Author: Psybertron

Had this piece from The Harvard Gazette bookmarked for a couple of weeks and still not fully digested:

“How the West Became WEIRD
– that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.”

It’s an interview of Joseph Henrich by Juan Siliezar.

Main thread in my own agenda that “western rational arrogance” is a disease that we suffer from and leaves us blindsided when it comes to understanding that there are alternative world-views held by those not subjected to western (mental) colonisation, via media if not physical via force of arms.

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Follow-on beyond and unrelated to the above article, a topical example of why dominant Western reasoning is a problem for the world:

The alternate views of Covid19 “disease” on the one hand and Covid19 “response measures” on the other.

Prof. Sunetra Gupta – Oxford UK (theoretical) Epidemiologist – with alternate views on this balance of risk. (I’m pretty close to her position.) “Do the math” is the false step; easy, but false. Classic memetics.

Dr. Reiner Fuellmich – German lawyer – a bit too big-capitalism business-conspiracy focussed for my taste, but interestingly bringing in very early the idea of archetypal Germans being very disciplined in terms of rational logic representing a target for “the science” driving the Covid19 response. He goes as far as to say “there are no excess deaths anywhere”

If nothing else in a rational democratic society – popular consensus is not a great measure for scientific validity, not when the very basis is already biased to that kind of “Western” logic. The modern (post 1920’s) East is thoroughly contaminated with the same western mental virus.

The only “conspiracy” is that we are memetically trapped – complicit – in this reasoning loop.

And “economy” has nothing to do with the arithmetic of money either – that’s “autistic” to coin the phrase. It’s about living meaningful lives.

The only argument for lock-down is the delaying effect that prevents overload of health services. The delay in itself has no other value, yet has huge and profound downside “costs” in its own right.

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Note:

Tricky part of this whole debate is what constitutes an “acceptable” level of death. Zero or minimal sounds reasonable but is in fact totally irrational.  As someone quipped on Twitter the other day, aiming for zero deaths shows a lack of ambition, we should aiming to raise people from the dead 🙂

Keeping “Excess Deaths” within normal expectations is the benchmark most settle on, but even here, the question of excess relative to what is still a political (ie policy) choice. The appearance of science and pre-school arithmetic is attractive, but nevertheless entirely political. Consider:

COVID DEATH RATES vs EXPECTED
Expectations		Alive in 2020
UK Pop		67,800,000
UK Life Expectancy		81
Average annual (all causes)		837,037
Average monthly		69,753
Average weekly		16,005
Recent 5 yr recorded average		11,000 – 12,000

Slightly scary is that formal stats of UK excess death rates being used in public stats on Covid progress are using weekly deaths relative to that 5 yearly average. Recent years have been exceptionally low death rates, life expectancy and population have been rising unusually rapidly recently in the UK. Policy is being set on keeping it rising at these rates. Peak levels of deaths during Covid 19 (22k/wk) have been barely as far in excess of the lifetime expectation (16k/wk) as the 5 yr average (11-12k/wk) is below it.

Given this is marginally significant, it is even more worrying when looking at actual Covid reported deaths (these are just England, not UK). Whatever the age group 95% of reported deaths coincide with pre-existing conditions over the whole Covid period since March.

I agree with the general “Barrington” position that Covid health risks are being greatly exaggerated in connection with Covid policy measures.

We should be living life, taking targeted precautions, taking extra care of the elderly and those with (known) pre-existing conditions, those in front-line human contact, etc. Just as we would with any infectious potentially life-threatening disease. Basic good manners.

In terms of my own longer-term agenda, simple arithmetic is being used as a substitute for sound judgement because simple arithmetic looks like following-the-science and absolves decision-makers from the responsibility of making judgements that could be challenged by such simplistic scientism as being “unscientific”.

(This has been well documented previously as The McNamara Fallacy. If you focus on what you can count – the body count, the case count – reality is distorted because uncountable, judgemental human factors are ignored and effectively rendered invisible. Even the apocryphal Einstein got it “Not every thing that counts can be counted“.) I say:

Simplistic scientism is killing real science and civilisation as we know it.

Wake-up folks. No conspiracies of skilled-incompetence needed, just natural laws of evolution, driving humanity to irrelevance until we recognise this fault in our modern rationality.

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[Post Note 26th Jan 2021 – UK passing the 100,000 attributed deaths milestone since the outbreak has been recorded. That’s 6 average weekly normal expected death tolls – in a year! It’s only “significant” because counting in base 10 – as we do arbitrarily – it has 5 zeroes? We are conned by arithmetic. Every individual life lost or damaged is a tragedy. Socially, population, human-progress-wise it is still barely a blip. We need to get a grip on the future of humanity. And … Whitty knows it.]

Just another placeholder post, like the last one from Alan Rayner, this one from Leemon McHenry who, the only time I came across before, was as editor of a collection of articles including Alan Rayner.

Anyway this link to a piece reviewing contemporary Critiques of Whitehead’s Metaphysics, including Russell. (Made it pretty clear I’m a fan of Whitehead’s process / event-based worldview, even if he over-elaborates his arguments.)

New paper from Alan Rayner on the work of Doug Marman:

Sentient Evolution

and

A Sequel

With another East <> West allusion, ref other recent post.

Just capturing a link to the AntiMatter blog pages of Cormac O’Rafferty.  (Like me he blogs about plenty of current affairs and global politics beyond his academic teaching interest in physics. For me these are in fact deeply connected via human memetics and social decision making – in both science and politics.)

Capturing the link because he was the one scientist linked by Rick Ryals in his “Einstein Was Right” agenda … turning the clock back to supplementary knowledge of Einstein that was overlooked by the science community when Relativity and QM took off after 1917 – and left us with all the paradoxes and anomalies of 21st C Physics. (Rick’s video presentation on that page.)

Topical because I’m following-up references to Peter Rowlands, who also follows the clock back to some mathematical conventions that were overlooked in development of Dirac’s version of Schrödinger. (Hamilton, Quaternions and Clifford mathematics). A Dirac Nilpotent Rewrite that leaves the reality of the symmetric elements exposed to the human reader as the algorithmic computation of much simpler maths. (Completed my read. Excellent. Recommended. Must publish a more detailed review.)

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Post notes:

(Rowlands does continue to have 2018/19/20 joint publications of papers, so he is still active out there. Intriguingly this one:

“Amoroso, Richard; Gianni, Albertini; Kauffman, Louis; Peter, Rowlands (2018). Unified Field Mechanics Ii: Formulations And Empirical Tests – Proceedings Of The Xth Symposium Honoring Noted French Mathematical Physicist Jean-pierre Vigier. Singapore: World Scientific. p. 601. ISBN 978-981-323-203-7.”

On a wiki page about the psyche in science. The plot continues to converge.)

And, whilst I remember, my original contact with Rowlands, via Peter Marcer of BCS / CASYS also included Brian Josephson and Karl Pribram. Rick Ryals was the common communication between O’Raffery and Rowlands. Need to refresh these old (email) contacts.

And, oh my, having mentioned Clifford maths above, the link has already been made here. What a tangled web.

Here a reference to Cormac by Cory Powell in Discover magazine which, given the “new” Einstein topic, is maybe where Rick picked-up the reference. (There are other Discover and Cory Powell links in Rick’s references.)

And, Cormac is also a surfer. A synchronicity one level too removed to elaborate here.

As an aeronautical engineer and an information modeller, I am more than averagely capable mathematically. Literate in the calculus and statistics of human-scale classical physics, natural science and business economics, including say, the compressible flow of Navier-Stokes for example.

Several years ago I wrote of Peter Rowlands (2007) “Zero to Infinity – The Foundations of Physics” ..

Maths Leaves Me Trailing

I could tell I was reading an important book, actually just the free peek at the introductory chapter(s) afforded by Amazon, but the maths of fundamental theoretical physics I found impenetrable as presented. I have the same problem with some of the more formal logical notations of pure philosophy, whilst we’re on the topic.

At that time, online correspondent Rick Ryals (since deceased) encouraged me by pointing out he had qualified in physics and been employed in science research, and yet in recent decades he too found it impossible to present his own latest thinking in the kind of mathematics expected. It was holding him back getting his own evolving ideas taken seriously.

Until today, I never did buy Rowlands 700 page tome, partly out of fear for the maths and partly because, as a hard-back text-book I would struggle to read, the price was scary too. Recently with all the renewed interest in the psychological and psychic aspects of fundamental physics, and the recurrence of my own informational foundations, I found myself re-reading that earlier post. I was moved to buy a second-hand copy of the 2008 hard-back reprint of Rowlands “Zero to Infinity” at last. And glad I did. Still expensive but reinforced the original impression of its importance and value.

Recently, I had also been looking at good reviews of Jim Baggott’s latest (2020) “Quantum Reality” and Tweeted a quip about the sub-editor’s use of Schrödinger’s Cat in  the headline sub-title. Like Hawking did “I reach for my gun” whenever I hear mention.

I’d normally baulk at a pitch that leads with Schrödinger’s cat, but a science writer that follows that up with “the choice we face is actually a philosophical one” has me hooked. https://t.co/6jdmpR6Yg3 Ordered.
(Max Born: “Theoretical physics equals actual metaphysics.”)

?” What, Why & How do we know? (@psybertron) September 16, 2020

I’ve not actually ordered it yet …

because … well … imagine my surprise

… following-up the renewed Rowlands interest and discovering he has written several books including (2015) “How Schrödinger’s Cat Escaped The Box” clearly described as a popular readership version of his more formal work.

But that meme of a title?

(Hat tip to @Katoi – from a project “about Dirac”, the only human face amongst the cartoon characters, with Schrödinger as Tom – the cat – from Tom & Jerry.)

Why had I never heard of Rowlands since? A professor of physics at Liverpool Uni, many publications including many books. Hmmm. His books published by World Scientific out of Singapore, few citations to be found, and most of those from his circle of collaborators. This is thought overlooked – or rejected – by mainstream physics?

Anyway, I’ve taken the plunge and acquired a copy of “How Schrödinger’s Cat Escaped The Box“, now reading the Kindle version in advance of receiving the hard-copy.

It is a wonderful read.

I’ve read a great deal of popular, and not so popular science, even more philosophy of science and the metaphysical foundations of its ontologies and epistemologies. As Rowlands points out is his aim, it is clearly written in such a way that the maths – yes there still is a lot of maths – is presented very simply. The simplicity comes from sticking with the abstractions symbolised in the mathematical relations and dispensing with the ubiquitous thought experiments as examples; Schrödinger’s cat-in-a-box for one (hence his title) but all the rubber sheets and bowling balls, clocks and astronauts travelling on trains, spacecraft and beams of light. Let’s escape from the box of conventional thought.

I’m only two chapters in so far, and I must have read the same content hundreds of times before – the particles and forces of the standard model(s), quantum mechanics and relativity, E=Mc2, you name it. As I say, it may be the same hackneyed scope as many a popular science book on these topics, but it’s presentation is very readable and preserves the mathematical significance of the symmetries.

He does also of course make reference to his “Zero to Infinity – The Foundations of Physics” very early on. A second reason he is able to keep the maths simple in his popular work is that he is only presenting the equations that represent the model of physics. What he is not doing is presenting all the calculations that relate the model to the many physical properties, constants and observed values in the universe that lead to the current-day paradoxes, anomalies and gaps which still prevent any consensus on the unification of physics as a whole. You want that level of calculation, you go to his formal work.

If you really want to start from zero, you also dispense with the presumed realities of the human-scale physical world. It is these that make the fundamental quantum and gravitational relativity views seem weird. The only thing after zero are points of possibility, or conceivability as others have said.

“This book requires [no] prior knowledge of physics or mathematics beyond arithmetic and the simplest algebra … Trained scientist[s] will find this [not] easy. There is an immense barrier to be overcome. This difficulty is not intrinsic to the subject. Complexity has nothing to do with it. [The difficulty] comes from our own habits of thought … generations of conditioning which makes us want to see nature in a different way to the one in which it really acts.”

Nature repeats itself at different levels. Of course it’s not the actual structures and qualities that repeat, but the abstract patterns that underlie them.

[The] paradox of Schrödinger’s cat is symptomatic of our desire to compromise, to hold on to a view of nature which has some tangible connection to our ordinary world. However if Schrödinger’s cat is ever to escape from its box, we have to escape from ours.

Too true. Thinking outside the box. Any excuse to post this:

Reading on …

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Post Notes: …

Read completed. Excellent. Recommended. Keeping the maths simple, the abstractions do seem to maintain their relationship to reality. Fascinating, no longer feel “left trailing” by the maths.

[Some more references to Rowlands in my next Cormac O’Raffery post.]

Contact with Rowlands and his ongoing work established:

• One peer review of his “Foundations of Physical Law” a more formal precursor to his Schrödinger book. From Contemporary Physics 2017, a reviewer not know to Rowlands at the time.
• Here a bio and pubs list from PIRT … a Russian annual conference on the Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory.

In his own words:

“[not] broken through yet, but a few green shoots”

• Rowlands website under construction at
  http://nilpotentquantummechanics.co.uk/
• I also have profiles on Researchgate, with a number of papers available
  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Rowlands
• and on Google Scholar (which gives me a not-too-bad citation index of 18)
  https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=peter+rowlands&hl=en&oi=ao
• You can get virtually the whole of this book in a series of 10 videos on
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtNyUiYRdwmwSfFlX5Hlalg

I’ve been following this Science of Consciousness conference for years, since before the 3 year period we lived in the US, and now a decade since returning to the UK, thanks to Covid, I can attend (virtually) in real time for the first time.

I’ll post some reports here – as with HTLGI – impossible to do justice in real time notes.

Pulled this off LinkedIn. Pretty sure it says the opposite of what the poster and the person quoted intended?

Is Trump right or isn’t he?

As I say, even a fuckwit is right half the time, but the “cause” of forest fires isn’t a simply binary (political poll) question.

Forest fires are natural, a natural part of the cycle of change that brings us evolution over time. The planet needs them.

The reason we’re having more forest fires, and more in previously cooler regions, is almost certainly to do with climate change. How much of that is a natural cycle of climate change (see above) and how much is “AGW” exaggerated by human activity is scarcely debatable. Whatever the proportion or form of human effects, it’s in the interests of “our” planet to work against them, to reduce and reverse our negative effects. They’re not negative because they’re human.

The reason we’re having more serious, more continuous, forest fires spreading closer to human populations more often, is almost certainly down to “light touch” eco-friendly forest management, choosing to do less maintenance for the benefit natural forest flora & fauna inhabitants  instead of the neighbours. The eco-warriors have a lot of human suffering to answer for.

These are not mutually exclusive positions. Both are likely true.

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Post Note:

Later the same day 75/25 (usual 80/20 in my book) relative contributions:

Here are the researchers telling us, yes climate plays a smaller part, but “75% is the way we manage lands and develop our landscape”https://t.co/IHrWnqGCsg pic.twitter.com/2HIHUzinB3

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) September 15, 2020

It’s perfectly possible to think differently and not be in denial. The activists are fucking it up for all of us. As a spokesperson for XR said the other day it’s not contradictory that they are climate activists and a good old fashioned anti-establishment anarchists. Don’t be fooled into thinking they care more about the planet than they do about their anti-human, anti-establishment credentials.

And there’s more Mon 21st Sept, here in The Spectator

“How environmentalists destroyed California’s forests – Short-sighted eco-measures helped cause the devastation we see today”

“We couldn’t have created better conditions for devastating fires if we’d tried. ”

“Even if every single thing that [eco-warriors] claim about climate change were to be true, it wouldn’t undo the consequences of decades of mismanagement driven by their ‘advocacy.’”

 

2020 update to my Epistemological Ontology from 2017/18
(Minor change of wording to emphasise the ontological reality.)

Ontology because it’s a world-view of what is deemed to exist.
Epistemological because it is based on knowledge.
Metaphysical Monism because the stoff of knowledge is information and therefore the only stoff of which the whole edifice is built.

Notes:

Earliest version (June 2017) published here.

Last formed part of a description of the (April 2019) Monist Informational Realism here (aka the “Epistemological Ontology”, above).

[Dec 2021 – Need to update the “Epistemological Ontology” metaphysics to reflect Whitehead’s dynamic participation, Goff and new pan-(proto)-psychists beyond Kastrup’s idealism, and McGilchrist (Parts1&2) integration of the “ways of knowing”. Everything else already there, in need of elaboration. Maybe also re-introduce the original “Res” Informatica, Cogitans and Extensa language in the Triad figure? and then “map” orthodox modern views (eg “science”) overlaid on the figure. Broad and narrow definitions, identity and difference (also McGilchrist Part3), good fences.]

In many discussions of the work of the modern panpsychists (eg Goff and more recently (Bollands) a universal-lifer who posits no distinction between the actions of living and conscious things), I have pleaded for a pan-proto-psychism / pan-proto-living world-view where the proto-stoff is information.

One obvious reason is that information exists non-contentiously at all levels in the cosmos. No reason to posit that life and/or consciousness as we know them literally exist at fundamental physical / metaphysical levels.

The second reason is that it’s possible to construct both physical and (living) conscious things from that monist stoff and in doing so not give priority to either physicalism or psychism in the language of our metaphysics.

(I use information in specific ways – both ontologically syntactical form and epistemologically semantic or significant informing way – also in an entropy-complementary / information-theoretic Shannon way – and importantly in a process / active-verb-noun way, information as the act of informing one thing of another.)

Another feature of not having to make a physical / psychical choice at the outset is we can apply quantum (Democritan atomic) thinking to the smallest “particles” of this information stoff. With an information model these can be conceived of as small as possible. That is by definition it is not conceivable to posit or discover any smaller component. (I’ve always assumed that’s what Democritus intended a-tomically before physicists decided to give smallest chemical element particles the name atom.)

In this formulation the smallest things, the smallest (conceivable) difference (on any arbitrary dimension) between any two things (this-thingy and not-this-thingy) is a bit of information, smaller than which it is not possible to be. A good candidate for the ultimate atom if ever there was one?

Since I last wrote up my most comprehensive version of the above (presented here in 2019), several things have happened. I’ve made more considered readings of Whitehead’s Process Ontology concerning the coming together nexus of awareness between one thing and another (mirrored also in Smolin’s nads.) Pre-conceptual (qualitative) awareness & response – the conscious-and-life-like behaviour – is core to radical empiricisms. Also, in evolving my thinking along with Dennett, I recently discovered I’d forgotten earlier Chalmers ideas on information underlying consciousness.  (And a zillion other references in the blog.) However …

… this morning , I read a 2016 MPhil thesis by Nino Kadić, a student of Goff, who had also positively reviewed Bollands. A paper which so far as I can see on a first reading comes very close – in much more formal philosophical discourse than I – to the metaphysics I’m suggesting above.

Rough Notes:

Phenomenal Bonding – Goff’s idea as used by Kadić – seems to be very much the solution to new objects emerging supervenient on others without direct (conventional) causal link. Always key to patterns emergent upon patterns. (Sure, the information patterns must always have an embodiment but the new patterns emerge independent of the embodiments. A car / motorcycle is not the sum of its parts, it’s the arrangement. ‘Twas ever thus, just ask Theseus (or Trigger).)

(And many more notes of Section 4 Phenomenal Bonding, Information and Panpsychism.)