1,140 research outputs found
Human Computation and Convergence
Humans are the most effective integrators and producers of information,
directly and through the use of information-processing inventions. As these
inventions become increasingly sophisticated, the substantive role of humans in
processing information will tend toward capabilities that derive from our most
complex cognitive processes, e.g., abstraction, creativity, and applied world
knowledge. Through the advancement of human computation - methods that leverage
the respective strengths of humans and machines in distributed
information-processing systems - formerly discrete processes will combine
synergistically into increasingly integrated and complex information processing
systems. These new, collective systems will exhibit an unprecedented degree of
predictive accuracy in modeling physical and techno-social processes, and may
ultimately coalesce into a single unified predictive organism, with the
capacity to address societies most wicked problems and achieve planetary
homeostasis.Comment: Pre-publication draft of chapter. 24 pages, 3 figures; added
references to page 1 and 3, and corrected typ
Proceedings of the ECCS 2005 satellite workshop: embracing complexity in design - Paris 17 November 2005
Embracing complexity in design is one of the critical issues and challenges of the 21st century. As the realization grows that design activities and artefacts display properties associated with complex adaptive systems, so grows the need to use complexity concepts and methods to understand these properties and inform the design of better artifacts. It is a great challenge because complexity science represents an epistemological and methodological swift that promises a holistic approach in the understanding and operational support of design. But design is also a major contributor in complexity research. Design science is concerned with problems that are fundamental in the sciences in general and complexity sciences in particular. For instance, design has been perceived and studied as a ubiquitous activity inherent in every human activity, as the art of generating hypotheses, as a type of experiment, or as a creative co-evolutionary process. Design science and its established approaches and practices can be a great source for advancement and innovation in complexity science. These proceedings are the result of a workshop organized as part of the activities of a UK government AHRB/EPSRC funded research cluster called Embracing Complexity in Design (www.complexityanddesign.net) and the European Conference in Complex Systems (complexsystems.lri.fr). Embracing complexity in design is one of the critical issues and challenges of the 21st century. As the realization grows that design activities and artefacts display properties associated with complex adaptive systems, so grows the need to use complexity concepts and methods to understand these properties and inform the design of better artifacts. It is a great challenge because complexity science represents an epistemological and methodological swift that promises a holistic approach in the understanding and operational support of design. But design is also a major contributor in complexity research. Design science is concerned with problems that are fundamental in the sciences in general and complexity sciences in particular. For instance, design has been perceived and studied as a ubiquitous activity inherent in every human activity, as the art of generating hypotheses, as a type of experiment, or as a creative co-evolutionary process. Design science and its established approaches and practices can be a great source for advancement and innovation in complexity science. These proceedings are the result of a workshop organized as part of the activities of a UK government AHRB/EPSRC funded research cluster called Embracing Complexity in Design (www.complexityanddesign.net) and the European Conference in Complex Systems (complexsystems.lri.fr)
An Evolutionary Framework for Culture: Selectionism versus Communal Exchange
Dawkins' replicator-based conception of evolution has led to widespread
mis-application selectionism across the social sciences because it does not
address the paradox that inspired the theory of natural selection in the first
place: how do organisms accumulate change when traits acquired over their
lifetime are obliterated? This is addressed by von Neumann's concept of a
self-replicating automaton (SRA). A SRA consists of a self-assembly code that
is used in two distinct ways: (1) actively deciphered during development to
construct a self-similar replicant, and (2) passively copied to the replicant
to ensure that it can reproduce. Information that is acquired over a lifetime
is not transmitted to offspring, whereas information that is inherited during
copying is transmitted. In cultural evolution there is no mechanism for
discarding acquired change. Acquired change can accumulate orders of magnitude
faster than, and quickly overwhelm, inherited change due to differential
replication of variants in response to selection. This prohibits a selectionist
but not an evolutionary framework for culture. Recent work on the origin of
life suggests that early life evolved through a non-Darwinian process referred
to as communal exchange that does not involve a self-assembly code, and that
natural selection emerged from this more haphazard, ancestral evolutionary
process. It is proposed that communal exchange provides a more appropriate
evolutionary framework for culture than selectionism. This is supported by a
computational model of cultural evolution and a network-based program for
documenting material cultural history, and it is consistent with high levels of
human cooperation.Comment: 18 pages; 2 tables and 11 figures embedded in tex
Decision-making between rationality and intuition: effectiveness conditions and solutions to enhance decision efficacy
Decision-making, one process, many theories: a multidisciplinary literature review. How individual and environmental factors interact and influence the effectiveness of strategic decisions through rational and intuitive dynamics. Mentoring and the promotion of self-confidence in decision-making: the role of cognitive awareness and expertise building through the lenses of rationality and intuition
Visualizing Tree Structures in Genetic Programming
This paper presents methods to visualize the structure of trees that occur in genetic programming. These methods allow for the inspection of structure of entire trees even though several thousands of nodes may be involved. The methods also scale to allow for the inspection of structure for entire populations and for complete trials even though millions of nodes may be involved. Examples are given that demonstrate how this new way of âseeingâ can afford a potentially rich way of understanding dynamics that underpin genetic programming. The examples indicate further studies that might be enabled by visualizing structure at these scales.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45620/1/10710_2005_Article_7621.pd
Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)
The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers
An Empirical Methodology for Engineering Human Systems Integration
The systems engineering technical processes are not sufficiently supported by methods and tools that quantitatively integrate human considerations into early system design. Because of this, engineers must often rely on qualitative judgments or delay critical decisions until late in the system lifecycle. Studies reveal that this is likely to result in cost, schedule, and performance consequences. This dissertation presents a methodology to improve the application of systems engineering technical processes for design. This methodology is mathematically rigorous, is grounded in relevant theory, and applies extant human subjects data to critical systems development challenges. The methodology is expressed in four methods that support early systems engineering activities: a requirements elicitation method, a function allocation method, an input device design method, and a display layout design method. These form a coherent approach to early system development. Each method is separately discussed and demonstrated using a prototypical system development program. In total, this original and significant work has a broad range of systems engineer applicability to improve the engineering of human systems integration
Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization-- Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 2nd Edition Feb 2018
This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and edited to bring them up to date (2019). All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable.
The first group of articles attempt to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of theoretical delusions. In the next three groups, I comment on three of the principal delusions preventing a sustainable worldâ technology, religion and politics (cooperative groups). People believe that society can be saved by them, so I provide some suggestions in the rest of the book as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers.
It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so the first section presents articles that try to describe (not explain as Wittgenstein insisted) behavior. I start with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality, which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind, rationality, personality) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgensteinâs insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. No neurophysiology, no metaphysics, no postmodernism, no theology.
It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes.
The next section describes the digital delusions, which confuse the language games of System 2 with the automatisms of System one, and so cannot distinguish biological machines (i.e., people) from other kinds of machines (i.e., computers). The âreductionistâ claim is that one can âexplainâ behavior at a âlowerâ level, but what actually happens is that one does not explain human behavior but a âstand inâ for it. Hence the title of Searleâs classic review of Dennettâs book (âConsciousness Explainedâ)â âConsciousness Explained Awayâ. In most contexts âreductionâ of higher level emergent behavior to brain functions, biochemistry, or physics is incoherent. Even for âreductionâ of chemistry or physics, the path is blocked by chaos and uncertainty. Anything can be ârepresentedâ by equations, but when they ârepresentâ higher order behavior, it is not clear (and cannot be made clear) what the âresultsâ mean. Reductionist metaphysics is a joke, but most scientists and philosophers lack the appropriate sense of humor.
The last section describes The One Big Happy Family Delusion, i.e., that we are selected for cooperation with everyone, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). Again, the No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces these delusions. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendantâs heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems. The only major change in this edition is the addition in the last article of a short discussion of China, a threat to peace and freedom as great as overpopulation and climate change and one to which even most professional scholars and politicians are oblivious so I regarded it as sufficiently important to warrant a new edition.
I describe versions of this delusion (i.e., that we are basically âfriendlyâ if just given a chance) as it appears in some recent books on sociology/biology/economics. Even Sapolskyâs otherwise excellent âBehaveâ(2017) embraces leftist politics and group selection and gives space to a discussion of whether humans are innately violent. I end with an essay on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology manifested as the inexorable machinations of System 1. Our psychology, eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa from ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees, to ca. 50,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), is now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior (philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, politics, law, literature, history, economics, soccer strategies, business meetings, etc.), this book is about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness (kin selection, natural selection).
The great mystic Osho said that the separation of God and Heaven from Earth and Humankind was the most evil idea that ever entered the Human mind. In the 20th century an even more evil notion arose, or at least became popular with leftistsâthat humans are born with rights, rather than having to earn privileges. The idea of human rights is an evil fantasy created by leftists to draw attention away from the merciless destruction of the earth by unrestrained 3rd world motherhood. Thus, every day the population increases by 200,000, who must be provided with resources to grow and space to live, and who soon produce another 200,000 etc. And one almost never hears it noted that what they receive must be taken from those already alive, and their descendants. Their lives diminish those already here in both major obvious and countless subtle ways. Every new baby destroys the earth from the moment of conception. In a horrifically overcrowded world with vanishing resources, there cannot be human rights without destroying the earth and our descendantâs futures. It could not be more obvious, but it is rarely mentioned in a clear and direct way, and one will never see the streets full of protesters against motherhood.
The most basic facts, almost never mentioned, are that there are not enough resources in America or the world to lift a significant percentage of the poor out of poverty and keep them there. Even the attempt to do this is already bankrupting America and destroying the world. The earthâs capacity to produce food decreases daily, as does our genetic quality. And now, as always, by far the greatest enemy of the poor is other poor and not the rich.
America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century, and now all of it, due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses about 2% of its topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of its food growing capacity will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests (which I suggest may be regarded as an unrecognized -- but the commonest and most serious-- psychological problem -- Inclusive Fitness Disorder). This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone elseâthere is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. Hence my concluding essay âSuicide by Democracyâ.
Those wishing to read my other writings may see Talking Monkeys 2nd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle 2nd ed (2019), Suicide by Democracy 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Stucture of Human Behavior (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019
Welcome to Hell on Earth - Artificial Intelligence, Babies, Bitcoin, Cartels, China, Democracy, Diversity, Dysgenics, Equality, Hackers, Human Rights, Islam, Liberalism, Prosperity, The Web
America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century and now all of it due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of one or two billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone elseâthere is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. Hence my essay âSuicide by Democracyâ. It is also now clear that the seven sociopaths who rule China are winning world war 3, and so my concluding essay on them. The only greater threat is Artificial Intelligence which I comment on briefly.
The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton, the Democratic Party and the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to Hell on Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the hardest to see. We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This is the source of the universal blindness described by Searleâs The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinkerâs Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmidesâ Standard Social Science Model.
The first group of articles attempt to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of theoretical delusions. In the next three groups I comment on three of the principal delusions preventing a sustainable worldâ technology, religion and politics (cooperative groups). People believe that society can be saved by them, so I provide some suggestions in the rest of the book as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers.
Another section describes the religious delusion â that there is some super power that will save us.
The next section describes the digital delusions, which confuse the language games of System 2 with the automatisms of System one, and so cannot distinguish biological machines (i.e., people) from other kinds of machines (i.e., computers). Other digital delusions are that we will be saved from the pure evil (selfishness) of System 1 by computers/AI/robotics/nanotech/genetic engineering created by System 2. The No Free Lunch principal tells us there will be serious and possibly fatal consequences.
The last section describes The One Big Happy Family Delusion, i.e., that we are selected for cooperation with everyone, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). Again, the No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces these delusions. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendantâs heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems
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