I noticed when writing a review of Fluke on Amazon it was “#2 Most Gifted in Neuroscience”. Today it’s “#1 Most Gifted in Quantum Physics”. For a political scientist (and self-confessed “disillusioned” social scientist) that’s quite some going. Wow - what an incredible story Funes the Memorious is. Fluke has changed the way I think – it’s opened a window – let’s see what happens when I walk through.
Loved the essay but I’d have to side with your New York editor and note that the thing has changed when the heuristic is no longer useful. It’s a ship until it’s not. I’d also paraphrase as a caution that “heuristics don’t lie but liars use heuristics”. That is actually what can change history.
Brian, I am in chapter 8 of your new book “Fluke.“ Totally captivated. Will be blogging about it extensively. When I began graduate school in 1994, my first seminar had 11 required texts. Roughly one book per week. (“The history of ethics.”) after that, I was blessed to teach “critical thinking “and “argument analysis“ as an adjunct faculty member for a number of years (while working as a risk mgmt analyst in a bank). Were I still teaching argument analysis today, I would stipulate ONE required text–your book, assigning each chapter to one student to be the discussion lead. I can see by now that we could devote an entire weekly seminar class to each chapter, spanning the entire semester. I have no doubt it would be enormous fun. I am a bit slow, didn’t get my first degree till I was 39 (1985).I am what is known as a lifelong unlearner.“ There is so much bullshit to discard. Now 78 and wrestling with Parkinson’s disease, I am rather running out of time. Books and thoughts like yours give me a great amount of pleasure and peace. Our species has deep shit, bro, much of it self-inflicted. Your clarity of prose and clarity of thinking are rather important these days. BTW: regarding “stories.” Did you ever read Steiner‘s 1974 “Scripts People Live?“ Yeah, we are all the Stars and Victims in our own melodramas. Those “stories.”
As I wade through both news and comments, I am constantly appalled not just by how diversity is ignored by categories but by how people constantly cram SOME detail into categories and then claim that the detail defines the category.
One example was a recent story by a NYT reporter who interviewed some random people and concluded (with headline, I think) that Democrats Are Exhausted. The implication is that therefore they will not go out to vote. She didn't even have the veneer of scientific "objectivity" that polls do.
This is the root of ALL prejudices. It isn't that the rotten apple spoils the barrel. It is the idea that the rotten apple DEFINES the barrel. Think about any prejudicial mindset--it starts with "ALL X are...." (sometimes with the sop "but some of my best friends are X.")
We really need better education from pre-school on about how to sort out specifics and categories to make them both useful. The gist of what you are saying. Wait--doesn't Big Bird sing "One of these things is not like the other?" Kids obviously can figure it out.
I can remember a professor in grad school, teaching Persuasion, pointing out what he saw as the key point of the whole novel--Anne telling Frederick Wentworth "you should have distinguished."
Fascinating as always, thank you. This conjured for me a quote I love by Aldous Huxley from the Doors of Perception, born from a mystical psychedelic experience.
“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
Dear Dr Klaas, I have read and listened to Fluke and was sufficiently inspired to reread and listen again to the audio. Very enjoyable. I do hope that the kindle edition and the audible versions of the former will one day become synchronised across devices (a small but convenient improvement). I also hope that your delightful dog is sharing the limelight (somehow).
What a fantastic reading history and an unbelievable memory (just two of the elements involved in your incredible ability to bring so many concepts together to bear on each other)! Thoughtful essays like this have the possibility of changing how people think!
Just finished Fluke! I bought two copies, you're welcome! One audio one hard. I discovered three things, I read faster than you speak, the written word is more memorable than the spoken word, and your thought process is sufficiently complex listening to it in 1 hr chunks, while doing treadmill or crunches too much of your spoken word becomes noise, not signal. So I'm going to have to read the book. Very interesting essay here! I need to reread it too! Garden of Forking Paths, do (and where) you reveal the genesis of that? As always, thanks Brian!
This line of questioning is familiar to me as a Buddhist. What is "me?" The body typing this is not the same body that woke up this morning. Various chemical process have been going on, absorbing nutrients and eliminating waste. Yet, I think of myself as continuous from my earliest memories. This body relies on an ecosystem of microscopic flora and fauna in my gut to survive. Yet, I think of myself as somehow distinct and separate. What is "me?"
I have a copy of Fluke on hold at my local library. I look forward to picking it up and reading it!
Brian shines a light on some of the endless ways our mind attempts to organize, control, and find meaning, in the service of an imagined "self". Inevitably the inquiry leads to questioning the nature of the imagined "self" that underpins the attachment to our misunderstandings built over a lifetime. Who or what would we/life be without our stories?
Brian, yet another great essay in what is seemingly randomness but it all is important! As somebody who has used models and data for my entire career, they will only take you so far. The analogy about the signal through the noise is fascinating. My reaction is what signal? That saying implies there is but one or two signals we should be seeing and the rest is noise. But really, the question is within the noise, there are signals that are not always easy to discern that we call noise. It is about putting together disparate pieces of information that actually are related. But just because events do not fit a “patterns” that can be modeled does not mean they are not related. That is why black swans cannot be “modeled”. They are a culmination of events that do not fit a pattern that we can easily discern thus they are dismissed as noise. In military history I think of the Battle of Midway. The stroke of genius by Rochefort to find out objective AF was. US carriers finding the Japanese carriers in a moment of indecision, mistakes by first wave of US aircraft that brought Japanese air cover down to the deck. There was nothing inevitable about a major US victory. If anything on paper and given trends, the “models” would have predicted the opposite. Those random events set the stage for what became a spring board to winning the pacific war.
Kyoto holds such a cultural, religious and historical position in Japanese culture and society that, had it been destroyed, the entire postwar relationship of the United States and Japan would have been different in ways that likely would not have been positive - at least for the United States.
Also: the A-bombs didn't end the war, despite 80 years of propaganda to the contrary. Of course the United States doesn't dare to admit that its entire postwar foreign and military policy has been based on a "cornerstone" that isn't even smoke.
Clue: go to the Japanese government archives (you'll have to demonstrate your own intelligence by figuring out how to do that - it's entirely doable) and look at the records of the Supreme War Council for August 9, 1945. There is no mention anywhere of the Nagasaki bomb, or even a discussion of Hiroshima three days earlier. What are they worried about? The entry of the Soviet Union into the Pacific War and the invasion of Manchuria, since they have no defenses there, having moved the overwhelming majority of the Kwantung Army to Kyushu to face the expected American invasion. The USSR was seen as the serious threat, since they knew what had happened in Germany the previous three months since the surrender, and that they had no defenses anywhere but Kyushu.
As a World War II historian myself, I hate it when glib morons like your friend pop off with their pompous bullshit.
Neuroscience assumes the brain ignores most sensory input for the reasons you and Borges describe: the paralyzing amount and complexity of physical phenomena impacting our sensory organs, external and internal. That doesn’t mean we aren’t able to focus on specifics when necessary. But not only are we restricted in how much sensation we can process at any time, we also are constantly creating an internal world that occupies a good part of our attention, so we think about a presentation while driving to work and think about what others think of us while giving the presentation. Seldom are we ever completely focused on the here and now. Anyway, Borges describes another feature of our brains’ ability to make sense of the world: that the dog seen from the side at 3:15 is the same dog seen from the front at 3:16, regardless of whether we move or the dog does. This modeling of the permanence of other objects is easily as important as the generalization of categories in helping us survive in a world cut off from direct exposure to our brains. Fun stuff.
I noticed when writing a review of Fluke on Amazon it was “#2 Most Gifted in Neuroscience”. Today it’s “#1 Most Gifted in Quantum Physics”. For a political scientist (and self-confessed “disillusioned” social scientist) that’s quite some going. Wow - what an incredible story Funes the Memorious is. Fluke has changed the way I think – it’s opened a window – let’s see what happens when I walk through.
Loved the essay but I’d have to side with your New York editor and note that the thing has changed when the heuristic is no longer useful. It’s a ship until it’s not. I’d also paraphrase as a caution that “heuristics don’t lie but liars use heuristics”. That is actually what can change history.
Brian, I am in chapter 8 of your new book “Fluke.“ Totally captivated. Will be blogging about it extensively. When I began graduate school in 1994, my first seminar had 11 required texts. Roughly one book per week. (“The history of ethics.”) after that, I was blessed to teach “critical thinking “and “argument analysis“ as an adjunct faculty member for a number of years (while working as a risk mgmt analyst in a bank). Were I still teaching argument analysis today, I would stipulate ONE required text–your book, assigning each chapter to one student to be the discussion lead. I can see by now that we could devote an entire weekly seminar class to each chapter, spanning the entire semester. I have no doubt it would be enormous fun. I am a bit slow, didn’t get my first degree till I was 39 (1985).I am what is known as a lifelong unlearner.“ There is so much bullshit to discard. Now 78 and wrestling with Parkinson’s disease, I am rather running out of time. Books and thoughts like yours give me a great amount of pleasure and peace. Our species has deep shit, bro, much of it self-inflicted. Your clarity of prose and clarity of thinking are rather important these days. BTW: regarding “stories.” Did you ever read Steiner‘s 1974 “Scripts People Live?“ Yeah, we are all the Stars and Victims in our own melodramas. Those “stories.”
Thanks. BobbyG
Congratulations on the billboard!!!
As I wade through both news and comments, I am constantly appalled not just by how diversity is ignored by categories but by how people constantly cram SOME detail into categories and then claim that the detail defines the category.
One example was a recent story by a NYT reporter who interviewed some random people and concluded (with headline, I think) that Democrats Are Exhausted. The implication is that therefore they will not go out to vote. She didn't even have the veneer of scientific "objectivity" that polls do.
This is the root of ALL prejudices. It isn't that the rotten apple spoils the barrel. It is the idea that the rotten apple DEFINES the barrel. Think about any prejudicial mindset--it starts with "ALL X are...." (sometimes with the sop "but some of my best friends are X.")
We really need better education from pre-school on about how to sort out specifics and categories to make them both useful. The gist of what you are saying. Wait--doesn't Big Bird sing "One of these things is not like the other?" Kids obviously can figure it out.
I can remember a professor in grad school, teaching Persuasion, pointing out what he saw as the key point of the whole novel--Anne telling Frederick Wentworth "you should have distinguished."
That should be the motto of every MSM outlet.
Fascinating as always, thank you. This conjured for me a quote I love by Aldous Huxley from the Doors of Perception, born from a mystical psychedelic experience.
“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
Dear Dr Klaas, I have read and listened to Fluke and was sufficiently inspired to reread and listen again to the audio. Very enjoyable. I do hope that the kindle edition and the audible versions of the former will one day become synchronised across devices (a small but convenient improvement). I also hope that your delightful dog is sharing the limelight (somehow).
What a fantastic reading history and an unbelievable memory (just two of the elements involved in your incredible ability to bring so many concepts together to bear on each other)! Thoughtful essays like this have the possibility of changing how people think!
Just finished Fluke! I bought two copies, you're welcome! One audio one hard. I discovered three things, I read faster than you speak, the written word is more memorable than the spoken word, and your thought process is sufficiently complex listening to it in 1 hr chunks, while doing treadmill or crunches too much of your spoken word becomes noise, not signal. So I'm going to have to read the book. Very interesting essay here! I need to reread it too! Garden of Forking Paths, do (and where) you reveal the genesis of that? As always, thanks Brian!
This line of questioning is familiar to me as a Buddhist. What is "me?" The body typing this is not the same body that woke up this morning. Various chemical process have been going on, absorbing nutrients and eliminating waste. Yet, I think of myself as continuous from my earliest memories. This body relies on an ecosystem of microscopic flora and fauna in my gut to survive. Yet, I think of myself as somehow distinct and separate. What is "me?"
I have a copy of Fluke on hold at my local library. I look forward to picking it up and reading it!
Brian shines a light on some of the endless ways our mind attempts to organize, control, and find meaning, in the service of an imagined "self". Inevitably the inquiry leads to questioning the nature of the imagined "self" that underpins the attachment to our misunderstandings built over a lifetime. Who or what would we/life be without our stories?
Brian, yet another great essay in what is seemingly randomness but it all is important! As somebody who has used models and data for my entire career, they will only take you so far. The analogy about the signal through the noise is fascinating. My reaction is what signal? That saying implies there is but one or two signals we should be seeing and the rest is noise. But really, the question is within the noise, there are signals that are not always easy to discern that we call noise. It is about putting together disparate pieces of information that actually are related. But just because events do not fit a “patterns” that can be modeled does not mean they are not related. That is why black swans cannot be “modeled”. They are a culmination of events that do not fit a pattern that we can easily discern thus they are dismissed as noise. In military history I think of the Battle of Midway. The stroke of genius by Rochefort to find out objective AF was. US carriers finding the Japanese carriers in a moment of indecision, mistakes by first wave of US aircraft that brought Japanese air cover down to the deck. There was nothing inevitable about a major US victory. If anything on paper and given trends, the “models” would have predicted the opposite. Those random events set the stage for what became a spring board to winning the pacific war.
Kyoto holds such a cultural, religious and historical position in Japanese culture and society that, had it been destroyed, the entire postwar relationship of the United States and Japan would have been different in ways that likely would not have been positive - at least for the United States.
Also: the A-bombs didn't end the war, despite 80 years of propaganda to the contrary. Of course the United States doesn't dare to admit that its entire postwar foreign and military policy has been based on a "cornerstone" that isn't even smoke.
Clue: go to the Japanese government archives (you'll have to demonstrate your own intelligence by figuring out how to do that - it's entirely doable) and look at the records of the Supreme War Council for August 9, 1945. There is no mention anywhere of the Nagasaki bomb, or even a discussion of Hiroshima three days earlier. What are they worried about? The entry of the Soviet Union into the Pacific War and the invasion of Manchuria, since they have no defenses there, having moved the overwhelming majority of the Kwantung Army to Kyushu to face the expected American invasion. The USSR was seen as the serious threat, since they knew what had happened in Germany the previous three months since the surrender, and that they had no defenses anywhere but Kyushu.
As a World War II historian myself, I hate it when glib morons like your friend pop off with their pompous bullshit.
Curios how/if metadata factors into our gathering/retaining, and recounting all of the detail. Maybe better referred to as metamemory?
Neuroscience assumes the brain ignores most sensory input for the reasons you and Borges describe: the paralyzing amount and complexity of physical phenomena impacting our sensory organs, external and internal. That doesn’t mean we aren’t able to focus on specifics when necessary. But not only are we restricted in how much sensation we can process at any time, we also are constantly creating an internal world that occupies a good part of our attention, so we think about a presentation while driving to work and think about what others think of us while giving the presentation. Seldom are we ever completely focused on the here and now. Anyway, Borges describes another feature of our brains’ ability to make sense of the world: that the dog seen from the side at 3:15 is the same dog seen from the front at 3:16, regardless of whether we move or the dog does. This modeling of the permanence of other objects is easily as important as the generalization of categories in helping us survive in a world cut off from direct exposure to our brains. Fun stuff.