![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 15 of 15. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by sigismund on August 20, 2020, at 2:23:34
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-ecology-of-perception/
Posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2020, at 11:15:43
In reply to Amazing stuff, posted by sigismund on August 20, 2020, at 2:23:34
I'm listening to it now.
The into was nice. Playful. With the music.
It is nice to hear good Philosophy.
Thankyou for posting it.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2020, at 18:07:01
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2020, at 11:15:43
So I finished listening to it...
What he had to say about language was interesting.
How it is a tool whereby everything other than things that make speech sounds on the outbreath are de-animated.
How the question maybe isn't about why is the sky blue.. qualia... the INTENSITY of the experience. yeah. you would think since we have been exposed to the sky for the entirety of evolution that it would be grey or nondescript. But for it to be something inducing fascination and wonder and the intensity of it... That's extrordinary.
Of course you might say (you would say) that it's a by-product of systems or capacities that enable predators to be salient etc. Wavelengths of light etc.
But it was interesting to hear his take on the problem of qualia or consciousness or experience.. And where that took him.I am very very very unhappy at the moment.
Not because of Covid. My life during lockdown isn't so very different as my life before lockdown. Because I was locked down in this country regardless.He said about the people in the detention facilities.
About how we all are, now.Yes.
I don't understand why this country has always treated me like garbage.
Total garbage.The learners pretend to learn.
The teachers pretend to teach.
The grades go to the kids they were always going to go to.
The places in the professional degrees.
Teh jobs.
The work.
The money.
The houses.
the cars.
The holidays.
All of the things. All of the things. All of the things.There's no meritocracy here...
Posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2020, at 18:14:59
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2020, at 18:07:01
I guess because it is a detention facility.
Trump was saying about withdrawing financial support of Hong Kong (China's doing alright financially, China can look after it, the US has problems more closer to home)...
About withdrawing financial support of Iran... Because investing in Iran was supposed to be investing in something that would promote peace in the Middle East. But that hasn't eventuated... And so... The US is going to withdraw quite a lot... I didn't realise how many US troops were stationed overseas... And also invest in the UAE (United Arab Emerits) and Israel and maybe that would be more conducive to peace in the Middle East...
Peace...
Productivitiy...
Better living and working conditions...
A meaningful life...
So that people don't swarm like locusts towards your vault...
So that people don't bomb your trade centre...How the US does lead much of the world.
Here in NZ we do just amble our way along however many years or generations behind.
Something in the newspaper about people who are in the US who won't be returning because things are supposedly somehow better here because of Covid.
How they can afford a house in the US and all their money doesn't have to go on housing.
How they can be a physicist and have their kids settled in school.This country won't allow me to do anything but live on disablity.
Doesn't listen to ANYTHING I say.
Treats me like garbage.
The more it treats me like garbage the more I write about how it treats people like garbage.
Garbage.
Garbage.
If you don't want me writing about your corrupt education system then don't be corrupt in the education system.
Garbage.
Garbage.
Garbage.
Posted by sigismund on August 21, 2020, at 14:32:18
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2020, at 18:07:01
It has been said that the USA is a meritocracy, but that should be enough of that.
I remember weeping and putting my head on the table listening to it.
The idea that reading language from alphabets was a profound act of animism amazed me.
I'll listen to it again.
Posted by sigismund on August 21, 2020, at 14:43:35
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2020, at 18:14:59
>About withdrawing financial support of Iran...
Ahem! How about lifting the sanctions? Let them use SWIFT.
So the USA has never got over the embassy takeover. There is a sequence, one item never mentioned. I can only think of Mossadegh, Shah, embassy, Iranian revolution, Iran-Iraq war, I forget the rest.
The Iran Iraq war is never mentioned. Human wave attacks, kids from school sent to the front and mowed down, the desire of the US administration that they should weaken each other. There was a memorial fountain maybe in Tehran for those kids full of red water. That nice photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. never bloody well mentioned. Maybe a million dead.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 21, 2020, at 18:28:04
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by sigismund on August 21, 2020, at 14:32:18
> It has been said that the USA is a meritocracy, but that should be enough of that.
There are lots of people in the USA who work really really hard and are not fairly compensated for the work that they do.
There are lots of people in the USA who were (by luck) born with talents -- but who do not get to use their talents to properly benefit their communities.
There are lots of people in the USA who have wealth and prestige and so on and they personally hadn't done anything at all and / or they aren't very talented.
I really do not mean to deny any of that.
But...
If you consider some gifts and talents and some kind of work... If you consider athletes who achieve such beauty and grace and strength in performance from conditions of relative freedom... I mean to say to compare the working conditions of elite athletes in the USA compared to the working conditions of elite athletes in other countries around the world...
If you consider whether a country will allow a kid to spend their time working on maths... Or whether they are never left alone for 5 minutes. Whether they are expected to spend their time running around outside or looking after younger siblings or working to provide for other members of the community...
I think there is some truth that I am trying to get at that I maybe can't express so very well about a greater proportion of people in the USA having a higher quality of life, or something like that.
I think... Maybe it is just about fit. Certain skills are appreciated... I guess you want to be somewhere that appreciates you. Similar values or whatever. So you can be... Without feeling like there's something fundamentally wrong either inside or outside simply because the fit is off.
Perhaps I should just say... I have had experiences in Australia and also in the USA where I felt the fit was better. Perhaps when I was in Australia but was meeting people from the USA. It was getting to talk with these people and seeing the quiet ways in which they lived their lives... Getting up to go cycling in the morning... The conversations... Decent. Kind. Hard working. Intelligent. Curious. Just spending time with them felt like a privaledge. That was what made me want to do Medicine rather than Philosophy. To really learn to look after myself. To understand myself better. To know what was good. To be able to help others understand, too, and make decisions that were consistent with the goals and plans and prefernces they had for themeselves...
So, I suppose I did want to join them. Just not as a Philosopher. I felt I needed to do more. I mean that literally. Do. I needed to do something. Something performative.
> I remember weeping and putting my head on the table listening to it.
> The idea that reading language from alphabets was a profound act of animism amazed me.Pictures. The Chinese alphabet is pictorial. He was talking about how some languages are visual. Snapshots of scenes. It's a different way of thinking.
I don't know about hieroglyphs. I thought they were people in poses. I honestly don't know. I guess there were mountains and birds. I don't know. I don't have a grasp or a handle on translation...
But I do understand a bit about how native peoples have a different conception of the world and their place in it. One very tied to their environment. Having a sense of finding their way home. Yeah...
That spoke to me. GOing out for a hunt or a forage or just getting away for a bit in play or whatever. With others or by yourself. Having the ability to find your way home. A centredness. Felt within oneself. That we don't experience in the same way, anymore...
Planting calendars... Okay I'm reaching now, he didn't talk about that. But he did talk about night. So, time of day. From within yourself. No, not within yourself...
The interface of self and world... Teh friction point or place or, I don' tknow...
It was the idea of phonetic speech sounds as a technology. So 'see' the letter 'C' 'cccaaaa' the outbreach 'ccccaaaa'. a component or building block of different words or phrases. The focus is on building up speech sounds.
Which is very differnet from languages that have building blocks of pictures. Speech isn't the focus. Beings in teh world. Events. States of affairs. Things like that are the object or the focus of the language.
I don't know.. I don't speak Chinese or Ancient Egyptian or... Anything. But It's likely got something to do with why Maori never took to what is (technically, from an English perspective) the easiest language to learn because we wrote it down for them all phonetically simple and everything. And they (Maori people) sort of scratch their heads at it (formal Maori or written Maori or how the University Maori tell them they ought to speak Maori) and say 'that's not how anybody actually speaks'.
Except... It is, now.
It is traditional to introduce yourself with your name and a description of your home. Your mountain. The most salient mountain in your vicinity. Where you would go climb up a mountain, were to you go climibing up a mountain. The name of your river. Pirongia is my mountain and the Waikato river is my river. You dwell on that and gloss over the mountain, rather. I'ts a perfectly good mountain. Er.. Hillock. It's nice for day trips but it's not abseiling in the snow staggering peaks of South Island scenery... But Auckland pays a lot for the river-water for drinking and hydro-dams are a big deal... And the Waikato rowing team gives Oxbridge a good run for their money on the river... With all the rowing upstream they make them do in training... If you are into rowing...
Yeah, there was lot there. A lot of... A radically different world-view. Different view of our place in the world. That's what philosophy was supposed to (in some sense) be about. This curiosity and wonder...
So differnt from much of academic philosophy.
The way it is practiced in so much of academia...
> I'll listen to it again.
Yes.
I've started learning about limits in AP calculus... It is surprisingly understandable. Not to start with, but second or third time around I am actually feeling like I am following along and am able to do the problems (or go doh! I see how I faffed that up) and it's not much harder than... Counting the carbons in chemistry...
Maybe there is hope for my math...
Maybe there is hope for me.
(((Thanks for being here)))
Posted by alexandra_k on August 21, 2020, at 18:58:52
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by sigismund on August 21, 2020, at 14:43:35
> >About withdrawing financial support of Iran...
> Ahem! How about lifting the sanctions? Let them use SWIFT.
?
I don't know about this. I am learning to count in binary. It is helping me understand counting in... Uh... English? No, that's not it. Math. It's helping me count in math. In base 10. Which is ridiculous.He said the idea of the sanctions is that some people... When they get money they spend it on funding terrorism. Which, I guess means people who are a threat to peace and security. Which, I guess means people who might bomb a trade centre or blow up a mosque.
Why might they do such things? Because they are led to believe that the US is withholding resources from them, I suppose.
Their own countries... Use the money they have to buy.. Guns and bombs and stuff to get them using them on civilians...
I don't know...
I guess the idea is that money goes to them... And things they want to buy. They want to buy weapons... They will pay money for them. That means jobs for americans if the weapons are manufactured in the US. Jobs for people. Good jobs... Could be. If the government gets the labor laws right and gets a good amount of money...
That's what they choose to buy. Guns and weapons. Of all the things they could buy. They could be buying.. Stethescopes. Or virus testing equipment.. Or, I don't know... Corn. I don't know.
But when they choose to use their money or invest in things that only result in worse unrest etc etc... Then it's probably time to withdraw... Because of opportunity cost. I think Trump means that there are good things in the US that could use a little more money... Maybe... Maybe there are better uses to which money could be put a little closer to home.
I don't know...
He had to twist some arms to get shipping shipping stuff out west. It was easier to send stuff from NY or Chicago or Minnesota overseas / offshore than to send it out West to Iowa. I did not realise that about the US, before... So... Sometimes it seems easier to invest in... I don't know.. Hong Kong. Than to invest in Iowa. But there's likely good people there who would go on to do great things if only they had the resources...
It's hard to match things.
You don't want to over-supply because the cost of excess / waste...
If I do get a pay-out from the courts, here, I need to figure out what to do with it. My Mother put her money (for a time anyway) into bonus bonds. As a place to put it while you make other plans for it... I don't know... I'll need to look into that. And into literally buying-in to a system if I do in fact have the funds to to that. Then that is excactly what that is for. Yeah.
> So the USA has never got over the embassy takeover. There is a sequence, one item never mentioned. I can only think of Mossadegh, Shah, embassy, Iranian revolution, Iran-Iraq war, I forget the rest.> The Iran Iraq war is never mentioned. Human wave attacks, kids from school sent to the front and mowed down, the desire of the US administration that they should weaken each other. There was a memorial fountain maybe in Tehran for those kids full of red water. That nice photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. never bloody well mentioned. Maybe a million dead.
Hmm. I don't know about these things. I have been doing some US government and policits and world history etc, too... And it's interesting.
I think....
What did they teach me in school? What have they been teaching in University? Some of the stuff, yeah... But mostly I don't feel like I've learned much in the way of anything... I've had a lot of time wasted by people who focused on weird thigns... I don't know...
I play Civilisation 5 a lot. On the Earth map, because it is a good map. But it doesn't have geographical borders or whatever and it doesn't start the civilisations off in the right place and sometimes the resources / terrain is randomised so you don't necesarily get a desert in the middle of Australia or whatever... But interesting to see the migration of people and the civilisations in world history...
I mean... taking a course in it seems... Important, somehow. To have some lasting general understanding in yoru lifetime of world history.
Just... ONe decent course in it. As a sort of a ... General education thing. Yeah.
It's phenomenal how things are available or accessible on the internet. Khan Academy and the AP courses. Wow.
ANyway... The US government and civics one is cool, too.
I sort of independently 'discovered' (in some sense) the declaration of independence in the last chapter of my thesis. Of course just because I've never studied it doesn't mean I haven't profited from talking to people who have.... ANd so on... But to come... Myself.. By way of a process of my own reasoning or understanding... I didn't think a social contract was with a person and government... I thought it was an agreement between individuals. I thought understanding it was the *source* of conscience...
Anyway...
I have to get this judicial review, breach of statutory duty, negligence, maleficence of office, bill of rights?? Claim done by Monday. I promised myself.
There's no Kahn academy instructions on how to file for tort violations.. Darn it...
There's also nothing on how disjunctive claims entail anything anything anything at all (either a or b or c or d or e or f... and not a... therefore anything I choose!!!!!!) 'style' (shall we say) of 'reasoning' (shall we say) employed by the Dean in a reductio ad absurdum of the entire University.
Posted by sigismund on August 22, 2020, at 1:47:30
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff » sigismund, posted by alexandra_k on August 21, 2020, at 18:28:04
>I've started learning about limits in AP calculus... It is surprisingly understandable. Not to start with
I don't know what AP refers to there, but we did calculus in higher maths at school. Really good teachers I guess, they wrote the text books, but.......I never could understand what the hell triangles had to do with rates of change. I would have been better off with classificatory sciences, botany, geography, history.....in those days unless you did straight physics, chemistry, maths1 and 2, and French......I'd have ended up in a class in which I'd have felt very threatened indeed.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2020, at 2:45:37
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff » alexandra_k, posted by sigismund on August 22, 2020, at 1:47:30
> I don't know what AP refers to there
Neither do I.
Did you have High School / Secondary School that went
Third form
Fourth form
Fifth form (Fifth form certificate)
Sixth form (Sixth form certificate)
Seventh form (University Entrance or UE).And...
If you did really really well in Sixth form then you could go to University off the back of that (but smaller more exclusive schools earned more 1's and 2's (the highest grade to be given) on the basis of how well their studnets did in the Fifth form certificate external examinations...
And most studnets completed seventh form before going off to University...And now they are called year 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
So...
Seventh form was meant to be good preparation for University.
Because it was at the same level, really, or something like that...
It just gave studnets 1 more year to mature...
Socially...So...
AP is apparently a curriculum.
That is apparently something you can claim as University Credit.
And in the US there is a distinction between 3 year Degrees (offered by community colleges) and 4 year College Degrees (offered by... A 'real' University, in some sense).And so if you go to a good school they might offer a range of AP classes...
And if you don't then they won't.
And then your AP credits can be used for various things...
I'm not entirely sure on this...
I think the idea is...
Say...
For example...
If you want to go to Brown and to a Bachelor of Science then you need to pick a concentration (or make one up) and it is very very very very likely they won't let you make up a concentration that would count towards a Bachelor of Science unless it had a calculus paper in it.
Perhaps unless you already had AP credit for calculus. Then they might let you get away with taking different subjects becuase there was something you wanted to pursue...
So... AP credits can be used to get you out of what would otherwise be a compulsory subject. A calculus requirement or a language requirement or something like that.
At some Universities I think you can use AP credits to reduce the time it takes you to get your Degree... But I don't know...
That might be a sneaky way of... Well... Basically offering you a 3 year degree instead of a 4 year degree.
Or.... Well... 2 year degree with a year of Secondary School AP credit...I guess people apply to what seems right for them.
It's all good.
So long as people know what they are choosing to do... I mean... Aren't being sold something under false pretenses...Some Universities are scathing of the AP thing.
Because they say that the AP courses are not substitutes for subjects they offer.
E.g., a John's Hopkins Professor has a rant about how his college Calculus classes would not get AP credit (would not be recognised in their curriculum) because they think using calculators is important and he doesn't let people use calculators...But the issue of the AP thing... Is more...
That it provides a curriculum.
As opposed to no curriculum.
Or... Well... Take a look at the NCEA (New Zealand Curriculum).
Our maths teachers go on and on about how terrible it is...
They keep faffing up the grading and asking stupid questions and not recognising correct and actually intelligent and out of the box thinking answers when they are provided...
They penalise studnets for solving problems without calculus when they don't need calculus to solve the problems... Because they didn't ask questions that needed it...
They aren't conceptual...From my perspective... I don't imagine that AP curriculum would teach me as much as I could learn from doing a course at MIT or wherever... I know it wouldn't... But the point is that if I am not capable of following along the AP curriculum... When it is as well presented as it is on something like Kahn Academy. When I can work at my own very very very very slow and relaxed working pace... Without a frustrated person breathing over my shoulder... Then if I still can't do it... Then I know there is no way I can do it. But if I can do the stuff online for that... Maybe there is hope for me that I could complete a course in calculus to a satisfactory standard.
So... That I could have a concentration option locked in (for an Arts Degree) and get it done in 3 1/2 years... So I'd have a semseter at the end there where I could try for calculus or physics or whatever to get a science concentration to get a Bachelor of Science Degree. Yays. I don't know...
So, yeah, that's the AP thing. It's a curriculum that counts (in some sense) for University credit (in some sense) in the US.
I forgot about the MCAT. That's another test. Darned it...
Sigh.
Oh Dear...
ONe step at a time...
One foot in front of the other...I am realising that a huge part of the maths problem for me was the lack of maths books. We had books of problems with unworked answers to every 5th question only.
I never learned to speak math.
Sal Kahn is great because he read the equations so I hear what they mean. And he explains them in differnt ways so I come to understand what they are saying. It is a language, yeah. For me... Learning the words is the hardest bit. Learning how to read it... I'm a bit slow to get started... But need to take the time on the foundations... Yeah.
> I never could understand what the hell triangles had to do with rates of change.
Hmm. Slope? Rise over run? (biggest y minus smallest y) divided by (biggest x over smallest x)? Or... A difference in change (y values) over a difference in time (x values)? Sigh. Chemistry... Sigh.
Titrations scare the hell out of me...
Our goggles were cheap and the plastic was not very clear and not very... Even or something. So it did some weird distortion. Not quite fish-eying everything, but it did funny things to space... LIttle portions of magnification and little portions of warping... It made me feel like a migraine and I don't get migraines. And then the graphing paper was very very tiny little tiny little squares... And then we had numbers with lots of decimal places... And we had to manage reading a time off a clock and reading a value off a Ph meter and record the instantaneous point in time that the ph read whatever... And I would jumble things up, rather.
IN one of my physics exams I just... Couldn't read. Then the most basic of things... I needed to do 4 x 6 or something like tht and I went... I don't know... BInary or something. I didn't know the answer (never learned my times tables). Or... I could have a stab. Sometimes I guess right. It just seems right.. Whatever occurs to me. And sometimes it is right. But othertimes it is wrong... So... So I tried to convert it into an adding problme because I can count on my fingers... Under the table... Sureptitiuosly so the invigilator can't see what I'm doing... ONly I can't do it very well when I can't see my fingers and counting on my fingers is problmeatic because of the whole numbers meetin gin the middle so I have to remembe the number I'm carrying into the next column and it's a mess basically.
ANd I swear I ended up donig something.... With zeros and ones trying to figure out a simple (haha) multiplication that I just should have known.
And that was physics.
Oh Dear.
That was a few years ago, now. To be fair. It was also a summer school course where the lecturer for the second half would only give us problems in batches of about 10 with no worked answers until the following week... It was designed to set people up to fail to gain entry to Engineering (again). It was not designed to help people learn physics. And it was too compressed for someone who hadn't heard it all before... At least 1 previous time... ANd not for someone with no algebra...
I suppose I have learned a lot of math in chemistry and physiology, really. I don't mind physiology. The equations. For neurones and for blood flow etc. I can do that. But titrations are harder...
The cartesian co-ordinate thing is really really really really helpful. To put the numbers on a line properly.
I need to practice basics more. Bedmas rules etc. It's just so helpful hearing Sal say what the equations mean or say in English. And explaining them a few differnt ways...
My intuitions are often upside down and back to front so it's a bit of work for me to set them right.
E.g., 'approach from the left'. Or... 'approach from smaller numbers to bigger numbers'... or 'moving to the right'... And then keeping straight what the `-' means at various points... Just that bit... Needs to take time to settle. Go over and over and over... Until seeing it that way is automatic and easy.
Like... Orienting yourself with anatomy x-rays and mri's and so on... That took a bit of work with the planes... But then you just see them rightly... Orient correctly... But that took a bit of work, too...
> I would have been better off with classificatory sciences, botany, geography, history.....Geography is classificatory??? Do you mean differnet kinds of rock? Yeah I see that... HIstory?? How is that classificatory?? Or do you just mean that you like history as well?
> in those days unless you did straight physics, chemistry, maths1 and 2, and French......I'd have ended up in a class in which I'd have felt very threatened indeed.
Was maths 1 and maths 2 something like calculus and statistics? I started doing a first year course in statistics (had to drop because of my thesis)... I was surprised that I was following along...
But my intutions got weird again. With addition / subtraction and multiplication / division and sets. The do unexpected things... I think because I tend to think of addition as an 'and' operator... But with sets it doesnt' do that... It picks out what I think of as 'or'. THe overlapping subset.. That's not how I was thinking of 'and'... Then I get stuck for a bit...
But I was actually really enjoying it. ANd it was my first exposure.. And I was following along... But then our course book (actually MY coursebook other people's printed coursebooks were fine). MY coursebook (randomly given to me by the centre) had a big chunk of the wrong content in it. They put some of the previous years notes in or something...
It meant that I had problems that didn't match the content. So I was having a hard time doing the problems... ANd then I thought I wasnt' following along....
ANd after wasting an entire weekend trying to solve things that I couldn't do... Getting really really demoralised... Going to a tutor for help (and he thinks I'm pretty dumb because it should b eunderstandable from the book)... AN dthen figuring out that I learned a bunch of stuff that... I don't know.. And I didn't have the content I needed. And then interference effects and...
It was a bit of a mess...
_____
Khan Academy is saying something about getting rid of some of their courses.
NOt sure why.
Politics, I expect. People don't know why they would pay for their kids to go to high quality schools with AP content when you have Khan academy providing high quality content online. So... Yeah...
They said the MCAT (med school admissions test) content will go... They are delaying removing it while people find an alternative...
I forgot about that.
I guess i need to study for that test...
I think... From what I've seen of the test... It is something to be... Crammed for??? I think... I would rather get a high quality undergraduate education. Particularly the stuff on inequality and public health... Sociology... I don't know...
I would like to help people.
But I am wary of things like 'doctors withotu borders'.
Sustainable change. Genuine change.
I guess I would like to understand more about international relations and the like... From smart people who are trying themselves to genuinely help things be better for mor epeople.And of course there is a lot of work to be done within the US, too...
A lot of unhappy people.
:(
Posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2020, at 3:14:17
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2020, at 2:45:37
There's just... Something that goes weird with public health.
I'm not sure what it is...
I guess it's the same thing that goes weird with ethics, sometimes.
On the one hand you have these really smart and good and kind people with curiosity working things out... Explaining things different ways... Really picking out the good and the best and developing the understanding...
And then you have sort of... Awful courses where you learn laundry lists of different theories. Catch-phrases and buzz-words. And you apply whatever theory to justify whatever seemed right... Where what seemed right was not arrived at by an epistemically responsible process or similar... Because there wasn't curiosity or wonder or whatever for a time there while the process worked... Before delivering a result. Rather, there was a snap judgement made at some point for random or irrelevnt reasons. And then the.... Tools, I guess. The tools of philosophy and reasoning are... ABused or misapplied, I guess, to justify the wrong answer only.
And I feel a bit that learning about inequality and philosophy theories and sociology theories and the like can become a bit like that...
And I suppose I see courses offered in public health and I... I don't know... Just as I don't know about courses that are offered in applied ethics and things like that.
And of course it's all about who is teaching them. How bright they are. HOw curious they are. I mean... I heard 'consciousness, ecology, spirituality' and I went 'okay, little bit of cringe at the word 'spiritual' but... Let's not be judgemental'... ANd then it was a wonderful talk by an interesting person who had put genuine thought and care into understanding.
I see 'public health' and I do a little bit of a cringe...
But I see courses in things like international relations and the like and... I don't know...
If we assume that the aim or goal or what the US is genuinely trying to do is to make it be the case that there is a higher quality of life for more people around the world... Not in an endless accumulation of riches way... But in a going back to basics sort of a way where we do reconnect with the parts of us that need to find balance with the natual world... Caring for the water and the sky and so on... Quality housing and schools and... Investing in good. INvesting in the things you want to see more of...
And people working on how to scale things up.. So when you get a little pocket.. A tiny business... How you can scale things up without losing the thing that was valuable that we wanted to scale up... How you keep the quality in mass production...
Trying to solve the problems of the earth...
Daniel Dennett was a Philosohper who influenced me a lot. I loved his books when I was an undergrad.
Some of his ideas were amazing to me.
One of them was that human beings were like the nervous system of the planet. Maybe the purpose or the function of human beings is to be the nervous system of the planet.
There was stuff about how long the leash was... So... Trees can grow... In a direction. Or a vine can grow towards the sun... But growing is a slow form of movement compared to a critter that can swim, say. Or walk. A nervous system gets you faster responsivity. And about seeing things from afar... About remote controlling a vehicle on teh surface of mars... ABout putting sensors and so on into the vehicle so it can respond in real-time because of how long it would take for a signal to travel from mars to earth and back from earth to mars.
And the idea that humans could be something the earth produced so that we could see or sense impending danger to the earth... In time to do someting about it. Maybe... An incoming collision form a planet or whatever. People are supposed to protect and help the earth. Not parasites to kill it.
I wanted a to do a Masters at Tufts, but I didn't see a way...
Posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2020, at 3:36:02
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2020, at 3:14:17
When I did Logic at Uni year and years ago... I was afraid I would do badly because I thought it would be math and I was bad at math..
I got the book early and read it and worked the problems...
I did put a lot of work into it.
It was Copi and Cohen.
We did truth tables to define the logical operators (AND, OR, IF THEN, NOT).
So.. P AND Q is true if and only if P is true AND Q is true. P OR Q is true if and only if either P is true or Q is true or both are true (inclusive or)...And then we had 21 rules of inference.
I think there were maybe 8... Um... Arguments. For example...
If given an argument like this:
1. P
2. IF P then Q
_____________
You could write:
3. Q 1, 2 Modus Ponens (MP)And then there were a bunch of substitution rules.
So from 'P and Q' you could simplify to 'P'.
Or you could do addition from 'P' to 'P OR (anything you like).ANd then the goal or aim... Was that you would be given a certain number of premises... And you had to infer some conclusion. Off you go... ANd yes, we had to memorise the rules... Which was actually really helpful for seeing what to do to get the conclusion out. Because it might not be written with p or q. p might stand in for a much much much longer expression... So you needed to identify the form...
Not explaining the best... But I liked it. It made sense to me. I could do it.
There were also brackets for order of operations and different brackets for different orders. Round brackets. Square brackets. Curly braces.
I don't remember the BEDMAS rules very well. When I look at maths I go 'that's not a well formed formula! surely! it's nonsense. It looks like nonsense to me!! Go away and put your brackets in and we'll talk later!!'
And then we did stuff... Some and All... And the notation for that. ANd was okay, too.
And at some point someone showed me stuff in polish notation.
And it looked. Weird. ANd it looked wrong. ANd it looked very very very very strange. And it looked backwards.
And they were like, huh. Most people like polish notation better because it's more like maths. How they write the things in maths...
So it is something with me about the standard notation or something like that about how maths is written down or represetned or taught. It's not that I can't do it... But I get to a bit and it just strikes me as very odd or very strange or very wrong. It just seems really off and doesn't compute. ANd I need to spend a bit of time, actually, going over and over and over and over the really most basic thing so that it feels natural and automatic. And then prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr things start to compute the way they are supposed to. The way tehy do for everyone else, I guess. I suppose it is the most basic conceptual thing.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2020, at 6:27:35
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2020, at 3:36:02
I'm sh*tty about well formed formulae because I got 97 per cent for logic.
That based on three tests.
The first test I lost 1 per cent because I forgot to close a bracket that I opened.
The second test I lost 1 per cent because I forgot to close a bracket that I opened.
The third test I lost 1 per cent because I forgot to close a bracket that I opened.
I think a handful of people did similarly well with scores over 95 per cent in a class of a few hundred.
It was unlike any other class in Logic, though, for being unlike maths, I guess.
I struggled a bit to keep up / work alongside the studnets I was tutoring (ashamed to admit) in North Carolina... Because it was a course in mathematical reasoning.
We had entrance and exit rules for each connective...
And he would reason through some maths stuff...
I was aliright up until the last concept. A handful of kids in my tutorial group clearly understood better / more than me. I let them explain things... But I felt bad. It was about two sets.. About mapping. Along the lines of 'there is someone for everyone'... Means for each individual in the first set there is an individual in the second such that they are paired... I don't remember exactly... I suppose it was the notion of a function. lolz. I honestly don't know / remember...
Posted by sigismund on August 22, 2020, at 17:24:43
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2020, at 2:45:37
>Hmm. Slope? Rise over run? (biggest y minus smallest y) divided by (biggest x over smallest x)? Or... A difference in change (y values) over a difference in time (x values)?
Oh, I see. No one ever said that. It makes some sort of sense.
You are very kind about us. The last 20 years have been too much for me. At least I put my anger into learning another language. I wanted to leave forever.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 27, 2020, at 6:31:21
In reply to Re: Amazing stuff, posted by sigismund on August 22, 2020, at 17:24:43
> >Hmm. Slope? Rise over run? (biggest y minus smallest y) divided by (biggest x over smallest x)? Or... A difference in change (y values) over a difference in time (x values)?
> Oh, I see. No one ever said that. It makes some sort of sense.I'm not explaining well.
https://www.engineersupply.com/Understanding-Slope-and-How-it-is-Measured.aspx
Someone drew a picture there, on graph paper. That's how I think of it.
I've only encountered in it in titrations. Ph was on the y axis and time on the x. We had calculations getting from Ph to concentration... Lots of equations there... Molar concentration and... So on... That stuff was pretty hard going first time around. I could do it at home in the quiet on the computer. I couldn't do them in lab with the noise and the people around and me feeling slow and stupid and the weird goggles and the tiny tiny squares on the horrible math paper and the very long decimal numbers on the axis for the graph... And we couldn't figure out the numbers to put on the graph before class so the graph would often look odd because I didn't use the best numbers...
I suspect, using the magic of hindsight that other people were doing a considerably better job of things because their private tutors or friends in the residential halls showed them what they were supposed to produce in the laboratory for chemistry this week... I was in a physics lab once where one of the girls in our group was basically providing for us all what another girl from Carrington had provided for her... Because she felt sorry for us. And because she was picked to do Medicine at Otago so awwwwwwww poor us. Pity us. Give us the answers and you progress. Off you go...
> You are very kind about us. The last 20 years have been too much for me. At least I put my anger into learning another language. I wanted to leave forever.
What language did you learn? Where would you go?
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