Hold that Computational Thought

[This is just a holding post prompted by a long series of Twitter exchanges with on his film plot, using Kolmogorov-Chaitin (as opposed to Shannon) ideas on “Digital Physics” – metaphysics as “information realism” or “res informatica” in my recent writings. Will summarise and link more but just wanted to capture this fleeting thought.]

In the same way “Intelligent Design” can be reclaimed by evolutionary philosophers from the supernatural idea of “An Intelligent Design-er”

It is possible to accept we live in a world of information and computation without the need to posit a “programmer” outside the Matrix-like system. The computation (and intelligence) evolves algorithmically, within the system, just like everything else.

Algorithmic doesn’t mean the program is fixed and dumb. Obviously repeating the process on the same starting material always produces the same result, but the point (eg Hofstadter or universal Turing) is that the algorithm can be repeatedly applied to the results, and to the algorithm (program) itself. Complexity and intelligence both evolve from simple code and simple beginnings. That’s what evolution is.

[Also feel a synergy with Dan Brown’s “Origin”
which I always said read like a screen-play anyway
;-)]

Defending the PoMo Position – Again

Often find myself in situations where “scientists” are quick to mock or otherwise reject and/or denigrate a seemingly “post-modern” opinion. A main thread of mine is urging sceptical scientist types to be more open to respecting & understanding alternative thinking – alternative to realist logical positivism and anything but objective facts – so that constructive dialogue can actually occur. [Most recent here.]

[I should say I find myself in this position as an experienced science & engineering type who has had to resort to epistemology latterly, simply to keep STEM (and atheist / humanist & “social justice”) discourse honest.]

This morning I noticed a social / gender studies type (someone I don’t know anything about) dropped this into a thread:

Oh, how we laughed.

I know no more about the context or content of the dialogue beyond a couple of prior twitter responses, but the follow-up tweets started to include sarcastic mockery of the post-modernist statement – obviously false on the face of it.

I merely chuckled inwardly, until Sophie Scott, someone I have a lot of time for shared one particular “witty” riposte from someone I also know nothing about, or even whether he was involved significantly in the original dialogue – that’s social media.

When I was moved to post this:

Hence this blog-post rather than more Twitter exchange:

So, in the specific statement …

“Before the Enlightenment
the female skeleton didn’t exist”

… it clearly isn’t literally true, to anyone talking objective facts represented literally by the words. (As I said already.) But, doh(!) that’s not the point of a post-modernist statement like that – to convey literal objective facts about the  world, that’s what science is for.

What that sentence says (to me), is that,

“At that time, the prevailing culture did not recognise that female skeletons were any different to male skeletons, (even if some physiology experts already knew it to be so).”

I suspect that might be true, though I can’t be sure, and if it’s not it’s more an argument about dates I suspect, and “Adam’s rib” and the fact females were generally smaller maybe, and …. Anyway, whether it was relevant to the ongoing dialogue, I have literally no idea, that’s why I didn’t comment on the original thread.

What I did respond to was the shared mockery. Mockery is no substitute for dialogue unless the protagonists already respect each other. (See Rules of Engagement and The Court Jester.) It is especially bad-faith if the would-be jester really did understand the PoMo point, but is just making their own rhetorical zinger to the gallery. And clearly it’s the wrong response if the would-be jester really didn’t understand the point.

The right response would surely be more like:

“I understand what you mean (culturally), but I think it’s irrelevant to this thread. What am I missing?”

Which is much closer to his response to my own tweet, when I pointed out the PoMo position might need defending from mockery. Might need defending was my point, I’m only actually defending it because I was asked.

My tweet simply highlighted the thought …
… that a PoMo position might be defensible,
(and worthy of respectful dialogue.)

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Post Notes

A Twitter thread continued from this response. I had contemplated summarising it, but it mostly repeated what I’d already said above, with a side-order of ad-hominem and whataboutery. Basically the point was being willfully ignored – continuing to claim the right to mock as entirely appropriate.

And as I say, 20 odd tweets before and after that one.

Anyway, as I had feared, the target of the mockery (and much worse abuse) has posted a follow-up thread of her own, citing the dreadful experience of the pile-on that ensued.

(And the detailed thread that follows).

[Post-Post-Note: And sadly, after the disgraceful pile-on yesterday, @sally_hines has subsequently locked her account and only approved followers can see it now. Proper interdisciplinary dialogue disrupted by the thoughtless mob, yet again.]

[Incidentally – the “rules of engagement” topic came-up several times yesterday. Someone re-shared Maria Popova’s Dan Dennett / Rappaport Rules post into my timeline, and more:

…]

Res Informatica may be “Information Realism?.

In my humble opinion,

The universe is made of mental stuff,
therefore real physical stuff “must be” an illusion.

… is just as lazy as …

The universe is made of real physical stuff,
therefore mental stuff “must be” an illusion.

They’re just an example of a fake binary choice. The long-running choice between idealism and realism in fact. (My position on this is the “dual-aspect-monism” or “trialism” I last elaborated in a graphic towards the end of this recent post, pasted here again for reference.)

There are clearly illusory aspects in our perceptions of the world we interpret as the real and the mental. Obviously it’s all real (or it’s wrong), some of it is just not physical, and some of our (imperfect) models haven’t quite established and accepted the true relationships between them. But for me that difficulty is mostly a wilful cop-out – wilful in the insistence of casting it as a choice between physical and mental – and dismissing the loser – rather than accepting the relational reality. (The fact that reality is directly unknowable – in the above figure – doesn’t mean it’s not real, just that our picture of it is indirect and imperfect. Discussed more in the linked post.)

That first “quoted” statement above is my caricature / paraphrase of Bernardo Kastrup’s position as I see it circulating. As a computer scientist he is causing waves with his apparent pan-psychic position, and there are a number of click-bait headlines and quotes about his forthcoming book. One thing’s for sure, his “information realism” may in fact be quite close to my picture. This quote & exchange caused me to read more closely what I’d so far only bookmarked:

The reason physical reality (res-extensa) and mental experience (res cogitans) must be related is because they both comprise the same (even more) fundamental stuff – information (res informatica). Information is both conceptual AND physically embodied, but its content is independent of its embodiment or otherwise. Its meaning lives in both worlds.

(h/t Philip Goff for the Dual-Aspect-Monism suggestion.)

Ever since pan-psychism re-surfaced in popular psyche, people have been pointing out Kastrup’s work to me, although I have in fact been aware of him for quite some time already. I still need to digest through closer reading exactly what Katsrup’s position really is, as opposed to the “extremist” pan-psychist position that gets reported and winds-up the more scientistic physicists. Maybe it’s all part of pumping book sales, but I am sincerely hoping his position is much closer to mine.

[Post Note: Previous discussions re Kastrup:
Pigliucci vs Kastrup on Pan-Psychism and
Hossenfelder vs Kastrup on Pan-Psychism.]

Reclaiming “Normal”?

It’s been a long time coming, and even now I’m having second thoughts writing this, but what is “normal”?

Current context is LGBTI+ debates, especially around school curricula being cramped by those of dogmatic faith.

And slightly earlier:

Happens all the time with other social phobias, (eg Islamaphobia / Antisemitism and especially the religio-cultural-racial blurred self-identifying tribalisms) and it begs questions about whether phobias are misnamed and the nature of any expressed concerns. It is of course very easy to accept the PC conclusion that any expression of concern “against” any minority or “other” large bio-cultural group is a bigoted phobia. And many times it is of course. But this blurs some important nuances.

Sticking with the homophobic example, but remember the subtleties will vary with the particular examples and contexts:

Homosexuality is an evolved and developed bio-cultural variation in many sexually reproducing species, including humans. It’s indeed a valid and accepted natural part of life’s rich tapestry. To be “respected” like all “others”. But does that make it “normal”?

Is education “about” something the same as “normalising” it and/or should it be? Not necessarily.

Even limited to heterosexual sex and relationship education I’d be concerned what exactly is being taught “about” it and what aspects are considered normal. Normal variation includes deviation from the normal, but words like abnormal and deviant come with enormous negative baggage.

For me this is very analogous to free-speech, where in principle anyone can think and say almost anything, but that doesn’t mean they should necessarily. Evolution depends on a stable norm about which variation exists, but the prevalence of variation needs to be small or (self-)controlled relative to norms rather than the chaos of anything goes, anywhere, anytime. There is a wide spectrum between those extremes, and the extremes lie on quite different bio-cultural spectra. Respect for the other is the common factor, normal or otherwise.

I think it’s fair to be concerned about what is being taught as normal even if it is extremely difficult to find language that isn’t seized upon as bigoted or exploited by those that are actually bigots. The usual PC problem IMHO.

Am I making sense? Put me right if I’m not.

Idealism & Russell’s Metaphysics

Part of my slow working through Mumford’s “Russell on Metaphysics“, I have flipped back to recap the first 5 chapters. Having been left with even deeper nagging doubts that I was right to leave Russell behind after all, I need to check my thinking by capturing the key thoughts. A sanity check.

To be clear, I can summarise already that, having now read a lot more of Mumford’s collection and commentary than just that noted above, I can see how Russell did indeed engage in metaphysical thinking along the way to his analytic philosophy founded on realism. That is NOT at issue.

What I’m suggesting is that the philosophical position he arrived at is flawed – detached – metaphysically. In fact my main thesis is that this realist analytic philosophy – what I’ve variously referred to as a logically, materially and empirically objective positivism or scientism in my own mental travels – is more problem than solution to the big questions of our time. And, as I’ve said I’m less concerned with definitions of isms and what they are called (after say Feynman and Dennett), than I am with understanding specific sets of assumptions and assertions.

Hence my unpicking particular problematic assertions below.

Background note:
This exercise started here – A New Leaf
And continued here: Pan-Psychism
Here: Doubts on Russell & Idealism
And here: Dual Aspect Monism

Although I’m focussing on Part 1 (the first 5 chapters), most (but not all) of what follows for now actually uses Mumford’s introductions – to the whole book and to the specific chapters.

Firstly I need to say that Mumford’s little introduction to Metaphysics is itself tremendously valuable. To recognise the distinction between the metaphysical aspects of philosophy and the empirical aspects of philosophy and the sciences. In many ways it is this central issue that most concerns me here. Recognising their distinct natures is fundamental, but having used one to establish the other doesn’t mean we can thereafter dispense with the former – throwing the metaphysical baby out with the scientistic bathwater. The real world still cares about metaphysics and relationships with the physical, recognising the proper value in the relationship of the non-empirical alongside the empirical.

“Russell’s major and lasting contribution to metaphysics has been hugely influential and his insights have led to the establishment of analytic philosophy as a dominant stream in philosophy.”

Mumford’s editor.

“Contribution to metaphysics”? Sure, but it just seems to have been a means to his end: the “[dominance] of analytic philosophy” – precisely the problem that concerns me.

His later

“Starting with papers from his pre-analytic period, the volume collects Russell’s main realist accounts, his discussions of the problems of universals, and his writing on causation and the laws of nature. The final part covers Russell’s thoughts on diverse questions of metaphysics that occupied him later in life, including his classic paper on vagueness.”

Mumford’s editor

OK, fair enough. I’m focussing on his pre-analytic metaphysical journey here, to realism from idealism. Causation, free-will and the laws of nature (and time) are also fundamental to my own interests (See Unger & Smolin and Rovelli and many others cited here.) Ditto language and vagueness – I’m a fan of Wittgenstein, Dennett and more after all – all covered elsewhere and no doubt further in future, but not mentioned explicitly again in this post.

“Russell achieved public fame — often enough, notoriety — because of his engagement in social and political debates, becoming known to a wide audience as a philosopher in the popular sense of the term.”

Grayling’s introduction to the Russell series.

Again I mentioned in the preamble posts, I really do appreciate Russell as a fully engaged public intellectual – campaigning in skeptical, secular, rational, humanist areas of life, like myself I like to think. My issue with Russell is his flawed metaphysics, which obviously informs the detail of some of his ideas in real life.

[Meta – internal referencing of Mumford’s book can be a little confusing. As he acknowledges, many of the Russell papers and extracts are taken from “The Collected Papers”, so we have the book with it’s own chapter headings and numbers, the papers as numbered in the source collection, and the references Russell used withing the selected writings. It’s complete and thorough, just keeps you on your toes in following the journey.]

“[Russell was] one of the greatest analytic philosophers of the twentieth century”

Mumford

Not in doubt. It’s the analytic philosophy that is the problem (for me).

“there is no better introduction to metaphysics”

Mumford

Yes, as I say above, that has real value here in its own right.

“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 and was concerned primarily with the theory of knowledge or epistemology. If this book has but one aim, it is to relieve its readers of that misconception.

Russell was a metaphysician.”

Mumford

Yes, I quoted this already in an earlier post. I am Mumford’s target audience and I consider myself having been relieved of that particular misconception. My problem now is not whether he engaged in metaphysics, but that his eventual metaphysics was flawed.

“British Hegelian idealism [had evolved by inheritance from Kant > Hegel > Green > Bradley]. Russell [and G. E. Moore] rejected idealism for metaphysical reasons.”

Mumford

Fair enough. What is therefore crucial to my thesis is what was Russell’s understanding of idealism at the time and where was his basis for rejection, and his adoption of realism, flawed in the long run.

“Thought is a pre-condition of knowledge in the way Kant set out.”

Mumford

Oh boy. This is a definitional, almost tautological statement, but whilst I don’t deny Kant said this – as we’ve discovered before – words and concepts like knowledge don’t travel well in translation [see summary from French for example, below in final paras]. To be known requires some mental activity or state. To be knowable requires some information (or disembodied pattern of significance) to exist. Knowledge requires both. This will recur, and it’s why I shift my metaphysical and epistemological focus to information. [And obviously this is already a lead-in to idealism as something maybe, kinda, sorta pan-psychic, if we were to somehow privilege the mental over the (otherwise real) physical.]

“‘Appearance and Reality’ (Bradley 1893) [was described positively] by Russell [and Moore] as ‘epoch-making’ in 1895. By 1897 both had come to reject [the whole idealist tradition].

Bradley had argued that neither immediate experience nor relations are real, and from the latter we can infer that no ordinary phenomena are real and that there is no absolute truth or falsehood. Reality is a single togetherness rather than being many distinct, related things. The things that appear to us as distinct individuals are actually aspects of the comprehensive, concrete individual, which Bradley calls the Absolute.

In rejecting Bradley and idealism, Russell and Moore came to be realists. They accepted as real all the everyday, common sense, things that Bradley had told us were mere illusions. Whereas Bradley wanted to push appearance and reality apart, Russell and Moore sought to bring them together.”

Mumford

It’s easy to reject this version of idealism, described as Bradley’s here, that’s for sure. The whole Appearance vs Reality saga is long-established and my readings made good use of Owen Barfield’s “Saving The Appearances“. But the point is what about it is being rejected and what makes realism better in those particular respects?

[Could already say a lot more here: The “real” of realism indeed sounds a lot more like common sense, but that would be to ignore the definitions of the real and ideal (and their relations) actually being used here. But the idea that there might be something more fundamental – more absolute – than either physical reality or the appearances experienced is not necessarily what is wrong. What is wrong is the idea that it must be one or the other – the suggestion that this is all there is. The pushing apart vs pulling together difference is key – without privileging either – we are dealing with at least both and a relation. My position is there is a third kind, more fundamental than either and the two kinds being debated here are both evolved from this – a dual-aspect-monism. I’ve been calling it pan-proto-pscychism as a reaction to the prevailing (dominant) paradigm to restore the mental to the same level as the (physically) real, but in fact the proto-component (information, “res informatica”) underlies both real/physical and ideal/mental, so I can see why people reject privileging the psychism as the name of this position in a non-reactionary sense. Will read on before coming back to unpick this.]

What is interesting, in Mumford’s overall introduction from this point onwards, is how quickly Russell moves from rejecting Bradley over 2 years and need to refute his idealism, leading him in only 3 further years to developing his new Principles of Mathematics using the new logics of Frege [and Cantor].

It’s as if having refuted idealism, realism must be right, so without further ado let’s construct our new ontology of existence.

“The new logic had a metaphysical basis, however. It assumed all sorts of things that Bradley had rejected. It assumed certain objects such as real and mind-independent propositions. It assumed objective truth and falsehood, regardless of belief. It assumed the existence of relations with an independence that was external to their relata. It also assumed a plurality of objects. Russell discussed some of these questions of ontology in the papers collected in Part II. An ontology is simply an inventory of what there is. For a metaphysician, this will be a list of the categories of things that exist, such as propositions, properties and relations.”

Mumford

Telling is that Mumford’s example ontological categories includes neither real/physical nor ideal/mental stuff? Particularly scary is the idea of “mind-independent propositions” – proposed by who? I ask. But this introductory stuff if getting beyond the Part I on the idealism > realism turn.

[And … adding Frank Ramsey / Wittgenstein linguistic turn to this. Not forgetting Grayling’s reminder on Ramsey himself.]

“Metaphysics then endeavours to bridge the chasm between physics and psychology. Seeing that the objective reference of an idea is known as intuitively and immediately as its subjective nature (if not more so), it frankly accepts both; it allows a world other than the individual mind, concerning which we have knowledge and desire; its criticism is not of these them selves, but of a world concerning which they are possible: given Self and the world in relation, the problem is to make each term and their relation intelligible; and Self and the World are given, because the only alternative is blank and absolute scepticism.”

Russell – PSYCHOLOGICAL AND METAPHYSICAL POINTS OF VIEW (1894)

Seems fair enough. Particularly like the suggestion of the alternative as a “blank and absolute scepticism” – a recurring “scientistic” problem of everything being open to doubt if no metaphysical bootstrapping is accepted. A world of only empirically objective evidence is …. dead.

Finding it hard not to jump straight to my own position again, which I’m guessing turns out to be Russell’s once I get it. What I’m finding is that the either/or debate between Idealism and Realism is “fake” – neither can exclusively be the case in any narrowly defined sense. What matters is how they are related, and whether either has priority in any useful sense. In fact the Foucault triad seems the most sensible conclusion [See later].

That is: We can postulate a real-world “out there” – objective and mind-independent “facts”. But there are only two things we can actually deal with and that isn’t one of them. They are (1) Our empirical experience of it, and (2) the conceptual model of it (and our psychology) which we construct and revise as we evolve.

That fact we can never get a handle directly on the out-there real-world, is no reason to say it doesn’t exist and that only the ideal world exists. Idealism is clearly wrong, defined that way, but literal realism can never be be any use either, without accepting that we can only ever deal (in practice) with our experience of it and our model of it. A kind of pragmatic realism.

Everything else – the linguistic turn – says we might choose a limited (say, predicate) logic for our formal model of supposedly real-world facts, but in fact (a) we can choose (and evolve) the set of rules, logics (and exceptions) for our model (ontology), and (b) the relationship between our experience and our model cannot in fact be limited by arbitrary linguistic rules imposed by the model anyway (Russell’s paradox and Godel’s incompleteness, etc). Information and communication are rhetorically creative mental gymnastics – word games – between our experience and our model. And, it is almost impossible in the normal course of life to keep these two entirely distinct. The absolute – radical empirical – experience is ephemeral and almost immediately interpreted through our psychological model – the imperfect, incomplete and necessarily biased version of the formal model held in our minds, both conscious and subconscious.

Ha, right on cue. Russell attempts to impose formal rules on Wittgenstein’s language of reality. (Everything I see confirms my own take on Wittgenstein – the frustration that Russell never got the point of his Tractatus. Also neatly sums up my problem with modern scrabble as an “evolved game”):

I’m not sure labelling this ability to mentally hold both a model and an experience of the real world as compatibilist or reconcilliationist really helps. It’s not a problem to be reconciled, but a fact of life that the three-way relationships need to be acknowledged and understood pragmatically.

[Going to cut and run from this post …. with some final draft thoughts for now. Not a proper review, needs some significant editing.]

“Trialism” – a triad view of reality, or dual-aspect monism (after Foucault). A proper resolution of idealism (pan-psychism) and realism (physicalism), not simply a compatibilism?

Any one of the nodes is a view of the whole, but depends on the other two perspectives. The arrows are two-way interactions.  The axes are spectra, convenient dividing lines, but largely gradual “more or less” scale – which means the physical includes the pan-proto-psychic (everything is a combination of both). No reason to pick sides between physical reality and pan-psychism.

[Convenient dividing lines on gradual scales? = “good-fences”.
See also defining “identity”.]

[Post Note: Ray Tallis is not a philosopher I often find reason to agree with – unless I’m conflating experiences I have found him at the scientistic end of the spectrum. However this review of his “Logos” had one phrase that jumped out at me – “knowledge is a relational property” – which seemed to be a fundamental feature of my diagram above. (h/t David Morey for the link).]

Suffer the Little Children

We were living in Oslo when Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and turned out to wish him well at the balcony of The Grand Hotel along with the rest of the crowds on Stortingata. At that time he’d written a hopeful book and won and election and he was clearly one of the good guys we could get behind. But Nobel Peace Prize? That always seemed premature; a triumph of audacity over reality.

I feel the same seeing Greta Thunberg being nominated for that same prize, and lauded for all the hullabaloo behind the global series of school strikes for climate change. As a “grown-up” it’s good to see the younger generation getting passionate about a real issue, though I can’t help feeling some of the enthusiasm might be better spent getting educated about what it is and about the consequences of actions and solutions. Setting-up the rest of us – and yes, fossil fuels and plastics – as the bad guys and turning it into a crisis, is setting themselves up as populist fodder a la Pol Pot. Careful what you wish for.

When it comes to climate change, I feel I’ve been there for decades along with plenty of other adults, so it’s good to get some “support” for the efforts that custodianship of Planet A will take to get right. I’m more Bjorn Lomborg and Hans Rosling (RIP) (and Nassim Taleb and Anders Sandberg) than say “Extinction Rebellion” or “Mr Compost”. Good for sound bites and populist support, but not for any sound plan for humanity and the planet. In my case, knowledge & understanding of decision-making & leadership in complex situations are my personal focus. That’s my main contribution to the jig-saw, but the puzzle is much more complex that two dimensions on a single time-scale, so we’ll need many other contributions, leadership being one of them.

I tweeted my negative opinion of Thunberg’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination a la Obama a couple of days ago, and it got a lot of approval – which was slightly scary. It shows how the social climate is profoundly negative, so easy to support disapproval – of anthropogenic climate change. Down with this sort of thing, etc. It’s the inevitable memetic effect, that disapproval of bad stuff is dead easy, creative solutions are much harder. What we need are collaborative real world behaviours.

Nuclear Can Be The Future Of Green Energy

A recent survey of the history of nuclear power reactors [by Anna Kucirkova writing in the IQS Industrial Directory] concludes that, despite a checquered history, newer designs can and should be part of a low carbon future. I agree and have said so.

As I’ve written before, it’s not just the technology and the inherent risks in its processes and by-products, but the whole investment scale and timescale in design approvals and construction (and decommissioning) that dog nuclear power projects and magnify their perceived public and political risks.

The fact is that newer, proven and approved technologies, are not only inherently safer but also lend themselves to much smaller-scale and/or modular implementations. With fewer risky eggs in any one basket, there is opportunity for a portfolio of mixed technology projects where all risks can be spread and public confidence re-built.

Not coincidentally, the new article above reports on the real progress of the specific modular Chinese “PBMR” reactor projects I had recommended earlier. Nuclear progress. Far from having had their heyday, I suspect nuclear has a bright future if prejudice gives way to reason.

[Also from Summer 2019 this excellent Bloomberg piece by Liebreich.]

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[Post Note:

Nuclear Power Invention - Dilbert by Scott Adams
Even Dilbert understands the problem.]