Starting from the old joke about economists: "An economist is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
A philosopher is someone who knows the name for everything and the meaning of nothing.
A comedian is someone who knows all the jokes and sees the humor in nothing.
A psychiatrist is someone who recognizes the insanity in everyone and thinks himself sane.
The philosopher joke is a few months old, but the other two are new today--and I'm suspecting I'll think of some more, even if no one adds any as comments. (Has anyone else ever looked at my blog?) The genre will never be as prolific as the lightbulb jokes, but it has some small potential.
Showing posts with label multiple perspectives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label multiple perspectives. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Weird coincidences
Not really an epistemological topic (I think), but I couldn't figure out any other place to write about a few of these weird coincidences.
Today I just finished reading Queen in Danger by Adam Hall. At the end of the book there are a advertisements for 9 books, including 5 books by Tony Hillerman. I've never read any of Hillerman's books, but it turns out that I had just borrowed and have here A Thief of Time, one of Hillerman's books that was advertised at the back of Hall's book. I think I had first read one of Hall's books after reading his obituary (but that was at least some months ago--turned out to be in May of this year, but I encountered it again on my book list as I was working on the second paragraph below), and it was Hillerman's obituary that did motivate me to reserve the Hillerman book. I don't even remember what got me to borrow the book I just finished today, but it sure is a weird coincidence... Okay, so there aren't that many publishers, but it still strikes me as mighty weird--especially because it reminds me of an earlier weird coincidence.
That coincidence was in 2007, when I was reading a terrible book by Harlan Colban (or a name something like that) and I encountered a reference in his book to Anne Tyler, another author who I'd never read before--but that day I just happened to have one of her books in my briefcase in case I didn't like the Colban one. Turned out I didn't, and I still haven't finished it, and not sure that I ever will. However, the Tyler book was rather interesting, and I might read some more of her books later on. Actually, I ground to a halt in that Colban book as I wrote an email message to the author and got a rude reply--which reminds me of some more weird coincidences.
These coincidences involved the book Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. I also wrote him email and got a rude reply. However, in his book he mentioned his other book on black swans, which he defined as highly unlikely events. (I may have heard of that book before, perhaps from Mike Houle.) However, as I was reading his book, I encountered two more rather unlikely mentions of black swans---after he had just described black swans as being highly unlikely events. Both of those references were in other books. One was in an Agatha Christie book, The Labours of Hercules, where one of the stories starts in a pub called the Black Swan. I'd forgotten about that, but I encountered the story again as I was reading the Japanese translation in August while I was reading the Taleb book. The triple on this coincidence was Shopaholic Abroad by Sophie Kinsella, which I noticed was published by Black Swan Press. That Taleb book might be some kind of coincidence magnet? I remember that one day as I was reading it, I looked at the license numbers of a string of cars near IBM, and they formed a surprising sequential sequence of some kind. Probably only three or four cars at the time, but it still struck me as highly unlikely.
Or maybe it's just a matter of my having become too observant of too many things? If you see too much, you'll surely see odd coincidences?
Today I just finished reading Queen in Danger by Adam Hall. At the end of the book there are a advertisements for 9 books, including 5 books by Tony Hillerman. I've never read any of Hillerman's books, but it turns out that I had just borrowed and have here A Thief of Time, one of Hillerman's books that was advertised at the back of Hall's book. I think I had first read one of Hall's books after reading his obituary (but that was at least some months ago--turned out to be in May of this year, but I encountered it again on my book list as I was working on the second paragraph below), and it was Hillerman's obituary that did motivate me to reserve the Hillerman book. I don't even remember what got me to borrow the book I just finished today, but it sure is a weird coincidence... Okay, so there aren't that many publishers, but it still strikes me as mighty weird--especially because it reminds me of an earlier weird coincidence.
That coincidence was in 2007, when I was reading a terrible book by Harlan Colban (or a name something like that) and I encountered a reference in his book to Anne Tyler, another author who I'd never read before--but that day I just happened to have one of her books in my briefcase in case I didn't like the Colban one. Turned out I didn't, and I still haven't finished it, and not sure that I ever will. However, the Tyler book was rather interesting, and I might read some more of her books later on. Actually, I ground to a halt in that Colban book as I wrote an email message to the author and got a rude reply--which reminds me of some more weird coincidences.
These coincidences involved the book Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. I also wrote him email and got a rude reply. However, in his book he mentioned his other book on black swans, which he defined as highly unlikely events. (I may have heard of that book before, perhaps from Mike Houle.) However, as I was reading his book, I encountered two more rather unlikely mentions of black swans---after he had just described black swans as being highly unlikely events. Both of those references were in other books. One was in an Agatha Christie book, The Labours of Hercules, where one of the stories starts in a pub called the Black Swan. I'd forgotten about that, but I encountered the story again as I was reading the Japanese translation in August while I was reading the Taleb book. The triple on this coincidence was Shopaholic Abroad by Sophie Kinsella, which I noticed was published by Black Swan Press. That Taleb book might be some kind of coincidence magnet? I remember that one day as I was reading it, I looked at the license numbers of a string of cars near IBM, and they formed a surprising sequential sequence of some kind. Probably only three or four cars at the time, but it still struck me as highly unlikely.
Or maybe it's just a matter of my having become too observant of too many things? If you see too much, you'll surely see odd coincidences?
Saturday, March 3, 2007
What is your mental model of the Internet?
This kind of mental-model thing is a big part of my epistemology, so this post is an illustrative example. It's also an example of trying to get the reader to think about the problem more deeply, hopefully to increase interest and create a deeper understanding of the proposed 'solution', a mental model in this case.
What is the Internet?
Quite a hairy and complicated problem, eh? Probably it fits under 'big ideas'. So any smaller idea of where to start? Let's try to refine it a bit more.
Is there an optical instrument like the Internet?
Optical instruments include things like telescope, microscopes, binoculars, eyeglasses, and even optical images produced by quasi-optical or hyper-optical instruments like electron microscopes and radio telescopes. Do any of these (or some other optical instruments) make you think of the Internet? Nothing yet? If you have some ideas already, great. Maybe you should jot down some notes to see if your ideas are affected by the rest of this... However, I want to narrow the approach some more:
Does the Internet remind you of any animal optical system?
Any ideas? How about the compound eye of an ant? Not just simple views for a small piece of a fuzzy view of a 15-cm hemisphere, but more like an array of telescopes that can be independently targeted on various aspects of a problem or topic of study. If it's a big problem there are lots of places to stare at it. Of course, it's much more flexible than that. You could turn them around, and convert them into microscopes to try to study the problem from many possible angles. Since it's a virtual instrument, they can be imagined as a full sphere rather than a hemisphere. You might imagine all of them active at once in separate windows--but you'd also have to imagine a really big screen to do it properly. However, you can also imagine it running asynchronously, with a small group of telescopes panning through certain regions at a time.
Using that mental model, the URLs are like settings for your finder scope on a telescope (or a microscope with the microscopic equivalent). The pushing technologies like RSS feeds are sort of like tracking telescopes that are locked onto a particular target. The URLs stacked up in your history are also the support for the asynchronous approach, and also form a kind of tracking history of the movements of the instrument over time... They don't really tell you what was actually read, and certainly very little about what was actually understood and what sort of mental models were built as a result, but interesting evidence of intentions, at least.
This particular mental model was actually a negative reaction to a discussion with someone who was trying to use the Internet to supply evidence for his prejudices--but the only thing he accomplished was to make me wonder why he seemed to be looking through the wrong end of the telescope. He would cite URLs that pointed to very trivial incidents and decontextualized trivia, where I was quite aware of much larger contexts around his ideas, but those larger contexts make his arguments seem wrong or even ridiculous. Apparently his alternative usage of the Internet is to imagine it as a way to find some fact, however trivial or obscure, that somehow supports what he wants to believe--but he can also find it repeated ad infinitum by other people who want to believe the same thing...
So imagine the Internet as a compound eye built of super-mobile hyper-adaptable telescopes? Not a practical or useful idea (AKA mental model) in any way I can imagine just now, but perhaps an interesting one. Or maybe you can see some way to apply it?
What is the Internet?
Quite a hairy and complicated problem, eh? Probably it fits under 'big ideas'. So any smaller idea of where to start? Let's try to refine it a bit more.
Is there an optical instrument like the Internet?
Optical instruments include things like telescope, microscopes, binoculars, eyeglasses, and even optical images produced by quasi-optical or hyper-optical instruments like electron microscopes and radio telescopes. Do any of these (or some other optical instruments) make you think of the Internet? Nothing yet? If you have some ideas already, great. Maybe you should jot down some notes to see if your ideas are affected by the rest of this... However, I want to narrow the approach some more:
Does the Internet remind you of any animal optical system?
Any ideas? How about the compound eye of an ant? Not just simple views for a small piece of a fuzzy view of a 15-cm hemisphere, but more like an array of telescopes that can be independently targeted on various aspects of a problem or topic of study. If it's a big problem there are lots of places to stare at it. Of course, it's much more flexible than that. You could turn them around, and convert them into microscopes to try to study the problem from many possible angles. Since it's a virtual instrument, they can be imagined as a full sphere rather than a hemisphere. You might imagine all of them active at once in separate windows--but you'd also have to imagine a really big screen to do it properly. However, you can also imagine it running asynchronously, with a small group of telescopes panning through certain regions at a time.
Using that mental model, the URLs are like settings for your finder scope on a telescope (or a microscope with the microscopic equivalent). The pushing technologies like RSS feeds are sort of like tracking telescopes that are locked onto a particular target. The URLs stacked up in your history are also the support for the asynchronous approach, and also form a kind of tracking history of the movements of the instrument over time... They don't really tell you what was actually read, and certainly very little about what was actually understood and what sort of mental models were built as a result, but interesting evidence of intentions, at least.
This particular mental model was actually a negative reaction to a discussion with someone who was trying to use the Internet to supply evidence for his prejudices--but the only thing he accomplished was to make me wonder why he seemed to be looking through the wrong end of the telescope. He would cite URLs that pointed to very trivial incidents and decontextualized trivia, where I was quite aware of much larger contexts around his ideas, but those larger contexts make his arguments seem wrong or even ridiculous. Apparently his alternative usage of the Internet is to imagine it as a way to find some fact, however trivial or obscure, that somehow supports what he wants to believe--but he can also find it repeated ad infinitum by other people who want to believe the same thing...
So imagine the Internet as a compound eye built of super-mobile hyper-adaptable telescopes? Not a practical or useful idea (AKA mental model) in any way I can imagine just now, but perhaps an interesting one. Or maybe you can see some way to apply it?
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