Real choice

He sat frozen in a greasy spoon south of the river somewhere. Rain drops trickled down the front window taunting his inability to shed tears. He'd not taken work for months and would be homeless in a few days. Stringing sentences together with family was near impossible, the few remaining friends who spoke to him only did so out of some morbid fascination or gloating fear. A sodden Alsatian trotted past, pausing to look him in the eye menacingly - the reptilian mind's trumpets were sounding his demise. With his last pennies spent he wandered out into the streets.

Oily water drops glistened in the gutter, the spray from passing cars joined the melody. He'd felt an uplift just after turning to a new chapter before; this was different. He now possessed something solid, it couldn't be taken, and he couldn't give it up, it felt like an orb of energy beating calmly in his chest. To destroy it would mean killing him.

He sat, he didn't care where, it stank and people stared. His hands trembled, his eyes were half closed, the urban sounds melded into a simple cacophony he could ignore. Without much thought he took a stone, leant forward and with considerable force scratched the word DESTINY. He glanced up to find a policeman staring down. "Are you okay Sir?" "Yes" "You'll have to stop doing that." He continued (with a little more haste) YOU CHOOSE. He felt the policeman pull him up and flatly verbalise something that sounded legal. He turned and stood facing the Uniform "I've learnt new words and see new colours, I dare to think strange thoughts. I won't be needing your help from here." And with that his eyes joined with the downpour for the first time in nearly two decades.

I wrote this in 45 minutes in a notebook while sitting in a cafe in Headington. I had no particular idea in mind except to write a story in four paragraphs. I am pleased, I think it is the first story I've finished. The fate/choice melodrama is a little cheesy but I will go on like this - finishing ever longer pieces. Unlike my experience of chess where I played people (and computers) I rarely beat.

More on the right and left side of the brain

This is pretty amazing in terms of a scientist telling a story Aldous Huxley couldn't have told better even when tripping his nuts off on mescalin.

version 1

A drop of water slid slowly down a perfectly formed leaf,

A millisecond cut up and extended out,

Sun reflecting on this rounded muse of liquid life,

I see myself stare in awe,

And here comes more - the sky above extends,

The forest's gazes up,

This timeless cycle condenses again.

I am here, a kindness lets me swipe my memory,

Soak it all up,

Zoom into crystal floor of the solvent sweet with millions of colourful hues,

That let life swim and spread, dissolve our soup, let particles evolve,

Draws analogy which the latest branches can stand and weep,

Let ideas float above,

Invent a god and his words,

Stories to cling to, poems to recant,

Tie our ancestors to an otherwise haggard self,

Preserve our beast, let it play,

Without control, untamed pure aggression gives perfect kindness joy.

Apparently, or so it seemed,

We were happier in distant times,

This modern angst a party poo'd.

The matrix is uncoupled,

We must fill gaps, cement the cracks, bury hacks,

The words can be so helpless against the physical camp,

The weather untamed progress stewed, hubris of dreamers swallow recompense.

Yet up there our captains extend the drama,

Set the goals, provoke all systems,

The snakes tongue, the chimps lungs, and the shine on the golden set of rules,

The Glass Bead Game in all its hues,

This monastic dream will pilot streams of carriers,

Aircraft strewn with colours that reflect,

A chance for makers, from this generation of forgotten stew,

The historians will seek solace in their contention,

That this has happened before a thousand times,

Just like all the academics and their pigeon boxes,

Of relentless exponential finality,

Obsessive compulsion - the mantra of the Kung Fu warriors of pseudo-democratic servitude.

But so quickly the sparkle of Nature's beauty is tainted,

The innocence lost, social fear and our lot creep back,

As the drop falls so the memory lost,

The ecstatic membrane lost to a kick in the teeth,

Here again comes the ape-like warrior call,

To let hormones wreak havoc on crystal order,

Despite the computational transforms built in,

My brain cannot hold more templates,

The model replete, the goggles never gaze on chaos,

Without falling from grace.

So I reject splendour and early hubris,

Fall to god and my earthly morality,

Even on progression I get the kick,

Blaze with my fellow zombies in our domestic bliss,

We make our boxes houses,

Our transforms habits, our clothes glow sweet promise.

If memory of that drop falling appears in our dreams,

We blank it out with Holy TV and noise of every dimensional twist,

This certitude, social bliss, this is human in all its remiss,

Together we act play and strum,

Together we smile with a little irony perhaps.

Now twenty years on,

My guts twisted, my brain cramped,

My heart rendered, lungs poisoned, words broken,

I feel insane, lost and in want of retribution,

I want to see the squalour, bask in retreat,

Pickle myself in wine like a teenage knife cuts,

Enact my rage on all I have lost.

This god let me down, this childish trust,

The historians' lie,

The academic toys I lost when I gave up the courage,

Let hopeless others draw my path,

Let their gods release me from birth.

But now I must kill, reap my revenge,

Seek retribution on the things that I hate,

I must spit gargled phlegm deep from my infected lungs,

Collapse in sleep at every chance,

I must eye servitude, stare at her face,

That wrinkled image of those days when The Drop Fell And I Could See Taste.

Now dead, I died with the lust I killed,

I even wonder if the sky opened at all,

Those many years ago,

I lie in wait for nihilism to take me,

I gave upfaith I lieft completness for what?

Everything is an unanswered question

I do not care.

Collapsed and numb

I wonder out

In madness I leave

And arrive then lay down

The distant sound of a trickle

Enters thoughts, faint wondering of nature reliquishes anew,

Cold and wet

I open my eyes

A body bathed in blood,

Sputem spurned by guts

Hair bedraggled in tainted love

I lick my dry mouth, thirst rides my thoughts

A radicle permission overrides my slumber

I look up and see verdant splendour and blue sky

The water trickles down, the clouds seep above,

Nature again lights up,

But I cannot connect the dots

I am not sure this matters

I drove so far

Is there anything to comprehend, is there a point?

And then I see, for a millisecond at least,

That innocence is not bliss,

To be blind is not grace,

But leae your senses

Crash your connections,

Is to forget

That tranquil moment of bliss,

Time when the brain was divided into warring systems.

Morgan Spurlock: The greatest TED Talk ever sold | Video on TED.com

Morgan Spurlock: The greatest TED Talk ever sold | Video on TED.com

Thought and progress: a new approach to knowledge

I wanted to rescue this piece I wrote for the OWL Journal (compiled and edited by graduates at the University of Oxford). I am obviously quite embarrassed by this amalgamation of jumbled ideas, dizzying prose (heavily edited by someone more capable than I - thank you JvZ!) and general ignorance of the essential reading that would have filled the huge voids in the argument. The essential idea I still enjoy though, although it excites me less these days. (Please excuse the typos - copying text in PDFs with two columns is annoying.)

---------

Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters [grammata=writing]. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. Theuth came to him and showed his inventions [technas, “arts”], desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them. Thamus enquired about their several uses, and as Theuth enumerated them, Thamus praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them.

It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts [technai]. But when they came to letters [grammata], Th euth said, “Th is invention, O King, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; I have discovered a remedy [pharmakon: potion, medicine, drug] both for the memory and for wisdom.” Th amus replied: “O most ingenious [technikotate] Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a power opposite to that which they in fact possess. For this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it; they will not exercise their memories, but, trusting in external, foreign marks [graphēs], they will not bring things to remembrance from within themselves. You have discovered a remedy [phar- makon] not for memory, but for reminding. You off er your students the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. They will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Plato, Phaedrus. Based on the Jowett translation; updated by Martin Irvine, 1996

In Ancient Greece, the Sophists were employed to educate the city elite, normally to prepare their students for political offi ce. These professional teachers would supply their students with a stock of answers and train them how to apply this received knowledge to maximize their infl uence. Th ey treated learners like vessels for knowledge and placed little or no emphasis on developing the learner as a thinker in his own right. By contrast, the Socratic approach was to free the learner’s mind through philosophical play (paideia) in the pursuit of excellence (aretē). Plato created stories that invited learners to explore vivid metaphors and relate their own context to the subject. The Myth of the Cave, for instance, can be seen as a metaphor for education (paideia) but could also be used to refl ect on the role of the educator as someone who goes into the cave to free the minds of those trapped by the shadowy and coercive imaginings of the Sophists.

So which approach to learning prevails in our schools and universities today? Is it the love of a subject that inspires a personal pursuit of excellence? Or is something else shaping our educational experience? Th e answer is that Sophist practices almost completely dominate our educational institutions to the extent that they are taken for granted. Obvious examples of Sophist practices include examinations and curricula, which are set by assessment bodies without ever taking the learner’s voice into account. As a result their eff ect on learning is rarely questioned. One possible consequence is the personal indifference towards their subject often displayed by school children and university students. Contemporary society’s approach to information betrays a Sophist attitude, too. Traditionally, news agencies, universities, publishers, and governments have acted as information gateways deciding how to present information to the public and which information to present. These organisations have privileged access to information and control the production cycles according to their own agendas.

The Internet has the potential to democratise both processes – learning in educational institutions and access to information – by allowing many more people to read, discuss, and publish their own ideas. But modern information technolo- gies can do more than just enrich existing practices. In the future, they can help to create the heterogeneous environ- ment that allows us to optimise the relationship between our minds and the external world, whether we work alone or within our community of practice.

The Internet has already changed some of the ways in which information is handled. Blogs allow discussions to be recorded online and for anyone with access to a search engine to find these conversations and join in. Th e most well-known examples include Iraqi Salam Pax’s accounts of the US-led war, former Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi’s exclusive insight into the Islamic Republic’s government, and the highs and lows of the last US election campaign. Wikis are similar to blogs but the emphasis is on the collaborative editing of a single page. Wikipedia is perhaps the most successful example of this phenomenon with over a million high quality encyclo- paedic entries put online by many thousands of unpaid authors in under a year. It seems counter-intuitive that allowing anyone to edit any page will produce high quality content, but this is simply because we are accustomed to a more closed culture where elite groups act as guardians of knowledge. The Wikipedia project aims to make knowledge freely available for all; they have eight other projects that are building catalogues of free books, news and other media. Similarly, the Moving Image Archive is providing storage space for an impressive range of digital video and audio assets. Anyone with access to a computer and a phone line should be able to gain access to the world’s academic creations and to engage in the process of knowledge creation. The protest of the traditionalist is that this will lead to a reduction in quality. However, the assumption that the Internet cannot possibly be used to improve on the expensive and nepotistic peer review processes that are common today needs to be carefully scrutinised.

Here we can observe a parallel between the situation in Ancient Greece and contemporary society. New information technologies today are facing the same kind of obstacles in educational institutions that Plato described in the Phaedrus when he lets Socrates report Thamus’ objection to pen and paper. In classical Greece it was the public storytellers who feared for their reputations. Th e ancients held them in high acclaim; capturing their ac- counts on paper may have been sacrilegious and a threat to a prestigious and profi table trade. However, letters en- abled new approaches to scholarship, so that storytellers felt inclined to defend their trade with apocalyptic assertions about the fate of the minds of those who used these new approaches. With hindsight it is clear that the written word has not destroyed our memories or our ability to think and learn. All that was happening was an evolu- tion of what it means to construct and share knowledge.

The same evolution is happening today. Improved access to academic creations is a natural outcome of the use of digital technology. It is likely that we are simply waiting for some major institutions to take the lead and serve as the catalyst promoting a strong open-access publishing movement. Technology can be used to facilitate geographically diverse dialogue at a lower cost both financially and to the environment. Software can be used to modify rules of dialogue that counterbalance political forces within a community and lower the risks to con- tributors of speaking out of turn, for instance by giving people pseudonyms or allowing them to be anonymous. When using technology the communication can be enriched by adding digital creations such as a quotation from a paper, data from an experiment, a simulation, or a quote from a rare text that required search technology to find. Digital conversations do not need to be constrained by time, as is often the case with conferences, and participants can return to the thread of conversation after lengthy periods of refl ection. We may feel threatened by allowing computers to, in eff ect, take over the place of workshop organisers or facilitators; but computer soft- ware can make the rules of communication transparent, if only with a degree of reduction in spontaneity.

However, improved access to information, resources, edition cycles, and dialogue still does not constitute a revolution in our education systems. The real paradigm shift will come when we adopt modern technologies to transform the inti- mate relationship our minds have built up with the printed page. We need to move beyond the narrative structures of text, 2D static graphs and the occasional photograph to an entirely diff erent and more expressive medium.

From the moment when Alan Turing created the math- ematical foundations for digital technologies it became obvious that computers would aff ect our thinking in fundamental ways. Turing’s imitation game challenged researchers to create programmes that could fool a person into thinking they were communicating with another human being. Such enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has thankfully died down for the moment but it has been replaced by more pressing questions of how to optimise the way computers interact with our minds to support us when we are learning and solving problems. Cognitive sci- entists are working on models that describe the profound process of how our minds can perform with tools. Their research is showing how people work together using tools to solve problems. It is argued here that we engage in an iterative process of moving language unique to our minds (mentalese) to an external language (e.g. words and pictures), representing and re-representing knowledge until we give it a form that is meaningful to both ourselves and others. Although this sounds abstract it is happening everywhere all the time: just watch yourself next time you battle with an essay or solve an equation.

A diagram can be worth 10,000 words but an n-dimensional graph where the reader can manipulate parameters that change its form provides us with another order of expressiveness. Computer generated graphs have obvious utility in the sciences where morphology, distribution and time are fundamental to the global behaviour of a system, but graphics can serve all academic disciplines. Here at Oxford University, Denis Noble and his team are constructing a vast simulation of a virtual heart that can be used to model the causes of arrhythmias. Models of the heart have been created that can be used to predict what will happen to an individual’s heart before they receive some sort of intervention such as administration of a drug. Such graphical simulations reduce the cognitive load required to understand complex systems, as long as the semantics of the representation are well understood. If we have pictorial literacy then we will be able to learn more eff ectively because most systems share properties with these simulations: they are emergent, non-linear, often chaotic, and the global behaviour is the result of a large number of parallel processes interacting.

Our educational institutions need to equip learners with the skills and tools that enable them to become producers of these kinds of interactive simulations. Imagine an interdisciplinary team of researchers and learners collaborating to re-construct the life in a village off the North Eastern coast of North America in the18th century. The team gathers information to represent diff erent characters and the way they relate within their community. Key events are built into the simulation and problems built into a storyboard that allows people to explore the dimensions of the simulation in a game-like way. Such a project is underway at MIT where graphic designers, programmers, gamers, academics, and museum curators are collaborating to create a multiplayer simulation. Richard Dawkins has recently expressed a similar opinion about games when he mused: “[P]erhaps children should be given computer games to play with and familiarise them- selves with quantum mechanics.” Educational game research is a rapidly growing field and often highlights the relevance of motivation in designing learning material. It is important for teachers to be able to relate academic learning to the games that learners enjoy. It is patronising to assume that there is no relevance in the games that a popular culture selects – fun is not mindless. All games have properties that allow the players to engage in com- plex activities where the mind is exercised in ways that are directly transferable to academic pursuits. We need to adopt a diff erent understanding of the word ‘game’, or more words to capture the diff erent aspects of games.

Professor Seymour Papert of MIT, mathematician and seminal thinker on the way computers can change learning, says: “Instead of trying to make children love the math they hate, why not make a math they love.” Papert is asking us to think how technology can change the very nature of knowledge, the ways we represent and communicate our understanding. He is asking us not to revere ancient and medieval technologies and so settle into a relationship with our subjects that will be doomed to divorce us from real intellectual pursuit.

What causes apathy?

This is a good short sharp piece where Dave Meslin expresses succinctly why we should focus our attention on the external forces that drive us to apathy, rather than deride ourselves with guilt.

I latched onto this topic a couple of years ago after reading around the term 'passive aggressive':

Passive–aggressive behavior, a personality trait, is passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. It is a personality trait marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.

It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.

[Taken from Wikipedia April 2011].

Combined with the idea put forward in The Corporation documentary (available free on YouTube).

We should think of groups/companies/organisations as having personalities. Just as it is difficult to describe the character of a person, it takes hard work to describe the personality of a corporation...but it is possible if we have access to the necessary information and take the time to write it down coherently. Just as people rely on personas to avoid judgement, so do businesses. The trouble is that large global corporations enact their psycho-pathologies on a massive scale where as individuals just piss a few people off on a daily basis.

I disagree with the general idea that public organisations should behave more like private ones in the way they communicate. There will be lessons to learn but of course we would want to avoid the spin and lies that private organisations don't flinch at as they pump their bullshit into the market. Public organisations will do well to adopt a confidence that equals the arrogance of the private companies we tolerate today.

I think Meslin puts some useful markers in the sand that help us envisage better organisations generally. I subscribe to the view that the best way to overcome disease is to act publicly and give up vanity and paranoia and accept the help that comes your way. The mean level of goodness in society will always improve if we let it.

The moral psychology of liberal and conservative politics

• If a group shares values it becomes a team and stops being open to experience.
• Take the red pill an open your mind to a new moral matrix
• What is morality and where does it come from? Not the blank slate, it is organised in advance of experience. So what are we born with

1. Harm / care
2. Fairness / reciprocity
3. In-group loyalty
4. Authority / respect
5. Purity / chastity ("political right does this with sex, left with food")

http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php

Haidt's questionnaire (27, 000 respondents at the time) shows a marked difference between Liberal and Conservative morality. Liberals value harm/care and fairness/reciprocity while conservatives do too, but to a lesser extent, but great value the other 3 morals (called dark morality but some). But are the last 3 traits morals at all? Haidt answers this with reference to The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych by Hieronymous Bosch, the analogy being that order tends to decay. Then Haidt pull the paper by Fehr and Gachter (2002) on Altruistic Punishment as something that reinforces this analogy. Perhaps this is what religion gives us (another conservative choice) religion.

The crux of the difference between liberals and conservatives is the rate of change that they want to achieve justice. Liberals, being open to experience enjoy revolution, while conservatives fear change.

"Liberals speak for the weak and oppressed; want change and justice, even at the risk of chaos."

"Conservatives speak for the institutions and traditions; want order even at the cost of those at the bottom."

Then Haidt encourages us to see the two forces as complimentary, as in many Asian countries e.g. "If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease" - Sent-ts'an, c. 700 CE.

"Our righteous minds were designed to unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth."

I find it hard to think about this in such a balanced way. To me conservatives are people who want to live in a hierarchy, and normally at the top. People who fail to overcome their mammalian and lizard brains, they live by impulse rather than consulting their pre-frontal cortex to ask: how could we do this better. That's not to say all conservatives are powerful, there are of course plenty of people who get a thrill out of being dominated, beaten up, treated like they are scum. This fits with the hierarchy view - conservatism a longing for a medieval style of sado-masochism, a sense of security through hormones and thrills. I wonder who writes about politics like this...

The IMF

Reported in the Guardian today: Although the IMF saw no evidence of a double-dip recession, it stressed that it would take time for voters to feel the impact. "Households are likely to remain thriftier than before the crisis but will be in a position to gradually raise their consumption as labour markets recover."

I know the economics of infinite growth have been ridiculed over again. I know we all know the ironies of glamourising consumption now that we know about climate change science. Its not this that I want to harp on about here. When you read the above it just makes you wonder if we all get to an age where seeing the comedy of your ways becomes an impossibility. Maybe reflection is genetically impossible past the age of 40. Maybe our strategic self gives up re-invention and just tells us to pile on ahead as we were. I don't know who the IMF is but I know how often their economic forecasts are published. I don't know which economic religion they evangelise but I suspect it is not one I agree with. You create a brand, people sign up then you keep giving them the reinforcement that they crave. Afterall who wants to believe the opposite: after the crisis the economy will continue to improve as households carry on learning how to consume less and come down from their materialistic highs.

This post is about my incredulity at reading a summary of a report from an organisation with nothing about why I should care what this organisation says.

Robin Dunbar in a chapter titled Natural Minds

Our problem is that our minds just lack the intellectual capacity to deal with continua, especially if these continua involve the interaction of several variables operating along different dimensions. We are happiest with simple dichotomies because they save us having to think. Although evolution has no doubt provided us with a satisfacotry rule of thumb for getting by in everyday life, thinking in dichotomies becomes increasingly unsatisfactory for handling the complexities that beneath the surface that are the real stuff of science. Knowledge, it seems, is perpetually threatened by our own intrinsic limitations.

Well put. I have wondered about this too. I used to believe that we favour black and white arguments perhaps because we have two of most things: eyes, ears, sides of the brain. Then later I thought that the way we bludgeon truth on a daily basis is more down to the plethora of stone-age artefacts that litter our natural language. Another theory would be that we simply like a scrap, we enjoy taking the polar extreme because we rouse our prehistoric bodies. In the end, I think only more through using computers will we be able to communicate intelligently and more often. With computers we can ensure our arguments are properly researched, laid out explicitly, not rushed, multidimensional, with a wider range of relevant variables.

I enjoyed this chapter so much because Dunbar frames it with accounts of intellectual debates through the ages that have demonstrated that even those we pitch up as wise/intelligent make all the same mistakes as the rest of us. The ability to imagine our minds is truly embarrassing, what plundering idiots we seem destined to always be.

Human side of climate science - Ian McEwan

David Keith's unusual climate change idea

Should we engineer the climate?
A moral hazard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

Moral hazard occurs when a party insulated from risk may behave differently than it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. In insurance, moral hazard that occurs without conscious or malicious action is called morale hazard.

Moral hazard is a special case of information asymmetry, a situation in which one party in a transaction has more information than another. The party that is insulated from risk generally has more information about its actions and intentions than the party paying for the negative consequences of the risk. More broadly, moral hazard occurs when the party with more information about its actions or intentions has a tendency or incentive to behave inappropriately from the perspective of the party with less information.

Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution does not take the full consequences and responsibilities of its doings, and therefore has a tendency to act less carefully than it alternately would, leaving another party to hold some responsibility for the consequences of those actions. For example, a person with insurance against automobile theft may be less cautious about locking his or her car, because the negative consequences of vehicle theft are (partially) the responsibility of the insurance company.

Moral hazard also arises in a principal-agent problem, where one party, called an agent, acts on behalf of another party, called the principal. The agent usually has more information about his or her actions or intentions than the principal does, because the principal usually cannot completely monitor the agent. The agent may have an incentive to act inappropriately (from the viewpoint of the principal) if the interests of the agent and the principal are not aligned.

Saul Griffith's kites tap wind energy

A free flying wing can sweep through more sky, and generate more electricty than a fix wing...and go higher where there is more wind.

Again, didn't mention the issues - I guess he doesn't want to talk his business down.

Shai Agassi's bold plan for electric cars

So first off:
Chutzpa:

–nounSlang.

1.

unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall.

2.

audacity; nerve.

That aside, there's some kind of business speak going on here. I think this talk amounts to saying, in the US you have to change the way the market operates to get more people using electric cars. In Europe we have taxes, China will have edicts, India will just get better mileage per tank/charge.

Apart from that hopefully this guys ego is as big as the idea the engineers are coming up. He makes a good point about systemic change e.g. it is a moral change. Nice anecdote comparing it to the decision to give up slavery despire worring about the economy.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow

• Was inspired to understand what constitutes a life worth living because he saw how the second world war destroyed so many people's sense of well-being

• Since we don't get happier with wealth, what is it that makes some people very happy it must be something else, Milaly then began to research flow:
  
• On composing music: You are in an ecstatic state to such an extent that you feel that you almost don't exist. I have experienced this time and time again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself.
• Apparently there is a finite limit of about 160 bits/second that we can process external information e.g. listening to more than 2 conversation is almost impossible
  
• It is a truism in studies of truism that it takes about 10 years to be able to change something in a way that is better than it was before
• A poet's sense of flow: it's like opening a door that's floating in the middle of nowhere, and all you have to do is go and turn the handle and open it and let yourself sink into it. You can't particularly force yourself through it. You just have to float. If there is any gravitational pull its from the outside world trying to keep you back.

Seven conditions for flow:

1. Completely involved with what you are doing - focused, concentrated
2. A sense of ecstacy - of being outside everyday reality
3. Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well we are doing it
4. Knowing that the activity is doable - that our skills are adequate for the task
5. A sense of serenity - no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego
6. Timelessness - thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes
7. Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces flow becomes its own motivation

To me this sounds just like a natural high that comes after lots of hard work. Its worth mentioning Maggie Boden and her description of the Creative Space which draws on cognitive science to guess at what the brain might be doing, perhaps when it is in a state of flow.

Watching TV and sitting in the bathroom are the opposite of flow, unless for instance, you choose a program you really want to watch.

Now to do some research on what this legend advises on how normal people can get themselves some happiness, a sense of flow.

While this might sound like conspiracy theory I think one reason why so many people lack flow is because their agency is disrupted, they let other people subvert them away from who they are, or don't get the help they need to keep on their ideal path. For most people this happens at school, with our wonderful curricula, and if we are not hammered there then our careers will do it for us. And why does this happen? Because we still mostly live in clumsy medieval hierarchies, we let a few people concentrate power and organise us to maintain their positions. And the tragedy is complete when we find that even these people are unhappy on not experiencing flow - so we minions can't even enjoy their happiness. Why are we so conservative, why do we seek to shroud ourselves in false systems to hide from our insecurity, we just delay the downfall. I think the people that find flow are just the people who managed to stare into the void that is this world then decided they are just going to get on with life. The people that do we, most inspire us are the ones who understand how deep the abyss is and maybe even carry it around with them as a reminder of what we are up against.

PS: What will change everything:
The End of Analytic Science: The idea that will change the game of knowledge is the realization that it is more important to understand events, objects, and processes in their relationship with each other than in their singular structure. Western science has achieved wonders with its analytic focus, but it is now time to take synthesis seriously.

Eric Topol: The wireless future of medicine

Lots of obvious mobile physiological monitoring but why is there an explosion of these technologies/services now:

• 4 billion mobile users and many smartphones
  
• broadband 3G/pervasive connectivity
• ingenious sensors e.g. alarm clock EEG

In the case of asthma we can monitor: RR, FEV1, AirQuality, oximetry, pollen count

I am fascinated by this because of the politics of it, will the doctors and pharma-companies try to hold on to the doctor-patient relationship. Will the technology enable communities to look after themselves and do their own research. What is the place of the expert in medicine?

Again, another rather gushing talk, an evangelical sales pitch rather than a more educated critical analysis. There are obvious difficulties here but none of them were mentioned:

1. Who will own the data
2. What is the effect on the average patient of knowing all this stuff
3. Will the doctors know what to do with the data, or simply be able to deal with the volumes
   
4. Will the patients know how to use the data

There is essentially the old knowledge vs widsom problem. We don't necessarily know what to do with this technology - longitudinal trials are needed.

P.S. Was a cool idea to wear the monitoring equipment, and display the readings, while he was talking.

William McDonough on cradle to cradle design

Quotes:

1. Design is an expression of human intention
2. In the dominion versus stewardship debate, we are of course stewards because you can't dominate something you kill, and to steward something you have to dominate it
3. We can't say that destroying the planet was not our plan, because since we have no plan to save it, the de facto plan is to destroy it [consequentialism?]
4. Humility and architecture have not been in the same sentence since the fountain head...reflect on this, it took 5000 years to put wheels on our luggage
5. Le Corbusier architecture affectionately known in our industry as Brutalism
6. Solar energy has nothing to do with architecture [just as energy consumption has nothing to do with IT]

The beautiful thing here is that the world we design speaks volumes about us, according to William we do not acquit ourselves well. The trouble with shit design is the tools then speak back to us.

He published a database of chemicals to help designers analyse their products at the ppm level. (No reference given).

Designing 12 eco-cities in China.

Not much to say here, William is walking the walk, but I know too little to comment.

Alex Steffen sees a sustainable future

Alex is an editor of this website:
http://worldchanging.com/
Not sure this talk was well pitched for the audience e.g. rattling of things the other talks have done in detail, and perhaps more importantly slightly more critically. Of course it is important to be optimistic but this is all a little bit too gushingly so for me. The talk is like reading out a giant set of bookmarks.

John Doerr sees salvation and profit in greentech

John forgets that efficiency will not solve climate change, we'll just find new ways to use more (Jevons). And as for glorifying bullies like Walmart. You have to go green on a holisitic basis, being a business person is not just about being efficient. This guy is a linear, narrow, top down thinker, one of the old guard. He is adept at talking up economies that he wants to invest in (well at least he acknowledges this).

Interesting statistic:

"the presidents budget for investment in renewable energy technologies is $1M pa which is one day of profit for Exxon"

An interesting general point across all talks is how the cultural background of the speakers effects the solutions they promote e.g. americans love talking about efficient cars that use alternative fuel while the chinese (not at TED) talk about cutting their population. It would be a form of colonialism to say one is better than the other, but I suspect it is important to realise our prejudices.

to be continued...bloody internet connection cut again.

Al Gore's new thinking on the climate crisis

Scary stories, global political and economic strategies, new technologies. This is informative but not cutting edge, the main problem many will have with Al Gore is his posturing that top down big solutions are the solution. Given his history this is not surprising. I think his main strategy is subverting the American dream e.g. repositioning the heroes, rousing them, changing the end game. A nice quote that fits the MO idea:

"We have to change the light bulbs but we also have to change the laws," we have to be doing more.

And a nice quote:
"If you want to go quickly go alone, if you want to go far go together...but we have to got far and quickly".

One concern would be that maybe this is not an awesome issue, it is not going to be solved with new infrastructure, new material gains and so on. It is just a repositioning of what each wants, a humility, a quiet intelligence, a slower and more considered approach to living. Not a criticism however, others are making this point.

Pandering to the expert rather than focusing on the idea

Writing in progress...

It strikes me how often people justify ideas by referring name dropping experts. This is actually one of the more enlightened ways of doing it:

"Richard Tol is a research professor at ESRI in Ireland, one of the top 175 economists in the world and a contributor to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)"

At least here the link qualifies why this person is an expert e.g. Tol is often cited. But is Tol's view any more enlightened than any other person's guesswork?

For me there seems to be a distinct cut off point between statements about the world that can be measured e.g. physics, chemistry, biology etc and then conjecture based on assumptions of how people will react in the future. Okay, this is dangerous close to slamming the whole of the social science tradition but I want to make a point.

When it comes to predicting how people will behave or react to a future scenario, why not ask people, surely this is where Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a benefit, by measuring the system we can change it, and hopefully by involving people move things in a positive direction. In other words, maybe social scientists should stop pretending to be finding out fundamental truths about society and be more open with their ideas and how we want to influence things. I don't think there is any such thing as an objective social science experiment...but then I doubt any social 'scientist' would argue here either.

Bjorn Lomborg sets global priorities

How do we decide which problems to solve first considering we have scarce resource. Bjorn thinks we should focus on solving the problems that we have solutions for already. Prioritisation is always a very uncomfortable process. Apparently we should ask economists what we should prioritise, presumably because they are used to optimisation problems? e.g. dealing with global warming will cost $250,000,000,000 per year a fraction of what we give to other causes.

Of course this guy has cooked his numbers, or at least he makes no effort to explain the assumptions behind how he estimates the costs. He cites his dream team (Schelling was one of them) then extrapolates.

I just don't think you can convince people by essentially making one point over and over. There may be good research behind this talk but Bjorn presented none of it.

Martin Rees asks: Is this our final century?

Lots of Astronomical numbers and beautirful pictures reminding how small we are and why science has such a long way to go e.g. what came before the big bang.

Martin describes the possibility of a whole other universe, each with their own big bang, existing in parallel to our own, in other dimensions. This brings up the interesting idea that only quantum physicists would be able to 'see' this world and if more of us are to do so we'd need to have develop the insight and have access to the tools. Perhaps if there is life in these parallel world we'd not be able to experience it with our senses, it would be more like a techno-trip, something we can only appreciate and not sense. How crude the people who rely on their 5 senses would then look.

Bill Joy's fine-grained relinquishment - giving up the dangerous side of science. Of course this is absurdly naive, every coin has two sides.

Maybe we should be thinking in terms of cosmological time rather than now, this decade, this century. With our minds geared to think in this way, (maybe we can stop grasping). The science of the young Einstein will continue but we need the wisdom of the older man to ensure we can experience it.

Jared Diamond on why societies collapse

With reference to the Greenland Norse society:

1. People inadvertently destroying the resource base that they depend e.g. cutting all the trees down to make iron tools and causing soil erosion
2. Climate change
3. Relations with neighboring friendly societies e.g. between Iceland and Norway
4. Relations with hostile societies e.g. the Inuit
5. Political, economic, social and cultural aspects e.g. commitments to Christianity and building churches

South Western Montana:

1. Toxic problems from mining waste, weeds, desalination, forest fires
2. Getting warmer and drier, especially problem to irrigation agriculture
3. Transfer payments from out of payments e.g. social security
4. Terrorism and oil supplies
5. Long held values stunting development e.g. logging

And collapse is often a rapid:

1. Lowland Maya in Yucatan in 800 BC
   
2. Collapse of the Soviet Union
3. Easter Islanders
   
4. Growth of bacteria in a Petri dish where there is a mismatch between bacteria and nutrients

But how did these societies not see what was coming? (Tragedy of the commons?)

1. Conflict of interest between the considerations of the elites and the long term considerations of society e.g. Enron
   
2. Difficult to make good decisions within traditional value systems e.g. commitment to Christianity within Greenland Norse, commitment to British identity in Australia in backdrop growing Asian influence.

What is the most thing we need to do:

1. Realise the issue is complex, we need to do many things, and all of them are essential
2. Accept that our present course is unsustainable
3. We have a choice, this threat is not an asteroid, all the problems are tractable

Lots of bullet-point wisdom from Jared! For me the most interesting area here was how the disjoint between hierarchical interests can emerge, how it manifests itself and how it can be resolved.

Ray Anderson on the business logic of sustainability

The business case for sustainability:

1. operations are cheaper
2. which pays for necessary infrastructure costs
3. sustainable products attract customers/sales
4. sustainable brand also attracts best employees

and Ray factors in Affluence and Happiness.

Carpets are a hydrocarbon/petro intensive industry.

This is big news because here we have a company that can track its whole operation across the entire supply chain.

Finished off with great applomb with tomorrow's child, a poem written by one of Ray's employees.

Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good

Okay, on the scale of things this is a bit blunt, but admirable for a poitician. I guess you just watch this and see what these people are allowed/capable of saying. Like a litmus test.

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

I am just an ad man: "I particularly remember a good speech by Kim Jong-il about how to get teenagers smoking again" Nice intro."

Solve climate change by manipulating perception: "All convicted child molesters have to drive a Porche KM" [As Ataturk did by making prostitutes wear the veil].

Persuasion is better than compulsion - not according to the ideas behind altruistic punishment.

Veblen Goods vs Shakerism

Impulse savings...but saving is consumerism needlessly postponed.

"Social networking allows people to share news and give badge value to..."

Funny talk, intelligent humour.

John Gerzema: The post-crisis consumer

Not sure I agree with this guy. I think this is news for the people who have forgotten what life was like before things went mad. "There is a big DIY movement...people spend less when they have less, they buy less luxury goods". Come on where is the news? John seems to have his heart in the right place, but he speaks like an evangelist and as a Brit I'd like to see just a little more radicalism and perhaps a sense that the equation he presents is slightly more flaky if, heaven forbid we actually thought about it by ourselves for a few minutes.

I thought this would be a talk for consumers to learn how to shop more intelligently (or not at all). Actually the message seems more about how to maintain business as usual for large corporations, even though the poor little fat cat darlings might have to learn a few new tricks to to squeeze the 'consumer' now they are poor.

It is interesting how culture and audience has configured this talk - I'll be looking for the same theme presented by a local in a slightly less consumerist country.

Note: While watching this I tried to understand what is meant by leverage:

Leverage generally refers to a situation where any type of investment, credit or borrowed fund is used in such a way that a high return is gained. Leverage crops up when any investor attempts to have a control on a large investment or a borrower struggles to reduce liabilities for any loss.

Looks like one of those slippery economics terms, that actually means something very simple but us paupers are not prive' to understand how it is used in context i.e. like the word 'faith'

Rob Hopkins: Transition to a world without oil

There's something tantalising about this idea but the talk lacks substance. I very much like the affirmation that stories profoundly shape our culture, or at least identify desires that then through hard work get satisfied. Rob provokes the TED audience into asking whether it is right to give the impression that innovation is the magic elixir, without pointing out the obvious risk of this belief (we don't invent the things that will solve the problem - surely this is not possible).

Rob is clever enough to not dismiss the possibility that we can invent tools that bail us out. Instead he asks actually, is this what we want. His last sentence nicely sums up his view:

"a world that is more resilient, more skilled and more connected to each other"

But, the details I suspect leave many wanting more. On a practical level he only mentions or alludes to energy micro-generation, urban gardening, local currencies and new ways of building with natural products.

This leaves me cold too. While I do think many more people would be happier involved in simple manual tasks, hard work outside, because this would help solve a huge problem: too many people are cut off from meaningful relationships by pointless jobs.

But why should we aspire to be farmers and house buildings, is this just harking back to medieval days? Did the Amish have it right? Nostalgia is a powerful drug (does 'nostalgia' apply to something that we have no real memory of?), having been a keen allotment gardener in the past I know it is not all fun, and making enough to live from is much more work than most could handle, and more importantly very risky e.g. crops do fail.

I think this nostalgia is really fuelled by another social malaise. Lack of trust in the people/organisations that provide these commodities. We just don't like the big supermarkets, the intensive agriculture systems, the transport networks, the energy and chemical companies that underpin the whole thing. We don't know who they are, what they do and the assumptions that underpin their operations. We suspect they are there just to make huge profits to line a few people's pockets, treating the consumers cynically and with disdain.

What is more, I just cannot believe it is more efficient for thousands/millions of people to be farmers rather than the few. Is the battle here Fordism vs Anarchy with the assumption that people would be happier within a slower individualised world. I love to clear the mess from my desk so that I can have more interesting thoughts, I aspire to escape the mundane. After a while creatively needs new props, I am not sure how far my thoughts will travel within sensory universe of manual labour.

I suspect this view is largely unfounded and the issue is more to do with poor communications and laziness in many areas of innovations. Operations have been swimming in oil, basking on the beaches of indolence letting the fat cats swell to bursting point. What I suspect Rob and the network he is supporting is really peeved at is having their ideas and sense quashed for decades by the weight of these baby boomers, the Peter Pan generation and their 'progress' dogma.

Personally I don't want to be a market gardener, I want just enough food and energy for me to have meaningful relationships, and focus as much of my self as possible engaged in creative processes that befit 2100 AD rather than 1400 AD.

Choosing your beliefs

Why are people carrying on as though climate change science is not a real threat? Let's be honest, probably about 60% of people will say they believe the scientists, 10% of people have a meaningful grasp of the science, and 99% of people have made no change to their lifestyles as a result.

Yet people will happily believe in god, that they'll win the lottery, be reincarnated, that coca cola is good for them or cool to drink, that smoking won't kill them, that having a big family is a wonderful thing etc.

99% of people choose their beliefs to fit in with their short-term plans. Actually I wonder if people choose their beliefs at all - perhaps few people evolve sufficiently to make decisions any differently from the adults that dominated their childhood.

Are we a zombie species travelling through the ages destined to ravage everything we hunger for as fast as we can?

Breaking News: 10/10 campaigns make the climate change skeptics happy

Question: What is the net effect of all the good people making real changes to their life to reduce their carbon footprint?

Answer: They make the lives of the majority climate skeptics easier, cheaper and more smug than ever before.

The grass roots approach only works if the laggards change their ways. We live in a supply and demand free-market capitalist society. If some people use less of a resource, the resource becomes cheaper and easier to acquire. That is to say:

1. There is more space on roads
2. Flights become cheaper
3. Electricity, gas and water become cheaper
4. etc

Of course the rate of change in prices will vary (I suspect reducing water consumption has zero effect on supply). What is for sure is that the conscientious are being laughed at by the world's hill billies.

There is a caveat to this argument of course. If enough people reduce their consumption then then for instance an airline, gas, water company might collapse, which will reduce competition and increase prices. Of course this situation will mean it will be easier to make more profit, which will further entrench the status quo.

Let's not be naive - grass roots action is admirable but we have to keep lobbying for real regulatory change.

It does help to take action despite all this though, at least we get to feel sane again in the process. The attitude of the skeptics really is a thing of wonderment - how do these people think the world works?