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The Row Boat

"Had we but world enough, and time..." *

S T E N O G R A P H O R U S

1/31/2006 08:53:08

Here's a pretty nonsense draft I came up with related to a theater piece of some friends.

P R O S P E C T U S S T E N O G R A P H O R U S

FIRST SENSATIONS

My own experience with computer programming is one of the key mental
foundations for the sensation I have that circumstantial evolution
free of "outside" interference occurs or can occur or must have
occured. In computers we see the materialist puzzle clearly and
outright, and in the short, intelligible history of their development
and use in certain fields we may see something like a microcosm for
the evolutionary process. Whether or not it matters that this process
seems to have been guided by intelligent beings (i.e. human beings,
engineers) may actually not be relevant for why this is so. This
question is up for debate; computers may be either the best proof for
intelligent design or the best refutation possible, and perhaps at
once. It may even be that they suggest to us a middle position: that
the two interpretations are in fact not mutually exclusive and can
inhabit the same space.

In the computer, the phenomenon of abstraction is phenomenonally
clear. The thing is on the one hand a system of material,
unintelligible processes that are managed by a designed system,
i.e. the hardware. To even the most skilled engineer, the sequences of
switches, gates, and operations that occur to perform a simple
function on, say, a word processor, would not themselves be
meaningful. On the other, it is an interactive, highly intelligible
device that people are capable of engaging with sometimes at as high a
level as they might with other human beings. To an extent, computers
can be made to simulate human behavior or act in other, utterly
unhuman ways that nonetheless may to us feel "alive." That such an
incredible leap between the unintelligible and intelligible can occur
in a single machine, a leap people have designed but cannot exactly
comprehend because of its complexity, is a first indication that one
might question two common assumptions that cloud all sorts of
self-understanding questions we have in the universe:

1. Consciousness (or the souls of people, so to speak) cannot have
its basis in merely material stuff

2. Designed things are intelligible, undesigned things are not
(period)

When one builds a computer program of any significant size, there is
nearly always a Frankenstein moment. That is to say, the creation
starts to feel like it is taking on a life on its own. To me, this
comes quite easily, likely because my memory is poor and I forget
quickly the code I have already written. One begins often, after
drawing up some sort of plan, by building small, atomic modules.
After a while, one turns to the larger modules, stringing together
smaller ones. This pattern can even go in reverse, depending on one's
habits. But then, somewhere along the way, the program starts working.
The last steps here feel like the simplest; one is simply connecting
all the little ends that have already been created and which by this
time one takes for granted. With a single stroke or instruction, the
programmer orchestrates what may be thousands of lines of code this
way or that. The process of creation feels deceptively simple at the
end, at the stage that turns lifelessness to life, so easy is it to
forget all that had to occur to make these final steps
possible. Incredible, massive complexity of hours of effort appears to
translate into very simple steps.

Finally, when using a program I have written, I encounter a process of
discovering that it is more than the sum of what I planned or imagined
it to be. It behaves in unexpected ways. It does things I didn't have
in mind when I invented it. I have designed opponents in board games
that I could not beat. Furthermore I find that I am never able to use
it quite so freely as my friends can use it. They are better at
finding mistakes in my design, as well as interesting ways to use
it. Subconsciously I don't even think to do the things that might
cause errors or do wonderful things I never planned it for; my
knowledge of the architecture, or what I think I know, prevents me
from discovering the thing for what it truly is.

The essence and purpose of machines of all kinds is to do something
the creator alone could not do. We build a mechanical arm by making
its parts, assembling them, and using it for a purpose but it has a
strength in doing these things that is foreign to what we
are. Interestingly, we often have a great deal of trouble inventing
machines that do things we can do! To say that this universe is
designed in any sense that people design things might lead us to
suspect:

1. The designed does something that the designer could not do alone

2. Parts of the designed are intelligible to the designer while others
may not be

These are not conclusions but lemmas. They suggest that the lines
between design and evolution may not be as clear as they are often
described as being.

EVOLUTION AND LANGUAGE

Language, which itself must be an evolutionary construct, is both a
peculiarity to human beings and our most natural medium of
intelligibility. Roughly, the criteria for clarity in the discourse of
human societies is linguistic, and as a result, our ability to
understand ourselves as evolutionary beings (and also as spiritual
beings) must occur in these terms. One need look no further than the
linguistic medium of law in any sophistocated society. Because of
this, the vague sensations I have tried to outline with reference to
the computer and my experience with it are in this sense not enough,
lacking as they are in precise language, definitive rather than
descriptive. Nobody will take these as a reliable demonstration, at
least until they have the sensations themselves, which indeed can form
the shared basis of a community. But the linguistic community that we
so often are demands a linguistic demonstration: an article or a
decree or a word or somesuch.

In so doing we are riding on a moving horse and shooting at a moving
target. Language itself is changing. The modern epiphany of historical
linguistics, which discovered and systematized links between living
and dead languages, shows that, as a largely-independent sub-function
of biology, some kind of evolution occurs within and among linguistic
systems. As in biology, also, it is impossible, or at least often
unproductive and futile, to challenge this evolution one way or another
by conscious intervention or decisions about how one language might be
superior to another or one a degredation of another. In fact natural
language largely defies conscious adjustment to any considerable extent
altogether; to begin with it not the product of calculating adults
but young children, whose minds are especially adept at creating
communicable, fluent grammars. The languages they build unconsciously
are always far more usable than any academic invention of adult minds.

In terms of aesthetics, which as artists will finally be our goal,
evolution of all kinds has a very specific sense of the beautiful, and
that is precisely the existent. What is is beautiful and what is not
has no particular reason to go on existing. This is an incredibly
stark aesthetic, one that has no permanent regard for its tongues or
creatures. Obviously for ourselves we must reject it. Such is our
perogative; art has always been a dialog with the values of nature, an
the assumption of them. As human beings we must regard what is good
for human beings and the divine spark that makes each person
valuable. We miss the dodo bird for its curiosity while evolution does
not. Linguistically, we have great cause to preserve knowledge of the
languages of antiquity or the English of Shakespeare because of the
treasures they carry. But the process of language itself, the
mechanism in us that marvelously allows us to communicate, has no
regard for such things instrinsically. It rejoices in our abberations
and dialects and clumsy diversity.

Evolution will forgive us this because, to its grand scale, this
spiritual peculiarity of ours is simply part of our species' matrix.

The aesthetics of evolution are important to know in their cold
austerity because they assure us of the importance of our
disagreements with it. When we compare ourselves in this way to the
merely material world it becomes clear that human life must have a
higher spiritual calling than this. Nevertheless, the material is our
reality and it does the soul good to have aesthetic sympathy with it.
This is the goal of the art we are trying to make, the art of
conversation with the meaninglessness we are made of..

Finally, Christian theology creates a powerful connection between
language and creation. Evoking Genesis, the gospel of St. John begins
by declaring that "In the beginning was the Word [Greek "Logos," who
is later revealed to be a person, i.e. Christ, messiah and redeemer]."
The Word is an instrument of creation. Intelligent design theorist
William Dembski understands John's Word essentially to be the
information content of life, imprinted at the moment of creation and
discoverable in the mundane world, and indeed unobtainable by mere
material evolution. In theology, language preceded even human beings
to speak it. The scriptural theology of many creationists,
furthermore, amplifies the urgency of language. For them, the words of
holy writ are even more reliable than a theory that certain material
observations seem to corroborate. Truth, in this way as well, is
linguistic before it is extant: the opposite of the evolutionary
aesthetic.

IMITATING EVOLUTION

Beginning in the 1960s, though especially after the 1980s, engineers
and theorists discovered that certain optimization problems could far
and away be best solved simply by imitating the selective process of
biological evolution. These programs are called genetic algorithms.
Nearly always, they are executed on a computer. Because of their
tremendous calculating speed when compared to humans, computers are
well-suited to the vast time scales that an evolutionary process
depends on be simulated. For this reason also, working with a computer
can contribute to the development of an evolutionary intuition.

Though they can take a number of different forms in implementation,
all such programs share a few common characteristics, each of which
has direct correlates in the Darwinian scheme. There is a set starting
condition, usually of randomly-generated possible solutions. Each
solution is then tested by common criteria, and the best performing
ones are given priority in the ensuing process of reproduction through
recombination, which produces the next generation of possible
solutions. Finally, a small element of mutation (perhaps at a rate of
around 1%) is introduced in order to ensure sufficient diversity of
specimens without upsetting the stability of successful traits.
This process repeats until a satisfying result is found.

set initial population
repeat-loop:
evaluate individuals' fitness
reproduce by crossing best individuals
apply rare mutation

For program implementation itself, the genetic algorithm theorists
have come up with a technical vocabulary that has close correlates to
biology. The experience is, the closer we imitate the actual function
of evolution as best we understand it, the more effective the
algorithm will be.

In one important respect, however, the genetic algorithm of the
engineers differs from the biological model: in its criteria for
evaluation of members of the population. Biology is concerned only
with the circumstance of life or death, and those creatures who
survive the conditions they live in long enough to reproduce are
deemed successful. Engineers, though, may tailor their criteria
freely, depending on what the program is supposed to be used
for. Perhaps they are looking for an optimized airframe contour or a
promising business plan. This decision makes all the diference in
consequence, though perhaps not in kind.

MONKEYS ON TYPEWRITERS?

In Richard Dawkins' sometimes-infamous book The Blind Watchmaker, he
employs a simple computer algorithm to help explain how complex
patterns can emerge in nature from essentially random processes. The
key is to realize that in evolutionary mechanisms (i.e. DNA), progress
is maintained. Stasis is as important as random mutation! A similar
demonstration was also devised independently by Richard Hardison
around the same time. Both begin with the old thought-experiment
setting of a room full of monkeys clacking away on typewriters the way
their money-minds see fit for them. Will any of the monkeys just
happen to produce the complete works of Shakespeare? Or, rather more
modestly, even a single sentence from Hamlet?

Dawkins picks the sentence, "Methinks it is like a weasel." This in
itself has a very, very small chance of being typed at random anytime
soon. But then, following evolutionary theory, he alters the
conditions somewhat from total randomness to preserve
success. Whenever the monkey lands on a correct letter, it remembers
that and makes sure to do so again the next time around. By this
method, before too long (around a few hundred attempts), even the
least literary of the monkeys has composed a sentence of Shakespeare.

Those who use the monkey program are careful to point out that it is
not meant to demonstrate the whole of biological evolution, only the
way in which retained progress can make randomness a powerful creative
mechanism. Nevertheless, when I first read about it in a book that
argues for evolution as a self-sufficient maker of apparent design I
wondered, Where does the comparison sentence come from? In this
microcosm of a piece of the evolutionary process, a variant on the
genetic algorithm concept applied to language, the effect of
Shakespeare's words is all-important: they are both the telos and the
working constraint. In isolation, it seems to me, this little program
could serve an argument for supernatural intelligent design (with the
Bard as blueprinter) as well as it could for the creative power of
simple stochastic processes.

THE STENOGRAPHER PROGRAM

Similarly, in the stenographer program, I propose to draw a link
between the two evolutionary machines I have identified: computers and
language. For seventy years, the courtroom has been the dominant
political and dramatic setting for debates between evolution and
religion, beginning with the Scopes trial in 1925. Any attempt to
depict evolution as Americans imagine it has much to gain by drawing
from this fertile resource.

Inspired by my own research that lead me to read the exciting court
transcripts from the recent Dover trial in Pennsylvania, I have become
fascinated by the character of the court reporter, the stenographer.
She is always present but never recognized, and her job is terribly
important. She is nearly always a her, amidst a drama that usually
consists entirely of white men. While the men are creatures of will in
the trial, she is a force of nature, and does her job best when she is
unobstrusive and unnoticed. Combining her with the character of the
monkey typist from Dawkins' demonstration, it may be appropriate to
dress her up in a monkey suit.

The program I propose in this long-winded prospectus is essentially
her word processor, broadcast on a screen over the stage. It would
have the simple and rustic appearance of an old DOS or UNIX
workstation, free of fancy fonts or character sets. The audience would
see the words appear as the court reporter writes. They would be able
to compare the action on stage with what is being recorded; history in
the making. Meanwhile, as I imagine it, the program would engage in a
bit of mischief, perhaps of a kind inspired by the Dawkins program.
Some evolutionary process would begin to occur to the text, to the
record. Perhaps a little bit of mutation. Perhaps a message would come
out of the noise, as did the line from Hamlet, though this one might
reveal a Designer who is truly orchestrating all these events. "I am
the Alpha and the Omega," it could gradually say, quoting from
scripture. Alternatively we could delve more into the genetic
algorithm concept, which would be very powerful. The difficulty as I
see it is the requirement of optimization: how can the fitness of
language be evaluated, especially by a computer? How can words
produce offspring? With these questions answered, the program would
become quite interesting.

It is worth noting a difficulty; stenographers do not use conventional
word processors or anything that works like one. When they type, they
often use a contraption called a stenotype machine, which has a
special 22-letter keyboard. Words are entered in "chords," with more
than one key pressed at once, and entered in a phonetic and often
private freehand that may not be quite comprehensible to the untrained
reader. Using such a thing takes months of training and
practice. Whether the program should incorporate elements from this
interesting machine is up for discussion as well. On the one hand it
could be a distraction for the audience; on the other it could lead to
a far more interesting source of data for a genetic algorithm.

In any event, the stenographer program could have any number of
signifigances. Primarily I see it as a literal illustration of the
juxtaposed forces at work: language and the material, craftsmanship
and nature, man and woman, control and mutation, God and the
absolutely mundane.

THE POSSIBILITY OF CONVERGENCE

The reformulation of fundamentalist creationism in America as the
intelligent design movement, while politically complicating the
situation quite a lot, is sufficiently vague as to be at certain
levels humanly synomynous with material evolution. I say this about
the language it offers more than its scientific content. My trust in
God's creation tends to have no need for him to break his own rules,
for they are him intimately. Our experience tends to tell us that
materialism is a good policy most of the time, though perhaps mediated
by the language and ritual of religion. Let us trust our experience.
But the vocabulary of the design movement, with terms like irreducible
and specified complexity have some poetic as well as theological
value. It is in these fields of poetics and theology, and drama as
well, that design and evolution, or meaning and meaninglessness, can
be expressed truthfully, as two sides of a common existence.

Drama is especially important, I would conclude, because the language
of designer and designed implies a dialogic relationship, just like
that between the programmer and the program. Often this relationship
is clouded, rather than clarified by the designer's knowledge of the
plan, and this suggestion has important theological
signifigance. Could God's having created us mean that he is blind to
certain aspects of our being?

In this dialog, the language of design, the logos (plan and
interpretation), is just as important as evolution (the material
mechanism). That language itself evolves means that the whole thing
should be treated aesthetically, in the realm where language catapults
the conversation beyond language. The stenographer program, which
begins with elements of both language and evolution and ends with the
aesthetic, is meant to aid in this.

Evolution is satisfied with biological life, the simple fact that we
are alive, no matter in what condition. Only when we die, especially
without offspring, do we fail according to it. But human experience
generally has discovered that merely living is not enough and that
living must actually be good, even living without reproduction. The
practice of celibacy in religious traditions all over the world
certainly spells out an ancient defiance. Evolution alone provides no
answers to the meaning of what life feels like to human beings unless
we thoroughly adopt its aesthetic. Through history and now, people
have sought salvation in divinty with the assurance that only it is
stronger than death and capable of dignity in life. Such things may
even be a trick of evolution on our poor souls, but nevertheless these
souls are ours. We cannot transcend ourselves as materially designed
but only as designers.

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