Month: October 2020

All Lives Matter, Don’t They?

Keep coming back to this point, being missed by the more naïve in politics – mentioning no names, Lozza. But the ever thoughtful David Baddiel makes this point in the Labour / Corbyn / Anti-Semitism row:

Spot on. As natural language statements, …

    • Black lives matter / Jewish lives matter / Anti-semitism is wrong
    • All lives matter / All races matter / All racism is wrong

… are all clearly true statements. The question is why, when is it appropriate to say or use these expressions,

    1. in natural discourse.
    2. in hashtags / public memes supporting those sentiments and general positive rights / action campaigns to rectify the specific prejudiced imbalance, in our behaviours.
    3. in direct reference to specific political campaigning organisations.

In  natural discourse (1), the question of why & when appropriate is really about the objective of the discourse. Simply stating truths because you can is basic, but trivial in terms of achieving progressive outcomes. (Same applies to questions of Islamism/Free-Expression, LGBT/TERF debates, etc.)

Making such natural statements is always a matter of political choice, as well as their truth value. So the reason to state them is matter of believing specific disadvantaged groups (2) do need to be recognised in behaviours that restore balance … or not?

However (3) is quite different. It’s quite possible to sincerely support and act on (2) and to sincerely not support the political campaigning organisation that has acquired or dominated the particular (#BLM) hashtag or meme. Almost invariably the issues are complex and political campaign groups too often reduce their voice to politically correct slogans.

“Je Suis Charlie” is great as an assertion of free-expression against Islamist violence, in support of its immediate victims, but has little to do with resolving Islamism in society.

Supporting LGB and Trans rights is natural and necessary, but the polarisation of (eg) Pink and Rainbow/Pride organisations against nuanced detail objection on “TERF” female rights is unhelpful. (The whole Michael Cashman / BBC journalist guidance vs political campaign support is the next one to break? It’s about the specific political campaign affiliation, not about supporting enlightened takes on the issues – the Beeb will probably shoot itself in the foot by being too PC to explain that clearly, but they’re not wrong.)

All lives matter / Every life is sacred is totally distorting value judgements around Covid deaths. Judgements between civilised treatment of living humans – patients and everyday citizens living life – and long term expectations about populations and normal death rates and lifespans.

People asserting their right to say all & every are not being helpful to humanity. In fact they are – perversely – driving us to a kind of PC, lowest-common-denominator take on “all” issues.

Fundamental Physics in Graphics

Having got quite excited last month to reconnect with Martin Rowland’s simple presentation of the mathematical symmetries at the root of fundamental physics several neat graphic representations turned up via Twitter just this week.

Now normally I react to flashy graphics in science as giving too much mis-placed concrete credence to someone’s speculative musings – especially since flashy graphics are a free ticket-to-ride in the media. Sex sells, even metaphorically. (A real memetic problem). But two caught my eye initially, and then a thread by @katoi followed:

It started with this article in Quanta Magazine (h/t @AnitaLeirfall) which includes this wonderful dynamic 3D simulation:

(If you get lost, simply zoom back out, navigation is a little tricky, but worth exploring / interrogating.)

One of my reservations is still that for all its elegance and symmetries, the standard model is more than just missing some element that explains gravity and dark matter & energy at the cosmic scale, but must still be fundamentally flawed in some way we don’t recognise, probably to do with our default physicalist view (*) of the world. But this is indeed neat.

[Post Note: (*) “Our view” means we have to take Anthropic effects seriously, see footnote re Nima’s view.]

Shortly after that, these turned-up …

Image

… in this tweet.

Now I didn’t, still don’t, fully understand the “actually is an equation” point, but have always been fascinated by the equivalence relation between the four circles in 2D space and the one sphere in 3D space, especially also given flat / curved space considerations?

Anyway @katoi followed that up today with a thread explaining the significance:

Image

Image

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[Post Note:

Still digesting and watch the YouTube Video(s), (as well as investigating @katoi’s web site nounicorns – which has very little content yet?)

Oh, and wow! … the thread that keeps giving … the point of Nima Arkani-Hamed being the presenter is a non-PC / non-knee-jerk stance wrt to Anthropics … Carter, Barrow & Tipler … the inevitability … Wonder if Rick ever tied-up his ideas with Nima’s ?

(The handwritten graphic used by Katoi above is Nima’s)

It’s not about (mere) details,
but about (deep) structural issues

… I may be some time … ]

[And @Katoi continues the revelatory thread the following day, starting here ..

… more to follow?]

Pirsig, Whitehead, Sneddon & McWatt – Credit Where Credit’s Due

It’s no secret that my philosophical – metaphysical – journey was helped along early on by the writing of Robert Pirsig [(1974) “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and (1991) “Lila“], although I was late to that party, at the turn of the millennium.

I’m pretty catholic when it comes to sources of meta-physical thought and their syntheses  into a comprehensible & workable real-world-view, but I do still maintain that Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality is as good a framework as any I’ve come across. Almost all other syntheses of my own I relate to the MoQ even if, like any other philosophical theory, there is plenty of room for disagreement in interpretation and application, even amongst those that take the MoQ seriously. (I still maintain my Pirsig Pages.)

The path of getting Pirsig into the academic canon has been (and continues to be) a rocky one. Plenty of academic philosophers have written comparative papers, short-courses and even masters theses. So far as I am aware, there is still however only one full PhD dedicated to the work of Pirsig, and no full-time / tenured academic staff and/or courses that major on Pirsig.

“A Critical Analysis of
Robert Pirsig’s
Metaphysics of Quality“

Anthony Michael McWatt

(PhD thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements
of the University of Liverpool, November 2004.)

I don’t major on Pirsig particularly these days, although my intuitions of MoQ-as-Framework persist. This 20 year blogging project attests to the range of philosophy, metaphysics and fundamental physics I’ve researched since first reading Pirsig, and I’d not re-read McWatt’s thesis until this past week.

Anyone following my thought journey will have noticed that Whitehead figures prominently in the last year or two. Well, there are over 30 references to Whitehead in McWatt’s thesis that must have gone right over my head when I first read it. (I was prejudiced against Whitehead’s mathematical collaborations with Russell until I eventually caught up with his metaphysical thinking.) McWatt has references to “Process & Reality” (PnR) and to “Adventures of Ideas” (AoI) as well as secondary references, including

Andrew (AG) Sneddon (1995). MA Thesis
A Process Analysis of Quality:
A. N. Whitehead & R. Pirsig on Existence & Value“

Having been knocked-out by PnR – I discover I already had an unread copy of AoI. Perversly, according to most evidence, I’m finding AoI harder going than PnR.

Anyway, I clearly need to do a round-up of my Pirsig<>Whitehead synthesis at some point. Credit to McWatt for  his earlier work here.

The West is Dangerously Weird

Had this piece from The Harvard Gazette bookmarked for a couple of weeks and still not fully digested:

“How the West Became WEIRD
– that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.”

It’s an interview of Joseph Henrich by Juan Siliezar.

Main thread in my own agenda that “western rational arrogance” is a disease that we suffer from and leaves us blindsided when it comes to understanding that there are alternative world-views held by those not subjected to western (mental) colonisation, via media if not physical via force of arms.

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Follow-on beyond and unrelated to the above article, a topical example of why dominant Western reasoning is a problem for the world:

The alternate views of Covid19 “disease” on the one hand and Covid19 “response measures” on the other.

Prof. Sunetra Gupta – Oxford UK (theoretical) Epidemiologist – with alternate views on this balance of risk. (I’m pretty close to her position.) “Do the math” is the false step; easy, but false. Classic memetics.

Dr. Reiner Fuellmich – German lawyer – a bit too big-capitalism business-conspiracy focussed for my taste, but interestingly bringing in very early the idea of archetypal Germans being very disciplined in terms of rational logic representing a target for “the science” driving the Covid19 response. He goes as far as to say “there are no excess deaths anywhere”

If nothing else in a rational democratic society – popular consensus is not a great measure for scientific validity, not when the very basis is already biased to that kind of “Western” logic. The modern (post 1920’s) East is thoroughly contaminated with the same western mental virus.

The only “conspiracy” is that we are memetically trapped – complicit – in this reasoning loop.

And “economy” has nothing to do with the arithmetic of money either – that’s “autistic” to coin the phrase. It’s about living meaningful lives.

The only argument for lock-down is the delaying effect that prevents overload of health services. The delay in itself has no other value, yet has huge and profound downside “costs” in its own right.

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Note:

Tricky part of this whole debate is what constitutes an “acceptable” level of death. Zero or minimal sounds reasonable but is in fact totally irrational.  As someone quipped on Twitter the other day, aiming for zero deaths shows a lack of ambition, we should aiming to raise people from the dead 🙂

Keeping “Excess Deaths” within normal expectations is the benchmark most settle on, but even here, the question of excess relative to what is still a political (ie policy) choice. The appearance of science and pre-school arithmetic is attractive, but nevertheless entirely political. Consider:

COVID DEATH RATES vs EXPECTED
Expectations Alive in 2020
UK Pop 67,800,000
UK Life Expectancy 81
Average annual (all causes) 837,037
Average monthly 69,753
Average weekly 16,005
Recent 5 yr recorded average 11,000 – 12,000

Slightly scary is that formal stats of UK excess death rates being used in public stats on Covid progress are using weekly deaths relative to that 5 yearly average. Recent years have been exceptionally low death rates, life expectancy and population have been rising unusually rapidly recently in the UK. Policy is being set on keeping it rising at these rates. Peak levels of deaths during Covid 19 (22k/wk) have been barely as far in excess of the lifetime expectation (16k/wk) as the 5 yr average (11-12k/wk) is below it.

Given this is marginally significant, it is even more worrying when looking at actual Covid reported deaths (these are just England, not UK). Whatever the age group 95% of reported deaths coincide with pre-existing conditions over the whole Covid period since March.

I agree with the general “Barrington” position that Covid health risks are being greatly exaggerated in connection with Covid policy measures.

We should be living life, taking targeted precautions, taking extra care of the elderly and those with (known) pre-existing conditions, those in front-line human contact, etc. Just as we would with any infectious potentially life-threatening disease. Basic good manners.

In terms of my own longer-term agenda, simple arithmetic is being used as a substitute for sound judgement because simple arithmetic looks like following-the-science and absolves decision-makers from the responsibility of making judgements that could be challenged by such simplistic scientism as being “unscientific”.

(This has been well documented previously as The McNamara Fallacy. If you focus on what you can count – the body count, the case count – reality is distorted because uncountable, judgemental human factors are ignored and effectively rendered invisible. Even the apocryphal Einstein got it “Not every thing that counts can be counted“.) I say:

Simplistic scientism is killing real science and civilisation as we know it.

Wake-up folks. No conspiracies of skilled-incompetence needed, just natural laws of evolution, driving humanity to irrelevance until we recognise this fault in our modern rationality.

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[Post Note 26th Jan 2021 – UK passing the 100,000 attributed deaths milestone since the outbreak has been recorded. That’s 6 average weekly normal expected death tolls – in a year! It’s only “significant” because counting in base 10 – as we do arbitrarily – it has 5 zeroes? We are conned by arithmetic. Every individual life lost or damaged is a tragedy. Socially, population, human-progress-wise it is still barely a blip. We need to get a grip on the future of humanity. And … Whitty knows it.]

Critiques of Whitehead’s Metaphysics

Just another placeholder post, like the last one from Alan Rayner, this one from Leemon McHenry who, the only time I came across before, was as editor of a collection of articles including Alan Rayner.

Anyway this link to a piece reviewing contemporary Critiques of Whitehead’s Metaphysics, including Russell. (Made it pretty clear I’m a fan of Whitehead’s process / event-based worldview, even if he over-elaborates his arguments.)