Ignoring science at our peril

Many of Thomas Friedman’s recent op-ed pieces for the NYT have been silly or superficial, but today he hit a home run with Bush Disarms, Unilaterally: “At a time when the global economic playing field is being flattened – enabling young Indians and Chinese to collaborate and compete with Americans more than ever before… what we really need most today is a New New Deal to make more Americans employable in 21st-century jobs. We have a Treasury secretary from the railroad industry…. we have movie theaters in certain U.S. towns afraid to show science films because they are based on evolution and not creationism… Bush and the Republican Congress already slashed the 2005 budget of the National Science Foundation by $100 million… the National Innovation Initiative was virtually ignored by the White House.”

And the punch line:
“It’s as if we have an industrial-age presidency, catering to a pre-industrial ideological base, in a post-industrial era.”

Exactly. But what do you expect if you elect a know-nothing, born-again, failed oilman? And by the way: this blog piece was brought to you by way of the Internet, created with DARPA tax dollars. And don’t you forget it.

Open source, closed repositories, and snake oil

Over in the Register, Andrew Orlowski has a fascinating article entitled Torvalds knifes Tridgell about another bizarre outburst by Linus Torvalds. This time it’s all about BitKeeper, the source code repository system. “Torvalds uses the pay-for proprietary software to manage the Linux source code (obliging other kernel developers to follow suit), but last week its owner, Bitkeeper CEO Larry McVoy, yanked the license, pushing Torvalds to look for an alternative. He’s now going to write his own. For this inconvenience, he blames [Andrew] Tridgell”, the genius behind SAMBA (the technology which finally killed my old PC-NFS product).

And what was Tridgell’s crime? He wanted to reverse-engineer the BitKeeper protocols so that Linux developers could browse the repository metadata. This sounds innocuous enough – after all, BitKeeper’s own website says that “Read-only users (people browsing the source, tracking progress, doing builds, etc.) still need a license but there is no charge for that license.”, so it’s not a question of money. Clearly there is something big at stake – something so important that McVoy is prepared to forego the prestige of hosting the Linux kernel repositories. According to Andrew Orlowski, “McVoy was adamant: ‘sorry, we’re not in the business of helping you develop a competing product.'” So that’s it? The key intellectual property is in the protocols? That seems odd.

I had two reactions to this piece. First, why on earth is the acknowledged flagship product of the FOSS world relying on a proprietary, closed source repository – particularly one run by a guy who clearly has no sympathy with FOSS, nor any understanding of the related business models? I would (naïvely) have thought that BitKeeper would want to hang on to the data and proliferate clients like crazy. (A famous LBJ quotation comes to mind.) And second, what is it that makes BitKeeper so wonderful? Let’s check out their web site. Truth in advertising? You be the judge:

Hardware costs: BitKeeper does not have this problem [of scale] because of its distributed model…. This model means that the hardware costs can be spread over a set of inexpensive PCs rather than a $300,000 SMP machine. BitMover hosts the Linux kernel repositories for thousands of users on a single inexpensive PC.

Human costs: An administrator is the person who makes sure that the hardware and the software is working, the repositories are backed up, etc. The distributed nature of BitKeeper removes the need for such a person.

Wow. Thousands of users on a single PC. No administrators. How cool. No wonder Linus was impressed. [That’s sarcasm, in case you didn’t notice.] I think that in the long term we’ll see that Andrew Tridgell has done the FOSS community a service, by provoking Linus and Larry into falling out. Hopefully the community can create a better – and truly open source – repository. However I wouldn’t rely on Linus to create it – he doesn’t seem to believe in open source any more….

HHGTTG – I have a bad feeling

Among the Things that aren’t in the film:

I shall go and see the film, of course. But I’m prepared for the possibility that I won’t enjoy it.

(Via Chris, who sounds almost as depressed as Marvin.)

UPDATE: Reading all of those HHGTTG quotations got me all fired up, so when I came home this evening I hunted around in the basement, found the old (1992) VHS tape of the television version of HHGTTG, and watched it straight through – all 192 minutes. I sipped a gin and tonic while I watched it, but decided to skip the rubber ducky. I feel much better now. 🙂

More Hofstadter

One thing that Doug Hofstadter mentioned in his lecture yesterday was that many conventional ideas about physicalism – strict supervenience, law-like causality between the “levels” – are likely to be plain wrong: it seems likely that higher-level systems can be remarkably insensitive to changes in their physical underpinnings. So even though it is true that minds are implemented in brains, and brains are biological structures composed of cells and molecules and atoms which obey the laws of physics, that doesn’t mean that one can (or should) look for law-like relations between mental properties and microphysical properties.¹ Of course functionalists don’t have any problem with this. The objections seem to come, on the one hand, from philosophers like David Chalmers who see this gap as a reason to toss physicalism overboard, and on the other hand from neuroscientists like Christof Koch who expect to be able to build their house of neurobiological cards all the way up to the top.

While on this subject, Hofstadter recommended a new book by the Nobel physicist Robert Laughlin, A Different Universe – reinventing physics from the bottom down. I picked up a copy this lunchtime. From the fly-leaf:

The edges of science, we’re told, lie in the first nanofraction of a second of the Universe’s existence, or else in realms so small that they can’t be glimpsed even by the most sophisticated experimental techniques. But we haven’t reached the end of science, Laughlin argues-only the end of reductionist thinking. If we consider the world of emergent properties instead, suddenly the deepest mysteries are as close as the nearest ice cube or grain of salt. And he goes farther: the most fundamental laws of physics – such as Newton’s laws of motion and quantum mechanics – are in fact emergent. They are properties of large assemblages of matter, and when their exactness is examined too closely, it vanishes into nothing.

I suspect that this book may turn out to be more provocative than rigorous, but that’s OK.

[UPDATE: I’ve now read the first 6 chapters of the book. It’s WONDERFUL!!! Thought-provoking, mind-bending, funny, profound…. I’ll post a full review in a few days.]

¹ If this sounds poorly worded, blame me – this is my interpretation, not Douglas’s exact words.

Douglas Hofstadter in town [UPDATED]

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Hofstadter(author of Gödel, Escher, Bach and many other books) is in town this week. He gave a lecture to our Phil.of Mind class at Tufts entitled “What is it like to be a strange loop?”, and he’s talking at the Media Lab in MIT tomorrow.

As to the subject of the talk:
(1) Hofstadter remains fascinated (as he was in GEB) with the interaction of two ideas: feedback loops, and systemic (explanatory) levels. In GEB, you may remember, the strange – and unexpectedly stable – patterns generated by pointing a video camera at the screen displaying its output were a powerful example (and metaphor) for the way these ideas come together. Doug’s about to repeat a number of those experiments: how will the fact that the low-level technology has changed from analog to digital affect them?
(2) My interpretation of “strange loops” is that Doug is talking about feedback loops that cross various kinds of boundaries: between the physical and the cognitive, between the outside world and the I-in-the-world (in terms of action and perception), and across minds (from one person to another).

After the lecture, a bunch of us went out for dinner with DennettDaniel Dennett and Hofstadter. Among the faculty and students, was an old friend, the novelist and tech writerJohn Sundman. He and I worked together at Sun from 1986 until about 1989; John did most of the writing on the first release of PC-NFS, and managed the writing for the 386i workstation program.

[Apologies for the quality of the pictures – taken on my Treo 650 in very poor light.]

Great – now I'm really confused!

Went test driving cars today. First stop was a Toyota dealership a few miles south of us. Their website said they had a couple of 2005 Priuses in stock, but no… they had a pre-owned 2004 (whose owner had traded up to a 2005), they were expecting one from a cancelled order to arrive in a week (“if you’d like to put down a deposit”), and otherwise the delivery time was around a month. (Longer for red – 36% of the Prius deliveries are in silver, only 13% in red.)

But at least I could test drive the 2004. Very smooth, very comfortable. I was a bit tentative, in part because I wasn’t sure what would feel different, but in the end I was very pleased. The system status screen is fascinating, and the sensation of everything shutting down when you stop is… different. Dealership experience? We got a generic car salesman, no overt pressure but trying to weave a web of commitment.

From there we went down to the Subaru dealership where Merry has bought two out of her last three cars. Her regular salesman wasn’t there, but we worked with a young guy who was both an excellent salesman and a complete geek. (We spent almost as much time checking out his PSP and my Treo 650 as we did talking cars.) I was interested in the WRX, but he steered me to the new Legacy GT – the one with the 250 hp 2.5 litre turbo and a Tiptonic-style automatic with shift switches on the steering wheel. Man, that was a fast car! We drove around some nice sweeping backstreet curves and then onto I-95, where I got to check out the acceleration from 40 to 80 fast…. Unlike my tentative, experimental drive in the Prius, I got out of the Legacy with a big, silly grin all over my face. That was fun! (Thanks, Cody!)

So: two great cars, two very different experiences; about the same price. Both Car of the Year winners – the Prius in the US, the Legacy in Japan. Decisions, decisions. Anyway, there’s no rush. Maybe I should test a Mini Cooper.

4th digital camera

I just acquired my fourth digital camera. I got my first in Washington DC many years ago, a relatively simple Kodak. I can’t remember what the second was; I lost it on a business trip. The third was a Fuji FinePix which I eventually gave to my son. And the fourth is a Nikon Coolpix 5600.nikon5600.jpg

I’ve never been a real photography geek; I’ve tended to buy cameras that do the job required as simply as possible. For digital cameras, I’ve had a simple rule: buy the best possible for under $300. The Nikon qualifies. It came with a free 128MB SD card, which I’ve swapped for the 1GB SD card in my Treo 650. This means that I have room for 790 pictures (5.1MP) or 21 minutes of 640×480 video (with sound). That should be enough. (Typical British understatement.)

Catching up (philosophy department)

A good week. First, a thoroughly satisafactory result on my mid-term, made even more so by the fact that it was my first bit of classwork in 30+ years. Dennett’s class on Wednesday was about Kripke (“C-fibers and pain”, modal logic, essentialism reborn), and it was one of those lovely “ah-ha!” experiences. The account of the historic 1971 Irvine summer school was priceless. Great fun.
Then my classmate Richard Dub pointed me at the very useful Online Papers in Philosophy site, and from there I found my way to Megan Wallace’s’ delightful website and her provocative ideas about fictionalism and “slingshots” (not to mention the very useful Wussy/BadAss criterion and the priceless Acutetarianism).
And finally this afternoon I took some vacation time (I’ve accumulated a bit too much – use it or lose it) and went to hear Dennett deliver the 2005 Harvard Review of Philosophy Lecture at Emerson Hall. Excellent turn-out – probably around 200. The subject was familar (to those in his class): “Philosophers, Zombies, and Feelings: The Illusions of ‘First-Person’ Approaches to Consciousness.”. The Q&A afterwards showed how uncomfortable some people were with computational models of mind; how strong the need for human exceptionalism – or perhaps essentialism – is.

Quick blog: death penalty

In response to Ideology, American style, Alec weighed in with“ok, here’s a poser for you and jeff: ‘death penalty‘ – in your enlightened self-interest, or not?”

I find this an easy one. Setting aside the moral issues, which are not significant in the utilitarian calculus implied by enlightened self-interest, I find that there are three stances to be considered:

  • As a general member of society, I find that the death penalty is uneconomic (wastes my taxes), and offers no added societal protection (crime statistics). Since all human systems seem to be fallible, mechanisms for correction should be built in; the death penalty fails this test. It demonstrably distorts the policing and legal systems in countries where it is used, especially “equal protection” provisions. It impedes police work, since convicted criminals are likely to withhold information on additional crimes for fear of execution.
  • As a victim, or someone close to a victim of a capital crime, the death penalty offers me nothing but crude revenge. It will not restore the dead to life, or offer practical compensation. Revenge seems an inequitable basis on which to design a legal system. For example, some victims’ families might object to the death penalty: should the penalty depend on the whim of each family? In any case, enlightened self-interest is not generally assumed to include purely visceral satisfaction.
  • The final stance to be considered is if I, or someone close to me, were accused of a capital crime. (Even if I believe myself incapable of such a crime, I must consider the possibility of a wrongful accusation.) In all cases, the rational thing for me to do is to oppose capital punishment. Even if I were in fact guilty, and believed that I deserved the death penalty, I could always kill myself. I have no reasonable basis for imposing this preference on others who might be guilty, and none for imposing it on those wrongly accused.

That seems to cover it. In addition (and not surprisingly) I view the death penalty as morally indefensible. Just say no.