Too Much Freedom of Expression

Remembered reading this from Stanislaw Lem a few years ago, but no idea if I blogged it at the time. I keep making the unfashionable comment that too much freedom to communicate is not necessarily a good thing.

“Literature, from the very beginning, has had a single enemy, and that is the restriction of the expressed idea. It turns out, however, that freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of impostors, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?”
Stanislaw Lem, “His Master’s Voice”

Thanks to Ray Girvan for bring the quote back to my attention.

Buzzin’

Looks like this should link selected blog posts to Google Buzz too ?

Too Much Integration

I’m reading Stephen Toulmin’s 2001 “Return To Reason” (I also have, but have not yet read his “Cosmopolis“). It is as good an expose so far on the enlightenment wrong turn as I have yet read. That reasonableness is more than rationality, that wisdom is more than knowledge.

I hadn’t before quite appreciated how the 17th century enlightenment (Newton, Leibniz,  Descartes et al) was such a direct reaction to the sectarian religious violence laying waste to the populations of Europe in the 30 Years War. The response was the attempt to create and capture the  perfection of (God’s) nature in the certainty of mathematics and logic.

Some significant quotes here from Toulmin, illustrating the too-greedy-reductionism in assuming a scientistic view is a solution to every problem.

In practical terms, the people with the best claim to be the heirs of Leibniz are computer information engineers … .

We can dream up all the theories we please (of communication and control, neurophysical holography and artificial intelligence, automated reasoning, deep grammar and brain function, etc) But the further we move away from the Sciences of Matter and Energy, and toward the Sciences of Information, the more we must integrate theoria and praxis, and the fainter the distinction between “pure” and “applied” sciences.

By now, the question “How should the new ideas of science be utilized?” needs to be faced even at the initial state of conceiving possible new theories. So it is helpful to recall why the dream of rationalist philosophy proved to be a Dream indeed.

No formalism can interpret itself;
No system can validate itself;
No theory can exemplify itself;
No representation can map itself;
No language can predefine its own meanings;
No science can decide which of its technologies are of real human value.

… we must ignore the seventeenth-century ideal of intellectual exactitude, with its idolization of proof and certainty and recall the practical wisdom of sixteenth-century humanists, who hoped to recapture the modesty that had made it possible to live happily with uncertainty, ambiguity and pluralism.

It is admirable to share Bacon’s dreams in The New Atlantis, but let us be realistic about the obstacles to realizing those dreams – the most serious being the epistemological obstacles. The greater our interventions in the natural world, the less we can forecast their effects, the more significant will be their unintended outcomes. (… risks run today in the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.)

The dreams of seventeenth-century philosophy – infallible scientific method, perfectly exact language, and the rest – may still fascinate and inspire powerful new theories. But the future depends just as much on our ability to recapture the values of the sixteenth-century humanists and maintain the fragile balance between refinement of our practical skills and the human interests they serve.

…. there ends Chapter 5 – “Dreams of Rationality“.
Chapter 6 – “Rethinking Method” opens with ….

One aspect of the standard view of “rationality” is the assumption that a single method can turn any field of enquiry into a “hard science” (like physics …)

Short on Blogging Time

After an active blogging (and reading) January, I have stalled in February. Partly due to a very exciting business trip to Moscow, where I had little time or access for either reading or blogging and work piling up as a result.

During the past week, I did complete Brian Boyd’s On The Origin Of Stories, on the bus to and from the office. As well as discovering that Dr Seuss was a phenomenon that had passed me by, ultimately a very satisfying read. A very good summary of enlightened Darwinian evolution of mind, where attention is probably the main driving force, attention being drawn to perceived value. Makes perfect sense. Art and the art of story-telling are part of the evolution of that attention to value, and economy of explanation, necessary for mind to evolve.

Having earlier read David Lindley’s Uncertainty, someone recommended Graham Farmelo’s The Strangest Man – The Hidden Life Of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius. Finding it hard to put down – researched from correspondence, interviews and documentary records, the science, the competition, the philosophy, society and international politics and war of the first half of the 20th century. Fascinating. Obvious, but not seen mentioned before, the crossing in Cambridge of Dirac’s path with Wittgenstein’s – genius chalk with genius cheese. Clear also, as others have pointed out before, that Arthur Eddington was the contemporary writer to read for lay accounts of the new science as it developed.

Visual Feast

Some illusions, some just images you wouldn’t expect to see. Just browse around for the fractal Mask and fractal Rubik’s Cube, and many more. Thanks again to rivets.

Going Green ?

Buy a Ferrari 599 GTB Hybrid, you know it makes sense.

Cheap Shot

This is too easy, but a wonderful collection of wingnuts via rivets.

You’ll Believe a Puffin Can Fly

Excellent pictures.

More Stories

Still working my way through Boyd’s On the Origin of Stories.

https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3172
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3149
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3145

After Book I, on the evolution of play, art and fiction as part of the evolution of human cognitive capabilities and behaviour, Book II, as advertised, switches to two specific works of fiction, to illustrate how the evolutionary theories are applicable in practice. Homer’s Odyssey and Dr Seuss’ Horton. Something ancient and complex for adults, and something recent and simple for children. I’m guessing chapters 14, 15 and 16 are LitCrit101. Phylogeny on plot, character, structure and patterns, natural and contrived open-ended ironies. Interesting in their own right, since I’m neither a scholar of Homer, not of literary criticism. Phylogeny, because the age of The Odyssey says much about how fiction evolved as a species, with and since Homer.

If the first half was about the need for mutual attention of speaker/writer and listener/reader in developing knowledge of and strategic information about intents and beliefs, that affect our ability to predict our future behaviours, then these early chapters on The Odyssey show that this really is what is going-on, even if Homeric Greek has no language of mind, belief and psychology. There are all the obvious dramatic ironies between the mortals and between the gods and mortals over how much is known, both here and now and ahead of time, and of course deliberate “deceptions” as part of the process. Deceptions of incomplete knowledge, even in collaborative processes. Two points caused me to pause and blog.

Intelligence as curiosity as opposed to intellect. Curiosity for explanation that is, and the recognition that explanation in human affairs always involves implicit or explicit understanding of psychological games, and that these games may exist on infinitely many levels over many time-scales. Odysseus being the exemplar at the hands of Homer.

Taking a God-like view. Far from being primitives who knew no better, invoking gods as part of such explanations, actually shows a sophisticated understanding of how complex (and interminable) that explanatory process is, and that some things do need to be taken effectively as “god-given”, illustrated by examples, but never objectively known.

Like for example the idea of Xenia, the stranger/guest/host/friend behaviour amongst strangers. A behaviour that extends tendencies to mutual altruistic behaviours amongst close genetic individuals, to remote individuals recognized from their behaviours as members of the species – humans. If I turn up as a stranger (but a human) on your doorstep it is your duty to feed and show me hospitality (and more) before even needing to know my identity as an individual. An engrained code of behavior that can be explained in terms of evolutionary cost-benefit value at the species level, but would be intractable at the level of each individual transaction. A social pattern easily shared (a meme)  and statically preserved because it is worth preserving. A value.

Building Bridges

Noticed a paradox before in Thoreau’s descriptions of building a railroad with bridges … to get places … which I mentioned in this piece on The Devil Wears Prada “Everybody Wants to Get Ahead”

Came to mind again when I saw this story “to get rich quick, build roads fast” story of road-building opening up more remote areas of China (well Tibet actually, but that’s another story).

The reason I noticed was because I was looking up the Nick Lowe lyric (*) “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding.” which I have used before (as well as in the above post) as a summary or plea within my Psybertron agenda and my “Joining Dots / Weaving Threads” project, who knows maybe even building bridges to get places.

As I walk through this wicked world
Searching for light in the darkness of insanity
I ask myself, is all hope lost ?
Is there only hatred and misery ?

And each time I feel like this inside
There’s one thing I wanna know
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love & understanding ?
Oh, what’s so funny ’bout peace, love & understanding ?

And as I walk on, through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So, where are the strong and who are the trusted ?
And where is the harmony, sweet harmony ?

‘Cause each time I feel it slippin’ away,
Just makes me wanna cry.
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love & understanding ?
Oh, what’s so funny ’bout peace, love & understanding ?

So, where are the strong and who are the trusted ?
And what’s so funny ’bout peace, love & understanding ?

Indeed. If we are actually going to make any kind of progress, where are the strong and who are the trusted ?

(*) Most widely recognised version made famous by Elvis Costello.