On 6/30/11 8:02 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Thanks, Eric, for taking the question seriously. I will study your answer
with care.
Ask a simple question, and waddya get?
Another day older and deeper in (conceptual) debt!
Eric says:
" All these
flow problems that we talk about are not described by equilibrium ensembles;
they are ensembles of processes. Of course, everybody says that, but
apparently most of the time people don't act as if saying that should then
carry meaning for what they think afterward. (Like other mantras, its
function appears to be to suppress pre-frontal cortex activity.) "
What a great insight! I wonder how much of our blather here on this
list is in fact crafted or selected for it's ability to suppress
pre-frontal cortex activity? Wow! While we *think* we are promoting
pre-frontal activity, we may very well be supressing it! I wonder if
there is a simple heuristic for recognizing "mantras" in clear text?
Going recursive here, I wonder about the brain-state/chemistry that
might be involved in our (my!) propensity for (near) idle speculation
about things I know just enough about to be dangerous. There seems to
be something very soothing about this kind of speculation... hmmm?
As for the rest of your (Eric) response! What a lot to unpack... I
mostly get process vs equilibrium ensembles, spaces of histories and and
some of the entropy talk, but am lost entirely on the topic of competing
definitions of "diffusion" and it's precise relevance to this
conversation... I'll give it my best shot though... dig a little deeper.
I believe This is the Dill paper
<http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dillgroup.ucsf.edu%2Fdl_papers%2FJCP2008Stock.pdf&rct=j&q=ken%20dill%20caliber&ei=_KIMTqSdNZT2swOvkLCQDg&usg=AFQjCNF1QwcT3WourQaoLPT8EvAX1tfG4w&sig2=0YsVN6J1NJanyAIYt3rszQ&cad=rja>
you refer to? I missed it the first time it was passed around I think.
Or with your just-out re-attribution to RC, rather than NT And here is
a lecture by Dill <http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/537/> at MIT that might
be more accessible by some?
- Steve
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