Month: June 2018

Correlation is not Causation, but …

Correlation is not causation …

… smart-asses often point out when someone mis-uses some statistical or perceived correlation. That’s true, and easy enough when potential common causal connections are obviously available, but that’s quite unusual in the “real world”.

Causation is fundamentally mysterious even in simple Newtonian billiard-ball cases, or our daily expectation of sunrise, but at the common sense level causation is really about empirical certainty of expectation and prediction – if this then that, whether precise “physical” mechanisms are or are not clearly available.

In the real world however mechanisms are rarely simple or precise, so causation is really a testable theory of why if this then that, where the why is controllable. But real life is never a repeatable experiment, except maybe with drosophilla, and rarely with humans. And in  real life caustion may involve many variables over many space-time-scales. It’s complicated.

Correlation is useful even with negligible knowledge of causation. More knowledge of causation always helps. (Now, let’s read this:

“Big Data, epistemology and causality: Knowledge in and knowledge out in EXPOsOMICS” by Stefano Canali

(Hat tip Timandra Harkness.)

More Multiverse Bollox

Quite normally these days, headlines deliberately mislead – it’s called click-bait – and so often these days “Multiverse” is that click-bait. Total bollox, but it sells clicks.

Trouble is, when it’s the headline, it’s very hard to tell if the piece itself is saying anything useful that may or may not depend on any multiverse ideas. The simplest conception that there are parallel universes where alternate realities have arisen independently of our own is not – and never can be – science. It’s a thought experiment. And as a theory it can explain nothing – by explaining everything conceivable as merely a possibility, it explains nothing. And being an independent universe can never involve any empirical validation in this one. Just not science.

There are scientific theories that predict multiple “universes” that become independent, but they must share some historical points with ours. Even these – the wrong side of some space-time horizon – will only ever be empirically testable by very indirect means, if ever. However, their explanation can have value, and these can explain – must include explanation of – different situations arising non-randomly in these different zones. A single multiverse: one universe, multiple zones, not multiple universes.

Philip Ball writing in Prospect asks “Just how special is human existence?” and his headline writer baits the hook with “The answer could lie in multiverse theory.” Yeah right. Actually some interesting discussion of anthropic prespectives of our special human existence. How could there be any other?

Jim Baggott responds also in Prospect “The problem with “multiverse theories”: they’re just not science.” Agreed. And as he notes, the context of what the author is actually trying to say matters more than any misleading headline.

Anthropic discussions remain interesting however. Also recently, here Max Tegmark writing in Cosmos on the Fermi Paradox paper by Anders Sandberg et al that has been shared widely. (Interesting doesn’t mean either Sandberg or Tegmark are necessarily right …. that’s a longer story eh, Rick?)

Science. The original “fake news”. Sigh!

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[Post Note. Talking of science news, New Scientist now has this story:

Which on the face of it is addressing the bollox, at least making the important distinction between cosmological space-time history and non-scientific quantum hackery.]

[Post Note: Twitter exchange with Tom Chivers, referred to by Elizabeth Oldfield in sharing the original link (follow the thread too, for alternative statements of the argument consolidated below).

“Not science” is only interesting in so far as scientific journals and supporters of scientific explanations make claims for a scientific monopoly on justifying what are really metaphysical assertions.

What really matters are “good explanations” – explanations that are (a) likely to be true, (b) not super-natural and (c) likely to be useful in their explanatory reach. Honesty helps too, when it comes to metaphysical positions.

Likelihood is about information complexity – kinda like Occam’s simplicity argument, which sparked the original exchange – but really about probabilities of events in space-time. Evolution – simple algorithmic repetition – is the simplest, indeed inevitable, path to complex life and intelligence. (The reason other non-human life is unlikely to exist in the “observable” universe is because we’ve failed to observe it, despite our efforts. Not that it is unlikely to arise. We have, already. The observable matters here – see also “horizons”.)

JBP reminds us that even the most objective scientists need metaphysical positions.]

[Post Note – Aug 2018 and the Multiverse-Bollox click-bait continues. One Universe is Not Enough. Ethan Siegel this time from It Started With A Bang writing in Forbes. (Hat tip to Rick Ryals on FB for the link.)

As I said “This is just a word-game – publisher’s click-bait – of undermining the word universe. Cosmology isn’t science, isn’t physics. Starting with the definition that there is only one, with nothing beyond it in space or time – the Uni-verse we’re talking about – there are simply zones separated by horizons, Horizons that limit how much known “laws and constants” of physics communicate and change across such horizons. The universe is more than the observability from the zone we’re in. It’s a communication problem, with meta-laws – all other “laws and constants” evolve as they are repeatedly communicated. (I’m with Verlinde and Rovelli)“]

Because Data?

Possibly conflating two things inappropriately but they are linked at an information level.

Games evolve as their rules are evolved. I call it the John Terry effect. When Terry made the overt calculation that a non-violent “professional foul”, perpetrated on other than the last man with a scoring opportunity, wouldn’t get him sent off, and therefore he would commit the foul and take a yellow-card “for the team” …. he was sent off. Applying the rule, in prior knowledge of the rule – being a smartass – changes the rule. (Ungentlemanly conduct is about bad faith in relation to a rule, not about knowing the facts of the rule.)

That’s evolution, by definition.

Jermain Jenas is intelligent. No amount of information will make Harry Kane as intelligent (or John Terry for that matter). The more is known about the game (eg statistical data), the more how it’s played will evolve, the more its rules will evolve in response AND the less current knowledge will successfully predict its future outcomes.

That’s a game, by definition.

Short-term Jenas will probably be a better pundit than his current older peers (old dogs, new tricks is surely as old as the hills). But that’s because he’s intelligent. Don’t believe the big-data hype.

“There’s an expression: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Computers are our hammers right now.” https://t.co/mRdTNsbsyd

(And if you’re interested in football, Inverting the Pyramid is a great book on how successful footballing strategies inexorably fail. It’s all in the game. Even Eco on Italian Fascism invokes Wittgenstein on games.)

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[Post Note: And who knew?

Later that same day, yesterday, we now have the Harry Kane and the VAR meme doing the rounds. All games depend on the possibility of bad decisions and actions by players and officials – they wouldn’t be a game otherwise. There’s a kind of sweet-spot between the predictable and unpredictability of outcomes that makes for a “good” game. It’s why the rules of long-running popular games (like football) need to evolve over time, to keep play in that sweet-spot and audiences interested, as technologies and tactics evolve. Three points for a win, the back-pass rule and of course the (apocryphal) offside rule. Often subtle changes are not to the rules (or laws) but to the guidance on how they are applied, handling benefits of the doubt. There are many variables for a wise FA to tweak.

Sometimes technology or extra eyeballs are introduced to reduce doubts – enter VAR. Sometimes specific doubts (goal-line technology), sometimes doubt in general (VAR linked invisibly to the ref’s wrist).

Firstly can I say, it was a dire game by the England team after an encouraging first 20 minutes, and as is normal in international football (which I rarely watch these days*), the refereeing was dire anyway. Kane gets MotM because he scores two goals (!) not because Trippier was the best England player on the pitch by a mile (Khazri was the best player on the pitch). How Young and Sterling even get selected ahead of Rose and Rashford is beyond me, but I digresss. Back to the refereeing: No discipline and control generally, tolerating too much disrespect from the players (see Terry-effect) and too many decisions given to England (eg for Tunisia offside). What was meant to be new was the VAR, but few people, least of all the refs (and possible even the VAR teams themselves) appear to know how it is meant to be used. It will take time – that’s evolution.

The problem was the lack of respect. Blatant rugby tackles on Kane at all set-pieces nonchalantly ignored by the ref as the players knew he would. Crap refereeing spoils a game, even for “winners” – see sweet-spot. The VAR never even invoked to help make any call (few of us will know how or why, there is no public “challenge a decision” concept). The talk is not about the quality of VAR decisions, but about their obvious absence, either way. Nothing marginal or sweet-spot about that. Nothing to do with any game. Apart from artistry of the likes of a Messi or a Hazard (or hopefully a Salah) all the value in any game is in its marginal decisions.

When all you have is a computer every problem is a nail in football’s coffin.]

[(*) Prefer real football in championship and football leagues. Where boys (naive) are men (respectful) and goalposts are jumpers …. well maybe not.]

[Post Note: When it comes to philosophy in football,  David Papineau

Seems I am in good company.]

Pan-Proto-Psychism?

Formally agreed names for recognised philosophical positions often elude me because quite often I do want to play fast and loose with definitions until something new emerges. Infuriating I know, but bear with me.

This whacky click-bait headline in Scientific American:

“Could Multiple Personality Disorder
Explain Life, the Universe and Everything?”

… introduces this paper from The Journal of Consciousness Studies:

“The Universe in Consciousness.”

by Bernardo Kastrup, whose idea is:

“There is only cosmic consciousness.” – And the abstract lists the paper dealing with: physicalism / bottom-up panpsychism / cosmopsychism / the hard problem of consciousness / the combination problem / the decombination problem.

Obviously anything like pan-psychism undermines centuries of established physical science, so as is often said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (As Kastrup points out in later Twitter traffic, despite the undermining, much of the established structure can in fact stay intact.) But why make it this hard? Why make such an extraordinary claim?

If physics and consciousness are both emergent from the same proto-stuff and emergent through evolution to be more than the sum of their parts – both ergodic and non-ergodic parts – then job done?

I often refer to my own fundamental information position as pan-proto-psychism. It’s not that the universe comprises or depends on a cosmic consciousness, but that both the physical and mental universes are built of the same proto-conscious and proto-physical stuff – stuff called fundamental information. All the things we know and love are emergent from evolved patterns (of information) but are rarely reducible to their components. Philosophy-friendly scientists in both physics (String and QLG?) and consciousness (IIT?) both seem to be headed to this conclusion.

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[Hat tip to Sabine Hossenfelder for the original link. However a great flame-war arising from his response to her tweet …

Another side to my agenda – why go looking for a fight when there are more constructive options? Funnily enough in the immediate preceeding post I had said:

“public conversations in science are often dishonest, largely political in fact, about playing to galleries and tribes”

Hear, hear.]

Is Truth Sacred?

Two things came together this morning.

Firstly, over the weekend I engaged in a Facebook thread by Sabine Hossenfelder discussing Brian Keating’s brief video: “What’s a Greater Leap of Faith, God or the Multiverse?”.

And secondly, this morning I listened to Elizabeth Oldfield in conversation with Tom Chivers in Theos’ “Sacred Podcast”.

Brian’s conclusion in the multiverse video, agreed by Sabine, is that as leaps of faith, they are at least on a par. I also agreed with Brian that the difference is that the scientific leap of faith is a dishonest one:

“It’s a brief video, and lots wrong with Keating’s choice of examples and arguments. Most scientists? … sure … I happen to be in the camp that would agree that a multiverse theory (there are many variations) that permits anything, explains nothing. Sabine and many others have pointed this out before. I agree it’s just as big a leap of faith as any theist, BUT more importantly (as Keating suggests) a dishonest one. The real problem is the dishonesty. As Rick Ryals says – this denial overlooks an alternative simple natural explanation that life – and ever more intelligent life in fact – is fundamentally inevitable. Emergent information > time > entropy laws. Entirely natural. Nothing is less surprising than life.”

“When it comes to Ockham and explanations that explain anything explaining nothing – people should look at David Deutsch’s concept of “explanatory reach”. (Particularly intriguing in his case since Deutsch IS in fact a multiverse advocate!) Sabine you should also give Erik Verlinde’s ideas another chance – aside from mathematical rigour 

In the Theos podcast, Tom says a lot of things I don’t agree with – he’s a free-will denier for example. But for me he is simply and quite typically “scientistic” – a greedy reductionist who sees objectivity of evidence as some kind of absolute standard. That’s several longer conversations.

What Tom says he holds sacred is “truth” – which sounds fine apart from this problem with defining truth as something absolute – the result of objective causal reductionism. However imperfect the state of our human empirical quest to get there, this absolute sacred object nevertheless exists on a pedestal somewhere? Truth with a capital “T” as it is often referred in philosophical circles.

There is no such thing, not even in science. And many scientists do in fact agree, though it’s not penetrated the post-Dawkins / New Atheist Horsemen memeplex in public culture yet. Enlightened science really is Post-Post-Modernist. It really has got over the slippery-slope fear of cultural relativism unleashed by relativity and quantum weirdness in public science consciousness.

My point here is more specific – Tom also agrees with Elizabeth, and myself – private conversations can be more honest. As I say, public conversations in science are often dishonest, largely political in fact, about playing to galleries and tribes. In complex situations evidence is always moot and dependent on chains of authority and trust. Faith dare I say?

What is really sacred here is Honesty. Not honesty in the sense of a narrow syllogistic truth of all evidenced premises and individual statements made, but in a wider honesty and integrity sense – character, intent and care for outcomes. Virtue anyone?

The Matrix Cometh

This is just a holding post. Already in my previous post on Carlo Rovelli, I was overdue a fuller review. Since then I’ve been reading Sean Carroll, and finding myself reading backwards, from the index of key topics and chapter headings. The reality is that every current philosophical physicist I read, I find enormous implicit overlap and reinforcement of fundamental models of physics despite explicit competitive disagreement. The critical half of thinking seems to win out in “scientists still haven’t agreed on xxx” whereas a synthetic view suggests enormous deep agreement – on things NOT recognised in accepted authoritative interpretations of the Standard Model and Core Theory of physics.

I’m musing on the idea that a simple matrix, polling who supports which concepts, might lay the points bare more clearly than more prosaic words on the topic(s). Roughly, physics effectively needs a metaphysical reboot from a different starting-point on Quantum Gravity and Emergent Time. Defence of existing bases (ie politics) is leading to supernatural denial of available rational natural explanations (ie science).

Anyway what I need to do is a summary of my recent readings of:

  • Sean Carroll (“The Big Picture“)
  • Carlo Rovelli (“The Order of Time” and “Reality is Not What it Seems“)
  • David Deutsch(“The Beginning of Infinity” and “The Fabric of Reality“)
  • Erik Verlinde (Not yet published, and existing presentations and articles)
  • Sabine Hossenfelder (“Lost in Math” not yet read, and existing articles and papers)
  • Max Tegmark, Lee Smolin and many others (previously read and blogged about on Psybertron)
  • Rick Ryals (fellow traveller physicist on social media etc.)

And no, sorry to disappoint, The Matrix reference has nothing to do with a fictional parallel reality, just a means of presentation and organisation
– aka “For the love of spreadsheets.”

Well we never! PoPoMo Physics Again.

I’m reading my way through Carlo Rovelli’s “The Order of Time” (Finished Part 1 of 3) and finding it full of items that resonate. Not least because I already loved his “Reality is Not What it Seems” but also because I have been joining up the dots with the work of David Deutsch and Erik Verlinde , physicists in competing fields but with near-total common metaphysical ground. Post-post-modernism.

Even incidental items intrigue. For example:

I think we maybe all knew that Einstein was working in the Swiss patent office at the time his space-time relativity thinking was emerging. I think it’s also pretty common knowledge that the setting of standard time in everyday life was very much driven by (rail) transport operations needing to sync up the meaning of running on time. How hadn’t I noticed that Einstein had been working on patents for synchronised timekeeping of railway clocks? Doh!

I think I already knew Leibni(t)z was spelled without a “t”. How did I not know he had dropped it deliberately in protest at Newton introducing disembodied time into his equations of motion?

We knew Gödel had been Einstein’s closest friend in the last years of his life at Princeton – there’s even a new book on exactly that – and much of it figures in Rebecca Goldstein’s work on Gödel as well as in works by others. What I hadn’t realised was that Gödel was the first to recognise the possibility of closed-loop trajectories in space-time – where effect can, in some real sense, precede cause.

But those are not the important content, these are:

Real things are not absolute things, in fact there are few if any absolute things. Not even laws of physics can be fundamentally fixed everywhere. Everything is relative and our understanding local.

If we really are to understand space-time we need to think in terms of fluid streams of events and not persistent things.

It is a Netwonian error to think of things contained in space (or time). Spacetime is an integral part of all things.

Spacetime is therefore more fundamentally quantised than either matter or energy. The Planck-scale exists in both space and time.

The most fundamental property of quantised stuff is Information or its complement (or should that be its conjugate), Entropy. [Post Note: Important to note, after Alan Rayner, that these quanta are NOT in any sense building-blocks, they are simply the smallest resolution at which we can know about fluid patterns of space-time.]

The flow of time is our local impression of histories of entropy. There is no general or absolute sense in which the flow of time is always towards increasing entropy, simply the experience of a long-term trend.

At black hole horizons time stands still, events stop flowing, nothing happens, nothing exists. (See closest spacing of “bits” on horizons in previous post.)

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I’ll be back.

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I read it to completion last night. Excellent stuff: grammar and even love. We really are all post-post-modernists now, even physicists. (Will need to cosnstruct a review of key learnings.)

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Perfection in Performance

Watched this 2004 video many a time since I first discovered it a few years ago, and of course it got resurrected when Prince and then Petty passed away in 2016 1nd 2017. Thought I’d capture it here.

Perfection is not just the solo itself, but the whole choreography. Despite the lights catching his red outfit whilst playing along, he remains understated in the dimly lit wings. His guitar pedals are already set-up in front of Dhani, his minder is there to catch him as he leans back into the audience, with a quick visual check over his shoulder, and several glances and grins are exchanged with the band. He owns the spotlight from thereon. Finally and nonchalantly dispensing with his guitar the moment the last note has faded – to who knows where. And it is a great guitar solo.

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[Post Note: Reminded by a great Twitter thread from Anil Dash that just 3 years after this he did that amazing performance at SuperBowl 2007 in Miami. We were living in the US at the time I recall.

How Prince won the Super Bowl

How Prince won the Super Bowl (anildash.com)

Some excellent analysis of why it was so good, with the whole performance and more in clips.]

[Post Note: How have I never seen this before?

Too easy to spend an hour hopping around YouTube.]

[Post Note: And whilst I’m here, let’s capture this one. U2 performing for the 2018 Grammys with their anti-Trump anthem.

U2 – Get Out Of Your Own Way – LIVE The 60th GRAMMYs
from Cretu Marius on Vimeo.]

[And this: Best version of Lily Allen’s “Fear” performed on Jools.

Not the greatest recording quality, but the best unexpurgated version, keeps getting taken down.]

[And a connection top to bottom? In that Superbowl performance above Prince does several stadium-quality covers, including a medley with Foo Fighers “Best of You” … and, in that Jools series there was also a fantastic performance of “Numb” by Gary Clarke Jr, someone I’d seen several times in Austin, also with Eric Zapata on the second guitar – that outro is special.

Well, another great performance was Foo Fighters at Austin City Limits, which opens with a blistering version of “Times Like These”, something I play on repeat, but if you run the whole concert performance, there’s great section  where the Fighters invite Austin stalwarts Gary and Jimmy Vaughan to jam.

Can’t find a full free version of that gig – the one that opens with “Times Like These” – this was the return to Austin City Limits after they had done the ACL Festival (outdoor) gig, also with Gary guesting.]