Over the weekend, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)'s RISKS news digest passed along a report about a United States Air Force (USAF) drone that became unresponsive to operator commands and was accordingly shot down by a manned USAF aircraft before it could cross the Afghan border. It's unfortunate that ACM RISKS chose to package a rather lightweight and sensational report that seemed to insinuate that the drone may have become self aware, and ended with a provocative quotation about the drone being motivated by its feeling of being "sicked by reaping hapless fleshies."
The USAF's official statement on the incident is unsurprisingly terse, and an investigation is still pending. However, there seem to be no serious grounds for supposing anything like self-realization or rebellion (compassionate or otherwise) on the part of the drone, and there are several logical and factual problems with even suggesting this to be the case. Most seriously, there is no good reason to believe that a drone designed and built to be controlled by a remote human operator would have anything more than minimal capabilities of autonomous operation. Giving the machine unnecessary autonomy of any kind would be counterproductive to whole aim of building and operating an aircraft with a remote human pilot. More to the point, its seems excessively whimsical to suppose that such a highly constrained and special-purpose computer-control system could possess the richness and complexity necessarily underlying the spontaneous emergence of such a miraculous and unprecedented machine awareness. As far as becoming sick of "reaping hapless fleshies", I would hope that the human operators would take it upon themselves to conceive such a sensibility, rather than offloading the work of ethics onto a machine.
For the record, I believe that machine intelligence is entirely possible, even probable, and I do even admit the possibility of its spontaneous emergence. What I object to is that suggestion that a special-purpose machine containing the same sort of embedded computer systems common to most modern aircraft and designed to be controlled by a human pilot, albeit a remote one, would suddenly be the first machine to become not only willful, but conscious enough to be compassionate or vengeful.
As is always the case, though, truth is stranger than fiction. This most recent failure of a U.S. military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has some striking features that tell us, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, that we have more difficult problems with ourselves and how we use our machines than we do with the machines themselves. Five years ago, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) compiled and analyzed all information available on accidents involving U.S. military UAVs (there are no civilian UAVs in widespread use, that I know of), and found that the MQ-9 Reaper (also known as the MQ-9 Predator B), the UAV most commonly used in current U.S. operations in Afghanistan, suffered a noticeable preponderance of accidents due to human error[1]. In particular, operator difficulties with the poorly designed interface used for the remote control of the Reaper were cited as contributing factors in just under half of all reported accidents. These included an improperly executed attempt to transfer control of the UAV between ground control stations that resulted in the turning off of the aircraft's engines, and another episode wherein a pilot accidentally executed a routine that erased the random-access memory of the control computer while the UAV was in flight. The FAA report cites another source claiming that a sequence of keystrokes used to control the lights on the Predator UAV is almost the same as a sequence that cuts the aircraft's engine. Anyone who has ever played a video game knows how easy it can be to hit the wrong keys and get your computerized proxy metaphorically killed as a result. It would be naive to suppose that such mishaps are impossible just because the proxy is a $53.3 million[2] aircraft and the killing is quite literal.
I should note that the most of the other UAVs reviewed in the FAA report showed a much lower incidence of human error attributed to accidents, and these could usually be localized to a single eccentricity of the particular aircraft that made its operation counter-intuitive. (For instance, having to a turn a knob to the left in order to make the aircraft turn right.) However, this only seems to emphasize how the generally poor quality of the Reaper interface contributes to accidents. The episodes described by the FAA report sound eerily reminiscent of the infamous Therac-25 incidents[3], wherein a minor confusion at the interface between human and machine was all it took for someone to be seriously injured or killed. Perhaps we should worry not so much about the consciousness of our machines as about the consciousness of ourselves.
It's noteworthy that the wayward UAV was destroyed once it stopped responding to commands from its operator. This is a dramatic illustration of a basic technological principle: the thing has form and value only insofar as it serves a human purpose. The destruction of the unresponsive Predator can also be viewed, perhaps, as a tacit admission that the thing is dangerous in the absence of a human controller. Of course, there were sensible and sound reasons for USAF's action: the drone was on course to cross international boundaries, which could be easily and rightly read by others as an act of callous negligence, if not outright aggression. In all likelihood, this particular failure of a Predator was due to a component malfunction and not to any error by a human operator or maintainer. However, the episode itself and the responses it has drawn at large all call attention to a basic concern with the notion of a powerful technological artifact being allowed to drift freely out of human control. I would argue that such concern is a mark of sanity. The ease with such errors can happen, by simple misunderstandings or oversights, should highlight the profound difficulties in navigating the interface between human intentions and the machinery built and deployed to execute them.
[1] Williams, Kevin. "A Summary of Unmanned Aircraft Accident/Incident Data: Human Factors Implications". DOT/FAA/AM-04/24, Office of Aerospace Medicine, Washington DC. (available here)
[2] USAF Fact Sheet on the MQ-9 Reaper (available here)
[3] Leveson, Nancy, Clark Turner. "An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents", IEEE Computer, 26(7):18-41. (Also available here)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Hacking the Trolley Problem
When humans perpetrate awful things they are usually numb or indifferent to the awfulness of their actions. By contrast, most ordinary people -- even ones who may eventually do something awful -- will recoil when presented with the proposition that circumstances might compel them do something evil or reprehensible. It is perhaps this prospect of mechanically necessitated evil that makes what's commonly known as the Trolley Problem such a frequent and favorite topic of conversation. The original statement is due to Philippa Foot:
A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track by the mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?[1]
It would be great to fall back on a straightforward exhortation: "Don't be a tool, man!" Unfortunately, this won't work if we stay within the bounds of the thought experiment. In this, and any other standard formulation, you are inextricably caught in the machinations of a sinister mastermind; you have no choice but act out some part in what seems to be an evil deed. You can make choices, of course, but you still come out a tool.
This sort of problem is very characteristic of a certain mode of thought. The question itself, by the information it gives and the boundaries it draws for itself seems to suggest that (1) there is such a thing as some sort of "net-goodness" or "net-benefit" of an action, (2) it is possible to determine what the net-goodness of a particular decision will be, and (3) such notions of goodness are quantifiable. In fact, this dilemma is strikingly mechanistic: the passengers are imprisoned within a machine hurtling out of control, a situation that leaves them no apparent choice but to use the highly constrained controls set in place for them by a scheming architect. (I am tempted to borrow from XKCD here to make a joke: "The passengers should just type 'sudo stoptrain'.") The dilemma itself is almost a statement of a sort of frustration and despair regarding our late technological society that has been expressed elsewhere, in recent popular culture:
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death[2]
What I am suggesting is that this popular and appealing thought experiment exposes a great deal about how many people are accustomed to thinking about ethics: that 'goodness' is something that you can measure objectively and apply to the world through an effective and well-understood mechanism of control. The Trolley Problem is so persistently provocative of discussion because it takes these intuitive notions of ethics and responsibility and uses them to produce what seems to an unpalatable situation, wherein we are forced to choose only between greater or lesser evils.
A variant of the problem will, I think, bring the assumptions of the original sharply into focus. Consider the following restatement:
A trolley is running out of control down a track. Its passengers consist of members of two families unrelated by blood. In the path of the trolley are five members of one family. The passengers can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track. Unfortunately, five members of the other family are tied to that track. Should the passengers flip the switch?
I am not aware of any similar restatement of the problem, though I would not be entirely surprised to learn that there is one. Think about this variant for a moment. The utilitarian argument applicable in Foot's original statement won't work here: both families stand to suffer a terrible and tragic loss, and there seem to be no obvious criteria -- at least not generally applicable criteria -- that would make once choice clearly superior to the other. Moreover, this situation involves a very serious and troubling kind of distributed responsibility: if either party of passengers has its way as to whether or not to flip the switch, it will do so at the expense of the others. Thus, the interests at stake are not only commensurable, but necessarily in conflict with one another. Certainly one family will not sit idly by and let their loved ones perish for the sake of sparing the other family and equally deep and awful grief. The two parties will be collectively responsible for any possible outcome, and in either case, someone with the ability to affect the final outcome will suffer terribly. Foot's trolley problem seems to let us choose between a greater or a lesser evil, while this variant, which adds only a consideration of normal human social relations, appears to be truly impossible to resolve, either for the passengers, or for us as observers.
We might resort to constructing special cases where one or the other decision might seem preferable. Case-based arguments, however, are really a retreat from the sort of objectively knowable idea of net-goodness that Foot's problem proposes; they attempt to get around the problem by adding new parts to it. The very phrasing of the original Trolley Problem presumes that there is an optimal course of action, and that this course of action necessarily hinges on what the passengers do with the limited controls before the train hits. If we start asking about other elements of the situation, we are really admitting that there is more to the problem than just its mechanisms and its victims.
The trolley itself is an interesting element of the problem. To see why, compare Foot's ethical dilemma to the one of persecuted early Christians being forced to fight one another to the death in the coliseum spectacles of Imperial Rome. This problem has almost all the same elements as the Modified Trolley Problem presented above. Two parties are forcibly put into a position where their incommensurable interests are in necessary conflict, so that whoever prevails must do so at the expense of the other. Moreover, responsibility is distributed; assuming that the combatants are sincere and Christ-like christians, neither one will want to harm the other, even for the sake of his or her own well being. However, this dilemma readily admits a "poetic response" that the Trolley Problem does not: in his classic of Christian fiction, Quo Vadis, Sienkiewicz has the two would-be gladiators throw down their weapons and embrace, refusing to fight[3]. This, of course, results in their being mauled to death by captive lions. Notably, however, this response does not result in either party compromising their interests or those of the other. The two combatants, though they die anyway, seem to reach agreement that theirs is the best course of action.
The trolley forces a mechanical necessity on the situation. It is a sort of perverse deus ex machina; whereas the gods who appeared ex machina in classical tragedy did so in order to reconcile what seemed to be irresolvable conflicts of duty or justice among humans, the machine that appears as a premise of our thought experiment seems to create an irresolvable ethical conflict for the people entangled in it. The mechanical necessity of the imagined situation is an important part of what makes the thought experiment seem plausible. The passengers cannot stop the trolley, except by using the one problematic switch. The passengers cannot outrun the trolley, in order to rescue or warn the people ahead. The passengers cannot stop the trolley outright, since presumably its break mechanisms are malfunctioning. The machine (the trolley) essentially forces its passengers to evaluate outcomes in terms of a single point of control (the switch that changes tracks), thus forcing a lose-lose situation because, being only a machine, it can only do so much.
How one views and states a problem has a profound impact on what the accepted courses action will be. (This is a theme that came up earlier in "Paradox and Specification".) Foot's original Trolley Problem understands the problem as one of constraint by machine and evaluation of net-goodness. Thus, it only makes sense that the ethical question is phrased as "Should you flip the switch?" If this were a computer program, we would ask "What form does the output take?", and our response would be "A one-bit signal indicating whether or not the trolley changes tracks." However, I would argue that the Modified Trolley Problem articulated above is impossible to resolved by either flipping of the switch. In the Modified Problem, something awful will happen no matter what the passengers do, and neither the passengers nor any observer is able to leverage this one decision (whether or not to flip the switch) into anything like a commensurably better outcome. To me, this suggests that "Should you flip the switch?" is the wrong question. Answering it tells us nothing helpful.
What, then, is the right question? How about, "What does each family owe to the other in the wake of the tragedy?" Or, "How should each family behave toward the other?" Confining the scope of the ethnical question to within the boundaries of the machine is mistake, and precludes any kind of useful ethical directives. Asking "Should you flip the switch?" is characteristic of a myopic view in which we assume that problems can be solved once and for all by a single decision; in this case, by simply flipping a switch. (Does this mean that the modern world is promising us "push-button" ethics?) What I contend to have constructed here is a problem that cannot be solved in terms of the mechanisms actually available in Foot's formulation, or in any of the standard formulations. Tragedy cannot be averted or even mitigated. Rather, the participants of the tragedy must look to themselves, and to one another in order to understand how to cope with and accept something truly horrible. We must not localize our notions of consequence to only short-term outcomes, and we must not constrain our notions of possibility to those made explicitly available us by people that it seems do not have our best interests at heart.
There is a great deal more to ethical behavior, it seems, than the mere exercise of control.
[1] Foot, Philippa. The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect in Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978)
[2] Godspeed You Black Emporer. "The Dead Flag Blues", F#A#∞. Constellation Records, 1997.
[3] Sienkiewicz, Henryk, Stanley Conrad (Trans.). Quo Vadis?. Ignatius Press, 1992. (Also available through Project Gutenburg.)
A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track by the mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?[1]
It would be great to fall back on a straightforward exhortation: "Don't be a tool, man!" Unfortunately, this won't work if we stay within the bounds of the thought experiment. In this, and any other standard formulation, you are inextricably caught in the machinations of a sinister mastermind; you have no choice but act out some part in what seems to be an evil deed. You can make choices, of course, but you still come out a tool.
This sort of problem is very characteristic of a certain mode of thought. The question itself, by the information it gives and the boundaries it draws for itself seems to suggest that (1) there is such a thing as some sort of "net-goodness" or "net-benefit" of an action, (2) it is possible to determine what the net-goodness of a particular decision will be, and (3) such notions of goodness are quantifiable. In fact, this dilemma is strikingly mechanistic: the passengers are imprisoned within a machine hurtling out of control, a situation that leaves them no apparent choice but to use the highly constrained controls set in place for them by a scheming architect. (I am tempted to borrow from XKCD here to make a joke: "The passengers should just type 'sudo stoptrain'.") The dilemma itself is almost a statement of a sort of frustration and despair regarding our late technological society that has been expressed elsewhere, in recent popular culture:
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death[2]
What I am suggesting is that this popular and appealing thought experiment exposes a great deal about how many people are accustomed to thinking about ethics: that 'goodness' is something that you can measure objectively and apply to the world through an effective and well-understood mechanism of control. The Trolley Problem is so persistently provocative of discussion because it takes these intuitive notions of ethics and responsibility and uses them to produce what seems to an unpalatable situation, wherein we are forced to choose only between greater or lesser evils.
A variant of the problem will, I think, bring the assumptions of the original sharply into focus. Consider the following restatement:
A trolley is running out of control down a track. Its passengers consist of members of two families unrelated by blood. In the path of the trolley are five members of one family. The passengers can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track. Unfortunately, five members of the other family are tied to that track. Should the passengers flip the switch?
I am not aware of any similar restatement of the problem, though I would not be entirely surprised to learn that there is one. Think about this variant for a moment. The utilitarian argument applicable in Foot's original statement won't work here: both families stand to suffer a terrible and tragic loss, and there seem to be no obvious criteria -- at least not generally applicable criteria -- that would make once choice clearly superior to the other. Moreover, this situation involves a very serious and troubling kind of distributed responsibility: if either party of passengers has its way as to whether or not to flip the switch, it will do so at the expense of the others. Thus, the interests at stake are not only commensurable, but necessarily in conflict with one another. Certainly one family will not sit idly by and let their loved ones perish for the sake of sparing the other family and equally deep and awful grief. The two parties will be collectively responsible for any possible outcome, and in either case, someone with the ability to affect the final outcome will suffer terribly. Foot's trolley problem seems to let us choose between a greater or a lesser evil, while this variant, which adds only a consideration of normal human social relations, appears to be truly impossible to resolve, either for the passengers, or for us as observers.
We might resort to constructing special cases where one or the other decision might seem preferable. Case-based arguments, however, are really a retreat from the sort of objectively knowable idea of net-goodness that Foot's problem proposes; they attempt to get around the problem by adding new parts to it. The very phrasing of the original Trolley Problem presumes that there is an optimal course of action, and that this course of action necessarily hinges on what the passengers do with the limited controls before the train hits. If we start asking about other elements of the situation, we are really admitting that there is more to the problem than just its mechanisms and its victims.
The trolley itself is an interesting element of the problem. To see why, compare Foot's ethical dilemma to the one of persecuted early Christians being forced to fight one another to the death in the coliseum spectacles of Imperial Rome. This problem has almost all the same elements as the Modified Trolley Problem presented above. Two parties are forcibly put into a position where their incommensurable interests are in necessary conflict, so that whoever prevails must do so at the expense of the other. Moreover, responsibility is distributed; assuming that the combatants are sincere and Christ-like christians, neither one will want to harm the other, even for the sake of his or her own well being. However, this dilemma readily admits a "poetic response" that the Trolley Problem does not: in his classic of Christian fiction, Quo Vadis, Sienkiewicz has the two would-be gladiators throw down their weapons and embrace, refusing to fight[3]. This, of course, results in their being mauled to death by captive lions. Notably, however, this response does not result in either party compromising their interests or those of the other. The two combatants, though they die anyway, seem to reach agreement that theirs is the best course of action.
The trolley forces a mechanical necessity on the situation. It is a sort of perverse deus ex machina; whereas the gods who appeared ex machina in classical tragedy did so in order to reconcile what seemed to be irresolvable conflicts of duty or justice among humans, the machine that appears as a premise of our thought experiment seems to create an irresolvable ethical conflict for the people entangled in it. The mechanical necessity of the imagined situation is an important part of what makes the thought experiment seem plausible. The passengers cannot stop the trolley, except by using the one problematic switch. The passengers cannot outrun the trolley, in order to rescue or warn the people ahead. The passengers cannot stop the trolley outright, since presumably its break mechanisms are malfunctioning. The machine (the trolley) essentially forces its passengers to evaluate outcomes in terms of a single point of control (the switch that changes tracks), thus forcing a lose-lose situation because, being only a machine, it can only do so much.
How one views and states a problem has a profound impact on what the accepted courses action will be. (This is a theme that came up earlier in "Paradox and Specification".) Foot's original Trolley Problem understands the problem as one of constraint by machine and evaluation of net-goodness. Thus, it only makes sense that the ethical question is phrased as "Should you flip the switch?" If this were a computer program, we would ask "What form does the output take?", and our response would be "A one-bit signal indicating whether or not the trolley changes tracks." However, I would argue that the Modified Trolley Problem articulated above is impossible to resolved by either flipping of the switch. In the Modified Problem, something awful will happen no matter what the passengers do, and neither the passengers nor any observer is able to leverage this one decision (whether or not to flip the switch) into anything like a commensurably better outcome. To me, this suggests that "Should you flip the switch?" is the wrong question. Answering it tells us nothing helpful.
What, then, is the right question? How about, "What does each family owe to the other in the wake of the tragedy?" Or, "How should each family behave toward the other?" Confining the scope of the ethnical question to within the boundaries of the machine is mistake, and precludes any kind of useful ethical directives. Asking "Should you flip the switch?" is characteristic of a myopic view in which we assume that problems can be solved once and for all by a single decision; in this case, by simply flipping a switch. (Does this mean that the modern world is promising us "push-button" ethics?) What I contend to have constructed here is a problem that cannot be solved in terms of the mechanisms actually available in Foot's formulation, or in any of the standard formulations. Tragedy cannot be averted or even mitigated. Rather, the participants of the tragedy must look to themselves, and to one another in order to understand how to cope with and accept something truly horrible. We must not localize our notions of consequence to only short-term outcomes, and we must not constrain our notions of possibility to those made explicitly available us by people that it seems do not have our best interests at heart.
There is a great deal more to ethical behavior, it seems, than the mere exercise of control.
[1] Foot, Philippa. The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect in Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978)
[2] Godspeed You Black Emporer. "The Dead Flag Blues", F#A#∞. Constellation Records, 1997.
[3] Sienkiewicz, Henryk, Stanley Conrad (Trans.). Quo Vadis?. Ignatius Press, 1992. (Also available through Project Gutenburg.)
Monday, September 28, 2009
Paradox and Bad Specification
In the early Twentieth Century Bertrand Russell published a variant of the so-called Liar Paradox which he attributed to Oxford librarian G. G. Berry, and which, accordingly, is now commonly known as Berry's Paradox. The paradox is constructed as follows: What is the first number with an English language description of more than, say, thirty syllables? It seems reasonable to suppose that there is such a number; we can certainly think of numbers with descriptions that long. But how can we actually locate the first one? We could count, and for each number counted go through a list of its descriptions and count their respective syllables. It seems only logical that if there exists a number with no description of less than thirty syllables, then we must eventually reach it in the process of counting. Moreover, if such numbers exist at all, then there must be a first i.e. least such number. But wait! There's a catch! Suppose we reach a number, say N, and all the possible descriptions of N are thirty syllables or more. Suppose also that N is the first such number. Then N can be uniquely described as "the least number with no description less than thirty syllables", which is a description of exactly sixteen syllables. Sixteen is indisputably less than thirty, and so it would appear that N cannot be the least number with no description less than thirty syllables. Hence, the apparent paradox: conferring the name "least number with a description of less than thirty syllables" renders the name itself incorrect and inapplicable as soon as a candidate number is discovered.
The interest in this particular paradox, I think, is that it takes the self-referential circularity of the more commonly treated Liar Paradox and elaborates it as something of a computational procedure. The paradox has a certain intuitive appeal, because it takes a number of familiar, accessible ideas and puts them together with an unexpected result. To demonstrate what I mean by this, consider a naive algorithm (call it A) that seems to implement the sort of count-and-check procedure described above:
Unfortunately, this algorithm won't work. One problem is that there are, arguably, an infinite number of descriptions for any given number. For one thing, there are infinitely many ways to define a number in terms of arithmetic expressions, for instance, as the difference of two other numbers. (That is we can use the fact that , for any N, N = (M + N) - M, for any other number M, to generate infinitely many descriptions.) For another thing, we can define infinitely many numbers in terms of the sort of "tokens" that Frege used in his argument that the natural numbers are an a priori analytic concept[1]. For instance, "the number of dishes on the table I am sitting at, at Lakota Coffee of Columbia, Missouri on September 28, 2009" and "the distance, in centimeters, rounded down to the nearest whole number, between inch marks on a ruler" are both in some sense valid descriptions of the number two. Besides the apparent infinity of such descriptions, there is also an obvious difficulty in devising a procedure that could generate them all; this is left as an exercise to the inordinately skeptical reader.
These difficulties are not wholly insurmountable though; we might be interested only in a certain class of descriptions that we can finitely generate. In this sense, "the least number with no description less than thirty syllables" smells surprisingly like a bad specification. If we were actually interested in writing such a program, we would immediately ask, "Well, what kind of descriptions do you mean?" simply because "all" is generally an unreasonable thing to ask of machines except in the most tightly constrained circumstances. The paradox thus achieves its amusing paradoxicality by dwelling on its own bad specification. Consider, for instance, what we get if we devise an algorithm (call it A') closer in spirit to the algorithm as it plays out in the human mind:
BEGIN (A'): Set N := 0; L := EMPTY;
STEP 1: DO [generate new descriptions of N; append these to list L]
STEP 2: FOR EACH [description in L] DO [count syllables in the description; let MIN := smallest number of syllables counted so far]
STEP 3: IF (MIN > 30) THEN [append "least number with no description less than thirty syllables" to L; GOTO STEP 2] ELSE [N := N + 1; L:= EMPTY; GOTO STEP 1]
This is a slight variation on A, wherein we make the accumulation of descriptions in L at least partially explicit. The details of this are not important here (but try to work them out if you don't believe me). What is important is that the program now appends the paradoxical description to its list of descriptions-to-check, and checks it. This, of course, means that the program will throw out any and all candidates, either because the ordinary name-generation process produces a name that is less than thirty syllables, or because the very same process generates only thirty-syllable or longer names, which in turn triggers STEP 3 to append "the least number with no description less than thirty syllables" to the list of names to check, which then leads to the list being rechecked, and thus to the number being rejected on the subsequent pass. Essentially, the program is written to undo its own work and hence to work endlessly in exactly the same way that Berry's Paradox appears to lead to an indefinite search for the elusive number described in its statement.
There is an interesting conceptual disconnect between A and A'. Properly constrained, A will eventually halt and output something sensible, but doesn't do anything at all paradoxical. On the other hand, A' can never halt but "acts like" the paradox as it seems to present itself. Which one of these is correct? Before you answer, consider that we could modify A' so that, in STEP 3, N is output before going back to STEP 2. In this case, we would get an infinite sequence of numbers as output, the first of which would be the same as the output of A. Moreover, we could make the output of A identical, simply by changing "HALT" in STEP 4 to "GOTO STEP 1". The programs look different, and are differently motivated, but not all that different in how they actually work. More precisely, it is only our idea of the problem that seems to influence the decision of what the program should output and when it should stop. Even more surprisingly, the presence of the paradoxical description ("the least number ...") as in A' seems to be unnecessary; we could replace it with any description of less than thirty syllables, or we could just use modified-A to get exactly the same output.
I had at first imagined a profound and sweeping essay of logic and computer science that would somehow relate Berry's Paradox to program bugs or verification procedures, but this proved far too broad, and never quite seemed to resolve into a single idea of any greater coherence than "they all lead to an indefinite search for an elusive thing." Fittingly, though, I've come to the conclusion that the paradox is best framed as an instance of bad specification, but a very particular kind of bad specification. Essentially, asking for "the least number with no description of less than thirty syllables" is asking for too much, because it requires the seeker to account for "all" descriptions, in order to prove that "none" of them violate the sought-after property. Of course, we can always narrow the scope of admissible descriptions, as we presumably did to produce A and A'. This reduces the problem to a question of "going through these finite sets in order, which is the first that contains no small things?" This question is considerably less provocative than a paradox, and the reader might join me in finding it substantially less interesting. The thrill of mystery, or the unexplained seems to be the fun of the paradox and, weirdly, constraining this away seems to give us something materially present (i.e. a halting program with output) but rather dull. Considering that people program and use computers with human motives, one must ask if we ever make paradoxical demands on our machines and attempt to implement them, only to find ourselves disappointed.
[1] Frege, Gottlob, J. L. Austin (Trans.). Foundations of Arithmetic. Northwestern University Press, 1968.
The interest in this particular paradox, I think, is that it takes the self-referential circularity of the more commonly treated Liar Paradox and elaborates it as something of a computational procedure. The paradox has a certain intuitive appeal, because it takes a number of familiar, accessible ideas and puts them together with an unexpected result. To demonstrate what I mean by this, consider a naive algorithm (call it A) that seems to implement the sort of count-and-check procedure described above:
BEGIN (A): Set N := 0;
STEP 1: DO [generate all descriptions of N; denote this list by L]
STEP 2: FOR EACH [description in L] DO [count syllables in the description; let MIN := smallest number of syllables counted so far]
STEP 3: IF (MIN > 30) THEN [output N; HALT] ELSE [N := N + 1; GOTO STEP 1]Unfortunately, this algorithm won't work. One problem is that there are, arguably, an infinite number of descriptions for any given number. For one thing, there are infinitely many ways to define a number in terms of arithmetic expressions, for instance, as the difference of two other numbers. (That is we can use the fact that , for any N, N = (M + N) - M, for any other number M, to generate infinitely many descriptions.) For another thing, we can define infinitely many numbers in terms of the sort of "tokens" that Frege used in his argument that the natural numbers are an a priori analytic concept[1]. For instance, "the number of dishes on the table I am sitting at, at Lakota Coffee of Columbia, Missouri on September 28, 2009" and "the distance, in centimeters, rounded down to the nearest whole number, between inch marks on a ruler" are both in some sense valid descriptions of the number two. Besides the apparent infinity of such descriptions, there is also an obvious difficulty in devising a procedure that could generate them all; this is left as an exercise to the inordinately skeptical reader.
These difficulties are not wholly insurmountable though; we might be interested only in a certain class of descriptions that we can finitely generate. In this sense, "the least number with no description less than thirty syllables" smells surprisingly like a bad specification. If we were actually interested in writing such a program, we would immediately ask, "Well, what kind of descriptions do you mean?" simply because "all" is generally an unreasonable thing to ask of machines except in the most tightly constrained circumstances. The paradox thus achieves its amusing paradoxicality by dwelling on its own bad specification. Consider, for instance, what we get if we devise an algorithm (call it A') closer in spirit to the algorithm as it plays out in the human mind:
BEGIN (A'): Set N := 0; L := EMPTY;
STEP 1: DO [generate new descriptions of N; append these to list L]
STEP 2: FOR EACH [description in L] DO [count syllables in the description; let MIN := smallest number of syllables counted so far]
STEP 3: IF (MIN > 30) THEN [append "least number with no description less than thirty syllables" to L; GOTO STEP 2] ELSE [N := N + 1; L:= EMPTY; GOTO STEP 1]
This is a slight variation on A, wherein we make the accumulation of descriptions in L at least partially explicit. The details of this are not important here (but try to work them out if you don't believe me). What is important is that the program now appends the paradoxical description to its list of descriptions-to-check, and checks it. This, of course, means that the program will throw out any and all candidates, either because the ordinary name-generation process produces a name that is less than thirty syllables, or because the very same process generates only thirty-syllable or longer names, which in turn triggers STEP 3 to append "the least number with no description less than thirty syllables" to the list of names to check, which then leads to the list being rechecked, and thus to the number being rejected on the subsequent pass. Essentially, the program is written to undo its own work and hence to work endlessly in exactly the same way that Berry's Paradox appears to lead to an indefinite search for the elusive number described in its statement.
There is an interesting conceptual disconnect between A and A'. Properly constrained, A will eventually halt and output something sensible, but doesn't do anything at all paradoxical. On the other hand, A' can never halt but "acts like" the paradox as it seems to present itself. Which one of these is correct? Before you answer, consider that we could modify A' so that, in STEP 3, N is output before going back to STEP 2. In this case, we would get an infinite sequence of numbers as output, the first of which would be the same as the output of A. Moreover, we could make the output of A identical, simply by changing "HALT" in STEP 4 to "GOTO STEP 1". The programs look different, and are differently motivated, but not all that different in how they actually work. More precisely, it is only our idea of the problem that seems to influence the decision of what the program should output and when it should stop. Even more surprisingly, the presence of the paradoxical description ("the least number ...") as in A' seems to be unnecessary; we could replace it with any description of less than thirty syllables, or we could just use modified-A to get exactly the same output.
I had at first imagined a profound and sweeping essay of logic and computer science that would somehow relate Berry's Paradox to program bugs or verification procedures, but this proved far too broad, and never quite seemed to resolve into a single idea of any greater coherence than "they all lead to an indefinite search for an elusive thing." Fittingly, though, I've come to the conclusion that the paradox is best framed as an instance of bad specification, but a very particular kind of bad specification. Essentially, asking for "the least number with no description of less than thirty syllables" is asking for too much, because it requires the seeker to account for "all" descriptions, in order to prove that "none" of them violate the sought-after property. Of course, we can always narrow the scope of admissible descriptions, as we presumably did to produce A and A'. This reduces the problem to a question of "going through these finite sets in order, which is the first that contains no small things?" This question is considerably less provocative than a paradox, and the reader might join me in finding it substantially less interesting. The thrill of mystery, or the unexplained seems to be the fun of the paradox and, weirdly, constraining this away seems to give us something materially present (i.e. a halting program with output) but rather dull. Considering that people program and use computers with human motives, one must ask if we ever make paradoxical demands on our machines and attempt to implement them, only to find ourselves disappointed.
[1] Frege, Gottlob, J. L. Austin (Trans.). Foundations of Arithmetic. Northwestern University Press, 1968.
On Burning and Place
[a portion of a personal correspondence]
Some years ago, I had a deep insight into things, and it left me with the conviction that "everything has a place." Thinking of place and personal story today, I feel an equally deep and perhaps even more lucid impulse to add, "and that place is on fire." Sakyamuni Buddha once said, "All things are burning." The world is burning. We are burning. What are we to make of this?
Fire is a potent metaphor in many traditions. In the Lotus Sutra, the buddha uses a tactful trick to lead his children out of a burning house and out into safety. A common maxim of the Zen school is that one should practice "with urgency, as if your head is on fire." The Hells of the world's imaginations are all conspicuously aflame. Wendell Berry has referred to the destructive and exploitative modes and motives of our late civilization as "the combustion economy," which I think very vividly and completely captures the essential features of the modern way of life.
This has always bothered me, and it bothers me more as time passes. Feeling the heat of the flames, knowing that the world is burning, how can we possibly hope, and without hope, how can we possibly live? I have grown accustomed to living my own life astride the fault line of contradictions, but even familiarity cannot drown out the din of conflict. This has had many faces in my own past, but today I think of myself at the heart (though not the center) of a huge technological, economic, and social complex whose ways I find monstrous and inhuman, and my own heart is deeply troubled as to how I should live.
Why are there two worlds? We see a world of pastoral nature and a world created by man. Why are there two Americas? We see before us the America that is given, and the America that is taken. These division are not merely conceptual; they have become real matters of habit and of fact. More and more, I see these differences not as mere discriminations, but as deep wounds. Seeing this, I find that I want nothing more than to see these wounds healed, by wholeness and by peace.
But still the world burns, and we are in it. It burns with division. It burns with strife. It burns with vicious self-consumption. There is no way to simply remove ourselves, or to be above it. Even if this were possible, it would only be another division, bringing with it still more war and more hatred. There is no individual merit, and there is no individual guilt. We are all in this together, and we must take what we are given. But then what do we do?
The events of September 11, 2001 have become a deadly potent cultural symbol for us as Americans. I say this having largely disregarded their significance myself, until very recently. That occasion seemed to bring into sharp focus exactly the painful divisions, of worlds, of Americas, that we all now suffer from. It is the vividness and suddenness with which that division was manifested that made that episode so deeply terrifying to so many. The essential image is one of burning, and collapse. This is not, however, the only image. One of the stories most heralded, and most remembered by those involved was that of firefighters entering the doomed towers in search of the trapped and the wounded. It was an action of unmistakable selflessness and heroism, and one that spanned the divisions of that awful day and of the awful things it embodied.
I had not given this much thought until today, when it suddenly came into clear focus, and I said to myself, "Everything has a place, and that place is on fire."
We all give our lives to something, though we may not acknowledge it. As humans, each of us only has so much time, and so the use of our time is ultimately a gift to someone, or to something. When we willingly dwell in this burning world, we give our lives to a world that is imperiled. But does this fire ever go out? Is it within our grasp to extinguish it? These questions are matters for those who are trying to hold onto lives, rather than give them. It is thus that Jesus said, "whoever tries to save his own life shall lose it"; life is not a thing that is kept or obtained, it can only be a thing that is used. It is in search of peace that we enter the ground of war. It is in search of unity that we embrace division. It is only loving action, though our lives and according to our own capabilities, that can make things whole.
Things are different. People are different. We all have a place. When we go to our place, even as it burns, it is an act of selflessness and heroism. Fire is not only destruction, but warmth and light. These, ultimately, become the gifts of our own lives.
Some years ago, I had a deep insight into things, and it left me with the conviction that "everything has a place." Thinking of place and personal story today, I feel an equally deep and perhaps even more lucid impulse to add, "and that place is on fire." Sakyamuni Buddha once said, "All things are burning." The world is burning. We are burning. What are we to make of this?
Fire is a potent metaphor in many traditions. In the Lotus Sutra, the buddha uses a tactful trick to lead his children out of a burning house and out into safety. A common maxim of the Zen school is that one should practice "with urgency, as if your head is on fire." The Hells of the world's imaginations are all conspicuously aflame. Wendell Berry has referred to the destructive and exploitative modes and motives of our late civilization as "the combustion economy," which I think very vividly and completely captures the essential features of the modern way of life.
This has always bothered me, and it bothers me more as time passes. Feeling the heat of the flames, knowing that the world is burning, how can we possibly hope, and without hope, how can we possibly live? I have grown accustomed to living my own life astride the fault line of contradictions, but even familiarity cannot drown out the din of conflict. This has had many faces in my own past, but today I think of myself at the heart (though not the center) of a huge technological, economic, and social complex whose ways I find monstrous and inhuman, and my own heart is deeply troubled as to how I should live.
Why are there two worlds? We see a world of pastoral nature and a world created by man. Why are there two Americas? We see before us the America that is given, and the America that is taken. These division are not merely conceptual; they have become real matters of habit and of fact. More and more, I see these differences not as mere discriminations, but as deep wounds. Seeing this, I find that I want nothing more than to see these wounds healed, by wholeness and by peace.
But still the world burns, and we are in it. It burns with division. It burns with strife. It burns with vicious self-consumption. There is no way to simply remove ourselves, or to be above it. Even if this were possible, it would only be another division, bringing with it still more war and more hatred. There is no individual merit, and there is no individual guilt. We are all in this together, and we must take what we are given. But then what do we do?
The events of September 11, 2001 have become a deadly potent cultural symbol for us as Americans. I say this having largely disregarded their significance myself, until very recently. That occasion seemed to bring into sharp focus exactly the painful divisions, of worlds, of Americas, that we all now suffer from. It is the vividness and suddenness with which that division was manifested that made that episode so deeply terrifying to so many. The essential image is one of burning, and collapse. This is not, however, the only image. One of the stories most heralded, and most remembered by those involved was that of firefighters entering the doomed towers in search of the trapped and the wounded. It was an action of unmistakable selflessness and heroism, and one that spanned the divisions of that awful day and of the awful things it embodied.
I had not given this much thought until today, when it suddenly came into clear focus, and I said to myself, "Everything has a place, and that place is on fire."
We all give our lives to something, though we may not acknowledge it. As humans, each of us only has so much time, and so the use of our time is ultimately a gift to someone, or to something. When we willingly dwell in this burning world, we give our lives to a world that is imperiled. But does this fire ever go out? Is it within our grasp to extinguish it? These questions are matters for those who are trying to hold onto lives, rather than give them. It is thus that Jesus said, "whoever tries to save his own life shall lose it"; life is not a thing that is kept or obtained, it can only be a thing that is used. It is in search of peace that we enter the ground of war. It is in search of unity that we embrace division. It is only loving action, though our lives and according to our own capabilities, that can make things whole.
Things are different. People are different. We all have a place. When we go to our place, even as it burns, it is an act of selflessness and heroism. Fire is not only destruction, but warmth and light. These, ultimately, become the gifts of our own lives.
Monday, September 14, 2009
More Than Dust and Smoke: A Personal Perspective on Recent American History
When I was about seven or eight years old, in what would have been the late 1980s or early 1990s, I saw a photograph of a volcanic explosion doctored to look as if it bore the face of the devil. I saw it at a supermarket check-out line, on the cover of one of those tabloids that printed blatantly false and fantastical "news". Although I feel like I should have known better, I was a very sensitive and deeply impressionable child, and I was deeply disturbed to see a report, accompanied by apparent photographic evidence, that evil itself had burst forth from the very depths of the Earth in a sulfurous cloud of smoke and ash. The grocery had always seemed like pleasant, familiar, and safe place, but for weeks afterward its bright cleanliness and its promises of plenty were somehow darkened by vividly illustrated news of a demonic emergence from the depths of a shockingly literal Hell.
In my memory of today, that old supermarket tabloid is a document of unconcealed silliness, and the face of that fabricated devil is laughably cartoonish. A cosmology in which Satan lives inside of a volcano in Alaska seems almost quaint, as if he was little more than the eccentric and decadent villain of a James Bond movie. I remember my mother trying to explain to me that the photograph was fake, and why it was that a newspaper would publish reports with no factual content. I remember trying to comfort myself that it was all a harmless spoof belonging to the strangely frivolous and disconnected world of adults. I also remember how little comfort any of those arguments brought.
Surprising though it was, I was willing to believe in the falsity of certain news reports and the possibility of faking photographs. Possibility, though, is immeasurably bigger than any particular collection of events. I knew that there were other newspapers that were not fake, and whose photos depicted real events. I knew that each day brought new stories and new pictures, and there seemed to be no guessing what they might contain. I convinced myself that the picture was a fake, and that the devil was not erupting from a volcano somewhere in North America. Still, that seemed to provide no guarantee against what unforeseen but unquestionably real nightmares might emerge from the passage of days. I couldn't imagine what faces might yet appear, or where.
That cartoonish devil still floats in my memory, as a chimera of childish gullibility and mute awareness of the limits of the predictable.
In September of 2001, I had very little going on. My health was bad. School was not going well, and I didn't really care. Kung fu was the sole point of interest, and it was the only thing that I really worked at, but it seemed to cause me more frustration than anything else. Mostly I just wanted to play video games, and not think about the future.
On Tuesday the 11th, I didn't have class and so woke up extremely late. I put on some dirty workout clothes, went to the living room, and fumbled around trying to arrange the weights on a barbell for a strength workout. After one set, I turned on the television and saw that there seemed to be a news broadcast going on at an odd our the day. Someone was speaking dryly but haggardly about the stability of the stock market. I thought, oh, the market must have crashed, and took no further interest. I left the television on as I did several more sets. The press conference gave way to several others, then one or two monologues by television anchors. This was followed by a video of a very large building collapsing on itself in a plume of dust. I thought, huh, did someone botch a demolition job? The newspeople seemed all to be working under the assumption that I had been watching their broadcast for some time and so knew what was going on. I was not especially interested in what they were saying, though, and had written all them off some time ago as shameless seekers of attention. At some point, from bits and pieces fished out from the stream of information oozing in through the television, I gathered that someone had crashed commercial airliners into both towers of the World Trade Center, precipitating the collapse and utter destruction of the entire building. Realizing this, I recall saying to myself, "Ah, now that's something you don't see every day."
Later, my brother and I went to our favorite gas station off of the I-70 exit and got a soda. We ignored the minor panic of nervous motorists and windingly queued-up automobiles swirling around the gas pumps. Later, I went out and did what I always did at night, which consisted of drinking many cups of coffee at Osama's Coffee Zone (no, I am not making up that detail) and stubbornly studying abstract algebra that I could only barely understand. My days had long ceased to have any interest for me, and knowing no other way to orient myself, I tried to take pride in this, though I could scarcely understand how it was anything to be proud of. People always seemed to think that constancy was a virtue, and so I patted myself on the back for making all my days look exactly the same. I had become skilled at bending other people's views to suit mine.
At 10:00 PM that night, I honestly wondered if anyone I knew had not yet heard what had happened, and if I would be the first to break the news of the total destruction of a major U.S. landmark. As it turned out, everyone had, and I found myself vaguely annoyed with how hard people were taking an event that did not seem to impact any of them directly. There are, I thought to myself then, many thousands of people dying every day all over the world in events just as surprising and horrible. Why should this one event be any different? It seemed to me cowardly and self-indulgent to give these other tragedies, happening continuously around the world, such scant thought or mention, but then to raise a loud, public lament when our own false senses of security are shattered.
The world is full of pain and death as a principle, I would say to people then, so why raise a hue and cry now?
On the 12th, the Chancellor of the University declared a campus-wide moment of silence at noon. I was unaware of it until after it had happened. At noon, I simply found myself walking through ghostly still and silent crowds of people as a bell tolled from somewhere above. I hunched under a backpack that was too heavy for me, and scowled.
I look back at my profound sickness of the soul with sober disapproval, and I am never proud of it. To this day I do not fully comprehend how it came to be. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I saw too many stories of important events confabulated, and then debunked.
Just over three years later, my brother would die in an accident. Four years later, I would fall in love on the day that the city of New Orleans was almost totally destroyed by a powerful hurricane. Six years later I would lose that too. That was the same day that they unceremoniously tore down the old plantation house at the north edge of town, the one that had stood there since before I had moved here over twenty years ago.
The other night I returned home late. I turned on the television to see what was on, and discovered that the channel it had been left on was airing old news broadcasts from eight years ago. All the sudden I was seized with the feeling that I had lived through some history whose importance I had never really grasped at all. Many things have changed in the time that has passed, and all of it makes me see those events in a new perspective.
There is a profound tragedy in the perpetration of such a tremendous act of violence, and in the many lives lost as a consequence. There is no diminishing, or ignoring this, but I am of the firm conviction that death is a thing that speaks best and most truthfully for itself. For us as Americans, however, there is also a deep cultural significance attached to this event, one that goes beyond the number of lives lost, or the shocking manner in which they were lost.
I encourage the reader to locate and watch an old news broadcast of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I don't mean a news broadcast detailing the events after the fact, I mean a recording of the journalists and broadcasters struggling to cover the events as they unfold. Watch from the first announcement at least up until the collapse of the second tower of the World Trade Center. Events unfold with the surreal abruptness of a nightmare and indeed, I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that those events have become a nightmare of the collective mind of America. As is the case with nightmares, a patient examination reveals the unexpected contents of the unconscious.
The most conspicuous feature of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 is the utter helplessness of everyone involved. The journalists, whose modern profession is to appear confident and knowledgeable about the world, are shaken, confused, and visibly frightened. Their voices tremble. They speculate wildly and talk over one another. They ask questions that no one answers. A train of experts comment by phone, with none offering anything but bewilderment. The President delivers a short statement saying nothing new. The terrorists would seem to be the only ones with any power at all, and even they obtain it only at the cost of immolating themselves, so that even the perpetrators of this awful act have no real control over the course of events. All the while, the World Trade Center burns, the Pentagon burns, and the cameras are able to do nothing but sit and watch.
On that day, American wealth and American military power, the two things we have all learned to take for granted, are suddenly revealed as fallible. They suffer the destruction of two of their most conspicuous symbols and appear wholly unable to defend themselves. This is a profound revelation for our nation, for us as a people. Its significance should not be underestimated. For generations now, we have been able to justify all of our best and highest expectations for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, and for the country as a whole simply by noting that "this is America." We learned to take American victory and American prosperity for granted. We assumed ourselves invincible and eternal. Then, for a fleeting instant we all saw a face in the dust and the smoke, threatening us with the possibility that it could all be suddenly snatched away.
We should have learned, all of us, to live in a world where successes cannot be assumed. We should have learned that the ideals and principles of America as we know it, as we believe in it, as it can be, stand beyond the reach of money, influence, or forceful violence. America is not unbounded abundance and military victory, but liberty, equality, and justice for any and all who would peaceably dwell here. We should have learned that wealth and power are not bestowed on us from on high, but earned through perseverance and hard toil. I think that to some degree we did all learn that lesson. But I also think that would could have learned it better, and taken it more to heart.
Why do I say we could have done better? Because in the years that followed, we proceeded to try simply to debunk the frightening fallibility of American power through a series of far-reaching and ill-planned military adventures. We tried to debunk the threat of scarcity or poverty, in the days immediately after by urging the people their money freely "for the good of the economy", and in the long days after by turning a blind eye to destructive and short-sighted machinations of powerful financiers and captains of industry whose schemes ultimately spelled ruin for our economy today. We could have done more to reflect upon and nurture the sources of our power and our wealth, instead of recklessly flaunting them in an attempt to trivialize the significance of that terrible day. Our power and our wealth begin with our people and our land. We pursue heedless war and easy gain at their expense.
This is the error of those would abstract away from this event, and attempt to turn it into a simple schematic of wealth and power flowing here and there across the world. This sin was committed in many ways, by all kinds of people with all kinds of politics: the war profiteers with their lucrative government contracts, the idealogues who condoned the violence and indulged their own self-loathing, the politicians who used tragedy as a device for personal ambitions, and the demagogues who used the deaths of thousands of Americans to sow fear and division among honest citizens. These are all the people who would tell us that such things are "just the way world", disguising half-hearted and selfish fatalism as wisdom or maturity, in a self-serving justification for the callous pursuit their own small agendas.
We can do better than that. Loving your country means accepting responsibility for its past, present, and future. It means taking its triumphs and its tragedies to heart as your own. It means accepting its virtues and its faults as if they were your own. Being a genuine citizen means much more than just being on the winning team.
They say that tragedy tests a person. Surely the same is true of nations. Even all these years later, we should look back at that tragedy and ask what that test has showed us about ourselves. There is much more to America than wealth and power. There is much more to those terrible events of eight years ago than cartoonish caricature of evil, or a series of disembodied images beamed in from far away. The tragedy is one of real people and real events, all of which, in some way or another, belong to all of us.
In my memory of today, that old supermarket tabloid is a document of unconcealed silliness, and the face of that fabricated devil is laughably cartoonish. A cosmology in which Satan lives inside of a volcano in Alaska seems almost quaint, as if he was little more than the eccentric and decadent villain of a James Bond movie. I remember my mother trying to explain to me that the photograph was fake, and why it was that a newspaper would publish reports with no factual content. I remember trying to comfort myself that it was all a harmless spoof belonging to the strangely frivolous and disconnected world of adults. I also remember how little comfort any of those arguments brought.
Surprising though it was, I was willing to believe in the falsity of certain news reports and the possibility of faking photographs. Possibility, though, is immeasurably bigger than any particular collection of events. I knew that there were other newspapers that were not fake, and whose photos depicted real events. I knew that each day brought new stories and new pictures, and there seemed to be no guessing what they might contain. I convinced myself that the picture was a fake, and that the devil was not erupting from a volcano somewhere in North America. Still, that seemed to provide no guarantee against what unforeseen but unquestionably real nightmares might emerge from the passage of days. I couldn't imagine what faces might yet appear, or where.
That cartoonish devil still floats in my memory, as a chimera of childish gullibility and mute awareness of the limits of the predictable.
In September of 2001, I had very little going on. My health was bad. School was not going well, and I didn't really care. Kung fu was the sole point of interest, and it was the only thing that I really worked at, but it seemed to cause me more frustration than anything else. Mostly I just wanted to play video games, and not think about the future.
On Tuesday the 11th, I didn't have class and so woke up extremely late. I put on some dirty workout clothes, went to the living room, and fumbled around trying to arrange the weights on a barbell for a strength workout. After one set, I turned on the television and saw that there seemed to be a news broadcast going on at an odd our the day. Someone was speaking dryly but haggardly about the stability of the stock market. I thought, oh, the market must have crashed, and took no further interest. I left the television on as I did several more sets. The press conference gave way to several others, then one or two monologues by television anchors. This was followed by a video of a very large building collapsing on itself in a plume of dust. I thought, huh, did someone botch a demolition job? The newspeople seemed all to be working under the assumption that I had been watching their broadcast for some time and so knew what was going on. I was not especially interested in what they were saying, though, and had written all them off some time ago as shameless seekers of attention. At some point, from bits and pieces fished out from the stream of information oozing in through the television, I gathered that someone had crashed commercial airliners into both towers of the World Trade Center, precipitating the collapse and utter destruction of the entire building. Realizing this, I recall saying to myself, "Ah, now that's something you don't see every day."
Later, my brother and I went to our favorite gas station off of the I-70 exit and got a soda. We ignored the minor panic of nervous motorists and windingly queued-up automobiles swirling around the gas pumps. Later, I went out and did what I always did at night, which consisted of drinking many cups of coffee at Osama's Coffee Zone (no, I am not making up that detail) and stubbornly studying abstract algebra that I could only barely understand. My days had long ceased to have any interest for me, and knowing no other way to orient myself, I tried to take pride in this, though I could scarcely understand how it was anything to be proud of. People always seemed to think that constancy was a virtue, and so I patted myself on the back for making all my days look exactly the same. I had become skilled at bending other people's views to suit mine.
At 10:00 PM that night, I honestly wondered if anyone I knew had not yet heard what had happened, and if I would be the first to break the news of the total destruction of a major U.S. landmark. As it turned out, everyone had, and I found myself vaguely annoyed with how hard people were taking an event that did not seem to impact any of them directly. There are, I thought to myself then, many thousands of people dying every day all over the world in events just as surprising and horrible. Why should this one event be any different? It seemed to me cowardly and self-indulgent to give these other tragedies, happening continuously around the world, such scant thought or mention, but then to raise a loud, public lament when our own false senses of security are shattered.
The world is full of pain and death as a principle, I would say to people then, so why raise a hue and cry now?
On the 12th, the Chancellor of the University declared a campus-wide moment of silence at noon. I was unaware of it until after it had happened. At noon, I simply found myself walking through ghostly still and silent crowds of people as a bell tolled from somewhere above. I hunched under a backpack that was too heavy for me, and scowled.
I look back at my profound sickness of the soul with sober disapproval, and I am never proud of it. To this day I do not fully comprehend how it came to be. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I saw too many stories of important events confabulated, and then debunked.
Just over three years later, my brother would die in an accident. Four years later, I would fall in love on the day that the city of New Orleans was almost totally destroyed by a powerful hurricane. Six years later I would lose that too. That was the same day that they unceremoniously tore down the old plantation house at the north edge of town, the one that had stood there since before I had moved here over twenty years ago.
The other night I returned home late. I turned on the television to see what was on, and discovered that the channel it had been left on was airing old news broadcasts from eight years ago. All the sudden I was seized with the feeling that I had lived through some history whose importance I had never really grasped at all. Many things have changed in the time that has passed, and all of it makes me see those events in a new perspective.
There is a profound tragedy in the perpetration of such a tremendous act of violence, and in the many lives lost as a consequence. There is no diminishing, or ignoring this, but I am of the firm conviction that death is a thing that speaks best and most truthfully for itself. For us as Americans, however, there is also a deep cultural significance attached to this event, one that goes beyond the number of lives lost, or the shocking manner in which they were lost.
I encourage the reader to locate and watch an old news broadcast of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I don't mean a news broadcast detailing the events after the fact, I mean a recording of the journalists and broadcasters struggling to cover the events as they unfold. Watch from the first announcement at least up until the collapse of the second tower of the World Trade Center. Events unfold with the surreal abruptness of a nightmare and indeed, I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that those events have become a nightmare of the collective mind of America. As is the case with nightmares, a patient examination reveals the unexpected contents of the unconscious.
The most conspicuous feature of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 is the utter helplessness of everyone involved. The journalists, whose modern profession is to appear confident and knowledgeable about the world, are shaken, confused, and visibly frightened. Their voices tremble. They speculate wildly and talk over one another. They ask questions that no one answers. A train of experts comment by phone, with none offering anything but bewilderment. The President delivers a short statement saying nothing new. The terrorists would seem to be the only ones with any power at all, and even they obtain it only at the cost of immolating themselves, so that even the perpetrators of this awful act have no real control over the course of events. All the while, the World Trade Center burns, the Pentagon burns, and the cameras are able to do nothing but sit and watch.
On that day, American wealth and American military power, the two things we have all learned to take for granted, are suddenly revealed as fallible. They suffer the destruction of two of their most conspicuous symbols and appear wholly unable to defend themselves. This is a profound revelation for our nation, for us as a people. Its significance should not be underestimated. For generations now, we have been able to justify all of our best and highest expectations for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, and for the country as a whole simply by noting that "this is America." We learned to take American victory and American prosperity for granted. We assumed ourselves invincible and eternal. Then, for a fleeting instant we all saw a face in the dust and the smoke, threatening us with the possibility that it could all be suddenly snatched away.
We should have learned, all of us, to live in a world where successes cannot be assumed. We should have learned that the ideals and principles of America as we know it, as we believe in it, as it can be, stand beyond the reach of money, influence, or forceful violence. America is not unbounded abundance and military victory, but liberty, equality, and justice for any and all who would peaceably dwell here. We should have learned that wealth and power are not bestowed on us from on high, but earned through perseverance and hard toil. I think that to some degree we did all learn that lesson. But I also think that would could have learned it better, and taken it more to heart.
Why do I say we could have done better? Because in the years that followed, we proceeded to try simply to debunk the frightening fallibility of American power through a series of far-reaching and ill-planned military adventures. We tried to debunk the threat of scarcity or poverty, in the days immediately after by urging the people their money freely "for the good of the economy", and in the long days after by turning a blind eye to destructive and short-sighted machinations of powerful financiers and captains of industry whose schemes ultimately spelled ruin for our economy today. We could have done more to reflect upon and nurture the sources of our power and our wealth, instead of recklessly flaunting them in an attempt to trivialize the significance of that terrible day. Our power and our wealth begin with our people and our land. We pursue heedless war and easy gain at their expense.
This is the error of those would abstract away from this event, and attempt to turn it into a simple schematic of wealth and power flowing here and there across the world. This sin was committed in many ways, by all kinds of people with all kinds of politics: the war profiteers with their lucrative government contracts, the idealogues who condoned the violence and indulged their own self-loathing, the politicians who used tragedy as a device for personal ambitions, and the demagogues who used the deaths of thousands of Americans to sow fear and division among honest citizens. These are all the people who would tell us that such things are "just the way world", disguising half-hearted and selfish fatalism as wisdom or maturity, in a self-serving justification for the callous pursuit their own small agendas.
We can do better than that. Loving your country means accepting responsibility for its past, present, and future. It means taking its triumphs and its tragedies to heart as your own. It means accepting its virtues and its faults as if they were your own. Being a genuine citizen means much more than just being on the winning team.
They say that tragedy tests a person. Surely the same is true of nations. Even all these years later, we should look back at that tragedy and ask what that test has showed us about ourselves. There is much more to America than wealth and power. There is much more to those terrible events of eight years ago than cartoonish caricature of evil, or a series of disembodied images beamed in from far away. The tragedy is one of real people and real events, all of which, in some way or another, belong to all of us.
A Comment on the Start of the Lotus Sutra
[...]
At that time the Buddha emitted a ray of light from the tuft of white hair between his eyebrows ... lighting up eighteen thousand worlds in the eastern direction. There was no place that the light did not penetrate, reaching downward as far as the Avichi hell and upward to the Akanishtha heaven.
At what time? This light shines wherever there is awareness and truthful presence.
[...] At that time Bodhisattva Maitreya wished to settle his doubts concerning the matter. ... So he questioned Manjushri, saying, "What is the cause of these auspicious portents, these signs of transcendental powers, this emitting of a great beam of brightness that illumines the eighteen thousand lands in the eastern direction so we can see all the adornments of the Buddha worlds there?"
Maitreya sees this great light as a sign and looks for a meaning. But what he looks for is already before his very eyes! Every being in every world is gathered together in a single illumination. What more meaning could there possibly be?
Watson, Burton (translator). The Lotus Sutra. Columbia University Press. New York, 1993.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Case: Schematic of a Win-Win
I returned to my car a little after midnight, and found the parking lot uncommonly quiet. The only sound came from an empty styrofoam cup rolling gently back and forth, making echoes from the walls. And I thought of Selfridge's "Pandaemonium"[1] and said to myself, there is the one and only other living thing here.
I see no difficulty in attributing thought or life, even if extremely dim and primitive forms, to odd things. This is something that wise people have done across cultures for generations, and it has lead people to extremely stable and harmonious ways of living. That this view should arise in the elaboration of modern empiricism, materialism, and late technoscience only confirms to me its truth.
And I wondered to myself what it must be like to have a mind consisting of nothing but echoes stray breezes.
As I walked to the car, I noticed there was also dark green katydid sitting alone on the ground. It was chirping to the empty lot. It must have been lead by the bright lights to this barren space, and now was singing to a hopeless, lifeless absence. This struck me as incredibly sad.
I thought about taking the katydid home, to release into my yard, but I had no container to put it in. Transporting a living thing to a better place only seems like a sound act of charity if you can assure its safe passage on the way. At the far end of the lot, the cup began to roll back and forth, and I thought, ah, of course, life seeks out life.
So I put the solitary katydid into the solitary styrofoam cup, and took them both home. The katydid is now singing to other katydids, and the trash is no longer on the ground. Episodes like this one, however, make me think that there should really be no such thing as "trash."
INPUTS: lost insect, piece of trash
OUTPUTS: transportation of insect to a friendlier home
What kind of procedure produces outputs like this from inputs like that?
Note the structure of the phenomenon. The problem presents as a division: the insect is out of its normal place, the cup has been left where it should not be. The solution appears as a unification (with intentional, but not exclusive reference to "unification" in the sense that a logic engine "unifies" terms): the cup and the insect become mutual parts of a process that puts things back where they belong.
What other sorts of problems present as division, and are solved by unification?
The skeptic might protest that not only was this a pointless or self-indulgent diversion, but that there is no guarantee that it would not ultimately result in a "net-evil" in utilitarian terms. That is, what if transporting the insect robs a starving bird or bat of a meal, or what if it leads to a plague, or what if the katydid turns out to be the orthopteran equivalent of Adolf Hitler, ad infinitum. (I would also add "ad absurdum".) Utilitarian arguments, such as this one, suffer from a certain conceptual lack: they recognize that causes may have far-removed and unexpected effects, but then assume that these effects do not themselves become causes, and thus can be evaluated as magnitudes of goodness or badness that can be used to compare courses of action. Such comparisons, however, are silly if they are arrived at by reasoning that uses "unexpected consequence" as a factor since (1) there are always unexpected consequences and (2) the same process that produces these consequences produces effects that evaluation at a single point in time cannot take into account.
We should recognize that every action has far-reaching and essentially unforeseeable consequences. This does not trivialize decision-making, but it does exclude the existence of "perfect plans" or "final solutions", both of which, as we have all seen, fail miserably at implementation time.
It is my firm conviction that if the Universe has anything like a logic to it, this logic is complete, in the technical sense of "complete", and whatever actions are good and right are exactly the rules of proof. Thus is how we live throughout that matters, and not some result that is tabulated, judged, or measured after a certain interval of time has passed. An action, then, is good simply if it is done in a good way. When we are confident that we have used the right means, we don't worry about whether our action has strange or startling, or even disturbing consequences any more than we would reject a strange or startling or disturbing theorem with a water-tight proof.
Goodness is truth, and truth is goodness, and goodness is as goodness does.
[1] Selfridge, Oliver G. "Pandaemonium: a paradigm for learning". Mechanization of Thought Processes: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the National Physical Laboratory, 1958, London: HMSO, pp 513-526.
I see no difficulty in attributing thought or life, even if extremely dim and primitive forms, to odd things. This is something that wise people have done across cultures for generations, and it has lead people to extremely stable and harmonious ways of living. That this view should arise in the elaboration of modern empiricism, materialism, and late technoscience only confirms to me its truth.
And I wondered to myself what it must be like to have a mind consisting of nothing but echoes stray breezes.
As I walked to the car, I noticed there was also dark green katydid sitting alone on the ground. It was chirping to the empty lot. It must have been lead by the bright lights to this barren space, and now was singing to a hopeless, lifeless absence. This struck me as incredibly sad.
I thought about taking the katydid home, to release into my yard, but I had no container to put it in. Transporting a living thing to a better place only seems like a sound act of charity if you can assure its safe passage on the way. At the far end of the lot, the cup began to roll back and forth, and I thought, ah, of course, life seeks out life.
So I put the solitary katydid into the solitary styrofoam cup, and took them both home. The katydid is now singing to other katydids, and the trash is no longer on the ground. Episodes like this one, however, make me think that there should really be no such thing as "trash."
INPUTS: lost insect, piece of trash
OUTPUTS: transportation of insect to a friendlier home
What kind of procedure produces outputs like this from inputs like that?
Note the structure of the phenomenon. The problem presents as a division: the insect is out of its normal place, the cup has been left where it should not be. The solution appears as a unification (with intentional, but not exclusive reference to "unification" in the sense that a logic engine "unifies" terms): the cup and the insect become mutual parts of a process that puts things back where they belong.
What other sorts of problems present as division, and are solved by unification?
The skeptic might protest that not only was this a pointless or self-indulgent diversion, but that there is no guarantee that it would not ultimately result in a "net-evil" in utilitarian terms. That is, what if transporting the insect robs a starving bird or bat of a meal, or what if it leads to a plague, or what if the katydid turns out to be the orthopteran equivalent of Adolf Hitler, ad infinitum. (I would also add "ad absurdum".) Utilitarian arguments, such as this one, suffer from a certain conceptual lack: they recognize that causes may have far-removed and unexpected effects, but then assume that these effects do not themselves become causes, and thus can be evaluated as magnitudes of goodness or badness that can be used to compare courses of action. Such comparisons, however, are silly if they are arrived at by reasoning that uses "unexpected consequence" as a factor since (1) there are always unexpected consequences and (2) the same process that produces these consequences produces effects that evaluation at a single point in time cannot take into account.
We should recognize that every action has far-reaching and essentially unforeseeable consequences. This does not trivialize decision-making, but it does exclude the existence of "perfect plans" or "final solutions", both of which, as we have all seen, fail miserably at implementation time.
It is my firm conviction that if the Universe has anything like a logic to it, this logic is complete, in the technical sense of "complete", and whatever actions are good and right are exactly the rules of proof. Thus is how we live throughout that matters, and not some result that is tabulated, judged, or measured after a certain interval of time has passed. An action, then, is good simply if it is done in a good way. When we are confident that we have used the right means, we don't worry about whether our action has strange or startling, or even disturbing consequences any more than we would reject a strange or startling or disturbing theorem with a water-tight proof.
Goodness is truth, and truth is goodness, and goodness is as goodness does.
[1] Selfridge, Oliver G. "Pandaemonium: a paradigm for learning". Mechanization of Thought Processes: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the National Physical Laboratory, 1958, London: HMSO, pp 513-526.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Two Exemplary Thinkers of Our Time
Easily, the two most provocative and fascinating books I have read this year are Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, and Wendell Berry's collection of essays, The Art of the Commonplace. The very fact that these two books are simultaneously in wide print circulation is a vivid testament to the astonishingly deep schism in modern views about humanity, its place and its destiny.
It is extremely noteworthy when these authors intersect their subject matter, considering that they seem to have no knowledge of one another's work. Neither author cites the other, despite their prominent positions in their respective movements, and despite the fact that all aspects of their respective philosophies and practical proposals seem to oppose one another. One suspects that they are either wholly unaware of one another, or that each considers the other's program wholly irrelevant to their own.
Consider what each says of the Luddite uprising of the early nineteenth century:
Mr. Berry says of the Luddites,
These were people who dared to assert that there were needs and values that justly took precedence over industrialization; they were people who rejected the determinism of technological innovation and economic exploitation. In them, the community attempted to speak for itself and defend itself. [...] The Luddites did, in fact, revolt not only against their own economic oppression but also against the poor quality of machine work that had replaced them. And though they destroyed machinery, they 'abstained from bloodshed or violence against living beings, until in 1812 a band of them was shot down by soldiers.' Their movement was suppressed by 'severe repressive legislation' and 'by many hangings and transportations.' (Berry, "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community", 1992)
Of the same Luddites, Mr. Kurzweil says:
The invention of the power loom and the other textile automation machines of the early eighteenth century destroyed the livelihoods of the cottage industry of English weavers, who had passed down stable family businesses for hundreds of years. Economic power passed from the weaving families to the owners of the machines. As legend has it, a young and feebleminded boy named Ned Ludd broke two textile factory machines out of sheer clumsiness. From that point on, whenever factory equipment was found to have mysteriously been damaged, anyone suspected of foul play would say, 'But Ned Ludd did it.' In 1812 the desperate weavers formed a secret society, an urban guerilla army. They made threats and demands of factory owners, many of whom complied. When asked who their leader was, they replied, 'Why, General Ned Ludd, of course.' Although the Luddites, as they became known, initially directed most of their violence against the machines, a series of bloody engagements erupted later that year. The tolerance of the Tory Government for the Luddites ended, and the movement dissolved with the imprisonment and hanging of prominent members. (Kurzweil 2005; footnote 37, Chapter 1)
Subtle differences in the telling of history make profound differences in its understanding.
On the issue of the body, biology, and death, the two make remarks that are uncanny, almost chilling opposites of one another:
Mr. Berry:
I know that there are some people, perhaps many, to whom you cannot appeal on behalf of the body. To them, disembodiment is a goal, and they long for the realm of pure mind -- or pure machine; the difference is negligible. Their departure from their bodies, obviously, is much to be desired, but the rest of us had better be warned: they are going to cause a lot of dangerous commotion on their way out. (Berry, "Feminism, The Body, and The Machine", 1989)
And Mr. Kurzweil, in a fictional dialogue between himself and Ned Ludd:
NED: You're missing something. Biological is what we are. I think most people would agree that being biological is the quintessential attribute of being human.
RAY: That's certainly true today.
NED: And I plan to keep it that way.
RAY: Well, if you're speaking for yourself, that's fine with me. But if you stay biological and don't reprogram your genes, you won't be around for very long to influence the debate. (Kurzweil, 2005)
Have we really produced two irreconcilable views of humanity?
Berry, Wendell, Norman Wirzba (ed). "The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry". Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA, 2002.
Kurzweil, Ray. "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology". Penguin Group, New York, NY, 2005.
It is extremely noteworthy when these authors intersect their subject matter, considering that they seem to have no knowledge of one another's work. Neither author cites the other, despite their prominent positions in their respective movements, and despite the fact that all aspects of their respective philosophies and practical proposals seem to oppose one another. One suspects that they are either wholly unaware of one another, or that each considers the other's program wholly irrelevant to their own.
Consider what each says of the Luddite uprising of the early nineteenth century:
Mr. Berry says of the Luddites,
These were people who dared to assert that there were needs and values that justly took precedence over industrialization; they were people who rejected the determinism of technological innovation and economic exploitation. In them, the community attempted to speak for itself and defend itself. [...] The Luddites did, in fact, revolt not only against their own economic oppression but also against the poor quality of machine work that had replaced them. And though they destroyed machinery, they 'abstained from bloodshed or violence against living beings, until in 1812 a band of them was shot down by soldiers.' Their movement was suppressed by 'severe repressive legislation' and 'by many hangings and transportations.' (Berry, "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community", 1992)
Of the same Luddites, Mr. Kurzweil says:
The invention of the power loom and the other textile automation machines of the early eighteenth century destroyed the livelihoods of the cottage industry of English weavers, who had passed down stable family businesses for hundreds of years. Economic power passed from the weaving families to the owners of the machines. As legend has it, a young and feebleminded boy named Ned Ludd broke two textile factory machines out of sheer clumsiness. From that point on, whenever factory equipment was found to have mysteriously been damaged, anyone suspected of foul play would say, 'But Ned Ludd did it.' In 1812 the desperate weavers formed a secret society, an urban guerilla army. They made threats and demands of factory owners, many of whom complied. When asked who their leader was, they replied, 'Why, General Ned Ludd, of course.' Although the Luddites, as they became known, initially directed most of their violence against the machines, a series of bloody engagements erupted later that year. The tolerance of the Tory Government for the Luddites ended, and the movement dissolved with the imprisonment and hanging of prominent members. (Kurzweil 2005; footnote 37, Chapter 1)
Subtle differences in the telling of history make profound differences in its understanding.
On the issue of the body, biology, and death, the two make remarks that are uncanny, almost chilling opposites of one another:
Mr. Berry:
I know that there are some people, perhaps many, to whom you cannot appeal on behalf of the body. To them, disembodiment is a goal, and they long for the realm of pure mind -- or pure machine; the difference is negligible. Their departure from their bodies, obviously, is much to be desired, but the rest of us had better be warned: they are going to cause a lot of dangerous commotion on their way out. (Berry, "Feminism, The Body, and The Machine", 1989)
And Mr. Kurzweil, in a fictional dialogue between himself and Ned Ludd:
NED: You're missing something. Biological is what we are. I think most people would agree that being biological is the quintessential attribute of being human.
RAY: That's certainly true today.
NED: And I plan to keep it that way.
RAY: Well, if you're speaking for yourself, that's fine with me. But if you stay biological and don't reprogram your genes, you won't be around for very long to influence the debate. (Kurzweil, 2005)
Have we really produced two irreconcilable views of humanity?
Berry, Wendell, Norman Wirzba (ed). "The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry". Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA, 2002.
Kurzweil, Ray. "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology". Penguin Group, New York, NY, 2005.
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