Month: July 2005

Stephen Jay Gould

Sad given how good Dennett’s writing is, that he has to devote almost a third of “Darwin’s Dangreous Idea” to refuting doubts about Darwinism created by Gould and Lewontin’s original paper and Gould’s high profile public views on evolutionary mechanisms. Burgess Shale – the boy who cried wolf, etc.

Gould was someone I read ten years go, the popular science “Life’s Grandeur”, and blogged previously when reading Dawkins that Gould’s points about which specific mechanisms of speciation dominated, that they were all just variations accomodated within the “natural selection” scheme, why the fuss ? Dennett concludes political (marxist) and religious (theistic) motivations that belie Gould’s stirring up confusion over Darwinian details, because he “secretly” doesn’t accept the core of it.

Remember Dennett introduced his book as “not a scientific work, but a book about science”. Who says science is just about objectivity ? (See previous Josephson post too. Communications are part of the problem, just like the Josephson examples, even cases where Gould would agree his views had been misinterpreted, the misinterpretation becomes widely embedded in the culture as “World renowned zoologist doubts Darwinism”, etc and exploited mercilessly by those whose agendas it suits. )

All roads continue to lead to this one problem.

Why People Say The Things They Do

Really just a holding post for two presentations (with some overlapping content) from Brian Josephson thanks to a cross-link on the man himself. A hero of mine, sceptical of sceptics’ motives and abuse of power for rejecting scientific claims. Cold Fusion, The Memory of Water and more examples killed by the cultural spread of scepticism rather than any good reasoning, scientific or otherwise. The memes have it.

Good and Bad Ways to do Science
Pathological Disbelief

If X were true, everything else we already know about Y would be false.
So what ? Maybe we might actually be learning something new.

Digeriblues

Seems the brief run of regular blues acts at Perth’s “Blue to the Bone” is coming to an end. Thursday has already become a karaoke night, Friday was already rockabilly, Saturday still has the excellent John Meyer (and Lindsay Wells) I believe, but last night was the last of Rick Steele’s “industry” guest nights. Rather than the quality of the musicians, the failure seems mainly due to the awful winter we’re having and the lack of any promotion (other than giving away free drinks at the drop of a hat ?), but audiences drawn to Northbridge on weeknights clearly haven’t matched the costs.

(Rick is part of the blues furniture in Perth and continues to host the Tuesday night “Perth Blues Club” at the Charles Hotel, great night again this week, with horns too, as well as appearing Thursdays and Sundays at the Dianella.)

Last night was a feast – As well as Rick on guitar, harp and vocals, we had his usual cohorts Travis on keyboard, vocals, drums and bass, Marc on bass, vocals and lead guitar, and Ace on drums, together in various combinations with Cat (McKineally ?) on keyboards and vocals, Dave Brewer on Lead and vocals, Zak, Kenji, plus half a dozen others on guitar , vocals, drums, flute (no euphonium last night) and digeridoo. (Nice to hear the sustain of a Gibson amongst the wall-to-wall Strats, who was that guy with the pre-hensile little finger on his left hand, and who was the chick with the voice and the delayed reverb Roy Harper / Jon Martyn style electric-folk guitar ? All too brief, but great sounds from Zak’s “gypsy” guitar again too.)

However, the digeridoo accompanying the blues guitar and vocal is really something to behold – novelty value clearly – but a mesmerising range of rhythms and layers of beating resonances driving the groove along. Worth the admission fee alone – what was it again ? Ah yes, no charge.

Spoke Too Soon

After skimming Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”, I suggested earlier that I already knew it from secondary sources. Well actually no, there is lots of new material for me with fresh links to my threads.

Something Rather Than Nothing – as a pan-Darwinist I never had any trouble with the evolutionary explanation of life the universe and everything emerging out of the chaotic void. Nor also that whilst the specific world we know has human supporting features and a particular set of laws of physics, any range of possibilities could have arisen instead, which may or may not have supported life as we don’t know it. The only catch is the prior existence of more than nothing.

Buildings and Process – Throughout the book he uses the skyhook vs cranes analogy of never really having “get-out-of-jail” convenient starting points, but always needing to imagine how the crane was built to provide your starting platform. Dennett also has a large section on biology as “engineering”, and on the engineering process generally. He relates it to archeaological analysis of features of ancient building structures, and recognising that many features are not to do with the primary function of a building as an enclosed space of given dimensions, but are to do with the processess of constructing it and the processes that will continue after it is complete. In fact he even goes so far as to say that the point of completion is far from clear in most cases. A building has a process lifecycle.

Edge of Chaos – is a fashionable phrase cropping up in many fields. One point in Darwinian evolution is the idea that not all mutations are in fact random, they are “directed” by naturally occurring patterns in the first place, hence multiple emergence of many identical design solutions – working with nature, not against it. These sweet-spot states where natural progression is easy, and meaningful patterns emerge, are typically associated with complexity and modern “chaos”. Mark Maxwell’s MoQ paper uses the edge of chaos analogy for the coherence or sweet spot when dynamic quality is achieved (and the optimum chance exists of loosing your arrow cleanly and hitting your target, to use Herrigel’s analogy) is a point of “resonance” or maximum potential between complete stasis on the one hand and good-old-fashioned chaos (absence of any meaningful order) on the other. More than just linguistic coincidence ?

Oh, and Nietzsche and Marx got the real significance of Darwinism first.

Blog Reading Catch-up

Just spent an hour or so browsing many of my recently ignored favourite blogs, and leaving a few comments in my wake. Matt, Seb, Piers, Euan, Suw, Frizzy, to name a few.

I liked the “wavelets of history” at David Gurteen’s blog and this story about Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford. Reminded me very much of the inspiring address by Richard Russo.

[Post Note Nov 2016 – Adding to this collection – someone tweeted this excellent (fictional) graduation address by Woody Allen in the NYT in 1979]

[#GraduationAddress #CommencementAddress]

The Socratic Dennett – Onward and Upward

Made a start on my pile of Dennett original reading. Having realised recently I’m practically a pan-Darwinist, I thought I’d start on “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”.

Skimmed it first, and realised I feel I practically know it already; so many of his chapters and witty headings having been quoted by others since 1995. The respect Dennett pays to his reader just commands reciprocation.

“This book is about science, but it is not itself a work of science.”
“There is no such thing as a sound argument from authority …”
“… when I quote them, rhetoric and all, I am engaging in persuasion.”

“Since you are reading this book, you have probably read several of ..”
Dawkins, Pinker, Gould, etc …

“And if [I] can’t write a good book after the sterling help of …
[Dawkins, Hofstadter, Pinker, Mayr, Brockman, etc] … [I] should give up !”

After his “peremtory dismissal” of creationism, which I’ve quoted before, he says “The fundamental core of Darwinism is now beyond dispute …” and later “Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award to the best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin ahead of Newton, Einstein and everybody else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. But it’s not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea.”

“The philsopher and scientist are in the same boat [quoting Van Quine, quoting Neurath.]” “There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, only science whose philosophical baggage [is unexamined]” And the unexamined life is not worth living, is it. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread [quoting Pope]. Do you want to follow me ?”

And so he’s headlong into Aristotle’s misguided teleology.
And Locke too. “Go run along and stop asking such silly questions.”
It’s why / how, not why / because, dummy.

With respect, I’m not sure I need to read this, but I’m going to enjoy it.
What is it about men with bushy beards ?

Mind’s I – Round-up

Completed Hofstadter and Dennett’s “The Mind’s I” on the way back to Perth, Oz. Although it peters out a bit, with Hofstadter’s “Conversation with Einstein’s Brain” there are still more gems in there.

After Lem’s excellent “Non Serviam” mentioned previously, we still have Ray Smullyan’s “Is God a Taoist”, John Searle’s “Minds, Brains and Programs”, and Thomas Nagel’s “… Bat”

Nagel’s Bat has been well aired here previously, and familiarity no doubt breeds contempt. There’s actually quite a lot wrong with it and the editors’ reflections, not so much wrong, as missed opportunity. Bats are not only not blind, they “see” with sound, but their vision must be incredibly vivid and textured compared to our world of one-dimensional electromagnetism, they have so many layers of modulation as well as wavelengths to play with and, what’s more, they are in control of it. Nagel’s Jimi Hendrix to Hofstadter’s J.S.Bach maybe. Of course there is something “it’s like to be” a bat, even if its self-conscious “I” is no doubt pretty limited by its neurone count. Again, it’s not all or nothing. There must be some kinda way outta here. Next.

Smullyan, on the other hand, was new to me. His brief dialogue with “god” on free-will and ethics, can’t help but lead you to a Taoist, non-teleological, pan-theist view of the “laws of nature”. Liked the conclusion ….

[Quote]
Mortal : You certainly seem partial to Eastern philosophy !
God : Oh, not at all ! Some of my finest thoughts have bloomed in your native American soil.
[Unquote]

East and West are merely points of view as Northrop and others have pointed out. In fact Smullyan is thinking of neither Northrop nor Pirsig, but Walt Whitman when he quotes … “I give nothing as duties. What others give as duties, I give as living impulses.” Native American is good too – the ambiguity in the native referring to the “mortal” in the dialogue works on three levels at least. Clever stuff.

Searle is ultimately disagreed with by Dennett and Hofstadter. This legendary discussion on AI covers the “Chinese Room” and McCarthy’s infamous “thermostat”. Like many a thought experiment the “ifs” are probably too incredible to begin with, but whilst the particular case doesn’t support AI, the reasoning does, even if it is more geared to the material of brains than the form and architecture of the software levels they can support. The disagreements seem subtle compared to the power of the arguments for Strong AI. (I see Roger Schank’s work gets yet more namechecks, alongside Block, Dreyfus, Haugeland, Wilensky and Winograd. Must read Schank and understand better why Jorn Barger fell out with him. My instinct is to stick with Barger. The criticisms of strong AI seem to be targetted at the falsity of early claims to haver created it, rather than the possibility in principle.) The thermostat story, just illustrates the problem with excluded-middle / binary arguments about what constitutes AI. Let’s move on.)

The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of

Used this quote recently (at the MoQ Conference), and admitted I couldn’t recall it’s source.

No, not Shakespeare dummy – it’s a deliberate play on the Tempest quote.

Best documented web source is Thomas Disch, who used this as the title of his book about how Sci-Fi “conquered” the world.

I first saw the phrase as a signature line on some mail discussion forum, and it is frequently referred to as a quote by “a” physicist, alluding to the fact that quantum physical reality is 99.9999% vacuum. The only attribution I can find is David Moser (?)

[BTW – “Science Fiction” – I like the ambiguity, the fiction that is science.]