Psybertron Asks

Hmm. After Greenteeth (don’t ask), here’s Paul Burgess. Interesting that he’s a beat generation fan who’d read The Tractatus, but like me didn’t read Pirsig until after he was 40, and a good thing too he says … [Quote] Yes, Pirsig in his former pre-psychosis persona of Phaedrus is a near dead ringer for your [...]

Or more officially the GCP (Global Consciousness Project). Princeton, serious science (?) with some wonderfully whacky content – Princess Di’s funeral and the O J Simpson trial linked to random events detected in electronic networks apparently arising from the fact that “… a small effect of consciousness on the electronic REG (random event generator) isn’t [...]

Some very interesting material brought to my attention by Alice’s comments, so important I brought it onto the main page. Too much material to assimilate and do justice in any summary, but … As recently as Feb 2005 Maccoby is writing “Creating Moral Organisations” for Research Technology Management, whilst as an ex student of Erich [...]

It’s a little difficult to explain how I came to be Googling for Greenteeth, and you’d never believe it anyway, too spooky for words, but I’m glad I did. A certain Ian Thorpe runs a very entertaining blog in the name of Jenny Greenteeth the Boggart, or is that Bloggart. Roll on. Toilet humour isn’t [...]

Piers at Monkey Magic made a positive reference to Maslow, being valuable because he’d studied successful / advantaged people, and therefore his psychological outcome was inherently more positive, looking toward progress, rather than wallowing in “failure” or “sick psychology”. Part of my “Criticisms of Maslow” memewatch. Of course muggins here, didn’t spot that was Piers’ [...]

Hofstadter’s GEB has a thread – his eternal golden braid I guess – on strange loops from the outset, mathematical, visual and musical at the obvious level of his title, and clearly from the content, he’s leading to the idea of emergence of “intelligence” from multi-layered (recursive, cyclical) patterns of complexity. I noted a clear [...]

I see Google maps covers the UK now. Here’s a familiar patch. Big variabilty in the quality (clarity, resolution and colouration) in different regions, but it’s all there. Some of the biggest cities have the poorest imgaes. [via Rivets] Weird experience to navigate right round the coastline from the air.

Apart from historical education as museum pieces (which is fair enough), why would anyone want an on-line slide-rule, several on-line slide-rules in fact ? I remember using one for real, but not beyond high-school and university days, when electronic calculators became widespread. Also remember finding one in an old briefcase about ten years ago and [...]

Another fine spot by Jorn at Robot Wisdom. “The Wicker Man” is an almost forgotten film that made an impression on me, though I never analysed why then, an awful long time ago. This review by philosophical writer Robert Farrow weaves an analysis of Foucault’s ideas (and others) into a synopsis of the plot. No [...]

One important thread in the development of Pirsig‘s ideas, starting with Northrop and the aboriginals of “Latin” America (and all points “East” of western thinking), continued in the North American Indian anthropological forays with Verne Dusenberry. A descendent of said anthropologist points out that Dusenberry’s book is back in print with Oklahoma University Press. Some [...]

“The simple truth — I don’t know, I just like it that way — simply won’t do, so into this vacuum rushes the bullshit” a quote from Design Observer (Harry Frankfurt) via Adrian Trenholm comments on Johnnie Moore’s blog “Sophistry”. A story where a subject finding no credible patterns to explain something, concocts complex fiction. [...]

Mark Federman makes a connection between this Canadian political taping story and Watergate, following recent “Deep Throat” revelations. Interestingly the story has it’s own justification “Everybody … tapes all their conversations with politicians.” And people are surprised ? Actually I can remember being shocked in a previous life when a colleague told me he taped [...]

The royal we that is. I blogged when I first spotted Skype that it came from the same guys that brought us Kazaa – P2P technology being fundamentally analogous to semantic networks, that I had been following and blogging about those technologies generally. I’d forgotten until I read this BBC story.

Hofstadter’s metaphor for the brain / mind as a colony of ants makes only one reference to E O Wilson, as author of “The Insect Societies”. Been meaning to add E O Wilson to my reading list. One quick google throws up this exchange, something I’ve alluded to many times about a number of physicists. [...]

Aung San Suu Kyi is 60, and still under house arrest.

Couldn’t help noticing the hypocrisy in this tale of envy and fear between dynamism and comfort. We are so mixed up. Yes, that’s we.

Hofstadter’s variation on Nagel’s Bat. His “Ant Fugue” seems to say it all. More later.

Said “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” which reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s 3 stages of reaction to technological breakthroughs: (a) It’s completely impossible. (b) OK, it’s possible, but it’s practically useless. (c) Well, I said it was [...]

I’m well through Godel, Escher, Bach. Hofstadter is almost apologetic in his introduction about his appparent espousing of Zen philosophy, almost distancing himself from it to maintain credibility with serious scientific peers. It’s actually pretty clear in the book that he is not ultimately sympatheic to it anyway, but he does provide a good summary [...]

Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog) – The physical world has causal closure. Physical things are caused by physical things. The biological brain is part of that physical world. IF the mind is not physical, then it cannot cause physical things to happen, and must just be a by-product, and epi-phenomenon, of the physical. Mind and mental things [...]

This one is running and running …. more on the decision making behind the Iraq invasion from The Downing Street Memo. The point of interest for me is not so much the outrage that this clearly happens (happened) at high level, but that it is in fact how most decisions are reasoned in real life.