fractalnavel

an uncle sends this one along:

A local toy store prices its merchandise according to the owner's whim. A doll costs $12, a  kite costs $15, a skateboard costs $34, and a ring toss costs $24. According to this system, how much will a blackboard cost ?

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hmm...

I had a big argument with my mom lately since she's an O'Reilly listener. Lately he's been blasting off about how Christ has been removed from Christmas. I took the opinion that I'm glad the liberals are trying to keep religion out of government, it doesn't belong there. Too many times religion has been abused by people with selfish agendas. Religion is powerful because no one is allowed to question it. I tried to tell her it's these "right of religon" people who are also the anti-abortionist, prayer in school and other backwards thinking agendas. Anyway we ended up agreeing to disagree.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/17/185811/92

earlier post ref: discernment.  looks like i need to start another category.  what to call it ?

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discussion:

craig:

 interesting read I found on Lou's delicious feed:

http://www.centacs.com/quickstart.htm

me:

i saw that too.  that's the five factor model article, right ?  i keep waffling on whether i want to spend the time on that.  i ran into that stuff when i was doing all that psych reading [note: back in '98-99].  although some people may find it useful, it's based on a fallacious application of pseudo-mathematical ideas to an inappropriate domain.  i found a lot of that in that field, and other fields where the mathematical applications were traditionally weak.  statistics are another thing, i'm talking about "theory" here, where some nimnod gets it into their head and figures that if he draws a picture, or a couple of orthogonal axes and assigns arbitrary values, that his ideas are more "scientific", or "truer" then something not so presented.  common poor critical thinking problem, both in the orignator and their audience.

 

there are a number of psychological theories of personality that have been proposed with a varying number of dimensions, and the five factor model is just one of them, mbti another, and so on.  it's crap, as clearly the subject is much more complex, and the underlying complexities of the physics all the way up through the biochemistry and neural structures clearly won't evolve any sort of small numbered orthogonal dimension pattern.  that there are correlations between this "theory" and reality (quotes there too?) is simply a statistical inevitability, as long as there is some differentials among the traits so graphed, as there will also be personalities with these various combinations of traits as well, and, by necessity, will be integrated and identifiable as a (ahem) "type". 

 

of course, if you get too fine grained (as in a large number of dimensions or traits) the possible combinations start to include types that just aren't found in the world, and the divisions for the rest are just too small to be really useful (in some person's eyes, and then they see this as invalidating the model - just because they can't handle it!).  taken to the extreme, you eventually come down to classifying each person individually.  which is really the truth of the matter, and would lead one to develop a complexity / emergent based theory, not this simplified crap.

 

however, that's exactly why low dimensional models are "useful", they allow their users to manage the unmanageable, however inaccurately.  it gives them a feeling of control, and what's more, they feel they can justify any actions taken upon it, whether diagnostic, or in hiring policies.  in truth, though, all those models really amount to is an exercise in conceptual phrenology.  more charlatans pretending to be magicians of the soul.  and then the human resources hacks get hold of it.  or worse, the consultants, who will latch onto anything they can sell.  and the aura of respectability displayed by these models to your averaqge lay person is all they need.

 

for now, until the research improves, if one insists on imposing a numerical / dimensional / graphical structure on purely observational data (and very subjective data at that, given the topic), i would prefer personality to be expressed in terms of a collection of individual traits that are more or less readily identified, and may vary widely in number and degree from person to person.  basically this is equivalent to some large-number n-factor model, but that's not how i would approach it.  for example, current personality disorders (and other pathologies) are only diagnosed in limited named categories.  much of this is in conjunction with insurance restrictions that require a specified disorder.  this has resulted in enumerated personality disorders, 13, last i checked.  most of these are defined such that there needs to be a minum number of traits present out of a total set defining the disorder.  however, it is easy to see where a person could have a large number of pathological traits, but distributed across the official diagnosis spectrum in such a way that they appear, if not quite healthy, out of the domain of the health system.  we can probably name a few people like this.  in my approach, having a specified pre-ordained set of named illnesses is not important.  one would nearly look for a sufficient number of pathological traits, which would compose an unspecified disordered personality.

 

the same analysis applies to "healthy" personalities as well.  the terms need to be tossed out.  but it's one of the blessings and curses that evolution has provided pattern seeking and identifying behaviors, and this is sometimes (often?) abused. (for example, it's the basis of all "illusions" and presumptions, useful and otherwise.)

 

granting the practical workability of such a model, but understanding its arbitrariness, does it make sense to take action with respect to other people's lives based on this ?  since when has pigeonholing been useful ?  yeah, i know, define "useful".  ok, let's extend this - what if a completely accurate and scientifc model were found ?  or one just approaching it ?  should we use it to literally push people's buttons, where they become the automatons that they always were, and are now under "control" ?  or is it ethical to completely ignore such a devlopment, consign knowledge to the dustbin ?  i'm sure it will be something in between. the interesting part is to recognize that any self-styled button-pushers are themselves as subject to automation as their intended subjects.  i suppose that use of such things should be conceived as consituting a type of "force".  just as we don't (shouldn't?) allow physical restraint, abuse, compulsion, damage, etc., the same considerations need to apply in these (less obviously, but still physical) realms as well.  and we are just beginning to do that sort of thing. (btw, this related peripherally to intellectual property rights and the like as well.)  so it is important that our models be more than practically expedient and arbirary, and that's the strongest reason why things like the mbti and the five factor model, and their proposed uses, are objectionable.

one aspect of this is that with the increasing recognition of the mechanistic (if not quite deterministic) nature of existence that such a program of research and social innovation involves, entire concepts of free will and responsibility and the institutions based upon them - courts, democracy, economic liberalism, etc. - are challenged as well. which may well be the thing that mitigates against use of today's factor systems - isn't an employer or other agency then fully responsible, if they've been pushing the buttons ?  yet our current institutions don't recognize this.  see? problems already.  our ethics and philosophies and worldviews, etc., lag far behind our technologies.  and it's interesting that science itself is subject to these same anachronistic forces, and for now, is self-limiting because of that.

craig:

Well the article just explained the five factor model as compared to the older 4 factor model and why it's a better judge. I kind of came to the same conclusion, why not just claim that the n+1 factor model is the best model? Of course the purpose of these models is for personality profiling. Hiring, therapy guidance and general research. But you are correct in that reducing people to mathematical equations is kind of demeaning and dangerous when it's extended to our legal and moral institutions and practices. Sort of reminds me of the movie Gattaca where your entire life is predetermined by your genetic makeup at birth. The protaganist fools the system and is able to get further in life than someone else with his poor genetic makeup. Brave New World comes to mind too. Then in defense of psych profiling (or any profiling for that matter) it does provide a necessary filter when the resources are not readily available to tackle the whole set properly. That can get out of hand too. A respected black doctor that walks in the city park with a gold chain and big tennis shoes will most likely get stopped by a cop. Fair? Sucks to be the doctor but the park is safer due to profiling. Like the Vulcan saying "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". Wow is that a socialist statement or what?! Any Rand just rolled in her grave.

me:

did you just roll ayn rand?  yes you did, you rolled her, didn't you.  shame on you ;-)

 

there's a good passage on the potential damage caused by a social ethic like spock's in "the new intellectual".  it's an excerpt from "atlas shrugged", and it's a character describing what happened when they implemented that policy in a factory.  instructive.

 

in high school, i developed that theory for myself.  was a good topic for assigned essays.  i really thought i had something there.  ms. rand's opinion notwithstanding, there is still some truth in it.  but one must be careful, as with anything.  actually, the "truth in it" part is probably something else being confused with that concept, which is really bullshit.  finer distinctions are necessary.  see ?  that's where labeling fails us again.

 

"profiling" is an expedient to fill the void of judgment.  the friggin' police forces are filled with the dregs of our progeny, what else would we expect ?

 

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why don't i just give it up? because sometimes i like to be annoying, that's why ;-)  besides, everyone knows the midwinter pun is dim ;-)

pun, at wikipedia

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yeah, well, the same to you buddy. 

i would have written earlier, but i was busy stuffing my face with more i've been getting them in twenty-packs lately. 

ok, the movie's name is “what the #$*! do we know?”.  there's no “bleep” in there anywhere, but i guess that's easier to remember.  thanks for the torrent, guys.  to me, it came off better than it was described.  i guess that's because i was getting the same personal effect that i got with mindwalk - i filled in blanks and made corrections as i went, still able to enjoy the resulting work.  another good meditation on reality, for me, anyway.  even some good humor at points.  again, i guess there needs to be caveats to the less well informed about some of these areas of thinking.  don't start here, you'll get the wrong ideas.

the animations / effects i wasn't that impressed with, really.  sticking with the talking heads would have been enough.  although some of the cell / biochemistry stuff was pretty funny.

eventually we'll get all these things straightened out.  (the quote attributed to) einstein was more correct than he knew - everything is relative - relations, to be more precise.

i did like the credits at the end, when they introduced their speakers.  the one lady i was impressed with (her demeanor more than her ideas) is credited as so-and-so1 channeling so-and-so2.  dang, i fell for it ;-)  first time i ever heard of a spirit getting a movie credit.  is that considered a voice-over ?

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bittorrent: after some heavy early losses, the fight is on.

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wouldn't you know it, i finally try something, and it happens to be the day a lot of it dies.  i thought it was just an unfortunate isolated incident when suddenly yesterday suprnova.org [hard to imagine a high traffic site like that getting slashdotted, but they are completely offline at the moment] went offline (leaving only a tombstone [repeated in various forums]).  one minute it was there, then poof! it was gone.  strange to be one of the first to notice, even if i didn't recognize the significance.

turns out to be a widespread effort by “authorities” to shutdown bt.  and just in time for the holidays too !  check the news sites yourselves.  and of course it popped up on /. as well.

a common concern with preserving bt is how to provide anonymity to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.  clearly, an encrypted protocol could be used for transmission.  as for anonymity of peers & trackers, why not use the old pgp anonymous remailer idea, with all the techniques they used, except now for routing packets instead of emails ?  and in fact, that service could be - would have to be - distributed as well, in quite the same manner as the primary bt packet streams themselves.  ie - all peers are anon mixmaster re-routers as well as bt peers.  it's just that no one really knows where the endpoints are.

of course, the visible end points could still be implicated, even though they are not explicity involved in the particular bt swarm in question.  i guess at that point anyone involvement at all would be considered suspect.  which is what i think happened with the remailers.

when was the golden age of the internet ?  yes, “was”.  in some ways, it was the precommercial days, whose end more or less coincided with the birth of the web. well, somewhat after the birth.  this was followed by a few years of relative innocence.

if we consider an analogy with what happened with radio, telephone and power distribution, we are seeing the beginning of the end to the internet as a commons.  each of these other industries became heavily commercialized, quickly followed by heavy regulation.

the 'net is still relatively young.  but its age is starting to show.

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finally got around to playing with bittorrent [this faq seems a bit out of date,but still very thorough].  i had that mindwalk file to share, and it was a low key tv night, so it seemed like a good thing to do to look and see what i could get.

very smooth.  but i had a couple comments:

• if multiple concurrent (upload) torrent tasks are running, and there is an imbalance in demand, there is a strong tendency for the less demanded torrents to get shut out altogether.  attempting to remedy this by throttling the higher demand file results in inefficient bandwidth use, but at least the obscure file gets served that way.  it's almost equivalent to an ftp server like that, in that there are multiple clients pulling from few - or one - server.  although they will shortly begin trading with each other, once the pieces are dispersed in a balanced manner.
• it makes sense to get upload “credit” in toto, not just tit-for-tat for each file.  in the example above, i want to throttle the high bandwidth upload to allow the low one more chance of reaching folks.  in the end, this would result in the same total bandwidth use, but is actually more onerous since the low demand offering will need to remain up for longer (since there are less pulls).  and it also provides more of a community service; what's one more seed among thousands, especially if it interferes with providing other worthwhile stuff.  then again, that reflects a particular value system.  still, the result as things stand will be that one would appear to be slacking on the popular uploads, while the obscure heroic effort goes unnnoticed.

  then again, it's all pretty much self regulated anyway, and my feel for the subject is that this sort of indirect reciprocity ¹ is worthwhile.

• the distribution algorithm uses a random selection of file pieces, and that does not seem to result in the most efficient distribtution scheme.  i would need to run simulations on this, but i suspect a more intelligent algorithm would be better, one where the dispersion of pieces is tracked such that a higher priority is placed on the distribution of scarcer pieces, resulting in more virtual copies in the net much sooner.  stare at this simulation for a while, playing with different balances and timing of seeds v. peers.  i wonder how accurate the sim is.  if it is, then i wonder how hard it would be to play with different algorithms in the code (and modify it it to spit out stats as well).  or i could fire up mathematica; that would take some work.  and i suppose that the application of analytic operations research techniques could solve the problem as well, but i think running a sim is a better approach.  or even running lab tests using the actual software.

of course, these are the observations of a complete newbie, so there may well be reponses to all of it already.  i'm not stopping looking around; i'll post more when i find it.  like maybe after investigating the bt protocol's creator's site.

¹ i can get a lot of mileage from that term.  got it from an edge.org mailing.  which reminds me how much language is an integral part of worldview. etc.

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take the (not really) banned books reading poll.

this was prompted by an earlier post on challenged books (etc.) 

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answer: no, but dang anyway.  oh - what am i talking about ?  this:

i actually scan for spyware every couple weeks on my laptop, using four - ! - different programs.  they each seem to catch thngs the others miss.  good thing viruses, etc. aren't like this.  what the hell ?  seems there's no preventing them from loading, and even the memory resident stuff misses things.  not to mention taking up all kinds of system resources.  good thing pcs are more powerful.  remember that periodic discussion about "what are we going to do with all that computing power?" ? well, most of it goes towards keeping out the mean nasties.  i think this box spends like 90% of its (non-idle) cpu time scannning for viruses.  and think of all the firewall packet handling.  the disk io.  as i've seen mentioned every now and then, the things that suck the most resources from our systems are the "protection" things themselves - which makes them parasitic and viral in their own way.  but it seems necessary. 

extrapolating, most of our systems will be in a continuous battle for survival, with a vanishingly small amount left over to actually accomplish work.  sounds like society, or biology, to me.  think of all the crap that has grown up and around the basic dna propagating machinery.  all that we are is the result of an arms race, and otherwise superfluous. and our ("our") systems will be no different.

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God has graciously granted America a reprieve from the agenda of paganism

that's a solid discussion.  nothing new however.  one observation:  it's time we start making a distinction between "religion", and whatever it is that those idiots are trying to do.  need some new terms, etc.  because it _is_ different.  it is also different from the political right, from republicans, and from conservatism, although they have become closely associated.  yet that association stems from this very lack of conceptual distinction machinery.  given the proper tools and worldview and vocabulary, we'd be more likely to adddress these issues to our mutual satisfaction.  how do we run the insane folks out of town without ticking off these co-opted associated groups ?  by separating them.  which is exactly the opposite of what the insane folks want. as one comment pointed out, that's been their agenda all along, to confuse and identify their agenda with otherwise unrelated groups so that those groups will then feel obligated to supprt those agendas.  unfortunately, that comment didn't make the necessary distinction, it used the republicans as "they".

I am of the growing opinion that religion *must* be taught in schools. Aggressively and completely. It has played a important historic role in the development of modern society.

Much like feudalism should be taught - so we don't make the same mistakes. "Here is what people believed, some people still do this today" is a perfectly valid and truthful education. For feudalism, show the modern warlords of Africa and the resulting famines, show the royalty of France and the beautiful courts. Turn to religion and show modern creationism with all the problems the belief has and show the glorious Sistine chapel and the beauty of the ceiling. In such education you are advocating neither a feudal society or a particular religion, but rather showing how they affected us and what they produce.

Education is about teaching children how to think and then giving them knowledge. Teach them how to think critically and show them how we got to where we are. Let them decide: if you have presented a full view of our modern world and the history that got us to where we are... *and* have taught them the tools to think and research, they will come to their own beliefs. Hopefully these beliefs will not mirror ours - hopefully their beliefs will be a little better. We will have then hoisted them a bit higher to become the giants upon whose shoulders *their* children will stand.

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Wikinews And The Growing Wikimedia Empire 

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screen page scraped, but i'm glad somebody did it. i'm thinkng this may go on my home page permanently (rss).

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interesting list at Orange as Philosophy: Banned Books.  but what's the “ALA” ¹ ?

which brings to mind other recent book / media / information news:

• google to scan libraries: Shhh! Google links to libraries.  now there's another target for the neo-nannies to attempt a mind block on.
• last month, google did something else library related: Google engineers new scholarly search
• and to complete this indulgence of google trivia: Better search results than Google?  this one showed up at the beginning of the year; apparently picked up by cnn and slashdot simultaneously. hmm.
• then there's the link i got from craig, http://www.letitblog.com/epic; one person's view of the future of the internet as an information source, dramatized in a flash movie set in 2014 (link also posted here a couple days ago).

how does library management science address censorship issues, and/or less formal social or cultural impacts on information sources ? ²

at what point does “filtering“ become a sort of individualized virtual book burning ?  but we (as a species) have always done some version of that.  in fact, so has all life.  and it's even built into physical laws (locality via finite speed of light, among other things).

i'm also starting to feel just a tad bit leery about one source of information becoming dominant. google everywhere ?  i get a similar (but much stronger) feeling when i think about u.s. intelligence (;-)) being brought under a single umbrella agency.  no danger, you say ?  well, how much of the internet (blogs, news, whatever) is simply information passed on from other sources ?  more “filtering“.  but the originating sources remain few.

and if you'll notice, i'm using a lot of cnn links lately.  it's all in the streets we travel.  but “choice” is just a manifestation of accumulated stimuli / response.  nodes of (relative) complexity.

in any milieu, what people accept is simply a matter of their accustomed worldview.  that's not as circular as it seems.  one cannot object to what one is not aware of.  there may some discomfort, but we are trained to find some discomforts acceptable, while others are not.  “discomfort”.  dissonances.  from these conflicts - internal or external - arise change, motivation, dynamicism.  the odd part is that we strive for complete consonance.  if that were achieved, it would be worse than orwellian double-think - we will have achieved “single-think”.

my instincts are like most others, i like my comfort zone, and i only want that to improve.  “improve”, i should say.  the quotes are important.  comfort, by the way, includes one's accustomed risk taking, etc.  i don't mean something like a padded cell in the traditional sense.  but it is equivalent.

counter to these natural instincts, becoming too successful at comfort leads to a kind of happy-happy joy-joy near death, a self-induced cultural soma.  intellectually, it is clear that the optimal growth environment is one on the boundary between chaos and stasis.  a common theme, that.

and so it goes with books and information as well.  and democracy.  complete acceptance of all lifestyles may actually be counter productive - taken in isolation.  but there are sufficient other conflicts to keep us on our toes indefinitely.  thankfully.

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