What, Why & How do we Know ?
Back when this occurred – back in July 2010 – it was a bug with Facebook, that if you clicked on an item to see what was actually there, you were credited with a “Like” even if you were disgusted with what you found. I think it’s fixed.
Hopefully Sunderland City Councillor Florence Anderson or her defence has the nous. She’s already suspended. Bloody politics.
Great to hear the collaborative evolutionary aspect of “survival of the fittest” make prime time at last.
Interviewing D S Wilson on the BBC R4 Today programme this morning, Evan had to make a clumsy apologetic aside along the lines of “Dawkins is big around here” but the visiting American could see the battle lines drawn differently within the cognoscenti and the public political popular-science sound-bite arenas.
Darwin’s “fittest” has always referred to best fit with your environment (physical, biological, social, intellectual) , nothing exclusively to do with being fitter as in stronger, faster, better, than those you are competing against in your environment. Where group-selection occurs in the social environment, the best fit concerns mutual participation in the group and the group in the wider environment. As I’ve written many times before, the “selfish gene” title has a lot to answer for in public misunderstanding promulgated by the professor for public understanding of science.
Ironic then that the next news item, about Cameron visiting Salmond on Scottish home turf for their debate on the British union, was characterised as drawing-up “battle-lines”. Public learning is a very slow process, when there is a useless but victorious meme holding the tattered standard in the tournament arena. We should be feeding Dawkins to the lions.
Also fitting in hindsight was the earlier thought for the day (Das) … BBC links slow to update in the aftermath of the live programme – will come back and add links.
Interesting TechCrunch review of Cisco report on information traffic trends.
Picked-up on this BBC Magazine story from the memetic “fashion” angle, but the second quote is telling too.
“The fear of nuclear war has diminished partly because the risk has receded significantly with the end of the Cold War,” says Nick Bostrum, director of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. “But another factor might be simple changes in risk fashion – it becoming more popular recently to worry about global warming, for example.”
More immediate worries are terrorist attack, pandemic disease, and economic meltdown. Robert Harris in his recent novel The Fear Index examined the modern anxiety that fuses the threat of powerful technology with unbridled financial markets. The main character, who runs a hedge fund, remarks:
“Fear is driving the world as never before… The rise in market volatility, in our opinion, is a function of digitalisation, which is exaggerating human mood swings by the unprecedented dissemination of information via the internet.”
Another case of less is more when it comes to free communication.
If I wanted to get there, I wouldn’t start from here ?
I need to finish off my notes on Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” since I posted some criticisms before I’d read the concluding chapters.
Strange to read the explicit dualisms:
Two systems – Fast intuitive thinking and Slow considered thinking.
Two species – Humans (reasonable) and Econs (entirely rational).
Two selves – Experiencing self and Remembering self.
As I commented before it’s almost trivial to conclude this is how humans do actually work, what was slightly scary was the implicit suggestion that human deviation from pure rationality was a problem to be corrected. Cognitive biases (vs rationality) are real, but they value more than rationality. In admitting a complex picture of values without prescriptive conclusions Kahneman uses masterful understatement to admit economic decision-making is more than maths:
“Philosophers could struggle with these questions for a long time.”
He makes a number of plain wrong statements along the lines that – the integral of pain experienced over time is somehow obviously more significant than remembered pain – doh ! But also a number of key positive conclusions:
“I have …. devoted many pages to errors of intuitive judgement and choice … However, the relative number of pages is a poor indicator of the balance between the marvels and the flaws of intuitive thinking. System 1 is indeed the origin of much of what we do wrong, but it is also the origin of most of what we do right – which is most of what we do. Our thoughts and actions are routinely guided by system 1 and are generally on the mark.”
“One of the marvels is the rich and detailed model of our world that is maintained in associative memory: it distinguishes surprises from normal events in a fraction of a second, immediately generates an idea of what had been expected instead of a surprise, and automatically searches for some causal interpretation of events as they take place.”
ie we’d do well not to assume system 1 is somehow inferior to pure rationality, to be corrected and brought under control of system 2 – which would be autistic. [see McGilchrist – let’s not forget who is master and who is emissary.]
Also, often talks of “laziness” in under-use of system 2, as If more use would lead to more (rationally) optimal decisions – but this is basic economy of effort – consideration costs are part of the optimisation. [Brunsson / Argyris decision rationality is action irrationality, etc.]
Libertarian Paternalism – after Richard Thaler’s “Nudge” – we humans do actually need “help” with free choices, beyond free access to “information”. We need meta-information about different ways information should be considered and valued, and how presenting the same information different ways, might lead us to different considerations. Those entrusted with governance do (need to) know better than free popular choice would suggest. Their power to “nudge” us to given conclusions must be trusted, even if we baulk at their power to physically restrict our choice. And:
“Decision-makers are sometimes better able to imagine the voices of present gossipers and future critics, than to hear the hesitant voice of their own doubts. They will make better choices when they trust their critics to be sophisticated and fair, and when they can expect their decision to be judged by how it was made, not only by how it turned out.”
Governance, sophistication, values, fairness and trust – all in there.
“Better able to imagine than to hear“
Another case of less communication is more.
A little ignorance goes a long way.
All this recent negative stuff around football contrasts with the real thing seen as Barca visited Leverkusen last night.
Scrap handshakes ? That’s how to do it. Defenders laughing and congratulating Messi when he beats them. Messi continuing regardless as he is repeatedly mis-tackled, and coming back for more. Contrast the grace of Messi (again) with the graceless Ballack, fortunately dropped from Leverkusen’s squad for the game.
Interesting that Malcy MacKay actually suggested scrapping handshakes – to put the focus back on the game. Gentlemanly conduct is part of the game. Suarez could / should have been sent off before the kick-off – full marks to the ref for not doing so, so as to better manage the situation – and again at the end. Let’s hope the apologies are not hollow politics. The beautiful game needs grace.
[Though misery-guts German director of football Rudi Voller wishes his players weren’t quite so enthusiastic about their opponent 😉 ]