Notes
[Notebook: DB 61 Warm]
[Sunday 24 June 2007 - Saturday 30 June 2007]
[page 83]
Sunday 24 June 2007
Model: Tool building. Mathematics is our basic social toolset as we see specifically in the use of statistics in the management of society. Stewart page 29 Stewart
'You can't eat a spinach souffle if no one has invented agriculture or discovered fire.'
What is the difference between discovery and invention. We discover something that is actual, we invent something that is possible.
MATERIALIST = ANALYTICAL CONTINUITY
FORMALIST = LOGICAL CONTINUITY
[page 84]
Monday 25 June 2007
What is all this reading and writing for? To make me feel secure. To replace the false sense of security engendered by the Roman Catholic Church's paternalistic god with security based on the realities of the Universe. To maintain continuity I call the Universe god and replace the personality of god and gods delineated in the Bible with a personality based on my experience of life in the world. My security is based on a rather scientific understanding of my environment, which includes myself, my family and ultimately all the people and other agents in the world ranging from atoms to galaxies and beyond.
Symmetry: Mathematics is the study of structure. Not structure made of any material substance but purely formal structure made with symbols and rules for using these symbols. These structures may be made recursive, structures made of structures ad infinitum, built on some zen-like structureless structure like the empty set as a foundation.
Stewart page 110: 'In Galois's hands, mathematics ceased to be the study of numbers and shapes - arithmetic, geometry and ideas that grew out of them like algebra and trigonometry. It became the study of structure . What had been a study of things became a study of processes.
[page 85]
Tuesday 26 June 2007
How big is a function space? - continuous vs discrete. Cantor showed that a discrete function space is recursive and each layer is effectively infinite and continuous with respect to its foundation.
[A common a very powerful constraint is continuity. it is a constraint because whereas the function that changes arbitrarily can undergo any change, the continuous function can change at each step only to a neighbouring value. Ashby page 133]
The fundamental symmetry is logical confinement, implemented in the symmetrical network as fullness.
Computability is the limiting resource that provided protection against error and so durability.
Wednesday 27 June 2007
Thursday 28 June 2007
Ordering the chain of explanation:
God, Immensity, Logical continuity. Turing Machines (the implementation of logic), Transfinite Network, Compression (knowledge).
Turing Machines: All the rational arts depend on an ability [to compute], from counting sheep and doing arithmetic with different mobs, prices and other numbers to calculating the critical mass of a nuclear weapon.
I travel at my own characteristic speed and any attempts at overclocking seem to yield no benefit. Controlling impatience within myself is an important art, given (perhaps) the ideals (saintly hard work) and problems (a false religion) that I inherited.
[page 86]
A driving force is my representation of the expectations of people for whom I have consented to do something, make a call, write a letter (secretary), fix pipes (plumber).
Like every little seed trying to find the right conditions to render my script dynamic, acquire the necessary resources (like a pen that works) to come to life.
An equilibrium society needs to have room for everyone even if a few extreme ones have to be confined, not for punishment but for public safety and their own health. No system can reach equilibrium unless there are adequate communication channels. In the hard sphere ideal gas, the channels to equilibrium are molecular collisions, modelled as Dirac deltas. infinite force, infinitesimal time, finite exchange of momentum. In our model, of course, the collisions are exchanges of information. We model information as momentum.
INFORMATION = MOMENTUM
Have thought this for a long long time but can only vaguely see how it works. We have a mechanistic network of Turing machines,
ENERGY = PROCESS (ACTION)[temporal detail]
MOMENTUM = INFORMATION [ENTROPY] [spatial detail]
Physics = action = execution of a Turing machine.
Terrorism: killing to get attention. To what? Some
[page 87]
pain great enough to motivate terrorism. By fighting terrorism we increase the pain and terrorism. A good strategy for warmongers. By removing the cause we nip it in the bud because it is no longer motivated.
Friday 29 June 2007
Saturday 30 June 2007
