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Lollie
Social climber
I'm Lolli.
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Jun 13, 2014 - 08:02am PT
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LOL!
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jun 13, 2014 - 12:54pm PT
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I found Olmsted on a site called ResearchGate (MH2)
ResearchGate is a site where one can post speculative stuff or papers that for one reason or another weren't accepted by refereed journals, or just articles one doesn't feel measure up as important research but still might be of interest to others in one's discipline. I joined this year simply to put up some classroom or minor elementary research notes in areas not pursued by others that I do purely as a hobby now in old age. Papers published here should be taken with a grain of salt.
To publish in refereed (math and other disciplines?) journals usually requires a community - "fitting in" to currently active topics in a continuum of published works, if for no other reason than there are active researchers who can verify your results and place some sort of value on them. When you are out at the fringes, on your own, there may be no current interest in what you are doing and no measure of the relative importance of your work.
edit: The first CA I posted started in the top row with random 0, 1, or 2 assignments, giving rise to a complicated structure that may have some patterns if one looks hard enough. Here is the same CA starting with 0, 1, 2 repeated across the top row, giving both easily seen patterns and what seems to be chaotic behavior. Substantial regularity in the beginning produces interesting results.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 13, 2014 - 08:12pm PT
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Speaking of "mind," I nearly lost mine yesterday having to get a bunch of teeth extracted because the tooth base of my jaw bone got powdered during my groundfall and so they had to extract about 22 teeth and now bore in implants at about a million dollars apiece. Took 7 hours and if a couple female friends hadn't kept sending me topless photos of themselves to distract me (the dentist took a break every two hours), I would have perished from grief and fear.
Look forward to getting back into this discussion soon.
JL
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
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Jun 13, 2014 - 08:35pm PT
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'The Tooth Bearer'
A rainy day the month of May,
A day not unlike some I'd say,
I felt a toothache come my way,
And wondered was it tooth decay?
I winced while biting on kabob,
The pain it darn near made me sob,
So when my jaw began to throb,
I called my dentist, name of Bob,
My visit was to be at three,
And there I sat so quietly,
But not my tooth it yelled at me,
I said with some uncertainty,
"Miss dentist office lady please?
My pain's increasing by degrees,
This agonizing tooth disease,
Brings no comfort or no ease,"
She reassured me not to fret,
To wait another minute yet,
That he would see me she would bet,
And in his office I was let,
I told him how my tooth did feel,
And hoped that free from pain I'd feel,
I took from pocket to reveal,
My painful tooth for him to heal,
He asked me, "what's it doing there?"
In outstretched hand it lying where,
As he examined with such care,
Extracted it was to be fair,
"That's quite a tooth and that may be,"
Then Doctor Bob he said to me,
"The tooth is loose and fully free,
No longer in your head I see,"
I looked at him with some surprise,
And only then did realize,
The jig was up and he was wise,
That's when I woke and I surmise,
That I'd been snoring like a song,
My tooth still painfully felt wrong,
But intact was it all along,
Tic tock the clock went ding ding dong,
"The dentist he will see you now,"
No words more welcome I'd allow,
And soon the dentist would endow,
To fix my tooth and reckon how,
I fell asleep in so much pain,
As tooth affliction racked my brain,
Snoring so loud with no refrain,
It drove out patients in the rain.
-bushman
05-03-2014
Feel better JL
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jstan
climber
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Jun 13, 2014 - 09:22pm PT
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they had to extract about 22 teeth and now bore in implants at about a million dollars apiece. Took 7 hours and if a couple female friends hadn't kept sending me topless photos of themselves to distract me (the dentist took a break every two hours), I would have perished from grief and fear.
Look forward to getting back into this discussion soon.
This is not all bad. We now can look forward to no more arguments that there is not a real world out there. Only 10 teeth being left and the million dollars suggests your lower jaw has been reconstructed out of a rib and two artificial joints invented.
Serious bummer.
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MH2
climber
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Jun 13, 2014 - 10:31pm PT
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You and Tolstoy, Largo. Imagine what it was like before they had ways to send topless photos. Before they had photos, that is.
Anyway, empathy on the occasion of your 7 hour dentist sit. Which equals I don't know how to say many objective years.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 14, 2014 - 12:18am PT
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JL can say he climbed the nose of the captain in a day.
and this dentist can say he built JL's jaw in a day.
at least you don't need that mouth to talk on the internet
hurry up and heal so you can get back to spew'in
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 14, 2014 - 01:09am PT
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horrendous Largo...
If I knew how to time travel I'd advance you to the other side of this project...
I'm just going to be able to wish you the best.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 14, 2014 - 02:50am PT
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Thank you, friends. I honestly don 't know how people get through these kinds of epics without some mind control practice , or at least some understanding that you can bear anything for one more breath. But the mind is funny. At one point you naturally just say, F*#k it. This is what it is and I've gotta bear it and be done with it. The really intense pain only lasted into that night, and I had some pain pills and just took them till I didn't care anymore. Next day, yesterday, it wasn't too bad. But I do understand that pain and suffering can be a purifying experience owing to the intense focus it engenders per the pain. Total absorbtion in anything, even badness, confirms something fundamental in us - sex, an intense lead or intellectual pursuit, a piece of music, a painting, whatever. It might be where we encounter something bigger than our ego identification, and also where there is no escape from our immediate experience, which carries with it a strange kind of freedom, even while dying from the pain.
JL
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Jun 14, 2014 - 03:26pm PT
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Whew, yeah, there's always a certain solace in feeling that at least it can't get much worse. Hope it all heals up real quick like.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jun 14, 2014 - 04:32pm PT
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John, in honor of your recent surgical experience, here is a guaranteed unique cellular automaton:
If this is too scary for some of you I will remove it!
;>)
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MH2
climber
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Jun 15, 2014 - 07:24am PT
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The microstructure of the brain [posted by Ed] resembles cellular automata, where a few simple instructions produce an elaborate graph. (jgill)
Cellular automata - more than pretty pictures
It was mathematician Stanislaw Ulam who first used computers to generate patterns from simple fixed rules applied repeatedly, at Los Alamos toward the end of WWII. The design of the computers he used was provided by John Von Neumann.
Back during WWII automation of industrial manufacturing was on the increase. Among Von Neumann's interests was the question of whether a machine could make itself, and beyond that, whether a machine could make a machine more complex than itself.
It was Ulam who suggested to Von Neumann that what we now call cellular automata might be used to simplify study of the issues involved in machines copying themselves. Von Neumann was able to prove that a cellular automaton, an idealized machine, could make a copy of itself. He was also able to show that a machine can make a machine more complex than itself.
Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata
Von Neumann, John
1966
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press
Von Neumann's results settled a philosophical question: Does life need more than chemistry and physics? René Descartes believed that the human body is like a machine, subject to the same laws as inanimate matter. Others disagreed. Non-living objects do not behave at all like organisms. They do not reproduce themselves like organisms do. Von Neumann showed that self-reproduction is logically possible in a system even simpler than the physics we currently know.
So another answer to Largo asking what truths do not depend on instrumentation or quantifying could be: mathematical truths. The non-mathematician is likely to think of math as numbers, but this is not the way most mathematicians see it. Otto Frisch met Stanislaw Ulam at Los Alamos and,"At once he told me that he was a pure mathematician who had sunk so low that his latest paper actually contained numbers with decimal points!"
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jun 15, 2014 - 08:35am PT
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Can cellular automata produce something more complex than themselves?
Evolution would indicate a 'yes' answer there.
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go-B
climber
Cling to what is good!
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Jun 15, 2014 - 09:23am PT
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Lordy Largo!
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Jun 15, 2014 - 01:05pm PT
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What is mind - Who is mind and who says?
Good luck Largo.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jun 15, 2014 - 08:19pm PT
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Unfortunately, Wolfram some time ago concluded that CAs were not an appropriate tool for modeling the brain. They can be useful in cryptographics, however; possibly in public key cryptography even.
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MH2
climber
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Jun 15, 2014 - 09:37pm PT
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Useful?! The horror!
What I like about the cellular automata answer to the questions of self-reproduction and making something more complex than yourself is the general nature of the result. It does not depend on our universe's particular brand of physics or our as-yet limited understanding of that physics. It suggests that understanding how the brain and mind operate, too, will not need new physics or anything beyond physics, just better definition of the questions to be answered and a model to work with which reduces nonessential detail.
What the brain and mind do is quite different from self-reproduction and not as easily definable or identifiable. Notice, though, that we know that machines could reproduce themselves and make machines more complex than themselves, even though no one has yet made such a machine.
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ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
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Jun 15, 2014 - 09:40pm PT
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as Andy KP recounted: "just pretend it's happening to someone else"
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TWP
Trad climber
Mancos, CO
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Jun 17, 2014 - 07:26am PT
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Oh yuck!
Mind is what contemplates and realizes: no matter how bad it is now, hey, it could be even worse. I suspect mind is also what decides: hey, it could be worse. Wow! in that case I'll just die and get it over with!
An anecdote in support of my hypothesis. My Mother died almost as a voluntary reaction to her pain and suffering within a few hours after she was told there was no more that could be done - and no prospect of survival for more than a matter of days - given her then-current cardiac condition.
Largo, you are the man. I admire you more for this thread and your intellectual and spiritual adventures and search than your exploits like NIAD. Of course, your fame is due to the latter but that's how it goes. You get famous for one thing; you deserve fame for something else. Who said life is fair?
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