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?

What is work?

Why do we all have to work? Its not that I am against work per se, it just that I see so many jobs that are utterly pointless. Society is structured to make us need employment, and employers entice people into captivity with salaries, permanent contracts and pensions. In this world of hyper-networked people, is this really the best way to organise effort?

I guess part of the problem is due to seemingly genetic desire to create in-groups. Exclude to enrich, feed our need for status, find the best mate. On the other hand, there's the free-spirit in us all. Many have escaped captivity, we can contribute as we travel and learn without taking too much from the planet.

I was prompted to write now after reading the news about the Twitter Opera. This is another example of the wisdom of the crowds, just like all the companies outsourcing their problems to the masses, this seems to be the way to go. Why not pay everyone a standard salary. If they want to work let them. Give everyone enough. Those that want to go the extra mile can earn more if they want. The people that want to work can use their industry to make things as efficient as possible. Work would simply be defined as doing things to help as many people as possible not need to work. We can get rid of all the pointless jobs through creating robots and intelligent information systems.

Its funny though, when you write this down you see all the holes in the master plan: if work needed to be done, how would we choose who has to do it; lottery?

Those that aren't working can dedicate their lives to learning, sport, adventure, painting, music, raise cultured children etc. They can follow their passions as long as its in a very humble way. We'd all live in a environmentally sustainable way unless we're doing research that could help more people avoid work.

The trouble with too many jobs is they are simply a way of controlling people. Jobs are too often the way to make managers feel they have a place in the world. It seems we have two strong human instincts: the need to captivate and the need to be captured.

People don't learn anything by swiping food through a checkout point, or processing bits of paper, and creating widgets that nobody needs. So why oblige people to take part in the name of employment statistics.

Of course many people have thought about this before. I don't think this is communism. I am saying let people be free to live humble but cultured lives. Let the boundaries of freedom be set by a sustainable life, not a cancerous must always expand economy looking to exploit the planet as fast as possible to optimise the status of a few people. We are not wolves, we are humans, we can rise about the most primitive systems.

Brendan Behan

I saw a notice which said 'Drink Canada Dry' and I've just started.

Working title: mentalese

Stunned silence

The message bounced upwards, and only a few ripples remained. The silence in the garden was palpable. Even the angel looked perturbed, the day they always knew could come had arrived.

People, the earth would bulge,
Carnivores would take over from grazers,
The planet would limp onwards,
The Oceans would continue to churn onto the shores,
But land would give up the fight.

The human virus would grow too big,
The burden too great,
So much stupidity would weigh too heavy on the balance,
That had tipped to a slide from day one.
Some will remain innocent,
And they will leave. The rest will perish.

The shores would reveal themselves once more,
When the creators return to start the process again.

Toad belched. They return. The car backed into the garage. The humans came out, wandered into the garden and stopped dead. The angel recounted the story.

Pale they wondered back into the house. The cats briefed the slip to the roof. Fritter away this time, it had no point, why bother with the normal pace. Jump forward. The humans ran out into the street and began to wreak havoc. Jump. Escape. Sadness, a few billion years of history on this beautiful blue-green rock finished. Inevitability can be forgotten on such lengthy time lines.

They boiled on transit, their molecules razed to the most basic. Seeds fell onto the new planet, and their began another experiment. Serendipity?

A message beneath the water

Time stood still. The water pulled up and uttered its message:

In between chaos, where fractals type patterns onto imagination, where mathematics and art entertain the puppet that dances ahead of the humans mind, there will soon be a terrible realisation for Man. Their genes cannot go any further in this planet's evolution. We the Iarquarty have waited patiently for this day. You the agents of Nature will come with us, but the human ego cannot cope with being tamed. Nor can their minds cope with the inevitability of what they will soon realise. Their societies will collapse when they stare straight into the limits of their imagination. Individual tribes have already seen this and have been trying to change the clockwork but they will soon find they cannot support the dimensionality to appreciate any more complexity.

You the animals and inanimate are their only comfort. Some will cope. Most will not accept this final chapter in human evolution and will perish or take others down with them. Expect strife on a scale never seen before.

Toad began to swell, his warts pulsating and oozing a vile puss. Poor Woolie suddenly regressed to kitten. If he'd known his mother he'd seek her warmth now. One look towards Furndrine told him she was not in any state to offer comfort. Only the angel remained serene, but Angels always do. We angels have always know this day would come, we've crept out from the humans minds since their beginnings. We've watched them and seen this final chapter coming. They hung onto hope primed with ever greater destruction of their surroundings to shroud themselves in a mad grinning haze. Of course some will escape this planet before it collapses, but this is to avoid the fact that their life form is flawed, irreparable. Toad belched a knowing accord. Yes, if you don't live in fear of misery it is painted everywhere in black and white.

Cuckoo shouts down, what about their creations, their technology networks? Surely they can evolve beyond their genes and history?

The spark that started the story has to be perfect, otherwise the fate is inevitable. Their computers are just as flawed because they do not know what questions to ask.

Woolie had sneaked over to Furndrine and nestled close to her warmth. They were the closest to the humans and had some affection for them. They had managed to live with the headache that followed the constant humdrum of their grunting impulses, the positive feedback of their trajectory. They knew how to squint and when to cover their souls to find some affection for this most perverse of species. The angel too could see a love for them but of course did not bother to feel it.

Another message appeared beneath the water: we can take you to our world, you decide.

Stephen Pinker

One of them is a simple logical point that no matter how important learning and culture and socialization are, they don't happen by magic.

People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections.

Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?

Staring into the water

Fat white clouds drifted across the blue sky above, a dragonfly touched the water and caused it to fold, and momentarily blur the perfect vision below. Furndrine had caught the young pretender's eye. He sat their frozen to the ground, looking more like a furry statue than the kitten that had only just started to poke at the word cat.

Trembling above a cuckoo chick bleated for more as its diligent surrogate parent slaves fluttered off on overdrive for more food. This cuckoo had a murky past. Its genes of course had been oscillating between Europe and Africa for millenia but times were changing. In fact it seemed the whole world was changing of late. The direction of winds, the landscape beneath. The mover shakers seemed to have gone berserk over the blink of the most recent 3000 years. What were they doing and why. What story were they trying to conjure. It just seemed to go on and on like a cancer rolling off greasy hills into a filthy ocean, ever swelling against a failing coastal stalwart.

The happy cats stared hopefully upwards, the clouds still puffed across the blue that shielded all from space, even managing to blot out a vapour trail or two from those metal shacks that that hurtled through the stratisphere. The cuckoo wriggled to the edge of the nest his mother had stolen only a month ago, the skeletons of his adopted siblings picked clean by ants below.

A car started chez Furdrine. The humans were off for their weekly shop. They crashed and waddled around as usual, they must be deaf to be able to cope with so much noise. They sped off as darker clouds started to congregate over the clear water, Furdrine and Woolie seemed to age in a second. Their whiskers bristled as a cooler air caressed a breeze that promised to flex muscle.

When humans are nowhere to be seen the statues are allowed to get up. The angel in the water stretched an elegant arch, a ballerina just for amusement this ominous morning. She clicked her greetings in her angelic tongue, the sounds had no precedent but somehow all of the garden's sentient beings understood. The metronome of nature was at a tipping point. Someone had to tame the humans again. They'd become drunk on black gold, stuffing dead animals into every orifice of their sordid existence.

The toad knew why. His warty existence plumbed the darkness on a daily basis. He had no time for happiness, the mere attempt of a smile made him feel depressed. His joy came from knowing, from avoiding illusions. With this flat-lining life he could taste the stink and where it came from. The toads were the species ideal for solving the tragedy that was about to occur.

Angel said Toad. Feature my thoughts in this garden. We must transmit. And they did.

From high up a beam of light shone down. A message from the edge of our galaxy appeared and wrote the following beneath the water:

Josh Epstein on agent-based modelling

5:15-6.02:



"Anyone who has an opinion on these kinds of topics has some kind of model in their head, its just an implicit model that can't be compared with data, and can't be tested for internal consistency, and can't be the basis of a disciplined analysis of anything. My favourite point is that everyone is a modeller, the only difference is that some people are implicit modellers, when nobody really knows what their model is, including themselves, and some people are explicit modellers, where we try to write it out carefully, and then we can get rid of what's bad, improve on what's good, and compare it to data, and be hard nosed about it. But on these types of problems [small pox] there's just no hope of thinking about it without a model"

Hopefully it won't be good enough to state an opinion without showing all the assumptions that sit behind it. Many opinions are simple views on complex systems, which cannot be understand without a computer model. Intellectual bullying is done by the people who have an 'instinct' or 'intuitive' opinion. e.g. something that satisfies their egos, but does not correlate with the real world.

• Two real life conversations:
  
• Three species of birds: crow, magpie, peacock
  
• Two brand names for food: danone, heinz
  
• The words for six signs: no left turn, vauxall bridge straight on
  
• The name of one planet or star: neptune
  
• The name of a lipstick: revlon
  
• One time of day: 1.11
  
• The title of a book of fiction: me cheetah
  
• The title of a painting: bodice
  
• The name of a dead politician: Lord William Russel
  
• Two types of onion and one type of potato: vidalia, georgia, maris piper
  
• The names of three items in a hardware store: chisel, screw, hammer
  
• A make of gun: chesterfield
  
• The speech of a child: its mine...
  

News article: pick-your-own strawberry farm shut by health and safety killjoys

Free-writing exercise

flippant cat curtails accident with theatrical banana

sloping along the garden wall, Woolie paraded his new collar. these were good days. a butterfly fluttered through the early morning cool air, teasingly a short distance beyond reach. Woolie's paw twitched but this was not a day for risks.

winding his way through the scrub land between back garden and the new paradise. he could see her now, preening in the sun by the back door. so relaxed yet precise her fur glistened as it bent underneath the gentle caress. he thought he heard a gentle purr as she stretched out, and then, rolled over as though the world had no cares.

Furndrine had just moved to the neighbourhood. her new owners had a small green car, they smiled all the time, and the two kids never terrorised small creatures. Furndrine was a good owner, she looked after her humans well. what's this? with one flick of the tail she propelled herself accurately to the garden wall. this was a moment to lust over the birds bathing high up in the bath. why did humans care so much about this flying snacks. she knew she couldn't reach, nevertheless, this was a good way to spend 10am.

Coyly Woolie gestured his greetings. Did she hear him - she began to climb down, walk away, an age past until she looked back and twitched a whisker. Should Woolie move closer. He froze, she looked unimpressed. He took a step into her realm, she looked more unimpressed. He stepped back, disdain painted her perfect felted down.

Panic struck, there was no right next move. Agitation spread madness through his muscles. He jumped up crazily, made a swipe at the birds tweeting like Harpies above, along the garden fence, down the path, back again. Stop. Furndrine now looked perplexed. Well that was an improvement. A back flip, and she began to smile.

Good morning Furndrine. What did you have for breakfast? Uh? How are your humans? Good good, coming to your later on I think. Oh. Yes. You? I was having a wonderful morning until you turned up like a wildcat. She winked. He felt deflated. She moved up the garden to the pond. They looked in together. His heart nearly stopped.

John Keats - negative capability

I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

http://www.mrbauld.com/negcap.html

The mental switch

There is thinking about writing, and not writing. Writing is a zone. Like an athlete or a surgeon, you have to train yourself to get into this zone.

Word hoard, kenning, old norse word for a supply of words

Play, Pleasure and Games

Energy:
he looked up, punched the pirate in the face, stole his parrot, and hat for good measure, then ran towards the gangway just as the boat set sail
Surprises:
with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing
Never been written in the English language before:
calamity stormed through the wannabe sailors vacuous mind

Poem/ story using one of the phrases above:
phrase: with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing
Sitting atop an imaginary mountain she glared over the panorama of her mind's eye. or at least attempted to. car motors guzzled the winter air outside, street lamps spread their depressing gloom within her damp front room. no money and out of time for a real holiday, her only real relief was sit upright on this tenth arse armchair, straight back, and try to let the synapses relax.

lately the practice had become painful. the moment before the calm that normally descended was filled with a calamitous flood of thoughts streamed from the ever increasing nightmare that was her daily life. the nutcases at work, the staleness of single life, lackluster with seemingly no options to escape. how did it come to this?

it seemed that as the mind relaxed the vicious thoughts just accelerated. give space to angry chaos and it accelerates. the pounding of fearful sentences carved tiredness into her skull.

this was a stage in life when a meta-understanding was necessary. to step back, learn how to catch the runaway thoughts, tame them, slow their Brownian motion, direct them along paths etched to humanity in all its social wonders.

a train journey to a weekend away, sat upright on a beautiful hill looking over a verdant hills next to a tent filled with everything necessary for as many days as it will take. tomorrow morning she'll start. camp meal. turn in. dreams start.

moonlight bathes the tent. her eyes follow a single beam over the night. an owl hoots. relaxation spouts the cocophony from home. she persists. the beating drum of doubt takes hold. she tries to smooth the edges of her skull, let the deflections rebound without force, but that's mad it makes no sense. tiredness whells, she fights it back.

dawn breaks. she wakes, blood trickling from her nose. she's freezing.

Free writing for 5 minutes
Seed words (from the age of reason - sartre): added with a | deprecating, | harassed air: 'Of

petulance, this is the end of the story for you young man, your journey's end. the young man exclaimed, but i have only just started, why must it end now before I've set sail. because you are not fit for the voyage, you don't have your sea legs, where's your parrot, do you even know why you are leaving this port? calamity stormed through the wannabe sailors vacuous mind, who cares what this judgmental pilot says, I am going anyway, but wait, maybe he has a point, am i simply running into stormy waters, towards another port where nothing will have changed. doubt streamed from the Portishead song that had chimed in his mind too many times in those dark days a few months ago. every word that rebounded from the corners of his mind seemed to hurt, with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing. he looked up, punched the pirate in the face, stole his parrot, and hat for good measure, then ran towards the gangway just as the boat set sail. looking back as water stretched between him and his decision he could see nothing. the pirate had disappeared, the port seemed bland, and there was no proportionate drama on this vessel, his new home.

Kennings

A kenning (Old Norse kenning [cʰɛnːiŋg], Modern Icelandic pronunciation [cʰɛnːiŋk]) is a circumlocution used instead of an ordinary noun in Old Norse and later Icelandic poetry. For example, Old Norse poets might replace sverð, the regular word for “sword”, with a compound such as ben-grefill “wound-hoe” (Egill Skallagrímsson: Höfuðlausn 8), or a genitive phrase such as randa íss “ice of shields” (Einarr Skúlason: ‘Øxarflokkr’ 9). The term kenning has been applied by modern scholars to similar figures of speech in other languages too, especially Old English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning

Examples:
bear : bee wolf : beowulf
blood : battle sweat
corpse : raven harvest
chieftain or king : breaker of rings
eyes : brow stars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kennings

My own:
computer : mind's work horse
sky : gaseous ceiling
car : wreaking wrecker

Interesting parallel:
In cognitive linguistics, metonymy refers to the use of a single characteristic to identify a more complex entity and is one of the basic characteristics of cognition. It is common for people to take one well-understood or easy-to-perceive aspect of something and use that aspect to stand either for the thing as a whole or for some other aspect or part of it.

Stephen Pinker on 'enlightenment' and why we're not designed for it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIPQg657LwA&feature=related

2mins 08 seconds

Talking about why science is difficult to most people (roughly):

"I think some of the impediments come from our social emotions rather than our cognitive limitations, namely the idea that you should believe something because it is true, does not come naturally to people [laughs]. In most times and places assertions of beliefs has been a sign of solidarity with ones culture, you say that you believe things to show that you are a loyal member of a coalition, its a matter of asserting authority, politeness and convention."

Too true. Reminds me of blasphemy and towing the corporate line, two words that have and continue to be associated with a great deal of bloodshed. Also reminds me of Pirsig's assertion that we need to separate the social from the intellectual, live in a world where we can express and act on ideas freely.

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?