Nicholas Gall: Philosophy

The Unitarian Jihad is an amazing example of Web-enabled emergence.

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:40:35 GMT

A while ago, I posted an entry on the Unitarian Jihad. Well, this being the Web, it's taken on a life of its own. To see what I mean, check out the comprehensive Wikipedia entry on UJ, which describes the UJ as follows:

Unitarian Jihad is a nascent satirical religious/humanist movement which opposes religious extremism of all kinds through peaceful means.

The concept of the Unitarian Jihad originated in a column by writer Jon Carroll which was originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 8, 2005. The column intentionally juxtaposed the Unitarian Universalist faith and rational discussion with the Islamic concept of (militant) Jihad, and used the conceit of having received an anonymous communique from the then non-existent group.

Note how many different sites mentioned in the entry have sprung up. One of my favorites is the name generator. Here is what it generated for me:

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Machine Gun of Quiet Reflection. Get yours.

While the spread of the UJ meme is a humorous example, it is nonetheless a powerful demonstration of how the Web enables the emergence of spontaneous order. Let me walk you through it:

I find out about the UJ article from one of the blogs or newsletters I read (I can't remember which).
I bookmark it in Furl: UJ Bookmark.
Several weeks later, I look at my UJ bookmark (long story having to do with looking into my Furl Religion folder for some other search on Unitarianism).
I notice that someone named number-six has also Furled UJ with the following comment: "See: http://homepage.mac.com/whump/ujname.html to get your uj name. More here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/unitarian_jihad/ .
So I go to the UJ page at livejournal.
I am amazed to find over 300 members listed on the UJ community page. I'm even more amazed to find that the community had apparently been created on the same day as the article, April 8, 2005!
From these pages I discover the name generators and the Wikipedia entry

The point of going through this in detail is to give you a flavor of the serendipity of the emergence process. Imagine, just a few months after an article is published an entire community and an rich set of Web resources emerge into being! This is enabled by two "new" aspects of the 2nd Web Generation (aka Web 2.0):

The ability of individuals to easily create new Web resources: content, groups, tools, bookmarks, etc.
The automatic generation of backlinks, e.g., who also linked this page, what pages contain this phrase

These two capabilities are at the heart of the Web's ability to generate spontaneous order.

A true ironist.

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 16:51:23 GMT

Via Strange Doctrines, a Washington Post article about a man who really lives the concept of "contingency":

"What are the chances of you doing this again?" the judge asked.

Timmers -- dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, his long, white hair flowing down his back -- paused a moment before speaking up.

"There's always a chance of anything, Your Honor," he said.

The judge's jaw dropped. He pressed Timmers to be clear.

"The odds of that happening are 800 million billion to one," Timmers said, "but I can't ever rule anything out completely, Sir."

The irony is that his honesty has already gotten him more jail time (i.e., the delay in sentencing). What I also like about this piece is the chain of linked commentary about it. I especially like the commentary at Thoughts Arguments and Rants:

Don't be a Sceptic

Luka Yovetich sent me a link to this article in the Washington Post about the costs of scepticism. The defendent was asked whether he would commit more crimes if he was released, and (to paraphrase) he said that he didn't know because he didn't have an answer to global scepticism. As they say on the interwebs, read the whole thing. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll recognise behaviour that previously you'd only seen in philosophical colleagues, etc.

The Tao of Modularity.

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 11:06:09 GMT

Chapter 11

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

I read the Tao Te Ching many times as a philosophy major at Yale and for years after, but I haven't read it the last ten years. I guess I'd better read it again. "Usefulness [comes from] what is not there" beautifully states the value of modular extensibility. What is intriguing is the distinction between profit and usefulness.

At first pass it seems obvious that the maker of a modular object, like a clay vessel is paid for (on thereby makes a profit from) "what is there". On second pass, it strikes me that the user of the vessel makes a profit from "what is not there", either by adding it on, or by using the space to some purpose, say transporting liquid in the vessel. So the last two lines could be recast:

Therefore profit to the maker comes from what is there;
Profit to the user from what is not there.

Finally, the more I think about it, the more I believe that the profit to the maker really comes from what is not there. A potter buys a block of clay at a certain cost. Her "value add" is the vessel shape she forms the clay into. Someone pays her more money for the clay in the shape of a vessel than in the shape of the raw block of clay because the buyer values the shape--what is not there. Assuming she uses the entire clay block to make the vessel, her profit is the price of the vessel minus the price of the clay block. Now suppose she could get the same price for a vessel made from only half the block of clay. She has doubled her profit by halving "what is there." So the last two lines would be more clear if they were recast as:

Therefore profit is limited by what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

Which is another way of saying "Less is [worth] more." Which is why intangible artifacts (aka intellectual property) are the most profitable. There is no there there.

The Celtic Tree of Life.

Wed, 26 May 2004 03:15:01 GMT

This image symbolizes my philosophy/project. Itcaptures so many concepts: dialectic, recursion, spanning layer, epluribus unum (from diversity unity), symbiosis and speciation,asymmetry, complexity (braiding). The design is by the Welsh artist JenDelyth. You can see different variations of the design and even orderit on a T-shirt (I have it) at her web site Keltic Designs.