Posted by alexandra_k on September 18, 2016, at 0:35:53
In reply to Turn Left, posted by alexandra_k on September 17, 2016, at 23:57:17
So if you turn left then you screw up how their product placement affects you. It makes it easier / more likely that you will make better food choices. I mean... Currently... Walking left around the supermarket enables me to avoid looking into any of the television screens... The stuff that is visually salient is different...
All the 'freedom' stuff that I used to think was misguided (from an analytic philosophy point of view)... I'm starting to see the sense in it, now. What those authors were (perhaps) gesturing towards... Degrees of freedom, of course. Mostly about little choices that we make that reduce the impact of environments that conspire to control you...
Great Expectations... The story of Pip. So... Pip finds himself in pretty sh*tty environmental conditions much of the time. But he fails to adapt... He doesn't become a good thief. He doesn't give up his principles in order to make the best of a bad situation...
We're supposed to think that *the reason why* was because he had good biological parents.
But what if... There were Pip's who turned out to have sh*tty thieving parents? What about those Pip's?
Those Pips... The human Pip's. The humane Pips. The Pips that make us feel proud to be a member of homo sapiens...
The trouble with this whole... Some people having other peoples genetic sequences and having control of infant mortality and so on and so forth... The trouble is that they might have interests other than identifying and supporting the Pips.
Of course I understand that the response to this is that the whole idea of personality or person through time or Pipness is a construct. People aren't really like that. They are environmentally controllable. People will follow instructions from the person in a white coat to electrocute someone to death... Only... Only... What we really found (seems to me) was that there were a few people who aren't like that at all - a few people who do have personal integrity (lets call it). A few people who stood out as being exceptional.
Maybe their view of what should be supported and encouraged to thrive is... Their genes. Just because they can. Or the lackeys who suck up to them the most because they think that they are in the position such that they will always have control over their lackeys...
I suppose the idea is to increase the numbers of people who are predictable and controllable. Precisely because they are. Known quantity. Allows you to future forecast the outcomes of investing in this or that... Increase those people... Less of the... Humane? Not just humane... Other things, too... Something something about linked traits...
The trouble is you can see the people collecting the data... The interests... I don't think these people are looking out for humanity as a whole... I really don't think that is particularly plausable...
Would you call it 'freedom'? The freedom people have to be like Pip even with sh*tty parents and sh*tty environmental circumstance? If you could identify the Pips and... Mark them in some way... Prevent their getting into college or whatever... Make sure they never get jobs where they have any access income... Make them sterile... Who knows what... Would the world be better without the possibility of Pip? It would be if you and your's were decidedly not pip-like.
That was kind of brave new world?? No... That wasn't about how you might do your best to induce gamma-hood and yet... Ah, well, just so long as they don't make you or yours look bad... Sigh.
Something something about local optima and fitness traps...
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1092227
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20160906/msgs/1092228.html