Nothing is meaningful to a computer, though. You could program the computer to register any combination of pixels as a representation, but that would require an intentional act on the part of the programmer. — Wayfarer

Yes.computers manipulate information; we provide the meaning. The billionth decimal iteration of pi has a value between 0 and 9, and it means nothing to me, but it is a piece of information.

Conversely there is an elaborate machine that generates completely meaningless random numbers with balls being stirred by paddles called a lottery machine: a bunch of completely random numbers that becomes life transforming for the lucky winner. We supply the meaning, the machine the information

Like, if you wanted to encode and transmit white noise, you couldn’t do it, because it would be computationally irreducible, — Wayfarer

Exactly so. total disorder = maximal information.
Order = redundancy.

Now when it is a matter of communication, such wot us is doin' 'ere. sum dundency is agoodthing, cos my mean ing will be 'stood even iv i mean lots of mystics. If a single typo or grammatical error destroyed the entire communication of a post, this forum would be much much quieter.

As anyone will know, I’m fiercely opposed to physicalist reductionism, but for some reason this paper doesn’t ring true for me — Wayfarer

We are of one mind here. I was disappointed. There seemed to be nothing new at all and just this equivocation between meaning and information that actually reduced life to mere physical phenomena like whirlpools.

By contrast, Bateson equates life and mind with meaning and clearly distinguishes meaning, a difference that makes a difference (to an organism) from mere information such as what one hopes to forget as soon as the exams are over.

I have just posted his totally definitive take-down of the fundamentals of behaviourism— a joy! Fear-not, @Wayfarer, Bateson and I are on your side, and Bateson is a very special and deep thinker.

Thanks. I'm sympathetic to @Wayfarer's difficulty though, it has taken me years to really reconcile Shannon information theory with the entropy of physics in my own mind, and I have yet to come across a really clear and concise exposition.

A 'random pattern' is oxymoronic, as patterns are by definition not random, but ordered. — Wayfarer

You're right, but wrong about this. the order is pre-specified as "a square of pixels 100 by 100 each either black or white" . So any combination whatsoever that you see as 'random' can be read as a unique meaningful image by a computer - a language of 2 raised to the power of 10,000 words. That's a huge number.

Can't see it. If I zero out a hard drive, then it's physically the same as a hard drive with a thousand gigabytes of information. But there is no order. — Wayfarer

No, there is perfect order, like a blank piece of paper. Perfect order, and no information. The singularity before the bang. Information is written onto a piece of paper or onto a hard drive, bringing disorder to perfect symmetry. I sense your shock and dismay, but it is just a change of view.

Isn't it the case that the latter contains, and therefore conveys, no information? — Wayfarer

No it isn't the case. What is the case is that you are not interested in the information, but in the patterns and orders. But if you happened to be a computer, you would read that random pattern like a QR code.

Yes, It seems like a necessary truth that omniscient beings cannot learn.

The crux of my disagreement is that you make order synonymous with simplicity — Hanover

It's not my theory. It's Shannon's.

Information is order — Wayfarer

I understand this claim, it seems intuitively true, but it isn't, the opposite is true, and the thought experiment above was intended to convince you. I'll have another go.

Consider a computer image let's say 100 by 100 pixels, black and white so 10,000 bits. There are a lot of different ways this can be ordered; I will consider one simple one, where the bottom half is a repeat of the top half. It is surely immediately clear, that the information content is halved?

And any order involves repetition with or without reflection, inversion, negation, etc. and any repetion is a reduction in the information. This is the principle that allows data compression. The information that we are interested in is almost always ordered and structured, and to the extent it is ordered, it can be compressed. the result of compression is a smaller less ordered amount of information that decompresses to the original file (we hope, barring copy errors).

An omniscient being would gain no information — Hanover

Oxymoronic warning. Please don't make stuff up about entropy (or God) unless you really do understand it.

Knowing Euclid's definitions and axioms does not entail knowing Pythagorus' theorem even though it 'follows' from them. The information of the theorem has to be 'unfolded' from the axioms by a particular series of steps that are not specified by the axioms themselves. Similarly, the unfolding of physical processes in time produces new information even if that information is predetermined. If you like, existence is the unfolding of God's omniscience.

Have to declare an interest, in that I am in the middle of a thread on this book; nevertheless I commend to you strongly Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature, a Necessary Unity. Herewith, a teaser:

Is there a line or sort of bag of which we can say that "inside" that line or interface is "me" and "outside" is the environment or some other person? By what right do we make these distinctions?
It is clear (though usually ignored) that the language of any an­swer to that question is not, in the end, a language of space or time. "In­side" and "outside" are not appropriate metaphors for inclusion and exclusion when we are speaking of the self.
The mind contains no things, no pigs, no people, no midwife toad s , or what have you , only ideas (ie, news of difference), in-forma­tion about "things" in quotes, always in quotes. Similarly, the mind contains no time and no space, only ideas of "time" and "space." It follows that the boundaries of the individual , if real at all , will be, not spatial boundaries, but something more like the sacks that represent sets in set theoretical diagrams or the bubbles that come out of the mouths of the characters in comic strips.
My daughter, now aged ten, had her birthday last week. The tenth birthday is an important one because it represents a breakthrough into two-digit numbers. She remarked, half serious and half in jest, that she did not "feel any different. "
The boundary between the ninth year and the tenth year was not real in the sense of being or representing a change in feeling. But one could perhaps make Venn diagrams or bubbles to classify propositions about various ages.
In addition, I want to focus on that genus of receipt of information (or call it learning) which is learning about the "self" in a way that may result in some "change" in the "self." Especially, I will look at changes in the boundaries of the self, perhaps at the discovery that there are boundaries or perhaps no center. And so on. — Ch.5.

Finally , all that comparing of comparisons was built up to pre­ pare author and reader for thought about problems of Natural Mind. There, too, we shall encounter creative comparison. It is the Platonic thesis of the book that epistemology is an indivisible, integrated meta­ science whose subject matter is the world of evolution, thought , adapta­ tion , embryology , and genetics-the science of mind in the widest sense ofthe word.*
The comparing of these phenomena (comparing thought with evolution and epigenesis with both) is the manner ofsearch of the science called "epistemology."
Or, in the phrasing of this chapter, we may say that epis­temology is the bonus from combining insights from all these separate genetic sciences.
But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. — P.87

[The text, as indicated here, gives many examples, in this chapter, but rather than go through line by line writing that is already more eloquent than I can manage, I skip gaily forward.]

The Pavlovian case is very famous, but my interpretation of it is different from the standard interpretation, and this difference consists precisely in my insistence on the relevance of context to meaning, which relevance is an example of one set of messages meta-communicative to another. The paradigm for experimental neurosis is as follows: A dog (commonly a male) is trained to respond differentially to two alternative "conditioned stimuli," for instance, a circle or an ellipse. In response to X, he is to do A; in response to Y, he is to do B. Ifin his responses, the dog exhibits this differentiation, he is said to discriminate between the two stimuli and he is positively reinforced or, in Pavlovian language, given an "unconditioned stimulus" offood. When the dog is able to dis­criminate, the task is made somewhat more difficult by the experi­menter, who will either make the ellipse somewhat fatter or make the circle somewhat flatter so that the contrast between the two stimulus ob­ jects becomes less. At this point, the dog will have to put out extra ef­fort to discriminate between them. But when the dog succeeds in doing this, the experimenter will again make things more difficult by a similar change. By such a series of steps, the dog is led to a situation in which finally he cannot discriminate between the objects. At this point, if the experiment has been performed with sufficient rigor, the dog will ex­hibit various symptoms. He may bite his keeper, he may refuse food, he may become disobedient, he may become comatose, and so on. Which set of symptoms the dog exhibits depends, it is claimed, upon the "tem­perament" of the dog, excitable dogs choosing one set of symptoms and lethargic dogs choosing another.
Now, from the point of view of the present chapter, we have to examine the difference between two verbal forms contained in the ortho­ dox explanation of this sequence. One verbal form is "the dog discrimi­ nates between the two stimuli"; the other is "the dog's discrimination breaks down." In this jump, the scientist has moved from a statement about a particular incident or incidents which can be seen to a general­ization that is hooked up to an abstraction-"discrimination"-located beyond vision perhaps inside the dog. It is this jump in logical type that is the theorist's error. I can, in a sense, see the dog discriminate. but I can­ not possibly see his "discrimination. " There is a jump here from particu­lar to general, from member to class. It seems to me that a better way of saying it would depend upon asking: "What has the dog learned in his training that makes him unable toaccept failure at the end?" And the an­swer to this question would seem to be: The dog has learned that this is a context/or discrimination . That is , that he " should" look for two stimuli and "should" look for the possibility of acting on a difference between them.
For the dog, this is the "task" which has been set-the context in which success will be rewarded.'*'
Obviously, a context in which there is no perceptible difference between the two stimuli is not one for discrimination. I am sure the ex­ perimenter could induce neurosis by using a single object repeatedly and tossing a coin each time to decide whether this single object should be interpreted as an X or as a Y. In other words, an appropriate response for the dog would be to take out a coin, toss it, and use the fall of the coin to decide his action. Unfortunately, the dog has no pocket in which to carry coins and has been very carefully trained in what has now become a lie; that is, the dog has been trained to expect a context for discrimination. He now imposes this interpretation on a context that is not a context for discrimination. He has been taught not to discriminate between two classes of contexts. He is in that state from which the ex­perimenter started: unable to distinguish contexts.
From the dog's point of view (consciously or unconsciously), to learn context is different from learning what to do when X is presented and what to do when Y is presented. There is a discontinuous jump from the one sort of learning to the other.
In passing, the reader may be interested to know some of the supporting data that would favor the interpretation I am offering.
First, the dog did not show psychotic or neurotic behavior at the beginning of the experiment when he did not know how to discrimi­ nate, did not discriminate, and made frequent errors. This did not "break down his discrimination" because he had none, JUSt as at the end the discrimination could not be "broken down" because discrimination was not in fact being asked for.
Second, a naive dog, offered repeated situations in which some X sometimes means that he is to exhibit behavior A and at other times means that he should exhibit behavior B , will settle down to guessing. The naive dog has not been taught not to guess; that is, he has not been taught that the contexts of life are such that guessing is inappropriate. Such a dog will settle down to reflecting the approximate frequencies of appropriate response. That is, if the stimulus object in 30 percent of cases means A and in 70 percent means B, then the dog will settle down o exhibiting A in 30 percent of the cases and B in 70 percent. (He will not do what a good gambler would do, namely, exhibit B in all cases.) Third, if the animals are taken away outside the lab, and if the reinforcements and stimuli are administered from a distance-in the form, for example, of electric shocks carried by long wires lowered from booms (borrowed from Hollywood)--they do not develop symptoms. The shocks, after all, are only of the magnitude of pain that any animal might experience on pushing through a small briar patch; they do not become coercive except in the context of the lab, in which other details of the lab (its smell, the experimental stand on which the animal is sup­ported, and so on) become ancillary stimuli that mean to the animal that this is a context in which it must continue to be "right." That the animal learns about the nature of laboratory experiment is certainly true, and the same may be said of the graduate student. The experimental subject, whether human or animal, is in the presence of a barrage of context markers o exhibiting A in 30 percent of the cases and B in 70 percent. (He will not do what a good gambler would do, namely, exhibit B in all cases.) Third, if the animals are taken away outside the lab, and if the reinforcements and stimuli are administered from a distance-in the form, for example, of electric shocks carried by long wires lowered from booms (borrowed from Hollywood)--they do not develop symptoms. The shocks , after all , are only of the magnitude of pain that any animal might experience on pushing through a small briar patch; they do not become coercive except in the context of the lab, in which other details of the lab (its smell, the experimental stand on which the animal is sup­ ported, and so on) become ancillary stimuli that mean to the animal that this is a context in which it must continue to be "right." That the animal learns about the nature of laboratory experiment is certainly true, and the same may be said of the graduate student. The experimental subject, whether human or animal, is in the presence of a barrage of context markers . — P.118

Sorry for the very long quote. Bateson does here what the behaviourist refuses to do, which is to consider the dog's view of things. By comparing the empathically analysed and imagined dog's description of the experiment, to the experimenter's description, the double description gives us a new understanding. The induction of neurosis in the dog is shown to be a complex relationship of mutual learning and meta-learning that places the dog in a bind that he cannot resolve, and this understanding feeds into Trauma theory which I have discussed elsewhere. Punishment is worse than pain because it it is understood to be intentional, just as reward is understood to be. These are communications between beings, not mere events.
Dogs and humans are social beings, with a high sensitivity to the emotional condition of their significant others; a child needs to be able to make their parent happy and vice versa, and the inability to do so is traumatising and tends to neurosis.

information about depth is created. In more formal language, the difference between the information provided by the one retina and that provided by the other is itself information of a diferf ent logical type. From this new sort of information, the seer adds an extra dimension to seeing.
In Figure 4, let A represent the class or set of components of the aggregate of information obtained from some first source (e.g. , the right eye) , and let B represent the class of components of the information ob­ tained from some second source (e.g. , the left eye). Then AB will repre­sent the class of components referred to by information from both eyes.
AB must either contain members or be empty.
If there exist real members of AB, then the information from the second source has imposed a sub-classification upon A that was previously impossible (ie , has provided , in combination with A , a logical type of information of which the first source alone was incapable). — P70.

The explanation of the functioning of human vision is worth reading in its entirety, but here is just the punchline, that illustrates the principle that a double description allows, through comparison, a second order description of information that is not present in either description alone, the difference makes all the difference. Stereoscopic vision enables depth perception.

[This description of the value of double description will be given a second description in my next post.]

I think the term 'natural selection' was 'selected' in the first instance to provide a believable alternative to "Chosen by god" or "Designed by God" to indicate that natural processes might function over time to produce results that appear 'intelligently designed'. Ironic that it now offends the religion of science.

You have a universe that keeps mixing things up and then trying out new possibilities," Hazen says, adding that it encompasses biological evolution, too. Things that work are selected for, he adds. "That works on nonliving worlds, and it works on living worlds. It's just a natural process that seems to be universal." — op

What I fail to understand at bottom is how this new principle or law or whatever it is is something other than the law of entropy. Energy dissipates, disorder/information increases. this allows that life, or a hurricane can produce temporary order that functions to increase total entropy.

The confusion I think arises for many through a misunderstanding of information and its relation to complexity. Maximal order is minimal total information. Everything starts simple and gets more complex and order is simplicity. "functional information" ( as opposed to "total information") is just that temporary ordering of the entropic flow that spontaneously arises by chance, because it 'eases' the flow.

Thought experiment.
Imagine a flask of gas an isolated system an equal mix of CO2 and O2 separated by an impermeable but insubstantial barrier the whole at standard temperature and pressure. The total information of the system includes the position, velocity and identity of each molecule but the identity information is highly ordered and compressible to " all the molecules on this side are oxygen, and all the molecules on that side are CO2. The magic barrier functions to maintain this order so in effect there are two isolated systems at energy equilibrium.
Now remove the magic barrier without disturbing the gasses. They will start to diffuse into each other by the random movement of the molecules, until they are completely randomly positioned. This will be the new equilibrium of the now single system, and total information required will have increased because each molecule will have to be identified individually. Total information increases as disorder increases; The information is trivial and meaningless; for human purposes, "the gasses are mixed" is all we care about.

Edit: Functional information, which is information we care about (aka a difference that makes a difference{to someone}) is information about order which is to say about disequilibrium and therefore exploitable energy. The details of a state of equilibrium are un exploitable and therefore useless.

If you are 71 and three quarters then you are likely to die before me. — Agree-to-Disagree

That rather depends on who (if anyone) decides to fuck with you, and how.

But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
You’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
"Only a pawn in their game." — Bob Dylan

Here is a proposal to explain why despite this, the total information density (a measure of order) of the universe increases. At least that is my gloss on it. (I stalled at the section with the equations, as always — Wayfarer

For my own convenience, here are the bullet points from the article, and some comments from the authors and some from me


1.

Configurations of matter tend to persist unless kinetically favorable avenues exist for their incorporation into more stable configurations.

EG. Dynamite is fairly stable until a spark of energy favours its rapid decomposition into more stable (lower energy} configurations of CO2 and other byproducts with the release of dissipating shockwaves and heat. This is a combination of Newton's first law, and entropy.

2.

Insofar as processes have causal efficacy over the internal state of a system or its external environment, they can be referred to as functions. If a function promotes the system’s persistence, it will be selected for.

The fundamental process is the dissipation of free energy—without this function, no complex, dynamic entities could exist. Unlike static persistence, which only requires dissipation during formation, dynamic persistence requires active dissipation.

This is the beginnings of systems theory, expressed in terms of an elaboration of the law of entropy. A hurricane is formed from temperature inversions from some random fluctuation in the first instance and 'functions' to transfer hot air from the lower atmosphere to the upper, because hot air is lighter. when it runs out of hot air at sea level, it slowly dissipates.

3.

Insofar as processes have causal efficacy over the internal state of a system or its external environment, they can be referred to as functions. If a function promotes the system’s persistence, it will be selected for.

This seems definitional/tautological, or else plain false. But an example can give the sense of it, I think:

Experiment: take an uncapped bottle of water and invert it, creating an analogue of the temperature inversion of the atmosphere; the water wants to fall out and the air has to get in. The result is a chaotic series of "glugs" as first some water comes out an then some air gets in. Time how long it takes to reach the stable lower energy of the water all in the sink and the bottle full of air. Now repeat the experiment but this time as the bottle is inverted, give it a swirling shake to initiate a whirlpool effect. The bottle will empty smoothly and much faster. The dynamic system of the whirlpool increases the entropic energy flow, by introducing a dynamic system of order. the whirlpool once initiated is self sustaining as long as the potential energy of water in the bottle persists.

4.

There exist selection pressures favoring systems that can open-endedly invent new functions—i.e., selection pressures for novelty generation.

This is largely speculative, if not mere wishful thinking. This is as good as it seems to get:

an enzyme’s function is not to perform any of the core functions alone, but to play a specific role in the context of a core function expressed at a higher level of organization. From the perspective of the enzyme, there is a top–down selection pressure for enzymes to have high catalytic efficiencies due to a selection pressure at a higher level for a lineage of organisms to persist. In other words, the enzyme’s function is informed by its context within a larger system. [Note one minor caveat: There are certain cases where protein folding is better described by selection for “form” based on the givens of physics—i.e., static persistence—rather than selection for functional adaptations (50)]. Ancillary functions can exist across many scales: From the perspective of an organism, there may be top–down selection pressures from the needs of its community, and the community may experience pressures from higher ecological units of selection, etc.

So there might be a top down pressure from the environment against the surplus of intelligence that can destroy the ecological balance that supports it. This by way of my own warning to shareholders, that "prices can go down as well as up" - and complexity also, as every dinosaur knows. In the case of dinosaurs they did not engineer their own demise, because either they hadn't the intelligence, or their arms were too short to manipulate the environment effectively.

5.

The functional information of a system will increase (i.e., the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system are subjected to selection for one or more functions.

BUT:

Functional information analysis is thus not currently feasible for most complex evolving systems because of the combinatorial richness of configuration space. Even if we could analyze a specific instance where one configuration enables a function, we cannot generally know whether other solutions of equal or greater function might exist in configuration space

All in all this is disappointingly hand wavy and vague, equations notwithstanding, and as far as I can see is far less rigorous and convincing than the Bateson book I have started to discuss here, where a close examinations of how causality operates in complex systems (defined in terms of causal loops) such that a change anywhere in the loop has effects on every other part of the loop. The concept of 'functional information' is related to but less clearly distinguished than Bateson's "difference that makes a difference".

I'm afraid it all looks like physics envy, allied to loose use of metaphor. This is systems analysis masquerading as fundamental physics when it is quite patently emergent physics. Read Bateson, chaps, this is all derivative and the original is clearer and more challenging to the current philosophy of science.

what are the principles that lead to the growth of complexity and information-encoding capacity in very different kinds of systems where an “evolving system” is a "collective phenomenon of many interacting components that displays a temporal increase in diversity, distribution, and patterned behavior." There's more to it than "stuff happens". — Wayfarer

"What more?", is the question I am asking. I'm suggesting basically that it is merely an aspect of entropy:- order decreases <—> information increases. A universe of hydrogen has nothing else to do, but make heavier atoms; life can't get going until carbon oxygen nitrogen etc are formed, life can only start simple and get more complicated. What am I missing that they are saying? Electronics start simple and get complicated, because ...?

Your statement "just fuck off and die" is typical of the younger generation's attitude towards the older generation. Are you trying to lead by example? — Agree-to-Disagree

I must be young at heart then at 71 and three quarters. You do know that Deacon is a satirical journalist don't you? Take what he says with a pinch of irony, maybe.

Of all your attempts to undermine the purposes of this thread, this is undoubtedly the most mean-spirited, spiteful, and useless.

To set one generation against another in this way does nothing but foster useless argument and resentment. Do what you can to help, and support whatever others can do to help, or just fuck off and die.

You might consider for a moment that the young are not householders by and large, and renters cannot invest in green living the way householders can. But you don't want to think, you want to spread poison.

Does the committing of Allied war crimes entail a moral equivalence between the Allies and Axis?
— RogueAI
Yes. What makes actions "war crimes" is that, to begin with they are not self-defensive, they are gratuitous, etc. — 180 Proof

I'm claiming that Allied war crimes were morally equivalent to Axis war crimes insofar as they were both war crimes. Your special pleading is what's absurd, sir. Inform yourself.
— 180 Proof

OK, so there is a moral equivalence between Axis and Allies viz-a-viz war crimes, but the war crime moral equivalence does not create an overall moral equivalence between the two? Even though the Allies committed war crimes, they were morally superior to the Axis. Is that correct? — RogueAI

You can always tell the goodies from the baddies by the colour of their hats. Plus the goodies always win because God is on their side. So we know the Nazis were bad because they lost, and the Allies were good because they won, and the fact that they both slaughtered children by the thousand is unimportant.

Similarly, we know the Taliban are good because they won and the US and Britain are bad because they lost. Now God does not seem to have decided yet about Israel and Palestine, so you have to rely on the hats - and all the Jewish hats I've seen have been black, from the little crocheted ones they have to glue on to their heads to the giant extra thick pancake things with furry bits. I rest my moral case.

If one assumes that any phenomenon begins as simply as it possibly can be, complexification is the only way to go. So I am wondering how this new law of physics can be distinguished from a drunkards walk of evolution that simply explores the whole space of the possible in a random undirected way?

My skim of the article suggests no distinction.

There is at least a suggestion around that the complexity of human style intelligence is more like a peacock's feathers, than a genuine step forward in survival ability. (an explanation of the lack of intelligent alien civilisations). On the other hand, if one were looking for the fantastic complexity of the Amazon rain forest ecosystem up in the sky, one might never find it though it could be quite common. I would ask my pet dinosaur about this, but she died.


One might conclude, that when evolution takes a particular direction, it tends to be an arms race or a beauty pageant, rather than a move towards a general goal, and such directions commonly lead to fragility to environmental change, where more simple organisms and ecosystems will have the advantage.

Not everyone engages in othering, though, it doesn't come naturally to all people. This is a problem, for them at least. — baker

Them? or Us? That is, are they that engage in othering a problem for us who do not, or is it the other way round? No, actually, don't even try and answer. I'll just repeat: everyone engages in othering.

The Golden Age was first; when Man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted Reason knew:
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear.
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;
Needless was written law, where none opprest:
The law of Man was written in his breast. — Ovid

And it's been downhill ever since. Thusly, our inheritance tells us to avoid hubris and the pretence of very stable genius. Do not pass Go, do not call Ghostbusters. Just grit your teeth and dig your heels in.

That it is pointless to criticize othering as long as one engages in it oneself, and even profits from it. — baker

I think it is potentially useful to recognise what oneself and everyone else is doing with our lives and our deaths. It might be possible to do it less vehemently at least, and it might be possible to modify societies so that the fault lines of identity become more blurred. For instance, the separation of powers between religion and politics, and between politics and economic status, the encouragement of intermarriage, common education and other shared facilities, and so on. In a slogan, "Down with purity!"

Such measures do not make us better people, but if our loyalties are divided, because auntie is a Palestinian and uncle is a Jew, we are less likely to resort to violence. The conflict is not ended, but becomes intra-personal rather than interpersonal. This is the essence of conflict theory in sociology.

Others expect me to stop othering them, but they refuse to stop othering me. What does it matter if I stop othering others if they still other me? — baker

If Hitler says you are a Jew or a queer or an imbecile or a Jehovah's Witness, it doesn't matter what you think or who you other; off to the extermination camp you go. In the game of identity power is everything. But what is your point? There is nothing personal here. No one expects anything of you, except to die when killed.

The other is at least our moral inferior, but at the same time an existential threat. Both aspects are essential for our unity; without the other we fragment into internal conflict. The other necessitates, justifies and takes the blame for the burden of suffering entailed by the individual's subjugation to the group, and there can be no group that is not defined in terms of its other. 'Othering' thus becomes a process, the threat of which controls us. If you demonstrate insufficient revulsion and hatred for the other, you may be seen as, and so become, other yourself. This loss of identity is a fate worse than death. Such a fate worse than death gives rise to the martyr - one who dies to maintain their identity.

Wiki summarizes it into stages well:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism — Hanover

What wiki illustrates is that there is a coinciding of religion, ethnicity, and economic group. Conflict Sociology suggests that the more these boundaries align, and the sharper they are, the more likely there is to be open conflict. And as is usual in living systems, the reverse is also the case, the more there is conflict, the more aligned and sharp the boundaries will remain.

Most often, the Picts, Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Huguenots, etc, etc merge over time into a common folk sharing the land to the extent that such identities become lost entirely. If I had to speculate, I would suggest that the language and the Book were central along with a rare tradition of universal learning, (hence 'argumentative'?) aided by a tribal religion with strict rules about marriage and something of an obsession with lineage.

If I got bombs, I'd rather use bombs and not risk my own skin. If I got guns I'll use them; if all I got is piano wire, I'll throttle you with that, because you are the baddie and I am the goodie.

If civilians are all innocent and all equal, then fighters are all guilty, and all equal. The distinction between group A and group B is arbitrary and has no moral significance, unless it already has that moral significance.

. The claw, as an example, is not the Ding an sich; it is precisely not the "thing in itself." Rather, it is what mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other. — Introduction

The wiki page has sections on mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, as well as arthropods, and a nice picture of a beetle claw. They leave out the claw hammer, the clawed foot bath and other furniture, and that thing on the end of cranes with 3 great hooks for picking up logs and boulders etc, or in the case of those arcade machines usually, to not quite pick up the prize.

Bateson is not referring to a thing, but to this pattern, this family resemblance that connects. In the end, he is saying, what one can think about and talk about is always the abstraction, and never the particular, and that mind is 'made of' these patterns that we name.

To make sense of the world is to find the patterns, which is to say the regularities; this, that and the other can all be claws, but 'the claw' is none of them in particular. And this pattern of making sense of the patterns of the world is the meta-pattern, that Bateson is drawing attention to. This is philosophy, because philosophy above all is its own meta.

It all seems rather Kantian, but with 'substance' dropping out of the conversation altogether like a Wittgenstein beetle, leaving a monism of form and process. There's a point later on where he describes an electrical switch in its functional existence as either a gap in a circuit when off, or nothing at all, not even a gap when on.

I have a fairly strong argument for the conceivability of philosophical zombies, based on the premise that folks can very easily mistake a clearly non conscious language program for a conscious being.

If one finds things that exist inconceivable, one is in trouble, philosophically.

if Muslim leaders & their followers would do the same. — Nicholas

I don't remember that bit of the quote. If only folks would do what I want, I wouldn't have to bully them so much. Saith the Lord of the flies.

Civilians get killed in war. Should the Allies not have bombed German cities? — RogueAI

Who are you asking now? The war crimes tribunal? They only prosecute losers. So win at any cost seems to be the moral thing to do. Losers attempt to commit genocide; winners unfortunately, reluctantly, find that collateral damage occurs.

It's a dangerous game asking moral questions, because if you cannot win by fair means, then you ought to be content to lose. The suggestion that one cannot have it both ways is unwelcome.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. — Romans 12: 19-21

The violent attack on Israel is far worse than the defensive reply with violence. Defense is permitted, attack is not — Nicholas

I remember the good old days when 'defence' meant trying to stand your ground and chase the enemy off your territory, and attacking the ground your enemies held was called 'attack'. Life was simpler back then.

Trump is losing his mind. — Michael

With luck, it's more that the rest of us (US) are regaining our minds. Trump is preparing himself for jail by channeling Nelson Mandela. He would go to his execution convinced he is Jesus.

Would you like to answer that question? — schopenhauer1

Certainly. What one should do in these circumstances is die. It's very clear; Jesus did it and he told his followers to do it. And everyone can understand it. The blood sacrifice has to be made. All the horror comes from wanting someone else to do it.

Should the Allies have bombed Nazi Germany in 1945? — schopenhauer1

Still looking for the moral high ground? The moral high ground, preferably with a deep surrounding ditch of historical persecution and subjugation, is always the most easily defensible, especially when guarded by "innocent civilians".

Everyone agree? — FreeEmotion

Everyone agrees, of course.

Except the enemy.

Their own, or the blood of civilians? — FreeEmotion

As if there is more than one kind of person. "The blood of our civilians is sacred, but the blood of your civilians doesn't count at all."

Blood.

The righteousness of of any people is directly proportional to the amount of blood they are prepared to sacrifice. That is the agreement that makes war possible, and the spilling of blood maintains identity and unity.

How else can we identify both ourselves and the common good, except by contrast with the others and their common evil?

We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, We shall never surrender. — Churchill

The fight is always existential; the blood shed demonstrates the worth of the bloodline, without which 'we' dissolve into mere 'folk' and 'sheeple'.

Yet all the 'People of the Book' will agree on the barbarity of the human sacrifice of "primitive people", even as they contend to pile up the most of 'their own' copses to prove their virtue.

Do you think you are different?

It's the same old cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, goodies and baddies, traumatised and traumatising, innocent civilians and guilty terrorists. a roundabout of death and destruction.

Finkelstein is someone I could listen to. Comparing the Palestinians to his Jewish holocaust survivor mother; and then to the slave revolts; even Jesus would weep.

You keep saying interesting incomprehensible things: Explain yourself!

As a meta-theory [anti-realism] forces the ethicist to evaluate ethics on something other than the usual. — Moliere

What is the usual, and what is the other? I can guess on behalf of the realist that their usual basis for judging an ethical theory is whether or not it is true, absolutely or approximately.


Suppose I define a desire as "identification with a personal judgement of an imagined future", I think this suggests that a perverse desire is one that is either incompatible with the desires of others, or that is incompatible with reality(they amount to the same thing, because others are always part of reality). The former case demands a meta judgement of 'our' desires that is the province of ethics, and that means that perversity can be personal or social.

If I want of you, that which is incompatible with your desires, then a social judgement can be made as to which of our desires is perverse. But the case of global warming is the paradigm of collective social desires incompatible with reality:— to have an energy rich and wasteful economy, and a stable and productive environment. The personal equivalent would be things like wanting to be a concert pianist, but not wanting to practice for several hours every day, or wanting to give up an addiction but not wanting to go through any withdrawal process.

The perversity of pornography is the perversity of advertising, that it deliberately sets out to stimulate desires that it cannot fulfil. The sexual desires of the innocent adolescent (as was), are incoherent urges towards an unclear and unimaginable intimacy. Porn provides cartoon images of a fabricated unreal intimacy that is never mutual, because it is only an image; but the unreal image attaches to the primitive urge and thus develops a perverse desire that can never be fulfilled in reality, but becomes an unsatisfying addiction. Fast food and beauty products work in a similar way. This is the building up of desire, as unreachable because unrealistic images. Compare this with the job of the architect, planner, or engineer which is to make images of realisable ideas, that might be desired.

Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder.

Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones.

He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal. — Lao Tzu

(Legge translation)

I see the potentiality as being in both, and the actuality as being in the interaction. — Janus

Yes, that's about right.