Ah - those Hypotheticals!

Many years ago the ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Commission) ran a TV series called the Hypothetical, presented by Geoffrey Robertson. He is a human rights lawyer, now in the London.

I like the man. He is articulate, precise, says what he means and means what he says, and of course there is his target, human rights, or rather the abuse of them.

But back to the program. He covered a series of topics - topical topics in fact - for which he invited prominent people, politicians, professionals, heads of departments. Pillars of society one might call them.

Hypothetical situations were played out in which the guests had to respond with their own attitudes and opinions for all to see. It was interesting to watch a righteous representative from the bush wanting to witness the execution of someone caught with illegal drugs in the fictitious land of Xanadu. "That's a pity", Robertson counters, because Xanadu happens to be a Muslim country where the penalty for drinking is death. Plenty of grog where the politician comes from... you get the picture.

Wouldn't it be nice to have another version of those programs, but this time even more realistic.

The politician or professional is confronted with a panel of people who have the facts at their disposal (and who are not afraid of voicing them, one might add). Instead of hiding behind glib news-speak they would have to defend their stance and openly debate with facts and figures, telling us how exactly they came to their decisions. Who knows, they even could be right, but then again maybe not.

One candidate could be Associate Professor Darryl Jones, Director of the Centre for Innovative Conservation Strategies at Griffith University, Brisbane, who would have to explain why thousands of people should be subject to considerable inconvenience to say the least. See on another post what the problem is about. Imagine...

Professor Jones, why aren't we allowed to do something about the crows, do you know how noisy they are? - They are just being noisy teenagers.

Their decibel levels are higher than lawn mowers, and there are council laws limiting their use. - Crows are an indigenous species, they need to be protected.

Because they are indigenous? 80 decibels and higher makes for serious sleep deprivation, which has been recognised by the WHO as a form of torture. - There may be some older people in nursing homes who are affected, so? Anyway, they clean the place of rubbish.

Leave our garbage disposal in the hands of crows? Do you know how cities look like if not councils but animals deal with the rubbish? - Crows are a precious resource, they need protection.

In urban centres? Brisbane has well over 300,000 of them, and the city is for people, not birds. - And so on...

Add a representative from the UN, the city council, the sanitation department and I think we'd have an interesting debate.

Make it an hour-long grilling. If their arguments stand up, so much the better.

And if they don't - that makes for good ratings too!

PS: To be precise, the first statement by Professor Jones comes from an interview he gave for the Courier Mail. Statement #2 has been taken from a letter to me written by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service who in turn sourced the information from the people at Griffith University. The third comes from a pamphlet by the same organisation. The last comes again from the professor directly.

The reasons against Otoom - again

In the previous post on that topic I mentioned some of the more obvious reasons why the Otoom model can grate against someone's perception of their world. Its descriptive framework focusing on functionality rather than content so that patterns become visible, the definition of an individual's or a group's situatedness within their culture in an objective, non-ideological sense, and so on.
There can also be deeper reasons for becoming uncomfortable with using such a view.
Since Otoom treats cognitive behaviour first and foremost as a system based on chaos-type attractors and hence affinities between clusters, the emergence of complexity as well as the deconstruction of affinities can be observed. These phenomena can relate to ideations as well as concepts and cultural memes at higher scales.
A human activity system that presents itself as a well-developed entity and featuring many subsystems can do so because its inherent characteristics (size, number of members, connectivity, processing potential, resources) allow it to be so. Similar developments can be observed in other areas of nature and indeed life itself, and so the evolutionary path from the simple to the highly complex does not need recourse to some mystical power but is a completely natural function of life's processes.Therefore Otoom builds upon Darwin's description of evolution, but goes one step further. Not only is natural selection being adhered to, but an ongoing development is also defined in terms of what feature does not [italics 1] meet a constraint. Take beetles - these insects have many useful functions allowing them to have grown into the most prolific order in its class, but with many an outlandish body shape emerged simply because it could. If in due course the environment presented no problem such a shape allowed the genus to survive (see an example in the stag beetle below).

From: E. Reitter, Fauna Germanica, K.G. Lutz' Verlag, Stuttgart 1909.

Similar dependencies can be observed in human behaviour.
Religionists, those who require the presence of a mystical god to bring the wonders of this world into existence, stall at such a deconstruction.
A corollary to the above is the progression lock. It refers to the step-by-step evolutionary path and its multitude of junctions, with each a determinant of what can follow given the already existing framework. Unless some event undoes a junction the developmental direction of that entity is laid down in a very specific way. Take urban development - to modify a building in a street is more easily done than changing the layout of the street (that's why the general plan of most European cities reflects the effects of a major fire some time back in their history). On a lower level similar cause-and-effect relationships hold too; for instance compare the general evolution of the skeleton in mammals to that in whales.
In human cognition a progression lock can have devastating effects. An ideologue may be open to all kinds of arguments, but dare touch on their core belief and the claws come out.
It would be a fascinating exercise to apply these principles to existence in its widest sense. How would a quantum physicist approach the question of the beginning of the universe: a rapidly following series of fundamental progression locks during the first few moments of its birth? What else could have been?
Because another major feature of complex systems is the sheer interdependence of its subsystems, any given characteristic is subject to an ongoing feedback loop ensuring that it appears useful to a casual observer. To go back to our example of urban layouts, once a certain street appears just so people will make use of its configuration and therefore such a utility will remain largely unquestioned. Sure, in a certain, contemporary sense that street is useful, but was that really the full intent of those who were responsible for its appearance, and could there have been something better?
Individuals who question those underlying assumptions are called iconoclasts and quite a few of them were murdered for their efforts. And yet, without their courageous ability we would still live in caves.
In a world of an ever increasing potential for self-destruction - a product of emergent complexity - we must unlearn our propensity to stand in awe before those who distinguish themselves by an unwavering adherence to their convictions. The emotional stamina for it should be recognised for what it is - the sign of a psychopath.
Otoom uncloaks their nature. Therefore it is dangerous.

An update... and a Thank You

The Premier's Office has been contacted again. I was told my previous email had not been received and was asked to submit another request for a meeting (on the other hand, I know that email was opened exactly 5 minutes 39 seconds after being sent). In any case, let's see what happens this time.

And now a big Thank You to all those people who visited the Otoom website and this blog.

Judging by the web stats there must be thousands who have been to Otoom, from over forty countries. Although the blog received far less at this stage, there are the feeds and the cross referrals between the two. So it's not YouTube, but then again the topic is very specialised and it does require some effort to keep reading through the pages. A Thank You to you all out there!

Let's not forget too that word spreads to those who may not be visitors themselves. Consider the constantly increasing number of confirmations which demonstrate that other individuals have arrived at similar conclusions to Otoom (167 confirmations all around and counting - see Parallels). As I mentioned in the Parallels, they would not have known about the model but analysing reality at large brought them to a particular conclusion.

On the other hand, the time could have come where it is feasible to assume some of those individuals actually are aware of Otoom and articulated their perceptions accordingly. Note the tentative wording - at this stage I cannot be more specific.

However, this is not the first time decision makers and politicians had been approached with some effect, however indirect it may have been in some cases. In the early 90s ideas from the book "Logic and Order in Society" (I referred to it briefly in the Opposition) did find their way into official pronouncements. Following are some examples.

- In 1987 the FitzGerald Commission on Australia's immigration invited comments from the public. References to the suitability of new arrivals in my submission found their way into the Commission's report. In June 1995 Prime Minister Paul Keating announced a $25 million initiative to teach Australians "about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and the functions of government".

- In 1988 details for an electronic checking system for life stock was suggested to the New South Wales Farmers Association and Elders Pastoral. In its 1992 Yearbook the Australian Meat Research Corporation had taken up the idea. Alas, it wasn't until July 2005 that a National Livestock Identification System came into force.

- In August 1992 "Project 21" was forwarded to the Prime Minister's office. It outlined the need for computer-based linkages of universities. A report ("Electronic Facilities Network to Enhance Tertiary Open Learning Services") was published in August 1993 by the working party of the Committee of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT), which in turn responded to a consultants' report commissioned by the Department of Employment, Education and Training. This report emphasised the need for computer-based integration among Australia's educational facilities.

- Still on "Project 21", in April 1995 Prime Minister Paul Keating announced a prime ministerial council in order to study the establishment of a nation-wide computer network to enable Australia join the information super highway. Very much in line with "Project 21".

But as I said, as far as Otoom is concerned it's early days yet.

We all smile in the same language (not!)

The above statement - minus the "not" - appears on the notice board of a school in West End, Brisbane.

It is quite wrong, in fact dangerously so. In the following short essay I will show why (and it is an essay; for more detail see the Otoom website with all its papers, confirmations from around the world, computer simulations, and references).

Let's take the literal meaning first. The sentence is meant to convey the common nature of us as humans, a feature underneath so many differences often emphasised and hence leading to conflict. A nice try if you will, but like other well-meaning but ultimately misguided views promising much but delivering little.

What is a smile? It is a type of body language representing the pleasure of feeling satisfaction. You don't need to be a profound philosopher to realise the prompts for smiling are as varied as life can make them. Even a child (and remember, that false proverb is there for mostly children to see) could smile for many a reason - to the face of a friend in agreement, to the face of an enemy out of Schadenfreude, because they got praised or because they got away with something.

But, you might say, aren't these the very things that bind us? Yes they are, but here we run into the first of several problems. Consider 'agreement'. Do we all agree on the same thing? Certainly not, but why?

Whether we agree on something depends on our disposition, on what we know, what we have experienced, on our surroundings, our culture. In other words, we interpret the world according to what our minds can make of any given situation. The thought associations we are capable of determine our response, and what we don't know won't get to play a role - end of story.

Yet even what we 'know' does not present the full picture. For an association to be made the right triggers need to be in place (think of mnemotechnics), but it also requires the brain to be sufficiently flexible. Certain psychological tests rely on that characteristic to evaluate a person's ability to process information.

Hence for some people a particular moment is enough to evoke an avalanche of ideas, others it passes by in silence. Being creative is a trait we sometimes admire (if it makes us smile!), and sometimes dread (if it takes us out of our comfort zone).

Going right back to the basic detail the associative capacity is a function of the connectivity of the brain's neurons and their processing ability. The more dendrites per neuron the greater the cognitive reach, the healthier the neurons the more efficacious they are. All this is no longer conjecture, and feeds into such aspects as goal setting and sense of responsibility.

Now shift the perspective to the recipient. If the source of a smile is difficult to ascertain, how much harder is it for the other to interpret? If I grow up among friends and only friends I will never know what it is like to smile with grim satisfaction - I never had the opportunity to learn. If higher abstractions are beyond me what do I know of wan wistfulness?

And so my mind will process the proffered gesture and respond accordingly. The other will do the same in turn. Where does that leave the "common language"?

If the response goes beyond mere conversation but involves acts of significance the diversion of our respective trains of thought can lead very quickly to radical measures.

Consider the fury generated by Salman Rushdie's knighthood. Consider also the attempts by the British government to hose down the flames. Neither side understands the other. Muslims don't relate to the often iconoclastic nature of our culture, and the government doesn't recognise how meaningless it is to point to Rushdie's authorship as an apology. In fact, an apology - like a smile - means different things to different people. For some it is a measure of manners, to others it represents weakness.

On a larger scale the contingencies have moved along. The idea has become the cultural meme, the individual has become the demographic. Just as in a person their mindset has to reconcile the differences somehow, so do the effects of varying cultures influence the status of a society. The mutual relationship between the greater whole and its parts requires a certain synchronicity, but enhance the differences and there comes a point at which the very definition of society becomes questionable.

Furthermore, although we all are capable of learning to some degree, what we allow ourselves to learn depends very much on our exposure to the wider world and how we perceive it. Increase the number of a demographic's constituents and the probability that any one of them will widen their frame of reference diminishes. From a certain size onwards there is no change and the culture will maintain itself regardless of their host.

In the era of globalisation the above applies not only within nations but across the entire world.

Tamil militants in Sri Lanka blackmail immigrants in Australia; radical Muslims associate in groups spread between tribal areas in Pakistan and the UK; newly arrived Africans evoke networks between Europe and their homelands to circumvent EU border controls.

The very laws we have created reflect our general mien. They can never define each and every act anyone is ever able to come up with, but are a collection of markers that rely greatly on social consensus. Introduce behaviour from outside that zone and the law becomes inadequate and needs to accommodate the new. Terrorism and the influx of religious intensity have shown how unsettling the shift can be.

For example, in Western jurisdictions guilt by association has been largely expunged, and for good reason. Yet an association based on family, tribe, and sect are most powerful drivers in Middle Eastern demographics. As I write this the law in Australia is forced to wrestle with the extent to which such alien concepts are to be aligned with our own definitions, in order to deal with suspects arrested here and connected with an act of terrorism that occurred in the UK. There are protests and misgivings, a fear of loosing the achievements gained through centuries of hard work. Those gains had sharpened themselves on the minds of Europe, and not on those of the Middle East.

We have moved beyond the land of rosy visions in which the downtrodden stand in awe before Western accomplishments eager to take part as we in our naiveté would like to assume. Some do, but more and more the darker side of wishful inclusivity in the face of irreconcilable difference emerges. The canvas so far is still the same, but increasingly what is painted there are not the comfortable idylls of yesteryear but the charring strokes of dissonance, anger even.

How long before the lines burst the frame?

The reasons against Otoom

A previous post presented a sweep of vistas open to someone who employed the conceptual tool set of the Otoom mind model.

Yet like any analysis that probes into hitherto hidden areas the findings can be decidedly uncomfortable. What could prevent a person from looking in this particular direction?

Otoom allows two general approaches, from the top down and from the bottom up. Let's take the latter first.

The subject under focus can be identified as a system, and its active constituents as elements that behave in a certain manner. As such these are functional elements, that is to say the things they do relate to their inherent properties, their potential for 'doing a certain thing'. For example, a particular collective of neurons processes visual information, and nothing else. It does so because its configuration allows it and the neurons do nothing else because they are exposed to one certain set of data and no more.

Yet clearly that bunch of neurons is also part of a larger system, similar in terms of functionality but different in scale and in terms of the information they receive and process, and therefore in terms of the result. That result, which higher cognitive processes represent in the form of meaning to us, transpose what is initially some bundle of light frequencies into an image that moves us.

Or take the activities of an organisation. Again there are sections dedicated to one particular type of work, but they also belong together and all those processes reflect the part as well as the greater whole. Since Otoom is scalable it makes sense to talk about a focus on neurons as 'from the bottom up' and it makes equally sense to refer to our view of an organisation along these lines.

The sheer relativity of this approach does not sit well with somebody's need to keep the world and its parts in neat little boxes. It prevents them from separating one phenomenon, one characteristic even, from its neighbours and so responding as if one element exists in isolation from any other. Reality of course teaches otherwise, but for the purpose of maintaining a perspective that prefers simplistic answers to complex situations - and acting accordingly - anything that opens unwanted windows would be anathema.

Now take the top-down approach. Since the act of labeling a particular contingent 'a system' is only ever a relative one, the result of an observation coming from the top and moving downwards could also have been achieved by having arrived there while proceeding from some lower focus to that higher one. What will have changed are the associations observed along the way, but the characteristics pertaining to that focus and now having become visible are no different.

Again, that can be problematic for someone who prefers to be selective. Suppose the idea is to reconfigure an organisation. A plan is developed that concentrates on the wider view but does not involve the sections, the subsystems. Without considering the functionalities of those sections the plan may prove unworkable. Add the personal agenda, surrounding politics plus the need to 'save face', and the iconoclast who points to discrepancies between the grand vision and the practicality on ground level may well be disposed of.

All this would seem straightforward to most, but how often are such considerations disregarded? How many times has a system intruded upon another to impose its ideal, with no thought given to the contingencies present at the target and proceeding blindly no matter what the cost - think of Iraq, of missionaries, of arrogant governments.

Otoom also addresses the processes themselves in terms of their situatedness within the conglomerate of functional elements. Just as in the brain a visual processing area (let's say, V1, V2, etc) deals with data according to such neurons' capacity, a different set of neurons produces other results depending on their situatedness within the brain overall. On a different scale a similar functional relationship holds, although the outcome will have changed.

A human activity system that is dedicated to creating and maintaining a database will behave functionally similar regardless where it is employed, only the content differs (let's say it works for a police department, or an employment agency, or for the biology section of a cancer research institute).

Not only that, but the result also reflects what the data have been subjected to along the way, in other words their history. The history is a function of whatever associations have been evoked and the processes they gave rise to.

To remain with our examples from above, an employment agency will be able to profile an individual according to their work history, but may not include any criminal convictions. The potential difference between the set of present associations and what will not be covered depends on the respective situatedness of the processing domains. While it is less difficult to enable a connection between a potential employee and court cases, when it comes to cell structures the research institute could well have pertinent information but how associative will that type of information be for the employment agency?

Therefore, under a certain focus (a relative exercise in itself) the representation of something that happens in a given situation can easily be omitted because the processing system does not contain the necessary associations to encompass such detail. There is a saying, "To a hammer everything looks like a nail".

The effects can be profound. A Christian will see the world - interpret the world, to be exact - in terms of what that mindset will allow to be covered; not more, not less. For Muslims the filter will be a different one. Adjust that lens to any set of contingencies our world offers and one gets some idea how variable our perceptions can be.

There was a time when we in the West categorised people by their 'obvious' differences. Because they were obvious they also were superficial, and over the years to come the presumptuous nature of that view was duly recognised. Unfortunately, today we fail on the other side of the spectrum: everyone is considered to be the same, with no thought given to their specific mindsets.

Not only can someone interpret a certain scenario differently from someone else, even what is quite literally seen and not seen can disagree with reality.

For someone - whether child or adult, male or female - the experience of joy and happiness, of pleasure and pain, of honour and dishonour, of what is desirable and objectionable, can differ to such an extent that for an observer the effect can be anything from consternation to horror. And yet, especially in today's climate, we act as if everyone has exactly the same mind.

Consider how we evaluate a display of emotion, or religious intensity, or sexual behaviour. Nor can we necessarily rely on the articulations from the individual concerned, since they are made on the basis of their own perspective.

Under Otoom the functionality of subjective assessment can be just as arrogant and overbearing whether we judge someone to be different based on skin colour and nothing more, or whether we presume them to be the same by dismissing the difference in cognitive processes. The former drives unwarranted exclusion, the other promotes blind inclusivity; both can be dangerous.

In a very real sense, our mind is at once a prison and our home. Otoom can be a friend who guides us out of our prison, but becomes the enemy if it dissolves the other.

... and society pays.

The big picture

He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Individuals are born, live, and die. Societies come into being, pursue their interests, and deconstruct. Civilisations emerge, form their environment, and vanish.

The ever widening circles of mutual flows, from low to high and back to low again, determine the overall stability at their respective scales.

Today there exist three great civilisations, each drawing on thousands of years, each having achieved brilliance, and each managing to survive despite so many catastrophes. In alphabetical order they are China, Europe, and India.

One may ask, "What does it take to make a great civilisation?" - one can equally ask, "What does it take to make a great individual?" - because, although different in scale, the fundamental qualities that Life appreciates need to be there in any case.

We need stability, so we have the chance to strike out on an adventure. We need knowledge and wisdom, so we can identify ignorance and stupidity. We need records of our history, so we can see the importance of the moment. But above all, we need an atmosphere that allows our intellect to range far and wide, and atmosphere that sustains the mind with its manifold particles of the spirit, because without the mind there can be no individual, society, and civilisation.

And here we find one essential difference between Europe and the other two. For all its unpredictable intellect, a strange animal that can fight and obey, rage and love all at once, there was a time in its history when it decided to absorb the mentality of an alien people. That mindset became known as Christianity, an outgrowth of Middle Eastern values which imposed their chains on its host ever since.

Do we really know all about the wealth of our antiquity, "the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome" as Poe called it? Can we imagine where we would be now if a thousand dark years of Church dominance had not intervened - if the Age of Enlightenment had continued where Rome had left off?

Instead we had to endure one disaster after another driven by a general religion that with its monotheism imposed a spiritual dictatorship that persecuted the search for knowledge, through its yearning for self-flagellation destroyed elegance and beauty, and whose evangelism drove us to conquer not just lands but also the minds of people, their most precious possession. Think of the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the missionaries, the hate towards the human eros.

So here we are today, facing challenges on a global scale, and yet loosing ourselves in Middle Eastern affairs we even invited into our midst, for here to fester. We wage wars trying to convince the victims that our values are better than theirs; we harbour people within our own lands who scorn the millions of volumes of their own culture while at the same time standing in awe before those who cannot show a single sheaf; we permit individuals to harness an entire governance to their fear of their own selves.

We imprison those who wilfully damaged others in pursuit of their own gains, and rightly so. Yet actions on a grand scale, similarly destructive but not even enhancing our selves, are defended and glorified.

The lives of individuals make a society; the society creates a civilisation through its endeavours; the civilisation in all its might relies on its members. It takes wisdom to understand this continuum.

The dark side of the tribe

A few days ago another horrific story about honour killing went through the news.

Those terrible events haunt us not only for the murder but also because they confront society with the dark reality hiding behind the romantic image of the tribe.

From sports to the construed glory of indigenous society, when it comes to the tribe the West likes to see in such demographics the opportunity to re-live its own mythical past. The ambience of close relationships, immovable customs, and a value system unencumbered by outsiders are perceived as a comfort zone we in our seemingly unnatural sophistication have lost long ago.

A classic symptom of selective memory. What is conveniently forgotten are personal ties that are inviolable, rigid laws that must never be broken, and the veil of secrecy protecting wrong-doers at any cost.

There is a reason why large-scale societies have left such prisons behind. The more people there are subsuming themselves under a common law, the more open and more accountable such a framework will need to be. The sheer volume and dynamism demands it.

The relationship can be turned around quite easily. A society that cannot manage to overcome traditional idiosyncrasies will not be able to extend its reach since its parts will stay bound to their respective customs; overall harmony remains elusive.

Societies can be seen as systems, and so their definition relies on identifiable common denominators. Hence there are systems within systems, institutions, organisations, and groups; all situated within the greater whole but equally cultivating the similarities of their members.

Should any such entity revert back to a cloistered existence its relationship with the wider realm becomes endangered. Queensland has provided us with examples - years ago it was the entire state government under Joh Bjelke-Petersen that actively hunted down dissidents, more recently we had the health system which tried to silence those that spoke out against its transgressions.

And always it was the value system of the tribe held above all else; submit to the group, play along, don't speak to outsiders lest you get punished.

The affair surrounding Griffith reveals another version. In the West universities achieved a degree of autonomy grown out of the desire to protect our places of learning against the vicissitudes of religion and politics. They were meant to be a sanctuary from ideological persecution and the hysteria of the driven masses. Yet as human activity systems they are equally not immune to tribal machinations, should the opportunity arise. To misuse something of value is a form of decadence.

On the advice of Queensland Education Dr Richard Armour, the Academic Registrar at Griffith University, was presented with the case. His response? The same old whitewash dished out so many times before. No new information had been provided he claimed, when in fact the questionable selection of the thesis' examiners was mentioned for the first time. In his view the evaluation should stand, when in fact the points raised by myself had not been examined. How could they have been, unless one assumes the presence or otherwise of text written in black and white was actually some form of hallucination on my part. Should I submit to a test, to ascertain whether I am capable of parsing sentences and processing their content?

Or had Dr Armour's examination of the case been nothing more than talking to a select few, relying on their assurances that everything is just fine? Never mind the glaring detail, if only there is the will to look through the veil.

It's the tribe all over again: submit, play along, don't say anything. After all, it worked for the Kurds, didn't it?