I've been disappointed that I didn't grok why you couldn't use entanglement to make an ansible, so I asked around on the Viable Paradise Yahoo! Group, and got some insight. Thanks to Laura, Meredith, Calvin, and Leo.
Here's what I've got in my head:
In order to transmit information, one party must set (that is, determine) a property of the universe, and another must read (that is, measure) that same property. When each party is in possession of one particle of an entangled pair, neither party can set any entangled state of the particles (like, say, spin). One party (A) can set the property whether-the-waveform-has-collapsed-yet, by reading any of the entangled states, but the other party (B) can't read that same collapsed-yet property; B can only read the entangled state, which is something A didn't set. So even though the two particles might be said to be communicating with each other instantaneously, the two people who have them can't.
I'm not sure if I've got it right, but it feels good to think that I grok it.
2008-06-24
To-do
A to-do list is like a sun. When enough stuff collects in one place, it can spark to life, and produce energy, and fuel interesting processes. But above a certain size and beyond a certain age, its own weight turns against it. More stuff goes in than gets out. Eventually it collapses on itself, withdraws beyond its own event horizon, and becomes irrelevant, and nothing can escape from it save in the occasional random quantum event.
2008-06-20
Contraspectivism
There's a thought I have. I've tried to put it into words. I've tried to write it down. But every time I try, I think, "Not good enough. I'll try again later."
But I may never get it right. So I'll cut and paste what I have now:
Every concept in philosophy has a scope to which it properly belongs. A realm of discourse within which it is appropriate. Free will belongs to the subjective scope, the discussion of what it's like to be a finite imperfect being. Determinism belongs to the objective scope, the discussion of abstract and complete reality. The confusion between free will and determinism comes of failing to keep the scope of each concept in mind. That's my position. I call it contraspectivism.
There I go, making up words again.
But I may never get it right. So I'll cut and paste what I have now:
Every concept in philosophy has a scope to which it properly belongs. A realm of discourse within which it is appropriate. Free will belongs to the subjective scope, the discussion of what it's like to be a finite imperfect being. Determinism belongs to the objective scope, the discussion of abstract and complete reality. The confusion between free will and determinism comes of failing to keep the scope of each concept in mind. That's my position. I call it contraspectivism.
There I go, making up words again.
2008-06-12
Burqa
I have ridiculed those who force their women to wear the burqa. But I am as wrong as they are: A burqa baffles only the eyes.
For a bad man, a woman modest to his eyes can be naked in his heart, and for a good man, a woman naked to his eyes can be modest in his heart.
What matters is not whether your wife is surrounded by more or less cloth, but whether she is surrounded by good or bad men.
East or west, sun or rain, any man who points at a people not his own and condemns it for the attire of its women should look not to the eyes of his fellow men, but to their hearts.
For a bad man, a woman modest to his eyes can be naked in his heart, and for a good man, a woman naked to his eyes can be modest in his heart.
What matters is not whether your wife is surrounded by more or less cloth, but whether she is surrounded by good or bad men.
East or west, sun or rain, any man who points at a people not his own and condemns it for the attire of its women should look not to the eyes of his fellow men, but to their hearts.
2008-06-09
The new meme: LOLyers!
In other news, today entertainment industry lawyers brought piracy suits in federal court against three gravestones, a puppy, and a traffic light.
2008-06-02
Making Tea Now
I want to tell you that I've changed the way I make tea since my earlier post on the subject. It's been evolving fitfully, and only reached the state I'm about to describe a few days ago.
Darn Douglas Noel Adams (DNA on h2g2) and his milk molecules.
On my desk I now have a Bodum half-liter teapress teapot, a stirring implement, a quiet kitchen timer, and a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup. In one desk drawer I have a tin of Tealuxe Irish Breakfast looseleaf tea and a plastic teaspoon. In another drawer, I have a box of 16-ounce Solo hot beverage paper cups and lids. In the coffee nook across the cubeway from where I sit are a spring water cooler/heater, a microwave, a mini-fridge containing half-and-half and a tiny ice tray, and a little squeezy plastic jar of honey.
Here's what I do: I open the desk drawer, get out the tin and spoon, and scoop two heaping teaspoons of leaves into the teapress. I take the teapress and measuring cup to the coffee nook. I fill the Pyrex with one and three-quarters cups of water from the hot spigot, put it in the microwave, and press Quick Min and Start. I wait, worrying what leaking microwaves are doing to my gametes. Sometimes I go fetch a cup and lid during this wait, but I only have a minute and I have to be there and ready right when the microwave beeps. If I'm five seconds late, the water in the Pyrex has stopped bubbling, and Douglas tells me, "the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves." So when the microwave beeps, I take out the Pyrex promptly, pull out the teapress's steeper insert ('cause otherwise the water flows out through the pores and carries particulates with it), pour in the bubbling water, and quickly lower the steeper back in. I take the teapress (caution: hot!) and Pyrex (also hot!) back to my desk and set them on my tea napkin. The tea napkin is just a folded paper towel dedicated to the purpose of absorbing drips, not a specially-purchased product. I'm not sick. I start the timer, which is programmed for 4 minutes and 40 seconds. Sometimes I put the press part of the teapress in, sometimes not; it sinks and thus cuts the number of open pores through which tea liquor can flow (or through which tea particles can diffuse; I guess both things are happening), which bugs me, but then I've heard you're supposed to cover it while it steeps. While the timer counts down, I go back to the coffee nook. If I didn't bring a cup before, I do now. I squeeze about a teaspoon of honey onto the flat paper bottom of the cup. No, not upside-down, silly, right side up. I know that my phrasing might be confusing. I just say it that way because when I watch the thick honey blob spreading on the coated paper, I think of it as on a flat surface, not in a concave space. I take the cup back to my desk. When the timer goes off, I press the press part of the teapress. I pour the hot tea into the cup, onto the now spread-out honey. The tea pushes up little irregular circular ridges in the honey. I assemble my stirrer; I stick a plastic coffee-stirrer onto the end of a wooden stick that once held rock-candy, because the plastic stirrer isn't long enough. I stir the honey in until the bottom of the cup doesn't feel gooey. This involves reversing direction several times. I stick the end of the stirrer in my mouth and pull out the wood while sucking to get drops of tea out of the stirrer. Then I take the cup back to the coffee nook. No one has questioned why I make so many trips, but it's only a matter of time. I take out the ice tray and pop five or so little cubes out of it. If the cubes are reluctant to come, I use the point of the small blade of my Swiss Army knife to pry them. The top of the microwave provides a platform at just the right height that I don't have to unclip the lanyard from my belt loop. I fill the empty pockets with water from the cold spigot, and replace the tray in the freezy compartment of the fridge, carefully aligning it with the little ridges through which the coolant flows. I stir the ice cubes into the hot honeyed tea until they melt. This is enough to bring the temperature of the tea down near room temperature. Do I use the same stirrer? No. I'm too lazy or forgetful to have brought it along. So I grab one out of the cardboard box in the coffee nook, and chuck it when I'm done. Wasteful. I add half-and-half. Too much for my health, probably. Almost a quarter cup. Also, the English insist milk, not cream. Whatever. I sip. Wow, that's good. I mean, really, wow. I get what DNA was trying to convey. I return to my desk humming. I put the lid on. For some reason I don't drink immediately. It's as though I'm reluctant. Or I don't feel I deserve it yet. Or I'm not ready. If I was smart, I ate something substantial before I began this process. I mentally gird my loins, and open a blank page to type into, and I drink the tea. All of it. Usually in one go, sometimes I pause in the middle and make it two. Either way the majority of the tea flows into me in under a minute. I get high. I write. Or something; the recollection is unclear.
If you read the earlier post on tea, you'll recognize that all of this allows me what is quite possibly British Kitchen-quality tea, in an American Cubicle setting.
Now I have to clean up tea leaves.
I cry sometimes when I think that, no matter how well I succeed or how badly I fail as a writer, I will never get to meet Douglas Adams.
Darn Douglas Noel Adams (DNA on h2g2) and his milk molecules.
On my desk I now have a Bodum half-liter teapress teapot, a stirring implement, a quiet kitchen timer, and a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup. In one desk drawer I have a tin of Tealuxe Irish Breakfast looseleaf tea and a plastic teaspoon. In another drawer, I have a box of 16-ounce Solo hot beverage paper cups and lids. In the coffee nook across the cubeway from where I sit are a spring water cooler/heater, a microwave, a mini-fridge containing half-and-half and a tiny ice tray, and a little squeezy plastic jar of honey.
Here's what I do: I open the desk drawer, get out the tin and spoon, and scoop two heaping teaspoons of leaves into the teapress. I take the teapress and measuring cup to the coffee nook. I fill the Pyrex with one and three-quarters cups of water from the hot spigot, put it in the microwave, and press Quick Min and Start. I wait, worrying what leaking microwaves are doing to my gametes. Sometimes I go fetch a cup and lid during this wait, but I only have a minute and I have to be there and ready right when the microwave beeps. If I'm five seconds late, the water in the Pyrex has stopped bubbling, and Douglas tells me, "the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves." So when the microwave beeps, I take out the Pyrex promptly, pull out the teapress's steeper insert ('cause otherwise the water flows out through the pores and carries particulates with it), pour in the bubbling water, and quickly lower the steeper back in. I take the teapress (caution: hot!) and Pyrex (also hot!) back to my desk and set them on my tea napkin. The tea napkin is just a folded paper towel dedicated to the purpose of absorbing drips, not a specially-purchased product. I'm not sick. I start the timer, which is programmed for 4 minutes and 40 seconds. Sometimes I put the press part of the teapress in, sometimes not; it sinks and thus cuts the number of open pores through which tea liquor can flow (or through which tea particles can diffuse; I guess both things are happening), which bugs me, but then I've heard you're supposed to cover it while it steeps. While the timer counts down, I go back to the coffee nook. If I didn't bring a cup before, I do now. I squeeze about a teaspoon of honey onto the flat paper bottom of the cup. No, not upside-down, silly, right side up. I know that my phrasing might be confusing. I just say it that way because when I watch the thick honey blob spreading on the coated paper, I think of it as on a flat surface, not in a concave space. I take the cup back to my desk. When the timer goes off, I press the press part of the teapress. I pour the hot tea into the cup, onto the now spread-out honey. The tea pushes up little irregular circular ridges in the honey. I assemble my stirrer; I stick a plastic coffee-stirrer onto the end of a wooden stick that once held rock-candy, because the plastic stirrer isn't long enough. I stir the honey in until the bottom of the cup doesn't feel gooey. This involves reversing direction several times. I stick the end of the stirrer in my mouth and pull out the wood while sucking to get drops of tea out of the stirrer. Then I take the cup back to the coffee nook. No one has questioned why I make so many trips, but it's only a matter of time. I take out the ice tray and pop five or so little cubes out of it. If the cubes are reluctant to come, I use the point of the small blade of my Swiss Army knife to pry them. The top of the microwave provides a platform at just the right height that I don't have to unclip the lanyard from my belt loop. I fill the empty pockets with water from the cold spigot, and replace the tray in the freezy compartment of the fridge, carefully aligning it with the little ridges through which the coolant flows. I stir the ice cubes into the hot honeyed tea until they melt. This is enough to bring the temperature of the tea down near room temperature. Do I use the same stirrer? No. I'm too lazy or forgetful to have brought it along. So I grab one out of the cardboard box in the coffee nook, and chuck it when I'm done. Wasteful. I add half-and-half. Too much for my health, probably. Almost a quarter cup. Also, the English insist milk, not cream. Whatever. I sip. Wow, that's good. I mean, really, wow. I get what DNA was trying to convey. I return to my desk humming. I put the lid on. For some reason I don't drink immediately. It's as though I'm reluctant. Or I don't feel I deserve it yet. Or I'm not ready. If I was smart, I ate something substantial before I began this process. I mentally gird my loins, and open a blank page to type into, and I drink the tea. All of it. Usually in one go, sometimes I pause in the middle and make it two. Either way the majority of the tea flows into me in under a minute. I get high. I write. Or something; the recollection is unclear.
If you read the earlier post on tea, you'll recognize that all of this allows me what is quite possibly British Kitchen-quality tea, in an American Cubicle setting.
Now I have to clean up tea leaves.
I cry sometimes when I think that, no matter how well I succeed or how badly I fail as a writer, I will never get to meet Douglas Adams.
Monkey knuckles
In Ursula K. Le Guin's Steering the Craft, she has exercises for the writer. Exercise one is playing with the sound of words. For the full description, see the book. Here goes:
Sitting sipping tea.
Fussing fingers typing types.
Precise and neat and tidy.
Taptaptap slap ding!
Zephyrs in my frizzy flutter.
Taptaptaptap ding! Taptap.
But rustle crash! That doesn't go.
The zephyr window yawns and not a breeze comes through, but monkeys! monkeys!
Here they come!
Slap not the ding, but handy feet
scatter crumbs and toast aside.
Monkey butts upon my page. Monkey knuckles thump the butter!
Tea a stream, and dripping down.
Tapping typer mouth an O.
And then no more. The window out.
And screeching swinging bellies go.
All grinning laughs and happy hands.
Another cup to turn.
- read this aloud, with an audience
(I know the taps and dings don't match how a typewriter actually works. Bite me.)
Sitting sipping tea.
Fussing fingers typing types.
Precise and neat and tidy.
Taptaptap slap ding!
Zephyrs in my frizzy flutter.
Taptaptaptap ding! Taptap.
But rustle crash! That doesn't go.
The zephyr window yawns and not a breeze comes through, but monkeys! monkeys!
Here they come!
Slap not the ding, but handy feet
scatter crumbs and toast aside.
Monkey butts upon my page. Monkey knuckles thump the butter!
Tea a stream, and dripping down.
Tapping typer mouth an O.
And then no more. The window out.
And screeching swinging bellies go.
All grinning laughs and happy hands.
Another cup to turn.
- read this aloud, with an audience
(I know the taps and dings don't match how a typewriter actually works. Bite me.)
2008-05-27
Stairwells
When I was a kid, there was a Gifted And Talented Children program (or something like that) and a bunch of smart kids were invited to come to the Museum of Science on a day when it was closed so that we could listen to lectures about being smart and eat crappy box lunches. I brought my best friend along.
We skipped out of the lectures and went nuts in the empty Museum of Science. It was ours, all ours. We went down back stairwells and found empty corridors and saw disused corners with forgotten display cases that no one had looked at in years. We got to peek into the box rooms and junk drawers of the house of knowledge. Delight! And we didn't get caught!
I wanted to see places I'd never seen before. I wanted to learn secrets.
My friend just wanted to go to the tops of the stairwells and spit down the middle.
We skipped out of the lectures and went nuts in the empty Museum of Science. It was ours, all ours. We went down back stairwells and found empty corridors and saw disused corners with forgotten display cases that no one had looked at in years. We got to peek into the box rooms and junk drawers of the house of knowledge. Delight! And we didn't get caught!
I wanted to see places I'd never seen before. I wanted to learn secrets.
My friend just wanted to go to the tops of the stairwells and spit down the middle.
2008-05-20
Viable Paradise!
Hey, look, Pam's unofficial index of Viable Paradise info is up! And she linked to Salt Trick! Yay!
Viable Paradise is an SF writers' workshop that happens every fall on Martha's Vineyard. I attended VP XI in 2007.
Viable Paradise is an SF writers' workshop that happens every fall on Martha's Vineyard. I attended VP XI in 2007.
More Neutrinos!
Scientists are already building an interstellar Schrödinger gun. And they don't even know it. Super-sensitive neutrino detectors are the death of reason, I tell you.
This is the Great Filter, isn't it? Civilizations get just smart enough to disrupt cognition throughout the galaxy.
(via Slashdot)
Hey, it looks like they're making beams of antineutrinos. What happens when a beam of antineutrinos intersects with a beam of neutrinos? Do they annihilate, and release energy? That'd be neat, since they don't interact with anything on the way there. It'd be a way to deliver energy to an arbitrary point in space.
This is the Great Filter, isn't it? Civilizations get just smart enough to disrupt cognition throughout the galaxy.
(via Slashdot)
Hey, it looks like they're making beams of antineutrinos. What happens when a beam of antineutrinos intersects with a beam of neutrinos? Do they annihilate, and release energy? That'd be neat, since they don't interact with anything on the way there. It'd be a way to deliver energy to an arbitrary point in space.
2008-04-09
The Attentiometer
The two-slit experiment. Schrödinger's cat. Heard of 'em? If not, go read up. I'll wait.
They're important concepts. They represent the greatest mystery about reality we currently face, and I just don't hear much about them. This bugs me. The two-slit experiment demonstrates that looking at the universe changes it. But it doesn't give us an adequate description of what "looking at it" means. Schrödinger's cat was an attempt by Schrödinger to make us see how bizarre were the implications of the "observation" aspect of quantum mechanics. Remember, he intended it as a reductio ad absurdum, that is, he meant to show how silly the superposition interpretation of quantum mechanics was, by showing that it led to a cat being both dead and alive at the same time, which is absurd. But nowadays lots of physicists are perfectly happy to use it as the metaphor by which they describe reality. "Yup," they say, "until you observe it, the cat's dead and alive at the same time."
Maybe if I'd taken one more term of physics before giving up, I'd know why what I'm about to suggest is just plain wrong. I hope somebody will explain it to me, and be gentle. Here's my thought:
Observing a quantum event can change its result. If you stick a photomultiplier on one of the slits, the pattern on the film changes. Can we turn that around, and use the pattern on the film as a way to tell whether an event was observed?
Could we send people randomly into a room where the output of the photomultiplier shows on a screen? And make sure that if there's no one there the information is irretrievably lost? Like, line the room in black velvet? Or something? Then later we compare the films with records of when there was someone in the room, and (here's my hypothesis) lo and behold we can tell when someone was watching.
I dunno. Maybe if you add it all up informationally, you're always observing or you're never observing. Maybe your act of looking at the results is causally downstream of the events, and so always counts as an observation. We know already that the observation's collapse of the quantum state is extratemporal. Or maybe something like Penrose's "one graviton effect" rule holds true, and it's purely a matter of how much stuff gets bumped by the event.
But, dammit, we can see the difference in the films. Can't we? Isn't there an epistemic asymmetry there? A handle to grab on to?
Maybe there's a catch-22 guaranteeing that you can never gain utility from decoherence. They say that you can't use entanglement to make an ansible; maybe it's a similar kind of situation to that. I don't grok it; I didn't study hard enough in Differential Equations. But, if so, is there any way to rigorously prove that that's the case?
And could somebody please convince this layman, so I can stop dreaming?
Please, can we settle this question?
They're important concepts. They represent the greatest mystery about reality we currently face, and I just don't hear much about them. This bugs me. The two-slit experiment demonstrates that looking at the universe changes it. But it doesn't give us an adequate description of what "looking at it" means. Schrödinger's cat was an attempt by Schrödinger to make us see how bizarre were the implications of the "observation" aspect of quantum mechanics. Remember, he intended it as a reductio ad absurdum, that is, he meant to show how silly the superposition interpretation of quantum mechanics was, by showing that it led to a cat being both dead and alive at the same time, which is absurd. But nowadays lots of physicists are perfectly happy to use it as the metaphor by which they describe reality. "Yup," they say, "until you observe it, the cat's dead and alive at the same time."
Maybe if I'd taken one more term of physics before giving up, I'd know why what I'm about to suggest is just plain wrong. I hope somebody will explain it to me, and be gentle. Here's my thought:
Observing a quantum event can change its result. If you stick a photomultiplier on one of the slits, the pattern on the film changes. Can we turn that around, and use the pattern on the film as a way to tell whether an event was observed?
Could we send people randomly into a room where the output of the photomultiplier shows on a screen? And make sure that if there's no one there the information is irretrievably lost? Like, line the room in black velvet? Or something? Then later we compare the films with records of when there was someone in the room, and (here's my hypothesis) lo and behold we can tell when someone was watching.
I dunno. Maybe if you add it all up informationally, you're always observing or you're never observing. Maybe your act of looking at the results is causally downstream of the events, and so always counts as an observation. We know already that the observation's collapse of the quantum state is extratemporal. Or maybe something like Penrose's "one graviton effect" rule holds true, and it's purely a matter of how much stuff gets bumped by the event.
But, dammit, we can see the difference in the films. Can't we? Isn't there an epistemic asymmetry there? A handle to grab on to?
Maybe there's a catch-22 guaranteeing that you can never gain utility from decoherence. They say that you can't use entanglement to make an ansible; maybe it's a similar kind of situation to that. I don't grok it; I didn't study hard enough in Differential Equations. But, if so, is there any way to rigorously prove that that's the case?
And could somebody please convince this layman, so I can stop dreaming?
Please, can we settle this question?
2008-03-27
The Schrödinger Gun
Roger Penrose proposes in The Emperor's New Mind that consciousness depends not just on arrangements of synaptic connections, but on funky quantum effects. (He was on a panel discussing this at a symposium at Dartmouth while I was there studying cognitive science, and I got to ask him a question. Squee!) Collapse of the quantum waveform, decoherence, boundaries between the quantum and classical, that sort of thing. Apparently he explored that particular topic, specifically with regard to a hypothesis he has about microtubules, in his next book, (hang on, Googling/Wikiing the name...) Shadows of the Mind. I haven't read it.
Suppose he's right. Suppose consciousness relies on something like quantum computing. Well, then, decoherence would interfere with it, wouldn't it? If you could figure out a way to "observe" the essential process or feature, you could disrupt someone's consciousness.
It's too bad we have no actual clue what "observe" means. Either theoretically or practically. How do you open the box on the cat? Can we mathematically define what constitutes opening the box? Penrose touches on this; he proposes that maybe it's something like, an event is observed when it's causally connected to a one-graviton outcome. He makes it clear that he's just waving his hands, though.
What if we could causally connect consciousness to a one-graviton outcome? Something like a photomultiplier for the soul. A cascade resulting from detection of some aspect of cognition.
Like say we discover that the quantummy activity in, oh heck, let's just go with the flow and say microtubules, sometimes emits neutrinos or something. Or when consciousness is happening, it has a different probability of emitting neutrinos. I dunno, all you need is something observable. Yeah, I know what you're going to say, but just for the sake of argument let's suppose we figure out a way to detect neutrinos without a coal mine full of ultrapure water. I watch PBS sometimes, too, you know.
So there you go. Point some appropriate kind of detector at somebody's head, and disrupt their consciousness. Just like the detector in the two-slit experiment, but useful.
Wouldn't that make a rockin' weapon?
Suppose he's right. Suppose consciousness relies on something like quantum computing. Well, then, decoherence would interfere with it, wouldn't it? If you could figure out a way to "observe" the essential process or feature, you could disrupt someone's consciousness.
It's too bad we have no actual clue what "observe" means. Either theoretically or practically. How do you open the box on the cat? Can we mathematically define what constitutes opening the box? Penrose touches on this; he proposes that maybe it's something like, an event is observed when it's causally connected to a one-graviton outcome. He makes it clear that he's just waving his hands, though.
What if we could causally connect consciousness to a one-graviton outcome? Something like a photomultiplier for the soul. A cascade resulting from detection of some aspect of cognition.
Like say we discover that the quantummy activity in, oh heck, let's just go with the flow and say microtubules, sometimes emits neutrinos or something. Or when consciousness is happening, it has a different probability of emitting neutrinos. I dunno, all you need is something observable. Yeah, I know what you're going to say, but just for the sake of argument let's suppose we figure out a way to detect neutrinos without a coal mine full of ultrapure water. I watch PBS sometimes, too, you know.
So there you go. Point some appropriate kind of detector at somebody's head, and disrupt their consciousness. Just like the detector in the two-slit experiment, but useful.
Wouldn't that make a rockin' weapon?
2008-03-17
Meme Grenade
I'm shy, in a peculiar kind of way, about communicating with people I don't know. There's a threshold, and only certain situations will get me over that threshold. If I have something I know to say, for instance, and I can convince myself it's relevant to the conversation, I can usually open my mouth. That's rare, though, and tough, and I'm afraid in my efforts to improve my social skills I may have somewhat degraded my criteria for relevance.
Another behavior which I often exhibit is what I call the meme grenade. I do this both in person and online. I'll toss an utterance of a few words into the group, carefully constructed to catch in people's heads and stimulate thought and conversation. Often, I'll then withdraw a bit, since the grenade was all I had to offer. More often than not, it's a dud, but it goes off frequently enough that I get reinforced for doing it. There's a little bit of glee I derive when, for instance, a thread or subthread discussion I initiate snowballs into a weeklong conversation.
There's a little subvocal exclamation in my head when I pull the pin. Translated to words, it might be, "Fire in the hole!"
I'm a visual person. There's a part of me that attributes synchronicity or something to the faint resemblance between an old-fashioned pineapple grenade and the capsid of a virus.
Another behavior which I often exhibit is what I call the meme grenade. I do this both in person and online. I'll toss an utterance of a few words into the group, carefully constructed to catch in people's heads and stimulate thought and conversation. Often, I'll then withdraw a bit, since the grenade was all I had to offer. More often than not, it's a dud, but it goes off frequently enough that I get reinforced for doing it. There's a little bit of glee I derive when, for instance, a thread or subthread discussion I initiate snowballs into a weeklong conversation.
There's a little subvocal exclamation in my head when I pull the pin. Translated to words, it might be, "Fire in the hole!"
I'm a visual person. There's a part of me that attributes synchronicity or something to the faint resemblance between an old-fashioned pineapple grenade and the capsid of a virus.
2008-03-16
The Powers That Be
So, we just got to see the OLPC talk at PyCon. It was given by the fellow who handed out the first production OLPC.
And I've got my usual sci-fi feel about the OLPC thing, like it's going to wake the Overmind and such. And I don't know how silly that thought is. Even the most extreme position I've got in my head thinks that there's less than an even chance that this thing will actually happen; there's a great risk that it'll either fizzle on its own, or be stomped out by the powers that be.
I mean, how subversive can you get? How futurist can you get? Mesh networks. Pedagogy, economics, memetics.
One sad note, in that extreme position, is that if the big stuff happens, it will also include some bad shit. Seriously bad shit. Mass roundings up of XOs. Quashed uprisings by children. I don't want to think too much about it, but if you're starting to get really ugly images, you're heading in the right direction.
But one hopeful note is that the heroes of these events won't be unsung. The revolution will be televised.
And not so much broadcast as sowed. It's decentralized. Peer-to-peer. Mesh. The fundamental architecture of the OLPC project is exactly the kind of stuff that's least suppressible by tyrannical governments. In fact, it's superbly engineered countertyrranical technology. Someone's been doing some big-picture systems thinking.
I spent some time last night playing a trial of a game called GalCon. It's a resource-acquisition galactic conquest game. Implemented in Python, natch. I sucked at it, as I do at games, but after a little practice I began to hold my own against the Practice level of the bots. It reinforced a lesson I'd learned in Settlers of Catan: Grab resources fast. The importance of a given second in the game follows something like a hyperbola; no second is nearly as important as the one before it.
So taking that lesson and looking at OLPC, I'm happy that this fellow was talking about handing out a quarter million laptops in this first go. Sure, more faster would be better. But this might be enough.
Let's hope the powers that be don't yet grok graph theory.
And I've got my usual sci-fi feel about the OLPC thing, like it's going to wake the Overmind and such. And I don't know how silly that thought is. Even the most extreme position I've got in my head thinks that there's less than an even chance that this thing will actually happen; there's a great risk that it'll either fizzle on its own, or be stomped out by the powers that be.
I mean, how subversive can you get? How futurist can you get? Mesh networks. Pedagogy, economics, memetics.
One sad note, in that extreme position, is that if the big stuff happens, it will also include some bad shit. Seriously bad shit. Mass roundings up of XOs. Quashed uprisings by children. I don't want to think too much about it, but if you're starting to get really ugly images, you're heading in the right direction.
But one hopeful note is that the heroes of these events won't be unsung. The revolution will be televised.
And not so much broadcast as sowed. It's decentralized. Peer-to-peer. Mesh. The fundamental architecture of the OLPC project is exactly the kind of stuff that's least suppressible by tyrannical governments. In fact, it's superbly engineered countertyrranical technology. Someone's been doing some big-picture systems thinking.
I spent some time last night playing a trial of a game called GalCon. It's a resource-acquisition galactic conquest game. Implemented in Python, natch. I sucked at it, as I do at games, but after a little practice I began to hold my own against the Practice level of the bots. It reinforced a lesson I'd learned in Settlers of Catan: Grab resources fast. The importance of a given second in the game follows something like a hyperbola; no second is nearly as important as the one before it.
So taking that lesson and looking at OLPC, I'm happy that this fellow was talking about handing out a quarter million laptops in this first go. Sure, more faster would be better. But this might be enough.
Let's hope the powers that be don't yet grok graph theory.
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