Tag: Science and Religion

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Predictive Coding

March 10, 2020

Listening to Karl Friston on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast this morning, something came to mind regarding the Planning Cat and the In The Moment Cat.

It seems a fundamental challenge to animal life, as itinerant systems, is motion detection. Motion can be danger and death; motion can be food and opportunity. (Same goes for sound. We need to organize the background music so that the snapping of a twig, which might mean our end, stands out. But here I’m dwelling on light and vision.)

I was sitting by a very early and successful higher organism, a dragonfly, one day. Its compound eye seems to provide one way to detect motion – by comparing change across the different views. But my type of vision is different. I focus on something, moving my head and eyes about. I need to hold peripheral vision more or less constant to minimize consumption of brain energy. So my brain makes up a story about what is going on at the edges, checking the story only periodically.

The brain is practised at making up stories when it comes to vision because, it seems, there is a huge, roughly 200ms, latency between eye and brain. This needs to be compensated for, or we would be sitting ducks for all kinds of calamity. So what we “see” is already a prediction anyway. And a prediction is a story. Is this the source of consciousness? Both cats are conscious. So is the dragonfly. But the Planning Cat strings together a story, over time, with herself as the central character – just as we do. The long-story version of ourself, which we carry around, emerges over time from the more in the moment child.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Stupidity and Evil

March 7, 2020

There was a fine picture in the press the other day of scientists at a national lab showing Donald Trump a molecular model of what I presume was the coronavirus. The look on our Dear Leader’s face – a sort of obstinate petulance commonly seen in children, he clearly would rather have been on the golf course – was priceless.

The look reminded me of Werner Herzog’s comment about evil and stupidity coming together in the eye of a chicken. Except that this look was attached to an object much larger and with many more responsibilities than a chicken.

An appropriate caption might have read “Why are you showing this to Baboon? Baboon can’t eat this!”

Strange times indeed.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Works Good Like A Government Should

March 1, 2020

Michelle Goldberg’s column in support of Elizabeth Warren had the by-line ” She wants to purify capitalism so that it works as it should.”

What is it that people find so hard about this to grasp? Capitalism is an economic system; government is a socialist enterprise. They do not stand in opposition to each other. In fact they have worked well together.

Yet since the Reagan era, we have been assaulted with the slogan-myth that “government isn’t the solution, government is the problem.” Want to get laughs in the right wing troll-o-sphere? Repeat their favorite stock mockism: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Har har! Oddly, you don’t hear this so often after natural disasters affect them directly. But I digress.

Capitalism is a fine economic system. It has served this and other countries well. But neither it, nor any Social Darwinist underpinnings, provides a pathway to good governance. Part of the problem is that money tends to turn into power. That’s not all bad, as long as its tendency to corrode and corrupt is held in check. Money turning into power beats birthright turning into power at birth, something the Founding Fathers fought against. But it’s not all good either.

For a long time there have been corporate entities, and now there are individuals, with enough money/power to overwhelm the governments of many municipalities, counties and even some states – but not the Federal government; it’s just too big. They can rent parts of it when needed but, in the end, and at least until recently, the Federal government has retained the ultimate power. So they hate it, and decry its size as an evil. This is why the likes of Grover Norquist speak of getting government small enough it could be “killed with a shovel” (like a snake) or “drowned in a bathtub” (like a what? Like a child?).

But government is how the people make an end run on power. Capitalists get this. Why doesn’t everybody?

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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“Why Bernie Sanders Scares Me”

February 29, 2020

That was the title of Bret Stephens’ opinion column today. Why does Bernie scare Bret? I’ll hazard a guess. It’s because Bret is a so-called “conservative.”

Conservatives, pretty much by definition, are scared of things. All sorts of things. Change, of course, but especially the future.

Conservative ! Scaredy cat !

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Madness In Iowa

February 10, 2020

Before trains, cars and airplanes, a trip to Washington was a long slog on horseback. So selecting delegates to vote for you – whether for the nominating convention or for the general election, via the Electoral College – was a big deal.

In 2020, why on Earth would a party as large as the Democrats not simply use ranked voting in the largest states, on paper ballots, to select its candidate?

The results of a ranked vote (first choice, second choice, etc) in the half dozen most populous states would clearly identify the most viable candidate.

Those half dozen states contain about 256 million people, or roughly77% of the nation’s population. I consider this a significant cross-section.

Given the Democrats’ advantage in registered voters nationwide, a candidate selected that way ought to win almost every time against the out-numbered GOP. Barring cheating in the count, of course.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Sanders Warren Ticket

February 7, 2020

Sanders because he motivates the base. But his age suggests one term.

Warren because she’s the smartest. And this country is more likely to have a woman president after it’s grown accustomed to a woman vice president. Hate to say it, especially because HRC actually won in 2016, but it’s likely so.

Both because a new kind of oligarchy is forming and these two are the best heads to confront it. This might give us three to four terms, at least, to stop the cycle of Republican economic damage followed by Democrat economic repair.

The fact that they don’t necessarily get along well makes it all the better.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Out They Go

February 1, 2020

So now the process of England (and maybe Wales, too, but probably not Scotland or Northern Ireland) becoming great again begins. Now they can negotiate with their neighbors once again from a position of strength.

Remind me, because I forget. What specifically is their negotiating advantage? That they drive on the wrong side of the road and therefore need their own kind of cars, or that they don’t use the same money as everybody else?

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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So What Is It?

February 1, 2020

It’s been clear for some time that the central powers at the RNC have something on every last Republican in both the House and the Senate. Yesterday’s vote not to allow additional witnessess – in the face of an important one jumping up and down and screaming he’d like to testify – seals it. The look on Moscow Mitch’s face (“Damn, it worked again!” ) – seals it. The question is: What is it?

Is it money? A promise of a windfall from oligarchs at the end of their respective terms in office? So long as they go along with the program. Maybe. But some of these people, like Mitt Romney, are already rich as Croesus.

Is it the promise of little boys or girls, such as Jeff Epstein might have made? Or the promise to reveal that the promise has already been kept? Dennis Hastert might have been in a better position to say.

Is it the judges and Roe v. Wade thing? Arguably. We’ve seen many a conservative sell his or her soul for that. But all of them, and to avoid Mike Pence, who would only be more that way?

My guess is that it’s the voting machines. Probably each and every Republican member of Congress has been informed – and kept silent about – the probability that they were elected by cheating and therefore hold their offices illegitimately.

MOE

M.I.C.H – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Judge Not

January 27, 2020

Re: impeachment

And so it comes to this: the country wants a real trial, and that requires a real judge.

The Constitution calls for an amalgam of the Senate and the Supreme Court when trying a President for removal from office. The Chief Justice’s role is to preside. When it comes to judges and courtrooms, that means to control the proceedings.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Step 3 – Never Presume To Know The Mind Of God

Sunday August 25, 2019

You would think that this one simple act of humility would be the thing all religions could agree on. But the opposite is true. Each creed stakes itself out as the one which knows the mind of God.

May we point out that if a God exists – and that is a big if – it is clearly not trying to communicate with us. Therefore, we would not expect to know its mind. In an earlier post we gave a reason why that might be.

Since Chipotle or Burger King can easily reach us anytime and anywhere they please about a new menu offering, we must assume that an all powerful creator is not trying to reach us. If it were, we would expect to see and hear the message, outside, in the street, through our eyes and ears – since by all-powerful we do not mean stronger than dirt, we mean able to blow out all the stars in all the galaxies in the universe like so many candles on a cake. This presumes such an entity could at least engage Ogilvy, Google, WPP or Omnicom to get us a message.

And no, Dora, God is not talking to you. That little voice in your head is just the way it sounds when you are thinking, but not out loud. We all carry on an internal conversation.

And no, Rodney, such an entity is not communicating with us via ancient texts. That would be beyond pathetic and way not all-powerful. See last Sunday’s post.

So the silence is filled by sacerdotal arrogance and manipulation:

Parishioner: What does God want me to do?

Priest: I’ll go in the back room and ask. Wait here.

Parishioner: What did he say? (always a he)

Priest: He said you should do exactly as I say.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity