John C. Wright's Journal

This is tangentially related to my last post, where I listed the first, best, worse, and last time I came across the Malthusian ruminations of “little Erlichs” convinced that we were having too many babies, and compared it to a recent comment mocking the ruminations of “little Mark Steyns” that we were having too few babies, but the Muslims were not having too few.

Well, here is someone else who is fuming that humans are over-reproducing: none other than hatred-filled nutbag James J. Lee, who earned his fifteen minutes of fame by taking hostages at the offices of the Discovery Channel and being gunned down like a rabid cur.

Oddly, the New York Times was unable to fathom the motives of Mr. Lee.

http://m-francis.livejournal.com/166760.html

On an even-less tangentially related topic, a reader here left a comment criticizing (as hatred-filled nutbaggery) any opposition to the triumphalist monument to the Allah-inspired deaths at the hands of hatred-filled nutbags of unwarned innocent victims on 9/11. In the same conversation, comparison was made with hatred-filled nutbag Pastor Terry Jones, who wants to hold a Burn-the-Koran day.

One comparison, oddly enough, that did not emerge in this or any conversation I have had the honor of overhearing was comparison with the hatred-filled nutbag Webster Cook and/or hatred-filled nutbag P.Z. Myers who, two years ago, was publicly threatening to desecrate a communion wafer. The outrage of the easily outraged, as I recall, was not directed against the desecrator, for his intolerant lack of respect for the faiths and rights of others, but against the descratees, for the silliness of their obscurantist superstition. But why are same folks that, two years ago, were saying,  “Its Just a Goddam Cracker!” are not now saying, “It’s Just a Goddam Book!”?

Bueller…? Anyone…? Bueller…?

On the same topic, a reader writes:

“(quoting me) abstract thought cannot possibly be described or defined except in terms of symbols.”
[wrf3] But software can.
… Define a line of software merely in terms of quantitative measurement of mass, length, duration, or other physical properties without reference to the language or other non-physical symbolic correspondence that language contains but that empirical objects do not?
It’s just 0’s and 1’s in the right pattern and all digital logic can be represented by NAND (or NOR) gates wired in the proper sequence. Do you want me to give you the NAND gates that are equivalent to (INCF X)? Or the NAND gates that are equivalent to a LISP compiler? We build abstraction on top of abstraction on top of abstraction, but it’s just NAND gates connected the right way. You’ve built your argument on the claim that the representation of the thing is not the thing, but I’ve given you two counter-examples, which you haven’t yet addressed.

Let me address it now as best I may:

“It’s just 0’s and 1’s in the right pattern and all digital logic can be represented by NAND (or NOR) gates wired in the proper sequence.”

The word “it”in this sentence refers to the object I asked you to provide me an example of: a line of software merely in terms of quantitative measurement of mass, length, duration, or other physical properties without reference to the language or other non-physical symbolic correspondence that language contains but that empirical objects do not.

I asked you for the physical properties of a line of code lacking all symbolic properties.

In your answer, you used the word “represented”, and used it to refer to “and” and “or” which are not physical properties but symbolic properties (purely symbolic, namely, symbolic logic).

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A reader, or perhaps the Tin Woodman of Oz, once again has a few questions about the distinction between final cause and mechanical cause, mind and brain, and why I am programmed to act as if I have free will.

Unfortunately, instead of calling tech support to simply have me rebooted, he insists on using symbols called words to appeal to my sense of reason and my integrity as a philosopher in order to let myself be persuaded that his metaphysical reasoning has that non-physical and non-empirical quality called coherence or logic. His soul intuits no irony in this.

But first! An apology. I fell into the sloppy habit of reading into his arguments something that was not there. I emerged from my ferocious battle with a straw man mostly unbruised and only slightly winded, having completely ignored my real opponent who was standing off to one side, looking puzzled.

“I must request, once again, that you carefully distinguish between what I actually claim, and what your radical materialists may claim.”

I humbly stand corrected and accede to the request.

To clarify — yes, I claim that poetry-making cannot be reduced to an algorithm, and that anything that can be reduced to an algorithm is not poetry.

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“Consider the Chinese Room, or better still consider Deep Blue, the chess machine. Nobody claims that Deep Blue has consciousness, but it has intelligence in the very narrow sense of playing excellent chess.”

And Grandfather Clock has intelligence in the very narrow sense of being able to count the minutes and hours correctly, adding up the sums in its head, and telling me the correct time, by deciding to play the chimes hanging in his case. Oddly, Grandfather Clock always decides just exactly on the hour and half-hour to ring the correct chimes. I am astonished at how accurately Grandfather Clock’s sense of timing is, how tirelessly he attends to his task, and how he never loses count or mistakes the number of minutes in an hour. No doubt Grandfather Clock is helped in the tireless precision of his thinking process by the wheels and gears that make up his brain. Nonetheless, we all must commend Grandfather Clock for his diligence and uncomplaining attention to detail. He is as patient and devout as a Beefeater Guard who stands before Buckingham Palace, and, like them, he never stirs from the spot where he has decided to stand.

I am kidding, of course. Grandfather Clock is a machine.

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