Whether a decision as such is good or bad is never determined by its actual consequences as such.

Decisions are made before their consequences are reälized (made actual). Instead, decisions are made in the face of possible consequences. There may be an ordering of these consequences in terms of plausibility, in which case that ordering should be incorporated into the making of the decision. Most theories even presume that levels of plausibility may be meaningfully quantified, in which case (ex hypothesi) these quantifications should be incorporated into the process. But even in a case where there were only one outcome possible, while the decision could (and should) be made in response to that unique possibility, it still were possibility of the consequence that informed the decision, and not actuality. (Inevitability is not actuality.)

When the reälized consequences of a decision are undesirable, many people will assert or believe that whoever made the choice (perhaps they themselves) should have done something different. Well, it might be that a bad outcome illustrates that a decision were poor, but that will only be true if the inappropriateness of the decision could have been seen without the illustration. For example, if someone failed to see a possibility as such, then its reälization will show the possibility, but there had to have been some failure of reasoning for a possibility to have ever been deemed impossible. On the other hand, if someone deemed something to be highly unlikely, yet it occurred anyway, that doesn't prove that it were more likely than he or she had thought — in a world with an enormous number of events, many highly unlikely things happen. If an event were highly unlikely but its consequences were so dire that they should have been factored into the decision, and yet were not, the reälization of the event might bring that to one's attention; but, again, that could have been seen without the event actually occurring. The decision was good or bad before its consequences were reälized.

A painter whose canvas is improved by the hand of another is not a better painter for this, and one whose work is slashed by a madman (other than perhaps himself) is not a worse painter for that. Likewise, choosing well is simply not the same thing as being lucky in one's choice, and choosing badly not the same as being unlucky.

Sometimes people say that this-or-that should have been chosen simply as an expression of the wish that more information had been available; in other cases, they are really declaring a change in future policy based upon experience and its new information. In either case, the form of expression is misleading.

Some readers may be thinking that what I'm saying here is obvious (and some of these may have abandoned reading this entry). But people fail to take reasonable risks because they will or fear that they will be thought fools should they be unlucky; some have responded to me as if I were being absurd when I've referred to something as a good idea that didn't work; our culture treats people who attempt heinous acts but fail at them as somehow less wicked than those who succeed at them; and I was drawn to thinking about this matter to-day in considering the debate between those who defend a consequentialist ethics and those who defend a deöntological ethics, and the amount of confusion on this issue of the rôle of consequences in decision-making (especially on the side of the self-identified consequentialists) that underlies that debate.

This morning, I went to the website of NBC New York, to read a news story and a promo on the right-hand side of the page caught my eye: So NBC not only expects that I would enjoy reading about the mutilation of these people, but openly caters to such presumed enjoyment, and encourages its readers to indulge in it.

I am not aware of any reason that I should find gratification here.

I'm not a fan of cosmetic surgeory except to effect some bona fide reduction of injury. Most cosmetic surgeory instead represents an falsification of youth, of health, or of preferred genetic endowment, and does so at a cost of lasting (though perhaps concealed) injury. Nor am I a fan of celebrity (a creätion of journalism, with its need for material), nor of most celebrities, who are, as the saying goes, well-known for being well-known, and rarely arrive at their status by by virtue of desirable character traits. And, sure, to some extent, virtually every one of these people has brought it on themselves, but so would most other people if given a chance.

Celebrities did not and could not elect themselves to celebrity; for all the celebrities out there, there are many more people who try for it and fail, and an even greater number who simply wish for it to be thrust upon them. And whatever one might claim about actual celebrities wasting the opportunities that they are given, my experience of other people convinces me that a share as great or greater of the wannabe celebrities would make as much a mess if they had those opportunities. If I should wish ill upon the actual celebrities, I should wish it upon most of humankind.

Nor is cosmetic surgeory driven by vanity or by insecurity just an indulgence of the famous. If I flip through an issue of the local weekly, I find plenty of advertisements for such procedures, and I'd be rather surprised if NBC New York weren't selling commercial time to plastic surgeons. I certainly see plenty of women with utterly unnatural breasts, and occasionally see ruined noses or lips. I'm not sure what I'd find at the beach, but it probably wouldn't be pleasant. Some of the rich may keep going in surgical self-destruction, but many of these other folk have merely run short of funds and of collateral.

There's nothing new in the proposition that envy, sadism, or a lack of empathy will cause some people to indeed enjoy reading about plastic surgeory gone especially wrong, and looking at images of the results. But our culture has coarsened; the presentation and enjoyment has been moved into the mainstream. Bad enough that, for some, it's a pleasure; now it's a pleasure without a sense of guilt or even of shame.

In a previous entry, I discussed the meaning — or lack of meaning — of the word capitalism. With an eye towards future entries, I want to write now about the word socialism.

The OED (and the New SOED) provide the original definition of socialism:

A theory or policy of social organization which aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all.

It's pretty straight-forward: collective, communal ownership of the means of production, and administration for the collective benefit. But there's at least three points to be raised here. First, and most important, is that different conceptions of the community are possible. The community in question might be the whole world; it might be every human being within a particular jurisdiction; it might be a particular religious community; or it might be members of an ethnic group of some sort. Second, the definition here does not intrinsically entail comprehensive communal ownership; that is to say that it doesn't declare that all means of production must be communally owned for a system to be socialistic. Third, those who indeed advocate a comprehensive communal ownership of the means of production often fail to note that labor is an important means of production, so that such ownership would mean that an individual must work when, where, and how the community or its representatives told him or her to work.

Merriam-Webster gives us set of definitions, each somewhat different from that original definition:

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

The first three M-W definitions here (1, 2a, and 2b) all ignore the issue of for whose benefit the means of production are employed. Definition 1 is additionally broader than the original, in that it includes state ownership as possiby different from collective ownership. Definitions 2a and 2b are each otherwise narrower, as one precludes any private property, and the other insists upon state ownership. The final definition is introduced because Marxism, an important school of thought, made peculiar use of the term. Jointly, this set of definitions illustrate how a word can lose usefulness when popular use is uncritically accepted.

My 1975 copy of the AHD defines socialism as

1. A social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods. 2. The theory or practice of those who support such a social system. 3. In Marxist-Leninist theory, the building, under dictatorship of the proletariat, of the material base for communism.

In the case of the first definition, one might begin by asking why the system should be called socialism; there is no mention of society or of community here, except in-so-far as this is a social order (as would be many in which producers would not have ownership or political power). Even if we regard the relevant community as that of the producers, the definition says nothing of them owning qua community; all property could be private, so long as the producers had means of production and distribution! Frankly, the author was so swept-up in his or her theory of socialism (recall the definition of capitalism that appears in the same edition) that he or she lost sight of its essential structure. (And perhaps the author was too enraptured to note that different folk would have different ideas about whom one should take to be a producer.) The second definition is purely derivative of the first. The third definition pushes-aside Marxism more generally in favor of Marxist-Leninism in particular, but is roughly a reïteration of the same notion, for about the same reason.

The 1993 version of the AHD defines it thus

1.a. A social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community. b. The theory or practice of those who support such a social system. 2. The building of the material base for communism under the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist-Leninist theory.

The first definition here has nearly restored the original sense: collective, communal ownership of the means of production, and administration for the collective benefit. (The three points that I raised in response remain germane.) But now there's an insistence that political power is exercised by the whole community. This is a response to the great embarrassment of decidedly undemocratic regimes claiming to represent the community in the administration of the means of production. (The reference to political power in the earlier edition was probably an ineffectual attempt to deal with that embarrassment.) The second definition is again purely derivative of the first. The third that from the earlier edition, with a non-substantive reördering of words.

All right now. When someone else has introduced the word socialism into the discourse, I've tried to respond to it based upon how that someone else is or at least seems to be using it, Or I've explicitly asked what he or she means by it; but when I've introduced or will introduce the word socialism into the discourse, what I've meant is

collective, communal ownership of the means of production and administration for the collective benefit

And I do plan to be writing again about socialism, very soon.

Although I'm something of a fan of E[lzie] C[risler] Segar, what I like most when it comes to Popeye are the animated cartoons made by the Fleischer Studios, before they relocated to Florida. (Some years ago, the Woman of Interest got me a copy of Popeye the Sailor: 1933 – 1938, which was exactly the perfect collection for me.)

Anyway, I thought that I'd present my single favorite bit from those cartoons: For a better sense of what is happening here, watch Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves (1937), or at least the minute and 48 seconds starting at 6:12.

Popeye and Olive and Wimpy are the restaurant of an oasis village, when there is a warning that Abu Hassan and his band of forty thieves are out on a raid. The villagers go into hiding (as does Olive). Indeed, the thieves approach this very village. Popeye hears a great commotion outside, leaps from his stool, and begins pumping his fists.

Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves is, over all, not actually my favorite Popeye cartoon — which, off the top of my head, might instead be Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936), though I'm not sure — but this one bit is perfect. Popeye isn't sure what he's about to confront, but he's prepared to fight it! Popeye is emotionally prepared to fight anything,[1] and he expects to do so with his fists!

Popeye is, in important respects, a simple man. He has many apparently unexamined certitudes, leaps to conclusions, and often does things that are very inappropriate. And he knows that he's simple; that's part of what he's saying with I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam! Popeye doesn't typically think his way out of a problem; it doesn't even seem to occur to him to try. If thinking were suggested to him, then he'd probably confess that he couldn't. He uses his fisks 'cause that's what he's gots. And, ultimately, they've always seemed to be enough.

But, in the moral sphere, he is consistently doing his very best. Not just what others might see as enough, but his best. I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam! isn't used to rationalize shirking. Popeye is prepared to fight whatever comes through that door because, if it's bad, somebody has to fight it; and, if Popeye doesn't fight it, well, then who will?

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BTW, on Thursday, I received copies of the first three volumes of the Fantagraphics Popeye reprints from Edward R. Hamilton, mentioned in a previous entry; they had no remainder marks. (And the transaction seems otherwise to have been perfectly satisfactory.)

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[1] Except in-so-far as he has no personally acceptable means by which to fight a woman.

Uhm, Firefox programmers? I have a question for you: What does this thing actually mean? You know, that red button with the central white x on the Navigation Toolbar. What's s'posed to happen when I click on it?

Let me explain my question. Traditionally, browsers gave me something like this It looks a lot like a stop sign, and clicking on it was a lot like stepping on a brake. The browser stopped what it was doing. That's not exactly what happens when I click on your little red-circle-with-the-eks. Now, it's as if my brakes have been redesigned by a passive-aggressive sociopath. Metaphorically speaking, the car will no longer stop before it goes into the intersection; instead, it will stop either on the other side or just in the intersection.

Really, I mean, when I'd discover that a site was trying to send me some big-ass graphic, I would use the friendly stop-sign button, and it would stop the loading of that thing. The new red button says Just a minute; let me finish loading this big-ass graphic. Or I'd click on a link, and things would churn and churn, so I'd decide to bail. With the stop-sign button, the browser just stopped, leaving me at the prior page on which the link was; with the new red button, it goes to a blank screen (and then, to back-up, Firefox demands that the server of the previous page be re-sent everything to reload the page from scratch, which might not even be directly possible).

Anyway, I'd like either to get the functionality associated with the old button restored, or at least some honest revelation of the functionality associated with this new button. It seems, well, evil.

TNX.

In a foot-note to a previous entry, I mentioned that, when people use the word capitalism, I want a definition.

The word capitalism, when first introduced, meant a condition of possessing capital, and the coördinate term capitalist identified one who possesses capital.

At some point, a new definition for the former was introduced. The word capitalism was used derogatorially, for a system that favors capitalists. The reason that this definition doesn't much work except for disparagement is that, under any system that has capital, there are capitalists (possessors of capital). For example, a system that declares a present or former proletariat to be the rightful owners (collectively or otherwise) of the means of production has declared them to be the rightful capitalists, and would favor their interests.

(At some further point, capitalist acquired the additional meaning of one who favors capitalism. But, if we replace the definition of capitalist within capitalism to use this later meaning, then we just have an idiotic loop-de-loop, within which capitalism is defined as a system that favors the interests of those who favor the system, which definition wouldn't do much to exclude all sorts of systems.)

In the OED, one finds basically the original two definitions of capitalism:

The condition of possessing capital; the position of a capitalist; a system which favours the existence of capitalists.

But my copy of the New SOED (1993) instead defines the term thus:

The possession of capital or wealth; a system in which private capital or wealth is used in the production or distribution of goods; the dominance of private owners of capital and of production for profit.

It's a bit troublesome to find the historically second definition seemingly shoved-down a memory hole;[1] but, in any case, one now finds two new definitions, one in terms of how capital is used, the second in terms of some sort of dominance by private capitalists, and of production for profit.[2] (That definition in terms of dominance might actually be an attempt to capture the sense of the historically second definition.)

Meanwhile, though, Merriam-Webster had its own thoughts on the subject. They define capitalism as

an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

Well, it's probably worth noting that free market is a bit of a redundancy, in that, to the extent that prices or quantities are bounded by law, one isn't really talking about a market. But, in any case, the main thing to note is that this definition differs markèdly from the previous definitions, as corporate as well as private[3] ownership is allowed, and as a reliance upon markets has been introduced into the definition.

My 1975 copy of the AHD gives a remarkable definition:

1. An economic system characterized by freedom of the market with increasing concentration of private and corporate ownership of production and distribution means, proportionate to increasing accumulation and reinvestment of profits. 2. A political or social system regarded as being based on this.

That's kind-of like the Merriam-Webster definition, but with a theory of increasing concentration grafted onto it; and, not only increasing concentration, but proportionate increase. Huh. So, in other words, capitalism, at least under the definition labelled 1., refers to a system that not only has never existed, but couldn't ever exist; 'cause, as I guarantee you, economic processes don't typically follow nice lineär laws (nor simple arithmetic functions more generally). And one wonders what one is supposed to call a system in which there is a market, but not increasing concentration of wealth, or at least one in which wealth is not increased proportionately. Really, of course, what's going on with this definition is some attempt to impose a theory and to advance a social prescription.

But wait! My 1993 copy of the AHD tells us something else! It defines capitalism thus:

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

Uhh… it's more of that proportionality stuff; another system that never has and never could exist. But, now, instead of investment increasing concentration of ownership, it's producing growth. Another attempt to grind an ideological axe, just a different axe. (I guess that versions of the AHD are kind-of like versions of Wikipedia, except that the changes are effected more slowly.)

Okay, so that's — what? three? five? — very standard sources, and how many definitions? And what is one to think when someone uses the term state capitalism, and defines it to mean an economy controlled by the state in a capitalist manner?

I once responded to an essay by asking the author what he meant by capitalism. His reply was that he'd used it with the standard definition. Well, there is no standard definition.[4] As far as I'm concerned, the word capitalism is practically useless, unless what one wants to practice is confusion, or unless one defines it before or immediately after first using it.

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[1] The SOED is supposed to be complete for terms and definitions found after 1700.

[2] An unclarified notion of profit appears here; there's no point in doing anything under any system, unless it actually improves things somehow; one suspects that the author has some narrower notion in mind.

[3] Some people loosely use the term corporation to refer simply to an association of some sort, but that would be just another sort of private ownership; legal corporations, on the other hand, are creatures of the state. They can be formed by license to a single person, rather than to an association. Corporations are treated by law largely as themselves persons. And they insulate those to whom they are licensed from liability, not merely to those with whom they contract (to whom liability could anyway have been limited by overt contractual terms) but to third parties who may be injured by the actions of the corporation.

[4] I cited some of these dictionary entries to make that point to him, and reïterated my question; he lapsed into silence.

When someone uses the word random, part of me immediately wants a definition.[1]

One notion of randomness is essentially that of lawlessness. For example, I was recently slogging through a book that rejects the proposition that quantum-level events are determined by hidden variables, and insists that the universe is instead irreducibly random. The problem that I have with such a claim is that it seems incoherent.

There is no being without being something; the idea of existence is no more or less than that of properties in the extreme abstract. And a property is no more or less than a law of behavior.

Our ordinary discourse does not distinguish between claims about a thing and claims about the idea of a thing. Thus, we can seem to talk about unicorns when we are really talking about the idea of unicorns. When we say that unicorns do not exist, we are really talking about the idea of unicorns, which is how unicorns can be this-or-that without unicorns really being anything.

When it is claimed that a behavior is random in the sense of being without law, it seems to me that the behavior and the idea of the behavior have been confused; that, supposedly, there's no property in some dimension, yet it's going to express itself in that dimension.

Another idea of randomness is one of complexity, especially of hopeless complexity. In this case, there's no denial of underlying lawfulness; there's just a throwing-up of the hands at the difficulty in finding a law or in applying a law once found.

This complexity notion makes awfully good sense to me, but it's not quite the notion that I want to present here. What unites the notion of lawlessness with that of complexity is that of practical unpredictability. But I think that we can usefully look at things from a different perspective.

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After the recognition that space could be usefully conceptualized within a framework of three orthogonal, arithmetic dimensions, there came a recognition that time could be considered as a fourth arithmetic dimension, orthogonal to the other three. But, as an analogy was sensed amongst these four dimensions, a puzzle presented itself. That puzzle is the arrow of time. If time were just like the other dimensions, why cannot we reverse ourselves along that dimension just as along the other three. I don't propose to offer a solution to that puzzle, but I propose to take a critical look at a class of ostensible solutions, reject them, and then pull something from the ashes.

Some authors propose to find the arrow of time in disorder; as they would have it, for a system to move into the future is no more or less than for it to become more disorderly.

One of the implications of this proposition is that time would be macroscopic; in sufficiently small systems, there is no increase nor decrease in order, so time would be said neither to more forward nor backward. And, as some of these authors note, because the propensity of macroscopic systems to become more disorderly is statistical, rather than specifically absolute, it would be possible for time to be reversed, if a macroscopic system happened to become more orderly.

But I immediately want to ask what it would even mean to be reversed here. Reversal is always relative. The universe cannot be pointed in a different direction, unless by universe one means something other than everything. Perhaps we could have a local system become more orderly, and thus be reversed in time relative to some other, except, then, that the local system doesn't seem to be closed. And, since the propensity to disorder is statistical, it's possible for it to be reversed for the universe as a whole, even if the odds are not only against that but astronomically against it. What are we to make of a distinction between a universe flying into reverse and a universe just coming to an end? And what are we to make of a universe in which over-all order increases for some time less than the universe has already existed? Couldn't this be, and yet how could it be if the arrow of time were a consequence of disorder?

But I also have a big problem with notions of disorder. In fact, this heads us back in the direction of notions of randomness.

If I take a deck of cards that has been shuffled, hand it to someone, and ask him or her to put it in order, there are multiple ways that he or she might do so. Numbers could be ascending or descending within suits, suits could be separated or interleaved, &c. There are as many possible orderings as there are possible rules for ordering, and for any sequence, there is some rule to fit it. In a very important sense, the cards are always ordered. To describe anything is to fit a rule to it, to find an order for it. That someone whom I asked to put the cards in order would be perfectly correct to just hand them right back to me, unless I'd specified some order other than that in which they already were.

Time's arrow is not found in real disorder generally, because there is always order. One could focus on specific classes of order, but, for reasons noted earlier, I don't see the explanation of time in, say, thermodynamic entropy.

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But, return to decks of cards. I could present two decks of card, with the individual cards still seeming to be in mint state, with one deck ordered familiarly and with the other in unfamiliar order. Most people would classify the deck in familiar order as ordered and the other as random; and most people would think the ordered deck as more likely straight from the pack than the random deck. Unfamiliar orderings of some things are often the same thing as complex orderings, but the familiar orderings of decks of cards are actually conventional. It's only if we use a mapping from a familiar ordering to an unfamiliar ordering that the unfamiliar ordering seems complex. Yet even people who know this are going to think of the deck in less familiar order as likely having gone through something more than the deck with more familiar order. Perhaps it is less fundamentally complexity than experience of the evolution of orderings that causes us to see the unfamiliar orderings as random. (Note that, in fact, many people insist that unfamiliar things are complicated even when they're quite simple, or that familiar things are simple even when they're quite complex.)

Even if we do not explain the arrow of time with disorder, we associate randomness with the effects of physical processes, which processes take time. Perhaps we could invert the explanation. Perhaps we could operationalize our conception of randomness in terms of what we expect from a class of processes (specifically, those not guided by intelligence) over time.

(Someone might now object that I'm begging the question of the arrow of time, but I didn't propose to explain it, and my readers all have the experience of that arrow; it's not a rabbit pulled from a hat.)

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[1] Other words that cause the same reäction are probability and capitalism.

Sometimes I've simplistically said that invocation of consensus is not a scientific method. A more accurate claim would be that its use is a way of approximating the results of more rigorous methods — a way of approximation that should never be mistaken for the more rigorous methods, and that is often unacceptable as science.

Calling upon consensus is a generalization of calling upon an expert. Using an expert can be analogous to using an electronic calculator. In some sense, using a calculator could be said to be scientific; there are sound empirical reasons for trusting a calculator to give one the right answer — at least for some classes of problems.

But note that, while possibly scientific, the use of the calculator is, itself, not scientifically expert in answering the question actually asked of the calculator (though some scientific expertise may have gone into answering the questions of whether to use a calculator, and of which calculator to use). Likewise, calling upon opinion from a human expert is not itself scientifically expert in answering the question actually asked. That distinction might not matter much, if ultimately scientific expertise from someone (or from some thing) ultimately went into the answer.

The generalization of invoking consensus proceeds in at least one direction, and perhaps in two. First, using consensus generalizes from using one expert to using n experts. But, second, invoking consensus often generalizes from invoking the views of experts to invoking the views of those who are less expert, or even not expert at all.

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Individual human experts, like individual electronic calculators, may not be perfectly reliable for answers to some sorts of questions. One response to this problem is the generalization of getting an answer from more than one, and, using a sort of probabilistic reasoning, going with the answer given by a majority of the respondents, or with some weighted sum of the answers. However, this approach goes astray when a common error prevails amongst most of the experts. If one returns to the analogy of digital calculators, various limitations and defects are typical, but not universal; a minority of calculators will answer some questions correctly, even as the majority agree on an incorrect answer. Likewise with human experts. That's not to say that being in the minority somehow proves a calculator or a human being to be correct, but it does indicate that one should be careful in how one responds to minority views as such. (In particular, mocking an answer for being unpopular amongst experts is like mocking an answer for being unpopular amongst calculators.) Counting the votes is a poor substitute for doing the math.

A hugely important special case of the problem of common design flaws obtains when most specialists form their opinions by reference to the opinions of other specialists. In this case, the expert opinion is not itself scientifically expert. Its foundation might be in perfectly sound work by some scientists, or it might be in unsound work, in misreading, in intuïtion and in guess-work, or in wishful thinking; but, in any case, what is taken to be the scientifically expert opinion of n experts proves instead to be that of some smaller number, or of none at all! In such cases, consensus may be little better, or nothing other, than a leap-of-faith. It isn't made more scientific by being a consensus.

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In a world in which expert opinion were always scientifically expert, broadening the pool to include those less expert would typically be seeking the center of opinion in less reliable opinion. However, as noted above, a field of expertise isn't necessarily dominated by scientific experts, in which case, people less expert but more scientific may move the center of opinion to a better approximation of a scientific opinion.

Additionally, for an outsider in seeking the opinion of experts, there is the problem of identifying who counts as an expert. The relevant knowledge and the relevant focus do not necessarily reside in the same people. As well as experts failing to behave like scientists, there are often people instead focussed on other matters who yet have as much relevant knowledge as any of those focussed on the subject in question.

So a case can be made for sometimes looking at the opinions of more than those most specialized around the questions. None-the-less, as the pool is broadened, the ultimate tendency is for the consensus to be ever less reliable as an approximation of scientific opinion. One should become wary of a consensus of broadly defined groups, and one should especially be wary if evidence can be shown of consensus shopping, where different pools were examined until a pool was found that gave an optimal threshold of conviction for whatever proposition is being advocated.

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What I've really been trying to convey when I've said that invocation of consensus is not a scientific method is that a scientist, acting as a scientist, would never treat invocation of consensus — not even the consensus of bona fide experts — within his or her own area of expertise as scientific method, and that everyone else needs to see consensus for no more than what it is: a second-hand approximation that can fail grotesquely, sometimes even by design.

One or more persons have wandered to this 'blog searching with

openoffice weak preference symbol

which touches on the font-fallback problem that I mentioned in my previous entry.

The symbols that one would typically encounter or want to use when talking about preference are

[Up-Date (2011:04/05): I have since uploaded a more complete table, including symbols, Unicode values, and LAΤΕΧ code, in the form of a PDF file.]

Now, it used to be that, when running OpenOffice under Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I had no problem using the symbols of my choice from amongst those on the table above. But when I up-dated to RHEL 6.0, the OpenOffice formula editor stopped properly rendering any of the above except ∼.[3]

For the formulæ that I'd previously entered, I'd specified a font either of Times New Roman or of Liberation Serif. The files for neither of these fonts actually contain the symbols above, but OpenOffice and RHEL are supposed to coöperate to effect font-fallback, and draw the characters from the files for some similar font or fonts. The software had been doing this, but with the up-date to RHEL 6.0 it is not.

This isn't a particulary great problem for new formula; I would just need to change the configuration of the formula editor to use some font that has the desired symbols; one could even play specifically with the formula editor's catalog, so that just those symbols would be rendered with that font, and some preferred font could be used for everything else.

But one of the serious, long-standing deficiencies of the OpenOffice formula editor is that there isn't a way to globally change the settings for all formulæ which have already been entered into a document. I have literally hundreds of preëxisting formulæ, for each of which the editor would have to be individually reconfigured, to fix things within OpenOffice. Right now, my best option seems to be to export the relevant documents to ΤΕΧ or to LAΤΕΧ, and to proceed with a plain-text editor!

Red Hat has responded to my bug-report as if it were a request for enhancement; since they hadn't planned any near-term enhancements in the versions that they distribute of OpenOffice or of fontconfig (with which OpenOffice would handle font-fallback), they refuse to address the bug. OpenOffice.org, meanwhile, is aware that OpenOffice doesn't handle font-fallback properly, and aware that it ought to be possible to reconfigure the formula editor globally within a document, but had invested its hopes in the editor's using a specific font, OpenSymbol, to provide mathematical characters. That font doesn't have any of the characters above, except perhaps ∼.

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[1] The relation of weak preference is one of being either more desirable or equally desirable, rather than one of necessarily being just a little more desirable. On the assumption that preferences are a complete ordering, weak preference is equivalent to being not less desirable.

[2] This relation is one of being either less desirable or equally desirable, rather than one of necessarily being just a little less desirable. On the assumption that preferences are a complete ordering, this relation is equivalent to being not more desirable.

[3] I'd not been getting that by entering ∼, but by using the editor mark-up sim.