Consilience Dialogue 5 – D56

For this dialogue I must admit that I didn’t read, but it made good interjections. Most of all we discussed epigenetic rules. I have to say that the dialogue was a little slow so I lost some interest in it. I don’t think it was too good since it was a little superficial.

Consilience (Ch 7-8) Dialogue – D51

Pretty good dialogue, very interesting, and insightful. Dialogues like this make you think we are improving our dialogue skills, respecting our rubrics, and in general terms, progressing as a group. Nice comeback MPCers! Karen stayed for the dialogue, although in the outer circle since she was late.

Here are my notes on the dialogue:

• What are epigenetic rules?
• “They are the algorithms of growth and differentiation that create a fully functioning organism.” p.163
• The role of culture in evolution. Can culture change more rapidly evolution than genes, and how?
• Behaviors predisposed to humans. Color vision, language.
• Is culture the result of these epigenetic traits?
• “Epigenetic rules are prescribed by genes” . p.138 (very important page)
• “Epigenetic rules leave open the potential generation of an immense array of cultural variations and combinations.” P.210 (vip)
• Epigenetic rules as the reptilian brain that along with the mammal brain form the limbic system. This system is what “instinctively” makes us react somehow to different situations. These predisposed behaviors are the epigenetic rules. The main functions of the reptilian brain are survival and reproduction. Usually it tends to do three things to different situations: freeze, defend, or attack. 

• What are the inherited traits?
• Traits for survival and reproduction mainly, the epigenetic rules.
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• What is human nature?
• The relation between genes, epigenetic rules, and institutions.
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•  Are ethics an example of epigenetic rules? How about Rubrics?

• Culture transcends to the mind? Institutions can guide the mind?
• Bert: As long as we take these institutions into our mind, we will remove or modify our primary epigenetic rules.
• Hyperactive kids as obeying their natural epigenetic rules, and institutions can change them (they become more obedient and tame).
• Institutions mutate our epigenetic rules?

Debriefing – D50

We started today’s debriefing by sharing our perspectives of the Euclid class, and most of them or all, were very positive. We are all happy with this new method of going with a group that you can follow according to your standards and capacity of learning. The other thing we discussed was about commitment. It started with Isa’s interjection of stating her frustration and unhappiness with some MPCers, since they are not showing commitment at all. The discussion was long and exhausting because some, especially Lucía, when pointed out of their flaws reacted in a negative way, not accepting the feedback and making up excuses. I must congratulate Chacho and Alejo, because the three of us were, I think, the most sincere people when talking to another MPCer. It surprised me a little when Chacho said that Lucía was sinking our boat with her lack of commitment and respect, and that she should reconsider staying on the MPC. Alejo’s intervention was mostly the same when he said that if she was not willing to give her best, then it would be better for her to leave to a cruise she was planning on applying. My intervention was mainly because of her lack of respect during most of the dialogues she is in the outer circle and some even when she is in. Also, when doing other activities. But I mainly focused on her actions during today’s dialogue of Words and Rules, because she was not being real by being on her phone and constantly leaving the room and getting back in, showing her disinterest and disrespect on the dialogue. She tried to counter argue by saying we (Chacho, Isa, Alejo, and I) were not perfect and she mentioned some actions we did that were not correct. That really bothered me so I told her that those comparisons were not near correct, because of the difference in the times we committed them (almost never) and her constant failures. This is how it ended, pretty rough but feeling very good that we said it and that some us are thinking alike for improving our culture.

By the way, I thought I was going to rest some today since we were leaving early (at 3:20 p.m.) but I found out I had this Logo called Domando al Cocodrilo. It’s about psychology and how can we control our brain. I think it would relate a lot with Thinking, Fast and Slow, and Consilience. I leave at 8:30 p.m. nice, ha?

Are machines going to control us? (Consilience) – Dialogue with Chris Lingle – D47

For our third dialogue of Consilience, Christopher Lingle visited us. There were many neuroscientific topics, and one of the most important was the materialistic implications and possibilities of eventually creating artificial intelligence (AI) and emotions (AE). I mean, if emotions are just chemical reactions in our brain, can’t we create an artificial organ that simulates this? You may say that emotions are connected with memories, so how about creating a machine with enough capacity to gather databases and based on these knowledge, form opinions, criteria, and emotions. By doing this, you would be able to talk with a computer and not find a difference with a human interaction, making an exception to the Turing test. So, can we achieve a state in which we can control our minds? Read thoughts? Control them? Change our perspective of time and space, being able to control it? Are these AI and AE machines have the instinct of survival and therefore capable of rebelling themselves against humans? Is this process of controlling us, humans, inevitable and only a matter of time? Maybe, I don’t know yet…