What is your Q.I.Q?

What is your Quantum Intelligence Quotient?

I am not here refering to the largely bogus field of quantum AI, I am referring to the metaphor of quantum superposition as applied to ourselves.

Usual thinking is either/or and this picture is MASSIVELY encouraged by the success of digital programming or digital machines. The metaphor of either/or burns deep and long in the culture's psyche. Edward de Bono- still alive I hear thank goodness! made a good career by suggesting either/ or thinking was a bit limited. He took to carving out the middle ground. He even invented a word Po- which meant neither Yes or No. Sadly it looked a bit too much like Poo and so the idea died a quiet death (imagine if Black Holes had been called Brown Holes instead- goodbye NASA funding...). (Rule one of ideas- do not suggest shit in any way shape or form otherwise people will subconciously assume your idea is tainted by the brown stuff...)

A quantum state can be YES or NO at the same time- up until we poke around and demand to know which. Like I said, this is a useful metaphor for the way our own minds work, freeing us from the digital either/or metaphor.

Your whole school curriculum is pretty much either/or. The world of business presentations and law is too. And government. Anywhere where practical wisdom is over ridden by rule based literalism.

Real world engineering, practical wisdom, craft and art infused with lived experience of a useful, kind all shows that intelligence is best expressed by the ability to hold contradictory positions in your mind at the same time. Until context and necessary deployment nudge one way or the other.

The famous Mulla Nasrudin joke (sometimes retold as a rabbi joke or a goha joke) sees the Mulla presiding over a law court. After hearing the defendent speak he says, "You're right!". After hearing the prosecution he says, "You're right." Both legal teams turn on him and demand, "We can't both be right!" The Mulla responds, "You're right!".

Like much Nasrudin stuff it's a variation on the Cretan paradox- that constant warning that contradiction is built into any presentation in language and that to be functional we must be able to live with this, use it when we can, in other words: be comfortable with contradiction...be quantum intelligent and hold as many different position as you can at the same time until the REAL WORLD CONTEXT favours or demands one that fits in that time and place.

I will be offering Quantum Intelligence training courses in the near future. Feel free to apply.

the genius curve

Forget the bell curve and refer instead to the genius curve.

In a nutshell the genius curve predicts that in any sample...whatever its size...99% will be shit and 1% will be...pure genius ie. oustanding. Anyone who has judged an essay, poem or book competition will know this to be true. It's really easy to judge as within seconds you get the sinking or rising feeling. Sinking- 99% of the time, nervously rising 1% when you realise THIS IS THE WINNER- SIMPLE.

Bell curve thinking has infected every area and encourages us to use 'the law of averages' in our favour. It encourages poor sap authors to endlessly self-promote on facebook and their blogs and of course they get...nowhere. The average dude who says to himself- 'it's one in a million'- has a better grasp of the maths than the bell curve bell end...

But flip it around and ask- what's going on? A friend who attended the presigious Rhode Island school of art and design told me that all the best work was done in the first month. By the end of year one it was fairly dire and by the end of year three it was crap...why? Because everyone copied each other and tried to 'fit in' and all their work resembled each other's. The element of DIFFERENCE had been eliminated.

And it is difference that counts. Difference doesn't just get noticed it has a functionality beyond that. Difference indicates a potential new survival plan (stripping it very rapidly down to basics here). In any Milgram experiment situation the presence of an EQUAL status person who said the opposite of the evil task setter FREED people to act on their own conscience. Difference is the grit of human progress, the moment we all start acting in the same way is the moment of greatest vulnerability. So even if you produce a brilliant but derivitive art work it will be disdained for something rough...and different - just look at the bad drawings Jackson Pollock did before he embraced difference. But that sort of modern art is SHIT I hear you expostulate (well a few of you anyway) and part of me agrees. But as we all know the ability to hold contradictory opinions is a sign of true - call it quantum- intelligence...QIQ- what is your QIQ?

Back to the difference thing. It is not that difference per se is better than a sound copy of what works. It is just that the modern world is a difference engine (sorry, had to say that) which is geared up to spot difference rather than quality. The ability to spot quality is connoisseurship- but we have moved from that kind of culture ever since the first world war (for all sorts of complex cultural reasons the main being the connosiseurs signed off on Trench warfare, A Bombs and Death Camps). So in a difference culture be...different.

The bell curve makes the fatal assumption about society that in a uniform society difference will be evenly distributed. NO! In a uniform society difference is RARE. So you can see I'm tying two ends up here- we still live in a uniform society (by definition almost) but one without quality awareness- the pursuit of quality will get you nowhere without an element of difference squirted into the mix.

When you know that, you can begin to beat the odds. You'll be on the genius curve.

why science as we know it has come to an end

This is a pretty outrageous claim.

But this is my reasoning: science is a method of describing the world using precise methods. It began to take off properly when we had accurate rulers and clocks to measure things. This was how Gallileo separated what we now know as Newton's laws from Aristotle's earlier ideas that included friction in any result. We could only factor out the common sense idea of friction with accurate clocks and rulers. So accurate measuring lets us divide up the world and see things more clearly. But there comes a point when our measuring begins to suffer problems generated by itself. One is noise- at the very limits random noise interferes with the result. This can to some extent be factored away but eventually quantum noise sets in and we find we can't know with accuracy any result without interfering with it. So we rely on probability. Likewise, in outer space, we rely on models that interpret radiation to say what the universe is really like. And as you get further from earth the noise increases here too. 

Einstein with relativity and those who pioneered quantum mechanics have far less influence on our world than many imagine; they have a huge influence on telling us the limitations of our measuring though. And it is in measurment that the future of science resides. All else is just modelling and speculation. That will continue ad infinitum- becoming what I call fractal philosophy. Like the potentially infinite coast line of Norway with fjords on fjords, fractal philosophy can build theory on theory without every really increasing the useful length of the coastline or quantity of knowledge which is limited by the limits of measurement not theory.

Engineers and material scientists will continue to make astounding breakthroughs- as they always have- but we have reached the limits of academic science- it is now in a similar position to medieval scholastic philosophy aided by a university system that is a direct descendent of the monastery.

So, if you like making new things and seeing astounding stuff- quit science and take up engineering- preferably in a field that solves the problems caused by...engineering.

a footnote on quantum computing

Dr M. Vardi, a sceptical physicist writes: "An important part of the report (the US Gov. Report on Quantum Computing) is an analysis of why and how computing technology scaled exponentially in performance for over half a century. This scaling was mostly the result of a virtuous cycle, where products using the new technology allowed the industry to make more money, which it then used to create newer technology. For quantum computing to be similarly successful, it must create a virtuous cycle to fund the development of increasingly useful quantum computers. But the beauty of classical computing is that developing algorithms is incredibly easy. Every teenager writing a program is developing an algorithm. In contrast, in more than 25 years of intense research on quantum computing, only a few dozen algorithms have been developed. It is conceivable that governments will pour major investments into a small number of critical quantum-computing applications, but this will not give rise to the thriving marketplace that is needed to sustain the virtuous cycle. Count me a quantum skeptic!"

Me too.

Twigger's rule for predicting the future

Twigger's rule is simple: That which can be conceived need not be believed, but that which is made will not fade.

In other words: engineering is the real driver of techno-change not dumbass science fiction. Oh, don't get me wrong, I love sci-fi too, but it just isn't how the real world works. What happens is the tinkerers make something that has 'distinct possibilities'. They play with it, stretch it, make it cheaper. And bingo, now and again they make it do something that was 'predicted' by science fiction. There is a great episode of the Big Bang Theory in which Leonard's bullying old classmate says he needs a tech guy to make his invention come true. The 'invention' is just some sci-fi magic nonsense. And the brainboxes just say "pretty sure that can't be done". That in a nutshell is what conceiving is about. Driverless cars, AI in its more ambitious forms, quantum computing (come on!), Nuclear fusion and probably thorium fission- they are all driven by what 'should be possible' rather than engineers tinkering and making. A subset of this rule is that real advances are not trumpeted years before hand. They just get done. No one heard a darn thing about the internet and no one invested a penny till POW it was up and running. When you hear a lot about something it is usually a fanfare to get funding. So ask yourself- is this thing something a scientist conceives- ie. thinks up in theory or is it something that has been physically built and now does things. Incline towards the physical.

Right and Left brain meshing methods crucial

You can only get so far thinking in the broad terms of right and left brain, right and left hemisphere- each indicating a package of attributes.

Every single 'left brain' function needs some right brain context.

Every single 'right brain' attribute nneds a left brain 'compiler' or 'translator' to operate in the real world.

Pure left brain knows no way of starting or stopping, what to pay attention to, where to go.

Pure right brain is a swirl of colours and impressions in a continuous present (kind of).

So what is really key is HOW you mesh right and left together.

What we have nowadays is less of a 'left brain culture' than one in which the left brain meshes in a very clunky and inefficient and painful way with the right brain. There is no other option- both sides must mesh to produce human behaviour that is sane- but the manner of meshing is somewhat like a gearbox without syncromesh. In the old days to change gear on a car you had to 'couble de-clutch'. This meant you couldn't go from 3rd to 2nd by just flicking the gear stick. You had to go into neutral, alter the revs to suit roughly the new gear, press the clutch again and get into the new gear. This method saved the awful grinding of gears that accompanied old style gear changing.

So the culture we live in- which of course has its own aims and methods, is intent on using us as drones, workers or queens. Queens are celebrities, workers are, er, workers and drones are consumers. The difference with a bee hive is that we can switch roles (a bit). The Culture- call it the global hive- has one aim- to get as big and fat as possible. Doesn't matter how many drones and workers die in the process. That's why average health is now DECLINING in the west. In the past an increase in health meant increased productivity and growth of human activity. Now ill health only generates money and goods from rich people. Poor people no longer contribute much to productivity (productivity in the past was increased by volume of workers, now it is increased by cleverness of manufacturing system). But rich people are a minority so the hive is moving towards a lower standard of health for all.

You must cut out from the global hive mind and find your own mind. If you do one thing in your life it should be this. Otherwise you are being 'lived' by the culture. And like the general in a first world war movie: the culture sees you as a number, cannon fodder. So go AWOL (maybe with a cushy job in the home country).

The global culture wants you to be a single drone consumer or worker. It has no need of your multiple skills or interests. Not really. In the past- the hive was increased by good multiple skills. Now it is excellent single skills that get you noticed- be it at playing pool or writing musicals. The hive also functions very well on getting everyone to WANT to be footballers or pop stars (ie. 'queens') and then only allowing- by dint of a vast open marketplace- a few to 'make it'. That leaves a vast frustrated populace who will SPEND TIME AND MONEY- buying the product and servicing the 'queens'. Sadly many buy into this concept because they envy life as a queen. But study the life of the honeybee for a while and you'll see that being a queen is not all it's cracked up to be....anyway, I imagine everyone reading this is savvy enough to know that finding your real-self is at odds with being an unquestioning dork (technical term meaning an unquestioning bee) in the global hive.

Back to meshing...again. You need to work on how you mesh your right brain activity with the appropriate left brain container it comes in. One way to alter the balance is to rely on your memory- either in a learned skill or simply as data, rather than outsourcing it to a device of some kind. Outsourcing involves lots of left brain translation that will partially thwart right brain genius. Imagine playing pool by telling someone 'left a bit, right a bit, bit harder, bit slower' while they made the moves for you. The right brain- which rightly is pretty much the source of all genius - needs to be able to fly, dance and play. It can only do this if it meshes with left brain outlets- steps, words, notes easily.

But there are many levels to meshing. One is managing transitions. Going from one activity to another upsets the right/left balance. Ever wondered why it is so hard to start writing- unless a teacher tells you too? 

Another mesh problem is 'your learning style' by which I mean something different from visual/audio/touch etc. (All humans are very similar in that we have HUGE visual memory capacity and an innate interest in getting home, finding food and getting sex.) By learning style I mean what inspires you and what kinds of momentum activity give you a good buzz, propel you into the 'flow' zone. This is all very personal and yet needs to be addressed if you are going to mesh.

That we have a global meshing problem is evident everywhere; in extreme cases it produces mental health issues. In less extreme situations it results in the need to polarise and find indentity in opinions rather than your real characteristics.

Learning how to mesh right and left sides of the brain is therefore a huge priority.

changing the world....again

Many people talk about changing the world.

What they mean, of course, is making a future that is different to the present.

There are things about the present they don't like and want to change. And they imagine a certain trajectory of the present that DOESN'T include what they hope for and desire. So they try and change what will happen.

So really we don't change the world, we try to change what the world will become.

So all along we have an idea about the future, what the world will be like.

The important thing, then, is how we imagine the future.

And what we change is other people's ideas about the future. We can change it by force or by persuasion.

Tim Smit, who was the force behind the Eden Project, calls it the Tinkerbell theory- if enough people believe it will happen it does.

So the real task of changers is making a different kind of future believable.

Science fiction anyone?