Psybertron Asks

Various grades of paranoia surrounding widespread RFID tagging of goods, being associated with movements of ourselves as consumers.

I’ve never quite got the paranoia generated by identification of the innocent (identity cards n’all that). Where I come from a discarded tin can already is a crime scene – a small one naturally.

Anyway, technology is always available to be misused. Nothing new.

Reading “The Unconsoled” by Kazuo Ishiguro, prompted by Alice’s comments about Ian McEwan on the Dawkins “Selfish Gene 30 Years On” thread.

Strange book as the TLS review commented. Some weird situations. First person narrator following two third parties moving out of the first person view, and continuing the first person narrative. Shouting to be heard above the noise in a library (!) Long conversations in a cinema (!), watching 2001, but with Clint Eastwood in the Dave Bowman role. Anonymous mid-European location, with disproportionate number of old school friends from back in the UK ? Confusion compounded by long streams of digression (?) by characters unloading their problems, long preludes to scenes about to happen, with little narrative certainty that they actually do, mixed with historical flashbacks; characters moving along streets between locations in the one city adds to the Joycean feel.

The plot line is a “Clockwise” out-of-control time-pressure not-quite-farce, a concert pianist arriving in a foreign city for a recital, but being confounded by events – real and imagined. The general idea being what really matters in all the confusion? The underlying story is about personal relationships and communication as tacit (mis)-understanding – man who spends long periods away from wife and growing child, and the relationship with that child. Older broken couple(s) who’s “understanding” can allow serious rows and breakdowns within the ongoing loving continuity.

Two thirds through – mainly in two long sittings (one of those, another west-bound transatlantic flight). Enthralling, though not yet mind-blowing. Mind-bending certainly – no clues noticed yet as to the eventual outcomes, or the turn of events at the much heralded climax yet to materialise.

Just reading the latest Edge magazine, and see a review by Stewart Brand of Kevin Kelly’s – “Speculations on the Future of Science”.

I’ve mentioned many times the vaue of recursion, often when people get hung up on cyclical logic, as if it is automatically a dead end, begging some question or other. Most recently I referred to the evolutionary value when something (like a brain) works on itself, and evolves intelligence, many of these thoughts driven by reading Hofstadter (who as I type is speaking at Tucson 2006). I see reading Brand’s piece on Kelly, that he’s talking about the evolutionary recursion of science working on science – science’s self-modification. That’s science as in new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovering knowledge, ie philosophy (of science at least).

Interestingly in the same Edge edition there is a piece by John Horgan reviewing the reconcilliation of scence and religion (referring to the same Event I mentioned involving Dawkins and McEwan). Nothing earth shatteringly original, but an intelligent summary including his atheistic involvement with the Templeton Foundation.

Post to the point from Euan Semple [quoting David Maister].

Post Note : Interestingly Dave Snowden comments twice encouraging proper publishing attempts.

A list of Amory Lovins’ myths, presented by Dave Pollard. I’m struck not by the oil dependency specifics, but by the genericity of the “rational” human behaviour myths. I think this is the same “autistic economics” story from Dave Snowden ?

Aparently that’s my Robert Johnson song – one of my favourites, along with Dust My Broom, I remember being performed by Scarecrow, mid to late 70’s, after the Clapton version … [via Rivets]

Also from Rivets this link to high-rise skylines of the world. You’d have to like modern man-made skylines to appreciate it, but I’ve never seen Hong Kong, or Shanghai with such clear light and skies. Shenzen is truly surreal for a huge city you’ve maybe never heard of before you drive into it.

Not sure whether Melvyn Bragg’s recent book, describing 10 (or is it 12) books that changed the world prompted Sam’s recent post – but the list of most important books is a meme that comes around. Sam’s are a personally significant collection, Melvyn had some clear criteria for influencing the world. Anyway Brian Walden reviews his favourites in response to Melvyn’s, and in commending Melvyn’s list conlcudes with …

It can only help to see the role that logic plays in human development. How each new idea leads inexorably to the next one. But don’t neglect chaotic reading either. We can be sure that Melvyn does that too. Because it’s fun.

Memes evolve not by logic alone. Anyway, that’s how I come to be reading Ian McEwan’s “Enduring Love” – saw McEwan associated with the Dawkins “celebration”, and just happened to come across “Enduring Love” whilst packing away the family collection of books over the weekend. (Am I allowed to say spooky ? Alice ?)

Or even plain old post-autistic-rationality.

I keep using the “scientific” meme in scare quotes … the idea that being hyper-rational, fundamentally-objectivist … the meme of using entirely deterministic and reductionist scientific arguments and logical induction … cannot be the basis of a high quality explanation in all but the simplest “scientific” context. (Every debate of any kind in any domain including public-media, seems to have to follow these unwritten rules. At root it’s a problem with myths and metaphors about the very idea of causality. From a western scientific camp, I always quote David Deutsch as having his finger on this one, and I suspect David Chalmers may be there too, if I ever get to thoroughly understand his “supervenience” and other arguments, but of course a Buddhist slant gives us dependent-arising instead of “empty” causation – See Twelve Links for that one. )

I keep accusing Dawkins of this failing – despite him being the person who brought the idea of memes to the fore, and despite him being a great scientist and writer, ironically he seems almost totally blind to this one. Cast the meme out of thine own eyes Dawkins was a working title I’ve had for some time for an essay on the subject.

I picked up earlier on “autistic” as an adjective to describe this failing. So perhaps now we have as a working title :

“Post-Autistic-Memetics :
Cast the meme out of thine own eye Dawkins.”

And for the pointless binary polarisation issue – really just a corollary of the above – we have the working title :

“All or Nothing:
Looking for an Argument”

Loads of general media anecdotes there – where press seem to determined to find “conflict” in looking for an angle on the truth of any story – even if it’s just the cock-up vs conspiracy angle, or the classic “scientists discover revolutionary new ….” angle. Gary Richardson of BBC Radio 5 springs to mind, can he interview anyone without setting them up to bad-mouth someone else ? It’s just sport for chrissakes Gary.

Post Note :
As well as Sam pointing me at Asophic & Apathistic as alternatives to “Autism”, whilst checking up on the Dupuy quote on knowledge in literature, both in the Dawkins comment thread below, I found this quote from Dupuy I’d also recorded as significant, way back when … Listing many problematic dichotomies in “knowledge”, from his AI / Cybernetics historical perspective, as well as science vs literature , he lists the dichotomy :

between Hidebound Savants
and Cultured Ignorami (or Foggie Froggies)

Savants are commonly “Autistic” – see Kim Peak threads, and others …
Here of course Dupuy is alluding in the Foggie Froggies to the more “cultural relativist” post-modern French philosophers contrasted with those trapped (hidebound) in the logical-positivist “scientific” meme.

The convergent spiral tightens its screw.

I was about to post a link to Sue Blackmore’s piece about Albert Hofmann’s 100th birthday party, which she had published in the Times Higher Education Supplement, mainly to continue the ongoing psychedelics thread I have within Psybertron.

I did post the link of course, but in re-reading it, I noticed her final paragraph is a plea for “Wisdom”. A topical subject. I notice Sue is attending Unhooked Thinking, where many “Friends of Wisdom” look like congregating. And to bring it full circle – the main agenda of Unhooked Thinking is “addiction” in a very general sense (link only to latest 2016 event sadly).

To drugs ? Well yes, but primarily to bad memes,
like the one in psybertron’s manifesto above.

The “great convergence” spirals onwards and upwards.

The proceedings of the Darwin Day Talks “The Selfish Gene 30 Years on.” at LSE last week 16th March are now on-line on The Edge web-site. (I was in the air over China at the moment the tickets went on release, and by the time I landed they were all gone, though by the sound of the press reports, they were very hard to come by anyway.)

The day was chaired by Melvin Bragg, and included Dan Dennett, John Krebs, Matt Ridley, Ian McEwan and Richard Dawkins himself.

The Edge site includes Brockman’s own intro, full transcripts, audio streaming and mp3 downloads, and selected press reports. The Edge is a “professional” operation. Ironically, Brockman chose to use Krebs’ quote of Dawkins’ “Plane load of cultural relativists at 30,000 feet” story to introduce the piece. One of the very quotes I singled out for criticism in my review of Dawkins’ “A Devil’s Chaplain“.

This will be an interesting read, we already know Dawkins doesn’t “get it”, but I happen to believe Dennett does. Back soon.