Psybertron Asks

Hoping to use the 430kph (270mph) MagLev “train” from Shanghai to PuDong Airport tomorrow.

A somewhat eastern philosophical engineering review here about “being able to run with the wind”.

[Added – a later YouTube video of the full journey – with speedo.]

At 50RMB it’s one eighth the taxi-fare and at 8 minutes it’s under one fifth the travel time too. Scary to think of travelling at that speed only mm from the massive concrete rail, but impressive to see it whizz silently past the freeway traffic on the way here.

Thinking of Prof Eric Laithwaite demonstrating the principles all those years ago at Imperial College, and is my memory playing tricks or were they even earlier black-and-white TV editions of Tomorrow’s World with Raymond Baxter and Michael Rodd ? [James Burke actually.] The principles were first demonstrated by Germans pre-WW2.

[Post note : my flight out left too early, before the MagLev started operating, and my hotel was on the PuDong side of the river away from the downtown LongYang Road terminus anyway, so I missed out. Ah well, next time.]

The PuDong Shangri La hotel here in Shanghai affords an amazing view of the HuangPu river. The traffic on it indicates the mind-boggling scale of local economic activity.

The myriads of barges and lighters incessantly ploughing up and down, neck and neck, six “lanes” overtaking in each direction, with their loads of coal, aggregates and god knows what, loaded to the gunnels, wash breaking over their prows, are scary enough. The ferries chancing their luck to make the river crossings by weaving through the traffic, are given no obvious quarter. Only the massive cargo freighters, tankers, container ships, heavy lift cranes and barges, and submarines (!) with their official-looking tugs and pilot boats, receive a wider berth.

Amazing stuff, but the seemingly ever present smog, makes any photographic record a pretty murky prospect.

Still reading Hofstadter and Dennett’s “The Mind’s I” collection when I get free moments.

There are several extracts from the work of Stanislaw Lem, of whom I’d never previously heard, which actually pre-date Hofstadter’s own “Godel, Escher, Bach”. One “book”, “Non Serviam” taken from Lem’s 1971 work “A Perfect Vacuum – Perfect Reviews of Non-Existent Books“, is remarkably prescient concerning the evolution of consciousness. Practically blown away by it, I have annotations next to just about every paragraph.

In fact Dennett and Hofstadter’s own editorial reflections sum it up … Lem’s Non Serviam ” … is not just immensely sophisticated and accurate in its exploitation of themes from computer science, philosophy, and the theory of evolution; it is strikingly close to being a true account of aspects of current work …”. As true now in 2005 I reckon, as it was when they commented in 1981 on this 1971 work.

I was struck at the MoQ conference by the number of passionate musical connections, (not to mention the Liverpool location). There’s a running musical thread in my blog, which I’d never really connected to the world-model mainstream, except I guess through Hofstadter’s Bach and Minsky’s musical appreciation, but Ant kept this one quiet. Some interesting links there too.

I remember thinking, given that it was a post-hippie trip, that there was precious little musical allusion in ZMM given, say the constant references in Kerouac, and the road-movie genre generally. Every movie has a soundtrack except ZMM, and it’s not even a movie. 😉 Odd what ?

Two posts [initial reaction] & [on reflection] from Hydragenic via [qB @ Frizzy].

Without the BBC here in China, it has seemed eerily distant since last Thursday. Can hardly believe I’m saying it, but it makes you proud to be British.

[Ewan (B) forwarded this link too … We’reNotAfraid.]
[And what’s more, I got this photo onto their site too. “Ian G Australia“]

[Like this one too from Anonymous via Euan (S), via Suw (C). PS like the “stalker gen” idea on Suw’s site :-). Brilliant comment thread too, with additional images.]

Another “post-note” this time via Dave Pollard, the New Yorker story by Adam Gopnik contrasting 9/11 with 7/7 in terms of popular response and public debate.

Not sure yet whether all the conference papers are to be published – presumably on Ant McWatt’s site would make sense, or the MoQ.org site – it will be interesting to see if and how the BBC filmed documentary and any transcripts see the light of day.

[My photographs published here.]
[Horse has published proceedings & attendees? on Original MoQ.org]
[Papers are published on Ant’s site.]
[My own paper here and the accompanying slide presentation here.]
[Many broken links above – under reconstruction by the RPA in 2024.]

Whilst waiting, I thought I’d blog my incomplete thoughts …

I was only able to attend the Wednesday 6th social evening, at the Bear and Billet in Chester and then on a Dee river cruise, and the Thursday 7th conference, before zipping back to Reading as the Thursday evening social got underway. Bob and Wendy (Pirsig) both attended, as did a number of active MoQ-Discuss members and other participants with connections to organiser Ant McWatt, and the Liverpool Philosophy department. Marvellous, not just to put real human faces to names, but to see, hear and be a part of lively discussion between so many enthusiastic personalities. Bob as the self-effacing but proud father of his now self-sufficient MoQ offspring, and Wendy as enthusiastic advocate of MoQ as anyone. Horse, Maggie Hettinger, David Buchanan, Paul Turner, Mark Maxwell, Mati Palm-Leis, Gavin Gee-Clough amongst the 35-plus participants, including several who had travelled from the US, Canada and the Far East, not forgetting the sympathetic BBC TV production team of Andy and Karen. I hope Ant got a full attendee list.

The conference itself kicked-off with a welcome by Ant, including delivering an introduction penned by Bob.

Horse (custodian of MoQ.org and the MoQ-Discuss forum) then read a scene setting excerpt by Lao Tsu from the Tao Te Ching, suggested by Henry Gurr.

Then Paul Turner and I presented a live tour of Henry Gurr’s web-site, focussing certain passages in the narrative ZMM trip, being (a) highly accurate in terms of the real details of the geography and locations, and (b) metaphorically equivalent to the philosophical “chautauqua” woven into the narrative. The latter may be no surprise in a general sense to readers of ZMM, (the low country, the foothills and the high ground of the mind, etc) but Henry’s studies show how precise and consistent the metaphorical bridges between the journey and the chautauqua really are. Those claiming the title “Pirsig Pilgrims” need to check-in with Gennie DeWeese in Bozeman.

Then I presented my own personal view “It’s Evolutionary Psychology, Stupid” of how I came to read ZMM late in life and learn that the MoQ fitted as a world model of many issues I’d discovered in my 25 plus years general engineering management and information modelling experiences to date, and some of my speculative thinking that makes up the material blogged through Psybertron.

[I see this 1999 paper by Ant McWatt (Doug Renselle’s review here at Quantonics), covers very explicit Darwinian evolution parallels in the MoQ. I remember thinking I must be going mad when some MoQ’ers challenged the reality of evolution, but I feel vindicated in the title of my paper.]

Then Dave Boyce, one of Ant’s colleagues, read out a paper “Quality in the new Millennium” by Richard Loggins. A poetic review of the relevance of MoQ and its significance compared with the great works never fully appreciated in the lifetimes of their creators, together with a very personal view of cultural blindness and perception such as only Richard could know. (Post Note – Loggins and his paper both turn out to be hoaxes. Humorous though the content is with hindsight, a great deal of ill-feeling has been caused between the perpetrators and those embarrased by their quotes about the paper. My own reaction to the paper itself was to criticise Loggins / Glenn Bradford’s use of feigned disabilities and sympathy to excuse that “perecption as only Richard could know” as I alluded. See report here.)

The second half was led by the highlight of the day, an immensly creative and moving presentation by Dave Buchanan. Suffice to say it was a speculation on a screenplay, that portrayed the MoQ via a modern-day Orphic mythology with rock music, more details of which I can’t give here without spoiling the quality and effect of the paper itself. You people will be eternally grateful David’s delivery was recorded for posterity by the BBC crew. Inspired stuff which hit home with everyone, not least Bob, who was moved to reveal personal details of experiencing Cocteau’s film (Testament of Orpheus ?). The Orphic thread must surely grow from here.

Follow that, Mark Maxwell. Mark continued with a paper on his questions concerning the coherence of dynamic quality or “sweet spot” that lies between static quality on the one hand and totally disordered chaos at the other extreme. Mark’s search for that elusive dynamic quality, illustrated with his father’s bow and references to Eugen Herrigel.

Mati Palm-Leis then presented his paper on the difficulties of getting Bob’s work approved as a valid academic / doctoral research topic, and some recommendations to make progress in future, Ant McWatt being the sole success so far. A number of those present with specific interests in this problem led to some lively debate.

Talking of academia and education, Gavin Gee-Clough delivered an, at times vitriolic, tirade against the low-quality culture of education by imitation, mediated with an enthralling mix of sex and drugs and rock and roll. Worth experiencing for the QOTSA quote alone.

Several impromptu statements and questions were made by others that led to some real quality debate, terminated only by the caretaker needing us to vacate and lock-up the room. Pity I couldn’t stay for the full post-conference social.

The first ever conference on Bob Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality was held yesterday 7th July 2005 at Liverpool University Philosophy Department, organised by Dr Anthony McWatt.

A fuller report will follow here, and on the MoQ.org website in due course.

Excellent event with some really high quality presentations, and face-to-face meetings of minds.
Well done to Ant for pulling it off, all the headaches were worth it.

Just a few sketchy holding points for now …

Finished Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach. Excellent to the end. Skimmed the tougher mathematically and notationally detailed sections – seemed important to get the thrust on trust, which I think I did. I think his final dialogue, almost explicitly explaining the “fugue” underlying all the dialogues throughout the book is almost superfluous – ie if you hadn’t already spotted it, I can’t imagine how you would have found the book intelligible up to that point. Although he focusses on the possibilities of AI – back in 1979 it seemed to be the exciting new subject – I think his main messages are about the emergence of consciousness and itelligence, and hence what those things really are. I buy most of his story there I think. In a nutshell – Properties emerge at higher levels in patterns of interaction between things at a lower level, that are not actually present in those lower level things. “It’s the interaction, stupid”. I actually think it’s where I started, or certainly where I’d already arrived, so it’s quite exciting to find that so strongly reinforced.

Having completed GEB, I’ve started and now more than half-way through “The Mind’s I”, collected, edited and reflected upon by Hofstadter and Dennett. Wondereful stuff. I didn’t realise this book was the source of popular published copies of those seminal pieces by Turing and Nagel, and that it was the source of the whole family of “brain in a vat” pieces including Dennett’s own. Matrix fan’s can start here, as indeed David Chalmers did I believe, though personally I’m with Dr Hfuhruhurr on this one. Not finished this collection yet, but I’m going have to read all the original Dennett stuff (including Branstorms – one not actually in the un-read pile yet, although Consciousness Explained and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea both are.) How did Dennett come to be an espouser of “consciousness is just an illusion” stuff after this collaboration with Hofstadter ? Maybe he didn’t, despite what Sue Blackmore seemed to have concluded ?

In the meantime read a large part of Owen Barfield’s “Saving The Appearances”. Barfield is a common port of call for Pirsig scholars, and I was prompted to pick him up again after a string of MoQ threads referring to Barfield’s “particles”, and posted this …

Despite claiming to be a fan of Barfield (on the strength of Poetic Diction and History in English Words) I hadn’t read Saving the Appearances until I saw all his “particles” floating past in a couple of recent threads. I couldn’t comment so I just had to read it. In fact I’ve had the book for ages, and now recall why I stopped reading it.

His physics is completely wrong. [See post note below.]

He’s right that one way or another since Kant, philosophy seems to be mainly about the difference between (or interface between) what we perceive and what is “out there”. (whether we’re talking “immediate experience”, the Quality “event” triplet, or Peircean “firstness”, etc.)

He’s right that most 20th century philsophical writing has ignored the implications of “modern physics” – except where written by physicists, who understand it, naturally – a big recurring gripe of mine, you’ll recognise. Barfield is not one.

He’s right that “trees” are more “tangible” than “rainbows” (they do more than interact with light for a start). Metaphorically both are made of “particles’, but quite a different mix of particles on quite different physical levels. He’s right that we only see light, and we only hear sound, everything else is “mental” (alpha or beta thinking).

But his Netwonian, classical, physics is up the creek, before we even get near “new physics”.

There is nothing about a rainbow that depends on human (or any animalian) eyes seeing, in order for it to exist, individual or shared, any more than a tree. The refracted light from rainbows is more “diffuse” and “non-localised” than the reflected light from a tree, but the light rays (photon streams whatever) are as real in both cases, whether eyes exist to see them or not. (All the stuff about where in space and relative to distant hills and hands in your field of view is just not true – poetic, but wrong none-the-less.) I can make a rainbow between me and this computer screen (or behind it) by blowing a raspberry in the right place.

His stuff about hearing due to having ears, rather than sensing sound waves, is suspiciously close to the same evolutionary fallacy that no being could see (sense light) until the eyeball had come to exist. Just plain wrong “watchmaker” creationist meme.

(There are particles and there are particles, and as it turns out there is information more fundamental to any. But that’s another story.)

Pity. I have read on almost to a conclusion, and there’s some good stuff in there nevertheless, but with recurring references to his erroneous start.

[Post note : The thread on MoQ-Discuss includes an exchange with Scott Roberts which points out that despite any physically inaccurate statements about rainbows, Barfield does in fact make the point that the issue of immediate sensing vs interpreted representation of the sensed, is the same for both ephemeral rainbows and tangible trees, so his error is not material to his story – that’s good – count me as a Barfield fan again.]

Hmm. After Greenteeth (don’t ask), here’s Paul Burgess. Interesting that he’s a beat generation fan who’d read The Tractatus, but like me didn’t read Pirsig until after he was 40, and a good thing too he says …

[Quote] Yes, Pirsig in his former pre-psychosis persona of Phaedrus is a near dead ringer for your humble narrator, back in my late teens and early twenties. And his eventual philosophical solution to the subject-object dichotomy– which is not a bad solution at all!– smells uncannily like my eventual turn to the symbol, and then to Peirce. Pirsig’s “Quality” smells a good deal like Peirce’s category of Firstness. Pirsig also clarifies a question that has exercised me greatly in recent years: “What the hell has gone wrong with modernity?” He thinks, as I do, that the problem lies not in science, technology, industrialization as such, but rather in the mindset we bring to their application– a mindset which fragments us, which fragments our world, into all sorts of polar dichotomies. [Unquote]

Yes, yes, the divisiveness of superfluous dualisms. Me too.
(Must browse around the rest of his site and blog of “pseudo-philosophical” ramblings. Know how he feels, he even has a page called “How Do We Know What We Know”, which is spookily close to Psybertron’s own tag line.)

Or more officially the GCP (Global Consciousness Project). Princeton, serious science (?) with some wonderfully whacky content – Princess Di’s funeral and the O J Simpson trial linked to random events detected in electronic networks apparently arising from the fact that “… a small effect of consciousness on the electronic REG (random event generator) isn’t diminished by distance or shielding, so it apparently isn’t brought about by something physical like temperature changes, or sound waves, or electromagnetic radiation. Instead it seems that the information itself is the important thing …”

I happen to believe that final sentence, about non-local information being the most fundamental level in physics, but can this whacky noetic / noosphere stuff really be empirically proven ? I kinda hope so. What does Josephson make of it I wonder ?

Today, American scientists announced, “send us the money”. Hmm.

Teilhard de Chardin gets top billing, but this Poetic History page includes many luminaries and other phaedra including personal hero Ned Lawrence with a quote I remember oh so well

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. ”

I’d actually forgotten how much of an impression that had made on me. (to whit my still unwritten review of Seven Pillars of Wisdom – “It Is Written“.

Thanks to Platt at MoQ for providing the link.