Talk:Technology as a threat or promise for life and its forms

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Karl R. Popper[edit source]

From memory and using web search, I found the following Popper quotation: "All life is problem solving. All organisms are inventors and technicians, good or not so good, successful or not so successful, in solving technical problems." In German: "Alles Leben ist Problemlösen. Alle Organismen sind Erfinder und Techniker, gute und weniger gute, erfolgreich oder weniger erfolgreich im Lösen von technischen Problemen."

From memory, from the same article, I recall Popper saying something like that the Green enmity toward technology is nonsense since it is enmity toward life itself. Popper was rather critical of the environmentalist movement, accusing it of driving youth to despair, claiming that we live in the best society of which we have historical knowledge, or something of the sort. One can find similar statements from other authors today.

I am not sure I want it in the article, so I'll leave it here for now. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 13:26, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I found a complete German quotation from Popper:

Alles Leben ist Problemlösen. Alle Organismen sind Erfinder und Techniker, gute oder weniger gute, erfolgreich oder weniger erfolgreich im Lösen von technischen Problemen. So ist es bei den Tieren, zum Beispiel den Spinnen. Die menschliche Technik löst menschliche Probleme, etwa Kanalisierung, Wasser- oder Nahrungsmittelbeschaffung und Speicherung, wie es zum Beispiel schon die Bienen tun.
Deshalb ist die Gegnerschaft gegen die Technik, wie wir sie häufig bei den Grünen finden, Unsinn, denn sie ist ja Gegnerschaft gegen das Leben - was leider die Grünen nicht bemerkt haben. Aber Kritik der Technik ist natürlich nicht Unsinn, sondern dringend notwendig. Dazu ist in unterschiedlicher Weise jedermann befähigt und willkommen. Und da die Kritik zur Berufskompetenz des Technikers gehört, so ist sie etwas, womit besonders die Techniker selbst dauernd beschäftigt sind."

It matches my memory. The above Popper's analysis is weak. Living things are described as "inventors" and "technicians" or "technologists", and examples of spiders and bees are given (spiders make a web, bees store honey in honeycomb). And we learn that the hostility toward technology is therefore nonsense since it is thereby hostility toward life itself (since living things themselves are "inventors" and "technicians"). This is wrong: the contrast between living things and human technology that endangers them cannot be explained away by philosophical notional games. Even if there is an analogy between the extended phenotype of spiders and bees and the extended phenotype of humans, the human extended phenotype is a whole different kind of phenomenon on some level of analysis, and how to call that level of analysis is merely a matter of intellectual effort, whether "qualitative", "quantitative", "order of magnitude", "a different order of phenomena", or whatever. Non-human extended phenotype (of spiders, bees, beavers) does not approach human extended phenotype in its anatomical structure, functional structure, extent, mass, complexity, moving parts, energy consumption, etc. Popper seems to have fallen into the trap of notional games he accuses Hegel of. This was one of Popper's weak moments.

One may further ask why bees are described as "technicians" rather than "makers". Surely one would not describe a human weaver as a "technician", although one may well describe the process and result as part of "technology". A proper conceptual (notional) analysis resulting from such analogies and comparisons between non-human biological world and human world is not entirely straightforward. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 11:20, 13 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article employs Karl Popper's idea that statements are reduced to other statements by means of proof, and meanings of terms are reduced to meanings of other terms by means of definitions, and both kinds of reduction need to stop somewhere, in unproven statements and undefined terms. The Popperian idea seems obviously correct, and well articulated. Some objections may be raised against it, but it is at least a very plausible idea. The idea of end of reduction is much older than Popper, reaching back to Ancient Greeks. Popper's key claim is that we often do not need to worry about definitions and that may terms can remain undefined. Popper rejects Hegelian definitions as no true philosophy but rather sham, by which e.g. "constitution" is redefined in such that a state that has no constitution in the relevant sense can be claimed to have one. The question "what is state" can be set aside for analysis of government; we may instead point out that in democracy, the majority can get rid of the government without bloodshed if it so wishes, performing an analog of falsification of a scientific theory. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:52, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Kevin Kelly[edit source]

Some of the ideas are inspired by Kevin Kelly's book Out of Control[1]. Those include the idea of comparing living things to technological things as similar on some level, the idea of library of form, of artificial evolution and life simulation in a computer, etc. Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:09, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jerry Mander[edit source]

Other ideas are from Jerry Mander's book In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. From what I recall, he pointed to Hans Moravec book Mind Children expounding the idea of mind uploading, during which a human gets killed while being "uploaded" to an android to act as quasi a new body for the human, fulfilling someone's abiological dream of quasi-immortality. Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:13, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Existence of natural resources[edit source]

In this section, I am losing my distanced neutrality. It is hard to stay neutral while responding to what I can only describe as rank nonsense by so-called economists (surely not scientists of prices, resources and human behavior in relation to resource allocation and scarcity). I could be able to tone it down a bit later. Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 13:02, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Originality[edit source]

I am fairly certain that almost everything I write here I must have read somewhere, I just don't always remember where. My contribution is mainly in selecting what to believe and what to rank as absurd, implausible, logically invalid, etc. Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 15:27, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Elon Musk[edit source]

Elon Musk is a notable person relating to the issues of the article:

  • He claims to want to get humankind to Mars, to avert impact of adverse events.
  • He is a key driver in making of electric cars, saying he wants to help humankind move away from fossil fuels.
  • He has 10 children.

This raises relevant questions:

  • Is the project of Mars colonization realistic?
  • Can there be enough renewable electricity sources to provide for the hugely increased electricity consumption driven by electric cars?
  • Can human manufacturing create a closed material loop to become sustainable, rather than continue exhausting irreplaceable mined raw materials? This pertains both to Mars and car making. If this cannot be done, then getting to Mars and moving to electric cars are very short term fixes with no substantial increase of sustainability.
  • Does further increase of the population of the Earth help extend or shorten the lifespan of the present highly technical civilization?

Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:23, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Language as a graveyard of metaphors[edit source]

A supporting consideration. It is a metaphor, pointing out to senses often being "dead metaphors", where "dead metaphor" refers to a sense that originated as a metaphor. The metaphor is "dead" in so far as it became its own sense, to have the right to be covered by a dictionary, in contrast to ad hoc metaphors created e.g. in poetry. The user of a dead metaphor uses language "literally", hence the distinction of "dead", since otherwise, metaphorical use is by definition not literal. Not only are the secondary figurative senses often dead metaphors of the primary sense but also the primary senses may be dead metaphors of terms in a language from which they were borrowed. Thus, language shows that not only are words (syntactic objects) used to point to concepts (semantic objects), but also concepts (semantic objects) can be used to point to concepts (semantic objects). Thus, the concept of puncturing something with a sharp instrument can point to the concept of mathematical point. Language is a store not only of dead metaphors but also other dead figures of speech such as metonyms, e.g. White House, but these are philosophically rather uninteresting. A related metaphor is that dictionary definitions are tombstones of metaphors.

Thus, by investigating senses and etymologies, one learns about connections between concepts that language users made. For instance, value is likened to price in the words "appreciate" and "priceless". The words presents the user with the question: what, if anything, have price and value in common? Thus, the language as a store of metaphors presents a starting point for philosophical conceptual inquiry, a store of hypotheses to be investigated.

One may try to avoid dead metaphors as an exercise, as hard as it may seen. Whether it is worth it and what pay off it may bring is unclear. It may be an aspirational exercise in literalness, to see how far one can get. (Not very far.)

Further reading:

Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 20:17, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Dan Polansky, I am not sure, but I thought you may be interested in an idea (by William Burroughs), that Language is a virus from outer space. Please forgive me, if I was wrong... Tosha Langue (discuss • contribs) 11:01, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. We could create a debate Is language a virus from outer space? It is a metaphor, of course; what the debate would do is analyze the merits of the metaphor. Alternatively, we could create an original article Language is a virus from outer space to analyze the metaphor in a non-debate treatise format. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 17:33, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Morphological and etymological literalism[edit source]

One may strive at syntactic literalism, avoiding figures of speech. That helps readers not acquainted with these figures and better exposes the implicit argument structure to the reader's mind.

As a more challenging project, one may strive at morphological and etymological literalism. That is very hard to do and may be not worth it, but we may give it a try. Let's consider some examples.

There is the word sophist. One may first use etymology to create a more transparent version of the word, propably wisdomer or wiser. Who is wisdomer? Perhaps someone who has wisdom or seeks wisdom. But that is not what the word means; it means sly or deceptive arguer. The word has a history and the meaning of the word originated in that history. One may make things simpler by replacing morphology and etymology with syntax: instead of saying "sophist", one may say "sly arguer". Who is arguer? One who argues? Right. The word arguer is transparent; it is morphologically a sum of parts. But is arguer one who quarrels? Possibly, but that was not the intended meaning. The intended meaning was argumentmaker. Now we have a transparent and less ambiguous word. We may thus render sophist as sly argument maker. Is the word sly semantically atomic? Perhaps not, but let us leave it there; the exercise to built the meaning from something like semantic atoms is deferred.

Consider demagogue. Who is demagogue? From etymology, it is folkleader or peopleleader. But is that what the word means? Not entirely: it is one who uses deceptive argumentation or panders to people's prejudices instead of leading them out of their prejudices.

A related concept is the one of base vocabulary. One may replace hard words with their definitions. It is likely to make the prose less relevant and interesting but it may make it more accessible to people who do not know these words. More importantly, it may expose the salient properties to the mind's inference capabilities.

Thus, one may use the word Holocaust, but then the reader may need to wonder which of the salient characteristics are being invoked. If one says "mass industrial extermination of Jews", the salient characteristics are exposed.

Doing away with hard words is impractical. But sometimes it makes sense. The above is for inspiration. Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:07, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Robert Pirsig[edit source]

The article is inspired in part by Robert Pirsig. His works contain a lot of bad philosophy but also a lot of good and thought-provoking ideas.

ZMM:

  • Is Quality (or the measure of good or value) just what you like? Is it objective, subjective or neither?
  • Some things are better left undefined. ("Keep Quality undefined".)
  • Making statements that use a term acts as an incomplete definition. If you really want to keep Quality fully undefined, say no thing about it and in fact, never give a single example of it.
  • Definitions can be a mere sketch yet be useful. Thus, one can point to elements of quality in thought and statement without thereby providing a definition proper, or a complete decision procedure.

Lila:

  • Dare to be a philosopher before you start reading philosophy. Find out what your ideas are. Do a philosophy, not just philosophology, which talks about philosophers without talking much philosophy itself.

The search for definitions can be very useful, and one should not give up without trying. At the same time, one cannot define all terms. One thing that could help are definitions by axioms rather than genus-differentia; that would possibly work quite well and would to some extent solve the infinite regress problem. At the same time, definitions by axioms are necessarily incomplete, serving as a finger that points to an object but multiple objects are in the direction to which the finger is pointing. One can at best hope that one of the object is "closest" in some sense. Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:10, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Norbert Wiener[edit source]

Hi Dan Polansky, I've noticed here some pieces of literature that I read. I'm glad to see that! Thank you! What I read right after Robert Pirsig (or before -- I don't remember for sure) was God and Golem Inc. I feel I must add this. (Excuse me, if I disturbed you.) Tosha Langue (discuss • contribs) 16:24, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for inspiration. I must have read W:God & Golem, Inc., but I don't remember what it was about. Maybe I'll find time to have a look. There is a link to a full text online from Wikipedia. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:48, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Fisherman and the Fish[edit source]

The following items seem to have some sort of bearing:

However, they seem to have more of a mnemonic value (remembering a topic) than cognitive value (learning about the world). I am leaving it out of the article for now. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:40, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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