Psybertron Asks

Quantum Genetics ? Link, thanks to the other Ian Glendinning, to New Scientist summary of paper by Apoorva Patel linking the existence of precisely 4 bases in DNA to Quantum Computing algorithms at work in genetics. Contains a link to the full technical paper (pdf) Intriguing.

I’ve captured several more important links, originally embedded in the blog, now in the sidebar. Sasha’s is completely new to me and quite inspiring. These are rich links, though not necessarily all frequently updated blogs.

(Still need to sort out old archives and link to new pages, so much search engine traffic is hitting the archives from the old weblog pages, and those people will not find any link to the new.)

Ten Little Niggers – Another Radio 4 Gem – A spokesman for the UK Campaign for Racial Equality was being interviewed yesterday about an experienced, competent, respected nursing manager who had resigned under pressure after jokingly making a “ten little niggers” remark about late arrivals at a committee meeting. Counter intuitively, the CRE spokesman (with an “ethnic” accent) was insisting that the resignation was inappropriate and was “political correctness gone barmy” and also that “we all needed to re-learn the place of humour” in communication. Refreshing stuff. Many a true word.

I’ve been using Argyris work together with emperor’s suit of clothes analogy in my Rationalisation thread for some time, but just discovered that Argyris published a Harvard Business Review paper with that title only a couple of years ago (1998).

Gimboland. Another intersted blog (spotted by Jorn), added to the side-bar.

The Wunderkind has no Clothes. (Via Jorn again). Quote from Heinz Pagels in a Wired review by Steven Levy of Stephen Wolfram’s meisterwerk “A New Kind of Science“.
“Most scientists will find it difficult to believe that there’s a better way to do science.” OTT, unscientific, but intriguing thesis based on complexity underlying all phenomena, and the simple quantum effects and algorithms underlying all knowledge and computation. Hits so many of my threads that this looks like a must read. My conclusion is in here somewhere already – “scientific method” – objective inductive rational logic – is effectively useless for any real life processes beyond simple controlled experiments – life is just too complicated (or in Wolfram’s words – just complex enough.) “Anything can be done on three or four lines of code !” Too radical to ignore. (Interesting angle on humour too.)

Music, Mind & Meaning. Michael brought this Minsky paper to my attention last night. (It’s actually a chapter from The Neuropsychology of Music, ed Manfred Clynes, Plenum, NY 1981). The paper itself is also available on line at Marvin’s site.

One of my threads is (4) “Many a True Word” (spoken in jest). I now notice that Minsky has already covered the place of humour in knowledge, and in fact draws on Freud too.

BBC Radio 4 Today this morning, interviewing a head teacher and a local authority administrator about boring “safe” school playgrounds with no chance of injury – hit all key points. Individually all three in the studio arrived at same “some level of risk is a good thing” conclusion and noticed they’d agreed, but all said such a decision would not get made by any committee with coroporate responsibility for kids at school – “fear” of litigation, rather than litigation is the rationale, but this is identical to thread (2) Rationalisation based on cultural pressure in “organised” decision making. John Humphries, bless him, even suggested sueing a local authority for providing playground facilities for a child NOT getting exposure to risk, and therefore not learning / preparing for life adequately. Spot on. (Also tied in with the general issue of “people” in general not comfortable with the idea of “acceptable risk” – in fact it illustrates precisely the opposite, specifically that thoughtful individuals are comfortable – it’s organised decision making that’s not.)

Political Heat (Chicago 1995). New Yorker (via Jorn again – how does he find them ?) review of book by Malcolm Gladwell. A complete set of rationalisations of poor decisions leading to many deaths, and the “political” reality and “act-of-god” justifications used. Interesting blend of science / engineering calculations in sizing power supplies and air-con units, vs the “complexity” of weather forecasting vs the political aspects of decision making, together with the “random” chance outcomes of who does and doesn’t survive. Review based anecdotally around July 1995 Chicago heat-wave disaster, but drawing on references to many earlier, mainly natural / extreme weather related, disasters. Interesting angle on behaviour at extreme cases in complex systems being the true determinant of “good performance”, rather than long-term steady-state averages. I was beginning to wonder why disasters like Enron, 9/11 etc were becoming an emerging theme of this research – morbid fascination / ambulance chasing or a natural consequence of looking at complex behaviour ? In fact it is quiet literally “Catastrophe Theory” all the significant minutiae are hidden or suppressed until the chaotic outcome reaches some cusp, whereupon we have a catastrophe on our hands. Blindingly obvious again – “ambulance chasing” a euphemism from the “Many a true word” thread.
[And a further review from Salon, also via Jorn.]

. Just posted a first draft (barest outline actually) thesis / essay / paper on the threads emerging from this effort. Accessible from my Work in Progress page too. The threads identified are (1) Values & Levels, (2) Rationalisation, (3) Emergence, (4) Many-a-true-word. Bookmarks to this draft should avoid my continuing need to repeat myself in the K-Blog itself everytime I find a relevant link. Encouraging that Heylighen’s draft paper on complexity and overload (below) should turn up so recently too. I wish I had the personal bandwidth to do justice to this research.