 This has nothing to do with anything written below but I thought it was a cool picture and story: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34039680 With finals over and the responsibilities of my semester done with I have been focused on reading some randomness. Below, I learned a new software program, SImulacra, and Self-Organizing theory... Adobe Premiere Pro Clemson allows for free Adobe software downloads. I had to edit a short video. I found Premiere Pro. After about an hour of YouTube instruction I am a Premiere Pro expert. Well, maybe not but I can do basic editing now. I’m pretty stoked. Baudrillard’s Simulacra “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” In trying to understand the election results and why a reality star might be our next president it occurred to me to look to the postmodern philosophers. They are the ones that dealt with authors like Borges and presaged the Matrix movies. Baudrillard uses the idea of the Simulacra to explain why we are fooled and the fabric of the make-believe we are living in. In this election and what the United States passes as politics there is no substance. The arguments regarding wealth and poverty, security and terror are based upon nothing substantial. The world and the United States have experienced wealth and unemployment not seen prior and violence of all metrics is staggeringly low. However, we are conditioned to absorb dramatic narratives and submit to the base demons of fear and a resulting orgy of consumerism. Here, we are consuming the narrative of a cocksure and arrogant wannabe leader who threatens impending apocalypse and promises an absurdity of eternal safety. “Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original to begin with, or that no longer have an original. Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.” There is no original with which the jingoist spews. Self-Organizing Systems Theory of Biology I have a very hard time reconciling the ideas of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and Biology. Entropy and Life seem very disparate to me. In trying to understand this I am looking at Self-Organization Theory. Similar to Emergence theory. Emergence, to be summed up poorly, is that the sum is greater than the whole of the parts and parts come together in a phenomena that develops larger things. A snowflake is an example of emergence and water droplets look nothing like the intricacy of the whole flake. Self-organizing is dynamic non-linearity. It requires three things: development through positive or negative feedback, balance of exploitation and exploration, and multiple interactions. Self-organizing doesn’t create life but it along with other factors, like self-catalyzing and natural selection, allow for life to occur. I’m still trying to incorporate this with abiogenesis and the origin of life but for now I’ll focus on understanding energy (and disorder) in conjunction with life.
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Restorative Environments In trying to understand the importance of place I’ve been using ecological models to natural resources, ecosystem services, and food web connections. From the human side, I’ve been exploring eco-philosophy and then motivations, barriers, and entryways to conservation. But I never consciously considered the psychological component of a place. If I did it was it from an unconscious one-off reaction; similar to it just feeling peaceful away from traffic and the city. Apparently there is both a ter and a whole study associated with place. According to PsychologyDictionary.org, a restorative environment is “any surrounding or natural setting which assists in rejuvenation or recovery from tension or chronic fatigue.” To me, this seems my definition of a boxing gym but I can see how others wouldn’t see that. Stephan Kaplan uses a syllogism to explain the importance of a restorative environment: “1. Increasing pressures lead to problems of mental fatigue 2. Restorative environments are an important means of reducing mental fatigue, and have a special connection to natural environments. 3. Natural environments, in providing these deeply needed restorative experiences, play an essential role in human functioning.”  Morro Bay, California is my restorative environment Environmental Psychology Similarly to the above, Environmental Psychology is centered around the interplay between the person and their environment. This environment can be Morro Bay, California or the boxing gym or anywhere in between and it does not have to a restorative place or anyplace with value for that matter. Natural settings, schools, or wherever contribute to the idea of environment and the nexus between the person and the place contribute to behavior. Apparently, the whole field is determined to solve problems of individual well-being within a larger society. As little as I care about that generally, if I can find an application to help people’s engagement with conservation then I suppose I can be interested. Affordance I learned this last night when talking to a friend and trying to understand whether cognitive biases are structurally or psychologically based. Affordance is a concept that originates in psychology as well and has been applied to design-theory. The idea is what does an object afford and that can vary in levels of complexity or difficulty in comprehending it’s possibility toward action. A simple example is that a chair is easily understandable as something you sit on. I would imagine that cross-culturally and cross-time any human would understand that a chair is something that you could sit on. I would imagine that a camera would not be as easily understood universally and hence has low affordance, or, according to William Gaver, hidden affordance.
How do you mix Poetic Naturalism, Translational Science, and the Drive-Discharge vs the Culture-Pattern Model? You read too much Sean Carroll, EO Wilson, and Arne Naess, and Roderick Nash.
Poetic Naturalism From Wikipedia: “poetic naturalism understands that the way we find personally relevant meaning to life does not naturally emerge from a purely scientific approach. Science is a rigorous method of finding what is true or false, while poetic naturalism encourages extending the conversation to include contemplation into what is right and wrong” Sean Carroll has a great new book called The Big Picture: Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. It is really really good and I can see it getting up there on my top five science book list - I need to digest his thoughts a little more before I officially do that though. He goes through quantum physics in a very accessible way, evolution through natural selection and genetic drift cleverly, and a ton of other very pertinent science concepts that are relevant to humans. More than all that though, and something that few writers do (scientists especially), he intertwines philosophy with all these scientific topics. The consilience of his work produces a very mature and robust argument for a new ethics for us moderns. I want to say that he speaks to how with all we know through the ways that we know it becomes unethical to act contradictorily to our best theories. But he even says this is not possible because we cannot create an objective morality. Ah! This book is so full of great philosophy, Bayesian rationality, and cutting-edge science that it deserves so much more than this. However, he does introduce a completely new term and philosophical thought: Poetic Naturalism. Oh man, I think I am a poetic naturalist. Maybe it is just me but Carroll and Poetic Naturalism seem to be an extension of EO Wilson’s sociobiology ideas. I see a lot of similarities. Anyway, here’s what Carroll calls Poetic Naturalism: “Naturalism is a philosophy according to which there is only one world — the natural world, which exhibits unbroken patterns (the laws of nature), and which we can learn about through hypothesis testing and observation. In particular, there is no supernatural world — no gods, no spirits, no transcendent meanings. I like to talk about a particular approach to naturalism, which can be thought of as Poetic. By that I mean to emphasize that, while there is only one world, there are many ways of talking about the world. “Ways of talking” shouldn’t be underestimated; they can otherwise be labeled “theories” or “models” or “vocabularies” or “stories,” and if a particular way of talking turns out to be sufficiently accurate and useful, the elements in its corresponding vocabulary deserve to be called real.” (this is from his website: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/poetic-naturalism/) I can’t wait to play with this idea more and include into my own perspective better. In the meantime, Maria Popova does a much better job of explaining Carroll’s book and his philosophy: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/05/31/sean-carroll-the-big-picture/ Translational Science Never have I heard this before this week (that’s not true- I heard it about a month ago but totally disregarded it because I didn’t know what it meant). Translational science bridges the gap between regular research science and applied science. I’m thinking of the documentary Particle Fever where they show the healthy tension between theoretical physicists and experimental physicists working at CERN. The physicists that actually do play in both games would be considered Translational Scientists as would neuroscientists like Sam Harris, I think. My advisor used the idea in regards to conservation and my own work. That is yet to be seen as little of my work up until now has been science and my research now isn’t applied to anything but I like the idea being a Conservation Translational Scientist – it sounds fun. Drive-Discharge Model v Culture-Pattern Model This is wild. Freud approached this idea a lot with all of his work – the innate desires need to be expressed. Apparently, this guy named Konrad Lorenz pushed the idea further and specifically with aggression. His idea is described as the Drive-Discharge Model and can be described as a desire that continuously build without extrinsic motivation until it is ‘discharged’ or frustration specifically is a response to desire otherwise that has been frustrated or retarded. The idea is similar to a pressure release valve and the pressure to act upon something (aggression, sex, whatever) is undeniable and going to occur anyway. If you release it through social acceptable methods (sport, ceremony, etc) then it goes away. If you don’t release it that desire, and specifically aggression, will overflow and spill into war or other socially dangerous activities. EO Wilson says this was proven wrong by a guy named Sipes. More specifically, Wilson says that sociobiology explains aggression and other desire very differently and more nuanced. He says that we have the capacity for aggression and even war but it is an interplay between environmental pressures and learning from cultural values that determines whether that capacity boils over into dangerous territory. This makes way more sense to me as it gives us agency in our social engagement and doesn’t relegate the human species to a predetermined cog victim to the whims of innate behaviors. If nothing else, the human species, far more than any other species, has demonstrated the ability to transcend the boundaries of our genetic capacities. This model is called the Culture-Pattern Model. Basically, it says that yes we have ability to petty fights and even war but we are destined to follow that path and can learn and teach ourselves out of that rut with limited minimal consequences, especially compared to the NonZero social and global consequences of collaboration.
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