multilayer I/O

Cycles of revenge between families and cultures (electronically mediated or not) are often viewed as organism behaviors. However they might also be seen as group behaviors elicited among individuals by an evolved survival mechanism for families and cultures.

In a complementary sense, social consensus may also be seen as an evolved survival trait for groups of organisms as well as a skill on the part of individuals. Social consensus in principle can give the group many eyes, many arms, and many brains!

Like most patterns of behavior it is also a double-edged sword. Thus for better and for worse, it has provided a path to domestication for many large mammals in today's human-communities (cf. Diamond 1999).

Consensus itself is also inherently inward-looking. Consider for example (cf. Kuhn 1962) the challenge of paradigm-change in science: Like organisms in a maze, consensus scientists may be good at working the system but have no reliable way to learn about the big picture i.e. about places where the particular maze they are running falls short.

Thus the perception of "experts in the old", i.e. the authorities of consensus, may understandably miss better paths that start below the point on the hill to which they've already climbed. This is a shortcoming that consensus communities should keep their eyes open for...

viral self-isolation

Modern media's wide range of options has (ironically) opened the door to a new form of manipulation, by exploitation of our neolithically-evolved reward-systems like e.g. the joy of criticizing others. The result is that big money can predictably put anyone out of business who doesn't pander to it, by mounting a media-campaign which directs those addicted to the spectacle of bad-mouthing toward the target of the day.

This self-isolated population, moreover, might be particularly difficult to reach except by information that is delivered in a package which likewise exploits that addiction. Looks like we've discovered yet another means by which humans can (by just following their natural instincts) inadvertently guide a social-system toward collapse.

evolving idea codes

Evolving idea codes are the DNA of culture. Collaboration spaces, both local and global (like wikipedia), are idea-code evolution-spaces for which we all share responsibility. Do what you can to make them better!

wireless TV?

One of the phone companies has been running a series of commericals which falsely pretends: (i) that wireless TV is a new thing, (ii) that they invented it, and (iii) that it is difficult for kids to live without it. This is odd, since TV in our house was wireless from the beginning and still is.

Moreover, not once did I (or my kids) ever ask to take advantage of its wireless nature by moving the TV to the garage or to the closet. Is it really OK to pay children to broadcast a self-servingly false history of communications technology in this way?

What does it suggest about the technical competence and/or professional ethics of the people responsible for such uses of electronic media? Is this an occasion to ask advertisers to flag: (a) the audience they are targeting, (b) the soft spots within the target audience they are trying to hit, and (c) the places where technical and historical observations are being distorted to falsely-inflate the status of the organization running the ad.

manipulation flags

Fast-response or "muscle-memory" reaction-modules, to which electronic-communications are oft-targeted 'cause they get a response, include:

• pursuit of food (H),
• fear-based avoidance and/or camouflage (F),
• intra-species fighting for territory or mates or belief-systems (A),
• aggression-redirected toward e.g. pair-bonding, bauer/sports, or xenophobic-treatment of outsiders (R),
• imitation of high-status individuals, which as above may also involve denigrating others (I),
• humor and "the joy of the aha!" in model-selection (C),

and what else?

All of these response-modules seem to have been naturally-selected for good reason in the worlds of our ancestors. However in the world of today they also play into the way populations as a whole respond to electronic-communications (like radio, TV, and the internet) which did not exist in ancient times.

If electronic-communications can neurophysiologically associate (e.g. by repetition) certain desired sensory-patterns and/or behaviors with these fast-reaction modules above, then they can elicit reactions that after-the-fact modules (like the PR-module mentioned below) will naturally help institutionalize e.g. by reduction to memetic-code.

After-the-fact and hence "slower-by-comparison" modules might instead involve:

• public-relations or "knower in charge" self-narrative construction (P),
• prefrontal-cortex reasoning in general (L),

and what else?

Somewhat illogical (L) but none-the-less successful examples of modern-world uses for these "modules with ancient roots" include:

associations developed with help from our "fast-reaction" modules

pattern/behavior	modules	supported consequence
(meta-stable) "diamonds are forever"	R,I	created a tradition that expanded a mining-industry
cigarettes placed in movie actor hands	I	helped start nicotine-addiction among tobacco-industry customers
"king of beers"	H,I	helped start alcohol-addiction among brewing-industry customers
guns & terror on TV	F,R,I,P	excellent stimulus to arms-industry sales
bottled-water commercials	I	popularized water-in-plastic where high-quality tap-water was basically free
"four-cheese" as a good thing	H	excellent stimulus to the dairy & fast-food industries
rhetoric of mono-cultural superiority	F,A,R,I,C	politically-incorrect comedy, isolationism, and worse...
academic self-aggrandizement	I,P	grants/publications as ends, rather than as tools to apply/refine

and what else?

PR modularity

Neuroscientists today seem to be finding evidence that individual humans have a relatively-advanced "public-relations module", which speaks (often after the fact) for the reasons behind the ways that they behaviorally react to developments in the world around. Unfortunately, like the automatic neural-systems that more-directly impact our behaviors, that PR-module is not always kept abreast of developments in those other subsystems.

Historically, of course, folks often thought of themselves as organisms under the control of a single "thinker", represented by the voice of that PR-module. Moreover, they are often blissfully unaware of the effects of concept-choice on the world that their PR module sees.

This illusion of the "knower in charge", of course, has consequences for policy. It might lead, for example, to the presumption that if we armed "good knowers" with weapons and took weapons away from "bad knowers" then such a weaponization process would serve as the foundation of neverending social bliss.

Of course if all "knowers in charge" are really just partially-informed PR-modules, which mainly after-the-fact explain behaviors by "muscle-memory modules" capable of much more rapid-response, then weaponization might mainly just give all those PR-modules more in the way of "unintended consequences" to explain after the fact. In this context, can we risk assuming that "folks who think they are infallible in this way" are less likely to fail than those who don't?

are robots alive?

The emerging science of correlation-based complexity sees life as a layered-hierarchy of subsystem-correlations, in our experience forged in free-energy flows at the surface of a star-illuminated planet. The key word when it comes to robots is "layered".

Even though they might look and act like organisms, they are either an instrument of the layered-hierarchy that created them or (if separate) a much-less-layered phenomenon by comparison. For example they do not have depth in their adaptation to the chemistry of this planetary environment. As a result, like us fragile multi-celled organisms they are likely to be gone long before microbes on this planet find it too inhospitable to stick around.

On the other hand, robots may be quite helpful in the extension of our life-phenomenon to other planets i.e. as an extension of our layered hierarchy of subsystem-correlations. In other words as an extension of us, robots may be an important part of life. Separately, even if they "look tough" they are a pretty shallow phenomenon by comparison.

pointing among cats

I've long been aware of the fact that when you point at something for a cat to look at, they often look at your finger instead of at what you are pointing toward. Based on a simple "two-cup one-treat" experiment done with chimpanzees and children in one episode of Alan Alda's SciAm/PBS "Human Spark" series, chimpanzees (and wolves) apparently don't get it either, even though puppy-dogs (thanks to something like 50,000-100,000 years of co-evolution with us) have this down pat.

It's also possible that as we imagine evolving toward more levels of sub-system correlation, or even just stronger correlations (e.g. with center-of-mass niche-network layer-multiplicity approaching 6), that we too will find ourselves in a world of folks who won't get it when we point at stuff with the goal of helping them out. If you can think of places where this has happened in the past, or if you encounter this same effect now, let us know!

model competition?

The modern mathematics of model-selection (separately in both life and physical sciences) provides guidance for setting up a beauty-contest for concepts, idea-sets, paradigms, and mathematical models of all sorts. Remarkably in this context it's not individual people or even consensus, but data from the world around, that serves as judge.

For more on this topic, check out this link here.