The Current World
There are two worlds: the human-constructed world and the natural world, which has become so endangered it is now the realm of preserves and refuges inside the first world.
It struck me, driving on I-20, that I lived in a simulation. I thought that driving to Atlanta, all around me was forest and this part of the world was not nearly as developed as it is.
But it was merely a mirage, a small amount of recently grown trees to serve as a buffer to the highway. The hardwoods have long been cut down. Every bit of land has been planned and alloted. There is no more unclaimed land.
Human Ingenuity
What has given humans such power is the capability for abstract thought by simulating hypothetical worlds. People make better decisions when they look ahead at multiple hypothetical world-states, such as in chess.
On a more primal level, it might mean planning ahead to ambush the herd at a chokepoint.
If we live in three spatial dimensions plus the one temporal dimension of time, the ability to think of multiple timelines is thinking in five dimensions, except that it takes a lot of energy and time to do so and think of these exception cases. Spiders too can apparently think ahead, but it takes them a long time.
Thinking of multiple timelines isn’t easy. It takes energy to do so.
Keeping people distracted with social media, music, or games prevents them from using this power to think about what is happening around them or to think of alternatives.
The ability to think of alternative timelines and happenings is what gives rise to strategy.
Changing the hallucination
The human world is a hallucination, which means that it can be changed. People whose power rests on deluding others (think of how many infantry died for their ideals with the belief that those in power cared about them, software engineers who’ve imbibed the “do good things and help other people” mantra) don’t want to call it a hallucination. They don’t even want you to realize reality can be any other way.
Agency
Many definitions don’t exactly capture human agency in the way I feel is right. A commonly given answer is something like this:
For our purposes, an agent is an entity capable of autonomous, intelligent, goal-directed behavior.
The default assumption of many in life is that we have “goals.” But that doesn’t make sense. How can “goals” build a city or company? How can goals inspire and lead? Goals are something like:
- I will get a good job (without definition of what good is, except based on the general perception)
- I will lift more weights (without the question of why lifting more weights is important)
Goals, I think, are a subset of mimesis. Goals are for followers to have, not leaders.
Local state into global state
I recently heard a definition that clicked: agentic behavior is turning local state into global state.
Local state is in the brain. Global state is the world around us. When the brain feels like a television on the wall is uneven, this perception in local state causes the human to change global state.
The organism exudes its local state out into the environment to the best of its ability. Someone with a dirty environment has a jumbled mind. This becomes more and more clear to me when you see the houses of people who are ill mentally or physically. This becomes clear when you see the increasingly diminutive drawings of those with dementia.
Someone might have a great imagination but little power to change the world, so they make art, movies, music.
Our constructed world is a reflection of the local state in our minds. Walking through a beautiful city is inhabiting the beautiful minds of people long ago. Sometimes, like Paris, it may just be the mind of a few people who planned the street patterns. Through energy to construct the world and the thought that originated it, people’s states of mind are transmitted across time.
Three Parts of an Agent
- Humans have three parts
- Local state (the brain or genetic intuition/algorithms)
- Actions that update the environment (changing the global state)
- Speech, writing, choices, habits, material constructions/tools, social constructions
- Perceiving the environment (updating local state from global state/natural selection)
- The discriminating factor (perceptiveness, taste, knowing what is important and what is not) to update internal/local state
- Mimesis
Local State in the Digital Age
Some people are poorly able to perceive the environment around them so they rely overly on mimesis or accept media as truth. This may stem from an authority bias, a lack of perception, or a lack of contrast of different places in one’s life.
Their local state has been completely replaced by that of someone else’s, which means their actions are similar.
Examples include people ranting about politics in a grocery store, men stating that “marriage is a sham,” eating bland chicken and rice to make gains in the gym, and all other forms of copying others and unoriginal thought.
The issue with updating your local state with online content is that most of it is low quality. Depth and expertise are naturally wrought out by experience, so having a central source of truth (the internet or the media) can never be as dynamic as people thinking for themselves in local conditions.
Books and the internet serve as a source of local state for the human superorganism. Since most of the information on the internet is bad and most people cannot discriminate bad information, the local state and actions in society become worse.
Mental Conception
Mental conception forms the template for tool-making and object transformation. Without a mental image, tools cannot be made. Books also transmit mental conception across time.
People who repeat are mainly enforcing another person’s mental conception.
Detail, subtlety, and nuance are the characteristic of high mental conception. Simple rules are of base mental conception.
Why is properly perceiving things and having an opinion important? (In the current zeitgeist, also known as taste). Properly perceiving things means updating local state appropriately, which is reflected into the world through one’s actions.
A difference of opinion is a matter of life and death. Different thought or internal state leads to different action, leading to different built worlds, inevitably leading to conflict. Of course, the world isn’t that dense, so there is always the option of going to do your own thing somewhere else.
My taste in articles about taste
I like this for its conciseness and insightfulness:
I feel like these, although true, repeat too much rather than getting to the core of things:
- https://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
- https://jzhao.xyz/posts/aesthetics-and-taste
- https://asterisques.com/Taste
- https://karrisaarinen.com/jiro/
- http://jiggity.com/techtaste.html
- https://callum.website/the-matter-of-taste
I don’t like these:
Conclusion
The world is mainly a human hallucination, not the natural world.
Humans can think in 5-dimensions, or one extra temporal dimension, also known as thinking of alternatives or multiple timelines.
Internal state is the basis for action in the world.
Having the perception to recognize the shape of the world allows the right action to be taken.
Mental conception can be transmitted through time due to the environment or books.