Is God a Mathmatician, Livio

Is God a Mathmatician, Livio- fin 6/09 – a guided history of mathematics and it’s intersection with philosophy and the title question. Livio is a great author making both history and mathematics easy and enjoyable to read about. His style reminds me of Simon Winchester who writes engaging stories of the history of such arcane and potentially dry topics as the Oxford English Dictionary. A couple of excerpts:

P114 The validity of the cosmological, teleological, and similar arguments as proof for God’s existence has been the subject of debate among philosophers for centuries.  My personal impression has always been that theists don’t need these arguments to be convinced, and atheists are not persuaded by them.

P140 and there-abouts, Livio discusses probability and statistics and I’m reminded of the great book Innumeracy, by Paulos.

P143 Scientists who try to decipher the evolution of the universe usually try to attack the problem from both ends….Probability and statistics are related in a similar fashion.  In probability theory the variables and the initial state is known, and the goal is to predict the most likely end result.  In statistics the outcome is known, but the past causes are uncertain.

The book ends with a general argument that mathematics is both discovered and invented by humans – god is and isn’t a mathematician.  He quotes Bertrand Russell in the end “Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.”  (from http://www.skepdic.com/russell.html). 

An enjoyable book.  For me,  mostly because of the history of mathematics presented.

Your Big Brother could be evil if he wanted to be

“Don’t be evil,” says Google, but after reading Googling Security by Conti, I expect the temptations have got to be unreal.
 
I read on John Battelle’s blog that Google is now allowing users to change the information that comes up in “vanity searches.”  The price is that you must have a Google profile.  And the ranking of the “yous” will be affected by how complete your user profile is.
 
Google, and other online advertisers, expect to make money by knowing you better.  Google wants to know you really really well.
 
The implications are scary in a Big Brother, Hal, Skynet, AI sort of way.
 
As Conti points out repeatedly in his book, the more personalized the online service, the more you hemorrhage potentially sensitive information.
 
Alright, I am the REAL me, so let’s make sure I’m listed correctly on Google….  These friendly words appear on creating a Google Profile: “The more information you provide, the easier it will be for friends to find you.”  TO FIND YOU.  That’s sort of frightening in what’s left unsaid.  Like maybe not everyone is your friend?
 
And continuing the profile setup…”Your profile is not yet eligible to be featured in Google search results.  To have your profile featured, add more information about yourself.”
 
I wonder if you can turn this off later? Probably not.  And *never* on Google’s servers….  I got freaked out and stopped.
 
Right now YOU are the STRONG link in connecting your address, your phone, social security, and credit card numbers, your medical and family history, your credit record, how many traffic tickets you’ve received, your personal and your professional online profiles, like your “home” and “work” email accounts, and all the varied and “private” interests you’ve ever shared with the oracle of Google. 
 
The technology exists: it’s no stretch of the imagination at all to contemplate machine-based connection making. 
 
Richard K. Morgan is a science fiction author who does a brilliant job weaving tales of the near, and usually dystopic future.  In his novel TH1RTE3N, Morgan describes the AI-empowered n djinns that pull data from “the feeds” to make these sorts of connections.  As is typical with a lot of science fiction, the future is now and we’re helping Google to create it.

Thirteen by Morgan

I finished Thirteen, by Morgan: Dystopic Future, genitically modified humans, Mars, cannibalism, what more could you  ask for?  Morgan is adept at creating a dystopic vision of the all-too-near future.  The issue of racism is recast here as a sort of xenophobia describing ongoing tension between “13’s” who are genetic variations of modern humans – essentially the original hunters in the hunter/gather equation – and their “femanized” descendents, us.  Morgan creates and fills out a whole mythology here and gives the moster a soul.  Brilliant book.

Telescope/astronomy links from Wired 16.03

Some links for online telescopes or at least astronomy sites were published in Wired from March 2008 “Surf the Starry Skies”

http://telescope.org/index.php

http://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/MicroObservatory/ but not really?

http://www.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/explore-the-sky/

http://www.slooh.com/

Dumb comments from the Dumbest Generation

I finished The Dumbest Generation by Bauerlein.  I’m too dumb to take the time to post  a complete response yet, but…

He’s right, and he offers no solutions.  Only gripes.   I guess he does suggest that reading more BOOKS would help – or reading more books seems to be correlated with being smarter. And then I think that’s a clue to where his arguments fall down, as he implicitly discounts web-based reading.

As information consumers we’re overwhelmed with too much stuff coming at us.  That we’re making poor choices on what to focus on is obvious.  But we can’t keep up with everything.

A number of sources that look like they provide interesting counterpoints to this dumb book.

Bit literacy and Information Anxiety

Changes in curriculum in the UK

Innumeracy by Paulos points out deficiencies in math literacy AND offers solutions.

A post from JOHO by David Weinburger about some other posts by Stephen Johnson and Clay Shirky about the future of news.

And while Bauerlein points at the under 30 crowd in his book, it’s not just our kids that are having trouble.   From the report “Information behaviour of the researcher of the future,” “In a real sense, we are all Google generation now” and “from undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal,`flicking’ behaviour in digital libraries. Power browsing and viewing appear to be the norm for all. The popularity of abstracts among older researchers rather gives the game away. Society is dumbing down.”

A dumb book about The Dumbest Generation

The Dumbest Generation, Bauerlein – I expected to read this book siding with the author, as I’ve been frustrated with the kids’ levels of math literacy lately….

I find I’m arguing with the author page-by-page now.  He’s got some good points, but he’s also missing many.  I am reminded of the load of steaming crap: Cult of the Amateur, by Keen. 

For overexcited and breathless tome on one side of the fence I guess there’s its inflammatory titled double on the other side.  We’ll see if I can get through this.

He’s mentioned several books I’ve read like Marc Prensky’s Don’t Bother me mom, I’m learning refering to him as a futurist.  I think Marc is report current events;  Kurzweil is a futurist – and Bauerlein hasn’t even touched “The Singularity” or Kurzweil’s idea of merged human-machine intelligence yet….

We Couldn’t Say It in Print If It Wasn’t True

Avoiding scams and malicious disinformation is pretty easy once you learn your way around, but sometimes bad information can be hard to spot.

 “You can’t believe everything you read” is as relevant today as it has ever been.  Using information requires evaluation of information resources.  This goes for all information resources, the Web, and sites like Wikipedia (the encyclopedia anyone can edit), as well as traditional printed media.

The director of the British Library sums it up (http://publishinghouseresearch.blogspot.com/2008/12/interview-with-dame-lynn-brindley.html) “It is a much bigger theme of media literacy and critical thinking skills – not just trusting what Google gets you. I think you have to triangulate these things, at the very least.” 

Traditional publishing processes might make it more difficult to spread incorrect or inaccurate information in books or other printed material.  On the Web, however, anyone can publish anything at any time, whether it is factual or not.  One thing that limits the spread of inaccurate information on the Web is that everyone is publishing information, accurate or otherwise, and all of it is lost in the noise.

Some entertaining websites, designed to point out the hazards of believing everything you read, are the DHMO Homepage (http://www.dhmo.org/) and the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus page (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/).

There are Billions and Billions of sources of information that are inadvertently or even purposely inaccurate….  And that reminds me of Carl Sagan’s book, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” which predated both the Web, as we know it, and the Google Generation, which is all of us now (http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf).  Sagan encourages us to use “scientific thinking” when encountering new information using a “Baloney Detection Kit,” a set of tools to help us construct a good argument as well as recognize a bad one.

The Baloney Detection Kit promotes, for example, independent confirmation of facts, debates from all points of view, quantification, separation of variables, and ensuring hypotheses can actually be tested.  The Kit also provides tools for detecting common fallacies of logic, such as confusing correlation and causation, arguing from authority, and the drawing conclusions from inadequate sample size. The Baloney Detection Kit is summarized here: http://www.carlsagan.com/index_ideascontent.htm#baloney.

It is irresponsible, and sometimes even dangerous (BAN DHMO NOW!), to approach new information without using a critical eye.  Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit is a valuable set of questions you should always be asking yourself.

Links

Google Generation
“We are all the Google generation, the young and old, the professor and the student and the teacher and the child.”
http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/ggworkpackageii.pdf
http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/other_sites/aliss/23augustgodwin.ppt
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0220/p08s01-comv.html

Information literacy in education
For example, see “Big Six” http://www.big6.com/category/overview-of-big6-skills/

Examples pointing out risks of poor Information Literacy
DHMO: http://www.dhmo.org/
Tree Octopus: http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Critical thinking and the web
http://library.humboldt.edu/~ccm/crithink.html
http://www.iusb.edu/~libg/pdf/critical-reading.pdf

Evaluating resources like Wikipedia
http://www.information-literacy.net/2008/02/teaching-with-wikipedia.html
‘“For God’s sake, you’re in college,” he said. “Don’t cite the encyclopedia.”’ http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2598/wikipedias-founder-says-the-site-has-a-place-in-academe

Baloney detection kit and scientific skepticism
http://www.carlsagan.com/index_ideascontent.htm#baloney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism

Wired October 2007

Trying to catch up – pretty pathetic.

Wired 15 10, October 2007

 

P. 66 Discusses Outboard brains and how we’re relying more on phones, google, Wikipedia, etc. to remember things.  Reminds me of Carr’s comments in his book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World; and Cory Doctorow’s discussion of his Outboard Brain – actually it mentions Cory’s comments.

 

P90 books, Douglass Coupland – The Gum Thief

 

P184 Inspiration for Blade Runner:

Movies: Eraserhead, Brazil,

Books, America, a prophecy Roy Batty

Do androids dream of electric sheep, Dick, We can build you, Dick

Kids and organized religion nighmares

This picture/story is at first hilarious, but then extremely disturbing

http://laughingsquid.com/god-hates-signs-protest-of-the-westboro-baptist-church/

The little boy holding a ‘god hates fags’ sign is truly one of the most disgusting faces of organized religion I have ever seen.

Of course this group seems to be pretty extreme.

URL hacking for star charts

Some star charts are available with addresses like:

http://content.telescope.com/rsc/img/catalog/lc/starcharts/11Nov08StarChart_bw.pdf

But how to find other months?

January
http://content.telescope.com/rsc/img/catalog/lc/starcharts/01Jan08StarChart_bw.pdf

February
http://content.telescope.com/rsc/img/catalog/lc/starcharts/02Feb08StarChart_bw.pdf

March
http://content.telescope.com/rsc/img/catalog/lc/starcharts/03Mar08StarChart_bw.pdf

You can’t find these on the site, or Google for them, you have to notice the pattern in the URL and hack the URL address:

…/YYMmm08StarChart_bw.pdf

where YY is the month as 01, 02, 03, for January, February, March, etc. and Mmm is Jan, Feb, Mar, etc.

April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

You can also view past year’s charts by changing …08 to …07 for example.  Not sure there are differences between years though?

This is useful since some sites publish the night sky star chart for the current month, but the morning sky can be just as fun to look at as the night sky.  The star chart  for the morning of a given month is the same as the night sky chart three months in the future.  So a chart for October’s morning sky at 9 UTC (5AM in EDT) will be the same 3UTC (10 PM EST) in January (EDT = UTC-4, EST = UTC-5) which differ by six hours. 

Why?  It takes 24 h for the Earth to rotate one complete cycle.  Six hours is a quarter of that.  It takes 12 months for the Earth to revolve around the sun, one quarter of that is three months.  Every night the sky shifts  ca. one degree overhead from East to West; after a year it’s made a complete cycle.

So even though many star chart sites don’t publish other month’s charts they can be useful if you can find them.