On A More Lighthearted Note

“Troubleshooter” in the Enlightened Caveman thread provides this link.

Actually it’s funny, but it’s not lighthearted is it ? It’s quite chilling how true it is. It’s even more chlling that the creator (of the cartoon) felt he had to use Norse mythology as his foil, rather than christianity. Now I am being paranoid.

File under “many a true word” and “every picture paints”.

Post Note : Looking beyond the cartoon link, there is quite a bit of thinking here that gels exactly with mine – there is some critique of the creationists quest to get their “theory” on an equal footing with the other one on school curricula. How many times have we referenced that ? Two specific points ..

(1) The Darwinist gets to say something important before he get’s it – Evolution is a theory the elegantly explains the available data AND is supported by empirical …

(2) He says – It?s always both cute and pathetic listening Fundamentalists try to use the language of empiricism to try to defend their wonky myths and superstitions, sort of like seeing chimpanzees wear little human clothes or very young children trying to use polite etiquette. They can approximate the form, but they just don?t get the content. They don?t understand what the word ?theory? means; they confuse correlation with causality; they argue by analogy; they can?t keep a grip on logic. I?m not going to waste any space in this artist?s statement explaining or arguing for the theory of evolution; it?s like having to argue for the theory of gravity or electricity. And anyway, there?s no point in engaging advocates of Creationism or Intelligent Design in debate as though they really accepted enlightenment values or could be convinced by evidence or persuaded by rational discourse. There?s no reason to talk to them at all.

This “lighthearted note” is deadly serious, and correct.

You’re right Robert – Tim Kreider’s Pain Comics site is very good. This is not a space you can work in without humour. When will it all end ? is the desperate message though. Eclectic set of lists too – Beefheart Bacon Zappa Nietsche Kubrick Axis-of-Eve Mongoloidian-Glow rubbing shoulders.

I Need You To Keep This Secret – OK ?

Nice to get a word of encouragement in response to the previous post – thanks Georganna. I’ve actually stepped out of both threads of debate, purely for a breather – I’ll be back. I don’t want to go the same way as Pirsig, exhaustion to the point of total breakdown, “in the effort to outflank the entire body of western thought”. It sure is hard work.

I genuinely don’t want to waste the breath – like Dennett, amongst others who “peremptorily dismiss” such issues of faith in any kind of purposeful causal god, my preferred tactic is just to ignore and if necessary reject out of hand any such suggestions. However there are good and bad theologians and some, after overcoming the initial offence, do seem prepared for open debate – open to everything except a change of premise it seems. What is the point ? Well none it turns out, if I explain to you my thought for today, really just another re-statement of my Catch-22 I guess.

I think I’ve stumbled on something. Clearly religious faith is in deep in all socio-political structures. Religious faithful were never my target – are still not a “target” at all – I really would ignore them if they went away to mind their own business. There is clearly another suggestion (equally offensive, no doubt) of an element of religious faith for the non-intellectual who just want something convenient to plug the mysterious gaps in the world – isn’t that Marx’s opiate of the people ? Anyway, as long as people who’d really rather not worry about difficult questions never get into positions of power and influence then we might be OK.

The dangerous ones are those who are either cynically exploitative (I might say evil) in their power, or worse still, the buggers who seem to want to argue using “dishonest intellect” – and this is the key point – that dishonesty is of course generally NOT pre-meditated NOR evil NOR a conspiracy (see exceptions above). Of course it looks to have a conspiracy behind it, in exactly the same way the creation looks to have an intelligent designer behind it. What it is, is the same widespread misplaced western faith in objective / logical positivism. Exactly the same. As in exactly. Using that misplaced style of argumentation, you can indeed convince / be convinced you are right in your faith. The intellectual argument is not so much “dishonest” as plain misguided.

The very problem I was trying to find a solution to for more parochial “business management” reasons. I always knew it spread across all “organisational decision making”, right to the highest national and international government and non-government organisations, but until this moment I had never spotted it was exactly the same problem “western” churches suffered from. How right Pirsig was with his “Church of Reason” – even if he was using “church” in the more figurative sense.

Oh my god, this is truly awful. The logical positivist memeplex reinforces the religious memeplex. Science has unwittingly been it’s own worst enema.

So back to plan A. The original plan was in fact correct. Ignore them as politely as possible and keep working to get “higher quality” argumentation and decision rationale in at a very simple level, far away from the battlefront. Evolution always needed segregation and nurture as well as comptetition for survival. We need a domain where the meme has space to replicate, re-inforce, meet complementary memes, breed a nice healthy memeplex and some suitably supportive environmental conditions, and then find opportunities for stealthy break-out into the wider world.

So, we’re looking for a godless place to breed. Don’t you just love the dirty jobs.

(And psst – as I said, it neeeds to be a conspiracy, kept secret from those other buggers. Talk about Catch-22. Mum’s the word.)

What is science ?

I’m getting into a tight corner on MoQ-Discuss, where it has been impossible to avoid debate between scientific belief and religious faith. At least we’ve got the level down below the history of global politics and war, where there is some chance of debate rather than propagandised gain-saying. As you know I’ve been in many respects anti-science, or at least anti the extreme-logical-positivist or exclusively-scientific-fundamentalist aspects of some applications of “science” in management in particular. (I see even Enlightened Caveman is embroiled in an identical debate – this god stuff is pernicious, gets everywhere.)

However, finding myself practically a universal Darwinist – most real world change processes have some element of “copy, vary, select” – I can’t help but reject any kind of intellient designer creationism, or indeed any purposeful, causal “god” real or metaphorical.

I made the point that what was convincing about science, “quality of explanation”, was not exclusive to science, and lumped just about any of the intellectual spheres of thought into the same pot philosophers, artists, ologists of practically any kind. Except theologians, where either such explanations were not made, or if they were, were constructed with “dishonest intellect” using false logic and premises of mediaeval science. I was not alone, but seem to be carrying the brunt of the demand for explanation. (See David Deutsch posts earlier for post-Popperian scientific explanations.)

Anyway faced with “explain what you mean by science, or at least a high-qualty explanation” I spotted via Sue Blackmore the “Spiked” Guardian survey of 250 scientists asked “What one thing do you think everyone should know about science” as part of the Einstein / e=mc2 centenary year of science. (The full survey is here, along with more analysis.)

Some of it is quite predictable – Dawkins’ plea against intelligent design … some of it is fairly simple, single tangible examples from that scientist’s sphere, targetted for a lay public …. and a good deal of it focusses on uncertainty, and the intent of scientific method, as the distinguishing aspect of science.

In fact the majority are about the easy half of scientific method – the disproving of false hypotheses – very little said about the creativity of formulating good candidate hypotheses, and explaning why before subjecting them to falsification.

Well I’m still reading – only 200 to go, but I’ve reached the D’s – and lo David Deutsch is amongst them. Sadly he was lost for words, or rather refused to be drawn on a single fact – so responded “read my book” (which as recorded earlier is about how not one but four distinct threads support each other as the most fundamental science). I know he’s right, but it’s a pity he missed that chance. He didn’t make the cut to the Guardian summary.

Many a true word …

Or in this case, “It was a tongue-in-cheek idea which seemed to catch the imagination.” says Pep Torres, inventor of this Spanish battle-of-the-sexes work-sharing washing machine.

Isn’t it always the way. Technology and intellect are nothing without imagination and humour.

Philsophical Reading

I referred to the Alexander McCall-Smith Von Igelfeld Trilogy described as a farcical germanic Frasier / Clousseau mix. Well its true, but it was thought prvoking in a philosophical kind of way – the farce allows a surreal world to supplant the supposedly real, but who knows which is which kind of thing. Truth stranger than fiction.

Like Don Quixote, which I’ve just started reading, there is an element of the writer writ, the reader read. The Von Igelfeld character is a writer whose only repute is through his written work, that no-one has read. I notice McCall-Smith’s third work is “The Sunday Philosophy Club”.

Very impressed with the Carlos Fuentes introduction to “The Modern Library CLassics” edition of Tobias Smollett’s translation of Cervantes, as well as Smollett’s own description of the life of Cervantes. Fuentes quotes Bachelard “But when science, ethics, politics and philosophy disciver their own limitations, they appeal to literature to go beyond their insufficiencies. Yet they only discover with literature itself, the permanent divorce between words and things.” Summarising Erasmus, who was a major influence on Cervantes, through his tutor Juan Lopez de Hoyos, Fuentes says “The Erasmian folly, set at the crossroads of two cultures [faith and reason], relativises the absolutes of both: this is a madness critically set in the very heart of faith, but also at the very heart of reason. The Madness of Erasmus is a questioning of man by man himself, reason by reason itself, and no longer by god, sin or the devil. Thus revitaised, man is no longer subjugated to fate or faith; but neither is he the absolute master of reason.”

Nothing new under the sun, again. Why are we still stuck in this dualist battle 400 years later ?

I also love all the “first modern novel” allusions, and the cross links to Shakespear’s Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth. I had no idea. I think I’m going to learn something in the next 1100 pages of close-spaced tiny print !.

[Oh yeah, and Reading blew it, losing at home to Wolves after leading – Oh well, all down to hoping for results on the final day of the season next Sunday.]

Losing Your Ethics On The Drive To Work

Been watching a TV documentory about Australian management practices (can’t find a link for now … ) and was struck by a quote from a Harvard guy, that echoed with the one I keep using from John Z DeLorean – “Committees of moral men make immoral decisions.”

The quote yesterday was “So many board members seem to lose their ethics in the car on the drive to the office.” The game in the boardroom is about pushing the envelope of the legally possible, not “what is right”. Quite different from their domestic behaviour with family and friends, most of them go to church (sic). Partly it was seen as a detachment issue – reaching the boardroom as a retirment reward, rather than a job affecting people – but whatever the mechanism, the behaviour is real enough.

Thumbs Up For HitchHikers

Saw the H2G2 film this evening. Remarkably good; story, effects and the point – all pretty true to the first book, as true as any screenplay adaptation. The John Malkovich character the only superfluous addition. The planetary construction scene is indeed impressive. Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast steals the show. The whole presentation seemed quite literal, new audiences should have no trouble following the narrative, powerful stuff.

(And Sunderland are Champions. Whoohoo … More importantly The Royals get the edge over Hammers for that final play-off place. So close this season, even the one extra goal conceded by Hammers drops them behind the Royals. Unlucky Mr Pardew. Enjoy the party Mr McCarthy.)

Quantum Computation – Video Encryption

One of the claimed opportunities for quantum information processing is highly secure private key encryption – here demonstrated in real time encryption and decryption of each frame of streamed video.

I see from the linked stories, the other more interesting aspect, non-local entanglement over real world distances also demonstrated (1mm and 600m mentioned). The encryption aspect is really just a result of the power, the processing density, of Qubits, but the non-locality raises all sorts of causality bypasses in real world physics, and communication channels behind the electromagnetic “ether”. Hence my interest in basic questions of what is information anyway !!!

(And Stevie Elliott puts Sunderland ahead of the Hammers … Yeehah, …. 1:2 with 2 minutes to go. Hammers biggest crowd of the season, 33,400 leaving in droves, 90 minutes up, 4 minutes added.)

Blogging & Reading Update

Almost a week since I posted. Too many domestic (relocation to Australia) chores. Been active philosophically on MoQ-Discuss e-mail forum, trying to raise the bar as far as scientific explanation being more than “scientific method”.

Since finishing David Deutsch and “The Rule of Four” I’ve been reading “The Two and a Half Pillars of Wisdom – The Von Igelfeld Trilogy” by Alexander McCall Smith (Author of “The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”). Amusing, if a little stereotypically British about stereotypical Germans “A blend of the cultivated pomposity of Frasier Crane and the hapless gaucherie of Inspector Clouseau.” says the cover blurb aptly. As I say, amusing with “philological” intellectual references. Flood of reminiscences as the central character is asked what he would most like to do in life that he has not yet had the opportunity to do “Study and work in Cambridge” he says, and for all the reasons I miss the place. Oh well.

Of course it was the title caught my eye. What with WWI in focus with the ANZACs suffering at Gallipoli against the Turks and other disasters like Townshend surrendering to the Turks at Al Kut in Iraq – T. E. Lawrence “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” was clearly just below the surface.

Anyway, whilst waiting for the following to arrive …

* Dennett – “Freedom Evolves”
* Dennett – “Consciousness Explained”
* Dennett – “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”
* Hofstadter and Dennett – “Mind’s I”
* Hofstadter – “Godel, Esher, Bach”
* Chalmers – “The Conscious Mind – In Search of a Fundamental Theory”
* Blackmore – “Consciousness, An Introduction” (to replace one I gave away)
* Neville – “Magic Circle” (suggested by Georganna in response to hype around The Rule of Four and The Da Vinci Code) – out of print, must find a used copy.

… prompted by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, I picked up Cervantes’ Don Quixote (The Tobias Smollett translation). Something I probably ought to have read already.

(Almost forgot – what a great coillection of book links from Rage Boy / Entropy Gradient Reversal.)

Blue to the Bone

No one I spoke to in the club of the above name (in Northbridge, Perth) seemed to have heard of George Thorogood and his “Bad to the Bone”. Still … the place has live blues bands 5 nights a week, and tonight had two acts on. The venue has only recently organised itself to that format, so management and staff were keen to please, and attract an audience for future nights.

The first duo, rhythm / vocal and lead semi-acoustic covered a wide range of bluesy-country-folk-rock. Apart from the Kalgoorlie to Port Hedland “road” blues number, the two that stuck were covers of Dylan’s “Times They Are a-Changin'” and Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” – both in the vocalist’s own style, rather than a karaoke imitation style. Brave for such well -known classics.

The next act were a 4-piece (2x Strat) blues rock outfit called “The Gators”. A tight unit, but quickly apparent that they were the latest vehicle for guitarist Paul Felton and vocalist Pete – it was the rhythm sections first gig together. Says something about the quality of both that they were tight throughout. Paul impressed on The Animal’s “Misunderstood” and on Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”. “Misunderstood” introducing Paul’s understated right hand pinched harmonics, and the latter giving free reign to his solo virtuosity. So simple, but so effective.

I’ve seen a few rock guitarists in my time, Joe Satriani most recently, Slim Hamster and Bill Puplett most memorably, but Paul is up there in the top handful. Worth catching.

[Post Note : This was my first visit of many to BTTB, and the first “duo” mentioned were Rick Steele (see many later references) Became very friendly with Rick, life and soul of Perth Blues Club still (in 2012) even though BTTB has long changed its format. Saw him most recently in 2011, though don’t appear to have blogged.)]