Meditation 3:
[Hardest of the meditations, for me.]
Let us observe the difference between [post-utopian]-->[colonial alienation]
and a connected thing (say [I see you picked Ace]-->[You see you picked Ace] from a deck of cards):
In the first case, there is no way to settle an argument about whether Ellie is post-utopian or not. We would predict that it would cause arguments between people that are not settled. Anything connected to the causal web is more likely to lead to settlable arguments, at least among people behaving more-or-less rationally. It is not a perfect test, but it does suggest that I expect to see different things from connected networks and unconnected networks, like people changing their minds.
Meditation 3: [Hardest of the meditations, for me.] Let us observe the difference between [post-utopian]-->[colonial alienation] and a connected thing (say [I see you picked Ace]-->[You see you picked Ace] from a deck of cards): In the first case, there is no way to settle an argument about whether Ellie is post-utopian or not. We would predict that it would cause arguments between people that are not settled. Anything connected to the causal web is more likely to lead to settlable arguments, at least among people behaving more-or-less rationally. It is not a perfect test, but it does suggest that I expect to see different things from connected networks and unconnected networks, like people changing their minds.