The temptation was irresistible though it is my meeting with Sally's world(view) what is actually expressed in the title. Below is the abstract to her research paper "Today's Copernican flip: how putting collaborative learning at the hub of human evolution improves our chances of survival". Within it there are answers to questions which have lately been going on in my mind. Further exploration of her work is bound to lead me to new insights.
"Civilization is reinventing itself, much as it did 500 years ago in the shift from medieval to modern patterns of society. This time, the modern, mechanistic, imperialistic approach to life is failing and a new, collaborative learning species vision of humanity and ecosystem view of Global Integral Civilization is rising to take its place. Systems science stands at the heart of a new, integral stage of science that supports this new stage of civilization, not only with empirical and methodological detail, but also with a solid foundation for the new cultural and economic understandings. The result is a Copernican flip in our scientific view of the world and a new Enlightenment movement beginning to gather force throughout the world. Yet, though the ideas, the technologies, the ennobling inspiration and even the popular desire for this new era already exist, so far they remain diffuse and disjoint - obscured, suffocated and intimidated beneath the powerful pressures of business as usual. Today's challenge is to use the new scientific framework to build the intellectual clarity, common-cause unity and social infrastructure needed to achieve the next stage in human development by channelling these positive forces into a self-sustaining, actively learning whole."
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Monetisation, the all-surpassing overriding directive in individuals' simplified models of reality.
Each individual attempts to deal with the stuff in the world in a problem solving scenario. Knowledge derived from previous experience assists to formulate and subsequently solve the problem based on mental structures past experience has built. The world is vast and only take notice of a limited amount of information presented. The capacity to assess a situation and provide solutions is small. It only allows an individual, a bounded rationality a concept attributed to Herbert A. Simon as it is mentioned in the Cognitive Structure Notes, website.
As a result
"the intended rationality of an actor requires him to construct a simplified model of the real situation in order to deal with it."
Therefore each individual goes along in life armed with a simplified model which uses to deal with problems encountered.
"He behaves rationally with respect to this model, and such behaviour is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world."
Whatever the letter or form of an individual's simplified model, there is a feature that deeply permeates and influences the solutions to problems the individual chooses, and this is monetisation. A feature incessantly promoted by states, governments, institutions, politicians, public and private organisations, a directive ruthlessly forced into the consciousness of each individual. Almost every human activity has to pass through the monetisation sieve. Principles, dignities, values, lives are looked primarily from the monetising perspective and accounted by it. Nothing escapes.
Therefore the simplified model an individual uses to deal with world issues, is heavily influenced by the monetisation principle. It is forced from above and against the will of the individual as the values held, are compromised to satisfy the monetising directives. It distorts choices and decisions made, forces to view life from a monetising perspective. A monetising drive that overrides almost everything else.
As a result
"the intended rationality of an actor requires him to construct a simplified model of the real situation in order to deal with it."
Therefore each individual goes along in life armed with a simplified model which uses to deal with problems encountered.
"He behaves rationally with respect to this model, and such behaviour is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world."
Whatever the letter or form of an individual's simplified model, there is a feature that deeply permeates and influences the solutions to problems the individual chooses, and this is monetisation. A feature incessantly promoted by states, governments, institutions, politicians, public and private organisations, a directive ruthlessly forced into the consciousness of each individual. Almost every human activity has to pass through the monetisation sieve. Principles, dignities, values, lives are looked primarily from the monetising perspective and accounted by it. Nothing escapes.
Therefore the simplified model an individual uses to deal with world issues, is heavily influenced by the monetisation principle. It is forced from above and against the will of the individual as the values held, are compromised to satisfy the monetising directives. It distorts choices and decisions made, forces to view life from a monetising perspective. A monetising drive that overrides almost everything else.
Saturday, 24 November 2007
Short-lived? As opposed to long-lived ....
Just sprung into my mind and made me wonder. I felt I had to dig deep, in every nook and cranny of my brain, the deeper recesses of my mind, visited once or twice in a life-time and bring out whatever relevant mental structures, I have amassed during the course of my life.
Short-lived, like the goods we consume daily, what we eat and drink, the films we watch, the games we play, our times of passion and intimacy. Our looks.
As opposed to what? Long-lived? Long-lived in what sense? In regards with our lives, our body, our mind? What? Does long-lived span the entire length of our lives, or segments of our lives? Or spans out, our entire lives? Or even be out of time completely, in a realm where time does not exist. Timeless? There were always references to timeless in human history. One of them was the reference to ideas, concepts. Concepts and ideas that are not bounded by time. Timeless. And these I take must be long-lived.
And what else could long-lived be? Material? Of course not. Long-lived bear no relevance to material. Should be irrelevant of matter, as matter by itself is bound by time. Time makes material short-lived.
Short-lived, like the goods we consume daily, what we eat and drink, the films we watch, the games we play, our times of passion and intimacy. Our looks.
As opposed to what? Long-lived? Long-lived in what sense? In regards with our lives, our body, our mind? What? Does long-lived span the entire length of our lives, or segments of our lives? Or spans out, our entire lives? Or even be out of time completely, in a realm where time does not exist. Timeless? There were always references to timeless in human history. One of them was the reference to ideas, concepts. Concepts and ideas that are not bounded by time. Timeless. And these I take must be long-lived.
And what else could long-lived be? Material? Of course not. Long-lived bear no relevance to material. Should be irrelevant of matter, as matter by itself is bound by time. Time makes material short-lived.
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
Consciousness and computing concepts
Going through notes which I scribbled down some years ago and titled them "New Ideas Laboratory". The following is an extract from an article by Stewart Hameroff.
"The main obstacle to realization of quantum computation is the problem of interfacing to the system (input, output) while also protecting the quantum state from environmental decoherence. If this problem can be overcome, then present day classical computers may evolve to quantum computers".
The interfacing of Hameroff's idea lit up a connection in my mind; interfaced, compelling me to explore its implications armed with whatever knowledge I possess now before I delve into his article. The word 'interfaced' I used, could it be the key? Is it an attempt to use my subjective experience of it, as it comes naturally within me? Interface what? What is an interface?
Taking ideas from the computing science field, their specific use of the interface concept: the two different kinds of programs, the client and the server. The client program wanting to instantiate objects served by the server and doing it so by the use of interfaces. Binary interfaces that both can understand, written in a language understood by both client and server programs. Each client and server programs evolved developed, making use of different languages of expression but nevertheless both built up from the same basic language, the binary, bits and zeros and the interfaces used are built from the same basic language so that the two kinds of programs can communicate with each other. Which means each individual client and server programs must have the ability, possess the proper functions to reach down to their basic levels and by doing so to establish a link, a handshake with the other program.
Can it be that our brain/mind uses the same principles? That our brain/mind being the client reaches down to its basic level language, the binaries of quantum computation, the same level that all reality exists and finds the interfaces which are available and gets connected with the various server programs that exist in nature, server programs that are responsible for the proper function of nature, natural phenomena, physical phenomena which we have understood and define with the laws of physics chemistry biology and so forth.
Which we need to look at them, examine them from another perspective, a perspective of language, programming language and define the language's code. Code that uses quantum computation at its basic level, define its 'bits and zeros' and therefore determine the nature of the interfaces that are used for client and server programs to communicate.
Who knows? We might be able to discover what consciousness is? Whether consciousness requires the 'I' to express itself? That the objects that client programs instantiate, in computing, via the interfaces by the server programs might be the same with the objects in the world?
Objects, being instantiated, in a similar way as in computing, as a result of client programs, executed by our brain/mind, via interfaces by server programs, executed by the physical universe.
"The main obstacle to realization of quantum computation is the problem of interfacing to the system (input, output) while also protecting the quantum state from environmental decoherence. If this problem can be overcome, then present day classical computers may evolve to quantum computers".
The interfacing of Hameroff's idea lit up a connection in my mind; interfaced, compelling me to explore its implications armed with whatever knowledge I possess now before I delve into his article. The word 'interfaced' I used, could it be the key? Is it an attempt to use my subjective experience of it, as it comes naturally within me? Interface what? What is an interface?
Taking ideas from the computing science field, their specific use of the interface concept: the two different kinds of programs, the client and the server. The client program wanting to instantiate objects served by the server and doing it so by the use of interfaces. Binary interfaces that both can understand, written in a language understood by both client and server programs. Each client and server programs evolved developed, making use of different languages of expression but nevertheless both built up from the same basic language, the binary, bits and zeros and the interfaces used are built from the same basic language so that the two kinds of programs can communicate with each other. Which means each individual client and server programs must have the ability, possess the proper functions to reach down to their basic levels and by doing so to establish a link, a handshake with the other program.
Can it be that our brain/mind uses the same principles? That our brain/mind being the client reaches down to its basic level language, the binaries of quantum computation, the same level that all reality exists and finds the interfaces which are available and gets connected with the various server programs that exist in nature, server programs that are responsible for the proper function of nature, natural phenomena, physical phenomena which we have understood and define with the laws of physics chemistry biology and so forth.
Which we need to look at them, examine them from another perspective, a perspective of language, programming language and define the language's code. Code that uses quantum computation at its basic level, define its 'bits and zeros' and therefore determine the nature of the interfaces that are used for client and server programs to communicate.
Who knows? We might be able to discover what consciousness is? Whether consciousness requires the 'I' to express itself? That the objects that client programs instantiate, in computing, via the interfaces by the server programs might be the same with the objects in the world?
Objects, being instantiated, in a similar way as in computing, as a result of client programs, executed by our brain/mind, via interfaces by server programs, executed by the physical universe.
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