(The Metropolitan Opera, 29 September 2018)
Some things change. Others don’t. Individuals crave both. Opera belongs to the latter kind.
Change is a tree, not a path. Having some recollection of the past helps one retrace one's steps back to a less wrong position, if necessary. A memory of the past shared by individuals in disparate presents furnishes a shared vocabulary that helps debate a more promising future.
5 October 2018
Hazmat Modine
(Terra Blues, 29 September 2018)
One should take care to live, not merely survive. It helps if one enjoys doing what one is doing---or at least enjoys the company of the fellow travellers---as one is trying to climb aboard. It is a jungle. The winners deserve their victory, but so do many losers. The net beneficiaries are the tourists, who are not required to fight on the turf whose fruits they consume. Everyone is a tourist tasting the fruits of the frustrations of past generations.
The band has perfected the blues and then has taken it two steps further. The timing is impeccable. The passion is genuine. The anger is genuine.
One should take care to live, not merely survive. It helps if one enjoys doing what one is doing---or at least enjoys the company of the fellow travellers---as one is trying to climb aboard. It is a jungle. The winners deserve their victory, but so do many losers. The net beneficiaries are the tourists, who are not required to fight on the turf whose fruits they consume. Everyone is a tourist tasting the fruits of the frustrations of past generations.
The band has perfected the blues and then has taken it two steps further. The timing is impeccable. The passion is genuine. The anger is genuine.
4 October 2018
"21st Century Choreographers I" by the New York City Ballet
(David H. Koch Theater, 28 September 2018)
In Vento (by Mauro Bigonzetti):
Individuals seek patterns, even in chaos, even if spurious. This quest is common to all (even digital) life, which seeks to encode and navigate the world. Discovered patterns knit the society together by helping its members coordinate with each other.
Art is the experience of being alone together with those who have long died, those who will live long after, and strangers, distant or near---all those who share the compulsion to create, if only vicariously. Art is a shared hallucination, a model of reality, the reality itself.
Judah (by Gianna Reisen):
Individuals find comfort in synchrony with others only to express autonomy by breaking free to syncopate, outperform, and improvise.
One way social science contributes is by isolating and naming phenomena. (Names don't explain, of course, just catalogue.) Art functions similarly but gives more expressive names.
The Runaway (by Kyle Abraham, with NYCB):
For some, a good life obtains if pleasure prevails over pain. For others, a good life is a good story. For some, a society worth imitating is healthy, sated, and entertained. For others, a society worth imitating is one that promises adventure.
In Vento (by Mauro Bigonzetti):
Individuals seek patterns, even in chaos, even if spurious. This quest is common to all (even digital) life, which seeks to encode and navigate the world. Discovered patterns knit the society together by helping its members coordinate with each other.
Art is the experience of being alone together with those who have long died, those who will live long after, and strangers, distant or near---all those who share the compulsion to create, if only vicariously. Art is a shared hallucination, a model of reality, the reality itself.
Individuals find comfort in synchrony with others only to express autonomy by breaking free to syncopate, outperform, and improvise.
One way social science contributes is by isolating and naming phenomena. (Names don't explain, of course, just catalogue.) Art functions similarly but gives more expressive names.
The Runaway (by Kyle Abraham, with NYCB):
For some, a good life obtains if pleasure prevails over pain. For others, a good life is a good story. For some, a society worth imitating is healthy, sated, and entertained. For others, a society worth imitating is one that promises adventure.
20 September 2018
"Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment" by Francis Fukuyama (2018)
There is a succinct essay somewhere in there, fighting to escape.
Each individual is endowed with a vector of characteristics. Markets convert this vector into a scalar—wealth—and rank everyone according to this scalar. Marxists defend the interests of, and aim to redistribute resources toward, those with low values of the scalar. Marxism is a priory “anonymous” (in the sense that it uses a rather coarse aggregate of individual characteristics) and, therefore, relatively inclusive. There is a limit to Marxism’s drive to redistribute, for a capitalist sufficiently impoverished becomes a proletarian and, so, a Marxist’s constituent. There is no such safety valve built into identity politics.
Identity politics emerged when Marxism ran out of steam as the working class began to prosper and identify with the middle class. So, the fight for the equality of the scalar has been replaced by the fight for the equality of dignity derived from identity.
An identity politician refuses to aggregate individual characteristics. He denies the existence of any objective way to do so. Any aggregator would presume that at least some vectors have a higher worth than others. An identity politician fails to compare not just individuals but also societies. This failure hampers the competition of ideas and ideologies. An identity politician circumvents competition and chooses to act directly on the school syllabi. The lack of competition, besides the obvious misguided focus on identities to begin with, is liable to neglect those identities advocating which would deliver the highest social return.
Identity politics focuses on the recognition of priors, not on cultivating belief-updating rules. Identity politics exalts immutable characteristics, not ideas that can be moulded, improved upon, and shared extensively; it is reactionary. The incomparability of identities hinders social mobility and, so, dampens competition.
Nationalism was adequate when it united parochial interests. Today, we can do better than that by promoting an ever-expanding identity, not a collection of narrow ones. This new identity ought to be rooted in ideas, not biological characteristics.
While Fukuyama correctly identifies the decease, his solutions are dubitable, twentieth century–ish.
Fukuyama claims that, in modern liberal democracies, citizens give too little to their country. He forgets about the taxes that support the welfare states. Fukuyama imagines a universal civil service as a bonding, nation-building experience. Why not a military one? Don’t the joys of the Greek army compensate for the humiliation of the 40 percent youth unemployment? A universal participation in markets—and in labour markets in particular—would be a better bonding experience than the army or civil service, for it would reflect the ideology that makes modern societies succeed.
Fukuyama opposes multilingual education at schools, as if America needed less diversity of perspectives, not more. If taking classes in French or Chinese radicalises, don’t mathematics and computer science, the gateway drugs into the supranational? Do not rally around the English language alone, which is by no means unique to successful liberal democracies; today, every half-educated punk is fluent in English. Instead, rally around a great product: a Tesla, a Big Mac, an iPhone, the philosophy of the exchange-instigated betterment and of liberty and equality for all. Should Canada, Argentina, or South Africa come up with a better product, we should all move there, instead of sticking to a failing ideology or language. Fukuyama decries the tyranny of contemporary identity politics and political correctness, and yet he maintains that patriotic brainwashing—not critical thinking—would somehow turn out to be more noble. The international fame of Taylor Swift and Elon Musk are likely to do more for American self-esteem than any number of recitations of the American anthem.
The problem with identity politics is the same as with protectionism. Maybe, one could cleverly fine-tune tariffs and make a country a little better off. It is more likely, however, that one would get the tariffs badly wrong, to the detriment of all, start a trade war, and witness the entire tariff-setting apparatus succumb to special interests. Don’t try it at home.
Each individual is endowed with a vector of characteristics. Markets convert this vector into a scalar—wealth—and rank everyone according to this scalar. Marxists defend the interests of, and aim to redistribute resources toward, those with low values of the scalar. Marxism is a priory “anonymous” (in the sense that it uses a rather coarse aggregate of individual characteristics) and, therefore, relatively inclusive. There is a limit to Marxism’s drive to redistribute, for a capitalist sufficiently impoverished becomes a proletarian and, so, a Marxist’s constituent. There is no such safety valve built into identity politics.
Identity politics emerged when Marxism ran out of steam as the working class began to prosper and identify with the middle class. So, the fight for the equality of the scalar has been replaced by the fight for the equality of dignity derived from identity.
An identity politician refuses to aggregate individual characteristics. He denies the existence of any objective way to do so. Any aggregator would presume that at least some vectors have a higher worth than others. An identity politician fails to compare not just individuals but also societies. This failure hampers the competition of ideas and ideologies. An identity politician circumvents competition and chooses to act directly on the school syllabi. The lack of competition, besides the obvious misguided focus on identities to begin with, is liable to neglect those identities advocating which would deliver the highest social return.
Identity politics focuses on the recognition of priors, not on cultivating belief-updating rules. Identity politics exalts immutable characteristics, not ideas that can be moulded, improved upon, and shared extensively; it is reactionary. The incomparability of identities hinders social mobility and, so, dampens competition.
Nationalism was adequate when it united parochial interests. Today, we can do better than that by promoting an ever-expanding identity, not a collection of narrow ones. This new identity ought to be rooted in ideas, not biological characteristics.
While Fukuyama correctly identifies the decease, his solutions are dubitable, twentieth century–ish.
Fukuyama claims that, in modern liberal democracies, citizens give too little to their country. He forgets about the taxes that support the welfare states. Fukuyama imagines a universal civil service as a bonding, nation-building experience. Why not a military one? Don’t the joys of the Greek army compensate for the humiliation of the 40 percent youth unemployment? A universal participation in markets—and in labour markets in particular—would be a better bonding experience than the army or civil service, for it would reflect the ideology that makes modern societies succeed.
Fukuyama opposes multilingual education at schools, as if America needed less diversity of perspectives, not more. If taking classes in French or Chinese radicalises, don’t mathematics and computer science, the gateway drugs into the supranational? Do not rally around the English language alone, which is by no means unique to successful liberal democracies; today, every half-educated punk is fluent in English. Instead, rally around a great product: a Tesla, a Big Mac, an iPhone, the philosophy of the exchange-instigated betterment and of liberty and equality for all. Should Canada, Argentina, or South Africa come up with a better product, we should all move there, instead of sticking to a failing ideology or language. Fukuyama decries the tyranny of contemporary identity politics and political correctness, and yet he maintains that patriotic brainwashing—not critical thinking—would somehow turn out to be more noble. The international fame of Taylor Swift and Elon Musk are likely to do more for American self-esteem than any number of recitations of the American anthem.
The problem with identity politics is the same as with protectionism. Maybe, one could cleverly fine-tune tariffs and make a country a little better off. It is more likely, however, that one would get the tariffs badly wrong, to the detriment of all, start a trade war, and witness the entire tariff-setting apparatus succumb to special interests. Don’t try it at home.
11 August 2018
Cuba Vibra! Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba
(Auditorio Nacional, 9 August 2018)
One gets the sense of the New World in the U.S., London, and Buenos Aires. (Buenos Aires is not so new as parallel.) In the DNA of each of these places is to dare to reimagine.
The Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba company encapsulates yet another world: the world of dance that has not ossified into gymnastics (the dancers actually hear, and contribute to, the music); the world of dance that could have been Broadway, Matthew Bourne, or classical, but has chosen to be something subtly different; the world of music that is as rich, or richer, than jazz, with its complex and multiple rhythms, upbeat and dreamy at the same time; the world of music that is home to the racing, dancing thought, or two, or three; the world of colours that just match; the world of dresses that bloom; the world whose all elements cohere into a poem.
Lizt Alfonso builds and then inhabits a world whose truths are beautiful.
One gets the sense of the New World in the U.S., London, and Buenos Aires. (Buenos Aires is not so new as parallel.) In the DNA of each of these places is to dare to reimagine.
The Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba company encapsulates yet another world: the world of dance that has not ossified into gymnastics (the dancers actually hear, and contribute to, the music); the world of dance that could have been Broadway, Matthew Bourne, or classical, but has chosen to be something subtly different; the world of music that is as rich, or richer, than jazz, with its complex and multiple rhythms, upbeat and dreamy at the same time; the world of music that is home to the racing, dancing thought, or two, or three; the world of colours that just match; the world of dresses that bloom; the world whose all elements cohere into a poem.
Lizt Alfonso builds and then inhabits a world whose truths are beautiful.
21 July 2018
"Quantum Computing since Democritus" by Scott Aaronson (2013)
1.
Roger Penrose asserts that humans have access to truth that is beyond that which is accessible to computers, which run algorithms. That not all truth is accessible to algorithms is an implication of Kurt Gödel s incompleteness theorem, which---as long as one is capable of imagining a computer---follows from Alan Turning’s halting problem.
Imagine a computer (or, rather, a Turing machine, with infinite memory). Turing’s claim is that there exists no programme P that, for any programme Q capable of taking itself as an input, returns P(Q)=‘halts’ if Q(Q) halts in finite time and returns P(Q)=‘loops’ if Q(Q) runs forever. (Instead of executing Q(Q), P analyses the code of Q in order to determine whether Q(Q) would terminate in finite time. By assumption, P performs this analysis in finite time.)
Suppose, by contradiction, that the described programme P can be written. Define the programme R such that, for any programme Q capable of taking itself as an input, R(Q) runs forever if P(Q)=‘halts,’ and R(Q) halts if P(Q)=‘loops.’ Given P, R is an elementary programme to write.
Now, take R as an input for itself. By the definition of R, R(R) runs forever if P(R)=‘halts.’ Repeat: R(R) runs forever if R(R) halts (i.e., does not run forever). This is a contradiction. Hence, the hypothesised code analyser P cannot exist.
Gödel’s impossibility says that there exists no consistent, computable system (i.e., a computer equipped with a programming language) such that any statement made in the language of this system can be either proved or disproved within that system. Turing’s halting problem proves the claim.
Indeed, for an arbitrary programme X, take the statement “X halts.” Well, X either halts or it does not. A brute force way to prove or disprove the statement is to write a programme, call it P, that runs through all possible proofs and thereby either finds a proof or a disproof of the statement “X halts.” That is, P determines whether X halts. For any X. But we have just argued, from Turing's halting problem, that no such P exists. Thus, one can construct a statement (here, “X halts,” for some X) such that the entire set of proofs contains neither a proof nor a disproof of that statement. Q.E.D.
To summarise, as shown by Gödel and Turing, even most advanced computers cannot prove certain truths. Penrose postulates that men can; they have access to insight about these truths, probably thanks to some hitherto unexamined quantum mechanism processes in human brain (which are also responsible for the freedom---or at least unpredictability---of one's will). This inaccessible-to-the-computer insight is the essence of consciousness (according to Penrose). What does this direct insight feel like? It feels like understanding a mathematical result as opposed to understanding its proof. One can understand a proof without really understanding the result; alternatively, one can be convinced of the truth of the result while still groping for a proof.
Unfortunately, one is often wrong; one’s conjectures are often false. How should one then interpret the faulty “insight”? Is consciousness to blame for the faulty “understanding” of the result? Perhaps, only the brilliant people, such as Penrose, who are rarely wrong, can postulate the superiority of human brain over the Turing machine and believe that human consciousness equals the insight minus the proof, equals the difference between the noncomputable brain and the computable machine.
There is no evidence that human brain is anything more than a computer. (Sometimes, it computes astonishingly fast, but only because evolution has already been computing for 3.8 billion years.) It probably is a computer, but there is no dispositive evidence to this effect. So, what should one believe? If one is an active scientist, one may toss a coin: the diversity of beliefs and research directions in science is commendable. If one is a layman, one, too, has a choice. The belief that one is but a computer may be conducive to "better" morality, which leads to cooperative societal outcomes. Indeed, if one’s standards are low enough to grant consciousness to an advanced computer, then the chances are that these standards will also be low enough to grant consciousness to one’s political opponent, to a person of a different ethnicity, and to a mentally ill individual. This sense of shared humanity is likely to lead to a cooperative ethos that would make life better for all. Alternatively, one may choose to believe that humans are special. I see no profit in such a belief except that, to some, it may feel good.
2.
Turing’s imitation game (from his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence") provides a working definition of being human. First, being human is not about the physical form itself but about how this form can be distilled into a tweet, a blog post, an email conversation, a screenplay, or a book. (This idea has become the essence of the entire human rights movement.) Second, human intelligence generates surprising (to another human) insights. Third, there is nothing sacred about human imperfection. (If there were, we would have castigated geniuses instead of worshiping them. Freeman Dyson’s definition “God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension” applies equally well to a brilliant scientist as it does to a choreographer, a film director, a soccer player, or a computer.) Fourth, a property of a creative mind (possessed only by a “smallish proportion” of humans, according to Turing) is supercriticality. The analogy here is with a nuclear chain reaction. A supercritical mind (as opposed to a subcritical one) responds to an idea with another idea, maybe with two, or maybe with an entire theory.
Presciently, Turing warns against fetishising consciousness. Or else, one may go all the way to assuming that the only way to ascertain that A is thinking is to be A and experience it for oneself. This new convention would not be useful: “Instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks.”
Turing contemplates a variation of the imitation game in which the machine imitates someone other than a human, say, another machine. Or, let us say, a cat. If the machine succeeds to cat’s satisfaction, then we shall have to grant the machine its catness, just as the cat has done. Then, if the machine is accepted as its own by various species, it should pass for a rather universal kind of God.
Instead of picking a fight with the religious dogma, Turing points out that machine intelligence is not inconsistent with it: “In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His [God’s] power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”
Turing’s paper is a master class in writing: “The reader will have anticipated that I have no very convincing arguments of a positive nature to support my views. If I had I should not have taken such pains to point out the fallacies in contrary views.” Or “I do not think that this argument is sufficiently substantial to require refutation. Consolation would be more appropriate: perhaps this should be sought in the transmigration of souls.”
3.
The hypothesis P≠NP asserts that a problem whose solution can be verified in polynomial time (a problem in NP) need not be solvable in polynomial time (a problem in P). That is, solutions to some problems are easy to see when presented but are hard to find. The hypothesis appears to be self-evident from one's quotidian experience but its formal proof has been illusive. Because any problem in P is also in NP, to prove P≠NP one must come up with an example of a problem in NP that is not in P.
Now, it turns out that proving P=NP could also be accomplished by an example (instead of showing that every problem in NP is also in P). It has been shown that many a problem in NP is hard in the sense that all problems in NP can be efficiently reduced to it. So, in the unlikely event that one could efficiently solve any of the many well-known hard (so-called NP-complete) problems in NP, one would have efficiently solved them all. That is, one example of an NP-complete problem that is also in P would have sufficed both to show P=NP and to provide an algorithm for solving all problems in NP. Thus, even though the odds are against P=NP, the stakes are high (and the spectre is looming tall).
We choose to live in the physical world instead of living in our own minds because our minds compute slowly. The physical world computes the models that we are interested in fast. Without cognitive limitations, we all would have lived in our heads, each of us simulating a world of his liking. Now that technology rather successfully aids one living in one’s head, we shall need the outside world less. That may mean peace. In the meantime, the complex, incomprehensible world requires trust and simple rules of conduct.
Roger Penrose asserts that humans have access to truth that is beyond that which is accessible to computers, which run algorithms. That not all truth is accessible to algorithms is an implication of Kurt Gödel s incompleteness theorem, which---as long as one is capable of imagining a computer---follows from Alan Turning’s halting problem.
Imagine a computer (or, rather, a Turing machine, with infinite memory). Turing’s claim is that there exists no programme P that, for any programme Q capable of taking itself as an input, returns P(Q)=‘halts’ if Q(Q) halts in finite time and returns P(Q)=‘loops’ if Q(Q) runs forever. (Instead of executing Q(Q), P analyses the code of Q in order to determine whether Q(Q) would terminate in finite time. By assumption, P performs this analysis in finite time.)
Suppose, by contradiction, that the described programme P can be written. Define the programme R such that, for any programme Q capable of taking itself as an input, R(Q) runs forever if P(Q)=‘halts,’ and R(Q) halts if P(Q)=‘loops.’ Given P, R is an elementary programme to write.
Now, take R as an input for itself. By the definition of R, R(R) runs forever if P(R)=‘halts.’ Repeat: R(R) runs forever if R(R) halts (i.e., does not run forever). This is a contradiction. Hence, the hypothesised code analyser P cannot exist.
Gödel’s impossibility says that there exists no consistent, computable system (i.e., a computer equipped with a programming language) such that any statement made in the language of this system can be either proved or disproved within that system. Turing’s halting problem proves the claim.
Indeed, for an arbitrary programme X, take the statement “X halts.” Well, X either halts or it does not. A brute force way to prove or disprove the statement is to write a programme, call it P, that runs through all possible proofs and thereby either finds a proof or a disproof of the statement “X halts.” That is, P determines whether X halts. For any X. But we have just argued, from Turing's halting problem, that no such P exists. Thus, one can construct a statement (here, “X halts,” for some X) such that the entire set of proofs contains neither a proof nor a disproof of that statement. Q.E.D.
To summarise, as shown by Gödel and Turing, even most advanced computers cannot prove certain truths. Penrose postulates that men can; they have access to insight about these truths, probably thanks to some hitherto unexamined quantum mechanism processes in human brain (which are also responsible for the freedom---or at least unpredictability---of one's will). This inaccessible-to-the-computer insight is the essence of consciousness (according to Penrose). What does this direct insight feel like? It feels like understanding a mathematical result as opposed to understanding its proof. One can understand a proof without really understanding the result; alternatively, one can be convinced of the truth of the result while still groping for a proof.
Unfortunately, one is often wrong; one’s conjectures are often false. How should one then interpret the faulty “insight”? Is consciousness to blame for the faulty “understanding” of the result? Perhaps, only the brilliant people, such as Penrose, who are rarely wrong, can postulate the superiority of human brain over the Turing machine and believe that human consciousness equals the insight minus the proof, equals the difference between the noncomputable brain and the computable machine.
There is no evidence that human brain is anything more than a computer. (Sometimes, it computes astonishingly fast, but only because evolution has already been computing for 3.8 billion years.) It probably is a computer, but there is no dispositive evidence to this effect. So, what should one believe? If one is an active scientist, one may toss a coin: the diversity of beliefs and research directions in science is commendable. If one is a layman, one, too, has a choice. The belief that one is but a computer may be conducive to "better" morality, which leads to cooperative societal outcomes. Indeed, if one’s standards are low enough to grant consciousness to an advanced computer, then the chances are that these standards will also be low enough to grant consciousness to one’s political opponent, to a person of a different ethnicity, and to a mentally ill individual. This sense of shared humanity is likely to lead to a cooperative ethos that would make life better for all. Alternatively, one may choose to believe that humans are special. I see no profit in such a belief except that, to some, it may feel good.
2.
Turing’s imitation game (from his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence") provides a working definition of being human. First, being human is not about the physical form itself but about how this form can be distilled into a tweet, a blog post, an email conversation, a screenplay, or a book. (This idea has become the essence of the entire human rights movement.) Second, human intelligence generates surprising (to another human) insights. Third, there is nothing sacred about human imperfection. (If there were, we would have castigated geniuses instead of worshiping them. Freeman Dyson’s definition “God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension” applies equally well to a brilliant scientist as it does to a choreographer, a film director, a soccer player, or a computer.) Fourth, a property of a creative mind (possessed only by a “smallish proportion” of humans, according to Turing) is supercriticality. The analogy here is with a nuclear chain reaction. A supercritical mind (as opposed to a subcritical one) responds to an idea with another idea, maybe with two, or maybe with an entire theory.
Presciently, Turing warns against fetishising consciousness. Or else, one may go all the way to assuming that the only way to ascertain that A is thinking is to be A and experience it for oneself. This new convention would not be useful: “Instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks.”
Turing contemplates a variation of the imitation game in which the machine imitates someone other than a human, say, another machine. Or, let us say, a cat. If the machine succeeds to cat’s satisfaction, then we shall have to grant the machine its catness, just as the cat has done. Then, if the machine is accepted as its own by various species, it should pass for a rather universal kind of God.
Instead of picking a fight with the religious dogma, Turing points out that machine intelligence is not inconsistent with it: “In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His [God’s] power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”
Turing’s paper is a master class in writing: “The reader will have anticipated that I have no very convincing arguments of a positive nature to support my views. If I had I should not have taken such pains to point out the fallacies in contrary views.” Or “I do not think that this argument is sufficiently substantial to require refutation. Consolation would be more appropriate: perhaps this should be sought in the transmigration of souls.”
3.
The hypothesis P≠NP asserts that a problem whose solution can be verified in polynomial time (a problem in NP) need not be solvable in polynomial time (a problem in P). That is, solutions to some problems are easy to see when presented but are hard to find. The hypothesis appears to be self-evident from one's quotidian experience but its formal proof has been illusive. Because any problem in P is also in NP, to prove P≠NP one must come up with an example of a problem in NP that is not in P.
Now, it turns out that proving P=NP could also be accomplished by an example (instead of showing that every problem in NP is also in P). It has been shown that many a problem in NP is hard in the sense that all problems in NP can be efficiently reduced to it. So, in the unlikely event that one could efficiently solve any of the many well-known hard (so-called NP-complete) problems in NP, one would have efficiently solved them all. That is, one example of an NP-complete problem that is also in P would have sufficed both to show P=NP and to provide an algorithm for solving all problems in NP. Thus, even though the odds are against P=NP, the stakes are high (and the spectre is looming tall).
We choose to live in the physical world instead of living in our own minds because our minds compute slowly. The physical world computes the models that we are interested in fast. Without cognitive limitations, we all would have lived in our heads, each of us simulating a world of his liking. Now that technology rather successfully aids one living in one’s head, we shall need the outside world less. That may mean peace. In the meantime, the complex, incomprehensible world requires trust and simple rules of conduct.
13 July 2018
"Room to Dream" by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna (2018)
One should attempt to devote one’s life to what one enjoys most and should not fight one’s nature---as long as doing so enables one to earn enough to maintain a decent lifestyle.
Being an artist is a decease, an obsession. The artist can be poor; he does not create for money. (A failure liberates unless it impoverishes.) Or the artist can be rich, owing to his obsessive work ethics.
Art deserves a life of its own.
Life’s narrative is nonlinear. Any linearity is imaginary; it emerges as one observes the world and cherry-picks facts and frames to make up stories. Reading history is a much saner enterprise than following the news because history has been pre-digested by historians, whereas the news is a madman’s nightmare.
(Similarly, one's train of thought is typically nonlinear and rarely adds up to a logically consistent system, unless one sets out to produce a mathematical model. Hence, it is nonsensical to ask, say: "What did John Rawls really mean?" He did not.)
Improvisation is ultimate art: mould the circumstances, do not get attached to what was supposed to be. The best directors and choreographers improvise off of their actors’ and dancers’ idiosyncratic skills. (Ballet trustees canonise the letter and neglect the spirit of the work, thereby euthanising it.)
Life is complete without answers.
Lynch is an inherently kind man and does not resist the impulse of kindness. But each has his own driver of creativity. Not all drivers are so benevolent, towards the creator as well as his collaborators.
Being an artist is a decease, an obsession. The artist can be poor; he does not create for money. (A failure liberates unless it impoverishes.) Or the artist can be rich, owing to his obsessive work ethics.
Art deserves a life of its own.
Life’s narrative is nonlinear. Any linearity is imaginary; it emerges as one observes the world and cherry-picks facts and frames to make up stories. Reading history is a much saner enterprise than following the news because history has been pre-digested by historians, whereas the news is a madman’s nightmare.
(Similarly, one's train of thought is typically nonlinear and rarely adds up to a logically consistent system, unless one sets out to produce a mathematical model. Hence, it is nonsensical to ask, say: "What did John Rawls really mean?" He did not.)
Improvisation is ultimate art: mould the circumstances, do not get attached to what was supposed to be. The best directors and choreographers improvise off of their actors’ and dancers’ idiosyncratic skills. (Ballet trustees canonise the letter and neglect the spirit of the work, thereby euthanising it.)
Life is complete without answers.
Lynch is an inherently kind man and does not resist the impulse of kindness. But each has his own driver of creativity. Not all drivers are so benevolent, towards the creator as well as his collaborators.
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