RoR: Forum

Post 0

Wednesday, February 6 - 12:20pm

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Bob,

Would you please put that into a syllogism (or 2 of them, if necessary)? I don't quite understand (yet).

;-)

Ed

Post 1

Wednesday, February 6 - 1:10pm

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O'ists are human. I am smarter than O'ists therefore I am human. The general form is this:

If X is human and Y is smarter than X then Y is human.

Got it?

Bob Kolker

Post 2

Wednesday, February 6 - 1:36pm

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Infinitely.

Ed

Post 3

Wednesday, February 6 - 1:45pm

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Mr. Kolker,
In another thread you said:
"Mathematics consists of what other mathematicians have said plus what I (and others) have added."
I'm curious about your contributions to mathematics. Could you give some references to your published work?
Thanks,
Glenn

Post 4

Wednesday, February 6 - 2:30pm

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Glenn, you wrote:

I'm curious about your contributions to mathematics. Could you give some references to your published work?

I'm curious, too. A cursory glance at published work (available online) from Bob reveals precious little from which to glean ...

That is the combinatorial reason why our vision is not entirely
reliable. It says (sometimes) that two different things are the same
which is just plain wrong.

Objectivists who, like Leonard Peikoff, hate mathematics probably do not
understand this. How many Objectivist mathematicians are there? Probably
less than ten.

From:
http://groups.google.com/group/humanities.philosophy.objectivism?hl=en

I think when a rich man dies, his wealth should be burned up in a grand
potlach. That way his children would not get and neither would the
government. A person should be able to take it with him when he dies.

From:
http://www.talkaboutinvestments.com/group/sci.econ/messages/212250.html

LeGuin does for anarchosyndicalism what Ayn Rand attempts to do for capitalism. The difference? LeGuin succeeds.

From:
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/pdp/profile/A20AU9V1CGBPAT

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 2/06, 2:33pm)

Post 5

Wednesday, February 6 - 2:34pm

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I worked on military applications. All classified. I can tell you I developed some algorithms for steering cruise missiles. This was before GPS and the algorithms involved compression and decompression of terrain radar data.

The other stuff I did was in connection with nuclear weapons.

I also did some work using Weiner Kallman filters for detecting Soviet underground tests, by filtering the seismic data. I co-authored some papers on Weiner Filter applications back in 1967 and some of it got published in on the the IEEE publications. It has been a long time so I cannot provide the reference. Sorry. It was pretty straight forward application of fast Fourier transforms to time domain data to get the material in the frequency domain where the Wiener Kallman theory could be applied. I also did the programming. I used to be an expert number cruncher and I wrote many a long program to do the data analysis and reduction.

After 1968, I became terminally disgusted with working for the defense department either directly or indirectly through contractors. I went into the business of database applications, mostly financial data. Most of the mathematical applications had to do with setting up constraints on relational databases using the Armstrong Axioms and also some statistical analysis of financial data. Very routine and tedious, but the pay was good.

I was trained in mathematical logic and computational theory and was in graduate school. I passed my doctoral preliminary exams, but I became thoroughly disgusted with the academic scene and went to work in defense industry. My specialty was cooking up special purpose algorithms one of which had to do with guiding cruise missiles to target, as I mentioned.

In the last ten years before I retired in 2001, I did independent software contracting. Lots of different stuff and specialized in problems requiring mathematical analysis or mathematical methods of data compression and reduction. I also taught corporate seminars on relational databases and related matters.

The only theoretical work I am currently doing is in connection with the Collatz Conjecture (look it up). If I prove it you will see it in the newspapers otherwise you won't.

Bob Kolker

Post 6

Wednesday, February 6 - 2:47pm

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I forgot to mention that I did some applications for pattern recognition based on linear threshold functions. I developed some algorithms to cut down on the computation time. I also experiment with automata arrays for pattern recognition. Unfortunately linear threshold devices (aka neural nets) of the one level variety do not handle topological invariants very well. I also applied discrete Laplacians to detect edges. The results were pretty good, but not world shattering.

I did a bit of this and a bit of that. It produced and good income and I had some mental fun. One of the advantages of doing -applied- mathematics is you get to see the results in short order. Theoretical results are like art. One is playing to a specialized audience. I don't have the patience for that which is why I left the groves of academe.

Bob Kolker

Post 7

Saturday, February 9 - 1:36am

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I don't spend my time thinking about how smart or how human I am.

Post 8

Saturday, February 9 - 2:52am

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I do, when I am told I am a faux human because I am not an Objectivist.

Bob Kolker

Post 9

Saturday, February 9 - 5:03am

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I figure a great many posters here are "smarter" than most Objectivists.

Post 10

Saturday, February 9 - 10:22am

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Mr. Kolker are you sure you're human? I thought I saw you on the news the other day:

P.S. Just in case, please take this only as good natured ribbing. :P

Post 11

Saturday, February 9 - 10:53am

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True - am sure Mr. Kolker shaves......;-)

Post 12

Saturday, February 9 - 12:37pm

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"O'ists are human. I am smarter than O'ists therefore I am human. The general form is this:

If X is human and Y is smarter than X then Y is human.

Got it?"

So, if some dolphins or elephants turn out to be smarter than some humans, they are members of homo sapiens too?

Intriguing theory. Probably rebuttable. ;)

Post 13

Saturday, February 9 - 3:08pm

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Find an elephant or dolphin smarter than an Objectivist. Then I might reconsider the matter.

Bob Kolker

Post 14

Saturday, February 9 - 4:16pm

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Find an elephant or dolphin smarter than an Objectivist. Then I might reconsider the matter.

What if the elephant or dolphin IS an Objectivist?

Post 15

Saturday, February 9 - 5:34pm

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Jim, why are you even discussing the possibility of dolphins or elephants as Objectivists? Have you been doing this O'ism thing long? Because I always figured O'ism was based on realism.

Post 16

Saturday, February 9 - 8:03pm

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"Jim, why are you even discussing the possibility of dolphins or elephants as Objectivists? Have you been doing this O'ism thing long? Because I always figured O'ism was based on realism."

David, two reasons:

1) I thought the remark would be funny. Perhaps it wasn't, or perhaps not to you. I'm quite new to this site and Objectivism in general, though I first read Atlas Shrugged about a decade ago. Does realism preclude humor?

2) I would imagine that if elephants or dolphins are as smart as they are reputed to be, approaching if not exceeding human levels, they may have a philosophy of how to behave, and could in fact view life through an Objectivist perspective, even if they are incapable of (or disinterested in) communicating that to us. Elephants are known to care for sick or weak members of their troop. Do they do that out of altruism, out of instinct, or do they have a philosophy approximating Objectivism? Does realism preclude curiosity, or speculating about lines of possible scientific research?

Post 17

Monday, February 11 - 10:06am

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What a silly discussion, but then it's nice to see that humor has a place on an Objectivist forum.

But seriously folks, Bob's original statement belies its audacious claim. The good mathematician isn't much of a logician. Recall that he wrote, "That fact of the matter is I am smarter than most O'ists. That is what makes me human."

Sorry, Bob, but that's not what MAKES you human. You would be human even if you WEREN'T smarter than most Objectivists. What makes you human is your rational faculty.

So, based on the faulty logic of your statement, I'd have to say that you're NOT smarter than most Objectivists! ;-)

- Bill

Post 18

Monday, February 11 - 11:55am

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William -- LOL!

Post 19

Monday, February 11 - 1:19pm

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I hear flipper was pretty smart: