Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth

Ruby
121

On 16 Apr 2009, at 21:58, Tom C. wrote:

Free market idealism…ah, yes. In the USA, and, as a consequence,
in world in general, we are presently enjoying the rewards of market
left entirely TOO free. Wild pigs with the social morality of your
average two year old took over, uprooted a lot of the garden and
many of the fruit trees, and as a result many of us are more than a
bit worried about how we’re going to feed ourselves in the coming
months.

You haven’t had a free market in the USA, any more than we have here
in the UK. And because the market wasn’t free, but a pro-monopoly
model based upon the Chicago School belief that price is the
determinant of market efficiency (it isn’t) and that lowest price can
be delivered only where there is a strong market monopoly (which is
patently absurd), we’re seeing another bubble go pop.

I’m sad, Eleanor, since this is the first time anything you’ve
posted has evidenced anything but keen intelligence.

Well I guess that blows the conceit that I’m largely invisible on
here :slight_smile:

Ever study economics…with an emphasis on data, rather than mere
theory? I suggest the investment of some time in that endeavor. Free
market idealism is a lovely thing, but the real world is
considerably more
complex than such a simplistic representation as that. I’m puzzled
that you missed this.

I have a degree in physics and that leads me to believe that all
phenomena can be reduced to a simplistic representation, if they can
be reduced at all. That’s a fundamental tenet of the scientific method
which I apply to both the development of software and to analysis of
everything else.

I would have thought that your superb knowledge of both software
design concepts and the messiness of the working out of those
concepts in the real world might have given you a large hint about
all this.

Actually my belief in truly free markets is an outgrowth of the
analytical skills mentioned above. When I was a teenager I thought
that government could play a useful role in moderating the negative
impacts of individual groups in society (in UK terms I was a Liberal)
but the deeper I studied physics and the more familiar I became with
both non-linear and quantum systems the more convinced I became that
the only way to govern anything well is to embrace the chaos and
decentralise/deregulate. That insight has served me very well in
software development and I see no reason why it shouldn’t apply
equally well to economics or politics as well.

I also make no assumptions regarding the good will or rationality of
any participant in a physical system, and that already puts me one
step ahead of those economic theorists who insist on including the
implicate calculus of human motivation into their models.

Longing for the sea gets no boats built at all. Grounding that
longing in cooperative effort, governed by a measured degree of
altruism, just might.

However someone not only has to want to go to see in the first place,
they also have to convince others that it’s a good idea. Cooperative
effort is not something that arises magically just because an idea is
good, it is a consequence of the idea being sold: that’s why bad
technology so often predominates commercially, because it has been
sold better. The same applies to politics, where in my experience the
vast majority of legislation is bad because the key element isn’t
efficacy but marketability.

Thankfully the larger the market and the smaller the elements within
it, the less overall effect individual bad decisions will have - which
is why a key element of genuine free markets is that they abhor
monopoly. Our ecosystem is a pretty good example of this principle in
practice.

“In a free market economy, technology will serve whatever is needed,
when it’s needed.”

Not if the technology needed requires massive investment with
LITTLE OR NO hope of rapid profit. For that
sort of thing, history tends to show government gets the job far
quicker and better. The free market didn’t defeat the Nazis, or
invent nuclear technology, and a great deal of the launch of modern
cybernetics was also government sponsored.

True, the free market didn’t defeat the Nazis. Except of course that
the economies which funded the defeat of the Nazis were all built on
free market models. The USSR would not have triumphed in the war were
it not for the huge investment of US resources and the war wouldn’t
even have lasted long enough for that to happen if it hadn’t been for
the huge investment of British resources. Of course that investment
required political will as well, largely generated as a result of the
incredible marketing skills of Winston Churchill.

As for nuclear technology, much of the point there is that government
invested in weapons research because it was hungry for a super-weapon
which lead to the development of the nuclear reactor as a necessary
prerequisite. However the development of the reactor could just as
easily have been achieved by private enterprise had there been a
perceived need: there was an amusing incident a few years ago with a
boy scout who built a nuclear pile in his garden shed using the radium
from about 7000 old glow-in-the-dark watch-faces to prove that point.
The relative investment of resources to develop nuclear power is also
not dissimilar to the investment required to develop steam power in
the 18th century, and that was largely privately funded because people
saw the benefit it would provide their businesses.

Likewise if there was a perceived need for cybernetics you can bet
that the money would appear to fund it. Look at the truly remarkable
medical achievement of our era, the mapping of the human genome. The
vast majority of that work was funded by private donation to the
Sanger Institute which is a charitable trust. The Welcome Trust
(another charity) is the largest conductor of medical research in the
world.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

122

.

Goodbye Ruby my Dear,
Christophe

Hello_Earth != " Goodbye Ruby"

Ruby ==  "more productivity"

more_productivity == "Less Impediments"

less_impedients == "Less or No Tension"

no_tension ==  "Good Earth"
123

On 18 Apr 2009, at 06:10, Phlip wrote:

And besides, who are we kidding thinking that the planet needs us?
It’s been around for a long time before we were here and can do
without us fine**x, where x is a Bignum.

Who will move it to a safe orbit as the Sun goes off the Main
Sequence?

Mother Nature works in mysterious ways. Including sometimes via Epic
Fail.

If a billion years isn’t long enough to Dyson sphere the Sun it’s
because we’re either a failed evolutionary experiment and no longer
around (more than likely) or our descendants have come up with a
better option.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

124

On 19 Apr 2009, at 09:29, Chad P. wrote:

An HMO wouldn’t exist in a free market, because “free market”
implies the
necessary absence of governmental intervention causing the existence
of a
corporation to be possible. Corporations are, by definition, legal
“persons” – something that sure as shit doesn’t exist without someone
with a bunch of guns going around making sure everybody plays along.
That doesn’t sound very “free” to me.

The whole point of Joint Stock Companies in the first place was to
create and maintain legal trade monopolies, and as we see at every
turn any market system which places undue reliance upon them as the
foundation of a “free” market becomes heavily distorted. However even
large corporations are bounded by the laws of thermodynamics and will
eventually fail, which of course is what a bubble crash such as the
current one is supposed to achieve. Unfortunately governments insist
on bailing out failing corporations when they’re sufficiently
politically influential and that exacerbates matters in the long term:
just look at the disastrous history of nationalised industries in the
UK…

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

125

On 18 Apr 2009, at 20:11, Michael S. wrote:

I do believe we should do what we can to clean up the planet,
however. A
clean environment is a good thing! We should be doing it for its own
sake, however, not because some alarmists who are afraid to look at
all
data on an issue are screaming the sky is falling.

Now that’s a statement I can get behind. Likewise I believe we should
be being efficient in our resource consumption because it’s good
management: if I can get three times the mileage from a gallon of
petrol, that’s three times the number of miles I can travel on it or
one-third as many trips to a garage to fill up. Not that I drive, but
you hopefully see my point :slight_smile:

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

126

On 18 Apr 2009, at 23:58, Michael S. wrote:

As before … exactly where does that statistic come from? What is its
doesn’t say that it isn’t. After all, there was once a vast majority
of
scientists who believed the earth was the center of the universe.

This is my main complaint with this type of argument. Those in the
argument - on BOTH sides - seem to be incapable of rational thought.
They hear a statement and don’t question it. Worse, they accept - or
reject - facts just because it happens to support their personal bias.

Most scientists are not impartial and the further one moves from
empirical study into model-driven simulation, the less credence one
should give to any theory.

My main criticism of climate science’s attempts to model global
warming is that it’s fundamentally flawed in its methodology. The
climate is a chaotic non-linear system and hence the only way to make
accurate predictions is to understand its exact starting conditions.
Instead researchers take patchy historical data over a brief
geological period and feed that into incredibly complex climate models
to produce predictions.

Am I the only one reminded of Ptolemy’s model of the heavens? A
stunning intellectual achievement, but as Copernicus demonstrated so
effectively, a complete fiction which prevented astronomy from
progressing for a good fourteen hundred years.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

127

<…>

Actually my belief in truly free markets is an outgrowth of the analytical
skills mentioned above. When I was a teenager I thought that government
could play a useful role in moderating the negative impacts of individual
groups in society (in UK terms I was a Liberal) but the deeper I studied
physics and the more familiar I became with both non-linear and quantum
systems the more convinced I became that the only way to govern anything
well is to embrace the chaos and decentralise/deregulate. That insight has
served me very well in software development and I see no reason why it
shouldn’t apply equally well to economics or politics as well.

Well, getting another degree in sociology or psychology should fix that.
There are no spherical cows. I have degree in physics myself, but
all attempts to remove human factor from equation seem laughable to me.

Regards,
Rimantas

128

On 19 Apr 2009, at 09:27, Chad P. wrote:

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 04:31:44AM +0900, List Sp wrote:

So what country does have this “free market” you describe ?
Let me guess: none.

What utopian system do you favor that does exist, or has existed
in a
form that didn’t end up failing in a truly epic manner (or even with a
pathetic whimper)?

Although as anyone who’s read Utopia will know, Moore was making a
mockery of the notion that all things could be directed with the
perfection of clockwork. He was the Orwell of the sixteenth century :wink:

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

129

Suresh Kk wrote:

less_impedients == "Less or No Tension"

no_tension ==  "Good Earth"

Diiiing! What do we have for him, Johny??!

130

Eleanor McHugh wrote:

My main criticism of climate science’s attempts to model global
warming is that it’s fundamentally flawed in its methodology. The
climate is a chaotic non-linear system and hence the only way to make
accurate predictions is to understand its exact starting conditions.

The weather is chaotic. The climate is the walking average, beneath
the
turbulence. The point of the Butterfly Effect aphorism is you can’t
predict
whether the butterfly’s wings flapping in Africa will create a hurricane
in the
Atlantic, even if you did know how its wings flapped in microscopic
detail.

However, you can predict trends over time, and you can predict the
effect of
forcing (such as more sunspots, or more CO2) on those trends. For
example,
Katrina occurred at the peak of a decadal cycle in hurricane activity.
That
doesn’t mean CO2 didn’t have a role…

Instead researchers take patchy historical data over a brief
geological period and feed that into incredibly complex climate models
to produce predictions.

That’s the prediction phase of the experiment. Then they confirm their
predictions by correlating them to historical data, such as ice cores in
glaciers containing the predicted amounts of certain chemicals at
certain depths.

Am I the only one reminded of Ptolemy’s model of the heavens? A
stunning intellectual achievement, but as Copernicus demonstrated so
effectively, a complete fiction which prevented astronomy from
progressing for a good fourteen hundred years.

You have both the history and details wrong. Copernicus did not
demonstrate
anything - he simply published the alternate view, which had already
existed.
And (the ghost of Carl Sagan notwithstanding), Ptolemaic models did not
“prevent
astronomy from progressing”. You could still predict, over time, where
Mars and
Jupiter would appear in the skies. That’s as old as Astrology.

131

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Eleanor McHugh
[email protected] wrote:

If a billion years isn’t long enough to Dyson sphere the Sun it’s because
we’re either a failed evolutionary experiment and no longer around (more
than likely) or our descendants have come up with a better option.
This is a joke, right, well probably not.
I always thought that a Dyson sphere was Gene Rodenberry’s idea, but
seems there has been some serious thoughts about it.
BTW if there were any Dyson spheres out there, should we not be able
to detect them already in a certain distance? I mean would that not
cause some anomalies between emissions and gravitational behavior of
the neighboring stars? Or is this shadowed by the gravitational
overkill of the “central black hole”?
Cheeers
Robert

–
Si tu veux construire un bateau …
Ne rassemble pas des hommes pour aller chercher du bois, préparer des
outils, répartir les tâches, alléger le travail… mais enseigne aux
gens la nostalgie de l’infini de la mer.

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect
wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to
long for the endless immensity of the sea.

132

I have a degree in physics and that leads me to believe that all
phenomena can be reduced to a simplistic representation, if they can
be reduced at all. That’s a fundamental tenet of the scientific method
which I apply to both the development of software and to analysis of
everything else.

it is not a fundamental tenet of the scientific method, it is one
possible modality of doing science, but there are others. i would argue
that under the current circumstances in which humanity and the rest of
the natural world find themselves a more holistic, systems
theoretical/ecological approach would be far more appropriate.

133

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Robert D.
[email protected]wrote:

Mother Nature works in mysterious ways. Including sometimes via Epic
cause some anomalies between emissions and gravitational behavior of
Games With Brains
–
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

O sea, en lugar de darle un pez a un individuo, enseñalo a pescar!

134

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:59 PM, Eleanor McHugh
[email protected] wrote:

I always thought that a Dyson sphere was Gene Rodenberry’s idea, but

  1. that life has thrown up an active intelligence;
  2. that intelligence is sufficiently social to survive for a significant
    geological timeframe;
  3. the resulting society develops sufficiently advanced technology to
    reengineer the structure of their solar system;
  4. having achieved that level of technology they then have the will to use
    it;
  5. and all this has already happened.
    I challenge this ;), a Dyson sphere might be the evolutionary response
    of spacebound nonconscient lifeforms.
    Now that would be a deception.

BTW
We are not OT here, the same lifeform has created a biological virtual
machine for Ruby, completely by chance!!!
Can you believe it?

Cheers
Robert

135

On 22 Apr 2009, at 15:06, Robert D. wrote:

seems there has been some serious thoughts about it.
The clue is in the name: Dyson spheres were hypothesised by Freeman
Dyson and I believe the general concept was first popularised by Larry
Niven in his Ringworld novels. I was being somewhat flippant as I
doubt humanity will be here in a billion years, but if we are it would
speak poorly of us if we failed to advance our technology sufficiently
to fully utilise the energy output by our nearest star. After all, it
only took a billion years or thereabouts for the earliest multi-
cellular life-forms to evolve into modern humans…

BTW if there were any Dyson spheres out there, should we not be able
to detect them already in a certain distance? I mean would that not
cause some anomalies between emissions and gravitational behavior of
the neighboring stars? Or is this shadowed by the gravitational
overkill of the “central black hole”?

It might. However whether or not we will ever detect evidence of one
is dependant on the probability of a particular chain of events:

  1. life exists elsewhere in the universe;
  2. that life has thrown up an active intelligence;
  3. that intelligence is sufficiently social to survive for a
    significant geological timeframe;
  4. the resulting society develops sufficiently advanced technology to
    reengineer the structure of their solar system;
  5. having achieved that level of technology they then have the will to
    use it;
  6. and all this has already happened.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

136

On 16 Apr 2009, at 20:07, Christophe M. wrote:

science is feeding us, but not knowing which way to turn for
solutions,
intellectualize and abstract away the very real dread which most sane
human beings feel when felt with the prospect of annihilation. human
beings lived for hundreds of thousands of years before the culture of
plunder took over and now threatens all of our lives.

I wish you well with your endeavours as I’m sure on a personal level
that permaculture is rewarding (at least based on my experiences of
growing my own vegetables and brewing my own alcohol) so please don’t
take this as an “I disagree with you so you’re an idiot” comment
because it isn’t, but I think you’ve fallen for the same golden-age
myth that’s haunted all human civilisations since at least the
invention of writing.

Human beings lived for hundreds of thousands of years before their
numbers were sufficient for our basic instincts to start making a
significant impact on a global scale, but if you look at the ecology
of particular regions you’ll see that long before settlement and
domestication we were already a primary mover of our environment.
Thanks to our prolific use of tools we happen to share an edge that
you usually only see in short-lived, fast-breeding generalists such as
rodents which ensures that we can exploit an incredibly broad range of
ecological opportunities as well as being able to define new ecology
such as the current petrochemical-driven agrimonoculture.

Incidentally I agree with you that that is unsustainable, and perhaps
permaculture or any of a broad range of alternative farming
technologies will out-compete it. However I see no moral imperative to
preferring one over the other as evolutionary pressures are by
definition circumstantial and amoral.

Were the green lobby to abandon the intense moral zealotry that so
often dominates their arguments and instead focus on that old
Christian concept of “do as you would be done by” - leading by example
and using the tools of free market economics to make their point - I
believe there would be a much better chance of alternative
agricultural practices becoming dominant. There also needs to be an
abandonment of the social agenda prevalent in the Western world that
sees farming subsidies as an important role of national and
supranational trade blocs as it creates many of the market distortions
which have created current circumstances.

On your other point, I’m a natural pessimist and tend to believe that
if something can go wrong it will go wrong therefore in most
circumstances the best course of action is to do nothing. If that’s a
socipathology, then it’s one I share with the medical profession (i.e.
first do no harm).

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

137

On 22 Apr 2009, at 18:31, Robert D. wrote:

one is
to use
it;
6. and all this has already happened.
I challenge this ;), a Dyson sphere might be the evolutionary response
of spacebound nonconscient lifeforms.
Now that would be a deception.

Fred Hoyle proposed something similar in the form of intelligent dust
clouds which I’ve always found appealing.

BTW
We are not OT here, the same lifeform has created a biological virtual
machine for Ruby, completely by chance!!!
Can you believe it?

I’m willing to believe that if a Dyson sphere evolved naturally that
it would be Ruby compatible :slight_smile:

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

138

On 22 Apr 2009, at 17:34, Christophe M. wrote:

that under the current circumstances in which humanity and the rest of
the natural world find themselves a more holistic, systems
theoretical/ecological approach would be far more appropriate.

I’m not entirely sure how that conflicts with “all phenomena can be
reduced to a simplistic representation, if they can be reduced at all”
but would be happy to hear your thoughts on alternative approaches.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

139

Human beings lived for hundreds of thousands of years before their
numbers were sufficient for our basic instincts to start making a
significant impact on a global scale, but if you look at the ecology
of particular regions you’ll see that long before settlement and
domestication we were already a primary mover of our environment.

the detrimental effect on ecologies was not linear in nature, there was
a very marked phase transition with the advent of monocultural
agriculture and the city state. human health for instance saw a
pronounced decline during this transition, lives were longer mainly due
to increased physical security, but nutrition suffered and so did the
much more labour intensive lifestyle take it’s toll. the hunter
gatherers had developed a way of life which was sustainable, many of
them even practicing explicit population control. since you bring up
myths, civilization has a great many myths that all of us live by,
it’s time to examine them more thoroughly.

as well as being able to define new ecology
such as the current petrochemical-driven agrimonoculture.

monoculture is by definition not an ecology. ecology is about diversity
and connection. monoculture is about obliteration and alienation.
whether we are talking about agricultural or human culture.

However I see no moral imperative to
preferring one over the other as evolutionary pressures are by
definition circumstantial and amoral.

one of the myths for instance is that the natural and social worlds only
work by way of competition. a reductionist cartesian analytical model
may very well be to blame. it is obvious to anybody with any kind of
feel for how ecosystems actually work, that the forces at play are as
much about cooperation as competition. it is not at all surprising that
the popular view (read mythology) of the natural world in industrialized
societies see only competition at the exclusion of any other kind of
analysis, judging by it’s treatment of cultures which do not share a
similar world view. my hope is that as energy and resources become
scarcer that cooperation as a model for human culture begins to make a
great deal more sense, just as cooperative behaviour does in ecosystems
in energy decline.

Were the green lobby to abandon the intense moral zealotry that so
often dominates their arguments and instead focus on that old
Christian concept of “do as you would be done by”

of course many of the ‘green lobby’ do in fact walk the walk, but i
think that what the green movement in general is starting to realize is
that the green problem is actually a cultural one first and foremost, so
i think that you can expect to see an increase in ethical discourse not
a decrease. what is it that you have against ethics exactly?

There also needs to be an
abandonment of the social agenda prevalent in the Western world that
sees farming subsidies as an important role of national and
supranational trade blocs as it creates many of the market distortions
which have created current circumstances.

the current agricultural system in europe for example survives by way of
subsidies not in essence because of some kind of cultural imperative,
but because it could not do so otherwise. it is just so ridiculously
inefficient.
i agree about the abandonment of subsidies, but that can only be
achieved through a major agricultural revolution with a move towards
self-sustaining, low-input and ecologically sound techniques, not simply
by lifting the subsidies. the problem here as in so many other places is
corporate hegemony, but also cultural inertia. it is difficult to shake
off 10,000 year old assumptions.

On your other point, I’m a natural pessimist and tend to believe that
if something can go wrong it will go wrong therefore in most
circumstances the best course of action is to do nothing. If that’s a
socipathology, then it’s one I share with the medical profession (i.e.
first do no harm).

first do no harm, then try to heal.

140

On 22 Apr 2009, at 14:35, Phlip wrote:

Africa will create a hurricane in the Atlantic, even if you did
know how its wings flapped in microscopic detail.

With the starting conditions and the correct model a chaotic system
can be predicted because it is fundamentally deterministic.
With the starting conditions and a set of experimental data the model
is derivable from observation, given sufficient observations.
Without the starting conditions, all bets are off.

However, you can predict trends over time, and you can predict the
effect of forcing (such as more sunspots, or more CO2) on those
trends. For example, Katrina occurred at the peak of a decadal cycle
in hurricane activity. That doesn’t mean CO2 didn’t have a role…

But conversely it doesn’t mean that it did either, or that if it did
its role was the significant factor.

Instead researchers take patchy historical data over a brief
geological period and feed that into incredibly complex climate
models to produce predictions.

That’s the prediction phase of the experiment. Then they confirm
their predictions by correlating them to historical data, such as
ice cores in glaciers containing the predicted amounts of certain
chemicals at certain depths.

If I build a model based upon data for a given timeframe and I make
that model capable of predicting other results for that timeframe I
have an intellectual curiosity. It’s only when I can apply that model
globally and still achieve a significant correlation between data and
results that I can promote the underlying hypothesis to the status of
a theory. Looking in from the outside, climate science still appears
to have a long way to go before it achieves that.

This wouldn’t matter except that people seem desperate to use these
models to drive public policy for purposes which could much better be
argued on non-apocalyptic grounds.

Jupiter would appear in the skies. That’s as old as Astrology.
What Copernicus advanced was a model of orbital motion which placed
the Sun at the centre of the cosmos as opposed to the Earth, with the
distance between the two considered insignificant to the overall size
of the cosmos. It’s true that he wasn’t the first to posit a sun-
centred model, but to the best of my knowledge he was the first to
accompany it with a mathematical model of the orbital motion involved.
It was this mathematical model which allowed Astronomy and Physics to
develop into the sciences we know today, although arguably it is just
one of a set of correlated historical events including the fall of
Constantinople and the expulsion of the Moorish and Jewish communities
from Spain.

Anyway, I stand by my argument, various rabbit holes, omissions and
over-simplifications not withstanding.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason