@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

RanaldClouston

@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org

Lecturer in Computer Science at Australian National University.

He/him.

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RanaldClouston, to Logic
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

this 1854 book by George , which summarises his thoughts (first published a few years earlier) on , as well as probability. Boole built the world I live in as a logician (and to extent, the world we all live in in the age of computers) but this is the first time I've read him in the original, so I thought I might make a thread with a few notes in it as I read it over the next few weeks.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

Before I get to the book itself, note that while Boole was revolutionary, the revolution didn't catch on quickly; this precious family heirloom, a logic textbook signed by my great-great grandfather in 1885, mostly focuses on logic as Aristotle would have understood it. It does, in fact, cover Boole, but mostly to complain that his work is obscure and unnecessarily mathematical!

Half a page of a book, focusing on the section 'Boole's System of Logic': "It would not in the least be possible to give in an elementary work a notion of the system of indirect inference first discovered by the late Dr Boole... The process as actually employed by him is very obscure and difficult ; and hardly any attempt to introduce it into elementary text-books of Logic has yet been made."
Hand-written inscription inside an old book: John Porteus, 11 Barony Street, Edinburgh, 1885

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

develops by close analogy with arithmetic, though he is at pains to say this is mere analogy and there is no a priori reason the rules should be the same. So while we usually think of logic as being about entailment, Boole virtually ignores it in the early going and makes equality primary; see the attached proof of the principle of contradiction (here 1 stands for the whole universe, and x - y, defined only if y is a subset of x, is set difference), with its arithmetical flavour.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

's propositions do not range merely across 0 and 1, as often presented today, but across subsets of all objects in the universe (or some agreed upon universe of discourse). If this sounds like Boolean Algebra, you're half right; conjunction is indeed intersection, but disjunction (which he writes +) is disjoint union, so x+y is not meaningfully defined in general, as with x/y in arithmetic (as y might be 0). This strikes me as something which might cause trouble later.

emarktaylor, to Rugby
@emarktaylor@thecanadian.social avatar

🏉 🇳🇿 🇿🇦 @rugby

I don't think Israel Dagg will be sending Wayne Barnes a Christmas card this year.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@emarktaylor @rugby it's a bit of tantrum isn't it? He keeps going on about 'malice' but the ref isn't obliged to mind read the players' minds to establish motivation; it's whether the actions are legal or not

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@philippsteinkrueger @emarktaylor @rugby some penalties and sanctions in the rules do talk about intentions, but most of the dangerous play ones don't: https://www.world.rugby/the-game/laws/law/9 'Malice' would not have been considered a relevant factor to judging the first three cards in the final

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RanaldClouston,
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@philippsteinkrueger @rugby the English sports media are reliably ridiculous; their teams are always heroes or relentlessly attacked, and their status can flip on a single result. Still, I don't blame the team for choosing the game plan most likely to win for them; but it would never have worked for them two weeks in a row against quality opposition

Fanua, to mastodon
@Fanua@mas.to avatar

Nice to see all the chatter on . Sadly, my Manu didn't make it out of the pool stage. So, backing another team .

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@Fanua @rugby yes, they were. A near record winning streak speaks for itself

luciedigitalni, to random
@luciedigitalni@aus.social avatar

Do I know any NZers who want to tell me what's the best coverage and how to access it from the Wist Island?

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@luciedigitalni I'm watching https://www.youtube.com/user/radionz

otherdog, to bookstodon
@otherdog@mastodon.social avatar

I have been so intimidated to start this (been on my shelf for months) but I think with the weather getting cooler and the nights longer, it’s time. @bookstodon

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@otherdog @bookstodon I liked it a lot, although I did skip the chapter written from the viewpoint of Lucia Joyce, which I found to be pretty unreadable; thankfully not too much in the plot required it.

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RanaldClouston,
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@ouaterebreak @sticklandtim @rugby right, that already exists, and is an important driver for umproving standards in tier 2 European rugby. But there's no mobility between 6 Nations and the rest of Euro rugby

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Seriously though, what is this new thing with celebrities selling branded liquor?

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@ZachWeinersmith https://gourmantic.com/acdc-the-wine-collection/

FrancescaJ, to random
@FrancescaJ@mastodon.nz avatar

I honestly feel watching the lose by that much should be more fun. Was it because I live in Aus in now or was it just not a scintillating game of rugby?

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@FrancescaJ I like the All Blacks to be a bit better than the Wallabies, but a complete collapse in standards for Australian rugby is not really in our interests given how intertwined our rugby is (Super rugby & Bledisloe) @rugby

ct_bergstrom, (edited ) to random
@ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org avatar

AITA, academic publishing edition.

Journal sends a review back to me because as reviewer I did not run the code and replicate the results.

My reply: "As an unpaid anonymous peer reviewer who handles probably 30 manuscripts a year, I am absolutely not in the position of running and evaluating code any more than I am in the position of running gels to evaluate lab results. If this is important to you, I suspect you can find a consultant who will do it at a reasonable rate."

Am I the asshole?

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@ct_bergstrom some computer science conferences have a separate artefact evaluation committee to handle exactly this sort of job.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

So I watched The Dark Crystal with the 9 year old last night and it's always disappointing how weak of a movie it is. I found it only makes sense if you assume Henson just had lots of ideas for cool scenes with advanced puppets and then just loosely strung together a plot with vaguely fantasy-sounding dialog.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@ZachWeinersmith I agree Dark Crystal is a bit weak as a story, rather than a collection of images / moments, but The Labyrinth is great

johncarlosbaez, to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Crackbots!

Here Michael Varney gets ChatGPT to write an essay that maximizes its score on my Crackpot Index - a way to rate potentially revolutonary contributions to physics.

You can read what it came up with - and also the Crackpot Index - here:

https://chat.openai.com/share/1f3bac29-1b11-4011-b30b-0477de3ca699

Personally I think the "second coming" theme is over the top. Most physics crackpots don't claim to be God, and I'd find a more realistic crackpot more funny.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@johncarlosbaez "I have conducted thought experiments that contradict every quantum experiment to date" is rather good, I think

RanaldClouston, (edited ) to Astronomy
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

this fascinating look at how indigenous people around the world (but with particular focus on Australia) understand , both for storytelling and for practical matters like navigation and tracking seasons - these are not separate concerns, as the stories act in part as mnemonics for the vital skills. Always nice to see references to scientists, in this case indigenous astronomers @karlienoon and Peter Swanton. @bookstodon

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@msbellows @eyrea I was just trying to suggest in a mildly humorous way that a moderately famous movie from 40 years ago isn't a reference "we've all seen". I am aware that old things can be interesting.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@msbellows @karlienoon @bookstodon I was 1 year old when this film came out, so I'm afraid that reference is a little before my time!

RanaldClouston, to bookstodon
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

(as an ebook because I'm travelling) 's Roots of Chaos series is epic and stunning, but this series is pure popcorn and feels like she was having a holiday writing it: sexy vampire-esque creatures, magical gangsters, constant twists and betrayals, heapings of supernatural violence; it's the sort of book where a villain's most potent weapon is the enslaved poltergeist of Jack the Ripper. @bookstodon

RanaldClouston,
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@temporal_spider @bookstodon 'The Bone Season' is part one of the series

RanaldClouston, to Cambridge
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

I'm enjoying the in , a workshop in honour of my PhD supervisor Andy Pitts. Loved this talk by Larry Paulson, who advocated for mathematicians to use proof assistants with liberal use of sorry / admitted for parts of proofs they are confident in to avoid burning time on small details, for example the many lines of code required when verifying one sentence proofs in a standard textbook.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@johncarlosbaez I will; he gave a talk yesterday on some aspects of Brouwer's thought on the continuum

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RanaldClouston,
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@DanKen @bookstodon I own a big collection of her short stories, which are great

grammargirl, to random
@grammargirl@zirk.us avatar

Is there a name for the figure of speech "A is the B of C"?

For example "Jill is the Martha Stewart of woodworking."

It feels like a formulaic snowclone (e.g., "X is the new Y"), but I feel like I've seen a name for it somewhere that I can't remember.

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@grammargirl is X is the Napolean of Crime (for Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes stories, but inspired by a real criminal) the most famous example of this phenomenon?

tao, to random
@tao@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Sometimes a precisely defined mathematical concept can be in complete opposition to its colloquial meaning. I encountered this recently with the concept of two objects being incomparable. Mathematically, this means that neither object is greater than or equal to the other (with respect to some ambient partial ordering); however colloquially it is often taken to mean that one object is far greater than the other, which is almost the opposite meaning.

Another example I know of: if something is colloquially said to be "generally true" (i.e., true with only a few exceptions), then mathematically it will not be true in general (since "true in general" indicates that there are no exceptions whatsoever).

Are there other examples where the mathematical usage of a term is not merely different or orthogonal to the colloquiual usage, but is actually closer to being an antonym of that usage?

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@tao 'closed' and 'open' in topology not being antonyms, leading to the extraordinary coinage 'clopen'

RanaldClouston, to scifi
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

a cosy organic farming postapocalypse is visited by a sinister figure in a giant nuclear powered vehicle... and what a great cover by . Book was fine but running with a passive and disengaged main character was an odd choice. @bookstodon

RanaldClouston, (edited )
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@kimlockhartga @johnmclaren @bookstodon I've not even heard of Sam Lipsyte! Thanks for the recommendation

RanaldClouston,
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

@kimlockhartga @bookstodon hard for me to choose a favourite! I also loved Amnesia Moon and Motherless Brooklyn, and a few others too

RanaldClouston, to Horror
@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar

this collection of spooky stories from pioneering women writers. Quality varied, but some gems here: loved the chilly, elegant 'In the Closed Room' by , the myth-like 'The Were-Wolf' by and the humour of 'The Banshee's Halloween' by . Great cover too. @bookstodon

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