Inaugural Waffle

Greetings!

I'm posting this blog to facilitate some creative thinking, mind mapping and general ideas bouncing about topics such as: Linguistics, Metanarratives, Geopolitics, the Fermi Paradox, Innovation Rates/Futures/Foresight. I'll try to be multimodal in future: links to pictures and videos and the like. I'll be updating the blog on an informal, infrequent basis... its a work in progress.

Its an eclectic, interdisciplinary space, and I feel that all people have something to offer to the discussion. I'd like to learn from you and share some humble wafflings/tangential discussions in the process. I'd like to encourage maths discussion/approaches to these abstract word problems and creative thought on these topic areas, as an alternative space to some other forums, such as Math Stack Exchange or Physics/Biology Stack Exchange.

Without further ado, let's dive in!

I've seen a lot of great discussion recently over on those Stack Exchange forums and elsewhere about combinatorial theory and limits thinking applied to problems such as finding the set of all possible 'real' genomes in the universe, and found them great reading! Hop on over and have a read for yourself:

http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/13665/biodiversity-is-restricted-by-genome-combinatorics

It would be interesting to: discern the ratio of 'meaningful' unique DNA combinations to non-meaningful combinations, find patterns to the distribution of types (and see if any specific types are universally/frequently occurring) see which combinations actually arose in this universe out of the set of all possible combinations during different timespans etc., digitally recreate these in Project Blue Brain... Naturally, this sort of thinking might go somewhat towards answering the Fermi Paradox/refining the Drake Equation - what other kinds of life might there be out in the Cosmos? Sagan, of course is also a huge influence here... 

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What are your thoughts on this subject? 

Do you think there are other lifeforms in the universe?

How do you explain the Fermi Paradox?

How do you approximate the distribution of, or likelihood of meeting an extraterrestrial civilization?

Why hasn't a similar project to the biology stack exchange discussion of genome combinatorics been done for all possible combinations of compounds/elements (I know there are still a few elements missing on the periodic table, etc)? If such a thing has been done, please, share a link.

The same idea could be applied to energy generating solutions: I speculate there are limits to the variety of real meaningful unique combinations in the universe. There'd then be a ratio of more effective solutions to less effective (but easier to discover/implement) solutions to meaningless solutions. Most solutions would be meaningless/gibberish. There'd be a set of 'optimal' solutions --- perhaps what are referred to as Kardshev V Type Civilisations.

Coming down to Earth from extraterrestrial civilisations to the futures of more terrestrial civilisations...

many have written about the subject, and there seem to be two or three main camps:

Malthusians (Gloomers), Cornucopians (Boomsters) and Others.

I'd have to state that, as a compatibilist/agnostic, the futures appear to be less positive than negative... we can go further into this, and more rigorous too. I'm more inclined towards agreeing with the 'limits' side of the coin, on philosophical and political grounds alone.

The work of Coutts outlines an exponentialist approach which I found to be highly objective approaches to futures potentialities, and I highly recommend The Exponentialist as a wealth of reading materials are there!

http://members.optusnet.com.au/exponentialist/

Basically, I envisage society/progress as being multiple 'persian chessboards' being simultaneously played --- each board representing the near-exponential trends (or variable compound interest) states of vital factors, at any moment being in positive or negative steps. The 'victory' condition is to keep all the boards within certain parameters. The 'loss' condition is losing any of the critical boards for a prolonged period, or all boards simultaneously. So population growth might be a particular chess board, food production another, energy resources another and innovation another again. This is more or less what Bartlett, Malthus, Coutts convey.

 

 I also envisage those models as a mime with spinning plates/objects: the mime must keep all the spinning objects within optimal parameters at all times. All the plates are interrelated...  some smash and can be replaced at particular rates... other pieces of pottery are irreplaceable and delicate.

It seems the futures are more likely towards a Harlan Ellison scenario than say a Gene Roddenbury Eutopian vision (who wouldn't like to live in a Roddenbury Eutopia though?!).

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What are your thoughts on the futures of civilisation?

Are you a Fukuyama supporter, or more of a Huntington person?

How do you imagine/approximate the innovation rate: are you a proponent of a Carlyle-esque "Influential Individual Theory"?

Lets skip to linguistics and ideas:

Korzybski's E-Prime concept is very interesting, especially when it comes to epistemology and biases per language and presenting clear communications/attempting to make universal languages or universal translators.

Also of interest are Chomsky's thoughts on language (combinations in the characters etc), as well as William S Burroughs thoughts, and Jorge Borges "Library of Babel"/Oliver Burkeman "Museum of Failure" concepts... Especially when you recall Skinner's "Tabula Rasa", Asimov and Kurzweil on artificial intelligence.

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Can knowledge be 'acquired' via a process of constructing algorithms for the language and a sufficient construct of intellect? (here, the intellect could pass a Turing test or be based on a simulated other genome, or equally be adopting a different set of worldviews/standpoints for hypotheticals). How would we differentiate between meaningful and meaningless knowledge acquired as the result of such a process?

What do you think of 'Interlingua' and 'Esperanto'/ other constructed languages? Are these languages a step towards a globalised monoculture/standardised culture?

Alrighty,
We'll leave this inaugural post there;
for next time, I will attempt to post fewer topics and speak fewer,  more complete sentences.
Any feedback you have in regards to format or a ramble/waffle on the topics here would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!