The de facto ID concept of intelligence.
As I have remarked many times on this blog the de facto Intelligent Design movement affects to leave the internal details of the "intelligence" they believe to have stepped in and directly created life as a mystery. There is some justification in this policy: When handling great mysteries (e.g. Divinity) caution is sometimes the better part of valour and so it may be best to proceed apophatically; that is, to define the mystery in terms of what it isn't. An apophatic approach to intelligence seems to be stock in trade of the de facto ID community in North America. In fact as far as I can tell the mainstream IDists believe that the intelligent agent which created life is neither explicable in terms of so-called "natural forces" or even for that matter any process which has the potential to be expressed algorithmically no matter how complex that algorithm may be. I find their views a little ironic: As many of them make claim to a Christian faith one might think that those so-called "natural forces" which we as Christians believe to be God's sublime Creation may hold one or two surprises for us as to what these "forces" (under Sovereign management) can do; after all, Quantum Mechanics alone has left enlightenment humankind thoroughly perplexed as to what it all means (For a start it is no longer meaningful to talk of matter as having identity of substance; identity comes via configuration). But no, in the de-facto IDist world the "profane natural forces" vs "sacred intelligent agency" dichotomy is their habitual thesis and anti-thesis. In their view "matter" is too debased and inferior to be a secondary source of the dignified sublimity of mind.
So, in the light of all this I was not in the least bit surprised to find a post on the de facto Intelligent Design website Uncommon Descent with links to ID material giving the clearest evidence I've yet seen that de facto ID prefers to think about true "Intelligence" as a property tantamount to a magical power, setting it apart from anything else we encounter in this world*1. The UD post in question alerts us to one of de facto ID's gurus who is attempting to identify human intelligence as having the ability to act as a "partial halting oracle". That is, it is assumed that human intelligence is an oracle which can in some (but not all) cases solve the halting problem. According to Wiki. the concept of an "Oracle" as used in computational theory is defined as follows:
An oracle machine can be conceived as a Turing
machine connected to an oracle. The oracle, in this context, is an entity
capable of solving some problem, which for example may be a decision problem or
a function problem. The problem does not have to be computable; the oracle is
not assumed to be a Turing machine or computer program. The oracle is simply a
"black box" that is able to produce a solution for any instance of a
given computational problem:
A "black box" capable of doing the right thing sums up those inscrutable oracular powers. This manoeuvre by an IDist guru well and truly places the essence of intelligence all but beyond analytical probing *2. As I have said many times before the de facto IDist's preference for an esoteric notion of intelligence traces back to their use of their "explanatory filter" which once it has been used to settle on intelligent agency as the cause of a pattern doesn't really allow one to proceed much further. This of course contrasts with my own approach to intelligence which doesn't resort to super-analytical processes; well nearly: In my Thinknet project I see intelligence as a teleologically driven search process by a "Thinknet" like system. Thinknet systems are potentially chaotic which means that they can amplify those quantum ambiguities up to the macroscopic level, ambiguities which if they remained un-collapsed would give us people who could be in two places at once. Well, we can't have that at the macroscopic level so if the mind is constantly collapsing those wave-function, then, I tender, it is this process of constant collapse which generates consciousness. But if the mind amplifies those apparent random collapses up to macroscopic level there is therefore the potential for it to manifest that great incomputable - absolute randomness; so in that sense mind has an incomputable aspect to it. Nevertheless, what I'm proposing is no blackbox concept of intelligence: I'm working on a notion of intelligence that is much more resolvable than ID's magical oracular black box and this is why I have to sophisticate the explanatory filter.
Turning to my subjective perspective on my own thought life I must say that it certainly doesn't feel like some magical oracle able to coolly solve a problem just like that! In contrast problem solving requires the hard graft of mental searching as one attempts to make connections which lead to solutions. To me my thought life feels much more like the seek, reject and select trial & error grind of a Thinknet search than it does ID's magical oracle where genius solutions just pop into the head. I see the hard work associated with thinking as a consequence of the overheard incurred by using a very general-purpose thinking system with a general purpose connectionist language to solve the generic problem; as this system is a jack-of-all trades-problem-solver it can be slow at solving specialised problems as it has to first translate the problem into its connecionist terms.
I don't have a strong claim to having clinched the essence of intelligence anymore than do the defacto IDists. But like myself they have just as much right to investigate an avenue of possibility in their search for what intelligence is about. In fact I believe their presence is a good thing; the more people investigating different avenues the better. For all I know the IDists might be right! Also, like the IDists I believe that intelligence of some sort underpins the nature of the cosmos. So under any other circumstances I would applaud the IDists efforts at tentatively trying to move forward with something new; after all that's science for you. But I'm afraid in this case I can't applaud. Why is that?
Turning to my subjective perspective on my own thought life I must say that it certainly doesn't feel like some magical oracle able to coolly solve a problem just like that! In contrast problem solving requires the hard graft of mental searching as one attempts to make connections which lead to solutions. To me my thought life feels much more like the seek, reject and select trial & error grind of a Thinknet search than it does ID's magical oracle where genius solutions just pop into the head. I see the hard work associated with thinking as a consequence of the overheard incurred by using a very general-purpose thinking system with a general purpose connectionist language to solve the generic problem; as this system is a jack-of-all trades-problem-solver it can be slow at solving specialised problems as it has to first translate the problem into its connecionist terms.
I don't have a strong claim to having clinched the essence of intelligence anymore than do the defacto IDists. But like myself they have just as much right to investigate an avenue of possibility in their search for what intelligence is about. In fact I believe their presence is a good thing; the more people investigating different avenues the better. For all I know the IDists might be right! Also, like the IDists I believe that intelligence of some sort underpins the nature of the cosmos. So under any other circumstances I would applaud the IDists efforts at tentatively trying to move forward with something new; after all that's science for you. But I'm afraid in this case I can't applaud. Why is that?
***
Well, the answer to that is politics especially the politics in North America. It's the catalyst that has precipitated and hardened a "natural forces" vs "intelligent agency" polarisation. The IDists are persona non grata among the academic establishment and so it is no surprise that these IDists have been tempted to put all their eggs into the "intelligence-is-magic" basket in order to batter academia's evolutionary and algorithmic rendering of the processes of life, processes the academics believe to have generated human intelligence. Some times I wonder if the de facto ID people aren't really being serious with their proposals and simply come up with their stuff just to rile the academic establishment!
But the politics doesn't stop there. IDism is all part of a greater right vs left wing tribal conflict which means that the right wing sharply disagree with the government tenured academics over one or more of a set of well contended issues (as mentioned in my last blog post): e.g. vaccinations, climate change, gay rights, deep government conspiracy theories, the regulatory role of government, the covid-19 lock down, hyper-market libertarianism, gun rights etc. The common underlying theme running through all this is the diffidence right-wingers have toward central government interventions; no!, make that the status quo interventions: When it comes down to it the right-wing is just as capable of supplying individuals of totalitarian inclination as any other human sub-culture, if not more so. Do you think those characters one finds in America's quasi-militias would have the slightest respect for the argumentative cut and thrust of an authentic parliament? Unlikely: More to their taste would be for one of their plutocrats to do a Cromwell and clear parliament using AR-15 armed thugs.
Crackpot daftness can be found on the extremes of both left and right, but my argument here is with the right-wingery of the de facto ID community. Right wing sentiments ultimately drive their all but exclusive commitment to an Oracular paradigm of intelligence. They've backed themselves into the cramped corner of this paradigm because they are suspicious of those government tenured academics who for the most part will get rubbed up the wrong way by de facto ID's support of oracular intelligence.
The republican language coming out of England's 1642 civil war fed into the American war of independence (from tax) and now the North American right-wing endlessly recapitulate the sentiments of this language Viz: interference coming from a tax funded government is at best regarded with suspicion and at worse as evidence of a deep government conspiracy. For example, on Uncommon Descent one can find references to "climate change alarmism" and also "covid-19 lock down alarmism". The emotive term "alarmism" is the keyword expressing right-wing apprehensions about projects largely emanating from government sponsored tax funded bodies. In my view coordinating the social responses to the black swans of climate change and covid-19 requires centralised information and control; such a response is well beyond the powers of the sluggish market with its distributed blind-watch-maker decisions. But such government involvement is the right-winger's worst nightmare come true; especially if government should muff it (which they often do!)
The pretext supporting the "libertarian" polemic about covid-19 and climate change is, however, entirely plausible if not sound: The world's wealth generating markets could be so affected by central government policies that it causes huge economic hardship or perhaps even an apocalyptic economic collapse. But this line of argument cuts both ways. Covid-19 and climate change, if left to run their courses, could conceivably also cause economic collapse. Moreover, the right wing's emotive language can be used against them: One might accuse them of promulgating "economic hardship alarmism", or "totalitarian new world order alarmism". Both sides are faced by the same dilemma: The fix may be worse than the problem!
Whilst I strongly reject the border-line Marxism and anti-theism found among some academics, neither can I support the right-wing affectation for so-called libertarianism. Libertarianism is to the free market as fundamentalism is to Christianity; they are the kiss of death for the things they purport to uphold. Sociopathic libertarianism is a source of social disaffection thus helping to serve up a discontented society on a platter to either Marxist or right-wing dictators. For example, allowing covid-19 to take its course is likely to strike harder among the poor than the rich and therefore this solution to our problems is readily perceived as the solution in favour of the rich. Moreover, self-branded "libertarianism" with its connotation of "liberty" comes under the heading of "self-praise is no recommendation": Looking at the mix of potential plutocrats, domineering characters and the well armed quasi-militias (in America) who make claim to the name "libertarian" it is easy to imagine a would be dictator arising from their ranks. And it wouldn't be the first time that "liberty" and "hegemony" have walked hand in hand; let's recall the outcomes of the English civil war of 1642, the French revolution of 1789, the October revolution and Mao's China. Idealism and hegemony are closely linked.
The many wildcards of socio-economics don't stop some people thinking they are clever predictors and planners. The open-endedness of socio-economic systems is a bottomless pit of new data that can be cherry-picked and tailored to support the favoured planning polemic. In a chaotic world human beings are necessarily complex adaptive systems and therefore by definition much better opportunists than they are planners. They make their decisions and take their opportunities on the hoof. Like other biological organisms society is a mix of central as well as distributed control and this mix no doubt better suits a chaotic world where black swans create new problems and at the same time deliver otherwise unforeseen opportunities. But the time honoured overriding concern of human beings is that of hanging on to the immediacies of survival at all costs and that's probably why many people favour social distancing rather than the long shot of saving an abstract economic system that more likely favours lining the rich man's pockets in his ivory tower before it gets to line your pockets (if you've survived covid-19!). While there's life there is hope, hope that the new opportunities open up into vistas of fruitful originality and prosperity. We can only plant and water; it is God that gives growth.
Crackpot daftness can be found on the extremes of both left and right, but my argument here is with the right-wingery of the de facto ID community. Right wing sentiments ultimately drive their all but exclusive commitment to an Oracular paradigm of intelligence. They've backed themselves into the cramped corner of this paradigm because they are suspicious of those government tenured academics who for the most part will get rubbed up the wrong way by de facto ID's support of oracular intelligence.
The republican language coming out of England's 1642 civil war fed into the American war of independence (from tax) and now the North American right-wing endlessly recapitulate the sentiments of this language Viz: interference coming from a tax funded government is at best regarded with suspicion and at worse as evidence of a deep government conspiracy. For example, on Uncommon Descent one can find references to "climate change alarmism" and also "covid-19 lock down alarmism". The emotive term "alarmism" is the keyword expressing right-wing apprehensions about projects largely emanating from government sponsored tax funded bodies. In my view coordinating the social responses to the black swans of climate change and covid-19 requires centralised information and control; such a response is well beyond the powers of the sluggish market with its distributed blind-watch-maker decisions. But such government involvement is the right-winger's worst nightmare come true; especially if government should muff it (which they often do!)
The pretext supporting the "libertarian" polemic about covid-19 and climate change is, however, entirely plausible if not sound: The world's wealth generating markets could be so affected by central government policies that it causes huge economic hardship or perhaps even an apocalyptic economic collapse. But this line of argument cuts both ways. Covid-19 and climate change, if left to run their courses, could conceivably also cause economic collapse. Moreover, the right wing's emotive language can be used against them: One might accuse them of promulgating "economic hardship alarmism", or "totalitarian new world order alarmism". Both sides are faced by the same dilemma: The fix may be worse than the problem!
Whilst I strongly reject the border-line Marxism and anti-theism found among some academics, neither can I support the right-wing affectation for so-called libertarianism. Libertarianism is to the free market as fundamentalism is to Christianity; they are the kiss of death for the things they purport to uphold. Sociopathic libertarianism is a source of social disaffection thus helping to serve up a discontented society on a platter to either Marxist or right-wing dictators. For example, allowing covid-19 to take its course is likely to strike harder among the poor than the rich and therefore this solution to our problems is readily perceived as the solution in favour of the rich. Moreover, self-branded "libertarianism" with its connotation of "liberty" comes under the heading of "self-praise is no recommendation": Looking at the mix of potential plutocrats, domineering characters and the well armed quasi-militias (in America) who make claim to the name "libertarian" it is easy to imagine a would be dictator arising from their ranks. And it wouldn't be the first time that "liberty" and "hegemony" have walked hand in hand; let's recall the outcomes of the English civil war of 1642, the French revolution of 1789, the October revolution and Mao's China. Idealism and hegemony are closely linked.
The many wildcards of socio-economics don't stop some people thinking they are clever predictors and planners. The open-endedness of socio-economic systems is a bottomless pit of new data that can be cherry-picked and tailored to support the favoured planning polemic. In a chaotic world human beings are necessarily complex adaptive systems and therefore by definition much better opportunists than they are planners. They make their decisions and take their opportunities on the hoof. Like other biological organisms society is a mix of central as well as distributed control and this mix no doubt better suits a chaotic world where black swans create new problems and at the same time deliver otherwise unforeseen opportunities. But the time honoured overriding concern of human beings is that of hanging on to the immediacies of survival at all costs and that's probably why many people favour social distancing rather than the long shot of saving an abstract economic system that more likely favours lining the rich man's pockets in his ivory tower before it gets to line your pockets (if you've survived covid-19!). While there's life there is hope, hope that the new opportunities open up into vistas of fruitful originality and prosperity. We can only plant and water; it is God that gives growth.
POSTSCRIPT
27/4/20
In a post on Uncommon Descent that I wouldn't necessarily want to take issue with we find an interesting comment from a character called "Polistra". Viz:
Polistra April 26, 2020 at 2:48 pm
This is silly and illogical. It
wasn’t the virus that stopped the world.
The virus just wandered around and
found tissues to infect, and the humans who own the tissues killed the virus
using standard weapons and tactics. A very few humans were unable to maintain
the war, and they lost.
The world was stopped by GOVERNMENTS.
The virus was just the latest fake “reason” for stopping the world.
This commentator doesn't like the fact that the UD post suggests 900 bytes of covid-19 DNA is the reason why the world has shut down. Polistra clearly wants a much clearer statement that the culpability lies with GOVERNMENTS. Polistra doesn't tell us why governments want to shut the world down with what he calls a "fake" reason any more than flat earthers will tell us why the UN wants us to believe in a spherical earth instead of their flat earth. Although I don't think most UDers would go along with this kind of conspiracy theorism it's probably significant that they don't challenge him: He's one of them, he's part of their anti-government tribe! The irony is, as I have already said, that it's so easy to see dictators readily emerging from the ranks of the domineering fanatical right wingers if they should ever get power.
Footnotes
*1 I'm not quite sure how this works out with human beings, objects which from a third person perspective are observed to be entirely a product of complex organisations of God's atoms.
*2 Turing's halting theorem and Godel's incompleteness theorem are closely related in that both use the "runaway self-referencing" reasoning found in the diagonalisation procedure. Roger Penrose proposed that the human ability to understand Godel's argument proved that human thinking was an incomputable process. Hence Penrises ideas are also favoured by IDists. Whilst it is wrong to dismiss Penrose outright I have submitted my reasons why I don't follow him down this particular avenue..
*2 Turing's halting theorem and Godel's incompleteness theorem are closely related in that both use the "runaway self-referencing" reasoning found in the diagonalisation procedure. Roger Penrose proposed that the human ability to understand Godel's argument proved that human thinking was an incomputable process. Hence Penrises ideas are also favoured by IDists. Whilst it is wrong to dismiss Penrose outright I have submitted my reasons why I don't follow him down this particular avenue..
