Category: Uncategorized

Following on from Sue Blackmore’s works, I have at last ordered the Dan Dennett materials so I can read him in the original. Also ordered David Chalmers book – I guess I need to read that too, even if it seems I disagree with him on Qualia. (What I forgot to order but will do next time is some Hofstadter – “Mind’s I” presumably, since he was influential on Chalmers.)

Meantime, having read Sue, and followed that with David Deutsch, both impressive – I started reading Ian Stewart’s “Flatterland” – the most recent of the sequels to Edwin Abbott Abbott’s 1884 fictional Flatland. Interesting idea, and nice allegory to get your head round concepts you can’t visualise in your current “world” – mainly dimensions beyond 3 in this case. [One omission that nags, is the idea of biological life in a 2D world – which as Martin Rees points out is impossible – a digestive tract splits you in two, unless you excrete through the same orifice you ingest – messy.] The thing that really gets in the way of my reading it is the dear diary, dear-unseen-correspondent please-lead-me-through-this-story style of Sophie’s World. A real turn off now as it was then. Pity, I though Stewart’s book on chaos was much better than Gleick’s, …. in exactly the same way I prefer Talbot to Gladwell, hopefully not a UK vs US thing ?

Apparently not, I’m now reading Caldwell and Thomason’s “Rule of Four”. Picked up and blogged about the subject of this book – the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili – soon after I’d read Donna Tartt’s “Secret History”, when I’d seen “Rule of Four” described as being Eco’s “Name of the Rose” written in the style of Donna Tartt. (Though since Dan Brown has ejaculated all over this memespace in the intervening year, I now prefer the UK Independent’s rather snooty tag of “The Da Vinci Code for people with brains”.) A promising start – like Tartt’s Secret History the plot involves the riskier side of US College frat house traditions – Apollonian Educated Genius vs Dionysian Reckless Madness leading (presumably) to a Love (and Humour) Conquers All thesis. Anyway I’m hooked.

The Apothecary highlights that April 2005 is Mathematics Awareness Month, reminds me that I’m well through reading David Deutsch’s “Fabric of Reality”.

I owe a fairly thorough review, because it has already made a big impression. The first time I’ve been convinced by the “multiverse” idea being more than an allegorical predictive metaphor, actually more an explanatory model of the “real” world. Several other key concepts too. I mentioned before about a non-reductive view of what makes something “fundamental”. Notwithstanding the fact that physics underlies chemistry, underlies, biology, etc, there is nothing more fundamental than life (replication) itself, for example.

The main mathematical point here is Deutsch’s contention that mathematics is constrained not by some pure logical, abstract concepts, but by physical reality, with the corollary that pure logic is itself an illusion – argumentation being the only test of truth. Some great extensions of Turing universal computer into the concept of a universal virtual-reality generator, being indistinguishable from reality, and (like maths and computation) obeying the laws of physics rather than logic – quantum physics of course.

is view of time and causality seems to support absence of free-will until he exposes that our common sense view of time is badly misled by experiencing only one the multiverses. Tough going, but fascinating. Good chapter summaries make re-capping easy, even if the quality of writing is not in Blackmore’s class.

I can’t recommend Deutsch too highly. Stuff I’ve not seen expressed elsewhere – which is increasingly uncommon.

[Some great stuff on Ray’s site again – check out the octopus walking on two legs !]

BBC again, this time a report from UK teachers unions alarmed that creationist twaddle is spreading from US into UK school curricula materials.

“Evolution is not compatible with christianity” says Monty White of the “creation science movement”. He’s not wrong there – biologically & genetically at least, some hope for the right outcome then. Would that he were right memetically; the virus requires active resistance to curb its spread, whilst the supernaturalists hold the ace cards of fear and disprovability.

A BBC report on blogging, mainly on the freedom of speech angle and East vs West differences. However, as it says, if a problem shared is a problem halved, what is happening when millions share with millions ?

Wonder what Northrop would have made of blogging ?

At last I have domestic PC and Broadband working to day in Perth, WA. Business travel permitting, I should be getting more blogging time. May even take the plunge and go for WordPress implementation.

Leonid sent me some links to work by and about Stafford Beer recently. [eg A Time Whose Idea Must Come] [2005 Web Archive Copy] It’s something I should have followed up much earlier. On the quality of modelling business organisations in order to design systems for their management he says

[Quote] In programming a computer, one needs a model. Models are provided by brains. Models are necessarily massive variety attenuators, because they select only those aspects of the world that are relevant to the model’s purpose. Worse still, the models adopted are not the best that we can provide: they are consensual models put in place and held together by ideologies. And an ideology is a very low variety instrument indeed. Vast tracts of political philosophy since the ancient Greeks have been studied in common by the theorists of both communism and capitalism; but the ideologies to which the two superpowers rallied their supporters attenuated this variety in different guises. They have had this much in common: neither had Requisite Variety (as defined by Ashby’s Law) by which to manage. Both are managerially dysfunctional therefore. And neither works. [Unquote]

The tension of static and dynamic quality, Variety attenuation, Greek philosophy, Management dysfunction – my whole thesis is in there somewhere.

[Post Note: Beer makes his own main source reference to Maturana and Varela seminal work – “Autopoeisis and Cognition”. (Offline PDF Copy also available here.)]

Just spent a week, over Easter weekend, playing tourists around Perth – mostly local to Perth, but got as far north as The Pinnacles – an alien landscape worth seeing – John Forrest Park – a pre-historic forest-scape worth seeing – plus the usual winery boat trip, fish’n’chips at Fremantle fisherman’s wharf, plus wildlife park … daily weather maximum went from 42C / Sunny to 18C / Rainy inside the week …

Anyway the reason to blog ? … whilst at the Aquarium of WA at Hillary’s Marina, we witnessed a member of staff describing the “creator’s design” of a leafy sea-horse to assembled visitors. The irony was Robbie had Darwin’s “Origin of Species” in his backpack. It was all we could do to stand gob-smacked. Terrifying.

Strangely, reminiscing about Devo (Are We Not Men / Wiggly World) the other day with some colleagues, I recalled seeing Mark Mothersbaugh’s name as creator behind US 30-somethings / family life / kids cartoon (Rugrats? ).

Anyway, saw on TV a couple of nights ago the film “The Royal Tenenbaums”. What a gem I’d passed over previously. Excellent dysfunctional family drama – weirdly funny on so many levels with Gene Hackman, Angelica Houston, Bill Murray and others. The point is that the music soundtrack – original and selected, was by Mark Mothersbaugh, with Rob Casale as part of the band of musicians. Only spotted that in the closing credits, but no doubt the eclectic sounds had added to the weird experience.

I guess the film got recent airtime, because the same director’s (Wes Anderson?) opus, “The Life Aquatic” is just out or due for release. Bill Murray stars, with others from the previous cast in a story inspired by Jacques Cousteau’s underwater adventures ?!?! If the trailers and the Tenenbaum’s are anything to go by should be interesting and entertaining.

I’ve started David Deutsch’s “Fabric of Reality”. From his quantum information work, and his acknowledgements to others like Artur Eckert (sp?) I was execting a dive straight into “here’s why the world is realy made of quantum information” thesis. In fact the introduction is quite refreshing. A review of the philosophy of science and of philosophy itself. An ecouraging draw-back from the brink of logical positivism whereby everything (of any real world value) is predictable by logical derivation (induction) from empirical evidence. Predicting outcomes by formulae based on hypothesis and experiment, is merely the method of science, not its scope or purpose.

He believes a unifying theory of everything can explain and understand what is currently understood, but only what is understood; it can never presume to explain that which is not yet understood. ie in his original metaphor – it’s possible for a single brain to understand everything (that is understood). Fair enough.

Dwelling on science as the explanation for everything in the world, neither holistic nor analytically reductionist, but by generalisation being able to explain and hence understand everything, brings in very early the concept that general underlying explanations may be truly valid even if they are practically useless for predictions through the emergent layers of complexity above.

Very promising. Part of my thesis is that there is no metaphysics. Physics as the most fundamental of the sciences is the place to look for the most general model of the world, underlying chemistry, biology and the rest of the “ologies”.

The Calcutta Telegraph manages to bring a litte ironic wit to this tragic fight between the christian conservative right and the active left in US. [via BBC]

Talking of black humour the woman’s maiden name is Schindler – I can’t resist a smile each time I step into one of Schindler’s Lifts in hotels around the world.