[OT] "Pre-announcement" of Python-based "computing appliance" project.

[Richard Hanson]

[A heads up: Slightly longer post; somewhat serious, but with (I hope)
some humor -- after all, what would life *be* sans humor? ]

My opinion on this matter is that this project has
no chance of succeeding in any palpable way. It will
always remain at this semi-conscious level of making
some generic statements that may make feel one better
but have no actual relevance to the way things work.

"I try to be cynical, but it's *so* hard to keep up."[1] ;-)

Less non-seriously, at this stage of my life, such a project will
likely not make *me* feel better -- I fully realize that implementing
the *complete* vision is a quite daunting task. If you read my
follow-up post to Carlos Ribeiro, you may realize that actually
implementing daunting tasks may well make me feel worse. ;-) (Explicit
NB: I'm *not* complaining, whatsoever; indeed, I feel quite fortunate
in the big picture.) However, discussing the theses I mentioned *is*
making me feel better. Criticism is *quite* welcome, Istvan.

I'm primarily of the intellectual persuasion. I have evolved into
mostly not personally identifying with or becoming attached to, ideas
-- whether they're emanating from me, or "stolen" from others. I
*enjoy* intellectually honest critiques -- seemingly, that way lies
the path to knowledge of the "self" and of the world.

The Beach Boys have already properly captured
this design in their song titled "Wouldn't It Be Nice":

"Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong"

Hmm... That song came out in 1966. Considering your age as you
recently posted (32-years-old) suggests that you have an interest in
"my generation's" music. Good show!

And here is how to wake up from your dream.

Please, don't wake me! -- I'm sleeping. ;-)

Pick a simple task,
design a program that does it and make it as simple
as you can. Then grab a few people off the street,
take them to a room, ask them to perform the task,
leave the room, then watch them try to accomplish
that task.

As Jerry Pournelle so often says, "Despair is a 'sin'" (I added the
interior, single quotes; I'm areligious, as well ). But, I can as
easily get into disillusionment about the state of society as the next
guy. However, I'm finding it much more productive -- and fun -- to
keep on doing my art and science, even as a non-intentionalist[2] who
finds incoherent such things as: humans are a rational species; the
existence of the ego or agency (free will); and many other dubious or
undecidable things left unsaid for now. It is a commonly accepted
thesis that the universe is evolving following some, possibly
ultimately unknowable, immutable set of laws. Humans *do* seem to do
art, though, so I'm concentrating on thinking of the behavior which
comes out of Richard as art. And I continue on.

The lessons you learn in a few hours
will last you a lifetime. You'll then understand
why this "generic computing appliance" serving the
"needs of a typical user" makes no sense whatsoever.

Ahem. My life has already lasted a lifetime. ;-) Be that all as it
may, however, you're not suggesting that the status quo serves the
needs of the typical user, are you?

But thanks for the critique, Istvan. Sincerely. These theses and
proposals would be well served to be shot down early if they can be;
life is way too short to spend on side-trails, and all that.


undauntedly-but-with-a-twinkle-in-my-eye'ly y'rs
Richard Hanson
_________________________________________________________
[1] A possibly paraphrased rendition of a humorous comment by Lily
Tomlin which I can identify with.

[2] See Daniel Dennett's many writings on such. The web is full of
much of his shorter works and critiques of such.

 

[Richard Hanson]

If I disappear temporarily, it is likely from connectivity issues --
nothing more... ;-)


running-straight-into-the-demarc-box-at-the-moment'ly y'rs,
Richard Hanson

 

[Ksenia Marasanova]

Ah, but there's plenty of thought about neocon ties to Israel (and the

hard-line Zionist movement(s) there, in particular) and related
(rumored) connections to extreme Millenial religious groups who'd be
happy to see the arrival of Armageddon (and thus the Second Coming)...

Hey, this is just the right date for this discussion

Greetings from unusuall-still-because-it's-Yom-Kippur Tel-Aviv,

Ksenia.

 

[Ville Vainio]

Richard> undecidable things left unsaid for now. It is a commonly
Richard> accepted thesis that the universe is evolving following
Richard> some, possibly ultimately unknowable, immutable set of
Richard> laws. Humans *do* seem to do

Is it? For some reason or another, many seem to believe that quantum
mechanics provides some blissfull exit from the immutable set of laws
(and deterministic universe). It's a place where God throws dice every
time a particle hits another.

Yes, it's absurd and entirely unpythonic, according to the law of "If
the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea."

 

[Jeff Shannon]

Richard> undecidable things left unsaid for now. It is a commonly
Richard> accepted thesis that the universe is evolving following
Richard> some, possibly ultimately unknowable, immutable set of
Richard> laws. Humans *do* seem to do

Is it? For some reason or another, many seem to believe that quantum
mechanics provides some blissfull exit from the immutable set of laws
(and deterministic universe). It's a place where God throws dice every
time a particle hits another.

Ah, but quantum mechanics are still a (supposedly) immutable set of laws
-- they are nondeterministic laws, to be sure, but that doesn't prevent
them from being laws. Quantum uncertainty follows a specific set of
rules, even if we haven't figured out what all of those rules are, and
even if those rules are expressed in probabilities. If one were to
believe that the universe did not follow an immutable (or nearly so) set
of laws, then one would also necessarily believe that science is
pointless, since the purpose of science is to try to figure out the laws
by which the universe operates. God may throw dice, but if we're
careful we can reconstruct the rules of the game He's playing.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

 

[Richard Hanson]

My candidate for QOTW:

"You *did* signal that quite adequately. This, however, is
comp.lang.python and clear signals never stopped anyone. <wink>"

+1

(And I'm not biased at all... ;-) )


Richard Hanson

 

[Richard Hanson]

"Traps" are even more useful sometimes ;-)

(...running for cover..)

LOL!

Ahem.

(Note to self: I must maintain *some* sense of decorum in this
forum... uh... for 'em.)

;-)


stole-most-of that-one-from-the-"Cheers"-TV-program'ly y'rs,
Richard Hanson

 

[Richard Hanson]

Richard> undecidable things left unsaid for now. It is a commonly
Richard> accepted thesis that the universe is evolving following
Richard> some, possibly ultimately unknowable, immutable set of
Richard> laws. Humans *do* seem to do

Is it? For some reason or another, many seem to believe that quantum
mechanics provides some blissfull exit from the immutable set of laws
(and deterministic universe). It's a place where God throws dice every
time a particle hits another.

Yes, it's absurd and entirely unpythonic, according to the law of "If
the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea."

Ahh... Yeah -- you're quite right about the "many." I was using
"commonly accepted" for a suitably restricted subset of the "many."

;-)


Richard Hanson

 

[Richard Hanson]

Ah, but quantum mechanics are still a (supposedly) immutable set of laws
-- they are nondeterministic laws, to be sure, but that doesn't prevent
them from being laws. Quantum uncertainty follows a specific set of
rules, even if we haven't figured out what all of those rules are, and
even if those rules are expressed in probabilities. If one were to
believe that the universe did not follow an immutable (or nearly so) set
of laws, then one would also necessarily believe that science is
pointless, since the purpose of science is to try to figure out the laws
by which the universe operates. God may throw dice, but if we're
careful we can reconstruct the rules of the game He's playing.

And -- keeping it well in mind that I am only a mere autodidact ;-) --
I am starting to align with the quantum-loop-gravity, spin-foam,
M-brane (generalized string theory), and such theorists. It is
possible that in the higher-dimensioned theories, quantum mechanics
will turn out to be deterministic. Or, at least that's what I'm quite
foggily gathering from hanging out on sci.physics.research and other
suchlike readings.


Richard Hanson

 

[Richard Hanson]

[A heads up: Post of moderate length and moderate content. ]

Even more fortunately, Apple has learned some lessons over the last 20
years, so its systems, while quite usable for grampa, do also appeal to
power users and geeks -- Tiger will seamlessly let you use its wonderful
search facilities _together_ with good organization of your materials
(if you take the bother of the latter). Consider Mail.app: its search
functionality works across all mailboxes or on a single mailbox --
you're _still_ encouraged to do a little decent filing of your mails,

It *does* seem necessary to "educate" the database about our own
preferences and styles of organization and the like, as well as
"rating and filing" specific, individual objects. I'm interested in
figuring out ways to make it *very* easy to "add value" to the
database with a more efficient HCI -- unless it's very, very simple to
do (nearly automatic, even ;-) ), the user won't do it.

though the search does make it more feasible to survive with the popular
"one big inbox and never bother filing" paradigm;-).

I'm thinking one database with some auto-indexing helped along with
specific user guidance re the "value-adding" aspect. Without some sort
of fast auto-indexing, of course, and without the easy ability for
user attribute-adding, the "one big box" paradigm could be painfully
slow for precise narrowing of large collections of heterogeneous
objects. Presumably, the above mentioned apps, and Google, of course,
do the auto-indexing part.

Consider Google:
it doesn't eliminate the advantage of well-organized, navigable sites,
even though it gives you a chance of surviving the typical "designed by
marketing, what's this ``usability'' newfangled thing?!" ones...

Heh. Don't get me started re the latter... ;-)

Apple's work definitely sounds like a step in the right direction. Is
there *complete* integration of *all* object types?

As I see it, the user should be able to tap a button and change an
email into a snailmail doc, or vice versa, say, with the system
handling the details automagically. And, with a few appropriately set
filters using attributes, sorts, and such, the user should be able to
see all the emails, documents, pics, sounds, flicks, etc. relating to,
for example, "Pink Floyd" -- all in one, narrowed view even though the
objects are of disparate types.

(Some of my early inspiration was XTREE for DOS from the 1980s --
XTREE provided a global view which could be narrowed; although, things
were still a bit primitive back then.)

I don't have access to the modern Macs -- they sound more interesting
to me than the Wintels I'm using. (Although, pedantically speaking, my
currently not-working Fujitsu laptop uses a Transmeta chip, not an
Intel one.)

Mike Meyer's link to an implementation of Jeff Raskin's work also
sounds quite interesting. I note from scanning the smaller zipfile
referenced in the link some similarity with my own ideas -- no save or
delete, for example, such being either unnecessary or is transparently
handled under-the-covers.

(I'm having connectivity problems, so I won't be able to review the
implementation of Raskin's "Humane Interface" till I can get wxPython
DL'ed again. Perhaps tonight.)


civilization-wobbling-along'ly y'rs,
Richard Hanson

 

[Alex Martelli]

It *does* seem necessary to "educate" the database about our own
preferences and styles of organization and the like, as well as
"rating and filing" specific, individual objects. I'm interested in
figuring out ways to make it *very* easy to "add value" to the
database with a more efficient HCI -- unless it's very, very simple to
do (nearly automatic, even ;-) ), the user won't do it.

There are many kinds of users. I essentially rely on automatic
classification of mails into mailboxes based on a dozen or so
rules/filters. But my wife Anna, who's worked as office manager etc for
years, has filing as "second nature" -- _her_ mailboxes (Thunderbird,
her preference) are neat and pristine, just like her filing cabinets.

In real life whenever I have to look for some weird document I face
hours of rummaging through papers trying to divine where I may have put
it; when Anna is looking for a document in her archives, she reaches
into the right folder, and there it is, period. On computers, with
automatic classification rules and search engines &c, her advantage is
not quite as pronounced -- but it's still there.

I have known several people with a penchant for effective and systematic
filing, though they are no doubt a minority, wrt us slobs. It's
important for the system not to get in their way: for example, when they
move a mail from folder 'pending purchase decisions' to folder
'purchases considered but rejected', the system must automatically and
seamlessly update the indexes of both folders, and the global index of
all boxes, too. Otherwise, if the system makes it _less_ effective to
do good classification and filing, it will earn deserved scorn and
enmity from those kind of users.

I'm thinking one database with some auto-indexing helped along with
specific user guidance re the "value-adding" aspect. Without some sort
of fast auto-indexing, of course, and without the easy ability for
user attribute-adding, the "one big box" paradigm could be painfully
slow for precise narrowing of large collections of heterogeneous
objects. Presumably, the above mentioned apps, and Google, of course,
do the auto-indexing part.

Yes, and 'searchlight', Tiger's forthcoming search engine, centralizes
the indexing (still needs SOME cooperation from apps, of course) as well
as the search. The ability for the user to tag documents with arbitrary
metadata is also a key part of this, I assume it's what you call the
"value adding aspect"?

Heh. Don't get me started re the latter... ;-)

Apple's work definitely sounds like a step in the right direction. Is
there *complete* integration of *all* object types?

Only in as much as applications cooperate with the central engine, at
least in some aspects. That may be why Apple has been circulating
alphas of Tiger to developers with such HUGE lead time, up to a year
before it hits the shelves: Searchlight's value grows exponentially the
more apps register their documents' metadata with it, and use it for
their search facilities -- app developers need time to enable that. Say
a user prefers Entourage or Thunderbird to Mail.app for their mails:
such a user will find Searchlight less useful than a Mail.app user will
_unless_ these other mail apps cooperate with Searchlight (sure, Apple
might reverse engineer _some_ file formats for documents of some
recalcitrant apps of particular importance, but that's more overall
work, and will still tend to produce results not quite as satisfactory,
than if the app's own developers did the job...).

As I see it, the user should be able to tap a button and change an
email into a snailmail doc, or vice versa, say, with the system
handling the details automagically.

In Tiger, such import/export facilities remain fully up to individual
apps -- there's just no way an indexing and search facility can have
enough metadata on all aspects of documents of disparate types
(including, crucially, formatting/presentation issues) to do the job.

And, with a few appropriately set
filters using attributes, sorts, and such, the user should be able to
see all the emails, documents, pics, sounds, flicks, etc. relating to,
for example, "Pink Floyd" -- all in one, narrowed view even though the
objects are of disparate types.

Yes, this IS part of Searchlight's functionality, and part of the added
value of a centralized indexing/search wrt per-app facilities.

(Some of my early inspiration was XTREE for DOS from the 1980s --
XTREE provided a global view which could be narrowed; although, things
were still a bit primitive back then.)

I don't have access to the modern Macs -- they sound more interesting
to me than the Wintels I'm using. (Although, pedantically speaking, my
currently not-working Fujitsu laptop uses a Transmeta chip, not an
Intel one.)

Heh -- Anna's got a Fujitsu with a Transmeta chip, too (P2000 Lifebook,
works fine, alas not very fine with Linux yet;-). And all the Linux
boxes in the house have AMD chips, better value-for-money (there _is_ an
OpenBSD box with a pentium 75 that does routing, firewalling &c year
after year since the dark ages, admittedly).

Today's Macs don't have Tiger yet (unless an alpha-stage developer
preview), though some of the (mostly per-app) search facilities are
indeed excellent even in Panther, the current release of MacOS X. Tiger
should be out in the spring of 2005, and it will cost about $150 (free
with _new_ Macs, but $150 to upgrade existing ones).

Mike Meyer's link to an implementation of Jeff Raskin's work also
sounds quite interesting. I note from scanning the smaller zipfile
referenced in the link some similarity with my own ideas -- no save or
delete, for example, such being either unnecessary or is transparently
handled under-the-covers.

Yes, Raskin's paradigms are definitely revolutionary, for good or for
evil. Apple (and I guess MS for Longhorn) OTOH are living in the real
world, where apps from multiple suppliers with their own separate
documents (sometimes in proprietary formats, sigh) are a reality and
users won't drop them (particularly as they need to keep exchanging docs
with other people using other machines), so any paradigm shift must
accomodate the likelihood of gradual and incomplete transitions...


Alex

 

[Ville Vainio]

Richard> undecidable things left unsaid for now. It is a commonly
Richard> accepted thesis that the universe is evolving following
Richard> some, possibly ultimately unknowable, immutable set of
Richard> laws. Humans *do* seem to do
Jeff> Ah, but quantum mechanics are still a (supposedly) immutable
Jeff> set of laws -- they are nondeterministic laws, to be sure,
Jeff> but that doesn't prevent them from being laws. Quantum
Jeff> uncertainty follows a specific set of rules, even if we
Jeff> haven't figured out what all of those rules are, and even if
Jeff> those rules are expressed in probabilities. If one

But aren't they probabilities just because we haven't understood them?
A thing like "probability" just can't exist in the ultimate
Reality. No lab equipment can prove the absence of further mechanisms
directing the phenomena that have been observed and "proved" to be
nondeterministic.

Jeff> were to believe that the universe did not follow an
Jeff> immutable (or nearly so) set of laws, then one would also

Of course the "fundamental" laws are immutable, unlike the derived
laws that have been observed and we know about.

Jeff> the universe operates. God may throw dice, but if we're
Jeff> careful we can reconstruct the rules of the game He's
Jeff> playing.

Not very likely, considering that the fundamental laws are quite
probably well beyond time, space and all the other cozy stuff ;-).

 

[Ville Vainio]

Richard> M-brane (generalized string theory), and such
Richard> theorists. It is possible that in the higher-dimensioned
Richard> theories, quantum mechanics will turn out to be
Richard> deterministic. Or, at least that's what I'm quite

It's not just possible, it's inevitable if the scientists are worth
anything. It's amusing how long this charade of nondeterminism has
been allowed to go on, considering how the scientists are supposed to
be reasonably rational adults.

 

[Arthur]

Richard> M-brane (generalized string theory), and such
Richard> theorists. It is possible that in the higher-dimensioned
Richard> theories, quantum mechanics will turn out to be
Richard> deterministic. Or, at least that's what I'm quite

It's not just possible, it's inevitable if the scientists are worth
anything. It's amusing how long this charade of nondeterminism has
been allowed to go on, considering how the scientists are supposed to
be reasonably rational adults.

Ville, Ville, Ville.

You're a card.

 

[Alan Kennedy]

[Richard Hanson]

> It is
possible that in the higher-dimensioned theories, quantum mechanics
will turn out to be deterministic.

That's an attention-grabbing statement!

[Richard Hanson]

Or, at least that's what I'm quite
foggily gathering from hanging out on sci.physics.research and other
suchlike readings.

I'd be most grateful for some links to further reading, ideally giving
an overview/summary, if you know of such.

thanks,

 

[Richard Hanson]

Richard> M-brane (generalized string theory), and such
Richard> theorists. It is possible that in the higher-dimensioned
Richard> theories, quantum mechanics will turn out to be
Richard> deterministic. Or, at least that's what I'm quite

It's not just possible, it's inevitable if the scientists are worth
anything. It's amusing how long this charade of nondeterminism has
been allowed to go on, considering how the scientists are supposed to
be reasonably rational adults.

I think you are correct, sir. The key point may well be that
scientists, as humans, are neither rational (nor adult ).

;-)


homo-sapiens-is-a-misnomer'ly y'rs,
Richard Hanson

 

[Richard Hanson]

There are many kinds of users.

Agreed -- I spoke too loosely, there.

I essentially rely on automatic
classification of mails into mailboxes based on a dozen or so
rules/filters. But my wife Anna, who's worked as office manager etc for
years, has filing as "second nature" -- _her_ mailboxes (Thunderbird,
her preference) are neat and pristine, just like her filing cabinets.

In real life whenever I have to look for some weird document I face
hours of rummaging through papers trying to divine where I may have put
it; when Anna is looking for a document in her archives, she reaches
into the right folder, and there it is, period. On computers, with
automatic classification rules and search engines &c, her advantage is
not quite as pronounced -- but it's still there.

I have known several people with a penchant for effective and systematic
filing, though they are no doubt a minority, wrt us slobs. It's
important for the system not to get in their way: for example, when they
move a mail from folder 'pending purchase decisions' to folder
'purchases considered but rejected', the system must automatically and
seamlessly update the indexes of both folders, and the global index of
all boxes, too. Otherwise, if the system makes it _less_ effective to
do good classification and filing, it will earn deserved scorn and
enmity from those kind of users.

One problem I have with tree organizations is that often I want an
object to be in several or many branches of the tree -- the memory
cost for larger objects, and the synchronizational problems resulting
from the replication of such, can become problematic. I like the
flat-file approach with "virtual folders," if you will, through the
definition and addition of "folder attributes" (again, if you will)
attached to the individual objects. This approach makes possible the
ability to have multiple virtual trees of organization with easy
switching from one organization to another. (Possibly, a *partial*
emulation of this part of my idea could be implemented using Linux and
Unix's "sym-links" [if I have that term correct]. However, I would
prefer a proof-of-concept work on top of Windows, as well, and
therefore I'm thinking of a database with one field containing the
object's path, leaving the objects (for now) in the hierarchical
harddrive's tree.)

Yes, and 'searchlight', Tiger's forthcoming search engine, centralizes
the indexing (still needs SOME cooperation from apps, of course) as well
as the search. The ability for the user to tag documents with arbitrary
metadata is also a key part of this, I assume it's what you call the
"value adding aspect"?

Correct -- that is what I mean. Also, a key point is that it needs to
be drop-dead easy to "add value" (the arbitrary metadata) so that lazy
humans like me will do such.

Only in as much as applications cooperate with the central engine, at
least in some aspects. That may be why Apple has been circulating
alphas of Tiger to developers with such HUGE lead time, up to a year
before it hits the shelves: Searchlight's value grows exponentially the
more apps register their documents' metadata with it, and use it for
their search facilities -- app developers need time to enable that. Say
a user prefers Entourage or Thunderbird to Mail.app for their mails:
such a user will find Searchlight less useful than a Mail.app user will
_unless_ these other mail apps cooperate with Searchlight (sure, Apple
might reverse engineer _some_ file formats for documents of some
recalcitrant apps of particular importance, but that's more overall
work, and will still tend to produce results not quite as satisfactory,
than if the app's own developers did the job...).

Again, this is sounding quite encouraging -- on Apple's part, at
least.

In Tiger, such import/export facilities remain fully up to individual
apps -- there's just no way an indexing and search facility can have
enough metadata on all aspects of documents of disparate types
(including, crucially, formatting/presentation issues) to do the job.

Check. That's why I think an "appliance" or embedded approach is a
nice target. *One* development team makes the one, monolithic "app"
with the OS *and* user functionality integrated within.

Yes, this IS part of Searchlight's functionality, and part of the added
value of a centralized indexing/search wrt per-app facilities.

Again, quite encouraging.

One of the reasons I started this thread was to tease out other work
related to mine which I was unaware of. I have long observed that many
folks independently but concurrently come up with the same epiphanies
and ideas. I had sincerely hoped that this was the case with my ideas,
as well. (Indeed, I was presuming such -- not wanting to reinvent the
wheel, and realizing that many, much-more-capable people are on this
planet. )

Heh -- Anna's got a Fujitsu with a Transmeta chip, too (P2000 Lifebook,
works fine, alas not very fine with Linux yet;-). And all the Linux
boxes in the house have AMD chips, better value-for-money (there _is_ an
OpenBSD box with a pentium 75 that does routing, firewalling &c year
after year since the dark ages, admittedly).

Mine is a P1120 LifeBook with touchscreen. I have read about two
people who were successful in getting Linux running with the
touchscreen *somewhat* operational on the P1120. The touchscreen is
particularly important to me for the several reasons I mentioned
previously. (I plan on getting a new harddrive for the P1120, soon,
and then see if I can get a Linux distro installed with the
touchscreen fully functional.)

Today's Macs don't have Tiger yet (unless an alpha-stage developer
preview), though some of the (mostly per-app) search facilities are
indeed excellent even in Panther, the current release of MacOS X. Tiger
should be out in the spring of 2005, and it will cost about $150 (free
with _new_ Macs, but $150 to upgrade existing ones).

Indeed, it sounds *very* interesting.

Yes, Raskin's paradigms are definitely revolutionary, for good or for
evil.
;-)

Apple (and I guess MS for Longhorn) OTOH are living in the real
world, where apps from multiple suppliers with their own separate
documents (sometimes in proprietary formats, sigh) are a reality and
users won't drop them (particularly as they need to keep exchanging docs
with other people using other machines), so any paradigm shift must
accomodate the likelihood of gradual and incomplete transitions...

I understand your point about Apple et al starting from the current
real-world situation and mapping out a route forward, starting from
here. That's a necessary step in the evolutionary process -- I totally
concur. My project aims for a more distant, down-the-road point, with
parts of the project not even solvable at this time (the hardware
platform, for instance), and without a transitional route mapped out.
Thus, my desire to realize a prototype on top of the current platforms
as a proof-of-concept. (We'll see if I have the energy and wherewithal
to get anywhere. )

Thanks for the enlightening comments!


life-is-all-about-taxonomy'ly y'rs
Richard Hanson

 

[Richard Hanson]

[Richard Hanson]

It is
possible that in the higher-dimensioned theories, quantum mechanics
will turn out to be deterministic.

That's an attention-grabbing statement!
;-)

[Richard Hanson]

Or, at least that's what I'm quite
foggily gathering from hanging out on sci.physics.research and other
suchlike readings.

I'd be most grateful for some links to further reading, ideally giving
an overview/summary, if you know of such.

thanks,

I shall attempt to find just such summaries. However, as I am now down
to relying solely on the "wetware" between my ears for my personal
archives (had a recent series of harddrive crashes), I will now
attempt to (re)locate off the net some of the material which points to
the possibility suggested above. I'll see if any suitable overviews
are available and will let you know.

And -- you're quite welcome. I may need a bit of time, however, for a
variety of reasons.


just-re-DL'ed-all-of-sci.physics.research-from-my-newsserver'ly y'rs,
Richard Hanson

 

[Terry Reedy]

But aren't they probabilities just because we haven't understood them?

That is the question. To me, the underlying question is whether the
existence of this universe (in particular, the big bang) was
'deterministic' or 'arbitrary' in some megauniverse.

A thing like "probability" just can't exist in the ultimate Reality.

That is your religious belief -- and perhaps Enstein's. But I am not sure
that God has any choice but to play dice.

No lab equipment can prove the absence of further mechanisms
directing the phenomena that have been observed and "proved" to be
nondeterministic.

Given that no lab equipment can prove the absence of anything, this is a
vacuous statement (irony intended ;-).

There is a mathematical theorem in quantum mechanics that claims, as I
recall, that certain observable phenomena will be different depending upon
whether there are or are not unobserved 'hidden variables' that would, if
they were known, remove indetermancy. About 20 years ago, observations
were obtained which clearly agreed with the no hiddem variables option.

Of course, if the premises are wrong, then so are the conclusions. But the
burden is on QM premise doubters to produce an alternative that accords
with data just as well as QM.

Terry J. Reedy

 

[Stephen Waterbury]

(sorry, this looked like too much fun ...


What makes you so sure that "ultimate Reality" is a well-formed
(logically consistent) concept? QM may be the ultimate framework
for an observer/observable-based theory of physics, and since
the observer/observable paradigm is fundamental to science,
it might be "as good as it gets", in which case an "ultimate
reality" that is meaningful in the context of the scientific
method might well require probability.

Of course, if you want to transcend observer/observable, you
have to go beyond science, and into the realm of "Cosmajoonity"
(see Freeman Dyson's delightful book "Disturbing the Universe" .

Steve