Year: 2011

Information Socially Corrupted

Another story indicating that socially shared information is not necessarily good information. Tweeted by Dave Gurteen on LinkedIn, this Wired Science story based on this National Academy of Sciences paper.

Good also that it acknowledges the misnomer in the “wisdom”of crowds having nothing whatsoever to do with wisdom, more a matter of objective statistical accuracy in aggregated subjective judgements. BUT, crucially the statistics are broken if the crowd shares what it knows before judging – then all you have is a meme, information of dubious quality that just happens to be easy to spread. Easy crowds out good.

Social sharing of information is not necessarily a good thing.

Never Say Never

Irrelevant to the Bin Laden context I reckon, but a worthwhile piece from Baggini on the idea of torture being an absolute no-no as some matter of principle. Of course like all rules, it’s the exceptions we need to be talking about – the old adage that “Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the enslavement of fools.” That and making the distinction between thought experiments and their value in a real world situation, where the decision-maker must live with the consequences.

The paradox that yes, even absolute rules have exceptions.

The truth in “never say never” is that there are no exceptionless rules. But that does not mean there are no rules. Rules matter and to be rules they need to be universal in form: always do this, never do that. But it is foolish to rule out in advance the possibility that an occasion might arise when normal rules just don’t apply. Rules are not there to be broken, but sometimes break them we must.

Foolish = for fools – right?
Breaking rules = something wise people must do.
The more absolute the rule the greater the wisdom needed.

Some good stuff in Baggini’s piece – like even the excluded middle between a binary choice is not just another single third choice, they come in many potential varieties.

These responses — yes, no and it’s a bad question so I won’t answer — seem to exhaust the options. But I think there is a fourth option: yes and no, a contradiction that makes as much sense as “never say never”.

(PS – I recall that Harvard Law public lecture series on escalating otherwise very simple moral dilemmas …. must dig up the link.)

Farenheit Quality

Read the 5oth anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury’s 1953 “Farenheit 451” the other day and noticed this passage:

There is nothing magical in [books] at all. The magic is in what [they] say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn’t know this, you still can’t understand what I mean when I say this. You are intuitively right, that’s what counts. Three things are missing:

Number One: Do you know why books such as this are so important ? Because they have quality.

And what does quality mean ? To me it is texture. The book has pores. It has features. The book can go under the microscope. You’d find life streaming past in infinite profusion. […]

Number Two: The leisure [time & space] to digest it.

Number Three: The right [ freedom] to carry out actions based on the interaction of the first two.

Intelligent File Naming

A nice one from Dilbert yesterday:
Dilbert.com

Templeton for Martin Rees

The usual furore when Templeton awards its £1m dollar prize to a prominent scientist. This time it’s Martin Rees.

As usual I think this “Quisling” remark says more about Dawkins than anything.

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and one of the most high-profile scientists in the aggressively pro-science, anti-religion ‘new atheist’ movement, once called Rees a “compliant Quisling” for accepting Templeton sponsorship of a lecture series when he was head of the Royal Society.

This is the reality, “publicity machine” basically.
Unlike constructive debate, polarization sells.
Just my previous post was on those excluded middles between polar opposites.

Denis Alexander, director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at the University of Cambridge, UK, welcomed Rees’s award and said that although “people who want to keep a very sharp demarcation” between science and religion are highly vocal, they are few in number. “The media tend to thrive on conflict so these loud voices in favour of a polarized debate tend to get heard quite often,” he says. Carroll agrees that Templeton Prize controversy has now become something of an annual event. “It’s a publicity machine and it works very well. Every year I get a phone call like this,” he says.

Excluded Middles

If there are two competing versions of the truth, almost certainly neither is true. David Mitchell soap-box piece from Guardian Comment is Free.

Grayling Heads the BHA

Good to see Anthony Grayling appointed president of the BHA (British Humanist Association).

He may not be my favourite philosopher, but he is streets ahead of Dawkins when it comes to understanding the arguments.

For the first time, I see I am not alone in seeing Dawkins as part of the problem. Andris Rudzitis and Matthew Byrd on Facebook.

I both agree and disagree with what he/you have to say! I agree that Dawkins isn’t equipped to deal with the enormous intellects of people like Keith ward, maybe even Alister McGrath but certainly Rowan Williams,and that his philosophy and knowledge of religion aren’t great but the fact remains that most theists aren’t this clever anyway. People like Hitchens and Dawkins, despite not being experts in disentangling the most erudite and complex arguments are more than capable at destroying the arguments of the run-of-the-mill theist. Yes, this is partly due to those arguments being weak – argument from design, pascal’s wager, argument from miracles etc. but also because these arguments are often more in the sphere of science (Dawkins) or sociology and politics (Hitchens) What Dawkins brings is his great desire to change peoples’ views, enough intellect to justify doing so, and the position in academia and society in order to do so.

You also have to bear in mind that a lot of Dawkins’ thought and writing engages the effect of religion on society – you don’t necessarily have to be a great philosopher to support these arguments. Finally, as I said earlier, a LOT of peoples’ reasons for theism are reasons which are best answered by science – design argument etc. In this regard, who better to challenge them then someone who was Oxford Professor for the Public Understanding of Science!?

Yes, Dawkins may be naive is he thinks that science can be used to respond to all claims of theism – but he isn’t wrong that it should be used to challenge a LOT of the arguments that are used – even if these are the more basic ones.

I personally set the other three “horsemen” (Hitchens, Harris and Dennett) quite apart from Dawkins in this respect, but a good balanced view IMHO. Ditto McGrath, but good to see another atheist recognise the qualities of  the Archbishop, Rowan Williams. The problem for me has always been the presumed monopoly of science when it comes to reason – and Dawkins has shown little else in his kitbag. (The odd glimpse, maybe.)

The other interesting point in that view from Andris, is the emphasis on “destroying” the arguments of others. We’ve reached a point where constructive dialogue requires mutual trust to make constructive progress. Again a recurring theme here, as recently as the previous post.

[Post Note: This lecture by Sam Harris has an excellent 2 minute intro – that incidentally points out that Richard Dawson (sic) is simply no longer relevant.]

[PS – Facebook is a very closed channel; I can’t link in to a specific group or discussion from outside. Beware Facebook, it wants your eyes locked-in to its own advertising sales model. LinkedIn is almost as bad.]

Bandwidth of Trust

Seems I’m not alone. Karl-Erik Sveiby, founding father of knowledge management, says:

Trust is the bandwidth of communication.

I like that. Thanks to David Gurteen for the link.

Interestingly, Sveiby also records aboriginal Tex Skuthorpe (in Treading Lightly) saying:

We don’t have a word for [knowledge].

Our land is our knowledge, we walk on the knowledge, we dwell in the knowledge, we live in our thesauras, we walk in our bible every day of our lives. Everything is knowledge.

We don’t need a word for knowledge, I guess.

The story owns the storyteller, not the other way around.

The roots are direct lived experience, dare I say “pre-intellectual participation” and custodianship.

Are They Mad ?

Shock, horror – Top Gear drove car aggressively during track test ?!? I actually thought the Tesla came out really (really) well in that test, absolutely no surprise the practical economics and reliability couldn’t stand that kind of thrashing, but it was actually possible to thrash it. How dumb do Tesla believe the market is ? I seriously researched one as a result. At least Clarkson didn’t attach an outboard motor and sink it or let Hammond launch it off a ski-jump.

Talking of energy, was there ever any doubt over Tepco writing-off the Fukushima plants the day they chose to turn the salt-water cooling hoses on them ?

And, still talking of energy, I see the Oil&Gas Co’s are reviewing UK North Sea investment project economics following last week’s UK budget. Yes, the cost changes affect the project economics, but I love this remark

“… the new combined tax rate faced by Statoil would be 62% of its UK profits, compared with a rate of 78% levied by the Norwegian government in its home market.”

Voting – Help

I’m in a genuine quandary. I’m a big advocate of UK electoral reform (both houses), but I cannot see myself voting yes in the upcoming referendum, (same as I cannot see me supporting the idea of popular votes for the second house).

The AV system proposed remains a first-past-the-post system. There is weighted value for first, second, third preferences (*), but the winner takes all. No changes to constituencies of representation, no proportionality, no balance, no shared responsibility. Still open to gerrymandering of constituencies too. And by all accounts, the actual weightings proposed look like barely changing outcomes for any previous election scenarios. Most people still end up governed / represented by someone they didn’t vote for, so criticising “them” politicians remains the default stance for most of “us” citizens. Sigh. If anything I suspect it will increase tactical vote-splitting incentives too. At least it looks like a minimum turnout limit on the vote being valid – best thing maybe not to vote (can’t believe myself) or turning up and spoiling the paper in a no-confidence vote perhaps the best option.

And in the supreme irony, the referendum itself is a simplistic yes / no first-past-the-post vote itself, one choice. No “No, buts” or “No, because”, “My preference is” … no alternatives, nothing, nada. Like the latest census, a total waste of valuable public resources, eliciting minimal valuable information in return, at a time when we can least afford it.

Point missed; opportunity missed. What do you think ?

[Post Note : (*) I should be clear. The AV systems proposed – is indeed still a first past the post system – but the counting does not involve weighting of the preferences per se, rather reallocation of last place based on your preferences until the first place gets over 50% of those equally weighted votes cast – the winning post is 50% rather than a simple majority and the first past it wins – clear FPTP. In a sense the winner will in fact represent a greater number of people who voted for them – albeit with lower preferences – which is indeed a step in a progressive direction, but I’m guessing there can be no enforcement of people having to express additional preferences beyond their first choice, so the difference may be even more marginal and open to tactical considerations. This single referendum issue really depends on a holistic view of how people genuinely feel enfranchised (or not) by constituencies and parties at local and national levels, including both houses and head of state at the national level. The whole thing needs a plan or strategy longer than a single electoral cycle. The psychological (hence tactical / strategic game-play interaction) complexity is real, no matter how much Hurd and others rant the banal matra of  the single vote FPTP being simplest and anything else requiring “higher maths”. Fixing the enfranchisement is the core issue. If people cast their single (simple) vote but still believe all politicians are “dickheads” they can disown when they disagree, then we have a problem that needs fixing. I don’t think we’d like the alternatives to democracy. What was it Churchill said ?]