Month: October 2018

Basic Game-Theory in Evolution

What’s the best next move in the game of life? I’m forever pointing out the evolutionary nature of all life decisions, so I thought I’d make a little post I can point at when necessary.

(If you prefer skip straight to Nicky Case’s excellent visual “Evolution of Trust Simulator” in the footnote, and come back to the words. Bottom line is ALL life-moves involve trust, and it’s scary to realise that media systems are in fact degenerately evolving trust OUT of the system. Read on.)

This is a tiny recurring example of what is fundamental about cultural evolution, which always involves information exchanges of ideas. (In fact information exchange and replication is fundamental to evolution full stop, biologically and even physically, just more obvious culturally in daily life.) One mystery is cause and effect, or blame and responsibility for consequences in political life, but again the mystery exists at all levels, even physics as I say. It’s mysterious because, despite the appearances of experience and hindsight, most causation involves some interaction and questions of which-way / two-way causation. Hard to credit at the level of physics, and easy to reject in a temporal precedence sense, but then even time is fundamentally weirder than everyday human experience.

The course of a river is constrained (caused) by its banks at the same time as the shaping of the river bank is scoured (caused) by the flow in the river. The net result is predictable in nature but not in detail. So many biological examples are cast as arms-races if competitive or exchanges of interests if collaborative. Again all species (physical, biological or cultural) are a matter of hindsight, not prediction.

At the cultural (social and intellectual) level ideas and responses continually bounce off each other. Even rationally intentioned at each step – it’s a game getting to best (or even least-worst) outcomes as discourse evolves imperfect knowledge and understanding at every expression. Even rationally intentioned, those outcomes may not converge predictably. Add in irony (and metaphor by analogy, per the Hofstadter zero-rules “Tabletop” game) and it’s anybody’s guess – it’s a creative game.

The example here is the irony problem:

It is now standard practice in game shows to read out news items, ads and “letters” sent in. In fact it’s been standard practice to publish individual reactions as long as media have existed, it’s just that the cycle of publish and react (and to react to and/or republish the reaction to the reaction) is so much faster and more ubiquitous these days. So is the irony in the hope or in the truth of the response or hope and intent of the reaction or … where?

It’s in all of them, it’s everywhere. I’ll wager most typos or absurd “funny” contributions are ironic from the outset. The original sender is complicit in the game where the publisher knows the contribution is ironic. The sender gets published and the publisher gets read and re-published in further media – win-win-win-win. Add in those adding their own irony when sharing their response and , you can be sure even the originator is doubling down on multiple levels of irony-but-is-it in order to make moves in the game.

I’m not even sure what “I hope it’s true” means. It’s certainly true that it is ironic, but how many levels of irony? That’s anybody’s guess – which means anybody can make the next move in the game, and there are so many immediate opportunities to make that move. The game of life.

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[Post Note: Seeing the usual annual news story (yawn) about who won the world championship with which word, reminds me that Scrabble is an archetype of the process / problem. In my lifetime it’s gone from a game to test family and friends vocabulary-in-use, with the dictionary on hand as adjudication in case of disagreement, to a game of who knows the most obscure letter combinations that players know exist as words in the world’s most comprehensive dictionaries. An entirely different species of game.]

[*** Post Note ***
Very sophisticated simulation of social evolutionary game theory, even if you believe you already know the standard cases. (It’s a powerful visualisation by Nicky Case of Axelrod 1984 much referenced in Dennett and other sources.)

Many different aspects demonstrable. The significance of “trust”. Specifically “fidelity”- many rounds of (conservative) replication with only few exceptions. Also individual to individual significance, as opposed to generalised individual vs mass / class or class vs class cases. That fidelity of % miscommunication (memetic mutation) is very telling – worth playing through to the end.

Trust Simulator

(Spoiler: Our problem today isn’t just that people are losing trust, it’s that our environment [unmediated media communications anyone?] acts against the evolution of trust.)

Can be replayed with different strategies and different research aims. Sorry, lost the original Tweeted link, but I suspect must have been EES source? This seems like definitive demonstration of my own intuitive position. Respect and trust matter, and “social-media” is destroying it. It’s anti-social media. So, sadly now, it’s even worse. We can now not only game “the system” we can game the long-run behaviour of game-theory itself. This is REALLY SCARY.]

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[Post Note Nov 2020:

Another classic example.]

The Stories That Bind Humanity

Was about to post a placeholder for a piece on the need for “Religion by any other name.” I last mentioned the concept – a merging of causes in a Humanistic value-model – in response to a Rabbi Sacks talk. (And did I see a article only yesterday “destroying” Alain de Botton over his taking on board the best bits of religion?)

It arose today with the potentially explosive consequences of recognising the disparity in secular and religious “fertility behaviour”. This tweet / paper and a thread of three comments below in particular. (General gist of truth whatever the detail analysis / discourse right now.)

The nudge to actually post came from an article / interview in New Humanist presenting Alex Rosenberg’s idea that:

“We would not have survived in the Darwinian struggle on the African savannah without the theory of mind. The trouble is it long ago outlived its usefulness.”

“The trouble is that this sort of history – without stories – uses theories, models, equations, data, in short science. And since we were selected for preferring stories to science, we’ll keep on demanding [story-based] history as our preferred mode of understanding, greatly to our cost, I fear.

Completely the opposite of any truth! Almost impossible to approach directly as a problem with a solution, but to recognise as a game-theoretic model of teleological evolution. And a bio-cultural evolutionary cycle at that too! Needs a lot of unpicking.

[And I see it was Rosenberg published that “defence of scientism” that was slammed by Wieseltier and counter-defended by Pinker(?) and other New Atheist types. Jeez!]

[And what was that about AI being inhuman yesterday – Doh!]

[Placeholder only.]

Causation in Science

Expensive first release in hardback, so I will need some justification to buy, but clearly an important topic to me. Causation remains much weirder than everyday common sense. I am not aware of either author or any previous work, so the ” … in science, and the methods of scientific discovery” subtitle scared me a little, that it might be a bit scientistic – reductive and logical-positive.

This blurb, (courtesy of Amazon) …

“[They] propose nine new norms of scientific discovery. A number of existing methodological and philosophical orthodoxies are challenged as they argue that progress in science is being held back by an overly simplistic philosophy of causation.”

… starts with the subtitled focus on scientific methodology and orthodoxy, but does indeed give hope in the final clause:

progress in science is being held back
by an overly simplistic philosophy of causation

This really is a philosophical problem, as close to my agenda as I could expect. Their previous work is even more hopeful:

Rani Lill Anjum is Researcher in Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science (CAPS) at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). She was postdoctoral fellow at the universities of Tromsø and Nottingham.  At NMBU, she then led the Causation in Science research project. She currently leads the research project Causation, Complexity and Evidence in Health Sciences (CauseHealth), funded by the Research Council of Norway (NFR). She has co-written with Stephen Mumford:

Getting Causes from Powers (2011)

Causation: A Very Short Introduction (2013) 

What Tends to Be: the Philosophy of Dispositional Modality (2018)

Stephen Mumford is Professor of Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University as well as Professor II at Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). In addition to co-author of the above, he has written:

Dispositions (1998),

Russell on Metaphysics (2003),

Laws in Nature (2004)

Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotion (2011)

Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction (2012)

Glimpse of Light (2017) 

The Norwegian connection is particularly interesting to me, one reinforcement of my fear of an overly logical focus but also, more recently, some new positive connections. The sporting connection too – I often use sporting examples as a kind of “morality play” on the evolution of ethical rules through “gaming the system” – Rules for guidance of the wise and the enslavement of fools, etc. Law-like behaviour is evolved, like anything else. If nothing else, I need to do some reading of their existing works methinks.

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[Post Note: I see now, the Durham Uni connection, I must have come across Mumford before. Followed by Anthony Gotlieb. And a Blades fan! I need to pay more attention.]

[Post Note: Intrigued by Mumford as the editor of the “Russell on Metaphysics” collection by Routledge, series editor Anthony Grayling. As a fan of the post-Tractatus Wittgenstein, I hold Russell-the-logician (hero of present day humanism and rationalism) as a kind of evil demon behind the persistence of the logical-positivism of analytic philosophy in the scientism and ever increasing simplistication (eg polarisation) of everyday discourse. Imagine my surprise, then:

Russell discussed many things, including politics, religion and ethics. He was, however, one of the greatest analytic philosophers of the twentieth century and this book includes some of the writings for which he deserves this status. Some of the ideas Russell discusses here may be difficult,  therefore. But Russell thought that in almost all areas of philosophy, clarity and simplicity was possible and that even very difficult ideas could be  stripped down to their easily grasped essentials.

He successfully demonstrates this in these papers […] it is the work of a prominent and important philosopher engaged in metaphysical study. […] To some who know a little of Russell’s philosophy, it might seem strange to speak of him being engaged in metaphysics. He is often depicted as standing squarely in the empiricist tradition that had, on the whole, rejected metaphysics […] If this book has but one aim, it is to relieve its readers of that misconception.

Russell was a metaphysician.

Still holds this clarification-by-simplification (by a logician) fear for me, so I shall be intrigued to see what subtlety I find here.]

A Rose By Any Other Name

The first half of The Bard’s quote is an adage I use frequently – in thousands of posts over two decades. The point of Juliet’s words lies in the second half. Umberto Eco wrote a whole philosophical novel riffing on it.

“A rose by any other name …
… would smell as sweet.”

One word – one name for a thing – is as good as another once you’re experiencing the real thing.

I’ve written at length on “Identity Politics”, that naming things for “tribal” reasons – even unconscious ones – is an unhealthy aspect of discourse (even scientific discourse – climate change anyone?) and one good reason some words are controlled for Political Correctness in some contexts. But it’s important to understand how that’s different from language fascism, prescribing and proscribing word-use in general – banning and demanding, through expectation and reaction if not by formal ruling. Rules are for guidance of the wise and the enslavement of fools anyway.

In fact this issue is a technical ontological error that infects epistemology. We refer to individuals (people and things) using the names of their classes all the time. But it’s at our peril if we use that class naming to suggest identity and/or definition of the individual. In a world where linguistic symbols confer massive advantage to promulgating information – as opposed to the individual contact of “knowing biblically” – we have little choice but to use words or other portable metaphorical representations of them. Catch-22 – We must use them but beware their limitations in becoming too attached to them individually.

I often defend Wittgenstein from those who take too narrow and reductive a view of his early phase Tractatus work. Inferring that he believed the logical positive objectivity of his austere aphorisms with their neat logical joins of thus and therefore somehow described all that could be said about the world. Kinda – “I’ve completed the job, if you want more, go whistle!” It was simply all that could be said with that world view. His later work showed he understood the need to make the altogether more mystical linguistic turn.

I felt that same defensive emotion this morning, reading Giles Fraser posting his memories of Mary Midgley who died a couple of days ago. (I’ve also defended Midgley who despite her sharp and subtle understanding wasn’t quite up to the “banter” of mediated conference dialogue when I last saw her.) Anyway, fascinating because I’ve come to treat Giles as a professional contrarian who’s wheeled out, or dives in, to every public moral debate, without ever appearing to hold a single intelligible view IMHO. To the point I’ve given up attempting any dialogue. Imagine my surprise to find he not only benefitted from Mary Midgley in his philosophical (and theological and pastoral) education but that he seems to genuinely appreciate the fact. Touching. Hope for the old polemicist yet.

His only black mark was that having appreciated the philosophical subtlety of Midgley, he simply dismissed Wittgenstein as the opposite archetype – standing for reductive objectivity – whereas, he absolutely detested and ridiculed the school that adopted him.

Words matter not because of which words – in which disembodied logical and grammatical order – but because of “how we” use them in the problem-solving game we (universal constructors) call life.

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[Post Note: Holding Stub – Part of a dialogue with David Harding on choice of words, but coincidentally also relevant to his post of Sophistry. I’m defending Rhetoric, more than Sophistry. The former is necessary – see above – the latter is deliberately mis-leading, even if Machiavellian intent is overall positive. All more evidence for “the Wittgensteinian word game“.]

Zen and the Art of Philosophy

A review of:

“How The World Thinks
– A Global History of Philosophy”
by Julian Baggini

All my reviews are done in the context of my own philosophical journey and often, like this one, a review done very early on in the reading, so that my own prejudices are laid bare for later analysis and a later review if I sense I learned something new worth sharing. And since “nothing new under the sun” – a perennial philosophy – is a recurring adage of my own, success in this may boil down to a pithy restatement – or aphoristic restatements – of long established wisdom for current and future times.

“Intriguing and illuminating”, as a description of what the book is, the review by Simon Blackburn in the Literary Review says it well enough. Baggini is filling a hole in his, and many a western philosopher’s, grounding by exploring in a descriptive, historical and comparative way a range of Asian and African philosophical traditions. He’s doing so in a laudably naive way by identifying this gap in the current state of his own education. And he’s proceeding to explore by reading and interviewing and by physically travelling to conferences of these non-western schools of thought. The content is therefore as substantial as that recent research exercise, which is naturally pretty thin. As I say, that naivety laid bare is laudable since he is claiming little more than a prerequisite first step towards a mere introduction to the topics.

The point, of course, is to cultivate sufficient interest in, and recognition of the significance of, the parallels and differences between alternatives to western received wisdom when it comes to ways of looking at the world. In that, I believe, he succeeds.

And for me, he also succeeds in some interesting new summary statements of what it is about non-western world-views he wants to bring to our attention. Which is good because, if nothing else, Baggini has his own way of engaging with”intellectual and spiritual generosity” which is essential “for our fractious and dangerously divided era” as Richard Holloway’s cover-blurb comment attests.

All those people out there who believe real world progress depends on pursuing critical debate to its natural conclusions between objectively well defined options or, god forbid, between partisan identity-politics positions, would do well to savour Baggini’s more generous style.

Personally, as someone who came into philosophy late in life via Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“, and as someone who only noticed any need for philosophy at all after decades of perceiving an ineffable incompleteness – something’s missing that I can’t put into words – in the received wisdoms of everyday western techno-socio-economic business life, I don’t need the gap pointed out. The gap is where I started. I do however appreciate Baggini’s summary restatements of lessons learned.

He quite comfortably uses Karl Jasper’s idea that classic traditions of philosophy arose independently in parallel in Greece, India and China in the 500 years or so up to around 300 BCE, the so-called “Axial Age”. I say comfortable because, as I learned from hearing reaction to the same concept used by Rebecca Goldstein (an influence Baggini and I both share), it’s controversial to reduce so much complex history to a single idea. But then as Baggini points out the need to generalise common aspects whilst taking account significant differences is a fundamental philosophical – human – trick in any tradition. That’s material for a whole text by itself.

Having started there, not surprisingly the Indian and Chinese classics behind the subsequent histories of eastern philosophies and religions are a focus of the work. Despite a richly documented heritage, both place much lesser emphasis on words – spoken or written – than the western tradition. With even less documented traditions, African references are of course much more sparse, and so far as I can see there is no reference to any native American traditions, north or south.

This is part of what I call the Catch-22 of philosophy. Thanks to Gutenberg, not to mention modern electronic and social media, any ideas that can be – and are – represented in symbolic language, have a natural memetic advantage in their spread and adoption over those that are nevertheless lived by all humans around the world. That advantage says nothing about how good the world-view is, simply that it is easy to represent accurately, which is only fine if you believe transportable linguistic representation is the most valuable measure of a philosophy. Catch-22 as I say, or Procrustes bed if you prefer.

Anyway, Baggini notes that before he (and Pirsig), plenty of western philosophers have noted and grappled with this. It takes the nuanced readings of Spinoza, Kant and Wittgenstein to appreciate workable ways of fitting the omission of eastern ideas to western thinking to create any truly integrated global world-view. I say integrated because holding onto the idea some single monolithic world-view – the one true metaphysics – might result, is part of the problem.

Baggini obviously chooses the sources he references and anyone reading could choose their own preferred alternative sources of similar if not much the same content. But, beyond critical debate on exactly what P meant when they wrote X and whether that might be true or not according to which arguments, the real value here is in identifying the ongoing significance of the classic east-west gap to a global philosophy for modern life. Baggini’s specific contribution – beyond his generous and readable style – has to be the neat taxonomy of the subject matter in his (mostly) one word choices of chapter headings; Insight, Logic, Tradition, Time, Unity, Self, Harmony and Virtue; to name just a few examples.

Recommended.

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It’s Now Illegal to Mock Fruit

We live in a world hemmed-in by PC rules. When I started this post about 5 tweets ago, it was about the latest “Sokal” prank poking satire at gender-based social-science research. Of course, being PC rules, they are broken ironically all the time, so the levels of irony – odd or even – become crucial to working out who the good guys are.

Apparently we have to respect dogs whilst inspecting their genitals. Moving on ….

in fact just 2 tweets after I started, the title of the post was:

“Truly, we live in shrunken times.”

Which has nothing to do with the Trumpian mushrooms bandied about by Jimmy Kimmel but, 3 tweets in, David Deutsch provided the alternative title.

I liked Timandra’s line – which she had already stolen without attribution, so it’s already now officially an anonymous aphorism – because in form it rang with a T E Lawrence (of Arabia) line – conflating the “it is written” sentiment with the relative obesity of British and Arab culture at the time.

But notwithstanding it’s ring, the rhetorical content is clear. Objectivising everything and recognising the politics in identifying objects – choosing one identity in relation to others – is sorely cramping the space for human manouevres – if we let them.

McLuhan had it right. Confusing the medium with the message shrinks the global village available to operate in.

Truly we live in shrunken times.

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And there’s more:

Jazz hands instead of applause, anyone?!?

And Haidt’s coddled mind?!

[The original social-science prank has become tagged “Sokal-squared” which helps its circulation, but it doesn’t free it from its deficiencies:

The key words in the Venn diagram are “prove” and “because” – clearly only divisive idiots would form those views, so the joke works. What’s needed is the measured approach to recognising what is the point of an ironic attack of the Sokal kind (And I’m no fan of S J Gould). The attackers derived plenty of amusement as can be seen in the early videos. Humour is the point. And the point of the humour is to make the target – and audience – think. Nothing about the content proves the cause of anything.

Fortunately, plenty of “measured” responses.]

[Oh my god, more forbidden fruit. When will it ever end. And now because Churchill wasn’t morally perfect apparently, it’s a no-no to quote anything positively inspiring he might have done or said. Even if you’re an astronaut.]

[No, it is never ending. Apparently everyone has to drop their interest in #Strictly to write about the latest climate change warnings.]