Sam Harris podcast #146 - DIGITAL CAPITALISM

Some great ideas came out of this podcast (esp. from 1:00:00 onward).

• Financialization means that everything that cannot be assigned of value is lost. 
• Making the user control their data (Jaron Lanier's proposal) and sell it for value will simply be gamed from the other side, leading to dysfunction. 
• Reward dividends instead of capital gains to get away from the requirement of eternal rapid growth. 
• New digital platforms are embedded in the VC capitalist growth incentivized business model, so the bigger system drives the smaller. 
• The loss of the old-fashioned impromptu visit or chat. 
• We only connect to each other interpersonally these days via products and services not directly or via our own creations. 
  

https://samharris.org/podcasts/146-digital-capitalism/

What's interesting?

I came across an interesting article on what makes something interesting -- this question should be of considerable interest to writers. On the one hand the answer may seem obvious in hindsight, but I suspect only in hindsight.

The piece poses the question in academic context of social theories, but I think it applies fairly directly to works of literature:

"QUESTION: How do theories which are generally considered interesting differ from theories which are generally considered non-interesting? ANSWER: Interesting theories are those which deny certain assumptions of their audience, while non-interesting theories are those which affirm certain assumptions of their audience."

As the discussion points out, one implication of this claim is that writers must understand their audience (including knowing the assumptions they generally hold) in order to come up with interesting theses. Further, the author cautions that this works best with the audience's weakly held assumptions - that firmly held assumptions are difficult to dislodge and the author risks being branded a crackpot.

The catalog of exemplar interesting theories is worth cataloging. These fit the pattern I will spell out here for the first one.

• Organization: What seems to be an organized phenomenon is in reality disorganized, or what seems to be a disorganized phenomenon is in reality organized.
• Composition: (heterogeneous phenomenon versus being just one)
• Abstraction: (holistic versus individual phenomenon)
  
• Generalization: (individual versus universal)
• Stabilization: (time variant versus invariant)
• Function: (function versus dysfunction)
• Evaluation: (seeming good versus bad)
• Co-relation
• Co-existent
• Opposition
• Causation

Davis, Murray S., That's Interesting: Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology , Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 1:4 (1971:Dec.) p.309

https://proseminarcrossnationalstudies.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/thatsinteresting_1971.pdf

Book: "Men Without Women" by Haruki Murakami

Short story collection "Men Without Women" by Haruki Murakami (in English translation)

Excellent writing and storycraft throughout, most stories set in the author's usual somewhat oddly slanted world. His stories have very little "action" and lots of observation and internal thinking - as I tend to write - yet he does a good job keeping the pace moving and "hooks" the reader in subtle but effective ways. I cannot usually put my finger on how he does it but I do see a number of the techniques at times and I'm impressed.

One quite imaginative story begins with the line: He woke to discover that he had undergone a metamorphosis and become Gregor Samsa.  The story the title comes from was the strangest and my least favorite but still interesting.

Chaos in the brickyard

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/142/3590/339.1.long

Brilliant one page allegory about the state of scientific endeavour.

Book: Age of Anger

Author: Pankaj Mishra (2017)

Historical perspective on modern age focused on the revolutionary developments of the late 19th century.

Modern anger among many oppressed groups of people around the world stems from seeing how the elite get the very choicest fruits society has to offer while the masses struggle, leading to retreat into "cultural supremacism, populism, and rancorous brutality" [346]. This is expressed as "negative solidarity" which promotes apathy, isolationism, and ultimately rebellion.

[267] ... individuals, struggling to find a place in the world, or defeated by the whole grueling process, and resigned to failure, boost their self=esteem through identification with the greatness of their country.

[269] Tocqueville: "in their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune ... [people] lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all."

[270] (continuing) "It is not necessary to do violence to such people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold."

[270] There is something else going on in the societies defined by the equality of conditions. Claiming to be meritocratic and egalitarian, they incite individuals to compare themselves with others and appraise themselves in an overall hierarchy of values and culture. Since actual mobility is achieved only by a few, the quest for some unmistakable proof of superior status and identity replaces the ideal of success for many. Consequently, the pitiless dichotomy of us-versus-them at the foundation of modern nationalism is reinforced.

[345] T.S. Eliot asks if modern impersonal economic order has any "beliefs more essential than ... maintenance of dividends"?
[347] Seeds of the book concept are Nietzsche writing about elite Voltaire versus plebeian Rousseau. Highlighting influence of Bakunin, Mazzini, Sorel, and Tocqueville.

[offline notes 8/2/2017]

Book: Strangers in their own land

A liberal Berkeley sociologist spends time getting to know conservatives in Louisiana in an effort to bridge the gap of understanding between right and left.

• anti-big-gov't sentiment makes sense: "too big, too greedy, too incompetent, too bought, ..." - Mike Schaff p.6
• conservative values conflict with gov't: values, religion, patriotism, military - p.58
• tend to ignore details and when gov't just works - p.58
• worried about giving away tax dollars more than pollution, health, jobs -p.61
• like simple talk (avoid complexity) - p.62
• anger at petty bureaucracy (which is associated with Dems) - p.69
• favor freedom to X vs freedom from Y - p.71
• trust in free market over gov't - ch.6
• Deep Story: entitlement, slow progress toward the American Dream, anger at "line cutters" (liberals, educated, minorities, immigrants, even endangered animals) getting favored treatment
• Attributes: team player (loyalty), worship, cowboy, rebel.

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Reason in Human Affairs - Herbert A Simon

Scholarly overview on Simon's study of the limits of human reason in practice (e.g. politics and management) dated 1983.

In our society, we have an unfortunate habit of labeling our political institutions in two different ways. On the days when we are happy with them, we call them democracy; on the days when we are unhappy with them, we call them politics. We don't choose to recognize that "politics" used in that pejorative way is simply a label for some of the characteristics of our democratic political institutions that we happen not to fancy. 

[p. 99]

The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs

Erosion of Cities or Attrition of Automobiles - We went awry by replacing, in effect, each horse on the crowded city streets with half a dozen or so mechanized vehicles, instead of using each mechanized vehicle to replace half a dozen or so horses. [p. 447]

Subsidized Dwellings - Jacobs describes a radically different vision for public housing integrated into private residential areas based on guaranteed rents as subsidy combined with guaranteed financing for landlords providing the subsidized housing. 

[50th Anniversary Edition] (C) 2011, Modern Library (New York)

The Social Conquest of Earth

by Edward O Wilson

Well written lay science book that argues that socialization was a major driving force of evolution that resulted in human intelligence growing rapidly. Wilson is an expert on social insects and uses that basis to extrapolate how humans are uniquely eusocial among the primates.

Some choice quotes:

• After the decline of logical positivism in the middle of the twentieth century, and the attempt of this movement to blend science and logic into a closed system, professional philosophers dispersed in an intellectual diaspora. They emigrated into the more tractable disciplines not yet colonized by science -- intellectual history, semantics, logic, foundational mathematics, ethics, theology, and most lucratively, problems of personal life adjustment. [p.9]
• We [humans] are an evolutionary chimera, living on intelligence steered by the demands of animal instinct. This is the reason we are mindlessly dismantling the biosphere and, with it, our own prospects for permanent existence. [p.13]
• The origin of eusociality, in which organisms behave in the opposite manner, has been rare in the history of life because group selection must be exceptionally powerful to relax the grip of individual selection. [p.55]
• Surely all will agree: [I don't agree!] a clear definition of human nature is the key to understanding the human condition as a whole. [p.191]
• [67 social behaviors from Human Relations Area Files by George P. Murdock (1945)]
• age grading
• athletic sports
• bodily adornment
• calendar
• cleanliness training
• community organization
• cooking
• cooperative labor
• cosmology
• courtship
• dancing
• decorative art
• divination
• division of labor
• dream interpretation
• education
• eschatology
• ethics
• ethnobotany
• etiquette
• faith healing
• family feasting
• fire making
• folklore
• food taboos
• funeral rites
• games
• gestures
• gift giving
• government
• greetings
• hair styles
• hospitality
• housing
• hygiene
• incest taboos
• inheritance rules
• joking
• kin groups
• kinship nomenclature
• language
• law
• luck supertitions
• magic
• marriage
• mealtimes
• medicine
• obstetrics
• penal sanctions
• personal names
• population policy
• postnatal care
• pregnancy usages
• property rights
• propitiation of supernatural beings
• puberty customs
• religious ritual
• residence rules
• sexual restrictions
• soul concepts
• status differentiation
• surgery
• tool making
• trade
• visiting
• weather control
• weaving

The final chapter on the future disappoints, devolving into what I would say are unsupportable personal opinions of the author. Wilson claims (as "justified by scientific evidence") that humans will never emigrate from Earth into space. While it might be so that it isn't rational to do so, my opinion is there are plenty of people driven to try so it will happen - and science will have little to do with the decision. Early attempts might prove futile, but people will keep trying and I would think eventually succeed (with technology we can't even imagine today). Wilson also deems it (without basis in my view) unlikely we are the first life form to venture off planet - based on why no signs of "ET" have been found - instead suggesting that other advanced lifeforms "just grew up" and decided not to explore distant regions of the galaxy.

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The Age of Entanglement

http://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/enlightenment-to-entanglement

Capitalism vs Aloha

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-hawaii-millionaire-fight/

"Unfortunately, we had to make some priorities. And you may not take that as aloha"

So we have a choice in Hawaii - capitalism with it's priorities built around making money, or aloha which is not concerned with profit/loss considerations. People tend to severely cherry pick one way or the other depending on how they are personally impacted, but of course ultimately the two are deeply conflicting mindsets that cannot coexist, and there is no clear compromise third alternative.

Aloha

Paranoia as rational response

'Trust no one': Modernization, paranoia and conspiracy culture 

Stef Aupers, Erasmus University, The Netherlands

[p26] "Another prominent example is conspiracy theories, and the Internet plays a crucial role in their proliferation. " ---> The internet simply allows anyone to cheaply and easily publish to the world.

 

[p30] "conspiracy culture, too, is a response to existential insecurity in a disenchanted world" ---> Faced with the overwhelming complexity of the many problems in the world, it's tempting to identify one thing as "The Problem" behind everything else and then focus on that (ignoring all the real problems with no easy answers).