[FRIAM] FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Robert Wall]

Hi Glen,

What you describe as *flow* or being *in the zone* has been precisely
written
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W94FE6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1>
and talked
<https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow#t-396713> about
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the Optimal Experience.  No one will
experience this quite the same way, as the flow experience requires
both skill and challenge in an area where flow will occur. By his own
statements, Einstein is said to have been in flow when he synthesized the
concept of General and Special Relativity. At the time he was arguably very
skilled in math and physics and, of course, very challenged.

However, I prefer Alfred North Whitehead's (et al.) concept that we are all
always in *flow*. We just don't alway realize it. In his *Process
Philosophy*, as conveyed  in his *Process and Reality*, he writes about the
two modes of perceptual experience: (1) *Presentational Immediacy* [the
bits of data that get presented to us through our senses--or imagination]
and (2) *Causal Efficacy* [the conditioning of the present by the past].
Curiously, Csikszentmihalyi says that we can only process data from our
senses at a rate of 110 bit/sec.  Reading this post likely will chew up 60
bits/sec. of that bandwidth. 😴

Why I bring this up at all is that Whitehead thinks that what integrates
these two modes into the whole of what we perceive is *Symbolic Reference*.
Symbolic reference is kind of like how we tag bits of our real-world
immersion for building a largely symbolic but sustainable--for us
individually--worldview. Most time these symbolic references are provided
to us--inculcated--by others like with a religion or by our parents.  Most
are satisfied with that. In your friend's case, I believe it is possible
that y' all were unsettling--challenging--his worldview ... or, he
challenging yours.

Flow is not likely to be aroused in a social context. It is an inner state
... what the Greeks and Csikszentmihalyi would say is the entering into
an alternate reality devoid of our sense of self.  Your existence melts
away in such a state. So our symbols get challenged or, perhaps, disappear
as well. French social philosophers Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze
also talk about symbolism, but it was at a social level.  As far as I am
concerned, Flow can't be achieved at the level of society ... but, boy I
wish that that were not so.  Csikszentmihalyi talks about the opposite of
Flow that occurs on a social level that often occurs when society has been
thrown into a chaos as with war or Trumpism. 🤔

Is mathematics invented or discovered?  This is a perennial topic that
arises within my philosophy group.  It never really gets resolved, but how
could it be?   It is the ultimate of symbolic reference systems because of
its precision in predicting the way the world manifests itself to our
perception. This is not so true of our other symbols or abstractions. So
are they any different?  In a way, they are because mathematical symbols
form from an axiom-driven language. But, notwithstanding Jerry Fodor's
"built-in" syntactic language of thought, languages are human inventions
based on metaphors [if you like George Lakoff].  Languages work among
cultures because they are more or less conventional (acceptable) to a
culture.  The fact that they can be translated into other languages is
because we are all immersed in the same reality. In this way, I tend to
think of mathematics as invented. If you are a Platonist--a worldview--you
will likely disagree.

As I often do, I  kind of resonate with Vladimyr's thought, which you
included in your post. It is very Csikszentmihalyi-est. I do think that
simulations can lure us into thinking that they are an exact dynamic
facsimile of the reality which they try to abstract into an analytical
model.  There are all kinds of things about simulations that can lead us
astray. Fidelity is one thing, obviously.  But, I think that the worst
thing--and this is often the fate of a simulator because of time and
funding--is when they get so complicated that no one understands the
process for how the results were computed.  This--like with many neural
networks--is when the simulator just become an Oracle.  This is kind of
what happened with Henry Markam's Blue Brain Project
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-human-brain-project-went-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/>,
building a simulation of something for which they didn't know the first
principles.  I think also this is what John Horgan wrote about concerning
what was going on at the Santa Fe Institute in his *SA* article From
Complexity to Perplexity
<http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/hogan.complexperplex.htm>.

But, as Vladimyr muses, maybe this is the best we can do ... and symbolic
reference is what nature served up for us to cope, concerning what we are
perceiving.  But, as with all smart systems, a smart entity will always try
to challenge and refine those symbols with continuous feedback--FLOW.
However, in the larger scheme of things, it really doesn't matter if
mathematics was invented or discovered. I mean, where did the concept of a
hammer come from? 🤔

Cheers

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 11:13 AM, glen ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> There's no doubt that there's some kernel of truth to the concept of
> "flow" or "in the zone".  I always make the mistake of thinking others have
> had similar experiences to mine.  But at our journal club a few weeks ago,
> while discussing whether math is invented or discovered, one guy kept
> conflating mathematical symbols with their semantic grounding.  A couple of
> us kept trying to make the point that after you've abstracted all the
> symbols away from their grounding, so that you're just manipulating the
> symbols, you get into the state where you start to think of the math,
> itself, as having an ontological existence.  You're "in the zone", so to
> speak, where the math becomes real as opposed to a proxy for the real.
> That the other guy couldn't grok it could be a sign that he's never entered
> that zone, hamstrung by his grounding to physical reality.
>
> Or, he could have simply felt defensive because he thought we kept
> attacking him ... you never know how some people interpret the milieu.
>
> On 02/20/2017 10:44 PM, Vladimyr Burachynsky wrote:
> > Some music allows some people to focus longer. Maybe Taser jolts work
> for others. The simulation lures us into fantasy lands. Which I kinda like
> sometimes.
> > Time links these sims of mine but temporality is a coincidence not a
> true cause and we don't live long enough to test every contingency, so we
> make do with delusions. There seems no path out of this box. The box just
> grows with us.
> > vib
> >
> > So why did evolution place so much emphasis on time...
>
> --
> ☣ glen
>
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