Edgar Morin

Here is a video:



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I specifically wanted to talk about a point in the video when he is talking about how life is uncertain, choices are wagers, and we must strategize like the Art of War strategizes for uncertainty.

I want to take the side of I think I think too much. Think think think think think. Thoughts are misleading. How do I feel? What does my gut say? He put it into terms of wager so it is really hard not to make poker analogies especially considering we are on a poker message board. One could end up with a 43cc and say something like, "well, I'm going to bluff here because it is the bottom of my range...." but the best could have top pair and be like "well, I'm going to bluff shove here because it is unprofitable to call and he is going to fold better hands an insanely high % of the time." Yeah, we all knew about GTO but the highly skilled exploitive players were the ones raking it in. Yeah, I guess they had certain strategies but it was all based on who they were playing with. But, I didn't even want to go there because as we found out in the other thread the only people who play GTO are poker players, economists, and psychopaths. That's pretty horrible company in my opinion. So, we have to make wagers. That is a given. Do we really need all sorts of plans and strategies? Why not just listen to the gut in the moment? Corporations want plans and strategies. Corporations want unfeeling, productive robots. Fuck that. I don't want to be controlled and manipulated.

It's just something I've been thinking about.

I would love to discuss anything from "7 Complex Lessons in Education."

He kind of answers your question in the same video. "Listening to the gut" is just abandoning rationality and acting based on passion (feelings). He argues that we are complex beings that get into trouble whenever we operate at the extreme end of one of these two polarities. What allows human beings to function -- or flourish -- is this dialectic between the two. There is no living poetically without prose and vice versa. If you were completely free to just be able to live poetically all the time, it would become a kind of "sameness", it wouldn't be poetic anymore; what makes it the thing that you value is constrained by the fact of its opposite being present. Being strategic and able to make plans is part of what made us human. It's needed, but it has been way overdeveloped in our world and we have reduced ourselves to being performance-subjects (achievement and efficiency above all) who are largely unable to be contemplative and live poetically. It works as a push-pull dynamic: the more you develop one of them, the less present the other one is.

He kind of answers your question in the same video. "Listening to the gut" is just abandoning rationality and acting based on passion (feelings).

I think that going with your guts isn't always a bad thing. You just gotta make the difference between good instincts and bad one.
As a poker analogy, there is a difference between the fish who's like "i know it will pay this time, imma all in with 27o, my guts knows they will fold!", and the seasonned player who can't exactly say why, but knows by instinct his opponement is weak and will probably fold to a bluff.

I think its the same in the real world. The most sucessfull people probably listened to their instincts at some points.

You just gotta make the difference between good instincts and bad one.

Yeah and the "you" who makes that difference is the analytical part of you, not the affective part (not that there is a perfectly clean break between the two). You also know the difference between the fish and your intuitions because you know the maths behind the bad move the fish made and you know that he can't predict the future.

It's not instincts if the player cannot say why, it's because our brain processes a lot of data and makes associations that the conscious mind would be overwhelmed by if they were made available immediately. Your intuitions, even if they cannot be put into language, are more pre-rational than purely affective. Given enough time and with hindsight you can sometimes infer the causes as to why you acted a certain way. You can often be wrong about it too, because the interpretive center of the brain's job is to create convincing stories that don't reflect what has actually occurred.

"Similarly, society is incontestably the product of interactions among individuals. These interactions, however, create an organization which possesses its own qualities, notably language and culture. And these same qualities retroact on the individuals from the moment of birth, to ensure that they acquire language, culture, etc.... This means that individuals produce society, which in turn produces individuals." - Edgar Morin, "On Complexity" page 71.

Is it too late for me?!?!!

Society has produced me and will continue to produce me. Scary thought. But! As humans we regenerate...... well.... at least our cells do. If our cells regenerate every 4 years what does that mean for our consciousness? Our being in the world. We have to have those interactions that affect culture in a positive way. I am not going to have kids but I am responsible for producing society and for that society producing individuals. Man, I just want a dope life.... whatever that means.

On May 19 2018 19:19 RiKD wrote: "Similarly, society is incontestably the product of interactions among individuals. These interactions, however, create an organization which possesses its own qualities, notably language and culture. And these same qualities retroact on the individuals from the moment of birth, to ensure that they acquire language, culture, etc.... This means that individuals produce society, which in turn produces individuals." - Edgar Morin, "On Complexity" page 71.

I havn't read his work, but what is the profound insight in this paragraph? also he is making a claim that is empirically false. The view that human interactions and organisation ensure that language is acquired is widely rejected in the linguistics profession, and on grounds that are very reasonable. Language is learnt for the same reason that legs are grown, it is part of human ontogeny , the exposure to a culture merely fills in the gaps into what kind of syntax/semantic rules the language will have.

I agree with a lot of what he says in the video-the specialisation of intellectual inquiry has constraining effects, especially when trying to understand global problems. Certainly one has to be a kind of a polymath to try and understand the problems of society, the university is also plagued by professions trying to create their own academic theories an advanced terminology when it isn't really giving us any new insight into whats going on in the world. Take a look at what chomsky says about politics, it's all very simple, offers a lot of insight, and any high school student can understand it, but an academic profession wouldn't be able to justify itself if it offered simple explanations. I remember the ex greek finance minister and game theoriest/economist saying this is why the economics profession started using so much advanced math; because it was used to legitimise the profession and get more research grants.

Specialisation is also necessary in fields like mathematics, it's impossible to learn all of math, the field is has grown too big. So in some cases specialisation is necessary and some it isn't.

On May 20 2018 07:35 Stroggoz wrote: Show nested quote + On May 19 2018 19:19 RiKD wrote: "Similarly, society is incontestably the product of interactions among individuals. These interactions, however, create an organization which possesses its own qualities, notably language and culture. And these same qualities retroact on the individuals from the moment of birth, to ensure that they acquire language, culture, etc.... This means that individuals produce society, which in turn produces individuals." - Edgar Morin, "On Complexity" page 71. I havn't read his work, but what is the profound insight in this paragraph? also he is making a claim that is empirically false. The view that human interactions and organisation ensure that language is acquired is widely rejected in the linguistics profession, and on grounds that are very reasonable. Language is learnt for the same reason that legs are grown, it is part of human ontogeny , the exposure to a culture merely fills in the gaps into what kind of syntax/semantic rules the language will have.

It's not an original insight, it's basic second-order cybernetics/systems theory. It's a feedback/auto-poietic loop: culture and the individual are not separate entities, they generate each other.

I don't really understand why you're construding his statement about language the way that you are. He's not saying there are no genetic structures that serve to generate language in that paragraph, he is merely saying that without human interactions you won't be able to share a language and culture with other human beings.

That said, I'm pretty sure he doesn't subscribe to Chomsky's universal grammar and his views on domain specificity, which as far as I know couldn't be "empirically wrong" since the theory isn't even falsifiable. I'm pretty sure most academics don't subscribe to his model either. Not saying that means he's wrong, but there's clearly plenty of alternative models that are deemed acceptable.

Edit: Just looked up in his third book, the chapter on language. He begins the chapter by quoting (and agreeing with) Chomsky (1968): "language has no existence outside of its representation... whatever its properties may be, they must be [given] by the innate processes of the organism that invented it." So yeah, whether he departs with the theory on domain specificity or not, it's clear he doesn't hold some Skinnerian view as you seemed to think.

I wonder what I should read now?

I went with "Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millenium "

His books in English are really sparse.

Yeah, there isn't much else after that except his older work on cinema and modern culture.

"Closed rationality produces irrationality. It is obviously incapable of facing the challenge of planetary problems"

I just thought of this while reading.

Somewhere in Homeland Earth Morin is talking about how the nature of reality is that it isn't real. I think he was talking about it in relation to uncertainty. I don't understand what he means.

Rikd i suggest reading this book i'm in the middle of. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13530973-antifragile

funny how someone who looks at a wall of numbers on a daily basis trying to prepare himself for Wall Street's next major fuck up is also one of the best mainstream philosophers

On June 06 2018 18:41 cariadon wrote: Rikd i suggest reading this book i'm in the middle of. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13530973-antifragile

Crazy. This very morning I went over to my bookshelf to see if I still had a copy of "London Fields" by Martin Amis. I didn't but I came across "Antifragile" and was like "huh, yeah, I should probably read that soon."

I remember thoroughly enjoying "Fooled by Randomness." It supplemented my early poker career nicely. "Black Swan" I think I read like half of that book and was just like "ok, I got it" and it was in a phase of my poker career that I didn't read much and I already understood outlier events pretty well. I've kind of realized that there are just too man books out there so if my patience is waning I might start skimming it or just stop reading it altogether. I don't know if I can do 500 pages of Nassim.

It doesn't matter anyways. I am giving all my books to my sister who for some reason wants a glorious library in her home. I'm trying to get rid of property. All these niggas is trying to hoard it. Whatever.

Man, you should have seen my library before. I gave a library to the library. So, if my sister wants books, eclectic books sure it's mutual aid. Plus, my sister rocks.