Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, I’ve been hunting around in the dusty sub- sub- basement archives (cough, cough) of the SDA Studios, as a result of which here is The Earliest Known Footage of Comments at Small Dead Animals, from an entry entitled It Pays to be Ignorant, featuring (starting audience right) Kate, as played by Jackie Gleason, followed by Tenebris, played by Frank Fontaine, ET, played by Jayne Mansfield, and (stage right) yours truly, Vitruvius, played by the world’s foremost authority, Prof. Irwin Corey, with a cameo appearance by EBD, delivering the question.
And so it’s over to you, ET, as EBD last asked: could you please provide a link or two to a primer-level essay on semiotics? I mean, I think that, just barely, I sort of understand it, yet you’re a pedagogist: why not provide us with such a link, or create one? I know I’m interested, and clearly EBD is, and I dare say Tenebris too. Now to be clear, I’m not trying to put you on the spot here and now, yet perhaps you could get together with some of your colleagues and work to come up with an explanation of this stuff that is at least partially accessible to the rest of us. Or perhaps make a YouTube video ~ I could perhaps help, perhaps with the software, perhaps even with editorial feedback.
Your Reader Tips are, folks, as always, welcome in the comments.
Michael Goodwin, in the NY Daily News, has a column questioning Obama’s competence. A few comments:
” Which brings us to the heart of the matter: the doubts about Obama himself. His famous eloquence is wearing thin through daily exposure and because his actions are often disconnected from his words. His lack of administrative experience is showing.
His promises and policies contradict each other often enough that evidence of hypocrisy is ceasing to be news. Remember the pledges about bipartisanship and high ethics? They’re so last year.
The beat goes on. Last week, Obama brazenly gave a speech about earmark reform just after he quietly signed a $410 billion spending bill that had about 9,000 earmarks in it. He denounced Bush’s habit of disregarding pieces of laws he didn’t like, so-called signing statements, then issued one himself.
And in an absolute jaw-dropper, he told business leaders, “I don’t like the idea of spending more government money, nor am I interested in expanding government’s role.”
No wonder Americans are confused. Our President is, too. ”
More and more people are questioning both Obama’s competence and the disconnection between his words and his actions. Obama has never had to connect the two and it is interesting watching him either ignore their disconnection or blame his actions on others – Bush, partisanship, etc.
What I think you’ve missed, EBD, is that I’m quite aware that by complaining about people complaining about things they can’t change, I’m complaining about something that I can’t change, yet as you allude to, I am trying to make a contribution to the value of the aggregate force of the endless chattering complaint, as you put it. Plato said that the price good men pay for inattention to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. Of course, Plato was wrong about many things.
Now, ET, I received the slide shows and have viewed them. They are effectively useless for the problem I’m interested in, which is: how to explain to people the notion that it may be the case that, say, matter and energy may not be the alpha and the omega of existence, but rather, that they may be manifestations of some more fundamental and primitive phenomenon, such as “information”, or “interaction”, or “computation”, or cetera.
Here’s one simple example that I’ve found interesting. You can say to people of average knowledge: “How does an orbiting planet know that star is there?”, and often enough the response you will get is “Say, that’s a good question”. It’s terribly sloppy, intellectually, yet now you’ve got them interested in the notion. Whereas, I’ve found that yelling What about rule 30? only works with very peculiar audiences.
I think that it is probably the case that you, ET, cannot properly do that job, in the same sense that I, Vitruvius, cannot properly do the job of explaining ~ to a general audience ~ what I work on; that is to say because (1) we in each case know too much about the domain to be able to remember what it was like to know little, and (2) how can I put this delicately, we may not have a natural tendency to suffer such generalizations graciously.
In other words, you, or rather your field, needs, in my opinion, a populist salesman ~ somebody who actually can and will do a TED Talk ~ just as we in my organization have done the equivalent (not by me) for our work, and you can bloody well tell your colleagues I said so 😉
More ironic weather/AGW news. Driving the Northwest passage to prove it’s melting??
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090314/sc_nm/us_passage_2
vitruvius – I see your point but changing the mindset of people isn’t easy as that mindset is embedded into a societal, economic, political infrastructure.
There’s the classical modernist view of reality, which focuses on discrete particles in kinetic interaction with other discrete particles.
Then there’s the disgraceful, disgusting opposite view, the postmodernist view, which rejects the objective reality of finite particles and insists that reality is ‘only in your perception..(I used to tell my students to try jumping from the 20th floor if they want to test the validity of that idea)..
So, these two perspectives come up with ‘matter’ and ‘energy’ as two different realities.
My focus on a basic process of information generation…is different. These two views of modernism and postmodernism focus on matter and energy as basic forces, whether objective or subjective. Whereas, I say that they are both RESULTS of information generation and NOT its causes. So, my theme turns the whole set of ideas completely around.
As for who can explain this or even spread the word in an attractive and endearing manner – I’ve no idea. We don’t lack for fun and humour; I recall one colleague (and we agree on many themes) who, in front of a packed audience, before he presented his paper, walked off the stage and presented me with a container of tomatoes to throw at him. Ah well. But populist presentations? Hmmm.
Well, there you have it, in your own words: You’ve no idea. You’ve forgotten the relationship between populist and populus. You’re a fan of the free market, yes? The free market includes salesman, no? Else, how would the market know about your product? Now, would you please, ET, mention to your colleagues, that there are at least some of us out here who are interested, and we would really appreciate it if they would come up with some ways to more accessibly relate to us the ideas at hand here. For me? Thanks.
I will echo the plea of Vitruvius, if only to get an adequate foundation for discussion. Conversations with you, ET, seem to spring fully formed from the mind of Zeus. I HATE making presumptions to progress a discussion.
Don’t hate, Tenebris: avoid.
Hate is a waste of energy.
Actually, Tenebris, presumptions are a basic requirement in all discussion. I refer to Aristotle for that view (as well as Peirce – but he was an Aristotelian).
Why? Because we, as human beings, aren’t born with knowledge; we rely on the work of others, long past and elsewhere, for our knowledge base. We exist in a collective, in a ‘community’ of knowledge.
We therefore must presume that their conclusions have some validity. So, when we discuss anything, even if it’s the nature of a molecule or the speed of light or how to measure kinetic force or why a tribal system is hereditary or why swidden economies are matriarchal or why narcissism is incurable… we must rely on the validity of the work of others, as I’m sure that it isn’t the case that each and every one of us has carried out such investigations.
And once again, Tenebris, there’s no need to be insulting. The fact that YOU don’t understand my framework doesn’t mean that you have to suggest that it is unknowable or outside of human understanding. Since there are professionals who use it as a framework for empirical research in biology and computer science and robotics, then obviously, they don’t consider it ‘mythical’ or ‘outside of the human realm’ of thought.
Since it’s been peer reviewed and published, and been awarded a ‘best paper prize’ (in the physics section of all places)..then, possibly, it’s understandable to a few. OK? As Vitruvius suggested – just avoid it, but there’s no need to personally insult me.
Get over it, ET, Tenebris is cool. (How the hell an aspergaian became nurse around here is beyond me. I figured my multiphasic personality inventory would be right out for that job. Yet apparently not. Must be the audience, eh what ?-)
Hey, you know, it’s not that I don’t find semiotics interesting. But otics is twice as interesting.
Gord Tulk: I would really like to know more about this financial exercise you use with your clients to get them to save money. Sounds useful.
Hey, vitruvius, I don’t find Tenebris ‘cool’ but cold and even frozen to different areas of research.
As for nursemaid,hmm, I’d say no. A nursemaid is someone who is attempting to return an unstable system to stability. Your Reader Tips, whether the lectures, the music, the marvellous cartoons, are geared to provoke, destabilize, entertain, and suggest new ways of thought. [You’re an ‘aspie’?…a ‘different cognitive style’ as it’s called.]
Well, that’s enough for me today. Back to my mystery novel.
ET said: “…(I used to tell my students to try jumping from the 20th floor if they want to test the validity of that idea)
My favorite has always been grabbing them by the nose. More immediacy to the lesson, and it has lots of historical precedent from Zen. Hitting them with a stick is good too, but I never seem to have a stick handy.
I for one am looking forward to your threatened powerpoint slides. Just the little bit you’ve talked about today sounds useful.
Have you read any of the work being done on Maxwell’s Demon from the information transfer perspective? Somebody proved the demon couldn’t work using information theory back in the 90’s I think, but lately I seem to remember somebody else saying it can work, also due to information theory. I may have misunderstood the whole thing, being a bone cracker I don’t have a great math background. Just calculus, and that a long time ago.
Vitruvius: My two cents — and probably worth less than that.
When you say ‘matter and energy may not be the alpha and the omega of existence, but rather, that they may be manifestations of some more fundamental and primitive phenomenon, such as “information”, or “interaction”, or “computation”, or cetera.”
I am not clear on where calling matter or energy something else (information) gets us. When we label a phenomenon matter or energy, we are attributing to it certain qualities. I appreciate (I think) that the label “information” allows discussion of the phenomenon at an additional level of abstraction, but in doing so it turns the phenomenon into something totally abstract and (I think) makes it difficult to grasp in the real world.
A corrollary (and maybe easier way to grasp this) might be to suggest that consciousness creates reality (or the material world.) Once you move matter and energy into an abstract notion, then the abstraction becomes the reality, but the challenge is still to understand the nature or experienced essence of whatever it is you are describing.
Accepting the notion of consciousness as a creator allows an easier way to explore possibilities, rather than starting with the (relatively) tangible (matter/energy)and moving to the abstract (information, computation). Surely at some point, information exists only in the ether of consciousness.
I hope this is not too much of a distraction, as I confess I really do not know much about this stuff, am completely uneducated (relatively speaking) and perhaps should not have commented at all.
phantom – yes, several in the group were focused on Maxwell’s Demon – and we were trying to set up several projects that explored what we called ‘the Interface Relation’ where data from one site was transformed at a ‘node site’ (the Interface) and used in another site. Couldn’t get funding for it in Canada but continued the projects in Europe. The projects were in economics (internet transactions), computer processes and robotic knowledge development, business management processes..and plant adaptation.
Lindal – matter and energy are not called ‘something else’ in this theory. Matter and energy are in a way, secondary forms of information..and remain distinct from each other and from information.
And no, consciousness is not required for either information, matter or energy to exist and function. After all, you might be unconscious but your material being, and that of your environment, continues to exist. You are moving into a base of postmodernist phenomenology.
Information is not abstract but is real.