Organised success
My interest was piqued by two recent New 杏吧原创 articles discussing the relationship between organisational structure and human behaviour.
In his article comparing banking institutions and colonies of bacteria, Harvey Rubin picks out similarities between the two (19 September, p 24). These are phenotypical 鈥� that is, observable 鈥� while the differences between them are genotypical. While bacteria “optimise growth for any external and internal conditions”, bankers have attempted to operate without any attention to their external environment.
The differences can be understood in terms of two design principles, first outlined by psychologist and organisational development pioneer Fred Emery in 1967. The organisational structure of banks has been built on the first design principle (DP1), called “redundancy of parts”, in which responsibility for coordination is located at least one level above any individual doing work. Conversely, bacteria are organised on the genotypical design principle called “redundancy of function”, DP2, in which adaptation depends on regulatory systems built into the operational parts of the system itself.
The unstable nature of DP1 systems means they require external regulation. As we have seen in the global banking system, the entire system fails if these regulators are removed or weakened.
In the same issue, Michael Bond suggests we can make people a little kinder to each other by evolving social networks that encourage altruism and cooperation (19 September, p 32). The group-based networks he discusses are built on redundancy of function, DP2.
While DP1 structures are inherently competitive, DP2 structures are inherently cooperative. It is not the individuals’ capacity for empathy and compassion that primarily determines their behaviour, it is the nature of the structures in which they are embedded.
Don't bend the facts
In his review of my book Don’t Be Such a 杏吧原创: Talking substance in an age of style, Michael Brooks suggests that I am advocating inaccuracy in the communication of science (3 October, p 49). Brooks distorts the message of the book when he writes that I advise “bending the facts when they get in the way”. On page 111 of my book I write: “I will never, ever endorse the idea of striving for anything less than 100 per cent accuracy in the making of any film related to real issues in the world of science.”
The subtitle of the book points to the divide between substance and style. The substance of the book, its written text, was unambiguous. But the style 鈥� the use of funny stories and the occasionally flippant attitude 鈥� may well have led to Brooks’s misperception.
The bottom line is that it is indeed possible 鈥� and at times even advisable 鈥� to wrap a serious message in a silly package as a means of reaching a broader audience. Just because you opt to lighten the heaviness of science communication with a little humour, it does not mean you have anything less than the utmost respect and concern for the fundamental tenet of science, which is accuracy.
Brain in a box
Noel Sharkey’s rejection of the computational theory of mind 鈥� the theoretical foundation of artificial intelligence 鈥� is a breath of fresh air (29 August, p 28). As Sharkey rightly says, the intelligence is in the human who creates the program, not in the program itself.
But in making this point, Sharkey goes further than denying that a program could be intrinsically intelligent: he also asserts that the machine that executes the program could not be intrinsically intelligent. This conceptual jump from computation to machinery reveals an assumption: namely that computers are limited to performing computations. It ignores the possibility that if computers could do more than compute, they might be able to perform the non-computational operations that are a necessary part of intelligence and mind.
This idea is not idle speculation. My own and other research indicates that computers are capable of performing various types of non-computational operations, including a type of associative processing in which inputs are stored according to their association to each other. This gradually builds an inner structure not prescribed by a programmer. Which of the inputs are associated with one another to form this structure is not specified by a human; characteristics of the input stream itself determine the structure of the system.
This implies that it is possible for a computer to be intelligent, even if no program can be. The fault in AI is the limited view it takes of the computer as a computing machine.
In associative processing there are three elements: the program, the machine, and the inner structure built from input symbols where the input stream itself 鈥� not a human designer 鈥� determines the shape of the output. A tantalising prospect is that such a structure could be a mind.
Scientific truths
Hugh McLachlan is right to raise fundamental issues about Richard Dawkins’s and David Hume’s arguments against miracles (8 August, p 26), which are, as he suggests, weak if not circular.
Unfortunately, he mars his own case by making the same mistake as Hume and other philosophers in assuming that scientific laws are statements of the form “if A, then B”, and that these represent “universal laws”.
As Bertrand Russell pointed out over 60 years ago in his book A History of Western Philosophy, almost no scientific theories consist of causal statements of the form “if A, then B”. Rather, they usually comprise complicated systems of partial differential equations that describe and predict the behaviour of phenomena in time and space given certain initial and boundary conditions.
McLachlan’s ideas seem to be based on a persistent misunderstanding of science by philosophers dating from the time of Kant, who was so impressed by Newton’s laws of motion that he imagined that they must embody universal, eternal truths.
I suspect that very few scientists today would claim to be in search of “laws of nature” in this sense. Ever since Karl Popper’s writing on the philosophy of science, we have been used to the idea that all theories are wrong, but that some are less wrong than others and that science advances by a process of improving the way our theories describe the world.
McLachlan’s arguments about miracles miss the mark. Instead, I suspect the importance of miracles, if they could be shown to happen, is not that they violate some “law of nature”, but that they demonstrate that a mechanistic view of the universe is insufficient to account for what happens in it.
The bee's wings
In his article on models of insect flight, Paul Marks attributes the first theory on how bumblebees are able to fly, despite their apparent defiance of the rules of aerodynamics, to Tony Maxworthy in 1981 (26 September, p 22).
However, I recall from my days as an undergraduate at the University of St Andrews in the UK, between 1975 and 1979, that I attended a lecture by Professor John F. Allen in which he addressed this same problem.
As I remember it, he explained that it was to do with the bee wing having small-scale surface corrugations. The resulting effect on air viscosity at this small scale enables the wing to work like an aerofoil, generating a faster airflow above the wing than below it.
Meat substitutes
In your feature on making the world a better place, Michael Le Page suggests replacing mutton and beef with chicken, pork and if you live in Australia, more kangaroos (19 September, p 32).
However, any expansion of the kangaroo-meat industry would be problematic as, unlike cattle and other stock animals, kangaroos fare badly when conventionally farmed. The meat obtained from them is a fraction of what comes from a cow, so you would need vast numbers to make any inroads into the beef industry.
As Le Page says at the beginning of the article, perhaps it is better just to eat less meat.
The editor writes:
鈥� A number of conservationists and conservation groups are () as supporting the kangaroo harvest.
Climbing carnivore
Your article suggesting that Velociraptor used its claws to climb trees sparked debate in our household (12 September, p 10).
My 9-year-old son, the family expert on dinosaurs, pointed out that most specimens have been found in the desert environments of the Djadochta formation in Mongolia and Chinese Inner Mongolia. Indeed, the most famous specimen appears to have been buried either during a sandstorm or under a collapsing sand dune. With few trees, there would have been little point in the dinosaurs developing the foot claw for climbing.
The editor writes:
鈥� Indeed there would have been few trees in these parts of Mongolia. However, there must have been some vegetation present in the vicinity of the desert location where most Velociraptor fossils have been found to feed its plant-eating prey, such as Protoceratops. Velociraptors may also have spent time in environments with more vegetation but a lower chance of fossil preservation, so we can’t rule out tree-climbing habits.
Resisting intruders
When Feedback once more addressed the proliferation of feeble warning signs, I was reminded of one of my father’s favourite anecdotes (8 August).
In the 1930s, he was plagued with petty thefts from his allotment shed. As his security measures were proving ineffectual, he hit upon a solution. He acquired a 40 kilo-ohm electrical resistor and pinned it to the shed’s door, with the warning: “DANGER 40,000 OHMS”. The thefts stopped immediately.