> What I am trying, but apparently failing, to get across, is that optimizing a cost benefit analysis is not the primary mode of human existence.
I get what you're saying, but, with respect, I think you're wrong about that.
> It may be, in some uselessly wide tautological sense, an inevitable aspect of it,
As far as scientific consensus goes, I think it's pretty common to encounter the belief that life is "just" biological machinery and, ergo, evolution is a chemical tautology.
> but it doesn't characterize the human experience in toto.
But here it seems to me that you're verging into mysticism, which personally I don't mind but you have to call it out.
> Most human beings do plenty of things which they don't consciously evaluate in such bloodless terms
Yes, I agree, and in fact it seems to me to be a very recent, even modern, thing that people are doing that at all. I mean, accounting only began around 5k years ago, eh? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform )
> there is no universal notion of cost or benefit, its unclear what your imaginary perfect analyzer would be up to in the first place.
There is a universal notion, but it's self-referential: success at replication.
Again, this is a IRL chemical tautology: success at replication engenders new conditions that then bring about changes in the (virtual) fitness landscape engendering new adaptation. (E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event )
Thus the universal notion of benefit is a verb not a noun, further, it's a self-defining "emergent" notion.
Evolution and meta-evolution occur at the same time, are the same process.
From this POV, it's absolutely fascinating (IMO) that this process created self-aware individuals with intelligence that can, e.g. look at the night sky and see stars in all their celestial glory (as contrasted to mere tiny lights on a fixed fabric.)
> Thus, if we are to preserve as valid the vast majority of human activities...
(Just to mention in passing, I don't think we can evaluate the validity of human activity en mass for at least a few hundred million years or so. If we talking apes can't survive longer than the unintelligent dinosaurs I don't think any of our civilization(s) can be considered valid.)
...we must deny the idea that literally every moment needs to be consciously optimized...
(Again, I'm not saying that, and I don't think WalterBright meant that either, but it's not interesting IMO)
...and embrace the counter-notion: that society be organized in such a way that we can sometimes, perhaps as often as possible, chill the fuck out.
Now, here, you are talking my language friend! I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that I'm a fan of Bucky Fuller, in part because he basically said that our tech can support us with a high standard of living w/o "disadvantaging anyone" and we should be able to retire at 25 (etc.)
So, yeah, slack off. :-)
That's the other interesting question, IMO: is the evolution of intelligence the end of evolution or a change of form? (And this Q is complicated by the fact that intelligence is ambient (cf. M. Levin's work.))
I mean, what if we all slack off ("Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay.") and get enslaved by Klingons or degenerate into blobs?
I get what you're saying, but, with respect, I think you're wrong about that.
> It may be, in some uselessly wide tautological sense, an inevitable aspect of it,
As far as scientific consensus goes, I think it's pretty common to encounter the belief that life is "just" biological machinery and, ergo, evolution is a chemical tautology.
> but it doesn't characterize the human experience in toto.
But here it seems to me that you're verging into mysticism, which personally I don't mind but you have to call it out.
> Most human beings do plenty of things which they don't consciously evaluate in such bloodless terms
Yes, I agree, and in fact it seems to me to be a very recent, even modern, thing that people are doing that at all. I mean, accounting only began around 5k years ago, eh? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform )
> there is no universal notion of cost or benefit, its unclear what your imaginary perfect analyzer would be up to in the first place.
There is a universal notion, but it's self-referential: success at replication.
Again, this is a IRL chemical tautology: success at replication engenders new conditions that then bring about changes in the (virtual) fitness landscape engendering new adaptation. (E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event )
Thus the universal notion of benefit is a verb not a noun, further, it's a self-defining "emergent" notion.
Evolution and meta-evolution occur at the same time, are the same process.
From this POV, it's absolutely fascinating (IMO) that this process created self-aware individuals with intelligence that can, e.g. look at the night sky and see stars in all their celestial glory (as contrasted to mere tiny lights on a fixed fabric.)
> Thus, if we are to preserve as valid the vast majority of human activities...
(Just to mention in passing, I don't think we can evaluate the validity of human activity en mass for at least a few hundred million years or so. If we talking apes can't survive longer than the unintelligent dinosaurs I don't think any of our civilization(s) can be considered valid.)
...we must deny the idea that literally every moment needs to be consciously optimized...
(Again, I'm not saying that, and I don't think WalterBright meant that either, but it's not interesting IMO)
...and embrace the counter-notion: that society be organized in such a way that we can sometimes, perhaps as often as possible, chill the fuck out.
Now, here, you are talking my language friend! I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that I'm a fan of Bucky Fuller, in part because he basically said that our tech can support us with a high standard of living w/o "disadvantaging anyone" and we should be able to retire at 25 (etc.)
So, yeah, slack off. :-)
That's the other interesting question, IMO: is the evolution of intelligence the end of evolution or a change of form? (And this Q is complicated by the fact that intelligence is ambient (cf. M. Levin's work.))
I mean, what if we all slack off ("Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay.") and get enslaved by Klingons or degenerate into blobs?