watching the science channel last night, I saw a bit about some folks who cause avalanches for a living. They find likely spots where the terrible snow flows may occur and blast them so that they will give way and clear the danger while no one is in harm's way. I've been watching the news and I feel like some folks are doing the culturally equivalent thing. But I'm not so sure that their intent is as benign. I'm watching the slippery slopes be made much safer to ski by people causing huge calamities that no one seems to notice.
The first one that caught my eye was in Canada. Here a man unsuccessfully tried to get the high court to hear and appeal for the murder of his wife. His appeal was for a lesser charge based on the fact that she had insulted his honor. They refused. Happy ending you may think. But there is a devil in the details. They refused because of the fact that the man had had an affair and that having an affair was the very insult he claimed has sent him into the honor fueled rage. However, I see a great big hanging snow sheet there that's been cleared. Now what happens when a fiery and righteous man comes along with the same claim. Will he receive the lesser sentence? By their logic, he should.
The next one is in the UK. The odious member of the BNP was cleared of charges of race hate. Good guys lose, right? Well, not to their minds. They are considering changing the laws. I'm sure that the last time I read up on rule of law it was the exception that should repeal parts of the existing rules - not create new ones. The broader the reach of these laws that are on their very face based in subjective judgement, the scarier the power of the state becomes. Law should be as cold as possible. The fire belongs in the hearts of the juror and the minds of the trial lawyers. The people should bring the views to the laws. The laws are not the views of the people.
All around people react to extremism with more extremism. Too bad the moon isn't ready for tenants yet.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Man as the Instrument
I am reading Incompleteness. Right now we are making a survey of the positivists and their Vienna Cirle thoughts. I find myself in that hazy place again. It is positivist vs. Platonist; radical empirical vs. realist/idealist (depending on who you talk to). And I wonder where there is room for the common experience in either view? Of course, these are all men of ideas talking about ideas. So perhaps it's natural that they don't have much to say about the place of sweat, blood and tears.
But I always find myself taking the sociologist's view. These men would not be but for the sweat, blood and tears of people that live along with them in their time and countless generations before that. How then can they find themselves discussing what they would deem complete theories of "What Is"(TM) which discount that perspective? Am I too Marxist here? I don't know.
Fugazi says "we need an instrument". I agree. Math is the only thing which seems to come close, but even that we don't understand well enough yet. Our attempts are fumbling at best. Grandiose, beautiful, inspired fumbling - but fumbling none the less.
Of course, you add the lack of instrument to the lack of commonality in the intellectual debate and you get the whole reason religion thrives today long after so many of those intellectuals predicted its demise. God may indeed be dead (in the Nietzschian poetic sense), but the churches remain full regardless. Because the people don't understand the new prophets' words - they preach from high atop Babel.
In the end, religion and god and all those ancient concepts are just an attempt to grasp that instrument. I struggle to help my own children understand the world. It would be great to have an instrument where I could just put it all through a lens and show them. I know there is none. But many grasp and find the same one that has been refined from the assumptions of our forefathers. Ironically, though, in their attempt to make something so grand and all seeing they still inject themselves. The god is always somehow among or of or akin to us in mind or spirit or even body. Man is the instrument again. And there the failure lies...
But I always find myself taking the sociologist's view. These men would not be but for the sweat, blood and tears of people that live along with them in their time and countless generations before that. How then can they find themselves discussing what they would deem complete theories of "What Is"(TM) which discount that perspective? Am I too Marxist here? I don't know.
Fugazi says "we need an instrument". I agree. Math is the only thing which seems to come close, but even that we don't understand well enough yet. Our attempts are fumbling at best. Grandiose, beautiful, inspired fumbling - but fumbling none the less.
Of course, you add the lack of instrument to the lack of commonality in the intellectual debate and you get the whole reason religion thrives today long after so many of those intellectuals predicted its demise. God may indeed be dead (in the Nietzschian poetic sense), but the churches remain full regardless. Because the people don't understand the new prophets' words - they preach from high atop Babel.
In the end, religion and god and all those ancient concepts are just an attempt to grasp that instrument. I struggle to help my own children understand the world. It would be great to have an instrument where I could just put it all through a lens and show them. I know there is none. But many grasp and find the same one that has been refined from the assumptions of our forefathers. Ironically, though, in their attempt to make something so grand and all seeing they still inject themselves. The god is always somehow among or of or akin to us in mind or spirit or even body. Man is the instrument again. And there the failure lies...
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
tunnel
Someone said to me "I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel", and I answered:
There is no light. Learn to love the tunnel. That is the only way. To look for the light is to find oneself stuck forever in becoming and never in being. It is to always try to be somewhere, something else - never to be here and what you are. It is as Yoda says, "Do, or do not. There is no try." It is the tunnel for you, and me, and everyone else. Learn to like the pulsing lights. Learn to love the speed and hugging the sides for speed. Be in the tunnel, or stop. There is no light.
=] I do mean that in a positive way, I assure you. I love my tunnel (most every day).
There is no light. Learn to love the tunnel. That is the only way. To look for the light is to find oneself stuck forever in becoming and never in being. It is to always try to be somewhere, something else - never to be here and what you are. It is as Yoda says, "Do, or do not. There is no try." It is the tunnel for you, and me, and everyone else. Learn to like the pulsing lights. Learn to love the speed and hugging the sides for speed. Be in the tunnel, or stop. There is no light.
=] I do mean that in a positive way, I assure you. I love my tunnel (most every day).
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
groovy
NOTE: quoting myself from here.
seed magazine: prime numbers get hitched
Short summary of the article - Mathematicians say to physicists: "We give you all these great tools, you give us nothing. When are you going to pull your weight?" Physicists reply: "We're working on it, but how can physics, which is about reality, contribute to the pure ideal world of math?" Enter one very brave physicist who notes there is a similarity between the patterns in prime numbers and the patters in electron states in atoms. Primes have always been known to show up in patterns. Anyone who has been through high school physics since 1960 know electrons orbit in "shells" (states) where they sit in relation to the nucleus (center) of the atom and that it takes energy (given or taken) to switch from one "shell" to another. Well, it seems that they have been able to use what they know about electrons to make actual verifiable predictions about prime numbers.
Why is this SOOOOOOOOO cool that it makes me tingle every time I say it????
Well, I bet many of you have heard of things like the "golden ratio". It's basically a pattern that you can use to show how things like a conch shell or sunflower will grow. But it was found in nature, and then analyzed. So nature showed this to us and then we brought it into math to analyze. In other words, nothing new was brought to math by it's discovery. The tools of math were just used to describe it.
With these primes and the atomic states, we actually have reality informing us on a completely, until now, abstract issue. Prime numbers have always thought to be something wholly unrelated to anything but the confines of math. If you recall the movie Contact, they are convinced that the message is from an intelligent life-form because it uses primes, and primes are something only intelligence could have used because it has no bearing on anything but the ideal constructs of mathematics - so says the scientists in the movie. But here we have a staggering connection showing that reality may connect to this prime concept in a very deep way.
Were we innately in touch with some deep part of the universe when we discovered, described and manipulated primes? Do we now start looking at all the "pure abstractions" and wondering if they are really just reflections of things we have not yet realized in the world around us? Does this point to a day when we see every thought ever had as part of the natural order because they are all entwined with phenomena at all levels of reality?
Maybe one or all of those questions are completely insane, but before this they were nonsense and now they may just have some standing.
What do you think?
seed magazine: prime numbers get hitched
Short summary of the article - Mathematicians say to physicists: "We give you all these great tools, you give us nothing. When are you going to pull your weight?" Physicists reply: "We're working on it, but how can physics, which is about reality, contribute to the pure ideal world of math?" Enter one very brave physicist who notes there is a similarity between the patterns in prime numbers and the patters in electron states in atoms. Primes have always been known to show up in patterns. Anyone who has been through high school physics since 1960 know electrons orbit in "shells" (states) where they sit in relation to the nucleus (center) of the atom and that it takes energy (given or taken) to switch from one "shell" to another. Well, it seems that they have been able to use what they know about electrons to make actual verifiable predictions about prime numbers.
Why is this SOOOOOOOOO cool that it makes me tingle every time I say it????
Well, I bet many of you have heard of things like the "golden ratio". It's basically a pattern that you can use to show how things like a conch shell or sunflower will grow. But it was found in nature, and then analyzed. So nature showed this to us and then we brought it into math to analyze. In other words, nothing new was brought to math by it's discovery. The tools of math were just used to describe it.
With these primes and the atomic states, we actually have reality informing us on a completely, until now, abstract issue. Prime numbers have always thought to be something wholly unrelated to anything but the confines of math. If you recall the movie Contact, they are convinced that the message is from an intelligent life-form because it uses primes, and primes are something only intelligence could have used because it has no bearing on anything but the ideal constructs of mathematics - so says the scientists in the movie. But here we have a staggering connection showing that reality may connect to this prime concept in a very deep way.
Were we innately in touch with some deep part of the universe when we discovered, described and manipulated primes? Do we now start looking at all the "pure abstractions" and wondering if they are really just reflections of things we have not yet realized in the world around us? Does this point to a day when we see every thought ever had as part of the natural order because they are all entwined with phenomena at all levels of reality?
Maybe one or all of those questions are completely insane, but before this they were nonsense and now they may just have some standing.
What do you think?
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