2008: личные открытия

[ded_maxim]

Музыка: Detektivbyrån, Bon Iver, Eleanoora Rosenholm, Valet
Книги: Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen; Neal Stephenson, Anathem; Clifford A. Wright, A Mediterranean Feast
Кино: Get Carter (1971)
Политические блоги: Balloon Juice, Eunomia
Эпикурейские наслаждения: tarte tatin with crème fraîche and armagnac; she-crab soup and hush puppies
Гаджеты: iPhone

Comments

[wsobchak.livejournal.com]

tell me, do you think I missed something in my review of Anathem?

[ded-maxim.livejournal.com]

I think you've focused too much on the Platonic realm as we understand it (and all the baggage that goes with that, e.g., the Allegory of the Cave) -- whereas to Stephenson it just meant a universe that can causally affect us, but we cannot affect it. Otherwise I think you nailed it.

[wsobchak.livejournal.com]

he's pretty clear on the fact that the HTW is where all the stuff like perfect triangles dwells...I know that NS is at least an order of magnitude smarter than I, so I doubt that it's possible for me to consider implications of a concept he brings up which he has overlooked.

Thanks for the props, though.

[ded-maxim.livejournal.com]

From what I understood, he starts with the notion of the HTW as the Platonic realm in the standard sense and then refines it to mean a universe that can causally affect other universes, and then he proceeds to talk about the plurality of worlds, as long as there is a directed acyclic graph that captures their causal relationship. What he means, I think, is that, from our point of view, a world we cannot change can, for all practical purposes, be thought of as the realm where the perfect triangles and such like reside.

[wsobchak.livejournal.com]

that is not what I get out of this: http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem/acknow.htm

and the whole bat fish worm thing was a prime example of it-in the book the HTW deals with geometry and time, stuff you can't directly perceive through normal channels.

[ded-maxim.livejournal.com]

Right -- so the bat-fish-worm setup serves to show that, when confronted with higher-order phenomena that we cannot affect but that can affect us, we come up with a symbolic means of describing them, i.e., geometry. Maybe I misunderstood something, but the fact that we cannot perceive certain things directly (what you call "through normal channels") causes us to arrive at these symbolic structures that we can ascribe to these things and to their effect on us.

[wsobchak.livejournal.com]

the geometry has an existence OF ITS OWN which predates, informs and determines every material thing so that it can all be described geometrically. Hence, the HTW in which geometry dwells. It's not a way of describing higher order things that we can't affect-it IS one of those things.

[ded-maxim.livejournal.com]

Yes -- but it also arises as a means of describing them, just as the bat, the wish, and the worm use symbolic means to communicate about the traps that surround them.

[wsobchak.livejournal.com]

they don't use symbolic means-how could they establish those symbols and their representative meanings in the first place, lacking a common language?

[ded-maxim.livejournal.com]

So that's the whole point -- the symbolic means eventually emerge (like when the worm curls up into certain shapes, etc.) and are associated with various events in the environment. IIRC, the fish-bat-worm example was brought up first in the discussion about whether we may have means of communicating with extraterrestrials (which reminded me of Freudenthal's Lincos idea), and then led to the analogy of the fish, the bat, and the worm to parts of the brain, which eventually co-evolved to use common symbolic means to accomplish certain tasks. The symbols are established through the input/output behavior of each parts, and their representative meanings are learned (using reinforcement or whatever). Once a stable pattern is established, it essentially becomes a symbol.

tell me where I'm wrong below

[wsobchak.livejournal.com]

>The symbols are established through the input/output behavior of each parts, and their representative meanings are learned (using reinforcement or whatever). Once a stable pattern is established, it essentially becomes a symbol.

This is circular reasoning-until it understood to be a symbol by both sender and receiver,a pattern like this is useless. How does it become recognized as a symbol-well, the sender and the receiver have to have the same thing in mind, i.e., the geometric characteristics of whatever object is being symbolized. How is it that all objects follow the same geometric rules? The rules have an existence of their own which is more enduring than the objects, and this existence is in the HTW.

Which is all cool, but then the idea of having triangles come flying out of nowhere and open up a can of whupass is kind of silly.

Re: tell me where I'm wrong below

[ded-maxim.livejournal.com]

Would you mind if we resumed this discussion in 2009? I must get into the holiday mood (visit the parents and all).