| (no subject) |
[Oct. 13th, 2008|01:07 am] |
Godel tells us that any sufficiently complex reasoning system, if it is consistent, is incomplete: one can make hypotheses in the language of that system that cannot be shown to be true or false within the language of that system. And the language of human objective reasoning, sufficiently abstracted, appears to be such a system.
But the other side of the theorem is also interesting: any sufficiently complex reasoning system, if is complete, is necessarily inconsistent: it contains hypotheses that are, according to the rules of the reasoning system, true, and just as validly false.
What if the language of human moral reasoning, similarly abstracted, is such a system. Then the fact that reasonable minds may reach differing conclusions is not a demonstration of the subjectivity of the system, but simply a consequence of the fact that many acts are in fact good, and with equal rigor, evil.
Or put another way, there are both pros and cons, but weighing pros and cons is a sham. They cannot be reduced to weighted values and summed. They cannot be distilled from their context into various amounts of abstract good and abstract evil to be compared. There is no addition operation, merely a union operation. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 30th, 2008|06:31 am] |
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Nice things about spring, #423. Letting birdsong be the alarm clock. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 29th, 2008|09:07 pm] |
The ground is clear, and the snow that's left is the curbside piles, especially the ones in the shade.
Today I saw a Christmas tree lying on the curb.
Thought one: This is a little late to take down Christmas.
Thought two: I bet it's been inside a snowbank since January. |
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| Mud is beautiful |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|07:59 pm] |
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Once upon a time, I was informed that one of the Russian words for springtime (rasputiza) translates more or less as, the muddy season. At the time, I thought this was typical Russian fatalism. Now I understand in the days of the spring thaw, mud can be beautiful. |
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| Just a crazy idea.... |
[Mar. 18th, 2008|09:49 pm] |
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If we think of the lifestyle of our pre-sedentary ancestors as one that covered large distances in the annual cycle, and larger ones over a lifetime, with culture-bearing units having a lifespan of only several generations, and meetings with true strangers a regular fact of life, throughout life, then could the language acquisition faculty of young children been at that time a lifelong faculty of our species ... one rapidly lost among sedentary populations due to its high energetic costs? |
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| International news can be good after all ... |
[Mar. 8th, 2008|06:25 pm] |
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For the first time since 1968, Malaysia is not under single-party rule. While the party still rules, they no longer have the 2/3 supermajority needed to amend the constitution. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|10:10 pm] |
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So Gary Gygax has died. Best obituary headline ... "Failed saving throw". |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 19th, 2008|12:42 pm] |
Brush-choked vacant lot,
Sunrise on ice-glazed brambles:
Acres of diamonds. |
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| Baba Yetu |
[Feb. 17th, 2008|06:24 pm] |
I buy modern video games so rarely that I don't know if quality music is par for the course these days, but I remember about a year ago, being very impressed by the opening score for Civilization 4. Actually, it brought tears to my eyes.
I don't recall exactly how the topic came up today, but someone mentioned that the choral lyrics to it were, very loosely, the Lord's Prayer in Swahili. So I wanted to listen to it again, but had issues reinstalling the game. But then I found that the composer offers it as a sample track on his site. If you have 3:29, enjoy. (Hint: It took me a few minutes to figure out that the green arrows next to the track titles were in fact play buttons.)
http://www.christophertin.com/samples.html |
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| After 13 inches |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|09:05 pm] |
I thought the way the snow hung in this crabapple this morning was way cool. |
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| A gnarly tree |
[Jan. 31st, 2008|07:27 pm] |
Sunday I drove a little bit out of town to take a picture of one of the coolest trees I've found in the Madison area. By midmorning when I got there, it's still a neat tree, but against a sunrise for a backdrop, it's sublimely beautiful.
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| Haroun and the Sea of Stories |
[Jan. 27th, 2008|07:45 am] |
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I picked it up because I've been working through Salman Rushdie's corpus in no particular order. But not until halfway down the first page did I realize what kind of book it was. Apparently, he spent the first two years of his life-in-hiding writing a children's fantasy, which, as far as I have seen so far, is his only book with a happy ending. All I can say is wow. At 200 pages, it can be finished in a Saturday. If you have a spare day, it's a good use. |
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| In which I speak heresy.... |
[Jan. 26th, 2008|04:10 pm] |
It is a reasonable supposition that because feed conversion ratios for turning corn into meat are on the order of 10:1, somewhat more for beef, somewhat less for pork and poultry, we could do the environment a favor by eating mostly plants.
But lying in bed in the wee hours of this morning, I realized that the truth of this supposition depends entirely on which plants we are talking about. Excluding diets constrained by dire poverty, few of the vegetarians I know subsist on cornmeal. Indeed, a diet in which most of the calories are derived from the low-cost, energy-rich plant products on which the reasonable supposition is based, say corn and potato, with canola oil putting in an important supporting role, can be obtained from the nearest vending machine, and is common route to poor nutrition. Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, are mostly fiber and water. And while they certainly involve less land, water, and energy to produce than meat on a per-mass or per-volume basis, it would be very interesting to compare them to meat on a per-calorie basis. (To validate the assumption that it would be interesting to see the numbers, at the extreme end we have things like lettuce and celery that, if the energy used to digest them is considered, contribute nothing to one's energy balance. We can say for these plants, that whatever land, water, and energy went into producing them, it contributed absolutely nothing to feeding the world.)
I'm not saying you shouldn't eat your veggies. Micronutrients are also important (but increasingly available in tablet form). But I suspect that if we considered foodstuffs on a balance of being both good for you, and not particularly taxing on the global resource base to produce, the winners would be legumes and animal products with high feed conversion rates, like eggs and dairy. |
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| Crime on a snowy evening in Madison. |
[Jan. 25th, 2008|09:03 pm] |
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This evening someone opened all my car doors and turned my headlights on. Fortunately I returned to it while my battery still worked. |
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| A milestone, ten of them, actually ... |
[Jan. 19th, 2008|04:55 pm] |
So today I finally got my running distance up to 10 miles. The pace was only a 10-minute mile pace, but I went the distance. This is the first time I've ever built to this distance before I hurt myself. This year might finally be the year I make the marathon.
Less personally, I think basketball would do itself a service by abandoning free throws as the penalty for fouls and adopting hockey's notion of the power play. |
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| August (reprise with snow) |
[Jan. 7th, 2008|07:39 am] |
It began raining the day I moved to Madison; the thunderstorm very nearly did not stop for the month of August. Today I wake to thunder, drips hitting the windowpanes. It could be August again, except there is snow. |
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| On dreams |
[Jan. 5th, 2008|03:40 pm] |
I seldom remember my dreams after waking, except sometimes, something will trigger a memory of an event or experience, sometimes marked as belonging to a dream by its implausible elements, but more often marked as from a dream simply by its lack of context ... the feeling that if I experienced this, I experienced it nowhere.
Today while driving, I in this way recalled reading an article illustrated by neatly lined, black-and-white, angular diagrams, illustrating an aerial view of how two men may hug each other in a manly way. |
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| funniest ebay item evar |
[Dec. 19th, 2007|09:52 pm] |
You are bidding on a rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.
Here is the arrangement:
I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has one church with no bell because angry Germans stole it. Aside from vodka, there is not a lot for me to do.
During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing.
These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.
The postcards will not be coherently signed, leaving your mark confused, guessing wildly, crying out in anguish.
"How do I know this person? And how does he know I had a ferret named Goliath?"
Your beloved friend or relative will try in vain to figure out who it is. Best of all, it can't possibly be you because you'll have the perfect alibi: you're not in Poland. You're home, wherever that is, doing whatever it is you do when not driving your friends loopy with international prankery.
Your target will rack their brains in the shower. At dinner. During long drives. At work. On the golf course.
"Who did I tell about the time I got fired by a note on my chair?" they'll ponder, "And where the hell is Szczeczinek?"
But wait, there's more.
To add to the sheer confusion and genuine discomfort, one missive will be on an original promotional postcard announcing the 1995 television premiere of Central Park West on CBS.
Another will be a postcard celebrating Atlanta's disastrous hosting of the 1996 summer Olympic games.
Your mark will be at a complete loss, desperate for answers, debating contacting people he or she hasn't talked to in years.
"I know this will sound weird," they'll say, "but by any chance were you in Eastern Europe ranting about cantaloupe... twelve years ago... right before some show with Mariel Hemingway debuted?"
When you decide to end the torment is completely up to you. If you can, I recommend owning up on 1 April 2008 - giving you nearly half a year of joy and a George Clooney-esque level of prankage. If you can't hold it in that long, I totally understand. |
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| Sore |
[Dec. 16th, 2007|05:31 pm] |
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I have discovered there is a muscle in the back connecting the top of the pelvic arch to the lower ribs. I have discovered that it it apparently not trained by the way I was doing side bends, but is definitely trained by the way I did them on Friday. |
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shimmin's journal