Philosophy

André DeHon

• The physical world can be understood.
  • It is governed by immutable laws of nature/physics.
  • Our understanding at any point in time is always incomplete, but general good enough to work with and identify what we do not understand at present.
  • Understanding also implies understanding the effects (and magnitude thereof)
    • We do not have to understand or consider everything which may effect behavior if we can bound the magnitude of the effect.
• We have tools for understanding the physical world--primarily our brain which allows:
  • observation
  • reason (induction, deduction)
  • experimentation (create more and useful data to observe)
  It is critically important that you develop your tools. Learn to think clearly and rigorously and discipline yourself to do so.
• Understanding the physical world, we can control it (i.e. make it serve our purposes)
  • With suitable approximations, almost everything can be reduced to an engineering problem.
• You cannot cheat nature (physical reality).
  The laws/limits of nature will ultimately catch up with you.
  ``Natural laws have no pity.'' -- Lazarus Long
  • As a consequence, one must distinguish real laws of nature from man-made abstraction and constructs.
    • Man-made abstraction/constructs can be altered and changed when they get in the way, when they don't serve their purposes;
    • laws of nature are immutable and must be accepted and accomodated.
      
• Technology is the embodiment of our understanding and control of the physical world.
• Knowledge is good. ==> Technology is good.
  • While there are (or may be) negative side effects of a given technology at a given point in time:
    • as we understand the negative effects better, minimizing these become new goals and optimization constraints
    • so better understanding and hence technology will adapt to eliminate (minimize) negative efects
• Most optimizations have more than one "goodness criteria"
  • optimizations have different effects on different criteria
  • must often weight magnitude of importance to pick overall solution
  • not all tradeoffs are inevitable, but some do seem to be (Goldratt, "It's not Luck", etc.)
  • many spaces are non-linear
  • many spaces are not monotonic --> difference between global and local minima
  • goodness criteria that determine success of technologies often come from fronts beyond the purely technological (e.g. timeliness -- Worse is Better)
• Question Everything:
  • It is your personal understanding that will see you through the world.
    • student Tuvok: I will question everything you say.
      master: You would not be a worthy pupil otherwise.
      --ST:VOY Gravity
    • ``I said I believe you!'' I sat bolt upright.

      ``You said you had faith! What I tell you about science should never be taken on faith. Each and every step should be proved by direct observation. I am trying to teach you how to understand and manipulate the physical universe. I am not trying to teach you a religion! That's not my job.''

      ``I'm sorry, Sir Conrad. Please continue.'' He has such a temper! I think he doesn't drink enough wine.

      ``No, I owe the apology Sir Vladimir, and, in fact, there is a certain religious aspect to science. You see, God made all beings, all things, the whole of existence. He is the Grand Planner, the Master Designer, the Chief Engineer. When we study the world around us, we are studying His works, His thoughts. It's almost blasphemy to ignore that and have faith in the words of a mere man.''

      -- High-Tech Knight, Frankowski

    • ``Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.'' -- Richard Feynman, ``What is Science'' reprinted in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (p. 187, pp. 184-185 has a nice description of why this is important.)
  • Our deductions depend on context and assumptions.
    • They are not valid if the assumptions/context change. (e.g. Hugh Akston: "check your premises", Howard Roark's Parthenon critique)
  • Cached answers and wrong assumptions abound: many breakthroughs result from recognizing unnecessary assumptions
    • ``To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.'' -- Lazarus Long
    • ``If `everybody knows' such-and-such, then it ain't so, by at least ten thousand to one.'' -- Lazarus Long
    • (also see Feynman reference above)
  • The world around you is not static -- but rapidly changing.
    • Traditional cost functions will change, moving the optimal points.
    • Cached answers will become stale.
    • Know ``why'' something is. This way you can recognize when a solution, technique, or approximation is invalidated, and how to derive its replacement.
  • It is critically important to understand how things around you work, how everything works.
    • Nothing should be accepted as magic or unfathomable only something you haven't, yet, taken the time and discipline to understand.
    • Since your time is limited, must prioritize the order and depth at which you come to understand things.
  • You can do anything.
    • but you have to work at it.
      • it won't be given to you
      • the first path you think of isn't likely to work
      • ...but understanding what you want, the space of constraints/paths, the obstacles you encounter, you can systematically work around them to your goal.
    • You make your own success. It is never handed to you. Don't sit and wait for it and blame others for not giving you opportunities.
    • Power to accomplish what you want comes not from position or association, but from action and leadership.
  • The winner is seldom the one with the least failures (or even the lowest failure rate), but generally the one who tries the most.
  • You must learn to accept and grow from failure (Petroski, To Err is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Engineering Design, also The Evolution of Useful Things)
  • There is room for many new ideas and discoveries. I disagree with those who claim there are no new ideas and everything has already been discovered.
  • The more you know, the more you know that you do not know.
    • Think of your knowledge as the area of some two dimensional figure (perhaps a circle, initially). As you increase knowlege, the area increases. as the area (and knowledge) increases, the boundary (perimeter) between the area of knowledge and the area outside of the knowledge-space (the unknown) grows. Hence your awareness of what you don't know grows with your knowledge just as the perimeter grows with the internal area.
    This isn't bad, but helps you appreciate the fact that you will always see more that you need to know, and as you become more knowledgeable you gain even greater appreciation for what you still don't know.
  • Expose yourself to great ideas (big thinkers)--even/especially in different domains.
  • The entirety of knowledge, and often, even, the entirety of knowledge to solve a particular problem is greater than one person can hold in his/her head at one point in time.
  • Teamwork is necessary to do things greater than the individual.
    • Big problems often require more than one brain.
    • Sharing knowledge and ideas, that is communication, is vital.
    • Coordination, hence management, is necesary to successfully bring a group together to achieve a common goal.
  • Consult others.
    • Their knowledge space is generally different from yours, as are their biases and assumptions.
    • ``Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established.'' -- Proverbs 15:22
    • ``Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.'' -- Lazarus Long

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  André DeHon