Sunday Jan 4 2009, 2:51 AM
The fact that tiling rules can produce aperiodic patterns is a nifty hint that tiling is equivalent to Turing Machines.
Ghost Diagrams
Ghost Diagrams
okie
sarah
Saturday Jan 3 2009, 6:11 PM
A very close friend's mother passed away this week after a long battle with cancer. It's amazing how some things come along in life that just filter out the bullshit and completely refocus your worldview.
meta
Thursday Dec 25 2008, 5:42 PM
all of my clothes i've worn smell like cupcakes. that's nice but do i always smell like frosting?
2008-12-29 14:08:26
okie
This is definite.
jacob
Thursday Dec 18 2008, 11:24 PM
Sparks is no more
This is a perfect example a problem with mainstream media which angers me more than anything else that I can think of:
"A recent study found that college students who mix alcohol and energy drinks engage in increased heavy episodic drinking and have twice as many episodes of weekly drunkenness. College students who reported consuming alcohol mixed with energy drinks also had significantly higher prevalence of alcohol-related consequences, like sexual assault and injury."I would be willing to bet money that these people don't drink that much as a result of drinking alcoholic energy drinks like Sparks, but rather that they drink alcoholic energy drinks like Sparks because they are already heavy drinkers, and that not selling them prepackaged drinks like that won't change a damn thing.
Attention everyone involved in the reporting of statistical studies such as this one: correlation does not imply causation. Period. Please stop drawing bullshit conclusions from statistics that you are not qualified to understand or interpret in any meaningful way.
okie
Wednesday Dec 17 2008, 3:27 PM
Developing Bohm's Ideas...
In Wholeness and the Implicate Order, David Bohm challenges the following ideas (along with others not listed here):
1. That phenomena are reducible to fundamental particles and laws describing the behaviour of particles, or more generally to any static (i.e. unchanging) entities, whether separate events in space-time, quantum states, or static entities of some other nature.
2. That the Cartesian coordinate system, or its extension to a curvilinear system, is the deepest conception of underlying order as a basis for analysis and description of the world.
Regarding the first one, I probably also challenge the notion that all phenomena can be reduced to the behavior of static entities, depending on what is considered static. A static state should be defined as a state that can be computed. Here, the formal machinery that is and/or describes the computable state is the entity of a static nature. I don't necessarily agree with the restatement, but I think it makes a more interesting question. This definition places has no necessary connection to locality in space or time. Furthermore, the second item is an unnecessary notion that restricts our concept of time, the nature of an entity, and causation.
In Wholeness and the Implicate Order, David Bohm challenges the following ideas (along with others not listed here):
1. That phenomena are reducible to fundamental particles and laws describing the behaviour of particles, or more generally to any static (i.e. unchanging) entities, whether separate events in space-time, quantum states, or static entities of some other nature.
2. That the Cartesian coordinate system, or its extension to a curvilinear system, is the deepest conception of underlying order as a basis for analysis and description of the world.
Regarding the first one, I probably also challenge the notion that all phenomena can be reduced to the behavior of static entities, depending on what is considered static. A static state should be defined as a state that can be computed. Here, the formal machinery that is and/or describes the computable state is the entity of a static nature. I don't necessarily agree with the restatement, but I think it makes a more interesting question. This definition places has no necessary connection to locality in space or time. Furthermore, the second item is an unnecessary notion that restricts our concept of time, the nature of an entity, and causation.
2008-12-18 01:27:31
Briggs
I'm really glad that second one was mentioned.
2008-12-18 02:06:13
Jake
Is there anyone who *does* argue for the second one?
2008-12-20 01:16:03
Briggs
No. No one needs to argue *for* it, because it's already used all the time.
2008-12-22 03:12:09
seohyung
In regards to the second idea, the notion that we (can? must?) specify categories of understanding in order to understand phenomena, and that it takes a significant amount of effort to even articulate those categories was mind-blowing to me when I first encountered it. But then I realized that at the same time we're choosing some categories of describing, we're abandoning others; furthermore we begin to see only in those categories we chose to describe phenomena (descriptive=> prescriptive) even when there's more to be perceived in the lurking reality (reality beyond affect is yet another issue worth delving into?). Do you know about Charles Lyell, the geologist?
2008-12-22 06:49:57
okie
No, I don't know the geologist, and reading some things about him on the internet didn't show me how he's related to the topic...is he? :)
2009-01-02 00:56:58
bryan
re: your heartbeat/breath rational twitter:
when they align you die.
when they align you die.
alissa
Wednesday Dec 17 2008, 11:33 AM
hm. how is it possible that i am still taking final exams? didn't i do this enough times already? clearly i missed the boat somewhere.
11th semester of finals. rock on.
also, I owe a formal apology to Behram for not including his August visit on my blog.
Formal apology begin: I AM SOOO SORRY! Formal apology end.
Quick recap of visit: Behram, Collin, and Luke stopped by on their way to Cali in August. I was worried that my adultish/lame lifestyle would freak them out (and it did, I think my 'real' house scared the beejebus out of Luke) so I tried to plan something weird and silly to do. Which I did, and it worked famously! We went to the Michigan Renaissance Festival for the opening weekend. I don't know if other states have these but they are AWESOME and about the nerdiest ,weirdest, most random thing that happens around here in the fall. Do people wear medieval costumes and buy swords and chain mail? YES. Is there meat on a stick? YES. Did I get to drink some mead and get thrown in jail by my "friends" and have to sing a silly nursery rhyme to get out of said jail? YES. Is there a joust and wench show, complete with noisy, smelly wenches who yell at you? YES. And did i win the axe-throwing contest? FUCK YEA. Moral of the story: Don't mess with me because I can throw a small axe and probably hit you with it.
11th semester of finals. rock on.
also, I owe a formal apology to Behram for not including his August visit on my blog.
Formal apology begin: I AM SOOO SORRY! Formal apology end.
Quick recap of visit: Behram, Collin, and Luke stopped by on their way to Cali in August. I was worried that my adultish/lame lifestyle would freak them out (and it did, I think my 'real' house scared the beejebus out of Luke) so I tried to plan something weird and silly to do. Which I did, and it worked famously! We went to the Michigan Renaissance Festival for the opening weekend. I don't know if other states have these but they are AWESOME and about the nerdiest ,weirdest, most random thing that happens around here in the fall. Do people wear medieval costumes and buy swords and chain mail? YES. Is there meat on a stick? YES. Did I get to drink some mead and get thrown in jail by my "friends" and have to sing a silly nursery rhyme to get out of said jail? YES. Is there a joust and wench show, complete with noisy, smelly wenches who yell at you? YES. And did i win the axe-throwing contest? FUCK YEA. Moral of the story: Don't mess with me because I can throw a small axe and probably hit you with it.
okie
Wednesday Dec 17 2008, 7:55 AM
Hungry Monster Computer
Imagine a pretty-much infinite string of symbols. To make the symbols change, there's a machine with a mouth that can bite between one and infinity symbols at one time and apply some rules to them that change the symbols into other symbols. And then the rules tell the monster what to do next (where to bite next, how to change the shape of his mouth, when to stop eating, etc.), and that's how the monster eats. If the monster has a small mouth, it was programmed by an imperative programming language and he has to bite a lot of time before he's finished eating the string. If his mouth is super-large, he was created by a functional programming language, and he takes fewer bites.
Though monsters have all sizes of mouths, any monster can make a string end up any way any other monster can make a string end up, given enough bites and the right method of eating. But there's one thing no monster can do. No monster can tell whether any other monster will eat forever or not without, in some cases, eating forever while figuring out...unless the monster is fairly crazy.
Evidently, or so it has been said before, there can be a monster that can emulate any other monster...or there's a language that can describe any monster and a monster that can understand this language. This monster can either have a very simple mouth and the capacity to have tremendously complex methods of eating OR a ridiculously deformable mouth and very simple ways of chewing OR somewhere in between. Now, usually people think of any of these monsters as equivalent because they can, in the end, make one string into any other string. Then we might think that it's silly to think of these monsters as being equivalent because the strings they chew evolve so differently.
Well, it turns out, if we look at what's going on with the string + what's going on inside of the monster + what the monster is, everything adds up. And actually, we can split and splice the string, the monster, and whatever other "things" we want to describe into whatever other "things" or thing we want to...as long as time (or the step(s) of the process) is one of those things.
We can actually think of all of the universe in the same way we think of the monster system. The universe is all of the information it takes to describe "what is" and "what happens". We can designate whatever we want to be "what is" and "what happens" according to a trade-off. If we want to have more things, less happens, but the cool thing is that we can jump between these "views" (trading off thing-stuff, rules for happening) and even look at the universe from more than one view at the same time. We do this when we connect chemistry and physics.
In chemistry, we can think about the universe as being made up of atoms, and an atom is everything that's goes on there. The tricky part is when there are "in-between" situations, for example, when an atom splits or is being formed. To speak of everything as atoms, we would define a measurement and thresholds that determine whether there's an atom or not. Those measurements could be based on a deeper probing of the atom or a higher level behavior of the atom such as a chemical reaction, or a combination of both such as when a carbon atom is called a carbon atom when it's part of a piece of graphite OR a strand of DNA. The real power comes with being able to use different views at the same time without feeling that there is a contradiction.
Here's the thing that Einstein was unable to swallow along with many others: things affect other things based on how you define the things and what interactions can be expressed in the language used to describe the interactions and things. The way we go about doing science is both limited by and expanded by the mathematical language of which we can conceive.
Imagine a pretty-much infinite string of symbols. To make the symbols change, there's a machine with a mouth that can bite between one and infinity symbols at one time and apply some rules to them that change the symbols into other symbols. And then the rules tell the monster what to do next (where to bite next, how to change the shape of his mouth, when to stop eating, etc.), and that's how the monster eats. If the monster has a small mouth, it was programmed by an imperative programming language and he has to bite a lot of time before he's finished eating the string. If his mouth is super-large, he was created by a functional programming language, and he takes fewer bites.
Though monsters have all sizes of mouths, any monster can make a string end up any way any other monster can make a string end up, given enough bites and the right method of eating. But there's one thing no monster can do. No monster can tell whether any other monster will eat forever or not without, in some cases, eating forever while figuring out...unless the monster is fairly crazy.
Evidently, or so it has been said before, there can be a monster that can emulate any other monster...or there's a language that can describe any monster and a monster that can understand this language. This monster can either have a very simple mouth and the capacity to have tremendously complex methods of eating OR a ridiculously deformable mouth and very simple ways of chewing OR somewhere in between. Now, usually people think of any of these monsters as equivalent because they can, in the end, make one string into any other string. Then we might think that it's silly to think of these monsters as being equivalent because the strings they chew evolve so differently.
Well, it turns out, if we look at what's going on with the string + what's going on inside of the monster + what the monster is, everything adds up. And actually, we can split and splice the string, the monster, and whatever other "things" we want to describe into whatever other "things" or thing we want to...as long as time (or the step(s) of the process) is one of those things.
We can actually think of all of the universe in the same way we think of the monster system. The universe is all of the information it takes to describe "what is" and "what happens". We can designate whatever we want to be "what is" and "what happens" according to a trade-off. If we want to have more things, less happens, but the cool thing is that we can jump between these "views" (trading off thing-stuff, rules for happening) and even look at the universe from more than one view at the same time. We do this when we connect chemistry and physics.
In chemistry, we can think about the universe as being made up of atoms, and an atom is everything that's goes on there. The tricky part is when there are "in-between" situations, for example, when an atom splits or is being formed. To speak of everything as atoms, we would define a measurement and thresholds that determine whether there's an atom or not. Those measurements could be based on a deeper probing of the atom or a higher level behavior of the atom such as a chemical reaction, or a combination of both such as when a carbon atom is called a carbon atom when it's part of a piece of graphite OR a strand of DNA. The real power comes with being able to use different views at the same time without feeling that there is a contradiction.
Here's the thing that Einstein was unable to swallow along with many others: things affect other things based on how you define the things and what interactions can be expressed in the language used to describe the interactions and things. The way we go about doing science is both limited by and expanded by the mathematical language of which we can conceive.
2008-12-17 15:50:49
gwax
I feel that your discussion of chemistry/physics in this post, especially when juxtaposed with your discussion of Turing machines, is founded in an insufficient understanding of the principles of quantum mechanics.
Specifically, quantum mechanics can describe both "what is" and "what happens" concurrently and in a single framework; the trade-off, which you suggest, does not exist. Further, under many interpretations of quantum mechanics, the universe does not contain all of the information necessary to understand "what is" and "what happens"; there is more going on and how we perceive is fundamentally changes it.
Also, though Einstein disagreed with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, that should not suggest that he didn't have a better grasp of quantum mechanics than almost everyone since.
Specifically, quantum mechanics can describe both "what is" and "what happens" concurrently and in a single framework; the trade-off, which you suggest, does not exist. Further, under many interpretations of quantum mechanics, the universe does not contain all of the information necessary to understand "what is" and "what happens"; there is more going on and how we perceive is fundamentally changes it.
Also, though Einstein disagreed with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, that should not suggest that he didn't have a better grasp of quantum mechanics than almost everyone since.
2008-12-17 17:52:04
okie
Maybe you've misunderstood what I mean by "what is" and "what happens". The trade-off is easy to see in the uncertainty principle: position is "what is" and momentum is "what happens". I don't know what kind of universe would not contain all the information it needs to describe itself. I would say that we can think about the universe containing systems that do not have access to all information. We can also think about the universe as a system that has access to all the information that it has access to. To say that "other" information exists adds nothing to a theory and is really meaningless. I'm not claiming that Einstein didn't understand quantum mechanics. I am claiming that it seems he had a narrow viewpoint about how things could possibly be.
2008-12-17 19:45:26
gwax
First, I did not mean to suggest that "other" information exists but rather that some information does not exist.
If the universe has access to all of the information it needs to describe itself, that would mean that the universe is deterministic. The deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics require either hidden variables, parallel minds or parallel universes. Both parallel minds and parallel universes are inconsistent with single universes, thus also being inconsistent with a universe that can completely describe itself; hidden variables are inconsistent with Bell's experiments. Therefor, quantum mechanics is inconsistent with a universe that has access to all the information it needs to describe itself.
Furthermore, the uncertainty principle does not tell us anything about the momentum or position of a particle; it tells us about what we might be able to determine about a particle's momentum and position with a given observation. Two separate observations of the same particle at the same precise moment might yield different and wholely inconsistent results, as illustrated by Bell's experiments and theorem.
If the universe has access to all of the information it needs to describe itself, that would mean that the universe is deterministic. The deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics require either hidden variables, parallel minds or parallel universes. Both parallel minds and parallel universes are inconsistent with single universes, thus also being inconsistent with a universe that can completely describe itself; hidden variables are inconsistent with Bell's experiments. Therefor, quantum mechanics is inconsistent with a universe that has access to all the information it needs to describe itself.
Furthermore, the uncertainty principle does not tell us anything about the momentum or position of a particle; it tells us about what we might be able to determine about a particle's momentum and position with a given observation. Two separate observations of the same particle at the same precise moment might yield different and wholely inconsistent results, as illustrated by Bell's experiments and theorem.
2008-12-17 21:18:37
okie
If the universe has access to all of the information it needs to describe itself, that would mean that the universe is deterministic.
Not really...a wavefunction contains all the information the universe needs to describe itself, and we could say that the universe computes the evolution of it. There need not be any hidden variables or parallel business here...only the the universe is kind of like "one thing" from this perspective. Or, the notion of a thing is much different from other views.
Furthermore, the uncertainty principle does not tell us anything about the momentum or position of a particle; it tells us about what we might be able to determine about a particle\'s momentum and position with a given observation.
Your second statement here is consistent with a consistent interpretation, but the first statement is misleading. The second statement explains why the first one is a little off...but I know what you meant. Also, the story and experiments regarding Bell's theorem is a work in progress.
Not really...a wavefunction contains all the information the universe needs to describe itself, and we could say that the universe computes the evolution of it. There need not be any hidden variables or parallel business here...only the the universe is kind of like "one thing" from this perspective. Or, the notion of a thing is much different from other views.
Furthermore, the uncertainty principle does not tell us anything about the momentum or position of a particle; it tells us about what we might be able to determine about a particle\'s momentum and position with a given observation.
Your second statement here is consistent with a consistent interpretation, but the first statement is misleading. The second statement explains why the first one is a little off...but I know what you meant. Also, the story and experiments regarding Bell's theorem is a work in progress.
okie
Tuesday Dec 9 2008, 1:28 AM
Depiction of Ideas
Process theory is a way of thinking about events occurring in which some transformation manifests.
Systems theory is a way of thinking about information or things in terms of a structure of relationships.
Category theory in mathematics is a dealing with relationships between mathematical structures.
I don't think category theory swallows process and systems theory. I think process theory and systems theory together form one of many special sets of complete ways of dealing with mathematical thought.
Process theory is a way of thinking about events occurring in which some transformation manifests.
Systems theory is a way of thinking about information or things in terms of a structure of relationships.
Category theory in mathematics is a dealing with relationships between mathematical structures.
I don't think category theory swallows process and systems theory. I think process theory and systems theory together form one of many special sets of complete ways of dealing with mathematical thought.
2008-12-09 22:39:06
bryan
this kind of metamath doesn't do it for me
it's like the algebra of metamath, blech
it's like the algebra of metamath, blech
2008-12-10 14:37:17
okie
It has a weird feel to it. It's exciting to feel little structures from different thought systems begin to resonate...especially if you know one of them well, and it is well connected with other side-structures. You may feel it with the different equivalent formulations of quantum mechanics (i.e. Schrödinger wave mechanics, Dirac's algebraic formulation, and Feynman's path integrals) or their analogous view of classical physics: kinetics and Newtonian mechanics, energy state transitions, and least action principles. And these divisions have a lot in common with the same divisions that are being made in computing paradigms. It can also feel meaningless or weird to feel like you're exploring a new way of looking at something if you're doing it alone, and I think this restricts people who find legitimate paths and from people just being able to jump in and do it at will.
meta
okie- you made my whole blog slanty
that looks like an extremely fun game
Sunday Dec 7 2008, 8:23 PM
2008-12-12 02:51:40
amanda
nvrmnd. matt beat us both. 12
2008-12-19 19:51:03
amanda
okie- you made my whole blog slanty
that looks like an extremely fun game
2008-12-20 18:39:57
okie
sorry! i want to play
meta
Older Sunday Dec 7 2008, 8:20 PM
]]]]Day of Gumbo[[[[
Friday night Seohyung and I went to dinner then stayed in and watched the royal tenenbaums. she spent the night, we stayed up late talking and i woke up exhausted saturday but still made it to harvest and back to bexley at 2pm like i had planned to start cooking. Justen was a great sous-chef and together we made a delicious gumbo and managed to NOT set off the bexley fire alarm after the one in my room went off.
friends and friends came over and we invented games and played jenga and then there was a camp fire with s'mores in the courtyard. after eating much gumbo and many s'mores we all headed over to crash the beta christmas party, which was in fact a shit show.
one our way back to bexley marcus and i lost mali and some scary shit went down. i hope she'll alright. love you, mali.
Friday night Seohyung and I went to dinner then stayed in and watched the royal tenenbaums. she spent the night, we stayed up late talking and i woke up exhausted saturday but still made it to harvest and back to bexley at 2pm like i had planned to start cooking. Justen was a great sous-chef and together we made a delicious gumbo and managed to NOT set off the bexley fire alarm after the one in my room went off.
friends and friends came over and we invented games and played jenga and then there was a camp fire with s'mores in the courtyard. after eating much gumbo and many s'mores we all headed over to crash the beta christmas party, which was in fact a shit show.
one our way back to bexley marcus and i lost mali and some scary shit went down. i hope she'll alright. love you, mali.
2008-12-18 12:07:55
okie
That movie once scared me more than almost anything has before.