[FRIAM] A Cloud (Thread?) Never Dies

Sat Jun 6 16:11:52 EDT 2020

Jon,

I see Alexander's horned sphere is defined in a problem in Spivak's book on
differential geometry.  I'm glad you mentioned it.

Frank

On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 9:24 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> Jon -
>
> Bombastic free-for-all is an apt description.
>
> I think "what is a cloud" came up when I used my own "watching a cloud
> evolve" as an example of how one might begin to develop an intuition for
> higher-dimensional objects/phenomena through the limits of our visual
> system.   This was for Dave's question about trying to develop an intuition
> for the 4-polytopes he thinks he observes/perceives/experiences in his
> dreams/visions.
>
> I tossed in another extra degree of freedom in the discussion by
> introducing SimTable's aspirations to use the often-widely-visible skyscape
> of clouds and even more directly interestingly, smoke plumes for the
> primary purpose of calibrating multiple cameras whose view frustums might
> include the same clouds.   This augments capturing or pre-stating the
> camera extrinsics (location/pose) and intrinsics (focal length/FOV, etc.)
> and the use of landscape features (skyline, etc.) for tweaking
> calibration.   Smoke plumes, of course, have more direct utility to the
> problem at hand, of estimating and locating wildfire as it evolves.
>
> The first observation about clouds is very intuitional and perhaps
> whimsical...  maybe I really can't intuit anything about the distribution
> of atmospheric conditions by observing the evolution of a cloud...  and the
> second is very practical and any mathematical abstractions obtained for
> that purpose are only as meaningful as they are useful.    I appreciate
> your offering of the _Alexander Horned Sphere_ in that spirit.
>
> Clouds are interesting "alternative" objects to say mountains or buildings
> because of there ephemerality and ambiguity of boundary, etc.   This
> tangent may be of interest to those considering "what means object".
>
> Over my shoulder in many of our zoom calls, sits a hand-painted and framed
> phrase by the hand (and mind?) of Thich Naht Hahn which states "A Cloud
> Never Dies".   This use of the term "Cloud" references (for me) all of the
> observations above and many more.   Thus the explosion of threads when
> things like this are discussed on FriAM.
>
> Some of us are primarily an analytical bunch, wanting to dissect things
> down until we feel we understand (apprehend) the parts directly and then by
> extension, possibly understand the original whole in that way.   Of course,
> the theme that brought this group together is bigger than that.   Systems
> Thinking, Complexity, Synthesis, Emergence, Exaptation, Spandrels,
> Attractors, etc.  are all complementary to the traditions of Analytical
> Thinking, yet compatible.
>
> So, on this list, I really have no other goal perhaps than to put "yet
> more perspectives on the table" on the off chance that someone will
> recognize one of them and provide some parallax that is useful (or
> interesting) to me.   Well, that and to _scratch the itches_ that sometimes
> spontaneously jump up under the casts that others try to put around what
> they see to be a broken limb, thinking that reducing the degrees of freedom
> is the best way to "put it right".
>
> We ARE the proverbial "Blind Men and the Elephant".   Our meta-trickster
> made this observation weeks ago:
>
>     http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-elephant-in-room.html
>
> - Steve
> On 6/5/20 11:13 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
>
> I was hoping you would sketch out more of your objection
> to my claim that the Alexander horned sphere provides an
> example of a fractal space whose topology is given simply
> as a sphere. In speech, I can feel pressured to make the
> best of the few words I have room to express and sometimes
> at the expense of accuracy. Analysis of the Alexander horned
> sphere (and the space it encloses) is a bit more nuanced
> than I let on, the details of which may be helpful for our
> discussion of clouds. OTOH, Friam discussions are sometimes
> nothing short of a bombastic free-for-all where injecting
> aporia or the occasional first order footnote is about
> *as good as one can hope for*. If it turns out to help our
> discussion here, I will dust off my copy of *Hocking & Young*.
>
> Yes, a discussion of limit points would be necessary for
> investigating the topology of this pathological object.
> Analysis of its interior and exterior yield very different
> results, while the ball is simply connected its boundary
> is not. Somehow, this off-the-top-of-my-head example
> seemed to be relevant enough to Nick's itch that I hoped
> it would slow things down.
>
> Nick, Steve, Frank, et al.
>
> Before we dive into Mandelbrot thumping, or some other
> obnoxious witch hunt of popular mathematics, what exactly
> is our goal? I don't mind beginning with Nick's definition of
> a cloud, but only if that means we work to prove what is
> and what is not an entailing theorem. Further, I will hope
> that we *do not* confuse these theorems for truths about
> our material world. I maintain that any definition we start
> with will have *some* domain of applicability, but we are
> far too along in our understanding of rhetoric (as a culture)
> to waste time building strawmen. Granted this, if Nick wants
> to use *shrouds* as a way of talking about Darboux sums
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darboux_integral>
> converging to Riemann Integrals, say, well fine. I am not
> entirely sure there is any particular reason we need to
> dive into an analytic hole, but hey. Nick, if there is a
> question underlying all of this demand for technology,
> please state it. EricC, however, helped me to feel justified
> in claiming that asking *what is a cloud, really* is not a
> productive question.
>
> Jon
>
>
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-- 
Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
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