Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes: > As i said, education is the key. Teach lamba calculus. Teach symbolic logic. > Teach math. And, teach everything else in general. When the common crowd all > speaks lamba calculus in grade school, it's hard to imagine that they'll > touch the eternally moronic unix C->C++->Java sh->csh->awk->perl fucking > fuck all fucked up FUCK shit.
teaching people foo is insufficient. one must teach people to teach foo. hence, divorcing from your immediate student requirement of understanding the irrationality of people, is unwise.
Tim Bradshaw wrote: > So *something* is going on here that is not > rational, but is to do with `metaphysics, culture, fad, or what you or > me think "how people thinks"'. And we need to understand what this > something is
Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes: > If i may put on the hat of an observer, i believe that on the whole our > century is steadily progressing. In very large part this is due to the > internet: a grassroots massive supply and uncontrolled flow of information, > the hotbed of knowledge.
There's something, though, which really disturbs me: It seems to me that in many of the richest countries of the world, the quality of the school system is decaying. At least in Norway, where I live (and which currently is supposed to have the highest internet user frequency of the world), there may be an enormous growth in _users_ of high-tech, but the number of those who understand some of the basics of the technology seems to be be decreasing. Math intro courses to the universities show depressing results, and students turn away from classical university studies of both language and technology :-(
* Duane Rettig wrote: > But to say "Lisp has not won" is misleading; it invokes in most > people's minds either the dichotomy "win or lose", in which case > the statement is saying that Lisp has lost, or at least the trichotomy > "win, lose, or draw", which is somewhat less harsh, but a draw is also > not such a great performance, either.
Yes, I didn't really mean this like that, and I certainly don't think lisp has `lost'! What I meant can probably be said better as `lisp has not gained the market share which it deserves', but even this is not really right.
Partly I think there is a clash here between the pure-academic viewpoint (which is how I would characterise Xah's, perhaps wrongly) and the more social / economic viewpoint which I and others have.
From the pure academic viewpoint market share is just irrelevant. I mean, what does it matter if General Relativity has `market share'? Either it's a good theory or it's not. What does it even mean for it to *have* market share? Perhaps it means that a reasonable proportion of physicists work in it? For GR this proportion has been pretty low for most (all?) of the time since the theory was developed. Is that relevant? No.
So the pure academic really needs to argue that Lisp is `just better', perhaps because lambda calculus is `just better'. There are problems you'd need to overcome with this argument, but I think they're problems that have already been addressed in other fields -- clearly the differential geometry (manifold / tensor) approach to GR is `just better' than the explicit component one (even though, perhaps analogously with Lisp, it requires more mathematical maturity to use).
But Lisp is a programming language, or family of languages -- it's really worthless without reasonable current implementations, at least I don't think it's interesting if Lisp survives merely as a theoretical construct. And reasonable current implementations require work by many people, which requires money and time. So I think you absolutely have to take these social & economic issues into account.
--tim
(I don't think this article means I disagree with you, I'm just trying to clarify my own thinking).
* Duane Rettig wrote: > Rationality, like many other attributes, can be thought of on a local > or a global level. People usually think rationally, but in order to > understand what that rationale is, you must place yourself into their > frame of reference and locality (including the locality of time).
I disagree with `usually'. Of course, if you take away enough considerations -- often this means if you put a horizon on things of about a week into the future -- then you can make almost anything look rational. But I find it hard to think of someone who only looks a week ahead as being rational in most cases.
Paul Foley <mycr...@actrix.gen.nz> writes: > > There's something, though, which really disturbs me: It seems to me > > that in many of the richest countries of the world, the quality of the > > school system is decaying. At least in Norway, where I live (and which
> Every generation bemoan's the decay of (the educational system, the > language, politics, family values, and whatever else was done better > in their day). I'm sure it's not completely without justification, > but we do seem to survive and grow.
You caught me there ;-) Actually, I was a bit general in stating that the 'quality of the school system is decaying', I was basically worried about the position of mathematics, which has never been very strong in the norwegian school system, and which, according to friends who teach introductory university courses, has never been weaker than now (and this can be directly measured by simply counting the number of hours spent learning math during 13 years at school, I think). -- (espen)
* Erik Naggum wrote: > Not at all. The academic market consists of minds. Whether an idea > has sufficient "mind share" is substantial to its survival.
But not to its merit. In fact, my *definition* of `pure academic' would be that market share / mind share does not matter but `merit' is all.`Pure academic' might be the wrong term for it, but that's what I'm trying to get at.
(There's also some platonic issue here -- does GR exist if no one understands it any more? Since my whole point is that these viewpoints are not at all relevant for Lisp or other programming languages, where mind share is *absolutely* significant, I don't want to worry about it...)
> >>pomos can't consistently pick and choose the "neat" aspects of the > >>rationalist enterprise while simultaneously dismissing it all as > >>"nonsense". which suggests a flaw in their orthodoxy/dogma.
> >>sashank
> This is why the entire "PostModern movement" seems to me to be much > more about Style than Substance.
You mean, the importance of having the right kind of black beret?
On 31 Jul 2000 10:07:35 +0200, Espen Vestre wrote:
> There's something, though, which really disturbs me: It seems to me > that in many of the richest countries of the world, the quality of the > school system is decaying. At least in Norway, where I live (and which
Every generation bemoan's the decay of (the educational system, the language, politics, family values, and whatever else was done better in their day). I'm sure it's not completely without justification, but we do seem to survive and grow.
It seems to be the current fashion to try to replace real teachers with Internet access, though...this worries me somewhat.
> currently is supposed to have the highest internet user frequency of > the world), there may be an enormous growth in _users_ of high-tech,
Perhaps there's a connection.
-- And ælc þara þe gehierð þas min word, and þa ne wyrcþ, se bið gelic þæm dysigan menn...
Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote: >> As i said, education is the key. Teach lamba calculus. Teach symbolic logic. >> Teach math. And, teach everything else in general. When the common crowd all >> speaks lamba calculus in grade school, it's hard to imagine that they'll >> touch the eternally moronic unix C->C++->Java sh->csh->awk->perl fucking >> fuck all fucked up FUCK shit.
> teaching people foo is insufficient. one must teach people to teach foo. > hence, divorcing from your immediate student requirement of understanding > the irrationality of people, is unwise.
Replace the 'foo' in your first sentence with 'quality education', then you might correctly interpret what i wrote before you, which may prevent you from coming up with such wisecrack.
--
A while ago i was watching the Americanized version of the Japanese cartoon "Pokemon, (the first movie)" on DVD, and watched the annotated version by the director and another guy (producer, i think).
The commentators commented that the character Meowth (a cat) in the original (Japanese) version takes on the persona of a philosopher, but in the Americanized version it was edited to became a wisecracker for American taste.
This got my brain engaged: "just what's the difference between philosopher and a wisecracker?".
Their difference can be contrasted thus: A philosopher is a wise man who have something to say, and is able to say it eloquently. A wisecracker is a wise man short of a philosopher, who is only able of making wisecracks at issues. The grave discourses of philosophers can only be appreciated by the elite, but the shallow jests of wisecrackers are easily appreciated by all who can sense questions but not consider answers.
As an example, Xah is a philosopher, Thi is a wisecracker.
Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes: > This got my brain engaged: "just what's the difference between philosopher > and a wisecracker?".
> Their difference can be contrasted thus: > A philosopher is a wise man who have something to say, and is able to say it > eloquently. A wisecracker is a wise man short of a philosopher, who is only > able of making wisecracks at issues. The grave discourses of philosophers > can only be appreciated by the elite, but the shallow jests of wisecrackers > are easily appreciated by all who can sense questions but not consider > answers.
> As an example, Xah is a philosopher, Thi is a wisecracker.
in addition to shallow, it also quick. but no need to be original; here is a fortune cookie for you: "time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
> > Rationality, like many other attributes, can be thought of on a local > > or a global level. People usually think rationally, but in order to > > understand what that rationale is, you must place yourself into their > > frame of reference and locality (including the locality of time).
> I disagree with `usually'. Of course, if you take away enough > considerations -- often this means if you put a horizon on things of > about a week into the future -- then you can make almost anything look > rational. But I find it hard to think of someone who only looks a > week ahead as being rational in most cases.
Consider the old maxim of "If you buy [Microsoft, IBM, current gorilla], you won't get fired." Is it irrational to follow this maxim? Rationality can really only be measured as the application of logic (or other pseudo-rational techniques such as induction) to achieve a particular set of objectives (or at least to maximize some, perhaps hazily defined, objective function).
If *your* objective is to maximize Lisp's market share, you need to consider rhetoric (= applied psychology) in your approach to the problem - and calling people irrational for not choosing Lisp is not likely to make you many friends outside of existing Lispers...
* Harley Davis wrote: > Consider the old maxim of "If you buy [Microsoft, IBM, current gorilla], you > won't get fired." Is it irrational to follow this maxim?
I don't think so. But, say, obsessing about using only free software because it minimises up-front cost even if it cripples you with maintenance costs later isn't rational. Likewise obsessing about using only commercial products even when free ones are very well supported.
> If *your* objective is to maximize Lisp's market share, you need to consider > rhetoric (= applied psychology) in your approach to the problem
That was my point.
> - and > calling people irrational for not choosing Lisp is not likely to make you > many friends outside of existing Lispers...
But *my* objective is not solely to maximize Lisp's market share, I also have one of being able to say what I think (:-).
> Is F.P. an idea that's still considered important? Is it important for > Lisp programmers in "the real world"?
Yes. I depend on (or long for) it every day. I transform or append projects I either inherit from previous non-FP writers, or from myself... (which is often worst of all). Paul Graham, author of "ANSI Common Lisp", enlightens us that "The cost of a mistake is the time it takes to fix it." If you're young and/or engenious you may not believe me, but it is amazing how much the mind can forget about a program after a few months...MRIs...years...
Pardon the four ellipses, but that's the main point of my reply. Time. I can't tell you about parallel processing, AI, or anything else that speaks in terms $40 words. It simply takes longer to read and understand a web of side-effects than to review primary functions and those they depend on.
If you use FP for no other reason than longevity (of your code, and perhaps your own life), then that is "real world" enough for me.
Harley Davis wrote: > Consider the old maxim of "If you buy [Microsoft, IBM, current gorilla], you > won't get fired."
I think it was "Nobody has ever been fired for buying IBM." - and I have not heard it in relation to any company other than IBM. I would not be surprised to hear that someone _was_ fired for buying Microsoft.
* Link Davis <linkda...@mindspring.com> | It simply takes longer to read and understand a web of side-effects | than to review primary functions and those they depend on.
Let's restate this as: It simply takes longer to read badly written code than to read well-written code. From this obvious position, it behooves the proponent of any paradigm to compare well-written code in his favorite and his least favorite paradigms. I don't think I have seen this yet from those who favor functional programming -- they always compare themselves to really bad side-effect programming and win, hands down, just like any other programming style would.
Another obvious position is this: It simply takes longer to do what you're not trained for or not good or don't like at than it takes to do what you are trained for and good at and like. Those who compare their own skills at their favorite and their least favorite ends of the spectrum tend to forget this, too.
#:Erik -- If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > * Link Davis <linkda...@mindspring.com> > | It simply takes longer to read and understand a web of side-effects > | than to review primary functions and those they depend on.
> Let's restate this as: It simply takes longer to read badly written > code than to read well-written code.
I'd say it differently, of course, even though Xah doesn't like it. It simply takes longer to read things that are expressed in a way that is not how your brain is thinking about them. Any time you have to marshall and unmarshall concepts to different representations, you lose. This means that for some set of things, functional notation is to be preferred and for some other things functional notation is not to be preferred. Deepends a lot on the nature of the thing being modeled, and how your brain wetware is already modeling it.
JMO. ... but didn't want anyone to think I'd given up on my position just because Xah has decided my writing style is "invalid". ;-)
The fact that one can't measure for sure how your brain is modeling these things doesn't mean it's not having an effect. It probably does mean there is an interesting set of psychology experiments that could be constructed to learn some things about brain representation.
But the notion that the "speed of understanding" by a human processor is invariant under changes in brain representation, which seems to be Xah's position, would be the most surprising kind of outcome of such experiments and would have fascinating ramifications on the science of data interchange among communicating distributed processors.
In article <3174286879763...@naggum.net>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> wrote:
> * Link Davis <linkda...@mindspring.com> > | It simply takes longer to read and understand a web of side-effects > | than to review primary functions and those they depend on.
> Let's restate this as: It simply takes longer to read badly written > code than to read well-written code. From this obvious position, it > behooves the proponent of any paradigm to compare well-written code > in his favorite and his least favorite paradigms. I don't think I > have seen this yet from those who favor functional programming -- > they always compare themselves to really bad side-effect programming > and win, hands down, just like any other programming style would.
[...]
In the cruel place known as "the real world", this usually translates to "it's easier to understand code that i wrote than the code (written by others) that i have to maintain.".
> The fact that one can't measure for sure how your brain is modeling these > things doesn't mean it's not having an effect. It probably does mean there > is an interesting set of psychology experiments that could be constructed > to learn some things about brain representation.
> But the notion that the "speed of understanding" by a human processor > is invariant under changes in brain representation, which seems to be > Xah's position, would be the most surprising kind of outcome of such > experiments and would have fascinating ramifications on the science of > data interchange among communicating distributed processors.
I think De Groot's experiments with chess positions already proves Xah's position invalid. Really good go players also seem to see a very different board than I do. Even low ranking amateurs can replay from memory the games they play against one another, because they are remembered in terms of concepts, but they can't do this if they play against a complete beginner since his moves generally don't make sense.
-- Lieven Marchand <m...@bewoner.dma.be> Lambda calculus - Call us a mad club
Lieven Marchand <m...@bewoner.dma.be> writes: > I think De Groot's experiments with chess positions already proves > Xah's position invalid. Really good go players also seem to see a very > different board than I do. Even low ranking amateurs can replay from > memory the games they play against one another, because they are > remembered in terms of concepts, but they can't do this if they play > against a complete beginner since his moves generally don't make > sense.
One of my favorite experiments with the importance of understanding brain representation have to do with recognizing rotated objects. The subject is shown an object of complex shape and another which purports to be the same object rotated and is asked whether it's the same object. You might think they'd construct an abstract wiring diagram or correspondence tree, but they mostly don't says the experimental data. Rather, they rotate the object in their head, taking time proportional to the amount of rotation. The really fun part is that somewhere down toward 180 degrees rotation--where the picture is nearly upside down--they sometimes rotate the wrong way so you get a split in the experimental data where some people rotate it the "right" way and some people backwards.
Another is an experiment that shows that people do very badly at the following game: you show people cards with numbers on one side and letters on another. Then you lay down one card with an odd number up, one with an even, one with a vowel, and one with a consonant. Then you ask, "how many cards must I turn over in order to validate the claim that on the back of every odd number is a vowel?" People are awful at this, and worse if you ask them which card. But there are isomorphic experiments you can do with more familiar objects like letters that are either addressed or not and either stamped or not, or some such thing like that, where people get it right a lot more. The hypothesis, supported by the experimental data, is that people have better wetware for dealing with "familiar" circumstances than obscure ones and that they just don't reason well about abstracts. What's curious is that college educated people always rail against this claim, claiming they can deal fine with abstracts. But I find myself wondering if that's not because they think that an "abstract" is a specific concrete situation and they in fact do have good wetware (because of constantly confronting them in this or that class) for dealing with them. But these are not abstract abstracts--they are concrete abstracts. Heh... And "most" people don't have them because most people just don't think meta most of the time.
I'm reciting the above two from memory after many years of not having looked up the specific reference, so pardon any mental transcription errors. But my point is that while Psychology is full of all kinds of poorly designed experiments and broad overgeneralizations and mumbo jumbo, there are also among the soup some people doing some good science that teaches us interesting and often suprising things about how people think. I can't help but believe that this information is key to making good choices about how to design languages and computational systems for use by people.
Sure, sometimes the computational effect of doing something in an alien way and just absorbing the reprensentational shift as "part of the price" is fine. And sometimes you trust a system so well that not being able to debug the intermediate result is ok. But you can only decide that if you know the cost of the computation, the reliability of the algorithm/heuristic (and hence the likelihood you'll have to debug the system in alien transform space), and the cost of the representational shift at each end...
Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> (3 Aug 2000 13:29:53 GMT) wrote:
> But the notion that the "speed of understanding" by a human processor > is invariant under changes in brain representation, which seems to be > Xah's position, would be the most surprising kind of outcome of such > experiments and would have fascinating ramifications on the science of > data interchange among communicating distributed processors.
"...seems to be Xah's position,..." ??
Kent, I'm so fucking disappointed. For all my lengthy posts in this thread, you don't get to my points but cling to your thoughts about how human beings this or that and hacking on something i never proposed.
Lieven Marchand <m...@bewoner.dma.be> (03 Aug 2000 18:27:36 +0200) wrote:
> I think De Groot's experiments with chess positions already proves > Xah's position invalid. [... go players this and that]
I think if De Groot's experiments proved "my position" invalid, it must have also proved that bookworms like you are invalid.
Quality thoughts and writings take energy. I'm getting very tired here dealing with bigwigs who dodge & quibble & equivocate and ramify but couldn't follow an argument. I wish somebody plaster this thread to the moon, so that people can see the extreme stupidity of persons involved and be ridiculed upon. No, i wish we can fast forward to the next 100 years, so that we can actually see a statue of Xah pissing on these ph.D tag wearers of 21st century.
Gee... i feel sooo... Sane! Doctor Naggum, let's go get a drink!
> Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> (3 Aug 2000 13:29:53 GMT) wrote: > > But the notion that the "speed of understanding" by a human processor > > is invariant under changes in brain representation, which seems to be > > Xah's position, would be the most surprising kind of outcome of such > > experiments and would have fascinating ramifications on the science of > > data interchange among communicating distributed processors.
> "...seems to be Xah's position,..." ??
> Kent, I'm so fucking disappointed. For all my lengthy posts in this thread, > you don't get to my points but cling to your thoughts about how human beings > this or that and hacking on something i never proposed.
"...all my lengthy posts..."
Perhaps this is precisely the problem. In the past, your posts have been verbose and grand, using words and phrases that seldom come up in most English-speaking conversations or writings.
When I first started seeing yur articles on comp.lang.lisp, I thought you considered yourself a poet/philosopher, specifically one to whom it might actually be an insult for others to understand fully or to catch all of the potential double-meanings of the phrases. But as of your last couple of articles, which have become more terse and direct as your frustration with us has climbed, and especially the paragraph I quoted above, which states your point so directly and with no chance of misunderstanding, I now believe that you really want us to understand you. If this is truly the case, then you would obtain much of that desired understanding by realizing this: There is a middle ground - just because you have a firm command of a language doesn't mean you must use it all, especially if your purpose is to communicate.
-- Duane Rettig Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/ (www) 1995 University Ave Suite 275 Berkeley, CA 94704 Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510) 548-8253 du...@Franz.COM (internet)
"Xah" <x...@xahlee.org> wrote in message news:B5AF631B.DFD9%xah@xahlee.org... >I'm getting very tired here > dealing with bigwigs who dodge & quibble & equivocate and ramify but > couldn't follow an argument.
So don't do it if it's such a burden. Are you some sort of masochist or just insane?
>I wish somebody plaster this thread to the > moon, so that people can see the extreme stupidity of persons involved and > be ridiculed upon.
As it is, this is probably as close as you can get to "plastering this thread to the moon" these days, unless you want to go to the expense of press releases and PR firms. Feel free if you wish, though for one "getting tired here" it might just prove to be more of a burden.
>No, i wish we can fast forward to the next 100 years, so > that we can actually see a statue of Xah pissing on these ph.D tag wearers > of 21st century.
My! That would be an interesting outcome. Good luck on your goal. Although peeing on people seems to be a slightly odd ambition. And probably not one to be immortalized in statuary, unless as part of a fountain.
