Category Archives: Soapbox

A view from the middle

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Red tulips in a window boxI was schooled to compete in the classroom, in examinations and on the sports field in preparation for life in, what Mary Midgley described as, the ‘intense competitiveness of the Western world’.  Many of us are obsessed with winning, believing that life is not worth living unless we are at the top of the hierarchy.  As result, we strive for the top where there are only a limited number of places so most people remain in the middle or bottom no matter how hard they strive.  If they are led to believe that they are despised for their position in the hierarchy then they will be miserable and make those around them, both above and below, miserable too.  It took me some time to realise that happiness was not the exclusive property of those at the top of the hierarchy but can be found anywhere through supporting and valuing others.  As a young naval officer, I was trained to look after those under my command and to gain their respect.  I hope that as a leader in academia I have learned to blend the competitive and compassionate elements of the training I received as a young man to create happy and successful communities in which individuals can thrive.  It is ongoing challenge that requires constant vigilance [see ‘Leadership is like shepherding‘ on May 10th, 2017].

Sources:

Mary Midgley, Beast and Man – the roots of human nature. Abingdon, Oxon. Routledge Classics, 2002.

Mind-wandering guided by three good books

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We took a long weekend break last week. We did some walking, read some books and not much else.  I read ‘A line in the world: a year on the North Sea Coast‘ by the Danish writer Dorthe Nors (translated by Caroline Waight).  The author, Jessica J. Lee, described this book as ‘starkly, achingly beautiful’ which aptly describes an exploration of history and memories associated with the wild and desolate west coast of Denmark. Then, I read ‘The Easy Life‘ by Marguerite Duras (translated by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan), written in 1943 when the author’s husband was a prisoner at Buchenwald for having been part of the French Resistance, as she was, and a year after the death of her younger brother which occurred just months after her child was stillborn.  The novel is about a murder, one of three deaths, which lead the narrator, 25-year-old Francine Veyrenattes, to flee the family farm for the seaside to contemplate her borderless grief and the endless sea.  The third book I read during our weekend break was ‘German Fantasia‘ by Philippe Claudel (translated by Julian Evans), which Le Monde described as ‘Dark, sober and strong’.  It is a series of interconnected short stories in which the characters’ reflections play as large a part in the story as the action as they navigate a post-war landscape.  These three books probably suited my mood on a cold, dark February weekend; however, they are beautifully written and in relatively few words create the mental constructs that allow you to live the experiences of the protagonists in the latter two books and the author in the first book.  They are exemplars of the kind of writing Mary Midgley exhorts us to produce – just enough words to bring to mind the appropriate constructs [see ‘When less is more from describing digital twins to protoplasm‘ on February 22nd, 2023].  They took my mind to new places away from everyday concerns which was the purpose of the long weekend break.

A conversation about a virtual world and global extinction

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Photograph of an octopusI went for a haircut a week or so ago and my barber asked me about the books I had been reading recently.  He always has a book on the shelf next to him and sometimes I find him reading when I arrive and the shop is quiet.  So it is not unusual for us to talk about our current books.  I told him about ‘Reality+: virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy’ by David Chalmers which led into a conversation about the possibility that we are in a simulation.  My posts on this topic [see ‘Are we in a simulation’ on September 28th 2022 and ‘Virtual digitalism’ on December 7th, 2022] have provoked a number of negative reactions.  People either think I have written nonsense or would rather not consider the prospect of us being part of a giant simulation.  Fortunately, my barber was happy to accept the possibility that we were part of a simulation which led to a discussion about whether our creator was the equivalent of a teenager playing on a computer in their bedroom or a scientist interested in the evolution of society; and, in either case, why they would have decided to give us hair on our heads that grows steadily throughout our life – perhaps as a personal indication of the passage of time or, simply to provide a living for barbers.  The development of human society and the use of probability to reason that a more advanced society might have created a virtual world in which we are living also led us to talk about the probability that a more advanced society finding us on Earth would annihilate us without pausing to learn about us in the same way that we are destroying all other forms of intelligent life on the planet.  For example, populations of vertebrates living in freshwater ecosystems have declined by 83% on average since 1970 [see World Wide Fund for Nature Living Planet Report 2022].  Maybe it would be preferable for someone to switch off the simulation rather than to suffer the type of invasion mounted by the Martians in the War of the Worlds by HG Wells.

Regular readers with good memories might recall a post entitled ‘Conversations about engineering over dinner and a haircut’ on February 16th, 2022 which featured the same barber who I visit more frequently than these two posts might imply.

The image shows Ollie the Octopus at the Ocean Lab, (Ceridwen CC BY-SA 2.0) for more on the intelligence of an octopus see ‘Intelligent aliens?‘ on January 16th, 2019.

When less is more from describing digital twins to protoplasm

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Word cluster diagramI spent several days last week reading drafts of PhD theses from two of my students.  I have three PhD students who are scheduled to finish their studies before Easter when they plan to start jobs that they have already been offered.  So, there is some urgency to their writing besides the usual desire to finish after three years or more of work on the same topic and the end of their funding.  Their relatively undiluted study of their topic can make it difficult for PhD students to see the big picture and write accessible descriptions of their research.  I have also encountered this challenge in describing our recent work on integrating digital twins to form an engineering metaverse.  There are dozens of published definitions of digital twins whereas the reverse holds for metaverses – no one really knows what they are.  Mary Midgley wrote, in her book ‘Beast and Man’, that descriptions should not be an account of everything about an entity or event but just enough to bring to our minds the appropriate conceptual scheme or construct that will tell us everything we need to know.  Our challenge as communicators is identifying the conceptual scheme that is needed, in other words selecting what matters and nothing else.  I like her example of an inappropriate description: “a section of protoplasm, measuring 1.76 meters vertically, emerged at 2:06 P.M. from hole in building at point x on plan and moved northward, its extremities landing alternately on concrete substratum, finally entering hole in further building, at point y on plan, at 2:09 P.M.”  If you need a conceptual scheme to understand this sentence, then try ‘a person walked across the road’.

Source: Mary Midgley, Beast and Man – the roots of human nature. Abingdon, Oxon. Routledge Classics, 2002.

Image: Cluster #1: simulation along product life cycle from Semeraro C, Lezoche M, Panetto H & Dassisti M, Digital twin paradigm: a systematic literature review, Computers in Industry, 130: 103469, 2021 who found thirty definitions of digital twins and created five such clusters of definitions.