The Electric Nomad is a standard sized electric guitar that features all the usual features usability and playability of a normal electric guitar however it is designed so that it collapses.
“Sometime over the course of new arrivals’ first year in the city, they find themselves becoming New Yorkers.” Also confirms above survey with anecdotal evidence.
Two and a half pages on how to write better, not just for philosophy. I like, “You should assume that the first draft of each sentence will have to be fixed up.” (my emphasis)
Warren Buffet’s letters to his shareholders. Makes for surprisingly good reading… I just wish I had his sort of bad news, like, there’s no way you can expect us to keep doing this well. - I’m sorry that our predictions from last year were off. Of course, we did much better this year…
I recently had a discussion with Mr. R. Brown about eating meat. He tried to maintain that vegetarians have the moral high ground. Even though I successfully defended my omnivorous position (even against his cannibalism tack), I’m thinking Zizek’s ad hominem is now the way to go (26s) [via]:
I just returned from a cruise to Alaska. It is a wonderful, beautiful place. I zip-lined in a rain forest canopy, hiked above a glacier, kayaked coastal Canada and was pulled by sled-dogs. Anywho, as on many cruises, there was a casino, which is an excellent excuse for me to discuss probability.
What is probability and where does it come from? Definitions are easy enough to find. Google returns:
a measure of how likely it is that some event will occur; a number expressing the ratio of favorable cases to the whole number of cases possible …
So it’s a measure of likelihood. What’s likelihood? Google returns:
The probability of a specified outcome.
Awesome. So ‘probability as likelihood’ is non-explanatory. What about this ‘ratio of favorable cases to the whole number of cases possible’? I’m pretty wary about the word favorable. Let’s modify this definition to read:
a number expressing the ratio of certain cases to the whole number of cases possible.
Nor do I like ‘a number expressing…’ This refers to a particular probability, not probability at large, so let’s go back to using ‘measure’:
a measure of certain cases to the whole number of cases possible.
We need to be a bit more explicit about what we are measuring:
a measure of the frequency of certain cases to the whole number of cases possible.
OK. I think this isn’t that bad. When we flip a fair coin the probability is the frequency of landing on heads compared to the total cases possible, heads + tails, so 1 out of 2. Pretty good.
But notice the addition of the word fair. Where did it come from, what’s it doing there? Something is said to be fair if that thing shows no favoritism to any person or process. In terms of things that act randomly, this means that the thing acts in a consistently random way. Being consistently random means it is always random, not sometimes random and other times not random. This means that fairness has to do with the distribution of the instances of the cases we are studying. What governs this distribution?
In the case of of a coin, the shape of the coin and the conditions under which it is measured make all the difference in the distribution of heads and tails. The two sides, heads and tails, must be distinguishable, but the coin must be flipped in a way such that no one can know which side will land facing up. The shape of the coin, even with uniform mass distribution, cannot preclude this previous condition. Therefore the source of probability is the interdependence of physical conditions (shape and motion of the coin) and an epistemic notion (independence of knowledge of which side will land up). When the physical conditions and our knowledge of the conditions are dependent upon each other then the situation becomes probabilistic because the conditions preclude our knowing the exact outcome of the situation.
It is now time to recall that people cheat at gambling all the time. A trio of people in March 2004 used a computer and lasers to successfully predict the decaying orbit of a ball spinning on a roulette wheel (and walked out with £1.3 million). This indicates that after a certain point it is possible to predict the outcome of a coin flipping or a roulette ball spinning, so the dependence mentioned above is eventually broken. However this is only possible once the coin is flipping or the roulette ball is rolling, not before the person releases the roulette ball or flips the coin.
With the suggestion that it is the person that determines the outcome we can expand the physical-epistemic dependence to an physical-epistemic-performative one. If I know that I, nor anyone else, can predict the outcome until after I perform a task, then the knowledge of the outcome is dependent upon how I perform that task.
This makes sense because magicians and scam artists train themselves to be able to perform tasks like shuffling and dealing cards in ways that most of us think is random but are not. The rest of us believe that there is a dependence between the physical setup and the outcome that precludes knowing the results, but this is merely an illusion that is exploited.
What about instances in which special training or equipment is unavailable; can we guarantee everyone’s ability to measure the thing in question to be equal? We can: light. Anyone who can see at all sees light that is indistinguishable from the light everyone else sees: it has no haecceity.
This lack of distinguishability, lack of haecceity (thisness), is not merely a property of the photon but a physical characteristic of humans. We have no biology that can distinguish one photon from another of equivalent wavelength. To distinguish something we have to use a smaller feature of the thing to tell it apart from its compatriots. Since we cannot see anything smaller, this is impossible. Nor is there a technology that we could use to augment our abilities: for us to have a technology that would see something smaller than a photon would require us to know that the technology interacted at a deeper level with reality than photons do. But we cannot know that because we are physically limited to using the photon as our minimal measurement device. The act of sight is foundational: we cannot see anything smaller than a photon nor can anything smaller exist in our world.
The way we perceive photons will always be inherently distributed because of this too. We cannot uniquely identify a single photon, and hence we can’t come back and measure the properties of a photon we have previously studied. Therefore the best we will be able to accomplish when studying photons is to measure a group of photons and use a distribution of their properties, making photons inherently probabilistic. Since the act of seeing light is a biological feature of humans, we all have equal epistemological footing in this instance. This means that the epistemic dependence mentioned above can be ignored because it adds nothing to the current discussion. Therefore we can eliminate the epistemic notion from our above dependence, reducing it to a physical-performative interdependence.
Since it is a historical/ evolutionary accident that the photon is the smallest object we can perceive, the photon really is not fundamental to this discussion. Therefore, the interdependence of the physical properties of the smallest things we can perceive and our inherent inability to tell them apart is a source of probability in nature.
This is a source of natural randomness as well: once we know the probability of some property that we cannot measure directly, the lack of haecceity means that we will not be able to predict when we will measure an individual with said property. Therefore the order in which we measure the property will inherently be random. [Assume the contradiction: the order in which we measure the property is not random, but follows some pattern. Then there exists some underlying structure that governs the appearance of the property. However, since we are already at the limit of what can be measured, no such thing can exist. Hence the order in which we measure the property is random.]
————–
If I were Wittgenstein I might have said:
Consider a situation in which someone asks, “How much light could you see?” Perhaps a detective is asking a hostage about where he was held. But then the answer is, “I didn’t look.” —— And this would make no sense.
hmmmm…. I did really mean to get back to gambling.
Johnny Chung Lee pretty much shocked the entire video game world (and lots of others) with this video (5.8 million views, 5/5 star rating with 21,000 votes):
This is a pretty nifty bit of engineering, using the off the shelf Wii Remote and a relatively cheap extra (safety glasses with IR leds <15$) to provide a very high level virtual reality setup.
Secondly Nintendo has recently come out with the Wii Balance Board. This peripheral can accurately measure your weight distribution.
If we combine the potential of head tracking with weight distribution it would be possible to create a very accurate Matrix-style dodging bullets experience, simulating what is seen in this clip:
This would be a damn sweet feature if integrated into a full action game. It could likely be accomplished with head-tracking alone, but the combination of board, head-tracking, and Wii Motion Plus makes for near full body integration. The Matrix franchise is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the technology, seeing as everyone wears sunglasses in the movie anyway.
“What sort of person subjects children as young as 12 to beatings and a life of prostitution? An evidence list submitted in the case of Corey Davis, a Queens man who billed himself as “Magnificent,” might provide some insight. Mr. Davis, 36, is facing a minimum of 23 years in prison after pleading guilty in March to a federal charge of sex trafficking involving a 12-year-old runaway.
“… But then things went dark, weird, and creepy: one girl laughed, but then so did another, and then another, and then another, and then another.
After exposure, the incubation period from nothing to hysteria was short, from a few hours to a couple of days. There was no fever, no physical symptoms, just laughter and occasional crying between short moments of exhausted recuperation. When victims were restrained they sometimes became violent…”
This is a video of a reporter being waterboarded in order to investigate torture and ‘agressive’ interrogation… It is weird stuff. Be sure to check out the accompanying article.
“This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers.”
(they’re all out of free posters now, but the file is available so you can print one for yourself)
Check out this video describing the technology that is going to be used in the new Nintendo Wii Motion Plus. General relativity needs to be accounted for to accurately measure motion in 3D space (true 6 degrees of freedom) by using both accelerometers and gyroscopes. But perhaps the most interesting part of the site is the disclaimer at the bottom (my emphasis):
“InvenSense sensors should not be used or sold in the development, storing, production and utilization of any conventional or mass-destructive weapons or any other weapons or life-threatening applications as well as in any other life-critical applications including but not limited to medical equipment, transportation, aerospace and nuclear instruments, undersea equipment, power plant equipment, disaster prevention and crime prevention equipment.”
Culture
Nadia Comaneci, Montreal 1976 TEN!!! [1:06] (via plump plum)
Last but not least this is what I consider to be a throwback to vintage internet. We are talking a space background repeating image here people; I don’t think I’ve seen that since ‘97. Plus something for nearly everyone: lots of links, e.g. useful information like an up to date guide to SEO, and Women Chess Grandmasters.
“But Ms. Roche told the audience here that her inspiration for the book came not from those women, but from the feminine-product aisle of her local store. Peeking out at the audience from under dark brown bangs, speaking in a childish voice that accentuated her transgressions against propriety, Ms. Roche explained, to howls of laughter, how the lemon-scented products called out to her in uncensored terms that she was, as the commercials put it, not so fresh, or at least not fresh enough.”
The Miracle Fruit, a Tease for the Taste Buds
A small red berry called miracle fruit temporarily rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors, rendering lemons as sweet as candy.
A study conducted by Britain’s First Research Group for Breast Health attached to the University of Portsmouth could throw some light on the little understood causes of ‘Breast Pain’
… you know there was some lucky male lab assistant required to measure breast motion
Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil
One of South America’s few remaining uncontacted tribes is photographed from the air on the Peru-Brazil border.
Aesthetics, Etc.
19 Artists You Can’t Afford To Miss Out On
“From half-naked pink girls to Isometric grinning trees, these artists are sure to satisfy the sucrose cravings in your eyeballs. Check them out before they get too famous and start making stuff nobody gets.”
The Wii has a lot of potential as a golf simulator/ practice program. With the introduction of the Wii balance board the opportunity for using weight distribution has become a real factor, and, though I know nearly nothing about golf, balance and weight distribution during a club swing has to be critical.
Now using the balance board to monitor weight distribution is somewhat obvious. However, very accurate motion sensing from the controller would also be required to really pinpoint the motion of the swing. By some pretty basic reasoning about cost and manufacturing I heard once, it is fair to say that Nintendo is providing middle of the road accelerometers- they are good, but there is still a lot of noise (inaccurate random data) to be dealt with. Lots of noise means that a lot of processing of the data from the motion sensors is required to get a clear picture of what is going on, and if lots of processing occurs, then the nuances of the motion are also getting smoothed over. My solution is to connect the nunchuck controller to the main controller in a rigid way.
A mockup of the connected remote and nunchuck in the
shape of a traditional controller.
The nunchuck controller is incredibly light and would add almost no bulk to the main controller, while doubling the number of accelerometers. With double the accelerometers, a clearer picture of the motion would be provided.
Secondly, to get a more complete picture of the orientation of the Wii controllers, the sensor bar which is normally placed near the television should be placed on the floor where the golf ball ought to be. With the sensor bar on the floor where the golf ball should be the controllers would be able to pick up the location of the sensor bar and provide non-inertial data about its velocity. As the controllers swing past the sensor bar, the location of the infrared lights would act as fixed points with which to measure velocity.
A picture of someone on a Wii balance board with
the sensor bar on the floor.
All on-screen menu navigation can be done in the traditional way by using the directional keys; pointer-enabled functions are nice but unnecessary for this sort of game. Moving the sensor bar around the room would be a clever way to also have a swing trainer for baseball.
“Partly inspired by Franz Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ and partly by the American system of capital punishment as well as the current political situation, the piece is an ironic approach to killing and torture machines. A moving megaphone speaker encircles an electric dental chair. The chair is covered in pink fun fur…” [via]
I once worked for a pathology department, and my job required that I go to the morgue on a regular basis (multiple times a day). The human body is completely awesome. These pics are a little gruesome, but then again, so are we.
Speaking of being completely awesome:
Five-year-old inventor comes up with a better broom. (At 5 I invented the bag-o-bags: a bag that contained other bags, so that you would have lots of bags. It was a homework assignment in kindergarten. I recall being pissed because I didn’t think it was fair that at 5 we should be asked to know enough to solve anything. My parents still tease me about it till this day.)
On pages 44-47 when describing the difference between Dependence Logic and Independence Friendly Logic Väänänen says,
The backslashed quantifier,
∃xn\{xi0,…,xim-1}φ,
introduced in ref. [20], with the intuitive meaning:
“there exists xn, depending only on xi0,…,xim-1, such that φ,”
…
The slashed quantifier,
∃xn/{xi0,…,xim-1}φ,
used in ref. [21] has the following intuitive meaning:
“there exists xn, independently of xi0,…,xim-1, such that φ,”
which we take to mean
“there exists xn, depending only on variables other than xi0,…,xim-1, such that φ,”
The backslashed quantifier notation is part of what Väänänen calls ‘Dependence Friendly Logic’, and is equivalent to the ‘Dependence Logic’ that the rest of the book expounds. This backslash notation makes the difference between Dependence (Friendly) Logic and Independence Friendly Logic clear by showing that the former logic takes the notion of dependence to be fundamental whereas the latter takes independence to be fundamental. Väänänen takes this to be an advantage because he says that Dependence Logic avoids making
one ha[ve] to decide whether “other variable” refers to other variables actually appearing in a formula ?, or to other variables in the domain…
However, this treatment misses an important philosophical difference between Independence Friendly Logic and Dependence Logic. Dependence Logic is fundamentally based upon Wilfrid Hodges work, ‘Compositional Semantics for a language of imperfect information’ in Logic Journal of the IGPL (5:4 1997) 539-563, in which Hodges lays out a compositional semantics for languages such as Independence Friendly Logic using sets of assignments instead of individual assignments to determine satisfaction (T or F). Väänänen infers that Independence Friendly logic is just a bit unruly when it comes to specifying variables because he is working within a system that assumes sets of assignments are a useful and unproblematic way to determine satisfaction.
However the unseen problem of using sets of assignments is that something is added by assuming the domain is a set. For example, let’s take try to define a location and take the set of all the points in the universe. However, we immediately run into relativity: All locations are defined relative to each other and the people trying to figure out where things are, i.e. There is no predetermined set of all the points in the universe. The issue is that the domain of potential assignments, the objects in the universe, may be dependent upon the person or people using them (the players of the semantic game in this case). If the domain is dependent upon the players, the set cannot be constructed until after the players have begun the game. Therefore, if we postulate that the domain is a set at the outset then the players know something about the game that they are playing, namely that it does not depend upon them because it was predetermined.
Following this line of thought it seems possible to constructed a game in which the domain {Abelard, Eloise} is such that Abelard and Eloise are the actual people playing the game and the formula is ‘Someone x lost the game by instantiating this formula’ such that whoever instantiated that formula would win the game according to the rules. But then the formula would not be satisfied, so that player would have lost, but then it would be satisfied, a paradox. It is easy enough to declare that the domain must be independent of the players, but again this signals something about the game being played to the players before the formula to be is revealed.
Lastly there is something to be said about using logic to represent natural language here too: if you consider the set of all possible responses to some question, you are not ever considering all possible responses, but all the possible responses you can think of at that time. Therefore if we are using game semantics and imperfect information to represent natural language, then it is a mistake to predetermine the domain of all possible responses separate from the people involved. Again, the domain being linked to the people involved is at odds with the domain being a predetermined set.
Long story short, there is a very good reason for not always using sets of assignments to determine satisfaction. Depending on the situation, a set may offer non-trivial information about a game or misconstrue the game being played. Independence Friendly logic makes no assumptions about the type of game being played and is therefore of greater scope than logics that are based upon Hodges work. Of course one is free to use sets of assignments to determine satisfaction and derive set-theoretic results, but the compositionality gained comes at the price of limiting the types of games that can be played.
Apropos my first post on video game design, I have thought up a new “game” for the Wii. It is a marionette theater simulator: you would get to create virtual marionettes, with customizable bodies and outfits (Mii integration if possible, lots of different clothing options), and levels would include performing different scenes from plays or entire plays. The accelerometers of the Wii controllers would function as the strings on the virtual marionettes. As you tilt the controllers different ’strings’ would get pulled or slackened moving the different parts of the marionette’s body.
Interactive audio effects would be crucial: recorded voice acting for characters, dynamic background music and sound effects (e.g. when a marionette hits a wall, a thud could be made), with karaoke-style text of the characters’ lines scrolling across the screen, as an option (voice recognition, if possible). A scene/play creation mode would allow players access to creating their own sets, characters, and lines, giving the game infinite replay value (online sharing of new sets, characters, etc., and entire plays, if possible). Buttons could trigger effects on stage, change the motion control to different characters, have the marionettes pick objects up, change camera angle, etc.
If saving a marionette performance and text-to-voice is included (with user-defined manipulations - angry, soft, loud, etc.) a playwright could produce his or her play on the Wii and immediately distribute its virtual staging. This could be done by recording the output of the Wii, but if the Wii could upload and download complete performances, it would become an artistic platform.
A good puppet show is something amazing. Check out these scenes from Being John Malkovich done by Phil Huber:
Welcome. I'm interested by metaphysics, relativity, philosophy of science & language and women philosophically inclined or not. But there will probably be a bit of everything here, kind of like me.
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