Notes
[Notebook: DB 60 Spotlights]
[Sunday 15 October 2006 - Saturday 21 October 2006]
[page 16]
Sunday 15 October 2006
Ordering personality meets chaotic world result Parmenides, Pythagoras, Plato, Augustine. Chaotic mind meets chaotic world and lives with it, feeling no need to write = FIX
[page 17]
But the time is coming when I must make a living not by fixing and building thing but by fixing and building texts [which are things too].
The big Q: Quid est hoc quod est esse? The fact that we ask it tells us much about the answer. We are on an endless journey of experience, taken up by each being, lived and finally laid down in death to be recycled in another life.
How to live forever: think of Shannon and Nyquist.
The algorithm of survival works on the average, but not in every case.
Doubt is a function of error rate, cf Descartes.
Anybody can say things. The big question is what can we rely on.
The spaces and potentials of human desire have been the stuff of literature since people first tried to record their inner states in writing.
Monday 16 October 2006
FORMAL = COUNTABLE (ie distinct symbols)
DYNAMIC = UNCOUNTABLE (indistinct, dynamic)
PARMENIDES vs HERACLEITUS
[page 18]
All communication is normalized locally to self communication.
I am my own metric.
Tuesday 17 October 2006
God is totally other? The otherness is model dependent, as we shall see.
Free fall transforms gravity away - Einstein's happiest thought [fulfilled desires disappear]
Mathematical analysis relies on the symmetry of the continuum based on the Archimedian principle and Euclid's definition of a point.
One cannot control communication. It is like falling in love, it happens when it happens and getting pushy tends to destroy it. This situation (we hypothesize) is common to all entities in the Universe. Perhaps in different ways. We postulate two classes of entities. They are fundamental that are annihilated upon interaction. They are composite which maintain an identity through interaction, like me in other words, they have memory. So our categories are memory/not-memory. Not-memory we tend to identify with time, memory with space.
Beyond the simple Euclidian continuum there is the 'differentiable continuum' and its inverse,
[page 19]
the 'integrable continuum'.
(Digital) general covariance is equivalent to symmetric Universe, in that the transformation between any two points in the Universe is a computable function [but its consequences at higher peer levels may not be computable]
Although mystics might tell us that time is an illusion, when it comes to fitness and survival, time is of the essence. All measurements are measurements of time, counts, 'numerus motus secundum prius et posterius' [the numbering of motion in the order of before and after Aristotle, Physics, 220a25, Aristotle], ie program counters.
Turing Oscillator: an oscillator (cyclic process, group) whose transition form one state to another are computable functions.
Wednesday 18 October 2006
Thursday 19 October 2006
Quantum mechanics [better, quantum field theory] describes processes without memory, ie at the level where particles are created and annihilated by each communication, rather than by existing through many messages (and so exhibiting a personality.
Local is simple. In a computer local = NAND, which is a bit like spin +- 1/2, one or the other, but not both.
What we want to do is replace the classical continuum with the logical continuum represented by a Turing machine.
Friday 20 October 2006
Einstein, Relativity, page 122: 'The following statement
[page 20]
holds generally: Every physical description resolves itself into a number of statements, each of which refers to the space-time coincidence of two events, A and B. In terms of the Gaussian coordinates, every such statement is expressed by the agreement of their four coordinates x1, x2, x3, x4. Thus in reality the description of the time-space continuum by means of Gauss co-ordinates completely replaces the description with the aid of a body of reference, without suffering from the defects of the latter mode of description; it is not tied down to the Euclidian character of the continuum which has to be represented.' Einstein
page 123 General principle of relativity: 'All Gaussian coordinate systems are essentially equivalent for the formulation of the general laws of nature.'
page 124 'According to the general theory of relativity, on the other hand, by application of arbitrary transformations of the Gauss variables x1, x2, x3, x4, the equations must pass over into equations of the same form; for every transformation (not only the Lorentz transformation) corresponds to the transition of one Gauss coordinate system into another.'
page 125 'For this reason non-rigid reference-bodies are used which are as a whole not only moving in any way whatsoever, but which suffer alterations in form ad lib. during their motion.
'"reference mollusk"'
page 126 'The great power possessed by the general principle of relativity lies in the comprehensive limitation which is imposed on the
[page 21]
laws of nature in consequence of what we have seen above.'
Four space, as described by Einstein, is the tip of an underlying iceberg which we have to study using the methods of quantum mechanics.
Laws of physics are true for all observer. Laws of biology or sociology, on the other hand, are only true for observers observing biological or social systems. What about laws of theology. True for the whole, and for all the parts, and so true for all observers no matter what they are observing, ie they are the laws of observation or communication.
And in the end (when I got the distributor in on the right tooth, the engine came to life, doing its best to replicate the Carnot cycle.
God is not a body (Thomas), ie not extended, not continuous, not given to decay etc. Aquinas 14 The notion of the continuum has dominated physics since before the time of Aristotle. Even though quantum mechanics tells us that all observations are discrete (integral) quantities, we still work our quantum mechanics and quantum field theories in continuous spaces and manifolds.
The 'argument from continuity' continues to dominate in an obviously discontinuous world comprising at the moment raindrops and flashes of lightning all around me. Everywhere we model these phenomena with continuous functions which reach a breaking point or discontinuity in the moment when the lightning flashes over or the water condenses out of the air. Continuity appears to have some logical power.
[page 22]
Universe = body; god = not-body. We want to change this, showing god and body are comparable using logical continuity rather than continuity by proximity, which presupposes a metric space.
Dual spaces 'contract' one another to a real number (an observable symbol = message). Since we consider the message to be the invariant, the 'sizes' of the duals must vary in an [inverse] manner, the one growing as the other gets smaller so that their 'product' (or contraction) remains constant. The invariance of the message is what physics is trying to explain eg why do we always get the same result (or an element from the same set of results) when we do x. Here is exactly the foundation of the creativity of the Universe: that a 'preparation (ie question) no matter how precise can easily lead to different outcomes. In quantum mechanics he dot product gives us the probability of an event; in general relativity, it gives is a spacetime interval. These to features may be united if we see distance as a function of probability and vice versa. ds2 = 0 <==> p = 1.
Saturday 21 October 2006
. . .
