design a city oriented to public transport
John McCarthy
relying on public transport as satisfactory.
Still, let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said just before he reduced
it to just one red flower.
Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
to pay for it.
You can design it as you choose, but you can't have a Berlin wall to
keep residents in.
Take into account
1. Single people.
2. Married couples with children.
3. Children moving out when they grow up.
4. Enough roads for deliveries.
5. People changing jobs, changing spouses, etc.
6. People with connections to people who don't live in the city.
When I see some designs, I'll have more considerations to take into
account and questions about the design.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
glas...@my-deja.com
John McCarthy <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
> I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
> relying on public transport as satisfactory.
>
> Still, let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said just before he reduced
> it to just one red flower.
>
> Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
> multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
> their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
> to pay for it.
>
Wrongo! The millionaires used the Autocompanies, the gas companies and
the tire companies to buy out the existing transit lines in the city so
cars could rule! The lines and routes were allready there!
Also highways do not pay for themselves. General tax finds is used to
pay for highwa
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
JW
spokes going in to Cleveland. Easily walkable from virtually anywhere.
Of course, the Van Sweringen's went bankrupt in the process.
OTOH - here in NJ we have the worst public transit system of any densely
populated state.
Jack
John McCarthy wrote:
> I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
> relying on public transport as satisfactory.
>
> Still, let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said just before he reduced
> it to just one red flower.
>
> Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
> multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
> their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
> to pay for it.
>
John McCarthy
> The automobile arose as an expression of the need for freedom, just as the
> horse did before it. Did the wealthy horsebreeders conspire to divert us
> from walking?
>
> I would think of it as nothing short of the extinguishment of my personal
> freedom were the car to become prohibitively expensive to run.
>
> In this city, who would set the mode of public transport, the timetables and
> routes? I would suggest the minute such a city was realised we will have
> instantly entered the Paternalistic Age. Perhaps a curfew and some strict
> rules on clothing styles could follow?
Such a city might indeed attract people who like to impose
regulations. The one regulation they are not allowed to impose is a
regulation against leaving. Like you I wouldn't live there.
Scott Bryan
sovereign land with our allies to build large American cities abroad and
foreign cities here.
a. Permanently obsolete all weapons of mass destruction.
b. Forces a deeper integration of national economies.
c. Could eventually facilitate a healthy competition between
governments to attract citizens.
d. Is a wise hedge against a rising sea level since we have too many
folks in costal areas now.
John McCarthy wrote:
> I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
> relying on public transport as satisfactory.
>
> Still, let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said just before he reduced
> it to just one red flower.
>
> Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
> multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
> their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
> to pay for it.
>
> You can design it as you choose, but you can't have a Berlin wall to
> keep residents in.
>
> Take into account
>
> 1. Single people.
>
> 2. Married couples with children.
>
> 3. Children moving out when they grow up.
>
> 4. Enough roads for deliveries.
>
> 5. People changing jobs, changing spouses, etc.
>
> 6. People with connections to people who don't live in the city.
>
> When I see some designs, I'll have more considerations to take into
> account and questions about the design.
Leonard Evens
>
> I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
> relying on public transport as satisfactory.
This is a silly debate. It is not a matter of public transit
vs. the use of automobiles but rather an appropriate mix of
the two.
--
Leonard Evens l...@math.nwu.edu 847-491-5537
Dept. of Mathematics, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL 60208
Don Libby
>
> When I see some designs, I'll have more considerations to take into
> account and questions about the design.
Zurich.
-dl
SHMartin
wrote:
>quote>I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
>quote>relying on public transport as satisfactory.
>quote>
>quote>Still, let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said just before he reduced
>quote>it to just one red flower.
>quote>
>quote>Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
>quote>multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
>quote>their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
>quote>to pay for it.
>quote>
>quote>You can design it as you choose, but you can't have a Berlin wall to
>quote>keep residents in.
>quote>
>quote>Take into account
>quote>
>quote>1. Single people.
>quote>
>quote>2. Married couples with children.
>quote>
>quote>3. Children moving out when they grow up.
>quote>
>quote>4. Enough roads for deliveries.
>quote>
>quote>5. People changing jobs, changing spouses, etc.
>quote>
>quote>6. People with connections to people who don't live in the city.
>quote>
>quote>When I see some designs, I'll have more considerations to take into
>quote>account and questions about the design.
How many people constitutes a city? Does it require individual
houses, or would a single mile square apartment complex on top of a
shopping center do? Would a fussgangerplatz in the center of the city
qualify?
Are we free to lay out the city as we see fit? Newport News, VA is
very long, very narrow, and has a train track running up its center.
But their idea of public transportation is running busses that stop
every 1/4 mile down a road that's half a block from this train track.
If we can use their layout and wanted to make a larger initial
investment, surely we could do better.
Does it require industry? Are we free to locate the industry as well?
Where I work, busses run from town to work because of the distance
involved (>50 miles) and the concentration of people who would
otherwise have to drive. This system is run by the facility, not by
the city, and involves maintaining unpaved parking lots in town for
those who aren't on the route. Come to that, there's undoubtedly some
sort of governmental incentive in place already. Then again, the
major employer in Newport News maintains some centralized parking lots
away from the city, and busses people to/from those, because there
isn't enough parking area in the city. In both cases, there is a
small charge to the rider for the bussing.
Are we free to restructure the tax scheme? For instance, charge a car
tax sufficient to cover the costs of any roads to those who drive
(including the businesses, which would make consumers pay their share)
but not to those who don't. . . Should this be based on actual miles
driven, or just possession of a vehicle?
How about the penalties for misusing the system? In northern VA, they
have HOV highways (yes, complete highways, not just lanes). The
penalty for annoying other drivers by driving on the highway without
enough people is $500. The penalty for risking a worker's life by
speeding in a highway work zone is $250. (Well, we knew their
priorities were screwed around DC, anyway.)
Does NYC qualify? I've already got friends who live in the suburbs of
NYC specifically so that they don't need to drive. They do all their
going by train and subway. It limits their range somewhat, but they
freely chose to do so. . .
-- S. H. Martin
Note: To reduce spam, e-mail address incorrect. Correct server is ida.net
John McCarthy
> John McCarthy wrote:
> >
> > I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
> > relying on public transport as satisfactory.
>
> This is a silly debate. It is not a matter of public transit
> vs. the use of automobiles but rather an appropriate mix of
> the two.
OK. I find the present mix appropriate for now.
In the next century, there should be enough capital to double deck our
cities and provide plenty of underground parking. There should also
be enough AI to make automatic chauffeurs. This will eliminate many
of the present disadvantages of automobiles. Public tranportation can
also be made better by automation.
John McCarthy
don't meet the heart's desire of the anti-car posters in this NG.
Koroush Ghazi
Koroush Ghazi
planned city. It was designed by the US architect Walter Burley-Griffin as
the winner of an international design competition.
Ironically his design, although beautiful, meant a sprawling city with vast
areas of open, unpopulated land. Now we are struggling to fight off the
planners who want to build a "mass-transit" system. We only have a
population of 300,000, with minimal projected growth.
Our vehicle registration fees have risen from around $400 to $600 p.a. over
the past few years, and parking and violation fees have increased rapidly.
We are being forced onto expensive, inefficient, inconvenient public
transport so that a few environmentalists can relieve their guilty
consciences.
This is despite the fact that air & water quality here is the best I've ever
experienced.
"John McCarthy" <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> wrote in message
news:x4hwvm8...@Steam.Stanford.EDU...
> Such a city might indeed attract people who like to impose
> regulations. The one regulation they are not allowed to impose is a
> regulation against leaving. Like you I wouldn't live there.
>
Halpern
> I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
> relying on public transport as satisfactory.
>
> Still, let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said just before he reduced
> it to just one red flower.
>
> Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
> multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
> their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
> to pay for it.
Hmm...well as long as others are building strawmen, let's try this one:
Establish a metro area without significant public transport (there are
lots of these).
Pay for all road building and maintenance out of vehicle license fees.
Same conditions. No state or federal gas taxes, but no state or federal
highway funds. No using general revenue to support road transport.
Josh Halpern
Mark Thorson
>multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
>their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
>to pay for it.
Do you remember the Dial-A-Ride program? That was about 20 years
ago in Santa Clara County. The idea was to increase usage of the
bus system by making it possible for you to call for a bus to pick
you up at your house. I believe it was a Federally-funded project.
After a year, it was abandoned.
I remember seeing lots of buses on the road in those days, usually
empty except for one or two passengers.
I believe they screwed up by trying to copy the taxi cab model.
On-demand buses are really inefficient. They should have adopted
the airlines model, where you get deep discounts for committing
to a travel schedule weeks in advance. And a deeper discount
if you agree to buy the non-refundable ticket (i.e. give up
some of your flexibility).
In your case, you live a few blocks from a major artery, Page
Mill Road. You work at a major employer, IBM Almaden Research
Center. Under the airlines model, you should be able to subscribe
to a bus service that picks you up at your house every Friday
morning within some window (say, 9 to 9:15) and either takes
you to IBM or drops you off at a hub from which you take a second
bus to IBM. Efforts would be taken to make sure you only waited
some reasonable time at the hub (say, 5 or 10 minutes) and that you
were delivered to IBM at some reasonably predictable time. (Not-
withstanding the occasional traffic jam.)
If you were willing to walk a few blocks to Page Mill Road,
you should get a big discount. Maybe $50 a month instead of
$75. Or, maybe you would get more flexibility. I'm sure
there are other people on your street who would use a convenient
public transportation system. Maybe there would be one bus at
9 to 9:15 to sweep up all those people. Be ready or you get
left behind. On the other hand, you might have a contract
which says you get picked up on Page Mill Road between 8 and 12
(with buses running no more than 20 minutes apart). Or maybe,
you have both options. That costs extra.
Back 20 or 30 years ago, it would have been hard to optimize
this problem. Creating optimal routes for serving many thousands
of itineraries would have been intractable. It still is, but
I think present hardware/software technology probably could
produce near-optimal solutions for most people most of the time.
That presents the opportunity for fine-tuning the cost model.
If I want the bus to stop at my doorstep, that costs a certain
amount, but if I'm willing to walk two or three blocks, that
either gets me a discount or additional scheduling flexibility.
And, there can be catch-as-catch-can seats available for people
that didn't make any reservations. If you missed the 9:15
pickup, that seat can be sold to the pregnant teenager who
wants to visit her boyfriend, but can only afford $0.25 to
get across town. If no seats are available, she's out of luck.
I believe a computer system could be created which could
coordinate all this activity. As the bus departs the McCarthy
house (honked twice, waited 30 seconds, and he didn't come out),
the computer could even inform the girl waiting at the bus stop
at El Camino and Page Mill that her $0.25 had been accepted and
her seat to downtown San Jose was confirmed. The bus will arrive
in 10 minutes.
I often wonder what ever happened to the Dial-A-Ride program.
There must have been a final report for the experiment. I'd
like to see it.
Mr. Rupert
>
> Leonard Evens <l...@math.nwu.edu> writes:
>
> > John McCarthy wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
> > > relying on public transport as satisfactory.
> >
> > vs. the use of automobiles but rather an appropriate mix of
> > the two.
>
> OK. I find the present mix appropriate for now.
>
> In the next century, there should be enough capital to double deck our
> cities and provide plenty of underground parking. There should also
> be enough AI to make automatic chauffeurs. This will eliminate many
> of the present disadvantages of automobiles. Public tranportation can
> also be made better by automation.
I picture a city of mass transit in which there are "tea cups" which run
on small tracks throughout the city. Think of the tea cups as packets
with a destination address. The tea cups afford the person the freedom
of an individual vehicle while allowing the rider point to point transport.
Throughout the city there would be tea cup docking stations and a user would
just jump into a tea cup, type in the address (location), and away he/she goes.
Tea cups should be designed to hold ~5 people.
--
Mr Rupert
David Lloyd-Jones
"Mr. Rupert" <m...@home.com> wrote
> I picture a city of mass transit in which there are "tea cups" which run
> on small tracks throughout the city. Think of the tea cups as packets
> with a destination address. The tea cups afford the person the freedom
> of an individual vehicle while allowing the rider point to point
transport.
Seems to me the Philippine jitney or South African microbus "taxi" is
probably a near-ideal size for public transport. These are small enough to
make radio-directed house calls in the off hours, and also small enough to
go a little off the beaten track without inconveniencing large numbers of
people not going to that address, yet large enough to cover the overhead of
a driver.
The important point in all of this is probably that One Size Does Not Fit
All.
-dlj.
ebu...@uniserve.com
>I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
>relying on public transport as satisfactory.
The automobile is a good solution to sprawl. But why do we have
sprawl? Blank-out.
>Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
>multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
>their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
>to pay for it.
There is no need for any design, nor any multimillionaires. Only two
things are needed: 1) fund the local government entirely by taxation
of land value, and 2) allow private services to transport people for
profit in a reasonably free market, under modest safety rules.
The problem of urban transport is purely a problem of inadequate
density to support efficient transportation. Density is too low
because of the huge subsidy to land ownership. Because of this
subsidy, funded by taxation of economic activity, every resident and
every business owner must strive to get as much land under his
residence or business premises as he can possibly afford, in sheer
financial self-defense. There is no possibility whatsoever that
problems arising from urban sprawl can _ever_ be solved while the
subsidy to land ownership accounts for a significant fraction of GDP.
The perverse incentive of the subsidy will inevitably defeat any
conceivable design-based solution.
>Take into account
>
>1. Single people.
>
>2. Married couples with children.
>
>3. Children moving out when they grow up.
>
>4. Enough roads for deliveries.
>
>5. People changing jobs, changing spouses, etc.
>
>6. People with connections to people who don't live in the city.
All fully accounted for.
SHMartin
wrote:
>quote>The existing places SH Martin mentions survive, but I gather they
>quote>don't meet the heart's desire of the anti-car posters in this NG.
They are places where you can get by without a car, not where most
people do so. If you were looking for a design where cars aren't
permitted, I won't be giving you one. On the other hand, I do think
that alternatives to cars should be encouraged in many places.
Dwain Goforth
> The automobile arose as an expression of the need for freedom, just as the
> horse did before it. Did the wealthy horsebreeders conspire to divert us
> from walking?
>
They would have if they could make a buck.
>
> I would think of it as nothing short of the extinguishment of my personal
> freedom were the car to become prohibitively expensive to run.
>
I don't own a car because it is "prohibitively expensive to run." Instead, I pay
lots of taxes to subsidize the personal automobile, yet the tiniest of fraction
goes to infrastructure for transportation for pedestrians, bicyclists, and
would-be public transportation systems. Not only is my freedom taken away, but I
have to pay for others' so-called "personal freedom."
The automobile is a fine transportation method. However, we have become slaves
to it. Try a little freedom for a change!
>
> In this city, who would set the mode of public transport, the timetables and
> routes? I would suggest the minute such a city was realised we will have
> instantly entered the Paternalistic Age. Perhaps a curfew and some strict
> rules on clothing styles could follow?
In a democracy, the people (fallible as they are) would set the timetables,
routes, etc. I thought we entered the Paternalistic Age the minute the steam
engine was born and women were forced to work in sweatshops.
Do you really think restricting the automobile and sharing the tax base with
people who can't afford, or don't want one will "extinguish" your freedom?
John McCarthy
An ingenious scheme. However, lately I have been going to ALmaden IBM
Research Center only rarely and unpredictably.
> In article <x4hzor5...@Steam.Stanford.EDU>,
> John McCarthy <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
> >
> >Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
> >multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
> >their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
> >to pay for it.
>
--
John McCarthy
Mike Coburn
> On 07 Apr 2000 23:50:50 -0700, John McCarthy <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU>
> wrote:
>
> >I'm a fan of the automobile, and I'm skeptical that people will find
> >relying on public transport as satisfactory.
>
> The automobile is a good solution to sprawl. But why do we have
> sprawl? Blank-out.
>
> >Design a new city, relying on public transport. You need to get some
> >multimillionaires to invest in building it and also to locate some of
> >their companies in it. Otherwise, you can try to get the Government
> >to pay for it.
>
> There is no need for any design, nor any multimillionaires. Only two
> things are needed: 1) fund the local government entirely by taxation
> of land value, and 2) allow private services to transport people for
> profit in a reasonably free market, under modest safety rules.
>
> The problem of urban transport is purely a problem of inadequate
> density to support efficient transportation. Density is too low
> because of the huge subsidy to land ownership. Because of this
> subsidy, funded by taxation of economic activity, every resident and
> every business owner must strive to get as much land under his
> residence or business premises as he can possibly afford, in sheer
> financial self-defense. There is no possibility whatsoever that
> problems arising from urban sprawl can _ever_ be solved while the
> subsidy to land ownership accounts for a significant fraction of GDP.
> The perverse incentive of the subsidy will inevitably defeat any
> conceivable design-based solution.
>
I want to say that I do not disagree with the idea of land taxation for
the purpose of financing city government. I do not know that I agree
with land taxation as a solution to federal government finance. But the
subject here IS local taxation, and in that arena there is
NOTHING superior to a tax on the actual land, and NOT on the structures
or improvements. But I have a problem here: I have never been able to
convince myself that the developers would not seek to run away from the
high land taxes in the core of the city and to develop shopping malls and
housing tracts outside the city just as they do now. You seem to be
saying that they can't do that because they would have to build the
transportation tunnel (road, rail, whatever) to allow any commuting, and
it would be less expensive to build up instead of out. I just don't know
if people are actually that smart, or, more importantly, I observe that
the folks that want it seem to always find a way to "bamboozle" everyone
else into paying for it.
Koroush Ghazi
news:38F35BB9...@humboldt1.com...
> I don't own a car because it is "prohibitively expensive to run." Instead,
I pay
> lots of taxes to subsidize the personal automobile, yet the tiniest of
fraction
> goes to infrastructure for transportation for pedestrians, bicyclists, and
> would-be public transportation systems. Not only is my freedom taken away,
but I
> have to pay for others' so-called "personal freedom."
>
> The automobile is a fine transportation method. However, we have become
slaves
> to it. Try a little freedom for a change!
>
I don't know about your situation but my taxes (petrol, registration etc.)
go to subsidise the poor and the incompetent. Our roads are deteriorating
while the money is being siphoned to the latest group of "society's
victims".
> In a democracy, the people (fallible as they are) would set the
timetables,
> routes, etc. I thought we entered the Paternalistic Age the minute the
steam
> engine was born and women were forced to work in sweatshops.
Ideally the people would set such timetables, but even then, the minority
would have to live with the majority's routes. Individual transport
overcomes this comprimise.
> Do you really think restricting the automobile and sharing the tax base
with
> people who can't afford, or don't want one will "extinguish" your freedom?
Again, in Australia I get so little back from my taxes in the way of
services that I wish the people living off my taxes would send me a card at
Christmas...at least to show their appreciation!
The issue is simple - let the masses decide where I go and when, or let me.
I prefer the latter. Who wouldn't? The secondary issue then is the
environmental impact, to which I say we will find a solution soon.
Close-to-zero emission cars are available now.
Please let's not go back to the eighteenth century.
SHMartin
wrote:
>quote>My car serves also as a portable closet.
But is that a point against public transport, or for it? Also, is it
more economical to have two small closets to support weekday vs.
weekend/work vs. leisure/adults vs. kids activities, or one big closet
which can handle just about anything? ;-)
ebu...@uniserve.com
<michael....@gte.net> wrote:
>But I have a problem here: I have never been able to
>convince myself that the developers would not seek to run away from the
>high land taxes in the core of the city and to develop shopping malls and
>housing tracts outside the city just as they do now.
Why would they choose inferior locations? The land tax just means
that instead of paying a previous owner (and a bank) for using the
land, the developer pays the government. The total land cost is the
same whatever the tax rate, because it is equal to the rent, which is
not affected by the tax.
Also, you need to understand why developers choose to go outside the
city now. Under current tax regimes, if they choose to locate in a
high land rent city area, they must pay the landowner for the land
_and_ pay the taxes on their economic activity, such as income and
sales taxes, that finance the government spending that creates the
land rent for the landowner. By locating outside the city, they still
have to pay the tax that subsidizes the landowner, but at least they
don't have to pay so much rent on top of the taxes.
>You seem to be
>saying that they can't do that because they would have to build the
>transportation tunnel (road, rail, whatever) to allow any commuting, and
>it would be less expensive to build up instead of out.
Right. That's just another way of saying that the city land is
expensive for a _reason_.
>I just don't know
>if people are actually that smart,
Oh, they aren't, definitely not. A few minutes in
alt.politics.economics will convince you of that. But the market is
smart _for_ them.
>or, more importantly, I observe that
>the folks that want it seem to always find a way to "bamboozle" everyone
>else into paying for it.
That's why you don't see land value taxation in use. The folks in
charge know there is no bamboozling with LVT, so they will not permit
it.
Henry Wilson
<King_o...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>Actually, the city I live in - Canberra, the capital of Australia - is a
>planned city. It was designed by the US architect Walter Burley-Griffin as
>the winner of an international design competition.
Around 1925. Unfortunately, he had no idea of the imminent rise of the
automobile. Canberra was designed for mass transport but the
automobile postponed its introduction.
>
>Ironically his design, although beautiful, meant a sprawling city with vast
>areas of open, unpopulated land. Now we are struggling to fight off the
>planners who want to build a "mass-transit" system. We only have a
>population of 300,000, with minimal projected growth.
>
>Our vehicle registration fees have risen from around $400 to $600 p.a. over
>the past few years, and parking and violation fees have increased rapidly.
>We are being forced onto expensive, inefficient, inconvenient public
>transport so that a few environmentalists can relieve their guilty
>consciences.
As you are no doubt aware, Canberra has ended up with arguably one of
the worst road systems imaginable. One can never travel in a straight
line from A to B. One must follow a kind of random zigzag path,
sometimes in the exactly opposite direction from one's goal, on the
off chance that one might eventually reach one's destination. The
accident rate is not much lower than in cities that were totally
unplanned.
I think the armies of experts who designed Canberra were on the
payroll of either the oil companies or the manufacturers of traffic
lights.
The whole thing is a disaster from start to finish, with peak hour
traffic congestion now rivaling that of much larger cities.
>
>This is despite the fact that air & water quality here is the best I've ever
>experienced.
>
Only because of the absence of industry and powerhouses.
Koroush Ghazi
fulfilled.
However, accidents are high because the drivers are some of the worst I've
ever seen. Rude, incompetent and inconsiderate. Congestion is high because
we have single-lane arterial roads!
As for zig-zagging roads...try getting somewhere in Sydney and you'll find
it's much worse. Try getting out of the Sydney CBD in under an hour!
I think a simple grid layout is the best for most cities.
Finally, public transport is an idea which sounds fantastic in theory, but
in practice it reduces us to the lowest common denominator. If used as a
secondary transport system then fine. However the greens want it to almost
fully replace common use of the automobile. Fat chance.
"Henry Wilson" <He...@the.forefront> wrote in message
news:38f8fcd4...@nsw.nnrp.telstra.net...
David Lloyd-Jones
"Koroush Ghazi" <King_o...@bigpond.com> wrote
>
> Finally, public transport is an idea which sounds fantastic in theory, but
> in practice it reduces us to the lowest common denominator. If used as a
> secondary transport system then fine. However the greens want it to almost
> fully replace common use of the automobile. Fat chance.
Where the market, as opposed to the City Councillors, designs the mass
transport, the modal size of vehicle tends to be the jitney, a car or truck
designed for three to eight passsengers which can carry somewhere between
eight and fifteen in a pinch. This is what you see on the roads in Asia and
Africa, where we do in fact have cities served by mass transport.
In North America the only form of transport like this is the airport taxis
of New York, which operate on the same principle, though illegally. In
general both our laws and our policies are directed at suppressing precisely
this kind of transport, in order to strengthen the market for the private
taxi and enhance the role of the oversized bus and train.
This seems suboptimal -- if not directly counter to good policy.
-dlj.
Green Futures
<King_o...@bigpond.com> writes
>You're right on some things. I doubt if Canberra's true potential has been
>fulfilled.
>
>However, accidents are high because the drivers are some of the worst I've
>ever seen. Rude, incompetent and inconsiderate. Congestion is high because
>we have single-lane arterial roads!
>
>As for zig-zagging roads...try getting somewhere in Sydney and you'll find
>it's much worse. Try getting out of the Sydney CBD in under an hour!
>
>I think a simple grid layout is the best for most cities.
>
>in practice it reduces us to the lowest common denominator. If used as a
>secondary transport system then fine. However the greens want it to almost
>fully replace common use of the automobile. Fat chance.
We have excellent public transport here in Kingston upon Thames, which
is part of Greater London. However most people seem to prefer to clog up
the roads with their cars, buses being mainly used by the elderly &
school children. Particularly annoying are all those poseurs in 4 x 4
vehicles trying to manoeuvre in narrow streets of double parked cars.
If we are to tackle all the problems of pollution and congestion some of
the variety of green ideas should be tried out in different cities to
test effectiveness. In fact different solutions will depend on perceived
urgency, culture, city planning, finance etc.
In London the carrot & stick approach might be best. Cheaper bus fares.
Some traffic lanes only available for multiple occupancy vehicles. That
sort of thing.
There is a public health issue in places like the USA where it is almost
impossible to walk around some neighbourhoods because it is all designed
for the automobile, yet people increasingly are dying from obesity
related illness.
Jean
Watch reply address for anti-spamming--
Green Futures
rob...@earthnet.net
I have to ride Denver-Bouder express bus. This 2 year old bus has a 10-90%
air recirculation system. Driver can set his own air and open a side window
for fresh. The rest have to suffer.
The driver can mis set the a/c or forget to turn it on or set it to 90%
recirculate. And the light rail is the same way except there they also use
"air fresheners." Boy, what a combo, recirculated air and a man made smell,
too. I gave up the light rail part of my commute to ride a second commuter
bike four miles each way through the dense traffic. Now I have fresh air,
but I have to worry about being run over by a public transit bus. Unlike
trucks, not too many trucks on the streets, the buses don't cut me any slack.
Why does not public transit work? Smells bad. Recirculated air. And this
is no exaggeration, a couple of years ago I got on the express bus, summer
day, a/c set to full recirculate as it works better that way to keep temp
down, full load of passengers, water condensing on windows so bad it looked
like a shower stall. Well, I caught the worse summer cold in my life. That
bus smelled like the inside of a kid's gym locker. No joke. And I sat next
to the driver with his OPEN side vent, but that did not save me.
Smells are a big part of public transit. And they are getting worse.
eof
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
John McCarthy
No-one advocating public transport would think of it smelling bad.
Likewise, no-one in 1900 advocating automobiles thought of traffic
jams. It is hard to anticipate the bugs in a system one is
proposing.
Arthur T. Murray
[...]
> No-one advocating public transport would think of it smelling bad.
> Likewise, no-one in 1900 advocating automobiles thought of traffic
> jams. It is hard to anticipate the bugs in a system one is
> proposing.
Well, Dr. McCarthy, you pioneered artificial intelligence -- you
had better take some responsibility for AI and its "bugs."
Following your lead, we AI lemmings have been writing AI programs:
http://www.geocities.com/mentifex/mind4th.html : Mind.Forth;
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mindrexx.html : Amiga Mind.Rexx;
http://www.virtualentity.com/mind/vb/ : Mind.VB in Visual Basic.
Soon maybe someone will code the AI in the language you created:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/lisp.html : LISP.
Like Bill Joy, would you advise us to call the whole thing off
before AI runs away and becomes the Technological Singularity of
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html Vinge?
Where do you stand, Dr. McCarthy? Can you sing like Edith Piaf,
"Je ne regrette rien," or does your career entail our extinction?
> --
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
--
Why do so many of the Greats of AI have four-letter names?
Alan, Andy, Bart, Bill, Dave, Doug, Drew, Hans, Harv, Jeff,
*John, Jorn, Kurt, Mark, Marv, Matt, Matz, Ment, Mike, Neil,
Nick, Nils, Noam, Paul, Pete, Phil, Push, Ross, Seth, Vern.
Seth Russell
> Well, Dr. McCarthy, you pioneered artificial intelligence -- you
> had better take some responsibility for AI and its "bugs."
>
> Following your lead, we AI lemmings have been writing AI programs:
> http://www.geocities.com/mentifex/mind4th.html : Mind.Forth;
> http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mindrexx.html : Amiga Mind.Rexx;
> http://www.virtualentity.com/mind/vb/ : Mind.VB in Visual Basic.
Perhaps ... but what I can't figure is why you don't give us a running
Web Demo. There is a directory waiting for it at
http://robustai.net/mentifex/index.htm
Seth Russell
Http://RobustAi.net/Ai/Conjecture.htm
Scott Nudds
: No-one advocating public transport would think of it smelling bad.
Here in this city most the busses run on natural gas. Now that you
mention it, I haven't noticed any smell from them at all.
The liquid fuelled ones sometimes have something buring iside somewhere
that smells really horrid - burining rubber or something. Quite rancid.
: Likewise, no-one in 1900 advocating automobiles thought of traffic
: jams. It is hard to anticipate the bugs in a system one is
: proposing.
McCarthy is correct. His 200,000 nuclear reactor <paradise> is
unworkable for this reason as well.
David Hanley
"Arthur T. Murray" wrote:
>
> Soon maybe someone will code the AI in the language you created:
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/lisp.html : LISP.
Is porting this "mind" program to lisp a project which is in need
of doing? Because, offhand, this looks interesting, not too hard,
and i wouldn't mind doing it myself.
dave
Patrik Bagge
>of doing? Because, offhand, this looks interesting, not too hard,
>and i wouldn't mind doing it myself.
In the process maybe you could enlighten us others,
regarding the innovative (intellectual) highlights of
this mindmaker thingie.
Mr wrong number of letters Arthur doesn't seem inclined to...
/pb
Patrik Bagge
Arthur T. Murray
> "Arthur T. Murray" wrote:
>> Soon maybe someone will code the AI in the language you created:
>> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/lisp.html : LISP.
DJH:
> Is porting this "mind" program to lisp a project which is in need
> of doing? Because, offhand, this looks interesting, not too hard,
> and i wouldn't mind doing it myself.
Yes; please go for it: http://www.geocities.com/mentifex/mind4th.html
and please put your PD AI LISP code up on the Web quite early,
so that others may inspect the rudiments of Mind.Lisp and so
that people like me may link to your code from various jump-off
points such as the list of candidate programming languages at the
http://www.geocities.com/mentifex/webcyc.html#proglangs URL.
Anybody who can Webify their PD AI "Mind" code should maybe submit
it to Seth Russell for installation in his "Web Demo" site at
http://robustai.net/mentifex/index.htm -- or wherever else Seth
makes some room for robust GOFAI. (Thank you to Seth from Arthur.)
> dave
Dear Dossier: Maybe the PD AI is really going to proliferate now!
Dear Patrick Bagge: I am trying to err on the side of too much
information, not too little. I can't do the Java -- any volunteer(s)?
--
Come one, come all AI hackers and mindmakers on 5-10 Aug 2001 to
http://www.geocities.com/mentifex/ijcpdai.html : IJCPDAI-01 the
International Joint Conference on PD Artificial Intelligence to be
held sub rosa in the coffee houses and 'Net cafes of Seattle WA USA.
Patrik Bagge
>Dear Patrick Bagge: I am trying to err on the side of too much
>information, not too little. I can't do the Java -- any volunteer(s)?
for the n'th time, What are the functional highlights of your work ?
I'll do the Java forya, if there is any substance in your project
(no of versions or translations doesn't count as substantial)
/pb
Seth Russell
> "Arthur T. Murray" wrote:
>
> > Soon maybe someone will code the AI in the language you created:
> > http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/lisp.html : LISP.
>
> Is porting this "mind" program to lisp a project which is in need
> of doing? Because, offhand, this looks interesting, not too hard,
> and i wouldn't mind doing it myself.
Hmmm ... I wonder what it would take to get LISP going at
RobustAI.Net which is an NT with a low budget.
Seth Russell
Http://RobustAi.net/Ai/SymKnow.htm
Http://RobustAi.net/Ai/Conjecture.htm
John McCarthy
> John McCarthy (j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
> : No-one advocating public transport would think of it smelling bad.
>
> McCarthy is correct. His 200,000 nuclear reactor <paradise> is
> unworkable for this reason as well.
>
That there would be bugs was inevitable. That they would be bearable
and preferable to no transport was likely, and so it turned out.
The same is the case for very large scale use of nuclear power.
Graham Cowan
John McCarthy wrote:
Nudds must be objecting to 200,000 one-gigawatt nuclear units
providing power on the grounds that 200 one-terawatt ones could
do it more efficiently.
---------------------------------------------------------------
$1 uranium = ca. $102 petroleum = ca. $73 natural gas.
Electricity? Hydrogen? No, the indirect nukemobile runs
on the fifth element, ~boron~. More at
http://members.xoom.com/I2M/boron_blast.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------
ebu...@uniserve.com
<gfut...@gfutures.demon.co.yuk> wrote:
>If we are to tackle all the problems of pollution and congestion some of
>the variety of green ideas should be tried out in different cities to
>test effectiveness. In fact different solutions will depend on perceived
>urgency, culture, city planning, finance etc.
Not necessary. As I wrote in another post, taxing land value solves
all these problems. If people aren't trying to get as much land as
possible under their homes and businesses in financial self defense,
there's no sprawl, and the density is sufficient to support good
public transit. One solution fits all, and nothing else can possibly
work. The subsidy to land ownership will inevitably defeat any
attempt to undo its ill effects.
Scott Nudds
: Nudds must be objecting to 200,000 one-gigawatt nuclear units
: providing power on the grounds that 200 one-terawatt ones could
: do it more efficiently.
Cowan isn't impressed by the scale of the disasters so far. He would
like to see them 1000 times larger.
Silly boy.
John McCarthy
know what HL will be like till we get a lot closer.
2. You can't get people to seriously discuss policy until HL is
closer. The present discussants, e.g. Bill Joy, are just chattering.
3. People are not distinguishing HL AI from programs with human-like
motivational structures. It would take a special effort, apart from
the effort to reach HL intellignece to make AI
systems wanting to rule the world or get angry with people or see
themselves as oppressed. We shouldn't do that.
4. Je ne regrette rien.
5. To get so many four letter names you had to use some nicknames.
Arthur T. Murray
-Arthur T. Murray, ment...@scn.org, d.o.b. 13 July 1946 Dallas TX USA.
*John McCarthy, j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU, wrote on Good Friday 21 Apr 2000:
> 1. AI isn't close to human level (HL) yet. I don't think we
> can really know what HL will be like till we get a lot closer.
> 2. You can't get people to seriously discuss policy until HL is
> closer. The present discussants, e.g. Bill Joy, are just chattering.
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html Vinge's
Technological Singularity scares me and remains my favorite AI text.
> 3. People are not distinguishing HL AI from programs with human-like
> motivational structures. It would take a special effort, apart from
> the effort to reach HL intelligence to make AI
> systems wanting to rule the world or get angry with people or see
> themselves as oppressed. We shouldn't do that.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/mind4th.html Mind.Forth
is not the "special effort" that you would advise against. Rather
it is the sincere effort of this B.A. in Latin and Greek to answer
religious questions on the nature of the brain-mind-soul by trying
to see how far we can go in AI before reaching a "Do Not Trespass".
> 4. Je ne regrette rien.
I thought I would regret my post if it backfired, but you are gracious.
> 5. To get so many four letter names you had to use some nicknames.
Yes, but everybody immediately assumed correctly that *John was you.
> --
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
--
John McCarthy
computer power will guarantee human level AI. I don't agree. New
ideas are needed.
--
John Mccarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
Courageous
>
> Vernor Vinge seems to be one of those who supposes that sufficient
> computer power will guarantee human level AI. I don't agree. New
> ideas are needed.
A basic understanding of human intelligence would be in order.
Our understanding, while vastly greater than it was just a mere
two decades ago, is pretty much still in the dark ages. The
renaissance looms...
C/
Christopher Browne
>Vernor Vinge seems to be one of those who supposes that sufficient
>computer power will guarantee human level AI. I don't agree. New
>ideas are needed.
Douglas Hofstadter's work on AI, particularly, "Creative Analogies and
Fluid Concepts," suggests that it may be more difficult still.
Particularly in the area of analogy, the things that humans do seem
remarkably difficult to turn into algorithms.
Hofstadter may not be the be-all and end-all of AI research, but when
he can come up with such intractable problems, it should at least be a
bit suggestive...
Computers are pretty good at doing search; _useful_ comparison is more
than a little thorny.
I would _not_ accuse Vinge of the supposition that you suggest;
"sufficient cycles" are _not_ sufficient unless there are suitable
algorithms to go along with them.
The nearest that we get to that is in the area of neural nets, and
while they offer scalability, all they do, at this point, is pattern
recognition. Symbol processing, the _usual_ strength of computers, and
the way that humans communicate abstraction, seem afar off in that arena,
and not particularly compatible with neural-like constructs.
--
"Many companies that have made themselves dependent on [the equipment
of a certain major manufacturer] (and in doing so have sold their soul
to the devil) will collapse under the sheer weight of the unmastered
complexity of their data processing systems."
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
cbbr...@hex.net - - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
David Lloyd-Jones
"Arthur T. Murray" <uj...@victoria.tc.ca> wrote >
> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html Vinge's
> Technological Singularity scares me and remains my favorite AI text.
I was at a seminar on robot intelligence at the Center for the Study of
Democratic Institutions in 1968 where ne of the moderators opened up with a
jovial "We thought we ought to get to work on this stuff before the robots
are here at the table voting with us." That was a generation ago now.
Vinge's paper above is more of the same kind of stupidity. I think the
generic name for this bumf is Californication.
There is no Singularity in the future. There are a hundred small
singularities in the past. It's now about 250 years since a thread-cutting
machine could make a better screw than a master machinist at his lathe.
Machines have been better ot arithmetic for much of that same period, at
bookkeeping for perhaps 110 years, at chess for three, is it now?
So what?
There have certainly been major drafts through the hallways of our thought
about what it is to be human, but they have not had much to do with the
power of machines. The Somme and the Holocaust have had major impacts on our
view of ourselves, essentially destroying the 19th century religious view of
"Man" after Darwin, and perhaps Marx and Freud, had nibbled away at the
foundations. The machine-gun and the railway were technologies of this
change, but humanity has suffered through mass effects before, Tamerlane or
the Plagues being examples.
I do not doubt Vinge' assertion that machines will have greater intellectual
power than humans in the very near future. It just strikes me as a rather
uninteresting observation. They aren't riding horses or carrying composite
bows and short swords.
-dlj
Seth Russell
> Vernor Vinge seems to be one of those who supposes that sufficient
> computer power will guarantee human level AI. I don't agree. New
> ideas are needed.
> --
> John Mccarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Perhaps these new idea are at hand:
1) Interaction of agents in a networked environment
see: "Why Interaction Is More Powerful Than Algorithms"
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/pw/home.html
2) Rickert's paradigm
Do a search for ricke...@cs.niu.edu
at http://www.deja.com/usenet/
(sorry, no crisp URL available)
Progress (even in AI) is measured not so much by what
we do, but by what we do together. Why? Well simply
because that is what persists in our environment,
that is what sticks, survives, perhaps to evolve.
--
Seth Russell
Http://RobustAi.net/Ai/Conjecture.htm
Scott Nudds
: > : No-one advocating public transport would think of it smelling bad.
: >
: > McCarthy is correct. His 200,000 nuclear reactor <paradise> is
: > unworkable for this reason as well.
McCarthy responds"
: That there would be bugs was inevitable. That they would be bearable
: and preferable to no transport was likely, and so it turned out.
It is foolish for McCarthy to argue that building his 200,000 reactor
<nuclear paradise> is necessary for to provide transportation.
Who is he trying to deceive?
Scott Nudds
: Vernor Vinge seems to be one of those who supposes that sufficient
: computer power will guarantee human level AI. I don't agree. New
: ideas are needed.
Simple ideas will suffice in my view. AI has been a long time failure
because the "solutions" attempted so far have been constrained by a need
to develop solutions that can be implemented on existing hardware, and
existing hardware has been vastly to slow to produce anything meaningful.
In addition, humans think by sensual modeling augmented by linear logic
and common sense derrived from language. Other higher animals think in
the same way but obviously don't have the advantage of a logical construct
from a language.
I don't expect to see AI until machines are made that can experience the
world in a manner similar to the experiences the animals have.
David Thornley
Christopher Browne <cbbr...@hex.net> wrote:
>Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when John McCarthy would say:
>>computer power will guarantee human level AI. I don't agree. New
>>ideas are needed.
>
human-level AI to be carefully constructed and designed; I expect it
to happen more or less unexpectedly. I don't think we humans can
effectively design comparable intelligences.
>Particularly in the area of analogy, the things that humans do seem
>remarkably difficult to turn into algorithms.
>
[snip to establish proximity]
>
>The nearest that we get to that is in the area of neural nets, and
>while they offer scalability, all they do, at this point, is pattern
>recognition.
Analogy is, to a very large extent, pattern recognition and expression.
Symbol processing, the _usual_ strength of computers, and
>the way that humans communicate abstraction, seem afar off in that arena,
>and not particularly compatible with neural-like constructs.
Symbols are useful partly because they can refer to things, and one of
the real pains of AI is to establish references between symbols and a
messy world. Some sort of linkage of symbol manipulation and pattern
recognition is going to happen, just like it happens in human minds.
Neural nets are lousy at symbol manipulation, and symbolic systems
are not very good at pattern recognition (as evidence, I'll cite the
development of computer vision).
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
Kirk Is
> John McCarthy (j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
> : Vernor Vinge seems to be one of those who supposes that sufficient
> : computer power will guarantee human level AI. I don't agree. New
> : ideas are needed.
> Simple ideas will suffice in my view. AI has been a long time failure
> because the "solutions" attempted so far have been constrained by a need
> to develop solutions that can be implemented on existing hardware, and
> existing hardware has been vastly to slow to produce anything meaningful.
Well, it's not for lack of trying on the hardware part-- in "The Age of
Spiritual Machines" Kurzweil points out that while Moore's law- the
exponential component of 1000s of computations per second per dollar which
extends back to when Babbage's machine was engineeringly feasible, in the
early 1900s-- it's MUCH less clear that software has had anything near
that degree of advancement. Yes, GUIs and the like have done a very good
job of riding on the hardware's coattails (and slurping up every order of
magnitude of CPU power made available to it), but my unstudied instinct
(danger!) suggest that we really haven't made brilliant progress on the
software part.
So another way of putting Scott Nudd's previous paragraph would be "Well,
we suspect that our brute force techniques in software might produce
something resembling intelligence if we had blidingly fast computers to
run the damn stuff on- orders of magnitude faster than what we have now
(even though what we have now is orders of magnitude faster than what we
had a few years ago, and so on for many generations)"
> In addition, humans think by sensual modeling augmented by linear logic
> and common sense derrived from language. Other higher animals think in
> the same way but obviously don't have the advantage of a logical construct
> from a language.
> I don't expect to see AI until machines are made that can experience the
> world in a manner similar to the experiences the animals have.
Is it that simple? What do you use for your measure? Our computers are
much faster than our brains in some ways, much slower in others.
Could there be a point where you say "Ok, we probably have the hardware
now but we're *still* not getting intelligence- maybe we're going
about it wrong?" How can we know that we have the right structural ideals
that will make real, dynamic intelligence, without seeing the result?
--
Kirk Israel [spamblock in effect, use ki...@alienbill.com]
Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet reflection followed by
sudden preventive action explains why they led the field for many
years in both chess and ax murders. --Marshall Brickman, Playboy 4/73
David Lloyd-Jones
"Kirk Is" <kis...@andante.cs.tufts.edu> writes
<a lot of sensible stuff, but I pick up on only one point>
> Well, it's not for lack of trying on the hardware part-- in "The Age of
> Spiritual Machines" Kurzweil points out that while Moore's law- the
> exponential component of 1000s of computations per second per dollar which
> extends back to when Babbage's machine was engineeringly feasible, in the
> early 1900s...
A lot of goofusses go around camping about how the supposed "acceleration of
information" is going on at 18% a year, or some number they've pulled out of
the aether over their meusli this morning.
My family are only 150 years away from ratshit, in the coal mines on one
side, picking stones out of the field on the other. My partner's family is
only about 100 years ago from greeting the English with spears on their
shoulders.
(They did this with great dignity: my partner's grandfather was called out
to meet Stanley's crew when they struggled into southern Sudan sometime
around 1900, I forget, and said "Your soldiers' piss is sour, and makes my
land smell bad. Go away." The English insisted on passing through, so my
partner's clan seniors hired bearers from a neighbouring polity to carry the
palefaces' stupid boxes for them. Damn, what a bunch of incompetents! Why
can't they cut down their baggage enough so they can carry their own silly
boxes?)
I saw a recent video (information explosion or whutt!) from one of our
weddings in Khartoum, but a lot of our relatives looked uncomfortable in
their $30 suits. It's like really difficult to do the jump dance wearing
Bata shoes. They'd rather have a ground-length shirt in cold weather, less
in hot -- and maybe an AK-47 stashed somewhere to keep the Arabs honest. As
far as clothing is concerned, most of the younger folks wear jeans and
T-shirts from Swedish charities. Feh!
(All the younger girls on that side of the family see photographs of their
great- or great-great-grandmothers sixty years ago -- 15~20 years to a
generation -- dancing bare-breasted, wearing only a string of beads. My
Ajok, even though she is totally sophisticated at the world -- Washington,
CIA, World Bank, Edinborough where she cooked for an earlier husband as he
got his Ph.D.., living with the Italian Royal family when she first escaped
from the shitstorm of the second Sudanese civil war in 1980 or 83, and so
on -- still sometimes wears nothing but the ankle and waist beads passed
down to her by one of her female ancestors. Only around the house, you
understand. :-) )
In my grandfather's house we had a record player. It was made out of cherry
wood, weighed about half a ton, and had a cunning series of arms which
picked up records, put them on the spindle, then three minutes later picked
them off, threw them on a pile, and picked up the next one. I first learned
Mozart -- and music hall -- in three minute slices.
In my father's house we had a microscope, gold-and-silk curtains made on
Jacquard looms (whose Lovelacian theoretical meaning was explained to me
before I was seven), a magisterial grandfather clock of the sort which had
only recently replaced the town hall clock and the factory whistle --
personal control of information -- and a lot of other good stuff.
I think information was accelerating at maybe 18% a year -- pick your own
number -- 100 years ago.
If you look at the clever and difficult invention it took to make the
earliest jewelry we know about yet, roughly 60,000 years ago in the
Aurignacian period, I think anybody would also be convinced that information
was accelerating at a magnificent rate all the time -- maybe, aww the hell
with it, pick a number, but certainly a whole lot faster than human
population growth.
-dlj.
Scott Nudds
: > Simple ideas will suffice in my view. AI has been a long time failure
: > because the "solutions" attempted so far have been constrained by a need
: > to develop solutions that can be implemented on existing hardware, and
: > existing hardware has been vastly to slow to produce anything meaningful.
Kirk Is (kis...@andante.cs.tufts.edu) wrote:
: Well, it's not for lack of trying on the hardware part-- in "The Age of
: Spiritual Machines" Kurzweil points out that while Moore's law- the
: exponential component of 1000s of computations per second per dollar which
: extends back to when Babbage's machine was engineeringly feasible, in the
: early 1900s-- it's MUCH less clear that software has had anything near
: that degree of advancement. Yes, GUIs and the like have done a very good
: job of riding on the hardware's coattails (and slurping up every order of
: magnitude of CPU power made available to it), but my unstudied instinct
: (danger!) suggest that we really haven't made brilliant progress on the
: software part.
To a large extent software is still captive of the hardware. There is
no point in implementing "solutions" that can not run effectively on
existing hardware. As a result there is little to no work being done on
languages for dramatically different hardware which does not exist, and
for which there are no plans to develop.
What you see is a seemingly perpetual tweaking of older langauges to add
some trivial feature here or some trivial feature there.
Without dramatic changes you aren't going to see dramatic results.
Without dramatic changes in hardware you aren't going to see dramatic
changes in software.
It's just that simple.
: So another way of putting Scott Nudd's previous paragraph would be "Well,
: we suspect that our brute force techniques in software might produce
: something resembling intelligence if we had blidingly fast computers to
: run the damn stuff on- orders of magnitude faster than what we have now
: (even though what we have now is orders of magnitude faster than what we
: had a few years ago, and so on for many generations)"
The machine I am currently running is about 20,000 times faster than the
first computer I owned. You could increase the speed by a million and
still not have enough power to produce a reasonable AI entity with the
current types of hardware - large linear RAM store connected to a handfull
of accumulators communicating over a single bus - perhaps two.
One of the essential requirements of a working AI is the ability to do
fuzzy searches on a very large database to come up with a handfull of best
fit cases. Streaming a few gigabytes of data through once CPU over a
single bus isn't going to work at any reasonable speed. The machine is
going to have to be massively parallel, and designed for performing these
searches rather than designed as a general purpose computing engine.
: > In addition, humans think by sensual modeling augmented by linear logic
: > and common sense derrived from language. Other higher animals think in
: > the same way but obviously don't have the advantage of a logical construct
: > from a language.
: > I don't expect to see AI until machines are made that can experience the
: > world in a manner similar to the experiences the animals have.
: Is it that simple?
I don't find the task simple at all. Successful AI is going to have to
be able to very rapidly sample the real world. Extract patterns which can
be identified, identify individual objects within the data and then
abstract it.
Successful AI is going to need to be able to do that with several
streams of 1D data and at least one stream of 2D data. In addition it is
going to have to have a sufficient "concept" of 3D space so that it can
model the world in 1D, 2D, and 3D.
: What do you use for your measure?
Of what?
: Our computers are
: much faster than our brains in some ways, much slower in others.
: Could there be a point where you say "Ok, we probably have the hardware
: now but we're *still* not getting intelligence- maybe we're going
: about it wrong?" How can we know that we have the right structural ideals
: that will make real, dynamic intelligence, without seeing the result?
You won't. Not knowing what intelligence is. Having a defintion of "I
know it when I see it." means that there is no well defined target, as a
result it's going to be trial and error, or "organically" grown though
simulation.
Oliver Sparrow
> Successful AI is going to need to be able to do that with several
>streams of 1D data and at least one stream of 2D data. In addition it is
>going to have to have a sufficient "concept" of 3D space so that it can
>model the world in 1D, 2D, and 3D.
That is a very interesting idea: searching N space by M<=N orthogonal
bus-processor systems. You may just have invented a new server technology.
I think ANDing would do, so easy h/ware.
_______________________________
Oliver Sparrow
Kirk Is
> : Scott Nudds (af...@freenet.hamilton.on.ca) wrote:
> : > Simple ideas will suffice in my view. AI has been a long time failure
> : > because the "solutions" attempted so far have been constrained by a need
> : > to develop solutions that can be implemented on existing hardware, and
> : > existing hardware has been vastly to slow to produce anything meaningful.
> To a large extent software is still captive of the hardware. There is
> no point in implementing "solutions" that can not run effectively on
> existing hardware. As a result there is little to no work being done on
> languages for dramatically different hardware which does not exist, and
> for which there are no plans to develop.
> Without dramatic changes you aren't going to see dramatic results.
> Without dramatic changes in hardware you aren't going to see dramatic
> changes in software.
> The machine I am currently running is about 20,000 times faster than the
> first computer I owned. You could increase the speed by a million and
> still not have enough power to produce a reasonable AI entity with the
> current types of hardware - large linear RAM store connected to a handfull
> of accumulators communicating over a single bus - perhaps two.
> One of the essential requirements of a working AI is the ability to do
> fuzzy searches on a very large database to come up with a handfull of best
> fit cases. Streaming a few gigabytes of data through once CPU over a
> single bus isn't going to work at any reasonable speed. The machine is
> going to have to be massively parallel, and designed for performing these
> searches rather than designed as a general purpose computing engine.
Ok- you're claiming that the software can be simple ideas *if* the
hardware implements some very complex ideas; you're moving the complexity
from hard to soft.
But are you encouraging AI researchers to start comissioning and designing
hardware, or sit back and hope hardware advances in ways that are useful
to developing these systems? Because those advances you're looking for
might not be a "natural progression" for hardware designers; you have a
classic chicken and egg problem, actually: software writers aren't good at
writing parallel code (or maybe many problems don't lend themselves to
being paralellized); so hardware makers have no incentive to make
groundbreaking hardware. There's not much great parallel hardware, so the
software writers have nothing to learn on.
But you still say it's not a matter of speed; that no matter how many
generations of (normal) proccessor speed doubling we get, we won't be
able to "fake" the parallelization in software; it'll never be fast
enough, we *need* it to be hardwired?
Hmm.
--
Kirk Israel [spamblock in effect, use ki...@alienbill.com]
"SANTA HAS A TUMOR IN HIS HEAD THE SIZE OF AN OLIVE. MAYBE IT WILL GO
AWAY TOMORROW BUT I DON'T THINK SO."
--sign language by Crumpet the Macy's SantaLand Elf (David Sedaris)
Gary Forbis
news:7ugS4.133$m26....@news.tufts.edu...
> But are you encouraging AI researchers to start comissioning and designing
> hardware, or sit back and hope hardware advances in ways that are useful
> to developing these systems? Because those advances you're looking for
> might not be a "natural progression" for hardware designers; you have a
> classic chicken and egg problem, actually: software writers aren't good at
> writing parallel code (or maybe many problems don't lend themselves to
> being paralellized); so hardware makers have no incentive to make
> groundbreaking hardware. There's not much great parallel hardware, so the
> software writers have nothing to learn on.
Parallel processing is going on behind the scenes. For instance, most
(if not all) commercial microprocessors being built today are superscaler.
By using speculative execution a branch address and subsequent instruction
can process at the same time. If the branch is taken the effects of the
subsequent instruction can be thrown away. This is accomplished by
caching the internal registers as if they were onboard memory.
Paralellization seems like a compiler problem to me. Algorithms should
know as little as possible about the hardware on which they run.
(The C compiler should generate the same code for I++ and I=I+1)
Kirk Is
> Parallel processing is going on behind the scenes. For instance, most
> (if not all) commercial microprocessors being built today are superscaler.
> By using speculative execution a branch address and subsequent instruction
> can process at the same time. If the branch is taken the effects of the
> subsequent instruction can be thrown away. This is accomplished by
> caching the internal registers as if they were onboard memory.
Yes, that is a good point; we are getting away from the traditonal Von
Neuman architecture in ways we might not be aware of. Still, if anything
we're using a modestly parallel architecture to emulate a traditional
sequential one. And then some AI writers are using *that* in turn to
emulate a parallel architecture! And thus, the circle is complete.
> Paralellization seems like a compiler problem to me. Algorithms should
> know as little as possible about the hardware on which they run.
> (The C compiler should generate the same code for I++ and I=I+1)
But seriously, I think while compilers and proccessors can do some
tweaking, making a compiler that could do *that* level of optimization is
a *seriously* difficult AI problem. I almost wonder if you'd get into
territory of the Halting Problem.
--
Kirk Israel [spamblock in effect, use ki...@alienbill.com]
Chanting against Nazism is like drinking for sobriety.
--http://www.subatomichumor.com
David Lloyd-Jones
"Oliver Sparrow" <oh...@chatham.demon.co.uk> wrote
> (Scott Nudds) wrote:
>> Blah-blah, yurk-yurk..
Oliver, Kirk, Gary,
You guys are obviously bright and thoughtful. Still, would you take this
stuff the hell out of sci.econ.
We try to do serious work over in this ng.
I don't want to hurt your feelings, because, as I say, you are clearly
bright and are doing good stuff. You're just doing it in the wrong place.
Best,
-dlj.
Frank A. Adrian
news:8fb2pn$b8f$1...@mohawk.hwcn.org...
> To a large extent software is still captive of the hardware. There is
> no point in implementing "solutions" that can not run effectively on
> existing hardware. As a result there is little to no work being done on
> languages for dramatically different hardware which does not exist, and
> for which there are no plans to develop.
Why of course there is! It would be to get hardware to develop in a
different direction. You assume that the hardware dog wags the software
tail. The amount spent on software now far surpasses that spent on hardware
and yet people still see hardware as more real or more important. Repeat
after me - hardware without software is just a box of plastic and molten
sand; software without hardware is just conceptual crap. They need each
other to work together, and they both should be designed together. However,
the view that the box is more important than the bits still persists! And
even among software designers! It seems an extremely lopsided relationship.
And as long as the software dog allows itself to be wagged by its hardware
tail, it will continue. Especially when software folk are convinced that
they are "captives of the hardware".
faa
Kirk Is
> Why of course there is! It would be to get hardware to develop in a
> different direction. You assume that the hardware dog wags the software
> tail. The amount spent on software now far surpasses that spent on hardware
> and yet people still see hardware as more real or more important. Repeat
> after me - hardware without software is just a box of plastic and molten
> sand; software without hardware is just conceptual crap. They need each
> other to work together, and they both should be designed together. However,
> the view that the box is more important than the bits still persists! And
> even among software designers! It seems an extremely lopsided relationship.
> And as long as the software dog allows itself to be wagged by its hardware
> tail, it will continue. Especially when software folk are convinced that
> they are "captives of the hardware".
Thinking about "real world" hardware in the 1980s and 1990s; it was
probably the rampant piracy that helped PC clones become cheap and
plentiful; people could spend money on hardware when the software itself
was going to be "liberated" from work or a friend. And yet, it's the
software company that became super rich and powerful...
--
Kirk Israel [spamblock in effect, use ki...@alienbill.com]
"Here I am; I'm here-- in my mind, and yours, it seems.
Please don't hold me too dear. Some dreams are unrealized."
plaw...@arcbs.redcross.org.au
"David Lloyd-Jones" <ico...@netcom.ca> wrote:
.
.
.
> My family are only 150 years away from ratshit, in the coal mines on one
> side, picking stones out of the field on the other. My partner's family is
> only about 100 years ago from greeting the English with spears on their
> shoulders.
>
> (They did this with great dignity: my partner's grandfather was called out
> to meet Stanley's crew when they struggled into southern Sudan sometime
> around 1900,
Misattribution - Stanley was nothing to do with the English, or
indeed Britain more widely. Stanley himself was a Welshman who
wound up in North America, which happened to some of them. His
early explorations were on behalf of US newspapers and his later
ones on behalf of the King of the Belgians.
On the other hand this may be a genuine account of some other
expedition in those parts. The British, in conjunction with the
Egyptians, made thorough going military expeditions, which was largely
why they were able to bounce out the more lightly outfitted French
at Fashoda.
I forget, and said "Your soldiers' piss is sour, and makes my
> land smell bad. Go away." The English insisted on passing through, so my
> partner's clan seniors hired bearers from a neighbouring polity to carry the
> palefaces' stupid boxes for them.
This does NOT sound like the British. They stayed, in that era,
rather than moving on.
Damn, what a bunch of incompetents! Why
> can't they cut down their baggage enough so they can carry their own silly
> boxes?)
Earlier expeditions took baggage corresponding to anticipated research
needs, allowing for blurry contingencies, and trade goods etc. that
had to be selected without certain knowledge of what would be
appreciated. It was in fact the best allocation of resources, given
uncertain knowledge (if it had been certain, there would have been no
point going!).
.
.
.
My
> Ajok, even though she is totally sophisticated at the world -- Washington,
> CIA, World Bank, Edinborough where she cooked for an earlier husband as he
> got his Ph.D.., living with the Italian Royal family when she first escaped
> from the shitstorm of the second Sudanese civil war in 1980 or 83, and so
> on
THESE are supposed to impress people with her cosmopolitan qualities?
I am sure you have made an excellent assessment of her as a person,
but that lot of references is a bit like being "world famous back home
in Ohio". The Italian Royal Family, for instance, took refuge with
Farouk in Egypt (after a sojourn in a cheap hotel in Portugal, while
their funds were frozen). PML.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Scott Nudds
: tail, it will continue. Especially when software folk are convinced that
: they are "captives of the hardware".
You are of course free to simulate hardware consisting of 1E6 processors
running in parallel.
Your simulation will run 1E8 times slower than the real machine provided
you are using a single processor.
One second on the "real thing" will take you 3.17 years.
Comprehend?
Scott Nudds
> > no point in implementing "solutions" that can not run effectively on
> > existing hardware. As a result there is little to no work being done on
> > languages for dramatically different hardware which does not exist, and
> > for which there are no plans to develop.
> > Without dramatic changes you aren't going to see dramatic results.
> > Without dramatic changes in hardware you aren't going to see dramatic
> > changes in software.
> [snip]
> > The machine I am currently running is about 20,000 times faster than the
> > first computer I owned. You could increase the speed by a million and
> > still not have enough power to produce a reasonable AI entity with the
> > current types of hardware - large linear RAM store connected to a handfull
> > of accumulators communicating over a single bus - perhaps two.
> > One of the essential requirements of a working AI is the ability to do
> > fuzzy searches on a very large database to come up with a handfull of best
> > fit cases. Streaming a few gigabytes of data through once CPU over a
> > single bus isn't going to work at any reasonable speed. The machine is
> > going to have to be massively parallel, and designed for performing these
> > searches rather than designed as a general purpose computing engine.
(Kirk Is) wrote:
> Ok- you're claiming that the software can be simple ideas *if* the
> hardware implements some very complex ideas; you're moving the complexity
> from hard to soft.
Neurons are not computationally complex.
(Kirk Is) wrote:
> But are you encouraging AI researchers to start comissioning and designing
> hardware, or sit back and hope hardware advances in ways that are useful
> to developing these systems?
I recommend building specialized hardware. Specialized hardware has
the potential of running millions of times faster than the general
purpose processors that are currently being used. If you don't have the
ability to produce a practical solution to a problem. If the hardware
isn't there, you aren't going to explore solutions of that type.
(Kirk Is) wrote:
> Because those advances you're looking for
> might not be a "natural progression" for hardware designers; you have a
> classic chicken and egg problem, actually: software writers aren't good at
> writing parallel code (or maybe many problems don't lend themselves to
> being paralellized); so hardware makers have no incentive to make
> groundbreaking hardware. There's not much great parallel hardware, so the
> software writers have nothing to learn on.
Yes. And simple kinds of parallelism that currently exist are just
extensions of single processor methods. There is a little bit of
difference around the edges but the paradigm is still primarily a linear
one - even on parallel systems.
Our mind however, is not linear. Our verbal thoughts are. They
embody the minds formal system of logic. However, our other methods of
thinking are generally not linear. We think in large part by modeling
the world as we would experience it with our senses. The method of
recall isn't linear either it's massively parallel.
(Kirk Is) wrote:
> But you still say it's not a matter of speed; that no matter how many
> generations of (normal) proccessor speed doubling we get, we won't be
> able to "fake" the parallelization in software; it'll never be fast
> enough, we *need* it to be hardwired?
We can approximate. 1E11 neurons in the brain, 1E2 connections per
neuron, each neuron firing 1E3 times a second. 1E16 events need be
simulated per second. With a conventional CPU this may take 100
instructions per event - say 50 cycles. This means that the
computational frequency of an artificial mind composed of general
purpose CPU's would be 5E17 Hz. 500 million GHz.
CPU speeds are essentially already at their limit with silicon. There
is perhaps another order of magnitude left. With GAs you can get
perhaps another two orders of magnitude. Getting there will take
another 30 years. At that time you will only need a parallel system of
500,000 CPU's to simulate the human mind.
On the other hand, using a specialized CPU you could probably simulate
a neuron with 1,000 transistors. So, 100,000 can be simulated per
equivalent CPU with current die and transistor sizes. Thing is you can
do so 1 million times faster than real neurons. So perhaps 1E11 neurons
per chip. More realistically 1E10. With the same improvements in
capacity mentioned above it would require 5 special purpose CPU's not
500,000 general purpose ones.
--
<---->
Scott Nudds
> But seriously, I think while compilers and proccessors can do some
> tweaking, making a compiler that could do *that* level of optimization is
> a *seriously* difficult AI problem. I almost wonder if you'd get into
> territory of the Halting Problem.
Optimization is an intractible problem. That's why compilers are so
pathetic at optimization, and why hardware is designed to make it easier
for compilers to optimize rather than the other way around.
It is still typical for compilers to produce code that is on average 4
times slower and 4 times larger than need be.
--
<---->
Scott Nudds
> Parallel processing is going on behind the scenes. For instance, most
> (if not all) commercial microprocessors being built today are superscaler.
> By using speculative execution a branch address and subsequent instruction
> can process at the same time.
But that only gets you so far. You can effectively reduce the
instruction cycle time to perhaps 1/3 of a cycle on average. You can't
just continue to increase the number of execution units to increase
speed. You pretty much bottom out at 4.
"Gary Forbis" wrote:
> Paralellization seems like a compiler problem to me. Algorithms should
> know as little as possible about the hardware on which they run.
> (The C compiler should generate the same code for I++ and I=I+1)
This is the kind of limited thinking that illustrates my point.
Forbis is thinking in terms of increment, branch, test - all traditional
components of programming.
Neurons don't branch, increment, test, multiply, etc. etc.. etc...
You can simulate neurons with branches, increments, tests, multiplies
etc. but you pay a penalty of lowered performance, in this instance
several orders of magnitude lower.
If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem appears to be a
nail.
--
<---->
Kirk Is
> "Kirk Is" <kis...@andante.cs.tufts.edu> writes
> <a lot of sensible stuff, but I pick up on only one point>
> > Well, it's not for lack of trying on the hardware part-- in "The Age of
> > Spiritual Machines" Kurzweil points out that while Moore's law- the
> > exponential component of 1000s of computations per second per dollar which
> > extends back to when Babbage's machine was engineeringly feasible, in the
> > early 1900s...
> A lot of goofusses go around camping about how the supposed "acceleration of
> information" is going on at 18% a year, or some number they've pulled out of
> the aether over their meusli this morning.
[snip a lot of interesting, but somewhat offtopic? rambling]
> Aurignacian period, I think anybody would also be convinced that information
> was accelerating at a magnificent rate all the time -- maybe, aww the hell
> with it, pick a number, but certainly a whole lot faster than human
> population growth.
Well, I wasn't talking about a general "amount of human knowledge" or any
of that... Kurzweil makes a fairly detail case over the last 100 years at
counting calculations per second per thousand dollars you spend; sheer
computational speed on a variety of hardware, from the purely mechanical
to today's fastest computers.
--
Kirk Israel [spamblock in effect, use ki...@alienbill.com]
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around,
and don't let anybody tell you any different." --Kurt Vonnegut
David Lloyd-Jones
"Kirk Is" <kis...@andante.cs.tufts.edu> wrote
>
> Well, I wasn't talking about a general "amount of human knowledge" or any
> of that... Kurzweil makes a fairly detail case over the last 100 years at
> counting calculations per second per thousand dollars you spend; sheer
> computational speed on a variety of hardware, from the purely mechanical
> to today's fastest computers.
>
Look, I love Ray Kurzweil dearly, but it would be difficult to find an
easier-to-futz measure than "calculations per second." Hell, you can get an
order of magnitude difference in a machine's performance depending on
whether you manufacture it or compete with it.
My point was simply that this seems to me to be equally true of the couple
of centuries before that, and of J. Random Millenium any other time.
There are times when knowledge goes all to hell, like the plot of some
sci-fi novel (but of course the sci-fi novels are generally based on stuff
in ordinary history books.) Thus the breakdown of the dams of the former
Seleucid in the 7th Century C.E. happened at a time when people had lost
either the technology or the "social technology" for rebuilding them. As a
result there was a Jayhansonian dieback, with the survivors taking to
camelback as to lifeboats.
These, however, are the glitches. My claim is that the accretion of
information, knowledge, and information processing skills has been going on
at an awesome rate for maybe 60,000 years now. I don't make any more general
claim, because we don't have very good evidence before the Aurignacian
jewellery/tradegoods/tools finds.
There are, of course, astonishing finds in Africa -- e.g., of cooperative
flint-knapping pits: would "factories" be too strong? -- going back much
earlier. Put it's hard to think about rates of change when developments are
episodic. You can't differentiate a series of intermediate events, even if
they happen on a Poisson function. :-)
In the dying years of the Soviet Union there were a couple or three very
competent Russian archaeological grops working in Arabia. On may surmise
that the Soviets thought to improve their influence in this vital area by
digging up stuff to make the Arabs feel good. The last thing I saw of this,
maybe ten or twelve years ago, was their greatly extending the evidence of
iron age technology in the Meroitic Empire, i.e. today's Sudan in the 8th to
6th centuries B.C.E. (This was when the ancestors of us white folks were
doing OK at stone, and the northerners among us had only bronze.
Anyway, with the collapse of the USSR, I suspect that both funding and
political will dried up; certainly I haven't heard anything about these
expeditions lately. Still, I expect to see and hear more of this interesting
age and area in the next fifty years or so.
-dlj.
Kirk Is
> "Kirk Is" <kis...@andante.cs.tufts.edu> wrote
> >
> > Well, I wasn't talking about a general "amount of human knowledge" or any
> > of that... Kurzweil makes a fairly detail case over the last 100 years at
> > counting calculations per second per thousand dollars you spend; sheer
> > computational speed on a variety of hardware, from the purely mechanical
> > to today's fastest computers.
> Look, I love Ray Kurzweil dearly, but it would be difficult to find an
> easier-to-futz measure than "calculations per second." Hell, you can get an
> order of magnitude difference in a machine's performance depending on
> whether you manufacture it or compete with it.
> My point was simply that this seems to me to be equally true of the couple
> of centuries before that, and of J. Random Millenium any other time.
Oh. I'm not sure what our disagreement is then; I believe Kurzweil might
suspect that that trend he charted has been in place for a long long time,
though the farther back you get the more abstract the measure has to
become.
--
Kirk Israel [spamblock in effect, use ki...@alienbill.com]
"If you feel it, but it isn't right, don't do it and don't
believe it. We can be better than natural -- we're human."--Penn Jillette
Oliver Sparrow
>These, however, are the glitches. My claim is that the accretion of
>information, knowledge, and information processing skills has been going on
>at an awesome rate for maybe 60,000 years now.
Quite a nice model takes a three-dimensional view. On one scale,human
capabilities cumulate: knowledge and interpretations, interpersonal skills,
patterns of daily life. On a second, the machinery of value creation and
consumption become separated out from individual lives and become
impersonal structures and imperatives. On a third, non-economic
institutions (law, governance, regulation, dispute resolution) develop.
Societies form a cloudy locus between these three axes. Evidence suggests
that there is a tight link between adequacy on each: you need social,
commercial and institutional balances at any level of complexity that are
broadly in line with each other. Low complexity societies have relatively
simple patterns of social ordering, as measured by e.g. division of labour,
life stage segmentation and so forth. The UK has shifted from needing 4
dimensions to classify social opinions by type to 2SDs (1945), to over 120
in 1980, before the idea of 'type' broke down and people became unboxed and
roved between types. Similar things can be said about economic institutions
(subsistence or hunter gatherer to dotconning the venture capitalists) and
about institutions (village counsel to pre-sherpa agenda shaping for G7
talks-about-talks w.r.t new institutional development.)
Over-reliance on one arm creates e.g. Asian collapse of 1998: duff
institutions for scale. World Bank show that Africa, Asia were a few
hundred dollars per capita different in 1950: SS Africa is now poorer than
it was then, Asia several thousand dollars per cap richer in real terms.
Difference from econometric fit: institutional adequacy.
It may well be that Kuhn's hard-to-spot-in-the-record paradigm shifts are
in fact the consequence of tensions being relieved in one of these arms, to
be taken up in another. We get commerce 'right' in the 1980s and then have
to cope wit the institutional and social impacts that follow. I suspect
that learning spontaneous how to organise complexity has been the limiting
factor - see (whoops- author?) Corruption and the Decline of Rome for an
e.g. of stasis in a society that did not need to reinvent itself.
What must be true if this model is true is that combinatorial complexity
increases greatly when advances are made. Guesses are that we are trying
out 100 combinatorial experiments in commerce today for every one that we
tried in 1970. One can probably add a zero to that for 2010 and another for
2020. Finding our way through this is already hard for the less skilled. It
may become a major issue for all, with the prospects of e.g. paralysed
institutions. Widgets - knowledge engineering, AI, soap operas with covert
guidance - may help us through this. The new scarce factor of production is
neither land, labour nor capital, but the ability to surface, evaluate and
exercise adaptive options. That is why capital falls like a misguided
pancake on any-thing or -one who seems to have a clue what they are doing.
_______________________________
Oliver Sparrow
Frank A. Adrian
Of course I comprehend. It's still a question of cost in the end. You
choose to write your software to run on hardware that makes programming
difficult. You (or whomever hires you) pays the price in substantially
higher development costs. As long as your managers are clueless about the
money that the hardware folk suck away from them, you can take that
position. You and most of the world still thinks that hardware is
expensive. Wake up. Hardware's cheap and becoming ubiquitous. Software is
the tough part. As long as you think that one should subjugate software
construction to what current hardware runs well, rather than looking at what
makes programming easier, you're part of the problem, not part of the
solution. Wake up and smell the bits.
faa