What book are you reading?

[Joe Shearer]

I await any commentary you have, if any, on the social contract etc and any worthy sidetracks....before I proceed a bit more....the route to artificial intelligence (nobody is engaging a book on) lies first in exploring human intelligence.

Perhaps a little later.

I am wrestling with a number of distractions including very poor health.

 

[Nilgiri]

Perhaps a little later.

I am wrestling with a number of distractions including very poor health.

Wishing and praying for quick recovery and good health. This can all wait, no rush.

 

[Indos]

@Nilgiri I finished chapter 4 of AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future and I am in love with the book. I will strongly urge you to give this book a shot.

What do you study in university bro ?

 

[_NOBODY_]

What do you study in university bro ?

Computer Science

 

[Indos]

Computer Science

Wow nice, have you learned Python programming ?

 

[_NOBODY_]

Wow nice, have you learned Python programming ?

Yes but I am no Python expert. I only use Python for machine learning, data engineering and data visualization.

 

[Indos]

Yes but I am no Python expert. I only use Python for machine learning, data engineering and data visualization.

What programming language do you intend to specialize and why ?

 

[_NOBODY_]

What programming language do you intend to specialize and why ?

My field is data science and AI so I will mostly be dealing with Python and R.

 

[Indos]

My field is data science and AI so I will mostly be dealing with Python and R.

When will you be graduated and get the degree according to you (your target) ?

 

[_NOBODY_]

When will you be graduated and get the degree according to you (your target) ?

Next year

 

[Nilgiri]

Since its a book thread, and since i mentioned Hobbes and Locke already (Rousseau, Hume et al. are just extra bonuses for those keen on it):

In an archetypical way, this resembles the disputes i have with another friend regarding the post on "electric sheep" and what he sees as ersatz and genuine....and why the Philip K Dick novel (and the movie even more so IMO) is good as any to get into for us as we have started.

His is a more Hobbesian approach, mine is firmly Lockean....he doesn't seem to know either word though heh at least at this point.

But it is not surprising he prefers the book, and I the movie (Bladerunner).

This is why it will mimic to some degree what I got into with my counterpart @_NOBODY_ here as well regarding "brave new world".

More on this later, I will see if anyone has any thoughts to share in interim.

If you have any thoughts to share on the social contract @FuturePAF lets hear them. Stay involved in this thread as much as you can....I think its important subject to then understand outer layers like economics....as good economics (debate and application) can only really sustain itself if there is high public trust (which needs the optimal social contract).

To me this means the state aspect (since its the highest human authority/power regarding a nationstate) has to be focused and as uncluttered as possible.

Otherwise large social forces are squandered and nothing in the outer layers (i.e dependent on it) can put that in order in reverse outside-in way..... as the core ultimately are human psychological forces that intersect only so much with pure materialism to begin with (hence the ideological wars that bypass materialism I mention too i these are not rested and resolved well in the nation's people).

What I mention with the 10% pitching in to help the 90% base (and the govt role of this versus non-govt role of it, where is one more qualitative than the other at some intersection of time for a nationstate) in the economic sense (re-allocation of resource more optimally to address material scarcity) is only one smaller inducted current from this.

 

[FuturePAF]

If you have any thoughts to share on the social contract @FuturePAF lets hear them. Stay involved in this thread as much as you can....I think its important subject to then understand outer layers like economics....as good economics (debate and application) can only really sustain itself if there is high public trust (which needs the optimal social contract).

To me this means the state aspect (since its the highest human authority/power regarding a nationstate) has to be focused and as uncluttered as possible.

Otherwise large social forces are squandered and nothing in the outer layers (i.e dependent on it) can put that in order in reverse outside-in way..... as the core ultimately are human psychological forces that intersect only so much with pure materialism to begin with (hence the ideological wars that bypass materialism I mention too i these are not rested and resolved well in the nation's people).

What I mention with the 10% pitching in to help the 90% base (and the govt role of this versus non-govt role of it, where is one more qualitative than the other at some intersection of time for a nationstate) in the economic sense (re-allocation of resource more optimally to address material scarcity) is only one smaller inducted current from this.

As an American and as a Muslim, I must say I agree more with Locke. A government with so much power as Hobbes or Rousseau would have it, will inevitably lead to a government that can’t be persuaded to change course when the people demand it. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

A strong middle class, economically and politically, as was in the US, not that long ago, created a civic minded populace. With the knowledge that their rights and prosperity where shared at home, the citizens of America became more entrepreneurial then their European counterparts. Compare this to Argentina, a 100 years ago, similar GDP per capita, but missing that element.

Unfortunately, now many Americans feel we are living in a Plutocracy and the contract is broken, hence the breakdown in service, especially by the young, for the sake of the nation. Expectations are higher in wealthier countries to share the wealth, while less wealthy countries have more simple requirements to feel egalitarian.

This is why in the US Declaration of Independence references “the laws of nature and nature’s God”. In that sense, what is legal should be moral. The authority of God, on the ruler, checks their privilege, as long as God’s word is not abused but the ruler or clergy (a contributing factor for the Protestant reformation against the Catholic Church and many Islamic revivals that bring the faith back to a more basic and conservative understanding).

So a social contract, as the framers of the US constitution would see it, should be morally based; not theological but derive its morality from the Bible (New Testament), so we don’t have “despotism” and “tyranny” as stated in the constitution.

This is also how many Muslim countries try to frame it as well, not theological law per-say, but always in the spirit of that law. Hence why if the majority of the public feels this way, a separate Pakistan, who’s moral and legal compass was pointed towards Islamic morality, could not be its true sense, fully within the Indian social contract, in an India that would inevitably revert to one governed on the basis of Hindu morality. It was why many Americans couldn’t vote for Vivek. It is also why, outside of known discrimination, you see underperformance from Indian Muslims (as a whole compared to the average Indian citizen) I hypothesize. They don’t feel a part of that social contract, especially the more and more India moves away from its secular social contract.

This is why JFK’s inaugural speech was so power a motivator for civic duty, and his death such a blow. JFK, a catholic, seen by many as a different faith from most Americans, still upheld American values, and why the conspiracies around his death, sowed the seeds of distrust between the people and the government.

This is why his successor, LBJ had his “Great Society” funding while at the same time escalating the Vietnam War, and it didn’t work. Something broke then, the people could not be bribed off and the continued dissonance since means we haven’t been the same country since the high water mark of JFK.

 

[_NOBODY_]

@Nilgiri I will definitely reply to your posts this week. As you know that my domain is AI. What subjects should I be learning in order to use my knowledge of AI for the development of the smart cities of the future?

 

[Nilgiri]

@Nilgiri I will definitely reply to your posts this week. As you know that my domain is AI. What subjects should I be learning in order to use my knowledge of AI for the development of the smart cities of the future?

For any field (to make bridge from human intelligence to AI).... you have to think about its dataset and where to access them.

So for smart cities, the existing cities (at least of importance/relevance/accessibility to you) datasets pertaining to their population dynamics, sociological and economic forces, infrastructure and so on.

You will then come across folks that are looking at, measuring and analysing the same thing....and it will help networking hopefully.

AI at this stage really is about optimal algorithms for search + filter in these datasets so it "learns"....so becoming comfy with the dataset and existing + legacy processes involving them is the 1st step.

For me its been air and gas molecules related, its very specific domain (i.e I know the dataset fairly well) and their incredibly large population numbers and numbers concerning their forces and other derivations.

So a montecarlo sim gains an immense advantage from example... deeplearning oriented to proper determination (by search, filter and refinement) of a suitably representative and sensitive subset of the population of molecules involved......as there is a heavy advantage to supercomputer/mainframe time having to deal with say 1000 vectors rather than a million (for the same qualitative result).

i.e dataset handling, what is the economisation that AI will help in it that you foresee and then you got to explore everything you can related to it wherever you can find it. Joining a company somehow involved in it will help you a lot on this as there is larger guidance you get off the bat.

 

[Nilgiri]

As an American and as a Muslim, I must say I agree more with Locke. A government with so much power as Hobbes or Rousseau would have it, will inevitably lead to a government that can’t be persuaded to change course when the people demand it. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

A strong middle class, economically and politically, as was in the US, not that long ago, created a civic minded populace. With the knowledge that their rights and prosperity where shared at home, the citizens of America became more entrepreneurial then their European counterparts. Compare this to Argentina, a 100 years ago, similar GDP per capita, but missing that element.

Unfortunately, now many Americans feel we are living in a Plutocracy and the contract is broken, hence the breakdown in service, especially by the young, for the sake of the nation. Expectations are higher in wealthier countries to share the wealth, while less wealthy countries have more simple requirements to feel egalitarian.

This is why in the US Declaration of Independence references “the laws of nature and nature’s God”. In that sense, what is legal should be moral. The authority of God, on the ruler, checks their privilege, as long as God’s word is not abused but the ruler or clergy (a contributing factor for the Protestant reformation against the Catholic Church and many Islamic revivals that bring the faith back to a more basic and conservative understanding).

So a social contract, as the framers of the US constitution would see it, should be morally based; not theological but derive its morality from the Bible (New Testament), so we don’t have “despotism” and “tyranny” as stated in the constitution.

This is also how many Muslim countries try to frame it as well, not theological law per-say, but always in the spirit of that law. Hence why if the majority of the public feels this way, a separate Pakistan, who’s moral and legal compass was pointed towards Islamic morality, could not be its true sense, fully within the Indian social contract, in an India that would inevitably revert to one governed on the basis of Hindu morality. It was why many Americans couldn’t vote for Vivek. It is also why, outside of known discrimination, you see underperformance from Indian Muslims (as a whole compared to the average Indian citizen) I hypothesize. They don’t feel a part of that social contract, especially the more and more India moves away from its secular social contract.

This is why JFK’s inaugural speech was so power a motivator for civic duty, and his death such a blow. JFK, a catholic, seen by many as a different faith from most Americans, still upheld American values, and why the conspiracies around his death, sowed the seeds of distrust between the people and the government.

This is why his successor, LBJ had his “Great Society” funding while at the same time escalating the Vietnam War, and it didn’t work. Something broke then, the people could not be bribed off and the continued dissonance since means we haven’t been the same country since the high water mark of JFK.

We've obviously read a lot of the same kind of material that's influenced us heavily in similar directions of thinking heh.

What you describe is, the way I see it, veering of the US to more heavyset statism (the shift of things to the federal govt from the state level it was at prior to it)....this change of the nature of statism in the US in the 20th century has a running inductance into statist dependency to the level that things "bleed in" from proximate statist doctrines.

As to why statism and the populist-statism-maximalism (which slowly starts to intersect with more leftist and/or fascist ideology) was inducted/accelerated during the cold war era after WW2 is a longer topic to get into.....there are pre-WW2 things to look into sinew wise regarding it.

At any rate it has created downstream pressures on the nation component of the nationstate (given a nation is ultimately what supports a state, and an unwieldy state imposes a burden if misaligned time/ramp rate with say the nation's longer imbued inertia).

The US is its own context of it, but there are archetypes broadly in the world. The changing human world brings new competing forces that create own eddy currents in the positive virtue cycles that exist in their tiers....and also the negative-virtue voids that have been created in their tiers.

Political populism then responds to both of this to make somewhat oversimplied case for the nation to decide the next "chunk" of operating conditions policy wise from the state....again somewhat misaligned with the institutional inertias of the state that is has soaked up from its own statism and insularity (some call this the deep state etc).

Here are some posts I made in another forum w.r.t Ataturk "factor" as it relates to the social contract and the republic formed in Turkiye's case and some compare and contrast related to that, both you and others can take your time to think about things and reply to any bit that interests you:


#1:

Issue for Turkiye is it is a secular foundation (w.r.t Ataturk and its republic) and ideology deep enough in its national fibre now (this always applies pressure on its own state politics for the longer term...and restricts what the state can do to veer from the inertia set in on it).

Quite the opposite to what has happened with Iran post the 79 revolution regarding its state at least. So Iran's govt (state) meshes in the mid and long term with the large ideological clay in the region available to it.

This brings high long term costs and risks to Iran too btw....that Turkiye will not have to deal with if it steers the course well while waiting things out.

Turks have to know how to be a rock and trust in Ataturk's vision (and strengthen it always within own country at all junctures).

Of course apply and deploy great strength and deterrence to protect one's borders and security......and work with what you got past own borders with this in mind......but understand the ready raw state of region is default an anti-Ataturk one. This is how the west itself has also involved itself in ways antithetical to Turkish nation and state in the region....what is easily on offer to fund to hold much larger Turkish power to contain/resist it.

In the longest term, Turks have to be thinking for a post fossil fuel energy world....that is where Turkiyes industrial might will come into play in much larger way regarding what pays the bills for security in the end (if it invests well up to say 2050) versus the oil slush fund driven region. This alone will sap a lot from the Iranian regime then (assuming it is still there and the region's sociological state has not shifted much).

The Turks will also have to watch and judge the West and NATO, West's allies etc (regd tech tree flow and market access pertaining to these for itself).... vis a vis how China and Russia develop things with Iran (i.e its much limited model Iran has to enable here).

#2:

The nation, state and nationstate.

The importance of the proper social contract that best arranges authority and public trust from insight and experience of history at both collective and individual realm cannot be overlooked. The success of any country/society for the longest duration rests upon this and realising in enough intensity (especially by those best in positions of power/responsiblity)...the positive and negative variables all along the route involved.

If as many Turks as possible always read in depth from beginning to end the story of Ataturk, the answers of what realities moulded him through his military career.... that he harnessed to make a republic....the Turkish nation is secure as that period of time and Ataturk really dramatically captures this for the Turkish national context more than anything else.

As I explained to a friend of mine, Ataturk could sense the what (Turks wanted and required) and the who (the Turks even were) in the broadest picture required for it.... to filter out the noise and distraction and conflation of other things that had ultimately harmed and costed the Turks in the Ottoman era....that should not be repeated among the nation of Turks again. Things like why a state should be secular for it to be optimally aligned with the unique nation it serves.

So when any nation inverts itself or ignores and mentally victimises/doubts itself in sufficient capacity for whatever reason, one will find the short-circuiting (to the state and its statist levers) of all kind of counter-ideologies finding room and permeation where previously they were little or in check. The very word "nationalism" is turned into a bad word in certain parts of over-wrought society by this short-circuiting (bypassing the nation itself)....be it by (statist/theocratic oriented) religion or by marxism....anything that does not exist as default, but exists in the recesses (given the world's reality and turbulence) looking to become the default (by undermining what occupies the default). Ideological tension, coercion and then conflict and war (overt or subvert depending on the circumstances easiest for it). This is exactly why you find similarity in political islam and marxism....its a statist short circuit grab to then slave the nation till its ideologically supportive itself to those designs.

If the national scaffolding is built poorly (again w.r.t optimal social contract), it is undermined easily or great damage is done within it even while it may be big enough to exist outwardly.

If its built well like in Ataturk's republic, it will take much longer to do and there will be warning signs. In the end the ideology of the good republic (and what is good and what is a republic) has to prevail in enough minds of the people to recognise things deeply enough....that which has provided well and they should be grateful for and further nurture...roots to flower. Cutting flowers away from the roots is cut flowers and it has become in vogue in certain corners of the world (though the reasons/contexts vary a bit) in over-wrought and undermining processes.

What is your current take on how much the Turkish nation adequately grasps what I mean with Ataturk?

#3

That's true to some degree too. I guess I'm talking more about nations where there has been a long enough record and maturation of an intelligentsia formed to study and analyse these dynamics of esteem vs say grievance in the nationalism aspect.

Given this is a foreign policy + geopolitics thread, basically the subset of countries that have noticeable surplus power and influence to exert past their borders.

Quasi and pseudo nations that have not developed this sufficiently (we can then argue how much is their fault vs another's fault in todays current snapshot.....but that will take a long time for analysis) and are permeated and compromised extensively (and thus exploited in high degree by any power class within them and power classes outside them) is another topic.



2nd part of what you mention is complicated to get into. The republic must form and establish first (or its equivalent in the bounded monarchy i.e constitutional monarchy if you really want to keep a monarch around)....for it to set democratic operations into play.

This again requires a study of say the Turkish model w.r.t Ataturk deeply. Not just the person himself but the processes he implemented for the long run and why regarding both the setup and operation of the constitution (and the intuition he had for this version of the social contract and where that came from regarding his life experience up to that point).

There is no democracy possible without the guarantee of basic rights by the law. Democracy flows from the Republic.

W.r.t US (the most powerful democratic republic currently), this was for example drastically seen at the conclusion of the civil war (past such things as habeas corpus suspension during it)....when there is "quasi peace time"....essentially ongoing destruction of the working republic law and order in sufficient capacity in states being "readmitted".

There was suspension of democracy during this process where the Klan et al. were (past their heavy subversion and coercion from CSA militia residuals).... running lose murdering judges and sheriffs trying to implement law and order again of the Republic....and in the wake of a President that had been assassinated as well.

The quasi peace time and its shadow form the quasi civil war is the argument used by dictators, despots and autocrats in their argument (if they have one) of forming a republic.

But in hindsight you always see if they actually genuinely believed it....or it was an ersatz excuse (including the secularism).

Ataturk obviously believed in it....and in the largest possible way for his nation's destiny.

Many commentators today likely would have called him an autocrat/dictator if they were inserted back then at some point....or likewise if an Ataturk popped up somewhere today and was setting things into longer term working order w.r.t actual long term constitutionalism for the republic and its institutions and the massive advantage of secularism and forming things like the Diyanet to see this through w.r.t personal religious liberty in the nation's citizenry.

The larger Muslim world would have done better in every case with their forms of Ataturk, but they largely didn't get such.

That is why everything considered in, among the Muslim countries of the world, I hold Turkiye in the highest regard as its unique success story in its core.

This is why Goatsmilk and others sense what they do even when they have moved to the West.....there is an archetype concerning the destructive process for any nation through what is cultivated against the nation simply to take over the state and then try craft another type of nation.

Turks have their inertia and resistances baked in (and the West does to its degrees in its higher privileged setting....which can be debated) and they express themselves in various ways.....but wise Turks must remain ever-vigilant deep down as to the what, why and who found in Ataturk's story. This is unique inheritance that has served them very well and it is to their advantage to sustain it.

#4

I understand where you are coming from, but IMO there is only so much to harness from empires and civilisations etc....and there can be good and bad regarding such as there are both objective and subjective things harnessed from it by the individual.

That is why statist operating principles need to be geared to being minimalist and focused as possible to that which is objective (within the nation)...i.e physical.

Law and order, security of the nation, administration, national infrastructure, long term merit institutions and so on and addressing any severe instances of market failure collectively by way of the state (in a market infancy period etc).

Things like religion, theology et al. are vast domains within the even larger domain of metaphysics.

The core self evident truths (preceding the nationstate formation) stemming from these can be harnessed and applied (regd the social contract and law etc which I mentioned earlier) without all the assorted baggage in the metaphysical alleyways (which are interesting to get into within bounds, but should not be wielded in the state) that will only impose costs.

A metaphysical+maximalist oriented state will do damage to the nation and start grievous erosions, conflicts (to add to any ongoing ones) and collapses....as it posits perfectionist utopia and make enemies among its own body quickly by power for power sake elitist capture and so on.

Marxism copies and pastes the pyramid (it perceives) and inverts it to an extreme materialist domain. It becomes its own religion effectively from its reactionary metaphysics.

The forces regarding this will happen somewhat inevitably over time in a relatively minimalist+focused state....so there is even less reason to make this easy from the get go.

Things can be compared and contrasted for example between the Ottoman empire ---- > nationstates occupying its former realm today and the same for say Qajar Iran.

The lack of proper balanced minimalist reset from Ataturk's revolution and republic.... shows up drastically now in modern day Iran's case.

The moulding of Ataturk in his life story.....one example is his basic realisation the metaphysics---statist danger.

He saw the strife, the fassad of co-religionists in the breakup of the Ottoman empire. That the raw metaphysical size of these things will always be far larger in number outside the Turkish people than inside it....the sheer population differential. This would be the danger if a quick circuit of it is given in the republic to be formed. Hence the minimalist approach with secularism instead. The resistance against over-secularisation (also a problem like I describe with the extreme form of it in say Marxism).... would be trusted to the people and communities and institutions formed in cohesion with the state's law and order and principles....that they hold what is best about their culture within them for the long run as well.

Iran's theocracy in comparison is heavily disjointed from its own population, does not work for their interests well....and instead meshes far more seamlessly with the larger region's sociological clay on offer. Hence proxy export model (by the state)....at long term cost to its nation.

The shah was essentially just as insular and bad regarding this....there was basically no commitment to a longer term process generated within Iran like Turkiye did.....so the state does tenuous ad hoc things relative to the nation. This nationstate is in the end in a bunch of trouble long term till the next revolution hits it, then have to see how the state shapes up then and the accounting of the costs.

In China this can be seen in quite short span of time too in the 20th century. The attempted principled crafting in Ataturk kind of fashion by Sun Yat Sen....but insufficient time and space for it to set in (like Ataturk was able to harness with the intelligentsia and context he had)....correlated to the vastness and context of China.

The quick usurpation (for a number of reasons) by his successor, the civil war, the foreign invader war interjecting during it as well.... and then rise of a despot who went for the maximalist approach with Marxist statism and the "constant internal war" (and communism export to world etc) with the nation to be slaved to this first and foremost, no matter the cost. The better balance and operating conditions (ability of some virtuous cycles to nest within larger non-virtuous one) only really came to bear after his death for a reason....but there is still cult image legacy and so on that harnesses the metaphysics and its ego and so on.

Really the topic is a vast one. Turkiye was very lucky to have Ataturk around at that time it did.