You've got mail and Sleepless in Seattle. I didn't know that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks had this Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan number going; or may be it was K & SRK having a MR & TH thing going; or maybe it was just parallel flows, like we say in UML parlance.
In the academic arena i foresee google scholar overtaking citeseer... one day, not just yet though.
It's that time of the year when you take stock; and it's not a roseate outlook. The blog is in real danger of descending to the depths of whiney blog, not that it ever left that state...
There just might be 2 kinds of bloggers
Those who blog for the sake of writing
Those who do it as a means of communication
That reminds me, I actually have a draft post waiting for my ftp to start working. I believe it's the first time that I've had a draft.
Getting back to the movies, also watched Garfield, Johnny English & Sweet November(Tv). If I watch a movie a week, I'd cover 52 movies; I really am not going to get on top of this movies thing, am i?
Christmas has come early this year; there are so many people about! all dressed up to boot. Saturdays used to be good, dammit.
Getting back to the movies again, the ones I watch insist on being anachronistic. Did i mention that i found You've got mail a bit disturbing...
The infinitely many monkeys theorem bugs me... But in the end, I guess the yinternet simply does not have enough of em. I wouldn't hold my breath. I'm getting that, "you're missing it, you big oaf!" feeling again...
The current state of creative and pseudo-philosophic bankruptcy is driving me to immortalise the conclusions drawn from a certain after luncheon discussion. Although I say discussion, it was more like a soliloquy which some colleagues had the misfortune of enduring.
I had long since wondered about the terms 'dating' and 'going out'. These vague concepts are usually defined with the help of equally vague concepts such as 'Romance' and 'Intimacy', while (un)scrupulously skirting the issue of sexual relations. Almost all explanations have left me with a vague sense of limbo. And almost all explanations have proved unsatisfactory in answering questions like
Can one date ones spouse?
If one is married, can one go out with a person other than ones spouse? Will this amount to cheating?
Can you date/go out with two people at the same time? Is this cheating?
The thorn is ofcourse in the definitions. And here be definitions that are the product of much < suitably profound word to indicate, nothing better to do > thought.
Dating:An individual is in the state of dating when he/she indulges in any collaborative activity performed in close proximity to a person(herewith referred to as the date) with fixed intent of having sexual relations with said date within a reasonably short duration of time after the said date.
Note that sexual relations need not be so restrictive as in the Clintonion sense, and that the pivotal words are fixed intent.i.e. very crudely put, you will only date a person if you are absolutely sure you want to sleep with that person.
Going Out: An individual is in the state of going-out when he/she indulges in any collaborative activity performed in close proximity to a person(herewith referred to as the partner) with some intent of having sexual relations with said partner within a reasonably short duration of time after the said going-out-session. (i.e. You aren't really sure... not 100%, but you're open to the possibility).
These two definitions necessitate a third definition,
Hanging out: An individual will hang out with another individual when he/she indulges in any collaborative activity performed in close proximity to a person(herewith referred to as the partner) with no intent of having sexual relations with said partner at any time.
These definitions, whilst not being accurate, does undeniably give you that warm fuzzy feeling which accompanies some kind of pseudo-understanding.
revisiting our earlier dilemmas,
Hell yes, you can date your spouse. You even have the option of going out; depends on how you define the reasonable time frame. On the other hand there will be certain moral issues to deal with If a married person dates or goes out with a person other than his/her spouse. You can most certainly date/go out with two people at the same time. Whether this is cheating is irrelevant.
There are some interesting side-effects;
Note that the definitions are from an individual perspective. And hence it is entirely possible to have a situation in which one person thinks they are dating whilst the other person perceives the situation as hanging out.
The definitions do not preclude two individuals merely hanging out, only to find themselves dating
Not bad eh? wot?
But the icing on the gateaux for me, is that, when you dear reader, go-out/date/hang-out, you will now remember my definitions and try to find a match. Oh oh and you'd also be trying to figure out if your partner thinks of it as dating or going out or hanging out. Muahahhahahahhaaaaaaaa. Sometimes, it is a pity, that I don't have much of a readership.
Some of the ideas, especially the definition of dating, had significant contributions from a colleague/s who will be most relieved that I've not referred to his/their contributions oops.
I constantly amaze myself with the sheer amount of nothing, that I'm capable of engaging in. The sense of amazement is second only to the repugnance of the rationalizations that renders the notion sufferable.
Hardly a post goes by, in forge's, without me having to google something; this time it was Zeitgeist(pronounced 'tsIt-"gIst, 'zIt). If you don't know what that is, google define: it... Go on.
Google Zeitgeist was what the wind blew in, on this occasion.'Search patterns, trends and surprises according to Google' is how it's described. What an amazing position google finds itself in - Data Mining Central. Google user search behavior apart, you get to draw entertaining conclusions. For example,
People are more interested in finding out where they are than in finding the meaning of a word.(Factoid, October 2004 , What reference tools were most searched for?).
Dragons are on the verge of ousting dogs from the position of mans best friend(Factoid October 2004, Which animals were most popular?)
There is also, the completely inexplicable; Britney Spears turns out to be the most popular celebrity searched for, on Image Search.
Ed (10:42:25 AM): I wonder if we can get avatars to h***(rhymes with lump) each other ...
Ed (10:43:25 AM): so in a conference there could be an orgy...
Now, if this were possible, would we?
Affirmative or negative, the really intriguing question would be, why so? or why not? What do we mean by it?
disclaimer: This post is ed's fault. Ed is a perv ;)
Entropy is defined as the amount of disorderliness in a system.
The essence of understanding is in finding order in a messy universe. As our understanding of the universe grows the orderliness in our brain increases. But as a consequence of work done to bring about this orderliness, the disorderliness of the universe as a whole increases; because entropy increases as work is performed. So the more we sort out the universe the more there is for us to sort out.
Observation[tangibles] -> Thought(projection of tangibles(data) + Programs(reflex || instinct || rules of inference and such as expressed in language || X factor)[processing] -> Expression(language, formal or natural) -> -> Observation(tangibles || expressed through language).
Observation:The process of our senses projecting the real world into models and subsequent storage.The process would not be unlike a digital camera taking a snap. Some type of Analog-to-Brainpic conversion and then storage in terms of nubits(neuron-bits).
Thought:'operations on data'. The data would be the nubit models, initially acquired through observation. Thought would be the process that transforms these models into other nubit models(output) according to certain procedures(operations).The initial procedures will be built-in; i.e.reflex and instinct.
example:Touching a hot object is the observation phase. Our sense of touch converts the physical 'hotness' to a nubit model. This nubit model triggers a built in protection mechanism(reflex) that transforms the 'hotness' nubit model to a 'get away' nubit model, which results in a reflex action that takes our hand away from the hot object.
Notice that the number of nubit models increase as a result of thought. The nubit model produced might be a static modeli.e. an abstraction of a real world entity or it might be a dynamic model i.e inference rules and procedures to be used in subsequent thought processes. Nubit models produced from thought may be validated by matching against reality; i.e the ones that are in-line with observations are kept and the others thrown out.
Expression:Brainpic-to-Analog conversion. Nubit model to a real-world phenomena conversion.
extending the previous example, A chap attempting to express the fact that coming into contact with hot objects is undesirable. This can be done through verbal communication, action or written communication.
Notice that the 'artifact' of expression becomes an observable for another individual.
example 2:
Observation - Newton sees an apple falling. A nubit model is created.
Thought - He applies other nubit models(the ones that he has been developing as a result of indulging in mentation) as processes to the falling-apple-neubit model. A gravitational theory nubit model is created.
Expression - He records his gravitational theory nubit model in formal mathematics.
Observation - Another individual reads(observes) Gravitational Theory and forms his own nubit model of gravitation...
And the cycle continues, within society as well as within an individual.
On the subject of ambiguity or misunderstanding..
Notice that ambiguity is built into this cycle.
Observation: you loose data when you convert from real-world to nubit models.
Thought: When an individual applies his own set of neubit models & programs to (already inaccurate) neubit data, the results may be different to that of another individual. i.e. I have my own mental picture of the Theory of Gravitation and you have yours.
Expression: When converting the neubit models back to reality-representable-format again there is a loss of information. i.e. I can't tell or put down on paper my interpretation of the Theory of gravitation.
Observation(by another individual) you are anyway reading a lossy representation of the Theory of gravitation.
Conclusions
Ambiguity comes built-into Thought. But hey, it works!
Thought communication is ambiguous. It would still involve converting my nubit models to yours; this is a lossy process.And also, interpreting nubit models. This is possibly unique to each individual as they have different nuebit procedures. So the processed models will differ from individual to individual. So conversion and intepretation will still bring in ambiguity.
Our knowledge is self contained. We will only be able to explain things in terms of what we already know. What we already know boils down to our basic observations.
disclaimer: This is an expression of a nubit model and is thus inherently ambiguous/incoherent. And according to (4) it is nothing new.
Assume that, our(an individual's) observations, values, beliefs and the rules used to intepret said values and beliefs, form a formal system in higher-order logic. Then, this formal system would infact represent an individuals 'understanding of the world'.
This uotw(pronounced U2) is an extrapolation of Hilbert's Program, constrained to one individuals perspective.
Hilbert's Program was proposed to formalize all existing axioms to a complete set of axioms and provide a proof that these axioms were consistent.
How did Hilbert hope to bridge these different systems? He proposed that the consistency of more complicated, higher-order logic systems could be proven in terms of simpler systems.
But, according to Godel even the simplest system strong enough to define natural numbers cannot prove it's own consistency let alone proving the consistency of anything at a higher order.
It follows that the consistency of uotw can never be proved. i.e there will always be a statement(not a theory, mind you) in uotw, that we would never be able to prove the truth or fallacy, of.
So an individual would never be able to vouch for the consistency of his uotw.Hence, our undertsanding was, is and always will be, wonky.
Wot a crock of shite. A prime example of seemingly-sceintific but grossly non-scientific thinking. More like fantasy gone bad.
Forgive me Albert, for I have sinned. I am guilty of shameless over-generalization in my attempt at explaining away the inaccuracy of vocabulary by invoking Godel.
Godel's first Theorem states that,
In any consistent formalization of mathematics that is sufficiently strong to define the concept of natural numbers, one can construct a statement that can be neither proved nor disproved within that system.
Here a formal system conforms to first-order logic, which permits the formulation of quantified statements such as " there is at least one X such that..." as opposed to higher-order logic which supports statements of the type "For All X, ......".
And a formal system is said to be consistent if none of its proven theorems can also be disproven within that system. Therefore a system is consistent if it lacks contradiction.
So a crude rewording of Godel, goes something like "In a system which does not contradict itself, it is possible to construct a statement(Not a theorem) which is neither provable nor disprovable." Ofcourse, for this statement to be invoked The system has to be a formal system conforming to first order logic capable of defining natural numbers. Rephrasing again, we can take it that in such a system, there will always be some statement which we cannot determine the truthfulness of.
Godel's second theorem states that,
Any consistent system cannot be used to prove its own consistency.
Rephrase: Take a system such as the one described above; Now take that systems rules and axioms. Godel tells us that, by working with those alone we cannot prove that the system does not contradict itself.
So Godel's first tells us that given a specific type of system we cannot assign a truth value to everything in that system. Godel's second tells us that, given such a system we cannot vouch for the non-contradictory nature of the said system by appealing only to elements contained within the system.
See, not only is the application of Godel limited, Godel does NOT apply to the completeness of systems.Completeness is another story altogether. And Godel does not preclude the existence of complete systems. What Godel questions is, our ability to claim the consistency of such systems, i.e The Hilbert Program and hence quite a huge chunk, of science.
So the argument put forth was, in a nutshell, pure bollocks.Kudos to forge for sorting me out.
It is so easy to stray <sigh > The temptation is just too much. See some vague familiarity in a situation and label it with some theory or the other, slap! bang! whammo! without taking any care to notice the real question at hand nor the applicability of the theory.
