Author: Psybertron

Been reading  The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force by Jeffrey M Schwartz and Sharon Begley, at the suggestion of an exchange between Dave Morey and Harvey Taylor on FB.

Other than the two title topics being part of any complete brain-mind story, the only real connection between Neuroplasticity and Mental Force is that they are both aspects of science denied by mainstream science for many decades for which common sense and less-reductionist open-minds would recognise much supporting evidence. Most of the book is the authors’ narrative of the battle to generate support for the evidence already out there, as well as their own neuro-psychological experience, in the face of political resistance to good science.

For me it’s another book I could have (wish I had) written. The line of argument and all the sources are those I’ve been marshalling on the blog for 15 years, so in practice I skim read it, but would recommend it for anyone for whom the lines of thought are novel.

After kicking off with Terry Bisson’s Thinking Meat, there are 3 or 4 solid chapters on 20th century demonstrations of brain (cortical neurone rewiring) plasticity. Tough in gory detail for anyone squeamish who finds vivisection distasteful or morally questionable, but the Silver Spring macaques and human stroke survivors suffered more for longer than strictly necessary for our knowledge to become accepted. Ramachandran is referenced, and I’ve used the likes of Damasio, Sacks, Zeman, and others to provide the same stories. Not only does the “mind” learn, the brain re-wires itself according to real life experience of the individual, not just in its early development. The authoritative body-scientific learns to rewire itself much more slowly than human individuals. (3 generations or 80 years is my typical estimate, after Kondratiev.)

The second half of the subject matter kicks off with my 3 favourite quantum physics quotes from Bohr, Born and Heisenberg. These provide a lead-in to the relationship between the writer(s) and Henry Stapp, and the long relationship between them and the Chalmers et al Arizona / Tucson Science of Consciousness and Quantum Consciousness movement(s) – a resource I’ve plundered for much material previously. I must have seen the Schwartz and Begley names before, but not registered.

Finally, they cover Libet’s Volitional Brain. Unlike so many in the mainstream, they do not misinterpret Libet as evidence that free-will is non-existent, an illusion. Like Libet (and myself) they recognise that it points to a free-won’t view of how free-will really operates. In closing they join up Jamesian and Buddhist world-views with the science presented so far. The “quantum Zeno effect” whereby the mental really does supply “downward causation” on the physical. A clear antidote to the objectively-physical greedy-reductionists; free-will really does wield mental force over the merely physical.

A great reference work from my perspective, and as I say, a recommended read for anyone to whom the subject matter is new or mysterious.

[Post Note : will come back and gradually add internal links to all the existing blog references.]

Another interesting and typically honest down-to-earth Grauniad piece by Jon Butterworth, following on from a couple of weeks ago, he’s obviously had plenty of correspondence from two quarters. Scientistic types who find Bayes Theorem the thin edge of a statistical wedge, admitting subjectivity into their hallowed ground, and philosophical types (aka nut-jobs) using the chink to insert suggestions of alternative physics into Jon’s “standard model” domain. Against the scientistic types Jon is happy to point out the value of honesty when it comes to admitting Bayes; to the nut-jobs he says:

For example, as a writer and head of a physics department, I get quite a few unsolicited communications about new theories of physics, often involving Einstein having been wrong, or the Higgs boson actually being a macaroon or something. I have a prior bias here, based on the enormous amount of existing evidence. Einstein might have been confused about the cosmological constant on occasion, but given prior evidence it is highly unlikely that the whole thrust of relativistic mechanics is up the spout. Likewise, I personally have quite a lot of evidence that the Higgs boson is consistent so far with being the fundamental Higgs of the Standard Model, and inconsistent with the macaroon theory.

Well I’ve not been sending Jon any pet theories, but I do highlight two of Jon’s points:

(1) it is highly unlikely that the whole thrust of relativistic mechanics is up the spout.

(2) a lot of evidence that the Higgs boson is consistent so far with the Standard Model.

Firstly, that prior assumption, his bias,  has a massive impact on interpretation of new results. Perversely, Einstein was right, and there is a great deal of “non-inflation” evidence the standard model is way off the mark. Once that is more generally recognised, that prior assumption (1) is gone, totally.

Secondly, as I reported when I heard Jon speak on the latest LHC Higgs evidence, it is quite explicit that the increasingly significant (5-sigma plus) evidence is pointing to internal self-consistency of the incomplete standard model. (2) does doing nothing to prove the fit between the model and the real world, other than to reinforce the subjective impression in (1).

As well as Bayes, we need a little Godel here. Jon already highlighted last time, the need to look elsewhere. It is a wonderfully healthy situation to have an honest scientist thinking out loud in the mainstream press. Could save science form the scientistic extremists. Be even better if we could find Jon a philosophical type for similar dialogue, with mutual respect.

[Post Note : More on Bayes in science from the NYT –

“Statistics sounds like this dry, technical subject, but it draws on deep philosophical debates about the nature of reality,” said the Princeton University astrophysicist Edwin Turner, who has witnessed a widespread conversion to Bayesian thinking in his field over the last 15 years.

Countering Pure Objectivity

Woohooo – maybe more scientists will gradually see the need to respect and/or get to grips with philosophy?]

 

Public communications piece from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Laura Mersini-Houghton’s recent announcements (previously reported Bang Goes The Big Bang here):

“Physicists have been trying to merge these two theories — Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum mechanics — for decades, but this scenario brings these two theories together, into harmony,” said Mersini-Houghton. “And that’s a big deal.”

And it does that by dispensing with black holes and singularities (and consequent inflation and dark-matter and dark-energy and many-worlds multi-verses), all the way back to the big bang. Stripping out the hacks and returning to (classical) common sense. (Hat tip to Rick on FB again- trawling the web for big-bang updates.)

That’s a big deal.

[Post Note : Obviously there are honestly sceptical responses to Mersini-Houghton, but so far no direct refutation, and I did notice one reference to Stephen Hawking having now agreed with her, over the non-existence of black-holes as singularities anyway. Need to collate other links.]

[Post Note : Oh, and how timely.]

Hat tip to @TiffanyJenkins for the link to this BBC Future Proofing episode on The Singularity.

(Holding post for now: Will miss tonight due to MeetUp engagement, but will review when I get to listen on iPlayer later.)

FYI – My prejudiced position is that all the talk about the impending Singularity is premised on a “too mechanistic” misunderstanding of the true computational nature of mind and intelligence. I say AI will be achieved when it evolves to be Real-I. (Need to dig up relevant blog links.)

Rough Notes whilst listening:

Computing power = smartness ? Hmmm.

Exponential human development – quartering time-base since homo-sapiens – OK. Predicts 2030-ish Omega point. If (that is IF) computers overtake human intelligence at that point, then by 2045 they will be billions of times more intelligent. Not sure computational power is the main driver of that cycle, but …

(Personally – I still believe in the three human generations timescale of technology development, ~80 year cycles in their actual effect on how humans live. Kondratiev / Kuhn etc. Interestingly 2030 is about the cusp of the next wave.)

Ray Kurzweil (now Eng Dir @ Google) – it’s about Language, the Turing Test. Zzzzz.

IBM “Watson” – “more” natural, sure. Anthropomorphic interactions (saying thanks), sure.

Humans do have advantages over robots – creativity, problem solving, emotional intelligence, dexterity, flexibility, etc. Doh! that’s what makes us humans as opposed to Accounting PhDs. Sure technology will automate the boring bits. Accounting however is a very complex human game – a million miles from arithmetic computation. Can’t see any robot playing “Tabletop” – the level-slipping analogies of creative problem solving.

Still (@24:10) only talking about “digital” computers and algorithms. Fast and accurate is not the point of human intelligence. Additive is the key – human intelligence will exploit ever more powerful tools.

(Interesting both presenters wrong in detecting human vs machine composed music. Second was clearly “formulaic” – metronomic – time-base-wise. Hard to prove now, proves nothing anyway, but I made the right choice. Not sure whether we were dealing with recordings or if both compositions machine-played?)

The Meta-aspects of humans, standing back to reflect on humanity. (Meta is the level-slipping in Tabletop.)

Ultimate conclusion is humanity – and human intelligence – is more than “machine” AI.

Agree. This is why I say AI can and will evolve, but it will only approach the intelligence of an intelligent life-form like humans, when it evolves to be an intelligent life-form itself. Real-I. (On evolutionary timescales.) Nothing special about humans here – any similarly intelligent life-form will do, we just happen to be the encumbents around here.

So long as AI workers have digital computers as their “computation” model of human brains (let alone minds) they’ll be severely hampered in getting AI to develop that way. Human intelligence does of course exploit “algorithms” to save time and brain power from the boring bits, free to do the creative “slipping”.

This is being reported everywhere. The irrelevance of CMB polarisation patterns relative to background noise and interference from space dust. No longer clutching at straws to support inflation-driven hacks to explain cosmic evolution since the big bang and, by rights, casting fresh questions over the nature of cosmic origins themselves. Here’s hoping common sense prevails, and good scientists ask the scientific questions. (Like Mersini-Houghton for example.)

Neatly summarised on FB by Rick Ryals:

If you project the expansion of the universe backwards without *pre-assuming* that you have to go all the way to an infinitely dense initial singularity in order to have a big bang, then inflationary theory becomes un-necessary as the most natural solution falls out… A universe with pre-existing volume had a big bang.

No more flatness problem, no more horizon problem… etc… duh.

Ironically, the same day UK science’s poster-boy is aired being interviewed by Jim Al Khalili in The Life Scientific, claiming he supports a multiple (parallel) “multiverses” view. [Text here – (*) even Schroedinger’s damn cat. Aaaaaggghhh!!!.] I do wish scientists would leave metaphysics to the philosophers, or at least (as Jim clearly does) acknowledge that some of the questions really are not in the realm of science. Why? Because if scientists actually did their real jobs, instead of playing stand-up politics with the media and their funding sources, they’d notice there is good scientific evidence for multiple sequential “universes” separated cyclically in time and furthermore, universes that don’t depend on the inflation hack. Nor do they depend on the brainless cop-out that if we can’t fit our flawed story to the cosmos as a whole, we’ll posit an infinity of possible universes where our politically-motivated guesses might just happen to be true in one of them. Scientists ought to have to pass some kind of test before being let loose with the kind of thought experiments used by philosophy. Stands to reason, dunnit?

As Haidt said (previous post) – science is untrustworthy because (too many) scientists spend their time playing-politics and issue-campaigning instead of doing science. Scientists are no more to be trusted than politicians or theologians, and only philosophers seem to appreciate that problem. Honest a-political scientists can of course understand the physical problem, if they put their minds to it, rather than their political defenses.

[(*) Post Note – literally many worlds, multiple parallel (independent) universes, is a thought experiment, nothing to do with physics – if the physics of two different worlds are related in anyway, they are part of the same world, possibly an inadequately explained part of the world, but the same world. Uncertainty of, or superposition of, multiple possible states in this world is a reflection of the difficulty agreeing explanations at the boundaries of physics knowledge about the world – unfinished work of physicists. Multiple universes in the sequential sense is something entirely different, cyclical aeons in the same world, same universe, but with (most of) history reset at each new big bang.

The mechanism is actually a lot easier to understand says Rick Ryals:

When you make a particle pair from vacuum energy you leave a real hole in the vacuum. This increases negative pressure and causes the vacuum to expand. The positive gravitational effect of the newly created massive particle offsets the increase in negative pressure so the “flatness” of the universe is fixed. Ripping out huge chunks of the vacuum structure to make particles with causes the vacuum to “thin” as tension between the vacuum and matter increases. Eventually this process will compromise the integrity of the forces that bind the universe and… BOOM… a universe with pre-existing volume has *another* big bang.

And, Neil Turok, betting against gravitational waves in Scientific American.]

Interesting Boyarsky Lecture at Duke, from Jonathan Haidt – who I’ve read and reviewed very positively before – which he opens by contrasting liberal unconstrained view of morality with the need for institutional constraints. And immediately nails his colours to the more conservative “centrist” mast than the vast majority of his liberal academic, medical scientific, audience.

Hat tip to Stephen Law on FB for the link.

Excellent, after a full viewing. The ultimate message is that we share most values, but our views become skewed or imbalanced by making one value “sacred” above all others, immune from any trade-offs. And the sacred choices are mostly partisan, defended vs the mad, irrational perceived opposition, liberal vs conservative at any given point in time, but environmental changes over time mean that the sacred priorities evolve. Or rather they should evolve, but become even more imbalanced by the reaction to the opposition. On the science front, the problem is scientists (the humans) are politicised on the liberal side of the balance. Hear, hear.

Definitely worth watching in full, despite the US-centric agenda.

Good to see a piece on the new computing element of the UK school curriculum, where it is more than simply a “coding” skill for immediate employment. Stuart Dredge in the Grauniad quotes Bill Mitchell of the BCS.

He says it’s “thinking about thinking”, and you can do with bits of string and card and lots of running around, without going anywhere near a computer. It can be inspirational. Hear hear. Computation is something as fundamental in this world as say physics, understanding of which is highly transferable knowledge, as I’ve mentioned several times, last time here in The Year of Code.

[Post Note : A little scare-mongering.]

Met and heard Bob Churchill of IHEU talk to the CLHG at Conway Hall last night, with an audience of 60-odd.

His provocative title “Your Humanism is a Thought Crime” left out the implied … in certain parts of the world where religious freedom is not recognised, or is actively suppressed whether by legal arrangements or by cultural taboo. His first and recurring clarification is to note that the expression Religious Freedom is a selective contraction of a much more comprehensive UN Human Rights declaration on:

Freedom of thought, expression and belief
including religious and non-religious belief.

His presentation was in two parts; Firstly, to describe and update us on the work of the many (hundreds of) international humanist groups under the IHEU umbrella, and the many examples of specific cases and countries where campaigns to help those individuals and groups subjected to discrimination and much greater lethal risks. The examples and statistics are mind-boggling in scope and variety, and the most comprehensive account of these forms the basis on the annually updated Free Thought Report (which Bob edits). The second was to focus specifically on the direct first-hand lobbying activities of IHEU and other humanist NGO’s in support of ongoing UN proposals for new and amended motions and declarations. (Be great to share the slides, Bob.)

The amount of work evident in these combined activities was and is immense – impressive and indeed inspiring. Even as an avid follower of such human rights issues and cases reported in the media, you couldn’t hope to appreciate the total scope without the IHEU work done to report them all under one umbrella. From the IHEU perspective, Humanism is as broad a church imaginable: “The global umbrella organisation embracing Humanist, atheist, secularist, skeptic, rationalist, lay, ethical, cultural, free-thought and similar organisations, worldwide since 1952.” To be whole-heartedly commended and supported.

In the Q&A, and ongoing discussions late into the evening, Bob responded to two lines of questioning amongst others:

Given the very general nature of the human rights freedoms, and the range of issues of nation, race, age, gender, sexual-orientation as well as religious and non-religious beliefs generally, how is the “Humanism” message made distinct compared to the many campaigning organisations in this broad libertarian, humanitarian sphere – such as Amnesty International it was suggested.

And secondly, given that the focus in sheer weight of example cases was religious – predominantly Moslem – suppression of freedoms, how is Humanism establishing and arguing for alternatives to the underlying fundamental tenets of specific religious beliefs.

Joining the dots between those two issues; Humanism, despite the impressively huge amount of campaigning and success against violation of general freedoms of belief and expression, it has done so largely under an anti-religion banner, often under the God vs Science wars” or, BHA specifically, secular moves to eliminate faith-based activity from any (UK) state organs. The focus has been to criticise, attack and ridicule the more “irrational” and dogmatic aspects of religious belief or otherwise exclude it from the domain. Other than some “scientific” & “democratic” forms of rationality, is Humanism doing enough to establish the nature and values of “good” Humanist beliefs, in the vacuum left behind where established religious-based moral law has withered or is otherwise being progressively swept away? The process of getting our own Humanist house in order, as it were.

Bob, from his perspective as both philosopher and campaigner, articulated a sophisticated and informed response. In summary: Firstly, we can’t be simplistic about the myriad interconnected issues. And even where we are able to propose appropriate responses, policies and values, there remain complexities in their communication. Even in the no-brainer clear cut cases, with an obvious wrong to be put right,  there remain many tactical subtleties of both communication and action depending on the short and long term risks to the individuals involved. But in general, many levels from particular campaign messages and actions to more general intellectual debate and conversations, mediated and un-mediated.

Hear, hear. And, in many ways, this represents the fear that drives the agenda here on Psybertron. In this world of ubiquitous communications, it’s all too easy to allow the focus on clear-headlines needed to pursue the clear-cut no-brainer campaigns, to crowd out the tougher, subtler conversations that are also necessary.  It’s a truism that real values are reflected in how individuals act and govern their actions in practice, and that policies and manifestos expressing aims and values, however carefully drafted, can remain theoretical. But, like The Free Thought Report, agreed and published policies and processes for addressing the real complexities of the issues, are a resource for justification and validation of action by all involved.

Impossible to be comprehensive and conclusive within the constraints of the evening, and a blogged report like this, but all in all a very encouraging conversation pointing in all the right directions.

At least it will if our all-pervasive PC standards of objectivity and democratisation give engaged judgement a chance. A talk by Tiffany Jenkins on BBC Four Thought. An important plea picking up on one point of Grayson Perry’s Reith Lectures.

In reviewing The Muslims are Coming! by Arun Kundnani, Andrew Copson writing in the New Humanist finds that whilst he supports the warnings against prejudice, the message falls short on the part the religion itself plays in Islamic extremism. He adds this point of his own:

There is a confidence imparted to a person by religious ideology that can motivate excessive violence, and the intellectual and ideological content of religion needs to be considered in any full analysis.

Of course he’s right. But there are moral distinctions to be made between “attacking” extremism and “critically debating” religion. The fact that ideological confidence can motivate violent extremism is no premise to assume that it does in anyone who identifies with any given religion. Considerate analysis must include respect for those who find value in religion, something far from ideology and a million miles from condemning violent extremism.