public weblog('jaysen naidoo')
22 May 2024
16 February 2024
new opiates
18 November 2023
solving social with forced interoperability
15 October 2023
Beyond Selfishness and Altruism: Evolution, Empathy, and Systemic Sustainability
Ben Goertzel on good and evil:
"It's a complicated and somewhat silly distinction. Human beings under evolution have been shaped by two objective functions: Individual selection and group selection. The tension between selfishness and altruism. A lot of what we view as evil is selfishness -Individual interest. A lot of what we view as good is altruism -acting in the interests of the collective. We are a mix.
But culture has a lot of flexibility in what it teaches as
the default position between the two.
And we have a lot of room to move to more altruism."
[end quote]
Expanding on Ben Goertzel's delineation between good and evil through the prism of individual and group selection, there's an additional evolutionary dimension worth considering: the long-term viability of groups in relation to their external environment and other groups. This involves another kind of selection - one based on a group's ability to extend its empathic boundaries and sustain harmonious coexistence with out-groups and the environment.
This "meta-selection" isn't just about immediate survival or dominance but encompasses a group's adaptive strategies for long-term sustainability and coexistence. It's about how a group defines its circle of empathy and the consequent impact on its cooperative and competitive strategies. Groups that practice wider empathy are not just being altruistic; they're investing in a robust strategy for long-term survival. They contribute to a social and ecological equilibrium, enhancing not just their own resilience, but the resilience of a larger interconnected system.
This perspective also casts a new light on the concepts of good and evil. Actions and policies that foster broad cooperation and empathy, even beyond immediate in-group interests, contribute to the collective good—not just of one's own group, but of the larger ecosystem of groups and the environment.
Conversely, short-sighted strategies, those prioritizing immediate in-group benefits at the severe expense of others and the environment, can be viewed as contributing to a collective evil. They may offer immediate gains but compromise the long-term resilience and sustainability of the broader system.
It's crucial to note that in this evolutionary framework, the ultimate "victory" scenario isn't one group out-competing all others to the point of their extinction, then living in isolation, sustainably, with the non-human environment. Such a scenario would actually be detrimental to survival in the long run due to decreased systemic robustness resulting from reduced diversity.
True optimal success in this framework is a rich tapestry of diverse
groups, all practicing extended empathy, cooperating where possible, and
coexisting sustainably with each other and the environment. This
diversity isn't just a moral ideal; it's a strategic one, vital for the
long-term resilience and adaptability of life on Earth.
(uses some help from an artificial friend)
28 July 2021
technical stagnation under late capitalism
Our best minds are largely at work making shiny things we don't need or figuring out how best to sell it to us. Pure scientific research is at an all time low and research departments directed in some way by profit motive are the norm. We think we're living in a sci-fi future because that thinking sells shiny things and advertising works. But the slowing down in the rate of technical advancement has only really just begun... It takes about a generation before the fruits of raw research can be deployed as technologies, and we will only really see real downside of this approach a generation of two from now - just when we could use all the science we can get to save us from the ecological disaster also wrought by run away capitalism.
25 August 2019
hypothes.is
Social bookmarking, tagging, annotating and note sharing of the web in public or private groups, or just for yourself.
"Our efforts are based on the annotation standards for digital documents developed by the W3C Web Annotation Working Group. We are partnering broadly with developers, publishers, academic institutions, researchers, and individuals to develop a platform for the next generation of read-write web applications. You can follow our development progress on our roadmap. Many have contributed tools, plug-ins and integrations."
https://web.hypothes.is/about/
sourcecode and other projects at https://github.com/hypothesis
A Chrome extension. Firefox and other users will have to use the bookmarklet for now - which works very well
see web.hypothes.is/installing-the-bookmarklet/
run by a public foundation apparently. source code is open but not copyleft, alas.
15 August 2019
hacking past deepfakery
04 August 2019
odd notes Copyleft and our digital future .. and a public rhizome to surf and build
12 January 2018
dream talk
Our brains are largely a patchwork of buggy sub-processes making us feel happy or sad by the relative probabilities of some uppity replicating protein making more of itself. That's why we feel good and that's why we feel bad. That and all the real pain and joy that causes.
All we can do is to try get out of our heads. Our heads are broken. Be kind to each other, kind to everyone. Try to fix ourselves. We don't have to live these broken lives. When they're broken, then we can try to help each other.
That or something close is what the lady told the players, but only after she lost.
01 January 2018
our tools are broken
---
The list of our broken tools include Facebook, Google search, Twitter, and the operating systems Windows, Mac-OSX, IOS, and bits of Android. Linux is completely ours. Most of Android and the software that serves up and browses the world wide web is also properly public property.
Distributed/Federated social software that could easily replace Facebook and Twitter already exists (see Diaspora and Identica). Publicly owned search engines won't have to start from scratch either.
Its just going to take us some time to realise that all the complaints that we have about our social software - about the abuses of power that extend from privacy violations to the manipulation of search results and manipulation of our social signalling - all of these cannot be fixed until we switch to Free (as in speech) Software.