The book (Calculating God) does respect logic in the manner you're discussing. Both characters are true scientists, although the alien one knows facts that prove a transcendentally powerful being exists. By your lights, the alien makes too large a leap connecting that being to traditional (non-provable in principle)notions of God, but I think it's understandable given the (fictional, for us readers) fact set at hand.
Sawyer doesn't cheat on the logic in this one (or any of his books, for that matter). That's one of the reasons I buy his books the minute they're published.
Another excellent analysis of this issue (why documentation can't begin to teach as well as hands-on instruction) can be found in Virginia Postrel's book The Future and Its Enemies. A great deal of the most relevant knowledge (about anything involving people, at least) is local and extremely difficult to discover and express (for example, knowing an org. chart will never tell you that the department head's cranky in the morning, so you'll do much better by going through her administrative assistant before that first cuppa joe). Manuals can't cover everything, and are usually only a first approximation of the most explicit and static information about the process or system or what-have-you at hand. Hands-on information exchange provides feedback and the opportunity for discovery of those essential but not relevant-seeming details that are part of the practice of life. The application to universities (and the real-life tendency for researchers to have to visit labs that're trying to replicate their results) are obvious. BTW, the book's a lively read.
Our concepts of good are derived, in large part, by contrast with things that are bad. As Satan sings in the South Park movie:
Without evil there would be no good, so it must be good to be evil sometimes...
BFE (that acronym doesn't just fit the movie in question, eh?) is good because it throws a sharp and valuable contrast on the good movies that manage to get made.
Whenever I lent these books out to friends, I warn 'em not to expect the ending to live up to the book. It seems to me that Neal loves playing with the story and atmosphere up until a certain point, after which he just wraps up the story as quickly as possible, making the endings anti-climatic. I enthusiastically recommend his work, but with this single caveat.
(P.S. to tokengeekgrrl - your opinions, your gender and your sig line - I could fall for you!)
AC, PLEASE warn people when you drop spoilers!!!!! You've destroyed the core mystery of the first book, Inherit the Stars. The theme of that book is how science tests, hypothesizes, and argues (not to say fights) its way to truth, even when it involves a monumental rethinking of assumptions (for example, what you've casually spilled here). Anyone you've pointed to these books who hadn't read ITS before will now find it really deflated (the subsequent books should still work, though). Anyway, you have the facts wrong (the Earth has always been in its present orbit in the Giant's books).
It is simply inevitable that corporations hold the government's leash. P.J. O'Rourke summed it up succinctly: "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
I've given this a lot of thought since I became a libertarian. There's a lot of business-bashing, most of which I dismiss, but much of it is valid. There is certainly some ugly behavior from corporations that I can't reconcile with my basic presumption for freedom. If companies' rights derived entirely from those of the individuals involved, I'd say let everyone offer what they want, and the offerings people don't support will die off (i.e., let the market decide). But that's definitely not the case in our society. Corporations do NOT operate subject to this limitation.
The basic problem (IMHO) is with the idea of a corporation. It's not just an association of individuals who agree to pursue common goals (typically, getting filthy rich), and who would remain liable for the actions they take. Incorporation is a grant from the state (in the U.S., literally a state - Delaware gets a lot of the action because its incorporation laws are very favorable) that creates a fictitious person (the company) which is liable for the company's actions. That therefore shields the decision-makers of the company from liability for their decisions. Officers of the corporation thus have plenty of reason to ignore potential negative consequences of profitable (but shady) short-term actions. Hence, some executive decides on behalf of Union Carbide to skimp on maintenance costs, and winds up poisoning Bhopal. An Exxon boss chooses to ignore the habitual drinking of Capt. Hazelwood (Hazelton?) rather than risk the potential lawsuits for firing him - and the Valdez incident results. It is this dynamic that squeezes the human factor out of their decision-making (those bosses collected their bonuses and were applauded - but did they ever get punished for the harms their short-sightedness caused? have their names ever been publicized, exposing them to public disapproval?).
My first reaction is that corporations should be eliminated (in a perfect world, maybe). But corporations arose in English common law because of liability problems concerning the city of London (it became the first corporation - fictitious person authorized by law - because who is liable for its decisions? If a pedestrian falls through a rotting bridge plank, who gets sued? The mayor? The previous mayor? The city planner? A bridge engineer? The workman who followed the engineer's orders?).
I'm realistic - I know corporations won't be abolished tomorrow - but legal band-aids (such as limits on corporate contributions to political campaigns, or the travesty of eliminating private contributions and having government pay for political campaigns) will have tiny effects in the short term, and will be mooted in the long term (don't forget whose money calls the shots in implementing - or nullifying - the laws).
I've loved The Tick from the first time I saw it (which was the Fox cartoon series). Warburton and Sonnenfeld are good choices to continue it, but the very best part of the cartoon was the tremendous voice work (especially Charles Townshend, who always balanced the fine line between heartily enthusiastic and dangerously manic). "Puddy" will be working under a HUGE shadow!
I expected BJM to deliver laughs and be thought-provoking, but to inevitably falter when faced with the need to wrap up a plot (I think Katz's review sums up to this reaction). Put another way, that it'd wind up straining to be weird-for-weird's-sake, and that I'd be skimming it for amusing nuggets.
I have to tell you, though, I've never had more surprised/delighted moments from a single film in years! It met my expectations in the first 30-45 minutes, but then it found valid, character-rooted twists to explore, over and over! Much to my surprise, the writer (mea culpa - can't remember his name) really thought out what people would want to know about his premise (can you get better and worse times to be Malkovich? what about during sex? how about if it involves someone you know? what would happen if Malkovich himself tried it? and there's more) - and established a set of characters whose motivations would naturally get us there. It's not flawless, but it's so much better a movie than the premise and experience with movie plots would lead you to expect. I'll be surprised if Toy Story 2 matches it for fun.
I'm glad to see the nano discussion moving closer to the mainstream, but this author seems to have read the (free, online) book Engines of Creation and stopped there. The idea that the nanites would have to be self-replicating is one that Drexler disavowed in Unbounding the Future. In that book, Drexler argued that replication is a complex function and is itself responsible for some (though certainly not all) of the "Dark Side of Nano" problems. He was in favor of function-specific nanites for nearly all uses - they're easier to build, easier to control, and would never have the potential to mutate. Aren't those points directly relevant to the article?
Given that the C/Net article is a pretty elementary version of intro to nano, it's a shame the author didn't bother to look at several sources, not to mention the most recent (and even more layperson-friendly!) writings of his source.
Actually, the living Pythons are going to do a reunion special on BBC Oct. 16 - the story is from May, but I just saw a one-paragraph reiteration in my local newspaper this weekend. I think they're writing some new skits for it.
Wired News just had an article describing DPI, a non-profit Silicon Valley agency that helps match afflicted programmers with hundreds of technology products that can let you work without destroying your wrists. They range from different keyboards to full Stephen Hawking-type setups.
Damn - I lost half my post! Take a look at James Hogan's _Voyage from Yesteryear_, in which a future human colony develops its own customs in a world where material needs are essentially free. Hogan's not great at three-dimensional characters, but he knows his stuff and is usually fun to read. Anyway, the "gift culture" this article described really reminds me of this novel's world, where the "currency" that the economy operates on is competence, not ownership.
Our world has been driving down the cost of virtually everything for as long as technology has existed. Add to that the prospect of nanotechnology, and I think it's quite plausible to anticipate a future (near or not) in which it's not worth the transaction costs to charge for food, shelter, clothing, etc. The Open Source movement looks intriguingly like the first hint of what that future might be like.
The tool you MUST have to read The Diamond Age!
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
One of the threads in TDA that I enjoyed was the group identification issue that Clampe mentioned. However, one the major social groups in the book are neo-Victorians, who have revived a LOT of old words that range from quaint to baroque to fossilized. Given Neal's research, I knew they were worth tracking down.
What I did (and I strongly recommend) is that you keep a list of words you don't know (and their page numbers), and look 'em up in the biggest dictionary you can access (if I were less lazy, I'd provide an online dictionary link - right about here!). Then scan back over the page they came from and see how much that knowledge richens the book for you.
It's more than a rumor - The Central Treasury Bond Registration and Settlement Co., the only automated stock exchange in China (limited to government and some big, favored corporations), is down indefinitely. A spokesman says it's because of 9/9/99, a technician says it may or may not be. FWIW, the whole exchange apparently runs on a single '92 or '93 vintage AS/400.
This was one of the main reasons the Federalists only centralized certain powers, and left many more to the states - people would be free to "vote with their feet" for the regulatory climate (among other factors) they found desirable. Predictably (but sadly), the federal government has found ways (such as withholding tax proceeds like highway funds from states that won't bow to a federal mandate) around it.
What makes the Internet so positive for freedom-lovers is that it restores the chance to shop for freer conditions in at least SOME relevant areas!
Don't overlook the Libertarian Party - they're for strict enforcement of the Bill o' Rights and a consistent, minimal government (police, courts, and national defense), maximum freedom society.
Going to Lester Thurow for a comment on self-regulation is like having Clinton define propriety - you're getting a strongly biased position, not a judgement. A major emphasis of his career has always been to justify and support governmental control of...well, everything. You have to be suspicious of an economist who claims that wealth can't be created, only divvied up differently (his best-known book is called "The Zero-Sum Game"). There's an enormous bug in that reasoning!
Yes, these terms are pejorative, but so is "social junkie" (It's inevitably the perogative of the numerous to set the ideas of what's "normal", but you're running the same "label as bad whatever's different" routine that you're justly complaining about). But I think you're overlooking the fact that this sort of research will help to reduce any such stigma (not reinforce it). Much of the negative baggage of terms like "mild autism", "geek", et al have to do with lack of social reciprocity that makes others uncomfortable ("I was being friendly - why did he/she blow me off?"). Understanding that 1) there's a source for it that's not just "weirdness", 2) that the "condition" plays a strong part in the enormous contributions to the world of computing (and technology in general - I bet Edison would've met these criteria), and 3) there's a learnable skill set that can reduce the discomfort of social interactions for both "normals" and "mildly autistic/geek/ADD people",
is an important step in getting people to make realistic and profitable adjustments in attitude.
If no one else had mentioned the Brin articles, I'd have done so. Maybe I'm getting old, but I reacted to TPM the same way I did to the rereleases of episodes 4-6 - i.e., bored silly (though I did enjoy them, especially Empire, the first time around). To the extent that there's any philosophy behind the movies, it's 99% wrong-headed. Brin nails those problems, along with the storytelling flaws and plot holes you can fly the Millenium Falcon through. And look at the trend line - especially from Empire Strikes Back to Revenge (oops!) Return of the Jedi and now TPM - gruesome!
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The book (Calculating God) does respect logic in the manner you're discussing. Both characters are true scientists, although the alien one knows facts that prove a transcendentally powerful being exists. By your lights, the alien makes too large a leap connecting that being to traditional (non-provable in principle)notions of God, but I think it's understandable given the (fictional, for us readers) fact set at hand.
Sawyer doesn't cheat on the logic in this one (or any of his books, for that matter). That's one of the reasons I buy his books the minute they're published.
Another excellent analysis of this issue (why documentation can't begin to teach as well as hands-on instruction) can be found in Virginia Postrel's book The Future and Its Enemies. A great deal of the most relevant knowledge (about anything involving people, at least) is local and extremely difficult to discover and express (for example, knowing an org. chart will never tell you that the department head's cranky in the morning, so you'll do much better by going through her administrative assistant before that first cuppa joe). Manuals can't cover everything, and are usually only a first approximation of the most explicit and static information about the process or system or what-have-you at hand.
Hands-on information exchange provides feedback and the opportunity for discovery of those essential but not relevant-seeming details that are part of the practice of life. The application to universities (and the real-life tendency for researchers to have to visit labs that're trying to replicate their results) are obvious.
BTW, the book's a lively read.
Check a dictionary - spelt is the English (i.e. Great Britain) way to spell spelled.
BFE (that acronym doesn't just fit the movie in question, eh?) is good because it throws a sharp and valuable contrast on the good movies that manage to get made.
Whenever I lent these books out to friends, I warn 'em not to expect the ending to live up to the book. It seems to me that Neal loves playing with the story and atmosphere up until a certain point, after which he just wraps up the story as quickly as possible, making the endings anti-climatic. I enthusiastically recommend his work, but with this single caveat.
(P.S. to tokengeekgrrl - your opinions, your gender and your sig line - I could fall for you!)
AC, PLEASE warn people when you drop spoilers!!!!! You've destroyed the core mystery of the first book, Inherit the Stars. The theme of that book is how science tests, hypothesizes, and argues (not to say fights) its way to truth, even when it involves a monumental rethinking of assumptions (for example, what you've casually spilled here). Anyone you've pointed to these books who hadn't read ITS before will now find it really deflated (the subsequent books should still work, though). Anyway, you have the facts wrong (the Earth has always been in its present orbit in the Giant's books).
It is simply inevitable that corporations hold the government's leash. P.J. O'Rourke summed it up succinctly: "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
I've given this a lot of thought since I became a libertarian. There's a lot of business-bashing, most of which I dismiss, but much of it is valid. There is certainly some ugly behavior from corporations that I can't reconcile with my basic presumption for freedom. If companies' rights derived entirely from those of the individuals involved, I'd say let everyone offer what they want, and the offerings people don't support will die off (i.e., let the market decide). But that's definitely not the case in our society. Corporations do NOT operate subject to this limitation.
The basic problem (IMHO) is with the idea of a corporation. It's not just an association of individuals who agree to pursue common goals (typically, getting filthy rich), and who would remain liable for the actions they take. Incorporation is a grant from the state (in the U.S., literally a state - Delaware gets a lot of the action because its incorporation laws are very favorable) that creates a fictitious person (the company) which is liable for the company's actions. That therefore shields the decision-makers of the company from liability for their decisions. Officers of the corporation thus have plenty of reason to ignore potential negative consequences of profitable (but shady) short-term actions. Hence, some executive decides on behalf of Union Carbide to skimp on maintenance costs, and winds up poisoning Bhopal. An Exxon boss chooses to ignore the habitual drinking of Capt. Hazelwood (Hazelton?) rather than risk the potential lawsuits for firing him - and the Valdez incident results. It is this dynamic that squeezes the human factor out of their decision-making (those bosses collected their bonuses and were applauded - but did they ever get punished for the harms their short-sightedness caused? have their names ever been publicized, exposing them to public disapproval?).
My first reaction is that corporations should be eliminated (in a perfect world, maybe). But corporations arose in English common law because of liability problems concerning the city of London (it became the first corporation - fictitious person authorized by law - because who is liable for its decisions? If a pedestrian falls through a rotting bridge plank, who gets sued? The mayor? The previous mayor? The city planner? A bridge engineer? The workman who followed the engineer's orders?).
I'm realistic - I know corporations won't be abolished tomorrow - but legal band-aids (such as limits on corporate contributions to political campaigns, or the travesty of eliminating private contributions and having government pay for political campaigns) will have tiny effects in the short term, and will be mooted in the long term (don't forget whose money calls the shots in implementing - or nullifying - the laws).
I've loved The Tick from the first time I saw it (which was the Fox cartoon series). Warburton and Sonnenfeld are good choices to continue it, but the very best part of the cartoon was the tremendous voice work (especially Charles Townshend, who always balanced the fine line between heartily enthusiastic and dangerously manic). "Puddy" will be working under a HUGE shadow!
I expected BJM to deliver laughs and be thought-provoking, but to inevitably falter when faced with the need to wrap up a plot (I think Katz's review sums up to this reaction). Put another way, that it'd wind up straining to be weird-for-weird's-sake, and that I'd be skimming it for amusing nuggets.
I have to tell you, though, I've never had more surprised/delighted moments from a single film in years! It met my expectations in the first 30-45 minutes, but then it found valid, character-rooted twists to explore, over and over! Much to my surprise, the writer (mea culpa - can't remember his name) really thought out what people would want to know about his premise (can you get better and worse times to be Malkovich? what about during sex? how about if it involves someone you know? what would happen if Malkovich himself tried it? and there's more) - and established a set of characters whose motivations would naturally get us there. It's not flawless, but it's so much better a movie than the premise and experience with movie plots would lead you to expect. I'll be surprised if Toy Story 2 matches it for fun.
I bet you added just as much to the other discussion, too.
(First post is fun to get, but if you're not gonna add content, why post at all?)
Given that the C/Net article is a pretty elementary version of intro to nano, it's a shame the author didn't bother to look at several sources, not to mention the most recent (and even more layperson-friendly!) writings of his source.
Only when we get rid of the human students and teachers will the circle really be complete!
Actually, the living Pythons are going to do a reunion special on BBC Oct. 16 - the story is from May, but I just saw a one-paragraph reiteration in my local newspaper this weekend. I think they're writing some new skits for it.
Wired News just had an article describing DPI, a non-profit Silicon Valley agency that helps match afflicted programmers with hundreds of technology products that can let you work without destroying your wrists. They range from different keyboards to full Stephen Hawking-type setups.
Damn - I lost half my post! Take a look at James Hogan's _Voyage from Yesteryear_, in which a future human colony develops its own customs in a world where material needs are essentially free. Hogan's not great at three-dimensional characters, but he knows his stuff and is usually fun to read. Anyway, the "gift culture" this article described really reminds me of this novel's world, where the "currency" that the economy operates on is competence, not ownership.
Our world has been driving down the cost of virtually everything for as long as technology has existed. Add to that the prospect of nanotechnology, and I think it's quite plausible to anticipate a future (near or not) in which it's not worth the transaction costs to charge for food, shelter, clothing, etc. The Open Source movement looks intriguingly like the first hint of what that future might be like.
What I did (and I strongly recommend) is that you keep a list of words you don't know (and their page numbers), and look 'em up in the biggest dictionary you can access (if I were less lazy, I'd provide an online dictionary link - right about here!). Then scan back over the page they came from and see how much that knowledge richens the book for you.
It's more than a rumor - The Central Treasury Bond Registration and Settlement Co., the only automated stock exchange in China (limited to government and some big, favored corporations), is down indefinitely. A spokesman says it's because of 9/9/99, a technician says it may or may not be. FWIW, the whole exchange apparently runs on a single '92 or '93 vintage AS/400.
This was one of the main reasons the Federalists only centralized certain powers, and left many more to the states - people would be free to "vote with their feet" for the regulatory climate (among other factors) they found desirable. Predictably (but sadly), the federal government has found ways (such as withholding tax proceeds like highway funds from states that won't bow to a federal mandate) around it.
What makes the Internet so positive for freedom-lovers is that it restores the chance to shop for freer conditions in at least SOME relevant areas!
Don't overlook the Libertarian Party - they're for strict enforcement of the Bill o' Rights and a consistent, minimal government (police, courts, and national defense), maximum freedom society.
Going to Lester Thurow for a comment on self-regulation is like having Clinton define propriety - you're getting a strongly biased position, not a judgement. A major emphasis of his career has always been to justify and support governmental control of...well, everything. You have to be suspicious of an economist who claims that wealth can't be created, only divvied up differently (his best-known book is called "The Zero-Sum Game"). There's an enormous bug in that reasoning!
Yes, these terms are pejorative, but so is "social junkie" (It's inevitably the perogative of the numerous to set the ideas of what's "normal", but you're running the same "label as bad whatever's different" routine that you're justly complaining about). But I think you're overlooking the fact that this sort of research will help to reduce any such stigma (not reinforce it). Much of the negative baggage of terms like "mild autism", "geek", et al have to do with lack of social reciprocity that makes others uncomfortable ("I was being friendly - why did he/she blow me off?"). Understanding that
1) there's a source for it that's not just "weirdness",
2) that the "condition" plays a strong part in the enormous contributions to the world of computing (and technology in general - I bet Edison would've met these criteria), and
3) there's a learnable skill set that can reduce the discomfort of social interactions for both "normals" and "mildly autistic/geek/ADD people",
is an important step in getting people to make realistic and profitable adjustments in attitude.
If no one else had mentioned the Brin articles, I'd have done so. Maybe I'm getting old, but I reacted to TPM the same way I did to the rereleases of episodes 4-6 - i.e., bored silly (though I did enjoy them, especially Empire, the first time around).
To the extent that there's any philosophy behind the movies, it's 99% wrong-headed. Brin nails those problems, along with the storytelling flaws and plot holes you can fly the Millenium Falcon through. And look at the trend line - especially from Empire Strikes Back to Revenge (oops!) Return of the Jedi and now TPM - gruesome!