Psybertron Asks

Dawkins got me thinking – I’m going to collect a page on big numbers. He spends a lot of time on the statistics of improprability of various cosmic, geological and evolutionary events on the one hand and the various microspcopic, molecular genetic, scales on the other. He is at pains to emphasise that our ability to believe them is greatly influenced by our own perspective (as humans) of scale in space, time and probablities of life experience, which is itself a result of our own evolution.

Dealions, Googles, Googleplexes, or how long would it take a million monkeys to write the compete works of Shakespeare by chance, etc, perhaps 2 to the power of a number whose number of digits it would take us the entire known life of the cosmos to even write down, spring to mind as boggling biggies – Dawkins Watchmaker is full of similar examples to illustrate his points of credulity. No doubt his later Climbing Mount Improbable is similarly endowed. Anyone know of a starting resource for such concepts ?

Had a traumatic two weeks IT-wise. Recently acquired a new P4/XP machine and loaded Norton Anti-Virus and Internet Security stuff. The combination played havoc with various web-sites I use and has taken until now to recover.

Anyway in that time I finished Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker and moved on to Rorty’s Philosophy as a Mirror on the World.

Dawkins continued with his “Darwinian evolution is the only mechanism to explain emergent adaptive complexity” theme. I already agreed with him – probably will not now bother to read Selfish Gene – may seek out Devil’s Chaplain. Only drawback with the later chapters is the effort he expends disproving alternative evolutionary theories, which becomes a drag when you’re already convinced. Keep discovering an enigmatic mix of views on Stephen Jay Gould – will probably have to read more of his stuff for myself, to understand if and where he get’s it right, despite often seeming wrong to me.

Started Rorty – he was on a mission when he wrote this, and spends a good deal of his introductory chapter discrediting views I wouldn’t have found naturally believable anyway, and makes extensive use of philosophical jargon – phenomenal, intentional etc. I’m hoping these early chapters are deliberately controversial so I’ll be sticking with him for a while yet – despite scribbling bollox in the margins several times already ! He’s a big supporter of Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey. His main target is to undermine the need for any kind of dualist mind-matter views of the world. If all he’s saying is that all folk-mind-stuff is ultimately physics (beyond folk-physics) then he’ll get no argument from me, but it all looks like pedantry around lingusitic definitions of matter and physics and mental (and phenomenal and intentional) so far. Here’s hoping.

The Unloved American – Simon Schama writing in The New Yorker [via Jorn] See also the earlier Rudyard Kipling reference under “the empire that dare not speak its name“. Also from Simon Schama in the Guardian this piece on US one year on from 9/11. Disingenuous reverence and religion conspiring against open debate on the way ahead.

Ev, three Jasons and a Jensen – Everything you wanted to know about the Google Blogger wedding, and weren’t afraid to ask.

The End of Doneness – A 1998 Dave Weinberger JOHO article [via Gurteen’s Blog] [Quote] The cards are stacked against documents. We are seeing a massive cultural shift away from the concept of done-ness. The Web allows for constant process and enables open-ended groups of people to be invited into the process. Documents are things that are done. That is why the Web will kill them. [Unquote]

I think this is healthy – a process view of web information.

Cost Effective Meta-Data – From Stefano Mazzocchi [via Seb] [Paraphrasing] The more, higher quality meta-data the better, because the quality of meta-data heavily influences the effectiveness of retrieval systems. Meta-data mark-up-based “semantic” web solutions (RDF, Ontologies) are economically infeasible (because the human assignment of the right tags is in addition to defining the content itself and is either expensive to do properly or compromised by cutting corners.) The best semantic meta-data solutions are based on transparent inference, without heuristics (in publishing the content). User feeling is important (in creating meta-data, and in how it is perceived as relevant later). [End Paraphrasing – my italic emphasis]

IMHO – The quest is for some kind of ontology that captures (or infers) the creator’s actions and intent at the point of creation and/or publication, not some misleading post-rationalisation according to some fixed prescribed ontology. ANKOO – A New Kind of Ontology ? Maybe not, “AnOint” perhaps – An Ontology of Intent ? Has your blog / output been annointed yet ?

If the human assigns meta-data to their own output, the “intent” problem just shifts along one – from why did Mr X say that, to the question of why did Mr X assign that meta-data to it. When the Mr X says his latest offering is the best thing since sliced bread, do you believe him because it is, because he says it is, or because you believe him (or not as the case may be) ?

Progress via Disruptive Technologies – From Hugh Blackmer, Science Librarian, Washington & Lee Uni. [via Seb] Particularly on the subject of colaborative web tools, but on the message of emergence and change – mainly technology driven – usually hingeing on chaos at disruptive cusps in development. See my dissertation on business change.

Interesting and related story today on BBC Radio 4, about business cycles in large successful family run businesses, being driven by the three generations rule. Very much my view of Kondratiev in economic cycles (Techno-Economic Paradigms) generally – One generation to learn & grow – One to succeed & exploit – One to lose-focus & fall prey to the next disruptive influence. 80 Year knowledge cycles are predictable. Is the cycle of change really faster in the e-memes age ? I doubt it – still human limited – unless artificial knowledge can really supplement the rate of human knowledge transfer, evolution and emergence.

Conversational Terrorism [via Seb] For example, as the same quote used by Seb, sums it up …
[Quote] “Think vs. Feel” Any person will likely be off-center of the analytical / emotive spectrum in any heated exchange. By pointing out which side the other person is on, (either side will do) he/she is obliged to defend his/her temperament instead of the case at hand. Either
(1) “Your cold, analytical approach to this issue doesn’t take into account the human element.”, or
(2) “Your emotional involvement with this issue obscures your ability to see things objectively.” [Unquote]