Britney Spears

I heard Ms. Spears say this on an MTV program a few years ago.

"I wanna go University, you know - get knowledge"

At the risk of sounding snobbish I decided to post on this simply because the quote shows an interesting attitude to learning, one that I had not considered before: learning is a product, something you pick up and take away.

I always think of learning as discovering how little I can know, and how arbitrary human explanations of the world are. I think I would benefit from Britney's more 'simple' outlook.

If I wanted to define the University product perhaps it is maintaining an environment that allows people to learn to be creative with a system of representation - music, mathematics, experimentation, computation, prose etc. To credit BS, I'd say she's managed to learn to a fairly high level how to dance, sing and manipulate the media Moguls to semi-mutual effect.

Anyway, nice quote. Perhaps if B had gone to University when she said this she might have held it together a bit better...

The biological imperitive

Watch groups choose tools ( in modern day this is often software ). Look at the choices of tool, and ask, where is the locus of control e.g. who will have power when the system is rolled out. 90s software has given extraordinary power to the "system administrator". Today the wiki dominates which essentially removes any hierarchy but its amusing to watch the 'gatekeepers' baulk at this idea e.g. news corporations, academics, governments, NGOs, charities etc .

...the moneyless society, where everyone gets a resource quota, and people are not forced to compete against their will.

This sounds depressing, against human nature, we love the fight, surely?

The Cheap Round

Ask them questions, gather the data, and siphon off the results for your own glory. They wouldn't understand anyway, and we don't want to risk upsetting them.

Food for thought

The CABDYN seminar series most definitely deserves a blog entry on brainsplurge. The presentation on Physics and Complexity by Professor David Sherrington in particular stimulated the writing of this post. In fact it was one slide that really stuck in my head (which I'v been cheeky and copied).

First of all it seems physicists live in a weird and wonderful world. They are apparently searching for u = 0, a theory that defines everything, and have a license to think extremely big.

How I understand this slide is that if you're try solve a problem, and you have all the tools known to man at your fingertips, then you could say you're sitting on a optimisation curve where the green dot is on the graph. But, despite best efforts there might be a red point that is a far better solution to the problem, but with a huge branch of missing mathematics in the way.
Well, as I heard things, it seems physicists are happy to draw graphs that say that point red exists, and even assign a probability to its existence (second graphic).

Is this delving into cogntive science, and saying that mathematical truth is a function of cognition, and by optimising the problem solver, we can optimise the problem.

No idea how to conclude this blog post apart from giving my apologies to my undoubted mistranslation of a great talk on 'simulated annealing' in ferrous metals, the brain, and the stock market.

Laser's edge

The more you think through an idea, the closer it comes to a peak where it seems many answers are equally likely. I guess we can only think through an idea until we run out of information, so the process feels like we've reached a summit, but we've actually just arrived at the limit of our knowledge (or our ability to think).

This morning I was thinking:

(1) how convenient it is to be religious (believe in 'god'), because this helps people fail to recognise that their fate is in their hands, or instead for the religious people, its in the hands of the people that control them, (or brain-washed them in their youth). of course their is no such thing as a god helping us out, we shape our own lives, or it is shaped for us by our environment (including more rational people).

but this afternoon, this thought turned to:

(2) how necessary it is to believe in god, since we cannot know everything, and can never be in complete charge of our destiny, and if we try we'll become too tight in our thinking, so unhappy and unproductive.

these observations in themselves are moot, what is interesting is that a single belief (in god) can be arrived at for entirely different reasons. the ignorant and the learned will end up requiring faith, hope and all other human frailties to maintain their sanity.

of course there is a big difference between 1 and 2 in practical terms, 1 will not strive to understand why they need faith, they just do what they are told. 2 will walk a more painful and elegant path, but they will know why they ended up where they did.

i guess it all goes back to our animal ancestry, where we are constantly striving to spread our genes through shaping social structures around our own phenotypic needs. science is the new religious order, and tries to introduce a more egalitarian process to creating and analysing knowledge. before it was all about forcing people to memorise words, and live by them, now its about appreciating process and engaging in it.

there is one common theme, we create games (religions) to battle our egos from self-certainty and megalomania. its never healthy for self to become to sure. like mr Sidhartta and Pirsig said, zen and quality are only experienced when part of the flux (well they didn't use these words, but this is a brainsplurge). to look after our brains, so think, and be part of the global brain, this is how we have to live. and to complete an almost circular argument; it seems that we have to slow our brains down with illogical concepts to be part of the flow. we have to believe in faith and even god, even though we know this is nonsense, just to cope, because we are frail human beings.

but robots and genetic engineering are coming, maybe we can create a self that doesn't suffer so. but maybe there is no limit, and tomorrow's fundamentalists will be the people that say, even if you enhance you'll end up with the same issues: be back at point 1.

what will be next? is there any way to jump to another more satisfying train of though, an entirely different hillock?

How to be a customer

Capitalism is a beautiful system, but
Customers need education otherwise the average person is too easy to exploit,
Intelligent customers will shape a better market.

Mental models

How aware are we of the mental models that shape our point of view. I've started to realise recently that we are all carrying a huge bag of assumptions that relate to models of reality, and we'll act on these without questioning. There are certain models that once witnessed, are so compelling we take them as religious truths. Selfish capitalism is one of these. It is reinforced everyday and we find it harder and harder to see past it.

By allowing people to create and de-construct models they will be able to challenge these assumptions, and generate new possibilities. They'll be able to carry new models around with them, and act in new ways. Its important for as many people to construct their own understanding as possible, and opposed to receiving knowledge passively.

Simulation is the new literacy that will give people the skills to challenge received mental models, rather than merely act on them. Written understanding is no longer sufficient.

Green economics and consumerism

The trouble with being green, at root, is that capitalism has become synonymous with consumerism. There is no incentive for people to be green, because everytime an individual makes an effort to reduce their personal effect on the environment, they just make it cheaper for the people who don't make an effort. In other words the eco-warriors are just making the lives of the oilers easier.

It would be interesting to model this.

So a business idea. Create tariffs for eco-warriors that are the reverse of what we see today e.g. electricity should be offered at a cheaper than the market average price if an individuals keeps under a specific amount, but more expensive if they exceed this limit.

This would allow eco-warriors to oust the oilers from the market. Eco-warriors would become fitter members of the market eco-system.

This same principle could apply to all commodities if we had credit cards that scored purchases against a sustainable index of products. Flights, gas, everything.

Basically, to ensure equality in the fight against environmental degradation, nobody should be allowed to benefit from another's sacrifice. Eco-warriors should not be the suckers.

definition: oilers = greedy selfish ignorant b'stards

Dignified collective action

Why, so often does change only happen after people have gone through ridiculous levels of personal sacrifice. We've all heard stories of people jumping under a racehorse, hunger striking, marching outside parliament etc. but my point is, why do we the proles admire this so much. Surely we should be asking why we seem to have to make such catastrophic or plain undignified efforts to bring about change.

It seems obvious that we're not organised enough, we're prone to admire emotional gestures above reason, and prone to make change only when emotional pleas have been made.

Maybe a wave of reason will sweep through and we will make better thought out plans, more justified changes, and these acts will seem like grunts in our Neanderthal past.

I look forward to a day when we don't admire marching, we think of it as a kind of oppression by the political elite. Why should we have to march to get our opinion across, I can do that through an open online survey for instance. I'd get more from the results too, and I'd be more prepared to listen to the movement.

Are we all bound to our primitive tribal instincts, not really wanting to live in an enlightened society.

Change of emphasis for news corps

When you look at the news papers and the broadcasters struggling and bumbling their little heads around user generated content, you're lead to wonder what is the point of these multi-billion organisations. Well imagine a news story stripped of all the opinion, what have we left? The answer: data.

Seems to me a logical and rationalised progression. News corps should be representing their customers in asserting FOI on organisations their size, then being ingenious with the way they represent this information. That would be a days work.

With the data, we the populace would provide the opinion, and learn from the data. We'd be generating the hypotheses, and the news corps would learn from this, and then gather more data, and provide us with the tools to re-present the data. And so the knowledge supply chain continues onwards. The organisation enabling the individual. Money for a service, rather than the disservice we currently receive.

The Peter Principle

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence," Dr Laurence Peter, 1919-90, Canadian academic, from the 1969 book, The Peter Principle, written by Dr Peter and Raymond Hull - Peter was the academic, Hull the writer.

This is not meant to be a cheap stab at people, but a stab at the organisations people tend to make to establish 'order'. As I see it people do good work, burn out, get promoted then construct ivory towers so that people 'under' them cannot see the quality of their 'work'.

So why do these static hierarchies exist? Some ideas:

1. As people get older they loose interest in what they do but cannot be paid less
2. There is some primitive desire to dominate and be dominated
3. Fresh ideas must be suppressed, too many would become unmanageable (now there's a circular argument)

Well this list could go on forever, indeed it could have to end up becoming a treatise on the human condition. I like the ideas Pirsig put forward with his discussion of Quality. I see this relating to the topic of management because in the end hierarchies exist because we're still living the patterns of our ancient past. We are organised by social not intellectual considerations. Its like watching chimps scratching, fighting, mating, preening, displaying. Of course there is a certain attractiveness to the noble savage, the innocence of instinctual living, but we have nuclear bombs now...

It always amazes me how short human history is. Was it really only 150 000 years ago that we emerged as a species? Was it only 9000 years ago that we started 'writing'. Its incredible, I knew my great-grandmother fairly well, I could talk to her about her great-grandmother, and the stories she'd been told about her great grand-mother. That could have been a conversation that took place only 20 years ago about stories from 9 generations ago, so perhaps 200 years in the past. That's the end of the 17th century!

Nevertheless we are carrying a lot of baggage. In the 17th century people had huge families, disease was rife, medicine primitive, and we were 'tied' to the land. The point being, that if we get past the next major hurdles, namely energy scarcity, over-population, and pollution then we stand a good chance of getting beyond our lament to medieval society, and might be able to move onto a way of living that would keep the trekkies happy :-)

Footnote:

Of course there are some inspirational people who can provide leadership that helps the people around them. What do we do with these people though, put them in an institutional hierarchy?

Communicating understanding

You know that feeling when you experience something (film, writing, music an event) and the information seems to construct something terribly meaningful. Well the interesting thing to me is how no matter how hard an artist tries to communicate their ideas, they only seem to be able to communicate the surface directly. Its like its only possible to describe the topography of an idea, the textures across the form, and maybe even with a little movement. The viewer is left with this tantalising shape, so intriguing, so deliciously interesting, but that's it. The artist omitted the process, so the shape just floats away from the moment, down the stream of consciousness.

Now I think children see this as adults strutting their stuff, maintaining their market, but I am not sure it is this anymore. I think we generally don't know more than the shape, we can't hold more than the form, and some textures, the idea of holding the methodology or describing the process of realisation is beyond capability.

But of course any academic will tell you, it is the process that is the truth, because there is no truth, just more effective process.

So the artist just gives you the shape, and you are left to construct your own path, which may lead to, if you are lucky, another expression, a work, a moment of reflection on the turmoil that we know is out there but cannot bear to look at for too long.

So the artist is merely someone who carries the tools of thought capture with them at all times. There is no perfect process, nor absolute truth, each mind is fully equipped for perfect expression at any one moment. So carry your tools.

A business dynamic

Outsourcing is talked about as a way to cut costs. The trouble with this approach is that the bigger the operation the more business it must attract. Bigger operations may be less agile, and if they fail to adapt they may fall. Therefor big operations may pose a greater risk to customers over the long term.

I think the trick is for customers to get the most from big operators when the time is right, then have good exit strategies for when change is needed.

The bigger they are the harder they fall.

Of course well planned big operations can offer economies of scale.

Gustav Flaubert (1821-80)

"Le bon Dieu est dans le detail" - Gustav Flaubert.

This quote is also attributed to Michelangelo, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and Aby Warburg.

Confusingly it is a variation of "The Devil is in the details", which was apparently the maxim of the German pop singer Blixa Bargeld.

Anyway, god or devil, this expression catches my attention because it is so obviously true. Too often our lazy minds love to over-simplify, ignore things to suite our prejudices or convenience. I think I prefer to believe that god is in the details, as it encourages me to keep looking.

Maybe its was a lazy docrine that recast god into the devil, people who don't want you to find out that reality is beautifully complex.

PS. I was alerted to this quote by the masterful series called Spooks. It took me ages to find anything out about Flaubert, mostly because I didn't know how to spell his name, (miserable researcher and ignoramous that I am).

Jack Johnson

Oh, but everybody thinks
That everybody knows
About everybody else
Nobody knows anything about themselves
'Cause they're all worried about everybody else
Yea, mmhmm, aw

Opticon

The unit of information that causes imbalance within a relationship, through one partner consciously delaying the release of information until a favorable time in the future.

Cyncism

Cynicism (Greek: Kυνισμός) was originally the philosophy of a group of ancient Greeks called the Cynics, founded by Antisthenes.^{[citation needed]} The Cynics rejected all conventions, whether of religion, manners, housing, dress, or decency, advocating the pursuit of virtue in a simple and unmaterialistic lifestyle.^{[citation needed]}

Currently, the word 'cynicism' generally describes the opinions of those who maintain that self-interest is the primary motive of human behaviour, and are disinclined to rely upon sincerity, human virtue, or altruism as motivations

The Rise of the Meritocracy - Michael Young

With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before.

The Guardian, 29th June 2001.

As energy flows through society, the young will exert themselves, be rewarded then seek to build ivory towers...so they can nurture their young.

Education systems need:

1. To control access to information (CAM, OED etc)
   
2. To define the metrics of success (examination, review)
   

Office politics

Here's a list of rule for dealing with office politics:

1. Keep it professional at all times.
2. Play the game being played, not the one you want or think should be played.
3. Don't make enemies. Don't burn bridges.
4. Don't whine and complain.
5. Don't intimidate superiors. Try to avoid going over your superior's head.
6. Don't make others look bad.
7. Don't criticize employees or bosses.
8. Couch criticism in terms of employer's interests, not personal.
9. Help others get what they want.
10. Establish affiliations of mutual advantage with important people.
11. Find common ground with others.
12. Don't discuss personal problems.
13. Selectively self-disclose.
14. Don't assume anything will stay secret.
15. Create win/win solutions.
16. Keep employer's perspective in mind.
17. Cultivate a positive, simple, accurate image.
18. Force yourself to do difficult, uncomfortable or scary things.
19. Be pleasant. Laugh and smile.
20. Be assertive and tough when required, not aggressive.
21. Don't oversell. Be natural. Develop your own style.

And my thoughts on each:

1. Bit vague, surely professional people would never play politics
2. But this is a self perpetuating rule, one that can only lead to social decline
3. Yes, I agree here in principle but this should be a long term view, it might be necessary to make short-term enemies
4. Never, totally agree
5. Hmmm, you have to believe in social hierarchies, which I can do if the hierarchy grew through strict compliance with reason e.g. within a meritocracy
6. So if you work hard and create something great, and this makes a comparison with a colleagues work look poor, this is a fault?
7. Constructive criticism is important. But I think the author is thinking of a link to point 4.
8. Yes, be constructive
9. If it relates to what I want from my work. Selflessness is not a currency in a commercial world. Sad but true.
   
10. Yes, just said this in different words.
11. Again, work within SIGs...
    
12. Okay okay
13. Yes, big difference between friend and colleague.
14. Yes
15. Yep. But counteract this with knowing rights, should be judged on your work
    
16. This is a good one, thinking strategically is very important.
17. But what about the employer doesn't seem to know what direction it is going
18. Positive, that's fallen off, perhaps why I am writing this blog
19. Totally agree, this is very important
20. See 18
21. Yes, never show anger
22. Understated is a good brand.

While sensible, this is a list for creeps. This list smacks of faking human relationships...is there anything worse that a false laugh.

There should be only one rule for dealing with office politics, rise above them, focus on what you are creating, and do what you judge to be best. Be optimistic for relationships, don't write anyone off. (As opposed to views held by Yeung:

claims colleagues can be divided into four types — bigwigs, rising stars, no-hopers and has-beens — depending on their level of influence and seniority in an organisation. He suggests the ambitious should cultivate relationships with influential bigwigs and rising stars, but waste no time on no-hopers and has-beens.") - Times online, A Faker's Guide to Office Politics, 15th October 2005.

In the long term this gamesmanship will catch up on everyone: see the U. S. of A's.

Betrand Russell

'..is in fact to be sought in its very uncertainty...While diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be.'

Dom Anthony Sutch

'..we seem to believe you can fatten a pig just by weighing it'

The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker

It is certainly reassuring that there are authors out there with razor-sharp intellects ready and willing to rip to pieces the scientific charlatans, the people that weasel their way into our affections only to transplant false ideas of identity through exploiting the science brand to ill effect.

We see this exploitation of science a lot these days. I think science is suffering from its own success. We're at a juncture now, as science overtakes religion as the route to and root of truth, then the layman gets increasingly impatient where answers are not forthcoming. I am ashamed to admit that I did not continue with genetics for precisely this reason: a page in a University-level biology textbook is typically the result of several people's life work. I was in too much of a rush to understand that in terms of achievement, this is immense. Science is slow, and our lust for knowledge corrupts this process and allows scientific charlatans to make claims that put them in the lime light, and probably in the money too.

Having said this I do have some doubts about Pinker's argument. He's basically arguing for a sensible position on the nurture-nature debate, one where genes and the environment shape our evolution, both personal and historical. Nothing controversial here you might think, but Pinker's shows how many scientists have got it wrong, skewing 'reason' to align with their own political beliefs. So for instance, if you're 'right wing' then you'll believe in the determinism of the genes so the need to expunge those with bad inheritance. If you're 'left wing' you'll believe that the mind and culture are separate from biology so we just have to organise our environment in the most civilised way (- oh dear, perhaps this is a good sign that I find it hard to describe the link between politics and science).

When I studied genetics however it was the way that statistics was used that bothered me. The debate hinges on studies of twins. We are told that twins have remarkable similarities even when they are separated at birth and grow in different environments. What's more, when adopted children are treated exactly the same, they invariably turn out very different. This is evidence to the idea that there is a strong causal link between our genetic makeup and behavior. My suspicions rise because of three main points:

1. There are not many identical twins in the world and fewer that have been raised in very different environments
2. The way that similarities and differences are characterised - I am just very skeptical about putting objective properties on something as abstract as human behavior
   
3. The studies tend to be short and cross sectional (as far as I know) and people do not react in the same way to an environment each time. Humans are not like chemicals in a test tube, we can very easily play with the minds of the scientists making the observations.

Of course biologists use other techniques aside from twin studies. In general they will look up and down the stack in terms of genes, proteins, cells, organs, tissues, ecosystem to try to explain observations at many levels, and describe causal links between the stack of biological units.

Even writing these down makes me suspect my own suspicions. Perhaps these doubts stem from having seen so much flaky psychology, and not having met many identical twins. But more worryingly, perhaps I hold a mental model of human nature that is not well informed. Despite having a degree in genetics my mind holds out to to a set of values that wants to believe that genes play little part in shaping our lives.

Its funny, writing this down feels ridiculous. Of course our genes play an enormous role in shaping our lives. I think my pigheadedness stems from a belief that once we understand a system, then we can control it, so re-gain free will.

Perhaps in the future we will go to school, put our genetic map into a computer, some software will then tell us how we are likely to live our lives, and we can then formulate the necessary learning schedule to mitigate against an unhappy life.

But, having said this we're faced with the question, how deep does the rabbit hole go. Also we have no idea how much we should use our ability to solve problems as opposed to just going with the flow e.g. does vaccination solve problems, or store them up for future generations? Will genetic manipulation give grief to civilisation in 5 years. I suppose you have to have faith in 'progress' and man's ingenuity.

The Machine Stops - E.M. Forster

She had never known silence, and the coming of it nearly killed her - it did kill many thousands of people outright. Ever since her birth she had been surrounded by the steady hum. It was to the ear what artificial air was to the lungs, and agonizing pains shot across her head. And scarcely knowing what she did, she stumbled forward and pressed the unfamiliar button, the one that opened the door of her cell. E.M. Forster, first published in 1909