Journaling

I've wondered for a long time about why I keep a journal. I've filled up a few books by now; I started writing when I was in junior high school as a result of being bored in class, and afterwards I just kept making entries. Some of them are a day or two in between but most are weeks or months apart.

Some people write journals as though they're writing to a penpal. "Dear Diary, here's what happened to me today." I don't really do that. I don't write for the purpose of myself or someone else reading what I write at some point in the future. I just find that I think a lot late at night, and if I have recurring thoughts that I can't get out of my head, I just write down those thoughts in my journal.

This blog is similar. Only a handful of people (if any) read it, but that doesn't bother me. I don't write for the readers, mostly. Mainly I write entries here because I type faster than I can write, and sometimes I don't have my journal handy. If I have thoughts that wouldn't be terribly embarrassing to admit publicly, this is a convenient place for them.

But why bother writing these thoughts down? It's not so I have an archive of my life. It's not so I can look back and see how much I've grown; to be honest, I'm consistently ashamed of entries I've written even a few months ago, of the decisions I made or the things I said or did, or just my outlook on life in general.

I suppose some of life's issues are too complex to think about all at once. Humans in general are terrible at looking at the big picture. We prefer to focus on one thing at a time, fact-by-fact. This might be easier but it also leads to having a biased outlook on pretty much everything.

If I write down all my thoughts as they come to me, not in any particular order, eventually there's enough on my pages to externalize the issue and finally see the big picture. If I'm thinking about a problem in my head, it's just this confusing web of thoughts that jump from one to another for God knows what reason. Once it's all on paper, it's just a math problem. A logic puzzle. I can look at everything at once and decide what to do next.

It doesn't apply only to decision-making. I use it to form opinions about the world. I suspect the approach could be used to figure out just about anything.

If you're reading this and you don't keep a journal, start. You'll come to realize your own biases and learn how to account for them. You learn how to look at issues from every point of view and start to see the big picture. You do sort of have to force yourself to write at times, but it gets easier, and you won't regret it.

Why I Trust Wikipedia

Wikipedia has become an enormously important way of sharing information. It's used by everyone from elementary school students to doctors and CEOs. However, it seems to be a commonly held belief that Wikipedia is not an accurate resource. Most schools don't accept Wikipedia as a citation for reports; some even specify that "any website except Wikipedia" can be used. Why is it so many people don't trust Wikipedia? And, more importantly, are they right not to?

Wikipedia is not perfect, of course— but I intend to show in this post that it is one of the best and most reliable sources on the internet. I'll start by responding to some of the common arguments against Wikipedia.

"Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time, and is therefore unreliable."

This is probably the most common argument out there. Yes, it's true that anybody with an internet connection can edit Wikipedia. Yes, there's always the possibility that a vandal decides to deface a page the moment before a reader views it. This, however, doesn't discredit the reliability of the entire encyclopædia. Here's why.

• Edits to Wikipedia are constantly being monitored. There are hundreds of people watching the recent changes feed at any given time. There are counter-vandalism programs like Huggle, Twinkle, and others which many people make use of. On top of that, there are many readers looking through pages on Wikipedia who will remove any vandalism they find.
• Edits by anonymous users are automatically flagged as suspicious. It's true that anyone can edit Wikipedia, but those that do so without registering for an account (so-called IP Users, since their IP is displayed in place of a username) risk having their edits removed simply due to the fact that they don't have a reputation in the Wikipedia community. If an anonymous user adds content that is unsourced, it is far more likely to be removed than if an established user does so. If an anonymous user hopes for his or her edits to remain on Wikipedia, the edits should be accompanied with a link to a relevant policy page justifying them. It's common to see edit summaries like "Miscellaneous information section removed as per WP:TRIVIA." If an anonymous user makes a change and doesn't include a good edit summary, their change probably won't last longer than a few seconds. Edits are more likely to persist if they're made by established users who have a good reputation in the Wikipedia community.
• Users identified as vandals are blocked. If a user (whether anonymous or logged in) makes an edit that is identified as vandalism and is then reverted, the user usually receives a warning on their talk page. The warning messages increase in severity with each unconstructive edit until the user is reported as a vandal and blocked from editing by an administrator. If they're an anonymous user, their IP is blocked. There have been cases where entire schools and offices have been blocked because someone using the IP repeatedly vandalized Wikipedia.
• There are bots on Wikipedia to immediately revert changes that are clearly vandalism. Examples include edits which insert strings of profanity or random sexual words throughout the page. Edits like this are flagged by bots like ClueBot right away and removed. These bots also have the ability to warn users and request blocks.
• Edits which are detected as being suspicious are flagged by the software. There are a number of reasons why the MediaWiki software might flag an edit as suspicious; perhaps the editor only joined Wikipedia today, or their IP address has a history of vandalism, or the edit blanked large sections of the page, or the edit contained some links to external sites. Edits like this are marked with a red exclamation point on the recent changes feed so that reviewers will pay them extra attention. The edit can only be unflagged if an established user marks it as patrolled.
• Pages which are likely to be vandalized or have been vandalized a lot are restricted from editing. The process is called page protection, and it restricts any anonymous users (as well as users whose accounts are less than four days old or have less than ten edits) from making any changes to the page. Pages about controversial subjects (such as politics or abortion) are frequently protected in anticipation of vandalism. So, the belief that anyone can edit anything on Wikipedia is not entirely true.
• Wikipedia requires valid sources. If significant content is added to a page without a citation, it is removed, or at least annotated with the infamous [citation needed] template. Often, citations (and their corresponding facts) are removed because they are not reputable or reliable enough. Articles with only one citation are either deleted or modified to include a bunch of flags and disclaimers at the top (for an example, see the page on Mandingo Theory; at the time of posting, there are quite a few disclaiming templates at the top). There are actually a lot of other templates like the citation needed one which indicate a problem with a statement or section (see here).

"Content on Wikipedia isn't peer-reviewed."

This argument is commonly used in contrasting Wikipedia with academic journals and print encyclopædias. It's true that a scholarly article written by someone with a Ph.D. in the subject will probably be more reliable than a Wikipedia article on the same subject. However, a mistake on Wikipedia will certainly be corrected sooner than a mistake in a scholarly article. Wikipedia may not always be peer-reviewed by academics, but whether it's better to have an article reviewed by two or three graduate students or 90,000 non-graduate editors is up for debate.

On that note, there is still some degree of professional peer-review on Wikipedia. Articles about very specific or complex topics are often fitted with a template stating they are in need of attention from an expert.  The template is removed when someone with a degree in the field reviews and edits the article.

Long story short, while you probably shouldn't refer to Wikipedia if you're about to attempt brain surgery or defuse a bomb, it's certainly reliable and accurate enough for more common usage.

When it comes to comparing Wikipedia with other encyclopædias, there has been a lot of research done into the comparison of Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica which I'll discuss in the next section. 

"There are many articles on Wikipedia that are poorly written."

This is a rather weak argument for a number of reasons. Consider:

• There are many articles on Wikipedia that are written very well. See the list of Featured Articles for some examples. The fact that there are many poor-quality articles on Wikipedia is a product of the fact that there are many articles on Wikipedia. By nature, articles which are searched more and draw more public interest (and are hence more important) are the ones which are more comprehensive and accurate. The article on a random high school in Ohio might not be the most lengthy or accurate, but the article on maple syrup certainly is. What matters more than number of errors or poor-quality articles is the ratio of good articles to bad and the ratio of correct facts to incorrect facts. One way to quantitatively rate these ratios on Wikipedia is to compare it to another encyclopædia.
• Wikipedia has less errors per word than the peer-reviewed Encyclopædia Britannica. Check out the study done by Nature in 2005 comparing the two. This isn't meant to criticize EB, but rather to illustrate why the Wikipedia approach to information sharing is superior. If an error is found in EB, it will probably last at least a couple of weeks, if it's even found in the first place. Errors on Wikipedia are a) far more likely to be found, and b) much easier to correct.

I'll probably be updating this entry to add refutes to other common arguments against Wikipedia, but currently this entry is in its original form.

© Nicholas Klose, 2011. Copyleft: The text of this post is available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License. This license applies to this post only, so that it may be shared on Wikipedia. It does not apply to other posts on nicholasklose.com.

Randomness and Determinism

My thoughts here are adapted from my earlier post, Omniscient Machines. This is (in my opinion) a clearer and more refined explanation of my stance on determinism. After discussing it at length with my peers for several years, I've been able to weed out some of the logical issues and explain it in a more concise manner.

Can science prove or disprove determinism?

If so, it must first prove or disprove the concept of randomness. I'm defining determinism as the belief that everything in the timeline of the universe was predetermined as soon as the Big Bang happened, and I'm defining randomness as the concept that some things can happen spontaneously and without cause. If something happens "randomly", that technically means it had no cause at all, it "just happened". Determinism, by definition, requires that every event which occurs had a cause (and will have an effect). If it's possible for anything to happen randomly, determinism is false.

So is randomness real?

At first you might say yes, of course it is-- and you might provide examples like the rolling of a die, or the use of a random number generator. I'd argue that those things aren't really random, though. In throwing a die, if you were to throw it with a known force at a known trajectory, and if you had measured other variables like air currents in the area and the restitution between the dice and the surface onto which it's being thrown, you could calculate with certainty what number it would land on. Thus, it's possible to predict the outcome of a dice throw before it occurs, meaning the throw isn't truly random. What about a random number generator, though? Actually, these aren't truly random either-- when a computer generates a random number, it must first be given a "seed" to run through a complex series of algorithms and computations, after which the "random" number is generated. This seed is usually given by the current time in seconds (or miliseconds, microseconds, etc.) because it's always changing, ensuring the number generated isn't always the same. One popular "true random number generator" at http://www.random.org/ uses atmospheric noise as its seed. But, if the generator is given the same seed twice, it will always generate the same number each time. So, you can predict the number that will be generated as long as you know the seed-- and in this case, the seed can be treated as the cause of the number generated. You can use similar arguments to show that the winning of a lottery or the spinning of the Wheel of Fortune aren't examples of true randomness either.

A counterexample to the above argument is quantum mechanics; the idea that when a particle is in a quantum state, the state it chooses when the waveform is collapsed is completely random. If that's true, then yes, determinism is false. But we still have a very limited understanding of quantum mechanics. We interpret the state chosen as being random, but perhaps that's a result of our model being too simple or of us making false assumptions. If so, quantum mechanics is as pseudo-random as all of the examples in the above paragraph.

If nothing is random, then nothing happens without a cause or a reason. If that's true, then everything that has happened and will happen in the timeline of the universe was determined during the big bang. Ergo, determinism is true.

Generally, people resist the notion of everything being predetermined because it makes life seem purposeless. This seems rather depressing. I'd argue that it's possible to be a determinist, but at the same time believe that life is far from purposeless. Just because everything that happens is determined doesn't mean that we can build a machine to predict the future. To do so, we would need a supercomputer capable of observing and cataloging all of the information in the universe. This is, of course, impossible for many reasons, but perhaps the biggest issue is that this computer would have to exist in another universe, otherwise you'd end up with the recursive issue of having to catalog the information in the computer itself. So, even though the choices you'll make and the future you'll have has already been decided, you can't possibly know anything about this, meaning you still get the excitement of having to wait to find out (which I think is the main qualm people have with determinism). Of course, determinism implies you don't really have free will-- but all that means is that every decision you make is the result of everything that has happened in your life, as well as your biology. Logic dictates everything. It means you'll never make a decision for no reason at all-- and is that really a bad thing?

Graffiti as a Form of Communication and Art

This is a modified version of an essay I wrote for English 102 on March 16, 2011.  If you'd like to see the original essay, message me.



What qualities does something need to have in order to be called "art"? Most people will agree that paintings, sketches, sculptures, and the like can definitely be considered art. Can you call graffiti art, then? Often, it's seen by the public as little more than an offensive nuisance found in dingy neighbourhoods riddled with crime. It is seen as a mark of societal breakdown, anarchy, and a sign that those living in nearby residences “just don’t care.” Personally, I think graffiti deserves more consideration by society.

I'm not saying the common perception of graffiti is unfounded. It's rather unsurprising that these anonymous painted messages are seen in such an unfavourable light, especially in the case of “fairly useless, or even damaging graffiti: stupid racist remarks, empty slogans, illegible signatures or comments like ‘Nick and Gloria sparkle’ ” (Boyd, 246). Because this sort of thing is seen everywhere, I think it taints the public view of the art form— and yes, I do think in some cases it can be called an art form. A lot of graffiti isn't stupid or useless at all— much of it is sophisticated and political. Alex Boyd (A Canadian poet/essayist, by the way) mentions that a lot of graffiti is probably created by young, poor people who have no place to call home, as an act of protest against home-owners and business-owners: “Those of us who are most opposed to it … can afford to own at least a home if not other buildings, and take offense to anyone who would stain it” (Boyd, 247). I think this is probably the reason for the association between low-income neighbourhoods and graffiti, and is also why land owners who are victims of graffiti refer to the creators as vandals. Sometimes, they go so far as to call their spray cans as weapons of destruction. “If it allows those who have less to be articulate, and critical of those who have more, naturally anyone in the better position will see it as a ‘weapon’ ” (Boyd, 247).

Think on that last quote for a moment, and try to put it into a political context. This explains why anonymous graffiti is common in parts of the world where free speech is limited or banned. In places like El Salvador, “graffiti becomes an affordable, accessible method of communication” (Boyd, 246). Is it still vandalism, then, or is it more of a demonstration against censorship, dictatorship, and closed-mindedness? Graffiti can be used to publicize political views or to protest against oppression. A proponent of free speech can't be opposed to this kind of graffiti, or consider it vandalism.

Graffiti is different from advertisements and signs in that it has the potential to be interactive and change over time. While advertisements are intended to be static, remaining the same until they are removed, there are accounts of full conversations taking place using graffiti alone. In Scotland, “a public debate had taken place entirely through graffiti … resulting in a permanently posted conversation” (Boyd, 246). Another account tells of a graffiti writer who “began work on a large piece one night but left before completing it when he heard a noise. He returned the following evening to finish the painting when he found,  ‘Just Missed You – Wait Till Next Time – The Watchman,’ written on it” (Castleman, 43). The most important difference, though, is that graffiti, unlike advertisements, isn't fuelled by money. The purpose of the message is the message itself.

Graffiti can be interpreted in a historical context, as well. Interestingly, in the twelfth century, graffiti very similar to that found today was left on the inside of a tomb by Norsemen (Boyd, 246). In some contexts, it can be seen as a territorial marker— “territorial graffiti have an identical function at the neighbourhood scale, that of ascribing a proprietary meaning to space” (Ley & Cybriwsky, 504).  Leaving a message like “Dave was here” in an alleyway taps into the same part of the human psyche as sticking a flag in the ground of some unclaimed land, the top of a mountain, or the moon. It's human nature to expand one's territory. Graffiti is seen by many as an effective way of establishing boundaries, whether personal, physical, political, or societal.

 Again, I'm not saying graffiti can't be harmful. I only hope to show that it has the potential to be more than a nuisance with negative connotations. While it is commonly seen as a product of high crime rates and the breakdown of society, it can in fact be a product instead of human nature and cultural development. While some graffiti is indeed vandalism and has no real significance, much of it is a form of communication and art, and should be treated as such.


Works Cited:

• Boyd, Alex. “In Defense of Graffiti.” 2006. Steps to Writing Well with Additional Readings. Eds. Jean Wyrick and Sanka P. Bose. Toronto: Nelson, 2011. 245-248.
• Castleman, Craig. “Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York.” 1982. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press. 
• Ley, David and Cybriwsky, Roman. “Urban Graffiti as Territorial Markers.” 1974. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Vol. 64, No. 4. 491-505.

Update?!

So, I'm bringing this blog back from the dead. In case you're still viewing this on the original Blogger domain, you can actually read this blog now on my personal domain, http://nicholasklose.com/.

I'll be posting some of my journal entries here (the less personal ones, at least) for your reading pleasure. Most of them are centered around philosophical questions about physics, math, and science, hence the new title Enigmas and Conundrums which I find fitting (although, I admit the real reason I chose is is just because it sounded cool).

I'll try and improve on my historical bi-yearly posting, a feat which won't really be all that impressive since I technically only need to post three times to call it an improvement. I'll be reading/replying to comments regularly, if there are any.

Cheers!

The Importance of Input

Note: I originally wrote this on February 1, 2010 as an essay project for a philosophy course (PHIL 366).

From the first binary computer to the astounding power of modern computing devices such as touch-screen tablets and OLED displays, society has found itself captivated by the exponential growth of technology. In less than a century, the computing world has exploded; in 2002, it was estimated that over 1 billion computers existed in the world. [1] Because computers are used so extensively, it is undoubtedly crucial that efficient input methods be researched and developed. There have been many developments in this field in recent years such as T9 for mobile phones, voice dictation, and handwriting recognition; however, until these methods become much faster and more reliable, the standard keyboard will remain the most common device for entering text. The keyboard is here to stay—but are we really using it to its full potential? Could keyboard keys be rearranged to make typing faster and more accurate? In English-speaking countries, the most common keyboard layout by far is known as QWERTY. [1][2] It is difficult to find keyboards for sale which support other layouts; usually, software must be used to emulate those layouts. Despite this, numerous attempts at rearranging the QWERTY keyboard have been made—and consequently, several more efficient layouts have been made available. In particular, the layout known as the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard [3] (or simply Dvorak) was created in response to the issue of input efficiency.

To realize the inefficiency of the QWERTY layout, it’s important to understand its origins. The arrangement was originally created for use with the typewriter, not the computer. Notably, the most common letters in English (E, T, A, and O) [4] are spaced out across the entire keyboard, and the less common letters (such as V, B, X, and Z) tend to be jumbled together. By keeping common letters separate from each other, the risk of jamming the typewriter’s internal components was reduced. However, this came at a cost: by spacing these letters out, some of them became harder to reach, and as a result a typist’s efficiency (WPM count) can be decreased dramatically. The most efficient theoretical layout possible is one where keys are positioned such that their ease of reach matches how common they are in the English language. The Dvorak layout mentioned above acknowledges this as follows: the five vowels, as well as the common consonants S, N, and T, can all be found on the home row. The top row is easier to reach than the bottom row, and as such the very commonly-used punctuation keys (period, comma, and apostrophe) are found here. The keyboard is designed so that the alternating of hands between adjacent letters in words is encouraged; typing a word like this is faster than typing it with only one hand. [5] When this layout is used, approximately 70% of typing in English is done using only the keys on the home row. [6] Because of these advantages, the world’s fastest typist (Barbara Blackburn) achieved her record using the Dvorak layout. [7] Additionally, a study conducted by the US Navy in 1944 showed that the typing accuracy of fourteen former QWERTY users increased by 68% and their speeds by 74% after switching to Dvorak. [8] The layout’s efficiency and superiority over other layouts has been exemplified many times over the years.

In many careers available in North America today, the majority of one’s time at work is spent typing. Take, for instance, a journalist for a newspaper. If she had learned to type on the Dvorak keyboard, her typing speed would surely be higher than it would have been with QWERTY; production would be faster, and in the end more could be accomplished (or time could be freed for other tasks). Full implementation of this layout would have a significant, measurable impact on the productivity of any company with employees whose job involved typing in some way.

There are a number of reasons why Dvorak has failed to displace QWERTY as the mainstream layout. Perhaps the main reason is that nearly all typing classes available in schools offer training for the QWERTY layout only. By the time someone realizes that other layouts are available, he or she is often unwilling to learn simply because the advantages are not worth the time and effort which must be spent to learn a new layout. Additionally, the fact that very few physical Dvorak keyboards are available is a potential deterrent, although most modern operating systems (including all versions of Windows and Mac) come with software support for easily switching; furthermore, the mislabeled keys pose little hindrance because a Dvorak typist typically learns to touch-type, or type without looking at the keys. The simple fact that QWERTY is mainstream and has so much momentum makes it very difficult to displace; the greatest hindrance to Dvorak is that people simply aren’t aware of it. So, how can Dvorak be made mainstream? Typing classes offered in schools should give students the opportunity to learn Dvorak instead of QWERTY; if someone is just learning how to type, the Dvorak layout is far more appealing than if they are forced to relearn later. Desktop and laptop keyboards should also come in Dvorak versions; giving users the option when ordering a new computer would not cost much more, but it would spread the word about this more efficient layout.

In summary, the extensive use of computers in today’s society has made the issue of finding efficient data input methods extremely important. The majority of English-speaking typists are using the inefficient QWERTY layout which hinders their productivity and the productivity of the companies they work for; the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is the most ideal alternative, and implementation of it would have significant advantages. A good way of encouraging this implementation would be to teach the Dvorak layout as an alternative (or replacement) to QWERTY in schools offering typing classes, and making physical Dvorak keyboards more widely available. While these changes might not have an immediate effect, they would certainly increase the long-term productivity of typists around the world.

Footnotes and References:

1. Citation: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/number_of_personal_computers
2. The QWERTY keyboard derives its name from the left of the top row of keys on the keyboard itself.
3. Other Latin languages use variations of the QWERTY layout, which is shown by this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout.
4. An image showing the layout of the Dvorak keyboard can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_United_States_Dvorak.svg
5. Information on letter frequency in English can be found here: http://letterfrequency.org/
6. Citation: http://www.theworldofstuff.com/dvorak/#advantages
7. Citation: http://www.dvorak-keyboards.com/
8. This article has information on Barbara Blackburn’s typing record: http://thebrainiac.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-worlds-fastest-typist/
9. Citation: http://www.mit.edu/people/jcb/Dvorak/index.html

All URLs listed above were accessed on 28/01/2010.

Omniscient Machines

I'm avoiding studying for exams, so I decided to discuss something I've been thinking about. I'll try to make it as short as possible so I can effectively convey my ideas.

We can certainly agree that the concept of randomness exists; in fact, the concept has many practical applications, particularly in computer science when random number generators are employed for some purpose. If we define a random number generator as one which outputs numbers with no predefined conditions, then it does not follow any pattern, and each time it outputs a new number, every possible output is allotted equal chance of appearing. Real-life random number generators mimic this definition, but they aren't perfect; every digital random number generator in existence must be seeded by some constant flow of input, whether this be the current system time, the digits of pi, or otherwise. Because of this, there is always some bias (however small) towards certain numbers, and thus the machine doesn't meet our qualifications to be considered a true random number generator.

From an analog perspective, we can consider the rolling of a six-sided die; theoretically, each time the die is rolled, it has an equal chance of 1/6 of rolling any of the six numbers. However, this isn't truly random either; it's impossible to make the die perfectly symmetric, so the geometry will always apply a small bias; on top of this, the number rolled is largely dependent on the initial force applied to it. If you could throw a die and know its exact position, speed, and trajectory, as well as the effects of air currents, restitution, and miscellaneous forces, you could predict with certainty which number it will land on. And if it's possible to predict the output, the die certainly can't be considered random.

It would seem that in any situation where we use the term "randomness", we're referring simply to a near-perfect simulation of randomness. From this claim, it would seem that true randomness is purely theoretical and doesn't actually exist in the real world.

If you accept this claim, then imagine the entire universe frozen at one instant. Suppose you had a machine capable of collecting every bit of data available at that instant, down to the position and velocity of every particle. Say this machine were capable also of carrying out calculations using the laws of physics. In this case, the machine would be able to eventually predict the exact state of the entire universe a moment (say, one millisecond) later. Through recursion, the machine would therefore be able to predict the state of the universe after two, three, fifty, or one million milliseconds into the future. Using this same principle, the machine could also work backwards, predicting the state one millisecond before, etc. Given enough processing power, the machine we have is effectively capable of telling us everything about the universe at any arbitrary point in time. Thus, looking forward into the future or backwards in time is possible.

I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks about this.