This is insect speed.
When I inherit this joint, first item on the agenda is putting those bloody powerlines underground. They are the bane of my existence! Except for the way they deliver power.
Working on this next paper is going awesome, I'm blinded by my own unsurpassed brilliance, and getting a tan off the reflection of the monitor to boot. I pulled a 12 hour shift today after 1.5 hours at the gym, pumping what I pump best. Not only that, I did some stuff today that was as cunning as all buggery-get-together. Right on! Go me!
Those turkeys/stooges/future employers from Agere in Sydney have been onto me today, organizing when they're gonna fly me up for an interview. I'm still in the dilemma of scouring all job advertisments, whether academic or industry, and struggling to find anything that really gives me a solid hard-on. Hmmm... Anyhoo, I'll see some of you mongoloids when I'm up, which looks like it may be 15-17 July.
I think that if you have the time, you should read about
Gödel's incompleteness theorem. This is something that gets banged on about by a whole lot of total lunatics who love junk science, to varying degrees of accuracy, most variation confined to the total bollocks region. I find that I get vague on the whole thing, and get a lot out of reading this particular page again. Anyway, it's good, and worth pondering. Insert your own boobies joke here if you like, it would lighten the mood.
You really, really, also should read somethingawful.com's July 4 update, which is funny as heck.
If you have a shred of self-respect and dignity, once again I repeat that you should not go within pissing distance of Rome: Total War. Read one of the novel-length campaign strategy guides to get some idea of the sweet, sweet, nourishing detail. I need superman to fly my computer into the sun to destroy the loathsome pattern of bits which has captured my imagination and with it my will to bathe. It's not that bad, really, but I've had too many really bloody late nights in the last week. Thank the everloving, clusterfucking Christ that I've finished it.
Keep it real as possible under the extenuating circumstances.
Oh yeh, I'm sure that at least one of you will be rapt to the back teeth to know that the sick ewe is back on her feet, and has resumed her action-packed life of eating grass. She, like us, can once again look forward to her untimely and grisly demise at the abbatoirs and subsequent glorious rebirth as pot roasts and dog food. Warms the cockles of my 'eart.
posted by dr. cok at 6:34 PM
22 Comments:
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Go ewe good thing!
Hey mat,
Nice work on the 12 hours shift. I've hit a lull, and I'm trying to boost my motivation levels. My main approach has been to spend hours surfing the web. It's not working.
I don't think Goedel's theorems have anything to do with philosophy. Or much of mathematics, for that matter.
ian
p.s. your photos continue to impress me!
p.p.s. Barry if you read this, I can't post replies to your blog, as I'm not a blogger member. Can you change a setting somewhere? Or are you just trying to keep out the riff raff?
But I'm reading your entries with a keen interest.
How long are you planning on spending in the north? Looks like I'm heading that way in October.
Thanks bro. I find that if I take three to four, or perhaps five thousand shots of the same thing with various settings there's a good chance a good one will pop out, according to the infinite monkey theorem.
As far as Goedel thingy goes, I think that like the halting problem, it relies on a pathological case. But I wonder what reduces to this case in stuff that I'm familiar with.
Do you mean like unmeasureable sets in integration theory?
But I don't think the fuss about Goedel's theorem has anything to do with its applicability to mathematics.
The mystical side of it (which Goedel himself was a big proponent of) I think is utter rubbish. There's a certain type of person who delights in giving people that kind of dizzy feeling that an apparent paradox can give. Russell and that guy who wrote "Goedel, Escher, Bach" are two more examples. Extremely clever, obviously, but very shallow. That kind of person annoys me.
From that wikipedia article: "For example, if you take Euclidean geometry and you drop the parallel postulate, you get an incomplete system (in the sense that system does not contain all the true statements). An incomplete system can mean simply that you haven't discovered all the necessary axioms."
But what do they mean doesn't contain all the true statements? A true statement in a formal system is one which is proveable in that system. So they must mean true in another sense.
And "all the necessary axioms". What does "necessary" mean? It can only have sense with respect to a particular purpose. With geometry, presumeably that purpose is related to taking measurements of angles and distances.
But if you resort to taking measurements, then your axioms are a theory of physics, not of mathematics.
Without the parallel postulate, you can have a complete formal system for geometry, modulo curvature, so to speak, and then there are no true statements missing.
Sorry for the long post. Yet another example of my procrastination!
Yeah. I philosophising on the results of mathematics is quite irritating. It is totally out of context, and often relies on the common sense of words rather than the mathematical sense. None is more annoying than the whole Quantum Physics
”we are all energy” bollocks.
People have suggested that I see the film, “What the bleep to we know?”. I have helpfully suggested that they go and boil their heads. I can think of nothing worse!
I think it's the composition - you are getting really interesting angles!
Hmm, just looked at the imdb page for that movie. Yes, it looks awful.
But the worst is when high profile scientists commit such sins, e.g. Roger Penrose.
I recommend Wittgenstein's lectures on the foundations of mathematics. Now that's philosophy!
Mat's pics are very well composed. You've got a good eye, tiger.
Can I just say that I had no idea that my sis and the people she hangs out with are such nerdy nerd nerd nerds.
All those years of her calling me the meganerd no longer hang over my head.
Thanks guys!
Oh these people aren't my 'friends', they all followed me home one day, and looked at me with these big sad eyes, so I had to take them in...
Ian is a certified uber-nerd, Mat is soon to be same, but everyone else is sitting on approx 2 tertiary qualifications, so their coolness is still salvageable.
If all else fails, an extensive knowledge of gangsta rap should allow everyone to fly under the radar.
Could you please explain today's post title, Mr Peacock?
13 is unlucky
The title is a line from a 13&God song from the latest pop77 mix (where else?)
PS nerdz roolz
Hey mat, did u like the kool keith stuff on the reef trip dvd?
Why, yes I did! I am yet to fully assimilate its essence, as I tend to play the same thing over and over until the mp3 sounds all scratchy and worn out. Then I have to get new music.
Sets with measure zero, like the cantor set with the lebesgue measure are pathological (is that what you mean?), yeh, but that's not what I meant.
"The fuss about Goedel's theorem" has got everything to do with loonies, like the ones you describe. And the explanation in that article about Euclidean geometry is dodgy, you're right.
Getting passed all the fuss and cone-smoking armchair philosphy though, examples of undecidable statements, such as the halting problem in CS, are still fascinating. And whether physics or CS or number theory, it's still playing a game according to some agreed set of rules, and discovering that doing some things are innately and unavoidably hard is interesting.
And sometimes when I get sick of trying to prove something I like to declare: it's true but undecidable, the end, see you down the pub.
Anyone who says "Now my helmet's on, you can't tell me I'm not in space" is a genius in my book!
It's been a while since I did integration theory, but non-measureable is not the same as zero-measure. Roughly, its not Lebesgue measureable if its rectangular approximation from the outside doesn't equal that from the inside. (Caretheodory's construction.)
Anyway, the point is that without restricting yourself to measureable sets, you can construct things like the Banach-Tarski Paradox. But I've never heard of anyone finding a non-measureable set which was anything but pathalogical, in the strongest terms. So in practice everyone just assumes all sets are measureable.
Umm... how can I express this... What I don't like is what is sometimes called "mathematical realism". The theory that mathematical truths are "out there" and we discover them. And then undecideable propositions, well, its like saying God knows them, but we never can.
Like with an infinite series... God sees the whole series, but we can only ever see a finite expansion. This gives people a mystical feeling, like platonic forms or noumena.
If there is a God, he doesn't know any more mathematics than we do.
But yes, I agree, these results are very interesting mathematically. I just don't really understand them yet!
bleh.
About the photo: remember mat, power lines are not an eyesore, they're a reminder of man's ability to generate electricity.
Ok, I may be a little nerdy, but unlike my lil bro, I completed my school years sequentially (who needs year 8? or to be in senior high school post puberty? not some lil bros), as did everyone else in the land of nerd, as far as I am aware.
Thus my lil bro is a far blacker pot than the greyish kettle I am. Although I don't like that analogy, as obviously, I am the blackest by any measure.
I finally feel I can contribute to this intellectually intimidating conversation by grasping at an area I'm familiar with.
As far as I'm aware I am by far the blackest pot from this little possy and feel this is a good point to counteract the rest of the maths theory discussion.
ok then - what's the difference between a 'pidgeon' and a 'chickenhead'?
If you can tell me that, you may be onto something!
Oh, I feel like the scottish hotel proprietor from Little Britain now, I need a little riddle music pipe...
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