Iran intelligence report

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/unlike-most-of.html

My takeaway is twofold:

1.) The assessment is likely not overtly political. No surprise. That's not to say that an institution can't itself be biased--the CIA is supposedly notoriously liberal--but it's not specifically anti-Bush.

2.) It's not necessarily solid info either. "Whether it is new photographs, new human sources, or new signals intercepts, the fact that just two years ago, indeed just a few months ago, we were confident that the exact opposite of what the latest NIE says Iran is up to suggests that either we have multiple, unimpeachable sources of intelligence that have shown us the light; or the information we have is all over the map and drawing definitive conclusions is next to impossible. That our intelligence services have rarely penetrated a hard target like Iran, and the fact that the intelligence community has missed a laundry list of major strategic developments around the world, suggests the latter case is more likely. I am always willing to hope for the best, but the historical pattern is hard to ignore."

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Testing a theory

By the way, this post is somewhat unique in that it is being written straight to the blog and not to real people.

What I did just now reminds me of one time when I was a freshman at BYU. I had taken a job aptitude test for on-campus jobs, thinking to apply for secretarial work or data entry or something else taking advantage of the fact that I type pretty fast and am a good speller. I got some words wrong on the spelling test. This bothered me because I am a pretty good speller, and it didn't tell me which words I got wrong so I could fix them. Now, you were only allowed to take this aptitude test once per day, but the test was the same each time you took it. So I came back the next day and tried again. Same score.

Hmmm. It won't tell me what I'm getting wrong, but I can retake the test again tomorrow. I eventually realized, when I accidentally logged back into the spelling test instead of another test on grammar or something, that it would let you take the test more than once, but your score only counted once per day. At that point I went into high gear. I took the spelling test again, purposefully getting the first word wrong. Score was one lower. That means I had the first word right. I took it again, getting the second word wrong. One lower, so it wasn't the second word. On the third or fourth try, I realized that it was faster to try to get each one in succession purposefully right and just type "asdf" or something for the wrong ones. Eventually I figured out which three words I had misspelled. Two of them were genuine mistakes and so I corrected myself; one of them was actually right. The program showed the word "insure" and told me to correct it if it was wrong; of course I left it alone because "insure" is a word. Turns out it was intended to be a misspelling of "ensure," so leaving it alone was a mistake. How was I supposed to know that? They're both words. It's like "immigration" and "emmigration," or "affect" and "effect." Two words with different meanings that often get misspelled as the other, but you can't tell that it's a misspelling without the context. I felt like my hard work had been worth it.

The next day I got a call from the manager in charge of the office. He told me I had crashed their database, and for the next three days they would be unable to test students for hiring during the busiest time of year (beginning of Fall semester). He was quite angry and told me never to come to their office again. My attitude was pretty much, "Taking the test multiple times crashed your system? Seems like that's your own fault for building it fragile." Still, I was scared enough that I never applied for another clerical job the whole time I was at BYU.

Related: "The Difference" a.k.a. "How could you choose avoiding a little pain over understanding a magic lightning machine?"

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Testing a theory

Blogger is not buggy if you can see this.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Testing a theory

The blog software seems to index posts by subject. I wonder what happens if I send in two posts with the exact same subject. Will it get confused?

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Semmelweiss & Pride

P.S. To be fair, I should note that Pasteur's germ theory hadn't come out yet, and when it did Semmelweiss' ideas were accepted. I don't see that as much as an excuse, if any. Semmelweiss had the data to show that his method worked, even if he couldn't explain why. Scientific honesty includes accepting "magic" that clearly works, and figuring out how it works later. Rejecting ideas that you don't understand is stupid, blind pride, and a scientist must be humble.

 

I think it was Feynmann who said that the greatest scientific discoveries stem not from the word(s) "Eureka!" but "Hmmm, that's funny."

 

Three items

[Cc'ed Tara, Adam and Tom. You guys can skip the first item and probably the second. Hope you're all having a great Christmas. Sorry I haven't mailed any letters yet. -Max]

 

Dear Jenn,

 

Three items of interest today.

 

1.) "Sun-Tzu, concerned with war on the highest strategic level, affirms that the greatest warrior is one who calculates so well that he never needs to fight. Clausewitz, interested more in the operational level, allows that war takes precedence only after other forms of politics have failed." http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=289&MId=14 I know the article is more serious, but that has implications for my Axis and Allies tactics.

 

2.) Very amusing article on global warming. http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22430 I didn't realize the WHO had repealed the ban on DDT. Tragically and stupidly late (by 35 years), but very good news nonetheless. DDT is the most cost-effective way of fighting malaria. DDT saves lives. "Extreme optimism" prevails. (An extreme optimist is defined by John McCarthy, of Artificial Intelligence fame, as "someone who believes that civilization will probably survive, even if it doesn't take his advice" because good ideas will triumph in the end.)

 

3.) This is good and very interesting: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande. [I hope that's a perma-link.] Anyone who cares about national health care should read pages 4 and 6. National health care will cost more than equivalent private care because you can't exclude the uninsurables, and I suspect because of increased moral hazard. On the other hand, there are notable inefficiencies in private insurance too such not covering preventive medicine, when it's actually the most cost-effective kind. (I suspect this is because insurance companies are capped in their profits--they can only charge a certain percentage more on premiums than they pay out to hospitals. Naturally this means there's no incentive to reduce the cost of medical procedures, because then their maximum allowed profits would decrease too. I could be wrong, of course, but I think I sent you a link a while back to this data on private health care "inefficiency.") Anyway, if you want to pay for national health care you need to fix other inefficiencies in order to pay for the ones you're going to introduce.

 

"In December, 2006, the Keystone Initiative published its findings in a landmark article in The New England Journal of Medicine . Within the first three months of the project, the infection rate in Michigan's I.C.U.s decreased by sixty-six per cent. The typical I.C.U.—including the ones at Sinai-Grace Hospital—cut its quarterly infection rate to zero. Michigan's infection rates fell so low that its average I.C.U. outperformed ninety per cent of I.C.U.s nationwide. In the Keystone Initiative's first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated hundred and seventy-five million dollars in costs and more than fifteen hundred lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years—all because of a stupid little checklist."

 

Anyone in the software industry should read it too--it's a great example of a problem domain where tools to reduce cognitive load have a dramatic effect on cost (and save lives too), and software is all about finding places where information tools impact the real world. There are lessons for managers and business executives, too. One final thought: hospitals don't seem real receptive to the lessons. Remind you of Ignatz Semmelweiss? [Onlookers: Semmelweiss was a 19th century physician who spent years as a pariah in the medical community because he had this crazy theory that "childbed fever," which killed many women after giving birth, could be prevented by doctors observing basic sanitary practices like, say, washing your hands after performing an amputation and before delivering a child. Obviously crazy, right? Eventually the medical community changed its mind but I understand it took years.]

 

-B.C.

 

--

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

Economics paper

Assertion: The cost of creating and enforcing regulations seems to be about 1/20 of what it costs those regulated. If the government had to pay the cost of regulations it wouldn't create many of them.

 

Interesting assertion. The source given is http://brianmicklethwait.signal100.com/podcast/HabitsofHighlyEffectiveCountries.pdf . Read it when you get the chance.

 

-B.C.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Datum: Greenland glaciers

Thought this might interest you three. During the 1920s-1940s warm spell, Greenland glaciers also retreated. The researchers suggest that this is evidence the glacier retreats are related to atmospheric temperatures as opposed to other models that say, for instance, that they're related to magma "hot spots" beneath the crust in Greenland.

 

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/grnlndice.htm

Note: I'm discounting the part where the researchers talk about an irreversible "tipping point," because 1.) that's not what this data is about, and 2.) researchers have a bias towards making their work seem important. But the correlation between the warming and glacier retreat is persuasive to me. Maybe that's obvious and uninteresting to all of you. :)

 

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Humor: xkcd.com

[Cc'ed http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/]

J.,

You may have seen this before, but just in case:

http://xkcd.com/356/
http://xkcd.com/246/
http://xkcd.com/79/
http://xkcd.com/245/

Hover your mouse over the picture for an additional amusing caption.

-B.C.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

How to change an opinion

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/12/nuclear_qa

Wired News: You don't argue that nuclear power is entirely safe, but that it's vastly better than coal and fossil fuels. Do we have to choose between them?

Gwyneth Cravens: I used to think we surely could do better. We could have more wind farms and solar. But I then learned about base-load energy, and that there are three forms of it: fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear. In the United States, we're maxed out on hydro. That leaves fossil fuels and nuclear power, and most of the fossil fuel burned is coal.

Emphasis added.

-B.C.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Bin Laden analysis

[Kill the formatting first]

From Chaos Manor: a reader supplies a link to "an interesting analysis of Bin Laden's October 23 Statement" from somebody with impressive credentials. "It was circulated as recommended reading by the USAF Air University staff." The reader also supplies this comment which I found interesting:

"The US has forces which aggressively carry out whatever plans are handed down under a unified chain of command, even if the plans or support for the plans aren't ideal. Bin Laden has a plan he has been developing for many years which takes advantage of our inherent weaknesses, but he can't seem to get his troops organized and unified under one command. I'm not sure which side's problems are more frustrating but according to this analysis, it seems as though Bin Laden considers interference by Saudi Arabia and Iran to be about as helpful as the Congressional budget maneuvers are to President Bush's strategy. Both sides of this conflict are divided internally at various levels, and both sides see divisions among those who are paying the bills and providing ideological guidance."

The analysis:

http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=289

Chaos Manor letter (scroll down a bit):

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail495.html#Friday

I haven't read the analysis yet but will later.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Cool words

Barbara,

One thing I like about English is that it has so many words to describe things concisely. For instance, you can refer to "those funny eyeglasses on a stick" or you can just call it a "lorgnette," which it is. Here are some of the cool words I never knew existed, which I thought you might enjoy. I mostly learned them by getting them wrong on FreeRice.com.

One of those 17th- or 18th-century century powdered wigs: peruke (pa-ROOK). A periwig is any wig, but especially a peruke.

Sword-shaped: ensiform.

The flourish at the end of some people's signatures: paraph. Originally it was for protecting against forgery (I don't really see how) but nowadays just goes with fancy people.

Snores a lot: stertorous (STIR-terous). A stertorous person snores a lot, or is currently snoring, or sounds like he is.

There's a musical symbol called a "breve" which is two whole notes. A regular whole note is a semibreve.

Having an odd number of toes: perissodactyl. Having an even number is artiodactyl, and can refer specifically to certain species of mammals with an even number of toes, all of which are ungulates (hoofed mammals). For instance, pigs and hippos are artiodactyl. So were the ancestors of whales, but apparently whales aren't considered artiodactyl--I'm not sure if they lost another "finger" or if it just doesn't count any more because their fingers are inside their flippers.

Needle-shaped: acicular (uh-sick-ye-ler).

Itching, an itchy feeling: pruritus (proo-RY-tus).

Cheese-like: caseous (key-see-us or kay-see-us).

Foggy: brumous (brume means fog or mist).

Having to do with tailors: sartorial.

A pibroch (PEE-broke) is a piece of bagpipe music of a certain kind. Basically a bagpipe song.

Those eyeglasses with a handle attached: lorgnette (lorn-YET).

Love,
Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Book Review: Conrad's Fate

[Cc'ed the blog.]

Well, I just finished reading Conrad's Fate, and I liked it quite a bit. The "villain" (to the extent that Diana Wynne Jones has villains) is totally nutbar, and so the plot doesn't make much sense, but 1.) there are nutty people in real life, and 2.) mostly it's a character book. It's nice to hear from Christopher and Millie again, and to get some perspective on how their relationship works later on in Charmed Life. I do wonder whether Millie has to call him Chrestomanci in private now too--does name-magic require that it function as his exclusive name as well as his title? Probably not, because Gabriel de Witt seems to have used his birth name--but it's fun to hear her say what she thinks of Christopher. Some of the plot involving the Walker didn't make sense to me either, and the final plot twist was resolved rather abruptly, but I liked Conrad and I especially liked his outsider perspective on Christopher. I give the book four out of five stars for Chrestomanci fans, three for new readers.

P.S. I think I know what's wrong with security mechanism on this blog. Unfortunately it's not fixable, so I'm disabling security.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Samaritan Pentateuch

I was reading the end of Revelation in the New Testament and thinking about Deuteronomy 4:2, and how everybody always wants to declare that God is finished speaking, and then (we see from Church history and the scriptures) when he does speak again people are often upset because he doesn't say what they thought he was going to say. The Christians say the Bible is the complete and last message from God, the Jews (some of them, anyway) say the Tanakh (Old Testament) is the last, the Samaritans don't accept anything after Deuteronomy. Among other things, this shows that it's not sophistry to point people toward Deuteronomy 4:2 in answer to Revelation 22:18--there really are people (Samaritans) who read Deuteronomy 4:2 the same way, but that's not what it means. The Lord is always free to keep speaking: Moses 1:4 reads, "And, behold, thou art my son; wherefore look, and I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands; but not all, for my works are without end, and also my words, for they never cease."

But I wanted to talk about the Pentateuch. I went to check my thoughts on the Pentateuch, and turned to Wikipedia on the theory that asking Wikipedia is a lot like asking your dad: it may not always be right but it's often useful, and it probably represents conventional wisdom. It's also usually accessible to a layman and a good start for highly-technical subjects. I found this Wikipedia paragraph interesting:

'There are important differences between the Hebrew and the Samaritan copies of the Pentateuch in the readings of many sentences. In about two thousand out of the six thousand instances in which the Samaritan and the Jewish texts (Masoretic text) differ, the Septuagint (LXX) agrees with the former. For example, Exodus 12:40 in the Samaritan and the LXX reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan and in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years." In the Masoretic text, however, the same passage reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years."'

IIRC, that jives with some of the things said in the New Testament (maybe Acts 7? I forget) about the length of time in Egypt, and--given that Jochebed was Levi's daughter--helps a little to reduce the ridiculous lengths of time Levi would have needed to live and Jochebed would have needed to stay fertile in order for Moses to be 80 years old when the children of Israel came out of Egypt. Not conclusive, but I'll keep the Samaritan/Septuagint version in mind next time I'm thinking about the issue.

-Max

--

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Two cool quotes, plus

Y.A.,

Two quotes from Rogue (composer/lyricist for the Cruxshadows) which, together, pretty well summarize what I like about the band:

"If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions then the road to Heaven is paved with honest attempts."

"It is the man gripped by fear, who still stands to face his enemies, that is truly possessed of bravery."

Rogue also lists these dislikes: "Rudeness, Hypocrisy, Onions, Anything with Caffeine, Drug Abuse, Hatefulness, Smoking, Prejudice, Alcohol, Frozen Vegetables, Closemindedness, Religious Fundamentalism, Chocolate, Nintendo 64." Interesting, no? Reminds me of Jordan Vajda.

-B.C.


--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

On fascism

Y.A.,

You may appreciate this interesting mini-essay from Chaos Manor on where fascism comes from, historically, and why it's inaccurate to call it a right-wing philosophy. Perhaps I should be ashamed to not already know this, but I always did wonder just what fascism was exactly, and Jerry is good at historical context.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view495.html#Friday

'[snip] The theory of Fascism, to the extent that it has a self-consistent political philosophy, accepts the Marxist theory of history as a series of class struggles; but whereas Communism seeks to end class warfare, Fascism believes social classes are inevitable. Mussolini was undoubtedly influenced in this belief by the brilliant work of Vilfredo Pareto, whose work demonstrated that power is always distributed unevenly, there will always be elites, and attempts to destroy class structures only replace one kind of social class with another. (The history of Communist societies and the nomenklatura are instances of successful predictions of Pareto's theories.)

'Since social classes are inevitable, but class warfare cripples the state, the solution to the problem is for the State to stand above the social classes and force them to work together, preferably in equity and fair play. Fair play or no, though, the important thing is to make the classes cease their warfare and stop cancelling each other out, so that there can be social progress and national greatness. Hitler was Mussolini's disciple from the 1920's until the Austrian Anschluss. For a demonstration of the "left wing" nature of his thought, get a copy of Leni Riefenstahl's brilliant propaganda film The Triumph of the Will. In particular see the sequence in which thousands of laborers do a manual of arms with shovels, as the voiceover speaks about the relationship of "the classes and the masses." [snip]'

I recommend the whole thing if you have time.

~B.C.


--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Hello, the blog!?

Security mechanism is still being flaky, I think. If duplicate posts show up, I apologize in advance, because they're not showing up when I send them and I've sent some several times.

Blog: security update

The security mechanism on the blog has been acting flaky. I reversed the polarity on one of the settings (heh, I'm being purposefully cryptic but literally accurate). We'll see if this works. Attempt #2.

-B.C.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Four sparrows

Dear Y.A.,

I just got back from Institute, and I have some things written on my palm that I need to tell you about:

1.) I wonder how many people are aware that, according to Mormon doctrine, only Mormons go to hell? Depending upon what you mean by "hell," of course, but "the only ones upon whom the second death shall have any power" is what I mean here. (D&C 76:35,38.)

2.) You know those sorts of people who say that Mormons aren't Christian? To a certain extent I'm sympathetic and can see where they're coming from, but then you run into one of the ones who also claims that Catholics aren't Christian, and then I lose patience. If your version of "Christian" doesn't include "Catholic" you are clearly not speaking English any more. Hello, the Crusades? Muslims and Christians? Some of the Crusaders may have been Orthodox, but mostly they were Catholic--they sure weren't Anglicans and Baptists.

3.) Within the Church, it's not uncommon to hear people express their gratitude for the Atonement with an observation that "I know that Jesus would still have [suffered Gethsemane and death on the cross] even if it had only been for me." That kind of thinking doesn't really move me. Of course he would have. Today, my Institute teacher bore his testimony at one point that there really "was no other good enough / To pay the price of sin," and that nobody else would have been qualified to be the Savior. A thought struck me: "Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men." Jesus would have volunteered for the job even if there had been somebody else available to do it. For the first time, I was awed. I've been feeling for a while that I need to work harder at "exactness and honor," and--I don't think I can express how this is relevant. Well, it is.

4.) Define "justice." My teacher asked this question today.

Here's my definition. Justice is about the inevitable consequences of a choice or an action. Mercy is about intervening to shield someone from the consequences of what they've done. If you juggle dynamite, sooner or later you will hurt yourself. Someone can step in and catch the dynamite for you once, or twice, and that's mercy, but if you persist in your foolishness nothing can help you. And that's why mercy cannot rob justice. It just cannot be done.

-B.C.

P.S. Okay, here's what I was trying to say with #3: I'm a wimp sometimes. I let myself off easy when it comes to certain hard things. Jesus did not do this. I'm trying to quit it. They're not even hard hard things--it's just stuff like doing my calisthenics or going to bed on time--I'm just being a wimp and making too many exceptions.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Theory of mind

[Cc'ed the blog]

Theory of mind appears to be all about studying people's perceptions of other people's minds, as it relates to things like predicting their actions. Immediately we think of the Halting Problem from automata theory, and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which essentially come down to the fact that finite systems cannot analyze arbitrarily complicated systems: to analyze an arbitrarily complex system you must be arbitrarily (and, in the limit, infinitely) complex yourself. Thus, while anybody may have a theory of mind, theories about their "theories of mind" will inevitably be simplistic abstractions, or in other words models, or in other words lies, at some level. (Confusion may arise here from using the same word "theory" to refer both to a specific, scientific theory of a process and also to an individual's understanding of phenomena around him, i.e. thinking beings.)

Anyway, I don't see theory-theory and simulation-theory as being mutually exclusive. My personal experience is that my simulation-theory is generally poor compared to my theory-theory; when I give girls guy-advice, I generally feel it's of better quality when I do it based on material I've read (like Chris Carter's books on attracting men) and not on my own feelings (which could mostly only ever help attract guys like me and is of extremely limited utility to your average girl). There are some edge cases, such as girls who want to attract smart guys or guys in the Church or other things that bring their target closer to me, and in those cases I'll use more of my own feelings. Anyway, my point is that you can have a theory-theory which gives different predictions than simulation would. At the same time, it's really nice and relaxing to deal with people for whom you can leave the theory-theory on the shelf—simulation theory is much less cognitively demanding—and that's why dealing with Jenn or, to an extent, Tara or Barbara is so much less draining than dealing with the average person. Even the ones I like, like Bristy Burtenshaw. On the other hand, if you didn't have a theory-theory you'd make a lot of bad decisions about how to treat people.

(Caveat: Tara & Dathan is probably only about 25% similar to me. That's what marriage does, doubles the size of the gene pool.)

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Iraq

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/14/AR2007111402524.html

[quote] Indeed, some U.S. Army officers now talk more sympathetically about former insurgents than they do about their ostensible allies in the Shiite-led central government. "It is painful, very painful," dealing with the obstructionism of Iraqi officials, said Army Lt. Col. Mark Fetter. As for the Sunni fighters who for years bombed and shot U.S. soldiers and now want to join the police, Fetter shrugged. "They have got to eat," he said over lunch in the 1st Cavalry Division's mess hall here. "There are so many we've detained and interrogated, they did what they did for money." [end quote]

-B.C.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Re: Change of subject

Incidentally, the song in question is "Jackal-Head," by the Cruxshadows [Kroo-shad-ows], a really interesting group. Check out "Winterborn" and "Sophia" if you ever get the chance (I think both songs are available as free samples on the Internet).

 

-Max

Change of subject

[Cc'ed Jenn and the blog]

 

Hey, sorry to change the subject, but I just noticed a song lyric: it seems the Egyptians believed in a god named Amun, the "Father of the Gods." When I heard this in the song lyric, I thought they said "Ahman," which caught my attention pretty quick because that's the name of the Father in Adamaic. (Jesus is "Son Ahman." See D&C 78:20 and 95:17.) It's still pronounced the same, even if the spelling is different. Anyway, it could be coincidence, but they were taught by Abraham... it's an interesting datum.

 

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

F-35 vs. A-10

Y.A.,

I was really surprised when my roommate Ben told me that the new F-35 Lightning is slated to replace both the F-16 and the A-10. That seems like a tough spread to cover--how can you be nimble enough to dogfight and still be as tough as the A-10? Apparently the answer is that you shouldn't have to BE as tough as the A-10 if you stay out of range. Here's an interesting comment from some guy named E.L.P.: http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-1703.html

This shed some light on that John Ringo op-ed a while ago that talked about killing off the A-10 in favor of high-altitude precision-bombing: this E.L.P. guy is worried about 1.) response time, and 2.) "trashfire." Much as we love the A-10, maybe letting go really is a good idea. Still, I'd like to hear more views from the other side of this issue. I'll keep you posted if I learn more.

~B.C.

-- "The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are, Be witty if you can, But be cheerful if it kills you.

China and Japan: "the way" vs. "a way"

This is both thought-provoking and hilarious.
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/the_way_vs_a_way_japan_v_china.php

The guy in the bottom picture is sucking to start a siphon, in case
you've never seen that done.
(http://www.physicscentral.com/lou/2001/siphons.html )

-Max

Testing the new security mechanism

Testing the new security mechanism...

-B.C.

Taking Adam's Advice

Y.A.,

I guess I'm taking Adam's advice and setting up a blog: http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com. Not sure if anyone will ever read it, but I'll try to include it when I send you stuff. We'll see if Adam is right about this stuff being of general interest.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.