True but useless

Reading through Steven Pinker's fabulous book "How the Mind Works" - I came across this paragraph, here in relation to theories of the mind, but articulating a principle that applies more widely - about making statements that are factually true but, for all practical purposes, useless:

And the "interactionist" position, with it phobia of ever specifying the innate part of the (mental) interaction, is not much better (as compared to those to make it a nature vs. nurture debate). Look at these claims:

The behavior of a computer comes from a complex interaction between the processor and the software.

When trying to understand how a car works, one cannot neglect the engine or the gasoline or the driver. All are important factors.

The sound coming our of this CD player represents the inextricably intertwined nature of two crucial variables : the structure of the machine and the disk you insert in it. Neither can be ignored.

These statements are true but useless - so blankly uncomprehending, so defiantly incurious, that it is almost as bad to assert them as to deny them.

A good listener helps us overhear ourselves.

Yahia Lababidi, author (b. 1973)

A common man marvels at uncommon things - the wise man at the commonplace.

Mendeley

If you're having trouble managing your bibliographies and paper / literature collections, you should try out Mendeley, probably one of the most integrated and comprehensive digital library management systems out there. Not only does it support importing citations from PubMed, ACM, etc. a la JabRef, but it also synchronizes with CiteULike. Moreover it allows synchronization across machines, sharing of libraries with other users, anywhere-access, literature trend tracking, and other such goodies. And a pretty slick interface - as icing on the cake. It appears to me, more robust and comprehensive than JabRef (which is quite excellent but unfortunately restricted to your local machine).

The Economist

A wonderful little (a bit long, actually) article in the Atlantic (another good journal) on why the Economist is and will continue to be a strong and thriving paper, despite all its detractors with their (justifiable) accusations of smug Anglophile old-school condescension and shoddy research, and the general malaise affecting the print media in the age of the internet:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/news-magazines

The gist of the article is :

The real value of The Economist lies in its smart analysis of everything it deems worth knowing—and smart packaging, which may be the last truly unique attribute in the digital age.

...

And even as Time and Newsweek attempt to copy The Economist's success, they seem to be misunderstanding what it is, exactly, that they should be copying. By repositioning themselves as repositories of commentary and long-form reporting—much like this magazine, it's worth noting, which has never delivered impressive profit margins—the American newsweeklies are going away from precisely the thing that has propelled The Economist's rise: its status as a humble digest, with a consistent authorial voice, that covers absolutely everything that you need to be informed about.

The secret to The Economist's success is not its brilliance, or its hauteur, or its typeface. The writing in Time and Newsweek may be every bit as smart, as assured, as the writing in The Economist. But neither one feels like the only magazine you need to read. You may like the new Time and Newsweek. But you must—or at least, brilliant marketing has convinced you that you must—subscribe to The Economist.

The brain and reality

It is really bizarre sometimes how things happen in a concerted fashion - today - at lunch - I was having a discussion with a friend that how the more sticky and troublesome problems in physics and mathematics won't be solved unless we begin to really understand the human mind and the human conception of reality. How much does our "perception" of the world (i.e. the results of the operation of our brain) inform our understanding of the external (objective) reality - and can we ever know this reality with any meaningful level of objectivity?

And - a few hours later - I came across this article - which talks about *exactly* the same points - as to how the "neuro" (i.e. neuroscience) revolution is going to change the way we think about these things and cause (probably) a leap in our understanding of Reality and of ourselves.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17256-top-scientists-predict-the-future-of-science.html?full=true

Philosophy of Science

An excellent interview with Hillary Putnam on the modern "Philosophy of Science", in which he goes over much of the work done on the foundations of mathematics at the turn of the 20th century, along with the ideas of Bacon, Burke, Popper, Kuhn, Russel, etc.

One of the main points he makes, which I agree with wholeheartedly, is this collapse of the notion of absolutism in science, and his emphasis on the role of the human mind in this whole process, and this shift toward a philosophy that we are simply building better and better consistent models of the observed reality. This is at least the case in theory, though there are many "scientists" out there who seem to subscribe to the notion that these models and equations are somehow the Truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG3sfrK5B4E&feature=related

The Joy of Less

A very nice article - about how being "happy" is quite disconnected
from the pursuit of any particular set of goals at
http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/?em and
quite along the lines of what Dan Gilbert, a academic psychologist has
to say about what makes us happy: (see
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html)

It reminds me of something I had read in a book on Zazen - along the
lines that people look to God, religion, meditation, zen, etc. for
peace and happiness. But, what must realized is that peace is a
quality within, a property of your own self and mental states, not
something that can be found in external artifacts. All that is simply
delusional - when we believe that some externality is the source of
our agitation and mastering it will solve all our internal troubles.
Zen makes no such guarantees. Zen is quite like that ... self
contradictory and self deprecatory.

Dangerous Knowledge

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

An excellent BBC-4 documentary on four of the most tragic geniuses of mathematics : Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gðdel, and Alan Turing ... their tortured internal and external lives - the absolute, almost mystical bizarreness, of their insights - and how they reformed the way we think about science and mathematics

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8492625684649921614&hl=en

It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are not
needed, or not possible, to avoid making those that are required.
-Ivan Goncharov, novelist (1812-1891)

Seen on the internets

A husband always has the last words in any argument with his wife, 'Yes, Dear'.

Hilbert's program - then and now

Came across this very interesting paper:

R. Zach, "Hilbert's program then and now," Aug 2005. [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0508572

Hilbert's program was an ambitious and wide-ranging project in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. In order to "dispose of the foundational questions in mathematics once and for all, "Hilbert proposed a two-pronged approach in 1921: first, classical mathematics should be formalized in axiomatic systems; second, using only restricted, "finitary" means, one should give proofs of the consistency of these axiomatic systems. Although Godel's incompleteness theorems show that the program as originally conceived cannot be carried out, it had many partial successes, and generated important advances in logical theory and meta-theory, both at the time and since. The article discusses the historical background and development of Hilbert's program, its philosophical underpinnings and consequences, and its subsequent development and influences since the 1930s.

A love potion ?

Oxytocin and social perception: Oxytocin increases perceived facial trustworthiness and attractiveness, Angeliki Theodoridou, Angela C. Rowea, Ian S. Penton-Voaka and Peter J. Rogersa

Abstract
The neuropeptide oxytocin is involved in the development and maintenance of attachment behaviours in humans and other species. Little is known, however, about how it affects judgements of unfamiliar others. In a double-blind placebo-controlled study we investigated the effect of a single intranasal dose of oxytocin on judgements of facial trustworthiness and attractiveness. We found that oxytocin administration increased ratings of trustworthiness and attractiveness of male and female targets in raters of both sexes relative to control ratings, suggesting that higher levels of this neuropeptide may enhance affiliative behaviour towards unfamiliar others. Our results provide evidence in support of a general facilitative role of oxytocin in promoting positive trait judgements.


Available at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WGC-4VYXMRN-2&_user=10&_origUdi=B6VH9-4TS239N-2&_fmt=high&_coverDate=04%2F01%2F2009&_rdoc=1&_orig=article&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2d7be5e0643ed9a304b5715ac11c1e3e

Infinite Jest

A friend forwarded to me these lovely and so juste excerpts from an interview by Davis Foster Wallace

I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the point
that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if
I'm hanging out with you, I can't even tell whether I like you or not
because I'm too worried about whether you like me

It was just feeling as though every axiom of your life turned out to
be false. And there was nothing, and you were nothing — it was all a
delusion. But you were better than everyone else because you saw that
it was a delusion, and yet you were worse because you couldn't
function.

A madman dreams of Turing Machines

From a quote on pg. 9 of this book, you can see why I immediately liked it

" <talking about the Vienna Circle - a distinguished group of mathematicians in the 1930s> At the center of the Circle is a circle: a clean, round, white, marble tabletop. They select the Café Josephinum precisely for this table. A pen is passed counterclockwise. The first mark is made, an equation applied directly to the tabletop, a slash of black ink across the marble, a mathematical sentence amid the spaltters. They all read the equation, homing in on the meaning amid the disordered drops. Mathematics is visual not auditory. They argue with voices, but more pointedly with their pens. They stain the marble with rays of symbolic logic in juicy black pigment that nearly washes away.

They collect here every Thursday evening to distill their ideas - to distinguish science from superstition. At stake is Everything. Reality. Meaning. Their lives. They have lost any tolerance for ineffectual and embroidered attitudes, for mysticism and metaphysics. That is putting it too dispassionately. They hate mysticism and metaphysics, religion and faith. They loathe them.They want to separate out the truth. "

And later on pg. 11

"Everyone gathered on this Thusday, the rotating numbers accounting for three dozen, believe in their very hearts that mathematics is unassailable. Gõdel has come tonight to shatter their belief until all that is left are convincing pieces that when assembled erect a powerful monument to mathematics, but not an unassailable one - or atleast not a complete one. Gõdel will prove that some truths live outside of logic and that we can't get there from here. Some people - people who probably distrust mathematics - are quick to claim that they knew all along that some truths are beyond mathematics. But they just didn't They didn't know it. They didn't prove it.

Gõdel didn't believe that truth would elude us. He proved that it would. He didn't invent a myth to conform to his prejudice of the world - at least not when it came to mathematics. He discovered his theorem as surely as if it were a rock he had dug up from the ground. "

The power of music

After being completely enraptured by Rachmaninoff's Prelude in B
minor, opus.32, No.10 played by Sviatoslav Richter - a friend sent me
this wonderful quotation, on the power of music to convey deep ideas,
concepts and emotions:

"After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that
I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my
own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for
one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense
of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears. I can fancy a man
who led a perfectly commonplace life, hearing by chance some curious
piece of music, and suddenly discovering that his soul, without his
being conscious of it, had passed through terrible experiences, and
known fearful joys, or wild romantic loves, or great renunciations"

-- Oscar Wilde