[From Bill Powers (950207.1330 MST)]
Dan Miller (950207) --
About intrinsic (genetic) values: If there are any, and I would
characterize them as prime directives, then they must be 1. to
survive, and 2. to procreate.
I think this is the wrong way to approach built-in reference levels.
These are general terms, and as such requiring a generalizing brain to
give them meanings. I doubt considerably that a dog has an intrinsic
reference level that says "survive." I doubt that people have one,
either. Same for "procreate."
What we are far more likely to have are built-in goals that have the
_effect_ of promoting survival and procreation. The goals themselves,
however, say nothing on either subject. I have a reference level for
maintaining a brainstem temperature of about 99 degrees F. I have a
number of other built-in reference levels of similar nature. The result
of maintaining my intrinsic variables near their respective reference
levels is that I can continue to function for some reasonable number of
years. But I have no built-in goal that says "continue to function for a
reasonable number of years." That's a result, a side-effect, not a goal.
Goals are always specific states of specific variables. We can talk
about them in general vague terms, but general vague reference signals
don't work for control systems. When you get down to actual cases, it is
always a specific perception being quantitatively controlled relative to
a quantitative reference value.
When someone says "Oh, just put it down anywhere," you're stymied until
you can look around, pick a specific spot, and put it down exactly
_there_. "Just anywhere" isn't a place.
People have built-in goals for certain pleasurable feelings which are
created by sexual activity. Doing what brings these feelings to their
familiar nice peak has the result of making babies, but there is no goal
for making babies until you learn it. And classifying this whole
procedure with its surprising and sometimes disastrous outcome as
"procreation" is something that we learn only later in life. the built-
in goal is just to feel good, where "good" is defined for us by our
genes.
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Tom Bourbon [950207.0943]--
Right, people kill people, not guns, and that really illustrates
the relationship between killing, as an activity, and perceptual
control.
Speaking practically and not as a theoretician, I would much rather meet
an idiot waving a rock or a knife than an idiot waving a gun. Guns allow
you to kill someone else at a distance and minimize your own risk
(unless the other guy has a gun, too). They vastly increase your loop
gain when it comes to controlling for dead people. And compared with
other weapons they greatly increase the number of people at risk because
bullets have a tendency to keep going whether or not they hit the
intended target.
Gun-owners should be licensed just as car-drivers are licensed. If you
get caught drunk with a gun, you should lose your license just as you
lose it for drunk driving. Guns may be littler than cars, but they're
more deadly.
Now all I have to do is persuade the NRA that they should take on the
responsibility of licensing guns and gun-owners.
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Bruce Buchanan (950206.2130 EST)--
And it is part of the systems of society and the law that those who
have agreed to accept responsibilities for policy-making and
administration in such organizations, who make it their gainful
employment, i.e. where there is a quid pro quo which has been
clearly accepted, can be held accountable for results and
performance. Presumably the rule of law governs, more often than
not.
You're still talking in practical terms, as I was doing about guns,
above. Society is a human invention, as is the machinery for making it
work. EVERYTHING ABOUT IT is a human invention, including politics and
laws. The only reason for such things is the history of how we have done
things before, which becomes the set of arrangements that we teach our
children to take for granted, by word and deed. There is nothing
necessary about any of it, in the sense of being inevitable or springing
from first principles. We made it all up. Different groups of people
make it up differently. There isn't any one way that's objectively
right.
We could argue about this, but the ideal is that due process and
objective evidence should prevail.
"The ideal is?" Who says so? The answer is that PEOPLE say so. When
enough individuals say so, this principle is put into practice and
maintained in practice against disturbances from people who want us to
try something else. I repeat, we made all these things up ourselves.
They have no justification other than that enough of us consider them
useful and right to prevail over others who dissent.
What would be acceptable to you as evidence of REAL responsibility?
Do you mean a specific objective responsibility, a responsibility that
is objectively right for every person to assume, that is given by some
force larger than human beings which is infallible? If that's what you
mean, I don't believe there is such a thing (and I'm aware that there
are others who DO believe that there IS such a thing. Unfortunately,
they can't agree on just what those universal objective responsibilities
are).
The only way I can make sense of responsibility is to think of it as
what a person has control of. When you start talking about what people
_should_ have control of, and control in a certain way, you're back into
your own world of private convictions. The fact that the convictions are
about public matters doesn't make them any less private. Societies
develop out of people trying to get others to go along with their
private convictions about how a society might work. How else could all
of this have happened?
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Taking off tomorrow to see some Utah scenery. Back Friday night.
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Best to all,
Bill P.