olivier auber on Sun, 20 Oct 2019 13:37:37 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Social robotics, cognitive bomb


@Mar Herman.

Thanks for your relevant thoughts and quotes (Olaf Sporns, Networks of the Brain, and the Washington Post paper).

In my book Anoptikon, I rely on the research in neuroscience of Guillaume Dumas & all (Institut Pasteur, Paris), who study experimentally the influence of level of reciprocity allowed by a the network through which we communicate on the synchrony of our brain activities. I also rely on the work of Diederik Aerts & all (Free University of Brussels) on quantum cognition, i.e. the way our concepts may be entangled just like particles, and conversely how particles behave just like our concepts. On this basis (+ Dessalles' approach of costly signaling theory, already quoted), I define three types of asymmetries (1-logical, 2- attentional, 3- temporal) that structure our cognition very fundamentally. These cognitive asymmetries are not to be confused with what is usually called "biases". On the contrary, the fact that we consider some of our choices as "biases" reveals in some extend one of our cognitive asymmetries.

In short: 
1- Our logical asymmetry which makes choose rare and unexpected solutions can be understood, not as a human bias to be exploited, but as a jewel of evolution.
2- Our attentional asymmetry which seems to determine our social profile in an almost automatic way, could find a cultural remedy as soon as we show its automatisms.
3- Our temporal asymmetry, which is rooted in the belief in the omnipotence of optical perspective, could be overcome by a new reference framework based on anoptical perspectives.

@John Hopkins

A propos " going back to Shannon's information ideas " and  "All organisms will consume available energy at some maximum rate until it is gone.This, life requires".
In a paper called 'Search for Terrestrial Intelligence' written prior to Anoptikon, I imagined five typical extra-terrestrial civilizations (Devoratus, Formabilis, Imitativus, Pervasus and Legitimus) that may or may not overcome the cosmic stupidity supposed to extinct every intelligent life form after a certain time If the fifth one only may survive; it is because this Legitimus civilization found means to manage its information, its network topology and its and signaling activities. In Anoptikon, I tried to give more arguments to sustain this assumption, notably by considering seriously Dessalles' extension of Shannon's theory. In sort:

- Information is a drop in complexity (unexpected, difficult to obtain, simple to describe).
- Information only exists if it can be “read”.
- Information is what “survives”.

  medium.com/@olivierauber/search-for-terrestrial-intelligence-2673ef92c2ec    

I hope that this will give others the idea to pursue research paths that are less focused on energy (which always concludes with our extinction) and more on information and networks (which could help to escape this fate).
I thought I saw a sign of this change in the second point of Greta's message (stop your blah blah), but it is clear that we are only at the "weak signal" stage. If, however, she were to realize one day that the greatest danger we are facing is not climate change nor species extinction, but our incessant disputes that make us unable to respond in a relevant and appropriate way to all major challenges.

Olivier
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