Passiflora/me/libervis will maybe be a participant of Open Translation Tools 2007. Whether or not that will happen depends on if they will pay the trip to Zagreb for me, in other words: it depends on me being interesting enough.

In other news, I will most likely attend T-DOSE, where I will not speak but will meet the nice guys of Get GNU/Linux who will speak.

In yet other news, I really have to hurry up with writing that sermon… And coding Passiflora… I’m going to see the screen a lot these days!

Recently I wrote a short story with the moral that it is not for the recipient to decide whether he deserves a gift or not. (If you’re curious, you may ask for the link outside public view, it was published under an alias.)

The act of giving is to tell someone else something that was or still is yours is now theirs, in some way or another. We should take a wide definition of ownership here, for a silly example if you give someone else an account on your computer, it also becomes their computer in some way, but usually you would still think of it as only your computer… and if it catches fire the insurance company will pay you and not your friend.

Actually all ownership works that way: something is only yours when others think it is, if you think you own something and others think you don’t, it will soon be gone! It can be a matter of culture, some things can be owned in one culture while they can’t be in another. Even something as “obviously owned” in western culture as land may not be ownable at all in the cultures of nomadic peoples.

Our culture has some problems discerning different forms of ownership from each other, which are worsened by us too easily thinking we can decide for ourselves what is ours. An obvious example is label A signing a contract with artist B thinking that gives them the right to decide whether or not C is allowed to use the music made by B. A may have the law on their side, but C could argue they don’t have an agreement with A or B, and music cannot be owned anyway. This is a culture clash between A and C.

What would happen if we completely stop claiming things as our own while continuing considering things to be owned by others? Maybe every day would become like the best birthday ever, but this would only work if a large majority thought this way. In our society only close friends will share so freely, and the reason for this is that they trust each other. If you don’t trust someone, you don’t know if they will share with you as much as you share with them, causing a huge potential disadvantage for you.

The funny thing with trust is that it doesn’t always need to be based on a long relationship. You can write a contract and trust someone to behave according to that contract, because you know you can sue them and win if they don’t play by the rules you defined.

I know copyright licenses may not be “contracts” (depending on of which country you consider the law?) in a strict sense, but for the example that doesn’t matter: by publishing something under the terms of the GPL, or a creative commons sharealike license, or similar, you share only with others who are willing to share too. There still is some personal ownership left in the attribution part of the license, but apart from that such licensing could be considered as giving away to everyone except leeches.

I think it’s great a nicer society has been made possible where it matters most, information and creativity. That doesn’t mean that if you publish something under cc-sa, someone reuses your work, and you reuse some of theirs, they are your friends. But it could be a start .

PLEASE NOTE: snippets copied from dictionary.com are not under the same license as the rest of the text. If you want to reuse this post for something serious, you may need to remove these snippets and replace them by some other explanation of the same concepts. The bible is in the public domain in most if not all of the world (even though apparently the author isn’t dead ), so you can safely leave that bit in.

I know there is nothing about evolution and hardly anything about communities in this post, but it will fit into the final work somewhere. Please bear with me.

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From dictionary.com:

talent

1. a special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.

6. a power of mind or body considered as given to a person for use and improvement: so called from the parable in Matt. 25:14–30.

7. any of various ancient units of weight, as a unit of Palestine and Syria equal to 3000 shekels, or a unit of Greece equal to 6000 drachmas.

8. any of various ancient Hebrew or Attic monetary units equal in value to that of a talent weight of gold, silver, or other metal.

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From the bible, king James version, through gutenberg.org (note: entering “God” in the author field doesn’t work):

40:025:014 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.

40:025:015 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

40:025:016 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.

40:025:017 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.

40:025:018 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.

40:025:019 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.

40:025:020 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.

40:025:021 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

40:025:022 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.

40:025:023 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

40:025:024 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:

40:025:025 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

40:025:026 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:

40:025:027 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.

40:025:028 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

40:025:029 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

40:025:030 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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One interpretation of the parable is that if we receive a gift from god, we owe it to him to make use of it and develop it, to his greater glory, or at the very least don’t let it go to waste (bring it to the bank instead of hiding it in a hole in the ground).

Another interpretation, if we take “the kingdom of heaven” to mean something like “a state of happiness”, is that to reach that state one has to use ones talents. Ignoring ones talents leads to deep unhappiness.

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from dictionary.com:

gift

1. something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; present.

3. something bestowed or acquired without any particular effort by the recipient or without its being earned: Those extra points he got in the game were a total gift.

4. a special ability or capacity; natural endowment; talent: the gift of saying the right thing at the right time.

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So the choice of word for the same thing makes a big difference: either having a talent obliges us to use it, or nothing is required of us both before and after receiving the gift!

So are talents really gifts or do they create a debt somewhere? And which of the interpretations is the best way to read the parable? Let’s consider some options:

Talents make us owe to a god: This concept I dare to immediately reject. If a god or goddess gives a talent to someone who will not use it, he or she could have used his or her infinite wisdom and have known this would happen. It would be what is called in Dutch “finding a stick to hit the dog”, creating ones own right to punish someone. If (a) benevolent giving god(s) exist(s), the gifts would be true gifts, not traps for those who fail to see what they received. That is not to say it wouldn’t be unwise not to make use of the gifts. (too many negations in the previous sentence!)

We owe to humanity that we use our talents: Being a social species, we feel responsible for the well-being of each other. Talents may be useful for taking this responsibility. Also, we need the help of others to develop our talents, it is only fair that we help others develop theirs, either by teaching or by taking away barriers. These need not be the same others, it will even out over humanity as a whole.

We owe it to ourselves to use our talents: This is an easy one. Who would feel happy doing a job that is much too easy for them for the rest of their lives? Who would like knowing they have a talent and never show it to anyone, not even to themselves? We are much happier when we are able to develop and express ourselves, and as a social-creative species we are most happy when we can do this while connecting to others. The big problem is that many can’t, or think they can’t live a life that makes optimal use of their talents.

It is debatable whether we are obliged to use our talents, and in the end it doesn’t matter. Nobody is going to get any happier by choosing not to use their talents (except perhaps in exchange for something else, but even that is most likely a bad choice), we really owe it to ourselves to do what we can do best and what makes us most happy.

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Thanks to Carmen for inspiration!

Found through Schneier on Security: The Evolution of Security. I didn’t have time to read this carefully yet, but it seems to contain some good points relevant for my writings.

Both shadowdoubters (a certain type of atheists) and rabid creationists are advised not to read this. I’m not trying to provoke a hateful discussion, just putting a load of linked interesting thoughts from my mind to the screen .

Chatting with a new friend who is no less than a priestess of Ishtar reminded me of something else that is missing from the old half-finished article about communities, selfishness and selflessness, and evolution of information (search for it in the libervis wiki). Love.

Selfless behavior usually doesn’t come from rational decisions, it is something we do because our hearts tell us to.

In fact communities tend to be tied together by multiple forms of friendship, love and spiritual(-like) thoughts.These shouldn’t be omitted from a text about the way communities work!

There is a bit of a problem here, though: when one starts talking about love and other spiritual matters, this will be hard to integrate with the scientific style reasoning on which the other ideas from the article are based.

Spiritual and rational truth both are valid, but they are very different beasts. In science it doesn’t matter that you have a feeling something is correct, you have to have evidence and you have to have tried hard and to falsify your theory. Then you will still not have found an absolute truth, but your theory (provided that it is simpler than equally tested alternatives) will be the best available theory. For spiritual matters, the best you can do is follow your heart.

A simple example of the two types of truth operating on the same domain: If the weather report says there will be rain, you take an umbrella with you, instead of having faith (the) god(s) will keep you dry or will have an intention with your getting wet. On the other hand, if you’re outside without an umbrella and it starts to rain, you may feel a whole lot less miserable if you react by meditating on the feeling rain gives on your skin and the cleansing of the world it symbolizes, instead of wishing you had an umbrella.

A special case is dogma: In science you have to make certain assumptions and then reason in a logical way starting from those. One such assumption is that statistics can be used to make predictions. For example when you flip 100 coins, the prediction is that about 50 of them will be heads. There is absolutely no reason to believe the universe won’t suddenly change and always make all coins fall on the same side. Of course there is no reason to believe something like that will happen either. You could say we can use statistics because they have always been correct, but that is circular reasoning. So, science requires some assumptions that seem sensible: 1 + 1 = 2, statistics can be used for predictions, the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same, etc etc. It is of course important to make the set of assumptions as small as possible, because any extra assumption is an extra potential point that can be proven incorrect.

Religious dogma combined with logic is different. There is no way such dogmas can be compared with reality. Accepting a set of dogmas crafted by a malicious individual and then following a series of logical consequences can lead to becoming a suicide bomber or an exploited sect member. It leads to abuse of selfless behavior, the destruction of the individual and possibly part of the larger community. A good advice is to follow your heart and let your mind protect you, not the other way around.

One interesting “conflict” between religion and science are the origins of the universe, life and humanity. Most religions have creation myths, and science also has theories about the subjects. When one reads creation myths as symbolical instead of factual/historical texts (follow your heart instead of your mind!) there doesn’t appear to be much of a difference at all, though. But why do religious literalists make such a big deal of creation myth vs science, and not of other myths that science disagrees with?

It could be because the creative process is something nearly every member of our species cares about. Humans are builders: houses, airplanes, websites, networks, clothing, etc etc. All those things that make humans different from most other animals is caused by our love for creating things. It’s not surprising we have strong feelings about what created us.

We are far from the only species on earth that builds things. We even aren’t the only animal that builds things that are far larger than our own bodies. Others are ants, bees, naked mole rats… All of them social species of which most individuals are exceptionally selfless. Humans are very democratic, even anarchic in comparison, but we are just as social.

Cooperation between many individuals is needed to build large things. Humans are the only builders on earth that are intelligent enough to cooperate without a need for strong authoritarianism. (That doesn’t mean individual ants don’t make their own decisions, it means they base their decisions on what serves their queen best, unlike humans who make more balanced decisions.)

Logic shouldn’t have a leading role in spiritual matters, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at science for inspiration just like we may look at (creation) myth for inspiration. Multicellular organisms most likely evolved from colonies (communities!) of singlecellular ones. Individuals aren’t objects, they are processes just like communities are, processes of thought and constant regeneration. Evolution is a method of thought mostly used by communities (evolving species, the scientific method, …). We all are and are part of multiple levels of thinking entity-processes, with one living, thinking, loving universe at the root of the tree.

It would appear being cooperating builders is our natural behavior. Choosing being a cooperating builder as a meaning for life sure feels like a good spiritual decision to me .

About a year ago I started writing an article about evolution of information and processes in communities. You can find it in [a now undisclosed place due to conflicts] if you’re curious. Although the main ideas of the article are valid, it contains some naiveties.

For example I wrote “we” (eukaryotes) are more advanced than bacteria because we reproduce sexually, allowing our DNA to be mixed. The truth is, bacteria have their own way of exchanging DNA (which is also called “sex” to add some confusion), which doesn’t have anything to do with reproduction. What’s more, they are capable of doing this across very different species. The reason they are primitive (for some definitions of primitive) is that the trick only works for single cells. Of course our different trick also only works for single cells only, which is why it is linked to reproduction, the only moment at which we are single cells. And then there are the single-cellular eukaryotes, some of those do have ways of sharing DNA, about others I’m not sure. Some of those are way more “advanced” than bacteria, others aren’t.

Also, consider the fact our bodies contain more bacteria than human cells. Who is more successful now?

The whole analogy about sharing of information leading to better results just falls apart. The right thing to conclude from the analogy is that keeping your information well-organized (in a nucleus) leads to the ability to create more complex designs. A wise lesson, but not what we were looking for. On the other hand, the fact that (nearly?) all lifeforms are capable of sharing information with each other still leads to the old conclusion: sharing ideas is good.

Another thing that doesn’t appear in the article is that the idea of all ideas are part of an evolutionary process isn’t exactly new. One person who wrote about that is Karl Popper, who also wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies, see also: Open Society, something I really should read.

The conclusions of all this? I should probably discontinue but save the article, dig deeper into biology, philosophy and sociology, and then write a book rather than an article. It would keep me busy for a few years, so I’m not sure if I would… Anyone willing to give me a well-paid parttime job after I finish my computer science studies?

(first published somewhere else 2005/7/28 )

Many people say they don’t believe in evolution. To me, as a computer scientist, that is a ridiculous statement. I have seen evolution at work, and used it in a program. Of course I understand these people mean the evolution of organisms, leading to homo sapiens by coincedence. It is debatable whether there was some intelligence behind that or not. Personally, I believe evolution by itself is intelligent enough to accomplish that, when given a couple of million years. But that’s not what I want to write about today.
Evolution is a process in which generations of individuals in a population change by mutation, often also crossover, and selection of the best/fittest solution. An example:
Let’s say you plan to do a few things today. You could do those in different orders. Some plans would be ridiculous and impossible, like shopping for food after cooking that same food. Others are impractical, and there are a few plans that are practical, of which one is optimal. Your goal is to find a close to optimal planning for today. You might make up a few different ones, compare them (selection), change them (mutation), or combine parts of different plannings (crossover). This is evolution! “Wait”, you say, “I make intelligent choices, not random mutation and crossover”. Well, those intelligent choices might help you get a good planning quickly, but a “dumb” evolutionary algorithm running on a computer will find a better solution in less time. Trust me, I know from programming experience that evolution works. It is actually used to find good solutions for problems that are impossible to find an optimal solution for before the universe will collapse/explode/freeze.
But that’s not the point. What I’m trying to tell you is that not only species evolve, data can evolve too, and even ideas evolve. A large part of the process of science IS evolution. It is also known that languages evolve. Understanding what individuals, population, selection, mutation and crossover mean for science and languages is left as exercise for the reader.

Now, if ideas evolve, that means we can take a evolutionary algorithms / computer science type of view at how innovation works.

For example, take copyrights. Making copies of most copyrighted stuff is not allowed, but you can reuse the ideas. This means more work to produce a mutation, so it’s slowing the mutation speed. With random mutation, that is not always a bad thing, but with our intelligent mutation operator called “thought” it probably almost always means less optimal solutions.
Conclusion: the free/open way of using copyrights is better than the proprietary way.

What about patents? A patent means only one organization can use an idea for a while. Patents reduce the population size. A smaller population means less, possibly good, mutations can be explored. What’s worse, patents make crossover impossible. Crossover is known to make evolution go much faster. (By the way, crossover is the reason we reproduce in couples instead of budding clones like bacteria do. Think about that.)
Conclusion: patents are a very, very, very bad idea.