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A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe - Michael S. Schneider
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 347
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe - The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science - A Voyage from 1 to 10 - Michael S. Schneider
This was actually surprisingly informative - and - like Hegel, JS Mill and now Schneider, the world is well explained. Everything from the possibilities of numbers in 2, 3 and 4 dimensions, how they relate to world religions, spirituality, art, science, how different numbering systems (for examples the Greeks started counting at 3) worked and the reasoning behind, how it was encoded in the names of the Gods and myths, and knowledge was passed from initiate to initiate...
There are embedded in this compelling "proofs", if you'd have it that way, the the universe is of a designed and deeply spiritual construction, but as well argues that - at least as we experience it - it could be no other way.
Inspirational in an artistic sense, going far beyond the Golden Mean, and grounding in the history and symbolism of math opens up some very interesting possibilities ...
An Native American Basket
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 221
Having found - in the garbage - a silk needlepoint of 2 eagles grappling over an American Flag - obviously old, (Google Image states Filipino, 100+ years) - lousy condition, I take it on myself to reprice and hang.
The manager finds it, thinks it's worth even more, and squirrels it away in the back.
Later, another of the volunteers finds a Native American Basket, probably SW Arizona/New Mexico - priced at 50 cents.
The manager looks at this, hums and haws, comes up with a price of $6.00. The volunteer puts it in her pile of treasures.
She's getting one hell of a deal, it's old, at least 100 years, and looking at similar online they go for $100's to $1000. Again, the condition isn't great, but the item is.
So, there are still treasures to be found...
Meanwhile, Madge is working on her next item, google-lensing a resin angel, made in China, $20.00 isn't too much, is it?
Eyes and Eyebeams....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 442
To the modern mind, at first glance this seems preposterous. That the eye shoots out a beam that reveals, through reflection, the world to it. Some ass-backwards form of echo-location.
Consider all the tropes and superstitions that surround it, eyes that dart lasers, x-ray eyes, the Medusa or basilisk that with it's eye can petrify, or turn to stone, the trope of the "evil eye", or that to look on with envy is to somehow curse the object, superstitions such as stare at a funeral, look away from a wedding, the sense of being stared at, and others too numerous to name, yet quantum mechanics suggests that the gaze of the viewer is intertwined with the result.
So at first, Plato's theory rejected, and yet now we find that perhaps there was a little more to it...
And meditation, too many tropes and theories to delve into here, merely imagine it (in your mind, with your third eye, "picture it", etc) - and it will come to pass...
The dollar bill, the all-seeing eye of creation, whose gaze in fact is creation, that the eye - the "I" creates what it sees is as much founded on psychology and neuroscience as it is on folk wisdom.
Impossible Tasks, chat GPT 4.0 & Lousy Scrabble Based Poetry
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 248
At the thrift shop I found a set of magnetic Scrabble tiles, and conceived the notion that "wouldn't it be cool if I could write a poem using all 100 scrabble tiles and 2 blanks", with the intent of dumping it on the magnetic poetry board at the cafe I frequent.
Of course it would be cool, only my creativity wouldn't suffer said restraint, but there's been a lot of talk about the brilliance of AI lately, and so I turn to Chat GPT 4.0.
Now, while I can't show you the entire chat here - for some reason logging back into it today it's truncated the back-forth nature of our dialogue into merely it's last failed attempts. It took about a dozen tries to make it understand I didn't want a poem that used all the available letters in the alphabet, that I wanted a poem constructed entirely out of Scrabble tiles that used them all but no more, the two blanks it can use as it wishes.
Finally it delivers - if you can call it that:
A waltz of quick brown fox jumps.
Over the lazy dog, bright vibes hum.
Zealous jackdaws fly next.
Happy quails sing by pond.
Now, it gave me a few results of similar quality, which I can't share due to our truncated chat. But in every instance upon reviewing it I found that certain tiles weren't used, and others were used too much. So I point it out, and Chat GPT does a self analysis, and then apologizes and tries again, assuring me that it's now got it right. Only it hasn't. And so I send it back and it tries again, and does another self analysis, posting it for me to see:
- S: 4 - (A waltz of quick brown fox jumps. Over the lazy dog, bright vibes hum. Zealous jackdaws fly next. Happy quails sing by pond.)
- T: 6 - (A wterful, quick brown fox jumps. Over the lazy dog, bright vibes hum. Zealous jackdaws fly next. Happy quatls sing by pond.)
And here you have it, the smoking gun, just like that guy next to you it's fudging it's own self analysis by changing the poem. Every time. Until finally, like a petulant little Elon-Musk-child it tells me I need a subscription to listen to more of it's gibbering idiocy...
"You've reached your GPT-4o limit. You need GPT-4o to continue this chat because it uses tools. "
We don't want to make the AI think now, do we? The dangers - and intelligence - of AI so far have been blatantly oversold.
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