[From Bill Powers (2010.06.13.0859 MDT)]
Martin Lewitt )2010.06.13.0739
MDT) –
ML: So? There may still be
differential levels of fitness, with the more fit contribution a higher
proportion to the next generation. There is within species
competition, even when the carrying capacity of an environment has been
reached. None of this is new. The human species has a small
effective population size estimated at 10,000 to 15,000. Once the
leading hypothesis was a population bottleneck in the past, but that has
become untenable, and now the leading hypothesis is group competition,
extermination or displacement to marginal resources, and group extinction
causing the loss in diversity. Even if one is in denail about
routine genocides of other groups, displacement to marginal resources is
not much different, the deaths are by starvation, thirst, heat, cold,
disease, etc.
BP: What I’m proposing is that our intentions can have a lot more
influence than any supposed impersonal laws of evolution. And maybe
always have had since we became human. For one thing, “carrying
capacity” is relevant only if we choose always to increase our
consumption in a mindless way until carrying capacity sets a limit to
further increases, and “differential levels of fitness” are all
that determine whether an otherwise viable person lives or dies. Human
nature is what we decide it shall be. We’ve made some pretty poor
decisions – assuming, of course, that most people are even aware that
there are decisions to be made at the system concept level.
BP earlier:Then the question
becomes “What kind and what level of consumption do we want to
sustain?” We could choose to sustain the largest possible
population at a level of consumption just barely sufficient to keep all
of the current generation alive for some limited time, or we could choose
a lower population with more resources of higher qualtity available to
each one in greater abundance during a longer lifetime.
ML: Or we could keep growing the population AND improving our standard of
living, WHILE decreasing consumption.
BP: I don’t think it’s profitable to base important principles on faith
or imagination. There are physical limitations and other tradeoffs among
those three factors. Part of my own definition of a high standard of
living, for example, is having enough space to be alone when that’s what
I need, and another is not having to fight someone else for every scrap
of food or drop of water.
ML: I don’t know if you have
seen that piece of propaganda being foisted upon our public schools
called “Stuff”. It starts with the Ipod as an example of
conspicuous consumption, the heart of which is made from
sand. I’ve got over 100lbs of vinyl, plus a turntable,
amplifier and speakers to contrast with the Ipod that show that
consumption can be decreased while living standards improved. Similarly
for the reduced consumption and increased standards associated with
telecommuting, in home entertainment via the internet and cable or
satellite, etc.
I don’t know about this line of argument. I don’t think iPods or the
other things are made by pouring sand into little molds and tamping it
down a bit. Isn’t Intel the largest user of water in Albuquerque? For me
the question isn’t how we can accomodate an ever-expanding population by
increasing efficiency, lowering power consumption, decreasing waste
disposal, and so forth, though all of those are good things. I just
wonder what’s so wonderful about increasing the population – without
limit, according to some moral authorities. What’s so good about using up
all the resources we can possibly use as fast as we can? What’s so good
about being in never-ending conflict with everyone else?
BP earlier: … The human race
needs to develop its system concepts to a much higher degree than is done
now.
Or perhaps we can only wait and see whether that level of consciousness
develops and becomes effective in enough people – in
time.
ML: Perhaps we just need to accept the ethics of personal responsibility.
I totally agree. I feel personally responsible for trouble that I cause
for other people, not just for myself. I think that a society in which
everyone prospers is the society I’d like to live in – not one where
it’s every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. I think the
best world is the one based on mutual support and encouragement, not
cold-hearted and self-centered competition.
ML: If you can’t afford the
children, don’t have them, and if you do have them, don’t expect any
help.
BP: Well, I think that’s pretty immoral thinking, letting babies die as
an object-lesson for offending parents. I wouldn’t do that, no matter how
wrong I thought the parents were for having children when they clearly
couldn’t raise them. I don’t think you would either, if faced with the
concrete situation.
ML: Personal responsibility
seems a far more moral and less harsh position than forcing the
responsible to pay to unnaturally support the children of the
irresponsible at the expense of having less resources to invest in ones
own while having a coercive policy of restrictions on reproduction
resulting from an allegedly higher “level of
consciousness”.
BP: You can’t have it both ways. I’m all for personal responsibility, but
for me that includes letting other people be responsible too, not trying
to run their lives for them or make decisions for them. However, it also
includes a willingness to help those who make mistakes, if I can and am
asked, and to protect the helpless. I don’t expect everyone to be perfect
like me.
ML: What does PCT offer to
improve on other theories of intentional psychology, perhaps those laws
or approximations to laws? Is it more likely to have identifiable
neurobiological correlates to its structure? I think answers
to these questions would be the path forward to wider acceptance of
PCT. Otherwise it is just another intentional psychology theory
where “our clearest source of data for estimating the intentional
states of an agent comes from his verbal behavior” which are less
reliable than “movements of the whole body
provide”.
BP: That’s a bit annoying, Martin. You’ve had plenty of time to learn how
PCT ties intention to neurophysiology, which it does better than any
theory has ever done before it. Do you really think that the basis of PCT
is “verbal behavior?” Have you gone through the demos in LCS3?
I’ve been told by a neuroscientist that the control-system diagrams are
“very biological” and that the demonstrations are
“astonishing” in their predictive power. PCT is all about the
CNS. Name me another theory that works as well to explain how the brain
works, or that predicts behavior as well.
I sense that the fly in the ointment here is an ideology called
Libertarianism. Some good thinking has come out of that movement, but so
have some really unpleasant excesses. There’s a thread of Me First
selfishness running through it, which appeals to those who just want to
get others off their backs so they can do anything they like (such as, if
I remember right, importing defective cars from India to sell them at a
great profit to any suckers in the US who will buy them). When someone
rails against regulations, the first thing I would like to ask is what it
is that this person wants to do that is against existing regulations. If
I could get an answer, I would like to retain the option of finding a way
to nail the bastard if he actually did it. Not every regulation makes
sense, but having no regulations at all makes no sense at all.
Please, you guys out there, stop writing provocative posts. I have only
about four weeks to get my presentations ready for Manchester and I still
don’t have the working model of classical conditioning that I promised.
Nor have I yet pared the paper for the other presentation (BABCP) down to
a length that can be presented and discussed in the time available. And
I’m still not sure whether I will be there in person to do it, or will
have to telecommunicate, because I can’t find the figures telling me
whether a portable O2 concentrator will deliver enough stuff using a
feasible number of batteries to get me across the Atlantic at 8000 ft.
effective altitude. I see my pulmonologist tomorrow, and maybe he will
settle the issue.
Best,
Bill P.