One thing I have noted in melconway.com/CBH/Historical…
Is that one-dimensional value metrics (such as that stated by Milton Friedman 50 years ago that the sole duty of corporations is to make money for its shareholders) are invasive species.
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Is that one-dimensional value metrics (such as that stated by Milton Friedman 50 years ago that the sole duty of corporations is to make money for its shareholders) are invasive species.
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Friedman’s doctrine in particular has captured American politics over the last half century and, I am coming to suspect, has quietly spawned a hidden river of money on which today’s politics floats. (That’s what @SenWhitehouse seems to be suggesting.)
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Some one-dimensional value metrics, such as those centered on the sanctity of individual freedom, are binary and naturally lead to polarization. They force people to choose their alliances and hence partition the population into disjoint adherent sub-populations.
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Western religions and political parties, by quite deliberately conflating association and doctrine, do this. It’s worth thinking deeply about how many people in the history of Europe have died violently as a direct result of this conflation.
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4/9
So our fuzzy use, too often our deliberate misuse, of language can have big, sometimes catastrophic, consequences. A recent example is the brouhaha around “herd immunity”.
I am working my way through @PezeshkiCharles’s essay on the memetic wars, ... empathy.guru/2020/10/07/the…
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I am working my way through @PezeshkiCharles’s essay on the memetic wars, ... empathy.guru/2020/10/07/the…
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...and I am coming to despair about the utility of language itself as a tool to help us to reason about complex issues.
(I have previously tweeted my view that legal education specifically disables the brain to reason about large networks.
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(I have previously tweeted my view that legal education specifically disables the brain to reason about large networks.
https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1313855948432322560)
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I have tweeted about agent-based modeling and simulation as an aid/alternative, but that is moot because bringing it into general use would require redesigning public education. Doing that can’t happen within the time frame in which it will be needed to make a difference.
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7/9
It has also occurred to me that we can bypass public education and go directly to the next generation by teaching systems thinking through gaming.
I wish somebody would pick up on this.
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I wish somebody would pick up on this.
https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1228392415976939521
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Short of that, is there a way we can improve our use of our existing language to deal with problems that it can’t handle today?
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