> From the viewpoint of BDSM, it appears that everyone unconsciously plays out the same dynamics in everyday interactions. All. The. Time. It’s pervasive! But unrecognized, because it is not explicit or negotiated. And that makes it generally unpleasant and not enjoyable for most participants most of the time.
Have you read "Existential Kink" by Carolyn Elliott? She starts from a similar thesis.
That has been on my short list to read for years. I felt I especially ought to read it before writing this, but ... time is also short. I'll definitely read it any year now I suppose!
(Thanks for the recommendation, which is certainly apposite!)
>>When I adopt someone else's mindset and be and think like him/her for a while to see what happens which can be exhilarating.
This is one of the joys of writing my substack which is roughly auto-fiction. It allows me to view the world through my own slightly idealized eyes in a social environment which is just a little different from what is around me. It lets me toy with "how would a person who believes X describe Y. What would be the salient features they would pull out and how would they talk about them?" Yes, luscious!
Something I enjoy about my field (computer programming) is that the dominance hierarchy at the company is clear, and I get to participate in it in an overt way. My boss/manager is my superior and "dom" in a way not dissimilar to the BDSM, and I get to act as their subordinate, and then I get to feel good about myself if I'm performing well, and feel bad if I'm not.
There's a way to go too far with it, as was the case in one place I worked at where my boss's presence was looming over my whole life and activities even outside of work hours, and I find that it helps to have a feminine touch in that structure, to temper and soften the dynamic. I wouldn't want to work in an environment where everyone was my peer, it wouldn't be motivating and satisfying to me, unless these people were my good friends.
(also, a note on the formatting of the essay - the hand-written letters add delightful texture to the whole thing and make it more engaging, but as both a young person and a non-native english speaker, I sometimes find it hard to parse the handwriting, especially in Liota's first reply)
It's not just you... she wrote that letter in "American cursive," a highly stylized form of handwriting that has been obsolete for decades. When we were young, it was taught to all children from a young age. I don't know why; it seems to have been a nearly-religious tradition. Gradually everyone realized it was pointless and it's mostly no longer taught, and I'd guess for younger American adults it may be difficult to read as well!
I learned to write in cursive in the 00s (in Germany) and still default to it! Find it a little funny that it's treated as an archaic relict in some places... when writing by hand I genuinely find it much more pleasant to write than non-cursive.
Interestingly in Germany the move has also been away from teaching cursive, but with the assumption that children will develop their own style of cursive rather than forcing them to learn and use a prescribed style the way it was traditionally done. This has been criticised as expecting too much of children. I find it fascinating that few seem to argue for the obsolescence of cursive.
I recently said goodbye to a (not very serious) romantic relationship because she had to leave the country, and as a goodbye she wrote me a letter, that i was to read after she's back to her home. The issue is... the handwriting. I did manage to read it in its entirety (how could i not!), but a few words still eluded me
Really interesting read as someone who left academia for reasons that are at least partly tied to your thesis about domination and submission.
In my case, the mounting revulsion over years was largely to do with the social sciences' disregard for skillfull communication (e.g. writing) and the completely mercenary approach to Vitae Farming I increasingly saw among colleagues.
In my mind, what that boiled down to was "the quality of the work won't save you, you must become integrated with and subservient to the institution/culture."
Ugh! Well, congratulations for leaving. I wish universities were not driving many of their best people out! I wish they were different in many ways. FWIW, my guess is that the current institutional structure is unsustainable and approaching its end. Much will be lost that should not be, but also ... good riddance to a lot of it.
It's a very tough thing to talk about, because I still know many academics doing great work, and because my critique is that the system should be BETTER at a time when politicians are trying to destroy education in America full stop. So I try not to go tooooo hard. But I also can see many of the ways that the system doomed itself to irrelevancy, through the twin curses of mercenary credentialism and (my real peeve) a bone-deep bias against genuine public engagement.
>>> “When someone will let me show them how to think in one of the ways I like, I get to watch them seeing the world through my eyes. Luscious!”
Hm. Had once occurred to me to consider that the experience of reading "Meaningness" (which I've been returning to, w/regular fits of intensity, over the last 6 years) had any character of dominance or/or submission. Buuuuut, 🤔 I suppose if one thinks about it, lol…
A couple things: great to see handwritten letters make yet another appearance. 🙌 (Until I saw the comments thread, I hadn’t realized how much an historically-niche skill it has become to read “American cursive” without noticing/remembering its near-total obsolescence.)
Also, FWIW: in re-reading my own diaries, marginal-notes-to-self and correspondence from about that same late-80s time period (which I’ve been doing lately) I too keep encountering ideas—not fully-formed, but darned near—that I honestly believed I had only arrived at in my 50s. Guess the foundations were already poured a long time ago. (Or at least the blueprints drawn up, to stretch the metaphor.)
NB: Rather than feeling demoralized, I’m choosing to see it in terms of the karmic—if you will—readiness that seems to define so many things in this life. That is: you can’t hurry the process, or force it. The fruit drops the exact moment it’s ready, no sooner. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Oh well.
I too keep encountering ideas—not fully-formed, but darned near—that I honestly believed I had only arrived at in my 50s.
That’s really interesting, thanks!
Guess the foundations were already poured a long time ago. (Or at least the blueprints drawn up, to stretch the metaphor.)
Yes, I like those metaphors!
readiness that seems to define so many things in this life. That is: you can’t hurry the process, or force it. The fruit drops the exact moment it’s ready, no sooner.
> Ought I not to have had some new ideas over the past forty years? This is one way my research for the Liota story has been emotionally difficult.
I have gone back and forth with journaling over the years and one reason I tend to fall off the wagon is noticing this phenomenon. At one point I had a habit of reviewing my journal using a “on this day” feature which showed entries from the same calendar date in years past. It was alarming / interesting / transformative to see how often I would be thinking the same things on the same days.
Yeah, I've been re-reading other parts of my diaries, and i keep finding entries that say "OMG I just realized this thing about how I am, this explains everything, now I don't need to do the dumb thing anymore" and then a few weeks later an entry that said "I was rereading my diary and discovered that I'd had exactly the same revelation three years ago" and sometimes it would be "I've had this revelation four times so far, and forgotten it shortly after each time" which is rather disheartening, really!
Thanks for the post , David ! How would you distinguish between belief vs ways of thinking ? I think the beliefs frame the ways in which one can think. Kind of like assumptions based on which one operates in the world.
Well, as an example, you can use differential equations as a way of thinking. In lots of fields, that's the main metaphor. Even when you don't specify in detail what the equation is, that's the "feel" of the way you think. There aren't any particular beliefs required for that way of thinking. In a particular case, specific facts or domain theories may be necessary, and those might count as beliefs. But those are "content" rather than the "container," which is the way of thinking.
Perhaps I didn't express myself properly. I'm not trying to be contrary, this subject simply fascinates me. In quantum theory you have wave mechanics and matrix mechanics, which are equivalent relative to the theory. You seem to distinguish these as distinct “ways of thinking.” Okay, some background.
My BELIEF is, with the exception of a few enlightened embodiments, humans tend to have a default “way of thinking.” David Hestenes calls this the Model Theory of Cognition. We navigate our world by constructing mental models of that world in our mind. We then represent these mental models in symbolic language, resulting in a conceptual model. Wave mechanics and matrix mechanics are simply distinct but related symbolic languages describing the same conceptual model. They are related via linearity and the continuum - wave mechanics, of course, expressed with partial differential equations and matrix mechanics with Hilbert spaces. But these symbolic languages are, in and of themselves, conceptual models and conceptual models are belief systems; no good Buddhist would argue with that!?!
“What I care most about are definitions. For one thing, humans describe mathematics through language, and, as always, we need sharp words in order to articulate our ideas clearly. (For example, for a long time, I had some idea of the concept of diamonds. But only when I came up with a good name could I really start to think about it, let alone communicate it to others. Finding the name took several months (or even a year?). Then it took another two or three years to finally write down the correct definition (among many close variants). The essential difficulty in writing “Etale cohomology of diamonds” was (by far) not giving the proofs, but finding the definitions.) But even beyond mere language, we perceive mathematical nature through the lenses given by definitions, and it is critical that the definitions put the essential points into focus.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to find the right definitions by pure thought; one needs to detect the correct problems where progress will require the isolation of a new key concept.”
Thanks for an interesting comment! I love the quote from Peter Scholze. When I studied math 40+ years ago, the mainstream view was that definitions are trivial and uninteresting and what matter are theorems. (And proofs were considered interesting mostly only as annoying work you had to do to get a theorem, which was what counted.) I thought then that this was wrong, and definitions are the most interesting thing! And the field overall seems to have gradually come to that realization also.
> conceptual models are belief systems;
Our differing understandings here may be the result of different definitions :)
I take it that a belief is something that is supposed to be true, or not. A conceptual model is neither true nor false. It is usefully applicable (in some situations) or not so much. One way it can be useful is if you derived true beliefs from it (in that situation). But (for example) the conceptual model of PDEs is neither true nor false.
That was the big debate between Goedel and Wittgenstein which motivated Tarski to formalize Proof Theory and Model Theory, on the one hand. I would say Goedel was an Idealist, Tarski a pragmatist, and Wittgenstein a metaphysical nihilist.
On the other, it's an ongoing debate in the Philosophy of Science. In the beginning, wave mechanics was preferred because physicists were accustomed to PDE's and a realist philosophical position, but over time the Copenhagen philosophical position prevailed - shut up and calculate, and matrix mechanics became more popular.
At any rate, I believe I see the distinction you are making. I wonder if you have read Hestenes' Model Theory of Cognition. He was/is a mathematical physicist awarded numerous Oersted medals for his research in physics education. He would say Newtonian physics, for example, is a "way of thinking" and a conceptual model. You cannot use this way of thinking without thoroughly integrating the key concepts into your mental model of Newtonian physics. Their research indicated that college education was failing in this regard. They came up with the Force Concept Inventory to test the students conceptual understanding of force. Force is generally presented as F=ma, which is conceptually confusing. Newton originally presented it as (using the notation of Liebniz), F=d(mv)/dt, allowing one to see immediately that force is a momentum exchange. But even simpler, I have encountered many students online who insist they "know" Differential and Integral Calculus, yet have no idea that dx stands for "differential in x" or even what a differential is! It seems impossible to use Calculus as a "way of thinking" without knowing what a differential is!?! Of course, I didn’t know until I worked through an extraordinary textbook by Ross Middlemiss published in 1940!
Anyway, I was hoping you were going to clarify Pramana for me . . .
> I wonder if you have read Hestenes' Model Theory of Cognition.
Thanks, no, I hadn't come across this before.
> Force is generally presented as F=ma, which is conceptually confusing.
Yeah I've spent a lot of time thinking that through and might write about it someday. The Ohm's Law case is similar but worse (in my experience).
> I was hoping you were going to clarify Pramana for me
Sorry, no! I know vastly more Western mathematical and philosophical logic, and the histories thereof, than anyone not an academic specialist should. As far as I can tell, pramana is a rehash of Ancient Greek logic, and not an improvement. But I haven't looked into it more than superficially; learning another variant system is not attractive :)
This is my Clutch - I told you I kayak whitewater. The state equation on the side is Navier-Stokes! I thought Jackson Kayaks did such a tremendous job with the design. We'll, I just picked up their new Antix 3 tonight, so we'll see.
The confusion in mathematics bothers me, and sometimes seems intentional. We learn the differential in single-variable calculus as a geometric entity, clear as a cloudless day. Then in multi-variable calculus it of a sudden becomes a linear transformation!?! Worse, they have the audacity to tell me the linear transformation reduces to the geometric entity in the special case!?! Not difficult to show that it does not!
Hestenes is the ASU physicist who developed Clifford Algebras into Geometric Algebra by adding the calculus. Geometric Algebra indicates that spacetime has a distinct signature: (+, -, -, -) as opposed to (-, +, +, +). He's a realist responsible for the Zitter Model.
There’s a conference that’s held in San Diego. I won’t name it, but you might be able to work out which one. Anyway, we could, in principle, cut it short and do something else, like go to the San Diego zoo or Sea World or something. (I think they have actually arranged trips to San Diego Supercomputer Centre).
Anyway, when I’m refereeing papers for this lightly-anonymised venue, I am thinking “would the audience actually rather go to the San Diego zoo rather than stay around to listen to _ this_?”
I love the San Diego Zoo! Yeah, I'd much rather go there.
Standard good advice for conferences is to blow off the sessions and hang out in the hallways talking to interesting people. This works on the margin, but are there actually interesting people there? And can you find them, and will they talk to you?
This is now widely-enough known that various alternative conference formats encourage that. I've been to only a few of those, and have enjoyed them on the whole.
A while ago, some BDSM kinksters of my aquiantance were looking for a volunteer to be locked in a cage and poked with a stick at their fetish night. (Think of the King Kong movie here). They’d constructed a cage specially, I think. I passed on their offer, but knowing that community, they will have found someone whose fantasy that is.
But anyway, agreeing to present a paper at (e.g.) IEEE Security and Privacy in Oakland has some noticeable similarities with volunteering to be the guy who gets locked in a cage and poked with a stick.
I haven't read this whole article, but from what I've gathered so far, essentially what you're saying is that no other partner is able to intellectually entertain you. *raised eyebrow*
Unrelated, but just wanted to mention something to you. I think my boss at work tried to dominate me using the feminized way of dominating people that you alluded to in your post. It was helpful that I read what I did of your post, and can just understand, "oh, this is just someone trying to dominate me", and not have to take it so personally. It's interesting, people really do do this to each other all the time, but it's underneath what's actually being said. Thanks for showing me that.
When you use differential equations many implicit beliefs are assumed, the continuum most obviously. Have you read Where Mathematics Comes From? What is the difference between a countable and uncountable set? Even the existence of a countable set is taken on faith.
> From the viewpoint of BDSM, it appears that everyone unconsciously plays out the same dynamics in everyday interactions. All. The. Time. It’s pervasive! But unrecognized, because it is not explicit or negotiated. And that makes it generally unpleasant and not enjoyable for most participants most of the time.
Have you read "Existential Kink" by Carolyn Elliott? She starts from a similar thesis.
That has been on my short list to read for years. I felt I especially ought to read it before writing this, but ... time is also short. I'll definitely read it any year now I suppose!
(Thanks for the recommendation, which is certainly apposite!)
The book had a big impact on me and helped me improve my well-being a lot (even though I do not have much of a conscious masochistic streak).
>>When I adopt someone else's mindset and be and think like him/her for a while to see what happens which can be exhilarating.
This is one of the joys of writing my substack which is roughly auto-fiction. It allows me to view the world through my own slightly idealized eyes in a social environment which is just a little different from what is around me. It lets me toy with "how would a person who believes X describe Y. What would be the salient features they would pull out and how would they talk about them?" Yes, luscious!
Something I enjoy about my field (computer programming) is that the dominance hierarchy at the company is clear, and I get to participate in it in an overt way. My boss/manager is my superior and "dom" in a way not dissimilar to the BDSM, and I get to act as their subordinate, and then I get to feel good about myself if I'm performing well, and feel bad if I'm not.
There's a way to go too far with it, as was the case in one place I worked at where my boss's presence was looming over my whole life and activities even outside of work hours, and I find that it helps to have a feminine touch in that structure, to temper and soften the dynamic. I wouldn't want to work in an environment where everyone was my peer, it wouldn't be motivating and satisfying to me, unless these people were my good friends.
(also, a note on the formatting of the essay - the hand-written letters add delightful texture to the whole thing and make it more engaging, but as both a young person and a non-native english speaker, I sometimes find it hard to parse the handwriting, especially in Liota's first reply)
It's not just you... she wrote that letter in "American cursive," a highly stylized form of handwriting that has been obsolete for decades. When we were young, it was taught to all children from a young age. I don't know why; it seems to have been a nearly-religious tradition. Gradually everyone realized it was pointless and it's mostly no longer taught, and I'd guess for younger American adults it may be difficult to read as well!
Apparently it's recently been mandated again in some American states due to activism from cultural conservatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive#Decline_of_English_cursive_in_the_United_States
I learned to write in cursive in the 00s (in Germany) and still default to it! Find it a little funny that it's treated as an archaic relict in some places... when writing by hand I genuinely find it much more pleasant to write than non-cursive.
Interestingly in Germany the move has also been away from teaching cursive, but with the assumption that children will develop their own style of cursive rather than forcing them to learn and use a prescribed style the way it was traditionally done. This has been criticised as expecting too much of children. I find it fascinating that few seem to argue for the obsolescence of cursive.
I recently said goodbye to a (not very serious) romantic relationship because she had to leave the country, and as a goodbye she wrote me a letter, that i was to read after she's back to her home. The issue is... the handwriting. I did manage to read it in its entirety (how could i not!), but a few words still eluded me
I love that you had the same dorky smile back then, too.
Really interesting read as someone who left academia for reasons that are at least partly tied to your thesis about domination and submission.
In my case, the mounting revulsion over years was largely to do with the social sciences' disregard for skillfull communication (e.g. writing) and the completely mercenary approach to Vitae Farming I increasingly saw among colleagues.
In my mind, what that boiled down to was "the quality of the work won't save you, you must become integrated with and subservient to the institution/culture."
Ugh! Well, congratulations for leaving. I wish universities were not driving many of their best people out! I wish they were different in many ways. FWIW, my guess is that the current institutional structure is unsustainable and approaching its end. Much will be lost that should not be, but also ... good riddance to a lot of it.
It's a very tough thing to talk about, because I still know many academics doing great work, and because my critique is that the system should be BETTER at a time when politicians are trying to destroy education in America full stop. So I try not to go tooooo hard. But I also can see many of the ways that the system doomed itself to irrelevancy, through the twin curses of mercenary credentialism and (my real peeve) a bone-deep bias against genuine public engagement.
>>> “When someone will let me show them how to think in one of the ways I like, I get to watch them seeing the world through my eyes. Luscious!”
Hm. Had once occurred to me to consider that the experience of reading "Meaningness" (which I've been returning to, w/regular fits of intensity, over the last 6 years) had any character of dominance or/or submission. Buuuuut, 🤔 I suppose if one thinks about it, lol…
A couple things: great to see handwritten letters make yet another appearance. 🙌 (Until I saw the comments thread, I hadn’t realized how much an historically-niche skill it has become to read “American cursive” without noticing/remembering its near-total obsolescence.)
Also, FWIW: in re-reading my own diaries, marginal-notes-to-self and correspondence from about that same late-80s time period (which I’ve been doing lately) I too keep encountering ideas—not fully-formed, but darned near—that I honestly believed I had only arrived at in my 50s. Guess the foundations were already poured a long time ago. (Or at least the blueprints drawn up, to stretch the metaphor.)
NB: Rather than feeling demoralized, I’m choosing to see it in terms of the karmic—if you will—readiness that seems to define so many things in this life. That is: you can’t hurry the process, or force it. The fruit drops the exact moment it’s ready, no sooner. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Oh well.
I too keep encountering ideas—not fully-formed, but darned near—that I honestly believed I had only arrived at in my 50s.
That’s really interesting, thanks!
Guess the foundations were already poured a long time ago. (Or at least the blueprints drawn up, to stretch the metaphor.)
Yes, I like those metaphors!
readiness that seems to define so many things in this life. That is: you can’t hurry the process, or force it. The fruit drops the exact moment it’s ready, no sooner.
Thank you—I will try to see it that way :)
> Ought I not to have had some new ideas over the past forty years? This is one way my research for the Liota story has been emotionally difficult.
I have gone back and forth with journaling over the years and one reason I tend to fall off the wagon is noticing this phenomenon. At one point I had a habit of reviewing my journal using a “on this day” feature which showed entries from the same calendar date in years past. It was alarming / interesting / transformative to see how often I would be thinking the same things on the same days.
Yeah, I've been re-reading other parts of my diaries, and i keep finding entries that say "OMG I just realized this thing about how I am, this explains everything, now I don't need to do the dumb thing anymore" and then a few weeks later an entry that said "I was rereading my diary and discovered that I'd had exactly the same revelation three years ago" and sometimes it would be "I've had this revelation four times so far, and forgotten it shortly after each time" which is rather disheartening, really!
Thanks for the post , David ! How would you distinguish between belief vs ways of thinking ? I think the beliefs frame the ways in which one can think. Kind of like assumptions based on which one operates in the world.
Well, as an example, you can use differential equations as a way of thinking. In lots of fields, that's the main metaphor. Even when you don't specify in detail what the equation is, that's the "feel" of the way you think. There aren't any particular beliefs required for that way of thinking. In a particular case, specific facts or domain theories may be necessary, and those might count as beliefs. But those are "content" rather than the "container," which is the way of thinking.
Perhaps I didn't express myself properly. I'm not trying to be contrary, this subject simply fascinates me. In quantum theory you have wave mechanics and matrix mechanics, which are equivalent relative to the theory. You seem to distinguish these as distinct “ways of thinking.” Okay, some background.
My BELIEF is, with the exception of a few enlightened embodiments, humans tend to have a default “way of thinking.” David Hestenes calls this the Model Theory of Cognition. We navigate our world by constructing mental models of that world in our mind. We then represent these mental models in symbolic language, resulting in a conceptual model. Wave mechanics and matrix mechanics are simply distinct but related symbolic languages describing the same conceptual model. They are related via linearity and the continuum - wave mechanics, of course, expressed with partial differential equations and matrix mechanics with Hilbert spaces. But these symbolic languages are, in and of themselves, conceptual models and conceptual models are belief systems; no good Buddhist would argue with that!?!
“What I care most about are definitions. For one thing, humans describe mathematics through language, and, as always, we need sharp words in order to articulate our ideas clearly. (For example, for a long time, I had some idea of the concept of diamonds. But only when I came up with a good name could I really start to think about it, let alone communicate it to others. Finding the name took several months (or even a year?). Then it took another two or three years to finally write down the correct definition (among many close variants). The essential difficulty in writing “Etale cohomology of diamonds” was (by far) not giving the proofs, but finding the definitions.) But even beyond mere language, we perceive mathematical nature through the lenses given by definitions, and it is critical that the definitions put the essential points into focus.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to find the right definitions by pure thought; one needs to detect the correct problems where progress will require the isolation of a new key concept.”
Peter Scholze on definitions – theHigherGeometer https://share.google/QSSzsL2bu3cfi0rUQ
Thanks for an interesting comment! I love the quote from Peter Scholze. When I studied math 40+ years ago, the mainstream view was that definitions are trivial and uninteresting and what matter are theorems. (And proofs were considered interesting mostly only as annoying work you had to do to get a theorem, which was what counted.) I thought then that this was wrong, and definitions are the most interesting thing! And the field overall seems to have gradually come to that realization also.
> conceptual models are belief systems;
Our differing understandings here may be the result of different definitions :)
I take it that a belief is something that is supposed to be true, or not. A conceptual model is neither true nor false. It is usefully applicable (in some situations) or not so much. One way it can be useful is if you derived true beliefs from it (in that situation). But (for example) the conceptual model of PDEs is neither true nor false.
That was the big debate between Goedel and Wittgenstein which motivated Tarski to formalize Proof Theory and Model Theory, on the one hand. I would say Goedel was an Idealist, Tarski a pragmatist, and Wittgenstein a metaphysical nihilist.
On the other, it's an ongoing debate in the Philosophy of Science. In the beginning, wave mechanics was preferred because physicists were accustomed to PDE's and a realist philosophical position, but over time the Copenhagen philosophical position prevailed - shut up and calculate, and matrix mechanics became more popular.
At any rate, I believe I see the distinction you are making. I wonder if you have read Hestenes' Model Theory of Cognition. He was/is a mathematical physicist awarded numerous Oersted medals for his research in physics education. He would say Newtonian physics, for example, is a "way of thinking" and a conceptual model. You cannot use this way of thinking without thoroughly integrating the key concepts into your mental model of Newtonian physics. Their research indicated that college education was failing in this regard. They came up with the Force Concept Inventory to test the students conceptual understanding of force. Force is generally presented as F=ma, which is conceptually confusing. Newton originally presented it as (using the notation of Liebniz), F=d(mv)/dt, allowing one to see immediately that force is a momentum exchange. But even simpler, I have encountered many students online who insist they "know" Differential and Integral Calculus, yet have no idea that dx stands for "differential in x" or even what a differential is! It seems impossible to use Calculus as a "way of thinking" without knowing what a differential is!?! Of course, I didn’t know until I worked through an extraordinary textbook by Ross Middlemiss published in 1940!
Anyway, I was hoping you were going to clarify Pramana for me . . .
> I wonder if you have read Hestenes' Model Theory of Cognition.
Thanks, no, I hadn't come across this before.
> Force is generally presented as F=ma, which is conceptually confusing.
Yeah I've spent a lot of time thinking that through and might write about it someday. The Ohm's Law case is similar but worse (in my experience).
> I was hoping you were going to clarify Pramana for me
Sorry, no! I know vastly more Western mathematical and philosophical logic, and the histories thereof, than anyone not an academic specialist should. As far as I can tell, pramana is a rehash of Ancient Greek logic, and not an improvement. But I haven't looked into it more than superficially; learning another variant system is not attractive :)
This is my Clutch - I told you I kayak whitewater. The state equation on the side is Navier-Stokes! I thought Jackson Kayaks did such a tremendous job with the design. We'll, I just picked up their new Antix 3 tonight, so we'll see.
The confusion in mathematics bothers me, and sometimes seems intentional. We learn the differential in single-variable calculus as a geometric entity, clear as a cloudless day. Then in multi-variable calculus it of a sudden becomes a linear transformation!?! Worse, they have the audacity to tell me the linear transformation reduces to the geometric entity in the special case!?! Not difficult to show that it does not!
Hestenes is the ASU physicist who developed Clifford Algebras into Geometric Algebra by adding the calculus. Geometric Algebra indicates that spacetime has a distinct signature: (+, -, -, -) as opposed to (-, +, +, +). He's a realist responsible for the Zitter Model.
Notes_on_Modeling_Theory.pdf https://share.google/ITmGxgephmMllGzBt
There’s a conference that’s held in San Diego. I won’t name it, but you might be able to work out which one. Anyway, we could, in principle, cut it short and do something else, like go to the San Diego zoo or Sea World or something. (I think they have actually arranged trips to San Diego Supercomputer Centre).
Anyway, when I’m refereeing papers for this lightly-anonymised venue, I am thinking “would the audience actually rather go to the San Diego zoo rather than stay around to listen to _ this_?”
I love the San Diego Zoo! Yeah, I'd much rather go there.
Standard good advice for conferences is to blow off the sessions and hang out in the hallways talking to interesting people. This works on the margin, but are there actually interesting people there? And can you find them, and will they talk to you?
This is now widely-enough known that various alternative conference formats encourage that. I've been to only a few of those, and have enjoyed them on the whole.
Alternative take:
A while ago, some BDSM kinksters of my aquiantance were looking for a volunteer to be locked in a cage and poked with a stick at their fetish night. (Think of the King Kong movie here). They’d constructed a cage specially, I think. I passed on their offer, but knowing that community, they will have found someone whose fantasy that is.
But anyway, agreeing to present a paper at (e.g.) IEEE Security and Privacy in Oakland has some noticeable similarities with volunteering to be the guy who gets locked in a cage and poked with a stick.
omg can't stop laughing!
Hello,
I haven't read this whole article, but from what I've gathered so far, essentially what you're saying is that no other partner is able to intellectually entertain you. *raised eyebrow*
Well, that's true, but it's something mentioned in passing, not the point of the post.
That's true.
Unrelated, but just wanted to mention something to you. I think my boss at work tried to dominate me using the feminized way of dominating people that you alluded to in your post. It was helpful that I read what I did of your post, and can just understand, "oh, this is just someone trying to dominate me", and not have to take it so personally. It's interesting, people really do do this to each other all the time, but it's underneath what's actually being said. Thanks for showing me that.
When you use differential equations many implicit beliefs are assumed, the continuum most obviously. Have you read Where Mathematics Comes From? What is the difference between a countable and uncountable set? Even the existence of a countable set is taken on faith.