13 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
Technology Enables IA, but Culture Must Evolve for It
Look at what intellect would be without writing or the printing press—these primitive technologies already make such a difference. Just think of what the latest computer technology will be able to do to further augment the intellect!
But this is a non-sequitur: what makes writing and paper powerful is technology to some extent, but it is mostly the rich culture that grew up around it.
Let’s look at writing first. The earlies extant samples of writing are Babylonian clay tablets contai... 1 
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notes24 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Geometry Sets the Mind Right
Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence. It has been assumed that the followmg statement was written Upon Plato's door: 'No one who is not a geometrician ...Folksonomies: mathematics meditation
Folksonomies: mathematics meditation
1 Makes me think about mindfulness meditation, which is fine, but there are meditative practices that are proactive as well.
21 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Sacrifices Necessary to be a Sports Star
But it’s better for us not to know the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so very good at one particular thing... the actual facts of the sacrifices repel us when we see them: basketball geniuses who cannot read, sprinters who dope themselves, defensive tackles who shoot up with bovine hormones until they collapse or explode. We prefer not to consider closely the shockingly vapid and primitive comments uttered by athletes in post-contest interviews or to cons...Folksonomies: sports kinesthetics
Folksonomies: sports kinesthetics
A disturbing revelation. Possibly an overstatement or anecdotal, but the idea that total devotion to kinesthetic intelligence comes at the cost of other forms of intellect makes sense.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Humanity has Reached the Hatching Point
To begin our position-fixing
aboard our Spaceship Earth we must first acknowledge that the
abundance of immediately consumable, obviously desirable or
utterly essential resources have been sufficient until now to allow us
to carry on despite our ignorance. Being eventually exhaustible and
spoilable, they have been adequate only up to this critical moment.
This cushion-for-error of humanity's survival and growth up to now
was apparently provided just as a bird inside of the egg is provided
wi... 1 notes
notesThinking of our Earth as an egg, we have been living on the yolk so far. We are reaching the point, by burning our fossile fuels off and exceeding the production capacity of our agriculture, where our intellect must launch us into the stars.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Spaceship Earth Didn't Come with Instructions
One of the interesting things to me about our spaceship is that it is
a mechanical vehicle, just as is an automobile. If you own an
automobile, you realize that you must put oil and gas into it, and
you must put water in the radiator and take care of the car as a
whole. You begin to develop quite a little thermodynamic sense.
You know that you're either going to have to keep the machine in
good order or it's going to be in trouble and fail to function. We
have not been seeing our Spaceship Ea... 1 notes
notesIt requires maintenance in order to continue supporting our growing civilization, but we have to discover, through empiricism and experimentation, what that maintenance is.
25 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
How Math Books Are Like Poetry Books
If you pick up a textbook on poetry and thumb the pages, you will see poems interspersed between explanations, explanations that English professors will call prose. Prose differs from poetry in that it is a major subcategory of how language is used.
Prose encompasses all the normal uses: novels, texts,
newspapers, magazines, letter writing, and such. But poetry is different! Poetry is a highly charged telescopic (and sometimes rhythmic) use of the English language, which is employed to simul...Folksonomies: mathematics poetry
Folksonomies: mathematics poetry
1 notes
notesAn intermix of algebra/verse and prose explanations.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Laplace's Demon
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain an...Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
1 notes
notesIf an intellect could know all the positions and motions of the Universe at one point could predict the future.
06 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
Knowledge Increases
The progress of the sciences secures the progress of the art of instruction, which again accelerates in its turn that of the sciences; and this reciprocal influence, the action of which is incessantly increased, must be ranked in the number of the most prolific and powerful causes of the improvement of the human race. At present, a young man, upon finishing his studies and quitting our schools, may know more of the principles of mathematics than Newton acquired by profound study, or discovere...By standing on the shoulders of giants, the college-graduate can know more than Newton learned in a lifetime through all his hard work and discovery.
26 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Vulcan Meditation
In any system of meditation, one can categorize the techniques endlessly.
One could divide them into active, passive, and waking, or make
distinctions between mental, emotional, and physical meditations. Active
meditation techniques require you to focus on some object to the
exclusion of all else - like a meditating on a symbol, a set of words or
an image. A passive meditation involves stilling the mind so that the
train of thoughts which occupy our consciousness so pervasively stop. The
su...Folksonomies: meditation
Folksonomies: meditation
There are three types of meditation: intellectual, emotional, and physical.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Gallileo's Realy Revolution
What the founders of modern science, among them Galileo, had to do, was not to criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and to replace it by another. They had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and to reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept of knowledge, a new concept of science—and even to replace a pretty ... 1 notes
notesWasn't in his new scientific truths, but in his methodology for obtaining them.
