On 19/03/2009, at 7:42 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 17 Mar 2009, at 11:49, Kim Jones wrote:
>
>> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16769-concept-of-hypercosmic-god-wins-templeton-prize.html
>
>
> Nice! d'Espagnat got it!
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Next year, Bruno's turn!!!!!
>>
>
>
>
> You are too kind.
>
> You know, in the seventies, last century, I met three or four times
> d'Espagnat in Paris. I am very glad for him. It is a sincere
> inquirer well aware that something was informative, to say the
> least, in the EPR quantum weirdness, and in the quantum measurement
> problem.
> I read all his four first books, and two of them has been my bible,
> with respect to the quantum "mystery".
> Despite a good, open minded description of Everett "many-worlds", he
> prefers to stick on a veiled but fuzzy reality, yet of the platonist
> kind. I am sure he could appreciate comp, if that was taught. To be
> frank I have not read his more recent last books. Klein in Paris is
> also very nice. Thanks for the link and for you wishes. Next year is
> a bit too early I think.
>
> About creativity I agree perhaps with Brent. I am not sure it could
> be taught. Respect of the creativity of the other, can be taught,
> but then only by example, by practice not by theory or suggestions.
> The human mind is too "much creative" per se, and creativity is like
> consistency in machine. To make a theory could lead to a contrary
> effect.
But who can say that creativity cannot be taught when no institution
sets out to do so? Who even understands what creativity actually is? A
few do, but only a few listen. They tend not to be academics and
because of this, academics dislike them and their work. It is true,
they tend not to rely on other people's work and so don't go around
quoting the right authors or reverencing the right superluminaries of
the past. Why I like Wolfram's approach; they revisualise the entire
game. They don't go about inventing theories and setting out to argue/
defend them or prove themselves right and everybody else wrong. They
don't get their thrills like that. They set out to design and
construct. They question and challenge everything, they stare at the
mid-section of a pencil and wonder whether its design might be
improved. That is natural creativity - when properly encouraged and
taught. Who you gonna call? A guy with a theory or a guy with the
right tool in his hand for the job? Creativity can be taught using
tools designed for the optimal use of our kind of active self-
organising information system. The basis of creativity and the mind
was understood by 1969 by Edward de Bono. He modelled the mind as an
active self-organising information system. I mean - we are not
computationalists on this list for nothing, I take it! The particular
memory-surface that is the entity we usually call the 'mind' has been
shown to be a pattern-generating and a pattern-reading-using entity.
Because of this, the crucial factor is the _sequence_ of the arrival
of all information, as it always is in linear systems requiring
continuity. Time makes it that things settle into defined patterns
sooner or later. This process lays down the assymetrical founding
patterns we recall (patterns of recognition). These, amazingly, grow.
They never shrink.
It amazes that you think the human mind is "too creative" by nature.
The reverse is surely the truth. The human mind has evolved over time
to be as uncreative as possible. "Better Be Safe then Sorry" is a very
strong algorithm in our atavistic unconscious. Or else, the Church -
with its maidservant: Education - throttled it out of civilisation
when it was seen that the church's teachings might be under attack
because people were starting to know how to think creatively about
information, facts and evidence and started to restructure things...
Left to themselves, patterns tend to grow by continuity. This means
that established patterns do not change but only get added to.
Equilibrium sets in; gravity does the work. With mind as with matter.
"If it ain't broke, why fix it?" sets in. Things start to rot as we
poo in our petrie dish. In order to restructure a pattern so as to put
the contained information together in a new and better way requires
some act of discontinuity. That's what creativity does in a self-
organising information system like the human mind. It provides a
necessary sideways step across (laterally) the oh-so-well-established
memory patterns to reveal the hidden sidetrack leading straight to
your goal (at a 5th of the original cost, and with a whole bunch of
other stuff nobody could have imagined. It's the "dare to imagine and
go out to do it" part of the mind.) Veeeeeeery underdeveloped.
Because information creates assymetrical patterns of memory in the
mind, there remains the eternal possibility that we missed something
important at the time the tramtracks of our memory were laid down
because of incomplete perception. There may be any number of good
reasons why our perception is always incomplete in any given
situation, one of them being, you guessed it: Goedel's Incompleteness
theorem. This means we may be missing vital systems information that
would give us more confidence in our data about the world if only we
might creatively _bet_ on the right horse for once?
There arises the mathematical necessity in an information system like
this to use _discontinuity_ at some point to stop things settling into
local pockets of equilibrium. Creativity is too often associated with
'genius' and as such only happens in fits and starts - like when the
next genius bothers to get born and do chose geniale...a better way to
characterise creativity is via humour, the laugh at the punchline or
some other moment when the previously hidden information sidetrack is
revealed. If you can put across a good joke, chances are you are a
creative. Everybody understands (or should understand) humour as the
natural snap-reflex of the mind when we snap out of one pattern and
achieve another ON THE SAME DATA. This is why there is not even one
blessed laugh in religious doctrine. Religious thinking (what we may
have to stoop momentarily to call "Theology" with a capital T) has
gone nowhere in over 18 centuries. The church has nurtured ONLY
critical thinking in civilisation, Bruno! Nobody can convince me that
creativity has thrived under the influence of the Church. Creativity
was thrown out of science and religion and philosophy and tolerated
only in the arts, that's what happened. And the artists were made to
live in garretts and sing for their supper!!
Creativity has been the victim of repression in western thinking since
Socrates, who, along with Plato and Aristotle are the sods responsible
for giving us the our critical-thinking-dominated and design-energy-
deficient thinking system. OK - so get the bloody Athenian Academy
doors yanked open and let's get this thing sorted out by golly! You
have great reverence for Greek thinking, Bruno - I just want to slap
them all around the gills for their lack of design, their lack of
creative, generative thinking energy. It's all argument bloody
argument. I am right sir and you are wrong sir! The truth lies with
me! No sir it is you who are wrong sir! You are without merit! So what
have these two guys created while yelling at each other? Where's a
good tradie when you need one? They've all turned into bloody lawyers!
There is a good argument that goes if you never try to teach
creativity you will never know whether it is possible. The answer is
it is possible and formal techniques are available. Training in
thinking skills - including Lateral Thinking (=structured creativity)
have never been more urgently needed in humanity's increasingly urgent
struggle against indomitable forces like the weather and the economy.
>
>
> About academies, I agree with many things you say, but I do think
> also, that they are the worst, except for all the others. Expertise
> are needed, and interdisciplinarity will develop through
> interdisciplines, which will constitute new disciplines. It is the
> opening of the mind to new disciplines which is lacking.
Like the teaching of Thinking Skills in schools, an
interdisciplinarian terrain.
> Old academies can be rotten, that is true. But then we need new
> academies, or we need to reopen the very old one, the one by Plato.
But for goodness sake leave the Gang of Three (Soc, Plat, Arist) dead
and buried willya!!?? We don't need Plato the GUY to have Platonia now
do we? He was a fascist and a slave-owner. Socrates just wanted
everyone to agree with him. Bullshit he was showing people how to
uncover the 'truth'. He was a SOPHIST. He was exercising the sacred
art of seduction on his audience. He was selling - which is what
'sophistry' is. He sold them only the front left wheel of the car.
Socrates did NOT sell the whole car! He sold critical thinking skills
only. He OVERSOLD his buyers on critical thinking. NEVER trust a Greek
bearing gifts!!!!!
We were left with a thinking system devoid of creative, generative,
provocative design energy. The church REDISCOVERED all of this
wonderful fascist stuff at the time of the Renaissance when the first
schools were established in Europe and used critical thinking as a
tool to repress creative thinkers = heretics (those possessed of the
magical ability to put given data together in new ways to give a new
view). They and the Evil Education Empire have been pushing
argumentative/adversarial/I win-you lose, lawyer-style thinking as the
basis of all thinking ever since. No wonder we pang for a Michelangelo
or an Einstein to lift us out of it. But this laziness of waiting for
Darwinian Evolution to solve our deepest problems is unfortunately
lacking in design, crfeativity and imagination once again...
> And learn to come back to seriousness in fundamental human or person
> matter (very hard task).
>
> The layman is still in advance here, in a sense. The "everything"
> quest, will leads also to experts. Experts are not bad, only bad
> experts are bad, especially the one who talk negatively about a
> field they does not really know.
Yes, I exaggerated my take on experts on purpose. But who has not
encountered a closed mind today or yesterday? Everybody goes to
school. Remember, it is the sequence of the arrival of the data that
forms the patterns that determines how the future unfolds.
Two restaurants A and B open up, side by side. Both offer reasonably
equivalent services. The problem is how to get some momentum
happening. Nobody, it seems, will be attracted to eat at an empty
restaurant. So one of the restaurants cracks and does something
creative (which might also include the possibility of their not doing
anything) and somehow gets one person to sit and eat in the
restaurant. A second customer, faced with the choice of an empty
restaurant or a restaurant with one customer then experiences the
"Better Be Safe Than Sorry" atavistic-memory instruction kick in and
goes into that restaurant. Then a third arrives, and a fourth etc.
The outcome is that you have one restaurant that is a booming success
and one next door that is a complete failure and all this without any
data. This is what I mean by saying the patterns of recognition are
assymetrical; they travel always to continuity without some mechanism
for interrupting them (the 'mathematical necessity' for lateral
thinking.)
>
>
> A good expert is someone who can remain silent when he does not
> know. I agree with many of your points and tones. I just point on
> points which, perhaps by reading to quickly, gave me the feeling
> that you could criticize the wrong cible.
OK, I judge academics as much by their prejudices as by their beliefs.
The belief that creativity cannot be taught is based on a prejudice
against ever being seen as 'wrong' in some sense. No academic ever
seems to understand that sometimes you have to be 'wrong' under the
conditions of the present reality to provoke a change following which
the action taken will be seen to be very much the 'right' thing to
have done. Only you could not see this before. Occasionally, in order
to continue travelling North, you might have to turn South. It will no
doubt appear logical to you after you have experienced it, but was
highly illogical before. In other words, at certain moments (moments
of stagnation or local equilibrium) it becomes logical - even
desirable - to be 'illogical' or wrong. A provocative statement or
action will doubtless make better sense AFTER the sought-after change
has occurred.
There can therefore be a class of statement for which NO reason exists
before the statement is made. It's value will, by hindsight, be seen
to lie in its leading toward a restructuring of the existing
information so that patterns invisible before are now visible to the
mind. This is what Socrates and his mates were definitely NOT selling
that fine, hot day in Athens.
Kim
> But interesting post sure, I wish I could say more. AUDA will lead
> to examples of contrariety laws. Do you know Alan Watts, in
> particular "the Wisdom of Insecurity" ? Smullyan's TAO is also very
> nice.
>
> Best,
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
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Received on Thu Mar 19 2009 - 00:19:42 PDT