Psybertron Asks

Excellent edition of The Edge NEwsletter, includes not only Dan Dennett, recovering from an acute heart condition, and Evolutionary Morality from Nick Wade of the NYT, but also last weekend’s Observer piece by their religious correspondent Jamie Doward, reviewing the three popular science books lined up against God in the best seller charts as we run up to Christmas.

Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion
Dan Dennett – Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Sam Harris – The End of Faith / Letter to a Christian Nation

Not yet read any of the three. As a big fan of Dennett, I will almost certainly obtain and read that. Dawkins, I’ve said enough about, what he seems unable to see is that being “scientifically right” is hardly a convincing argument. Sam Harris was recommended by Sue Blackmore on “A Good Read” recently, so I may give it a try, though Sam seems to shoot the atheist cause in the foot with a “Nuke the Bastards” suggestion if reason fails to impress not just religious extremists, but masses of religious moderates. (See previous piece on moderate but sophisticated theological issues here.)

The “final solution” outburst from Harris is interesting though. A sign of the seriousness of the issue under debate here. As the footnote to every page of my blog has said since 9/11 “The phrase ‘Creative Destruction’ can never again be used lightly.” Cool heads needed like never before.

Nothing to lose but an ideology.

Brilliant via Rivets yet again.

Some more great Weird Al Jankovic spoofs on YouTube too.

Not heard this one before, but as an engineer in the s/w business it rings true.

“If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.”

– Weinberg’s Second Law

Via TCL via Rivets. Guessing Steve Weinberg, but I don’t know, must check.
(Gerry (Gerald) Weinberg apparently. Hat tip to Dermot and EDinCT for the comments)

And talking of software and engineering, after Napster and I-Tunes along came, no not YouTube, but the phonograph. Fascinating actually (Rivets never fails to find ’em)

Interesting post from Anecdote about peer pressure influencing moral decisions. I first noted this 15 years go when I read DeLorean’s (auto)-biography. The paraphrased quote of his I keep dredging up is “Committees of moral men make immoral decisions”.

Nils Brunsson has this well documented as “Management Hypocrisy”

Interstingly another recurring memory on that score, comes from an early management training course I did, with a role-playing exercise, where we were each given different briefings. The point was that noticing the smell of something not quite right is one thing, diagnosing the problem is another. The situation involved some “falling out” between groups of colleagues that was interfering with harmonious working, in fact every role involved had some hidden issues, weird-religious-interest, domestic-upset, office-stationary-pilfering, promotion-rivalries, fiddling-expenses, stealing-work-time, office-romance-jealousy / infidelity, you name it – all human life was there. In fact the greatest cause of the friction was not the least moral actions – eg the “stealing”, but the least “congruent” – the religious odd-ball. A salutory lesson.

I’ll keep that link for a rainy day on MoQ.Discuss. 😉

Not the kind of stuff I usually expect to find at The Apothecary’s Drawer, but it looks like Ray Girvan has found YouTube too.

This takes me back to the jukebox in the Fisherman’s Arms in Scalloway, when Sylvia and I first met back in 1979. Don’t think I’ve ever seen the video before.

Great set of photos by Ray too.

As a confirmed atheist, I was about to do some research on the coincidences of atheist philosophers converting to catholicism in later life (Wittgenstein ? McLuhan ? and a couple of others ?), basically wondering if there was an intellectual elitst attraction with the hierarchy in said church. That’ll have to wait.

I stumbled across the BBC’s John Humphrys’ “In Search of God“, in an extended discussion with Anglican Archbishop Dr Rowan Williams.

Apparently Humphrys was a believer, but lost the faith in recent years. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Beslan schoolchildren’s massacre. He is challenging multi-denominational faith leaders to re-convert him.

I’m no great fan of Humphrys, but I’ve noted before that the Archbishop does seem to speak sense in public life.

Williams was painfully honest in trying to address questions, about what is the God he believes in and why. I made a lot of notes, but here are just a few.

He believes in a God, which at some level of abstraction is the root of causality, first cause, but not in any literal direct (interventional) cause of any specific events. The setter of the framework of the processes in the physical world, the only set of processes the world can have, even a god created world. God’s “omnipotence” limited by that physical framework “he” created. Ditto prayer, “somehow” a channel of “hope” for such influence, but no identifiable or explicable causal effect. He pretty freely used love and bliss as almost synomyms for God.

Since the true nature of that abstract God is unknowable, crude anthropomorphic metaphors – the bearded wise omnipotent old man – were actually preferable to any more sophisticated abstractions, because they may have the illusion of being closer to a real picture of God, whereas they cannot really be. At least with the crude metaphor, you are unlikely to forget “he’s” only a metaphor.

(A fair bit of stuff about “free-will” and “eternal afterlife”.)

Here is the main point, if I can articulate it. “Faith” in that God, and that description of the divine creation, underlies a belief in the observable facts that the world (governed by “his” physical framework) comprises uncertainty, contingency, complexity, risk & probability and arising (emergence) of unwillable outcomes, unwillable even by God.

Significantly, the Archbishop didn’t draw on any arguments of authority, biblical quotations, or historical weight of numbers to support any of his answers. (Compare the christian non-theologian response to Sue Blackmore on “A Good Read”) 

Ultimately he appeared to see faith as “sense-making intellect”, and god as that “sense” ? Some significant silences, in trying to distinguish mysticism from theistic faith. Apart from “historical doctrine” only “holistic consistency” distinguished religious faith.

Even Dawkins might struggle to find anything to disagree with there, if he could get past the choice of word and metaphor.

I blogged about Eestor recently. That’s not an anomalous energy patent, but an electrical capacitance alternative to the internal combustion engine. Will it work commercially and socially ? The point is that there may be reasons for engineering scepticism, but the basic physics is not (yet) in doubt.

Brian Josephson has been a regular champion against sceptics in physics, who let their scepticism get the better of their scientific judgement, when anomalous effects are reported. “Cold Fusion” (more accurately low-energy or solid state fusion) is alive and well despite the heavy guns of received wisdom in physics arrainged against it.

Sam sent me a link to Steorn Technology. Like low-energy fusion it seems to be an anomalous excess energy effect, something magnetic, but the difference here is that the “discoverers” and patent holders are giving nothing away as to what the physics might be. In fact, assuming the whole thing is not just some start-up funding scam, their approach is to say we’re just engineers, we challenge serious scientists to explain it. Their FAQ sums it up,

Question :
Is this a:
1. Marketing ploy. Such as “Steorn: Remember what we did with a fake product, think what we can do for your real one.”
2. A scam
3. You are too weak technically to realize it is not really a free energy device

Answers:
1. No
2. No
3. The Jury will decide.

Be interesting to see how their quest progresses. Like the low-energy fusion anomalous energy, explaining the physics is one thing, harnessing technology is another.

The point here is that the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine is such an anathema, that the possibility of an as yet unexplained natural energy source is too easily discounted. Josephson – Nobel physicist – goes so far as to suggest that physics is not the most fundamental reality, though to be fair by that he means physics as current explained by quantum mechanics.

Which brings us to J.S.Mill again. Claiming to believe in the contingency of scientific knowledge is one thing. Acting that way is another. Which of course is back full circle to Chris Argyris too … the behavioural distinction (in social organisations) between “espoused theories” and “theories in use”.

Here in northern Alabama, there are a dozen churches of every christian denomination per square mile as far as the eye can see. The locals also seem to “celebrate” Halloween as a major social and commercial event. We’ve been unable to move for pumpkins, fall-wreaths, packets of “treats” and the smell of cinnamon in the local shopping malls for a full month already.

Last night, Saturday, seemed to be the Halloween party night around town, people in the parking lots dressed to party, lugging cases of beer to their SUV’s, and many in Halloween fancy dress – all ages.

Pretty chilly in town last night – mid-40’s I’d guess – the band (Yes No Maybe, excellent by the way) wearing several layers and warm jackets, warming their fingers on the radiant propane heaters between numbers on the patio-stage at Humphrey’s. Younger groups dropping in and out of the bars in fancy dress, presumably planning to move on to the Halloween party at the local nightclub later. As I left town at about 11:30pm, there were still queues to get into the downtown parking lots.

Some seriously elaborate fancy dress – one amazing Gene (Kiss) Simmons get-up, put me in mind of Tommy Womack’s (cod) piece a couple of nights earlier, but that’s another story. The point though, is that given the “conservative” locale, the young girls were almost without exception in skimpy schoolgirl, nurse, french-maid, little-devil, dominatrix, geisha stereotype outfits.

The quantity of cold-weather-exposed flesh put me in mind of the geordie lasses on the riverfront in Newcastle on a Friday night, or the geordie lads in the Gallowgate end when Saturday comes. Is it just me ?

Sitting here I’m watching an angler on this bright crisp morning dry-fly fishing by the footbridge across the pond outside our window. He’s also ground-baiting, throwing handfulls of breadscraps onto the water in the general area. The kids feed the fish off that same bridge most days – tilapia, sun-fish, catfish, whatever. The Kingfisher and Herons make the most of the opportunities from the bridge hand-rail too. What of it.

I’d mentioned to a serious-angler colleague a couple of weeks ago about how much fishing there was locally, on ponds / lakes as well as the Tennessee river and its backwaters, and how often people seemed to catch significant fish on at least two out of three casts – Bass and Catfish as big as your leg, or forearm at any rate. Too easy, where’s the sport if the fish are that plentiful and dumb ?

He recalled a story of fishing near his previous home on lake Ontario, where huge Carp and Bass seemed to congregate near a power station warm cooling water outlet, and consequently many anglers also congregated. (I had similar experiences at the outlet from the Guntersville dam earlier this year.) The profusion of fish and bait, including ground-bait, seemed to be self-reinforcing. The more people fished, the more fish there were. Eager fish would even intercept baited hooks or thrown ground-baits before they hit the water. 

Fishing-fest or feeding-frenzy ? 

(BTW the dry-fly guy doesn’t seem to have had a bite yet.)