Re: OT: Local Optimization?

From: Kevin Aylward (salesEXTRACT_at_anasoft.co.uk)
Date: 08/04/04 

Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 21:47:47 GMT

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 10:12:14 GMT, Rich Grise <null@example.net> wrote:
>
>> Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
>>
>>> But I'm not sure I was understood, given your reply, so I'm
>>> honestly not sure how to address your comments and am therefore
>>> just answering them abstractly.
>>
>> You seem to be taking it as a given that without some government
>> lording it over people telling them when they're allowed to clip
>> their fingernails, society will immediately be overrun by gangster
>> bosses whose only purpose seems to be to go around looting and
>> pillaging.
>
> Nope, I don't think that way.
>
>> I don't think there are enough people like that to pose any threat,
>> in a society where people are truly free, and the government hasn't
>> turned the Constitution into so much toilet paper.
>
> I don't agree that it's a matter of simple counting that permits such
> people to pose or not pose threats. The idea of "enough people"
> being your deciding factor seems very strange to me. I can think of
> a dozen individuals currently living right now who have done
> incredible, immense harm to the US -- far beyond what millions of us
> can undo easily. And we are prevented from doing much about it, as
> well, by laws we wouldn't broadly support and wouldn't want if we
> were asked directly about it.

The people who make the laws, usually instigate laws for their own
memetic/genetic interest. However, in the long run, laws that don't
maximise the number of people holding to those laws will be overrun by
those that do.

>
> In short, they already pose a threat. I think your conclusion is
> seriously flawed because your assumptions are simply wrong.

I agree, that a few can do great harm, but in the long run, they do get
weeded out by evolution. More so, now in my view due the ease of
communication. Its much harder to hide the abuses now. Hitler was
beaten.

>
>> And, when these gangsters, on their rampage, come to your door, how
>> many at a time are you expecting to show up?
>
> I've no idea what you are imagining here.
>
>> IOW, I'm trying to explain why anarchy is better, I think, and you
>> (or someone) have (has) making apologia for government intrusion in
>> the name of security, or have I diverged entirely?
>
> And I don't agree that it is. We've had what amounted to anarchy in
> various places around the world. All such laissez faire cultures are
> gone. They don't survive, but are overrun, or absorbed, or
> systematically eliminated. And I also don't like the idea of sitting
> by while my neighbor supplements their family income by deciding to
> accept radioactive toxic waste barrels onto their property just
> because they've decided the money is worth the risks. Frankly, I
> want some social contracts that prevent this kind of thing by common
> agreement.
>
> What you don't seem to understand is that anarchy isn't even close to
> a local stability point with the genes most humans have had selected.

Agreed. Its a transient random meme that doesn't maximise numbers of all
those that could hold those views. This is trivially obvious.

>
> Which brings up another subject... I often hear religious folks
> talking as though it's a given assumption that religion is the source
> of all absolute good morality and that if anyone dares to argue
> otherwise, then these religious folks trot out the canard that "well,
> without absolute guides, it's all just a slippery slope, isn't it?"
> But quite to the contrary, most good morals have come about *despite*
> the resistance from organized religions; clawed for, with difficulty.
> The rights of children, for example, is a more recent example.
> Religions are the source of morals as much as squirrels are the
> source of acorns.

Well, here we again:-)

Religion just notes a few (meme) traits that are are usefull in
maximising the numbers of Replicators holding those traits. e.g.
http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/religion.html

These memes, of course, work independently of any religion attributed to
them.

>
> Commonly held, stable social morals and goals, rules like "murder is
> bad" for example, are exactly local stability points. They arise, in
> social systems, and remain for a time exactly because of this detail.

Yes. Those that had the random generated meme "murder everyone you meet"
got killed off in retaliation, hence those sorts did not pass on that
particular meme as effectively as those that had a meme of "only kill
when necessary". As usual, "what is observed mostly, is what replicates
the most".

> Some of these aren't too deep and, with only some upheaval, are lost
> sight of as society moves towards other local points. Some are much
> deeper pockets and it's almost impossible to avoid returning to them.
> (The mathematics of catastrophe theory, for example, plays into this
> subject.)
>
> By the way, I've recently read an archeology paper about a population
> of humans that apparently had agriculture some 7000 years ago and
> which had shown no signs of the kind of social stratification over
> periods of thousands of years that developed in the middle east quite
> quickly also around that time and later, so it's possible that the
> genes of those humans might have been somewhat different
> -- but those genes,

I doubt this very much. Social ideas are *meme* based not gene based.
The gene hardware can support pretty much any meme. To my knowledge, its
unlikely the brain has changed much over around 50,000 years.

>if they existed at all, are in shorter supply
> today.
>
> In any case, I've seen no argument that convinces me anarchy is
> stable. Not even close to it.
>

Indeed. Of course it isn't stable. The most observed menes are simply
the ones that maximise the number of *all* of the Replicators (us) that
hold them, hence why, e.g. abortion is frowned on by many.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
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