Merge pull request #301 from audreyt/main

zh-tw: catch up on 03-02 split and tie up loose ends

contents/english/03-00-a-view-from-yu-shan.md → contents/english/03-00-what-is-plurality.md

@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
-# What is plurality?
+# What is Plurality?
 
-"Democracy is a technology. Like any technology, it gets better when more people strive to improve it." - Audrey Tang[^Audrey]
+> "Democracy is a technology. Like any technology, it gets better when more people strive to improve it." - Audrey Tang[^Audrey]
 
-"Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality … this plurality is specifically the condition — not only the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam — of all political life." - Hannah Arendt[^Arendt]
+> "Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality … this plurality is specifically the condition — not only the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam — of all political life." - Hannah Arendt[^Arendt]
 
 In the previous chapter, we discussed the growing conflict between technology - or, more precisely, technology as implemented largely by profit-seeking corporations, and democracy - or, more precisely, democracy as implemented by top-down centralized nation states, and how these two forces seem to be pulling in opposite directions. To develop an approach that moves beyond this toxic binary, it helps to first acknowledge and understand the thing that the two sides have _in common_. This is a complex topic, but in our view a reasonable summary can be made as follows: the thing that the two perspectives we previously labeled "Libertarianism" and "Technocracy" have in common is a **monist view of the world that sees the social world as a two-level structure of "individuals" and a monolith called "society"**.
 
@@ -14,11 +14,11 @@ Note that this view differs from a historically common approach to adding nuance
 
 <table><tr><td style="width:50%">
 
-<img src="../../figs/circles1.png"/>
+<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pluralitybook/plurality/main/figs/circles1.png" />
 
 </td><td>
 
-<img src="../../figs/circles2.png"/>
+<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pluralitybook/plurality/main/figs/circles2.png" />
 
 </td></tr><tr><td style="width:50%">
 
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ Right: a plural view of society.
 
 Interactions between circles are complex, and much of what is beautiful about our world comes from various interactions - as well as many of our conflicts. Each individual has all kinds of loyalties to all kinds of groups, and efforts to try to strip away this plural loyalty in favor of either unbridled valorizing of self-interest or demanding supreme loyalty to some overarching structure representing "all of society" (or "all of humanity" etc), are the cause of many of the problems that we see today. Profit-making corporations, and the workflows and the technologies that they build, often cause the most damage by stripping away this complexity. Meanwhile, democracy, seeing itself as trying to create a counter-pressure, often ends up making a second punch against these diverse groups and communities by demanding that these workflows and technologies operate in ways determined and standardized at very large scales by a centralized state.
 
-### What is Plurality?
+### Defining Plurality
 
 Our vision of Plurality can be described succinctly in three parts:
 
@@ -41,3 +41,7 @@ Our vision of Plurality can be described succinctly in three parts:
 * **Technology must take center stage in Plurality, and plurality must take center stage in technology.** Digital technology is and will be at the center of how we interact with each other, but it will be far better placed to improve the world if works with our diversity, rather than working around it or fighting against it.
 
 Each of the next three chapters will go through one of these ideas in much more detail.
+
+[^Audrey]: [Interview with Azeem Azhar](https://sayit.pdis.nat.gov.tw/2020-10-07-interview-with-azeem-azhar#s433950), 2020
+
+[^Arendt]: Hanna Arendt, The Human Condition (1958).

contents/english/03-01-living-in-a-plural-world.md

@@ -97,9 +97,6 @@ If the defining idea of 19th century macrobiology (concerning advanced organisms
 
 [^LifeAsJoy]: “Life as Joy, Duty, End”
 [^RelationalReality]: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/05/the-big-idea-why-relationships-are-the-key-to-existence
-[^MonistAtomism]: “Objectivist” here is not meant only in the narrow sense of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, though perhaps she expresses this view most consistently, but rather in the broader sense of common sense, simplistic version of the philosophy of the Enlightenment.
-[^NaturalSelection]: Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Darwin, The Descent of Man.
-[^ComputationalIrreducibility]: Wolfram, Stephen. “A new kind of science.” (2002).
 [^MultilevelSelection] Wilson, David Sloan et al. “Multilevel Selection Theory and Major Evolutionary Transitions.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 17 (2008): 6 - 9.
 [^NeuroscienceComplexity]: Here are some examples of these properties in neuroscience: **Sensitivity**: In neuroscience, sensitivity refers to the ability of the brain to detect and respond to small changes in its environment. One example of sensitivity in the brain is the phenomenon of synaptic plasticity, which is the ability of synapses (connections between neurons) to change in strength in response to activity. This sensitivity allows the brain to adapt and learn from experience. **Chaos**: Chaos is a property of complex systems that exhibit unpredictable behavior even though they are deterministic. In neuroscience, chaos has been observed in the activity of neurons in the brain. For example, studies have shown that the firing patterns of individual neurons can be highly irregular and chaotic, with no discernible pattern or rhythm. This chaotic activity may play a role in information processing and communication within the brain. **Sensitivity and chaos together:** Sensitivity and chaos can also interact in the brain to produce complex and adaptive behavior. For example, studies have shown that the brain can exhibit sensitivity to small changes in sensory input, but this sensitivity can also lead to chaotic activity in neural networks. However, this chaotic activity can be controlled and harnessed to produce adaptive behavior, such as in the case of motor control and coordination. The brain's ability to integrate sensitivity and chaos in this way is a hallmark of its remarkable complexity and adaptability. 
 [^SocialDynamics] Page, S. E. (2007). The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies. Princeton University Press.; Hidalgo, C. A. (2015). Why information grows: The evolution of order, from atoms to economies. Basic Books.; Acemoglu, D., & Linn, J. (2004). Market size in innovation: Theory and evidence from the pharmaceutical industry. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(3), 1049-1090.; Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017). The enigma of reason. Harvard University Press.; Pentland, A. (2014). Social physics: How good ideas spread—the lessons from a new science. Penguin. Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster. Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380. Uzzi, B. (1997). Social structure and competition in interfirm networks: The paradox of embeddedness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(1), 35-67.; Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Harvard University Press.; McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 415-444.

contents/english/03-02-the-lost-dao.md

@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@
 
 *      Wiener's scientific work focused almost exclusively on physical, biological and information systems, investigating the ways that organs and machines can obtain and preserve homeostasis, quantifying information transmission channels and the role they play in achieving such equilibrium and so on.  Personally and politically, he was a pacifist, severe critic of capitalism as failing basic principles of cybernetic stabilization and creation of homeostasis and advocate of radically more responsible use and deployment of technology.  He despaired that without profound social reform his scientific work would come to worse than nothing, writing in the introduction to *Cybernetics*, "there are those who hope that the good of a better understand of man and society which is offered by this new field of work may anticipate and outweigh the incidental contribution we are making to the concentration of power (which is always concentrated, by its very conditions of existence, in the hand of the most unscrupulous.  I write in 1947, and I am compelled to say that it is a very slight hope."  It is thus unsurprising that Wiener befriended many social scientists and reformers who vested "considerable...hopes...for the social efficacy of whatever new ways of thinking this book may contain."  
 
-     Yet while he shared the convictions, he believed these hopes to be mostly "false".  While he judged such a program as "necessary", he was unable to "believe it possible".  He argued that quantum physics had shown the impossibility of precision at the level of particles and therefore that the success of science arose from the fact that we live far above the level of particles, but that our very existence within societies meant that the same principles made social science essentially inherently infeasible.  Thus as much as he hoped to offer scientific foundations on which the work of George, Simmel and Dewey could rest, he was skeptical of "exaggerated expectations of their possibilities"
+     Yet while he shared the convictions, he believed these hopes to be mostly "false".  While he judged such a program as "necessary", he was unable to "believe it possible".  He argued that quantum physics had shown the impossibility of precision at the level of particles and therefore that the success of science arose from the fact that we live far above the level of particles, but that our very existence within societies meant that the same principles made social science essentially inherently infeasible.  Thus as much as he hoped to offer scientific foundations on which the work of George, Simmel and Dewey could rest, he was skeptical of "exaggerated expectations of their possibilities."
 
 Across all of these authors, we see many common threads. We see appreciation of the intersectional and layered nature of society, which often shows even greater complexity than other phenomena in the natural sciences: while an electron typically orbits a single atom or molecule, a cell is part of one organism, and a planet orbits one star, in human society each person, and even each organization, is part of multiple intersecting larger entities, often with no single of them being fully inside any other. But how might these advancements in the social sciences translate into similarly more advanced social technologies? This is what we will explore in the next chapter.
 

contents/english/03-03-technology-for-collaborative-diversity.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# Technology for collaborative diversity
+# Technology for Collaborative Diversity
 
 > (D)ecisions about the development and exploitation of computer technology must be made not only "in the public interest" but in the interest of giving the public itself the means to enter into the decision-making processes that will shape their future. — J. C. R. Licklider, "Computers and Government", 1979 
 
@@ -221,6 +221,6 @@ All three ideas had their seeds at the edges of the early community Lick formed
      Estonia paragraph
 
 
-      Yet while Estonia pioneered the use of Plurality to transform a national government, both its size and its very early development limited what it could achieve. While it took longer to fully develop, in the last decade a small and mountainous island became the world's clearest example of a different path.  Its story animates our next chapter.
+      Yet while Estonia pioneered the use of Plurality to transform a national government, both its size and its very early development limited what it could achieve. While it took longer to fully develop, in the last decade a small and mountainous island became the world's clearest example of a different path.  Its story animates our book.
 
-[^WEIRDest]: Henrich, J (2020) The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_World
+[^WEIRDest]: Henrich, J (2020) [The WEIRDest People in the World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_World): How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous