Heraclitus as Quantum Physicist

Someone just asked me who Heraclitus was.  A Greek philosopher I said.  Phew, I thought, when I looked up the wikipedia entry to show to that person - it certainly said he was a Greek philosopher (got that one right).  Reading through the article, I came across this:

In Heraclitus a perceived object is a harmony between two fundamental units of change, a waxing and a waning. He typically uses the ordinary word "to become" (gignesthai or ginesthai, root sense of being born), which led to his being characterized as the philosopher of becoming rather than of being. He recognizes the changing of objects with the flow of time.

Plato argues against Heraclitus as follows:[57] - from Cratylus Paragraph 440 sections c-d.

How can that be a real thing which is never in the same state? ... for at the moment that the observer approaches, then they become other ... so that you cannot get any further in knowing their nature or state .... but if that which knows and that which is known exist ever ... then I do not think they can resemble a process or flux ....

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus, accessed 19th March 2013).

The Plato quote, especially the part "for at the moment that the observer approaches, then they become other", seems to indicate that maybe Heraclitus was an original quantum physicist - stating a formulation of the observer effect (partially related to the uncertainty principle).

Heraclitus is an interesting read - worthwhile re-acquainting oneself with his work.

Irreversible

Interesting movie this - Irreversible

Interesting review this ...
http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/reviews/i/irreversible.html

Irréversible (Irreversible, 2002)

Gaspar Noé

France

99 min, color, French (English subtitles)

Review © 2003 Branislav L. Slantchev

Time destroys all things.

This is the first time I have ever seen over half the audience marching out in disgust barely 20 minutes into the film. It was also the first time I heard people shouting at the screen (or was it at us, the ones who stayed behind?) that they did not think rape was such an art. (It is not, but the marching ants should be forgiven for completely and irreversibly missing that simple fact.) It was also the first film where people were obviously uncomfortable with being seen in public watching it.

Irreversible is brutal. There is no finessing this (although the guy who wrote the Film Guide capsule summary tried very hard with bullshit like "A precisely constructed masterpiece, Irreversible penetrates into the darkest regions of human action and existentially, biologically, and sociologically explores the nature of free will and the repercussions of existence." Yeah, and Nietzche was my hamster.) nor should there be any attempts to do so. The film is the story of Alex (Monica Bellucci), her lover and soon-to-be father of her child Marcus (Vincent Cassell), and her cerebral and melancholic ex-lover Pierre (Albert Dupontel) who go to a party. She leaves early and gets raped by a guy called Tenia (Jo Prestia), who then beats her into a coma. Marcus and Pierre track the guy down the same night and Pierre kills him by smashing his head repeatedly with a fire extinguisher even though he has spent most of the hunt trying to persuade the explosive Marcus to give up.

Is this just a run of the mill revenge flick that reminded me somehow of Deliverance and I Spit on Your Grave? Despite the lofty intentions of the reviewer I cited above, is this all the film is, even if it is filmed in reverse. Is it any less of an art than just about any secular European piece of art from the last two millennia? The film has a simple point to make: shit happens almost invariably and there is no changing that... There is no reversing that in real life unlike through the medium of art, which can make even the irreversible go from tragic to happy, from death to life, contrary to nature, contrary to society, and contrary to fate.

The film really is a statement about the power art exerts on our rather artless minds. When the film ended with a pulsating white screen and ear-blasting noise I felt strangely serene, having in my mind the last pastoral scene with Alex lying on the grass with children playing around. Knowing full well how the story ended in "real life" was not enough to overcome that feeling. The idyllic sight was tinged with sadness by the general knowledge that all things must perish, and the most beautiful and delicate moments must pass forever.

Strangely, this only made the scene even more precious, perhaps by the desire to capture that fleeting moment and for a brief second experience its own beauty in dying. The pose of the fat naked man at the beginning of the film talking about having spent time in jail for sleeping with his beautiful daughter reminded me of Buddha and hence of Buddhism with its profoundly pessimistic world view that sees existence as suffering and portrays its goal as one of forgetting forever.

At this the film marvelously succeeded for time does destroy all things and only art can halt its destruction and make it somewhat less painful. If one does not seek nirvana, this is as close as one will ever get to happiness and eternity. The progression from chaos to order, very unnatural because it goes contrary to everything we know about the universe, is accentuated by the splendid camera work which depicts these first (although chronologically last) events as a whirlwhind of sights where we can only catch glimpses of events and guess at what's going on mostly from the dialogue. It then becomes steadier as art-time moves forward to describe the "real-time" backward, it becomes calmer, the colors lose much of their red vibrancy, to fade out into a thorough white.

The film is very brutal but so is some of the best art. Violence is always essential to art just like it is essential to life. If it is the violence in leaves torn from the tree by the wind, or a wolf devoring its prey, or a human being killing another, it is all death; and it is death that tinges life with meaning, gives taste to happiness, and makes sadness the color of our monochrome existence. One who insists on being happy by avoiding violence never is and never can be. But he can be safe even if it means safe to die without having lived.

Irreversible reverses the course of events, defies time, and defies death but with the full knowledge that the latter still exists and will always prevail. Yet, strangely, for a split second we enjoy life. The artfully employed reverse story telling makes the "trick" obvious: We only really enjoy it because we know what is going to happen. Otherwise it's the "lived happily ever after" nonsense that is all the more depressing because we all know it's a lie.

January 19, 2003

A nice little blog post from Dyneslines explains a common misquotation from Nietszche bandied around a lot nowadays:

As it often the case, the precept becomes more understandable when we turn to the original text, which reads: “Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens - Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich härter.” This observation stems from The Twilight of the Gods (Götzendämmerung) of 1888. It appears as number eight in a series of aphorisms that stand at the beginning of the book, so that it is not possible to deduce much context.

Still, the precept should be faithfully rendered. Yet the common English-language version incorporates a subtle, but serious error, for the last word is not “stronger” but “harder.” Thus what Nietzsche seems to be saying is that, even after contracting a terrible disease (AIDS for example), or being crippled in a car accident, we still need not despair. We can rise to the occasion by becoming “harder.” This does not mean that we are “stronger,” just more firmly resolved to deal with our lot.

Every Person

Every person has at least one secret that will break your heart.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state - Aristotle

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
- Aristotle

21 steps to philosophy

A XKCD strip had an image text rollover which stated:

Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".

This site has a little script which lets you test it out (I have included a sample below) - but it is fun doing it yourself.  Follow the instructions above and you will see that it really does work.

Mind you - it does not always work - there are some pages which result in an endless loop - which may constitute philosophy in its own right!

---

xkcd wikipedia steps to philosophy

(Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy")

Start from article: http://en.wikipedia.org.wiki/

sutherland

1. sutherland
2. registration_county
3. great_britain
4. island
5. continent
6. landmass
7. land
8. earth
9. planet
10. orbit
11. physics
12. natural_science
13. science
14. knowledge
15. information
16. sequence
17. mathematics
18. quantity
19. property_(philosophy)
20. modern_philosophy
21. philosophy

21 steps to philosophy

Missing Something

You will miss a ton, but that’s OK. We’re so caught up in trying to do everything, experience all the essential things, not miss out on anything important … that we forget the simple fact that we cannot experience everything. That physical reality dictates we’ll miss most things. We can’t read all the good books, watch all the good films, go to all the best cities in the world, try all the best restaurants, meet all the great people. But the secret is: life is better when we don’t try to do everything. Learn to enjoy the slice of life you experience, and life turns out to be wonderful.

Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage - Cicero

Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage - Cicero

Risibility

Besides, risibility come to man from his fundamental intention: he tortures himself, bloodies himself, and kills himself trying to reach the sublime summit.  And what does he hope to find there?  Being.  Well, supposing the impossible, were he to reach it he would merely discover universal nonbeing and his own nothingness.
 - Jean Paul Sartre, Carol Cosman: "The Family Idiot, Gustave Flaubert 1821-1857", The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989, page 190

Purity Is Obscurity

Reflection on a Wicked World
by Ogden Nash

Purity
Is obscurity.

A Good Judge

But with the judge it is otherwise; since he governs mind by mind; he ought not therefore to have been trained among vicious minds, and to have associated with them from youth upward, and to have gone through the whole calendar of crime, only in order that he may quickly infer the crimes of others as he might their bodily diseases from his own self-consciousness; the honorable mind which is to form a healthy judgment should have had no experience or contamination of evil habits when young. And this is the reason why in youth good men often appear to be simple, and are easily practised upon by the dishonest, because they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls.

Yes, he said, they are far too apt to be deceived.

Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.

Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge.

Yes, I replied, and he will be a good man (which is my answer to your question); for he is good who has a good soul. But the cunning and suspicious nature of which we spoke-- he who has committed many crimes, and fancies himself to be a master in wickedness--when he is among his fellows, is wonderful in the precautions which he takes, because he judges of them by himself: but when he gets into the company of men of virtue, who have the experience of age, he appears to be a fool again, owing to his unseasonable suspicions; he cannot recognize an honest man, because he has no pattern of honesty in himself; at the same time, as the bad are more numerous than the good, and he meets with them oftener, he thinks himself, and is by others thought to be, rather wise than foolish.

Most true, he said.

Then the good and wise judge whom we are seeking is not this man, but the other; for vice cannot know virtue too, but a virtuous nature, educated by time, will acquire a knowledge both of virtue and vice: the virtuous, and not the vicious, man has wisdom--in my opinion.

 -- Plato, The Republic, Book III

(ref: Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, page 1045, paras 409a-d)

Corinthian girlfriends

Then you also object to Corinthian girlfriends for men who are to be in good physical condition.

- Plato, "The Republic", 404d, p. 1041 in "Plato Complete Works", eds. John M Cooper, D. S. Hutchinson, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997

(What has Plato got against Corinthians girls?)

Also, see http://reconstruction.eserver.org/042/kozlovic.htm for an analysis of "The Republic" from a human resource management critique perspective, which also mentions Corinthian girlfriends.

The Right Kind of Love

But the right kind of love is by nature the love of order and beauty that has been moderated by education in music and poetry?

- Plato, "The Republic", 403a, p. 1040 in "Plato Complete Works", eds. John M Cooper, D. S. Hutchinson, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997

If you want to view a very summarised version of The Republic, try here: http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/plato.htm (called the Squashed verison of The Republic, and there is also a Very Squashed verison of The Republic on the same page).

Time

Philip Zimbardo - Time-focus
February 2009

See http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html
and
http://blog.ted.com/2010/06/phillip_zimbard.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TEDBlog+(TEDBlog) for some great animation (from RSAnimate) illustrating the text.


Promised Virtues fall prey to the Passions of the Moment

Two-thirds of 4 year olds give in to temptation for 1 marshmallow now versus 2 marshmallows later. In a study 14 years later, the children who resisted the temptation had a SAT score 250 points higher than the children who gave in to the temptation (Stanford study).

Dividing the time flow of human experience into different time frame or time zones - automatically and non-consciously.

People become biased by learned over-use of some frames and under-use of others.

Make a Decision - Take an Action (cf Aristotle).

Past Oriented - Memories (What Was)
Present Oriented - Immediate Situation / Stimulation (What Is Now)
Future Oriented - Anticipated Consequences (Cost Benefit Analsysi) - What Will Be

6 Time Perspective (TP) Factors:
1. Past TP - Focus on Positives
2. Past TP - Focus on Negatives
3. Present TP - Hedonism
4. Present TP - Fatalism
5. Future TP - Life Goal-Oriented
6. Future TP - Transcendental (Life after death of the mortal body)

Optimal Time Profile:
- High on Past-Positive
- Moderately High on Future
- Moderate on Present-Hedonism
- Low on Past-Negative
- Low on Present-Fatalism

Past-Positive gives you Roots - to connect to your identity and family - to be grounded
Future gives you Wings - to soar to new destinations and challenges
Present-Hedonism gives your Energy - to expore people, places, self and sensuality

The video:

experience

'But I'm getting off the point. The point is, you came to ask me about something that really is important. So why be ashamed and deny it? You see, I know you through and through. I know exactly what you want. You want me to tell you what I know --

'Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, believe me - there's nothing I'd rather do! I want like hell to tell you. But I can't. I quite literally can't. Because, don't you see, what I know is what I am? And I can't tell you that. You have to find it out for yourself. I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about --

'You could know what I'm about. You could. But you can't be bothered to. Look - you're the only boy I ever met on that campus I really believe could. That's what makes it so tragically futile.

Christoper Isherwood, "A Single Man", p144, Vintage Books, London, 1964 (2010).

---

So desperately wanting to pass on experience to those around us, especially our children, those closest to us, those that we feel for. And yet can't. There is no reading of the book. No time to be had, just to read. Lives to be led, experiences to be had, to write one's own book, no reading of someone else's. The need and the tragedy of unrequited desire. The futility - on and on.

the think-machine gods, whose cult has one dogma, we cannot make a mistake

Everybody is informed of everything. George glances through them all and then tosses the lot into the waste-bucket, with one exception: an oblong card slotted and slitted and ciphered by an IBM machine, expressing some poor bastard of a student's academic identity. Indeed, this card is his identity. Suppose, instead of signing it as requested and returning it to the Personnel Office, George were to tear it up? Instantly, that student would cease to exist, as far as San Tomas State was concerned. He would become academically invisible, and only reappear with the very greatest difficulty, after performing the most elaborate propitiation ceremonies; countless offerings of forms filled out in triplicate and notarised affidavits to the gods of the IBM.

George signs the card, holding it steady with two fingertips. He dislikes even to touch these things, for they are the runes of an idiotic but nevertheless potent and evil magic; the magic of the think-machine gods, whose cult has one dogma, we cannot make a mistake. The magic consists in this, that whenever they do make a mistake, which is quite often, it is perpetuated and thereby becomes a non-mistake. . . . . Carrying the card by its extreme corner, George brings it over to one of the secretaries, who will see that it gets back to Personnel. The secretary has a nail-file on her desk. George picks it up, saying, 'Let's see if that old robot'll know the difference' and pretends to be about to punch another slit in the card. The girl laughs, but only after a split-second look of sheer terror; and the laugh itself is forced. George has uttered blasphemy.

Christoper Isherwood, "A Single Man", p30-31, Vintage Books, London, 1964 (2010).


The above was written in the early 1960's in America (the original book was published in 1964), yet, unfortunately, the sentiment behind the piece is as applicable today as it ever was at that time. It appears to be a social verity - large organisations become impervious to people - an individual not longer counts, and is treated not even with disdain - they are treated as abstract commodities, which if they do not conform to the idiotic strictures placed on them by organisational design and control (hegemony), are then severely punished and sacrificed in their attempts to either: rejoin the organisation, or exert their right to live as an individual outside the bounds of organisational rigidity.

It is people conveniently forgetting that they are people, because they are now a factotum of this mysterious "god" and thus above and separate from being individually and responsibly human. They have no responsibility any more - they can claim the "These are the procedures (rules / processes / instructions / etc)" Nuremberg defence. And the lure of conformance (to authority, and/or power) is far too strong for most to resist (the Stanford Prison Experiment - Zimbardo, after "Obedience" - Milgram, 1963 - see http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/milgram_experiment.html).

So we now find that organisations continue to act as "think-machine gods", who can not make mistakes, and if anything resembling a mistake is notified to them, they simply need to "apologise" and deny that anything further can be done ("it is out of my power", "I have now authority", "We don't recompense for any of those reasons", "What more do you want me to do?", "I have apologised, what more can be done?"). There no longer is a mistake, there is nothing to be further addressed (the "apology" has been issued) and the organisation can continue without change - gods don't change, gods sacrifice people.

the life of the philosopher, the life of scientific and philosophic contemplation

Pleasure is, therefore, a necessary element in the best life, but it is
not the whole of it nor the principal ingredient. The value of a life
depends upon the nature and worth of the activity which it involves;
given the maximum of full free action, the maximum of pleasure necessary
follows. But on what sort of life is such activity possible? This leads
us back to the question, What is happiness? In what life can man find
the fullest satisfaction for his desires? To this question Aristotle
gives an answer which cannot but surprise us after what has preceded.
True Happiness, great satisfaction, cannot be found by man in any form
of "practical" life, no, not in the fullest and freest exercise possible
of the "moral virtues," not in the life of the citizen or of the
great soldier or statesman. To seek it there is to court failure and
disappointment. It is to be found in the life of the onlooker, the
disinterested spectator; or, to put it more distinctly, "in the life of
the philosopher, the life of scientific and philosophic contemplation."
The highest and most satisfying form of life possible to man is "the
contemplative life"; it is only in a secondary sense and for those
incapable of their life, that the practical or moral ideal is the best.
It is time that such a life is not distinctively human, but it is the
privilege of man to partake in it, and such participation, at however
rare intervals and for however short a period, is the highest Happiness
which human life can offer. All other activities have value only because
and in so far as they render _this_ life possible.

But it must not be forgotten that Aristotle conceives of this life as
one of intense activity or energising: it is just this which gives it
its supremacy. In spite of the almost religious fervour with which he
speaks of it ("the most orthodox of his disciples" paraphrases his
meaning by describing its content as "the service and vision of God"),
it is clear that he identified it with the life of the philosopher, as
he understood it, a life of ceaseless intellectual activity in which at
least at times all the distractions and disturbances inseparable from
practical life seemed to disappear and become as nothing. This ideal was
partly an inheritance from the more ardent idealism of his master Plato,
but partly it was the expression of personal experience.

- from J. A. Smith, Introduction to "Ethics", Aristotle,
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ethics, by Aristotle
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/7ethc10.txt
also available as paperback - see http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Aristotle/dp/1406806056
Publisher: Echo Library (August 7, 2006)
ISBN-10: 1406806056
ISBN-13: 978-1406806052

When Ulysses talks of the immeasurable sea and boundless earth

I recollected so well how I used formerly to watch the course of that same stream, following it with inquiring eagerness, forming romantic ideas of the countries it was to pass through; but my imagination was soon exhausted: while the water continued flowing farther and farther on, till my fancy became bewildered by the contemplation of an invisible distance. Exactly such, my dear friend, so happy and so confined, were the thoughts of our good ancestors. Their feelings and their poetry were fresh as childhood. And, when Ulysses talks of the immeasurable sea and boundless earth, his epithets are true, natural, deeply felt, and mysterious. Of what importance is it that I have learned, with every schoolboy, that the world is round? Man needs but little earth for enjoyment, and still less for his final repose.
-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

Once more I am a wanderer

Once more I am a wanderer, a pilgrim, through the world. But what else are you!
-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

The brilliant wretchedness, the weariness

Oh, the brilliant wretchedness, the weariness, that one is doomed to witness among the silly people whom we meet in society here! The ambition of rank! How they watch, how they toil, to gain precedence! What poor and contemptible passions are displayed in their utter nakedness!

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"