From sc@ewav.com  Wed Aug  1 18:55:06 2001
To: <fuchs@michaelfuchs.org>, "Ryan Canolty" <ryan_canolty@yahoo.com>
Cc: "Chad Poplawski" <cpoplawski@yahoo.com>,
        "Alexander Heublein" <alex@heublein.net>,
        "Jeremy Kassis" <jfk@stanfordalumni.org>,
        "Joe Laltrello" <jlaltrel@us.ibm.com>,
        "Alison Henry" <ali.henry@talk21.com>,
        "Ryan Fife" <theman@followryan.com>
Subject: RE: rooting for the determinism underdog...
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 18:54:13 -0700

RC: > > Thus it is true, as Michael says, that Darwin
> > found God -- although I might say that he
> > found the Tao since evolution “...flows
> > everywhere, to the left and to the right.
> > All things depend upon it to exist, and it
> > does not abandon them.  To its
> > accomplishments it lays no claim.  It loves
> > and nourishes all things, but does not lord
> > it over them...” Evolution, like the Tao, is
> > most definitely not omniscient but rather
> > operates via blind, unknowing action, in the
> > dark.
>
MF: > Mein Gott! If evolution and the Tao are connected in some
> important way,
> I may just fall over. This would be a stupendous connection. But, you
> know what--I've always felt there was something Lao Tzu wasn't telling
> us. He would talk about "the source" a great deal; but he never told
> us what it was.

SC: Wow...I thought I was losing it for a while there but it's nice to
see other people have connected the Tao Te Ching and this crazy thing
called evolution.

A few months ago I picked up a copy of Stephen Kaufmann's _Origins of
Order_ because I kept seeing it referenced as a primary source for the
marriage of evolution and complexity theory.

Sadly, most of the mathematical knowledge I assiduously gathered during
my college years (13 years ago now...oy I'm getting old...anyway) is all
gone but that's not terribly important right now. What is important is
that while I was reading the nice understandable text parts it suddenly
occured to me that I was reading a variant of the the Tao in suped up
modern parlance with snazzy equations to back it up.

The Tao is the tendency for the universe to order which is the Way which
is evolution which is like this

	The Tao is like a well;
	used but never used up.
	It is like the eternal void;
	filled with infinite possibilities.
	[from chapter 4 in my translation of the Tao Te Ching]

Evolution (or maybe it should be _order_ or just coupled with order?) is
a process not a thing. It can never be used up. It is innate to the
essence of the universe. That's just the way things have worked out.
Because of the properties of matter it tends to clump together. Because
of the properties of atoms when clumped they form molecules. Those tend
to form bigger molecules and so on. I'm sure everyone here knows these
sciency things and there's no need to be ridiculous about dragging it
out.

MF: > You don't suppose Lao Tzu scooped Darwin by 2200 years . . . ?!

All the deeper understandings of all the religions say similar things
but the Tao Te Ching seems to be the only version (that I know of
anyway) which has managed to stay relatively intact throughout the
years.

Many of the early Christian thinkers said similar things translating
"God" into a concept not unlike Tao. They were slaughtered by people who
were more interested in translating their influence to power. This I
think, sitting here in a cafe drinking way too much coffee and it may be
addling my little brain, turned out to be a good thing. You leave off in
a different direction and a few thousand years later your back where you
started but now you know infinitely more about what you thought before
you left.

The Eastern way of Oneness as the underlying philosophy hasn't fostered
the reductionistic drive that the Western world has had since the time
of the Greeks. That reductionistic drive to pick apart the world to see
what makes it work encouraged more and more science (despite the cool
down period of the Middle Ages and what appears to be the steady desire
of American religious conservatives to kill all thought) which created
questions that fed upon themselves. What is light? What does blood do?
What are the planets? Each answer begetting another question.

What are people? What is the mind? What is me?

It's only recently that such a question could really begin to be
answered. And that brings me to another connection related to what I've
been reading the past few days. In Daniel Dennet's book _Darwin's
Dangerous Idea_ there was a small thing about language and meaning which
said that you can't really talk about a thing unless you have a concept
for it. This is kind of obvious and it's been related in so many other
philosophy and/or science books that it's meaningless to cite more.

Lao Tzu and the modifiers of the Tao Te Ching could have seen the
patterns swirling around them 4000 years ago that we see today and call
evolution and order. They wouldn't have had the language to describe it.
They wouldn't even know how to think about such a thing because the
entire mental framework to formulate such a notion did not exist.

The West did have that mental framework in the form of a lengthy path to
the current evolution of the Theory of Evolution and it's only now that
the large scale perspective of "the Oneness of all things" and the small
scale perspective of "what's that atom do" can be married. Both are
important and necessary to a deeper understanding of the universe. One
leads to the other twisting around over and over not unlike the yin-yang
symbol.

What this implies, it it has any meaning at all, I'm not sure.

RC: > > The idea that I am
> > this physical organism, this bodymind, rather
> > than that organism, or even the environment
> > in which they find themselves no longer has
> > as much support.
> . . . <snip> . . .
> > Imagine playing the prisoner’s dilemma now.
> > Your mind-brain is working with a different
> > representation of self than before -- you see
> > yourself as both prisoners, even though you
> > only experience the perspective of one.  You
> > realize that the two organisms are like the
> > left and right hands of a larger body, and
> > seek to maximize the net benefit.  You have
> > expanded your circle of concern to include
> > everyone and everything
>
MF: > Brilliant! At the risk of turning this into a L.T. lovefest:
>
Lao-tzu: > 	"See the world as your self.
> 	 Have faith in the way things are.
> 	 Love the world as your self;
> 	 then you can care for all things."

SC: [Shades of the Prayer of St. Francis? "Lord, grant me the courage to
change what I can and the wisdom to know what I cannot" --- paraphrased
as I haven't been in Catholic shoolf for 16 years]

[clip and snip in place]

RC: > > This is the logical conclusion to
> > the expansion of moral span that is the basis
> > of ethical development from egocentric to
> > sociocentric to worldcentric.
> >
> > Personally, I like this vision of reality.
>
MF: > Me, too.  8^)  I think you've made genuine progress.

SC: I agree completely although I don't know where exactly that progress
is leading.

What would be the implications of such a philosophy and could it be
followed?

First the philosophy.

Let's assume that as RC said, "You realize that the two organisms are
like the left and right hands of a larger body, and seek to maximize the
net benefit.  You have expanded your circle of concern to include
everyone and everything." Such sentiments are not unknown throughout all
the religions of the world (e.g., Jesus' Golden Rule: treat others as
yourself. Simpler kids version: treat others as you would have them
treat you].

Thus far, such notions have failed to penetrate the vast mind of the
human collective. But let's be optimistic and assume they do. That some
sort of new philosophical world view battles for meme space and wins
outright implanting the notion of Oneness and the connection of all
things to all things in a very real way.

Now what? What changes? Is there still poverty? Is there still war? Is
there still stealing and lying? Are there still marketing people?

The Tao Te Ching would have you believe that acting in accord with the
universe is enough to keep the harmony of interactions. However, not all
will act in accord with the Way. You can't even get a really good handle
on what the Way is. Your example should be good enough?

What if it isn't? Eventually decisions are made that directly impact
people and tell some that they are bad and some that they are good.
You're good if you go to work and come home to your family and do it
again the next day. You're bad if you go out and slaughter 100,000
people because you don't like them.

What's the proper course of action? Maybe the repetive nature of life is
slowly destroying the mind of the happy family man (and I'm sure it
sometimes is based on the comments I get from people about my website
[shameless plug: www.ewav.com]). Maybe that psychotic guy killing
wantonly every day is having a grand old time.

The right course of action has many levels to it. There is the self
level which concerns only you. There is the person-person level which
concerns how you interact with small groups of the people you conenct
with every day. There are larger levels with regard to what you think
about your city/state/nation/culture/etc. Some of the you have a lot
more impact upon than others despite your presence being important in
the grand summation of all things.

This is all a swirling twirling interconnected mess. All things are gray
in some respect. Your actions are gray. Sometimes they can do nothing
other than harm and that's the right choice. Sometimes the right one is
obvious and will do nothing but good. Harm to who? Good to who? Good for
you? Good for me? Good for 10,000 people but not that one guy?

Most of the ethical questions posed by everyday life are relatively
simple. Some aren't. Most people don't have to worry much about their
connection to the big picture. Most are barely connected to their own
neighborhoods these days.

I would argue that any possible philosophical guide post for the modern
era would have to take all that and much much more into account. It
would have to integrate the concept of the Tao with the concepts of
modern physics, evolutionary psychology, etc. It would have to account
for ethical grayness which not many philosophers seem to be willing to
explore. Please let me know if there are any wh do because I'd be
terribly interested.

Absolutes rarely exist in the world of human concerns and that lack of
absolutes makes the whole thing a tad complicated.

Now onto practice.

It's easy to be bevevolent and kind when you're a hermit or a wanderer.
Trust me. I've done it and it's easy. You leave if things get bad. You
stay if things get good. Real life is not that simple.

Life binds you to a place, to a family, to a job, to a house. Without
people having kids the world crumbles. Resources are limited. Maybe we
should all be living minimally in small huts gathering what we need.
That would require the elimination of roughly 5 billion people.

Maybe we should constantly expand our social networks and bring all
people into the "us" group. Still, that means that some will come to
harm. Some ideas, some memes, some cultures, must die to accomplish such
and integrative feat and they aren't going to like that. Maybe you
should use your example of health and prosperity as a guide post for the
billions wallowing in misery and starvation. Is it ethical to let them
starve if they don't want to follow the way to prosperity and stop
murdering the witches?

Maybe you're supposed to give most of your income to help the poor and
downtrodden (a la Singer's notions). Is anyone willing to start? Is it
ethical to start if the poor and downtrodden won't do very much to help
themselves? Is is ok to suggest a way and then go to the pub and have a
pint leaving everyone to their own devices?

Do you have the right to kill to defend yourself? If you're nothing but
part of the big wide world then you don't matter. But then that killer
doesn't matter much either.

Does that imply that killing people isn't much of a big deal? "That guy
is an idiot! I wish he were dead." Could bodies stacked up like cordwood
lack any moral significance?

To a meme's perspective the bodies mean nothing. They are just a means
to an end. Maybe that's the Way.

These pseudo-philosophical notions do not imply a simple worldview that
can be explained and assimilated in an afternoon which is probably why
all the religions have started as a Tao kind of thing and turned into a
"this is what you do on the third Tuesday of the 6 moon of the year"
kind of thing. Everyone of those questions above can be answered with a
"it depends".

I've been pondering this crap for two years with nary a dent into the
problem space. It's a grand perspective way of thinking that requires
one to toss out many of the axioms built up over the ages. Perhaps many
of them can't be tossed away since they could very well be built into
the human genome driving all the subconscious decisions that bubble up
and seem so obvious to us when they "pop into our heads".

Also all of our decisions about the path of our lives are based on best
guesses. The whole process of evolution is based on best guesses. Will
this creature with a slightly irregular blood cell be susceptible to
malaria? Will this fish with these weird flippers be able to eat a
little more on the land?

Since so many of the answers to so many of the questions are so "fuzzy"
does anyone think it's possible to espouse a philosophy of grey, a world
of morality contingent upon the situation based on simple axioms that
tend to increase overall individual opportunity and tempered with the
science of the day? Not a particularly original thought I admit but
that's where everything I've read and thought eventually leads me.

Now everyone please tear that apart and tell me why I'm full of shit.

RC: > > Check it out -- use
> > determinism to show that the organism or
> > bodymind has no free will.  But by negating
> > free will, you have negated the idea of a
> > separate self to be constrained or
> > determined.  Thus determinism is negated as
> > well, for what is it that is being determined
> > if there is no other option?  What is left is
> > reality as such, doing its thing, and its
> > actions, properly speaking, are neither free
> > nor determined.
> >
> > Far out?  Yes.
>
MF: > But it also solves the problem very nicely.

Does it? What exactly has it solved?

Don't get my flippant response wrong.

I agree that understanding the "self" as part of a wider interconnected
world is a very good thing. It could even be considered a kind of
expanded maturity. For me though it only seems to pose more questions.

Another thing I think that needs to be completely exorcised from the
discussion (and all of western thinking) is the notion of a conflict
between free will and determinism. Neither of the terms really makes
much sense now that we have a better notion of the inner neurological
workings of the mind. They were grounded in a religious desire to offer
up a way to eternal paradise and gross lack of information about how
complicated a machine the brain actually is.

Based on what I know of these things I'd sum up the situation:

There is the brain which is part of the ridiculously complicated
biological machine called a human being. Inside the brain are smaller
components doing specific tasks which have all evolved from components
in other animals that did vaguely similar to completely different things
along with a few components did didn't exist at all in other creatures.

Those components are arrayed in a neural net configuration, each vying
for attention, constantly responding to inputs from the external and
internal environment. Information evaluated and acted upon varies from
potassium levels to ideas in a commercial. Some are immediatley tossed
away because it isn't important, such as visual or auditory stimuly
encountered while reading an engrossing email. Some stimuli are acted
upon immediately such as when catching a glimpse of a rock hurtling
toward your head. Most are acted upon automatically without ever
reaching the level of active consciousness.

The individual is part of a mesh of other individuals. Humans are not
islands. We are social animals who need others to survive in the more
primitives states of existence. Others are absolutely imperative in the
modern world as each person does more and more specialized tasks.

The mesh of individuals is organized into socieities and those societies
interact with each other in a way loosely analogous to the components of
the human brain vying for attention and resouces.

Individuals can be part of numerous societies on different levels of
organization like a Russian egg --- a small group of doctors who are
friends that all go to a Catholic church in New York City.

The interaction of the individual within the varying levels of societies
that person belongs to directly effects their internal state which
effects the decisions and life choices that person makes. Those
decisions are tempered by base genetic imperatives (stay alive,
propagate) as well as by the experiences of the individual and the
experiences of others as related to them through the socieites that
person is a part of.

The actions a person engages in effect the societies they are a part of
and those societies assimlate the information entering them and spit out
responses which reflect back upon the individuals to repeat the cycle ad
infintum.

[I didn't think I had that much gall to attempt to summarize everything
in a few hundred words. Apparently I was wrong.]

The important thing is that the brain, while nothing but a bunch of
atoms and hence nothing other than physics, is a _self-referential
self-modifying_ machine. It has information about its internal state as
well as the external state and produces outputs based on both those
things but the important crucial difference is that it can physically
alter the connections and create new ones so that it can learn
previously unknown information and respond in previously unknown ways.

It's reasonably clear that people often act in accord with something
like a genetic imperatives (anyone out there ever been around a woman
with "baby fever" or a man in lust with a young girl, it's ain't pretty)
however it's also obvious that people often act in direct opposition to
their built-in desires.

I suppose you could make a complicated profit-loss matrix and try to
explain every node of possiblity in a decision to say for isntance go on
a hungry strike to protest an oppressive government. You could claim
that it was only the meme's then that were controlling such an action.
The memes of freedom.

That's part of it but not all of it because you don't _have_ to follow
any of those things. The people that really changed the world have gone
against the memespace they were steeped in and done something new. The
fact that people can create anything "new", anything that has never been
on the planet before, means that they aren't just machines responding to
inputs. This doesn't make them "deterministic" in the sense that it
typically is used (you are a hardwired computer doing only what you can
do) nor does it mean that humans have ultimate "free will" to do
anything and be anything. It means that those complicated machines can
evolve themselves which, I guess, is a kind of conditional freedom.

Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.
I say let me never be complete. I let me never be content. I say deliver
me from Swedish furniture! I say evolve and let the chips fall where
they may!

Oh, wait! Sorry! Sorry! I thought I was at the meeting at the docks for
a minute. I'm ok now. Forget that last paragraph.

Actually, I say that most people don't ever get past the level of
machine. Even in the Tao Te Ching there are "the people" and the
"enlightened/the master". The enlightened are always more awake than the
rest of the world and that's what it's all about.

Waking up as much as possible. Learning as much as possible. To push the
bleeding edge out further and further to evolve ever more.

Why? I have no idea. There is stagnation and death or there is
evolution, growth and life. If I had to choose between the two I'd err
on the side of life and hope that it would all make sense in a few
million years.

MF: > And that's how so-called "satori" is usually described: a sudden
> understanding that there is no barrier between the "self" and the rest
> of the universe.

The funny thing about that feeling is that some experimenters have
stimulated it in subjects throught he use of magnetic fields after
studying monks and other religious tyupes in prayer. I can find a URL if
anyone cares although there was a pulse of stories a few months ago
about such things ending up in Time or Newsweek, I don't remember which.

It's also quite interesting when you're walking down the street in
Tucson, Tucson no less, and you get hit with that feeling and it lasts
for a month. It sure does make the universe a lot more interesting.
"WOW! Look at that ant! And over there is a can! Can you belive that?! A
fucking can! A field of cactus stretching out as far as you can see?!" I
don't even want to talk about what food or sex during that time is like.

I've never taken any psychedelic mushrooms but that's what they're
supposed to do. Is it any wonder so many religious rituals had
psychedelics as part of them? Anyone out there with real world
experience of psychedelics? I'm just curious.


Scott Christensen
Working to make these responses ever longer.
This is what happens when you haven't worked
for 2.5 years.