Of drakes and progress

[davv]

I'm still here! Work just cuts doubly from me: first, in that suddenly my day's cut in half, and second in that it uses energy that I then have to recover by resting, which cuts away more still of my day. As a result, I don't get much time to write posts or things of the sort after I've done both work and my daily routine. (But what can one do?)

Speaking of which, the work I'm doing (connecting-libraries-together sort of programming, as opposed to algorithm-invention sort of programming, so to speak :) ) reminds me how (oddly?) conservative I am, even though I spend so much time on technology. Everybody's going nuts over the whole smartphone concept, and I go "huh, I only need a phone to call others with, and barely even that". Then people go even more nuts over Apple's particular variant and I'm left scratching my head, thinking about how what you buy shouldn't define you[1].
I turn my head, and (this is where work comes in) outsourcing chunks of logic seems to be all the rage. Software as a service, get someone else to do everything you don't want to do and then link their "libraries" to your program through API calls, and if you can do it really well, call it cloud-based. I suppose I can see the benefit in it from a business point of view, but to my sense of aesthetics, it just seems... disconnected, fragmented, hard to pin down.
I turn my head again, and there's one company wanting to make ordinary computers' interfaces look like tablets' without minding the different input methods and screen sizes. Meanwhile, in another organization, the product manager moves to an extremely rapid release schedule, and when companies complain, said product manager says that's okay, because companies don't count anyway.

Maybe the technological acceleration turned my personal inflection point and it's just going too fast now. Or maybe my interest in technology is secondary, and it's taken me up to this point to really see it. Whatever is going on, it seems there's a mismatch between what we could broadly call advancement and what (I/people) can manage. If you really want to stretch it, you could say that my critters each represent their own solutions to this mismatch: the Vasai, in altering the advancement (since their technology advances relatively slowly - or has, so far); and the corvids, in altering themselves (so they can stand the pace, although even they give the external impression of careful deliberation and planning).

I have to think more about this - when I have the time - but distinguishing what's strange because of oneself (i.e. a lack of congruence between oneself and the world), and what's strange on a larger scale (having a lack of congruence between parts of society), is very hard. I only have this one mind with which to observe, after all.

[1] Although I guess that particular trick is quite old, it doesn't do anything for me. "Buy X to show you're Y!" Well, I know whether or not I am Y, I don't need to buy something to be secure in my knowledge. Perhaps this is because I don't deal all that much with others and so don't feel the need to manage what impression I give off? Or perhaps I just see through it. Who knows?

Comments

[davv]

I'd assert rather the opposite... the technologies you mention (smart phones, fast release schedules for software) give the illusion of rapid progress, rather than actual rapid progress. But, for whatever reason, the minor advances are treated as though they're matters of huge import.

That might be true. It's just hard to know when you're in the middle of it, and all those around you are going cloud and phone this, convergence that. The world could use being a little more rational :)

For that matter, it seems to me that, outside computing and (maybe) medicine, technological progress has slowed since (say) the middle of the last century. But it is a difficult matter to gauge.

Progress in computing, in turn, causes progress elsewhere. The one thing I can most readily think of is science. Computing lets one sift a lot of data more easily, while related production gains make for better equipment (sequencers, telescopes, etc).

Now that I think about it, though... I don't get the same "relentless pursuit without direction" feeling from science itself, even though there's progress (or appearance of progress) there, as well. Maybe it's more manageable, or easier to quantify. Or maybe it is truly progress while the rest is just appearance, and the discrepancy between "treated as matters of huge import" and "is truly of huge import" is what's turning me confused.

[lhexa]

The world could use being a little more rational :)

As always! But I think I'm learning the trick of indifference to unimportant things -- which, if you believe the Stoics, is the same thing as peace of mind.

Progress in computing, in turn, causes progress elsewhere. The one thing I can most readily think of is science.

Heh, I was careful to say "technology" and not "science". A great deal of science has no, or at least no immediate, technological application -- most of general relativity and particle physics, for instance. Also, the gain experience by science by a gain in computing power is way sublinear -- I'd say it's logarithmic, at a guess. That is, as computing power grows exponentially, the number of scientific advances that can be made with that power grows linearly.

...I think spending a year and a half as a computational physicist left me a bit doubtful about the ability of computing to help science -- I mean, it does, but the problem of chaos shows up everywhere. (Also, I think you'd enjoy this tidbit: looking at the class of dynamical systems that are finite-dimensional and Hamiltonian, the set of non-chaotic systems are countably infinite, while the set of chaotic systems are uncountably infinite. That's stretching it a little -- the distinction is actually solvable versus unsolvable, which itself is a technical definition -- but I probably lack the ability to explain better.)

I really do hope I can make this career work, though... it would be nice to have one of the increasingly rare jobs that isn't the equivalent of pushing bits of paper around. I want to take part in actual progress, not consume false progress.

[davv]

But I think I'm learning the trick of indifference to unimportant things -- which, if you believe the Stoics, is the same thing as peace of mind.

I don't think I'm quite there yet. I imagine it would involve being so sure of (and so right about) your estimates that you know that when the world appears to act bizarrely, it's not you, it's them; and I'm not that confident yet.
(Alternately, you could deliberately decide to do your thing and let the world do its thing, but that, too, requires a certain degree of strength - in that case, of independence - so that if you guess incorrectly, you're not affected.)

A great deal of science has no, or at least no immediate, technological application -- most of general relativity and particle physics, for instance.

Making GPS accurate and designing nuclear reactors? :p I get your point, though - the second's rather a stretch.

...I think spending a year and a half as a computational physicist left me a bit doubtful about the ability of computing to help science -- I mean, it does, but the problem of chaos shows up everywhere.

The problem of chaos, I suppose, means that you can only look so far before sensitivity to initial conditions makes short work of anything you might try to infer from the data. It seems, though (even if I'm no expert here), that the actual data-gathering has improved quite a bit, and made possible investigation in areas that earlier were quite dark. As an example, I'm thinking of cladistics in biology, where computers can throw great amounts of processing power onto the problem of hierarchical classification.

(Incidentally, your reference to sublinear advances makes me think of particle physics again - I seem to recall hearing that they don't scale with respect to the kinetic energy, so we aren't going to get much further than current energy levels without impractically large accelerators. Is that right?)

I really do hope I can make this career work, though... it would be nice to have one of the increasingly rare jobs that isn't the equivalent of pushing bits of paper around. I want to take part in actual progress, not consume false progress.

Yes. The coding I do now feels a lot more like "plumbing" (for the lack of a better word) than the sort of coding I did on my own. It's not exactly pushing pieces of paper around, but it's next to - it's telling a computer how to push virtual pieces of paper around. I like discovery and invention, and that, it is not - but if I wanted something in that direction, I should have endured the educational system, I guess.

[lhexa]

(Alternately, you could deliberately decide to do your thing and let the world do its thing, but that, too, requires a certain degree of strength - in that case, of independence - so that if you guess incorrectly, you're not affected.)

I think this ties into your notion of congruence, actually... if you're congruent enough, you could (implicitly) reason, "I am human, therefore what matters to humanity matters to me," and just go along with whatever is occupying humanity. If you're not very congruent, you would have to find some basis for what does and does not matter to you, other than what matters to humanity.

Making GPS accurate and designing nuclear reactors?

I said "most"! Also, nuclear reactors wouldn't need general relativity, just special relativity.

It seems, though (even if I'm no expert here), that the actual data-gathering has improved quite a bit, and made possible investigation in areas that earlier were quite dark.

That's a good point. I was thinking of physics, where the main application of computing is simulation. But there are plenty of sciences where data collection and data parsing are what you need computers for.

Is that right?

I'm not sure what you mean. For a linear accelerator, beam energy does increase linearly with accelerator length. However, this won't do you much good if the energy scales you want to investigate (say, the energy scale of electroweak/strong unification) require accelerator lengths on the order of AUs, as in fact they do. (Quick calculation: the ILC will have a length of 50 km and an energy of 1 TeV. Unification is predicted to occur around 10^16 GeV, for a 5*10^14 km accelerator. That's about a twentieth of a light year.)

...but if I wanted something in that direction, I should have endured the educational system, I guess.

Hmm. I suppose the current job could lead into a better programming job, or you could make it past the busywork and move on to less trivial tasks.

[davv]

I think this ties into your notion of congruence, actually... if you're congruent enough, you could (implicitly) reason, "I am human, therefore what matters to humanity matters to me," and just go along with whatever is occupying humanity. If you're not very congruent, you would have to find some basis for what does and does not matter to you, other than what matters to humanity.

I guess you mean with respect to humanity, because it would be possible for a being to be congruent to the natural world (that is, to understand the world and have it yield easily, so to speak) yet not to humanity. Such a being would probably be better off going its own way, to the degree that would be possible.

That said, knowing what really matters to humanity is hard, because there are so many things in the way. What you say about congruence is true (you'll understand humanity if you're honed to it and/or it's honed to you), but it says little about how you may go about to actually do that.

I hope the "ooh, shiny!" is a temporary thing, though. It reminds me of the Gorbachev joke where everything's replied to with slogans; and if that's going to become a permanent thing, well...

I said "most"! Also, nuclear reactors wouldn't need general relativity, just special relativity.

General relativity for GPS, particle physics for the reactors :)

I'm not sure what you mean. For a linear accelerator, beam energy does increase linearly with accelerator length.

Ah, then I was wrong. I thought the unification scales were so hard to investigate because you hit diminishing returns on accelerator construction, not because the energy scale is just so far away.

Could circular or wakefield accelerators make unification scales feasible? Again, I know too little, so I ask :)

Hmm. I suppose the current job could lead into a better programming job, or you could make it past the busywork and move on to less trivial tasks.

I doubt the latter, because the nature of the thing feels, well, too plumbingesque. There's certainly work involved, but it's more of a "keep the threads well-joined and don't let them tangle each other up into knots as you make the system" type of work than a "find that puzzle solution that fixes it all" type. There might be a little of the latter in what I do currently (for instance, I implemented an apportionment algorithm for some scheduler-related stuff), but it's rare.

So there are two ways this could change. I could get the papers I require by studying and taking tests off-work time, or/and I could keep working and then have that "job experience" everybody's looking for.

On a broader level, I'm not sure if I want to work at programming, either. It does require a lot of energy - much more than administration, at least as far as I've noticed. Hm, choices, choices.

[lhexa]

Yeah, I meant congruence to humanity. But I question this: That said, knowing what really matters to humanity is hard, because there are so many things in the way. I'm not sure there's an extra category of things that really matter to humanity, hidden somewhere behind what seems to matter to it.

I hope the "ooh, shiny!" is a temporary thing, though.

I dunno... the impulse itself is not bad. What's bad is losing one's perspective among the shiny things.

Could circular or wakefield accelerators make unification scales feasible?

Circular are limited by cyclotron radiation, so I don't think they scale as well as linear accelerators. Wakefield accelerators (which I worked on for a year and a half!) are, first, not yet proven to be viable, and second, better suited as pre-accelerators than main accelerators, because they don't scale in a predictable way. You change the parameters of your plasma and laser and hope that it gives a larger charge and energy -- and if you're my old group, you then find out that the experiments don't back up your simulations. :P

So there are two ways this could change. I could get the papers I require by studying and taking tests off-work time, or/and I could keep working and then have that "job experience" everybody's looking for.

Any more thoughts about this in the delay of my reply? :P

[davv]

I'm not sure there's an extra category of things that really matter to humanity, hidden somewhere behind what seems to matter to it.

Intuitively, it feels like there would be, at least with respect to time: that people look back and say "oh, I thought this mattered, but I was too caught up in it, too close to judge, and when it went [this way or that], I found out that it affected me less than I thought". We're not perfect at estimating, and there's a significant group that tries to trick our judgment of things as important or not important, as well.

I dunno... the impulse itself is not bad. What's bad is losing one's perspective among the shiny things.

Well, yes. I like shiny things (I'm a dragon, what did you expect! :p ), but in moderation. The feeling I get is that people do lose perspective and everything new is so much better than before, oh! That kind of response makes me cautious, as I think such periods of extremely quick improvement are rare indeed, and so I shouldn't assume that "this time, it's different".

You change the parameters of your plasma and laser and hope that it gives a larger charge and energy -- and if you're my old group, you then find out that the experiments don't back up your simulations. :P

Heh, makes me think of black-box antenna optimization done for the ST5 spacecraft - they basically set a genetic algorithm on it, then it came up with something that gave good results in the real world even though the design made no sense. Just the "fumbling in the darkness of parameter space where each parameter affects the whole system in complex ways" part of it :)

Any more thoughts about this in the delay of my reply? :P

The sensible thing to do would be to allocate half the day to work and half the day to studying, but that would drive me crazy in short order, so the latter it is! ... although I doubt I want to be gluing databases together from now till eternity.

[lhexa]

Just the "fumbling in the darkness of parameter space where each parameter affects the whole system in complex ways" part of it :)

Yep, that was the way of it!