From various points of view the opinion has been expressed that all
questions of money are so complicated as to be well-nigh impossible to
grasp in clear and transparent thoughts. A similar view can be
maintained regarding many questions of modern social life. But we
should consider the consequences that must follow if men allow their
social dealings to be guided by indefinite thoughts; for such thoughts
do not merely signify a confusion in theoretic knowledge, they are
potent forces in life; their vague character lives on in the
institutions that arise under their influence, which in turn result in
social conditions making life impossible...
'The well-being of a community of people working together
will be the greater, the less the individual claims for
himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these
proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his
own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of
the work done by others'.
Genuine interests of right can only spring up on a ground where the
life of rights is separately cultivated, and where the only
consideration will be what the rights of a matter are. When people
proceed from such considerations to frame rules of right, the rules
thus made will take effect in economic life. Then it will not be
necessary to place a restriction on the individual acquiring economic
power; for such power will only result in his rendering econornic
achievements proportionate to his abilities, but not in using this to
obtain privileged rights. . . Only when rights are ordered in a field
where a business consideration cannot in any way come into question,
where business can procure no power over this system of rights, will
the two be able to work together in such a way that men's sense of
right will not be injured, nor economic ability be turned from a
blessing to a curse for the community as a whole.
When those who are economically powerful are in a position to use
their power to wrest privileged rights for themselves, then among the
economically weak there will grow up a corresponding opposition to
these privileges; and this opposition must as soon as it has grown
strong enough lead to revolutionary disturbances. If the existence of
a special province of rights makes it impossible for such privileged
rights to arise, then disturbances of this sort cannot occur. . . One
will never really touch what is working up through the social movement
to the surface of modern life, until one brings about social
conditions in which, alongside the claims and interests of the
economic life, those of rights can find realization and satisfaction
on their own independent basis...
Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the cooperation of
*associations* arising out of the needs of producers and the interests
of consumers. In their mutual dealings, impulses from the spiritual
sphere and sphere of rights will play a decisive part. These
associations will not be bound to a purely capitalistic standpoint,
for one association will be in direct mutual dealings with another,
and thus the one-sided interests of one branch of production will be
regulated and balanced by those of the other. The responsibility for
the giving and taking of credit will thus devolve to the associations.
This will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with
special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give
individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to his
association for achieving the best possible results. The association
is responsible to other associations for using these individual
achievements to good purpose. The individual's desire for gain will no
longer be imposing production on the life of the community; production
will be regulated by the needs of the community...
All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations and
old forms of business--there is no question of the old having to be
destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its place and
will have to justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the
old will dwindle away... The essential thing is that the threefold
idea will stimulate a real social intelligence in the men and women of
the community. The individual will in a very definite sense be
contributing to the achievements of the whole community... The
individual faculties of men, working in harmony with the human
relationships founded in the sphere of rights, and with the
production, circulation and consumption that are regulated by the
economic associations, will result in the greatest possible
efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper adjustment of work and
return for work, will appear as a final consequence...
Rudolf Steiner - Capital and Credit
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/ Steiner-Social.html
you may find similar stylistic soundings, but
this relies on gross differences rather than
differentiation based on subtlety. each order
of subtlety takes an order of magnitude more
genius, so to get 80% of the way there is easy,
but to get to that last 20% is the hardest part.
query -- what programmer here would say that the code produced by a 'code generator' has anywhere near the elegance of human hand-tweaked code? a code generator or a chopin-style emulator can hitch onto the 'sequence of pattern runs' that give a style a distinctive flourish (just like tokenizing byte runs in LWZ compression), but if you compare intelligently written code with the output from a code generator, or music created and sequenced in a particular order by a human as a result of their experiences of life emotion, it is clear that there is art in programming just as there is in music.
"Perfection (in design) is achieved
not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more
to take away." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
you may find similar stylistic soundings, but
this relies on gross differences rather than
differentiation based on subtlety. each order
of subtlety takes an order of magnitude more
genius, so to get 80% of the way there is easy,
but to get to that last 20% is the hardest part.
query -- what programmer here would say that the code produced by a 'code generator' has anywhere near the elegance of human hand-tweaked code? a code generator or a chopin-style emulator can hitch onto the 'sequence of pattern runs' that give a style a distinctive flourish (just like tokenizing byte runs in LWZ compression), but if you compare intelligently written code with the output from a code generator, or music created and sequenced in a particular order by a human as a result of their experiences of life emotion, it is clear that there is art in programming just as there is in music.
"Perfection (in design) is achieved
not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more
to take away." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
--| the musician's association - hashing out solutions |-----
in a nutshell:
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the musician's pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active producers.
- from the pool comes more new music. which is given away for free. unlimited digital copies for everyone - AIFF,.mp3, whatever... never again a dime paid for anything that's just DATA.
- the distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- the distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back around and feeds itelf in a positive fashion. >> that's the most important part.
so all the software is free - before we had radio and tapes, now we have unlimited copying of files over the web - you get mindshare from it. then people still buy your stuff. i've got a copy of lewis carol by download - i bought the book too. you can download red-hat for free, but its a best seller at chapters.
the thing is - if you press a record or burn a CD and put it on sale, it is something physical, and a percentage goes back, but the artist is not paid direct - it goes to the musician's pool. perhaps one way of doing it would be then to dole out the shares each month by percentage of overall free downloads from a server (e.g. napster) that offers them up for free. may have to weigh the downloads - this has to be intelligently moderated. this needs some more thought behind it - so that it works equitably for those involved. that's the job of the association.
the economic principles i have grasped in only rudimentary form. i'm afraid i really don't do it justice. however, there is a viable alternative to the capitalism-communism dichotomy that exists here:
i believe i have come up with a solution to the troubles which involve:
- the record industry - distribution of music - compensation of artists.
the outline provided below advocates the establishment of a musician's association that works together with current technical realities (i.e. napster, mp3, etc.), and still provides a way for musicians to get paid for their livelihood without restricting the digital distribution of their music. the current funcions of record companies get split into two parts: i) distribution, and ii) compensation of artists:
--| musicians's association in a nutshell |-----
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the musician's pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active producers.
- from the pool comes more new music. which is given away for free unlimited digital copies for everyone - AIFF,.mp3, whatever... never again a dime paid for anything that's just DATA.
- the distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- the distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back around and feeds itelf in a positive fashion. >> that's the most important part.
so all the software is free - but the thing is - if you press a record or burn a CD and put it on sale, it is something physical, and a percentage goes back, but the artist is not paid direct - it goes to the musician's pool, which equitably distributes it to its members.
income recieved by the association from the physical goods is then allocated to the artists each month by gathering data on the percentage of overall downloads from a server (i.e. NAPSTER) that offers them up for free.
will physical packaging get less and less? i think not. you can download redhat for free, but it is still a best-seller at chapters. people still like something tangible. the distributors will make their living by 'value adding' to the music - making collector's editions and printed art more attractive, and saving people the trouble. the physical distributors job is to make these things continue to be appealing. you can download texts from project gutenberg, people still buy the books to save the trouble of printing them out.
--
i have based this conception for the music industry on my rudimentary grasp of the economic principles outlined here:
please pass this along to anyone you feel might be interested in this sort of development. interested parties should contact: johnrpenner@earthlink.net
the fact is that you can SCALE UP from one mouse button to two or three mouse buttons, but the converse is not true - you can't scale down from a multi-button system to a single button and still be able to run the system.
i have a mac, i can plug in a microsoft FOUR button intellimouse (with a scroll wheel too), and it just works -- the mac system DOES support multiple button mice - and in a more consistent system-wide fashion than other systems.
so the mac user has the option of having ONE button, or MORE buttons. the converse isn't true - the windows users CAN'T use one button mice even if they wanted to. so i ask you: who are you to impose multiple buttons on me, when i don't impose one button on you?
"Man will, in time, manage to implant the death-forces in man, related to electrical and magnetic forces, with external machines. He will then be able to direct his intentions, his thoughts into the machine."
(Rudolf Steiner, "Individuelle Geistwesen und einheitlicher Weltengrund", especially November 25, 1917, Dornach)
just thought that was interesting, since it was written BEFORE computers, and only nine years after the first vacuum tube.
for an interesting article on the subject: http://www.gottfried.no/articles/it_eng.htm
One of the best languages to start with is FutureBasic on the Macintosh. It does away with a lot of the cruft of earlier basic revisions, modernises the language with local variables and real funcions and libraries. Some improvement in FutureBasic over traditional Basic languages:
- No more line numbers - No more Goto (you can do it, but highly discouraged - it uses real Functions instead). - It compliles instead of interprets - Modern GUI Event-driven architecture - Resable Modular Code - Local and Global Variables - Recursion - Conscructs like While and Multi-line IF statements - Parameter passing through Functions. - Ability to use #includes - You can easily transition to a more robust language like C++ because the principles are the same, except you just start using { } instead of While... While End which is more like English for while you're learning it.
an observation regarding your theories on consciousness. in your online book, you include the exerpt below on consciousness. but you must be aware that you are displacing the problem of consciousness away from your individual experience of consciousness into the speculative realm by the fact that you attribute to matter the ability to THINK.
in this regard, you may find the following interesting:
> Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of > the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin > with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the > world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or > material processes. But, in doing so, it is already > confronted by two different sets of facts: the material > world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to > make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely > material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in > the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place > in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and > organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain > circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, > in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one > place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to > matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at > his starting point. How does matter come to think about its > own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and > content just to exist? The materialist has turned his > attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has > arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. > Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic > conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it > from one place to another. > > (Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)
anyhow, if you truly are a materialist and have such great faith that within matter you can find the CONSCIOUSNESS to arise as some sort of emergent property of sufficient complextity", then i'm afraid you will be subscribing to a gross superstition.
you may be able to fool many people with automatic conditioned respones, but i think you would be grossly decieving yourself if you were to call this CONSCIOUSNESS without first even truly understanding what it is that consciousness IS within that only realm in which you can experience it in the FIRST HAND CASE -- in your own SELF.
just a thought.
regards, johnrpenner.
p.s. for a PhD disertation on CONSICOUSNESS and the process involved in what is THINKING, you can find it here: http://www.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA004/
--| Consciousness |----- | | http://www.atoma.f2s.com/Chapter-6.htm | | How then can be talk about or analyze this phenomenon of life? Let's start | with how you or I know we are alive. I will say I know I am alive because | I have "consciousness" and I will further articulate that consciousness as | a recognition of "I-ness" (awkward as the word is). Jaron Lanier who | coined the expression "virtual reality" and pioneeered its development is | reported on the web site http://www.forbes.com/asap/99/0222/072.htm as | saying "The centre of the circle that defines a person is a dot called | consciousness, and as murky as that subject is, we are fast approaching | some crucial conclusions about it. This is the notion that computers are | becoming more 'alive' and capable of judgement." He then dismisses this | idea completely. "It has become a cliche of technology reporting and a | standby of computer industry public relations. It is a myth that depends | upon public support, from, of all people, intellectuals." | | Thus we should not create the impression that all of the | computing/AI/robotics field is jumping on the AL bandwagon. Levy (1992) | dates the beginning of the modern AL field to a 1987 conference at Los | Alamos, attended by >100 scientists (p. 4). A further comment which will | disturb some people is that "What distinguishes most of the a-life | scientists from their more conservative colleagues-and from the general | public-is that they regarded plants, animals and humans as machines." (p. | 117). Thus what we are seeing is the differing philosophical-theological | positions of dualists and monists. Lanier is a dualist. Levy and his | fellow AL scientists are monists subscribing to complete objectivity and | materialism. "Consciousness" seems to be the last line of defense for | those who subscribe to the unique, beyond-material nature of life. And | even there it is encroached upon by those who will say that consciousness | will appear as an emergent quality if the intelligent machine is built | correctly.
creationists may resort to unsubstantiated theories, but science too has its religious zealots. it happens when people don't just use the scientific method as a tool for understanding things, but declare that it is the only valid method for understanding things.
science is really good at explaining: a moves becasue force b acts on a, and this happens because that happens, and this interaction occurs because of this or that phenomenon. but science is only left with explaining an endless chain of cause and effect, but never gets to the root of the problem.
i can give you an endless discussion on the physiological processes involved in getting the neurotransmitters to fire in the synapses of the brain, and the electro-chemical reactions which travel through the nervous system, and the contraction and expansion of muscle tissues according to chemical laws...
BUT to simply explain by this why an arm moved in the way it did instead of another says absolutely nothing about the INTENTION or WILL behind the fellow who brought all those physiological processes into motion by the fact that he wanted to throw a stick for his dog to fetch. science explains HOW things work very well, but it is blind in one eye, because it knows nothing about CAUSES.
for causes, we have to first start with our own selves. how does it come to be that i am self-consciously aware? the fact of our own conscious existence precedes any theory that science can make up about the phenomenon, and therefore this aspect can never be done away with or ignored. science doesn't like to dabble in these questions, but they won't just go away -- not so long as you and i, and all these humans continue to exist as sentient beings, the question as to how this came at all to be in the first place will persist longer than any science concocted within the frame of our conscious existence.
"Our conception of nature is clearly striving toward the goal of explaining the life of the organism according to the same laws by which the phenomena of inanimate nature must also be explained. General laws of mechanics, physics, chemistry are sought for in the bodies of animals and plants. The same sort of laws that control a machine must also be operative in the organism-only in immeasurably more complicated and scarcely com-prehensible form. Nothing is to be added to these laws in order to render possible an explanation of the phenomenon we call life.... The mechanistic conception of the phenomena of life steadily gains ground. But it will never satisfy one who has the capacity to cast a deeper glance into nature's processes. Contemporary researchers in nature are too cowardly in their thinking. Where the wisdom of their mechanistic explanations fails, they say the thing is to us inexplicable... A bold thinking lifts itself to a higher manner of perception. It seeks to explain by higher laws that which is not of a mechanical character. All our natural-scientific thinking remains behind our natural scientific experience. At present the natural-scientific form of thinking is much praised. In regard to this, it is said that we live in a natural-scientific age. But at bottom this natural" scientific age is the poorest that history has to show. Its characteristic is to hang fast to the mere facts and the mechanistic forms of explanation. Life will never be grasped by this form of thinking because such a grasp requires a higher manner of conceiving than that which belongs to the explanation of a machine." (Rudolf Heidenhain, November 6, I897)
| Given any system of sufficient complexity and flexibility we | have the possibility of real intelligence arising as part of | an emergent phenomenon. And since this system is designed to | mimic known biological mechanisms involved in conscioussness | and thought, it is even more likely that it will become | intelligent once a critical threshold of complexity has been | reached.
i'm sorry, but this fantasy of so many people today that somehow, mysteriously, "intelligence" will "emerge" from "sufficient complextity" is a bunch of speculative wishful thinking. i don't know how so many people can buy into this superstition.
consider this:
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another.
| Given any system of sufficient complexity and flexibility we | have the possibility of real intelligence arising as part of | an emergent phenomenon. And since this system is designed to | mimic known biological mechanisms involved in conscioussness | and thought, it is even more likely that it will become | intelligent once a critical threshold of complexity has been | reached.
i'm sorry, but this fantasy of so many people today that somehow, mysteriously, "intelligence" will "emerge" from "sufficient complextity" is a bunch of speculative wishful thinking. i don't know how so many people can buy into this superstition.
consider this:
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another.
(Rudolf Steiner, Chapter II, The Philosophy of Freedom)
if man is so smart, how come he has to look to "dumb nature" for ideas that were already implemented and perfected for endless ages already. i guess we can always learn more -- but from where did the original knowledge and intuition come from then???
paper will last longer than any computer. if you print on hemp or cotton paper, there are samples that have lasted more than 400 years. you really think that the html you create now and store on a hard disk or CD-ROM will still be accessible in 400 years... <ha ha ha ha ha!>
anything physical/electronic is transitory -- get over it.
I am posting this on the behalf of vladamir zetzer -- university Professor for the Dept. of Computer Science, and Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, USP (Nas Paulo), and lecturer on Software Engineering, Computers in Education, and Social and Individual Impacts of Computers.
he has presented a research paper entitled, "A REVIEW OF ARGUMENTS FOR THE USE OF COMPUTERS IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION"
the full paper is available at: http://www.ime.usp.br/~vwsetzer/review.html
--| an exerpt |-----
We have no doubt that computers accelerate children's development. This is quite clear to us: forcing a virtual setting, a formal language (when issuing or choosing commands to any software) and a logic-symbolic thinking, computers force children and teenagers to physically and mentally behave like adults. It is absolutely non-natural for a child to sit on a chair for long periods of time, if the child has no possibility of imagining, innerly fantasizing (this would happen while hearing a fairy tale, for instance). As with TV, educational software full of images leave no space for inner imagination. In fact, we conjecture that the capacity for forming inner mental images is damaged by the use of such software. Note that if this software is not rich in images, and consists essentially of texts, it will be so boring to a child or adolescent that it will not be used at all.
The acceleration of a gradual mental and psychological development, making the child innerly and outwardly behave like an adult, is in our opinion the worst influence exercised by computers. Obviously, we are of the opinion that there is a proper timing for every development in children and young people. Any undue acceleration produces some damage; in particular, we think that early intellectual activities tend to steal from the child her childhood, necessary for a balanced development, which should encompass physical, psychological, artistic, social and intellectual aspects. In this sense, we extend to any kind of computer usage Neil Postman's fears for the disappearance of childhood [4], which he concluded mainly from examining the impact of communication media. So pattern (e), which is praised by many authors, Papert in particular, is for us a counter-argument for the use of computers in education. Papert's position is absolutely clear, as in his following statement:
"The image of children using the computer as a writing instrument is a particularly good example of my general theses that what is good for professionals is good for children." [2, p. 30]
That is, in our opinion he does not recognize some essential differences existing between children and adults. He also does not see the damage one can do to children when they are handled as adults. His argument (6) seems astonishing: behaving like psychologists and mainly epistemologists puts a child into a clear adult state of consciousness.
not much has changed since the inquisition, only now we pay our children to be UNTRUSTING. do we really want to raise our children by teaching them to MISTRUST each other...!? this is just the beginning. ever wonder how big brother 1984 began? witchhunting reborn in modern garb.:-P i can't believe a country even dares to call itself "the home of the free" in a place where they allow something like this into the schools, and let it be run by a complany with a vested economic interest in keeping kids bound-up within CONFORMITY. just another reason why i'm glad i don't have to live in a country like the united states -- people are a little bit wierd over there.
the stronger locks you make, the more justified people will feel in picking them. the only way is to keep on TRUSTING -- DESPITE THE RASCALS THAT WOULD SPOIL IT FOR THE WHOLE BUNCH.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Benjamin Franklin)
| The hayday of the epistemological enquiries on the meaning of physical | reality and the mind of God and all that, came with quantum mechanics (a | subject which, need I remind, Einstein never believed in...
albert einstein expresses his views on religion thusly:
> Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from > its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the > mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the > way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and the centuries. > Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid > realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to > remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic > religious feeling that gives a man such strength.
(Albert Einstein, *Ideas and Opinions*, Crown Publishers, New York, 1954). http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/ Einstein1.html
| Sorry to disappoint you but, no, there isn't any hidden spirituality | in physics. Spirituality is an attribute of the human mind...
you are correct -- physics is only about physics; however, the theory that humans are merely products of cause-and-effect relationships which can be explained solely by physics and that consciousness arises as a by-product of interactions within matter is simply unscientific.
The assertion that its "all just atoms and molecules" is a theory that is more questionable than the fact of your conscious existence itself. You are faced with the unavoidable fact that we are self-conscious beings, because you cannot deny the fact of your own conscious existence. However, we CAN question whether human consciousness is a by-product of interactions within matter or not.
you can of coures BELIEVE that all thinking and conscious processes do arise from the interaction of molecules, and that consciousness is a sort of "software' that runs on the hardware of the human brain, but then one is confronted with this:
"Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another."
(Rudolf Steiner, TPoF, chpt2).
physics doesn't deal with causes and the meaning of existence, but we as humans do, and we are a part of the world.
i have read this book, and it is quite interesting. he re-hashes a lot of what stephen hawking posits about the tapered-off indefinite origins of space-time. worth a read, but not as good at addressing the issues as another book "The Philosophy of Freedom", which applies the scientific method to practice of thinking itself: http://www.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA004/TPOF/
a link to what einstein actually wrote about religion is here: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/Ei nstein1.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/Mi crosoftPeng.html Since return-on-investment must govern the development of an application for a platform, the "more innovative, smaller" platforms are squeezed-out by an over-bearing monopoly competitor. For example, if you asked a developer in 1997, "why not make a Linux or Apple version -- there is an INERTIA against them for developing for a MINORITY platform, because it costs them some extra developers to PORT anything that is not in conformance with an industry STANDARD in the operating system. So, because it costs money to deviate from these standards, the smaller platforms face a significant barrier to entry because of INERTIA. This is why it is so important to understand the difference between an OPEN standard, and a PROPRIETARY standard. This inertia can be used to affect standards across the board. By uncessarily bundling and tying their browser to the OS, Microsoft sought to gain control of the open public standards established by the W3 consortium, and replace them with their own propritary standards so that they would have an unfair monopoly advantage. The results of this can be seen in what happened to the workload of Web Designers coding for two different versions of HTML. Because Microsoft sought to "embrace and extend" the HTML platform for their own benefit, the HTML became fragmented. There were effectively two versions of HTML. One was the open standard adhered to by Netscape 3.0, and the other was the Microsoft-ized version of HTML in Explorer 3.0. Because of this, all web designers were forced to make TWO versions of their HTML web pages, in order to accomodate Microsoft's "Explorer html 'extensions'". Due to Microsoft's "innovation" -- national productivity went down, because people had to do double the work -- coding once for "standard" HTML, and again to ensure compatibility with the proprietary Microsoft HTML extensions. This continues until those "extensions" became more standard than the original, because they kept giving their browser away to ensure that everyone had it, and used it, thus suplanting an industry-agreed standard with their own proprietary "standard". Fortuneately, public pressure helped to bring the HTML in the 4.0 versions of Explorer and Netscape closer to each other. The solution to the Microsoft problem lies in this -- that there must be seperation of RIGHTS (i.E. Who sets the STANDARDS), and of Economic Interest (those who produce the software which EMPLOY the standards, and go by them as a guide to create the product of their labour called the "Operating System Platform"). So long as they remain coupled, the abuses of monopoly power will be able to continue. The solution to monopoly problems is to deccouple the FEELING / RIGHTS / STANDARDS DEFINITION BODIES - from the PRODUCERS / THOSE WHO PRODUCE WHAT IS DEFINED BY THOSE STANDARDS. Microsoft's monopoly has resulted from the ability for a proprietary standard to exist. The proprietary standard could not arise if you decoupled these two functions. Instead of having the vested-interest manufacturer defining their own standards and letting the economic force run amuck, it is in the public interest to have economic power trimmed and pruned to grow appropriately to what is good for the consumer (the people) by the democratic exercise of FEELING, rights, and standards definition as a seperate, non-biased entity. A failure to seperate these two will always eventually result in a situation where an abuse of monopoly power can arise. If we are to ask -- who is it that should set the standards? It should not be those with an economic interest in furthering their own protocols. It should be determined by those who love the technology for the technology's sake -- the peer-to-peer open sharing of code by geeks are best qualified to do this. Through this sharing, they will ensure that the best technical solution will be found. The standards thus established are open, and shared. Once these standards exist, then any company can produce and economically benefit by creating products which follow these standards. There must be a seperation of STANDARDS SETTERS and STANDARDS IMPLEMENTORS. But it is important to understand that this is a reciprocal relationship. Otherwise, unrealistic standards that don't relate to real-world need will arise. The standards are to be created by consideration for the user; for the user. The economic force to carry out and pay people to implement a system conforming to this need however must remain seperate from the standards-defining body. The best way to do this is to ensure that Open Standards are adhered to, and that Proprietary standards are not allowed to arise. This is best done by seperating the standards setting body from those who have the economic force necessary to deliver a product based on those standards. Listen to Richard Stallman -- he has the best solution for re-regulation of normal industry operation -- to remedy any harmful ways in which Microsoft may operate. References: - Social Threefolding, Rudolf Steiner: http://www.anth.org/socialthreefolding/tsnindex.ht m - Linux - By the People; For the People: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/so cialLinux.html - Towards a Threefold Social-Economic Order: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/St einer-Social.html - Richard Stallman on How to Deal with Microsoft: http://linuxtoday.com/stories/4999.html - The Microsoft Halloween Documents: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/ --
that's nothing -- side effects software has ported their whole high-end 3D animation software package to Linux almost a year ago (they were the first), and they're ahead of maya for the big film production houses (they use houdini for: titanic, the matrix, appolo 13, etc.)
also, maya is a bit behind in Procedural technology. side effect's Houdini not only has got the procedural geometry, but also procedural motion and sound editing. check out:
| Why are some of us combative, friendly, hopeful, grammatical? | Does free will or genetic determinism shape our behaviour?
it is clear that genetic endowment does give us a predisposition towards certain behavioural traits, but it is in nowise clear that all our behaviour stems merely from the nurture of external circumstances and our genetic endowment. a few comments:
--| conscious human action |-----
Is man in his thinking and acting a spiritually free being, or is he compelled by the iron necessity of purely natural law?...It is one of the sad signs of the superficiality of present-day thought that a book which attempts to develop a new faith out of the results of recent scientific research,* has nothing more to say on this question than these words:
With the question of the freedom of the human will we are not concerned. The alleged freedom of indifferent choice has been recognized as an empty illusion by every philosophy worthy of the name. The moral valuation of human action and character remains untouched by this problem. (David Friedrich Strauss, Der alte und neue Glaube).
It is not because I consider that the book in which it occurs has any special importance that I quote this passage, but because it seems to me to express the view to which the thinking of most of our contemporaries manages to rise in this matter. Everyone who claims to have grown beyond the kindergarten stage of science appears to know nowadays that freedom cannot consist in choosing, at one's pleasure, one or other of two possible courses of action. There is always, so we are told, a perfectly definite reason why, out of several possible actions, we carry out just one and no other.
...in combating the concept of free will. The germs of all the relevant arguments are to be found as early as Spinoza. All that he brought forward in clear and simple language against the idea of freedom has since been repeated times without number, but as a rule enveloped in the most hair-splitting theoretical doctrines, so that it is difficult to recognize the straightforward train of thought which is all that matters. Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November, 1674:
I call a thing free which exists and acts from the pure necessity of its nature, and I call that unfree, of which the being and action are precisely and fixedly determined by something else. Thus, for example, God, though necessary, is free because he exists only through the necessity of his own nature. Similarly, God cognizes himself and all else freely, because it follows solely from the necessity of his nature that he cognizes all. You see, therefore, that for me freedom consists not in free decision, but in free necessity.
But let us come down to created things which are all determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner. To perceive this more clearly, let us imagine a perfectly simple case. A stone, for example, receives from an external cause acting upon it a certan quantity of motion, by reason of which it necessarily continues to move, after the impact of the external cause has ceased. The continued motion of the stone is due to compulsion, not to the necessity of its own nature, because it requires to be defined by the thrust of an external cause. What is true here for the stone is true also for every other particular thing, however complicated and many-sided it may be, namely, that everything is necessarily determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner.
Now, please, suppose that this stone during its motion thinks and knows that it is striving to the best of its ability to continue in motion. This stone, which is conscious only of its striving and is by no neans indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason than its own will to continue. But this is just the human freedom that everybody claims to possess and which consists in nothing but this, that men are conscious of their desires, but ignorant of the causes by which they are determined. Thus the child believes that he desires milk of his own free will, the angry boy regards his desire for vengeance as free, and the coward his desire for flight. Again, the drunken man believes that he says of his own free will what, sober again, he would fain have left unsaid, and as this prejudice is innate in all men, it is difficult to free oneself from it. For, although experience teaches us often enough that man least of all can temper his desires, and that, moved by conflicting passions, he sees the better and pursues the worse, yet he considers himself free because there are some things which he desires less strongly, and some desires which he can easily inhibit through the recollection of something else which it is often possible to recall.
Because this view is so clearly and definitely expressed it is easy to detect the fundamental error that it contains. The same necessity by which a stone makes a definite movement as the result of an impact, is said to compel a man to carry out an action when impelled thereto by any reason. It is only because man is conscious of his action that he thinks himself to be its originator. But in doing so he overlooks the fact that he is driven by a cause which he cannot help obeying. The error in this train of thought is soon discovered. Spinoza, and all who think like him, overlook the fact that man not only is conscious of his action, but also may become conscious of the causes which guide him. Nobody will deny that the child is unfree when he desires milk, or the drunken man when he says things which he later regrets. Neither knows anything of the causes, working in the depths of their organisms, which exercise irresistible control over them. But is it justifiable to lump together actions of this kind with those in which a man is conscious not only of his actions but also of the reasons which cause him to act? Are the actions of men really all of one kind? Should the act of a soldier on the field of battle, of the scientific researcher in his laboratory, of the statesman in the most complicated diplomatic negotiations, be placed scientifically on the same level with that of the child when it desires milk: It is no doubt true that it is best to seek the solution of a problem where the conditions are sinmplest. But inability to discrinminate has before now caused endless confusion. There is, after all, a profound difference between knowing why I am acting and not knowing it. At first sight this seems a self-evident truth. And yet the opponents of freedom never ask themselves whether a motive of action which I recognize and see through, is to be regarded as compulsory for me in the same sense as the organic process which causes the child to cry for milk
...This leads us straight to the standpoint from which the subject will be considered here. Have we any right to consider the question of the freedom of the will by itself at all? And if not, with what other question must it necessarily be connected?
If there is a difference between a conscious motive of action and an unconscious urge, then the conscious motive will result in an action which must be judged differently from one that springs from blind impluse. Hence our first question will concern this difference, and on the result of this enquiry will depend what attitude we shall have to take towards the question of freedom proper.
What does it mean to have knowledge of the reasons for one's action? Too little attention has been paid to this question because, unfortunately, we have torn into two what is really an inseparable whole: Man. We have distinguished between the knower and the doer and have left out of account precisely the one who matters most of all - the knowing doer.
It is said that man is free when he is controlled only by his reason and not by his animal passions. Or again, that to be free means to be able to determine one's life and action by purposes and deliberate decisions.
Nothing is gained by assertions of this sort. For the question is just whether reason, purposes, and decisions exercise the same kind of compulsion over a man as his animal passions. If without my co-operation, a rational decision emerges in me with the same necessity with which hunger and thirst arise, then I must needs obey it, and my freedom is an illusion...
What distinguishes man from all other organic beings arises from his rational thinking. Activity he has in common with other organisms. Nothing is gained by seeking analogies in the animal world to clarify the concept of freedom as applied to the actions of human beings. Modern science loves such analogies. When scientists have succeeded in finding among animals something similar to human behaviour, they believe they have touched on the most important question of the science of man. To what misunderstandings this view leads is seen, for example, in the book The Illusion of Freewill, by P. Ree, where the following remark on freedom appears:
It is easy to explain why the movement of a stone seems to us necessary, while the volition ofa donkey does not. The causes which set the stone in motion are external and visible, while the causes which determine the donkey's volition are internal and invisible. Between us and the place of their activity there is the skull of the ass. . . . The determining causes are not visible and therefore thought to be non-existent. The volition, it is explained, is, indeed, the cause of the donkey's turning round, but is itself unconditioned; it is an absolute beginning.* (Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, 1885, page 5).
Here again human actions in which there is a consciousness of the motives are simply ignored, for Ree declares that "between us and the place of their activity there is the skull of the ass." To judge from these words, it has not dawned on Ree that there are actions, not indeed of the ass, but of human beings, in which between us and the action lies the motive that has become conscious. Ree demonstrates his blindness once again, a few pages further on, when he says:
We do not perceive the causes by which our will is determined, hence we think it is not causally determined at all.
But enough of examples which prove that many argue against freedom without knowing in the least what freedom is.
That an action, of which the agent does not know why he performs it, cannot be free, goes without saying. But what about an action for which the reasons are known? This leads us to the question of the origin and meaning of thinking. For without the recognition of the thinking activity of the soul, it is impossible to form a concept of knowledge about anything, and therefore of knowledge about an action. When we know what thinking in general means, it will be easy to get clear about the role that thinking plays in human action.
(Rudolf Steiner, *The Philosophy of Freedom*, from Chapter 1).
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another.
(Rudolf Steiner, *The Philosophy of Freedom*, from Chapter 2)
--
| ______________________________________ - O - ___________________________ http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner | johnrpenner@earthlink.net
Slashdot Mirror
From various points of view the opinion has been expressed that all
/ Steiner-Social.html
questions of money are so complicated as to be well-nigh impossible to
grasp in clear and transparent thoughts. A similar view can be
maintained regarding many questions of modern social life. But we
should consider the consequences that must follow if men allow their
social dealings to be guided by indefinite thoughts; for such thoughts
do not merely signify a confusion in theoretic knowledge, they are
potent forces in life; their vague character lives on in the
institutions that arise under their influence, which in turn result in
social conditions making life impossible...
'The well-being of a community of people working together
will be the greater, the less the individual claims for
himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these
proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his
own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of
the work done by others'.
Genuine interests of right can only spring up on a ground where the
life of rights is separately cultivated, and where the only
consideration will be what the rights of a matter are. When people
proceed from such considerations to frame rules of right, the rules
thus made will take effect in economic life. Then it will not be
necessary to place a restriction on the individual acquiring economic
power; for such power will only result in his rendering econornic
achievements proportionate to his abilities, but not in using this to
obtain privileged rights. . . Only when rights are ordered in a field
where a business consideration cannot in any way come into question,
where business can procure no power over this system of rights, will
the two be able to work together in such a way that men's sense of
right will not be injured, nor economic ability be turned from a
blessing to a curse for the community as a whole.
When those who are economically powerful are in a position to use
their power to wrest privileged rights for themselves, then among the
economically weak there will grow up a corresponding opposition to
these privileges; and this opposition must as soon as it has grown
strong enough lead to revolutionary disturbances. If the existence of
a special province of rights makes it impossible for such privileged
rights to arise, then disturbances of this sort cannot occur. . . One
will never really touch what is working up through the social movement
to the surface of modern life, until one brings about social
conditions in which, alongside the claims and interests of the
economic life, those of rights can find realization and satisfaction
on their own independent basis...
Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the cooperation of
*associations* arising out of the needs of producers and the interests
of consumers. In their mutual dealings, impulses from the spiritual
sphere and sphere of rights will play a decisive part. These
associations will not be bound to a purely capitalistic standpoint,
for one association will be in direct mutual dealings with another,
and thus the one-sided interests of one branch of production will be
regulated and balanced by those of the other. The responsibility for
the giving and taking of credit will thus devolve to the associations.
This will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with
special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give
individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to his
association for achieving the best possible results. The association
is responsible to other associations for using these individual
achievements to good purpose. The individual's desire for gain will no
longer be imposing production on the life of the community; production
will be regulated by the needs of the community...
All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations and
old forms of business--there is no question of the old having to be
destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its place and
will have to justify itself and prove its inherent power, while the
old will dwindle away... The essential thing is that the threefold
idea will stimulate a real social intelligence in the men and women of
the community. The individual will in a very definite sense be
contributing to the achievements of the whole community... The
individual faculties of men, working in harmony with the human
relationships founded in the sphere of rights, and with the
production, circulation and consumption that are regulated by the
economic associations, will result in the greatest possible
efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper adjustment of work and
return for work, will appear as a final consequence...
Rudolf Steiner - Capital and Credit
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00%2F08%2F0
you may find similar stylistic soundings, but
this relies on gross differences rather than
differentiation based on subtlety. each order
of subtlety takes an order of magnitude more
genius, so to get 80% of the way there is easy,
but to get to that last 20% is the hardest part.
query -- what programmer here would say that the code produced by a 'code generator' has anywhere near the elegance of human hand-tweaked code? a code generator or a chopin-style emulator can hitch onto the 'sequence of pattern runs' that give a style a distinctive flourish (just like tokenizing byte runs in LWZ compression), but if you compare intelligently written code with the output from a code generator, or music created and sequenced in a particular order by a human as a result of their experiences of life emotion, it is clear that there is art in programming just as there is in music.
"Perfection (in design) is achieved
not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more
to take away." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
regards,
john.
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner
you may find similar stylistic soundings, but
this relies on gross differences rather than
differentiation based on subtlety. each order
of subtlety takes an order of magnitude more
genius, so to get 80% of the way there is easy,
but to get to that last 20% is the hardest part.
query -- what programmer here would say that the code produced by a 'code generator' has anywhere near the elegance of human hand-tweaked code? a code generator or a chopin-style emulator can hitch onto the 'sequence of pattern runs' that give a style a distinctive flourish (just like tokenizing byte runs in LWZ compression), but if you compare intelligently written code with the output from a code generator, or music created and sequenced in a particular order by a human as a result of their experiences of life emotion, it is clear that there is art in programming just as there is in music.
"Perfection (in design) is achieved
not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more
to take away." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
regards,
john.
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner
--| the musician's association - hashing out solutions |-----
.mp3, whatever...
t einer-Social.html
in a nutshell:
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the
musician's pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active
producers.
- from the pool comes more new music. which is given away for
free. unlimited digital copies for everyone - AIFF,
never again a dime paid for anything that's just DATA.
- the distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- the distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back around and feeds itelf in a positive fashion.
>> that's the most important part.
so all the software is free - before we had radio and tapes,
now we have unlimited copying of files over the web - you get
mindshare from it. then people still buy your stuff. i've got
a copy of lewis carol by download - i bought the book too.
you can download red-hat for free, but its a best seller at
chapters.
the thing is - if you press a record or burn a CD and put it on
sale, it is something physical, and a percentage goes back, but
the artist is not paid direct - it goes to the musician's pool.
perhaps one way of doing it would be then to dole out the shares
each month by percentage of overall free downloads from a server
(e.g. napster) that offers them up for free. may have to weigh
the downloads - this has to be intelligently moderated. this
needs some more thought behind it - so that it works equitably
for those involved. that's the job of the association.
the economic principles i have grasped in only rudimentary form.
i'm afraid i really don't do it justice. however, there is a
viable alternative to the capitalism-communism dichotomy that
exists here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/S
extra ideas:
- certified teachers
- certified distributors
- classes of members:
- novices
- students
- apprenticeships
- professional
i believe i have come up with a solution to the troubles which involve:
.mp3, whatever...
t einer-Social.html
- the record industry
- distribution of music
- compensation of artists.
the outline provided below advocates the establishment of a musician's
association that works together with current technical realities (i.e.
napster, mp3, etc.), and still provides a way for musicians to get paid
for their livelihood without restricting the digital distribution of
their music. the current funcions of record companies get split into
two parts: i) distribution, and ii) compensation of artists:
--| musicians's association in a nutshell |-----
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the
musician's pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active
producers.
- from the pool comes more new music. which is given away for free
unlimited digital copies for everyone - AIFF,
never again a dime paid for anything that's just DATA.
- the distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- the distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back around and feeds itelf in a positive fashion.
>> that's the most important part.
so all the software is free - but the thing is - if you press a
record or burn a CD and put it on sale, it is something physical,
and a percentage goes back, but the artist is not paid direct - it
goes to the musician's pool, which equitably distributes it to its
members.
income recieved by the association from the physical goods is then
allocated to the artists each month by gathering data on the percentage
of overall downloads from a server (i.e. NAPSTER) that offers them up
for free.
will physical packaging get less and less? i think not. you can download redhat for free, but it is still a best-seller at chapters. people still like something tangible. the distributors will make their living by 'value adding' to the music - making collector's editions and printed art more attractive, and saving people the trouble. the physical distributors job is to make these things continue to be appealing. you can download texts from project gutenberg, people still buy the books to save the trouble of printing them out.
--
i have based this conception for the music industry on my
rudimentary grasp of the economic principles outlined here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/S
please pass this along to anyone you feel might be
interested in this sort of development. interested
parties should contact: johnrpenner@earthlink.net
regards,
john r penner.
the fact is that you can SCALE UP from one mouse button to
two or three mouse buttons, but the converse is not true -
you can't scale down from a multi-button system to a single
button and still be able to run the system.
i have a mac, i can plug in a microsoft FOUR button
intellimouse (with a scroll wheel too), and it just works --
the mac system DOES support multiple button mice - and in a
more consistent system-wide fashion than other systems.
so the mac user has the option of having ONE button, or MORE
buttons. the converse isn't true - the windows users CAN'T
use one button mice even if they wanted to. so i ask you:
who are you to impose multiple buttons on me, when i don't
impose one button on you?
over eighty years ago, it was written:
"Man will, in time, manage to implant the death-forces in man, related
to electrical and magnetic forces, with external machines. He will
then be able to direct his intentions, his thoughts into the machine."
(Rudolf Steiner, "Individuelle Geistwesen und einheitlicher Weltengrund", especially November 25, 1917, Dornach)
just thought that was interesting, since it was written BEFORE computers, and only nine years after the first vacuum tube.
for an interesting article on the subject:
http://www.gottfried.no/articles/it_eng.htm
One of the best languages to start with is FutureBasic on the Macintosh. It does away with a lot of the cruft of earlier basic revisions, modernises the language with local variables and real funcions and libraries. Some improvement in FutureBasic over traditional Basic languages:
- No more line numbers
- No more Goto (you can do it, but highly discouraged - it uses real Functions instead).
- It compliles instead of interprets
- Modern GUI Event-driven architecture
- Resable Modular Code
- Local and Global Variables
- Recursion
- Conscructs like While and Multi-line IF statements
- Parameter passing through Functions.
- Ability to use #includes
- You can easily transition to a more robust language like C++ because the principles are the same, except you just start using { } instead of While
2cents.
johnrpenner.
an observation regarding your
theories on consciousness. in your online book, you include the
exerpt below on consciousness. but you must be aware that you are
displacing the problem of consciousness away from your individual
experience of consciousness into the speculative realm by the fact
that you attribute to matter the ability to THINK.
in this regard, you may find the following interesting:
> Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of
> the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin
> with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the
> world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or
> material processes. But, in doing so, it is already
> confronted by two different sets of facts: the material
> world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to
> make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely
> material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in
> the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place
> in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and
> organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain
> circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that,
> in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one
> place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to
> matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at
> his starting point. How does matter come to think about its
> own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and
> content just to exist? The materialist has turned his
> attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has
> arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite.
> Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic
> conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it
> from one place to another.
>
> (Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)
anyhow, if you truly are a materialist and have such great faith
that within matter you can find the CONSCIOUSNESS to arise as
some sort of emergent property of sufficient complextity", then
i'm afraid you will be subscribing to a gross superstition.
you may be able to fool many people with automatic conditioned respones,
but i think you would be grossly decieving yourself if you were to call
this CONSCIOUSNESS without first even truly understanding what it is
that consciousness IS within that only realm in which you can experience
it in the FIRST HAND CASE -- in your own SELF.
just a thought.
regards,
johnrpenner.
p.s. for a PhD disertation on CONSICOUSNESS and the process
involved in what is THINKING, you can find it here:
http://www.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA004/
--| Consciousness |-----
|
| http://www.atoma.f2s.com/Chapter-6.htm
|
| How then can be talk about or analyze this phenomenon of life? Let's start
| with how you or I know we are alive. I will say I know I am alive because
| I have "consciousness" and I will further articulate that consciousness as
| a recognition of "I-ness" (awkward as the word is). Jaron Lanier who
| coined the expression "virtual reality" and pioneeered its development is
| reported on the web site http://www.forbes.com/asap/99/0222/072.htm as
| saying "The centre of the circle that defines a person is a dot called
| consciousness, and as murky as that subject is, we are fast approaching
| some crucial conclusions about it. This is the notion that computers are
| becoming more 'alive' and capable of judgement." He then dismisses this
| idea completely. "It has become a cliche of technology reporting and a
| standby of computer industry public relations. It is a myth that depends
| upon public support, from, of all people, intellectuals."
|
| Thus we should not create the impression that all of the
| computing/AI/robotics field is jumping on the AL bandwagon. Levy (1992)
| dates the beginning of the modern AL field to a 1987 conference at Los
| Alamos, attended by >100 scientists (p. 4). A further comment which will
| disturb some people is that "What distinguishes most of the a-life
| scientists from their more conservative colleagues-and from the general
| public-is that they regarded plants, animals and humans as machines." (p.
| 117). Thus what we are seeing is the differing philosophical-theological
| positions of dualists and monists. Lanier is a dualist. Levy and his
| fellow AL scientists are monists subscribing to complete objectivity and
| materialism. "Consciousness" seems to be the last line of defense for
| those who subscribe to the unique, beyond-material nature of life. And
| even there it is encroached upon by those who will say that consciousness
| will appear as an emergent quality if the intelligent machine is built
| correctly.
creationists may resort to unsubstantiated theories, but science too has
its religious zealots. it happens when people don't just use the
scientific method as a tool for understanding things, but declare that it
is the only valid method for understanding things.
science is really good at explaining: a moves becasue force b acts on a,
and this happens because that happens, and this interaction occurs because
of this or that phenomenon. but science is only left with explaining an
endless chain of cause and effect, but never gets to the root of the
problem.
i can give you an endless discussion on the physiological processes
involved in getting the neurotransmitters to fire in the synapses of the
brain, and the electro-chemical reactions which travel through the nervous
system, and the contraction and expansion of muscle tissues according to
chemical laws...
BUT to simply explain by this why an arm moved in the way it did instead
of another says absolutely nothing about the INTENTION or WILL behind the
fellow who brought all those physiological processes into motion by the
fact that he wanted to throw a stick for his dog to fetch. science
explains HOW things work very well, but it is blind in one eye, because it
knows nothing about CAUSES.
for causes, we have to first start with our own selves. how does it come
to be that i am self-consciously aware? the fact of our own conscious
existence precedes any theory that science can make up about the
phenomenon, and therefore this aspect can never be done away with or
ignored. science doesn't like to dabble in these questions, but they won't
just go away -- not so long as you and i, and all these humans continue to
exist as sentient beings, the question as to how this came at all to be in
the first place will persist longer than any science concocted within the
frame of our conscious existence.
"Our conception of nature is clearly striving toward the goal of
explaining the life of the organism according to the same laws by which
the phenomena of inanimate nature must also be explained. General laws of
mechanics, physics, chemistry are sought for in the bodies of animals and
plants. The same sort of laws that control a machine must also be
operative in the organism-only in immeasurably more complicated and
scarcely com-prehensible form. Nothing is to be added to these laws in
order to render possible an explanation of the phenomenon we call life....
The mechanistic conception of the phenomena of life steadily gains ground.
But it will never satisfy one who has the capacity to cast a deeper glance
into nature's processes. Contemporary researchers in nature are too
cowardly in their thinking. Where the wisdom of their mechanistic
explanations fails, they say the thing is to us inexplicable... A bold
thinking lifts itself to a higher manner of perception. It seeks to
explain by higher laws that which is not of a mechanical character. All
our natural-scientific thinking remains behind our natural scientific
experience. At present the natural-scientific form of thinking is much
praised. In regard to this, it is said that we live in a
natural-scientific age. But at bottom this natural" scientific age is the
poorest that history has to show. Its characteristic is to hang fast to
the mere facts and the mechanistic forms of explanation. Life will never
be grasped by this form of thinking because such a grasp requires a higher
manner of conceiving than that which belongs to the explanation of a
machine." (Rudolf Heidenhain, November 6, I897)
| Given any system of sufficient complexity and flexibility we
| have the possibility of real intelligence arising as part of
| an emergent phenomenon. And since this system is designed to
| mimic known biological mechanisms involved in conscioussness
| and thought, it is even more likely that it will become
| intelligent once a critical threshold of complexity has been
| reached.
i'm sorry, but this fantasy of so many people today that somehow,
mysteriously, "intelligence" will "emerge" from "sufficient
complextity" is a bunch of speculative wishful thinking. i don't
know how so many people can buy into this superstition.
consider this:
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of
the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin
with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the
world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter
or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already
confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world,
and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make
these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material
processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain,
much in the same way that digestion takes place in the
animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic
effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances
with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he
is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He
ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself.
And thus he is back again at his starting point. How
does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it
not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The
materialist has turned his attention away from the definite
subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something
quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him
again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem;
it can only shift it from one place to another.
(Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom)
| Given any system of sufficient complexity and flexibility we
| have the possibility of real intelligence arising as part of
| an emergent phenomenon. And since this system is designed to
| mimic known biological mechanisms involved in conscioussness
| and thought, it is even more likely that it will become
| intelligent once a critical threshold of complexity has been
| reached.
i'm sorry, but this fantasy of so many people today that somehow,
mysteriously, "intelligence" will "emerge" from "sufficient
complextity" is a bunch of speculative wishful thinking. i don't
know how so many people can buy into this superstition.
consider this:
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of
the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin
with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the
world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter
or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already
confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world,
and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make
these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material
processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain,
much in the same way that digestion takes place in the
animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic
effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances
with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he
is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He
ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself.
And thus he is back again at his starting point. How
does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it
not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The
materialist has turned his attention away from the definite
subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something
quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him
again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem;
it can only shift it from one place to another.
(Rudolf Steiner, Chapter II, The Philosophy of Freedom)
if man is so smart, how come he has to look to "dumb nature" for ideas that were already implemented and perfected for endless ages already. i guess we can always learn more -- but from where did the original knowledge and intuition come from then???
johnrpenner.
paper will last longer than any computer.
if you print on hemp or cotton paper, there are samples that have lasted more than 400 years. you really think that the html you create now and store on a hard disk or CD-ROM will still be accessible in 400 years... <ha ha ha ha ha!>
anything physical/electronic is transitory -- get over it.
anyone that doesn't agree with what metallica is doing should BAN METALLICA.
on JUNE 1 -- BURN YOUR METALLICA ALBUMS
thousands of people burning their metalica albums should get their attention.
they can't afford to lose their audience over this.
I am posting this on the behalf of vladamir zetzer -- university Professor
for the Dept. of Computer Science, and Institute of Mathematics and
Statistics, USP (Nas Paulo), and lecturer on Software Engineering,
Computers in Education, and Social and Individual Impacts of Computers.
he has presented a research paper entitled, "A REVIEW OF ARGUMENTS FOR THE
USE OF COMPUTERS IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION"
the full paper is available at:
http://www.ime.usp.br/~vwsetzer/review.html
--| an exerpt |-----
We have no doubt that computers accelerate children's development. This is
quite clear to us: forcing a virtual setting, a formal language (when
issuing or choosing commands to any software) and a logic-symbolic
thinking, computers force children and teenagers to physically and
mentally behave like adults. It is absolutely non-natural for a child to
sit on a chair for long periods of time, if the child has no possibility
of imagining, innerly fantasizing (this would happen while hearing a fairy
tale, for instance). As with TV, educational software full of images leave
no space for inner imagination. In fact, we conjecture that the capacity
for forming inner mental images is damaged by the use of such software.
Note that if this software is not rich in images, and consists essentially
of texts, it will be so boring to a child or adolescent that it will not
be used at all.
The acceleration of a gradual mental and psychological development, making
the child innerly and outwardly behave like an adult, is in our opinion
the worst influence exercised by computers. Obviously, we are of the
opinion that there is a proper timing for every development in children
and young people. Any undue acceleration produces some damage; in
particular, we think that early intellectual activities tend to steal from
the child her childhood, necessary for a balanced development, which
should encompass physical, psychological, artistic, social and
intellectual aspects. In this sense, we extend to any kind of computer
usage Neil Postman's fears for the disappearance of childhood [4], which
he concluded mainly from examining the impact of communication media. So
pattern (e), which is praised by many authors, Papert in particular, is
for us a counter-argument for the use of computers in education. Papert's
position is absolutely clear, as in his following statement:
"The image of children using the computer as a writing instrument is a
particularly good example of my general theses that what is good for
professionals is good for children." [2, p. 30]
That is, in our opinion he does not recognize some essential differences
existing between children and adults. He also does not see the damage one
can do to children when they are handled as adults. His argument (6) seems
astonishing: behaving like psychologists and mainly epistemologists puts a
child into a clear adult state of consciousness.
about time the bully got his due!
not much has changed since the inquisition, only now we pay our children to be UNTRUSTING. do we really want to raise our children by teaching them to MISTRUST each other...!? this is just the beginning. ever wonder how big brother 1984 began? witchhunting reborn in modern garb. :-P i can't believe a country even dares to call itself "the home of the free" in a place where they allow something like this into the schools, and let it be run by a complany with a vested economic interest in keeping kids bound-up within CONFORMITY. just another reason why i'm glad i don't have to live in a country like the united states -- people are a little bit wierd over there.
the stronger locks you make, the more justified people will feel in picking them. the only way is to keep on TRUSTING -- DESPITE THE RASCALS THAT WOULD SPOIL IT FOR THE WHOLE BUNCH.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain
a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
(Benjamin Franklin)
johnrpenner@-nospam-earthlink.net
| The hayday of the epistemological enquiries on the meaning of physical
/ Einstein1.html
| reality and the mind of God and all that, came with quantum mechanics (a
| subject which, need I remind, Einstein never believed in...
albert einstein expresses his views on religion thusly:
> Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from
> its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the
> mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the
> way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and the centuries.
> Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid
> realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to
> remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic
> religious feeling that gives a man such strength.
(Albert Einstein, *Ideas and Opinions*, Crown Publishers, New York, 1954).
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
| Sorry to disappoint you but, no, there isn't any hidden spirituality
| in physics. Spirituality is an attribute of the human mind...
you are correct -- physics is only about physics; however, the theory that
humans are merely products of cause-and-effect relationships which can be
explained solely by physics and that consciousness arises as a by-product
of interactions within matter is simply unscientific.
The assertion that its "all just atoms and molecules" is a theory that is
more questionable than the fact of your conscious existence itself. You are
faced with the unavoidable fact that we are self-conscious beings, because
you cannot deny the fact of your own conscious existence. However, we CAN
question whether human consciousness is a by-product of interactions within
matter or not.
you can of coures BELIEVE that all thinking and conscious processes do arise
from the interaction of molecules, and that consciousness is a sort of
"software' that runs on the hardware of the human brain, but then one is
confronted with this:
"Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of
thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins
with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it
is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material
world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make these
latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He
believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way
that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he attributes
mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in
certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that,
in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to
another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to
himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does
matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply
satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist has
turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and
has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here
the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot
solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another."
(Rudolf Steiner, TPoF, chpt2).
physics doesn't deal with causes and the meaning of existence,
but we as humans do, and we are a part of the world.
regards,
john penner.
i have read this book, and it is quite interesting.
he re-hashes a lot of what stephen hawking posits about
the tapered-off indefinite origins of space-time.
worth a read, but not as good at addressing the issues
as another book "The Philosophy of Freedom", which
applies the scientific method to practice of thinking
itself: http://www.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA004/TPOF/
a link to what einstein actually wrote about religion
is here: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/E
regards,
johnrpenner@-nospam-earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/Mi crosoftPeng.html Since return-on-investment must govern the development of an application for a platform, the "more innovative, smaller" platforms are squeezed-out by an over-bearing monopoly competitor. For example, if you asked a developer in 1997, "why not make a Linux or Apple version -- there is an INERTIA against them for developing for a MINORITY platform, because it costs them some extra developers to PORT anything that is not in conformance with an industry STANDARD in the operating system. So, because it costs money to deviate from these standards, the smaller platforms face a significant barrier to entry because of INERTIA. This is why it is so important to understand the difference between an OPEN standard, and a PROPRIETARY standard. This inertia can be used to affect standards across the board. By uncessarily bundling and tying their browser to the OS, Microsoft sought to gain control of the open public standards established by the W3 consortium, and replace them with their own propritary standards so that they would have an unfair monopoly advantage. The results of this can be seen in what happened to the workload of Web Designers coding for two different versions of HTML. Because Microsoft sought to "embrace and extend" the HTML platform for their own benefit, the HTML became fragmented. There were effectively two versions of HTML. One was the open standard adhered to by Netscape 3.0, and the other was the Microsoft-ized version of HTML in Explorer 3.0. Because of this, all web designers were forced to make TWO versions of their HTML web pages, in order to accomodate Microsoft's "Explorer html 'extensions'". Due to Microsoft's "innovation" -- national productivity went down, because people had to do double the work -- coding once for "standard" HTML, and again to ensure compatibility with the proprietary Microsoft HTML extensions. This continues until those "extensions" became more standard than the original, because they kept giving their browser away to ensure that everyone had it, and used it, thus suplanting an industry-agreed standard with their own proprietary "standard". Fortuneately, public pressure helped to bring the HTML in the 4.0 versions of Explorer and Netscape closer to each other. The solution to the Microsoft problem lies in this -- that there must be seperation of RIGHTS (i.E. Who sets the STANDARDS), and of Economic Interest (those who produce the software which EMPLOY the standards, and go by them as a guide to create the product of their labour called the "Operating System Platform"). So long as they remain coupled, the abuses of monopoly power will be able to continue. The solution to monopoly problems is to deccouple the FEELING / RIGHTS / STANDARDS DEFINITION BODIES - from the PRODUCERS / THOSE WHO PRODUCE WHAT IS DEFINED BY THOSE STANDARDS. Microsoft's monopoly has resulted from the ability for a proprietary standard to exist. The proprietary standard could not arise if you decoupled these two functions. Instead of having the vested-interest manufacturer defining their own standards and letting the economic force run amuck, it is in the public interest to have economic power trimmed and pruned to grow appropriately to what is good for the consumer (the people) by the democratic exercise of FEELING, rights, and standards definition as a seperate, non-biased entity. A failure to seperate these two will always eventually result in a situation where an abuse of monopoly power can arise. If we are to ask -- who is it that should set the standards? It should not be those with an economic interest in furthering their own protocols. It should be determined by those who love the technology for the technology's sake -- the peer-to-peer open sharing of code by geeks are best qualified to do this. Through this sharing, they will ensure that the best technical solution will be found. The standards thus established are open, and shared. Once these standards exist, then any company can produce and economically benefit by creating products which follow these standards. There must be a seperation of STANDARDS SETTERS and STANDARDS IMPLEMENTORS. But it is important to understand that this is a reciprocal relationship. Otherwise, unrealistic standards that don't relate to real-world need will arise. The standards are to be created by consideration for the user; for the user. The economic force to carry out and pay people to implement a system conforming to this need however must remain seperate from the standards-defining body. The best way to do this is to ensure that Open Standards are adhered to, and that Proprietary standards are not allowed to arise. This is best done by seperating the standards setting body from those who have the economic force necessary to deliver a product based on those standards. Listen to Richard Stallman -- he has the best solution for re-regulation of normal industry operation -- to remedy any harmful ways in which Microsoft may operate. References: - Social Threefolding, Rudolf Steiner: http://www.anth.org/socialthreefolding/tsnindex.ht m - Linux - By the People; For the People: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/so cialLinux.html - Towards a Threefold Social-Economic Order: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/St einer-Social.html - Richard Stallman on How to Deal with Microsoft: http://linuxtoday.com/stories/4999.html - The Microsoft Halloween Documents: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/ --
today, i've got a mac with Vision DSP, which handles audio & midi tracks seamlessly, and is very tight for producing professional studio quality work.
how many years will we have to wait before we can get a linux version to be doing what i've already been doing for years already anyways?
john.
just the renderer?
that's nothing -- side effects software has ported
their whole high-end 3D animation software package to Linux almost a year ago (they were the first), and they're ahead of maya for the big film production houses (they use houdini for: titanic, the matrix, appolo 13, etc.)
also, maya is a bit behind in Procedural technology. side effect's Houdini not only has got the procedural geometry, but also procedural motion and sound editing. check out:
http://www.sidefx.com/product/index.html
john.
i've never read the newspaper. it always seemed a BIG waste to me to have this thick pile of paper that you had to throw out every day.
i read the web however - slashdot is all the news i need. all the rest of the "politics" that goes on in newspapers just bores me silly.
basically, i guess i don't like the "PUSH" of newspapers where they determine what to feed you.
the toronto SUN is one of the WORST gossip rags i've ever seen - i would pay just to keep them from ever printing another copy again!
j.