and I would note that it has been my observation that there was no shortage of Be-MWs to be found in the parking lot of the center for the convocation of the "Be-ers not do-ers" in the affluent community where I previously resided. My take on affluent Buddhists is not exactly like my take on Evangelical preachers who speak of hell and fornication, yet fondle 14 year old boys in highway stop restrooms. It is more like my take on me when I accept a compliment about looking like I don't wear make-up and do not choose to reveal the artifice involved in attempting the appearance of no artifice.

My less punk response would start with the observation that I think what you are communicating is that "searching for the way forward in the name of reinvention" is a form of "striving", and I agree. However, it is my current take that it is not the case that all striving causes misery. There is one kind of striving that is "just pimping" or "counting coup" or "status/security seeking", and that flavor of striving does cause misery. There is another kind of striving that is something like "engaging in purpose towards fulfillment" or "following your passion" or "finding your flow" that leads to joy. So, it would be my particular belief that if the name you are attaching to the internal force that is driving you towards "searching for the way forward in the name of reinvention" is anything like "anxiety" or "need to control the future" then that is bad striving, but if the name you are attaching to the internal force that is driving you towards "searching for the way forward in the name of reinvention" is anything like "curiosity" or "wonder about the future" then that is good striving.

Anyways, as the artistic white boy who found himself parked in a trailer in the complex region next to a sharp boundary line rapped, "snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity." The funny thing is that it is likely that at the same time you were sitting by the river observing the falling leaves, I was wondering around a park amusing myself while my BF ran around a track by using my new plant identification ap to put a name (construct) on to some trees and shrubs.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote: I think what you are communicating is that "searching for the way forward in the name of reinvention" is a form of "striving", and I agree. However, it is my current take that it is not the case that all striving causes misery.
Close, I think. Maybe more like the key skill for reinventing is possibly the ability to simply lower resistance to change. Humans are inherently adaptable, but tend to get weighed down by past cause-effect observations.

I don't think striving is bad or necessarily causes misery or whatever, but it does create tension between where a person is, and where they think they want to be. Some people thrive on that tension 24-7-365, others do better if the tension is relaxed periodically.

Correct, I am not a Buddhist, nor do I play one on TV. I'm an affluent westerner who on many levels is a striver, planner, and steeped in habit/tradition. My only defense for having the audacity to think some of the things I do is that I can so why not!

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity.
arms spaghetti
7Wannabe5 wrote:So, it would be my particular belief that if the name you are attaching to the internal force that is driving you towards "searching for the way forward in the name of reinvention" is anything like "anxiety" or "need to control the future" then that is bad striving, but if the name you are attaching to the internal force that is driving you towards "searching for the way forward in the name of reinvention" is anything like "curiosity" or "wonder about the future" then that is good striving.
so the quality of striving is purely subjective, and even just depends on how an individual frames things?

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Ego
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Ego »

jacob wrote:The problem here is that living in an Idiocratic world effectively demands that one balances two different frameworks at the same time. First one has to understand and be able to use the correct framework along with objective facts. However, it is no longer enough or even encouraged to just communicate that understanding. Instead one has to translate it and communicate it in some kind of fun and personable style that "folks" can relate to.
Four frameworks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opini ... gence.html

As the psychologist Keith Stanovich and others observed, even the Kahneman and Tversky data show that some people are highly rational. In other words, there are individual differences in rationality, even if we all face cognitive challenges in being rational. So who are these more rational people? Presumably, the more intelligent people, right?

Wrong. In a series of studies, Professor Stanovich and colleagues had large samples of subjects (usually several hundred) complete judgment tests like the Linda problem, as well as an I.Q. test. The major finding was that irrationality — or what Professor Stanovich called “dysrationalia” — correlates relatively weakly with I.Q. A person with a high I.Q. is about as likely to suffer from dysrationalia as a person with a low I.Q.

jacob wrote: Maybe if techmology finds a way to directly read the emotional impact that certain words or styles have on people in an idiocratic world, it's possible for algorithms to actually handle the low levels of complexity that needs to be communicated to the average person in such a world. Not because algos are getting smarter, but because people's behavior are getting tuned down to the simpler level of complexity that algos are capable of handling.
From the same story:

In the interactive games, following each simulation, a review gave the subjects instruction on specific decision-making biases and individualized feedback on their performance. Immediately after watching the video or receiving the computer training, and then again after two months, the subjects took a different version of the decision-making test.

Professor Morewedge and colleagues found that the computer training led to statistically large and enduring decreases in decision-making bias. In other words, the subjects were considerably less biased after training, even after two months. The decreases were larger for the subjects who received the computer training than for those who received the video training (though decreases were also sizable for the latter group). While there is scant evidence that any sort of “brain training” has any real-world impact on intelligence, it may well be possible to train people to be more rational in their decision making.



This is what worries me. If we can train people to be more rational then the inverse is also true. There are deep pockets motivated to create a less rational populace. Here is the roadmap.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by jacob »

@Ego - Also add information. There are three factors. (Or more)

I think of IQ primarily as a combination of bandwidth and speed. A person with higher intelligence is able to think faster and more importantly, he's able to think about more things/variables at the same time and thus able to hold/ponder more complicated ideas in his head. This is why one person with an IQ of 150 is able to beat a group of 15 persons with an IQ of 100 when it comes to solutions of complex problems.

The second factor is the ability to reason. Call it critical thinking. A subject which for obvious reason isn't taught in the educational system. This is of course nothing new. Here's Schopenhauer from 1831 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right ... and the interest in subverting the reasoning process probably goes back to the time when reason became the "respected" way of making decisions (Plato?). The ability to reason is the operating system of the brain. A great OS on an average brain beats an average OS on great brain.

The third is a framework without which it's easy to miss important aspects or be complete fooled by the lack of theoretical context. That's another way of saying that without knowledge, information becomes meaningless, because it's hard to establish truth. The framework is the software running on the OS. Also, here, a great piece of software running on an average OS is better than an average piece running on a great OS.

Algorithms is what's being substituted in for reason. The trust of experts is being replaced by trust in the computer. It's long been possible to hire an expert who would be willing to use their intelligence to justify whatever you wanted them to. Making an algorithm do that is even cheaper.

With information, the internet makes it extremely easy to spread disinformation. There is for some strange reason still a supreme belief in the written word---that if something is written down, it's probably true. If one adds the information dimension to the rhetorical tricks listed by Schopenhauer, we get agnotology. This is culturally constructed ignorance. The internet more than anything (and aided by search engines) really really speeds up that process. People used to have to crack open a book and read somewhat before they could begin to opine. Now it takes less than 5 minutes to construct an ignorant paragraph ... and the more intelligent the person is, the better he is able to string together various pieces of ignorance together in a way that sounds convincing to anyone lacking reason+framework. In particular, if the person possesses both IQ+reason and only lacks framework, it gets even harder.

I don't think we're that far from a point where 75% of facebook or twitter debates could be taken over by algos that scan other fb or twitter comments and strings together random samples in a way that's semi-grammatical (i.e. at least as grammatical as the average user). There are already some bots out there doing just that.

I'd like to hope that at the very least, thinking will split into two. An internet that's free but ignorant and full of trash that's either wrong or irrelevant---largely governed by algorithmic remixes of information with no way of knowing whether it's right or wrong (but nobody cares because all that matters is whether it's entertaining. And an internet that's expensive, because it's the complete opposite. Yet, maybe not.

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by cmonkey »

jacob wrote:I'd like to hope that at the very least, thinking will split into two. An internet that's free but ignorant and full of trash that's either wrong or irrelevant---largely governed by algorithmic remixes of information with no way of knowing whether it's right or wrong (but nobody cares because all that matters is whether it's entertaining. And an internet that's expensive, because it's the complete opposite. Yet, maybe not.

I was under the impression we already had this split occuring - ERE forums and.......everything else. :D

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