Category: Uncategorized

Elon Musk: psycho

Jon Ronson’s book ‘The Psychopath Test’ makes many references to examples of specific brain activity that signal of psychopathic propensity.

Of course, these signals only arise in relation to some stimulus – e.g. extreme images of mutilated bodies (psychopaths hardly react, or seek more details)

But is the signal a cause or a response? Is it inherent, i.e. it’s the way your brain is made, or can it be trained/socialised? Does the repeated exposure to horrifying images on Twitter (now rebuilt as a snuff porn hub) dull the signal or exaggerate it?

Or both? If it dulls, then people become indifferent to psychopathic stimuli, they are normalised; if it exaggerates it, well people become less subject to other controls that might exist  either within the psyche or externally to it.

In either case, driven by PsychoMusk’s love of violence-porn, Twitter fuels psychopathic tendencies, one video at a time.

Books (My ‘Oppenheimer List’)

The Development of the A-Bomb (and related matters such as quantum physics)

No doubt the arrival of the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ in 2023 stimulated many of us to read up on this transformative period of developments in applied science, specifically atomic physics. Astonishing, hair-raising, enthralling … here are some books, films and TV I have read/seen recently (Nov23 – Mar24) (I eventually watched the Nolan movie but was disappointed.) 

Books (in no particular order).

  • Ray Monk. 2012. Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Good on the science side. (Read this when it was published but have re-read it)

  • Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.  2008. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Good on Oppenheimer’s life before Los Alamos and the political/personal skullduggery of the tearing down of Oppenhiemer’s status.

  • Jennet Conant. 2005. 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos.

An excellent book, very readable. Great detail about the social aspects of Los Alamos and the extraordinary role of Dorothy McKibbin in managing the ‘interface’ between the secret city and the war-time civil world from an office in Santa Fe. Fills in many of the gaps in the biographies. Excellent on the psychological impact of the Trinity test and the bombing of Japan; has important perspective on the post-war security hearings and aspects of Oppenheimer’s personality.

  • Thomas Powers. 1993. Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb.

A hair-raising story. In the biographies we learn only that the Allies were worried about Nazi progress on developing their own atomic weapons. This book makes you realise how real a threat that was. (NOt a great book because too much detail!) In the end the Nazi regime lacked the organisational finesse as well as visionary insight to make much progress. Speer’s attitude was key in dismissing the practical possibilities. Heisenberg, a key scientist for any attempt, seems at worst to have been, on the one hand a sincere patriot, but on the other, antagonistic towards the Nazis. He seems to have quite deliberately played down the possibility of constructing an atomic bomb but instead concentrated on the loner term possibilities for limitless energy supply though the development of reactors. This did not stop the Allies from worrying about what the Nazis were up to!

Startling is the extent to which there was a deep and genuine fear that while the Nazi’s own atom bomb programme was nowhere, the threat that bob payloads might use radioactive materials to poison land and people was taken very seriously indeed (especially after the development of the V1 and V2 rockets as delivery vehicles). Also note that Oppenheimer too had ‘cold-bloodedly’ drafted a scheme to poison German food supplies wht strontium. Such plans were much more feasible and practical in the absence of a bomb-programme.

It is a more exciting story than Oppenheimer’s given the amount of allied effort that went into intelligence work, as well as H’s lone ambivalence. It seems a little ironic that H was thought by more than a few to have been incompetent but hiding behind a moral posture, whereas Oppenheimer, who was competent, was ultimately ‘convicted’ by his moral position.

  • Lanouette, William & Szilard, Bella. 2013.  Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb.

A fascinating man, one of the ‘discoverers’ of the atomic fission chain reaction that started it all. A combination of genius, dilettante, trickster, and all round humanist who was one of the first to realise, and to campaign against, the terrifying implications of the atomic bomb.

  • Ananyo Bhattacharya. 2021. The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann.

A truly startling figure and one can only agree with the epithet ‘visionary’. The book covers the range of Neumann’s work across mathematics, games theory, automata, computing, and of course his contributions to the atomic and hydrogen bomb projects. Very interesting stuff. Bhattacharya provides one of the more complete descriptions of the constituent parts of an atomic bomb – surprisingly complex and not a bomb in the conventional sense!).

In general, in some of the books listed above, Neumann does not get the acknowledgement he deserves for his work in quantum mechanics and atomic theory, but the sources in Bhattacharya’s well written and affirmative book can help to flesh that out. Good content on Neumann’s work on defining the ‘balance of power’ during the Cold War. While fascinating a lot of this is also very scary stuff.

This book provides a very good overview of the intellectual environment surrounding the scientific and political issues of a momentous period in human history.

(see also Labatut, The Maniac.)

  • Gino Segre, 2007. Faust in Copenhagen.

More focus on the people behind the development of quantum physics, with more emphasis on Bohr. Interesting general background with biographical details. The author is the son of one of the lesser known protagonists.

  • Benjamin Labatut, 2023. The Maniac.

A wonderfully written portrait of the development of the mathematics underlying quantum physics. An emphasis on John von Neumann. The final chapter is a valuable account of the emergence of ’AI’, preceded by chapters on von Neumann’s development of the fist computers and computing theory.

  • Benjamin Labatut, 2020.When We Cease to Understand the World.

Like his later book, The Maniac, this too is a driving, dynamic description of the development of quantum physics 1900-1945.

TV Shows

  • Oppenheimer (the  movie: Christopher Nolan).

Very good on Trinity test and its aftermath. Less good on Oppenheimer’s personal background or the setting up of Los Alamos. Great cast.

  • BBC TV, ‘Oppenheimer’. 1980.

Very good; brilliant performance from Sam Waterston. Covers the ground in a mere 7 episodes, so a bit of a run through the details but very good on the post-war security hearings. Available on iPlayer in the UK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0g3j9cp/oppenheimer

  • Storyville: The Trials of Oppenheimer. 2009.

Good with face-to-face content with some of the participants.  On iPlayer in UK:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lpk70/storyville-the-trials-of-oppenheimer

  • Manhattan. 2 series 2014-2015.

A very annoying production! While admiring the ‘creative non-fiction’ approach that it takes the series descends into creative absurdity. Forget about Los Alamos and then you can watch it on its own terms … Series 3 was cancelled, thank goodness! Available on Amazon Prime Video.

  • The Day After Trinity. 1980.

Excellent archival content. Available on Amazon Prime Video

 

Cultural transmission

The Hebrew University has discovered an ivory comb from 1700 BCE that is inscribed with a plea to rid oneself of lice. The inscription reads:

“May this [ivory] tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”

Isn’t cultural transmission amazing!

https://scitechdaily.com/3700-years-old-scientists-discover-the-first-sentence-ever-written-in-canaanite/

East is a Big Bird

I watched ‘Moana‘ the other night. Artistically beautiful but debatable cultural politics (for example see here).

I note this because it reminded me about ‘East is a Big Bird’ by Thomas Gladwin that I read ‘back in the day’ (It was published in 1970).

I just picked it up again after the film. A book of its time. It begins with a question that was hot then (in the 1960s): why do schools “…keep penalizing children for the poverty into which they have unwillingly been born…” He investigates this with a ‘study’ of the lives and seafaring expertise of pacific islanders while living among them.

How does this answer the queation … ? … read the book!

It’s a relevant question for educators today. The rise of endemic homelessness (which really began to take off under Thatcher) and widespread food and energy poverty is visible to all yet denied by politicians. Food and warmth – in a rich society such as ours everyone has some right to expect these.

In education, however, we seem to continue on basically the same path as Gladwin had observed (as did many educators at the time). While too many of today’s children endure the misery of poverty, national policy in education has been devoted into ensuring that the ineffective becomes more efficient, i.e. educating kids (and adults) in the same old discriminatory manner. We had hoped that was on the way out at the the end of the 1970s …

How wrong we were … *sobs quietly*

Postscipt: don’t take tis the wrong way. Terrific work is done all day and every day by thousands of teachers fighting the circumstances that constrain both them and their charges are in …

EdTech and Social Control

Sorry the post title is a bit OTT, but it’s direct (until I find a better one)!

  1. Starting point is Basil Bernstein who said, ,to paraphrase, ‘all society is pedagogical’. Something like that. There used to be a word in common use in the 70s: ‘socialisation’. Not much now.
  2. It is useful because it implies an active process on integration. It is therefore pedagogical because it involves the transmission of social and cultural mores. However, the word ‘socialisation’ alone does not imply any particular character of the integration. It is simply a process, how we become participants in any kind of community no matter how good … or how bad, as large as a nation, or smaller than a household.
  3. Socialisation is ongoing, lifelong. It never stops so that over time, for example, values that were once held true can become transgressive.
  4. There is no clear boundary, nor can there be, between daily life in a community and the place that technology plays in enabling, disrupting, ‘nudging’, or sometimes blocking activities.
  5. This is a dynamic process for all technologies which can be both a result of earlier social situations as well as a cause of social change.
  6. Change is usually incremental (or ‘normal’ in a Kuhnian sense) and occasionally revolutionary (‘extraordinary’ in a Kuhnian sense).
  7. Edtech is intimately woven into the lifelong socialisation of all members of a society

Notes:

Thomas Hillman (@thomhillman) tweeted at 7:05 am on Fri, Apr 01, 2022:

People often ask me how the platformization of education is different from educational technology in general. The big difference is that the center of coordination changes. We’ve moved from technology in classrooms to classrooms in technology. (https://twitter.com/thomhillman/status/1509773871901196289?t=dAIoKvfwLYYkQP_dCAEhXQ&s=03)