Free flowing writing experiment

OK. I'll attempt to direct some thought into something coherent.

Perhaps writing is like a process of refinement. Like panning for gold. You read lots and lots of stuff and let it incubate and digest and assimilate and then you attempt to construct something legible and interesting out of the result.

Someone, I think it was Terry Pratchett, said writing went something like that. You fill your mind with stuff and wait until it all bubbles over and you start writing. He then qualified it by pointing out that this didn't necessarily imply any kind of verbal diarrhea 1 and that the process of refinement was equally important.

So perhaps having a blog is a mistake. Sure it builds up writing ability, but in fact it's blurting out valuable writing ore whilst at the same time not providing for the essential process of refinement.

I mean when it comes to writing an essay or a computer program or something where meaning is important and purpose both necessary and good you need to plan everything out beforehand.

I've always had difficulty with this mode of writing. I can write essays and whatnot but I always need some central scaffold on which to assemble the main core of meaning of the text. What I'm doing now is attempting to give some kind of suggestion as to the unmediated flow of thoughts and sentences that comes out of my mind as I think about something.

I need to stem and control the flood, plucking the nuggets of metaphor out of the flow of simile. Y'see that last bit made no sense as an analogy but I'd need to work at it. Also I'm writing as you speak in long clauses without any meaningful sentence structure. I could go back over this and build it into some kind of structured essay but what would be the point?

The intention here is to explore how my writing process works. This isn't even the first draft. I'm not trying to write anything here. I'm doing that thing the kid does from that film where he sees dead people.

This isn't intentionally post modern. There is meaning in the medium or whatever but it's meaningful in the way the noises animals make is meaningul. This is also lazy. What am I doing here? Constructing fine words in a pleasing manner? Hardly. This keyboard is really appalling. So buy a new one.



1:Impossible to spell first time correctly. Also a good name for a blog. Verbal Diarrhea. Doubly annoying as the spell checker doesn't immediately identify my mangled attempt at spelling it correctly. Wouldn't it be good to have a blog that was called something like Verbal Diarrhea but was purposefully spelt incorrectly.

Perhaps I should write a list of good qualities to have in a blog title, but that would be time consuming and frankly rather beside the point. I'm sure it's already been done and better elsewhere.

Three kinds of politics

There are three layers of politics, from the top:

1. Theoretical political philosophy: the teachings of Plato, Locke, Mill, Hayek, Smith, Berlin, Marx, and the rest occupy this topmost and most ideological stratum of political discourse.
2. Administrative political reality: this layer contains politics as it is instantiated in the real world, and is often at odds with the ivory-tower teachings of the upper layer. It is studied by sociologists and political scientists.
3. The office politics of the powerful: this is the layer most often discussed by journalists who are too close to the game to realise that inasmuch as the personalities involved are of any relevance to what actually goes on (see above) it is almost impossible to predict what effect they will have. Nick Robinson is particularly guilty of believing that this is the only layer of politics that matters.
   

Potentially lengthy blogging interregnum

Some guy called Daniel Davis has written a much better blog than I. This is dispiriting but also reassuring. It means I won't be the guy who says good things but I have less responsibility if those good things result in a pyramid of skulls.

In the meantime I got into Warwick University to study systems engineering. This is a pretty awesome fact.

Nationalising religion

There's a brilliant post over on Overcoming Bias on the possibility that lower levels of religiosity in Europe relative to the USA is are due to the state-sanctioned nature of organised religion in much of Europe.

Hume, an agnostic if not an atheist, takes the position that religion is not a public good but its opposite — a public bad — and that government intervention will avert the pervasive negative externality of religious controversy, which clergy create and that threatens public safety.

...

The strongest argument for socialized medicine is the strongest argument for socialized religion, that government provision seems to reduce enthusiasm for and consumption of such things. Western Europe seems to have hit on the clever solution of loving both religion and medicine to death. Should we consider loving other cranks to death?

Imagine bureaus of palm reading, UFOS, conspiracy theories, etc. In a few decades they might be run by out-of-date boring bureaucrats following stacks of official protocols. If the best devotees were distracted seeking promotions in the ossified agency, they might inspire less public enthusiasm.

From an evolutionary standpoint an increase in diversity and competition caused by freedom of religion inevitably leads to selection of ever more compelling and virulent memesets (7th Day Adventists, Scientology etc). But by creating a benevolent state monopoly of the C of E the state has repressed diversity and hence the fitness of religion.

Certainly government endorsement immediately makes everything much more boring and unattractive (apparently use of cannabis actually decreased when it was relegated to a class C drug).

Thoughts on Feersum Endjinn and writing

This book has an immense span of imagination. Banks has an ability to create ideas that are just over the boundary of the absurd and yet implements them so that they seem almost homely and reasonable.

There is, in my limited experience of writing, a sort of mental crash-barrier between the familiar and comfortable and the strange and disturbing.

Great SF writers possess a kind of intellectual bravery in vaulting the barrier and hauling the strange into the familiar.

When writing I will pursue an idea as far as I can but there is always a part of me too willing to reject a plot or character or situation as too ridiculous for further exploration.

Feersum Endjinn starts superbly: with typical Banksian whimsy gradually revealing an immense canvas that (had I ever thought it) I would have immediately rejected.

There is a tendency towards dues ex machina in the plot: and the Bad Guys aren't as unpleasant as most Banks villains. However the story is compelling enough and the Good Guys interesting enough to follow through.

An excellent read.

These things I *could* believe

I don't subscribe fully to any coherent political ideology (if indeed any political ideology can be truly coherent), but following is a brief list of things I'm beginning to suspect are true:

The free market is a powerful evolutionary system for generating Good Ideas.

Important policy decisions should be made on the basis of empirical study and rational thought

The rule of law applied equally to all is a Good Thing

Freedom of speech for everyone is a Good Thing

Political representation is a Good Thing

Individual negative freedom is a Good Thing

Agonistic pluralism is a Good Thing

Democratic nation states are a reasonably effective way of getting certain necessary jobs done

What consenting adults do with their time is not the business of anyone else

Privacy is important

All healthy human beings are fairly smart but not infallible or perfectly rational

Wars are complicated and always morally ambiguous

A large majority of healthy human beings possess a basic sense of fairness and morality

There can probably be no such thing as a genuine meritocracy

Equality is a Good Thing

Education is a Good Thing

Equality in education is an especially Good Thing

I might go through each of these and explain exactly why I think each of them.

In praise of failure

I disagree with the following part of In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell:

But, I shall be told, the case is quite different when savings are invested in industrial enterprises. When such enterprises succeed, and produce something useful, this may be conceded. In these days, however, no one will deny that most enterprises fail.

That means that a large amount of human labor, which might have been devoted to producing something that could be enjoyed, was expended on producing machines which, when produced, lay idle and did no good to anyone.

The man who invests his savings in a concern that goes bankrupt is therefore injuring others as well as himself. If he spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger.

But if he spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for surface card in some place where surface cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one.

Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of his investment he will be regarded as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a frivolous person.

What Bertie is missing is the value of the deductive tinkering in any new business endeavour.

What reading The Origin of Wealth has taught me is that the value of free markets lies in their ability to generate many new and interesting ideas, then apply a selection process to them, and then amplify the successful ideas.

Innovation does not just emerge from one Big Man with a Plan but rather from the collective efforts of thousands of competing enterprises, businesses, startups, and university faculties, all deductively tinkering their way around idea space.

Laying out surface car tracks, as in Russell's example, may not end up being economically useful, but if the business were (for example) to develop a slightly more efficient way of laying down track then there would be a positive outcome for humanity, if not for the erstwhile entrepreneur ¹.

The core lesson of The Origin of Wealth is that knowledge is value, and finding things out by trying and failing is a worthwhile activity, if not in the narrow rationally self-interested sense.

Update 02/03/2009:

Chris Dillow has a post up that has relevance to this point:

Labour is not just a cost, to minimized. It is - or can be - a form of satisfaction in itself - a way of asserting who we are.
It is on this point, of course, that Marxism starkly confronts neoclassical economics. Marx’s gripe with capitalism was that it transformed work from a means of expressing one’s nature into a force for oppressing and demeaning people. So great has been capitalism’s triumph that many of us don’t even appreciate the possibility that Marx could have been right. It’s just taken for granted that work must be alienated drudgery.

So not only is Russell missing the value of failure in business he also misses the fact that certain kinds of labour are enjoyable and that it is extremely difficult to determine beforehand what will make us happier and what will make us richer (in all senses of the word).

Hence trying and failing is good. Trying is good. And some kinds of work are good.




1. Unless he had the forsight to patent his improved track-laying process, then he could licence the method for profit. Humanity as a whole would still benefit from increased speed of track-laying and the innovation would become widely available after the patent expires.

On The Origin of Wealth

After a brief hiatus I have started reading this book again. Everything Taleb has written, sans the epistemic philosophy and general snark, can be seen as a subset of this book.

As I read Beinhocker is discussing how the observation that businesses evolve in the marketplace can be applied to practical strategy. He makes the point that for the most part conventional strategy and long-term planning is futile in the face of the complex non-linearities of the marketplace.

Beinhocker grounds his descriptions of economic activity in modern physics itself, rather than attempting to ape physics as many early economists (like Jevons and Walras) did.

Beinhocker defines wealth as useful order. And order is information, and useful information is knowledge. So knowledge is wealth.

Beinhocker says that value is created by:

• Irreversible actions
• Local reductions of entropy and
• Fitness

Fitness is determined by an evolutionary process, the free market, which can be thought of as a knowledge-generating machine.

Beinhocker advocates ideas similar to Alex Harrowell of the Yorkshire Ranter (who I suspect is familiar with the book), stating that we need to build institutions that evolve more effectively.

This sentiment runs counter to many traditional conceptions of Big Man, top down, authoritarianism. Politicians are praised for ignoring evidence and not adapting to circumstances.

The scientific method and free markets work so well because they lead to the creation of a large number of ideas and then subject each idea to testing, selecting the most successful ones, replicating and recombining these successful ideas, then repeating the whole process continuously.

The outcome is a an increase in knowledge, and hence wealth.

Bildungsphilister

In The Black Swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines a bildungspilister as a philistine possessed of a fake, cosmetic culture.

Taleb borrows the term from Nietzsche, who used it thus:

A bildungsphilister is someone who reads newspapers and reviews and imagines themselves to be cultured and educated but lacks genuine, introspective erudition.

Bildungsphilisters are prone to dogmatic, cliched, and unsubtle responses to events and things.

Taleb extends it to refer to anyone who has a high degree of education in one particular non-empirical field, who is prone to using buzzwords and ignores conflicts between the ideas they promote and the nature of reality.

Timewasting

Since I made a conscious decision to stop reading newspapers a la Taleb I've found that I spend more time reading blogs, most especially the Yorkshire Ranter, Stumbling and Mumbling, and DSquared.

In fact the amount of time I've freed up by reading fewer newspapers has been entirely consumed by additional blog reading.

My attention span seems to be subject to its own version of Jevon's Paradox. Increases in the efficiency and quality of my text consumption are immediately swallowed up by an overall increase in the amount of text consumed.

I would prefer to spend my time reading substantive literature, both novels and textbooks, rather than blogs. However because I spend so much of my time sitting in front of an Internet connected screen I inevitably end up getting distracted by them.

Explaining intelligence: complex adaptive systems

I've been trying all day to write a coherent response to Michael Anissimov's recent posts Friendly AI - May I Check Your Ideological Baggage and The Three Singularity Schools, Kurzweil, and Superintelligence.

I finally succeeded in this comment on Ken MacLeod's recent discussion on evolution and AI.

Following is a slightly cleaner version:

My problem with Anissimov's implicit argument stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of technological progtess. Anissimov's belief that "once we create a superhuman intelligence all our scientific problems will be sold solved¹" is based on the assumption that intelligence is the only contributory factor to innovation. Anissimov says:

To me, the relevance of a given technology to humanity’s future is largely determined by whether it contributes to the creation of superintelligence or not, and if so, whether it contributes to the creation of friendly or unfriendly superintelligence. The rest is just decoration.

"The rest" being every technological development that will occur between now and birth of our putative god-in-box AI.

Now I'm willing to bet microchips to nanobots that there will be a few interesting innovations, inventions, and scientific breakthroughs over the next few years that aren't directly linked to AI research but still have a large impact on people's lives.

Developing a cure for AIDS, for example.

Anissimov makes these claims concerning the importance of AI research in support of the intelligence explosion school of the technological singularity the school which can briefly be expressed as:

Intelligence has always been the source of technology. If technology can significantly improve on human intelligence – create minds smarter than the smartest existing humans – then this closes the loop and creates a positive feedback cycle. What would humans with brain-computer interfaces do with their augmented intelligence? One good bet is that they’d design the next generation of brain-computer interfaces. Intelligence enhancement is a classic tipping point; the smarter you get, the more intelligence you can apply to making yourself even smarter.

The problem with this view of the singularity is that intelligence is not the main driver of innovation.

We know this because the single most dynamic, creative, and successful innovation generator on the surface of this planet famously does not possess intelligence.

Natural selection lacks intelligence and it has produced an extraordinary fecundity of design and invention, not to mention the only version of intelligence currently available to us.

Some transhumanists imagine that simply creating a sufficiently powerful intelligence will solve our problems. We probably could evolve an intelligent being, using the process described in Ken MacLeod's The Star Fraction just by creating billions of lines of random code (a trillion script-kiddies at a trillion keyboards) and applying an evolutionary de-stupidifying process to it, then rinse, cycle, and repeat until we get something that smokes a pipe, does The Times crossword, and publishes the occasional enlightening monograph.

Or we could even do a brute-force molecular-level simulation of a human being, assuming that the various exponentials associated with computing hardware continue ticking over for a few more decades.

But in the meantime why not cut out the AI and go straight to innovation by evolution? Why don't we find some way of generating vast numbers of products and items and testing them under competitive conditions, then recombine and incrementally adjust and improve them until we have an optimal outcome?

And in fact we already do this - free markets create a huge pool of possible companies and products and the really bad ones are filtered out. Effective companies increase the extent of their control of a finite set of resources at the expense of less effective companies.

Companies don't breed, of course, rather new designs for companies are created by human beings. Most fail. But if one is superior to another it will survive and grow, taking wealth, influence and market share from its competitors.

It also applies to products: the idea that products like the iPhone come about as a result of a flash of genius insight from someone like Steve Jobs is incorrect. The iPhone is the result of a long series of tiny, incremental, trial-and-error developments across many scientific and technical fields.

My conclusion: if the singularity means anything then it means that technological change will continue to accelerate in certain areas. And this trend has already been happening for almost two centuries.

The physicist and complexity theorist Murray Gell-Mann would say that human civilization is a complex adaptive system in the same way that the biological evolutionary process and individual human minds are.

Knowledge, science, learning and culture have created an evolutionary process working outside of human minds and outside of biology that results in an ongoing rise in the rate of change of technical progress.

1: Presumably these superhuman entities would be willing to pay us to solve our problems, what with their being superhumanly bored with life having already simulated and experienced the totality of all possible existences while the lab guys were getting the celebratory muffins.

Realisable fusion power

I commented on this fusion-fission hydrid reactor design on Futurismic a while ago.

Researchers at the university of Texas are developing a means to process spent nuclear fuel using fusion:

The scientists propose destroying the waste using a fusion-fission hybrid reactor, the centerpiece of which is a high power Compact Fusion Neutron Source (CFNS) made possible by a crucial invention.

The CFNS would provide abundant neutrons through fusion to a surrounding fission blanket that uses transuranic waste as nuclear fuel. The fusion-produced neutrons augment the fission reaction, imparting efficiency and stability to the waste incineration process.

The reason this is exciting is that it raises the possibility of a way of developing fusion technologies incrementally and economically. Instead of going all-out to build a nuclear fusion reactor in one step, putative nuclear fusion companies could market their wares as a means of processing the nasty transuranic waste output of conventional fission reactors.

This would provide fusion companies with a source of revenue to develop more advanced magnetic containment methods, and many of the other technical requirements of fusion electricity production.

The problem with fusion technology in the form of the ITER project is it's a massive, expensive, centralised, all-or-nothing endeavour.

I entirely support ITER: but it I'd love to see some this fission-fusion hybrid fuel cycle implemented in practice.

Charles Stross makes this point about incremental development but concerning the LiftPort group, a consortium that have made the mistake (as Stross sees it) of focusing on the development of an elevator system under the assumption that the revenue-generating fullerene cable technology would appear from somewhere else.

I see their knavery; this is to make an ass of them

I've been doing the rounds of the UK anti-tabloid blogs over the last few days: including the The Sun Lies, Enemies of Reason and Alone in the Dark.

The creators of these blogs see it as their duty as good citizens to refute and rejoin every last lie, exaggeration, misrepresentation, canard, fib, falsehood, and untruth that pours from the pages of those grotesques of British public life: The Daily Mail, The Sun, and The News of the World.

This is an entirely necessary task, as the tagline on Mail Watch says:

We are not here to hate the readers of the Daily Mail.

We are here to show them that they are being lied to.

We ask our readers and contributors to keep this is mind.

Indeed: but Daily Mail readers aren't stupid (or at least not as borderline-disabled as you'd have to be to believe what is written in The Mail) so why do they continue to buy a newspaper that is lying to them?

I'm not being naive here: why do people read The Mail? Is there a particularly good crossword? Are the horoscopes particularly accurate? Is the sports coverage terse and reliable?

If the quality of every part of the newspaper is similar to the quality of the headline, news, and editorials then it can't be particularly good.

I have no way of knowing if the editorial line of these newspapers accurately reflects the pre-existing views of the readership or not. If I were to take over any of these newspapers and replace the editorial staff with people with extensive technocratic competence as well as journalistic and writing skills, would the readers be any better off?

I don't know.

But there comes a point when the nastiness and unpleasantness reaches a level where it generates a genuine public hazard. Check out the latest of the baby P case, an open letter sent by the social services blog Community Care to the editor of The Sun Rebekah Wade.

Social workers do an incredibly necessary and unpleasant job. And when the tabloids aren't complaining that they're not doing their jobs properly they're complaining when they decide to take a child into care.

You can imagine an alternate universe where baby P was taken into care before he died and became the subject of tabloid ire because the child snatching social services were taking kids away from their parents.

As the letter says:

Informed public opinion is undoubtedly important. Unfortunately, your coverage misinformed your readers. And in considering their views ahead of the facts and the informed opinions of the social workers who struggle with the realities at the frontline everyday, you have risked more children's safety and maybe their lives.

So at what point will something be done? And is it even practical to do anything? Is the generation that reads this trash dying out?

How would you go about altering the sensational and dangerous reporting of British tabloids?

Said with confidence

A more hostile memetic environment

I didn't know who this "right wing Dutch politician" was until all the kerfuffle yesterday.

Foamingly right-wing racists feed off the oxygen of public attention: if HMG genuinely wanted to damage Mr Wotsits' credibility they should simply have ignored him.

This is the problem with not wholeheartedly embracing free-speech. Supposed anti-hate laws give a megaphone to idiots by turning them into martyrs.

More open debate and more freedom of speech is a necessary part of what Alex calls a more hostile memetic environment: the more society is exposed to stupid ideas the stronger it's immune response to them will be.

What is the best way to write blog posts?

The best way to write blog posts is to have a clear and specific point to make, and only to make one point per blog post.

If you want to make multiple points, or write a multifaceted argument on a particular subject what you are writing become what Stephen Fry calls a blessay.

From now on I will try to keep my posts short and interesting, rather than long and rambling.

Problems of specificity

Eleizer Yudkowsky on the virtues of specificity:

When the unenlightened ones try to be profound, they draw endless verbal comparisons between this topic, and that topic, which is like this, which is like that; until their graph is fully connected and also totally useless. The remedy is specific knowledge and in-depth study. When you understand things in detail, you can see how they are not alike, and start enthusiastically subtracting edges off your graph.

This is a problem that is ever-present online. Very rarely are online debates actual arguments, they are bickering contests between people who have completely different ideas about the actual definition of words and the scope of the debate.

I was impressed by Yudkowsky's thoughts on the three schools of the singularity because it addresses directly the oft-ignored problem of what exactly someone means when they talk about the singularity.

This was the problem with PZ Myers' objections to the singularity - he argued against a few elements of Kurzweil's thesis and used these inconsistencies to dismiss the whole thing out of hand.

I agree there are problems with various aspects of Kurzweilian singularitarianism but they need to be adressed clearly and specifically.

Delicious specificity

In a similar vein I've been trying to work out what the best way of organising my Delicious tags is.

There are some tags, like "technology", "economics", "politics", "science", and "toread" which are so wide-ranging they lose all meaning.

However if my intention is to be able to refer back to a specific article when I need a reference too much specificity can hinder my search.

Tag bundles help solve the first problem of overarching vagueness by promoting "technology", "economics", "science", and "politics" to a well-earned retirement on the board of directors {?}.

Could it be possible to build a system into Delicious whereby it is possible to say that something vaguely reminds me of something else?

I don't mean a tag like "remindsmeofStephenFry". I mean a way of tagging a document that doesn't explicitly reference Stephen Fry in any way but still reminds me of him. Something like remindsmeof:"StephenFry".

In this context remindsmeof would be a command recognised by the Delicious API to note that the article isn't explicitly about Stephen Fry but nevertheless puts me in mind of him.

I suspect that this sort of thing is less useful in practice than I imagine, particularly as much of the utility of Delicious comes from its simplicity and intuitiveness.

And as to Yudkowsky: obviously this respect for the specific can be taken too far: a general knowledge encompassing many fields can also be very valuable.

It's best to learn a lot about a little and little about a lot.

What I think of the three kinds of technological singularity

Michael Anissimov has a post up on the three kinds of singularity. This is based on this post on the three schools of singularity thought by Eliezer Yudkowsky. This is relevant to many criticisms of the idea of a technological singularity as criticisms frequently focus on minor or ancillary effects of the singularity.

As I said before, I don't "believe" in the singularity. I think it's either irrelevant or a fairly trivial observation of technological growth trends. But within the context of the three schools I think I can express my thoughts more coherently.

Here are the three kinds of singularity Anissimov and Yudkowsky describe:

1. Accelerating change: advances in computer science, AI research, genetics, human augmentation, and biotechnology create a positive feedback of rapid technological growth. As the abilities of our tools improve and our own abilities improve through augmentation (both external in the form of personal AIs and internal in the form of intelligence-enhacements and nootropics) technological change accelerates exponentially.


2. Event horizon: advances in computer science, AI research, genetics, human augmentation, and biotechnology lead to the creation of a greater-than-human intelligence. It is impossible for a less intelligent mind to predict the actions of a more intelligent mind so it is truly impossible to make any definitive statements about what will happen after a superintelligence (whether pure AI or strongly augmented human).


3. Intelligence explosion: advances in computer science, AI research, genetics, human augmentation, biotechnology and neurobiology allow intelligent beings (either human or AI) to alter their own brains so as to improve their own intelligence. As intelligence is the source of all technological development this process will feed back on itself, as the slightly more intelligent beings develop slightly better ways of improving their intelligence, all the while creating amazing spinoff technologies.

Here's what I think of them:

1. The accelerating change school of the singularity is the one I find most compelling. This is because it is both logically plausible and reflects the experience humans have had of changing technologies in the past. Technologies like electronics combine with digital computer theories to develop fast computers that go on to have a major effect on other areas of development. I think the accelerating change argument is the most coherent and reasonable depiction of a technological singularity


2. The event horizon school is flakier. First, I have issues with the idea that greater-than-human intelligences are necessarily unpredictable, second, I don't believe that raw intellectual or cognitive ability is the primary driver for technological progress, and thirdly we have seen that it is already impossible to accurately predict all the outcomes of any technological development, let alone strong AI/posthuman superintelligence.
   


3. The intelligence explosion school is flakier still. It is based on the assumption that a sufficiently powerful general intelligence would necessarily be able to comprehend how it's own mind works and know how to improve it. I do believe that as knowledge of the workings of the brain increases it will lead to real gains in various intellectual capacities, through nootropics, brain augmentation, or through brain simulation on faster substrates. Gaining additional knowledge about the brain doesn't require us to be "smarter."

With reference to the last point: the knowledge of how the brain works will be gained through trial-and-error scientific experimentation and ongoing technological development of brain-scanning technology (itself developed by trial-and-error technological tinkering), surgery (again also developed through the inductive tinkering of the barber surgeons), and neural interface technology (which is being tinkered with as I write).

Anissimov believes that all technological progress must be judged on the basis of how much closer it brings us to the existence of a superintelligent AI, because then the superintelligent AI will take over the business of technological development and create an intelligence explosion.

Anissimov describes himself as a technological determinist, as such he presumably believes social change is caused primarily by technological development. I agree with technological determinism in general but I feel Anissimov's perspective is closer to cognitive derminism: he believes technological (and hence social) change in the future will happen purely as a result of the cognition of AI.

This is at odds with our experience because the component of scientific and technological development that relies entirely on pure cognition (e.g. Einstein's development of the theory of relativity or Newton's laws of motion) is quite small compared with those which required a substantial amount empirical study (Darwin's theory of evolution) or mechanical tinkering (Faraday's law of induction).

This is a similar criticism to Kevin Kelly's idea of thinkism, where Kelly highlights the fallacy of believing you can study the universe by simulating it, without recourse to experiment to attempt to falsify your belief.

To summarise: although the development of a smarter-than-human AI will be a huge aid to our understanding of the nature of intelligence, consciousness, and the human mind there is no reason to assume the effects (though unpredictable) will include an intelligence explosion - I agree that it may help lead to an acceleration in technological development - but it will only be one part of the general acceleration.

Current areas of interest

Here's what I'm up to at the moment:

• Doing Open University Tutor Marked Assignments in "Data, Computing, and Information" and "Engineering the Future" courses.
• Learning how to program Python using Diving into Python and Thinking Like a Computer Scientist.
• Applying to go to university.
• Looking for a job.
• Creating a lengthy webcomic narrative.
• Blogging extensively.
• Reading The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker.
• Reading Four Laws that Drive the Universe by Peter Atkins.
• Reading Feersum Endjinn's by Iain M Banks.
  

Singularity and transhumanism

PZ Myers has written an interesting critique of Ray Kurzweil's thoughts on a possible technological singularity:

...not only is the chart an artificial and perhaps even conscious attempt to fit the data to a predetermined conclusion, but what it actually represents is the proximity of the familiar.

We are much more aware of innovations in our current time and environment, and the farther back we look, the blurrier the distinctions get. We may think it's a grand step forward to have these fancy cell phones that don't tie you to a cord coming from the wall, but there was also a time when people thought it was radical to be using this new bow & arrow thingie, instead of the good ol' atlatl.

We just lump that prior event into a "flinging pointy things" category and don't think much of it. When Kurzweil reifies biases that way, he gets garbage, like this graph, out.

Now I do think that human culture has allowed and encouraged greater rates of change than are possible without active, intelligent engagement—but this techno-mystical crap is just kookery, plain and simple, and the rationale is disgracefully bad. One thing I will say for Kurzweil, though, is that he seems to be a first-rate bullshit artist.

...

Kurzweil tosses a bunch of things into a graph, shows a curve that goes upward, and gets all misty-eyed and spiritual over our Bold Future. Some places it's OK, when he's actually looking at something measurable, like processor speed over time.

In other places, where he puts bacteria and monkeys on the Y-axis and pontificates about the future of evolution, it's absurd. I am completely baffled by Kurzweil's popularity, and in particular the respect he gets in some circles, since his claims simply do not hold up to even casually critical examination.

Calling Kurzweil a bullshit artist is unfair: Kurzweil is a genuinely talented inventor and engineer. His beliefs might be a little kooky to some, but I've always found his writing compelling.

Kurzweil is a spiritualist: there's nothing wrong with that. A belief in the power of some imminent superhuman AI to solve all our problems is slightly less absurd than most religious beliefs, and Kurzweil doesn't come across as the type to build a pyramid of skulls in the meantime.

But really: who honestly cares about the singularity?

Building artificial human minds may be possible within my lifetime, or it may not.

There will still be substantial technological change, even if the prime mover remains good old-fashioned human grey matter.

What I find compelling is the suggestion of where ongoing developments in biology, computing, genetics, and human augmentation may take us over the next few decades.

Among these developments are new ways of combining human intelligence with machine intelligence that result in a substantial increase along all dimensions of intellectual development (what Kurzweil calls the law of accelerating returns.)

So although the idea of the singularity has become less compelling what continues to excite me about Kurzweil's writings are his descriptions of posthumans. Partly for the good ol' SFnal sensawunda, and partly because maybe it could happen to me. Maybe I could become a posthuman.

I think the idea and potential reality of self-guided human evolution is a great idea in itself. I can take or leave the singularity.

Prof Myers also comments separately on the recent pronouncements on the future of humanity Juan Enriquez at the TED conference:

Every species also takes control over its own evolution, in a sense; individuals make choices of all sorts that influence what will happen in the next generation. You could rightly argue that they don't do it with planning and intent, but I have seen nothing that suggests that our attempts to modify our species, low tech and high tech together, are any wiser or better informed about the long-term consequences than those of any rat fighting for an opportunity to mate. We do what we do; don't pretend it's part of a long term plan that is actually prepared for all of the unexpected eventualities.

I agree with Myers up to a point: he's basically saying that developments in biotechnology and the progress of transhumanism won't happen in some big, top-down, organised way, but will rather develop as a series of steps through stochastic tinkering in the lab and (eventually) the marketplace.

The beauty of human progress is it doesn't have any long term plan: we do what we do and we tinker and experiment and find things out.

Juan Enriquez can make all the grand pronouncements about the future of humanity he likes but what he is actually trying to do is raise investment capital for his company Biotechonomy.

And Biotechonomy will pay scientists to tinker and experiment and find things out.

Such is the nature of technological advancement.

Prof Myers ends on a positive note:

Maybe this information age will have as dramatic and as important an effect on humanity as the invention of writing, but even if it does, don't expect a nerd rapture to come of it. Just more cool stuff, and a bigger, shinier, fancier playground for humanity to gambol about in.

Well I certainly agree with that.

The eye of the apple

This development is... interesting.

That Apple's next update to the OSX line of operating systems is to incorporate a geolocation facility is both compelling and worrying.

Obviously having fully networked, location-aware computers is a Good Thing, but the potential is also there for additional harmful tracking and monitoring of individual computers.

Where Apple leads Microsoft and everyone else is sure to follow. Yet another component for realisable spimes is imminent.

Interesting times.

power to the commentariat: The Inauspicious Er...

power to the commentariat: The Inauspicious Er...

I'd go with "lolwut?". Carries impact and genuine scorn, as if you don't really give a damn. "Ahem" is also nice of course. Both are either end of the scorn - condescension axis.

Or you could always try sincerity...

Productivity in shops

One of the problems with working in a second hand bookshop is that although you spend a large portion of your time sitting in front of a PC on your own you're productivity drops to nearly zero.

Every time someone asks you a question or buys a book it breaks your concentration, then there's all the usual stuff - Twittering, blogging, surfing, and general procrastination.

I'm not complaining - I'm just saying that this is the reason I've managed to get so little work done.

And in a way I am being productive, or at least as productive as misanthropic booksellers ever are...

/Bernard Black

The fifth element

In the Western classical tradition there were believed to be four elements from which everything in the human world was made. They were earth, air, fire, and water.

Every object in the human world was believed to consist of different proportions of these four elements.

Of course in order to combine these elements together into objects there needed to be a fifth element, which Terry Pratchett calls the element of surprise.¹

Surprise is a funny thing: an emotional response in a rational context. You think one thing, something changes, and then you think another thing. They've forgotten my birthday, every jumps out at you, they haven't forgotten your birthday!

Why do we feel surprise? Is it an evolutionary adaptation to finding out that things are other than they are? Does it act as a kind of exclamation mark for the mind to highlight the importance of a change in the universe or is it simply a high-order emergent property of consciousness that serves no really useful purpose?

Do animals feel surprise in the same way as humans? Are there qualitative difference amongst surprises?

Intellectual surprises are the most fun, over at Overcoming Bias Robin Hanson asks what would have surprised our hunter-gatherer ancestors about how we view the world today?

The answers boil down to a couple of basic points:

1. The universe is far bigger and older than expected.
2. Everything in the universe is actually composed of a surprisingly small set of items operating on the basis of a surprisingly simple set of rules. Complex things emerge from these simple rules.
   

The loss of determinism to quantum physics was also suggested.

As an SF fan I'd love to fast forward a few thousand years to see what things we will discover in the future that will surprise me.

There is a strong temptation to fall into the trap if thinking "we've got this science thing basically nailed down except for a few small details."

One of the most compelling things about life is surprise: the act of discovering something is other than you expected and that things are not as they initially seem.

{Incidentally if this post seems a little off it's because I've had difficulty sleeping recently and I'm currently very tired... ;)}

1: Actually the original fifth element was quintessence, which accounts for all the stuff in the "heavenly realm" of the sky that didn't obviously consist of any of the other four.

The quantum leap intelligence problem: are posthumans ineffable?

There is an idea prevalent in transhumanism that when posthumans or strong AI finally develop they will be to us as we are to the beasts that perish. They will be so much more intelligent that we will be incapable of understanding them.

They will possess super-science mojo and will live in mathematically optimal blocks of matte computronium, and they will have awesome tech that we puny baselines won't be able to distinguish from magic. They will be ineffable and godlike and we simply won't be able to understand them or their motives.

(Aside: for the sake of brevity for the remainder of this post I will refer to "them and us" to distinguish baseline humans from posthumans - not because I don't buy into the whole Kurzweil machine-human merger, but just because it's easier to write about)

I disagree with this idea of posthuman ineffability.

The idea suggests that there are other ways of being intelligent (i.e. possessing a highly accurate model of the outside universe and a highly accurate model of yourself and your fellows, thereby enabling self-reflection, communication, and culture ¹) that are an entire quantum-leap above human intelligence such that we won't be able to comprehend them or their actions.

Michael Anissimov has written an interesting article making the point that human beings are dumb. In fact we possess only the bare minimum of intelligence required to create the civilization we have now.

Michael Anissimov makes some good points in this article on the current state of human intelligence:

Hey, human philosophers — I’ve got some bad news. It turns out that Homo sapiens probably isn’t the qualitatively smartest possible being.

...

How do I know? Well, most other members of the genus Homo had plenty of time to build agricultural civilizations, but they were too unintelligent to get off the ground. Homo sapiens was just barely smart enough to do the trick. And like a self-replicating machine that moves from 99.9% closure to 100% closure, the payoff was big.

I agree with this as far as it goes. All it took to develop complex social technologies like language and complex physical technologies like bows and arrows was a small increment in intellectual capacity.

We made that quantum leap from animal to human around 100 000 years ago: in the intervening period we haven't evolved a great deal (in fact, some say we've stopped evolving at all).

Ergo we are possessed of the bare minimum intellect required to sustain and develop technological civilization.

Anissimov uses this as an argument in favour of the idea that there there are many more superior modes of intelligence that we haven't yet developed or encountered, or in his words:

The apparent magnitude of our accomplishments, including those of Einstein, is merely a side-effect of how low our standards are. To another species on another world whose intelligence was crafted in the furnace of selection pressures more intense than ours, quantum mechanics is obvious from the get-go. The only thing funnier about how dumb we are to take so long to figure it out is our self-importance at having finally figured it out.

This is where I disagree with Anissimov. I think that the miniscule quantum leap between pre-human animals and human beings is a one-time event. Improvement is certainly possible, but to claim that there is some qualitatively and quantitatively different perspective on the universe that is definitively superior in every measurable dimension to human thought and would result in beings that we are incapable of understanding is incorrect.


Here's why:

1. Human knowledge and understanding does not progress wholly through deductive reasoning or pure cognition. In fact a large amount of human knowledge and understanding comes from what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls stochastic tinkering, and Eric Beinhocker calls deductive tinkering. Trial and error and accident has contributed enormously to the development of human knowledge. Presumably a posthuman would make mistakes: otherwise how would it learn? And if it doesn't learn how does it grow and develop?
   
2. I agree with Kevin Kelly that there is a fallacy in the idea of "thinkism." Thinkism is the idea that it is possible for a mind, completely ignorant of the workings of the physical universe, to consider a few small objects, like a rock, flower, a feather, and a model of a galaxy embedded in amber, and then use these items to deduce the workings of the physical universe without any recourse to experiment. It could well be that there are other universes with different physical laws that could generate those items and without recourse to experiment how would this mind know which universe it lived in?
   
3. We will share the same universe (they may go elsewhere, of course, but the chances are baselines will stay here): as such this posthuman entity will be subject to all the usual laws of entropy, conservation of energy, gravity and whatnot. As such this posthuman will need things and do things that are explicable to us. Only by creating a solipsistic alternate-reality computer bizarro world could a posthuman behave in a completely ineffable fashion: and even then a posthuman would still be subject to the axioms of a given logical or mathematical environment. N-incomplete problems would remain so.
   

Looking at point 1 "how does a posthuman learn" suggests an interesting counterargument: "posthumans develop in a way that doesn't involve learning, they use something different and ineffable."

The problem with this counterargument is that what I'm arguing is empirically refutable: the existence of a truly ineffable posthuman entity is something that is observable, so my point can be refuted by the observation of one posthuman entity whose motives and actions we do not understand. However transhumanist thinkers can continue asserting that true posthumans are by definition ineffable until the end of time. I predict that as posthumans emerge and their actions are studied they will eventually always be found to be explicable by baseline humans (if weird and peculiar - see below).

I agree that there are almost certainly better modes of intelligence, but I disagree with the idea that these modes of intelligence will ever be wholly incomprehensible to baseline humans.

They may be faster, cleverer, wittier, more attractive, stronger, longer-lived, instatiated within superior hardware, and better at poker - but it doesn't mean baseline humans would be incapable of understanding them.

The distinction between what I'm arguing and what Anissimov implies in his article is fairly subtle, and I could be accused of nit-picking, but I think it's important that we realise that there is no reason to assume posthumans will be completely and utterly ineffable to us, at least not if they want to survive IRL (which they may not).

That humans have accomplished what we have says more about the power of the evolutionary methods of stochastic tinkering combined with occasional deductive reasoning than it does about the brilliance of human intellect: and this is exactly what Anissimov is saying and why I agree with the premise of his article.

But once you possess culture (what Ian Stewart and Patrick Cohen call extelligence, or what Richard Dawkins might term "a memetic environment"), and a reasonable means of manipulating the universe it doesn't matter how "smart" you are. Trial and error and learning and robust heuristics take care of the rest.

I believe that some posthumans will be pretty weird, some may be charismatic, some may be frightening. But we can get to where they are, they are post-humans and they took a path we will be able to follow. Because of this and for the reasons given above I don't believe posthumans or posthuman civilization will ever be truly ineffable.



1: In fact it could be that this superior intelligence works on a completely different basis to creating a highly accurate model of the universe and the self, and works on some other basis that we can't comprehend. This non-intelligent "intelligence" would be truly ineffable and would completely disprove my point if it actually was superior in every possible way to human intelligence.

Further reading: if you do understand precisely what I'm trying to say I should mention that it isn't original, Greg Egan argues something similar in the opening chapter of Schild's Ladder.

Interviews and university

Well. Here I am.

In approximately ten hours I will be on campus at Warwick University, either being interviewed or trying to find the bar.

And I can't sleep.

It isn't because I'm nervous. I just have a serious problem with sleep.

At about ten in the evening I enter a stage of heightened wakefulness and distraction. If left to their own devices my sleep patterns shift later and later until I go to sleep at around 6:00 and wake up at around 14:00.

Black swans and Google failure {Ramble}

Re-reading this article from last year in the Times (via George Dvosrky and BoingBoing) concerning Nassim Nicholas Taleb and black swans.

As I write Google seems to be going through a bit of a crisis, flagging all sites it's searches return with "this site may harm your computer" (it even spawned a Twitter hashtag #googmayharm) and redirecting you to an interstitial site:


Anyway it occurs to me that Google going bankrupt or suffering some huge failure that wipes out all the data stored in, say, blogger would be a black swan event. High impact and widely unpredicted.

This is exactly why I've taken to making local backups of my blog with this software using Blogger Backup. In the event of Google getting fubared I can be back up and running within two shakes of a Wordpress template.

I've also been doing something similar with my Delicious account, by using this website to create a local xml copy of all my Delicious bookmarks.

Incidentally Delicious is now becoming really useful: it's got to the stage (with 2096 tags and 2009 saved URLs) where it acts as a sort of private search engine of stuff I know I'll already be interested in.

But my obsession with long term data storage (and I mean for Long Now values of long term) has since been piqued by this article by Charles Stross. Stoss is talking about data formats being essentially forgotten after a few decades and data stored in those formats becoming inaccessible.

But the value of something like my Delicious xml backups may change for me because those websites might drop off the web.

So I'm currently looking for some software that will save all the pages associated with the URLs in my Delicious account as local html files.

LATER: Well Google is working properly and I found something like what I just described (a means to acquire local copies of all my Delicious sites) using the wget tool on UNIX based systems.

wget actually looks really awesome.

I know I should bite the bullet and switch to either Apple or Linux but I haven't got round to it yet, so in the meantime I'm looking for something similar to wget but for Windows...

The nolinkvisit rule of worthwhile Internet stuff

Like all denizens of the Interwubz I have, over the course of several years, collected records of everything I've read, touched, looked at, linked to, discussed, commented on, or visited - the sticky trail of webby spoor that will undoubtedly follow me for the rest of my life.

I back up bookmarks at Delicious, Google bookmarks, and locally, both in my browser and in big HTML gloms in my weekly monthly backups.

The other day when I did this I realised that the blog of Scottish science fiction writer Ken MacLeod was not included in any of my bookmarks! I realised that over the years I've been reading his excellent weblog I've simply got into the habit of (I've never liked RSS aggregators - I've tried FeedDemon but found it deeply unsatisying somehow) clicking through when I visited Charles Stross' similarly excellent weblog.

It occurs to me that this behaviour can act as a kind of litmus test for genuinely excellent online stuff.

If you care enough about something to remember it without creating a link on your desktop or browser then it's almost certainly worthwhile.

Called it the nolinkvisit rule.

Charles Stross and politics

Crooked Timber have been doing a big Charles Strossian seminar, featuring Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman and fellow Scottish science fiction writer Ken MacLeod:

Shamefully, I have yet to read Saturn's Children, Halting State, and I'm only one book into the Merchant Princes series - all books the victim of a moratorium on book-purchases until I manage to cut down on my book hoarding.

Nevertheless I still read Stross' excellent weblog (it passes the nolinkvisit rule of worthwhile Internet stuff) and I've always been struck by his yen for taking ideas that I find difficult to articulate in the most basic terms and expressing them concisely and wittily.

And so, in the Wildean sense that most people's opinions are actually the opinions of others, this is what I've been struggling to articulate to myself about the current state of politics in the EU:

Old certainties have been eroding: family, religion, gender roles, race, the hopelessly compromised multinational news media, politicians mired in the megaphone era and trying to grapple with ubiquitous information overload at the same time that they’ve been systematically stripped of actual power by the trade treaties of Empire. And so the existing establishment figures shout louder to drown out the noise, and foment moral panics and pass increasingly draconian laws just to be seen to be Doing Something. And something is done: anti-terrorism laws are applied to fly-tippers, bugging facilities are used to see that parents aren’t conspiring against the interests of the state by sending their children to the wrong school, and the unforseen complications of the disconnect between authority and real power multiply exponentially.

[from this article at Crooked Timber]

On decluttering

As I mentioned in my previous post, some of the key ideas I've been exposed to over the past few months have been to do with decluttering.

Bruce Sterling's Viridian philosophy has at it's root an understanding that material possessions, beyond the tools we use every day, are essentially a tedious distraction.

As Sterling says himself:

It may belong to you, but it does not belong with you. You weren't born with it. You won't be buried with it. It needs to be out of the space-time vicinity. You are not its archivist or quartermaster. Stop serving that unpaid role.

The bulk of the stuff around me right now consists of various kinds of data-storage. There is also a lot of junk.

There are also some tools.

Why don't I lose the junk?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes a similar point concerning information: we are exposed to all sorts of information on a daily basis. But only a vanishingly small fraction is of any use to us.

The human mind being what it is additional information clouds our judgement of mundane, day-to-day matters as well as distracting us from what is truly significant (whatever that might be).

And finally Getting Things Done from David Allen. This strikes me as the ultimate in decluttering: it is the removal of all the nagging jobs and chores that we hold in our minds all the time and the placing of them elsewhere for processing.

Yet more GTD thoughts

OK, here's the thing: I've been trying to get my head round the utility of Eston Bond's Moleskine system, which he says is based partly on GTD and partly on PigPog.

Here's a brief summary of how the Moleskine thing is meant to work:

• Odd pages are numbered
• Pages 1 - 4 are the contents of the project pages
• Pages 5 - 123 are the inbox
• Pages 124 - 189 are the projects
  
• Pages 190 onwards are someday

The basic idea, which is taken from the processing component of GTD, is that you take all the things you need to without distinction or prejudice and write them down in the inbox section of this notebook.

Stuff that can be done within two minutes is immediately done. No ifs, no buts, no coconuts.

Stuff that requires a large number of discrete actions to be taken ("go on holiday to France" or "get a new part-time job") automatically becomes a project.

Projects are entered in the Projects section of the notebook.

All those things which you hope one day to do maybe but aren't really likely right now go into someday.

Inbox

Across each page in the inbox section the following is written:

Date | Task | Ref | Iteration | Project | Wait?

The date and task columns are fairly self-explanatory. The reference number is intended to indicate which page the task was previously entered in. The iteration is intended to indicate how many times the task has been moved forward in this manner.

If something has been upgraded to a project the project reference number is quoted in that column.

If something needs putting off for some reason then the Wait? column is marked.

My first problem is with the idea of moving tasks forward. If you're not waiting on something and not turning something into a project then why are you moving it forward?

Projects

The idea behind having a separate Projects section at the back of the notebook seems like a good idea initially: Projects need to be broken down into discrete units before they can be tackled.

But if the projects are all stuck at the back in the Projects section when do you process them?

And also: are you really going to enter discrete steps of projects in both the projects pages and in the inbox pages? Where's the utility of that?

Developing an alternative: WTD

Instead of Getting Things Done why not Write Things Down?

This works in essentially the same way except there are no iterations, references, maybes, or projects.

WTD would focus on discrete actions that need to be taken soon or at some time in the future.

The problem with WTD is it ignores the big picture: an entry like "Get a job" might remain for weeks whilst the lesser tasks that "Get a job" entails like "Write CV" and "Write covering letter" and "Buy stamps" are crossed out one by one.

In fact, this problem highlights a problem with the whole GTD philosophy as I see it: there are always some things that you need to do that you just do without needing to write them down and remember.

I will certainly do some more research into GTD (like buying the book [aha! I knew there was a catch!]), but in the meantime I'll explore my own needs a little further.

Furthering WTD: where's the utility?

Taking WTD as a starting point: what can I do to further my productivity?

Looking at the list of things I've created it strikes me that any stuff (the GTD generic term for "Things You Have to Do/Take Care Of/Deal With") can occupy any one of the following categories:

1. Stuff I need to do (e.g. "Get a job")
   
2. Stuff I don't need to do but would like to do (e.g. "Learn to program with Python")
3. Stuff I should do but probably won't (e.g. "Organise files")
4. Stuff I need to do and will do anyway (e.g. "Brush teeth")

As I see it the value in any productivity system lies in it's ability to encourage you to deal with all these categories of stuff.

All the extraneous stuff about references and iterations is all very well but I doubt it actually increases your productivity.

So, I'm going to dump the Moleskine in favour of a smaller and cheaper notebook (also one with diary functionality and maps and a pencil).

I'm also going to do some further research into GTD: I've only really touched the surface and I need to read the book.

I agree with this guy.

I think for my own happiness and peace of mind maintaining an elaborate system of references and iterations is less effective than having an ad-hoc scrawlbook.

And inevitably the ideas of GTD put my in mind both of Taleb's dictum to avoid information overload, and Sterling's thoughts on the Viridian design movement.

Taleb advocates information decluttering, Sterling advocates physical decluttering, and Allen advocates mental decluttering.

H. J. Blackham

An anonymous commenter has informed me that humanist thinker and writer H. J. Blackham has died this past week at the age of 105.

His book Humanism has had quite a profound effect on my life.

Beyond that I'm not really sure what to say.

GTD thoughts

Since I started using GTD it has struck me how much of what I don't do but should do isn't because I can't do it or forget to do it but rather that I am just unwilling to do it.

For example I've been half-intending to switch from my normal savings account to an ISA tax-free savings account for a while now. The reason I haven't done it is I am somewhat unwilling to put up with the £10 a month standing order.

That's it.

I have however created my own version of Eston Bond's Moleskine-based system of productivity.

So far I've written down all the things I need to do. Some clearly require more extended projects and as such have their place in the projects section.

I think I will continue using it for a while, but I will be open to on-the-fly modifications of the system (it's worth reading Bond's own method here to familiarise yourself with it).

Selah.

A new peace with GTD

I have a problem.

I am currently 20 years old.

I am fortunate to be healthy, live in a Western liberal democracy, and not to have too many pressing concerns on my time.

Despite this I have a number of problems that I've been struggling to articulate for most of my life.

These problems are specified below. If you, the reader, are a prospective employer I exhort you to be aware that I am defining these problems that I might solve them and make myself a better person.

Here they are:

1. I am passive.
   
2. I will default to inaction if there is no clear alternative.
3. My attention span is short.
4. I am easily distracted.
5. I have difficulty organising and optimising my life.
   
6. My memory lets me down sometimes.

OK. So now they're out in the open - where do I go from here?

The answer that most readily springs to mind is to adopt the Getting Things Done lifestyle.

A discussion of GTD and it's founder, David Allen, can be found in this article on Wired Magazine.

As ever with the cultish fringe there is a suspiciously religious element to GTD that I'm, wary of. Not to mention the vast variety of tie-in products and money spinning items associated with it.

Fortunately there seem to be no end of easy, cheap implementations of the basic philosophy, including a rather splendid Moleskine-based project described in detail here.

However I have just taken the time to write down all the things I need to do. In no particular order and with no distinction made between their being big or small or important or unimportant.

This simple act has proven to be very cathartic. For the first time in a very long while (in fact, since I was on holiday in the summer) my mind seems calm and at peace.

All those nagging little tasks are still there. But now they are stored elsewhere and I can concentrate on getting things done.

I intend tomorrow to purchase a Moleskine notebook and begin living with GTD.

Watch this space.

Which programming language am I?

For years now I've been tinkering around with computer programming languages.

Back when I was thirteen I bought a copy of C for Dummies in my local Oxfam shop. I learned a little but gave up half way through.

More recently I've been reading Sams Teach Yourself Java 6 by Rogers Cadenhead and Laura Lemay. I also have an up-t0-date copy of Sams Teach Yourself C++ Liberty Jones on my desk.

Another textbook that's floating around somewhere is PHP 6 and MySQL 5 Visual Quickpro Guide by Larry Ullman.

I'm also learning Javascript for one of my OU courses at the moment.

In short I've made my usual mistake of not focusing on one language and letting myself get distracted by other projects.

The motivation behind my interest has always been my desire to more fully understand the computer I use so much.

Cory Doctorow commented, in this review of his recent book, that:

"Even if you only write code for one day, one afternoon, you have to do it. Computers can control you or they can lighten your work — if you want to be in charge of your machines, you have to learn to write code."

Which is good advice, I guess. Chris Applegate has written a brief guide as to how you might start off, and recommends Python as a good place to start:

If you work in any information industry, or are thinking about a career in it, learn to code. And by code I don’t mean learn something hardcore like Java or C++, or even learn a full programming language (as you’ll see below). But it means getting above the usual abstractions you see - your web browser, Word, Excel - and getting involved at a deeper level, get to appreciate what the data it is you’re reading and realise it’s not just something to look at.

Python (along with Perl) is one of the few languages I haven't dickered around with at some stage.

I think that the important thing is that I focus on one language at a time.

Procrastination and Anticrastination

An interesting study here concerning procrastination:

The findings, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, were very clear.

Even though all of the students were being paid upon completion, those who thought about the questions abstractly were much more likely to procrastinate--and in fact some never got around to the assignment at all.

By contrast, those who were focused on the how, when and where of doing the task e-mailed their responses much sooner, suggesting that they hopped right on the assignment rather than delaying it.

The authors note that "merely thinking about the task in more concrete, specific terms makes it feel like it should be completed sooner and thus reducing procrastination."

They conclude that these results have important implications for teachers and managers who may want their students and employees starting on projects sooner. In addition, these findings are also relevant for those of us resolving to have better time management skills in the New Year!

This idea of focusing on the real and specific rather than the abstract and general is similar to the ideas of productivity guru David Allen, detailed in this profile in Wired:

Items on next-action lists should be described as concretely as possible. Breaking down stuff into physical actions, Allen says, is the key to getting things done.

I've certainly found Allen's ideas useful in getting things done. I now keep a diary and focus on doing things now rather than later.

[via Paul Raven]

Political engagement

Chastened by this post by the Yorkshire Ranter I wrote to my MP concerning Freedom of Information Order 2009, an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act that would allow MPs expenses details to be kept secret. This is the content of the email I sent him:

Dear Mr Maples

I am writing concerning the Freedom of Information Order 2009 (described here: http://www.commonsleader.gov.uk/output/page2698.asp)

My understanding is that this Order will use the provision in section 82 of the Freedom of Information Act to allow an exemption for MPs and Lords so that they do not have to reveal details of their personal expenditure.

This seems to be in response to the FOI request concerning MPs expenses that has been compiled and is due for release.

My objections to the Freedom of Information Order 2009 are as follows:


1) It will mean that the large quantity of public money that has been spent collecting receipts will have been wasted.

2) As the FOI request concerns how taxpayer's money has been spent (and what you and your fellow MPs spent at John Lewis can hardly be considered secret for reasons of national security) we have a right to know.

3) It implies that parliament is uniquely privileged over other public sector bodies as to how it spends money.

4) It reflects badly on the reputation of the Houses of Parliament that MPs feel it is necessary to keep their expenditure details concealed.


It is my understanding that this Order needs two parliamentary votes, one in the Commons, one in the Lords, which are scheduled for Thursday the 22nd March.

I would be very grateful if you would consider the points above and choose to vote against this Freedom of Information Order.

yours sincerely


Thomas James

And now look what has happened:

On the 16th of May 2008 the High Court ruled that MPs’ expenses must be published under the Freedom of Information Act.

Tomorrow [[[i.e. today]]], MPs were going to vote on changing the law to keep their expenses secret after all, just before publication was due and after spending nearly a million of your pounds and seven months compiling the data.

However, after a tremendous response from you, with over 7,000 members on our Facebook group, 4,000 messages sent to MPs, help from Stephen Fry, and a helpful 4th Report of the House of Lords Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, it appears that the vote has been cancelled – Guardian, Times, BBC.

As President Obama said in his inauguration speech: “And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Huzzah! The system works.

On writing

Malcolm Gladwell writes that you require 10, 000 hours of practice to become truly skillful at something.

This highlights the problem with the nature/nature question: is performing 10, 000 hours of practice in anything the result of a biological inclination, or an accident of circumstance? Or is it a combination of both?

The areas I wish to become skillful in are the fields of writing, draftsmanship, and design. Being able to write well and knowledgeably about a wide range of subjects is a core part of this skill.

To get some perspective on my 10, 000 hours consider this: if it takes me one second to write one word (and considering the possibility of multiple drafts, research-time-per word etc this is quite likely) then I will need to write some 36, 000, 000 words to become truly proficient.

Professional writers often get this experience in journalism (as in the case of Charles Stross and Malcolm Gladwell) or just through huge amounts of practice.

So far in my life I have probably written around half a million words. This needs to end now. I need to write more and more often.

As I imagine it writing is like anything else: if you keep doing it you will eventually become proficient. If you keep the wheels spinning and well-oiled things should develop in due course.

I also need more practice at narrative-building. I need to learn how to create a plot and build characters and plug everything together.

I suspect that there are plenty of writers who don't write 36, 000, 000 words in their entire lives. Writing copy may be one of those skills that reaches a plateau of excellence before it needs to be given an additional boost by an insight into the human condition.

On a completely unrelated note it would be a good idea for me to get a new keyboard if I intend to write so much in the future. This one is really appalling.