primate simple machines

Whether to prevent or encourage further philosophical discussion, here's what the internet says about simple machines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machines

What are the simple machines? There are anywhere between 4 and 6, depending on how picky you want to get.

- inclined plane
- wheel and axle (aha - it's not just a wheel, because what good is a wheel by itself?)
- lever
- pulley
- wedge (or maybe it's just an inclined plane?)
- screw (or maybe it's just a dizzy inclined plane? ... specifically, they mention the Archimedes screw, which is a type of pump... but I think the machine type would be a generic screw)

What simple machines have in common is the ability to convert small force / large distance to large force / small distance, or vice-versa.

Question of the day - what's your favorite simple machine? :)

sound and fury

Yes, it's one of the top 10 most over-used quotes in the English language, and no, I'm not going for a Faulkner reference but something much older. Macbeth on life: "...it is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Underneath all the shouting and all the whispering, the anger, jealousy and violence, the pettiness and greed that seem to dominate modern life, I sometimes think I hear a small voice coming from each of us. And it's saying, "Notice me while I'm still here. Tell me I'm important. Remember me when I'm gone."

How can we escape self-reference in language when language is ultimately a personal thing? Like any form of art, it's something we produce directly, with very few external tools. Of course we can repeat the words of others, and we can try our best to speak objectively, but it's still our voice that carries the idea. The idea travels through us and is shaped by the passage.

Is all our noise and motion an attempt to drown out the question, if I'm eventually going to die, what's the point of life? Some of us confront the question, but can any answer be satisfying?

Think of giant sequoias. Think of the growth of mountains. Think of the movement of seas. Think outward to the comets in their 100-year orbits. From these perspectives, the life of one human being seems brief and insignificant. We live within so many interwoven cycles of existence - each of us will experience the life and death of insects, plants, pets, strangers, loved ones. We may experience the death of races and cultures. Those of us alive today will hopefully never experience the death of the human race or the planet we live on, but we've been educated enough to know even that won't last forever. The lifetime of our planet, solar system and sun is a short one on the timeline of the universe.

But does it make you feel better or worse to know that not only are you going to die, but so is the sun? To know that millions of people have had the same fears and desires you're having right now? To know that this comfortable society we rely on and take for granted has only existed in the form we know for about 200 years, a heartbeat the 4.7 billion year lifetime of the earth?

We still go through life looking out at the world from behind our own eyes. No matter what we believe about our own death, we still need to live though every moment until then. So we still shout, and we sing, and we tell stories. We desire tangible and intangible things. We argue over how to raise our children and what we want for dinner. We live, and we do the things we do because they are what gives meaning to the moments.

small tangent

the language of thought

i want to let you in to my mind
where there are no sharp edges
no corners or holes
no empty spaces or missing pieces

ocean and sky grow into one another
as each wave turns seashells in its fingers
taking them apart to build something new
and every tidal pool contains a lifetime

fields of flowers bloom overnight
on yesterday's decay
they grow tall, seed, and die
to begin again tomorrow

the landscape embraces itself
opening outward like a leaf
unfolding inward like a breath
there is room inside for the universe

i open my mouth to explain it all to you
and out fall single petals
quickly wilting in the air
turning to dust as they touch the ground

i try again and produce insects
buzzing, snapping
they leave us to tap against the windows
they make clicking sounds and static
and settle inside lamps

i shake my head and start over
out rise bubbles, fragile, shimmering
which shiver and then burst against our faces
or make wet spots on the ceiling

and when i grow frustrated
ball bearings bounce and roll
shiny and hard
we chase them and lose them under furniture
days later you find them in your shoes

my words pick like birds at the truth
mindlessly collecting
pulling out the things that can be grasped
leaving the universe behind

wdydwyd-----why do you do what you do?

We ponder academic questions without thoroughly researching what has been said--not because we don't know any better but because we are a little lazy. Not only that but there is wonder in discovery even if it has already been discovered----there is a joy in coming to a conclusion about something then finding out you came to the same conclusion as someone else or some book or reference. It is truly a joy to conjecture----even if it has no actual purpose.
There is a certain idlility to it but ----accomplishing things when you have no drive brings no joy and perhaps shouldn't exist in the first place.

So is there a goal----I ask this question? Is it survival? Is it an aesthetic quality that only the creator (I mean the person who develops and sustains a life in a certain manner) can define? Is it a mental space?

I know that death will overcome us all--though I'm not sure I want it--I am faced with it all together too soon....
Death of a life is really nothing we are not used to it is a fact of life----but when it occurs in your horizon to somehow takes on a different aesthetic feel and an entirely different mental space when it refers to the individual who has of the thought. I think I will die takes on a different meaning than, the old man died or the old man will die.

This is interesting----self-reference is often difficult to overcome----implicating the self in anything can be difficult. Why well I really wish there was a solid answer but an element of responsibility comes to mind----If I involve myself in a statement hen I am responsible for whatever has been said----

I'm not sure where to go with this but it actually does relate to language.
The self-referentiality of language is often generalized in speech. Why we all do this, I do this but there is something lost in the meaning of the statement when it is stated in such a way...---what exactly is it that I am trying to find----I think it is a tone perhaps a tone of responsibility.
As far as lot goes, I think also we see some issues with translation at this point. If we are in fact translating, we may, in the translation take the personal pronoun in thought language, and since it is being translated morph it into a third person or generalization.


I'm not really sure where this goes.


what will I have accomplished? will it matter? will it matter to me?

happiness

Until the other half of this blog finds the inspiration to write, I'll supply my own random spam.

From Chuck Palahniuk's book of short non-fiction, "Stranger than Fiction", story titled You are Here.

You want to be happy? You want to be at peace? You want to be healthy? As any good writer would tell you: unpack "happy". What does it look like? How can you demonstrate happiness on the page - that vague, abstract concept. Show, don't tell. Show me "happiness".

possibly no lot

typing becomes innate. driving a vehicle and the such, they also become innate. Maybe language is such. If language of thought dosn't exist then language is purley social existing only in the public realmSomething of an observation-one in which we can choose to participate . ---this would be reminiscent of the adage--man is a social animal.

That there are certain components of our species that develop only in the presence of others is quite probable, and it seems like it really is the case for many things. For example, division of labor becomes physically possible only in a social setting--do we claim than division of labor is innate?. Perhaps language---existing on a purly physical level should be considered in much the same way we consider the processes of learning how to ride a bike or assembling a bedframe or a computer or anything that has a structure.

What is direct access and can it be had. So if ther is no LOT how to structure our thoughts in a general way presents many conceptual problems. But it also dosn't mean that ther is no innateness to language. Reasoning: we have trouble separating our minds from the experience our minds have. When examining whether or not there is a language of thought, if we assume ther is a LOT then we have to assume that the observation goes through many steps before it can be regurgitated if ther is no LOT perhaps we could say that recogintion of an object dosn't need to be translated into a LOT from the observation and then back to a language. We perhaps want to stick with LOT because there are many languages, and they all do the same thing. So perhaps this LOT-uber language that exists beyond the spoken language needs to exist to homogonize recognition. But it may not need to exist if we can conceptualize some sort of direct acess to the object itself--if hte mind dosn't need the LOT , if we don't do an inter translation into a lot the language itself becomes the LOT---our only pitfalll at that point is---can we truly say our ability to think as dependent onour having learned a language. Perhaps this is too far ona pendulum swing. I suggest perhaps a more gradual process. with no learned language people still have the ability to express needs and desires so the thought exists but does the thought have to take a language form at all---I think that it doesn't.
Only with langage is our ability to express thoughts more nuanced---our desires can take form and our needs can be intricately expressed.
So back to direct access---the claim that we only see representations of objects in our minds may be valid but the fact that we associate a word, or place the object in a linguistic construct has no connection with the observation. We directly connect a word with the observation or the representation----so in a way our language has direct acess to the representation of the object---our visual representation of the object cannot claim this directness but since we are actually in the mind connecting the representation of the object with the word for the object---the language made from the representations is seem sto be more direct than even the observation. so It seems that if we look at language creation in this manner we have a direct access link---this eliminates the need to translate nouns into a lot----we are merly associating a lexicon with the object. If we however get into the subject of verbs, quantifiers, and other grammatical constructs we need to develop a better theory to avoud LOT--but for now little chunks. Perhaps we caould even see that somecomponents of language are part of a lot but that other components of the language are direct acess.
"the best vocabulary and flair for words can never put you directly in touch with that perception."----true. But perception is experience and can/should we expect language to be an equivalent to the experience? remember the Movie Total Recall---Society tends to frown on any medium that can mimic the experience itself----there is somethng in the truth of an experience actual--if language could do that, reading about a romance woud be as good as being in the romance itself. I don't think language is supposed to be perfect. We need to be able to emotionally discern an experience from the perception.


These were other threads that I wanted to elaborate on at some point that also touche on the idea of LOT.
Zen of passing thoughts through

good writing/good propoganda

butterflies

I'll preface this with a disclaimer - I can't say I completely stuck to the topic proposed, though I did circle around and through it a few times...

***

Your question brings to mind the concept of language of thought. It's a subject that's always bugged me. Do our thoughts have a structure that can be considered a language - something with a grammar and a lexicon? Are there orderly rules and a vocabulary to what's going on inside our heads? Sounds funny, but if not, what is there?

Suppose there is a language of thought. If so, either it's entirely innate or it's something that was imposed on us during our first few years of life. Or, a more appealing combination of the two - we are born with some sort of predisposition to a structured language of thought, and our experiences have the effect of configuring that language the way Chomsky believes we configure our spoken language via the setting of parameters. Note that I'll be using the term "spoken language" here to mean the language we use to communicate, whether we're speaking or writing, since spoken language is the predecessor to written language.

But what kind of parameters are there for thought? And how many different languages of thought might exist? Potentially as many as there are people. Here's why: A spoken language is a very practical tool with the specific purpose of communication between one human being and another (or a group of others). Thought doesn't have as clearly defined a goal. The only requirements for a language of thought would be (1) that the thinker himself understands it and (2) that the thinker can create a relationship between his thoughts and his spoken language that's reliable enough for successful communication with others. Within these criteria, there might be an infinite variety of ways of thinking. If our language of thought is structured by our experience of the world, each of us has a slightly (or wildly) different experience.

So, right now I'm talking about spoken language as a translation of thought - a mapping. This is where the loss of meaning between the thinker and the audience (the perceiver, the listener, the reader, etc.) comes in. If every time we communicate there are two translation steps being done (from thinker to spoken language, then from perceived words to perceiver's thoughts) there are two places meaning can be lost or skewed. With every passing-on of an idea, there's another chance for distortion, like a huge game of "telephone".

With this kind of scenario, one has to wonder how human beings can ever be sure they're being understood. Why isn't the whole of human communication on the level of me pointing to a flower and saying "flower", and one listener thinking I'm referring to the color, another thinking I'm referring to the species of flower, another thinking I'm complimenting the flower's beauty, etc.? Simply because we've had such a lot of time for trial and error to figure out what everyone's talking about. What we've got now is close enough to work most of the time. It works better between people who have spent their lives together, and doesn't work as well between strangers. When you meet someone and feel like the two of you are "speaking different languages", maybe you're just translating very differently.

I'd like to look harder at the loss of meaning we're talking about. If our words are an attempt at translation of our thought, what might be getting lost? A quality of depth, I think. My internal experience of a thing is as rich as the capacity of my senses, and as subjective as the influence of a lifetime of experience can make it. The best vocabulary and flair for words can never put you directly in touch with that perception.

My thoughts keep returning to the metaphor of butterfly collecting. Humans have a drive to capture a thing of beauty, examine it, preserve it. But what starts out as a gorgeous, delicate thing full of life becomes, when the goal is reached, something far less. The shape and color remain, but the energy and movement are gone. The urge to express our thoughts drives us to capture them, force them to be still, and pin them to a board. Something is lost. We still do it, because having an approximation of the true thing seems better than letting it fly away to be forgotten. For example, I have a memory of my grandmother, who collected butterflies. But how many words do I need to truly communicate the old house, the smell of her basement, the brittle, iridescent wings that seemed to glow in shades of blue and gold? And what about the feeling of knowing that right now all those carefully collected specimens are decaying, crumbling to dust, their colors faded to gray?

So how can a writer hope to get his point across? What techniques can we use to shrink the gap between the thinker and the audience? One way is to call on themes and archetypes that underlay civilized society and span cultural differences. Most people can understand and relate to birth, death, conflict, hope, fear, etc. Many words and images, like those employed by religion, superstition, horror movies, etc., speak directly to our instincts. I'm not saying all good writing has to be sensationalism, just that these are the things that are most likely to relate directly to something in the audience's mind.

I could say more, but I'll stop here for now. There are plenty of ideas that I'd like to explore further. If you like, you can take one and see where it goes, or pick something else entirely. Here are some: (1) Suppose there actually is no language of thought. Then what is the nature of our thoughts? (2) Can we have direct access to our own thoughts? (3) Is there any merit to the sort of Zen concept of letting thoughts (like butterflies) fly away free rather than capturing and dissecting them? (4) In the last paragraph I pretty much compare good writing to good propaganda. Any comments?