Re: Philosphy of programming

From: William D. Tallman (wtallman_at_olypen.com)
Date: 02/26/04 

Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 21:14:54 -0800

Programmer Dude wrote:

> "William D. Tallman" wrote:
>
>> Love these discussions!! Let me take a stab at this:
>
> Hey! Watch out where you're stabbing!! (-:

<grin>

>> They say reality is in the mind of the beholder,...
>
> I must not be a member of "they", because I *definitely* do not
> define it that way, and we can start with an interesting point:
>
> *IS* reality really in the mind of the beholder, or does it exist
> and an external object to behold? I would certainly agree that
> the internal representation of our perceptions...is just that: an
> internal *representation* of our perceptions.

It's the internal representation that is the reality. Reality is the mirror
of our environment that we create for our own purposes.
 
> I just read about an incredible study. They showed a film of a
> basketball game to a group and told them to count the number of
> times a certain player passed the ball. Afterwards, they were
> asked if anyone noticed anything unusual.
>
> A *surprising* number of people never noticed the man in the
> gorilla suit run through the game! Strong focus on a task can
> cause a kind of tunnel vision.
>
> The point is that our perceptions are pretty awful. (There is also
> the fact that--considering quantum aspects of reality--even the
> most perceptive of us is only seeing a sort of image of things.)

Actually our perceptions, within their limitations, are pretty good. What
we do with them is another matter and has to do with our individual
experience bases.

>> I suggest that we all have an environment in common. And reality
>> is our conceptual representation of our environment. Note here
>> than I'm not saying anything about the environment other than that
>> it exists, and that we all have certain aspects of it in common.
>
> Yet what we may have in common about a 'thing' is only the shared,
> learned identification of that thing. Imagine, for example, that men
> and women actually experience something quite different internally
> when they perceive the color red. Until we get that telepathy machine
> working, we'd never know, because men and women have a common *learned*
> "tag" associated with the internal experience.

Our perceptions are generated by our physical bodies, and so I think we can
expect them to be much more similar than different. The use we make of
them varies with the individual, of course.
 
> It's even possible that each being has a different internal experience
> and that what we really have in common is those learned tags.

What we have in common and what we share are two different things. Lot's of
arguments about the nature of language and imagery, and it looks like there
is a physical basis for much of it (not all, of course). The statement
that we have more in common than we realize is a human verity, as we focus
on those things that differentiate us in order to describe our identities,
speaks to this. What we do with commonalities is largely prescribed by our
survival needs of the moment, and civilization is all about such things as
the division of labor, pooling of resources, etc. Civilization, when
possible, is more efficient in promoting mass survival than is basic
tribalism, and thus provides the individual with the opportunity to enhance
his/her own survival. Shared commonality is the basis of civilization, and
the medium of sharing is communication.

The point is that there are several levels of reality extant, and we take
some of them for granted. Those we do are often the ones that bite us
because we weren't watching them.
 
>> The differences are largely about the differences between us as
>> individuals: no two of us occupy the same point in space and time,
>> and so our experiences thereof must differ.
>
> Exactly. Further, no two of us have identical brain wiring, so it
> is actually possible the internal experience varies considerably
> from being to being.
>
>
>> A second attribute of reality is that it is dynamic.
>
> Very! (-:
>
>
>> So a third attribute of reality is that it is binary.
>
> This really caught my eye, because--taken out of context--I'd say
> this is the exact opposite of true. One thing chaos mathematics
> has taught us is that any attempt to quantify reality into discrete
> bits is doomed to failure.
>
> But I think you mean it differently.... (-:

Well, the fulcrum here is consciousness, where our identity hangs out. On
one side is our environment, and on the other is our internal model
thereof. Consciousness is ephemeral, of course, leaving the internal model
and the environment to engage in an ongoing dance as each informs and
influences the other. Like a binary star system, the major star is the
environment and the minor is our model.
 
>> Reality is the connection between our environment, and our
>> internal perceptual/conceptual model thereof. And the purpose
>> here is to allow us to predict, to answer the question, "What
>> comes next?"....
>
> I think--in a different venue--I'd quibble over the wording, but
> I think I do agree with the basics here. Our model of reality
> enables us to function within that reality, IF that model is
> reasonably accurate. Yes?

There is a critical level of correspondence, below which survival is
threatened. It can never be identical, but we can test the internal model
to see if its predictions are born out by our experiences of the
environment. It allows us the opportunity to make the right moves, and to
the extent we learn how to do this, we not only survive, we thrive.

>> So at root, reality is about maintaining a one-to-one basic
>> correspondence between the environment and the internal model.
>
> Or--at least--an as-*accurate*-as-possible map of it, yes. One
> simplistic definition of mental health is the degree to which
> your internal map of reality matches the real thing.
>
> (But, since none of us actually perceived the real thing fully.... :-)

Which is why science, and the Tao, for two somewhat dissimilar examples...
<grin>

>
>> Now, we all discover that the changes and processes in our
>> environment cannot be completely understood, and so prediction
>> can never be absolutely reliable.
>
> In fact, Quantum physics suggests pretty strongly that it is
> impossible to become absolutely reliable!
>
>> This generally means that we learn how to keep some number of
>> forks up and running as if they were primary, and we test them
>> regularly (reality checks?) to determine their validity.
>
> Reality checks. That's one reason I newsgroup! (-:

Usenet: Freefloating intellectual marketplace with service problems
(sewage, for instance.... lol!!!)
>> [big snip]
>
> Hmmmm. I'm not sure I'm down with you on most of this, but that
> may be because you present a very abstract concept without any
> kind of examples to illustrate it. AS STATED, it sounds a little
> bit like philogibberish, but maybe I'm just not grokking you.

Yep. Now the task is to see how these abstractions are manifest in the
issue of interest; here, programming.
 
> Thing is, I'm not sure I agree about the forking process. I have
> no sense of multiple processes running in my head--only the one.
> You use the term "speculation" at one point, so I gather that by
> multiple processes, you are talking about imagination and guessing.

My terminology is not consistent and for good reason: it's not set. So I
use various metaphors and other such devices in order to further
comprehension. I can't say that the notion of forking is meaningful to
others, but it seemed appropriate for me. I guess one has to think about
it a bit, dunno/

> Off the top of my head, I'm not sure I agree with the "forking"
> model (that might be because fork() has such a specific meaning to
> me :).
>
> We certainly do create imaginations (fantasy) and guesses (attempts
> at predicting an unknown reality), and you do seem to be saying we
> (if sane) distinguish them from our perception of "reality"....

All internal presentations of an environment are realities, even the
fantasies, and yes, the primary purpose is to create an opportunity to ramp
up our preparedness by successful prediction, to perceive the possible and
evaluate the probable. Any one of these reality streams can become primary
in an instant, if a different one satisfies our input from our environment
better than the current primary (sudden changes for which we are prepared,
etc). So it's not our perception of reality we need to distinguish, it's
that we maintain one that has acceptable correspondence to what we can know
of our environment. Thus, it's good to have "reality checks" on all
significant reality streams (child processes?).
 
> I donno, we may be running into terminology issues here, and it
> is off topic (and I feel like I'm typing and typing and managing
> to not say anything useful), so I'm just going to skip ahead....

Yep, I understand the feeling!
 
>> [masso snip]
>>
>> Dunno what you guys will make of this,...
>
> Well, to be honest, it didn't do too much for me, I guess. Not in
> any way trying to suggest any of it's wrong (or right)...just that
> I'm not tying it in to anything right now.
>
> Let me just ask you this: how do you tie any of this into programming?

Okay, the OP was talking about modeling reality, and I presented my take on
how we do that in our daily lives. In real life, we have an ongoing
iterative process where we check and adjust on a continuous basis, or we
gamble that we can do so periodically. We also have a fork process where
we allow alternative and optional streams to arise in parallel with the
working primary. And there are other things we do, of course.

How about applying these to programming. I think that perhaps the notion of
creating a test for the code in parallel with the code itself is akin to
the reality check we ordinarily do. I think that having several different
teams taking different approaches at different points has advantages. I
think that acceptance that the fact of the matter is that, when all is said
and done, what one has done is "muddle through", as the British are wont to
say. In the last regard, it would mean that it would be useful to
accommodate that approach as legitimate and see how to incorporate that
point of view in the design and execution of a project.

So, a definition of programming might do well to speak to these views as
well. Maybe programming is getting a computer to perform as desired, to
produce what is wanted from it. Figure out what needs doing, figure out
how the computer best does that, and write the instructions the computer
needs to do its job. Maybe programming is writing computer programs, and
all the rest of this is just common sense; apply what you know with what
wisdom you possess and be prepared to learn a lot.

Now, I'm not a programmer (think I said that), so this is a somewhat
informed outsider's view of all this. I'm sure that these views run
counter to accepted programming wisdom, but perhaps they might have some
value if only for that reason.

Bill Tallman

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