
Enlightened Imagination for Citizens - mrzool
http://worrydream.com/EnlightenedImaginationForCitizens/
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delish
I often see believers-in-climate-change ricule and name-call deniers. These
days convincing deniers is at best "Look at this computer print-out!"[0] or at
worst "You bonehead" or "Look at this dying polar bear." Almost nobody has
adequate tools to _see and verify_ the effects of climate change.

Yes we have computer printouts and scary media images. But we don't have the
equivalent of the weather forecast: you see concrete predictions about _n_
days from now, and by waiting _n_ days, you verify their predictions.

Nobody is a weather forecast "believer" or "denier"\--we just see the
prediction and adjust.

By making tools for understanding dynamical systems, "climate change" will
lose its religious clothing and become something we merely _see_.

I'll make another loose analogy. Everybody believed that Aristotle was right
about everything for a thousand years during the middle ages. Only academics
had copies; they'd be called heretics for pointing out flaws in revered works.
But after the printing press was invented, everybody got copies of Aristotle,
Galen, the bible, and everybody _saw_ they disagreed. This contributed to the
Renaissance: dissatisfied with Aristotle, Galen, and the bible, people sought
new answers.

My point is: You can't expect people to change their views unless they see
things differently. Our task as technologists is to enable different seeing.

[0] I'll ridicule again computer print-outs and graphs as explanatory devices.
Everybody has a feel for how statistics lie. The reason the weather forecast
works is the tight-coupling between prediction and verification. Making an
appeal-to-computer-print-out to a non-believer is like appealing to another
religious text. It's not persuasive.

~~~
efnx
The shitty part about this method is verifying hurricanes ten times worse than
Katrina. I'd rather show people the printout ;)

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paulannesley
I saw worrydream.com and thought I was reading Bret Victor's writing; my eyes
skipped the Alan Kay byline. I enjoyed the piece either way, just thought I'd
point out the authorship in case anybody else based it on the site domain.

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ilaksh
Its not the people, its the systems and beliefs.

The idea of a republic is based on representation by a few. This has been
demonstrated to be flawed. Its based on an elitist worldview.

We need to scrap the elitism (classism, racism, even supposed 'merit'-ism
(which is based on subjective measures and leans towards privilege and
authoritarianism)).

Then we need to fundamentally re-engineer society. Focus on avoiding over-
centralization while maintaining the ability to achieve holistic efficiency.

Money and government have never really been separate. So re-think money and
government as technologies with a new understanding that they are part of one
system.

~~~
blfr
_Then we need to fundamentally re-engineer society._

This is a fundamentally elitist concept that led to countless deaths over the
course of the 20th century. Everyone was out to help the common man and
somehow ended in an equilibrium involving gulags.

~~~
ilaksh
What's elitist about it? 'We' need to do it together, not some select group.

I am not saying have some bloody revolution. You would have to be mindful of
history and make incremental improvements.

~~~
blfr
It's elitist because realistically only a small group of people will agree on
any particular redesign of society. You don't expect it to be completely
unanimous, do you? And the group which pushes through their version is the
elite.

~~~
ilaksh
My idea is you need to have base protocols or metalanguages that people can
build on and freely evolve the system.

So its not a static design but a dynamic process based on a shared information
systems platform. The goal is to make that platform as flexible as possible so
that anyone can create new designs, but you can still automate integrations
and do holistic calculations.

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roxmon
Does anyone have more information about this essay (apart from it being
written by Alan Kay)?

I can't seem to find anything that doesn't link back to the worrydream site.

~~~
cma
There are some YouTube lectures out there from him on this topic. Specifically
I remember him showing a slide with the earth on a podium, or a globe on a
stand or something, and talking about the different dynamic stabilities of it
being slightly kicked and wobbling or kicked hard and toppling, very similar
to this from the essay:

the part where he says:

"One way to imagine “stability” is to take a bottle and turn it upside down.
If it is gently poked, it will return to its “stable position”. But a slightly
more forceful poke will topple it. It is still a system, but has moved into a
new dynamic stability, one which will take much more work to restore than
required to topple it."

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ycosynot
Behind the cathartic whining, what happens is what people want, and I wouldn't
say they're being irrational in sacrificing the environment. People don't want
to lose their competitive edge, because they're more afraid of the Chinese
than hurricanes. They're whining about it, just like they're celebrating
heroes (in the hope that other people will buy into it, and that they don't
have to act upon it). People know what they're doing, but they don't care...
Invent first a man who will protect his fellow, before his genes and pleasure,
and then the system will change. (call me cynical)

~~~
delish
I'm happy you got to cathartically whine. I do that too.

But I'll disagree with your cynicism. Here are some areas where people
invented ways to overcome their caveman brains:

democracy

engineering

mathematics

modern legal systems

Each of these is a response to humanity's inborn inability to do something we
thought was very valuable. Each contributes to a society that "protects his
fellows," to use your words. None is perfect, of course, but each is better
than practical alternatives.

Not only _can_ we invent ways to overcome huge problems, we _have_ invented
them. We have yet to invent a way for people to understand dynamical systems.

(I'm taking these ideas from videos of Alan Kay I've watched)

~~~
ycosynot
You're right, sorry, I have such moods. In fact, I have ideas. The problem is
fear feeds competition, and competition feeds pollution. There needs more
empathy between the people, and more education about each other... I thought
the social scholars should figure out ways to increase bonding between
cultures.

I had ideas which could seem strange, for experiment. Imagine you're told to
eat a yoghurt, while looking at a foreigner eating a yoghurt. I think it could
increase bonding, and empathy, ect... It's just a thought. (Don't make fun of
my yoghurt.)

~~~
delish
You say "fear feeds competition" but there's an opposing view by rhetoricians:
Nothing ever gets better without at least the threat of competition. I don't
often find myself defending competition, but there you go.

As to your empathic observation idea: go for it! One of my go-to heuristics is
"symmetry of experience", that is, the more aligned the teacher and student
are for example, the better the learning is. Symmetry happens often in
communities and rarely in hyper-specialized institutions.

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A_COMPUTER
There's not time to educate the entire population of the United States, nor
would only educating the people in the sphere of our democracy be sufficient.
The environmental crisis is now.

~~~
delish
The article mentions the importance of evidence in argument. Forgive me for my
boldness: you have cited no evidence. You asserted, "the environmental crisis
is now," which I can't easily verify. It sounds no different than, "the
rapture is coming."

Alan Kay might say this is the _problem_ we should be solving. Evidence-based
argument feels so much better to me than slinging bloviations at one another.

