Emergent Properties

Someone in my condo estate doesn’t like cats. The last few newsletters have had short articles complaining that while dogs have to be kept on leashes (and no, they aren’t always) cats are allowed to roam free. The author of the article justifies this in terms dead birds around bird-feeders. I think that author doesn’t understand cats and doesn’t understand birds and doesn’t understand bird-feeders.

There are a number of types of condominiums here in Toronto, its a large city. The 2001 census put the city’s population at 2,481,494. There is the downtown as well as the suburbs. The catchment area known as the Greater Toronto Area, the area within easy commuting distance or the “bedroom suburbs” (though many are self sufficient economic centers in their own right) has a population about twice that but at much lower density – 4,682,897. The archetypal condominium, such as the TV adaption of John D McDonald’s novel is mainly a downtown phenomena. Or at least part of the ‘core’, the main intersections. The burbs have lower level condos, and by far the most common are condominium town houses. There are generally two types – the high density ones where the road come right to the front door, there is no garden and the ground floor is the garage; and the low density ones like the one I live in. “Henry Heights” is really a piece of parkland with some houses scattered though it. The ratio of space occupied by building to the amount of free space, lawns, trees, flowerbeds is less than some of the nearby ‘luxury’ single houses.

I’m well known among the other condo owners for my giant sunflowers and for taking my cats for walks. I sometimes say that once you’ve managed programmers, herding cats isn’t that difficult.

According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, entitled "Livestock's Long Shadow" livestock use 30 percent of the land surface of the planet, generate more greenhouse gases than transport:

The livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent — 18 percent — than transport.
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Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land, [which is] used to produce feed for livestock
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The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, euthropication and the degeneration of coral reefs.
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Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass.

Perhaps we need a Kyoto Accord for livestock as well.

Technorati Tags: greenhouse gas, livestock, kyoto, co2, vegetarianism

There is a maxim attributed to the Jesuits that goes: “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man”, meaning that the childhood years are formative. More ancient philosophies going back to to the Greeks and Chinese voice a similar outlook. Modern psychology, thanks in large part to Freud, supports this outlook.

So its frightening when that principle is used for subversive ends. We feel horrified when we hear of children being recruited by rebels and terrorists in Africa and the Middle East, being armed with automatic weapons or being used as involuntary human bombs. What frightens us most, perhaps, is that their minds and outlook are being perverted, just as in another age children living in totalitarian societies were encouraged to “report” the “subversive” activities of their parents and other adults.

We, especially in the contemporary West, value our children and their innocence. We take the view that crimes against children, exploiting them or abusing them is particularly pernicious.

Why then, asks John Taylor Gatto, do we do so systematically, and have this deeply embedded in our culture and educational system? Gatto has written books and essays on this subject. The essay you can read on-line, the book is worth reading in its own right.

The sad thing is that while Gatto is right, and I will shortly look into the details of his assertions, I also want to show how they are true, false and necessary. I want to show how the bad stuff we learn at school harms us as individuals, in our relationships, in the workplace and how it damages society as a whole.

In “Technics and Civilization”, Lewis Mumford puts forth the idea that “the clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the modern industrial age”[1]. Many others have written on how the industrial world required the conversion of the agrarian mind-set which was based on the sun and the seasons into a “factory” mind-set where the workers’ day is regimented by the clock. Many of Gatto’s points are in accord with this point of view.

But the other great marker also emerges from works like Mumford. We live in a very complex and interconnected society. For it to function and hence for it and its members to survive in good health and comfort requires that we submit to the “greatest good”. On “space-ship Earth” which is more like “life-boat Earth”, we can’t afford to have people rocking the boat. We are no longer in the situation of being small tribes of hunter-gatherers, and if you don’t like the current leadership or prospects you can go off and form your own tribe.

That’s one view. Another sounds more like a conspiracy theory, but is really just an ‘emergent property’ – that the situation emerged naturally from the demands of the environment. Gatto and others subscribe to that idea, but never the less view it as less than harmonious.

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ISBN Hardcover	0-86571-519-X
ISBN Paperback	0-86517-231-X

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¹ Page 14 of the cited paperback edition.

If you are not familiar with The Onion then this report may come as a surprise to you.

Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life.

It reminds you of the laws defining the value if Pi, doesn't it? Its quite comprehensive:

The sweeping new law prohibits all living beings within state borders from being born with random genetic mutations that could make them better suited to evade predators, secure a mate, or, adapt to a changing environment. In addition, it bars any sexual reproduction, battles for survival, or instances of pure happenstance that might lead, after several generations, to a more well-adapted species or subspecies.

And how will this be enforced?

To enforce the law, Kansas state police will be trained to investigate and apprehend organisms who exhibit suspected signs of evolutionary behavior, such as natural selection or speciation. Plans are underway to track and monitor DNA strands in every Kansan life form for even the slightest change in allele frequencies.

As if the police aren't overworked and understaffed as it is. And how will this affect you, should you happen to visit Kansas?

Human beings may be the species most deeply affected by the new legislation. Those whose cytochrome-c molecules vary less than 2 percent from those of chimpanzees will be in direct violation of the law.

In The Beginning was The Word
and The Word was Content-type: text/plain

Some people say that dictionaries are records of common usage… meaning that if enough people understand a word to mean a particular thing, that’s what it does mean. Likewise for spelling and pronunciation. In other words, the dictionary definition reflects the common understanding, even if that understanding is ignorant and wrong.

Indeed, people look to dictionaries for guidance and enlightenment about the proper meanings of words. They rarely think to themselves, as they look up an entry, “even though this is what it says …” that was how people used the word at the time it was compiled, but that might not be the appropriate of the word now, in this context. For example, works on Shakespeare, whose Saxon English did not contain esoteric words from the Latin, Greek and “Romance” languages, still needs footnotes that explain the different meaning of many common words as they were used in his times. Even in my lifetime words have changed meaning (and I don’t mean just as result of my travels). The term “Gay” is a good example. Even this Random House Unabridged Dictionary 2006 definition lists all of the “archaic” forms before the contemporary usage.

So when we come to how the Miriam-Webster redefines the term “atheism” – as mentioned in this article http://h3h.net/2005/05/atheism-debunked/ one wonders just how good a job of separation of Church and State the constitutional forces in the USA are doing.

To the Founding Fathers it was important that the special privilege accorded to the Aristocracy and the Church in Europe, and in particular in England, should not be the case in their new society. This applied also to the legal system. Status was not to confer any advantage in legal proceedings – all disputes would be settled in court. (Yes we can see the unfortunate side effect of that today where wealth is the ‘privilege’ and advantage, and even that is comparative. There is no shortage of examples where the ‘little guy’ gives in because the legal costs would be ruinous and the ‘big guy’ can afford a better legal legal team. It happens even when the ‘little guy’ is a multi-million dollar corporation!)

It’s municipal election time here in Toronto, and the politicians are paying attention to the voters and promising bread and circus so they can ignore us for another four years.

Well the incumbent David Miller is certainly making promises along those line. He is currently saying he will invest the equivalent of $100,000 in each and every ward across the city in a plan to clean up and beautify Toronto’s open spaces. The works out at nearly $18 million. He points to a local artist who has painted murals on the underside of a bridge. Well in one park near me graffiti artists have done that. Big Deal.

Miller’s leading contender, Jane Pitfield, is taking a different tack, she is promising that there will be investment in the infrastructure — a commitment to work on transit issues. But lets face it, compromises and a peculiar obsession to balance spending ‘fairly’ between the boroughs has meant that a lot of Toronto’s necessities, most pointedly roads and public transit, has been systematically short-changed for decades. A recent grant to the TTC by the province is being swallowed up just to deal with maintenance — no new vehicles or infrastructure. And lets face it, poor roads cost us all in wear and tear on vehicles, not just our own cars, which we have to use, despite the gridlock, because transit is so under-developed, but the buses and the commercial vehicles suffer too.

Vote Early Vote Often

Democracy costs. This election is costing the city about $6 million, and its been in the works since the last election. Many people question whether its worth it. As a democratic process, its almost laughable. The voter’s list has always been a mess but this year the amalgamation has finally gotten around to using the list compiled by the Municipal Property’s Assessment Corporation — an outsourcing effort. Although this has called into question the eligibility of over a quarter of a million voters, it is not as bad as it sounds. Or perhaps its worse.

When explaining emergence I sometimes say, half jokingly that:

The English language is an Emergent Property of the Hydrogen Bond

We usually talk of emergent properties of complex systems in the contemporary world, things like bio-systems and ecology, complex social systems and of course consciousness and “intelligence”.

Emergent properties are usually the result of complex interactions.  Simple, first level interactions such as sodium and chlorine, neither of which are crystalline or salty, combine to make salt – which has properties that are not inherent in either of them.  However basic chemistry does tell us that such chemicals can make “salts”.  Water, however, has complex physical properties that are unique in chemistry and cannot be predicted from knowledge of how similar elements combine.  Merely saying that:

“An emergent is a higher-level property, which cannot be deduced from or explained by the properties of the lower-level entities.”

is inadequate.  It may be simply that we don’t have the detailed knowledge.  Non-chemists, for example, will not be aware of the chemistry of “salts”.  There are no shortage of stories based on having such a superior knowledge to “impress the natives”.  Or be a stage magician.  See, for example, Penn and Teller explaining how they do their “magic” tricks.   But there are many other areas where unexpected phenomena result from complex interactions:

• A study at the University of Maryland concludes that “Love is an emergent property of the mammalian autonomic nervous system”
• A Canadian study showed that even though erosion and deposition by flowing water generally follow simple rules, the end result is complex and cannot be predicted in detail, although, like many fractal systems, it exhibits “self organization” at a macro scale.

The hydrogen bond I mentioned is the basis for DNA.  In his essay “Son of Moore’s Law” in the collection “The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century” Richard Dawkins predicts that DNA will become what computing has been in the lest 50 years, and fears that an obsession with God and a religion-based ethical outlook that was geared for small pre-technic tribes making a marginal survival in the deserts of the Middle East will inhibit the resource-rich, information-rich world we are moving into.

The BBC is not normally a hotbed of high standards, but it offers this report on the dumbing down of science education in the UK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6038638.stm

The new GCSE science curriculum has been branded “sound bite science” which takes a back-to-front approach. Sir Richard Sykes, rector of Imperial College London, is among the scientists to attack the core qualification, in which pupils discuss topical issues. Sir Richard told BBC News: “If you wish to have a dumbed-down syllabus for the general population that’s fine.

The article goes on to quote Ethicist Baroness Mary Warnock:

“What counts as an issue to be debated in class is largely, as David Perks points out, dictated by the press. Far too much teaching at school has already degenerated into this kind of debate, more suitable for the pub than the school room.”

So it would seem that in the UK science is being discarded as Latin and Greek and the gramatical analysis and critical thinking that went along with them is being discarded.

Why?

The reason is both subtle and obvious. The obvious one is an effect that has pernciously infiltrated much of Western society – obsessive liberalism and a misunderstadning of what democracy means. Like a science-fiction world gone mad we are confusing “democracy” with a lowest common denominator form of socialism where its not OK to be smart and outstanding. Lucky, yes, but to work hard and apply yourself and achieve sucess that way is “un-democratic”.

We can see this in schools where it is no longer permissible for students to get a failing grade – it would hurt their self esteem! Very different from my school days when suceeding against fierce competition did wonders for your self esteem and falling back was an incentive to try harder.

But the “subtle” is more so. Like so many things it is not “just one thing” – it is many factors acting towards social control. I mention some of them in my posting about John Gatto and the education system. Lets face it, intellectuals, people with a tight focus on ideas, especially in science and engineering, are disruptive influences on society.

One of my themes in this blog is how technic civillization arose when it did. Its clear that the “Pristine States” — as social anthropologists call them — The Nile valley, The Indus Valley and the Yellow River valley, were very dependent on a stable society. So too was much of the mediaevil western world although for different reasons. In many ways, the Industrial Revolution suceeded becuase there was the foundations of mercantilism and commerce to make use of it. But why so in western Europe and in England in particular, and not in the very mercantile world to the east?

Perhaps because of another aspect of anti-intellectualism. England of that time was faced with an aristocracy and privilidged class that were loosing their basis of wealth. While science and engineering – getting one’s hands dirty – may have been declasse, it was acceptable to employ such people to come up with methods for pumping water out of one’s mines or harvesting one’s fields more cheaply. Even then, the height of the the Industrial Revolution, the English Speaking World “dumbed down” and compartmentalized science and engineering.

I find it interesting that the social connotation of “Engineer” in English is that of a lower class worker, a “grease monkey”, some who drives the train. I’m told that in other cultures “Engineer” is a highly repected profession and even a protected title – you can’t call yourself an “Engineer” unless you have an enginerring degree and are a member of the appropriate professional society.

Well OK, maybe they are. They are buying the book to be informed. But surely its tactless calling them an “Idiot” or a “Dummy”. Its one thing to admit you’re a dummy in the privacy of your own home, but in a public context its a different matter. How wold you react to being called a dummy or an idiot at a business meeting. You’ve just expounded authoritatively when the alpha-geek stands up and says “You’re an idiot, you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. You’re a complete dummy.” You’d feel sorely in need of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Enhancing Self Esteem or perhaps The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Assertiveness. But are you going to flash copies of those around the office? No, more likely your boss will take you aside and tactfully lend you a copy of The Assertiveness Workbook: How to Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships. At least he’s not calling you an idiot.

These two books look like they go hand in hand, but actually they tell very different stories in very different ways about very different things. One might say that they also reflect the troubles between the two Celtic heritages in Northern Ireland today, but that would be stretching the matter.

Cahill’s book originally came out in hardcover in 1995. I have the trade paperback which came out in 1996. It has full colour front plates and 8 pages of photographs as well as many in-line illustration and maps. It is about two-thirds (218 pages of text) the thickness of Arthur Herman’s book (429 pages of text) in paperback, and therein lies part of the point of this review.

Herman’s work has no front-plates, no photographs no maps, no illustration. That too is worthy of note and slightly puzzling.

I can understand why Cahill’s book is thinner and bulked out with illustrations. Its message is short and to the point. I can imagine it as a high school term paper running to about 5-8,000 words. But the we see the Irish as story-tellers and Cahill spins out this tale to continue to be interesting. Yes, it is engaging, and it has a simple can coherent theme – as I said, its really an essay. Side-by-side with Herman, the pages are actually the same line spacing and font side, but seem more relaxed and easier to read. It does leave me with the feel that I’ve been listening to him in an old Irish pub one evening over a relaxing drink. Its a comes across as a simple tale – though its obviously well researched and has no shortage of details to make its points – and is memorable.

By contrast. Herman’s book feels that you are studying history. Memorable? Not easily. It reads more like a PhD disertation, complete with a chapter titled “Conclusion” and “Sources and Gide for Firhter Reading” – which is really the bibliography. I foud myself using a yellow high-lighter; putting the book down for long periods and restarting; going back; listing names and dates and drawing charts and time-lines to make sure I understood who was who, who studied with whom and which charecters were contemporaries. The book needed those! Its not a quick read. Maps would definitely have been useful too.

Never the less, I can most definitely recommend Herman’s work.

A comparison of the two books is difficult. They are presented so differently. Re-reading the above I feel that I’ve made Cahill’s work to be a minor one by comparison, its not so weighty and doens’t come across as so … well “intellectual”. Which isn’t fair. The preservation of literature though the Dark Ages following the fall of the Roman Empire, the politics of the European vs Roman churches and the imporance of the spread of Christianity through northern Europe while Islam was gathering momentum in North Africa and Asia Minor should not be belittled. Melvyn Bragg’s excelent historic novel “Credo” dramatizes the conficts very well.

Herman and Cahill are both good reads. I recommend them both.

Today is Thanksgiving here in Canada. Its another “turkey feast day” when families get together to pig out on a large meal built around cooked turkey. The meal is large, lots of vegetables, traditionally folllowed by pumpkin pie.  After this excess the family normally sits around and does nothing much except possibly load up the dishwasher and watch TV.

That feeling of overwhelming lethargy following a meal I once tagged, jokingly, as “large mammal syndrome” to friends one Christmas, when we were exhibiting the syndrome. It is, I said, nature’s way of protecting small animals from the continued predetation of large animals.— Yes I did talk that way after a few glasses of wine. But its a good point. Small animals like rats and mice need to eat continously; large ones, like the big cats and bears eat intermittently. If they ate continously they would soon consume all the feedstock.

Of course this being an after dinner discussion my friends disagreed. They pointed out that the big cats were carnivores and meat had a more energetic food value than the grain that rats and mice ate. They countered with ‘elephants’. Well elephants don’t eat continuously either, do they?

And then there’s humans.

I’ve long been enamoured by H. G. Wells story “War of the Worlds“. It seems to me a key example of early science fiction as popular literature. In many ways SF took a step back into “gadget fiction” before John W Campbell., the long time editor of Astounding/Analog SF could rescue it. But Wells captured the public imagination. Both of them: “Herbert George“ and “Orson“. Oops! That’s “Welles“, sorry.

The story has to be viewed in context. It was published in 1898. In its day, the idea of interplanetary travel was quite outrageous. Few people understood rocketry (Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon” notwithstanding), or planetary dynamics (Professor Moriarty’s book “The Dynamics of an Asteroid” notwithstanding) as we do today; but they understood mechanics and cannons and cannon shells. Germ disease and antiseptics were still new – think in terms of the Crimean War (1853-56) and Florence Nightingale. That was an era of innovation and invention as well: by analogy, think what was being developed 30 years ago for us and is in the popular imagination today and being used in popular SF. Wells built on this and introduced the fabulous – the heat ray, the red weed.

The British Empire, and hence most of Wells’ readers, was the centre of the know world. Why else would the capsules have been targeted there? And hence, with the defeat of the British Amy and the British navy, human civilization is brought to its knees.

Despite the archaisms and the jingoism:, the story remains popular to this day. Not only are movies still being made, but various re-workings of it are still being produced. My favoriutes include the Manly Wade Wellman’s highly creative “Sherlock Holmes’s War of the Worlds” (I’ve a soft spot for anyone who can write a Holmes story better than Doyle did!), and Kevin Anderson’s collection of short stories of the happenings else where in the world – “Global Dispatches”.

War of Todays Worlds

I’d like to look in detail at the implications and consequences of Douglas Niles’ book “War of the Worlds: New Millennium”.

This was published in 2005, and forms part of a wave I see in SF of a new style of image of America that is fighting back which has developed since 9/11.

Fair enough, that trend is, in itself, worthy of a master’s paper, but as ever, I’m interested in the “what comes next” and the wider implications, and how that story fits in with the history of mankind and civilization.