There are people who don't accept, who aren't obedient. They are weeded out, they're "behavior problems". The long-term effect of this is to reward and foster subordination; it begins in kindergarten and goes all the way through your professional or other career. If you challenge authority, you get in one or another kind of trouble. It's not 100 percent the case, and there are some areas of life were it's dramatically not the case, but on average and overwhelmingly in the outcomes, it holds.
--

If something comes along that you don't like, there are a few sort of four-letter words that you can use to push it out of the sphere of discussion.  If you were in a bar downtown, they might have different words, but if you're an educated person what you use are complicated words like "conspiracy theory" or "Marxist." It's a way of pushing unpleasant questions off the agenda so that we can continue in our own happy ideology.

--Noam Chomsky

 

When recently traffic to this site experienced a ten-fold spike, I got worried: Where have I gone wrong? Luckily, there was no need for concern: the site targets the thinking practitioner, and the notion of thousands of such is too far-fetched. Turns out that somebody mentioned one of my articles, If You Liked SQL, You’ll Love XQuery, at Slashdot which triggered an exchange of about 500 messages there and spiked the traffic here. Such a high volume of messages is usually an indicator of heat (hot air, to be more precise), rather than light, which proved true in this case too. I’ll be debunking some of the more egregious nonsense in future articles (the first of which, Slashing a Slashdot Exchange, Part 1, is forthcoming at DBAzine.com). In it I state as follows:

 

What is really astounding is not just the almost total lack of knowledge by practitioners, experts, and even academics, of the history and foundation of their own field (which does not stop them from making broad pronouncements; they even boast about it; Unskilled and Unaware of It indeed). Rather, it’s also the lack of most basic reasoning ability—confusion, vagueness, inconsistency and a total disregard for evidence. In my writings I at least strive to be logical, and back arguments with either direct evidence, or references to sources (the reader is invited to judge to what extent I succeeded in my article under consideration). Yet in the whole Slashdot exchange the reasoning and evidence for my arguments are thoroughly ignored, while nothing resembling such is offered for opposing arguments. Yet I am the one accused of unsubstantiated claims. Poor reasoning in a field founded on logic is scary, and it sure provides yet another reason why the relational model has not been properly appreciated in the industry.

 

I’ve already written many, many times on this general subject, but the Slashdot exchange is so atrocious that,  jaded as I am, I realized that even I have actually underestimated the problem. This called for another editorial, so here goes.

 

Some brief personal background is necessary as context.

 

Ø       I was born in one of the harshest members of the Soviet bloc and lived—if you can call that living--there until I was 13. When emigration was permitted, anybody who could, fled, including our large and close extended family. We scattered all over the world and lost contact and everything we had.

 

Ø       I came to the US to study on a scholarship; I enrolled in a political science PhD program, with the intention to pursue an academic career, and for 15 years studied, did research, taught and published on political systems and behavior (my BA is in economics, and I also hold an MBA).

 

I mention this to point out that because I actually lived in a communist state, and studied politics, I have a better understanding of social systems in general, and of the difference between the Soviet and US systems in particular, than US/western armchair ideologues who have neither my experience, nor my education; who pummel their chests in defense of freedom, without a clue as to what that means; who understand neither capitalism, nor communism; and who, my guess is, never bothered to read Lenin and Trotsky, but nevertheless are quick to throw their books at those with whom they cannot sustain any meaningful intellectual argument.

 

What struck me after living in the US for a while, was the similarity, at a very fundamental level, between the US  and Soviet systems: while the means by which they attain their objectives differ, the objectives themselves are, for all practical purposes, the same: control and exploitation of the public. Both systems indoctrinate with propaganda from childhood. But because the Soviet system had coercion at its disposal, the propaganda did not need to be convincing: if you stepped out of line, the government came hard after you. That’s why propaganda could be blatant and absurd, and the public was fully aware of it and did not believe it, only pretended to. That is also one reason why the Soviet system collapsed.

 

The US system cannot use coercion (well, not at the Soviet level, at any rate, but the way things are going, give it time), so it must rely solely on propaganda, which must be believed. This means it’s got to be very subtle and psychologically simple and attractive, rather than blatant and absurd, to be at once unobtrusive and effective. It’s no coincidence that the mother of marketing and advertising originates here. If you step out of line, the government does not need to come after you: business, the media, and even the public itself will. They cannot jail, torture, or disappear you (the system is testing the waters, though), but they will try to marginalize you, and make it very difficult to function professionally and socially. And at least insofar as members of the public are concerned, they are enforcers without realizing it. Quite elegant.

 

Otherwise put, under Soviet “communism”, everybody must believe without questioning in the party, which almost nobody did; under US “capitalism”, everybody must believe without questioning in “the market”, which almost everybody does (I use quotes, because neither system is the true thing, as they pretend).

 

The IT industry is but a component of society and operates within the same culture. At its own level, the same mechanism is operating.

 

Consider the following Slashdot comment:

 

Re:What the?!...

by OscarGunther

 

Ever read any Trotsky? Or Lenin? Pascal sounds like any of the old Communists (not the later totalitarians, but the true believers who were old enough to have known Marx or Engels personally). His diatribe is entirely typical of the species. He gratuitously belittles his targets:

 

“Natural" perhaps for those without a grasp of data fundamentals.

 

(Yes, Fabian, the co-inventor of SQL probably doesn't have a grasp of data fundamentals.) He sprinkles his text liberally with "quotes" and italics so you can "feel" his anger, his dismay -- indeed, you can almost hear him spitting the words in Chamberlin's face. You can almost hear him chortling to himself as he bangs away on his keyboard, demolishing his opponents.

 

He venerates the Founder. Finding a quote that supports your argument settles the matter. Codd the Wise avoided the errors that Chamberlin made; clearly the latter is the inferior intellect. And there's only a small core with the Founder. "We" are the true believers; all others are apostates and heretics.

 

Overstatement is a definite tell. Chamberlin's explanation of the difference between SQL and XML data is "unbelievable." The nesting argument is "ridiculous." Industry pronouncements are "incoherent." And most prominent of all is the cutting remark that's meaningless to anyone not in the know or already in agreement:

 

Unbelievable. Any wonder that SQL fails so abysmally at relational fidelity? We may not expect the average practitioner to distinguish between pictures of relations, which are "flat" due to the presentation medium, and relations of N-degree themselves, which are N-dimensional logical structures. But we sure expect "industry experts" to be aware of the difference.

 

And I sure expect a polemicist to know enough about his art to understand when he's descended into self-parody.

 

And there you have it: is Chomsky right, or what? Gunther and his ilk are literally “pillars of industry and society”.

 

·   Note how totally devoid the comment is of technical content, of consideration of my arguments and evidence, and of substantiation of opposing arguments. I am actually being criticized for providing supportive quotes! (of course, if I did not provide any, I would be accused of unsubstantiated positions).

 

·   Note the inability to distinguish science—logic applied to database management--from ideological dogma; and technical criticism from “gratuitous belittling” (the latter being exactly what the comment itself is engaged in).

 

·   Note the demonization by an absurdly grotesque interpretation of my use of quotes and emphasis (psycho-babble that says something about Gunther’s psychology, not mine). If, indeed, the author of a widely used data language does not understand data fundamentals, pray what, other than dismay and anger, is the proper reaction?

 

·   Note the uncritical--shall we say religious?—belief in the industry (quite common: “if the relational model is so great, how is it possible that such resourceful and successful vendors as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM don’t implement it? If they don’t, it can only mean that it’s either impossible, or useless” ).

 

·   Note the judgment of work by reputation, rather than the other way around: instead of a-ss-u-me’ing SQL is fundamentally sound and, ipso facto, it’s inconceivable that Chamberlin does not possess foundation knowledge, Chamberlin’s knowledge should be judged by how well SQL fares on fundamentals.  Alas, that  requires foundation knowledge and reasoning ability, which is precisely what Gunther does not possess either.

 

Foundation knowledge and reason are demanding and difficult. They discipline the thought process and limit the freedom to be inconsistent, vague, confused; pronouncements on matters not known or understood are dismissed or ignored. The industry/market dogma relieves from this tyranny of knowledge and reason.

 

The irony is that relational proponents have science behind them, yet we are being accused of religion by those who have nothing sound behind them, except market religion.

 

Re:Ridiculous

by negative video

Fabian Pascal is smart and well-informed, but a zealot.  Like all zealots he is willing to sacrifice anything and everything for his vision of technical purity.

 

Ridiculous, indeed. Smarts and being well-informed are inconsistent with zealotry. A smart and well-informed zealot is almost a contradiction in terms, an extremely rare occurrence at best. More importantly, what does it say about an industry (and society) that it deems science zealotry, and ignorance progress? Furthermore, what is it that I am “sacrificing”? Should we base database management on “impure logic”? Isn’t logic exactly what we should not sacrifice?

 

In such a system there are only opinions and preferences, all of which are equally valid. Knowledge and reason are just theory and therefore, not practical. Intuition, tool skills and experience are all that’s necessary. “Please don’t bother us with all that theoretical stuff, we have practical things like objects and XML to cater to.”

 

And if you think this is limited to the US, not anymore. Check out Dumbing Down: Et Tu Europe?). Here’s an email I got from Europe:

 

Things are getting worse fast, the thing that mainly concerns me is what is going on in higher education, which is being reformed to be "compatible" with international "standards" - in practice this means that the American model (bachelors/masters, majors/minors, "credits" in stead of a curriculum, etc...) is implemented on EU level. Actually, the European Union has no educational authority/responsibility at all. But it has a responsibility on "vocational training" and it tries to stretch this into education. On the other hand, the real power in the EU is not with the European Parliament or even the European Commission, but it is with the "Council of ministers" (which may be the prime ministers, ministers of external affairs or education as is fit for the problem at hand). On the level of education ministers, there is an agreement called the "Bologna protocol" which is a sell-out of the universities to the industry. This has been going on for quite some time. One of the driving forces behind all this is the European Round Table of Industrials and a lot of shady organisations around them.

 

The dismissal of knowledge and reason (on which science is predicated) is the context in which to understand the past shift of power from Islamic middle east to the west, the descent of the US into fascism and theocracy, and the current shift from the west to the far-east, of which the offshoring of jobs is but one aspect of particular relevance to the US/western IT practitioner.

 

"We have 22 universities and colleges with over 200,000 students in Dalian," the city's mayor, Xia Deren, told me. More than half graduate with engineering or science degrees, and even those who don't are directed to spend a year studying Japanese or English and computer science” … The Chinese certainly want to believe it's inevitable that they will move from basic software outsourcing to design, but even a top Chinese science planner acknowledges that it won't be easy. Xu Kuangdi, president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said to me that for China to advance, "we have to build more products from our own intellectual property … But in software”, he added, that will require "improving the innovative capability of the younger generation," which will require some big changes in China's rigid, rote education system. Chinese officials, he said, are thinking about such changes right now. I wouldn't bet against them.  Have your kids finished their homework?

--Thomas Friedman, Doing Our Homework, New York Times

 

 

Posted 07/23/04