Re: Mind's Eye Re: A Call To Democratic Arms?

I am glad my dogs are trained to a potty board the advantage of small
dogs.. am no longer used to freezing weather

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 4:24 PM, rigs <rigs117@gmail.com> wrote:
> My earlier post has been diverted to outer space, it seems.
>
> That loneliness may be a cover, you know.
>
> Saul Bellow was a rascal.
>
> The speed of information leads to surprise and a protean miss, often.
> I look for patterns in history/culture and try to keep two columns-
> pro and con with hope for the margins. The top tiers of government are
> usually the culprits rather than their off-spring- and it's true of
> tribes as well as complicated systems- the buck really does stop- even
> in suitcases of cash and packets of Viagra.
>
> My "dog" would need diapers- we're at -30 wind chill factor.
>
> On Jan 21, 6:10 am, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Of course, I don't expect anything tangled-up with government and
>> academic bureaucracy to produce much practical. The gist was once
>> that we should aim for praxis, a form of rational action. For some
>> the guide was marxism, but most of us grew up with a form of Keynesian
>> guide - the economics of full employment and FDR's never completed
>> second Bill of Rights. More recently we have reverted to the control
>> fraud of banksters and neo-classical economics. I was never much
>> interested in the 'grand theory' - as a cop I was more interested in
>> what people were hiding and lying about, as scientist the grand was
>> excluded as rigorously as possible a the laboratory door and as a
>> university teacher I was more interested in developing resourceful
>> humans than daft, religious managerial theories. As a kid, my elder
>> brother and sister always claimed I changed the goalposts in argument
>> and as I grew up I discovered this was what argument was generally
>> about - the goalposts changing name to root metaphor and paradigm.
>> Experts in argument are bought like lawyers and have about the same
>> ethics. When Socrates gestures at the Sophists claiming 'I know
>> nothing, but even this is to know more than they' he is just being the
>> smartest guy in the room.
>> We say 'jaw-jaw' is better than 'war-war' - but there is no crucial
>> experiment to decide in 'jaw-jaw'. The problem with argument is that
>> it needs arbitration if human beings are involved in it and the seeds
>> of its own destruction are laid in most people having no training in
>> how it is constructed. If you get some training in this you can be
>> bought like a lawyer as a mouthpiece. Machine knowledge bases and
>> reasoning capacity potentially offer a democratisation of argument
>> expertise, manufacturing capability, medicine, finance and much more -
>> evidence-based practice for all. In practice, doing management
>> information systems, one soon learns those currently in the know want
>> to keep things that way. I believe the professions are currently
>> preventing this as surely as those smashing machines in the industrial
>> revolution. I believe this is the central issue of the moment - and
>> my reasons concern the dream I have of the precipice of disgusting
>> war,the dullness of politics, religion and literature. Economic
>> growth is nearly all uninteresting - FlopBook and so on - and rarely
>> about the growth of capital I would value. Would we could dream up
>> something else - and why we cannot when 2% of labour can provide our
>> food. I miss any sense of collective dreaming and find only the
>> loneliness more 'primitive' people I've met would comment on in the
>> first blush of their experience amongst us.
>>
>> On Jan 21, 9:18 am, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> > Those who have contributed to the thread have shown me there isn't
>> > much general awareness of the 'technology'. There are already
>> > intelligent systems like Watson (IBM) doing a fair job on embodied
>> > expert knowledge (medical in this case). The general idea is in this
>> > from New Scientist:
>>
>> > In your wildest dreams, could you imagine a government that builds its
>> > policies on carefully gathered scientific evidence? One that publishes
>> > the rationale behind its decisions, complete with data, analysis and
>> > supporting arguments? Well, dream no longer: that's where the UK is
>> > heading.
>>
>> > It has been a long time coming, according to Chris Wormald, permanent
>> > secretary at the Department for Education. The civil service is not
>> > short of clever people, he points out, and there is no lack of desire
>> > to use evidence properly. More than 20 years as a serving politician
>> > has convinced him that they are as keen as anyone to create effective
>> > policies. "I've never met a minister who didn't want to know what
>> > worked," he says. What has changed now is that informed policy-making
>> > is at last becoming a practical possibility.
>>
>> > That is largely thanks to the abundance of accessible data and the
>> > ease with which new, relevant data can be created. This has supported
>> > a desire to move away from hunch-based politics.
>>
>> > Last week, for instance, Rebecca Endean, chief scientific advisor and
>> > director of analytical services at the Ministry of Justice, announced
>> > that the UK government is planning to open up its data for analysis by
>> > academics, accelerating the potential for use in policy planning.
>>
>> > At the same meeting, hosted by innovation-promoting charity NESTA,
>> > Wormald announced a plan to create teaching schools based on the model
>> > of teaching hospitals. In education, he said, the biggest single
>> > problem is a culture that often relies on anecdotal experience rather
>> > than systematically reported data from practitioners, as happens in
>> > medicine. "We want to move teacher training and research and practice
>> > much more onto the health model," Wormald said.
>>
>> > Test, learn, adapt
>>
>> > In June last year the Cabinet Office published a paper called "Test,
>> > Learn, Adapt: Developing public policy with randomised controlled
>> > trials". One of its authors, the doctor and campaigning health
>> > journalist Ben Goldacre, has also been working with the Department of
>> > Education to compile a comparison of education and health research
>> > practices, to be published in the BMJ.
>>
>> > In education, the evidence-based revolution has already begun. A
>> > charity called the Education Endowment Foundation is spending £1.4
>> > million on a randomised controlled trial of reading programmes in 50
>> > British schools.
>>
>> > There are reservations though. The Ministry of Justice is more
>> > circumspect about the role of such trials. Where it has carried out
>> > randomised controlled trials, they often failed to change policy, or
>> > even irked politicians with conclusions that were obvious. "It is not
>> > a panacea," Endean says.
>>
>> > Power of prediction
>>
>> > The biggest need is perhaps foresight. Ministers often need instant
>> > answers, and sometimes the data are simply not available. Bang goes
>> > any hope of evidence-based policy.
>>
>> > "The timescales of policy-making and evidence-gathering don't match,"
>> > says Paul Wiles, a criminologist at the University of Oxford and a
>> > former chief scientific adviser to the Home Office. Wiles believes
>> > that to get round this we need to predict the issues that the
>> > government is likely to face over the next decade. "We can probably
>> > come up with 90 per cent of them now," he says.
>>
>> > Crucial to the process will be convincing the public about the value
>> > and use of data, so that everyone is on-board. This is not going to be
>> > easy. When the government launched its Administrative Data Taskforce,
>> > which set out to look at data in all departments and opening it up so
>> > that it could be used for evidence-based policy, it attracted minimal
>> > media interest.
>>
>> > The taskforce's remit includes finding ways to increase trust in data
>> > security. Then there is the problem of whether different departments
>> > are legally allowed to exchange data. There are other practical
>> > issues: many departments format data in incompatible ways. "At the
>> > moment it's incredibly difficult," says Jonathan Breckon, manager of
>> > the Alliance for Useful Evidence, a collaboration between NESTA and
>> > the Economic and Social Research Council.
>>
>> > Hearts, minds and funding
>>
>> > There are economic issues. Most of the predictable areas where data
>> > and evidence would be useful span different departments, and funding
>> > for research that involves multiple government departments is near-
>> > impossible to come by at the moment. "Only counter-terrorism gets
>> > cross-departmental funding," Wiles says.
>>
>> > And those at the frontline of all this may also need convincing. Some
>> > teachers have already expressed reservations. There may be problems
>> > with parents not wanting their children to take part in education
>> > trials. For instance, in a control group they will feel left out of
>> > innovation; in the experimental arm they will worry that the old ways
>> > were better. What's more, teachers may be tempted to halt a trial
>> > early if they feel it is not helping students.
>>
>> > Nevertheless, the government is working with NESTA and a range of
>> > backers to create a set of institutions dedicated to gathering
>> > evidence that will impact on public policy. One example is the Early
>> > Intervention Foundation, which helps local government evaluate schemes
>> > that help preschool learning amongst children who would otherwise
>> > enter standard education at a disadvantage.
>>
>> > There will be announcements of more initiatives in the next few weeks,
>> > says Geoff Mulgan, NESTA's chief executive . "We're hoping this year
>> > the UK will jump a step ahead of every other country in the world in
>> > having a set of institutions dedicated to generating evidence and
>> > helping it to be used in day-to-day decisions."
>>
>> > My own view is that intelligent systems could affect politics and our
>> > attitudes towards work and wealth distribution. It could even be the
>> > machines will give us rationality we are incapable of.
>>
>> > On 21 Jan, 08:59, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > > I don't agree with that now Don - though I once did. 'Grand
>> > > democratic socialism' never appealed much to me and in reality the
>> > > nearest to examples we have of it are in the West anyway. What I've
>> > > lost is any faith in the financial system and the politics of the
>> > > vote. I was in Bucharest in the late 80's with a Saul Bellow book
>> > > describing an academic finding the same corruption there as in his
>> > > home Chicago. Never liked Bellow much - but thought his description
>> > > of people who had read the great literature wandering around in the
>> > > freezing moral climate of the Soviet Block rang true for me - and what
>> > > bothers me is I feel the same in our system. I've eaten well on the
>> > > academic drivel Don and once believed it had some point beyond
>>
>> ...
>>
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|_D Allan

Life is for moral, ethical and truthful living.

Of course I talk to myself,
Sometimes I need expert advice..

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