Playing the Tenth Man
I was just thinking about art after seeing this article and it occurred to me that we tend to like certain color palettes just as we like certain chord combinations. Notes that are just outside the acceptable frequencies in these chords create dissonance to us. It seems we're willing to accept notes, I'm being metaphorical here, that resonate with us even if different but if they're just different enough, they create dissonance, or in another term, they sit in the uncanny valley. Of course I don't know enough about music theory to say much here and I know various cultures have many different types of music, some of which might even seem non-harmonious to us. But if I may refer the subject to AI and human-like robots, it seems that we tend to accept that which is just like us and very different than us, but some odd place inbetween and it's uncanny, leaving us with unsettling feelings. You more often see the term "uncanny valley" applied in robotics and CGI. Of course even that is subjective and I suspect just as with evolution, there's going to be some minority players involved who choose novel niches, just as with mate selection as I've read that it's very determined that some small minority will choose mates with novel features but on the whole, at the macroscopic scale, things settle or average to a more deterministic order.
I was going to go into the topic of evolution when I mentioned how thermodynamic bodies could be seen as varying frequencies on a thermodynamic spectrum and how some, conjecturing here, seem to resonate or take to each other harmoniously while others don't and may even overpower others unless having a property field or means to resonate appropriately, perhaps through proverbial phase shifting, to deflect or neutralize the opposing frequency body. Well, that was a long-winded setup for my explanation but in evolution it seems that members of a species tend to resonate to some extent while very different species can also work harmoniously with others in this same ecosystem while those that are somewhat like but also somewhat different tend to get selected against, in this case it manifests macroscopically as species competing for the same resources usually, as they're just close enough that proverbial head-butting goes on. Once again on the topic of sound waves, I got to wondering if my intuitions were true if this extinction event applied to sound. After loading up Audacity and creating a 100.000hz file and another one at 100.001hz and then playing both at the same time, you get a variation in amplitude; they're just different enough and just like enough that one drowns out the other at predictable points. Perhaps in thermodynamics the winner would be the one that can fit in the niche, or the average, of all other frequencies putting impending pressure on them.
It seems the universe's lust for averaged or quantisized units may be reflected in the microscopic as well as macroscopic scale. When you have many varying arbitrary frequencies it seems they begin to quantisize or conform to average likeness when pressured, some smaller and similar frequencies get drowned out in favor of bigger and more averaged frequencies, kind of like beehive nests do. As we've long discovered, a hexagon is the most efficient shape for that application. Bubbles, the kind you blow, when blown in an array as a beehive nest will also conform to this hexagonal pattern because it's naturally the most efficient. What once was circular shapes in this 2D array, when compressed, the averages of the boundaries means it conforms to a hexagonal shape. So if everything seems a wave then how does this outlook fare with wave-particle duality? Well, I mean we haven't proven entirely that particles aren't just more definite waves, have we? I'd hope some string theorists could side with me here and as a music lover I'd like to think that the universe elegantly operates on essentially plucked strings. On a related note (heh), a quick search for "wave mechanics" brings up this site by a science philosopher with whom I mostly agree with though I think he's too stuck on attacking particle physics when I think it's relevant science and that "particle" is just nomenclature for a particle wave space or as he describes a "wave-center", or so I gathered from a quick read. He doesn't seem to hold mathematical physics in high regard either though I have to give it some respect. Upon re-reading and editing this entry now, I realize I'm using some of the same terms but they may mean something else in another context or have a fuzzy definition when using a word in a novel way. I've long noticed that sometimes it's semantics or definitions that we may disagree about but the ambiguity of language causes conflict. Language does a lot to connect us but sometimes it's responsible for disconnecting us. That makes appreciate the clarity that math brings us and I wished I was better at conveying myself in such ways. Though I think it only gets a pass here because it's so discrete. If we used mathematics to talk to each other, Game Theory would show itself and we'd still be fighting over petty things because X + Y = Y - Z = Z + X = Y + Z, basically boy loses girl, boy wins back girl by fighting other boy or something such. And besides, the internet is humans talking to each other through math, the OSI layers, and we see how that works. So nevermind, I guess standard language is a reasonable and natural default.
Now how does this all fit within hormesis? Well, it reminds me also of the tenth man rule, which basically states that for any important decision-making, you'll want a tenth man to counter argue and in doing so will strengthen your final decision. In my abstracted view of hormesis, you want a small amount of counter force to inoculate you against a stronger force. In evolutionary analog, the more static, entrenched and more populous species can essentially become inoculated against the threats of newer and less populous species by adopting to this new ecological niche by way of breeding with the imposing species if possible and/or by adopting the same environmental or cultural exploits used by the adversarial species, which in primate species may be tool usage, to pre-empt being exploited by the other species. Of course the new species isn't always successful in exploiting this new ecological niche better than the old species and so it lingers for a while or dies out eventually. In summation, by adopting a small part of the threat you can defy the threat. Maybe Homo Neanderthal's legacy represents this evolutionary notion in that he still lives on in those of us with European heritage on average of two percent. Maybe Neanderthal was a note slightly out of pitch, the uncanny valley, too like Homo Sapiens Sapiens while too different unlike other primates that still live harmoniously with man. These things all represent, in my insane mind, variable frequencies of waves colliding, or averaging as entropy wants to do since the universe tends to love efficiency and averaging is the path of least resistance or the consequence of most resistance, if you choose to see it that way, which reminds me of post-war sentiments in that most wish for moderation or peace after much traumatic warfare.
But in this thermodynamic view, in the more static zones you have more order or lower entropy and on the boundaries of them you have higher entropy from the collisions that ensue. You might envision it kind of like an iterative 3D Mandelbrot Set which I've been fascinated with for at least a decade. But unlike the all-ordered Mandelbrot Set, I see it more like small dynamic 3D bits of order with sequentially descending bits of disorder surrounding these orderly central bodies with the outer less orderly bodies acting as tentacles to 'feel' for threats to the main order. Though maybe that's anthropomorphizing things too much and forsaking clarity. Online forums, political groups and economics as seen in wealth distribution, or lack thereof (hah) remind me of this also in that you tend to have a few big players, agents of order, leading with many followers of varying degrees of order or deviance from the main, of loyalty and ideology. Like how plant branches diverge, once again hearkening to the MS, or with military ranks, you have a few stationed orderly mains while you have the many followers on the edges, branching out to feel for threats. Along these boundaries you tend to have more direct averaging, or higher entropy. The boundary represents a chaotic barrier to the local order that can potentially greatly make or break the zones of order should there be a niche for exploitation or inoculation. As humans, we love to create barriers against what we perceive are agents of entropy to maintain local order while sometimes forgetting there may be order on the other side also. Perhaps it's because of our environment, conditions and such that we become ordered to, or the niche which we've been filtered in, that it necessitates that we perceive our order as sometimes the only valid order when perhaps the disorder just lies at the barrier of these multiple distinguished orders. But I digress, thermodynamic entities will do what thermodynamic entities do. Being a determinist, I think conflict is inevitable and for years have thought that some amount of conflict is productive, if only because it can help inoculate you against the inevitable major conflicts in life.
I digress once again here as the further I stray from confirmed science, the more I look like a loon. This hyper pattern-seeking behavior that schizophrenics harbor leaves me wondering if it's not subsuming me also and perhaps this is all a great non-sequitur. My father had a bout of mental illness during a period of stress which involved schizo-typical behavior and maniacal writing and it's also a pattern I notice in myself occasionally. If anything, maybe my blog serves as a stress outlet as well as a psychological exhibit in the frame of 'this is what insanity looks like', hah. I have no major vices other than an indelible coffee habit and my sometimes unhealthy longing for solitude and so this blog serves as a vice, one in which I'd rather keep to myself for the time being as I'm always afraid I'll go insane and never know it. As alone as I am I rarely ever feel alone knowing logic and reason are by my side but if I feel I've lost touch with those partners and nothing is what it seems anymore then I'll feel dreadfully alone. With this blog, maybe I started something that I can't finish, to quote The Smiths because I have to work a band into my entries as is tradition. And as a disclaimer to you and reminder to myself, the universe is a tricky one and just when you've got something that may apply at one level doesn't mean it'll apply to another.
Since I recently quoted The Smiths and as a boy with a thorn in his side who sometimes wonders if the body rules the mind or if the mind rules the body (why not both?), I'd like to post another favorite of theirs.
To be edited: Because my mind is everywhere and it seems a bit incongruent upon re-reading.
I was going to go into the topic of evolution when I mentioned how thermodynamic bodies could be seen as varying frequencies on a thermodynamic spectrum and how some, conjecturing here, seem to resonate or take to each other harmoniously while others don't and may even overpower others unless having a property field or means to resonate appropriately, perhaps through proverbial phase shifting, to deflect or neutralize the opposing frequency body. Well, that was a long-winded setup for my explanation but in evolution it seems that members of a species tend to resonate to some extent while very different species can also work harmoniously with others in this same ecosystem while those that are somewhat like but also somewhat different tend to get selected against, in this case it manifests macroscopically as species competing for the same resources usually, as they're just close enough that proverbial head-butting goes on. Once again on the topic of sound waves, I got to wondering if my intuitions were true if this extinction event applied to sound. After loading up Audacity and creating a 100.000hz file and another one at 100.001hz and then playing both at the same time, you get a variation in amplitude; they're just different enough and just like enough that one drowns out the other at predictable points. Perhaps in thermodynamics the winner would be the one that can fit in the niche, or the average, of all other frequencies putting impending pressure on them.
It seems the universe's lust for averaged or quantisized units may be reflected in the microscopic as well as macroscopic scale. When you have many varying arbitrary frequencies it seems they begin to quantisize or conform to average likeness when pressured, some smaller and similar frequencies get drowned out in favor of bigger and more averaged frequencies, kind of like beehive nests do. As we've long discovered, a hexagon is the most efficient shape for that application. Bubbles, the kind you blow, when blown in an array as a beehive nest will also conform to this hexagonal pattern because it's naturally the most efficient. What once was circular shapes in this 2D array, when compressed, the averages of the boundaries means it conforms to a hexagonal shape. So if everything seems a wave then how does this outlook fare with wave-particle duality? Well, I mean we haven't proven entirely that particles aren't just more definite waves, have we? I'd hope some string theorists could side with me here and as a music lover I'd like to think that the universe elegantly operates on essentially plucked strings. On a related note (heh), a quick search for "wave mechanics" brings up this site by a science philosopher with whom I mostly agree with though I think he's too stuck on attacking particle physics when I think it's relevant science and that "particle" is just nomenclature for a particle wave space or as he describes a "wave-center", or so I gathered from a quick read. He doesn't seem to hold mathematical physics in high regard either though I have to give it some respect. Upon re-reading and editing this entry now, I realize I'm using some of the same terms but they may mean something else in another context or have a fuzzy definition when using a word in a novel way. I've long noticed that sometimes it's semantics or definitions that we may disagree about but the ambiguity of language causes conflict. Language does a lot to connect us but sometimes it's responsible for disconnecting us. That makes appreciate the clarity that math brings us and I wished I was better at conveying myself in such ways. Though I think it only gets a pass here because it's so discrete. If we used mathematics to talk to each other, Game Theory would show itself and we'd still be fighting over petty things because X + Y = Y - Z = Z + X = Y + Z, basically boy loses girl, boy wins back girl by fighting other boy or something such. And besides, the internet is humans talking to each other through math, the OSI layers, and we see how that works. So nevermind, I guess standard language is a reasonable and natural default.
Now how does this all fit within hormesis? Well, it reminds me also of the tenth man rule, which basically states that for any important decision-making, you'll want a tenth man to counter argue and in doing so will strengthen your final decision. In my abstracted view of hormesis, you want a small amount of counter force to inoculate you against a stronger force. In evolutionary analog, the more static, entrenched and more populous species can essentially become inoculated against the threats of newer and less populous species by adopting to this new ecological niche by way of breeding with the imposing species if possible and/or by adopting the same environmental or cultural exploits used by the adversarial species, which in primate species may be tool usage, to pre-empt being exploited by the other species. Of course the new species isn't always successful in exploiting this new ecological niche better than the old species and so it lingers for a while or dies out eventually. In summation, by adopting a small part of the threat you can defy the threat. Maybe Homo Neanderthal's legacy represents this evolutionary notion in that he still lives on in those of us with European heritage on average of two percent. Maybe Neanderthal was a note slightly out of pitch, the uncanny valley, too like Homo Sapiens Sapiens while too different unlike other primates that still live harmoniously with man. These things all represent, in my insane mind, variable frequencies of waves colliding, or averaging as entropy wants to do since the universe tends to love efficiency and averaging is the path of least resistance or the consequence of most resistance, if you choose to see it that way, which reminds me of post-war sentiments in that most wish for moderation or peace after much traumatic warfare.
But in this thermodynamic view, in the more static zones you have more order or lower entropy and on the boundaries of them you have higher entropy from the collisions that ensue. You might envision it kind of like an iterative 3D Mandelbrot Set which I've been fascinated with for at least a decade. But unlike the all-ordered Mandelbrot Set, I see it more like small dynamic 3D bits of order with sequentially descending bits of disorder surrounding these orderly central bodies with the outer less orderly bodies acting as tentacles to 'feel' for threats to the main order. Though maybe that's anthropomorphizing things too much and forsaking clarity. Online forums, political groups and economics as seen in wealth distribution, or lack thereof (hah) remind me of this also in that you tend to have a few big players, agents of order, leading with many followers of varying degrees of order or deviance from the main, of loyalty and ideology. Like how plant branches diverge, once again hearkening to the MS, or with military ranks, you have a few stationed orderly mains while you have the many followers on the edges, branching out to feel for threats. Along these boundaries you tend to have more direct averaging, or higher entropy. The boundary represents a chaotic barrier to the local order that can potentially greatly make or break the zones of order should there be a niche for exploitation or inoculation. As humans, we love to create barriers against what we perceive are agents of entropy to maintain local order while sometimes forgetting there may be order on the other side also. Perhaps it's because of our environment, conditions and such that we become ordered to, or the niche which we've been filtered in, that it necessitates that we perceive our order as sometimes the only valid order when perhaps the disorder just lies at the barrier of these multiple distinguished orders. But I digress, thermodynamic entities will do what thermodynamic entities do. Being a determinist, I think conflict is inevitable and for years have thought that some amount of conflict is productive, if only because it can help inoculate you against the inevitable major conflicts in life.
I digress once again here as the further I stray from confirmed science, the more I look like a loon. This hyper pattern-seeking behavior that schizophrenics harbor leaves me wondering if it's not subsuming me also and perhaps this is all a great non-sequitur. My father had a bout of mental illness during a period of stress which involved schizo-typical behavior and maniacal writing and it's also a pattern I notice in myself occasionally. If anything, maybe my blog serves as a stress outlet as well as a psychological exhibit in the frame of 'this is what insanity looks like', hah. I have no major vices other than an indelible coffee habit and my sometimes unhealthy longing for solitude and so this blog serves as a vice, one in which I'd rather keep to myself for the time being as I'm always afraid I'll go insane and never know it. As alone as I am I rarely ever feel alone knowing logic and reason are by my side but if I feel I've lost touch with those partners and nothing is what it seems anymore then I'll feel dreadfully alone. With this blog, maybe I started something that I can't finish, to quote The Smiths because I have to work a band into my entries as is tradition. And as a disclaimer to you and reminder to myself, the universe is a tricky one and just when you've got something that may apply at one level doesn't mean it'll apply to another.
Since I recently quoted The Smiths and as a boy with a thorn in his side who sometimes wonders if the body rules the mind or if the mind rules the body (why not both?), I'd like to post another favorite of theirs.
To be edited: Because my mind is everywhere and it seems a bit incongruent upon re-reading.
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