Re: Dijkstra's Methodology for Secure Systems Development

[Nala Ginrut]

2014年9月21日 上午2:39于 "Left Right" <address@hidden>写道：
>
> Sorry, I really only registered to submit a couple of bugs, but I
> couldn't miss the opportunity! Well, you see, there is a very well
> known ethical school of thinking which does not think that ethics is
> relative (I don't believe that too, but for other reasons).

Well, I think the topic becomes a little ridiculous and OT. 
I don't believe ethics is relative too, in essential. But it's no related to the original topic of thread, and it's interesting IMO.
No matter what the ethics is, it's a good point to hack the compiler & OS to find the problem and solve it.
Please don't find some reasons to avoid such a hack. I understand it's hard hack. But we can't say it's unnecessary just because most of people in the world is friendly and no evil.

Immanuel
> Kant is by far the best known proponent of universal ethics. I also
> happen to work on my future thesis, which is about formalization of
> ethics (as you would guess, if that's possible to formalize, or, at
> least, I believe so, then I also must believe it to be universal). The
> examples I like to give in this debate (of course there are other
> famous school of ethical thought which disagree with this) is the
> example of an elevator, which must implement an ethical program in
> order to be considered functional (w/o going into detail, it is
> possible to construct an elevator, which will be more efficient than
> those we use normally, but it would be perceived as unfair).
>
> To put a brief argument for Kant's view of the problem: he believed
> that the right thing to do is to act freely, he also believed that
> given the opportunity to act freely everyone would choose the same
> strategy. These ideas seemed quite solid at the time, but not so much
> any more. The world of philosophy of the day was deterministic and had
> very weird concepts of what reality is made of :) Nevertheless, many
> adopt his categorical imperative as a moral norm (which I don't think
> anyone should, but that's a separate story).
>
> Another great ethical thinker, who believed in universal ethics is
> Aristotle. Surprisingly, he has a much better grounded view to offer.
> The collection of his view also known in the modern world as teleology
> survived a lot of paradigm shifts. (I subscribe to this idea too). It
> was mostly advanced by philosophers of Abrahamic religions, and so it
> is known in the modern world as Tomis or Aviccenism, but it doesn't
> have to be religious in nature. I think it was just comfortable for
> religions, which wanted to be universal to have a doctrine, which also
> wanted to be universal. Put shortly, the premise of this doctrine is
> that it is good to give which is due, and it is bad otherwise. Which,
> kind of, transfers the responsibility of answering the question of
> what is good to what is due, but, in the same sense as we have logical
> system which don't define what is true and what is false (this is
> mandatory defined outside the system), and they are still useful.
>
> The counterexamples of ethical thought, where good and bad were
> considered relative in one sense or another: of course utilitarianism,
> libertarianism. Basically, everything that has nowadays to do with the
> humaism of the Western world thrives on an assumption that ethics are
> relative, perhaps to an individual, maybe to a group, or maybe the
> time dimension makes them relative - depends on what philosopher you
> pick.
>
> ----
>
> I also read the OP, and, I think that there are thoughts that could be
> useful, but it is unhelpful that the reaction creates a conflicting
> situation. I would suggest the following proposition to Ian Grant, I
> think it may be helpful:
>
> It is possible to build a good, solid mathematical model (and it seems
> like you are into that kind of programming, since you mention Dijkstra
> and Milner very often), but it will not map well to the actual
> observed phenomena. This is very well known problem in areas like
> molecular biology, particle physics and economics / social studies.
> I.e. for example, it is possible to come up with a model, which, given
> some input DNA will make interesting inferences about it, but will be
> completely worthless for making predictions about how actual ribosomes
> synthesize polypeptides. Quite similarly, the hypothesis suggested by
> Milner, I think it was "properly typed programs can't be buggy"
> appears not to hold water. It is a good, consistent, even solid
> theory, but it doesn't capture the nature of programming. And it
> doesn't deliver on the promise. Programs in ML, too, have bugs.
> I don't say this to discourage you, I think that searching for this
> kind of models is important. I just wanted to say that maybe your
> conclusions have been premature and lacking the statistical evidence
> (lack of evidence isn't in itself a proof of the contrary).
>
> Best,
>
> Oleg
>