Muddled Thinking about Free Will

Over at his blog, in support of the existence of "free will", David Heddle says (in a comment):

If free will is an illusion, then deterrents are an illusion. How can a deterrent make me choose not to commit a crime, unless I have the facility of choice?

I think this is more muddled thinking about free will. I still don't know what free will is supposed to mean, exactly, and I don't think anyone else does, either.

But, ignoring this, let's address Heddle's claim. Could deterrents work on humans if they have no free will? I think the answer is clearly, yes. Let's pretend that humans are soulless computational machines, shaped by evolution, who act based on a very very very complicated algorithm that takes sensory impressions as inputs and produces actions as outputs. Let's say that this algorithm tends, generally speaking, to try to ensure survival and pleasure and reproduction of the individual. Now the human machine suddenly sees resources, for the taking, that belong to another. The human machine does a cost-benefit analysis to "decide" whether to take the resources or not. In the absence of a known deterrent, such as a dangerous dog or future incarceration, the human machine may decide to take the resource. In the presence of a deterrent, the human machine may make another decision.

How does this involve "free will"? You can call this decision-making "free will" if you like. But then a thermostat has free will, too.

It's not at all surprising to anyone who thinks about computation for a living that a complicated algorithm can result in different behavior based on different inputs. The mystery to me is why Heddle thinks this says anything about free will.

Beg the Question

Here's a great post about the phrase "beg the question", it history, and what to do about its misuse.

Authoritarian High School Superintendent of the Month

This month's Authoritarianism Award goes to Ricky Clapton, superintendent of the Copiah County schools in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Mr. Clapton erased a student from her class yearbook. And what was her offense? Did she murder someone, or cheat on her final exams? No. She wore a tuxedo instead of a dress.

When asked about it, Mr. Clapton retreated behind legalese, saying "We have had our legal counsel research the validity of the position of the School District on this matter.. We are informed by counsel that this exact issue has been litigated in federal court. The decisions of the federal courts completely support the policy of the district in this regard. It is the desire of the Copiah County School District to inform, first, the patrons of the district, and second, all other interested parties, that its position is not arbitrary, capricious or unlawful, but is based upon sound educational policy and legal precedent."

Horseshit.

Congratulations, Mr. Clapton. Your award is well-deserved.

LaTeX Search Tool

Well, this doesn't do exactly what I'd want - but latexsearch is at least a start to making mathematical equations searchable.

Boston Marathon!

The Boston Marathon went by on Commonwealth Avenue, just a few blocks away from where I'm living in Newton. We watched at about mile 20 of the course, at the start of the infamous Newton hills, the most famous of which is called "Heartbreak Hill".

Here are a few pictures:



Above: Teyba Erkesso, the top woman finisher, from Ethiopia, all alone with a very substantial lead near mile 20. She would fade and still win, but only by a few seconds.



Above: Robert Cheruiyot (#6) and Deriba Merga (#1) duelling near mile 20. Cheruiyot would win in 2:05:52, a minute and a half ahead of his nearest competitor.



Wheelchair marathoners near mile 20: In the front, from left to right: Kota Hokinoue of Japan (finished 3rd); Soejima Masazumi of Japan (finished 4th); Ernst van Dyk of South Africa (the winner). In the back: Roger Puigbo of Spain (finished 5th) and Kriga Schabort of the USA (finished 2nd).

Biblical Mathematics

For a good laugh, look at this website, which claims to find the values of the mathematical constants π = 3.14159... and e = 2.71828 ... hidden in the bible.

Needless to say, such numerology is not considered very highly by most mathematicians. It depends too much on the choice of passage, and the method of calculation. In this page, the author decides that the proper measure is the number of letters times the product of the letters divided by the number of words times the product of the words, but on what basis? And even then, he must remove powers of 10 to get his desired result, and cheat in other ways, such as considering a comma as a letter for one calculation, but not another.

Sad to say, this kind of foolishness is the one area where devout Jews and Muslims find agreement. Numerology has wide currency among many Jewish people, where it is called gematria, and among Muslims such as Louis Farrakhan, who says things like, "What is so deep about this number 19? Why are we standing on the Capitol steps today? That number 19 -- when you have a nine you have a womb that is pregnant. And when you have a one standing by the nine, it means that there's something secret that has to be unfolded."

Jesus Off Limits for Criticism

Here's a laughable press release from a Christian group that claims "Blasphemy does not qualify as free speech".

They're wrong. It does.

They go on to claim, "Gallaudet University has no right to harm and slander the spotless reputation of the God-Man with blasphemy".

They're wrong. It does.

Look for more and more demands from fundamentalist believers of all religions that criticism of their beliefs be outlawed.

Ignoramus of the Month: Denyse O'Leary

Not all intelligent design advocates are dishonest. Some of them are merely ignorant, abysmally ignorant, pig-stupefyingly-ignorant of the theory they criticize.

Example: here is Canadian "journalist" Denyse O'Leary describing her understanding of evolution:

So the claim is, "changed shape, changed size, changed metabolism and changed food source. How much more MACRO do you expect an organism to evolve?"

Hmmmm. Kittens do this all the time.

Change size? You bet. Goes from a couple of ounces to five lbs in half a year.

Confusing development of an individual with evolution in a population? That's a misconception about evolution that is usually ironed out in high school. Looks like Denyse was absent that day. I'd blame Pokemon, but I think Denyse is far too ancient for that.

Denyse O'Leary: our ignoramus of the month.


Update: O'Leary's posting was apparently too stupid even for her. It now seems to have disappeared from her website.

Further update: it's now back here.

My Sabbatical Project

Now that the contract has finally been signed, I can reveal my sabbatical project:



Oxford University Press will be publishing my latest book, An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers and Zombies. This is a revised edition of the classic text of Hardy and Wright, modified to include new results in algebraic number theory and zombiosis. I am particularly proud of the new chapter that discusses Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem, which has a short section mentioning how Wiles was able to defend himself from a zombified Ken Ribet using the Tate module and a meat cleaver.

This is just one of a series of new editions of classic mathematical books that have been updated for the 21st century. I am really looking forward to the updated version of Constance's Reid's book, entitled David Hilbert: Vampire Slayer.

(Hat tip: A. L. and A. S. for the graphic.)

Alan Cobham

Alan Belmont Cobham (b. November 4 1927, San Francisco) is a mathematician and theoretical computer scientist. He was an undergraduate at Oberlin College and the University of Chicago, and later went on to do graduate work at both Berkeley and MIT, although he never got a Ph. D. He worked at IBM Yorktown Heights, and for a while was chair of the computer science department at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He still lives in Middletown. I recently had a chance to talk briefly with Alan Cobham at his home, and took the picture above.

He is known for several achievements. He was one of the first people to bring attention to the complexity class P, in a paper entitled "The intrinsic computational difficulty of functions", where he proposed studying the functions computable in polynomial time.

In 1969, he wrote the first of two papers on what are now called "automatic sequences" (he called them "uniform tag sequences"). An automatic sequence (a_n) is one in which the nth term can be calculated by expressing n in some base k, feeding it into a deterministic finite automaton, and then looking at the state reached at the end. An output function converts the state name into (a_n). In this paper Cobham proved a subtle and beautiful result: if a sequence is generated by two automata that accept inputs expressed in multiplicatively independent bases, then it is ultimately periodic. There is still no really simple proof of this result.

In 1972, he wrote a very influential paper entitled "Uniform tag sequences", where the theory of automatic sequences was developed in great detail. This paper has led to hundreds of others exploring the theory of automatic sequences and generalizing them.

I Won't Be Going to This Cafe

Two women sharing a kiss got told off by the owner of the 1842 Cafe in Waterloo, Ontario. Well, I guess I won't be buying anything from that place when I return to KW from my sabbatical.

Protons, Proteins - What's the Difference?

NPR's science reporter Nell Greenfieldboyce just now (2 PM EST, March 30) referred to the Large Hadron Collider sending "beams of proteins whizzing around a 17-mile circular tunnel, then smash[ing] them together at high speed, creating a shower of debris". I sure hope that was just a slip of the tongue. Any science journalist who doesn't know immediately what the difference between a proton and protein is, and why the LHC would be smashing the former and not the latter, doesn't deserve a job.

Economist is the New Messiah, Cult Says

Here's a funny article about Raj Patel, an economist who appeared on the Colbert Report and is now being proclaimed as the new Messiah by a religious cult.

I thought the Brits knew that Eric Clapton is god?

Freedom of Expression: Canada vs. Texas

The president of Tarleton College in Texas has a stronger commitment to free speech than the vice-president of the University of Ottawa.

This is one of the worst things about living in Canada.

Mathematical Genealogy

The Mathematics Genealogy Project records Ph. D. mathematicians and their thesis supervisors. Recently they've relaxed the "thesis supervisor" to include advisors of various sorts, which allows them to extend their records back to the Middle Ages.

Of course, I couldn't resist looking at my own record. (It's incomplete; they don't list 2 of my Ph. D. students.) Some of my supervisory ancestors include:

Saunders MacLane - 3
Hermann Weyl - 4
David Hilbert - 5
Felix Klein, Georg Frobenius, Lindemann - 6
Kummer, Weierstrass - 7
Jacobi, Dirichlet - 8
Fourier - 9
Gauss, Lagrange, Laplace - 10
Euler - 11
Leibniz - 14
Huygens - 15
Mersenne - 17
Copernicus - 23

Here the numbers indicate the number of links it takes to get to that person. Assuming that each student has shaken the hand of their supervisor, I find it neat to think that only 23 handshakes separate me from Copernicus. Of course, I'm not very special in this regard, as lots and lots of mathematicians have illustrious forbears. The database, for example, currently lists 53,775 descendants for Copernicus, or about 38% of all the people listed.

My wife's tree might even be more prestigious. She's got Newton at level 14, and Galileo at 17.

Everything in its Proper Place

Tony McManus sent along this picture from the Chapters bookstore in Waterloo, Ontario, showing that at least some bookstores recognize a charade when they see one.

Take That, Bob Dylan!

I had a nice time with Celtic guitar superstar Tony McManus last night. Tony revealed that two of his pieces will be in the new Neil Jordan film, Ondine.

He also told the following story: a guitarist he knew recently died and was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Newton. His epitaph reads, "Times were sometimes tough, but at least I never made a Christmas album."

Boehner's Ridiculous Rhetoric

I have mixed feelings about the healthcare bill, but Boehner's hyperbolic rhetoric on the House floor last night was simply ridiculous:

"Today we stand here amidst the wreckage of what was once the respect and honor that this House was held in by our fellow citizens."

And just when was the House viewed with "respect" and "honor"? Was it when Joe Wilson yelled "you lie!" during Obama's speech? Or, for a bipartisan example, was it when disgraced federal judge Alcee Hastings was elected to that august body?

"We have failed to reflect the will of our constituents."

Duh - there's a reason why we elect our representatives instead of deciding everything by referendum. It's so that our representatives can do what they think is right, not what will appeal to the emotions of the moment. Besides, polls show wide support for the main provisions, even if people think they oppose the bill as a whole.

"They’re disgusted, because they see one political party closing out the other from what should be a national solution."

Actually, the bill had over 200 Republican amendments. It's not the Democrats' fault if the Republicans are bent on opposition and obstruction at all costs.

"Around this chamber, looking upon us are the lawgivers – from Moses to Gaius, to Blackstone, to Thomas Jefferson.

By our action today, we disgrace their values.

We break the ties of history."


Providing healthcare to more people disgraces the values of Moses? Who knew?

"It is not too late to begin to restore the bonds of trust with our Nation and return comity to this institution."

Yeah, and it's not too late for Republicans - like Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) - to stop yelling "baby killer" at Stupak.

When to Doubt the Science Bashers

Former DI flack Jay Richards has a piece over at the American Enterprise's "journal", giving 12 reasons why you should stick your fingers in your ears and say "Na, na, I can't hear you!" when there is strong scientific consensus. So, in the spirit of that piece, let me offer a few reasons why you should doubt the doubters:

1. When the deniers have little or no scientific training. Richards has "a B.A. with majors in Political Science and Religion, an M.Div. (Master of Divinity) and a Th.M. (Master of Theology), and a Ph.D. (with honors) in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary."

2. When the deniers worked for groups, such as the Discovery Institute, who have a history of prevaricating, dissembling, and just flat out lying.

3. When the deniers publish their supposedly scientific books with publishers devoted to far-right political screeds.

4. When the deniers have held appointments at so-called universities that advertise "biblically centered education" and offer courses in scientific apologetics designed to "demonstrate the harmony between science and a biblical worldview".

5. When the deniers claim that the very existence of a scientific consensus is a reason to doubt the consensus.

6. When the deniers are well-funded by groups that stand to lose a lot of money when action is finally taken.

7. When the deniers post their claims on web pages that don't allow comments.

8. And finally, when the evidence is strongly against the deniers.

Turkey!

This is the turkey I met walking down the street today - here in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. Any resemblance to a Discovery Institute fellow is purely coincidental.