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Of serpent-bites in logic

Saturday, August 31st, 2013

[ by Charles Cameron — continuing my series on the “serpent bites tail” reflexive form (1, 2, 3, 4) in which analytic gems and other insights may often be easily discovered or succinctly expressed — read this post fast for fun, or reflectively (!!) for the ripples ]
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I’m going to lead off with this tweet, which seems very timely considering the news this last week or so about Syria…

I thought this was another quite beautiful example of “serpent bites its own tail” phrasing — timely too — uttered by JM Berger in summarizing his Loopcast with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on the current status of Al-Qaeda, highly recommended, BTW:

And if you want to know about Hezbollah and its global reach, this one refers to the book you need…

**

Okay, having given pride of place to those three, I’d like to catch those of you who are interested up on an entire series of self-referencing tweets I’ve run across since I last posted. I’m really collecting these things because I’d like, one of these days, to do a thorough analysis of what they teach us about our modes of thought, and how we can apply that to pattern-recognition in our own readings, and creative insight in our writings and analytic output… In the meantime, don’t feel obliged to read every last one, just dip in as you feel inclined — think of this as a reference section, okay? Take what you need and leave the rest.

Here’s one that uses the Escher‘s hand draws hand format:

And here’s a pair that needs to stay together:

Continuing… I might as well give you a cluster from Teju Cole, since he’s a master…

Okay, here’s another one with timely reference, this time to the whole NSA business:

Really, this is just such a rich vein of humor and insight:

Let’s go to another wordsmith — they’re often good at this stuff:

Two from philosopher Allen Stairs:

One from quasi-Einstein, via the very bright (non-quasi) Seb Paquet:

**

I’ll close with an example from the “all is nothing” category, this one from Peter J Munson:

Posted in al qaida, Charles Cameron, Creepy-state, daveed gartenstein-ross, economics, guantanamo, hezbollah, IC, intelligence, JM Berger, philosophy, syria, twitter, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Big Pharaoh: Levels of complexity in presentation

Thursday, August 29th, 2013

[ by Charles Cameron — Syria, yes, but with a focus on networks, tensions, mapping, and understanding ]
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Binary logic is a poor basis for foreign policy, as Tukhachevskii said on Small Wars Council’s Syria under Bashir Assad: crumbling now? thread, pointing us to the work of The Big Pharaoh. Here are two of the Big Pharaoh’s recent (before Obama‘s “undecided” speech) tweets:

Each of those tweets is non-linear in its own way, but via its implications — we “complete the loop” by knowing that the “mass murderer” is the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad and the “cannibal” is the Syrian rebel, Abu Sakkar, and that Al-Qaeda typically cries “allahu Akbar” after killing Americans, while Americans typically rejoice after killing Al-Qaeda operatives. So these two tweets are already non-linear, but not as complex as what comes next>

**

The Big Pharaoh also put this diagram on his blog, and Max Fisher picked it up and blogged it at the Washington Post as The Middle East, explained in one (sort of terrifying) chart:

I’d have some questions here, of course — one about the directionality of the arrows, which only seem to go in one direction — okay for the “supports” and “has nu clue” arrows, perhaps, but surely the “haters” would mostly be two-way, with AQ hating US as well as US hating AQ? There’s no mention of Jordan, I might ask about that… And there are no arrows at all between Lebanese Shias and Lebanese Sunnis — hunh?

**

What really intrigues me here, though, is that while this chart with fifteen “nodes” or players captures many more “edges” or connections between them than either or even both of the two tweets above, the tweets evoke a more richly human “feel” for the connections they reference, by drawing on human memories of the various parties and their actions.

Thus on the face of it, the diagram is the more complex representation, but when taken into human perception and understanding, the tweets offer a more immediuate and visceral sense of their respective situations.

And scaled down and in broad strokes, that’s the difference between “big data” analytic tools on the one hand, and HipBone-Sembl approach to mapping on the other. A HipBone-Sembl board may offer you two, or six, ten, maybe even a dozen nodes, but it fills them with rich anecdotal associations, both intellectual and emotional — a very different approach from — and one that I feel is complementary to — a big data search for a needle in a global needlestack…

**

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point you to Kerwin Datu‘s A network analysis approach to the Syrian dilemma on the Global Urbanist blog. He begins:

A chart by The Big Pharaoh doing the rounds of social media shows just how much of a tangled mess the Middle East is. But if we tease it apart, we see that the region is fairly neatly divided into two camps; it’s just that one of those camps is divided amongst itself. Deciding which of these internal divisions are fundamental to the peace and which are distractions in the short term may make the diplomatic options very clear.

and goes on from there, offering a series of network graphs of which is the fourth:

from which he draws the following observation:

What can we do from this position? If the US decides to pursue a purely military route to remove Assad from power, it will incur the ire of Russia, Iran and Lebanese Shias, but it can do so with a broad base of support including the Syrian rebels themselves, Israel, Qatar, Turkey, Lebanese Sunnis, and even Al Qaeda. However if it chooses a diplomatic route to curry support to remove Assad it must isolate him in the above graph by making an ally out of Russia and/or Iran (assuming that making an ally out of Lebanese Shias would have little impact). Russia doesn’t hate the US but it does hate the Syrian rebels, making it an unpromising ally against Assad. Iran hates the Syrian rebels and the US hates Iran, but the Al Qaeda is a thorn in both their sides, making it a potential though unlikely source of cooperation.

Really, you and I should read the whole piece, and draw our own conclusions.

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Or lack thereof. I’ll give the last tweet to Teju Cole, who articulates my own thoughts, too:

Posted in blogosphere, Charles Cameron, complex systems, complexity, egypt, Lebanon, maps of war, model, simulation, syria, twitter, Uncategorized, washington post | Comments Off on Big Pharaoh: Levels of complexity in presentation

Twitter mixology

Friday, August 23rd, 2013

[ by Charles Cameron — bemused by all you young people ]
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Kim Kierkegaardashian is exactly the right amount of Kardashian for me to allow into my life. It’s a twitterstream consisting entirely of combination authentic Kardashian soundbites and Kierkegaard quotes, and it’s usually hilarious.

JM Berger‘s tweet, by contrast, sets out one version of an aesthetic principle which seems to underlie much of today’s culture: mixing pop-reference in with serious culture, for serio-popular effect.

Bashar al-Assad‘s supporters do this, aligning their man with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Salafi jihadists likewise, borrowing footage from the Lord of the Rings. Dan Drezner does it — using zombies to discuss international politics — and wins an Association of American Publishers honorable mention for the 2011 PROSE Award in Government & Politics. Kim Kierkegaardashian does nothing else…

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Has this sort of hi-lo-brow mixing always happened?

L’homme armé was a French pop song from the 14th or 15th century, its melody used as the basis for Masses by composers from Dufay and Okeghem to Palestrina — and thence to Peter Maxwell Davies in our own times:

The man, the man, the armed man,
The armed man
The armed man should be feared, should be feared.
Everywhere it has been proclaimed
That each man shall arm himself
With a coat of iron mail.

It must be noted that some believe the “armed man” in question is the Archangel Michael. His fight, unlike Kierkegaardashian’s, is neither with God nor man, but directly with the Devil.

**

DoubleQuotes Sources:

  • Kim Kierkegaardashian
  • JM Berger

    • Posted in 15th century, 20th century, Charles Cameron, christianity, Doublequotes, france, JM Berger, music, Musings, Religion, Specs, twitter, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

    Zeitgeist?

    Tuesday, August 20th, 2013

    [ by Charles Cameron — the weather of the world? — three otherwise unrelated tweets and a December 2013 prediction ]
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    Sources:

  • JM Berger
  • El Cid
  • Teju Cole

    • **

    Meanwhile, some people are going whole hog:

    Source:

  • Sovereign Society

    • Posted in Charles Cameron, economics, prediction, question, twitter, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

    One-eyed: or suspecting Ali Gharib might just be the Dajjal…

    Saturday, August 3rd, 2013

    [ Charles Cameron — always on the lookout for signs of the dajjal — even in the New York Times ]
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    Seriously, WTF?

    Are you Presbyterian?

    **

    I probably wouldn’t have take much notice of Ali Gharib’s tweet (upper panel, above) if I hadn’t just wandered off after reading a tweet from Habib Zahori:

    to find out who he was, and run across his NYT piece, The Insidious Language of War, which looked interesting enough that I read it — leading me to the headlights quote (lower panel, above).

    Okay, two one-eyed remarks in five minutes got me thinking…

    **

    But as you may know, by now my mind is fully stocked with what Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria calls the “hooks and eyes of memory” — so a broken headlight in Kabul and mention of the Mullah’s missing eye brought me naturally to the celebrated image of Mullah Omar (below, upper panel)

    and thence (lower panel) to the Dajjal — Islam’s version of the Antichrist.

    **

    Thus, a sort of Six degrees of Kevin Bacon game brought me from a Daily Beast blogger via broken headlights to the Dajjal in three quick hops — and the result is what one might term a false positive…

    It was fun while it lasted — I just wonder how many times NYPD officers ask drivers “Are you Amish?” Maybe a horse and buggy on Fifth Avenue would somewhat justify so inquisitive an inquiry.

    **

    Sources:

  • Ali Gharib
  • Habib Zahori
  • Mullah Omar
  • Dajjal

    • Posted in Charles Cameron, christianity, Doublequotes, Islam, Mahdist, media, new york times, Taliban, twitter, Uncategorized | Comments Off on One-eyed: or suspecting Ali Gharib might just be the Dajjal…

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