Author: Psybertron

Counting Sheep – Didn’t I just read this in Dawkins, talking about big numbers – Blind Watchmaker wasn’t it ? Spookily, Disenchanted (linked to Qubits) relates quantum cryptography to intuitive “folk” view of large numbers. What would Dawkins think of it, I wonder ? (In Devils’ Chaplain he rolls current Quantum “hype” into the unscientific / mystic pot.)

Stalled a bit recently in reaction to “hyper-rational” rants by Rand (objectivist) and Dawkins (scientist) which boiled my blood and knocked my confidence a bit. Picked-up Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil – Preface to a Philosophy of the Future”. I struggled earlier with Zarathustra, as I was warned I would, but so glad I came back to Nietzsche. So witty and well written and, in my own experience, wise words too. Nuff said for now – 1886 ! – Wow.

Hyper-Rationalism – I think I’ve found the right word for what’s been bugging me.

I’ve been struggling for over two years in this blog and for half a lifetime before that, to avoid being perceived as a mystic, an unscientific woolly thinker, when I warn against the dangers of scientific rationale in decision making. In a scientific situation, I’m happy with science as the arbiter of truth – scientific truth. In complex situations – scientific truth may be largely intractable for practical everyday purposes, though it still clearly exists, and the scientists retain every right to rail against unfounded prejudice in such situations. Where that multi-layered complex situation involves a sentient being or beings in individual and/or social decisions and behaviours, then the scale of the intractabilty is so enormous, that scientific truth brings little except a few, albeit essential, identifiable “physical” boundary conditions.

In such complex situations, so many premises and causal metaphors, turn out to be founded on “emergent” conditions, that applying only scientific rationale and dialectic is not only not the most useful way of establishing the facts, it is positively inappropriate and can lead to disastrously “wrong” outcomes. Remember I still believe that the whole world, even the messy, living, human part of it, is founded ultimately on underlying physical science – it’s just that for all “intents and purposes”, science (as currently understood – dare I say) addresses only a small percentage of the problem.

Hyper-Rationalism – the mis-application of scientific rationale and dialectics to situations whose outcomes are goverened predominantly by premises and causal metaphors which are emergent from human understanding, communication, intent and behaviour ?

Navier-Stokes to the Rescue – At the risk of being branded a mystic I’ll mention this spooky little synchronicity.
I’ve just been reading Dawkins’ A Devil’s Chaplain and written an article prompted by it (Stop Press – Article now on-line here). As an aero engineer I chose, in that article, to follow an aeronautical analogy, picking up on Dawkins’ references to the Navier-Stokes equations and Chaos, and to a plane-load of social anthropologists. Is The Apothecary (with an interest in CFD apparently) also currently reading Dawkins ? Or is this just a coincidence. Spookier still, the article itself uses the word “evolution” to describe the effect of applying the CFD principles to pixels involved in photographic restoration.

The only flag which will be flown – Treefrog [via Kuro5hin] reporting pre-battle speech by Lieut. Col. to 1st Batallion Royal Irish.

But US Marines reality is a cock-up …

Abandoned Places – A little industrial archaeology. [via Wotever]

Pi to an incredible number of places. Is this for real, does it ever stop exploding ? [via Gimbo][via Gammatron] (The page I mean, not the irrational Pi of course.) Apparently March 14th was (is) Pi Day. Loads more Pi links here. [via nycsmith]

Organisations as Life Forms – Some interesting, if politically motivated, comparisons with the real thing. [via Gimbo]