I've signed the petition to support this here freedom bill.
I'm always a bit lairy of putting my name on political petitions, partly because that's how they getcha and partly because I don't want to end up being responsible for a pyramid of skulls.
But this bill seems entirely sensible. In fact I'm rather surprised the whole lot isn't already in law:
# Scrap ID cards for everyone, including foreign nationals.
# Ensure that there are no restrictions in the right to trial by jury for serious offences including fraud.
# Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square, at the heart of our democracy.
# Abolish the flawed control orders regime.
# Renegotiate the unfair extradition treaty with the United States.
# Restore the right to public assembly for more than two people.
# Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
# Strengthen freedom of information by giving greater powers to the Information Commissioner and reducing exemptions.
# Stop criminalising trespass.
# Restore the public interest defence for whistleblowers.
# Prevent allegations of ‘bad character’ from being used in court.
# Restore the right to silence when accused in court.
# Prevent bailiffs from using force.
# Restrict the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes and stop councils snooping.
# Restore the principle of double jeopardy in UK law.
# Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
# Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.
# Scrap the ministerial veto which allowed the Government to block the release of Cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war.
# Require explicit parental consent for biometric information to be taken from children.
# Regulate CCTV following a Royal Commission on cameras.
Brought to this place by the inestimable People's Republic of Mortimer.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Build Your Own... political ideology
Your friendly guide to building your own political ideology.
First step: if you want to build your own political ideology you need to look hard at the Way Things Are and try and work out why they are the Way They Are.
Second step: carefully record your findings and then make careful ethical judgements about the Reasons for the Way Things Are that you have discovered. If you find there are some Reasons that are ethically questionable then make a note of these.
Third step: write a tract or essay describing the bad Reasons for the Way Things Are and your personal ideas for how we might go about Improving Matters.
Fourth, final, and most important step: toss the whole lot in the bin and walk away and do something useful and worthwhile. The world has enough ideologies and enough ideologues to be getting on with. :)
First step: if you want to build your own political ideology you need to look hard at the Way Things Are and try and work out why they are the Way They Are.
Second step: carefully record your findings and then make careful ethical judgements about the Reasons for the Way Things Are that you have discovered. If you find there are some Reasons that are ethically questionable then make a note of these.
Third step: write a tract or essay describing the bad Reasons for the Way Things Are and your personal ideas for how we might go about Improving Matters.
Fourth, final, and most important step: toss the whole lot in the bin and walk away and do something useful and worthwhile. The world has enough ideologies and enough ideologues to be getting on with. :)
Why I am not a minarchist libertarian
I've been reading Charlotte Gore's wonderful weblog, having being directed there by the sublime People's Republic of Mortimer.
Gore describes herself as a "libertarian liberal democrat." This is fair enough, but she is also a minarchist (and especially here):
Consider the following two scenarios:
Now which of these two wannabe entrepreneurs d'you think is most likely to follow their dreams and set up their potentially wealth-creating business?
If you made your answer purely on the basis of their cost-benefit calculation then you probably agree with me that it would be the denizen of the social democratic state, but probably not for the same reason as I.
Do you think Steve Jobs is as rich as he is because he wanted to be a billionaire or because he loved making computers? Do you think Thomas Edison founded General Electric because he wanted some guy to take it over after he was dead and build the world's second largest company?
No! These geeks and misfits and entrepreneurs and Johnny Appleseeds did it for the love and adventure and sensawunda and because they couldn't help themselves.
Do you think Felix Dennis created Maxim magazine because he wanted a better skinmag for the sarky masses and also to make shedloads of moolah? Well yes, he probably did. But 60% of $240 million is $144 million more than 100% of nothing and a notebook full of good poetry.
A minarchist libertarian disputant would claim that I clearly know nothing of business: the individual entrepreneur may be doing it because they love it, but they need to get capital from somewhere. This will need to come from investors who want large returns to make up for the risky nature of business.
My answer to this is to be point out that in our hypothetical minarchist state where there is less propensity to start businesses there is less propensity to invest in the same. Why not stick it in a vault or buy land? Land isn't risky. Banks vaults are (no deposit insurance), but they're a damn sight less risky than investing in some nobody's idea for a business.
Further these libertarians might point out the bureaucratic monstrosity that social democracies inevitably end up as. The problem is that bureaucracy is not and has never been endemic to the public sector. Large corporations are as liable to it as anyone else.
At this point my hypothetical libertarian opponent might say that the only reason large companies are bureaucratic is because of state regulation. They might also throw in the point that bureaucratic companies will fail in the marketplace, as the costs of maintaining the bureaucracy lead to a lack of profitability.
To the first I say so be it. If bureaucracy is the price you pay for clean water and functioning aircraft then I'm fine with that. To the second I point out that if a company has to deal with particular regulations then so will all it's competitors.
At this point my assumptive adversary will presumably posit that the state is not accountable. Well, this is certainly true. But governments are (that's why they're called social democracies) and governments are nominally in control of the state. If bureaucracy really starts to irritate the people then they will elect a government that aims to put an end to it.
I'm all in favour of markets. They create wealth and foster innovation. And I'm all in favour of making markets as free as possible. But the notion that the state is always inimical to the creation and maintenance of free markets and innovative industry is nonsense. In many cases the state is necessary to foster industry in ways far beyond simply providing for the rule of law.
Look at South Korea in the last century. Look at industrial development in Britain during the Elizabethan period.
In both cases the state stepped in with tariffs and subsidy to protect industry at home2.
Look at what came of ARPANET and the World Wide Web. Look at what came of Global Positioning System and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
The idea that the state is somehow "getting in the way" of economic growth is absurd.
The state needs to support economic growth through the provision of extensive civil amenities just as a poorly-educated, under-insured, and uncertain entrepreneur is likely to fail whereas a well-educated, healthy, well-informed entrepreneur is likely to succeed.
1: I get the free market, I do. My argument is not that the free market is a bad idea, just that it is wrong to think that there is more to the creation of human happiness than the creation of wealth and more to the creation of wealth than free markets.
2: I also get globalisation and maximum advantage. I won't go into that now as it would be a long and involved conversation that is orthogonal to my main point: a minarchist state is not a state that enhances economic growth OR human happiness.
Gore describes herself as a "libertarian liberal democrat." This is fair enough, but she is also a minarchist (and especially here):
I used to think - that the alternative to what we had was Afghanistan or some African style government.It is this the implicit assertion that the actions of the state (in addition the maintaining the rule of law) cannot add to the wealth1 of everyone that I intend to refute.
I've changed my tune on that. The most important part of any Government is the rule of law - the ability to enforce contracts, maintain a monopoly on force and be subject to the rule of law themselves.
...
I'm not an anarchist. I want a state - I just want one that acts as nothing more than a framework to make free and honest trade possible and otherwise keeps out of people's lives. Upholding the rule of law is more important than anything - consider Iraq with democracy but without rule of law, for example.
I want this because free trade is the key to creating wealth, which improves the quality of our lives, advances technology and makes things cleaner and more efficient.
Free trade, you see, makes everyone richer because when two people trade in their mutual self interest both are made wealthier as a result.
Consider the following two scenarios:
1. A person living in a minarchist, night-watchman state has a business idea. They know that if their business works they could change the world for the better; create hundreds of rewarding jobs; initiate a whole new industry; and make them famous and wealthy and respected for their inventiveness and brilliance.
But they're smart enough to realise that there is a risk their business could fail. They have a good job at the moment. They have a family to support. One of their children has a disease that, although manageable at the moment, could degenerate at any time into a much more serious condition that will require intensive, and expensive, medical care.
The prospective entrepreneur knows if they succeed they will get 95% of all the profits from their venture to keep for themselves, paying a small 5% tax on the gains to the night-watchman state.
2. A person living in a social democracy has a business idea. They know that if their business works they could change the world for the better; create hundreds of rewarding jobs; initiate a whole new industry; and make them famous and wealthy and respected for their inventiveness and brilliance.
But they're smart enough to realise that there is a risk their business could fail. They have a good job at the moment. They have a family to support. One of their children has a disease that, although manageable at the moment, could degenerate at any time into a much more serious condition that will require intensive, and expensive, medical care.
Taxation in this social democracy is high, to provide for the generous welfare payouts, state-funded R&D, high standards of education, and superbly generous national health service. The prospective entrepreneur knows he will have to pay at least 60% of all the profits he makes from his business to the state.
Now which of these two wannabe entrepreneurs d'you think is most likely to follow their dreams and set up their potentially wealth-creating business?
If you made your answer purely on the basis of their cost-benefit calculation then you probably agree with me that it would be the denizen of the social democratic state, but probably not for the same reason as I.
Do you think Steve Jobs is as rich as he is because he wanted to be a billionaire or because he loved making computers? Do you think Thomas Edison founded General Electric because he wanted some guy to take it over after he was dead and build the world's second largest company?
No! These geeks and misfits and entrepreneurs and Johnny Appleseeds did it for the love and adventure and sensawunda and because they couldn't help themselves.
Do you think Felix Dennis created Maxim magazine because he wanted a better skinmag for the sarky masses and also to make shedloads of moolah? Well yes, he probably did. But 60% of $240 million is $144 million more than 100% of nothing and a notebook full of good poetry.
A minarchist libertarian disputant would claim that I clearly know nothing of business: the individual entrepreneur may be doing it because they love it, but they need to get capital from somewhere. This will need to come from investors who want large returns to make up for the risky nature of business.
My answer to this is to be point out that in our hypothetical minarchist state where there is less propensity to start businesses there is less propensity to invest in the same. Why not stick it in a vault or buy land? Land isn't risky. Banks vaults are (no deposit insurance), but they're a damn sight less risky than investing in some nobody's idea for a business.
Further these libertarians might point out the bureaucratic monstrosity that social democracies inevitably end up as. The problem is that bureaucracy is not and has never been endemic to the public sector. Large corporations are as liable to it as anyone else.
At this point my hypothetical libertarian opponent might say that the only reason large companies are bureaucratic is because of state regulation. They might also throw in the point that bureaucratic companies will fail in the marketplace, as the costs of maintaining the bureaucracy lead to a lack of profitability.
To the first I say so be it. If bureaucracy is the price you pay for clean water and functioning aircraft then I'm fine with that. To the second I point out that if a company has to deal with particular regulations then so will all it's competitors.
At this point my assumptive adversary will presumably posit that the state is not accountable. Well, this is certainly true. But governments are (that's why they're called social democracies) and governments are nominally in control of the state. If bureaucracy really starts to irritate the people then they will elect a government that aims to put an end to it.
I'm all in favour of markets. They create wealth and foster innovation. And I'm all in favour of making markets as free as possible. But the notion that the state is always inimical to the creation and maintenance of free markets and innovative industry is nonsense. In many cases the state is necessary to foster industry in ways far beyond simply providing for the rule of law.
Look at South Korea in the last century. Look at industrial development in Britain during the Elizabethan period.
In both cases the state stepped in with tariffs and subsidy to protect industry at home2.
Look at what came of ARPANET and the World Wide Web. Look at what came of Global Positioning System and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
The idea that the state is somehow "getting in the way" of economic growth is absurd.
The state needs to support economic growth through the provision of extensive civil amenities just as a poorly-educated, under-insured, and uncertain entrepreneur is likely to fail whereas a well-educated, healthy, well-informed entrepreneur is likely to succeed.
1: I get the free market, I do. My argument is not that the free market is a bad idea, just that it is wrong to think that there is more to the creation of human happiness than the creation of wealth and more to the creation of wealth than free markets.
2: I also get globalisation and maximum advantage. I won't go into that now as it would be a long and involved conversation that is orthogonal to my main point: a minarchist state is not a state that enhances economic growth OR human happiness.
Trivium and the MBA
It occurs to me that in a couple of centuries historians will look at the MBA in the same way contemporary historians look at the trivium - as something someone has to possess to be considered educated.
Insert obligatory Talebesque derision of MBAs here
Insert obligatory Talebesque derision of MBAs here
Trolling my former self
Nearly three years ago I wrote a post entitled Things We Need to Do describing various bits of technological wotzitry I felt humanity needed to create:
Well first I really should point out that every machine ever made only needs "energy and mass" of one sort or another. And as for my earlier comment:
Yowza. What was my younger self smoking? Bit of a cognitive leap from realisable fusion to communal ownership to libertarianism.
How much have I changed in the intervening years? Sadly not enough. I am prone to making vague statements and leaping from topic to topic without any clear rationale.
Further I still haven't made my mind up on all those ideological questions of capitalism vs. public ownership or free markets vs. command and control. The world is far more complicated than ideologues and ranters on both sides make out and neither side is as fully rational and empirical as they should aspire to be.
Mature nanotechnology: as demonstrated by the RepRap, it is becoming clear that nanotechnology (coupled with another technology, see below) will sort out quite a few of our problems). Once material wealth can be “made” by a machine that itself only requires energy and raw mass (the most advanced post-nanotech replicators will presumably need only energy) then a significant proportion of the iniquities in life will be resolved and done away with.
Well first I really should point out that every machine ever made only needs "energy and mass" of one sort or another. And as for my earlier comment:
Fusion: in order to supply a crowded planet with sufficient energy whilst maintaining the integrity of the biosphere for future generations (and for ourselves, see below) it is necessary to create an elegant fusion reactor that produces significantly more energy than it consumes. This will remove any further material iniquity. We will have energy “too cheap to meter”, and the means of production will be owned by anyone and everyone. I suspect this will result in a sort of libertarianism.
Yowza. What was my younger self smoking? Bit of a cognitive leap from realisable fusion to communal ownership to libertarianism.
How much have I changed in the intervening years? Sadly not enough. I am prone to making vague statements and leaping from topic to topic without any clear rationale.
Further I still haven't made my mind up on all those ideological questions of capitalism vs. public ownership or free markets vs. command and control. The world is far more complicated than ideologues and ranters on both sides make out and neither side is as fully rational and empirical as they should aspire to be.
Friday, March 20, 2009
In praise of apathetic youth
Commenting on the undoubtedly cringe-inducing1 video interviewing Future Leaders of the Labour Party (produced by The Guardian) Alix from The People's Republic of Mortimer makes a rather interesting comment:
As I've commented before I think there are three rather distinct uses of the word "politics" in common usage. Two of these, one concerning political traditions, and the other concerning how things actually work I am fascinated by.
But the tedious, tribalistic, mudslinging nonsense that might well be fun if-you-like-that-sort-of-thing-but-I-don't that is reported on the news on a daily basis is not something I or any other non-nerd would ever be remotely interested in.
The problem is that whenever da yoof are exhorted to "engage in politics" it is this tedious bottom layer we are expected to "engage" with. No discussion of Adam Smith or Plato or Marx. No discussion of the global balance of power or how computer chips are made.
And not even anything useful, like giving everyone under 25 a free bus pass.
Just tedious distracting talking shops like the Youth Parliament2.
Y'see I'd say the reason otherwise quite engaged and well-informed young people such as myself (no really) aren't interested in this kind of politics is because it is boring. And also has very little relevance to how many of us live our lives.
Take, for example, the "90 day without charge" Terrorism Act later rehashed as the "42 days without charge" Counter-Terrorism Act. From an ideological standpoint it was an obvious attack on some fairly solid principles of freedom: namely you should not be imprisoned by the state without being told why you've been imprisoned ASAP and then given the opportunity to defend yourself.
But what did it actually accomplish? Sweet Fanny Adams is what. The chances of me dying in a terrorist attack are ridiculously minute in any case, but they haven't grown substantially smaller because the police can now hold suspects for a whole two weeks longer.
And even if that weren't the case what the hell is the point of being a liberal democracy if you let the bastards win by caving in to their terror tactics like this?
I keep an eye on what goes on in parliament. And if I see some way of making the world a better place by taking political action I will certainly do so. But I do not want to engage with this bunch of egotistical navel-gazing pishers3.
Political apathy amongst the young is probably a good thing as it will keep those with genuine talent out of career politics and place them in the real world where they might be able to do something useful.
1: Of course I haven't watched it and I have no intention of doing so. Partly for the reasons described above and partly because Alix does a wonderful job of summarising the Horror.
2: I suspect the Youth Parliament is a clever way of distracting and then proceeding to grind down anyone with even the remotest genuine interest in helping their fellow man. That or ensuring all the trouble-makers are kept in one place for easier observation /paranoia.
3: I can get enough of that online and in a more entertaining package.
Actually, I always feel slightly sorry for youngish politicians when journalists ask them - as they invariably will - about political apathy amongst the young, because their responses are so hopelessly inadequate. And no wonder, because they (charmingly uncognisant of this as they may be) are the weirdos who did get interested. You might as well ask a zebra why it thinks more of the horse family don’t have stripes.
As I've commented before I think there are three rather distinct uses of the word "politics" in common usage. Two of these, one concerning political traditions, and the other concerning how things actually work I am fascinated by.
But the tedious, tribalistic, mudslinging nonsense that might well be fun if-you-like-that-sort-of-thing-but-I-don't that is reported on the news on a daily basis is not something I or any other non-nerd would ever be remotely interested in.
The problem is that whenever da yoof are exhorted to "engage in politics" it is this tedious bottom layer we are expected to "engage" with. No discussion of Adam Smith or Plato or Marx. No discussion of the global balance of power or how computer chips are made.
And not even anything useful, like giving everyone under 25 a free bus pass.
Just tedious distracting talking shops like the Youth Parliament2.
Y'see I'd say the reason otherwise quite engaged and well-informed young people such as myself (no really) aren't interested in this kind of politics is because it is boring. And also has very little relevance to how many of us live our lives.
Take, for example, the "90 day without charge" Terrorism Act later rehashed as the "42 days without charge" Counter-Terrorism Act. From an ideological standpoint it was an obvious attack on some fairly solid principles of freedom: namely you should not be imprisoned by the state without being told why you've been imprisoned ASAP and then given the opportunity to defend yourself.
But what did it actually accomplish? Sweet Fanny Adams is what. The chances of me dying in a terrorist attack are ridiculously minute in any case, but they haven't grown substantially smaller because the police can now hold suspects for a whole two weeks longer.
And even if that weren't the case what the hell is the point of being a liberal democracy if you let the bastards win by caving in to their terror tactics like this?
I keep an eye on what goes on in parliament. And if I see some way of making the world a better place by taking political action I will certainly do so. But I do not want to engage with this bunch of egotistical navel-gazing pishers3.
Political apathy amongst the young is probably a good thing as it will keep those with genuine talent out of career politics and place them in the real world where they might be able to do something useful.
1: Of course I haven't watched it and I have no intention of doing so. Partly for the reasons described above and partly because Alix does a wonderful job of summarising the Horror.
2: I suspect the Youth Parliament is a clever way of distracting and then proceeding to grind down anyone with even the remotest genuine interest in helping their fellow man. That or ensuring all the trouble-makers are kept in one place for easier observation /paranoia.
3: I can get enough of that online and in a more entertaining package.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
What to do, what to do?
My basic problem is that although I have every confidence that if I put my mind to it I can accomplish a great deal I'm not sure at this stage exactly what I want to do.
Although there are numerous avenues that may lead to remarkable achievements and Good Times I'm never sure if I want to dedicate the time and effort necessary to achieve and enjoy.
I worry that the time I spend not really doing anything is detracting from my enjoyment of life and from the time I could spend doing something useful. If I had some clear goal perhaps it would be different but I really don't.
I'm fairly happy with how things are at the moment but there is always going to be room for improvement.
Although there are numerous avenues that may lead to remarkable achievements and Good Times I'm never sure if I want to dedicate the time and effort necessary to achieve and enjoy.
I worry that the time I spend not really doing anything is detracting from my enjoyment of life and from the time I could spend doing something useful. If I had some clear goal perhaps it would be different but I really don't.
I'm fairly happy with how things are at the moment but there is always going to be room for improvement.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
A perfectionist trapped in an indolent's body
~In which a deep conflict of personality within our hero is discussed~
I am a perfectionist.
Given the choice I would love to do pursue this blogging lark properly. I would love to lovingly craft a lovely blog in WordPress or MoveableType or some such. I would love to lavish countless hours on CSS templates and plugins. I want to worry and obsess over tiny details of compatibility and stick little "certified CSS" or "XML validated" stickers all over my prospective palace of a personal portal.
Unfortunately I don't have the time. Amazingly I have other things to do.
Now this presents something of a quandary.
I am an indolent1.
I believe that life is for living. I believe that civilization progresses by reducing the number of conscious operations required to accomplish a particular task. Laziness is a virtue that has catapulted a rather peculiar hairless ape into a position that is apparently unprecedented in the history of the known universe.
So on the one hand I have an obsessive desire to realise a given project, because craft is it's own reward.
And on the other hand I lack the inclination to dedicate my time and energy to something that doesn't appear to produce any clear reward beyond craft.
Therefore I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I need to shape up and show off. I need to become more actively self promotional and invest more time and energy in the content and quality of my blog postings.
Hopefully this will lead to a feedback loop in which feedback (hopefully constructive) leads to a greater desire on my part to invest time and energy in the enterprise of blogging.
~To be continued~
1: I'm aware this is an adjective but I am hereby coining it as a noun that refers to one who prefers efficient accomplishment over unproductive activity.
I am a perfectionist.
Given the choice I would love to do pursue this blogging lark properly. I would love to lovingly craft a lovely blog in WordPress or MoveableType or some such. I would love to lavish countless hours on CSS templates and plugins. I want to worry and obsess over tiny details of compatibility and stick little "certified CSS" or "XML validated" stickers all over my prospective palace of a personal portal.
Unfortunately I don't have the time. Amazingly I have other things to do.
Now this presents something of a quandary.
I am an indolent1.
I believe that life is for living. I believe that civilization progresses by reducing the number of conscious operations required to accomplish a particular task. Laziness is a virtue that has catapulted a rather peculiar hairless ape into a position that is apparently unprecedented in the history of the known universe.
So on the one hand I have an obsessive desire to realise a given project, because craft is it's own reward.
And on the other hand I lack the inclination to dedicate my time and energy to something that doesn't appear to produce any clear reward beyond craft.
Therefore I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I need to shape up and show off. I need to become more actively self promotional and invest more time and energy in the content and quality of my blog postings.
Hopefully this will lead to a feedback loop in which feedback (hopefully constructive) leads to a greater desire on my part to invest time and energy in the enterprise of blogging.
~To be continued~
1: I'm aware this is an adjective but I am hereby coining it as a noun that refers to one who prefers efficient accomplishment over unproductive activity.
My reading list
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Rationale: I wasn't paying very close attention to Our Glorious Ally's Recent Imperial Adventures whilst it was happening. Partly this was because this sort of thing is difficult to piece together when you're reading it on a daily basis in the newspapers and partly because I was busy being a truculent teenager.
Anyway this seems to be the standard text on the subject and will hopefully give me a good grounding in What the Hell Happened.
The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin
Rationale: I enjoyed the discussion of theoretical physics in The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann, which was published in the early nineties, and I also enjoyed The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler. I really want to find out what's happened since, and what the current state of play is as regards Big Science.
This book was recommended to me by one of my physics teachers a few years ago, and at the time was being serialised in The Times. I skimmed through it a while back in a bookshop and was impressed by the tone and content.
Introduction to Materials Science for Engineers by James F. Shackelford
Rationale: this is one of the set textbooks for the course I am (if everything works out) starting in September (there will be a few of these to come).
Manufacturing Engineering and Technology by Serope Kalpakjian and Steven Schmid
Rationale: Again another set text. I want to have a vague familiarity with the course materials well before the course actually starts. The reason for this is that I learn best when presented with a fairly long runway. I also like the opportunity to become comfortable with a particular textbook layout before using it in earnest.
The End of Politics: New Labour and the Folly of Managerialism by Chris Dillow
Rationale: This book is much discussed by the likes of Alex Harrowell and Daniel Davis and Dillow's blog is quite superb. If his book is even half as interesting and engaging as his blog then this will be a worthwhile read.
The Hidden Family by Charles Stross
Rationale: I enjoyed the previous book in this series and since I finished it the sequence has been praised and commented on by Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman. Definitely not one to miss out on.
Foundations of Engineering by Mark T. Holtzapple
Rationale: Another set text!
Mathematics for Engineers: A Modern Interactive Approach by Anthony Croft
Rationale: And again.
Management for Engineers, Scientists and Technologists by John V. Chelsom
Rationale: Same again - nothing to see here.
Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives by Satyajit Das
Rationale: I've read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books,The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, and enjoyed them immensely. However I would like a more in-depth and technical look at all the derivatives, investments, quantitative finance, mortgage-backed securities and other paraphernalia of the ongoing economic troubles.
This book seems to get high reviews and from the brief excerpt on Amazon seem to capture this particular facet of the Zeitgeist rather well.
The Accidental Pornographer: A Story About Having a Go - And Succeeding... in Failing by Gavin Griffiths
Rationale: After reading Paul Carr's enjoyable account of trying and sort of not-quite failing,Bringing Nothing To The Party , I sought out similarly themed books. This looks to be one such in which the eponymous pornographer protagonist tries and fails.
And as an additional bonus he apparently meets none other than my favourite business antihero Felix Dennis!
Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks
Rationale: Well, I'm reading this at the moment so I've rather jumped the gun as far as rationale goes. It is a spectacularly florid book with titanic set pieces and more Big Dumb Objects than you can shake a space elevator at. Truth be told it could easily gain from content-trimming if you prefer tighter reads, but I've always enjoyed Banks' Banksishness so it's all puppy for the fat as far as I'm concerned.
Rationale: I wasn't paying very close attention to Our Glorious Ally's Recent Imperial Adventures whilst it was happening. Partly this was because this sort of thing is difficult to piece together when you're reading it on a daily basis in the newspapers and partly because I was busy being a truculent teenager.
Anyway this seems to be the standard text on the subject and will hopefully give me a good grounding in What the Hell Happened.
The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin
Rationale: I enjoyed the discussion of theoretical physics in The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann, which was published in the early nineties, and I also enjoyed The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler. I really want to find out what's happened since, and what the current state of play is as regards Big Science.
This book was recommended to me by one of my physics teachers a few years ago, and at the time was being serialised in The Times. I skimmed through it a while back in a bookshop and was impressed by the tone and content.
Introduction to Materials Science for Engineers by James F. Shackelford
Rationale: this is one of the set textbooks for the course I am (if everything works out) starting in September (there will be a few of these to come).
Manufacturing Engineering and Technology by Serope Kalpakjian and Steven Schmid
Rationale: Again another set text. I want to have a vague familiarity with the course materials well before the course actually starts. The reason for this is that I learn best when presented with a fairly long runway. I also like the opportunity to become comfortable with a particular textbook layout before using it in earnest.
The End of Politics: New Labour and the Folly of Managerialism by Chris Dillow
Rationale: This book is much discussed by the likes of Alex Harrowell and Daniel Davis and Dillow's blog is quite superb. If his book is even half as interesting and engaging as his blog then this will be a worthwhile read.
The Hidden Family by Charles Stross
Rationale: I enjoyed the previous book in this series and since I finished it the sequence has been praised and commented on by Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman. Definitely not one to miss out on.
Foundations of Engineering by Mark T. Holtzapple
Rationale: Another set text!
Mathematics for Engineers: A Modern Interactive Approach by Anthony Croft
Rationale: And again.
Management for Engineers, Scientists and Technologists by John V. Chelsom
Rationale: Same again - nothing to see here.
Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives by Satyajit Das
Rationale: I've read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books,The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, and enjoyed them immensely. However I would like a more in-depth and technical look at all the derivatives, investments, quantitative finance, mortgage-backed securities and other paraphernalia of the ongoing economic troubles.
This book seems to get high reviews and from the brief excerpt on Amazon seem to capture this particular facet of the Zeitgeist rather well.
The Accidental Pornographer: A Story About Having a Go - And Succeeding... in Failing by Gavin Griffiths
Rationale: After reading Paul Carr's enjoyable account of trying and sort of not-quite failing,Bringing Nothing To The Party , I sought out similarly themed books. This looks to be one such in which the eponymous pornographer protagonist tries and fails.
And as an additional bonus he apparently meets none other than my favourite business antihero Felix Dennis!
Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks
Rationale: Well, I'm reading this at the moment so I've rather jumped the gun as far as rationale goes. It is a spectacularly florid book with titanic set pieces and more Big Dumb Objects than you can shake a space elevator at. Truth be told it could easily gain from content-trimming if you prefer tighter reads, but I've always enjoyed Banks' Banksishness so it's all puppy for the fat as far as I'm concerned.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
My contribution
Opinions, in the wise words of Chris Dillow, are mere arseholes. Everyone has one but I don't want to hear them.
Now being as I have access to little special knowledge or empirical data not available to everyone else, and being as my thoughts are largely the opinions of other people this leaves me in something of a quandary.
What do I blog about? There are so many topics I need to learn more about before I am qualified to analyse the relevant data: what can I contribute?
The obvious answer is that I can simply ask questions.
Surprisingly few blogs concentrate on defining the terms of their own ignorance as opposed to ranting on about their opinions.
Therefore from now on I will concentrate on asking questions and attempting to come to conclusions.
Now being as I have access to little special knowledge or empirical data not available to everyone else, and being as my thoughts are largely the opinions of other people this leaves me in something of a quandary.
What do I blog about? There are so many topics I need to learn more about before I am qualified to analyse the relevant data: what can I contribute?
The obvious answer is that I can simply ask questions.
Surprisingly few blogs concentrate on defining the terms of their own ignorance as opposed to ranting on about their opinions.
Therefore from now on I will concentrate on asking questions and attempting to come to conclusions.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Free flowing writing experiment #2
This is an experiment.
This is the second of what may eventually become a whole series of essays on the subject of writing, and specifically the writing process as perceived by one who writes.
I say "one who writes" as I am not ready to call myself a full writer, any more than I am ready to call myself a full blogger. Most of what I write down here is in the form of questions and idle wonderings. It is not opinion or comment or theorising. Inasmuch as it is an attempt to make sense of the world it is preliminary to all these.
I suspect the key part of the writing process I have yet to fully acquire is the process of refinement. I intend this series to be both an exploration and a trial, to see how I might develop this skill.
What do I mean by refinement?
Picture the raw input of any process. It could be labour or energy or earth or wood or clay. Now picture the process by which these commodities are converted into something more valuable.
In writing the valuable output is a well written piece. In writing the raw input is largely other writing, thoughts, ideas, experiences, other people, yourself, your beliefs and ponderings and habits and the minutiae of your daily life.
Inbetween the raw input and the valuable output there are several processes of refinement. I generally lack the patience or obsessive compulsion required to persue a writing project beyond a single iteration. This is a problem I am working on remedying.
This industrial process whereby the raw and unrefined output of my mind is distilled onto a page or screen is itself subdivided between drafts and even between the moment the words are instantiated in the real world and I travel back to the end of the sentance to remove them.
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 diarrhea1 and that the process of refinement was equally important.
If this is correct then blogging might not be such a good idea: you venting valuable material and not bothering to refine it.
Or perhaps it is good practice.
In any case I need to stem and control the flood of half formed ideas, plucking the nuggets prose out of the flow of verbiage.
The intention here is to explore how my writing process works.
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.
This is the second of what may eventually become a whole series of essays on the subject of writing, and specifically the writing process as perceived by one who writes.
I say "one who writes" as I am not ready to call myself a full writer, any more than I am ready to call myself a full blogger. Most of what I write down here is in the form of questions and idle wonderings. It is not opinion or comment or theorising. Inasmuch as it is an attempt to make sense of the world it is preliminary to all these.
I suspect the key part of the writing process I have yet to fully acquire is the process of refinement. I intend this series to be both an exploration and a trial, to see how I might develop this skill.
What do I mean by refinement?
Picture the raw input of any process. It could be labour or energy or earth or wood or clay. Now picture the process by which these commodities are converted into something more valuable.
In writing the valuable output is a well written piece. In writing the raw input is largely other writing, thoughts, ideas, experiences, other people, yourself, your beliefs and ponderings and habits and the minutiae of your daily life.
Inbetween the raw input and the valuable output there are several processes of refinement. I generally lack the patience or obsessive compulsion required to persue a writing project beyond a single iteration. This is a problem I am working on remedying.
This industrial process whereby the raw and unrefined output of my mind is distilled onto a page or screen is itself subdivided between drafts and even between the moment the words are instantiated in the real world and I travel back to the end of the sentance to remove them.
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 diarrhea1 and that the process of refinement was equally important.
If this is correct then blogging might not be such a good idea: you venting valuable material and not bothering to refine it.
Or perhaps it is good practice.
In any case I need to stem and control the flood of half formed ideas, plucking the nuggets prose out of the flow of verbiage.
The intention here is to explore how my writing process works.
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Three kinds of politics
There are three layers of politics, from the top:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
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.
In the meantime I got into Warwick University to study systems engineering. This is a pretty awesome fact.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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.
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).
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).
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
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.
Monday, March 02, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
In praise of failure
I disagree with the following part of In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell:
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:
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.
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:
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).
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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 besold solved1" is based on the assumption that intelligence is the only contributory factor to innovation. Anissimov says:
"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:
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.
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
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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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 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.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.
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.
Monday, February 16, 2009
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:
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:
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?
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?
Friday, February 13, 2009
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 andmore 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.
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
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
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.
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:
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.
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:
Here's what I think of them:
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.
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:
- 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.
- 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).
- 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:
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Singularity and transhumanism
PZ Myers has written an interesting critique of Ray Kurzweil's thoughts on a possible technological singularity:
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:
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:
Well I certainly agree with that.
...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.
Monday, February 09, 2009
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.
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...
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
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:
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.
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:
- The universe is far bigger and older than expected.
- 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.
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.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
- 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?
- 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?
- 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.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
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.
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.
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