Johann Strauss: "The Blue Danube" … in Space.

Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Even if you hate sci-fi, chances are you'll have something good to say about Stanley Kubrick's 1968 “2001: A Space Odyssey”, based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel.

I was too young to watch it the year it was released, but I didn't have to wait much. Sometime in the early 1970s I watched it. It was the years of the Apollo Program and the future seemed like a great adventure.

It didn't last long. By 1982 with Ridley Scott's “Blade Runner”, and Michael Radford's “1984”, the future started to look somewhat bleaker. I was growing up, I guess. And over time, my impressions just got worse. (Shortly after Jan 1, 2001, I remember telling a workmate something like: “Gee, the future looks surprisingly like the past, only crappier”. Don't ask me today.)

If you haven't seen it: it's a great movie. There's little dialogue. Keir Dullea, as Commander Dave Bowman, is terrific.

But the soundtrack is, well, just superb. Given that I'm far from being Nietzsche's greatest fan, you'll be surprised to read that one of the highlights is Richard Strauss' “Also sprach Zarathustra”; but the compositions by Aram Khachaturian ("Gayane") and György Ligeti are not far behind.

Anyway (and this is the by far the absolute high water mark of the movie for me, thanks to that other Strauss, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, and directed by Herbert von Karajan) this is how the future looked like to me back in the early 1970s:

Well, I'll wish readers a happy 2015. Hopefully, the next year will look more like “2001” than “1984”.

PS: The interruption in the video means a lot to me, even if it's only accidental.

Derek Ide: Chomsky vs. Foucault.

Commenting on the 1971 debate between Noam Chomsky and Post-Modern philosopher Michel Foucault, Derek Ide notices that:

"(…) Foucault asks [Chomsky] poignantly: 'When, in the United States, you commit an illegal act [of political activism], do you justify it in terms of justice or of a superior legality, or do you justify it by the necessity of the class struggle, which is at the present time essential for the proletariat in their struggle against the ruling class?' After a brief period he quickly reiterates the question again: 'Are you committing this act in virtue of an ideal justice, or because the class struggle makes it useful and necessary?' " (See here)

Chomsky apparently tries to dodge Foucault's first question; finally, when he replies to the second, he does so rather weakly.

Smelling blood in the water, Foucault swiftly goes for the jugular:

"I will be a little bit Nietzschean about this … the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power … And in a classless society, I am not sure that we would still use this notion of justice."

To which Chomsky basically has no reply, other than to reiterate his belief on "some sort of an absolute basis -- if you press me too hard I'll be in trouble, because I can't sketch it out --ultimately residing in fundamental human qualities, in terms of which a 'real' notion of justice is grounded."

A lefty observer, suggests Ide, would probably give a point to Foucault: his answer would seem to be in harmony with views widely held in the left, particularly the Marxist one. After all, "it is deeply rooted in the recognition of class-based power, hegemony, and contestation."

However, Ide writes:

"Yet, Foucault's position seems at odds with the stance that Patricia O'Brien attributes to him when she explains that, for Foucault, 'culture is studied through technologies of power -- not class, not progress, not the indomitability of the human spirit. Power cannot be apprehended through the study of conflict, struggle, and resistance … Power is not characteristic of a class (the bourgeoisie) or a ruling elite, nor is it attributable to one … Power does not originate in either the economy or politics, and it is not grounded there'."

----------

I can offer a solution to Ide's puzzle: Foucault can assume contradictory stances on the same issue, because foundational questions are not important for Post-Modernists. A and Not(A) are only debating, rhetorical tools to be employed at the debater's discretion against different opponents, according to tactical considerations.

The point is not to argue a deeply felt position, but to win the debate, by hook or by crook.

Far from me to side with him on anything (God forbid!), but Richard Dawkins, the bête noire of some in the "academic" "left", alludes to something similar in the preface to "The Blind Watchmaker":

"I remember being shocked when visiting a university debating society to debate with creationists. At dinner after the debate, I was placed next to a young woman who had made a relatively powerful speech in favour of creationism. She clearly couldn't be a creationist, so I asked her to tell me honestly why she had done it. She freely admitted that she was simply practising her debating skills, and found it more challenging to advocate a position in which she did not believe. Apparently it is common practice in university debating societies for speakers simply to be told on which side they are to speak. Their own beliefs don't come into it. I had come a long way to perform the disagreeable task of public speaking, because I believed in the truth of the motion that I had been asked to propose. When I discovered that members of the society were using the motion as a vehicle for playing arguing games, I resolved to decline future invitations from debating societies that encourage insincere advocacy on issues where scientific truth is at stake." {op. cit. p. xv}

This is what the debate between petit bourgeois intellectuals has come to: word games. And why one sees really surprising bouts of admiration towards apparently mortal foes.

Mecano: "La (Otra) Fuerza del Destino".

Economist, teacher, writer, musician, TSSIer, blogger and nice guy extraordinaire, Peter Cooper reminded me of pop songs from the 1980s.

Well, Pete, here's a 1988 song I always remember, by Spanish band Mecano. Ana Torroja sings "La Fuerza del Destino".

Yes, you guessed it, the pretty and mischievous face belongs to Penélope Cruz.

Ojalá la vida fuera como las canciones; pero a veces no hay final feliz.

Bits and Pieces (III).

George Ellis (professor emeritus of applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town), and Joe Silk (professor of physics at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore) are worried about cosmology and theoretical physics. They are Popperians and string theory and multiverse ideas -- unlike dark matter/energy -- don't make the scientific cut for them. (h/t MNE)

Writing for Nature, Ellis and Silk complain that multiple universes are unobservable (how could their existence be verified?); the energies required to empirically test string theory are beyond actual (and foreseeable) human capabilities. According to Popper, this means those theories are not falsifiable: they are, therefore, at best "metaphysical research programmes".

Ellis and Silk are not alone in adopting Popper's ideas. After all, in economics, Friedrich Hayek (recently promoted to PoKe icon) was also a Popperian (and so was Joan Robinson, by the way, but we'll leave that for the near future).

----------

Sean M. Carroll (senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology) picks up the gauntlet: for him, Popper's falsifiability is overrated.

Carroll:

"It's a well-meaning idea, but far from the complete story. Popper was concerned with theories such as Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist economics, which he considered non-scientific. No matter what actually happens to people or societies, Popper claimed, theories like these will always be able to tell a story in which the data are compatible with the theoretical framework. He contrasted this with Einstein's relativity, which made specific quantitative predictions ahead of time. (One prediction of general relativity was that the universe should be expanding or contracting, leading Einstein to modify the theory because he thought the universe was actually static. So even in this example the falsifiability criterion is not as unambiguous as it seems.)".

----------

I may be mistaken, but this is how I read that: Popper's falsifiability was a "well-meaning" hatchet job "against theories such as Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist economics, which he considered non-scientific".

You have a conclusion and devise a clever-sounding argument to support it. Neat, uh?

----------

But the fun doesn't stop there. If Carroll is a crypto commie, then he hides it well:

"This [two criteria Carroll proposes to replace falsifiability] is what distinguishes these theories [multiverses and strings] from the approaches Popper was trying to classify as non-scientific [Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist economics]. (Popper himself understood that theories should be falsifiable 'in principle,' but that modifier is often forgotten in contemporary discussions.)".

So, the idea is not to abandon falsifiability, even if it sucks big time. Intentionally or not, what Carroll proposes is to apply the full falsifiability criterion to the theories people don't like, but relax it when dealing with the theories he likes.

You've gotta love the philosophy of science.