i've been thinking about conversation recently, like with strangers.
it's often a depth-first search through the person's information store. people use standard entry nodes and then follow them to other conceptual nodes, usually without jumping. but if you get stuck or too deep, the jump will happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth-first_search
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Rain Drops
After our typical desert weather, cold little raindrops were like an old friend tapping me on the shoulder
Old friend being the biosphere that created us
Old friend being the biosphere that created us
Sunday, October 17, 2010
not understanding experience
it seems like there's something missing from our understanding. it's hard to say what exactly.
but, the main annoyances are...
(1) when i say "nature appears to be calculating" such and such, i really don't know how nature does what it does to calculate things.
(2) if nature needs to keeps track of multiple states of a person, i'm not sure if they are all "turned on" - like i don't know if they are all experiencing reality like i am
if i run a simulation of a human on a computer, is it experiencing something?
what if instead of running the simulation on a computer, i just do it on paper - you can do that - anything a computer can compute can be done on paper - it just takes longer and is really boring.
but if i'm doing that on paper - is the human i'm simulating experiencing something?
but, the main annoyances are...
(1) when i say "nature appears to be calculating" such and such, i really don't know how nature does what it does to calculate things.
(2) if nature needs to keeps track of multiple states of a person, i'm not sure if they are all "turned on" - like i don't know if they are all experiencing reality like i am
if i run a simulation of a human on a computer, is it experiencing something?
what if instead of running the simulation on a computer, i just do it on paper - you can do that - anything a computer can compute can be done on paper - it just takes longer and is really boring.
but if i'm doing that on paper - is the human i'm simulating experiencing something?
free will isn't about quantum mechanics
some guy at a hat party walked up to me and tried to convince me that life has all sort of possibilities due to quantum mechanics.
why? why do weird people resort to quantum mechanics to explain free will? you don't need it. a toaster has free will, based solely on classical principles: it notices time and temperature and makes a choice to pop the toast. humans are a little more complicated, but it's the same idea.
what about quantum mechanics anyway
my understanding is this:
with a two hole experiment... you say that the electron leaves the emitter, nature uses some kind of a wave function so figure out the probability distribution of it landing at any place on the on the photographic paper, and it appears on the photographic paper (according to the probability distribution nature calculated).
the thing is that the wave, like a wave in the ocean or whatever..like a wave in the ocean, explores both slits, both possibilities.
if you have a cascade of events, like an electron going through a double slit, the activating one detector or another, then making another emitter go off (according to where the electron landed) and shooting through another slit, etc., then nature still has to explore all possibilities totally with the wave approach. again you end up with a probability of it ending up in some place on the final photographic paper detector, and that will match experiment.
it's nice to break the experiment into human observer and non-human experiment - but what if the human get's pulled in to the experiment...
extending a bit further, you can go ahead and say a whole human being is part of the cascade of events - since we are a bunch of atoms, each atom a detectors and an emitter of some sort (along with a bunch of other stuff atoms do). and now you just have an experiment, no more pesky division between the observer and the experiment. but now you end up with a system that just always has this wavy description of everything - it's not totally clear where the end of the experiment is. i suppose the human could write down the result on a sheet of paper and that could be considered the final result (another human could then take a look at it). yes, let's do that. lets call that person who writes stuff down the writer.
when nature does the wavy calculation, your writer doesn't have a particular state - all of his possible states will get explored. during the calculations, nature would keep track off all of his possibilities to get the final outcome right.
it begs the question: if nature apparently keeps track of all possibilities of the writer during its calculations, does that mean the writer is actually existing in all of those states? somehow i just doubt it. but it's bothersome - i have little evidence for my doubt.
is that cat really dead+rotten and alive+healthy at the same time - again i doubt it - but again - i have little evidence for my doubt.
why? why do weird people resort to quantum mechanics to explain free will? you don't need it. a toaster has free will, based solely on classical principles: it notices time and temperature and makes a choice to pop the toast. humans are a little more complicated, but it's the same idea.
what about quantum mechanics anyway
my understanding is this:
with a two hole experiment... you say that the electron leaves the emitter, nature uses some kind of a wave function so figure out the probability distribution of it landing at any place on the on the photographic paper, and it appears on the photographic paper (according to the probability distribution nature calculated).
the thing is that the wave, like a wave in the ocean or whatever..like a wave in the ocean, explores both slits, both possibilities.
if you have a cascade of events, like an electron going through a double slit, the activating one detector or another, then making another emitter go off (according to where the electron landed) and shooting through another slit, etc., then nature still has to explore all possibilities totally with the wave approach. again you end up with a probability of it ending up in some place on the final photographic paper detector, and that will match experiment.
it's nice to break the experiment into human observer and non-human experiment - but what if the human get's pulled in to the experiment...
extending a bit further, you can go ahead and say a whole human being is part of the cascade of events - since we are a bunch of atoms, each atom a detectors and an emitter of some sort (along with a bunch of other stuff atoms do). and now you just have an experiment, no more pesky division between the observer and the experiment. but now you end up with a system that just always has this wavy description of everything - it's not totally clear where the end of the experiment is. i suppose the human could write down the result on a sheet of paper and that could be considered the final result (another human could then take a look at it). yes, let's do that. lets call that person who writes stuff down the writer.
when nature does the wavy calculation, your writer doesn't have a particular state - all of his possible states will get explored. during the calculations, nature would keep track off all of his possibilities to get the final outcome right.
it begs the question: if nature apparently keeps track of all possibilities of the writer during its calculations, does that mean the writer is actually existing in all of those states? somehow i just doubt it. but it's bothersome - i have little evidence for my doubt.
is that cat really dead+rotten and alive+healthy at the same time - again i doubt it - but again - i have little evidence for my doubt.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Religion
religion does two separate things
1. answers the creation question
2. serves as government (and sometimes military) organization
these two are tied together with a God concept - God created everything and then got involved in running human affairs
evolution is sort of God-like in its creative power (so arguably not too much different than the God creation theory) - BUT it really doesn't lend itself well to creation of a rhetorical device to unify or control masses of people.
people probably got annoyed with evolutionary theory because it breaks (1) and (2) apart.
1. answers the creation question
2. serves as government (and sometimes military) organization
these two are tied together with a God concept - God created everything and then got involved in running human affairs
evolution is sort of God-like in its creative power (so arguably not too much different than the God creation theory) - BUT it really doesn't lend itself well to creation of a rhetorical device to unify or control masses of people.
people probably got annoyed with evolutionary theory because it breaks (1) and (2) apart.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Conversation
I continue going to random meetup events... I'm studying the social behavior of humans. Interaction is mostly in the form of verbal communication - although gestures come into play. Tone of voice is often just as important as the actual words used.
1. Storytelling is a sizable chunk of the communication.
1.1 Sometimes the story is to hype something up - like a comic book store or a city. I suppose the evolutionary underpinning that humans should share important people places and things with each other. It's a natural way to cause people to share useful things. They feel joy if they get somebody interested in something they like or if they find something new.
Standard responses are something like - oh I've been there too - maybe some more details - or maybe a similar thing.
1.2 Sometimes the story is to share some emotional experience - e.g. somebody's grandmother thought her music was from the devil. Maybe an underlying motivation here is to get confirmation from the group that her music is not from the devil.
2. Some people will lead a conversation - sometimes a moderate amount, sometimes too much - so that nobody else can get a word in. There are two basic approaches for the leader - totally define the topic autonomously or look into the crowd, identify what they have interest in, and attempt to bring it out.
Sometimes the leader walks off and the entire conversation will stop.
Sometimes there is no leader - probably a more robust architecture - as it won't fail when one link breaks.
3. Humor
Humor is some sort of an semi-unconscious approval mechanism. In purest form, the laughter of a small child is unconscious approval. As people grow up, they still have some unconscioius laughter, although it's mixed in with intensional. Sort of the way people clap for musicians, they laugh for the short performances that occur within any typical conversation.
1. Storytelling is a sizable chunk of the communication.
1.1 Sometimes the story is to hype something up - like a comic book store or a city. I suppose the evolutionary underpinning that humans should share important people places and things with each other. It's a natural way to cause people to share useful things. They feel joy if they get somebody interested in something they like or if they find something new.
Standard responses are something like - oh I've been there too - maybe some more details - or maybe a similar thing.
1.2 Sometimes the story is to share some emotional experience - e.g. somebody's grandmother thought her music was from the devil. Maybe an underlying motivation here is to get confirmation from the group that her music is not from the devil.
2. Some people will lead a conversation - sometimes a moderate amount, sometimes too much - so that nobody else can get a word in. There are two basic approaches for the leader - totally define the topic autonomously or look into the crowd, identify what they have interest in, and attempt to bring it out.
Sometimes the leader walks off and the entire conversation will stop.
Sometimes there is no leader - probably a more robust architecture - as it won't fail when one link breaks.
3. Humor
Humor is some sort of an semi-unconscious approval mechanism. In purest form, the laughter of a small child is unconscious approval. As people grow up, they still have some unconscioius laughter, although it's mixed in with intensional. Sort of the way people clap for musicians, they laugh for the short performances that occur within any typical conversation.
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