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This webpage relates to the CASA proposal. No promises or guarantees are expressed or implied. Only assessments and goals. All statements made here in must stand or fall on their own merits, and are presented to aid in the formulation, for each reader, of an opinion of their own, freely expressible.
In so far as this document expresses desirable objectives, it still, however, represents no binding commitments to anyone else. Any existent or future contracts and guarantees what so ever are simply not dealt with here in, and are or will be a matter for entirely separate documentation.
In so far as this document constitutes any part of a prediction or prognosis, it is a best effort. But this document is not a promise by anyone to anyone else. Only the prospect in and of it self may be deemed promising. Such may be hoped.
How can even the deeply ambivalent be compatible with anyone, any match, when the ambivalent, by definition, are not even compatible with themselves? Indeed, such is where their problems truly arise, much as they may entrench themselves in denial on that very score. nevertheless, even the ambivalent need love too! And so, the deeper the ambivalence, the greater the insight, care and finesse called for in Psychotherapy.
But what is Psychotherapy, except a contrived relationship under controlled conditions? If Psychotherapy, then, seeks to simulate an ideal relationship, then why not instead seek the real thing, just like everybody else? Why not seek one single flexible embracing solution for anyone and everyone? Because there may still really be special cases. Indeed, the particular needs of ambivalence are a contradiction, an unreal and impossibly inconsiderate Narcissistic fantasy, that's why! It may be fashionable to compare shrinks to whores, but, indeed, either tend to be accorded the least sympathy or respect from those who need them the worst! nevertheless, sophisticated personality profiling and matching even at it's height would most likely also serve for better matching patients to the right Psychotherapists, rather than actually putting them out of business.
And so, the very notion is, quite literally insane! Through out history, the failure of great ideas and mass movements, much less forgotten individuals, has been in the denial of manifest contradictions. And that applies to technological Research and Development no less than pure Science. Approaches so fraught with contradiction stall and are finally superceded.
In particular, Douglas Wilson’s notions of bringing together only those who are agreeable, while keeping incompatible individuals apart, yet anonymously sharing their experiences via an interactive data base, amounts to human interaction only via agents, computer models of personality which, as yet, tend to be inaccurate, inflexible and insidiously controlling, and thereby may ultimately only amount to automation of the infamous Delphi Technique, risking all of the unsavory manipulations and abuses heir to, either intentionally or simply via the notorious insidious runaway Adductive Validation tendencies of Artificial Intelligence/Stupidity. "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -to quote George Orwell. By contrast, Douglas Wilson’s prediction seems to be of an unprecedented therapeutic effect from near perfect compatibility, by which all self-deception and dysfunctionality is to melt away in due course, first, and only then the individual acceptance of difficult truth and responsibility, utterly painless, without any need of such interpersonal struggle even as often manifests from inner conflict.
The implicit assumption seems to be that conflict on any level,, is merely friction, and just as in engineering, friction is imperfection, inefficiency exacerbating wear and tear, leading, in turn, only to systematic breakdown and failure. But that would make for a dangerously blithe assumption in Psychology, disregarding any other views of inner and social life, of personal growth, relationship, social evolution and interpersonal conflict resolution, such as may even been seen as akin to that of Scientific Method, wherein struggle and even conflict are at the very heart of all fruitful processes of Evolutionary Epistemology. So, perhaps such, being such an important yet beleaguered value, ought to actually be also considered an important matching criteria, beyond simply being only filtered out to eliminate incompatibility?
Indeed, can or even should CASA ever actually draw a final curtain upon all human drama whatsoever? The idea may even seem offensive! Because such perfect harmony or “true love” is commonly the dream of conflict aversion, passive/covert aggression and depraved indifference, of the most pathologically self centered manipulative and exploitative psychiatric patients, resentful of adult societal expectations not only of practicality, sacrifice and deferred gratification yet also beyond timid conformity and oppressive peer pressure, but of assertive honest square dealing, caring and real and abiding empathy to relate to others even at the expense of one’s own immediate comfort and convenience. And all these things may be as much product of confrontation as of nurture.
Still, none of this logically rules out even very such sad, angry, passive and lonely fantasy of effortless conflict free perfect harmony as uniquely prognosticated, and constructed towards actual feasibility in the proposals of Douglas Wilson, as a better lifestyle for everyone in a real Utopian future. Surely our species owes no less of our success to adapting our environment than from adapting to our environment. Why compromise if one does not need to? The extra effort of refusing to settle may pay off. Social and technological evolution implies the emphasis and priority of desired traits at the expense of less desired traits. A more human society, then, paradoxically, may also be less human. But what’s wrong with that?
The line between genius and madness is often not thin, but blurred. Madness of one kind or another is often observed to be the only font of certain insights beyond the censorship of common sense. The old notion that all human problems are actually communications problems has been dusted off and updated by Douglas Wilson, into the bold idea that all human problems are not communication problems, exactly, but, rather, to be more precise, compatibility issues resolvable by better profiling and matching. Of course, CASA, Computer Assisted Social Activity, is untested and needs to be tested. This is agreed among all those who see any promise in the idea.
nevertheless, the only possibility of failure that Douglas Wilson, the programmer and researcher who has coined the acronym CASA, is to give any other consideration in the mean time, is that of CASA matches that fail to actually come about due to incidental mishaps (but never deliberate Relational Bullying, because such, as he puts it, simply is no part of his world-view!) and people with genetic congenital Neurological pathologies who need medication.
Any other issues or problems foreseeable he dismisses as speculative, and demands the most rigorous conclusive peer reviewed data evidence!
And this rather seems like one standard for Optimism and another for caution. So how can that be honest or responsible? Where as the opportunity has been presented, now should come, in turn, also, legitimate misgivings, one at a time, so that the reader may evaluate the entire prospect:
There are extreme Headgamers who's every conversation and interaction is designed only to illicit what is called Existential Validation, to irresponsibly "vindicate" and to justify as blameless the learned helplessness, self destruction, and defeat of the poisonously conditioned behavioral rut, learned self image defense or coping routine that may be referred to as their script.
Ulterior Transactions or headgames are such generally compulsive manipulation that has one false deceptive and/or self deceptive purpose on the surface, but another real dysfunctional, destructive and/or self destructive one beneath, in the drive for Existential Validation to irresponsibly "vindicate" and to justify as blameless the learned helplessness, self destruction, and defeat of the poisonously conditioned behavioral rut or leaned self image defense and coping routine that may be referred to as their script.
To help one another break free of headgames, Transactional Analysis offers, among other things, the Transactional Analysis, the script Antithesis is a repertoire of curve ball responses and come backs design fitted to each of the known and catalogued types of headgames, to frustrate Existential Validation and offer, instead, an Existential reality check in the strategy of quick disentitlement from each particular categorized Ulterior Transaction or headgame by thwarting and escaping whatever the real payoff and moving away from any of the established roles and simply refusing to play the game.
And beyond matching one to one, a key goal of CASA is to be optimal social embedment for all manner of practical, social and even deep emotional needs, even therapeutically.
But, while many may indeed begin to awaken from their scripts and respond positively in Transactional Analysis, there have been found to be entrenched headgamers who are most likely only panic and actually seek out others more amenable with whom to actually escalate their headgames all the more. Besides, as with anything else, in the first place, one must have the desire and the dedication to follow through and complete Transactional Analysis.
Likewise, CASA may be able match, group, and network promising candidates Antithetically, to help break one another's headgames, and reach new levels of refreshing honesty, genuineness and true spontaneous intimacy. And even work more subtle matches to help people without scaring them off.
But, from results in Transactional Analysis that should not simply be ignored, there appear to be certain character types who will most likely not be interested, and even refuse to put up with that. People who appear to be adamantly disinterested in anything but their headgames. Are such people then intrinsically unmatchable for any helpful purpose?
Currently, sophisticated personality tests such as the MMPI are actually very
good at diagnosing personality disorders/personality issues. However, there
remain two problems with such personality tests. That they are
tediously long, and that their utility declines as a person becomes more and
more normal, indeed, normal, by most definitions meaning some sort of
equilibrium in balanced personality ruling out certain extremes. Hence, as
pathology decreases, so does predictability. And ain't that the truth!
Hence, the greatest hoped for efficacy of CASA must indeed be contingent, by whatever means, human or computational, upon the promise of ever finer discrimination facilitating Scientific testability, refutability.
The limits of CASA:
Intrinsically unmatchable and beyond help by
CASA alone?
CASA would identify problem character types, entrenched headgamers, abusers, Masochists, and also Pathological Liars. CASA is to profile for jealous rage, abandonment fear, empathy versus empathic failure, attachment disorders, grounding in reality, honesty versus dishonesty, and so on.
And, again, pathology tends towards one dimensionally predictable behavior, for the most part consistently destructive, but also possibly positive responses under the right circumstances. But are there always such openings?
Indeed, there are those who just don't relate. It's hard enough to help such. But, worse, whatever such people may have going for them, it may prove challenging to find what they may have to offer others. And that would be crucial to combinatorial optimization.
More over, there are those who consistently bite the hand that feeds them, and even kill the goose that lays the golden egg. And others, generally harmless except to themselves, who quite consistently tend continually to shy away from their own best interests. Indeed, the most blatant among the entrenched Headgamers are exploitative abusers and self destructive Masochists.
There appear to be those individuals, Sociopaths, who have no interest in any social interaction, or any other person, what so ever, save either as unwitting and/or vulnerable prospective victims to manipulatively and/or forcibly abuse/ terrorize and to exploit, or cohorts to assist and co-validate in such abuse. Confirmed abusers encountering and recognizing any such others showing no potential either as victims or cohorts, mutually threatened and repulsed, only tend simply to shun one another. The Existential Validation of the abuser's jealous rage is simply to get away with harming others deliberately, and nothing else is of much interest. Nor, likewise, would the abuser in all likelihood tend to be very appealing to anyone not deceived or otherwise sucked into the Headgame!
And there are also those most extreme and confirmed Masochists. These are individuals who are a) observed to relish and eagerly seek to be abused, and b) appear to display a phobic avoidance response to the prospect of kindness and kindly people. Such an individual really will typically insist upon accepting any positive benefits to them only within some context of abuse, in order to existentially validate, to "prove" that abuse pays off.
Indeed, for the Masochist's Existential Validation is their self-styled martyrdom and an undying hope that their abusing parents, or similar villains, will one day be redeemed, and that a good person underneath the vile exterior will emerge and love them. By paying for attention by enduring abuse, the Masochist, in classic denial, evades a deep phobia of genuine trust and and confrontation with their own trauma, inferiority and jealous rage.
While all manner of behaviors, saintly, monstrous, and otherwise, are often demonstrably, profoundly, and radically environmentally influenced in ordinary people, there also are those severe cases who appear to be nonresponsive, or who's repertoire of observable responses are severely limited, and do not appear to vary regardless of how social stimuli are changed. Perhaps even far milder pathological patterns, yet with the same complete exclusion of any other context for interaction.
In short, it may be said that what we are dealing with are memes (hypothetical units of behavioral and cultural information that are defined as the metaphorical equivalent of genes), however parasitic and even debilitating, evolving for survival to guard their own integrity, not only by strong resistance, both blatant and devious, against all contradicting memes (experiences or inputs of whatever variety, be they modifying "mutagenic", recombinant memplexing, or refutational and/or reconditioning "hunter-killer" memes), but, which is more directly pertinent to the functionality of CASA, also by immediate and ongoing selective social networking to close memetic access to the mind and the life of the memetically "infected" individual.
Memetically, the survival of the ever fitter might conceivably culminate in any fixed behavior pattern that will not so quickly completely disable or destroy the host as to prevent future transmission. Hence, possibly, a profound and unusual difficulty for CASA alone in the inculcation and substitution of more desirable behaviors, in such difficult cases.
Indeed, the poisonous conditioning of abusive childhood environment in which Mental Illness is very effectively transmitted indeed, may prove nigh indelible in someone who has never really been a whole adult, however highly they may function. For, just as with Psychotherapy or anything else, opportunity for voluntary change in response to new and different social stimuli, however improved, refined or better selected and targeted, is all that even CASA would really be able to offer.
Only the conjecture that some as yet unknown stimulus not only exists in principle but can be discovered and applied to relieve every problem whatsoever, at all contradicts the above truism. But the possibility at all in and of itself only constitutes so much support. And it also remains that not all conceivable stimuli are actually feasible in any possible real life match, but some are fantasy realizable only under delicately controlled and contrived therapeutic conditions.
Indeed, what can keep inflexibly destructive and self destructive people whom we cannot tempt into anything benign, involved in a social context that would provide them with none of the evil they seek (which is bad for them and/or for others), blocked as they will be, from destructive and/or self destructive interaction, with opportunity only for that which they shun and avoid (however desirable from any sane and rationally Hedonistic perspective)? What can ever positively motivate them, and, in the mean time, keep'm coming while their dark compulsions are extinguished, frustrated and hopefully eroded away?
One answer may be in shameless manipulation by way of the very jealousy and the fear of abandonment which drives such destructive and self destructive impulses and compulsions to begin with. The provocation of jealousy by exposure to people who's expressiveness and activity will reliably incite them them to burn with jealousy. And the feeling of simply being left behind and abandoned by others whom they would plainly see progressing. In short, there are many who desperately need role models close to them, to be drawn out of their ruts.
The problem is, however, while there are some who need no more than the example of a peer they admire, envy and fear to loose, in order to progress, there are those for whom this is only part of the solution. Because the first impulse of jealousy and abandonment fear, especially for the worst cases, is ever more flagrant and/or devious increasingly destructive or self destructive behavior. Especially outside of any sort of controlled environment to hold the acting out of jealous rage in check.
And that brings us back to the need for Transactional safeguards for the dual purpose of a) protecting others and b) keeping the entrenched Headgamer, abuser, or Masochist irresolvably frustrated, extinguished in protracted Systematic Non Reinforcement, with only positive opportunities and outlets then provided for resolving said frustration.
Conceivably, pathologically permissible and destructive jealousy might actually be provoked, thwarted and frustrated. Jealousy, the resentment of others who are less repressed, will turn back into repressed envy, the lust for what others exhibit the courage to express. If all goes well, ordinary needs demanding functional behavior for expression would finally then emerge, when destructive patterns of compensation through hostility are simultaneously frustrated and thus effectively reconditioned away.
But the jealousy and abandonment fear must be so completely engrossing and overwhelming that the subjects will not simply back of and/or bide their time and seek out another social context in which to act out. In this way can such conflicted needs be met, safely. Perhaps.
For this purpose CASA is conceived to create anonymous long distance social networks, matched both for jealousy provocation and for Antithesis, with the safeguards of CASA longitudinal data, matching for error covariance, suspicious and caution. And perhaps even expert guidance and a stated mission, and matching for an interest in the undertaking.
But, for public safety, except to professional help, local area matching must be deferred and stalled for inflexible abusers, until they show improvement. And Masochists and other entrenched Headgamers, harmful primarily to themselves, may also prove unmatchable, locally, at least until they improve.
This seems like the best that can be hoped for in such extreme cases, unless CASA actually succeeds in stumbling across each individuals irresistibly liberating "magic stimulus". And who knows? But this seems like sheer Psychomancy!
What is there save for supposition and hope that everyone no matter how screwed up, has any irresistibly liberating "magic stimulus" only waiting for CASA correlation? Is there even a clear hypothesis at all worked out?
Otherwise, the only option left would still be coercion within a controlled environment, thus going beyond CASA alone and unaided.
Another problem is that some of the worst cases will quite consistently tend to retreat in to the fantasy refuge of Pathological Lying, even deprived of the ability to lash out for satisfaction or to self destruct for attention. And in all normal situations, such is, at best, a complete communications deadlock and a waste of time.
So CASA is to also provide and transition anonymous long distance social networks where in Pathological Lying is acceptable and appreciated, designed to seduce those who need it into Transference to reach Catharsis, within the safety of fantasy.
This might even be helpful and appreciated for such other non communicating maladaptations as different modes of unintelligible idiosyncratic speech.
Rather than humoring or personality conflict, bypassing, an exchange which is not genuine communication because it lacks sufficient intersubjectivity and does not carry at all the same meanings between the participants, may be optimal and even Zen-like for those who simply need more soothing company until they may ever be ready to actually reach out, however tentatively. For, traditionally, in the Zen, conversation is seen as less important as an exchange, than as a catalyst. Because, though each party can never be entirely on the same proverbial page, fortunately, they need not even be! And so, who knows! CASA may even some day cross reference and catalyze even the Zen!
And failing that, as Thomas Szasz is fond of pointing out, everyone benefits from attention at all one way or another.
As inflexible as these cases are, there may well be those with only a few more necessary added defenses, to thwart even the special measures. Worse still, the most dangerous are often very well adapted to moving within the social network. CASA is not to be a band aid solution, and the limitations of CASA must, likewise, eventually call forth more than mere band aid repairs.
Technology does not always follow neatly from the application of Science. No, the History of Science and Technology doesn't always describe a one-way street where Science discovers first, and then Technology neatly applies that knowledge. Useful tools and techniques have been invented with almost no scientific knowledge, since prehistoric times. Many important ideas have actually been put into practice, and developed that way, long before ever even being articulated.
Indeed, often it has been the
Technology that opens the way for scientific discovery. Fire is a
prime example, it's usage long preceding the first Discordian
analogies of Heraclitus, let alone any modern comprehension of
oxidation. Because fire was used without any knowledge of
chemistry. And the state of the art knowledge of Physics had long
been practical rather than formal, as materially embodied,
experimentally learned, and Memetically encoded and transmitted
all in the crafting and the utility of the wheel.
Likewise has it been through history with better governments,
legal systems, education, and many other social institutions
embodying a social technology expressing a practice of civic science in
application, not formulated and formalized until much later. Indeed,
unlike Philosophical idealizations of virtuous and harmonious
life, many of the real principles behind the best practical and
pragmatic governance of the Ancient Greeks where never explicitly
stated in any Realist and even down right cynical Social and
Philosophical literature until historical research and
rediscovery in the Renaissance, in turn giving rise to the Social
Contract Theories of the Enlightenment.
And the Rationalistic ideals of the Enlightenment live on,
particularly the hope that someday social technology may well be
no more than the application of Social Science, upon which our
social institutions may then be fastidiously founded upon. Alas,
currently what we don't know about society appears to vastly
exceed what we do know.
Worse still, most of our current haphazard disastrously inefficient and so
blatantly mismanaged government, legal system, schools, and other social
institutions are bereft of any minimum of Sociology, let alone the full measure
of knowledge and skill readily available and currently practiced. For, alas,
policy tends to
be the last concern of Politics, incompetence is monumental and our legislators
rend to be
scientifically and technologically illiterate! Only corruption at
all holds the system together, and only the political technology
of the democratic form barely alleviates such pressures by which
it should all otherwise collapse under it's own weight!
Not that we are as yet at any point where any social technology is
the straight forward application of any well-understood Social
Science. Someday social technology may well be no more than the
application of Social Science, upon which our social institutions
may then be fastidiously founded upon. Alas, currently what we
don't know about society appears to vastly exceed what we do know.
But we may hope that a new instance of social technology
such as CASA may lead the advance of Social Science, not merely
as a distinct research initiative, but in the evolution of
society, as with Ancient Greek statecraft in practice embodying
the gain and growth of a practical knowledge analogously to the
Physics of the wheel, or as the spark for unprecedented new
social patterns to be investigated, like unto the long unknown
physical information manifest in fire, and likewise tamed by an
uncomprehending humanity.
However, while perhaps
Methodologically supportable from the
History of Science, it is not clear how such Conjectural
Scientific Method could ever in turn support particular
success
or failure predictions. Any support for such predictions, or
indeed explanations for the results should any such predictions
ever be borne out, must be found elsewhere.
But CASA itself deals to some extent in the art of
successful
prediction without explanatory support, at the vanguard of
Technology preceding Science. Specifically, computational brute force used to
uncover obscure correlations and test them with attempted prognosis. The CASA concept is predicated upon making the most of the
surprising and even accurate predictions that Artificial Intelligence has been
able to draw from poorly understood correlations, and pushing this tool to
whatever it's limits. After all, we should expect lurking within the
Gestalt, more complex
interrelations than we yet understand. And the first indication thereof, as with
many a Scientific discovery, may be anomalous correlations, at all consistent
and therefore predictable, thus calling for new explanatory
hypothesis that may well be longer in coming. And hopeful confidence may arise
from knowledge and experience of what the constituent
Sociologically and Psychologically applied data processing
technologies can do, of encouraging research and experimentation,
even short of such real scientific understanding of how and why
which hopefully may accrue in the fullness of time. For such
appears to be the Technologists' credo of
Epistemology of the
unknown, in practice, and the well spring of hope for
CASA
visionary Douglas Wilson.
And this already raises serious problems of Scientific Method. Most of all, that the sheerest possibility does not equal to probability or preponderant evidence, only initial hypothesis, if that. After all, a purely engineering challenge begins from that which is well known. And masking experimentation under Research and Development does not change any of this. And so, in designing any properly rigorous and precise experiments, why not also seek to test the particular contrary hypotheses or exceptions already exposited, as well? That is why Scientific experiments require a range of control groups, for the discriminating precision to rule out contrary or competing viable hypotheses. After all, such much is how CASA is hoped to become more Scientific and testable than Freud ET AL! To properly define a relevant experiment so as to adequately test an hypothesis to exclusion of contrary hypotheses, still requires a full range of test and control groups, including, for CASA, those most challenging and resistant character types. Why abandon the Scientific quest for truth (correspondence to reality in assertions), unless one lives in denial, afraid to know?
Until conclusive evidence, the mass of any supporting evidence especially for the most extreme claims of Douglas Wilson at all is embodied only in the work of Douglas Wilson and as yet remain in his private possession. And so, much remains unclear for the rest of us.
Douglas Wilson challenges even of the very evidentiary role of explanation in Science. And this is problematical, because, how can anything be testable without any (explanatory) hypothesis to test?
The Instrumentalist answer is that tests are not for the viability of hypotheses, but rather for practical results. However, the problem with that is of Adductive Validation, as in Fortune Telling, wherein one continues to build upon encouraging results without backwards error checking, easily veering off far astray and never suspecting.
And this has been a chronic difficulty in Cybernetic research. With no idea what they are doing, apparent succesess are often wild goose chases dragged out by Adductive Validation, as when a neural net learned not how to recognize the difference between empty forests and forests full of camouflaged tanks, but only how to tell bright days from cloudy ones, in photographs provided, because the means for proper Scientific error checking are simply not provided for.
This is why the most glaring deficiency with traditional Cybernetics has been that it amounts to sheer Cyber-Behaviorism! Because only the input and output are known. But not the the activity inside the neural net itself. And there are dissidents within the field of Artificial Intelligence espousing systems capable of at least monitoring and recording their own internal state, so that researchers would have more to go on.
But can even this be enough?
With neither the scientists nor their neural nets having any idea what to look for, finding it takes that much more luck.
The central problem is that of Pattern Recognition, which is really pattern creation (as demonstrated by Feature Integration Theory's vindication of Gestalt). Correlations drawn in fantasy must then be tested against reality.
For the aim of Science is knowledge of truth, truth defined as correspondence to Reality, not just practical results, whatever that actually means.
And this is the Hypothetico Deductive Method.
But, after all, the Hypothetico Deductive Method is essentially a democratic value system demanding the free and open contest of competing viable hypotheses, even to that of the Hypothetico Deductive Method itself.
What, then, are the competing viable hypotheses to the Hypothetico Deductive Method itself?
One such may be Zen.
But central hypothesis to Zen seems to be more as to questions of priorities and life style, possibly in competition with any others, including those of Scientific curiosity. Zen appears to be more of a competing value system than a competing Epistemological Methodological and Ontological hypothesis.
Indeed, Zen tends to define knowledge at all, according to it's importance within Zen priorities, entirely.
Another competing viable hypotheses to the Hypothetico Deductive Method itself is Douglas Wilson's attempt to rehabilitate Inductivism, an important and separate goal which deserves to be stated and treated explicitly.
"Perhaps there are some areas of science that inductivism fits, and others that it does not. [...] the nature of inductivism depends upon what one takes induction, as a method of reasoning, to consist in. Standard critiques of inductivism take the induction involved to be induction by simple enumeration. It certainly is pretty clear that this pattern of reasoning on its own is too impoverished to constitute the main process of scientific thinking. Not everyone thinks of induction as consisting solely in the pattern of inference by enumerative induction. Not surprisingly, the more relaxed one is about what can count as inductive reasoning, the more plausible inductivism becomes. More plausible, but also less distinctive as a methodological position. Some writers have suggested that we should call any inference to the best explanation an induction. If we do that, then I suppose we are all inductivists. But it is questionable whether we should allow that degree of latitude to inductive inference. Since there is quite widespread disagreement over what the criteria for a good explanation are, there is a danger that taking inductive inference to be inference-to-the-best-explanation may only result in making it unclear what is and what is not a warranted inductive inference." - INDUCTIVISM AND ITS DEFECTS
And among the worst practiced abuses of Inductivism, quite aside from Epistemology, beware the path to underhanded consensus manipulation, revamped in high tech concealing low guile. Indeed, much of the hope and promise of CASA is in outmoding all such chicanery. But more on this, later.
More over, CASA as is conceived, is to be seeking to bolster the one revolutionary poorly understood tool, Psychology and Psychotherapy, by the use of a newer and even more poorly understood revolutionary tool, Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence. And Artificial Intelligence research has been deeply entrenched in Neural Net experimentation, electronic imitations of the brain, from which only input and output can be recorded, but not their mysterious internal operation. But then, revolutionary tools are often poorly understood especially by those who most rely upon them. And this is never without detriment to the practical result, Pragmatism be damned. It remains folly to cavalierly dismiss the goal of Science which is the pursuit of truth.
One thing, however, that is actually if only generally understood at all about this new way of Heuristic Computing, is the brain-like use of weak correlations, even logical Fallacies of Weak Induction, fallacies in which the connection between the premises and the conclusion is not strong enough to support the conclusion, conclusions that are not necessarily but only somewhat and even very slightly possible and suggested from any given premise, as cumulative circumstantial evidence. A computer can uncomprehendingly process volumes of just such weak correlations that agree and that together nevertheless make for too much of a coincidence to ignore, even despite falling short of logical necessity.
This involves the assignment of probability "weights", which, as yet, makes no concrete sense, except as an estimate, however arbitrary, of our own subjective certainty and uncertainty, called measurement uncertainty (which, indeed, makes far better sense from a stand point of NeuroScience), unless one accepts the objective reality of probability (and operative somehow in the Macro not just the Quantum universe, yet!) whatever that means. But all this is another question entirely.
CASA is to make correlation's that no individual can even guess at unaided. But at least CASA, as envisaged by Douglas Wilson, is to be be designed to record by what steps conclusions are reached, even if not precisely how probability weights are reassigned, Cybernetically, from continual feedback.
Evolutionary Computing, by trial and error, gathering longitudinal data, thus selecting the most successful responses even without gaining understanding of the problem, accrues new riddles with every success. And yet this may even be promising.
And so, we may even keep alive the hope even for the most inflexible and non responsive cases, thought intrinsically unmatchable for any helpful purpose, that even the most unresponsive and depressingly consistent people may only be waiting for the right social stimuli, not only beyond their reach but our imagination, which may yet be discovered by CASA. Some as yet untried "magic stimulus" to yield some new and beneficial response.
Who knows? Perhaps, one day, almost no one will be unredeemable by CASA. And then, CASA would live up to the immortal advertising slogan of Philip Kindred Dick, "What God Promises, we deliver!"
But there may be more to consider:
The optimistic assumption for CASA seems to be that there will always be some vector to come at any thorny issue sideways, by meeting some other need at the root of the problem, such that the contacts and social stimuli facilitated by CASA are to be attractive and therefore effective. Even by way of evolutionary computing, even such that we may never understand quite how the solutions work. But can that always be the case? Is that always even intrinsically possible?
Much as those Psychopharmacological NeuroScientific Reductionist Neo-Buddhists may decry the Ecclesiastical vanity of any such snares of the Ego, and advocate, rather, a future of better living and perfection through Utopian NeuroChemistry instead, nevertheless no human desire or illusion endures as more cherished and powerful than fulfillment of the yearning for sympathy and understanding. But not always. Not for a person in denial, hiding from themselves, ambivalent even and especially at the prospect of understanding with an unacceptable entailment of honest self knowledge. Indeed, such will tend only to accept the unearned pity that is dishonest Existential Validation.
CASA may, at least initially, be programmed to seek the elimination of drama from life by selecting best interpersonal influences towards desired outcomes for all. Or can the human condition ever be made that simple?
What if truthfulness hurts? Can freedom then ever be attainable without that cost or without that willful choice?
Perhaps the worst practiced abuses of Inductivism, quite aside from Epistemology, beware the path to underhanded consensus manipulation, revamped in high tech concealing low guile. Indeed, much of the hope and promise of CASA is in outmoding all such chicanery. And so, can truth best be served by steering certain people out of contact with one another as incompatible? Would that really be that much more more noble than the old chemical straightjacket? For as George Orwell put it, liberty, if it means anything, is the freedom to tell others that which they do not want to hear. In other words, the right to clear the air with disruptive, flagrant and incompatible insensitivity, the very catch-all and vague cardinal sin of intolerant and oppressive Political Correctness.
So, what is to become of real life character development, growth, which often entails real life dramatic conflict at the very least on on the level of creative tension as that is sometimes called, in order to reach of any sort of real happy or hopeful ending? Is the CASA system, as it adjusts by recompiling longitudinal data, to end up matching for those criterion as well? Even in society post-CASA, can we, indeed, always get we want? Or, like the Rolling Stones sing it, if we try some times, we might just find, we get what we need? Will CASA actually choreograph drama, in the true sense as opposed to the melodrama of headgames, but for real life?
Yes, indeed, what really defines nurture in life? What is compatibility? And what would it really be like? Are the liberating social stimuli, if and when they may ever be possible, predictable, and reproducible repeatable and on demand, all sweetness and light, just the way that certain insecure passive, selfish and uncaring types, so shockingly lacking in values and unwilling to relate, fantasize them to always be? Not everything of real abiding value that passes between people is all sweetness and light. Can, or indeed, should it ever be so? At least given that the vast majority of people still do have their personal issues and inner demons to confront.
Therapy is not the first social interaction serve in coping with tragedy, after all. Most everyone wants sympathy and understanding, and may benefit greatly therefrom. What some might not want, however, is responsibility. Empathy for others, that calls upon the individual to be responsible, is a weak and buried impulse in the sullen and self centered, lacking in character and seeking to locate their own faults anywhere else but in themselves. And these number among those pining the most for more compatible matches to other people, who are, in actuality, incompatible with others because they are ambivalent and hence incompatible even with themselves, much less others. For example, those most remote, professing the quest for true love. In a nut shell, the most entrenched maladies of deeply seated hypocrisy.
No matter that courage may even derive from joy and strength from thriving and nurture rather than Nietzschean adversity, yet it has even been observed that character manifests only from the experience of regret that may even require facing it and coming to grips. If that be true, then it takes character in order to gain character. And if that where so, how would any one have any? Perhaps it's some sort of emotional boot-strap operation, an arduous and painful stretch. nevertheless, perhaps, under the right "near perfect" circumstance, everyone is to find themselves amenable. Or else, just maybe, even given the optimal best opportunity, it may still take free choice, resolve even sometimes against the grain, more than any any seduction of Positive Transference sliding along any perfect and utterly dreamlike initiativeless path of least resistance, no matter how consummately well charted and navigated by technological miracle.
Can technological advance actually render character redundant and obsolete? Character as manifest in Scientific integrity demands such important and serious questions not be taken lightly. But it has been tried before, particularly in the history of Scientific Method:
Science began to seek investigative procedures, Epistemological Methodology, that don't depend upon character ever since confronting the bull-headed failure of Religion to build character reliably. But to no avail. Because Hypothetico Deduction, the last viable human Epistemological Methodology, relies entirely on intellectual integrity and honesty.
Though some rebuke what they see as the Moral Relativism entailed, and perhaps not without justice, the great advance in state of the art of modern Psychotherapy over Religious Salvation is to do so much more to fit the treatment to the patient, than to force the other way around as Religion particularly and Moralism in general are chronically wont. And CASA is hoped to do this better than ever before. But, nevertheless, might there yet remain important limitations intrinsic to reality? If so, then there may still remain issues of character, no less in lives we lead than in Science.
And, for the most deeply disturbed, frightened and mistrustful, the seductive Positive Transference (traditional to Psychoanalysis and the whole of Psychotherapy which has it's roots therein), even if the defenses of Negative Transference are overcome, has always depended upon the professional relationship and the illusion, the extreme non threatening and undemanding role of the analyst or therapist as exemplified by TVs Mr. Rogers and is no less unreal and manufactured.
But even this is often not enough. How is any real relationship, no matter how consummately matched, ever to replace or surpass Positive Transference for the worst cases? Again, Douglas Wilson's confident reply remains that this will come about, all as smooth as silk, by the input and computational correlation of factors we do not know and will not even understand afterwards!
The limits of Psychological and Psychotherapeutic guess work would be transcended by more precise details that we don't have, won't grasp or need to when we have them, but must, nevertheless, exist.
Only seemingly miraculous...
If it works, CASA would be able to help run the world better and more smoothly. At last, a Utopia in which there is to be no inconvenient and expendable people who do not abide by some meticulously restrictive social contract! Only the better pursuit of happiness for each and all. But even best optimal facilitation of the pursuit of happiness may still only be part of what it takes.
To curtail the most one sided exploitation, the moral inhibition of Empathy already encourages and facilitates all manner of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" defensive coercion, in learned sensitivity, conduct, custom and pressure of moral suasion, not to mention enforcement of the law. And bearing that in mind, do we really want to live in a world where no one ever feels put upon? And what sort of a society would that be? Is pure and utterly noncommittal spontaneous collaboration to the exclusion of all else remotely feasible or even desirable?
Life is suffering. And that just won't do. Most of life's struggle is, indeed, flagrantly needless and tragic. But is all? Might it not, however, still be not only inevitable and indispensable but even desirable and crucial to inculcate such inner struggle, and even it's interpersonal manifestation, even friction, as is essential to growth and to character development? Innocence being rare and irretrievable as it is. And has not every society that has endured depended on tribulations of personal growth, one way or another? Might it not also be prudent to include such parameters in the operation of CASA? But, and here's the rub, might that not sometimes run against personal preference? And, after all, how enticing is regret? And thus, would there be any point in such an offering?
Only sympathy that sooths regret can make facing regret at all attractive. But we have already seen how complicated even such a simple thing becomes. And how even so clear a free choice becomes obscured. One must ignore human nature and Psychology entirely not to anticipate difficulties.
After all, will every proverbial horse brought to the metaphorical water drink, even when it tastes medicinal, not only when it runs sweet and clear? Not without the thirst and ambition that takes, in the individual. That which we call, in our limited understanding, character out of regret, not fleeing from it. Not conflict aversion or passive aggression. Among such may therefore remain if not unmatchable, challenging, to say the least. What if it just isn't tempting?
Research where in actual chemical disinhibition, rather than stabilization, is applied, even for particularly intractable patients, to lower their defenses but only during the actual Psychotherapy of one kind or another, has been routinely curtailed by the authorities phobic of the Drug Culture. Because, any drug just as it shows the first glimmer of promise in therapeutic disinhibition during sessions of treatment, quickly also becomes popular on the street for much the same transient liberation of affect. Therefore any such therapeutic prospect may remain difficult to evaluate.
Today's over lucrative and over promoted primitive suppressant chemical straightjackets are touted by Psychopharmacological Neurochemical Reductionism more often than not predicated upon simply ignoring environmental factors and how emotions are always naturally reflected Neurochemically, instead of first investigating to properly rule it out, so as to simply jump to the causally reverse conclusion, despite that such is so obviously the exception! (Even the alternative approach of treating malnutrition as any sort of contributing cause to depression, seemingly misses the very question of how, contrawise, affect and temperament might actually influence Omega-3 fatty acid production, digestion and uptake in the body.)
Thence springs the myth of Endogeny, of spontaneous anxiety and such.
Where as it used to be that when a patient complained of anxiety out of the blue with no trigger, the Therapist would gently ask the patient what they happened to be thinking of at the time, and guide them past their denial.
And the old talking cure is still most helpful, but only if it takes.
Indeed, the opposite approach entirely, that we may some day be truly be free of all deep regret and character issues, a hope which is of great appeal to those who have the hardest inner lives and demand everything easiest, is the Utopian vision of better living and perfection through the Utopian and subtle Psychopharmacology of the future as propounded and prognosticated by the Hedonistic Imperative website.
And in fairness, real Futurism predicts greater technological advance than 'Brave New World' shallow Distopias of repressive Psychopharmacological blunders and nightmares of coercive Borg consensus.
Because the nanotechnology drugs of the future, sooner than we think, may well be able to really change mind and mood! To actually improve function and even induce happiness. And without side effects as such.
And so, it may be argued, that with better living through chemistry, there is to be no need either for revolution from within or in the outside world. Indeed: "There is an eerie confluence between what Prozac does and what society demands."
But the personality is a complex whole. Thus how can even the smallest and most artful change, in order to have it's cascade of profound strategic effect, ever be anything less that intrusive distortion by definition?
The questions and challenges of Pathology have long overshadowed definition of wellness and the essential nature and definition of true integrity which may not be so easily extricable from the problems of unhappy and bizarre maladaptive rigid inflexibility.
The mechanics of character and the human condition may indicate the limitations of CASA no less than they do of Religion and Psychotherapy, and for that matter, why any future perfected Psychopharmacology, as advocated by the Hedonistic Imperative website, must be intrusive by definition the more so should it ever succeed, no matter how economically it tweaks the personality (indeed, because of that!), and with all due respect to that vision.
CASA, by contrast, is to be drug free entirely, and is to improve life as defined as that which is experienced, real interaction, as stimuli, rather than directly and intrusively enhancing the mind that experiences. And so, it may be argued, that with CASA, there would be no need either for need for conflict on any level, neither inner effort of character nor struggle with the outside world. And so, we return, again, to the question of just what eerie confluence, then, would the concept of CASA seek for? Indeed, while the hope for progress in development in CASA is no less towards artful subtlety, nevertheless, must not CASA remain heir to all those fundamental limitations and ethical questions?
Imagine some latter day bomb throwing Anarchist, instead, bringing Online some sort of disguised evil Psychotherapist program designed to subtly encourage violent crime, equipped with artificial intelligence to learn what sort of prompts seem to work most effectively.
For that matter, matching people to egg one another on in the worst behaviors is far easier, indeed so difficult to prevent, than making desirable matches. Imagine Terrorists matching together their most dangerous psychos for co-validation and greater mayhem!
Indeed, here is a parody (I hope!) warning of the abuse of Online resources in the perpetuation of sinister cause. But then, there are already USENET newsgroups as bad and worse...
After all, there are already thriving communities of spite, not just cutting edge Web-tech in the dark service of ubiquitous Neo Nazis and various and sundry other legions of angry kooks, but forums of revenge, cyber-vandalism and, of course, flaming.
All swords are two edged, and every tool is only as good or evil as the hand that raises it to action. Any intrinsic goodness of CASA must ever depend upon it's seduction and neutralization of dangerous tensions. But human nature has the decided head start.
The CASA proposal boasts of being a decidedly nonconfrontational Utopian panacea. But, beyond the effort of critical thinking and rational questions, there is already simply venomous opposition to the very goal of universal embedment of each individual into an optimal immediate social network, linked to the larger social network and the needed and useful resources of society. And have been even since the dawn of man. Because anticompetitive dominance is a tried and true strategy in nature. And this should come as no surprise. After all, what is Fascism except the reaction against modern democracy?
And, in real life, even beyond the need for outreach to help others in trouble, there may be the need for intervention, and to actively resist cliques of bullies who engage not only in harassment, but Relational Bullying and ostracism which basically amounts to ongoing social network deoptimization. Despite the better life and temperament that CASA may ever offer such unhappy and maladjusted individuals as behave this way. Indeed, it may well take more time and effort to reach bullies among others.
More over, considering that the more wide spread the success of CASA, the more common may also be eruptions of jealous rage in response. At least, initially.
Indeed, consider how Gaybashers have come out of the woodwork as Gays came out of the closet, simply because the Gaybashers are triggered by what hither to had been publicly repressed.
And this is only one example of how new acceptance of others tends to anger bullies who then act out against it. Why, one only need turn the TV dial to Jerry Springer for mass validation of Jealous rage as a way of life!
And so, just as the Science Fictional Harry Seldon had his Second Foundation
in reserve to protect his great plan, so too should society deliberately have
civility in active response to conniving incivility. At least as an option in
reserve or stopgap. And that is the thrust of the
CliqueBusters
TM
proposal.
To recapitulate, the process of the brain, imitated in Cybernetics by the fabrication Neural Nets, is believed to begin from circumstantial evidence of sensory input, subject to weak correlation, triggering a cascade down the path ways of the brain, in which each neuron in turn switches one way or another, choosing a decision. And the outcome is majority rule, for opinion, reaction, or even perception itself. But what does this mean, unless it's completely arbitrary?
Of course, the form of the brain is not quite arbitrary, but a product of evolution, and, there fore, an experimental mechanism for survival. But that is no explanation of what happens, or why it works! And there are those who are satisfied with whatever works, never mind how or why, at least for now. In the mean time, however, the only known guiding principle for weak correlation remains probability weighting, whatever that is or however that is done.
It's rather the same mess as Quantum Mechanics, and in the macro universe, yet! The first question is, what is probability? Probability, it stands to reason, is either zero or one hundred percent, given perfect knowledge, which, of course, is thermodynamically impossible. Thus, probability is merely measurement uncertainty, inevitable under the Physics of Fisher Information. Alas, that much common sense is rejected under the claim that probability is objectively real, and not just of future outcomes, but of current conditions to begin with! But the begged question then remains unanswered, what is probability? And how are probability weights assigned, except from imperfect knowledge? And even then, how? This is by no means clear.
The only good news is the Pragmatic defense that computers excel in adjusting probability weights by trial and error. And that is what Neural Nets, natural or artificial, do.
And so, once understood, in totality as in generality, any cognitive process can only be about refining conjecture by testing. So much for Inductivism.
Indeed, another complication is is the notorious obliviousness of AI to Biased Sample, if anything even more so than any other valid conclusion from dubious premi.
So much for all the questions Douglas Wilson believes that one should not ask about the concept, the trend, the proposal that he calls CASA. For there is not only room but, fortunately, also means for improvement:
Intelligent question-answering programs already implemented, do more than simply retrieve raw data; they make deductive inferences in order to return all valid responses and report logical inconsistencies, possibly even upon input. Indeed, further information is requested from the user should a question asked be discovered to be ambiguous.
CASA is to match new problems to previous cases, and all of their characteristics, from a growing and continually revised longitudinal database, for the purpose of then adapting
successful solutions from the past to current situations, for
compatibly matching users to one another, and also to written advice and recorded prior experience of others.
Thus, CASA as conceived is already to be cased based rather than merely rules based.
However, CBR data bases also retain explanation of results, and, so, seek to advance learning in some true sense.
And this has been crucial to it's progress and
success, in the field and on the
market, while other approaches still founder in the lab.
In short, CBR as applied to software is claimed to be an actual conjecture-engine. Science, not merely Technology. Seeking explanation, thus rejecting sophisticated Obscurantism.
Indeed, the CBR software is supposed to 'understand' new problems in context, by soliciting such input. Indeed, prior states
-both current environmental and prior developmental, in application to problems
pertaining to human behavior- may be utilized to explain new and reoccurring features of problems.
in short, causes are also sought to explain behaviors, and reasoning decisions in particular.
Likewise, CASA as conceived by Douglas Wilson, is also to seek to correlate prior data with new data. But not in an explanatory fashion.
Explanatory elegance and Hypothetico-Deductive Method having been rejected by
Douglas Wilson as inessential to predictive power in Inductivist Research and
Development. Because, (to repeat) from the standpoint of Technological Pragmatism,
understanding can wait for Science to catch up, later.
And, after all, computers are facile in even the most unwieldy calculations. Though, perhaps if CBR can obtain elegance in reasoning, might that not translate, after all, into more
efficient code to reduce the load on the CPU?
First of all, perhaps CBR can redeploy as an improved filter for the Creativity Machine's vaunted random creativity. But more saliently, the versatile variation of which the Creativity Machine is capable, might even enable CASA to begin varying questionnaires and even thereby modifying and testing new theories, all autonomously, even beyond just building associations over time as do conventional neural nets.
IEI's Patented Creativity Machine Paradigm purports to be a quantum leap in electronic mimicry of the conjecturality of the living neural system functionality, forever antiquating brute force computing and quaint notions of Inductivism unaided. To maximize opportunity, it is most sagacious to bring about the convergence of new technologies by widening the scope of knowledge referenced in development, as recommended in TRIZ.
The mechanics of character and the human condition may indicate the limitations of CASA no less than they do of Religion and Psychotherapy.
It should be admitted, of course, that given how correlation is fallible in the first place (Pattern Recognition being, in fact, only pattern creation, as demonstrated by Feature Integration Theory's vindication of Gestalt), explanation only advances even further into conjecture.
But conjecture is, after all, the preferred domain of Science. And for good reason. While the mysterious in Cybernetics has tended to be a stumbling block to progress, not a Promethean boon like fire and the wheel. Because, computers being so idiotic, it still all comes down to how precisely the programmers define the problems. Or in Cybernetics, how well they filter the extraneous from data sets compared. As when the computer may learn to distinguish a bright day from a cloudy day, instead of, as intended, woods filled with or empty of camouflaged vehicles. Just for one example of a problem which can be daunting. Thus, if, instead, CASA is to be equipped to explain it's decisions along with the automated monitoring and record of internal state missing in more traditional Cybernetics, to log the changes in it's inner state, then tweaking CASA may be that much better guided, efficient, edifying, and more fruitful, benefiting from error checking crucial to Scientific Method as crucial safeguard from Adductive Validation, perhaps to become only the more of a Methodological issue as AI advances towards true cognition..
When we don't know what computers are doing, and how, then how are we ever know that they are doing what we want them to? Why, from the desirable results, of course. That is, if the desires be simple, as they always are in those successful cut and dry Evolutionary Computing proof of concept experiments. Not nigh unfathomably complex, as are those to be dealt with by CASA. Making human sense of longitudinal data may still prove challenging, in case CASA's own uncomprehending success criteria ever run however subtly awry.
And accepting the Scientific need for explanation still seems the first step for predicting, admitting, and grappling with the most ultimately rigid human problems, even for CASA. Even acknowledging the intriguing prospect that CASA may find correlation and matching mysterious solutions inconceivable to the unaided human mind, we might still be better off at least trying to recognize and understand whenever should that occur.
And, from a business standpoint, the more extreme and precise the definition of character types beyond CASA help, the stronger the support for claims of a that much broader market waiting to be tapped.
And, while CASA may be frightening enough to some, not to mention CliqueBusters by far more so, aggressive appeal for support, among those most progressive, serious, interested, curious, visionary, compatible and helpful to the advancement of CASA, is more important than cravenly avoiding offending anyone at all, even those most conservative and already least interested or even most opposed.
Market dominance is more often the prize seized by the first who can do it well enough, rather than falling to the one who eventually does it best. Thus Perfectionism is irrelevant to the true Pragmatists, the Entrepreneurs. And the real opportunity may yet survive fallibility and imperfection.
However, lost opportunity, in wait for perfection and hiding from criticism, is less easily recoverable. (And that is cause for regret, hence growth and maturation of character or else the failure all thereof.)
Aaron Agassi agassi@erols.com aspiring Entrepreneur.
In further comment to the CASA proposal with Douglas P. Wilson dp-wilson@shaw.net visionary software engineer.
CASA and related matters are discussed on the Social
Technology mailing list.
Copyright © 2000-2008 Aaron Agassi agassi@erols.com
Please visit CASA creator Douglas Wilson's home page if you have not already done so.
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