I'm new to this egregore thinking. It sounds to me like the great magical agent, the "astral light...the receptacle of forms. Evoked through reason,the forms are produced in harmony; evoked through madness, they turn up disordered and monstrous," according to Eliphas Levi. The astral light the source of creative energy, which we tap into with our imagination and form with our will. I imagine a lot of people imagining and forming the same thing could build like an egregore; I am not magician enough to know if some greater energy with intent could inhabit it and direct it.
Well, the mystical egregores can probably be stated to not exist in the way we imagine them to. Yet there are emergent patterns made up of people - see social media and how it acts like a feedback loop that mostly dictates to its adherents. That's a modern egregore in action, and defining it is NOT easy, nor is figuring out what its function is beyond magical dopamine fixes.
I assume you all talk about the woke phenomenon as an egregore? By woke I mean the scientism on race, gender, climate, covid and history. That it is now killing, maiming and cutting children, that it looks to kill many more in the name of saving the earth, does that suggest to you or any of your friends that those who once called it a demon might have been on to something? By demon I don't mean something controlling them. I don't even know how we would know what it is, if it is. But there does seem something inhuman about it.
Well, "the woke phenomenon" is *an* egregore, sure, I think it's one of the ones out there. But if you're on the internet, you're probably part of an egregore in one sense or another; it may not be that one, it may be an actual set of others.
Egregores are particular types of groupthink, in one sense, but that's probably too simplistic as a description of what they do and are. The problem is that working out an *accurate* description is ... not trivial, because each one is so different.
I think if you are arguing from a position of monism (as it seems to me you are), where consciousness is a product of and inherent to physical human brains, a truly emergent property of them, then you rapidly run into many problems (the hard problem of consciousness has always been explaining this "hard" emergence for which we really have no evidence and no other examples exist).
But what's fascinating about the idea of egregores is that there is a very clear parallel to the emergence of human consciousness. If an arrangement of cells with electric potentials and specific connections with extensive positive and negative feedback systems produces qualia and the visceral experience of being in control of your action and the intricacies of thought (all the trappings of consciousness), how can you argue that an arrangement of these consciousnesses spatially connected with external positive and negative feedback systems cannot possibly produce something else emergent?
An egregore in this sense would be just as in control of its actions as we feel we are, and would see the individual components no different than we see a neuron receiving stimulation and inhibition from neurotransmitters, eventually leading to rapid depolarization of its membrane, and return to the initial state
But how would you describe the survival mechanism of an egregore? Is that even a function of its agency?
On the slack, we've had a number of discussions about that: if an egregore can be described as having agency, would it be in any kind of context which we, as humans and/or synapses for the egregore, would be able to recognize or describe? And if we can't, can we say that it exists _for us_?
Not being able to grasp or describe the agency of a being doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. My liver cells can’t grasp my agency, goals and decisions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to have to deal with some bourbon soon. It exists and if one wants to begin to understand one has to recognize that while recognizing we don’t know much about it, and maybe can’t.
We have to be careful with that and avoid a false dichotomy: emergent patterns are not so different from "something" when things are complex enough. Lots of simple things can lead to extremely complex behavior that when seen from the right angle is mind. Of course humans want to see minds everywhere because that's how we role, but that doesn't necessarily mean we are wrong to, and I think we have gone a little far in the past couple of hundred years in the other direction.
Frankly, I am not certain some people have minds as well developed as some really large multi-agent systems, the only difference is that I can peek under the hood of one easier than the other.
Yea, the big trick with emergence is how you get from "lots of inanimate things interacting" emergence that doesn't seem to get much mind, to "lots of animate things interacting" which gets a lot of mind really quick. The chain looks like "lots of inanimate crap" -> apparently alive thing with no mind-> lots of alive things with no mind -> alive thing with mind -> lots of alive things with minds -> ???
Figuring out how that first step means you solved creating life. Figuring out that last step's result means... you understand gods?
Well, you're ascribing intent to me that isn't quiiite accurate - I'm more interested in modeling them than in describing them as a biologist would, because I don't think they're biological or extant *things* per se. They could be, but not in any context in which we'd be able to tell, so anthropomorphizing them with "intent" or "agency" the way we would understand those terms feels unwise in a narrative sense.
I'm new to this egregore thinking. It sounds to me like the great magical agent, the "astral light...the receptacle of forms. Evoked through reason,the forms are produced in harmony; evoked through madness, they turn up disordered and monstrous," according to Eliphas Levi. The astral light the source of creative energy, which we tap into with our imagination and form with our will. I imagine a lot of people imagining and forming the same thing could build like an egregore; I am not magician enough to know if some greater energy with intent could inhabit it and direct it.
Well, the mystical egregores can probably be stated to not exist in the way we imagine them to. Yet there are emergent patterns made up of people - see social media and how it acts like a feedback loop that mostly dictates to its adherents. That's a modern egregore in action, and defining it is NOT easy, nor is figuring out what its function is beyond magical dopamine fixes.
I assume you all talk about the woke phenomenon as an egregore? By woke I mean the scientism on race, gender, climate, covid and history. That it is now killing, maiming and cutting children, that it looks to kill many more in the name of saving the earth, does that suggest to you or any of your friends that those who once called it a demon might have been on to something? By demon I don't mean something controlling them. I don't even know how we would know what it is, if it is. But there does seem something inhuman about it.
Well, "the woke phenomenon" is *an* egregore, sure, I think it's one of the ones out there. But if you're on the internet, you're probably part of an egregore in one sense or another; it may not be that one, it may be an actual set of others.
Egregores are particular types of groupthink, in one sense, but that's probably too simplistic as a description of what they do and are. The problem is that working out an *accurate* description is ... not trivial, because each one is so different.
Trying to avoid egregores by setting up culture that resists them seems egregorish.
Isn't it?
I think if you are arguing from a position of monism (as it seems to me you are), where consciousness is a product of and inherent to physical human brains, a truly emergent property of them, then you rapidly run into many problems (the hard problem of consciousness has always been explaining this "hard" emergence for which we really have no evidence and no other examples exist).
But what's fascinating about the idea of egregores is that there is a very clear parallel to the emergence of human consciousness. If an arrangement of cells with electric potentials and specific connections with extensive positive and negative feedback systems produces qualia and the visceral experience of being in control of your action and the intricacies of thought (all the trappings of consciousness), how can you argue that an arrangement of these consciousnesses spatially connected with external positive and negative feedback systems cannot possibly produce something else emergent?
An egregore in this sense would be just as in control of its actions as we feel we are, and would see the individual components no different than we see a neuron receiving stimulation and inhibition from neurotransmitters, eventually leading to rapid depolarization of its membrane, and return to the initial state
Flock sound an awful lot like mob.
Okay, I can agree with that.
But how would you describe the survival mechanism of an egregore? Is that even a function of its agency?
On the slack, we've had a number of discussions about that: if an egregore can be described as having agency, would it be in any kind of context which we, as humans and/or synapses for the egregore, would be able to recognize or describe? And if we can't, can we say that it exists _for us_?
Not being able to grasp or describe the agency of a being doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. My liver cells can’t grasp my agency, goals and decisions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to have to deal with some bourbon soon. It exists and if one wants to begin to understand one has to recognize that while recognizing we don’t know much about it, and maybe can’t.
See my comment to Ed. I don't think you're wrong, nor do I think my description and your response describe oppositional positions.
We have to be careful with that and avoid a false dichotomy: emergent patterns are not so different from "something" when things are complex enough. Lots of simple things can lead to extremely complex behavior that when seen from the right angle is mind. Of course humans want to see minds everywhere because that's how we role, but that doesn't necessarily mean we are wrong to, and I think we have gone a little far in the past couple of hundred years in the other direction.
Frankly, I am not certain some people have minds as well developed as some really large multi-agent systems, the only difference is that I can peek under the hood of one easier than the other.
Yea, the big trick with emergence is how you get from "lots of inanimate things interacting" emergence that doesn't seem to get much mind, to "lots of animate things interacting" which gets a lot of mind really quick. The chain looks like "lots of inanimate crap" -> apparently alive thing with no mind-> lots of alive things with no mind -> alive thing with mind -> lots of alive things with minds -> ???
Figuring out how that first step means you solved creating life. Figuring out that last step's result means... you understand gods?
The next step is lots of alive things with mind. Singular.
Well, you're ascribing intent to me that isn't quiiite accurate - I'm more interested in modeling them than in describing them as a biologist would, because I don't think they're biological or extant *things* per se. They could be, but not in any context in which we'd be able to tell, so anthropomorphizing them with "intent" or "agency" the way we would understand those terms feels unwise in a narrative sense.