Sunday, December 12, 2010

Government for the Many, Anarchy for the Few.

I was talking to some guy in a bar the other day. A self-proclaimed Anarchist. I was drunk, so we had an argument. He told me that no such creature as government actually exists, and what we have in reality are scaled-up versions of the 'friendly' skills and commodity bartering systems of old - hierarchies arising spontaneously and organically within anarchic states, without the need for the artificial contrivances and paraphernalia of elections and politic structure.

In short, he said that governence is an illusion, unattainable in any perfect form, and as such only pursued by fools, and that an acceptance of our true 'anarchic' statehood is a more practical, realistic POV.

There are a few things wrong about assuming a social system can be scaled up without distortion - a system which works well in a community of a few hundred people may not work so well when applied to a society of a few million. There are reasons for this. Reasons perhaps most succinctly outlined by game theory.

You may be familliar with game theory in its most well known form of prisoner's dilemma - two suspects, held incommunicado in separate interrogation rooms, deciding whether or not to implicate the other - mutual co-operation (enabled by a faith in the good faith of the other) leading to freedom for both.

This is however, only the tip of the iceberg.

Moral Universals: Just Say No.

There are a variety of different conceptions of what “universal human morality” means, all of them involving varying degrees of absurdity. Perhaps the simplest definition would be an 'innate' morality which all human beings share. Trouble is though, it's just wishful thinking, and ignores something, well, huge: The world around us.

Why are we so obsessed with morality and absolutes anyway..?

Hmm. I think it's because we are all natural scientists at at heart, and have come to expect that what looks like chaos on the surface, is nothing but a smokescreen that conceals a hidden order underneath. I mean hell, it works for stuff like tornados and wave-patterns, why not human behaviour..? Like my friend said to me the other day:

"In the science realm this comes in the form of things like Cymatics. It is interesting that the universe shows so much complexity and elegance, and undeniable order, because we haven't been able to figure out parts of it, some are quick to claim there a lack instead of a possible unity."

 Cymatics. Well, that was a new word for me too. So, underlying order in the macro-cosmic chaos hmm..? Sexy. But I think the opposite - that we are lured into nonsensical concepts like universals with regard to human behaviour exactly because of our infatuation with (and general misapplication of) mathematic principles in the broader world. We long for the sense of finality they lend, the stability; a panacea for the troubled human condition.

I mean sure, no-one's going to overly dispute the validity of things like the universal laws of motion for example - even if things do get a little screwy at relatavistic levels, they remain perfectly good for a huge class of masses and velocities.

Thus intuitively, we go on to think "Ah - so if we can find universal principles governing things so astronomically huge as planets or as tiny as quanta - it shouldn't be so difficult to sort out a few universals for a bunch of retarded homo sapiens."

Afterall, though it's hard to measure a planet's mass and velocity, it's comparitively easy to measure or own - all we have to do is stand on the bathroom scales and carry a stop watch while we move. Surely then, intuitively, human behaviour, in comparison to astrophysics, must be child's play..?

You wish. We wish.

It's Hard Just Being Yourself

In my book, Sartre's got a lot to answer for. His existentialist novels espousing the seed-crystals of every goddamn Disney-film plot in creation "Be true to yourself... Follow your heart Littlefoot... Just be yourself..." make me want to puke, for they have condemned a legion of tweedy-pipe-smokers to an unfulfilled existence of endless soul-searching for their 'authentic self' and guilt when they come up short and realise on their death beds that, despite their constant striving for something 'real' something 'different', they ended up pretty much like any other Joe Schmoe on the planet, or worse still, become convinced they simply strait-jacketed themselves into a life-long affectation, and lived only as a hollow antonym of Joe Schmoeism.

Anyway - before we get down to business, let's kick off with defining terms.

Individual:
in·di·vid·u·al
1.a single human being, as distinguished from a group.

3.a distinct, indivisible entity; a single thing, being, instance, or item.


Authentic/Authenticity:
au·then·tic
1.not false or copied; genuine; real: an authentic antique.

Authenticity (philosophy)
"In philosophy, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very different from, and other than, itself. Authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one's own personality, spirit, or character, despite these pressures."

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Sad AD&D Nerd Stands Revealed

I came across some of my old minatures when I was cleaning out the Cupboards: I painted them when I was in my early teens.




Thursday, December 09, 2010

Mechanisms of Authority.

I just passed a happy half-hour on the motorway thinking about authority.

As far as I could decide, auothority at base starts with ownership. As defacto owners of our bodies, by means of direct control over it, we could be said to have authority over its behaviour, and the ends to which it is put. The caveat of ownership being a means of adequate defence. You do not truly own what you cannot defend and protect. A kid with a gold brick possesses it only at the retraint of those around them.

Anyway, we cede that authority over ourselves to others in a number of cases - which I've loosely grouped into 3 basic types: Impositonal assumption of authority, intrinsic and situational. The lines between them are a bit fuzzier in real life, but then, they always are.

Impositional: This is the most powerful, and also the most useless way to assume authority over others. Brute force. The classic "I have a gun/sword/kung-fu, do what I say, or I will feed you your own spleen." means of assuming control over others. Effective, because whilst you hold the gun, others have no choice but to obey, useless, because they will not respect your assumed authority, and attempt to wrest it from you.

Why..?

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

The Brain that Talked to Itself.

I was talking with a friend the other day about language and thinking, and how the brain does it. He said, quite emphatically:

 "brain chemistry must have something in it that represents a statement in a linguistic way"

And I was pretty much tsaying that it doesn't.

Not as he imagined anyway.

Linguistic representation is to the brain is as sky-writing in a plane is to us. Effortful, showy, slow, and kinda dumb. Imagine Shakespeare writing all his plays with the aid of a funky single-prop plane.

First, let's talk about speed. I'm just gonna write "I want to go to town and get a pizza" on a bit of paper. Okay, it took me 14 seconds. Now, I'm gonna type it. i want to go to town and get a pizza. I cheated a bit with the capitals. Still it took 10 seconds. I am only a three-and-a-half finger typist however, I imagine their are faster typers out there.

Now, I'm going to risk a few weird looks and say it out loud, at a normal conversational pace. Took about 2 seconds. And one weird look. Now I'm going to say it as fast as I can. awannagotatownangettapizza. About a second. Now I'm gonna think it.

That's where it gets tricky. If I simply mentally speak it, it takes the same time as the speakasfastasican version. Which is no surprise as the systems are the same, except during 'speech thinking' your brain simply supresses the movements of your tongue and mouth. However, if I don't really try to 'say' it seems just to hover there whole. Taking no time that I can measure on my watch anyway.

Quick. Imagine a pizza.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Monday, September 27, 2010

The Inevitabilist goes to the Theatre

One sunny Tuesday afternoon the Inevitabilist was sitting at home when the telephone rang. It was Goldie. He liked her because she possessed the uncanny ability, when presented with three options, to always choose the one that was just right.

"Hey Mr. I, I'm bored stupid, y'wanna take me out to the theatre..?"
"Sure. One condition though."
"Okaay - what is it..?"
"Whichever one we go to, it's gotta have gravity..."
"You're never gonna let me live that one down are you. I said sorry about a million times already."
"Can't help it - we sat there for 14 billion years and nothing happened. My arse got so numb I forgot I had one."
"Gravitygravity I get it, no more minimalist art. Okay -
"And planets this time, gotta have planets."
- fuck, okay planets too - I'm checking the listings here. That leaves us with three."
"Fine, let's go check them out."
"What..? Now..? It's far too early, none of the plays are even scheduled to start till seven or so."
"Well, you know me, I like to know the initial conditions."
"Oof - can't you just get off the whole inevitabilist schtick for one fucking second..?"
"No."
"Jesus. You're about as spontaneous as a concrete beam you know that..?"
"It's my nature."

Monday, September 20, 2010

Free-Will. Two Men & A Bear.

Funny how inspiration strikes sometimes. I was sitting on the balcony thinking about the debate with a friend, and about free-will. And that old joke about the two guys running from a bear popped into my head. You know the one - one guys says "Shit, we gotta outrun that bear." and the other guy says "Nah, I just gotta outrun you..."
And for some reason, something clicked.

We experience having free-will, and yet it seems to contradict everything else we observe. Something aloof from the usual clunk-clunk cause-effect universe.

If I were better at computers, I'd have produced a wonderful simulation to illustrate this next bit, but unfortunately, I'm not, so we'll have to do with imagination. Imagine a board, a bit like a chessboard, but bigger perhaps.

In the middle is a cafe. The cafe makes and serves only two kinds of food, blue food, and pink food. Dotted around the edges of the board are the homes of blue and pink people. They stay in their homes until they get hungry. Each get hungry at specific times, on utterly clockwork cycles, three times a day. When they get hungry, they move at a rate of one square a second, along the shortest path between their home, and the cafe. The blue people eat blue food, the pink people eat pink food. That's all they ever eat. After they've eaten, they go home, retracing their paths, to await the occasion of their next hungry cycle.

The chef in the cafe, knowing what they will eat, when they will eat it, and the exact times that each will appear in the cafe, buys stocks and prepares it accordingly, there is no lack, no waste, the food is always hot and ready as soon as the patrons sit at the tables.

It is a very simple simulation. No variables, no random factors. It runs faultlessly, automatically, day in, day out. The chef knows exactly what will happen at any given time, however far in the future that time may be. The system is utterly predictable, each node in constant lockstep with all the rest. Determined. There is no free will - no choice for the people to restrain or pre-empt their hunger, no choice of what route they will take, no choice of what they will eat. They make no choices, they also know exactly what they will be doing at any given time.

Obviously - this 'bears' no resemblance to reality. [Bears geddit..? Arf.]

Let's shake it up a little. Now the Pink people eat blue food, but only on Tuesdays, and the blue people, if it's a Thursday, eat pink. But it's too simple, the chef still is able to predict and plan to cater perfectly for his clientelle. Still a determined system.

Again, we'll add complexity. They go for haircuts on specific times every month, again, predictably and in an utterly clockwork fashion. The length of their hair affects what they can eat - short and they switch preferences until it grows past a specific length. Again, now if there are more right turns than left as they move across the board from their homes to the cafe they switch preference from the one dictated by day, or hair length. And again, if they are preceded by two people of the same colour, they switch from their previous preference.

Okay, now the situation is a lot more complex, I couldn't work it out straight off the cuff, but still the system is determined - the computer can run it perfectly. The chef buys his produce, cooks it serves it, no mess no fuss no waste.

The point I'm trying to make is that as long as the behaviour and preferences of the people living on the board are known explicitly, are predictable by the chef, the system is inarguably determined, and there is no question of choice involved on the parts of the pink and blue people.

Here's where the two guys and the bear come in. Except this time one of the guys is the conscious experience of free-will, and the other is autonomic prediciton, determinism. The bear, well hell, the bear's kind of extraneous, so he can still be a bear.

And to complicate matters, both these guys are running inside of one head. Your head. You have two guys and a bear in your head. Okay..? Also might help to view your brain as a great big prediction engine.

So, now imagine the head of a pink person. Which guy is running ahead of the other..?

Well, prediction of course. Prediction looks at his watch, remembers the time he was last hungry, works out when he will be next hungry, remembers the path he takes to the cafe, the turns it takes, the time it takes, knows what day it is, checks the length of his hair, knows his colour... And knows absolutely what he will being doing at any point in his future. Each moment, each action, flows seemlessly into the next like clockwork.


The experience of choice, the experience of free-will, is eaten by the bear.

But the brain, this marvellous prediction engine we all carry within the confines of our skulls, is only so big. Prediciton can only run so fast. If the number of states, the number of variables it has to deal with during predicitive acts goes over a certain [and pretty small really] limit, poor old prediction starts to stumble, starts to run out of breath.

And I think, that is when the experience of free-will, of choice, of being able to have chosen a different food to the one we find ourselves eating, begins to overtake. The chef drops his wok, fucks up his shopping list and starts swearing at the staff. Now it's prediction's turn to feel bear-nibble.

Did you know you are effectively blind for around forty minutes of each day..? It's called Saccadic masking. Basically, to prevent your world from looking like the jerky camcorder movie all day, your brain shuts down your optic nerve while your eye is in motion.

I have a feeling that our experience of deliberation, leading to the experience of having made a chioce, of free-will, is similar. A masking process, to cover the periods in time when our (unconscious) predictive engines get their cogs in a twist and can't get up sufficient momentum to whip us across from one action to the next.

When we walk, or climb stairs, we have no consciousness of having chosen where to put our feet. It takes a minefield, or a tango class to wake us up to what we're doing. It takes complexity, processing lag, to wake us up.

We observe, albeit with a few quantum quirks, an utterly deterministic universe. We ourselves are made of matter, our thoughts are generated and supported by physical sysytems. Our systems of meaning, of relating or associating thoughts and thought images are also deeply emeshed in the physical world, and are laid down according to experience in the physical world, in relation to physically limited parameters of chemical and electromagnetic brain function. There is no magic lurking in our synapses. No get out of jail-free cards.

I think what we experience as free-will, of choice, is simply a kind of papering over of the cracks, akin to a sort of maintained cycle of surprise - the brain locked in a state of not knowing wtf. is going to happen next.

That said however, the illusion of free-will, if indeed it is illusion is a damn convincing one.

Part of the experience of having free-will - of choosing - is the existence of multiple alternate futures we could have chosen from. In one future, I chose the fish, in another I chose the steak, in yet another I said "fuck this" and walked out. All seem to have hovered before our eyes, equally choosable at that moment of choice. Why would these ghosts of future possibles haunt me so, if there is no such thing as freedom of choice..?

Next slide please:

Image

Obviously this model is woefully simple and doesn't indicate that all causatives are not external - there are a great number of internally-generated causatives or 'wants' - hunger for one, as exemplified in the original post. But it does emphasize the recursive/reductive processing the brain is forced into doing by the limits of its processing power.

The aforementioned wants and other drives that we experience are the condensed reductions of a myriad of other lesser causatives generated by the body - when we experience hunger we are not aware of the individual detail - PH of stomach, blood-sugar concentrations, the hormonal tides of circadian rhythms etc. etc. etc. - we simply feel 'hungry'. The brain has helpfully simplified the inputs from the body systems into a single imperative.

Getting back to the diagram, you must extrapolate the numbers of recursions our brain-states undertake when faced with difficult high-variable situations - generating multiples of alternate futures, which in turn are then re-considered - becoming virtual causatives in turn - and plowed back into the heuristics our brains use for reducing effect-clusters into behavioural imperatives - forcing action.

But I'm getting technical, which is always a bad sign. In short, we experience as part of the process of determined causal reduction - deliberation/choice - sometimes a myriad of alternate futures. But that does not mean we are as free as we think to act upon them.

I think it's about time to dredge out the classic Socratic "He who knows what is right will do right" there are of course many interpretations of this quote but to me, the implication of not being able to undertake an action deemed as 'wrong' has always been apparant. Put into cognitive terms: The brain seeks the 'right action' in response to a set of external and internal causative variables.

And once it alights upon what it defines as 'right action' undertakes that right action - this is the important bit - and no other.

The alternates we are aware of as we seem to choose are merely ghosts, never to have been realized - not ends in themselves, but simply parts of the process.

Another pillar supporting the notion of free-will and meaningful choice is external to the individual rather than hidden coiled and invisible within the crenulations of the brain. We in the world have surrounded ourselves by choice. The open buffét of real life...

Image

...is a long way from the deterministic Café's blue food/pink food combo. Why so much choice if there is no free will..? I mean, it's one thing to fool ourselves, but a wholly other thing to fool the world.

It comes down to prediction once again. Remember the chef in the BluePink café..? How easy he had it, with his utterly predictable clientelle..? No mess, no fuss..? What would have happened if he'd launched a menu of orange food..? Well, it would have just rotted on the plates, untouched, un-ordered.

Trouble is, when it gets to the point where not only can you not predict the actions of others, but cannot even predict what you yourself will do from moment to moment with anything like total accuracy... Then making orange food doesn't seem so foolish.

Whether choice and the ability to choose is real or not, it doesn't matter. Illusion and reality aside - choice begets choice. The chef, faced with an unpredictable range of punters, is drawn to follow the path of making best guesses. Creating a broader range of food, following a bell-curve diversity of stuff he's come to observe everyone likes, quite a few people like, what's in vogue right now, what's in season right now, what's cheap and what's expensive right now. He also, like a speculative investor, will try to create a new menu option from time to time - a long-shot. I dunno - fried ice-cream or something.

Some of these long-shots will pay off, becoming subsumed within the great collective cuisine of the masses, others will be spat out, and get struck off the menu. But always the number of choices made available will grow. It will be the same in any industry - fashion, automotive etc. etc. Ford's classic "you can have any colour as long as it's black" never lasts. In attempting to cater for a range of tastes beyond his capability to predict accurately, the great chef will always err on the side of too much, rather than not enough, or be out-competed by the fancy restaurant next door.

This last point is of dubious importance. It has to do with the idea of "shaping".

In the orignal model - the board-game world of predictable blue and pink people - the chef, because of his perfect knowledge of his patrons, was able to 'shape' himself to them. By this I mean he could perform his job so well as to become invisible to the person visiting his cafe. They would come in and the right food, at the right temperature, would have been placed on the table only seconds before their hand had alighted upon the handle of the cafe door. The need for interaction between the workings of the cafe, and the punter, drop to zero if prediction is total and accurate.

Now imagine a world that could predict you absolutely, and naturally shape its machinations around you, one that you could subconsciously predict perfectly yourself. Need you be conscious at all..? Would anything actually require your attention..? Or active involvement..?  All would in effect, be one indivisible system, and would have always been one.

In short, I have a feeling that consciousness, our sense of individuality, and imperfect prediciton are very closely involved.