Year: 2018

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?]

Scientism and the Limits to Science

An important thread of mine is that scientism – the presumption that anything not-objectively-evidenced-as-scientific has no value – is the problematic meme of our times. And I mean that in everyday social, political and media life, not in academic philosophy and psychology.

The polarisation that has driven the god vs science wars has led those on the “new atheist” side of any debate to breathtaking levels of arrogance and extremism in dismissing anyone that begs to differ whilst at the same time attracting so many to the naively perceived “right side” of any debate. Even closer to everyday life, politicians and economists without objective evidence explicit to their every move struggle to make progress, without a kinda psuedo-objectivity invented just to play the game. And so much of that is getting built into our algorithms, mental as well as machine software, that filter the information and argumentation we are all exposed to.

It is an incredibly destructive and dangerous meme.

I was therefore very interested when I saw this new book co-edited by one of my favourite current philosophers, Massimo Pigliucci.

After querying, and agreeing, there really are no pros to scientism, I was intrigued to see what this collection of essays had to say, some of the titles do suggest support for the idea of science without limits. It is an new academic book, and priced accordingly, but early and/or unedited versions of some of the essays can be found on-line.

Obviously co-editor Maarten Boudry’s Why Science Does Not Have Limits looks to be the most “pro” and the two by Massimo Pigliucci and Mariam Thalos In Defence of Demarcation and Against Border Patrols look closest to my own “good fences” position. I have those 3 and Stephen Law’s Scientism! in downloaded on-line forms available to read. (In progress.)

As I say, my own position is clear. There is nothing wrong with the broadly-defined science-as-natural-philosophy view that everything “can” and will be explained by science, and that “everything” is indeed supervenient on the fundamental levels of our scientific model – kinda by definition in that metaphysics. But that’s a long way from practical reality that says things incompletely and speculatively explained by science now – by logical extension of objective evidence according to that model – must not give way to “better” psychological-value-based models in practice. As ever this is a semantic debate about “limits” and “values” when dealing with both the here and now reality and with the eternal model at the same time. Meta-limits. I’ll be back.

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[Post Note: Of course one reason this immediately resonated and prompted me to comment before significantly reviewing the new content, is because my immediately previous post on Pinker and political correctness tied this to the fetish of scientism within more psychological human topics. Stuff that cannot immediately be rendered “scientific” is practically taboo in some would-be scientific fields, like psychology itself.]

[Post Note: And it’s an ever present topic, here Martin Rees being quoted.

Don’t generally agree with Rees’ modesty take – he is a theistic god-of-the-gaps kinda person – but topical.]

Political Correctness is Caring About Perception

Misappropriation of political correctness really is a degenerate driver of liberal-left policy, and if we don’t find honest ways to debate it openly it will continue to fester. There is a serious Catch-22 in here.

Yesterday’s social media conversations were dominated by three related topics.

  • A secret series of eugenics conferences held annually at UCL.
  • Toby Young’s appointment / de-appointment to UK ministerial post.
  • Some selected remarks by Steven Pinker on PCness around racist / sexist topics in academe.

The secret UCL eugenics series suffice to say for now, the range of papers, presenters and topics is incendiary without careful interpretation wherever the individuals lie on the spectrum from actively eugenicist to free-thinking intellectual. Knowing this, the organisers attempted to operate in secrecy, which can only compound the impression that there was something to actively hide, rather than simply provide a “safe space” for tricky intellectual debate from which misrepresented misunderstandings might escape. (Lies and misunderstandings get halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on.)

Young I have zero reason to defend. Apparently he actively participated in the UCL Eugenics event(s) but also has a long record of careless and provocatively bigotted public remarks on a whole range of race, gender and sexuality freedom issues. So much so that whatever he actively believes, he is unfit for any public office on grounds of not caring.

Pinker I have had plenty of reason to be critical of in the past. Mainly on his naive basis of bringing science and statistics to his main field of psychology. Specifically he’s sometimes out of his depth, but more generally he’s part of the scientism infecting many areas of would-be-science that fail to appreciate their limitations – limitations to the validity of their own interpretations as well as inherent limitations in reality. (I’m all for making any field as scientifically rational as it can be, but that also involves understanding where rational values lie beyond science as well as the science.) Also, although he writes well, Pinker has an awkward gauche manner when talking with attempted humour (I should talk) and his intent is easily misunderstood. I think he knows this, but is nevertheless sincere intellectually even when, in my opinion, misguided scientistically. (Seems Pinker also attended one of the UCL events too? Need to check.)

Anyway, I find myself defending the criticisms of Pinker’s recent remarks as neither bigotted nor even careless. Does he have a history of making unguarded non-PC comment in public media? I don’t know but Petra thinks so. Maybe he has been careless. All I can say is that the Spiked Magazine Panel – “Is Political Correctness Why Trump Won?” was an excellent debate. All four speakers, the moderator and the audience. Apart from Brendan O’Neill maybe being provocative for effect at times – a Brexiteer with history, and promotional interest in Spiked – I’d say all including O’Neill and Pinker took care to stick to the topic honestly and intellectually. Ironically and knowingly, Spiked refer to it as part of their “unsafe space” series. Pinker even uses the mock trigger warning at one point that what he’s about to say is “gonna sound ragingly controversial”.

Well trigger it did. Many people people I admire leapt on the “bigotted remarks from Pinker” bandwagon yesterday on the strength of statements selected out of the full context. It’s not a thin edge of a wedge to talk about such topics, merely to talk about them carelessly. Careless talk cost lives.

It would be a pity if people didn’t watch that whole debate. It was excellent and it was organised openly with care. Basic use-mention distinction in philosophy. If we can’t talk “about” controversial views, even listen to people “using” them in a controlled debate, all hope is lost.

(I for one will be following-up all the speaker’s contributions. “Most rejection of free-speech is psychological not ideological”. “PC as blasphemy for a secular individualistic age”. “Therapeutic justice”. “Caring and civility of human contact”. “PC gets in the way of having-it-out”. “PC as a proxy battle for economic ideologies”. Fascinating resource, the closing remarks alone.)

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Post Note: Particularly worrying about those people I admire is how many made sarcastic Auschwitz gas-chambers “jokes” conflating both the Young and Pinker cases too as their main and final responses. I won’t share links. I know these people do care, but it is careless to leave such memes hanging as lasting misrepresentative impressions in the ether. Memes have lives of their own.

Post Note: This is an excellent piece on the scientistic PC-ness problem relating to mirsepresentations of Sam Harris, but also written after the Pinker misrepresentation story.

Post Note: And even Jerry Coyne leapt to Pinker’s defence (and I have zero time for Coyne’s opinions! I see him as part of the bigotted scientism problem, not the solution.)

[Post Note: And oh boy, PZ Myers weighing in, just as intellectually dishonestly, on the other side:

Hat tip to @JosephRatliff.]

[Post Note: And Baroness Warsi in defence of Young (@toadmeister)

I have no specific reason to doubt Young’s intellectual and ideological sense, as I say, the problem is the emotional carelessness in his history of inappropriate overtly bigotted public remarks, beyond any intellectual context. Not the stuff of public office.

And as Jeremy notes re Warsi statement – it really is marginal – a grey area – where intellectual freedom becomes bigotry:

Part of the reason discussion spaces need to be “safe” so that subtleties can be addressed before careless communication. PC is about caring, not censorship.]

[Post Note:

Exactly. It doesn’t say don’t mention the difference, it says take care – respect and empathy – when discussing it.]