Back at Old Stone Dock, in a different mood.

Function iteration problem

 Solve for f, in

f'(x) = f(f(x))

I have no idea how to solve this. It is one of a set of similar questions, seeking to transform the function iteration into something more manageable. 

Quisset Harbor - a quiet January afternoon

 

before I messed it up:

A couple thoughts from the edge of sleep - noun replacement and cognitive momentum

It seems like there is a language template activity in my mind, where the activity and template are a bit independent of the nouns. This is one way I make mistakes: when I am going to the sink to do something and pick up the wrong utensil. I think I am almost always within some narrative framework.

It is pretty easy for the nouns to slip out of place in the narrative structure and be substituted for by other things. I observe this to be happening when I begin to dream: the wrong noun gets into the story, but the story continues as I dream.

I recently noticed something that might  be responsible for noun substitution, that I want to call cognitive momentum. This is the idea that what you are thinking is a whole surging mass of different separate thoughts, with some more central than some others; and then some another mental mechanism (behaving like an external applied force) causes the whole mass to change direction. What can happen as you go to sleep, is that some constituent of the mass slip out, and continue in the direction they were going, while others respond to the external force and change of direction. 

The act of dreaming begins when you switch to the residual mass - perhaps with the existing narrative structure, but now with the wrong ideas elevated to central position, creating impossible combinations.

Red Crab

 

Too bad the CDC is run by incurious politicians and not scientists

I think "big" science has a lot to answer for. How many people suspected a bioengineered virus and kept it to themselves for fear of ostracism? How many of them challenged the censoring of information, publicly and loudly? How many of them held the CDC's feet to the fire? How many of them have publicly clarified that science can never determine public policy or the answers to ethical questions? How many of them have shifted their research goals to encompass some of the basic questions? Why didn't they set up a test species (eg mink) lab and get to work on the obvious:

 - What is the nature of cross immunity? - Could we have distributed a common cold rather than a vaccine?

 -Why were different demographics affected differently?

 - How does viral "load" work?

 - Why are different people affected differently, and in different parts of the body?

 - How early was it, and where - by sewage DNA analysis.

 - Transmission medium: air versus surface

Those questions have been there from the beginning and might have been answered or better understood in a short time frame.

Bufflehead