what we are afraid of

So I've been reading W. Wimsatt's "Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality". It has a lot of material on reductionism, which is quite wonderful, since its always been a topic that fascinates me and scares me. He provides tools to get around the various overly crude reductionisms- the "nothing but"isms. One challenge is that its rather focused on philosophy of biology, and I don't know this literature so well. But I'm still appreciating it quite a bit. In particular, Dawkins' reduction of all natural selection to the level of the gene ("the selfish gene") is something that scared me when I read it, and would like to find more articulated criticisms within the group selection literature.

It occurred to me that extreme reductions may be behind a variety of fears we have. We are afraid of being too machine-like. We are afraid of being too computer-like. We are afraid of being too tool-like. We are afraid of being too money focused. We somehow know that to view all as "mechanism", or all as "computation" or "communication" or "economics" is a kind of simplification that will make many things we value rather hard to articulate. (A friend was recently telling me about his "all is optimization" theory of life, which of course is the very same type of beast.) So the fear is perhaps our reminder to ourselves not to take the (maybe useful) ideology too seriously- a nagging suspicion that everything we value is being defined out of existence.

This occurred to me as I was thinking about my own life and how to form patterns that are positive (a self-help/therapeutic approach to life). I was realizing that I have a deep antipathy to planning things too much. "It makes me into a machine." I say. Or perhaps, "it makes me into a computer."

To say much more, I'd either have to be more explicit about myself, or try to be more precise about these philosophical arguments and societal forces. But I'll stay in this gray zone where hopefully I've still said something useful. (I know its a bad habit of staying in this gray zone, and I ought to start moving out.)

language

To have a nicely working system, people should know the names of things. And computers and programs make this even more difficult since they are so inflexible when it comes to names.
So put oneself in a multi-lingual environment with disparate computer codes, and naming of things becomes a difficult job.
I'm trying to get my own mess sorted out. I have directories with names that classify.
I have files with different extensions implying the programs that can read them.
And I have different projects I am working on. I keep redefining the projects, so I keep renaming them, and there is overlap between the different projects. And I seem to have multiple copies of the same files in different locations.
Basically, there are settings for devices, there is a corresponding parameter in a model, and then there are measured and calculated quantities for these different settings.
Sometimes settings are named based on the day they were used to link them together with other parameters for those days. Sometimes they are named with something like the word 'nominal' to try to push these into standard settings.
Now, I might think I am obsessive about this sort of thing except for the fact that I really have not yet created a working system. So its really just unfinished work that I'm having trouble moving forward on.

A final point about this kind of work. There are two aspects to this kind of work. First there is this clarification work. Work to try to make language that works well for the different people involved. Then there is actually getting stuff done. For the latter purpose, there will inevitable be arbitrary choices made. The area is complicated enough that its not always clear what the right thing to do is. The point is that you should know what you did. So if someone asks you, you can tell, and they can repeat (or you can!) if necessary. So you need to know what you did. And depending on the kinds of people you are working with, you may also need to have answers ready to defend the arbitrary choices you made- or at least a strategy so that you could easily try something else if you can't defend a choice.

There is a conflict between doing something definite and coming up with an appropriate language to describe what you are doing. Doing something definite will often make you make choices about language before you are ready to do so. Walking the line between these two things is the key to move forward but also bring others along with you so that it can help the total understanding and group good as well.

tolerance

I'm trying to do some detailed work. I have to create a bunch of files with settings of currents and magnet strengths, and then load these values into a model of the machine and calculate quantities based on tracking particles through the machine.
I'm realizing that I have an approach where I assume that everything I do I might make some mistakes. If I focus really hard, I can make fewer mistakes, but this is exhausting, and its hard to think creatively while doing this. So I try to set up my systems so that they are tolerant to making mistakes. This means that there are checks later on, and reviews where I can catch the mistakes I make.
I think that other people don't work this way with this kind of work. They are more careful, they don't make many mistakes, and once things are checked, they leave things as is for fear of messing it up.

This to me is another aspect of "the mess". Its an area, where in order to turn something not into a mess, I have to work much harder than I normally would. If it were not a mess, and I had no problems with the systems in place, then I could just work in my concentrated mode, not make mistakes (or very rarely), and get a lot more done. Since I allow myself to make mistakes, then I have to change the system itself in order to accommodate this, or else face the consequences of making mistakes and looking bad as a result.

relearning to read

The institute for the future of the book blog discusses a slow viewing of a Herzog film
and states

The problem of availability is something that seems increasingly to have been solved. To view or to read well is another kind of problem. In the past, when there was an economy based on scarcity, this might not have been as much of an issue: whatever was available was watched or read. Now we need to think about how we want to watch: we need to become better readers.

I've been chewing on this for awhile. This morning it struck me that perhaps this is a much harder task than we may think. And perhaps the technical challenges associated with bringing about the new mode of availability are trivial compared to the human and social challenges of reclaiming the same depth we had and perhaps developing it in new directions. I, for one, have certainly become worse at in depth reading in recent years. Perhaps there will be long term benefits. But I'm most often struck by a sense of loss.

To me, there are two separate questions. The first is about the nature of hyper text, and what such a literature might mean. My gut feeling is to reject it, and somehow it feels like this is related to the integrity of personal identity, and the linearity of time... (problem much simpler reasons are available)... were there ever choose your own adventure stories that reached the level of high literature?

The second question is about how to read single texts. Do we take notes? Do we spend hours at a time, or minutes? Do we always read linearly, or sometimes skip ahead? I don't know why these questions should even be asked, except that with internet reading I've taken to all these habits, and perhaps they should be clarified if not rejected on an individual basis. I think for the most part, these are bad habits, akin to seeking out cliff notes for a book and not actually reading it. The danger of mistaking the map for the territory?

One final point is that there's a small flaw in the claim that the availability problem has been solved. What this means is that digitally, texts are more and more easily available. However, at this point, I really don't feel like e-readers are good enough. Maybe I just haven't given them a chance. But in any case, the truth is that if one prefers to read a printed text in a convenient book form, then the digital existence on one's devices is not the same. And independent book stores provide a filtering process that forms a community and provides these books for immediate purchase. I see the new system as an alternative, but calling it the "availability" problem hides the changes that have already taken place and will continue to take place with respect to what books mean, how they get to us, and the connection to the author.

I guess I just really like libraries and bookstores, and wonder what will happen to these institutions and how the social role will develop. Probably much has been written on this, but I think its easy to think that somehow the technical part of digitally distributing text has somehow done away with a large amount of preexisting objects, culture and ways of thinking about things.

messes

How do we deal with being stuck in a messy situation?

The nature of a mess is that you put energy into fixing it and it is still a mess. Perhaps one can slowly turn a mess into not a mess, but during the process it will be a mess. The key is to not look for completion, and to make sure one has other resources and interests. Some kinds of life projects give regular rewards, and have regular moments of clarity and transformation. A mess on the other hand, is a constant drain. Again, the work may still be valuable, and in the end, something good may come of it, but for large amounts of time, no such rewards are there, and not being draining may be the best possible scenario.

When one is involved in such a project, it is rather frustrating because one is often asked if one is passionate about it, and if one loves it. But really, all one can say is that one is trying to improve a mess. One can barely even talk intelligibly about it because the nature of the mess is that it cannot be clearly defined, and in fact incoherent approaches to characterization of the issues may abound. Thus, not talking about it may be the clearest and most honest approach available, but this leaves oneself in a state of mystery where one is exhausted, but cannot say why. Historical and psychological analyses of those involved may also help, but without the grounding in other healthier areas (such that its essentially just an approach of humor/compassion), one may again be led to increasing the problem, rather than improving it.

Living through a mess is difficult because one's faster/more direct analytical facilities are led astray. The one thing that one may do is to constantly remind oneself that one is involved in a mess, think to somewhat more healthy situations, and not push too hard. Put energy into it, notice that it is still a mess, and then recover from that effort, having hopefully pushed things along incrementally such that they will be a bit better then next time you return.

slow processes

I think that watching computer technology develop sometimes is disheartening for us humans.
We watch things go faster and faster, and see any process which once took an hour and a person to help with it, now take a single function call in a high level interpreted programming language, and a few seconds of processor time.

Seeing this, and looking at ourselves, and our own development, its hard not to feel impatient with ourselves. Some things take years, and lots of work, and the progress is still only partial. Things like developing friendships, coming to terms with our past, and finding an appropriate way of life, profession, etc. How do we keep our dignity and allow ourselves our slowness when many things seem to be faster and faster? I think there is some flaw in thinking that devalues something for its slowness. When we have a beautiful tree in the yard providing shade for years, do we put this tree down because it took so long to grow? No, in some sense the time it took to grow adds to its value.

So what is the difference between a tree and a Fourier transform algorithm? I don't think many people would wish that their basic programming tools could run a little slower. We like responsiveness.

How do we defend slowness? Perhaps the point is again back to the question of dominant natural and technological language. This computer age asks us to put all things in terms of algorithms and processes. But our own lives are mysteries in some ways. When we translate this into computer language, we have inevitably left things of value out. In the same way that when we translate into economics language, we also leave things out. Its certainly worth the effort to try to understand why some things are slow, and all of the different things that are involved in the process from an algorithmic perspective, but one should also just accept that the translation is only partial, and slow things of great value exist.

separation of duties

There have been various times in my life when I've felt "smart". Sometimes this goes along with some context in which others think I understand what is going on. When I realize that in some context I am considered "smart", my usual response is one of something of the sort: "wow, but I am so confused! I know so little!" Now, one might put this down as modesty, and say, no, in fact I know quite a bit and such and such. But to me this dynamic seems to expose something of the structure of knowledge in society (as I have encountered it). There are people who feel they are not so smart and that others have most things figured out, and there are those who realize they don't know very much, but somehow represent structured knowledge to the others. To me this feels like a hoax that doesn't serve either person very well.

Now, this is a caricature, and I wouldn't want to say that it says much about the actual validity of knowledge. I only point out that this is a dynamic that may complicate things when evaluating how much ground a particular area of study actually covers. Consider perhaps a set of different areas of study, each overlapping with the other in some way, and as a whole covering a large amount of ground. Suppose further that the people studying each area take the subject matter in the surrounding areas to be more solid than those actually studying them do themselves (though they may be less forthright about this aspect than they should be). How do we evaluate the total ground covered by the overlap of these different disciplines? I suppose, we need to try to gain a bit of expertise in each of the areas and ignore some of the sociology and build up our own picture of the total ground covered.

distributed consciousness

Ok, I was getting worried before about the internet and distributed consciousness.
Nice to read from Crispin about collective consciousness. Here and here.
Yes, I like to think that if there are thoughts, that those thoughts belong to someone.
In any case, I am here. I interact with many others through this funny medium, but my consciousness is associated with me body, here and now.

commucations theory

I recently read this article by William Deresiewicz on the history of friendship, and how social networking is changing the definition. I guess its about ideas from one area of technology, development coming into another. In this case, communications theory is being applied to human interaction. So we have nodes that are sending messages to other nodes through channels. Those channels have various properties, such as (?) latency and bandwidth. Thus, we can communicate with each other over the phone, through email, through Facebook, Twitter, Skype and other messaging services. Now, from our perspective, we are living our lives, and these are modes of communicating with others. From the system designer's perspective, we are nodes trying to communicate with each other. Face to face contact through light and sound that travel through the air becomes another channel. It is prized for its "high bandwidth".

Like each such system, the difficult part from a human perspective is that one is put on the defensive. One may be required to put ones values into this new language in order to defend them. I was complaining about Facebook recently and how many of your actions become publicly available. The response of the person I was speaking to was "don't you know about privacy settings?" There was a dismissive attitude to this. It was my job to understand the way in which Facebook had designed the system, and to address my concerns within that system. Rather than keeping things as they are, Facebook allowed more information to be shared publicly than was previously being done, and then put the burden on the user to figure out its system to reinstate those values. Its a similar situation with environmental concerns and economics. Within the domain of economics, those who don't think that species should be wiped out, or forests destroyed, or rivers polluted must phrase these goods within the language of economics.

Let me add one more point. In his article Deresiewicz discusses a Facebook friend who tells everyone that they are at Central park, and Deresiewicz asks why this person felt the need to share this. The thing about these new technologies is that they make this sharing just incredibly easy. The amount of effort to share such a thought is minimal. So, if in the end, one decides that such sharing is actually detrimental to one's relationships, then one must see these technologies as rather dangerous. Or, at least, something that requires a new kind of thought and understanding. A new kind of ledge one may fall off if one isn't careful. The new tools encourage us to externalize our internal worlds. This has much potential, and can improve self expression. But one can also give away important things, and not get much back in return. So, I note the dangers. And hopefully use this as a reminder to those developing this technology to use humility and don't expect everyone to fit into your system.

Computer science is the new physics?

I've been meeting a lot of people doing research in various topics in either computer science, machine learning, or various areas of somewhat related applied math topics. I was discussing pure vs. applied research with someone, and they were telling me that it was a very good time to be doing relatively abstract research in computer science. It was perceived that any kind of results, no matter how abstract can have practical benefit in a relatively short amount of time.

This reminds me of how I imagine it to have been for physics following the creation of the atomic bomb. The physicists were seen as miracle workers. Give these guys some money, and they will do magic with it. It seems to me like we are coming to the end of this. Physics has lost some its sway on the popular imagination. Observing the public perception of the LHC, for example, its hard not to see the last gasps of this former power. I don't think the physicists have no culpability in the impression that the LHC may create black holes to swallow up the world. Although not actively pushed, I think that it is also not actively discouraged. The problem with this, and I think the whole unification of everything via string theory falls along the same lines, is that no real result can live up to this hype. No matter what happens, it will be a let down to the public.

On the computer science front, I suppose there may be fruitful years of research ahead. What personally scares me about this is that the research is about our own imaginations, and not about the world. (But then, maybe this is just my bias, from not being very involved in it.) I do hope that this research doesn't get too far ahead of itself, and leave the world, and people behind. I suppose that physics has its control aspect as well.

A friend/colleague of mine forwarded me this link to these lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman about computer programming based around Lisp. One can only hope that some of this kind of spirit survives in the discipline of computer science. It is a joy of discovery and appreciation of simplicity and clarity that has a kindness and humanity behind it.

For me, I prefer to stick with the science. I prefer to try to understand what's already here, rather than create infrastructure to dramatically change things. And on the creation front, I prefer more modest modes of expression.

Looking back, I'm glad we have found quantum mechanics, and it is said that CERN produced the internet. I'm sorry that it has to be at the cost of a certain group of people presenting themselves as magicians.

A final comment I'd add, is that even though I phrased this in terms of "popular imagination", I think there is more to the story than this. I think that it is accurate to say that there isn't much chance that elementary particle physics will produce practical/technological benefits at this point. Certainly its possible, and one never knows the results of research. But it certainly doesn't appear that the Higgs Boson has any practical benefit, nor do the superparticles for that matter. And I don't think many particle physicists think this either. I think they just believe very strongly in reductionism, and this is the main argument as to why particle physics research should continue. I have to admit, I'm sympathetic to this line of reasoning. But I also think something has gone wrong with this approach- it has gone too far- and it will be very interesting to see what the effects of LHC research are, whatever the results!

philosophy of science

Hmm, so my interest in Nancy Cartwright isn't so idiosyncratic after all perhaps.

wreckage?

I look around accelerator physics and see that there are so many tried and aborted projects.
I think of this process of working on an open source project, and I see its been tried before with the UAL framework. Every idea one has has already been tried and failed.

Perhaps I should try to put a more positive spin on this, and list the open source beam physics projects. We have Zgoubi, and the previously mentioned UAL. Then there is XAL, which is an offshoot of UAL developed for the SNS. Each of these is rather project related, I believe.
UAL is an attempt at generality, but from a physics perspective seems to be more about absorbing existing codes, than developing new algorithms. It is used in the RHIC online model.

Also, I think beam physics should look to other fields such as HEP, with GEANT, and on the synchrotron optics side with codes such as shadow.

cyber

I came across this piece of writing called iGooglesque by E. Sartwell, who is actually a cousin of mine (second cousin, once removed?). It was satisfying to see some analysis of what a large amount of time interacting with a web browser might mean, and what it says about personal choice and identity.

It left me with a desire to better understand these things, and led to a flurry of web searches and wikipedia reading on cyborgs. Particularly disturbing was the idea of distributed consciousness. I read something about this, and it opens up a new concept that then pushes me away from the path I've been following. To me, the concept of grounding oneself, of being very much in touch with one's surroundings, and of consolidating experience, and slowing down; all these things are very important and I would like to do them more often and be better at this. But reading about the idea of a distributed consciousness left me wondering if there wasn't a short cut to all of this. This left me with the same uneasiness I used to feel when contemplating the concept of determinism, after reading Richard Dawkins, for example.

beam optics codes

So I'm continuing on with my conversion of the Excel optics code into Open Office Calc. I've been calling the code Open Optics. I've almost finished the part where a lattice is copied together with the appropriate formulas for calculating some uncoupled parameters by adding them up around the ring. Hard to keep up momentum on this project, because I think that no one will really use it.
But its really not that hard of a job to do, so I can keep moving forward slowly.

For a second project, I have two different possibilities. One is working on the idea of developing a TPSA library to work with Accelerator Toolbox (AT), so that the one turn map can be computed and used to optimize various quantities.

Secondly, there is the need for more collaboration on Accelerator Toolbox. Many different people use it at different labs and they are repeating the work. I can try to put the code in a central repository so that people can work together on it. This is probably the first thing to do before working on the TPSA project. Once more people are working together, it may be easier to use existing code and get more ideas about the right way to combine AT with TPSA. Of course, then, something like a normal form algorithm should be written- or at least something to find tune shift with amplitude.

For the moment, I need to learn better how to use Sourceforge and SVN. I did this with the Tracy code, but my collaborator knew more about it than me. I should set it up myself, and figure out how to do it from behind the firewall, etc.

Finally, there is MAD-X and PTC. This is the existing rich TPSA, normal form code. But its not used that much for light sources, and the tracking routines are somewhat obscure- buried in the PTC Fortran 90. Getting this physics (well, sort of- symplectic integration) out in the open, would be part of the point of collaborating on AT. The tracking routines are very easy to find and read there.

mumbling

And one day we woke up, and everyone we ever knew was there.
The familiar smiles, the wry comments, each distinctive approach.
But there was a strange slowness and vagueness to each individual. Focus as you will, you couldn't quite grasp them. Small pieces came through, but not the whole. There was a kaleidoscope of moments, a flooding of halting attempts to communicate.
"This is who I am!", Alan said. "Ok, we believe you." But he had spoken too loudly. His mumbling had been mistaken for clarity. His words parsed, the structure analyzed, but his face was foggy, and the impressions he received were not coming through.

direction

One can choose direction in many aspects of life.
I guess on this blog I have mostly dealt with my work and attitude towards online stuff.
Can analysis help? We may try to think about who we are communicating with, how we are doing it, and what we hope to gain from this. In a blog, you mainly put stuff out there and don't get a lot back. It can be valuable for the purpose of collecting thoughts and recording moments, but as far as interaction, its rather minimal. I suppose this is not set in stone. Some blogs may cultivate communities in which the relationship is quite different. Perhaps blog is just not a very good word, or its meaning is not specific enough.
Anyway, if one is to be serious about online communication and work this into one's life as a positive thing, and not always an experimental, rather unconscious hope that it will be therapeutic in some form, maybe a little more clarity and direction is required.
This is just to note here that I would like to do this. Either fade this aspect of my life out, or clarify it. The one to anonymous connection doesn't feel like a long term healthy solution. It is too murky, and though perhaps part of development, should be clarified.

works too well

There are some things that work just too well.
Like google search, whatever you put in, you get something back, as if you meant it.

I was going to try to run a program I am writing, and realized that I hadn't written everything that I need to yet. I was thinking, could the code somehow be smart enough to guess what I wanted to do, and then just run? Why do I have to take the time to put all these explicit instructions in there? Of course the reason is that it is based on rules that I understand, so I have a certain measure of control in the situation. If the code could decide itself what it thought that I wanted to do, then its no longer a situation based on rules that I can understand to whatever degree I want.

I'm not saying I think Google should crash on badly phrased searches, but having hidden rules with a goal of never failing and always trying to guess what you want takes the control away from the people using the code and puts it into those writing it.

Again

Just because something has been done many times before, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done again. Yes, the awareness is helpful to some extent. But you will always bring something new.

I'm thinking of my project of writing an accelerator optics code in Calc. What can I do differently? Can I document it better than MAD? Can I make it easier to use?
This area has such a heavy history. Too many codes already. Yes, I'm writing another one. But maybe I can bring something good to the process, and even the result?

harmonizing

Realizing that there have been a number of situations in my life, where try as I may, I just can't put it all together, and can't find a nice picture. Ah well. No reason not to try to harmonize in other contexts, perhaps on a smaller scale.

computers as tools

I came across this article (seems to be badly formatted- should be run through some wiki software?- I cut and pasted it into emacs to get the line breaks...) by Chris Dent at University of Indiana.

He says that there are two different views we have of computers. One is as "interactive artifacts", and the other is as tools. He suggests that the view as being interactive is flawed and the source of computers resulting in much less increase in efficiency than you might expect. He says that basically it is a flawed metaphor. We think of the computer as like a person, able to interact with us. However, for the forseeable future, computer programs are still rule based within a given domain, not able to form their own categories and make connections between domains. Thus, we have overly high expectations for how easy the interaction will be (the computer can understand what I want!), and also too low expectations for how that experience actually goes (I guess I just don't know how to talk like a computer :( )

He says that the two main ways in which computers are tools are in terms of automating tasks that are now or were previously done by people, and by acting as tools to augment ourselves.
I must say that I get a little uncomfortable thinking of augmentation. But I really like this idea of thinking of computers as tools. It throws away the fiction that we are somehow creating beings, or entities, or some kind of abstract existence out there. Instead we are using tools. These tools may store, represent, and manipulate information. And much more. But turning it back into tools, gives us the responsibility. What tools do we want? How effective are they? What do we want them for?