Psybertron Asks

Strangely, reminiscing about Devo (Are We Not Men / Wiggly World) the other day with some colleagues, I recalled seeing Mark Mothersbaugh’s name as creator behind US 30-somethings / family life / kids cartoon (Rugrats? ).

Anyway, saw on TV a couple of nights ago the film “The Royal Tenenbaums”. What a gem I’d passed over previously. Excellent dysfunctional family drama – weirdly funny on so many levels with Gene Hackman, Angelica Houston, Bill Murray and others. The point is that the music soundtrack – original and selected, was by Mark Mothersbaugh, with Rob Casale as part of the band of musicians. Only spotted that in the closing credits, but no doubt the eclectic sounds had added to the weird experience.

I guess the film got recent airtime, because the same director’s (Wes Anderson?) opus, “The Life Aquatic” is just out or due for release. Bill Murray stars, with others from the previous cast in a story inspired by Jacques Cousteau’s underwater adventures ?!?! If the trailers and the Tenenbaum’s are anything to go by should be interesting and entertaining.

I’ve started David Deutsch’s “Fabric of Reality”. From his quantum information work, and his acknowledgements to others like Artur Eckert (sp?) I was execting a dive straight into “here’s why the world is realy made of quantum information” thesis. In fact the introduction is quite refreshing. A review of the philosophy of science and of philosophy itself. An ecouraging draw-back from the brink of logical positivism whereby everything (of any real world value) is predictable by logical derivation (induction) from empirical evidence. Predicting outcomes by formulae based on hypothesis and experiment, is merely the method of science, not its scope or purpose.

He believes a unifying theory of everything can explain and understand what is currently understood, but only what is understood; it can never presume to explain that which is not yet understood. ie in his original metaphor – it’s possible for a single brain to understand everything (that is understood). Fair enough.

Dwelling on science as the explanation for everything in the world, neither holistic nor analytically reductionist, but by generalisation being able to explain and hence understand everything, brings in very early the concept that general underlying explanations may be truly valid even if they are practically useless for predictions through the emergent layers of complexity above.

Very promising. Part of my thesis is that there is no metaphysics. Physics as the most fundamental of the sciences is the place to look for the most general model of the world, underlying chemistry, biology and the rest of the “ologies”.

The Calcutta Telegraph manages to bring a litte ironic wit to this tragic fight between the christian conservative right and the active left in US. [via BBC]

Talking of black humour the woman’s maiden name is Schindler – I can’t resist a smile each time I step into one of Schindler’s Lifts in hotels around the world.

John Z DeLorean, is an unlikely hero, given his brushes with fraud and drug-dealing, but I often find myself quoting from his (ghost-written) eye-opening “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors” – particularly “Committees of moral men can and often do make immoral decisions.” – in relation to my high- / low-quality organisational decision-making thesis.

(Still not got domestic internet access yet, here in Perth, so limited on blogging time at the moment.)

Managed to spend two late afternoons on the beach this weekend, and finished Sue Blackmore’s Meme Machine. I have to say I’m still a fan of Sue’s writing, but I’m glad I didn’t read her best-seller first. (Intriguing for me is that Sue’s writing projects parallel in real-time my own amateur research – I didn’t realise this, her most popular acclaimed book, was so recent – 1999.)

I buy the entire story about memes being independent replicators, unleashed, and increasingly significant as comms become ubiquitous at the speed of light. ie the dog is no longer (never was) on a leash, but it is now in the driving seat, and furthermore has no longer any tendencies to favour hunter-gatherer / sexual-reproduction / mating-game genetic traits, hence the dog could just as well well be a bitch. That I buy.

What I don’t buy is her depressing conclusion that we humans are powerless. I’m (surprisingly) with the hyper-rational Dawkins on this one – we are a species that can take control of evolution – genetic and memetic. Sue unfortunately comes down on the side of the idea that our “self” is a an illusion and free-will non-existent. I think she falls for her own anthropomorphic selfish-meme metaphor. It can no more be a matter of “it’s all in the memes” any more than it could ever have been true to say either “it’s all in the genes” or “it’s god’s will” – life’s complicated enough, without trying to reduce it to a single issue.

Her last chapter is at least contradictory, if not hypocritical. How can she talk as if she and other intelligent humans have meme-recognition strategies, and yet memes are in control over humanity ? (I’ve read Dennett’s Intentional Stance, but I’m going to have to read his Darwin / Consciousness / Memetic stuff in the original.) The illusory self stuff is a cop-out I feel. It’s complicated and in looking for simple (scientific) black and white evidence all we find is metaphor – so what ? – that’s true of 100% of reality (Come in Lakoff, your final call.) That doesn’t mean the conscious self is merely illusion – only a metaphor – any more than any other reality we talk about. Talk is the clue.

(Oddly, she doen’t make much of her Zen views of self and unity-with-reality in this context. Interesting to note that she includes Francis Heylighen in her web-list of significant people in memetics. What a tangled web.)

I see why in her bio-pen-picture she was described as previously being a researcher into paranormal phenomena, but that she is now a total sceptic. Alien-abductions and meeting-my-maker-at-the-end-of-a-near-death-tunnel type whacky stuff is clearly memetic – undisprovable myths to explain the mysterious. But I hope she’s not cut herself off from the idea of non-local / non-causal communication channels out there in the ether – physics explains everything, but physics is not yet itself fully explicable in my book.

(Marsha, I see why Sue is sceptical of mysterious agent explanations of scary events, like near-death-experiences, and sleep-paralysis-fears – aren’t we all – but she is not sceptical about the existence of those “paranormal” phenomena – she just prefers a 100% memetic explanation – as I say, in going 100%, she just goes too far.)

She is equally dismissive of Hameroff and Penrose – cellular micro-tubules governing quantum coherence – quoting the Churchlands again – “about as much use a pixie dust in explaining consciousness”. I don’t think Sue (or any other modern philosophical writer I’ve seen) has actually got to grips with understanding the weirdness of new phyiscs – a real pity, so close. When will I get the time to write on this ?

David Deutsch’s “Fabric of Reality” next.

Jorn used to use Google as a meme-watch, and I’ve noticed I’m doing the same with Google and other search hits on my site, reported by Site Meter.

One that sticks out – “Criticisms of Maslow”. I’ve never had a hit by anyone looking for Abraham Maslow that did not also include the word “criticism” in the search string. Yes the guy focussed on a kind of intellectual middle-class in his work, but his analyses and thinking were pretty sound IMHO. His layering model is very Zen.

Alternate view of HP CEO Carly Fiorina, strongly worded by pre-Carly-ex-employee John Maloney.

(Only my second reference to Carly, previously positive.)

Actually the point of the story as noted by Piers at MonkeyMagic is that on any business measure, HP was immensely (like really, really) successful pre-Carly with a business policy of “dignity of the individual”.

Still not got internet access domestically back in Perth, but hopefully will have within the week.

Watched the sun go down on the beach yesterday whilst reading Meme Machine. As I blogged previously Sue Blackmore is very, very good, and having finished her “Consciousness, An Introduction” I’m now reading her best seller – one that I’ve referred to and quoted indirectly many times, but never previously read.

Really excellent. Again, if I’d read it sooner, she’d have saved me a long journey through modern philosophers of mind. Huge list of references, racked-up whilst being laid-up with illness. Reassuring to find I’ve already covered a fair proportion of them myself – must actually read Dennett’s main best-sellers – Darwin’s Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained – though I suspect Sue has done me a good job in summarising their main thrust.

Gist – she talks about memes not generally being high-fidelity replicators with only exceptional mutations, unlike genes. Some phrases and neologisms may be repeated verbatim (but we’re talking language here) but most memes replicate the general idea – the gist, the essence – but with constant unwitting variations in subtlety of the concept understood or intended.

Unleashed – memes as truly independent replicators, ie not dependent on genes in the long-run, not simply an expension of genetic evolution. I think that’s correct – they’re not independent in the sense that memetic and genetic evolution can and do affect each other, but neither is led by the other. Clearly if brains die out, memes will fall on hard times, but equally memes can control the environment in which brains evolve. Remembering that the “selfishness” of replication intent is an anthropomorphic metaphor, it nevertheless suggests an uneasy alliance between competing drives.

My view – in a physicalist sense memes came after genes but before religious memeplexes – For individual memes, selfish intent may be only a metaphor, but for widely held beliefs, collective conscious intent, can be no less real and any more metaphorical than individual human intent. This implies human intent (individual and collective) can choose the path it wishes to steer memetic (even genetic) evolution – this is why human (high-level) consciousness is so special – we have been unleashed on the hitherto unsuspecting world – our consciousness can have objectives, even if it doesn’t necessarily understand or control the mechanisms sufficiently to succeed in realising its intent. Spooky. probably means, as Dennett already suggested apparently, that memes ARE consciousness itself – the thoughts are doing the thinking.

Linguistics – the subjective symbolic framing of concepts “out there” – can it ever be anything but metaphorical ? Come in Lakoff, you’re time is right.

Sue really is a good writer. So easy to read and with a smile too.

… on the way back to Syndey and Perth.

Finished Sue Blackmore’s book. Excellent. Predictably positive review of Buddhism in the final chapter – the continuum avoiding duality. She quotes Dennett – it’s the thoughts that “do” the thinking, there is no other “I”. Mentions all the usual Zen suspects, inlcuding Wilber, but not Pirsig.

Didn’t get any internet time in NZ unfortunately, just circumstances.(Wonder if my new domestic broadband modem will have turned up when I get back to Perth ?)

… airport …

Still reading Sue Blackmore’s Introduction to Consciousness – gets better all the time. So matter of fact, easy and witty. Just done the chapters on “alternate” states of mind – inlcuding drug induced (again) – she quotes James Austin on Zen parallel’s – but I love the down to earth “whilst stoned”, “the equivalent of 3 or 4 tabs of acid” and descriptions of her own experiences.

Still finding the paranormal vs science dichotomy too narrow and limiting – must get to the bottom of her recent scepticism.

… next stop Aukland, NZ.