Garzik: An Andre To Remember
| From: | Jeff Garzik <jeff-AT-garzik.org> | |
| To: | linux-ide-AT-vger.kernel.org | |
| Subject: | An Andre To Remember | |
| Date: | Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:56:55 -0400 | |
| Message-ID: | <20120727175655.GA23784@havoc.gtf.org> | |
| Cc: | LKML <linux-kernel-AT-vger.kernel.org>, lwn-AT-lwn.net | |
| Archive‑link: | Article |
An Andre To Remember July 2012 Linux lost a friend and advocate this month. Though never a household name, Andre Hedrick had a positive impact on everyone today running Linux, or using a website, with any form of IDE (ATA) or SCSI storage -- that means millions upon millions of users today. For a time, Andre interacted with practically every relevant IDE drive and controller manufacturer, as well as the T13 standards committee through which IDE changes were made. He helped ensure Linux had near-universal IDE support in a hardware era when Linux support was a second thought if at all. As the Register article[1] noted, with CPRM and other efforts, Andre worked to keep storage a more open platform than it might otherwise have been. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/26/andre_hedrick/ Andre also played a role in IDE technology coalescing around the idea of a "taskfile", which is IDE-speak for an RPC command issued to a disk drive, and the RPC response returned from the drive. It was very important to Andre that the kernel have a "taskfile ioctl", an API enabling full programmable access to the disk drive. At the time, a more limited "cmd ioctl" API was the best option available, but Linux's cmd ioctl did not give users full and complete access to their own disk drive. Andre's taskfile concept was a central component of the current, rewritten-from-scratch Linux IDE driver "libata." libata uses an "ata_taskfile" to communicate with all IDE drives, whether from a decade ago or built yesterday. The taskfile concept modernized IDE software, by forcing the industry to move away from a slow, signals-originated register API to a modern, packetized RPC messaging API, similar to where SCSI storage had already been moving. I spent many hours on the phone with Andre, circa 2003, learning all there was to know about ATA storage, while writing libata. Andre could be considered one of the grandfathers of libata, along with Alan Cox. I became friends with Andre during this time, and we talked a lot. Andre was unquestionably smart, driven and an advocate for Linux user freedom. Andre was also mentally ill. Some of those hours spent on the phone with him were not geeky discussions, but me patiently listening to paranoid thoughts about kernel developer conspiracies, and even more patiently describing how he was simply misunderstanding and misapplying the development process and/or basic code details. Andre would receive engineering feedback on some of his changes, and wonder why the engineer reviewing his changes was conspiring to shoot down his obviously-needed changes. At some point, paranoia and mental illness makes you difficult to work with, which starts a nasty feedback loop feeding further paranoia and stress. Perhaps it is the nature of intelligence itself, or just the nature of computer science, but our profession seems to have a higher than average rate of bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. A Beautiful Mind comes to mind, as does my own purely anecdotal observations of others as a kernel developer and maintainer. Whatever the reason, Andre is not the only developer I've encountered who sees conspiracies, wheels-within-wheels in the feedback they receive. Although I was truly shocked by the news of Andre's suicide, it always seemed like Andre was continually stressed out, when I knew him. When spending long hours discussing kernel and storage industry politics over the phone with Andre, I found myself constantly advising him to relax, to take a break from computing. This is a time for grief and a time for celebration of Andre's accomplishments, but also it is a time to look around at our fellow geeks and offer our support, if similar behavioral signs appear. There is no computing project that is worth your life. Turn off the computer. Seek help. Get outside, enjoy the green grass, the birds in the trees. Talk to people you know. Talk to strangers! Drive to Wisconsin, and find out whatever it is they do there. Build a treehouse. Park on a parkway and drive on a driveway. Make a macaroni necklace. Visit a dairy. Climb a rock. Seek life. Life is so much more than code. Rest in peace Andre, Jeff Garzik friend and libata author PS. Remembering Andre website: http://hedrick4419.blogspot.com/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Posted Jul 27, 2012 21:32 UTC (Fri)
by leandro (guest, #1460)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jul 28, 2012 1:42 UTC (Sat)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jul 28, 2012 18:22 UTC (Sat)
by saul (guest, #85992)
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Posted Jul 28, 2012 8:20 UTC (Sat)
by karim (subscriber, #114)
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Thanks Jeff for writing this and thx LWN for reposting.
I think the issues raised are legitimate and the more there's awareness about such issues the better it is. I too have come across a tremendous amount of talented people who's extraordinary cognitive abilities to master very complex systems were matched by distortions about daily life. All too often it's difficult to know when/how to help, if at all.
Posted Jul 28, 2012 10:49 UTC (Sat)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (11 responses)
All this was about ten years ago and hopefully not directly relevant. But it is a sad situation. Thin-skinned people can have useful contributions, in any field, and effort must be made to retain them and put them at ease.
Posted Jul 28, 2012 12:48 UTC (Sat)
by stevenb (guest, #11536)
[Link] (10 responses)
Posted Jul 28, 2012 14:31 UTC (Sat)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (9 responses)
My point was simply that he was not fairly treated, and if he himself thought so, that was not paranoia. If indeed he was mentally ill, it is sad (and there is no stigma in it), but let us not jump to conclusions.
Posted Jul 28, 2012 14:53 UTC (Sat)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
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Posted Jul 28, 2012 17:45 UTC (Sat)
by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
[Link] (7 responses)
Garzik mentions one thing that's far more important than the others: Seek professional help. Depression is treatable, and like many illnesses the best outcomes are associated with early detection and treatment. If your healthcare is tied to your employment it's even more important to talk to a doctor straight away, if the depression prevents you from working you may lose the medical cover that could otherwise have helped you.
That also means the rest of us are responsible for reducing the stigma associated with treatment for psychiatric problems. If treatment is stigmatised then people will try to do without, so we're effectively pressuring them to get /more/ sick.
Posted Jul 29, 2012 2:29 UTC (Sun)
by thedevil (guest, #32913)
[Link] (2 responses)
Isn't that very fact depressing?
Sorry if this sounds frivolous; I am planning a more serious comment.
Posted Jul 29, 2012 6:27 UTC (Sun)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
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Posted Aug 1, 2012 10:51 UTC (Wed)
by Felix.Braun (guest, #3032)
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Posted Jul 29, 2012 10:18 UTC (Sun)
by t4680 (guest, #85997)
[Link] (1 responses)
A physical doctor both knows more and can do more than a lay person.
What do I mean by that? Well, physical health professionals have access to a huge range of interventions. There is a wide range of drugs, surgical operations, etc. Usually, if someone you know is physically sick, the best thing you can do is see they get to a doctor, and there is often little else that you can do.
Mental health is not like that. There are only a few drugs, by comparison. Surgery is not usually relevant. What mental health professionals can do for the most part is talk to the patient. And they can usually only do this for an hour a week, or less.
If Andre had been seeing a professional, they might have tried to tell him that his work was obviously respected, but this could not substitute for Jeff's actual respect for him in the their conversations. There are many simple things that mental health professionals cannot do, that a lay person can:
Many mental illnesses have their origin in how a person has been treated by others, and even for those which are genetic in nature, the people around them can have a big influence on its course. So please, if you know someone who is mentally ill, don't assume that it's out of your hands, down to the professionals. Don't assume that there's nothing you can do.
Posted Jul 30, 2012 9:43 UTC (Mon)
by acooks (guest, #49539)
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Depressed people don't necessarily know that they're depressed until it's pointed out to them. It's a slippery slope and even if you've been through it before you may not realise you're in trouble until the downward spiral is well under way. So, if you have negative thoughts about yourself, your situation or the society you live in for more than a few days in two weeks, speak up!
Depressed people struggle to accept that their rational thought is compromised and will find all sorts of reasons to stay in that state. Here are some I've used:
In my experience, to beat depression you have to:
Practical, everyday things to do - A Plan:
If anyone who'd like to talk, my lwn account name is also my gmail account name.
Posted Jul 29, 2012 15:58 UTC (Sun)
by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656)
[Link] (1 responses)
This is good advice. Regrettably there are many problems here. First off men tend not to go to medical professionals even if very ill, and if they do it is usually the SO that makes sure he gets help. Why this is so I do not know but I hear it is part of human nature.
Secondly the human mind is enormously complex and not infrequently even well experienced professionals do not find what is wrong. Some times they discover that it is a case of several issues. Some times the experts disagree on the situation. One small comfort is that there is a lot of development, just a few decades ago things like ADHD or Asperger syndrome were hardly recognised nor treated.
In the end what happens is that they turn to their friends for help or contact, few of which can be expected to have professional knowledge in these fields. And there are quite a few around us with varying degrees of problems; I have heard the statistics and it is rather disturbing and occasionally even growing as new aspects of the human minds are recognized.
The only thing we realistically can do is to treat our fellow humans well. And that alone will go a long way to help.
Posted Jul 29, 2012 21:18 UTC (Sun)
by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
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Such good advice!
And when we feel we are being treated poorly, assume it is not deliberate but accidental (which is usually the case I find) and respond with compassion, not anger.
Posted Jul 28, 2012 18:09 UTC (Sat)
by genjix (guest, #85847)
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~ genjix
Posted Jul 29, 2012 15:59 UTC (Sun)
by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656)
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Posted Jul 29, 2012 17:55 UTC (Sun)
by whacker (guest, #55546)
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Posted Jul 30, 2012 9:50 UTC (Mon)
by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375)
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. (period of silence)
K3n.
Posted Aug 1, 2012 23:02 UTC (Wed)
by jackb (guest, #41909)
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Mental illness is stagmatised because the largest cause of it is something that society is not willing to openly talk about. Alice Miller, John Bradshaw and Lloyd deMause should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand the prevalence of mental illness in the world.
Posted Jul 30, 2012 20:13 UTC (Mon)
by kjp (guest, #39639)
[Link] (44 responses)
I have been there myself... it's a very dark place. I would add to the list of suggestions, "go to church... and pray". Fortunately, "YOU" is a flexible concept.
Posted Jul 31, 2012 8:33 UTC (Tue)
by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452)
[Link] (35 responses)
Also, when a condition reaches the point where medical assistance is needed, there's not better idea than seeking a professional. That is, a professional in psychology, not in reading fiction books.
Posted Jul 31, 2012 9:07 UTC (Tue)
by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
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And there is sound psychological value in letting go of your guilt, and in admitting to yourself that you are not in complete control of everything in your life - both effects of genuine prayer quite apart from whether the entity addressed has an objective existence out side of the person praying.
While I admit that I cannot demonstrate that the bible is largely accurate, I'm quite sure that you equally cannot demonstrate that it is largely fiction. When someone makes a bona-fide attempt to record events, that is usually called "history", even if not everyone agrees that it is accurate.
I certainly agree that seeking professional help is wise. Choosing the right profession, or the right professional, can be a challenge - just ask anyone who has suffered from a bad back (phsyio? chiro? osteo? acupuncture?).
Posted Jul 31, 2012 21:40 UTC (Tue)
by kjp (guest, #39639)
[Link] (23 responses)
"Then it pleases me to be the first."
Trust me, I tried the 'professionals'. Talk about epic fail. Also, 'man's search for meaning' is a good book...
Posted Aug 1, 2012 3:51 UTC (Wed)
by acooks (guest, #49539)
[Link] (22 responses)
"Man's search for meaning" is a great book. "Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography" by Walter Isaacson is a good read as well. I'm not an Apple fanboi at all, but the guy had major issues and still achieved great things.
Posted Aug 5, 2012 20:23 UTC (Sun)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (21 responses)
He's definitely not. He starts out, earlier in the thread, with, "I would add to the list of suggestions."
Posted Aug 12, 2012 17:59 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (20 responses)
He merely said *he* was an example where the professionals were useless and the church helped.
As somebody who wanted to be a doctor (I didn't make medical school), I have a *deep* distrust of modern medicine. Only deepened by my knowledge of medical history and what I call "the arrogance of the modern" - the belief that we are so much cleverer than our forfathers.
Just read some old medical books as far back as even the 1600s. About the only real advance we have is technology that makes surgery safer and easier, and antibiotics (an advance we are in real danger of throwing away soon).
The arsenal of knowledge they had 400 years ago hasn't been improved that much at all! Indeed, the arsenal of knowledge they had 2000 years ago sometimes exceeds todays!
Cheers,
Posted Aug 12, 2012 19:41 UTC (Sun)
by viro (subscriber, #7872)
[Link] (3 responses)
We aren't more clever than we used to be in 1600, but we definitely have learnt a lot since then. Including, BTW, mathematical statistics and data analysis. How much of that gets learnt by students in medical schools is a different question, of course...
Posted Aug 17, 2012 12:59 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (2 responses)
And, as item #6 explains, we actually are smarter than in 1600; at least we don't have all that lead around us any more.
Posted Aug 17, 2012 14:17 UTC (Fri)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 17, 2012 14:40 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Aug 13, 2012 7:01 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (15 responses)
Medicine is about the best way to illustrate the progress. Essentially all medical practices from before 1800-s would now be considered actively harmful to patients. Simple surgeries are about the only surviving pieces of the pre-1800-s medical practices.
Consider this - germ theory of diseases has been developed only in late 1800-s! Before that doctors were using the crap like 'humour imbalance' theory, doing things like blood-letting to 'cure' weakness and infection!
Posted Aug 14, 2012 14:19 UTC (Tue)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (14 responses)
In other words, it was a lot like the religion that was compared to medicine earlier in this thread as treatment for depression.
Posted Aug 14, 2012 18:48 UTC (Tue)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link] (13 responses)
Posted Aug 14, 2012 22:36 UTC (Tue)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link] (12 responses)
Medical practicioners are to medical researchers what engineers are to physicists – i.e., they apply the results of research to everyday problems.
The only difference is that the world of engineering has, on the whole, less tolerance for quacks and charlatans than the world of medical practice.
Posted Aug 17, 2012 13:02 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (11 responses)
My pediatrician is also a homeopath practitioner and sometimes she prescribes some diluted sugar recipe which we immediately throw to the nearest garbage can. It goes to show how deluded a modern practitioner can be, since she is otherwise a good pediatrician.
Posted Aug 17, 2012 14:44 UTC (Fri)
by jackb (guest, #41909)
[Link] (10 responses)
If she's not blatently prescribing fake cures for financial benefit then it must mean she is incapabable of distinguising between the effectiveness of antibiotics vs. distilled placebo water. In that case she might as well be picking treatements randomly out of a hat.
Posted Aug 17, 2012 15:08 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Aug 17, 2012 22:46 UTC (Fri)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link] (8 responses)
»Allopathic« is a propaganda term homeopaths use for what the rest of the world calls »scientific«. Homeopathy is a form of sympathetic magic that dates from a time when modern medicine basically didn't exist. In spite of vast numbers of trials there is no evidence whatsoever that homeopathy works better than placebos; in fact, if it worked at all it would mean that large, well-established swathes of contemporary physics and chemistry are wrong. That homeopathy works is, in other words, unlikely in the extreme. Modern science-based medicine, on the other hand, has at least a fighting chance of working, because it relies on evidence and our contemporary knowledge of human biology, pharmacology, etc.
Posted Aug 17, 2012 23:10 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Last time she prescribed some 30C phony medication, which means it has one ml in a sphere 212 light years long. I wonder if they actually take the time and effort to do the dilution or just skip it and use pure sugar. But of course that would be fraud...
The thing is, our pediatrician knows her basic stuff and explains things nicely. We have gone to other (reputed) doctors to get a second opinion and they have all prescribed lots of unnecessary things which have done nothing either, and our child has only had the usual colds and fevers. If she had anything more serious (god forbid) we would go to a specialist, so we just tolerate the quack homeopathic thing as an eccentricity. And double-check everything on MedlinePlus and similar places. Which is not a bad practice anyway.
Posted Aug 18, 2012 17:40 UTC (Sat)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (6 responses)
...
and are actively misleading their patients, which means they are unethical.
But placebos work, on some people. Is it possible a practicioner can legitimately heal someone by prescribing a homeopathic treatment that the patient can read about on the web and develop some faith in?
There is a recognized ethical quandary over whether prescribing placebos is unethical, especially considering that for them to be effective, they typically have to be expensive.
Speaking of placebos, I'll always remember looking at a box of minoxidil hair regrowth medication. It said something like 35% of subjects reported hair regrowth using the drug vs 25% for placebo. It was very expensive and my first thought was, "I'll take the placebo. Sounds like a better deal."
Posted Aug 18, 2012 20:28 UTC (Sat)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link]
The percentages of success vary, but hair growth is not usual; rather it stops hair loss. It is there where placebos may be some competition and not in growth, since if placebos caused hair growth they would sell like crazy.
Posted Aug 19, 2012 21:24 UTC (Sun)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link] (4 responses)
Placebos "work" for some people because many ailments people suffer from will tend to go away if they are left alone long enough. Consider, for example, the common cold, which so far has resisted the efforts of scientific medicine, but for which your friendly neighbourhood homeopath will be more than happy to prescribe some sugar pills at an outrageous price (for sugar). It doesn't matter if you take the sugar pills because they will neither help or hinder your getting better. However having taken the sugar pills you are likely to give them the credit. It is even likely that your symptoms will get worse after you have started the sugar pills, since they don't do anything, which homeopaths will conveniently explain away as the effect of the medication getting to work inside you.
Many other ailments people suffer from (e.g., chronic back pain, which scientific medicine has so far also failed from curing conclusively) tend to come and go, and since people are apt to go to the doctor (or homeopath) when their complaints are worst, even sugar pills will seem to help because of "regression to the mean" (you would have come out of the bad phase into a somewhat better phase, anyway).
Then of course there are those ailments that have a good chance of killing you when they remain untreated, like malaria or cancer. This is something that "ethical" homeopaths shouldn't touch with a 10' pole. If only they would. The BBC has found in an experiment that a vast majority of homeopathic pharmacies in London will be more than happy to sell you "homeopathic" malaria "prophylaxis", and one homeopathic remedy for cancer is sugar pills with hyper-diluted extract of mistletoe (i.e., no mistletoe), on the grounds - and I am not making this up - that mistletoe looks like cancer on trees.
The problem with stuff like homeopathy is that the placebo effect is a lot less powerful if your medical practitioner tells you that there's nothing in the pills except sugar, that they have not been able to be proven to work in clinical trials, and that indeed they have no conceivable way of doing anything to you as far as our concepts of physics, chemistry and biology go. Which is, perhaps understandably, why most people dealing in homeopathy neglect to explain this to their patients. In effect, they are being knowingly dishonest to their patients, which is unacceptable. Personally, I would have much less of a problem being told that there is no remedy against my cold that has been shown to work, but that the cold will almost certainly get better anyway, than being prescribed very expensive sugar pills or (for that matter) antibiotics (which too many non-homeopathic practitioners are prone to do, but that is a different problem).
Posted Aug 19, 2012 22:56 UTC (Sun)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (3 responses)
No, that's not the placebo effect. The fact that things get better in time without treatment is a big reason that the control group reports improvement, but it isn't what people refer to as the placebo effect.
The placebo effect is where a person's subjective evaluation of his health improves when he thinks he is being treated. The placebo doesn't cause his rhinovirus count to go down, but it makes him feel better. When you consider that the real reason most people go to the doctor is to feel better, not to effect a particular biological change in the body, you have to say a placebo is effective in that case. In fact, you could argue it's unethical to withhold a placebo.
The placebo effect is very real. I have a friend who is extremely susceptible to it, not just in medicines, but in everything else. If he installed a new wireless access point, especially if it were expensive, he would report faster web browsing even if the actual speed was unaffected. (He's not the type to measure it, of course).
Posted Aug 19, 2012 23:10 UTC (Sun)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (2 responses)
On the other hand, spreading unscientific theories is a much worse sin in my opinion.
Posted Aug 19, 2012 23:28 UTC (Sun)
by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
[Link] (1 responses)
You seem to be spreading the theory that "spreading unscientific theories is harmful".
Just curious...
Posted Aug 20, 2012 0:04 UTC (Mon)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link]
Anyway, I don't have any scientific basis to dislike unscientific theories, but I am not right now speaking from an office which is (or should be) based on science. If a professor of Astronomy spoke about the horoscope I would start to worry... And I am not a medical practitioner, thank god, since I think it is one of the hardest professions.
From medical practitioners I expect to get at least a plausible explanation of the causes, or (as in the case of Minoxidil above) an experimental confirmation. We should require both, but life is tough. With homeopathy there are neither, and therefore the iniquity.
To bring this long thread at least a bit back into topic, the psychiatric profession has made wonderful advances both in the determination of the root causes of mental illnesses, and in the experimental treatment of those. If you don't feel well, please go to a doctor (a psychiatrist) in addition to a psychologist.
Posted Jul 31, 2012 22:51 UTC (Tue)
by gvy (guest, #11981)
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For one who has been a (honest) atheist back then but has seen enough strange things that e.g. probability theory would have a hard time explaining, and who has been close enough to death on a couple occasions, I *know* that there's God there and that there's nothing really random out there.
And I only have read *two* sane psychologists, one of whom is an Orthodox monk by now. The rest of those I happened to meet so far (mostly while traveling) were crazy people who would be better off being barred from "treating" people: it takes more than knowledge and clean hands to meet someone's soul.
Please don't try referring to science blindly, modern science can't prove the non-existence of anything in general manner. But if you have an explanation of these fireballs I as an M.Sc. in Chemistry and someone who's got some practice with reasonably high voltage equipment would be glad to hear it (shigorin gmail com if you please, let's not spam this sad discussion anymore).
The intelligence isn't substitute for the common sense. I have buried one of my best friends who took his life either and who was extremely intelligent too but apparently did turn to the ridiculuous entities -- there were satanic videos found on his PC afterwards by his relatives... and I managed to be somewhere else.
We should care for each other while we still can.
Posted Aug 12, 2012 17:51 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (8 responses)
"If one defines a religion as being an irrational belief in the unprovable, then not only is mathematics a religion, but it is the only religion that can prove itself so"
What you believe about religion is up to you, but you must recognise that secularism, and mathematics, are both religions themselves.
Some include science as part of maths. I don't, but for me the only reason science is not a religion is because it is not something to believed - it is the OBSERVATION of the past and the PREDICTION of the future. No belief there (at least as far as "I know what I saw" has any objective reality, which often it doesn't).
Cheers,
Posted Aug 19, 2012 21:55 UTC (Sun)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (7 responses)
Mathematics is a religion, you say? How can the derivation from a set of axioms and rules to a number of theorems be a religion? Mathematics says nothing about the nature of the Universe. To use a common example, our space may be Euclidean, hyperbolic or elliptic; if it is Euclidean then Euclid's postulates and conclusions will hold, and not otherwise, but maths do not (and cannot) say which.
The fact that mathematics can accurately represent some phenomena of our physical world, or rather the fact that our physical laws can be represented mathematically, is just an exponent of some kind of objectivity in the world: things sometimes work in a way that can be deduced from a few axioms. Is it a lucky coincidence or some kind of superior powers at work that makes integers behave according to Peano axioms? Maths do not go there.
There is certainly nothing to believe or to worship in mathematical laws, and few people since Pythagoras have done so. If there are still some people who believe in mathematics with some kind of enthusiasm bordering in religious fervor, then good for them; axioms and theorems do not need people to believe in them to work, contrary to most religions.
Posted Aug 20, 2012 0:47 UTC (Mon)
by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205)
[Link] (4 responses)
> Mathematics is a religion, you say? How can the derivation from a set of
Because to avoid infinite regress (i.e., to get a theorem B from axiom A, you would need the axioms "A implies B", "(A implies B and A) implies B", "((A implies B and A) implies B) implies B)", and so on), you need to take the definition of "implies" from somewhere in your psyche. Philosophers argue endlessly about where this definition comes from. Mathematicians generally take it on faith.
You can certainly do mathematics without ever thinking about the religion or philosophy of it. But all of mathematics is built from logic and set theory, which I would say are religion.
>Mathematics says nothing about the nature of the Universe.
No, but as soon as you accept that the two in "I have two hands" is the same as the two that mathematicians use, you have indeed made a statement about the universe (and one that also requires faith!).
Posted Aug 20, 2012 1:07 UTC (Mon)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Aug 20, 2012 6:42 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (2 responses)
Axioms are not some 'self-evident truths', they are just starting points. And math is just a way to see what can be derived from them, nothing more and nothing less.
Want to see what happens if it's possible to draw exactly 3 lines parallel to a given line through an arbitrary point? Go on, that would be interesting. But that doesn't affect any geometry theorems operating in our familiar boring Euclidean space.
Posted Aug 20, 2012 9:07 UTC (Mon)
by hppnq (guest, #14462)
[Link] (1 responses)
Unfortunately, of course, our familiar space is not Euclidian. Well, mine isn't.
But, given a nicely-behaved Euclidian space, the challenge would be to prove that there can be at most one line through a point that is not on a second, parallel line. Now, that's hard enough even for aspiring mathematicians, but if you could prove that it is possible to actually draw two or more such lines, it would most certainly mean the end of Euclid's famous fifth postulate, and with that all of Euclidian geometry, not to mention the start of a hectic tour of talkshows in which you would have to patiently explain that you cannot explain what it all means.
Posted Aug 20, 2012 15:27 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
> But, given a nicely-behaved Euclidian space, the challenge would be to prove that there can be at most one line through a point that is not on a second, parallel line.
That's impossible. The Euclid's fifth axiom is independent from others and that has actually been proven. It's not possible to prove that in general case (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompletenes... ), but Euclidean geometry is a complete theory (in Göedel sense).
So you have the following choices:
Posted Aug 20, 2012 12:05 UTC (Mon)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link] (1 responses)
It depends on how you define »religion«.
John Barrow observed that if you think of a »religion« as a system of ideas containing statements that are unprovable, then mathematics is not only a religion, it is actually the only religion that can prove itself to be a religion.
Posted Aug 20, 2012 12:25 UTC (Mon)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link]
What you describe is more "theology" than "religion": the deduction of conclusions based on a set of postulates. Not coincidentally theology is a branch of philosophy, heavily based on logic. In that respect, theology is to religion what mathematics is to science: science does indeed apply mathematical laws to our physical universe, thereby implying that some sets of axioms apply in our world. Answering apoelstra above, physics equates the "2" in "2+2=4" with the "two" in "I have two hands".
What Wol missed above is that science is indeed akin to religion, in that there are no proofs that it works at all but still people believe in them with something resembling faith. See e.g. Wigner:
Posted Jul 31, 2012 8:57 UTC (Tue)
by morhippo (guest, #334)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Aug 1, 2012 10:27 UTC (Wed)
by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Aug 2, 2012 10:11 UTC (Thu)
by dunlapg (guest, #57764)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Aug 2, 2012 12:47 UTC (Thu)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 2, 2012 13:05 UTC (Thu)
by dunlapg (guest, #57764)
[Link]
Posted Aug 5, 2012 21:05 UTC (Sun)
by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
[Link] (2 responses)
Basically? Science.
Posted Aug 12, 2012 18:40 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
As practiced by humanity, precious little difference between that and religion! See my other comment :-)
Cheers,
Posted Aug 12, 2012 18:44 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
And the same appears to be true of many other areas of big business, too :-(
Cheers,
Posted Aug 13, 2012 8:40 UTC (Mon)
by dreamcode (guest, #86226)
[Link]
Posted Aug 19, 2012 10:30 UTC (Sun)
by sumanah (guest, #59891)
[Link]
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Ps - just to be clear, the events that I refer to occurred before Jeff's reported telephone talks with Andre. Jeff may have seen this as part of the normal process, Andre may have seen it all as targeted at him personally. Jeff may have been right, but to me, Andre's reaction was understandable even if he was not 'mentally ill'. In fact I find it remarkable how cooperative and helpful Andre was despite how poorly he was treated.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
So it is. It's why healthcare isn't tied to your employment in civilized countries.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Not only professionals can help
A mental health professional knows more, but *can do less*.
- Invite them out for lunch with some mates, or introduce them to new people
- help with a hobby or work, or chores
- Waste time just talking about pointless fun stuff
Not only professionals can help
1. "anti-depressants are just a band-aid and won't fix the problem"
2. "anti-depressants will make me feel numb and affect my ability to think clearly"
3. "my logic is fine, it's everyone else who are blind to the problems"
4. "counselling is just a waste of time and money, because there's no guarantee it will help and it's not even in the counsellor's financial interest for me to get better".
5. "if my employer finds out that I'm getting counselling, people won't take me seriously at work or it could affect my future in some way"
6. "I don't want to have this weakness and I refuse to be judged or have my judgement questioned"
7. "this is my problem and I'll fix it myself - I don't need anyone's help"
1. Accept that things really can get better.
2. Realise that getting better is in your own hands and that nobody can "fix" you.
3. Believe that if you follow the plan, it will get better.
4. Ask for support to stick with the plan. The people you feel you're a burden on would much rather help you than see you suffer and feel powerless to help you.
5. Stop punishing yourself and living in your own head.
6. Stop comparing your own shortcomings to other people's strengths.
1. Write that thought down. Writing forces you to get your thoughts in order and makes it easier to look at the facts.
2. Get an external point of view on each of the issues you struggle with from someone you respect. If you're insecure about technical aspects of your work, speak frankly to someone technical.
3. Do some physical activity at least twice a week. Even a 5 minute walk is a start. Just keep increasing it as you feel comfortable. It will become less effort and you'll find more time for it as you improve. Solitary activities are not as effective, because it's easier to say "not today" if nobody's waiting.
4. Set small targets and acknowledge the small steps.
5. Look at the lives of other people. Depression doesn't mean you won't achieve anything. It means you're not giving yourself credit for what you've achieved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_major_de...
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
paranoid psychosis should not be stagmatising
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
If you're implying that professional counselling will _never_ help, ...
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Wol
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Not to speak about vaccines, grafts, prosthesis, vitamins, micro-surgery, anti-retro-viral medicines, X-rays, analgesics or monitoring equipment. Saying that nothing but antibiotics and surgery techniques has changed from an era where amputation was the most common surgery (and the tourniquet had not even been invented, figure that) shows a high level of self-delusion.
Medical procedures
Smarter than in the last century, which is what #6 is about. See also http://www.rachel.org/files/document/Lead_Poisoning_in_Historical_Perspective.pdf
Medical procedures
Not only last century; please read the pdf you cite and not only the abstract, specifically the section about the preindustrial and industrial ages.
Medical procedures
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
What's happened in medicine since the 17th century is not just progress, it's a fundamental change. Medicine today is based on science, but before the late 1800s it generally was not. Today, we try to deconstruct the internal workings of the human body and develop hypotheses for treatments and test them with experiments. In contrast, before then, medical practicioners did what felt like it ought to work, for any number of reasons.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
To be fair, it is much easier to detect quacks in engineering than in medicine: in engineering there are many more controlled variables, while in medicine there is a an enormous variety of conditions and tolerances -- not to speak about interactions. Proteins are much harder to predict and control than screws and bolts, or even than lines of code in large systems.
Diluted sugar
Diluted sugar
My pediatrician is also a homeopath practitioner and sometimes she prescribes some diluted sugar recipe which we immediately throw to the nearest garbage can. It goes to show how deluded a modern practitioner can be, since she is otherwise a good pediatrician.
I think you're being too charitable by using the word "deluded". I would lean more towards "fraudulent" or, at best, "incompetent". I also couldn't imagine trusting such a person to provide medical care to a child.
She is careful to prescribe quack pills only when there is no other treatment, and to explain that they may not achieve the expected results; also there is no direct financial benefit. Perhaps it is the placebo effect she is after, but I think it is just incompetence. Many other things recommended in the alopathic (i.e. non-homeopathic) literature do not work either and they get away with it; avian flu remedies come to mind. It is a strange science indeed.
Diluted sugar
Diluted sugar
Yes, sorry for the "allopathic" moniker. I meant "scientific medicine", i.e. non-homeopathic.
Diluted sugar
Diluted sugar
In spite of vast numbers of trials there is no evidence whatsoever that homeopathy works better than placebos
Minoxidil is a funny example of "scientific" medicine: it was discovered by chance, it only works on some people, the mechanism by which it works is unknown, and all of its effects are reversed if the patient stops using it. But still it is used, as it is the only known medicament which stops hair loss effectively.
Diluted sugar
Diluted sugar
Diluted sugar
Sorry for the off-topic
In fact, you could argue it's unethical to withhold a placebo.
That argument could even be a suitable justification for homeopathic medicine. I am not sure if you want to go there. The thing is that the Hippocratic Oath specifically says "never do harm", but not "avoid useless treatments". It could be argued that using the placebo effect can sooth both patients and their families, in cases where there is no known cure. Sugar pills cannot do any harm...
Sorry for the even-more off-topic
Do you have scientific evidence for this theory (is so, please provide references), or is it just anecdotal/personal belief evidence?
Thanks for the recursive laugh, I always appreciate those :)
Sorry for the even-more off-topic
Just don't turn to ridiculous supernatural entities.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
There speaks the true believer
Wol
Sorry, too much for me; I will bite. I do not recognize that mathematics is any kind of religion.
Lack of faith is not a kind of faith
Lack of faith is not a kind of faith
axioms and rules to a number of theorems be a religion?
Yes, you need axioms and rules. No, rules are not mysterious entities that require belief; they are a well understood part of the system. Logic and set theory are also sets of axioms and rules, and in that they are very similar to mathematics. Again, no belief or faith necessary: if you don't believe e.g. that "a and ¬a cannot be true at the same time" you can still be happy, just accepting that the conclusions of first-order logic cannot be carried out to the physical world.
Still no faith required
as soon as you accept that the two in "I have two hands" is the same as the two that mathematicians use, you have indeed made a statement about the universe (and one that also requires faith!).
That is precisely why the "I have two hands" part is firmly planted in reality, and outside the realm of mathematics. I am forced to quote Einstein again:
as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Not that I dislike quoting father Einstein, but citing the same quote twice in a week is excessive and has the danger of becoming old.
Lack of faith is not a kind of faith
Lack of faith is not a kind of faith
But that doesn't affect any geometry theorems operating in our familiar boring Euclidean space.
Lack of faith is not a kind of faith
And? Mathematics is in no way related with the real world. The fact that some mathematical structures can be used to model objects and behaviors from the real world is just a happy coincidence.
1) Leave it out entirely. You'll have much poorer set of theorems.
2) Use it. You'll get boring old geometry.
3) Replace it with another axiom. You'll get non-Euclidean geometries as a result.
Lack of faith is not a kind of faith
If you think of a "chicken" as a two-legged vertebrate then we are all chickens :)
Lack of faith is not a kind of faith
arguments could be found that might [...] put a heavy strain on our faith in our theories and on our belief in the reality of the concepts which we form.
There is a big difference though: religions usually demand faith from the practitioner, while science works independently of beliefs. This conceptual leap (pioneered by Galileo himself) is worth centuries of progress.
I think it is not very good taste to spread your personal belief system in the context of this sad news, where an apparently sick man ended up killing himself. Let's not bring belief system into this, but let's honor the man.
That is of course, unless Andre would have endorsed your belief system and lived by it, which I seriously doubt.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Speaking on the basis of knowing several people with bipolar spectrum disorders: God can't write you a prescription for carbamazepine; your psychiatrist can.
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Wol
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
Wol
Garzik: An Andre To Remember
I have to pay him the tribute by contributing to the VM area in the kernel, as he tried to help me in this too.. along with trying to help me in an unpaid internship at Cisco and other places he knew.
As per the emails exchanged, he commanded good respect at his work place.
If you're interested in helping out with this issue, BlueHackers.org is an organization to look at.
BlueHackers.org