Wednesday, November 29, 2023

A comment on adjective order

The information should be the same whether adjectives are given in the "correct" order or not. So, in principle ((X_/A)_/B) should be the same, if A and B are reversed.

Off hand, the reversibility of the order is theoretical. Getting it wrong is so awkward it suggests (sticking with the letter choices) that B sets an attribute of X_/A which was not available in X alone; and that A has no such attribute to set in X_/B.

Monday, November 27, 2023

A little logical rule

This is kind of interesting:

If you say A :: H_/q, then we can summarize by saying H::H_/q, forgetting how it happened. 

Whenever there are two ways of getting to the same answer, there is the possibility of math.

Saturday, November 25, 2023

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Judging age by degree of weathering - NE vs SW

Here in New England, the more weathered something is the older it is judged to be. It occurs to me that in an environment like dried glacial lakeshore in Nevada this principle could be wrong. Suppose older stone tools were buried and protected under sedimentation. Then desiccation would gradually expose materials with the younger ones exposed to weathering longer.

In accord with this, desert varnish would build up in reverse chronological order for places that were buried. It is a cautionary tale!

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Narrative Stickiness

Sometimes I watch a single snowflake falling through the sky and, for the moment I am tracking it, it seems to have its own life and a story line that I am unwilling to abandon as the snowflake disappears into the rest of the snow. I feel a faint sadness as I turn towards other things and other activities. I think the reason for this is that energy was spent creating a topic instance for the snowflake and this instance gets orphaned quickly and our "system" is not set up to do that and wants to conserve energy.

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Pineapple still life

I don't like staged still-lifes. But naturally occurring ones are okay. My eye was captured by the geometric regularity of the light and shadow on the pineapple leaves - of course I lost that completely. But the colors are nice.

Every story tells a picture

Recall the example of Sphinxmoth: "Liquid, out of my body".

Let's think of the words as glue that holds together some objects and action. When those words were in my head, so also was a picture:


Now I tend to think of the words being in one-one correspondence with parts of this picture but I am not at all sure this is correct. It may be a subtler meaning combinations which selects for individual parts of the picture. For example something in my body and something liquid (in my body) may combine to create a spherical vesicle picture, and that part of the picture is combined with others. The tube has openings to left and right. The sphere has no openings. Etc... 

One part of this idea is the "cloud" of other topics and ideas hovering around each word. The pictures and movements and directions are there anyway. The words trail a path through the cloud that can be enacted...

A man sniffs a bag of coffee

Waiting in line at Dunkin Donuts, they were under-staffed, and the guy in front of me reached over to a display rack, took a bag of their coffee grounds, sniffed it, and put it back. I knew what he was doing, he was evaluating the smell. 

As I passed from observing to understanding, what went through my mind was the feeling of myself reaching out to take the coffee bag and smell it. So (a) it feels like the ideas themselves are encoded in the muscle memory [a known concept]; and (b) it is the original imitation which forms the basis for memory and later ideas. Thus, imitation becomes a pillar of learning and a pillar of post-learning recognition.

Thursday, November 2, 2023