Category Archives: Brain Bubble
Still half a meal!
When I was growing up, we didn’t have much money, but we were always blessed with food on the table, a place to sleep, and a roof over us. I have no complaints — nor even a sense — my life lacked luxury. It never lacked what was needed, and it never lacked love. That’s a pretty golden childhood.
But money was tight, and our ethic was “waste not, want not!” Two of the more grievous sins in our family were waste and inequitable distribution (everyone got a fair share of what there was). I heard a lot about those “starving children in India.”
Which is why it annoys me when characters waste food.
Continue reading
9 Comments | tags: cliches, food, tropes | posted in Brain Bubble, Movies, TV
For the last two weeks I’ve written a number of posts contrasting physical systems with numeric systems.
(The latter are, of course, also physical, but see many previous posts for details on significant differences. Essentially, the latter involve largely arbitrary maps between real world magnitude values and internal numeric representations of those values.)
I’ve focused on the nature of causality in those two kinds of systems, but part of the program is about clearly distinguishing the two in response to views that conflate them.
Continue reading
20 Comments | tags: Alan Turing, Cantor's Diagonal, Georg Cantor, Halting Problem, Heisenberg Uncertainty, Incompleteness Theorems, Kurt Gödel, quantum mechanics, Turing Halting Problem, Werner Heisenberg | posted in Brain Bubble, Computers
Time for another Friday News Dump! The good news is that these are about quite recent news articles that caught my eye. (The bad news is that I might dump some older ones on you if there’s room.)
Usually I present them, more-or-less, in order of their interest to me… and apparently to my readers, since the comments seem to always involve the first article. So, this time I’m going to save the meatier one (in my eyes) for last hoping the others get some interest.
The lineup is: Dog brains, static electricity, quantum DNA, and free will.
Continue reading
25 Comments | tags: dogs, eels, electricity, free will, quantum cognition, quantum effects, quantum physics, static electricity | posted in Brain Bubble
It’s time for another Friday news dump from my list of links. (Actually, a folder of emails sent from my iPad, where I do the news reading, to my laptop, where I write my blog posts.)
The intent, originally, is to write a full post about them — which I sometimes do — but often, if the urge to bang out a post right away isn’t there, the email with that link ends up sitting in the folder. The longer they sit, the less likely I am to post about them.
So occasionally I open the cage and let some of them return to the wild…
Continue reading
25 Comments | tags: abiogenesis, AI, John Preskill, Matthew Fisher, quantum cognition, quantum physics, Roger Penrose | posted in Brain Bubble
I have a growing list of links to articles that catch my eye, things I’d like to post about (for whatever reason). But there’s a tension between posts based on lists of links or draft posts or idea files versus posts based on what I’m currently thinking about.
I seem to feel the latter isn’t enough, that I need a reserve for “lean times” — which never happen. More and more, I post when something strikes me as worth the effort. The “idea pile” seems almost like homework.
Anyway, here are some things that recently caught my eye.
Continue reading
6 Comments | tags: AI, analog recording, Crab Nebula, Mars, Marshall McLuhan, photons, vinyl record | posted in Brain Bubble
Well, it’s been two weeks. Things still seem very unsettled and chaotic. It’s not an obvious disaster, yet, but many of the signs aren’t encouraging. If it does turn out pear-shaped, we might look back at this early indicator:
I’m surprised no one picked up on this…
There are three human beings in the frame of that shot. All three share at least two characteristics. I’ll give you a hint: All are male, and all are white. #justsaying
Not even his FLOTUS-elect was allowed in shot. Interesting priorities.
Continue reading
1 Comment | tags: Anyone But Trump, Donald Trump, internet, interweb, Never Trump, President Elect Trump, social media, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Brain Bubble
It doesn’t matter, because this isn’t about that, but it was a blog page I was reading — about baseball, as it happens — where the writer used the phrase, “who among us is perfect?” I hear variations of that sentiment often. It’s meant to embrace the flawed humanity in all of us, but to my ear it sometimes excuses the egregious.
In this particular case (again, not the point), the writer was excusing the putative racism of a ballplayer during the 1940s, and that’s when a Brain Bubble floated up to my consciousness: Does it seem we use the phrase “no one is perfect” a little too broadly, a little too generously?
Have our standards of acceptable gotten lower in the modern era?
Continue reading
4 Comments | tags: Age of Enlightenment, Ancient Greeks, civilization, debate, dialectic, ego, humanity, id, perfection, rational thought, social mores, super-ego | posted in Brain Bubble
Foam: Lots of little bubbles. In this case, a dump of various news items that caught my eye but which didn’t — for whatever reason — fit into the previous bubbles. (Or which I just forgot to include.)
Truth be told, I’m actually getting a little bored with these bubble posts of news items. But I’d accumulated so many of them by the time I got the idea that it’s taken some effort to flush the queue. And it has been nice that other writers, and other events, have been making my points for me.
And now I’m down to the foam at the bottom of the glass…
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: carbon, Comedy Central, consciousness, Facebook, Gawker, human consciousness, human mind, Immanuel Kant, Joan Didion, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Nick Ut, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, Samantha Bee, The Daily Show, The Nightly Show, Trevor Noah | posted in Brain Bubble, Society
I’ve said in the past that all the crazy and stupid in the world doesn’t make me bitter so much as bemused (which is not at all the same as amused). Lately, as the stakes seem higher and the ought-is gap ever wider, I have to admit to a fair degree of bitterness. It just doesn’t have to be this bad, and often I can’t really grasp why it is.
I read my news feed and am struck by the juxtaposition of items describing the tragedies of life so many experience daily with… handwringing over Taylor Swift’s latest romantic breakup.
Ah, the flotsam and jetsam of modern humanity…
Continue reading
18 Comments | tags: Burning Man, Candy Crush, Clint Eastwood, fads, Harambe, internet, interweb, National Parks, Pokemon Go | posted in Brain Bubble, Society
Looking back over the trail of sour bubbles, obvious themes emerge: Society, Politics, Media, The Interweb. Important topics that affect and reflect us. Topics I find filled with dire signs and portents, chill winds carrying a hint of smoke that makes my neck hairs stand up straight.
For example, Vin Scully is retiring. If that’s not a sign of the coming apocalypse, I don’t know what one is. Adding insult, my Minnesota Twins are having a bad season of truly biblical proportions.
So, a strange sour silly summer…
Continue reading
2 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, democracy, democratic society, dogs, Dunning-Kruger effect, emotional mind, Google effect, internet, interweb, millennials, nevermore, opinions, politicians, rational mind, rational thought, stupid, stupid people, stupid stupid stupid, stupidity, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster, truth, Vin Scully | posted in Brain Bubble, Politics, Society, The Interweb
Logos con carne 