One common misconception, for example, is the treatment of infinity as a number.  Really, folks, just because something is used in mathematics doesn’t make it a number.  Arguments that devolve from “uh-huh” and “nuh-uh” to “uh-huh TIMES INFINITY” and “nuh-huh TIMES INFINITY PLUS ONE”, though (hopefully) not reflective of the true intellect of those involved, exacerbates the false definition.

Another mistake: an infinite universe necessitates infinite matter within the universe, arrange in infinite arrangements.  It’s surprising how many people would be amazed to hear that, assuming our universe is infinitely expanding, there is NO reason to believe that somewhere out there aliens exist.  One begins to think these people are the same who mishandled ‘infinity’ in math, as well; anyone who has divided one by three can find an infinite sequence with a finite variety of numerals.

I realize at this point that nobody cares how many other people misuse vocabulary; after all, modern society spits on language in favor of looking like a moron on the internet.  Strange value systems aside, I think the concept of ‘infinity’ is much more important than grammatical crimes, and society’s inability to understand it speaks a lot about our breadth of mind.

Of course, it may not seem like it matters, given that people have been making the same mistakes for eons.  Yet humankind is spreading at a frightening rate; advances in information technology, communications, transportation, and other fields have massively increased the reach of each person.  Before widespread sea travel came around, a person in Europe could be completely mistaken as to how far the Americas were, and it wouldn’t really make a difference to everyday life. But those distances became important as improving capabilities put them within reach.  Same deal with air travel.  Now, as society eyes the ‘final frontier’ of space, a true understanding of what space really entails is becoming more relevant.

Such a literal context, however, might make it seem insignificant; we’re not vacationing to the moon yet, after all.  In that case, consider the somewhat recent movement for people to become ‘global citizens’.   Belonging to the Earth instead of a nation, it is said, would promote responsibility to treat the planet well, as well as sympathy towards others far away from you.  In my opinion, the realization that an infinite universe does not automatically supply us with another inhabitable planet is a frightening and much more effective way to put our planet’s ills in context.  It makes you realize how small, fragile, and unique the Earth truly is, and how moronic it is for us to blindly mistreat it.

Also, it means all those people studying stars that are millions of light-years away are wasting their time. That’s like dreaming of a space shuttle before the steam engine was invented.  Let’s get that space elevator up and running, and connect it to a lunar colony.  That sounds better to me.

If you were to tell me that all truths are relative, would not that truth be absolute? And then, if you had previously believed that there are no absolute truths, until my paradoxical question changed your mind, would that not also destroy the previously established truth? To restate the problem, one would say: It is a TRUTH that all truths are relative. If it were not a truth, it would by definition no longer hold true; yet if it were, it would be absolute, and thus equally untrue.

It’s a ridiculous scenario, a Schrodinger’s Cat of semantics. And strange as the idea may be, the parallel here is uncanny; what we face is not a problem of different opinions or world views, but instead, the impossibility of quantum linguistics. Unfortunately, a google search reveals that this not-so-clever term has already been coined, and is used to mean things which I’m not quite sure I understand (see: http://nats-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~joseph/dis/dis/node35.html). I simply intended it to be a phrasal portmanteau of quantum mechanics and linguistics, and I shall use it as such.

We’ll begin with mechanics, returning again to the dead-and-alive cat. Nobody in their right minds (or so thought Schrodinger) would interpret the scenario as a plausible argument for the existence of a cat who is both living and dead; instead, it was a scientific reductio ad absurdum which sought to disprove a common conception of quantum physics through expounding upon its absurd conclusions. Little did anyone expect for it–along with a menagerie of related questions involving trees falling in forests–to be seriously considered as a pseudo-ontological issue. But as it turned out, people still ignore years of complex mathematics and theoretical physics to entertain the notion of quasi-dead animals. In the words of Stephen Hawking, “when I hear of Schrödinger’s cat, I reach for my gun.”

However, as violence is frowned upon, we will forgo the firearm and continue the misapplication of quantum theory to linguistics. If we use a simplified version of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (the interpretation that inspired the killing of cats in the name of science), we could posit that language, or more specifically, the meaning of words, has multiple possible meanings that could be true, until its actual meaning is determined by an observer. Meaning that, in an abstract discussion, truth can be at the same time both relative and absolute, neatly solving our conundrum.

Except not. As with theoretical physics, it only seems to work in the abstract; when it’s brought to a medium we can perceive, be that a cat or a conversation, the quantum principles that allow for multiple existences seemingly crumble. Thus, a new solution is called for, and I’ve got a radical new idea. I realize it’s nearly an extremist view, but sometimes that’s what it takes. Here goes.

We need to expand our vocabularies.

Language is fluid, dynamic, adaptive. Words are made and used and wasted liberally; just look at Shakespeare. Yet despite the infinite capability of language to give us just the right word to say what we mean, we revert to using slang, or catch-phrases, or try to imitate the words of others–in short, our speech has been morphed for the purpose of manipulation. Why is the abortion debate between pro-life and pro-choice? Because pro-death and anti-choice don’t sound too appealing in a political advertisement. Why do people disagree over what constitutes truth? Because why would you say “opinion” when you could sound so much more authoritative saying “fact”? It’s a degradation of rhetoric and a perversion of communication, but it’s what presses the right buttons for those in the audience.

It’s pretty absurd to say “a false opinion, held by enough people, is factually correct”. Yet it doesn’t seem so absurd to say “truth is determined by what people believe”. It makes me wonder if those who spouted the latter would defend the former.

Now as for tolerance, I’ve only one request: tolerate the intolerant. Trying to change their beliefs does not qualify.

———–

Here’s some links to things I’d have talked about had I the time and energy and patience and etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebniz

Why? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that despite the amount of time we spend indoors, the outdoors is always right there, through the window or door. It’s so close, so comfortable, so reachable, that we simply take it for granted. At the same time, it’s full of alien things; our personal contact with the world’s content is extremely limited. It was for this reason that we sought to learn about our surroundings, to discover what’s out there and integrate it into our schematic of what our world is. It’s the focus of political thought today, with people calling for others to act as the world’s citizens, not a nation’s: develop a more complete, global conception of who you are.

However, as much progress as we may or may not be making on our own planet Earth, the heavens above us seem as distant as ever. The more inclusive we are of our planet, the more exclusive the collective conscious seems to focus on outer space.

Doesn’t anyone else here feel claustrophobic?

It seems to me that just as a person isolated to his home would have the Earth to impress upon him his relative size, so should a person ‘isolated’ to the Earth have something within reach to put the Earth in its place. But space is not within reach. Sure we have the technology to send things up there, but an insignificant portion of people have experienced it, have explored and learned it, have taken it back home where it can be absorbed into the earthly schematic. Space is ‘familiar’ in some ways to those in the communications business–what with satellite technology behind cell phones and other apparatuses. Space is ‘familiar’ in some ways to those in the military, or the military industry, or the military-industrial complex; it’s the next frontier of warfare that nations are using to dominate others. Space is ‘familiar’ in some ways to astrophysicists and all those other scientists with complicated labels, with such detailed and obscure knowledge that any average Joe would be baffled by hearing a fraction of it. Yet the ignorance of the average Joe is exactly what should be changed.

Art, I think, has always been able to familiarize people with ideas. Whether it symbolically represents an idea in a sympathetic figure; or it depicts the foreign in the universal language of sight, or music; or it could simply be a representation of a thing beyond an ordinary person’s reach, putting it somewhere available for scrutiny. Through these and a multitude of different communicative mediums, art brings things closer. It’s depressing to think of the prohibitive restrictions that prevent art from reaching outer space and how many potential connections were preemptively severed. Practicality in mind, there are warrants as to why it’s so difficult–my random idea of ‘cosmic painting’, for example, which started this whole train of thought, would involve scattering different magnetic or mechanical particles across a huge portion of space and leaving them in orbit, whereupon the sunlight’s altered reflections would create a grand image against the night sky for those observing from the earth (and even better, if the particles could be moved and rotated to create new images from time to time). The impossibility of this working is clear when you factor the costs involved, the damage it would do to current orbiting satellites, the difficulty it would create for launching further projects into space, etc., but I still feel a loss at the thought that an artistic endeavor such as that one will never come to fruition. We’ve managed to create art out of everything here on Earth, place it everywhere. I’m sure one day art will access the cosmos as well, in a way that is accessible and appreciable by just plain old people like me.

After all, ‘vacuum’ is just another way to say ‘blank canvas’. Let’s paint.

If we’re on the same page in agreeing that eugenics, in the context I use it in, is acceptable social behavior (and if you don’t agree, then suspend your disapproval for now), then I can take the next step and draw a line between the selective breeding of humans and the selective breeding of dogs.  Now obviously there are significant differences; in selective breeding in dogs to create purebreds, for example, many times it is acceptable to inbreed the animals. For humans, needless to say, this is strictly prohibited.  Yet to consider the underlying reasoning, the purpose of this breeding is to bring out certain desirable traits–in animals, the physical traits in particular.

So why is there no human Best in Show? The ethical dilemma that segregates humans and animals plays its part here, too.  One common example is the Kantian “means to an end” argument, in which human life should never be treated as a means, only as an ends in and of itself.  However, we humans have that all-important capacity for sentience; so if we were to willingly breed–or with the onset of genetic manipulation, engineer–ourselves into paragons, would this be dehumanizing?  It seems that this could only occur as a result of the ‘humanity’ of consciousness; thus, instead of dehumanization, it really should be the opposite.  There is, of course, a second roadblock: those who believe we shouldn’t “create life” artificially.   For this I will simply refer back to how we breed animals; if the sanctity of life itself is such an a priori issue, it seems impossible that purebreds or Thoroughbreds could exist.  Of course it’s entirely possible that we have a huge double standard; hypocrisy is the standard of humanity, isn’t it? For the sake of argumentation, however, illogicality will be ignored, and we can thus conclude that genetic engineering and/or selective breeding of humans should be a perfectly ethical and acceptable practice.

…Yet I still feel squeamish about plastic surgery. Go figure.

There is an issue with the public discourse on the subject of technology: the public, as a cumulative entity, is rather moronic. Not generally (well, perhaps generally), but in regards to technology. Whether the discussion is on biotechnology, nanotechnology, or some other -technology, there is a clear dichotomy in the masses: those who know, and those who don’t. As David Berube put it (www.ifs.tu-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/phil/nano/berube.pdf), “Contemporary technological discourse is shameful. Leaders who wish to recommend
options and sometimes policy call upon experts. Heavily biased by personal and professional
interests, experts craft their messages so they are resistant to most counterclaims. For
example, by using excessively technical vocabulary, their arguments become arguments
from authority. When asked “why is that true?” their response generally is “Don’t you understand?
I do. I have an advanced degree!” As a result, citizen-consumers are frozen out of
depthful discussions on issues involving science and technology”. Though the reasons for this development in technological rhetoric can be blamed on many causes, the bottom line is that the general public is systematically removed from the technological sphere.

This in some ways seems justified; shouldn’t the highest tier of scientific discussion take place among the highest echelon of qualified scientists? While this may have its merits, one must consider the purpose of science itself. Especially in areas such as this week’s focus of biotech, science is explored for the purpose of potential utility. Science is an industry; innovation is a commodity; and each new technology is a marketable product. In a world dominated by the supply-demand dynamic, it certainly seems odd that the “citizen-consumer”, to quote Berube again, has no say in the pre-implementation policy decisions concerning the future course of scientific advancements. Internationally we already face a digital divide, where developed and undeveloped countries are increasingly separated in terms of technological wealth. Now we face an internal “digital divide” of knowledge and discourse, where the common crowd is fed sensationalist, exaggerated, and oversimplified journalism from the profit-seeking media, while the scientists and researchers hole up in an Ivory Tower built to repel all opponents, political, intellectual, or, inadvertently, those who are neither–us.

This returns us to the Other. First, identification; who is the Other? From the viewpoint from one such as me, I am part of “us”; thus, the guardians of Science must be the Other. Yet in terms of scientific discussion, it is equally clear that the scientists are the dominant group, which would in turn otherize the non-scientific community. A mutual otherization is most certainly not a scenario normally seen. Ordinarily, one group holds power, while the Other is subjugated. The question of who’s who therefore relies on finding out which community truly holds the reins. Settling this power struggle will be a defining moment for scientific progress; in effect, it will determine the exclusion or nonexclusion of ‘the masses’ in the world of Science. Thus we become concerned with the actions of each group.

Reintroducing economic theory, we assume that both groups act rationally, in their own best interest. Also assuming that power is a valued commodity, we can utilize a basic form of game theory. To begin with, we establish the rudimentary risks and rewards for each. The common crowd is at risk of having little to no say in the advancement of technology; and thus the fruits of human achievement will be arbitrarily plucked. Their reward is the ability to direct science and bend its course to their own benefit. For the scientists, the risk is submitting their work to the power of those less-qualified, and being placed under restrictive policies; the reward is freedom.

Game theory would then tell us thusly: although if both groups chose the submissive option (that is, the scientists included non-scientists in policy decision, but non-scientists gave them freedom), both sides could gain rewards, if only one side chose the dominant path, then the other group would be denied this reward. Therefore, the safest option for either would be the dominant strategy. Which, in accordance with the pessimism inherent in economics, leaves all of us worse off.

How depressing.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, I posit the idea that Art is an empire.  Likewise, one can label Science to be the same; however, Art is unique in its freedom to expand as it wishes. Aesthetics are highly subjective, and if one person creates something that they believe to be artistic, there is little room for others to disagree–at least, there will be no changing the opinion of the artist.   Such was seen in the last lecture on the subject of the GFP Bunny; despite many protests to the contrary, Mr. Shanken (sorry if I got the name wrong) was steadfast in his definition of the subject as art. If we were to go back to the Roman model one might connect this phenomenon to the peripheral communities who did not identify themselves as Roman, but were subsumed in the name of the Empire despite this minor detail. This may be taking the analogy a bit too far, but it brings up the point originally intended: Art may be expanding its borders at too fast a rate.

Fortunately there is no true counter-Empire to that of the Arts; were Art to theoretically fall, the void of Aesthetics could only be filled by the very same Art; one might say its immortality is by virtue of its definition.  However, the other ailments of  imperial collapse are not so easily avoided. That is, were there a point at which Art had expanded its boundaries to include too vast a reach of subjects, it could fall victim to (1) lack of governmental support, i.e. a decrease in recognition from the people (which we can already see in a variety of the more obscure or less accessible forms of art); (2) attack from external forces, i.e. a rejection of the Arts by a casual observer, particularly as a result of inaccessible artwork; (3) underpopulation, i.e. a lack of artists, too thinly distributed over so many sects; (4) civil rebellion, i.e. protest within the artistic community; and many more. To be sure, all of these problems occur not only in overgrown empires, but in any State; however, expansionism past maintainable capacity is a catalyst for their geometric growth.

Thus I protest not the liberty of artists to constantly push the boundaries of Art, but instead the propriety of doing so. Although Art clearly thrives on the advantageous aspects of innovative growth, it is not impervious to the less advantageous side effects of doing so. My concern is simply that, while Art has not befallen any great calamity due to its expansionism, it might be on the brink of doing so; or, if there is no sudden cliff to fall off of, we may be on the top of a very long downwards slope, a gradual degradation that accelerates as time goes by.  The empirical evidence goes against me; Art has been expanding since it was first conceived. However, its growth is  exponential, and with every step made in other fields of innovation, such as science, multiple new venues of artistic expression open. I cannot help but worry that we are inevitably heading towards an Artistic carrying capacity–if not an imperial collapse, a Malthusian one.

Since I would be far too long-winded if I were to discuss Malthus, I’ll put up links about him instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=6366&pageno=8

To begin with, intellect is generally understood as something’s capacity to learn, reason, and understand based on factual information.  Learning has already been conquered; computers have long been able to store and recite information fed in from external sources. Reasoning has likewise been tamed, on a basic level at least; the simplest “IF/THEN/ELSE” statement provides for a simple conclusion based on given factual premises. Understanding is also falling under manmade dominion; the Kansei robot, for example, “reads” facial expressions and “understands” the emotions they convey.  “Intelligence” per se is not, therefore, referring to actual intelligence, but rather to a higher degree of conscience or sentience.

This is where we tend to overreach.  Humankind has long thought itself far superior to other animals based on our advanced mental capacity.   It seems more reasonable to me for development of robot “minds” to focus first on autonomy in baser forms; that is, re-focus our obsession from Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Instinct.  The ability to sense, perceive, and develop reaction to anything around them, even things outside their pre-programmed schematic, is that vital step between machines and those “robots” of the future.

On a somewhat tangential point, the ethical question would spring up around here somewhere; at the point where humans are creating autonomous individuals.  More interestingly, and perhaps more importantly, would be the dilemma when we are actually on the cusp of creating actual sentience.  Sure, these robots wouldn’t be “alive” by a scientific definition; yet if they could act on their own, think on their own, and behave for all intents and purposes like a living organism, then I don’t think ethics should be concerned about the physical makeup of its robotic innards.  After all, the creation of certain types of robots would be technological eugenics; programming a robot is tampering with or creating its genetic code. In a time where stem cell research is so hotly debated, I find it interesting how the issue of robotic life is just about ignored.

Another interesting subject (sorry for jumping around) is what was brought up during discussion in regards to art and robots: is it art if it’s made by a machine?   Before diving into this question, I’d like to say that, in my opinion, art and meaning exist in separate realms. A piece of art can have a particular meaning; a person can draw meaning out of art as well. Yet the absence of meaning doesn’t prohibit a piece from being artistic, if it is still aesthetically pleasing.  The “perfect man” image, for example (http://calvin.st-andrews.ac.uk/external_relations/news_article.cfm?reference=409), was computer-generated. Yet I can find artistic merit.  Thus to return to the original question, I would say that yes, art created by robots is still art. However, I don’t think robots can confer a meaning in the art they create. It can be programmed to do something a particular way; however, any meaning is coming from the person programming, not the robot itself.  And here we come full circle in my attempt to make this entry less scatterbrained: in my opinion, a robot will not be able to create something of its own, with a meaning or message that came not from a programmer but itself, until it has autonomy and sentience.

Now here’s some links to interesting robot stuff:

http://www.livescience.com/technology/071012-robot-marriage.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6200005.stm

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/robots/remote-control-humans-193817.php

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9516845/

“Math.”

“…Oh.”

‘Oh’ is pretty much all I say; I think it would be rude of me to point and laugh and yell, “WHY STUDY SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST!?” Yet for all the people studying it, for all the uses we’ve found for it, and all the faith we placed it in, the concept of mathematics is based on a suspiciously shaky foundation: numbers.

Numbers are so normal, so ordinary, so ingrained that nobody thinks to question their existence; and yet I wonder: do numbers exist? When you count three dogs, the dogs exist and the number is an adjective. When you write ’3′ the numeral exists there on your paper. But what of the actual number three? Two? One? There is no such thing as a one.

Yet here people would protest that it exists as a concept; it may not be tangible, but then, what ideas are? Clearly math cannot be an arbitrary set of rules and principles, else it wouldn’t be so universal. So it exists in our minds. Descartes’s famous ‘cogito ergo sum’ seems appropriate;we think it, therefore it exists. But what if there was no human life left to think numbers into existence?

Many thinkers, more well-known, qualified, and intelligent than myself, have pondered the existence of numbers without coming to a satisfactoy conclusion. To me this crisis of identity, although worrisome to some of us who think too hard. stands as a testament to the power of the human consciousness. Mathematics as a self-existent field of study is uniquely manmade, of equal parts necessity and innovation. By virtue of its basis in nothing but itself, it intrinsically gains the freedom of being bound only by itself.

And therein I find at least one fiber connecting the realms of math and art. Art is aesthetics; aesthetics are independently defined, with no laws to govern right from wrong. While it is true the attractiveness is partially biological–we seek traits in mates that are advantageous, for example–that is simply one schematic of appraisal. Just as geometry can break free of its Euclidean roots, the evolution of artistic appreciation beyond the ‘norm’ is the essence of the similarity between art and math.

This perhaps is why I don’t regard math as a ‘regular’ science. The sciences concern themselves with sets of rules and laws to govern the world. For those worlds that exist, this creates a natural limitation. For the world of numbers, imaginary as they are, there is no such barrier. This places mathematics into a sort of intersectional limbo, with both roots and branches so far-reaching, its ubiquity transcends that of any other language. It is clearly present in the other realms of science; field theory, for example, is nearly purely mathematical. Equally is it present in the artistic world, where even aesthetics will recognize the significance of phi.

Who needs a third culture when you have math?

Here’s some people who are a lot smarter than me discussing math. It’s really quite interesting:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-9213.00079

http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/exist.html

http://platosheaven.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-numbers-exist.html

This is a chicken.

This is a head of lettuce.

As I subscribe to the theory of evolution, in one form or another, I can accept that chicken and lettuce could share a common ancestral pool; perhaps one set of eukaryotes provided the initial sets of DNA that eventually developed into the organisms we have today, including both chicken and lettuce. Yet in the same way we regard our own species as different from the rest of animalkind, we likewise don’t treat animals in the same fashion as vegetables—or, to consider earlier evolutionary branches, bacteria and other protists. In scientific research, the treatment of lab animals and human patients are incomparable; I’ve never heard of someone raising domesticated beets as pets; and I’m fairly certain the international community would hold even less respect for the Universal Declaration of Amoebic Rights than they do the rights of other humans. It seems therefore that the origin of species, while illustrating a deeply buried common thread among the living world, seems to have little to do with the accepted schematic of ‘what’s what’ on planet Earth.

This is not to say that the two cannot live in harmony, even collaborating once in a while to produce something that neither could do alone. Yet as much as we all enjoy a Caesar salad, as far as I have heard, we have yet to successfully interbreed plant and animal to create a third, uniquely delicious walking salad. In the culinary world, various ingredients can and should be combined, and it is very rare that you find a single ingredient that can single-handedly constitute an entire dish. But as much as the combination of the two should be celebrated, I still believe that it is proper to regard each ingredient as an individual entity. Reverting our paradigms to accept all living things as fundamentally equivalent would disregard the progress made by each divergent branch of evolution; would obscure the breadth of the living world; and could very well replace the Caesar salad in our diets with e coli bacterium. But being the gourmand I am, if people can find ways to properly cook e coli, I’d be happy to try a plate.

E coli is not particularly appetizing, but we don’t hold that against it.

(By the way, sorry for not following the two questions format. But here’s some links)

http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/index_scicult.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=E6C48417-E7F2-99DF-3C663F8599E57021&colID=12

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CEFDF123EF934A15757C0A961958260

http://www.istitutoveneto.it/twocultures/abs_miller.htm

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/279/5353/992