[Fis] Scientific communication

Wed Oct 26 13:21:29 CEST 2016

Dear Jose, Francisco and Pedro, (Pedro - please could you forward if
the server won't do it?)

First of all, thank you Jose for pointing out this news story. It's
interesting to reflect that Alan Sokal's hoax of 1996 (which is
similar) was specifically directed at a discourse which he deemed to
be unscientific (postmodernism). This one is a nuclear physics
conference.... and clearly, nobody cares about the science - this is
about money, status and ego: I'm not sure Sokal could see the full
extent of this in the 1990s.

Francisco, I agree with you about not tarring everything with the same
brush. On the other hand, I think it is important not to stop asking
fundamental questions, not least "What is economics?". Even great
economists like Hayek and Von Mises were not convinced about its
subject matter (they thought it should be "Catallactics" - the science
of exchange) - and they were even less convinced by the maths! I do
recommend Tony Lawson's work for a broader perspective on economic
history.

Pedro, thank you for a very elegant summary of the complexities of the
"science system". I like the study of the nature of information
because, rather like cybernetics, it digs away at the foundations of
things. There is of course a practical level where we publish papers
(which few read) and fall asleep (or get drunk) at conferences (!).
But I am arguing that what we think happens in the "brownian motion
chamber" of face-to-face communication isn't as impenetrable as we
might have thought (Bateson got this) , and that it is profoundly
connected not only to what we do with technology, but to the
pathologies of communication, marketisation and inauthenticity that
Sokal and others point to. This partly falls into the domain of the
phenomenologists (Alfred Schutz is important in covering this
territory), but also into the domain of artists who communicate in
powerfully in different kinds of ways. There's more work to do here.

As a very speculative contribution to this, I've done one more video
which is an attempt to summarise my argument and tie it to an example
of musical communication (a Bach fugue). Alfred Schutz wrote a
wonderful paper on music called "Making Music Together"
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/40969255 - Loet told me about this years
ago, and it's one of the few really great academic papers I know). I
don't mention Schutz in the video, but I do use John Maynard Keynes's
remarkable treatise on probability from 1921.

I argue that at the root of our communication practices lie
assumptions about 'counting' and 'similarity': we make assumptions
about things being the same, we count references (but one reference is
not the same as another!), etc; in scientific practice, we make
connections between like-observations and causal explanations - all
the while losing sight of the possibility that it is us who impose the
order of similarity on things. I've found Keynes's idea of 'negative
analogy' (see video) useful for looking at this differently, and to
explain the patterns perceived in music. I've found understanding this
helpful to understand that the "Brownian motion" may also be like
this. The process depends on multiple descriptions - which brings
things back to my basic argument for the exploitation of rich
communications media, etc. I should also say that Loet's ideas on
mutual redundancy also fit to this perspective, although there remain
deep questions about Shannon and probability.

Apologies for the rather crackly sound in parts of the video, but I
hope at least some of it makes sense (and I hope I didn't make too
many mistakes playing the Bach fugue!)

The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeuRlVrTUGU -
"Scientific Communication: From Keynes's Probability theory to a Bach
Fugue"

Best wishes,

Mark

On 22 October 2016 at 13:18, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero
<javierweiss at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Mark,
>
> I think this might be of interest for the discussion
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/22/nonsense-paper-written-by-ios-autocomplete-accepted-for-conference
>
> It's a extreme case of economic interest debunking scientific communication.
> I think it shows a problem of coding between science and economics. Codes
> disambiguate information processing allowing differentiation. Frauds like
> these fall in between both codes: they are making money out of science
> without making science.
>
> Best,
>
> Javier
>
> El oct 21, 2016 9:06 a.m., "Francesco Rizzo" <13francesco.rizzo at gmail.com>
> escribió:
>>
>> Caro Mark e cari tutti,
>> da "Il giudizio di valore" (1972) affermo che la scienza economica
>> "normale" doveva essere buttata alle ortiche o nell'immondezzaio, perchè
>> "La scienza non può non essere  umana, civile, sociale, ECONOMI(C)A,
>> enigmatica, nobile, profetica" (2016). Quindi non mi viene facile leggere
>> taluni rilievi critici che non possono condividere perché non è giusto fare
>> di tutte le erbe un fascio.
>> Ho rispetto del pensiero degli altri, ma ritengo sempre opportuno mettere
>> i puntini sulle i.
>> Francesco
>>
>> 2016-10-21 14:33 GMT+02:00 Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>:
>>>
>>> Dear Mark and FIS colleagues,
>>>
>>> It was a pity that our previous replies just crossed in time, otherwise I
>>> would have continued along your thinking lines. However, your alternative
>>> focus on who has access to the "Brownian chamber motion" is pretty exciting
>>> too.
>>>
>>> Following our FIS colleague Howard Bloom ("The Global Brain", 2000),
>>> universities and the like are a social haven for a new type of personality
>>> that does not match very well within the social order of things. It is the
>>> "Faustian type" of mental explorers, dreamers, creators of thought, etc.
>>> Historically they have been extremely important but the way they are treated
>>> (even in those "havens" themselves!), well, usually is rather frustrating
>>> except for a few fortunate parties. A long list of arch-famous scientific
>>> figures ended very badly indeed.
>>>
>>> So, in this view, people "called to the box" are the Faustians of the
>>> locality... But of course, other essential factors impinge on the box
>>> composition and inner directions, often very rudely. SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST:
>>> it means that as the box's outcomes are so much influential in the
>>> technology, religion, culture, richness, prosperity, and military power,
>>> etc., a mixing of socio-political interests will impress a tough handling in
>>> the external guidance and inner contents of the poor box.
>>>
>>> And finally, the education --as you have implied-- that very often is
>>> deeply imbued with classist structures and class selection. The vitality of
>>> the Brownian box would most frequently hang from these educational
>>> structures --purses-- for both financing and arrival of new people. And that
>>> implies further administrative strings and been involved in frequent
>>> bureaucratic internecine conflicts. The book of Gregory Clark (2014, The Son
>>> also Raises) is an excellent reading on class "iron statistics" everywhere,
>>> particularly in education.
>>>
>>> E puor si muove! All those burdens have a balance of positive supporting
>>> and negative discouraging influences, different in each era. Perhaps far
>>> better in our times, but who knows... The good thing relating our discussion
>>> is that, from immemorial times, all those Brownian boxes around are
>>> wonderfully agitated and refreshed by the external communication flows of
>>> scientific publications via the multiple channels (explosive ones today,
>>> almost toxic for the Faustian).
>>>
>>> Maintaining a healthy, open-minded scientific system... easy said than
>>> done.
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>> --Pedro
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> El 16/10/2016 a las 16:07, Mark Johnson escribió:
>>>
>>> Dear Pedro,
>>>
>>> Thank you for bringing this back down to earth again. I would like to
>>> challenge something in your first comment - partly because contained
>>> within it are issues which connect the science of information with the
>>> politics of publishing and elite education.
>>>
>>> Your 'bet' that "that oral exchange continues to be the central
>>> vehicle. It is the "Brownian Motion" that keeps running and infuses
>>> vitality to the entire edifice of science." is of course right.
>>> However, there is a political/critical issue as to who has ACCESS to
>>> the chamber with the Brownian motion.
>>>
>>> It is common for elite private schools in the UK (and I'm sure
>>> elsewhere) to say "exams aren't important to us. What matters are the
>>> things around the edges of formal education... character-building
>>> activities, contact with the elite, etc". What they mean is that they
>>> don't worry about exams because their processes of pre-selection and
>>> 'hot-housing' mean that all their students will do well in exams
>>> anyway. But nobody would argue that exams are not important for
>>> personal advancement in today's society, would they?
>>>
>>> Similarly, elite universities may say "published papers are not that
>>> important - what happens face-to-face is what matters!". Those
>>> universities do not have to worry so much about publishing in
>>> high-quality journals because (often) the editors of those journals
>>> are employed by those universities. But when, at least in the last 10
>>> years or so, did anybody get an academic job in a university with no
>>> publications?
>>>
>>> I draw attention to this not because it seems like a stitch-up
>>> (although it is). It is because it skews what you call the "Brownian
>>> motion". At worst we end up with the kind of prejudice that was
>>> expressed by Professor Tim Hunt last year
>>>
>>> (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/10/nobel-scientist-tim-hunt-female-scientists-cause-trouble-for-men-in-labs).
>>> More fundamentally, the doubts and uncertainties of the many are very
>>> important, and in this system, they are not only not heard, but in the
>>> increasingly rarefied and and specialised exchanges in the "Brownian
>>> motion chamber", as the elite scholars endlessly discuss ontological
>>> arguments for the existence of information (!), everyone else is
>>> effectively locked-out.
>>>
>>> The economic crisis and the economists is a good example of this kind
>>> of pathology. It was pretty obvious that the economic system was
>>> heading for trouble quite some time before 2008; it was also obvious
>>> to a few economists on the fringes (who became very unpopular) that
>>> economics was in a mess many years before, concocted out of spurious
>>> mathematical models and a published discourse which would admit little
>>> else. As Tony Lawson says here (this is worth watching:
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vMLHis5cE), after the crisis it's
>>> easier to claim that economics is in a mess. But doing something about
>>> it is a different matter.
>>>
>>> As a side note about Brownian motion: Tony Lawson is based in
>>> Cambridge as has, over the last 20 years, held a bi-weekly seminar
>>> series open to all called the Cambridge Realist Workshop. Some of the
>>> brightest minds in the University attend these. They all have deep
>>> discussions about economics, ontology, society... basically, about
>>> "everyone else". But "everyone else" isn't in the room.
>>>
>>> This is the problem. Were "everyone else" to be there, for it to be
>>> truly open, honest and democratic.... I think we would have a better
>>> science of society, information, education, etc... A small step to
>>> achieving this is to communicate our doubts in different, more open
>>> and more creative ways.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>> Pedro C. Marijuán
>>> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>>> Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
>>> Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
>>> Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
>>> 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
>>> Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
>>> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>>> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>>> -------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
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-- 
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Institute of Learning and Teaching
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
University of Liverpool

Visiting Professor
Far Eastern Federal University, Russia

Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com