Friday 12.09pm

I am listening to Particles and waves by the Cranes on my new iPod. The battery on the old one was close to useless. I made a spirited attempt to DIY the solution by changing the battery but somehow I broke the whole thing. So I bought a new nano with money I don't have. (I used to hate credit but I've learned to love it. So long as I have some idea how I can pay it back. Without it, I would not have a PC, for instance, which would make life difficult.) I could have bought a 30GB iPod for the same money but dude, that thing's chunky. The nano's so teensy that I could comfortably fit it up my arse. I won't though.

So I am thinking, what can you do with a guy who thinks that he should use "which" for inanimates and "that" for animates, except say "don't"? After writing that information systems are appealing because all problems have solutions, he answered my suggestion that many problem do not get solved by referring me to Wittgenstein, who says that all technical problems have technical solutions. He can consider himself lucky that editors can no longer contact editors directly, so that he does not have to read my explaining to him that yes, all technical problems do, in principle, have technical solutions, but some are so complex that in practical terms they are unsolvable. Also, he ignores that this would only be true of problems about which we had full information. For instance, whether to call or fold a limit poker hand is usually a technical problem that often has one correct and one wrong solution (I am simplifying by considering only situations in which calling or folding are options, and ignoring that one might bet). But one's approach to the problem is complicated by not knowing what the opponent has. Imagine a game of holdem in which there can only be one bet in each round. Either my opponent can bet and I call, or I bet, he calls. Or we both check. Say I have AT and the board is KQJxJ rainbow. My opponent bets. Should I call? Two factors above all others inform this decision: one, what hands my opponent would bet and two, what hand he actually has. (The latter is obviously more important!) If my opponent only bets the nuts, I should fold. If he has QJ, likewise, I should fold. But I've just sat down at the table and I don't know what my opponent has, and he won't show me his hand. Technically, there is a correct solution, but I cannot know what it is.

Poker fiends will of course be yelling CALL at this point! Because the way we actually approach problems, whether in poker or in computing, is to take a heuristic and apply it, refining it as we gain more information. The heuristic in poker is a default play: in this case "Do not fold good hands on the river for one bet". We might change our solution if the previous betting has clued us in somewhat. It's important to realise though that we might well arrive at a solution to a problem that works but is not complete, or even correct. Recognising this is key to mastering a game that is as complex as poker (and the same thing applies to difficult strategic games such as chess: you might learn to beat opponents using techniques that are not, taking the broader set of possible opponents, correct).

I probably sound like I am seething with anger as I deal with this shit. But I'm not. I already know that the authors are idiots. Their texts tell me that. These are people who think they will be persuasive just by dropping Wittgenstein's name. But thinking is not just a question of finding the correct allusion. It's about working out how what Wittgenstein said actually fits (or does not fit) what you are looking at. Thinking about anything is seriously hampered by taking a cookiecutter approach to your subject matter. Of course, you need to be able to use and manipulate concepts, but there's a difference between using a concept as a means to investigate your subject matter -- a lantern in the darkness, if you like -- and using it as a box to stuff your subject into. If you do that, you will have a neatly packaged universe, I suppose, but you won't ever be able to step outside your preconceived schema, and insight will elude you.

Which is probably why this book is so fucking boring.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:08 pm