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trancequility
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This is irking me.
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Aug 28 03:22 UTC 2007 |
Okay, I'm going to assume uncle remmers isn't ignorning me and proceed to ask
an off topic question.
Is there any logical explanation why, when I'm almost 33, finally have a real
clear understand of Point Set Topology? I find this sort of odd that a branch
of mathematics I learned 13 years ago and never really understood at the time
is finally starting to sink into my skull now.
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| 62 responses total. |
remmers
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response 1 of 62:
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Aug 28 14:23 UTC 2007 |
Seems to be yet another example of the way the mind assimilates and
problem-solves at an unconscious level. The pieces were there; your
brain was organizing them, and perhaps incorporating new bits of
information that you didn't realize were connected, over a 13-year
period and you weren't even aware of it. When the final result bubbles
into your consciousness, it seems to come out of nowhere, by magic.
Examples from my own experience:
(1) I work on a crossword puzzle, get stuck on some words, put it aside.
Next day, I pick up the puzzle again and the answers magically jump out
at me.
(2) From my student days - I'm taking a math course, all during the
semester I'm in a state of vague, uncomfortable frustration about the
concepts, feeling like I'm not getting it. Then, the night before the
final exam, I'm going over the material, and BANG! Suddenly, it all
makes sense.
The brain seems to be pretty good at background tasks.
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nharmon
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response 2 of 62:
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Aug 28 14:52 UTC 2007 |
As long as you don't nice your brain with booze like Chad does, it does
seem to be pretty good at that. ;-)
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sholmes
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response 3 of 62:
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Aug 28 15:22 UTC 2007 |
I loved the book "How to solve it" by G Polya.
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rcurl
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response 4 of 62:
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Aug 28 19:34 UTC 2007 |
Re #1: I have also frequently observed # (1). But my hypothesis is that
taking time off allows mental impediments - accumulated detritus from
thinking? - to get cleared out. I don't think the brain independently
continues to work on problems you haven't been able to solve. You have to
return to the task yourself.
In regard to # (2) above - I found that the best way to surmount a problem
of understanding a concept is.....teach it. That is, organize the material
so you understand it well enough to teach it to someone else.
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djdoboy
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response 5 of 62:
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Aug 29 00:46 UTC 2007 |
nharmon,
Will you please quit shut your fucking mouth before I drive over to
Temperance, MI and fucking beat you and your fat ass wife up. Topology is 10x
harder than Calculus 3 or Linear Algebra. So just fucking shut your mouth on
something you know nothing about and go back to trying to figure out the
fucking difference between a Perl reference, a C pointer, and what the
controlling terminal is on Unix you fucking retarded tech monkey.
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unicorn
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response 6 of 62:
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Aug 29 04:18 UTC 2007 |
#4: I'm not su sure about that. I recall at least one case where I
was working on trying to solve a problem for a couple of months, and
finally gave up, feeling that there wasn't a solution to the problem.
A week later, I was lying in bed after waking up in the morning,
staring at the ceiling, letting my thoughts wander from one thing to
another without direction, and suddenly the answer to the question I
had given up on popped into my head out of the blue. I wasn't even
thinking about the problem at the time, and I don't know of any reason
for that subject to have popped into my mind at that particular time.
I wasn't sure at the time whether the solution that popped into my
head fit all the facts of the problem, but it seemed plausible enough
that I had to jump out of bed to check my references to verify that
it actually did (and it did).
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rcurl
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response 7 of 62:
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Aug 29 05:38 UTC 2007 |
That is consistent with my hypothesis, that the "block" to that realization
dropped. But let me ask, what was the nature of the "solution to the problem"
that popped into your head. Did the solution use any concepts *that you
could not understand*? If the brain had been "working" on the problem while
you were not conscious of it, it is likely to have gotten well beyond your
current understannding. If it was just the next step, then it seems more
likely it was just "unblocked".
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unicorn
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response 8 of 62:
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Aug 29 06:06 UTC 2007 |
Well, to explain the problem and the solution here would not be a
simple matter. I ended writing a complete essay on the subject, which
I have since misplaced, and plan on trying to reconstruct. I'm sure
from reading what you've written on grex elsewhere that the subject
would not interest you anyway. I had to do with reconciling two verses
in the Bible with the rest of the Bible in a way that would avoid
contradictions, and I had come to the conclusion that that wasn't
possible, and that something had been lost through mistranslation
over the centuries. The solution had to do with applying a particular
word in the original Greek in a different way than I had heard it
applied before, but that was not inconsistent with the actual meaning
of the Greek word (to be exact, it was applying the Greek word "porneia",
which means "sexual immorality" to a marriage rather than to relations
outside of the marriage).
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scholar
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response 9 of 62:
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Aug 29 06:18 UTC 2007 |
Oh lord
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remmers
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response 10 of 62:
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Aug 29 12:41 UTC 2007 |
From point set topology to biblical studies in 10 responses, with an
intermediate stop at brain function. Only on Grex...
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cross
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response 11 of 62:
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Aug 29 14:54 UTC 2007 |
Gotta love the systems conference.
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rcurl
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response 12 of 62:
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Aug 29 17:52 UTC 2007 |
Re #8: you're right: I consider all biblical scholarship as mostly
sophistry, since the bible is a mishmash of folk tales written down at
different times by different people in different languages, and then
distorted in translation.
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cross
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response 13 of 62:
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Aug 29 19:00 UTC 2007 |
Regarding #12; We are now moving very, very far away from the focus of this
conference. If you want to debate religion, please take it elsewhere.
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unicorn
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response 14 of 62:
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Aug 29 20:13 UTC 2007 |
I probably said more about the actual problem than I should have. I
was just giving one example of a time when I was no longer actively
working on a problem and the answer came to me out of the blue. I
wish I could have come up with one that involved programming, and
there probably is one, but it doesn't come to mind right now.
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rcurl
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response 15 of 62:
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Aug 30 02:25 UTC 2007 |
A question: would the answer to your problem that came to you suddenly be
the answer that all scholars in the field would agree upon? Or was it just
an answer that satisfied you? Also, in subjects like that, what is the
link between the problem and the answer? That is, is it deterministic
(even if not unique), such as in programmming or other realms of science?
I have had sudden "insights" in science from reading a book or paper, and
finding an approach that I could use in an entirely different area not
envisaged by the authors I read, to solve problems I have been
considering. I suppose this is more "serendipity" than unconscious
reasoning.
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cross
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response 16 of 62:
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Aug 30 14:02 UTC 2007 |
Answers in programming are not necessary deterministic. It is possible for
two different programmers to come up with different, yet equally reasonable,
solutions to the same problem. Hence, its designation as an engineering form
rather than a science.
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rcurl
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response 17 of 62:
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Aug 30 17:39 UTC 2007 |
That's why I wrote "even if not unique", as one can have multiple
deterministic routes to the same end.
The same is true in science. There is a famous story about Norbert Wiener,
the "father of cybernetics". He was teaching a class at MIT and went
through a long, involved, mathematical derivation. Afterward a student
questioned an intermediate step. Wiener studied the blackboard for a
minute, and then turned to the student and said "I get the same result by
a different method".
(I recall Wiener walking the halls at MIT reading, while keeping a finger
trailing along the wall as a guide.
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nharmon
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response 18 of 62:
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Aug 30 18:13 UTC 2007 |
Adding 5 and subtracting 4 isn't wholly different from adding 7 and
subtracting 6. On the other hand, there are so many different ways to
write a "Hello world" program that each likely does it all differently.
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cross
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response 19 of 62:
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Aug 31 01:17 UTC 2007 |
Regarding #17; I guess what I'm saying is that even the process doesn't have
to be deterministic. Plenty of engineer descisions have been made on the flip
of a coin (yes yes, one could argue that that's actually deterministic, yada
yada yada).
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trancequility
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response 20 of 62:
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Aug 31 01:18 UTC 2007 |
I think the moron in #18 was looking for the word verbose.
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rcurl
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response 21 of 62:
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Aug 31 05:19 UTC 2007 |
Re #19: that's an important point. In fact, many engineering decisions are
*optional*: you don't even have to flip a coin to get the same result by
many different choices. It just might not make any difference, so the
choice might depend on who you like to order from, or which catalogs you
have. The process is only then "deterministic" because it hardly matters
how some choices are made. There are also optional ways to write scripts
for any particular purpose. A philosophical question: if the route to D
from A can go through either B or C with no otherwise distinguishable
difference, was D reached in a "deterministic" manner if you don't know
which was taken? (I think the word "deterministic" isn't the right word
for what we need.)
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unicorn
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response 22 of 62:
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Aug 31 06:05 UTC 2007 |
#15: Would all scholars agree with my solution? Maybe not, but from
my reading, they don't all agree on any other explanation. On the
other hand, I discussed it with a number of people, including several
who had studied Biblical Greek, and was able to convince several of
my conclusion. One pastor even showed me an article that he had that
agreed with my conclusion and had additional arguments for it that I
hadn't thought of. The few people who I discussed it with who
disagreed with me used emotional arguments based on why they didn't
think God would be so strict, but they couldn't give me any arguments
based on scholarly study of the text using the original Greek (or even
using the English text).
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djdoboy
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response 23 of 62:
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Aug 31 13:32 UTC 2007 |
I think rane might be ignoring me . Like I care. This fag probably has to be
the dumbest PhD i've seen yet. Anyhow for cross, mcnally, and the rest that
don't have me on ignore yet, I would like to point out that certain aspects
of Mechanical Engineering are probablistic. I say probablistic as opposed to
heuristic.
This is going back to my ME days.....
Say one department measures every 5th gear with a certain degree of accuracy
and writes this down in a log book. Now I take this log book and enter in the
numbers on a computer. I would get a chart of points that would hopefully fall
within the accepted limits. If these points start going outside the accepted
limits, then I can infer that something funky is going on on the production
line. In this case, I would be using probability to make a decision.
I'm not too sure how this relates to the discussion. I think it just sounded
cool.
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cross
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response 24 of 62:
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Aug 31 14:01 UTC 2007 |
Regarding #21; Short answer: No.
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