A Quora discussion on systemic racism

This is a comment by someone else on Quora: 

Systemic racism implies that the entire society as we know it today is built with a strive to some sort of skin color supremacy. If you really belive that, then you really don't understand the basic values that moved humanity forward from the stone age. A few rotten apples don't make the entire batch bad and it is racist to throw them all away lightly, considering you are living in a somewhat functioning society, with tons of written knowledge, philosophy and law structure. The fact that you know what is good and bad in the general sense proves that there is no “systemic” racism. There is racism and unfairness, but it's not systemic, huge difference

My reply:

Racism is a product of an interconnected system.. it does not happen in isolation. It's a subtle, aggregate effect which seems to vanish when taken independently, not a few bad people saying obviously hateful things (although this does happen). People who live these experiences do not have the privilege of framing the world in such a simplistic, localized, and individual-basis point of view. The systemic nature of the situation is painfully obvious to them and it behooves us to listen.

If it helps, no one is saying that being a racist makes you a bad person — more often than not systemic racism is perpetuated by ignorance rather than malice. It's just a word… one which is, unfortunately, laden with connotation through history and triggers defensiveness in people (understandably).

However it's our job to see past that and listen. It's arrogance to dismiss the hidden complexity behind what others say and why they say it. Too often we interpret the words of others within our own frameworks, as subsets of ideas we already know, instead of entertaining the possibility that it's an entirely new frame of mind you have to learn. The acceptance that others truly know and experience things you don't is a form of empathy and a generally a good skill to have. In my experience, it really takes a lot of “letting go”, and admitting that there's something of substance there which you could not possibly understand with your current way of seeing things.

Another reason for the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences

 Unreasonable effectiveness: Consider this from a statistical perspective... if you have to, imagine multiple universes that all work differently. 

By being surprised at this "unreasonable effectiveness", you're assuming that it's highly unlikely that mathematics would be effective in predicting things about the universe, creating an "isomorphic model", in other words.

However, isn't it quite feasible that a sub-system would arise under any particular universe, say, some lifeforms, and they might have "information processing" capabilities so as to survive and propagate within that universe's rules? After all, to have some staying power within the universe's rules (particularly if one of the rules is entropy), the lifeform must "care" somewhat for its rules and global properties. This itself is the definition of what it means to actually process information -- the capability to change in response to the data, dependency, responsiveness, non-constancy. 

So it also seems feasible that these creatures might do this in some fashion, perhaps even find a way to communicate information to each other, forming an information processing mesh... and they might do this with certain patterns, protocols. Perhaps the particular instances of information-sharing pertaining to deep concepts in how to survive and replicate -- i.e. information regarding the laws and properties of how their universe work -- could be called... mathematics? In fact, this seems more than just feasible... one might say reasonable, even.

In short, mathematics is reasonably effective because mathematics arises from a smart creature's very effective attempt to understand its universe via something like simulation, to live in it better. 

If you take a meta-universe view, it seems more obvious. You can even think about different example universes like Wolfram's different cellular automata rules. Within these universes you can create self-replicating sub-systems, like the lifeforms I described above. These sub-systems can more or less simulate the laws of their own cellular automata universe under their own paradigm. Kind of like building a Minecraft server within Minecraft itself? 

Play

It sucks that the notion of "play" -- as in free-associating, undirected and creative/lateral activity -- sort of disappears as an adult. Perhaps it also contributes to a loss of neuroplasticity, weakening of lateral thinking, and other cognitive changes.

I'd love to be able to reclaim the notion of play, but I honestly don't know how. Why do we look down on (adults doing) it? Are we so captivated by purpose, structure, and certainty that we fear anything outside of that framework, or view it as social deviancy? Is it the association with childhood and immaturity? Are there differences along Western and Eastern modes of thought?

But counterargument: Adults play, just in more "advanced" ways. We've exhausted the top-level stuff in breadth, and now we play with deeper things, which means hobbies, sports. 

I agree on some level, but I still think that there's something lacking even as we do pick up hobbies. In following hobbies, we are still purposeful. We still constrain our own state spaces, and direct our activities, coloring them with some form of purpose or ruleset.  

Play and Risk Management

Perhaps it's the adult responsibilities, the singular notion of survival and reproduction that naturally constrains us. Therefore, we must adopt a purpose-oriented, proof-seeking, constrained-space mindset. 

The exercise is to get out of that mindset for at least some time. It seems difficult for adults. I'd imagine that for particularly conscientious people it is more difficult.  I think order arises out of risk management, as order and structure induce proof and certainty. i believe it can be mathematically modeled as an optimal strategy. So this conscientious attitude likely is a defense against scarcity. It would explain the conscientiousness paradox. On the flip side, abundance and lack of scarcity gives us room to optimize and explore, and break more constraints. 

Play and Mindfulness

It's well known that there's a link between meditation and neuroplasticity. An element of mindfulness is a sort of "emptying" of thoughts. From another perspective, this is analogous to removing constraints, and expanding the space of possibilities (state space of mind-states?). A core function of play is some degree of detachment from purpose. Meditation explores this concept to the end in its concept of "emptying". 

Play and Art

Art is expression, and expression requires some degree of expression. There are, of course, self-imposed constraints when it comes to art, since there is often a message that requires conveyance. But the key that connects play and art is the degree of freedom allowed within both. Play can be seen as a form of art with the purpose of expressing joy, and art can be seen as a constrained form of message-passing play. 

Wants, Goals, and Objectives

How do we want things? There's probably some sort of neuroscientific "explanation" for it, in the sense that there is a granular model that fits the data around the phenomenon of wanting things. 

The idea of goals on the other hand seems much more immediate, tangible. We don't need psychology or neuroscience for this, because goals follow logical structure. A goal can be thought of as a set of outcomes. So goals can be related to each other by implication, as in the fulfillment of one goal can imply the fulfillment of another. So you can think of goals being ordered by this relation, creating some kind of goal-ordering, with goals and sub-goals and sub-sub-goals. 

Goals and wants are related in the sense that we can want a goal. 

Can we say something else regarding goals and wants? I feel that the best, or "true" goal in a sense, should be one that guides us to optimize for... something. Prevents mistakes, shortsightedness? Gives us a sense of "global" purpose, rather than stumbling around, following our wants at the particular moment. There's a sense of "locality" in the latter. It's like solving an optimization problem by gradient descent, but the objective function isn't known, and somebody has to whisper you the gradients for wherever you are that point in time.

Conjecture. Regret-freeness model. 

We seek to find a goal, or goals X such that fulfilling this X will provide us "exactly what we want", in the sense that we do not want any goal Y that contradicts X. 

Re-orientation clause: If ever we do find ourselves wanting such a goal Y, we regard this as a sharp state-change, a significant re-orientation of wants. 

It's not clear to me yet what picture I'm trying to paint here. The model isn't perfect, I think. The re-orientation clause seems to powerful, because you could invoke it quite liberally. And I need to work out whether time has got something to do with this. But if the model works, it should be pretty obvious when re-orientation invocations are "weird"... the model can always be fit, but there are some implicit rules on how to fit it, I think. 

I have a feeling that neuroscience and psychology are going to be an inexorable part of the analysis. If not directly part of the theory, at least something to draw inspiration and perspective from. 

I wrote earlier about how wants are essentially derived from basic human needs, even though they may be inaccurate, biased, unhealthy. Perhaps this gives us perspective; wants are a manifestation of a chemical algorithm that points our arrow to satisfy... well, some biological directive, in the immediate, but survival and reproduction I suppose, in the general. 

The above makes me want to ascribe "want" a lot less philosophical import... it's no longer very abstract or mystical. It's more or less a biological algorithm. Goals, on the other hand, are purely analytical.