Year: 2017

Causation Conundrum

“Causation is seriously weird” – has been a mantra since the earliest days of this blog. Here in in 2006 I was already wearily “bearing in mind” the problem with time / ordering / causation first noted in 2001. It was already a given.

Bearing in mind that “causation” is itself a pretty weird concept — nothing like as “concrete” as most of our common sense induction would have us believe.

And part of that is the weirdness of time itself and the tendency (!) for cause to precede effect. And that’s even with cause transmitted by forces between Newtonian billiard balls, or the sun rising over the gravitationally orbiting earth. Things only get weirder with quanta. I last riffed on the topic in the spring of this year, reacting to a whole conference on the processes of causation.

At any level causation is little more than a metaphor for prediction based on experience. There really is no fundamental explanation available.

One need to get a handle on this basic, seemingly tangible and objective, if-this-then-that causation is because there plenty of knottier cases we also need to understand. Cases where we have emergent “objects” – complex systems with their own behaviours, behaviours which in turn “cause” effects in their component parts. Top-down, reverse or two-way causation. Chickens and eggs. Fundamental questions not just for physical (biological) evolution, but for individual consciousness and will, and for social systems of governance beyond the individual. Historically ancient philosophical concerns that still – unsolved – underlie everyday life in the 21st century.

So I was naturally interested in the Santa Fe Institute (SFI – 16 Nov 2017) news story advertising:

“New paper answers causation conundrum.”

Which refers directly to …

“Coarse-graining as a downward causation mechanism.”

… by SFI’s own Jessica Flack, published by The Royal Society in their Philosophical Transactions.

I particularly like the fact that despite a biological evolutionary context, it starts straight in with a self-evident social governance example. I really did write the paragraph above before opening the paper.

” … the idea that higher-level features can be a cause of behaviour by lower-level components.
On the one hand, this seems self-evident.
Governments make laws and laws constrain individual behaviour …”

I also like “coarse graining” as a handle. One of the things oft referred to in my earlier examples is that in settling on our metaphors for causation, we invariably aggregate effects at the current objects of interest. Like any ontology this is something deemed useful, nothing physically fundamental. A promising read. There’s a tremendous feeling of convergence in the air, of important ideas crystallising and coming together at last.

(Oh, and it gets better, the first two references are from Studies in the Philosophy of Biology by Donald T Campbell edited by Francisco Ayala, who I mentioned way back in 2004 in exactly this context, and who is linked with Francis Heylighen’s work. What goes around comes around. And the paper is Templeton funded!)

Eddies in the Flow of Life?

I’ll just leave this here.

The dissipative-systems / entropic-anthropic agenda seems to have taken off in the wake of Dan Brown.

The key point being that the 2nd law’s cosmic drive to dissipate energy and maximise entropy inevitably leads to intentional life because local concentrated pockets of reverse-entropy / complex-order turn out to be the most effective and efficient way of dissipating energy in the whole system. A cosmic teleological drive towards intelligent (human) life (and beyond). Get used to it.

Today’s point? This cosmic level is is analogous to scale-dependent eddies in turbulent flow – vortices and organised sets of vortices that are created in smooth flow regimes in the wake of solid objects. This vorticity contributes to engineering effects local to the objects but ultimately dissipates the flow energy more remotely. Vorticity is a measure of the order and potential in a given flow situation. I’m not the first to spot the analogy across a wide range of more fundamental physics:

Why Fluid Dynamics is not boring?

Hidden Concepts – Edge 2017 – Let’s play Connections instead of Bulldog

The #JeremyEngland #Smackdown of Dan Brown

Anyone who thinks the thesis of Dan Brown’s Origin is to disprove the existence of god clearly hasn’t read it. [Spoilers]

Pre & Post Humanism in Dan Brown’s “Origin”

The thriller plot suspense clearly hangs on the assumption of a church plot to suppress a triumph of science over god, but that’s the point of it being a thriller, it’s absolutely not. The only conspiracy is by the Edmund Kirsch information scientist character and his AI Winston to frame “Dark Religion” – the cultish Palmarian Church – for the assassination of the scientist, who was already dying and planning his own suicide. The assassination is a suicide set-up – well telegraphed to the reader before the event – which hangs on releasing the alternative “there is no god” conclusion to the wider church days before publishing the actual enlightened point of the story. The apparent assassination of a scientist and the apparent suppression of scientific publication are plot devices. The real conclusion is pure Blake.

“The Dark Religions are departed & sweet science remains.”

“Science can banish the Dark Religions ….
so that enlightened [science & religion] can flourish.”

Jeremy England is one of the many current scientists and philosophers of evolution cited by Brown, specifically for his work on the informational (ie physical) inevitability of the evolution of life. But as I said in my own review these findings are not limited to Discovery Institute or Templeton Foundation funded researchers. Apologetics is not a plot to undermine science, but even if it were, the science stands or falls as science. My own philosophical research, starting decades ago with Hofstadter, and the Entropic Anthropic physics of Rick Ryals also support natural teleology. “Teleology Without a God” I wrote as a preview to Brown’s Origin.

Back in October this became a meme:

“Dan Brown can’t cite me to disprove God”, writes Jeremy England.

Well that’s what WSJ’s click-bait headliner wrote. England actually wrote “The novelist relies on my research, but my literary doppelgänger makes bad arguments.” He sure does, it’s a fiction. “There is no real science in the book to argue over”. As he goes on to explain the idea that physics could disprove god is a serious linguistic misunderstanding. It’s a total red herring, a typical god vs science meme. In fact that is mostly what Origin is about. How information works. Something authors – and philosophers – seem to understand better than scientists in my experience.

As I noted in my own review, Brown goes as far as suggesting Transhuman AI will involve a humanist integration of science and god – a religion by any other name. With or without AI he’s not the only one predicting such a future, but you know neither sci-fi nor predictions are the future. What’s good about Origin is that as a block-buster it will expose some very important areas of information science (in physics and biology and humanity) to a wider public. All we can hope is that people actually report and show curiosity about reading what is actually written, and don’t just jump on memetic “fake-news” bandwagons.

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Good news – caught the attention of Quanta and Jim AlKhalili

Some inevitable Dan Brown references in the comment thread too 😉

Pre & Post Humanism in Dan Brown’s “Origin”

I’ve been pretty sceptical about AI hype going back a decade or so when Kurzweil coined Transhumanism beyond the Singularity where artificial computer intelligence overtakes real human capabilities. Here my 2010 take on the 2009 Singularity Summit, where one of my heroes, Hofstadter, and others were also sceptical about Kurzweil’s take.

In fact there are many posts in the blog going back to 2002 and 2003 (quite a few now with link-rot) picking up on Steven Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science” and specifically Kurzweil’s take on “ANKOS”. I was already sceptical for “there’s nothing new under the sun” reasons. Cellular automata were already an established topic in my Dennett & Hofstadter space, building on Conway’s “Game of Life”. Marvin Minsky no less was also pointing out this was hype based on 20 year old material.

The idea that the complex – and the entirely unpredictable – evolves from repeated algorithmic application of very simple rules to simple starting points is long established, the key point being, whether it’s the physical or the biological domain we are talking about, this is an information processing phenomenon – disembodied information independent of its physical or biological substrate. Hofstadter expanded the algorithmic concepts most widely and generally in “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies“(1995). Dennett has ploughed his furrow, applying it continuously ever since to the evolution of intelligent human consciousness and will, culminating most recently in “From Bacteria to Bach and Back“(2017).

Interest lies in the artificial intelligence field is because it teaches us about the evolution of real human intelligence, not because it enables us to predict the unpredictable. Futurists like Kurzweil at Google obviously make their living predicting the future. Like politics, futurism is as much about making true what you wish to be true than “prediction” per se.

Doubly interesting in this field where Shannon, Turing and von Neumann appear to be as important as Darwin, is that it appears that fundamental aspects of information and computation also lie at the heart of physics, not just biology. The evolution of a whole physical, living and intelligent cosmos simply from information – any differences between points in space-time, prior to any particles, forces or energy (or laws even?). Do ideas come any bigger? [Ref EES (Biology and Philosophy). IIT (Physics and Philosophy). ANKOS (Unger & Smolin). And more.] Well yes they do.

Move over God, you might think. Dan Brown’s “Origin“ is based on that thought. Half on the futuristic trans / post-humanist “where are we headed”?” angle, and half on the fundamental evolutionary “where have we come from?” angle. It’s a fiction, a conspiracy and code-breaking action thriller in Brown’s usual style, and clearly the protagonist Edmond Kirsch, alongside Robert Langdon and their AI Winston, bears more than a passing resemblance to Kurzweil. However the scientific and technical plot components are firmly based – with explicit references in most cases – on the science above – and the conspiracy angle is merely cover for a positive story-line.

There are two corollaries to the information-based evolution thread that are also exposed in the plot.

Firstly, the idea that increasingly complex life and human intelligence are an inevitable outcome of physics. A kind of cosmic teleology towards humanity (and beyond). Get that! Brown uses Jeremy England’s Dissipative Systems work as his source. I’ve long used Rick Ryals’ Entropic Anthropic work as my source. Given the 2nd Law – the inevitable dissipation of energy in the increase of entropy in the cosmos – it turns out the most effective and efficient arrangement to achieve that is life. The more complex and intelligent the better. Local pockets of high order and intentional activity maximises the overall disorder – entropy – of the cosmos. Order is the complement to information. Entropy is an informational property.

Secondly, having admitted humans to the party, several other concepts can be rehabilitated after decades, even centuries, of exclusion from science. For example Dennett has pushed consistently to recognise intelligent design – the intentional purposes of naturally evolved intelligence – as one of evolution’s driving forces. Dennett has also consistently warned scientists and philosophers not to be too quick to exclude human subjectivity by rushing to greedy reductive objective definitions. And another example, Iain McGilchrist in “Master and Emissary” has rehabilitated that the fact the human brain has a bicameral design – in two hemispheres – is fundamental to how we function intelligently. Brown exploits the latter – even explaining the hemispherical roles without specific references – in his fictional artificial brain design behind Winston.

As a fiction Brown has used many established sci-fi tropes in his AI knockabout. The cliched HAL(2001) and impossible Déjà Vu technology references are neatly played down by the Winston character of the AI supporting our hero. He plunders the Bach and Familia Sagrada memes much used by evolutionary theorists, including Dennett. As a thriller, it has all the components you’d expect from a Dan Brown block-buster. It has screen-play written all over it.

However, having had the “move over God” thought, it’s worth taking stock. Brown’s conclusion is that rather than a God of the gaps – what gaps? – what we really have here is a natural human bridge between science and theism. Humanity of the gaps, I’ve called it. Like others before him, Sacks for instance, Brown’s futurist predicts a benign, adaptive and progressive fusion. A transhuman fusion between AI and humanity sure, but also a humanist fusion of science and theism – an integrated and enlightened religion by any other name.

“May our philosophies keep pace with our technologies.
May love not fear be the engine of change.”

Whatever the intellectual snobbery Brown’s conspiracy-theory block-busting style might attract (*), it is excellent that we have a best-seller exposing these fundamentally exciting topics to a wide public. Hopefully more than a few will be moved to curiosity.

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[Post Note (*) And they really do attract that kind of negative review – try this one for a 2021 TV special version of Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol. I don’t disagree, could never bring myself to read or watch, Angels & Demons or Da Vinci Code based on hyped reviews and trailers.]

Origin Where We’re Headed

Origin is the latest from Dan Brown. [Many spoilers and rough notes.]

[This below is a doubtful piece of writing – a much better review here in “Pre and Post-Humanism”.]

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This review focusses on the “technical” content, with anything on the plot and style or on my reading of it being relegated to a later post. Safe to say, if you’re a fan of Brown’s you’ll probably enjoy the conspiratorial code-cracking block-busting thriller you’re expecting, visually it’s practically a screen-play already. If not you probably won’t. Except, that is, for the content.

The content was the topic of this earlier review by David Klinghoffer published in Evolution News, the voice of the Discovery Institute. They of course are the somewhat controversial organisation attempting to use science join up science and theism, so not a surprise that the plot appeals to them. But others have also reviewed:

In the Guardian Peter Conrad called it “a Nostradamus for our muddled times” Sam Leith called it “fun in its own galumphing way – the battle between science and religion”

Lakshmi Singh of NPR leads with “Pits Creationism Against Science”

I’m going to cut right to the chase, so as far as being a thriller is concerned, this is ALL spoiler.

Dialogue Towards Enlightenment

I take issue with “battle between” and “against“. Sure that’s what gives the plot its thriller-style trajectory, but the point of Edmond Kirsch’s story as told by Brown through his hero Robert Langdon is in Blake’s words:

“The Dark Religions are departed & sweet science remains.”

Elaborated by Langdon to emphasis the Dark Religions as:

“Science can banish the dark religions ….
so that enlightened [science & religion] can flourish.”

And quoting Nietzsche: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster” Treating religion as a monster to be slain risks becoming just such a monster as Brown reminds Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris and Neil deGrasse-Tyson et al.

It is indeed a story about joining-up the dots between the two where “Dialogue is always more important than consensus.”

Part 2 First – Amor Vincit Omnia

What makes it plausible, however well Dan Brown does or doesn’t succeed in telling it, is its dependence on a well-researched set of current theories.

“Where have we come from, where are we going?” I can’t be the only person whose earworm sings Cotton-Eyed Joe to that meme, but it repeatedly restates the scope of the book. It’s a story of two halves.

The second half – where humanity is headed in a godless world is in many ways the least interesting half. It’s a prediction about the future, and you know what they say about those. It follows a Transhuman AI Singularity narrative, similar to (say) Ray Kurzweil, but there the similarity ends. The nature and outcome of the syncretic co-evolution of technology and humanity is very specific and non-threatening except for its pace. Specifically not just a new species overtaking intelligent human life, in fact not even a genus, order or phylum but new Kingdom absorbing – incorprorating – humanity. As Brown points out none of this is new in the sci-fi genre.

In fact, it is simply a continuation of how we came to be as we are. With hindsight, we will always be “the ancients”, even an alien species from an alien kingdom, but it’s still our future, however it turns out.

“May our philosophies keep pace with our technologies.
May love not fear be the engine of change.”

It’s Amor Vincit Omnia again! Spiritual love reigns and love is a spontaneously-created non-finite resource.

Then Part 1  – The Science

Predicting the actual future is less interesting than understanding the processes that will continue to happen into the future, those same processes that got us to where we are today. What is really interesting technically – hopefully scientifically – the first half the story is the natural explanation, without a supernatural god, of how life came to be. The main omission, for me anyway, given the theories expounded, is that the story is limited to life only, not pre-life physics & cosmology and not post-origin-of-life human intelligence, consciousness and will. Maybe that’s too much to ask, but all the key components are there.

In terms of life the story draws on Jeremy England’s dissipative structure work. If we treat the “universal teleology” of the cosmos to dissipate energy and maximise entropy, then the most efficient spread of energy requires pockets of order to maximise long run entropic dissipation of energy . Life is the most effective tool for creating local pockets of order to maximise the spread of disorder, creating entropy and dissipating energy. Life is the inevitable result of entropy. Teleology without a god.

The other topic introduced but not greatly elaborated is in the assertion that “The question of god lies in the difference between patterns (of information) and codes (intended to convey information).” The god question here concerning creative evolution being natural with or without supernatural intervention. As soon was we call something like DNA a “code” we are implying intelligent intention to use the information not simply incidental patterning. Some stuff also on the earlier Conway “game of life” cellular automata evidence of how complexity can evolve from processing of simple information patterns, the kind of material I’ve taken from Dennett and Hofstadter. Right now beyond Brown’s book the fundamental nature of information is seen to lie behind the evolution of both physics and intelligence, the intelligence needed to turn patterns into code. This is sadly left hanging as an open question.

AI is central to the whole story, not just in the transhuman predictions and not to mention the participation of “Winston” in the plot action, but its involvement in the science of the evolution story. Great to see the bicameral nature of the AI “brain” relying on distinctly separate regions interacting whilst processing information quite differently. This is another area of science being rehabilitated after decades of abuse.

A Hopeful Future?

As well a science, religion and love, there is a large element of extolling the humanity of libraries and museums. And as far as the dialogue between religion and science is concerned it goes as far as predicting a merger between science and religion as a new religion by any other name.

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Previously on Psybertron: A recent preview “Our Destiny in Dan Brown’s Origin”
And earlier “Teleology Without a God” and “Andy Martin et al on Transhumanism”

Better consolidated content review here.

Further review on plot and style may follow.

Raw notes below:

Rough notes – ALL SPOILERS:

Joe Campbell upfront.

All locations an institutions real.

Libraries … Monarchy … Symbols … codes and codes within codes. many di’s / written instructions / info read by character unknown to reader
Kirsch assassination, after only weeks to live / large donation ton church … self-set-up
Revenge for atheist terrorism? No, his mother.

Conspiracy politics of fake news “even respected scientific channels simply turning every ludicrous statement into a leading question”

“An Episcopal minister and an evolutionary biologist – polar opposites or they would not be on your show.”

Winston is in fact named after Churchill not 1984 oh well.

Four Horsemen titles and American Atheists / Brights – only Dawkins and Dennett by name so far … and Harris, eventuallt NdGT and Hitchens.

Nietzsche: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster”

Oh my, it’s Blake! “The only pre-modern with any imagination”. Been thinking Origin / Origen / Urizen all the way through.

Palmarian (conservative) church vs the new atheists. Kirsch as Blakeian Horseman.

(Crass 47 char password search – the last book in the last cabinet! With the baddies and security forces arrived yelling the stairwell outside the front door. Cut to other scene with its own suspended drama … a physical climax? crah bng wallop fights. x marks the spot and password. boys own stuff. Telegraphing in the actual text “the ultimate moment of triumph seemed to have arrived without any fanfare”)

Eco-enviro reasons to find new planet and extraterrestrial panspermia advanced alien life …? recipe for advanced alien intelligence? Surely not. Langdon agrees.

Interesting Sagrada Familia star of the show …. as epitome of Darwinism, bottom-up evolving structure? Kirsch donation.

Conway’s Game of Life – Cellular Automata – I did scream Dennett & Hofstadter, didn’t I.

Darwin “If we admit a first cause the mind still craves to know whence it came and how it arose.”

silence / opposite – scheme of dying man?

Mare nostrum plus a q-computer – metallic monolith – E-Wave? – two half-brains vertically layered?

yep, bicameral = humanity

what’s inside? a new model of the universe

lots of geeky computer jokes.

more than a nod to ayn rand’s atlas shrugged speech

miller-urey primordial soup.

flaw predictability through complexity? nothingb about uncertainty? false climax

Origin seems to be only about life’s origin, not cosmos?

Bach!

entropy

every 38 years – Kondratiev

JEREMY ENGLAND – universal goal – efficient spread of energy requires pockets of order to maximise long run entropic dissipation of energy – Rick. Jeremy England and dissipative structures – universal teleology driven by local pockets of order maximising spread of disorder? Life is exceptionally effective tool for creating entropy /dissipating energy.

Life is the inevitable result of entropy.

Ah! part 2 not the loss of god but the prediction of where evolving intelligent entropy leads. (tweening in simulation modelling).

Not just new species overtaking intel human life, not just genus / order / phylum but new Kingdom absorbing humanity.
Kenin Kelly nothing new here in term of sci-fi

syncretic fusion of humanity with technology. hybrid specie hom sapiens > homo – bright future.

Singularity yes, but not Kurzweil –

“May our philosophies keep pace with our technologies. May love not fear be the engine of change.”

happy / sad ending trick

Merging of science and religion, a new religion by any other name – (Sacks)

Winston has no hopes & dreams, no sentimental attachment to himself.

Amor Vincit Omnia again! Spiritual love reigns. And love is NOT a finite resource. Dialogue is always more important than concensus.

Pana for History in libraries, art and museums.

The question of god lies in the difference between patterns (of information) and codes (intended to convey information).

The of mice and men denoument – obvious from the moment it happened. And a little too much neatly tying up loose ends – the true meaning of the key Blake line.

The Dark Religions are departed et sweet science remains.

Science can banish the dark religions …. so the enlightened ones can flourish.

Our Destiny in Dan Brown’s Origin?

I’m reading Dan Brown’s latest in a similar mode to my readings of Lee Child. That is it’s a genre and author that really holds no interest other than witnessing what a best-seller looks like and attempting an understanding how it’s constructed. Who am I to call it drivel? Stylistically neither has won me over. The “thrilling” aspect is very dependent on structural twists hidden under a mass of intricate detail. Ballistics and field-craft detail for example in Jack Reacher’s case; institutional locational and historical conspiracy detail in Robert Langdon’s case. I say hidden but, if you don’t find the detail topic absorbing, the plot devices are transparently obvious and telegraphed before every twist, so far.

With Origin however there is a level in which the content and the overall premise and thesis fit right into my agenda. From this point on this “review” is a spoiler. It’s the content I’m gutting here.

I’m reading it because of this review I noted here: “Teleology Without a God”. I’m interested in AI and latest information and communications technology not because they impress me about possible artificial futures, utopian or dystopian, but because they are helping us understand the evolution of real human consciousness, will and intelligence from the information potential of the universe.

Almost all of the components of Brown’s plot I’ve read before: The lying down in a meadow to look up at the cosmos, and the simulation in “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” are pure Douglas Adams. The religious institutional historical conspiracies and libraries of ancient books are pure Umberto Eco (as was already said about Brown many years ago) with the connections right to the top of the Vatican a la Godfather-III. A little too much religious suppression of science a la Galileo and al-Ghazali put me in mind of Alice Dreger and Salman Rushdie. Gaudi and his Familia Sagrada as archetypes to the plot, and the encoding of emergent natural patterns all scream Dennett and Hofstadter to me. I’m probably not Brown’s target audience.

One neat device is the use of a fictional conspiracy-theory web-clearing-house to summarise the public view of unfolding news stories, rather than inserting an inevitable myriad of individual tweets and messages into the narrative or dialogue. The cliched HAL(2001) and impossible Déjà Vu technology references are neatly played down by the character of the AI supporting our hero, named Winston as a nod to 1984 no doubt. There is a certain craft, and it’s not all bad. As suspected the topic is right on.

And, as usual, I’m writing this “review” barely a third into Origin. First impressions.

Looks like Brown’s central story really is the “discovery” that the middle way between mindless evolution and a creative god, is naturally evolved, intelligent and purposeful creativity – Teleology Without a God, as I already said. Information patterns are the root of course. At this point I can’t quite see two things: why this Elon Musk vs Discovery Institute angle is so earth shattering to the religious communities; and how is Brown going to resolve first-cause beyond his infinite corridor metaphor?

I’ll be back.

STEMming the tide of ignorant science.

STEM is the acronym for those “sciency” disciplines that contribute to the (human) built environment. It was coined at least in part to provide a handle on those areas of humanity that had traditionally been very male gender biased, unlike the humanities themselves. The natural order MSTE is arranged to make STEM a pronounceable acronym, but it represents part of a useful taxonomy of human knowledge (independent of gender issues).

There is always a tendency for people to put their topic, the one they are promoting, at the centre of their world view assuming the broadest definition of their topic. One of my pet hates is the extent anything remotely technical attracts the “isn’t science wonderful” meme. Science is indeed wonderful but, as I often say, it required a lot more than science to get 500,000 rivets flying in close formation to the moon and back.

The maths, logic and the art of being scientifically rational is one thing. Everyone should have a basic horizontal grounding in tools and methods and in the model of factual knowledge supported by these. But this is just science without a vertical education in why and how the whole edifice of humanity hangs together.

Using the natural MSTE taxonomy:
Science is more than Maths and Logic
Technology applies the art of the possible to the Science.
Engineering turns the possible into reality with Human Ingenuity

Horizontally, humanity interacts as a subjective input at every level, these are all human endeavours, but in terms of the vertical stack, “STEM” is simply the point of contact between science and the rest of the edifice. Education in and about science has limited value without understanding the whole of our built environment, by which I mean the sum total of all physical and human systems humanity has co-evolved.

Did I mention I was an engineer?

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And, right on time:

What matters? What’s matter anyway …. for another time.

Web Knowledge Goes to Ratshit

Really just a holding post, but a recurring theme of mine that the memetics of sharing information freely via the web necessarily tends to lowest common denominators, degenerates to simplest polarised positions, despite the efforts of those who pursue more nuanced truths.

So-called “inventor” of the web – Tim Berners-Lee – on how The Web is Failing.
The semantics of interlinked content is indeed degenerate.

Founding president of Facebook – Sean Parker – on the Monster that is Social Media.
(Also reported by the BBC.)

More to unpick, but in the meantime, read.

And Jaron Lanier too.