simondedalus

it should be called russell's package manager.

if this article makes you think kripke stole the idea of rigid designation, you may as well say he stole it from john stuart mill (or st. augustine, for that matter).

definitely. his warmth and humor are very much on display in "a puzzle about belief" as well:

http://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Kripke%281979%29.p...

(putnam is cited in this paper as well, by the by)

the stuff he calls the "frege-russel theory of names" is even more egregious than his take on wittgenstein.

to be fair, i don't believe his "take on wittgenstein" is exegetical anyway. he's putting forward his own (interesting!) plus/quus argument. kripkenstein is worth reading in its own right; if you care enough to get wittgenstein right in the first place you shouldn't really be looking to kripke's writing to get there.

and of course, "the frege-russell picture of names" is just a straw man to propel his argument forward in N&N. he's really talking to/about searle there, and most people who are going to read N&N know that. but the stuff he says is still wildly inaccurate if you take it at face value.

(not that frege's views on sense and reference are all that clear in the first place, but they weren't the nonsense that frege (or searle!) attribute to him)

i agree on the last point (all 3 more interesting, and i agree with including the 'even'). like i said above though, it's hard to deny that his discussion of contingent a priori as such speaks to kant more directly and strongly than, yeah, "two dogmas of empiricism" (i wasn't impressed either).

to put it another way, i think it would be hard to take many other philosophers as deeply entrenched in a particular set of concerns and assumptions (take, like, derrida or godel) and as effectively press the points of their major work against the work of kant or aristotle or some other towering "we all claim her/him!" figure. "naming and necessity" speaks to kant in terms that need to be answered, which is way more than most publish or perish philosophy professors ever achieve in their lifetime (much less right away, in a lecture presenting a semantics based on modal logic!).

but yeah, the point is well taken. kripke is worth reading once / reading about. putnam is worth reading a lot.

yeah. kripke can be convicted of truly awful exegesis of russell, frege, wittgenstein, but his own contributions to philosophy are mammoth. his attack on the identity of necessary truths and a priori knowledge alone is excellent.

unlike a lot of contemporaries read through the end of the 20th century / beginning of the 21st, putnam was a rigorous and important philosopher (as opposed to, say, jerry fodor, who should be lauded for generating interest in philosophy and opening new discussions but whose arguments are almost uniformly terrible, technically).

i'd forgotten about his direct realism, but it makes sense given his sort of instinctual bent toward wittgenstein. i wish more analytic philosophers were adventurous enough to reject platonist place-holders and carry their views out to the furthest logical extent.

sorry that this comment was so vague, but what else could it be? just wanted to post that we've lost a great mind.

some random reading in the realm of what i'm talking about:

http://philpapers.org/rec/FINWOR (doesn't mention putnam if i recall, but the wittgensteinian considerations here can shed light on what i'm talking about re: putnam's instincts)

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23171-hilary-putnam-pragmatism-and-r... the quick summary of direct realism here corresponds very well with how many of us chicago-wittgensteinians are pulled toward direct realism; once you discard the idea of a correspondence theory of truth and knowledge, and start to recognize that truth conditions are ubiquitously context dependent (in terms of what the speaker is trying to accomplish with the words, the shared cultural knowledge of speaker and listener, etc etc), so too can you get rid of many of the pesky oddities of traditional 20th century analytic philosophy of mind: (abstract?) mental items, qualia (maybe), etc etc. if i see a cow, i don't see "cow + some LaTeX symbol" that exists just-for-me--that's not how language works, and we're not talking about magic observational souls, we're saying that guy over there looked and saw a cow--or whatever we're actually talking about).

anyway, putnam is very worth reading, if only to remember rigor and honesty. as with all philosophy, the conclusions you can take or leave.

I think the idea is to use awareness of GNU and also to focus the attention of people with the skill to contribute on neural-networks.

What I mean is, you're right of course, there's much better neural-network free software already available, but GNU endorsing an official package 1) could get people whose concerns are more strongly geared toward free software ethics to start paying attention to neural networks, and 2) get people, regardless of their ideological commitment to anything, to be more aware both of the ethical issues and of neural-network software--just in virtue of GNU's mild fame.

and of course, unless the maintainer of this package makes weird choices and alienates other projects, there's the other benefit of projects learning from each other and poaching code and strategies for the greater good.

yeah, not to belabor it, but if you can do something like be a champion in go or chess, chances are you have the mental skillset to do something exponentially more lucrative.

you could search (and watch) with mps-youtube:

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/02/new-command-line-youtube-play...

incidentally, you could also just use google.

Thinkpenguin makes very good stuff. I don't have any experience with the current models, but in terms of build quality and bang for the buck, I think they blow System 76 away.

Admittedly, I use a Thinkpad t430 and a MacBook Air myself, but if I didn't have more laptops than I knew what to do with, I'd be considering Thinkpenguin (though, I'm of the same mind as Linus Torvalds, http://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-torvalds... , so I'd be likely to get a refurb'd MacBook Air).

Edit: link to Thinkpenguin site: https://www.thinkpenguin.com/

if you're implying that everyone who usefully modifies source code or compiles with options is able to write the code from scratch, i would advise you rethink your position.

to put a finer point on it, the concept of "layers of abstraction" is fundamental to computers and software. i can know quite a bit about adjusting the pieces of a program without having the ability to build it as effectively as i modify it.

the parallel is divisibility by 2.

re: what determines what sounds good, in some sense you can read up on music theory for this (scales / keys). in a more basic sense ("why is this sad and this happy?") it's actually an open and actively researched question in the physics of music. it's anyone's guess, really, why certain melodies are pleasant. is it a physical/structural/formal feature of the sound itself? is it a feature of our psychology or neurological makeup? who knows.

this article is bad. chomsky and his ilk have always acknowledged the wide variety of linguistic behavior; that's the whole point. universal grammar is the parameters to be set (what sounds have meaning? what word order is used? etc). learning a language is the setting of those parameters.

humans may have linguistic "knowledge" that they're born with, they may not... but this article is beside the point.

I don't want to argue about systemd vs this or that, but re: (2) you are totally misrepresenting linus's objection to systemd (developers).

the well-publicized incident to which you're referring had systemd introduce something that broke userland, then instead of fixing it in systemd code, proposed a kernel change for it. this is, obviously, bad practice.

it would be one thing if the systemd code exposed a vulnerability or inefficiency in the linux kernel. but fixing your bad code by modifying the kernel is like trying to modify a popular compiler because some bad code you wrote isn't doing what you want it to.

this is true in general, but it bears noting that highly specialized fields need jargon. there's nothing wrong with using a word "in a technical sense," nor is there anything wrong with leaning on connotation to help orient your interlocutor.

writing and speaking are like anything else: use the right tool for the job. when i talk to people outside of analytic philosophy, i can't use various technical terms to talk about wittgenstein's thoughts on language. i can talk about them, but it takes longer. like, a lot longer.

advice: put just a bit more boring memorization type time into honing your discovery ability; ie hit the :h a bit, find some tutorials you like, pick up the "practical vim" book, print out a vim cheat sheet. not too much; just enough so you have somewhere to go when you have a question.

then, code in vim. at every pain point ask "is there some faster/easier way to do this?" sometimes you'll find something that seems great, then never use it again. other times, you'll relieve a recurring pain point and at the same time incorporate expanded facility with vim. after awhile, you'll pretty naturally start messing with vimscript as well.

in other words, i think videos and tutorials of "look at how powerful vim is in this situation!" can only go so far, at least until you've really expanded your horizons through practical use and need.

edit: the earlier advice in responses to you (some of which i basically just repeated) is good too. mine could be distilled into a sentence: "learn vim by coding in it, but allowing time for 'how could i do this better?'" on the one hand, just do your normal work. on the other hand, don't stay satisfied with being "good enough" at vim to do your normal work. that's where the learning curve is, and after you do that artificial thing (overdoing "can i make this easier?") it quickly becomes natural.

Here's a link to one person's answer: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html

The person to whom you replied seems to quite literally be talking about "people who see no ethical concerns with proprietary software" as such. Some people do.

You want to know why they do? There are many resources available online that you can use to read up on why they do. If after reading them you still don't need to see every line of code on your Netflix player, you will still be disingenuous if you pose "problems with proprietary software as such" as some kind of ending of a reductio ad absurdum. Disagreement is fine; you don't need to be confused by it.

It's worth pointing out that nowhere in her note does she say "Google is evil." In fact, she doesn't even use the word 'evil'.

The only place where an entity's being evil has been mentioned is in these strawman comments.

The issue is not a board member spreading around the opinion that a sponsor "is evil." The issue is whether it's alright to forbid any criticism of a sponsor's actions by board members (or by management, or other high level / prominent figures).

If you choose to argue against, for example, me (since you responded to me), please understand the position. It is not that Google or anyone at all is evil. It's that no one's actions can be beyond criticism in a healthy society (or a healthy business, or a healthy relationship, etc).

Further, it is especially dangerous when people like founders, politicians, board members, etc can't express opinions of the actions of other prominent figures. When that is the case, the only people who can complain are those people whose voices won't be listened to. How does that make society better?

The position I, at least, am arguing for is that it is a socially irresponsible policy to force board members to express uniform approval of all actions taken by a sponsor.

Expressing disapproval of a company's actions is far from saying the company is evil, or that you're too good to cooperate with the company, etc. Please avoid straw man arguments if you want to have useful discussions.

You cannot have a healthy society if only the powerless are allowed to criticize the powerful.

She isn't even resigning in protest of Google's involvement, but the board's forbidding her to criticize any of Google's actions.

i want to say that math just is logic (which, blown up into set theory, is the major way we understand language outside of full on anthropology and incidental history/statistics)... but my early allegiance to frege would be showing. alas, we are doomed to never find the logical foundation of mathematics--godel hits us on one side, wittgenstein on the other! at least frege was a better writer than either of those two.

anyway, i love the author's point (2). i would never argue that we don't need to bother wondering about the import of death or how we feel about things, but (2) not being widely known comes largely from A) people not studying philosophy, since B) they don't realize that philosophy isn't (always) about finding (capital M, almost-supernatural) Meaning, but rather is just being rigorous in your thought and language (as well as curious). math and programming aren't magic; they admit of rigorous thought just like anything else. you needn't be a savant, and you needn't go and vilify any particular normal human capacity or object of investigation to be allowed to not be a savant. sadly, i write like wittgenstein, not frege.

hope this rambling response struck you as topical enough.

as long as the ads don't run code, i don't mind at all.

As with Vivaldi, I'm partial to Il Giardino Armonico.

e.g.

Bach: Concerto for violin in A minor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmlsxr_ceSc

Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 violoncellos, strings & b.c. in G minor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gQCUACBxTo

while i don't agree with priest either, your reasoning is bad.

the point is not to argue against how people define logic, or anything as arbitrary or seemingly self-defeating as that.

the point is to provide a functional logic in the face of the liar's paradox and the like. regardless of the motivations of individual philosophers, the work itself posits as motivations actual technical problems. the technical problems generally arise from self-reference, but (as you can see with varieties of incompleteness proofs as well) you don't need outright self-reference to get the truth of a statement resting on its negation.

yell all you want about rigor, the onus is on you to use conventional logic to resolve these tensions. again, i personally think that proponents of many-valued logic are misguided in their large scale view of truth functional representation (and i probably think the same of you!). however, i respect that they seek to defend it by solving problems rather than saying "hurr, 'this is a lie' just doesn't mean anything at all. and oh yeah, language is compositional, truth is correspondence, and i'll hear nothing saying otherwise!"

nagarjuna's point is not that contradiction or many-valued logic can be tolerated. nagarjuna, who is addressing a specific set of buddhist logicians, is finding paradoxes in logic in an attempt to break those logicians clinging to logic, and (somewhat presciently in the history of buddhism) suddenly enlighten them. he, like most buddhists, is not making any ontological or metaphysical claims whatsoever.

it's similar to kant's antimonies. he is not trying to assert contradiction exists, he is trying to point out why we need to countenance ideas like a distinction between noumina and phenomena. or like zeno's paradoxes, which have a rhetorical purpose: to confirm zeno's teacher parmenides's claim that the universe is one undifferentiated whole. see also plotinus, who does roughly the same thing (any real ontological difficulty posed by the paradox of plurality is uninteresting to them; they have a thesis and their statement of the paradox is for a purpose).

incidentally, i don't mean to slag graham priest too much. after all, j.c. beall was my logic professor, and i'll always fondly remember how he introduces every new step in a proof by saying, slowly, "now holllld on, what about (etc)." the dialetheists will always hold a place in my heart. that said, i think godel did about all that need be done with the liar's paradox, and we ought to be wittgensteinians regarding language in the first place (words mean what they do in virtue of their being used by agents for a purpose; you cannot fully enumerate representational content of an utterance solely in virtue of its shape. all utterances are context sensitive. for more, see the almost unreadable but spot on work of charles travis, e.g. unshadowed thought).

http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Nagarjuna/Nagarjuna_and_...

http://homepages.uconn.edu/~jcb02005/

http://www.amazon.com/Unshadowed-Thought-Representation-Lang...

if someone said to linus

"given that kernels are your research project, i expected that you'd already tested whatever you're talking about on wayland and contacted its developers about security holes,"

and he replied curtly, i don't think anyone on hacker news would be "calling him out." the idea that her tone is "too aggressive" is highly suspect. it is not unusual to express ideas as if you believe them, nor to conduct yourself as if your blog posts needn't be written in the tone of My-First-Job-Interview or Visiting-My-Conservative-Grandmother-In-The-Hospital.

yes.

i'm not saying the concept is novel, i'm saying that it's the only viable option for the systems of today. related to that, i think the qubes approach will be adopted eventually (and that articles of hers, specifically, that i've read will likely come into fashion, despite the--dare i say it--borderline sexist reaction many on hn seem to have to "her tone").

regarding outright original thought, i'm sure both she and he are guilty of it. probably you and i as well; it's easier than a lot of people think. the world is large and complex, and really most of the "oh my god i can't believe [person] thought of [amazing idea]!" really ought to be marveling at the fact that [person] implemented [amazing idea] as a practical tool.

sure, we rehash over and over in our thought, but the world of ideas is so specialized that given even a few months of serious study, novelty is not particularly impressive.

i've been saying for awhile now (to anyone bored enough to listen) that qubes style isolation is the only safe idea on offer these days. i just wish qubes were usable.

i'm fairly sure that 10 years from now people are going to be citing joanna rutkowska articles with regularity. her flatfooted denial that security is possible without isolation is the only sane perspective.

the point is that starting from full isolation and straining to get things to talk to each other in the hope of achieving productivity makes sense. starting from full interactivity and straining to isolate but just when it's necessary "for security" is a battle we will all eventually lose, and we should know it already.

if you want to go linux or open source based, i would recommend thinkpenguin, https://www.thinkpenguin.com/catalog/notebook-computers-gnu-...

great customer service, and the computers hang together. amazing bang for the buck too, like mac.

i've had my hands on about 4 models of theirs. 1 had an unusable keyboard (flimsy + sticky spacebar), one had a very unpleasant trackpad, but beyond that it's been a beautiful experience from keyboard/trackpad to overall system performance to battery life to weight to, again, power for your dollar.

if i weren't happy with my thinkpad w520 (and my work 13' MBA) i'd grab a snares from thinkpenguin (or contact them and see what other models they may be able to hook me up with).

also, the point of a straw man proposal isn't exactly to be refined... it's to get jump off ideas from the straw man's trivial refutation.