Mail 425 July 31 - August 6, 2006 (original) (raw)
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Please check your Tarnkappe at the door!
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Sir Arthur C. Clarke
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060731/sc_nm/science_invisible_dc
It's unlikely to occur by swallowing a pill or donning a special cloak, but invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future, according to research published on Monday.
Petronius
==========
Subject: Eight words that explain a corrupt concept,
Jerry
Political correctness is affirmative action for lousy ideas.
Sue
==========
Subject: Global Warming Link to Hurricane Intensity Questioned
Thought you might find this interesting. It looks like some are looking at the data, and not just trying to generate grants by proclaiming the groupthink du jure.
Jim Riticher
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/
2006/07/060728-hurricane-warming.html
Excerpt:
Global Warming Link to Hurricane Intensity Questioned
John Roach for National Geographic News
July 28, 2006
An expert with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is questioning the connection between climate change and the appearance of more intense hurricanes in recent years.
Historical data on hurricanes is too crude to determine long-term trends in intensity, says Christopher Landsea, a science and operations officer with NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.
Extreme hurricanes like Katrina were likely as common around the world 30 years ago as they are today, Landsea says. But since satellite imagery was poorer, storm intensities were underreported.
============
How soon the Singularity?
Subject: This Morning's Stories
Vernor Vinge suggests that we will know the Singularity is approaching when we start seeing *large* software projects being developed successfully, particularly those involving a lot of parallelism. Right now--based on the UK Government's experience with IT--I think we're safe, but I think I should comment--I was a software architect for many years, and my current research is exploring biological ways of generating intentional behaviour using parallelism. (I'm using a large Beowulf cluster and biomimetic robots for part of this work.)
To me, the problem with large projects appears to be that software development currently involves finding a large number of local solutions. The architect ensures that these local solutions work well together--it often takes a good deal more intelligence than your average manager possesses to do that. I suspect we won't solve the problem until we can provide the architect with suitable tools to visualise and control the design. Most of the tools I've seen are unable to manage just those aspects of the system design that I have to manage in a successful solution. The key interactions that cause problems are deep down in the details, and tools don't help you identify or control them. If we want to build larger systems, I think we will have to move away from the algorithmic and specification- driven approach to solving problems and come up with a more robust approach to combining subsystems. That would make the job easier for the architect, too, because it is the sheer number of detailed interactions that limits the size of a system that one man or woman can design. It will also allow evolutionary design to work, since a refactoring capability is just what I want at the architectural design level. We experimented with architectural teams at TRW, based on some ideas of John Gormally, and they seemed to be successful for large systems, but it still helped to have one or a few persons on the team providing style guidance and controlling specific system- wide aspects. So the first need is an architectural assistant in the architect's laptop. The Eclipse SDK provides a taste of some of the things needed. Give me an architectural tool like Eclipse, and I could build some amazing things.
We're only just beginning to understand how the brain solves these kind of problems. Here is a report of a recent paper on how the brain turns on innate behaviour <http://cognews.com/1154442364/index_html> that suggests one solution might involve a timed sequence of actions turned on by hormones, rather than by synaptic interactions. Since innate behaviour can be as complex as a new-born colt or calf standing up and walking, it suggests that most behaviour involves such timed sequences. Learned (as opposed to innate) behaviour is probably scheduled relative to internal timing signals--perhaps gamma and beta rhythms. The fact that behaviours can be interleaved suggests various behaviours are associated with specific phases of the internal timing sequences--Christo Panchev has done work suggesting how this might take place <http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/ ps/panchevwermter05.pdf> . So a second need is some way of scheduling timed activities so they work together compatibly. The solutions I see the engineers coming up with here are too narrow, but I haven't had the time to point them in what I suspect is the right direction. (Sue Denham has commented that neuroscience is too hard for most engineers!) My current grant may give some insight here in about two or three years.
There are some other hard problems to be solved before we will make much progress. One major one is understanding how the brain can do algorithmic things non-algorithmically. For example, bats are able to predict the future positions of *accelerated* targets, yet there's no evidence in the brain of any mechanisms for vector arithmetic. Also, planning seems to involve decision tree representations, but we don't see evidence for the switching networks we would expect. That's why I speculate that real brains may have some capabilities for working with a continuous external reality that digital computers will always find computationally *very* demanding. Real AIs may have to be hybrid entities, with both silicon and biological components. I know I already interact with my laptop that way, but the user interface needs a lot of work. So the third need is a more intuitive GUI. I already use my laptop as medium and long-term memory, but if it could act as an extension of short-term memory, I would allow me to work on bigger systems. I'd also like it to compute off-line doing tasks, searches, and algorithmic calculations while I work on other aspects of a problem. Perhaps that would be the next key application--it would certainly use all the compute power available and more!
On to the news:
Blair says we need to completely rethink the war on terror: <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2295604,00.html>
MI5 assessment: <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2295582,00.html>
Curfew orders on terror suspects held illegal: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1835296,00.html> <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2295588,00.html>
NHS trusts divert sexual health funds to cover their deficit: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5234938.stm> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1835308,00.html> <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2295495,00.html>
Another IT disaster: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,1835280,00.html>
A hospital fined for being too efficient: <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2295840,00.html>
To save money, NHS trusts are only providing one cochlear implant to deaf children: <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2295387,00.html> (This is one area where I work as a researcher, so I have a strong negative opinion of these policies.)
Hermitage hit by thieves: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5235148.stm> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1835338,00.html>
School workload: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5235146.stm>
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information Systems Security, University of Sunderland. <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw> Weblog at: <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/blog/index.php>
=============
The other shoe drops.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101334_pf.html
-- Roland Dobbins
Not unexpected.
========
Dr. P.,
I just finished listening to your guest appearance on "This Week in Tech" with Leo Laporte. I very much enjoyed your input. I listen to the show weekly and I have occasionally felt that the viewpoint is too heavily skewed toward the 'insider' or 'geek' viewpoint. You provided an exceptional grounding for the conversation and it made the show much more valuble.
Thanks for all you do,
Brian K. Moynihan
Thanks!
==========
Subject: 1 Aug 1971: Apollo 15 finds Genesis rock
Jerry:
With everything else that's going on, this is worth remembering:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/1/newsid\_4101000/4101579.stm <http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/1/newsid_4101000/4101579.stm>
Steve
*****************
It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.
---Lord Kenneth Clarke
============
I asked Colonel David Couvillon, USMCR, to comment on the Iraq article:
Subject: Re: Even Churchill Couldn't Figure Out Iraq.
Of course the Sunni's are afraid the Shiia won't give them a fair deal. After all, they didn't give the Shiia a fair deal the whole time they had control.
One question they avoid, is whether a Shiia/Sunni conflagration wouldn't be better for the Western world than peace? Saudi, Kuwait, Jordan, Sunni Iraq, possibly Turkey against the Shiia Iraq and Iran, The Taliban and Hezbollah (I'd bet a buck that Syria tries to sit out the overt warfare). Pressure is certainly relieved against Israel. Iran is preoccupied with war - diverting attention away from developing nuclear weapons; well, certainly slowing it (AND, it provides cover for western espionage [as poor as they are in that part of the world] to sabotage the Persian nuclear program). Palestinians lose their funding. The Western world (nee - the US) would have to blockade the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean east coast.
Downside is the disruption in the flow of oil from the region - turn that around, though and give the Russians opportunity to sell the world their oil. They'll reluctantly support the Western effort.
Col Hammes is absolutely correct in his analysis about the Iraqis believing that we are leaving. Everyone is moving to grap the power left by that vacuum. We saw that immediately after Baghdad fell, while in the early months after the war - everyone skeptical but jockeying for position. Certainly the Shiia where deathly afraid that we'd leave and the Sunni would again renew their pogroms. We really blew that - the Iraqi Shiia were ready to be on our side AND to ignore the Persians (despite the presence of the Badr Brigade/SCIRI) - The Iraqi Shiia hated the Persians from the Iran/Iraq war. We could have denied the Mullahs their reach in Iraq, if we wouldn't have been so afraid of their money and organization. We were so afraid, in fact, that we stood by and let them organize and use their money to put themselves in the position they're in now.
Sadr used to be a joke to ALL Iraqis. Now, because we didn't have the guts confront him, he has strength - and the Sunnis/Al-Queda saw that we were a paper tiger - not willing to use the power we had. Now it's squandered.
A colleague of mine, serving in Iraq as an advisor to an Iraqi general, was present at a meeting with the senior American commander. After the meeting was over, the Iraqis were not satisfied. My colleague's counterpart, commented to him about the American commander, (interpreted & cleaned up a bit) "Nice guy, but he has no balls." Too many of the Iraqis, Arabs, Islamists, etc., believe we have no balls.
Couv
Machiavelli: Never do your enemies a small injury.
Our problem was that the neo-conservatives in the White House really believed that Chalabi would be welcomed with flowers and cheering, and he would take over Iraq and be our ally and build a pipeline for the oil, and everything would be just peachy. When that didn't happen they didn't have a real plan, and they distrusted all those who did have plans because we had all told them, "Don't invade. If you do invade, this is what you must do. But don't invade." They never heard a word past the advice about not invading.
Competent imperial wars are more expensive than most believe. Incompetent imperial wars are even more expensive, but one needs to know more history than most to know this.
============
Continuing the discussion on domestication of humans:
Subject: domestication
I'm afraid Mr. Thompson and Mr. Cochran are greatly misinterpreting the trends in human social interactions. Not all hunter-gatherer groups are or were completely egalitarian. True egalitarian communalism is a rarity, both ethnographically and archaeologically. Evidence suggests that in even largely unstratified egalitarian societies there would often be at least some informal status differentiations (whether merit-based or ascribed by lineage) through which a group's activities are organized.
Further the general trend in group structures is to maintain the status quo, even when that is not necessarily to the best advantage of a large portion of the group as a whole. This is why archaeologists are very much interested in the transition between small band social systems and nascent state societies (antiquated terminology these days, but I figured most people would be familiar with these terms).
In the former, subsistence and resource allocation are relatively homogenous across the population thereby being much to the advantage of even the lowest status members of the group. In the latter, resources are typically very unevenly distributed across the population and there is a great deal of differential access to subsistence and resources between status group members. Therefore the latter system is much less to the advantage of the majority of the population. Even still the general historical trend is towards greater stratification and complexity of social systems despite its disadvantage for the majority of the social members.
The logical conclusion from this is that the trend as population increases and societies become more complex in structure resources and subsistence becoming unevenly distributed is supported by the majority disadvantaged population, and resource availability _as a whole_ becomes greater although the lower strata have less access than they had as small groups (e.g. typical nutrition and health in agricultural societies is far worse than that of hunter-gatherers - agriculture is just a bit more predictable).
Does this mean they've become domesticated? Not really. In making individual choices within a cultural system, the probabilistic trend is toward the norm maintaining the status quo and the status differentiations. Only extreme pressures of subsistence and survival are likely to break those choices away from the normative trend, and is likely to be motivated by an outlier individual or individuals (incipient elites) making choices that can rally and organize the lower strata population. Thus the rarity of (successful or not) peasant or slave revolts. Most civilizations have collapsed from the top down instead.
None of this suggests domestication, only that the probabilities involved in human agency within a social structure operate to maintain a system rather than being a destabilizing force. Yet another reason why the Jacobin philosophy of waiting for the "people" to rise up against oppressive regimes is unfounded. People more often than not will choose AGAINST their own self interest to maintain the devil they know.
A somewhat simplistic explanation, but covers much of the observable evidence without going into too many of the complexities of large scale social interactions and cultural propagation.
Just my 2c as a reluctant voodoo scientist...
--J. Scott Cardinal
==============
Steve Goldberg on natural law.
This came from another conference. Dr. Goldberg had made an argument that elicited the comment from me, "No natural law for you, then." Another participant then answered,
>>(moral philosophy)...refers to the logic, science (=experience), and art of designing public policies that actually have some realistic chance of increasing the general welfare<<
to which he replied:
Meme 071: A virtues approach to personality
Hi,
This is no doubt desirable, and entirely concordant with science, but it has nothing to do with moral philosophy. It is scientific in the sense that it addresses empirical causes and effects. But "moral philosophy", virtually by definition, attempts not merely to find effective ways of implementing moral assumption--determining the moral assumptions not being the province of science. Moral philosophy attempts to determine which moral assumptions are "right" (I.a., desirable). Science has nothing to say about this.
To the extent that one wishes to answer the empirical questions and take the moral assumptions as given (without claiming that they are justified in any scientific sense) then economics and political science would be the venues.
Which is not to say that these, or any other social sciences, are, in fact, capable of well answering the empirical questions. After forty years in sociology I've become persuaded that, save those aspects of social life for which hereditary factors play a role, such questions are for the most part unanswerable. The problem is not primarily the extent to which ideology has captured social science, but the fact that most social questions are effectively infinite-dimensional manifolds.
I *would* ease up and go along with a moral philosophy that saw societal survival as the initial moral assumption. The problem is that cross-cultural evidence gives us pretty much the set of moral precepts that would be obvious to a seven-year-old. All else varies from society to society and can't be seen as required for societal survival.
It may well be true--as I have written--that the view that separates science from morality is disastrous for many reasons. But this is no argument for it's not being correct.
Best,
Steve Goldberg
I haven't time to write a long essay on the subject. I do refer interested readers to C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, all three parts.
================
Need surgery? How about going overseas?
Dear Jerry,
An interesting response to high health care costs-outsource it:
"After going overseas to outsource everything from manufacturing to customer services, American businesses - pressed by rising health-care costs - are looking offshore for medical benefits as well. A growing number of employers who fund their own health insurance plans have begun looking into sending their ailing employees around the world for surgeries that in the U.S. would cost tens of thousands of dollars more..."
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=/20060731/REPOSITORY/607310329/1013/48HOURS
Perhaps the hidden costs of Malpractice lawyers and illegal immigration are coming home to roost.
Cheers, Rod Schaffter
-- "A good scientist, in the absence of data, simply says, "we don't know" rather than proposing an unfalsifiable, untestable explanation." --Robert Bruce Thompson