If....
* Jeff Koons can afford an atelier of assistants to polish his balls;
* Urs Fischer can hire someone to construct a set of autonomous office chairs;
* Mauricio Catellan can be praised for his Duchampian wit, a century on;
* Darren Bader can get a warm review in the Times for his re-heated thoughts;
Then....
It seems that even the ideas of post-post-modern artists' are of little utility.
Therefore....
Along with no longer producing anything of intrinsic value, I should also outsource the conceptualizing. Surely there are artists in other countries who can have ideas much more economically than me?
After that, given its glaringly short supply in the developed world, I might as well suspend my judgement as well.
So, from here on in, just assume that, if I had thought it was worth the effort, I would have done it.
Already....
Showing posts with label brain fahrt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain fahrt. Show all posts
Saturday, January 4, 2020
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Random Thought
I have to say, that, in general, I do not believe in randomness. I'm sure there are some Quantum Mechanics (Maniacs?) out there who will beg to differ and provide supporting arguments, but until then....
Let's say I flip a coin. This particular flip comes up HEADS. Can you provide me with a proof that it could have been TAILS? Sure, sure, you can show that the next few flips might have different outcomes, and further that the next 1 billion flips will average dangnabbitedly close to 50% each. But that's not what I asked. I want proof that the original action might have taken a turn to the T-side. Since that has already (not) happened it is in the -- still apparently -- inviolable past and cannot be changed. So maybe it wasn't random at all?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue that we can predict the future. Both complicatedness (many moving parts) and complexity (intersecting feedback loops) make that practically and theoretically impossible.
I'm just saying that we can predict the past.
Let's say I flip a coin. This particular flip comes up HEADS. Can you provide me with a proof that it could have been TAILS? Sure, sure, you can show that the next few flips might have different outcomes, and further that the next 1 billion flips will average dangnabbitedly close to 50% each. But that's not what I asked. I want proof that the original action might have taken a turn to the T-side. Since that has already (not) happened it is in the -- still apparently -- inviolable past and cannot be changed. So maybe it wasn't random at all?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue that we can predict the future. Both complicatedness (many moving parts) and complexity (intersecting feedback loops) make that practically and theoretically impossible.
I'm just saying that we can predict the past.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Art Work
Following on from thought #1, Residue, this is thought #2 from my failed nap a couple weeks ago. If Art is always the useless bits leftover from cultural development, what comprises those bits right now? I'm not smart enough to jump the entire paradigm, but I do have this much:
Harking back to my whole schtick with the Prisoner's Dilemma where the "rational" solution -- defect -- is the "obvious" strategy which maximizes-reward and minimizes-risk over the short term. This optimizes well for evolutionary natural selection in a scarce and hostile environment, but results in a slightly less beneficial overall outcome -- versus cooperate -- for both parties over the long term.
And the long term is significant these days.
Thanks to over fitting, the Social Darwinists of the 19th century are no longer with us -- except in the guise of Libertarian economists -- but we still don't really think outside of the risk/reward box.
I recently attended an SFI talk by an evolutionary roboticist who, as an aside, complained that his evolved robots did not do so well in the long term. When I suggested that other fitness functions might be tried he pretty much dismissed the idea because they would be out-competed in the short term (in my own self-serving paraphrase of the interchange...).
But what if we try to do evolution with different utility functions?
If it's not Science, then what is it?
...Art...
Harking back to my whole schtick with the Prisoner's Dilemma where the "rational" solution -- defect -- is the "obvious" strategy which maximizes-reward and minimizes-risk over the short term. This optimizes well for evolutionary natural selection in a scarce and hostile environment, but results in a slightly less beneficial overall outcome -- versus cooperate -- for both parties over the long term.
And the long term is significant these days.
Thanks to over fitting, the Social Darwinists of the 19th century are no longer with us -- except in the guise of Libertarian economists -- but we still don't really think outside of the risk/reward box.
I recently attended an SFI talk by an evolutionary roboticist who, as an aside, complained that his evolved robots did not do so well in the long term. When I suggested that other fitness functions might be tried he pretty much dismissed the idea because they would be out-competed in the short term (in my own self-serving paraphrase of the interchange...).
But what if we try to do evolution with different utility functions?
- What's the best option for the common good?
- How can we all have the most fun?
- Can I be the best improvisational drummer in the ensemble?
- What would make the prettiest rainbows come out of my unicorn's butt?
If it's not Science, then what is it?
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Residue
(This is the result of not being able to nap after not being able to sleep before getting up too early...)
Art is the residue of culture on two levels.
In the first sense, art objects are the artifacts left over after all use-value has been extracted, i.e., when things have no further function they become Art. Pictures on a wall.
(Here the reader may insert an argument about design and craftsmanship and/or a counter argument about bad design.)
However in Level II of my alternate historicity, The Arts are the residue.
Lets say that Dark Ages newspapers had a monthly Arts section which covered everything from Hildegard von Bingen to Leonardo da Vinci.
Then later, during the Enlightenment, it became the Arts and Natural Philosophy page.
After which Science got it's own weekly publication, leaving us with the Art and Humanities magazine.
...und-so-weiter...
Until now: The Arts and Entertainment sunday supplement.
The point being that The Arts are always the residue of cultural ferment, calving off new areas of development. An interesting field of endeavor splits off and Art is left holding the spare parts bag.
Now. What if we split Entertainment off? After some bloody skirmishes, movies, TV, pop-music, yadayadayada, get their own section of the net, and The Arts gets the rest -- say Art and Culture. Opera, Symphony, Literature, Galleries, Museums, all the stuff that signifies sophistication to consummate 10%ers.
Then Culture can be excised. The historically significant art gallery and concert hall spectacles are all stuffed into convenient wallets and the surplus is renamed Arts and Ideas, where Ideas are what's left of late 20th century art.
So, ultimately Art is the leftover stew from whence Ideas bubble. When one of those New Ideas gains credence it becomes its own field leaving the unnecessary bits behind as The Arts. And without The Arts broth, New Ideas do not gestate.
Art is the residue of culture on two levels.
In the first sense, art objects are the artifacts left over after all use-value has been extracted, i.e., when things have no further function they become Art. Pictures on a wall.
(Here the reader may insert an argument about design and craftsmanship and/or a counter argument about bad design.)
However in Level II of my alternate historicity, The Arts are the residue.
Lets say that Dark Ages newspapers had a monthly Arts section which covered everything from Hildegard von Bingen to Leonardo da Vinci.
Then later, during the Enlightenment, it became the Arts and Natural Philosophy page.
After which Science got it's own weekly publication, leaving us with the Art and Humanities magazine.
Until now: The Arts and Entertainment sunday supplement.
The point being that The Arts are always the residue of cultural ferment, calving off new areas of development. An interesting field of endeavor splits off and Art is left holding the spare parts bag.
Now. What if we split Entertainment off? After some bloody skirmishes, movies, TV, pop-music, yadayadayada, get their own section of the net, and The Arts gets the rest -- say Art and Culture. Opera, Symphony, Literature, Galleries, Museums, all the stuff that signifies sophistication to consummate 10%ers.
Then Culture can be excised. The historically significant art gallery and concert hall spectacles are all stuffed into convenient wallets and the surplus is renamed Arts and Ideas, where Ideas are what's left of late 20th century art.
So, ultimately Art is the leftover stew from whence Ideas bubble. When one of those New Ideas gains credence it becomes its own field leaving the unnecessary bits behind as The Arts. And without The Arts broth, New Ideas do not gestate.
Monday, November 17, 2014
YATC -- Yet Another Taxonomy Compiler
For decades my friend Brian has self-identified as a Moron. In his defense, because he is obviously much smarter than me, I declared myself an Idiot. Recently affairs of the world have come to such a point that I was sorely pressed for descriptive expletives, so I asked Brian if I could join him in order to free up an appellation for other uses. He agreed to upgrade me to moron and now I can freely use idiot as needed.
In order to have a clear order of precedence I looked for the ur-meanings of my terms, and the ever faithful wikipedia came through under the Idiot sub-heading of Disability:
From this I have developed my idiosyncratic taxonomy for use in further discussions.
An Idiot does stupid and or dangerous things over and over. In current American medical classification, these people are now said to have profound intellectual disability.
A Dunce is an idiot who is specifically incapable of learning.
An Imbecile has an intellectual disability less extreme than idiocy. This is now usually subdivided into two categories, known as severe intellectual disability and moderate intellectual disability (again, thank you wikipedia). I apply this word to media personalities who just make up information and then get huffy when someone argues with them.
A Moron misses connections which are staring him/her right in the face. They do however usually have the ability to learn once something is explicitly explained to them (Brian, and now I, pretty clearly fit in this category).
Then the various categories which reflect lack of experience, education, or tact rather than missing capability, and thus may be redeemable.
A Fool is unwise or lacking in judgement.
An Ignoramus is stupid, uneducated or ignorant.
A Dolt is stupid and entirely tedious at the same time. According to the Urban Dictionary they may also be oblivious to their own mental incapacity.
A Dullard is an unimaginative person. Again with thanks to The UD: An omnipresent, boring, annoying, and frequently idiotic being who is a master of inane conversations. Note that Websters has an extensive set of synonyms under dullard, but only two antonyms...
A Cretin is a vulgar or insensitive person, c.f.: clod, lout. A special sub-class (which may not be redeemable) was created by Karl Marx and best described by Friedrich Engels:
A Jackass will do anything that might make them seem to be popular. I apply this to most politicians.
An Asshat has their head up their ass, or more technically:
A further set of categories applies to working environments:
Dweebs are people that aren't really capable of anything but sometimes try anyway. Most employees throughout the management hierarchy are dweebs.
Then there are the Nerds and Geeks. They're pretty much the same except for one important quality. Both Nerds and Geeks are fairly tightly focused and capable in some, usually technological, subject. The difference is that the nerd thinks he actually enjoys doing what he's doing. The geek knows better.
Yahoos are egregious people whom you can't live without because they get things get done.
And finally, Gurus can be truculent and unpredictable. They amuse themselves by solving obscure problems and, if you are lucky, one of those problems will be yours.
Many of these folks are intelligent enough to believe that they know everything. Some few realize that they don't. An even smaller number actually do know everything, or at least how to figure it out.
In order to have a clear order of precedence I looked for the ur-meanings of my terms, and the ever faithful wikipedia came through under the Idiot sub-heading of Disability:
Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbeciles had a mental age of three to seven years, and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.This is reasonably close to how I would classify actual children of those various ages so the glove fits nicely. The entry also mentions that Idiots are barred from voting in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, and British parliamentary elections. Would it were so...
From this I have developed my idiosyncratic taxonomy for use in further discussions.
Intelligence
An Idiot does stupid and or dangerous things over and over. In current American medical classification, these people are now said to have profound intellectual disability.
A Dunce is an idiot who is specifically incapable of learning.
An Imbecile has an intellectual disability less extreme than idiocy. This is now usually subdivided into two categories, known as severe intellectual disability and moderate intellectual disability (again, thank you wikipedia). I apply this word to media personalities who just make up information and then get huffy when someone argues with them.
A Moron misses connections which are staring him/her right in the face. They do however usually have the ability to learn once something is explicitly explained to them (Brian, and now I, pretty clearly fit in this category).
"Moron" was coined in 1910 by psychologist Henry H. Goddard from the Ancient Greek word μωρός (moros), which meant "dull" (as opposed to oxy, which meant "sharp" (see also: oxymoron)) [!emphasis mine!] [wikipedia:Moron]
Education
Then the various categories which reflect lack of experience, education, or tact rather than missing capability, and thus may be redeemable.
A Fool is unwise or lacking in judgement.
An Ignoramus is stupid, uneducated or ignorant.
A Dolt is stupid and entirely tedious at the same time. According to the Urban Dictionary they may also be oblivious to their own mental incapacity.
A Dullard is an unimaginative person. Again with thanks to The UD: An omnipresent, boring, annoying, and frequently idiotic being who is a master of inane conversations. Note that Websters has an extensive set of synonyms under dullard, but only two antonyms...
A Cretin is a vulgar or insensitive person, c.f.: clod, lout. A special sub-class (which may not be redeemable) was created by Karl Marx and best described by Friedrich Engels:
Parliamentary cretinism, an incurable disease, an ailment whose unfortunate victims are permeated by the lofty conviction that the whole world, its history and its future are directed and determined by a majority of votes of just that very representative institution that has the honour of having them in the capacity of its members. [Encyclopedia of Marxism]Working our way further into politics:
A Jackass will do anything that might make them seem to be popular. I apply this to most politicians.
An Asshat has their head up their ass, or more technically:
Their cranial capacity has been reified by the hegemony of the interiority of their posterior. [Schippling, 2014]Asshats believe what imbeciles (media) and jackasses (politicians) say.
Work
A further set of categories applies to working environments:
Dweebs are people that aren't really capable of anything but sometimes try anyway. Most employees throughout the management hierarchy are dweebs.
Then there are the Nerds and Geeks. They're pretty much the same except for one important quality. Both Nerds and Geeks are fairly tightly focused and capable in some, usually technological, subject. The difference is that the nerd thinks he actually enjoys doing what he's doing. The geek knows better.
Yahoos are egregious people whom you can't live without because they get things get done.
And finally, Gurus can be truculent and unpredictable. They amuse themselves by solving obscure problems and, if you are lucky, one of those problems will be yours.
Many of these folks are intelligent enough to believe that they know everything. Some few realize that they don't. An even smaller number actually do know everything, or at least how to figure it out.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Epistomology 1
...back in the day when I was in skool, course #1 was the introductory event, now the usual nomenclature is Basket Welding 101, but I'm stuck in the past...anyway...being shut in with a cold and 8" of snow outside for the last few days my mind gets to wandering, I've been meaning to try to get this down for a while so here goes...
I am, from what I glean in the literature, a Pragmatic Instrumentalist with a strictly Mechanist -- causal -- bent. This means that I only believe things when I see them and can construct some reasonably clear step-by-step explanation for why they are that way.
As an Instrumentalist I believe that we make Hidden Markov Models of reality. Observations are used to develop models that make efficient predictions. But these models may have no deep relationship to that reality.
I know there are difficulties with Causality. So I also make it an article of faith that every Effect has a Cause. However, this does not mean that I believe that every Effect is predictable. Huge numbers of variables, sensitive dependence on conditions, and Heisenberg make that impossible. None the less, statistical and quantum mechanics make pretty good predictions about the distribution of classical and quantum level behaviors. Most pool balls aimed at a pocket go in. Unless I'm the player.
I also know there are difficulties with Objective Observation. Thus I'm willing to posit that a whole buncha folks should observe and explain things in a reasonably similar fashion before I really believe myself. This means that I depend on a fairly stable external 'reality' peopled by others like me. That's a tough row to prove, so lets make it another article of faith.
There are two places this gets dicey.
The first is mass delusion. The second is stuff I can't see ...and maybe third, various combinations of the two... For the latter I have to put my trust in other people who seem to have a grasp of the issue to provide second hand observation and explanation. In triplicate if possible.
For the former we have Engineering.
If someone can build a bridge or skyscraper that survives multiple earthquakes, I tend to believe that they know something about how the world works. When the explanations for these lunar-landers and cell-phones are all stacked together and appear logically congruent then the body of knowledge they are based on is good enough for me. This is the Pragmatic part. As the logo on this blog says: Quomodo Efficat -- Whatever Works.
So.
A set of similar independent Observations equals Evidence. Some Evidence with a plausible Explanation equals an Hypothesis. A large body of replicable Hypotheses equals a Scientific Fact. And a set of Scientific Facts that makes things work equals Truth. Or the best I can get in this life.
I should note here that this is not the way Science actually behaves on the day-to-day scale, there's more social construction at work. But on the aggregate, stuff tends to even out. If this weren't the case we'd have Mach's law instead of Boltzmann's equations.
Then, thanks to Popper, this all has to be couched in a language that makes predictions which can be tested and refuted. "God does (not) exist" is not a good scientific hypothesis. Further, science cannot even address the super-natural because it is just that: not of nature. Once the super-natural impinges on the natural, then we've got a case. I've just never seen it happen.
Of course, there are a huge quantity of observations that don't fit together in this system. Things which are not immediately repeatable, or for which we don't know the replication conditions, or happen so infrequently that we can't repeat them. When these observations can be explained by existing theory we can lump them into what we already know. The recent sighting of the "Bert and Ernie" neutrinos at Antarctica's Ice Cube facility, or the probable Higgs Boson(s), might be good examples.
When they so aren't explicable there's trouble...
Just because someone (believes she) saw something isn't strong enough Evidence to begin developing explanatory hypotheses. First it is impossible to distinguish believes he saw from actually saw. Then add observational biases, sensory and memory quirks, and just plain errors in the instruments being used and it adds up to Insufficient Evidence.
But... Because someone (believes she) saw something inexplicable is the place every new theory starts. It's the beginning of a Metric S-Ton of work to be done. Unfortunately there are usually many lower-hanging fruits to be selected, so a lot of observations get lost in the skuffle. This is not a good reason to deny their existence, and in fact there is no basis to deny anything until all due-diligence attempts at replication have been exhausted. But it's the way of the (Enlightened) world.
Good examples of the inexplicable might be, witch-doctory, acupuncture, and/or the placebo effect. (To my knowledge I have never experienced any of these working. Usually drugs and techniques that work for other people stop working on me after a couple tries, so I'm even more skeptical than I should be.) Placebos are well documented to the point that they must be accounted for in medical studies. The best explanation I've seen so far is from a natural healer who said, "It just proves how strong an influence the mind has over the body." This is probably both factually and poetically true, but it provides no mechanism nor way to replicate the effect. So we stumble along asserting, often incorrectly it seems from some recent statistical meta-studies, that such-and-such-a-drug(-that-my-company-supplies) is XX% better than a placebo for YY condition.
Or spontaneous cancer remission. It happens. No one knows why. Maybe you had a fever? Your immune system finally kicked in? Hormones? Prayer? No way to even create a body of evidence because it's so rare. Cracking that nut would be worth a few Nobel Prizes. However, as I said, there are many lower-hanging prizes with higher chances of success.
So it's a Miracle.
I am, from what I glean in the literature, a Pragmatic Instrumentalist with a strictly Mechanist -- causal -- bent. This means that I only believe things when I see them and can construct some reasonably clear step-by-step explanation for why they are that way.
As an Instrumentalist I believe that we make Hidden Markov Models of reality. Observations are used to develop models that make efficient predictions. But these models may have no deep relationship to that reality.
I know there are difficulties with Causality. So I also make it an article of faith that every Effect has a Cause. However, this does not mean that I believe that every Effect is predictable. Huge numbers of variables, sensitive dependence on conditions, and Heisenberg make that impossible. None the less, statistical and quantum mechanics make pretty good predictions about the distribution of classical and quantum level behaviors. Most pool balls aimed at a pocket go in. Unless I'm the player.
I also know there are difficulties with Objective Observation. Thus I'm willing to posit that a whole buncha folks should observe and explain things in a reasonably similar fashion before I really believe myself. This means that I depend on a fairly stable external 'reality' peopled by others like me. That's a tough row to prove, so lets make it another article of faith.
There are two places this gets dicey.
The first is mass delusion. The second is stuff I can't see ...and maybe third, various combinations of the two... For the latter I have to put my trust in other people who seem to have a grasp of the issue to provide second hand observation and explanation. In triplicate if possible.
For the former we have Engineering.
If someone can build a bridge or skyscraper that survives multiple earthquakes, I tend to believe that they know something about how the world works. When the explanations for these lunar-landers and cell-phones are all stacked together and appear logically congruent then the body of knowledge they are based on is good enough for me. This is the Pragmatic part. As the logo on this blog says: Quomodo Efficat -- Whatever Works.
So.
A set of similar independent Observations equals Evidence. Some Evidence with a plausible Explanation equals an Hypothesis. A large body of replicable Hypotheses equals a Scientific Fact. And a set of Scientific Facts that makes things work equals Truth. Or the best I can get in this life.
I should note here that this is not the way Science actually behaves on the day-to-day scale, there's more social construction at work. But on the aggregate, stuff tends to even out. If this weren't the case we'd have Mach's law instead of Boltzmann's equations.
Then, thanks to Popper, this all has to be couched in a language that makes predictions which can be tested and refuted. "God does (not) exist" is not a good scientific hypothesis. Further, science cannot even address the super-natural because it is just that: not of nature. Once the super-natural impinges on the natural, then we've got a case. I've just never seen it happen.
Of course, there are a huge quantity of observations that don't fit together in this system. Things which are not immediately repeatable, or for which we don't know the replication conditions, or happen so infrequently that we can't repeat them. When these observations can be explained by existing theory we can lump them into what we already know. The recent sighting of the "Bert and Ernie" neutrinos at Antarctica's Ice Cube facility, or the probable Higgs Boson(s), might be good examples.
When they so aren't explicable there's trouble...
Just because someone (believes she) saw something isn't strong enough Evidence to begin developing explanatory hypotheses. First it is impossible to distinguish believes he saw from actually saw. Then add observational biases, sensory and memory quirks, and just plain errors in the instruments being used and it adds up to Insufficient Evidence.
But... Because someone (believes she) saw something inexplicable is the place every new theory starts. It's the beginning of a Metric S-Ton of work to be done. Unfortunately there are usually many lower-hanging fruits to be selected, so a lot of observations get lost in the skuffle. This is not a good reason to deny their existence, and in fact there is no basis to deny anything until all due-diligence attempts at replication have been exhausted. But it's the way of the (Enlightened) world.
Good examples of the inexplicable might be, witch-doctory, acupuncture, and/or the placebo effect. (To my knowledge I have never experienced any of these working. Usually drugs and techniques that work for other people stop working on me after a couple tries, so I'm even more skeptical than I should be.) Placebos are well documented to the point that they must be accounted for in medical studies. The best explanation I've seen so far is from a natural healer who said, "It just proves how strong an influence the mind has over the body." This is probably both factually and poetically true, but it provides no mechanism nor way to replicate the effect. So we stumble along asserting, often incorrectly it seems from some recent statistical meta-studies, that such-and-such-a-drug(-that-my-company-supplies) is XX% better than a placebo for YY condition.
Or spontaneous cancer remission. It happens. No one knows why. Maybe you had a fever? Your immune system finally kicked in? Hormones? Prayer? No way to even create a body of evidence because it's so rare. Cracking that nut would be worth a few Nobel Prizes. However, as I said, there are many lower-hanging prizes with higher chances of success.
So it's a Miracle.
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