[FRIAM] hidden

[Frank Wimberly]

Forget covariant tensors (again).  There was a beautiful, talented girl in
my sixth grade class.  She could dance ballet, draw striking pictures,
etc.  I thought of her occasionally over the decades.  When Google search
became available I discovered that she was married to a celebrity.

When you say that my inner life isn't private, Nick, do you mean you could
figure out her name given what I've just written?  As I think of her face,
can you "see" it well enough to recognize her photo?

I just don't understand what you mean when you question that I have a
private inner life.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, May 18, 2020, 7:47 PM Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:

> Frank, Glen, Nick,
>
> Glen writes:
> `... in last week's Zoom, I mentioned to Jon (in response
> to his query to Frank about RSA-encryption::mind) that I
> think homomorphic encryption is a better analogy (to mind).`
>
> Fully homomorphic encryption† was also the metaphor I originally
> had in mind. In an effort to not complicate matters, I decided to focus
> on the idea of public key encryption more generally. Thank you, Glen
> for taking it the rest of the way. Because Glen, Nick and I appear to
> differ on Frank's mind only in that we disagree about the way that
> Frank's mind is public, I will attempt to switch sides and argue for
> why his mind may be private.
>
> Firstly, while we may only need to know some combination of
> *transformations* which will allow us to know his mind, it may
> be the case that those transformations are not accessible to
> us. As an example and in analogy to computation, it may be the
> case that we are not the kind of machines which can recognize
> the language produced by a mind. While we as observers are
> able to finite automata our way along observations of Frank,
> his mind is producing context-free sentences, say. I don't
> entirely buy this argument, but it also may be defendable.
> As another example/analogy, we may be attempting to solve
> a problem analogous to those geometric problems of Greek
> antiquity††. It may take a psychological analog to Galois theory
> before we understand exactly why we can't know Frank's mind.
>
> Secondly, it may be that the encryption metaphor should
> actually be something closer to hashing. A friend of mine
> once said that *rememberings* were morphisms between
> *forgettings*. We are often ok with the idea that memory is
> lossy, but why not thoughts themselves? Perhaps, at least
> with regard to what we can observer of Frank, every time
> Frank thinks of a covariant tensor he is reconstituting
> something fundamentally different. The *remembering* is
> always between different *forgettings*.
>
> Ok, I am not sure I could necessarily defend these thoughts.
> Further, I am not sure they are necessarily helpful to our
> conversation. It seemed a good idea to try.
>
> On the topic of steganography, I wanted to mention the
> book *Steganographia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganographia>*. I
> had originally read about it in some
> part of Neal Stephenson's *Baroque Cycle*, and it has since
> found a place in my heart. The book, originally written in
> 1499, is perhaps the oldest text on the subject of cryptography.
> What is amazing about the book is that it is an example of
> itself (nod to Nick). The plaintext content of the book is
> on the subject of magic, but for a reader clever enough to
> find the deciphering key the book is about cryptography.
> I had found a copy from the 1700's in the rare books library
> at the University of Texas some years ago. The content was
> *doubly hidden* from me as I neither had the deciphering
> key nor can I read Latin ;)
>
> Jon
>
> †: If any members of the group would like to form a reading
> group around Craig Gentry's thesis on FHE
> <https://www.bookdepository.com/Fully-Homomorphic-Encryption-Scheme-Craig-Gentry/9781243663139>,
> I would gladly
> participate.
> †† While it turned out that the Greek's assumptions about
> the power of a compass and straightedge were incorrect,
> work beginning with Margherita Beloch
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margherita_Piazzola_Beloch> (and
> culminating
> with the Huzita-Hatori
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huzita%E2%80%93Hatori_axioms> axioms) show
> that origami would
> have been a more powerful choice!
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