Topic: Economic Devastation - page 5. (Read 504818 times)

For the immediate future, docking on large screens to do substantial work. I think non-technical creative production is likely to remain mobile and on varying size screens with a greater emphasis on physical controls and interfaces. Voice interfaces already work well enough for very basic purposes such as memos and short notes, simple instruction, etc.

Those are largely traditional arrangements. Wearable augmented displays have not yet been sufficiently miniaturized and commercialized, but they offer far greater flexibility than a docking station. Magic Leap is making progress, although there are some small outfits that are pursuing healthy compromise solutions for a moderate cost and seem to be closer to production models.

End result: some form of keyboard, perhaps foldable or rollable, combined with an AR headset and smartphone base.When laid out, the keyboard may act as physical feedback and a base for the AR system to render a desktop display of significant size while also providing creative content production ability.

this is why i like my note 4 with its built in stylus. pull the stylus out it automatically opens a window to draw/write with. OCR can be done on it later if needed and i can sync it with evernote on my pc. annotate it with the pen or whatever. most androids can also output HDMI and accept a regular pc mouse and keyboard via a otg cable.

allows a lot more work to be done with only a phone. of course still cant touch the horsepower of a pc and youre limited to android versions of software but its not too bad, to the point that i just take my note 4 with the otg adapter, a mouse and small keyboard on vacation, although with the note 4 stylus and largish screen i hardly use them.

>Mark wrote:
  Creative work on mobile devices is increasing rapidly.

This might be true, but I doubt that results are of same or higher quality.
Just try to create music, draw/paint something on small screen, vs large screen.

>We can not do maximally productive work of nearly any kind of creative arts on a mobile device. The screen is too small, the keyboard is too slow, and the pointing device is too imprecise.

I agree with this.


Personally I never wanted a tablet(almost useless to me), except for reading books, but decided to buy kindle instead.
Perhaps something like Superscreen could come in handy.
If one wants tablet for lets say gaming (or reading in my case - mobile is too small for much text), what they really want is just larger screen.

Docking seems practical, it might be the future.

That's a good question, and I can only offer observations not answers.

We are touring Italy, since I was not sure which devices would serve me best during our fairly long trip I brought them ALL along:

-- iPhone (with a temporary "plan" for overseas use)
-- iPad Mini4 (the littlest of the iPads, better resolution & screen than the phone, but mine is WIFI only)
-- my Wintel laptop (that I am writing on now)

No docking mechanism.  For traveling, it might be that we will be stuck with something with at least 12" diagonal screen measurement as I cannot efficiently type or even work the 'Net on my iPad Mini4.  The iPad is too big to carry in my pocket (like my cellphone).

I think that for my next trip I will leave the iPad at home, I have used it the least.  My cellphone is good enough when not in my hotel, and who CREATES anything while walking the streets of Italian cities?

So, my guess is cellphone for when walking around (not in hotel or meetings) and laptop for serious use.  Docking?  Perhaps not in m y case, as I can email myself pdf's (etc.) if I need to print something from one OS to the other.

This relates to the OP of this thread.

Is the future of mobile computing small screens or docking on large screens?

The original comment was made here, but as usual I seemed to get banned where ever I go.

P.S. James A. Donald who first challenged Satoshi on the scaling (and centralization?) problem, has written about the Scalepocalypse. Yet I have those technological solutions he wishes for in an altcoin. (note side-chains are irreparably insecure). Details will be forthcoming on my Steemit (so follow me there!).

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Edit: Will Millennials have to learn to do creative work, so they can work remotely to live in lower cost jurisdictions, or just continue to swipe their life away on a smartphone while sleeping on someone’s sofa? Is pulling income forward 30 years with debt not a massive bubble compounded by sovereign debt/welfare/socialism bond bubble that has finally come to its Minsky Moment?

https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Anthony-Negron-4 (Bingo!)
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Anthony-Saldana-3 (There you go!)
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Charles-Stone-6
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Mateusz-Mroov
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Nick-Chang-26
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Faith-Paul-2
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Karim-Elsheikh
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/William-Beteet-1
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Gustin-Fox-Smith
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Craig-Weiler
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Christopher-Ordway
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Michael-Brescia-2
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Ross-Wilson-20
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Torie-J-Patterson
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Grant-Schmutte
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Amy-Harris-56
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Ben-Skirvin
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Henriikka-Keskinen
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Dave-Sloan
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Anika-Pasilis (note the Millennials in UK with their leader Corbyn are trying to turn the UK towards Communism)
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Bee-Rogers
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Henry-Solomon-Crampton-Hays
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/Nikolite (interesting the perspective of a borderline Gen X/Millennial)
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answer/James-Edward-Hinds
https://www.quora.com/Do-millennials-feel-more-entitled-than-previous-generations/answers/47876582

The above comments are very interesting for getting inside the minds of Millennials. Whoa so Henriikka-Keskinen says (and you see the environmentalism indoctrination in her writing which Apple cleverly markets to) they are going to save the fucking planet with educated women and get the same fucked result we get every time we do that because…!

Mark apparently does not think that there are serious problems today that could impact the a move away from iPhone's walled garden to Android's more open ecosystem. I claim that we need large screens and keyboards to be productive and he claims that only coders need that and that smartphone users who spend money are not (and by implication do not need to become) creators. Afaics, he is essentially arguing there is no need to focus on the needs that creators might have on mobility that might differ from those who use computing only to be consumers. The implication is that 700 million iPhone users can never significantly be creators, only consumers. So where is their income going to come from?  I posit that perhaps new monetization models can enable people to earn money in more ways as creators and that such monetization (e.g. via blockchains) models might be incompatible with a walled garden, i.e. I think Apple will stifle such innovation because they want to funnel all payments through their services so that Apple can take 30% fees. No way the world is going to give Apple 30% of everything. I believe the world will become much more level playing field with fierce competition.

My point to Mark is that if everyone will only be consumers and not creators, then who will have the jobs to pay Apple $1 per day? If Apple is catering to a bankrupt world in which everyone just swipes and never creates, they will not succeed long-term. If the world has become more financially difficult, people are not going to be willing to give 30% fees on everything to Apple! Competition of the free market will route around that parasitic rent.

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I hope you did not drink the iPhone security and privacy FUD Koolaid. You give Apple closed-source control of your life and then claim you want anonymity and privacy. I presume you do not use the iPhone for anything you want to remain private from authorities. (A smartphone is a metadata leaking device (e.g. hotel IP address) even if you are using another device for sensitive activities.)

If you are not intalling shady apps on Android, the anti-malware advantages of Apple’s (technological and) economic totalitarianism are probably not significantly better in practice if you are upgrading your OS every 6 months or so.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-worlds-most-secure-smartphones-and-why-theyre-all-androids/


Seems you may be missing the point? By docking and having the ability of your smartphone to function as a full-fledged computer, then you do not need to repurchase the laptop every time you upgrade your CPU. In other words, over time the software utilitizes the faster CPUs so normally we upgrade our CPU. Without docking, you would have to buy a new laptop and a new smartphone, instead of just a new smartphone.

Also all of your files and work are immediately (within a second) accessible simply by plugging in your smartphone to the docking laptop. No need to lose time transferring files around. This also presumes that apps on small screens will add features for working with documents (e.g. a quick annotation added) that you primarily edit on a large screen.

Also it means you can dock on a friend’s or public access docking station (e.g. a 50" screen at a conference room) without needing to lug around another laptop.

Wireless data access (especially WiFi) may become so fast, ubiquitous, and cheap that the different devices can get the necessary documents off the cloud. But the duplication of CPU/GPUs cost argument remains (and we probably want the most powerful CPU/GPU we can afford, especially for highly creative work such as animation). Also the more we travel, the less sure we can be that in every circumstance we can get files off the cloud fast and low-cost (gouging tourists is known profit activity). And what about those rare instances when the cloud goes down, e.g. that 2016 Dyn DDoS attack that took large chunk of the entire Internet down (would suck if you have a conference presentation or other time-critical important work to do).

Even more important from my perspective, is not needing to maintain the file systems, apps, and OSes of two or more devices. That is half of the hassle. My life is already too complex. I do not want to maintain more devices than I need to. You must have extra time on your hands. I find maintaining multiple devices to be burdensome.

It is all about simplifying our lives and conserving scarce time.

Also although perhaps you can afford to buy multiple copies of CPUs, the billions in the developing world probably can not. I am talking about a world where there is much greater competition and incomes on average are much lower than they are now in the West (virtual employee gets less than 50% of quoted rates and I anticipate possibly those not-highly-specialized-expertise rates will be initially for a decade be driven down or stagnant by developing world competition and Western economic implosion). Asia is coming. My Belgium friend and I were relating how the Philippines will see incomes double or triple in the 10 years, but that still this would be unacceptable quality-of-life for our Western expectations.


You never had an idea you wanted to jot down while walking around?


Tablets do seem to be dying.

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ePaper screen (non-backlit, easier on the eyes for reading but too slow for animated pointers and such on screen) which Blutooth docks to my smartphone would be perfect.

A tablet can be useful when we want a larger screen and only want to point and swipe. But the use cases seem to be too few to justify lugging around and maintaining another device. I do not know if Blutooth docking (wireless) I/O would be fast enough so that the docking laptop screen could be detached and also run as a tablet.


When I need to sketch (as opposed to structured shapes+text drawing), I prefer a pencil. I suppose there might be a few cases where I would be okay with a stylus on a slippery screen, but I really need the friction of paper and pencil to sketch. My sketching with a stylus slips all over the place and is fugly horrible. As for text, even though I had beautiful handwriting in elementary, I can barely handwrite now as it an order-of-magnitude too slow compared to my typing speed. I loathe typing on mobile! Can become an enormous waste of time! I try to do a little as possible on mobile. This is why apps that require mostly only finger gestures for most actions are more popular on mobile. But I rarely use my Blutooth keyboard, because the setup time/hassle is greater than the occasional terse note I want to type.


Syncing is for me yet another step that consumes my time. I have no free time. I have a TODO list that only grows longer the older I get.


Yeah I remember now having researched that option years ago but a problem at that time at least, was it did not seem to work plug-and-play on every device. Some fiddling and frustration and failure. Probably glitchy too (as even Blutooth seems to be at times).

And still even if it is now reliable, we have to lug around a full size monitor which is not compact and then we have no battery option to use it unplugged. I like that laptop docking idea because it also charges the smartphone meaning the smartphone CPU will run at run speed as if it is plugged in to a wall socket.


Well the fact that mobile apps do not adapt well to work well both in large and small screens is one of the important aspects I want to address with an “app browser" concept for Bitnet. Because I want convergence between mobile, desktop, and browser code, so we developers can write-one and run every where.

I think I read that mobile CPUs are roughly about 1/8th of the performance of a desktop CPU fundamentally limited by TDP power dissipation (can not dissipate more than about 3 watts for extended period of time and perhaps 7W in bursts inside of a plastic mobile phone). But the faster CPUs get, the fewer computing activities we do which have a noticeable delay, so the noticeable nominal differences are shrinking over time. Also the desktop CPUs can’t increase TDP on same die and multi-core can’t always be leveraged optimally by all software, thus the gap may close proportionally over time as well. However, we must bear-in-mind that the smartphone uses for example dedicated hardware video codec processors in order to attain TDP efficiency at such computationally expensive tasks. Thus a smartphone is underpowered as a general purpose CPU for highly computationally intensive tasks such as video editing. In that case, we would need an additional processor in your docking station. But note that by leveraging the CPU and specialized processors in the smartphone, the docking station’s TPD can me much lower (more battery efficient) than a desktop. Thus the docking laptop idea seems to make more sense than lugging around an HDMI monitor that can only be used where there is an electrical plug, because the portability and battery life are another factor that make it worth leveraging the low TDP CPU and processors in the smartphone. Meaning I would like a laptop docking station with a larger screen, keyboard, and a co-processor on board. Possibly in the future, the co-processor could be on a server accessed over the wire.

https://www.quora.com/Are-smartphone-processors-finally-comparable-to-PC-processors-in-terms-of-performance/answer/Michael-Daniel-21


But once again another special case device complexity between two filesystems and OSes that I have to figure out how to setup, remember how to setup if ever (i.e. a form of long-term maintenance after I long since forgotten how I set it up).

I would rather have something that works the same with all Android phones and does not require me to maintain synchronicity between two disparate systems.


More and more complexity and Murph’s law.

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@miscreanity, I can talk faster than I can type, but last time I tried it on Android, the recognition engines can’t reliably keep up with my fast speech (never tried Siri). If ever speech recognition (and latency back to the server or local computation) gets good enough, then possibly I can finally ditch the keyboard except I think it will be exhausting to speak everything I type and especially “cursor up”, “cursor down”,  “cursor to end of line”, etc.. I agree that the monitor could plausibly be replaced by a headset (or perhaps holographic projection?), except still need a docking station for the pointing device and when presenting (unless all of the audience was also wearing headsets). But in any case, we still need apps that work well at many different display sizes and modes of use (i.e. terse gestures vs. detailed manipulation), which is one of my main points here w.r.t. to my plans for an “app browser" concept for Bitnet.

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I will explain why i think that is nonsense, at the appropriate time and in a venue where I am not banned.

I'm looking into this

http://iamcicada.com/cicada-deep-dive/

it looks super cool

600watt shared this thought provoking article on the topic of the evolution of civilization and accounting and how it relates to bitcoin.

The author Daniel Jeffries appears to be a science fiction author, engineer, serial entrepreneur, and now bitcoin commentator which makes for an interesting combination.

Earlier in this thread there was a discussion on global warming. I have found this topic to be a particularly difficult one to follow due to its political nature and the large amount of disinformation surrounding it.

Here is a nice little 12 minute video outlining the skeptics case.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=0gDErDwXqhc

By Dr. David M.W. Evans

"We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message. Here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention..."

Dr. David M.W. Evans consulted full time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia's carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The area of human endeavor with the most experience and sophistication in dealing with feedbacks and analyzing complex systems is electrical engineering, and the most crucial and disputed aspects of understanding the climate system are the feedbacks. The evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.

I would agree that in Turing machines the concept of entropy is quasi inexistant. Most of the time it is entirely absent.

Turing machines:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine

The underlined portion is the key reason for both a lack of emergence and subsequently the lack of conceptual entropy in Turing machines.

In a standard Turing machine the symbols on the tape do not ultimately change the nature of the machine (even if those symbols have been previously read). This is because the typical Turing machine draws from a finite table of instructions which are ultimately fixed and invariant.  

Thus the Turing machine with a fixed and finite table is a simple system regardless of how complex and long that table may be unless you allow the table of instructions to be dynamically and permanently altered based on the tape readings.

As programming languages have a fixed set of basic code they are simple Turing machines. However computer programming language in general is something more and represents a complex system. The programmers using them are the equivalent of a tape that applies dynamic updates to the instruction table. Thus over time we have seen the progression from assembly language to C++ as discussed in your links above.

I am not going to be helpful in a technical discussion of how to add emergence to a programmed system as I am not a programmer but I will address one of your points.

You appear to arguing (in the bolded section above) that if the interaction between objects are not contained in the objects themselves but requite an external observer/visitor state then the system is not valid from metaphysical point of view. If I understand you correctly you are arguing that a programmed system must be complete to be metaphysically valid.

Completeness is never possible. For a discussion on this point I would refer you to an excellent write up by Perry Marshall: The Limits of Science and Programming

I will take example with turing machin and OO programing, maybe it will be clearer what i'm talking about =) As the concept of entropy is quasi inexistant with turing machine, and like this we know we are not talking about something mystical

And i think it can interest also shelby because he is into this sort of problematics with language design lol

The problem is this conceptions from metaphysics to organize the world based on fundemental 'objects' with properties, and 'entelechy' , which is abtracted with the OO semantic of having class of objects with properties and 'entelechy' through the alteration of its state by its methods.

So far good, but then the probelm is when you want to program interaction between all the different type of object that can be present in the world, with OO programing generally it become quickly a design problem.

Either you will add a member function in all class to program the interaction with each other class with specialized functions for each type, but then it mean either you have make the interaction in double in each class, or then one class doesn't know or contain the interaction it can have with the other class, which is bogus from metaphysical stand point.

Either you do a visitor class for each pair of objects, and then each time you add a new type of object, you need to add visitor class for all the combination that the new object can interact with, but it's still bogus from metaphysical point of view because it mean the interaction between the object are not contained in the object themselves, but applied from the exterior through a visitor class that visit the two object in questions.

Even to program physic simulation like bullet physic it's not a small problem, when need to compute mutual gravity from two object for example, and that's only a simple case. And even if there is no entropy in turin machine, it's easy to see if you run complex real time physic simulation two time, you will never have the same result at the end, but it's not really entropy, neither really chaotic function , it's not fractal or strange attractor, only plain linear newtonian physics. I think the 3 body problem of gauss run into this problem.

This whole design of hard typed object make emergent property very hard to program and conceptualize.

Past days i've been digging more into haskel, already through reading the discussion of shelby on the git, i'm starting to get where they want to get at, because in fact in haskel there is this concept of monad, which are generic base object that can be used in generic code 'type classes' and can be specialized into pretty much anything, and the language allow to do meta programing very easily based on monad interactions, which allow to write generic code that can apply to any type, and i think i saw somewhere they are doing stuff to be able to handle emergent property kind of things based on type class like this.

http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/08/the-category-design-pattern.html

But it's the same principle i wanted to get at with my framework, to have generic place holder for holding reference to meta typed object with monomorphized access function in sort that the code is independant from the type of the data it manipulate as long as the node can convert it's data to the type required in the code.

It allow to manipulate collection of heterogenous objects and apply generic function to them without having to do specialized function that apply to each specific combination of class.

I'm not sure if typeclass are considered as being turing complete language before they are compiled/monomorphized to concrete type, but if they are turing complete already it mean it could allow to program things based on runtime dynamic data and emergent property between them, and it would probably lead with unpredictible result in the end, even if it's not chaotic functions or entropy, but in the realm between the turing undecidability and mutual interaction problem in physic.


http://number-none.com/product/Predicate%20Logic/index.html , http://number-none.com/product/My%20Friend,%20the%20Covariance%20Body/



https://books.google.fr/books?id=HBZADQAAQBAJ&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=haskell+monad+emergent+property&source=bl&ots=Rk20Gl6GEy&sig=iJyXEi8DbY4LuTgFjmFNgeOxpgo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_r9iIusrUAhWMKMAKHbThAEcQ6AEIKjAF#v=onepage&q&f=false

...

Nice quotation by Lave and March, CC.  Maybe add statistics to those easy problems.   

Social sciences do not seem to offer easy solutions.  Nor is it as easy to predict the future with all of its confounding variables and unknown Swans out there.  Seems we're about due for a Swan, think I'll head over to an ATM now and pull out some dough...

IadixDev I would actually agree with your description of the universe above but would also argue that it is incomplete as it focuses only on self-organisation and neglects the other aspects of complexity. This is a similar objection to the one you raised against the term entropy.  

I take the position that the entire universe is in a process of ever increasing complexity and there is not one particle or quanta in the whole thing that is not participating in this growing complexity.

Anonymint the author of the essays linked in the opening post is a self described anarchist and focuses on emergence, entropy, and freedom. You seem to view the world more as a process of self-organisation.

I believe both of these conceptions can be brought into harmony under the broader umbrella of complexity.

Complex systems exhibit four characteristics:
–  Self-organization
–  Non-linearity
–  Order/Chaos Dynamic
–  Emergence

Informational entropy provides a way to empirically measure emergence but emergence is only one aspect of complexity. Self-organization can be looked at as a process that actually reduces entropy yet it undeniably also increases complexity.

The chaos in this context is a observation of system dynamics. Systems exist on a spectrum ranging from equilibrium to chaos. A system in equilibrium does not have the internal dynamics to enable it to respond to its environment and will slowly (or quickly) die. A system in chaos ceases to function as a system. A system on the edge of chaos will exhibit maximum variety and creativity, leading to new possibilities. The field of complexity analysis is new and still in its infancy.


 

 

Yes i saw this kind of discussion with non deterministic algorithm

But for me need to distinguish between chaotic function, predictibility and entropy =) I saw a good in depth video about this kind of algorithm, but i will never find it back lol but it was digging very deep into core science philosophy to show how determinism like newton is always based on analysis of components of a system, and defining a system as sum of its part,and seeing each part as somehow immutable and ideal, but it fail to integrate emergent properties, whereas these new kind of non deterministic algorithm are more holistic, and more consider the informations as a whole without trying to fit it to predetermined template or structure. It's more something that is result/reward driven to estimate the efficient of the algorithm rather than something based on some kind of pre determined ontology and induced properties like newtonian physics.

In a way this whole distinction between self organisation and entropy is very subjective, and mostly in the eye of the beholder Maybe the whole universe is in a process of self organisation and there is not one particule or quanta in the whole thing that is not participating in this auto organisation.

But it's a bit the philosophical problem i have with newtonian based theories in general is that they tend to see everything in term of what is understood by the person, and it's very easy to fall into  the intellectual trap of categorizing things as entropic or self organized based on if you understand its purpose and how it serve you. Basically if you can understand the purpose of something and how it serve you in a predictible manner, it's not entropic, if you don't understand it, or if it get in the way to have predictible positive outcome, then it become entropy. But it's all very subjective in the end.

Chaos theory are also different from entropy, in the sense with chaotic functions, the functions is already supposed to be unpredictible to begin with, so there is not really a concept of entropy as how the function result will deviate from expected outcome.

Even high degree of variation due to complexity is not really to be called entropy. Entropy can actually be quite regular. If you take wheel spinning on it's axis, the entropy would be how it's not exactly spinning in circle, but the variations will still be statistically simple.

Even if most of the time i guess what engineers will measure as entropy in a system will mostly be emergent properties, quantum stuff, etc it's mostly a concept that apply to linear system because linear system are never accurate in physics, which can make one wonder why it's even called science to begin with, it's interest is mostly for industrial economy.

After you can see a tree or a child as just noise (actually children are often just this ), compared to the beautifull dystopia the megalomaniac in goldman sachs are trying to concoct A parking is certainly 'less entropic' than a forest

This is because we have until very recent focused our engineering efforts on creating predictable or "dumb" devices.

In the context of the discussion upthread the goal has been to accomplish a fixed task and then maximise the self-organisation of the system ideally driving emergence to zero aka minimising informational entropy. In this context entropy represents loss or misdirected efforts.

However, if we want an adaptive machine capable of responding to unanticipated environmental changes or improving over time then we need a component of emergence and thus Shannon entropy.

This can be seen when looking at one of the more famous new machines Google's Go playing machine AlphaGo. This machine must respond to unpredictable responses from opponents and still win in a game that is to complex to simply play via simple brute force.

Christopher Burger who has a Ph.D in machine learning wrote this interesting analysis of how AlphaGo works.

https://www.tastehit.com/blog/google-deepmind-alphago-how-it-works/

The problem imo is not that much technology, but the whole obscurantism surrounding it, with the whole lot of proprietary closed technology, deceptive marketting, it leave its understanding  benefits and operation / decision piwer etc under selected hands.

Assange explain well how feudalism always emerge from control of technology who increase production that become vital to sustain a certain population, it was with windmill in middle age, same goes with cpu & IT now.

That's too bad you missed out on an interesting essay.
Wisdom is not limited to the ivory tower.

I am actually somewhat sympathetic to this position. Ideally it would be Anonymint here defending his definitions but he is boycotting the forum at the moment after getting his most recent incarnation banned so I will do my best to defend his thesis in his absence.


Let's dive into the definitions and see where that takes us. From the papers I linked above:.

Emergence can be understood as new global patterns which are not present in the system’s components.

Self-organization, in its most general form, can be seen as a reduction of entropy. Self-organization is the complement of Emergence and a metric of order and regularity.

Complexity comes from the Latin plexus, which means inter-woven. something complex is difficult to separate. Complexity represents a balance between change (Emergence) and regularity (Self-organization), which allows systems to adapt in a robust fashion. Regularity ensures that information survives, while change allows the exploration of new possibilities, essential for adaptability. In this sense, complexity can also be used to characterize living systems or artificial adaptive systems, especially when comparing their complexity with that of their environment. More precisely, complexity describes a system’s behavior in terms of the average uncertainty produced by emergent and regular global patterns as described by its probability distribution.

So where does entropy come in?

Information entropy is a deterministic complexity measure, since it quantifies the degree of randomness. If we can measure degree of randomness we also quantify emergence with some limitations

As you said entropy is only measurable against expected behavior in a constructed system. The complexity of different phenomena can be calculated using entropy-based measures. However, to obtain meaningful results, we must first determine the adequate function to be employed for the problem. In the case of "natural" behavior out of the context of a human fabricated system this becomes problematic as we don't know the underlying function.

I believe it was Gödel who said, the world is either a perfect order of God, or chaos. The difference is in the belief that infinity comes before entropy.

If we go with infinity then we can assume that some underlying function exists for all systems including "natural" ones. Lacking an understanding of the system we may not be able to measure the the entropy and the associated emergence but we can assume the relationship persists outside of our knowledge.

What you call the process of individuation is not just about maximizing emergence aka maximizing entropy. The "process of individuation" is the maximization of emergence while maintaining overall self-organization. It is the long term maximization of the complexity of the system.

In a way it can be told that realization of freedom goes through concept of efficiency, and we are at a stage where centralized structure are not efficient because of too diversified population and needs, and with democratisation of computers and internet, it will probably become more optimal that life organize around small specialized structure, rather than in big national scale collective and objective, the society of today become much more multi polar, and there is not one big corporation or organisation who can be efficient for everything.

https://hermetic.com/bey/quantum

Quantum Mechanics & Chaos Theory
Anarchist Meditations on N. Herbert’s Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics
By Hakim Bey

1. Scientific worldviews or “paradigms” can influence — or be influenced by — social reality. Clearly the Ptolemaic universe mirrors theocentric & monarchic structures. The Newtonian/Cartesian/mechanical universe mirrors rationalistic social assumptions, which in turn underlie nationalism, capitalism, communism, etc. As for Relativity Theory, it has only recently begun to reflect — or be reflected by — certain social realities. But these relations are still obscure, embedded in multinational conspiracies, the metaphysics of modern banking, international terrorism, & various newly emergent telecommunications-based technologies.

2. Which comes first, scientific paradigm or social structure? For our purpose it seems unnecessary to answer this question — and in any case, perhaps impossible. The relation between them is real, but acts in a manner infinitely more complex than mere cause-&-effect, or even warp-&-weft.

3. Quantum Mechanics (QM), considered as the source of such a paradigm, at first seems to lack any social ramifications or parallels, almost as if its very weirdness deprives it of all connections with “everyday” life or social reality. However, a few authors (like F. Capra, or Science-Fictioneers like R. Rucker or R. Anton Wilson) have seen Quantum Theory both as a vindication of certain “oriental philosophies” & also as prophetic of certain social changes which might loosely & carelessly be lumped under the heading “Aquarian.”

4. The “mystical” systems evoked by our contemplation of Quantum facts tend to be non-dualist and non-theocentric, dynamic rather than static: Advaita Vedanta, Taoism, Tantra (both Hindu & Buddhist), alchemy, etc. Einstein, who opposed Quantum theory, believed in a God who refused to play dice with the universe, a basically Judeo-Protestant deity who sets up a cosmic speed limit for light. The Quantum enthusiasts, by contrast, prefer a dancing Shiva, a principle of cosmic play.

5. Perhaps “oriental wisdom” will provide a kind of focusing device, or set of metaphors, or myth, or poetics of QM, which will allow it to realize itself fully as a “paradigm” & discover its reflection on the level of society. But it does not follow that this paradigm will simply recapitulate the social complexes which gave rise to Taoism, Tantra or alchemy. There is no “Eternal Return” in the strict Nietzschean sense: each time the gyre comes round again it describes a new point in space/time.

6. Einstein accused Quantum Theory (QT) of restoring individual consciousness to the center of the universe, a position from which “Man” was toppled by “Science” 500 years ago. If QT can be accused of retrogression, however, it must be something like the anarchist P. Goodman's “Stone Age Reaction” — a turning-back so extreme as to constitute a revolution.

7. Perhaps the development of QM and the rediscovery of “oriental wisdom” (with its occidental variations) stem from the same social causes, which have to do with information density, electronic technology, the ongoing collapse of Eurocentrism & its “Classical” philosophies, ideologies & physics. Perhaps the syncresis of QT & oriental wisdom will accelerate these changes, even help direct them.

For me it's more a thing along this trend that large scale organized structure stop to be really efficient to facilitate development, opposed to decentralized solution who are coming more and more.

Bitcoin is only partially a good thing for this imo, because it's not really modular, and the code is quite monolothic and not that easy to adapt, and to really to do something useful with it buisness wise, need also other things like web servers, and other applications, which make it still quite hard for it to reach it's advertised goal of decentralization/fungibility to maximize fluidity in utility for trading or other, for the moment it still stay quite centralized.

But it's already a completely novel approach, in the sense the node implement both server & client side, and it's already a completely new way to see distributed application development, with shared data validated in trust less manner, and RPC api to exploit the data in third party application. Already it switch from centralization of all the data in data centers, with all the monopoly and exploitation of the information it leads to, and it's mostly milking user driven content, even sometime without really their full consent lol Whereas the cost of processing / storage / bandwidth is becoming quite low, and there is lot of operations that are done by data centers who could be done in decentralized manner.

It's why i'm working on my solution which i think can help a lot to really be able to run blockchain based application more complex than just wallet and miner with HTML5 in an all in one node, with much more modularity and script engine to be able to customize everything easily to tailor it to reach more the full objective of decentralized trading and decentralized application.