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A journal of sorts to record Jonathan Sturm's (and others') thoughts and observations on things worth thinking About. Feedback welcome, but be aware that unless you prominently say you want your communication kept private, I may publish it. |
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Tuesday, 10 April 2007
Ray Sutton wrote:
Hello, Jonathan......
Last evening, I spent some time looking through your various posts, and enjoying the reading. I can't help wondering why there doesn't seem to be anything since May of 2006. I hope all is well with you and yours.
Ray.
Well Ray, the short answer to that is The Git has been very busy. But I hear your call :-)
On with the farce...
-oOo-
A little over a year ago, The Git was on his first holiday in many a long year. SWMBO said it was ten years since we took a holiday together and now we know the reason why. After almost three weeks away, we came back to catching up on all the things left undone while we were away. It took several months to do so and as I write this, the garden is finally in the low-maintenance state I planned for it two years ago. The Git last wrote that we were visiting our friends Margot and Mike Miller in Brisbane and that Margot was dying of cancer. She died less than two weeks after our return home, so we were glad that we had managed to visit before her final hours of life.
-oOo-
The year has been a busy one and somewhat fraught, with the company The Git worked for (XYZ) AAAing BBBing PPPers on behalf of the g[censored]ment coming under a sustained attack by members of the state parliament, BBBing PPPer representative groups and the local press. While the work we did was criticised, the staff were all offered positions doing exactly the same things as employees of government -- same shit, different toilet. Several people involved at the top were all charged under the Crimes Act for... making a contract with the government binding any future government to honour the contract. The Git wonders if the contract he signed binding the government to pay him regardless of change of government is similarly illegal. We will find out in the fullness of time. There's not a lot can be said about these events at this time, but it's history in the making.
-oOo-
The aforementioned reached crisis point to coincide with The Git's Philosophy and Cosmology exam. He asked for a deferment on the grounds of the crisis, but was refused on the grounds he might be trying to cheat. The exam was a "seen" exam; that is, the questions had been handed out weeks before. Despite being totally stressed and unable to study, or think very well, The Git gained a Credit. This was due as much to the excellence of Dr Richard Corry's abilities as a lecturer and philosopher as The Git's abilities. Thanks for the challenging questions, Richard :-)
The previous semester was in some respects rather worse. The Git learned that he can't spell his own name (apparently it's Jonothon rather than Jonathan), misused the word apologetics (it's apologests) and he foolishly believes that St Thomas Aquinas was responsible for the fusion of Christianity with Aristotelian philosophy. The Scientist teaching the Philosophy of Science and Religion class says it's Saint Augustine.
-oOo-
Mat Lemmings visited the Gits this summer and a wonderful time was had by all. He complimented The Git on his more philosophical Blogs even though he found them difficult to follow on occasion. Philosophy is difficult. The Git does his best to simplify the concepts, but as Einstein once said, while explanations should be as simple as possible, they must nevertheless be adequate to explain whatever it is that needs explanation.
It's quite a while since The Git wrote about Things Computerish and the last few weeks have thrown up some computerish issues that might be amusing to read about. Possibly even enlightening in places. Some time ago, The Git was working for a private company contracted to the state government. Let's call the company the Tasmanian Clever Clogs to anonimise it. When he was first employed, there were five computers; four in a Windows Workgroup and one Mac connected to the Internet via modem. One of the Workgroup machines was being used to run FileMaker Pro as the server for everyone else accessing the database. The less said about the backup system the better as The Git hadn't been employed to look after the "professionally" set up system. That person, let's call him Dave Dickhead to preserve his anonymity, had told the staff that he wrote FileMaker Pro! Dave Dickhead lasted all of two weeks after The Git arrived, but that's another story and nothing whatsoever to do with the computer system.
Well, to cut a long story short, there was a backup failure and FileMaker ran terribly slowly. The workstation it was running on was an older Celeron with a mere 256 MB of RAM. Fortunately the data loss was not catastrophic. Only two days' data entry had been lost, though the time it took to recreate that data emphasised the need for proper protection. The Git set about creating a decent small business network based on Microsoft Small Business Server 2003. There's them that would scoff at this, but it packs plenty of small business functionality for not much more than $AU500 with six licences, two more than we needed. Exchange Server is part of the package and allowed the boss and myself to share our Calendars (diaries) so the staff could enter appointments for us when we weren't there. He could synch his Calendar with his PDA.
FileMaker was set to run on the server as a service using AlwaysUp, a useful utility that converts EXE and BAT files to run as Windows services. If the server crashes, or FileMaker generated an error AlwaysUp can automatically restart the service, or server. A neat little utility.
The budget The Git was given didn't stretch to a proper server, but it did allow for a second hard disk used to create a disk mirror of the data and operating system. Actually, the first mirrored disk created went off-site as extra insurance and the third hard disk purchased remained as the mirror. If you aren't familiar with disk mirroring, it is a continuous, virtually instantaneous copying of changes from the primary disk to a second hard disk. It's also known as RAID 1. In this instance, I used Server 2003's software RAID. On my friend Sue's home machine, the motherboard has RAID built in. RAID 1 slows down disk writes, but it speeds up disk reads. It's a very cheap insurance against hardware failure. Not so according to Professor Stinkjet! He wrote:
The sensible thing to do on a computer that is on a local network is to cross save ie so that each computer has a copy of the important files of each of the other computers. It is also the cheapest solution as you only need a smallish additional HDD in each of the computers on the network - $100 does it.
The first thing to note about Professor Stinkjet's solution is that it is not necessarily any cheaper than The Git's. If you did need to purchase a two-port RAID card, it would cost a little more -- around $AU40. The main advantages of RAID are that your backup is always up-to-date and verified, and you don't have to think about it. Professor Stinkjet's use of Windows Copy does not verify that your copied files are identical. You also have to think about doing it. Not a good idea when you can't think very well. You also have multiple copies of files lying around and it's all too easy for someone to be editing the wrong copy without thinking. The next backup overwrites the changed file with old information.
A slight change to what Professor Stinkjet does would work very well if you can be sure that the wrong files won't be accidentally edited. rReplikator is software that will mirror to a number of possible destinations. The Git hasn't tried it yet, but it certainly looks interesting.
The real advantage to the RAID solution became obvious shortly after Tasmanian Clever Clogs was taken over by the government. Let's anonymise the name of the department to protect the guilty and call it Justkidding. The secondary plex in the RAID died, so The Git dutifully logged a fault report with the IT Helpdesk. The response to the situation was somewhat tardy. By the time thirty days had passed, The Git asked if he could replace the dead drive only to be told in no uncertain terms that the server no longer belonged to the company, it was government property and to keep his hands off. On the Git's day off, a member of the Justkidding IT staff visited the server. The following morning, 34 days after reporting the fault, The Git arrived at work to discover that the secondary plex had died.
Of course the disk mirror was only the first line of defence. Each month, the server created a full Windows Backup across the network to The Git's computer overnight. This backup file was in turn backed up to DVD using Nero since it filled about three DVDs. Each of these backups were, of course, verified to ensure that what was in the backup was identical to the original files. Each night apart from the night of the monthly full backup, the server made a differential backup to The Git's computer and these were written to five rewritable DVDs, one for each day of the week. Neither the monthly backups, nor the differentials were left on the premises in case of disaster. If these terms are confusing, Wikipedia has a useful explanation.
The Git would have preferred tape to DVD, but the office budget didn't stretch that far. Of course Professor Stinkjet as a member of that august élite, the Scientific High Priesthood, has a different opinion:
NEVER use tape, not for anything... As for reliability of tapes - the tape drives must also be considered with regard to reliability and that is where you will probably find a greater weakness. I checked the tape drive that the local pharmacy was using and found that it was not actually working and probably hadn't been for some time - they had been religiously backing up - it took 20+ minutes to do it - every day but had no actual backup data at all - no warnings on screen etc. The drive was Seagate, I don't know what era the tapes were or what the format was but they had it installed in about 2002-3. I through it and the tapes into their waste paper basket to demonstrate clearly what I thought of it. They now use Apacer Flash drives for backup - very fast and reliable and the No.2 in the shop carries them on a strap around her neck!! The Seagate service man sounded bored and lonely - go figure.
A quick Google search turned up the relative Bit Error Rates (BER) for various devices -- not found in regular data sheets from the manufacturers, but nevertheless available. Memory sticks have a BER of <1 in 1013. Hard disk drives vary between <1 in 1012 and <1 in 1015. Tape's BER is <1 in 1017. Now what do these numbers actually mean? When one of these devices accesses data, from time to time it fails to read a bit. When that happens, it tries a second time. When that fails, it accesses extra data (ECC) stored to restore the missing value. When that fails, it goes into a proprietary routine that enables recovery in most instances. When every attempt fails, you see an Unrecoverable Read Error and know that you have a real problem! BER expresses the average number of bit reads between Unrecoverable Read Errors. These BERs then tell us that tape is about 100 times more reliable than the most reliable hard disks and 10,000 times more reliable than USB memory sticks.
This doesn't mean you should throw out your USB memory sticks, especially since they cost around $AU35/GB. They are useful for small amounts of data. When you have hundreds of gigabytes of data and a legal requirement to archive data, then tape is still very much a no brainer. Yes, you will read about its imminent demise, but tape's demise has been imminent for the twenty years The Git has been involved with computers. It costs around $AU0.16/GB for the tape and more than a $AU1,000 for a tape drive. A lot more for a tape library. You'll have to do your own sums to decide what to do. As for speed, at the high end writing to tape is faster than writing from one hard disk to another. That's only "slow" if you're a professor.
Of course Professor Stinkjet's client's problem was that he had failed to check whether verification was turned on. Turning it off meant that no error messages would be registered by the backup software when verification failed. Not a very bright thing to have done. Note that The Git is not suggesting that Professor Stinkjet turned it off, but he certainly hadn't bothered to check that it was turned on. Very unprofessional! Complaining that tape in the circumstances described is unreliable is like saying Rolls Royce motor cars are unreliable because they fail when the oil isn't kept to the correct level, tyres and brake pads are not replaced etc.
Back to the main saga. Day one without the server was pretty much a washout from our clients' point of view. When they phoned with queries relating to information in our database, we had to tell them we'd call back when our server was back up. For some reason it took the government IT "professionals" part way through the second day to finally arrive with our new server (a compact HP desktop with no room for a disk mirror). About a week later, they arrived with a tape drive and enough tapes for a week's backups. It took another two, or three weeks for more tapes to arrive. Since we were required to send each day's backup tapes to the IT department, that meant a week or two without backups. Not really. Even though he wasn't authorised to do so, The Git returned to his old backup regime.
We have since moved into one of the government's offices with our new colleagues and The Git hasn't even clapped eyes on the servers. Last week the computer network became infested with W32Spybot turning the network something more like a newt-work. When the IT staff arrived at The Git's desk with their disinfestation software, he tried to ask why they weren't disconnecting his machine from the network and waiting until they had tested every machine to be certain the trojan was vanquished. "That would take far too much time", The Git was peremptorily informed. Hmmm... The disinfestation software from Symantec, whose antivirus had failed to detect the virus in the first place, worked on some machines, but not all. Those not successfully disinfected appear to have immediately begun reinfesting the other computers on the network when they were rebooted. So it goes. The "professional" IT staff were into their third day of visiting and revisiting computers when The Git left work for his Easter holiday.
The main thing to bear in mind from all of the above is that prevention is far better than cure, but even the best preventive strategies will not prevent disaster. But they will reduce the pain. Don't rely on luck. Or the Professor Stinkjets of this world.
Here's another Professor Stinkjet gem:
here are two identical Emails written in Outlook Express and Outlook HTML format. They are identical in appearance. First, the Email:-
How about Hindu Brahmins as a comparison?
Benny
RKS:
According to a cursory search of the web, all Indian born Nobel Prize winners have been Brahmin, about six in all.
RobertNext, Outlook Express's HTML Code:-
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.3790.1218" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Georgia><FONT face=Arial color=#000080 size=2>How about Hindu
Brahmins as a comparison?<BR> <BR>Benny</FONT><BR> <BR><FONT
color=#800000>RKS:<BR>According to a cursory search of the web, all Indian born
Nobel Prize winners have been Brahmin, about six in
all.<BR> <BR>Robert</FONT></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
Next, Outlook's HTML Code for the same EMail:-
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3c.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
<HTML xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40" xmlns:v =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content=Word.Document name=ProgId>
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.3790.1218" name=GENERATOR>
<META content="Microsoft Word 10" name=Originator><LINK[ The remainder of the 2,271 lines of code deleted by The Git! ]
This is why I wouldn't use Outlook unless I was marched to an Outlook computer at the end of a shotgun - it is absolute rubbish (superior for networking, but for stand alone computers it is a waste of space - and has a delicate one file archive making it unreliable for archiving Emails).
The Git was about as interested in "the absolutely disgusting HTML code spewed out by Outlook" as he would be by someone informing him that Britney Spears has two tits. The Git informed Professor Stinkjet that:
Outlook Express isn't a MAPI client and therefore cannot connect to Exchange Server
Our employers usually want us to access our internal email, only available via Exchange Server
Access our voicemail via Exchange Server
Share Calendars via Exchange Server
Access common files via Exchange Server public folders
Share Contacts files
and so on
Therefore we have no choice but to use a MAPI client. In any event, if Professor Stinkjet wanted to compare Outlook to anything, it should be Lotus Notes, or Novell Groupwise, Exchange's main rivals. Of course Outlook Express is useless on "a standalone computer" since there would be no other computers to send email to, or receive email from. Outlook, on the other hand, does not need a network in order to use its Calendar (diary), Notes, Contacts, or Journal (for simple project management). Needless to say, Professor Stinkjet was having none of this.
You ignored the central point of my message - the absolutely disgusting HTML code spewed out by Outlook. This message that you have sent is surprisingly clean and quite unlike the usually repeated crap one gets from Outlook though I note the font, font size, and font colour are set for carriage return vis:
<DIV><FONT face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12px"></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
Totally pointless waste of space, and Outlook is good at wasting lots of space!!....
BTW There are two separate issues - the HTML code, which can be objectively verified, and my opinion of Outlook, which is just my opinion - everyone has opinions. You seem to have confounded the two.
The problem here, of course, is the HTML Professor Stinkjet is quoting didn't come from Outlook. The Git fired Outlook 2000 up to see what the HTML code generated by Professor Stinkjet's email looked like, though he never sent the email anywhere. Somewhat unsurprisingly, OL2K generated something remarkably similar to that generated by Outlook Express. Maybe there is some common code base between them. So how did Professor Stinkjet generate the "objectively verifiable" 2,271 lines of HTML in Outlook? He didn't of course. It's part of his usual bullshit. The giveaways are the last and third from last lines quoted above. The HTML was generated by Microsoft Word, an application notorious for generating "absolutely disgusting HTML". So how did Professor Stinkjet react to being sprung?
OK, you have answered the original query - someone used MSWord to generate the code - the still most probably used Outlook to generate and send the Email as one can opt to use MSWord as an editor. You accuse me of bullshitting, but then go on this convoluted rave before focusing back in on the original question. Your Outlook code is longer than Outlook express by around a 2:1 ratio... [Emphasis The Git's]
Well, The Git hasn't sent Professor Stinkjet any Outlook code since November 2005 when he shifted to the Mac for email! Stinkjet actually complained about this elsewhere in his email.
Why didn't you sent the code from Outlook 2000 instead of just telling me about it? Why not sent the Email you made?
Maybe it's because The Git couldn't be bothered setting up an email account in Outlook at home and he couldn't be bothered driving to work to do so during the Easter Holiday. If Professor Stinkjet is too lazy, or too stupid to "objectively verify" the code generated by Outlook for himself, he shouldn't complain that The Git never sent the code he generated to "objectively verify" Stinkjet's claims. Who might this mysterious "someone" be that "used MSWord to generate the code"? Could it be another High Priest of Science with a pathological hatred for philosophers and logic? John Hunter perhaps, who claims everything on this website is a pack of lies? The truly bizarre aspect of this is that the only reason the Professor received any HTML email from the Git is because Entourage's default for replying is to use the formatting of the incoming email. When The Git originates email he uses plain text.
To summarise what we have here, uninvited, Professor Stinkjet sent The Git an HTML email complaining about The Git's Outlook's "stinky" HTML.
Stinkjet's email could have been expressed in a 2kb plain text email and an offer of sending the offending code if requested. Standard Netiquette obviously doesn't apply when you are a highly respected member of the Scientific Priesthood. In this instance, The Git's reply would also have been plain text, rather than being "offensive Outlook HTML". If Stinkjet doesn't want to receive "offensive Outlook HTML", why send HTML emails in the first place?
Stinkjet says that The Git seems incapable of telling the difference between Stinkjet's opinion and what Stinkjet refers to as "objectively verifiable". This is true since "objectively verifiable" clearly has a different meaning to Stinkjet than the contents of The Oxford English Dictionary and doubtless many other dictionaries of the English language.
When Stinkjet is found out, he insists that it was "somebody" else who had claimed that Outlook had created the 2,173 lines of offending code.
"Objectively verifiable" in Stinkjet's case clearly means: "That which cannot be verified or proved to be true, authentic, accurate, or real".
Here's what Tom Syroid and Bo Leuf had to say about Outlook 2000 in their first class O'Reilly book:
TIP # 45 Message Formats and Message Size
Few people realize that message format has a tremendous effect on message size. Plain Text messages are much smaller than messages created in RTF or HTML. For example, one 50-line message in Plain Text format (no attachments) occupies 1 KB of hard disk space. The same message in HTML occupies 8 KB. So the size of Plain Text messages alone is good reason for using this message format unless you really need the capabilities of HTML or MS-RTF.
Unsolicited Advice
So which editor should you use? And which message format? We'll offer our recommendation, developed from many years of email correspondence and far too many hours wrestling with the inner workings of Outlook.
We suggest using Outlook as your default editor, and Plain Text as your default message format. In our opinion, this serves as the best daily working combination, while still leaving numerous options open for those situations that demand the formatting options found in HTML. We do not recommend the use of MS-RTF in anything but a closed Exchange Server environment -- it is quirkyy and has unexpected consequences when used in conjunction with non-Microsoft email programs.
There are several obvious (and a few not quite so obvious) benefits that result from the Outlook editor/Plain Text combination. They are:
The Outlook editor is more than good enough for everyday correspondence. It demands fewer resources than Word, and is a capable editor.
Plain Text delivers a smaller message footprint than HTML or MS-RTF, and by using it for daily correspondence alleviates the "Can they read this?" question. When you think about it, very few messages really demand the formatting characteristics of HTML. As an added bonus, most email power-users appreciate the use of Plain Text.
When circumstances dictate, Outlook's actions menu allows you to easily compose a message in HTML or MS-RTF (see Figure 5-2). This same menu also allows you to use the Word editor on a per-message basis (New Mail Message Using - Microsoft Word). The only drawback here is that if you're using Plain Text, and want to create a message in HTML with Word, you'll have to switch your default format first-which is really a small price to pay for the flexibility you'll gain.
So there you have it. You know the options available for editors, and you have the knowledge needed to make an educated choice about which message format to use.
That's Tom and Bo's opinion. The Git agrees. What else does The Git's subjective opinion to say about Outlook? It gets the job(s) done, but it's riddled with inconsistencies and saddled with an often illogical interface. Its help file is inadequate, and Tom and Bo's book is indispensable for finding out how to do things that are not part of one's day-to-day use of Outlook. Given his druthers, The Git would prefer either for Outlook to be thoroughly revamped, or the MAPI interface be opened up so that competition would supply a better Exchange client.
On with the farce...
(Just in case you learnt no Latin, the above translates to: Bullshit Baffles Brains)
Excerpt From The Encyclopedia Of Philosophy:
"PHILOSOPHY. The Greek word sophia is ordinarily translated into English as "wisdom," and the compound philosophia, from which "philosophy" derives, is translated as "the love of wisdom." But sophia had a much wider range of application than the modern English "wisdom." Wherever intelligence can be exercised -- in practical affairs, in the mechanical arts, in business -- there is room for sophia; Homer used it to refer to the skill of a carpenter (Iliad XV, 412). Furthermore, whereas modern English draws a fairly sharp distinction between the search for wisdom and the attempt to satisfy intellectual curiosity, Herodotus used the verb philosophein in a context in which it means nothing more than the desire to find out (History I, 30). Briefly, then, philosophia etymologically connotes the love of exercising one's curiosity and intelligence rather than the love of wisdom. Although philosophers have often sought to confine the word "philosophy" within narrower boundaries, in popular usage it has never entirely lost its original breadth of meaning."
Note the "exercise of curiosity". You can only be curious, that is eager to learn about things of which you are ignorant. Almost two and a half millennia ago, Aristotle codified the terms for rational discourse (discussion of a subject at length):
Aristotle's Laws of Thought are fundamental logical rules, with a long tradition in the history of philosophy and collectively prescribe how a rational mind must think. To break any of the laws of thought (for example, to contradict oneself) is to be irrational:
The law of identity states that P = P. Any reflexive relation upholds the law of identity; when discussing equality, the fact that "P is P" is a tautology. For example, a cat is a cat.
The law of non-contradiction (paradoxically also called the law of contradiction) states, in the words of Aristotle, that "one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time". In the symbolism of propositional logic, this is expressed as:
not(P and not-P)
The law of the excluded middle states that a proposition is either true or false. As one of the laws of classical logic, it can be symbolically expressed as:
P or not-P.
Derived from the Latin principle "tertium non datur", it is literally translated as "a third is not given."
These three tautologies (necessary truths) are foundational (fundamental) to mathematics and all rational discourse, not to mention computers. There is no way (that Pompous Gits know of) to rationally deny them. Denial of the Laws of Thought is, by definition, irrational. This does not mean that people who purport to be rational do not think irrationally, consciously, or unconsciously.
Professor Stinkjet wrote:
Jon,
I'm wondering if philosophers or philosophies consider any science to be built up from fundamental 'atoms' (of the ancient Greek variety)?
For instance, it would be logical if quantum physics began with the most fundamental particle and built up from there. But it doesn't. It would be logical if biology began with a definition of and example of the most fundamental element of life. But it doesn't and it still hasn't solved that mystery.
It would be logical for Evolution to begin with the first thing to evolve, but it doesn't, or for Cosmology to begin with the first moment in time, but it doesn't do that either.
They all start somewhere in the middle. Indeed, they all started on the human scale, the human measurement, the human senses, and worked out from there toward something fundamental. But none have ever been reached that I am aware of.
Maybe you know of one or more that would qualify as fundamental or that started at other than the human scale or from the feeble human senses.
Robert
Now it seems fairly obvious that enterprises "all start somewhere in the middle". For example an architect doesn't begin the design of a building by drawing bricks, or footings; he/she conceptualises the spaces needed through sketches before the various foundations are worked out. But The Git was thinking foundational thoughts of a different nature than architecture when this email arrived. He was reading J O Urmson's Philosophical Analysis, an account of the rise and fall of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism. The Git wrote back:
Not that I know of. In general, philosophers accept the discoveries of science as the starting point for their thinking... Some fundamental truths have been reached, however. What makes you think that fundamental truths are not true?
And Professor Stinkjet responded:
You'll have to give me an example of a fundamental truth that has been reached (in science or philosophy). Science doesn't generally deal in 'truths' as such. Essentially, no scientific position can not be challenged by new observations, data, etc.
It is not logical that something can be both a 'solid' particle and an ephemeral wave at the same time, and students still grapple with the concept as it is not logical. Extending the particle/wave duality to protons and neutrons and even to entire atoms defies the imagination.
It may be logical to observe that if subatomic particles are real then one should be able to imagine them or to imagine analogs of them. Neither proves to be true - analogies can only account for some properties of particles but not all their properties (eg their particle wave duality and the nature of the Schrodinger wave equation) at the same time.
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of quantum physics. Particle wave duality does not state that electrons/photons/protons etc are simultaneously particles and waves. It states that our instruments and theories can demonstrate their particle nature, or their wave nature, but not both simultaneously. This is Bohr's Principle of Complementarity. Niels Bohr stated:
There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.
This is basically what The Copenhagen Interpretation is all about. Quantum physics is fundamentally an anti-realist doctrine. It does not, however violate any of the Laws of Thought.
<aside>Scientific Realism is the commonsense conception that while recognising scientific methods are fallible and that most scientific knowledge is approximate, we are justified in accepting the most secure findings of scientists "at face value." Consider, for example, cookery book realism -- the doctrine that food really exists and you can cook it; that the books you buy about cookery from the bookshop tend to get it approximately right about the appearance, flavour, preparation methods and so forth; and that the cooked food has these properties largely independently of our theories about them. That's a pretty clear doctrine, but it's so commonsensical that it doesn't seem to have any particular philosophical import. The question of what makes the analogous doctrine about science a philosophical doctrine and therefore debatable, interesting food for thought. </aside>
Professor Stinkjet again:
I think you'll find that light can be described as a particle or a wave, not that light is correctly described as a particle and wave. The wave equation can not always be used to describe the interaction of light with matter, such as in the photoelectric effect, nor can light always be described as a particle, such as the interference effect. Thus it is not true to say that both your propositions are true as there are conditions in which the 'particle equation' can not be employed, such as when observing the interference patterns of two intersecting waves of light and conditions in which the 'wave equation' can not be used, such as when observing the photoelectric effect.
Note the not-so-subtle swapping of "and" to "or" here to make it look as though The Git said what Professor Stinkjet said and vice versa. There's also an assumption of ignorance -- that The Git is ignorant of the photoelectric effect. It's true that Einstein received his Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect that led to the discovery of the photon. Unfortunately for Einstein and for Professor Stinkjet, it is widely acknowledged that this work was badly flawed. The photoelectric effect is better explained by the wave nature of light than its particle nature according to Peter Atkins (among others).
For some reason, The Git's references to truth had upset our Professor. He wrote: "I didn't mention truth in my question" and The Git replied:
Did you not? "For instance, it would be logical if quantum physics began with the most fundamental particle and built up from there. But it doesn't..." Logic deals with truth. Science is (supposedly) logical and therefore deals with what is true and what is not true.
For example, science makes the truth claim that atoms consist of electrons, neutrons and protons that determine their chemical and physical properties. Water consists of atoms of oxygen combined with two atoms of hydrogen. Oxygen is characterised by the Atomic Number 8 (8 protons) and Hydrogen the Atomic Number 1 (1 proton). Science makes the truth claim that if an atom has an atomic number not equal to 8, then it cannot be oxygen. Science makes the truth claim that if an atom has an atomic number not equal to 1, then it cannot be hydrogen. If you believe that science does not make these truth claims, you are going to have to give me a reference.
From this point onward, Professor Stinkjet's claims became increasingly bizarre.
For instance hydrogen has no neutrons. There are no atoms without protons but the possibility remains. An atom made up of antiparticles is also a possibilities as is, for instance, an atom with a nucleus made up of pions.
The chemical properties of a compound is determined not only by its atomic constituents but by its purity, concentration, temperature and pressure. I was just reading about the exotic compounds that exist deep in the Earth where temperatures and pressures are quite different from the earth's surface. These compounds exist only at those great temperatures and pressures. At a low enough temperature, gases become liquids and so on.
But hydrogen does not transform into silicon, or iron into gold.
It is not a truth statement that Oxygen has the properties you mention (esp. atomic number) but, rather, that an element that has those properties is called 'oxygen'. This is not the same as truth regarding oxygen but, rather, a naming convention ie that if a thing has certain properties we give it a certain name (in the case of atomic elements, we name each atomic number).
From the Wikipedia:
Oxygen was first described by Michał Sedziwój, a Polish alchemist and philosopher in the late 16th century. Sedziwój thought of the gas given off by warm nitre (saltpeter) as "the elixir of life".
Oxygen was more quantitatively discovered by the Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele some time before 1773, but the discovery was not published until after the independent discovery by Joseph Priestley on August 1, 1774, who called the gas dephlogisticated air (see phlogiston theory). Priestley published discoveries in 1775 and Scheele in 1777; consequently Priestley is usually given the credit. Both Scheele and Priestley produced oxygen by heating mercuric oxide.
Scheele called the gas 'fire air' because it was the only known supporter of combustion. It was later called 'vital air' because it was and is vital for the existence of animal life.
The gas was named by Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, after Priestley's publication in 1775, from Greek roots meaning "acid-former". As noted, the name reflects the then-common incorrect belief that all acids contain oxygen.
The concept of atomic number was not used until the 20th Century! The above all predates the 19th Century.
It is not possible, then, that in another universe oxygen could have a different atomic number. It is possible, however, that some other element has chemical properties similar to that of oxygen in our universe.
In science, one can't prove a negative. I'm not aware of science making the truth statements that you claim - it is beholden on you to give an example from science that these claims regarding truth are valid.
The Moon is not made of green cheese. Is Professor Stinkjet saying that the moon landings did not establish this as a true proposition?
I could say that all science is based on a belief in God and then claim that it is up to you to show that this is not true. Science does not work that way - science starts with evidence for a position which can then be refuted. We don't start with evidence against a position - never!!
The preSocratic Greeks used evidence that the Earth was spherical to refute the belief that the Earth was flat: ships gradually disappearing over the horizon, the shadow cast by the Earth on the Moon's surface. The Phlogiston Theory of heat held that all flammable materials contain phlogiston, a substance without colour, odour, taste, or weight that was liberated upon burning. Once burnt, the "dephlogisticated" substance was held to be in its "true" form, the calx. There was never any evidence for this, which was why the theory fell of its own weight, so to speak. The theory of heat that supplanted phlogiston had its genesis just because of evidence against the Phlogiston Theory.
Science does not make a truth statement about atomic number and element. It names each of the atomic numbers eg 1=Hydrogen. The name of an element with an atomic number of one is Hydrogen. It does not follow that Hydrogen has an atomic number of one because the statement implies a pre-existence of hydrogen which is then assigned properties.
So, prior to the Atomic Number Theory, hydrogen and its properties did not exist. Hmmm...
Although some elements names are derived from names of substances that happen to have the same atomic number eg Gold and so on, the convention is to name the atomic number. This becomes clear when there is a dispute, such as an isotope of an element having the same mass and properties as another element. Should we then consider these two elements as variations of each other, say with one having a neutron in place of a proton but otherwise the same? No, the atomic number defines the naming convention.
Thus science does not make a truth claim that hydrogen has an atomic number of one but, rather, that an element having an atomic number of one is to be called hydrogen.
BTW you still haven't come up with a truth statement which is actually true. The only statement you have provided is false.
Let's see: Aristotle's three Laws of Thought are propositions (that is either true, or false). Atoms consist of electrons, neutrons and protons that determine their chemical and physical properties (that is either true, or false). Water consists of atoms of oxygen combined with two atoms of hydrogen (that is either true, or false). Professor Stinkjet's responses:
Hydrogen is an atom and it consists of no neutrons.
This had The Git nonplussed. "Consists of" means "to have as its constituent substance or elements". As Shakespeare put it in Twelfth Night: " Does not our liues consist of the foure Elements? And. Faith so they say, but I thinke it rather consists of eating and drinking". What the hell are "no neutrons" when they are at home? Eureka!:
when a boron-11 atom fuses with a hydrogen atom the result is three helium atoms and energy, but no radioactive waste:
* The fuel (boron and hydrogen) is not radioactive.
* The reaction product (helium) is not radioactive.
* The reaction releases no neutrons.
It is true that the hydrogen-boron reaction releases no neutrons, but as fusion progresses a greater number of helium atoms are created and occasionally a boron atom will fuse with a helium instead of a hydrogen. This produces a (non-radioactive) nitrogen atom and a neutron. However, this reaction releases very little energy and so the neutron is not the same as the high energy neutrons produced by fission or deuterium-tritium fusion. These low-energy neutrons can create a small amount of short-lived radioactive materials, but these materials decay so quickly that it would be safe to enter a room containing a focus fusion device seconds after it is turned off.
[Emphasis The Git's]
So there we have it; "no neutrons" are helium atoms and we can render Prof Stinkjet's statement as "Hydrogen is an atom and it consists of helium atoms". Prof Stinkjet again:
Given without qualification, one uses an elements name one is always referring to the periodic table listed variation (protium).
If you check a Periodic Table, you'll see that hydrogen has an atomic mass of 1.00794. (1.00797 in Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary, p443). The atomic mass of protium is 1.007825. Why the difference? The term "hydrogen" refers to a class of atoms possessing a single proton: protium, deuterium, tritium... with 0, 1, 2... neutrons respectively. The Earth's atmosphere, oceans and crust contain a very large amount of protium, a much smaller proportion of deuterium and a very tiny trace of tritium since the latter is unstable. Thus the atomic mass of hydrogen, since it consists of atoms of protium, deuterium and tritium, includes neutrons, as well as protons.
That is a load of rubbish. Neutrons are HEAVIER than protons. By your masses above we get 1.00794-1.007825=0.000115. Are you saying that that is the mass of a neutron??? The atomic mass of protium is 1.007825032, deuterium is 2.014101778. Perhaps your periodic table was compiled by a philosopher...
The Periodic Table was most certainly not compiled by The Git, so it's not "his". It's compiled by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; it's close to certainty that the IUPAC is not "a philosopher". Is the fact that the atomic weight of hydrogen is a weighted average that hard to understand? ((0.99985*1.00794)+(0.0015*2.0140))/2. Prof Stinkjet again:
Science doesn't generally deal in 'truths'
Fairly obviously this would be the case if Professor Stinkjet were the arbiter of scientific truth! Fortunately, this is not the case. Science consists of a rather large number of propositions. Propositions are either true, or false (see the law of the excluded middle above). For example, F=ma is a proposition. It is either true, or it is false regardless of our belief. Belief is subject to revision, not truth. If F=ma is not a proposition, then it must be one of the other kinds of statements one can make: a question, a command, or exclamation for example. Buggered if I can make sense of F=ma as a question, command, or exclamation. In Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary, p1003, F=ma is given as the "Definition, or Defining Equation" of force.
The proposition f=ma is not always true, if we are to use true and false specification. For relativistic speeds and for masses with the density approaching that of a black hole the equation is no longer true. Thus a blanket "is true" or "is false" can not be applied as the equation is considered "a reasonable approximation" for most purposes (relativistic equations actually apply to any velocity but the correction given by relativistic equations is diminishingly small for speeds less than a substantial fraction of the speed of light, usually considered to be around 1/10th of c).
So how does this make F=ma false? My Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary states that the unit of force, the Newton is that unit of force required to impart an acceleration of 1 metre/sec2 to a mass of 1 kg. It is true that this equation needs modification if the measuring device and object are travelling at near light speed relative to each other, or the force is due to some extremely massive object. How many bridge and motor car engine designs would benefit from the great complications of the relativistic formulation?
F=ma is of course Newton's Second Law of Motion. The OED defines law in this sense as: "In the sciences of observation, a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present. In the physical sciences, and occasionally in others, called more explicitly law of nature or natural law." From the Wikipedia:
In science, there are a specific number of established scientific laws, or physical laws as they are sometimes called, that are considered absolute and inarguable facts of the physical world. Laws of science may, however, be disproved if new facts or evidence arise to contradict them. A "law" differs from those as hypotheses, theories, postulates, and principles, etc., in that a law is a general statement about nature that is considered proven beyond doubt. Conservative estimates indicate that there are 18 basic physical laws in the universe:
Fluid mechanics
- Archimedes' principle
Force, mass, and inertia
- Kepler's three laws of planetary motion
- Newton's three laws of motion
- Newton's law of universal gravitation
Heat, energy, and temperature
- Newton's law of cooling
- Boyle's law
- Law of conservation of energy
- Joule's first and second law
- The four laws of thermodynamics
Quantum mechanics
[Emphasis The Git's]
- Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
There is an argument against the concept of force, but Stinkjet does not give it. Frank Wilczek on f=ma in Physics Today:
By comparison to modern foundational physics, the culture of force is vaguely defined, limited in scope, and approximate. Nevertheless it survives the competition, and continues to flourish, for one overwhelmingly good reason: It is much easier to work with. We really do not want to be picking our way through a vast Hilbert space, regularizing and renormalizing ultraviolet divergences as we go, then analytically continuing Euclidean Green's functions defined by a limiting procedure, . . . working to discover nuclei that clothe themselves with electrons to make atoms that bind together to make solids, . . . all to describe the collision of two billiard balls. That would be lunacy similar in spirit to, but worse than, trying to do computer graphics from scratch, in machine code, without the benefit of an operating system. The analogy seems apt: Force is a flexible construct in a high-level language, which, by shielding us from irrelevant details, allows us to do elaborate applications relatively painlessly.
The Git is running out of time. To wind up, he has as usual been thinking deeply about thinking. For a philosopher, there are no forbidden questions. When someone makes the proposition "all As are Bs" for example, the philosopher asks him, or herself "are they?". The philosopher then commences to think about As and Bs in their experience, or if their experience is lacking, reading about As and Bs. It's usually not much use paying attention to people not qualified to provide information about As and Bs. Now by qualified, The Git does not mean holding a doctorate, degree, or whatever in a discipline. He means qualified in a much broader sense than that. Let's face it, we all know people holding formal qualifications who are utter dickheads. And most of us know people who just have a knack for understanding things. By qualified, The Git means using information sources, whether people, or particular published sources that have earned one's trust.
Of course you can become lulled into a false sense of security; a once apparently trustworthy source can become obviously untrustworthy. Sadly, that's what happened with Professor Stinkjet. Despite many warnings over many months, he insisted on bullshitting. There's an interesting book on bullshit by Harry Frankfurter.
Believers think of God as ultimate reality, the source or ground of all else, perfect and deserving of worship. This concept of God occurs in both Eastern and Western religions. Some thinkers attribute this to human psychology or sociology. For example, Freud regarded people's belief in God as a psychological need. Marxists say belief in God originates from the capitalist structure of society. In contrast, Believers trace their belief to religious experience, revealed or authoritative texts, and rational reflection.
We can dismiss Freud's argument by pointing out that most men have a psychological need to play hide-the-sausage, yet you would find only idiots believing that this was sufficient grounds for not believing in the existence of the game of hide-the-sausage. There seems to be sufficient evidence for belief in God to have existed for far longer than the notion of Capitalism to also dismiss the Marxist belief. As Robert Winston points out in The Story of God, whether God exists is an open question, but belief in God is certainly real and on that account worth thinking about.
One thing to note about belief in God is that there are two distinct types of Believer: intrinsic and extrinsic. An intrinsic Believer has no choice in their belief; for them it's a given. It makes as much sense to attack them for their belief as it does to complain about the stripiness of zebras. The atheist philosopher George H Smith wrote: "the average believer -- who was persuaded to believe for emotional, not intellectual, reasons -- is impervious to arguments against the existence of a supernatural being, regardless of how meticulous and carefully reasoned these arguments may be". Smith does not state on what grounds he believes that Believers were persuaded to believe. If their belief was merely due to emotional persuasion, he does not explicate the occurrence of martyrs.
It is true that extrinsic believers believe due to persuasion, but it is not apparent that this is entirely due to emotional persuasion. St Thomas Aquinas, Plato, Aristotle and many other thinkers have all relied on rational, rather than emotive argument to persuade people to believe in God. In any case, it is The Git's intention to pursue the rational arguments about God, rather than some supposed average believer's beliefs. He also notes that while Smith claims to be an atheist for entirely rational reasons, he fails to demonstrate that in his book. His non-belief appears to be neither more, nor less arbitrary than the beliefs of those who believe in God's existence.
Philosophers explain the concept of God by drawing inferences from God's relation to the universe and from the claim that God is a perfect being. Perfect-being theology is the more fundamental method. Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, and Christians such as Augustine and Boethius all used perfect-being arguments. The perfect-being argument draws on four basic intuitions:
In varying proportions, these intuitions yield the various concepts of God.
Criticisms of perfect-being theology concentrate on the possibility that the set of divine perfections are not necessarily consistent or unique, and doubts as to the adequacy of human judgment to form coherent concepts of God. Different accounts of perfection yield different accounts of God. Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd held that God would be more perfect lacking some knowledge, while most Christian writers hold that God's perfection requires omniscience.
God's relation to the universe spans a wide range of opinions. Pantheists equate God with the universe. Panentheists say that the universe is a part of God, or is related to Him as body is to soul. Their version of God has the limitations associated with being a person: limited power and limited knowledge. Nevertheless, they argue, being a person is itself a state of perfection. Other philosophers believe that God is wholly different from the universe.
Some philosophers have argued that God created the universe ex nihilo, that is, literally from nothing. Others think that God discovered some pre-existing material and his "creation" consists in gradually improving this material (Plato's myth of the Demiurge in the Timaeus). Deists deny God's providence and believe that after the Creation, the universe has followed its own course. Some philosophers argue that God is not involved in the world and never was.
Despite the jumble, there is a common thread here: the concept of perfection. Philosophers make a logical, or causal connection between God and the universe based on their thoughts about God's perfection.
One version of the First Cause argument goes as follows:
Thomas Aquinas wrote that "everyone gives the name of God" to the First Cause. Actually, he wrote it in Latin, but if The Git wrote what Aquinas actually wrote you would just say: "What a Pompous Git!"
The alternative to First Cause is accepting infinite regress, that virtually all Western philosophers find abhorrent. The problem with infinities is that they create some particularly difficult problems. Hilbert's Hotel, for example, contains an infinite number of rooms. Suppose that all the rooms are occupied and that a new guest arrives. No problem. The new guest is put into Room 1, the occupant of Room 1 is moved to Room 2, the occupant of Room 2 is moved to Room 3 and so on. No problem. Suppose that an infinitely large bus with an infinite number of new guests arrives. Again, no problem. All the guests in the odd numbered rooms can be moved. For any odd-numbered room n, move its occupant into room 2n (moving the occupant of that room n* into 2n*, and so on), thus freeing up the infinitely many odd-numbered rooms.
It was while thinking about infinity and God that The Git thought of another infinity conundrum. The ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle entails the irrational mathematical constant pi. Pi can only expressed as an approximate decimal quantity since there is an infinite number of digits that are apparently non-repeatingly random. Imagine then, a computer calculating pi and feeding its result into a program that translates the digital stream into pixels displayed on a computer monitor. Since the stream of digits is random, we might expect to see "snow". However, since the stream of digital data is infinite, we can also expect that among the images of "snow", we eventually will see every possible combination of pixels on the screen. Every possible combination of pixels on screen must surely include every possible combination of words that have ever been written, or will be written (and in every language, real, or imagined). Perhaps even more excitingly, it will include every movie that has ever been made, or will be made. Some of those movies will certainly include alien pornographic movies made by Zaphod Beeblebrox when he was raising the necessary funds to run for President of the Universe!
But this is getting away from the First Cause argument. It is important to realise that the original arguers for First Cause were not Moderns and did not therefore necessarily mean causality through time. For a modern version, science (natural philosophy) has sociology reducing to psychology which in turn reduces to biology which in turn reduces to chemistry which in turn reduces to physics which in turn reduces to the four fundamental forces that in turn reduce to a single force that came into existence in the Big Bang. We avoid the infinite regress, but at the expense of postulating a First Cause. And what can we say about the Cosmic Instant of the Big Bang? There was no space, no time, no mathematics, no quantum vacuum... in a word... nothing. The Greek philosophers believed that from nothing you cannot derive anything. Is nothing observable, understandable, measurable, detectable, or even believable?
The Git finds himself in partial agreement with Philo of Alexandria, a person who may well, as some believe, have been Jesus. Not everyone believed that Jesus died on a stick on Jerusalem's garbage dump. Philo wrote that God's essence is unreachable for human knowledge, but his existence should be obvious to all (natural theology). Knowledge of God is attained through his powers and, above all, through his Logos ('Word' or 'Reason'), by means of which he stands in relation to what comes after him.
Somehow, Philo's account seems more real than the "scientific" account of what happened in the first microseconds and minutes after the Big Bang. This is especially so when just about every BBT prediction has been discovered to be wrong. A recent discovery is that galaxies that existed before star formation occurred. Perhaps in BBT you don't need stars for galaxy formation!
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge and Keegan Paul. The most comprehensive single source of philosophical thought available on the planet. Be aware that it comes at a pretty high price, both in dollars (~$US5,000) and the concentration to follow some of the logical arguments.
The Story of God, Robert Winston, Random House 2005. A lucid account of the variety of beliefs in God from the perspective of Western thought. Written by one of Britain's best-known scientists with wit and a penchant for surprising the reader.
God Beyond Knowledge, HA Hodges, MacMillan 1979. All the main philosophical arguments for God in one book. Herbert's conclusion is that there is little to choose between well thought out ideas in theology, or science. Easily the best I have read in this field. It is a philosophy text and though clearly written, is intended for philosophers, rather than the general reader. That is, you need to think carefully through the arguments.
History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell, Routledge 2004. A welcome reissue of Russell's 1946 classic text in paperback. Essential reading if only to disagree with some of the conclusions of one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers.
Atheism: The Case Against God, George H Smith, Prometheus 1979. Preacher to the converted.
The Git can notify you by email when a new post is ready. Just email him to be put on the list, or removed if you are on the list and don't want to be. Apologies for the old email address becoming so swamped with spam that it became impossible to monitor adequately.
Thoughts for the week year:
The universe is not to be narrowed down to the limits of the understanding, which has been men's practice up to now, but the understanding must be stretched and enlarged to take in the image of the universe as it is discovered. -- Francis Bacon, Parasceve, Aphorism 4. c.
-oOo-
The emerging picture of microbes as gene-swapping collectives demands a revision of such concepts as organism, species and evolution itself. -- Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese in "Biology's next revolution", Nature v 445 p 369
-oOo-
Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to... The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. -- Harry G. Frankfurt
-oOo-
All argument begins with an assumption, or a set of assumptions; that is, with something you don't dispute. You can, of course, dispute the assumptions at the beginning of your argument, but in that case you are beginning a different argument with another set of assumptions at the beginning of it. And so on ad infinitum.
in other words
Logic is always an 'if...then' process which proceeds from the known to the unknown. But if nothing is known at the beginning of the process, then nothing can ever be known. You can't use logic to generate knowledge from a state of total ignorance.
Current Listening:
The Velvet Underground -- Another View
Frank Zappa -- Chunga's Revenge
Fat Freddy's Drop -- Based on a True Story [don't pass up any opportunity to hear this one]
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