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Just a list of headings from Alain de Botton’s TED talk.

• Religious vs atheist – some confusion of gods and religions?
• “There is no god” is just the start of the story.
• Ritual, moral, communal aspects – cherry-picking “the good bits”
• Shakespeare, Plato, Austen (etc) – cultural sources of morality tales.
• Universities have forgotten to teach “how should we live” – as if we don’t need help, we don’t want to be treated “like children” – whereas most of us are barely holding it together.
• Repetition of old truths (nothing new, etc.) rather than valuing novelty for its own sake.
• Religious calender to ensure ideas cross our paths regularly.
• Looking at the moon – a ritual
• Oratory – rhetorical skills for communication. Praise be to Shakespeare. Plato, Austen
• Associating the physical with the moral lessons – to cement / anchor.
• Art – no such thing as art for art’s sake, always a message / lesson / reason for art. (Explanatory labelling in art galleries.)
• Love, fear, hate and death in religious art. Reinforcing (propagandising) old truths. Art organized according to their didactic message.
• Branding of massive common institutions. Not just individual books by individuals – they can’t change the world, without scale and repetition.
• Travel as pilgrimage.
• You may not agree with the ideas, but you have to admire the processes.
• Politeness is a much overlooked virtue.

All my posts go to twitter, and selected one’s are filtered by dlvr.it to facebook and linkedin (and a few other targetted channels).

I’ve only recently – last 2 or 3 months – started actually following anything (#) or anyone (@) on twitter. (Since for me it was just a channel to other discussion spaces I never really saw the point of watching a twitter feed, and I’m trying to understand who does actually use twitter as their primary user interface.)

None of the people with big followings seem to watch responses to their own general feed, except from people they are already following or have addressed explicitly – not even “replies”. They are just one-way “look at me” feeds.

@GeorgeGalloway is predictable, but a good source of contentious political stories that don’t break in the mainstream media, oh and “me, me, me” posts about is own media appointments – mercifully few.

@AlanSugar and @PiersMorgan are like eight-year-olds – all “me, me, me” promotion of follower numbers and slaves to inane re-tweet requests, and yobbish partisan footie comments. (Stopped following both … pity ‘cos I had a a lot of time for Sugar’s business sense.)

@RichardBranson is interesting and intelligent, both earnest and fun. Most of his tweets are fed from one or other of his other blogging / publishing channels – always related to Branson & Virgin initiatives – but not specifically self-promoting.

@RickyGervais – you already know whether you love or hate his comedic style – and his tweets don’t disappoint – they seem honest. All about him, his media output and I suspect testing out his comedy ideas (as well as his atheist agenda). Cruelly merciless in mocking the “twonks” who don’t always get it – as you’d expect. Making heavy use of “phones smarter than the twonks who own them” at the moment.

Since someone asked – where does IP fit with the MoQ ?

First – IP is about (legal / contractual) rights to use copyright – not about property ownership per se. (See previous SOPA / PIPA threads especially the Kinsella reference.)

In a world where democratic mixed-economy is already the evolved norm, then contracts are clearly very common social level patterns, and could hold true whether the considerations were financial or in-kind / deferred / social-contract terms.

As one social pattern amongst a massive complex of trading and commerce patterns, there are clearly also many level-crossing patterns involved too. Socio-intellectual patterns in establishing and adjusting fair terms for such contracts, particularly in cases near or moving boundaries of existing legislation – where terms are not already established social patterns – (though of course in an evolved society the processes of debate and intellectual freedom are themselves regulated by established social patterns and institutions of governance). And there obviously socio-bio-physical patterns where cases of enforcement arise.

If we’re not in a world of democratic mixed economies, then we have a different starting point. We’re in another possible world, but we’d need to address questions of where trading and commerce (or their equivalent) fit as patterns.  That’s a different question, that would require a great deal of intellectual debate, not to mention social (even biological) evolution before we could start (would even need) to address IP.

Seems pretty straightforward ?

[Post Note : Oh, and another example of illegal internet uses …
and more from Megaupload – see previous.]

Excellent Edinburgh TED talk from Alain deBotton. Good on so many fronts, will need to comment more later. Even made BBC R4 Today programme this morning. Atheism2.0

I’ve always resisted identifying with the term “atheist” preferring non-theist or new-humanist, or maybe Spinozan pan-theist,  if I must choose a religious label. Mainly because atheism really has become an extreme anti-theist religion, that misses or debases the spiritual experience dimension of life, and is profoundly “anti” … devoid of love and respect … both words Alain is happy to use. The placing of scientific rationality on a pedestal to the exclusion  all others – scientism – is itself a religion based on misplaced idolatry.

Anyway, enough about me. It’s a must watch.

Thanks to Horse for this Register link “SOPA is dead, are you happy now ?”

I’m for fair IP Copyright licensing. Fair is a tough question – but I’m for answering it.

I’m against bad legislation – Duh, who isn’t, that’s what bad means, let’s improve it.

There is already legal enforcement of copyright in most democratic mixed economies, what new arrangements need to cover is how it’s enforceable when it crosses national boundaries via intermediary services. If people don’t make fair effort to comply, and knowingly encourage and enable others to break IP terms, then I can’t see any defence.

Half the rants seem to be anti-authoritarian – against mis-application of the legal powers of enforcement – ulterior motives of the establishment to use the cover of such legislation to trample unfairly over otherwise legal but inconvenient uses of internet communications – see fair.

The other half of the rants seem to be anti-capitalist – against any tendencies to make “loadsa” money (or even any money at all ?) out of selling fair use of copyrighted content – see fair.

Fair ? In a mixed-economy democracy ? These are the clues.

Previous threads
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=4099
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=4063
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=4059

Former Mozilla CEO John Lilly argues:

What’s extremely discouraging to me right now is that I don’t really see how we [the tech  world and the US Congress] can have a nuanced, technically-informed, respectful discussion/debate/conversation/working relationship.

Instead all we get is the media industries engaging in back room lobbying to get bad bills passed while the tech world shotguns abuse until Congress capitulates. Talk about a dysfunctional relationship.

[Ha – Megaupload were not averse to a little illegal capitalism then, magic.]

Inevitable, despite the attempts to associate the iconic brand with digital products.

[Yes, I know it’s misspelt, but the brand wouldn’t turn up in searches otherwise.]

Several people noted yesterday that it was significant that Wikipedia was joining today’s internet blackout – given the fact that Wikipedia are pretty hot on honouring IP copyrights. This Jimmy Wales interview reinforces that fact. I still despair at the rhetoric being traded – of course collaboration is needed to improve the wording of any bill – none of the bill content I’ve actually heard quoted seem at all unreasonable, the criticisms are simply being generalized. Freedoms (of speech and others) are a separate issue. The problem as ever is mistrust of authority applying its powers fairly. There can be as many self-policing arrangements as people want, but law enforcement is still the last resort. In the final analysis legal enforcement of copyright needs to have teeth where crime is committed.

Amazing that only (under) 2 years ago Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, and now not only are full US (and other) diplomatic relations restored, but there are elections and Suu Kyi is running for office.

BTW, when did Myanmar become Burma again, reverting to the old colonial spelling of basically the same word?

Interesting to contrast Dean Windass and Gary Speed, the day after Mancini aims to emulate Rooney – not even with any apparent irony. Mancini is the kind of superstar fashionista dipstick the game could do without, as opposed to Phil Brown, speaking up here for Deano. It’s a funny old game, more important than life and death some have said, and City’s points tally pales into insignificance in my book.

Gary Speed was so much the cerebral professional – player, manager and TV pundit, that you can only agree his suicide – with signs not even seen by closest friends – was inexplicable. Some specific trigger beyond career depression, surely. Deano, never the brightest or most eloquent communicator always seemed to be struggling with (but enjoying) his Sky TV match reporter role, you nevertheless had to smile along with him and Jeff Stelling; he was after all a good-old-fashioned centre-forward at the end of his career, not a rocket-scientist.

I’v always liked Deano, even a match I recall when he became the bogey-man-we-love-to-hate for most Royals supporters. In April 2004 (Bantams vs Royals) Ivar Ingimarsson was the inexperienced but promising defender and the seasoned centre-forward niggled away at him for an hour before Ivar responded with a frustrated but deliberate kick – and got the first red-card of his career, on the losing side, naturally.

You can understand the career-end depression, drinking, gambling, spending almost all he’d ever earned – not that uncommon we are led to believe. But suicide? You could learn a lot from Deano. Ivar did. It’s a game.

This year’s Edge question 2012 is:

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE
DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL
EXPLANATION?

Many of the responses don’t really answer the question, but there are hundreds of responses on many subjects. These are a few that caught my eye – almost all mean further reading! Some are just interesting to see in this context even if not new; some are frankly disappointing in that same sense.

Richard Thaler – “Commitment” – more optimal to restrict choice by prior commitment.
Charles Simonyi – Boscovich was right, a recurring claim.
Dave Winer – on not wearing a watch (me too).
Tim O’Reilley – Pascal’s wager generalized for decision-making.
David Dalrymple – principle of least action
Tania Lombrozo – Metaphysical half-truths engrained in our psyche – realism and causation included – including professional scientists, who should know better.
John McWhorter – From a lobster to a cat. Guts / nerves – front / back ?
Andrew Lih – Information theory and Ernest Shannon.
Eric Weinstein – The Geometric Quantum (Einstein’s Revenge). New to me.
Virginia Heffernan – In the beginning was the word, and still is.
Stuart Kauffman – cell types as attractors.
Bruce Hood – complexity out of simplicity
Timo Hannay – Feynman’s lifeguard (See David Dalrymple’s principle of least action – explanation of light)
Giulio Boccaletti – Fooled by habits (See Tania Lombrozo)
Brian Eno – on the limits to intuition
Simone Schnall –  Metaphors Unify Perception, Cognition and Action
Joel Gold – Dark Matter of the Mind –  The conscious mind�”much like the visible aspect of the universe�”is only a small fraction of the mental world.
Jon Kleinberg – ” Sometime in the past 4000 years, there have been two people in your family tree�”call them A and B�”with the property that A was an ancestor of B’s mother and also an ancestor of B’s father. Your family tree has a “loop”, where two branches growing upward from B come back together at A�”in other words, there’s a set of parents in your ancestry who are blood relatives of each other, thanks to this relatively recent shared ancestor A.”
Marti Hearst – Why programs have bugs. “The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff”. (Code is Poetry, remember.)
Thomas Metzinger – Simplicity itself.
Rebecca Goldstein – why the question (deep, elegant & beautiful) is valid (or not).
Ernst Poppel – Trusting trust. (Intriguing, another one of my focus subjects.)
Charkes Seife – “Even something as simple as counting one, two, three can lead to a completely unexpected realm”. (See Hofstadter, but also another reference to the Pigeonhole Principle – see Jon Kleinberg above)
Davdi Myers – Group polarization problem. (Intriguing.)
Hans Ulrich Obrist – Cagepatterns. (Reminds me of Hofstadter – Intriguing.)
Hugo Mercier – Metarepresentations Explain Human Uniqueness
Philip Zimbardo – Time Perspective Theory. “I am here to tell you that the most powerful influence on our every decision that can lead to significant action outcomes is something that most of us are both totally unaware of and at the same time is the most obvious psychological concept imaginable. I am talking about our sense of psychological time.”
Elizabeth Dunn – (see Zimbardo)
Frank Wilczek – (see Metzinger)
Stanislas Dehaene – The Universal Algorithm For Human Decisions.
Freeman Dyson –  the search for a unified theory could turn out to be an illusion.
Dan Dennett – ” [Some] species of sea turtles migrate all the way across the South Atlantic to lay their eggs on the east coast of South America after mating on the west coast of Africa. [When] the behavior started, Gondwanaland was just beginning to break apart (that would be between 130 and 110 million years ago), and these turtles were just swimming across the narrow strait to lay their eggs. Each year the swim was a little longer�”maybe an inch or so�”but who could notice that? Eventually they were crossing the ocean to lay their eggs, having no idea, of course, why they would do such an extravagant thing.” Magic – if true; any volunteers to test / prove / disprove.
Jennifer Jacquet – Tit for tat. (Hofstadter’s Tabeltop ?)
Steven Pinker –  Evolutionary Genetics Explains The Conflicts of Human Social Life.
Clay Shirky – read Dan Sperber.
Jonathan Gottschall – Faurie-Raymond handedness and survival of the sportiest. Interesting twist on “fittest” – as in best fit.
Richard Foreman – A matter of poetics.
Timothy Taylor – why the Greeks painted red people on black pots. “Anyone can understand what is going on (for which reason museums often keep their straight, gay, lesbian, group, bestial, and olisbos [dildo-themed] stuff out of public view, in study collections)”.
Arnold Trehub – The Anthropic Principle (Great to see it make this context !)
David Christian – The idea of Emergence.
Nicholas Carr – The mechanism of mediocrity (The Peter principle)(The memetic problem, I say. Easy is most popular, Correct can be hardest to promote.)
Howard Gardner – The importance of individual human beings.
Nicholas Humphrey –  A Beautiful Explanation For Why The Human Mind May Seem To Have An Elegant Explanation Even If It Doesn’t. “Elegance can be misleading. Consider a simple mathematical example. Given the sequence 2, 4, 6, 8, what rule would you guess is operating to generate the series? …” (Hofstadter again?)

Disappointments

Nathan Myrvhold – Scientific Method – too much faith.
Vilayanur Ramachandran – Consciousness is genetically evolved – this isn’t news.
Scott Sampson – The Gaia hypothesis.
Haim Harari –  “All of matter consists of six types of quarks and six types of leptons, with seemingly random unexplained mass values, spanning more than ten orders of magnitude. No one knows why, within these twelve building blocks, the same pattern repeats itself three times.”
Susan Blackmore – Darwin and Natural Selection.

Darwin’s Natural Selection is probably the most mentioned, naturally since it is generally held to be the biggest dangerous idea ever across the most fields of enquiry. Feynman and Einstein get plenty of mentions. I see Hofstadter everywhere these days, but I didn’t see a mention.