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Singapore Surf UTWTPosted by intellisg on April 8, 2007
This is where it really begins, our history that is! – Homer.
The Great Hall Debate will be held here at 9.00 pm (Singapore) on the 8th April 2007 this Sunday. Take a seat it will change your life! After that nothing will be what it seems again!
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THE INTELLIGENT SINGAPOREAN 
chairman said
Go ETAC SLF 1-5 / Urbana USA.
THE GREAT HALL DEBATE 8th APRIL 2007 / 2100 HR (LOCAL) / BROUGHT TO YOU EXCLUSIVELY BY THE INTELLIGENT SINGAPOREAN AND THE BROTHERHOOD PRESS.
Gentlemen,
Allow me to welcome all of you to the first LIVE session of the great hall debate this year held in the Senate in the planet Primus Aldentes Prime 129,993,300.3 light years after from earth – the home of the brotherhood.
We hope this will be the first of many to come.
My name is Nacramanga and I am the chairman on the debate.
This evening the topic will be an “exploratory foray” true to the tradition of the GHD – we hope to touch on many issues such as the merits of rationality mooted by Dr Chandra against what darkness calls an “open process” of enquiry.
This is very much in the spirit of all great hall debate as we do not want it to resemble a sermon but instead hope both parties will improvise and sharpen their respective positions as the debate proceeds in a conversational style.
Allow me now to introduce the debaters.
The left honorable gentlemen is Dr Chandra who is a mathematician, he will be arguing the case for a why he believes a rational network will be key for the economic survival of Singapore in the 21st century.
In proposing this line of thinking Dr Chandra firmly believes it is necessary to pay Singapore ministers a competitive salary that reflects parity with the private sector, he considers this a logical progression based on his ideal of rationality.
Dr Chandra also believes there is a serious need to augment the way most Singaporean think, that is by instilling in them a discipline based on traditional lines of rationality.
To support his model, Dr Chandra will be arguing why it is necessary for all of us to entertain the idea of emulating how computers derive at results to improve decision making.
He strongly believes this should be the goal of the rational movement, to continually craft a flawless thinking organism albeit with a heart. Dr Chandra believes this endeavor should be pursued as a strategic imperative as we are increasing living in a world that is increasingly mired by complexity.
The right honorable gentlemen hardly requires any introduction, he is darkness. Darkness is an engineer credited with at least 40 industrial patents. He is also known as the father of the game having conceptualized the “strangelands” in 2002.
I have been informed this evening darkness does not have any position other than to state he intends to “demolish Dr Chandra’s machine world theory.” Take this as you may as he did not elaborate further.
To our new readers many of the customs of the GHD may be new to you, pls read carefully and just go with the flow.
Dr Chandra you may begin.
Dr Chandra said
Go NANA SLF 1-5 / Imperial College / London.
Thank you Mr Chairman. I would like to begin by stating categorically as a matter of fact darkness reference to what he describes as my “machine world theory,” is a gross misrepresentation of fact.
What we have here gentlemen is a case where he proposes to undermine the entire basis of my submission even before this debate begins in earnest.
By deliberately associating the theory of rationality with a metaphor that is lifeless, metallic and cold – a machine. Darkness is trying very hard to hold himself out as a savior; it is hardly a tactic that requires elaboration.
We all know this is what darkness does so very well and the internet is redolent with so many accounts where he has resorted to this sort of under hand tactic to extend the implications of his half baked themes, by using words which have the effect of detaching his opponents case with the audience sentimentality.
Once again we can all see he is playing to the public gallery instead of seriously addressing himself to the debate.
Honorable chairman may I very respectfully request that you ask darkness to retract his statement, “machine theory” and use the proper term “rational theory” instead which I have forwarded to you on the 7th April 2007.
Chairman said
Does the right honorable gentleman, darkness concede the point on an error?
darkness said
Go PRAETORIA SLF 1-5 / MIT / USA.
Mr Chairman I may concede the point if the left honorable gentleman tells me how many fingers he has on his right hand.
I am merely trying to illustrate how a supposition of fact can have more than one terminological reference Mr Chairman.
Surely the left honorable gentleman doesn’t consider this as unreasonable.
Dr Chandra said
Mr Chairman please don’t waste your time with him.
As we can all see this is another of his diversionary shenanigans– one which we are all only too familiar with.
None the less, let me humor him otherwise we will never ever get started! – Darkness there are 5 fingers.
darkness said
Can you then tell me what is the largest appendage on your hand called?
So again Dr Chandra how may fingers do you have on your right hand this time?
Dr Chandra said
Mr Chairman I protest, the right honorable gentleman is quibbling.
Chairman said
Dr Chandra you waived your right to protest on (5).
Need I remind you this is the great hall debate! We have barely begun and you have already logged 3 protest, if this happens again in the next 10 minutes, I will not hesitate to issue you 1 penalty point to the grounds of ‘pettifogging!”
As for you darkness if your question doesn’t have any bearing on this proceedings and goes off tangent – I will not hesitate to issue you 3 penalty points on the grounds of quibbling!
Dr Chandra please answer the question!
Dr Chandra said
It’s a thumb. There are 4 fingers. But its a semant / cut off
(Cut off exercise by controller 2B MIT darkness)
darkness said
So now 5 has been magically transformed into 4. That is precisely my point senators, though Dr Chandra will have us all believe his thesis has only a singular definition which he staunchly describes as the theory of rationality.
I contend otherwise and will continue to use its derivative four finger and one thumb reference – “machine theory.”
Senators allow me to share with you my supposition: why I believe Dr Chandra’s machine or theory of rationality makes little or no sense though he is contend to insist otherwise.
The crux of his thesis is summed up in his seminal work published in the brotherhood press EP 9930028 entitled the
“The Call To The Age of Light.”
In the article which I still haven’t found the correct words to describe, the unforgettable words that would do it justice – raucous chortling? I’m probably not up to the task – or else language is too feeble and instrument to capture its imprecise nature, Dr Chandra first promulgates his thesis of what he terms “rationality”
“If you look at 99% of the problems of this world, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out people haven’t really tried to organize common sense knowledge. So what we have out there not only in the scientific community but in the broader society is a sort of Babel land where people are just trying their best to explain things which they themselves don’t even know what it really means.
They just don’t know how to represent it and this was evident to me during my research period in Harvard. As a result researcher are always arguing about methodology rather than focusing on content i.e should I use a relational database for make sense of this? Or would a neural net provide a better road map for decision making? Perhaps fuzzy logic would be better as it takes into account gradational values? Oh maybe it should be represented as a bunch of axioms in mathematical logic?
The answer to all this is of course no one really knows, the world still doesn’t have a coherent way to make sense, not logically at least of how we should typically even decide to eat Char Kuey Teow or Mee Goreng.
Use neural net for things that depend on a whole lot of small inputs in a moderately additive, but not very interesting way… just weighting things. Use logic for something that depends on a few very important influences.
If you change the value of one of them, the whole thing won’t work. If that’s the kind of thing you’ll make out of might’s, ands and ors and so on, but it hardly gives you even a basis to improve incrementally in baby steps. What we need is a systematic process of making sense of the world that cuts off much of the noise typically generated by “extraneous” factors such as religion, ideology and what many call the liberalism.”
As you can see Senators, what Dr Chandra is proposing to introduce in his last sentence, where he mentions,
“What we need is a systematic process of making sense of the world that cuts off much of the noise typically generated by “extraneous” factors such as religion, ideology and what many call the liberalism.”
Did I read it incorrectly Dr Chandra?
Dr chandra said
Darkness, let me put the article in the right context because you have mangled it up as you always do everything.
I would have much preferred it if you just described my article as hiccupping pizzicati rather than raucous chortling, that way it may even compliment your goose choking rant about why you seem to have such difficulty understanding what I can only term as elementary and basic logic.
Gentlemen I was talking about a very specific issue that relates to the idea of how best can we can make sense of problems in the scientific sphere, especially in pure scientific research. Such an enquiry would of course lead me to consider the various pathways to “progress.” It is important for the audience to note, I mentioned nothing remotely directional in this article beyond the research paradigm.
So darkness is wrong to conclude that I am proposing this as a general doctrine. But having said that I did mention in the article there are many lessons gleaned in the research field than can be transplanted into the wider society to render decision making more rational.
My article was merely a lament on why hardly any dramatic progress has been made in the direction of programming in the last 10 years.
This was the contextual background. Sure we have faster laptops, colorful phones with stereo sound bites, but very little progress has been really made in the area of lets say artificial intelligence – we still haven’t really made a computer that can function like a human being – this of course led me to question why in the article and part of my thesis suggested this could be because very little research has been done between studying the linkages between man and machine.
Sure there is a lot of machine knowledge out there as there are battleship sinking tomes on knowledge about how a man would consider spending his salary.
But most of the knowledge between these two paradigms exist mutually exclusively from each other and I would even go as far as to say they are hermetically sealed off.
Now most of you will be asking what does this have to do with the title of the debate: how do we make sense of right? My answer is this based on my research, I have discovered there are many systematic control logics and that is a big word, so let me just call it “know how” about artificial intelligence into augmenting current day to day decision making in both the public and private sector.
Let me give you an illustration of what I mean by this gentlemen, consider the pay issue for ministers. Most of us would not balk an eyelid if some guy who doesn’t shave or bother to wear a tie manages to earn billions belting out mind dumbing music, but when it comes to the serious business of running a country paying the right fee suddenly runs counter to our logic and smacks on our sensibilities? So what happened here? Why are we able to reconcile ourselves with one construct which has a no apparent pay out, yet when it comes to another that has a direct pay out nexus, we can seem to mobilize the lateral train of logic? Doesn’t that sound illogical?
This of course led me to consider trying to represent knowledge in the form of mathematical logic which in my view reduced everything down to a scientific process of enquiry one which I believe may be a better approach in the long term. I do however recognize it remains somewhat repugnant to many, after all aren’t humans supposed to be decision makers. Aren’t we supposed to be in control? But there again there’s a big hole in that logic if you consider how most commercial planes are already automated.
Or computers typically do 95% of the work that it takes to land the space shuttle. Man isn’t even in the equation and there is a very good reason why – he is a lousy when it comes to making decisions.
Central to the process of progress which I have promulgated is a systematic means to reject, learn from mistakes and move on to another level.
I am sure even darkness will agree progress would be impossible without this sort of logic streaming>
Chairman said
Darkness you have 3 min otherwise one penalty point for a late reply.
darkness said
Dr Chandra are you asking me whether I agree with your last sentence?
“Central to the process of progress is the need to reject, learn from mistakes and move on to another level.”
dr chandra said
Chairman I wish to lodge a complain as to late reply – he is obvious stalling for time – Yes darkness, because if you claim my thesis resembles anything close to what you call “machine theory.” You would have to first disprove this assumption and I really don’t see how any logical person can do that! Not even with your mumbo jumbo melodramatic erudition.
So yes darkness, not only am I challenging you to rubbish it! I invoke “Duellum.”
observer said
Observers first hand reportage: There is uproar in the senate / The council of the wise requires a moments deliberation.
Chairman said
Chairman to readers:
“Duellum” is a right that any debater can invoke. It ups the ante in the debate as the loser will be denied food, fire and shelter 100 kilometers from the senate, effectively forcing the loser into exiled for perpetuity.
I have just been informed by the Council of the wise that darkness should concede the point and move on.
Dr Chandra you motion for “duellum” is not necessary darkness will concede on the issue.
Darkness if I do not receive a reply from you in 2 min a motion of concede will be passed.
darkness said
Mr Chairman and honorable councilors and senators, I will not concede the point. I was thinking and comlink is slow!
“Central to the process of progress is the need to reject, learn from mistakes and move on to another level. I am sure even darkness will agree progress would be impossible without this sort of logic streaming>”
I came here to put him into a NTUC plastic bag, so I accept “duellum.” Now if I may be allowed to continue without further interruptions because I really need to rush home and feed my cat.
Let me explain to all of you why Dr Chandra’s assumption of progress is so flawed. There are 3 systematic flaws in Dr Chandra’s line of reasoning as to how he proposes to make what we calls “perfect” decisions.
For the sake of brevity I will just focus on one that has a hole the size of the grand canyon, lets us consider the whole idea of absolute rationality where did Dr Chandra derive much of the material which makes up his seminal thesis? He developed it in the virtual! Am I right Dr Chandra? Perhaps I will allow him to flesh it all out for us otherwise he will say I mangled it up again.
dr chandra said
Absolutely right much of the logic was derived from experiments with supercomputers to play chess faster. IBM as you all know is credited with deep blue. However during my tenure in Carnegie-Mellon I was one of those who worked on developing many of those heuristics which made the neural net part hum and purr. The press as usual never ever mentioned Carnegie-Mellon. But that is another story. Mr Chairman I would be grateful if this is recorded in your history book – the book of ages.
Getting back to the point – we learnt many things from this research endeavor one of them is how computers can actually to learn very much like humans. They actually get better with every game! Much of the thinking engine was based on assigning scores to a decision tree, using the alpha beta heuristic for controlling searches.
Yes you are absolutely right darkness most of it was developed based on my personal observations in the virtual which I extrapolated to base my theory on rationality.
darkness said
Senators,
The first flaw in his rational thesis is he used the wrong model. I want to tell you all he has indeed changed the light bulb, only because he unhinged the whole ceiling and turned it to do so, when of course we all know there is an easier way to get things done.
Let me give you an example of what I mean by error in modeling. In the real world, an elephant to sits on a table, it will break. That won’t happen in the virtual because the table hasn’t been programmed to support something using a load algorithm based roughly on Newtonian physics. Even if the programmer did envisage such a scenario – that table will break according to a given number of cachet sets or if the programmer was just goofing around, it will break only one way all relative to the size of the virtual elephant. So in the virtual world, everything has a purpose, assuming the programmer had one in the first place. Please tie a string to this because it will kick in latter as a case point to complete the whole picture.
I am not denying that the virtual can successfully simulate and capture how materials would behave under X or Y set of circumstances to allow engineers and scientist to develop better cars, planes and trains. But that’s only because all those things are stuff.
Simulation alone can’t tell you what happens if someone on a recreational trailer decides to press the cruise controller and go to the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Because that person thinks cruise controls means the car drives can drive itself. Don’t laugh this has happened before. Neither can simulations tell you what happens when a train driver who suffers from erectile dysfunction only manages 3 hours sleep overruns a red light or what is going to happen 2 or 3 kilometers down the track. Sure simulations can tell you what happens when a car hits a brick wall at 60 mph, but it doesn’t tell you whether the person is going to love or hate Jesus if he survives.
My point is simply this in the real world nothing necessarily has a purpose other than existence except we try to make purposeless things do the best they can for us. And that’s why according to Dr Chandra the world is in such a mess. He is out to make everything functional, but I don’t necessarily see anything logical about that, because he is using a flawed model to make sense of real problems.
Let me give you a very practical down to earth example: Is it true that super computers can learn from playing chess as Chandra mentioned? Yes, but that’s like saying the Sistine chapel is just a Bible cartoon – it’s a grossly negligent and reckless over simplification – what Dr Chandra didn’t tell you – is if that same super duper computer plays with a novice player, his gaming skills actually deteriorates exponentially. It actually gets dumber with every dumb game, so to keep the super computer sharp the developers need to confine it to only playing good players all the time!
Now if you are saying so what darkness? What is your point? You are circumnavigating round the world, when are you going to get to the point! My answer would be go and connect the dots yourself! Stepping back and looking at the world laterally, this is how society is already typically organized Senators. The scholar system or for that matter the entire bio-med push or even the whole idea of paying ministers more is based on this idea that is not so different from the chess playing computer that Dr Chandra has described – in truth senators the age of Dr Chandra is very much with us today already as it aspires to do very much the same thing as the table in the virtual by attempting to predict the unpredictable – and this same theorem can be used to predict on a linear curve not only behaviorism or whether someone would be a success or failure.
I submit to the honorable members of the council and to the senate that we already live in Chandra’s machine world!
A world I might add that even suggest that we can do without such a thing known as human consciousness.
dr chandra said
Since you brought the matter up darkness.
Let’s talk about human consciousness. But before I proceed allow me to just point out how once again darkness has shown all of us how adept he is the art of misdirection. Instead of confining his argument to the issue of rationality in the context of my research findings in the virtual, he has expertly by sleight of hand brought the debate into the wider arena to cover the issues concerning minister pay rise, the scholar system etc. To add further I do not agree with darkness statement we already live in a sort of machine world. I would go on to provide illustrations but Mr Chairman this would simply mean that I would have to digress, so I am not going to play his games and instead stick to the agreed road map.
Let me therefore bring back the argument to focus on one specific aspect which he mentioned consciousness. I believe a deeper analysis into this area will be able to flesh out the points of the debate by analogy better.
Consciousness certainly has baffled so many people including myself, it is very simple: there isn’t any such thing. I know this sounds shocking to most people and I have probably just erase 50% of public gallery points by saying this but please bear with me for one moment. As I will endeavor to show you all why I say, there is no such thing as consciousness to the degree that darkness would have us all believe at least.
“Consciousness” is a word that darkness likes very much because it gives him a whole lot of latitude to cut and paste whatever comes out from his brain to shore up his drunken chimpanzee theories. You will find if he is cornered this is favorite top hat that allows him to pull out all sorts of rabbits to run around and distract people no end. I will play his game only this time I will set the parameters tightly so that we are all clear what I mean when I say – there is no such thing as human consciousness.
Gentlemen during my period in Harvard and Carnegie Melon, I did extensive research on the issue of consciousness in the context of questioning: do machines have a soul? Are they actually conscious? I understand this may be a repugnant notion to most of the readers, but bear with me and do keep an open mind as I will endeavor to explain in greater details my findings.
I have a theory of that machines may not be capable of consciousness per se but we can certainly replicate every aspect of it even by today’s technology! Of course there will still be people like darkness who will say, but you haven’t gotten at the solar nucleus of consciousness. My answer is go do some Hatha Yoga headstands if you want that sort of consciousness.
My definition of human consciousness requires us to ask the question: what is it in an empirical and scientific sense, its an scientific and not a social enquiry? This has been well delineated in my seminal article published by the brotherhood press and everyone knows it, but that fact remains strangely incoherent to him.
But I don’t want to waste too much time dwelling on why he seems to be so forgetful when it serves his end to do so. As I mentioned I have discovered however one may wish to define “consciousness,” it just comes down to one word, “control.”
So the question is what really constitutes the control features? During my research in Carnegie, I realized as I enquired deeper into this question humans don’t control anything! Not even themselves and even less of what they may do, say or feel. We just bottle it up and we call give it a fuzzy word called consciousness.
Consider the predicament of a man who feels too hot, what is happening at a conscious level?
The anterior hypothalamus controls what happens if you’re too cold or too hot. And the posterior hypothalamus does the opposite. Both of those little pieces of brain, which are very tiny, have about 10 heuristics.
Like if you’re too hot you will start sweating like a pig. If you’re smart, you’ll go to an air-conditioned mall, using the higher, more reflective levels of the mind. So what I’m saying is that what controls what you do is NOT centrally controlled as what people like darkness would have us all believe. The reason why he doesn’t know all this because he is an operational scientist and till today, I don’t even know what that means except giving himself a mysterious tag that says, I know a bit about everything, but nothing about specifics.
So he cannot truly explain to you the deeper meanings of consciousness. Or even explain why it should feature in any workable ideology. I think it is important for many here to comprehend darkness likes to use words without really going into specific details.
As you can see I have already explained in clinical terms why I believe consciousness is altogether an overrated concept and if you really consider long and hard it is human consciousness that causes most of mans irrationality. He however has not even bothered to answer the first question I had posed as a challenge to him, that is
“Central to the process of progress is the need to reject, learn from mistakes and move on to another level. I am sure even darkness will agree progress would be impossible without this sort of logic streaming.”
darkness said
Senators,
I have already de-constructed his first issue argument in (18), but since Dr Chandra insist let me just knock him on the head a few more times.
He contends,
“The need to reject, learn from mistakes and move on to another level.” Pls refer to (11, 12)
Now he states categorically:
“I believe consciousness is altogether an overrated concept and if you really consider long and hard it is human consciousness that causes most of mans irrationality.” Pls refer to (19)
What Chandra is advocating by all this is his endorsement of rote learning i.e computer language, binary lingo where everything is 0 and 1 or 1 or 0. I don’t disagree with the prevailing wisdom in his thesis that one should learn from ones mistakes and try to improve upon it, but this is not what Chandra is saying senators. Look very closely at (19) again.
Senators, everyone understands that in mathematics. If you hear a theorem, then you also want to know the hundred most likely ways that it won’t apply. Of course a theorem is always true if the condition precedents remain true, but if this was true for a compact set, is it also true for a locally compact set, and if not where is the counter example that shows why that kind of reasoning breaks down?
Let me give you an illustration: for example evolution and genetic algorithms don’t tell us why the dodo bird died off or why roaches were seen scurrying happily around Hiroshima and Nagasaki two hours after the Americans dropped the atomic bomb.
If it weren’t for an almost super religious worship of species imitation which took 600 million years, to get to us from tadpole to here. You could say, if someone had kept some records of what went wrong and more importantly spent about the same amount of energy on learning why some species died off and others survived, maybe it would have taken only 5 million years instead of 400 for the human species to evolve from tadpole to man! Of course I am simplifying here, but you get my point – we can learn a lot from stuff that fail to work.
Now this may sound like the same stuff Chandra is saying, but it isn’t because if you read (19) and (20) very carefully he is saying, if he gets burnt on the first touch, his idea of “progress” is to avoid the hot stove, but gentlemen it also means he will not touch a cold stove either. So you tell me where is the value in that sort of scadey cat learning outcome?
Now you can take this whole model and even superimpose in any part of work, life and play and ask yourself whether this is the sort of decision making methodology that produces or disables – could this be the reason why we may excel in examinations but when it comes to squaring off the number of patents inverse against the square root of our academic prowess we don’t even have the same intellectual parity with a country like inner Mongolia? While countries like the US and those in the EU may not necessarily have higher than average examination score ratings but nonetheless they are able to somehow make that quantum leap that allows them to leverage on creativity and innovation to remain competitive. This is a serious question senators because it goes into the root of the whole issue, what we are concerned here is not what is the value let say the number 13, we are looking way back to ask is 13 a resultant of 10+3 or 23-10? Let me put this aside but again hold on to it as a case in point as I shall return to it again.
What Chandra doesn’t seem to understand is in the last 10 years most of the ground breaking inventions and innovations haven’t really emerged from the scholar class or even in academia – in fact those guys are just threading water – most of the earth shattering stuff have been emerging from modern day caves, like garages, sheds and rooms where clothes go to die. You know the reason why don’t you? Because those are the guys Chandra hasn’t lectured too. They haven’t been schooled to think rationally, so they don’t know where is the front or back end and that raises the question: what went wrong with the whole process of traditional decision making why can’t the universities produce the producers at the rate they are supposed too?
Where did it go so wrong? Simple they started to tell people how and what to think – go right, turn left, stop here (cut off by Chandra).
Chairman said
Time exceeded we will move on
dr chandra said
What you describe as “go right, turn left, stop here etc” happens to be academic conventional methodology which is designed to define, clarify and harmonize what is wrong about that?
(give to darkness / KIIL 00893)
darkness said
Its wrong Chandra because if tell a man to go right, turn left, stop, go, reverse and do it long enough he will eventually put his hand up one day and ask you whether he can have your permission to pee.
(give to Chandra)
observer said
laughter in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier of the senate
darkness said
(193 we have a signal loss / MIT will be going off line / KOHO give me the SLF 7 quick!)
Another thing I make no pretense of the fact, I detest the use of statistical methods for determining empirical outcomes or to distinguish between ambiguous words in language or learning behavior by changing probabilities and so forth. The reason is that again, if the knowledge you store is stored as vectors of numbers, then that program might be good. Might get 95% of what it’s faced with. But the other 5% might be stuff that requires some reflection and deeper thought about the nature of the problem. There is where consciousness kicks in. Remember senators Dr Chandra doesn’t think much of it because he considers the brain as just a reactive agent, nothing more than a chemicals in a Petri dish. But can anyone here in the Senate tell me if your conclusions are expressed as meaningless vectors in some high dimensional vector space, there’s no way you can assume that you have covered the ground 100%.
So to cut it short whenever I see a number in a learning program, I say that might be useful now, but it’s an intellectual dead-end at best it’s a means to and end that all. But Chandra is different to that to him it’s the end. And to prove it he even has a word for it, he calls it deductive reasoning!
But senators how can that be? That is why he agrees with the whole idea of the ministers pay hike, pay more get better people, it’s a straight line calculation with zero margin for error, only if you believe machine language holds the key that opens the door.
I don’t believe it’s that simple. For one we have to look at the whole issue of what is corruption? And find out why corruption occurs in the first place. I want to emphasize when one thinks along these lines, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with logic or even how the anterior hypothalamus would react under a given set of circumstances – its important to understand this because if you really think about what Chandra is saying, he is telling all of us man is just the sum of his chemical composition. If that is the case, then we might as well take a stress pill and pack our bags and go back home and all we have to really need to do to get better ministers is by adding stuff into the water supply.
That’s why is it so important to approach the issue from what I call the back end and please follow me here closely otherwise I will lose you in the chain of thought – by asking ourselves first what are the priori conditions precedent in this minister’s pay debate, in simple lay English – it requires us to ask are where are we? Do we really have an effective government? What is an effective government in the context of a globalization? What does that government need to do? OK lets start with baby steps, is a good government? Yes comparatively, now you see we run smack into a fork road in the decision tree, that doesn’t happen in Chandra superhighway road map, he just picks up from the point it is a good government and vroooooom he off, but hold on lets just spend a bit of time looking at the back end stuff – hey why are our students doing so well getting into the ivy league but they cant seem to string together ideas to develop anything close to a patentable idea? Why is don’t we have as many entrepreneurs as HK? Where is the Singapore Dan Brown? What would have been Bill Gates or Steve Job’s life be like if they grew up next door in Singapore? Is there perhaps some issue with innovation and creativity? Now you notice the decision tree is beginning to spread out very much like a fan, each tributary is seeking out a course of logic that’s going deeper and broader to encompass a wider definition of what is “good.”
I can go on and on all night on this area and bore all of you to death, but you get the general drift – I am certainly not starting off the whole issue of ministers pay from Chandra’s POV where he believes they are perfect supermen and Singapore is the centre of the universe – now if you think that’s a joke the last time I checked my history book the last civilization that bought into that admirable sentimental ended up puffing themselves off in an opium haze to the stone age – that’s what happens when people think they are perfect – they don’t see the need to improve – the get blindsided – above all we get more of the same back end stuff and who the hell is going to pay $2.2 million for that!
Besides what kind of idiot designs any system where someone is indispensable? So I am not even going to go down that road where he tells me if I don’t pay that sort of money then (cut off by Chandra)
dr chandra said
Astronauts are pretty hard to come by NASA even coined the term “the right stuff.”
All I am saying is if you pay peanuts you get monkeys darkness.
Surely even a yuppie puppy like you wouldnt disagree to that!
(gives to darkness)
darkness said
Yes Chandra why do you think monkeys were the first species to be blasted off into space?
You just proved my point, smart people never design systems or processes where anyone is indispensable so why should politicians?
I wonder I do!
observer said
The senate is wild with raptarous laughter and on fire, all the senators have spilled over to the first tier / the praetorian guards have been called in to control the situation.
Chairman said
Gentlemen,
I call order – I call order to the house – 5 min break / we may have to break off here!
Chairman said
5 min break. Darkness one penalty point for playing to the public gallery – I have warned you already!
Chairman said
controllers hold for 5 minutes.
Chairman said
another 5 minutes / gentlemen I will not resume till everyone resumes their seat.
Darkness this is my last warning to you – if you play to the public gallery again I will have you removed!
darkness said
(darkness we have a green – go / KOHO)
Allow me senators to kill this whole idea of “progressing by rationality” dead in the simplest way to suggest to all of you the matter of how we all typically consider the value: 12 as the sum of something or anything.
I mention this only because this is the type of error his ultra rationalistic movement typically makes and even has the temerity to call “progress.”
Of course Chandra will disagree by calling me names again, to him 12 is 12 and it is an absolute ideal. Now please re-call back some of what I termed “the back end stuff” and the example that I share with all of you earlier, the whole idea of questioning the value of a number because this is where everything fits together and we can all go home. Chandra does not believe it is important to dwell deeper into how the value 12 might have even been derived. But I do! I will ask was it a derivative of (4 + 8) or (4 – 16) or (4 divided by 7) and so on.
He will of course tell you I am just making a mountain out of a mole hill, but let me tell you why it is so important to take a closer look beyond the value 12.
Because if you’re just counting things you don’t care if they’re fucking people or pencils, there are just stuff. That is the problem with Chandra’s idea of rationality. It tries to simplify things so that he can cont writing seminal refereed AI paper that my fishmonger considers to be the best next thing since sliced bread, but it does squat when it comes to making sense of the real world.
Representing decision payouts in the form of mathematical logic reveals a lot of problems that I admit. That’s why half the time those guys work through the weekends, but it doesn’t produce solutions. For one, logic guts out one reasoning by analogy, remember the consciousness stuff that he tells us all is overrated.
What I mean by reasoning by analogy is: of course if you see a problem exactly like one you’ve seen before, then you can just remember the solution. But in real life that almost never happens. There are always some things different. So you look at this problem or situation and say, what worked? What do I remember about solving a similar problem in the past? That word “past” means that you’re rummaging through the back end stuff and figuring out whether 13 is a resultant of 3+10 or 20-7 – you’re searching for a case that has some features or properties or functionality that’s the same as this problem, and other features that are different. Then you have to ask, which of these features are important? If they’re not important, then by all means throw it down the chute. The problem that I have with Chandra’s idea of decision making is he doesn’t even consider this a pre-requisite protocol step!
If it’s different in important features, then you want to make a note of it or put a question mark on that decision tree, which says, how can I change this problem so that it will better fit that one. So it seems to me that most of what we typically refer too as decision making or problem solving – has a lot to do with is figuring out how to fit the present case to situations which you’ve seen before, which isn’t just a matter of taking and running with a value a super computer churned out.
Mathematical logic is lousy at this, it never looks back. You know how I discovered this flaw by sheer accident Chandra. One day I was tinkering with this idea of building a time machine in the virtual and I wanted to get more knowledge on contemporaneous heuristics and algorithms, guess what there was none! None that I could use at least, so I sat down and wrote it all out using LP logic – now you know why Einstein had to use explain his theory of relativity using toy trains and cue cards instead of nut and bolt logic language – otherwise the world will think he is mad.
dr chandra said
Mr Chairman he used bad words is someone going to do something about it?
chairman said
Darkness one penalty point for profanity. Another and you are out!
dr chandra said
Mr Chairman, I really don’t want to bother you, but as you can see he has put a whole load of words in my mouth again. I haven’t even spoken about the issue of ministers pay in detail and yet he seems to be more interested in showing off his ESP skills rather than sticking to the points raised.
It is true as darkness states I do not put much emphasize on human consciousness in the decision making process. This I never denied, but it is false to assume that I have completely eliminated it as he frequently makes mention again and again. This gentlemen is another gross misrepresentation of fact. I merely emphasized the need for one to gain the relative importance of “consciousness” in the decision making process.
Let me set the record straight by stating categorically here and now that I have frequently mentioned the idea known as “collective consciousness.” If I did not believe consciousness was important why should I do that? However allow me to emphasize that my definition of collective consciousness is very different from darkness’s notion of individual consciousness which is couched in some mumbo jumbo that only he and he alone understands and no one else.
Allow me to illustrate an example. What does the word “padang” mean? It’s a difficult word because it means so many things to people and if we don’t pin it down definitively we will soon find ourselves embroiled in a kind of philosophical quagmire. Some may tell you this is where the national parade is staged. Others will tell you this is where they play cricket every Sunday. Then there are those who will just say it’s a good place to pick up cute Japanese tourist. See what I mean, but what is the padang actually in the context of consciousness? Is it the product of collective conscious understanding of what the word should imply? Or is it something that some individual is content to fashion? In my view it has to be the former and never the latter, that is what I mean by collective consciousness.
If we juxtapose this state of multiple meanings to the issue of how much we should pay ministers, again we can see how it creates confusion. The same can be said of a whole lot of issues ranging from how research should be conducted and who should fund it. Gentlemen my point is this,
So if you understand something in many ways, then according to the theory of rationality you don’t understand it at all: Darkness will disagree he will instead label it as understanding by rote.
The point I am trying to make is if you have 10 different meanings or representations of the “padang,” then you are really in trouble because even something as basic as consensus is impossible. That is why when this whole idea of minister pay is discussed, it will always remain divisive and controversial. There are too many differing views. According to darkness we need to entertain all of them because he aludes us all the fact it is somehow so very “important.” Yes I know a puppy may piss on a building but that doesn’t mean anything does it. So give me something that I can run with. Give me something that doesn’t play to the public gallery and allows me instead to plot a straight line on a graph and say this is progress.
In short the theory of rationality is a simply counter thesis to this; if you understand something in many ways, then you don’t functionally understand it at all. You are just terribly confused, this of course is darkness preferred hunting ground. Darkness excels in ambiguity and half truths. For example gentlemen he calls himself an “operational scientist,” what the hell that? Let me tell what it is, he is an alchemist, someone who claims to have knowledge in the black arts to transmute lead to gold! We have done a background search on him, it is true that he has 40 industrial patents, but all of them are just knick knacks, glorified mouse traps hardly earth shattering discoveries. So as you can see gentlemen, (cut off invoked by Chairman.)
Chairman said
Dr Chandra you are seriously out of line sir, one penalty point another outburst like that again and I will not hesitate to disqualify you from this debate and nominate your second to take over!
(Dr Chandra line is on hold KOHO)
dr chandra said
Dr Chandra: Mr Chairman I have not finished you cut me off! I will gladly suffer the one penalty point to state my case. I wish to defer from you. I did not personally attack darkness. I merely highlighted how on more than one occasion, he regularly deceives scholars and baffle the unwary by postulating his crackbrained theories which I can only describe as bizarre bordering on fantasia. I even have proof of this which he describes most recently in a blog excerpt which I submit as exhibit (A.) Where he says:
“The fact of the matter is ppl change their POV at least a 400 times a day. So why go around labeling ppl as liberals or radicals when 99% of the time they are just as confused either you or me and just trying to find their way.
I really have to go up stair now. Remember keep an open mind.”
by darkness March 30th, 2007 at 12:58 am
My informants have notified me this post was most recently posted on a blog managed by a certain Kitana where darkness manifested one of his famous madness.
Allow me to highlight a few of the anomalies, his reference specifically to this quote:
“The fact of the matter is ppl change their POV at least a 400 times a day.”
He claims it as a matter of fact. Mr Chairman I submit to you darkness does this regularly to support his claim that we cannot be trusted and because of that we need to abide by his logic to continually question our actions. In short he is endorsing a sort of belief whereby we may not even be responsible for our actions. This I submit to the council is the sort or type of reasoning which I find most disturbing – the notion we are not even responsible for ourselves or our actions and words. If that is the case what is the point of even having this debate?
Can the right honorable gentlemen please enlighten us all as to how he derived at the magical number of 400 to lend credence to his crackbrained theory we are not responsible for our actions?
darkness said
You mother****** chee bai light bulb worshipping ****. You come over now to Bedok North 243.
I will wait for you there in the car park with my Kendo stick. I will show you Newtonian physics when I drop a concrete apple on your pea brain – no need to talk so atas, we will just cut to the chase and settle this once and for all like real men. **** chee (cut off by the chairman)
dr chandra said
Can the right honorable gentleman stop his diversionary antics and address himself to my question: I repeat, will he please enlighten us all as to how he derived at the magical number of 400 to lend credence to his crackbrained theory we are not responsible for our actions? Or maybe he would like to concede the point as a contradiction?
darkness said
I will not concede the point because what I have stated is a clinical fact.
The brain has 400 brain centers. If you do not believe me give Dr Lee a call. There’s a whole glob that we don’t know about because there are families of cells that are common to many brain centers that are activated by separate busses. If you look in the brain, you’ll see several hundred distinct large busses and in only a few cases do we know what those do. But each brain center typically connects to one, two or thirty different other brain centers, and has almost no connections with the rest. So it’s a bit like a giant soviet warehouse where the supervisor is a bit drunk. That was how I derive at the figure of 400. Having stated that I still fail to see the point of the left honorable gentlemen as he points this anomaly to me in what way does this clinical observation suggest that I darkness am “deceiving the scholar class and baffling the unwary?” If anything I am simply enlightening them to their obvious human limitations.
To answer your question: Do I believe we humans can be trusted? Well judge for yourself since the beginning of time when man figured out it was easier to do a man in with a bone. He has been doing roughly the same thing only with a greater level of accuracy and efficiency. In truth the modern guided missile today is not so very different from the large bone femur. If what Dr Chandra says is true then there should be no wars, no conflict and we would have already arrived at this place called utopia, but as you can all see this hardly the case. So may I ask all of you answer the question yourself! As I my role here is not to point out the obvious.
There is a very good reason why philosophers stretching all the way back to Socrates and Karl Popper continue to insist on checks and balances.
Chairman said
The GHD is over . we have run out of time 10 minute break after that questions from the floor. Then we will wrap up / meanwhile we will totalize the score on return.
See u all here in 10 minutes
Chairman said
pls post yr questions here
The Royal Poppy Shop said
To Dr Chandra:
1) What does the system of ministerial pay benchmarks extend?
2) What does the system of ministerial pay benchmarks make obsolete?”
3) What is retrieved by such a system?
4) What does the system of ministerial pay benchmarks reverse into if it is over-extended?
5) To what valid extent can we be assured that the system will not overextend?
harphoon said
Chairman this I am posting as an extraordinary member on behalf of a Miss Tan, she has a question she submitted to me earlier:
“This is a question close to the heart of my own persona and chosen profession, the conventional view of making sense of right does seem more than a tad parochial in its nearly exclusive focus on the decision sciences, and upon the kinds of relatively simple problems solvable by controlled experiment and subject to reliable mathematical formulation. While this may go a long way in the area of pure research my question is how does this fair in the area of our unfolding world history – what can we for instance say about the demise of the Soviet Union and the advent of globalization in the context of modern day decision making? Does it have to be right? If so whose right would that be ideally? More importantly how does decision science reconstitute itself against this ever changing historical backdrop?
We may epitomize the fundamental nature of an episode so fecund in scope and effect, albeit so difficult to characterize, by citing any preferred motto or metaphors to best describe the present and how we should best deal with them to create an architecture of the future. Even so even the best experts in the field of decision science would have to agree it remains sadly very much in the tradition of crossing the Rubicon or opening Pandora’s box – wouldn’t you say so?
Chairman said
controllers hold all the questions / feed spool pls KOHO do you read me?
KOHO said
rodger that sir / we r closing SLF 2.3.4.5.6 on my mark / view only
Chairman said
Gentlemen pls respond chandra first/
dr chandra said
let me attempt to simplify things here because it is clear to me the debate is moving to the political arena miss Tan that is what I read from your question at least.
let me for just one instance adopt a very unusual position to try my best to answer your question and buy into this idea we (humans) cannot be trusted as darkness stated.
Can darkness then tell us then if we cannot trust ourselves why the world was once divided in the 16th century into Catholicism and Protestantism and in the latter half of the 20th century between Communism and Capitalism and now in the dawn of the 21st century into democracy and tyranny?
Are you saying darkness the world managed to organize itself miraculously into monolithic blocks of beliefs because people didn’t know better? Isn’t that empirical proof that there is such a thing called collective consciousness? Or are we to believe darkness that it was all simply a dream?
Gentlemen if you look at modern history never before has it been clearer when open societies were liberal democracies, almost by definition, and it seemed they would come into being wherever dictatorship had been overthrown. Isn’t that I ask you the clearest vindication of my truth there is such a thing a collective consciousness, in this case manifesting itself in the right of people to choose the system which they want to be governed by!
Thank you for your answer miss Tan / I received an e-mail from harphoon stating that you were the person who requested for this moot.
It is regrettable that darkness behaved in the way he did by threatening me, but nonetheless I enjoy the hospitality of the rest of the brotherhood and the intelligent singaporean.
Thank you for having me here mr webmaster and a very special thanks for hosting this most enlightening event.
I also hope this will be recorded in the brotherhood press – many thanks again.
Dr Chandra, “The Light.”
darkness said
Miss Tan, I just want to say this is a very good question and I really you’re your description “crossing the Rubicon.”
Actually, I have never seen it used in that context bfr, so I believe what you may be asking in a subtle manner is whether I believe in absolutes – i.e end of tyranny = democracy.
The answer your question which if one considers is a trick question in itself, but it is a delightful mystery which I really find irresistible so I will give it a swipe. Miss Tan do I believe for example the collapse of a closed society automatically lead to an open society; it may actually have quite the reverse effect of precipitating a continuing collapse and even a series of disintegrations that is followed by some kind of restoration or stabilization that has nothing to do with the simplistic notion of Chandra’s happy dichotomy.
T
hus a simple dichotomy between open and close or as he mentions capitalism and communism or democracy and tyranny fails to capture reality adequately, though I can well understand why it must be so for Chandra, otherwise his theory of rationality will simply crash and burn.
In truth Miss Tan, this taxonomy if I may be permitted to use such a word to describe the phenomena is usually what happens whenever closed societies collapse but fail to make the transition to openness the reason need not be that they languish in anarchy or suffer a return to dictatorship. It may be that they adopt an illiberal form of democracy, Along with the liberal democratic tradition that goes back to the very basic model of democracy i.e which understands democracy as the expression of popular will. The elective theocracy that is emerging in much of post Saddam Iraq is a democratic polity in the latter sense, as is the current regime in Iran; so is the Hamas government in Palestine.
In every case Miss Tan what we are seeing is that regimes seldom if ever coalescence into neat parcelments as Chandra would have us all believe. In every case what we see isn’t so much a monolithic movement resembling anything close or as organized as what Chandra likes to describe as collective or whatever consciousness – it is in fact scared people who don’t know what to do except cling to what they know best to be the truth. This senators is why the whole notion of entertaining the idea of a collective consciousness is so dangerous as it is an attempt to break down everything to its common aggregates. That it renders easy complex ideas to explain this I don’t doubt, but it remains in my view a very dangerous precedent that frequently leads to inaccuracies and worse still abuses.
I thank you all and especially Dr Chandra for gracing this event along with Inspirid for making it happen. I would also like to thank the controllers who have been working thru the weekend and Harphoon for asking me to come this evening.
Thank you and happy reading.
Chairman said
Harphoon says on behalf of the chairman / spool interrupt / KOHO
Friendly webmaster
Would you like to say something bfr we close to your readers and ours?
inspir3d said
well, let me just say it’s been fascinating viewing this debate for the 1st time.
cheers
Chairman said
I declare the first GHD of 2007 close – thank you.
KOHO said
The GHD for 8th April 2007 is a draw /
KOHO said
I am sorry we were not able to answer yr question due to the overshoot / we have close to 47 questions but we will make sure they will addressed in our preceeding articles in the future.
Thank you for participating in another brotherhood press event.
My name is KOHO signing off
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