[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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