Structure In A Structure In A Structure...

I'll briefly interrupt the usual whooshy wind and tumbleweed here at Fresh Brainz with this video you just HAVE to see.

Check it out in 720p for all the astounding detail.

At first, it seems like a well made, Transformer-esque CG virtualscape...



... but when it zooms in, you start to see recursive patterns of Lego-like metallic plates, and it zooms further in and...

HEY! SELF SIMILARITY!

It's a fractal!

Yes my friends, now solids can also be fractals.

Apparently, such 3D fractal sets have only been developed a couple of years ago, and mathematicians are still considering if it is a "true" 3D Mandelbrot set.

But mathematical rigour aside - just think of the artistic potential!

The ability to generate visually spectacular landscapes with both sweeping scale AND detail - simply by plugging numbers into a formula.

Incredible, bizarre environments that goes to the limit (or beyond?) of human imagination.

Filmmakers and gamemakers, get a crackin'.


Would you like to know more?

Other epic 3D fractal videos:
- Mandelbox trip (YouTube)
- Trip to center of hybrid fractal (YouTube)

About the mathematics of 3D fractals:
- The Mandelbulb: first 'true' 3D image of famous fractal (New Scientist)
- Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal (by Daniel White)
- Mandelbox (by Tom Lowe)

Can Science Answer Moral Questions?

Just watched an interesting TED talk by Sam Harris about how science can shed some light about questions of morality.

I like many of Harris' talks, and as a structuralist I agree with the overall premise that questions of morality can be investigated scientifically.

Thus I was looking forward to hearing his arguments; however, after listening to him I realized that I mainly disagreed with him instead!

Here, check it out first:



Eloquently articulated, to be sure, but I have so many disagreements with his view that... wow, where do I even begin?

1. "Values are a certain kind of fact. They are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures."

Firstly, I don't know which moral philosopher would agree with Harris' definition of "values", but dictionary.com defines "values" as "the ideals, customs, institutions, etc., of a society toward which the people of the group have an affective regard."

In common language the term "values" has a very strong social component which is missing in Harris' definition - making "values" appear to be some kind of individual-level property.

This is a very big problem. There is a difference between the moral sense/personal principles of individuals and the social values of groups.

Harris makes it look as if social values can ultimately be reducible to neuroscience, which in my view is pitching it at the wrong organization level.

Secondly, how would you measure "well-being" in the context of social values?

There are many cultures that consider some amount of physical/psychological pain to be an important aspect of a person's development toward adulthood, or to be recognized as a legit member of society.

Even if someone was able to create some kind of standardized "well-being" metric, how would you convince other people to agree with it?

Take for example, our "civilized" culture in Singapore where children are subject to at least a decade of institutional education, usually longer.

It is a system which regularly inflicts pain of varying degrees.

Does anyone think that most teenagers want to be scolded by teachers/prefects, spend their holidays on homework/tuition, learn calculus/linear law, or train furiously/contort their bodies in order to get silver for their NAPFA test to avoid PTP during NS?

So are all these activities immoral?

2. "There are truths to be known about how human communities flourish - whether or not we understand these truths. And morality relates to these truths."

During the talk, Harris constantly emphasized human "flourishing".

Harris was trained as a biologist, as was I. From a biological perspective, the survival of a population can be easily measured - in terms of reproductive fitness, children per woman, population growth rates etc.

But how would anyone agree on what "flourishing" means, let alone how to measure it?

Take for example, the Spartan civilization in Ancient Greece.

Spartan society was highly structured, militaristic and brutal - from the cradle to the grave.

Small or deformed babies were left to die of exposure. Boys began military training at age seven - deliberately underfed to encourage them to learn the skill of stealing food.

By eighteen they were trained to kill members of the Helot minority; at twenty they were eligible for military service and they would remain on duty until they were 60 years old.

If a Spartan soldier lost his shield in battle and returned alive, it was assumed that he attempted to flee and thus was subject to punishment by death or banishment. Even mothers enforced the militaristic lifestyle that Spartan men endured!

Yet, for such a cruel and warlike society, Sparta was well-admired during its day, considered by many people - even some of its rivals in Athens - to be an ideal state free from the corruption of commerce and money. Spartan women also enjoyed more rights and equality to men than elsewhere during that time period.

In terms of survival as a group, Sparta managed to maintain its political independence for several centuries.

So did the Spartans "flourish"?

And how do we critique the morality of their societal practices scientifically?

**********

There are many, many other things that I disagree with, but it's late and I need to sleep.

Suffice to say that I am amazed to see how reductionist Harris' view is, and how much he is attracted by the concept of a universal morality - eg. continuum along a single dimension, fixed peaks and valleys in his "moral landscape".

I realize that the systems perspective is not immediately intuitive, and people, even science-trained people, like to see things along a simple spectrum of black and white, right and wrong.

This spectrum, especially for social values, cannot exist because of confounding variables such as short-term vs long-term benefit, individual vs group benefit, stability vs flexibility etc - there are multidimensional trade-offs that preclude simple optimality.

A Grey Lizard That Isn't Really Grey

Last month, during the Chinese New Year period, I was passing through a jogging track beside a canal in Ghim Moh when I spotted this little critter:















GREY LIZARD!

It had a surprisingly deep grey colour that matched the surrounding asphalt very well. If not for the fact that it was dashing across the track right in front of me, I would have missed it.

I think that its grey skin is a good camouflage to protect the lizard against predators, such as birds.

I don't know much about lizards, but I find its even grey tone surprising since I've only seen garden lizards in brown and green.

My first thought when I saw it was - maybe there is a selection pressure for "jogging track lizards" to be grey?















Here's the fellow next to a ten cent coin.

The lizard was about 3 cm long. It could be a juvenile, so the grey colouration could be a transitory feature.

Most scientists who study the evolution of animal features tend to focus on the adult form. That doesn't mean that the features of young animals are less important.

We must remember that the environment starts to act against an animal, even before it was born!

If an animal cannot survive its youth, it cannot become an adult.















When I took a close-up photo of the lizard, I realized that it wasn't really grey!

The scales were in a mottled pattern of light and dark brown, and coupled with the fact that the lizard appeared to be moulting, the resultant colour from a distance was a dull, dark grey.

It made me ponder about the concept that quantitatively different features at the component level can result in qualitatively different features at the system level, ie. emergence.

After all, if you try to find a novel "grey gene" on this grey lizard, you might end up finding nothing! It might have been the combination of expression level changes to existing brown colour genes and opacity of the scales that contributed to its overall grey appearance.

Well, that's too much speculation for one day.

So I left the lizard, which had remained frozen in that position for minutes on the asphalt and didn't leave even after I had walked several metres away.

Survival instinct or excessive fear?

Seconds later, a bicycle zipped by that same spot.

I didn't look back.


Would you like to know more?
- Tertiary color (Wikipedia)

Introduction To Jean Baudrillard

Here's a superb primer by globalbeehive to the work of Jean Baudrillard - French sociologist and philosopher best known for his book Simulacra and Simulation, which was misinterpretated by the popular movie, The Matrix.




To a science-trained person, postmodernist philosophy can be very annoying due to the abundance use of metaphors and abuse of scientific jargon.

Moreover, I strongly disagree with the view that the world is fundamentally unknowable - even if "objectivity" can never be reached in practice, we can still distill a high level of intersubjectivity, which for many purposes is good enough knowledge to generate testable predictions and create technologies.

Even so, I think that Baudrillard's observations about the modern consumerist culture are spot on, especially his view on the "sign value" of objects.

Globalbeehive puts it this way:

"For Baudrillard, the sign value is much more important. So you don't just buy a computer to use it, but you also buy a computer in order to prove to the others, in a capitalist system, to make them believe that you are participating in it and have a certain status in it."

Oh my, that is really eerie!

Have you ever wondered why people put up those "Made on a Mac" badges?

Wondered why people spend a quarter million dollars on sports cars, only to drive them through city streets with a 50 km/h speed limit?

Why people spend tens of thousands on high-end audio systems that sound practically the same as those costing ten times less?

The yucky aesthetics of the Bohemian fashion trend in early '09? Bubble skirts? Croc shoes?

Well... now you know!

The consumer doesn't just consume the brand, she also gets subsumed by the brand, and the identity of the person becomes inextricable from the products that she brandishes as signs of her status.

Baudrillard's view on "hyperreality" is also very interesting.

From my perspective, hyperreality is a systems-level, socio-emergent trait that can become more compelling than factual reality.

Hyperreality can be created by distorting or exaggerating certain aspects of factual reality such that it becomes more "real" to the people than reality. This can be reinforced by constantly repeating the message ad nauseum (eg. through media bombardment) and eventually through the mechanism of "normalization of deviance" the people accept the hyperreality as the authentic version.

Or as Baudrillard would say:

"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth - it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true."

This concept is not only of great importance to systems theorists, it is also important to those who are involved in creating the perception of value, for example politicians and sales/marketing people.

**********

I know this is quite a heavy topic to start the New Year with, but heh heh heh... get used to it.

It's going to get even heavier.


Would you like to know more?

About Jean Baudrillard's ideas:
- Excerpt from Simulacra and Simulation (Stanford) *Warning: postmodernist language!

About hyperreality in society:
- War between Business and Science

Not Always About Who You Know...

Check out this superb article "Is the Tipping Point Toast?" (Fast Company article via Mind Hacks) which critiques the concept of "Influentials" in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and highlights some of the interesting research data by network theorist Duncan Watts.

Social-networking tools are extensively used in marketing today, stemming from a belief that there exists a small group of highly-interconnected Influentials who play the major role in starting or propagating trends of any sort.

However, this belief is rarely put to a rigorous investigation and the assumption that these Influentials can be identified and targetted is made with the benefit of hindsight.

In fact, studies by Watts suggest the counterintuitive result that random Ordinary people are more likely to start trends than Influentials, and there is no way of telling in advance who that person will be.

He performed an interesting "turn back the clock" experiment (conceptually similiar to Richard Lenski's experiment in evolutionary biology) that was published in Science in 2006:

Watts wanted to find out whether the success of a hot trend was reproducible. For example, we know that Madonna became a breakout star in 1983. But if you rewound the world back to 1982, would Madonna break out again? To find out, Watts built a world populated with real live music fans picking real music, then hit rewind, over and over again. Working with two colleagues, Watts designed an online music-downloading service. They filled it with 48 songs by new, unknown, and unsigned bands. Then they recruited roughly 14,000 people to log in. Some were asked to rank the songs based on their own personal preference, without regard to what other people thought. They were picking songs purely on each song's merit. But the other participants were put into eight groups that had "social influence": Each could see how other members of the group were ranking the songs.

Watts predicted that word of mouth would take over. And sure enough, that's what happened. In the merit group, the songs were ranked mostly equitably, with a small handful of songs drifting slightly lower or higher in popularity. But in the social worlds, as participants reacted to one another's opinions, huge waves took shape. A small, elite bunch of songs became enormously popular, rising above the pack, while another cluster fell into relative obscurity.

But here's the thing: In each of the eight social worlds, the top songs--and the bottom ones--were completely different. For example, the song "Lockdown," by 52metro, was the No. 1 song in one world, yet finished 40 out of 48 in another. Nor did there seem to be any compelling correlation between merit and success. In fact, Watts explains, only about half of a song's success seemed to be due to merit. "In general, the 'best' songs never do very badly, and the 'worst' songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible," he says. Why? Because the first band to snag a few thumbs-ups in the social world tended overwhelmingly to get many more. Yet who received those crucial first votes seemed to be mostly a matter of luck.

Word of mouth and social contagion made big hits bigger. But they also made success more unpredictable. (And it's worth noting, no one in the social worlds had any more influence than anyone else.) So yes, Watts figures, if you rewound the world to 1982, Madonna would likely remain a total unknown--and someone else would have slipped into her steel-tipped corset. "You cannot predict in advance whether a band gets this huge cascade of popularity, because the social network is liable to throw up almost any result," he marvels.

Contingency is important, and the role of Influentials is highly exaggerated.

In any case, I find it curious that both Duncan Watts and I have a similar key criticism of The Tipping Point which I reviewed over three years ago - using a similar metaphor!

Watt's view:

Perhaps the problem with viral marketing is that the disease metaphor is misleading. Watts thinks trends are more like forest fires: There are thousands a year, but only a few become roaring monsters. That's because in those rare situations, the landscape was ripe: sparse rain, dry woods, badly equipped fire departments. If these conditions exist, any old match will do. "And nobody," Watts says wryly, "will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire."

My view:

Just one match (Maven) in a fireworks factory can blow everything up. You don't need to set up a comprehensive network of fuses (Connector) and detonators (Salesman) first. In contrast, even a hundred detonators would have trouble blowing up a hydroponics farm.

We have both observed that an agent in the midst of change has a tendency to believe that she is the prime mover of the change, ignoring the contributions of others, preconditions in the environment and the vagaries of blind luck.

Where Is The "Swim" In A Swimmer?

Here's a concise and nicely presented video by QualiaSoup about the problems with the philosophy of dualism.






I should add that substance dualism is also not consistent with the experience of people who go through general anaesthesia.

They describe feeling drowsy before the operation and then abruptly awake after the operation, as if no time had passed in between.

This subjective continuity of consciousness is a problem for dualists - where did the consciousness "go" during those hours?

If consciousness can be suspended in this manner by chemicals, then it cannot be independent of physical reality. The strong possibility exists that consciousness is simply a process of physical reality, and can be obliterated via physical means.

Also, if an "eternal soul" is supposed to persist even when consciousness is suspended during anaesthesia, this suggests that they are distinct entities.

If someone's "eternal soul" survives physical death but is not linked to her consciousness, then she didn't really survive.

Dubai World's US$59 Billion Debt

Dubai's sovereign wealth fund, Dubai World, has shocked investors with an announcement to delay debt payments until 30th May 2010.




Before the onset of the global economic recession, Dubai accumulated US$80 billion of debt, of which US$59 billion is owed by Dubai World.


Would you like to know more?
- Dubai World Seeks to Delay Debt Payments as Default Risk Soars (Bloomberg)
- World stocks slump amid Dubai's debt woes (Daily Mail)
- Dubai’s debt default shakes world (Hindustan Times)
- Dubai World debt fears haunt financial markets (The Australian)

Why Societies Collapse

Interesting TED talk by Professor Jared Diamond, better known for his book "Guns, Germs, and Steel".





1. "One interesting common thread has to do with, in many cases, the rapidity of collapse after a society reaches its peak. There are many societies that don't wind down gradually, but they build up, get richer and more powerful, and then within a short time, within a few decades after their peak, they collapse."

2. "One blueprint for trouble, making collapse likely, is where there is a conflict of interest between the short-term interest of the decision-making elites, and the long-term interest of the society as a whole. Especially if the elites are able to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions."

I am concerned with situations where a leadership class sets the society on a unsustainable trajectory that results in a rapid collapse of the whole system in a matter of decades.

This is especially worrying when the decision-makers are insulated from the consequences of their actions, therefore there is no feedback inhibition to reduce or stop their damaging policies.

We Can Simulate Your Marriage Wholesale

Just came across this nice romantic flick with an interesting sci-fi twist...


Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Ok, now that you've wiped your tears dry and snorted your nose juice down your throat, it's my duty as the resident spoilsport to inform you that:

1. Memories can't be implanted directly into the brain like that because the brain doesn't really have a central, fixed location where all the memories get stored. Also, unless you intend to cut a big hole on the back of someone's skull, the only way for a person to "experience" a VR is to actually put on sensory devices such as goggles, headphones... and Sogo-7 data gloves.

2. Complex systems are not predictable to the same extent that simple systems (eg. traffic patterns) can be. Thus it is not possible to produce an accurate simulation of a relationship by only plugging in the subjects' DNA and personality profiles, while ignoring other important factors such as the environment (eg. economic downturn leading to loss of job). Even if that was possible, at best the simulation can only be probabilistic, because a confluence of small factors can result in some emergent, opposite effect.

I know you don't care.


Would you like to know more?

Another movie about people getting their minds fucked:
- Total Recall (YouTube)

Mob Behaviour Of Social Groups

What a remarkable confluence of events today!

1. This morning I received an email from an old friend - unfortunately it was a chain mail with some pretty NASA photograph in it.

I prefer not to propagate chain mails, so I deleted it while asking myself: "Why do people fall for chain mails so easily?"

2. Next, I came across this YouTube video about chain letters on MySpace and other social networking sites:



Nykytyne2 sees a connection between Pascal's Wager and the mob behaviour of people who keep reposting chain letters.

He thinks that social networking and multiplayer game sites can potentially be a great tool for social psychologists to study mob behaviour.

3. And then, sociologist Jesse Fagan of Orbital Teapot posts a summary about this research study:

Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move (Couzin et al. 2005, Nature)

This paper has revealed a very interesting result. Jesse explains:

The powerful insight, I thought, was that groups that behave like swarms or flocks can find some resource if only a small proportion of the the individuals have the knowledge. Furthermore, the ratio between those who know and those who follow scales logarithmically with respect to the size of the total group. That means the larger the group, the group of knowledgeable individuals does not have to rise linearly.

When I say agents who behave like a swarm I mean they obey a small set of simple rules.

So here's a plausible explanation for why there are so many "sheeple" in the world today mindlessly following a tiny clique of powerful overlords.

Maybe it doesn't hurt society to have many stupid people who are only good at following orders - there could be a structural reason behind this.

Ain't that neat?

The question, the hypothesis-generation and the results all popped up within the space of a few hours.

Sometimes I wonder if I am trying to find systems science, or if systems science is trying to find me...

Update: AWARE Exco Remains Silent

Here are some updates from mainstream media sources regarding the AWARE Exco takeover (I've highlighted some key facts in bold):


1. 160 AWARE members call for meeting to question new ExCo

By Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia

Posted: 14 April 2009 2057 hrs

SINGAPORE : 160 members of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) have submitted a request to call an extraordinary general meeting for the society, where a motion of no confidence in the newly-elected Executive Committee (ExCo) will be considered.

It all started at the AWARE annual general meeting on March 28.

Nine of the 12 Executive Committee positions went to newcomers during that meeting. Over 100 people had turned up to vote and many of these voters had only just joined AWARE.

Some of the newcomers have previously written to the media speaking against homosexuality. AWARE, on the other hand, is known for its liberal stance.

"It (AWARE) stands for choice, it stands for gender equity, it stands for democracy, it stands for diversity, plurality. That's why our membership has always been open," said Corinna Lim, a former Executive Committee member and AWARE member since 1992.

When asked for their reasons for seeking leadership, the new ExCo members declined comment.

"We told you that ExCo is going to be meeting sometime this week, after which there will be a press release. So there is no comment," said Charlotte Wong, VP of AWARE.

Its newly-elected President, Claire Nazar, a longtime member of AWARE, resigned barely two weeks after being voted in.

Some past presidents in the meantime, have been collecting signatures to call for an extraordinary general meeting - prompting some observers to comment that they are behaving like sore losers.

"We welcome change, it is not about losing at all. Someone from a different group came in, have certain ideas about what AWARE should be doing and hasn't communicated it, and all we want to know now is what this is about," said Lim.

"The extraordinary general meeting is an opportunity for the new guard to explain their position and win the members over. We can't really comment whether they will hold fast to the traditional line of AWARE, but I can't imagine why not, if they chose to enter AWARE and run for office there," said political analyst Gillian Koh.

The current committee has not replied to members' request to hold the meeting.

AWARE has about 500 members. - CNA /ls

2. Old guard calls for meeting

ESTHER NG

estherng@mediacorp.com.sg

THE old guard is fighting back.

After a leadership grab by new faces, the abrupt resignation of the new president and rumours of hidden agendas swirling on the Internet, some 150 longstanding members of the women’s advocacy group Aware have called for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) that may include a motion of no-confidence in the new executive committee (Exco).

“We don’t know who these people are. We’ve not heard a word from the new Exco for the past two-and-a-half weeks,” said Ms Corrine Lim, a longstanding member of Aware, which stands for the Association of Women for Action and Research. Ms Lim is one of the 150 signatories calling for the EGM.

The concern of the old guard is palpable. On March 28, a large group of new members turned up at Aware’s annual general meeting and apparently staged a coup. Nine of the 12 seats on the society’s Exco went to new members. Eleven days later, its new president Claire Nazar quit abruptly and cyberspace has since been abuzz with rumours about the religious and allegedly anti-gay views of the new Exco members.

“It didn’t help that people were speculating all kinds of things on the Internet. In fact, in times like these, the Exco should come out to respond quickly,” said Ms Lim.

Aware’s new vice-president Charlotte Wong was tight-lipped when Today met her at the group’s office yesterday.

“None of us can answer your questions until the Exco meets. We’re just following the rules. They are in the constitution,” said Ms Wong. “We’ll be releasing a statement after we meet.”

However, a check with Aware’s constitution has turned up no such rule. Today understands that the Exco will meet today.

Responding to comments by veteran journalist P N Balji that Aware should live up to its spirit of “championing the need for choices in a pluralistic society” and so accept the new line-up, Ms Lim said the EGM will precisely serve this purpose.

“It will be an opportunity for members to raise their concerns with the Exco and also for the new Exco to explain their values and vision of Aware. If the general meeting is happy with their goals, we’ll go along. If not, we’ll put (the matter) to a vote,” she said.

Members of the old guard have asked that the notice to call the EGM be issued no later than 14 days from the date of the request. This is the first time that the society has called for one.

3. Counter-attack at Aware

160 veterans to table no-confidence vote at extraordinary meeting

By Wong Kim Hoh, Senior Writer

THE old guard at the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) has launched a counter-attack after several unknowns seized the leadership at its recent elections.

A group of 160 veterans are calling for an extraordinary general meeting (EOGM) where they intend to table a vote of no confidence in the new executive council.

In a statement on Tuesday, they expressed concern over the unusual nature of the March 28 annual general meeting 'when a large number of new members turned up and appeared to vote for several office bearers, all of whom are also new members'.

Older members present were shocked when the newcomers contested and won almost all positions, beating more seasoned members by wide majorities.

Those calling for an EOGM also found it disturbing that Mrs Claire Nazar, who was elected president without a contest, resigned within days.

The new exco members have yet to make known publicly who they are, how they are connected, what prompted them to take over in the manner that they did, or their plans for Singapore's leading women's group.

Repeated attempts to reach exco members for comments have drawn a blank since last week.

Ms Corinna Lim, 44, a spokesman for the old guard group, told The Straits Times: 'It is necessary to have an EOGM because we need an open discussion of what their agenda is.

'We've had a lot of calls from concerned members but we have had no communication from the new exco.'

Ms Lim, a corporate counsel, said that under the Aware constitution, an EOGM must be called if 10 per cent of the membership ask for one in writing. Given the rules, it could be held within a month.

**********

In light of this new information, I think that my previous guess that there is a lack of rapport between the veteran core and their members is incorrect.

The fact that 160 members can stand together and call for an extraordinary general meeting shows that their ties within the organization and their commitment to AWARE's mission remain very strong.

This suggests that the Exco takeover was only successful due to its unexpected nature and not because of any fundamental disunity within the organization.

If there is any schism at all, it is between the new Exco and the vast majority of AWARE members.

And this gulf widens every day with their continued and concerted effort to stop communicating with their own members, not to say the press.

Even more worrying, they appear to be interpreting AWARE's constitution in their own special way.

If this situation persists, the remaining silent majority of about 300 members may become motivated to take a stand.

Anyone who has some experience as a member or a leader of a committee would be aware of the importance of a clear channel of communications, especially during unusual situations.

And this is an unusual situation indeed.

How unusual? Let me put it this way:

Imagine if you just won an election, by a landslide victory, over a group of veterans in an established and respected organization.

You would thank your supporters enthusiastically.

You would immediately reach out to the outgoing exco, thanking them for their previous contributions and assuring their supporters that their voices will continue to be heard by the new administration.

You would greet the new day with a press release announcing the plans of the new exco, affirm your commitment to the core values of the organization and say something optimistic about its future.

In other words, you'd be rather happy. Ecstatic even.

Because you won!

But instead, we get this cold, hard, stonewall.

Even the supporters, who in other elections (remember the US presidential election?) would be running around happily, singing praises of the new committee, remain strangely silent.

"No comment".

In my previous post, I used the metaphor of an iceberg collision to convey my feelings about this matter.

Once a few chunks of ice hit the deck, people will start to ask questions.

If the leaders do not quickly and honestly communicate the situation to the people, the people may begin to imagine all sorts of hideous problems under the surface.


Would you like to know more?

- Time line of events aboard the Titanic

The Same Thing We Do Every Night, Pinky

One of the most chilling scenes I've ever seen in a movie is this part when the Titanic hits the iceberg:





It's not the frantic action and the utter devastation below decks that gets me, but what happens up at the passenger levels.

Where... nothing much happens really.

Rose and Jack just see some chunks of ice drop onto the deck, while other passengers look on sheepishly at what they thought was a near collision.

It all seems very boring.

But yet, at that exact moment, the Titanic was already doomed to sink "with mathematical certainty".

In hindsight, these boring scenes at the passenger levels give an eerie sense of forboding.

Today, I got a similar feeling when I read this news (pipette tip to Lucky Tan):

Unknowns knock out veterans at Aware polls

Caught off-guard by big turnout, longtime members lose to fresh faces

By Wong Kim Hoh

SINGAPORE'S best-known women's group, the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware), has seen a dramatic changing of the guard - which some members are describing as nothing short of a leadership grab.

When Aware held its annual general meeting on March 28, everyone expected the usual: No more than 30 or 40 members would turn up at its Dover Crescent centre, and a prepared slate of candidates would be voted into office easily.

Instead, more than 100 people came, the majority of whom had joined Aware only in recent months.

And when the election of office bearers began, almost every position was challenged by new faces, who won by wide majorities.

In the end, nine out of 12 executive committee spots went to the newcomers.

One older member who won without a contest was Mrs Claire Nazar, a former corporate counsel nominated to be president by outgoing Aware chief Constance Singam.

But barely a week into her new term, and before making her first statement as president, Mrs Nazar quit suddenly this week.

She confirmed that she had resigned, but declined to say any more when reached by The Straits Times.

It is not known who will now become president.

Longtime members took two other positions: Chew I-Jin as assistant honorary treasurer and Caris Lim Chai Leng was elected a committee member.

The election results have left longtime Aware members in shock.

Former president Tan Joo Hymn, 38, told The Straits Times the big turnout at the AGM surprised her.

'I arrived at the meeting late and found out that I was No. 100 on the attendance list. I've been a member for 10 years, and never before has there been such a turnout,' said the former lawyer who is now a full-time mother.

Another former president, writer Dana Lam, 57, said: 'There were many faces I had not seen before, and I found that very strange.

'In previous years, even if there were new members, they would be known to one or more of the older members.'

The first indication that something was afoot came when Ms Chew, an Aware veteran, was challenged and defeated handsomely by new member Charlotte Wong Hock Soon for the post of vice-president.

Ms Chew was later elected unopposed as assistant honorary treasurer.

'It was alarming,' said Ms Lam. 'How could a new member who had just joined for a couple of months, and whom we knew nothing about, be picked over someone who has been with Aware for more than 15 years?'

Some of the older members immediately began checking the attendance list.

Ms Tan said: 'We found that about 80 of the 102 who turned up were new members who joined between January and March this year.'

Aware, a feminist group that has prided itself on being 'all inclusive', has never vetted the people who apply to be members.

Men can join too, as associate members.

As it dawned on them that a leadership grab was imminent, some older members at the AGM tried asking the newcomers who they were, what they stood for, and why they wanted to be in charge.

They got only the briefest answers, they said.

Ms Lam said she tried suggesting that new members serve a stint on Aware's various sub-committees before standing for election to leadership positions.

But such suggestions went unheeded as the election proceeded, with more newcomers winning executive committee positions by landslide margins.

Ironically, the old guard at Aware had been working towards changing their Constitution to make it a rule that only those who have been members for at least a year would be eligible to join the ex-co.

There is currently no rule to bar a brand new member from seeking office, and that was what happened at the AGM.

Ms Tan said: 'We were simply outnumbered. Technically, they got in legitimately.'

She added that the way the election proceeded was so unusual, it was hard to imagine that the takeover was not a planned effort.

'It could not be pure coincidence,' she said.

But little is known of Aware's new leaders, aside from the fact that they include women from the corporate sector, lawyers, company directors and academics.

Older members said the newcomers spoke well but would not elaborate on their plans for Aware.

'When asked if they believed in equality, they kept repeating they were there to support women and to make sure they got ahead and got all the opportunities given to them,' Ms Lam said.

Older members were keen to know if the newcomers shared Aware's vision and values, including equality for all regardless of race, religion or sexuality.

But one outspoken new member from the floor, who identified herself as Angela Thiang, said questions about the new office bearers' religion and their stand on homosexuality were not relevant.

Former Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Braema Mathi, a two-term president of Aware, told The Straits Times that she, like many other members, was concerned.

'If you are keen to serve, you don't challenge every position. We do not know who they are,' said the former journalist who is now in Bangkok doing consultancy work for international women's group Unifem.

'It is very troubling, more so because I've heard the new president has resigned.'
Almost a fortnight into their new roles, the new leaders of Aware were not entertaining calls from the media this week.

New honorary secretary Jenica Chua Chor Ping told The Straits Times a press release would be issued 'in a few days' and added that until then, the committee would not answer any questions.

A check showed that some of those at the AGM and on the new committee have appeared in The Straits Times Forum Page.

Ms Chua, Ms Thiang and Dr Alan Chin, a male member of Aware who attended the AGM and supported the newcomers, all wrote letters to this newspaper between August and October 2007.

In a letter on Oct 17 that year, Ms Chua said NMP Siew Kum Hong had overstepped his non-partisan role and advanced the homosexual cause by tabling a petition in Parliament to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code which criminalises homosexual sex between consenting men.

In another letter on Oct 25, she took issue with a Straits Times report which said NMP Thio Li-Ann had been 'visibly distraught' when she opposed Mr Siew's petition vigorously.

Ms Chua said Ms Thio had dealt with several points succinctly, with humour and passion.

Dr Chin and Ms Thiang both wrote letters to caution against the risks of promoting the homosexual lifestyle.

Meanwhile, news of Aware's AGM has spread among older members who did not attend the meeting, as well as civil society groups.

The most frequently-asked questions: Who are the new women in charge, why do they want the leadership, and what are their plans for Aware?

Ms Mathi said: 'The building of an institution takes many years; building its value system is even harder.

'Why can't they come in and be part of the process, and build it together and in a more evolutionary manner? That way, the comfort level will be high for everyone.'

Former newspaper editor and media consultant Peter Lim, a longtime associate member of Aware, said he was very surprised to learn what had taken place.

Asked why he thought a group of newcomers would want to take control, he said he did not know if it was an orchestrated effort.

But he thought Aware would be attractive to those seeking to be in charge of an established institution. Setting up a new outfit would take too much time and trouble.

'Aware has built up its credentials over the years and achieved more than a few things,' he said.

Three former Aware presidents - Ms Claire Chiang, Dr Kanwaljit Soin and Ms Mathi - have served as NMPs.

'Aware is a brand name and most people regard it as the leading voice of the feminists and modern women in Singapore,' said Mr Lim.

kimhoh@sph.com.sg

**********

A number of bloggers have voiced their opinions on this issue (Sam Ho has a good compendium of their responses).

Some of them suspect a conspiracy and are concerned about the possibility of an anti-homosexual agenda by the new Exco members and their supporters.

I should say that I'm surprised that Dr. Alan Chin (who is no stranger to us at Clearthought Singapore; check out his views on homosexuality here, here and here) is a member of AWARE.

Nevertheless, here at Fresh Brainz we are obsessed with systems science and thus are more interested in the plausible strategy of the takeover. From this perspective, all those discussions about homosexuality are just "chunks of ice falling on the passengers' deck".

What is more significant is the fact that a group of total newcomers have swiftly taken over the reins of leadership from a core of established veterans!

Incumbent leaders of other organizations who have been looking on sheepishly should sit up now and pay attention.

Assuming that the events depicted by the Straits Times is factually true, this is the approximate timeline of key events:

Jan - March 2009

- Spike in AWARE's membership.

28 March 2009

- Unusually large turnout during AGM, about 3 times bigger than normal, nearly 80% are newcomers.
- 9 of 12 Exco positions goes to newcomers, so new that they have no subcommittee experience.

Early April 2009

- President Ms. Claire Nazar resigns.
- Media blackout regarding the new Exco.

Here are three plausible system-level weaknesses:

1. Lack of defence mechanism

- no vetting process for membership.
- no consensus standards for evaluating eligibility of Exco candidates (whether they publicly support AWARE's vision and values, eg. equality for all regardless of race, religion or sexuality).
- no subcommittee experience, or minimal membership time required for Exco candidates.

2. Voter apathy

- low turnout on regular AGMs permitting a takeover via manageable number of supporters (~100).

3. Lack of rapport/schism between veteran core and ordinary members?

- May explain low voter turnout.
- May explain why some members are not alarmed by the sudden takeover.


Would you like to know more?

- Are you aware of AWARE? (Sam's thoughts)
- The AWARE AGM 2009 — my personal take: beware of ST (Mathia Lee)

FAMILIAR Part 4: Aligned Resources

One important reason why the Star Wars series of films has such a wide appeal is due to its story structure. George Lucas was inspired by Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and deliberately applied Campbell's ideas into his storyline.

Campbell was studying comparative mythology and wanted to find out if there are common elements between major myths around the world that have lasted for thousands of years. He elucidated a fundamental structure which he called the "monomyth" or "the hero's journey" and summarized it like this:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

The monomyth is divided into three sections - "Departure", "Initiation" and "Return". Each of these sections has a set of characteristic stages, for example "Supernatural Aid" in Departure where the hero encounters an old wizard (Obi-Wan!) who provides him with special tools (Lightsabre!) and advice (Use the Force!) for the adventure ahead.

Only a few world myths contain all these stages, some of them only have a few stages and others have them in a different order. Campbell's monomyth is thus criticized for focusing on the similarities and glossing over the differences between the myths, and scholars have also questioned its usefulness and general validity.

Nonetheless the monomyth has been an influential tool for plot development; aside from Star Wars, popular movies like The Lion King and the Matrix series (possibly the Harry Potter series as well) have story structures that are modelled on the monomyth.

I won't go into further details of the monomyth here, but suffice to say that by using a comparative strategy, Campbell was able to create a common resource out of the dozens of diverse mythologies in the world. He recognized that it is impossible to do this based on any single myth.

Indeed, I would argue that in general single cases only represent data and not knowledge. Outside the context of mythology, even single cases that are firmly rooted in physical evidence cannot really enlighten us about the nature of our Universe; we can only learn about them, not from them.

In other words, they have descriptive but not prescriptive value.

**********

The power of comparative analysis was driven home in my mind very early in my graduate student career by my advisor.

During a genomics lecture he illustrated this by showing a single sequence from one species of animal. For example, here's part of the amino acid sequence of a human gene:

MYNMMETELKPPGPQQTSGGGGGNSTAAAAGGNQKNSPDRVKRPMNAFMVWSRGQRRKMAQEN...

Well, it's a string of letters. You can't learn much just by staring at it.

But when you do an alignment with homologous genes from many other species...






... important features immediately jump out at you.

The yellow blocks represent regions that are completely identical over hundreds of millions of years of evolution - it's a good bet that those regions are functionally crucial. Blue and green blocks are identical only among some species, while white areas exhibit high variability.

Therefore, you can see regions of similarities as well as regions of differences. Regions that are common to mammals, or just to rodents, or unique to one species which may reflect functions that are only relevant to those group of animals.

This is knowledge.

Whether it is science or history, information derived from a single case is only descriptive of the case itself - in order to understand fundamental principles, produce testable predictions or to "give advice" to other people, you must have data from more than one case. With an increasing number of aligned cases comes a more accurate and more refined knowledge of the subject matter.

Hence the "analogy" aspect of FAMILIAR - knowledge obtained by comparing the features of complex systems and aligning them into a structured resource, not only at the same organizational level, but also across organizational levels.

I am aware that argument from analogy is a logical fallacy, but that does not preclude the use of an "analogy machine" like FAMILIAR to start the investigation by generating hypotheses and enabling cross-discipline visualization.

Having a systematic way to align single cases into a common resource allows people to see both the similarities and differences between the cases. Where the cases are too different in key areas to be effectively compared, proposed models can be rejected as uninformative. Where cases have striking similarities over numerous key characteristics, there is compelling support for a fundamental structure among them.

However, human knowledge is wildly varible in format. How is it possible to align diverse forms of knowledge into one common resource?

Stay tuned for the next post on the FAMILIAR Core.

That Will Be 90 Dollars, Please

By now practically everyone in the Singapore blogosphere must have heard of this "unique" incident:

You're a hero

Donor hands over the money to SGH to say thanks to man who saved drowning woman

By Judith Tan

SEVERAL readers of The Straits Times came forward yesterday and offered to pick up the treatment tab for a good Samaritan injured while saving a drowning woman.

More than 10 people offered to reimburse Mr Filip Lou's $90 bill after reading in The Straits Times yesterday that the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) would not waive the charges.

They were beaten to it by an unidentified man, who turned up at the hospital early yesterday morning and handed over cash to cover Mr Lou's bill.

Mr Lou, 34, a Dutch IT executive here for a conference, had jumped into the Singapore River on Monday night to rescue a woman who had fallen into the water.

While pulling her out, he cut his hands and feet on the sharp stone steps along the water's edge. He was brought to the hospital, along with the woman, by the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), where his wounds were cleaned and he was given a tetanus shot - and then presented with the bill.

Yesterday, Mr Lou received a call from the hospital, asking him to return to collect his money.

Initially, he thought SGH had gone back on its earlier insistence that he pay the bill.

But when his wife, Ms Theresa Lee, arrived at the hospital to get the cash in the afternoon, she was told what had happened.

Contacted yesterday evening, Mr Lou said he was rendered speechless by the generosity of Singaporeans.

He said he understood SGH's policy, saying that there was a service performed, after all.

But, he added: 'What there should be is a policy looking into treating someone who got hurt trying to save another.

'Mine was a small injury. What if it had been a broken leg or dislocated joint?' he asked.

When contacted yesterday, SGH stood by its decision.

'We maintain our stand that we will not waive fees for medical services rendered,' a spokesman said.

Its stand drew comments from more than 70 people who called or wrote to this newspaper yesterday.

Most were critical, and said Mr Lou's act should be recognised.

Said a former MP for Sembawang GRC, Dr Warren Lee, a paediatrician, 47: 'We as Singaporeans should not hear about such a brave and selfless act without expressing our thanks by at least paying for his medical bill.'

Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner Yeow Boon Kwee, 67, who was among those who wanted to pay the bill, said: 'It's my way of saying sorry, and that we are really not that bad.'

Mr Lou's deed did not go unappreciated, however.

Apart from having his bill picked up, he was also given a Public Spiritedness Award by the SCDF.

He is also the toast of the town, as far as some people are concerned.

The story and photo in The Straits Times yesterday, he said, brought him a lot of attention - 'both wanted and unwanted'.

'After it made the papers, I received a lot of hits on my Facebook account - mostly propositions from women.

'I am indeed flattered. But sorry girls, I am happily married.'

**********

What an elegant case to demonstrate my point about the weakness of a rigid system!

Based on the frenzied commenting rate at the ST forum, I'm pretty sure that the blogosphere must be ablaze with criticisms and insults for the hospital admin.

How come they cannot come up with $90? So kiam siap (stingy) meh? How come no common sense? How come so heartless? How come no GRACIOUS SOCIETY?

Actually, there's no need to generalize so much.

The simple answer is that the rigid organization of an administration also precludes individual initiative.

Rigid systems have stable and predictable behaviour, similar to reliable machines. If all the constituent members are free to exercise their "common sense", then the hierarchical structure would be weakened and its efficiency compromised. Expect to wait long long at the queue while the staff put their duties aside and pass envelope around to collect money to reimburse Mr. Lou.

You can't have it both ways.

The solution can only be supplied from outside the system - in this case an anonymous donor who must have felt very lau kwee (lose face) for Singapore that a life-saving hero ends up getting "fined" for his efforts.

I can assure you that there are people within the hospital admin who also feel very lau kwee, but they also boh bian (no choice).

To use an old Army phrase: This problem is not at "their level".

System says no policy for reimbursing good Samaritan, so no money for you. Any comment please fill up the feedback form. Have a nice day, goodbye.

FAMILIAR Part 3: General System Theory

Ludwig von Bertalanffy was an Austrian-born biologist who was a major figure in the development of the systems theory.

Around the mid-20th century he was concerned about the overemphasis on the reductionistic approach and the resulting fragmentation of science. In 1968 he published his book General System Theory where he wrote:

A consequence of the existence of general system properties is the appearance of structural similarities or isomorphisms in different fields. There are correspondences in the principles that govern the behaviour of entities that are, intrinsically, widely different. To take a simple example, an exponential law of growth applies to certain bacterial cells, to populations of bacteria, of animals or humans, and to the progress of scientific research measured by the number of publications in genetics or science in general.

System isomorphisms also appear in problems which are recalcitrant to quantitative analysis but are nevertheless of great intrinsic interest. There are, for example, isomorphies between biological systems and 'epiorganisms' like animal communities and human societies.

It seems therefore that a general system theory of systems would be a useful tool providing, on the one hand, models that can be used in, and transferred to, different fields, and safeguarding, on the other hand, from vague analogies which often have marred the progress in these fields.

Bertalanffy, together with some of his contemporaries, noted that regulation via feedback loops allow a system to maintain stability (today this field of study is called cybernetics).

He was also interested in the apparent contradiction between the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the increase in organizational complexity of living systems during embryo development and evolution. He proposed an idea that resolves this:

According to the second principle of thermodynamics, the general trend of events in physical nature is towards states of maximum disorder and levelling down of differences, with the so-called heat death of the universe as the final outlook, when all energy is degraded into evenly distributed heat of low temperature, and the world process comes to a stop.

In contrast, the living world shows, in embryonic development and in evolution, a transition towards higher order, heterogeneity, and organization.

But on the basis of the theory of open systems, the apparent contradiction between entropy and evolution disappears. In all irreversible processes, entropy must increase. Therefore, the change of entropy in closed systems is always positive; order is continually destroyed.

In open systems, however, we have not only production of entropy due to irreversible processes, but also import of entropy which may well be negative. This is the case in the living organism which imports complex molecules high in free energy. Thus, living systems, maintaining themselves in a steady state, can avoid the increase of entropy, and may even develop towards states of increased order and organization.

Bertalanffy's concept of an open system is usually illustrated like this:















Input refers to the stimuli and imported materials from the external environment, throughput refers to the processes within the system, and output refers to the resulting response or exported materials.

To emphasize the importance of feedback control, this version is also used:














Bertalanffy's open system model inspired biologist James Grier Miller to examine the applicability of systems theory to living systems.

Miller published Living Systems Theory in 1978, expounding his general theory about the existence of all living systems, their structure, interaction, behavior and development. He proposed that living systems must contain 20 critical subsystems which he later arranged into 8 nested hierarchical levels:















Miller noted that:

All nature is a continuum. The endless complexity of life is organized into patterns which repeat themselves—theme and variations—at each level of system. These similarities and differences are proper concerns for science. From the ceaseless streaming of protoplasm to the many-vectored activities of supranational systems, there are continuous flows through living systems as they maintain their highly organized steady states.

His observation of recursive patterns is likely to be inspired by the work of Benoît Mandebrot, the mathematician who founded the field of fractal geometry. Mandebrot observed that many objects in nature exhibited self-similarity and scale invariance - parts that are made up of smaller scale versions of the overall shape.



















Interestingly, neither Bertalanffy nor Miller made any big impact on the field of biology itself, which in the wake of monumental discoveries of DNA and the central dogma, has remained firmly rooted in the reductionist paradigm.

General System Theory has become influential mainly in information science and cybernetics, whereas Living Systems Theory is more commonly read in sociology.

That is why as a neuroscience undergrad I had never heard of these guys and was completely unaware of systems theory, even though I regularly lamented with one of my fellow students about the lack of a systems interpretation of neuronal behaviour.

I first read Bertalanffy in 2005 when I picked up his General System Theory from the NUS library during the height of the popularity of the buzzword "Systems Biology". I wanted to know all this "systems" talk really meant, apart from expensive, shiny new high-throughput liquid handling robots.

I found his book to be quite repetitive but I was impressed by his open systems model, which I now call the "Bertalanffy Box". Excitedly, I wrote an article about it which was published in a student's magazine (GSS Journal 2005).

Here is an exerpt:

Actually, Systems Biology is not strictly a new idea. Some aspects of this perspective can be traced as far back as Plato! The modern synthesis of its fundamental concepts, however, first appeared in the General System Theory (GST) proposed by biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the late 1940s. At that time, Bertalanffy was disturbed by what he saw as the overspecialization and fragmentation of science. He felt that the standard reductionistic approach to science was driving scientists to obsess over tiny details that may not advance the understanding of the big picture. His solution was to find some common patterns of organization in nature which could help unify the sciences and even the humanities together.

In a nutshell, the GST is a holistic theory that describes a complex system by examining the interactions between its components, rather than by analyzing the detailed structure of each component. Gesalt psychologists say that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” an illustration which is also valid for the GST. In the context of biology, Bertalanffy described living organisms as “open systems” that interacts comprehensively with their environment. Next, he recognized that complex systems have emergent properties that cannot be predicted by knowing the properties of its components. In addition, he observed that such a system can also exert control over its components, such as in homeostasis, by using feedback loops.

Although I liked the simplicity of the Bertalanffy box, I found it to be incomplete and aesthetically displeasing. It is only focused on one particular system and has no scaleable aspects, thus it cannot take into account the inputs that might have arrived from another organization level, and ignores the outputs that will affect another organization level.

While recuperating from an illness in a hospital, I decided to improve the Bertalanffy box by integrating Bertalanffy's idea with Mandebrot's (I hadn't read Miller yet), and this is the result:















The "extended" Bertalanffy box (which I called a "leaky" open system at that time) features a system that is affected by both internal and external inputs and contributes outputs to both internal and external states. Thus, it is embedded in an organization level with constant interactions with lower, adjacent and higher levels.

Now I had a repeatable unit that is scaleable and conceptually self-similar.

To illustrate the self-similar aspect in a more visually striking manner, I designed this diagram about a year ago:















Here you can see a complex system opened to reveal the interactions in its intrinsic environment. It is made up of complex systems which are in turn made of smaller complex systems. With this simple repeating unit, you can model a system of any amount of complexity.

I hope I have clearly explained the "Fractal" aspect of FAMILIAR.

But what about the "Analog" part?

Stay tuned for my next post on heroes' journeys and multispecies alignments.

FAMILIAR Part 2: Why No Runaway Complexity?

Long time Fresh Brainz readers probably know that my undergrad training was not in molecular biology, but in neuroscience.

My interest in systems science started about 10 years ago when I learnt a bizarre fact about neurons - that the transmission of neural impulses was a probabilistic process.

The firing of a neuronal action potential is not perfectly reliable because it depends on a complex interplay of input signals such as EPSPs, IPSPs and internal states such as the refractory period.

Due to the inherent unpredictability of any single neuron, vertebrates have to rely on a large number of neurons in each nerve in order to convey a reliable signal to other parts of the body.

This struck me as something that is particularly odd.

If you can't even trust one neuron to do its job, how can you trust a thousand of them?!??

Why won't they simply misfire all over the place and garble the signal?

The nervous system has often been compared with human technology such as computers, but you'd be barking mad to try design a computer using millions of components that are not 100% reliable.

These questions perplexed me during my undergrad years and also in my first job as a research assistant in neuroscience. What was even more puzzling then was the realization that other researchers around me simply took this fact for granted - nobody would explain to me why a bunch of unreliable parts could suddenly make a reliable system.

As I started grad school in 2004, I noticed that a similar situation occurs in cell biology. In an unfinished article entitled "Brief thoughts on the Inception of Systems" I wrote:

A cell is an amazing mixed bag of biochemical processes, some of them quite straightforward, others so convoluted that Occam’s razor would not find its mark there.

Unlike the oft used analogy of a factory, each cell is made up of components that do not fit together clearly like a clock. For example, many proteins have multiple roles across several different pathways. From cell to cell, proteins can have different functions depending on where and when it is expressed.

The compounded variability from the probabilistic performance of each intracellular player should become so large so as to make an integrated system impossible.

What I am saying is, if one wanted to make a reliable machine to fulfill a very specific function, one would not deliberately use components with variable and probabilistic characteristics. But yet cells do exists, and are quite stable and reliable. How can this be?

How indeed?

Let me illustrate this problem with a graph.















When the number of components in a system is small, the total number of interactions is limited and predictability of component behaviour is high.

This is why we can play games like pool and snooker - we can tell where the target balls will end up.

As the number of components increase, the total number of interactions increase exponentially to such an extent that it quickly becomes impossible to know exactly what will happen.

Imagine a pool table with thousands of balls.

In addition, the probabilistic behaviour of each component makes this problem far, far worse.

Imagine a pool table with thousands of unbalanced balls!

By this additive concept, it should be impossible for any limited sentient being to comprehend much of the Universe, since it consists of trillions upon trillions of probabilistic subatomic particles in constant interaction.

But here lies the trick...















In some cases, the increasing number of components start to exhibit emergent properties, forming a complex system. The whole system itself becomes reliable enough to be a "component" (or module) of another larger system.

Each successive complex system then occupies a higher organization level in a hierarchical structure, so that the total number of "component" interactions at the higher organization level never gets out of hand.

This why we can predict the trajectory of a cannonball with such accuracy, even though we can never predict the exact locations of all the component electrons in a cannonball.

There is no runaway complexity because complexity appears "fold in" on itself with each successive organization level.

But how exactly does a complex system make itself reliable and predictable?

Stay tuned for my next article about Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his General System Theory.

FAMILIAR: Unity of Knowledge

It is with great reluctance that I reveal my new model of organizing and creating new knowledge, called FAMILIAR (Fractal-Analog Method of Integrating Limitless Information into Aligned Resources), partly because I had planned to refine this idea further so that I can publish it properly in a book, and partly because I'm not best friends with humanity right now and I don't want my ideas to fall into the hands of the people I hate.

As it currently stands, the model has some holes and is fairly useless, but when decked with sufficient relevant data it has some potentially powerful implications.

This is an exclusive privilege for Fresh Brainz readers only - please do not pass this knowledge to scumbag bankers, dickhead politicians and fuckfaced lawyers because they can turn this idea into a weapon for controlling everyone.

Many thanks.

**********

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible." - Albert Einstein

Indeed, considering its complexity and vastness, the most mysterious thing about the Universe is the fact we can even begin to understand it.

Strangely enough, the reality is that the vast majority of living systems are routinely capable of coping with the staggering complexity of the Universe. People and microbes alike experience perfectly happy lives without needing to know the existence of quarks or quasars.

The key to this is the ability to prioritize and react only to a few immediately relevant aspects of the total complexity - to differentiate between knowledge and data.

Scientifically, "knowledge" comprises a collection of data (or fact) and an explanatory structure (or theory) that organizes the data into a meaningful whole. While data constitutes an important aspect of knowledge, by itself it is not knowledge. In fact, data that cannot yet be aligned into any coherent explanatory structure will usually be regarded as noise.

It doesn't take a genius to perceive the difference between knowledge and noise; the tiniest single-celled organism instinctively ignores most of the stimuli it receives from its environment and responds to only some of them that pose an immediate threat or benefit.

Likewise, scientific knowledge doesn't directly mimick the full complexity of a given system, but brutally simplifies it into some basic principles that are comprehensible and useful to the human mind, thus allowing testable predictions and technologies to be produced.

This simplification process is often accused by opponents of rational inquiry to be fatally flawed because it is unavoidably tentative and incomplete.

How can anyone claim to understand the whole Universe if one has only examined an infinitesimal fraction of it?

Here at Fresh Brainz, we think that such a feat is possible once you appreciate the crucial distinction between knowledge and data, and understand the core structure of systems that reiterate themselves over and over again, from the subatomic world, through the intricacies of cells, organisms and societies to the interactions of galactic clusters.

I should emphasize again that as limited beings we can never hope to collect every last bit of data about the Universe, but we can achieve an increasingly complete knowledge about the Universe.

FAMILIAR is a simple, scaleable model that seeks to organize and unite all aspects of human knowledge so that we can learn about the core structure of systems and in doing so, gradually approach a complete understanding of our Universe.

Stay tuned for the next post about runaway complexity.


Would you like to know more?
- Prologue to FAMILIAR: Redundancy Redundancy

Redundancy Redundancy

I think that creationists who support the concept of irreducible complexity don't really understand what their idea entails.

They seem to think that a biological system (or subsystem) is made up of absolutely interdependent and indispensible components - if any of these parts was suddenly removed, then the whole system would fall apart.



















Even a cursory glance at reality tells us that this is not true.

People don't disintegrate if their fingers, hands or arms are chopped off - indeed they can stay alive for a while even if a critical organ like the liver is removed, otherwise organ transplants would be impossible.

But assuming that some irreducibly complex system can be found, it still doesn't follow that the system could not have developed via stepwise evolution.

To illustrate this: imagine that you have been appointed as the CEO of a large corporation today, and you decide to sack the entire sales department immediately.

This would inflict a severe wound on the company which can cause the whole company to collapse if competent replacements are not quickly found. That's because the critical functions of a corporation have been delegated to departments which have become highly specialized and optimized over time.

Clearly, finding such an irreducibly complex corporation today doesn't mean that it MUST have poofed into existence by supernatural means!

It just means that roles of its members have gradually changed over time.

When the company was in its infancy, it had only a few staff members.

Everyone helped out to do sales, so there was no sales department.

That wasn't particularly efficient but it didn't need to be, because a small company simply didn't require (and couldn't afford) a proper sales department.

Likewise, hundreds of millions of years ago our simple animal ancestors didn't have any hearts or brains - they just didn't need them. Of course, we won't last long without these critical organs today.

In any case, complex biological systems can tolerate a certain amount of damage or loss of their subsystems because they exhibit modularity (to reduce spill-over effects) and redundancy (to backup some functions).

However, if there exists a system which has absolute component interdependency, no modularity and no redundancy, then the creationists would be right and any small change would bring down the whole shebang.

Such a system cannot be "constructed" by any stepwise process; indeed it cannot be physically constructed at all and must magically come into existence completely intact.

The fact that creationists prefer to assume that biological systems must be organized in such a manner, reflects strongly on their ideology.

**********

In my previous full article about social systems, I talked about some of the problems of an absolute authority, but I forgot to elaborate on the importance of redundancy, which I will highlight in this article.

Absolute authorities are problematic due to the lack of checks and balances, but singular absolute authorities have an additional problem - the lack of redundancy.

If a system contains redundant components, then it will continue running even if some of its components are flawed or missing.

On the other hand, if a system contains no redundancy at all, then the imperfection of one component will lead to the collapse of the whole system.

Thus, people who believe in singular supernatural authorities tend to have a worldview that contains no redundancy and brooks no dissent.

They can only be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, because any "wrongness" of any one part would render the whole belief wrong (although in practice they take on faith that no part of their belief can possibly be wrong).

Seeing the world through such tinted glasses, they expect other social systems to exhibit this same characteristic.

Of course, this is false - even within the area of supernatural belief, people who believe in multiple deities for example, do not share this problem.

Also, systems that do not depend on central authority don't have this problem.

Science, for example, is made up of multiple specializations. In addition, scientific theories and facts are discovered using independent lines of evidence, often employing diverse approaches or technologies.

So if any particular fact, theory or even an entire field is shown to be wrong, it won't bring down the entire scientific endeavour.

Thus, redundancy is a strong defensive move.

This is clearly illustrated in the previous post about investor psychology - diversification helps to preserve capital and guard against the big loss.

Unfortunately, diversification also diminishes the gains from any particular stock, which suggests that singularity is a strong offensive move.

And that is definitely true from the historical point of view - monotheistic belief systems have grown faster and to far greater numbers than any other supernatural or naturalistic system.

My previous articles have already covered the reasons why a centralized and rigid power structure is so effective against a fragmented power-sharing structure.

Since science is driven by evidence, not by central authority and social consensus - thus it mean that, as a social movement, scientific thinking will never be able to compete with supernatural beliefs?

Not quite.

Although science appears fragmented because it cannot in principle have unity through centralized supernatural authority, it can have unity through emergent authority.

A unity of knowledge.

**********

Regular Fresh Brainz readers might have been wondering why I embarked on this odd detour into foreign territory such as sociology and economics in my recent articles.

Well, the gig is up - all these articles constitute the prologue to an original idea that I have been developing for the past ten years.

I had originally planned to hone it in secret and publish it in a book to make a tonne of money, but many events have since transpired that made me change my mind.

Facing a depressing job market and a difficult career ahead, I don't feel confident about the relevance and usefulness of my idea, and so I have decided to post what I've currently worked out to all my readers.

Stay tuned for the first post about FAMILIAR: Fractal-Analog Method of Integrating Limitless Information into Aligned Resources.


Would you like to know more?

Prologue to FAMILIAR:
Part 1 - The Meanings Of Life
Part 2 - Elitism: Human Warmth or Weakness?
Part 3 - Not Right, But Necessary
Part 4 - In Fiat We Trust
Part 5 - When The Sane Go Marching In
Part 6 - Downfall Of Gods