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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'll throw this in as a quickie. It doesn't quite fit but all here will see the relevance.
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Paradigms I Have Loved Sep 3, 2024
It all goes back to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
You have all heard of ‘paradigms’, you all vaguely know what they are, you all vaguely worry you might not have got it quite right. Join the club. Join the human race. Paradigm theories have been worrying and propelling human beings ever since Ug discovered the First Law of Thermodynamics, ‘When two sticks are rubbed together, thou shalt get fire’. (I can't do the accent.)
Paradigms are those fundamental laws, theories, hypotheses, discoveries upon which our detailed knowledge of the way things work are based. It’s no use spotting the sun rises in the east — it might rise in the north tomorrow— without knowing the reason. God ordained that the sun went round the earth in that direction, and He doesn’t mess around when it comes to Creation.
Plate Tectonics is a ‘paradigm theory’. Darwinian Evolution is a paradigm theory (strictly speaking, it is now Neo-Darwinism but we need not go into that). The Laws of Thermodynamics are paradigm theories. You get the drift.
They came into vogue after Thomas Kuhn published his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. You may not believe it now but they were on everyone’s lips at the smarter dinner parties. So much so that by the nineteen-seventies any mention of them got you jeered at for being so yesterday, darling.
This was a blow for me personally because, after reading Kuhn’s book, I had resolved to make the study of paradigm theories my life’s work but fortunately the vogue for inviting me to dinner parties had passed by then.
So what have I learned? (‘Briefly, Mick.’) Well, I have learned that every society has its paradigm theories which are devoutly believed but which always turn out to be either totally false or so in need of radical revision they might as well be. With one exception. Our own.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is the general problem expressed as a Socratic dialogue
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In the Pub with M J Harper Dec 26, 2024
What’s he on about this time?
Bloke in Pub: What a load of old bollocks.
M J Harper: Now that is interesting.
BIP: What is?
MJH: I’ve just presented you with a complex idea, completely new to you, yet you were able to reject it in a matter of seconds.
BIP: So?
MJH: That can only mean one of three things.
BIP: Go on.
MJH: One: the idea is so bad anyone can see it’s rubbish straight off. Apart from me. That is profoundly depressing. If everyone can instantly see the flaws except me, it would make me pretty much the dumbest person around.
BIP: Out of the mouths…
MJH: Two: you have such a remarkable brain you can understand, process and reject a complex and unfamiliar idea in seconds. That’s pretty unheard of. OK, my idea might be dumb, which is a nuisance, but your reaction time means one of the world’s sharpest intellects drinks in my local. Not to be sniffed at in this day and age.
BIP: And the third?
MJH: Three: you are an ordinary person behaving in the usual way when confronted with a new and complex idea. It is the brain’s way of keeping its neural networks stable. It has to reject everything because choosing between new ideas would require considering all new ideas. Not even my brain is capable of that.
BIP: What a load of old bollocks.
MJH: Now that is interesting.
BIP: What is?
MJH: You have just been presented with three alternatives of a complex nature about something that is completely new to you, yet you were able to reject all three in a matter of seconds. That can only mean one of three things.
One: the three alternatives were so bad anybody could see they were absurd without breaking sweat. Apart from me. I thought they were pretty near definitive. Ergo, I am one of the dumbest people around.
Two: you have such a remarkable brain you could tell the alternatives were absurd in seconds even though an ordinary person, in this case me, thought they were perfectly reasonable and are in fact part of an established procedure. Ergo, I have bought a drink for one of the greatest minds on the planet.
Three: you are an ordinary person behaving in the usual way when presented with a novel choice. See above. Ergo, the search goes on.
BIP: What a load of old bollocks. Can I get you another?
MJH: Please. In a straight glass if you wouldn’t mind.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows
Jan 2, 2025
In a previous story In the Pub with M J Harper I explained why, when presented with a novel idea, your first reaction is to reject it. Since the human brain does not have a holding store for ‘new ideas, rejected, but worth revisiting at leisure’ that is the end of the matter. It is why everything you believe is the same as everything your friends and acquaintances believe. Pretty much.
For you, this is not a satisfactory position. One of the things you believe is that you have chosen those beliefs after mature consideration and would change them, if necessary, in the light of new information. Since that hasn’t happened in living memory, you have the following choices
1. Reject the idea everyone you know believes all the same things you believe. Since they do (after making all due allowances) this is not possible.
2. Carefully ignore the fact that everyone you know believes the same things you believe. Since I have just told you, this is not possible.
3. Assume all the things you believe happen to be true, over and above the fact you happen to believe them, and that therefore you and everyone you know is fully justified in believing them.
Luckily for you, your brain agrees with you — it’s (3). Since it
* would not retain anything known not to be true
* rejects new and contrary ideas automatically
* doesn’t have a holding store for considering doubtful cases
* has held the same beliefs long enough for contrary evidence to accrue
* is always in the company of people who believe the same things...
it doesn’t have a lot of choice.
Now the only thing left is to account for all those people who believe things you don’t believe. But you have already done that. They are mad, bad and dangerous to know. Every single one of them. Phew. You thought for a moment...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Reading this again, I thought I ought to revisit
| Since the human brain does not have a holding store for ‘new ideas, rejected, but worth revisiting at leisure’ that is the end of the matter. |
because, for this particular audience here, we seem to be doing this constantly. But nevertheless this is largely illusory, even for us. We start well enough
| "Oh, that looks interesting, it's not something I believe presently but it is worth revisiting at my leisure." |
and oftentimes fall at that first hurdle. But oftentimes don't. So what happens when we plunge in?
| "Oh, that was interesting. But is it enough to change my existing belief?" |
1. Yes. Our brain now holds B when before it held A.
2. No. Our bain holds A as before.
3. But not maybe.
Our brain cannot hold A and B because we would be constantly thrown into turmoil trying to decide which applied when directly confronted with a relevant situation, and in a constant state of apprehension that we are avoiding/not recognising relevant situations, and/or not giving each a fair crack at the whip, and generally being made unhappy as opposed to being happy with (1) or (2).
| Now I understand this is possible. |
Middle-aged Anglican vicars come to mind. Dimly aware cuckolded spouses come to mind. But it is not our experience on a day-to-day basis. It is not how brains operate in our daily exposure to new ideas. And remember, we here are unusual in deliberately seeking out such opportunities on a daily basis. Nevertheless something has changed.
| Consciousness has changed. |
We are either A-turned-B or A-aware of-B. How that operates I'm not too sure.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
1. Yes. Our brain now holds B when before it held A.
2. No. Our bain holds A as before.
3. But not maybe.
Our brain cannot hold A and B...
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You are still conflating Brain and Mind.
This does not help us gather more insight.
Perhaps more Cholesterol is required.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| You are still conflating Brain and Mind. |
I may be but I'm trying not to. You're going to have to be more enlightening than this if you want to help.
In this instance I am pointing out that our brain can only do so much. Our mind has to work within these limitations if it wants to do anything about it.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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My understanding is that, firstly, you are obliged to travel and live on another's planet for a significant time.
You then are really obliged to try a sneak Cylon-style attack.
They probably are not going to like this.
Hey ho.....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I think I prefer Borry's approach.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This piece, I now see, is an attempt to show that 'wisdom' consists of engaging the mind to confront the brain.
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The Pursuit of Wisdom Feb 9, 2025
The word ‘wisdom’ has acquired a lot of unnecessary baggage
Too high falutin’, too old-fashioned, too subjective. But really it just boils down to ‘sound judgement’. Now if you are thinking ‘Oh, is that all?’ then think again. That is the one thing most people are incapable of.
* Are there wise plumbers? No, there are good and bad plumbers.
* Are there wise philosophers? No, there are good and bad philosophers.
* There are plumbers who are wise but a good plumber is one who is well-trained, meticulous and cheap.
* There are philosophers who are wise but a good philosopher is one who is well-trained, original and useful.
* Wisdom is not a job requirement.
| Wisdom is available to anyone who wants it but it is not necessary for a long, productive and happy life. So not many seek it. If you do, listen up. |
Let us take a recent event for which you have the same amount of information as everyone else. Elon Musk waving his arms around. You have to use ‘sound judgment’ to decide whether he was making a Nazi salute or not. These are your options:
1. He didn’t mean to do so. Since it would be vastly to Mr Musk’s demerits and had no obvious advantage for him, it was an accident arising from his well-known brio.
2. He meant it. It was some kind of coded (or indeed overt) signal to his followers and sympathisers. Or he sort of half-meant it, or it became one as a gesture of derision or combativeness to his critics. Something.
3. I don’t know.
| Which of these would be an example of ‘sound judgement’? |
We can speedily dispense with (3). People can acquire the reputation for wisdom by appearing to be judicious in situations where ‘the full facts’ are not known but this is not applicable here since only an opinion is being sought. Anyone who said, ‘I don’t know’ is either chickening out or, more likely, not wishing to court unpopularity with whomsoever they are speaking.
(1) is clearly a fully rational position and would constitute ‘sound judgement’ though that does not make it true. (2) is less likely (in my judgement) but still within the parameters of ‘sound judgement’ to make (in my judgement). So where does the ‘wisdom/unwisdom’ come in?
| It is the attitude you adopt to people who are (2) if you are (1) or (1) if you are (2). |
If an air of hostility is somewhere in your thoughts, it indicates you are bringing something to the table outside the parameters of the question. You are either of a generally anti-Musk cast of mind or a generally pro-Musk one. This in itself is not necessarily unwise but if it generates emotion when a simple technical issue involving Musk is before you then
It is immaterial that in fact there is a very great correlation between adopting (1) and being pro-Musk or adopting (2) and being anti-Musk. That is their problem and hostility would not be appropriate on your part. They cannot help themselves. Some degree of forbearance, even sympathy, is called on from you.
You will have noted that I myself am firmly in the (1) camp. But the difference is that I have forbearance, even sympathy, for you all.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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An illustration of what's going on in some mind/brain interfaces as an illustration of what's going on in all mind/brain interfaces most of the time.
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The world is divided into two sorts Feb 13, 2025
1. Those who never make a joke in their entire lives
2. Those who make jokes compulsively.
I should explain that making jokes is not to be confused with telling jokes. I should also explain that this piece isn’t going to be about jokes primarily. But creativity in general. I should explain that ‘creativity’ is not to be confused with ‘doing stuff’.
Everyone here can write, for example. Everything they write is created mint fresh by them and them alone, but they are not necessarily being creative. They are just doing stuff. ‘Just’ being my word. Successful writers are not, generally speaking, creative. They are just very good at doing stuff. Creative people tend to be unsuccessful unless they are also good at doing stuff, which they almost never are. God should strike twice already.
Here’s an example. I sat down at my computer this morning fully primed with coffee, vape and a lively mind. I was just about to start when I realised I wasn’t wearing my glasses and couldn’t see anything on the screen. What did I do? A non-creative would have got his glasses (or her glasses, though not in this case but passim). I thought of a joke instead, prompted by the situation
| “I walked out on stage acutely aware that I’d forgotten something. I patted my inside pocket to make sure it wasn’t my speech. Clothes!” |
Now that’s quite funny but it’s so obvious it’s probably an old joke. A thousand stand-ups step onto a thousand stages every minute of every day. At least a thousand of them could have thought that one up.
Already you are vaguely thinking you’ve heard it before. That is called Old Hat Syndrome. Whenever the human brain hears something new it either adds it to an existing synaptic chain as ‘information’ or, if it can’t find a suitable synapse, it assumes it is already on a synapse but put there so long ago it has forgotten which. General Memory as we insiders call it.
The brain knows perfectly well this is untrue but it is necessary. It can’t start instituting searches in and, if necessary, the re-organisation of its own wiring every time it recognises something is new but does not fall into the 'just new data' category. Instead it goes into cognitive dissonance mode — the Old Hat trick in this case.
There is no need to tell the brain’s owner any of this. He thinks he’s Mr Bang Uptodate, always on the lookout for what’s new and breaking in the world. Takes a pride in it as a matter of fact. No need to tell him he is actually a prisoner of all that tripe he acquired when he was an adolescent. Ignorance is bliss when you’re yoked to a human being. The laugh is to allow the brain to cover its tracks.
Actually that last sentence represents a new idea so I’d better pack this up before my brain starts running riot. I told you it was going to be about jokes. I’ve just earned twenty pence for a major contribution to world thought.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Maybe you're thinking "The laugh is to allow the brain to cover its tracks" is Old Hat rather than a major contribution to world thought. You could be right, I posted some of this up on the AEL. But I'd like to consider it all the same.
Nobody knows why people laugh. All human beings do it, no other living thing apart from humans do it. There must be a reason for it and that reason must presumably be linked to what humans have and no other living thing does. Speech, perhaps. But laughter is specifically not speech. And don't chimps grin?
Humans do need an instantaneous refuge while their brain computes where to stash new things and jokes, by definition, are new things. But jokes are specifically unimportant new things. That is presumably why we don't laugh when confronted with serious new ideas. Except, I've found, that's exactly what people do when I confront them with a serious new idea.
It leaves me in tears regularly.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is the last one, and the penultimate story I posted on Medium. Not that I knew this when I chose the title.
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The nub of it all Mar 10, 2025
How do you stop believing one thing and start believing another?
Being sentient creatures we are supposed to do this all the time. The ability to learn from stimuli in the external world in order to change what we think marks us out from the beasts, stuck with their combination of instinctive and copied behaviour.
Don’t you adam-and-eve it. You are pure animal. Your beliefs are still the same ones authority figures imparted to you on your journey from toddler to late adolescence.
* You may have honed these assumptions.
* You may have expanded them, modernised them, reformed them to within an inch of their sorry lives.
* You may, in a few cases, have flipped them over to their mirror state.
* But they are manifestly the same beliefs you hold right now and
* You regard them as being self-evidently true or as near as human ingenuity can make them
* So you have no reason to change them.
It is irrelevant whether you accept any of this because it is a matter of brain chemistry, and you and I share a knowledge of brain chemistry. The simple fact is
| your brain is not designed by nature to change your mind. Not about anything major. |
Your brain is designed to cope with the manifold situations you face in life, as they arise. Which requires a complex brain working at or near peak efficiency and that would not be the case while your brain was
| busy replacing a major synapse because the owner of the brain wishes to stop believing something and to start believing something else. |
Because changing a major synapse inevitably requires
| tests being carried out on all connecting synapses to see whether they still fit with the new one. |
Given the cause-and-effect connectedness of knowledge, some of them definitely won’t. It wouldn’t be very major if they did. Which means
| your brain remaining distracted while new connecting synapses are forged. |
Given the nature of networks, all these new synapses will have to be tested for compatibility with their links too, meaning
| your brain will be virtually useless for an indefinite period while it inspects and if necessary replaces more and more synapses |
as the changes — or the decisions not to change them — cascade through all the relevant parts of your cortex. Given the structure of the human brain, this leads to you
| dropping down dead because so much of your brain will be busy testing, discarding and replacing cortex circuitry, it won’t have anything left over to keep your autonomic body functions going. |
Do you want that? Do you really, really want to drop down dead? Probably not. So if you’ve got an ounce of common sense, you’ll stick with what you’ve got and be thankful for it. But one thing. Just as a favour to me.
| Could you please stop pretending you’re anything more than an unthinking twat who mouths twatty things you picked up when you were a twatty adolescent? |
You can pretend you’re all grown up to one another. You’ve got to breed and stuff, I understand all that. Just don’t bend my ear because
| I’ve been on a course that makes it possible to change your mind without general paralysis of the brain. |
So it is absolutely certain, whatever your beliefs happen to be, mine will be diametrically opposed to yours over a whole range of issues. No, wait. That would mean you believing something you didn’t believe before, wouldn’t it? Bugger. Back to the drawing board.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The underpinning of it all is the difference between
The pursuit of truth (the mind) and
The pursuit of happiness (the brain) |
I will write about this more extensively now I don't have to worry about talking to a Medium audience that doesn't know what I'm on about.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | How do you stop believing one thing and start believing another?
Being sentient creatures we are supposed to do this all the time. The ability to learn from stimuli in the external world in order to change what we think marks us out from the beasts, stuck with their combination of instinctive and copied behaviour.. |
In Behavioural Psychology and Personality Modelling, this falls into the domain known as "Growth, Change and Learning".
All our biological bodies continually regrow and change. If they don't, you are unwell or you wake up dead.
In the psychological space, learning and change is also a healthy thing. Trouble is, many people resist change, for a whole spectrum of reasons. Social, intellectual, financial, jobsworth, authoritarian, "not invented here" etc.
Asking questions, in an AEL-style, like "why?" - or "how do we know that?" - is to choose the path of learning through awareness. This, however, is relatively rare in the general population. And asking "why?" too often and too loudly can get one shunned or outcast.
The parable of sheep and goats springs to mind. Some might say we're the troublesome goats that keep butting in and asking the awkward questions.
The remaining general population tends to learn, not through awareness, but from painful experiences when change is forced upon them.
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Brian Ambrose
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | You are still conflating Brain and Mind. |
I may be but I'm trying not to. You're going to have to be more enlightening than this if you want to help.
In this instance I am pointing out that our brain can only do so much. Our mind has to work within these limitations if it wants to do anything about it. |
I’m here to help…
Mind is separate from Brain - Brain is the radio that you bought from the shop - the hardware. But the enjoyment doesn’t come from the radio (unless you like white noise.) Or a computer - the hardware doesn’t do anything (apart from create heat). And don’t think the software in the computer is the mind either. The mind came from somewhere else too. Instead of thinking Mind as emergent from brain, think of it more as trying to find where Mind and Brain contact. Think of it as if Mind could be in Alpha Centauri, the next street, or in your body, but the two things are separate and different.
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