[MD] Mystics and Brains

[Case]

[Platt]
I don't know much about chaos theory. An the article in Wikipedia about it
wasn't especially helpful. You have a knack of presenting these rather
obtuse theories in plain English that we unwashed can understand. So would
appreciate any effort you care to make to enlighten me and perhaps others.
All I know is that there seems to be some design in chaos that can be
mathematically expressed in what otherwise would be considered a holy mess.


[Case]
I appreciate your kind words. I confess it is difficult to figure out what
is important and what is not. For example when I read Gleick's book, which
is really a popularization not a technical book at all, it brought so many
things together at once that I have never quite recovered. The problem I
suppose is that what got brought together for me was patterns of what
Polanyi calls tacit knowledge. That is the underlying structure of
information we retain while focusing one individual thoughts and ideas.

Usually when I go off about this in the MoQ it gets ignored. I figure people
either aren't interested, don't get it, or already know it and don't need to
hear it. Also I respond better to specifics than generalities. For example
about an hour ago I started writing a Tao of Computers post to explain the
importance on binary mathematics and computers in general. I filled about
two pages and thought who the heck would read this much crap. So I stopped.
This is a short form forum it just wouldn't work.

Another problem is that lots of the stuff relating to complexity theory and
the like is easier to see in pictures and we can't do that here... If you
are serious about this I can try to put some of it up on my website.