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E M Forster the Humanist Liberal

It was a couple of years ago I noted E M Forster quotes turning-up with increasing regularity in my blog postings on knowledge and consciousness, and I mentally added Forster to my reading list. Last night the BBC TV started broadcasting a new serial dramatisation of Howard’s End. When one newspaper review compared it to Downton (!) it drew angry responses from Andrew Copson and Peter Cave.

Yes, the whole Upstairs-Downstairs / Downton genre risks misrepresenting intelligent social commentary – even a la Jane Austen, but in our case watching Ep1 of Howard’s End last night we were more recalling Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day”. Must correct the Forster omission in my actual physical reading list. Recommendations anyone?

The Integral Information of Pan-Proto-Psychism

Prompted by this click-bait headline on Pan-Psychism from Philip Goff in Aeon magazine.

“Panpsychism is crazy, but it’s also most probably true.”

“… physics tells us nothing about the intrinsic nature of the entities it talks about, and indeed that the only thing we know for certain about the intrinsic nature of matter is that at least some material things have experiences.”

As recently as last Wednesday my own position came up when I was talking about the evolution and nature of consciousness. Whatever nonsense(*) is talked about how the observer-effect influences physics – collapse of the wave function, n’all that – it remains certain that there is some “spooky” relationship between consciousness and physics. I made only a passing reference, but clearly it rang bells with the audience in the discussion it started. [(*) Be great if people could simply remember that Schroedinger’s cat was only ever a thought experiment intended to demonstrate how nonsensical it appears!]

It’s partly a problem of human metaphors that precede understanding in physics generally, physics as a model that works without deep understanding, but let’s stick with the specifics of this problem.

Panpsychism is a common suggestion, though it’s not always clear what is meant. It’s not necessary to suggest that highly developed consciousness itself underlies the real physical world, that might indeed be time for the men in white coats with the straitjacket, though obviously it will always underlie our subjective model of it. Consciousness itself, evolved and distributed unevenly throughout sentient species, is however only one metaphor away from the forces and other effects “sensed” by and between other otherwise non-sentient physical objects. Whatever physical objects “have” it’s quite different to our own experience of advanced intelligent consciousness, but nevertheless related it seems. There is also no need for the dualist thought that two distinct physical and psychical types of natural stuff exist and that some supernatural effect creates relationships between them.

I tend to think of the connection as a common basis in proto-consciousness, a “psychical” (non-physical) component of consciousness that is necessarily present throughout the physical world even if not generally manifested as consciousness. And this proto-conscious component is far from mysterious or supernatural. In both fundamental physics and evolved biology this common component is simply information – significant differences between points in space-time. (Points not particles notice, without any intrinsic properties of their own, but with all properties and particles, psychical or physical, deriving from information integral to these point distinctions.)

Fundamental (Shannon) information is both proto-physical and proto-psychical. Not crazy and probably true.

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[Previously on Psybertron – “significant difference” as a fundamental component is a recurring theme, first used with this integral information meaning back in 2005. And IIT is an exciting recent development in the physics of consciousness. Also a different topic on the face of it but with many more of the consciousness-as-evolved-information references and links.]

Kurt Goldstein

Hat tip to Jim Walsh for tweeting a mention of Kurt Goldstein. I frequently refer back to rehabilitation of the much-maligned Abraham Maslow, and discover that in his time as editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Goldstein was influential on Maslow and is the source of “self-actualisation”. The term is an awful “Americanism” but is nevertheless an important concept.

Uniquely Unique – Useful or Meaningless?

I noted when doing my own “review” of Kevin Laland’s “Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony” that the main reason I was reading and reviewing it was because it was to be the subject of Massimo Pigliucci’s next “in depth book club” review. In this in depth series he tends to review in detail chapter by chapter, and Massimo’s review of Laland’s chapter 1 is now published. Interestingly the focus is precisely one of only two I highlighted. The uniqueness or otherwise of humans.

Laland – “The fact remains that humans alone have devised vaccines, written novels, danced in Swan Lake, and composed moonlight sonatas, while the most culturally accomplished nonhuman animals remain in the rain forest cracking nuts and fishing for ants and honey.” (p.10)

Pigliucci – As I reported recently I was accused of “arrogance” when I stated this simple conclusion during a panel discussion at the New York Academy of Science. But the fact remains true, regardless of pious and well intentioned pleas for getting ourselves off the evolutionary pedestal. As Kevin says later in the chapter, yes, in a trivial sense every species is “unique,” but humans are unique in a highly interesting way, which is not comparable to the uniqueness of dolphins, birds, or what else. Indeed:

Laland  – “Herein lies a major challenge facing the sciences and humanities; namely, to work out how the extraordinary and unique human capacity for culture evolved from ancient roots in animal behavior and cognition.” (p.11)

Pigliucci – As I have pointed out, even brilliant biologists like E.O. Wilson don’t get that culture isn’t going to be reduced to biology, and therefore that the humanities are not, and never will be, a branch of the biological sciences.

I agree, there is a trivial sense in which every species is unique. The numbers and distribution of hairs on the abdomen are in some sense unique for every species – drosophila or human – and indeed each may be some combination adaptive and/or vestigial. Nevertheless unique. Less trivially, I summarised it like this:

“I like [Laland’s thesis] in the sense that it does support the idea that the human mind is a qualitatively distinct and uniquely different kind in a world of many sentient species. It’s not exceptionalism in the sense that it couldn’t have been otherwise, that humans were in any sense necessarily predestined to be that species. But let’s face up to facts and responsibilities. Here we are.”

Eventually Pigliucci concludes with Laland’s assertion that

The evidence appears to point to the conclusion that human intelligence and culture evolved in a particular way.

Whether the expression “uniquely unique” says any more than unique in a particular way is semantically moot. Either way our particular uniqueness is in having a sense of responsibility for an extended environment beyond our immediate experience as individuals. As I said that’s a unique “kind” of thing – the only example of its kind – in the (known) evolved cosmos.

It’s the very opposite of arrogance. Seems we’re all in agreement?

Why “Intelligent Design” Isn’t

Was the title of a talk given by “Elliot George” to the Teesside Sceptics in the Pub last Thursday. I had done some homework beforehand and was expecting to be publishing some review. However it was so dire I can see little value in compiling my notes.

Before we even get to the content, it was marred (a) by talking to excruciatingly slow text-build slides, and (b) the speaker’s indulgence in deploying for the first time some very slow and unreliable new app to control the presentation from his iPhone that simply kept failing and resetting. So damn rude!

Content-wise it was sadly devoid of any actual knowledge. Fortunate that the audience was able to drive the subsequent “Q&A” as free dialogue.

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Epistemological naivety. Truth / thinking / knowing / believing / trust / faith / authority / the nature of evidence & residual-uncertainties. Hypothesis / testable-assertion / theory / model. Any distinction between scientific knowledge and any other kind. (Julian Baggini anyone?)

Conflation of intelligence with perfection / optimisation. Conflation of creation / infinite-regress-first-cause with intelligence in evolutionary design. Conflation of design with designer. The idea that apart from a few evangelical extremists we need to defend evolution per se from god in 2017. The idea that a group of self-identified sceptics needed that particular history lesson. Couldn’t even get Jerry Coyne’s name right! The general conflation of all things “god” with everything else. The devil really needs to be in the details.

Totally dismissive (and/or ignorant) of any current scientific ideas around information theory, complexity and variety in physics, biological evolution and conscious intelligence.

[Many detailed notes on actual content.]

Scary idea that as a retired science teacher message aimed at 8-year olds. God help us. (Coincidentally and ironically I happen to be discussing the evolution of consciousness with my own retired physics teacher for U3A education.)

Coincidentally, though not in fact part of my homework for the above talk, the connection with Discovery Institute and George’s nemesis Jonathan McLatchie turned up in this recent post.

Not “Just” Food Rearranged

Despite previously making positive reference to Max Tegmark – holding a position seemingly close to mine – on consciousness – information and information patterns at root, I have been sceptical about his book “Life 3.0 – Being Human in the Age of AI“. Too hyped a topic and too breathless the reviews by association with Elon Musk.

But I watched this 15 minute 2014 TED talk …. and it’s very good. Very, very good.

It’s about information patterns – physical substrate-independent patterns – which have emergent properties above and beyond the physics of the fundamental articles. The whole story in a nutshell. He uses the expression “we call it” – when talking about different types of “stuff” – not so arrogant as to call these definitions. We call stuff Solid, Fluid Liquid, Gas, Plasma so why not also Memory, Computronium and Perceptronium – our abilities to remember, process and perceive. Oh, look, we already use the words. (Aha! and it’s IIT after Giulio Tononi – we’re already there.)

A man after my own – also reacts to the adjective “just” – as in we are “just” a bunch of quarks and photons. We are food rearranged. We are a bunch of physics with a particular history of dynamic patterns of information. Seems like the same old dualist question, but not a question what we need to “add” to physics – but what what are the physical properties of the patterns in the physics? It’s the (information) patterns that matter. “Matter” – think on.

So that’s Dan Dennett, Anil Seth and Max Tegmark talking sense. Will have to watch that again, and get Tegmark’s book after all. There really is no mystery of consciousness. Onward and upward.

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[Post Note: Aug 2019 – How did I miss this: Tegmark mentions Tononi and Integrated Information Theory here – I already inserted the parenthetical afterthought above. Not-coincidentally I did in fact notice Tononi and IIT also in early November 2017, same time I noticed Tegmark on the physics of consciousness. But searching that fact, I notice now that I mentioned Tononi without registering why when I referred to Tucson 2014 in advance.]

[Post Note: My only disagreement here is use of the word mathematical. It is undoubtedly all about patterns of information – fundamentally independent of any substrate physical or otherwise. In fact even the physical is emergent from the patterns. The patterns are independent. Mathematics is a conceptual language we use to describe and represent the patterns in any medium of our choice. The patterns are the patterns. Their representation can be mathematical, or pictorial, or … they are in some sense topological – structures – in time and space, but now we’re back to what the existence of fundamental substrate-independent information patterns might look like. I take this to the limits of conceivability where even time, space, laws and causation are potentially emergent. IIT too, seems to take an entirely unconstrained position on on what an information-fundamental ontology might look like.]

 

Generation Sex – “Everybody knows that no means yes.”

“Everybody knows that no means yes” is a line from Divine Comedy / Neil Hannon’s “Becoming More Like Alfie” the laddish side of 60’s sex-and-gender-liberation that evolved into “Generation Sex” – the latter quoted in its entirety below. I’ve dropped a Divine Comedy reference into a few – very few – pieces of the post-Weinstein, now post-Fallon dialogue. Is it a scandal? is it about sex? For the avoidance of mansplaining, I’ve shut-up for several weeks, and listened / observed.

Agreeing this morning with Isabel Hardman that Ruth Davidson gets it, and her position means supporting her is most likely to achieve the changes we need. [Full stop. End of] But …

My take, just in case anyone asks is pretty straightforward. If you want to take issue with me, please ensure you read it, all of it, carefully. As Isabel says earlier in that thread it’s not about flirting  but let’s start there.

Flirting – verbal and non-contact body-language – is part of the game of life, gauging respect and establishing level of common interest in any topic that excites one or the other. Often completely a-sexual, the excitement being in the topic. The topic may be sex.

Making a pass (I hate the term) – is the signal of interpersonal physical – sexual – interest (if any). This is where the minefield can go either way. Done entirely verbally it’s an extension of the flirting “game” and gauging the response depends entirely on any level of respect and common ground already established – one thing’s for sure no, no does not mean yes, even if it may mean I need you to try better for longer if that’s your interest. Taking it further, persistence verbally or making the move to first physical contact is entirely down to having interpreted the invitation to do so, and conversely interpreting the pass declined and moving on.

Of course we’re not all equal when it comes to social skills and good manners, with either clear-headed, infatuated or alcohol-impaired judgement. Alcohol is a part of the game and sharing food, and music & dance, and whatever turns you on …  life’s a complicated social game, whatever your business.

Anyone who thinks these “definitions” can or should be made tight and objective, and rules of engagement – codes of practice – based on them, is living in cloud-cuckoo land. In all walks of life – all topics – this is normal social gaming in operation. I don’t use gaming pejoratively, but …

Persisting at the pass level without confirmed consent is clearly harassment, assault if physical, rape in the extreme.

Where clear rules matter, and where the problem really lies, is in power, more specifically the abuse of an imbalance of power. There is always some imbalance of power, and there are often good tactical reasons why it is exploited with good strategic intent. Machiavelli’s Prince gets a bad press, but it serves as a parable of how complex a tangled web can be woven. But as I say, the issue is the abuse of power as means to nefarious ends, and most of the above has little to do with sex.

Focussing on the dominant-male cases, Weinstein, Spacey and Fallon say, they clearly lie on a spectrum from gross to trivial via unfortunate and sad in terms of actual details of events, but they are all abuses of power and they all involve (potential) victims. Unethical even at the thin end of the scale and criminal at the more serious physical end.

[Generation Sex]

[Well, there’s nothing wrong with a woman having two men, Every woman should have at least two men, if you don’t, there’s something wrong. I mean, guys do it all the time. Guys have a woman on this side of town, the other side of town. They have a woman in another city, why shouldn’t we? I mean, it’s the 90s!]

Generation sex
Respects
The rights
Of girls
Who want to take their clothes off
As long as we can all watch that’s okay

And generation sex
Elects
The type
Of guys
You wouldn’t leave your kids with
And shouts “off with their heads” if they get laid

Lovers watch their backs
As hacks
In macs
Take snaps
Through telephoto lenses
Chase Mercedes-Benzes through the night

A mourning nation weeps
And wails
But keeps
The sales
Of evil tabloids healthy
The poor protect the wealthy in this world

And generation sex
Is me
And you
And we
Should really all know better
It really doesn’t matter
What you say

[It doesn’t matter what colour you are, long as you’re happy. You know, loving has no colour, you know. I’d rather be with someone that’s white and keeps making me happy than with somebody my same colour and be miserable the rest of my life.]

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[“Becoming More Like Alfie”, reprise extract only]

Everybody knows that No means Yes
Just like glasses come free on the N.H.S.
But the more I look through them the more I see
I’m becoming more like Alfie

(c) Neil Hannon, The Divine Comedy.

[As well as the rest of Neil Hannon’s “Becoming More Like Alfie”, I could easily slip Lily Allen’s “The Fear” in there to add to the story from the female side. Everyone understands the rules of the game(s) and if we look to our poets we’ll find no shortage of wisdom.]

The more we look … the more we see … we really should do better.

It’s about the abuse of power, especially in walks of life where patriarchal dominance have been slow to evolve, and therefore needs to change faster. But it’s not a matter of  more / better rules. It’s about a culture where trust thrives on manners and respect for fellow humans.

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Coda:

I hate to mention it, but off that scale on which we find UK parliamentarians is Trump, the pussy-grabber-in-chief  running the white-house.

And generation sex elects the type of guys you wouldn’t leave your kids with. And shouts “off with their heads” if they get laid.

I also hate to mention, whilst we’re hand-wringing around the abuse of alcohol-fueled patriarchal culture in the mother of parliaments <cough> Islamism <cough>. It’s several levels beyond irony. And even a more “puritanical” Christian take on modesty and temptation. These are not things that can be wished or legislated away. Counter-intuition as well as irony-levels. That modesty “elephant” is still taking-up space.

Teleology Without a God

Discounting the intellectual snobbery that this is about Dan Brown, as indeed the reviewer himself suggests, it is worth a read. The headline is:

“Dan Brown’s New Novel Pushes Atheism and Endorses Intelligent Design … Wait …What?“

I’ve not digested the whole yet (and there are secondary references to follow-up) but my own position is pretty close to:

There is no (need for a) supernatural god,
because purposeful intelligent design is part of nature.

[Post Note: my most complete review is here.]

Pretty sure that’s a summary of Dan Dennett’s position too. Dennett is one of the sources referenced. Rehabilitating perfectly serviceable words that have been hijacked for supernatural purposes is something he recommends. As is his warning against an objective determinism based on too-greedy reductionism. If we had a perfect physical model of the world in every detail, then you could make a case that causation literally followed every link in that model from original fundamentals to the objects and events of here and now, though even then you’d maybe need plenty of short-cuts to get any actual work done. Looks like “a (temporary) god of the gaps“, except ….

The fact is, however, that plenty of objects and causal laws in that stack are only our current best-guess and they’re still only a model of reality, not reality itself. In practice the things that need revising and better defining are not simply gaps or beyond the bottom-end of our sub-quantum physics foundation, but through and across multiple levels within it. “Hold off on your definition!” says Dennett. All models have a purpose and our model(s) has(have) our purpose(s). One of science’s purposes is “natural” to deny any supernatural god and another is “objectivity” to deny any special human position in it, as a matter of policy. It’s a kind of Catch-22.

The problem with that denial, is not that it’s not fundamentally true, but that it makes us blind to errors in the model at the myriad of “something’s not quite right” levels within it. One of the more pervasive areas of error is the appearance of causation itself, and the assumption of causal laws rather than the results of evolving meta-laws. It makes us blind to solutions that look too mysterious right now to be justified based on the physics we do currently hold authoritatively. It’s a hostage to all-or-nothing fortune. Because there’s no god, because there’s nothing privileged or designed for humans, let’s shoot ourselves in the foot.

Anyway, hat tip to Rick Ryals for spotting the significance of the article and who, beyond Dennett, has been most influential to me in seeing the anthropic blind-spot in physics as well as natural purpose and intelligence beyond random entropy in the cosmos.  (More later after a detailed read and review.)

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[Post Notes: Previously on Psybertron ….

It’s all about the (Shannon) information, dummy, information being the root of evolution and the complement of entropy.

Carlo Rovelli’s Fresh Spin (Nov 2016) – Quantum Loop Gravity with Fundamental (Integrated) Information.

Unger & Smolin (Feb 2015) – back to basics and the evolution of laws according to meta-laws.

The Physics of Consciousness (Jun 2017) quick round-up including Integrated Information Theory (IIT) references.

The Edge survey of Hidden Concepts (Aug 2017) – the usuals suspects with some encouraging convergences – ergodicity being the novelty.

How the Light Gets In (Jun 2016) – including some interaction with Chiara Marletto on Constructor Theory.

Deutsch & Marletto (May 2014) on Constructor Theory meta-laws (hat-tip Rick Ryals, the plot thickens)

And, away from physics, let’s not forget Dan Dennett on the evolution of consciousness (Oct 2017).

Science and Psychology Bookmarks (Oct 2017) Another round-up of relevant links.

In the light of these – still to read the Dan Brown piece above!

Now having read it, I see Brown’s work is relying on Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer, also reference by Jonathan McLatchie, particularly using the specific complexity of information arguments for intelligent purpose. These are entropy vs information arguments I buy – in principle – but (a) it’s a big step to apply it to particular complex biological evolution example design-spaces, big as in lots of work and lots of expertise needed to do and to argue and/or verify, the point I made last time I referenced McLatchie, and (b) the design intelligence doesn’t have to be supernatural, a god, as I say above. But interesting these ideas are making mainstream ripples.]

BBC R4 Today Presenters’ Views of TFTD

Most of what’s wrong with Today could be fixed by retiring Humphrys IMHO but as an atheist, humanist, rationalist I happen to like Thought for the Day. Ironically it is Humphrys’ view that is closest to mine:

“Sometimes it’s good … an interesting thought in a provocative way [but] inappropriate that Today should broadcast nearly three minutes of uninterrupted religion.”

Says it all. Justin’s remark is surprisingly sneering and misrepresenting as Giles Fraser suggests:

A 2 or 3 minute reflective slot in the middle of the 3 hour flagship daily news and current affairs program is a great tradition. The real innovation needed is to ensure it includes a fair balance of non-religious spiritual / philosophical reflection. Again to be fair, despite currently being 100% religious, my impression is that few of the speakers let their particular religion or god dominate their message – more often than not the speaker’s underlying agenda is in fact more overtly political than religious (Giles?).

TFTD would however definitely be improved by a fair balance of speakers from secular philosophical perspectives, topical but reflective of the deeper or more transcending human issues. As for Justin’s sneering suggestion that the message is usually simply that people should be nicer to each other, my usual response is:

“What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?”

There are worse premises to start from.

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[Post Note: Clearly the quality of the slot is very dependent on the skills and qualities (and agenda, everybody has one) of the individual presenter. Like Nick Robinson I would single out a few excellent contributors. His example, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks would be one of mine too (I’ve praised Sacks before, reassuringly topical to today’s debate!). The problem to solve if moving in a secular / disestablished direction is who – which institutions – individuals represent and resist promoting with their agenda. But other think-pieces like A Point of View and Something Understood seem to reasonably solve this.]

[Round#2 – Ironic that TFTD the following morning 31st Oct, majored on the story of Luther, followed by an interview with Rowan Williams, followed by a longer piece on Luther. A good deal more than 3 minutes of “religion”. No-one mentioned the RT opinions expressed above.

And …

Sarah correctly points out that the Luther story got “legs” thanks to Gutenberg and the printing press. The solution to the question what to do with secularisation and disestablishment of TFTD, BBC and society general is very clear but the additional problem we have to deal with in the 21st century is social media – “the printing press on steroids”.

And more on Luther half an hour later. It goes on.]

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[Post Note: Elizabeth Oldfield’s Twitter thread on this:

“In case anyone is interested, here are my thoughts on #TFTD, as someone who has both worked in bbc radio from the inside , and delivered it. When I was offered it I almost said no. I wasn’t a big fan. I want faith *out* of the dusty legacy slot and where it belongs , in dynamic hurly burly of life and death and NOW. Lived religion is strange and visceral and joyful and rich and unsettling, not dull.

TFTD has v stringent editorial constraints. Standard BBC defences (presenter challenged,other guest balanced) don’t apply so paranoia reigns. Topical, offensive to no one, not even slightly political and an interesting three mins of radio? It is therefore almost impossible to do well. It’s not bc religious people have nothing interesting to say, it’s that the slot prevents them. I don’t think I’ve ever really nailed it.

BUT When it’s good, it’s very good. It lingers like nothing else in the prog. It creates space for meaning& reflection which we dearly need. So I think it should stay, but be improved. It needs releasing from being “topical” (this is often forced). The editorial constraints need relaxing, because saying *anything* about fundamental values will cause offence to someone. And some voices from thoughtful non- relig trads should probably be included in the mix, as long as relig voices not slowly pushed out. Religions have a huge amount of wisdom to offer on how we live honestly, lovingly, healthily together & my theology tells me so will others.”

Spot on Elizabeth. This has little to do with non-secular theistic religion, and everything to with reflective wisdom and values that are “meta-topical” to the onward rush of current affairs. (The artificial drive to be “topical” and non-contentious values-wise is almost certainly driven by the need to justify its ongoing inclusion “objectively”.) The flagship daily news programme is exactly the place for this slot and it really must be improved by removing exclusively religious constraints, in good faith.

The Humanists UK response, whilst quoting the negative comments from (some of) the presenters also concludes:

“We want Thought for the Day to include humanist perspectives.”

Progress.]

Laland’s Unfinished Opus

I’ve already made two somewhat dismissive references to Kevin Laland’s “Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony – How Culture Made the Human Mind”(1). This is a review on completion of that read.

[Post Note: I see Massimo Pigliucci’s book club review of Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony came out a few days before I posted this. I need to read that and comment. Uniquely unique?]

I like it  in the sense that it does support the idea that the human mind is a qualitatively distinct and uniquely different kind in a world of many sentient species. It’s not exceptionalism in the sense that it couldn’t have been otherwise, that humans were in any sense necessarily predestined to be that species. But let’s face up to facts and responsibilities. Here we are.

I also like it in the sense that it compiles three or four decades of empirical scientific research into the evolution of intelligent life-hacks by which sentient beings copied and more generally learned individually, socially and by teaching one another. Rats, sticklebacks and corvids may indeed be highly intelligent in solving and communicating solutions to particular kinds of problems and the primates may indeed have evolved more general intelligence, but the runaway success of humanity (humanins) is inescapable (2). That has been the result of co-evolution of brain and culture – the many shared languages (3) by which knowledge and meta-knowledge are communicated and recorded beyond the minds and bodies of living individuals. For any other species to repeat or beat that, including any artificial non-biological species, they’d need to find a pretty comprehensive planet-sized niche in which to evolve free of the limitations of existing human occupation. Human lives are not a repeatable experiment so we ain’t gonna let that happen.

That ought to be enough to recommend Laland’s work as a read for anyone who doesn’t feel they already know this, or is actively in need scientific evidence to support that knowledge.

My problems are two-fold.

What did I learn? How much is actually new? I learned why as a child I never managed to catch a fifteen-spined stickleback despite catching many three-spined critters. Genuinely fascinating, and totally plausible with hindsight, given an understanding of how evolution works. I never knew that! But beyond that it felt mostly like statements of what already seemed obvious. What I’ve already read or otherwise considered as reality, Laland is expressing surprise at discovering. Is that me just virtue-signalling what I consider to be my own knowledge? I don’t think so, and this is why:

Laland gives plenty of generous credit to his own collaborators and students, but seems rather pointedly to ignore or dismiss those in parallel, or even competing, streams of research and thought. It seems tribal rather than genuinely collaborative to dismiss Dennett and Memes, particular since these feature in the popular best-seller lists of science and philosophy and this is Laland’s magnum foray into that space. My only “interest” in Dennett is to credit him as the writer from whom I feel I’ve already learned most of this stuff – with many of the same empirical examples, supported by several other writers. The real difference is that in talking about the copying and sharing of cultural information (and mental tools; meta-information, also culturally shared) Dennett and I use the language of memetics.

Frankly what’s in a word? If you’re telling the same – true – story, who cares? I agree with them both. It’s the same story. There is really only one exception, and for me it’s the reason why dismissing memes misses an important aspect of the ongoing story.

History is one thing. If we agree, only a pedant would be picky about the particular words. There are in fact plenty of other bio-cultural co-evolution and group-level selection ideas that will keep others concerned with the details of which empirical findings really do support which aspects of the story. As a good scientist, Laland himself leaves a few pointers to contentious points of detail. Plenty for the EES crowd to get their teeth into for many a year to come, biologically, psychologically and philosophically. For me the concern is how we get to the future from here and now.

Like many a public scientist, Laland is good with awe – “awe without wonder” in his case – in describing the greatest story ever told. It is indeed awesome, but no-one should be wondering how it came to be in any general sense. We know (4). “Many talented scientists have chipped away at this wonder”, before now, he says. Laland’s final chapter re-iterates the marvel that is this unique species we know as human mind. What he doesn’t appear to suggest – if he does I missed it – is any doubt that the direction of this awesome progress is in the direction of continued success. To my eyes, this is because he doesn’t make enough distinction between the many examples and mechanisms of human success in cultural co-evolution and the behaviour of the patterns of information involved in these – the memes – that take on a life of their own. The selfish meme anyone?

It’s probably a reflection of the time period summarised in the majority of Laland’s narrative. Decades ago few of us were actively concerned with fake-news and the spread of misinformation, or half-baked simplistic information taking hold of public consciousness. Within science, reduction to simple repeatable elements is the name of the game. Real life, human cultural evolution, including science as a sub-set of that, is more complicated. We are going to need a word for – a handle on – the contents of ideas (and their properties) being shared that is distinct from their embodiment in the brains and media exchanging them. Markets can go down – quantitatively and qualitatively – as well as up.

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(1) I resisted reading Laland’s work due to some of the preview / publicity in relation to some of my prejudices on the topic. I prefer to make my prejudices explicit upfront, rather than pretend they don’t exist. [Here] [and Here]. I gave in when I discovered “Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony” was to be Massimo Pigliucci‘s next review in the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis context, and I wanted to be forearmed in that dialogue. [Post Note: Was actually published 23rd Oct.]

(2) Success is more than headcount or % of the cosmos populated, because …

(3) Remember we’re considering the whole of human culture here, language is any natural, formal, narrative or artistic form symbolised in any medium.

(4) There is a bit of a fetish, reinforced by the ubiquity of media communications, that somehow we all have to know every detail of everything we care about and therefore everything must be transparent to everyone. This is a physical impossibility for a finite processor of information, and at some point we all have to accept trust in authority at some level. It doesn’t remove our right to question and dig a little deeper when appropriate; complementary to the positive fetish for information overload is the fashionably negative fetish against authority.