Re: [Patents] "Betrayal of physics"

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>]

Carsten Svaneborg wrote:
> 
> Regarding the "forces of nature" criterion anybody knows what
> friction is and how it works, and you can make inventions getting
> rid of it (lubricants), or increasing it (glue/tape). Try to explain
> friction on the basis of the four fundamental forces! Basically
> you are in deep trouble.


I would have thought the forces of nature principle would apply to the
particular formulation of a particular lubricant, a teaching about the fact
that that particular combination of ingredients works together to lubricate
-- not an explanation of lubrication or friction themselves; it wouldn't
necessarily have to go down to fundamental forces and explain how
lubrication works, just explain that putting the pieces together produces
the outcome, and leaving the outcome as common understanding.  Likewise for
glue or tape -- once the patent on putting glue on a strip of paper is
gotten past, then it's a question of particular compounds that work as glue,
not explaining friction.


> > Are you backing down on this crucial point, where your input is most
> > needed, because you believe that Greg is somehow right?
> 
> No. He's clearly wrong. However, i don't find philosophical
> Mind/Matter arguments very convincing. And "forces of nature" is 
> complicated.


Aside from the fact that I think the "mind/matter" phrase, while venerable,
actually doesn't work well, I think that the point about ideal abstraction
is the most important one to make.  Vulgar empirical outlooks tend to look
at both the terms mind and matter in a similar way, and it's true that
ideality is not something people often concentrate on (though they used to,
and it was well-understood enough) (it is often not thought of enough even
among us anti-swpat activists); but communicating the point that ideal
abstraction is not the kind of thing that can be appropriated is not
inherently complex.  It's just often forgotten, and that forgetting is
easily encouraged.

It's just known and inherently usable as soon as the idea is communicated,
because this is just the nature of an abstract rule -- it has an ideal
aspect.  Even in the provisional, hypothetical sense of a physical theorem,
wherein the idea conveyed may not ultimately be a true, still the idea
communicated is truly the idea communicated.

An algorithm for executing in a logic device is an abstraction made up of
abstractions.  It is not a process made up of natural components that work
together in a new way.  It is important to acknowledge that in the case of
code, we are talking about a *representation* of an algorithm -- the code is
certainly embodied in physical form -- but it *expresses* or *represents* an
idea or series of ideas, and such instruction sequences designed for a
universal logic device inherently represent abstract processes using
abstract logical functions built into a generic device designed to execute
abstract functions automatically.

It's all about assuring that ideal abstraction is recognized as, and kept
as, something that people can make free use of, while particular concrete
implementations are recognizable as, and are kept as, something that can be
patented.  One can understand and anticipate that a concrete arrangement of
natural components could have been assigned as a patent to somebody, but one
cannot understand and anticipate that abstract functions devised for
execution by a generic logic device could be under that condition.  One has
to think that that's "just ideas" in a pure, ideal and abstract sense, which
because of that anybody can use just as well as anybody can know and
understand them.  They are just known and because they are abstract they are
ready for use by anybody who comes to know them.

On this analysis, the Gregbot theory that physical nature is information, if
it were true, would really just mean that whenever natural forces are
translated into pure information in the way that theory says is possible
(though I doubt the Gregbot really understands the idea of "pure
information"), then inasmuch as the natural forces can be harnessed in
information form, those natural forces would no longer be patentable.


Seth

> My input is to spending inordinate amounts of time on
> http://gauss.bacon.su.se/sql/
> 
> The goal is to create a community site that enables and supports
> monitoring EPOs software patentings practices, like GrokLaw.
> 
> --
>   Mvh. Carsten Svaneborg

-- 

DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!

New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org

[CC] Counter-copyright: http://realmeasures.dyndns.org/cc

I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication.  Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.