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WBraun
climber
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Jun 14, 2017 - 08:09am PT
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You ARE the illusion and NOT consciousness itself.
You are not your material body ......
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Jun 14, 2017 - 08:37am PT
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When Old Men are Sleeping
I slept the sleep of kings last night
And woke in peace
The enormity of the world
And all it's strife
Forgotten for but a brief respite
I thought I had died
Until I saw
The unkempt room and unmade bed
As aching bones shifted in my knees
My back was out
I coughed and wheezed
I slept the sleep of a thousand nights
Packed into one
And wished I'd live for two thousand years
If all my bliss
We're so peaceful as this
But then to a rude awakening I'd find
I was serving a sentence
In the darkest dungeon
Of nineteen hundred and ninety nine
I slept the dream of gods last night
Hovering o'er the world and all
The mountains and trees
What a beautiful sight
And all the stars within my reach
As waves lapped gently at a sandy beach
Then saw myself on a grassy hill
Hunched and grey with wrinkled skin
Snoring as I stumbled along
An old man sleep walking once again
-bushman
06/14/2017
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 14, 2017 - 12:22pm PT
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Any relation?
Through Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jun 14, 2017 - 02:08pm PT
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Eighteen years would pass before the world would have the details of the grandiose vision and of the "mirabilis sientiae fundamenta"-- the foundations of a marvelous science. Such as he was able to give them, they are contained in the celebrated "Discourse on the Method of Properly Guiding the Reason in the Search of Truth in the Sciences." According to Descartes, his "method" should be applied when knowledge is sought in any scientific field. It consists of (a) accepting only what is so clear in one's own mind as to exclude any doubt, (b) splitting large difficulties into smaller one, (c) arguing from the simple to the complex, and (d) checking, when one is done.
This reminded of something that I hadn't thought about for 40 years.
I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate mainly because there was a professor in the department whose classes were interesting to me. This guy seemed like some kind of walking-talking, modern-day Socrates. In the end it wasn't such a bad choice for my eventual career, because the job of studying and reconstructing philosophical arguments under his training ended up having a lot of carry over to mathematics.
Anyways, when it came time to study 20th-century philosophy, I had a sort chip on my shoulder about the Vienna Circle. Their emphasis on formalism, symbolic language and science seemed cold and sterile. It seemed to me they had stripped philosophy of all the drama, imagery, humor, beauty and, well, the humanity present in the works of people like Plato and Descartes. When I told my teacher this, he looked a little surprised and said something like "The logical positivists weren't the bad guys in the story of philosophy. For example, one of their main desires was to bring back Descartes's dream of a unified knowledge." What he said and the respect he showed for that group was, for me, one of those eye-opening moments that so rarely occur during formal education.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 14, 2017 - 02:25pm PT
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It seemed to me they had stripped philosophy of all the drama, imagery, humor, beauty and, well, the humanity
I love the writings of Raymond Smullyan.
R.I.P.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 14, 2017 - 03:03pm PT
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Some areas of inquiry in mathematics persist only through "family" structures: A professor has PhD students who continue his research in one way or another, and those students in turn have students who continue the process. When a disruption in this genealogy occurs it may happen that the subject dries up and is at least temporarily abandoned.
I think this has been the case to some extent in the analytic theory of continued fractions when the generation of "masters" retired or passed away. Many of their students ended up at primarily four year institutions, and although some research continued there have been relatively few further descendants. But in all fairness I dropped out of this clique seventeen years ago when I retired.
As you might suspect, the "importance" of such research can be questionable. I bring this up because we banter about philosophy on this thread, but I wonder what's actually happening in the academic world in the discipline? Has metaphysics been replaced by analytics? Is consciousness a popular academic path? Just curious.
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okay, whatever
climber
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Jun 14, 2017 - 03:10pm PT
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I appreciate all the interesting ideas that have appeared on this long-lasting thread. I am less appreciative of contributors (well, one, really) who simply arrogantly dismiss others' ideas or speculations as "stoopid". I don't know the "answer", anymore than the rest of the posters here, but it's worthwhile to toss around the various ideas, I think. Insults are not helpful.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 14, 2017 - 06:24pm PT
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Wow lots of nay-gative stuff thrown at this po' ol' thread.
A number of you people appear worried about it. It is talked about as if it were some sort of significant abstraction. So therefore there somehow exists this pressing need to let others know just how disappointed you are in the obvious futility of "thousands of posts" and so on.
My advice: try not to take your eye off your own ball.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 14, 2017 - 07:12pm PT
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Dingus: Consciousness is an illusion we create . . . .
Werner has it right.
Dingus' statement creates a mobius strip, an mise en abyme, like a mirror placed in front of another mirror, a display of a display, a reflection of a reflection, an infinity loop.
Consciousness is that which “you” are. One illusion is that there is a you, as well as all the things that “you” populates onto awareness that facilitates consciousness. Take out the things that are created, and what’s left? (There IT is.)
yanqui: . . . one of their main desires was to bring back Descartes's dream of a unified knowledge."
Kant tried. Couldn’t do it.
Once Nietzsche killed God (or had noticed that God had been replaced by reason), the opportunity for Western Philosophy was lost to unite the 3 pillars of wisdom (truth, beauty, and the good).
The next batter up (so to say) were Eastern Philosophies and radical spiritual traditions, which said there was nothing to find. They said realization was already a done deal if people could just see it. Radical spiritual traditions say there is nothing to discover, because one is already realized. He or she just doesn’t know it.
We're all off the hook. Everyone can relax.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 14, 2017 - 07:44pm PT
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the opportunity for Western Philosophy was lost to unite the 3 pillars of wisdom (truth, beauty, and the good).
Sounds anthropomorphic. Who is this Western Philosophy? Is this about the barbed-wire fences?
I am convinced that my own wisdom, such as it is, is not a three-legged stool. More like a magic carpet.
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 14, 2017 - 08:30pm PT
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Meditation has become popular in many Western nations, especially the USA.
An increasing body of research shows various health benefits associated with meditation and these findings have sparked interest in the field of medicine.
The practice of meditation originated in the ancient Vedic times of India and is described in the ancient Vedic texts.
Meditation is one of the modalities used in Ayurveda (Science of Life), the comprehensive, natural health care system that originated in the ancient Vedic times of India.
The term "meditation" is now loosely used to refer to a large number of diverse techniques.
According to Vedic Science, the true purpose of meditation is to connect oneself to one's deep inner Self.
Techniques which achieve that goal serve the true purpose of meditation.
Neurological and physiological correlates of meditation have been investigated previously.
Inner Self (soul), the real person, living entity itself which is NOT the material body which modern material
mechanistic science so foolishly thinks.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 14, 2017 - 10:54pm PT
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"The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
In this is a great truth as happiness is not the product of realization but lies in the struggle to know and that's why so many are so happy to post on this thread. It really is in the struggle.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jun 15, 2017 - 06:16am PT
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Some areas of inquiry in mathematics persist only through "family" structures: A professor has PhD students who continue his research in one way or another, and those students in turn have students who continue the process. When a disruption in this genealogy occurs it may happen that the subject dries up and is at least temporarily abandoned.
So I put "John Gill" in the Mathematics Genealogy Project and found:
Gill, John; Colorado State University, 1971.
Then I started traveling back in time. Passing back through Schwarz (Zermelo and the axioms branch off from that point) we come to a split. Should we go with Kummer or with Weierstrass? Following Kummer's line we pass another split: Brandes or Bessel? At this point there is no real distinction between mathematics and physics. Wikipedia describes Brandes as a "physicist, meteorologist, and astronomer" while Bessel is characterized as an "astronomer, mathematician, physicist and geodesist". One more generation back from Bessel, we come to Gauss. The prince of mathematics. The march back in time continues but I am content to stop here. Gauss is listed as having 10 students, including Bessel, Dedekind and Riemann. Sophie Germain is on the list, but counting her as a student of Gauss seems a bit of stretch to me. Even though, her story and her relationship to Gauss are fascinating:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Germain,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3618130?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.
Even if we do count Sophie, 10 students is not an exceptional number, yet Gauss has close to 80,000 direct descendents listed in the genealogy project. A list of descendents that includes many of the most important mathematicians of the last 200 years.
That's a pretty impressive family structure.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 15, 2017 - 06:29am PT
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Good quote, sycorax.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 15, 2017 - 08:24am PT
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20 generations of my academic family tree (for what it is worth):
Niccolo' Tartaglia Fontana
Ostilio Ricci
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de'Galilei
Vincenzio Viviani
Isaac Barrow
Isaac Newton
Roger Cotes
Robert Smith
Walter Taylor
Stephen Whisson
Thomas Postlethwait
Thomas Jones
Adam Sedgwick
William Hopkins
Edward John Routh
J.J. Thomson
Tom W. Bonner
Hugh Taylor Richards
Gerson Goldhaber
Wonyong Lee
Ed Hartouni
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 15, 2017 - 08:39am PT
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Camus appealed most when I was in my "teenage malaise" years, years where I had few real experiences living in the world, and few notable accomplishments. While at the same time "struggling" to find the top of the hill (to maintain the metaphor). It was easier to accept the lack of accomplishment and say that the struggle was the whole thing, and to enjoy it. And at that age, there was little to suggest that I would ever find the top.
I am older now and have a lot more experiences. And I rather like this quote on struggle:
"We choose to go to the Moon! ... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win..."
this is a uniquely American view of challenge, which embraces the struggle but engages in it with the intent to succeed. We did "win" that one, and it was probably worth the struggle.
But we don't always "win," we don't always get the rock to the top of the hill, and it is more often because of our choice of rocks. One can decide that the struggle is all there is, and go all in on that, and if one cannot find the Camusian enjoyment there, the Eastern philosophies will teach you about suffering and the path away from it.
It is always interesting what we saddle ourselves with in our lives, under the guise of "philosophy."
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 15, 2017 - 10:41am PT
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I remember Walt Tuvell asking, "Who were the greatest father/son pair of mathematicians?"
Answer: Either Gauss and his father or Gauss and his son.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 15, 2017 - 11:36am PT
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I've been consulting in tech since leaving DEC's RD labs in '87. I have had to completely throw out and turn over what I know on the average of every three years. But as a result I've never really encountered age discrimination in a world where 35 is considered over-the-hill because I keep my skills cutting-edge. By and large they don't care if you're 105, standing on one leg or three, or if you're purple if you can do the work. But it's a ton of effort and energy staying current and continuously rolling with technology's leading edge. It's pretty much exactly like what it takes to keep climbing at a reasonable high level as you get older.
But somehow I have managed to keep up and am currently migrating a big client's data centers and applications to Amazon's cloud and AWS services and am also still climbing fairly hard at 64. Don't know what it would be like to simply stop and relax, but I suspect it might all be downhill pretty quick if I did, so I don't...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 15, 2017 - 12:03pm PT
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"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."
He dun pitched some wisdom, there.
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