Psybertron Asks

Noticed an interesting New Zealand blog – Psyberspace – covering some similar ground to mine.

Just a holding post to capture a search cross-hit on Peter Marcer’s name [See recent Quantum Information post], with W Ross Ashby and “requisite variety”, and Stafford Beer, and Koans (!), and more ….. the common link being Cybernetics and this page of the British Cybernetics Society. This is a shrinking world – the great convergence really does seem to be happening.

They have a meetings agenda I must investigate.

Saw the Hamsters on their Mad, Bad and Dangerous tour at the Putney Half Moon on Tuesday, with John Otway and Wilko Johnson in tow.

Great show, 19:45 to 23:10 with only one short break in proceedings to switch the drumkit around.

Otway’s set the usual mad guitar “virtuosity” exchanges with sidekick Rick, and milking his 20 year chart hits history for gags. Did everything except the “House of the Rising Sun” spoof, including disco hits “Burn Baby Burn” and “Crazy Horses”. Rick is a great comic foil in his own right, not just the straight man; Otway perhaps overdid the theremin on too many numbers there.

Wilko his usual thousand yard stare, staccato strutting and guitar machine-gunning (psycho-duck-walking) self with the wonderful Norman Watt-Roy on manic bass. Apart from the highlight “Back in the Night” I have to say I didn’t recognise many, at this distance of 28 years, perhaps Wilko’s voice is just a bit flat to do justice ? Entertaining sounds though.

Hamsters did what was for the most part their standard set – just crowdpleasers Banner / Watchtower and Sharp Dressed Man as you’d expect from their Hendrix / ZZ-Top repertoire. Hamsters highlight was a number I didn’t recognise – must enquire. Someone reminded me that it’s not just Slim’s guitar, but his voice that makes the Hamsters’ great sound.

The gig wasn’t quite Mad enough (Otway aside) – don’t know why but I expected more mayhem and integration of the personnel than distinct sets – highlights were Otway and Rick on stage with the Hamsters several times and finally the whole lot crammed on the small stage for a couple of numbers. Only quibble is that Slim’s amplification swamps the other two guitars, when all on together. Bunsen Burner, Born to be Wild, and a big hit from Norman’s past to conclude – if you don’t know it I won’t spoil it here. Finished on a real high.

“One of the strangest portents of the end of progress is the recent discovery that humans are losing their ability to come up with new ideas.” says Bryan Appleyard in this Times article. Thanks to Sam at Elizaphanian for the link.

I’m not sure the specific argument measuring “innovations” holds up to much scrutiny, but the whole article is a reminder that all markets can go down as well as up, even the Darwinian one. The direction of “progress” is driven by morals, not technology or science (or nature) in its broadest sense. In fact the Metaphysics of Quality would suggest the natural direction is towards ever more “sophisticated” intellect – winning memes. Whatever that means, it probably means we should not expect to recognise new innovations by the standards of the old. Technology has progressed beyond the “physical” already, or at least its centre of gravity has; or rather physics has progressed beyond the material.

Clear as mud ?

I must have passed over the Anthropic Principle quite some time ago, because it leaves me unmoved. The reason to mention it is the debate about physical fundamentals of the universe and the recurring intelligent design debate, where I have also gone beyond debate to peremtory dismissal.

I got a combative comment on my report about the quantum information developments at BCS / CASYS below. “Crap”, to quote the comment in fact. The anonymous commenter “Island” runs a web-site called “Anthropic-Principle.Org“, and a blog called “Uncommon Ascent” with the URL “evolutionarydesign” under blogspot.

Also picked up via a Google / Technorati cross-hit a link to a blog by Melbourne student Will G with some extended Christian reasoning on the subject that Island liked. It includes this erroneous application of Occam

1. The universe has the appearance of design
2. There are no simpler explanations of design with evidential support
3. I am justified in believing the universe is designed

Very simple (not), except the absence of any explanation of the existence of the design itself, or any agent behind use of the verb “designed”. Just moved the “first cause” problem.

Unfortunately neither can I take seriosuly anyone who dismissess neo-darwinism with the rhetorical summary “where everything somehow happens this way for no good reason”. Of course Darwinism supplies plenty of “good reasons” and “explanations” – just not a teleological design from any intelligence higher than nature itself, with any pre-planned outcomes.

Anyway Wikipedia restored my belief that weak or strong the Anthropic Principle is just a truism that can explain nothing. Anyway, Island’s case on a brief read looks like “evolutionary design” – where design exists in nature itself, and the natural laws in this universe, but to me that design is a recipe for possible processes not a blue-print for an outcome of intelligent humans with any further pre-ordained destinies. With that spin, I wouldn’t argue against design. Design = Physics = Evolution in fact.

I might actually largely agree with Island.
Choose your metaphor for the fundamental existence of a universe containing these particular laws of physics.

This caught my eye on a Google cross hit. Spooky given Jorn’s HTML vs XML joke earlier about a cinema fire, that I hadn’t noticed this Snowden & Kurtz reference to a theatre fire in their example of organisational triggers that create meaningful instances from chaotic situations. [Snowden and Kurtz IBM paper – cached copy]

A transition from the chaotic to the complex is a matter of creating multiple attractors, or swarming points, around which un-order can instantiate itself, whereas a transition from the chaotic to the known requires a single strong attractor. For example, if one were trying to evacuate a panicked crowd in a theater on fire, it would make more sense to shout out “the blinking orange lights are above the exit doors,” which is a complex swarming-point trigger that relies on local knowledge only, than to shout out “come towards the back of the theatre,” an ordered trigger that relies on global knowledge which may be unavailable.

Of course in this context the idea of an attractor is very close to Pirsig’s “seed crystal”. The right point of organisation (seed-crystal) dropped into a chaotic meta-stable situation (super-saturated solution) can create order in the whole. Quality from chaos.

… When you can achieve altered states of consciousness by dialogue alone ? Interesting report by Julian Elve [Synesthesia] of an “out of comfort zone” event hosted by Johnnie Moore and others using “Dialogue”. That’s right you heard, dialogue.

Interestingly, Johnnie’s review refers to critics of the book (by Ellinor and Gerard) kinda complaining that it’s just market exploitation of something that’s part of everyday life – I also like Johnnie’s highlighting the paradox of simplicity vs complexity too.

Anyway simple or complicated, novel or old-hat, Julian reports that the conversation does indeed appear to take on a “life of its own” even becoming trance-like. Count me in guys, if another experimental opportunity arises.

Whilst we’re here … a couple of other good posts from Johnnie.

The paradox of silence in forum style communications – I agree with the dynamic value of the uncertainty generated, but at the same time am frequently frustrated by those silences that actually mean complete agreement. In a couple of other discussion forums I’ve been advocating “me too” posts occasionally, contrary to received netiquette wisdom – the alternative can seem like shouting into the void. Silence is golden but on the other hand you can have too much of a good thing.

Relationships before content (ideas) is one of Johnnie’s mantras he says. I know what he means. Actually it’s another of those paradoxical pairs – you can’t really have one before the other either way – what’s really needed is strange loopy “co-evolution”.

Interesting review of issues around ontologies and tools for “social tagging” posted on KnowledgeBoard by Silverio Petruzzellis. Not digested the quality of any analysis yet, but it’s comprehensive with a plethora of links (naturally) including Clay Shirky’s “Ontology is Overrated”.

As I keep saying it’s not ontology that’s overrated, but the idea that it’s fixed or pre-ordained. What social tagging does is allow an appropriate ontology to evolve. The best kind.

The theme of altered states of consciousness – drug induced or otherwise – keeps cropping-up in debates about consciousness in general and enlightenment in particular. Came across this Psychedelic Library whilst following up Aldous Huxley in my ever growing reading list. In this Huxley Paper (from 1963 Playboy !) “Culture and the Individual” I loved this quote …

In my utopian fantasy, “Island”, I speculated in fictional terms about the ways in which a substance akin to psilocybin could be used to potentiate the nonverbal education of adolescents and to remind adults that the real world is very different from the misshapen universe they have created for themselves by means of their culture-conditioned prejudices.

“Having Fun with Fungi” �” that was how one waggish reviewer dismissed the matter. But which is better: to have Fun with Fungi or to have Idiocy with Ideology, to have Wars because of Words, to have Tomorrow’s Misdeeds out of Yesterday’s Miscreeds?

Idiocy with ideology.
Misdeeds of yesterday’s miscreeds.
or
Fun with funghi ?

Nice ring.

Just capturing a link to this paper (from a search cross hit) by John S Nelson because of the interesting reference list at the moment – not yet read.