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MY BOOK ‘EXPLORER’ 2025

September 30, 2024

The log. of a journey of discovery to the end of the Universe and even beyond

Is the story of an ordinary man who dug up the rainbow’s end and discovered something far more precious than gold , and that was Wisdom. But nobody believed him – after all they could see he wasn’t a genius. So, when he was very old he wrote down how Wisdom works in the hope that one day all humans could share the recipe. He was fearful that without such wisdom they might well destroy themselves along with much of the natural world which had nurtured them.

In writing, his plan , my plan, was to give a step-by-step account of the journey Illustrating that dauntless curiosity had been the secret, not genius of any kind. And luck of course. He had been one of the tiny crew of the Hubble Space Telescope and so had stumbled upon mysteries which wouldn’t ever let his imagination rest. And that is how eventually he found his rainbow’s end – when he was trying to find something quite else – Hidden Galaxies. What he unearthed enabled him, and perhaps all of us who follow him, to think dozens of times better than we ever could before. I hope readers will find Explorer both an exciting adventure story and a persuasive revelation. That is certainly how the journey felt to the author. It is crafted in sixty very short episodes– entitled as follows:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE 2024 (1 kiloword) 

1 EXPLORER 1968 (930 words) Journal of a voyage as exciting as Magellan’s

2 OVERNIGHT FAME – BUT…..1969 (11 k-words)

The longest essay, included to show what astronomical observing is really like. It’s the discovery of the Crab Pulsar and the evidence that there is a new form of matter in the Cosmos, one teaspoon of which weighs as much as 200,000 ocean liners . But there’s skulduggery afoot.

3 LOST AMONG THE STARS (1969) (1 kw) I see the Universe clearly for the first time , from a mountaintop in Arizona. Smitten!

4 A REALLY MAD IDEA 1969 (1.7 kw) Are most Galaxies hidden underneath our sky? I become obsessed.

5 HOW FAR AWAY ARE QUASARS? 1972 (2.8 kw)  The huge question.Battling with killer hornets in Australia.

6 AROUSING THE BLOOD. 1973 (2.3 kw) How to design far better telescopes.

7 A RARE MOMENT OF ECSTASY 1975 (1.6 kw) A revelation I will never forget.

8 PROJECT TITANIC 1977 (1.1 kw)

9 INTO SPACE 1977 (1 kw) Beginning to plan The Space Telescope (Hubble).

10 A FALTERING START 1977 ( 2.0 kw) The rows start. They have to.

11 THE INTERNET INVENTS ITSELF 1979 (1.2 kw) In Britain first, not Silicon Valley.

12 THE EXPLORER IN THE LIBRARY 1978 (1.3 kw). Mr Cucumber gives me wings

13 TREASURE CHEST 1979 (700 w) How the gems of Cosmic discovery could all be shared.

14 THE GRAND CHALLENGE 1980 (800 w) How were the biggest scientific discoveries in history actually made? What can we learn from them?

15 GHOSTS IN SPACE 1980 (600 w). You can’t see them but they must be there, Or are they?

16 THE SECRETS OF BIRD FLIGHT

1.6 kw) . How can tiny birds cross oceans? Fascinating and unlikely.

17 TILTING THE UNIVERSE 1982 ( 1.8 kw) What it really looks like. They’d all got it wrong! Surely not?

18 HIDDEN GALAXIES IN THE SEWER 1983 (1.3kw)

19 BIRDS ACROSS THE OCEAN 1985. (900 w) It’s more than magic.

20 HITCHHIKING TO THE STARS. 1988 (800 w) Triumph, but then disaster

21 EINSTEIN AND ME 1987. (1.6 kw) An inspiring but troubled relationship. He was a thief …but a wise man as well. How very strange.

22 THE FIRST “CROUCHING GIANT” 1987 (700w) Beaten to the Pole. But what a wonderful surprise too.

23 WHY WEAKLINGS FAIL 1980’s. (1.9 kw) Character in Science.

24 HIDDEN BY SMOKE 1990 (9.2 kw) While observing at The Cape wisdom leaks down from the sky

25 THE BIG FIX. 1990 (1.3 kw) Helping to mend the Space Telescope. Insight in a glider.

26 STRUCK DUMB 1993. (2.4 kw) The Universe wasn’t meant to look at all like this! What’s going on?

27 IMAGING QUASARS 1994 (1.5 kw) Crown Jewels.

28 HIDDEN GALAXIES AND SPECTRAL GHOSTS 1994 (1.8 kw) Could they be related?

29 OUT OF FAILURE 1992. (1.4 kw) Never give up.

30 FEELING IN THE DARK 1992 (2.4kw) Looking for the Light-switch.

31 OIL TANKER DISASTER & IGNORANCE OFTHE BRITISH ELITE 1996 (4.2 kw) What happens when we cannot think straight.

32 SETTING SAIL 1997 (500 w) To explore the universe for Invisible galaxies.

33 THE SHARPEST EYE 1998 (3.4 kw) Designing a new camera for the Space Telescope.

34 CONFLICT AND CONTROVERSY. 1998 (1.5 kw) Conference rows.

35 HORRORS OF THE DEEP 2000. (1.1 kw) What the hell’s going on?

36 ARECIBO FOLLIES 2000 (1.1 kw) Mad Big Telescope Disease among our rivals.

37 THE SWEETEST SPOT (2002) (600 w) The special place to look; among friends.

38 HUMAN THERMODYNAMICS 2004 (2.7 kw) What everyone needs to know but does not. The Professors have got it hopelessly wrong.

39 RECYCLABLE OIL & PTEROSAUR WINGS 2000 (700w) How we could save the planet

40 EUREKA 2004 (1.4 kw) Applying Information Theory to explore the Cosmos; Revelations.

41 TRIUMPH AT LAST ? (1.4 kw) Could this be it?

42 WITCHCRAFT STATS AND BACK (1.1 kw) Deluded Statisticians.

43 THE AUSTRALIAN FIASCO 2005 (1.4 kw). Not again; surely not.

44 DISASTERS OF PROBABILITY. 2004 (900 w)

45 FIRST DARK GALAXY 2008. (1.1 kw) Unrefutable truths, but implacable enemies.

46 THE BIG SHOOT- OUT IN CARDIFF. 2007 (1.5 kw) Spectacular rows.

47 GREAT SECRETS BEGIN TO EMERGE 2007 (1.8kw) Intimations of a vast discovery.

48 HARD TO BELIEVE 2008 (3.4 kw) But here it is.

49 CRIMINALS IN ASTRONOMY 2008 (2.6 kw) All over the place.

50 LAST MISSION TO HUBBLE & THE BIG PRIZE 2009 (2.0 kw)

51 DETECTIVE’S EQUATION 2010 (2.3 kw) How we can ALL think far better. We must!

52 OCKHAM’S RAZOR – THE BASIS OF WISDOM 2011 (2.5kw)

53 FATAL MISTAKES. 2013 (1.8 kw) How wrong the human race can sometimes be. We’ve got to admit it.

54 ANIMAL WISDOM 2014. (2.6 kw). Smarter than the Ancient Greeks.

55 WAS THERE A BIG BANG? 2014 ( 1 kw) Probably not.

56 GALAXIES – HIDDEN NO MORE. 2017 (0.7 kw) At last!

57 ‘CATEGORICAL INFERENCE’ ,THE BEATING HEART OF THINKING. 2018. ( 3.4 kw)

58 THE SECRET OF HUMAN SUCCESS 2018 (1.8 kw) No it’s more than brains and was invented by Turquoise miners around 1800 BC.

59 ROTTEN REASONING 2018. (4.2 kw) And how to avoid it.

60 DARK MATTERS. 2024 (1.5 kw)

61 MY OWN BLUNDERS

62 THINKING AND PROGRESS Miracles await if we learn to think. But academics can’t teach us because they’ve screwed it all up.

63 WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

64 LAST WORDS

INDEX

64 SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL 2024 (600w)

THE PREFACE

If you read. this it should give you some idea of. whether. you want to read on

Here it is updated to Feb 2025

Imagine that as a young explorer  you were the first human to realize that the Earth must be round, and devoting the rest of your life to proving it so. Your contemporaries are divided into two camps; the much larger thinks the idea is preposterous and devise any number of arguments to support their view; the much smaller band of rival explorers want to test  it out but snitch the largest  share of glory for themselves. That is my story ,which I want to share with you here. Except it wasn’t a round Earth in my case but the realization that most of the structures in  Space are invisible to us because our local light levels blind us to their existence. What a lifetime challenge – to overcome the doubters and defeat the jealous rivals. Here I aim to share the ebb and flow of that battle. Could life be any more exciting?

My life has been led at  the very forefront of scientific research. In my 20s I became an astronomer who made some useful discoveries. I was then picked to join the select Hubble Space Telescope crew to explore the universe properly for the very first time: we are still going strong after 35 years. A university appointed me to become a full professor in my 30s  and were enlightened enough to leave me free to do much as I willed . Thereafter for eight months of every year, I roamed the world in search of discovery and adventure. I had become the explorer I had always wanted to be as a  boy. My interests range far beyond  astronomy, and I stumbled upon one or two startling  ideas which I hope will not be lost, because they could benefit all of us on this planet, and not just humans. If at least one of the following four ideas does not intrigue you  then read no further:

  1. According to Einstein scientists advance by using their common sense, but he couldn’t explain how Common Sense Thinking (CST) works. After 40 years of probing I have found out how. 14 -year- olds  could now be taught to use its main tricks: Bayes’ Rule for gambling successfully; The Detectives Equation for deciding wisely; the Principle of Animal Wisdom (PAW) for avoiding fatal mistakes; Ockham’s Razor to avoid wasting time, and Categorical Inference to free CST from mathematics. In the real-world decisions usually have to be reached  on the basis of conflicting evidence. Common Sense Thinking is all about reaching sound decisions in the face  of conflicting evidence. Check it out because, once  you can master CST,  all manner of insights tumble out of the sky.
  2. When we were crossing the Atlantic back in 1968 a  tiny warbler landed aboard  our ship mid-way. It seemed like a miracle to me. How could such a  tiny creature  have flown so far without food or rest?  I  vowed to get to the bottom of animal flight and eventually (it took  10 years)  I did. But that left a  monstrous puzzle, literally monstrous – but also a huge opportunity. My theory proves that no creature weighing more than 12 kg. can fly –  and none can. But in Texas the fossils of Pterosaurs are found with wing-spans in excess of 13 metres and weights of at least 150 kg. They could only have  flown  using blood that could pick up sunlight directly and turn it into energy without using oxygen or exhausting carbon-dioxide . When you think about it that is ‘Recyclable Oil’– endless energy for all , without any disastrous environmental consequences. Why don’t we attempt to synthesise Recyclable Oil (RO), and save the planet, including all those wonderful creatures  now on their way to extinction?

3) How come we can think so much more effectively than our cousin  chimpanzees – who share 98.5% of our genes? Armed with Common Sense one can show it is all about phonetic writing, which was only devised 3,800 years ago by Turquoise miners in the Sinaii peninsula. Without that we cannot put enough evidence together to reach sound conclusions in any but simple situations. Common Sense Thinking plus phonetic writing took us to the  Moon – but why stop there? For instance I have  used them to ask   “What are the roots of Progress?”  and out popped the answer: Curiosity, Honesty, Adaptability, Numeracy, Tolerance, Literacy, Committees and Sustainability [ CHANTLiCOMS for short].  Once one can think straight, and understand  the  roots of Progress, all  manner of  vistas open up – in Philosophy, in History and in Politics for example. One can even draw up a League table of nations defined by their Progressiveness. You might be surprised at some of the placings.

4) But  2,500 years ago scholars in ancient Greece thought they had found the  recipe for Certainty – Deductive Logic. Ever since, scholars have frowned upon Common Sense Thinking  as inferior – precisely because of its Provisional nature. They still frown upon it today –  but of course they are hopelessly wrong. That means they cannot teach our young ones how to think. Thus  most contemporary education is “Baducation”. It is, in Einstein’s words   “Teaching  fish  to climb trees”. How are we going to change this catastrophic state  of affairs?  We could do you know – and fast. The results would be dramatic

But why should  you pay attention to me?  I’m no genius – I don’t even believe in that phenomenon – for which there is no evidence , not in Science anyway. But I have been privileged to spend more time at the very frontier of knowledge than anyone else I know. I was born incorrigibly curious – my exasperated parents dubbed me ‘Mr Why’; I have read  at least 8000 books; and have been ruthlessly selfish with my time, devoting at least three hours  of every day to Thinking, ruminations which are recorded in diaries stretching back 70 years and containing 2 million words. It is not surprising then that  one  or two provocative ideas have turned up. Bugger fame – it’s far too late for that. But it is worth trying to keep the candle of Learning alight in the dark. After all it has flickered  out  before – more than once.

REFERENCES

There are a whole series of coloured images associated with the material. To put them in a book would make it impractically expensive.  So at the end of this book is a section headed SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL with many pointers to extra stuff, particularly to my website mjdisney.org . In the mean time you. can look them up in our parallel Post entitled ‘EXPLORER EXTRAS’. The paperback version of the full book (450 pages) should appear , along with the author’s other books, on AMAZON in mid Feb 2025

Referring to a different essay in this book I write [e22] for essay 22.

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FLAWED THINKING 2018

April 10, 2024

Below is an essay I wrote in 2018 immediately after cracking Common Sense Thinking showing the mixture of excitement and surprise that gripped me at that time immediately after I’d emerged from hospital following my minor stroke. I was trying to reassure myself I could still Think.

FLAWEDTHINKING 2Download

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PARTICLE THEORISTS POISON COSMOLOGY

October 16, 2023

Despite three decades of effort and tens of millions of dollars spent on accelerators and their like, it looks as if Particle Physics is coming to a sad end. No new particles beyond those such as the Higgs Boson proposed 50 years ago, and in particular none of those Supersymmetric particles which theorists had hoped would explain that greatest of all scientific mysteries — Dark Matter. Of course there will now be cries for more money and even larger machines, after all the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva is a mere 27 kilometres in circumference. But wait! Perhaps there is something far more interesting and fundamental at work: Perhaps Particle theorists have misled themselves, and everybody else , through neglecting a philosophical principle at least a thousand years old called ‘Ockham’s Razor’ (OR), named after a mediaeval monk called Friar Ockham.

At the heart of the Scientific Method is the business of Hypothesis Testing, which is where OR comes in. It states “Always prefer the simplest hypothesis first” and that, I suggest, is where Particle Theorists went so horribly wrong. Their “Standard Model” — as they call it, is fiendishly complex — what with its Quarks, Gluons, ‘Asymptotic Freedom’ and so on and so on. How do we measure complexity in Science? By the number of ‘Free Parameters’ (FPs) needed to describe a theory. One way you can think of them is to say they are arbitrary numbers brought into a theory to force it to fit the experimental data. A ‘good theory’ doesn’t need many FPs because it fits the experimental world naturally(for instance Newton’s very successful Theory of Gravitation has only 2 FP s) The so called Standard Model of Particle Physics needs no less than 18 FP s which has always suggested that it is an ugly and unnatural construct. It should be no surprise then to find now that it actually looks to be wrong.

So why did theorists construct such an ugly model in the first place, mostly back in the 1960’s and 70’s? Probably because they didn’t understand just how fundamental OR is. And there’s some excuse for them — because the Philosophers of Science, the self-appointed arbiters of the Scientific Method, didn’t understand OR themselves. Even Einstein, who relied on it extensively, waffled about some plastic ‘God’.

As I see it Hypothesis Testing works like this. You have some data-points, with error bars of course, and you have your hypothesis which generates a smooth curve which you must try to fit through those points. If there are lot of points the Odds on your hypothetical curve fitting them all by chance must be small. So if it does so fit then the Odds are that the hypothesis is probably right. If it doesn’t fit then you can always complexify your hypothesis ,so twisting your hypothetical curve until it does fit. But you can see that’s not a very convincing way to proceed, because eventually you are always going to force a fit. In that case the Odds in favour of it being actually right vanish. And that, I would suggest is what happened to Particle Theory, starting half a century a century ago.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with modifying a theory to fit the facts, after all that’s how science progresses. But you have to be very frugal in doing so. Only introduce a new concept (FP) into your theory if it fits at the very least two more data points than its simpler predecessor. And that’s hard to do, but it won’t degrade the Odds on it being right. But if it only fits one more data point the Odds will generally degrade dramatically. And that’s what Particle Physicists were tempted to do; making names for themselves at the expense of undermining the Odds on their so called ‘Standard Model’ theory. And that’s why almost nobody believes in their theory anymore. It’s as if they’d undermined their currency by printing too many notes. It works for a while — then collapses!

I am not a Particle Physicist, thank God, I am an Astrophysicist. And what worries me is that those same Particle theorists have dragged their own dodgy practices into our subject, with predictably unhealthy consequences. Take “Dark Energy”, an entirely artificial concept dragged into Cosmology by a particle theorist called Ed Turner from the Fermi Lab (and the University of Chicago). Now astronomers are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to chase this fantasy around the cosmos when there’s no justification for doing so, none at all. It was a thoughtless quick-fix extra Free Parameter to fit the apparent acceleration of Cosmic Expansion inferred from Supernova measurements in 1998. Had its introduction explained TWO or more discrepancies between theory and observation we might have welcomed it in. But it didn’t. So it should never have been introduced in the first place. Never!

PS Actually the situation is far worse than I am implying because the bloody particle theorists who have undermined their own subject actually introduced two more unnecessary FPs into Cosmology before Dark Energy: ‘Inflation’ to cure Isotropy and nothing else, and ‘Dark Matter’ to fix the Cosmic chemical abundances. We need to throw them out too.

So where do we go from here? Cosmology should chuck out Dark Energy, Inflation and Dark Matter and start again without them. As for Particle Physics I suspect that they may have to go back 50 years and try to reconstruct a more parsimonious theory of particle interactions than the ‘Standard Model based on quarks and gluons. In his wonderful book ‘Constructing Quarks’ Andrew Pickering (Univ. Chicago Press 1981) suggested that that theory was a social construct anyway, the product of trendy acclamation, rather than sober assessment.

More generally all of us need to understand the process of Hypothesis Testing on which the modern world of ideas is entirely built. Because if that isn’t sound ,God help us all.

For much more on Ockham’s Razor see our post “Fuzzy Thinking and Ockham’s Razor’ under the ‘Thinking’ category here on our blog. For a detailed explanation of Ockham’s Razor and why it works go to the url:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/AMSCI4-copy-1.pdf

But if you want to go into the whole business of Common Sense Thinking (CST) , of which Hypothesis Testing is only a part, try my book “Thinking for Ourselves” publ Amazon (2020) which is described in the ‘My Books ‘ Category on this site.

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ADVENTURING WITH A PEN

April 27, 2022

I love writing — spending several hours a day in solitude with pen and paper because it can be the most enchanting activity imaginable. But why is it so? Daniel Boorstin the historian admitted “I write in order to find out what I think.” Writing is a form of exploration which can take one on the most exciting journeys to meet unforgettable characters you never knew existed, until you encounter them emerging, like ink, from your pen. In some magic sense they must have been inside you all along, hiding just out of sight, waiting their chance to have their say and become part of your family. Many storytellers will attest to that. I will never forget finishing my first novel in rather dramatic circumstances. I was camping utterly alone on The Bay of Fires in remote Tasmania. I had taken my stool and writing table to the edge of the surf to commune with Griff, with Salome, with Elephant and Naomi — my main characters, and my only companions at the time, seeing that my flesh and blood family were still busy back in Britain. I uncapped my pen, looked out across the turquoise sea towards the rising sun and let my characters write the end of their story — which had very little to do with me. Three hours later they were done. They had finished with me, rising up into the sky and vanishing back from wherever they had come. I burst into tears, abandoned, desolate, like a tiny child dumped without warning at boarding school.

That was 20 years ago but I have been writing novels ever since as more and more characters come down to join me and my pen on any number of vivid adventures. To my regret I have never had a flesh and blood daughter : no problem; Petrel came down in “Crouching Giant” and she’s been with me ever since, while my fictional step-father Bob Salt badgered, inspired and entertained me every day throughout the 4-volume saga “Written in the Stars”, claiming to have written much of it himself.

But explorers, as I claim to be, ought to make discoveries. But how could one possibly make discoveries with just a pen? That turns out to be a very profound question linked to an even greater mystery — why can we humans think so much more successfully than our primate cousins in the wild who share 98 % of our genes? Natural Evolution is a painfully slow process whereas we have transformed from Cave Man to Space Man in a mere few thousand years. It cannot be biology — it has to be technology — which kicked in not much more than 3000 years ago. And I’m pretty sure of the answer now.

3800 years ago in the Sinai desert not far from Phoenicia , some turquoise -miners invented the ‘phonetic-alphabet’ which could translate language, any language, into written words. It was such a valuable trick that it spread from Asia Minor across the Mediterranean to Greece, Rome and far beyond, literally transforming everything — but why and how? Here comes another private adventure — even further afield than the Bay of Fires. For my living I was an astronomer obsessed with ‘Hidden Galaxies’. The figure below shows a montage of galaxies — colossal islands of stars in Space. They are the basic units of the Cosmos — and we live in in one such spinning island ourselves — The Milky way.

A gallery of galaxies first found with a radio telescope and then followed up with a big optical telescope to see what they looked like. As you will notice they are a very mixed bunch. Some are giant Spirals like our Milky Way 100,000 light across and containing 100 billion stars whilst others are so dim one can barely see them. But there’s not much connection between their true nature and their appearance. For instance the most luminous and massive galaxy is the dim ghost middle of the second row up. It’s not hard to imagine therefore that the eye and the optical telescope could miss most of the galaxies in the sky altogether.

As you can see some are bright whilst others are so dim as to be virtually invisible. Back in 1975 I collected some pretty convincing evidence suggesting that the Cosmos was probably packed with with completely invisible, that is to say ‘Hidden Galaxies’ (‘HG’s). If that sounds implausible you must remember that, because we live right next to a bright star called the Sun, even the darkest sites on Earth are still 5,000 times brighter than they would be from a typical point of cosmic Space. My suggestion sparked off several large-scale campaigns to either find, or rule out this hypothetical “Hidden Universe”. Strong pieces of evidence both for and against the proposition turned up — but conflicted. That led to furious debates within the profession. To reconcile the two sides I decided to consult “The Scientific Method”, the underlying philosophy to which all of us scientists subscribe. Easier said than done. The harder I looked for the Scientific Method the faster it danced away. Almost none of the people who wrote about it endlessly were scientists themselves, but philosophers or statisticians, while we scientists were suspiciously mum about the whole topic. Einstein had said that: “Science is no more than a refinement of everyday thinking.” but admitted: “The physicist cannot proceed without considering critically a much more difficult problem (than physics), the problem of analysing the nature of everyday thinking.”

It eventually dawned on me that no one on Earth qualified to know had any idea what the Scientific Method was or is, or whether it existed at all. So, when I retired I decided to track down dozens of historical scientific discoveries to find out how exactly they had been made. They clearly revealed that Common Sense Thinking (CST) was at its core, and that implied weighing different clues against one another and against the hypothesis under debate. Now here comes the point: to do that effectively and reliably ONE MUST BE ABLE TO WRITE. Neither animal nor human memory is large enough or reliable enough to do that job. So now we recognise the source of our sudden and spectacular ascendancy above our fellow creatures. Because we can write we can think millions of times more effectively than they can. And when I say ‘millions’ I am not exaggerating . You can actually calculate the height of our leap — far above the clouds — out among the tumbling stars. My favourite fairy story as a child was Jack and the Beanstalk. Now we don’t need his magic beans. We can vault far above the clouds with pen alone. At first I couldn’t believe these new found powers to explore and to think. It felt more like a fantasy dream than sober reality. I never expected it, but when you think of human-kind’s miraculous ascendancy there has to be a rational explanation. On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo painted God reaching out to inspire Man with celestial fire. But notice , their fingers don’t quite touch — as if the artist wasn’t quite sure.

God, off screen right, is seen here powering up Adam in Michelangelo’s famous fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But as you can see their fingers didn’t quite touch, as if Michelangelo wasn’t quite convinced. I don’t blame him. Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Now we know it wasn’t God but some ingenious turquoise miners in the Sinai desert trying to leave decipherable messages for their successors scratched on rock walls, 3,800 years ago. The history of Science turns up other stories of momentous but unintended developments like that — though none quite so dramatic: Johannes Kepler understanding that the darkness of the night sky implied the finiteness of the Universe; Darwin in the Galapagos Islands realising that the diversity of finches beaks from island to island implied the Evolution of species; Alfred Wegener recognising that identical fossil-beds on opposite sides of the Atlantic meant that continents must drift. The problem though with such serendipitous discoveries is that they are so improbable and therefore so hard to believe. .Who is going to believe that Common Sense Thinking (CST) is millions of times more effective than any other scheme simply because of writing — though Einstein did remark “My pencil and I are are smarter than I am”. But think of puzzles like crosswords and Sudoku — they would be impossible without writing. So it is with CST and the Scientific Method. Which brings me full circle to Hidden Galaxies. It took over 20 conflicting clues, 40 years and a great deal of writing to settle that issue. Hidden Galaxies certainly do exist and Fig 3 shows one of the first — pinned down using the Westerbork Radio telescope in Holland.

Fig 3.The first convincing Hidden Galaxy, Virgo HI21 . It was found by Dr. Jon Davies and his team from Cardiff University back in 2007. The banana shaped radio source in the Left hand image is a massive edge-on spinning disc of Hydrogen first found with the Jodrell Bank radio dish in Cheshire, and here seen projected upon a negative optical image of the famous Virgo Cluster of galaxies of which NGC 4254 is the brightest, most massive spiral. As you you can see, something has dragged out a bridge of Hydrogen gas from it towards the banana. To have done so VirgoHi21 must be very massive itself although it appears to be totally dark. The right hand image is a velocity-map of the Hydrogen observed with the Westerbork radio telescope in Holland. The twitch in the banana signifies that it is spinning rapidly like a plate seen edge on, and indeed must be very massive to prevent itself spinning to bits. All the evidence was published in the prestigious Astrophysical Journal in 2007, and although several sceptics have tried to undermine the arguments none has remotely succeeded. Hidden, even totally dark galaxies exist. And , thanks to writing, we know they do.

The more one thinks about Thinking the more fascinating puzzles the subject raises. If, as I am suggesting, Common Sense is the way even scientists like Einstein use, then why didn’t they teach us about the subject at school? I believe I know the answer — but I leave it as a fascinating puzzle for you. IF either of us can solve it we might, like those turquoise miners 3,800 years ago, take humankind on another journey far beyond the visible stars.

NOTES: 1 The Tasmanian novel is ‘Pterodactyl’s Blood‘ ,see ‘My Books’ Category. 2 For Hidden Galaxies see several Posts this Blog in ‘Astronomy ‘Category . 3 For Virgo HI21 see Minchin et al,2007, The Astrophysical Journal, 670, pp 1056-1064. 4 For CST see many Posts this blog under ‘Thinking’ Category. 5 For history of writing see “The Secret History of Writing‘ a series of 3 wonderful films made by Hugh Sington and shown on BBC ch. 4 in 2021.

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WHAT IS TIME?

August 23, 2021

Human Time and Clock Time are far from the same.

CLOCK TIME AND HUMAN TIME Mike Disney (originally 2001)

Old people know that each year slips by faster than the last. What may seem an age to a young boy, to his grandfather may feel no more than a month. Human time and Calendrical time not only seem different, they are different. Only an accident of history has given them both the same label, the same name. An extra year of life at age 80 is by no means as precious as a year lost when you are 20. Old age prolonged by medical science is no great gift; young life cut off in its prime is a tragedy. Why then do we count time only by the ticks of a mechanical clock, or the artificial marks on a calendar? Let us compute time as it really seems to be to us as sentient beings, not as it is to some blind watch that will go on ticking on our wrist even after we are dead.

Human time is surely logarithmic, that is to say that a year when you are twenty seems like a twentieth of a lifetime but only a sixtieth when you are sixty. That being so it is possible to compute one’s human age, as it feels, as against Calendrical or Clock time as follows:

Clock4510152030405060708090
[Human}[4][9][25][37][43][52][58][63][67][70][73][76]
Clock age above in years versus [Human age ] in years below.

Table A

On the upper row is somebody’s age in Calendrical, i.e. Clock Time, on the bottom, in square brackets, their Human Age as they really feel it. Look at the dramatic differences, particularly in childhood and old age. A boy who really feels like a young adult [25] is still a young child of only 10 by the Clock. A maturing woman of [37] is still counted by the clock as an immature teenager of only 15, although by then in the natural age before ‘civilization’ she would have been rearing children of her own. Then look at old age. In living Calendrically from 70 to 90 the old person has gained only [6] years of real life. It can be very comforting to a family who have just lost a beloved member at the all too young age of calendrical 40 say to realise that in human terms they were [58] years old and thus had enjoyed most of their real life.

And we can invert the Table:

Table B

Human[4][5][10][15][20][30][40][50][60][70][80][90]
Clock44.25681219294570107166
Human Age (above) versus Clock age below

which shows only too vividly how childhood crawls in Calendrical Time but accelerates out of control in Human Old age.

The use of the word “Time” to describe two entirely different concepts is purely a convention with all sorts of unintended consequences, many of them very unfortunate in my opinion. In the modern world childhood is grossly undervalued; children are rushed off into care so that their parents can go out to work all hours to earn pensions for their comparatively worthless old age. That’s pretty obvious when you think about it. Our whole values system is being twisted. Likewise humans are nowadays expected to spend their first 24 years or so at ‘schools’ of various kinds which means that by the time they get out into the real world they are almost [50] years of age. What a waste, what a tragedy!

The invention of tic-toc time was a very useful modern development [largely driven by the railway system in the Victorian age] which enabled us to organize all manner of great things from assignations to concerts to airline tables. What would we do without it? But who said it ever should have had anything to do with Human Time? That simply happened by accident. I believe we should all ponder very deeply about this. Very deeply indeed. A new word to describe tic-toc time is needed to distinguish it from the real thing. Time is a profoundly mysterious concept, as scientists recognize. Assumed to be Absolute in Newton’s physics, we now know it is nothing of the kind.

If you want to follow the simple calculation which enables one to convert between the two types of age and time go to the url:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/TIMEmaths.pdf

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COMMON SENSE & GOD

June 25, 2021

Common Sense Thinking needs some tool to discriminate between Truth and Falsehood, or more generally between sound hypotheses and unsound ones. ‘Hypothesis Testing’ ,as it is called, lives at the very heart of Science, Philosophy and Common Sense. As we now know it works by examining the various consequences C1 ,C2, …generated by that hypothesis to see whether they can be observed in practice. If they can be observed that improves our Odds O(H) on the hypothesis being true, if they cannot that reduces our Odds on it. But if the hypothesis generates no consequences we cannot test it , and so can say nothing about it one way or the other. That’s “Bayes’ Rule” which goes back at least as far as 1763 and probably much much further.

Take the hypothesis “God exists”. What consequences does it have? Once upon a time it was argued that the design of the natural world was so miraculous, perfect and improbable that it could only have been conceived by an Intelligent Creator. For instance how else to explain the spectacular plumage of the Rainbow Lorikeet ? [Click on the urls below to see their magnificence]

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/349487411/embed/800

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/199098091/embed/640

This was the very convincing “Argument by Design”, almost impossible to counter at the time. But in 1858 along came Darwin and Wallace who independently came up with the alternative hypothesis of “Evolution by Natural Selection”. As the Bishop of Worcester’s wife said of it: ” Dear me; let us hope it is not true. But if it is true , we must hope it doesn’t become widely known.”

The general point is that Inconsequential Hypotheses are hardly worth considering because there is no way of assessing their veracity, whereas Consequential Hypotheses are open to verification, at least in terms of their probability(Odds). Thus Evolution has subsequently been detected in, for instance, bacteria under stress , while I am not aware of any consequence for the existence of God which could be tested .

That’s not to say one can’t go on believing in a god — it’s just that the most consequential evidence on his/her hypothetical existence has an alternative, and partially verified explanation, even if it cannot be absolutely categorical.

Then there’s another important philosophical principle that can be brought to bear:Ockham’s Razor — “Always prefer the simpler hypothesis, because its more likely to be right’ [see my Post ‘Fuzzy Thinking & Common Sense’] .The problem with the God hypothesis is that there are so many inconsistent versions of it (4,000 known religions including 20 with a world-wide spread, according to Wikipedia).

Clever people have wasted a lot of their lives worrying about Inconsequential hypotheses — for instance the existence of Free Will [see Post. ‘Free Will and Common Sense] , or in the case of Mathematicians whether their subject was invented of discovered. It doesn’t matter. It’s Inconsequential.

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FREE WILL & COMMON SENSE

May 21, 2021

The hoary old hypothesis that ‘There is no such thing as Free Will’ has fired up public debate yet again thanks to a recent article by Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian. And once again, to judge from the many letters and comments it has aroused, the result is inconclusion, if not total confusion.

But there’s no necessity for that if you appeal to The Scientific Method. At its very heart lies a technique for Hypothesis Testing called ‘Bayes’ Rule’. What it offers to do is alter one’s Odds on any hypothesis H by appealing to any evidence E consequent on that hypothesis. But if there is no such consequent evidence, as there appears not to be in the Free Will case, Bayes’ Rule is helpless, and any debate about the matter is therefore fruitless. The mediaeval scholars who didn’t understand that wasted their lives discussing such arcane matters as ‘How many angels could dance on a pinhead.’ Why don’t so many modern scholars realise that Inconsequential Hypotheses are undecidable and so a waste of their time, and everybody else’s?

I would suggest it is because Western Philosophy is rooted in a quest for Certainty. On the one hand the Ancient Greeks thought that Certain truths could be arrived at solely by Deductive, even mathematical, Logic. On the other hand, Abrahamic religions held that Man, who sat on the right hand of the only true God, could find Certainty in Holy Scripture. The idea that Certainty was unavailable, except in trivial circumstances, as we recognise now, and that gambling Odds would have to do instead, was anathema to both schools.

The sad result is that the Education Establishment, even today, largely ignores Bayes’ Rule, and thus Common Sense Thinking in general, because of its abhorrent roots in gambling. It’s not so surprising though when you recall that Oxford and Cambridge for instance were set up by papal bulls in the thirteenth century to train priests. Gambling was certainly not on their curricula. Nor did they even teach Science until forced to do so by the Government late in the 19th century.

Thus the Free Will debate brings to light an extraordinary situation. The academic world largely ignores Common Sense Thinking because it lies outside a 2,500 year old tradition rooted in unsound philosophy and Abrahamic theology. Science has only progressed by ignoring both.

Equally though it highlights a quite extraordinary opportunity. We could now teach Common Sense Thinking , with its key principles: Bayes’ Rule, The Detective’s Equation, Ockham’s Razor, the Principle of Animal Wisdom and Provisionality to everyone over the age of 13. It will probably lead to advances far greater than did either Industrialisation or Electricity. And importantly, it would teach us Tolerance, because provisional (i.e measured) thinking and Tolerance for alternative ideas, are opposite sides of the very same coin.

Anyone interested in these matters might like to read Thinking For Ourselves, a 20 year study of The Scientific Method and Common Sense Thinking, discussed here under the My Books Category. And look under the Thinking Category for many other allied Posts.

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HOW THE MODERN WORLD WORKS:NUMERACY

April 29, 2021

AN EXAMPLE: MAXWELL’S EQUATIONS

The invention of the phonetic script about three and a half thousand years ago enabled humans to suddenly think about a million times better, and they took off. Likewise the invention of a script for thinking quantitatively, that is to say Mathematics , could lead to thinking of a different kind that is just as powerful. In fact it has already: Maxwell’s Equations (ME).

Some arguments are of a purely quantitative nature. For instance in our post “Civilization and Moonpower” we demonstrated that large cities not dependent on slavery only became feasible once tidal energy was harnessed, as was possible in North Western Europe, where it is far more abundant than elsewhere. Here I talk about the most momentous piece of Mathematics ever done, Maxwell’s Equations.

Maxwell’s Equations describe the interaction between Electricity, Magnetism, Space and Time. They were an attempt to write down the experimental findings of the ‘electricians’ Hans-Christian Oersted (1820) and Michael Faraday (1831) but they led to a totally unexpected insight, and thus to the modern world: “Electromagnetic waves can propagate across empty space at the speed of light”.

Out of that insight (1864) there was to come Radio (1887), Transatlantic wireless (1901), Relativity (1904), Electronics (1912), Broadcasting (1920), Television (1930), Code-breaking (1930’s onward), Radar (1935), Microwaves (1940), The Electronic Computer (1943), Communication Satellites (1960), Space Travel (1969), The Internet (1980), Mobile Phones (2000). … while the Second World War could as aptly be called ‘The Radio War’ because it was started by Radio ( broadcast hate propaganda), controlled by radio (e.g. Churchill and Roosevelt talking to their peoples), won by radar in its many guises both in defence and attack, and lost by code-breaking ( e.g. : the battles of Midway and Kursk). A huge operation like the D-Day landing would have been unthinkable without the command and control made possible by radio.

Einstein is rightly famous for his E=mc2 equation (1905) but in a sense he and others (for he was only one of several) were only adding footnotes to Maxwel’s Equations which in themselves prove that Space and TIme cannot be at all as we had thought them to be.

So what are Maxwell’s Equations? There are 4 of them actually and you can write them out in different ways using rather different vocabularies. Textbooks on Electromagnetism can make them look both galumphing and arbitrary, when, as I believe, they are inevitable; the world couldn’t have been constructed in any other way. I find that both beautiful and totally unexpected. They, and the many stories behind them, are certainly worth having a look at even if you have no ambitions to use them yourself. You can regard them like The Rosetta Stone, as a wonder to behold, though they are far far more remarkable and momentous than that iconic stone. If you don’t believe me look at:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MAXWELLSEQUATIONS.pdf

Yes they do look unfamiliar, even frightening, but that’s probably because you’ve been put off Mathematics by bad teaching.The world is full of Baducation and bad ideas . And one of the most debilitating , which goes back to the Ancient Greeks, is the notion that “Mathematics is Deductive in Nature”, and therefore quite different from our normal everyday Common Sense Thinking , which is Inductive. But that is a complete misconception. It’s as if the Maths teaching profession have mistaken the grocery- bill for the groceries. Don’t take my word for it: Morris Kline, that most eminent Historian of Mathematics wrote: ” “Mathematics is a human activity and is subject to all the foibles and frailties of humans. Any formal, logical account is pseudo-mathematics, a fiction, even a legend, despite the element of reason.” [‘Mathematics, The Loss of Certainty, ‘ OUP, 1986]

So many of us have been put off maths because we’ve been taught it back to front by the maths- teaching profession: deduction first, intuition afterwards. No wonder so many of us rebel. If you look at the following url you can see the Theorem that “The angles in any triangle add up to two right angles‘ being taught in the two alternative ways so that you can judge which is best for yourself:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/dedvindmaths.docx

The consequence of all this innumeracy are fairly tragic. Most of us are innumerate and, in my opinion, innumerate people can never become wise, not any more, not in the modern world( see all the current confusion over Covid vaccination statistics). The great news is that innumeracy is by no means irreversible. Maths is a subject peculiarly suited to self-instruction over the Internet. I suggest that everyone who earns a certificate of numeracy receives an immediate grant of £15,000 while many prestige professions and jobs be reserved entirely for the numerate. Thus a large fraction of a population could become numerate at a trivial cost by comparison with many infrastructure projects. And surely widespread wisdom is more desirable than say more runways. It’s probably no accident that the most numerate people on Earth (the Japanese) are also the wealthiest (UN figures).

The consequences of all this innumeracy are fairly tragic. Most of us are innumerate, and in my opinion innumerate people can never become wise, not any more, not in the modern world ( see all the current confusion over Covid. vaccination Statistics). The good news is that innumeracy is by no means irreversible. Maths is a subject especially suited to self instruction over the internet. I suggest that everyone who can earn a certificate of numeracy receive an immediate cash award of £15,000, while many prestige jobs and professions should be reserved for the numerate. Thus much of a population could become numerate at a trivial cost: Widespread wisdom is surely more desirable than say more runways. It is probably no accident that the most numerate people on Earth (the Japanese) are also the wealthiest (UN figures).http://Baducation

If you would like to see a wide-ranging discussion of numeracy and innumeracy in the British context, taken from my book ‘History of the Brits’ (Amazon 2020) you might like to click on:

If you want to see a wide-ranging discussion of Numeracy in the British context you might like to click on:

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/HISTORY15numeracy.pdf

Anyway , for those who can appreciate them, Maxwell’s Equations are every bit as beautiful as great music, prose or poetry . They enable us to hear , in Tennyson’s words “…the horns of elfland faintly blowing….” On the other hand the consequences of innumeracy can. be tragic. The Sea Empress disaster which drowned Pembrokeshire in oil back in 1996 was the outcome of innumeracy pure and simple, It’s. in the above url too.

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ANIMAL WISDOM & US

February 20, 2021

Every organism evolves to survive, but Evolution is an extremely slow process. That means that if we can think before we act (a distinct survival advantage) then so could our animal forbears. And modern studies of animal behaviour confirm that their mental sophistication is far higher than zoologists of any earlier generation could suppose1.

Life out in the wild can be extremely dangerous, so survivors (especially if they come from a potentially long-lived species, as we do) cannot afford to make unwise decisions. Caution must be their watchword.

We have elsewhere argued2 that decisions are reached using the Detective’s Equation (DE):

Revised Odds on H = Old Odds on H × (Weight of Clue 1)

× (Weight of Clue 2) ×………… and so on, for as many clues as you have.

in which the Weights are just numbers we attach to each clue as it bears on the particular Hypothesis H (e.g. ‘It is safe to try and catch that snake’) that we are trying to evaluate.

The great value of the DE is that it is multiplicative, so high Odds can be reached from only a few clues. But what if one of those clues, or our evaluation of it, is wrong? For instance that the tasty looking snake is not harmless but venomous. Such misapprehensions occur all the time, so we must have some mechanism for discounting them. An obvious possibility is insisting on the equivalent of at least three heavily weighted clues in favour before deciding. Why 3? Because one rotten plus one good could lead to fatal consequences, whereas with 3 strong clues one could hope that at least two would generally be sound.

But at what Odds would one feel it safe to decide? I would suggest at combined Odds of something better than 50 to 1 (for or against). Now the smallest whole number, which multiplied together 3 times, comes to more than 50 is 4 because 4 × 4 × 4 = 64 . That suggests (no more) that the highest Weight we should put upon any single clue is 4. And if two weak clues are equivalent to one strong that suggests weak clues should be given a Weight of 2 because 2 × 2 =4.

To the sophisticated statistician all this may seem very crude, but the truth is, in the real world we cannot put precise Weights on many vital clues, for instance on our assessments of say honesty or guilt or venomousness.

So we have a very crude suggestive scheme for making judgements using the DE, in which the ONLY permitted Weights are:

Weight

‘Strongly in favour’ = 4

‘Weakly in favour’ = 2

‘Neutral’ = 1

‘Weakly Against’ = ½

‘Strongly Against’ = ¼

which is, so far, only suggestive. The only real justification for this scheme , (which I call the ‘Principle of Animal Wisdom’ or PAW) will be its performance in practice.

At this point we need to step back and recall that, so far as we know, animals don’t count. So isn’t all this numerising pointless when we are looking back to animal decision-making as our exemplar? Not really, because 4’s and 2’s only stand in for Categories of Clue, “Strongly for”, “Weakly For”, “Weakly against”(1/2) and so on. Nor do we need that ‘50- to-1’, because all we were demanding was ‘At least the equivalent of 3 strong clues (net) before deciding, one way or the other. In other words, to reach wise decisions, we don’t need , nor do animals, to use any numbers at all, we can simply use CATEGORICAL INFERENCE instead (which is described in another Post3). But as we humans are familiar with simple numbers and simple Odds we might as well stick to 4’s, 2’s, ½’ s and so on.

It’s very difficult (as it was originally for me) for modern Scientists and Statisticians to imagine that anything as crude as PAW could play any useful role in modern thinking. However the more one uses it in practice, and thinks about its implications, the more convincing, and indeed profound, the PAW comes to seem.

History shows that progress in Science has often been completely halted by unsound conceptions, or ‘Systematic Errors’ as we label them. For instance:

The Earth is Flat

The heavens revolve around the Earth

The body is controlled by 4 Humours

The world is far too young for Evolution

Continents can’t move.

Child-bed fever is a natural part of birth.

Radio waves cannot possible girdle the globe.

Nothing can live in the Deep

Atoms are immutable

…..and so on.

Had we, instead of ceding them prime authority, given them low (i.e. PAW) Weights we might have progressed much faster.

Then again, carefully consider the definition of a Weight in Probability terms, which we have elsewhere4:

Weight of Clue = (Probability of Clue IF H is true) divided by ( Probability of Clue if some hypothesis other than H is responsible for it).

In an OPEN world, as opposed to a card game [CLOSED], this last Probability can never be zero because there are so many ‘other thans‘, indeed an infinite number. It follows that no Weight should ever be set very high; i.e. the PAW

We can see that very high, or very low Weights can almost never be justified because they require an assumption about “ all those hypotheses, apart from H, which could give rise to E”. But in an OPEN world, as opposed to a card game, those other hypotheses could be virtually infinite in number. Thus the profession of Statistics , with its 4-figure precise tables, has fooled itself into the belief that it is dealing with a real open world, when all it is doing is playing card-games (which are CLOSED).

But it’s only when one employs the PAW to deal with complex issues like Big Bang Cosmology that its true value shines out. Some of our conceptions about the Universe are probably wrong – but we don’t know which ones (Expansion?). But if we combine enough clues together, the unsound ones, because of PAW, won’t be able to twist the whole picture and obscure the truth. For instance I used to believe that the Big Bang picture, although it looked implausible, couldn’t be ruled out. But after I stumbled upon the PAW (2015) and applied it to the Big Bang, the Odds came out very firmly (128 to 1 ) against. That illustrates, somewhat surprisingly, that the PAW, even with its weak Weights, can actually be more decisive than the alternatives.(See our Post ‘BIG BANG COSMOLOGY IS WRONG’ under the ‘Astronomy’ Category, or click on the url below)

Science is of course only one application of a survival mechanism which is tens, probably hundreds of millions of years old. But humans, who are so easily persuaded by Culture, that is to say by ideas planted in their heads by others, need to understand and employ PAW even more assiduously today to preserve themselves from monsters employing modern media. Here is a short list of such CULTURAL MYTHS:

  1. God is naturally on our side.
  2. You shouldn’t mind sacrificing your life because you will be rewarded in paradise.
  3. There is a Hell awaiting, but if you pay us we will see you are spared the tortures of…..
  4. We ………s have a Divine Right to rule.
  5. The (other side) are evil and must be crushed.
  6. They’re savages; they don’t feel pain like we do.
  7. Education is good for you and for everyone.
  8. Our little father the Czar/ Stalin/ Mao….. will look after us.
  9. Newspaper proprietors have the best interests of their readers at heart.
  10. If you work hard you’ll get more stuff and that will make you happier.
  11. Our religion is the right one. Those others are blasphemers and heretics.
  12. All things bright and beautiful,….the Good God made them all.
  13. They’re only aborigines /gypsies ….If you gave them land they wouldn’t know what to do with it.
  14. Doctors/Lawyers/Professors/Managers …. can’t do their jobs properly unless they have much bigger houses and cars than you and I.
  15. Women are too emotional to drive vehicles.
  16. You can rely on the Government news channels.
  17. Anyone who criticises our Great Leader is a traitor.
  18. It’s our land; God gave it to us.
  19. Education is good for you.
  20. They’ve got Weapons of Mass Destruction.
  21. Education is good for you.

Oppressive regimes, knowing our susceptibility to propaganda, employ myth-makers to exploit us, impoverish us, and even kill us fighting their wars. That’s what priests, newspapers, propaganda ministries and PR firms are for. Thus the Pharaohs had priests who spread the lie that they were Gods who controlled the Sun and The Moon. Thus the Romans authorised the Christian Church to control Europe for over a thousand years. Thus Hitler whipped up the Germans into a thirst for revenge. Thus Big Business funds Think-tanks, News channels, and lobbying groups. And so on.

There is another way of looking at the matter. If one can set an arbitrarily high Weight on some particular Clue you can use it to ‘Win’ any argument. Thus it is ideal for Priests and Tyrants. But the PAW democratises Thinking. It makes all the different Clues and arguments which go towards reaching a Conclusion, almost, but not quite equal.

There is no such thing as Certainty in the real (OPEN) world. We all of us, whether we are seagulls or Professors of Computer Science, must navigate our way through life as best we can using the Balance of Probabilities. And to do so successfully the PAW is absolutely fundamental. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a Priest. And I cannot think of a worse charge.

If you really want to see how all this Animal Wisdom works out in practice click on;

https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/scamsmv5.pdf

References.

1“Are we smart enough to realise how smart animals are”? Frans de Waal, 2016; Granta Books.

2 See Post here ‘HOW COMMON SENSE WORKS’ under ‘Thinking’ category or ref. 4 below, Chapter 5.

3 See my post ‘CATEGORICAL INFERENCE’ under Thinking Category

4 See Chapter 4 in my book Thinking for Ourselves (Amazon 2020) .It’s described elsewhere on this site under the My books Category

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CATEGORICAL INFERENCE

November 26, 2020

OTHERWISE KNOWN AS “COMMON SENSE THINKING”

THE VERY VERY SIMPLE VERSION

As far as I can see Common Sense Thinking (CST henceforth) works like this: we all get ideas, they constantly bubble unasked to the surface of the mind; the real challenge is to decide which ones are sound [‘Hypothesis Testing’ it is called]. To determine that we look for evidence (clues) bearing on our idea or hypothesis H and place each clue in one of only 5 categories (This is the ‘Principle of Animal Wisdom’, or PAW for short):

TABLE (5:1) The Weights of Clues bearing on Idea H

Clue

Weight

Symbol

 

Strongly in favour of H

s

 

Weakly in favour of H

w

 

Neutral towards H

n

 

Weakly against H (underlined)

w 

 

Strongly against H (underlined)

s

 

We then combine (symbol ★ ) the Weights in obvious ways thus:

w★w = s

w★w = n

s★s = ss

s★w = w and so on.

And we finally decide to act on H only when the combined evidence reaches either sss [decide for H] or sss [decide against H]. This is a precautionary measure which saves us from making premature, possibly fatal decisions based on only two strong clues, one of which might be unsound.

SIMPLE EXAMPLE

A detective is having to decide whether to charge X with a crime [her hypothesis is ‘X is guilty’. Her thinking, based on the available evidence, might look like this:

TABLE (5:2) DETECTIVE’S THINKING

Clue

Her Weight

Accumulated Weight

Outcome

Motive

s

s

 

Opportunity

w

ws

 

Alibi

 w

s

 

Witness A

w

ws

 

Witness B

 s

w

 

Witness C

w

s

 

Witness D

s

ss

 

Forensics

s

sss

Charges X

    

My scheme is nothing more than the systematic Association of an Idea H with different clues, combined with a simple precautionary mechanism for avoiding overhasty decisions. I suspect such CATEGORICAL INFERENCE (CI for short) is our main survival mechanism with roots that go back a billion years. You won’t find it in text-books on Inference or Logic; they appeal instead to notions such as Probability Theory, Bayes’ Theorem and Parsimony. The problem is that their authors disagree violently among themselves – so something must be seriously wrong. That’s why scientists ignore them and go on using Common Sense CI to progress.

Notice three important features of this scheme:

1) The more evidence the better. With a sufficiently long string of clues, even when they conflict, we can eventually reach a decision [sss or sss ] about H, one way or the other, provided (a major proviso) a record has been kept of the incoming clues, together with their Weights. For instance I was eventually able to bring my own tangled research project to a triumphant conclusion but only after using writing to compound 25 separate clues, some in stark conflict with the rest. This means the scheme can be used, but only by the literate, to handle highly complex tasks such as voyaging to the Moon.

2) The process is open-ended; there is always room to add new evidence to the tally whenever it is found. Thus it is Provisional in nature, and even after a decision to act has been taken there must be room for a change of mind – in other words to Adapt.

3) Rather than remember these unfamiliar symbols it turns out to be much easier to use betting Odds and replace “combine” (★) by the multiplication sign ×, ‘n’ by the number 1, s by 4, w by 2, underlined-w by ½, and underlined-s by ¼ . Then a decision in favour takes place when the Odds are 64 to 1 on or better, and against at Odds of 64 to 1 against or worse. In future that is what we do. But remember it is still Categorical Inference, no more and no less, a process innumerate animals could have used to survive in the wild. We have just changed the symbols

NB. This extract was taken from Chapter 5 of my book “History of the Brits” where it is later used to tackle some very thorny issues such as ‘Is America Britain’s friend or enemy?’, or ‘Would the Scots have been better off Independent’ and ‘Is mass immigration good or bad for Britain?’.

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