I beg to differ:

Fiction and performance is where people lie to an audience/readership for
money, sometimes stumbling on something true. Sometimes even funny,
movingly, true.

Science is where people do the true stuff. Sometimes bullshitting people
for money.

Expertise and its derived authority is the performance of the license to
bullshit and keep talking like some annoying priest who's sermon never ends
and is a virus in both camps. Time and again, it amazes me how people on
both sides get caught up in redundant "the right, precise way to talk
shop/jargon", as if they wanted to belong to some exclusive peer group in
high school, not realizing how stupid this looks to the outside world, and
how correct the outside world is for thinking that: why does anybody need a
degree to have a reason to just chat?

I don't see a clear demarcation here between science, art, even theology
for that matter, even though a lot of people insist on it. I see the camps
moving closer and the boundaries getting fuzzier: A composer without sound
engineering skills and sincere belief has competitive disadvantage. Apple's
engineering would be nothing without the aesthetics and the mythology, with
its theological overtones.

Paul Dirac once said: *It seems that if one is working from the point of
view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound
insight, one is on a sure line of progress.

*Yes, seemingly. And thank heavens for that.

m

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Roger Clough <rclo...@verizon.net> wrote:

>  Scientific writing is accurate, but usually not concise, because it must
> be detailed.
> The truth is in text on paper, is objective, shareable, essentially
> provable. It does not and indeed should not,
> go beyond what is reported. I suppose one would call this context-free.
>
> An example would be a crime investigator's description of a crime scene.
> Or a scientific paper.
>
> Poetic writing is not concise, nor precisely accurate, indeed may be
> inaccurate, but can convey an entire world or story
> with just a few words because they suggest or point to context, and it is
> context that supplies and even creates meaning.
> In experiencing the context, or imagined context, the reader actually
> creates a world in his mind or intuition.
> Being experienced, the meaning is more personal than scientific truth, but
> is unbounded. Poets are writers that
> are sensitive to the effect words have on people, sensitive to context. As
> an example, here
> might be the description of a crime scene in poetic form:
>
> "There was blood everywhere-- on the bed, even splattered on the walls.
> His head was split open and the gray matter spilled out. I felt sick and
> had to leave."
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
> 8/23/2012
> Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so
> everything could function."
>
> ----- Receiving the following content -----
> *From:* Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com>
> *Receiver:* everything-list@googlegroups.com
> *Time:* 2012-08-22, 15:32:00
> *Subject:* Re: Simple proof that our intelligence transcends that of
> computers
>
>   On Aug 22, 2012, at 1:57 PM, benjayk 
> <benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com<+benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com>>
>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Jason Resch-2 wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 1:07 PM, benjayk
> >> <benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com <+benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com>
> >wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Jason Resch-2 wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 10:48 AM, benjayk
> >>>> <benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com <+benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com>
> >wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Bruno Marchal wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Imagine a computer without an output. Now, if we look at what
> >>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>> computer
> >>>>>>> is doing, we can not infer what it is actually doing in terms of
> >>>>>>> high-level
> >>>>>>> activity, because this is just defined at the output/input. For
> >>>>>>> example, no
> >>>>>>> video exists in the computer - the data of the video could be
> >>>>>>> other
> >>>>>>> data as
> >>>>>>> well. We would indeed just find computation.
> >>>>>>> At the level of the chip, notions like definition, proving,
> >>> inductive
> >>>>>>> interference don't exist. And if we believe the church-turing
> >>>>>>> thesis, they
> >>>>>>> can't exist in any computation (since all are equivalent to a
> >>>>>>> computation of
> >>>>>>> a turing computer, which doesn't have those notions), they
> >>>>>>> would be
> >>>>>>> merely
> >>>>>>> labels that we use in our programming language.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> All computers are equivalent with respect to computability. This
> >>> does
> >>>>>> not entail that all computers are equivalent to respect of
> >>>>>> provability. Indeed the PA machines proves much more than the RA
> >>>>>> machines. The ZF machine proves much more than the PA machines.
> >>>>>> But
> >>>>>> they do prove in the operational meaning of the term. They
> >>>>>> actually
> >>>>>> give proof of statements. Like you can say that a computer can
> >>>>>> play
> >>>>>> chess.
> >>>>>> Computability is closed for the diagonal procedure, but not
> >>>>>> provability, game, definability, etc.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> OK, this makes sense.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In any case, the problem still exists, though it may not be
> >>>>> enough to
> >>> say
> >>>>> that the answer to the statement is not computable. The original
> >>>>> form
> >>>>> still
> >>>>> holds (saying "solely using a computer").
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> For to work, as Godel did, you need to perfectly define the
> >>>> elements in
> >>>> the
> >>>> sentence using a formal language like mathematics. English is too
> >>>> ambiguous. If you try perfectly define what you mean by
> >>>> computer, in a
> >>>> formal way, you may find that you have trouble coming up with a
> >>> definition
> >>>> that includes computers, but does't also include human brains.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> No, this can't work, since the sentence is exactly supposed to
> >>> express
> >>> something that cannot be precisely defined and show that it is
> >>> intuitively
> >>> true.
> >>>
> >>> Actually even the most precise definitions do exactly the same at
> >>> the
> >>> root,
> >>> since there is no such a thing as a fundamentally precise
> >>> definition. For
> >>> example 0: You might say it is the smallest non-negative integer,
> >>> but
> >>> this
> >>> begs the question, since integer is meaningless without defining 0
> >>> first.
> >>> So
> >>> ultimately we just rely on our intuitive fuzzy understanding of 0 as
> >>> nothing, and being one less then one of something (which again is an
> >>> intuitive notion derived from our experience of objects).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> So what is your definition of computer, and what is your
> >> evidence/reasoning
> >> that you yourself are not contained in that definition?
> >>
> > There is no perfect definition of computer. I take computer to mean
> > the
> > usual physical computer,
>
> Why not use the notion of a Turing universal machine, which has a
> rather well defined and widely understood definition?
>
> > since this is all that is required for my argument.
> >
> > I (if I take myself to be human) can't be contained in that definition
> > because a human is not a computer according to the everyday
> > definition.
>
> A human may be something a computer can perfectly emulate, therefore a
> human could exist with the definition of a computer. Computers are
> very powerful and flexible in what they can do.
>
> Short of injecting infinities, true randomness, or halting-type
> problems, you won't find a process that a computer cannot emulate.
>
> Do you believe humans are hyper computers? If not, then we are just
> special cases of computers. The particular case can defined by
> program, which may be executed on any Turing machine.
>
> >
> > --
> > View this message in context:
> http://old.nabble.com/Simple-proof-that-our-intelligence-transcends-that-of-computers-tp34330236p34336029.html
> > Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> >
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