Saturday, November 28, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Approaches to politics
We're accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.
The contrast between economic liberalism and economic conservatism, then, ultimately lies not only in different values or preferences but in different epistemologies. Liberalism is a more deeply pragmatic governing philosophy -- more open to change, more receptive to empiricism, and ultimately better at producing policies that improve the human condition -- than conservatism.
Now, liberalism's pragmatic superiority wouldn't matter to a true ideological conservative any more than news about the medical benefits of pork (to pick an imaginary example) would cause a strictly observant Jew to begin eating ham sandwiches. But, if you have no particular a priori preference about the size of government and care only about tangible outcomes, then liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Anniversary
Well, yesterday was our 15th Anniversary, so we went out for dinner to celebrate, to Acadia, definitely one of the nicest restaurants around here. It's perched on a bit of a hillside, with a series of staggered tiers of cedar planking, and beautifully light: and the hillside view I guess reminds me a bit of Wellington.
Had a wonderful meal, spinach salad then Duck breast, accompanied by a truly golden Hungarian Tokay - Cat had Lobster bisque and the pork tenderloin which was also quite wonderful - and generally talked about how amazed we were to have made it so far, and in such strange and unexpected directions. Somehow it seems our marriage has lasted no time at all, and to have gone on for as long as we can remember. The blessing of poor memory perhaps :)
Next month, on the 15th, is the anniversary I consider more important, 18 years since we first met: probably use that as an excuse to go out for dinner again :)
Had a wonderful meal, spinach salad then Duck breast, accompanied by a truly golden Hungarian Tokay - Cat had Lobster bisque and the pork tenderloin which was also quite wonderful - and generally talked about how amazed we were to have made it so far, and in such strange and unexpected directions. Somehow it seems our marriage has lasted no time at all, and to have gone on for as long as we can remember. The blessing of poor memory perhaps :)
Next month, on the 15th, is the anniversary I consider more important, 18 years since we first met: probably use that as an excuse to go out for dinner again :)
Friday, November 20, 2009
A little more cosmology
OK, second post for the day - I started to answer this in comments, but it got a bit unwieldy.
Martin observed:
Of course, the fact is that we exist and are sufficiently self-aware (ordered) to question why the universe is so ordered. I suggest that situation was _much_ more likely to have arisen in a relatively ordered (low entropy) universe.
Accordingly, the proposition that a low entropy universe was unlikely in some general sense is meaningless. Given the condition that intelligent beings are questioning the nature of their universe, I would suggest that the likelihood is high that they live in a low entropy universe.
It is a bit like knowing some one has thrown dice (each 1-6) totalling 10 - impossible if they only threw one die, unlikely if they threw 2 dice, but unexceptional if they threw 3 dice.
Bottom line - nothing about an event which only occurs once (that is, is truly unique, not one of a class of similar events) can be used as inference. Likelihood and probabilty are concepts properly applicable to repeated events.
The idea that this is true because we are here to observe it, has been labelled the anthropic principle*, and in the overall article, Carroll ... hmm, I was going to say addresses this, but actually he more or less just hand-waves in the direction of it without really taking it on board.
I have to say I'm decidedly iffy about the whole proposition of 'what the universe should be like' as it is so freighted with undefined expectations as to be untenable, and I have to concur that judging from a unique event is just a dodgy idea at best.
And also:
Of course the corollary of my view is that it is very likely (IMO vitually certain) that there are other intelligent beings elsewhere in our universe.
It is furthermore very likely that some of them (about half, for lack of any evidence) are cleverer and more advanced than us. Unfortunately, a race that is clever and expansionary enough to reach us may not be particularly nice (the nice races who are ecologically balanced etc will not have the same pressure to expand and seek out new frontiers). Our fate could easily be comparable to that of the Australian Aborigines - pushed aside by more powerful and numerous aliens looking to exploit the resources of our part of the universe in ways we didn't even know existed.
But it is also very likely that any aliens are all so far away that they will never contact us - so who cares.
One could also postulate that any race clever enough to survive and expand without poisoning their environment might have awoken to the benefits of cooperation and mutual assistance ... or just that they have already had a look at us and written us off as not worth contacting :)
But I agree, they are likely to be so far away that nothing short of gravity-radio (or something based on the Pauli principle perhaps) will enable contact.
* not spelled priniciple despite the persistent attempts of this stupid software to 'correct' it to that :(
Martin observed:
Of course, the fact is that we exist and are sufficiently self-aware (ordered) to question why the universe is so ordered. I suggest that situation was _much_ more likely to have arisen in a relatively ordered (low entropy) universe.
Accordingly, the proposition that a low entropy universe was unlikely in some general sense is meaningless. Given the condition that intelligent beings are questioning the nature of their universe, I would suggest that the likelihood is high that they live in a low entropy universe.
It is a bit like knowing some one has thrown dice (each 1-6) totalling 10 - impossible if they only threw one die, unlikely if they threw 2 dice, but unexceptional if they threw 3 dice.
Bottom line - nothing about an event which only occurs once (that is, is truly unique, not one of a class of similar events) can be used as inference. Likelihood and probabilty are concepts properly applicable to repeated events.
The idea that this is true because we are here to observe it, has been labelled the anthropic principle*, and in the overall article, Carroll ... hmm, I was going to say addresses this, but actually he more or less just hand-waves in the direction of it without really taking it on board.
I have to say I'm decidedly iffy about the whole proposition of 'what the universe should be like' as it is so freighted with undefined expectations as to be untenable, and I have to concur that judging from a unique event is just a dodgy idea at best.
And also:
Of course the corollary of my view is that it is very likely (IMO vitually certain) that there are other intelligent beings elsewhere in our universe.
It is furthermore very likely that some of them (about half, for lack of any evidence) are cleverer and more advanced than us. Unfortunately, a race that is clever and expansionary enough to reach us may not be particularly nice (the nice races who are ecologically balanced etc will not have the same pressure to expand and seek out new frontiers). Our fate could easily be comparable to that of the Australian Aborigines - pushed aside by more powerful and numerous aliens looking to exploit the resources of our part of the universe in ways we didn't even know existed.
But it is also very likely that any aliens are all so far away that they will never contact us - so who cares.
One could also postulate that any race clever enough to survive and expand without poisoning their environment might have awoken to the benefits of cooperation and mutual assistance ... or just that they have already had a look at us and written us off as not worth contacting :)
But I agree, they are likely to be so far away that nothing short of gravity-radio (or something based on the Pauli principle perhaps) will enable contact.
* not spelled priniciple despite the persistent attempts of this stupid software to 'correct' it to that :(
Arkansas people II
I'm still sitting around, slack-jawed in amazement at this story:
An Arkansas woman called the cops for a domestic dispute, not because her husband was beating her or anything like that, but because her 10-year-old daughter wouldn’t take a shower. Oh wait, it gets better. The cops show up and take this woman’s crap seriously, and try to put the little girl in cuffs and arrest her. For “disorderly conduct”. For throwing a fairly standard temper tantrum. But the girl, understandably at this point, if flailing around and refusing to cooperate with anyone, and so at the mother’s request, they tased the little girl.
oh, and also this:
I've almost become inured to the stories of criminally corrupt, inept, power-abusing cops in the USA (and Arkansas seems to make a speciality of them), but this, this is just ghastly. It's not corruption, just a sense of casual brutality and violence on a scale I had never quite grasped before. Truly, the police are the biggest and best-equipped gang.
An Arkansas woman called the cops for a domestic dispute, not because her husband was beating her or anything like that, but because her 10-year-old daughter wouldn’t take a shower. Oh wait, it gets better. The cops show up and take this woman’s crap seriously, and try to put the little girl in cuffs and arrest her. For “disorderly conduct”. For throwing a fairly standard temper tantrum. But the girl, understandably at this point, if flailing around and refusing to cooperate with anyone, and so at the mother’s request, they tased the little girl.
Now the little girl is in a juvenile facility and is being charged with disorderly conduct. For, again, not wanting to take a shower when her mother told her to.
oh, and also this:
I hardly know where to begin. That some people are bad parents, and might even think calling the cops on a 10-year-old is a good idea, is not too much of a surprise: after all, noone gets handbooks, it's all make it up as you go, and some kids can be real jewels, so to speak. That the cops would show up and agree to participate at all, appalls me. That they would use potentially lethal force and shoot her with 50,000 volts of electricity for throwing a temper tantrum is just horrible beyond belief.“We didn’t use the Taser to punish the child - just to bring the child under control so she wouldn’t hurt herself or somebody else,” he said.
The police chief said his department has never had to Taser a child before. But he said if the officer tried to forcefully put the girl in handcuffs, he could have accidentally broken her arm or leg.
I've almost become inured to the stories of criminally corrupt, inept, power-abusing cops in the USA (and Arkansas seems to make a speciality of them), but this, this is just ghastly. It's not corruption, just a sense of casual brutality and violence on a scale I had never quite grasped before. Truly, the police are the biggest and best-equipped gang.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A little indigestible physics for a change
From deep-thinking physicist Sean Carroll:
If you didn't know any better, if you asked what the universe should be like, what configuration it should be in, you would say it should be in a high entropy configuration. ... There are a lot more ways to be disorderly and chaotic than there are to be orderly and uniform and well arranged. However, the real world is quite orderly. The entropy is much, much lower than it could be. The reason for this is that the early universe, near the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, had incredibly low entropy compared to what is could have been. This is an absolute mystery in cosmology. This is something that modern cosmologists do not know the answer to, why our observable universe started out in a state of such pristine regularity and order — such low entropy. We know that if it does, it makes sense. We can tell a story that starts in the low entropy early universe, trace it through the present day and into the future. It's not going to go back to being low entropy. ... Our best model of the universe right now is one that began 14 billion years ago in a state of low entropy but will go on forever into the future in a state of high entropy.
Why do we find ourselves so close to the aftermath of this very strange event, this Big Bang, that has such low entropy? The answer is, we just don't know. The anthropic principle is just not enough to explain this. We really need to think deeply about what could have happened both at the Big Bang and even before the Big Bang. My favorite guess at the answer is that the reason why the universe started out at such a low entropy is the same reason that an egg starts out at low entropy. The classic example of entropy is that you can take an egg and make an omelette. You cannot take an omelette and turn it into an egg. That is because the entropy increases when you mix up the egg to make it into an omelette. Why did the egg start with such a low entropy in the first place? The answer is that it is not alone in the universe. The universe consists of more than just an egg. The egg came from a chicken. It was created by something that had a very low entropy that was part of a bigger system. The point is that our universe is part of a bigger system. Then you can start to try to understand why it had such a low entropy to begin with. I actually think that the fact that we can observe the early universe having such a low entropy is the best evidence we currently have that we live in a multiverse, that the universe we observe is not all that there is, that we are actually embedded in some much larger structure.
Wow ... interesting theory, I'm not sure that he isn't leading the data a bit, but it certainly has a certain plausibility, at least.
If you didn't know any better, if you asked what the universe should be like, what configuration it should be in, you would say it should be in a high entropy configuration. ... There are a lot more ways to be disorderly and chaotic than there are to be orderly and uniform and well arranged. However, the real world is quite orderly. The entropy is much, much lower than it could be. The reason for this is that the early universe, near the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, had incredibly low entropy compared to what is could have been. This is an absolute mystery in cosmology. This is something that modern cosmologists do not know the answer to, why our observable universe started out in a state of such pristine regularity and order — such low entropy. We know that if it does, it makes sense. We can tell a story that starts in the low entropy early universe, trace it through the present day and into the future. It's not going to go back to being low entropy. ... Our best model of the universe right now is one that began 14 billion years ago in a state of low entropy but will go on forever into the future in a state of high entropy.
Why do we find ourselves so close to the aftermath of this very strange event, this Big Bang, that has such low entropy? The answer is, we just don't know. The anthropic principle is just not enough to explain this. We really need to think deeply about what could have happened both at the Big Bang and even before the Big Bang. My favorite guess at the answer is that the reason why the universe started out at such a low entropy is the same reason that an egg starts out at low entropy. The classic example of entropy is that you can take an egg and make an omelette. You cannot take an omelette and turn it into an egg. That is because the entropy increases when you mix up the egg to make it into an omelette. Why did the egg start with such a low entropy in the first place? The answer is that it is not alone in the universe. The universe consists of more than just an egg. The egg came from a chicken. It was created by something that had a very low entropy that was part of a bigger system. The point is that our universe is part of a bigger system. Then you can start to try to understand why it had such a low entropy to begin with. I actually think that the fact that we can observe the early universe having such a low entropy is the best evidence we currently have that we live in a multiverse, that the universe we observe is not all that there is, that we are actually embedded in some much larger structure.
Wow ... interesting theory, I'm not sure that he isn't leading the data a bit, but it certainly has a certain plausibility, at least.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Well I guess that's good news
Hmm, been a bit scary here for the last few days.
I started having a pounding pulse & rapid heartbeats, together with a pain in the left of my chest, not all the time, but coming occasionally and going. Rather hard and terrifying to think about, or try to handle, really.
But, I made an appointment, waited, and tried to increase my daily exercise in the meantime. It turns out to be a rather simple problem, a depletion of potassium in my blood due to prescription diuretics (to help with a swollen ankle/foot), so a switch of pill, and a potassium pill (designed for horses from the size of it) seem to be the straightforward solution.
Whew :)
One thing I'm relatively pleased with, is being able to look at the problem and deal with it at all - it used to be my wont to shy away/run away even when that was a terminally (bad joke) bad idea: for almost a decade I had a lump under my left nipple, which I tried really hard not to think about at all, until I gathered the courage to tell Cat (not long after we started living together) and she helped me get to a doctor to have it examined ... turned out to be a benign cyst which he removed with a small clinic surgery procedure. A decade of spasmodic bouts of worry and terror, for naught, pretty stupid really.
It would have been good to get over this idiotic attitude earlier in life, but, eh, so be it, better late than never.
--------------------------------------
Wandering off onto something less scary and more bizarre (OK, even more bizarre):
I keep getting pinged (er, stopped, queried, laughed at, asked to explain, whichever) by my use of strange words of excessive length and obscurity. Now, I know I do love strange obscure and antique words, but the ones I'm being hauled up on, I would have thought absolutely commonplace and normal. Just in the last month, these ones spring to mind:
Felicitations (on a birthday)
Loquacious
Eloquent
Elegant
Miniscule
Convex
oh, and numerous times, Fortnight - this is regarded as a seriously bizarre word in the USA for some reason.
On the other hand, I have to say I loathe the 'ghetto/rap slang' I keep having to deal with, online - pretty much invariably from teenage white boys wanting to be cool - and just to keep up my Grumpy Old Geezer cred, I usually refuse to respond to or acknowledge it, even when I understand (which ain't always).
I started having a pounding pulse & rapid heartbeats, together with a pain in the left of my chest, not all the time, but coming occasionally and going. Rather hard and terrifying to think about, or try to handle, really.
But, I made an appointment, waited, and tried to increase my daily exercise in the meantime. It turns out to be a rather simple problem, a depletion of potassium in my blood due to prescription diuretics (to help with a swollen ankle/foot), so a switch of pill, and a potassium pill (designed for horses from the size of it) seem to be the straightforward solution.
Whew :)
One thing I'm relatively pleased with, is being able to look at the problem and deal with it at all - it used to be my wont to shy away/run away even when that was a terminally (bad joke) bad idea: for almost a decade I had a lump under my left nipple, which I tried really hard not to think about at all, until I gathered the courage to tell Cat (not long after we started living together) and she helped me get to a doctor to have it examined ... turned out to be a benign cyst which he removed with a small clinic surgery procedure. A decade of spasmodic bouts of worry and terror, for naught, pretty stupid really.
It would have been good to get over this idiotic attitude earlier in life, but, eh, so be it, better late than never.
--------------------------------------
Wandering off onto something less scary and more bizarre (OK, even more bizarre):
I keep getting pinged (er, stopped, queried, laughed at, asked to explain, whichever) by my use of strange words of excessive length and obscurity. Now, I know I do love strange obscure and antique words, but the ones I'm being hauled up on, I would have thought absolutely commonplace and normal. Just in the last month, these ones spring to mind:
Felicitations (on a birthday)
Loquacious
Eloquent
Elegant
Miniscule
Convex
oh, and numerous times, Fortnight - this is regarded as a seriously bizarre word in the USA for some reason.
On the other hand, I have to say I loathe the 'ghetto/rap slang' I keep having to deal with, online - pretty much invariably from teenage white boys wanting to be cool - and just to keep up my Grumpy Old Geezer cred, I usually refuse to respond to or acknowledge it, even when I understand (which ain't always).
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