tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72253732024-03-07T17:05:07.128-05:00Who Were the Sea Peoples?We discuss politics, computer science, philosophy, economics, gardening, and sex.gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comBlogger8092125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-41334841208412264312023-07-30T21:02:00.004-04:002023-07-30T21:02:49.682-04:00"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness<p> I am currently reading <i>The Master and His Emissary</i>, which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.)</p><p>But then on page 186 I find:</p><p>"Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad."</p><p>OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean.</p><p>But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos">Aristarchus</a> had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?)</p><p>And when Copernicus proposed his model, what happened?</p><p>"In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered in Rome a series of lectures outlining Copernicus' theory. The lectures were heard with interest by Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals." -- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism">Wikipedia</a></p><p>Many people thought he was wrong, but I've seen no evidence that anyone thought he was "mad."</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-68397905647550192392023-01-17T16:23:00.001-05:002023-01-17T16:23:14.127-05:00"Machine Learning"<p> The name is a misnomer. And a harmful one, because it interferes with understanding the process that is really occuring.</p><p>What is really occurring is a search of a constrained program space. Let's say you want to be able to <a href="https://youtu.be/vIci3C4JkL0">identify images of hot dogs</a>. You begin with a plausible program for doing so, that is able to also search the space of nearby programs that might get better results on the problem. You then (in "supervised learning") provide scores that indicate how well one of these possible programs has done on solving the problem. After doing this for some time you settle upon a program that solves the problem "well enough."</p><p>This is a great technique that can produce truly impressive results on a wide class of problems, such as identifying images of hot dogs. But notice that, except for the phrase in scare quotes, there is no "learning" in the description. Calling this "learning" is importing ideological baggage that just obscures what is really going on.</p><p><br /></p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-38779725444667972272022-07-05T19:56:00.001-04:002022-07-05T19:56:34.472-04:00Misunderstanding dynamical systemsI once argued with a woman online — can you imagine? Me, arguing online! — Who claimed that global warming couldn’t possibly be due to human activity, because of the small amount of CO2 our activities release compared to the total in the atmosphere. <div><br></div><div>So I slipped her 500 µg of LSD, and said “Let’s see what small amounts of a chemical can really do!”</div><div><br></div><div>Ha ha! It was online, so I could not do that.</div><div><br></div><div>But imagine if she had never encountered ice but only water between 100°F and 32.5°F. I’m sure if I tried to explain to her that the next drop of 1° would make a huge difference, she would scoff, and say “No, the water is just going to get a little more dense and a little more sluggish.”</div><div><br></div><div>Dynamical systems experience phase transitions, where a small move past some point throws the system into a whole new form of behavior. </div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-65864453160778157602022-06-21T12:38:00.002-04:002022-06-21T12:38:19.799-04:00"It Tastes like Sawdust"<p>I recalled reading a mildly right-of-center pundit offering a recipe. When it came to the seasoning, her recipe called for pepper, and she made a point of saying "Freshly ground only! Pre-ground pepper tastes like sawdust!"</p><p>Of course, pre-ground pepper doesn't taste anything like sawdust. It taste pretty much like freshly ground pepper, only not quite as pungent. So why would she say this?</p><p>The remark makes perfect sense if you understand it, not as her report on what pre-ground pepper tastes like to her, but as an expression of class solidarity. "Hey, I may be slightly right-of-center... but I, also, am the sort of person who would <i>never</i> use pre-ground pepper!"</p><p><br /></p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-82597461529589566842022-03-25T02:07:00.001-04:002022-03-25T02:07:05.473-04:00It's Good in and of Itself!<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/most-unhealthy-countries-in-the-world-ranked-2019-3#1-south-africa-028-scoring-poorly-on-all-measures-south-africas-scores-for-obesity-drinking-and-life-expectancy-in-particular-made-it-the-unhealthiest-country-in-2019-20">Business Insider ranks countries on health</a>. One of the "plus" factors is you get more points the more the government spends on health care.</p><p>What the hey? If that spending is effective, <i>shouldn't it show up in some other health stat</i>? And if it doesn't... why is it a positive factor?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-32314950014046381892022-03-23T01:46:00.001-04:002022-03-23T01:46:32.747-04:00BZ: Don't ask me questions in the comments!<p>As I mentioned, for some messed up Google reason, I am unable to comment on my own blog.</p><p>And no, I absolutely do NOT wish to spend any more time addressing Block's ridiculous misinterpretations of what I wrote.</p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-43825605150803920132022-03-23T00:11:00.001-04:002022-03-23T00:11:08.706-04:00BZ: My response to Block<p> Apparently, I can't comment at my own blog! I kept trying to post this but it never shows up.</p><p>So <a href="https://cosmosandtaxis.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/callahan.pdf">here is my response</a> to Block.</p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-7227414582803574362022-02-02T22:57:00.001-05:002022-02-02T22:57:09.732-05:00Mises vs. Marx<p> Ludwig von Mises attempted to dismiss Marx's class analysis based on the fact that capitalists compete with each other for capital, for workers, and for customers.</p><p>All that is true. And yet it does not refute Marx.</p><p>Consider: the football players on the Bengals compete with each other for playing minutes.</p><p>And yet when they go up against the Rams, they will all unite to help defeat this opponent.</p><p>People can compete <i>within</i> some class, and yet unite <i>as a class</i> when faced with a challenge from a different class.</p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-79635665083978918832022-02-02T09:47:00.001-05:002022-02-02T10:04:28.207-05:00Would Marx have imagined this?Faced with the prospect of revolt from the proletariat, the liberal state created a new class: the permanent underclass.<div><br /></div><div>Whereas proletarian man was connected to society only as a factor of production, underclass man is not even a factor of production. If proletarian man is like an ox, underclass man is like a rat or pigeon: living a separate existence on the fringes of human society, collecting whatever scraps and refuse come his way.</div><div><br /></div><div>But he serves a purpose: he is the canary in the coal mine for the worker. “Not happy working 40 hours a week in a repetitive, stressful factory job for a barely adequate wage? You better keep showing up for work, or you could wind up in that housing project you drive past in the morning, with your kids getting beat up on the way to school every week.”</div><div><br /></div><div>UPDATE: And of course, Marx saw that liberal reforms would serve to prop-up liberal society, not to genuinely reform it.</div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-22223469224234460162022-01-16T02:02:00.001-05:002022-01-18T23:37:56.113-05:00Yes, Let's Talk About Sloppiness<p>UPDATE: Sorry, I just saw I failed to link to Field's essay! Corrected.</p><p>Laura K. Field, in <a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/revisiting-why-liberalism-failed-a-five-part-series/">a five-part essay</a> attempting to trash Patrick Deneen's <i>Why Liberalism Failed</i>, accuses Deneen of sloppiness. For instance, she writes:</p><p>"Bacon was not merely interested in 'torturing' nature to discover her secrets, as Deneen repeatedly alleges."</p><p>I just re-checked my copy of Deneen, and:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>He <i>never</i> says Bacon was "merely" interested in "torturing" nature. This just happens to be the aspect of Bacon's thought he is interested in. The book is not a intellectual biography of Bacon, nor even an intellectual history of liberalism. So why would we expect a full picture of Bacon as a thinker? That itself might take up the whole book, and Deneen would never get around to discussing liberalism!</li><li>He does mention this notion... just <i>once</i>. Not "repeatedly."</li></ol><p></p><p>Field writes:</p><p>"I do not know where Deneen got the idea that Francis Bacon had no interest in cultivating virtues like wisdom, prudence, and justice, given that one of Bacon’s most famous works is a collection of moral essays that considers some of these themes."</p><p>Again, she's making s&*t up: Deneen never says that Bacon had "no interest" in such topics. He contends that Bacon did not consider them the main focus of education.</p><p>She then writes: "Given how much Deneen’s inevitability thesis depends on early modern thinkers having a single ideological outlook and program..." Well, the answer to "how much" is "Not at all": what he contends is that there are various trends in thought that come together into liberalism. In fact, he names Locke as the first liberal political philosopher, so he could not possibly think he had the same ideological outlook as Bacon or Hobbes, whom he does not consider liberals!</p><p>Field further says that Deneen's very use of "liberalism" to describe what he criticizes "seems to me like a highly-charged political choice dressed up as scholarly objectivity." But liberalism is just standard terminology here: Fields argument <i>seems to me</i> to be just throwing a bunch of trash to see if any sticks. She contends that Deneed instead should use "liberal democracy" or "constitutional democracy," but this is nonsense: Deneen is criticizing <i>liberalism</i>, not constitutions or democracy. In fact, Deneen devotes a whole section of the book to "Antidemocratic Liberalism," noting how liberals tend to only like democracy when it produces liberal results. And he notes how constitutionalism long pre-dates liberalism. So Field is asking Deneen to irrelevantly drag concepts he is not critiquing into a discussion of one he is by mislabeling his target.</p><p>Field, in attempting to make her case that Deneen is intellctually sloppy in this book, writes:</p><p>"I take my final brief example of Deneen’s sloppy writing from his account of Tocqueville, a writer that he clearly admires and takes seriously. Deneen appeals to Tocqueville repeatedly in <i>Why Liberalism Failed</i>, and he makes his overall interpretation of Tocqueville more explicit in a response to some critics that came out in Commonweal magazine last year."</p><p>This is absolutely bizarre: Fields is putting <i>Why Liberalism Failed</i> on trial for intellectual sloppiness, and presenting as evidence... a <i>completely different work</i>. I'm sorry, the essay Deneen wrote in <i>Commonweal</i> may or may not be good (I have only skimmed it, and I am not a Tocqueville scholar), but that has nothing to do with whether the book under review is good: it is quite possible to write some works that are very good and some that are not.</p><p>In criticizing Deneen's emphasis on modern atomism and individualism, Field writes:</p><p>"For all of Deneen’s lamentations about modern atomism and individualism (modern politics is based on “the unfettered and autonomous choice of individuals” 31, “our default condition is homelessness” 78, and we live lives of “deracinated vagabondage” 131), the phenomenon he describes is not exactly new: selfishness and individualism have a long ancestry (!) that reaches at least as far back as ancient Greece. Ancient literature is full of characters who struggle personally with the duties imposed by convention..."</p><p>But Deneen never contends that the tension between individualism and social harmony is brand new! What he argues is that modernity has come down one-sidedly for individualism. The fact that ancient thought <i>struggled</i> with this tension backs, rather than refutes, Deneen's case: modernity has declared the struggle decided, with individualism the winner.</p><p>Field cites Samuel Goldman's review of Deneen's book a couple of times, but it might do her well to re-read it herself: it is a much more fair-minded, if still critical, review of Deneen. Her review is a partisan polemic, and not a serious engagement with what Deneen actually wrote.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-56093261449530930042022-01-14T23:23:00.001-05:002022-01-14T23:23:11.819-05:00Prices going up? Prices going down?<p> Ball of confusion</p><p>It's climate change today</p><p>Hey hey!</p><p>Or at least, there are people out there who would like to blame every single bad thing that happens on "climate change."</p><p>Listen, I am a climate conservative: I think we should mess with our atmosphere as little as possible, and I believe we might have messed with it too much already. <b>But</b>...</p><p>Today, I saw someone on Twitter blame recent price rises on... us "cooking the planet." Uuuugh...</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Earth is warming up some, but it's been far warmer than this in the past. What's more... earth don't care! It's a friggin' planet! It will be fine even if we wipe out the human race.</li><li>Not <b>every</b> bad thing that happens is due to climate change! The January 6 riot did not happen because of climate change. China persecuting the Uyghuts is not due to climate chnage. And the recent bout of inflation is not due to climate change: It is due to the Fed flooding the economy with cheap funds for a dozen years.</li></ol><div>Got it?</div><p></p><p><br /></p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-22072875307125232482022-01-08T04:17:00.001-05:002022-01-08T04:17:38.461-05:00What Is This Life?Rationalists pride themselves on believing in evolution, unlike dopey creationists.<div><br></div><div>Per the theory of evolution, if we find that all, say, woodchucks engage in some behavior, and expand a great deal of energy in doing so, we should suspect that that activity is important to the woodchucks’ survival, even if we are not sure how. It would be very non-Darwinian of us to dismiss this behavior as “Just stupid woodchucks, doing something ridiculous and pointless.”</div><div><br></div><div>And yet when it is noticed that all human societies ever have engaged in some form of behavior that can be characterized as religious, and have spent a great deal of energy doing so, these rationalists dismiss this behavior as “Just stupid humans, doing something ridiculous and pointless.”</div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-18695770410883025972021-12-12T19:52:00.001-05:002021-12-12T19:52:05.834-05:00The biology of your eyesI saw some contact lenses advertised that boasted that they were designed with that in mind.<div><br></div><div>An example of sciences trying to take credit for the things they study: our eyes have a nature, not a “biology.” Biology studies that nature.</div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-83278767869657685062021-12-12T00:14:00.001-05:002021-12-12T00:14:31.141-05:00More Adams-esque Nonsense<p>This was in the Dirk Gently TV show, so I don't know if Douglas Adams wrote it himself or it was inserted by the TV writers, but it is fully in line with Douglas Adams BS:</p><p>Dirk at some point "realizes" that a woman he has met is actually his former professor's brain-dead daughter's body operating via a "downloaded" AI.</p><p>For the people who like this kind of nonsense, this is an acceptable story line, because it is "scientific."</p><p>Ok, let us suppose that "AI" is a real concept, and let us further suppose that human brains are a sort of computer.</p><p>Well, then, the original AI would have been a program running on some computer architecture... say, Intel x86... and then program was then "downloaded" onto the professor's daughter... so, wait:</p><p>Her brain implemented the x86 instruction set? Intel created human brains? And although it was severely damaged, it was fine again once it downloaded some new program?</p><p>The people who love this sort of nonsense would haughtily dismiss a story of demonic possession. But at least such a story is logically coherent: one spirit overmasters another spirit, and takes control of the bodily entity that the first spirit was supposed to control. Whether that has ever occurred or not, the narrative makes perfect sense.</p><p>As opposed to "he downloaded the AI created into his daughter's brain."</p><p>Which makes sense only to scientism ideologues.</p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-62674282136705943862021-12-11T13:42:00.001-05:002021-12-11T13:42:11.727-05:00Douglas AdamsHe had a decent sense of humor. But his great appeal to intellectual midwits comes mostly through having his characters babble inanities like “Consciousness is just a stream of binary code.”gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-91907642110819106102021-12-06T18:16:00.001-05:002021-12-11T13:42:33.785-05:00The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justiceWhen Martin Luther King said this, apparently quoting Theodore Parker, it demonstrated how thoroughly his Christianity had already been infected by progressivism.<div><br></div><div>From a Christian perspective, there is simply no reason to suspect that the world will become more and more just in secular time. The sheep and goats will be with us right until the final judgment.</div><div><br></div><div>Parker first coined this phrase over 160 years ago. The time since his death has seen the race for Africa, which included the huge slave work camp called the Belgian Congo, World War I, the Soviet Gulag, the Chinese cultural revolution, the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fire bombing of Dresden…</div><div><br></div><div>By any objective reading of history, Parker‘s conviction has been shown as idiotically wrong.</div><div><br></div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-23421962434444981432021-12-06T17:48:00.001-05:002021-12-06T17:49:43.781-05:00Do you have any sticky buns?And by “sticky buns” I mean steel wool<div><br><div>And by “steel wool” I mean aspirin</div><div><br></div><div>No?</div><div><br></div><div>Well, forget I asked!</div><div><br></div><div>What are my needs to you?</div><div><br></div><div>Me, a mere scullery maid…</div><div><br></div><div>And by “scullery maid” I mean sticky buns…</div></div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-33128235920821327242021-12-05T23:10:00.001-05:002021-12-05T23:10:38.160-05:00But isn’t it improving?When I was mentioning how buggy Apple’s voice recognition software was, in about 2017, one of my audience asked “But it’s getting better and better, isn’t it?“<div><br></div><div>I thought about this for about a second, and answered “No, I’ve seen no improvement since I started using it seven or eight years ago.”</div><div><br></div><div>I must report that my evaluation is exactly the same today. And I find this really remarkable: how could this software be out and in use for so long, yet show no signs of improvement whatsoever?</div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-75020712360865356922021-12-05T22:43:00.001-05:002021-12-05T22:43:52.860-05:00The stupidest convention in detective fictionIs the one where, at the end, the detective assembles everyone who the reader or viewer ever suspected, accuses them one after another of the crime, and finally reveals the true culprit.<div><br></div><div>Whatever would be the point of such an activity, in solving any real world crime? None.</div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-50827694442164284412021-12-05T01:51:00.002-05:002021-12-05T01:51:48.251-05:00One Day, I'm Going to Vanish Out of the Historical Record<p>I just heard: "After this defeat, the NeoAssyrian empire vanished from the historical record."</p><p>What this nitwit meant was that the empire ceased to exist. It's not like he thinks there is still a secret "NeoAssyrian empire" that just happens to be missing from the "historical record."</p><p>No, the empire ended, but he can't bring himself to speak simply, and has to say the nonsense I quote above.</p>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-30121171794978299482021-12-02T13:42:00.001-05:002021-12-02T20:58:18.148-05:00Pulling a special science out of a rabbit holeYou’ve heard this before: the practitioner of some special science tells you “The world you see with your senses is not real. It is an illusion generated in your brain. The real world is the one exhibited by [FILL IN SPECIAL SCIENCE HERE].”<div><br></div><div>So, a physicist may tell you that the real world is what physics shows us. But how do we know what the laws and entities of physics are? Well, we know them by looking at a read out on a scale, or watching a dial, or peering through a telescope or electron microscope. In other words, this supposedly reliable world of physics is completely built upon the supposedly illusory world of our senses! If we can’t trust our senses when we look at a tree or another person, why can we suddenly trust them when we look at a meter or a scale?</div><div><br></div><div>It is obvious nonsense. At the very best, if the world of our senses is actually an illusion, then the laws of physics are the laws of how this illusion behaves.<br><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-38871171768906351712021-12-02T12:52:00.001-05:002021-12-05T01:38:31.072-05:00The inconsistency of liberal neutralityIt is often been pointed out that “liberal neutrality“ is a myth, that all laws embody concepts of right and wrong, and liberalism certainly is not neutral between liberal and non-liberal viewpoints.<div><br /></div><div>But even on its own terms, its claims are unjustified: if there is no way that we can publicly assert what's right and what’s wrong, if there’s no objective way to justify these judgments, then there is no way to justify the liberal claim that the government should be neutral between different moral stances. That itself is a moral claim, and by the tenets of liberalism, can’t be granted any priority over competing moral claims, such as “In the face of competing moral stances, the best thing to do is <b>Win! </b>so that your own stance carries the day.”</div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-69866082656716485962021-12-02T09:49:00.001-05:002021-12-02T09:49:47.190-05:00TootsieI had a chance to rewatch the Dustin Hoffman film Tootsie not too long ago.<div><br></div><div>Theoretically, it is a message about equality, and how men don’t treat women well.</div><div><br></div><div>But if you actually consider the plot carefully, it seems the main message is “Men are even better at being a woman than women are.”</div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-10840556434663169812021-11-29T20:47:00.001-05:002021-11-29T20:47:08.932-05:00Does it really help the deaf?I see closed captioning put up text like “somber piano music.”<div><br></div><div>In the program, the somber piano music is setting a mood. But seeing the words “somber piano music“ hardly does the same work, does it? Is there really any point to verbal descriptions of the background music?</div>gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-11147400901494199032021-11-29T17:03:00.001-05:002021-11-29T17:03:09.871-05:00OK, this is weird, even for New YorkLeaving the 99 Cents store, I just saw the guy leaving in front of me “go to third base” with a manikin. As though it were a live woman, and he were trying to get it turned on!gcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.com0