Scientific prose vs poetry
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 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 wrote: Jason Resch-2 wrote: On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 1:07 PM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote: Jason Resch-2 wrote: On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 10:48 AM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote: 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
Re: Scientific prose vs poetry
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
