You Noticed, Huh?
John Palfrey posts notes from Prof. Jean Nicolas Druey's discussion about how "Information Cannot be Owned."#
1) Law itself is information. Information itself is not good or bad.
2) Communications is the flow of information between specific individuals, which is governed by a series of pre-legal rules (e.g., values) as well as constitutional principles and the like. The channel of information between two persons is what's protected by law. Privacy becomes relevant.
3) Information law cannot be drawn by analogy to other types of rules (by way of "methodological" rule). The law is focused on the use of the information, not the information itself.
(There is a number 4.)
Freedom and Whiskey posts pictures of Adam Smith's grave, and Tyler Cowen quotes the man on death.#
The Black Saint on why celibacy is the best way to go.#
It's hard to believe there was a period in my life in which I interacted with 19-year-old women. The only people who are possibly dumber are 19-year-old men. Male teens are less annoying, I think, because they are focused on having sex with female teens (or preferably other male teens -- trust me, it's the smarter move). Female teens get wrapped up in Trite College Feminism, which is to deep philosophical thought what Hanna-Barbera cartoons are to animation.
These teenyboppers are taught that men suck (especially white men, which is pretty fucked-up on the Freudian tip, yo). Enlightened Men (tm) then shuck and jive and agree with them ("Yassuh, we sho' is mean to you women, yassuh!") and are "rewarded" with "enlightenment" sex and a lifetime of dealing with their neuroses, which they'll never make an effort to fix because that would mean giving in to the "patriarchy." I'm a bitch. I'm a liar. And so on. Meanwhile, Enlightened Men (tm) must never think that women suck on any level or they hate their mothers, eat children, and always leave the toilet seat up. They must agree that they are responsible for everything that's wrong in the world, including Jessica Simpson, and that they are potential rapists (this is a "legitimate" feminist theory -- I believe Andrea Dworkin espouses it).
Dave Winer announces his plan to merge Atom and RSS.#
It's pretty clear RSS is over the top, no matter what the Atom people do. Google is powerful, but they're not so powerful that they can compete with the ever increasing mountain of support for RSS. And why should they pick a fight with RSS? It's a format. It's not stealing any revenue from them. None of their jobs depend on wiping out RSS. It makes no sense to fight with it. If RSS were weak, they might be able to capture it, lock up the new format with patents, but that just isn't going to happen. RSS is too strong.
So here's the chance to do something good for the Internet, something not evil. Let's go Google, let's go SixApart, it's time to bury the hatchet and move on. Joi Ito, you're famous for being an advocate of peace. RSS is here to stay and so are Google and Movable Type. Let's all acknowledge that and stop this fight now.
Peer Fear: "There's no need for RSS. Atom is the future. Everyone has moved on."
Don Park posts very strange ideas about the future of living completely in cyberspace. Read at it.#
Chip Gibbons links to an article about a plan to lower the voting age in California.#
It has always been my opinion that voting should be allowed as early as possible. When I was younger, I was very angry that I paid taxes (on my business) and was in college, yet I could not vote. It's simply taxation without representation--a war started over that.
What I think is that anyone who pays taxes should be able to vote with full weight of anyone else, but if you don't pay taxes you shouldn't be able to vote. This is includes if you would pay taxes but your "credits" decrease the amount you owe to nothing.
Why should people who do not contribute to the government get a say in how it operates? Or, if you don't like the prospect of free-loading adults not voting, then the question is, Why should people who DO contribute to the government not get a say?
Dan doesn't like objects... damn:#
Objects are a big example there. It's probably no secret, if you've read back a ways, that I don't like objects. Yes, I know, they're rainbow-colored, fruit flavored, come in a variety of pleasing sounds with a nice mild vanilla scent, but... Bleah. Can't stand the things. It's a deep, unreasoning despisal, completely lacking any rational basis, I'm sure it speaks poorly of me as a programer, and reflects badly on my underlying character. I can live with that. Objects suck.
An Economist writer explains that "the case for gay marriage rests on equality, liberty, and even society." Via Richard.#
SO AT last it is official: George Bush is in favour of unequal rights, big-government intrusiveness and federal power rather than devolution to the states. That is the implication of his announcement this week that he will support efforts to pass a constitutional amendment in America banning gay marriage. Some have sought to explain this action away simply as cynical politics, an effort to motivate his core conservative supporters to turn out to vote for him in November or to put his likely "Massachusetts liberal" opponent, John Kerry, in an awkward spot. Yet to call for a constitutional amendment is such a difficult, drastic and draconian move that cynicism is too weak an explanation. No, it must be worse than that: Mr Bush must actually believe in what he is doing.
Chip Gibbons expands the benefits of abortion:#
In the broader context, having choice over the direction of one's life certainly reduces the sense of powerlessness. When people have choice they can afford to accept responsibility; they will not be blamed for the choices that others have made for them.
Control and responsiblity are inextricably linked.
Jane describes her wonderful day, here's a part:#
Buddha was so moved that he put the rabbit in the moon.
so he didn't eat the rabbit after all? no, i'm joking. that's a beautiful story. it's better than saying the moon's a big wheel of cheese.
ha. that's such a frenchman's fantasy. "look at all that cheese!"
"we must get it before the americans do!"
Findlay Dunachie in Glasglow reviews some books about slavery under Islam.#
Slaves in the Islamic world were much more for domestic use and while in the Americas the imports were predominantly male, within Islam females outnumbered males by two to one, probably (though this is not mentioned explicitly) because slave-raiding involved killing the men to secure the women and children (as opposed to slave-trading with the black kingdoms on the African West Coast). Segal claims, however, that though the journeys of the slave-caravans were terrible, once the slaves had, so to speak, arrived at their final destination, their treatment was relatively humane.
The whole system reflected the fact that slavery had been part of the Old World from time immemorial, with white slaves antedating black. Islam had rules about slavery; indeed, only non-Muslims were supposed to be enslaved at all, though this law was often broken, especially with regard to North African "white" Moors slave-raiding the Islamicised African kingdoms to the south. Freeing slaves was also common and while girls were sold for concubinage, their children by their masters were born free and marriage, though into a polygamous household, was frequent. Large scale use of slaves agriculturally or industrially hardly took place and seems to have been abandoned after rebellions of black (Zanj) slaves employed on the land around Basra in the ninth century. One feature not found in the Americas was castration to provide eunuchs; particularly for blacks this was a radical operation, removing penis, scrotum and testicles. One estimate is that in Ottoman times every eunuch "represented at the very least 200 Soudanese done to death". (p. 156)
Karen De Coster on public education:#
Simple common sense dictates that my paying $1,200 in annual school taxes with no children in the local public school system, while a neighbor with four children taking advantage of the free schooling in our district pays the same $1,200 in school taxes, is indeed a theft of colossal proportions.
This constant depredation of an entire community to pay for the education of the children of some of the members of that community violates the core philosophy of self-sustaining, voluntary market coordination. This is truly a form of legalized gangstering, where every property-owning taxpayer is robbed via legal government mandate to help support the goals of the state in maintaining a vicious system of educational welfare for my richer, as well as poorer neighbors.
Richard posts his thoughts on certain girls after Vanessa Richmond talking about girls who have been "duped" by sexy clothes.#
What I find interesting is the assertion at the end of the article that teenage girls are more conformist for wearing skimpy clothing than rebellious. The print article (but not the online version) shows a young woman who is attending McGill wearing a comfortable (pink) sweatshirt, casual pants and a baseball cap, and for some young women, that can be incredibly sexy. As a guy, girls showing skin naturally grabs my attention, but I've always been interested in the girls that had great bodies and wore comfortable clothes. To me, it said something about their personality: they were more interested in feeling good than looking "perfect". I'm not against girls wearing skimpy clothing, but when it doesn't reflect who you are as a person, you're doing it for the wrong reason. If you have a great body but would rather feel comfortable than have to squeeze into an outfit, then yes, there are guys who are into those kinds of girls too.
John Petrie writes about dealing with his college classmates who don't think and explains privatized police, as well as property rights.#
He also thinks the poor in the inner city would simply have no police protection (in stark contrast to their current situation). What about everyone else's protection against their agents, our elected criminal class, who take our money without hesitation? We literally have no recourse against them, no protection whatsoever. Where is our state-provided police protection? It would be the crime of crimes to protect ourselves against agents of the state who come to take our rightfully earned property to help someone who neither knows nor cares about us, who thinks it is his right. Forgive me if I don't jump at the chance to have money taken from me instead of giving it voluntarily. Maybe if they were allowed to have their God-given rights, the wealthy and middle class would help the poor to have the basic necessities of life that any civilized member of society deserves. Perhaps if they let it happen, the poor who haven't enough money for police protection would receive the charity — corporate and individual — that supposedly would not be available in a dark, selfish, greedy, capitalist libertarian world. I, personally, would prefer to do business with security companies that did something to help the poor over companies that didn't: the good PR alone would boost their business and their stock, enriching me.
Peter Lindberg wonders what "Universe of Discourse" means, and although he found a satisfactory answer, I'll add my understanding.#
First of, my understanding of it comes from studying mathematics in college with particular reference to theory classes--like proof creation and number theory.
In general, "universe of discourse" just means "what we are talking about when we make statements." Sometimes this is stated, and sometimes it is not. The idea, in my experience, is only useful when it is not stated because it should be a reminder for yourself to ask, "What exactly are the objects under discussion?"
Some examples.
For every X in R, if X * Y = 1, then Y = X-1. In this case, I state what X is, a real number. The reals are my universe of discourse. Assuming that [R; *] is a group, then you know that everything else I talk about will be a real as well.
But suppose I just said, "If X * Y = 1, the Y = X-1." It is not completely clear what I am talking about, I haven't told you what X is, so it isn't obvious what * or -1 means. But, if you read this in an algebra book, it's fairly obvious that almost all statements are going to be about real numbers.
So, for me, "universe of discourse" really says to me: When you make a statement, be honest with yourself about the assumptions you are making and try to make those assumptions clear to the reader.
J. D. Roth (or is it JD Roth?) describes the background of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon story. I have found another good reason to learn Chinese.#
Dave Pollard on "corporatism."#
The only things separating us from global corporatism today is the democratic ballot box and the vigilance of public interest groups and non-mainstream media. The mainstream media, owned and controlled by big corporations, already self-censor news that is anti-corporatist. The collapse or privatization of public education would lead to the corruption of what our children learn -- to a corporatist-friendly message. The continuing dumbing-down of the electorate, and its disillusionment due to gerrymandering and other anti-democratic political abuses, plays right into the hands of corporatists.
We are at a crossroads for democracy, and we are so distracted by other issues that we can't see it. If Bush wins re-election, their second term slogan might well be "we're lovin' it".
Yes! The answer to being stolen from is to start stealing from others!
But really, why would you want a strong government that can be taken over by corporations, rather than no government which cannot be taken over?
Will Hutton writes about population rates as needing to rise not fall. Interesting, read at it.#
Frank M. Shipman III and Catherine C. Marshall, from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, describe a problem in many computer systems in the paper: Formality Considered Harmful: Experiences, Emerging Themes, and Directions.#
This paper reviews experiences in designing, developing, and working with the users of a variety of interactive computer systems. The authors suggest, based on a number of experiences, that the cause of a number of unexpected difficulties in human-computer interaction is users' unwillingness to make structure, content, or procedures explicit. Besides recounting experiences with system use, this paper discusses why users are often justified in rejecting formalisms and how system designers can anticipate and compensate for problems users have in making implicit aspects of their tasks explicit. Incremental and system-assisted formalization mechanisms, as well as techniques to evaluate the task situation, are proposed as approaches to this problem.
When I read this paper, I kept laughing because of the way they referred to users "rejecting" a computer system, like a person's body can reject medical treatment.
The authors don't exactly think that the users are doing anything wrong, i.e. not being deliberately and unconstructively uncooperative:
The broad range of examples we discuss in the previous section highlights the ubiquity of the problems associated with enforced formalization. In this section we explain why we believe that the users are making the right decisions, in some sense, by resisting premature, unnecessary, meaningless, or cognitively expensive formalization.
From the user's perspective formalization poses many risks. "What if I commit to this formalization only to later find out it is wrong?" "What do I do when the ideas or knowledge is tacit and I cannot formalize it?" "Why should I spend my time formalizing this when I have other things to be doing?" "Why should I formalize this when I cannot agree with anyone else on what the formalization should be?" These are all valid questions and the answers that systems provide are often insufficient to convince people to use a system's formal aspects.
An interesting note about expertise and installing it into systems:
Tacit knowledge is knowledge users employ without being conscious of its use [Polanyi 66]. Tacit knowledge poses a particularly challenging problem for adding information to any system since it is not explicitly acknowledged by users. The problem of tacit knowledge has resulted in knowledge engineering methods aimed at exposing expertise not normally conscious in experts, such as one described by Mittal and Dym:
"We believe that experts cannot reliably give an account of their expertise: We have to exercise their expertise on real problems to extract and model their knowledge." [Mittal, Dym 85] (page 34)
When I read this I thought, "No system can make you act like you know what you're doing when you don't."
Peter, this seems like something you'd be interested in reading.