Psybertron Asks

Bureaucratic Hyper-Rationalism. Not what I expected to find here, an analysis of an unitelligible Powerpoint slide from Boeing that may have contributed to mis-analysis of Shuttle Columbia’s insulation damage before its disastrous end. Edward Tufte calls the overstructured style “bureaucratic hyper-rationalism” – sounds like my main thread ? [via Jorn again] Rodcorp also picked-up on the link, and points out the evocation of Tufte and Feynman analysing the Challenger disaster too.

Metaphor and War – George Lakoff at AlterNet. [via Jorn]

Picked up and started Dawkins’ A Devils Chaplain last night, but more of that in a minute.

I also picked-up on impulse, a copy of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy, Who Needs It ? – having seen how many books she’d published, but knowing nothing about her I thought, I’d dip my toe in and find out. She’s hailed as the greatest ever salesman for Philosophy in the sleeve notes. This is a book of essays written in 1975 to 1980 but published shortly after she died in 1982. The first essay is a speech she made at a West Point officers passing out parade. Terrifying stuff. If you were to replace Kant with Bin Laden and Existentialists with Al Qaeda, it could have been Dubya addressing the nation – Kant is the greatest evil to be driven out, Existentialists are his loyal henchmen, USA is the greatest and the only moral nation. In fairness the main message, a pep talk to these graduating officers, is banish self-doubt, objectivist reason is king, choose your own philosophy (as long as its mine), you’ll need one to make important decisions in your life, don’t just accept received wisdom, don’t just go with the herd, get out there and argue with confidence, etc. But why such vehement reactionary rhetoric of evil against those with whom she disagrees, who fail to worship at the altar of objectivism ? Some of my best friends are American, but …. etc. This is going to be a tough one to finish if she carries on like this.

Dawkins on the other hand – well actually he’s also on quite a rant, against “irrational” religion in his case. Time to stand-up and be counted he says – no more place for political correctness in pussy-footing around religious views – 9/11 was the final straw – religion is and has been not only the cause of most conflict in the world, but also the most unnecessary cause of anything. (See also the acknowledgement in the footer to my blog pages, where I didn’t quite have Dawkins’ courage it has to be said.). This book is also a collection of essays and other pieces, including a lament and the eulogy for Douglas Adams. So many good quotes – like the Monk in the opening passages of Dirk Gently, who’s there to hold your beliefs for you, even things they woudn’t believe in Salt Lake City. Magic. No secret that Dawkins and Adams were a mutual appreciation society, but as a fan of DNA’s humour, I can see why I find it so easy to take Dawkins seriously.

Having finished The Blind Watchmaker – I was browsing Dawkins contribution to The Third Culture, which includes commentary on, and by, other members. I was struck by one of Dawkins quotes about Stephen Jay Gould “building non-existent windmills to take a tilt at” and felt the same problem I’m having with Rorty at the moment. Similarly on reading the Brian Goodwin commentary on Dawkins – I found myself fuming at this from Goodwin

[Quote] To give a very brief summary of the way he presents neo-Darwinism in The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype, let me mention four points he makes: (A1) Organisms are constructed by groups of genes, whose goal is to leave more copies of themselves; (A2) this gives rise to the metaphor of the hereditary material being basically selfish; (A3) this intrinsically selfish quality of the hereditary material is reflected in competitive interactions between organisms, which result in survival of fitter variants generated by the more successful genes. (A4) Then you get the point that organisms are constantly trying to get better, fitter, and — in a mathematical, geometrical metaphor — always trying to climb peaks in fitness landscapes.

The most interesting point emerged at the end of The Selfish Gene, where Richard said that human beings, alone amongst all the species, can escape from their selfish inheritance and become genuinely altruistic, through educational effort. I suddenly realized that this set of four points was a transformation of four very familiar principles of Christian fundamentalism, which go like this; (B1) Humanity is born in sin; (B2) we have a selfish inheritance; (B3) humanity is therefore condemned to a life of conflict and perpetual toil; (B4) but there is salvation.[Unquote]

This is absolutely NOT what Dawkins says or believes – he explicitly reminds us all the time that the Selfish Gene is rhetorical, a metaphor – there is absolutely no suggestion of his point (A3) in Dawkins – that competitive behaviour (in the organism) is inherited from the inherently selfish gene. Utter bollox, and Dawkins does not only not say this, he is at pains to “caveat metaphor“. His use of “trying” in point (A4) similarly misses Dawkins point. No amount of trying by any organism can help it evolve to any peak of fitness. Goodwin is confusing metaphor with causality. His point (B3) is doubly fatuous. Dawkins memetic views make it absolutely clear that Dawkins sees humans as having both genetic and memetic mechanisms for development (and improvement) even if points (B1) and (B2) were true for any organism – which of course they’re not. Goodwin also makes big issues about the value judgements in views of evolutionary “progress”, subject dear to my heart, but quite spuriously lays criticisms of non-existent claims at the doors of Darwinist. What is Goodwin’s point in this misrepresentation ? [Post Note – Murray Gell-Mann, no less, says of Goodwin – Perhaps he doesn’t really believe what he says and is just being mischievous. Steve Jones says – I think he’s a mystic. Complexity is catching, that’s the trouble. Dawkins remarks – we thought he was … just being a bit off the wall. – Phew, got me going for a moment there – I’m in good company again.]

Actually I suspect Goodwin’s “life of sin” rhetoric is closer to being the accepted metaphor for the reality of life, perceived and rationalised this way by Christian society, in the absence of sufficently credible explanatory science. No excuse now surely ? The other metaphorical trap I see here is the recognition of deep recurring patterns in nature being seen as evidence in the some causal relationship with the pattern itself, not as evidence of some underlying mechanism common to occurences of the patterns – these may be mathematically explainable as “attractors” to use complexity and chaos language – but the existence of such attractors does not “cause” the development towards the recurring pattern, without some driver for the dynamic in the first place. Some good stuff about these recurring patterns in taxonomy in Foucault and Eco I seem to recall.

Yes Dawkins, like Pinker, comes over as a passionate zealot, but surely the passion is in awe of the science, not necessarily religion. In fact Dawkins, also like Pinker, often remarks that the amazing thing is that the science is so much more amazing than anything supernatural anyway.

Dawkins got me thinking – I’m going to collect a page on big numbers. He spends a lot of time on the statistics of improprability of various cosmic, geological and evolutionary events on the one hand and the various microspcopic, molecular genetic, scales on the other. He is at pains to emphasise that our ability to believe them is greatly influenced by our own perspective (as humans) of scale in space, time and probablities of life experience, which is itself a result of our own evolution.

Dealions, Googles, Googleplexes, or how long would it take a million monkeys to write the compete works of Shakespeare by chance, etc, perhaps 2 to the power of a number whose number of digits it would take us the entire known life of the cosmos to even write down, spring to mind as boggling biggies – Dawkins Watchmaker is full of similar examples to illustrate his points of credulity. No doubt his later Climbing Mount Improbable is similarly endowed. Anyone know of a starting resource for such concepts ?

Had a traumatic two weeks IT-wise. Recently acquired a new P4/XP machine and loaded Norton Anti-Virus and Internet Security stuff. The combination played havoc with various web-sites I use and has taken until now to recover.

Anyway in that time I finished Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker and moved on to Rorty’s Philosophy as a Mirror on the World.

Dawkins continued with his “Darwinian evolution is the only mechanism to explain emergent adaptive complexity” theme. I already agreed with him – probably will not now bother to read Selfish Gene – may seek out Devil’s Chaplain. Only drawback with the later chapters is the effort he expends disproving alternative evolutionary theories, which becomes a drag when you’re already convinced. Keep discovering an enigmatic mix of views on Stephen Jay Gould – will probably have to read more of his stuff for myself, to understand if and where he get’s it right, despite often seeming wrong to me.

Started Rorty – he was on a mission when he wrote this, and spends a good deal of his introductory chapter discrediting views I wouldn’t have found naturally believable anyway, and makes extensive use of philosophical jargon – phenomenal, intentional etc. I’m hoping these early chapters are deliberately controversial so I’ll be sticking with him for a while yet – despite scribbling bollox in the margins several times already ! He’s a big supporter of Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey. His main target is to undermine the need for any kind of dualist mind-matter views of the world. If all he’s saying is that all folk-mind-stuff is ultimately physics (beyond folk-physics) then he’ll get no argument from me, but it all looks like pedantry around lingusitic definitions of matter and physics and mental (and phenomenal and intentional) so far. Here’s hoping.

The Unloved American – Simon Schama writing in The New Yorker [via Jorn] See also the earlier Rudyard Kipling reference under “the empire that dare not speak its name“. Also from Simon Schama in the Guardian this piece on US one year on from 9/11. Disingenuous reverence and religion conspiring against open debate on the way ahead.

Ev, three Jasons and a Jensen – Everything you wanted to know about the Google Blogger wedding, and weren’t afraid to ask.