What, Why & How do we Know ?
Incidentally, being 50 next birthday was not the reason that I followed this link. I too have only recently begun reading Gibbon.
No, the reason I followed it was for this Mark Bernstein post next door, on US news priorities. [via Oliver Wrede] Made me smile.
Interesting. Posted several times and exchanged comments with Georganna, that Google is truly amazing in indexing seemingly insignificant little blogs like ours, totally in minutes flat, 24, 7, like amazing, however you look at it.
Matt Mower seems to have dropped off their radar. I wonder how that happens. Is there a blacklist 😉 Conspiracy theorists need not apply.
I posted “dont you just love ’em” (Americans) earlier this week. Here is the opposite view from an American travelling in the UK or rather, exactly the same view from the other side. [From Virginia Postrel via Mark Lerner.]
The usual annual slanging match between directors and unions as the survey of directors remunerations show that directors average pay has “risen steeply” n x inflation for the nth year in a row, etc. They disagree, yet they agree “We must reward success” say the directors, “Yes, we mustn’t punish success” say the unions, blah, blah, blah.
The meaningless news story struck me because I’d just been browsing Tom Peter’s who puts all his presentations up on his web site, even though at this very moment, you could be paying $1750 a head to hear him strut his stuff at Birmingham NEC (Sharing the stage with Michael Porter, Charles Handy and Gary Hamel mind you.)
Tom is still preaching “excellence”, with the same passion as ever, judging by the colour schemes in his powerpoints. Excellence; The relentless pursuit of difference. Innovate or die. The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle. Do we employ enough weird people these days ?. etc ..
Anyway the problem with the management vs employees debate above, is that whilst they are talking success, they are meaning “my slice of the pie” – that objective, measurable, accountable, financial pie of earnings, and in doing so they (or the media reporting them) miss what matters :
Reward excellent failures
Punish mediocre successes
ie Don’t forget the quality.
It’s all slogans, and most of Tom’s are lifted from others, (with acknowledgement, to Phil Daniels in the quote above) but that doesn’t mean they are wrong. Far from it. It’s “pathetic” as he says, that people still need reminding of this stuff. Keep pushing that meme Tom. Of course, that’s why Tom’s slides are freely available, memes rely on replication. Copy and use freely. Aristotle has one hell of a head start on us.
Don’t know much about the “World Science” source of this article, but I was struck by vague parallels with Hofstadter’s “Ant Colony” in this image of fractal patterns arising in a bacteria colony multiplying across the surface of an agar dish. [via David Morey over on MoQ-Discuss.]
The article itself looks quite involved – need to read carefully.
Glad to see Google is pressing ahead with its wholesale digitisation of world libraries. When will copyright holders wake up to the fact that Google’s massive investment gives them an opportunity to exploit their copyright to a far greater extent than any they currently hold. Subscriptions can fund library management of in-copyright / out-of print (or low volume / specialist print) titles too.
That’s the “Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle” to you. The Anthropic Principle thread below spawned a long discussion thread with “Island” at Anthropic-Pinciple.Org And coincidentally “crap” was Island’s first comment on that post 🙂
In a nutshell, the way I see it, Island’s anthropic principle is a very weak form, and he uses teleology also in a very weak sense of tending under the laws of physics towards some natural end (which includes intelligent life) – no “intelligent purpose”, in any common sense sense of either intelligence or purpose – so no real controversy there for me. In fact although Island hitches his thesis to the Anthropic Principle, his thesis is more specifically directed at undermining evidence for quantum uncertainty, and as yet I haven’t grasped how specifically the anthropic principle supports his reasoning. Given that thesis – that practically all modern physicists since Gottingen and Copenhagen (except Einstein) are wrong (no less) – the precise relationship to any anthropic principle doesn’t really seem to be the most critical issue. The jury’s out and as usual I suspend disbelief however “cranky” the claim might seem. “A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds …”
I’m still feeling that strong or weak, the anthropic principle remains a tautology of no explanatory value, it has nevertheless re-entered my consciousness, so I’ve been reading up about it. Reccommended by Struan Hellier, in private correspondence, I’ve been browsing Nick Bostrom’s work at Anthropic-Principle.Com
As a thorough and comprehensive review of the history of various anthropic principles and ongoing arguments for or against I’m in no position to fault it. From a read of the first five on-line chapters of his book “Anthropic Bias” I’m still left with the impression that it’s still pretty obviously a tautology, even in its strongest forms. (On-line, it’s not possible to get as far as the chapters where he formulates his own “Observation Selection Theory” backed up by Bayesian Methods.)
Two strong forms (SAP’s) are
Carter introduced two versions of the anthropic principle, one strong (SAP) and one weak (WAP).
WAP states that: . . . we must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers. (p. 127)
And SAP: . . . the Universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage. (p. 129)
Carter’s formulations have been attacked alternatively for being mere tautologies (and therefore incapable of doing any interesting explanatory work whatever) and for being widely speculative (and lacking any empirical support). Often WAP is accused of the former and SAP of the latter.
and
A “Final Anthropic Principle” (FAP) has been defined by Tipler (Tipler 1982), Barrow (Barrow 1983) and Barrow & Tipler (Barrow and Tipler 1986) as follows:
“Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.”
Martin Gardner charges that FAP is more accurately named CRAP, the Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle (Gardner 1986).
I say, in both the strong forms, the SAP or the FAP / CRAP versions, the problem is the question begging in the implicit thought experiments they state and their choice of language to state them. They both use the expression “The” Universe. What neither bothers to qualify, because it makes the tautology more obvious, is which universe ? Notwithstanding any assumptions about the structure of any universe, infinite or finite, one or infinitely many, they seem to mean the whole of existence – “the universe in which we already exist” by definition.
Where the universe(s) is/are infinite – chances of specific existence are surely meaningless ? (Which I suspect may be related to Island’s uncertainty thesis.)
Where referring to finite universe(s), the thought experiment chooses whether or not we are talking about one in which we do or do not exist, no ?
Still not convinced.
According to US-based OCLC worldwide survey of books held in libraries – ie ranked acording to the library purchasing vote, as they put it. [Thanks to Georganna for the link.]
Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita and Tao Te Ching all near the top, and the top 100 stuffed with Shakespeare, but the whole 1000 makes an interesting catalogue of books and authors we should presumably know. I see Pirsig’s ZMM makes it at No. 910, whereas neither Wilber nor Campbell are in there. Baum’s Wizard of Oz up there with Plato’s Republic. Some odd modern popular numbers in there with the classics.
Although they don’t go so far as to comment on significant omissions, Georganna points out that the Factoids page, and the the comparisons with other lists, also make interesting reading.
A BBC News story on some research on the letter writing habits of scientists of old, vs current day e-mail habits, finds the scale and patterns of communication are much the same. Twas ever thus. The technology is (almost) irrelevant.
(I’ve also commented before that blogging is very like – notekeeping / index cards used by authors preparing theses / books. )
Americans that is … Just done a long round trip to Auckland NZ, via LA. I’d forgotten that there is no such thing as international “transit” in US airports, so had the edifying experience of going into and out of the US both in each direction, immigration, baggage, customs, check-in, gate security, the lot. Spitting feathers at the mind-numbingly bureaucratic “security” measures seemingly designed to use an excess of disinterested cheap labour, backed-up by beaming portrait photos of Bush, Cheney et al, not to mention cheesey welcome announcements, to piss off the travelling public and bore would-be terrorists to death – both by attrition alike. Oh look, another queue to join a queue.
Anyway, after having bought from a charity vendor a little stars and stripes button, in a cynical attempt at a smoother passage, I have to admit, I found in the bookshop, not just multiple copies of Pirsig’s ZMM, but also Ken Wilber and Joe Campbell, amongst a well stocked philosophy section (!) not to mention some great bar service whilst I waited three hours for my UK return flight. So having completed Barbara Tuchman’s “Bible and Sword” on the outward leg, I got through both “A Theory of Everything” and “The Power of Myth” on the return leg.
Tuchman’s story of the intertwined histories of Palestine and England is educational and a good amusing read, even for those who already recognise the British responsibilities for the state of the middle east. Can’t help thinking US President Wilson’s plea for “self-determination” was singularly unhelpful at a critical moment in a delicate political situation, but that’s history for you. “The March of Folly”, another of her titles I’ve previously read, says it all.
[Interestingly, after that comment about British responsibilities for Israel / Palestine, I noticed this report on the Iranian president’s recent anti-Zionist speech. Striking is that his war on Zionism concludes with “Once we have defeated the Anglo-Saxons, the rest will run for cover.” The explicit rhetoric is chilling, but I wish these guys would address what their real grievances and expectations are here and now, beyond warlike vengence for injustices of history. If he’s looking for the Anglo-Saxons to condemn a pre-emptive strike by Israel and a lack of public opinion to defend them against Arab retalliation, he may be proven right, but it’s one hell of a dangerous (not to say immoral) game of provocation to play with his own people, let alone the rest of the world. The particular web site is dedicated to encouraging moderate Iranian’s to be represented in government. Link via Sam at Elizaphanian.]
Wilber’s theory of everything, suffers from some inconsistency in his “evolutionary psychology” criticism of parts of western culture for believing it has personally invented the correct view of life the universe and everything – but on the whole I find his summaries mostly common sense with little to actually disagree with. The Graves, Beck, Cowan based spiral of evolution through levels (colours) of thinking looks just like Maslow / Pirsig to me. The spirals evoke both Pirsigian “dynamic quality” and Hofstadter’s “strange loopiness”. (His only mistake for me is in ridiculing both string theory and evolutionary psychology, without realising they are just different metaphors for the same whole.)
Campbell – need to read more of, but on the strength of this 1991 interview with Bill Moyers – I don’t find earth shattering, again mainly common sense – Myths exist for good human development (evolutionary psychology) reasons in the context of our place in the world, and the myths themselves mustn’t be confused with the metaphors, the various specific traditional symbolic representations of them frozen in “religions” in different cultures.