Month: January 2018

The Second Cyberbetics

Which came first? The second or the first?

“The Second Cybernetics” is the title of a 1963 paper by Magoroh Maruyama which I discover from a bit of googling around was considered seminal in shifting the focus of cybernetics from machines and mechanistic systems to the biological and social sphere. Much referenced in many later works.

Cybernetics is pretty fundamental to my Psybertron agenda, that the origins of cybernetics / kybernetes was always more general than machines, being more concerned with social systems following WWII. I suspect if I dig out my copy of Dupuy’s “Mechanisation of the Mind” (1994) I will find Maruyama as a reference (*). Certainly my own thrust has been to counteract the mechanistic focus of systems of regulation, whether in soft rules (for the guidance of wise men) or in arrangements of hard-wired gates (in good-fences). Especially topical now as people are predicting ever more algorithmic AI interventions in human life.

Maruyama too confirms that whilst he is giving the softer, more fluid kind of cybernetics a name to distinguish it from the harder mechanistic kind, already becoming prevalent in the white-heat of technological industrial growth of the 1960’s, the softer kind with the second name was always a primary part of the original intent of first cybernetics.

Since both types are systems of mutual causal relationships, or in other words systems of mutual feedbacks [between parts and wholes], they both fall under the subject matter of cybernetics.

But since the deviation-counteracting type has predominantly been studied up till now under the title of cybernetics, let us consider its studies the first cybernetics, and call the studies of the deviation-amplifying mutual causal relationships “the second cybernetics.”

The deviation-counteracting mutual causal process is also called “morphostasis“, while the deviation-amplifying mutual causal process is called “morphogenesis“.

Though the second cybernetics as defined here is lagging behind the development of the first cybernetics at the present moment, the germination of the concept of deviation amplifying mutual causal process is not entirely new. The concept was formulated in some fields even before the advent of [applied] cybernetics.

The field of economics is a good example.

The second form of cybernetics was already being applied in the human world before the so-called first kind could be applied in automating the physical world.

Maruyama uses his deviation-counteracting and deviation-amplifying distinction for what I short-handed as hard and soft. Either way, the key point is in the morphostasis / morphogenesis distinction.

The former is essentially static, always self-regulating towards some intrinsic equilibrium or to some stable externally-pre-set state in the mechanism – like a thermo-STAT. It merely preserves the past.

The latter is genetic, creative of new states which may be meta-stable, dynamically-stable or forever in unstable flux from which the future evolves. Quite rightly, the second cybernetics is the primary focus for an enlightened humanity. And not suprisingly is more complicated and more interesting. Not for the first time the easy meme has dominated the difficult.

I came across the Maruyama reference in Alan Rayner’s “The Origin of Life Patterns – in the natural inclusion of space in flux” about which I’ll say more soon, but I’m long overdue a review. In fact the reference is in the preface by the Springer Briefs in Psychology series editors Giudeppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner:

“Biological and social systems – open in their relationships with their environment – constantly produce innovation. New forms come into being, which are transformed into still newer forms – while maintaining generative continuity with the past.”

More on Rayner’s Origin of Life Patterns to come …

In fact, there’s a lot more to come on Maruyama’s Second Cybernetics too. Two-way “mutual causation” and causality itself, no less! The evolution of inhomogeneous entropy gradients. Informational model of genetics, and a simple cellular-automata example. Cultural and technological evolution. Naturally evolved directivity – teleology! All human life is here.

“The elaboration and refinement of the second cybernetics belong to the future, and we may expect many fruitful results from them.”

Magoroh Maruyama (June 1963)

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[Post Note: (*) Actually there is no reference by Dupuy to Maruyama, but Dupuy also talks in terms of going back to focus on a second cybernetics. I always find parallel thought interesting.]

The Cult of Mary Beard

Picked-up the Guardian long-read on “The Cult of Mary Beard” last night. As a clearly sympathetic biographical piece I found the use of “cult” in the title a little odd.

I presumed some irony, but never found that to be resolved, not even in the conclusion that her star having been in the ascendancy as a British national treasure, she knew she would inevitably fall out of the limelight at some point. I don’t see temporary popularity as necessarily cultish. The style and content of her messages fit a time and need but context-fugit and we either learn from them or not as we all move on. That’s as true of messages that are geuninely valuable as they are of a misguided cult.

I find Mary Beard genuinely valuable. And the long-read is valuable too; providing a great sense of the person you wouldn’t get from the surface of her public writings and broadcasts. Recommeneded.

One reason she has been in the spotlight recently was the spat between her and her legions of social-history supporters on the one hand and a band of scientistic detractors – amongst whom Nassim Taleb was prominent – criticising the appearance of an “African” Roman (ie non-slave) in an educational British-Roman historical piece as a PC fiction. Though the parties are un-named the events get a mention in the long-read:

Beard radiates authority and expertise, but she does not hesitate to get mixed up in messy public arguments, which often puts her on the frontline of the culture wars. Last year, when a far-right conspiracy theorist attacked a BBC cartoon that showed a man of sub-Saharan appearance as a Roman in Britain — political correctness gone mad! — Beard calmly stepped in to explain there was in fact “plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain”. Her expert intervention was met with a what she later described as a “torrent of aggressive insults, on everything from my historical competence and elitist ivory tower viewpoint to my age, shape and gender”.

For most people, this would be a cautionary tale; for Beard, it was evidence that such battles cannot be shirked. Embedded in her refusal to be silenced, in her endless online engagement, is a kind of optimism: the idealistic, perhaps totally unrealistic, notion that if only we listened to each other, if only we argued more cogently, more tolerantly and with better grace, then we could make public discourse something better than it is.

I agree with the sentiment and admire that position. A major part of my own agenda is that without “proper dialogue” no argument leads anywhere constructive. Unfortunately the mention as quoted perpetuates a myth that was left in the wake of the original spat. Any disagreement involving social media ends up with a sexist, ageist, racist stink as the trolls pile in, the after-taste can scarcely be anything but bitter, and subtle flavours are inevitable lost.

No one was arguing against “plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain“. That’s a given and that was not the root of the spat.

The political correctness accusations were about proportionality of representation in selecting a single (cartoonishly black-skinned) sub-Saharan / central-African individual as representative of the complex statistics of many haplo-groups that could and would have been amongst the Britannica Romana population over time. Skin colour and appearance varies across these many groups, and exactly which groups matter a great deal to today’s descendents of those populations whose routes took them from (say) North-Africa to the Middle-East and Europe or later from Central Africa to the Caribbean and America and any number of variations on those heritages.

As any historian surely knows, time and context matter. When it comes to identity politics, we do need to care about the political correctness of messages communicated. Of course simplifying decisions need to be made when representing a – model of a – whole complex ecology in a few cartoon examples, and creative fiction is essential to filling gaps in the social-historical record. It necessarily requires careful dialogue when a scientists talks to a social-historian, honesty and care on both sides. Social history is not “BS” (to quote Taleb) simply because it cannot all be evidenced objectively, directly and individually in every chosen detail. That would be scientism (*).

Once the trolls have piled in to defend their chosen party – talking past each other on both sides – dialogue becomes attack and defence. That’s a war between cults – even if it’s a phoney war to promote book sales – on both sides. Battles should not be shirked, but the point should be to turn them into constructive dialogue, not a fight to the death.

That aside, Charlotte Higgins’ piece is a recommended read. You will certainly learn a good deal about Mary Beard.

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[Post Note: (*) In fact one of my pet hates is overly creative scientific representation – sexy CGI videos of scientific happenings – of unobserved detail at cosmic and quantum scales, merely inferred from theory and indirect evidence. Obviously they help communication – and sell clicks and eyeballs – of the otherwise invisible processes and objects at issue, but their visualised “reality” overly reifies what is really informed speculation and generally misleads on the actual uncertainty and lack of detail in a way that a sketch or an “understood to be metaphorical” rubber-sheet (say) cannot. Again, you can forgive the creative “artistic licence” but it cuts both ways and requires balance of intentions. Dramatisation of both social-reality and science necessarily involve creative fiction.]

Post-PostCapitalism for New-NewLabour?

Great to see a proper dialogue with participants supporting and building on each other. On the face of it it was a debate on the (potential) job-destroying nature of AI and new algorithmic technologies, but it morphed into enlightened politics for a future we cannot know or control.

I’ve always said – “I love Paul Mason’s economics – but his politics stink.” But this shows that with the right dialogue, enlightened politics can emerge. In fact Chuka’s headline says it:

“I’m convinced Labour needs to stop pretending it’s a party of Marxists versus Neoliberals.”

And he says that

“After talking with Paul, … ”
and
” … Everyone wants to be ‘radical’ but the truth is a bit different.”

Too right. Again, as I’m always saying, what’s killing all modern discourse is the meme that everything is about binary choices in opposition, whereas Paul’s first one-word response to Chuka’s question is “both”. Its OK to talk with rather than always choose sides and argue against.(*)

Interestingly in Chuka’s piece he leads with the identity politics problem of choosing labels of factions or tribes we feel the need to identify with, to set ourselves in contrast or opposition to others. “Do they serve any useful purpose in 2018?” he asks. There is only passing summary of the content of PostCapitalism, but there is very positive alignment, focussing on the degenerate nature of competing labels.

“Paul was accused of being a “revolutionary Marxist” in the House of Commons in May 2016 by the then Tory Chancellor George Osborne, who was mocking Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell for signing Paul up to speak at John’s New Economics lecture series.”

This meme of mocking perceived opposites as extreme caricatures is part of the problem, as I’ve also often said. I always knew Paul’s thinking was enlightened. When I say his “politics stink” I do mean it when I see the all the “eat the rich” rhetoric in his pro-Corbyn / pro-Momentum social twittering – he goes to great efforts to look like a revolutionary radical in his anti-government and anti-moderate pronouncements. But in a constructive dialogue, no reason our politics can’t be as enlightened as our thinking.

Well done Chuka, I think he gets it. Hope for the Labour Party yet.
Question is do those currently in party-power get it too?

[Post note: Only watched the whole of the Paul Mason contribution after posting the above. Recommended. He makes one mistake trying to claim Corbyn as a social democrat, much to “semantic” consternation of the others. Probably what prompted Chuka’s piece on identity politics?]

[Post Note: (*) Obviously this is close to the idea of a middle-ground position, somehow including the “excluded middle”. Very important to recognise the Mary Parker-Follet position here, that “anyone who thinks this is about some waterered-down PC compromise has missed the point” … that it’s about “integration” of opposing possibilities.]

[Post Note: Interestingly Paul had posted this piece disagreeing tactically with Chuka, only a week before.]

[Post Note: And since then, Paul is explaining what a “radical” social-democrat needs to be …


… though he is still bandying around the “neoliberal” epithet, making enemies for rhetorical purposes. Hmmm.]

Evolved Teleology

A piece tweeted today by @alomshaha linked from Cambridge University Research pages.

First time “cog wheel” mechanisms (observed in many natural invertebrate contexts) have been shown to be functional as such – the point being the “designed-looking” arrangement – from our human perspective – is naturally evolved …. er, obviously.

More interesting are the below-the-line comments – the usual trolling of the scientistic and the intelligent designers calling each other stupid. ie stupid-squared. Responses even include the ubiquitous flagella-motor example:

Whilst everyone is playing the usual ’tis / ’tisn’t “binary bollox” game with teleology as intelligent design, the most rational reality remains blissfully ignored. That the teleology of intelligent design is naturally evolved. Calling it god or science is a human choice, an anthropic perspective if ever there was one.

The Multiverse Kludge

Always seen the multiverse idea as nothing more than a thought experiment, a kludge, a total cop-out if seen as representing or explaining anything like reality, (pretty much the same as Schroedinger’s Cat in that respect). By adding a massively complex explanation – whole new universes of infinite posssibility – to answer simpler problems and questions, it’s the antithesis of Occam. It’s just not cricket. It’s basically dishonest.

Nice convergence yesterday and today. Two or three of my favourite physicists and a favourite philosopher.

Here Carlo Rovelli praising and succinctly summarising Sabine Hossenfelder’s piece on why multiverses are unnecessary speculation. Madness she calls it.

And here Massimo Pigliucci also recommending the same piece, whilst also reminding us of his own post from yesterday referring to Sean Carroll and Sabine on the same topic, in which he calls Larry Krauss and Stephen Hawking “ignorant” of philosophy. Hear, hear!

Onward and upward.

[Post Note: I have some problems with Sabine. I think I’m on her mute list, she sees me as some cranky-old-guy with his own personal theory of everything – and a model of it in my garden shed(!) – and therefore to be ignored, even when all I am doing is pointing out where some of the questions with existing standard models are worth asking. I’m not alone in that. But she’s not stupid and seems to be gradually finding the questions for herself. I have another – critical – draft post on her recent flatness, simplicity and elegance of the universe piece, where she is too dismissive again – especially of Anthropic questions. My interest really is epistemological and philosophical, and scientists do need to listen.]

[I should add / clarify – the multiverse is distinct from multiple universes. The madness, the kludge is to see many parallell worlds that have their own universal behaviour that can support any conceivable possibilities – every possible combination of quantum “choices” – an explanation for “anything” that explains nothing. The idea of many “universes” is quite different, causally linked through time each with their own big-bangs, big-crunches and evolving properties from their original boundary conditions is part of one (possible) continuous explanation of cosmology and cosmogeny.]

“You Got Me”. Aha! The Cathy Newman Learning Moment

Preamble

I’ve written on identity politics before, and most recently called the BBC Gender pay gap “mythical”. Also frequently written on freedoms of speech NOT including a right to offend, even though no-one has a right not to be offended. Recently in the PC-Pinker debate the key point is that the freedom to risk offending is coupled with a duty of care – to be careful not to offend where possible and to care enough about potentially offended persons to resolve the offence. It’s why PC was invented, the problem is when PC becomes a censorious taboo (or worse, a physical ban) on even mentioning terms and ideas. [And several more recent threads linked and summarised here.]

My main underlying thread is that ideas are memes. Thoughts, patterns of thought and argument, and even thinking itself are simply memes upon memes, memeplexes and meta-memes. Our thoughts and thinking tools have evolving lives of their own as they are repeatedly used within and cycled through the brains of humans via our mouths and ears … and social media. Ideas coevolve with humanity.

Currently the most problematic meme is the polarisation fetish. The idea that simple statements are right or wrong, true or false, this’n’that, us’n’them – the “is vs isn’t” in these various binary identity debates. That rational discourse – critical thinking – involves questioning based on disagreement and doubt that attempts to show the other guy to be wrong. It’s how objective science makes progress, so it must be the best way to progress thinking and ideas. It’s scientism in fact. It’s a problem because conflict sells media, attracts clicks and eyeballs. If it bleeds it leads and this adversarial Q&A or argument and counter-argument debate meme feeds this drive by reinforcing disagreement, reinforcing the meme that creates it. Polarisation begets polarisation. People being “owned” by their opponents is the most grotesque form. Pure trolling. Oh, how we all laughed.

It is the antithesis of progressive dialogue.

Well, It Happened Today

Jacob Kishere brought Jordan Peterson to my attention. I’d been vaguely aware of his controversial views causing a stir out there in the ether – but there’s no shortage of that, so I’d never looked too closely. Jacob pointed out a trend in common with Sam Harris (and others), that in the podcast environments they are in control of (“safe spaces” or “intellectual dark web”) conversations and dialogue on contentions non-PC topics seemed to be making progress and taking on a life of their own – and generating audiences. I was always a bit sceptical of Sam Harris intellectual credentials – too pat, too arrogantly scientistic in the God vs Science wars but had noted several times that he seemed to have a hidden long-game riding on his notoriety and book-sales. “What is Sam Harris game?” I questioned at one point. Later, starting with his spectacular falling-out with erstwhile horeseman compatriot Dan Dennett and subsequent kiss-and-make-up podcast conversations with Dan and with Maajid Nawaz, I noted that Harris seemed to be somewhat “chastened” – prepared to be been seen to have been wrong and changing his mind in the course of dialogue.

Today Joseph Ratliff shared links to the recent Channel4TV interview of Jordan Peterson by Cathy Newman. A fair bit of it is on gender inequalities. Initially people were sharing a very short clip of Cathy lost for words – accompanied by all the usual predictable misogynistic, victim trolling, anti-mainstream-media hatred. accusing Cathy of some lefty PC agenda and so on. In fact the whole interview is very enlightening. Cathy does follow the journalistic “Paxman” meme of adversarial questions aiming to find fault with Peterson’s case. I’d guess even if she’d done extra-special research into Peterson’s real arguments beforehand, she’d have had trouble re-inventing the Q&A, summarising points of disagrement style, in one interview the following day. That meme is pretty much engrained in the schedules, standard practices and our own expectations. Hence Jacob’s pointing out the alternative “intellectual dark web” where the rules can be, have evolved to be, different.

What we really need is this evolution to happen in mainstream media where journos and channels are judged on public clicks and eyeballs and where the prevailing meme (in the brains behind our fingers and eyeballs) is the adversarial Q&A. It’s that public meme we need to evolve. There are several points in that typically adversarial interview where despite his provocations and her over-simplistic (erroneous, see*) counter summaries, Peterson very good-naturedly points out where they are agreeing and they both exhibit smiley body-language. Moreover when lost for words (where the hate-selected clip ends) Cathy does continue with the admission “you got me” and the interview continues a while longer with good humour and ends mutually respectfully. Result.

I reckon Cathy learned something. You can too. Then we can have the proper dialogue we all need.

[Post Note: After many threads of trolls and Cathy in danger of being cast in the victim role:

Reasonable dialogue instead of fetishised adversarial model, as I’ve said. Here’s hoping.]

[And (*) there’s more:

Elizabeth also says she’s is still confused by Peterson, but the sentiment is right here. As I said above, the adversarial style that mis-summarises your interlocutor in extreme, seemingly simple objective factual ways – basically rhetorical “straw-men” even if unintended as such – kills intelligent debate on subtle realities and just leaves polarised options hanging in the ether.

Spot on says Sam @Elizaphanian. So it goes. And that idea of “accurately characterising the views of those you don’t agree with” is Dennett / Rappaport – don’t move on until you get “thanks, I couldn’t have put it better myself” And Sam gets it too – followed-up with his own post.]

[And:


HOW WE DON’T COMMUNICATE NOW … hear that?!?]

[Post Note: This Joe Rogan post-Cathy Newman interview with Jordan Peterson gets it pretty much right. The focus on the media position and Cathy’s role, as opposed to anything personal about her. Hat tip to Jack Kishere.]

[Post Note: This analysis makes all the right points about why Peterson is right and “Cathy” is wrong – that’s not news – but is very derisive of Cathy on a personal level. This woman pillories Cathy. I pillory the meme that says we expect everything to fall into simple right and wrong choices where we have to choose sides and dis the opposition, a meme that all media and (most) journalism falls into, to sell clicks by stoking such (mythcal) difference. A stoking that is multiplied by “trolls” piling in on either side. “The Gender Pay Gap” is mythical, as I wrote some weeks ago, but that’s true of all “identity politics” not just gender. Hat tip to Terry Waites.]

“Computing” Education

I’ve never been a programming geek, though I share some of the early Basic and Fortran experience in engineering and earlier BBC Micro interest of Eben Upton and Jim AlKhalili, as well as extensive information systems experience subsequently.

As the inventor of the Raspberry Pi, Upton is obviously centred on the hardware understanding of computer functionality. Interesting however, that the original abortive intent to work with BBC as an educational project has been maintained in ongoing computer science education including supporting teacher-training resources. A great potted history of this basic hardware and programming educational project on today’s Life Scientific.

My pet project is education in “computation” over and above “computing” very much because as well as supporting bottom-up educational development towards computers and information systems, which Upton believes should address as wide a range of non-technical students as well, computation itself is fundamental to all natural human disciplines, with or without implementation in computer hardare or software. Everyone should understand this.

Should maybe join up with RaspberryPiForum and with MagPi?

 

Identity and Misguided Political Correctness

Great edition of Start the Week with Tom Sutcliffe talking to Peter Carey, Afua Hirsch and Geert Mak.

Listening in the background, but clear message that difference – (historical, geographical, biological) – matters, it’s valuable. Words for “other” have evolved in context. Denying it is ignorant, simply insulting.

[Previously on Psybertron: Identity Beyond Politics and Good Fences. And recently on PC with Pinker.]

[Post Note: And the Cathy Newman / Jordan Peterson kefuffle came only a day later:

And, more from Afua Hirsch in mainstream media:

… causing a flutter, as did this recent cover of American Skeptic magazine:

Not sure what the message is, other than click-bait media selling ... fear of anti-intellectualism?]