Friday, May 21, 2010

Professor Quibb's Picks-2010

My personal picks for the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season:

18 cyclones attaining tropical depression status
17 cyclones attaining tropical storm status
7 cyclones attaining hurricane status
4 cyclones attaining major hurricane status

3 comments:

A.G. said...

Professor Quibb, your posts are great. I find the synchronicity of your posts with my own casual interests most absurd. For example, this morning I put together a strange illusion representing event perception propagation through neural tissue (http://img.skitch.com/20100625-d5te3928r92b9ekmwytsnftm24.jpg). Then I switched over and made this photo of the gulf (http://img.skitch.com/20100625-cbiqn2aw3uk7mg86maxqxkabfr.jpg). Then I discovered your blog. Crazy.

I find your interests in physics to be most interesting, but I want to posit a question to you and let you ponder and perhaps develop it with me. Assume the universe, at its heart, is purely uniform, dimensionless, chaos. No structure can be inferred from this chaos. At any point in the universe, the value could be anything from 0 to 1. Now, take the first derivative of this chaos (the act of perceiving). You get a gaussian distribution with a mean and variance. From chaos, you have formed structure. Apply this to your neural hardware. theres a chain of sensory neurons that respond to the chaos of their environment (which has no structure). Then you have neurons attached to those, such that they fire when the both of their children are firing (essentially a sum). While the first order neurons will fire, or not fire, 50% of the time... the second level neurons will fire only 25% of the time. Continue higher level differentiation, and you get to neurons that fire only fire for particular temporal arrangements of the chaos. Structure is formed from chaos. The universe, as it exists, essentially is a reflection of your own perceptive hardware.

Louis said...

Thanks for your comment. I enjoy having a variety of topics on my blog, and they reflect my own casual interests.

About your theory, the aspect of structure arising from choas is interesting, but the idea of it being present in our neural hardware could possibility be generalized to a broader "perspective" which includes the point of view on an event from any point in space. Overall, I find your theory quite interesting.

A.G. said...

Pnxstutawney Phil predicts the length of winter. Of course, we all "know" this is unlikely. Analysis of the data shows that Phil has been wrong almost every time he doesn't see a shadow. And correct nearly every-time he doesn't see his shadow. Which means, that our random somewhat chaotic event and our perceptions of it, has lead us to the knowledge that Mr. Phil is a good indicator that its nearly always cold in pennsylvania in february and early march. Phils predictions, represent chaos, which we have assigned structure to. Over longer and longer periods, and hence higher and higher levels of differentiation, and convolution with our own perceptions, we can form the structure that its cold in pennsylvania, and that groundhog is close to, but not quite as accurate as our own knowledge from our perceptions (that winter will always be 6 more weeks).

Of course, the weather in pennsylvania is not chaotic, and phils predictions are not either. But it doesn't discount the fact that the act of perceiving any random thing of which we have no knowledge about, and assigning it to some random occurrence which we have no control, has lead us to knowledge about that occurrence. In essence, it has created form from chaos. But before anybody paid attention to this, who's to say what the weather was like in pennsylvania. It is only through the perception of chaos temporally, that we assign the structures of our universe. Whether there is or isn't some structure we are actually perceiving, that is universally perceivable, is inconsequential and unknowable, for your perceptions of these indicators are already filtered through your own perceptions. You could be saying something to me that at its heart, means something completely different to you than what it means to me. And I could respond in the same manner. That doesn't detract from the fact that humans, are at their very core, the product of light perception. And any artificially intelligent being, could be made that way, just by giving it a lot of nodes to categorize and respond to what is at first, essentially random data going through a lens. Synchronicity of perceptions is the method in which our brains navigate the world.

One last question:
But how could you reasonably distinguish between percieving two related events and that being a perception of some previously unseen structure, or just our brains overanalyzing chaos and forming structure where there is in fact, none. After you make that first structure on top of chaos, you begin a process of categorization that will build and infer structure from the misconception that there was ever any structure to begin with. I'm sure you can see where this is headed. So how do we as a species know the dividing line between overanalysis and pertinant perception?