Month: August 2005

The Dave’s Have It

I’m very close to finishing “The Conscious Mind – In Search of a Fundamental Theory” by David Chalmers. Everything except his review of Quantum Physics, over which I skimmed ahead to get a feel for the scope he’s addressing. I find myself in a very strange state, skimming some sections forwards and backwards, returning to read some sections very carefully. I can hardly believe it but everything I’ve been researching for four years is just slotting into place before my eyes. Spine tingling.

The bit I just did not expect to find in Chalmers, because I’ve not seen anyone quote or argue the aspect with him in papers or conferences, is “Information” (after Shannon). Information as something more fundamental than consciousness itself. Which is significant because Information was in fact my subject when I came into this space, and I’ve already bought the idea from quantum information work, that information is more fundamental than physics, and suspected it must underly both physics and consciousness or, effectively, a physics embracing information underlies everything including consciousness.

David is very careful with his argumentation – really impressive in fact – painfully distinguishing speculations from tiny fragments of evidence, recognising intuitions and suspending disbelief where unproven too, all in a synthetic way, and building cases that are hard to refute despite few individual “knockdown cases”. Very much aligned with Deutsch’s stuff, as I said already, when it comes to the limitations of logic in building a quality explanation or formal argument.

Everything is here. Quality. Physics. Logic. Life. Consciousness.
From Dave Deutsch via Dave Chalmers to Dave Bowman’s final words.
“Oh my god, it’s full of information.”

So rather than another long-winded dump of incoherent thoughts and impressions, it’s time I tried to put a thesis together. I’ve felt I should do this many times before, but the problem has always been the breadth of what needs to be covered, and however narrow an aspect I chose to focus on in a potential paper, there were always boundary conditions that couldn’t avoid undeveloped (and hence incoherent) reference to more of the other aspects. In truth, I spotted this with Deutsch’s Fabric of Reality, where his synthesis of four arguments each suffering an explanatory gap in their common sense acceptance, nevertheless seemed to hang together as a whole. I’ve just gotta do it.

Don’t hold your breath. It may be worth the wait, but don’t forget that the patron saint of the universal church of the interactive network is St Douglas (of the whooshing deadline) Adams.

Anti-Portfolio

Bessemer Venture Partners list some of their more notable goofs.
[via Johnnie Moore] [via Adrian Trenholm].

The opposite of hype says Johnnie; It’s a compelling read says Adrian (and it is, they sure let some big ones get away, not least Google, whatever the moral of the story). Which is of course that perhaps even in marketing, a self-deprecating honesty pays in preference to begging credulity over claims, exagerated if only by presentation in their best light. Another case of less is more.

[BTW that reminds me, not quite the same angle, but playing against the macho-sexist Australian beer stereotype, what was that ad I saw for a beer sponsoring the rugby, where the opposing teams aim to impress by removing the beer tops with various parts of their anatomy, only to be trumped by the obligatory pretty model below the waist-high bar level, if you get my drift. Sorry but it worked for me, though as Sylvia often points out, memorable ad but I’m damned if I can remember the name of the product. There’s probably a name for that in the business is there Johnnie ?]

Truth Stronger Than Fiction

NY Times piece by Rachel Donadio. [via Georganna].

As a “born again” reader of literary fiction (though it has to be said my reading list is stuffed with learned texts at the moment) I find this interesting. Outlets for fictional writing, not just books / novels, but literary journals too, are reporting that the market is dominated by “factual” work these days. Two observations – even the factual stuff has a bias to the long-form narrative they say, and given that it is indeed advertised as non-fiction, I hope it’s obvious that doesn’t make it factual in any sense of “truth” whatever its rhetorical qualities. The bummer with rhetorical quality is distinguishing between reasonable truths and speculative, conspiracy-theory, pseudo-scientific, life-style mumbo jumbo. Being market driven, as the article points out, this kind of narrative apparent non-fiction can appeal most easily to what people want to hear, rather than stuff that makes them personally uncomfortable. At least with fiction you know where you stand – if it appeals as an essentially true natural history, it’s probably because of some more intrinsic, aesthetic, instinctual qualities, rather than an explicit logic or reasoning.

Quality beats skin-deep “truth”.

Leo Sayer Sings The Blues

Noticed one Leo Sayer was in town last Saturday; catchy though he was he was never my cuppa 70’s tea. Anyway, after his Saturday show at Perth’s Burswood, he and his band dropped into Blue to the Bone and jammed along with Lindsay Wells. Seems they are old buddies after Lindsay once helped him out on an earlier tour. Great sax addition to Lindsay’s usual three-piece sound, and Leo’s voice sounded good with a great sense of timing on some old blues & rock’n’roll standards, even if he had to gamely improvise for those where his recollection of the verses was absent. A good sport, posing and pausing for mobile phone snaps and autographs.

(Leo’s one of those artists whose name always reminds me of a song with his name in the lyric. Like “The Beatles and The Stones” always make me think of Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes”; Elvis and Sinatra, too many to mention. “I hope Neil Young will remember, Southern Man don’t need him around, anyhow” say Lynyrd Skynyrd, whereas “Tom Robinson, The Beatles, The Byrds and Leo Sayer” is the line spat out by Bill Nelson in Phantom Zone.)

Bellow’s Taxonomy

Like this Saul Bellow quote from Seb Fiedler. Don’t think it has to be head shrinks, but any professional advice about a problem always feels good if the problem gets an official name, more so than if it gets any meaningful solution.

The name of the rose. The bible of taxonomists everywhere ?

The Eudaimonic MoQ

Paper from April 2003 by Sam Norton, concerning an alternative interpretation of the “intellectual level” in Pirsig’s MoQ. I only skim-read it previously, and because I didn’t “get it” I’ve been unable to participate in some of Sam’s debates. So here goes … (this is a long one) …

The standard model – Sam describes the standard view of the MoQ in his own words. Only a couple of quibbles. Inorganic Level – Sam admits to being no physicist, so let’s not worry about errors of popular science detail – let’s just agree to call it the “Physical” level (the level where only physics prevails – in its widest sense). Similarly the Biological Level – a few quibbles on where physics and chemistry become biology and life. Let’s agree to think of this as the “Living” level, where life prevails over mere physics.

First actual disagreement. Sam says this is the layer where “natural selection” occurs. No, I say that exists in all the levels and is one of the major mechanisms of evolution throughout the MoQ.

Second actual disagreement. Sam says only humans participate in the “Social Level”. Not sure why we need to make such a constraint. Clearly a lot of social patterns in other animals may be purely biological evolved instinctual social behaviours, but I have no doubt other intelligent species can and do use inter-individual communication – language of sorts – in their own lifetimes to organise social patterns too. (But “inteligence” is part of the subject under discussion here, so let’s hang fire.)

In the Social Level Sam also talks, as does Pirsig, about the celebrity principle, setting and spreading cultural standards. My only quibble would be to update this with the concept of “memes”.

In the Intellectual Level, Sam re-iterates Pirsig’s idea that this is distinguished by “symbolic manipulation of information” and by the idea of “truth over opinion” and quickly goes on to point out what he sees as failings with the intelectual level, the subject of the essay.

OK – just to put my stake in the ground – I see the intellectual level as the advent of “formalised reason” – “scientific thought” – this is the lowest layer of the top level. The start of the whole problem. The idea of truth and right being derivable from concepts and axioms, as distinct from what social and below had just been “better” for those involved. So what I’m looking out for is the meta-problem. Is Sam saying the world model for “reason” is wrong or that the MoQ statement of it is not a good one ? If the former – I’m right with him, as is Pirsig’s MoQ of course, that’s its point.

A second stake in the ground – I’ve never actually seen the Intellectual as totally distinct from the Social. I see a socio-politico-intellecto-cultural continuum, with many different static latches, not just one clear social vs intellectual demarcation. The definition of “intellect” is a cultural issue. I prefer one Cultural level. There is a level at which the formal intellectual gets added to the social, but it never displaces it, just adds to it. I think we’re going to be debating which kinds of reason are higher quality – “intellect” is a crude approximation. The intellectual Quality level is going to need a definition that involves “Quality” as part of it, or else it is going to get hooked on the very defintions of “reason” it aims to supplant. This is Godel. This is the meta-problem. The “top” level in any MoQ may always have to have this cosmic bootstrap problem.

Reading on.

Sam expresses concerns 1 to 5. Clearly I share something like them. (Let’s just ignore further popular science quibbles about biological life, evolution and DNA, being irrelevant to the point.) Basically the Intellectual Level is badly defined – either absolutely or distinct from the social – intellectual is certainly not the best word for it

So Sam “Eudaimonia” is your alternative to “Intellect” as the fourth level ?

Sam suggests “The autonomous individual” as the esence of the fourth level. No, that’s not it. Though Sam re-defines autonomous. Not just free to act but free to rationlise / reason how to act. This is looking promising. Its the communicable formalisation of reason – beggining to look like memes to me.

Sam says “My society says that this is good, but is my society right to say so? – in other words, there is a questioning of social values.” Spot on. In the social level value are right because they are social, in the intellectual (or whatever) they are right because the reason can be formalised independent of the social acceptance. Super-social-reason.

The middle third of the essay is a pre-and post-Socratic history of the of judgement of individuals independent from their social roles. So what are those units of judging, units of choosing ? (Interestingly the Chalmers stuff I’m still reading, has a big play on “judgement” in terms of what can be known – but I digress.)

Aha, it’s happiness – Sam says Eudaimonia is human flourishing or happiness. I say, or Satori or Quality. This is beginning to crystallise – the top level of the MoQ is highet level of quality itself, where quality is defined by the MoQ, dynamic quality. MoQ is its own grandpa. This strange-loopy recursiveness is very attractive (to me). Maximising happiness is also very “pragmatic”.

Sam goes on to highlight artistic, aethetic quality that is not amenable to “logical” analysis. This is not new or contentious.

Sam says “I consider intellect (in the Western sense) to be something of an anti-DQ death-force, precisely because it seeks a ‘closed’ and formal understanding.” I say I wish I’d written that first. Spot on. This is Godel / Hofstadter again.

Sam concludes (before pre-loading ammunition for his critics)
[Quote] Again, I think this is something that Pirsig himself articulates in ZMM, not least when he discovers the Sophists properly, and their teaching that ‘man is the measure of all things’, and Pirsig writes, “Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! not ethical relativism. Not pristine ‘virtue’. But arete. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along.” Rhetoric – the development of the capacity to discern quality – is the pre-eminent technique for developing autonomous individuals. It seems fitting for this to be the most notable characteristic of the fourth level. [Unquote]

Sam, I think I agree. Not sure re-naming the fourth level Eudaimonia helps enlighten. We should just re-label it with any existing name for the highest quality – you list plenty. Quality or Dynamic Quality or MoQ itself, and damn the recursion.

Alternatively, let’s just maintain the “Intellectual” label for the fourth level, but make sure we have a clear definition that this is what MoQ means by intellectual. Least resistance line to the right conclusion, no ? MoQ is the highest intellectual pattern. (So much ongoing discussion misses this meta-problem of discussing the MoQ within the MoQ – this would expose that beautifully.)

Wot, still no god ? 😉

It’s All Connected

Browsing Ray Girvan’s Apothecary’s Drawer – Wave Related – fairly slow blog rate due to his “estivation” (summer equivalent of hibernation mainly in cold blooded creatures) – attracted by the Mexican philosopher Manuel DeLanda.

[Quote] DeLanda is a contemporary Mexican philosopher with a strong interest in the scientific and cultural crossover: “topics as diverse as warfare, linguistics, economics, evolution, chaos theory, self-organizing matter, nonlinear dynamics, artificial life and intelligence, the internet and architecture, amongst many others” (including solitons). [Unquote]
[Annotated Bibliography] [Interview] & [DeLanda Destratified]

Then noticed his previous thread on one-off waves or bores, linking back to controversial boxing day tsunami pictures, and existing pictures of previous bores. (A hundred links to browse in that lot.)

The connectedness – non-periodic waves, strange loops etc and mexican anthroplogical backgrounds to Northrop and Pirsig et al. Clear as mud ?

Manuel DeLanda [Quote] If you read the essays by the first guy who saw spontaneously oscillating chemical reactions, you find out he was unable to publish his essays. This was in the 50’s, not long ago. The idea that orderly behavior could arise spontaneously from matter was so counter-intuitive.. At that time, the only two ways they could see stable things arising in nature was through rational perfection — the best possible outcome — or heat-death. What nonlinear science brings about is a complete new range of structurally stable forms of behavior, which has absolutely nothing to do with rationality or the heat-death of entropy. Now attractors are appearing all over the place. We’ve discovered a whole new reservoir of forms of stabilization. It’s a paradigm warp. [Unquote]

Scepticism is too powerful – “nothing to do with rationality” – scarily true.

Manuel DeLanda [Quote] As they say, they key word here is not wisdom, but caution. You don’t know what happens at bifurcations. You have absolutely no control. The smallest fluctuation can make things go wrong. The predictive power of humans and technology is nil near bifurcations. All you can do is approach carefully, because the last thing you want to do is get swallowed up by a chaotic attractor that’s too huge in phase space. As Deleuze says, “Always keep a piece of fresh land with you at all times.” Always keep a little spot where you can go back to sleep after a day of destratification. Always keep a small piece of territory, otherwise you’ll go nuts. [Unquote]

Dynamic Quality is lost without the latches of static quality.

Oh wow … DeLanda is lecturing ” .. about a shift of paradigm in the postmodern world – the old, analytic way is replaced by new, synthetic one .. ” A man after mine own. Someone to take a serious interest in methinks.

[Post Note – for Mitch – Australian Apostle collapses into the sea. Could it be a sign ? No, stop it, you’re getting silly.]

Stick With It Google Books

Remember debating all the copyright custodianship issues about Google’s plan to create an on-line the content of all the great libraries in the world, at least a year ago, if not two.

Still think it’s an inspired idea, that must succeed; the amount of knowledge made available would be just mind boggling.

So many books would see the light of day, that would otherwise languish in a handful of largely hidden volumes. If anything the proportion of old texts that might benefit from new sales in printed (or electronic) form, would actually more likely be promoted by their on-line presence. (See legal music downloads story). For those older books with little prospect of sale ever again in print, the libraries themselves lose any commercial benefit from the cost of their custodianship, then this implies some fee needs to be paid somewhere, but surely the numbers add up easily from a very small Google subscription, if needed, and Google are investing millions in it anyway. Who needs to lose at all from this enormous benefit.

The copyright blockages must be temporary. See Google’s own blog here.