Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:59:57 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams) Cc: terry@lambert.org, nate@mt.sri.com, jkh@time.cdrom.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Commerical applications (was: Development and validation Message-ID: <199701202359.QAA16714@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199701202128.OAA16080@rocky.mt.sri.com> from "Nate Williams" at Jan 20, 97 02:28:31 pm
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> > If FreeBSD did not move to ELF because it was "protecting" the best > > interests of its users, then it made an error. > > Why? That's a pretty strong statement you make w/out anything to back > it up. I already said why: > > FreeBSD's first priority must be protecting FreeBSD's interests; The first goal of any entity must be self-preservation. All other goals an actor may have are dependent upon the continued pursuit of those goals by the actor... goals do not pursue themselves. If the actor allows themself to be removed, then the other goals will not be achieved. All goals must be sobservient to continued existance of the actor. This is true of the actor is an individual human organism, or an individual social orgnism composed of one or more humans. > FreeBSD's primary interest is to keep the people developing code for it > happy so they'll maintain and develop code for it. The secondary > interest is to encourage people to use it so that the developers can > feel good that their work is useful. Neither of these reasons preclude > using ELF tools. The topic at issue is not "why ELF should not be precluded", but "why ELF should be adopted". You're right that ELF is not precluded by these... yet ELF has not been adopted; therefore there must be something else precluding it. Jordan argues it's "warm bodies to do the work". A number of us who *are* "warm bodies" dissent, citing other causes. > > > 1) Bill Gates has a couple billion dollars > > > 2) Terry does not > > > 3) Having a couple billion dollars is a good thing since Terry > > > wants to invest in nano-technology > > > 4) Terry is doing something wrong. > > > > > > Terry: But, but having a billion dollars isn't as important to me as > > > finding good solution to problems, rather than re-using existing > > > technology. > > > > You are ascribing goals to me which I do not hold to be evident. > > Ahh, but I could go off and document your *extreme* desire for > nano-technology, and your arguement that the only thing holding it back > is money. This is an example of "the law of the excluded middle". It is an artifact of your use of a logical construct called "an Aristotilian mean". In both the book "Fuzzy Systems" and the book "Fuzzy Logic", this is examined in detail. The problem is that you have posited: IF a THEN !b To be equivalent to: IF !a THEN b Lack of 'a' does not imply 'b' simply because presence of 'a' implies lack of 'b'. 'a' is not *ONLY* 'the set of all things not in set b' You have established a false causal relationship by assumption, and then gone on to build a house of cards using it as a foundation. The false causal relationship is that, in this case, you presume that because he has a billion dollars, that Bill Gates *did* something *volitional* that resulted in him obtaining it. If this were true (which it is not, as I have documented by reference), then indeed, I would be "doing something wrong", if in fact my goal were the accumulation of wealth. That something would be "not acting volitionally as Bill Gates acts to obtain identical results to those obtained by Bill Gates". > Matter of fact, I could argue that you've argued for nano-technology > more than for ELF. This is irrelevent to the fact that your conclusions result from combining this posit with a false cause. This posit may itself be true, and you may or may not be able to draw conclusions about my priorities from its validity. Nevertheless, you can not obtain a provably true conclusion from operating a false cause upon a posit; this is simple boolean algebra. Alternately, you could simply ask for me to prioritize the two goals, and you would not have to conclude anything. > They are evident to many folks, in the same manner that 'ELF' is a good > thing. They are simply more important things to you to do than get a > billion dollars to spend on nano-technology that youd' rather spend your > time on (ahh, but we're making excuses now, and that's not allowed in > your world). This is called "crisis management". It is among the most ineffective techniques one can use in any priority resoloution process. I do not engage in crisis management, contrary to your opinion. Anyone who does is less effective than they could otherwise be. Suboptimal does not equal ineffective, but marginally effective is also a far cry from optimal. Yes, "anything which works is better than anything that doesn't", but "some things work better than others". > Priorities don't exist in your complaints, and neither do grey areas. > Live by the same rules you set for the FreeBSD project and start making > a billion dollars since you believe nano-technology is a good thing. > That you set priorities to other items is simply not acceptable in the > black/white world that you set before the FreeBSD project, so it will > not be acceptable to us either. Again, you are incorrect. It is you who are resorting to Aristotilian means... you are presenting a restricted set of two options because you blindly believe those are the only options available. You are excluding all other possibilities in order to argue for your point; that is logical fallacy. St. Thomas Aquinas tended to this technique; but good company does not ennoble bad logic. As far as prioritization goes: FINE. Establish a list of goals for the FreeBSD project, prioritize them however you choose, *PUBLISH* them so that people don't have to guess what they are, and then *OBEY* the priorities you have established when you engage in your decision making processes so that those processes do not appear arbitrary and unfair to the external observer. As for gray areas: they exist, but they should not drive your ability to categorize according to your established goals. Yes, this means abitrary assignment (or creation) of category in some cases. The appropriate action (promotion or demotion of an object on a fuzzy boundry) really depends on which of several processes you adopt. Personnally, I would tend to promote borderline cases to a higher priority, erring on the side of caution, and then only in the case that I can not create a new category for the object to prioritize it in between the other two categories. > Live by the same rules you put before others, or be branded a hypocrite. I do. My rule that I expect others to obey is "don't do obviously counterproductive things". It is *you* who wants a uniform definition of obviousness. Unfortunately, it's subjective, so I simply can't oblidge you... I can only try to educate you about things which I see as obviously counterproductive so that you, too, will avoid them. Hopefully, you will respond in kind so that I don't make "obvious" mistakes either, and the value of our subgroup will be greater than the sum of its members. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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