[REALLY-OT] namelessness, GPLv3 (new thread name = happy Ben)
Bill Sconce
sconce at in-spec-inc.com
Thu Jul 12 14:24:27 EDT 2007
RE: Zen.
Find one line from me posted at the bottom.
-Bill
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:04:53 -0400
VirginSnow at vfemail.net wrote:
> > 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!
I confess to being really confused (in that I owe the link to that
video to a bunch of people, and I know that made promises about such
a link on Monday night - at FOSSED, in Durham! - and I already have
a bushel of trouble remembering the names of the fine folks I met at
the conference... and I'm only feeling worse now, since so far as
I can remember each of the persons I met had a ... er, "name".
Although I evidently don't get to know which of the persons it is to
whom I'm fulfilling a promise, here's the fulfilment:
Video:
http://www.archive.org/details/EbenMoglenLectureEdinburghJune2007StreamingVideo384kbits
Transcriptions:
http://www.archive.org/details/EbenMoglenLectureEdinburghJune2007text
-Bill
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