J. S. Mill's Methods I

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From Dictionary of Philosophy

Mill's methods: Inductive methods formulated by John Stuart Mill for the discovery of causal relations between phenomena.

Method of Agreement: If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree, is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon.

 -- A. Cornelius Benjamin 

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Process Eats Product

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There is no music that is free of the instrument.  Interface dictates product.  Consider this quote, "An elective despotism is not the government we fought for" from James Madison.  Doesn't the current POTUS personify this misallocation of human resources?  Didn't re-election become Job One as the votes were being counted in November 2016?

-- Kilgore Forelle

Cincinnati III

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 -- Kilgore Forelle

Cincinnati II

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As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government … too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.

 — Robert Taft

— Kilgore Forelle

Cincinnati

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It has been a long time, but as usual I enjoyed Cincinnati tremendously.  Cincinnati was one of my influences in my youth.  It was the largest city within reach of my Kentucky home, and it, along with Boston, was among my two favorite European-style American cities.  When I graduated from college, I began my professional career in the Queen City.  This, the home of the Tafts, is where I learned standing on my own, responsibility, freedom, individualism, voluntaryism, and choice.  Cincinnati is a great town for these qualities.  I follow with a Chōku (a Japanese verse form that starts wit a Haiku, but continues with an indeterminate number of pairs of 7-syllable lines) dedicated to Cincinnati:

Cincinnati pig
Porkopolis, Ohio
Eden Park, the Reds
Krohn Conservatory, the
heights of Mt. Adams, Skyline,
the buildings and the Chili
Union Station, Music Hall
Salmon P. Chase, William Taft
Zoo, Botanical Gardens
Moerlein India Pale
The seven hills, named for Rome,
I studied spontaneous
organization UC,
United Dairy Farmers
The Newport Aquarium
Architecture Cinci-style
Residence Inn, Lytle Park.

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Murder

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Are we in an echo chamber?  Certain sounds are coming back.  Sounds like, "We must control guns because guns kill," are everywhere.  How effective have been all such prior cries?  And yet a madman smuggles 2 dozen firearms into a perfect vantage point to kill 58 people (and counting).  High vantage points are associated with projectile deaths -- let's outlaw all structures over the average human height -- tall structures kill.  Below, from an article based on Center for Disease Control statistics, "5 things cause two-thirds of U. S. deaths:"

Five things kill more people in the United States than anything else: heart disease, cancer, lung disease such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis, stroke and unintentional injuries such as those on roads or caused by medication overdoses. {emphasis added}

Wow!  Neither firearms nor illegal drugs are on that list!  Why don't we find something that is associated with heart disease and outlaw it.  Obesity comes to mind.  Why don't we find something that is associated with unintentional injuries, like automobiles, and ban them.  Let's outlaw death, let's outlaw guns!  But wait, isn't murder already against the law?

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Yalta Bibliography II

 -- Charles L. Mee, Jr.

Seven Fateful Moments When Great Men Met to Change the World, By Charles L. Mee Jr.

Yalta Bibliography I

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The Yalta Conference of 1945 has been shrouded by inattention from mainstream historians.  As I find writings on this neglected but critical point in history, I will share the references here in this Blog.

Seventy years ago, during the week of February 4-11, 1945, the most momentous conference of the Second World War was held at Yalta in the Crimea between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Their decisions have affected much of the world ever since.

 --  Richard M. Ebeling

THE GHOSTS OF YALTA STILL HAUNT THE WORLD,
The Future of Freedom Foundation, web site, February 4, 2015

 -- Kilgore Forelle

The Yalta Fault Line

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Is it a coincidence that one of the most seismic occasions in human cultural history occurred at a place that is characterized by catastrophic geological phenomena.  The Black Sea is a stunning medley of tectonic effects, happening over geologic time scale epochs.  But the outcomes of the Yalta Conference in 1945 have reverberated throughout the latter half of the 20th Century and the first part of the new millennium.  It should be enough to say that the Cold War emanated from Yalta.  The history books are nearly silent about this conference in the Crimea, but the mid-century rise of both Stalinism and Maoism can be traced directly to deals made at Yalta.  Humanity will continue to feel the ripples throughout their entire future.

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Catalunya

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Catalunya!  How dare such a region express its independence!

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/4D89/production/_98094891_8ec64a5a-ec35-46d9-a7ea-50daa7b60b1c.jpg

 -- Kilgore Forelle

The Golden Rule

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I don't get it.  Isn't the Golden Rule simple and straightforward enough?  I heard a young girl in the Ophthalmologist's waiting room this morning, "Why can't people just treat each other as they would like to be treated?"  There's the confusion -- why do people suspend the Golden Rule?  Why do they take killing implements, with malice of forethought, to a high floor of a hotel overlooking an open air concert, to shoot more than a quarter of a thousand people?  Too soon?  Then, when is it a good time to address why the Golden Rule is observed too often in its breach.  Children and thoughtful adults want to know.  Gun control is not the answer -- guns do not observe the Golden Rule to the good or the bad.  It is people who forget the Golden Rule.

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Anders Chydenius

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Years ago, when I first signed up for Facebook, as I recall, there was an opportunity to establish a nom de guerre.  So I chose Anders Chydenius.  Despite this boost in exposure, he has remained obscure to this day.

I am somewhat convinced that his birth name was not Chydenius, because that looks like an obvious latinization after the academic fashion of 18th century Europe.  But the sources I find are not forthcoming on the issue.  I suppose it is possible that his father had already gained the latinized surname through his membership in the clergy.  The title of Chydenius' modern collected works says much about his claim to fame -- Anticipating The Wealth of Nations: The Selected Works of Anders Chydenius, 1729–1803 (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics).  He was a forerunner and co-runner to John Locke.

Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.

So, he spoke for division of labor, free trade, open markets, and non-intervention in two sentences.  He also wrote, "The exercise of one coercion always makes another inevitable," therefore, he clearly understood the principle of unforeseen consequences and predicted the advance of unchecked government.  I think I will keep the alias, on Facebook.

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Tipping Point VI

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How will the avatar of general artificial intelligence (GAI) handle the associative parts of the 10 Commandments.  What will be his guidelines on killing, lying, stealing, coveting, and fornication?  Are these norms built in to human nature, but disposable for non-human nature?  Will the association norms be different based on the fundamental associations human to human, human to machine, machine to human, and machine to machine.  Which type of consciousness can best handle the permutations?

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Tipping Point V

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If general artificial intelligence, GAI, comes to pass (computers learn to program themselves based on consequences in their own environment, toward individual collections of experience) will its owners have human nature?  Will, for instance, owners of GAI have fight or flight instincts, self-preservation and species preservation impulses, territorial imperative?  These are parts of all known cases of animate consciousness, not just human nature.  Will GAI agents have particular human behavior like an understanding of ownership, hoarding, knowledge of impermanence, authoritarianism, and pursuit of power for power itself.  As the technological offspring of humans, how could GAI individuals fail to have human traits?

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Tipping Point IV

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How deeply woven into the nature of things are humans?  We have only been around for a snippet of cosmic time, but we carry the imprint of all that has gone before.  We have the same biological building blocks as the trilobite and the triceratops, as well as Roy Rogers' wonder horse, Trigger.  It is folly to presume that we do not share cellular likeness to life forms all over the galaxies.  How then shall silicon-based forms, such as computers, replace us?  We have a toe hold!  To be sure, robots will have no particular incentive to keep us around, but how shall they stamp us out?  The good thing is that they probably have no overwhelming incentive to wipe us out either.

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Tipping Point III

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Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil have called it a Singularity -- that point at which the question of getting sucked in to the black hole, or the AI takeover, becomes a foregone conclusion.  Let me first admit that Kurzweil has gone, in the last decade, from an oversimplification, to a more nuanced view.  Singularity advocates see this whole idea as a single point at which all former paradigms are replaced wholesale by all new paradigms.  I, instead, see similar changes, but in a far less monolithic event -- AI will take over some areas quickly, and others much more slowly, some never at all.  Right now, there are areas in which machine knowledge is superior to human knowledge.  There are other areas in which human knowledge is embryonic, and where we can't even know what the concrete questions are.  The devil is, however, still in the details.  I have no question that GAI can plumb the depths of detail faster and better than humans.  But I still wonder about knowing which questions to ask.  A principle question for me is will natural laws be uprooted -- an abstraction?  Or will humans be replaced by alternate intelligent organic forms first.  Nobody is telling me that the rules of natural selection are being short-circuited.

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Tipping Point II

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Will the GAI* emerging individuals have a DNA-like heredity?  Will they have the impulses of Ghandi or Hitler -- will they inherit the genocide gene, the logic of species purity?  If so, whom will they eliminate or enslave?  Will it be humans, tardigrades, or roaches?

  * general artificial intelligence

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Tipping Point

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If general artificial intelligence (GAI) is ever to rise above order taking, there will be a tipping point at which that occurs.  As of now, AI requires stepwise instructions from humans, but then, in GAI, the computer will write, and more importantly decide its own, instructions -- becoming a voluntaryist.  The most telling succeeding event will be what the GAI creatures will decide to do with humanity.  What do you see in our past that would recommend our continuation into the future?

 -- Kilgore Forelle

Baby Boom Bubble

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A friend pointed out that everything the U. S. Government touches turns into a bubble.  I was part of one this week when I had cataract surgery on my right eye.  I'll be back for the other in several weeks.  I am part of a giant crop.  I was born in the middle of the U. S. involvement in WW II.  My father was an adjunct of Army Intelligence.  So, I am a front ender in the "Baby Boom."  The boom itself is a government-action bubble.  But the bubble takes on a life of its own.  An ever expanding array of conditions are being harvested in the fields of America's seniors.  And the competition is stiffening.  I had a surgical gown with its own HVAC in the prep room.  I could set the thermostat to suit.  The nurses were doing handsprings to make me happy.  Hospitals are competing with very expensive goodies.  The costs of the services must go up, or the number and breadth of services must increase.  Projected to a logical end, baby boomers will be in the system 24/7/365.  Medicare will pay.  Taxpayers will pay for Medicare.

-- Kilgore Forelle

I Am libertarian + voluntaryist + individualist + ...

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I was asked in my writing group last Monday, "what is a libertarian?"

• First of all, notice the lowercase "L" in "libertarian."  I cannot speak for other libertarians, but the lower case, in my case, means I am not a member of the national Libertarian Party (LP), nor of any of its regional, state, or local affiliates -- they are a political party, not a philosophy.  I am apolitical,and I am registered to vote as an independent, but I have no expectations of politicians, in general.  The libertarian philosophy is based on the non-aggression principle (NAP) which holds that one may not initiate violence against any person, place, or thing.  Please appreciate that this does not bar self-defense or defense of any person, place, or thing.  
• By virtue of what do I also call myself a voluntaryist?  A voluntaryist believes that all transactions between or among individuals should be voluntary for all individuals.  This includes all individuals in a specific agreement, and excludes any who are not bound by that voluntary agreement.  
• And how would I describe an individualist?  An individualist believes that all individuals are created equal.  Further, an individualist believes that all relationships should be on a 1-to-1 basis among individuals.  No two individuals are alike in all respects, therefore dealing with others always involves unique needs and characteristics.  I cannot be pegged by the 3 labels above, however, because, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes.  Each individual is the only one of her kind in all the universes.  

I am convinced that there is no discord among these three tracks of philosophy.

 -- Kilgore Forelle