The inverter, an emergent dissipative structure far from thermodynamic equilibrium, now implicates vast and disruptive climate change over this spot. El Nino shoves the jetstream up and opens a channel of cold Pacific air that gives Texas a wet year with milder high temperature in summer. La Nina shoves the channel closed by inverting behavior. This artifact of climate is a complementary climate inverting gate.
This is acting as a phase lock loop. It borrows climate from the future and the past to stave off the rising temperatures. Hurricanes are air conditioners - they throw into space. This is a component in a vast machine-like apparratus implementing a code. The code is the information in each rail car of a train that goes on forever without an engine to pull it. [3.1416]
[3.1416]The Mandelbrot Set can be more easily explained by describing a simpler sub-set of Mandelbrot, A Cantor Set. Imagine that each number in the number line had a boxcar next to that number. Write down the counting numbers on a sheet of paper and draw a tiny boxcar below each number. The number line continues to infinity in the positive direction (positive infinity) and in a negative direction (negative infinity). There is no number in the numberline from negative infinity to positive infinity which cannot be summed with one. Since there is now a number closer to infinity than every number in the number line; including your last candidate that we added the quantity one to.
But my box cars are special. I assign a boxcar to ever possible number in the number line and I guarantee that there is a box car for every number in the number line. You cannot add the quantity one to my last box car and arrive at a new number that does NOT already have my box car assigned to it. I defined a set, the number line comprising all the counting numbers, and an closely associated set, the set of all box cars, that seem to contain each other.
In fact I can alter my definition to be slightly different. Instead of one number in each box car, I pack the entire number line up to that number in the box car. Since numbers don't take up any space, even my vanishingly small box car can ontain an infinite time line. Now notice that the first set contains the second set. The number of numbers pointed to by the box cars now contains a box car with all the numbers to infinity and that numbers box car. This is an aleph of two sets.
Now I will define a set that contains every set that is similar to
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
CBT
From this article in SA 25Oct2011
The chimp ponders the hand of providence in his banana:
"Yet, despite its critical role in mental health, there has been a kind of “church and state” separation regarding spirituality in clinical theory and practice. For instance,Aaron Beck’s cognitive theory, and the cognitive behavioral therapy it inspired, is among the most empirically validated models in clinical psychology, aiding scientific understandings of anxiety, depression, and even schizophrenia. Core beliefs about the self, world and future are its principle province, yet little has been done to address the role of patients’ spiritual beliefs in this foundational system."
The chimp can have a banana without God but can he have God without the banana?
The chimp ponders the hand of providence in his banana:
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Existential Bells Toll for Thee
For the rest of the narrative, we see an evitable end transform into inevitable doom. As I said, both novels can be read aloud to children at bed time because of the wonderful storytelling. A boy and an escaped slave attempt to leave civilization behind and find a life on the river. An American fights fascism by blowing up a bridge real good.Then the sophomore english term paper kicks in. The river is a symbol of life or the world or our lack of personal freedom or perhaps the presence of our personal freedom - different sophomores have different thesis statements to flesh out. The Spanish Civil War is an alegory for man's struggle with personal ethics and the prevailing tides of history. Huck's raft and Robert Jordan's bridge are allegorical figures from Greek Mythology or derp de derp derp.
In the thin air of high school English these are not right - they are not even wrong. Hemingway wrote a story about a man blowing up a bridge. Twain wrote a story about a youth escaping down the river. Starting and finishing with these existential facts creates a universe in miniature. We live our lives or we live the life of someone else. I have my reasons for blowing up Franco's bridge or I don't. I live authentically by taking the mission or I die. I keep my good faith bargain with death by doing what I can while I live.
Robert Jordan in Chap. 13
"But Maria has been good. Has she not? Oh, has she not. Maybe that is what I am to get now from life. Maybe that is my life and instead of being three score years and ten it is forty-eight hours or just threescore hours and ten or twelve rather."...
So if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I have the value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.
Probably Golz knew all about this to and wanted to make the point that you must make your whole life in the two nights that are given to you; that living as we do now you must concentrate all of that which you should always have into the short time that you can have it."
Friday, October 21, 2011
Neuroscience and Justice
This article in Edge prompted my response here.
This is the spacial and temporal organization of human brains. In split brain person's we see subjects left hands responding to the right lobe and right hands responding to left hands. But only the action of the right hand can be described in a coherent fashion because only the left brain produces verbal reports (narratives) about what is happening subjectively. If the right brain makes the left hand do something different from the narrative, the left brain just expands the narrative fiction to include whatever the left hand is up to no matter what the right brain's motivation or observed behavior.
"We have this thing over here, in the left side, that we've called the interpreter. It's not in the right hemisphere, you can't get the right hemisphere to do this kind of thing. The interpreter is just weaving the story, the narrative that makes sense out of these modules that are constantly bombarding us with information, with actual behaviors, with felt states, with everything. We've got to tell a story about what's going on and that's what we think this narrative function does."
The account of free will we can use comes up in the Q/A from our peer Dr. Pinker. Good times.
 |
| Heterophenominological Ensemble of Dispositions |
"We have this thing over here, in the left side, that we've called the interpreter. It's not in the right hemisphere, you can't get the right hemisphere to do this kind of thing. The interpreter is just weaving the story, the narrative that makes sense out of these modules that are constantly bombarding us with information, with actual behaviors, with felt states, with everything. We've got to tell a story about what's going on and that's what we think this narrative function does."
The account of free will we can use comes up in the Q/A from our peer Dr. Pinker. Good times.
The Motivation of Secularism
Here is a great article on the source and motivation for secularism. The thesis - that secularism stands in opposition to harmful, sectarian impulses motivated by religion.
1. First, secularism is a stance to be taken about religion. At the level of generality with which I have just described this, it does not say anything very specific or precise. The imprecision and generality have two sources. One obvious source is that religion, regarding which it is supposed to take a stance, is itself, notoriously, not a very precise or specifically understood phenomenon.
2. Second, for all this generality just noted, ‘secularism’—unlike ‘secular’ and ‘secularization’—is quite specific in another regard. It is the name of a political doctrine. As a name, it may not always have had this restriction, but that seems to be its predominant current usage. So, to the extent that it takes a stance vis-à-vis religion, it does so only in the realm of the polity. It is not meant—as the terms ‘secular’ and ‘secularization’ are—to mark highly general and dispersed social and intellectual and cultural phenomena and processes
3. Third, secularism, as a stance regarding religion that is restricted to the polity, is not a good in itself. It seeks what is conceived, by those who favor it, to promote certain other moral and political goods, and these are goods that are intended to counter what are conceived as harms, actual or potential. This third feature may be considered too controversial to be regarded as a defining feature, but its point becomes more plausible when we contrast secularism with a more cognitive (rather than political) stance regarding religion, such as atheism. For atheists, the truth of atheism is sufficient to motivate one to adhere to it and the truth of atheism is not grounded in the claim that it promotes a moral or political good or the claim that it is supported by other moral or political values we have. By contrast, secularists, to the extent that they claim ‘truth’ for secularism, claim it on grounds that appeal to other values that support the ideal of secularism or other goods that are promoted by it.
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| Secular Interpretation of the Gospels |
2. Second, for all this generality just noted, ‘secularism’—unlike ‘secular’ and ‘secularization’—is quite specific in another regard. It is the name of a political doctrine. As a name, it may not always have had this restriction, but that seems to be its predominant current usage. So, to the extent that it takes a stance vis-à-vis religion, it does so only in the realm of the polity. It is not meant—as the terms ‘secular’ and ‘secularization’ are—to mark highly general and dispersed social and intellectual and cultural phenomena and processes
3. Third, secularism, as a stance regarding religion that is restricted to the polity, is not a good in itself. It seeks what is conceived, by those who favor it, to promote certain other moral and political goods, and these are goods that are intended to counter what are conceived as harms, actual or potential. This third feature may be considered too controversial to be regarded as a defining feature, but its point becomes more plausible when we contrast secularism with a more cognitive (rather than political) stance regarding religion, such as atheism. For atheists, the truth of atheism is sufficient to motivate one to adhere to it and the truth of atheism is not grounded in the claim that it promotes a moral or political good or the claim that it is supported by other moral or political values we have. By contrast, secularists, to the extent that they claim ‘truth’ for secularism, claim it on grounds that appeal to other values that support the ideal of secularism or other goods that are promoted by it.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
What the mould Penicillium camemberti Wants
what Camembert cheese wants more than anything is more Camembert cheese. The existential is how we put our time in. In those rare moments in the past when meat was satiated, we would sing to each other of the events of the day and the dream of tomorrow and yesterday. The Dream Now exists as an emergent quality of human consciousness. A superstructure of vastly many robots, large and small supported a brain with a mind that could watch itself thinking about itself. The subjective mind examines itself while it's self, being a particular ensemble of dispositions, was supported by an army of robots intent on our survival.
We could bring our game when we had to guess what happens next. Bill Hicks says it best; it's just a ride. We make the ride the way we need to and sometimes the way we want to. I've got to try it to miss it. That is, the possible consequences both good and bad form a landscape based on many variables.
At the level of fermions and bosons there is a bounding box around the meat. The system 'outside' the bounding box defines me, my meat, it's cells, their forebears down to algae. Then the strange yearning for a coming together as an ensemble of dispositions.
First a particular bacteria works on the milk as it has always worked on the milk. The good bacteria make deals with us constantly. We both agree to work together; I work on having strong babies and because I am a mammal and I need milk, or I am a bacteria that wants more people raising more ungulates (who also benefit by having more ungulate genes) by making a anti-bacterial poison that kills loathsome bad bacterial while nourishing the mammalian babies. This is the barter and exchange of Natural Selection. We constantly look for allies. We want more people for us than against us. We check our status constantly to see who has our back. The more the better.
Preserving face is an expensive and time consuming activity. A man with much status has much face to loose. The loss of a good name is worse still. A persons status can be measured objectively and subjectively. Currently there is a level set or calibration point at $65,000 in the USA. This amount in real term varies across the heirarchy of local economies and highly networked international wealth accounting. Rough Beast knows my worth in real terms. Lacking patience, she tells me bluntly in independent credit scores from three competing agencies. I am triangulated precisely if I care to look it up.
So in this sense we could say that the global economy wants me in dept but does not especially care if I pay it back. If too many people are not paying it back, the not paying back becomes the dominatant conditioned behavior. The young people are paying it back. If they possibly can.
But think about a dept that can never be discharged. Why pay it back? Just get used to owing it and not paying it. There are consequences but there are consequences for not doing this anyway. Think about the proposition that instead of millions of unemployed English and Fine Arts majors we would have millions of high school graduates that didn't know the score. The rage has a voice - it is the voice of St. Mark
At the level of fermions and bosons there is a bounding box around the meat. The system 'outside' the bounding box defines me, my meat, it's cells, their forebears down to algae. Then the strange yearning for a coming together as an ensemble of dispositions.
 |
| Cheese me! |
Preserving face is an expensive and time consuming activity. A man with much status has much face to loose. The loss of a good name is worse still. A persons status can be measured objectively and subjectively. Currently there is a level set or calibration point at $65,000 in the USA. This amount in real term varies across the heirarchy of local economies and highly networked international wealth accounting. Rough Beast knows my worth in real terms. Lacking patience, she tells me bluntly in independent credit scores from three competing agencies. I am triangulated precisely if I care to look it up.
So in this sense we could say that the global economy wants me in dept but does not especially care if I pay it back. If too many people are not paying it back, the not paying back becomes the dominatant conditioned behavior. The young people are paying it back. If they possibly can.
But think about a dept that can never be discharged. Why pay it back? Just get used to owing it and not paying it. There are consequences but there are consequences for not doing this anyway. Think about the proposition that instead of millions of unemployed English and Fine Arts majors we would have millions of high school graduates that didn't know the score. The rage has a voice - it is the voice of St. Mark
Friday, October 14, 2011
What Oscilloscopes Want
[email to Matt G.]
I don't have access to a lab any more but it should be possible to get into the hardware lab in Freescale if you ask the right person. My overall take on the o'scope is that it was the most general purpose tool for a very long time and then evolved to do what digital electronics wanted - a digital representation of multiple signals over time. The ability to capture multiple digitized signals was the first inflection point. Then it was a small step to logic analyzers that could 'see' bus protocols and capture edges on complex conditions across all the signals based on improved memory and processing power. What technology wants is an improved capability to look as as much state information over the longest intervals so that's what o'scopes wanted to do. And they got their wish while becoming a continuous number of instantiations of hardware and software. The o'scopes built integrated chips that make o'scopes better at what they wanted.
To quote Charles D.
"If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of instrumentation, technical tools vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometrical powers of increase of each kind of instrument, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for market share, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all instantiated artifacts of technology to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each technical artifact's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to the tool user, man. But if variations useful to any technical artifact do occur, assuredly individual tools thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for product life; and from the strong principle of inheritance of specific technical solutions in hardware and software, they will tend to produce divergent forms similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection. Natural selection, on the principle of qualities being inherited at corresponding ages, can modify the IP, improved feature set, or new models, as easily as the earlier form."
 |
| Feed Me Seymour |
"If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of instrumentation, technical tools vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometrical powers of increase of each kind of instrument, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for market share, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all instantiated artifacts of technology to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each technical artifact's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to the tool user, man. But if variations useful to any technical artifact do occur, assuredly individual tools thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for product life; and from the strong principle of inheritance of specific technical solutions in hardware and software, they will tend to produce divergent forms similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection. Natural selection, on the principle of qualities being inherited at corresponding ages, can modify the IP, improved feature set, or new models, as easily as the earlier form."
Monday, October 10, 2011
The Architecture of Desire
In the Architecture of Motivation, Leda Cosmides claims a strong theory from evolutionary psychology provides us with a balanced structure for predicting a response policy for individuals with sufficient understanding of the neural correlates of motivation. Emotional states play a large role in decision making. In fact, most humans most of the time require a sufficiently strong emotional response to take action. The cognitive chain of causation begins with giving a shit.
What emotional triggers give us the strongest motivation - what is the architecture of desire? Let's suppose that we can use the intentional stance to construct the ensemble of dispositions comprising desire(1):
1. Lust (luxuria)
2. Gluttony (gula)
3. Greed (avaricia)
4. Sloth (acedia/discouragement)
5. Wrath (ira)
6. Envy (invidia)
7. Pride (supervia/vainglory)
Entering a cognitive set evocative of these brain states and combinations of brain states, provides us with the answer to this question. What does desire want? To quench each fire in the belly.
Lust wants the love of others above the love for god according to Aristotle. Lust puts desire for other meat at the level of meat.
Gluttony wants over-consumption to the point of waste.
Greed wants an over abundance of wealth and status.
Sloth wants to avoid the pain of using our talents or capabilities by lack of discipline in our livelihood.
Wrath wants us to explode in anger and frustration - to give into fear and anxiety with bad temper.
Envy wants others to have less while I have more.Why am I motivated to acquire more than I am due? I am intently focused on my status which is measured by my Metcalfe
Pride wants me to be more important or attractive than others.
The entanglement of the ensemble of dispostions.
Each dispositon or intuition has a place to motivate. Desire drives my over-use of right motivation.
The Emotional Response
Anxiety
Fear
anger
jealousy
Grief
Sorrow
Falling Love
Elation
Depression
Want to help
Want to hurt
love
guilt
gratitude
incest avoidance
disgust
status striving
"[These are outputs] from layers of neuro-computational procedures and representations—what we're going to call internal regulatory variables—devices that compute them, and decision rules that these variables feed"
1. Lust (luxuria)
2. Gluttony (gula)
3. Greed (avaricia)
4. Sloth (acedia/discouragement)
5. Wrath (ira)
6. Envy (invidia)
7. Pride (supervia/vainglory)
Entering a cognitive set evocative of these brain states and combinations of brain states, provides us with the answer to this question. What does desire want? To quench each fire in the belly.
Lust wants the love of others above the love for god according to Aristotle. Lust puts desire for other meat at the level of meat.
Gluttony wants over-consumption to the point of waste.
Greed wants an over abundance of wealth and status.
Sloth wants to avoid the pain of using our talents or capabilities by lack of discipline in our livelihood.
Wrath wants us to explode in anger and frustration - to give into fear and anxiety with bad temper.
Envy wants others to have less while I have more.Why am I motivated to acquire more than I am due? I am intently focused on my status which is measured by my Metcalfe
Pride wants me to be more important or attractive than others.
The entanglement of the ensemble of dispostions.
Each dispositon or intuition has a place to motivate. Desire drives my over-use of right motivation.
The Emotional Response
Anxiety
Fear
anger
jealousy
Grief
Sorrow
Falling Love
Elation
Depression
Want to help
Want to hurt
love
guilt
gratitude
incest avoidance
disgust
status striving
"[These are outputs] from layers of neuro-computational procedures and representations—what we're going to call internal regulatory variables—devices that compute them, and decision rules that these variables feed"
Belief is a Response Policy: Comment on Cosmic Variance
I left this comment on this blog post from Sean at Discover.
I am currently trying on the proposition that ’belief’ does not exist even to a professed believer in something or other. This is an extension of Dan Dennett’s ’belief in belief’. That is belief(1) in belief(2) indicates that there is at best a weak belief(1) in the object pointed to by belief(2). Dennett seems to mean on the surface that the authentic subjective belief(1) is merely a response to others verbal reports of a REAL belief(2) that the believer of belief(1) sincerely wishes, hopes or prays for at some later time but needs a rain check at present.
What I have is a response policy to other folks behavior – including subjective verbal production. When someone tells me they ’believe’ in Thor I can only try to discern compliance with Norse ethics and morality as evidenced by their behaviors. I can only respond to what they do. I don’t believe in meaning – I respond to meaning. I don’t believe in belief – I respond to the behavior of the professed believer. Believe it or not.
What I have is a response policy to other folks behavior – including subjective verbal production. When someone tells me they ’believe’ in Thor I can only try to discern compliance with Norse ethics and morality as evidenced by their behaviors. I can only respond to what they do. I don’t believe in meaning – I respond to meaning. I don’t believe in belief – I respond to the behavior of the professed believer. Believe it or not.
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