On feminism and celebration

I am a feminist, but to be more specific, I will act as if I am about to give my opinions about some ideas that may characterize different schools of thought.

I look at feminism from the point of view of myself in the current time and project myself to different times. So, for example, I look at the principles and ideas of first-wave feminism by projecting myself to other periods in time, and then I consider the relevance of those ideas in the world today. Through these projections, I ask myself several questions: What is the current state of things? What is the ideal state of things? What change is possible? What's the best way to influence change?

Of course I believe that laws should apply equally to both sexes (even abortion laws, though men cannot currently birth children). That's a given. And I won't address those aspects of feminist movements. Outside of legal equality, the second-wave feminist movement that began around the early 1960s addressed sexuality and non-legal inequalities. These issues are rooted in the traditions of societies, and some argue that even capitalism plays a destructive role here. Inequalities in the workforce and sexuality issues spurred scientific debate regarding gender differences, and reactions to these debates led to third-wave feminism and post-feminism.

Third-wave feminism challenges the definition of femininity, supports a more continuous notion of gender, and celebrates freedom in sexuality. Some say that third-wave feminism is the result of generations that have grown up with feminism. This is true, but it's often followed by a negative critique of third-wave feminism. My issue with the statement is that third-wave feminism is complex and is a result of many more factors than just "growing up with feminism".

About the same time the third-wave feminist movement and other movements such as the LGBT movement were moving to celebration of sexuality, other ideas also "decided" that it was time to celebrate. The theme is celebration. The free use of terms that used to be considered offensive is celebrated. Anything that was not previously celebrated is celebrated: the terms cunt, whore, bitch, etc., prostitution, stereotypes of all types. Intellectuals, celebrate. Anti-intellectuals, celebrate. Atheists, celebrate; the evangelical Christians were already celebrating. To get attention, you celebrate. Everyone likes a party, and the biggest party wins. Celebrate because you have all the sex, all the drugs, and you have the best life. Celebrate because you've had it tough. You have the biggest tits, the biggest dick, and have all the fun. You have the cutest tits, the cutest dick, and you look really good in your clothes. Celebrate because you're super fat, celebrate because you can make fun of people really well. You work hard. You are the most passionate; you understand people. Celebrate the solstice. What you make, everyone adores.

Has humility been trumped? Has it always been this way, or does it cycle? How long must we wait for no gender or infinite varieties of gender, one mind or infinite minds?

This is a video clip put through a filter I wrote in MATLAB. It finds edges that are moving and creates a transparent haze there that cycles through the colors of the rainbow and more.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/42394/okierainbow.avi

The constructal theory is the mental viewing that the generation of design (configuration, pattern, geometry) in nature is a physics phenomenon that unites all animate and inanimate systems, and that this phenomenon is covered by the Constructal Law stated by Adrian Bejan in 1996: "For a finite-size (flow) system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve such that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it."

Life can be described as those systems that evolve to make energy flow through them most efficiently.

SPECTRAL UNIVERSES! MATH POEM THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
This is a beautiful thought experiment expounded by Harold Cooper about the possible evolution of continuously morphing, continuous universes. He proves that if the universe is continuous and changes continuously, then no matter what the physical laws are, it will not eventually reach every possible state, among other things.

John Conway lectures on the free will theorem that says if we have some free will, then according some assumptions, so do particles like electrons.
http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/flash/lectures/2009_03_04_conway_free_will.shtml

"Some readers may object to our use of the term “free will” to describe the indeterminism of particle responses. Our provocative ascription of free will to elementary particles is deliberate, since our theorem asserts that if experimenters have a certain freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom. Indeed, it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom is the ultimate explanation of our own."

Some things to try with brain farms...

1. Connect the brains to virtual worlds and try to get them to learn, grow, and become intelligent. They may need participation of grown people in the virtual worlds to teach them.

2. Speed up the physics in the virtual world to see how this affects intelligence.

3. Try to make a brain intelligent enough in a virtual world to educate other new brains that are connected to the virtual world.

4. Put a new brain that is to be educated in a virtual world in a virtual world that is embedded in the virtual world of a brain that was educated in that virtual world. Increase the simulation speed (and/or vary other parameters) in each level of the hierarchy of virtual worlds. Oversight by brains whose access spans multiple levels of virtual worlds might be needed.

5. Connect new brains in different ways at different times in their development. For example, connect the output of one brain's visual cortex past the basic image processing functions to the input of the visual cortex of a new brain so that higher levels of abstaction may be formed. This could also be done in the code of a virtual world. Or, try to connect multiple brains to one agent in a virtual world.

6. Vary the physics of the virtual worlds. For example, make random things less random, make everything squishier, make physics non-local, or omit conservation of mass and energy.

7. Vary the basis of "reward". Make the reward mechanism be based on arrangement of symbols that are valid syntax of a programming language with increasing rewards for code that calculates elementary mathematical functions, generates random numbers, or has an output of high Kolmogorov complexity.

Some Things I'm Not Completely Sure About...

1.. P=NP is either a number theory problem (2-SAT and 3-SAT could be converted into encodings for different types of numbers?) or a physics problem (a question regarding the nature of spacetime).

2. Fractal-like systems and/or systems with very simple rules can resolve inconsistencies between quantum physics and the general theory of relativity and may be important for explaining the genesis of galaxies, Wolfram style.

3. Computing that is more "reconfigurable" (like FPGAs, evolving processor architectures, programming for many-core systems) in increasingly higher levels of abstraction will bring big results in machine intelligence.

4. The first three items are related.

http://andyslife.org/games/sand.php

Evolution of Evolution
Molecules were some of the first things to use evolution to do what it does. Random permutations of interactions between atoms found stable molecules and they stuck around because they could. By this same process, molecules evolved that could group together and be more stable than they were on their own. By this same process, molecules evolved that could help make stable ones and form complex structures and mixtures that could make more of itself, which led to first living stuff. At each step in the process, a higher level abstraction formed, and this seems to be the theme of evolution in the universe. Our brains evolved in an analogous way. At first they formed low-level abstractions using sensory information that controlled basic behavior in a somewhat direct manner. The brain probably came about because it could support a wide variety of these low-level abstractions using one medium: neurons. Human brains still have this low-level machinery going on, and it's things like edge detection, basic shape detection, automatic pupil dilation, and so on. We now abstract these thing at a much higher level to invariant classification of objects, invariant classification of actions and the many other classes in our language, the self, and all of these things, for the most part were not evolved in the low-level machinery of the brain but instead evolved in the domain of society. A society spends years preparing a child's brain to be a part of it, and now society is in the process of evolving other mechanisms by which these abstractions can be built by way of overlapping work in biology, chemistry, neuroscience, psychology, physics, electrical engineering, materials science, and computer science. Both separately and in combination with our biologically evolved abstractions the evolution of these abstractions are also happening in the machine. At each step in the process, a higher level abstraction forms, but it seems particularly interesting from our point of view now because it seems that from the level of abstraction on which we operate and create new abstractions, we are continually aware of all the lower levels and the higher levels we create.

Justin Curry pointed me to an interesting book by R. Buckminster Fuller called Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, which is a sort of guide for how we might want to direct our evolving efforts. Buckminster suggests that much of what has evolved in society and education makes us too specialized and gives a convincing account involving kings, pirates, big strong dudes, and trade of how this came to be. He suggests that specialized education came about as a means for control and for the few to maintain rule over the masses, and this extends to our whole education system now.