Recent Changes

Some Recent Readings: (top)

• Hedley Bull: The Anarchical Society
• A few Terry Pratchet books: Thud, Mort, Going Postal, The Color of Magic. Ian Banks: Excession. Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon. Steven Baxter: Manifold Space, Manifold Time.
• Creation : life and how to make it / Steve Grand. Touts his program "Creatures" as an example of his idea that we can design intelligent beings by simulating some lower level building blocks. Intelligence emerges from beings interacting with the environment in which it acts. We may be able to codify some domains: e.g. Deep Blue does chess, but for something to act intelligently in our world, it must have interactions with our environment.
• Project Management, by Harold Kerzner, provides a text on how to manage a project for a client or boss, and basically builds professional ethics. It really does not provide guidance for resolving a larger system that includes groups with conflicting objectives.
• The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould looks at how people use statistics to change ideas. A quote (p. 111) from the eugenicist Earnest Hooton (1939, p. 309) seems relevant to the 'single sanction' praised by the UVA Honor committee: "The elimination of crime can be effected only by the exterpation of the physically, mentally, and morally unfit, or by their complete segregation in a socially aseptic environment." Gould's thesis is that science is the scientific method, not the body of beliefs generated by people using science. We can learn more through understanding that the current set of scientific theories are the result of a long history of revising earlier theories, than learning the current theories themselves.
• The End of Education by Neil Postman examines what the point of education is and whether vocational training or entertainment is more effective. As a question for whatever _your_ area of expertise is: "Describe five of the most significant errors have made in (biology, physics, history, etc.). Indicate why they are errors, who made them, and what persons are responsible for correcting them. You may receive extra credit if you can describe an error that was made by the error corrector. You will receive extra extra credit if you can suggest a possible error in our current thinking about (biology, physics, history, etc.). And you will receive extra extra extra credit if you can indicate a possible error in some strongly held belief that currently resides in your mind." (p. 128) Postman's point is that people should be taught to detect error rather than be taught a body of knowledge. This helps build a skepticism about their knowledge. I rather liked his representation of Alfred Korzybski's idea that since scientists and engineers actually try to do work with the real world, that they have more of a skepticism about their ideas about it. Since they use they must use models to get results, they know that models are just tools that don't really match what they study. I think the study of error is one of the best tools we can use to relate to the world.
• Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn outlines how our agricultural society is not sustainable, and we are destroying the societies that are sustainable.
• Douglas Hofstadter, Ph.D. physics - cool stuff on perception. I first read Godel, Escher & Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid while looking for Escher pictures. Recently his Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies discussed the how seemingly high level cognition is produced by competing low level perceptions.
• Hermann Hesse
  A Glass Bead Game
• Daniel Dennett - I learned of him through The Mind's I and recently read Darwin's Dangerous Idea about how competitive adaptation explains the development of all kinds of complicated systems. I'm now re-reading Conciousness Explained which posits that there is no "Central Meaner" or "Decider" that does our thinking for usand that our stream of conciousness is an after the fact explanation of what we did & why.
• Eliyahu Goldratt - Author of The Goal. His current book, Its Not Luck shows interesting methods of changing things & good conflict resolution and communication tools. If you've heard of 'The Theory of Constraints', that's his work.

I own lots of Elvis Costello, Grateful Dead and X. like a few poems.