07.30.08
Vacation
I’m off cruisin’ to Alaska. Make do.
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07.29.08
Relativity as Informational Interdependence
Ever have the experience of sitting in traffic and believe that you are moving in reverse, only to realize a second later that you were fooled by the vehicle next to you moving forward? You were sitting still, but because you saw something moving away, you mistakenly thought you started to move in the opposite direction.
Two different senses may be at work here: your sight and your balance. Lets assume that your balance did not play any role in this little experiment (you would have been moving too slowly to feel a jolt). Your sight told you that you were moving in a certain direction (backwards) because of something you saw, say a bus pulling forward. Then you saw something other than the bus, say the ground, and you realized that your initial appraisal of the situation was incorrect.
At the point when you look away from the bus, you believe that you are moving backwards. Then when you see the ground, you believe that you are not moving backwards. You reconcile these two contradictory beliefs by deciding that it was not you who were moving backwards but the bus that was moving forwards.
What this illustrates is that objects require something other than themselves to be considered in motion. Without the ability to reference a ’stationary’ system (the ground), it is impossible to make a determination who is moving and who is staying still.
Now imagine this situation was taking place in a very gray place. The only things visible are yourself and the bus on a gray background. Then you notice that the bus is getting smaller. There is nothing for you to use as a reference (no stars, no ground, no nothing) to decide if it is you who is moving away from the bus or if it is the bus moving away from you, or both*. The only thing you have is the information that you and the bus are moving away from each other.
I refer to the statement that you and the bus are moving away from each other as information and not a belief because it is much more certain than what I called beliefs above, namely that you were in a certain kind of motion, which quickly turned out to be questionable.
The information that you and the bus are moving away from each other is not your everyday sort of information. It would be inaccurate to reduce this statement to a conjunction (you and the bus are moving), which is incorrect, or a disjunction (you or the bus is moving) because you are only moving with regard to the bus. By claiming that either you or the bus is moving, it makes it seem that the motion of one has nothing to do with the other. The motion of you and the bus need to be mutually dependent upon each other, and a mutual interdependence is not reducible.
If we return to the everyday, we can say that you have the information that you and the bus are moving away from each other and you and the bit of ground you are on are not moving away from each other. Since the bit of ground we initially selected was arbitrary (we could have chosen anything, like another bus) it is subject to the same issues as the bus; we merely take the ground to be stationary for most purposes, but this is a pragmatic concern. Hence all determinations of motion (or non-motion) are instances of informational interdependence.
The result that relativity is part of a larger class of mutually interdependent structures is non-trivial. Minimally this formalism will allow us to specify exactly when the use of relativity is warranted, but more importantly it will allow us to identify and provide insight into other situations of informational interdependence. Cases of mutual interdependence are relatively rare as far instances of logic go (they can’t even be described in first order logic) and having such a well studied example gives us a head start on this phenomenon.
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* or if the bus is shrinking, or you are growing, or all of the above, but lets assume no Alice in Wonderland scenarios.
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07.27.08
Video Game Design 4: Matrix Bullet-time
Johnny Chung Lee pretty much shocked the entire video game world (and lots of others) with this video (5.8 million views, 5/5 star rating with 21,000 votes):
This is a pretty nifty bit of engineering, using the off the shelf Wii Remote and a relatively cheap extra (safety glasses with IR leds <15$) to provide a very high level virtual reality setup.
Secondly Nintendo has recently come out with the Wii Balance Board. This peripheral can accurately measure your weight distribution.
If we combine the potential of head tracking with weight distribution it would be possible to create a very accurate Matrix-style dodging bullets experience, simulating what is seen in this clip:
This would be a damn sweet feature if integrated into a full action game. It could likely be accomplished with head-tracking alone, but the combination of board, head-tracking, and Wii Motion Plus makes for near full body integration. The Matrix franchise is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the technology, seeing as everyone wears sunglasses in the movie anyway.
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07.26.08
links, cause even though
i’m at the end of the internet, you may not be.
Animal of the Month: NYC Pimp
“What sort of person subjects children as young as 12 to beatings and a life of prostitution? An evidence list submitted in the case of Corey Davis, a Queens man who billed himself as “Magnificent,” might provide some insight. Mr. Davis, 36, is facing a minimum of 23 years in prison after pleading guilty in March to a federal charge of sex trafficking involving a 12-year-old runaway.
Mindbending
“… But then things went dark, weird, and creepy: one girl laughed, but then so did another, and then another, and then another, and then another.
After exposure, the incubation period from nothing to hysteria was short, from a few hours to a couple of days. There was no fever, no physical symptoms, just laughter and occasional crying between short moments of exhausted recuperation. When victims were restrained they sometimes became violent…”
- Vanity Fair: On the Waterboard: Politics & Power
This is a video of a reporter being waterboarded in order to investigate torture and ‘agressive’ interrogation… It is weird stuff. Be sure to check out the accompanying article.
Science
“This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers.”
(they’re all out of free posters now, but the file is available so you can print one for yourself)
- Core77: The Secret Lives of Invisible Magnetic Fields [4:45]
A very cool movie visualizing (with sound) magnetic fields.
- Dancing Non-Newtonian liquid (also via core77) [1:32]
- InvenSense: Gyroscopes and Accelerometers Compared
Check out this video describing the technology that is going to be used in the new Nintendo Wii Motion Plus. General relativity needs to be accounted for to accurately measure motion in 3D space (true 6 degrees of freedom) by using both accelerometers and gyroscopes. But perhaps the most interesting part of the site is the disclaimer at the bottom (my emphasis):
“InvenSense sensors should not be used or sold in the development, storing, production and utilization of any conventional or mass-destructive weapons or any other weapons or life-threatening applications as well as in any other life-critical applications including but not limited to medical equipment, transportation, aerospace and nuclear instruments, undersea equipment, power plant equipment, disaster prevention and crime prevention equipment.”
Culture
- Nadia Comaneci, Montreal 1976 TEN!!! [1:06] (via plump plum)
- plump plum: Selection from “The Groucho Letters”
- OPENERS - Takashi Murakami Prints “My First Art” Series (click for more pics)
- Michael Bluejay | Crazy World of Michael Bluejay
Last but not least this is what I consider to be a throwback to vintage internet. We are talking a space background repeating image here people; I don’t think I’ve seen that since ‘97. Plus something for nearly everyone: lots of links, e.g. useful information like an up to date guide to SEO, and Women Chess Grandmasters.
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07.24.08
Getting Around Gettier
The Gettier argument (and its descendants) run thusly…
Someone thinks they know x.
However, due to factor y, they do not know x.
These sorts of thought experiments are used regularly to undermine different accounts of knowledge. Generally I think they are effective but there is one gray area that is under-appreciated.
When the thought experiment is introduced, it is generally assumed to be unproblematic: whoever is setting up the thought experiment is defining the situation and generally is allowed to do so as he or she pleases. However, in setting up a thought experiment that has to do with knowledge, we are inherently assuming an ability to create thought experiments. This means we are presupposing knowing how to do something order to analyze knowledge in general.
In this instance, due to the self reflexive nature of epistemological research, we are forced to accept a presupposition of knowledge of thought experiments when trying to explain knowledge. Therefore Gettier-style thought experiments beg the question by analyzing Knowledge while making you implicitly presuppose a form of knowledge.
Unless you are a skeptic, you are probably thinking that no one is denying that we have knowledge; we just can’t explain it yet. Gettier merely was pointing this out. Therefore it is fine that we have the knowledge of how to have thought experiments and the Gettier-style thought experiments stand as testament to the failure of the Justified-True-Belief account of knowledge.
As I said above, for the most part I agree. I say ‘for the most part’ because just about all the theories of knowledge I have seen don’t take presupposed knowledge as a problem that has to be dealt with, just explained. Hence the big upshot is: If an epistemology came along that started off by explaining thought experiments (and presupposed knowledge in general), then that theory would be a step ahead of Gettier. With a theory of presupposed knowledge you would have the opportunity to prevent Gettier-style thought experiments from becoming problematic. (Those theories would be able to have a retroactive thought-experiment abortion, a la The Terminator.)
Personally I default to my stated epistemological position. Still, for those who disagree with me (and as far as I can tell that is everyone but, like, 3, if I am lucky and it’s a good day), I offer this argument/ suggestion in hopes that it is useful.
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07.18.08
more of my metaphysics
I’ve put up another paper under ‘My Metaphysics‘ entitled ‘The Imperius Curse‘. No, it is not about the Imperius curse from the Harry Potter books exactly - it is about control, determinism and free will - but I am re-purposing the term for my own uses (just like the paper entitled ‘Occlumency‘).
When I approached the subject of free will and determinism from my metaphysical perspective, I felt that philosophers have focussed upon naturalistic or religious or logical issues and not enough upon our influence over each other. Basically, since we have to be convinced by some person (ourselves included) that the world is determined in some way, I see this as a more fundamental kind of control. Convincing someone to do or believe something is a Leadership skill, and I strongly believe that the concept of leadership has been neglected in philosophy. Hopefully some of my discussion of leadership will be of interest to non-philosophers as well (Charm is defined in this essay as well, which is fun.).
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Also, through the wonderful statistics that you can get for your website, I know that exactly 0 people have actually read any of my metaphysics and I’m sure this message will fall on deaf ears. Nonetheless I push on with the same expectations. I’m thinking that one day I’ll have enough for a proper book, which no one will read either, but this all makes me happy, so it’s going to happen.
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07.15.08
It was just a matter of time…
[via]
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07.10.08
A Counterexample to Skepticism
The statement, “Either something happened or something didn’t happen,” is immune to skepticism.
If a skeptic tries to doubt it, then something has happened, making the statement true. If no one doubts it and nothing happened, then the statement is again true. Therefore you may have absolute certainty that something has or has not happened.
Moreover, this statement has it’s uses: I can imagine mothers all over the country trying to impress upon their teenagers to refrain using the word ‘like’. “Either something happened or something didn’t happen. Nothing ‘like happened’.”
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07.08.08
A note on epistemology
Justified true belief does not yield knowledge, and everyone should know this by now. Beyond Gettier’s argument, is this tack I heard given by Jaakko Hintikka:
You may believe something, fine, and have whatever justifications you wish. But how do you know the thing is true?
The point he was making was that far beyond the issue of problems in having the right sort of justifications is the problem of having truth as well. Whenever the Justified-true-belief scheme is used for knowledge the truth of the thing in question is whitewashed over: all the focus is put on the justification and the truth is assumed to exist separately.
For example if I make a claim P, then I clearly believe P, I will need to give justifications x, y, z, etc., and P needs to be true for me to count P to be part of my knowledge. The first two conditions are easy enough for me to demonstrate according to some standards, even if skepticism is still an issue. However, I, nor anyone else, has any ability to demonstrate the truth of P in ways over and above whatever I have given as my justification. Therefore Justified-true-belief reduces to Justified-belief, which no one accepts as knowledge.
Between this argument and Gettier, I see the Justified-true-belief scheme of knowledge as beyond saving. To recover some sense of knowledge, we can focus on this idea:
If you know something, then it is not possible to be mistaken.
There are two ways of dealing with this conditional. First, you can make your definition of what it is to know something always correspond with whatever you cannot be mistaken about. Besides being ad hoc, this sliding scale for knowledge does not correspond very well with what we generally take to be knowledge.
Secondly, we can make what it is not possible to be mistaken about correspond to our knowledge. Although you have already called foul, hear me out. If you were to find out certain things were wrong you might start to doubt your own sanity. For example if you were to find out all the basic things you ‘know’ were wrong - there is no such place as the United States, water is not comprised of oxygen and hydrogen, subjects and verbs are one and the same, you are currently not reading, etc., - you would have reason to worry (at least I would).
Therefore I suggest that knowledge is comprised of things that if they were to be false, then we would not be able to claim we were sane. This definition makes a distinction between things we can be mistaken about and things we cannot be mistaken about. To be mistaken about this second type of thing would entail an unacceptable consequence: if you are insane then you cannot claim to have knowledge.
Is this ad hoc, as above? No, because the definition of what would classify you as insane does not refer to knowledge specifically. For example take the statement, “If x, y and z are false then I am crazy.” No mention of knowledge whatsoever. Therefore this definition is not ad hoc.
Does this definition of knowledge correspond to our intuitions? Very much so: it is based specifically upon the everyday experiences we have and our most established theories of the world.
What about skepticism: can’t we always be mistaken? The skeptic here is asking us to imagine the unimaginable. If we do as the skeptic asks, then we would be required to imagine ourselves to be insane and tell the skeptic what we think as insane people. I can’t do this- I don’t even have a guess as to how to go about trying to do this.
In the end you are wagering your sanity in order to have a claim to knowledge. However, there is no danger in this bet because you hold all the cards: you know what you can imagine to be different. Therefore you gain a theory of knowledge and lose nothing.
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