Distributed Mind

Although I've had a lot of social contact in the last week, I haven't had any good opportunity to discuss any of the strange ideas I have floating around in my head. Thus, I will unburden them on you, my poor, hypothetical readers.

First, I just came back from Borders where I saw The Language of God by Francis Collins, who was director of the Human Genome Project. The main point seems to be that one can both be Christian and a scientist, though it goes somehwhat beyond that. I skimmed through it a little. It didn't look entirely groundbreaking, but it was somewhat interesting. One of the biggest issues it faced is that certain sections were not very detailed, where perhaps they should have been. The book probably won't be popular in the most conservative circles (Collins prefers theistic evolution and questions the idea that life begins at conception). I'm not sure most agnostics would buy into it either (despite the fact that Collins writes about his own experience as an agnostic and atheist). But, hey, it contributes to the debate, right? It might be worth a read. Anyone volunteer?

I know I have said this before, but... I have discussed in passing twice in the last three days math education. Once was on the sad occasion of a remark by my father that my sister might not be much interested in studying math when she is older. I most certainly hope he is wrong, which he may very well be (after all, I didn't really "get" math until later, myself). The reason all this matters so much is because, as I was explaining in the other conversation on the topic, math is the one thing that no matter how much of it I learn, I can always find some way to put it to use. That may come as a surprise to some people who studies no farther than algebra or geometry or calculus and rarely if ever find themselves applying such skills, but that is more perhaps a byproduct of weak math education than a true lack of need for math. Math is a fundamental tool to explaining and understanding the universe. The most helpful areas of math I have encountered are calculus (obviously - you can't get very far without it) and probability and statistics. But there is so much good stuff that is immediately applicable (some of which I haven't even had a good chance to sit down and read up on, sadly): linear algebra, optimization, theoretical computer science, information theory, and of course graph theory.

Finally, an idea I have been thinking about a long time, that I may have mentioned here before. I have an idea for a publishing ministry - yes, ministry. The idea is that as the early believers' shared everything in common, that publishing for profit, and even copyright as it is presently understood (admittedly that might exclude "copyleft" sorts of approaches such as the GPL or Creative Commons licences), is out of place. In this day of digital publishing, texts can be distributed for almost nothing; charging $20 for a hardcover makes little sense. And having restrictive or expensive licensing restrictions (as for example are not unusual with Bible translations, of all things) for copyrighted texts especially makes no sense. So, the idea is to instead distribute worthy Christian books (or whatever - I think this would work excellently for music as well, for example) digitally for free, and maybe in print for very low cost (probably for a donation of no set amount) for those who can't use the digital texts or are highly desirous of having a print copy or whatever. Now, this would not preclude paying the authors or the staff (after all "the worker is worth their wages," right?): donations would be solicited and accepted to pay authors when appropriate. For most authors this would probably be a fairly small amount (say several thousand), as most full time authors (depending on the type of book) might be able to write a book in a few months, and many authors would probably have other employment anyway (as pastors or professors), and they might want to donate some of their time. It might be useful to support some authors full time (almost as a sort of fellowship, I suppose), though that would of course be much more expensive. Anyway, regardless of what money authors might receive, the idea is that the books would not be sold, or at the very least not for profit, so regardless of how successful a book is the author is always paid for their work and not for their popularity. Furthermore, works would be either public domain or licesned under some appropriate, liberal license so that other authors would be able to freely use the material to produce new scholarship or whatever. Anyway, I think this is a great idea, in the first part because I think it would provide leadership by example for removing commerce from the church (the money changers from the Temple, as it were) as well as providing very practical benefits for those who would use such books. The drawback is that it's a lot of work for little gain: books really aren't all that expensive, so the victory here is almost exclusively symbolic - and for that I am not sure the whole sceme is worth the effort. (Though for the case of music it might be much more useful - Christian music is such a racket...) I might write more about this in the near future, anyway, just in case anyone else might find it of interest.