Month: November 2011

Listening now to Laurie Taylor’s Thinking Allowed … quoting Emily Dickinson’s “Brain is Wider than the Sky”.

Not an original idea, but Bryan Appleyard uses it as the title of his latest work. A veritable meme.

Actually drawn to this edition of TA by Laurie’s introduction:

“Bryan Appleyard and John Gray on why simple solutions don’t work in a complex world.”

Reductionism of mind to brain, the mental to matter. The hype of the “Transhumanist” “H+” “Singularity” … Aaaaggghh my entire agenda in a single edition of TA. We don’t want to believe mind-brain “explanations” – I agree with Laurie. (Previous post …) Incoherent post, but for now this is the loop of thought I’m in …

https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3931 No-one wants to believe
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3430 Hofstadterian Algorithmic Loops
http://vimeo.com/7441291 Schmidhuber’s Humour as Compression Algorithm
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3440 Compression Loop
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3392 Hofstadter’s Tabletop
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=279 Rationalisation as Compression
Mandelbrot on Roughness at TED2010
http://www.cognitionresearch.org/extras/bio.htm Computing as Compression
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=278 Cornflowers – Too Blue
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=794 Edelman – Wider than the Sky
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=806 Sacks & Emily D

All these posts are inter-linked to each other, but following that link collection in order will give you the flavour. Now where’s that windmill we’re tilting at ? What was the name of the place again ?

It’s all Welsh to me. Acknowledgement to Gerry Wolff for the image.

Excellent short interview by Claudia Hammond (BBC-R4 All in the Mind) with economics-psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

(Also in the same edition another twist on the many studies of real-life abnormal brain lesions contributing to the understanding of normal brain-mind functions. A pair of conjoined-twins with separate-but-connected brains – 4-half-brains having more possibilities than the usual two. Interesting to consider the “case-study” distinct from the two human individuals. Personally, I don’t find the brain-mind findings in the least mysterious, there is so much reinforcement of common sense in published cases – it’s almost as if

we don’t want to believe explanations of consciousness and identity

See previous blog post on Claudia Hammond.)

[Post Note : Forgot also to attach this link to Kahneman’s appearance with Kirsty on Desert Island Discs. Learn a bit about the man.]

[And: a growing number of Daniel Kahneman references in the blog.]

So in practice the working rule is, when times are easy popular democracy is OK, when the going gets tough what we need is a meritocracy of peer-appointed technical experts.

I’m good with that. In practice, as I keep pointing out to over-confident UK electoral reform people, we need a balance of both. Both houses fully elected would be a disaster. There needs to be conservatism with “wise” custodians and only slow change according to popular fashion, and there needs to be liberal freedom (of speech and criticism, naturally, and) of popular mandates. An element of “elitism” in the conservative core is inescapable – the liberal freedoms need to act as checks and balances, not as an over-riding veto. Trust can only be mutual, working relationships cannot be built on criticism alone.

Oh, what was I saying about wisdom & criticism, see here.

“Critics say” they are undemocratic, short-term fix.

Shows what wisdom critics have.

Sheldrake’s conception of socio-cultural & intellectual fields which influence and are influenced by the living things within them – and contain that socio-culturo-intellectual memory.

Doesn’t seem in the slightest contentious – memes & memeplexes, Pirsigian levels of static patterns (of quality). Doesn’t seem in the slightest undermined by a holistic computer / machine / system metaphor of living / thinking things, things which perceive natural morality. Humans are “special” (a species as distinct as any) but not privileged.

Morphic resonance, the idea that new forms arise more easily within fields that have similar patterns of form – sounds just like “fit”, as in survival of. Why do people want to see “revolutionary” ideas in what is clearly common sense.

Formative causation. Laws of physics as “evolving habits” rather than mathematically fixed laws. Now that is more radical, but even then not entirely unique or original – a pan-Evolutionary model. Physics always was “nature”.

Sheldrake interviewed on PBS some years ago.

Interestingly in the closing words of that interview he reverses Shakespeare’s words (as I did)

“Such dreams as stuff are made of.”

[Also interestingly, I notice I first use the phrase in reviewing Pinker here in 2002, though even then it was clear I’d heard it somewhere before.]

The project for navigators (through life). Interesting blog, but can’t work out who “Matthew” is.

Interesting del.ici.ous aggregation on Pirsigian philosophical topics – no idea who it is.

Jeez. Who says they’re “being callous” ?

They’re probably doing what half the world was doing at that point, in front of their TV’s, reflecting with whoever was close to them on the awe-full significance of the event a few hours earlier in front of them. They just happen to have a ring-side seat.