Psybertron Asks

Been discussing the merits of alternatives to simple ontologies based on hierarchical classification taxonomies with Leon, off line. Folksonomies is the latest buzzword, mentioned here and earlier, for heterarchical taxonomies that emerge when users tag objects in the course of using them (for whatever it is they use them).

Dave Weinberger has some interesting recent threads on this subject. [Here] and [here].

Don’t normally do politics if I can help it. Here goes.

There is a long “have your say” thread on the BBC site, of public opinions on Iran re-opening its nuclear plants.

There is a preponderance of opinion attacking US & Western “hypocrisy and arrogance” in expressing opinion and raising the subject on EU and UN agendas, and plenty using the opportunity for digs at US / UK foreign policy history. So many of those threads lead to Israel and ongoing US support thereof.

Civil nuclear power has its risks, but there is no reason to suppose any one developed state is any more incompetent to manage those risks than another. Nuclear power is seeing a global comeback as more people take the peak in fossil fuel reserves, and the lack of any signs of reduced consumerism, more seriously. The fact that Iran’s fossil fuel resource wealth is probably not the most critical in the world, probably does cast doubt on the argument that their intentions are entirely civil. I doubt Iran is dishonest enough to use that argument anyway. It doesn’t need to lie, it’s intentions are publicly stated already.

Military nuclear capability, defensive or offensive, is a different matter, and only such things as moral trust in non-proliferation agreements, or practical trust in the fear of Mutual Assured Destruction and the like, can be held responsible for the minimum actual use of such weapons to date. So there can be little management of military nuclear capabilities without trust. Far from an atmosphere of trust, the world abounds with public declarations and conspiracy theories about Iran (or another Arab state) wanting to terminate Israel, or provoke what is already a nuclear power into a pre-emptive attack against which terminal retalliation might be (slightly more morally) justified. That absence of trust, is not going to be corrected by arrogant threats and sabre-rattling is it ?

Israel cannot be ignored in this. It is still “the middle east situation”. Twas ever thus.

I am an atheist, so whilst I’ll defend any individual or group to hold theistic religious beliefs and practice them in their own houses and churches, I am no supporter of religion being tied to any authority or state governance, if it endangers life in my world. That’s as true of Jewish as Islamic or Christian fundamentalists. Unfortunately all of those hold such authority in many of the states in this “situation”.

Secondly, no easy way to say this, I’m no supporter of Zionist claims to Israel as a state, not beyond their human rights as a recently constituted state, created with the accommodation of its neighbours. There is no more “fundamental” Israeli right here.

Of course, the medium term “security” of fossil fuel supplies from the middle-east (and neighbouring regions) to “western” countries is the other political factor in the situation. A factor which adds to the hypocrisy in many a western state’s declared motives. A trust totally compromised by the national and human security issues in the previous paragraphs. No doubt people on all sides will debate whether Oil or Religion is the prime cause of the difficulties, but that is irrelevant, they’re both in it up to their necks.

Trouble is oil (as a physical resource) seems much easier to talk about objectively, even if states insist on hypocritical double-speak, whereas religion is doomed to less objective, less rational arguments. What is needed is diplomacy, compromise and real trust. If only half of the subject matter is on the table, then no real trust is likely to arise.

There can be little doubt however that Israel and Anglo-Saxon support for Zionism is a key part of the Iranian nuclear power issue.
See the reference mid-way down this earlier post.
We need to be addressing the long-standing hard parts of this problem, (hard as in soft & difficult).

Just a holding post for an issue that keeps cropping up in Dennett (see previous post). Who is me ?

In the sections on will and quasi-altruistic (long term enlightened) self-interest, he mentions something I’ve raised before – often in nationalism / political debates – is the me / we distinction. In considering what is in “your” interest, you can identify yourself with with the individual person or any number of different overlapping “constituencies”, my family, my gang, my team, my company, my industry, my party, my nation, my “hemisphere”, me as part of all humanity, me as part of the whole of nature, etc …

In fact this is a recurring concept with Dennett, when talking about where consciousness resides in me. If you make yourself large enough, you can internalise every issue. If you make yourself small enough, you can externalise every issue. A “control volume” issue I’ve raised before.

BTW – following up on where I’d got to in the previous post. Dennett’s debunking of the “300 millisecond moral void” seemingly illustrated by the Libet experiment as demonstrating the absence of conscious will. I rejected this earlier, for the same reason Dennett explains here. Our consciousness is distributed in space and time, is a complex multi-layered system of processes, some of which are supervisory, some are delegated, and only some of which need be in active conscious awareness at any given time. The tennis analogy, returning a very fast serve, is a good illustration of how we have pre-planned sequences set in motion almost like a reflex, which only need be modified or even stopped by the supervisory control, in higher conscious awareness, just in time. The latter sometimes parodied as “free won’t”. That’s an extreme hand-eye-body coordination example, but we couldn’t even walk and chew gum at the same time, if we had to be consciously aware of deciding every individual action.

I mentioned earlier I had started reading Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves” and it seemed promising then. I actually think it’s his best yet. Convincing common-sense and hugely entertaining, with some great laugh-out loud gags for good measure.

He’s working up to the evolution of morality and values, via the arms race and economics of mental evolution. Not quite there yet. 80% through, just reached a section where he is about to explain at length the 300 millisecond “moral void” – the Libet experiment where motor action seems to pre-empt any conscious decision making. Why do I know I’m going to identify with Dennett’s version of events, even though I’ve not read it yet ?

After laying the ground with distinctions around determinism and the very concept of free will, and some basic re-capping of earlier work on how complexity and life can be explained by evolution from the simple and dead, a good part of the book is about evolution of strategies that involve cooperation and enlightened-far-sighted-self-interest, in contrast to “tooth and claw” competition. ie Given that we have free-will what kinds of thing to intelligent entities actually do as “rational agents”. There is a good deal of game-theoretic stuff with variations on the prisoners’ dilemma. Again not new for anyone already interested, just so well written and explained, synthesising the work of others, and with non-intrusive references to other good sources of detail.

Two favourites so far.

In describing how deferred gratification, or resistance of temptation to short-term personal gain, at the expense of longer term interest of yourself and other co-operators, cements greater trust and greater cooperation amongst actual and potential collaborators, he also describes the view from the side of the party doing the tempting. If the Mafia, making you the offer you can’t refuse, but do, recognises your reliability in resisting such temptation, it won’t need to waste a perfectly good horse’s head in any futile future attempt. Win-win.

Quoting “Brain Storm” from Richard Dooling, written 20 years after his own “Brainstorms”, he describes a pang of guilt preventing a husband’s otherwise inevitable act in a steamy clinch with another scientist on the lab floor, when she pipes up (as you would) with a description of how Dennett has proven that free-will doesn’t exists (which he never has of course), and there is no reason to feel such guilt for our actions. Dooling and Dennett tell it much better. As Dennett says, it’s hard enough to explain that fully clothed, standing behind a lecture stand, let alone rolling naked on the floor.

Of course there are plenty of side-swipes at believers in sky-hooks, which will either amuse or annoy, but there’s no denying the good-natured wit, and compared to Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, this aspect of his thinking is more gently understated here. Dennett is more concerned with quality of explanation, than the particular names of the more intangible things that people do or don’t believe exist, so he has learned that people sometimes have misunderstood what he has said about their existence. Reading “Freedom Evolves” can leave little doubt.

[Post Note – More hypocrisy and horses heads. Sorry couldn’t resist this – the current talk of “bungs” (bribes) in UK Soccer dealings has thrown up some quotes that just fit the story so well. Gerry Francis said “Agents soon found out those people who would take inducements and those people who wouldn’t.” and Graham Kelly said ” Clubs generally are hypocritical about this, because they condemn agents and then they work with them.”]

It doesn’t always, perhaps something of Tim Kreider’s Pain gets lost in transatlantic translation, but the latest made me smile.

When I blogged here, but no, The Meta-Memes Guy blogs already.

Found via Stephen C’s infrequently updated Square One blog

Both added to side bar too.

I blogged last April about the idea tha del.ici.ous might work as a means of creating categories, that could include inherited catgories, and that by adding such links the non-hierarchical taxonomy could just evolve from the links.

I noticed on a search cross-hit that Greg, John and Fritz at Freshblog had a detailed summary of ways to exploit del.ici.ous for this purpose. Must follow-up this idea.

Categories was the only reason I moved from Blogger to WordPress. Would I switch back to blogger if I fixed this ? The Swicki (in the header) is part of my experimenting with informal / evolving categories.

Is near the core of my agenda – life’s complicated enough – just enough that is to make it a serious error to work with an over-simplified view in any context, in any environment, in any organisation. Anecdote here has a video link to a presentation on the subject by Michael Crichton (Yes, that Michael Crichton.). [via Johhnie Moore]

His 60 minute talk (plus Q&A) focuses on the topics of fear, misguided predictions and the impossibility of managing the environment with a mindset of linearity. Using the environment as an example of the ultimate complex system, Crichton exposes the inadequacies of conceiving the environment as a predictable and stable system. (Just substitute ‘the environment’ for the name of any large organisation.)

I guess the key caveat must be to stress the qualification of “impossible” and “predictable”. Not possible with the wrong rational objective (linear, static) world view. Roll on Dynamic Quality.

Anecdote looks like an interesting blog itself.
[Post-note – I see Anecdote are a small Australian organisation, with IBM and Dave Snowden / Cynefin connections. The web-linking plot thickens. I see their ideas of Adams and narrative humour refer to Scott, rather than Douglas (DNA) Adams. Pity :-)]

I see Johnnie has more recent posts on imperfection [perfection kills engagement] and trust [experts can miss the obvious] – a running thread here, didn’t I blog that last link a little earlier ?

Interesting further, is this title of a book chapter contributed by Johnnie “Simple Ideas, Lightly Held” – a play on the strong opinions, lightly held idea (also via Johnnie). In the context of the complexity post above, what this is saying that simple ideas are useful and pragmatic, but it’s dangerous to get too wedded to them, because they are almost certainly flawed – oversimplifying reality in any fundamental sense. Same problem with holding a fundamental metaphysical view of an ontology of subjects and objects.

I’ve always used my site monitoring s/w “Site Meter” as a means of identifying cross-links, who’s looking at my site, in the sense of, where have they come from; other web-pages and institutions of interest. I’m rarely interested in spotting individuals physical locations or IP addresses, that would be sneaky, unless the link leads to further contact. The cross-linking of search hits provides me with valuable sources of new links on subjects common to my blog, however useful the hit has been to my visitor.

For a long time, most hits were just that: search engine hits, and if the user has not followed the link to more than one page, I really had no way of knowing if pages were really being looked at or not, unless people commented or corresponded.

Anyway some interesting stats (for me). I had’t really noticed, but compared to about a year ago (this is year 5) everything is about doubled. Averages are running at 60 hits a day, with over 2 page views per hit (120 page views per day) and each visit now over a minute, (and that’s averaged over the whole life !) so increasingly people are actually looking at my site content, not just having their search engine hit it. (That means the averages over 5 years are about twice those over 4. You do the maths for the 5th year. Must do some total stats over current periods, out of interest.)

Thanks folks.

Thanks to a search cross-hit, I picked up this link to Lynn Curry’s Onion Model on Learning Theories. You may know I often use the “onion” for my view that everything comes in layers (even layers), though I have to say when I think Onion I tend to think many layers – onion-skins.

Pirsig and Maslow scholars will understand how I was intrigued that Curry’s Onion involves four layers. Interesting, even though it doesn’t map directly.