[REALLY-OT] namelessness, GPLv3 (new thread name = happy Ben)

[VirginSnow at vfemail.net]

> From: Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com>
> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:26:56 -0400

> On Jul 10, 2007, at 14:17, VirginSnow at vfemail.net wrote:
> 
> > And I am not my name.  I am who I am, right here and right now.
> 
> Carbon isn't really 'carbon' either, it just makes chemistry a heck  
> of a lot easier not having to call out all the relative string  
> vibration modes each time you get to that arrangement in a compound.

Coal?  Graphite?  Diamond?  Buckminster fullerene?  C70?  Carbon
nanotube?  C-12?  C-13?  C-14?  Partially ionized?  Plasma?  Solid?
Liquid?  Gas?  Superheated/supercooled solid/liquid/gas?  ...not to
mention Heisenberg uncertainty.

I could say

 "neutrally-charged-solid-C14-graphite-at-standard-temperature-and-pressure"

but that's nearly as cumbersome as having no name for carbon at all.
We language-users have a tendancy to tag, categorize, and label
things---and once we label something, we think we understand it.
(--The X-Files) But this is a mistake.  Names are, at bottom,
deceptive.  They may look simple and neat, but this neatness
*oversimplifies reality*.  This is why most people think you have to
be "intelligent" to do chemistry... you need some mechanism to
recontextualize when names fail... for example, when a melting point
is reached or when radiocarbon transmutes into nitrogen.

I'm not saying that names shouldn't be used.  Certainly, we HAVE to
refer to things using descriptions of one sort or another.  And those
descriptions, in the context in which they are used, are names.  What
I'm saying is that the descriptions/names we use have to be
dynamically constructed to refer to what we want to refer to *when* we
want to refer to it.  The names we use must be as dynamic as the
things we name, or else our names will fail us.  And if anything is
complex or dynamic enough to contraindicate static naming, IMO, it's
people.

By that logic, as I've been quoted, I am
who-I-am-right-here-right-now.

BTW, Bill...  Monday night, you offered to send me a link to that
video on the GPLv3.  My e-mail name... er, address... is
VirginSnow at vfemail.net.  Much thanks!