Month: October 2023

“Dysmemics – Bad Ideas that Reproduce Furiously” caught my eye in the profile header of Paula Wright on Twitter / X.

I’ve been using “the memetic problem” for the idea that “bad ideas win over good ideas” in the battle for attention and adoption for at least two decades. Even the sciences themselves suffer from this addiction quite generally, before we get into socio-political minefields. Basically simplistic ideas are much easier to capture and share in a few memorable words and images than better ideas which are invariably more complex, nuanced and subtle. So bad wins over good, and that’s a degenerate state of affairs for humanity as a whole, an inevitable slide to lowest common denominators, especially as more of the process is (semi-)automated at the speed of light.

“Woke” wins over “everything before / after the but”.
[Post Note: Ditto anti-Woke btw.]

Until today, I hadn’t noticed someone had in the meantime coined a word for that memetic problem – “Dysmemics”.

Onward and upward.

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Post Notes:

Frankie Boyle – 2016 in The Grauniad:

“it’s difficult to explain why
an ingrained assumption is wrong
in a soundbite”

And in the “Woke” context hinted at above, from June 2023 – the incompetence of a three letter acronym vs complex systems reality. We’re doomed 😉

More Post Notes: Jan 2024

Hat-tip to Ben Taylor again, sharing “a space worth listening out for” – “quietly protecting the good stuff from the stupid ideas” by Matt Watt at Complex Wales / The Homunculus. A fellow traveller it seems.

Also interesting University of Nottingham post by Brigitte Nerlich on the dumbing down / dehumanising effect of AI et al.

And Dave Snowden at Cynefin “Anthropomorphising Idiot Savants”

And, here Stephen Fry reading a Nick Cave letter. The content itself, but also to note the “God” language – Cave being a believer and Fry, like me, not.
(Great use of the word “demoralising” … removing morals from the world.)

And finally for now Antonio García Martínez:
(Hat tip to David Gurteen, another fellow traveller)

“The decades after the printing press were some of the most violent and volatile in human history.

The same will happen with the Internet/blockchain/AI.

We’re just hurtling towards a wall, some screaming for the brakes, some claiming more speed will get us through it faster.”

(Note – the internet itself, not just the fashionable bits with flashy brandings and acronyms. I’ve been “screaming for the brakes” – calling for moderation of all internet enabled discourse since before social media.)

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That damn meme again. “Dennett denies consciousness”. No he doesn’t.

(I already part reviewed Dennett’s memoir recently and added links to a few other sympathetic reviews which all naturally included summaries of his important works. Apart from one footnote of my own on a reconciliation of his physicalist determinist compatibilism with informational subjective pan-proto-psychism (*), I didn’t detect the problem meme this time, though I’ve rehearsed it umpteen times before.)

However, yesterday Thomas Nagel’s review in The New Statesman got this headline treatment: “What Daniel Dennett gets wrong. Is consciousness an illusion? Only a philosopher could convince himself of something as implausible.”

That same erroneous (and frankly, offensive) criticism expressed 3 ways, by the headline writer at least. I responded wearily: “I’m getting tired of correcting this misrepresentation of Dennett. Our common intuitive view of consciousness is the illusion. Consciousness itself obviously isn’t.” And, as I hit enter, I knew I’d need to explain that “common (but misguided) intuitive view” again. That’s “the illusion”. Consciousness isn’t.

A couple of positive responses agreed with me, but inevitably expressed what they were agreeing with in their own words.

One respondent suggested “I suspect these misrepresentations are because of differences in how we define or understand consciousness. That’s an underlying problem.“

Another had already suggested: “Dennett doesn’t think consciousness is an illusion, only that experiential qualities are illusory. But as Nagel says, that’s to deny what looks to be essential to consciousness.”

The first first. Obviously there are many different issues with defining and understanding “consciousness”. We all already know there are many aspects and multiple axes of sentience, attention, sense-of-self, agency, will, the mental<>physical relationship, etc. It’s a cop-out to suggest the illusion problem is due to lack of a definitive understanding of these. Frankly, as Dennett himself often says, definitions are the last thing we should start with. A cop-out because it misses the specific problematic illusion.

The second is closer, and maybe any difference I have is in choice of words. Again Dennett is very clear on this in his “Bacteria to Bach and Back”. Dialogue, NOT definition, is where the solution lies.

It’s the “experiential qualities” that are illusory? Not exactly. Dennett isn’t denying the reality of these qualia experiences either. He certainly rejects the language of qualia because: ‘he’s saying the idea of such qualia as *objects distinct from* our experience of them is the illusion – the point that objective science will never find such things. (A very common sensible view IMHO)

Those qualia (experiential qualities) ARE our subject, we are they. They’re not science’s objects. Not so much a “hard problem” as missing that [subjectivity] point?‘

(PS – Stopped my usual practice of embedding Tweets since the “X” API has a doubtful future. The quotes above are pasted from Tweets.)

So what is that common (but erroneous) sensible view. It’s what Dennett used to refer to as “the Cartesian theatre”. The idea that we are observers independent from the objects of our observation. An audience of homunculi witnessing the qualia performing on the stage. We ARE our experiences, but that makes us subjects, not objects of empirical science. Science denial of this fact, or of any truth value in such a fact, is the real underlying problem.

In fact this view is now very common, more common than the “noddy” Cartesian-theatre view I’d say. It’s just very hard to express it in ways that orthodox (physicalist, objective, empirical, deterministic, …) science and its publications will take seriously. Mark Solms – who gives one of the best comprehensive explanations of what consciousness really is, how it works and how it evolved to function – calls the problem “crossing the Rubicon” – getting that orthodox science to embrace the subjective view.

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[Post Notes:

The “second” correspondent above was Tom Clark of Naturalism.Org – long time, no contact – maintained his “but Dennett is wrong” line to the end, despite agreeing that qualia are not (do not exist as) objects. He shared some articles of his – “Dennett’s physicalist case against qualia in B2BnB” and “Why Experience Can’t Be Objectified” and “Are Feels Real? – dialogue with Keith Frankish” – concluding with “[but Dennett] categorically denies there’s anything qualitative about experience.” I sincerely doubt that, but what is this obsession with wanting to find disagreement, having agreed the substantive point?!?

Dialogic is not definitive. I suspect resolution lies in that footnote (*) I mentioned above, from my previous Dennett post. It’s about how we use the terms subjective, qualitative and especially physicalist / compatibilist. (The Pirsig – quality teaching – aspect of that post is irrelevant to the current Dennett point – apart from use of the word “quality” of course. Love it when a plan comes together.)

(Weirdly, Keith Mitchell “liked” a couple of my replies in the thread with Tom Clark – hold point for a proper dialogue).]

Listened to a very interesting piece earlier this week before we were away for a few days. Fortunately I’d bookmarked it:

Building Soul – with Thomas Heatherwick
How to Ditch Boring and Humanise Our Cities

The overall thrust and message I completely agree with, but as someone who identifies as “Architect” I want to disagree with one point he repeatedly emphasises, or maybe sound a warning, a different way of looking at the same point.

I’m frequently citing variations of “The devil may be in the details, but the angels are in the abstractions.” Or, one message of “Systems Thinking” (after Levenchuk) is to preserve a domain, some space and time for the thinking at the more abstract – even holistic – level and not to confuse this with thinking about the current good / best-practice details of the planning and doing. The difference between a strategy and an implementation plan.

To be clear, when I’m talking Architecture. I’m talking in the most general human systems sense, not just the physical built-environment sense, that would fit with RIBA. Obviously, anyone engaging in architecture in the building sense needs a sound appreciation of the possibilities of materials and construction processes, as well as their vision for the functional reasoning behind shaping and scoping the building itself. Once upon a time the Master Builder might have literally had both at their fingertips. The visionary – shaping the plan in every dimension – also knew how to build and get stuff done.

The problem, where I think I agree with Heatherwick, is that if one is too prescriptive about the functional purpose of a building and the nominal – effectiveness and efficiency of – creation and intended “use” for a given design life say, it is easy to overlook the wider stakeholding of humanity in general having to live with the results – the soul as much as the physical and functional attributes. I’m not precious about job titles, architect, designer, builder and which different parties (contractors) takes responsibility for which aspects – thinking at different levels over different timescales – but what I am concerned about is that in integrating them they nevertheless remain distinct, with good fences between them. Either side of the builder-architect line, needs to engage in the integrating processes with the other.

[Personally, most of my hands-on construction experience, from strategic level down, has been with explicitly utilitarian facilities, manufacturing and processing plants in industrial areas, where having an economically defined design-life makes sense. Sustainability takes us as far as the recyclability of the materials (beyond the collateral damage of first creating and using it). An industrial facility can be seen as a part of permanent construction site with few aesthetic issues, but that’s not the case with buildings in the wider built human environment. If we’re too prescriptive – rigid – about the architecting in our regulation, we should not be surprised by the bland uniformity (and disposability, built-in obsolescence) of the results. Diversity and longevity includes caring for the wider consequences beyond those of the original funders purpose. I completely agree. What I wouldn’t do is attempt to define all the required attributes into a single educational and qualificational system. It’s about diversity of skills and interests, thinking skills as well as design and building skills – diversity in multiple dimensions.]

[The Long Now?

“German poet Heinrich Heine was once asked why men no longer build cathedrals. He replied: “People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.”Cologne Cathedral took 632 years to complete. Does modern man have the necessary conviction to build something like this today?”

German poet Heinrich Heine was once asked why men no longer build cathedrals. He replied:

“People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.”

Cologne Cathedral took 632 years to complete.… pic.twitter.com/2UzXLbDvEc

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) October 16, 2023

Conviction too.]

I’m reading Dennett’s memoir “I’ve Been Thinking” – not really intending to read the whole right now, as I mentioned before, but it’s a pretty good read, so I am close to a third through.

The reason to pause and make some notes was a striking parallel to Pirsig that jumped out at me.

Like his collaborator Hofstadter, some biographical similarities, but not so much. Ocean-going sailing from Connecticut to Maine for one. Very much not into the 1960’s hippy and drug culture and disparaging about the faux-profound lifestyle philosophy. Serious jazz pianist. Anti-Vietnam war / conscientious objector, but not a pacifist – concern for Hilary Putnam’s mental health as an obsessive anti-war campaigner. But no, none of that.

No. What jumped out was his teaching quality.

At Tufts, one of the undergraduate courses I began teaching was a section of Introduction to Philosophy. It was a “writing intensive” course, in which a small group of freshmen and sophomores (twenty or fewer) were obliged to write, and rewrite, a series of short papers. It was a lot of work for me […] Only the grade on the final submission counted, so I graded the early efforts sternly, giving students D’s and F’s, which they had never before seen on any assignment in their lives.

We’d go through [awkward and boring sentences from their papers] on the blackboard one at a time. “What needs fixing in this sentence?” [Nothing grammatical or content-wise.] “Does it sing? Does it make you want to read the next sentence? […] Or does it just limp along?”

I’d be busy erasing and writing on the blackboard, while they argued among themselves about which revisions were the most apt. They knew good writing from bad writing; they had just never been encouraged to aspire to good writing and didn’t know how to raise their standards until I showed them.

Dennett p107-108

Assessing their own work in class, they knew good from bad.

Pirsig quoting Plato on having his class grade themselves rather than him assigning grades: “And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good, Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”

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[Oh, and I think I spotted a way of reconciling Dennett’s determinist compatibilism with informational subjective pan-proto-psychism.]

[Great Dennett review / interview by Julian Baggini.
Dennett<>Pirsig<>Baggini, now there’s an interesting triangle. It was Julian who attempted the only academic philosopher to philosopher dialogue with Bob – and it didn’t go well.]

[Another sympathetic review, this time from Nigel Warburton in the TLS.]

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In theory I’m not reading, so I can focus on writing, but just acquired these three, on top of the two recent reads of Humboldt and Prigogine. Help!!!

Guess I can leave the two memoirs until some “time off in reward” and having seen Kevin talk about his latest, I probably have his thinking already absorbed in mine, so far as my immediate writing is concerned.

Couldn’t resist flipping through the dust-jacket blurbs and intros of Dan’s. As well as discovering a few biographical nuggets I was unaware of – it was always the content of his thinking I was focussed on anyway – I can rest easy on one thing.

I was baffled, in this interview of him in “Tufts Now” about his memoir, that “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” (B2BnB) wasn’t even mentioned in their list of his most important works. (Obviously “Consciousness [not] Explained” (C[n]E) was, as it always is, despite being over 30 years old.) Fortunately inside the back cover of his memoir, the publisher has B2BnB first in their list of his most important works (as well as a pretty comprehensive sequential bibliography in the front). C[n]E was about what an explanation of consciousness would need to be – the explaining of consciousness, not the explanation of it. B2BnB on the other hand is his best final version of the explanation he’s nailed to the mast.

The must read of his, a consolidation and update of all that went before. “This is a good place to start if you’re new to Dennett.”

I can rest easy.

[Great chat with Robert Kuhn (Closer To Truth) with Dan about his Memoir.]

[Great also to have Kevin’s alongside Dan’s here, Kevin dismissed Dan’s “illusionism” – but in fact says pretty much the same as Dan more recently. Something to work into the writing.]

Onward.

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