On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Ted Carmichael <teds...@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with the comments on the psychology/perception issue. But I don't agree with this: "So no matter which bisecting plane through the sphere we examine, it will always have more sticks parallel to it than to the orthogonal pole. So this actually explains a "planar force". There more horizontal sticks than up/down sticks...." I just don't think that is possible. All you have to do is consider one case (that supposedly has more sticks parallel), and then freeze the sticks in place, and rotate the plane through the sphere so that it is now perpendicular to the original plane. Clearly now the "parallel" sticks are "perpendicular," so if there were more parallel before, now there are more perpendicular. That seems reminiscent of the vision trick of Bumps(or Hollows) with shadows. In some sense our brains are wired (Hard or Soft?) to prefer certain short cuts of reasoning based on gravity or the assumption that the sun is overhead and shadows always fall in a particular way. If the sticks were oriented perpendicular to a plane it strikes me that most viewers would inevitable prefer to say the sticks are lying in some other orthogonal plane. It is striking that this discussion can not disentangle itself from Human perception for very long before exposing it again. Perhaps the reason we find difficulty accepting Gravity in this new form is that our brains themselves are stuck using a short cut approach. In spite of most human beings accepting a roundish earth, day to day we still assume it to be flat.! We automatically orient to a level flat plane with our bodies upright. Our plane of reference is preferred over all others. Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky Ph.D.(Civil Eng.), M.Sc.(Mech.Eng.), M.Sc.(Biology) 120-1053 Beaverhill Blvd. Winnipeg, Manitoba CANADA R2J 3R2 (204) 2548321 Phone/Fax <mailto:vbur...@shaw.ca> vbur...@shaw.ca -----Original Message----- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Sent: July 18, 2010 1:27 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Entropic force Hey Roger, Your posts inspired me to track you down a bit. Nice website (The Entropy Liberation Front <http://elf.org/puzzle> ). Not many posts, though. You should post more. I like your Puzzle Earth <http://elf.org/puzzle> . Very nice--except that the cursor doesn't always grab what it should. -- Russ On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Roger Critchlow <r...@elf.org> wrote: On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Ted Carmichael <teds...@gmail.com> wrote: I agree with the comments on the psychology/perception issue. But I don't agree with this: "So no matter which bisecting plane through the sphere we examine, it will always have more sticks parallel to it than to the orthogonal pole. So this actually explains a "planar force". There more horizontal sticks than up/down sticks...." I just don't think that is possible. All you have to do is consider one case (that supposedly has more sticks parallel), and then freeze the sticks in place, and rotate the plane through the sphere so that it is now perpendicular to the original plane. Clearly now the "parallel" sticks are "perpendicular," so if there were more parallel before, now there are more perpendicular. The plane is simply a place of reference. It makes no difference on the number of sticks oriented one way or another. There is no one plane perpendicular to a given plane in three dimensional space, that only becomes a possibility in four dimensions. When you rotate a plane through 90 degrees in 3D you end up with a plane that intersects the original plane along a line. Some of the sticks parallel to the first plane are still parallel to the rotated plane. -- rec -- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
