I long imagined that the essential flaw of binary logic lay in its foundation axiomsdefinition which exclude middles by asserting everything is EITHER true OR false with no inbetween. (This results in paradoxes which are considered to be unimportant by most people when compared with the overall […]
Apparently you can't convert base2 to base3 without an intermediary
I assume this is relevant to the ongoing quest to fully understand ternary logic, its strengths and limitations, but do not yet know what to do with it. So here it is: You can't convert a base2 number to a base3 number without loading it into an integer. The reason is that 2 and 3 are coprime - they […]
Consider an acorn, inside of which there somehow resides an entire oak tree
To keep things interesting, I occasionally start thought experiments on the relationship between finite and infinite from within the singularity, in a sense transporting my mind into infinity and "looking back" upon the finite experience rather than the way we usually do -- from within our […]
"Causality is in the mind"
I started transcribing a video because Dr. David Hawkins was talking about quantum mechanics in a way very similar to what I've been researching -- and he's spot on -- but then he took it in a completely different direction than I expected. This transcript is from the end of the first video linked […]
Insight into the pattern of primes and a weakness of excluded middle logic
(Huh, this post was definitely written while still in ephiphanic mode. Have fun parsing it. I added strikethroughs where appropriate to make it hopefully a little more sensible. I've since explored some of these ideas more coherently elsewhere.) Primes cancel out everything following which is […]
Learning advanced math without any formal training
Here I find myself in the middle of an example of how hard it can be to learn mathy things without having gone through years of training. You might say "So, go through years of training." And then I would say "No, that training comes embedded with a way of seeing the world that […]
Coherent Extrapolated Volition = how the best of us think
Just stumbled upon this while reading the wiki article on Friendly AI. Yudkowsky advances the Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) model. According to him, coherent extrapolated volition is people's choices and the actions people would collectively take if "we knew more, thought faster, were […]
Learning to see the hidden layer in neural nets
No one really knows how the most advanced algorithms do what they do. That could be a problem. Could be? It definitely is. I've thought about this problem for a long time, ever since it turned up in my private meditations on Cybernetic Intelligence years ago (back when I was inventing ideas like the […]
Metformin AKA Goat's Rue, Ancient Remedy for the Plague, Extends Life
Really didn't expect this. Apparently this medication derived from an herb, known since ancient days to help with diabetes symptoms, has an effect which improves quality and quantity of life. Pretty safe, too, minimal side effects for most people. A Google search of this life-extending aspect of […]
On the 'why' of things not just the 'how' of things
We do love when our own internal thought processes get confirmed by others. Aside from the shared joy of discovery, it tends to validate other related ideas which haven't been put into words yet. So I'm happy to see this idea coming from someone with Russell's reputation. I had made the observation […]
Parableizer Engine coming together
When I was first thinking about artificial intelligence years ago, I came up with this idea I called Parableizer Engine. Lately I'm starting to see the first elements of this idea being implemented. What is relational reasoning? It’s a form of thinking that makes use of logic to connect and […]
Language alters our experience of time
Not only does this article talk about one of my favorite subjects, the Aymara language, and how it is different from other languages, but it's loaded with gems like this: But Spanish-Swedish bilinguals are flexible. When prompted with the Swedish word for duration (tid), they estimated time using […]
Comparing Asterisk vs FreeSWITCH: a Meta-analysis
Overall, the two systems are roughly equal, both are well supported and both are well documented for the needs of anyone with basic PBX needs. For most purposes, either way you go, you're going to be fine. However, most likely, if you're asking "Asterisk or FreeSWITCH" you have little […]
Hebrew vs. Greek Thought
So we've been looking at binary vs ternary, intuitive vs logical, now here's Hebrew vs Greek thought: https://vimeo.com/227703921/3272b49eb6 Hebrew and Greek are two totally different ways of seeing things. Greek is more abstract, linear. Hebrew is more intimate, concrete. Several distinct […]
How can I install Perl CPAN locally as a non-root user?
Every now and then we encounter a Stack Overflow answer that cuts through hours of searching and aborted attempts at fixes with a few lines of elegance. Here's one I just deployed, figured I would point others to it as well in case Google brings you here... The easiest method I have found so far is […]
The three logical systems of Lesniewski
This guy was a student of Lukasiewicz, who famously established ternary (and then later, multivalued) logic as an alternative to the binary which prevailed since Aristotle's time. I didn't know about the three logical systems here, though, and they bear further study: The distinctive and original […]
Clifford Algebra combines geometry and algebra intuitively
I always just assumed the link between algebra and geometry was pretty solid, but actually it's two different worlds, similar to Poincare's distinction between logical and intuitive that I've discussed elsewhere (and so has Terence Tao). So it's nice to find that someone found an elegant synthesis […]
note to self on trivalence topic
This blog talks about trivalence with several posts I want to read more and maybe respond to someday when I have a little time to spare. Looking at Kratzer’s lumping problem, or the ill fit of the material conditional with natural language, I get the impression that logic is in its infancy. […]
In which I discover Barfield's Final Participation and am delighted
Barfield calls the early peoples' common sense "original participation," in that with their sense perceptions there was an extra-sensory participation with the object being sensed. While it is difficult to know what original participation is "like," there are some indications of […]
The world presented by perception is nothing like reality
This is interesting. On one side you’ll find researchers scratching their chins raw trying to understand how a three-pound lump of gray matter obeying nothing more than the ordinary laws of physics can give rise to first-person conscious experience. This is the aptly named "hard problem." […]