Psybertron Asks

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.

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.

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

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

Excellent pictures.

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.

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.

Apparently 80% of airliner manufacturer order books now depend on the budget airline business. Scary.

I still do a lot of business and domestic air-travel compared to my pledge to reduce it to a minimum, and that will probably continue well into 2010, depending how working life pans out. Sigh. But it is a long time – more than 10 years – since I even considered business class on a business trip.

Recently (like many) I have been taking advantage of budget airlines in Europe (Ryanair in particular) after several years of using internal and transatlantic US carriers. In terms iof service I do have favourite airlines, including BA by choice, if they have an economic fare / route for a given trip. But Ryanair is just too cheap in my opinion. For industry economic viability, for air-safety ultimately if the crew are all sales staff on commission, and for environmental balance in encouraging more discretionary travel. As I said in my pledge I’d support higher taxes on aviation fuel and travel – but of course being trans-national-borders that is unlikely to be possible to administer equitably – and most people would probably reject a taxation solution anyway.

I am amongst the “never again” crowd when it comes to Ryanair – yet perversly, despite having ludicroulsy inconvenient airport locations at the remote end, they often use a convenient local airport at the home end – I expect there is a BAA distortion in the market too, as well as the disruptive pricing policy.

At this rate, I could blog as many words on The Origin Of Stories as Brian Boyd writes.

“Attention” is as important as anything in communication and social behaviours, so not surprisingly we are well attuned to movement, particularly unexpected movement in life events, especially faces, or courses of events in any kind of narrative. So much of Boyd’s story is about play as art and art as play, very specifically their value to human evolution, and fairly obviously attention is part of play and art. Recognizing the value of the abnormal is not just a part of creativity, but also a part of understanding the normal. That doesn’t do justice to the first half of the book, which I have just completed, but hey. So what about the art of fiction, narrative at play ?

The last two chapters of Book 1 are Ch12 Fiction : Inventing Events and Ch13 Fiction as [Evolutionary] Adaptation. Ch12 ends with …

Narrative is always strategic, for both teller and listener, in ways that can range from the callously selfish to the generously prosocial. Because natural selection occurs at multiple levels, it can assist individuals or groups at different levels in their competition with other individuals or groups. But narrative especially helps coordinate groups, by informing their members of one another’s actions. It spreads prosocial values, the likeliest to appeal to both tellers and listeners. It develops our capacity to see from different perspectives, and this capacity in turn both arises from and aids the evolution of cooperation and the growth of human flexibility.

But maximum flexibility, in humans as in others, depends on play.

Wow. A very strong message on memes “likeliest to appeal” as well as the playful evolution of cooperation. Quite early in Ch13 after descriptions of child-invented play narratives, we find this solitary reference to Dawkins …

Thought experiments, Dawkins observes, “are not meant to be realistic. They are supposed to clarify our thinking about reality.”

The immediately following sentences are these …

Thought experiments of fiction may opt for realism, like Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan, or against it, like Aesop’s animal fables. We do not need to be a Samaritan or to travel from Jerusalem to Jericho, or to encounter a wayfarer robbed by the roadside to learn from the example ….

Irony at play I hope. Many a true word.

“If it was possible to carry our messages to you by words we wouldn’t have carried them to you by planes.”
Osama to Obama

Wouldn’t have. Interesting. Better late than never I guess.