Philosophy – Page 7 – Me on the net

Many worlds or only one?

English: Position and momentum of a particle p... — English: Position and momentum of a particle presented in the phase space. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Scientists often use the concept of a “phase space“, which is basically a representation of all the possible states that a system may be in. For the trajectory of a thrown stone for instance, the phase space would be a four-dimensional space, comprising the three dimensions of space, which define where the stone is, and one of time, which defines when the stone is in a particular position.

The trajectory of the stone is a line in this 4-d space, as the location and time information about the stone is known exactly. However, the stone is not a point and maybe be spinning at the same time that the whole object is flying through the air. This means that the trajectory would actually be a complex four-dimensional worm in phase space.

An animated GIF of a tesseract (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What if we were to introduce a probability factor into the experiment? Maybe we would set up the projectile to be triggered by an atomic decay or something similar. We would get a different worm depending on how long the atom takes to decay.

Clearly, if we want to show the all of the possible versions of the worm, the worm now becomes a sort of 4 dimensional sheet. Well, more like a 4-d duvet really, as the stone is not a point object.

Bedding comforter or duvet. Français : Couette... — Bedding comforter or duvet. Français : Couette (literie). Deutsch: Daunendecke, umgangssprachlich Federbett. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Within the 4-d duvet, each worm represents a case where the atom has decayed, and each of these cases has a probability associated with it. The probability can be expressed as the probability that the atom has decayed by that time or not, and can run from one to zero.

Actually the probability starts from zero and approaches one but doesn’t quite reach it. In practise in a group of atoms some will decay quickly and others will take longer. If there are a finite number of them, then the chances of any one lasting a long, long time are quite small, and all of the atoms are likely to decay in a moderately short time, a few multiples of the half-life anyway. However there will be a finite but microscopic in the extreme possibility, that an atom will survive for as long as you may consider.



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We can add another dimension to the phase space, one of probability. This gives us a five dimensional phase space, and the duvet becomes five dimensional. However, an atom decays at a certain time, and there is a single five dimensional worm in the phase space going forward. The space is no longer a phase space though, as a phase space, by definition, describes all possible states of the rock/launcher/atomic trigger, and doesn’t change.

According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics the state of a quantum system is described by a set of probabilities. When a measurement of the system is made the state becomes certain, and it is said that the waveform described by the probability function has “collapsed”.

The famous thought experiment of Schrodinger’s Cat is a description of the difficulties of such a case. The cat is enclosed in a box equipped with a mechanism which will release a poison and kill the cat if triggered by the decay of an atom. At some time after the experiment starts the atom may or may not have decayed so the quantum states “decayed” and “not decayed” are superimposed, and therefore so are the states “dead” and “not dead” of the cat.

How do we know if the stone has been fired yet? Well, we go and look to see, and we either see the stone in its launcher or we don’t. Quantum physics says that the stone exists in a superposition of states – launcher and not launched. The question this raises is, if this is so, how does looking at the stone “collapse” the superposition when we look?

Three wavefunction solutions to the Time-Depen... — Three wavefunction solutions to the Time-Dependent Schrödinger equation for a harmonic oscillator. Left: The real part (blue) and imaginary part (red) of the wavefunction. Right: The probability of finding the particle at a certain position. The top two rows are the lowest two energy eigenstates, and the bottom is the superposition state \psi_N = (\psi_0+\psi_1)/\sqrt{2} , which is not an energy eigenstate. The right column illustrates why energy eigenstates are also called “stationary states”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That quantum superposition is real is indicated by any number of experiments, even though many physicists working in the field (including Schrodinger himself) have expressed discomfort at the idea.

In quantum physics the evolution of everything is defined by the Universal Wave Function. This can be used to predict the future of any quantum physical system (and all physical systems are fundamentally quantum physical systems). Unfortunately for easy understanding, interpretation leads to the superposition problem mentioned above.



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Many people have tried to resolve this issue, and the best success has been achieved by the exponents of the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI), as described by Everett and championed by Bryce DeWitt and David Deutsch. The view of the MWI exponents is that the Universal Wave Function is fundamental and expresses a true picture of all reality. All of it, that is. Not just a physical system and its observer.

Everett’s view, as described in his thesis, is that an observer, as well as the object that he is observing is a subsystem of the system described by the Universal Wave Function. The wave function of these two subsystems does not describe a single state for each of these subsystems, but the states of the two subsystems are superposed, or in Everett’s term, correlated.

en:Many-worlds interpretation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When a particle is observed it may appear to be in state A 70% of the time (correlated with a state A for the observer). Similarly it may appear to be in state B 30% of the time (correlated with a state B for the observer). This led Everett to postulate a ‘split’ of the universe into a state A and a state B. (The term ‘split’ appears to come from DeWitt’s interpretation of Everett’s work).

The probabilities don’t seem to have a function in this model, and this is odd. The probability that the cat is dead when you open the depends on how long you wait until you open the box. If you wait a long time the cat will more likely be dead than if you opened it earlier.

This means that the world splits when the cat is put in the box, as from any moment it can be alive or dead, but you do not find out which branch you are in until you open the box sometime later.

I’m ambivalent about the MWI. On the one hand it is a good explanation of what happens when a measurement is made or the cat’s box is opened, and it does away with the need for a waveform collapse, which Everett argued against in his paper. However it is profligate in terms of world creation.

Another issue is that the split is decidedly binary. The cat is alive in this world and dead in that one. However most other physical processes are, at the macro level anyway, continuous. When a scientist takes a measurement he writes down, for example, 2.5, but this is only inaccurate value as it is impossible to measure something exactly and it may be wrong by up to 0.05 on either side of 2.5 (given the one decimal point value shown).

Consequently, I’d prefer an interpretation where there is no split, but instead a continuum of possibilities as part of a single world. Maybe the single path that we tread through life is an illusion and across the Universe, by virtue of the Universal Wave Function, we experience all possibilities, though to us it feels like we are only experiencing the one.



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Religious matters

Seen on the signboard of a Christadelphian Church : “Seminar: Brexit and Bible Prophecy”. What?? Anyway, that started me thinking about religion again.

In the days that religion was developing as a means of understanding the world, when natural occurrences like storms and earthquakes were hypothesised to be caused by supernatural agencies, such as spirits and gods, the details didn’t matter too much to people.

If your neighbour believed an evil spirit caused a landslide, it didn’t matter too much if he thought that the spirit was male, while you categorised it as female, and your other neighbour didn’t assign the spirit a gender at all.

Eventually problems arose with this approach. When Johnny arrived home with a bloody nose because he had insisted that the spirit was female and Nigel next door had been told that it was male, issues arose. Nigel always was a bit of a bully, as was his dad.

The tribe as a whole would, over time, discuss the matter and come up with a consensus. The landslide djinn had to be female as it didn’t actually try to kill anyone, but made work for the men, who had to clear the slide from the track.

As time passed, the original idea of the evil spirit would become embedded in a mythos or body of myths, as the spirit’s role and actions are extended upon, firstly by grandparents telling kids scary stories to keep the kids awake at night, then embedded into the structure of the society as the adults, more or less jokingly at first, try to appease the wrathful spirits.

Eventually people starting taking the stories seriously. A whole structure of myths and stories got inflated into a cosmology and a rationale for the way things were. Johnny’s and Nigels’ descendants took all the stories and hypotheses and treated them as if that was the way things were, and to some extent they were correct.

Except that the daemon that started the rock slide was called gravity and it was not a active being with human characteristics but a force of nature, impassive and impartial.

Having experienced the scientific revolution, most societies on Earth these days recognise that earthquakes and landslides are not caused by malevolent supernatural beings, but by the forces of nature, but this has to be taught to kids.

As they grow up they believe in fairies and Father Christmas, but they soon learn to distinguish truth and fact. They may well believe in these beings for the benefit of adults and the possibility of presents and money for some time, but their belief in these beings is ambivalent. Eventually their belief is fake, and everyone knows that. It becomes a game.

Without any knowledge of science, our ancestors did the best that they could, and make the best guesses as to causes of phenomenon using the tools that they had at the time – myths and stories, based around being of unlimited power and dominion.

With the advent of writing, these myths and stories could be written down. The writings did not change, so the views of people were now tied to these fixed stories. A class of people arose who existed for the single purpose of understanding the writings and even interceding with the supernatural beings.

Some of the sages, magicians and priests would have been wise individuals who, fundamentally, did not believe the myths and stories in the writings, but who could see an opportunity, but the vast majority of the religious officials would have really believe the religious corpus.

When two culture came into contact there would have been a mismatch in the religious beliefs. Since the supernatural beings were, in general, born from disasters, such as floods and landslides, it would not do to offend them.

But the guy from the city over there believed that the seas came from the salt tears of the goddess, while you knew that the seas arose when the god split the rocks and the seas sprang from the depths of the earth.

What to do about this? Well, in most cases the traders or travellers would have no problem with this, most people being practical in nature, but when the priests heard, well all hell would break loose.

At the very least, some people would travel to other lands to try to persuade the inhabitants of their errors, and they would either succeed of fail. If they failed, they could be cast out or, possibly, put to death in various horrible ways.

If the missionaries were put to death, why then that would escalate things and war could be the end result. After all, yours was the one true religion and we can’t have heathens looping off the heads of true believers can we?

A group of believers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So we get religious wars, crusades and jihads. Remember, although we cannot really conceive it these days, religion was the only explanation people had of the world. Science would be along in a few centuries. In this rational and largely atheistic world that we live in, we can’t really understand the fundamental belief in religion that used to prevail.

We teach religion as a subject in schools, like maths or geography. It’s largely been dissociated from feelings and even belief. This is why in the Western nominally Christian world we are uneasy when people believe deeply in religion. It seems to us like a sort of throwback to more ignorant times.



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Religion is still strong in the rest of the world, though it does appear to be waning in influence. From our less religious point of view, the rabid followers of Islam seem insane and wrong, and it is hard for us to understand them at all. More moderate Muslims probably think that the so-called “radicals” are wrong, and are horrified by their actions, just as Westerners who are nominally Christian are horrified by the actions of the Klu Klux Klan or other extreme Christian cults.

Religions can and do exist side by side in many societies, but it is an odd situation. So long as people keep their views to themselves and practice their religion discreetly people get along. But if someone believes that their religion is the only true religion and that others are going to burn in hell or whatever, then that person would consider themselves to be justified in trying to save the others from themselves, by force if necessary. Or maybe that person believes that their deity requires them to force others to believe, and the same applies.



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Maybe this is not the end of the story. Science is an explanation of the world, observation based. It is possible, though unlikely in my view, that this world view is as misguided as religion is misguided. Maybe our descendants may look on science as we look on religion, as necessary, but ultimately wrong headed view of life.

What’s the probability?

We can do a lot with probability and statistics. If we consider the case of a tossed die, we know that it will result in a six about one time in six in the die is not biassed in any way. A die that turns up six one time in six, and the other numbers also one time in six, we call a “fair” die.

We know that at any particular throw the chance of a six coming up is one in six, but what if the last six throws have all been sixes? We might become suspicious that the die is not after all a fair one.

The probability of six sixes in a row is one in six to the power of six or one in 46656. That’s really not that improbable if the die is fair. The probability of the next throw of the die, if it is a fair one, is still one in six, and the stream of sixes does not mean that a non six is any more probable in the near future.

The “expected value” of the throw of a fair die is 3.5. This means that if you throw the die a large numbers of time, add up the shown values and divide by the number of throws, the average will be close to three and a half. The larger the number of throws the more likely the measured average will be to 3.5.

This leads to a paradoxical situation. Suppose that by chance the first 100 throws of a fair die average 3.3. That is, the die has shown more than the expected number of low numbers. Many gamblers erroneously think that the die is more likely to favour the higher numbers in the future, so that the average will get closer to 3.5 over a much larger number of throws. In other words, the future average will favour the higher numbers to offset the lower numbers in the past.

In fact, the “expected value” for the next 999,900 is still 3.5, and there is no favouring of the higher numbers at all. (In fact the “expected value” of the next single throw, and the next 100 throws is also 3.5).

If, as is likely, the average for the 999,900 throws is pretty close to 3.5, the average for the 1,000,000 throws is going to be almost indistinguishable from the average for 999,900. The 999,900 throws don’t compensate for the variation in the first 100 throws – they overwhelm them. A fair die, and the Universe, have no memory of the previous throws.

But hang on a minute. The Universe appears to be deterministic. I believe that it is deterministic, but I’ve argued that elsewhere. How does that square with all the stuff about chance and probability?

Given the shape of the die, its trajectory from the hand to the table, given all the extra little factors like any local draughts, variations in temperature, gravity, viscosity of the air and so on, it is theoretically possible, if we knew all the affecting factors, that, given enough computing power, we could presumably calculate what the die would show on each throw.

It’s much easier of course to toss the die and read the value from the top of the cube, but that doesn’t change anything. If we knew all the details we could theoretically calculate the die value without actually throwing it.

The difficulty is that we cannot know all the minute details of each throw. Maybe the throwers hand is slightly wetter than the time before because he/she has wagered more than he/she ought to on the fall of the die.

There are a myriad of small factors which go into a throw and only six possible outcomes. With a fair die and a fair throw, the small factors average out over a large number of throws. We can’t even be sure what factors affect the outcome – for instance, if the die is held with the six on top on each throw, is this likely to affect the result? Probably not.

So while we can argue that when the die is thrown that deterministic laws result in the number that comes up top on the die, we always rely on probability and statistics to inform us of the result of throwing the die multiple times.

In spite the seemingly random string of numbers from one to six that throwing the die produces, there appears to be no randomness in the cause of the string of results from throwing the die.

The apparent randomness appears to be the result of variations in the starting conditions, such as how the die is held for throwing and how it hits the table and even the elastic properties of the die and the table.

Of course there may be some effects from the quantum level of the Universe. In the macro world the die shows only one number at a time. In the quantum world a quantum die may show 99% one, 0.8% two, 0.11% three… etc all adding up to 100%. We look at the die in the macro world and see a one, or a two, or a three… but the result is not predictable from the initial conditions.

Over a large number of trials, however, it is very likely that these quantum effects cancel out at the macro level. In maybe one in a very large number of trials the outcome is not the most likely outcome, and this or similar probabilities apply to all the numbers on the die. The effect is for the quantum effects to be averaged out. (Caveat: I’m not quantum expert, and the above argument may be invalid.)

In other cases, however, where the quantum effects do not cancel out, then the results will be unpredictable. One possibility is the case of weather prediction. Weather prediction is a notoriously difficult problem, weather forecasters are often castigated if they get it wrong.

So is weather prediction inherently impossible because of such quantum level unpredictability? It’s actually hard to gauge. Certainly weather prediction has improved over the years, so that if you are told by the weather man to pack a raincoat, then it is advisable to do so.

However, now and then, forecasters get it dramatically wrong. But I suspect that that is more to do with limited understanding of the weather systems than any quantum unpredictability.

Computer to Brain, Brain to Computer

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In the dawn of computing computers were essentially rooms full of racks and racks of circuits connected by mazes of cables. The circuits were formed out of electronic valves, relays, solenoids and other electronic and magnetic components, with not a single transistor to be seen, as semiconductors had not then been invented.

To reprogram such computers one often needed a soldering iron and an intensive knowledge of every part of the computer and how the parts interacted. From all accounts such machines were fickle, sometimes working sometimes not.

Since they were not housed in sterile environments or encased in a metal or plastic shell, foreign bodies could and did find their way into them and cause them to fail. Hence the concept of the computer bug. Computer pioneer Grace Hopper reported a real bug (actually a moth) in a computer and it made a great joke, but from the context of the report the term already existed.



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As we know computer technology rapidly improved, and computers rapidly shrank, became more reliable, and bugs mostly retreated to the software. I don’t know what the architecture of the early room fillers was, but the architecture of most computers these days, even tablets and phones, is based on a single architecture.

This architecture is based on buses, and there is often only one. A bus is like a data highway, and data is placed on this highway and read off it by various other computer circuits such as the CPU (of which more later). To ensure that data is placed on the bus when safe, every circuit in the computer references a single system clock.

The bus acts much like the pass in a restaurant. Orders are placed on it, and data is also placed on it, much like orders are placed through the pass and meals come the other way in a restaurant. Unlike the restaurant’s pass however, there is no clear distinction between orders and data and the bus doesn’t have two sides corresponding to the kitchen and the front of house in a restaurant.

Attached to the bus are the other computer components. As a minimum, there is a CPU, and there is memory. The CPU is the bit that performs the calculations, or the data moves, or whatever. It is important to realise that the CPU itself has no memory of what has been done, and what must be done in the future. It doesn’t know what data is to be worked on either.

All that stuff is held in the memory, data and program. Memory is mostly changeable, and can contain data and program. There is no distinction in memory between the two.

The CPU looks on the bus for what is to be done next. Suppose the instruction is to load data from the bus to a register. A register is a temporary storage area in the CPU. The CPU does this and then looks for the next instruction which might be to load more data from the bus to another register, and then it might get an instruction to add the two registers and place the result in a third register. Finally it gets told to place the results from the third register onto the bus.

I was not entirely correct when I said that there was only one bus in a computer. Other chips have interfaces on the main bus, but have interfaces on other buses too. An example would be the video chip, which has to interface to both the main bus and the display unit. Another example is the keyboard. A computer is not much use without input and output!

The architecture that I’ve described is incorporated in almost all devices that have some “intelligence”. Your washing machine almost certainly has it, and as I said above so do your tablets and phones. Your intelligent TV probably does, and even your stove/range may do. These days we are surrounded by this technology.

The above is pretty much accurate, though I may have glossed and elided some facts. Although the technology has advanced tremendously over the years, the underlying architecture is still based around the bus concept, with a single clock synchronizing operations.

Within the computer chips themselves, the clock is of prime importance as it ensures that data is in the right place at the right time. Internally a computer chip is a bit like a train set, in that strings of digits flow through the chip, passing through gates which merge and split the bits of the train to perform the calculations. All possible tracks within the chip have be traversable within a clock cycle.

Clockless chips may some day address the on-chip restrictions, though the article I cite was from 2001. I’m more interested in the off-chip restrictions, the ones that spring from the necessity to synchronise the use of the bus. This pretty much defines how computers work and limit their speed.

One possibility is to ditch the bus concept and replace it with a network concept little bits of computing power could be distributed throughout the computer and could either be signalled with the data and the instructions to process the data, or maybe the computing could be distributed to many computational units and the result could then be assessed and the majority taken as the “right” answer. The instructions could be dispensed with if the computational unit only does one task.

Network Computing Devices NCD-88k X terminal, back ports. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The computational units themselves could be ephemeral too, being formed and unformed as required. This would lead to the “program” and “computation” being distributed across the device as well as the data. Data would be ephemeral too, fading away over time, being reinforced if necessary by reading and writing, much like early computer memory was refresh on each cycle of the clock.

What would such a computer look like? Well, I’d imagine that it would look something like the mass of grey matter between your ears. Data would exist in the device as an echo, much like our memories do, and processing would be distributed through the device much like our brains seem to work. Like the brain it is likely that such a computing device would be grown, and likely some structures would be mostly dedicated to certain tasks, as in the brain.



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One big advantage that I see for such “devices” is that it should be very easy to interface them to the brain, as they would work on similar principles. It does mean though that we would be unlikely to be able to download one of these devices to a conventional computer, just as the contents of a brain could never be downloaded to a conventional computer.

On the other hand, the contents of a brain could conceivable be downloaded to a device like I have tried to describe.



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The Laws of Science and Magic

Everyone is familiar with the use of magic in stories, movies and video games. While it seems that it is possible for anything to happen in such environments, usually it is implicit that this is not so. It may even been touched on explicitly in the narrative.

What exactly is magic, though? Arthur C Clarke said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and that’s an excellent angle to approach magic from. An obvious example from the “magic is technology and technology is magic” approach is the introduction of guns to people who only knew spears and bows and arrows.

There are many laws of physics but the major ones comprise “classical physics”. I don’t propose to touch on quantum physics here – though magical devices might need to use such physics to account for the huge energy densities involved.

One of the cornerstones of classical physics is that you don’t get something for nothing. Energy is conserved and not created, though Einstein has shown that energy and mass are much the same thing.



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When Harry Potter waves his wand and his enemies are thrown backwards, the energy must come from somewhere, and that is from or through the wand. If the energy is stored in the wand, it would have to be stored very densely, and the densest form of energy is matter.

Does Harry’s wand transform mass to energy in a controlled way? Perhaps it does. Scientists talk about “cold fusion” and while it has not been demonstrated for real, perhaps it will be possible with future technologies.

Another possibility is that Harry’s wand is merely a channel for magical energies. Well, anything is possible, but I doubt it. The energies used in magic, for example, when used to repel attackers, are so large that the slightest inefficiencies in the process would probably melt the wand and destroy it and Harry with it.

Magic has been used to suspend people in the air, to overcome gravity. It usually requires the use of energy, so that the suspended person will eventually succumb to gravity eventually. Scientists have suspended small animals using magnetic fields, so it is definitely possible to achieve levitation with current scientific knowledge, this gives a hint about how magic might achieve the feat.

Daniel Dunglas Home, the famous Scots-born med... — Daniel Dunglas Home, the famous Scots-born medium of the nineteeth century, levitates himself in front of witnesses in the home of Ward Cheney in South Manchester, Connecticut on August 8, 1852. This illustration was first published in 1887 in the book Les Mystères de la science (The Mysteries of Science) by French psychical researcher Louis Figuier. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wands are often controlled by voice. This again is not a huge step beyond current technologies. Our wands, I mean cell phones, can already be controlled by voice.

That actually brings up an interesting point. Wands are used for all sorts of things, to battle enemies, gain access to secure places, to travel in time, but they are rarely, if at all used for communications. Harry Potter does not talk into his wand to communicate with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, so maybe modern technology has something that is one up over magic.

When Harry throws a fireball from his wand, there is no recoil. This would appear to violate a number of physical laws. Energy appears to be created from nothing and the Law of Equal and Opposite Reaction (Newton’s Third Law) does not seem to apply.

The energy necessary to create the fireball can be attributed to a mass to energy conversion process as above. Such a process would, as described above, use very little mass to create the fireball and to send it towards Harry’s opponent. It’s possible that the reaction to the throwing of the fireball is absorbed by the wand or harmlessly directed in the opposite direction, much as the recoil of a “recoiless gun or rifle” absorbs or redirects any recoil.

Movie of a Fireball (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Interestingly Harry’s opponents don’t usually appear to be seriously injured by his fireballs. They are thrown backwards and are usually discomforted by the fireball, but there is no sign of any wounds or other injury. Evidently they are cushioned in some way.

However several people were killed by the wands during battles, so it is evident that as weapon, the wands could be controlled by the users.



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Magic is able to transform things. Sometimes this is permanent, sometimes temporary. Sometimes people have the ability to change form, like the werewolves in many stories. Science does not have the ability to do things like this, but it occurs in nature, when a caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly.

Maybe science will be able to perform such feats, when we have mastered the genetic code. The body shows remarkable abilities to recover from trauma, to repair itself. Maybe we will some day learn how to use these abilities to modify our bodies in a similar way to the way that magic does.

It is unlikely that we will achieve the instant transformations of magic in the near future, but we may be able to regrow damaged arms, to change our heights and bodily appearance. For most people the first priority will be to gain the ability to control obesity!

Invisibility is a theme of magic. The hero uses the ability to become invisible to sneak past the guards and to rescue the maiden, recover the lost valuable, or defeat the evil overlord. Science has been trying to perform this trick for a long time, and has achieved some success. At the very least you can use an “Invisible Fence” to contain your pets!

Beyond the Invisible (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Things can be made invisible by the use of mirrors, but that’s not quite the same as an Invisibility Cloak. Things can be made invisible by camouflage too, though that again can be considered as cheating, I suppose. Real invisibility, which amounts to complete transparency, is currently unachievable by science. I would not bet against science being able to bend light around objects to make them properly invisible in the long term though.

A disadvantage to becoming invisible, apart from people tending to walk into you of course, is that you would not be able to see where you are going without disrupting the very fact of your invisibility. This is because you need to capture photons to be able to see. You may not need a lot of photons, but it would mean that there would be a slightly dim patch where you are standing with your Invisibility Cloak and you would not be able to see what is around you.



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Arthur C Clarke’s dictum implies that everything achievable by magic would eventually be achievable by science. It may be that some things achievable by magic in stories are actually physically impossible, so we will never be able to achieve them. But it is interesting to think of ways that they might be achieved by science.

2001's Discovery miniature — 2001’s Discovery miniature (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What shall I talk about now? Families?



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I thought that this week’s subject might be politics, but I decided to check if I had already selected politics as a topic to talk about. So I searched my posts for the word “politics” and lo and behold, I had addressed it, along with the Trump phenomenon just over a month ago.

I hope to produce something original, at least, original to me, in each post that I make. Clearly, there are topics that I return to time and time again. That’s very depressing! So I won’t be talking about politicians and why they are one of the least trusted professions, and I am going to talk about some aspects of society and how we as humans manage it.



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That sounds more high brow that it will no doubt turn out to be, and I’m not even going to bother to check if I’ve addressed it before!

The very basic societal unit is the couple, I’d say. Very few people go through life as a singleton, even the most anti-social of us. The bond between a couple is often lifelong, though breakups happen often enough that we are totally disbelieving when a couple does split.

Stable and possibly lifelong couple are recognised by the state of matrimony. This not only recognises the bond between the couple, but adds a layer of legalisation to the state. Married couples may share possessions equally or one, usually the male in a two sex couple, may control their joint assets.

The female in a two sex relationship may have less say in the control of the joint assets, and in return will be provided with protection and can expect that any children would also inherit that protection.

Today, in most societies, assets are under the joint control of both partners in a couple, both may bear some responsibility for bringing an income into the partnership and both are responsible for the care and protection of any children.

In spite of the more equal status of two partners in a couple these days, it is evident that full equality has not been achieved. While there is room to move in the direction of complete equality, the fact that the female has to bear the children, seems to imply that full equality is not physically possible.

Family (mother, father, son, daughter) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Obviously I’m referring to heterosexual couples above. Bonds between same sex partners have only relatively recently started to be recognised in our society and others. Since the partners start off more equal, one would assume that complete equality between the partners would be easier, but I think that roles would be assigned unequally in practise – one partner does the cooking, the other the cleaning. One may control the purse strings while the other does the actual shopping!

The arrival of a child alters the dynamics of the couple, and the three form the basis of a family. Of course the couple reside in a familial soup of siblings, parents, grandparents, cousins and so on, but the inter-familial bonds are a lot stronger than these looser ones.

That brings up another point about familial bonds – they change and weaken over time. A baby is completely dependant on his/her parents, a toddler less so. A teenager even less, and a mature child may have only a remote relationship with its parents.

When a couple gets married, there is an implicit “hands off” warning to others. This warning can be ignore, and may result in a catastrophic break up of the couple. In the past this was frowned upon by the establishment, usually the local religious hierarchy, but these days things are a lot less strict.

While the strongest bonds are between the couple and their children, the other familial bonds are fairly strong too. Your parents don’t stop being your parents because you have moved away and are married to someone not part of the wider family.

There are other groups, like neighbourhoods, and even nations that everyone is part of. A person may profess membership or belief in a religion. One might take part in a sport and become a member of a team. One may be part of a group where one works, and such a group may be a part of a hierarchy at work, which is part of an industry, which makes up a significant sector of a country.

The nuclear family, father, mother, and any kids, is often seen these days as the foundation of society, which it is, and as the smallest functionally and financially viable unit of society. This latter is much more debatable. While such families have been around for a long time, it is only relatively recently that nuclear families have been able to operate as independent units.

In many countries and societies the nuclear family exists and operates within an extended family group. On a farm, several generations may have lived and often still do live in close quarters and may even live within a single large dwelling house. This has obvious advantages as aunties and grannies can share cooking, cleaning and babysitting chores, freeing up the parents for other jobs.

The rise of the nuclear family as an independent unit can be attributed to the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution provided jobs outside the family business, it produced enough financial surplus to fund the provision of single family houses, and it spurred the transport revolution which allowed people to move from the countryside to the cities.

Transport and communications has enabled people to live in small family units, while still maintaining a slightly looser connection to other family members. Family members may live on opposite sides of the globe and still be in frequent contact with each other. We have lost the intimacy of having several generations and branches of a family being in constant physical contact, but we have the consolation of the looser electronic communication.

In days past, even just over a century ago, emigrating to a new country thousands of miles away would mean only the possibility of sporadic contact with family members via letters carried over unreliable routes, but these days we can email from one side of the globe to the other and remain in contact with family thousands of miles away.

Contacts--from-email--scree — Contacts–from-email–scree (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is the Brain a Computer?

I’ve just read an interesting article by Robert Epstein which tries to debunk the idea that the brain is a computer. His main thrust seems to be that the idea that the brain is a computer is just a metaphor, which it is. Metaphors however are extremely useful devices that use similarities between different systems to perhaps understand the least understood of the two systems.

Epstein points out that we have used several metaphors to try to understand the mind and the brain, depending on the current state of human knowledge (such as the hydraulic metaphor). This is true, but each metaphor is more accurate than the last. The computer model may well be the most accurate yet.

The computer model may well be all that we need to use to explain the operation of the brain and mind with very high accuracy. Brain and mind research may eventually inform the computer or information technology.

It is evident that Epstein bases his exposition on a partially understood model of computing – for instance it appears that he thinks that data is stored in a more or less permanent fashion in a computer. He says:

The idea, advanced by several scientists, that specific memories are somehow stored in individual neurons is preposterous; if anything, that assertion just pushes the problem of memory to an even more challenging level: how and where, after all, is the memory stored in the cell?

This describes one particular method of storing data only. It sort of equates with the way that data is stored on a hard disk. On a disk, a magnetic bit of the disk is flipped into a particular configuration which is permanent. However, in the memory of a computer, the RAM, the data is not permanent and will disappear when the computer is switched off. In fact the data has to be refreshed on every cycle of the computer’s timer. RAM is therefore called volatile memory.

In the early days of computing, data was stored in “delay line memory“. This is a type of memory which needs to be refreshed to preserve information contained in it. Essentially data is fed in and read out of a pipeline simultaneously, the read out being fed back to input again to complete the cycle and maintain the memory.

I expect that something similar may be happening in the brain when remembering something. It does mean that a memory may well be distributed throughout the brain at any one time. There is evidence that memory fades over time, and this could be related to an imperfect refresh process.

Epstein also has issues with the imperfect recall that we have of real life objects (and presumably events). He cites the recall of a dollar bill as an example. The version of the bill that people drew from memory was very simplified as compared to the version that they merely copied.

All that this really demonstrates is that when we remember things a lot of the information about the object is not stored and is lost. Similarly, when an image of the dollar bill is stored in a computer, information is lost. When it is restored to a computer screen it is not exactly the same as thing that is imaged. It is not the same as the image as stored in the computer.

It’s worth noting the image file in a computer is not the same as the real thing that it is an image of, as it is just a digitisation of the real thing as captured by the camera that created the image.

The image on the screen is not the same as either the original or the image in the computer, but the same is true of the image that the mind sees. It is digitised by the eye’s rods and cones and converted to an image in the brain.

English: Stylized idea of the communication be... — English: Stylized idea of the communication between the eye and the brain. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This digitised copy is what is recalled to the mind’s eye when we remember of recall it. The remembered copy of the original is therefore an interpretation of a digitised version of the original and therefore has lost information.

Just as the memory in our minds is imperfect, so is the image in the computer. Firstly the image in the computer is digital. The original object is continuous. Secondly, the resolution of the computer image has a certain resolution, say 1024 x 768, and some details in the original object will inevitably be lost. More details are lost with a lower resolution.

In addition the resolution of the image stored in the computer may not match the capabilities of the screen on which it is displayed and may need to be interpolated which produces another error. In the example of the dollar bill, the “resolution” in the mind is remarkably small and the “interpolation” onto the whiteboard is very imperfect.

Epstein also assumes a particular architecture of a computer which may be superseded quite soon in the future. In particular in a computer there is one timing circuit, a clock, that all other parts of the computer rely on. It is so important that the speed of a computer is related to the speed of this clock.

It may be that the brain may operate more like a network, where each part of the network keeps its own time and synchronisation is performed by a message based scheme. Or the parts of the brain may cooperate by some means that we don’t currently understand. I’m sure that the parts of the brain do cooperate and that we will eventually discover how it does it.

Epstein points out that babies appear to come with built in abilities to do such things as recognise faces, to have certain reflexes and so on. He doesn’t appear to know that computers also have built in certain basic abilities without which they would be useless hunks of silicon and metal.

When you switch on a computer all it can do is read a disk and write data to RAM memory. That is all. When it has done this is gives control to program in RAM which, as a second stage, loads more information from the disk.

It may at this stage seek more information from the world around it by writing to the screen using a program loaded in the second stage and reading input from the keyboard or mouse, again using a program loaded in the second stage. Finally it gives control to the user via the programs loaded in the second stage. This process is called “bootstrapping” and relies on the simple hard coded abilities of the computer.

But humans learn and computers don’t. Isn’t that right? No, not exactly. A human brain learns by changing itself depending on what happens in the world outside itself. So do computers!

Say we have a bug in a computer program. This information is fed to the outside world and eventually the bug gets fixed and is manually or automatically downloaded and installed and the computer “learns” to avoid the bug.

Learning Organism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It may be possible in the future for malfunction computer programs to update themselves automatically if made aware of the issue by the user just as a baby learns that poking Mum in the eye is an error, as Mum says “Ouch!” and backs off a little.

All in all, I believe that the computer analogy is a very good one and there is no good reason to toss it aside, especially if, as in Epstein’s article, there appears to be no concrete suggestion for a replacement for it. On the contrary, as knowledge of the brain grows, I will expect us to find more and more ways in which the brain resembles a computer and that possibly as a result, computers will become more and more like brains.

Inspiration

In Terry Pratchett’s series of Discworld books, one of the characters, Hwel, a dwarf, is a playwright, and writes plays which are obvious references to Shakespeare’s plays. Indeed some of the books themselves have themes based around Shakespeare’s plays.

Hwel is tormented by inspiration. He is a dwarf, and therefore by heredity a dour reclusive and unimaginative entity, but because of his mind is full of myriads of ideas, he is compelled to travel among humans and write his plays.

The witches (Jennifer Hunt, Suzanne Curtis, an... — The witches (Jennifer Hunt, Suzanne Curtis, and Sonja Lanzener) surround Macbeth (Remi Sandri) in this 2004 Alabama Shakespeare Festival production of the Shakespear masterpiece. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These ideas sleet through the Discworld universe impinging on and inflaming his dwarf brain. Hwel is also tormented by vivid dreams, which he then struggles to put down on paper. He is always dissatisfied with the result and is constantly revising and rewriting his plays.

Hwel is an excellent example of an inspired individual. His character is obviously a reference to Shakespeare, and many of his traits, such as his dissatisfaction with his inability to capture his ideas and concepts on paper, are traits found in many inspired individuals.



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Pratchett leaves the question of the source inspiration open. As above, they sleet through the Discworld universe impinging on the brains of all, especially those like Hwel, like neutrinos sleet through the material universe, only rarely interacting with other matter.

Everyone has ideas. Inspiration is a sort of high grade idea that has the wow factor and it is likely that simple ideas and inspiration have the same source. It is also obvious that ideas and inspiration actually spring from inside us, from inside our minds.

Inspiration (sculpture) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is probably not a particular part of the brain where ideas arise and inspiration is found, though some brain injuries result in people being unable to act voluntarily, these people however responding to instruction. (Caveat emptor: I’ve not been able to find an example of this on Google)

Inspiration seems to happen more frequently when a person is forced or required to look at a problem or issue from a different point of view, or when novel ideas are considered in conjunction with one another.

As I sit here, wondering what I should type next, I am looking for inspiration to come to me. In my mind I consider a number of possibilities, which run through my mind one after another, quite quickly. Some seem to be more attractive than others and the rejects seem to fade or drop back into the background.

So, it turns out that I decided to write about what goes on in my head when I get an idea. I can only assume that similar happens to others when the undertake a similar activity like writing a blog, or a novel, or even a letter to a friend.

Often, I find, one idea leads clearly and obviously to another. I write one sentence and soon find I’ve written a paragraph or two, and then I pause for thought and the process repeats. Eventually I end up with the full completed letter or blog post or whatever.

Inspiration is thinking outside the box. Terry Pratchett once said “I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it”. That’s true indeed, but the point of the “thinking outside the box” idea is to encourage people to discard conventional thinking and think in an unconventional manner. That’s easier said than done.

One way is to take conventional thinking and analyse it into facets or factors, and discard or reverse one of them. In a scientific but probabilistic setting, such as that of Schroedinger’s cat thought experiment, conventional thinking is that the cat must be either alive or dead. Thinking outside the box leads many people to consider that the cat is both alive and dead.

Some people seem to have success in deriving inspiration from a mind map or even a list of words. Some people have been known to use drugs or meditation to aid inspiration. It seems that the human mind is conservative and conventional in the most part, and that inspiration, when it doesn’t come freely, can be aided by persuading it to be more adventurous.

Meditation and mind maps or whatever tool is used to free the mind for inspirational thinking may be necessary in some cases, but in many others inspiration comes without the need for such things. Some people, like the dwarf Hwel above can’t help being inspired and this, as in Hwel’s case, is not necessarily a comfortable feeling.

Inspiration come in small chunks, such as the decision to drop all plans and do something different from usual or huge blocks, such as Hwel’s and Shakespeare’s plays. As I said above, it does some to vary from person to person, and possibly from time to time. For instance, if I’ve done the same thing 20 to 30 times recently, I may be inspired to do something different, for a change.

weather symbol (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you search on Google for “inspirational” you will find that many of the search results are for “inspirational quotes”. Most of these are in fact trite homilies, intended to list the spirits of those who need it, exhortations to remember and to treat friends and families well, and similar.

They are not inspirational in the sense that I have been using the word above. Nevertheless, the sheer number of such quotes appears to indicate that some people feel the need to post them in the hope that they will help others. Whether or not they actually help others is something that it would be hard to gauge. I sometimes wonder if only the people creating and posting these posts get any benefit from them.



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Some people are inspirational in that they persuade people to do things that they would otherwise not do. This could be good (Mahatma Gandhi) or bad (Adolf Hitler). A truly inspirational leader can change the world.

Inspirational leaders can be bad because their rhetoric and behaviours can override the sensibilities and consciences of their followers, which is particularly true of Hitler. Even the followers of good leaders can do evil at times, instituting pograms and wars against followers of other religions.

Would you Adam and Eve it?

A fig tree in Autumn colours. Willowbank Reserve, Tawa, New Zealand

I’ve been re-reading the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible and I believe that Eve has been given a raw deal! Nowhere in the Bible does God forbid Eve from eating fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve had not been created when Adam was given the prohibition!

Secondly, before Eve ate from the tree, she would not have known that it was wrong, as she would as yet have no idea of right or wrong. She would not have known that what she was doing was evil.

English: Adam and Eve are being sent out of the garden of Eden Русский: Адам и Ева изгоняются из Эдемского сада (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thirdly, why did God put the tree there at all? He had no need of it? The Garden of Eden was put there for Adam’s use, with two trees in the centre which Adam was told not to touch. What did God think was going to happen, given that both Adam and Eve were innocents and didn’t know Good and Evil?

And the serpent, described as “crafty” in the New International Version of the Bible. Its intent was obviously not good. Had it already tasted the fruit from the tree? Poor is loaded with the burden of the Original Sin and it should probably have been just the serpent that got the boot from the Garden of Eden with all his offspring.

Anglo-Catalan Psalter or The Great Canterbury Psalter, folio 1 recto: Genesis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While the Bible cannot literally be true, given that we appear to live in a deterministic scientifically describable Universe, and the events in the Bible, the miracles, seem to be both non-deterministic and scientifically highly improbable, we can use examples from the Bible to investigate moral and ethical matters.

The Bible story is an early attempt to investigate moral concepts. A mountain exploding is neither good nor evil, but if we tell a little story about the original people and how they came to know good and evil we can begin to get some idea of the concepts.

English: Bible of Lilienfeld (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the story God is responsible for the whole shebang. Why on earth did he introduce good and evil into the world? For that matter, what are good and evil?

In the story the Original Sin was Eve doing something that a higher authority (the Highest Authority!) told Adam, and by extension Eve, not to do. This then opened a Pandora’s Box of things good and evil, like not romping around with no clothes on.



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Philosophers note that this does not actually answer the question of where good and evil, bad and good, arise from. It doesn’t answer the questions of what exactly good and evil are and why they exist in the first place. The Universe would no doubt be a less interesting place without the concepts.

While good and bad are similar to good and evil, there are differences and the word “good” is used in a different sense in the two pairs of concepts. A good harvest means a plentiful one and there is no moral aspect to it (except possibly if it is a reward for serious toil), whereas giving part of the harvest to someone in need is a good deed and is good in a moral sense.

Charity (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Similarly a bad harvest is a light one, and again has no moral aspect to it, but refusing to spare a part of the harvest with those in need or stealing the harvest of someone else is morally bad thing to do. It is an evil act.

So, Eve was set up. She had no concept of good and evil, she was persuaded by the serpent who it appears might have already sampled the fruit, and God had placed the trees in the Garden of Eden to tempt her, and for her to be the channel by which good and evil entered the world.

English: Bronnbach Abbey. Choir stalls by Daniel Aschauer (1778): Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil Deutsch: Kloster Bronnbach. Chorgestühl von Daniel Aschauer (1778): Baum der Erkenntnis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The end result, apart from the expulsion, was the question of what was allowed and what was not. Obviously, doing what you are told by authority is high on the list, as is walking around with no clothes on.

Theologians of all religions have spent a great deal of time and effort deciding what is good and what is bad. Much of the thinking is encapsulated in the “Ten Commandments” (in Judaism, Christianity and Islam at least), and Jesus’ First Amendment to love others as one loves oneself.

The place of Ten Commandment made from Murano glass at Kedumim Synagogue SHetibe, up from the stand. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Other attempts to codify the concept of good and evil have been attempted over time. One such is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as advocated by Eleanor Roosevelt. This document is good in its intent, but lacking in its understanding of the realities of life. For example, during a war many of the so-called “Human Rights” may need to be abrogated.

For instance, an individual should never undergo torture. However, what if torturing one individual one can save millions of others? I don’t answer this question – I merely pose it. Indeed did God breach the Human Rights of Adam and Eve by evicting them from their home in the Garden of Eden, perhaps?

Adam and Eve ( ) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Arguments like this abound – is it acceptable to transport a man to “the colonies” for stealing a loaf of bread? What if he did it, not for himself, but for his family? The law, which is at its base a codification of good and evil, said at the time that this was acceptable, and indeed necessary, but today it seems barbaric. Morals seem to be mutable.

Poor old Eve gets the blame for everything. Literally everything. For pain, childbirth, and the whole Human Being thing, not to mention venomous snakes. Snakes may, if they were conscious beings might consider themselves hard done by, because after all, if God had not put the tempting tree there would have been no problem.

Red milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum syspila) User licence kindly provided to Wikipedia under the GFDL by photographer: Mike Pingleton Mike’s page (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What about all those fleas and mosquitoes too? They have probably killed more people than snakes ever have. Maybe it wasn’t the serpent’s argument that persuaded Eve. Maybe it was a mosquito whispering in her ear that tipped the tables.

It’s a great story, a story of innocence lost. It conveniently encapsulates a reason for good and evil, and accounts for the fact that humans have to toil for a living, either by tilling a field and fighting weeds and thorns, pest and crop diseases, or by piloting a desk in a modern city.



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But it is unfair that Eve gets all the blame. If Eve were being tried in a court of law, I’d believe that she would have a good case, being set up by God and beguiled by His servant the serpent, all when Eve was in a state of innocence, not knowing at the time that what she was doing was wrong. Yes, I reckon she’d be let off with a caution.

Depiction of Adam and Eve being cast out from the Garden of Eden in the Dispersed Falnama (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Upgrading

I’m a little late with this post because of an issue with my computer. An upgrade resulted in me not being able to send and receive emails. While this is partially fixed I still have work to do.

I’ve been in the business for decades so I’m acutely aware of how things can go wrong in an upgrade. Sensible systems administrators take backups, plan out the upgrade in as much detail as they can and probably spend more time getting ready than in actually performing the upgrade.



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This pays huge dividends, but still, not infrequently, things can go wrong. The wrongness can be major, with a totally destroyed system, or minor, as in niggling irritations like something behaving slightly differently after the upgrade.

Computer firms and software suppliers often make huge efforts to make an upgrade work easily and cleanly, and many have put in place systems to make it easier to upgrade their software or back it out if something goes awry.

Microsoft Windows wordmark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are various levels of upgrade – a small part of a program may need to be upgraded, or the whole program may need to be upgraded, or indeed the whole operating system, Windows or what have you, may need to be upgraded.

In the early days of computer systems upgrading would mean downloading some source code or source code changes called “patches”, making changes to the existing source code, compiling it and then installing it into a particular location on the computer.

The technical terms don’t matter too much. I just want to convey how complex and manual the process was. That is fertile ground for errors to creep in. You download a bunch of code, trusting that it will work and fix some problems, some of which you may not even be aware of, and then transfer them to the existing source code.

You may mistype something, or mistakenly overwrite something in the existing source, feed the new code into the compiler, and out pops a new program, which you then transfer into the correct location and cross your fingers and test.

English: Works Records System - schematic — English: Works Records System – schematic (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Incidentally a compiler is also a program and as such it has bugs which need to be fixed. What if you update or patch the compiler and it breaks? You can’t remove patch and re-compile as you just broke the compiler!

The solution is to reinstall the original compiler that came from the supplier, and potentially patch that to the point before you broke it. Or, if you a sensible system administrator, you restore the original compiler from the backup that you took before the upgrade. Either solution is tedious and frustrating.

Operating systems are the biggest upgrades that can be done. They are also the most dangerous because they are big and complex, which multiplies the chances of hitting problems or ending up with a system that doesn’t work.

Operating systems upgrades used to come as a magnetic tape or two, and a small book or manual of instructions. IBM for instance used to supply several books of instructions, hints, cross references, dependency lists and so on for each major upgrade. The necessary books for looking after IBM mainframes amounted to a library and that was what it was called.

Reel of 1/2" tape showing beginning-of-ta... — Reel of 1/2″ tape showing beginning-of-tape reflective marker. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

IBM and others quickly realised that something needed to be done to help the system administrators to install, maintain and operate their big computer systems. Otherwise people would end up with unusable systems, and IBM would have to spend time and money helping them fix them up.

So the concept of a package was conceived and from very early in computing history, everything was supplied to the customer as a package from the actual operating system down to the programs that ran the printers.

English: The Siemens SIMATIC S7 SATEP 7 V5.4 S... — English: The Siemens SIMATIC S7 SATEP 7 V5.4 Software Package. Deutsch: Das Siemens SIMATIC S7 SATEP 7 V5.4 Software Paket. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A package was a cluster of programs that provided some feature or facility on the computer. Packages requisites and dependencies on other program – it would be no use installing a package that needs stuff printed, like an accounting package, if there was no printing package already installed.

Computer manufacturers also moved away from providing source code to customers. They supplied, for example, a printer driver or a compiler in binary, ready to run, form, so that the program binary could be simply dropped in place and it would run right away.



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I’m simplifying a little, as there were other program chunks that, while they weren’t compilable source code, could not be run as supplied and which had to be intimately connected to other program chunks to produce a runnable program.

Nowadays the average user, professional or home, of the Windows operating system has never seen source code. All updates through Windows Update, and programs like browsers, games, utilities and other programs, are binary distributions, binary packages that the operating system installs for you. The Windows operating system doesn’t even provide a compiler.

This whole distribution system for programs and updates requires very rigid interfaces between the bits of the operating system itself and other programs which are not part of the operating system, and this is, when you know what is going on in the background, truly amazing.

Indeed, a Brazilian Windows systems operator can confidently install a program on his computer, which communicates with him in Portuguese, and so can a Windows systems operator in Finland or even Japan. All can expect that the program will work almost perfectly on all these diverse systems.

It’s slightly more blurry in the Unix/Linux world. There the operator or maintainer is given an option – use packages similar to those used with Windows or use source code. Many Unix/Linux users these days will never have knowingly compiled source code packages, though sometimes the package maintenance system may compile code for them. However this is rare.

Some Unix/Linux users however like to compile some things for themselves, so that they can get the very latest versions of things, and some even compile their whole systems from the ground up though this is rare.

Diagram of Monolithic kernels (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So when you complain about your Windows system installing updates when you shut it down, reflect that things could be worse – you could have needed to compile them yourself.



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