
An Ecology of Mind: A daughter's portrait of Gregory Bateson - apsec112
http://www.anecologyofmind.com/thefilm.html
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lukifer
I've enjoyed Nora Bateson's appearances on the Future Thinkers and Jim Rutt
Show podcasts, very curious about this film. Had to hunt a bit to find a
streaming source:
[https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bateson](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bateson)

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LeonB
Here is a talk by Jessica Kerr, that I find really interesting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9I4loWogqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9I4loWogqw)

It mentions Nora Bateson, "Symmathesy" and mental models quite a lot. It
covers many different ideas, all of them worth thinking about.

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mvn9
>The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how
nature works and the way people think

If we eradicate nature and replace it with technology, will we reach a state
without problems? If we turn all planes and forests into photovoltaic power
stations and use chemical processes to generate food, and everything becomes
an image of our thinking processes, will life be good?

~~~
rutherblood
the critical question is: is it economical?

let's take the example of replacing all plants with something humans made.
Let's take one function (among innumerable others we might know or not know
of) performed by plants critical to life: photosynthesis to trap energy to
organic material & fill the air with oxygen. could we make something cheap
enough to do this? the plants currently do this for free for us. they're also
self-replicating mostly. could we build something like that? wouldn't we end
up making something similar to what plants were and how they worked albeit
with all this unneeded effort? let's say we can even do this, wouldn't you end
up making something so similar to plants that it could actually be a plant?

You can ask the same question for all the other functions that plants perform.
most of these functions we might not even know of and only realize once it's
missed.

in short, it's not economical for us to do. it might not even be possible for
us to do fully given all that complexity that millions of years in evolution
captures.

life on earth can be seen as a huge huge body of knowledge. dont people mourn
of loss of ancient libraries or cultures for this very reason? many of the
things entrapped in such a culture or body of knowledge are tacit, unknown,
maybe even unknowable, it definitely cannot be exactly replicated once it's
lost

~~~
mvn9
Unneeded efforts is where all the technology began. Some ape grabbing a stick
instead of shoving more leaves into his mouth. Investing time and resources,
thinking, that's where technology starts.

We use technology to create more food than nature provides voluntarily. Plants
have become technology and we will use them as long as their synthesizing
processes are more efficient as pure technological ones.

But at one point, it will be more efficient to go full synthetic. If you kill
all life, all fungi, all bacteria, everything will be dead matter, and like
rocks on Mars or frozen seals at the poles, nothing will move in an
uncontrolled way and everything will be in line with the way humans think.

For sure, we have killed precious knowledge and as you say, we will never get
it back. But that's due to humans being short-sighted and acting in a non-
technological way. Like guns, it's not technology that is destroying the rain
forest and reducing biodiversity. It's humans who follow their natural urges.

~~~
rutherblood
> Unneeded efforts is where all the technology began.

let's say i grant this, but will you employ the said tech unless it is useful
for you to do so?

the question here is about the purpose of going all synthetic.

1\. sure, if say man can devise a way to manufacture a multitude of food
"synthetically", that us just one purpose served i.e. food. you can keep
replacing these various purposes that plants provide to _human_ life. Let's
say at one point all non-human species become extinct by human means or
otherwise. after this we discover a purpose through _their lack_ (even without
this said discovery, it can be likely that we might not even know what we have
lost, that could be or even then might have been useful to _us_ , humans). now
isn't that a tragedy? basically even if the "synthetic" means of some purposes
to which other species benefit us were to be made economical somehow, that
does not justify wiping them out even looking only through the lens of HUMAN
benefit.

2\. what is "synthetic" and how can synthetic means of achieving these
purposes be made economical? first to have such an economy we would have to
replicate the chemical efficiencies of photosynthesis etc. basically, copying
life. second, we would need the self-replicating capacity too since this goes
a long way towards economy, right? again, copying life. we might as well
discover something the scale of a cell with self-replicating molecular
architecture might be the way to go about it. we could as well end up making
something which looks a lot like life actually and take a hell of time to
achieve it, even provided we end up copying a whole lot of it (because it
would be massively difficult, even this being a huge understatement, without a
reference point i.e. existing life). now if all life on earth except humans if
wiped out hypothetically through some means, this effort would be justified
even if prone to instant failure because of our imminent deaths. but otherwise
i don't see a point.

I'm not discouraging gaining knowledge about life and how it works, only that
the argument of wiping it out to be replaced by everything synthetic, even
_someday_ doesn't make sense. do understand there is no such thing humans
someday having _all the knowledge_. that day will never arrive.

~~~
mvn9
Evolution has local optima. Octopus and dolphins kind of have the intelligence
to create civilizations but they are stuck in water. Dolphins never have the
time to re-evolve feet because predators will hunt them down. There are C3 and
C4 plants [1] but without technology, it is very unlikely that C3 plants
become C4 plants.

Enter technology, and food production can be optimized. Combine those
processes with others, and you can create plants that don't exist yet but are
much better at creating food.

Technology doesn't mean that plants are outright destroyed. But it is very
likely that new processes will be more efficient. To hedge against the threat
of not knowing, seed banks will be kept. A risky move compared to keeping
nature alive, but I doubt that anybody in power will maintain a rain forest
over using the area for more efficient means of energy and resource creation.

Maintaining nature only makes sense if we are interested in knowledge as the
primary driver. But the primary driver is power. Like Alexandria and Baghdad,
there is no way that knowledge will be maintained when it stands in the way of
power.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation)

~~~
rutherblood
> Technology doesn't mean that plants are outright destroyed.

> A risky move compared to keeping nature alive, but I doubt that anybody in
> power will maintain a rain forest over using the area for more efficient
> means of energy and resource creation.

> Maintaining nature only makes sense if we are interested in knowledge as the
> primary driver. But the primary driver is power.

I understand the sense in which you are saying all this, and I agree, this
might be how things go about provided humanity even survives this century
provided we reach this hypothetical synthetic economic optimal. lots of ifs.
and risky as hell, very very risky. but yeah probably how things would go by,
the best one can be is sad.

tbh if you ask me I really doubt human enduced climate change can ever be
mitigated through collective human effort. we'd rather chose annihilation over
it.

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mark_l_watson
There is a good recent conversation with Nora Bateson on the Team Human
podcast.

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rutherblood
What a strange coincidence. currently reading bateson's book with that title.

~~~
termy
do you like it?

