remember the universe

Pop Music

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:22:00 -0400

“In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

Everybody will be dancing and be doing it right and feeling alright.

- Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth

http://hirmes.com/aleph/

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 09:41:24 -0400

http://hirmes.com/aleph/:

The Aleph is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges in which a man is suddenly able to see all things at once:

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph’s diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror’s face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I’d seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam…

I wanted to present a version of what The Aleph might look like now, designed as an endless stream of descriptive passages pulled from the web.

-David Hirmes

Random polygons evolved with facial recognition software. Do it...

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 12:32:00 -0400

Random polygons evolved with facial recognition software. Do it live at Pareidoloop.

We (algorithms) have contextual time complexity.

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:02:40 -0400

We (algorithms) have contextual time complexity.

DAKOTA from Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Just not to...

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:22:22 -0400

DAKOTA from Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Just not to forget.

A publication system needs to provide two basic functions

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 07:03:55 -0400

“The current system of publishing in the biological sciences is notable for its redundancy, inconsistency, sluggishness, and opacity. These problems persist, and grow worse, because the peer review system remains focused on deciding whether or not to publish a paper in a particular journal rather than providing (1) a high-quality evaluation of scientific merit and (2) the information necessary to organize and prioritize the literature. Online access has eliminated the need for journals as distribution channels, so their primary current role is to provide authors with feedback prior to publication and a quick way for other researchers to prioritize the literature based on which journal publishes a paper. However, the feedback provided by reviewers is not focused on scientific merit but on whether to publish in a particular journal, which is generally of little use to authors and an opaque and noisy basis for prioritizing the literature. Further, each submission of a rejected manuscript requires the entire machinery of peer review to creak to life anew. This redundancy incurs delays, inconsistency, and increased burdens on authors, reviewers, and editors. Finally, reviewers have no real incentive to review well or quickly, as their performance is not tracked, let alone rewarded. One of the consistent suggestions for modifying the current peer review system is the introduction of some form of post-publication reception, and the development of a marketplace where the priority of a paper rises and falls based on its reception from the field (see other articles in this special topics). However, the information that accompanies a paper into the marketplace is as important as the marketplace’s mechanics. Beyond suggestions concerning the mechanisms of reception, we propose an update to the system of publishing in which publication is guaranteed, but pre-publication peer review still occurs, giving the authors the opportunity to revise their work following a mini pre-reception from the field. This step also provides a consistent set of rankings and reviews to the marketplace, allowing for early prioritization and stabilizing its early dynamics. We further propose to improve the general quality of reviewing by providing tangible rewards to those who do it well.”

Toward a new model of scientific publishing: discussion and a proposal

Horizon Field by Antony Gormley.

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:56:00 -0400

Horizon Field by Antony Gormley.

In future news, “Restless thoughts, like a deadly swarm of...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:01:04 -0500

In future news, “Restless thoughts, like a deadly swarm of hornets arm’d, no sooner found alone, but rush upon me thronging.”

Quick update from Penn GRASP Laboratory.

Previously.

Results of a category theory exam: Topos theory in a...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:05:11 -0500

Results of a category theory exam:

Topos theory in a nutshell by John Baez.

Mathematics is not the rigid and rigidity-producing schema that the layman thinks it is; rather, in it we find ourselves at that meeting point of constraint and freedom that is the very essence of human nature.

- Hermann Weyl

A topos theory for the foundations of physics. (Part 1) - Doering and Isham

Disambiguation: topos and topos.

A mixed (superpositioned?) state of buzz among those working...

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:02:29 -0500

A mixed (superpositioned?) state of buzz among those working in quantum foundations over a new paper by Matt Pusey asserting that quantum states are real physical objects and not simply statistical probability distributions. Matt Leifer does a balanced contextualization and explication. A giddy article in nature news and David Wallace support and summarize.

This type of reasoning, seeking to develop experimental tests to rule out certain interpretations (and accompanying metaphysical baggage) of quantum theory, follows in the footsteps of the famous Bell’s Theorem, which rules out certain kinds of hidden-variable theories. This new paper by Pusey, et. al. asserts that what is commonly referred to as the Copenhagen interpretation (i.e. quantum mechanics is merely a way of describing the things in our head that we know about the system) is untenable.

Here are some more rapidly developing encapsulations and generalizations to the original Pusey, et. al. result. Grain of salt reminder: terms like “physically real”, “physical property”, and “statistical property” need to be read carefully within how they are defined (or not well defined) within each paper. On-going discussion at shetl-optimized.

Corresponding Mefi post and discussion. My first!

wealldranktheooze: Grace Needlman Recent Graduate of Yale...

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:43:02 -0500

wealldranktheooze:

Grace Needlman Recent Graduate of Yale University and a Cleveland Native

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are...

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:39:00 -0500

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Time Lapse view from the ISS.

Suggested: fullscreen in 720p.

iwdrm: “Enough of symbolism and these escapist themes of purity...

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:00:06 -0400

iwdrm:

“Enough of symbolism and these escapist themes of purity and innocence.”

8½ (1963)

And every science, when we understand it not as an instrument...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:34:11 -0400

And every science, when we understand it not as an instrument of power and domination but as an adventure in knowledge pursued by our species across the ages, is nothing but this harmony, more or less vast, more or less rich from one epoch to another, which unfurls over the course of generations and centuries, by the delicate counterpoint of all the themes appearing in turn, as if summoned from the void.

- Alexandre Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles, pg. 20

If there is one thing in mathematics that fascinates me more than anything else (and doubtless always has), it neither “number” or “size”, but always form. And among the thousand-and-one faces whereby form chooses to reveal itself to us, the one that fascinates me more than any other and continues to fascinate me, is the structure hidden in mathematical things.

- Alexandre Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles, pg. 27

Grothendieck suggested, “All right, take 57.”

He likens his approach to mathematics to as sea: “The sea advances imperceptibly and without sound, nothing seems to happen and nothing is disturbed, the water is so far off one hardly hears it. But it ends up surrounding the stubborn peninsula, then an island, then an islet, which itself it submerged, as if dissolved by the ocean stretching away as far as the eye can sea.”

- Alexandre Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles, pg. 553

Today I am no longer, as I once was, the prisoner of interminable tasks, which so often prevented me from leaping into the unknown, mathematical or otherwise. The time of tasks for me is over. If age has brought me anything, it is lightness.

- Alexandre Grothendieck, Esquisse d’un Programme

As if summoned from the Void: The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck:

Part 1

Part 2

Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world—qualities that stick to writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them. At certain moments I felt that the entire world was turning into stone: a slow petrification, more or less advanced depending on people and places but one that spared no as- pect of life. It was as if no one could escape the inexorable stare of Medusa. The only hero able to cut off Medusa’s head is Perseus, who flies with winged sandals; Perseus, who does not turn his gaze upon the face of the Gorgon but only upon her image reflected in his bronze shield.

- Italo Calvino, Lightness, Six Memos

Photo

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:08:34 -0400

“The secret of the story lies in its economy: the events,...

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:56:48 -0400

“The secret of the story lies in its economy: the events, however long they last, become punctiform, connected by rectilinear segments, in a zigzag pattern that suggests incessant motion…Mental speed is valuable for its own sake, for the pleasure it gives to anyone who is sensitive to such a thing, and not for the practical use that can be made of it…it communicates something special that is derived simply from its very swiftness.”

- Italo Calvino, Quickness

“Discoursing is like coursing.”

- Galileo

Who said it isn’t still seriously playful? A theory on the...

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 10:00:05 -0400

Who said it isn’t still seriously playful?

A theory on the arxiv of Gravity’s Rainbow by Lee Smolin as reminder.

“In the static space of the architect, he might’ve used a double integral now and then, early in his career, to find volumes under surfaces whose equations are known — masses, moments, centers of gravity. But it has been years since he’s had to do with anything that basic…in the dynamic space of the living Rocket, the double integral has a different meaning. To integrate here is to operate on a rate of change so that time falls away: change is stilled….’Meters per second’ will integrate to ‘meters’. The moving vehicle is frozen, in space, to become architecture, and timeless. It was never launched. It will never fall.”

-Pynchon

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether: Famous Physicists hanging out...

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:37:35 -0400

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:

Famous Physicists hanging out together:
A. Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, Ed. Herzen, Th. De Donder, E. Schrödinger, J.E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin;
P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr;
I. Langmuir, M. Planck, M. Curie, H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, Ch. E. Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson

“The withdrawal of philosophy into a “professional” shell of its own has had disastrous consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Boltzmann, Mach and so on. But they are uncivilized savages, they lack in philosophical depth — and this is the fault of the very same idea of professionalism which you are now defending”

-Paul Feyerabend

“As the day progressed Feyerabend told us his story. He had been a physics prodigy as a teenager in Vienna, but his studies were curtailed when he was drafted to fight in World War II. He was wounded on the Russian front and later ended up in Berlin, where he found work after the war as an actor. After a time, he tired of the theater world and returned to the study of physics in Vienna. He joined the philosophy club, where he discovered that he could win on any side of a philosophical debate simply by using the skills he had learned in the acting profession.”

-Lee Smolin

anyone spotted him in Der Prozeß?

Drawing with Code. Jean-Pierre Hebert

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Drawing with Code. Jean-Pierre Hebert

Why Philosophers Should Care About Quantum Computing

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:01:06 -0400

Why Philosophers Should Care About Quantum Computing:

A new paper by Scott Aaronson on:

Why Philosopher’s Should Care About Computational Complexity.

One might think that, once we know something is computable, how eﬃciently it can be computed is a practical question with little further philosophical importance. In this essay, I oﬀer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In particular, I argue that computational complexity theory—the ﬁeld that studies the resources (such as time, space, and randomness) needed to solve computational problems—leads to new perspectives on the nature of mathematical knowledge, the strong AI debate, computationalism, the problem of logical omniscience, Hume’s problem of induction and Goodman’s grue riddle, the foundations of quantum mechanics, economic rationality, closed timelike curves, and several other topics of philosophical interest. I end by discussing aspects of complexity theory itself that could beneﬁt from philosophical analysis.

A serious list.

His blog Shtetl-Optimized.

And something of obligatory accompanying linkage: Quantum Computing Since Democritus.