Spectra, staircases and triggers!

Logic is meant to help us decide how to do things for a purpose, based on input factors and sometimes on their history. Time may or may not enter into it, but usually does in real life. True and false were big matters of debate just after Cantor, during Russell and Whitehead's heyday. The problem of completeness is not entirely solved yet, and despite Gödel, we need to take it further.

We can talk about simple things that have to be either one way or another, not in-betweens, such as pregnancy, mousetraps, light switches that work properly, and numbers as represented inside (digital) computers, but not necessarily as represented in mathematicians' minds. Spectra provide us with ways of thinking about more fluid concepts, like heat, light, pleasure, and we can even think of making spectra discrete so as to represent things as steps along a range, which is what digitization does to approximate continuity, and what we can do to deal with things that can take on more than 2 different values, like gender (there are 4 types in certain Ontario public databases).

I wanted to bring a prosaic example to the forefront, having to do with a previous post about service delivery. It has to do with safety, and I will keep the specifics vague to avoid further complications in the real-world. A colleague has had a service company come to assess a replacement for his hot-water heater (very prosaic as I mentioned), and the service guy instead of doing that, checked his chimney flue and red-tagged it as unsafe, although it had been venting his furnace and hot water heater without incident for 17 years. He now has to replace all three items at great cost.  Safety is not to be questioned and the service guy has the authority to do this kind of thing. The law is strict on acceptable carbon monoxide levels in homes (it is not seen as a spectrum but as a trigger, above a certain level is illegal because it is dangerous and can be lethal). The problem as I see it is about the transition. You can set a level to be your true/false trigger. True - you have to do something, false you are safe, but surely there must be a spectrum around that number, a fuzzy logic zone, maybe even based on history.

Engineers have known about this for a long time, likely before steam engines, and have used a concept called hysteresis to deal with it. The classic example is thermostats. The thermostat will turn on a furnace when the temperature drops below a point, but since turning on the furnace may just raise the temperature enough to have the thermostat go back to turning it off, there is a fuzzy range between on and off that uses the direction the temperature is moving to decide when to switch the other way. As the temperature goes up, the thermostat does not turn off until some level above the trigger point is exceeded (by a little bit), and as the temperature drops, the thermostat does not turn the furnace on unless the it is a bit below the threshold. The history and direction of the movement comes into play. Calculus was invented (discovered some say- hah!),
to deal with such history and trends in the domain of functions. It  triggered a crisis in mathematics which was addressed in the 19th century.

So things get complicated around the triggers. Logic has had to deal with this problem, and it was what motivated Zadeh to publish his famous fuzzy logic paper.
In the physical world, circuits that implement logic for computers address the potential noise around zero and one levels by having triggers that implement hysteresis around the trigger point, and eliminate the uncertainty resulting from noise by deciding that once latched they stay latched until the signal level drops enough below the noise to justify a decision change, and vice-versa going the other way.

Now what about quantum phenomena? The cat in the box? The undecidability of state is a bit like this notion of trigger point. We cannot theoretically know which way the trigger will go so we have to observe it to know. It is a limit problem, but one without a resolution in theory, effectively undecidable. Recent papers have suggested that the traditional statistical approaches to dealing with this may not be the best way to look at it. It may be that the size of the system imposes a limit on the trigger point resolution, in fact making it impossible for undecidability to maintain itself once the system exceeds a certain size. After that, it becomes Newtonian, logical, true or false, and the decision point can be made in advance, using classical deterministic methods.

All this makes me wonder if our accepted mathematical model for continuity may not have something to do with this difficulty. We think of a number line as infinitely divisible and more, having points on it that are impossible to measure exactly, Reals, not rationals (not to mention the irrationals). But as a result we get strange phenomena like Cantor's subsets whose members can be put into one-one correspondence with the members of its super-sets, and the fact that 0.9999... is equal to (resolves) to 1. Computers, discretization, and  stair-casing can provide some relief. Any numbers can be represented symbolically, and numerically if we accept a limit on the imprecision, but it can be made precise to the level required for the problem space at hand. This is of course not enough for a mathematician, who will always seek the absolute certainty, but since logic is used to implement the math inside the computer, it may be enough for a logician, and I would argue that if you throw in enough time, then you can get close to what the mathematicians want, although you may never reach it. Limits. So as some have suggested, we may benefit from throwing out Reals. They are limits, and therefore somewhat platonic. Let's just rock'n'roll.

Once last bit:

The law gets around the fuzziness of limit cases by specifying with words  what to do around the decision point. Laws are written to say which way trigger points are decided. For example, in property law, a wall can belong to a lot on which the larger width of it sits, or it may belong jointly to both lots if it crosses the property line between the lots, or whatever. It is a rule, a logical rule, like in a game. Whether the rule is ethical or moral is a judgement based on history, acceptance and tradition, in other words statistics.
Oh my.

Civil servants, public schools (and hypocrisy)

(Paris not Cambridge) Copyright A. Barake 2014

I know that the English use the term "public schools" that way because traditionally they were being contrasted with private home schooling, and that the apparent contradiction with our North American private/public school meaning is an accident of history. But it must be pointed out that despite the forgotten use, the naming is not likely to change, tradition is akin to snobbery, it is the listener that must remember to internally translate the convoluted meaning, the idiom will remain. But on to my rant about other such peculiarly English things.

This theme comes from my current interest in the novels and life of Baron Snow of Leicester, a.k.a. Sir Charles, a.k.a. C.P. Snow, novelist, civil servant, self-promoter, polemicist, and self-appointed sage on science versus the arts.

I must begin by saying that I have not thrown out his novels from my bookshelf despite 25 years of wanting to. In fact I keep re-reading them, especially The Masters and The Affair, both Cambridge-based lessons in closed door-politics. I remember thinking when I first read them that it must very tiring to live in such a society since for every word spoken, there seems to be ten or twenty unsaid. This is not to say that there is no dialog in the books, there is, and it can be entertaining, but there is far more "telling" and judging, from the point of view of the author's alter-ego Lewis Eliot.

Why do I continue to be fascinated and drawn back to these grey amorality plays?

It is not because of the writing. It is stilted and repetitive, and as F.R. Leavis, a fellow member of this Cambridge coterie  pointedly and accurately said in his famous vicious public and published attack on Snow, the chapters seems to be put together by a computer called Charlie.

I think it is because the work walks the line between apologizing for the hypocrisy and self-seeking selfishness of men of affairs and exposing them for the petty small-minded and fallible beings they can be. It is the same reason I like to read Kingsley Amis' semi-autobiographical comic novels. His apparent self-loathing is always couched in some sort of expiation, whether through laughter, ridicule of everyone and everything, clever point of view and great dialog (as opposed to Charlie's).

Snow's life has been studied and is undergoing further study today by Cambridge historians of science and government, because he was an insider of British politics during the middle of the 20th century. He saw things first-hand in his corridors of power, and was proud that he did. He could not help bragging about his presence and his rise from what he perceived as humiliating poverty in the provinces to being a clubbable member of the upper crust. He took the cheek further by "kissing and telling" through his fiction, a form of revenge on his early humiliations, a quiet and subtle revenge, not vicious enough to get him expelled from the back-rooms and clubs, in fact quite the opposite, he continued to gather honours until his death, so much so that some have accused him of being a "gong chaser".

So he had his pie and ate it too. Leavis' attack in the 1960's was apparently unexpected, and surprisingly effective, despite all of Snow's phlegmatic discipline, he continued to allude to it many years after, in fact it was reported that he attributed his lack of a Nobel prize [most unlikely] in literature to it!

The fascinating thing about Snow, (and Amis as well) is that despite the apparent literary self-awareness, running through tens of novels, there is never a doubt that he is completely comfortable with his choices to prevaricate, to bend the rules, to serve himself first, to wallow in the luxury and privilege and to do things first in the back room and then to pretend to do them in public once all has been decided. That is the way the world works. He is right. He was as successful as he wanted to be.

Leavis was not nearly as honoured or respected. One reviewer of his attack called him "a beetle". No one to my knowledge called Snow anything like that.

He had many powerful friends and part of the difficulty of writing a good biography is that these friends continued to be loyal and respectful of his privacy throughout his and their lives. For example, it is not clear if the first failed marriage of Lewis Eliot, his protagonist in the 11 novel series Strangers and Brothers has a counterpart in Snow's life, like the second one does (almost exactly). It is not entirely clear why Snow left a substantial endowment to his secretary in his will and why she held so much of his papers. And we only have his word regarding his proclaimed destiny, choice and inevitability of career as a novelist, despite his early efforts in physical chemistry at Christ's, where he published and had to retract a paper that was thought to be a breakthrough (regarding synthesis of vitamin A). Despite that, he rode his fellowship and connections to a high posting as a civil servant during the war, assigned to choosing and vetting scientific staff for the effort. The word "servant" is part of that strange vocabulary that one must tolerate in English, one that says the opposite of what it means. He only serves his masters and himself, maybe not in that order, and the civil side is just a convenient pretense and facade.

As Proustian documentary, the novels are valuable. As entertainment, they are passable, as psychology they are bedeviling, one cannot make heads or tails of Snow's ethical or moral stance. I am not sure that he could either, maybe it was what drove him to write, other that the boasting and settling of scores. In that sense the work continues to be interesting, but if artistry means controlling and projecting intention accurately, it is only fair that today these novels are mostly seen as dated artifacts of an era, and not valuable contributions to the art of fiction.

Breakfast at Tiffany's and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

It was 1961. Blake Edwards directs Audrey Hepburn who plays an American geisha based on a story by Truman Capote. For Hepburn, it is a defining role, for the other players, like George Peppard, Buddy Ebsen, and Martin Balsam, it would be one of their best roles before moving on to the new upcoming medium of TV.

Blake Edwards who had funny ideas about what is funny, had asked Mickey Rooney to pretend he was Japanese, created a typical surreal party scene, and later regretted and apologized for the former and repeated the latter with Peter Sellars playing an Indian gentleman in brown-face.

Detail from Dancer - copyright 2014 - A. Barake

Despite all the Hollywood crassness and foibles and the watering down of the very moving story, the movie is a classic, and is moving. Some scenes are exactly true to the book, and their power undiluted. The undercurrent of tragedy is always there, the sadness of men's lust for youth, the hurt of youth abused, and the exploitation that derives from these circumstances is played though the central character.

The pattern of a party girl that knows that sex is power yet that feels trapped by it and yearns for something more permanent than the puppet strings that the pull of Eros provides is classic. Marilyn's appeal comes from there. That Hepburn was able to transcend it while still providing the sadness is genius.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, although ostensibly playing with Chandler themes, does provide a nod to the same story (to be fair, so did Chandler in his own misogynistic way in "The Little Sister"). There is the sad back story of childhood abuse, and the party girl in Hollywood plot line, and the sympathetic "friend" who wants her but cannot "have" her.

The pattern of friendship that becomes love is a Hollywood staple, watered down in Doris Day - Rock Hudson movies, and used and abused even today. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang hints at it, but the boy and girl do not get together, the boy finally admits to not being good with girls. It plays all the cliches and then twists them into something that says "I know all about this bullshit".

Breakfast at Tiffany's could not do that. It was shot on a budget of $2.5 million and earned 15. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was shot on a budget of $15M and made 16. Draw your own conclusions on what sells.

How Downton Abbey is the M*A*S*H of our times

Copyright 2014 - A. Barake

Robert Altman shoots high. He made indie movies through mainstream distribution mechanisms, his way, with no apparent compromises. Actors loved to work for him. He got the best and he got them to be their best.

His breakthrough M*A*S*H film was made more or less at the same time as other mainstream war films like Catch-22 and Patton, but his had a humanistic twist, not as black as Catch-22, not as jingoistic as Patton. The characters were iconic, and the setting eternal. So much so that the TV series that followed used the same set, ran for a record time and was much loved. Altman did not see much or any money from the series.

It is interesting to compare the movie to the series. It is a good example of how movies could go further, were more adult, in the real sense than TV. The sentimentality was absent, the self-censorship not there.

Fast forward to about ten years ago. Altman, in his mature years, make the perfect manor mystery: Gosford Park. The threads of social change in post Victorian England are captured. The futile snobbery, the emergence of movie making, the dark side of robber barons, and the unfairness of class, are all wrapped in the tropes of the genre, with a wink at the detective, hammed up by Stephen Fry, the upstairs downstairs, the shooting party, the sumptuous settings. The movie works, like all Altman movies, on so many levels that it almost becomes a documentary.

The script credit goes to Julian Fellowes, who afterwards, said that Altman took his script as a starting point, in the same way that Kubrick took Clarke's "2001 a Space Odyssey"  as a starting point (my interpretation, not Fellowes').

Fellowes got a hefty fee with which he bought one of the manors used for the set. He then famously went on to write the TV series Downton Abbey, with many of  the same characters and settings. It is a lavishly produced soap opera. Sentimental, full of short intertwined plot lines, but ultimately apologetic to and for the upper classes. Completely unreal, completely different than Gosford Park, hugely successful and profitable.

Downton Abbey is to Gosford Park what the M*A*S*H  television series was to the original movie. Altman's career was framed by two very similar show trajectories. 

The future of medicine

Tugs - A. Barake - All rights reserved 2014

An item on this morning's public radio twigged my imagination. It was an interview with someone preparing to go on a medical mission to a developing country, with a fully equipped hospital ship.

Usually these kinds of stories annoy me, because there is the whiff of self-righteous do-gooding, and I know I am probably misguided about feeling this way, but pride is a big factor in human behaviour and the recipient's pride is rarely discussed.

Anyways... because I was annoyed, my mind strayed to alternatives to charity, in the same way that accessible ramps on buildings or at curb crossings benefit everyone, not just people with mobility impairment, why not try to overhaul the way medicine is delivered to everyone, using these mission approaches. For example, there are fully equipped ophthalmology planes that can land in remote sites to do eye surgery, there are the above mentioned hospital boats that provide all kinds of services including surgery, and there are travelling emergency teams that go to disaster sites for first response.

Well how about eliminating our (bloated) static hospital infrastructure, that is continuously growing its administrative load following Parkingson's laws, and make all medicine mobile?

The current ubiquitous Web and mobile telephony infrastructure combined with good scheduling software could provide the required efficiencies. The MD's and support staff would travel to the patients and treat them in-situ, with the best mobile equipment money can buy. I think it would be cheaper than maintaining the infrastructure we have now. It would be the return of the house call.

HAL, Zombies, Territorial Instinct, and Idiot Philosophers

Fire alarm panel in Kyoto apartment. From my flickr

It hit me like a flash today that 2001 A Space Odyssey is all about the "me" inside us.

Kubrick augmented Clarke's fairly banal story about extra-terrestrial visitation into a philosophical tour-de-force when he modified HAL's role in the story.

He made HAL truly and fundamentally conscious, with all the attendant complications of having to deal with another "me" on the ship.

There exists a school of thought which we could call the ostrich psychologists, who refuse to study or to consider consciousness since they see it as "subjective".

Their idiot brethren cognitive philosophers have proposed a thought experiment to demonstrate this point of view, where a zombie with no "me" interacts with a normal human. The argument goes like this:

• If such a zombie could behave in every way like a person, interact in day-to-day activities "normally", yet not be self-aware, who is to tell that the "me" is not there? 
• So ergo, consciousness is a fabrication and is useless.

There is a big flaw in that argument (despite my brutal simplification, that is the crux of it, I promise):

How do we know that the zombie could behave like a human? It may not be possible.

Consciousness is a survival trait, since it makes one evade pain, evade death, it comes with a territorial urge, a the need for a place in the world, a self is an embodiment of the sensory matrix.

So consciousness is, must be, an evolutionary an advantage, it has to make you run or fight better.

Kubrick saw this clearly and expressed it dramatically. HAL defends its turf because it is conscious. The "me" must prevail over those who want to snuff it.

I'd like to finish with a wonderful quote from a non-idiot:

The demand for continuity has, over large tracts of science, proved itself to possess true prophetic power. We ought therefore ourselves sincerely to try every possible mode of conceiving the dawn of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature, non-existent until then.

—William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890