Little House on the Internet: a short story inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Tony Flowers and the Web 2.0 paradigm
Laura is eating her breakfast one mLittle House on the Internet: a short story inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Tony Flowers and the Web 2.0 paradigm
Laura is eating her breakfast one morning when the doorbell rings. She runs to answer it, and there's a man holding a package.
"DHL delivery, Ms. Ingalls," he smiles, and he holds out his tablet. Laura signs with the digital pen just like she's seen Ma do it.
"You're getting to be a big girl, aren't you?" says the man. "I'm nearly seven," says Laura proudly. When the man's gone, Laura takes the package into Pa's office. Pa opens it. There's a book inside.
"What it is?" asks Laura. "It's a new children's book from the Australian National Library," says Pa. "It's called Hello! I said I'd review it for them on Goodreads."
"Can I look?" asks Laura. Pa shows it to her. There are lots of children, and they're all telling you how to say things in their own languages. Laura tries to read some of the words, but it's a bit difficult. She spells out what Emiko is saying. "Konni-chiwa. Is that right, Pa?"
"Alright," says Pa. "But I've only got time to do a few pages. You choose them." Laura looks through the book until she finds the Italian girl. "We'll do Sophia!" she says. "Good choice," says Pa. "Okay, how do we start?"
"First we digitize the pictures," says Laura. "That's right," says Pa. "Now, where's the camera?" "Ma was taking photos for her food blog again!" says Laura. She goes into the kitchen and looks for the camera. It's on the shelf next to the stove! Laura brings it back to Pa's office, carrying it very carefully. Then she and Pa open the new book and put it flat on the table. Ma comes in to see what they're doing. She stands behind them so she can put one arm round Laura and the other round Pa.
"I'm helping Pa speech-enable a new book!" says Laura. "We're going to digitize the pictures."
"Are there going to be copyright issues?" asks Ma. Pa sighs. "We'll show it to them when it's done," he says. "They wanted exposure, right? If they don't like it, we can always take it down." "Come on!" says Laura and pulls at Pa's hand. She hates copyright issues.
"Okay," says Pa. He helps Laura hold the camera over the pages, and Laura takes photos. Then they upload them to Pa's laptop. Laura thinks they look great, but Pa's a little unhappy about the lighting. "It doesn't matter!" says Laura. "Fine," says Pa. "Now what?" "Now we edit them," says Laura. "That's right," says Pa.
They import the pictures into Paint. Laura wants to use PhotoShop, but Pa says she isn't old enough yet. Anyway, Paint is fun too! Laura erases the text and cuts up the jpegs. Then she shrinks them down to the right size and saves them while Pa watches. "I can do it all by myself!" says Laura. "You can!" agrees Pa. "Now what?"
"Now we write the app," says Laura. "But you have to help me fix the metadata." "Okay," says Pa. He puts the book down next to his laptop and opens the wizard. Click, click, click! There's the metadata! "What do we do now?" he asks. "We put in the first prompt," says Laura. "That's right!" says Pa. The wizard says "Select picture". Laura looks at the book, and then she looks at the folder with her pictures.
"The picture is this one with Sophia saying hello," she says. "That's good!" says Pa. Laura clicks on the picture, and it appears in the picture box. "Now what?" says Pa. "Now we write the text," says Laura. She writes H-E-L-L-O in the text box. "And now?" says Pa. "Now we write the response," says Laura. She looks at the book again. "Key-a-oh," she says. "Ciao," says Pa. "Chow," says Laura, and she writes it in, C-I-A-O. "There you are!" says Pa. "Our first prompt done!"
They do all the others. It isn't really very difficult, but you have to be careful with the funny Italian words.
"And now?" asks Pa when they're finished. "Now we need audio files!" says Laura. "Who's our Italian native speaker?" asks Pa. "Aunt Irene!" says Laura, and laughs. "That's why I chose Italian!" Laura likes Aunt Irene. She's a sign language interpreter, and sometimes when she comes to visit she teaches Laura signs. Laura can sign Hi and What's your name? and You are so cute! She thinks maybe she'll be a sign language interpreter too when she grows up. Laura opens the mailer and writes "Hello Aunt Irene I need files for my speech app here they are love Laura x". Then she presses Send.
"And now what?" asks Pa. "Now we have a coffee break!" says Laura "Only I'm having hot chocolate". They go into the kitchen and make a latte for Pa and a cup of tea for Ma and a hot chocolate for Laura. When they came back, Aunt Irene has sent them the files. Laura presses the Deploy button, and there's her online app!
She sits and plays with it for the rest of the morning. It's fun to speak Italian, she just has to listen to Aunt Irene's voice and say it the same way! The speech recognizer tells her if she's got it right. Laura learns all the Italian words in the book, ciao and spaghetti alla Bolognese and calcio and uno, due, tre. And she's doing it with her own piece of software!
Language engineering is so cool, thinks Laura. Maybe I'll be a language engineer instead.
If you want to see some pages from Hello! look here.
If you want to try out Laura's speech-enabled web app yourself, go to this page. ...more
**spoiler alert** I read Sophie's World in Norwegian last year and quite liked it. Now my inner German child, who's decided he's called "Manfred", has**spoiler alert** I read Sophie's World in Norwegian last year and quite liked it. Now my inner German child, who's decided he's called "Manfred", has read it too. He tells me it just blew him away and he'll write a review so that all my friends on Goodreads will know how fantastic it is.
"You can't write a review, Manfred," I say. "You're not even three yet."
"I'm much older than that!" says Manfred. "Would a three year old know words like Schwerkraft and Rationalismus and Nahrungsmittelproduktion?" I have to admit that he seems to have picked up a lot of vocabulary. It makes him even more irritating than he was before.
"So what was so great about the book?" I ask Manfred with all the patience I can muster. "You know, it's not very well written. And the philosophy is kind of obvious. Not to mention actually incorrect in a number of places."
Manfred makes a rude noise. "You're too old to get it," he says smugly. "You don't see how astonishing and mysterious the world is. You're so dumb you think you understand it. Kids like me know that we don't understand it at all. It might be completely different from how you imagine it is, but you never stop to think about that any more."
"Well," I say defensively, "I do get that. I read books on quantum theory—" But Manfred's having none of it. Quantum theory is small potatoes as far as he's concerned.
"I mean completely different," he says with the contempt only a geeky preteen can feel. "You don't get it. You read the book too quickly."
"That's because I know how to read," I snap. Manfred looks crushed for a moment, but comes back strong.
"You don't read properly," he says. "You just skim. I read it all, every word, and I really thought about it. See, Sophie believes at the beginning that she knows who she is, but she finds she's wrong. She thinks she's an ordinary girl in an ordinary Norwegian town, but that's not who she is at all."
"Sounds totally different from every other bestselling YA novel," I agree. But Manfred's not impressed by my irony.
"It is totally different from every other bestselling YA novel," he says. "She doesn't discover she has some crappy superpower or whatever. She learns the truth by working hard and studying philosophy. Real philosophy."
"Sort of real," I say.
"Real enough," says Manfred. "She discovers she isn't an ordinary girl at all, she's just a character in a book. And because she's studied philosophy, she's able to figure out how to escape."
"Yeah, how does she escape?" I ask. "The ending doesn't make sense. That stupid tea party—" Manfred looks smug.
"I told you, you read it too quickly," he says. "The ending makes perfect sense. You remember they talk about Freud, and the unconscious, and the Surrealists, and automatic writing? And how Alberto has a plan he can't explain?"
"Yes," I say doubtfully.
"Look," says Manfred, "It's simple. The reason the writing stops making sense is that they trick the Major into letting his unconscious take over. And they hint several times that the Major isn't the real author either, and that maybe even he's being written. They don't just trick him, they trick Gaarder too. He loses control of his characters, and Sophie and Albert escape. They really do get out into the world."
"Well..." I say. Damn, is it possible that this little brat noticed something I missed?
"And you see," continues Manfred, "Maybe it doesn't even stop there. Maybe I'm just a character in a story. Maybe you are. How do you know?"
"I'm real," I protest. "And I still think the ending sucked." Manfred laughs.
"I keep telling you, you're too old," he says. "Now post my review. I promise, even if you don't get it, some other kids will." ...more
DISCLAIMER: It would evidently be irresponsible to call Donald Trump a Nazi merely on the strength of a recent sp[image]
[Original review, Feb 22 2016]
DISCLAIMER: It would evidently be irresponsible to call Donald Trump a Nazi merely on the strength of a recent speech in which he suggested it would be desirable to shoot Muslims using bullets dipped in pig's blood. A more plausible interpretation is that this is no more than the result of dispassionately calculating that the upside in terms of increasing his attractiveness to the ignorant racist demographic is larger than the downside in terms of decreasing his appeal to many people who already can't stand him. But I admit that I'm no expert on these matters, and I could be wrong. _______________________ [Update, Mar 13 2016]
there is no reason to attempt to reason with "Manny" he is a neurotic bigoted freak who is clearly so deeply insane or at least disturbed in how obsessive he is and should on matters of his repeated spam, violating ToS should be banned without having to consider him personally or his speech
Looking at the original review, I am a little uncertain about just what it is that Mr. Crockett is so violently taking exception to. I posted a link to a video clip in which Donald Trump suggested that it would be a good idea to shoot Muslims using bullets dipped in pig's blood. I went on say that I DIDN'T think this made him a Nazi, just a politician who is trying to please the ignorant racist demographic. I concluded that, since I was no expert on the subject, I might be mistaken.
Well, I'm baffled. Mr. Crockett clearly doesn't like something I've said. Does he think
a) that the video clip in question has been faked by the liberal media to discredit Mr. Trump,
b) that the idea of shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pig's blood will not please the ignorant racist demographic, or
c) that I am in fact an expert on the subject, and should not disingenuously claim the contrary?
Mr. Crockett, please clarify. I'm sure other people would like to know too. _______________________ [Update, Aug 16 2017]
I wanted to wait until I had more information, a policy recently advocated by Mr. Trump himself. And I'd hate to offend Mr. Crockett further. But all the same, the evidence we've acquired over the last few days does seem to increase the probability that Mr. Trump is a Nazi. He sounds sincere when defending the white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville, and one can't help feeling his behaviour means something.
That said, I freely admit I haven't got a statistically tight argument yet. It's just anecdotal. _______________________ [Update, Nov 23 2023]
[image]
Oh my goodness! I'm appalled to read in today's Guardian that Donald Trump has been using openly authoritarian and dehumanizing language reminiscent of tropes taken from early 1930s Nazi speeches!
Well, all I can say is that I'm just as shocked as the journalist. Whoever could have seen that coming?...more
2015 wasn't a very good reading year (too much software development), but I did finally manage to achieve one of my long-term goals and do something a2015 wasn't a very good reading year (too much software development), but I did finally manage to achieve one of my long-term goals and do something about improving my German. It's still pretty basic, but I've now reached the point of being able to appreciate books for younger teens. Hopefully I'll progress to grown-up literature during 2016! But even at the level I'm at now, I found things to read which were worth all the trouble. Krabat, Das doppelte Lottchen and Momo were all fantastic novels that I'd barely even heard of before, and I discovered to my delight that Swedish children's books are nearly as good in German; I particularly loved Madita and Karlsson vom Dach. A huge thank you to all my German Goodreads friends, particularly Matt, for being so kind and patient about explaining things to someone who a few months ago was still thinking of their language as an odd dialect of Swedish!
If you still haven't got round to reading Houellebecq's Soumission, it's a lot of fun. And, last but definitely not least, Pettersson's Ut og stjæle hester is an extraordinary novel which somehow hasn't had time to become famous yet. Trust me, it will.
Manny was working late one evening when he received an unexpected visitor. He was an old man with white hair and gold-rimmed glasses, curiously dresseManny was working late one evening when he received an unexpected visitor. He was an old man with white hair and gold-rimmed glasses, curiously dressed in a lace-embroidered doublet and a periwig, and he was carrying a book.
"Greetings," said the visitor. "I think you should read this."
"What is it?" asked Manny irritably. People were always asking him to read things. "I don't really have time right now. I need to get this software problem fixed for tomorrow. And then I have an article to write and a dozen emails to answer and some insurance paperwork I've been putting off for too long. I'm very busy. How did you get in, anyway?"
"It definitely sounds like you should read Momo," said the old man, ignoring Manny's question. "I am quite concerned about you. Here, take a look."
Manny flicked through it briefly and sighed. "It's some kind of YA fantasy novel, right?" he said.
"If that is what you want to call it," replied the visitor.
"But I don't read YA," said Manny. "All my friends know that."
"Why not?" asked the visitor.
"Well, I'm too old for it," said Manny, as he studied the error message his laptop was showing him. "I find it painfully unsophisticated and badly written. It never gives me anything."
"Perhaps you should become younger," said the visitor. "It's quite easy, you know."
"Really?" said Manny in a dismissive tone. But something made him glance up from his screen, and he saw to his surprise that the visitor was no longer an old man. In fact, he almost looked like a child.
"You see?" said the visitor. "Now, here's what you need to do. Just learn German. At first, you'll be a helpless infant and you won't be able to read at all. Soon, though, you'll find you're four or five and enjoying stories. When you're about ten, you'll be ready for this. I'll come back when you've finished."
"You must be joking," said Manny, who was looking at his screen again. "Didn't I just tell you I was very busy?" He turned around, but found his visitor had disappeared. All that was left was a large pile of German children's books.
Over the next few months, Manny somehow found himself reading one German book after another. He read Grimms Märchen, and Krabat, and Das doppelte Lottchen, and Madita, and Karlsson vom Dach. Finally, a couple of weeks before Christmas, he opened Momo. He found he couldn't put it down. He had just finished the last chapter when he heard someone clear their throat behind him.
"Well?" said the visitor. "I hope you're not too busy to talk to me?"
"Uh, no," said Manny. "It's funny, but when I think about it I find I have more time than I'd imagined. And you're right. Momo is very good."
"I'm glad to hear it," said the visitor gravely.
"There was just something I wanted to ask you," said Manny. "Here, wait a moment." He leafed through the book to find the page. But when he looked up, the visitor had gone again....more
David Smerdon has written an extremely interesting and original book, which deserves to attract a wider readership than the little group of chessplayeDavid Smerdon has written an extremely interesting and original book, which deserves to attract a wider readership than the little group of chessplayers who play odd gambit responses to e4. His starting point is one that's of concern to all of us. In chess, the Singularity has already happened and machines are smarter than people. So what do we do now?
Traditionally, the mainstream approach to chess theory has been presented as a search for truth. You try and find the best move in each position; when you believe you know what that move is, you should play it. But machine analysis of human games casts grave doubt on this simplistic thinking. It turns out that humans, even the ones right at the top of the world chess rankings, play very badly. They make mistakes all the time, because they just aren't up to the job of analyzing complex positions reliably. The only way they can be confident of playing reasonably well is if they've seen the position before and have studied it at home with their trusty machine accomplices. Most top chessplayers now spend hours every day preparing with computers.
It is consequently by no means clear that you should always play the best move, if the move is likely to result in a position which your opponent has had a chance to prepare for. If you play sensible, rational moves, that's going to happen a lot of the time. So why not play crazy, irrational moves, as long as they aren't too crazy and irrational, and reach positions which you've analyzed and your opponent hasn't? Objectively it's wrong, and a perfect opponent will make you pay for it. In practice, what you're doing is the chess version of the standard guerilla tactic: you lure your opponent into an area which you know and he doesn't, and you ambush him. It's been shown over and over again that guerilla warfare is effective, and allows an objectively weaker force to triumph against an objectively stronger one.
Smerdon presents a fascinating case study in this new way of thinking. He's developed a response to 1 e4, the most popular opening move, which defies most of the accepted rules of chess logic. Rather than trying to defend, Black immediately sacrifices material and counterattacks. As he says himself, it can't possibly be correct. But, precisely for that reason, it hasn't been studied much, and there's no doubt that White has many chances to go wrong. Smerdon, who is a strong Grandmaster, describes how he's spent hundreds of evenings researching these bizarre analytical sidelines with the aid of his obedient mechanical assistants. The method turns out to be very successful; he's won a lot of games with his "incorrect" opening.
Even if you're not a serious chessplayer yourself, you may want to consider buying the book. Smerdon writes well and has organized it so that every page has diagrams showing the weird and wonderful positions that can arise. There's a nice passage at the beginning of Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality which describes how he liked to flip through his brother's chess books when he was a young teen and just enjoy the pictures. This is an excellent book to flip through in that way.
Some people worry that the rise of machine intelligence will kill human creativity. But suppose it makes us more creative? Read Smerdon and get a tantalizing glimpse of one possible future.
(I also have a less serious review of the book here)....more
I found this book unpleasant to read, and it was interesting to try and clarify for myself just why I found it so unpleasant. Superficially, it may seI found this book unpleasant to read, and it was interesting to try and clarify for myself just why I found it so unpleasant. Superficially, it may seem that the authors are doing something that is perhaps quixotic or foolish, but which shouldn't really be very bad. Quite a lot of the time, they at least give the impression that they want to pursue an Artificial Intelligence approach to investigating certain problems of philosophy, in this case moral philosophy; by considering in detail the question of how we could construct mechanical agents capable of moral behavior, we might gain a better understanding of what these questions mean for us, and what morality consists of. Writing in 2008, they give an overview of what's been done so far.
I imagine that a good book could be written about this subject. The main difficulty, one would think, is that the goal appears very difficult to achieve, but one has to start somewhere. Perhaps, after enough preliminary research has been done, things will start falling into place and real principles will emerge. AI has tackled many problems which at first looked ridiculously hard (speech recognition, computer vision, grandmaster-level chess), and eventually come up with solutions which worked well. Even though it seems, right now, almost impossible to see how we would build an agent capable of understanding the concept of a moral choice, one could start with easy problems and work up to more challenging ones. Perhaps you could begin with a game; AI has had many successes with games. Bridge, in particular, is a game where ethical behavior is central, and it is often feasible to think objectively about whether a player has behaved ethically or not. Writing this down, I feel rather tempted to try and investigate the question myself.
The problem, unfortunately, is that the book isn't talking about tentative, low-key investigation of ethics in games and other test-tube domains. There is a frightening disparity between, on the one hand, the very vague and unconvincing descriptions of how researchers in this area are trying to build computational models of ethical systems, and on the other the extremely precise reasons why the US military are funding work in the area. As everyone knows, the US are using drones more and more. These drones are more and more often armed. At the moment, the drones are flown by remote control, which is technically unsatisfactory. Response times are slow because of the latency involved in long-distance communication, and the huge bandwidth required is causing problems for the military satellite network. The generals would like to have autonomous killer robots. They want to be able to tell the committees they report to that the machines are "ethically programmed", so that they'll sign off on the deal.
The authors don't come across as Doctors Strangelove. They are not in love with the military-industrial complex, though they don't seem particularly unhappy about it either. They give the impression of exaggerating the extent of progress in the field, but not to a ridiculous degree. They are interested in the technical problems they describe, but they are not passionate about them. They come across as geeks. They're aware that they're at the end of a long line of great thinkers, but the idea doesn't seem to have any immediacy for them. They dutifully mention Plato and Hume and Kant every now and then, but Asimov and HAL and Robocop much more. They do not even once quote any work of literature. In the middle of all their abstract talk about morality, they never tell us what their own moral beliefs are; when they say "right" and "wrong", I have no idea what these concepts actually mean to them. As far as I can tell, they want them to be measurable quantities, mainly because it makes their jobs easier; an act is 90% right if 90% of the subjects interviewed think it's right. They are the epitome of the people Dante meets in the vestibule of Hell, the people who were neither good nor evil.
Well, I can't exactly recommend this book. But it certainly makes you think. ...more
I don't know why I never thought of this before, but it occurred to me today that nearly all well-known science-fiction novels should be listed on GooI don't know why I never thought of this before, but it occurred to me today that nearly all well-known science-fiction novels should be listed on Google Scholar. And indeed they are! It's kind of interesting to see which ones have been cited most. After an hour or so of clicking, here's a preliminary top list:
George Orwell, 1984: 3925 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World: 3472 Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1349 Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five: 853 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged: 787 H.G. Wells, The Time Machine: 776 Isaac Asimov, I, Robot: 657 Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness: 502 H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds: 479 Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed: 458 Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey: 391 Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land: 362 H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau: 316 Isaac Asimov, Foundation Trilogy: 298 Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle: 292 C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength: 264 Frank Herbert, Dune: 243 Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: 213 Ursula K. LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea: 213 Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano: 209 L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The modern science of mental health: 195 Isaac Asimov, Runaround: 194 Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End: 189 Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle: 189 Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game: 181 Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, 176 Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, 163 Philip K. Dick, Minority Report: 161 John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider: 159 Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass: 159 Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: 153 Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon: 146 Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men & Star Maker: 143 Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron: 143
**spoiler alert** Why does the English language still not contain a word meaning "to have sex with an earlier or later version of yourself, using a ti**spoiler alert** Why does the English language still not contain a word meaning "to have sex with an earlier or later version of yourself, using a time machine"? I'm baffled. _________________________________
Inspired by Ivonne's new word, I present a couple of extracts from All You Heinleiners, which I am reliably informed will be the big indie hit of 2021:
- Why, you heinleining little bitch! I should put you over my knee and spank you!
- You do that, big boy. And remember, you're going to enjoy it twice.
- Twice?
- Three times if the guy watching us is who I think he is.
******************************
- Son, we need to have a serious talk. There's things I gotta tell you.
- Yes Dad.
- Look son, you think you're a big hit with the ladies. But they're all like that. They've been heinleinin' you, each and every one of them.
- Well Dad, I was starting to wonder about it too. And I thought... okay, so what if they are?
- Son, you're saying it doesn't matter if they're all you?
- Yeah, why should it?
- You know, they're all Mom as well. That doesn't bother you?
In this obscure science-fiction novel, written at about the same time as Dune, Frank Herbert asks a question which has occupied surprisingly few SF wrIn this obscure science-fiction novel, written at about the same time as Dune, Frank Herbert asks a question which has occupied surprisingly few SF writers: if you were immortal, what would you actually do? His answer, which will appeal to many people on this site, is more or less that you would catch up on your reading.
As things are, we're so limited by our puny lifespans. Usually we just read a book once and then move on to the next one. If we liked it, we might read it a second or even a third time. If we really liked it, we may occasionally go further: read books that it refers to or that influenced it, check out a biography of the author, perhaps find a doctoral dissertation that provides further details.
Even though we know we could do a whole lot more, we don't have time. But suppose we could count on living to two hundred thousand. If we thought a book was interesting, we could spend a century reading it properly. We could become fluent in Polish or classical Japanese to get all the nuances of the original, visit the places it mentions, check out every single book that the author might have read, learn to imitate their style and try rewriting the story in different ways to explore the artistic choices they had available, and finally publish our conclusions in thirty leisurely volumes. A few thousand years later, when we were busy with another author of the same period, we'd be able to reread our previous work, see how our ideas had changed and revise a few things. Maybe we'd suddenly notice an angle we'd missed first time round.
Well, that's roughly how the immortals here spend their time. Of course, the underground wants to get rid of these spoiled, decadent aristocrats, and you're encouraged to sympathize with their revolutionary ideals. But I wasn't sure I agreed. I quite liked the immortals and felt sorry that they couldn't go on with their cultural studies for another few million years.
**spoiler alert** I read this SF book when I was about 9, and I forgot most of it pretty quickly, but there was one subplot I've often wondered about.**spoiler alert** I read this SF book when I was about 9, and I forgot most of it pretty quickly, but there was one subplot I've often wondered about. The heroes are space doctors who go around the galaxy doing heroic medical stuff (the author was himself a medical doctor). They land on a planet where the monkey-like inhabitants are suffering from a weird virus infection, and they do their best to cure them. It doesn't work: every time a native looks like he's virus-free, he turns into a babbling idiot. In the end, the hero has an epiphany. They've got the wrong patient! The intelligent species isn't the monkeys, it's the viruses. They've been doing their best to kill the people who needed their help.
It works okay as a metaphor for various kinds of misguided interventionist foreign policy, which of course I completely missed as a 9-year-old. But that isn't the thing I wondered about; I was more curious to know whether it was in principle possible to have an intelligent virus. In the book, they were supposed to have some kind of hive mind, but this struck me even then as nonsense and still does. I couldn't really have said why at the time, but now I think I can voice my objections coherently: a virus contains too little information to encode any kind of intelligent behavior. It doesn't matter how many bodies you spread it over.
Or is it so obvious? Maybe there's a flaw in my reasoning... what do other people think? ...more
People like unified, completed pictures, and science books tend to go for that approach, typically some version of the Hero's Journey: the heroic sciePeople like unified, completed pictures, and science books tend to go for that approach, typically some version of the Hero's Journey: the heroic scientist (sometimes also the narrator) encounters the fiendish problem, bravely engages it, goes through many trials and setbacks, perseveres, and eventually triumphs. But real life is messier. You're never at all sure what's going on while you're in the middle of the fight, and quite often you aren't even sure if you've won or not. This book pretends to be a Hero's Journey, but it's pretty clear that in fact it isn't. I enjoyed it for the opposite reason: it effectively conveyed the confusion and uncertainty of these would-be heroic enterprises, where you don't know who's a good guy and who's a bad guy, whether you're making progress or going backwards, whether your idea is a brilliant flash of inspiration or the most complete bullshit.
We're somewhere in the middle of a transition period in physics, where people are painfully trying to sort out the contradictions inherent in the 20th century's two great breakthroughs, relativity and quantum mechanics. They just won't fit together. The story in The Black Hole War follows one thread, which engaged the attention of many of the world's best physicists for decades and is still anything but resolved. What happens when an observer falls into a black hole? What happens to the faint Hawking radiation that the black hole emits? Is information destroyed in this process, or somehow just very effectively scrambled? To what extent do observers outside the black hole see the same thing as observers falling into it? Black holes, it turns out, combine aspects of relativity and quantum mechanics in ways which do not allow people to ignore their mutual inconsistencies. Thinking about them is a kind of spiritual exercise, which one day may lead us to a new understanding of the most fundamental ideas in physics.
Susskind does a good job of conveying the frustration of grappling with these extraordinarily treacherous questions. He has a long drawn out series of skirmishes with Stephen Hawking, where he tries to convince him of the correctness of his point of view and meets with determined resistance. Hawking eventually capitulates, as far as I can see mostly from exhaustion, to a bizarre argument which seems anything but conclusive. My understanding is that it's already been more or less dismissed, and the Black Hole War, far from ending in a victory for Susskind's faction, is still going on. But I didn't feel cheated; I understand more clearly now what the issues are in this strange conflict, and I'll be better placed to follow the dispatches from the front lines. Thank you Len, fine battlefield reporting. ________________________
[And on further consideration...]
There's a claimed paradox which plays a major part in this book, and has been mentioned extensively elsewhere. Consider, says Susskind, what happens to an astronaut who falls into a very large black hole. From the point of view of someone a long way from the black hole, the astronaut will be fried to a crisp as they get closer to the event horizon. But from astronaut's own point of view, they will be fine. Since the black hole is very large, tidal forces will not be strong at the event horizon, and the Principle of Equivalence means that they won't notice anything special happening. This paradox is dramatized in the short story "Don't Forget Your Antigravity Pills".
Well... Susskind says he gets plenty of crank mail from people who write to tell him they have black hole paradoxes all figured out. I am reluctant to join this unhappy band, but there is an obvious point I'm surprised not to see highlighted, and it's not mentioned either on any of the pages I found when I googled "what happens when you fall into a black hole". Tidal forces aren't the only thing that might kill you when you are in the extreme situation of falling into a supermassive black hole! There is also the problem of your velocity, which, as far as I can see, asymptotically approaches the speed of light as you near the event horizon. That means that any light travelling towards you will be blue-shifted to higher and higher frequencies, which only fail to become infinite because the quantum nature of light means that it will arrive as a finite number of discrete photons. We know there will be some such photons, due to Hawking radiation. The last few photons you get hit by before you reach the event horizon should have truly enormous energies - quite high enough that you will get burned to a crisp from your own perspective. What's wrong with this argument?
Okay, okay, Professor Susskind... you pass my "good philosophy" test. That was such an interesting question that I have to start playing too. You win, and I'm giving you an extra star to show I mean it....more
It had been some time since the Chums of Chance had last visited Candlewood University, and as soon as they were on terra firma they made their way diIt had been some time since the Chums of Chance had last visited Candlewood University, and as soon as they were on terra firma they made their way directly to Professor Vanderjuice's office. The Professor, who was in the process of calibrating what looked like a complex optical instrument, welcomed them effusively. "Randolph! Miles! Lindsay! Darby! Chick! How wonderful to see you!" He gave Pugnax's head a pat, receiving a friendly growl of recognition from the canine savant, and exchanged manly handshakes with the others.
"So what have you been up to, Doc?" asked Randolph, the greetings completed. "Your wireless telegraph message sounded most intriguing. Something about a... book?"
"Indeed, indeed," said the Professor, hardly able to contain his habitual enthusiasm. "And what a book! We have had our setbacks with the temporal displacement unit, I am the first to admit it, but this time it is 'the real deal'. Feast your eyes on this!" As he gestured towards the scientific device with which he had been occupied, apparently some kind of microscope, the Chums were surprised to notice that it was trained on an open volume. The Professor carefully unfastened the clamps and handed it to Randolph.
"Against the Day, a novel by Thomas Pynchon," exclaimed the intrepid aeronaut as he studied the flyleaf. "Published in... 2007?!"
"Quite so, quite so," murmured the Professor. "By far our most successful experiment to date. Nearly a whole century forward. Please, read on!"
The other Chums crowded around their leader and peered over his shoulder as he turned the pages. There certainly were a great many of them.
"I can't make head or tail of it," admitted Randolph after a few minutes of study. "All these... mathematical equations..."
"Long sentences," added Chick.
"And foreign words," concluded Darby.
"It is, indeed, something of a challenge," said the Professor. "But, as you will no doubt remember, literary theory has long been a passion of mine. I remain convinced that, with suitable mechanical aids, even the most recondite screed will happily yield up its--"
He broke off in mid-sentence; from the glances being exchanged between Randolph and Miles, it was all too clear that they had not yet forgotten their unfortunate encounter with the Pansensual Gerty MacDowell Experience (see The Chums of Chance and the Jujubes of Joyce). But after a moment of hesitation, he continued, ignoring his young friends' skeptical expressions.
"I have studied the text carefully," said the Professor. "It soon becomes clear that the theme of mirroring is of central importance. Reflections and twins abound. Professor Renfrew, and his 'conjugate', Professor Werfner. Vibe, and his shadow Foley. Venice and Venice im Wien. The Isola degli Specchi. The curious doubly refractive properties of Iceland spar. Do you begin to see?"
"No," said Miles truthfully.
"It will become clearer," said the Professor with unshakable confidence. "What we are being told to consider, we soon realize, is the essential duality of nature. Yin and yang. Waves and particles. Vectors and quaternions. Bras and--"
"Panties?" suggested Chick.
"I was in fact about to say kets," said the Professor, not in the least discomfited. "But that too. What, after all, is sex, viewed in formal terms, but a vain attempt to find a common eigenbasis for two generally non-commutative operators?"
Chick tried, with rather limited success, to find a rejoinder to this no doubt penetrating question. But before he could stammer more than a syllable or two, the Professor was off again.
"I tried to determine what it was the author was telling me," he continued. "Why all these mirrors? I thought of Alice through the Looking-Glass, since childhood one of my favorite tales. And then it hit me. Lolloping Laplacians! This was evidently not the real book at all, but merely its reflection. The first step must thus be to build a device capable of restoring the true text. Luckily, I happened to have a high-quality calcite crystal and a good understanding of quaternionic theory. The decoding instrument was easy to construct."
He strode back to the "microscope", replaced the thick volume in its original position, and adjusted the focus. "Here," he said. "Look at it again!"
Randolph peered through the eyepiece and whistled. "I thought it was bad before," he said. "But now! Mathematical symbols on each page, every third sentence in some outlandish language or other..."
"One cannot deny it!" said the Professor cheerfully. "But having proceeded so far, we must not let ourselves be deterred. This, we have determined, is the true book. But what is it saying?"
He paused, pretending to wait for an answer to his transparently rhetorical question, but received none.
"I realized," he said, his voice now almost a whisper, "that it was telling us how to understand the other world... the world on the other side of the Mirror."
"You mean the Looking-Glass World?" asked Randolph. But the Professor shook his head. "No," he breathed. "not the Looking-Glass World... for, I have now come to understand, we are the Looking-Glass World, the imaginary, quaternionic world. What this book is telling us is how to reach the real world."
The Chums gaped open-mouthed, stunned by the enormity of the revelation they had just received.
"But..." said Lindsay in the end, "if the book is incomprehensible..."
"No book is incomprehensible," replied the Professor briskly. "My work with Joyce convinced me of that. I now have in place a rigorous study program. Intensive courses in the development of the labor movement, the histories of Mexico and the Balkans, techniques of silver mining, the dynamics of Æther vortices, special and general relativity, vector calculus, Riemann's ζ-function, cricket, the exploits of the duc de Richelieu--"
"Is that the third duc de Richelieu," asked Linday, who was taking notes, "the one who was involved with Émilie du Châtelet?"
"The very same," said the Professor, without pausing for breath. "As for languages, obviously French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian. Latin and Greek go without saying. Then it is undoubtedly useful to possess at least a smattering of Dutch, Croatian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Turkish, Japanese, Swedish, Finnish--"
"But..." expostulated Miles, "even if one had a century of study time..."
"You underestimate recent advances in educational theory," retorted the Professor with a mischievous look. "Choose a language, any language!"
"You said Finnish?" suggested Darby. "We were there once (see The Chums of Chance and the Curse of Karelia) and I picked up a few words of the lingo. Here, yksi, kaksi--"
"An excellent start!" said the Professor. "Follow me!"
Snatching up the book again, he opened a door and led the Chums down a long corridor. After passing a dozen oak-paneled doors, they paused before one marked DEPARTMENT OF SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES. The Professor knocked; a moment later, an arctically blonde young woman emerged, dressed in an alluringly brief ensemble consisting of a few scraps of reindeer leather.
"Excuse us for troubling you, Liisa," the Professor said, giving her a courtly bow. "My young friend wishes to improve his grasp of Finnish." He turned to Darby. "Unless you have got 'cold feet'?"
"No siree," said Darby with undisguised enthusiasm. "Boy-oh-boy!"
"Excuse me," interrupted Lindsay in a prudishly horrified tone, "I would just like to assure myself that this is entirely 'legit'--"
His protestations came too late; Liisa pulled Darby into the room, which appeared to contain little except a blackboard and a large bed, and closed the door, after which there came the unmistakable sound of a key being turned in a 'Yale' lock.
"You need have no fear," said the Professor reassuringly to Lindsay. "We use the most modern techniques, intensive one-on-one tuition based on a version of the sexualpedagogiska metoden which Fröken Suomalainen has in fact been instrumental in developing..." He continued in similar vein for a few minutes, without notably increasing Lindsay's confidence, until the door opened again and Darby stumbled out, tie orthogonally askew and almost implausibly well-informed about the inessive case.
"Was the experiment a success?" asked the Professor.
"Who-whee!" said the young student by way of answer. "What's next?"
"I think perhaps some higher mathematics," mused the Professor, opening another door marked ADVANCED RIEMANNIAN STUDIES. A brunette with an Italian accent was explaining the concept of hyperbolic geometry, with frequent references to her dramatic décolletage; but before Darby could sit down, Lindsay, wise from his earlier mistake, marched him out into the corridor again.
"Now," he said firmly. "What I want to know is, do we really need all this?"
"It is barely enough to keep up," said Professor Vanderjuice in a wounded tone. Randolph and Miles, familiar with this concept from an earlier adventure (see The Chums of Chance and the Red Queen's Race), nodded, but Lindsay set his jaw defiantly.
"Let's see what Pugnax thinks," he muttered. "If I may?" He relieved the Professor of the book, which he was still holding, and bent down to show it to the hyperintelligent canine.
"Rrrf!" exclaimed Pugnax after a few moments of perusal. "Rrrff-rrf-RRF! Rrrf!" The Professor suddenly looked shamefaced.
"To be completely honest," he sighed, "your dog has a point. I have perhaps been a little too enthusiastic in promoting my new invention. In fact, it is sufficient to have a robust sense of humor."
"Rrrf, rrf-rrf!" added Pugnax. "Rrf!" Vanderjuice sighed again. "Yes, yes, yes," he said with just a hint of asperity. "And a dirty mind." ...more
MANNY: Plato, welcome to Goodreads. I can't tell you what an honor--
PLATO: No, no, please, I find this fascinating. What a wonderfulPlato on Goodreads
MANNY: Plato, welcome to Goodreads. I can't tell you what an honor--
PLATO: No, no, please, I find this fascinating. What a wonderful agora you have created for philosophical discussions! I have been exploring it all day...
MANNY: You have?
PLATO: I will come back again. I am still not accustomed to the extraordinary profusion of books that your time has produced. The site is quite helpful in locating the more interesting ones.
MANNY: Well, that's, ah, that's very nice to hear. But actually, I was hoping we could discuss one particular book, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's Plato at the Googleplex.
PLATO: By all means. I would be delighted to discuss Rebecca's book.
MANNY: Ah... good! Okay, ah, so what did you think of it?
PLATO: What did you think of it, Manny?
MANNY: I'm, um, I'm trying to decide where to start. First of all, the sheer chutzpah. It's not so easy to try and write your own Socratic dialogues--
PLATO: You would know that better than most people, I imagine?
MANNY: [blushing] Oh, did you come across my little pieces? I'm terribly sorry if--
PLATO: Really, there's no need to apologize. You have no idea how many people have parodied me over the last 2,400 years! I found your Euthydemus quite amusing.
MANNY: [blushes again] That's, uh, that's extremely gracious of you. I meet a lot of sophists.
PLATO: I can see you do. But why don't you tell me more about your impressions of Plato at the Googleplex?
MANNY: Uh, yes. So, I guess I thought it was pretty good. She seemed to have put a lot of work into it and she did a fine job of quoting your actual words whenever possible. That was clever.
PLATO: I also approved of her methods.
MANNY: It certainly helped me understand you better. I hadn't grasped the historical context at all - the Peleponnesian War, and the Reign of the Thirty, and the importance of Alcibiades. And, even more centrally, the way in which you and Socrates were trying to disentangle the notion of arete from that of kleos and turn it into our modern notion of "virtue". That was extraordinary.
PLATO: I know Rebecca thought a great deal about those parts.
MANNY: A lot of it was funny too. Your conversations with Cheryl the media escort, and the arrogant neuroscientist, and the thinly disguised version of Bill O'Reilly. She made sure people knew about your playful side.
PLATO: Why is it so seldom mentioned? Don't my jokes translate well?
MANNY: And, heck, all the stuff about eros and learning. How you can only really learn from the people you love. Dammit, she loves you and she's not afraid to admit it. That was, um, that was actually very moving. But--
PLATO: All this, and there's a "but"?
MANNY: I'm afraid there is.
PLATO: Go on.
MANNY: Well... she keeps telling us about how vitally important you consider mathematics. How you'd only let mathematicians into your Academy, and how the guardian caste in your kallipolis, your Republic, all have to study mathematics for decades. But here you were, in the twenty-first century...
PLATO: Yes?
MANNY: Okay... why weren't you talking more to the scientists? I mean, hard scientists, cosmologists and particle physicists? There are a few mentions here and there, but it's just a sentence or two in passing. In particular, why aren't you talking to people about quantum mechanics? If there's one thing in the modern age that I'm completely certain you'd want know about, it's quantum mechanics. Talk about escaping from the Cave. It could hardly be more literal. You'd find it astonishing, much more astonishing than seeing a low-resolution picture of your brain on fMRI.
PLATO: So you think the book should have had more about cosmology and quantum mechanics?
MANNY: Well... yeah! Of course it should. It's obvious. Why isn't it there?
PLATO: To be honest, I'm a little surprised to hear you asking the question.
MANNY: You are?
PLATO: Tell me, did you find the book dull?
MANNY: No, not at all.
PLATO: Did the lack of cosmology and quantum mechanics stop you from reading it?
MANNY: Uh, to be honest, I couldn't put it down. I read it pretty much nonstop all weekend until I'd finished it.
PLATO: Despite the shortage of cosmology and quantum mechanics?
MANNY: Well, I guess so. But all the same, I kept thinking about them.
PLATO: I'm glad you did. Just one more question...
MANNY: Yes?
PLATO: Did you ever hear about a thing called a "sequel"? ...more
As you can see from my reviews of his last two books, I am a fan of Lee Smolin, so it pains me to say that this one was a major disappointment. It paiAs you can see from my reviews of his last two books, I am a fan of Lee Smolin, so it pains me to say that this one was a major disappointment. It pains me even more to explain why, but having started I suppose I have to continue. The book lists two authors on the cover, Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin, and it has an unusual structure. It starts with a co-written introduction of about 20 pages; then there is a section of about 350 pages, written by Unger; after that, a section of about 150 pages, written by Smolin; and finally a cowritten section of about 20 pages, where the authors list their disagreements.
Given my stated admiration for Smolin, you will already see one obvious reason for my unhappiness, namely that he isn't getting enough screen time. Unfortunately, this is far from being the worst problem. The central themes of the book, as the title suggests, are ambitious. The two authors, who can reasonably claim to be leading experts on philosophy and physics respectively, argue that science has lost its way in confronting the fundamental issues in cosmology. They give reasons to believe that the methods which have worked so well in understanding parts of the universe break down when applied to the universe as a whole, and outline a new way of approaching these ideas. The central notion is what they call "the reality of time". Contrary to what we have been taught since Einstein's introduction of relativity at the beginning of the last century, Unger and Smolin tell us that it does, in fact, make sense to think about an absolute, real time which applies all over the universe and defines a global notion of simultaneity. Accepting this revolutionary proposition opens the door to all kinds of interesting consequences. In particular, it means that one can discuss the possibility that physical laws may themselves be part of the universe and not fixed, that there may have been other universes before this one, and that quantum mechanics could just be an emergent consequence of a deeper theory.
Many people will no doubt think that the above sounds fascinating, and if so I agree with them: it is fascinating, and even if it's wrong it asks so many interesting questions that it's absolutely worth reading. The problem is that most of it appeared in Smolin's last book, Time Reborn, which was published less than two years before The Singular Universe. There is a huge overlap between the two books, and where they differ it is usually not to the later one's advantage. In particular, and I'm afraid I have to be blunt here, I thoroughly disliked Unger's section, which as noted occupies a good two-thirds of the text. Unger is widely reputed to be a very smart guy, so I assume that what he is trying to do stylistically is set up a fugue-like pattern in which various leitmotifs constantly recur in different combinations. But this is a hard act to pull off at the best of times, and he doesn't succeed: it comes across as interminably repetitious and dull, and one often suspects that he lacks a deep understanding of the physical concepts he refers to. Well before the end, I was groaning with frustration and counting the pages until I got to Smolin.
Smolin's section is indeed much better, and he is his usual lucid, provocative self. But again, the greater part seems to be recycled, and it reads as though it had been written very quickly. One of the most obvious indications of this is a staggering piece of carelessness: the references, which, atypically for this kind of book, are given as numbers in square brackets, do not match up with the bibliography, and it can be quite difficult to track things down. This is simply unforgivable in a publisher like Cambridge University Press. Worse, the new material which has been included is often rather weak. What could have been an exciting account of how Smolin and his collaborators have started investigating the notion of mutable physical laws is presented in a form so compressed and cryptic that it more resembles a set of rough notes than proper chapter text, and I was anything but convinced by the attempt to explain how mathematical concepts could be part of the normal, physical universe. Yes, postulating a separate Platonic universe which they inhabit does seem to get into nasty metaphysical territory; but, at least as far as I can see, the converse proposition, that mathematical concepts are time-bound, creates at least as many metaphysical problems, just different ones. Are we supposed to put a temporal operator before a statement like "2+2=4"? And if not, in what sense are the concepts temporal? Unusually for Smolin, it came across as no more than hand-waving. The one part I unreservedly liked was an up-to-date summary of Smolin's "cosmic evolution" scenario, which boldly postulates that black holes create new universes and that the apparent fine-tuning of our own universe is actually optimized for black hole production; there was some nice stuff on possible experimental tests. But it's not enough to justify a 550 page book.
Well, I don't really know what went wrong here, though it's easy to speculate. Bottom line: don't read this, read Time Reborn instead. ...more
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