Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

   Post 106.  February 16, 2020 continued . . .

  The Lucifer Principle

   Evolution is a Learning Machine

 + For scientists, their technical worldview is called a Paradigm, an approximate model of reality. But for religious and political believers, their worldview is typically taken to be an accurate description of the natural and supernatural worlds. So, “It’s easy to see why humans are willing to fight to the death to defend the memes that constitute their belief systems.” Bloom refers to those belief systems by analogy with the structure of the human brain. “Neural nets, and the conceptual webs they hold, give us our illusion of control over those things that elude our grasp.”

Continuing the metaphor of world systems as neural nets of intercommunication, Bloom says that “evolution is a learning machine”. His next book was entitled The Global Brain. And, as such, it is continually creating new forms of information. These novel species are not just different kinds of animals. He says that “the new forms are impalpable and invisible. They consist of the varieties of cooperation that grow up between solitary creatures — the ties that bind those creatures together into a larger unit.” This is his way of saying that evolution is a creative process of EnFormAction8. Evolution is also a “team sport”, it’s not simply win-lose Darwinian competition, but a game of win-win cooperation. Although, the players may not be aware of their role in the whole, the system only makes progress when their joint effort allows old things to give birth to new things. Evolutionary emergence is a holistic process of remodeling old things into novelties. By analogy with physical “phase changes”, EnFormAction can be described as Phase Transitions.

Cultural Evolution also progresses via Cooperation. But people frequently work together toward goals that are fantastic and unattainable. “The appeal of prophets often lies in their ability to paint a picture of an irresistible utopia and to convince us that this better world is almost within our grasp.” Bloom presents examples of Communism, Christianity, and Moham-medanism, for which millions of people lost their lives in pursuit of a dream, but never enjoyed their Utopia. Even though the rewards of faithful following were never fulfilled, “Mohammed’s ideas — like those of Christ — had been a social glue creating a superorganismic bond”.

The author goes on to discuss “Why men embrace ideas — and why ideas embrace men”. After recounting how Fidel Castro convinced the common people to support his revolution against their Capitalist oppressors without revealing his Communist intentions, Bloom noted : “Memes frequently make the temptation to riches and power even sweeter by disguising the pursuit of these prizes as selfless idealism, ascetic dedication to a cause”. Superorganisms survive by being internally cooperative, but externally competitive. Political and religious memes are inherently ambitious for replication, to spread their memetic seed. “An ideology is usually a high-minded mask for a group’s itch to take power and resources from other social groups . . . The aim of politics . . . is to increase the power of one man or group of men against the power of another man or group of men”. So, people embrace ideologies that promise to improve their status, and in turn, the anticipation of social and material rewards, stimulates their biological reward system to produce addictive endorphins to act as positive reinforcers of the group-approved behaviors.

                   Post 106 continued . . . click Next

Does the World
have a Mind
of its Own?

8. EnFormAction :
   Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to pro-duce novel & stable arrange-ments of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (aka : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for un-known reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html#EnFormAction

The Lucifer Principle

A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History

Howard Bloom

Psychology; Sociology; Political Science

The Problem of Evil