I'm intrigued by the discussion; theory of knowledge is one of my interests. Thanks for the tip on Pirsig; I'll have to read him.
I'm skeptical (ignorantly so, obviously) about redefining reality as Values. I'm fairly committed to the objective existence of both objects and people, while recognizing that there are difficult boundary questions. The problem comes when asking basic questions like "are there other people besides me out there?" If my only answer to that is that I value my sense experience saying "yes", then I come dangerously close to denying other people existence independent of my values. That seems -- arrogant. And foolish, since when I die, I would not expect everyone to stop existing! But perhaps I don't understand the theory.
In a similar vein, if one thinks of people as only one's perception of them, without granting them an indepedent, objective existence outside oneself, then the tendency is to treat people behavioristically.
But again, I'm thinking out loud without having read Pirsig. Still and all, my suspicion is that he trades one set of problems for another.
I recognize that Quine and others have denied the existence of the subject-object distinction. I also recognize that observer-observed interactions make observations challenging. That said, I don't agree that it's helpful to toss the distinction between observations and inferences out. It is legitimate to ask oneself "Am I observing, or am I hypothesizing?", if only as a way to identify bias. My high-school students will have ample opportunity in college to probe the problems with that question, but until they learn to actually ASK it, they aren't anywhere.
I don't know if anyone remembers, but a fellow named Tom Gold -- part respected physicist, part alleged nutcase -- wrote a book a while back (can't find it on Google) about the Earth's core being made in part of non-biologically-originated hydrocarbons. His most recent one postulates that there is a fair amount of bacterial life down in the nether regions of the earth's crust.
DISCLAIMER: I do not personally have an opinion of his view, being ignorant of geology./DISCLAIMER
I wonder what he would make of a methane discovery on Mars?
Since you've been trained as a mathematician, then you probably don't believe in root-2 as a typical number, either; only as a "Dedikind cut" or as an "equivalence class of converging sets of rational numbers.":-)
...you won't be able to actually measure the lines. The problem is the usual Heisenberg problem: the photons don't "travel" in straight lines; rather, they have a wavefunction-given probability of being captured at a particular point, etc. So we can't track a trajectory for them.
"Force" doesn't enter into it, though: our governments have freely entered into this treaty, and our parliaments have approved it.
Sorry; I used an ambiguous word. By "force", I meant "compel", not "use military action to coerce."
Treaties, like marriages, are not always advisedly entered into. Just because we have freely entered into the W.T.O. doesn't mean that we won't regret having done so. I'm not referring to the specific question of gambling, of course. I'm referring to the overall principle of having to revise laws enacted for the protection of others (such as the anti-gambling statutes) in order to conform to free-trade agreements: a side-effect that we perhaps did not forsee.
Now that I think about it, I'm also concerned about the ability of the W.T.O. to overrule our own separation of powers. As you know, the U.S. government has limited jurisdiction over the states; however, by entering into the W.T.O., the global community can now demand that the U.S. overrule that jurisdiction in order to conform. This is very troubling to me.
Hm...IANALHistorian, so I can't comment on the history of government. However, I am certain that government functions not only to promote a smooth economy, but also and even primarily to restrain evil actions by one person against another. This goes back to the Ten Commandments and the Code of Hammurabi. And, the U.S. ban on gambling (whether right or wrong) is an attempt to do just that: to prevent gambling interests from taking the money not only of the gamblers, but of their families as well.
I'm not interested in debating the pros and cons of "save me from myself" legislation. My only point is that the economic interest and function of government has become a very powerful for challenging or even overturning the restraining function of government. Has this been going on for thousands of years? Not on a global scale. So, I'm interested in the trend; it seems new and disturbing to me. Further, to the extent that this trend does have historical precedent, that precedent seems mostly negative.
The question of whether the U.S. is hypocritical is uninteresting because the answer is obviously Yes.
The interesting trend here is for individual laws of nations to be "leveled" or "normalized" to reflect the laws of other nations only because it simplifies the economic situation to do so.
In other words, the W.T.O. turns out to be a tool to not only resolve trade disputes but also to (attempt to) force nations to change their laws. This should make us nervous. It should also make us reflect that "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" -- II Timothy.
My students always have a mental block when it comes to teaching the distinction between theory and law. Although I state clearly several times that a "law describes, and a theory explains", many students have it firmly fixed in their minds that the progression of the scientific method is
Observation --> hypothesis --> theory --> law
instead of the correct
Observation --> law --> hypothesis --> theory
By the middle of the year, when we start talking about Boyle's Law and other gas laws being explained by the Kinetic Theory, some students start to get straightened out.
I'm not sure why this is so difficult for them, but my hypothesis is that it has something to do with their underlying thought structure. The reason (I believe) that students believe that theory comes before law is that they themselves have trouble distinguishing what they SEE with their BELIEFS about what they see. Therefore, they see no need to distinguish laws from theories. My $.02
The article was egregiously low on detail. (Googles a bit...) Here is a more technical article that explains the magnetism as a result of temporary unpaired electron spins (surprise!). The magnetism occurs at temperatures below 90K, so it's fairly remarkable that they can jerk this stuff from 9700K down to 90K and have it not shatter!
So, in the spirit of trying to find flaws in order to preserve democracy for all, who is in charge of loading the open-source software onto the machines? This is, IMO, a crucial problem with machine voting. It's fairly easy to imagine a scenario where an "updated" version of the software gets slipped in to the computer by a zealous poll-worker who is, after all, a registered member of one or the other parties. Vote fraud with paper ballots is so hard because members of both parties verify the results. Vote fraud with e-voting would be easy, once you figured out the right trick.
Don't get me wrong; I think open-source e-voting is better than proprietary e-voting. But I would still rather have paper ballots and wait a couple of days for the results. The problems in Florida in 2000 are chump change compared to the potential fraud possible with e-voting.
Several years back, and just for grins, I got my AP Chemistry class to do some "research" on students by posting signs by the water fountains that said "Danger! These fountains contain dihydrogen monoxide." The signs also outlined some of the dangers of dhmo. Then, we sat back at a distance and recorded reactions by various students.
The best line: "They can't make me drink this stuff! I'm telling my mom!"
The idea of optional charging has been floated before, and these objections have been raised before. I don't think that the objections are fatal, however:
I've *never* been lured into sending someone else an e-mail. The only way I could imagine someone doing it is either (a) sending me an e-mail first, or (b) setting up a website with a "click here to e-mail me about..." In case (a), if someone charged me, I would turn around and charge them for the original e-mail, and we would be even. Listservs could work on a similar basis: a small, one-stamp's-worth registration fee that is forfeited if you ever charge them. In case (b), people would quickly learn not to click on links that they don't trust, which is a desirable outcome.
Malicious or vengeful charging is also a non-issue. Simply give each "charge" (I prefer to call it a "reusable stamp") a time limit (perhaps one day, or three); then, the amount of damage that any one person can do to another is small and easily caught. Once bitten, twice shy: if you charge me, then I won't e-mail you anymore, which is the desired outcome.
Enforcement is a harder problem. To do this, a third party would have to be trusted to hold small amounts of money from everyone (and larger amounts of money for listservs), and mail would have to be routed through that person. I forsee that putting a serious crimp into e-mail bandwidth. Also, the more centralized the money-holding system, the more tempting it will be for electronic thieves.
Notwithstanding, I think it is very much worth trying to solve this last problem. At this point, there are only two live options for dealing with Spam: either ICAAN and e-mail users decide to self-regulate, or else national governments will step in and regulate for us. Do you want a government to decide what is spam and what isn't?
Out of the self-regulatory options, I like the reusable stamps the best for three reasons: (1) It gives the end-user the decision about what is spam (2) Unlike filters, it places the cost of spamming on the sender instead of the receiver (3) Also unlike filters, it results in reduced levels of spam being sent instead of increased levels of gibberish-coated spam being sent.
Found the problem: the posted link is not attached to the actual doctorsknow site! It is instead attached to a archived link on the "WayBack Machine." I think that's highly misleading!
So what does mean that it's a blacklist? The fact that the posted names could be used as a blacklist? Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two other uses for the list:
Patient walks in with odd complaint. You recognize his name from the list. Instead of attempting to diagnose him yourself, you immediately refer him to a specialist.
Patient walks in with presenting symptoms. You recognize his name from the list. Rather than treat him conservatively, you immediately order tests to cover all the bases.
Don't know which link you mean. The link I saw said this:
Add medical malpractice plaintiffs, plaintiff attorneys and expert witnesses to the DoctorsKnow.Us database. Posting of data conditioned on prior receipt of copy of lawsuit. Membership is required
When I tried to add a plaintiff, it requested a password. Curious.
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
I had to think about your last paragraph for a while. First off, I completely agree with your assertion that
The universe is not based upon the "fundamental" axioms and definitions that we use to model its behavior. It is arguable that by observation we will never be able to determine what the true fundamentals of the universe are, because there for every n observed behaviors, the (n+1)'th behavior might break the model that we established for the first n events.
My skepticism about IP has much more to do with mathematical (analytic) knowledge, such as algorithms, than it does with scientific (synthetic) knowledge.
Second, I conditionally agree that there is a need to protect people's work.
Here is the problem: with any other kind of property besides IP, possession and infringement are fairly clear-cut issues. This occurs because property is made of atoms, located in space, or can be readily modeled as such by extension. I can clearly state whether or not an item or a piece of real-estate is in my possession and the law clearly states what rights others have with respect to that item or piece of real-estate. By extension, I can do the same with a bank account.
Furthermore, my possession of item A in no way prevents your possession of identical item B, so that there is little confusion caused by simultaneous possession of identical items.
This clear-cut situation totally breaks down with IP. For example, if I am an English mathematician/physicist working on motion of cannonballs and invent something called "Calculus" to do the trick, and you are a German mathematician who does the same thing, independently of me, then do I have possession of your ideas, or do you have possession of mine? As you no doubt know, this exact scenario was played out between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, and the fight over "credit" for the Calculus helped no-one.
To my mind, this scenario illustrates the problem: IP has the singular unfortunate property that my possessing an idea places a lock on anyone else's possessing the identical idea. Obviously, this is unworkable; thus, all sorts of exceptions have been created under law (e.g., exemptions for "clean-room" reverse-engineering of software, but not so close as to have the same "look-and-feel"). But the exceptions create what seems to me to be an unstable system which will collapse as more and more energy gets spent trying to decide whose ideas were whose to begin with. Meanwhile, less and less time gets spent on using the best ideas out there.
So what happens to the PhD's of the world? I don't know. My fear is that, long-term, the market for ideas will turn out to be a bust. But I'm not a prophet!
Languages such as Hebrew and Arabic also make use of vowel points. The markings are different from Elvish, but the basic idea is not original to Tolkien.
IANALaser Tech, so I can't give you hard numbers. However, I would make the following points:
In your example, the mathematical relationship between the numbers is not 1/r^2 but 1/r^n, where n is about 1. I'm willing to accept a 1/r^n relationship as likely, but I am fairly confident that n is close to 0.
As evidence, I would appeal to the use of lasers to find the distance to the moon. Apollo 11 left mirrors on the moon, and lasers have been used to check the distance to the moon. In order for this to work, the drop-off in intensity must be negligible, at least for well-tuned lasers (i.e., not the cheapo solid-state laser pointers).
Regards, Jeff Cagle
P.S. read your post. It was interesting, although I confess ignorance on Mars issues.
Lasers aren't subject to inverse square law. Consider the typical laser pointer: it can illuminate a point up to 25+m away using only 5mW of power. An equivalent light bulb, which *does* obey inverse square, can't do diddly squat at that distance.
Lasers only diminish at far distances because the wavefunctions of the output photons aren't perfectly coherent.
BTW, the inverse-square-law occurs for light bulbs because they generate radiation uniformly in all directions; hence, the intensity = P/A = P/(4*pi*r^2) drops off proportional to r^(-2).
The person who ties it all together and gives it a pretty name, of course. That's perfectly fine when it comes to theorems, since (AFAIK) there's nothing to prohibit anyone else from using the new information, as long as the original author gets credit. The problem arises when we start mixing the word "property" in with ideas.
Mathematical knowledge is considered by philosophers to be "analytic": that is, "true by definition." It is derived by means of deductive reasoning applied to definitions and axioms. Deductive reasoning is able to tell us what the implications of our axioms are, but it cannot tell us anything genuinely NEW. (See, e.g., the Wikipedia)
By contrast, scientific, historical, and even technological knowledge is "synthetic knowledge", which operates using inductive reasoning. Those disciplines can give genuinely new results. I am fine with giving someone credit for a new piece of synthetic knowledge; giving someone credit for analytic knowledge is probably silly. Why? Because analytic knowledge is not genuinely new.
Humorous aside: Computers can be as adept as we are at discovering analytic results. Should we start giving property rights to computers?
"Bits are not the same as atoms. We need to reframe the legal discussion to treat the differences of bits and atoms in a more thoughtful way."
The current P2P swapping debacle that RIAA is facing was inevitable. Back in the day (i.e., when the printing press was invented), people funded their own printings of books on the theory that ideas were for disseminating. Nowadays, people ask readers to fund "printings" of various media on the theory that ideas are for making money. Nonsense! How can you "copyright" an algorithm? An idea? A mathematical theorem? Only by creating an unstable system of "intellectual property" which will inevitably collapse under its own weight. Consider: every theorem (including algorithms) in existence today was already contained implicitly in the fundamental axioms and definitions by which it was proved. So who gets the credit?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm intrigued by the discussion; theory of knowledge is one of my interests. Thanks for the tip on Pirsig; I'll have to read him.
I'm skeptical (ignorantly so, obviously) about redefining reality as Values. I'm fairly committed to the objective existence of both objects and people, while recognizing that there are difficult boundary questions. The problem comes when asking basic questions like "are there other people besides me out there?" If my only answer to that is that I value my sense experience saying "yes", then I come dangerously close to denying other people existence independent of my values. That seems -- arrogant. And foolish, since when I die, I would not expect everyone to stop existing! But perhaps I don't understand the theory.
In a similar vein, if one thinks of people as only one's perception of them, without granting them an indepedent, objective existence outside oneself, then the tendency is to treat people behavioristically.
But again, I'm thinking out loud without having read Pirsig. Still and all, my suspicion is that he trades one set of problems for another.
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
I recognize that Quine and others have denied the existence of the subject-object distinction. I also recognize that observer-observed interactions make observations challenging. That said, I don't agree that it's helpful to toss the distinction between observations and inferences out. It is legitimate to ask oneself "Am I observing, or am I hypothesizing?", if only as a way to identify bias. My high-school students will have ample opportunity in college to probe the problems with that question, but until they learn to actually ASK it, they aren't anywhere.
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
I don't know if anyone remembers, but a fellow named Tom Gold -- part respected physicist, part alleged nutcase -- wrote a book a while back (can't find it on Google) about the Earth's core being made in part of non-biologically-originated hydrocarbons. His most recent one postulates that there is a fair amount of bacterial life down in the nether regions of the earth's crust.
/DISCLAIMER
DISCLAIMER: I do not personally have an opinion of his view, being ignorant of geology.
I wonder what he would make of a methane discovery on Mars?
Since you've been trained as a mathematician, then you probably don't believe in root-2 as a typical number, either; only as a "Dedikind cut" or as an "equivalence class of converging sets of rational numbers." :-)
...you won't be able to actually measure the lines. The problem is the usual Heisenberg problem: the photons don't "travel" in straight lines; rather, they have a wavefunction-given probability of being captured at a particular point, etc. So we can't track a trajectory for them.
Treaties, like marriages, are not always advisedly entered into. Just because we have freely entered into the W.T.O. doesn't mean that we won't regret having done so. I'm not referring to the specific question of gambling, of course. I'm referring to the overall principle of having to revise laws enacted for the protection of others (such as the anti-gambling statutes) in order to conform to free-trade agreements: a side-effect that we perhaps did not forsee.
Now that I think about it, I'm also concerned about the ability of the W.T.O. to overrule our own separation of powers. As you know, the U.S. government has limited jurisdiction over the states; however, by entering into the W.T.O., the global community can now demand that the U.S. overrule that jurisdiction in order to conform. This is very troubling to me.
Hm...IANALHistorian, so I can't comment on the history of government. However, I am certain that government functions not only to promote a smooth economy, but also and even primarily to restrain evil actions by one person against another. This goes back to the Ten Commandments and the Code of Hammurabi. And, the U.S. ban on gambling (whether right or wrong) is an attempt to do just that: to prevent gambling interests from taking the money not only of the gamblers, but of their families as well.
I'm not interested in debating the pros and cons of "save me from myself" legislation. My only point is that the economic interest and function of government has become a very powerful for challenging or even overturning the restraining function of government. Has this been going on for thousands of years? Not on a global scale. So, I'm interested in the trend; it seems new and disturbing to me. Further, to the extent that this trend does have historical precedent, that precedent seems mostly negative.
Regards, Jeff Cagle
The question of whether the U.S. is hypocritical is uninteresting because the answer is obviously Yes.
The interesting trend here is for individual laws of nations to be "leveled" or "normalized" to reflect the laws of other nations only because it simplifies the economic situation to do so.
In other words, the W.T.O. turns out to be a tool to not only resolve trade disputes but also to (attempt to) force nations to change their laws. This should make us nervous. It should also make us reflect that "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" -- II Timothy.
My students always have a mental block when it comes to teaching the distinction between theory and law. Although I state clearly several times that a "law describes, and a theory explains", many students have it firmly fixed in their minds that the progression of the scientific method is
Observation --> hypothesis --> theory --> law
instead of the correct
Observation --> law --> hypothesis --> theory
By the middle of the year, when we start talking about Boyle's Law and other gas laws being explained by the Kinetic Theory, some students start to get straightened out.
I'm not sure why this is so difficult for them, but my hypothesis is that it has something to do with their underlying thought structure. The reason (I believe) that students believe that theory comes before law is that they themselves have trouble distinguishing what they SEE with their BELIEFS about what they see. Therefore, they see no need to distinguish laws from theories. My $.02
The article was egregiously low on detail. (Googles a bit...) Here is a more technical article that explains the magnetism as a result of temporary unpaired electron spins (surprise!). The magnetism occurs at temperatures below 90K, so it's fairly remarkable that they can jerk this stuff from 9700K down to 90K and have it not shatter!
So, in the spirit of trying to find flaws in order to preserve democracy for all, who is in charge of loading the open-source software onto the machines? This is, IMO, a crucial problem with machine voting. It's fairly easy to imagine a scenario where an "updated" version of the software gets slipped in to the computer by a zealous poll-worker who is, after all, a registered member of one or the other parties. Vote fraud with paper ballots is so hard because members of both parties verify the results. Vote fraud with e-voting would be easy, once you figured out the right trick.
Don't get me wrong; I think open-source e-voting is better than proprietary e-voting. But I would still rather have paper ballots and wait a couple of days for the results. The problems in Florida in 2000 are chump change compared to the potential fraud possible with e-voting.
Several years back, and just for grins, I got my AP Chemistry class to do some "research" on students by posting signs by the water fountains that said "Danger! These fountains contain dihydrogen monoxide." The signs also outlined some of the dangers of dhmo. Then, we sat back at a distance and recorded reactions by various students.
The best line: "They can't make me drink this stuff! I'm telling my mom!"
I've *never* been lured into sending someone else an e-mail. The only way I could imagine someone doing it is either (a) sending me an e-mail first, or (b) setting up a website with a "click here to e-mail me about ..." In case (a), if someone charged me, I would turn around and charge them for the original e-mail, and we would be even. Listservs could work on a similar basis: a small, one-stamp's-worth registration fee that is forfeited if you ever charge them.
In case (b), people would quickly learn not to click on links that they don't trust, which is a desirable outcome.
Malicious or vengeful charging is also a non-issue. Simply give each "charge" (I prefer to call it a "reusable stamp") a time limit (perhaps one day, or three); then, the amount of damage that any one person can do to another is small and easily caught. Once bitten, twice shy: if you charge me, then I won't e-mail you anymore, which is the desired outcome.
Enforcement is a harder problem. To do this, a third party would have to be trusted to hold small amounts of money from everyone (and larger amounts of money for listservs), and mail would have to be routed through that person. I forsee that putting a serious crimp into e-mail bandwidth. Also, the more centralized the money-holding system, the more tempting it will be for electronic thieves.
Notwithstanding, I think it is very much worth trying to solve this last problem. At this point, there are only two live options for dealing with Spam: either ICAAN and e-mail users decide to self-regulate, or else national governments will step in and regulate for us. Do you want a government to decide what is spam and what isn't?
Out of the self-regulatory options, I like the reusable stamps the best for three reasons:
(1) It gives the end-user the decision about what is spam
(2) Unlike filters, it places the cost of spamming on the sender instead of the receiver
(3) Also unlike filters, it results in reduced levels of spam being sent instead of increased levels of gibberish-coated spam being sent.
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
Found the problem: the posted link is not attached to the actual doctorsknow site! It is instead attached to a archived link on the "WayBack Machine." I think that's highly misleading!
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
Patient walks in with odd complaint. You recognize his name from the list. Instead of attempting to diagnose him yourself, you immediately refer him to a specialist.
Patient walks in with presenting symptoms. You recognize his name from the list. Rather than treat him conservatively, you immediately order tests to cover all the bases.
Second, I conditionally agree that there is a need to protect people's work.
Here is the problem: with any other kind of property besides IP, possession and infringement are fairly clear-cut issues. This occurs because property is made of atoms, located in space, or can be readily modeled as such by extension. I can clearly state whether or not an item or a piece of real-estate is in my possession and the law clearly states what rights others have with respect to that item or piece of real-estate. By extension, I can do the same with a bank account.
Furthermore, my possession of item A in no way prevents your possession of identical item B, so that there is little confusion caused by simultaneous possession of identical items.
This clear-cut situation totally breaks down with IP. For example, if I am an English mathematician/physicist working on motion of cannonballs and invent something called "Calculus" to do the trick, and you are a German mathematician who does the same thing, independently of me, then do I have possession of your ideas, or do you have possession of mine? As you no doubt know, this exact scenario was played out between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, and the fight over "credit" for the Calculus helped no-one.
To my mind, this scenario illustrates the problem: IP has the singular unfortunate property that my possessing an idea places a lock on anyone else's possessing the identical idea. Obviously, this is unworkable; thus, all sorts of exceptions have been created under law (e.g., exemptions for "clean-room" reverse-engineering of software, but not so close as to have the same "look-and-feel"). But the exceptions create what seems to me to be an unstable system which will collapse as more and more energy gets spent trying to decide whose ideas were whose to begin with. Meanwhile, less and less time gets spent on using the best ideas out there.
So what happens to the PhD's of the world? I don't know. My fear is that, long-term, the market for ideas will turn out to be a bust. But I'm not a prophet!
It was Old Norse, IIRC.
Languages such as Hebrew and Arabic also make use of vowel points. The markings are different from Elvish, but the basic idea is not original to Tolkien.
In your example, the mathematical relationship between the numbers is not 1/r^2 but 1/r^n, where n is about 1. I'm willing to accept a 1/r^n relationship as likely, but I am fairly confident that n is close to 0.
As evidence, I would appeal to the use of lasers to find the distance to the moon. Apollo 11 left mirrors on the moon, and lasers have been used to check the distance to the moon. In order for this to work, the drop-off in intensity must be negligible, at least for well-tuned lasers (i.e., not the cheapo solid-state laser pointers).
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
P.S. read your post. It was interesting, although I confess ignorance on Mars issues.
Lasers aren't subject to inverse square law. Consider the typical laser pointer: it can illuminate a point up to 25+m away using only 5mW of power. An equivalent light bulb, which *does* obey inverse square, can't do diddly squat at that distance.
Lasers only diminish at far distances because the wavefunctions of the output photons aren't perfectly coherent.
BTW, the inverse-square-law occurs for light bulbs because they generate radiation uniformly in all directions; hence, the intensity = P/A = P/(4*pi*r^2) drops off proportional to r^(-2).
I agree with a lot of your other points.
Clever retort, but consider the discussion of analytic vs. synthetic knowledge here
By contrast, scientific, historical, and even technological knowledge is "synthetic knowledge", which operates using inductive reasoning. Those disciplines can give genuinely new results. I am fine with giving someone credit for a new piece of synthetic knowledge; giving someone credit for analytic knowledge is probably silly. Why? Because analytic knowledge is not genuinely new.
Humorous aside: Computers can be as adept as we are at discovering analytic results. Should we start giving property rights to computers?
Jeff Cagle