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Ye Olde Natural Philosophy Discussion Group
== Reviews and comments on Judea Pearl: The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect [2018] ==
This is a book which argues against the dogma still widely prevalent in the field of statistics that “we should never talk about cause and effect, only about statistical correlation”. In reality what we are actually most concerned about is not mere correlation, but the genuine causes of things. Although our opinions of the book varied somewhat within our group, our average rating on a scale of 1 to 10 was a moderately low 4.38. Perhaps this is just because it is inherently difficult to make discussions of statistics and statistical procedures all that exciting!
Scott, however, gave the book a rating of 7, and actually found it to be of considerable interest. We often hear about things like Bayesian analysis and Bayesian networks, for example, and this book explains pretty well what those things are all about. It is true that the abstract presentations of material like this are rather difficult to follow throughout the book. But fortunately Pearl gives a number of specific concrete examples which are much easier to follow and which make things much clearer. Still, the book is hard going at times. Some chapters are pretty straightforward, while others are more obscure.
Scott felt that in general Pearl makes a convincing argument against the old anti-cause-and-effect biases within statistics, and really does show there is a better way to analyze complicated processes and situations which can bring out what the real causes are, which are most important, and so forth. In short, he makes his case about causal models. Still, actually practicing this new art of causal analysis is not exactly easy! None of the members of our group came up with a good example on our own of doing this sort of thing in our own areas of interest.
Scott also says that from political and philosophical perspectives the book is no good at all. For example, several of the references to real world problems are about how to expand capitalist markets and maximize profits. F*@k that! Human beings should have interests in promoting human welfare, not capitalist exploitation. And although Pearl does say that he is a compatibilist when it comes to the issue of free will, he then goes on to talk about “the illusion of free will”—which makes you wonder if he understands what compatibilism even means! Pearl is still too totally naïve to take seriously on such matters. Fortunately most of the political and philosophical aspects of the book can just be ignored.
Rich said that he “didn’t love the book”. He agreed with Pearl’s general thesis about cause and effect and the necessity of locating the real causes of things. But he (and the rest of us) were disappointed that the author did not get more into artificial intelligence (AI) as he seemed to promise early in the book that he would. Rich gave the book a 5.
Ron gave it a 6, and commented that “this book was almost worthwhile”! He commented that it was hard to understand what the book was talking about, and that it seemed to be written mostly for others in the field of statistics.
Vicki, alone in our group, has actually been to conferences in which causal models were presented and discussed. She felt that Pearl had not adequately provided a base line for readers to move forward from. She also commented that this is not at all a good book to try to listen to in audio format (which she did). Vicki did like Pearl’s real world examples. But she didn’t like the math. And she said that the author didn’t actually provide any steps forward toward AI in the book like he promised. She gave the book a 5.
Rosie gave it a rating of just 1. She read it on an I-pad, where the diagrams were unfortunately hard to see. “I was lost from the start. But the examples were great. If his causal method actually works, then people should read it.”
Kevin didn’t read much of the book, and had no interest in it. So no rating.
John also only read part of the book. He had difficulty with the E-book format, which somehow disappeared from his digital library. He noted that the causal models or diagrams reminded him of Feynman Diagrams. He gave it a tentative rating of 4.
Kirby also gave it a 4. He said he almost quit reading it after the introduction. But he also noted that in his study of psychology he had had lots of statistic courses and therefore had some basis for reading this book. He felt that Pearl does have a good idea in the book, and is moving in the right direction. But Kirby agreed that Pearl did a poor job with connecting this all up with AI. However, he thought Pearl’s discussion of “free will” was interesting.
But Kirby also felt that this was a muddled book, “one of the most muddled books we’ve ever read”.
Barbara said the book “is a book of riddles”. She didn’t like it and said she couldn’t make any sense out of it. She said she didn’t understand any of the author’s equations. She rated the book a 3.
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Ye Olde Natural Philosophy Discussion Group
== Reviews and comments on Richard Muller: Now: The Physics of Time [2016] ==
This book, though it has the overall theme of explaining what time is in light of the dominant current views of contemporary physicists, actually amounts to a fairly wide introduction to relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and other central components of modern physics. However, as is often the case with books on physics and cosmology, towards the end of the book it also goes pretty far afield and gets into the philosophy of science, philosophical speculation in general, and even promoting religion. Our group had quite diverse opinions of it, and our ratings—on a scale of 0 to 10—ranged from a couple of 1’s and a 2 at the low end all the way up to a 7, 8 and a 10 at the high end. Our group averate was in the middle: 5.44.
Vicki found the author’s frequent use of pop culture in his presentations useful, though too much of that can be annoying. She felt that some of the writing was off topic and unnecessary. When it comes to the main issue, “what time is”, it often seemed like we were getting somewhere but then there was a letdown, with no clear and solid answer. Vicki docks Muller one point in her rating because of his defense of the existence of the soul, but still rates the book a 6.
Rosie, though, gave the book just a 2. “Oy! What a slog to get through it!” She also commented that this is yet another of so many books our science book club has read where the author gets crazy at the end of the book. She felt the writing style was confusing. But she did slog all the way through it and did get a little more out of it than many other books on this general theme which we’ve read. Nevertheless, she really didn’t like it much.
Kevin read about half the book. He agreed with Rosie’s comments and said he didn’t get much out of the book. As far as the writing style goes, he felt that this was no way to communicate with people on this topic. Kevin rated it just a 1.
Kirby, however, felt bad about the reviews that preceded him. He thinks this is one of the two best books he’s ever read on the topic of physics and time. Muller “explained a lot of concepts I’ve been unclear about for a long, long time.” Kirby seems to have disagreed with Muller about time itself, though, and added “I don’t really believe in time.” Kirby remarked that Muller writes well, and for the most part he’s quite understandable. When it came to the religious stuff, Kirby just ignored that. “I just said to myself ‘Oh, crap!’ when I came to his comments about God.” But for the first time some of the physics, such as about quantum mechanics, seemed to make sense to me. He rated the book an 8.
Scott views all present-day “cosmology” (and much of contemporary physics more generally) as basically an absurdly speculative, quasi-religious enterprise which for the most part is not really science at all. This book, he says, is a fine example of that, though perhaps not quite fully representing the most typical “party line” within that bizarre field in all respects. Scott had previously told himself that he was done reading any more of this crap! But nevertheless he is glad he read this “one final book” on the topic. In Scott’s opinion Muller really is pretty good at presenting short summaries of major doctrines or themes in modern physics, such as time dilation in relativity theory, what entropy is all about, the weird stuff in quantum mechanics (or quantum physics as he prefers to call it), and so forth. While there really wasn’t much new for us in all these chapters, or stuff we haven’t read about many times before, it was still in many respects quite a good summary of contemporary physics theory.
Yet, in the end the book does indeed turn out to be just more crap, more bullshit, especially when it comes to his idealist philosophical theories and utterly nutty promotion of the existence of the soul and (implicitly at least) God. While he says these things are not “part of physics” or any other science, he claims they are not opposed to science and science is not opposed to them. (This is totally incorrect: For example souls and gods are imagined to be conscious entities which do not depend on complex organizations of matter, such as material brains. This idea goes directly against modern cognitive psychology.)
Muller is surprisingly honest at times in his admissions that quantum physics is deeply flawed. He especially focuses on the “measurement problem” in this respect, and its connection to the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. He admits that physicists have never so far had a good answer to this de facto logical refutation of the dominant Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. His own attempt to salvage the theory by claiming that “somehow” the universe measures itself (and thus collapses the quantum wave function spontaneously at some point) is no solution at all; it is just further idealist philosophical nonsense.
Scott thinks that Muller is actually correct to dismiss entropy as any sort of “explanation” of the “arrow of time”. But in Scott’s view no physics explanation of “now” and the “arrow of time” is even necessary. To put it bluntly: Constant change is a basic characteristic of the world. That is just a fact of nature. Human beings (or other intelligent beings living in the universe) have necessarily evolved to recognize this constant change. From this change, and the regularities of certain important cyclic changes (day and night, the seasons, etc.) we necessarily develop not only the concept of time but also ways to measure the passage of time. If physics supposedly can’t expain the arrow of time, then common sense certainly can! In this context to argue about whether “time really exists” or not, or to try to explain “now” in terms of abstract physics theories (quantum mechanics or whatever) is just plain stupid!
Because of its deeply philosophical idealist/religious essence and goal Scott wanted to give the book a zero (despite the fact he sort of enjoyed reading it!), but reluctantly he admits there are a few points of positive interest in it, and so raises his rating all the way up to 1. (Scott also thought that Muller does some rather distasteful self-promotion in the book, attempting to show how he personally had a major hand in various research which led to Nobel Prizes for his students and associates.) But Scott also says that after reading 6 or 8 books on the physics of time and a bunch more on quantum mechanics, cosmology, and such, he really is completely done with all that crap now. No more of this endless B.S. for him!
Ron was another of our book club members who really liked this book, and rated it an 8. Time, the physics of relativity, quantum mechanics, all these things ... “just don’t make sense, but there it is!” There are some things in the book, says Ron, “that I’ve never agreed with”. But weird things eventually get resolved. Ron sees Muller as building up all his arguments in the direction of his final theory, that “time gets created” just as space does, all because of the Big Bang. It’s a mind-boggling theory that at every moment “more time gets created”. Ron also thought that Muller’s explanation of the space-time stuff was done pretty well.
John also rated the book fairly high, a 7. “I liked the book too. It’s not really about time; instead it’s a summary of physics. I felt I understood Muller’s explanation of the breakdown of the wave function. I liked the idea that space is not ‘nothing’. But I don’t like his theory that space and time are always being created anew.”
Barbara said that she read the whole book with real zeal and anticipation. “I was able to understand it ... and got a better understanding of quantum physics. [Muller] had the spirit of God in his writing. I liked the last part of the book because he talked about God.” She rated the book a 10.
Rich was more middle of the road about the book and rated it a 6. “We’ve read a lot of similar material in the past, but this is a better account.” Rich liked Muller’s writing, but was disappointed with the religious stuff at the end of the book.
So there you have it folks; various opinions of the book from various perspectives!
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Ye Olde Natural Philosophy Discussion Group
== Reviews and comments on Lee Smolin: Time Reborn [2013] ==
This is a book on cosmology, the highly speculative and “philosophical” branch of physics, which here focuses on the specific issue of the “reality” or “non-reality” of time. Our group didn’t think very highly of this book. Many couldn’t make much sense of it and didn’t finish reading it. And our group average on a scale of 0 to 10 was just 2.1.
Kirby started off by saying “I really wanted to like this book,” but he found that in order to try to understand it he had to read some passages over multiple times and even then things sometimes weren’t very intelligible. Kirby only read the first half of the book, the part where Smolin puts forward the now commonplace arguments within cosmology about why time is “not real”. (The second part of the book argues the opposite, that time actually “is real” after all.) And while Kirby found the presentation in that first half poorly written and unclear, he nevertheless generally agreed with the point of view outlined there, that time is unreal. At the same time, Kirby said that his biggest problem with the book is that he really doesn’t know what Smolin actually means by the word ‘time’; Smolin never makes that clear. “There came a point where I didn’t know what we were talking about!” said Kirby. He didn’t finish the book because he was just too frustrated with it. So although he rated it a 5, he was quite disappointed with it. “Sylistically, Smolin just wasn’t going anywhere.”
Rosie had voted against selecting this book to read, and based on a previous book by Smolin that our group has read, said that she didn’t like his writing style at all. With regard to this book her first comment was: “You should have listened to me!” She said that Smolin is a “horrible writer”. The only thing she liked about the first half of the book was the observation that all physical experiments only involve part of the universe, and therefore extrapolations to the nature of the universe as a whole are often questionable. Rosie gave the book a rating of just 1.
John said that the book really didn’t work for him. “I wanted to like the book, but Smolin just didn’t say anything that I could understand.” John rated it a 3, but his overall “one-word” summation expresses his opinion better: “Pttttuee!”
Rich also gave the book a 3. He liked the earlier book by Smolin which we read. [The Trouble with Physics (2006).] But with regard to this book he said “I still don’t understand what people are saying about how time doesn’t exist. I don’t understand these theories about time.” He added: “I don’t feel I learned a lot from this book.”
Barbara read most of the book and also rated it a 3. She felt that there were many contradictory opinions in it on lots of specific points. But she felt the book became more sensible later on.
Vicki jumped around in the book and just read a little of it. She rated the part she read as just a 1. She also commented that as she read, Rosie’s warning voice about Smolin’s poor writing style kept running around in her head!
Kevin also read just a small part of the book, but rated what he did read a zero. He said that chapter 1 was just crap. Later he tried the audio version, but found that it put him to sleep in 3 minutes. He described what he read of it as a “horrible book, confusing, and a waste of time”.
Scott views all present-day “cosmology” as basically an absurdly speculative, quasi-religious enterprise which for the most part is not really science at all. This book, he says, is a fine example of that, though perhaps not quite fully representing the most typical “party line” within that bizarre field. Scott continues at length:
As I read this book a number of words to describe it repeatedly came to mind, such as: idiocy!, goofy!, nonsense!, utter crap!, and so forth. Finally I settled on daft!, that wonderful British word which has the pleasing connotation of a restrained suggestion of both inanity and a little insanity added into it. Even to ask the question of whether time is real or unreal is actually quite daft. It reminded me of various other nutty theories, such as solipsism and the absurdity of even debating it. Or disputes about the reification of attributes, such as “largeness”. (For example some silly Platonic philosopher might argue that since some things are obviously large and some are small that “largeness” and “smallness” must therefore exist in the world in the same way that chairs and people do (or even in some “deeper way” than individual large or small physical things do!). Or, on the other hand, a naïve mechanical materialist might dispute this in an inept, nutty way by arguing that “largeness” and “smallness” are actually “unreal”. What would we make of people who spend time debating whether “largeness” is real or not?! And what therefore should we make of those who spend time debating whether time is “unreal” or not?!)
Where does our conception of time come from anyway? It’s simply an abstraction we humans derive from the fact that the world is constantly changing all around us, that things are one way at one moment and a different way at a later moment. The changing world around us, together with the commonplace observation that some of that change is cyclic, as with day and night or the seasons of the year, leads directly to our basic concept of time. (Such standard cyclic processes allow us to measure the passage of time, to quantify the lengths of time periods.) Thus anyone arguing for the “unreality” of time would seem to have to deny the existence of change in the world—a denial that would be totally ... daft.
And yet, there have been those who have tried to do it anyway! In the history of philosophy there have been strange characters who have claimed that change “does not really exist”. The most notorious example in ancient Greek philosophy was Parmenides who argued that, despite all appearances, “All is One”, the world is actually a single unified whole and forever unchanging thing. His loyal student (and lover), Zeno, tried to “prove” this “logically” with his so-called “paradoxes of motion”. Other philosophers, such as Plato and many of his intellectual descendants, have tried to have it both ways: yes, they admit, there is change in the earthly imperfection around us, but in the deeper cosmic reality of the heavens and of ideas (or “forms”) there is never any change whatsoever.
One might have hoped that in the two and a half millennia since Parmenides and Zeno rejoined the “Universal Oneness”, we might have put such foolishness behind us. But, no, philosophical idealism of this totally ridiculous sort is still with us. The “All-is-One” doctrine is virtually universal among religious mystics. But human society in general is still grossly infected with religious notions or at least with the intellectualized versions of them (i.e., idealist philosophy). As I love to say, We still live in primitive times.
In cosmology too the ancient mystical idea that “All is One”, and that there is no such thing as change (or time!), is still all the rage. One popular version of this is the “block universe” theory (or “eternalism”) that Smolin talks about (especially in chapter 6). The “block universe” refers to the whole history of the universe at once. That is, it abstracts away from particular times, places and conditions. And, what do you know, if you abstract away (ignore!) all changes and references to time, then there are no changes, and time is “unreal”. How about that! (Talk about daft!) Here is how Smolin explains it in his dopey, simple-minded way:
“This is a timeless picture, because it refers to the whole history of the universe at once. There is no preferred moment of time, no reference to what time it is now, no reference at all to anything corresponding to our experience of the present moment. No meaning to ‘future’ or ‘past’ or ‘present’.” [p.58]
[And:]
“The picture of the history of the universe, taken as one, as a system of events connected by causal relations, is called the block universe. The reason for that perhaps peculiar name is that it suggests that what is real is the whole history at once—the allusion is to a block of stone, from which something solid and unchanging can be carved.” [p. 59]
[And again:]
“These nine arguments lead to a view of nature that denies the reality of the present moment and instead speaks of nature in terms of the block universe picture in which what is real is only the entire history of the world taken as one.” [p. 94]
Parmenides would love it! Smolin even admits what he has been doing: “In Part I, we followed the path of the mystic, seeking to transcend our time-bound experience and discover eternal truths.” [p. 95]
After spending the whole first half of his book “explaining” the idea that time is “unreal” and thus promoting that daft idea (intentionally or not), Smolin switches gears and tries to argue that time is actually “real” after all! But this second half of the book is overall even more daft than the first half. Basically Smolin tries to explicate all sorts of utterly bizarre cosmological theories and defends one (or a few) of them which admit that time must be “real”. This second half is sort of a tour of the wild, totally speculative theories which contemporary cosmologists spend their time dreaming up and debating. We hear about theories that speculate that whole “new” universes pop up from “singularities” or black holes. Speculations that the laws of the universe also change or may be different in “other universes”. The notion that universes may give birth to “daughter universes” and that as they do so the physical laws governing those daughter universes may evolve in a way similar to the Darwinian evolution of life on earth through natural selection. The parade of such wild and totally off-the-wall cosmological speculations is endless, it seems!
There is essentially no real scientific evidence for any of these fantastic cosmological theories whatsoever. (The best Smolin can do is to say that a few of these theories might be eliminated by actual scientific evidence sometime in the future.) It is humorous, however, to hear Smolin frequently use the words “research”, “evidence”, “results”, and “discoveries” [p. 246] of cosmology when he is actually only talking about some specific claims within one or another of these totally speculative theories. Moreover he even admits that the “developments” described in Part II of the book “are not yet fact and do not yet amount to a coherent theory.” [p. 241] Even the author himself admits he is not putting forward a coherent cosmological theory! (No wonder what he says is so hard to fathom.)
If this book, despite its claims, is not really about actual science, then what is it about? There is a traditional name for this sort of speculative crap, namely, metaphysics. Philosophy got its deservedly bad reputation because of the metaphysical speculations of people like Plato, Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche and so many others. But this sort of thing still continues, including quite often under the pretense of being science. Throughout the book Smolin focuses on a large number of what he calls “principles” that guide his thinking. A few of these “principles” might be considered “common sense”, but many are just his metaphysical biases. The whole book is basically just an elaboration of those metaphysical biases and what he takes to be their consequences. Some additional metaphysical “principles” he also holds go more or less unacknowledged, such as that our universe “must have had” a beginning.
Smolin’s book is “hard to understand” (actually impossible to really understand) for the very good reason that it is essentially incoherent. It is not really his “writing style” that is to blame for this; it is the utter nonsense he is attempting to put forward and “clarify”. He might just as well be trying to “explicate” the nature of self-contradictory objects such as “round squares”.
I really, really! wanted to rate this book a zero. But, extremely reluctantly, I had to admit that here and there there are a few things of interest, and occasionally things I could even agree with! The best of these is his defense of the “Hidden Variables Theory” of quantum mechanics, that was championed by Einstein. This is the materialist understanding of quantum mechanics that competes with the bizarre idealist interpretations (such as the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Many Worlds Theory). Even Smolin’s language in defense of the Hidden Variables Theory is a little strange, but at least he’s on the right track. [p. 154ff.] Because of his comments there I’ve raised my rating from 0 to 1.
Finally, a few words about the Epilogue, which was really quite weird and off topic (though Smolin kept trying to find some way to connect it up to his theories about time). He says a few useless things about climate change there, then gets into bourgeois economics, where he has a few minor criticisms of the dominant neoclassical school. Then after a few pious comments about democracy and politics he gets even nuttier than ever in his idealist philosophical comments. He worries about the goofy question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and again puts forward (and then worries about) his “relationist” metaphysical dogma (“there’s nothing real in world apart from properties defined by relationships” [p. 267]). Finally, he shows his ignorance of cognitive psychology by claiming that consciousness is an inexplicable mystery, which science may never be able to explain. (In reality, it already has explained it, at least in its most essential aspects.) As one might expect of Smolin, he’s completely bonkered and suckered in by the usual idealist nonsense about qualia. As bad as the book was, the Epilogue was even worse!
In summation: The book is quite daft!
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