Re: object system...


"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1c5d9eekx2fsu.3qmn0cdp27nl.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:11:56 +1000, cr88192 wrote:

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:17h9c7ry176nh.1ruvqpvmfes0h$.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:14:51 +1000, cr88192 wrote:

free will: ability to make decisions in such a way that one can be
credited
with having made decisions (and responsibility for these decisions). I
am
not sure what exactly could give free will, only that I am fairly sure
it
can't be manifested within a purely deterministic process...

Well, that depends. Determinism means that the new state is determined
by
the old one. Now, the question is, whether the indeterminism is merely
one
of an unknown input. So if you knew the input and the state you could
predict the next one. Or else it is the state itself that makes the next
one incomputable and thus unpredictable. The second is "free will", the
first is not. Further, there is the notion of computability involved. A
"hypercomputer" could compute truly random numbers (by generating an
infinite sequence of at once) , for such a system random variable output
is
decidable.

well, there is a property as I see it of deterministic vs
non-deterministic systems:
in a non-deterministic system, entropy (in the sense of the number of
total
possible states) increases with time;
in a deterministic system, entropy either remains constant or declines.

Hmm, this is an unsatisfactory definition, because it assumes that states
are countable. Consider a deterministic system which state is described as
a point in 3D space. Another weak point is entropy, which is defined
statistically.


this would seem to be the problem...

beyond trivial cases, measuring the total entropy of a system becomes
non-trivial (even a log-scale value would be sufficient, but I don't even
have this).

instead, I had based many of my past calculations on assumptions and
statistical measurement.
a problem though is that it proves difficult to measure the difference
between psuedo-random and true-random data (although, it could be possible
to do more intensive statistical analysis of the input source, ...).

however, the above assertions can be upheld via alternative ways of thinking
about the problem...


(namely, one can't easily say how much entropy is present, but it can be
said that it will increase in a non-deterministic system). of course, one
has to distinguish between entropy and choas, where they may look externally
similar, but will have different mechanisms, such that chaos can be large
but entropy remains stable, or even decreases...


one can, in a limited sense, faking non-determinism with a PRNG (or
equivalent), but this will have both a merit and a cost: given the same
inputs, the behavior of the program will always be the same. sometimes
this
is desirable, and sometimes not. so, some problems require a TRNG in
order
to work (examples: generating UUID/GUIDs, generating keys in some forms
of
cryptology, ...).

"Same behavior," how is it defined? This is in a close relation to
computability.


same behavior:
the same things will happen in the same way.

in the case of a PRNG, this would be getting the same sequence of "random"
numbers, ...


No, this is untrue, because we still design and program our computers
in
isolation of their "human subsystem."

but, the actual creation part can no longer be done apart from
machines...

They are mere instruments. And we know how in theory to start it from
the
square one. This is a crucial important point. It allows us, for
instance,
creation computing system based on any switching medium. Mechanical,
optical computers. I remember a paper that shown that a computer can be
built using Conway's life gliders.

yes, potentially. but how do we do so? by using the existing stuff...

the "actual" task would be, allowing people to retain all of their
knowledge
and information, to be promptly returned to the stone age, and have them
recreate it all before they forget...

That is a sociological experiment. Maybe they will eat each other.
Nevertheless we do know how to create computers and how to write software
without any tools.


only that it is a question if it could be practically done...

a half-way measure would be for people to build a computer from the ground
up using entirely non-industrial tools and meterials (wood, stone, ...). or,
as an alternate variation, see how quickly a group of people could
re-engineer all of this stuff starting with nothing but such resources (if
they want metal, they have to find ore and smelt it themselves, ...).


consider, for example, Rome.

Rome had many technologies that, when the empire degraded, were lost for
a
very long time, such as the ability to make concrete (and, more so, some
Roman buildings were steel-reinforced concrete...), ...

Our modern civilization can degrade too. We face same problem of
"barbarians" as ancient Rome did. The methods we have used in order to
achieve our present state were much like ones of Rome: domination,
proselytism, military force...


yes.


more so, raw matter does not exhibit any kind of cybernetic (or, AKA:
homeostatic) properties...

No, AFAIK there are many living and also dead natural homeostates. But I
doubt that cybernetics is really about homeostasis. It was a simplified
view of early 50's, IMO.

commonly they are associated, with "cybernetic" AFAIK refering to a
system
being able to respond to the environment in order to maintain a state of
homeostasis.

Yes, this is what they thought. But it does not imply either intelligence,
or an ability to describe / generate / achieve *desired* states. It is a
mere tool, not an answer. On their part it was a very naive first attempt
to look into the abyss.


but, then this is a whole new set of problems...
what is "intelligence" and what is "desired"...

I am only saying that machines exhibit cybernetic properties, not that they
have either "intelligence" or "will" at this point...


as I see it, modern technology is currently in a gray area between that
of
inanimate objects, and that of being animate (or, as it could be said
another way, "living"). however, as I see it, they still have a long
way to go...

It would be nice if it were so. But in my view the margin is still hard.
So
far nobody managed to create anything close to the behavior of a fly or
ant.

yes, but this demands a view that such "informational life" would need to
in
some way emulate that of "organic life". if such a state were to be
achieved, they would be sufficiently different as to be almost unable to
recognize each other as such...

I think it is a wrong stance. Emulating life will never give us any
understanding of. It is as fruitless as to emulate birds in order to fly.


I don't think my point was understood...

by comparing a computer to a fly or an ant, this implies emulating a fly or
an ant.
I was saying this need not be the case...


so, there is a good point to machines remaining stupid and predictable as
well...
people can continue making them as ever better tools, but should likely
continue to retain their role as tools (and not placed in the role of
some
kind of deity, as many of the singularity supporters seem to do...).

In this or that way, home sapiens will either evolute or give way to
others.


maybe, however, as is, people trying to make any sort of technological deity
seems misguided...

the great problem with computers, and one that I don't expect to be resolved
any time in the near future, would be the issue of "common sense". a human
can usually easily enough figure out when their judgements or actions are
unreasonable, but it asks a bit more that computers would have a similar
capability.

more so, there is little to say that the outcome would be what is desirable
for humans, ...


alas, even as a human, I tend not to consider the entirety of a program
at
the same time, but tend to carve it up in more or less the same way I
organize my code. this way, I see the external interface and defined
behaviors, but when considering a particular component, my scope of
thinking
does not extend much outside this component...

[...]
We all are looking out of the window of a fast moving train...

But that must teach us that deploying low level abstraction is really not
an option in programming.


the low level abstractions are used as a base for building higher level
ones...

none the less, if a human way of doing something can be emulated in a
machine, this is sufficient to accomplish the task...


speaking of nonsense... I recently beat together a textual analyzer and
generator based on a 'Hidden Markov Model'... it generates text that in
some
cases almost makes sense, even if it is all just a big set of
associative
graphs and random walking to produce the text (AKA: there is no
"understanding" in the system...).

but, alas, an HMM is something which is far from being complete, but
can
still get "useful" work done...

Yes, to close outputs to inputs of a learning system to see what
happens.
In many cases it can be predicted. If the system is more or less linear,
there will be nothing interesting, otherwise...

the question then is how effectively it can be put into practical use,
and
for what sorts of tasks...

I don't think it can, for the same reason as "emulating life" cannot.
Nothing comes for free. It would be to easy to be true and also it would
not help our understanding of what is going on. Nevertheless it would be
interesting.


well, luckily with code, one often does not need to fully understand it to
make use of it.

"well, it seems to work...".


You mean "human" here. Programmer is a role. It is not both. A human
can
play different roles at once.

maybe, but it does not mean they are not a programmer if they operate
within
the confined of reality...

As I said, I use computer to as a press...

I don't know the purpose of this statement...

It can also play roles...


ok.


But it is all economic in the end. A technology that is not
economically
feasible cannot sustain for a considerable time, even if you managed
to pay
others for it, as in the case of software products. That only
agravates the
problem, because the real expenses are invisible. We already had the
IT
buble. But the software buble is much bigger...

hmm... commercial software blows up and everyone uses opensource...

Freeware you mean? I think that it was an answer to the broken
commercial
model. But freeware cannot sustain either. You need to reward and select
people developing software, in a way that makes software better.
Freeware
lacks this mechanism either and the quality of is as miserable as the
quality of commercial software.

it all goes on though...

But it can be easily predicted that it cannot go on forever.


well, who knows about the long term, but it is the "right now" which matters
I think...


people continue writing software, gradually fixing limitations, and
selecting for better code. changes made in one project may also propagate
to
other projects, ...

To repeat an old joke. If NASA could train astronauts to climb trees,
because that would make them closer to the Moon.


hmm...


so, code is made, code is copied, and code dies...
better code and technologies survive and weaker ones die off, and
eventually
software as a whole improves...

No it does not. We observe that the same tasks require more resources than
before. The level of software reuse does not increase. Scalability does
not
either.


but we have a good deal more code, fileformats, ... available than in the
past, and often the code in use for a task is better than that which would
have been used for the same task further in the past...


so, it is my opinion that each shared library should specify an API which
is
independent of the implementation,

It is a desire impossible to accomplish at the current technological
level.
Not just because there is no tools, but because there is no theoretical
background.

Library APIs are build around weekly typed procedural decomposition. That
simply does not specify the behavior enough to allow API to specify
behavior. Any system built this way collapses under its weight.


well, there is OpenGL and friends, and they have done a fairly good job...


open-source then becomes a sort of massive feedback loop, which even if
lacking resources and much to prompt programmers to make good code or fix
things, eventually competes with commercial efforts (which are good at
achieving things quickly, but tend to produce sand castles which quickly
become eroded by the waves...).

If you understand making KDE like Windows as a competition then it would
be
better not to have such at all.


there is also GNome...


Linux becomes worse with each new version, and it was pretty bad from the
beginning. But now it became huge, slow, unstable and totally
unmaintainable, just like Windows is. It is a 70's operating system, a
jelly monster, which have survived only because its competitor is even
limper than it.


but it now supports my WiFi card, and older versions did not...
this would seem to be improvement...


the big problem with the commercial approach is related to reuse, where
each
company produces masses of resources "in house", but these resources die
with the project. next project, bunches of new resources, and the old
sand
castle is left to fall into oblivion...

And why is this wasting? Because there is no competition. These expenses
are paid by others. It is not a market.


because these resources could be put into opensource land, allowing them to
be endlessly reused in other projects. a simple example is how much 3D
modelling nearly every project implementing a 3D world has to do, if
anything, because there are not masses of general-purpose and
free-for-whatever-use 3D models...


and so, each new time, someone comes along and builds a new sand castle,
each a little higher than the last...

yet, the structure rests solidly on the continued operation (via profits,
...) of the companies which maintain these components (and so, we can
sure
as hell hope there is at least 2 or more independent companies producing
each kind of component...).

I missed a link between building sand castles and solid ground. These
castles are built on sand. But you probably mean other sectors of the
economy paying for the party. That is not sustainable, it have to break,
and it will.


companies keep going by "re-marketing" the same old stuff, again and again,
....
(for example: each new version of Windows, each new version of Office, each
new game, ...).

opensource doesn't really need this, and so largely avoids this issue...


--
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de


.

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