The Connectivist

I’ve been interacting with Jaap van Till for the last year or two, mainly on Twitter. His blog is The Connectivist.

He recently made a reference to, and separately blogged about, Ann-Marie Slaughter’s “The Chess Board and the Web“ in a comment to me. And my response was to liken the sound of her “Chessboard” metaphor to Doug Hofstadter’s “Tabletop” – the “theatre of operations for any future move”. (Aside – in fact it was this post that sparked the conversation, but that remains unacknowledged.)

Before I say any more about Chessboards and/or Tabletops, we are connected because “connectivism” seems to be a common agenda item, whatever our current policy agendas. Interestingly, we also both have fundamental physical interests – even metaphysical in my case – that treat information as the most fundamental “stuff” of the universe. (Cf most recently Carlo Rovelli and Erik Verlinde). Whether at the scale of nation-states or the fundaments of physical reality, relations – common connections & significant differences – ARE information, what’s worth knowing. Epistemology (what is knowable semantically) precedes Ontology (what can be deemed to exist objectively) I would say.

Connectivism – seeing the (human scale) world in terms of relations rather than objects – feels like a no-brainer for the last two or three decades, ever since the rise of speed-of-light connectivity of all entities and individuals made the relations most obvious in the connectivity itself. In fact I associate the concept of “Connectivism” as a thing with Stephen Downes, early in the digital age, but the semantic-web is older than Foucault, much older than the internet enabled web. So, the idea of a Harvard & White-House guru writing a book in 2017 recommending that organisations focus on connections rather than the objects and states seems like band-wagon jumping or maybe even bolting the stable door. No shit, Sherlock! Better late than never?

I’ve not yet read “The Chess Board and the Web” but it occurs to me that the fundamental difference between Slaughter’s Chess Board and Hofstatder’s Tabletop is that whilst they both rely on relations between potential positions on the stage, a chess board has constrained positions and moves, within which imagination must operate. The tabletop is limited only by the creativity of the imagination – conceptual-slipping – even though every individual move can be analysed as relations between binary states (now and next) and objects (this and/or that, me and/or you). The web adds an infinitely flexible, multi-dimensional and fluid layer of connectivity to the constrained grid of a chess board. That unlimited creativity was always there, simply limited by the pre-defined conventions of the game. And remember, after Wittgenstein, we may see words as signifying real-world objects, but in fact all language is a game, a game where we evolve the rules as we play.

Action Research Reloaded

Been reading a fascinating 2015 paper co-authored by @DrSarahEaton and shared recently on Twitter.

PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION AS RESPONSIVE PEDAGOGY

Fascinating for me on two levels.

Firstly in seeing that the Argyris “double-loop” learning process (aka Action Research), which I explored in my late-1980’s Master’s, has been taken up and evolved in many creative learning contexts since then, and forms part of collected textbooks like Keith Sawyer’s “The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences”. Even back then, “double-loop” was recognised as short-hand for the many meta-loops and considerations beyond learning from the explicit “procedural” process. Learning more by learning about learning, etc. Seems second nature now. Sure, there’s always the question of balance, avoiding analysis-paralysis whilst getting on with the planned task, but the process, not just the outcomes, is always a source of learning to improve the process and its outcomes.

Secondly, in this specifically educational context, as opposed to organisational learning generally, the need to recommend or even seek permission for the practitioners to engage collaboratively in the double / meta-loop processes of continuous quality improvement. In education the primary procedure (the single-loop) is the pedagogy. Fashions come and go in management practice, and “public service” practices like education suffer particularly from exposure to external management consulting fads, but stripped back to the underlying principles (*), quality will out.

“Findings reveal responsive pedagogy through reflection and collaboration that provided professional learning, especially in the areas identified as challenges [in Action Research]”

Almost by definition, once considerations apply to the many meta-loops, collaboration is the name of the game. Everyone’s loop is someone else’s meta-loop, the points of management contact between the different operational (pedagogical) procedures. Operational processes are about minimising deviation from those pedagogical procedures, with deviations seen as errors to be corrected. Once the meta-gloves are off, problems really do become opportunities to think out of the box, to step outside the daily operational loop into the meta-loops that bump up against fellow practitioners each operating in their own loops. It’s no longer about fixing and defending, questioning as the Socratic means of undermining the other guy, but about creative collaboration on better answers.

[Post Note: The key learning from my own research was to be careful not to turn these double and meta-loop processes into just another procedure – a box ticking exercise – they must be genuinely collaborative and freely creative between the people with skin in the game. Quite a few other lessons in Chapter 4 and as I noted back in 2002 shortly after I started this blog, this research project carries on where Chapter 4 left off.

(*) Ha! Even back then I referred to MOC / TQM / CQI as “A rose by any other name”. Nothing new under the sun.]

The Evolving Library Problem

Mary Beard’s short musing on how to tidy up and organise a sprawling library, ends with the fear that physical print libraries may be a thing of the past anyway. I think she’s wrong there.

Libraries are an infrequent but recurring theme of mine, and my own library is at that sad state of being so disorganised, following a couple of years of not-quite-complete house “remodelling”, that I actually have the same problem. I need to do something.

ISBN ordering seems arcane but, as with all good information management, meaningless index numbers are better than any other coding of what is meaningful or significant about the objects. Books that fall outside ISBN numbering can add a dummy “My-ISBN” prefix and follow the same conventions.

Extensible tagging can be used to add your own significance to the indexed database. After all, as well as having enough space to organise and evolve, such significance will evolve as our agendas develop over time,. And, there will be physical constraints like “oversize” shelves for individual books that disrupt efficient average shelf sizes. Having an indexed database ensure these kind of exceptions can also be handled with additional tags. The bonus is that using ISBN’s can also link you to other global library meta-data about the books you own. ISBN is the right way.

I’m not quite at Karl Lagerfeld’s “sideways library” state, but a good 40% of my books are currently in random stacks for assorted long-forgotten temporary reasons, and mostly not on or anywhere near the actually library shelves..

Two “Mind” Conferences Storified

Last week & weekend I followed two conferences via Twitter. HumanMind2017 and BreakingConvention.

#HumanMind2017 I had originally intended to attend in Cambridge (partly because I have a nostalgic soft-spot for The Møller Centre where it was held), but diary log-jam meant I overlooked doing anything about it until they started Tweeting. I ended up following them very closely and interacting via Twitter. Excellent multi-discipline event bringing international neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers together around two existing Cambridge and London based research projects. Felt very constructive and important. I shall be looking out for their next get-together, and for any published proceedings or other outputs.

Active Handles: Chris Meyns – Human Mind Project – New Directions Project – And my own in responses mainly to these.
HashTags: #HumanMind2017 – #GC17 – June 27 to 29 +/- days.
Fixed Sources: Tim Crane’s “New Directions” Cambridge Uni project –  Colin Blakemore’s  “Human Mind“, London Uni School of Advance Study project – The Human Mind Conference 2017

#BreakingConvention (#4) I had not even noticed until it was happening and I simply watched out if the corner of my eye, but its focus was alternative (non-mainstream science) views of consciousness and altered-states thereof. Always fascinating. Noticed one contributor was Rupert Sheldrake of Morphic Resonance infamy, but many on Psychedelics too. Didn’t notice Steven Reid? (Ha, he was there, ironically he is the conference press-officer.)  Will share with others.

Active Handles: @BreakingCon – Jules Evans
HashTags: – #BreakingConvention – #BC4 – #BC17 – June 30 to July 2 +/- days
Fixed Sources: Breaking Convention

[Ha, and coinciding with 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love”, which I mentioned a week or so ago. Not sure what the ’09 means on the poster?]

[Storify – tried out but couldn’t secure more than 50 items per story, so left very disjointed still. Will have to hope Twitter and other links do not rot in the meantime. Help anyone?]

MMT – Magic (Modern Money) Tree “Theory”

This is just a quick (unedited) reaction post. “Modern Money Theory” deserves more, but I have too many topics on the go right now, and I can’t claim to be expert enough anyway.

Big fan of @PaulMasonNews economic proposals in PostCapitalism, but can’t stand his partisan politics. (See Labour Populism). Long time correspondent David Morey has a banking background as well as deep philosophical interests, and has been posting on Modern Money regularly over the years. Chris @contronline posted “The Magic Money Tree is Real” in response to the recent political chatterings over government spending priorities. The popular reaction to the whole meme is the degeneration of partisan politics into tyrannical populism. However, as Chris says, Magic Money Tree (Modern Money) Theory is not partisan, it’s neutral theory. Same as the explicitly Marxist ideas in PostCapitalism, the mechanisms of how things could work can still be managed by our social priorities.

Things I get:

Debt or a promise to pay being a Government promise, the same monetary value linked to tax repaid in return. (But it’s also linked to bonds used to raise debt finance within the economy.)

Traditional relative competitiveness: with two sides of a trade one is always better off than the other, BUT the other is still better off than it would be in the absence of the trade. Implies not just between individuals, but between states or fiscal constituencies, there need to be trade boundaries with exchange value in the currency itself. The point of MMT is that even without this inter-state trade, the value in the money can still be maintained by the government promise in the state economy, and an isolated or even a single global economy is still possible. However big the state “debt”, the two-way trust is that ongoing liabilities will always be paid.

My remaining doubts and differences (on both MMT and PostCapitalism) are entirely about how things might actually work in practice:

These are still “just theory” and IMHO, the biggest problem with economics in general is that it is “autistic” to believe the economy runs predictively on any objective theory, capitalist / traditional money or otherwise. Goods and services as objects. Value as numbers. Decisions as arithmetic. (This is the root of my main agenda.)

In fact real economics is almost entirely about trust and psychology and gaming of these, and experience and wisdom and fault-tolerance and irreversibility and much more. There will always be unintended incentives to game the system and hence unintended consequences.

If there is only one economy (or each economy is monetarily independent) everything depends on trust in that money supplier.

Trust is the one thing the world is really short of right now. Apparently every statement must be backed by objective evidence. The default position is that everyone who makes a mistake, or makes a statement we disagree with, must be part of some evil conspiracy. Our job is to label them as evil or ridicule them as idiots apparently. Opposition politics has been replaced with populist tyranny – the free-democratic opposition concepts of criticism and holding to account have been totally lost.

And the real question – even if we “trust” in the new model for a brave new world – is the Irish question. How do we get there from here? We can’t start anywhere but where we are now. So, revolution or evolution? And whilst we don’t need to predict all the what-ifs, we have to know how we would handle classes of problem, plan B’s, escape-routes and off-ramps. There are the billions of people’s lives at stake.

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[Post Note : Book review link from David.]

#Grenfell Cladding – Let’s Get a Grip!

There’s a lot of bollox being reported about Grenfell cladding, its spec changes and “100%” failures on every other tower block cladding sample tested.

Purely anecdotal quickie – my opinions as an engineer – I have no inside knowledge on these tower block refurbishments

Pretty sure the “zinc” will have been some galvanised or zinc-coated steel. Heavier than aluminium, and less flexible in terms of possible finish appearance coatings. And, the claddings in question are entirely about aesthetic finish. Freshening-up the look of the ageing blocks.

Secondly I’d bet the saving here is in the “cassette” approach to modular fixing. Simpler and lighter weight fixings for lighter panels. Anecdotally in various media news film of cladding removal and inspection work, there has been enormous variation in the cladding SYSTEMS. Those like Grenfell seemed to have been as crude as (vertical) timber battens nailed into the old concrete with the cladding sandwich pinned onto these battens with a chimney airspace behind. No insulation, no convection-breaks. Others had both insulation and pre-formed (horizontal and vertical) metal supports. I’m sure there are many other system variations.

The cladding itself is a sandwich, pretty sure the price-per-sheet variation of the material (skin and core) has little to do with the material cost, more to do with the manufacturing and supply chain.

Nothing in these (strongly encouraged, always) value-engineering bid proposals – NOTHING – will have relaxed the actual regulations and specification required to be met.

Much of the testing appears to have been on the sandwich core material (as reported on @BBCR4Today today). There are several levels of SYSTEM being ignored here. The sandwich itself is more than the core, and the skins are variable too. The installation varies in terms of insulation, fixings, convection-breaks, geometric arrangements and more …

Pretty sure the BRE testing of just the core has simply been a conservative agreement to compare apples with apples, removing all the other variables for simpler testing interpretation. PE core is flammable, even with retardant fillers – no surprise, same result everywhere. True, but close to useless, like most simplistications.

Let’s stop rushing to judgement and let’s stop publishing half-baked stories to confuse a wider public.

I am not alone:

Quantum Weirdness Ain’t So Weird

Had this Aeon piece by Philip Ball on my desktop for a day or two, and had it brought to my attention today by Robin.

Firstly I’m already a believer that the wave-particle duality and collapse of the wave function driven by the observer are fudges, as is the idea that many superpositioned states represent any kind of many-worlds model of reality. Quantum weirdness is only weird because we struggle to make it fit our classical common-sense world. A classical common-sense world already conditioned by generations of shared and evolved models of physics.

I don’t buy the full decoherence explanation (yet), but there are several good aspects to this Philip Ball explanation of Zurek’s work.

Each act of observation consumes (captures, processes and changes) information, and the environment between any event and our observation supports that communication. Photons (or some more fundamental info-ons) carry the information in patterns, imprints of the event. This is good. I go further and suggest the information field is the more fundamental aspect of reality than any “objects” we rationalise out of it at either particle or everyday levels. (See also Rovelli and also IIT.) Waves and particles are two different abstractions from the same underlying information patterns. The information is more fundamental than any physical embodiment, even though there must always be one or more manifestation in the natural (physical) world. (What is particularly exciting about recognising an information field underlying “apparent” wave-particle duality in physics itself, is that the same “trick” dissolves any mind-matter duality limiting our explanations of consciousness and will.)

Aside re “fundamental” particles of physics. In the same way as the word “atom” has evolved in the physics it represents, since Democritus original grasping for the most fundamental indivisible objects, “photon” may simply be redefined to be the most fundamental physical information object. Either way, if it really is both indivisible and fundamental (by definition) it may as well be Boscovich’s points in space. Everything observable is patterns of relationships between these; there’s no intrinsic nature or property of these fundamental “particles”. One corollary is that indivisible and fundamental are two different things. There are higher level indivisible (or basic) objects that are integrations (systematic historical outcomes that are more than the sum of their parts, that can never be resolved into their more fundamental parts, even though the more fundamental parts must have existed and interacted to evolve the higher objects.)

The real myth limiting scientific progress is objective reductionism. The above suggests routes out of this fly-bottle.

[Important Boscovich > Mach > Einstein thread behind this that was on the right track before “Copenhagen”.]

#AmericanGods

Loved reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, the so-called “author’s preferred text” version from 2004 with the extra epilogue chapter. It made a big impression but I never did get round to writing a full review, beyond this passing reference.

Never been a fan of fantasy or sci-fi fiction generally, with a few satirical and philosophical exceptions, and I said the book felt like Douglas Adams  (Hitchhiker and Long Dark Teatime) meets Salman Rushdie (Satanic Verses and Two Years) – on several levels. Both exceptions I loved. Now watching the Amazon TV adaptation, with Gaiman as exec producer, I would add Terry Gilliam’s Brazil to that impression. The production is magnificent. The real difference from those other three, is the added bonus of Americana of which I’m also a great fan.

Confusing to say the least. But then, like the book there are so many surreal aside scenes in any temporal order that following “the plot” is tough. I really wonder what anyone not already appreciating the book would make of simply trying to sit down and watch it? Confused myself even further when having watched the 6th episode on the understanding it was the final episode, I was bereft. That’s not how I remembered it and put the impression down to experience and moved on.

But of course it’s 12 episodes in Series 1 (how can there be more than one?) and I’ve now watched episodes 7 and 8 having recapped on 6.

It really is brilliant on belief in stories and reality. Practically theological as far as the eponymous gods are concerned. The allegories and metaphors are pretty thin and transparent, (eg Technology and Media) which is just as well because as I say it would be pretty opaque if not. Gillian Anderson is magnificently cast in her several cameo roles as Media. Even my first full read involved a couple of false starts before I could get to grips with it. I saw one reviewer complaining that the Ricky Whittle’s lead character Shadow Moon was a pretty dumb name and the plot hard to discern. If that’s your entry level then I’m guessing the point of the story will be lost to you.

And I’m also guessing consistent with the original read, the theological and philosophical positions underlying the allegory may not be that sophisticated, despite being heavily researched from every pre-existing strand of mythology. How could it be otherwise given that scope. But it is full of thought provoking material presented with wit and imagination. The more I watch and re-read, the more it looks like a “resource” to be unpicked at leisure afterwards. What I really need is a synoptic schema of all it’s components – I’m probably going to have to create one.

Recommended for anyone prepared to put in the effort.

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[Post Note: And it seems Episodes 1 to 8 were “Season 1” …. So is Season 2 the remaining 4 (of 12) or are more planned, and when? Jeez.]

“The” Problem with Piers Morgan vs Tommy Robinson

Despite the fact Piers often remarked “Yes, I have often agreed with things you have said in the past.”, Tommy also said “Yes, I’ve apologised for some of the misguided things I’ve said in the past.” Let’s face it Maajid Nawaz founded Quilliam entirely on reversing things he said and believed when he was younger and hot-headed. There’s no love lost between these parties, but learning from mistakes, ours and those of others, is to be encouraged.

One argument for keeping this kind of debate off mainstream media is because the angry hot-headed “debate” stokes anger (and violent hatred) without noticeably progressing any constructive argument. The hypocritical and manipulative Piers sets the bar to moral high-ground pretty low, so Tommy easily wins that one. The second reason is that the shock-jock sound-bite set-piece style set-up by the host is never going to progress any subtle realities beyond shouty and personal gain-saying anyway. Credit to Tommy he did force in plenty of “Islamic” material and prior research he’d come armed with, despite the obviously set-up control-freakery of Piers, and as a rule I’m a supporter of conventional host / guest “platforming” arrangements. Tommy is the first to admit he’s not the one to make subtle arguments anyway. Shouting his simplistic points onto other people’s agenda is his style. In that he no doubt succeeded, but the triumphalism of “Tommy owned Piers” is grotesque.

Having considered all these arguments at various levels of detail many times before I have little new to say:

In fact “Islam, we have a problem” is how I’ve said it before.

Islam has any number of problems, like any ancient factional religion. And compared to the other two Abrahamic religions, is well behind the curve on reforming its illiberal patriarchal misogynistic traditions within and between factions. And even the most benign of religions has obvious theological problems between supernatural faith and wider accepted rationality.

Adding Islamism and a Jihadi-mindset into that mix, is a whole other level of problems. In the real world difference between religious teaching and otherwise non-secular democratic freedoms are an obvious recipe for conflict, if religious adherents expect explicit exceptions and impositions beyond basic tolerance. Murderous terrorist extremism in the name of any cause or ideology, is evil full stop. Specifically Islamist extremism – in the name of Islam – is a problem for Islam by association, however complex and flawed the immediate and historical causal chains of justification.

So how many problems is that; several dozen? And how are they related; how long have you got?

Islam isn’t “the” problem. Islam has its own distinct problems. Islamism is “a” (big) problem, but there is no “the” problem, except maybe ill-considered hateful simplistic “us vs them” – anti-religious, islamophobic – gain-saying. That is a problem for us all. Initiatives like Prevent, Quilliam and Inspire work to address any and all of these problems collaboratively rather than undermine each other’s efforts and stir up anger and Islamophobic hatred in the process.

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[Post Note 2 days later, as if to prove my point in a single Tweet.
Inspire supporting Quilliam supporting Prevent.
Constructive efforts.

…]

More on #IdentityPolitics

Wrote a fairly comprehensive piece on #IdentityPolitics a year or two ago. Have a “Good Fences” thread on the go also, about classifying individuals AND groups and recognising “woolly” boundaries and less than objective definitions (amongst other things). Naming is always political, for reasons of policy objectives. ALWAYS. The individuals being named, fluidly straddle the definitions of the groups or classes being named. When it comes to naming and identity, (subjective) self-identity is the closest we can get to neutral objectivity, but even then contentious identities may conflict, so mutual acceptance is needed. Equally externally imposed identities are “somebody else’s”, unwitting or deliberate, political ideology.

[The “Good Fences” piece remains in draft for a possible wider publication, but many fragmented references.]

Anyway. 3 Twitter threads today on the topic

Clive on “Disabled cyclists”, the disabled and cyclists

The “political utility” of calling #FinsburyParkMosque perpetrator a “terrorist”. This whole thread:

The recurring “Islam is not a race” nonsense – supporting a couple of threads from Alom Shaha

Obviously the last two are related. The naming of the perp as a terrorist and the claims he’s not a racist. Generic point would have been clearer if I’d used “cultural tribes” rather than “religious tribes” in that tweet, but same-same … is the point.

All grist to the upcoming “Good Fences” piece.

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[Post Notes – and there’s more …

And more from 2019: