Links

Another provocative essay by Ted Gioia, in this one he argues that the roots of modern rational philosophy and STEM culture are to be found in shamanic or Orphic musical traditions in Greece (and elsewhere). As always, good reading, lively engagement with knowledge and history, with broad ranging subject matter and unusual connections.

Consider in relation to J E H Smith’s Philosopher on Drugs

This is a 3 part exploration of connections between quantum indeterminacy and Gödel’s incompletenes theorem (and Turing’s uncomputable number theorem…). Engaging and interesting but important for getting at the way branches of thought are uncomfortable with relationships they can’t control. The third installment has a gripping refutation of Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis on the grounds of quantum state randomness and world state incomputability via Cantor’s diagonal method… Provocative and fun.

Part 2 and part 3

A really good essay reviewing two new books on climate change and looming catastrophe, along with some helpful history and context.

The first part of the essay is a very good summary of the seminal book, Limits to Growth: A Report on the Predicament of Mankind, which, along with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, stands at the origin our current conception of climate crisis, its future, and what we should be doing about it. Limits to Growth was the first important product of The Club of Rome, was a best-seller in 1972 when published, and inspired the first round of pro-capitalist/pro-growth climate denial. The book was produced by a team of people at MIT doing the first work in computer modeling of complex systems to make predictions about the living world and human activity. It was prescient, so far accurate, and alarming in its predictions.

The central focus of the essay is a critique of the Club of Rome’s 40th anniversary follow-up, Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity. Venzke argues the book is disappointing and fails to respect its debt to Limits to Growth, characterizing it as a sad attempt to present a case for optimism that fails to challenge the political and economic levers that continue to exacerbate the problem as predicted.

In the second book reviewed, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change, and Pandemics, Venzke finds what one should have hoped to find in Earth for All: respect for its origin in Limits to Growth and a clear identification of the critical challenge to altering the course of catastrophe in capitalism and the economic commitment to growth.

This is quite a long essay with real depth of thinking on a range of issues, and perspective on the problems of optimism, pessimism, action, and paralysis associated with the debate. An excellent basis from which to organize thinking on the big problem and sources to look at for deeper thinking.

Having heard many times that the right side of the brain connects to the left side of the body and vice versa, I had never really thought to ask why, and I had no idea it was ubuquitous throughout the brain-possessing animal population. This article provides an intuitive explanation, though for those of us with spatial dyslexia the illustrations can be a bit bewildering.

Another good talk by Lessig.

Stumbled on this not having seen it in many years and was reminded how amazingly important Lessig is both as a defender of freedom in the commons, as a speaker, and as a pioneer PowerPoint designer.

Reflection on how everything over the last few decades has grown so similar as to be indistinguishably average. Good writing but the photographs supporting the general argument are really compelling.

Amazingly beautiful reflection on the design of the bicycle: how an intersection of physics and human morphology produce an icon of liberation and aesthetic elegance. With captivating visualizations.

Feel overwhelmed by questions? Looking for questions? This may be the antidote: Gwern’s Open Questions — a collection of so many questions. Irresistable, immersive interogative landscape with infinite relational popups.

Excellent and entertaining talk about the preposterous popularity of the idea of Superintelligence among the tech elite. Old but still relevant.

One of several antidote articles showing the limitations of LLMs in action. This is a good example of not so much technical limitation as cognitive limitation, a useful counterpoint to the many commenters who get easily captivated by the apparent facility of LLMs with natural language, tending ineluctably toward anthropomorphism and onward to predicting the enslavement or extinction of humans by our new AGI overlords.

Reflections on finding the essence of art in the removal of what is familiar, or, perhaps, the suppression of context, or something like that. The suggestion is that the artist, rather than suppressing detail in order to create a model that emphasizes a subject, suppresses markers that might provide a context within reality, thereby opening the space for interpretation and imagination — allowing the mind to do more work than the model. Pardoxically, the conclusion is that the artist (Fan Ho, in this case) “is capable of showing more than is really there.” Featuring senryu and photographs by Fan Ho. Short and beautiful.

Excellent introduction to a trend in science away from computational/representational theories of mind — also away from Cartesian/Aristotelian, human/brain-centric assumptions — and toward more active, environmentally-embedded theories that, refreshingly, focus on things other than humans first, like plants.

Fascinating story of a real, early 20th century psychic and his career aiding police and inspiring detective novelists. Nicely balanced and well-told historical story which ends with this pleasing nugget of observation:

“The historian Wouter Hanegraaff has pondered the tortured relationship between esotericism and the knowledge enshrined in academic institutions, and found that the one can’t be narrated without the other. Just as chemistry deliberately distanced itself from alchemy during the Enlightenment, psychology had to make a deliberate effort to rid itself of its occult heritage for the sake of scientific validation. But the resulting « otherness » of Western esotericism could then, over time, make such banished knowledge a magnetic antidote to the emptiness of modern, secular society.”

Cory Doctorow applies his usual cutting analysis to the AI hype that has overwhelmed the common-sense of most commenters, especially tech enthusiasts and a few credulous academics. ChatGPT is new and impressive so it shouldn’t be surprising that media are overreporting; what is surprising is the unself-conscious and unreflective attention from people who should know better. The technology is new and we don’t know what it is for yet and, as usual, we have to wait to find out. What isn’t going to happen immediately is the extinction of humans by chat-bot AGI, but what probably will happen is corporate hacks will figure out ways to use it to put pressure on labour and inflate their ability to extract capital from credulous legislators.

This is exactly the kind of thing Cory is good at reminding us to be careful of and this is a pretty good shot across the bow of AI hype credulity.

The first part of the article is a bracing review of the status of reality in the mind from the perspective of philosophy — which Smith sees as hopelessly conservative, stuck in a tableau barely changed since 1950. This is a startling claim and, somehow, obviously right. His main thrust is to ask why philosophers are apparently so resistant to considering the altered mind as a source of representation of reality. A standard tactic of philosophy is to go to the pathological case when analyzing a concept in order to find the boundaries of the normal case. The assumption that the mind has a ‘normal’ state that presents a ‘normal’ representation of reality, contrasted with an ‘abnormal’ state when altered by psychedelic substance, ultimately just begs the question. The idea of ‘normal’ in minds or representations of reality is itself a metaphysical assumption that needs some attention.

The rest is a tentative, personal engagement with age and loss and the rediscovery of everything outside us that is also part of us — that is, all the other living things we are commonly encouraged to think of as merely things —, and how the object part of reality is less real and less significant than the phenomenal and social part of reality that extends through us. Or words to that effect: he does a good job of intimating with prose what is a job normally left to poetry.

More a sympathetic narrative account of the path down the rabbit-hole of conspiracy theory devotion than an argument about its nature; almost reads like a very well written-short story. Ultimately a plea for liberal forebearance and open-minded empathy.

Scott works at Open-AI and he isn’t terrified. He is one of the best, open-minded, common-sense defenders of not freaking out I have come across. The article isn’t full of deep or abstract or complex arguments, as are commonly found in articles on this subject; he describes his position both rationally and on the basis of intuition, and he comes down on the side of thinking we don’t know what’s going to happen but it probably won’t be as bad as those most infected by tech-anxiety think — and AI may even pull our asses out of the climate-change fire if we are very lucky.

A broad overview of arguments arising from a group of mostly technologists, with some scientists, psychologists, and Genius-Rich-Guys. It is useful as a reference to people speaking within a certain channel on both sides of the AI-alignment/end-of-the-world anxiety spectrum. The author is passionate and worried, like many in his camp, and wants us to worry too.

Of most use, this article highlights many of the strange unspoken assumptions that lie beneath AI discussions — about the nature of intelligence, consciousness, super-intelligence, and about the natural objectives, priorities, and optimizations of intelligent things (mostly including humans, possible aliens, and soon computers). One senses a deep anxiety that requires metaphysical therapy, stat.

Noah brings it… Who was the more active deregulationist: Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan? The answer is a surprise entirely contrary to the standard neo-con->neo-liberal mythology. Of course, it isn’t quite as simple as that…