There is an undercurrent within all this reading about complexity, randomness, and system behavior: Predictability without comprehension. Perfectly good rules to apply to many situations that cannot be fully explained. Some systems boil down to a list of coefficients, and that’s it - no explanation.
It takes some faith to rely on the counterintuitive result. Or the unfathomable calculation. We live among machines that can tell us answers we could never discover on our own. How do we know for sure that the premise was correct? There are patterns we refuse to believe because they don’t match our experiences - even with mass media to help us gather more than ever before. But neither can we vouch for subtle mistakes in the algorithm. Over time we might learn to accept the counterintuitive result, in so far as it can be demonstrated - we plug the answer back in and verify - but in some cases, this may not be enough.
This idea has been percolating in my head for years, and reading “Simplexity”, among other books, helps refine it for me… But really, it shows up unquestioned in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”: If you build the largest computer ever made to crank out some calculation you couldn’t dream of doing any other way… Well, how would you verify the result? And if your world is filled with lots of little computer-generated results, how do you know which ones can really be trusted? If it took so long to get the answer in the first place, who would have the patience to wait around for it to be verified? How can we be sure that the verification was correct? Would it even be possible to follow the argument?
Somewhere I read that the real power of science is not to find answers, but to find explanations. Right or wrong, it’s possible to be unhappy with the answer. If I handed you a slip of paper with “the answer” on it, and millions of years later when Deep Thought (or whatever the latest model is) finishes with the calculation… Chances are my quickly scribbled answer was not correct. But, even if it’s right, then it’s just a fluke. Nobody should trust that answer - there is no evidence that I put any effort into it.
Coming up next on my reading list is Leonard Mlodinow’s “The Drunkard’s Walk”. I skimmed a few pages the other night, and it reminded me of Gregory Chaitin’s “Meta Math”, mainly because of the discussion of our psychological problems with the truly random. For me, any actual list of random things has a tendency to seem special. We all want there to be a reason, or an explanation behind the actual. Deep down, we can’t believe in the totally random, so we act as if there must be an explanation that we just haven’t found yet.
Posted in books, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:01:00 GMT
I participated in a little thing called “democracy” today. Party Primaries - no presidential stuff. I looked at the booklet I received in the mail and I got depressed: It’s a few unopposed congressional candidates, and a bunch of “Pick no more than six (6)”. Committee members? I hadn’t heard of any of them. Maybe I should have paid more attention in civics class or something. But, that was Maryland, after all.
I got a coffee and a donut and reviewed the booklet in the cafe. I considered the list again… Why should I even bother? I recognize Eleanor Holmes Norton, and I saw a photograph of Paul Strauss standing next to Barack Obama, but beyond that every name is a complete cypher to me. Committee members from Ward 1? I don’t even know what this “Committee” even does.
Well, it’s the principle of the thing. If I didn’t go vote, what would I say later? It’s not my responsibility? Although, I have to wonder if my choices might inadvertently done some damage. I’ll never know for sure.
On the plus side, there was no line. Fifteen poll workers and three voters. I saw my sister’s name on the list - she keeps showing up, even though she spent ten years in Russia and now lives in New York state. There’s also a Jennifer Bittner who is always coming between Vanessa and I. She either votes later in the day, or she also moved to another country like my sister did. Or, maybe it’s not statistically significant for me to never see her sign off when I always vote before 7:15am.
I made sure to try the touch screen. If I make a mistake, no big deal - just chalk it up to user interface testing. I’m still a bit wary of using it on the BIG DAY, when it’s crowded enough that I can’t even stay to watch them register the card in the counting terminal. How can I claim any expertise in Human-Computer interaction if I won’t even vote on a computer?
As fast as it was to vote, I still missed the bus I wanted. According to my watch I still had a minute or two… But you can’t really predict buses - they tend to cluster, empty buses passing deserted stops catching up to full ones that took their time waiting for extra passengers to find standing room.
Posted in computer-interface, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:38:00 GMT
I worked yesterday and today. Not much of a holiday for me. I ran into a brick wall with my EDI ordering yesterday. I called the help desk and they admitted that there had been a problem with their computer system, but… False hope didn’t help me any. Since they were answering their phones on a Sunday, I was confident that they would pick up today also. They didn’t. I have such simple needs. Ironically, the computer modems that would not pick up yesterday suddenly started to work today, only to pass bad data repeatedly on each call - This is a classic symptom of problem with their system that they won’t admit to. It’s always block #16 of the confirmation that comes back bad. I doubt they can even do anything to fix it - they’ll offer to fax me the confirmation. That will mean lots of data entry on my end, and I’ll be forced to use a new purchase order number. The fun never ends.
Well I had to go through the motions for two days - accomplish what I could, and grumble about the rest - all the while making quick checks on the progress of hurricane Gustav.
Today everything seemed deserted. People either went out of town, or they were sleeping in. Even my roommate was gone for a couple of days. As I walked home from the bus, I noticed how quiet the city was. I tuned in to the subtleties of the sound around me. I’m still reading “Old Masters” - I’ll have more to say about that later. I was sitting around the apartment cooking dinner, reading from the book, and writing in my notebook. There is a big ball of thoughts in my head that I’m trying to tease apart - about communication and silence, meaning and significance. The book adds new layers to that: Conceptual artists vs. Experimental artists.
I started to use my pensive mood to get some mindless cleaning done at my desk - sort through some junk mail, straighten out my desk a little. I just got a very anonymous looking envelope from my credit union - my dad had been warning me that some day they would close out the account if I wasn’t careful, and it was a valuable thing to have since the interest rates are usually better. Well, they gave me fair warning - and an easy opportunity to make some modifications to my account. That’s how you get an account to lie dormant for five years: Not knowing the online banking password. All I have to do is mail the thing back and they keep it on the books. So, I’m filling out the paperwork when my roommate arrives. Ugh… I was enjoying the silence. I’m at my desk up to my elbows in forms and he’s prattling on about missing the first bus to Atlantic City, having to wait four hours for the next one, and his friend getting upset with him for no reason. Bonus conversational highlight: “I left up fifty bucks!”… “Yeah, but you spent that on drinks, right?”
Perhaps I shouldn’t complain. In general he’s catching on that I don’t need to know. It galls me to listen to people tell me stories involving other people I haven’t met. It’s no substitute for an introduction. If we can’t talk about something interesting, I’m happy to just do my thing in silence.
I went back to the Stan Brakhage DVD, and watched for a while as the sun went down. Soon I’ll have more to say about that, but for now: Some of the films are completely abstract - painted directly onto the film. Others are jump cut sequences, fooling around with focus and exposure, that vaguely resemble narrative. He makes remarks about the occasional critic who “gets it” about what one film is trying to say. I find it a bit painful at times.
Maybe I didn’t mention the connection earlier while I was reading “Utopia Parkway” - At some point, Joseph Cornell went looking for a cameraman so he could have footage made to order instead of relying on the movie prints he had collected, and he found Brakhage. But if I remember correctly, they didn’t last long together. Cornell was very eccentric at that point.
Posted in ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:55:00 GMT
When I talk about a world of my dreams, I am not referring to some ideal utopia, or even necessarily a better place than this one. Instead, I’m talking about an alternate world - a parallel world - conjured up while I dream. Sometimes I think about it more than I do other times - for whatever reason, the dreams will be more vivid, and I’ll see more clearly and remember more fully.
Whenever I hear people talk about turning their dreams “into reality”, I’m mildly amused: Clearly they aren’t talking about dreams in the same sense that I am - they’re talking about the particulars of ambition. I have ambition too, but because I’ve spent my whole life hearing people speak of ambition in terms of their dreams, I’ve been pushed into thinking that the dreams I have while I sleep were somehow unexamined keys to success. And they might well be in some metaphorical sense, but not literally.
Every question that I can ask about my dreams is the reverse of a question that I can ask about reality. (Or, maybe ‘reality’ isn’t the right word - dreams are real enough to the dreamer.) Why do the places in my dreams look the way they do?… Why do the places in the waking world look the way they do? I have enough of an aesthetic sense to be upset - no, disappointed in how the world around me looks. I go in search of it, looking around corners and behind curtains whenever I can. Maybe you could even go so far as to say I expect to find the world of my dreams hidden somewhere in plain sight. I don’t think I’m remembering a place I used to live - or even visited briefly - when I was too young to consciously record it. More likely, I have collected minor aspects of those places and been forced to fill in the gaps unconsciously. After all, the way sleep works, dreams probably require only the slightest bit of ‘input’ to evoke a cloud of ideas. What you experience (or remember - might be two different things…) is your best effort to integrate that cloud.
What it boils down to for me is a visual appeal. It makes me want to sleep more so that I have a better chance of seeing that world more clearly.
I’ve got one other concern here: In a dream I ‘know’ things about what I see that are not apparent. I haven’t perceived this knowledge at all - it’s the main ingredient. Your brain isn’t used to having pure ideas without sensation, so I figure that any attempt to hold an idea in a brain not receiving any external stimulus will trigger the apparatus to find significance in the random background noise. During the day, the whisper of those possibilities is swamped by the overstimulus of the senses - you’re so busy filtering out everything you can.
But this holds the secret, I’m sure: We clearly do distort what we experience in the waking world with unconscious cues. We still ‘know’ things about what we see that are not apparent, but that outside world provides plenty of opportunities to contradict that knowing that the dream world does not. Any hypothesis will last until it is sufficiently confronted. Maybe our way of looking at the world is a set of knowledge that has simply never been confronted sufficiently?
Posted in ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:18:00 GMT
There must be an election coming up soon. Or maybe every summer is like this: Whenever I pass through commuter nodes, there are fresh-faced, enthusiastic youths with identical t-shirts and clipboards. And they say things like “Do you have a minute for Barrack Obama and the Democratic Party?”
I’ve got an answer - but I don’t ever say it out loud, I just smile and keep walking , perhaps convincing them that I’m a foreigner who doesn’t want to struggle with English - “Yeah. I’ve got a minute for him in November.”
Okay, so obviously, I’m left-leaning. And if I want to risk having the guy I vote for win, Obama is probably my guy. As a registered voter in the District of Columbia, there probably isn’t anything I can do to prevent a Democrat from winning. I would have to go campaign in Virginia, Ohio, or Florida… Wherever some electoral votes can be swung. But you might have figured out by now that I’m not going to do that.
I’m going to steer clear of conspiracy theory in the following analysis. But, now that I mention it, what I want to say is probably the rational core of what could be spun out into a conspiracy theory.
I hate a world where showing a little interest gets you put on a list. Machinery kicks in, and suddenly you start getting junk mail and more phone calls. I want to be able to flirt with ideas and not have it come back to haunt me. I’m very adventurous in my mind. Less so in life. In my mind, I am less often sucked in; less often shackled to an idea. In life, that is a palpable fear. I actually like to discuss things without coming to any conclusion. People hate that when they have an agenda; when all they care about is brainwashing you. It is so pervasive that I have come to expect it from the very ideas I identify with. Just because I identify doesn’t make me an ideologue. I’m not about to go to war for a platform of ideas just because I agree with a few.
People are desperate to tag you with metadata. We used to say “pigeonhole you”. Getting pigeonholed, or tagged with inappropriate labels is promptly entered into a database somewhere, and you’ll never hear the end of it. It’s “going on you permanent record”. That is a real turn-off for me.
Is it the databases that are to blame? More likely, it’s the particular way we have come to rely on them. Blind faith in the power of machines.
I almost want to engage one of the DNC kids. But oddly, it wouldn’t shut them up. They would still try to accost me every time, a practically unlimited supply of interchangeable exuberance to find me outside the subway stop downtown. I’m not serious. I will feel guilty for wasting their time. And, that’s when I’m going to cave in and agree to something I won’t want to do later. Persuasion works on me. But, it ‘works’ only to produce utterances - and maybe actions - I will recant. I will distort myself that much to get around you.
Posted in databases, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:22:00 GMT
For a long time I thought my role here on Earth was to understand the concepts. With exploration, then repetition, those concepts become familiar friends, supporting me in everything I try to do. Even when things work the way I expect them to, I like to consider the fringes, where anything might go wrong. Problems crop up when you don’t expect them, so it’s nice to be prepared.
Wherever I thought I was weak in taking action, it made sense to have a more solid grasp of the ideas behind the action… Well, it made sense to me. On a normal day it simulates an infinite regress into the netherworld of ignorance - me paralyzed by the bottomless pit of the unknown, and unable, really, to act at all.
Apparently, nobody else sees concepts as helpful support. This is made clear when the people around me get progressively more confused. Without those concepts, how is anybody supposed to digest the colossal blocks of information being served? Everybody needs handy ways of chunking, filtering and prioritizing all that information. I thought they called that “Education”.
It’s a personal prejudice, I know, but it is hard for me to accept when people balk at mastering something technical. I don’t expect them to get it right away… I understand that some things take time - these are usually things that it took me some time to learn, let alone master, and I know that a particular person, learning a particular thing, may never get the whole way. But, in many of these cases, part way would actually help out a lot.
If (hypothetically) you’re my boss, and you want me to find ways to reduce the cost of the company website, the least you can do is figure out the broad strokes of our current situation, and how to communicate with me. Your misconceptions are just more work for me. And if you’re going to be ignorant, that’s fine - as long as you respect your ignorance.
Is this making sense? I only ask that people not try to walk around in boots that are too big to fit.
Please don’t let technical details confuse you: Cut everything back to the basic concept. Master that concept. Then take the next step. Refine as you go along.
My boss just demonstrated how profoundly confused she was about where our company website resides. We went over this two years ago! It was a painful process, and I shudder to think that after all those discussions, she has simply forgotten what is involved. To this day, a bill for web hosting can cause a whole new round of soul searching based on terrible misunderstandings of who we pay and for what service.
In the mean time, I’ve only become better at explaining it all. Every file transfer; Every database record insert or query; Every patch to the scripts or styles: It all caused me to consider the structure of what we have, how the parts work together, and what I might do in a contingency.
It all reflects my odd personality. I can’t just do anything. I wonder at the surrounding network of knowledge and ability, and I wonder at the inner workings. I am Extensive and Intensive at the same time. Depth and Breadth.
Posted in ontology, web-craft, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:46:00 GMT
By some quirk of fate, I now have the biggest office. All to myself. I like to keep the florescent lights off and use only my desk lamp.
Monday my boss and our boss sat down to review what might get missed in the coming weeks. A lot of our responsibilities overlap anyway. And, I wonder how much things are going to change in the near future.
Yesterday there was cake. We had our little going-away party in the afternoon. When I left, there was still a mountain of unsorted files and printouts, and she was resolved to clear it all out before she left.
The truck driver asked me this morning if I was busy “Moving In”. I might have said “making my mark on the place”, or “customizing my environment”. It might be nice to remove one of the three desks. I do sometimes have a guest working in here, but it’s safe to say it will never be crowded again soon.
Now I have a bit more latitude for organizing. There are a lot of things that I might be able to toss out, for one thing - But the more subtle change involves the filing systems I no longer have to share with anybody. I’ll be thinking about optimizing a few of those to my strengths.
Posted in olssons, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:29:00 GMT
I’m still reading “The Good City…”, and this morning I reached the chapter titled ‘The Good Politician’. The first example is Nicolo Machiavelli.
Okay, I know what you’re probably thinking: Machiavelli was a schemer interested in power. But a lot of comes from the simple fact that he was astute about the behavior of others. Using it to your own advantage is a clear possibility.
Still, I was being patient when I came to this quote:
“But a man is not often found sufficiently circumspect to know how to accommodate himself to the change, both because he cannot deviate from what nature inclines him to, and also because, having always prospered by acting in one way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well to leave it; and therefore, the cautious man, when it is time to turn adventurous, does not know how to do it, hence he is ruined.
I was considering first the run-up to the presidential election - as one candidate talks a lot about change, and further on to the Liberal / Conservative distinction, but I also couldn’t help thinking about how this might apply to me personally. So that’s a lot.
For starters, the Republican party always bothered me because they seemed like a bunch of old white men who liked the status quo, dammit - so why should we change anything? This isn’t entirely accurate, but it does capture some of the reality. Sometimes action is necessary to preserve the way things are. It isn’t all simply “stay the course”.
But whenever plenty of people are unhappy, someone can successfully run for office on a platform of “Change” - As the one guy is doing right now. I think it’s an amazingly accurate barometer.
Change can mean so many things. How about “We had to sacrifice YOU to maintain our way of life.” So, maybe stop saying “Change Is Good”.
Risk analysis sounds like a pretty defensive strategy, but it turns out not to be that at all. Maybe that in itself is a measure of my low tolerance for risk taking.
Posted in ontology, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:47:00 GMT
I never really finished reading “The Shape Of Things To Come”, and when July 4th came around, I was tempted to pick it up again. Now I realize that I don’t like the book all that much. Too many of the references are lost on me. I understand so much better now what Marcus sets out to do in the book: Examine a trend in our culture that took place mainly during the Clinton years - a trend that I didn’t follow closely… but, I will endorse the introduction, and maybe you followed along more astutely that I did. The introduction sets the scene with sweeping history. The rest of the book deals with Philip Roth books I didn’t read; with David Lynch movies I didn’t see; with the riot girrrl punk bands I didn’t care about; and, with the Bill Pullman movies I didn’t see. Then there’s some David Thomas and Pere Ubu that I paid some attention to. Marcus shows me how little that amounted to.
The general effect, then, was that I got very excited about where the book was going, and then it went somewhere else. When I have tried to explain the book to others, I necessarily get tongue-tied: It sounds simple enough to say “America is an idea”, but to capture the real meaning takes more: “America is the dialog we have with ourselves about unfulfilled promises”. And then you naturally have to ask Who? Who is having this dialog? And it starts to get circular. But, this is exactly right - the circular reasoning is not a mistake… Foreigners see that idea, and there are two basic responses: They want to be part of it, or they see an obvious way to attack it. You can’t tell the two apart at a glance.
For me, the real revelation in the book was Marcus’s take on the novels of John Grisham: Grisham depicts am America that doesn’t quite exist - if you believe in ideals. Think of “The Pelican Brief” and you’re likely to write it off as an exciting parallel universe. Isn’t that the kind of America we left behind us? Break out those history books, kids: Greed and Avarice are nothing new to us.
Somewhere else in my travels, I’ve noticed something particular about the Libertarian strain of the Neo-Conservatives: Reagan taught a generation to distrust Government, but that subverts democracy just as surely as a dictator: In a democracy, government represents the people. They may not be represented well all the time, but can you think of an alternative? Government by the highest bidder? As I said before, economic power is unchecked by the people. We let corporations grow based on a good argument taken to absurd levels, as if we don’t bother to think things through to the saturation point. When we distrust the government (even with good reason), we eliminate the sole avenue of improvement. Were you planning to do away with government entirely? Heck - it isn’t even fascist anymore: Multinational corporations aren’t patriotic - they can threaten to move their business elsewhere.
I don’t like the direction we’re headed. I also don’t see much choice - the ball is rolling, and it’s got a lot of momentum. We can resist the sellout of our country, but don’t imagine it will be easy. Just, try to imagine how much harder it will be if we wait.
Posted in books, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:46:00 GMT
Maybe take a quick look at What Do Your Words Say?. Brilliant.
It got me thinking about Stephen Pinker. One of his books explains why the structures in language don’t get too formal, even though some literature does: The children have to be able to understand it.
So we do develop a lot of high-test addition to our natural languages: Legalese, anybody? 1337-speak? And, as an enthusiast of Japanese, I would be respectfully pleased if I might be allowed to request of you the favor of hearing this humble manservant’s entreaties regarding ultra-polite language constructs in that aforementioned distant archipelago. Also LOLcat: Leef I alone. I iz bloggin.
But we don’t start the children out on LOLcat, do we?
It’s sad how a good teacher is an anomaly these days.
I left a comment, but right away, I wanted to say more / say different things.
Joeysmom’s title reminds me of a TV show you didn’t see. In one episode of “Wonderfalls”, Jaye meets a woman who stutters, and the stuffed animal tells her “Get her words out!”. It’s not exactly related, but I can’t help thinking of it.
Posted in ontology, school, books, writing-craft | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:06:00 GMT
