meaning in business

from the macintosh lead engineer:

Guy Kwasaki

Shakespeare

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep".
(Prospero in the Tempest)

Free to Choose

about the fact that free markets help people to collaborate and have peaceful interactions. Milton Friedman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vjrzUplWU&feature=related

Bernstein on music at Harvard

metaphor is the powerplant of music, names the unnameable und communicates the unknowable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14VhzlcSuT0

Research and fun

A very inspiring lecture by computer scientist Ivan Sutherland on the usage of shared computer time, the invention of the currency "yen" for trading computing time, and doing science in unusual places and making friends by scientific intellectual interactions:

http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1125352335/

Micro activities

Well, it can be argued that markets caused and will solve our climate change problems. From Fred Pearce in "The New Scientist":


"We need markets and social systems that make the coices for us. Humans shouldn't have to be experts at everything. I want my drains to work and my computer to function without knowing the details of exactly how they operate. This is why a carbon tax would be good. In Denmark we have a 180 per cent tax on cars. That means I've never owned a car. I cycle everywhere - not because I am especially good, but the system encourages me not to buy a car. All the same, the solution will come in the main, not from carbon dioxide taxes but from smarter technologies."

dynamics in space

Lately, I saw on BBC world an interview with Steve Nash, an NBA basketball player on the importance of practice, practice, practice. Then, I went to see a video on youtube.com about his skills in action, and it was stunnning to see how much control he had about his body and the direction of the basketball. In the interview he also used a lot of mathematical terms, like "linear", "equation", "equilibrium". I conclude that his perception on movements and forces must have been very sharp. Whatever it is that controls our movements or allows reflection on it, our machineries to process laws of mechanics come back in many other realms as well, such as in economy (growth and output curves), thermodynamics (entropy and energy) or recently in collaborative systems.

Growing identity

In a video cast on TED, Steven Pinker argues that we humans have never lived in such peaceful times, i.e. that violence and aggression has been decreasing for many hundreds of years. Living in Europe, there are still many traces of the many wars between different "tribes" and this made me remember a conversation I had last weekend with a person that grew up imediatly after the world war. He was saying that their highest goal was to have a roof on top and something to eat. Now, our generation must be living in great times, he was arguing. I answered that nowadays the challenge is the quest for identity, as we can easily get lost in the sea of information, certainly in a global world where borders are vanishing. The hierarchy of roles is lowered, and who you want to be, what you want to do, what stories you are going to tell, maybe is equally challenging as finding a place to cover for the rainy days.

Knowing what and knowing how

It is common to ask two sorts of questions when we explore a new world: "What" do we see, feel, experience, know? (structural descriptions) And "how" do we know? (functional descriptions)

Minsky describes that better concepts to represent knowledge would be "actors", "situations" and "actions". Depending on a context (= situation), an actor can issue only a limited set of actions. (Furthermore there is the concept of negative expertise, i.e. know-how that we employ to avoid a paradox.)

It can be argued that knowledge results not so much from learning new skills, but from finding new ways to organize knowledge that someone already has. This is the point of Papert's principle: "Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows."

processing of information

I was reading in a very interesting article about the invention of the Dynabook and Smalltalk, that "hardware is just crystallized software"

http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html

Social algorithms

The concept of algorithm is really powerful to explain phenomenon related to minds. It might be possible to attribute desires and beliefs to the symbol-manipulating effects of algorithmic processes, and as such we can understand "virtual" algorithmic systems by using the vocabulary to describe own behavior. Daniel Dennett refers to our antropocentric views as intentional stance which might also be useful in many realms, to understand the complicated lives of our fragile ecosystem, or the miosis of cells by DNA programs, or the decision-making processes in our brains, the interactions in groups and societies, or the design of complicated artifacts.

Of course there is some resistance to the idea that minds or even the fascinating games of live might be seen as cold, mechanistic, algorithmic processes. I don't think so. I think the new point of view rather provides much more interesting ways to look at ourselves, very much similar to the joy of doing mathematics, as Andrew Wiles, the mathematician who gave the final resolution to Fermat conjectures puts it:

"Perhaps I can best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of a journey through a dark unexplored mansion. You enter the first room of the mansion and it's completely dark. You stumble around bumping into the furniture, but gradually you learn where each piece of furniture is. Finally after six months or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, and suddenly it's all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then you move into the next room and spend another six months in the dark. So each of these breakthroughs, while sometimes they're momentary, sometimes over a period of a day or two, they are the culmination of - and couldn't exist without - the many months of stumbling around the dark that precede them."

memes and beliefs

hello,

in daniel dennett's book on the causes and effects of religion there are quite some interesting insights that memes may have on groups. This is a bit related to the idea of functionalism, i.e. seeing a society of people in the form of an organism as was introduced by French antropologist and sociologist Emile Durkheim. And like in complex living organisms, different organs have different functions. It seems as well that religion has a certain function in societies, maybe with the main function of leveraging collaboration between people. Relgion as such is a collection of memes with having the most important meme of the god concept. Without god, there would be no religion. Dennett makes the point, a religion without god, is like going to a football games where there is no ball. Of course, the idea that god is the cause behind good and bad is very questionable. Like in the joke "First, I was praying to god to get a new bicycle, and nothing happened. Thus, I stole a bike, and now I am praying to god for forgiveness..."

Another point mentioned in the book "breaking the spell" are some good points on evolution of memes, i.e. ideas that replicate themselves in forms of tournaments. It is nicely explained on how memes take control of our brains, and that in principle we are helpless transmitters. In principle, because one important meme idea itself is to strive for the good things in life, and trying to avoid bad memes. As such, you also can see culture as a very interesting form of software, which need to get service packs once in a while to remove bugs.

Nest building meme

Hm... interesting to see that wikipedia almost has no information on bird courtship, especially with respect to male nest building to impress female birds. Two links:

http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Birds/courtship-nests.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troglodytidae

Compilers versus interpreters

Just some note on information processing for personal use:

Algorithms are based on the idea that a set of operations can be combined in such a way that they can solve a certain problem. So, when we talk about algorithms, or initiation of processes, there are mainly two sets involved:

* the set of possible operations (= instructions, words in a language)
* the set of possible sequences of operations (= computer programs, or texts in a language)

We know from computer science, that there are two basic ways of having computers programs performing actions, the first is

* interpretation: the actions that a computer needs to perform are translated first into the actions of another language. That is, the abstract representation of a computer program is assembled step by step (= run-time)

* compiler: the actions that a computer needs to perfom are translated directly into the set of operations provided by the computer. That is, the abstraction representation of a computer program is assembled in one time (= compile-time)

So, interpretation and compilation are allowing for different designs. Interpretation allows more flexibilty in a design, because its functionality can be improved in an organic fashion, while compilation will allow higher performance design, because functionality can be optimized for certain tasks.

Limits of predictability

Some while ago, I was listening to some music by Palestrina (Missa Assumpta est Maria). The Catholic Church had been using the skills of Palestrina to fight reformation from Northern Europe on a spiritual level. When I was listening to the polyphonic voices of the chorus, there was indeed an idea of leaving the ground for reaching closer to the heavens. A strange experience I must say. Also, it is indeed a strange experience to realize that this music was used once to "brainwash" people, to transmit the dogma's of an institution. Luckily, we are not so sensitive anymore to greek or latin phrases. Palestrina lived until around 1595, so, he died around the same time when Galileo was a young man. (By the way, it seems that the father of Galileo was a musician as well.) It is interesting to see that science could not be used as a spiritual weapon for doing politics. Rather, politics needed to fight science to suppress changing forces within the organization. And indeed, we are using the same approaches within the organizations as we know them today, to have some form of predictability, some sense of security, be our dogma's based on correct assumptions or not. I guess this is why human contracts work in corporate worlds or marriage. But if we look back at the music of Palestrina, or the fruits of the scientific method, what survived were not the boundaries that we need to feel safe at a certain moment in time, but the ideas that arise from the confrontation with the unknown, the new, and questions around change.

(Some small note at the end, I also think, computers are a great tool to have a dialogue with the new and unknown, because they allow us to quickly express, validate and communicate ideas. We can think about designs (and avoid mistakes from the past) that would not be possible otherwise. Try it out, thinking about "thinking about thinking", the sound simplification of processes is exactly what a study of computers allows us to do, but why computer models can be misleading on the other hand, when they hide too much of the wonderful complexity of the real world.)

Bjoerk on making music

I have read an interesting interview with composer/artist Bjoerk:

Some extracts:

"I needed rythms that are a new country and adventure for myself. First, we have programmed tons of complicated beats. You needed 3 weeks to make them, but only 1 minute to listen to them. Then, we have thrown them all away, it was too ambitious. I needed more wood, more beats from real drums, tribal sounds."

"Making music is like doing research. It is like you need to solve a mysterious murder. As you do in the stories of Agatha Christie."

"There are so many parts in my music that will never change. ... Oh yes, people say: Your music changes with every album! ... but in my opinion, most elements in my albums stay the same. Some elements change, but some things will never change, and this is true for everyone. ... "

"Vespertine was the most difficult album I have worked on. Most songs consists of 120 layers and used up to 40 different beats, then there was a chorus, and orchestra, a harpe, ... You work on this for 3 years! I enjoyed the working process but afterwards everything seems very easy ... Then you don't care to throw some beats away afterwards. At least you have gained some experience while working on it. And you are happy, that you are a bit closer to the solution of your puzzle. It is cowardous to be satisfied with what you have. But sometimes, it is also courageous. The same is true for every adventure: Sometimes it is expression of braveness and sometimes of cowardice. You need to reflect on yourself whether your actions are expressions of escape or not. By listening to yourself in these situations, it is a very subtle spine to walk."

"Art has right for existence in itself. ... For artists, it is more important to be true to yourself, then the magic will follow, and others will appreciate what you do. If you just try to please other people, then noone will understand what you do probably. This is a paradox that I like."

The Brain Sources of Joy

A quote from Instruction Sheet in Lego Toys (quoted in J. Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience):

"When children play, they exercise their senses, their intellect, their emotions, their imagination - keenly and energetically.... To play is to explore, to discover and to experiment. Playing helps children develop ideas and gain experience. It gives them wealth of knowledge and information about the world in which they live - and about themselves. So to play is to learn. Play is fun for children. But it's much more than that - it's good for them, and it's necessary.... Play gives children the opportunity to develop and use the many talents they were born with."

Descartes on teaching

"My present design, then, is not to teach the method which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his reason, but solely to describe the way in which I have endeavored to conduct my own. They who set themselves to give precepts must of course regard themselves as possessed of greater skill than those to whom they prescribe; and if they err in the slightest particular, they subject themselves to censure." (Discourse de la methode)

altruism

I am reading one of those "self-help" books because I am interested on how to manage challenging projects. The book is called "7 habits of highly effective people", and up to now, the main message is to have high values and respect for life and other people's life. I guess translated to biological, evolutionary terms, this means of giving way to altruism, but not faked altruism to make "fast progress". Anyway, life is challenging for sure, even more so, if you try to involve with science.

Here a quote by Werner Heisenberg:

"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

(hmm..... designing a programming language that help us switch questions and models more easily, that is something I am thinking on lately.)

On imagination

I have the suspicion that imagination works best, when leaving it alone, i.e. is fueled by laziness. There is a saying: "Laziness stimulates the engineering creativity." - I found this interesting with respect to the following quote by John Backus, one of the early designers of programming languages:

"Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs,"

By the way, I am wondering who is reading this blog. As the blogspot.com commenting did not work satisfactorily, you might want to contact me at mulder DOT patrick AT gmail DOT com

more on music

personally, I am not a fan of heavy-guitar music (well, better, I stopped being a fan of heavy-metal 10 years ago, I stopped being a fan of most popular, electronic music around 3 years ago)

for the ones who need an excuse for heavy-metal music:

Stress

Narratives

When listening to music, it is interesting to think on how different tones in a tonal scale can take different functions, as if certain tones exert more gravity than others. The different functions of the same tones in different contexts can also be seen in a theater for example, where the same actors (tones) can play different roles (gravity) depending on the theater piece (tonal scale).

People need good narratives to work or play.

simplicity and complexity

I am just thinking that a system to represent multiple things at once (via equations, movements, sounds, light effects) would be great. the system should be as easily accessible like listening to music, and like good music, gradually increasing complexity.

hope to start programming on this sort of system soon.

Meta-mathematics

I have been reading about the problems of deductive and formal reasoning and lately finished the book on Goedel's proof by Nagel and Newman.

It got clear to me, that for every formal system, there exists a meta-system that can be derived (or used) to help to understand the nature of the original formal system. Some point out, that for intelligence, you would need to have meta-intelligence to derive understanding of what intelligence is. Some conclude further, that the meta-intelligence is "god" and can not be understood by intelligence. Somehow this is circular reasoning, and will not give "better" memes. What can be derived from this sort of reasoning however is some reaction we humans show to inconsistent reasoning. Meta-control mechanisms (= emotions) will point out that some processes are wasting time. See also a quote Marvin made in the newsgroup comp.ai.philosophy:

"I think that I've said before, that philosophy is mostly bad psychology. The most common reaction that "normal" people have to such propositions is -- after a few moments of thought -- to LAUGH! This is because, I'm sure, that the detection of absurdities (which include both asserting inconsistent propositions and exhibiting tabooed views of certain body-parts) activates certain brain centers that are used to prevent the rest of the brain from continuing normal reasoning. In other words, the machinery that prevents you from "taking it seriously". There's some more about this in chapter 27 of The Society of Mind.

Classical monotonic consistent logic was one of the first good ideas that came with the era of modern technical thinking about thinking. It came in the infancy of what we now call cognitive science. Philosophers played an important role in developing it.

Today that young organism, cognitive science, is approach puberty or, perhaps, middle age. Philosophers, it seems to me, with the exception of Dennet, Sloman, and a very few others, are fixated in that infantile stage. "

Developping ideas

This weekend, I finished reading the book "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. It was very impressive to think about the complexity and similarities between species, and how we inherit shapes and functions from one generation to the next. Dawkins argues that similar to the alphabet of life, our human brains can transmit words and ideas coded in an alphabet of "memes", replicators on an abstract level in our brains that are competing for communication channels (the internet is an incredible rich meme-pool, so is the television, a newspaper and a patent office).

All in all, I am thinking that ideas share some abstract features with computer programs, that use the roles of functions and expressions for coding change. At least, good ideas often (always ?) address some useful changes. And indeed, I would agree with John Maeda, that to develop those meme programs inside one owns mind, it is needed to look at these processes and programs and try to ban the critics and imprimers from guiding you. (There is a saying from Marvin Minsky: "Never listen to your critics. Don't even ignore them.")

Returns and success

During the lunch we had some discussion on the merits of socialism in education, i.e. that everyone should have the opportunity to learn whatever (s)he likes and as such can improve her/his personal understanding ("personal" is opposed to "socialism", but let's assume that the value of minds under development are equal)

The discussion turnt to the enormous endowments some universities have, and how they manage their financial assets to provide this sort of intellectual freedom for new ways of learning. I found an interesting article on the investment manager of Yale university, with an intersting advice on returns vs. making money1:

"What he demands of himself is exactly what he demands of the custodians of Yale’s capital: 'People who define success by generating great returns, not by making as much money as they possibly can,' he says. "

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/business/yourmoney/18swensen.html

26 letters

This morning, I saw some interesting paintings of Jan Brueghel the older in the "Alte Pinakothek". I was drawn to a painting displaying a sermon including a large crowd of interested people. In the front, near the preacher, there were obviously some women, in the back there were some people with guns, maybe some soldiers or some hunters returning home. It was striking to me how peaceful the crowd of mixed people was standing there, listening to the words of the philosopher. That we see lectures like this also in our modern world might be related to our needs for hope, the hope for a better life, the hope to find better meaning of our existence, the hope to prevent disappointment, or the hope to solve conflicts between people. It is interesting to see how languages and words can unify or split groups of people so heavily. Words can be instruments for power or seduction, but equally, they can transport the most interesting secrets of the world we live in. All with 26 letters.




(another interesting picture concerning a Brueghel painting.... found somewhere on the internet by googling. besides the 26 letters of the alphabet for normal writing, it is interesting to think about the 4 letters of the DNA for writing the sources of life.)

Russell's Paradox

"Nothing contains everything", applied:

A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself ?

* If the barber does not shave himself, he must abide by the rule and shave himself.
* If he does shave himself, according to the rule he will not shave himself.

And, another one:

"One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, the Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. This testimony is true."
Titus 1:12-14 (King James Version)

Automata

In the sense of this post, "automaton" is an abstract concept. It is not used such, that an element which can be explained by the automata concept, equals this concept. There is often large resistance to the idea that the working of minds or living processes in general can be explained by deductive reasoning, as by mathematical deduction of patterns. Still, it is my impression, that the concept of automata or virtual machines is very useful to predict certain patterns in our minds, or to explain the behavior of complicated, mechanical interactions, or to improve our use for processes in our "imagination" or learning. Daniel Dennett mentions that automata make the basic building blocks of our souls - although the resulting system is very complicated which maybe does not allow to use the automata concept for the soul itself. (Dennett: "Si, abbiamo un anima, ma e fatto di tanto picolo robots", "Yes, we have a soul, but is made from lots of tiny robots.") Marvin Minsky expresses the automata as agents or "ways to think" or "emotions".

Innovation !

Hello,

there is another quote by Alan Kay which I like:

"The best way of predicting the future is to invent it !"

It captures very clearly that aspect of creativity which we admire so much, breaking some mechanical routine which has been used in the past (= the way we do prediction), by replacing it with a new, interesting system (= the essence of an invention). It might help that someone does not know too much about a certain field to get this effect of discovery, on the other hand, experience teaches us, that it takes a careful, long, vertical approach of study to understand enough interactions and problems of a certain system. In his ACM Turing award, Alan Kays addresses this aspect when imitation of an existing solution is not possible:

"One of the most interesting characteristics of computing in the best universities of the 1960s was that the professors told the students that nothing much of importance was known, and it was the duty of all to try to invent a real computing science and software engineering."


...

"Just as "civilization" is not a place or state, but a process of people who are trying to be more civilized, real computing is the process of people trying to make a better notion of computing. The most progress will be made by young people who have been encouraged to criticize old conceptions and invent new ones with an elevated notion of what constitutes a high threshold for a good idea. "

Lambda calculus

Imagine, expression is based solely on algorithmic processes in our brain. How would we use this insight to reduce the complexity the modern information society provides, or how could we make learning difficult subjects such as physics or expression itself more effective ?

I am currently looking at lambda calculus, which is based on one transformation rule only: Substitution of variables. It is interesting to think on functions as basic components in expressions, and substitution of parts as one of the most simplest approaches to transform expression.

In lambda calculus, there are three possible forms to specify ideas:

(1) expressions := can be names, functions, applications
(2) functions := lambda name. expression
(3) application := expression expression


The idea of recurrence, expressions in terms of itself, simplifies tremendously the expression of repeating structures, or structures with so many details that make it impossible to keep track of everything. It also reminds me on the idea that mathematics is an artform, the art of expression, an artistic endeavour in itself.

Breughel

Yesterday, I have seen a BBC documentary about the Flemish painter Breughel (the older, 1525 – 1569). Some part of the documentary explained the idea of the painting "De Volkstelling" (counting of the population), and described all the different activities of the people in the painting and the playing children. The speaker of the documentary commented that this painting addresses a crucial human question: What is the meaning of it all? It was said that the achievement by Breughel regarding story telling, Breughel ranks maybe higher than Da Vinci, Rafael or Michelangelo.