[Darwyn43]

Future, great points. Sorry for the length everyone; being conscious of the vast potential for differences of underlying assumptions makes it hard for me to see how everyone can be comfortable with such brevity!

Originally Posted by futrethink Darwin43. ---I’m just curious as to whom you include in the ‘all of us’ in the ‘winners’ group?

---The human beings that will inherit the system. Though as groups of people, our underlying assumptions and ideologies drive us apart, a holistic scientific framework showing us how we are apart of a greater whole could replace the functions of existing cultures and bring us together around a new narrative and identity. (P.S. it's not my fault if this comes off sounding all peace-and-love, that's just an unfortunate side-effect )

---Since as you so, in a limited way, but succinctly put it, “For one person to get out of a relationship to find a better one, one person must have their heart crushed. It's a fundamental organization of the universe.” For one individual to ‘win/have a positive’, in one way, there is a ‘loss/negative’, in another aspect, for another or the same individual.

Yes, but it's balanced by the potential for "win-win" scenarios which increase as systems evolve. The whole premise of society (or even a human being) is that in certain areas we (or cells) can cooperate rather than compete (obviously cells were able to cooperate on almost everything, which could be a parallel to our own future).

In many respects, the win-loss games we currently play (republicans v. democrats, men v. women, rich v. poor) are games we haven't found way to cooperate in. Even so, however, you can already see how those win-loss games are balanced by win-win games - republicans v. democrats are still somewhat cooperating within the same social system, which is why it rarely comes to blows; men and women still pair-bond when they can cooperate over sex, security and support (not to forget homosexual relationships, here); rich v. poor is a product of currently needing a division of labor where all jobs aren't created equally, I think, but being a part of the same system does benefit them both differentially (as soon as everything is computerized, every person would benefit from an education, and social forces would shrink stratification, I think). So over the course of social evolution, political, technological, and social innovations create new ways to cooperate, which shrinks the amount of win-loss games played and makes the remaining ones easier to deal with with all of the support.

Oh, if I were sticking to Bloom's account, here, I'd have to mention that social hierarchies or pecking orders factor into this, but that's for another time, I suppose.

---You don’t see the loss/negative/limits in an organized co-operative? To have such a system, usually means that only certain paths are allowed to be chosen. To go outside those walls will cause, what is believed to be, unnecessary and unpredictable disorder or ‘evil’.

I agree, yet I think usually what drives people down alternate paths and feel they need to buck the system is not merely an inborn need for more freedom than the rest, whatever that would look like, but a developmental trajectory that is A) somehow different from the cultural norm and thus engendering of a different perspective, and B) a reaction to seeing some inadequacy of the system (like the inability to incorporate said perspective). I think that the future system would be based on the barrier-less communication of billions of minds, and would thus have enormous creative potential, eliminating the need for "B," and will thus be able to standardize the development of children coming into the system without compromising potentially new perspectives. This may sound big-brother, but again, it would never be top-down implemented because we would get it wrong - I think nature will take us to the balance. Finally, I think if you grow up in such a system, it would be the norm, so our own level of discomfort with the idea isn't necessarily a good gauge of it's potential.

---I do understand that such a Federated system is a peaceful and mostly predictable way of existence. I even push for it in other discussions. There is just something about it that I believe/know is wrong/bad/evil in pertaining to an entirety of existence context.

I agree completely - I don't think there should be some premature, top-down institution of such a system. I think it will come about naturally as cultural evolution exhausts possibilities and finds a worldview with the flexibility to apply to all permutations of experience and will be able to both maintain a structure and generate new creative perspectives.

---Evil is done, at a single point in time, so that as time passes good might arise from it at another point. The reverse is true as well; from doing good, at certain point in time, evil might arise from it as time passes.

I would only add that sometime they overlap - the criminal who is sentenced to life has an act of evil done onto them even as society does what it considers an act of good by doing so. In the sense that the criminal mind is created by the society which failed to shape it or persuade it, the criminal is also a victim - they were doomed to parasitism by the society that punishes them for it.

[Tina]

Originally Posted by futrethink Tina. 1) Is it only we humans that group/regard things in the groups that we call ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or can animals do/feel the same thing even without the words to describe such things?? 2) Now, let’s go back to the idea of an adult killing a child in front of its mother. Why is it a bad or an evil thing that is happening? 3) I want you to also tell me why the adult is considered being a ‘bad/evil’ individual? Again, keep it at its most basic level. $) To think that animal instinct is only a mental state and to exclude the physical state, is to limit your thinking about the entirety of what ‘instinct’ actually is. Is the flight-or-flight instinct and the state of the body, something that arises from the Emotion or Intellect, hmm?

Futurethink time limitations but will first answer half of #568

1) Animals are amoral and devoid of moral ideas of good/bad

2) Adult is causing extreme emotional pain and destroying life unecessarily. I do not call this evil - I'd call it tragic.

3) I try to have compassion for all people - purely victims of a screwed up world - but people intent on defacing and destroying life evoke ideas in me that they are being "evil'.

4) Animal instinct is more than mental state. I call instinct wisdom because the animal behaves in complete harmony with its genetic imperatives. Hormones, eating habits, mating all acted out in harmony with what they need to do. Ive said this many times - Animals live their life to the fullest - we don't.

Will answer the rest later.

[futrethink]

Darwin43.

The human beings that will inherit the system.

---Hmm. So, I am guessing that that is to mean that; you don’t think or care that the flora and fauna of planet Earth deserve a chance to be a part of the winning group. That, in a way, shows that you don’t care about ‘strangers’ or strange things that aren’t human. Isn’t that, in a way, an evil thing to be?
---In the greater scheme of things you probably don’t feel that that will matter, I am guessing. That one, little bit of something, that might be regarded as evil, won’t change things overall. It will and it won’t.
---That is a part of what I was talking about regarding the win and lose concept: for there to be a win, there has to be a loss somewhere. Whether you notice or care about the loss or not, doesn’t change that the loss still occurs. You seem to feel that a loss, for human beings anyway, is a bad or evil thing and that the idea of full blown cooperation is a good thing. For an extreme version of your cooperation idea, do a Google search for a science fiction group/concept called the “Borg.” I can think up other concepts/groups that involve the same idea, but that is an obvious enough one for now.
---You bring up sociological, social hierarchies and pecking orders as the things of winning and losing. Again, you are limiting those to only human ideas of compromise, even when you include the cooperation of cells within the human body.

I agree, yet I think usually what drives people down alternate paths and feel they need to buck the system is not merely an inborn need for more freedom than the rest, whatever that would look like, but a developmental trajectory that is A) somehow different from the cultural norm and thus engendering of a different perspective, and B) a reaction to seeing some inadequacy of the system (like the inability to incorporate said perspective).

---In essence: to conform, to what the rest of think and do, is the best thing and make sure that you aren’t outside of it. Being different (outside of anything that we can understand or control) means that you will be feared and attacked in some way.

I think that the future system would be based on the barrier-less communication of billions of minds, and would thus have enormous creative potential, eliminating the need for "B," and will thus be able to standardize the development of children coming into the system without compromising potentially new perspectives. This may sound big-brother, but again, it would never be top-down implemented because we would get it wrong - I think nature will take us to the balance.

---Think about the Borg. As I mentioned already, that is an extreme form, because that group physically takes people, violently, leaving them no other option, then changes them into ‘ant or bee’ drones.
---The society that you describe will occur because; the majority will see no other way, to live their lives, except to conform. To be outside the norm of a group or the wishes of the leaders of that group, even today, is to be verbally or physically abused in minor and major ways. From that, most people grow up thinking that, “To be anything different, other than what others think I should be, is an unthinkable option.” But, I am guessing that you don’t believe that that is an evil part of society? Me, I see it as the cause of violence, bullying and freedom fighting/terrorism.

I agree completely - I don't think there should be some premature, top-down institution of such a system.

---For, what I mean by a Federated or Allied system, to occur you would have to have it start from the bottom up. As it does for any form of government. You seem to, like most people I talk to, have the idea that a government isn’t made up of individuals who make choices.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---In case you missed it, here is my answer to the question “What is the basic root of all evil?” Post #532. Interaction.

[futrethink]

Tina.

1) Animals are amoral and devoid of moral ideas of good/bad

---You still aren’t making the connection to what I am talking about, even when you are showing that you know it. The proof lies within your own answers.
---You already know that animals have and show emotions. How do they know what emotions to feel, if they didn’t have some thought of what might be good and what might be bad?

2) Adult is causing extreme emotional pain and destroying life unecessarily.

---Extreme pain for whom? Do you know if the child was killed quickly and painlessly or long and painfully? How do you know that the mother didn’t want or take pleasure in the death of the child? Think carefully before you automatically say that no mother would do such a thing.
---How do you know that the life was destroyed for an unnecessary reason? I can think of many reasons that such a death would be considered necessary.
---I gave a general scenario of; an adult killing a child in front of its mother. For that description, it is in fact neither good nor evil. It is only by adding context to that sentence does a picture of good or evil arise.
---I posted, “I think that that is an evil or bad thing.” Did I cause you to, automatically and without question, form the idea that it was a bad thing or did you just use the beliefs of human that it is always a bad thing, when something like that happens? What if everyone who, for the rest of time, living after us decides that that killing was a good thing? What if that number is the majority of human beings for all of existence? Would that make the killing a good thing and mean that we, believing that it is wrong, are the ones having the mistaken belief?

3) I try to have compassion for all people - purely victims of a screwed up world - but people intent on defacing and destroying life evoke ideas in me that they are being "evil'.

---From where did you learn those ideas that they are automatically ‘evil’? Was it from your interaction with and learning from others?
---Allow me to show you something about evil: There are people throughout history who think that genocide is a good thing. When the majority of their society shows them that such a thing is evil, then it is a good thing for them.

Ive said this many times - Animals live their life to the fullest - we don't.

---Whom do you include in that ‘we’?
---Don’t forget the scientific idea of falsifiability, when you answer. If you are meaning all human beings, when you say ‘we’ and there are examples of human individuals who do live their lives to the fullest, including the ability to live in harmony with their environment, then your hypothesis is proven wrong.

[Darwyn43]

Hope to post soon, Future. I'm interested to jump in on the other discussion here too. Until then -

[Tina]

Originally Posted by futrethink Tina. 1)You already know that animals have and show emotions. How do they know what emotions to feel, if they didn’t have some thought of what might be good and what might be bad? 2) "I think that that is an evil or bad thing.” 3) Whom do you include in that ‘we’? Don’t forget the scientific idea of falsifiability, when you answer. If you are meaning all human beings, when you say ‘we’ and there are examples of human individuals who do live their lives to the fullest, including the ability to live in harmony with their environment, then your hypothesis is proven wrong.

Furturethink - it is difficult to give you commprehensive answers in this thread. I try to cover the points you raise but I cannot keep arguing about what I say. If you don't agree - fine - tell me what you think - but don't keep harping at my answers....

1) In animals and humans, (I THINK) emotions are instinctive - i.e. they arise automatically in response to stimulus. Emotions are physiological/biological/neurological responses to stimulus. Emotions are vital for SURVIVAL. Psychologists are pretty much agreed on six basic emotions:

Fear/Surprise/Happiness
Sadness/Disgust/Anger

In the human we can experience varying degrees of these emotions (Mild to intense). eg Shyness is a mild fear..... The human (unlike the animal) can rationalise the emotions and deliberate about emotional responses.

But the animal does not deliberate about instinctive responses. eg Fear (rapid heart, chemicals pump...muscles tighten etc ...legs are running before the animal has even registered what is going on. Or if it feels like "urinating' - it does...get the picture!. Animal is in harmony with what it is.

The animal does not need to think "oh I feel scared - I better run now".

2) If i say something is Evil - it is a subjective comment.

3) WE = the human. There are no exceptions - we cannot live our life to the fullest as an animal does. An animal cannot be in conflict with itself - humans are physiologically and psychologically in conflict with themselves. I said this so many times in thread now but hear goes again.

The animal has one primary motivator = instinct as one unified system
The human two primary motivators = emotion + intellect divided system.

Future think I see the points you make and the issues you raise but this is not the place for more extended discussions.

[Darwyn43]

Originally Posted by futrethink Darwin43. ---Hmm. So, I am guessing that that is to mean that; you don’t think or care that the flora and fauna of planet Earth deserve a chance to be a part of the winning group. That, in a way, shows that you don’t care about ‘strangers’ or strange things that aren’t human. Isn’t that, in a way, an evil thing to be?

---I'm not sure I understand your approach here. They don't "deserve" to be apart of the winning group? On what criteria do you think nature chooses whether someone "deserves" something? That doesn't sound particularly objective, and I tend to think that regardless of my intentions to use the TOE as an agent of positive change, it wouldn't matter if my beliefs don't line up with reality because I want the future to look a certain way. Therefore, I suggest you not try to find out whether plants "deserve" to be in the winning group, but whether they WILL BE, based on patterns of the past.
---That being said, I talk about systems of cooperation and competition particularly because it is a lens to see history, so I wouldn't mention it if you couldn't also go back before humanity and see trees working with animals working with bacteria in a interdependent web of life. But at the same time, when we think of the idyllic world without humans that preceded our species, we should remember that that world of bees and trees killed off a world before it of trillions of stromalites without wondering whether they should be apart of the winning group. Nature upgrades the social systems she creates without thinking any one creation is sacred - it needs to be functional.
---So what criteria does something need to have to have staying power? It needs to be capable of supporting a greater system on top of it - nature selects for designs at a particular "level" of evolution until a design is found that can connect other agents in a web of complex communication and coordination that allows for a new system to be produced from their cooperation. Molecules organized into cells, single-cells organized into organisms, organisms into social systems, but at each level, evolution's trial-and-error learning process had to search for the design that would carry evolution to the next level. At the level of organisms, most animals found it to some extent because most animals are social, but humans have the symbolism that allows us to communicate and coordinate on almost every possible need. It is not anthropocentric to think we might replace some of the other bio-functions of the planet, but rather that we are taking the torch from them in pushing nature's vision forward to the next level (even if we currently rationalize what we are doing as being for god or country). That being said, don't worry - I don't think humans will be alone in the winning group.

(Oh yeah, what does it mean that I "don't care about 'strangers' or strange things that aren't human?" I think you have me very, very wrong)

---In the greater scheme of things you probably don’t feel that that will matter, I am guessing. That one, little bit of something, that might be regarded as evil, won’t change things overall. It will and it won’t.

Not sure what you meant by this. Please elaborate at length as I do, if you'd like - I enjoy it myself, I apologize if some of you are turned off by the length.

---That is a part of what I was talking about regarding the win and lose concept: for there to be a win, there has to be a loss somewhere.

---I take it you see the "loss" that results from the "win" of our cooperation either in compromizing of independent thought that results from conformity or the collective impact on the environment (given your above thoughts). I already addressed the latter (I think the loss of some flaura and fauna and a human being are equally still wins for nature, who is learning through her process), but the second one is one I sympathize with. Even though you and I, joe shmoe individual-blaspheming-rebel-eccentric thinkers, suffer as a result of society's conformity to naive/ignorant ideologies, it doesn't mean that conformity (or cooperation) will always result in such suffering or ignorance. Cultural evolution upgrades the collective IQ of groups of people gradually and in fits and starts. Clearly we've already come a long way having jumped from religious narrative-understandings of the world to historical-narratives, what E.O. Wilson calls "political behaviorism." A major scientific-narrative revolution (which will only happen when the sciences are unified) will be a huge upgrade to the cultural frameworks that people are conforming to. And the better organized the information becomes that society teaches to new generations, the more complex the average persons thought process will be capable of being. Consequently, I think the future will see conformity and individual thinking quite complementary, and in the long run - no, I don't think our cooperation comes at a loss in that sense, only in the short term to individual thinkers like those on this website.

For an extreme version of your cooperation idea, do a Google search for a science fiction group/concept called the “Borg.”

---See above about why cooperation doesn't necessarily lead to the Borg. The Borg were designed with a fear in mind about what imbalanced conformity might look like. Remember, in my version, nature selects for balance.
---For the above reason, a society that conforms to a complex, yet well-organized and streamlined set of concepts could allow the average person to think at the levels we do here, while retaining the ability to understand each other and coordinate actions which is what conformity is for. Or another way to put it, the collective mind needs each individual mind to be incredibly intelligent and conscious, unlike the Borg, because the collective mind is simply billions of people who agree that they collectively make up a mind.

---You bring up sociological, social hierarchies and pecking orders as the things of winning and losing. Again, you are limiting those to only human ideas of compromise, even when you include the cooperation of cells within the human body.

If I haven't addressed this, please elaborate.

---In essence: to conform, to what the rest of think and do, is the best thing and make sure that you aren’t outside of it. Being different (outside of anything that we can understand or control) means that you will be feared and attacked in some way.

---Hmmm...if you are reading me as saying that I love conformity, you are mistaken. I think it is functional - it allows a large group of people to coordinate thoughts and actions. Being, as I am, though, self-imposed in a prison of social misunderstanding, I don't love it's affects on me - but I don't confuse my frustration with hatred.
---Still, I'd point out that my point is supposed to emphasize that A) different perspectives are engendered from growing up outside the cultural norm (which is one of the few things which explains how someone can resist the extreme pressures toward conformity - growing up differently makes a person find it just as hard to understand the cultural norm as to be different, which is one of the rare conditions that makes conformity NOT the path of least resistance) and B) nature uses these individuals as the "mutations" in cultural evolution, mutations that can potentially rise in society and help change it in a new direction with that person's outsiders/intelligent perspective.

---The society that you describe will occur because; the majority will see no other way, to live their lives, except to conform. To be outside the norm of a group or the wishes of the leaders of that group, even today, is to be verbally or physically abused in minor and major ways. From that, most people grow up thinking that, “To be anything different, other than what others think I should be, is an unthinkable option.” But, I am guessing that you don’t believe that that is an evil part of society? Me, I see it as the cause of violence, bullying and freedom fighting/terrorism.

---It's actually kind of funny how we've lost perspective on this. I don't know if you read my first post (this is my fifth), but I said I was more or less giving Howard Bloom's account. Included in that is these concepts of pecking order and conformities and superorganisms and so forth, but hardly in the way you are thinking. In fact, the pecking order and conformity are evil, by his definition, in exactly the way you've said. But that is why he considers evil as the creative cutting edge of the evolutionary blade - because these things are still ultimately useful in nature, even if they suck to you and I. And I would remind you that even though it sucks for us to be forced to the outside, we still contribute to the collective. In fact, we are the collective's creativity, it's ability to come up with new solutions. It punishes us, but it needs us too.

---For, what I mean by a Federated or Allied system, to occur you would have to have it start from the bottom up. As it does for any form of government. You seem to, like most people I talk to, have the idea that a government isn’t made up of individuals who make choices.

---I'm not sure what you mean - goverments are composed of individuals who make choices, but often these individuals take on a united front through an ideology, too. I'm saying that such a system should never be imposed in such a situation from a place of philosophy or ideology.

[Darwyn43]

Future, I read your idea about interaction. I have a hard time conceptualizing it because in my view, the universe is interacting energy and mass taking on new forms and complexities over time as a single creative force. Unless you are saying a variation on what I said, that evil is intrinsic to the organization of the universe, than I'm not sure how you can tease out interaction from everything else, because by definition, the forces that create things are the forces that drive things to interact. In other words, a molecule is a molecule because of the interactions of sub-atomic particles, so you can't consider a molecule separate from interaction because it IS interaction, as well as being shaped by it and designed for it. A molecule takes place in the context of forces that are not static, but dynamic by nature.

[Darwyn43]

Originally Posted by Tina we cannot live our life to the fullest as an animal does. An animal cannot be in conflict with itself.

Two things.

First of all, could you point me, Tina, to the post that explains this more fully? I agree with all of the points you make in this post, except that I don't understand how this follows, and I'm not sure I understand why we can't live our life to the fullest but an animal can.

About an animal not being conflicted - there is, I think, internal conflict in animals. I've been harping about cooperation and competition at all levels, including those of cells. Well in neurons, we represent our world like animals do. Even animals have some rudimentary categorization abilities, able to generalize to at least some basic categories of stimuli. So if a dog was able to categorize in the "tall men" category by scent and vision, and at once has a memory about being beaten by a former tall owner and getting treats from a tall neighbor, certain neurons would be activated in both apetitive and aversive ways, creating ambivalence, right?

I'll hold any other comments for more info.

[Tina]

[quote=Darwyn43;48283]

Two things. First of all, could you point me, Tina, to the post that explains this more fully... and I'm not sure I understand why we can't live our life to the fullest but an animal can. ... there is, I think, internal conflict in animals..... So if a dog .... has a memory about being beaten by a former tall owner and getting treats from a tall neighbor, certain neurons would be activated in both apetitive and aversive ways, creating ambivalence, right?

I don't think there is any particular helpful post that I could refer you to so I will summarise here: Humans at some point in evolution, or for the religious, were created as creatures that would escape animal reality.

Animal reality is governed by "instinctive" responses to the natural environment it finds itself in. eg Instinct will determine if a mother mouse will eat her young in overcrowed conditions, or whether males will start to become sterile to reduce population. Instinct is a very old fashioned term expressing what we now understand as the complex workings of feedback responses of DNA biochemistry. Ultimately the animal is 'wise' in its responses even if it means self annihilation...because ultimately it all will aid survival of its species.

The animal lives its life to the fullest because it is fully attuned to what it is and needs to do - and it does not try to do/be what it is not. (domesticated animals exempted)

In the human, instinct is fractured into what we can call Emotion and Intellect. The unified "wise" responses of animal are no longer evidenced in human. The connection of insinctive wisdom is severed and all our behaviour is now primarily motivated by the two driving (and often conflicting forces) of Emotion and Intellect. Our intellect is thus often in conflict with the biochemistry of our once instinctive responses. We do not live our lives to the fullest because we seek/or are made to be what we are not by totally arbitrary determinations of what is good and what is bad.

Your "tall men" argument falls into the realm of conditioned responses. If a tall man has evoked conditioned fear in a dog - future contact with tall men will induce fear because the combined sensory stimuli of a physical "tall man'' will result in increased heart rate when it sees that 'set of stimuli'. This is because the very pattern of the heart beat, and subsequent neurochemical responses triggered by these heartbeats, have laid specific brail like neuronal paths we call memory. Sensory stimuli reactivates these neuronal paths via the intensity of blood pumped by the heart. (Just as Pavlov's dogs began salivating for food upon receiving an electric shock) In cases of truly conditioned fear responses tall men with treats aint gonna fare much better than the abusive men and the man would need to forge new conditioned responses in dog to regain trust!

Gee I hope you find this helpful and not a load of mumbo jumbo