[MD] Mystics and Brains

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Case <Case at iSpots.com>:

> [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.

Thanks for the offer. Let me look around and see if I can find an authoritative
primer on chaos theory. In the meantime, would it be fair to say the theory is
based on a pattern of some sort? (Probably best to avoid the word, "design." It
gets Arlo jumping.)




-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/