Art, Science + Technology
DMA9 Fall 2007, Section BArchive for November 25, 2007
Week 8 – Peter Chang
Conciousness and Memory
Rhizome:
I didn’t quite understand what a rhizome was during our lecture on Monday so I took the liberty to research the subject. The rhizome is the part of a plant’s roots that extend horizontally in many directions. From these roots sprout the stems of plants.
C.G. Jung philosophized on the rhizome and applied it to life. While the visible parts of the plant may whither with time, the root remains. It is this collective system of roots, or rhizome that life is based upon. Humans live and die but our ideas create the rhizome that is passed on to generations and serves as the basis for how we think and live.
I wondered why we couldn’t just use any kind of root in this analysis of life and came to the conclusion that rhizomes are much different from ordinary roots we think of. The rhizome extends horizontally in many directions from these different parts of the rhizome sprouts the actual plant. An ordinary tree root supports only its single main trunk. The rhizome, by being able to extend and create many sprouts, can be thought of in life as a main consciousness which spawns many truths – many different lives.
Meme
I was intrigued by how Richard Dawkins’ meme was such a great example of how thoughts spread around the world and through generations. He relates how natural selection applies similarly to memes as it does genes. Many thoughts and ideas whose message is not as good or clear as it could be would become “extinct” while other strong and well founded modes of thought carry on through generations and would possibly “mutate.” Richard Dawkins used examples of this meme such as “tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches.”
Class Debate
The main basis for the debate in class on Monday was if every event that occurs necessarily has something to do with some other event. Personally I don’t believe that because you can’t say that all events has something to do with each other. For example, take our Columbia mission disaster and 9/11/01. You can’t say that the 911 event directly affected that space mission, how would you even explain that? Sure the astronauts on the flight may have thought of the 911 event it may have possibly affected their actions, but that’s only a slim chance. It may be possible, but these astronauts are trained professionals. The accident was caused by a piece of carbon that fell off the shuttle during takeoff – what does that have to do with an airliner hitting a skyscraper?
A coin flipped has nothing to do with the sinking of the Titanic. A fatal car accident in South Africa has nothing to do with a fatal car crash in New York.
A more interesting and mildly related issue I was interested in after this debate came from a self-help move called “The Secret” released recently. The movie talks about how if you truly believe in something it will become true. For example, if you had a dream house you always wanted to live in and thought truly believed you would live there someday than you would. This explanation for this, however, was completely unscientific (at least to today’s standards of science). They said that your thoughts would send out waves that would alter the way the world works so that your thoughts would become true. This I believe is false, however I do believe that the various outcomes of the different success stories in the video are still true, not based on what was superstitiously advertised in the video, but on a more scientific spinoff on the idea. If someone tells you not to think of a black cat you unconsciously do just that straight away. Applying this same concept to truly believing something you believe in would happen, it strikes me that people would probably take subtle steps toward achieving their goal. If you were a bad comedian and one day thought that your show would suddenly be good and you truly believed it then chances are you’d make subtle changes to how you project your voice or how you use gestures, all of which may be because you simply were more confident that this would be a great show!
Week 8 Post – Perception and Deception by Nathan Hsu
What is the so-called “Randomness”?
The term randomness has been used widely on various aspects and various ways. It can be defined as “proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern: the random selection of numbers.” – hence, in simpler definition, unpredictability. Many believe that the occurring that we are incapable of controlling or predicting is random; one cannot foresee outcomes as simple as what side would face up when one tosses a coin. If such as how random is defined, then nothing is purely random. Let’s perceive it this way: If one can control factors such as the mass of the coin, the angle of projection, the aerodynamic motions, the rigidity of the floor, the wind particle in the air, and the force of the toss, etc. then the result will be certain—therefore, not random. Randomness is merely a representation of the uncontrollable components in our life.
What is truth?
Truth can be many things for many people. With different cultural or religious influence, many perceive differently upon one fact, but to them, both of these perceptions are truths. The “Absolute Truths” in discussion is merely a fact what can be interpreted by many definitions, and often times people themselves believe that what they believe is the absolute truth. Ironically, the absolute truths themselves seem insignificant without interpretation, and it is the different interpretation, which are debatable, that makes the “real” truth, the fact, meaningful.
Links:
· Chaitin: Randomness and Mathematical Proof
· A Pseudorandom Number Sequence Test Program (Public Domain)
· Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Chance
Week 8: Fiction, reality, and truth
For thousands of years, human beings have attempted to discover and understand the truth of this world. Those who asked seek the answer often ask the question: what are the truth, fiction, and reality. It is easy to understand fiction and reality. Fiction is the thing that is made up, fake, or unreal. Reality is the world that we live in, including the events that actually happened. Many times it is easy to notice what fiction is. For example, when one hears a story about traveling through time and meet dinosaur, it is often considered as fiction. It is considered as fiction because it has never happened in reality. Therefore, we can conclude that fiction and reality are opposite of each other. Those stories that are fiction are often times exaggerated and unbelievable, simply because they have never occurred in reality.
However, many debates are around the reality, about what actually happened. For example, the origin of human beings and the earth has many versions of explanation. Of many, the creation and Big Bang Theory are the most famous ones. On one side, people said God created the earth and human. On the other side, they said, some unknown force exploded and created the universe. The event that actually happened is the reality and is the truth.
Generally there are two beliefs of truths: subjective and absolute. Subjective truths are the reality that a person perceived as. For example, if a person believes that Big Bang theory is the reality, then that is the truth. It is solely based on a person’s own logics, argument and experiences. The other one is the absolute truth, or the event that actually happens. This type of truth is the reality. It is very difficult or almost impossible to know the absolute truth of an event or object. For example, during Galileo’s era, most people believe that the earth is flat, and one would fall off into space if one goes too far in one direction. During that time, the flat earth theory is the truth. Galileo’s theory is considered fiction, the unreal version of the truth. Now, with the assistance of satellites and pictures from outer space, we can see that the earth is indeed round. The latest evidence shows that the early belief of truth is wrong. However, are we indeed “right”? The early believers of flat earth based their truth from their observation. They can see the flat earth when they are on the earth. We can see the round earth when we see from space. However, can we see earth as a different shape or being if we use a different perspective? Is it possible that in the future, when we use more advance technology, we can see earth in another form? The ultimate question is that do have we found the absolute truth about earth yet? To understand the truth, we must first know what truth is or at least what type of truth we are pursuing.
