EditMonday, March 24, 2003
Dumped
For those who don't know yet, Beth dumped me yesterday. It was kind of a shock since just the day before she was perkier than ever. But, I had gotten tired of her idiosyncracies anyway. I had even considered a pre-emptive break-up, but hey, can't violate causality at this point can, we?
So what did I do? I did what I always do when I'm upset- solved self-posed physics problems with Mathematicatm. I tried to model a unbalanced pin dropping with air resistance, and find the numerical solution to its motion. That part was easy, but modeling the bounce isn't as simple. See, I had watched how messed up the bouncing of items works in video games and figured it couldn't be that hard- just use a lower coefficient of restitution. But if you want to do it all with just one set of equations of motions and not have to jump between, it complicates things. My first thought was to have it act like the point contacting the ground hits a stiff spring/damper that's only active when said point is "in" the ground." For some reason, the energy-conserving spring makes it bounce higher than it starts! Back to the drawing board...
- Random unfinished thought- my next-door neighbor makes too much friggin' noise, and management doesn't seem to want to do anything about it. And now that you guys know I feel this way, it'll be impossible to get rid of her without making it look like a robbery. I mean... uh...
comment [2] :: Posted at 21:42 by blogger :: link
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Please, please don't get mad at me for not posting
So, I took a big hiatus. Sorry again. Yes, much has happened since I last posted here. But just for reference, I've posted more frequently, on average, than some bloggers. And do I have to remind you how hard hitting this site is? Do I really have to? Who exposed the modern flat-earth movement as morally bankrupt? Who speculated on the parallels between geoists and intellectual property theorists? Who denied the Holocaust? Me, me, and Nazi sympathizers.
Since last I posted, I went on two more dates with Elizabeth, and I'm not sure how well I'm doing. The dates went well, got a successful kiss in on the last one, but she always seems to be "busy" and this time said she'd "have to get back to me" regarding a park date, and didn't give me her home phone ## for Spring Beak (yes, Beak *peck peck*). However, she did have a big presentation about an hour and a half ago, so who knows? I hope to ask her on a double date tonight, so let's hope that works out. She really is a great girl, I'd hate to lose her.
Intellectual Junk
Am I at the stage where my random thoughts on various issues really are novel and thought-provoking, or am I still living in a childish haze? I don't know the answer to that yet, but I think I'm coming out of the youthful mindset as I reconsider many things that have happened to me throughout my life. But regardless, I have come up with ideas that I hope to form into essays, and I want to list them here, exclusively for my viewers, along with the basic structure of the argument.
Non-determinism in the universe
I originally hoped to make this into a free will argument, but even its lesser conclusion is fascinating. Determinism holds that, because same conditions produce same results, then whatever happens throughout all of time is determined solely by the initial conditions of the universe, and it's the only thing that can happen. But listen to this: Godel's (I know that should have an umlaut) Incompleteness Theorem, a well-established and solid result holds that any formal axiomatic system of sufficient complexity (can contain logic, arithmetic, and set theory) must be either inconsistent (contradictory) or incomplete (some statements in it have a truth value, but cannot be proven). However, the laws of physics, or more generally, the laws governing what happens in the world, given some intial condition, constitute such a system. The astounding conclusion is that either the laws of physics are contradictory OR they can't "prove" certain events. This means, respectively, that either a) there are contradictions in physics, which implies that some of them can be exploited to the point of violating Conservation of Energy, meaning we can get infinite energy in the universe or b) given some initial conditions, MORE than one result can come about. So, take your pick: either there's infinite energy or some aspects of the universe are not deterministic. Think think... (Let me remind viewers I'm not giving the full arguments here, just the overviews. But Stephen Hawking said similar things in a recent visit to my university.)
Geoists and interest
I've gone over my bit about geoists and IP here before, and I'm not going to do it again. But I also contend that geoists, who oppose profits from landholding, must logically also oppose making money through interest. This is because all money ultimately derives from a natural resource (gold, salt, silver) which is actually economic land. If you can't rent out real estate to make money, you shouldn't be able to do it with money either. Interestingly enough, this position is consistent with geoism in another way: zero-interest rates would make land have infinite value- which is bad, sure, but hell on earth for a geoist, meaning they want even more to take away profits from it.
A consistent language?
As you probably know, language is notoriously inconsistent. A boat is a small ship, and a ship is a large boat. Desire means to want; want means to desire. My conclusion on this one is the least developed, but I have to ask: if I were to construct a language that specifically avoided this problem by having a set of undefined root words, and the defined ones defined at their *most fundamental level*...
a) how many such words would I need (let's say i'm only trying to define concepts so I don't need to describe the physical world)?
b) would communication be any easier? Would concepts be easier to understand? Would ideologies be easier to compare?
For example, I would hope to define information as "a collection of relative certainties about a collection of truth and false values" and random as "having a relatively incompressible description using the most efficient information compression algorithm". Bulky, sure, but fundamental.
Keep in mind this is possible, at least in theory, as what I am doing does not violate the Incompleteness Theorem cited above- I specifically grant that such a language would be incomplete- I'd leave the most fundamental concepts undefined.
Comments on these ideas are very welcome.
comment [1] :: Posted at 22:09 by blogger :: link