Pythonic discoveries, Part 1

The "item1.function(variable)" form in Python was confusing me, until I got something to work in the interpreter. I made a list:

>>> countries = ['USA', 'Russia', 'Cuba', 'Iceland', 'Greenland', 'Atlantis'])

and wanted to add 'France' to it. Trying "append('France')" did not work, as the append() function did not know where to act. However, "countries.append('France')" did work. I realized I had been taking the "x.y" notation as something more complex than it actually is. It can more easily understood after thinking about List Comprehension. List Comprehension takes an expression and applies a for conditional within it, followed by zero or more for and if conditionals. Thus in:

>>> num = [2, 4, 6]
>>> [3*x for x in num]
[6, 12, 18]
>>> [3*x for x in num if x > 3]
[12, 18]

the expression "3*x" is applied to each term x in the list "num".

When something is imported, say a module called "fruit", then one can say "import fruit", and "fruit.peel()" (assuming that peel was defined in "fruit"), the same x.y() form. The "x.y" means: "do, or look for, y in x, or in the context of x."

Adumbrations

I used to spend several hours a day combing through feeds, newsletters, and portals concerning topics I found interesting. At first, I merely noted them in memory. Then, as I became interested in being able to refer back to particular developments, I started a simple text file, divided into basic topics, such as "Security", "Programming Languages", etc. After a short time, this became unwieldy and ineffectual.

My next approach was to create an extensible folder structure, finely-grained by topic, containing document files which included the links to stories, tutorials, and other sources of information pertinent to the topic of their directory. I also found it easier to add personal notes and commentary on the information in this way. This method was much more effective, but still very limited.

As time progressed and my collection of information grew, I realized that the structure I had created was limited in two critical respects: 1) adding or editing information was overly time-consuming, as I had to find the appropriate document in the appropriate folder structure, then open, edit, and save it, 2) searching the structure was limited to the search functionality built into Windows, and later to Google Desktop search. It became clear at that stage that the design of my record system needed to be centered around 3 basic principles:

1. Ease of entering new information
2. Ease of searching for information
3. Ease of altering topical structure
   

Around the time when I began to grow dissatisfied with the folder/document system, I discovered Treepad. This is a wonderful program, with many potential uses. It allows one to form a structure of "trees" and "leaves" within a single file. Each of the leaves allow for insertion of text and images, and the entire structure can be altered, linked, and seached with ease.

Using Treepad was much more effective, and I would have been satisfied with it, had I not found Freemind. This allowed for all the features of Treepad, except that I was not limited to an Explorer-style visual interface, but rather a topic map which could be unfolded as desired. I found it much easier to find information, track developments, and understand topics through this display method than any structure I had used previously.

I ran into one final difficulty: as my topics of interest and my databank grew, I found that the time required to search through various feeds and portals, pick out interesting information, and record them in my topic structure was simply too great. Thus emerged the need for a system which I now set out to create. This system (for which I lack an effective name currently) will perform the following basic functions:

• Record an initial list of syndicated feeds and URLs of portals of interest, and allow for new feeds and sites to be imported
• Read each of the feeds or portals as appropriate and parse the information they contain
• Tag each piece of content based on an extensible topical structure
• Record content and applicable metadata in a database
• Provide an interface for the content to be searched based on a variety of criteria
  

The system may also be extended to include the following much more advanced features:

• Web spiders to find new feeds and sites which should be of interest based on the current topical structure and areas for which information is lacking and determined to be desired
• Visual interface for graphical display of topical structure and content relations

I hope to write this system mainly in Python, as it seems suit the task well in its simplicity and ability. This blog will serve as a record of the steps in its development, from things I learn about Python, to semantics, and probably much more.

Telos and Human Evolution

That natural biological evolution is progressive and goal-oriented, with man as its pinnacle, has been a common and influential notion. From ancient and learned sources such as Plotinus, to the widely recognized and copied illustration "March of Progress" by Rudolph Zallinger, the idea can be seen in scholarly literature and also in more quotidian descriptions of evolution and human development. Even up to the time of Darwin and up to the Modern Synthesis, the idea of there being a telos, or goal, of evolution was not uncommon. As biological explanations became more distant from theological sources, however, the idea of telos and of goals existing in the activity of nature began to wane.

In the studies of modern evolutionary biology, the notion of man as the natural apex has re-emerged in a new form. While there is still a connection made by some between goals and evolution in a religious context or, more commonly, in the context of religious individuals attempting to refute the claims of Darwinian evolution in specific, most of the modern usage of teleology has been in a descriptive way. E.g. it is not uncommon to hear an expression of the function of a particular organ with respect to the goal which it accomplishes.

But this descriptive shorthand is very different from the tendency that has sometimes been present in biology to characterize man, and the particular animal stock from which he comes, as superior to other forms of life, or as the goal of the process of evolution, or even as the goal of the entire universe. Some scientists reject such claims out of hand, calling it mere "mammal-centricity" or humanistic hubris (depending on the intended object of the claim) and insisting that the statistical nature of (Darwinian) evolution necessitates a development based only on various factors affecting survivability and not a development that can look to any external goal.

As for humans as they currently exist, some scientists claim that human evolution has come to a standstill. The biological reasoning for this is that for populations to develop new characteristics, the "populations have to be small and effectively isolated genetically from their relatives". This currently is not, and will not be for the foreseeable future, the case for humans in the modern world. Populations that were almost completely isolated centuries or even decades ago can now come into contact with members of populations all over the world. Since human groups do not now breed within completely isolated groups and do not stay in the same environment for geologically meaningful periods, it is very unlikely that they will develop characteristics sufficiently novel to ever form a new species, pending severe ecological disaster or displacement of portions of the population (such as in permanent space colonies).

However, there may be other senses in which man can develop. As described in Humanity and Willed Evolution, man alone can participate in his own development and guide it through the externalization of the primary means of survival. What allowed homo sapiens sapiens to advance to the place of dominance of earth was information, i.e. data properly processed and utilized. Man's rise was, admittedly, a combination of his nature and of natural circumstance. And some may claim that other species should be given the title of dominant over man. Bacteria, for instance, are much greater in number and live in a wider range of environments (in their natural state, i.e. without assistance). Man, however, is the only species that can externalize internal experience. The lessons learned by each member of the species can be shared with all of the other members, today far more than at any point in the past. There are cases of group learning occurring in other animal populations as well, most notably, perhaps, those of the japanese macaques. These ingenious creatures have learned how to sift wheat from sand, and have taken on more amusing characteristics such as playing with stones, in the few decades since researchers began interacting with them. But the spread of such behaviors is limited to individuals in regular contact, and seems to stay at a simplistic level.

Man's ability to formulate internal states in a way meaningful to other members of the species in a permanent way is what sets him apart. The ways and means of spreading these externalized states, information, have evolved far more rapidly than man's biological form since their emergence, and they have given him a far greater advantage with respect to survival than any biological development. Since the time when speech and writing developed, there have been relatively few physiological changes to man. What has changed is his intelligence and the availability of information. And there are now more humans on planet earth than at all historical periods combined. Man can live in space, under the ocean, and anywhere on the planet that he chooses, given enough effort. It seems at times that, given proper circumstances, man can say "Our will be done", and not feel boastful, but merely self-assured, in thinking that he can accomplish any feat.

But aside from questions of ability, the control of man's evolution by himself, both physically through genetic engineering, and mentally and socially through information exchange, makes man a completion of the evolutionary process in a certain way. Evolution occurs because statistical effects on populations in a species result from environmental conditions and changes. Man's scientific advancements make physical changes unnecessary when environmental conditions change, not to mention the fact that, more and more, man can change those very environmental conditions himself as well as make physical changes himself by will and not chance. This is an idea more encompassing than the three stages of technological evolution of Radovan Richta. Information is what gives man an edge, and a new kind of edge. It takes little imagination to imagine mankind in the not-too-distant future being in a position such that little save for inner turmoil on a drastic level or a universal shift such as the Big Crunch would threaten his physical existence.

This, then, is how mankind is understood as the end, or final achievement, of evolution: he alone can move the aspect that must change to fit his environment, the aspect of adaptation, outside of himself, through the creation of information. The movement can come to an even more complete fulfillment once it becomes possible for individual members of the human species to fully remove themselves from a biological medium. When this is achieved, along with the developments that it entails, man will no longer have to be concerned with the vast majority of concerns which drove his biological evolution. This will allow for a new type of man to emerge: homo sapiens sapiens will become homo excelsior, man in complete control of his form and his future. He will be truly only limited by his imagination, which needs have no restraints.

Humanity and Willed Evolution

New methods of expression and dissemination of information that have emerged in the recent times that allow his nature as a force of improving the efficiency of his own development to more easily seen. Since intellection and expression of abstract ideas developed in man, this potential existed. From the articulations of philosophers and other thinkers in earlier periods of civilization, e.g. in Ancient Greece, it appears that, in many cases, humanity viewed the universe as something eternal. As soon as the idea of an origin arises, however, the idea that all things might have had a beginning, the idea becomes captivating. It is almost as if man had to develop the idea, and it took on its own internal force.

Once this notion is achieved, man will consider the idea of a variability of form following this origin, if only as a possibility. The idea of things having a beginning and of the state and quality of things being able to change moved from a mere logical possibility, however, to an assumed entity with its own power. Somehow, man arrived at the idea of a progression, that things can be changed for the better in some way. And just as statistical and biological forces cause changes over time in living systems that are beneficial with respect to preservation in some way, so can this happen for man in society, and even personally, in each man’s thoughts. And since man has a will toward his own survival, he can consider altering his own development. This may occur unconsciously, socially, or otherwise at first. But once 2 other factors are present, development can greatly increase:

1. man must decide that he can and will take his own development in hand,


2. man changes the material that development works on from a biological to an informational form.

One of the primary virtues of informational versus biological evolution is that selection in the former can occur independent of individuals. Death has a different meaning in such a context. During the current age, the rate of development in terms of information is much greater than that caused by biological change, mutations, etc. This causes a shift in the understanding of what forms and wholes are, what individuals are, what survival is, etc. Books, articles, networks, even conversations and the ideas that they foster become the new creatures that interact, and survive and reproduce or are destroyed. This change can occur much more readily than its biological analog, and, more importantly, it can be willed. Thus man forms a new medium for his development. It may even be possible for him to transfer all of his content, or at least all of the intellectual content he wishes to preserve, into a non-biological form. He may be able to achieve a manifestation completely based in information and not matter. In this way he could alter his form in any way he wished with extreme rapidity.

The Spatiality of Ideas

It is very interesting to consider the quality of volume that ideas often seem to possess in one’s mind. While this may sound like a rather inchoate notion, I do mean something very definite by it, but I do not yet have a word to express it precisely. I shall give an example instead:
Consider a university or any intellectual institution. When I consider such a thing, it seems to occupy a particular region of some sort of space in my mind. The region corresponds, in some way, to the physical locality of the institution, i.e the region the idea comprises relates to the region representing my self within the totality of my mindspace as my physical person relates to the physical location of the institution. But when I consider more deeply the institution qua intellectual, what was once a volume seems to resolve into points, viz. people and even ideas, the latter melting into some sort of locationless nothing, and the former shrinking to moving points. This seems to be a very subconscious notion, but it is one that I think is socially common. It would be worth considering how our minds connect physical locality with ideas, and more generally how intellectual structure has a spatial element. Perhaps it is merely a matter of association through habit that I connect certain physical locations with certain ideas, but it nevertheless occurs, and has an impact on my method of thought.

If this connection is something more than rote association, however, it would create a whole new level to the database that I have been considering, if the latter is to accurately represent ideas. (I will explain this database in a future post.) There may even be multiple levels to this sort of space, for I do not think that every single one of my ideas have a real or imagined physical correspondent. And even for those that did have a direct physical correspondence, it would not be the sort of correspondent that one could, to speak analogously, point out on a map. It is almost as if this notion requires some sort of fuzziness, i.e. an indistinct notion of location when considering certain ideas.

Perhaps then the database might include a display format to overlap the sense of physicality or even of volume (however distinct either of these may be), of certain ideas, while for others there would be no physical correspondent. Although I do think in the latter case that there is still a spatial sense (since I hold that all ideas, and ideal relations, have a spatial nature) and perhaps this could be meaningfully incorporated with the physical spatiality of ideas possessing such a quality. For simplicity’s sake, this could be displayed as the center of the map being the ideas that do have a physical correspondent, and the edges of it being the ideas which only have and ideal spatiality not a physical one.

In this context it is useful to consider one of Kant's claims within the section on space in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason (A19 ff). He says that by means of an "outer sense" we present objects as outside of us, within space. The soul’s inner state, however, is intuited through a distinct form: time. But he then claims that space cannot be intuited as something within us.

This seems wholly inconsistent with my experience. My own thoughts are often highly spatial. In fact, my ideas seem to have a spatiality that is either nearly identical to that of physical objects, or one based on it, in a sort of non-temporal extension. It seems odd and almost naïve for Kant to claim that a person is at a single location in space. With respect to certain things this seems true, but that sense should be expanded to include the space of the mind.

The mind as place is an idea which becomes of primary importance when considering how best to represent information, and how human intelligence can be represented.

First contact

This blog is an experiment. I have never kept a blog before, but I think it could be useful for me, as well as interesting. The main reason I am creating it is to document various thoughts that I have had, and new ones which I and others come up with, concerning certain topics, mostly centered on technology and the future of mankind. These will vary widely, as my current interests tend to do. Some of the content may come from various news outlets like Slashdot, as well as others, and some will be my own.

The goal: Become aware of, or create, new and amazing things, record and describe them in a useful and transparent way, ponder their novel and most potentially useful aspects, and record these thoughts for future consideration.