Year: 2017

More Heat Than Light

Little did I know when I made a passing reference to the Beard vs Taleb spat on Twitter in my previous post (the one before that actually) that it would turn into a full international incident. Nassim Nicholas Taleb holding-up Mary Beard – and her baying mob of PC-supporters – as all that is wrong with British academia in contrast to the US. (Links below.)

Hard facts or not, no discourse ever got anywhere without respect for the person, and on that I’ve said my bit. And it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve mentioned here that Taleb’s “abrasive” style can be daunting, even if you’re trying to agree with him. The difference between making a mistake and BS is a fine line if you can’t keep up with Taleb’s machine-gun pace on Twitter, or you’d just like to clarify your understanding. Once the rhetorical knives are out there is no hope for progress. Pointing out subtleties is branded as backtracking – simply more BS.

Taleb caused offense – it’s his style to do so when calling-out what he sees as BS – but Beard, for some baffling reason, responded by calling his credentials into question and it has been all downhill since, particularly as Taleb basks in his fuck-you stance.

Evidence comes in many forms, some of it highly objective in it’s own right (gene surveys, O2 isotope readings, archaeological finds, you name it), but even when not merely anecdotal, historical narrative requires knowledgeable interpretation, and balancing of the applicability of each evidence type. I’m skeptical that either scientific evidence source proves what is claimed on either side, reality is more subtle, but is there anyone more on top of statistical uncertainty than Taleb? One of the PC responses was against the ubiquitous argument from genetics trumping all others these days (sigh!), but here again, Taleb is probably as expert on Mediterranean and Mid-East genetic (and memetic language) evolution as anyone.

For what it’s worth, the ethnically diverse cartoon depiction of Roman Britain is almost certainly disproportionate and not actually representative or typical – almost certainly a PC portrayal. And whilst “Romans” did include sub-Saharan Africans as well as Mid-Easterners and North-Africans – anyone, trader or slave, could become a Roman citizen – I’m no expert on the timings and scales of various waves of adoption relative to Roman occupation of the UK and Northern Europe. (Even Beard’s own piece confirms not really representative – “at least some diversity” is as far as she goes.)

Taleb does have a point about “western” political correctness – it’s core to my agenda here – but he overstates the UK vs US rift just as much as Beard and her supporters have overdone the demonisation of the rude “Mr” Taleb. His fuck-you style is a no-nonsense US stance contrasted with the archetypal understated UK diplomacy, but he’s right that it’s PC to turn that difference of style into the substance of actual disagreement.

Taleb getting his retaliation in first on Friday.

Beard in the Grauniad on Sunday.

A pox on both their houses until they pick-up again the statistics of ethnicity of Roman Britain.

And, in case you were interested here is Taleb on his pet topic, anthropology of his middle-east, also this weekend. Forthright style intact, but something where my own knowledge confirms he’s right, unless of course the critique of the whole narrative thing is simply a strawman 😉 If I know, I’m sure any expert does.

Oh, and how did I miss it, Nick Cohen has already steamed-in earlier today on Mary’s behalf. At least he conceded there’s fault on both sides here:

“just as sinister,
is what the alt-right and politically correct left
are doing to public life”

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Post Notes later the same day!:

And now Cambridge Uni itself has stepped-into the battle.

And Massimo Pigliucci has written a piece for IAI News.

At least Pigliucci is New York based, so maybe UK vs US angle is defused 😉 And, presumably the philosophical BS technicality is a reference to Prof Frankfurter’s infamous work.

And Taleb has responded in 5 parts (so far)

So, firstly so far as I can tell, I actually agree with each of Taleb’s responses, points I’ve already made or agreed with, which doesn’t mean Pigliucci doesn’t also make valid points, see later

The problem is not the “overwhelming evidence of diversity” in the Romans in Britain, it’s about which ethnic mix of diversity. That implied by the cartoon not being a “representative heuristic” of that ethnic mix. The gender and “colour” being a more typical PC representation than factually representative. This would be a minor – pedantic – technicality for simplicity of cartoonish representation (in the context of its children’s educational point) if it weren’t that the earlier responses – some from Beard, some from her defenders – ignored the actual point and chose to question Taleb’s credentials (and “loutish” manners). The number of people who have stepped in to defend Beard since is mind-boggling. Quite a few I have a lot of respect for, like Pigliucci. Get a grip folks.

So, back to Pigliucci’s piece. In the same way I agree with Taleb on the PC-ness of the original Cambridge Classics / BBC angle being an endemic problem – one that gives rise to BS – Pigliucci is right about the arrogance of modern scientism. Whether Taleb is particularly guilty of that in this exchange is moot, but Pigliucci also treats both combatants as “high calibre academics” and he does find “BBC just slightly too informed by modern sensibilities” (ie PC) in the childish cartoon. The battle was well underway before Taleb chimed-in as we can see, and the scientism is the assumption that evidence that looks scientific and claims objectivity (eg in genes) must automatically take priority over any other historical perspective. Here I agree with Pigliucci (and others) and disagree with Taleb. It’s useful additional evidence that no “high calibre academic” would ignore, but it doesn’t automatically make any existing view BS without wider and subtler questions of applicability to the point being made. And of course respect for each other also matters alongside facts if actual progress is to be made.

Fate doesn’t hang on a wrong or right choice.
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice.

Neil Hannon / Divine Comedy, “Songs of Love”

This whole storm in a teacup is about darkness of skin being an all too easy metaphor for ethnicity, for us north-European whiteys that is. Ethnic diversity = “token” black man. Come on. That’s inaccurate and offensive to many long before our not-so-friendly Lebanese-American scholar threw in the “Bullshit” and “PC” jibes that offended our modern British sensibilities. Like I said, get a grip.

And … enough for now …

Ref, my very first tweet on this topic from 2nd August …

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Later Post Notes:

21 Sept 2017 – I see the war rumbles on (threads):

Evidence-Based Fetish

I often remark that the fashion of demanding “show me the evidence” is really just a fetish.

Another adage many bandy about is “correlation is not causation“.

The point is evidence is neither causation nor necessarily a relevant fact either.

Causation is understanding of relevant processes and applicability of relevant evidence, if any. Where there is no direct evidence, life must nevertheless go on making decisions. In the grey areas between the two, a good correlation to aim for is the position of trusted authoritative experts and meta-experts in aspects of related topics. But that’s not as snappy as either of the other two catchphrases.

The most recent example is those damned Finnish cardboard baby-boxes. If there ever were any correlation, it would surely be caused by the common evidence that people who care enough about potential cot-death of their offspring care enough to explore available choices. It’s the care that is the common cause. Thought we’d kicked the cardboard boxes into the long-grass 5 years ago?

Talking of care, what about trust and respect? As well as the disrespectful spat between @WMaryBeard and @NNTaleb over each other’s credentials and evidence, contrasted with Papineau vs Dennett exchange (previous post), I noticed these two pieces on the significance of evidence and trust. Another fetish I constantly call out is the demand for transparency, as if everyone has the right to know anything and therefore the right to see everything. A, it’s not true, see understanding and applicability above. and B, transparency reduces trust in the authority of any source. The Transparency Trap and Game Theory Without Trust.

“Need to know” is a good adage too.

Physical Inevitability of Intelligent Life

I’m fond of saying that humans ARE special, humanity IS special. That is technically we are a species, as distinct as any other, and in practice we are the most highly developed intelligent life and culture to have evolved in the universe we know. That is not exceptionalism in any unique or exclusive sense. We can hope and believe other centres-of-excellence exist in the so-far-unobserved universe(s). And self-organising colonies of other varieties of excellence – insects, fungi, bacteria – inhabit this universe, the same eco-system we share. We are nevertheless special and unique in our experienced world.

Figuratively, we are also self-centred, by definition of I / me / we, and we’ve always put ourselves at the center of our Copernican universe, whether that’s our earth, our solar system, our galaxy, our group or our universe as our knowledge grows and evolves. Of course geometrically or temporally that doesn’t make us the physical centre or origin of anything. Never has.

Philosophically many world views remind us of the pitfalls of misunderstanding our ego as the centre of anything, and go out of our way to positively dissolve the ego to help the lesson stick. Trouble is, that avoidance of misinterpreting our centrality lies at the dogmatic core of science. Objectivity is everything, extraneous subjective influence is squeezed out of every scientific procedure or explanation. Since we are not physically central, we quite rightly strive to some neutral god’s-eye view, for the physical model we aim to hold. So far so good.

But the exclusion of any kind of special pleading for humans as the highly developed life-forms actually doing the modelling can be so dogmatic as to also exclude legitimate thought. Any mention of Anthropic Principles is readily dismissed as heretical or merely tautological or circumstantial. In fact the aim of Brandon Carter, who invented the term AP, was precisely to warn against such dogma limiting necessary thinking on cosmological evolution. Sure we can hold that the real physical world exists independent of our place within it, but the model we call physics, or science more generally, is something that evolved – and continues to evolve – with us.

Many modern scientists have taken complex systems views of the cosmos – eg Prigogine – with life and intelligent-life as part of that complex eco-system. My own underlying interest has always been governance of self-organised complex systems – cybernetics – decision-making and actions in human organisations, groups, states and cultures. I first came across the idea that the evolution of complex systems must, for basic thermodynamic reasons, eventually lead to life, self-organisation, intelligent life, consciousness and who knows where after that, from a guy called Rick Ryals. He was at that time railing against the anti-Copernican / anti-Anthropic dogma that was denying him a hearing.

[Draft in Progress] Latest ….

https://www.facebook.com/ian.glendinning.94/posts/10159241794860533

https://www.wired.com/story/controversial-new-theory-suggests-life-wasnt-a-fluke-of-biologyit-was-physics/

“the origin of life is an inevitable outcome of thermodynamics”

“the true hallmark of biological systems is their information-processing capacity”

Objectivity itself is at stake.

As well as freeing some dogmatic blockages in cosmology – Fine-Tuning / Cosmological Constant / CMBR / Dark Matter etc …

Placing information yet again as more fundamental than physics or biology (or psychology). All are manifestations of the same underlying “substance” in physical / mental and science / humanity dilemmas. No need to have one explained as determined by the other, one need not reduce to the other.

Information > (Physical and Mental), not

Physical > (Informational and Mental)

At the metaphysical end – See also Tim Crane’s public talk on physical mind-matter confusions from earlier this year.

At the practical end – See also Neville Morley’s review of arguing truth with knowledge in these days of social media and the PC fetish for immediate “facts”. (Prompted by recent Mary Beard defences of seemingly-PC BBC cartoon portrayal of ethnically diverse Roman Britain.) As I said in the exchange with @NNTaleb, it’s part of the process of argument, AND “current authority” (*) must count for something – when a simple statement cannot itself be immediately represented in a hard objective statistical fact. Interpretation of what counts as a fact is more than a simple fact!

“What interests me is the framing of such historical arguments, and the dynamics of the encounter between [academic authority and social media].”

(*) Of course PC-ness pervades so much public discourse, every participant has their own agenda, and we need to guard against complacency and simple cognitive reinforcement, BUT it is crass to assume by default that an academic authority who has spent decades getting to grips with understanding a whole subject, to have been duped by misinterpretation of a new piece of data in updating their view. By definition most of the rest of us will have the culturally accepted and socially educated knowledge of the topic, so we will experience the cognitive dissonance without the deeper basis of knowledge of the academic authority. The latter’s interpretation of the new data is likely to be better. Particularly interesting in the @WMaryBeard vs @NNTaleb exchange where two “current authorities” on different topics disagree on the significance of the new fact, and in their style of argumentation(!), Mary the classicist historian, Nassim the objective statistician. In this case it so happens Nassim’s pet topic is also Mediterranean and Mid-East (genetic) ethnicity and (cultural/memetic) language – a recipe for conflicting interpretations and obviously not best resolved by 140 character public shittograms. There’s PC and then there’s anti-PC – equally problematic. A little decorum and respect goes a long way.

By contrast, talking of decorum here’s Tim Crane again, on how Dennett & Papineau work on disagreement.

Ha. Missed this particular exchange in the complex set of Beard / Taleb threads:

And, oh my, here is Massimo Pigliucci talking on Virtue Epistemology / Epistemic Virtue – putting the virtues of the knowing subject back into objective skepticism. Humility. And double-wow – good Q&A – first question is asking to compare Epistemic Virtue with Radical Empiricism (pre-Kantian style, I use a weaker version)! And timing of spread of bad ideas – memetics central here. Good stuff. Keeping science and humanism honest, as I say.

Tying up Corbynism and Marxism

This is really just a place-holder post to bookmark two great twitter threads (below) and to link them to something I need to elaborate on. Without editing, this isn’t it. Read the two Twitter threads whatever, but for now:

I’m a fan of Marxism intrinsically (theoretically) and in the latest Paul Mason Post Capitalism sense (practically) – that is socially-networked where a capital-centred industrial solution fails or is inappropriate. Extreme “neo-liberal” “bigger-than-the-state” capitalist free-for all is to be regulated against, as are extremes of inequity, but capital-centred industrial entities nevertheless succeed in driving economic activity (*). And, sure, some part of these need to be state-controlled where there is a natural monopoly or public good at the heart of the activity – utilities, transport, health, etc. But as I also said when reviewing Post Capitalism (better Meta Capitalism) this kinda Marxism needn’t be Trotskyist / Leninist, with Stalinist / Maoist central planning and control of all industrial activity. In fact the point is exactly the opposite.

Yes, state-level policy and strategy, but bottom-up socially-networked (person to person as well as technology mediated) activities are what is needed in practice, with management and governance federated by upward delegation through proper institutional democracy not some cheap imitation populist tyranny of “for the many, NOT the few”. The (Momentum) social-media strategy to achieve these entryist aims for Corbynism within the Labour movement is an explicit attempt to exploit these populist aims. [And, Trump > Scouts, Corbyn > Students … same, same. A Pol Pot cult of youth and child abuse of the highest order. I digress, but only slightly. Populist aims, targeted cynically at youth. Gimme strength!]

But as I’ve said, whilst being a fan of Mason’s economics, I have an aversion to his “smash the system” revolutionary politics. Sure we need to break some eggs to make this omelette, and creative destruction is an old concept I’m happy to engage in, but intentional violent revolution? We need to be careful what we wish for. Babies and bathwater. We need to care about the lives and livings of fellow humans (and our eco-cosmos) here and now, as well as in some brave new world. The polarising mentality inherent in “if you’re not with us you’re against us” is hurting some of those people we need most, not just innocent bystanders, collateral damage to fellow humans, but some of the best people working hardest for us in politics right now. Abuse is not debate.

Anyway, the two threads nicely link to MacDonnell, the Trotskyist centralised levers of state behind the Corbynista project and the perversion that current “socialist” Labour policy is leading to some of the most illiberal and least socially-enlightened stances in practice. To be avoided at all costs, especially by Marxists and enlightened social and liberal democrats in general. The antidote to neoliberalism is not a centralised iron-fist of state. The whole of each of these two threads:

Enough for now.

[(*) We can all imagine a brave new world where there are no states, all property is theft and all humans cooperate in sustainable harmony, we can even believe such a situation might be a practical proposition one day, but it’s irresponsibly naive to believe that simply smashing the system and guillotining the elite would deliver anything remotely like it. We will always need concentrations of power and activity (federations) to achieve human aspirations. Practically it’s always a matter of understanding where we are now, where we’d like to be and what should we best do to maximise our chances of moving towards it. Trust and risk are intrinsic.]

Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere. #KickingOffLive #FakeNews

Performance Live’s dramatisation of Paul Mason’s latest book “Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere” was broadcast on BBC2 last night. The link will be live for a month. It is compelling, intelligent stuff, and well done to the unbiased BBC for supporting it. (A good Twitter Storify from Performance Live.)

Of course it’s Paul Mason’s agenda, the recent history of socially-connected uprising from Paris to Trump (and Corbyn) via the Arab spring. And, being his agenda, it’s very much pro-revolution, sticking-it-to-the-elite kinda stuff. Mason’s Post-Capitalist economics is clear enough and now his revolutionary politics is transparently obvious too. Proper physically violent revolution where humans get hurt. Careful what you wish for. Post Capitalism I like, but the questions are all about how to get there, sustainably.

Scarily juvenile, and particularly topical politically in the UK, is Mason’s adoption by current Momentum / Corbynista populism.

More generally however, as well the socially enlightened aspects of post-Capitalism, there is the human social network aspect, with or without technology mediation. Here again, Mason is impaled on both horns of this dilemma. I tweeted twice during the broadcast to note Mason making these contradictory statements:

Socially networked communication is good, but unmediated social networks are not necessarily good. What they spread spreads fast, but it’s pure memetics, and Momentum’s strategy is explicitly targeted to spread through social media. The ideas will be catchy, attractive, fitting with prejudice and cognitive resonance of any local network bubble, positive-or-negatively polarised and divorced from any actual truth or quality.

“Fake news” travels faster than any truth. It’s wishfully autistic, like objectively quantifiable economics itself, to believe otherwise.

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[Post Note : By way of contrast Ruth Davidson – Scottish Conservative parliamentarian – with intelligent analysis of Capitalism-rebooted. All we need now is a strategic plan – how we get there through multi-partisan-electoral cycles to achieve sustainable outcomes. Hat tip to Ian Wright (ex)-MP.]

[Post Note : And another “cure” for capitalism. Don’t like the rhetoric, but the aim is true. Real “enemy” is extreme forms of so-called neo-liberal capitalism, but I prefer collaborators to enemies anyway. Hat tip to @PaulCharisse.]

[Post Note : And here a review by Dave Evans of earlier live production:

For all that these ‘populists’ have appropriated people’s ill feeling towards a self-serving establishment there is still a huge groundswell of support for progressive, inclusive change that seeks to make the world a better place for everyone and not to divide and conquer, ….

…. a step in the right direction.

For making that step, and for giving us undoubted food for thought, I salute Paul Mason.

Another constructive angle.]

Trust in Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I’ve been sitting on this link for a while, an Independent piece by Andy Martin on his interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She’s someone I’ve kept at arm’s length through the whole recent Islamophobia period – care is needed when unpicking the political correctness of anti-Islam / Islamism rhetoric and campaigns. Islam has a problem or two, but the extremes of nothing-to-do-with / all-to-do-with are equally unhelpful I find.

I rejected getting to know a little more about her back when drawing cartoons of Allah / Mohammed was the cause-célèbre. I’m all for freedom of thought and expression, and actions simply to claim that right in reaction to religious dogma, but beyond that not all expression is always appropriate or necessarily responsible. However, as ever with Andy Martin’s writing, he provides a great lead-in to her story and her thinking, with plenty of links to further philosophical avenues.

Ever topical, as I said recently, trust is one thing in short supply these days:

“I trust you,” she said, and smiled.

I appreciate that.

And the feeling is reciprocated.

Maybe that is the fundamental problem with all religions.

They don’t trust humans enough.

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[Post Note : An up to date piece on the problem of finding the middle-ground between all or nothing when it comes to Islam, from Ali Rizvi “the atheist Muslim”:

… those on the left and right of the political spectrum are unable to distinguish between “Islamic ideology and Muslim identity”, preventing honest conversations about the link between religion and terrorism.

….]

Universal Field of “Proto-Consciousness”

Many different versions of this idea around.

A view I hold myself in fact, that information underlies both mind and physics, and that information is therefore proto-consciousness. Captured the link largely because the site itself looks like an interesting resource for consciousness papers generally.