tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48193394653142860122012-01-22T13:27:24.623-08:00der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.comBlogger671100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-56645204900845478452012-01-22T13:11:00.000-08:002012-01-22T13:27:24.652-08:00

Personal identity is one of my favorite philosophical subjects to think about. It's been a mystery to me literally as long as I can remember. I remember being a kid and creeping myself out by wondering things like, "How do I exist?" and "Why am I me rather than someone else?" "If you replaced all my memories with other memories, would anything of me remain?" Philosopher Julian Baggini

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-49529207091394762952011-05-28T07:44:00.000-07:002011-05-28T07:44:59.008-07:00

I wanted to spend time on the presuppositions of Kant's philosophy in the last post because like much in Kant's philosophy they seem like they're open to easy attack. They're not. I wanted to draw a close connection between the presuppositions of Kant's moral philosophy and modernity generally, specifically modern technology and modern science. Kant and the rest of us assume a radical fact/

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-16079781386559410782011-03-27T10:00:00.000-07:002011-03-27T10:00:49.425-07:00

Kant noticed a paradox in all other theories of morality: so long as morality is based upon the idea that there was some object or material concept worth striving for by virtue of its intrinsic goodness—be it happiness, perfection, a moral feeling, the will of God, the 10 commandments, or the good life for man—then morality is impossible. Kant's claim was radical. These weren't just the wrong

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-78891186354427711092011-03-20T14:05:00.000-07:002011-03-20T14:05:36.990-07:00

Excerpt from something I wrote a couple years ago that I want to reproduce here... The reason I asked what your concept of God entails (other than to entertain myself while at work) is that my reaction to the use of this concept is often one of puzzlement and confusion. When it's used to refer to the omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely good, anthropomorphic entity that created the universe that

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-36475160053246457792011-02-03T16:00:00.000-08:002011-02-03T16:00:09.062-08:00

The really interesting thing Alan Turing did was to turn the machine itself into a kind of input. What the machine deals with and the machine itself aren't different in kind. This is the idea that both program and input are held in the same memory space—an essential feature of the von Neumann architecture that describes nearly every computer in existence today. But the engineering feat is

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-176632097271454272011-01-31T07:56:00.000-08:002011-01-31T07:56:45.762-08:00

I think each person has in them an impulse toward the light and an impulse toward the dark. I don't mean good and evil necessarily, but I suppose that's part of it. By "light" I mean "clear" and by "dark" I mean "confused". If you're clear about who you really are—what you value, what truly has meaning to you, and what your life is about—then that very act of self-consciousness will propel

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-86797556662440367952011-01-22T11:09:00.000-08:002011-01-22T11:09:49.883-08:00

Understand intelligence and its role in the world from a cosmological perspective. Because only when you understand it from a cosmological perspective will you be motivated to act, even when there are setbacks and things seem bleak. I would say this is the most important part. If you have trouble with philosophy, then embrace an appropriate religion, one that emphasizes compassion toward all

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-19478343204415404622011-01-11T19:15:00.000-08:002011-01-12T06:54:24.120-08:00

While I was running today (yes, I'm insane enough to run in this weather), I was thinking about how I might explain dialectics to someone who knows nothing about it. It's actually not that difficult. Most of what follows is from Scott Meikle's Essentialism in the Thought of Karl Marx, though a lot of it comes from things I've read here and there. Dialectics is a theory about (a) what exists

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-90137337620656706782011-01-10T18:27:00.000-08:002011-01-11T12:33:55.972-08:00

Unfortunately one of the problems with knowing about the law of accelerating returns is that you can see how unimaginative most science fiction plots are. Case in point: I watched Surrogates tonight starring Bruce Willis. It's about a future in which people can interact with the world via remote controlled robots while they stay at home. Now, a typical inner (or outer, irate) monologue of

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-21720678027215928392011-01-10T09:29:00.001-08:002011-01-10T09:29:55.829-08:00

A year ago I predicted we'd find 116 exoplanets by NYE 2010. We ended up finding 106. My prediction for this year is 160.

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-14130657481696918362011-01-05T08:36:00.000-08:002011-01-20T11:24:50.929-08:00

On the ride into work today I was thinking about some of the Great MysteriesTM. Things like, "Why does anything exist?" or "What the hell is up with quantum mechanics?" I've always been partial to the mysteries surrounding consciousness and personal identity. Yes, things like quantum entanglement are weird and interesting, but for me they don't pack the same punch I feel when I think about

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-39459455707754325432011-01-03T13:14:00.000-08:002011-01-03T13:14:13.140-08:00

Basic human coping skills like driving a car or playing ball seem based on the ability to recognize and respond to patterns, not solving equations or doing calculations. The general know-how involved here is based upon directly perceiving possibilities and acting on them, not knowing (implicitly or explicitly) that some set of facts holds. I have to expand on this later, but I wonder if there's

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-50125712579345685672010-12-28T15:07:00.000-08:002010-12-28T15:07:51.777-08:00

I don't understand people when they say they're okay with death. "When my time is up, it's up." Oh really? I'll believe that when you're facing death and saying it. I'm not saying there aren't good reasons to want death (or, if you're a Spinozist, at least good prima facie reasons). If you're hopelessly trapped or in unceasing agony, I could see preferring death to life. What I doubt

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-20236874470467698132010-12-19T17:41:00.000-08:002010-12-19T17:42:41.612-08:00

It's old news, but SETI is on the lookout for artificial intelligence."If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you," he told BBC News. "But within a few hundred years of inventing radio - at least if we're any example - you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-3849322288562312982010-12-18T12:44:00.000-08:002010-12-18T12:44:43.296-08:00

I started watching Mad Men. It's a delightful and entertaining show and very well written. It's inspired me to start drinking Old Fashioneds and to wear pocket squares. It's not inspiring me to smoke. Nothing has inspired me to smoke since I quit four and a half years ago. It's also one of the most interesting shows I've ever watched. It depicts an America arguably at the zenith of its

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-76694922493839913042010-12-18T10:41:00.000-08:002010-12-18T10:55:19.140-08:00

Right now I'm reading The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature by Geoffrey Miller. The author's thesis is that the human mind evolved for the purpose of courtship. The reason we're able to tell jokes, build monuments, compose sonatas, and follow fashion is the same reason peacocks are able to grow such magnificent tails and beetles have such elaborate markings on

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-8263432322020708352010-12-17T16:57:00.000-08:002010-12-18T09:36:45.495-08:00

When you think about it, the idea of a sexual revolution is bizarre. Most animal species are distinguished by their sexual displays: courting behaviors, feathers, facial hair, markings on carapace, etc. There are plenty of species which would be indistinguishable except on a molecular level were it not for their sexual displays. In the world of biological evolution, a sexual revolution usually

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-11968751555671106552010-12-04T11:22:00.000-08:002010-12-04T14:50:50.524-08:00

I think this person is absolutely right about the significance of the industrial revolution but also misses the point about the technological singularity. There can be no doubt that the industrial revolution represented a profound break in human history. Adding to what Mr. Shalizi states in his post, we can also include massive movements of population, unprecedented increases in worker

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-80540088861090866732010-12-02T15:37:00.000-08:002010-12-02T15:47:03.621-08:00

The announcement today from NASA that they had discovered a form of life that uses arsenic rather than phosphorus has many implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. Scientists don't have to limit their search to areas that only have carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur now. It's at least as important as the discovery of archaea in the 1970s. But I think the

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-30406969307418857012010-10-27T15:38:00.000-07:002010-10-27T15:38:19.571-07:00

In some respects I'm an optimist about history, and in some respects I'm a pessimist. I'm an optimist insofar as I think Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns is probably right, at least in its fundamental intuitions. By that I mean that the sort of technological change most people think will take centuries to realize will in fact take decades. Will a non-biological intelligence pass the

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-67269966801728238482010-10-22T15:44:00.000-07:002010-10-22T15:45:06.518-07:00

There was an article in yesterday's The New Scientist which lends support to claims I made in an earlier series of posts on evolution. According to the article, once complex organisms come into existence, they're freed from a host of constraints. This might allow their subsequent development to seem meteoric by comparison. The problem is crossing that initial hurdle from simplicity to

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-43722621669240560762010-10-12T07:50:00.000-07:002010-10-12T08:07:32.801-07:00

I recently came across an interesting quote in an article I was reading: If the universe lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, no matter how unlikely. In fact, this event will happen an infinite number of times.The article has to do with the laws of physics and why time must eventually end, but I had thought about this idea previously while thinking about abiogenesis and the

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-28366715512706725262010-10-07T17:24:00.000-07:002010-10-07T17:29:10.088-07:00

For a change of pace, here's some music I've been really into lately: I like how this one rolls in like low cloud cover. The Raincoats is Ana da Silva, Vicky Aspinall, and Gina Birch. Their drummer Palmolive (formerly of The Slits) quit before they did this album, so they had to make it up as they went along. It's why the percussion sounds so strange and why the overall effect is so

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-76827303626669314262010-10-07T16:18:00.000-07:002010-10-08T07:14:48.655-07:00

I want to clarify the post I wrote on sustainability yesterday. There are many definitions of the word "sustainability", and I don't want to give the impression that I'm impugning environmentalism. I'm not. In some contexts, it's a feel-good buzz-word with little substance, but that's not the case for all uses of the word. One important, legitimate use of the concept has to do with promoting

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-74654499970362668722010-10-06T13:05:00.000-07:002010-10-07T12:07:38.710-07:00

If you think about it, every society above the hunter-gatherer level has been "unsustainable" in one way or another. It's by no means a new feature or one restricted to industrial society. Yet over the long haul, the positive feedback mechanism between population growth and technological advance has remained intact. One civilization may not be able to resolve its immediate problems and prevent

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-45703816066201871372010-10-05T15:50:00.000-07:002010-10-14T16:37:43.759-07:00

I've been reading Guns, Germs and Steel. It's thought-provoking. The thesis that geography is what gave Eurasia the "head start" that allowed it to develop the tools to conquer the rest of the world is compelling. Diamond thinks on the largest scale of human history imaginable. He'd accept what Weber has to say about the role of Protestantism and capitalism while at the same time complaining

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-75487956278133954192010-09-29T16:07:00.000-07:002010-09-29T16:07:21.907-07:00

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/real-habitable-exoplanet/ Looks like these guys were pretty much on the money. They claimed there was a better than 50% chance we'd find a "Goldilocks" zone planet by May of next year. Interesting quote from the Wired article:“The fact that we found one so close and so early on in the search suggests there’s a lot of these things,” Butler says. Only

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-64519095930093454432010-09-11T08:24:00.000-07:002010-09-11T08:24:29.651-07:00

While I was on my run this morning, I thought a bit about E.O. Wilson's "epic of evolution":Human beings must have an epic, a sublime account of how the world was created and how humanity became part of it ... Religious epics satisfy another primal need. They confirm we are part of something greater than ourselves (…) The way to achieve our epic that unites human spirituality, instead of cleave

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-41654316614810082972010-09-10T15:05:00.000-07:002010-09-10T15:09:32.290-07:00

This is one of the more surprising TED talks I've watched. Hans Rosling, a doctor and researcher of hunger diseases in Africa and international health generally, gives a dazzling presentation of data debunking our preconceptions of the developing world. Some of the points he proves using statistics throughout his 20 minute presentation:We underestimate the tremendous change in Asia, which was

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-14022971478318860482010-09-03T08:34:00.000-07:002010-09-03T09:38:21.569-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/03/hawking.god.universe.criticisms/Writing in the Times, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: "Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation ... The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being."What an absurd statement to make. Every religion makes claims about the origin of the world, and the Judeo-Christian religions

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-35032090557026879942010-08-06T17:45:00.000-07:002010-08-06T17:45:58.924-07:00

I shouldn't be disingenuous. I don't relate to identity politics. But I think that's because I don't relate to subcultures generally. Clearly it's not enough that I'm a man, am white, and am from a middle class background. I know plenty of white, middle class males who ostentatiously self-flagellate and renounce their "privilege". I don't know. It must be some weird thing in my upbringing.

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-1610292835111193022010-08-06T14:29:00.000-07:002010-08-06T14:40:09.282-07:00

I realized today that identity politics is probably just one facet of a larger movement against the cultural mainstream. I realized this when I was thinking about the difference some draw between "liberal" and "radical" approaches to issues of gender, race, or sexual orientation. One of the features common across so-called "liberal" approaches—usually as they're portrayed by their "radical"

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-86331409094070915292010-08-01T06:53:00.000-07:002010-08-01T06:53:31.713-07:00

I've given more thought to the subject matter of my previous post on geek culture, and I've come up with an answer which seems so obvious that I don't know why it didn't occur to me before. Intense interest in a subject or an activity can't make you geek. You also have to be part of the subculture. And everyone knows being part of a subculture is more than taking an interest in certain

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-16937536395998803132010-07-30T15:19:00.000-07:002010-07-30T15:21:07.197-07:00

Immigration is one of the few issues I've moved further to the left on over the past few years, and I've done so for reasons damn similar to those given by this dickhead: Is there any moral difference between sneaking a job across a border (which is what outsourcing is, by the way) and sneaking a person across a border to work a job? Either capitalism is global, or it's not. Unless your

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-24481093039084826622010-07-28T10:04:00.000-07:002010-07-28T10:04:53.182-07:00

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz's article in The Atlantic today, What's Wrong With the American University System, serves as a nice segue from my last post into some more general comments about liberal arts education in a technocratic information society.[L]iberal arts, properly conceived, means wrestling with issues and ideas, putting the mind to work in a way these young people will only be able to do

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-34390378652888753372010-07-28T07:58:00.000-07:002010-07-28T08:02:00.882-07:00

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- GIT/M/MU/P/S/SS/O d-- s-: a C++ UL++>$ P++>$ L++>$ E--- W++ w+ PS++ PE++ GPG++ t-- X R* !tv b++++ G-e+++ h+ r ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ I've had a number of discussions over the past few weeks with different people about geeks and geek culture. I'm ambivalent toward geek culture. Many geeks I meet seem clueless about basic aspects of political and social

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-63320649686479080782010-07-18T14:27:00.000-07:002010-07-18T14:53:52.299-07:00

While I was on the bike at the gym today, I read the chapter on Hegel's philosophy of history in Herbert Marcuse's book Reason and Revolution. This is probably the most derided and dismissed part of Hegel's philosophy, maybe even more so than his philosophy of nature, owing to what some take to be its political and moral implications. As Marcuse himself puts it:Hegel's picture of the

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-79226632136356207362010-06-20T16:13:00.000-07:002010-06-20T16:13:34.403-07:00

The skill ladder keeps going up.  I remember what it was like working in IT back in 1998, and it's nothing like it is now.  The amount you need to know to break into this industry is somewhat daunting.  A lot of those jobs were being outsourced then, but it's crazy now.   Or not even outsourced - a lot of it is just automated.  In fact, that was my first IT job: automating shit.   This guy 

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-73824980401163492652010-06-17T17:16:00.000-07:002010-06-17T17:16:39.614-07:00

From the New York Times Magazine:“Toured the Burj in this U.A.E. city. They say it’s the tallest tower in the world; looked over the ledge and lost my lunch.” This is the quintessential sort of clue you hear on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” It’s witty (the clue’s category is “Postcards From the Edge”), demands a large store of trivia and requires contestants to make confident, split-second

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-31082957321485027662010-06-16T14:22:00.000-07:002010-06-16T14:22:01.259-07:00

There was an article in the NYT the other day about progress and lack thereof in medicine in the past 10 years since the human genome was decoded.The initial attraction of genomics was the assumption that knowing all the genes would lead to the discovery of thousands of new targets. And to some extent that has happened. But compared to the past, when targets tended to be discovered by academic

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-30259823568509178822010-06-12T12:03:00.000-07:002010-06-12T12:09:12.009-07:00

The point of view I suggested here is that the universe is intelligent. The universe has always had intelligence, since it has always had some form, and as this form has evolved, so too has the intelligence of the universe. This is another way of saying that the basic building blocks of the universe are not inchoate particulars (what Aristotle and the Greeks referred to as "hypokeimenon" or "

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-62955547858431914942010-06-03T17:03:00.000-07:002010-06-03T17:10:48.405-07:00

If you're in an auditorium and you notice that no one is standing but all the seats are taken, it makes sense to conclude that there are exactly as many people in the room as there are seats. Leibniz concluded the same thing about infinite numbers, should they exist. Assume an exact one-to-one matching between the natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4 ...) and the even numbers (2, 4, 6, 8...) such that:

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-51627571790699991832010-05-31T10:09:00.000-07:002010-05-31T10:10:30.870-07:00

There are few statements you could make about philosophy emptier than to say it's a history of mistakes. Likewise there are few moves you could make in the game of "doing philosophy" that are emptier than showing that a philosopher was wrong about something. Around 100% of philosophical ideas are completely absurd. Plato really seemed to recognize this, too. Of course there's pathos and

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-68021632161458633162010-05-15T07:27:00.000-07:002010-05-15T07:53:21.333-07:00

There are some interesting ideas in this Wikipedia article on the Omega Point. It's a concept formulated by the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard. The basic idea is that evolution (both cosmic and biological) gives rise to greater complexity which in turn is equivalent with greater consciousness. The entire movement exists for and is moving toward a purpose which Teilhard calls the "Omega

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-49458751177231865652010-04-25T10:49:00.000-07:002010-09-03T09:44:10.205-07:00

I often wonder what it must be like for someone who believes in a traditional religious account of existence to see a picture like this. It's the Hubble Ultra Deep Field exposure, a picture of the sky about the size of a crater on the moon, taken over the course of 11.3 days of viewing time. It reveals about 10,000 galaxies, the very first to emerge after the Big Bang which occurred 14 billion

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-15169401060157043572010-04-16T16:31:00.000-07:002010-04-16T17:12:30.187-07:00

I've been reading Martin Davis' Engines of Logic. I learned that when he was younger than I am now, Leibniz cleverly figured out the following is true: π/4 = 1 - (1/3) + (1/5) - (1/7) + (1/9) - (1/11)... The quantity on the left is pi divided by 4. Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean space. You may remember from trigonometry that π/4 radians equals 45

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-57724228161633988462010-04-03T14:23:00.000-07:002010-04-03T14:23:41.246-07:00

In reply to the question Are you worried about where technology will lead us? Do you think it's possible that civilization may someday turn away from technology altogether for the betterment of humankind?: It would be irresponsible not to worry where technological development may lead us. Whether it takes the form of blind confidence that technocrats will solve all our technological problems or

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-38974309853694701652010-03-28T17:47:00.000-07:002010-03-28T17:47:31.029-07:00

I recently read John Brockman's essay The Third Culture. This much I agreed with:In the past few years, the playing field of American intellectual life has shifted, and the traditional intellectual has become increasingly marginalized. A 1950s education in Freud, Marx, and modernism is not a sufficient qualification for a thinking person in the 1990s.He wrote this in the early 90s, but it seems

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-84072734041211285852010-03-27T14:34:00.001-07:002010-03-27T14:34:42.849-07:00

From physorg.com today:The accretion process releases vast amounts of energy, and as a result quasars are among the most powerful energy sources known. No one knows for sure, however, how these objects form, how they develop in time, or how exactly their stupendous energies are produced. Because they are so bright, quasars can be seen even when they are very far away, and this combination of

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-18300436545621303852010-03-20T07:21:00.000-07:002010-03-20T07:21:35.143-07:00

Perhaps Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is the patron philosopher of information theorists. Consider the following: Leibniz invented the first digital mechanical calculator capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Called the "Stepped Reckoner", it was an improvement over Schickard's earlier model. He might have been the first to document the base 2 (binary) system. He developed

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-89097282613440117952010-03-13T09:32:00.000-08:002010-03-13T09:32:37.310-08:00

"The brain's main job, like that of a scientist, is to generate hypotheses about what is going on in the outside world, a Max Planck Institute for Brain Research study suggests." (more) I'm not so sure. It's not the scientific work itself I'm skeptical of but rather the interpretation of it quoted above. It doesn't sound right. First of all, a brain is a part of a scientist already. Saying a

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-24168842253965313192010-03-02T18:27:00.000-08:002010-03-02T18:27:22.693-08:00

Yesterday I watched the first part of Nova's Becoming Human documentary. According to the documentary, hominid brain size remained relatively stable for 4 million years, and then suddenly there was a brain size explosion coinciding with the emergence of the genus Homo. Why should brain size suddenly have increased after 4 million years of near-stagnation? The answer, according to the narrator,

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-18165553069783648682010-02-26T07:26:00.000-08:002010-02-26T07:26:05.020-08:00

A friend of mine sent me this talk by Martin Seligman on happiness. I don't have as positive a view on the disease model as Seligman does, though I found the rest of the talk valuable and useful. The topic of the talk is that mental health professionals shouldn't just focus on making their patients less miserable but should help them achieve happiness. To this end Seligman and other

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-3634595751863063772010-02-20T10:01:00.000-08:002010-02-20T10:01:49.944-08:00

There was something else interesting in this Steven Pinker article I linked the other day. I don't typically find myself agreeing with Pinker because even while he admits there are problems with behavioral genomics, he sticks to his guns nonetheless in claiming that almost all our behaviors are inherited. The findings of geneticists leave me more ambivalent and agnostic with regard to such

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-63432944911831218372010-02-18T15:12:00.000-08:002010-02-18T15:13:24.636-08:00

I found this today via http://kurzweilai.net: Bluebrain | Year One from Couple 3 Films on Vimeo. Henry Markram is attempting to reverse engineer an entire human brain, one neuron at a time. This piece is an introduction to director Noah Hutton's 10-year film-in-the-making that will chronicle the development of The Blue Brain Project, a landmark endeavor in modern neuroscience. I think my

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-29260778082219529132009-07-17T17:09:00.000-07:002010-02-26T07:37:56.556-08:00

Kepler remarks in his Astronomia Nova that he had considered applying the ellipse too simple a solution for earlier astronomers to have overlooked. It is an interesting problem. Did it really never occur to anyone before Kepler to describe the orbit of planets as ellipses? If that is true, then why? None of the major theories of planetary motion devised before 1600 I've reviewed uses

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-12112348595742933882009-07-17T14:55:00.000-07:002009-07-17T15:57:24.025-07:00

It's the 400th anniversary this year of the publication of Kepler's Astronomia Nova. While thinking about his contributions, I realized Kepler probably made a larger contribution to the scientific revolution in astronomy than Copernicus did. While Copernicus made use of the epicycle, Kepler made it obsolete. More important, though, before Kepler, the systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Brahe

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-59301250145758085182009-02-20T10:51:00.001-08:002009-02-20T18:32:57.527-08:00

I’m reading through Kicilof’s and Starosta’s essay on I. I. Rubin called “On Materiality and Social Form” and came across the following rather dense passage:In our view, Rubin’s confusion (or rather, inversion) stems from the fact that he reads Marx’s passages where he states that exchange (as a necessary mediating form of the essentially private character of the direct process of production in

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-65323894952535238802008-08-27T11:30:00.000-07:002009-02-20T10:57:53.993-08:00

Marxism is a category theory. That means it’s a theory that seeks to uncover the basic categories of a phenomenon and ground them and show their origin.The way I’m using it, a category is a metaconcept. It’s a concept that shows you how to use other concepts. To illustrate, let’s say you have two concepts that aren’t categories, like “table” and “brown”. There are many ways you can assemble

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-30473586779600142542008-07-30T06:09:00.000-07:002008-07-30T06:15:24.234-07:00

In the context of the capital social relation, C-M-C describes the characteristic participation of the working class in circulation, while M-C-M describes the characteristic participation of the capitalist in circulation. One begins the circuit C-M-C just in case he needs or wants something he does not already have. In a society in which all the products of labor appear as commodities, the

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-24188540598735282472008-07-25T15:32:00.000-07:002008-07-25T15:37:08.827-07:00

Part Two: the goal of each circuitThe circuit C-M-C describes an interaction in which a person sells a commodity in order to buy a commodity. I exchange x commodity A for y dollars, and then I exchange y dollars for z commodity B. All other things being equal, we can assume from any transaction of this form that x commodity A has the same exchange-value (is worth as much) as z commodity B.

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-20743131986540523232008-07-25T12:55:00.000-07:002008-07-25T15:32:03.706-07:00

Part One: IntroductionThe essence of the capital social relation consists in the imposition of the commodity-form on labor by those who own the means of production. This imposition creates by force a situation in which the only access workers have to the necessities of life is by selling their labor-power to the capitalist. This turns all the products of labor into commodities. Each has a

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-77458304254139610442008-04-15T10:41:00.000-07:002008-04-15T10:42:25.566-07:00

Marx’s aim in the first chapter of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is to interrogate a theory according to which the essence of the commodity consists in its possessing use-value and exchange-value. Something has use-value insofar as it satisfies a particular want or need, and it has exchange-value insofar as one could exchange a quantity of it for a quantity of another thing

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-56268703818011296802008-03-25T12:06:00.001-07:002008-03-25T12:35:54.398-07:00

Bourgeois philosophy similarly fails to synthesize and grasp the totality and to get at the concrete, historical conditions of possibility of our existence. This is seen most perspicaciously where bourgeois philosophy is at its most radical and “critical”: in the thought of Kant. While the skeptic accepts the rationalist standard of knowledge (representation of mind-independent reality) but

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-51362679654648363192008-03-24T08:28:00.000-07:002008-03-24T08:29:57.133-07:00

Marx is often understood as providing us with the laws according to which the capitalist mode of production operates. The capitalist mode of production is the object “out there” that we as knowing, cognizing subjects represent using the theoretical framework provided by Marx. The economy is a given, external, social object which we can grasp by means of a linguistic or mental representation.

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-26902189801953403782008-03-19T12:00:00.000-07:002008-03-19T12:02:30.378-07:00

In the final section of the "Introduction" to the Grundrisse, Marx puzzles over what he sees as a disparity between the development of the material base of a society and the development of a people’s art. It is known in the case of art that specific times of artistic flowering by no means stand in a proportional relation to the general development of society, therefore [they do not stand in a

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-32225160626528944732008-03-18T06:57:00.001-07:002008-03-18T07:41:46.471-07:00

Like the rest of the introduction to the Grundrisse, the third section is both abstract and difficult. Nothing in Capital is as hard to slog through, simply because Marx is presenting here in vague outline what he intends to fill in later. Nevertheless, some of what he says here is intriguing, and it's gotten me thinking about the subject of Marx's so-called "method".My thesis is that almost

der Augenblicknoreply@blogger.com0