Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2002 04:35:15 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <3D7C8773.6035B63D@mindspring.com> References: <200209090927.g899RF129594@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org>
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Dave Hayes wrote: > > It's a measure of shared cultural understanding, or, in > > more technical terms, the set of lowest entropy equalibria. > > So, the people in the stock market share a Schelling point? Why > couldn't you just say "community"? Because it's not the same thing as a Schelling point. If I had meant "community", I would have used the word "community". What I meant was "Schelling point", so I said "Schelling point". Here is an example of a Schelling point: Out of 1500 people asked to name one of the four tires on a car, 62% named the right front tire. -- Mason, 1990 Here is another example of a Schelling point: When asked the question "If you were travelling aborad in Paris with a friend, and you had not planned ahead for the possibility, and were seperated, where would you go to meet your friend?", 74% of respondants chose "The Eiffel Tower". Here are some other questions that result in the identification of Schelling points; I've deliberately chosen all but the last question such that will it be likely to identify Schelling points in this particular readership; the last one is more universal: o If you wanted to go to a company's web site, what would you type into a browser location dialog? o If you had just downloaded some source code off the Internet, and were unsure of whether or not you could legally use the software as part of a commercial product, what file would you examine? o If you had just downloaded some unidentified source code off the Internet, and wanted to know what it was, what file would you examine? o Where would you expect these files to be located? o What search engine would you recommend to a friend? o You and a friend are flying into New York City, via different airports, for a conference of some kind, and agree to meet at 12:00 noon on the day before the conference, synchronize your schedules, and head out for some fun. But you realize as your plane is landing that neither one of you remember to pick a place to meet. Where do you go to stand the best chance of finding your friend at the appointed time? As you can see, a Schelling point is a place that "everybody knows", but which was not arrived at by explicit agreement, but rather on a cutural basis of lowest mutal entropy. > > As such, it is never arbitrary. > > Cultures are arbitrary, entropy is arbitrary, it's all arbitrary. ;) I'm surprised that you can ever get any useful work done; perhaps its because of an arbitrary perception of "useful"? ;^). > >> > Professional: characterized by or conforming to the technical or > >> > ethical standards of a profession. > >> > >> Look at the definition of "profession", then get back to me. > > > > Luckily for me, I didn't use that word. > > Yes you did, it's in your quote above. That's Webster's dictionary using the word, not me. I used the word "professionally". > With most people, I would do the following. Take your argument that > "it is unethical not to care". This reduces to whether you feel that > allowing someone to do something unethical is the same as actually > doing something unethical. Normally I would point this out, and point > out that I think these two things are different. Attempting to impose > ethicality on someone may be just as unethical as being > unethical. There are numerous examples to illustrate this and > most people would just agree to disagree after they had been > presented. > > This won't work for your case. Thanks! I'm glad my behaviour isn't ARBITRARY... 8-). > That's because it's not enough to argue on the surface. I have to > develop a linear space, assert my propositions as axioms on this > space, then prove this space can exist. Even once I do that, you are > so attached to the answer being a certain way, you'll find ways to > argue with each and every proposition I make. Now it's hard to resist > classifying you as one of those arrogant scientific worshippers who > refuse to listen to you unless you speak linear algebra. However, you > are dead set in your ways, and I've seen the lengths that the human > mind will go to rationalize their behavior. You can rationalize > anything if you try hard enough. That's an incorrect caracterization of me. You fail to grasp that rationalization is antithetical to my world view. > A mind in a state such as yours accepts no external input. It merely > tears everything apart as much as it can, attempting to discredit what > it cannot understand. Only that which can not be proven, independently of understanding. I don't have to agree with the Copehagen Hypothesis as the explanation of QED, for example, to agree that the math works, even if I don't quite buy the story that was made up to humanize the *why* of the math. > Thus, the correct way to behave to you is to be irrational, in a > rational way. =) That's the way you are trying to behave, I'd agree, but it's not the correct way to behave, if you are to make a convincing argument, nor is it possible to be truly irrational in a rational way, without the flaws in your model being externally visible to those who do not share it. > > It's an apt analogy: "just ignore input you do not wish to observe". > > Heh. That's what I've been saying for years. We aren't dealing with > experimental data here, just trolls. If you can do that with me, how > come you can't do this with trolls? Exactly. You solution is the same as a childs, and works about as well, overall, which is to say "not at all, as a long term approach". -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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