The meme that Cage was more of a music philosopher than a composer has become commonplace, most of all, it seems, among people who don’t like his music and are in need of a way to justify his celebrity.  Cage was not a philosopher in any sense that the philosophy profession would recognize, but he was very much a composer who drew inspiration for his music from philosophical ideas.  The list of artists, writers, and thinkers he names in justification of his musical trajectory is a long one:  Meister Eckhart, Huang-Po, Kwang-Tse, Erik Satie, Henry David Thoreau, Gertrude Stein, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage Sr., Marcel Duchamp, Sri Ramakrishna, Daisetz Sukuki, Joseph Campbell, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Alan Watts, Antonin Artaud, Robert Rauschenberg, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, Norman O. Brown, Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, Gita Sarabhai, and Christian Wolff, among others.”

I was reminded of James Pritchett’s intention, when writing his book on Cage’s music, as much as possible to read everything that John Cage had himself read, and in the order he had done so.

References:

Kyle Gann [2010]: No Such Thing as Silence.  John Cage’s 4′ 33”.  New Haven, CT, USA:  Yale University Press. 

James Pritchett [1993]:  The Music of John Cage.  Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press.

Technorati Tags: John Cage, Kyle Gann, James Pritchett

The Times article mentions the two main contenders for the leadership of ZANU (PF) following Bob’s always-imminently-predicted-but-never-quite-arriving retirement:  Emmerson Mnangagwa and Solomon Mujuru.  One would think that the Zimbabwean Vice-President, Joice Mujuru, who is likewise a ZANU (PF) nomenklatura, would perhaps also be a contender, but she is married to Solomon, so he takes precedence.   She is more famous in Zimbabwe under her chimurenga name, Teurai Ropa (or Spill-Blood) Nhongo, and for leading a team of guerrilla fighters into battle while pregnant.   Because she joined the struggle (for Independence) in her teens, she did not finish high-school; to her great personal credit, she completed her O-levels after Independence and while a Cabinet Minister.   In the year she did O-level English, a novel by George Orwell was on the syllabus, leading to her infamous stage whisper at the official opening by then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe Institute for Development Studies;  when the VIPs were led to a different (and much better) buffet than that provided for the other people present, she was heard by all to exclaim,  “But this is just like Animal Farm!”

Her husband also had a loud voice.  When I first met him, he was calling himself Rex Nhongo, and I did not then know what he looked like.  A mutual friend introduced us using only first names as we happened upon each other buying groceries one evening after work in a Greek delicatessen in the low-density (ie, formerly whites-only) suburbs of Salisbury (as it then was).  Making conversation while we stood in the queue, I asked,  “And what do you do for a living, Rex?”  In a booming voice which scared the daylights out of the white customers in the shop, he replied, “Oh, I’m Commander-in-Chief of the Army, son!”  Whether intended or not, this statement got the three of us to the front of the queue immediately.

FOOTNOTE:

Note that in maShona custom, a person may be given or may adopt different names over their life, and may prefer different names at different times or for different purposes.  In addition, for reasons of security during the liberation struggle many people adopted noms de guerre, so-called chimurenga names.

Technorati Tags: Emmerson Mnangagwa, Solomon Mujuru, Joice Mujuru, Robert Mugabe, Rex Nhongo

Because informants working for espionage agencies provide information on a regular basis to an employee of that agency, informants and their agents often develop quite close relationships.  Each has a secret which he or she usually cannot tell to other relatives or friends or colleagues – informants cannot usually divulge their information-passing actions to those around them, and agents usually do not divulge the names of their informants to their fellow employees.   Each also has to trust the other to some extent, and so the pair can develop quite a close relationship with one another; examples can be seen in Larry Devlin’s account of his close relationship with Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, and Robert Baer’s account of his time working for CIA in the Middle East.

If our Robert had indeed been an informant (paid or unpaid) for CIA, then we would probably expect the agency to release him from that relationship when he was elected Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.  If he had developed a close relationship with his agency handler, then becoming PM would mean he would no longer have a close, neutral confidant.     Is this then why Mugabe became close to Lord Christopher Soames, the temporary Governor sent by Britain to oversee the election and the transfer of power at Independence?  Their relationship became so close that Mugabe asked Soames to stay on (as Governor? as President?) for a couple of years after Independence, a request Soames declined.   Is this also why Mugabe met weekly with his political enemy, Ian Smith, for about 18 months following Independence?    Until it fell apart in 1981, their relationship was sufficiently close that they were able to dance with each other’s wives at official functions, such as the ball held for the African Parliamentary Union meeting in Zimbabwe in 1981.

The closeness of both these relationships (Mugabe-Soames, Mugabe-Smith) has always struck me as odd.   But, if true, an ex-informant seeking another regular confidant could explain them both.

References:

Robert Baer [2002]: See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism. Crown Publishing Group.

Larry Devlin [ 2007]:  Chief of Station, Congo.  New York, NY, USA:  Public Affairs.

Technorati Tags: Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Christopher Soames, Robert Baer, Larry Devlin

Choosing a PhD program is one of the hardest decisions we can make. For a start, most of us only make this decision once in our lives, and so we have no prior personal experience to go on.

Second, the success or otherwise of a PhD depends a great deal on factors about which we have little advanced knowledge or control, including, for example:

• The relationship between the student and the supervisor. A PhD is usually awarded only after a student has undertaken some original research. In some programs, this must also be significant. The key point here is that the student has to do this, not the supervisor, and not the two of them together. If you have never done research before, then you will have a period of learning. A good supervisor should be helpful, particularly at the beginning, but eventually wean you off his or her help. 
• The relationship between the student and the subject-matter. In formal subjects, such as pure mathematics, research is primarily undertaken in the head of the researcher. In experimental subjects, much of the effort involved in research may be taken up with creating the apparatus or system on which the experiments are conducted. In engineering, much of the effort may be taken up with designing and building the artefact or system which is the object of the research.One of the great features of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at this particular time in its history is that there are not yet established rules and procedures for how research in AI should be undertaken. Hence, people in AI use a mix of: the deductive analysis of formal systems (as in pure mathematics), computational experiment and simulation (as in the physical sciences and computational economics), the creation of artefacts (as in engineering, music or art), personal introspection (reasoning about our own reasoning and behaviours, as in parts of philosophy), reasoning about the reasoning processes of others (as in so-called rational-actor theories in economics, game theory, or political science), social introspection (reasoning about the behaviour of groups with which we are acquainted, as in sociology, social psychology, or the study of organizational behaviour), and reflective narrative and dialog (as in anthropology or business strategy). Some researchers emphasize one approach over others, some use a mix of approaches. Not everyone has the skills or aptitude for each approach. If you attempt a PhD centered on simulation, for example, without good software programming and debugging skills, you will not be playing to your strengths. It may still be possible to complete the PhD, but only at the cost of great personal pain.In my experience, academics are remarkably unwilling to engage in discussion about HOW they do research. I do not know if this is because they fear that talking about their methods will frighten away their muse, or because, like most people in most professions, they do not reflect much on what they do. Of all disciplines, AI ought to have the most self-reflective practitioners, but I have not found this. 
• The relationship between the student and the school. Despite their claims to the contrary, Universities are not at all meritocratic. Having now had personal working experience in Government, in business and in University, I have to say that Universities are the most status-conscious of the three institutions, and the one where good, original ideas from low-status people are given the shortest-shrift, if they are heard at all. So be prepared to be ignored.If you are coming to a PhD straight from undergraduate studies, you will not find many changes in the way you are treated by academic or other staff. However, if you have any prior working experience at all, you will find life as a PhD student a great shock. You may have commanded empires, thousands may have quaked at your words, but this will count for absolutely nothing in a university. You will be treated as if you were a blank piece of paper, to be inscribed on by the faculty, and only rarely will you find anyone interested in what you may have done before enrolling in the PhD. I think part of the reason for this is that most academics — having no experience of the world beyond their walls — think that only their problems contain intellectual challenges, and look down on those in business and Government. How little they know!Related to this is the bias which most academics have for beliefs over actions. Perhaps it is a result of the nature of the modern research university where the culture is primarily a written one, rather than being verbal or tactile; in the main, written outputs (such as books and journal articles) are preferred over non-written outputs (such as developing complex software). Certainly, there are many important activities in modern society requiring great intelligence and advanced skills which are not, and could not be, taught through lectures and reading (for example: playing the piano; forecasting demand for high-tech products; managing software development projects). All of these activities are learnt on the job, not in formal education.Another part of the reason is that most universities, being state-funded or funded by generous endowments, do not face the ever-present threat of extinction which even large companies in most markets face. How else to explain the fact that Universities so often treat their next generation of leaders with apathy, disrespect and cynicism, in ways which no company would survive very long doing.

  A PhD is perhaps the last remnant of a feudal relationship in the modern world. The only way to deal with this, in my opinion, is to maintain your self-respect and self-esteem, despite the insults thrown at you (wittingly or not) by the system. Stand your ground, give no quarter, and believe in yourself.

Third, it is very hard to evaluate a decision to undertake a PhD. Because most of us only do one PhD in our lives, we have no control group to compare our PhD with another. Moreover, even after you have finished, and successfully obtained your PhD, you may not be able to tell whether it was a good program or not. It may have been a painful and frustrating exercise, but that may be true of both good and bad programs. The program may produce lots of prize-winning graduates, but that may be feature of the people attracted to enter it, rather than anything they received while doing the PhD.

Deciding to do a PhD and deciding which PhD program to enter are therefore decisions we make and carry-through under great uncertainty. In particular, prior to doing the PhD, you will not be in a position to know what will be your own reactions to the experience, what the possible outcomes will be, or your own valuations of these outcomes. (It is odd that classical decision theory – developed by academic economists – should be so useless for such a common and important decision. Yet another failing of economics!) The first thing you can do is talk to as many people as possible about their experiences as PhD students (both successful and failed), or as PhD supervisors, before you make your decision. Here are some guides which I have found useful, and you may gain something from them:

• David Chapman (Editor) [1988]: How to Do Research at the MIT AI Lab. AI Working Paper 316. MIT. 
• Alan Bundy, Ben du Boulay, Jim Howe and Gordon Plotkin [1985]: The Researcher’s Bible, a guide produced by AI and CS people at Edinburgh University. 
• Some guides produced by the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University.

The second thing to do, before you start your PhD, is to list all the challenges you expect to encounter in the course of the program, and to identify possible reactions to these. Most PhD students get depressed at one or more points in their studies, often at the immense amount of reading they feel they have to do. To counter this depression, you need to identify strategies to deal with it, such as tackling some non-reading PhD activity (e.g., building a software simulator) or engaging in something not associated with your PhD (e.g., taking a holiday). Of course, you won’t know in advance all the challenges you are likely to face, nor the best strategies for surmounting or coping with them. But thinking about these in advance of starting forces you to reflect on the path you are embarking on. Thirdly, it is useful in my experience to keep a diary of your experiences, and of your reactions to them, as you proceed through the program. Writing a regular diary forces you to reflect on your experiences, and thereby distances you somewhat from them. I think it the best antidote to depression.

Some general advice I give to PhD students:

It is my belief that one crucial skill which a PhD student should acquire in the course of his or her degree is the ability to identify a feasible research problem. Therefore, I believe very strongly that the supervisor should not choose the problem for the student, but instead allow the student to identify a problem for him or herself. I realize that this is not the usual practice in all academic disciplines, especially mathematics, where the supervisor usually assigns a problem to each student. I think this practice condescending, and inappropriate in computer science and AI.Accordingly, as the problem may only be identified gradually, the precise details of the research may only emerge in the course of the PhD itself. Emergence is a phenomenon with which all reseachers in AI should be familiar. This means that the actual work undertaken during the PhD may appear to repeat on itself, or to diverge in new directions, or appear in other ways to be undirected. Nothing is undirected, if viewed from the right perspective. Part of the task of a PhD is to find the right perspective with which to view the work undertaken.

Research can be very frightening. In formal subjects such as computer science, we are trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, but a puzzle where we do not know in advance what the picture is on the jigsaw. Also, the pieces are not given to us in advance — we usually have to find them, or even have to construct them ourselves. Moreover, once we complete the puzzle we may discover that the picture it displays is not the one we thought we were constructing. We may even find that our efforts result in a jigsaw without any picture at all. This is indeed scary, and I liken it to finding one’s way across a deep canyon one has never been in before in thick fog. Why do we do it? Well, partly because we imagine the view from the other side of the canyon is so beautiful, partly because we want to be first to reach the other side, and partly because the adrenalin rush as we stumble down and back up the canyon is addictive. Doing a PhD successfully involves finding that source of adrenalin and using it to motivate us through three hard years of mountaineering.

I view the literature search as a survey of a landscape: you want to find what’s in the landscape, and where it is. Most of the survey is simply so you know what’s where, and so that you can find it again, if you need to. Some of the material you will read will turn out to be extremely important to your research topic, but you won’t know this in advance of reading it, and you may not even know it until you are near the end of your PhD. Only when you come to final write-up will you be forced to identify, formally and precisely, what your research is really about, and so ideally your literature search should only be done at the end. But, of course, you need to do it at the beginning in order to know what is where. This tension is an example of activities which appear to be undirected (reading everything more than once), but which in reality are essential.

Try not to be depressed by all the reading in front of you at the beginning. If you persist through this, then by about 18 months or so after you start, you will awake one morning to find you now know what is important to your topic and what not. You will then find you need to do very little reading until you come near the end.

Finally, it seems customary in guidebooks for PhDs to have some statement about this being the best experience of one’s life, or about research being a noble and elevated calling. I think such statements are misleading. PhDs are a feudal anachronism, an example of Karl Marx’s definition of tradition being the accumulated errors of past generations. They are required in order to get a job as an academic, or as a researcher in many advanced research labs. They serve no purpose that I can see which would not be served by other, less humbling and less psychologically-intrusive means of learning how to do research. The best you can hope for, in my experience, is to find a supervisor and a topic with whom you are sympatico, and try your best to get the damn thing over with as soon as possible. Real life in a real world awaits you, after all.

If you have any comments on these notes, I would very much welcome hearing from you.

The last time I saw him [RB], we were walking past the middle room of his house. There was a table in there with a typewriter on it.   ”Quiet,” he whispered, pushing me ahead of him into the kitchen. “My new novel’s in there. I kind of stroll in occasionally, write a quick few paragraphs, and get out before the novel knows what I’m doing.  If novels ever find out you’re writing them, you’re done for.”

Reference:

Pierre Delattre [1993]:  Episodes. St. Paul, MN, USA:  Graywolf Press.

Technorati Tags: Richard Brautigan, Pierre Delattre

The New York Times has an obit here and Quantum Tantra a tribute here.

Reference:

George Leonard [1985]: On getting a black belt at age fifty-two. pp. 78-98 in:  Richard Strozzi Heckler (Editor) [1985]: Aikido and the New Warriors.  Berkeley, CA, USA:  North Atlantic Books.   This volume also contains a reprint of Leonard’s fine account of Heckler’s aikido black belt examination, “This isn’t Richard” (pp. 198-205).

Technorati Tags: George Leonard, Richard Strozzi Heckler, aikido

First, let me say as a computer scientist, that a map is not the territory.  It is easy to confuse a representation of some object with that object itself, and the people now singing the praises for e-books seem to be doing just that.   Au contraire, I believe that hard, physical books will continue to be purchased and kept yet for hundreds of years, and possibly many more years, because books are souvenirs of our experience of reading them.   The same is true of works of visual art.    If you have had some hand in the commissioning, the creation (for example, as subject of the artwork or as patron of the artist), or the selection and purchase of a work of art, you want the work of art itself, not a copy, to remind yourself of that experience.

Second, let me say as a former mathematician, that printed reproductions of artworks are projections onto 2 dimensions of 3-dimensional objects.  By definition, such projections will lose something.  If you think that what is lost thereby in visual art is unimportant, as Cosma seems to, then you’ve not been looking very closely at real paintings or drawings.  There are too many examples to recount, so let me just point to:  the brush-strokes in JMW Turner’s seascapes, which manifest and convey the torment of the scenes (and that of the painter); or the drip effects in Jackson Pollock’s action paintings, which likewise manifest and convey the energy of the creation process; or the careful, visible brushwork of the leaves and blades of grass in Pre-Raphaelite art or in the art of the Yangzhou painters of the early Qing Dynasty; or the brush-strokes in Chinese and Japanese calligraphy.   These effects are either invisible or can barely be seen in printed reproductions.  It is also worth noting that Chinese art has, for hundreds of years, supported “factory production” of 3-D paintings, using lesser-skilled artists to make approved copies of paintings by famous artists, usually under the direct, personal supervision of the famous artist him or herself; that these copies are purchased rather than printed reproductions indicates that the 3-D object has qualities perceived to be lacking in any 2-D print.

Third, let me say as a former statistician, that it seems to be easy for people familiar with Andrei Kolmogorov’s theory of complexity to imagine they have represented faithfully some object, when all they have captured is its surface form (its syntax).   As I have argued before, the canonical example used in discussions of algorithmic complexity is Kazimir Malevich’s painting Black Square, which is alleged to be easy to reproduce with an algorithm such as: 

Paint a pixel of black in each pixel throughout the square.

At best what this algorithm generates is a copy not of the 3-dimensional painting itself, but of a 2-dimensional projection of it.  But even were it to recreate the 3-D object, such an algorithm ignores the meaning of the painting and the historical context of its creation – in linguistic terms, its semantics (or its use-context-independent meaning) and its pragmatics (its use-context-dependent meaning).      Both these aspects are immensely important to understanding and appreciating the work, and for explaining why it appeared when it did and not before, and understanding its reception and influence.  As I noted before, one can just about imagine the 18th-century Welsh  landscape painter Thomas Jones eventually creating something similar to Black Square, since he painted contemplative, Zen-like depictions of seemingly-featureless Neapolitan walls (such as A Wall in Naples, pictured above), but no other artist before Malevich.

How is this relevant?  Well, once you’ve seen and admired Malevich’s painting, no printed reproduction would satisfy you for an instant. 

Finally, paintings – even when traditional, representational art – are best understood, not as representations of objects or scenes or feelings or indeed of anything at all, but as attempts at solutions to problems in painting.   Most solutions fail, so the artist abandons that attempt, and tries again.  In the meantime, the abandoned partial solution may provide pleasure and joy (or other responses) to those who view it, and to those who seek to emulate the methods of its painting which a careful study of it may disclose.

FOOTNOTE:  The post title is a reference to an Ambitious Lovers song.

The evocative video uses footage from Ilya Khrjanovsky’s film 4, and is available here.

Some time back, I wrote about the painting of spirit-dreamtime maps by Australian aboriginal communities as proof of their relationship to specific places:  Only people with traditional rights to the specific place would have the necessary dreamtime knowledge needed to make the painting, an argument whose compelling force has been recognized by Australian courts.  These paintings are a form of map, showing (some of) the spirit relationships of the specific place.  The argument they make is a very interesting one, along the lines of: 

What I am saying is true, by virtue of the mere fact that I am saying it, since only someone having the truth would be able to make such an utterance (ie, the painting).

Another example of this type of argument is given by Rory Stewart, in his account of his walk across Afghanistan.   Stewart does not carry a paper map of the country he is walking through, lest he be thought a foreign spy (p. 211).   Instead, he learns and memorizes a list of the villages and their headmen, in the order he plans to walk through them.  Like the aboriginal dreamtime paintings, mere knowledge of this list provides proof of his right to be in the area.  Like the paintings, the list is a type of map of the territory, a different way of knowing.  And also like the paintings, possession of this knowledge leads others, when they learn of the possession, to act differently towards the possessor.  Here’s Stewart on his map (p. 213):

It was less accurate the further you were from the speaker’s home . . .  But I was able to add details from villages along the way, till I could chant the stages from memory.

Day one:  Commandant Maududi in Badgah.  Day two:  Abdul Rauf Ghafuri in Daulatyar.  Day three:  Bushire Khan in Sang-izard.  Day four:  Mir Ali Hussein Beg of Katlish.  Day five: Haji Nasir-i-Yazdani Beg of Qala-eNau.  Day six:  Seyyed Kerbalahi of Siar Chisme . . .

I recited and followed this song-of-the-places-in-between as a map.  I chanted it even after I had left the villages, using the list as credentials.  Almost everyone recognized the names, even from a hundred kilometres away.  Being able to chant it made me half belong:  it reassured hosts who were not sure whether to take me in and it suggested to anyone who thought of attacking me that I was linked to powerful names. (page 213) 

Because AI is (or should be) about ways of knowing and doing in the world, it therefore has close links to the social sciences, particularly anthropology, and to the humanities.

References:

Seymour Papert [1988]: One AI or Many? Daedalus, 117 (1) (Winter 1988):  1-14.

Rory Stewart [2004]: The Places in Between. London, UK:  Picador, pp. 211-214.

Technorati Tags: Seymour Papert, Artificial Intelligence, dreamtime, Rory Stewart