Month: November 2017

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.]

“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.

Ruth Davidson et al get this and are going to be part of the change that makes life just a little easier for their sisters.

— Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman) November 2, 2017

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

Generation sex
Injects
The sperm
Of worms
Into the eggs of field mice
So you can look real nice
for the boys

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.

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.]