Category: Uncategorized

… that Intelligent Design (ID) Creationism is not a scientific alternative to anything, and religion is quite distinct from science. They even refer to supporting the Pennsylvanian court ruling that upheld parents objections to IDC being taught as alternative science in their schools.[ via Sam at Elizaphanian]

The Jeremy Leggett oil-crisis article is I guess no great surprise, in terms of the discovery, reserves, production, security and consumption of oil & gas supplies. It’s only ever been a matter of when, though as he points out even intelligent public guesswork would be way off the mark on many of the key dates. The consequences of not planning a smooth transition through the crisis don’t bear thinking about. Actually they do, but like Jeremy you feel that perhaps a small disaster soon might be what we need to wake everyone up before a total global economic crash and word war three.

It’s a well researched article and worth the long read. Excellent.

My main interest is in the “facts” – that is my epistemological agenda. I mentioned the Shell overestimation of their own reserves, that led to the fall of their then CEO and Chief Geologist, in my MoQ Conference paper last year. I mentioned it amongst other “accounting” scandals, not to raise the nightmare scenario, but in order to raise the question of “subjective” information “objectively” presented, as part of the normal “hypocrisy” of taking a “scientific” view of complex situations involving behaviour of humans individually and collectively in organisations of any kind. My main agenda.

Before I go there – the other striking “fact”. Is it really true that the full worst-case predicted demand for global energy could actually be satisfied by solar power occupying <1% (less than one per-cent !!) of land area currently used for agriculture ? If that were only vaguely true, nothwithstanding engineering and logistical factors, we could solve the EU Common Agricultural Policy and the world energy crisis in one move. What a missed opportunity for the UK’s year as EU Chair. What a criminal waste if true and known. Except … what are truth and knowledge anyway … therein lies the rub.

I won’t cherry pick the quotes – you can read the article – but Jeremy has so many examples of “rational” distortion and exaggeration of quantitative “facts”, and hypocritical denial and sharing ignorance, and so on. Every trick in the rational logical-positivist objective book.

My urgent agenda – to get us thinking, decision-making and acting with quality instead of pseudo-objectivity – just got its urgency re-inforced. Talk about intent, power and interest – all more significant than any objective “facts”.

Thanks to Alex for pointing out this long and detailed Independent Article by Jeremy Leggett, adapted from his “Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis”.

All adding to the “Peak-Oil” relevance, and the significance of “The Middle East Situation” – Iran, Israel, Security, etc …

Been discussing the merits of alternatives to simple ontologies based on hierarchical classification taxonomies with Leon, off line. Folksonomies is the latest buzzword, mentioned here and earlier, for heterarchical taxonomies that emerge when users tag objects in the course of using them (for whatever it is they use them).

Dave Weinberger has some interesting recent threads on this subject. [Here] and [here].

Don’t normally do politics if I can help it. Here goes.

There is a long “have your say” thread on the BBC site, of public opinions on Iran re-opening its nuclear plants.

There is a preponderance of opinion attacking US & Western “hypocrisy and arrogance” in expressing opinion and raising the subject on EU and UN agendas, and plenty using the opportunity for digs at US / UK foreign policy history. So many of those threads lead to Israel and ongoing US support thereof.

Civil nuclear power has its risks, but there is no reason to suppose any one developed state is any more incompetent to manage those risks than another. Nuclear power is seeing a global comeback as more people take the peak in fossil fuel reserves, and the lack of any signs of reduced consumerism, more seriously. The fact that Iran’s fossil fuel resource wealth is probably not the most critical in the world, probably does cast doubt on the argument that their intentions are entirely civil. I doubt Iran is dishonest enough to use that argument anyway. It doesn’t need to lie, it’s intentions are publicly stated already.

Military nuclear capability, defensive or offensive, is a different matter, and only such things as moral trust in non-proliferation agreements, or practical trust in the fear of Mutual Assured Destruction and the like, can be held responsible for the minimum actual use of such weapons to date. So there can be little management of military nuclear capabilities without trust. Far from an atmosphere of trust, the world abounds with public declarations and conspiracy theories about Iran (or another Arab state) wanting to terminate Israel, or provoke what is already a nuclear power into a pre-emptive attack against which terminal retalliation might be (slightly more morally) justified. That absence of trust, is not going to be corrected by arrogant threats and sabre-rattling is it ?

Israel cannot be ignored in this. It is still “the middle east situation”. Twas ever thus.

I am an atheist, so whilst I’ll defend any individual or group to hold theistic religious beliefs and practice them in their own houses and churches, I am no supporter of religion being tied to any authority or state governance, if it endangers life in my world. That’s as true of Jewish as Islamic or Christian fundamentalists. Unfortunately all of those hold such authority in many of the states in this “situation”.

Secondly, no easy way to say this, I’m no supporter of Zionist claims to Israel as a state, not beyond their human rights as a recently constituted state, created with the accommodation of its neighbours. There is no more “fundamental” Israeli right here.

Of course, the medium term “security” of fossil fuel supplies from the middle-east (and neighbouring regions) to “western” countries is the other political factor in the situation. A factor which adds to the hypocrisy in many a western state’s declared motives. A trust totally compromised by the national and human security issues in the previous paragraphs. No doubt people on all sides will debate whether Oil or Religion is the prime cause of the difficulties, but that is irrelevant, they’re both in it up to their necks.

Trouble is oil (as a physical resource) seems much easier to talk about objectively, even if states insist on hypocritical double-speak, whereas religion is doomed to less objective, less rational arguments. What is needed is diplomacy, compromise and real trust. If only half of the subject matter is on the table, then no real trust is likely to arise.

There can be little doubt however that Israel and Anglo-Saxon support for Zionism is a key part of the Iranian nuclear power issue.
See the reference mid-way down this earlier post.
We need to be addressing the long-standing hard parts of this problem, (hard as in soft & difficult).

Just a holding post for an issue that keeps cropping up in Dennett (see previous post). Who is me ?

In the sections on will and quasi-altruistic (long term enlightened) self-interest, he mentions something I’ve raised before – often in nationalism / political debates – is the me / we distinction. In considering what is in “your” interest, you can identify yourself with with the individual person or any number of different overlapping “constituencies”, my family, my gang, my team, my company, my industry, my party, my nation, my “hemisphere”, me as part of all humanity, me as part of the whole of nature, etc …

In fact this is a recurring concept with Dennett, when talking about where consciousness resides in me. If you make yourself large enough, you can internalise every issue. If you make yourself small enough, you can externalise every issue. A “control volume” issue I’ve raised before.

BTW – following up on where I’d got to in the previous post. Dennett’s debunking of the “300 millisecond moral void” seemingly illustrated by the Libet experiment as demonstrating the absence of conscious will. I rejected this earlier, for the same reason Dennett explains here. Our consciousness is distributed in space and time, is a complex multi-layered system of processes, some of which are supervisory, some are delegated, and only some of which need be in active conscious awareness at any given time. The tennis analogy, returning a very fast serve, is a good illustration of how we have pre-planned sequences set in motion almost like a reflex, which only need be modified or even stopped by the supervisory control, in higher conscious awareness, just in time. The latter sometimes parodied as “free won’t”. That’s an extreme hand-eye-body coordination example, but we couldn’t even walk and chew gum at the same time, if we had to be consciously aware of deciding every individual action.

I mentioned earlier I had started reading Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves” and it seemed promising then. I actually think it’s his best yet. Convincing common-sense and hugely entertaining, with some great laugh-out loud gags for good measure.

He’s working up to the evolution of morality and values, via the arms race and economics of mental evolution. Not quite there yet. 80% through, just reached a section where he is about to explain at length the 300 millisecond “moral void” – the Libet experiment where motor action seems to pre-empt any conscious decision making. Why do I know I’m going to identify with Dennett’s version of events, even though I’ve not read it yet ?

After laying the ground with distinctions around determinism and the very concept of free will, and some basic re-capping of earlier work on how complexity and life can be explained by evolution from the simple and dead, a good part of the book is about evolution of strategies that involve cooperation and enlightened-far-sighted-self-interest, in contrast to “tooth and claw” competition. ie Given that we have free-will what kinds of thing to intelligent entities actually do as “rational agents”. There is a good deal of game-theoretic stuff with variations on the prisoners’ dilemma. Again not new for anyone already interested, just so well written and explained, synthesising the work of others, and with non-intrusive references to other good sources of detail.

Two favourites so far.

In describing how deferred gratification, or resistance of temptation to short-term personal gain, at the expense of longer term interest of yourself and other co-operators, cements greater trust and greater cooperation amongst actual and potential collaborators, he also describes the view from the side of the party doing the tempting. If the Mafia, making you the offer you can’t refuse, but do, recognises your reliability in resisting such temptation, it won’t need to waste a perfectly good horse’s head in any futile future attempt. Win-win.

Quoting “Brain Storm” from Richard Dooling, written 20 years after his own “Brainstorms”, he describes a pang of guilt preventing a husband’s otherwise inevitable act in a steamy clinch with another scientist on the lab floor, when she pipes up (as you would) with a description of how Dennett has proven that free-will doesn’t exists (which he never has of course), and there is no reason to feel such guilt for our actions. Dooling and Dennett tell it much better. As Dennett says, it’s hard enough to explain that fully clothed, standing behind a lecture stand, let alone rolling naked on the floor.

Of course there are plenty of side-swipes at believers in sky-hooks, which will either amuse or annoy, but there’s no denying the good-natured wit, and compared to Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, this aspect of his thinking is more gently understated here. Dennett is more concerned with quality of explanation, than the particular names of the more intangible things that people do or don’t believe exist, so he has learned that people sometimes have misunderstood what he has said about their existence. Reading “Freedom Evolves” can leave little doubt.

[Post Note – More hypocrisy and horses heads. Sorry couldn’t resist this – the current talk of “bungs” (bribes) in UK Soccer dealings has thrown up some quotes that just fit the story so well. Gerry Francis said “Agents soon found out those people who would take inducements and those people who wouldn’t.” and Graham Kelly said ” Clubs generally are hypocritical about this, because they condemn agents and then they work with them.”]

It doesn’t always, perhaps something of Tim Kreider’s Pain gets lost in transatlantic translation, but the latest made me smile.

When I blogged here, but no, The Meta-Memes Guy blogs already.

Found via Stephen C’s infrequently updated Square One blog

Both added to side bar too.

I blogged last April about the idea tha del.ici.ous might work as a means of creating categories, that could include inherited catgories, and that by adding such links the non-hierarchical taxonomy could just evolve from the links.

I noticed on a search cross-hit that Greg, John and Fritz at Freshblog had a detailed summary of ways to exploit del.ici.ous for this purpose. Must follow-up this idea.

Categories was the only reason I moved from Blogger to WordPress. Would I switch back to blogger if I fixed this ? The Swicki (in the header) is part of my experimenting with informal / evolving categories.