Intimate journal?

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Forget about it.

Last edited by paolo on 11 Sep 2007, 7:54 am, edited 2 times in total.

I think the constructivist view is that 2+2=4 only because we say it does.

Please, share some more.

Paolo, I would love to know what you wrote...because I am very nosy!

You mentioned in another thread that there should be a place for experimental stuff. I agree. And this is the perfect forum for it. I, for one, would be interested in the adventure.

Yes, please do share some more!

This was the post I deleted (Monday?)

Wake up a little more clear headed than yesterday evening. What do I do here? What do I ask readers? I have never perceived in such a way my absolute loneliness. If someone likes what I say, is what I say something approaching remotely to truth? I can make statements of the kind 2+2=4 and be assured that this might be nearly true (you never know: reading yesterday Leavitt’s book about Alan Turing I discovered that math is full of holes, and after all what Turing wanted, was besides companionship and some form of success, and like everybody else, sex. He helped to win ww2 – not that he was interested in the war. But his work was cracking codes. And he succeeded cracking these German codes, and had also some sex, but at the end he took his life, probably, or was killed, still young.

***
One of the holes in math which tormented Turing, Godel, and many eminent mathematicians was the liar’s paradox. If I say that I lie, am I not again lying? And again and again. And even 2+2=4 may be wrong. Wrong or irrelevant. You can say only irrelevant things or lies. Sometimes I feel plunged in this dilemma and that was part the reason of my demise Monday.

(I also asked for a spaceship to be rescued from my planet of holes, but I give up this request). The whole thing is not very clear. I will try later. I don’t know anything about math and anyway not overly interested. Here I am no aspie.

Yes, is our truth true? Is there an absolute truth, or maybe just a truth of today, or this minute, or this mood. It may change tomorrow, but for today, be felt as sincere, so, for that brief time, it is 'true'?

Thank you for sharing your journal Paolo. I look forward to reading more.

you didn't study accounting, did you

Paolo, WP does not always feel friendly, but don't forget you have friends here.

Last edited by BazzaMcKenzie on 13 Sep 2007, 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Turing = loneliness

Brilliance always does.


Too bad it don't go the other way.

I don't understand all of this, however-
In Wired I read about some new book by a guy named Hofstadter called "Strange Loop".
Excerpt from interview:
Q:"What is a strange loop ?"
A:"One good prototype is the Escher drawing of two hands sketching each other. A more abstract one is the sentence "I am lying". Such loops are, I think anyone would agree, strange. They seem paradoxical and even strike some peopple as dangerous. I argue that such a strnge loop, paradoxical or not, is at the core of each human being. It is an abstract pattern that gives each of us an "I", or, if you don't mind the term, a soul."
Q:"You have a great line:'I am a mirage that perceives itself'. If our fundamental sense of what is real-our own existence-is merely a self-reinforcing mirage, does that call into question the reality of the universe itself ?"
A:"I don't think so. Even though subatomic particles engage in a deeply recursive process called renormalizaton, they don't contain a self-model..."
(I only cut out a piece of the brief blurb. Sure you can find out more about this if you want...)
An older curious & humorous logic book is "I Think, Therefore I Laugh" by John Allen Paulos.

I don't do numbers very well in the higher senses. You may not do the numbers, but you do math better then most. Your interest is very apparent to me, as well.

One of the problems that baffles me more is that of recursivity. The primal cell has instructions to divide into two cells, I think they call this mitosis. These two cells divide again and again up to reach, in the human body, 300 trillion. How happens that at some point they stop dividing, how happens that they differentiate into 200 different kinds of cells, some have short life, some (the neurons) last for the whole life of the individual. Given that the instructions to do all this are in the DNA, and that the DNA is identical in every cell, derives from that primal cell how all this is possible? Probably genetists know but I will never understand. Recursivity is a mathemathical problem, but here we have do with life. elephants, oaks, whales, hippos.

I know that erythrocytes have no DNA and gametes had halved DNAs, but this does not simplifies the problems.

The math's beyond my comprehension, but recursion & self-similarity call to mind fractal processes (patterns of branching seen both in blood circulatory system & tree limbs/roots, for instance). I marvel at appearance of fractal illustrations (artificially generated or naturally found) but am out of my league as to the complex formulae and scientific implications.
How cells know when to start & stop gets into topics of apoptosis & teleomeres (telomeres ?), though having names for them doesn't mean that their workings are thoroughly understood. How (microscopic or macrocosmic) things 'choose' what to become & then distinguish themselves from their surrounding environment is mystery to me...
Yes it's in the DNA, but what does that really explain other than leaving us with new mystery (which we're working on) of "well, what's in the DNA ? what makes the DNA do what it does ?" & one can keep subdividing in hopes of nearing critical point where things seem less 'magical'. I'm "into" science, so don't mistake my words for being anti-science stance. Believe in it as explanatory framework, but there's plenty I don't understand & I call those things "magic".

No I studied philosophy. I think the naturalist view is "Well of course 2+2 always =4."

(your avatar)

As many probably know, modern theories of the mind are divided between monism and dualism. Dualism dates back to Descartes, and is now discredited. The prevalent theory is monistic: this means that there is no soul, elan vital, or anything different from matter and molecules (Dawkins, Dennett). I have much respect, in my ignorance, for Dawkins and Dennett, although there are also dualistic cognitivists (Chalmers and al.)

Now I can understand (vaguely for a laic like me) how the DNA contains the instructions to build an elephant (I like very much elephants, like all doomed critters, they move gently); or an immunitary system. But all these processes should start on the basis of an order (in the sense of a command). And here I am at a total loss. Where does the command come from: God? I am no creationist and I feel revulsion for this business of creationism and intelligent design. Life comes from the primordial broth, they say, but in what shape? is it a single cell or a colony of cells. Given the primordial broth, cells pop up all around the primordial sea, or lake?

The immunitary system is the most extraordinary construction (?) which keeps the whole animal together, as a closed structure, fighting enemies (bacteria), repairing and healing wounds, discarding damaging materials etc.

Well, I imagine that at this point a biologist starts lo laugh. But in my ignorance these problems have occupied my mind in the last years in an amateurish way.

Could a dualistic view of mind explain the inclination to randomly breed?

Or am I putting Descartes before the whores?