Things which remind me of folks on this list

[FrodeauxB at aol.com]

Subj:    Emeralds Are Grue, Sky Is Bleen
Date:   8/26/01 6:48:58 PM Central Daylight Time
From:   fff at futurefeedforward.com (futurefeedforward)
To: frodeauxb at aol.com



January 2, 2100

Emeralds Are Grue, Sky Is Bleen

PASADENA--Responding to recent panic surrounding the sky's dramatic change in 
color, a team of logicians and philosophers of language at the California 
Institute of Technology has released findings designed to calm the public and 
explain the transformation.  "We have heard the press speculation that the 
change in the color of the sky is related to an unexplained and possibly 
toxic pollution event," notes Caltech Professor of Nomenclature Dorinda 
Pocopollo.  "Our aim with this press conference is to dispel those rumors.  
This is not a natural catastrophe, as many have feared, but a catastrophe of 
logic."

    Scientists and religious leaders alike have struggled to account for the 
January first transformation of the traditionally blue sky to a shade of 
green likened by many to key lime pie.  In an effort to diffuse apocalyptic 
and alarmist fervor, a number of scientific institutions have offered 
preliminary analyses and have taken efforts to disseminate available concrete 
facts about the transformation.

    The U.S.-based National Center for Atmospheric Research ("NCAR") 
announced late yesterday that the change was not coordinated with any 
"apparent modification of atmospheric state or behavior" while atmospheric 
observatories and weather stations worldwide report no measurable change in 
the physical properties of observable light reflected from the sun through 
the earth's atmosphere.  "As far as we can tell the sky is still blue," 
exclaims NCAR Executive Director Herman Grout.  "Even if I didn't trust my 
own eyes, though, I'd have to trust the 30 billion other eyes out there that 
also are telling me it's green.  At this point it seems safe to say the sky 
is, indeed, green.  There are, however, no indications that it is falling."

    Noting that the largely overshadowed change in the color of emeralds 
occurred at the same time as that of the daytime sky, Professor Pocopollo's 
Caltech team speculates that the changes are related to a traditional logic 
problem known as Goodman's paradox.  "Goodman's paradox is a challenge to our 
intuitive understanding of induction," explains Professor Pocopollo.  "It 
postulates a language in which the properties 'blue' and 'green' are replaced 
with 'grue' and 'bleen.'  Something is 'grue' if it is 'green' before a 
certain time and 'blue' after it, while something is 'bleen' if it is 'blue' 
before and 'green' after."

    Discussions of the paradox have traditionally used emeralds as a 
heuristic example, and typical analyses have hypothesized a definition of 
'grue' objects as objects that are green before 2100 and blue afterward.  "We 
aren't offering a conclusion concerning what's happened," opines Professor 
Pocopollo, "But we would like to point out that the change in the color of 
the sky, and in that of emeralds, has been fairly accurately placed at 
12:00:01am Greenwich Mean Time, and while Goodman's paradox does not 
traditionally use the sky as an example of a potentially 'bleen' object, the 
sky is the paradigmatically blue object."

    Asked to speculate about the implications of her team's findings, 
Professor Pocopollo indicated that, rather than a sign of an impending 
apocalypse or ecological disaster, the green sky may simply be "the first 
fact about the state of the world to confirm that our language is out of step 
with the case.  Until now we've concluded, inductively, that the sky is blue; 
now we've learned that it is most likely bleen.  That's an inductive mistake 
that certainly isn't going to kill us, however much it may shake the 
entrenched foundations of our confidence in the familiar inductions on which 
we rely in everyday life.

    "If you ask me, and if the green sky is related to Goodman's paradox, 
people shouldn't worry about anything else than getting used to saying 
'bleen' and 'grue,'" confided Pocopollo.  "The thing I worry about is what 
this might portend for Hume's paradox.  Hume pointed out that our belief that 
the sun will rise tomorrow is inductively derived from our habitual 
experience of the daily rising of the sun.  If we're as wrong about that as 
we were about the color of the sky we could be in for a rude surprise 
tomorrow morning."

________________________________________

You have received this story as a subscriber to futurefeedforward. 

For more stories, visit our archive at 
http://futurefeedforward.com/archive2.mv

For a history of the future, visit our timeline at 
http://futurefeedforward.com/timeline2.mv

To unscubscribe, visit http://futurefeedforward.com/e_list.mv
____________________________________
See you in the morning...I think.


TTFN

frodeauxb