As I said in my last post, why is it that we view things as having a beginning and an end. Why do we view things hierarchically? Why must there be two sides to a strip of paper? (See Mobius Strip) Why does there have to be an inside and an outside? (See Klein Bottle). Our understanding of things is based on what we observe, learn, and experience. Think about it. Everything that you know to be true today is based on past experiences. Remember the sensation of learning something existed that you never knew before? You've never experienced it before so you never thought it was possible. Imagine you lived in a world where doors always open inwards (I suppose that's relative); let's say in one direction. You would be quite staunch in your approach and would tell someone that doors can only be opened one way. Then imagine you encounter a door that opens the opposite way. How could this be? How are we to understand this strange phenomenon? It so clearly violates the way the world works and yet there is the evidence standing right in front of you. The awesome part is that we now assimilate that experience into our understanding of how the world works and we are now ok with it. Innovators have an uncanny way of pushing the boundaries of their "complete" world and discovering new and exciting things.
This is simply Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. The theorem basically says that a system (your perception in this instance)cannot be both complete and consistent. Everything you know is based on past experiences and they are all true because that's how the world works. We'll say our world is consistent. Everything makes sense and there are no anomolies. We believe that it is complete but then we learn something new that challenges the way our world works and discover our system isn't complete. We could ignore this fact and say that its false and maintain our consistency but then we can't say that our world is complete because there is something new out there that isn't part of our system. Conversely, if we accept this newly learned truth, then we believe that our system is now complete but its not consistent because doors now open in two directions instead of one. So what do we do as humans? We have to change the rules of the game. We have to change our perception and understanding (our system) so that the new information is assimilated and we are again both consistent and complete. Or are we?
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Random Thought #130
A member of our ward came up to me the other day and mentioned that he could relate to what I had said in my testimoney a couple of weeks before about a friend of mine who didn't quite see the point in organized religion. This friend felt that he was a good person, believed in God, and generally tried to do what was right. He didn't see the need for all of the structure and rules and limitations and guidelines, etc. etc. I tried to tell him about the necessary ordinances and the priesthood authority but none of that really seemed to work. This fellow member came up to me and said that he had felt the same exact way earlier in his life and was inactive for a time. He relayed his feelings and experiences and we had a good conversation but what struck me most about that encounter was the fact that someone was able to relate so closely to my friend's situation.
I'm sure we've all been in some situation in which either we experience the exact same feelings, thoughts, or experiences as others or they have experienced much the same thing as we have. If you ever need advice, who do you go to? Someone who has been through something similar. If you have a question about how to do something, who do you ask? Someone who has already figured out the answer. It seems that there are cycles of patterns of thoughts, experiences, and/or feelings that different sets of people go through. Not everyone's experience is the same, but there always seems to be someone who we can relate to or who can relate to us.
As parents we teach our children, but what is the source of our teaching? Things we have already experienced or encountered or feel we have a good grip on. When we encounter a new or unfamiliar situation, we often refer to work colleagues, friends, or family. What makes us think they have the answer? I think this speaks deeply to the fact that we are all here to take the same test, we all just have different variations of the test. Remember how in grade school, they would use the same questions on the test but they weren't always in the same order or not all of the questions were on everyone's test. Different questions were left off of different people's tests. All of this was to prevent cheating and give everyone a fair shake. That's what life seems to be like. We all have the same basic test and there are of course similar questions and there are of course certain right answers, but not everyone has the exact same test. It makes one wonder how long this test has been around. I mean, there are other worlds with other spirits and Heavenly Father and Jesus both had to take the test to get to where they are. Our hierarchical understanding of beginning and end isn't able to understand this concept as there much (in our view) be some ultimate test maker. This process has to be recursive somehow. If it is recursive though, we are only looking at some point in time along the loop but we're unable to get outside the system to see who might have created this recursive loop. That leads me to another interesting thought about how our perceptions are constructed based on our surroundings and experiences but I'll go into more depth in the next post.
I'm sure we've all been in some situation in which either we experience the exact same feelings, thoughts, or experiences as others or they have experienced much the same thing as we have. If you ever need advice, who do you go to? Someone who has been through something similar. If you have a question about how to do something, who do you ask? Someone who has already figured out the answer. It seems that there are cycles of patterns of thoughts, experiences, and/or feelings that different sets of people go through. Not everyone's experience is the same, but there always seems to be someone who we can relate to or who can relate to us.
As parents we teach our children, but what is the source of our teaching? Things we have already experienced or encountered or feel we have a good grip on. When we encounter a new or unfamiliar situation, we often refer to work colleagues, friends, or family. What makes us think they have the answer? I think this speaks deeply to the fact that we are all here to take the same test, we all just have different variations of the test. Remember how in grade school, they would use the same questions on the test but they weren't always in the same order or not all of the questions were on everyone's test. Different questions were left off of different people's tests. All of this was to prevent cheating and give everyone a fair shake. That's what life seems to be like. We all have the same basic test and there are of course similar questions and there are of course certain right answers, but not everyone has the exact same test. It makes one wonder how long this test has been around. I mean, there are other worlds with other spirits and Heavenly Father and Jesus both had to take the test to get to where they are. Our hierarchical understanding of beginning and end isn't able to understand this concept as there much (in our view) be some ultimate test maker. This process has to be recursive somehow. If it is recursive though, we are only looking at some point in time along the loop but we're unable to get outside the system to see who might have created this recursive loop. That leads me to another interesting thought about how our perceptions are constructed based on our surroundings and experiences but I'll go into more depth in the next post.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Random Thought #129
I think its pretty evident by now that the US is not heading in a good direction and much of what made this country great has either already disappeared or will soon with the generations of my parents and grandparents. I've often thought, what would I do if things got really really bad. What is my backup plan? I've thought about moving to a different country and gaining citizenship there. I'd like to move somewhere that is still modern but isn't constantly wrapped up in everything that is going on in the world and feels like it has to be center stage. I thought about Australia or New Zealand. If things got really bad, where would you move to? or would you? Lemme know in the comments.
Random Thought #128
I was going through my usual batch of TED videos when this one caught my eye. Its pretty cool because someone is actually using social media for something good. It also showcases the absurdidty that is government. Deep down, people are great.
http://www.ted.com/talks/israel_and_iran_a_love_story.html
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Random Thought #127
So I was reading a post on meaning and how something can have a universal meaning to all parties who consider the idea/thought/object. For example, if I simply said door, would everyone conceptualize the same thing in their head? I'm sure we'd get quite a variety of doors, but they would all have likely the same general construct so the answer is infamously "it depends". At some very basic level, I think most everyone can agree on some very general characteristics but everyone's door is likely going to be different based on past experiences with the concept "door". This is kinda like navigating with a partially drawn map. The basic general concepts are like road markers along the road or they could be major cities or landmarks. We can get to the same place generally as long as we have some major points of reference that we all agree on.
This works the same way with translating languages....to an extent. There is a literal translation of a word in most cases or at least a couple of words that describe the word you are trying to translate. Outside of memorizing the corresponding word though, you would have to understand the concept (in your head) in order to have that same major landmark to reference). Otherwise, the word is just garbled gunk to you. If I gave you the same poem in 3 different languages, you could translate it a couple of different ways. The first is literally, but that will likely make very little sense. The words would translate but they would sound "funny". Why is this? Is there something deeper than just words in a poem? Is there a style in writing in a particular language? Are there cultural pretexts that embue a piece of literature with some sort of identity? When you read a fantasy book, you develop a picture of what the far-away world and the characters look like and how they act. You do it in dreams too. What is the basis for this? There is some sort of previous experience that influences how we see the world. I particularly like the poetic example because when I lived in Siberia, I decided to write a poem in Russian for a local talent show. I would gauge how "russian" I had become by how well I was able to embue my words with the local culture and relate the local people there. Needless, to say, it was a hit but it took concerted effort to write as if I were a Russian and had grown up in Russia. A different perspective indeed.
This works the same way with translating languages....to an extent. There is a literal translation of a word in most cases or at least a couple of words that describe the word you are trying to translate. Outside of memorizing the corresponding word though, you would have to understand the concept (in your head) in order to have that same major landmark to reference). Otherwise, the word is just garbled gunk to you. If I gave you the same poem in 3 different languages, you could translate it a couple of different ways. The first is literally, but that will likely make very little sense. The words would translate but they would sound "funny". Why is this? Is there something deeper than just words in a poem? Is there a style in writing in a particular language? Are there cultural pretexts that embue a piece of literature with some sort of identity? When you read a fantasy book, you develop a picture of what the far-away world and the characters look like and how they act. You do it in dreams too. What is the basis for this? There is some sort of previous experience that influences how we see the world. I particularly like the poetic example because when I lived in Siberia, I decided to write a poem in Russian for a local talent show. I would gauge how "russian" I had become by how well I was able to embue my words with the local culture and relate the local people there. Needless, to say, it was a hit but it took concerted effort to write as if I were a Russian and had grown up in Russia. A different perspective indeed.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Random Thought #126
I haven't posted to the blog in awhile but I hope this post makes up for it.
I'm currently reading a fascinating book called "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" written by Douglas Hofstadter. Its been quite a good book and the latest chapter I just read has been quite entertaining.
Let me first introduce a few terms/concepts: 1) Holism - This is the belief that the sum is more than the sum of its parts. Its a little easier to explain in terms of what it isn't. It isn't reductionism.
2) Reductionism - This is the belief that the sum is made up of its constituent parts and nothing more and nothing less.
For example, in the human body, you can break an particular organ down into its biological pieces (cells). Then you can break the cells into their chemical makeup (molecules). Then you can break those up into their physical components (atoms) and although it may be quite tedious, you could theoretically describe an organ in terms of its physical construction of atoms (or perhaps even deeper with sub-atomic particles) but you get the point.
As another example, let's take the brain to demontrate the concept of holism. A reductionist approach would be to break the brain up into smaller and smaller and more distinct or specific pieces. Let's not get too far and just say that your brain is made up of a bunch of neurons. A holistic approach would say, you can't tell me that the firing of neurons can adequately explain consciousness, or the concept of "I". The persona is that extra piece that can't be broken down into its constituent parts.
You could use the same concept with computers and programming languages. These two approaches rely on levels of abstraction. The deeper down you go, the more precise you get, but the more tedious it is to get any useful information out. You miss the forest for the trees. On the contrary, the higher up you go (the more chunking or summarizing) of groups of more detailed items, the easier it is to understand and conceptualize but the less true detail you know or understand about how the system actually works.
Let's take a little more abstract example. Hofstadter uses the following image to illustrate a point.
Unfortunately its a little small, but what do you see? Which word do you pick out? Some may say I see the words Holism and Reductionism. Others may say they see the word MU. It really depends on what level you are looking at it from. If you get a larger copy of this image, you'll actually see that the letters of the word Holism and Reductionism are curvy in nature and that's because each letter in those words is actually also written using the word MU. MU is the chinese word that means nothingness. Zen Buddhism uses the term to "unask" a question that doesn't really have a definite answer. Its their way of saying "it depends".
Let's try another one
This one is a little trickier. What do you see here? Here is what I see.
Option 1: J. S. Bach
Option 2: Fermat
Did you also notice that the letters get smaller or larger depending on how you look at them? If you look at the first have as the letters that make up the larger letters, you'll notice that J. S. Bach the letters progressively get larger and continue to do so but you have to change your perspective and use the larger letters to complete the name, but the letters do get progressively larger. If you use the name Fermat, you have to reverse the process and start with the larger letters and notice they start large, and then convert to the letters that make up the larger letters, but you'll notice they get progressively smaller.
The point here is that there is no ultimate answer. It all depends on what level you are descibing the object or sytem. The answer is MU.
Now, how is this relevant? Let's apply this to how we learn. Most times we think in holistic terms. We want to see the big picture or accomplish some goal so we think in terms of the end-goal. For example, we want to learn how to use a computer, but we don't necessarily want to learn how the software interacts with the hardware in translating code from one layer of abstraction to another all the way down until the hardware understands it. We just want to open the internet and get where we want. There are two problems with this approach.
1. If you spend all your time just using tools when they work correctly, when there is a problem, you'll be completely frustrated since you won't know how to fix it.
2. Once you get familiar with a certain program or set of favorites and build it into your routine, you'll eventuall reach the edge of what you are comfortable doing and when it comes time to extend your knowledge, or put it to the test in a different context, you'll find yourself really having a really humbling experience.
The other approach (the way I'm prone to) of pouring over 700 - 1000 page books covering every minute detail of how something works down to the nth degree when you likely won't use more than half of that knowledge can be quite boring, time-consuming, and a waste of valuable time.
So what should one do? Like most circumstances, taking a hybrid approach is the best approach. Again, MU is the answer. It depends on your circumstances. So much of the time, we are so concerned with what the right answer is, we miss all of the other right answers.
Sp what do I take away from all of this? Well, the best approach is always a hybrid approach. Use the right tool for the right job. Keep an open mind. Look at things from other people's perspectives. You may just find something you didn't realize was there before.
I'm currently reading a fascinating book called "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" written by Douglas Hofstadter. Its been quite a good book and the latest chapter I just read has been quite entertaining.
Let me first introduce a few terms/concepts: 1) Holism - This is the belief that the sum is more than the sum of its parts. Its a little easier to explain in terms of what it isn't. It isn't reductionism.
2) Reductionism - This is the belief that the sum is made up of its constituent parts and nothing more and nothing less.
For example, in the human body, you can break an particular organ down into its biological pieces (cells). Then you can break the cells into their chemical makeup (molecules). Then you can break those up into their physical components (atoms) and although it may be quite tedious, you could theoretically describe an organ in terms of its physical construction of atoms (or perhaps even deeper with sub-atomic particles) but you get the point.
As another example, let's take the brain to demontrate the concept of holism. A reductionist approach would be to break the brain up into smaller and smaller and more distinct or specific pieces. Let's not get too far and just say that your brain is made up of a bunch of neurons. A holistic approach would say, you can't tell me that the firing of neurons can adequately explain consciousness, or the concept of "I". The persona is that extra piece that can't be broken down into its constituent parts.
You could use the same concept with computers and programming languages. These two approaches rely on levels of abstraction. The deeper down you go, the more precise you get, but the more tedious it is to get any useful information out. You miss the forest for the trees. On the contrary, the higher up you go (the more chunking or summarizing) of groups of more detailed items, the easier it is to understand and conceptualize but the less true detail you know or understand about how the system actually works.
Let's take a little more abstract example. Hofstadter uses the following image to illustrate a point.
Unfortunately its a little small, but what do you see? Which word do you pick out? Some may say I see the words Holism and Reductionism. Others may say they see the word MU. It really depends on what level you are looking at it from. If you get a larger copy of this image, you'll actually see that the letters of the word Holism and Reductionism are curvy in nature and that's because each letter in those words is actually also written using the word MU. MU is the chinese word that means nothingness. Zen Buddhism uses the term to "unask" a question that doesn't really have a definite answer. Its their way of saying "it depends".
Let's try another one
This one is a little trickier. What do you see here? Here is what I see.
Option 1: J. S. Bach
Option 2: Fermat
Did you also notice that the letters get smaller or larger depending on how you look at them? If you look at the first have as the letters that make up the larger letters, you'll notice that J. S. Bach the letters progressively get larger and continue to do so but you have to change your perspective and use the larger letters to complete the name, but the letters do get progressively larger. If you use the name Fermat, you have to reverse the process and start with the larger letters and notice they start large, and then convert to the letters that make up the larger letters, but you'll notice they get progressively smaller.
The point here is that there is no ultimate answer. It all depends on what level you are descibing the object or sytem. The answer is MU.
Now, how is this relevant? Let's apply this to how we learn. Most times we think in holistic terms. We want to see the big picture or accomplish some goal so we think in terms of the end-goal. For example, we want to learn how to use a computer, but we don't necessarily want to learn how the software interacts with the hardware in translating code from one layer of abstraction to another all the way down until the hardware understands it. We just want to open the internet and get where we want. There are two problems with this approach.
1. If you spend all your time just using tools when they work correctly, when there is a problem, you'll be completely frustrated since you won't know how to fix it.
2. Once you get familiar with a certain program or set of favorites and build it into your routine, you'll eventuall reach the edge of what you are comfortable doing and when it comes time to extend your knowledge, or put it to the test in a different context, you'll find yourself really having a really humbling experience.
The other approach (the way I'm prone to) of pouring over 700 - 1000 page books covering every minute detail of how something works down to the nth degree when you likely won't use more than half of that knowledge can be quite boring, time-consuming, and a waste of valuable time.
So what should one do? Like most circumstances, taking a hybrid approach is the best approach. Again, MU is the answer. It depends on your circumstances. So much of the time, we are so concerned with what the right answer is, we miss all of the other right answers.
Sp what do I take away from all of this? Well, the best approach is always a hybrid approach. Use the right tool for the right job. Keep an open mind. Look at things from other people's perspectives. You may just find something you didn't realize was there before.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Random Thought #125
I always wonder about being philanthropic and donating to good causes because I'm never quite sure how that money gets used. Many well-intentioned organizations often try to help too much and impose their "better way" on the area or group they are trying to help and often waste money spinning their wheels. This talk from TED explains the problem quite nicely. Thought it worth the watch
http://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2012-11-30&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email
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