Ramble – Spacecraft, social nature of truth, Green Villain, the architecture of mind

Once again, I’m feeling a need to ramble around in my mind, see what’s going on.

Spacecraft

I’m still thinking about Tim Morton’s Spacecraft. I figure I’ve got two, perhaps three, more posts on it and then perhaps a formal review. One post will look at how he talks of spacecraft, and his basic distinction between spacecraft and spaceship. Even before that, though, I think I need to talk about the distinction between real spacecraft and fictional ones. By real spacecraft I mean the 100s if not 1000s of satellites we’ve launched since Sputnik back in 1957, the various probes and landers, manned orbital craft and, of course, the Apollo missions, etc. There’s been a lot of them.

But while Morton mentions one or three of them here and there, they aren’t of much interest to him. He’s only interested in fictional space craft, with the Millennium Falcon being his primary example. And I pretty much assumed that’s what he’d be talking about when I asked him to have a copy of the book sent to me. It’s a bit as though someone had chosen two write a book about unicorns or dragons and did so in much the same way as one would write a book about sheep or crows. Of course Morton knows these various spacecraft are fictional, as is hyperspace, which I’ve already written about. But he sees no need to remark on that fact, much less to examine it.

That in itself is interesting.

Then I want to write one about the future. For that’s what was on my mind when I asked Tim for a copy: I wonder if he’ll say something about the future? And he does, page 73. Not sure whether I can get a whole post out of that, we’ll see. But the future sort of goes along with science fiction, no? Nor, come to think of it, does he talk much, if any, about science fiction as a kind of fiction, but that’s what he’s writing about, no? That too is interesting, especially since he’s trained as a literary critic.

That is to say, what’s most interesting about Spacecraft is the framing that’s not there.

The social construction of truth

I was going to write a 3QD column about the social construction of truth, but bailed on it. It would have been an expansion and refinement of a recent blog post, What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and a far-out, but reasonable, idea? When does signaling go haywire? (July 21). I’m not quite sure why I bailed on it. Though I will note that, for one thing, it’s been shifting beneath my feet.

Perhaps I’m still figuring out an approach to truth. One thing that’s clear in a general sort of way, lots of people in what I will call my society believe lots of different things and this collectivity of beliefs is by no means coherent, mutually consistent, and stable. Do I need an approach to that multiplicity, a way to move it into the foreground instead of keeping it in the background? I’m inclined to think of that as the nature of belief in society and truth is something we carve out of it.

OK, this is going somewhere. The deep problem with asserting the social nature of truth is the implied split between nature and culture (and this goes back to Morton and his OOO). Given that split, society (that is to say, us) is viewed as a source of distortion and error. Truth is something outside us, it’s stable. What is in fact going on, however, is that, once we reach substantial agreement, we project that agreement into nature and fool ourselves into thinking it has nothing to do with us.

And in a sense it doesn’t, because it is about the world. But that agreement is something we’ve created. Science, in this view, is a collection of techniques for framing propositions about the world such that observations can be made that compel agreement from a given scientific community. Which brings us to the case of fundamental physics, where we’ve had half a century of theorizing without observational confirmation. Where’s that going?

What if scientists in other fields decided that they didn’t need to worry about observational confirmation either. That would surely make things easier for psychologists with their replication crisis. Just toss out observation all together. The crisis disappears.

Do these physicists know that their recalcitrance is threatening the very nature of science?

So, what’s at state in my other examples: 1) GOP Trumpism and conspiracy theories (e.g. QAnon), 2) memetics, and 3) the tech singularity? The first is mostly about socio-political reality where current truth is determined by journalistic means. The second was a proposal about science that just fizzled out. And the third is about things that will happen in the future.

I’m thinking that doing all that much stretch the limits of a 3QD column. It’s the framework implied in the previous paragraph that’s tricky. That is, almost all thinking about epistemology takes place within a Cartesian framework, where mind and body are split and truth is a problematic negotiation between a mind and the world. Drop that framework and truth becomes something different, a matter of reading agreement.

Green Villain

Instead of writing about the social construction of truth I choose to do a photo essay about the Green Villain loft space 51 Pacific. That was fun, and didn’t require much thought, just arranging the photos and providing a bit of introductory prose. The trick was to choose the photos, as I’ve got 100s to choose from. The idea was to sample the space.

Here’s another one, of Serringe in process:

In going through the photos, it occurred to me that if this space existed today (the building was demolished in 2015) it would be possible to charge people, say, $5 to enter and tour the building. That wouldn’t have been possible when the space was alive and kicking, back in the early 2010s. Things have changed.

The architecture of mind

And then there’s this recent post: Attractor nets, from basic vertebrates to humans, August 13. That belongs to my general attractor nets project, where the goal is to produce a primer on attractor nets. Does it make sense to think in terms of an explicit construction for each of the five principles listed in the brain paper (Principles and Development of Natural Intelligence)? The basic goal of the attractor net project is to work out constructions for the fifth principle (indexing). That earlier post mentioned the first principle (feeling, on-blocks). What about the other three? I’m thinking I need to leave them alone for awhile.

Seinfeld working paper

Yes, I need to get one of those done, one based on my explication of various bits.