This is here for archival and research purposes
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Ideas as components of systems
If we look at our systems of thought as actual systems, we quickly realize that ideas are actually parts, or components, of them. Do you think that the CPU inside of your computer or the current version of your Internet browser are final products? Of course not, so why should the way that you view the world be so disgustingly out of date and static while the technology that you use continues to be improved upon? For most of humanity, how information is processed is lagging far behind how QUICKLY this occurs.
Thought systems, ideally, should be:
1. Open
2. Dynamic
3. Practical. This entails implementing an ideal or concept by first testing its usefulness in the everyday world, then deciding whether there are any other ideals or concepts of higher degrees of utility. If not, we "prototype" the ideals, but we never "believe" in them, or act as though they can never change. We also, because the system is dynamic, remember to upgrade the ideals whenever we can.
Posted by Leaving Society at 5:10 PM No comments:
Email This
BlogThis!
Share to Twitter
Share to Facebook
Share to Pinterest
Computers don't need empathy, so why do we?
In today's world, computers can be readily programmed to medically assist people. With some work, they can probably even be programmed to invoke decision-making processes to the end of generating high quality sum outputs in real-life medical situations. Really, all we'd need would be a set of algorithms, a tentative set of values and desirable outcomes, and data on what kinds of variables and parameters exist in any given scenario that we're going to assess. The computer would then be able to calculate which outcomes have the highest value, and would subsequently perform the necessary actions to generate those outcomes. So, for example, if someone with an injury were to request to be attended to, but voiced his plan to massacre a school full of people, the computer would be able to realize that the most suitable action would be to NOT dress the man's wounds -- that is, if said wounds rendered him unable to carry out his plans.
Does the computer feel anything for those in danger of being massacred while performing this calculation? No, but it knows that the people involved DO feel, and that this is valuable. Therefore, the computer would be able to maximize the outputs of the situation, but without any of the setbacks of the exclusive preferences that emotions foster. Incidentally, you don't have to feel pain in order to understand that it's negative, and thus, something to rid the world of (for the same tautological reasons that the consequents of wetness and solidity are inherent in the definitions of water and solids, respectively).
Empathy is no good for the same reasons that racism, preferring the taste of unhealthy foods to healthy foods, and being sexually attracted to people whom we know aren't very mentally worthwhile are all no good. Even when we can't help feeling a certain way, we should still double-check the feeling by way of a mental algorithm before we decide to act on it.
Posted by Leaving Society at 5:09 PM 1 comment:
1 comment:
AnonymousNovember 2, 2011 at 9:10 PM
A computer would easily be able to understand that this blog is shit.
So sad that you can't.
ReplyEmail This
BlogThis!
Share to Twitter
Share to Facebook
Share to Pinterest
Collaboration over competition
Thought experiment: A corporation, headed by a single CEO, opens for business. Their key product line gets under way, mostly thanks to a small handful of experts -- marketing, design, etc. -- whom the CEO has deemed top of the line in terms of innovation capability. Before long, the corporation starts reeling in profits. So far, so good.
A business-savvy man gets wind of the product idea, and thinks that it is a profitable one. He decides that he wants to try his hand at selling the product as well, but realizes that, if he were to work under the current CEO of the new corporation, he'd be making virtually nothing in lieu of the bureaucratic hierarchy that exists there.
Problem! The man wants to make a profit. In fact, he finds this to be so much more important than refining the product to the end of maximizing its benefit to society that he decides to start his own, competing corporation! He doesn't need the former corporation's experts, he thinks. He'll just hire some of his own to find ways of making the product attractive enough to the average consumer to out-compete his rival.
He's successful. As a result, the two corporations are now competitors, which may stimulate economic growth, but it in no way makes society a better place. Due to the existence of a monetary incentive, neither CEO is willing to combine their experts for the purpose of balancing out their marketing and design teams, because neither CEO is willing to share his salary with the other. Obviously, if one group of experts contains an individual who knows more about some aspect of the product than everyone else in either group -- and vice versa -- then they'd all do well to combine and collaborate -- if their goal is the actual improvement of the product.
Eliminating the monetary incentive would solve this problem, as, in a resource-based economy, there would be no fear of becoming destitute or going hungry. We'd all have access to the exact same resources -- not as in communism, which is contingent on equal distribution of resources and ownership, but in a manner which utilizes equitable distribution -- that is, allocating resources based on wants and necessity rather than on lowest common denominators and fixed numbers. If this were to happen, we'd all be free to work on things for a superior reason: to make them better.
Posted by Leaving Society at 4:55 PM 5 comments:
5 comments:
Francois TremblayJuly 4, 2011 at 10:50 PM
You can go that route, or you can go the libsoc route- no more competing CEOs, just workers who are trying to produce something for society.
Reply
Leaving SocietyJuly 5, 2011 at 6:17 PM
That's what I was trying to say, basically -- though I didn't give it a name.
Reply
Francois TremblayJuly 12, 2011 at 11:33 PM
But you just published an entry calling libsoc and all other Anarchist ideologies a "return to nature."
Reply
Leaving SocietyJuly 31, 2011 at 11:26 AM
Is anarchism the only path to eliminating competing CEOs?
Reply
Francois TremblayJuly 31, 2011 at 2:42 PM
"Is anarchism the only path to eliminating competing CEOs?"
No- you can also go the dictatorship route. However, this is not the road to freedom.
ReplyEmail This
BlogThis!
Share to Twitter
Share to Facebook
Share to Pinterest
No one should categorize their ideas by way of isms
I don't generalize humans into predefined categories, so why should I generalize ideas in this way? Everyone seems to have at least one "ism" that applies to them, and while it's rare for them to find flaws in their own isms, when it does happen, they cast them off entirely in favor of wholly new ones. This is silly, because ideas should be scrutinized and refined individually; any other approach is inefficient.
What if you concur wholeheartedly with every facet of a given philosophy, but eventually find one, tiny flaw in it? Do you still steadfastly stand behind it? A lot of people do, and that's called cognitive dissonance. Others repudiate the philosophy as a whole, which I'd consider an emotional overreaction. It makes much more sense, then, to simply talk about ideas one at a time; isms and so-called static "philosophies" are archaic and a detriment to the quality of our society.
Posted by Leaving Society at 4:15 PM No comments:
No comments:
Post a Comment