Writing Progress

I’ve claimed to be “in writing mode” once or twice recently …

[But got stalled by an earlier “strained conversation” post – a car crash that proved fascinating – and it’s not over yet. Fascinating because the advancement of reason and knowledge (in the widest sense) is the point of everything I do, and dialogue is pretty fundamental to that process. A learning opportunity.]

… Anyway, it’s a week since I posted, so this is just a diary note to record, that I really do seem to have got some writing momentum recently.

      1. The Position – a statement of what I believe, in brief.
      2. The Thesis – the whole formal “how and why” development of that.
      3. Good Fences – an essay on one corollary of the whole.
      4. Sacred Naturalism – an essay on another corollary of the whole.
      5. Primary Sources – an acknowledgement of the main originators.
      6. Time and Tide – a fictional narrative inspired by the whole.

I have working drafts / chapters / outlines of all now. Progress.

1, 3 , 4 and 5 are a matter of honing / refining and I’ll probably share early versions sometime soon. 2 and 6 are just early sections / chapters and outlines – but motivation is there to plough on. But, also progress.

Wish me luck.

We Can Be Heroes 2022

Unrelated, but I just watched two unplanned programs the last couple of days.

Netflix had Lawrence of Arabia available, and it turned out to be the full 4.5 hour long director’s cut, complete with blank screen audio overture and intermission. The film that impressed me as a small schoolboy aged 6 back in 1962. Everything I remembered it for, even though I’ve read Seven Pillars of Wisdom multiple times since, supplemented by scenes and dialogue cut from the original cinematic release. Sound by Maurice Jarre I probably wouldn’t have noticed then. [Watching in HD, despite actually owning a DVD copy of the same version, one or two visual artefacts in view, but not enough to detract.] Flawed human, obviously, but lots of heroic intent in his words if not necessarily the action. Allenby is the real star. There but for grace, etc …

And, BBC Four TV had the Arena episode on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Long after Bloomsday, so no idea of the original timing, but apparently delayed due to the recent attack on Salman Rushdie, with him being a major talking head contributor. Guessing from his age it was maybe a few years old. Anyway, magical. So much to follow-up. The women that made it possible for the rest of us.

Strained Conversation

Opening Gambit

[Links being added]

[Q (21 Aug)]: “I understand that you have a professional engineering background and a strong interest in systems theory …  If you would like to discuss this very important topic one on one I would be interested.”

[A (22 Aug)]: “Sure, I most recently I summarised my interest here (18 Aug): [Opening para only] Cybernetics, like anything else, evolves, so I’m never talking about specific systems theory(ies). I’ve described my own journey every which way through systems engineering to systems thinking under the cybernetic umbrella. I have a nothing new under the sun attitude to any topic, whereby changing language may change the focus on details, but for the main part it’s really expressing a different view of the same underlying conception”

Trajectory Expected

I have some knowledge of systems theories, so, when you say cybernetics and systems thinking, but no particular systems theory(ies)- what do you mean by the same underlying conception(s)?

Me: Yes, cybernetics has just remained a broad umbrella term for my evolving thoughts. Cybernetics – simply meaning the processes of governance. Systems – meaning those things involved in those processes of doing and being. And that underlying conception of a system as any “thing” considered in terms of its functional relations with other internal or external, things (systems). For me Systems Thinking simply says pretty much anything and everything can be, and benefits from being, thought of that way.

So, where you go on to say … have you thought about … etc.

Actual Trajectory

[Tirade of angry expletives and personal insults – deleted.]

Breaking every rule of discourse with an added helping of whataboutery – name-dropping lots of additional historical sources without any apparent relevance given for any of the content of these to the content of the dialogue or anything I’ve said previously?

Me: bemused.

[Context – I’m only engaged with this person because I was impressed by some questions they’d asked about aspects of Iain McGilchrist’s work in a community channel about his work – and that their profile / introduction included this:

“I have been on a lifelong mission to convince scientists to abandon mechanistic materialism by fighting the battle from within […] I am abd [sic] on a PhD in mathematics. My intent was to be able to learn any area of science where there was a nascent awareness of the wrongness of reductionism and mechanistic materialism.”

Me too, essentially. Except in my case I’ve not (yet) embarked on a PhD, though my intent is that one of my writing projects is a PhD standard thesis, and rather than “learning the sciences” I’ve embarked on a broader focus including the philosophy of science and philosophy more generally from pragmatism to metaphysics.

The reference to “from the inside” is significant too. The “Church of Reason” being policed by academic organisations is one reason there is so much factional division – rivalry over resources and citations and who (doesn’t) cite who – between different schools of thought in science as well as philosophy. My focus is on building-bridges – a synthesis between the best of each.]

Live to Fight Another Day?

[6 to 10 Sept]

Independently, but in a small sub-group of the McGilchrist Channel, a conversation started on “computation” when someone posted a PBS Video on computation in the universe. Long story short, after I’d expressed some of my information-based metaphysics views in support of some key points in the presentation, primarily the point about scale – that a computation can describe something much larger (and more complex) than itself, and that given that it was possible to make the (possibly megalomaniac) claim that the whole world could be described in terms of information processing.

That drew one long response:

Leaving aside the issue of megalomania, there is a basic distinction between holism and reductionism. Friston and Solms published an article “How and why Consciousness arises” where they attempt to use the free energy principle to justify turning humans into fancy robots. The do have a disclaimer that what they are doing will almost certainly not answer the hard problem mentioned by Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers but full steam ahead anyhoo. Dr. McGilchrist is very clear on rejecting such ideas and openly advocates the pragmatism of William James in rejecting any notion of a final theory like Markov blankets. There is a BIG difference between Process philosophy of which pragmatism is an example. I use Google Scholar to find out who is doing work in unlikely areas. For instance if you do a search using the expression Solms + McGilchrist the are only about 80 hits and almost all of them are about clinical psychology. NONE on philosophy or consciousness. There is at this time very little about the use of mathematics in the study of process philosophy. I do NOT see Solms as doing Holistic science. I see him and Friston as trying to sneak materialism into the subject and saying don’t look to closely as we do our shell game with you. Daniel Dennet is an ultra cheap version of this song and dance. Don’t let them fool you. To say a process is a computation is just another way to say all processes are just fancy machines. Caveat emptor!!!!!

Plus:

Also, a note, I did a search in TMWT for both Friston and Solms. The result? Neither were mentioned by name anywhere in the text proper and only a handful of articles in the very extensive bibliography where almost all the articles(less than 10) were about the neuroscience. It is a VERY safe bet that Dr. McGilchrist is very well aware of their alleged attempts to do philosophy. It’s kind of funny in that Friston is often touted as referenced more than any other scientist let alone neuroscientist and Dr. McGilchrist felt no need to mention him even once in the main text of TMWT. In my view a very wise choice!

And:

So obviously, none of them are stupid, right? Do you believe you are so much smarter than them and you are going to show them why they are wrong to ignore each other? I am a nobody, so no one gives a damn what I say. I am sure none of them want to start a war by stating explicitly what they think of each other. I see the lack of publications which refer to both (Friston and/or Solms vs McGilchrist) of them as very clear evidence of seriously hostile camps. To me, Friston and Solms are clearly left brain dominant!

So, in the spirit of progress, let me address the content of the actual critical response. (I have a 3 strikes and you’re out rule in discourse where if people ignore the content of exchanges 3 times, I block and stop the discourse. This is our second exchange. Life’s too short.)

Firstly overall tone & style. I don’t want to spend any more time tone-policing, but it has to be said that overall it’s criticisms of people and their imputed motives. ie not related to the content of anything actually said – by me or them.

Let’s start with:

“Leaving aside the issue of megalomania,
… Caveat emptor!!!!!”

Ironically, it was I who’d already mentioned possible megalomania in making any fundamental metaphysical claims (or worse still “Theory of Everything”) as a caveat. And the more general caveat emptor? I’m a human individual in dialogue giving my good faith views, with the hope we all might learn from them being challenged in good faith in context, me included. My specific formal qualifications don’t bar me from holding opinions of what I’ve read and heard in good faith – in fact as I’ve often pointed out it’s an occupational hazard of multi-discipline research to bump up against limits to one’s formal and/or certified knowledge. (Ironically, systems thinking itself provides a solution to this problem of boundaries between disciplines – but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

I have bigger writing projects which this dialogue is distracting me from, but any new /  alternatives / corrections / inputs are always welcome. That’s the point of public dialogue.

“there is a basic distinction between holism and reductionism”

I’m not at all sure what point is being made in the context of this particular “computation” dialogue, but I’ll say (!) this is in fact what I’d hoped would be the content of the initial dialogue [21 Aug above]. Holism and reductionism are two sides of a coin / two ends of a spectrum. Systems, systems-theories, systems-science(s) and systems-thinking generally rose to prominence in the mid-20th C (eg Macy conferences) precisely because it brought to the sciences (and more) a solution to “wrongness of reductionism and mechanistic materialism”. Let’s talk about that?

“Friston and Solms published an article “How and why Consciousness arises” where they attempt to use the free energy principle to justify turning humans into fancy robots.”

So, these are relevant – to dialogue with me – because Solms is one of my recent sources exploiting both computation and systems-thinking views. The suggestion theirs is an “attempt to justify turning humans into fancy robots” is spurious and facetious – and irrelevant. They’ve written several papers together and Solms has written an excellent book since then. Anyway – I only came to know Friston through Solms but have subsequently taken an interest. I spent a whole day watching and writing-up some notes from watching a 4 hour (!) interview of Friston suggested by this interlocutor, though I’ve still seen no response to my efforts? I’ve also taken interest in Friston through my wider systems interests at INCOSE and ISSS, where systems-thinking is gaining wide traction across industry and human endeavours in the widest sense AND a whole school of “Active Inference” computation has grown out of Friston’s ideas in real time. As well as following his work, I also addressed a (now infamous) paper of criticisms of the “movement” created by his work. This is part of the process of progress in human knowledge.

“Dr. McGilchrist is very clear on rejecting
such [computing / machine] ideas”

He is, as I’ve noted several times. It’s the main cause for my integration project. It’s not that anything McGilchrist has claimed is “wrong” just that (imho) he’s missing a trick about where his work can be integrated into wider work on brain / mind knowledge. As I’ve said many times – this is partly a problem where the language of “computing machines” (and the geeks that use it) invokes that mechanist / reductionist impression in minds of hearers and experience of “users”, but where more recent (organismic) systems language is achieving traction not just in the physical / thermodynamic level but through biology, sociology and culture (see ISSS above).

Particularly baffling support for rejection of fundamental computation ideas from someone whose response to the original PBS video that started this second conversation was “I knew about parts of what he said but there was more that I did not know about and to see it all put together in one place was exhilarating!”

“[McGilchrist] openly advocates the pragmatism of William James in rejecting any notion of a final theory like Markov blankets.”

This is good. Me too. James’ pragmatism pretty fundamental to my journey, and I’ve acknowledged where McGilchrist shares many references with mine. James and Whitehead I’d add. I’m avoiding the idea of a final theory (of everything) too. See above. Science itself cannot be like that. It’s why the cybernetic language has morphed to “systems thinking” – a way of thinking about things – different systems of xxx – rather than a single system driven by one theory. The claims are actually metaphysical. I’ve not seen McGilchrist mention Markov-blankets specifically (?) – if I had to guess I’d say any rejection was in the context above – wider rejection of mechanistic-sounding ideas. (Solms is a must read.)

“There is a BIG difference between Process philosophy of which pragmatism is an example.”

Sure, but an interesting statement here. Not sure of the relevance? Depending exactly whose theories we’re talking about, they are different “systems of thought” that overlap both ways I’d say.

“if you do a search using the expression Solms + McGilchrist the are only about 80 hits and almost all of them are about clinical psychology.”

Not remotely surprising? Solms work in the area closest to McGilchrist’s is pretty recent. Neither references the other as we’ve already seen.

“There is at this time very little about the use of mathematics in the study of process philosophy.”

I know mathematics is a particular interest of yours, but can’t see the relevance of this statement here?

“I do NOT see Solms as doing Holistic science. I see him and Friston as trying to sneak materialism into the subject and saying don’t look to closely as we do our shell game with you.”

Apart from the spurious and facetious reference to motives again – which I’ll ignore – I very much see Solms using systems thinking to produce a holistic view of brain-mind processes. That’s almost exactly what he IS doing in his book. We can progress this only if we agree to discuss actual work of his and any words you or I have related to these.

“Daniel Dennet (sic) is an ultra cheap version of this song and dance. Don’t let them fool you.”

Ha, you obviously know Dennett is a “hero” of mine – but this is just a facetious jibe, again? We can talk turkey only if you want to relate it to specifics (relevant to my interest).

“To say a process is a computation is just another way to say all processes are just fancy machines.”

Not “fancy machines” – more of your pejorative rhetoric – but (many layered) organismic systems – complex adaptive systems, as you said yourself in an earlier exchange.

That’ll do for now. If you engage on the content of any of the discourse I will continue to engage in good faith.

OK, just one more (others are in the community platform already) relevant to McGilchrist’s main thread:

“Friston and Solms are clearly left brain dominant!”

Absolutely. Any “scientists” describing their science formally in symbolic or prosaic language is primarily using their left-brain tools, McGilchrist included – in fact it’s the main problem dominating discourse about McGilchrist’s work. You will only find the right-brained aspects in the specific content and embodied intent. Solms in fact, I can’t speak for Friston, is at great pains to make the same point – orthodox scientists need to make the leap to valuing the intuitive and subjective aspects of their work as well as the explicit and objective. He calls it “crossing the Rubicon” – he doesn’t use the language of “left & right brains” (obviously), but I think you’d find it fits very well with your own mission of correcting the reductive mechanistic errors of science generally?

If not, we’ve reached 3 strikes and you’re out 🙂

[Update added 12 Sep]

So, Round 3

Not quite given up yet.

Apparently I’m beyond contempt and there is no value discussing any of my words, so as I’ve already suggested several times, let’s discuss content which you have suggested:

From the above:

      • Let’s talk about your “there is a basic distinction between holism and reductionism” and where it fits with our systems subject and the “wrongness of reductionism and mechanistic materialism”?
      • Let’s talk about why you found the PBS cosmic computation video “exhilarating” and clarify why you nevertheless appear reject the idea of fundamental computation?
      • Let’s clarify your “difference between process philosophy [and] pragmatism” in our McGilchrist & systems context.
      • Let’s clarify in the context of this processes & systems dialogue what you intended by “There is at this time very little about the use of mathematics in the study of process philosophy.”

And from assorted community threads:

      • If you prefer let’s start with clarifying your “it’s about holism over reductionism” … where I said I agree in our systems context – in fact I responded “my systems thinking take … is absolutely is about holism over reductionism”. (Same as the first bullet above? already came up in earlier exchanges. The central point for me).
      • I liked your suggestion of “complex adaptive systems” as a good summary of my own interest. Let’s clarify where this fits in our McGilchrist context?
      • You said “I found a history of cybernetics paper published in 2020. I will send the url tomorrow.” An opportunity I missed amidst a longer para which I rejected – I was rejecting another longer piece of reading given all the other points we had already raised as discussion points and the fact you’d already ignored my responses to a full pdf book and a 4 hour interview you’d already shared. Anyway, you said you stopped studying Cybernetics in 1980 – I only started after that – so this might be interesting – You never did share the URL and I’m very much interested in the so-called first and second cybernetics?
      • You shared a “test” of your mathematics “bona-fides” and asked me to do the same. It felt like a pissing contest, but I complied with your request – apart from one word “promising” you never really followed that up. I guess I’m intrigued by the fourth bullet above, why you see mathematical prowess as so crucial to this systems dialogue?
      • At one point you said “you have refused to help me understand what you are saying”. For me this is the point of having the dialogue, to share mutual understanding, but I guess you were referring to my rejection of your very general earlier request to “define my terms”? Rather cryptically I said “eventually” (*). Happy to clarify specifics as they arise in the dialogue – I did suggest some – eg Cybernetics, Systems and Systems Thinking. Ask away, achieving shared understanding is the first phase of any dialogue in my book (of rules) 🙂 [(*) My take on definitions is quite specific to my systems thinking, so I prefer to think of definitions in terms of their usage, (a la Wittgenstein) rather than as detached objective statements – I have a long history in “definitions” which I have elaborated elsewhere.]
      • At one point you did say “I will reread that post [first link at the top] in light of our exchanges” but you never did respond to any of it, not even the first para. I’d be happy if you did.
      • I suggested a dialogue reset based on: an earlier conversation we spoke about Maslow’s Hierarchy and disagreed about “Self-Actualisation”. You wanted to take me back to the history of what he meant at the time and what people (who agreed or disagreed) said he meant during the past century. Systems thinking says – what I should be interested in is the best use of the gist of what he said – now, for the best future. [Part of what I call “deflation” – after Friston – a lot of the detail is deflated, discounted, embedded in layered structures that have evolved since.] I’m still happy to switch to that?
      • And many more … but pick any one (or more) you fancy?

Meantime – not holding my breath – back to the writing.

Evolved System Interfaces

“Every surgeon knows the quality of evolved functionality comes with lousy interfaces”

(Street in NYC. Hat tip <somebody> on Linked In
– but there are thousands out there.)

Compared with …


(Hat tip the following tweet.)

Which is a reference to this old “Designed Evolution” post of mine from 2006 -one of my earlier round-ups of Cybernetics / Systems influences, including John Dupré.

Stop Reading? – You Gotta Be Kidding

I’ve declared I’m in “Just Write Something” mode and am avoiding reading wherever I can until I’ve broken the back of the writing projects.

Still, I keep adding new references to my book list, and people commenting on what I’ve said or written often share some other paper or video link “have you seen this?” – with or without any obvious relevance to anything I’ve said or written. That long Friston interview was an example. 4 hours running time (!) a full day of listening, thinking and capturing notes to discuss with the person that shared it. In a sense, all dialogue is distraction, but it is also creative – of evolving ways of expressing the ideas. But reading is always a distraction from writing and is only worth it if there is also creative input.

As well as the book list, there are always references to papers and articles – I always try to bookmark or download, even if I have no intention of an immediate read. With the books, adding to the list is usually it for now, but one or two are irresistible, so I acquire a copy, even if with no immediate plan to read. Expanding the “Library of Unread Books”.

These four fell into that category:

Actually, the Bertalanffy I’d acquired back in London a while ago, but had simply filed in the library until digging it out a week ago.

And I thought I really ought to own a copy of this. With “We Are As Gods” premiering already in the US, tatty second hand copies are getting more expensive to acquire. One on it’s way.

=====

Post Note: Lo and behold, this from “We Are As Gods” just a few days later.

 

Digression Back to the Same Points?

An old quote, given my threads on formal logic vs chaotic approach to knowledge, from The Secret History by Donna Tartt (p.28) :

I was charmed by his conversation, and despite its illusion of being rather modern and digressive (to me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from the subject) I now see that he was leading me by circumlocution to the same points again and again. For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”

A direct copy of a post from way back in 2001 – but deleted to avoid a weird amount of spam traffic on the original post title. Nothing if not obsessive.

(Nope – update – marking as deleted, deleting the content and changing the title hasn’t stopped the spam hits, so these are not new search hits on the text, but must be externally indexed links to the permalink – so now hard-deleted. And – update – that appears to have worked – so I can leave this post to rest in peace.)

Donna Tartt a recurring input to my Amor Vincit Omnia thread.

The Information Philosopher

My own metaphysics is information-based and I know I’ve made a link or two to “The Information Philosopher” site before. I didn’t know any more about the “Bob Doyle” who curates the site in terms of his own philosophical thinking (*), BUT …

… as a resource of collected links, people and publications it is mind-bogglingly huge and well organised / indexed with descriptive pages – a veritable Wikipedia of Information Philosophy. Marvellous resource – general Google search hits on relevant topics eg on “Bertalanffy and Ergodic” invariably throw up masses of hits on these pages.

[Although local installations of Google’s search engine were withdrawn a decade ago, he uses Google with his site as a constraint filter in all his links and on-site searches. Better than inbuilt blog searches I reckon. Almost certainly means all searches lead to greater Google indexing of the local content too. Neat?]

Anyway. Learning the fact that Boltzmann coined the idea of the “ergode” back in 1877 – picked-up by Gibbs (of free-energy fame) and Ehrenfest – through Wiener, Bertalanffy, Shannon et al – to chaos theory and the likes of Stuart Kaufmann, much referenced by … Karl Friston only yesterday.

Nothing new under the sun,
all roads lead to systems thinking.

(*) That is a very comprehensive “about” page. Clearly a man after mine own – very positive relationship with Dennett for example, and author in 2009 of:

Robert O. Doyle,
“Free Will: it’s a normal biological property,
not a gift or a mystery,”
Nature, 459, June 2009, p.1052.

I’ll say! And …

Free Will:
The Scandal in Philosophy.
Published in June 2011.

Exactly how I feel. The continued “mystification” of conscious will is a dreadful meme holding back so much human value.

I wonder, any relation to John C Doyle? (Otherwise may explain my earlier confusion over a Dennett / Doyle relationship?)

=====

[Post Notes:

Actually only made one link to Information Philosopher before. Where I primarily noted the scale of the resource, and the fact I’d come across it following up a Frank Ramsay reference. But purely coincidentally the same post, a quite important one in terms of consolidating my agenda about a year and a half ago, also includes a very positive “holding out for a hero” reference to John C Doyle.]

Staring Into Nothing?

Staring Into Nothing is the name of a new musical / rock-opera created by a band of that same name. So new, it’s having its premiere at the El Portal theatre in LA on 7th October.

Significant here because the band’s name and origins, as well as the theme of their latest musical “Quality – What is Good and What is Not?“, arose from Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, band founder Steve Rogers favourite book.

[Hat tip to David Matos at ZMMQuality Facebook for sharing.]

Long Friston Interview

This Karl Friston interview is long and wandering (almost 4 hours!) and a bit distorted by the somewhat affected (?) naïve “Theory of Everything” – everything including the kitchen sink – agenda of interviewer Curt Jaimungal, but anyway … some very rough mental notes:

Deflationary view – hooray. The very point. Using / understanding general intent of simplifying view (of FEP-based systems view) and not having to worry about complexity in possible detail. (See overfitting and internal<>external independence – later.)

Mathematics and computation origins – and philosophy – Andy Clark, Richard Feynman, Kolmogorov, Helmholtz, Gibbs free-energies.

Chaos and meta-stable attractors.

Levels of Sentience – good.
Sensing external world, holding a “representation” of the external world, having self-awareness of the self and the model held of the world and self, etc. (Sentience does NOT mean feeling pleasure and pain.)

Thing – recognising one generally, starting from thing <> no-thing / not-thing – Markov chains / boundaries / blankets. Circular causality implied by that dynamic definition of a thing – maintaining its steady state.

Statistical “surprisal” theory, Bayesian probability densities. Minimising free-energy or prediction error.

Influence as causation?
Sean Carroll says causation is illusion – yawn.
(This whole thesis is about explaining causation – only kind presumed is elementary in simple control-theoretic sense – in the if-this-then-than logic of the maths …) Is the axis always time? (Yawn again – time & causation fundamentally pretty weird ab-initio – so only dependencies here are to intuitive sense other than independent variable in the maths, again. Underlying Langevin equation of state flows > Path Integrals, many “equivalent” representations. (Sabine also used the “confusion” over causation to diss alternative descriptions of “free” conscious will. Fact is no-one has “definitive” model of causation beyond the maths – no scientist, no politician.)

Flows up or down / parallel to probability / concentration gradients and flows across / along iso-probability contours. Many special cases of the general. Human scale is intermediate between hot / random-fluctuation / quantum scale and cold / cosmic / stable scale.

Schrödinger ? Yes.

Warnings about Free-Energy theories – Emperor’s clothes / impenetrable difficulty – oh yes. Hidden simplicity, lost at typical human levels – quite funny.

Back to ToE question? … interesting that Friston does address the question … but falls back to basic Markov blanket point in statistical mechanics, thingness, partitioning “things”. Deflationary again. His “Deflationary Theory of Everythingness” – very good!

Algorithmic complexity. Jamesian / Bayesian belief structures. Prediction errors / Surprise minimisation / Uncertainty resolution. [Post note – Meta-surprise. The explore<>exploit distinction sometimes intentional exploration of the uncertain IS the goal, not the surprise.]

Existential “goodness” – processing new information thermodynamically efficiently. Yay! Battery powered miniaturisation – versus super-computed complexity. Quite analogous to Occam. Avoiding “overfitting” data, locally, today. (This right scale – complexity / simplicity / frequency / time-base – very much John Doyle?) (There’s no prediction in Roulette – dummy! – other behaviours / incentives too.) But yes – leaving latitude in play. Game theory involves multiple “test” moves as well as optimisation moves – eg if there really is some skewed chance in the casino’s wheel.)

Newcombs paradox. Yawn again! Question is always about genuine “population” stats or a single psychological choice. See games again.

Zipping … is a good analogy.

AGI (re-)generative models currently “a long way from these principles”.

Jordan Peterson !?!?! The “Tao” between order and chaos – again the right middle scale is the point. Sure. Self-organised criticality … Stuart Kauffman … towards the “edge of chaos”. Repertoire of dynamics needed to give you that “latitude”.

Architectural decisions in model structure, which must itself “learn” – structural learning. (Where I started mid-80’s)

McGilchrist question.  (Ross-Ashby reference in his answer.) Iso-morphism between the world and our internal model (Bernado Kastrup too – hmmm) “sufficient” iso-morphism. (No acknowledgement of McG in the answer / discussion?) Architectural iso-morphism – the gist – Yay! (It’s Solms that takes Friston into actual brain / mind processes.) And nothing about hemispheric hypothesis. Curt asks a long question about L-R asymmetries … Friston doesn’t really have a view on McGilchrist – architectural connectivity not physical geometry / shape. (Need Solms here. But McGilchrist doesn’t have a view on Friston-Solms yet either.)

Topology of flat sensors vs long-thin processors (Axons). Computation architectures. Yay! Split of whatness / thingness and whereness / relational-properties. Good point.

NOTHING so far on the advertised “What Is Life, Consciousness, the meta-Hard Problem”? (Sound getting out of sync with video)

Speed and granularity (and density / sparseness of connectivity) of processing on multiple levels. 90% of our sensorium generated by ourselves and fellow humans – so that model clearly very important to our world view. Shared narratives, language, etc but also at many levels.

Hierarchies? Yes – layers of granularity.

[Pause at 2h13m] [Continuing ...]

Shared narrative to get along? Religion?

Shared narrative to be able to communicate (but again, see games) No strong view on the religion question, beyond societal norms on beliefs implied by the shared narratives – simpler is easier to share of course (memetics – Yay!)

Deity as the simulator???

Does he believe in free-will? Yes – autonomous dynamics is emergent. (Better developed by Solms.) And Yes, our own “sensorium” – awareness of our experience. My perceptions, my predictions, my needs, my surprises.

Self-fulfilling prophecies? Sure the world we perceive is filled-in (partially constructed) my our predictions. Fulfil and realise. But false inferences and delusions too. Schizophrenia and Autism?

We’re getting well into things Friston wouldn’t claim current expertise, but being asked “what he believes” (although he has psychiatric experience).

Interviewer’s experience of a panic attack? Schizophrenia? Hearing a voice and worrying about it. Even talked to his doctor about it! – where is this going for this interview – afraid of his own mind? Sleeping drugs? Huh? Now giving psychiatric advice! Does have colleagues that have had deep psychotic “episodes”. Group talking therapies. Discord group suggested by interviewer.

[Two interviews stitched together at 2:45]

Our own existence? Actually similar to the (circular) self-fulfilling prophecy.

At last the question about “generative” model. Model whose consequences are observable by the model.

Donald Hoffman on consciousness? (Gerry Edelman previous colleague) No opinion.

Penrose-Hameroff (Orch-OR)? Entertaining, like other QM theories of consciousness – but sceptical of explanatory value. AND REMINDER Friston himself is not proposing any theory of consciousness. (Solms is.)

Sentience – sentient behaviour – is found at our intermediate scales – important. Life as self organisation to some non-equilibrium states – at neither quantum nor cosmic scales.

Templeton challenge of FEP vs IIT as far as theories of consciousness.
(I don’t see them as conflicting. Addressing different aspects.)
Starting with what it means to be alive? Moving in a way that is in the service of sampling evidence, information and resources for its own existence. Sentience and consciousness? – Reflexive vs reflective-planned responses. I / me involved in the generative model. etc Agent that plans and selects its attention. Self-awareness at higher level, etc (Elaborating the levels of sentience from earlier.) Ad infinitum – in a meta sense.

The Meta-Hard Problem? After Andy Clark. Why does the hard problem matter, why is it a puzzle that interests us? Our model must include counterfactuals – must include philosophy and metaphysics. (Chiara Marletto) The existence of the philosophical zombie as a meme, says a lot about the kind of generative we must have. The fact we can have this thought experiment suggests we cannot be zombies.

Idealist or Physicalist? Bat for either side.  (Same model as mine – what we can know is always between reality and us – my triad. There are unavoidable implicit assumptions somewhere in our metaphysics. EXCELLENT!.)
Epistemic ontology – Yay!

Unlimited Scaling of Holons / Partons? Mathematically no constraint. Practical changes in speeds/frequencies/time-constants and predictability of processes at larger and smaller scales. Markov blanket states – internal / external independencies. Proof by induction.

The Meaning of Life? Deflationary – the meaning is in the existence – the existential imperative. Know thyself? (Aspiration, motivation, “attractive states” – Maslow?) Optimism bias in selecting our attention depending on agency is real. Interviewer Curt expressing interest in these levels of motivation – we really must rehabilitate Maslow. Beyond Self-actualisation to serving the gods, etc … Achieving congruence in the stack, acting to minimise cognitive dissonance.

Embodied Cognition? The “matter” of our actions in the world – yes a symmetry between internal and external – almost interchangeable, arbitrary which is which. Desire paths – the external world responds to / learns from its inhabitants. (My favourite is the course of a river constrained by the river bank that it is itself creating.) A “dance” – game theory again. Circular causality.

Overall impressionoverfitting was the one “new” idea I picked-up in this context. Interesting to hear so much elaboration and reinforcement through questions from another agenda, but the core is already there. Curt was clearly strongly affected by it – interesting in itself.

[END]

I Identify as Humanist

In terms of my view of how the world works:

I identify as Humanist.

[But then so do many people of faith who also value humanity. And obviously, in other terms I identify as a lot of other things too: male, husband, father, grandfather, British, European, Engineer, philosophical researcher, etc, etc. But identity is a whole other topic, so let’s stick to the point about holding a worldview ….]

Does that make me an Atheist?
(Well kinda, maybe, probably, but that’s jumping the gun on a metaphysical question, below.)

As a Humanist, I’m also a Free-Thinker.
(Part of what used to be called the Free-Thought movement.)
By freedom of thought and expression we humans are able to understand the world and our place in it – our freedoms and responsibilities- by means of Reasoning unencumbered by dogmas, religious, rational or otherwise.

So I’m also a Secularist.
How we humans govern our affairs collectively, not just our individual reasoning in the world, should also be free from – or at least free to democratically question – any established body of teachings, however rationally benign. (Governance as (Complex) Systems Thinking – literally cybernetics – is central here, and “the best kind of democratic government” is a whole other sub-set of this topic.)

Does that make me a Rationalist?
Not in the narrow sense that all our Reasoning be based on logical relationships – “ratios” – between objectively quantifiable values. I sometimes claim New Rationalist as a label for a more broadly defined reasoning that includes much wider palette of human values, but Humanism itself is already a good label for that.

So what about the Metaphysics?
I’m a Naturalist so I am essentially Non-Theist.  That is, all of that free-thinking reasoning about the world, and the place of humanity within it, is itself part of the natural world without appeal to any supernatural forces or agents beyond it. My world-view has no need of a supernatural, omniscient, omnipotent agent or being to explain it. I’m pretty certain about that – subject to as much free-thought reasoning as we can bring to it – but that doesn’t mean my world-view proves the non-existence of any god. So I’m not literally Atheist. Neither am I Anti-Theist, since Theists & Theologians are human too and more often deeper thinkers than the average science-informed persons. I prefer to define myself in terms of what I’m for, not what I’m against, and there’s a lot to be gained from dialogue with those who think different. It also means I’m neither Agnostic nor Gnostic. I cannot be neutral about the metaphysics of such a naturalist world-view even if for most practical purposes metaphysics can be ignored. Not much is sacred in this world other than nature itself, of which humanity is a part.

[Sacred Naturalism (Say?) Karen Armstrong also uses Sacred Nature since I thought I’d coined the phrase, and there is a Jonathan Haidt inspired project with that name too, or what Gifford called Natural Theology 150 years ago. A whole other topic, to formalise the idea as an ‘ism.]

And what about Science?
So, if we ignore the Metaphysics, for practical purposes, that Free-Thought reasoning looks a lot like Science. As a body of knowledge about the natural world, that established by Science is unbeatable, but as we get closer to the limits of what the methods of science can know, we cannot ignore our Metaphysics which cannot itself be science. In Sacred Naturalism, where reasoning about the Natural world involves human values beyond the narrowly Rational, there are aspects of nature that lie beyond objective scientific orthodoxy. These subjective, qualitative values and direct experiences, may be thought of as spiritual, sacred, even divine, but still entirely natural even if beyond orthodox science.

[A pet project of mine is to question people who (dogmatically?) insist on labelling any method or theory they consider valuable as some kind of “science” as if all those subjective, qualitative, psycho-social elements are best understood scientifically. Why? Making the intuitive and implicit, objective and explicit obviously has value – eg in the “social sciences” – but always has losses in relation to reality. The illogicality of [complexity science] = [science] plus [non-science], etc. almost as if simply calling something science – sprinkling holy-water – confers credibility. “As scientific as possible, but not more so”, to misquote the apocryphal Einstein.]

So WHY Humanist?
That’s answered above, so in my own summary:

In terms of understanding how the world works, there is no more advanced species in the observable cosmos and there is nothing better placed than humanity to solve the world’s problems, even those problems we humans create for ourselves and our ecosystem.  Freethought, together with a reasoning that respects human values and rejects dogma, is the most powerful resource we share with our fellow humans in that quest for a better world.

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Post Note: The reason for the fresh re-statement?:

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Post Notes:

Interesting follow-up post “Is God Sacred?” from AJ over at his “Staggering Implications” on the word we choose for “the sacred”. Noting that the common theme is developing into a movement. (See our exchange in the comments below.)

Also in stating the worldview above, the key topics that define the “What, Why and How do we Know?” agenda here on Psybertron are laid bare as “whole other topics”:

      • Identity & Identity Politics
      • Cybernetics & Democratic Government
      • Metaphysical Naturalism & Fundamental Computation

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