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

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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