Memory and photography

Sometimes I like the image that a photograph gives me, with lights and colors and shapes carefully captured. But sometimes I like the image that my mind gives me. Not so intense, so accurate, so complete, but a beautiful vision for all of that, and perhaps even more beautiful than the original c0uld have been.

In Denmark in a hotel I stayed in there was a magical swimming pool. Unlike other pools that are designed so that the water reaches six inches below the deck and sloshes into scuppers that carry away the overflow (and detritus that falls into the pool and ultimately makes its way to the edges) this pool was designed so that the pool deck, the overflow drains and the water were all on the same plane. The drains were a grid in the deck and as fresh water filled the pool it spilled out into the drain. When no one was swimming the surface of the pool was a mirror, even with the deck.

No photograph can capture what I saw and these words don't do it justice. But close my eyes, and I can see it.

Your business, their business, and the universe

A few months ago, I read a little book by a woman name Byron Katie, that I found very useful.

It's no good arguing with reality, she says. Reality always wins. When we say "This shouldn't have happened" we're arguing with reality. In fact it should have happened, because it did. The laws of physics and nature are fairly deterministic. If you happen to be standing in the path of a bullet, then you should have gotten shot because bullet's go in straight lines and because you made decisions, unrelated to getting shot, that put you in that precise place at that precise time. And the person who shot the bullet should have done so because of a causal chain that led to pulling the trigger, which pretty invariably leads to a bullet leaving a gun. And so on.

Point being that this is a universe of causes and effects, and if you leave the causes unchanged then the effects are inevitable. Which leads us to the only thing that you might have a chance of changing--and that is your future. You can't change them. They make their own decisions. You can't change the universe because the laws of nature are beyond anyone's changing. But you can change you.

So when faced a problem, Katie says, check to see if it's your business, their business or the universe's business (she says God's business, but tranlates it as I have.)

If it's their business, then it's theirs to deal with, not yours. If it's the universe's then you are fighting the universe, always a losing battle.

If it's your business then it's yours to deal with, and there are lots of tools--some from Katie, some from others--that can help you deal with your business.

Another joke about engineers

A journalist, a mathematician, a physicist and an engineer were having dinner together.

"I've heard it proposed," said the journalist, "that all odd numbers are prime."

"Let me see," said the mathematician. "One is prime, three is prime, five is prime, seven is prime." I suppose by a process of mathematical induction we might be able to prove that all odd numbers are prime.

"Hmm," said the physicist. "One is prime. Thirteen is prime. 47 is prime. Eleven is prime. 9 is not prime, but that could be experimental error. I suppose we could sample the universe of odd numbers and determine whether this is true."

"Well," said the engineer, "One's prime, three's prime. Hell, they're all prime."

The difference between a mathematician and an engineer

An old joke I learned at MIT. Told the way that I first learned it, back in the day when all mathematicians and engineers were assumed to be heterosexual men. You can retell it this way, or update it politically correct.

The story:
A mathematician and and engineer were put at the end of a long room. At the opposite end of the room was a beautiful naked woman. [PC version: one or more beautiful naked person of the desired sex and sexual orientation to make achieving the below-stated goal attractive to both the engineer and mathematician . Whatever. They were both hetero males and it was a naked broad. Probably blond in the original telling.]

They were told the rules. "You walk half way across the room. Then stop. Then half the remaining distance. Then stop. And so on."

The mathematician started to cry. "This is terrible," he said. [It was a he.] I'll never get there."

The engineer smiled. "Yes," he said, "but I'll get close enough."

The eye of the scientist and the eye of the engineer

I see myself as both a scientist/mathematician and as an engineer, using the perspective that suits the occasion--itself a mark of an engineer.

As a scientist I believe only in the use of the scientific method as a tool to obtain truth. I want to know the right answer, and only the right answer will do. As an engineer I believe also in the use of the scientific method, but here I do not need the right answer; I only one that is good enough for my present purposes.

As a scientist, when I find something that works, I want to know why it works--by relating it to other, more atomic domains of knowledge. And I want to test it to ensure that it truly works. The testing never ends.

As an engineer, when I find something that works, that's good enough. I only would like to know under what conditions (roughly) it works reliably, and to have it work well enough for now.

As a scientist/mathematicians I care about exactnesses, not approximation. Good enough is never good enough. Only the exact, full, right answer will do. As an engineer I care only to have something that meets my current need. I care about efficiency, not exactness. Exactness may be too expensive--either in time or effort.

As a scientist I only hold those beliefs that I know or believe to be true, but as an engineer I am willing to hold beliefs that I find useful--even if I am certain that they are false.

At one time in my life I believed in a God that loved me and cared about me. I was very young then, and I believed it thoroughly. During that time, when good things happened, I thanked God for them. And when bad things happened I believed that God made them happen for a reason, and that the reason was my ultimate well-being.

I no longer believe that this is true. I don't believe God exists, and if s/he happened to exist, I have no reason to believe that s/he would waste time on me. So I no longer hold this belief as true, but I know it is useful, at least could be under certain conditions, because I've used it.

As a scientist I could never hold a belief that I knew to be false. It runs counter to more fundamental beliefs--which are the core of what I believe as a scientist.

But as an engineer, I know this belief was useful in the past and could be useful in the future. I'd have no trouble, if I needed to, taking it out, dusting it off, and trying it on for size again.

My innner scientist would sneer, but I am more an engineer than a scientist, and my inner engineer would simply say: "It works," and call the argument finished.

The eye of mathematics, the eye of physic, the eye of the spirit,

For years I struggled to reconcile my belief in science with my attraction to the spiritual. Science had no room for the spirit. It is simply not necessary. Yet I had myself experienced things that were profoundly affecting for which science's explanations were weak and unsatisfying. The two remained in conflict.

Finally, about ten years ago I read an essay by Ken Winbur, whose writings had been part of Bobbi's PhD program. His argument, as well as I can remember it, was this.

We know that we can look at the world through the eye of physics and the eye of mathematics, and while the two seem connected, in fact they are not. Physics is entirely empirical. There is not a single physical fact that can be proven by mathematics. It is all experiment and measurement. While mathematical models can have great predictive power in physics, the fact is that they do not prove anything. There are many branches of mathematics that have no yet-known relevance to physics. The ones that correlate are selected by a process of elimination and experimentation, not because they represent the order of physical reality.

And similarly there is not a single mathematical proposition that can be proven by physics. Mathematics stands on its axioms, logic, the rules of logical reasoning and not by reference to the physical world. Domains of mathematics have been constructed so that they are useful in physics, but that is a by-product of their construction and their selection. There are infinitely many mathematical domains with no physical utility and only a small number that help us understand reality.

So the eye of physics and the eye of mathematics are independent of one another. In each domain knowledge is built and truth is determined by carrying out a process and observing results. In physics we say something is "true" if one can carry out this experiment under these conditions and reliably get this result. The process and or result may involve mathematical calculation, but that is part of the experiment.

In mathimatics we say something is "true" is we can provide a series of steps--a mathematical proof--which will lead to a particular result. The process of reasoning or the domain of application might have its analogies in physics but that is incidental.

So too with the eye of the spirit. In some corners of the world of the spirit (and in fake physics and bad mathematics) there is intuition and faith or its equivalent. But in world to which I am attracted, you can find "truth" in similar ways. Something is true if you can devise a an experiment which if performed under certain conditions will give you a predicted result. This is true for me in Buddhism, Scientology, and other domains of the spirit that do not call themselves religion.

Mathematics cannot prove or disprove physics. Physics can not prove or disprove mathematics. And the world of the spirit can not be proved or disproved by either. These three domains stand each alone, each independent, and each bearing its own truth.

Rules for SLE's

So many things that I want to say, so little time in which to say it. And I write, and rewrite and re-rewrite so that nothing ever gets said or done. It’s never quite good enough. So today, with this first post, a new regime: the regime of Shitty Little Essays, or SLE’s.

An SLE (like this one) does not have to be very good. It doesn’t have to be polished to jewel-like perfection. It just needs to be written, and as fast as possible.

To make my transition from NCE’s (Never Completed Essays) and ITNGW’s (Ideas That Never Get Written) to SLE’s some simple rules are in order.

Rule 1: no backtracking. You can fix a typo in the current sentence, but you can’t go back past that point. That means if you say it wrong you can say it again, but you can’t undo what you said.

Rule 2: One sitting. You write the essay in one sitting. When you get up, you are done. That’s a dangerous rule so it needs a little bit of fixing. You can be interrupted by something important (like a bathroom break or a phone call) but once it’s over you have to get back to completing the SLE as quickly as possible.

Rule 3: Quick posting. You write the essay and you post it. You don’t give yourself a chance to edit it.

Rule 4: Retraction. You can only retract by writing another essay. What you write is eternal. Now let’s see how that works.

Rule 5: End it when you’ve run out of gas.

Like right now.

(Then apply Rule 3 and post it.)

Like right now.