Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality (fwd)

[dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)]

Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com> writes:

> > From: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)
>
> > Blanc <blancw@cnw.com> writes:
> > > Initially your argument had to do with secrecy and the need for scientist
> > > to publish their work so that the scientific community may benefit from i
> >
> > Not just the scientific community... everyone. If an art critic declines
> > to publish something, its a loss probably only to his fellow art critics,
> > but if a mathematician or a biologist or a physicist doesn't publish, it's
> > a loss for more than just his colleagues.
>
> I believe this view to be fundamentaly flawed. Consider that if a particular
> scientist doesn't publish (ala Fermat) then this does not inherently
> prohibit or inhibit others from deriving the result (lot's of examples so I
> won't pick a single one).

You don't seem to realize that the likelyhood of someone independently
rediscovering a "lost" math result is much less than the likelyhood of
two people independently creating substantially similar works of art.

For example, all of T.S.Elliot's poetry is substantially similar to
Walt Whitman's poetry. They are, for most intents and purposes, mutually
interchangeable. (Emily "lick my bud" Dickinson is almost interchangeable.)

> However, when an artist or other practitioner of
> human expression fails to publish then an item of unique character is lost.
> Had T.S. Elliot not written 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' it is
> *very* unlikely that *anyone* in the entire remaining history of the
> universe would have written those charming poems and we would be deprived
> among other things of knowing why a cat has three names.

I was using art critics as an example, not artists.  Don't you know who art
critics are?

> In addition, the
> fact that a given individual finds no worth in why a cat has three names
> does not change the worth of the insight provided by the author. So, while a
> given art critics views may not mean much to you this does not justify in
> any manner trivializing that worth for others.

Think why I thought of art/lit critics and not, e.g., archeologists.

> To do so would indicate a
> personality of extreme hubris and potentialy a severe sociopathy.

Why thank you.

> Expect
> them to begin walking around with their hand in their vest at any moment.

I've got to get me a vest...

> The distinction is that human expression doesn't assume homogeneity nor
> isotropy as science requires. Rather it assumes a priori that each activity
> and it's result is unique in the history of the universe and fundamentaly an
> expression of that *individual* view of experience. That is what art derives
> it worth from while science derives its worth from the result being the same
> irrespective of the practitioner.

Well, you were just ranting about the non-euclidean geometries created by
Gauss, Lobachevsky, and janos (not Farkas) Bolyai.  Are they the same?
Does their choice of words to express their mathematical ideas matter?
Does it matter who published first? Would it be a loss for humanity if
Lubachevsky, like Gauss, chose not to publish contraversial ideas?

---

<a href="mailto:dlv@bwalk.dm.com">Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM</a>
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps