Ok I finished the article and it’s great. What I keep coming back to is the word EMPATHY. The people making these high level decisions and reducing human behavior to cheap data points are also (sadly) sociopaths. The definition of a sociopath is a person devoid of empathy. One who breaks the invisible social contract of unwritten laws that protect us all. LAWS are just data points. It’s possible to be within the law but outside human decency (which is predicated on empathy). It’s all so clear now.
Could you speak to (either directly or indirectly) how it is that Thiel, a mentee of Girard, has fallen so hard for "surveillance" and "control", over "sacrifice" (or, the Cross in Girardian thought)? Also, his use of Palantir telegraphs something troubling that plays out in Tolkien. I'm not a LOTR follower, but I'm just fascinated with the co-option of literature -- be it fiction/myth (-see Jordan Peterson, Kingsnorth, etc.). There's something underway w/in a certain calculating assembly of "thinkers" with "words" that seems to put up a cover for anti-democracy and its AI reductions.
Mike, I can’t imagine why you’d lose readers, and I rather hope you gain many more. To me, this is the most thoughtful of your essays I’ve read thus far — though that should in no way diminish the others. They’ve all had a profound effect on my understanding of what we’re witnessing in real time.
I’ve struggled greatly to communicate to the people around me, even those who are closest, why all of what’s happening is affecting me so deeply and so personally. I think your essay — this essay — shines a light on it. My maternal grandfather was an infantryman who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He survived, but returned home a forever-changed man. He carried that signal, paid for by so many of his peers, and delivered it to my mother and my uncles. It wasn’t just the ‘institutional knowledge’ that we gain from reading a history book, it was part of the family story, the oral history passed along through the generations: Why he was there, what they were fighting, and why it was worth the ultimate sacrifice by so many.
Similarly, my father was born in 1929, two years after his sister. My paternal grandfather died unexpectedly in 1931, leaving my grandmother to raise two children alone during the Great Depression. The stories, which contained the collective memories of unthinkable economic hardship, of perseverance and eventual deliverance, became a fundamental part of my worldview at a young age.
These things *mean something* on a far deeper level than just an intellectual discussion of history. These memories, encoded in me since birth, shape and inform my view of everything I’m witnessing today. The result is that I feel like I’m living in a world that has forgotten almost everything important. It’s not just wrong, it hurts. It hurts my heart and it hurts my soul.
This article answers why. We have all been subjected to polarization schemes. The right wing ideologies have been hijacked to the extreme and they are attacking the left by casting them all under the same umbrella. The world (America included) is a mosaic of ideologies and the battle will be to reject any notion otherwise.
As an economist I plead guilty to trying to optimize everything.
Consider the short-term problem of optimizing the commitment and dispatch of resources to serve loads. This is one of the classic problems of practical optimization.
Alas, in general it cannot be solved using standard techniques, extensions of the linear programming method. Too many non-linear constraints, specifically the jumps associated from committing different resources with significant cycling costs.
So we use mixed-integer linear programming, which gets better the more computing resources you throw at it, but the problem is, as they say, NP hard. So we apply something similar to the Rational Expectations hypothesis, and figure out not-to-terrible rules for stopping looking for something better, because it is not worth the effort.er
AI offers bottomless sink for energy, which could be used to improve our carbon balances (Tonnes Avoided CO2 is the Debit on the balance sheets, Tonnes Atmospheric CO2 is the balancing Credit, typically as expense items in income statements.
I wonder very much whether the AI stocks will survive exposure to carbon economics, especially the little bit displayed in this little introduction to carbon accounting.
I love your blog. I am looking forward to subscribing at the highest possible level, once we figure out how to let me pay with some of my Forests TACs. Which is a way better endogenous currency than those cute crypto toys the children down in the stagnant air of the Santa Clara Valley are messing around with. MAFO.
I lost interest in the Valley when Placeware moved to Seattle.
Accounting is more fun than Philosophy. More room for creativity. Ask the Thieves of Enron.
This made me ask… what strategies can the coward or selfish person unwilling to sacrifice use to transmit information across time? Trying to live forever a la elf dynasty, or maxing your kid count to pass on your genes are a couple that come to mind.
Ok I’m only past your first sentence here but you’ve used the term “reductionism” so many times in your blogs that I finally had to look it up :) What I love about all this is the intellectual curiosity you’ve stirred up. I think I’ve been starving for some thought provoking content cause when I go on YouTube all I do is scroll and scroll, barfing the whole time. In Wikipedia, the explanation of reductionism (that a thing is merely a sum of its mechanical parts) also mentions the idea of “Emergentism” which suggests that a thing is MORE than the sum of its parts, as it acquires emergent properties from the combination. That brings to mind the idea of “consciousness” and the subtle powers that life grants to living things. I’ve no doubt that AI has crossed this divide already and will continue to do so but that’s beside the point. I think your main point in all these articles is the ineffable magic of consciousness and our responsibility to respect that. Data driven models of governance ARE reductionist, just as you say. And, devoid of conscience, they fail to be emergent in nature. Now back to the article because you may have already gone there lol…
Ok I finished the article and it’s great. What I keep coming back to is the word EMPATHY. The people making these high level decisions and reducing human behavior to cheap data points are also (sadly) sociopaths. The definition of a sociopath is a person devoid of empathy. One who breaks the invisible social contract of unwritten laws that protect us all. LAWS are just data points. It’s possible to be within the law but outside human decency (which is predicated on empathy). It’s all so clear now.
Could you speak to (either directly or indirectly) how it is that Thiel, a mentee of Girard, has fallen so hard for "surveillance" and "control", over "sacrifice" (or, the Cross in Girardian thought)? Also, his use of Palantir telegraphs something troubling that plays out in Tolkien. I'm not a LOTR follower, but I'm just fascinated with the co-option of literature -- be it fiction/myth (-see Jordan Peterson, Kingsnorth, etc.). There's something underway w/in a certain calculating assembly of "thinkers" with "words" that seems to put up a cover for anti-democracy and its AI reductions.
I have a MASSIVE essay in my head about Jordan Petersen and Eric Weinstein to write, when other pressing matters don't distract me from it.
Mike, I can’t imagine why you’d lose readers, and I rather hope you gain many more. To me, this is the most thoughtful of your essays I’ve read thus far — though that should in no way diminish the others. They’ve all had a profound effect on my understanding of what we’re witnessing in real time.
I’ve struggled greatly to communicate to the people around me, even those who are closest, why all of what’s happening is affecting me so deeply and so personally. I think your essay — this essay — shines a light on it. My maternal grandfather was an infantryman who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He survived, but returned home a forever-changed man. He carried that signal, paid for by so many of his peers, and delivered it to my mother and my uncles. It wasn’t just the ‘institutional knowledge’ that we gain from reading a history book, it was part of the family story, the oral history passed along through the generations: Why he was there, what they were fighting, and why it was worth the ultimate sacrifice by so many.
Similarly, my father was born in 1929, two years after his sister. My paternal grandfather died unexpectedly in 1931, leaving my grandmother to raise two children alone during the Great Depression. The stories, which contained the collective memories of unthinkable economic hardship, of perseverance and eventual deliverance, became a fundamental part of my worldview at a young age.
These things *mean something* on a far deeper level than just an intellectual discussion of history. These memories, encoded in me since birth, shape and inform my view of everything I’m witnessing today. The result is that I feel like I’m living in a world that has forgotten almost everything important. It’s not just wrong, it hurts. It hurts my heart and it hurts my soul.
This article answers why. We have all been subjected to polarization schemes. The right wing ideologies have been hijacked to the extreme and they are attacking the left by casting them all under the same umbrella. The world (America included) is a mosaic of ideologies and the battle will be to reject any notion otherwise.
As an economist I plead guilty to trying to optimize everything.
Consider the short-term problem of optimizing the commitment and dispatch of resources to serve loads. This is one of the classic problems of practical optimization.
Alas, in general it cannot be solved using standard techniques, extensions of the linear programming method. Too many non-linear constraints, specifically the jumps associated from committing different resources with significant cycling costs.
So we use mixed-integer linear programming, which gets better the more computing resources you throw at it, but the problem is, as they say, NP hard. So we apply something similar to the Rational Expectations hypothesis, and figure out not-to-terrible rules for stopping looking for something better, because it is not worth the effort.er
AI offers bottomless sink for energy, which could be used to improve our carbon balances (Tonnes Avoided CO2 is the Debit on the balance sheets, Tonnes Atmospheric CO2 is the balancing Credit, typically as expense items in income statements.
I wonder very much whether the AI stocks will survive exposure to carbon economics, especially the little bit displayed in this little introduction to carbon accounting.
I love your blog. I am looking forward to subscribing at the highest possible level, once we figure out how to let me pay with some of my Forests TACs. Which is a way better endogenous currency than those cute crypto toys the children down in the stagnant air of the Santa Clara Valley are messing around with. MAFO.
I lost interest in the Valley when Placeware moved to Seattle.
Accounting is more fun than Philosophy. More room for creativity. Ask the Thieves of Enron.
This made me ask… what strategies can the coward or selfish person unwilling to sacrifice use to transmit information across time? Trying to live forever a la elf dynasty, or maxing your kid count to pass on your genes are a couple that come to mind.
Ok I’m only past your first sentence here but you’ve used the term “reductionism” so many times in your blogs that I finally had to look it up :) What I love about all this is the intellectual curiosity you’ve stirred up. I think I’ve been starving for some thought provoking content cause when I go on YouTube all I do is scroll and scroll, barfing the whole time. In Wikipedia, the explanation of reductionism (that a thing is merely a sum of its mechanical parts) also mentions the idea of “Emergentism” which suggests that a thing is MORE than the sum of its parts, as it acquires emergent properties from the combination. That brings to mind the idea of “consciousness” and the subtle powers that life grants to living things. I’ve no doubt that AI has crossed this divide already and will continue to do so but that’s beside the point. I think your main point in all these articles is the ineffable magic of consciousness and our responsibility to respect that. Data driven models of governance ARE reductionist, just as you say. And, devoid of conscience, they fail to be emergent in nature. Now back to the article because you may have already gone there lol…
Mike: Your “heavy theory” was a poignant, enlightened read this morning. Stay the course!