Conservation And Change

When do we need to conserve knowledge/things, and when do things need to change?

A record of the meeting of the Socrates Cafe, held 12 April 2025 to discuss the above question.

People in attendance:

• Me
• David (Australia)
• Ryan (UK)
• Marine (Japan)
• Ryan (Canada)
• Jack (Australia)
• Glen (Australia)
• Merry (Japan)

Please note that this is just the notes I took from the meetup, I didn’t record my own contributions and in recording the contributions of others I may have missed or misunderstood some of their points. If I have used square brackets [for example], it is to provide commentary on what was written down, which may be my views of what was said or to clarify for the reader that there may have been something else that was missed.

What are some Japanese Philosophers? Senno Rikio [not sure of spelling]

• Related to the concept of Wabi-sabi [spelling?], being in the moment Another name was mentioned but I didn’t hear it well

David: What needs to be conserved is the essences of society [<- My Q: what are the essence/s of society?]

Currently there is a lot that needs to change in society - it is very unhealthy; [No examples presented, Consumerism? Addiction to social media? Inequality?]

Been Reading a lot of Harari - “You don’t need to remember the past but be liberated from it”

Jack: Radical change leads to/involves violence, chaos, and revolution. Change is inevitable, but incremental change is better.

Nick: While I can think of many historical examples when radical change was violent and may not have been justified - e.g. French Revolution, American Revolution, Mao’s Cultural Revolution; there are also examples when arguably radical change was needed and justify - e.g. American Civil War to prevent slavery in the American South.

Fight against Hitler an example too.

The later liberalisation of trade in China was revolutionary too and very successful

David: In fact Deng Xiaopeng mentioned the process as “feeling the rocks on the way through the stream”. It wasn’t as top-down or dramatic as Mao’s cultural revolution, and probably should be seen as more incremental than dramatic

Jack: We need to have one eye on the past and one eye on the future. The key is to retain what we know, and also know what we don’t know.

On the Necessity of change

Ryan (UK) Change is inevitable

The individual human is symbolic of civilisation -> (Just as when you’re young you don’t know much, in earlier times we didn’t know much)

Jack:

If we don’t change we suffer Individually we see that’s true

Merry: “To Conserve” means “To keep something going/ to allow something to survive”. The point is adaptation is needed to keep something going,

Nick therefore although the question looks like it is positing opposite ends, adaptation and conservation are more symbiotic.

David:

As per [Harari], what we need to change is our fiction

To do this we need to understand change management, evidence, and understanding.

We should also redefine the outcome we want and all agree to it. E.g. we could aim at “[Gross National Happiness]” as the ultimate outcome. We should think of it as “Rocks” as cornerstone of things to conserve

Mentioned the Rejectionist work of David Bereta[sp?].[I couldn’t find any thinker with that name who was identified as “rejectionist”. Someone please let me know who this is!]. Rejectionism appears to be the belief that groups themselves cannot have beliefs - “According to rejectionists, although groups can accept propositions, they cannot believe them” [[https://philpapers.org/rec/TOLRR]]

When we look at society now, we shouldn’t compare it to previous societies, but to all possible situations - not just different historic periods.

Measurements of Happiness:

• When we look into happiness, we can ask “Is it possible to be happy?”, and we will findd it isn’t, so then we can do the long work of “What’s next?”

However, this won’t happen, because with humans’tribal background, it is built toward conflict

Jack: On genetic changes, the issue is that genetic/biological changes are much slower than social changes, and they haven’t kept up with it.

It is now time for humans to change things in themselves <-[In this context it seems to suggest eugenics/genomics?]

Ryan (UK): Life Reacts, intelligents adapts.

We’re [Humans] are smart enough to ask “what is happiness?”, and maybe the very fact that we ask this question prevents us from being happy, because we’re always looking for something more.

Not many people do ask this deeper question, it seems that this question of what is happiness shows that we’re a little uncomfortable with life [or self-awareness]

Nick: I think it’s JS Mill who mentioned that Happiness can be achieved, but only indirectly, by aiming for something else, hence the aim of happiness is due to fail.

Jack: Re “Collective fictions” as per [[Harari]], they have become more ridiculous now with the advent of science, they used to be much easier to understand and more compeeling (e.g. Religious narratives)

Glen: There is so much reflection on the question of what knowledge should be consrved and what should be changed in different cultures [examples?]

• What conversations need to change [missed the rest of this thought]

Jack: Retaining knowledge is difficult, and an art in itself [My thought was about librarians as storers of knowledge, and thinking about the destructions of various great libraries in Alexandria, Damascus and Baghdad that meant so many great tracts were lost]

Nick: The American constitution is a good example of a collective fiction that was created, and it admitted that it was created (rather than revealed by god)

Animism [?] Jack: The american constitution is a good example, of the tension between preservation/change, see the fierce debates over the “Right to Bear Arms”.

conssomething that is created

David: (Your) philosophy should be able to fit on a postcard, and then we should look at which variable should be most heavily weighted [in the context of preserving ideas?]

Transcendence [May be raised as conservation requires I concept of self-transcendence?, Or perhaps that transcendence is such an idea we should be conserving, or perhaps that we are too self-absorbed to be transcendant in such a way that is needed]

Harari has the idea that “Culture is a parasite”, and we spread it amongst each other. This cultural difference for example is seen in the way Chinese explorers didn’t seek to impose their ideas on the American Continent to the peoples there, whereas the Europeans did.

There is a question about how society progresses now with such a high level of cultural heterogeneity, [My thoughts: Seems to suggest there is little important in common between cultures, or the differences are too great/irreconcilable/lead to conflicting actions]

AI as a major source of change

Glen: Brings in the idea of AI. With this, we have 3 years until AGI, and about 10 years until superintelligence (AI able to improve itself), and how do we cope with that [in the context of conserving things]?

Ryan (UK):

Change is inevitable, should we fear it? - Suggests we shouldn’t. e.g. He Accepts of his place in the medical world and needing to work with AI as a Doctor, and also that one day it will replace him

Historically there have been major economic changes such as the industrial revolution, which led to massive changes but new job was created. [It seemingly was suggested that this process was smooth, uncontested, and that people coped with it well. But historically, the change was highly contested, disruptive, and I would say it was not well dealt with until post 1950, some 120 years after the industrial revolution. You have pollution and economic hardships]

Merry: This situation is different, as we don’t have time to update adjust/ very quickly, [that would not give us time to adapt].

In the past, in terms of conserving knowledge and achieving happiness, God was happiness, now we don’t have that. We have to find a new foundation for happiness. [she may have mntioned something else we have but I didn’t write it down. Here I might have gone on a mini-rant about hedonism and consumerism]

Marin: It’s now easy to get a lot of info <- ([[Harari]] talks about this in Nexus, and argues (as many have) is that the issue is that there is too much information, which creates difficulties in terms of storage and retrieval of information, or searching for useful information that can be crystallised into knowledge or from which we can derive meaning).

She mentions that, as a teacher, she sees how students use ChatGPT. She gave the example that when she asked about experiments on animals, most students agreed that was justified. Then they were shown the image of a mouse who had been genetically modified to have a human hear on its back, and then most students then disapproved of using animals for scientific experiments. It shows that we can’t know everything [even with all the potential information at our fingertips], and our opinions depend on the knowledge or information we have. It’s now easy to get a lot of information, but we have to step back.

Ryan (Canada): There’s always an emotional element to human stories.

• Need for proof [is outweighed by]
• How do you feel about [This information] Change is about when people feel ready

Ryan (UK): It’s a generational shift in terms of “feeling ready” [younger people feel ready a lot more quickly than older generations]

Merry: If AI does everything, maybe humans don’t have to work. In the Industrial revolution we had a lot of time to adjust compared to this AI revolution, which doesn’t give us time. No time to wait - we can’t wait for the older generations to pass away for us to react.

Jack: Maybe the human AI is finite [?]. We innovate ourselves out of history. [I don’t really understand this point as I’ve recorded it. I’m sure I’ve missed something here.]

We like dialogue with people because they’re imperfect. The irrationality is what we’re interested in

Glen: e.g. we still watch chess after AI

Nick: Yes, if I want to converse or look at art, what I’m interested in is that a conscious mind has sought to understand and express themselves and actually thinks/feels things that they then try and re-present.

Back to topic - what should we conserve:

I asked the question :”What ought we try and conserve”?

David: Looks at long-established scientific evidence [i.e. statements and theories scientific evidence is something we should conserve], simple things we can rely on (what he cals “postcard philosophy” - philosophical views that can fit on a postcard), and humans should study what matters. We should study happiness, realise it’s not possible, and come up with the concept of eudaimonia/fulfilment

Glen: Happiness measurements are pretty poor

Jack: Words are so imprecise. Art is good for emotional expression

Ryan (UK): Contentment is the climate, happiness is the weather. We can’t really be happy all the times but we may be generally content.

David: Mentioned the “Declaration from Biology” of Harari (A biologically translated version of The Declaration of Independence)

Jack and Ryan had a couple more comments here but they weren’t rcorded.

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I would say that there are a lot of things that we take for granted which are important to conserve - a general respect and care for people around us, our respect for democratic and liberal institutions (e.g. rule of law, of voting procedures, the ability to countenance a range of perspectives) even if they aren’t always perfect, a general view of non-judgement and non-interference of personal actions that don’t harm others, a robust education system, and a decent welfare state