Music, Perception, AI and Mathematics

I gave this presentation on Wednesday (the day Trump won the election) to Liverpool University's Music Theory group (see http://www.chromatic-harmony.com/theoryclub/). 

Present were some of the key intellectual figures who have been important in my journey, not just my thinking about music, but about perception, AI and physics: Peter Rowlands, whose physics has fundamentally changed my outlook on perception, alongside John Torday, whose biology informs a much deeper integration between physics and physiology, which explains what curiosity is, and Bill Miller who has worked with John on cellular consciousness. Also there was Michael Spitzer, whose book "The Musical Human" treads a path into music and evolution to which I am very sympathetic, although perhaps now I would say, "we need to think about the physics!"  

This integrates with the AI work that I did, and particularly perception in AI, where I learnt a huge amount from my Liverpool colleague David Wong (who couldn't make the presentation). With David, we are further developing these ideas, and this has led to a medical diagnostic company, but also to a slew of new thinking about the role of AI in society. 

There are so many avenues to explore from this, but one of the most fascinating came from Peter Rowlands, who said that "music and mathematics are fundamentally 'abstract patternings'", and I had a conversation with Peter after about whether this was the deep connection between maths and music: it's not that music is mathematical (which is often how we think, particularly with composers like Bach), but that mathematics is musical: a mathematical proof is like a perceptual journey in a similar way to the way to how I describe music. 

Seymour Papert was on to this I think when he pointed out the root of the word "mathematics" is the Greek "mathmatikos" which literally means "to be disposed to learn". I don't think that's a million miles away from "disposed to going on a journey of perception". 

The really fascinating thing here is the primacy of statistics in the study of perception - the essence of Gustav Fechner's work. Statistics is an outlier in mathematics, because it is rarely presented as logic, but fact, from which calculations are made. Where this "fact" comes from is quite mysterious - how and why does the probability density function arise, with its Pi and e and square roots? The "central limit theorem" will be the typical answer - but that only goes so far, because among the limits of the central limit theorem is "finite variance": well, what makes it finite? That may be a question for biology.

But then, machine learning is statistical. It is all about statistics and recursion. And when we say "we don't know why it works", what we're really saying is "we don't really understand the ontology of the statistics". What I am suggesting in my presentation, is that the ontology of the statistics may be even more profound than the ontology of mathematics as we conventionally understand it, or even the ontology of logic. I think this thought has been with me for most of my life.   

Back in Copenhagen

I'm in Copenhagen for the first time in almost a year. It's nice to see friends, but it's also letting me reflect on what's happened in the intervening time. I was last here between the 27th to the 29th November. Nothing here has really changed, except that the notorious Niels Bohr Building has been officially opened. I have to say, it's not a building that inspires me in any way... Copenhagen generally has a slightly weird "cold industrial" look about it, although the centre is nice...

I prefer to sit in the local cafe which is much nicer. 

It was good to catch up with people in the department, and I went to a fun "improv night" in which a former colleague and friend was performing. 

Looking back, I think coming to Copenhagen for a year or so was important for me to do, although I left a well-paid senior management job in Liverpool to do it. But Liverpool was not a nice place. Copenhagen at least allowed space to think about what was happening to education. Although the work was very messy, it may yet be important.

Today I've been teaching Danish teachers about AI. All very interesting, and nice people. My heart, however, is firmly in Manchester, and the extent to which that is the case has really dominated my thoughts while I've been here. Last time I was here I wasn't quite sure, and now I am. What happened in the intervening period was really critical in shaping the person I am now. 

Perennialism

This is Rusholme in the dark. It's been like that at night for many years, and I have many memories of it, both happy recent ones and from 30 years ago. In so many ways, nothing changes. Perhaps it's a bit more fun now. 

There's been a discussion online about perennial philosophy. Aldous Huxley wrote a book about it in 1947.  Perennialism is about permanence and continuity - about what stays the same. Love stays the same: there's a nice quote by Rumi in Huxley's book: "The astrolabe of the mysteries of God is love."

Scientifically and biologically, what stays the same is the fertilised egg. We phenotypes have to adapt in many different ways to different worlds. When I first knew Rusholme, there was no internet. But life began in the same way, driven by love. Bill Miller says it's driven by "preference". I can agree, but I think preference is really "order" and order is fundamental to perception. Perception is an order-seeking process.

What Ekhardt says here could be said of the zygote:

This identity out of the One into the One and with the One is  the source and fountainhead and breaking forth of glowing love.

What does an organism - you and me - do by way of expressing this? We seek order in our perception, enact preferences. On rare occasions in my life I can't tell if the universe selects my preferences for me.  Epigenetically, the results of our seeking are carried back to the zygote, to the unity. The agency of an individual seems to be coloured by the cosmos. And life goes on by maintaining stability.

We worry about our mortality. But not every part of us dies. The microbiome and necrobiome among other things, may be a vehicle for life after death. What if were to wipe ourselves out in a nuclear conflict?  Something of life is likely to be retained - something perennial survives. Love, as preference, perception and order, survives. 

Maintaining a Population of Healthy Workers

Stafford Beer's cybernetic model of the Toronto healthcare system from 1986 presents some very interesting ideas for thinking about occupational health. 

Not least is what's in the middle. Normally we think of a health system as a means of treating sick people, so the population of sick people forms the focus of the system. By putting a population of healthy people in the middle, then the question becomes one of "how do you create a system to keep people healthy?". So it's not a huge step to think "How do you create a system to keep people healthy in work?"

On the left hand side, the distinction between "unrecognised ill" and "recognised ill" is important in organisations, because "ill" can be an indication of "bad for the organisation" rather than with immediate symptoms of ill-health individually. Also the "iatrogenic" loop - healer-induced sickness - contributing to the "known ill" rings true for many occupational health services - it is the "failure demand" of the system, where services which are meant to help, actually make things worse. 

Also at the bottom is the distinction between known needs and unknown needs, and the way in which known needs and expectations must be balanced and mediated by political concerns. 

On the right hand side there is the information environment and the personal self-management around health. This isn't much different in occupational health. Here, government and media coalesce with self-monitoring, education and social services to deal with known risks and unknown risks.

So if we put a "Population of healthy workers" in the middle of this, where do occupational health providers sit in the equation? Where does the DWP and government sit? Where does the NHS proper fit? What about self-help and lifestyle issues? Where do the cocaine habits of stock market traders sit? And crucially, what in the system is iatrogenic and pathological?

The mapping can work. As occupational health globalises, there are important things to think about here.

An Die Ferne Geliebte

I've been wanting to write about this for ages. The way the love story between Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck is borne out by the passion in Schumann's piano Fantasie is one of the most enlivening and heart-felt episodes in the history of music. The ending of the first movement of the Fantasie contains a quote from a Beethoven song, An die Ferne Geliebte, where there is little doubt as to who the Ferne Geliebte is. 

To me this is also a passionate moment in science, because Clementine Fechner, sister of Gustav, became Clementine Wieck, and Clara's stepmother. Although Clara wasn't particularly close to Clementine, she knew Gustav Fechner, and also his artist brother. What were their discussions? Here was the founding father of psychophysics who also wrote about art and the afterlife, and the leading circle of composers (Schumann, Brahms, etc) in the 19th century. 

Then if course there are the letters, like this from Robert to Clara:

One would think that no one man’s heart and brain could stand all the things that are crowded into one day. Where do these thousands of thoughts, wishes, sorrows, joys and hopes come from? Day in, day out, the procession goes on. But how light-hearted I was yesterday and the day before! There shone out of your letters so noble a spirit, such faith, such a wealth of love!

I wonder about this kind of writing. Maybe it was just a style, but we can feel the beating heart - so common throughout the romantic period. Clara was no less passionate:

Dear Robert, I love you so much it hurts my heart. Tell me what you’re writing. I would so love to know, oh please, please. A quartet, an overture — even perhaps a symphony? Might it by any chance be — a wedding present?

The idea that this intoxicating passion has a resonance with science, and particularly with my own AI story, is something (among other things) that's keeping me going right now! 

The Death Cult of Education

I've been re-reading Illich's "Disabling Professions" (see https://www.panarchy.org/illich/professions.html ) which is his most excoriating critique of modernity. It stands in stark contrast to the prevailing view that knowledge and education is fundamental to our survival. This is the view (by respectable people) that people who vote for Trump are essentially "stupid", and (by extension) half the nation is stupid. Illich predicted modernity's slip into fascism. He was a systems thinker and he knew it wasn't knowledge but the system that was the problem, and education is a big part of the system.

All social disasters unfold slowly over many generations. Each generation only sees small changes, and adapts to a world that they perceive as relatively stable. Education is a system operating from generation to generation where each generation is only able to perceive tiny differences until it is too late. Only with the historian's eye can we see what is happening across the generations. Normal life for each generation entails just making things worse - but we can't see it.

From Easter Island to the Maya, it is the same. It is always the intergenerational transmission and awareness system that failed. That was the vehicle that led their society off a cliff. Our vehicle is "education", and it's just as efficient in steering towards disaster. 

Maybe the question we should ask is "who's steering the vehicle?" The challenge is no individual expert, however knowledgeable, can steer us to viability. Some will put the gas down a bit harder than others, but no single person or view can really help. That is the only difference between Trump and Harris, or (for that matter), Putin, Netanyahu, Xi, Zelensky, Orban, or any of the others. They are all the products of capitalism - they all went to the same school. 

I can only envisage a viable solution if everybody's brain is driving together as one brain. How do we do that? That is a cybernetic question. 

Moon of Alabama

So many memories walking through the park...

A beautiful picture and Kurt Weill's hauntingly bitter song...