λ Tony’s blog λ

Dear Prime Minister John Howard of Australia,
Many of my readers may not be aware that all people over the age of 18 are required to vote in elections by law in Australia. The exceptions are (of course) the organisations with an artificially heightened religious status such as Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I was de-listed to vote years ago and when I contacted your Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) to apply for conscientious objector status, I was told I needed to belong to a religious cult in order to be eligible and that I am not permitted to think for myself under Australian law. I resented this implication and I have since not ever enrolled to vote. Nevertheless, the AEC operator told me that to be a conscientious objector and at the same time, exist independently of a religious cult/organisation, that I simply should not enrol to vote — to break the law — go figure? I hadn’t voted before this time, since I had always submitted an empty voting ballot form. I won’t bore you with my somewhat complicated reasons why (relative to your comprehension skills that is).

But this is not the reason I write to you. No, it is the very rare victory that Science has had recently. I am writing to you to make a deal. I will forgive the implication that Australians are not permitted to think for themselves if you follow the lead of the UK government and even more, I will submit one vote for you! I will even forgive you for taking away my firearm licence those many years ago just because some psycho 2500km away went berzerk with a semi-automatic rifle. I know you do not possess critical thinking skills Mr. Howard, and neither do your nemeses, but I will forgive you for that.

You see, the UK government have recently announced that Intelligent Design has no part in a school that teaches Science; how great is that for our society!? This announcement has tipped me over the edge and given me some hope — I will do just about anything to have the same for our vulnerable Australian children. Please Mr. Howard!

So, I implore you, please follow suit, for the sake of my children and their well-being if anything. But of course, I know all you care about at the end of the day is my vote and believe me, you will get it! I will even vote for a government; that’s how desperate I am to save my children from the Monotheistic attacks that are conducted so readily and openly in so many civilisations today, including the one that you currently govern.

So, how about it?

Quite often, I hear comments from people who are trying to get a grasp on functional programming about entities which are “inherently stateful” or “intrinsically mutable” (example). The commenters often point to a disk or network to make the point. In this post, I am going to attempt to portray a slightly deeper understanding of this topic to erase the facade and bring to fruition the fact that this “inherent state” (or whatever) is in fact an illusion. This will require some thought experiment and the manipulation of some abstract entities in order to attain this insight.

I will first start off by describing the distinction between the physical universe as we observe it and the abstract universe. The physical universe is made up of matter; for example, a house, a typewriter and even a hard disk. The abstract universe is one that is, well, abstract — one that is not physical. If we consider the number 2. We call it ‘a number’, a physical entity, yet we cannot hold it in our hands or point to its physical representation. Therefore, 2 is better described as a representation of “twoness” or “the concept of two”. The symbol ‘2′ is used to denote the concept of two, among other possible representations of the same concept:

• two
• . .
• 00000010

…and so on. Anyone interested in defining the concept of two, with a bent for history, might be interested in learning about the discovery of zero.

Now, this point touches on some philosophical grounds that I’d rather not go into, so instead, I will make a note of the fact that a pure evolutionary Atheist might not accept this distinction (perhaps claiming that 2 is in fact physical as a chemical signal in the brain), while a Theologian would describe the abstract universe as your ‘Soul’ (or some such). I don’t mean to encroach on this philosophical point and I am hoping I can get away with using terminology that can be translated to the relevant philosophical view.

So, when you write a function, in any language, f(2), you’re not passing a 2 or 2 itself to that function, but instead, a representation of the concept of two to the concept of your function and nothing further. Here’s the clincher: All software exists in the abstract universe. Even your C program that does clever pointer arithmetic and your assembly program that moves the hard disk head. Yes, that FILE* is in fact, an abstraction of a pointer, not a pointer itself. None of these are physical entities, but abstractions of physical entities that manifest themselves somehow — none of these manifestations are relevant to the software author.

It’s all quite simple so far, but if you can pass ‘a representation of the concept of two’, then what is to stop you from passing ‘a representation of the concept of the file system’? or the network? Nothing, that’s what. In fact, you could quite plausibly argue that this is exactly what Haskell’s IO monad is doing — an abstraction that represents these physical entities using the expressive type system of Haskell. In exactly the same way that 2 is an abstraction that represents a physical entity i.e. it will eventually manifest itself as electrical signals in your computer hardware (or physically manifest somehow anyway).

Those of you who are concerned about passing an entire file system as a function argument and the impact on performance might be interested in delving further into a topic called Lazy Evaluation and Weak Head Normal Form (WHNF). I’d rather not reiterate the work of many others who are more dedicated, so I’ll just point out that concerns for performance are definitely valid, but the impact on performance is not there (in fact, often quite the contrary — performance improves!).

The distinction between ‘2′ and ‘the file system’ and ‘the network’ from a software developer’s perspective is entirely superficial and should be abandoned. One cannot be ‘inherently stateful’ while the other isn’t. It’s one or the other, so which is it? (hint: n**ther :))

I have 2 children, (almost) 6 and 4 years old, who have recently come under attack by the pawns of an elitist minority-led Christian organisation that is supported by our government and other elitist organisations. The sad part is that these so-called ‘pawns’ are unaware that indeed they are acting as pawns. The internalisation of the legitimacy of their ignorant stance has surpassed the point of conscious denial and is so prolific, that I very much doubt that this realisation will ever come to fruition. Despite this sad state of affairs, I must maintain the well-being of my children — at all costs — and this may require the absolute refusal to permit even the most remote hint of indoctrination of the purported filth to my children who are in no position to defend themselves against it. The persistence of the manipulators, and most importantly, those being manipulated, often requires quite a fervent and directed response from me — the protector of my children.

I am writing this post to address these people who are conducting these attacks, even though I know that it is probably futile, given their own lack of recognition of their actions. You may accuse me of “not giving my children a chance to make up their own mind” or blatantly disallowing established beliefs, despite their widespread proliferation. I accept these allegations, thank you for your (no doubt conscious) concern, but reject the legitimacy of the accusations, without further explanation. Unlike the religious establishment, free thinkers have absolutely no problem whatsoever shifting position in light of compelling evidence. My children are, and will be, free thinkers and your actions are detrimental to this objective. I withdraw any attempts to justify my position, not because I am arrogant or have some kind of personal conviction with my stance — simply, I do not wish to engage in your war. Call me Switzerland, call me a coward, call me whatever, heck, cast me to a furnace for eternity, but please don’t do it in front of my children. Please (oh please) understand.

Nevertheless, to express my dissent and fear for the well-being of my children is not the primary objective of this post. Instead, it is to express a common misnomer. Often times, I am accused of undermining the value of those who conduct blatant attacks with their irrational beliefs as human beings. Please be assured, I do not think less of you than another, even myself. You are an equal.

Some people don’t like pain — when they watch someone else smack their head on a tree, they cringe with empathy. In fact, if the poor victim could be warned of the impending danger somehow, I am sure that an empathetic person would make every effort to make it the case to prevent the infliction of pain. This is exactly my response to those who have been robbed of the ability to think critically. I have absolute, paramount sympathy for your position, well beyond that of any other position that I could possibly imagine — even extreme pain (I have had stitches in 23 separate sites on my body, including one amputation and one ’sewing it back on’ — I have felt pain).

Please also be assured that my response to the attack of my children must take priority over the expression of this sympathy. My response may appear to be in complete contradiction to what I have just declared — but it is not the case universally. I must put aside my own self-indulgences in expressing sympathy when protecting my children — they are just so vulnerable and trusting.

Please, please understand, just for a brief moment even.

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
…and they receive my sincere condolences for the loss of control of their own mind.

While the Dawkins argument against Agnosticism is the usual and incredibly weak and contradictory proposition with a touch of cognitive dissonance (sound familiar Dawkins?), I must otherwise extend an overriding congratulations and approval of any concise, calculated and importantly, successful, attack against Abrahamic theism. I strongly urge anyone of any faith to consider The God Delusion if only to learn what “all the fuss is about”, but do approach with extreme scepticism - as I’d imagine Dawkins himself would recommend.