Re:The Limitations of Science
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The Mind of God
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Don't have time for much so I'll go thematic instead of point-by-point.
The thrust of my argument is the sheer volume of brute fact it seems to me that the atheist has to accept. The fact that seasonings taste good to the human palate is my prototypical example. I fail to be convinced by the explanatory power of a worldview that says that physical laws just are, physical phenomena just are, and certain correlations between humans and the physical world just are. For a more detailed explanation of this approach, see Richard Swinburne's text, "Is There A God?"
The upshot of the beauty argument is that the theistic worldview and the athestic worldview are competing to explain the existence of the natural world and human beings. It is NOT a competition in the sense that if the atheistic answer is wrong or non-existent, the theistic argument wins by default. It is a competition in the sense of what can be explained by each theory and how well each side puts together its case. The sense of beauty is, in my mind, a pretty darn significant element of our human existence in a way that eclipses are not. A view that neither can explain nor can offer hope of explaining that in the near future is something I see as lacking. You apparently don't; you'll chalk it up to something we may find out in the future, or even if we don't it doesn't matter that much. I congratulate you on your faith.
For such a significant (in my view) element as the human sense of beauty, I have a ready answer and you do not. That is a separate issue from whether my answer is true or not, but in terms of explanatory potential, I've got the edge in this instance. I do NOT assume the theistic position is true and the atheistic position has no alternative; I merely point out that one theory may have greater explanatory potential than the other, and that's a criterion readily accepted by scientists.
Moreover, you are correct in asserting that the fact that the atheist doesn't immediately have an answer does not entail that no answer is possible. I'm not making that claim; if you thought I was, rest assured. In the interim, however, the theistic worldview is stronger in this area.
To sum up: I am not claiming that the problem of beauty makes theism true and atheism false; I am claiming that it makes theism a stronger theory than atheism, all other things being equal (which they seldom are) because of its explanatory richness. If that's the claim I'm making, I do NOT have to show my case to be valid until it's time to get to brass tacks; then we BOTH have to take the gloves off and evaluate the details of the competing worldviews.
Final point: I'm strongly suspecting that actual discussion of the validity of the cases would be pointless. You're demanding evidence but limiting it to only the subset demanded by empirical science (totally missing my point about the Christian claim that God directly interacted with human beings; it's direct--even empirical--contact which was written down thereby becoming historical evidence, not a tautology.) I don't suspect I can satisfy your evidentiary demands, mostly because I think they're artificially narrow. Likewise, I doubt you can satisfy my demands (or would care to or see the need to) regarding detailed explanations of various brute facts or human attributes because you'd think they're unnecessary. Sigh. I don't know, then, where we could really go from here.
Re:One Spiritual(?), Religous(?) person's thoughts
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The Mind of God
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I'll get going on your argument in just a second, but first I've got to comment on your tailing slap.
In summary, your friend's argument is total crap for countless reasons, just like all the other "proofs" of God that people with a superficial grasp of logic produce.
My friend is all-but-dissertation for his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Virginia. They don't LET people with "a superficial grasp of logic" get that close to a philosophy doctorate. As for his assumptions, they're well-grounded in reams and reams of literature surrounding this question. Discarding his assumptions because they don't mesh with 20th-century physics (which may or may not be correct) is NOT a stunning display of argumentative acumen.
First, I want to point out that Mike's term "traversal" means logical traversal of all events, so appealing to how long it took the universe to get here or how long it would take to traverse all events is really off-target. The notion of finite time doesn't even enter into the argument; you put it there, and your objection to the argument therefore cannot succeed on those grounds.
I can't say this strongly enough: the traversal of a past series of events is NOT dependent on the amount of time available!!! Furthermore, he's not uncritically assuming there has to be a beginning event. That assumption is taken as true in the first leg in which the series of events is finite; the assumption is taken as false in the second leg in which the series of events cannot be logically traversed going backward, leading him to conclude they could not have been traversed going forward. Show me clearly how an infinite series of events works without relying solely on the assumptions of physics/mathematics (because infinity IS an assumption in physics/mathematics as it cannot be observed, by definition), and we can talk. If you can't do it without being at least a little fuzzy, don't slam my friend for working with the assumptions he does. If you can't explain infinity any better than you did, don't yell at him for a misunderstanding of what it really is.
As for necessary and contingent, of course they fall outside the scope of modern physics. That's why physics and other branches of science cannot answer some of the questions people try to make them answer.
As for your "kicker", your error is misreading "consistent with" as "identical to." The latter implies that all thinking entities immediately jump to "God" when thinking of infinite, uncaused, prior to existence of universe, etc.... The former merely asks that we examine our notions of God and find them consistent with those requirements. This approach has plenty of historical evidence behind it (what others conceived of God) and isn't crippled by naysayers. The focus is on what we think God is, not what we think the universe is; you've got it backwards.
Your "Claim not proven" section looks neat, but you really don't provide coherent objections to the claims, merely state that the assumptions are incorrect without giving (in my clear) a clearer or more obviously correct definition.
As for his further claims, your entire objection rests on your assertion that "'Essence' and 'essential attributes' are so vague that they can't be meaningfully worked with." Well, I'm sorry that your grasp of those concepts is so weak, but there's a great deal of literature focused entirely on these concepts and clarifying them for those who don't yet comprehend them.
The approach is much the same for your objections to the rest of his assertions: if you don't understand them, they can't be true. From your final responses, I'm led to conclude that you really didn't follow most of his argument. The argument for intelligence is not a "HUGE fallacy"; it says that complex mathematical constructs found in nature are evidence of intelligence (because they aren't accidental, they're intentional.) What part of that don't you understand? I thought it's fairly straightforward. You totally misunderstand the irresistible/immovable dichotomy because you ignored the factor of God's will which resolves the potential contradiction of both existing in the same being. The charge against the existence of the objective moral standard is very weak; in light of the subject matter, it's a very reasonable assumption. Even if that assumption is false and the moral standard is subjective, then God has the prerogative of Creator to establish the supremacy of His moral standard. Finally, the composite element talks about the possibility that God would have a "warring spirit", as it were; if God had such a thing as part of His substance, He would not be infinite (which the argument claims to have already established), or he could become more perfect, also antithetical to infinity. (That doesn't hinge, by the way, on whether you claim to understand what Mike means by infinity or not.)
In summation, your objections to the argument are based on your personal understanding/misunderstanding of base definitions without offering clearer definitions in return. Plugging in your assumptions for someone else's does not an argument make. Take a little more time and learn a little more and come back to this argument after you've learned to tighten up your logic. To your credit, you did read the entire piece and make detailed objections. You just got most of them wrong.
Re:One Spiritual(?), Religous(?) person's thoughts
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The Mind of God
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Sigh. The quick squirt of napalm is ill-placed. All you've shown is that you're a science bigot who hasn't yet come to terms with the fact that your science is limited. Good luck in dealing with events that exist outside your assumptions. I think you'll really need it; contempt is no substitute for thought.
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
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The Mind of God
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Kaufmann:
Regarding the non sequitur, that was largely in response to others jumping in on this discussion who want to claim that holding a negative view needs no defense. It points out that failing to prove the pro case does NOT prove the con case. That's a notion that I saw creeping in, and I used your post as a jumping-off point.
As for the content of your position, I tried to illustrate the challenge you'd have to face without making too many assumptions about the actual content of your position. It sounds like you're in better shape than most; you think that your position, whatever its precise composition, is rooted in solid ground. Fine and dandy; you'll need that when you try to make a persuasive argument why your position actually captures the truth of the world.
You're right; I don't think there necessarily is A default position, argumentatively speaking. That's separate, however, from whether or not someone has a personal "default position" which is simply beliefs one holds supported by various background beliefs. I simply want to emphasize that each position making truth claims about the world has some 'splaining to do.
About Occam's Razor--be very, very careful in a discussion like this. Realize that Occam's Razor makes an assumption about the world--roughly stated, the simplest explanation is most likely to be true--that could very well be begging the question. For Occam's Razor to work properly in a discussion like this, it has to be true about the world that the simplest explanation actually IS most likely to be true. But that's part of the question: what is the world fundamentally like? Occam's Razor in this sort of discussion is dangerously close to assuming what it seeks to prove; be vewy, vewy careful using such sharp objects. Finally, don't forget that a Franciscan monk is responsible for the principle ("plurality should not be posited without necessity"); thus, it's a little disingenuous to use the principle to slice out the entire spiritual world. Poor William would not approve, I daresay.
As for the evidence claim, you caught me there; that was more in the nature of a sting to get your attention. It's often required on Slashdot, I've noticed. I am curious, though: would you accept historical evidence and testimony from the Bible as acceptable? How about testimony from Christians who claim to have had prayers answered that strain probability? In other words, is your request for evidence entirely empirical, the sort you can submit to standard scientific analysis? (If so, good luck with evolution; you can't replicate the so-called evolutionary history of the earth in a lab. You're limited to some proof-of-concept exercises with bacteria that are dangerous to extrapolate to the whole of history.) I can't check/. much more, so if you'd like to continue, hit me at dewyn17@yahoo.com
Finally, I'm glad you appreciated the counterpoint. I thought the point needed some fleshing out. Coming from a philosophy background, "rational" and "reasonable" are technical terms and seemed to be misused in your original post. Your clarification acknowledged that you actually are serious about this question, which is a step up from other parties who are content to rest on currently fashionable pseudo-intellectual agnostic laurels.
Take care.
Re:The Limitations of Science
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The Mind of God
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· Score: 1
Tell me, why shouldn't garlic be flavorful to humans?
Because garlic is an organism trying to carve out a niche in its environment. What survival advantage or benefit is gained by its flavor being desired by a group of hairless bipeds who come along very late in the evolutionary picture? All I can see is that you accept such an odd juxtaposition as a brute fact--AND accept all the other correlations between good-taste and good-for-you as brute facts. I find it difficult to swallow (pun intended) that all our foods independently incorporated their structures and compositions to appeal to our palates.
I also find the alternative explanation difficult to accept--namely, that our sense of taste resides absolutely in ourselves. Sans God as Creator and Designer, I can't see how such a refinement as desiring a seasoning either confers an evolutionary advantage or "makes the list" given the short amount of time (relatively speaking) some say we have between the first distinctively human hominids and historical humanity. In other words, I am not convinced by the panacea of evolution without a little more precision. If evolution is supposed to be so supported and so understood, it seems that I could get an explanation that's a little tighter than approximate empirical generalities.
As for the problem of beauty, the difficulty is this: today was a beautiful day today. The sun was shining, the grass was green, the wind was cool, and the birds were singing. Now, is that beauty in the world itself, is it in my perception only, or is it somehow in the interrelationship between the two? If the first, without the existence of a benevolent Creator with a sense of beauty, what geological or evolutionary advantage is there in beauty that served as a causitive principle? (And no, asking how this Creator got his sense of beauty doesn't help the case any; if you're going to posit that God isn't necessary to explain the universe, then start explaining.) Is beauty a by-product of another attribute with survival potential (for living organisms like trees, not snowy mountains); if so, what is that attribute, and how is beauty logically related to it if at all? In answering this question, appealing to chance isn't too encouraging; that's asking me to accept a ton of brute facts, and what's so persuasive about that?
If the second explanation, a variation of the first objection pops up. What evolutionary advantage is there is my finding the sound of birds to be beautiful? I can't see how this helps me survive or meet my needs as a developing hominid. Appealing to obscure psychological needs doesn't work here, either, because that posits a claim that can't be supported by evolutionary evidence. Again, claiming that this ability developed through chance or accident is not convincing; might as well say it was magic.
If the third, then tell me a little more what you mean. I identified the interrelation for the sake of being complete, but I can't for the life of me begin to detail what that might entail. If you can, go right ahead. I'll listen.
A fourth option, I suppose, is that that day really isn't beautiful at all, just a fancy of mine. If you really want to go that route and claim that beauty is absolutely arbitrary, I'll leave you to it...along with the embarrassing position that though there IS no actual beauty, I seem to be sharing that same illusion with millions of other people alive now and in the past. Enjoy convincing people that beauty doesn't exist; I feel much safer asserting that it does.
The upshot of the problem is that the atheist needs to explain WHY beauty exists (or doesn't exist) with supporting evidence or tightly defended fundamental premises because there doesn't seem to be any room for it in the typical evolutionary picture focused entirely on survival and propagation of genes. The atheist needs to either deny the existence of beauty or explain it WITHOUT recourse to the existence of God. THAT'S the huge problem for the atheist: it boils down, in its strongest form, to either rejecting humanity or rejecting the atheistic worldview as insufficient to explain the world. That is NOT a de facto proof for the existence of God (the charge you seem to be making, giving me the impression you really didn't understand the problem), but it does leave the atheist with a pretty serious hole in his story. The god-of-the-gaps argument has potential IF the worldview with God in it is more plausible than the worldview without God. Theists have a ready explanation for why beauty exists; it comes from the center of an all-loving and generous Creator who is the source of all that exists. Does the atheist have as ready an answer?
Finally, the countercharge you present is simply out of place. We don't take discrete phenomena and decide that it came from God only if we can't think of anything else. Like you said, evidence of God's existence is what constitues evidence of God's existence. That's why there is a Bible: to record the interaction between God and his creation. God isn't made up; He shows us who He is. He is responsible for the human sense of beauty because He told us so. That's the claim of the religious theist: God interacts with humans in history and teaches us about Himself. That's the strong claim that Jews and Christians make (since we're ultimately discussing what many call the Judeo-Christian God instead of just God.) Now, you can attack that claim on its grounds, but don't pretend that it's made up off-the-cuff by people wandering around the modern world. That's a lot stronger "default assumption" than the weak position you're trying to assign to me. Let's see what you can do with it.
Re:One Spiritual(?), Religous(?) person's thoughts
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The Mind of God
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Actually, I'll point you to one a friend of mine put together for a philosophy class he taught. I disagree with him slightly in the statement "the burden of proof lies with the one making the affirmative statement", but that's mostly a matter of phrasing; I agree with that almost entirely except when it's misused to defend non-existence as a default position. That's why I prefer "ontological truth claim" to "affirmative statement"; that covers more territory.
Take a look at this latest of several incarnations of the proof. The amusing aspect to it, actually, is that you think the number of people who have tackled this question actually disqualifies it as a legitimate endeavor. See if you can actually attack Mike's argument on its merits instead of resorting solely to sarcasm.
http://209.150.150.76/public_html/godarg.pdf
Re:Uh, doesn't seem very "rational" at all
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The Mind of God
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Okay, a number of things here. First, it is significant that this comes near the end of the book. In other words, this is a conclusion that has been reached by examination of the questions at hand. Thus, the implication that this cannot be rational because of its barest interpretation is lazy and misplaced.
Second, the burden of proof does NOT lie upon the party making the affirmative claim. It lies upon the party making the claim, regardless of its being affirmative or negative. In this case, Davies is making an ontological claim that he must support. If he fails, then that is all that has happened!! It does not show that his case is unsalvagable, nor does it automatically lend support to whatever position you believe. Failure to prove a case means just that; trying to extend the implications beyond that is tricky and requires additional work.
In other words, folks, THERE IS NO DEFAULT POSITION! Kaufmann may "believe otherwise", and he may tell us what that position is as a matter of sharing information about his current mental states. Once he makes statements about the way the world is as opposed to what's in his head, HE has to prove his case. Whether or not Davies can prove his case makes no difference as to whether Kaufmann is justified or unjustified in his position. That becomes important only when Davies' position is analyzed and its premises, true or false, can be used in a separate argument attacking or defending Kaufmann's position, whatever it may be.
As for "actual evidence", I suspect that demand is spurious. I rather suspect Kaufmann would submit any such evidence to a Procrustean bed. I'll go ahead and read his responses and see if my hunch plays out.
Re:One Spiritual(?), Religous(?) person's thoughts
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Because the answer of "GOD" is acually a non-answer.
Interesting. So the notion of a self-conscious, self-willing causative agent is useless as an answer to a question of "what caused x"? Won't you then have to discard the notion of a human agent as a "non-answer" to the question, "what caused this essay to exist?"
If I just go ahead and ask, "What caused the creation of God"? You would say, "God Just Is.(tm) He is infinite."
Yes, I would. I would then lay out the case showing why he exists out of logical necessity as well as make the case for His existence from His interaction with humanity. There--I just did two things that your universe can't do; the universe is logically contingent and has no self-consciousness to interact itself into human affairs. (Or if you say it does, then you're working with a FAR different notion of universe than any scientist I know.) NOW we can talk details; now we can get somewhere. The discussion has just begun, not been slammed shut.
Then I'd say, "Well that went nowhere. I could have said the 'Universe Just Is. It is Infinite'".
We could go on into an infinite regression of entities, or we can apply Occam's Razor. What is the rational choice?
Well, it seems the rational choice would be to explore the option most likely to lead to truth. We might want to figure out if Occam's Razor actually DOES lead to truth; you beg the question if you use it to determine what's "true" or not. It's like fishing with a net with two-inch holes and then claiming there are no fish less than two inches in the water! The rational choice is actually take the question seriously and do a little better than an absolutely unnecessary attempt to make it a question of multiple entities.
This book and others like it seem to be about this question: What do you do when you get to the end of science?
The move toward religion and philosophy by intense scientists is, in my view, a recognition of the limitations of present-day science. The limitations can be summed up thusly: Science as a methodology cannot answer a single question of "Why?"
Now, scientists can answer cleverly disguised versions of "How?" questions; ask "why is the sky blue?" and you'll get a thorough discussion of how light works and how atmosphere and color and nerve endings play together. You can get descriptive elements of empirical data collections all day long, but you can't get to the notion of purpose or meaning because science isn't built for normative pursuits. It sounds like these writers have explored the non-normative ramifications of science and found that while science points in wonderful directions, it can never get one to the destinations.
I might like to read this book; it would be even nicer to read it in a forum less crowded than Slashdot. Then we could explore statements like the following:
* Science as a methodology is chock full of assumptions that are difficult to justify with supporting reasons (like the tests of simplicity, fruitfulness, and predictive richness.) * In an argument, the burden of proof is "home field advantage"; furthermore, it rests on the one making an assertion whether that assertion is affirmative or negative. * Weak agnosticism/atheism is essentially biography: telling the contents of one's own mind. Strong agnosticism requires deep philosophy about the limitations of knowledge. Strong atheism is incredibly hard to support as it has to seriously support the claim of non-existence of God. * Rational and reasonable are useful but not necessarily identical. Complaints about someone's "I believe" credo as being de facto "irrational" are somewhat juvenile. All arguments have to start somewhere. * I'll take an atheist seriously when he can convince me why garlic is flavorful to humans in the absence of a self-willed conscious Creator/Designer in three maybes or less. The problem of beauty (of which the above is a subset) is as significant for an atheist as the problem of pain is for a theist.
Those would be interesting topics for debate, as well as the history of philosophy, science, and religion (especially since it seems so many have neglected to study any of it in detail.) Will such a discussion take place? Who knows, on Slashdot?
...seems to me to be sufficient justification for opening offices in Japan and Europe. I think this is another case of Red Hat trying to help grow the Linux pie rather than get a bigger slice. I really believe Red Hat wishes SuSE no ill will and in fact wants them to succeed beyond their wildest dreams...if it makes Red Hat money. A loose Red Hat/SuSE alliance to break up the Microsoft stranglehold in Europe makes a lot of sense to me. (Ditto an alliance with TurboLinux in Asia.) More pie for everyone.
Disclaimers: no, I have no knowledge that this is Red Hat's actual plan, nor do I make a substantive claim that a formal alliance exists between Red Hat and any other party. Nor am I so naive to believe that the coziness such a relationship implies would last forever; given the state of affairs I postulate, there could be a nasty breakup/competition in the future. But cross that bridge when you come to it, not before. As it is, take this as a plausible and possibly desirable speculation.
You make a pretty strong claim about how the community can no longer implicitly trust Red Hat. Your evidence? The IPO and Rasterman's departure. Yet you don't state why the IPO was a problem, nor do you seem to recall that Raster attributed his difficulties at Red Hat to a particular manager. I agree with another poster who said that a public response to an individual leaving a company is highly inappropriate. I would go further: it is inappropriate for Red Hat to respond to claims made by a former employee about the direction the company is taking.
In other words, I disagree that the events illustrate bad management, and I question the use of the powerful term "ominous." Furthermore, I question how professional it is for you to make these public claims when you're having private troubles with the company in question. I've always considered it illegitimate to air one's dirty laundry in public, particularly before there's been a resolution of the situation.
In short, whether you intended it or not, this post smacks suspiciously of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. I would hope you would either substantiate or retract these claims, preferably the latter. For some reason you've been moderated pretty high, and I fear that you're spreading ill will without sufficient justification.
Hamill? I'm fairly certain Mark Hamill spent a good twenty years or so distancing himself from Star Wars because he hated the typecast. In everything I've ever read about him, he's always quick to point out that he has done work other than Star Wars.
An actor complains about the script and the director...what's so new and surprising about that? Actors always complain how their directors are stifling them because the director is the person in charge of the movie, so much so that the obligatory cliche in any interview with an actor is, "But I really want to direct." Thus, it seems to me that all the charges about the dictator-like nature of directors in general (and Lucas in particular) is ridiculous. Directors are supposed to be like that; that's why they're directors. It's one of the perks. Actors are just paid to do a job.
As for the social commentary on the "obsession" some have with Star Wars, Guinness is just following a well-established Hollywood tradition: making a living pretending to be other people automatically grants you a forum and the right to do social commentary. Moreover, he lets his irritation show that he's been typecast (the bane of any actor) and consequently resents the fan base that did that to him.
Of course this isn't news; there's nothing new about it. It is, however, conflict and controversy, which is the real goal of the mass media because it sells. Unfortunately, it got a link to/. which generated yet another ridiculous wave of Lucas/TPM/Star Wars bashing. I don't think I've ever seen so many public unfair criticism when it comes to a movie before in my life (David Brin's atrocious analysis comes to mind.) This just generated more of the same. A shame, that.
Thanks for the response. It's quite clear (a welcome change from some of the other pieces I've seen.) Some comments:
Regarding the vehicle analogy, think of it like this: If Linux became incredibly popular but none of its new supporters cared about Freedom (or any ideal the original coders cared about), would you ditch it? Note that it doesn't have to become anti-free here, merely that that new majority doesn't think it's all about freedom. In other words, if by becoming popular Linux loses the meaning you had once invested in it, would you then commit yourself to converting the heathens or find a new monastery, as it were? (Granted, this may be moving away from the author's original work, but I think the question is still interesting.)
Regarding the philosophical aspect, my question is this: is the freedom granted with software valuable because it is or because it creates further benefits? In more philosophical language, is software freedom's desirability intrinsic or operational? I have no problem with promoting freedom because it allows other things that you deem good, from crushing nuts to customizing your machine to being able to share programs with your friends without acting against either your moral code or the law. But note that in these cases, it's not about freedom; it's about these good things that you want to happen. You want softer hides, not the ability to use a rock to soften hides. Granted, in most cases that ability or freedom is going to be necessary to achieve your end, but you're still valuing the tool according to the desirability of the result.
In other words, it's not all about freedom, it's all about the neat stuff you need freedom to obtain. Stallman has an essay on freedom; in the piece, though, he evaluates non-free software in terms of the harm it does and free software in terms of the good it promotes. In doing so, he unconsciously relegates "freedom" to the status of "best tool" instead of the end goal I often see it being trumpeted as.
The significant part I see in this is that it puts RMS and ESR on the same page: they're both making utilitarian arguments for the promulgation of open/free software. The difference then becomes that RMS puts an explicit moral component (but NOT identical with freedom) in his equation for social benefit while ESR's is either implicit or nonexistent. If I'm correct, then, the next step for the Free Software people to do is articulate the moral position that emphasis on freedom supports without identifying the position with freedom.
The reason I'm getting so picky about terms is because I worry that people are mistaking the thing required for the thing desired. And I think that's why some people might eventually leave: they might get what they wanted but not realize it because they lost their focus (or never clearly articulated it.) THAT's the danger I see.
Thoughts? Comments? I may have stuff wrong; just let me know and I'll re-evaluate. Thanks for writing back; I went a little over-the-top hoping for a response, and you generously responded. I'll probably be away most of the next few days, so you might need to mail me directly before this thread gets shoved back into obscurity. Thanks.
I don't know that the author claimed to speak for everyone, merely that he described members that fit a certain psychological profile that would abandon ship sometime in the future. To support that thesis he had to make some generalizations and assumptions about the makeup of an admittedly diverse group of people--much like you have done in your subdivisions.
As per your first point, I don't think he ever meant to imply that the community is monolithic; he just needed a term to provide a handle on the kind of people he wanted to talk about. Just how would you have identified this group, for instance, and would you have wanted to spend half your essay on defining that subgroup? As per your second point, I think you're right, but what difference does it make to the bulk of his argument? As per your third point, I don't see where he commits this error; that's a projection from your viewpoint, I dare say. He doesn't identify "commercial" with "proprietary"; he identifies it with "popular" or "establishment."
Furthermore, he doesn't predict a dire future for Linux, merely that the people that made it what it is (however you decide to designate them) will abandon it in the future. By the by, you do the same thing he does by predicting the reasons people will leave; it's a bit churlish to call his reasons "rationalizations."
Finally, since you're all about freedom (I wish someone who says that would explain that phrase as if they were defending it in a philosophy class instead of standing on a soapbox), would you abandon Linux if your peer group became entirely aflush with Open Sourcers who didn't care about the freedom issues? In other words, if your vehicle became so popular it outran your ideology, would you stick with the vehicle? This author of this article is betting you'll ditch the vehicle. Frankly, I'm inclined to agree with him.
Sometimes I despair of this community ever growing up. Christiansen just did a parody/satirical piece on RMS and his philosophy. Actually, I found it to be quite good; I thought he really nailed most of what RMS says in public and turned it around just so. I also thought that it was really rather gentle; it doesn't malign RMS or paint him as some evil troll, it just turns what he says inside out. I didn't find it biting, whining, vicious, or mean, and I know at least that I'm pretty good at detecting tone.
Consequently, I'm detecting an awful lot of childish sniping in the posted responses here. There are the martyrs who decry what RMS has meant to the community (or "the movement", to generalize) and feel betrayed that anyone would satirize him. There are the folks tasting sour grapes who then accuse Christensen of sour grapes. There are the gunslingers who want to take Christiansen down because he's the latest, fastest target. There are the crusaders who act like they were the target.
And then there are the people who decry how 'divisive' and 'inflammatory' a piece like this is. I think their judgment is wrong; this is a satire, not a pure attack piece. (Having followed politics lately, I've learned the difference.) But the real "diviseness" comes when there's a boatload of immature, irresponsible slams like I've seen here. Satire is healthy, people; when people see it, they're supposed to grimace a little, laugh a little sheepishly, and continue with what they were doing with a bit more humility and grace. The kind of blowup you're seeing right now is not a healthy response. A community that takes itself too seriously is in danger of no one else taking it seriously.
Finally, how many of you who are so upset about Christensen's piece actually sided with JonKatz in his South Park commentary? How many of you loved satire and ridicule from the South Park gang (most of which is far more vicious and cutthroat than anything Christiansen wrote) but can't stand it here? Who of you were rolling your eyes and jabbing your elbows over how worked up those "moralists" got over a movie that uses vulgarity as its primary means of expression but can't bear the thought of a mild satire on one of your heroes?
Slashdot isn't like this most of the time; it's really gotten a bum rap. But this thread is the ugly side raising its head. What a shame.
I can relate. One of these days I'll get into a discussion with some nice, rational, contentious FSF supporter who realizes that claims like "Software ought to be free," and "It's all about freedom" need some backing up. The philosophical position on the GNU web site isn't articulated too tightly.
Bravo! This is the best piece I've seen so far. It's absolutely right on in making the distinction between the "core" of democracy and the assorted "features" people tend to attach to it.
I've heard it said that "democracy is a terrible way to run a government; its only redeeming quality is that it's about eight times better than anything else we've got." I suspect that Pipis might agree with the first part, and we could delightful discuss the merits of the second observation.
My major complaint with Mr. Brin is that he's rejecting Lucas' stories primarily because they aren't compatible with his competing agenda. I think Pipis has already skewered Mr. Brin for perhaps the major aspect of that agenda (the "democracy==virtue" angle). In addition, I think Brin takes issue as a jealous rival would: he doesn't like the way Lucas tells his stories, so he concocts shallow and sarcastic objections to supposed "plot holes." They're straw men, almost to a man (so to speak.) As a professional writer, can he really fail to come up with a plausible explanation for the so-called "holes"?
At any rate, I thought Brin showed sloppy, lopsided argumentation style, leaving major problematic assumptions unexplained and using sarcasm instead of reasoning. After this second piece, I conclude that he still suffers from the same flaws, albeit with good humor. Pipis has rather skillfully blasted one of those assumptions, and I commend him for it.
I've also read the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as several plays by Evripides (in the original, no less!).
It's a shame you're listed as an Anonymous Coward. You sound like someone with a background in political philosophy as well as computer systems. The Linux community needs more of you.
Careful here--let's not back water so fast that we lose sight of the fact that much of the response was justified.
A lot of people pulled dumb stunts in complaining to Bryar. (The firewall thing, for example, better be a coincidence.) But when I tuned into the scene, most of the commentary was pretty on the ball.
Look--he screwed up big time. He made all kinds of false assertions and was smarmy about it to boot. When people do that, they need to be hit and hit hard. For your interests, you just can't leave that lying around ignored; for theirs, they don't need to get away with writing inferior pieces. Their reaction to your scathing reviews will show what they're made of. Apparently Jack Bryar is made of pretty stern stuff; not only did he admit what most suspected (he hadn't done his homework), he acknowledged that he deserved most of what he got.
He didn't deserve it all, though. I wonder if he would be interested in releasing the IDs of some of the more juvenile flamers? Some intense peer revulsion at this stage might do some good, as the best policing is internal policing.
The best way to go about this without stepping over the lines of free speech, it seems to me, is a little public dressing-down of the guilty parties. Let it be said that the Linux community takes care of its own--in both defending and administering justice.
Good points! Actually, re-reading that part I realize I went over it a little fast.
I'm not sure to what extent one can ascribe conscious behavior to the little beasties. The prophecy of a "Chosen" as well as a virgin birth suggests _some_ sort of consciousness, but if anything, it'd almost have to be something like the hypothetical "hive" consciousness of an ant colony.
Either way, I'm not precisely sure what the _significance_ is of the "arbitrary distribution" plot point. (By the way, did you say that the distributions IS arbitrary in the Star Wars world or not? I'm not clear on that.) It might be right in front of me, though; you DID say you don't necessarily disagree with me.
My beef with Brin (and others) on this point is that I think they're confusing OUR time line with the STORY'S time line. A lot of people are disenchanted with the revelation that the Force comes from "little critters", as it were. To me it makes perfect sense; it makes sense that the Force has a _cause_ and that the knowledge of that cause should be lost (or suppressed) in the turmoil to come. Also lost (my optimism again!) is the tendency to close ranks which, I contend, is symptomatic of a _cloistered_ order, not an elite power structure. (I concede that in some cases, however, the difference is slight.) However, this whole apparent re-definition of the terms upsets some people who prefer to keep their first impressions of the Force and their own interpretations of what the movies were about. Let's face it: people have made their OWN mythology about Lucas' work and don't like it disturbed, even by Lucas himself.
Again, I think I'm just restating my points for the fun of it because I don't think you disagree with most of what I'm saying. You did catch me on basing certain assertions on what I expect to happen than what's actually in the movie. For precision's sake, I should have made the anger point (among others) a conjecture rather than an assertion, but I was already running pretty long. My conjecture, however, runs as follows: if I recall correctly, Kenobi ascribes his failure with Vader to his own puffed up pride. That pride, I surmise, comes from (i) his appointment as Anakin's guardian, and (ii) some residual satisfaction of taking out a Sith Lord. However, circumstances other than his own merit mandate the first, and he accomplishes the second with dangerous means. Simply put, he really isn't ready to be a full-fledged Jedi, and the circumstances that propel him to that status are somewhat antithetical to the Way of the Jedi.
One final point for Lucas: his choice to make his characters black-and-white is, I think, entirely deliberate. He's not at all interested in developing _characters_; he wants to establish character _types_.
And one final point for me: writing about this is fun! The fact that these movies generate so much discussion is a point in their favor, don't you think?
I'm not familiar with Brin's work. After these pieces, I'm not going to bother.
The piece on Lucas' archetypal storytelling style was, I admit, thought-provoking. I disagree with about everything he says, but it WAS thought-provoking. However, I do think that Brin doth protest too much. As it happens, he's got an entirely different paradigm he's pushing. Consequently, his "analysis" actually becomes an advocacy article. He's not saying, "Lucas got it wrong here"; he's saying, "Pick me! Pick MY way of doing things!"
In other words, when he asks who nominated Lucas to preach his morality through his medium, he might wish to consider that the same question applies to him.
That piece I disagreed with, but his "analysis" of the Phantom Menace I found downright malicious. I don't think I agree with a single criticism he made. I'll try to keep my point-by-point stuff short, but here goes:
* Age of Anakin--the movie could have done a better job of making this clear, but in the Terry Brooks novelization it's explicit that potential Jedis are "recruited" at six months. "Ripping from the breast" might be entirely appropriate. It also lends credence to the Council's extreme reluctance to accept Anakin; at his age, he's far too fully formed to be trusted, yet they don't want a loose cannon roaming around. Nor, however, do they want to "sanction" him by full acceptance, hence the unusual remedy. The seeds are sown.
* More seeds: Obi-Wan's anger in destroying Darth Maul. Folks, _this is not a good thing!_ Not only does it open the Sith apprentice vacancy, it creates (or reveals) a flaw in Kenobi that will later manifest itself in Vader. When talking about anger and emotion and Lucas' approach to them, Brin should go back and read some Martin Luther King on violence and anger (I think "Letter From Birmingham Jail" or various versions of "I Have A Dream" contain the relevant thoughts.)
* Cliches: it's odd that Brin acknowledges that Lucas is retelling an old, old story and then chastises him for using cliches.
* Self-indulgences: It's Episode I. It's called "laying groundwork."
* Political situation (Naboo, "Originality"): Naboo is important specifically because _Senator Palpatine_ represents it in the Senate. It's his political opportunism that makes it important (as well as his willingness to use the "common people" he represents as power pawns--this foreshadows the manevolence of the man which is never explicitly stated in Phantom.) As for the "boring" charge, I think the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term "banality of evil" to describe the Nuremberg trials. It all started so innocently, and it was just politics as usual, right....?
* "Elitism" of Force: No, the Force didn't all of a sudden get a elite genetic deterministic cause. Those who have _abnormal concentrations_ are trained as Jedi in the old days (and suffer from the exclusivity and secretiveness common to cloistered groups.) By the time of Episode IV, the pickings are far more slim. Besides, it might even signify a _growing_ egalitarianism.
Finally, I think it is fair to make the Nazi Germany allusion as Lucas deliberately uses Nazi imagery in his opus. However, Brin's use of the metaphor is clumsy. No, we would not pardon Hitler. We might, however, pardon the hypothetical master lieutenant who, having been the major force in building the Third Reich, also became one of the major forces in overthrowing it (by killing Hitler, to maintain the analogy). Darth Vader is supposed to have been _redeemed_. (Personally, I find that a higher value than nicer institutions of the future.) The desire to think of the Jedi masters as being in "Jedi Hell" is very, very petty of Brin. Apparently there are scales of some sort; once you commit all that evil, there's not enough good to do to "offset" it, eh?
In summation, I don't care how well the man writes science fiction novels. He flies poor colors here.
I've got quite a few thoughts on the Microsoft challenge. I don't have the technical background (yet) to determine whether particular configuration tweaks are fair or not, but I didn't get a degree in philosophy for nothing. I'm going to try to map out the challenge for strengths and weaknesses of claims and arguments Microsoft makes.
In the first paragraph labeled "The Mindcraft Report", the author writes that PC Week and PC Magazine tests have corroborated Mindcraft's findings. If true, this is significant because it has been claimed that Mindcraft's study (and its study alone) contradicted prior studies. To show it's true, however, these questions (at least) must be answered:
1) PC Week and PC Magazine tests must be replicating equivalent conditions (per each other and Mindcraft) to be said to "corroborate" the original study. 2) Each set of tests must be "fair"; that is, they must not suffer from the same kinds of fatal flaws Mindcraft is accused of incorporating in their methodology.
Furthermore, even if the two studies check out with the two above conditions, that alone does not validate the original study. The original methodological concerns first raised must be satisfied (as they presumably will be should this now-hyped "open benchmark" test take place.) In short, the two new sets of tests do NOT "prove" the first Mindcraft study; at best, they provide a bootstrap to give further credibility to a presumably pro-Microsoft (in terms of winning) verdict in the possible future Mindcraft open benchmark.
Moving on, the Microsoft paper commits a subtle slur against the Linux community in intimating that the Linux experts are "dragging their feet" in responding to Mindcraft's new challenge (implied to be a quick, fair response.) Three things here: (1) Mindcraft submitted its original report on April 13. The open benchmark challenge was first issued May 4 and revised May 7. Given that the second "release" is the one that might be taken seriously, it's now been one week since that challenge went out after it took 3 weeks after the initial report to issue it. The "slow-to-respond" charge doesn't seem to take this proportionality into account. (2) Mindcraft is a single company, and this is work-related; they can do this "on-the-clock", as it were. Linux community experts are dispersed worldwide and by-and-large have jobs that demand their time and effort apart from their Linux roles. It's a major effort to collect all these people in one place for a conference planned months ahead, let alone a benchmark test in four weeks or so. (3) This charge is deliberately made because there is no way to decisively refute it. All it takes is one person answering late or refusing to participate, and one can paint the "community" as being recalcitrant. This is a barbed challenge, make no mistake.
Now the "track record": take it one point at a time. The TPC-C part is, frankly, very weak; I think it was put there in the hopes nobody would check it. The actual study primarily measures two criteria: throughput and throughput/cost of system (as determined by an entire, integrated system.) In the link Microsoft provides, the TOP throughput number is 24328. However, the _10th_ best in pure throughput has a score of 48793, just over twice as much as the "top" MS solution! (Number 1, by the way, is a Sun Starfire system with a throughput number of 115,395!!) By and large, the throughput list is comprised of high-end UNIX flavors whose price tag keeps them off the lists Microsoft so proudly displays.
In short, Microsoft's accomplishment here boils down to being the best cut-rate solution running on PC hardware there is. And the competition here is....? This is the whole point of the DOJ trial; MS just narrowed the field down until it hit its monopoly chip and then paraded the results. It is true that Linux vendors have yet to submit these kinds of benchmarks. Of course, what was the state of Linux vendors one year ago (how many, how successful, etc.)? I submit that the up-and-coming players today have been too busy trying to take the market by storm to worry overmuch about benchmarks.
As per the SPECweb: MS makes the claim that they have the "best dual and quad processor results." Well, according to the single page they link to, they must mean that IIS5.0 on a HP Netserver 8000 beats Apache & IBM on HP Netfinity 5500/7000 for 2 and 4 processors. IIS4.0 doesn't do all that well, and HP 9000 with Zeus absolutely beats up on MS's results. The "best" claim is optimistic and near-sighted at best. Again, Linux isn't in this--yet--and I'd suggest the people to talk to are the HPs, the IBMs, and the Suns represented in this particular benchmark. (Again, Linux is NOT one company!! Actually, in light of this fact, the claim "Linux has yet to post SPECWeb results" is a little bizarre.)
Re SAP: again, SAP has but recently made a Linux decision. (This entire process, by the by, is somewhat akin to the local bigwig claiming the new kid in town doesn't deserve respect because the old families haven't met him yet. The answer is both cases is, "Give it time.") As per the technical SAP evaluation (if you can find it), I'm punting on that one. If you're an expert, think of critiquing this claim as a module to plug into my larger argument.
THE REST: I'm about to beg off because I've got other things pressing. However, I've got some remarks that I think will cover most of the remaining claims that MS makes. First of all, the NetBench and WebBench tests use results purely from the Mindcraft, PC Week, and PC Magazine tests. My above comments should be kept in mind when evaluating these numbers; furthermore, these other two studies are brand new. I think it is not at all a coincidence that the studies and this gauntlet are so close together. It doesn't quite smack of collusion, but it does suggest that the marketing folks over at Microsoft instigated this document to capitalize on the prima facie positive results. By the time solid critiques of these two studies (coming out on the same day, no less) can be made, the marketing machine will probably have moved on. This doesn't imply that the two new studies are flawed; I simply suggest that whether they're flawed or not won't ultimately matter in terms of that new god of mass media, "perception."
The "Performance" section has three main flaws: (1) The points often don't match up against one another, (2) The lack of a centralized, bureaucratic command policy is always presented as a negative with a corresponding (false) positive always placed on integration and command decisions, and (3) many of the claims are either false or only true in the most trivial sense (see the security section, for example.)
To conclude, a shrinkwrap blurb does not an argument make. Of the "track record", two sections are really meaningless, a third is likely so, and two others need to be evaluated before proper judgment can be passed. Of the "performance" criteria, almost everything is a comparision of one paradigm element to another (and as such aren't suitable for comparision).
To response to Microsoft's "challenge", I think that the PC Week and PC Magazine tests need to be scrutinized. I think the Mindcraft test in June _might_ be a good response (although almighty tough to win in terms of PR), but it is VITAL to establish the significance of the test BEFORE it happens. I think it is a mistake to have a "wait-and-see" attitude; that is, it would be foolhardy to wait until you've "won" or "lost" before you say the test is meaningful or not. Finally, there is one part of the challenge that I think MUST be taken up: the response to MS' criteria for performance. That's an attempt to define the battlefield and absolutely MUST be countered.
Haste makes waste when it comes to the first half; knee-jerk reactions to benchmarks studies or rushes to establish benchmarks (like the first three tests they cite) for the sake of having your hat in the ring are ultimately detrimental to my mind. But when it comes to the second half, "he who hesitates is lost." Think of it in terms of warfare. Microsoft is a cadre of armor-clad knights, the heavy infantry of medieval times. Linux advocates are hill warriors (the Scots, say). Hill fighters don't work well on plains, and strong horses are useless going up mountains. Where are we going to fight the battle?
To do well, we must fight in the hills. Integration? Centralized control? No, no, no. Choice. Flexibility. Education. Openness. This is how we establish where the battle is fought and how ultimately the challenge is met and surpassed.
Ummm...I hate to rain on the parade in any way, but I think there's more than one questionable picture in Silverstein's opus. I hesitate to elaborate further than this: look through his two books, "Light in the Attic" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends" (I forget which one), for pictures of an anchor. Then LOOK at the anchor. Then flip through more of his work and LOOK at the pictures.
It spooked me a little. Still, that didn't kill my appreciation of his talent with words, and his death hit me with about the same impact as Dr. Seuss' did (although neither was as powerful as Jim Henson.) Like many others, I'll put a poem in the mix (from heart), one of the greatest introductions to a book I've ever read.
Welcome (?) (From LITA or WTSE)
If you're a dreamer, come in.
If you're a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hoper, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer, If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire. For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't have time for much so I'll go thematic instead of point-by-point.
The thrust of my argument is the sheer volume of brute fact it seems to me that the atheist has to accept. The fact that seasonings taste good to the human palate is my prototypical example. I fail to be convinced by the explanatory power of a worldview that says that physical laws just are, physical phenomena just are, and certain correlations between humans and the physical world just are. For a more detailed explanation of this approach, see Richard Swinburne's text, "Is There A God?"
The upshot of the beauty argument is that the theistic worldview and the athestic worldview are competing to explain the existence of the natural world and human beings. It is NOT a competition in the sense that if the atheistic answer is wrong or non-existent, the theistic argument wins by default. It is a competition in the sense of what can be explained by each theory and how well each side puts together its case. The sense of beauty is, in my mind, a pretty darn significant element of our human existence in a way that eclipses are not. A view that neither can explain nor can offer hope of explaining that in the near future is something I see as lacking. You apparently don't; you'll chalk it up to something we may find out in the future, or even if we don't it doesn't matter that much. I congratulate you on your faith.
For such a significant (in my view) element as the human sense of beauty, I have a ready answer and you do not. That is a separate issue from whether my answer is true or not, but in terms of explanatory potential, I've got the edge in this instance. I do NOT assume the theistic position is true and the atheistic position has no alternative; I merely point out that one theory may have greater explanatory potential than the other, and that's a criterion readily accepted by scientists.
Moreover, you are correct in asserting that the fact that the atheist doesn't immediately have an answer does not entail that no answer is possible. I'm not making that claim; if you thought I was, rest assured. In the interim, however, the theistic worldview is stronger in this area.
To sum up: I am not claiming that the problem of beauty makes theism true and atheism false; I am claiming that it makes theism a stronger theory than atheism, all other things being equal (which they seldom are) because of its explanatory richness. If that's the claim I'm making, I do NOT have to show my case to be valid until it's time to get to brass tacks; then we BOTH have to take the gloves off and evaluate the details of the competing worldviews.
Final point: I'm strongly suspecting that actual discussion of the validity of the cases would be pointless. You're demanding evidence but limiting it to only the subset demanded by empirical science (totally missing my point about the Christian claim that God directly interacted with human beings; it's direct--even empirical--contact which was written down thereby becoming historical evidence, not a tautology.) I don't suspect I can satisfy your evidentiary demands, mostly because I think they're artificially narrow. Likewise, I doubt you can satisfy my demands (or would care to or see the need to) regarding detailed explanations of various brute facts or human attributes because you'd think they're unnecessary. Sigh. I don't know, then, where we could really go from here.
I'll get going on your argument in just a second, but first I've got to comment on your tailing slap.
In summary, your friend's argument is total crap for countless reasons, just like all the other "proofs" of God that people with a superficial grasp of logic produce.
My friend is all-but-dissertation for his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Virginia. They don't LET people with "a superficial grasp of logic" get that close to a philosophy doctorate. As for his assumptions, they're well-grounded in reams and reams of literature surrounding this question. Discarding his assumptions because they don't mesh with 20th-century physics (which may or may not be correct) is NOT a stunning display of argumentative acumen.
First, I want to point out that Mike's term "traversal" means logical traversal of all events, so appealing to how long it took the universe to get here or how long it would take to traverse all events is really off-target. The notion of finite time doesn't even enter into the argument; you put it there, and your objection to the argument therefore cannot succeed on those grounds.
I can't say this strongly enough: the traversal of a past series of events is NOT dependent on the amount of time available!!! Furthermore, he's not uncritically assuming there has to be a beginning event. That assumption is taken as true in the first leg in which the series of events is finite; the assumption is taken as false in the second leg in which the series of events cannot be logically traversed going backward, leading him to conclude they could not have been traversed going forward. Show me clearly how an infinite series of events works without relying solely on the assumptions of physics/mathematics (because infinity IS an assumption in physics/mathematics as it cannot be observed, by definition), and we can talk. If you can't do it without being at least a little fuzzy, don't slam my friend for working with the assumptions he does. If you can't explain infinity any better than you did, don't yell at him for a misunderstanding of what it really is.
As for necessary and contingent, of course they fall outside the scope of modern physics. That's why physics and other branches of science cannot answer some of the questions people try to make them answer.
As for your "kicker", your error is misreading "consistent with" as "identical to." The latter implies that all thinking entities immediately jump to "God" when thinking of infinite, uncaused, prior to existence of universe, etc.... The former merely asks that we examine our notions of God and find them consistent with those requirements. This approach has plenty of historical evidence behind it (what others conceived of God) and isn't crippled by naysayers. The focus is on what we think God is, not what we think the universe is; you've got it backwards.
Your "Claim not proven" section looks neat, but you really don't provide coherent objections to the claims, merely state that the assumptions are incorrect without giving (in my clear) a clearer or more obviously correct definition.
As for his further claims, your entire objection rests on your assertion that "'Essence' and 'essential attributes' are so vague that they can't be meaningfully worked with." Well, I'm sorry that your grasp of those concepts is so weak, but there's a great deal of literature focused entirely on these concepts and clarifying them for those who don't yet comprehend them.
The approach is much the same for your objections to the rest of his assertions: if you don't understand them, they can't be true. From your final responses, I'm led to conclude that you really didn't follow most of his argument. The argument for intelligence is not a "HUGE fallacy"; it says that complex mathematical constructs found in nature are evidence of intelligence (because they aren't accidental, they're intentional.) What part of that don't you understand? I thought it's fairly straightforward. You totally misunderstand the irresistible/immovable dichotomy because you ignored the factor of God's will which resolves the potential contradiction of both existing in the same being. The charge against the existence of the objective moral standard is very weak; in light of the subject matter, it's a very reasonable assumption. Even if that assumption is false and the moral standard is subjective, then God has the prerogative of Creator to establish the supremacy of His moral standard. Finally, the composite element talks about the possibility that God would have a "warring spirit", as it were; if God had such a thing as part of His substance, He would not be infinite (which the argument claims to have already established), or he could become more perfect, also antithetical to infinity. (That doesn't hinge, by the way, on whether you claim to understand what Mike means by infinity or not.)
In summation, your objections to the argument are based on your personal understanding/misunderstanding of base definitions without offering clearer definitions in return. Plugging in your assumptions for someone else's does not an argument make. Take a little more time and learn a little more and come back to this argument after you've learned to tighten up your logic. To your credit, you did read the entire piece and make detailed objections. You just got most of them wrong.
Sigh. The quick squirt of napalm is ill-placed. All you've shown is that you're a science bigot who hasn't yet come to terms with the fact that your science is limited. Good luck in dealing with events that exist outside your assumptions. I think you'll really need it; contempt is no substitute for thought.
Kaufmann:
/. much more, so if you'd like to continue, hit me at dewyn17@yahoo.com
Regarding the non sequitur, that was largely in response to others jumping in on this discussion who want to claim that holding a negative view needs no defense. It points out that failing to prove the pro case does NOT prove the con case. That's a notion that I saw creeping in, and I used your post as a jumping-off point.
As for the content of your position, I tried to illustrate the challenge you'd have to face without making too many assumptions about the actual content of your position. It sounds like you're in better shape than most; you think that your position, whatever its precise composition, is rooted in solid ground. Fine and dandy; you'll need that when you try to make a persuasive argument why your position actually captures the truth of the world.
You're right; I don't think there necessarily is A default position, argumentatively speaking. That's separate, however, from whether or not someone has a personal "default position" which is simply beliefs one holds supported by various background beliefs. I simply want to emphasize that each position making truth claims about the world has some 'splaining to do.
About Occam's Razor--be very, very careful in a discussion like this. Realize that Occam's Razor makes an assumption about the world--roughly stated, the simplest explanation is most likely to be true--that could very well be begging the question. For Occam's Razor to work properly in a discussion like this, it has to be true about the world that the simplest explanation actually IS most likely to be true. But that's part of the question: what is the world fundamentally like? Occam's Razor in this sort of discussion is dangerously close to assuming what it seeks to prove; be vewy, vewy careful using such sharp objects. Finally, don't forget that a Franciscan monk is responsible for the principle ("plurality should not be posited without necessity"); thus, it's a little disingenuous to use the principle to slice out the entire spiritual world. Poor William would not approve, I daresay.
As for the evidence claim, you caught me there; that was more in the nature of a sting to get your attention. It's often required on Slashdot, I've noticed. I am curious, though: would you accept historical evidence and testimony from the Bible as acceptable? How about testimony from Christians who claim to have had prayers answered that strain probability? In other words, is your request for evidence entirely empirical, the sort you can submit to standard scientific analysis? (If so, good luck with evolution; you can't replicate the so-called evolutionary history of the earth in a lab. You're limited to some proof-of-concept exercises with bacteria that are dangerous to extrapolate to the whole of history.) I can't check
Finally, I'm glad you appreciated the counterpoint. I thought the point needed some fleshing out. Coming from a philosophy background, "rational" and "reasonable" are technical terms and seemed to be misused in your original post. Your clarification acknowledged that you actually are serious about this question, which is a step up from other parties who are content to rest on currently fashionable pseudo-intellectual agnostic laurels.
Take care.
Tell me, why shouldn't garlic be flavorful to humans?
Because garlic is an organism trying to carve out a niche in its environment. What survival advantage or benefit is gained by its flavor being desired by a group of hairless bipeds who come along very late in the evolutionary picture? All I can see is that you accept such an odd juxtaposition as a brute fact--AND accept all the other correlations between good-taste and good-for-you as brute facts. I find it difficult to swallow (pun intended) that all our foods independently incorporated their structures and compositions to appeal to our palates.
I also find the alternative explanation difficult to accept--namely, that our sense of taste resides absolutely in ourselves. Sans God as Creator and Designer, I can't see how such a refinement as desiring a seasoning either confers an evolutionary advantage or "makes the list" given the short amount of time (relatively speaking) some say we have between the first distinctively human hominids and historical humanity. In other words, I am not convinced by the panacea of evolution without a little more precision. If evolution is supposed to be so supported and so understood, it seems that I could get an explanation that's a little tighter than approximate empirical generalities.
As for the problem of beauty, the difficulty is this: today was a beautiful day today. The sun was shining, the grass was green, the wind was cool, and the birds were singing. Now, is that beauty in the world itself, is it in my perception only, or is it somehow in the interrelationship between the two? If the first, without the existence of a benevolent Creator with a sense of beauty, what geological or evolutionary advantage is there in beauty that served as a causitive principle? (And no, asking how this Creator got his sense of beauty doesn't help the case any; if you're going to posit that God isn't necessary to explain the universe, then start explaining.) Is beauty a by-product of another attribute with survival potential (for living organisms like trees, not snowy mountains); if so, what is that attribute, and how is beauty logically related to it if at all? In answering this question, appealing to chance isn't too encouraging; that's asking me to accept a ton of brute facts, and what's so persuasive about that?
If the second explanation, a variation of the first objection pops up. What evolutionary advantage is there is my finding the sound of birds to be beautiful? I can't see how this helps me survive or meet my needs as a developing hominid. Appealing to obscure psychological needs doesn't work here, either, because that posits a claim that can't be supported by evolutionary evidence. Again, claiming that this ability developed through chance or accident is not convincing; might as well say it was magic.
If the third, then tell me a little more what you mean. I identified the interrelation for the sake of being complete, but I can't for the life of me begin to detail what that might entail. If you can, go right ahead. I'll listen.
A fourth option, I suppose, is that that day really isn't beautiful at all, just a fancy of mine. If you really want to go that route and claim that beauty is absolutely arbitrary, I'll leave you to it...along with the embarrassing position that though there IS no actual beauty, I seem to be sharing that same illusion with millions of other people alive now and in the past. Enjoy convincing people that beauty doesn't exist; I feel much safer asserting that it does.
The upshot of the problem is that the atheist needs to explain WHY beauty exists (or doesn't exist) with supporting evidence or tightly defended fundamental premises because there doesn't seem to be any room for it in the typical evolutionary picture focused entirely on survival and propagation of genes. The atheist needs to either deny the existence of beauty or explain it WITHOUT recourse to the existence of God. THAT'S the huge problem for the atheist: it boils down, in its strongest form, to either rejecting humanity or rejecting the atheistic worldview as insufficient to explain the world. That is NOT a de facto proof for the existence of God (the charge you seem to be making, giving me the impression you really didn't understand the problem), but it does leave the atheist with a pretty serious hole in his story. The god-of-the-gaps argument has potential IF the worldview with God in it is more plausible than the worldview without God. Theists have a ready explanation for why beauty exists; it comes from the center of an all-loving and generous Creator who is the source of all that exists. Does the atheist have as ready an answer?
Finally, the countercharge you present is simply out of place. We don't take discrete phenomena and decide that it came from God only if we can't think of anything else. Like you said, evidence of God's existence is what constitues evidence of God's existence. That's why there is a Bible: to record the interaction between God and his creation. God isn't made up; He shows us who He is. He is responsible for the human sense of beauty because He told us so. That's the claim of the religious theist: God interacts with humans in history and teaches us about Himself. That's the strong claim that Jews and Christians make (since we're ultimately discussing what many call the Judeo-Christian God instead of just God.) Now, you can attack that claim on its grounds, but don't pretend that it's made up off-the-cuff by people wandering around the modern world. That's a lot stronger "default assumption" than the weak position you're trying to assign to me. Let's see what you can do with it.
Actually, I'll point you to one a friend of mine put together for a philosophy class he taught. I disagree with him slightly in the statement "the burden of proof lies with the one making the affirmative statement", but that's mostly a matter of phrasing; I agree with that almost entirely except when it's misused to defend non-existence as a default position. That's why I prefer "ontological truth claim" to "affirmative statement"; that covers more territory.
Take a look at this latest of several incarnations of the proof. The amusing aspect to it, actually, is that you think the number of people who have tackled this question actually disqualifies it as a legitimate endeavor. See if you can actually attack Mike's argument on its merits instead of resorting solely to sarcasm.
http://209.150.150.76/public_html/godarg.pdf
Okay, a number of things here. First, it is significant that this comes near the end of the book. In other words, this is a conclusion that has been reached by examination of the questions at hand. Thus, the implication that this cannot be rational because of its barest interpretation is lazy and misplaced.
Second, the burden of proof does NOT lie upon the party making the affirmative claim. It lies upon the party making the claim, regardless of its being affirmative or negative. In this case, Davies is making an ontological claim that he must support. If he fails, then that is all that has happened!! It does not show that his case is unsalvagable, nor does it automatically lend support to whatever position you believe. Failure to prove a case means just that; trying to extend the implications beyond that is tricky and requires additional work.
In other words, folks, THERE IS NO DEFAULT POSITION! Kaufmann may "believe otherwise", and he may tell us what that position is as a matter of sharing information about his current mental states. Once he makes statements about the way the world is as opposed to what's in his head, HE has to prove his case. Whether or not Davies can prove his case makes no difference as to whether Kaufmann is justified or unjustified in his position. That becomes important only when Davies' position is analyzed and its premises, true or false, can be used in a separate argument attacking or defending Kaufmann's position, whatever it may be.
As for "actual evidence", I suspect that demand is spurious. I rather suspect Kaufmann would submit any such evidence to a Procrustean bed. I'll go ahead and read his responses and see if my hunch plays out.
Because the answer of "GOD" is acually a non-answer.
Interesting. So the notion of a self-conscious, self-willing causative agent is useless as an answer to a question of "what caused x"? Won't you then have to discard the notion of a human agent as a "non-answer" to the question, "what caused this essay to exist?"
If I just go ahead and ask, "What caused the creation of God"? You would say, "God Just Is.(tm) He is infinite."
Yes, I would. I would then lay out the case showing why he exists out of logical necessity as well as make the case for His existence from His interaction with humanity. There--I just did two things that your universe can't do; the universe is logically contingent and has no self-consciousness to interact itself into human affairs. (Or if you say it does, then you're working with a FAR different notion of universe than any scientist I know.) NOW we can talk details; now we can get somewhere. The discussion has just begun, not been slammed shut.
Then I'd say, "Well that went nowhere. I could have said the 'Universe Just Is. It is Infinite'".
We could go on into an infinite regression of entities, or we can apply Occam's Razor. What is the rational choice?
Well, it seems the rational choice would be to explore the option most likely to lead to truth. We might want to figure out if Occam's Razor actually DOES lead to truth; you beg the question if you use it to determine what's "true" or not. It's like fishing with a net with two-inch holes and then claiming there are no fish less than two inches in the water! The rational choice is actually take the question seriously and do a little better than an absolutely unnecessary attempt to make it a question of multiple entities.
This book and others like it seem to be about this question: What do you do when you get to the end of science?
The move toward religion and philosophy by intense scientists is, in my view, a recognition of the limitations of present-day science. The limitations can be summed up thusly: Science as a methodology cannot answer a single question of "Why?"
Now, scientists can answer cleverly disguised versions of "How?" questions; ask "why is the sky blue?" and you'll get a thorough discussion of how light works and how atmosphere and color and nerve endings play together. You can get descriptive elements of empirical data collections all day long, but you can't get to the notion of purpose or meaning because science isn't built for normative pursuits. It sounds like these writers have explored the non-normative ramifications of science and found that while science points in wonderful directions, it can never get one to the destinations.
I might like to read this book; it would be even nicer to read it in a forum less crowded than Slashdot. Then we could explore statements like the following:
* Science as a methodology is chock full of assumptions that are difficult to justify with supporting reasons (like the tests of simplicity, fruitfulness, and predictive richness.)
* In an argument, the burden of proof is "home field advantage"; furthermore, it rests on the one making an assertion whether that assertion is affirmative or negative.
* Weak agnosticism/atheism is essentially biography: telling the contents of one's own mind. Strong agnosticism requires deep philosophy about the limitations of knowledge. Strong atheism is incredibly hard to support as it has to seriously support the claim of non-existence of God.
* Rational and reasonable are useful but not necessarily identical. Complaints about someone's "I believe" credo as being de facto "irrational" are somewhat juvenile. All arguments have to start somewhere.
* I'll take an atheist seriously when he can convince me why garlic is flavorful to humans in the absence of a self-willed conscious Creator/Designer in three maybes or less. The problem of beauty (of which the above is a subset) is as significant for an atheist as the problem of pain is for a theist.
Those would be interesting topics for debate, as well as the history of philosophy, science, and religion (especially since it seems so many have neglected to study any of it in detail.) Will such a discussion take place? Who knows, on Slashdot?
...seems to me to be sufficient justification for opening offices in Japan and Europe. I think this is another case of Red Hat trying to help grow the Linux pie rather than get a bigger slice. I really believe Red Hat wishes SuSE no ill will and in fact wants them to succeed beyond their wildest dreams...if it makes Red Hat money. A loose Red Hat/SuSE alliance to break up the Microsoft stranglehold in Europe makes a lot of sense to me. (Ditto an alliance with TurboLinux in Asia.) More pie for everyone.
Disclaimers: no, I have no knowledge that this is Red Hat's actual plan, nor do I make a substantive claim that a formal alliance exists between Red Hat and any other party. Nor am I so naive to believe that the coziness such a relationship implies would last forever; given the state of affairs I postulate, there could be a nasty breakup/competition in the future. But cross that bridge when you come to it, not before. As it is, take this as a plausible and possibly desirable speculation.
You make a pretty strong claim about how the community can no longer implicitly trust Red Hat. Your evidence? The IPO and Rasterman's departure. Yet you don't state why the IPO was a problem, nor do you seem to recall that Raster attributed his difficulties at Red Hat to a particular manager. I agree with another poster who said that a public response to an individual leaving a company is highly inappropriate. I would go further: it is inappropriate for Red Hat to respond to claims made by a former employee about the direction the company is taking.
In other words, I disagree that the events illustrate bad management, and I question the use of the powerful term "ominous." Furthermore, I question how professional it is for you to make these public claims when you're having private troubles with the company in question. I've always considered it illegitimate to air one's dirty laundry in public, particularly before there's been a resolution of the situation.
In short, whether you intended it or not, this post smacks suspiciously of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. I would hope you would either substantiate or retract these claims, preferably the latter. For some reason you've been moderated pretty high, and I fear that you're spreading ill will without sufficient justification.
Hamill? I'm fairly certain Mark Hamill spent a good twenty years or so distancing himself from Star Wars because he hated the typecast. In everything I've ever read about him, he's always quick to point out that he has done work other than Star Wars.
An actor complains about the script and the director...what's so new and surprising about that? Actors always complain how their directors are stifling them because the director is the person in charge of the movie, so much so that the obligatory cliche in any interview with an actor is, "But I really want to direct." Thus, it seems to me that all the charges about the dictator-like nature of directors in general (and Lucas in particular) is ridiculous. Directors are supposed to be like that; that's why they're directors. It's one of the perks. Actors are just paid to do a job.
/. which generated yet another ridiculous wave of Lucas/TPM/Star Wars bashing. I don't think I've ever seen so many public unfair criticism when it comes to a movie before in my life (David Brin's atrocious analysis comes to mind.) This just generated more of the same. A shame, that.
As for the social commentary on the "obsession" some have with Star Wars, Guinness is just following a well-established Hollywood tradition: making a living pretending to be other people automatically grants you a forum and the right to do social commentary. Moreover, he lets his irritation show that he's been typecast (the bane of any actor) and consequently resents the fan base that did that to him.
Of course this isn't news; there's nothing new about it. It is, however, conflict and controversy, which is the real goal of the mass media because it sells. Unfortunately, it got a link to
Thanks for the response. It's quite clear (a welcome change from some of the other pieces I've seen.) Some comments:
Regarding the vehicle analogy, think of it like this: If Linux became incredibly popular but none of its new supporters cared about Freedom (or any ideal the original coders cared about), would you ditch it? Note that it doesn't have to become anti-free here, merely that that new majority doesn't think it's all about freedom. In other words, if by becoming popular Linux loses the meaning you had once invested in it, would you then commit yourself to converting the heathens or find a new monastery, as it were? (Granted, this may be moving away from the author's original work, but I think the question is still interesting.)
Regarding the philosophical aspect, my question is this: is the freedom granted with software valuable because it is or because it creates further benefits? In more philosophical language, is software freedom's desirability intrinsic or operational? I have no problem with promoting freedom because it allows other things that you deem good, from crushing nuts to customizing your machine to being able to share programs with your friends without acting against either your moral code or the law. But note that in these cases, it's not about freedom; it's about these good things that you want to happen. You want softer hides, not the ability to use a rock to soften hides. Granted, in most cases that ability or freedom is going to be necessary to achieve your end, but you're still valuing the tool according to the desirability of the result.
In other words, it's not all about freedom, it's all about the neat stuff you need freedom to obtain. Stallman has an essay on freedom; in the piece, though, he evaluates non-free software in terms of the harm it does and free software in terms of the good it promotes. In doing so, he unconsciously relegates "freedom" to the status of "best tool" instead of the end goal I often see it being trumpeted as.
The significant part I see in this is that it puts RMS and ESR on the same page: they're both making utilitarian arguments for the promulgation of open/free software. The difference then becomes that RMS puts an explicit moral component (but NOT identical with freedom) in his equation for social benefit while ESR's is either implicit or nonexistent. If I'm correct, then, the next step for the Free Software people to do is articulate the moral position that emphasis on freedom supports without identifying the position with freedom.
The reason I'm getting so picky about terms is because I worry that people are mistaking the thing required for the thing desired. And I think that's why some people might eventually leave: they might get what they wanted but not realize it because they lost their focus (or never clearly articulated it.) THAT's the danger I see.
Thoughts? Comments? I may have stuff wrong; just let me know and I'll re-evaluate. Thanks for writing back; I went a little over-the-top hoping for a response, and you generously responded. I'll probably be away most of the next few days, so you might need to mail me directly before this thread gets shoved back into obscurity. Thanks.
I don't know that the author claimed to speak for everyone, merely that he described members that fit a certain psychological profile that would abandon ship sometime in the future. To support that thesis he had to make some generalizations and assumptions about the makeup of an admittedly diverse group of people--much like you have done in your subdivisions.
As per your first point, I don't think he ever meant to imply that the community is monolithic; he just needed a term to provide a handle on the kind of people he wanted to talk about. Just how would you have identified this group, for instance, and would you have wanted to spend half your essay on defining that subgroup? As per your second point, I think you're right, but what difference does it make to the bulk of his argument? As per your third point, I don't see where he commits this error; that's a projection from your viewpoint, I dare say. He doesn't identify "commercial" with "proprietary"; he identifies it with "popular" or "establishment."
Furthermore, he doesn't predict a dire future for Linux, merely that the people that made it what it is (however you decide to designate them) will abandon it in the future. By the by, you do the same thing he does by predicting the reasons people will leave; it's a bit churlish to call his reasons "rationalizations."
Finally, since you're all about freedom (I wish someone who says that would explain that phrase as if they were defending it in a philosophy class instead of standing on a soapbox), would you abandon Linux if your peer group became entirely aflush with Open Sourcers who didn't care about the freedom issues? In other words, if your vehicle became so popular it outran your ideology, would you stick with the vehicle? This author of this article is betting you'll ditch the vehicle. Frankly, I'm inclined to agree with him.
Sometimes I despair of this community ever growing up. Christiansen just did a parody/satirical piece on RMS and his philosophy. Actually, I found it to be quite good; I thought he really nailed most of what RMS says in public and turned it around just so. I also thought that it was really rather gentle; it doesn't malign RMS or paint him as some evil troll, it just turns what he says inside out. I didn't find it biting, whining, vicious, or mean, and I know at least that I'm pretty good at detecting tone.
Consequently, I'm detecting an awful lot of childish sniping in the posted responses here. There are the martyrs who decry what RMS has meant to the community (or "the movement", to generalize) and feel betrayed that anyone would satirize him. There are the folks tasting sour grapes who then accuse Christensen of sour grapes. There are the gunslingers who want to take Christiansen down because he's the latest, fastest target. There are the crusaders who act like they were the target.
And then there are the people who decry how 'divisive' and 'inflammatory' a piece like this is. I think their judgment is wrong; this is a satire, not a pure attack piece. (Having followed politics lately, I've learned the difference.) But the real "diviseness" comes when there's a boatload of immature, irresponsible slams like I've seen here. Satire is healthy, people; when people see it, they're supposed to grimace a little, laugh a little sheepishly, and continue with what they were doing with a bit more humility and grace. The kind of blowup you're seeing right now is not a healthy response. A community that takes itself too seriously is in danger of no one else taking it seriously.
Finally, how many of you who are so upset about Christensen's piece actually sided with JonKatz in his South Park commentary? How many of you loved satire and ridicule from the South Park gang (most of which is far more vicious and cutthroat than anything Christiansen wrote) but can't stand it here? Who of you were rolling your eyes and jabbing your elbows over how worked up those "moralists" got over a movie that uses vulgarity as its primary means of expression but can't bear the thought of a mild satire on one of your heroes?
Slashdot isn't like this most of the time; it's really gotten a bum rap. But this thread is the ugly side raising its head. What a shame.
I can relate. One of these days I'll get into a discussion with some nice, rational, contentious FSF supporter who realizes that claims like "Software ought to be free," and "It's all about freedom" need some backing up. The philosophical position on the GNU web site isn't articulated too tightly.
If you come across anyone, let me know!
Jason Fletcher
dewyn17@yahoo.com
Bravo! This is the best piece I've seen so far. It's absolutely right on in making the distinction between the "core" of democracy and the assorted "features" people tend to attach to it.
I've heard it said that "democracy is a terrible way to run a government; its only redeeming quality is that it's about eight times better than anything else we've got." I suspect that Pipis might agree with the first part, and we could delightful discuss the merits of the second observation.
My major complaint with Mr. Brin is that he's rejecting Lucas' stories primarily because they aren't compatible with his competing agenda. I think Pipis has already skewered Mr. Brin for perhaps the major aspect of that agenda (the "democracy==virtue" angle). In addition, I think Brin takes issue as a jealous rival would: he doesn't like the way Lucas tells his stories, so he concocts shallow and sarcastic objections to supposed "plot holes." They're straw men, almost to a man (so to speak.) As a professional writer, can he really fail to come up with a plausible explanation for the so-called "holes"?
At any rate, I thought Brin showed sloppy, lopsided argumentation style, leaving major problematic assumptions unexplained and using sarcasm instead of reasoning. After this second piece, I conclude that he still suffers from the same flaws, albeit with good humor. Pipis has rather skillfully blasted one of those assumptions, and I commend him for it.
I've also read the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as several plays by Evripides (in the original, no less!).
I'm jealous!! (and impressed! Maybe some day....)
It's a shame you're listed as an Anonymous Coward. You sound like someone with a background in political philosophy as well as computer systems. The Linux community needs more of you.
Careful here--let's not back water so fast that we lose sight of the fact that much of the response was justified.
A lot of people pulled dumb stunts in complaining to Bryar. (The firewall thing, for example, better be a coincidence.) But when I tuned into the scene, most of the commentary was pretty on the ball.
Look--he screwed up big time. He made all kinds of false assertions and was smarmy about it to boot. When people do that, they need to be hit and hit hard. For your interests, you just can't leave that lying around ignored; for theirs, they don't need to get away with writing inferior pieces. Their reaction to your scathing reviews will show what they're made of. Apparently Jack Bryar is made of pretty stern stuff; not only did he admit what most suspected (he hadn't done his homework), he acknowledged that he deserved most of what he got.
He didn't deserve it all, though. I wonder if he would be interested in releasing the IDs of some of the more juvenile flamers? Some intense peer revulsion at this stage might do some good, as the best policing is internal policing.
The best way to go about this without stepping over the lines of free speech, it seems to me, is a little public dressing-down of the guilty parties. Let it be said that the Linux community takes care of its own--in both defending and administering justice.
Good points! Actually, re-reading that part I realize I went over it a little fast.
I'm not sure to what extent one can ascribe conscious behavior to the little beasties. The prophecy of a "Chosen" as well as a virgin birth suggests _some_ sort of consciousness, but if anything, it'd almost have to be something like the hypothetical "hive" consciousness of an ant colony.
Either way, I'm not precisely sure what the _significance_ is of the "arbitrary distribution" plot point. (By the way, did you say that the distributions IS arbitrary in the Star Wars world or not? I'm not clear on that.) It might be right in front of me, though; you DID say you don't necessarily disagree with me.
My beef with Brin (and others) on this point is that I think they're confusing OUR time line with the STORY'S time line. A lot of people are disenchanted with the revelation that the Force comes from "little critters", as it were. To me it makes perfect sense; it makes sense that the Force has a _cause_ and that the knowledge of that cause should be lost (or suppressed) in the turmoil to come. Also lost (my optimism again!) is the tendency to close ranks which, I contend, is symptomatic of a _cloistered_ order, not an elite power structure. (I concede that in some cases, however, the difference is slight.) However, this whole apparent re-definition of the terms upsets some people who prefer to keep their first impressions of the Force and their own interpretations of what the movies were about. Let's face it: people have made their OWN mythology about Lucas' work and don't like it disturbed, even by Lucas himself.
Again, I think I'm just restating my points for the fun of it because I don't think you disagree with most of what I'm saying. You did catch me on basing certain assertions on what I expect to happen than what's actually in the movie. For precision's sake, I should have made the anger point (among others) a conjecture rather than an assertion, but I was already running pretty long. My conjecture, however, runs as follows: if I recall correctly, Kenobi ascribes his failure with Vader to his own puffed up pride. That pride, I surmise, comes from (i) his appointment as Anakin's guardian, and (ii) some residual satisfaction of taking out a Sith Lord. However, circumstances other than his own merit mandate the first, and he accomplishes the second with dangerous means. Simply put, he really isn't ready to be a full-fledged Jedi, and the circumstances that propel him to that status are somewhat antithetical to the Way of the Jedi.
One final point for Lucas: his choice to make his characters black-and-white is, I think, entirely deliberate. He's not at all interested in developing _characters_; he wants to establish character _types_.
And one final point for me: writing about this is fun! The fact that these movies generate so much discussion is a point in their favor, don't you think?
--Jason
I'm not familiar with Brin's work. After these pieces, I'm not going to bother.
The piece on Lucas' archetypal storytelling style was, I admit, thought-provoking. I disagree with about everything he says, but it WAS thought-provoking. However, I do think that Brin doth protest too much. As it happens, he's got an entirely different paradigm he's pushing. Consequently, his "analysis" actually becomes an advocacy article. He's not saying, "Lucas got it wrong here"; he's saying, "Pick me! Pick MY way of doing things!"
In other words, when he asks who nominated Lucas to preach his morality through his medium, he might wish to consider that the same question applies to him.
That piece I disagreed with, but his "analysis" of the Phantom Menace I found downright malicious. I don't think I agree with a single criticism he made. I'll try to keep my point-by-point stuff short, but here goes:
* Age of Anakin--the movie could have done a better job of making this clear, but in the Terry Brooks novelization it's explicit that potential Jedis are "recruited" at six months. "Ripping from the breast" might be entirely appropriate. It also lends credence to the Council's extreme reluctance to accept Anakin; at his age, he's far too fully formed to be trusted, yet they don't want a loose cannon roaming around. Nor, however, do they want to "sanction" him by full acceptance, hence the unusual remedy. The seeds are sown.
* More seeds: Obi-Wan's anger in destroying Darth Maul. Folks, _this is not a good thing!_ Not only does it open the Sith apprentice vacancy, it creates (or reveals) a flaw in Kenobi that will later manifest itself in Vader. When talking about anger and emotion and Lucas' approach to them, Brin should go back and read some Martin Luther King on violence and anger (I think "Letter From Birmingham Jail" or various versions of "I Have A Dream" contain the relevant thoughts.)
* Cliches: it's odd that Brin acknowledges that Lucas is retelling an old, old story and then chastises him for using cliches.
* Self-indulgences: It's Episode I. It's called "laying groundwork."
* Political situation (Naboo, "Originality"): Naboo is important specifically because _Senator Palpatine_ represents it in the Senate. It's his political opportunism that makes it important (as well as his willingness to use the "common people" he represents as power pawns--this foreshadows the manevolence of the man which is never explicitly stated in Phantom.) As for the "boring" charge, I think the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term "banality of evil" to describe the Nuremberg trials. It all started so innocently, and it was just politics as usual, right....?
* "Elitism" of Force: No, the Force didn't all of a sudden get a elite genetic deterministic cause. Those who have _abnormal concentrations_ are trained as Jedi in the old days (and suffer from the exclusivity and secretiveness common to cloistered groups.) By the time of Episode IV, the pickings are far more slim. Besides, it might even signify a _growing_ egalitarianism.
Finally, I think it is fair to make the Nazi Germany allusion as Lucas deliberately uses Nazi imagery in his opus. However, Brin's use of the metaphor is clumsy. No, we would not pardon Hitler. We might, however, pardon the hypothetical master lieutenant who, having been the major force in building the Third Reich, also became one of the major forces in overthrowing it (by killing Hitler, to maintain the analogy). Darth Vader is supposed to have been _redeemed_. (Personally, I find that a higher value than nicer institutions of the future.) The desire to think of the Jedi masters as being in "Jedi Hell" is very, very petty of Brin. Apparently there are scales of some sort; once you commit all that evil, there's not enough good to do to "offset" it, eh?
In summation, I don't care how well the man writes science fiction novels. He flies poor colors here.
I've got quite a few thoughts on the Microsoft challenge. I don't have the technical background (yet) to determine whether particular configuration tweaks are fair or not, but I didn't get a degree in philosophy for nothing. I'm going to try to map out the challenge for strengths and weaknesses of claims and arguments Microsoft makes.
In the first paragraph labeled "The Mindcraft Report", the author writes that PC Week and PC Magazine tests have corroborated Mindcraft's findings. If true, this is significant because it has been claimed that Mindcraft's study (and its study alone) contradicted prior studies. To show it's true, however, these questions (at least) must be answered:
1) PC Week and PC Magazine tests must be replicating equivalent conditions (per each other and Mindcraft) to be said to "corroborate" the original study.
2) Each set of tests must be "fair"; that is, they must not suffer from the same kinds of fatal flaws Mindcraft is accused of incorporating in their methodology.
Furthermore, even if the two studies check out with the two above conditions, that alone does not validate the original study. The original methodological concerns first raised must be satisfied (as they presumably will be should this now-hyped "open benchmark" test take place.) In short, the two new sets of tests do NOT "prove" the first Mindcraft study; at best, they provide a bootstrap to give further credibility to a presumably pro-Microsoft (in terms of winning) verdict in the possible future Mindcraft open benchmark.
Moving on, the Microsoft paper commits a subtle slur against the Linux community in intimating that the Linux experts are "dragging their feet" in responding to Mindcraft's new challenge (implied to be a quick, fair response.) Three things here: (1) Mindcraft submitted its original report on April 13. The open benchmark challenge was first issued May 4 and revised May 7. Given that the second "release" is the one that might be taken seriously, it's now been one week since that challenge went out after it took 3 weeks after the initial report to issue it. The "slow-to-respond" charge doesn't seem to take this proportionality into account. (2) Mindcraft is a single company, and this is work-related; they can do this "on-the-clock", as it were. Linux community experts are dispersed worldwide and by-and-large have jobs that demand their time and effort apart from their Linux roles. It's a major effort to collect all these people in one place for a conference planned months ahead, let alone a benchmark test in four weeks or so. (3) This charge is deliberately made because there is no way to decisively refute it. All it takes is one person answering late or refusing to participate, and one can paint the "community" as being recalcitrant. This is a barbed challenge, make no mistake.
Now the "track record": take it one point at a time. The TPC-C part is, frankly, very weak; I think it was put there in the hopes nobody would check it. The actual study primarily measures two criteria: throughput and throughput/cost of system (as determined by an entire, integrated system.) In the link Microsoft provides, the TOP throughput number is 24328. However, the _10th_ best in pure throughput has a score of 48793, just over twice as much as the "top" MS solution! (Number 1, by the way, is a Sun Starfire system with a throughput number of 115,395!!) By and large, the throughput list is comprised of high-end UNIX flavors whose price tag keeps them off the lists Microsoft so proudly displays.
In short, Microsoft's accomplishment here boils down to being the best cut-rate solution running on PC hardware there is. And the competition here is....? This is the whole point of the DOJ trial; MS just narrowed the field down until it hit its monopoly chip and then paraded the results. It is true that Linux vendors have yet to submit these kinds of benchmarks. Of course, what was the state of Linux vendors one year ago (how many, how successful, etc.)? I submit that the up-and-coming players today have been too busy trying to take the market by storm to worry overmuch about benchmarks.
As per the SPECweb: MS makes the claim that they have the "best dual and quad processor results." Well, according to the single page they link to, they must mean that IIS5.0 on a HP Netserver 8000 beats Apache & IBM on HP Netfinity 5500/7000 for 2 and 4 processors. IIS4.0 doesn't do all that well, and HP 9000 with Zeus absolutely beats up on MS's results. The "best" claim is optimistic and near-sighted at best. Again, Linux isn't in this--yet--and I'd suggest the people to talk to are the HPs, the IBMs, and the Suns represented in this particular benchmark. (Again, Linux is NOT one company!! Actually, in light of this fact, the claim "Linux has yet to post SPECWeb results" is a little bizarre.)
Re SAP: again, SAP has but recently made a Linux decision. (This entire process, by the by, is somewhat akin to the local bigwig claiming the new kid in town doesn't deserve respect because the old families haven't met him yet. The answer is both cases is, "Give it time.") As per the technical SAP evaluation (if you can find it), I'm punting on that one. If you're an expert, think of critiquing this claim as a module to plug into my larger argument.
THE REST: I'm about to beg off because I've got other things pressing. However, I've got some remarks that I think will cover most of the remaining claims that MS makes. First of all, the NetBench and WebBench tests use results purely from the Mindcraft, PC Week, and PC Magazine tests. My above comments should be kept in mind when evaluating these numbers; furthermore, these other two studies are brand new. I think it is not at all a coincidence that the studies and this gauntlet are so close together. It doesn't quite smack of collusion, but it does suggest that the marketing folks over at Microsoft instigated this document to capitalize on the prima facie positive results. By the time solid critiques of these two studies (coming out on the same day, no less) can be made, the marketing machine will probably have moved on. This doesn't imply that the two new studies are flawed; I simply suggest that whether they're flawed or not won't ultimately matter in terms of that new god of mass media, "perception."
The "Performance" section has three main flaws: (1) The points often don't match up against one another, (2) The lack of a centralized, bureaucratic command policy is always presented as a negative with a corresponding (false) positive always placed on integration and command decisions, and (3) many of the claims are either false or only true in the most trivial sense (see the security section, for example.)
To conclude, a shrinkwrap blurb does not an argument make. Of the "track record", two sections are really meaningless, a third is likely so, and two others need to be evaluated before proper judgment can be passed. Of the "performance" criteria, almost everything is a comparision of one paradigm element to another (and as such aren't suitable for comparision).
To response to Microsoft's "challenge", I think that the PC Week and PC Magazine tests need to be scrutinized. I think the Mindcraft test in June _might_ be a good response (although almighty tough to win in terms of PR), but it is VITAL to establish the significance of the test BEFORE it happens. I think it is a mistake to have a "wait-and-see" attitude; that is, it would be foolhardy to wait until you've "won" or "lost" before you say the test is meaningful or not. Finally, there is one part of the challenge that I think MUST be taken up: the response to MS' criteria for performance. That's an attempt to define the battlefield and absolutely MUST be countered.
Haste makes waste when it comes to the first half; knee-jerk reactions to benchmarks studies or rushes to establish benchmarks (like the first three tests they cite) for the sake of having your hat in the ring are ultimately detrimental to my mind. But when it comes to the second half, "he who hesitates is lost." Think of it in terms of warfare. Microsoft is a cadre of armor-clad knights, the heavy infantry of medieval times. Linux advocates are hill warriors (the Scots, say). Hill fighters don't work well on plains, and strong horses are useless going up mountains. Where are we going to fight the battle?
To do well, we must fight in the hills. Integration? Centralized control? No, no, no. Choice. Flexibility. Education. Openness. This is how we establish where the battle is fought and how ultimately the challenge is met and surpassed.
Ummm...I hate to rain on the parade in any way, but I think there's more than one questionable picture in Silverstein's opus. I hesitate to elaborate further than this: look through his two books, "Light in the Attic" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends" (I forget which one), for pictures of an anchor. Then LOOK at the anchor. Then flip through more of his work and LOOK at the pictures.
It spooked me a little. Still, that didn't kill my appreciation of his talent with words, and his death hit me with about the same impact as Dr. Seuss' did (although neither was as powerful as Jim Henson.) Like many others, I'll put a poem in the mix (from heart), one of the greatest introductions to a book I've ever read.
Welcome (?) (From LITA or WTSE)
If you're a dreamer, come in.
If you're a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hoper, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer,
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire.
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in.