Snow day for many people on the East Coast

I got to work ~6:30 and left shortly after lunch at ~12:45. I had a very hard time getting home only a few miles away. Now it has been snowing hard for 3 hours. I am happy to report that, over on my other blog, it looks like some people spent long chunks of time today reading about rock piles. Mostly about the Mayans in Georgia (good lord look at the photos from Track Rock Gap!) and arrowheads. But it is nice to offer value on a snowy day. Of course no one comes over here.

The geometry of mind

I end my paper on Best Models (while discussing reading as a sequences of frames of reference) with the question: "what is the data of this mental landscape and where are these frames attached?" 
The answer is in the direction of words and context networks. The geometric objects are narratives instantiated with such words. [Later on I start calling this narrative shape.]

Google's sale of Motorolo Phones is well timed

It seems weird Google would sell the most American of brands, Motorola, to Lenovo. But for crying out loud: suddenly a couple days later Lenovo discovers a market for these phones in India? WTF?

The Star Spangled Banner

Hey, play this one when they get a 51st state (and use my flag):

Try this.

The idea of a machine being more intelligent than a human is meaningless

You know how these IQ measurements are nonsense cuz they pretend intelligence is a one-dimensional quantity? It is just as bad failing to understand that intelligence is a way of achieving human goals. A machine that was super good at achieving a non-human goal would just be another piece of mining equipment. No one would call that intelligence.

I have everbody at work reading Wittgenstein

Who would have thought it? I've got everybody at Dentsply reading Wittgenstein. Curiously, we are having discussions including whether there is a pre-language, or if there are things in our physical makeup and environment obliging language to be a certain way. 

We all agree with Wittgenstein about thought being limited by language (or perhaps limited to language). What he is saying seems like kind of a no-brainer today, although I did not understand him when I was in college. I suspect these philosophers were driven to extreme statements for social reasons.

My confusion has nothing to do with wanting to refute Wittgenstein. Instead, I just want to know if a logical incompatibility like "an object cannot be flat and spherical" comes from language or from something else.

Why language works