Re: markup race

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Well, I warned you all that I would get back to this, and now I am.

I meant to do so over the weekend, but, as is said, if you want to 
give the fates a good laugh,  just make a list of what you plan to do 
tomorrow.

In my case, the oil secreted by the glands in the follicles of my 
left eyelashes provided an excellent environment for one or another 
variety of bacteria which infected that eyelid and sent me scurrying 
to the ER Sunday after ruining Saturday despite my best efforts to 
ignore the burning inflammation.

Fortunately a good diagnosis and a prescription for antibiotic 
eyedrops has cleared up the infection enough so that I can actually 
read and will end it completely in a couple of days. And so, after 
reading some of Cavalli-Sforza's work, I'll have to agree with Volker 
to a certain extent.

Except insofar as extant legacy databases include race, and have to 
be accounted for as we attempt to create valid datatyping that will 
allow those legacies to be utilized as much as we can both for 
historical purposes and for comparative purposes with current and 
future data, we should encapsulate the racial element as a deprecated 
idea useful for reference, and, when used in an individual's 
self-assertions, as evidence of a persistent, idiosyncratic or 
culturally-founded attachment to and adoption of an otherwise invalid 
concept that signifies no actual information other than what one can 
say of the individual's use of it, or its use in a legacy database.

However, we ought to solicit accurate genetic information and allow 
for it within HumanML, perhaps by employing whatever classification 
systems are adopted by those studying and classifying the human 
genome.

What'll ya bet this gets more response than my post on Perception? 
Note please that the culturally-founded use of race is a contextual 
modifier that predisposes a great deal of Perception and  that 
belongs in many culturalModules, and must be carefully researched if 
we want to measure up to our goal of "enhancing the fidelity of human 
communication."

We are also going to have make allowance for fanaticism or zealotry, 
religious or ethnic or...?

Also, while we have put our toes into the waters of intentionality 
when we looked into Speech Act Theory, we are going to have plumb 
those depths along with the intricacies of Perception as both and 
individual and group phenomenon.

Remembering all the while that we are not modeling human psychology, 
just making the tools to model it.

Ciao,
Rex


At 7:41 AM +0200 9/18/01, Volker Hamann wrote:
>To whom it may concern.
>
>HumanML: "The aim is to enhance the fidelity of human communication."
>
>Since i am an anthropologist who often handles html and some other
>codes, i can imagine, your HumanML undertaking is meant as a
>subversive joke. At least the use of 'race' in a draft from your
>websites (see the relevant cut of code below) indicates, you want to
>say that the in oasis involved US companies still record workers and
>employees as black, red, white halfblood or quarterblood. Code lists
>with values for jewish and half jewish?
>
>Scientifically, genetically, anthropologically, zoologically the idea
>of different human races cannot be prooved. Read Luigi Luca
>Cavalli-Sforza (Genetics, Stanford), to understand why humankind is
>not divided into races. Humans are one race among the races of
>hominides.
>
>You may find opponents to this scientific teaching. However, a
>language which aims to be as universal as possible, if i take your
>motto above for better than Brave New World, should not be decorated
>with race ideology, this way or that way. Better leave it out now
>immediately.
>
>The present realisation of the idea of HumanML also in deeper and more
>complex philosophical aspects needs to be criticized from all possible
>sides, to effect its design radically.
>
>Volker Hamann
>
>   The height and weight types should be numbers but have to allow for
>different measurement systems
>   </xhtml:p>
>
>- <xhtml:p>
>   <xhtml:strong>NOTE:</xhtml:strong>
>   The race, hair color, eyeColor, build attributes need code lists for
>values
>   </xhtml:p>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
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Email: rexb@starbourne.com
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