Six insoluble mysteries which may end us all

Occasionally we come across websites with lurid titles like “10 UNSOLVED MYSTERIES TO GIVE YOU THE HEEBIE JEEBIES!” And it’s all to do with odd bits of old stone or dodgy claims about flying crockery. Which made us think of a few everyday mysteries about Homo sapiens which are enough to give anyone the aforesaid Heebies, with a few jeebies thrown in for good measure. Because if we do not develop the cognitive capacity to solve them, we could well be heading for the biological equivalent of the junkyard,

(1) Where is the line between the individual and society? Countries that go too far towards prizing the State end up economically stagnant, as the society is captured by a small self-serving elite who grab all the resources. (Think USSR or Venezuela) On the other hand societies with no idea of the common good, where untaxed individuals run around doing what they like, not only end up without worthwhile armies or roads. They also get captured by an elite, this time billionaires, with almost identical outcome to the deluded Commies. No one has resolved this tension in any stable way.

(2) Emotion utterly dominates reason. All the technological and scientific advances that make life worth living (you really wanna give up soap, huh?) are formed in the reasoning part of the brain. Yet most people are driven by deep tides of emotion welling up from the subconscious. These rarely lead to anything profitable, and are the principal causes of most of the obsessions, addictions and generational hatreds which form such an immense drag on progress. Why is logic so weak and blind passion so strong?

(3) The drive to divide into hostile groups We often allude to this one; think football supporters and the Robbers Cave experiment. The American writer James Baldwin saw identity as a serious trap, denying us our own better nature. It may take all the AI in the world to solve this one

(4) The constant need for persecution of others, particularly the weak or disabled. Anyone still deluded about “the moral superiority of the oppressed” could learn from what happens to disabled neighbours in cheap housing estates, and how the noble proletarians make their lives utter hell. Why does everyone want justice, but only for themselves?

(5) The local and the trivial Why do so many people spend so much time learning about the lives of celebrities in tacky media outlets, when they would profit much more from reading magazines like The Economist or Science?

(6) An utter inability to change minds Most people are really rather deft and clever about what is around them; the hierarchies around their neighbours, families, jobs, and so on. But most of what they learned about bigger things like science or society was laid down decades ago. And the habits of mind formed in youth seem impossible to change, even when the survival need to do so becomes clear. This may ultimately be the most dangerous mystery of them all.

No species, however successful it seems at its peak, can long survive the competition from a better-adapted one. Our predecessor Homo erectus had evolved into top predator, and colonised three continents. Before it was utterly outclassed by the more intelligent Homo sapiens in its various subspecies. A newer, more intelligent form of human, perhaps incorporating elements from artificial intelligence and genetic engineering should be able to solve the above cognitive problems with ease. If that happens, there will be little enough space for the predecessor, and no motive to preserve us either.

#climate change #learning #cognition #human evolution #unsolved mysteries

Why we’re two years into a generational war

In the spring of 1789, Europe was at peace. It looked as if it would be a long one. The American-French victory in the Independence war had restored a rough equality of force between Britain and France, the two world powers, so that neither had obvious motives to attack. Further east, Austria, Russia and Prussia had achieved a rough status quo, or at least, had sufficiently fought each other out. To be frank, China, the Mughals and the Ottomans were ceasing to count. Just as in 1990, the world thought it could look forward to decades of relative peace, trade and prosperity.

Instead, events in France lead to the unfolding of a cataclysmic series of events. Each of them so large that on their own they would have been world-shattering. But in the twenty six years-a generation- from 14th July 1789 to 18th June 1815, they were so many and rapid that they left a world transformed and unrecognizable. Think Revolution, regicides, wars, terror, directory, Napoleon, Trafalgar, Austerlitz, Tilsit, Spain, Russia, Battle of the Nations, Elba, Waterloo all tripping in, one after the other in bewildering succession. *(If not, read Robert Harvey The War of Wars-it’s serious history which, amazingly, feels like a page-turning thriller {1])

We know believe that the events that began on 24th February 2024 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine have unleashed a chain of events which will take years and decades to play out. The two opposed coalitions are too big to easily fail. The issues at stake are too profound to escape the debate of war. As a blog which is read all around the world, you might not want to us to take sides. Yet we have to be honest about where we stand. On the one hand the US, EU and their allies have many grievous faults. The other side-Russia, Iran, China and others, may indeed claim- we stress claim-to represent the relatively disadvantaged. However, we know one thing. We are free to write these words in our country, as we would be equally free to criticise our Government, or our allies. All know that we would not be if we were sitting in one of those countries opposed to us. Our Georgian ancestors, who gave up their comfortable lives to confront a similar peril knew that was the single, irredeemable difference between them and their foes. That is what makes our cause just. And one day, we will prevail.

[1]https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Wars-Struggle-1789-1815-1793-1815/dp/1845296354

#ukraine #russia #china #usa #EU #canada #uk #australia #iran #peace #war #freedom of speech

Two stories that hint how we may become a new species

Things aren’t going too well for poor old Homo sapiens. Like a bacterial colony in a petri dish, we are starting to use up our resources fast, and pathological symptoms are appearing. When a species runs up against its ecological limits, it is quickly replaced by better adapted competitors. Two stories from Nature Briefings indicate how things might go. And that we have a way out of this if we are prepared to adapt.

Report Charts machines meteoric rise Better at maths. Better at pattern recognition. Better at reading. Remember that bright kid in the class? Next time you heard of him was twenty years later and he was Chief Executive Officer of a blue chip corporation. Well, that’s the way it is with AI now. .

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems can now nearly match — and sometimes exceed — human performance in tasks such as reading comprehension, image classification and mathematics. “The pace of gain has been startlingly rapid,” says social scientist Nestor Maslej, editor-in-chief of the annual AI Index. The report calls for new benchmarks to assess algorithms’ capabilities and highlights the need for a consensus on what ethical AI models would look like.Nature | 6 min read
Reference: 2024 AI Index report

Milestone Map of Brain Connectivity Yet there may be a chance of survival. First read this

Researchers have mapped the tens of thousands of cells and connections between them in one cubic millimetre of the mouse brain. The project, which took US$100 million and years of effort by more than 100 scientists, is a milestone of ‘connectomics’, which aims to chart the circuits that coordinate the organ’s many functions. Identifying the brain’s architectural principles could one day guide the development of artificial neural networks. Teams are now working on mapping larger areas, although a whole-brain reconstruction “may be a ‘Mars shot’ — it’s really much harder than going to the Moon”, says connectomics pioneer Jeff Lichtman. Nature | 12 min read

The point is that AI and mammal brains have one thing in common. Both depend on networks and the system control architecture that runs them. In theory it should be possible to create beings which fuse AI with biological neurons. This has already begun, in a small way, with things like brain implants and limb attachments which can interface with the nervous system. It is possible to imagine biocyber hybrids with advanced intellectual and physical capacities which are ready for the challenges of the future. It looks as if Homo sapiens itself may no longer be up to it. But the genus Homo will survive, albeit in modified form. Which has happened successfully before. We’ll leave you with some thoughts from the old British Rocker David Bowie, who memorably observed

The earth is a bitch, we’ve finished our news/Homo sapiens have outgrown their use

Which is the exact text of this blog. He just said it better.

#davis bowie #AI #neural networks #future #pollution #global warming # genetic engineering

How an old History Book still has very real lessons for today

It’s funny how some books suddenly explain something you’ve puzzled all your life. One of our obsessions was always “What was the Roman Empire all about? And why did it fall?” And we ploughed our way through everything from Gibbon to Asimov’s Foundation series. Until we came across RH Davis A History of Medieval Europe”[1]. Suddenly, things began to fall into place.

Before the Industrial Revolution, it was far cheaper to transport goods by water than by land. The achievement of Rome was to be the culminating power that united the whole Mediterranean Basin into a single, prosperous trading area. Where cities could flourish, ideas spread and production be subdivided to the most efficient source. And to do it all with the minimum effort. This was partly by religious tolerance: before Christianity, all beliefs and none were accorded equal status. But it was also done by Law. As Davis explains

“…….[The Romans] knew that all the Mediterranean peoples had a common interest in the commerce of their sea…….they believed that all men had by nature an instinctive knowledge of what was right and what was wrong…and that it was possible to frame laws in accordance with the standard of nature. They distinguished between custom, which was of local significance and law, which appertained to justice and was of universal significance …...

But the barbarians who entered the Empire did not quite see things that way. Most of them-Goths, Burgundians , and so on, came to enjoy, not destroy. But:

“barbarian invaders claimed that their own laws were were particular to themselves, since they were not founded ..on reason, but on the dictates of their divine ancestors….[the Roman Empire] was… cracked by the determination of barbarian invaders to prefer the law of their ancestors to the law of reason, since that preference implied the superiority of loyalty to one’s race over loyalty to the civilised world. It was shattered when traders lost the freedom of the sea. When that happened , the greater part of Europe reverted to an agricultural economy, in which there was no place for the cities that made men civilised” (all quotes pp 4-6)

Today, after a brief period of globalisation, we live in an age of retreat. In most places, people are reverting into ethnic or religious tribes. There are cries to tear down even the few international laws we have, which might have done some thing to keep the peace. Now, there is a very respectable argument to say this is in accordance with the most basic instincts of human nature. And so it might be. But Davis tells us very clearly what the price must be if we now follow this that course. The Dark Ages.

[1] RHC Davis A History of Medieval Europe from Constantine to St Louis Longman 1988

#RHC Davis #Middle ages #medieval #trade #henri #pirenne #dark ages #antiquity #economics

When AI met Archaeology

Photo by Michael Giugliano on Pexels.com

There’s nothing like a breakthrough, when a long delayed problem that no one could crack, suddenly yields to fresh thought. And opens the door to a vast potential new field of learning. Which is why this news from Nature Briefings has been such fun to read in itself, as well as digging into its juicy link article , which, by the way, is eminently readable. Essay on Pleasure revealed in Ancient Scroll

Student researchers have used machine learning to read text hidden inside charred, unopenable scrolls from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. The newly revealed passages discuss sources of pleasure including music, the colour purple and the taste of capers. The team trained an algorithm on tiny differences in texture where the ink had been, based on three-dimensional computed tomography scans of the scrolls.Nature | 7 min read

The point for us is this bringing together of two highly disparate disciplines. If archaeologists had said ”please give us enormous sums to crack the problem of the Herculaneum scrolls” someone would, very politely, have told them to go take a walk. And we take a safe guess that the principal interests of AI folk are directed towards finance, pharmaceuticals and physics. It’s when the two are brought together, serendipitously, that we see this marvellous synergy, this sum becoming worth infinitely more than its parts.

And what synergy! For all the many learned books which have been written about it, our knowledge of the Ancient World is actually rather limited. Even authors like Plato and Eratosthenes have only survived in a few, fragmentary texts. The same is true of many early Christian writings. There is only one fragment of the New Testament from before 150 AD, and its tiny. [1]The new CT technique could potentially decipher thousands of fragmentary or badly preserved texts. As our database suddenly grows, we may well find some startling new insights. Or old LSS doctrine that research money spent in one field will pay off in many seems to be vindicated once again. Time for a very smug cup of coffee. No biscuits.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri

#archaeology #CT #AI #scrolls #herculaneum #greeks #romans #christians #jews

Why the origins of this blog go back to 1687

We have made no secret of it. This is a Whig blog, written, researched, and edited by a senior staff whose political and philosophical affiliations are all to that most progressive and enlightened segment of mankind. (what the rest of them in this building think, we have no idea) But where did the name come from-and what about that of the Tories, the very antithesis, nemesis and inveterate opponents of all that we hold most dear?

According to the admirable Lord Lexden, writing in House magazine [1], the earliest origins of the word “Whig” go back to the bitter constitutional debates which followed the English Civil War. The “Whigs” were generally in favour of some kind of Constitutional Monarchy along modern lines, and feared the autocratic tendencies of the Papacy. Their opponents (unjustly, of course) mocked them as “Whiggamaires” a kind of horse rustler from the wilder lands of Scotland. They labelled their opponents, who wished to see the succession of the devoutly Catholic James as “Tories” after lawless Irish thieves, whom they described as

“popishly affected, outlaws, robbers, such as our law saith have Caput Lupinum, fit and ready to be destroyed and knocked on the head by any one that could meet with them”.

A little strong,perhaps.

Now you might say that the programmes of both parties have changed a bit since then. But, is there just an underlying kernal of truth somewhere in the recondite reaches of History? Perhaps of psychological type and preference?. To be a Whig was to be essentially looking to the future, and to reach, gropingly, towards new ideas in governance, science and belief. To be a Tory was to cling to what was, toexalt Authority and Custom as the supreme arbiters. Has anything changed?

[1]https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/tale-two-parties-origin-tory-party

#tory #whig #liberal #new labour #parliament

Why you should be happy in 2024. Whatever it brings

Whatever has happened in your life, and whatever catastrophes 2024 may bring, gentle reader, you have no right not to be of Good Cheer. Because you have had forty years of life, which began on 26th September 1983, when the world avoided catastrophic nuclear war by the narrowest of margins.

After a brief detente in the1970s, the world in 1983 was moving towards the peak of of a second Cold War, as author Brian J Morra ably explains in The Near Nuclear War of 1983 [1] Mutual fear and suspicion between the USSR and the Western Alliance had been growing exponentially since 1979. By 1983, each sides’ defence forces were on hair trigger alert. The shooting down of the Korean Airliner 007 on 1st September had caused a total severing of communication. Then on 26th September*[2] the OKO Soviet Defence system reported that the US had launched a nuclear strike from its base at Grand Forks, ND. Fortunately for the world, the duty officer on the Soviet side was one Stanislav Petrov, of whom Brian Morra comments

Petrov possessed unique knowledge of the strengths and flaws in the Soviets’ new satellite warning system, and assessed that the launch reports—which came in several, harrowing waves—must be false alarms. Petrov advised his leadership against a retaliatory attack. Petrov—the accidental watch commander—was truly the right man in the right place at the right time.

In fact there had already been a near trigger incident on 3rd September, involving a stand-off between Russian and American fighters near the site of the KAL 007 crash site, and this time an American, General Charles Donnelly had finessed us away from war. But there is no doubting Petrov’s central role in this account, and he deservedly received a Dresden Peace Prize and film called The Man Who Saved the World in 2013 [3]

For save it he did. Anyone who was alive at that time, and their children, and grandchildren, owe everything they have, and all their experiences, to that man. By 30th September, the world could have been reduced to smoking, radioactive ruins, with the survivors facing an oncoming Nuclear Winter of unimaginable duration. Instead they went out for Friday night drinks; prepared their boats for the last sail of the autumn; or got ready for the weekends’ shopping and football matches. And ever since they have had life, not death. And there is your reason to be cheerful.

*Morro gives 27th; clearly things like datelines and midnights have probably muddied the waters here)

[1] https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/the-near-nuclear-war-of-1983/

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saved_the_World

#nuclear war #USA #USSR #NATO #Warsaw Pact #Brian J Morro #stanislav petrov