antikoan

 |::| Wednesday, July 10, 2002

 |::| On Seeing Things (v. 02.07.10.01)  8:31:55 PM 

RayKurzweil: My inventions are in the area of pattern recognition, which is part of AI, and the part that ultimately will play a crucial role because the vast majority of human intelligence is based on recognizing patterns.
Gardner: We recognize them even when they don't exist, in fact. <g>

-- Ray Kurzweil, Gardner Dozois, chatting on SCIFI.COM

What we see in the world is not what is there; rather, it is what we see.

Put another way: Seeing things does not change the things themselves; rather, the neurological act of seeing creates things that can be understood.

Our understanding of the nature human experience is, for the most part, fundamentally mistaken because we understand ourselves to be considering and understanding the world, when in fact we are not: We are considering and understanding, at best, an approximation of the world. Sensory data is modified and enhanced in ways that have proven advantageous to our survival. For example, we enhance edges, create spatiality in a flat visual field (even the one-eyed see depth), give special weight to motion. And those are only among the most basic modifications that our brains make to visual data, before it's ever actually used for anything.

In a sense, this is the core intuition of Buddism: The world we perceive is an illusion. Zen takes it a step further, intuiting additionally that our consciousness -- the "self" we perceive -- are also illusion. Except as practiced by some some of particularly insightful mind, though, Buddists also fail to really strike to the root of it all and understand that the illusion is literally impossible to transcend. You literally cannot ever be free of it, because it's part of the very nature of your perceptual apparatus.

Another common error is to assume that the mechanisms that we use to structure the world of our perceptions are directly analogous to (or even the same as) the higher-order mechanisms that we use to structure our world(s) of concept. There's no real reason to assume that's true. We need to remember, always, that the brain is an evolved "machine" (to the extent that it's ever valid to use that analogy). In an engineered machine, it makes sense to generalize a design in such a way that the same parts, or at least the same kinds of parts, can be used everywhere. Witness the increasing trend toward using the same kind of relatively smart but cheap general-purpose microcprocessor for many different functions. It saves money and improves maintainability. In an evolved organism, there's no real reason to suppose that would be the case. Things will happen in the way that they happen, and all that can be guaranteed is that the outcome will be clearly optimal when all contextual factors are known (which they never will be). A designed machine can be planned to be optimal with regard to a stated set of goals; the only knowable goal for an evolved organism is reproduction.

 |::| "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose..."  10:27:55 AM 

Most folks will tell you it's a hard question to answer: How do you stop a Terrorist from killing? I think that it might actually be easy: Give him something to lose.

It's almost a cliche, actually, in all the stories about gunfighters who settle down, old bank robbers who lose their edge, youthful radicals who become important centrist politicians... And according to an article from the Atlantic, al Fatah and the Northern Ireland Prison Service appear to have actually manipulated the idea directly: The former, to shut down their mad-dog, loose-cannon "Black September" unit, and the latter to pry seemingly hard-core Unionist or Loyalist prisoners away from their cause and re-integrate them into their communities.

Al-Fatah took the Black September fighters, and facilitated marriages to healthy, attractive, traditional young Palestinian women, offering good jobs and cash incentives for childbearing in the bargain. Soon they were family men with something to lose. Instead of suicidal mad dogs who would lay down their lives for the cause, they were now husbands, fathers, and PLO bureaucrats. They were co-opted by their own organization, turned from one kind of "good soldier" to antoher.

But it seems to work from the other side of the law, as well. In Northern Ireland, Loyalist and Unionist prisoners in their 30s, with family connections, were targeted for a program that offered them parole in exchange for easing away from their radical connections. They'd have to move out of the segregated cell blocks into the general population, where they had to stay out of trouble, and could get access to early parole and vocational training. According to the source, the recidivism rate was very, very low. (Which argues, also, that political prisoners really are different -- Margaret Thatcher's infamous "crime is crime is crime" opinion notwithstanding.)

 |::| Dogma 2000: Stupid Ideas, Poorly Communicated, Since The Turn Of The Century!  8:44:09 AM 

I sympathize, I really do, with much of the core "dogma":

• type as you think
• don't care about your spellings, typos and cut-and-paste related mistakes
• try to write correctly
• do not make mistakes on purpose
• no intellectual capitals or other strange letter substitutions (LiKe Th15 0r ThAt)

If taken as a mere guide, fine, though the last seems pretty picayune. But when coupled with a manifesto including claptrap like this, it's extremely suspect:

The words in your brain are not written in a correct way. So, why should you type them in a dictionary style? Of course sometimes we must use a precise spelling - but not when e-mailing to your friends or sending a message to somebody! They'll understand your words with or without errors. So keep in mind:

Orthographic rules are not made for the net.

This is the DOGMA 2000. There is no need for proofreading! It takes only time, it's senseless. The only one who'll profit from proofreading is the onlineindustry. The time you need for spellchecking is their cashtime.

[emphasis added]

I mean, what the hell does that mean? It doesn't even make sense. Look, the most basic fact of human communication is that people interpret "words" (i.e., communicative speech or "texts") differently. The most important point of grammar, syntax, spelling, and "orthographics" is to achieve some degree of standardization. Because let's face it: "They" will not understand your words with errors. Anybody who says otherwise just hasn't thought it through. Or perhaps the words they use to communicate to themselves "have errors."

The really key, central problem with "dogma 2000" is that it negates the possibility of communication via anything but pure written language, while at the same time negating the most powerful ways to use that language: Through (sometimes selective) obedience to the commonly accepted rules for use of language. Under a "dogmatic" interpretation of \"dogma 2000", e.e. cummings would be just as out as William Safire.

[Side Note: Apparently Userland, in their infinite wisdom, has seen fit to make "dogma 2000" a macro that loads a link to the Dogma 2000 site. What a silly, silly thing to do.]

At the base, anything that proudly calls itself "Dogma X" is immediately suspect, IMNSHO. I have just this side of zero cympathy for anyone who believes that it's good to adopt a dogmatic position in order to force other people away from their own dogmatic positions. That just doesn't work. It never has, and it never will.