Psybertron Asks

Strange gig last night. Heavy looking line-up at Brisbane’s Globe Theatre, 4 or 5 (?) on the line-up, I saw three. Gold Coast’s F1Elevens’s I wanted to see, they are (were) local legends. The whole event was low key – none of the acts pre-set-up on stage, no roadies, just the one sound guy, really slow change overs. After Homeless Yellow (Dreadlocks, two acoustic guitars, OK), Sons of the Soil (single heavy guitar, also OK if brief set.), I’m glad I stayed to see the F1Elevens’s – but only about 15 people did, at least 10 of whom seemed to know the band personally. Most of the local bar bands attract more that that on a Saturday night. Spooky.

Still, double-stacked Marshall 4×12’s OTT in such a venue, lanky, hairy-arsed tattooed bass and rhythm guitars slung so low they could (and did) play between their legs, clean cut lead, seriously loud and heavy. Classic if stereotypical heavy rock, originals so far as I could tell, culminating in a cover of Motorhead’s Ace of Spades. It’s only rock and roll. Clearly this stuff does go in and out of fashion – but sad to see so much energy wasted on so few. I liked it.

Experienced the drive across Kansas, east to west, a few years ago on our way from Alabama to Bozeman, Montana. Another from Rivets. The Zen link ?

Collection of after and during the flood aerial photos of Brisbane. from ABC, via Rivets. CBD Riverside most interesting.

I did ask why the Manchester option wasn’t included in the Olympic stadium plans. And now we know why.

Fun (pleasure or jouissance), was part of Zizek’s agenda noted below. I finished his “Living in the End Times” a week or so ago; a good provocative read in many places, but I was just left with an inconclusive anti-climactic “so what ?”, and no further specific review subjects to publish, so I moved straight on to Rebecca Goldstein’s “36 Arguments for the Existence of God“.

The cover headline says “A Hillarious Novel …” ? Hardly. A very good novel, some very good writing as well as a well crafted story. So well constructed as to be almost contrived in the intersecting points of the actors’ life stories. Plenty of humour and wit in the narrative lived through these intelligent fictional actors, some of it really very funny, but as a novel it’s deadly serious, and very successful in its aims. Particularly clever, the book within the book, written by “New Atheist” Cass Selzer having an appendix summarizing 36 arguments and responses on the existence of god, as advertized, but potentially a distraction – only an appendix, no, really. Despite the 36 chapters all entitled “The Argument From ...” there is in fact little parallel between the chapters and the actual arguments. The appendix represents an excellent potted resource – they’re all there, succinctly and soundly summarized, so far as I can tell – for those participating in god vs reason debates, but the former is another excellent love conquers all parable. Recommended.

Aside [Amor Vincit Omnia][Amor Vincit Omnia again] Spooky – finished 36 Arguments at Changi too.

By way of further aside, after taking an interest in the Goldstein’s 36 Arguments, and having ordered a copy, I was pointed at some links to YouTube “interviews” of Goldstein with partner Steven Pinker (I’ll spare you the links). I’ve been a fan of Pinker too, too starstruck to actually speak when I found myself sat beside him (and her, I now surmise) in a Cambridge hotel bar. But the doey-eyed mutual love – jouissance – between the two kinda got in the way – get a room guys ….

I’m glad I ignored that initial prejudice. Having thoroughly enjoyed 36 Arguments from 2010, I’ve gone straight into “Betraying Spinoza” Goldstein’s 2006 book. (Less than 1/4 through.) [Post Note : review after finishing here.]

Jewishness is front and centre in 36 Arguments, and there are plenty of philosophy references, by the nature of the characters’ working lives. (William James is particularly prominent, Thoreau / Walden central, but all the US Pragmatists, Wittgentsein, Locke, and many more.) And Betraying Spinoza is published in the Jewish Encounters series … devoted to the promotion of Jewish literature, culture and ideas.

(Spoiler warning – don’t read on until you’ve read 36 Arguments.)

Now with a little hindsight, it’s easy to see child prodigy Azarya Scheiner genius character in 36 Arguments as  Spinoza. Although Azarya’s tale is ultimately a reversal of Spinoza’s excommunication in the more enlightened times we inhabit, both in fact choose love. In Azarya’s case love for his people and culture, despite the depth of his logical and mathematical prowess – his thorny blessings.

Goldstein’s “Betraying Spinoza” is significantly autobiographical (and dedicated to Steven) as well as a wonderful biographical resource (so far) on the life and times of Spinoza (that damn 30 years war again !) and written very readably. So what is so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding ?

“Though [Spinoza] was a man who had given himself over entirely to the search after truth […] still he would not speak the truth so long as his doing so might hurt those whom he loved. […] I felt that I loved him.” – Goldstein.

And …

“Spinoza is the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers. Intellectually, some others have surpassed him, but ethically he is supreme.” – Bertrand Russell, 1945.

Love being the highest form of truth.

And, finally,

“Metaphysics [narrowly defined] is the attempt to use pure reason, as opposed to [empirical] experience to arrive at a description of reality [by deduction].”

“Metaphysics [more widely defined] is ontological commitment concerning what sorts of things exist in the world. Paradoxically, even analytic philosophers [and scientists] have this kind of commitment to [faith in, love of] rejecting the very possibility of metaphysics in the narrow non-empirical deductive sense.” – My paraphrase of Goldstein.

[Post Note : Intriguing, eclectic collection of Kerouac references, following up on the “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and … ” meme. Weird. ]

The provocative title of a discussion event by Intelligence Squared held last Thursday at the Science Museum, Dana Centre, which I managed to attend after all.

Chaired by Jack Klaff, featuring Ian Angell, Ray Tallis, Jane O’Grady, and David Papineau as the panel, with Lewis Wolpert and others in the audience of around 100(?).

If there were any theists present they kept their heads down, and would probably have chuckled at the shambolic “non-debate” as far as fitting the available resources to the agenda. Very interesting to see the level of “talking past each other” amongst scientists and philosophers, as well as the arts and humanities represented.

Ray Tallis was closest to any middle ground, but even he appeared to be an unreconstructed dualist, seeing two clearly distinct objective and subjective domains of reality. The subjective humanities simply denied any scientific contribution to such things as love or art – the classic battleground being the “neural correlates of consciousness”. The scientists were frankly embarassingly arrogant in seeing no alternatives to scientism, despite significant definitional debate around narrow and broad conceptions of objectivity, empiricism and methods of science in “the view from nowhere” and truth defined anywhere from “objective fact” to pragmatism. Embarassing that they see only scale and complexity of detail in the ultimate tractability of everything falling under science, ignoring the paradoxes (eg in the zombie thought experiment) and non-linearity in the position of game-changing intentional consciousness in the game of life as we know it.

Ian Angell of course took the combative and extreme line of branding all objectivity and causation of as delusional, practically wearing his Nietzschean transendental nihilism on his sleeve. Strength of feeling was never going to win any arguments on this night or any other.

Other than those, I have to say it was mostly trading well rehearsed rhetorical arguments and smart-ass put-downs, that were simply not being listened to, let alone appreciated or understood, by their “targets” on either side. Wittgenstein’s take on language games got creditable recognition, but if you want a battle of words, don’t surprised if you get a war.

The answers lie somewhere in the “path” – that is the constructive processes of progress – and in raising the consciousness / free-will / intentionality / psychology / ethics / justice debate as THE core subject, above the “scientism vs love & emotion” tit-for-tat. Pragmatic objectivist convention that need not be greedy reductionist; determinism that does not deny free-will. It’s all there for the taking, in the quality of wisdom and values that fall between subject and object.

Two football posts in two days. Great headline, lifted from one the red-tops, just about sums it up. Sex discrimination or plain ignorance, Gray is just a dinosaur ex-player (Rio is right – there’s a first) with a stock of punditry clichés, good riddance. Keys is a professional broadcaster, he should have the book thrown at him.

Their offence is incompetence and plain ignorance of the rules of the game and the jobs the officials do – for any women in sport or officials of either sex, it’s sure water off a duck’s back. Before the story broke, we were already laughing at the predictable on-screen comments that the decision was in the least doubtful, doubly funny that Massey did actually make an offside error a few minutes later, though not in a critical goalscoring opportunity, so no-one seems to have picked up on that. Errors are errors. In my experience women make better match officials, provided the have the basic command / authority, because on the whole they are more intuitively concerned with the point of the rules than their anal interpretation and application to the letter.