Rationalisation as Compression

Been reading Pinker, Dennett, Rousseau and Rawls in the break. Forming a view of rationalisation as compression (after simple equals powerful idea). Pinker refers to the entire left side (?) of the brain as the “baloney generator” designed to produce convincing sounding “arguments” in difficult situations. Humans have an innate comfort with the “rational” and dislike of the “irrational”, needing rationale to explain experience. Often the rationale may be a gross simplification, simple near-term logic, basic correlation, even an analogy, with little or no true causal connection with the real situation – almost certainly also a mechanism for recording, recalling and reconstructing knowledge in ways that minimise the mental resources needed to do so (Keep it Simple Stupid). Shared (innate) intuitions of folk physics and folk psychology, mean that this is an important mechanism not only for recording and recalling knowledge, but also for sharing and communicating knowledge (with other humans). However important to communication, such rationale must not be confused with scientific reasoning concerning the truth of underlying cause and effect. True for all (apparent, human) “intents and purposes”, but false in any scientific sense of fact.

Still can’t get out of my head the significance of the fact that the evolution of the human brain – optimisation of physical wiring patterns – is way behind the evolution of knowedge in the last 100’s and 1000’s of years and the explosion in information and communication in the last 10’s and 100’s – exactly as one would expect given timescales of genetic evolution reinforced, against alternate mutations, over many generations. Rationalisation is the best (evolved) strategy our little brains currently have (may ever have) for dealing intuitively with an overload of information and mounting complexity of known, potentially true, relationships.

Behavioral Science is not for Sissies

Behavioral Science is not for Sissies. My review of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate (the above quote from p.121). I believe this will be an important work in my research into understanding knowledge, so much so that I felt the need to post a review even though I’m only half-way through. You get some flavour of the breadth from Pinker’s own quote from Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason [Quote] Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe; the starry heavens above and the moral law within. [Unquote]

Dynamical Layers

Mentioned earlier I’d started reading Dennet. Finished Eco’s Kant and the Platypus – need to review. Also re-started Pinker’s Blank Slate – excellent rail against all or nothing political correctness – just because nurture / culture are big drivers of actual motivations and behaviour why discount innate propensities and capabilities of the human mind (human nature) as setting natural patterns of behaviour, beliefs, preferences, and their evolution. Why does this have to be binary / mutually exclusive argument ? Great stuff on common misunderstandings about proximate and ultimate mechanisms in Darwinian evolution. Reinforcing my view that the apparent ghost in the machine is explainable as a many layered emergent effect of the complex physical brain. Also that competing drivers mean evolutionary progress is a dynamical balance of contractictory effects – found myself extending this same dynamic (and ever changing) balance between “types” in the Jungian / Myers-Briggs sense too. Got me thinking again. [So much so that I’ve barely been able to put the book down – already 200 pages into it – See the next post above.]

The Zen of Programming

The Zen of Programming. Jim Waldo via the Bright Eyed Mr Zen. [Quote] …. all require that the programmer change …. we need to give up a measure of control and accept that we cannot have full knowledge of the systems we are building …. we will know is a minimum set of behaviors …. over time the system will change in ways we could not have foreseen. Just as Socrates found that he was the wisest of men because he knew that he didn’t know anything (as opposed to others, who thought they knew something but were wrong), programmers must come to the realization that their knowledge of systems will be more and more Socratic. Rather than knowing everything, we will know what it is that we do not know …. the result will be more reliable, more flexible and more dynamic than the systems ….[Unquote]

The Intentional Stance

Started reading Daniel Dennet – The Intentional Stance last night. A collection of his essays old and new, as a prelude to his forthcoming book on mind and consciousness. Good read so far and looking like a good introduction to this important writer that I’ve not read so far. Instant reinforcement of motivation or purpose being the prime axis of any model of real knowledge – the main thread I guess. Quote of a quote that caught my eye (in view of the string theory reference below) along the lines of “the dreams that stuff is made of”. Very much from the many a true word camp of ironic aphorisms.