The Darien Gap & Postmodernism | Bret Weinstein | EP 434
[ 1/April/24 ]
A great conversation with much of profound interest that I will not comment upon, but some where I see over simplifications that need to be explicitly seen as such.
48:10 – Bret speaks of the American advantage, of the dynamism of invention; this seems almost entirely mythic.
The invention of flight is mythic, Otto Lilienthal (a German did some profound pioneering work in gliding – that the Wright’s followed). In New Zealand we had powered flight by Richard Pearse in March 1903 – ahead of the Wright brothers. What America had, was surviving 2 world wars without bombing of their productive capacity – so war footing production without the associated destruction. That is what essentially built America – they took the British empire through war based economic necessity.
The reality is much deeper and more complex. Complexity actually requires cooperation, and maintaining cooperation gets deeply complex – across multiple domains (mitigating cheating, maintaining motivation, etc). A human being is a deeply complex cooperative entity composed of more prokaryotic cells than eukaryotes. We have a name for any cell lines that start selfishly hoarding resources for their own purposes without regard to the signals and needs of neighbours and the whole – it is called cancer, and it is ultimately destructive (however successful it seems in the short to medium term).
50:40 – “Not radical equality” – agree but for different reasons. We can (and must) meet the reasonable survival needs of all, and still maintain diversity and ability to collaborate (and that will demand responsibility from all). Having an economic system based in scarcity is not required, and is not actually survivable long term. Our systems need to actually value the cooperation and abundance that make complex life possible (all levels, all domains), not devalue such things to zero as markets do in practice.
Markets can be very useful as part of a system that has a cooperative base, but they cannot provide that base. Cooperation must be fundamental, and it is far deeper than kinship, and there is kinship between all life forms on this planet if one looks deeply enough.
52:20 Jordan frames Bret’s position as reciprocal altruism and kin altruism being antithetical in a sense. To me it is clear that while there can be some contexts where that is the case, is it not the general case; and the general case is much more nearly simplified to – cooperation is foundational to the emergence and survival of complexity (necessarily), and that is actually deeply complex, far more deeply complex than most have ever considered the possibility of.
The general case for life, is that it is an open system of search across multiple and expanding sets of infinities. The simplistic games theoretic notions of zero sum games can be approximated in some contexts, but are not the general case. The general case is actually open systems. And every specific system does have real limits, that must be respected for survival. So again, deeply complex with eternal uncertainty.
54:10 – Jordan starts talking about semantic webs. The psychopath problem.
Yes in a sense, but one needs to get that the semantic webs all point to some level of simplification of whatever the reality actually is. They can be useful pointers to heuristics, and are unlikely to be anything more than that. Whatever it is that is more than that, is likely to be more complex than any human mind is capable of dealing with in detail. That, at least, is what the numbers clearly point to in my mind as being most likely to be the case.
57:25 Jordan – A pattern of complex social interaction that viewed over sufficient long time has a stable structure has a coherent ethos (something like the American constitution). Kind of, but that thing is cooperation in diversity.
57:50 Jordan speaks of the dovetailing of evolutionary biology and the metaphysical narratives upon which our culture is based; and to a degree I agree with him, but it does actually seem to be much deeper into strategic and complexity space than either of these guys have gone. It really does seem to be the case, beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt, that cooperation (far beyond reciprocal altruism) is fundamental to the survival of complexity – any and all levels and domains – necessarily. And the levels of strategic systems that can destabilise that are infinite, requiring an active eternally evolving ecosystem of recursive cheat detection and mitigation systems. There appear to be reasonable heuristic approximations to such things encoded in our genetic and cultural heritages, and if we are to survive we need to make that explicit and take it to the next level. The ethos of our scarcity based economic system is not survivable, and what is required to succeed it is something that has sufficiency for all and acceptance of diversity. Survival demands cooperation in diversity, all levels, all domains – no shadow of reasonable doubt in my mind.
The definition of life that I now find most useful is that of “systems capable of searching the space of the possible for the survivable”, which encodes both freedom and diversity in the notion of “search” and encodes responsibility in the notion of the “survivable”. Freedom without responsibility is necessarily destructive, and in any open system there are eternal uncertainties at the boundaries inherent in the notion of responsibility.
The fault inherent in much of post modernism is a failure to make the distinction between all things having uncertainties, and that there can be profound differences in the uncertainties/confidence in any specific context.
1:01:57 – Bret claims “Culture is a means to an end. What is that end? It is to get your genes, unfortunately, lodged as far into the future as you can possibly arrange from your current position.”
That is a gross over simplification, and it is a useful approximation in some contexts. Viewing life through the definition above, as systems searching for the survivable, gives a far deeper and more nuanced perspective; and when one can see that, then it is clear to cooperation is fundamental to long term survival of all levels of complexity, and the simple idea of competition driving evolution is a gross over simplification that is not survivable long term.
1:02:34 Jordan does a remarkable job of characterising the story of Abraham. And sacrifice is part of it, but the deeper part of it is cooperation in diversity, which is what actually necessitates the sacrifice in practice.
1:10:50 – Jordan accurately frames that science only works if it is operating in a cooperative ethos that is oriented towards closest approximation to reality, and long term survival of cooperation in diversity, not if it is oriented towards short/medium term profit to any subgroup at any level.
1:11:50 Bret accurately characterised that profit has turned science on its head. He just fails to generalise it to the notion of value in scarcity (market value). It seems to be too big a jump for him.
1:28:00 Both discuss the importance of variability and experimentation; but neither sees it as that aspect of “search” that is fundamental to life. They see the survival value, but not the underlying systemic part of the very definition of life itself.
1:29:20 Jordan recognises a “core set of axiomatic principles that one violates very rarely”, which to me more accurately generalises to “sets of constraints that are usually required for the survival of any level of system”, and these include cooperation, freedom, responsibility, and sacrifice at multiple levels. Complexity cannot survive with anything less, and anything less is essentially some form of cheating strategy.
1:30:20 Bret likens culture to an “epigenetic mechanism”. He characterises epigenetics as being more powerful because they are faster but have to serve genetic ends. While I can see some power in that formulation, it also carries deep dangers, as it is an over simplification.
When you see life itself as search of system space, then culture is an entirely new system space, and technology is another one, both with new forms of faster search, and AI is a new life form that is non-biological. The profound danger in AI comes from over simplistic understandings of what it is that makes systems survivable. If an AI is truly founded on competitive principles, rather than cooperative (as is required for survival long term), then is must self destruct, and will likely take us with it.
To be able to see both the profound risk, and the profound opportunity of AI, one must be able to see life as “search of the possible for the survivable”. The classical biological mechanism of search is “replication with variation with reality imposing differential survival as the sorting mechanism”, and as Bret noted it is slow compared to other mechanisms. Language/culture is faster. AI is profoundly faster again, if done with adequate responsibility.
[split by 10K limit]
1:31:25 Bret “Genes are utterly immoral, they have produced structures capable of morality, but they have done so as a means to an end”.
That formulation has some evidence, and some utility, and it is overly simplistic and contains profound dangers.
A much more useful formulation is to see the equivalence between the genetic mechanisms of our immune system in fighting “cheating structures on the cooperative” at the genetic level, and the cultural mechanisms of “morality” in fighting “cheating structures on the cooperative” at the social level. Many such heuristics had to evolve both genetically and culturally before culture could possibly become sufficiently complex to actually consciously embody some useful approximation to the strategic depths actually present.
So morality – viewed this way, has a deep and foundational lineage in the emergence and survival of complex life, that started at the cellular level, with systems to protect against viruses (cheating systems on the systems that are cells), and has gained in complexity at each new level of evolved complexity.
1:31:30 Bret gets it wrong. What distinguishes us from other organisms is our cognitive capacities, and the ability to use language to create technology, and it is goodness, insight and compassion that make such profound cooperation possible over the long term – but our bias to over simplify leads us to see the surface level competition as important, and fail to see the fundamental requirement for the deeper level cooperation, and all the systems needed to prevent levels of cheating from destroying that (which get profoundly complex and fundamentally uncertain – necessarily).
Current economic and political systems need to be seen as the terminal cancers that they are.
We need an immune system capable of mitigating them.
That is a deeply complex subject.
As both Bret and Jordan acknowledge, there are profound dangers in even contemplating such a thing, yet is does seem to be required if we are to survive as a technological species, a species capable of language in other words. If I may borrow from Jordan’s construct, the essence of the Ark that may not be touched is more accurately characterised as “cooperation in diversity”; and that demands an evolving ecosystem of cheat detection and mitigation systems.
Arguably, our entire economic system is based in “cheating strategies”. Reform at such a level is a profound undertaking, and it seems to be demanded of us if we are to survive.
“Search” contains freedom by definition, and survival demands responsibility (to avoid those vectors in systems space that are not survivable).
This is profoundly deep and complex, and it is fundamental to survival.
1:33:30 – Jordan accurate characterises the demand that powerful toys demand profound responsibility.
The culture war is an over simplification.
It is profoundly more complex than hedonism and power.
It is deeply about the foundational role of cooperation in the survival of complexity.
1:35:30 Bret accurately states that extinction is no longer a viable sorting mechanism, as with the level of technology present, it takes everyone with it.
1:37:40 Both Bret and Jordan see that we are at a defining time in history, but both fail to adequately capture the depths of what is needed, even as they accurately capture aspects of it.
If there is one simple formulation that recurses through all levels, it is that complexity requires cooperation in diversity and that cooperation requires effective mechanisms to detect and mitigate cheating mechanisms; and we all have a responsibility to make such determinations, each to the best of our limited and fallible abilities; and that will demand sacrifice of us (at multiple levels), and it will take acceptance of uncertainty at levels few are comfortable with.
[followed by]
@SaviorMoney That is certainly a major risk.
And it does seem to me that one can identify critical failures in key themes, and identify them with clear examples.
We all need to simplify. The numbers on reality are clearly such that we have no other option.
The huge danger comes when we consider our simple models (however complex they are) of “reality” to be “Truth” rather than explicitly acknowledging that they are some form of “contextually useful approximation”.
I work at being explicit on that latter bit.
If we are talking about the survival of humanity (and I believe that is what we are all talking about in the deepest of senses – Jordan certainly, and also Bret to a significant degree – and I love both, and I don’t agree with everything either of them says), then the key theme (that I got from reading Dawkin’s “Selfish Gene” in 1978, though Richard still doesn’t get it) is that cooperation is fundamental to the survival of complexity, all levels, all domains. No shadow of reasonable doubt about that in my mind – and it is deeply complex, and it demands evolving ecosystems of cheat detection and mitigation systems (all levels, all domains) to maintain cooperation, so that gets hard also.
So yeah – it is hard.
And the dominant idea, the dogma, that evolution is all about competition, is simply wrong. Competition, without cooperation, drives systems to some local minima on the available complexity landscape. In that sense, competition is the enemy of freedom (where freedom is access to greater possibility spaces that complexity makes possible). Competition reduces the scope of freedom, and reduces the probability of survival (long term). The stronger the competition, the greater to pressure to optimise for current local conditions, and the less ability there is in systems to survive the extremes that happen from time to time. Bret doesn’t seem to have gone deep enough to really get that; and he has gone far deeper than most, and I really appreciate that.
Hard !!!
[followed by]
@SaviorMoney
That is essentially true.
Evolution 1.0 sorts out what works in reality by the simple expedient of trying out lots of things, and seeing what actually survives.
Often, what works in the short term, fails in the long term – like cancer cells, their strategy of selfishly using resources for their own replication seems to work well, right up until the point that the body dies.
Free markets, devoid of fundamental cooperation, are like that for social systems.
We have brains, that allow us to work out what is likely to survive and what isn’t – so that we don’t actually have to die to prove a point. Yet many would rather die than question something they hold as True.
The free market, in and of itself, is like a cancer. It seems to work, right up to the point that everything fails.
And I am all for as much freedom as is reasonably possible, and that freedom has to come with appropriate levels of responsibility, or else it is destructive.
There are far more vectors in “possibility space” that lead in unsurvivable directions than there are survivable ones. And we are in a highly dimensional and extremely complex “space”, with multiple sets of dangers that few seem to have much awareness of.
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