[Martin Taylor 970410 11:30]
Rick Marken (970308.1110 PDT)
Stupendous. Martin has shown that information theory combined with
PCT predicts that we will all be informed about everything after we die.
I sure hope he's willing to do the research on this one because I'M
NOT!!!
I said I wouldn't respond publicly to Rick's further comments on information
theory, and I won't (at least not here and now). But I'd like to draw
reader's attention to Umberto Eco's wonderful book "The Name of the Rose",
which I am now rereading (not the movie, which had a completely different
topic).
Eco's book, like those others of his writing that I have read, is an
investigation into the nature of truth and the methods by which it may
be approached. Is "truth" something that is revealed to a chosen few, who
by virtue of their virtue are empowered to burn those who propose some
untruthful proposition? Is truth to be found in books that contain the
wisdom of trusted thinkers? Is truth something unknowable but to be approached
by painstaking investigation based on observation? Is truth something to
be extracted by torture from those presumed to know it? What if thinkers
normally trusted to write the truth sometimes write inadvertent untruth?
Is it the right and proper function of those who are good investigators, or
of those who _know_ the truth, to shield the common people from writings that
might, by being incomplete or false, mislead the unwary? Eco never comes
down squarely supporting any specific answer to any of these questions, but
at least in "The Name of the Rose" he suggests the disasters that may be
side effects of strong attempts to shield the common folk from partial
or misleading enquiry.
To shift from Umberto Eco, Mao in a misguided moment said "Let a thousand
flowers bloom; let a thousand ideas contend." Then he realized what a mistake
that was, because some of the thousand ideas disagreed with his. I don't
personally think that the Cultural Revolution was very good for the Chinese
people, though it may have shielded the populace from hearing falsehoods
about Communism (falsehoods known to be false by the keepers of the flame).
Arguments that take the form of ridicule serve not to demonstrate the
inadequacy (or in Eco's sense "untruthfulness") of the idea being ridiculed.
They serve to suppress the flowering of Mao's thousand flowers. Some of
those flowers may be weeds, for sure. But it's hard to know which without
examining them. And once they have been suppressed, they are hard to examine.
Martin