I wish people would start talking about idea pollution. Between religions, vested interests, various ideologies, and plain failing education systems, the world is full of stupid ideas. Why does it take a mathematician to write "if a lot of people make a small change, the overall outcome will be a small change" ? (he was arguing against the usual green narrative about how we can individually make a difference). I rarely use the word "stupid" but it seems there is a long way to go towards people learning how to think about problems.
Various movements have taken what should be a basic technical problem solving exercise and thought they could improve on that process by turning it into a moralistic social behavioural modification project (thus injecting their own preconceived moralisms into it). This is like the Taliban deciding the way to feed people and improve their standard of living is to drive for a return to the sayings of a political ideology from a thousand years ago. Then when it doesn't work as expected their answer is to shoot some more people.
His point was that China can do it faster cheaper and more intelligently, assuming they have a good understanding of the tech. Here in Europe, today's news is The Guardian complaining about the visual pollution of wind farms, and the BBC reporting about the Energy Minister and allegations about bribes from renewable energy companies.
It plays on the uncertainty that nobody can predict how far it will spread. If we all believed it was just a couple of guys then it can be dismissed as just another deranged murder. But if we are told by the killers themselves, we are fighting for Muslim brothers, and we are getting revenge and tomorrow it could be you, then that plants the fear. Whether we subscribe to it is another matter. But it plants the seed: you can try to ignore us, but how do you know there aren't going to be hundreds like us soon?
In a sense they are doing what we're all being told not to do -- brand a whole religion, accuse a whole religion of potential violence. But that's their stated goal, to make you think that they are just the start of a billion Muslims saying "enough is enough" and all fighting for their brothers and sisters.
People saying, "oh no don't brand a whole religion" are not really helping, because that was already done by the "terrorists", and it looks like trying to play down the act whilst not stopping further such acts. Rather than defend Islam, it would be more interesting to see people restate their allegiance to the UK, to Europe, to America, to the Western way of life, heck to Tellytubbies and Benny Hill reruns, anything that would feel British, rather than defending the thing the "terrorists" were defending.
I think the worst descriptions of M. I've read are about the Arab culture of honour and war [1] and it is interesting that most trouble we hear about is in the Arab world, whilst the biggest Muslin country is actually Indonesia. Perhaps it is just the result of desert life. To quote a terrible line, "I hate sand".
Interestingly there was a study that said the honour code (you should personally retaliate against people) is present in USA and increases from North to South -- the further South you go, the more people believe in honour -- and the further South you go, the more shootings you encounter.
Actually by the time you reach Canada in the other direction, Americans are as nice as Canadians. And shoot people as little as Canadians.
[1] The fact that their founder was a tribal warrior, and their religion the version 3 (obsoleting Judaism v1 and Christianity v2) make the sand-culture-religion-fanaticism all the more tricky to untangle. Frankly I don't suppose it can be disentangled, and too much hate speech by preachers goes unchecked.
Yes true, but why does a guy identify as Muslim in one country and claim to be brother to an entirely different part of the world? The non-Muslim is seen as worse than the "we-didn't-quite-get-the-same-memo-about-who-was-in-charge-after-the-prophet" disagreement.
But that's where I don't understand. Why do Muslims feel solidarity with all the world's Muslims? My understanding of secular modern life is, you don't identify with a religion or race or nationalism, you transcend that for identity with a humanistic world citizenry.
Then within that you might think, gee those Quakers have a really nice practice around this or that, and those French have a really nice soup dish, and those Chinese have a really nice idea about respect for elders, and those Arabs have a really sweet sense of hospitality, and so on. But you don't brand yourself "X" and take the idea of X so seriously that you go off like a nutter in defence of X.
Personally I'm not sure, but I was struck by Bernard Lewis' description that in Islam the moderate school said you have to reinterpret the Koran and Hadiths for moderns times, but the other school said, no, it doesn't matter how clever your interpretation is, if the other guys have more power then they can just kill you, so all that really matters is power, and actually the book wasn't written in an older period, thus "needing reinterpretation", it is actually "unwritten" and always exists as the true mind of Allah, so don't question it.
So anyway, the latter group won. That was a thousand years ago.
I was wondering about Sam Harris' argument in The End of Faith, basically that we have to go beyond irrationality if we're to survive, and that amongst all the world's faiths, Islam is at present the "worst" for various reasons -- there is no separation of Church and State, Islam is seen as a "complete system" (like communism or capitalism or whatever, ie. political power) and so on. One point he made as I recall, was that all the faiths have been weakened by modern secularism, and that's a good thing, but let's not forget they were weakened into being more peaceful. You can find all sorts of barbaric stuff in religions, although some histories were perhaps a bit more barbaric than others. The Grand Ayatollah Khomeini said that the West lies about Jesus saying "turn the other cheek" because, as the Ayatollah says, no true Prophet would ever be so stupid as to say such a stupid thing. Also Islam sees itself as inheriting the real truth, a truth that the Jews allowed to corrupt, and that the Christians allowed to corrupt, so the Islamic thing is to not allow it to be corrupted ie. don't modernise no matter what, remain pure. So there are variations and differences, and Harris thinks Islam is currently the worst offender, and the "peace" is actually only peace if you join the religion, be one of them, as it is monotheistic, One True God, no other way, only one right way, you're either with us or against us. The modern secular thing is, nobody has the real truth, let's enquire together and find stuff out. But in some Islamic schools, that is blasphemy. So it is complex. But how to respond when some "sick by Western standards" individuals gravitate towards the more murderous parts of certain ideologies? I guess the secular thing is to downplay religious intolerance and try to reaffirm, look, WE ALL WANT TO BE PEACEFUL. No to religious intolerance, no to religious hatred, no to hate. So called "terrorist" acts (are soldiers just a little more worried now when they walk out the gate? should they be? is that the intended effect? well, yeah) are there to incite hatred. People like that WANT to stir up hatred. And that's why we try to ignore them. But whether that will work in the long term, that's hard to see.
What's with the charts that we are doing even better than his best and most optimistic case scenario? There seems to be a lot of misinformation about what he predicted. What's your source?
Why do violent crime rates go up or down? Social "sciences" can make up all the theories they like, but it just isn't known. So let USA carry on and UK and Canada and Switzerland carry on as they are. We wouldn't know what effect the change has, if any, and the people already know the situation as a fact of life.
Gun ownership seems to get spun as a sort of moral argument that people should trust the state to protect them, or spun that people should be responsible for their own protection. There's perhaps more people with strong opinions either way on that, than have ever had to defend themselves in real life, thankfully.
"Every wind farm is a gas plant" -- said at an energy conference.
Our civilisation's huge infrastructure means we have big this and big that controlling our lives. Big oil is big energy is big gas and big wind. Those windfarms cost billions and the gas costs big money too. We have knowledge about the environment but the politics of who wins the contract is still there. All we can hope for is a reduction in corruption. That's the "ecology" problem. Doesn't matter if a scientist somewhere figures a well tested fact -- vested interests everywhere are competing and spinning the message. There is no more safety from corruption voting to the left or to the right. There are messages and narratives which appeal to the left, and different narratives which appeal to the right -- both are spin. Both are driven by vested interests competing for money and power.
Until everyone's integrity is raised, we won't make any sudden leaps in protecting the environment. We will continue to slowly improve, but it is slow, on the back of occasional tech developments. The Women's Suffragettes started in the most developed nations in like 1897 and over a hundred years later we still don't have equality (and just forget the developing world). The left villifying the right and the right villifying the left show neither side has any credible integrity.
I gather "deal with us or deal with the Taliban" is a tactic ––but their aims may be quite similar.
And at some point is gets hard to tell the difference. Ordinary folk write comments like, "we don't want Communism, and we don't want Capitalism, we want Islam."
It is the path of renunciation and purity — everything will work so much better if everyone just submitted to the proper and good system, namely Islam.
The West also had a thousand years or more of that sort of strive for purity — but in the end it largely dawned upon us that you can't crush the impure stuff out of existence —people need to think for themselves how to deal with the messy stuff in life, like sex and relationships and the meaning of life.
Islam is a political system —there is no separation of Church and State. It also considers itself the best and purest version 3, where Christianity was v2 and Judaism v1. Version 3 seeks to "correct" all the mistakes (corruptions) made by versions 1 and 2.
Versions 1 and 2 failed to pursue purity far enough.
Maybe a picture is, user awareness is the very last line of defence. If the terrorist is on the plane and armed, the passengers are the last line. But it was the failure of everything before that point that's to blame. Gee we really should increase passenger awareness of how to spot terrorists -- he has a big beard, no wait he doesn't have a beard, no wait he's dressed ordinary but is reaching into his bag, no wait he's taking off his shoe, no wait he's actually a she and young, etc.
We all know there are "bad guys" out there. And we can alert people about specific attacks occurring today. "A man in a blue T-shirt is walking around and police say he has a record and probably looking to steal equipment". People will listen to that. But indeed, general vague "you should be security trained" is not much use, it seems; you have to tell people exactly what they can and can't do and that list is too long and complicated and keep growing.
Glossy fine print magazines are horrible on anything less than a 9.7" retina display. The 10" is for the sofa. The smaller tablets are for everywhere else, so they have more usage scenarios. But I wouldn't give up the 10" form, as it is well suited to the sofa.
Perhaps it was also a better size to kickstart the market. Obviously not a phone, nor a netbook, nor a laptop.
Islam considers itself the updated purified version of Christianity. ie. God gave the truth to the Jews, but they corrupted it, so then God gave the truth to the Christians, but they corrupted it, so Islam is today the True version, and last thing they want is for it to be diluted in any way.
Yes, and there's an old joke where Moses meets Adam and Moses asks, "hey are you the Adam that ate the apple?" and Adam in his defence says, "yes but you know it was written that I would." The Koran is "unwritten" ie. it was not created at a point in time (opening it to the critique that it reflected the times and needs reinterpreting for today's world), instead it is "unwritten" -- it is and always is the mind of god, so it is always right. Any parts that don't make sense don't bear questioning.
The reason it is so unreasonable is that they had a big debate about it and one side said, we can demonstrate that your ideas are wrong, and the other side said, yes but being right makes no difference if we can just kill you, therefore POWER is the only thing which matters.
So anyway, they had that debate 1000 years ago, when they were wondering about modernising, and the POWER side won.
The "open society" argument is that democracy relies on everyone acknowledging their fallibility. Ie. we can never be sure our view is correct because views are by nature self-reinforcing. Maybe it is bias because of lack of education. But it can also be bias because of lots of education (we are the experts, so we are most likely to be right). So no matter how sure you are about the science, about a political idea, or whatever, fallibility says you should't impose it on others just because you think it is right. They need to have the option to think their own thing. So it is actually not about majority rule, it is about allowing minorities a voice just in case the majority got it wrong.
Nope. There's lots of books and analysis about culture in the last 50 years. So there's lots of ways for you to decide whether something is going on or not.
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I wish people would start talking about idea pollution. Between religions, vested interests, various ideologies, and plain failing education systems, the world is full of stupid ideas. Why does it take a mathematician to write "if a lot of people make a small change, the overall outcome will be a small change" ? (he was arguing against the usual green narrative about how we can individually make a difference). I rarely use the word "stupid" but it seems there is a long way to go towards people learning how to think about problems.
Various movements have taken what should be a basic technical problem solving exercise and thought they could improve on that process by turning it into a moralistic social behavioural modification project (thus injecting their own preconceived moralisms into it). This is like the Taliban deciding the way to feed people and improve their standard of living is to drive for a return to the sayings of a political ideology from a thousand years ago. Then when it doesn't work as expected their answer is to shoot some more people.
His point was that China can do it faster cheaper and more intelligently, assuming they have a good understanding of the tech. Here in Europe, today's news is The Guardian complaining about the visual pollution of wind farms, and the BBC reporting about the Energy Minister and allegations about bribes from renewable energy companies.
OK that's weird, what are books about the "warrior" part referring to?
It plays on the uncertainty that nobody can predict how far it will spread. If we all believed it was just a couple of guys then it can be dismissed as just another deranged murder. But if we are told by the killers themselves, we are fighting for Muslim brothers, and we are getting revenge and tomorrow it could be you, then that plants the fear. Whether we subscribe to it is another matter. But it plants the seed: you can try to ignore us, but how do you know there aren't going to be hundreds like us soon?
In a sense they are doing what we're all being told not to do -- brand a whole religion, accuse a whole religion of potential violence. But that's their stated goal, to make you think that they are just the start of a billion Muslims saying "enough is enough" and all fighting for their brothers and sisters.
People saying, "oh no don't brand a whole religion" are not really helping, because that was already done by the "terrorists", and it looks like trying to play down the act whilst not stopping further such acts. Rather than defend Islam, it would be more interesting to see people restate their allegiance to the UK, to Europe, to America, to the Western way of life, heck to Tellytubbies and Benny Hill reruns, anything that would feel British, rather than defending the thing the "terrorists" were defending.
I think the worst descriptions of M. I've read are about the Arab culture of honour and war [1] and it is interesting that most trouble we hear about is in the Arab world, whilst the biggest Muslin country is actually Indonesia. Perhaps it is just the result of desert life. To quote a terrible line, "I hate sand".
Interestingly there was a study that said the honour code (you should personally retaliate against people) is present in USA and increases from North to South -- the further South you go, the more people believe in honour -- and the further South you go, the more shootings you encounter.
Actually by the time you reach Canada in the other direction, Americans are as nice as Canadians. And shoot people as little as Canadians.
[1] The fact that their founder was a tribal warrior, and their religion the version 3 (obsoleting Judaism v1 and Christianity v2) make the sand-culture-religion-fanaticism all the more tricky to untangle. Frankly I don't suppose it can be disentangled, and too much hate speech by preachers goes unchecked.
Yes true, but why does a guy identify as Muslim in one country and claim to be brother to an entirely different part of the world? The non-Muslim is seen as worse than the "we-didn't-quite-get-the-same-memo-about-who-was-in-charge-after-the-prophet" disagreement.
But that's where I don't understand. Why do Muslims feel solidarity with all the world's Muslims? My understanding of secular modern life is, you don't identify with a religion or race or nationalism, you transcend that for identity with a humanistic world citizenry.
Then within that you might think, gee those Quakers have a really nice practice around this or that, and those French have a really nice soup dish, and those Chinese have a really nice idea about respect for elders, and those Arabs have a really sweet sense of hospitality, and so on. But you don't brand yourself "X" and take the idea of X so seriously that you go off like a nutter in defence of X.
Personally I'm not sure, but I was struck by Bernard Lewis' description that in Islam the moderate school said you have to reinterpret the Koran and Hadiths for moderns times, but the other school said, no, it doesn't matter how clever your interpretation is, if the other guys have more power then they can just kill you, so all that really matters is power, and actually the book wasn't written in an older period, thus "needing reinterpretation", it is actually "unwritten" and always exists as the true mind of Allah, so don't question it.
So anyway, the latter group won. That was a thousand years ago.
I was wondering about Sam Harris' argument in The End of Faith, basically that we have to go beyond irrationality if we're to survive, and that amongst all the world's faiths, Islam is at present the "worst" for various reasons -- there is no separation of Church and State, Islam is seen as a "complete system" (like communism or capitalism or whatever, ie. political power) and so on. One point he made as I recall, was that all the faiths have been weakened by modern secularism, and that's a good thing, but let's not forget they were weakened into being more peaceful. You can find all sorts of barbaric stuff in religions, although some histories were perhaps a bit more barbaric than others. The Grand Ayatollah Khomeini said that the West lies about Jesus saying "turn the other cheek" because, as the Ayatollah says, no true Prophet would ever be so stupid as to say such a stupid thing. Also Islam sees itself as inheriting the real truth, a truth that the Jews allowed to corrupt, and that the Christians allowed to corrupt, so the Islamic thing is to not allow it to be corrupted ie. don't modernise no matter what, remain pure. So there are variations and differences, and Harris thinks Islam is currently the worst offender, and the "peace" is actually only peace if you join the religion, be one of them, as it is monotheistic, One True God, no other way, only one right way, you're either with us or against us. The modern secular thing is, nobody has the real truth, let's enquire together and find stuff out. But in some Islamic schools, that is blasphemy. So it is complex. But how to respond when some "sick by Western standards" individuals gravitate towards the more murderous parts of certain ideologies? I guess the secular thing is to downplay religious intolerance and try to reaffirm, look, WE ALL WANT TO BE PEACEFUL. No to religious intolerance, no to religious hatred, no to hate. So called "terrorist" acts (are soldiers just a little more worried now when they walk out the gate? should they be? is that the intended effect? well, yeah) are there to incite hatred. People like that WANT to stir up hatred. And that's why we try to ignore them. But whether that will work in the long term, that's hard to see.
So robot bodies are durable but slow, human bodies versatile but fragile...
can't we send zombies?
What's with the charts that we are doing even better than his best and most optimistic case scenario? There seems to be a lot of misinformation about what he predicted. What's your source?
Why do violent crime rates go up or down? Social "sciences" can make up all the theories they like, but it just isn't known. So let USA carry on and UK and Canada and Switzerland carry on as they are. We wouldn't know what effect the change has, if any, and the people already know the situation as a fact of life.
Gun ownership seems to get spun as a sort of moral argument that people should trust the state to protect them, or spun that people should be responsible for their own protection. There's perhaps more people with strong opinions either way on that, than have ever had to defend themselves in real life, thankfully.
"Every wind farm is a gas plant" -- said at an energy conference.
Our civilisation's huge infrastructure means we have big this and big that controlling our lives. Big oil is big energy is big gas and big wind. Those windfarms cost billions and the gas costs big money too. We have knowledge about the environment but the politics of who wins the contract is still there. All we can hope for is a reduction in corruption. That's the "ecology" problem. Doesn't matter if a scientist somewhere figures a well tested fact -- vested interests everywhere are competing and spinning the message. There is no more safety from corruption voting to the left or to the right. There are messages and narratives which appeal to the left, and different narratives which appeal to the right -- both are spin. Both are driven by vested interests competing for money and power.
Until everyone's integrity is raised, we won't make any sudden leaps in protecting the environment. We will continue to slowly improve, but it is slow, on the back of occasional tech developments. The Women's Suffragettes started in the most developed nations in like 1897 and over a hundred years later we still don't have equality (and just forget the developing world). The left villifying the right and the right villifying the left show neither side has any credible integrity.
Microsoft needs a new PR department.
Are they the ones who said "no compromise" ?
I gather "deal with us or deal with the Taliban" is a tactic ––but their aims may be quite similar.
And at some point is gets hard to tell the difference. Ordinary folk write comments like, "we don't want Communism, and we don't want Capitalism, we want Islam."
It is the path of renunciation and purity — everything will work so much better if everyone just submitted to the proper and good system, namely Islam.
The West also had a thousand years or more of that sort of strive for purity — but in the end it largely dawned upon us that you can't crush the impure stuff out of existence —people need to think for themselves how to deal with the messy stuff in life, like sex and relationships and the meaning of life.
Islam is a political system —there is no separation of Church and State. It also considers itself the best and purest version 3, where Christianity was v2 and Judaism v1. Version 3 seeks to "correct" all the mistakes (corruptions) made by versions 1 and 2.
Versions 1 and 2 failed to pursue purity far enough.
But you don't know if your model correctly describes, if it can't predict.
Otherwise I can describe to you tomorrow's lottery numbers, the day after tomorrow, and call it science.
A far cry from let's help kids develop cognition and imagination by learning programming; a developmental tool like how Alan Kay might have wished.
Maybe a picture is, user awareness is the very last line of defence. If the terrorist is on the plane and armed, the passengers are the last line. But it was the failure of everything before that point that's to blame. Gee we really should increase passenger awareness of how to spot terrorists -- he has a big beard, no wait he doesn't have a beard, no wait he's dressed ordinary but is reaching into his bag, no wait he's taking off his shoe, no wait he's actually a she and young, etc.
We all know there are "bad guys" out there. And we can alert people about specific attacks occurring today. "A man in a blue T-shirt is walking around and police say he has a record and probably looking to steal equipment". People will listen to that. But indeed, general vague "you should be security trained" is not much use, it seems; you have to tell people exactly what they can and can't do and that list is too long and complicated and keep growing.
formZ deserves a mention.
Glossy fine print magazines are horrible on anything less than a 9.7" retina display. The 10" is for the sofa. The smaller tablets are for everywhere else, so they have more usage scenarios. But I wouldn't give up the 10" form, as it is well suited to the sofa.
Perhaps it was also a better size to kickstart the market. Obviously not a phone, nor a netbook, nor a laptop.
Islam considers itself the updated purified version of Christianity. ie. God gave the truth to the Jews, but they corrupted it, so then God gave the truth to the Christians, but they corrupted it, so Islam is today the True version, and last thing they want is for it to be diluted in any way.
I don't know how you can equate our certainty that the world is round, with being certain about model runs simulating a complex system.
Calling people names doesn't prove anything to anybody.
Yes, and there's an old joke where Moses meets Adam and Moses asks, "hey are you the Adam that ate the apple?" and Adam in his defence says, "yes but you know it was written that I would." The Koran is "unwritten" ie. it was not created at a point in time (opening it to the critique that it reflected the times and needs reinterpreting for today's world), instead it is "unwritten" -- it is and always is the mind of god, so it is always right. Any parts that don't make sense don't bear questioning.
The reason it is so unreasonable is that they had a big debate about it and one side said, we can demonstrate that your ideas are wrong, and the other side said, yes but being right makes no difference if we can just kill you, therefore POWER is the only thing which matters.
So anyway, they had that debate 1000 years ago, when they were wondering about modernising, and the POWER side won.
The "open society" argument is that democracy relies on everyone acknowledging their fallibility. Ie. we can never be sure our view is correct because views are by nature self-reinforcing. Maybe it is bias because of lack of education. But it can also be bias because of lots of education (we are the experts, so we are most likely to be right). So no matter how sure you are about the science, about a political idea, or whatever, fallibility says you should't impose it on others just because you think it is right. They need to have the option to think their own thing. So it is actually not about majority rule, it is about allowing minorities a voice just in case the majority got it wrong.
Nope. There's lots of books and analysis about culture in the last 50 years. So there's lots of ways for you to decide whether something is going on or not.