I should admit, up front, that I am not a big philosophy fan. My experiences with philosophy have been technical diatribes that tend to absurdly extend arguments and then play the "defend that" game - a game that never seemed to get back to discussion of the initial issues.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to actually like "Science and Philosophy" of "The Great Courses" series. Aside from some (to me) asinine asides using "breen and grue" for the absurd example of logical structure of mixed "green" and "blue" that change under logical conditions, the remainder of the discussions were interesting.
It is interesting to look at the limits of science, how much can be proven, and a reminder that theories are always under-supported by data (there is always a chance that a better explanatory theory may explain all of the existing theory plus other now-unrelated phenomena). It was difficult at times on the audio-only version (as I was driving I didn't refer to the written guides which would have helped) to keep clear which philosopher we were discussing at any particular time, and given that current scientific thought has grown out of many of these roots, it was occasionally difficult to understand the "point", given that it has been adopted and should be in play. I did find the actual philosophical discussions to be interesting and clear, even if the original author(s) were lost in transition.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Finished (Audiobook) - "Science and Religion" - The Great Courses
I listened to a second "Great Course" during my commute to and from Windsor. "Science and Religion" was OK, but it seemed to me that the author was taking too great a step to make sure neither side "won".
It is interesting to see that science and religion were more intertwined in times past, particularly since higher education schools were typically religious institutions and there was a need to pledge allegiance to god in order to be in good standing (not a point stressed in the course). However, there was much less dogmatic reliance on the biblical text, more on the interpretation, which didn't cause as much tension between the two.
They did go into the more modern, U.S.-based "intelligent design" debates. Overall, I didn't find the discussion to be very even-handed - Galileo was under house arrest for violation of the biblical interpretation of genesis - has any religious figure been arrested by "science" for their beliefs? Scientists may argue issues and differences, but there has not been opportunity, or desire to imprison "believers" on scientific grounds.
I did find the topic of Galileo interesting - the purely "scientific" community was not entirely convinced he had a good model. The current thinking had a much smaller entire universe, so there should have been evidence of parallax with stars that could be seen from Earth as it revolves around the sun - something that couldn't be adequately explained given the state of knowledge at that time. Even the philosophic analysis of Newton's gravity was interesting - the label "gravity" was not much better than "God did it" given the explanatory power of the times - there was no "substance" of gravity, nor a great explanation of how it worked at a distance. Newton's laws of gravity could easily have been considered an explanation of how God chose to handle planetary motion.
It is interesting to see that science and religion were more intertwined in times past, particularly since higher education schools were typically religious institutions and there was a need to pledge allegiance to god in order to be in good standing (not a point stressed in the course). However, there was much less dogmatic reliance on the biblical text, more on the interpretation, which didn't cause as much tension between the two.
They did go into the more modern, U.S.-based "intelligent design" debates. Overall, I didn't find the discussion to be very even-handed - Galileo was under house arrest for violation of the biblical interpretation of genesis - has any religious figure been arrested by "science" for their beliefs? Scientists may argue issues and differences, but there has not been opportunity, or desire to imprison "believers" on scientific grounds.
I did find the topic of Galileo interesting - the purely "scientific" community was not entirely convinced he had a good model. The current thinking had a much smaller entire universe, so there should have been evidence of parallax with stars that could be seen from Earth as it revolves around the sun - something that couldn't be adequately explained given the state of knowledge at that time. Even the philosophic analysis of Newton's gravity was interesting - the label "gravity" was not much better than "God did it" given the explanatory power of the times - there was no "substance" of gravity, nor a great explanation of how it worked at a distance. Newton's laws of gravity could easily have been considered an explanation of how God chose to handle planetary motion.
Finished (Audiobook) - The Great Courses "The Big History"
Started some of "The Great Courses" university-level courses in various topics given by lecturers who've been recognized as excellent instructors in their field.
"The Big History" was a very nice course to start with. The idea of "Big History" is to start with the Big Bang and go forward. Typical history is very writing-oriented - where history can be pegged to named individuals with precise (or reasonably precise) dates. From the "Big History" perspective, this is a kind of "pro-writing" bias, where many significant events (in fact THE significant events) are pre-historical in the classic sense.
Going through the eons in this course provides a nice overview of the sciences, from physics through chemistry, geology, seismology... In fact, the history of the sciences themselves was interesting: the initial universe only has physics, as there was only hydrogen and helium atoms - when stars began to coalesce, there was a start of chemistry, which much later let to biology and later social sciences - each level increased complexity over the last.
I'd recommend this course, particularly as an overview to a large number of sciences - cosmology, plate techtonics, human evolution, politics, history...
"The Big History" was a very nice course to start with. The idea of "Big History" is to start with the Big Bang and go forward. Typical history is very writing-oriented - where history can be pegged to named individuals with precise (or reasonably precise) dates. From the "Big History" perspective, this is a kind of "pro-writing" bias, where many significant events (in fact THE significant events) are pre-historical in the classic sense.
Going through the eons in this course provides a nice overview of the sciences, from physics through chemistry, geology, seismology... In fact, the history of the sciences themselves was interesting: the initial universe only has physics, as there was only hydrogen and helium atoms - when stars began to coalesce, there was a start of chemistry, which much later let to biology and later social sciences - each level increased complexity over the last.
I'd recommend this course, particularly as an overview to a large number of sciences - cosmology, plate techtonics, human evolution, politics, history...
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Finished (Comic) - "The Twelve" - Marvel Comics
The Twelve is a story of minor super-heroes at the end of WWII, where everyone was jumping on the bandwagon of the takeover of Berlin. The Twelve were twelve heroes who were dispatched to quell a pod of nazis, and were captured, and put into suspended animation, only to be uncovered in modern times during an excavation for a new building in Berlin.
The series goes through issues with waking up 3x Rip Van Winkle duration and coming to grips with changes in society, and the fact that most family has either died, or is much older than you are now (particularly children, who are now older than their parents). There are also issues dealing with details of the history of many of the twelve, showing their secrets, origins and a little more of their character.
All in all, the 12 issues were entertaining and I'd recommend the read. Not sure if there are other spin-off series out of this one or not, but it's worth looking for.
The series goes through issues with waking up 3x Rip Van Winkle duration and coming to grips with changes in society, and the fact that most family has either died, or is much older than you are now (particularly children, who are now older than their parents). There are also issues dealing with details of the history of many of the twelve, showing their secrets, origins and a little more of their character.
All in all, the 12 issues were entertaining and I'd recommend the read. Not sure if there are other spin-off series out of this one or not, but it's worth looking for.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Finished (E-Reader) - "In the Plex" - Steven Levy
"In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives" - Steven Levy is an excellent history of Google, which covers key points in the history of the company, how it started, grew and became huge.
The interesting aspect of the book is how Google struggles with the "do no evil" mandate that they try to live by, even when they are now huge enough that some consider them in the "evil" role formerly occupied by Microsoft and earlier by IBM in various periods of recent computer history.
Trying to imagine the pre-Google world is difficult. When I was in graduate school, Windows was not yet the standard on the desktop (Windows 3.0 was the first really big Windows product) and there were DOS, UNIX and other machines operating. E-mail was pretty new - grad school was my first e-address. Most of the internet was vague to most people, and was primarily file sharing point-to-point, with newsgroups and bulletin boards providing some of the services now taken fro granted.
Google was originally a search algorithm, which provided better results than competitors, primarily by considering websites somewhat like academic articles - keywords may serve a role, but it is the central usage of key players that determines importance. In academia, this is citations - the more your work is referenced and built upon, the higher "importance" that work can be thought of to have. Google put this to work and was able to determine importance of websites by visit and linkages in a similar manner. By itself, this innovation would have been important. The bigger impact was to apply this lesson to advertising - to let the "value" of the ads to consumers (e.g. us) determine ranking, and to link ads most of interest to customers rather than to link ads randomly. This allowed Google to do what many start-ups couldn't do - make tons of money, and do so in a tri-mutually beneficial way (Google made money - it was happy; advertisers were only charged if people paid attention to the ads and clicked - they were happy; customers were less harrangued by ads that had little or no interest to them, and in some cases, found the ads were as meaningful as the search they were undertaking - they were happy).
Thus, Google was able to live up to the "do not evil" idea. Free e-mail and much cloud-based applications and storage are all due, in large part, to Google, who can afford to provide free products to customers, as it lends itself nicely to the advertising model which provides they money - they aren't required to profit from the application(s) and service(s) themselves, they help feed the information and advertising model that drives the profits.
Living to this standard became more difficult when they introduced free e-mail, but decided to search the mail files to target advertising (considered a breach of privacy - particularly at the time), or to make forays into China, a country that wants to screen and censor information.
All in all, a great read - easy to follow, compelling stories, interesting personalities (not always in agreement) and a contemporary timeframe (all the stories, issues and concerns are recent enough to resonate with most readers).
I come away from the "In the plex" with a new respect for Google, and the innovations that made the company successful, though I can't avoid the feeling that much of the "best days" from a "do no evil" or even from a "wow, that's cool" perspective are behind them (a belief shared by some employees who left for smaller start-ups, to regain some of the early-Google feelings). This is not to say that Google has become evil, it is just much more difficult to play that role when everything you do is magnified to the scale that the current Google corporation is - every step, or mis-step is going to make waves - some waves are beneficial, oxygenating and re-vitalizing the water, others grow and become tsunamis.
The interesting aspect of the book is how Google struggles with the "do no evil" mandate that they try to live by, even when they are now huge enough that some consider them in the "evil" role formerly occupied by Microsoft and earlier by IBM in various periods of recent computer history.
Trying to imagine the pre-Google world is difficult. When I was in graduate school, Windows was not yet the standard on the desktop (Windows 3.0 was the first really big Windows product) and there were DOS, UNIX and other machines operating. E-mail was pretty new - grad school was my first e-address. Most of the internet was vague to most people, and was primarily file sharing point-to-point, with newsgroups and bulletin boards providing some of the services now taken fro granted.
Google was originally a search algorithm, which provided better results than competitors, primarily by considering websites somewhat like academic articles - keywords may serve a role, but it is the central usage of key players that determines importance. In academia, this is citations - the more your work is referenced and built upon, the higher "importance" that work can be thought of to have. Google put this to work and was able to determine importance of websites by visit and linkages in a similar manner. By itself, this innovation would have been important. The bigger impact was to apply this lesson to advertising - to let the "value" of the ads to consumers (e.g. us) determine ranking, and to link ads most of interest to customers rather than to link ads randomly. This allowed Google to do what many start-ups couldn't do - make tons of money, and do so in a tri-mutually beneficial way (Google made money - it was happy; advertisers were only charged if people paid attention to the ads and clicked - they were happy; customers were less harrangued by ads that had little or no interest to them, and in some cases, found the ads were as meaningful as the search they were undertaking - they were happy).
Thus, Google was able to live up to the "do not evil" idea. Free e-mail and much cloud-based applications and storage are all due, in large part, to Google, who can afford to provide free products to customers, as it lends itself nicely to the advertising model which provides they money - they aren't required to profit from the application(s) and service(s) themselves, they help feed the information and advertising model that drives the profits.
Living to this standard became more difficult when they introduced free e-mail, but decided to search the mail files to target advertising (considered a breach of privacy - particularly at the time), or to make forays into China, a country that wants to screen and censor information.
All in all, a great read - easy to follow, compelling stories, interesting personalities (not always in agreement) and a contemporary timeframe (all the stories, issues and concerns are recent enough to resonate with most readers).
I come away from the "In the plex" with a new respect for Google, and the innovations that made the company successful, though I can't avoid the feeling that much of the "best days" from a "do no evil" or even from a "wow, that's cool" perspective are behind them (a belief shared by some employees who left for smaller start-ups, to regain some of the early-Google feelings). This is not to say that Google has become evil, it is just much more difficult to play that role when everything you do is magnified to the scale that the current Google corporation is - every step, or mis-step is going to make waves - some waves are beneficial, oxygenating and re-vitalizing the water, others grow and become tsunamis.
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