obviousWed, Jan 23, 2008 From how people have commented on this post there seem to be two ways of looking at the importance of minds (or in this conversation, 'complex systems'):
1. Complex systems are important simply because of their content. That is, the activity which makes up the data flow within a complex system is an end in itself. Human conscious systems lay down, over time, a ream of data which has inherent value. Any data a mind processes which does not add to this archive is valueless.
2. Complex systems are important because of their capacity to become more complex. That is, the activity which occurs within a complex system has no inherent meaning, but is merely a means to a higher level of convolution. The continual emergence and renewal of ever greater systems of complexity is therefore where the value of this convolution lies.
I realise that trying to come up with a philosophy of value is a whole other conversation, but surely there is something missing in the binary model of opinion I just outlined.
All that "exponential phase transition curves" are made up of is billions of separately located systems of value. There can be no holistic value without singular value. What use is our ebbing towards ever greater levels of complexity if we don't first express the value of the complex reality we already subsist in?
(P.S. I didn’t talk about ‘minds’ in this comment because reducing them to ‘complex systems’ devalued them in much the same way that a lot of transhumant/singularity thinking does. Some conversations have more inherent value than others.)
From how people have commented on this post there seem to be two ways of looking at the importance of minds (or in this conversation, 'complex systems'):
1. Complex systems are important simply because of their content. That is, the activity which makes up the data flow within a complex system is an end in itself. Human conscious systems lay down, over time, a ream of data which has inherent value. Any data a mind processes which does not add to this archive is valueless.
2. Complex systems are important because of their capacity to become more complex. That is, the activity which occurs within a complex system has no inherent meaning, but is merely a means to a higher level of convolution. The continual emergence and renewal of ever greater systems of complexity is therefore where the value of this convolution lies.
I realise that trying to come up with a philosophy of value is a whole other conversation, but surely there is something missing in the binary model of opinion I just outlined.
All that "exponential phase transition curves" are made up of is billions of separately located systems of value. There can be no holistic value without singular value. What use is our ebbing towards ever greater levels of complexity if we don't first express the value of the complex reality we already subsist in?
(P.S. I didn’t talk about ‘minds’ in this comment because reducing them to ‘complex systems’ devalued them in much the same way that a lot of transhumant/singularity thinking does. Some conversations have more inherent value than others.)