Author: Psybertron

Talking of Wolfram’s ANKOS as we were in “Give him enough rope” two blogs ago …
(and many occasions before that) … [via Kurzweil][non-flash]

Coming Soon [via Rivets], and in slightly beter taste try [schedule] or [melanoma]

Time Sink – Pointless displacement activity, but thanks to Gimbo anyway.

From a bookclub party conversation with Dave Weinberger [Quote] … asked Minsky if he had read Wolfram’s book. “Of course not.” Why not? Because Wolfram is merely repeating what has been known for twenty years. Further, said Minsky, the book only finds three types of cellular automata: simple ones, looping ones, and complex ones. For a theory to be interesting, said Minsky, it needs to have at least five categories, not three. Minsky was being cocktail-party witty, but I believe his serious point was that Wolfram needs to present a theory that further analyzes the single class of complex and seemingly random cellular automata.[Unquote] I’m in good company then ?

[Am I the only person who confuses Dave Winer, Dave Weinberger and Steve Weinberg ? Sorry guys.]

Is there anywhere where this stuff is not currently being debated ? Browsing the BBC “Word of Mouth” message board – where typically, “Disgusted of Dorchester deplores the demise of the English language” – I find a thread debating the political motives of words used to describe Richard Reid’s cemtex-filled shoes. [Quote] Weapons of Mass Destruction came into popular usage to mean chemical/biological/nuclear weapons at just the same time as the US was re-writing its anti-terrorism laws, and its administration was trying to convince the populace of a conspiracy between America’s disparate enemies. [Unquote]

How can anyone contemplate unravelling words, from meaning, from intent, from reasoning – from conspiracy and paranoia ?

The fact that a perfectly tight, reasoned defintion could easily be arrived at – something along the lines of a weapon whose existence could not be justified based on its intended use against a bounded target – is irrelevant to the fact that this is a political debate, not an etymological one – and it always is. Every utterance has intent.

I think that’s the correct title of Dawkins latest offerring. By coincidence, given the previous blog, he was on Start the Week this morning with Andrew Marr on BBC Radio 4. Another member of the panel said he could not believe that there were enough “creationists” left in the world for Dawkins to feel the need to spell it all out again – we all believe you already. Surely the whole world understands the Blind Watchmaker. Apparently not says Dawkins – then proceeded to rattle off a litany of US statistics – followed by a debate that kept returning to fears about misguided US power, and mis-guided world-views – becoming very political very quickly and hitting on the main news item of the day – the split between Europe and US over Iraq, and several doomsday scenarios around the beginning of the end of NATO and UN no less. Terrifying.

(Notice also that next week Daniel Dennett is one of the guests, and that this week’s guest, Janet Radcliffe-Richards, is taking part in a British Academy debate entitled Does Philosophy Matter? on Tuesday 18 February.)

There is definitely something happening here. There is too much clamour for the need to re-think simple “rational” values we take for granted, and to question underlying philosophies and science – before it’s too late.

No joy with finding Susan Blackmore’s Meme Machine last night so I guess I’ll have to order on-line. Did pick up Richard Dawkins (Blind Watchmaker) as well as Karl Popper (Life is all about solving problems), and some Richard Rorty by way of introduction.

I can see why Dawkins is so loved by so many – I think I completely identify with his views after reading 3 chapters (well after the first 3 paragraphs actually), so I don’t need much convincing. What is significant for my line of research is that right from the off it’s the complexity of the human brain that is at the heart of his awe and conviction (like Pinker). Most significantly is that whilst the brain’s complexity is ultimately built on the basic physical entities and principles underlying everything (dead or alive, designed, evolved or not), the purposeful power and capabilities are nevertheless emergent from the evolution of that complex assembly of the physical, not from some purposeful agent or process driving them. Got me thinking instantly again about the Mind v Matter physics debates, and the Quantum Entanglement / Non-locality stuff behind both new Quantum Computing research and development as well as the Mind-Matter Unification stuff from Brian Josephson drawing speculatively (and controversially, given his open-minded attitudes to the paranormal and homeopathy [Josephson] [Psybertron]) on the same quantum effects. See also Quantum Mind 2003.

I’ve blogged on every one of these people, subjects and initiatives before, but it continues to amaze me how many roads seem to lead me back to Quantum views of information. (Seb Pacquet has a blog dedicated to Quantum Computing – I presume Seb has also made the link between the “computing” and the information we think of as “knowledge” and I know that Seth Russell has a “conjugate” view of information defintion vs richness of content.) See also Centre for Quantum Computing (Cambridge and Oxford – Deutsch but not Josephson, natch) for the physical principles behind the new computing devices, and also this Los Alamos US government funded Quantum Information Science and Technology research site on QC / QIP.)

Also some good stuff in Dawkins on intution and timescales, that had me scribbling Kondratiev Waves (and Techo-Economic Paradigm Shifts) in the margins. Human experience of change in and through human generations just cannot explain intuitively what happens over evolutionary timescales – almost like we were “designed to misunderstand” evolution, by the process of evolution itself.

Ditto on managable spans of control in explaining or describing something complex – Like describing how a motor car engine works in terms five or six major sub-assemblies (despite the fact that we know they’re actually made out of gazillions of atoms or quarks or strings or whatever – just no value in it).

Ditto on an ontology of the world starting from essential natural, dead or alive and artefact viewpoint. Sounds familiar EPISTLE ?

Susan Blackmore Link(s) – Went back to look at Susan Blackmore’s provocative contribution to the QuestionCentre2003, blogged a couple of days ago. All I knew about Dr Blackmore previously was her Meme Machine fame – but not yet read it (who’s off to Borders tonight then ?!). I hadn’t spotted that Adam Hart-Davis was her partner, nor the focus on Consciouness and Philosophy of Mind and the mass of papers she has published in this area.

A recent interesting article on The Grand Illusion (of Consciousness) From the Journal of Consciousness Studies and a related cover story from New Scientist in 2002. Impressive list of editors in the JCS – Dennett, Searle, Lakoff to name a few, and several Dennett references by Blackmore in various publications.