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Evolved Inhumanity

I’ve said it before, Artificial-I will only be reality when it is Real-I, ie long after human extinction I’d estimate.

Inhuman evolution evolves inhumanity until the evolved (machine) inhumanity evolves to be (living) humanity itself. Same same.

Evolution – genetic or memetic – is a real process happening everywhere right now. An evolved species is only a matter of hindsight. Careful what we wish for.

Meta-Meme – The “Overton” Meme Meme

Saw a reference to “The Overton Window” this morning – a meme so embedded in 21st C political commentary that you can simply tweet it in cynical fashion and assume your audience knows what you mean.

The “Overton Window” and its accompanying “Treviño Values” are a meme about memetics. About how ideas shift (ie literally memetics) and, more to the point, how the cynical can exploit the natural effect for ideological ends. As old as Machiavelli’s Prince, ’twas ever thus. Any idea follows a natural trajectory from its first thought. That is:

Freedom evolves:
Conservative and liberal, interests and values, are
Unthinkable > Radical > Acceptable > Sensible > Popular > Policy

Overton was coined in a public policy context, balancing these competing values, so the end-game is “policy”. But, in a more general sense, that end-game is simply “accepted reality”. Pretty much the same as  Arthur C Clarke’s science and new technology trajectory “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  The understanding of things moves from:

“That can’t be for real!”
(Inconceivably Magic)

to

“How did our world exist without it?”
( Everyday Technology)

…. by copying expression and sharing experience.

It’s so natural that the word meme is rejected by many as having any remaining use, because what it means is so embedded in accepted reality. It’s political by political choice and ripe for the adversarial game but an entirely natural process nonetheless.

What we really need to understand is that the stack of interacting memes (or memeplex) we inhabit are evolving ever faster and inexorably in the direction supporting and supported by that environment in a self-reinforcing positive feedback or mechanistic “first cybernetics” loop.

The more we value simplicity, clarity, objectivity, transparency, (ac)countability, the more the popularity contest delivers populism. A free-for-all for the memes – including the unthinkable – rather than cultivating human freedoms and values. Perversely, we need the conservatism of active moderation on all of those inhuman values:

Simplicity and clarity – in so far as  necessary “but not more so”.
Transparency and sharing –  in so far as “need to know” in context.
Objectivity and (ac)countability – in so far as “you get what measure”.
Careful what you wish  for in “best laid plans”.
Careful what you throw out with the memetic bathwater.

Doubly perversely, the greater the stakes, the greater the need for conservation and … yes … mystification. So tough for liberal humanists (like me!) to get this. We need to make space for the humanistic “second cybernetics”.

In order to value freedom of expression we need less of it.

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[Note: The use of the first and second cybernetics is counterintuitive here. I did say “perverse”. When it comes to positive and negative feedback, the point is which processes are reinforced, not necessarily which definable states and outcomes. It’s about the freedom (process) to evolve being distinct from the freedom (state) evolved. A free state is about freedom, the process of free evolution is about conservatism – hi-fidelity and hi-fecundity – many good copies of what already exists.]

In Good Faith – Memes Never Were Objective

I have a kinda love-hate relationship with memes and often find myself writing either about them or at least using the term “meme” and the idea of “memetics”. Most recently here in “Don’t mention the memes“.

As I say, although Dawkins is credited with coining the term to represent an “object”, mimesis has been around forever, and others like Dennett have done most to establish how memetic processes work, and how they are central to “mental” evolution.

My relationship with memes is summed-up in this tweet (retweeted by Elizabeth Oldfield) and my response:

Obviously the seeming objectification implicit in coining the term is the red-rag to anyone wanting to emphasise the non-objective – even transcendent – human aspects of life and the nature of culture. Me too, let’s be clear.

(1) tiny brain: lol memes

(2) normal brain: that’s not what “meme” means

(3) giant brain: the spread of the internet’s definition of “meme” is itself a good example of meme theory

(4) galaxy brain: lol the only useful idea Dawkins ever had was corrupted into a term for vapid derivative jokes

By any definition of truth, that’s all true. So, assuming I’m not stupid, why use a vapid term?

One reason is because, like it or not, (4) simply further confirms the truth of (3). Memetics is so “true” it is not even immune from it itself and, being a game, there is an inevitable end-game. Memetics is true on its own level and any number of meta-levels.

(1) to (2) is the start of the basic language game. Whether as disingenuous straw-men or as flattery by accidental imitation, all words that achieve circulation take on a life beyond any subtle (defined) intent of the originator. That’s not even fake-news. The word that achieves most meaninglessness is likely to be the most significant word in the lexicon on several levels. The more significant, the more it becomes a battleground of competing ideas … if we let it.

By “defending” the term meme – reinforcing the importance of memetics – the classic “critical debate” style of argument practically demands others attack or undermine my defence. Reinforcing the critical debate – logical attack and defence – meme. But that’s a meme that destroys knowledge in the wild, even if it refines knowledge in a controlled discourse. Beyond that environment what is needed is proper dialogue that seeks to evolve understanding. Unfortunately “critical thinking” is winning that game, because we refuse to recognise the degeneracy of that meme.

Secondly, the main aim of my agenda is not to defend meme from accusations of “too objective” or “too inhuman”. Quite the opposite. Not only am I saying memes are largely subjective (See 2), I’m using the fact to say that all other seeming objects – genes say – have an enormous subjective element, definitions which hold only in a human controlled environment. Sadly the winning meme here is scientism – that reductive objective determinsism can never be too greedy.

Even if we coined a new term for more definitive use of ideas involved in memetics in a knowledge context – simply “idea” or “mimidea” say – that term would follow a similar (1) to (4) trajectory.

I really do not care whether the term meme be accepted as valid for its intended meaning. What I really care about is that what evolves to be accepted as a valid and meaningful understanding of what it takes to be valid and meaningful …. is a memetic process. Accepting that meta-reality, we can better design rules for public discourse. One thing’s for sure, that unfettered free-for-all, the fetish of totally transparent freedom of expression, without mutual good-faith in the progress of human knowledge, leads inexorably to meaninglessness. Recent history tells us that good faith is a pretty fragile meme.

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[Post Notes: refine / distill and “starve upon the residue”.]

Nominalism as “Mechanical Philosophy”

In resisting overly mechanistic world-views, the idea of a mechanical philosophy is a scary thought. But it got my attention, as Stuart Glennan intended in the title of his “The New Mechanical Philosophy” reviewed by Carl Craver in the BJPS Review of Books. Hat tip to retweet by Judy Stout.

Based on reading the review only, I’ve not seen the book yet, it seems largely to focus on nominalism. Like many technical terms in philosophy, nominalism doesn’t sound very exciting in the real world, but the key thing is what it says about causation. Now that secured my attention:

A definition of nominalism says nothing about causation directly, indeed it is very dry and opaque in terms of any real world significance:

In metaphysics, nominalism is a philosophical view which denies the existence of universals and abstract objects, but affirms the existence of general or abstract terms and predicates.

It makes a distinction about the kinds of things that can be involved in different kinds of causal relations. Now that’s interesting.

To deny conceptual (universal and abstract) objects, that they don’t exist in your real world ontology, is almost tautological. In fact the conceptual and real, and the relations between them, are part of a more comprehensive ontology. The world we inhabit has both real and conceptual elements.

However philosophers – and physicists as natural philosophers – analyse their world-views into an ontology of what exists, they are ontologically committed, as Rebecca Goldstein has put it. The conceptual rubber of their fundamental physics or metaphysics  must hit real road before the job’s jone. The ivory tower cannot be a permanent refuge.

But it is an issue that whilst involved in theoretical discourse, the ontological commitment, of which objects are in fact real and which are merely conceptual, can get obscured. (Worse still, when working with those same objects in a real world context, we are even less likely to notice the significance at all.)

They key point is that real things in the real world are physical individuals and arrangements of individuals, named for their identity. The conceptual objects are simply named as being significant in the comprehensive ontology of our world-view, but not existing with individual identity in the real (physical) world. Hence nominalism – significant things are named even if they do not exist in a real physical sense. Real even though not physical?

Hence the caveat to both physicists and philosophers. There are several corollaries:

The simplest one is the empiricism alluded to already, that rubber must eventually hit the road. You have to ask yourself why we need to have such conceptual ontologies at all when we all probably prefer to deal with the real world? The conceptual must meet the physical at some point. Real world evidence is the test of any model. But there is a deeper issue here:

The concepts we give names to in our ontology may not exist in the real physical world, but we really do use their names and symbols in language – natural and logical – in predicates describing relationships between them. Many using causal language, even where conceptual objects are involved. One reason where we might find ourselves using sorta / kinda / more like qualifiers (after Dennett), when we realise we really do mean causation, but clearly a strange kind of causation. The review also uses the loose expression “hang together” for the job of the ontology (as I’ve heard Massimo Pigliucci too recently) rather than some more structurally definitive language. Important to note that these are not just about “ways of talking” it’s about saying anything about anything using our world-view. [Paging … Herr Wittgenstein.]

The most obvious place a simplistic physical causation seems disconnected from any conceptual kind is in the ubiquitous mind-body problem. How does an idea cause physical reality? Rather than deny it, we need to notice that causation crosses real and conceptual levels. Causation really is much weirder than a greedy-reductionist view of objective determinism. The because and therefore of argumentation is more than simply physical causation.

When it comes to “how?” because is more than cause as we know it.

Enough about me, the review itself says a lot more:

Craver agrees Glennan’s title is “audacious”. But it becomes clear the mechanical of the title is alluding to the “explosion of interest” in mechanism (ie causation) beyond the scientifically physical. That is so good to hear.

In fact the references – those in the review only – indicate further reasons to take an interest in Glennan’s latest book:

Glennan, S. [1996]: ‘Mechanisms and the Nature of Causation’,
Erkenntnis, 44, pp. 49”71

1996! The nature of causation. And there’s more:

Bechtel, W. and Abrahamsen, A. [2013]: ‘Roles of Diagrams in Computational Modeling of Mechanisms’, in M. Knauff (ed.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1839”44.

Bogen, J. [2005]: ‘Regularities and Causality; Generalizations and Causal Explanations’, in C. F. Craver and L. Darden (eds), In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 397”420.

Craver, C. [2007]: Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Craver, C. F. and Tabery, J. [2017]: ‘Mechanisms in Science’, in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Craver, C. F. and Darden, L. [2013]: In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Darden, L. [2006]: Reasoning in Biological Discoveries: Mechanism, Interfield Relations, and Anomaly Resolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Giere, R. [2004]: ‘How Models Are Used to Represent Reality’, Philosophy of Science, 71, pp. 742”52.

Woodward, J. [2003]: Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Computation, CogSci, Modelling … and questioning  scientific causal reasoning in life-sciences. Pretty much my own agenda. All human life is here. Fascinating.

There is a reality more fundamental than physics.

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Coda:

Fascinating  because of my current evolutionary-psychology agenda in human knowledge modelling and decision-making generally, in a world where “scientistic” types casually dismiss the reality of the decisions of human minds altogether, whilst stumbling unwittingly towards artificially automating them.

All the more fascinating to me not least because the computer-systems & business-modelling route that brought me into this space from physical engineering focussed very much on the difficulties of getting to grips with relationships crossing the levels between the conceptual (classes) and physical (individuals) – not to mention meta-relationships between the layers of conceptual (classes of class). Something which our clever modellers got pretty much right in the many dimensions of the core ontology of our “high-quality generic entity model”. However, after 30-years of evolution from STEP/EPISTLE through ISO15926 to the Semantic Web it’s still proving pretty much impenetrable to those working with reference data in the real business of engineering. Is it any wonder?

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[Post Note: Missed this earlier tweet from Anita Leirfall …

…. another good article, by Glennan himself.]

Rappaport’s Rule

Rappaport’s first rule of any constructive dialogue that aims to increase knowledge is:

You should attempt to re-express your interlocutor’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that they say “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way myself.”

Clearly, it’s an extreme version of understand-before-disagree and maybe life’s too short to expect to fully comply, but it puts the emphasis in the right place by shunning rhetorical tricks like straw-men as well as avoiding simple but important misunderstandings. Together with hold-your-definition – where Dennett suggests we don’t get too hung-up on objective definitions too soon in any discourse, since it’s unlikely we’ll interpret and understand them the same way anyway – Dennett’s “Intuition Pumps and Other Thinking Tools” captures Rappaport’s four rules and many more constructive ways of thinking and arguing.

You should attempt to re-express your interlocutor’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that they say “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way myself.”

You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

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More on Rhetorical Rules of Engagement

More on Humour in Rhetorical Discourse

Humanist as Language Scholar?

Interesting listening to Andrew Copson – CEO of Humanists UK (HUK) – in this brief interview with Talk Beliefs. In part it talks about his excellent recent book “Secularism” which I briefly reviewed earlier, but also covers humanism and ethics more generally.

In summary he sees humanism defined by the naturalistic (scientific, non-supernatural) outlook on human (and wider ecosystem) ethics in particular and on the truth of beliefs in general. And, given secularism in general, he sees religion pretty much as identity politics by any other name and theism / atheism as not really that interesting an issue.

Seems fair enough.

Earlier on in describing the origins of humanist / humanism as an English language term – as well as the Germanic “humanismus” origins that eventually defined the take on humanism that he and HUK hold (above) – he makes a passing reference to a humanist defined as being a grammarian or language scholar in Johnson’s original dictionary entry. A definition that sounds quaint and antiquated here and now?

(Let’s leave aside for the moment that many pre-enlightenment religious traditions – supernaturally theistic or not – may have long espoused basic human dignity – say, individual freedoms and the golden-rule – as key tenets. This is more a matter who might claim to have “invented” humanism, than what we actually mean by it. Spoiler – humans did it.)

I actually think the received wisdom above holds an important issue missing in appearing to dismiss the grammarian from the naturalistic definition.

Many anti-religion / pro-science groups are nevertheless careful to indicate that their humanist outlook is pro science and reason or rationality. That is despite many individual adherents falling into the scientistic trap that science has some monopoly or priority over reason and rationality, in fact most public considered positions recognise the important linguistic nuance in that “and“.

The knowledge content of science may be objectively independent of humanity, but our reason and rationality are not. As Johnson captured, humanist reason and rationality is as much to do with language – and information and epistemology more generally – as it does with objective science. A naturalistic outlook must cover both (objective) science and (human) rationality. We do well neither to conflate these nor reduce one to the other.

Naturalistic is not as simple as scientific.

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[Post Note: Also linked by Andrew is a written interview with Conatus News. (Hat tip to Terry Waites for sharing.)

Good, is the recognition that exactly who invented humanism, where and when, is no big deal – empathic rational humans reinvented the idea over millennia, and having invented it had preserved the ideas in cultural (and religious) traditions before they were eventually captured by secular umbrella institutions like the UN.

I would take issue however, as a 60+ “secular, atheist, humanist, rationalist, free-thinker”, with his generalisation of “older humanists”. I think we’re beyond any post-9/11 surprise reaction to fears of “irrational” religion and threats to hard-won liberal freedoms. In this Post-Post-Modern (PoPoMo) world it’s about fixing the over-reaction to those perceived threats that have led to warlike polarisations between Political-Correctness and Intolerance, between Science and Religion, between Liberals and Authoritarians, between them and us generally.]

Civilisations

So far I’ve only seen the Simon Sharma first excellent episode of BBC2’s Civilisations, but plan on catching up. This morning I read Kenan Malik’s review piece from the Observer, and right now I’m listening to all three presenters with Andrew Marr on BBC R4 Start the Week.

Malik’s excellent piece sees a lot of tension between the “certainty” of Clarke’s original UK perspective, and the alternative perspectives of John Berger and the latest BBC series. Strangely he sees the inability to provide (definitive) answers as a weakness of the new series? (I’ll say more when I’ve digested the whole.) The Marr conversation also goes some way to correct any suggestion that Civilisations is a “corrective rebuke” to Clarke’s Civilisation. Far from it. There are many overlapping perspectives (cf Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”).

One question that struck me right from the outset – Clarke and Sharma – is why the land-grab for “art” as the cypher for civilisation as a whole? Marr asks the same question, and we get the sense that art is enabled by the technologies of the day, but art is the human pinnacle. I don’t disagree, simply question how uncontentious is this?

Holding thoughts …

[Deep and long-standing topic. Art & Craft – the “rt” Pirsigian root – even in Engineering / Ingenuity / Built-environment is key.]

[And talking of alternative perspectives, well done BBC R4 for following Start the Week with “An Alternative History of Art” – inspired.]

[In terms of “the greatest ever documentary” I’ve always seen Clarke’s Civilisation as being of a pair with Bronowski’s Ascent of Man. Never seen any need for one culture to launch a land-grab competing with the other. Good fences. A real third-culture.]

The Intellectual Dark Web – a Sign of the Times?

The idea of an intellectual dark web sounds subversively negative, but it is a term coined by economist Eric Weinstein I originally picked-up from Jacob Kishere in his Medium post “What is driving the rise of the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ ?“. A version of that same piece has also been published by Conatus News. I’ve linked and tweeted a couple of mentions to the former already.

It’s a topic close to my heart. So much would-be rational discourse falls into standards tropes of polarising binary debates in all forms of media (and polls and referenda!), compounded by the compression into rapid “bites” in social media memes and their click-bait headlines, and further moulded by PR and PC constraints on should-know-better “platforming” by academic institutions, institutions in the “market” for money and punters.

It’s a good thing that intellectuals do find their own space to have proper dialogue. Dialogue where not every statement is subjected to the glare of public “transparency” (*) and can simply be treated as part of the dialogue towards mutually beneficial learning. Sure, no learning dialogue should be confined to ivory towers, the learnings must hit the road as real rubber at some point, but difficult dialogue needs space for subtlety and nuance of differences to be integrated into workable knowledge and practical wisdom. It is reductive to insist that every step in discourse – in context – must stand up to instant scrutiny in some global objectivity. [It’s the same reductivity of scientism that presumes all wholes are determined only by their parts without the complex processes of their whole history (see ergodicity). And (*) Transparency in 2010 and most recently with Dan Dennett.]

However as Jacob points out, it is a sure sign of the bad state of things in the public intellectual sphere. Public debate on important and difficult topics simply cannot be conducted in the media and institutions that most people subscribe to. Proper dialogue needs curated boundaries, and trust must be able to exist both sides of such boundaries. Good fences make good neighbours.

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[Post Note: Is it any wonder people with something to say retreat to the intellectual dark web, when there are barbarians at the gate in the real world?]

Dennett – Don’t Mention the Memes

Recent (26 Jan 2018) talk by Dan Dennett recorded in Warsaw and published by Polish Rationalists on the topic of his most recent “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” (B2BnB) book on the evolution of intelligent consciousness. I’ve written and talked much about B2BnB so not a great deal “new” in the presentation – and unfortunately the recording doesn’t capture his slides, just his words. Nevertheless a great talk on his key topics as well as a great book for the Dennett novice.

Other than the hardware plus software model of mind (consciousness, intelligence, the lot), like his book he doesn’t actually spend as much time on this as he does on words and memes as the basic tools and building blocks of everything, including intelligent conscious mind, and on the fact that these are information objects independent of any of their physical embodiments. As I said in my own reviews, Turing and Shannon (and Wiener) feature more centrally than Darwin in this story.

I’m already comfortable with the language of memes and memetics, and the fact that the word simply coined objectively what was already a clear subject of mimesis for centuries. It’s just a word for long established concepts, but a word – because of its seemingly reductive objectivity – that draws a lot of flak from art and culture and the humanities in general. The Q&A allows him to address many objections, as he does as well with his examples in the talk. He also incidentally makes many points I’ve made in my own interpretations of his work in my own. This is the real value for me in this particular talk.

Memetics is no less predictive than genetics and any complex systems science. It predicts that stuff will happen, the kinds of stuff and the explanatory how it will happen. Like all evolution, specific detailed objects and even creative genius exist – attract specific names in our ontology – only with hindsight. Memetics explanations are only as reductive and objectifying as you make them – culture and humanities really have nothing to fear. Dan himself always uses qualitative language sorta / kinda and “more like”. Worth understanding Dennett’s form of compatibilism – subjective stuff doesn’t reduce to objective components, even though they explain the processes. These processes and patterns may be “determined” by these objective component interactions, but the products of culture and creativity are not. This is as important for scientific objectors to understand – eg in the the reality of conscious will – as anyone concerned with the humanities.

Determinism, like transparency, is over-rated – a fetish of the scientistic. The humanities and humanists are right to fear scientism. Some scientists and philosophers have a lot wrong.

There is a strong acknowledgement of information science practitioners – systems developoers –  as one of the fields that takes true ontology of the real world – all of it, not just science – very seriously, and that philosophers ought to take information scientists more seriously. This was incidentally my route into this space.

Might be worth transcribing more of Dennett’s actual words from the Q&A … meantime, worth a listen.

[Hat tip to Terry Waites for the link.]

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Post Notes: topics in the transcript.

Evolution (hi-fidelity / hi-fecundity / lo-mutation – repeatedly emphasised here) is massively positive feedback loop. See also Maruyama on “second cybernetics”.

Transparency is a bad thing – fetishised in mass & social media. Need-to-know is better.

Fundamental Information.

No-brainer = brainless.

Educating the Poster Boys of New-Atheism

Reading this piece today from 2012 on Larry Krauss’ “Something From Nothing”. I reviewed it myself and saw him talk on the topic at that time too. It was pretty disingenuous hype, even though much of the reality was acknowledged in the detail, if not the headings and headlines of his titles and talks. I missed the spat reported here, but see now it was eventually mediated by (my hero) Dan Dennett. I’ve posted previously on Dan’s ongoing attempts to educate the other atheist-scientist poster-boys – Dawkins, Harris, Pinker – on philosophical (ontological and epistemological) considerations beyond their narrow rationalist ken.

Talking of them as “poster boys” – in the light of latest Krauss allegations (anonymous and unconfirmed other than single BuzzFeed article, so unrepeated and unlinked for now – see first comment below) – I also posted previously on sexual chemistry (Pinker) and flirting (Krauss). Ultimately his wife (!) in the former case; incorrigible I said in the latter; but entirely mutual and consenting in both cases in my experience.

Post Notes:

The Larry Krauss stuff does seem serious enough, which is sad. I’m no fan of Larry that’s clear, but sad none-the-less.

I see Sam Harris expressing the same sadness re Krauss in his own way:

“This is a very serious business. We have a colleague and a friend and a person with a very serious and much cherished scientific reputation under assault now.”
[talking in Phoenix Feb 23]

“I think we should be slow to destroy a person‘s reputation … ”
[tweeting in defence of the above statements.]

(Nowhere does Harris defend Krauss actions, whatever they were.) But what is interesting – appalling – to me is the “warfare” between the scientistic public intellectuals (Dawkins, Harris, Pinker, Krauss etc) and their critics. C J Werleman is one critic I have some time for, he gets the fault with their scientism. The same scientism I too am relentless in criticising – and providing constructive alternative epistemologies. But this warlike class of critics – I got the above from @danarel retweet by Werleman – are hateful people, and haters gonna hate, so I’m not including their links.

Everybody on whichever side is fighting whilst humming “we didn’t start the fire”. No disputing that the scientistic horsemen started their careers pouring scorn and hatred on the superstitions of their religious enemies with very little real claim to any enlightened high-ground other than, you know, because science. Choosing sides is the last thing anyone should do.

Time for (proper!) dialogue. Come in Jordan Peterson and the intellectual dark web. Equally sad that true intellectual dialogue has to create its own dark web and leave social and mainstream media to the numbskulls.