antikoan

 |::| Thursday, August 08, 2002

 |::| It's Worse Than That, He's Dead, Jim  1:47:11 PM 

But wait, there's more! It seems that all of our problems are due to our "lose/win" system of "wealth creation":

The primary problem with wealth creation systems of the Win/Lose Era is that they have limited the levels of emotional and spiritual intelligence in people. This is because wealth creation in this era has been fear based. The desire to control others comes directly from fear and mistrust.... When humans were in the hunter gather era and the rule was "Eat or Be Eaten," losing could mean death or pain.... Fear, therefore, is the primary motivator in the win/lose era. This fear-based paradigm is deeply ingrained within human's today. Our normal view of human nature is that of humans being competitive, selfish, judgmental, greedy, sinful, lazy and violent. Our thinking is that humans must be restrained against their natural tendencies through rules, regulations, discipline, punishment and must be managed, regulated and led by strong men. Our paradigm of human nature is, however, merely a reflection of our finite wealth creation, win/lose paradigm based upon fear.
-- "Programmed for Conflict", Barry Carter, Synergic Earth News (08/07/02)

There are lots of interesting touch-points, here (note the bits of Dianetics and Silva jargon), but the key characteristic of this line of reasoning -- and the reason that it's so patently, plainly mistaken, as attractive as it sounds -- is that it assumes that we choose our nature.

We don't choose our nature. That's why they call it our "nature."

We can choose the paradigm we use to understand our nature. But if we don't understand key facts about our nature -- for example, that the fear of "death or pain" that we felt in the Bad Old Hunter-Gatherer days is actually fundamental to the existence of animals with central nervous systems above some certain level of complexity -- we aren't likely to get the paradigm right. I see no indication that Carter is the guy to point this way. After all, he things that "wealth creation" is a good way to talk about the fundamental characteristics of human nature.

Furthermore, Carter seems to think that paradigms can determine reality. They can't. They can play into outcomes, but they are merely an aspect of reality -- and a removed aspect, at that. "Paradigm" is simply a fancy operational synonym for "metaphor" -- really nothing more or less. Metaphors can guide how we understand reality, but the do not shape it except to the extent that it is shaped by the outcome. And changing our fundamental nature, as Carter suggests we need to do (though he doesn't realize that's what he's saying, which is part of the problem) is just not a viable outcome.

This guy is an Economist on dope. Economists should never smoke dope.

 |::|   1:19:40 PM 

Now I know for sure that this guy is full of shit:

If we go into an Information Age and develop no more emotional intelligence and spiritual awareness than we have today, then we'll simply destroy ourselves out of the fear derived from our lose/win paradigm.... False neural associations are why we can see the irrationality behind someone else's actions when they cannot see it. Others can see our irrational behavior and we cannot see it. To the person performing the irrational behavior, it is perfectly rational. His or her brain is simply calculating from its false neural associations and therefore the action appears logical.... Paradigms tell us that there are different realities depending upon one's perspective. Our false neural associations create paradigms and our different realities.... [emphasis added]
-- "When Lose/Win becomes Lose/Lose", Barry Carter, Synergic Earth News

The real problem here is not that it's all bullshit: It actually seems to make a lot of sense. It's the language that's bullshit. "False neural associations"? What the hell does that mean? Why "neural" -- why not "mental"? Has there ever been any decent evidence that any high-order associateions were really "neural" in nature?

And what about these "Separate realities"? No, sorry: Separate perceptions of reality I can buy, but reality per se does not differ from one person to the next, regardless fo their "paradigm."

And finally, I'm really getting tired of having to live with the absurd, simplistic sidewash from the warm-n-fuzzy AI crap of the '80s. Referring to brains as "computers" (or even "machines"), or to what they do as "computation", was never more than a metaphor. While it may (or may not) turn out to be true that the actions of a brain can be understood in computational terms, what they are doing is not in fact computation. To speak of them as though it was is to mistake the map for the territory.

 |::| You can kill it, but you can't give it away.  1:02:31 PM 

Courtesy MetaFilter [discussion], a Florida law requires that any woman wishing to place a child up for adoption must publish her entire sexual history, in order to ascertain whether the father is in favor of the adoption. From the MeFi summary:

Web sites can't collect info on minors, but Florida wants all women, including minors, to publish their sexual history in local newspapers before they're allowed to give their child up for adoption.

Of course it's ironic that a state so focused on making abortions difficult to get [pdf] should pursue a policy that serves no end so well as driving women toward abortion:

“The adoption community is up in arms against this [law],” said Boca Raton attorney Charlotte Danciu, who represents the six women. “When women come into my office and find their whole lives have to be exposed in the newspaper, they are like, ‘Forget it.’ They can abort without consent, but they can’t give the child an opportunity to live without humiliating themselves.”
[Sun-Sentinal.com]

Or is it? After all, what most foes of abortion are really opposed to is people whose beliefs they find threatening, and they will pursue any path they can to isolate and marginalize those people -- preferably in a legal sense, as well. They have confidence that they will roll back Roe v. Wade, thus leaving women with only criminal behavior as an option. As for revealing sexual history, it further marks those women as Other, as alien, and places them outside of the community of blessedness.

Presumably the men named in those sexual histories will also be marginalized. Since dogs will have their day, I'm certain this will cause consternation to many men on the religious right who've sowed their wild oats without a saddle, so to speak. But as any American with the slightest awareness of his own culture must admit, redemption of reputation is childishly easy for a man to get, and intensely difficult for a woman. Anyone who says otherwise is either stupid, a liar, or not really paying attention.

Of course, as has always been the case, the wealthy and well-connected (which increasingly includes staunch members of the relgious right) will continue to have other options, such as secret adoptions and abortions. Again, anyone who thinks that the wealthy and connected on the religious right have not availed themselves of these options (including abortion) in the past is a fool; it will be so in the future, and, since it will then be a matter of law, as well as moral approbrium, it will dive further underground. In human society -- and this is espeically so in modern capitalist society -- the wealthy and powerful have always had an edge in the contest of moral superiority. Even when the scripture demands poverty and charity, the wealthy and powerful are deemed blessed. It makes a rare few feel guilty; but as wealth and power, whatever their guise, are regarded as the highest aspirations for most modern westerners (and Americans in particular), we tend to have difficulty understanding the reason for our guilt. And, too, the capitalist system has evolved plenty of ways to keep people asking the wrong questions about their guilt...