Too much of information, but not too much of wisdom!

Today I saw an interesting interview with Ralph Nader, among other things, a lawyer, a political activist, and an independent candidate in the American presidential campaign. In the interview, Nader questions that, with the outcome and development of internet, people are overwhelmed with tons of information and do not have enough time to process it into wisdom. 

Nader continues and explains what is the chain used to process senseless bits of information to a more deeper understanding of the world: 

                Information -> Knowledge -> Judgment -> Experience -> Wisdom.

First, one must know what is the information, that would be knowledge. Then with this knowledge one must think critically about it, that is, judge the knowledge, and then, base his/her actions on this judgement leading to experience. Finally, only after he/she has experimented and seen the outcomes of his/her actions, he/she transforms pieces of information into wisdom. 

Engineers vs Logicians

This past week I was attending a summer school about software verification, called VTSA, in Saarbruecken. There were many interesting lectures and I could learn much about model checkers and SAT solvers, giving me very good impression of the event.

From a more proof-theoretic and automated deduction perspective, it was interesting to see what is researched in model checking and in SAT solvers. They seem to do more engineering oriented research, trying to have good implementations and algorithms to overcome the state space explosion when modeling always more complicated softwares; while we try to work more in expressiveness of the logic and postpone, as much as possible, to implement specific algorithms that can handle some specific cases. So there is a contrasting approach in the communities: the theorem proving employes more logicians, while the model checking community employes more engineers.

However, I was very impressed on how far the engineers/model checkers/SAT solvers can go by "hacking" logic to be efficient. They seem to have many more applications cases than the automated theorem proving community, and seem to attract more and more the attention of industries. The negative aspect is that the size of software models seems to be growing much faster than the computational power of computers, what implies that more "hacks" would be necessary to obtain efficient implementations, and with these "hacks" more mysterious these systems would be. Moreover, the properties that we would like to be proved also tend to be more expressive, and hence may not be possible to check them by using model checkers at all. Therefore, I believe that in the future there will be an increasing demand for theorem provers, and to meet this demand, we must research more logic. This does not mean, however, that model checkers will not be used any longer. I believe that for simple properties, model checkers will continue to be used in larger scale, as proving with model checkers is in general easier than with theorem provers.

Modern Person?

Recently, Andrea brought to my attention a very curious way of Indians classifying a person as a modern person, what is not at all common in the western world. For an Indian, modern people are those that do not wear traditional Indian clothes, and that are more flexible towards traditions, such as dating or flerting, enjoying the nightlife, and other more "western" habits. As Indian society has not yet freed itself from religious/traditional habits, specially those traditions related to relationships before marriage and women suffrage, this classification is normal in India, but long forgotten in western cultures, where these movements happened one or two generations ago. That was indeed a very curious observation of cultural differences affecting language.

Working Holidays? Why work?

In the past three weeks, I was traveling through Australia, passing from Sydney, Alice Springs, in the center, and Cairns, to the east coast. As I was traveling alone, I prefered to stay in hostels, where is easier to meet people and enjoy more my stay. I met people from several nationalities, Germans, lots of them, French, Dutch, etc. What surprised me the most is that they are not ordinary backpackers, as those that we see in Europe and travel around for maybe 1-2 months. They were the so called Holiday-Workers, people that obtain a special visa and that are allowed to work, usually in blue collar jobs, and stay in Australia for longer periods, visiting the country. Though the idea seems interesting, I still did not understand why is this a good option, compared to the alternative of working in Europe and only then coming to Australia for a shorter period.

Each time I met one of these working-holiday students, I would ask why they do not just come for a short period, only for vacations. I obtained different answers: some would say that they come for the culture experience, what is not very convincing, since the Australian culture is not that different from the European and, moreover, with the jobs they do and the places they stay, they meet more Europeans than Australians; others said that they came here to save money for passing their universities later. What is also not very satisfying, since the living cost in Australia, specially the hostel rates, are very high, and I really doubt that the get some money out of this trip, when considering that they have to pay an expensive flight ticket.

I think the real reason for them to come here in hoards is a more basic one: independence. These holiday-workers are students that just finished their high school and are eager for "freedom" from their parents. They are constantly partying and getting wasted. What brings me to my point. Why work in Australia? Isn't it better to work in Europe and make short holidays there itself?

Achieving Perfection

This week, me and Andrea were at Barcelona, visiting the town for a week and what impressed me the most was the Casa Batllo, a house designed by the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. In my trips through Europe and elsewhere, I've seen several beautiful momuments and buildings, but this house had something more, it was not only beautiful, but also practical. All ornaments had not only its place in the house's sea world theme, but also its function in mainting either the rooms and halls illuminated, ventilated or something else.

This is exactly what research is all about: finding beautiful symmetries in theories that are also useful in, say, computer science. A theory that is only beautiful lacks the same as a theory that is useful but ugly. Gaudi, indeed, achieved perfection in his research field.

It is a matter of respect!

One does not need to search too far to find stupidity and foolishness out there. I've already given some examples in previous posts such as religion and extreme nationalism, but many more can be found in the same category: obedience to any authority, like to the state, to your boss and even to your parents. All of these examples have a common factor: respect. For example, people respect their priest, without even questioning if the respect is truly deserved.

Deserved. That is the key word, when I think about respect. To obtain my respect, one must deserve it, by demonstrating that he/she has noble thoughts and more importantly that he/she acts accordingly to those thoughts. There is no such thing as respect your boss, or respect your priest, or respect your parents, or respect the elder, etc. This is simply brainwashing, as in religion, or, as brilliantly put by Baltasar Gracian in his book: The art of prudence; people are just being prudent. For example, it is probably most of the cases that a soldier shows "respect" to his/her superior, so that he/she does not suffer any consequences such as punishments, or maybe having his/her career progression blocked.

In any of these cases, namely of brainwashing or of prudence, the respect given is not really a truely deserved respect. In the former case, brainwashing a person to respect something or someone is not really making him/her to think that respect derives from a logical reasoning of the merits of the respected person or object, but only from an almost dogmatic perspective. In the latter case, respect derives not necessarily from merit of the respected, but from the utilitarism of the one that respects. So the next time someone tells you to respect someone else, ask him why should you do so.

Paris for the Parisiens?

The past week, I received a visit from a very good Brazilian friend and as it was his first time in Paris, we did the whole Eiffel Tower, Champs Elyssee, Saint Michel, etc tourism. One of his comments that I found interesting was that the people he was seeing in the metro and other public places did not look very French. I immediately responded that he is completely right because the Parisiens are long far away for their holidays.

Most of the world knows Paris and would like to visit or live in Paris: La ville de l'amour! However, now that summer began and with that the student holidays, Parisiens are all away, leaving the hordes of tourist behind. Because of this invasion of tourists, Paris does not feel to be empty at all. The metro system is fuller than ever, as well as the streets and squares. I guess this is normal for touristic cities, such as Rome, Paris, London, etc.

This is very curious for a Brazilian because for vacations we usually go to the beach, leaving our cities completely empty. Furthermore, the people that are in the costal cities do not go to other cities but just overcrowd even more the restaurants and bars near the shore. So it is very seldom that a Brazilian city is full of people that do not live there.