Wednesday, September 2, 2009
I Evidently Am a Cycle. Also, Lazy.
Not much has been written here for awhile. I foresee that changing as the winter rolls around. I have this strange feeling that 20+ years of the school year/summer dichotomy has instilled in me an aversion to doing anything that might be construed as work during the summer. That or the ultimate season bludgeons me in the face until I pay attention. In either case, not much has been written here, because I haven't read a whole lot (outside of the day long fun reads that pop up here and there). I've got a list accumulating for the winter though. Spanning three index cards plus countless neurons, I'm hoping to get in a great deal of serious reading before the next summer fun period rolls around. And along with the serious reading, I'll be making an effort to get back here and set down thoughts and such. There's also the less thought like side of things over at http://enemyofthought.blogspot.com, which should have various personal tidbit sprinkled about carelessly. Those breadcrumbs however are definitely not intended to find my way home. Or anywhere really. So onwards into the winter. Hooray for rain and gloom and unending hours in a comfy chair or with an Americano at my side.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Remember This!
This is actually as much for myself as to let others partake in the goodness.
http://shirt.woot.com/
It's something to check daily as they showcase a different design every day.
http://shirt.woot.com/
It's something to check daily as they showcase a different design every day.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Democracy Inaction
I finally have completed my first bout of jury duty (this after getting out of it on my past 3 summons in the past year or two). It feels as if the elements of our justice system that we flaunt as the most noble (innocent until proven guilty!) are completely subsumed by psychological catches.
On Tuesday of last week, I was selected to the jury during the process of Voir Dire. The defendant was a black male. The first question that the Defense asked was "When you walked into this court room and saw the defendant, did you think he was guilty of something?". This question was posed to the panel selected to go through the Voir Dire process. Every single person responded no.
Flash forward to Thursday. Evidence is done being entered. Arguments are wrapped up. The five other jurors and myself head into our designated room. The bullish military guy gets elected to the foreman duties. We decide to take an initial tally and military guy firmly states that he was pretty sure from the start that the defendant was guilty. A complete 360 on his answer when posed in Voir Dire. I am the only one in the room to immediately voice a Not Guilty. For the next hour and a half, I am the only one on that side of the debate that ensues. After the hour and a half, quiet guy (and with me in the room how does this fall to anyone else?) says that he had a few problems with the evidence and was also on the Not Guilty side of things (in the first round of voting he had abstained from any indications, as immediate demands for my reasoning were made).
So now going back to the case.
The charge: Reckless Driving. By definition, Reckless Driving is Driving with willful or wanton disregard for people or property. An addendum indicates that speed may be considered reckless, but this is a non-binding condition.
The situation: On a weekday morning, two years ago, the defendant is riding to work on his motorcycle, a sports bike of some make or other. Along the way, he speeds (which is not one of the charges against him), and passes cars on both the left and right. Another motorcycle is riding with him. They go into a turn and see a car braking in front of them. They both hit the brakes. The bikes wobble a bit, and the defendant regains control and comes out of the curve. The other bike does not. The defendant continues on. A light is up ahead. He turns left at the light (this is the road that his place of employment is located).
The Witnesses for the prosecution:
#1 A man that was also on his commute on that morning. He was behind the riders at the 705 off ramp (turning on to 509). He saw the riders communicating with each other. He was one car behind the pair. The light turned green and they accelerated off. He estimates their speed at 70mph+ (as he's behind another vehicle, I assume that he's making this estimate from a stop or low speed, as his reaction to the light would be dependent on the vehicle in front of him). He loses sight of them. As he approaches the curve, he sees a cloud of dirt. Putting two and two together he thinks that at least one of the motorcycles has left the roadway. As he pulls even with the scene of the crash, his suspicions are confirmed. Vehicles appear to be on the scene of the crash. He sees the other motorcycle in the left turn lane at the intersection and pulls up behind. He sees the rider look in his mirrors, apparently seeing the cloud of dust at the turn. He takes down the license plate number and turns on to the road as well (his work is also there, and he intends to follow the bike to see what might be up here?). He sees the bike passing cars using the left turn lane and loses sight of the bike again. He pulls into his work parking lot, turns around, and heads back to the scene. The bit about using the left turn lane to pass strikes me as the only bit that I might agree would meet the definition of Reckless Driving. But I assume that there will be more on that later. Some kind of corroborating testimony as to this action. This never comes.
#2 A woman driving through the curve. She sees both bikes coming up from behind her in the right lane. She says that they are going "maybe 100mph". She knows the defendant slightly through work but didn't recognize him in his riding gear. Her thought as they pass her is "how stupid" (and this phrase is reused later by old lady on the jury. Repeatedly.) She sees the car further ahead on the road. The car brakes way early for the upcoming light (her interpretation is that the braking is intended to slow down enough to coast through the light without having to stop). The motorcycles brake. She sees them wobble a bit. The defendant regains control and continues. She sees the other bike lose control completely and go off the road. The prosecution in the course of interviewing the witness asks if she thought the riders were driving in a manner that was dangerous. She says. No. The prosecution asks this question three times. Rephrasing it slightly each time. And her answer stays the same. This is frustrating to the prosecution. (and completely ignored later by the rest of the jury).
#3 A detective from the Tacoma Police Department. He was driving to work that morning. He saw emergency vehicles on the side of 509 and pulled up to help secure the scene. At some point (within a half hour of the detective getting there) a truck pulls up with the defendant in the passenger seat. The detective says that they ask about helping with the bike. The detective sees the defendant's motorcycle gear in the back of the truck and thinks that this might be the other rider that he's heard reference to. No information is gleaned from the prosecution or defense about any other questions that might have been asked by the driver of the truck or the defendant (this comes up later as Old Lady continues to partially defend her Guilty verdict by saying "if he was a decent person he wouldn't have asked about the bike first". Of course, this seems like a false assumption to me, as I can not possibly imagine a conversation initiated at an accident scene that begins something like "hey is that a (possibly) damaged motorcycle over there? Mind if I throw it in the back of my truck?"). The detective asks some questions and ascertains that the defendant was the other rider (the defendant is cooperative in the questioning). They bring him in to question him about the accident (he is not under arrest). He complies answers the questions and is free to go. They call him back in a few weeks later to ask some more questions. Again he answers them and is free to go. No charges are filed at either time. In fact, we as the jury never find out when or who filed the charges. The defendant, during questioning, said that he had been speeding at about 70mph. Which is in line with the testimony of the first witness. He also indicates that he was coming back to the scene to help the other rider. But out of sync with the second. The detective does provide some background on Reckless Driving as a charge, namely by stating that often the choice to add reckless driving is based on conditions and circumstances.
And on that witness the prosecution rests. Did I mention that no officer actually saw any of the behavior described? No firm indication of actual speed is present?
The defense calls one witness.
#1 (and only) a woman who is completely forgettable. Her only testimony is that she works with the defendant as a commercial driver and attests to his safe driving. She was in a truck turning right from the street that the defendant was turning left onto after the accident. She waved at him and he acknowledged her.
The defense rests.
So a few observational things. The prosecution is inept. He gets his ass handed to him procedurally and doesn't get what he wants out of his witnesses. He submits pieces of evidence that have little bearing on what the defendant is charged with. You'll note that leaving the scene of an accident, speeding, or causing the accident aren't brought up. The prosecution tries to imply the cause of the accident is the defendant at some points, but nothing indicates this. He also uses a nice bit of retarded statistics to try and say the speeds traveled at are dangerous - the statistic as stated - "Two bikes go into the turn, one comes out. Would a reasonable person engage in an activity that has a fifty percent chance of resulting in an accident?". I choke back a chortle when he makes this statement. The only strong point of the prosecution is his opening statement and closing argument. The defense is the opposite. Her opening statement and closing argument are pretty humdrum, but she's quick to object, and has the judge sustain her objections consistently (is there such a thing as a legal batting average using objections sustained/overruled?). The prosecution objects at points but the judge rules against him most of the time (he's definitely batting under .100).
We have no exact number on the speed that the bikes were traveling. 70mph is admitted to, but if we are to believe the second witness for the prosecution, they hit the turn at 100mph (which I am extremely skeptical of - the defense shreds her ability to estimate speeds through a series of questions, and her assertion that she doesn't feel that the riders are driving unsafely would seem to be contraindicated if they actually are riding at 100mph).
The prosecution is definitely guilty of hyperbole (at least on some scale). The following statement tainted day one of jury discussion, and are contradicted in part by the detective's questioning of the defendant in the two separate interviews:
"weaving in and out of traffic at excessive speeds"
The detective made mock ups of the intersections and intervening stretches. His investigation in conjunction with the defendants statements indicate that the defendant passed two cars. There were a total of four lane changes. Jury deliberation and the starting point of Old Lady's argument was the weaving in and out of traffic at excessive speeds. Given that the accounts seemed to indicate a total of three or four cars on the road in a one mile stretch (and one of those cars was behind the defendant and wouldn't play into the passing at all) it's hard to make the leap the prosecution wanted. But that wasn't too large a hurdle for 4 out of 6 jurors. I'd be hard pressed to call 3 or 4 cars "light traffic".
Conditions on the day in question were dry and sunny.
The cloud of dust apparently (if we're to believe all testimony) hung in the air for a significant amount of time. It had to go up initially when the accident occurred, and remained in the air as witness #1 approached the turn. From the turn to the light is 3/4 mile (ish).
The total distance from when witness #1 turned onto 509 to the turn is 3.8 miles. The witness got to the light at Taylor Way and was directly behind the defendant. Which would indicate that either the witness was also driving "about 100 mph", or the rider wasn't going as fast as Witness #2 thought.
So that's where we started. Plenty of things for me to doubt. Apparently not much for everybody else. We were in deliberations for two days, separated by the three day fourth of July weekend. Come Monday, I was tired from a long weekend of ultimate. I entered the room with the other five. Quiet guy spoke up, saying that he had thought about things over the weekend and had changed his mind. He had plenty of friends that rode bikes and rode them exactly as the defendant seemed to ride his (speed! wheee!), but that's why he wouldn't ride a bike himself. Because he would also be tempted to engage in that kind of behavior. His choice to not ride because he thought he'd engage in such behaviors was what made him think of the behaviors as reckless. So now its my job to try and convince five people that he's not guilty. And I'm tired. Brain dead from a weekend packed with stimuli.
The jury of his peers is me. It is an elderly woman (late 50s?). It is the Quiet Guy (late 30s? Early 40s?). Military guy (late 40s easily). Quiet Girl (she speaks probably a total of 20 words over the two days. She is in her early 20s) And Indian guy (also late 30s, early 40s).
Indian guy and Military guy admit early on that they started at guilty and didn't get convinced otherwise based on the cross examination of the prosecution's witnesses. The military guy constantly comes back to the definition of the crime and substitutes the name of a law he broke (but isn't charge with) in the statement "He willfully...." as in "He willfully sped". My argument is not that he didn't commit the ancillary crimes (which again he is not charged with), but that committing those crimes does not necessarily imply a disregard for the safety of persons or property. Otherwise cops would hand out Reckless Driving tickets like it was nobody's business with the speeding tickets that they do give.
Old lady declares her view that driving of today's youth in general is reckless. That speed is enough. She goes so far as to say the defendant is not a decent human being because he didn't turn around immediately and go back to the scene of the accident (turn around at the light, as opposed to getting to work, finding a ride back, etc...)
Quiet girl just declares guilty every time the question is asked.
Quiet guy sits on the speeding and passing as well.
No one doubts the memories of the witnesses (2 years between the day in question and the trial). No one budges. I've drank 3 cups of coffee. I've run out of things to say. We sit in silence for stretches. I cede on one point. The passing in the turn lane. The defense never contested this point. Never tried to make explicit an underlying reason for this portion of the ride. I earlier defended this bit by asking two questions
1) Are there any circumstances in which you would use the turn lane to pass (wife in labor? etc...)? The other jurors answered yes to this.
2) Would knowledge of the accident (and a corresponding distress related to getting help) be an explanation for this? The other jurors refused to accept this.
In the end I gained no ground, and agreed that at least the last bit of the ride could be construed as reckless. Because the defense never tried to defend this portion, never tried to establish a motive, it was left as something that you could either make assumptions about or not.
The process left me feeling sick in general. I felt that there were holes in what the prosecution presented. There were vagaries. And despite the piss poor job he did, the city got the verdict in their favor.
"Innocent Until Proven Guilty" seems like a wonderful idea, but its practical application seemed to leave much to be desired. At least half the jurors seemed to start from guilty and wanted the defense to back them up from guilty towards innocence. I would postulate that there is a psychological basis for this. When involved in a criminal case where a figure with vested authority (in this case, the city - this was municipal court) presents charges against an individual, there seems to be a stronger impetus for the herd instinct of starting from the point of view of the authority figure. In retrospect it makes the defense's opening statement and closing argument more understandable. I had been underwhelmed with both during the course of the trial. They seemed to be mostly admonishments that the burden of proof was on the state and the assertion of innocence until proven guilty. These things needed to be rehashed because in reality we often do put the burden of proof on the defense, regardless of the instructions. And I think that the admonishments fell on deaf ears in this case.
So, with no help and what at times appeared to be an un-hearing wall of stupid, I buckled on the one point and went against what I felt should have been the correct decision. I regret that to a degree. Should I have sat there for days refusing to budge? Would a hung jury and a retrial give the defendant a better mix of his peers to determine his fate? How much would my personal life have been impacted by doing so? And my work life? Would the other jurors eventually have said uncle and ruled Not Guilty to appease me and get back to their jobs? Is it better to have one person vote Guilty with reservations then to have 5 people vote Not Guilty while only doing so to get back to their lives? These are the questions that will plague me.
Or how about the perceptions of the defendant by the other jurors? Would they have been as quick to jump to guilty if it was a middle aged white guy? A young woman? A car (instead of a motorcycle)? Gah. What ifs will ruin me.
This is the stuff that will make me expatriate. But where to...
On Tuesday of last week, I was selected to the jury during the process of Voir Dire. The defendant was a black male. The first question that the Defense asked was "When you walked into this court room and saw the defendant, did you think he was guilty of something?". This question was posed to the panel selected to go through the Voir Dire process. Every single person responded no.
Flash forward to Thursday. Evidence is done being entered. Arguments are wrapped up. The five other jurors and myself head into our designated room. The bullish military guy gets elected to the foreman duties. We decide to take an initial tally and military guy firmly states that he was pretty sure from the start that the defendant was guilty. A complete 360 on his answer when posed in Voir Dire. I am the only one in the room to immediately voice a Not Guilty. For the next hour and a half, I am the only one on that side of the debate that ensues. After the hour and a half, quiet guy (and with me in the room how does this fall to anyone else?) says that he had a few problems with the evidence and was also on the Not Guilty side of things (in the first round of voting he had abstained from any indications, as immediate demands for my reasoning were made).
So now going back to the case.
The charge: Reckless Driving. By definition, Reckless Driving is Driving with willful or wanton disregard for people or property. An addendum indicates that speed may be considered reckless, but this is a non-binding condition.
The situation: On a weekday morning, two years ago, the defendant is riding to work on his motorcycle, a sports bike of some make or other. Along the way, he speeds (which is not one of the charges against him), and passes cars on both the left and right. Another motorcycle is riding with him. They go into a turn and see a car braking in front of them. They both hit the brakes. The bikes wobble a bit, and the defendant regains control and comes out of the curve. The other bike does not. The defendant continues on. A light is up ahead. He turns left at the light (this is the road that his place of employment is located).
The Witnesses for the prosecution:
#1 A man that was also on his commute on that morning. He was behind the riders at the 705 off ramp (turning on to 509). He saw the riders communicating with each other. He was one car behind the pair. The light turned green and they accelerated off. He estimates their speed at 70mph+ (as he's behind another vehicle, I assume that he's making this estimate from a stop or low speed, as his reaction to the light would be dependent on the vehicle in front of him). He loses sight of them. As he approaches the curve, he sees a cloud of dirt. Putting two and two together he thinks that at least one of the motorcycles has left the roadway. As he pulls even with the scene of the crash, his suspicions are confirmed. Vehicles appear to be on the scene of the crash. He sees the other motorcycle in the left turn lane at the intersection and pulls up behind. He sees the rider look in his mirrors, apparently seeing the cloud of dust at the turn. He takes down the license plate number and turns on to the road as well (his work is also there, and he intends to follow the bike to see what might be up here?). He sees the bike passing cars using the left turn lane and loses sight of the bike again. He pulls into his work parking lot, turns around, and heads back to the scene. The bit about using the left turn lane to pass strikes me as the only bit that I might agree would meet the definition of Reckless Driving. But I assume that there will be more on that later. Some kind of corroborating testimony as to this action. This never comes.
#2 A woman driving through the curve. She sees both bikes coming up from behind her in the right lane. She says that they are going "maybe 100mph". She knows the defendant slightly through work but didn't recognize him in his riding gear. Her thought as they pass her is "how stupid" (and this phrase is reused later by old lady on the jury. Repeatedly.) She sees the car further ahead on the road. The car brakes way early for the upcoming light (her interpretation is that the braking is intended to slow down enough to coast through the light without having to stop). The motorcycles brake. She sees them wobble a bit. The defendant regains control and continues. She sees the other bike lose control completely and go off the road. The prosecution in the course of interviewing the witness asks if she thought the riders were driving in a manner that was dangerous. She says. No. The prosecution asks this question three times. Rephrasing it slightly each time. And her answer stays the same. This is frustrating to the prosecution. (and completely ignored later by the rest of the jury).
#3 A detective from the Tacoma Police Department. He was driving to work that morning. He saw emergency vehicles on the side of 509 and pulled up to help secure the scene. At some point (within a half hour of the detective getting there) a truck pulls up with the defendant in the passenger seat. The detective says that they ask about helping with the bike. The detective sees the defendant's motorcycle gear in the back of the truck and thinks that this might be the other rider that he's heard reference to. No information is gleaned from the prosecution or defense about any other questions that might have been asked by the driver of the truck or the defendant (this comes up later as Old Lady continues to partially defend her Guilty verdict by saying "if he was a decent person he wouldn't have asked about the bike first". Of course, this seems like a false assumption to me, as I can not possibly imagine a conversation initiated at an accident scene that begins something like "hey is that a (possibly) damaged motorcycle over there? Mind if I throw it in the back of my truck?"). The detective asks some questions and ascertains that the defendant was the other rider (the defendant is cooperative in the questioning). They bring him in to question him about the accident (he is not under arrest). He complies answers the questions and is free to go. They call him back in a few weeks later to ask some more questions. Again he answers them and is free to go. No charges are filed at either time. In fact, we as the jury never find out when or who filed the charges. The defendant, during questioning, said that he had been speeding at about 70mph. Which is in line with the testimony of the first witness. He also indicates that he was coming back to the scene to help the other rider. But out of sync with the second. The detective does provide some background on Reckless Driving as a charge, namely by stating that often the choice to add reckless driving is based on conditions and circumstances.
And on that witness the prosecution rests. Did I mention that no officer actually saw any of the behavior described? No firm indication of actual speed is present?
The defense calls one witness.
#1 (and only) a woman who is completely forgettable. Her only testimony is that she works with the defendant as a commercial driver and attests to his safe driving. She was in a truck turning right from the street that the defendant was turning left onto after the accident. She waved at him and he acknowledged her.
The defense rests.
So a few observational things. The prosecution is inept. He gets his ass handed to him procedurally and doesn't get what he wants out of his witnesses. He submits pieces of evidence that have little bearing on what the defendant is charged with. You'll note that leaving the scene of an accident, speeding, or causing the accident aren't brought up. The prosecution tries to imply the cause of the accident is the defendant at some points, but nothing indicates this. He also uses a nice bit of retarded statistics to try and say the speeds traveled at are dangerous - the statistic as stated - "Two bikes go into the turn, one comes out. Would a reasonable person engage in an activity that has a fifty percent chance of resulting in an accident?". I choke back a chortle when he makes this statement. The only strong point of the prosecution is his opening statement and closing argument. The defense is the opposite. Her opening statement and closing argument are pretty humdrum, but she's quick to object, and has the judge sustain her objections consistently (is there such a thing as a legal batting average using objections sustained/overruled?). The prosecution objects at points but the judge rules against him most of the time (he's definitely batting under .100).
We have no exact number on the speed that the bikes were traveling. 70mph is admitted to, but if we are to believe the second witness for the prosecution, they hit the turn at 100mph (which I am extremely skeptical of - the defense shreds her ability to estimate speeds through a series of questions, and her assertion that she doesn't feel that the riders are driving unsafely would seem to be contraindicated if they actually are riding at 100mph).
The prosecution is definitely guilty of hyperbole (at least on some scale). The following statement tainted day one of jury discussion, and are contradicted in part by the detective's questioning of the defendant in the two separate interviews:
"weaving in and out of traffic at excessive speeds"
The detective made mock ups of the intersections and intervening stretches. His investigation in conjunction with the defendants statements indicate that the defendant passed two cars. There were a total of four lane changes. Jury deliberation and the starting point of Old Lady's argument was the weaving in and out of traffic at excessive speeds. Given that the accounts seemed to indicate a total of three or four cars on the road in a one mile stretch (and one of those cars was behind the defendant and wouldn't play into the passing at all) it's hard to make the leap the prosecution wanted. But that wasn't too large a hurdle for 4 out of 6 jurors. I'd be hard pressed to call 3 or 4 cars "light traffic".
Conditions on the day in question were dry and sunny.
The cloud of dust apparently (if we're to believe all testimony) hung in the air for a significant amount of time. It had to go up initially when the accident occurred, and remained in the air as witness #1 approached the turn. From the turn to the light is 3/4 mile (ish).
The total distance from when witness #1 turned onto 509 to the turn is 3.8 miles. The witness got to the light at Taylor Way and was directly behind the defendant. Which would indicate that either the witness was also driving "about 100 mph", or the rider wasn't going as fast as Witness #2 thought.
So that's where we started. Plenty of things for me to doubt. Apparently not much for everybody else. We were in deliberations for two days, separated by the three day fourth of July weekend. Come Monday, I was tired from a long weekend of ultimate. I entered the room with the other five. Quiet guy spoke up, saying that he had thought about things over the weekend and had changed his mind. He had plenty of friends that rode bikes and rode them exactly as the defendant seemed to ride his (speed! wheee!), but that's why he wouldn't ride a bike himself. Because he would also be tempted to engage in that kind of behavior. His choice to not ride because he thought he'd engage in such behaviors was what made him think of the behaviors as reckless. So now its my job to try and convince five people that he's not guilty. And I'm tired. Brain dead from a weekend packed with stimuli.
The jury of his peers is me. It is an elderly woman (late 50s?). It is the Quiet Guy (late 30s? Early 40s?). Military guy (late 40s easily). Quiet Girl (she speaks probably a total of 20 words over the two days. She is in her early 20s) And Indian guy (also late 30s, early 40s).
Indian guy and Military guy admit early on that they started at guilty and didn't get convinced otherwise based on the cross examination of the prosecution's witnesses. The military guy constantly comes back to the definition of the crime and substitutes the name of a law he broke (but isn't charge with) in the statement "He willfully...." as in "He willfully sped". My argument is not that he didn't commit the ancillary crimes (which again he is not charged with), but that committing those crimes does not necessarily imply a disregard for the safety of persons or property. Otherwise cops would hand out Reckless Driving tickets like it was nobody's business with the speeding tickets that they do give.
Old lady declares her view that driving of today's youth in general is reckless. That speed is enough. She goes so far as to say the defendant is not a decent human being because he didn't turn around immediately and go back to the scene of the accident (turn around at the light, as opposed to getting to work, finding a ride back, etc...)
Quiet girl just declares guilty every time the question is asked.
Quiet guy sits on the speeding and passing as well.
No one doubts the memories of the witnesses (2 years between the day in question and the trial). No one budges. I've drank 3 cups of coffee. I've run out of things to say. We sit in silence for stretches. I cede on one point. The passing in the turn lane. The defense never contested this point. Never tried to make explicit an underlying reason for this portion of the ride. I earlier defended this bit by asking two questions
1) Are there any circumstances in which you would use the turn lane to pass (wife in labor? etc...)? The other jurors answered yes to this.
2) Would knowledge of the accident (and a corresponding distress related to getting help) be an explanation for this? The other jurors refused to accept this.
In the end I gained no ground, and agreed that at least the last bit of the ride could be construed as reckless. Because the defense never tried to defend this portion, never tried to establish a motive, it was left as something that you could either make assumptions about or not.
The process left me feeling sick in general. I felt that there were holes in what the prosecution presented. There were vagaries. And despite the piss poor job he did, the city got the verdict in their favor.
"Innocent Until Proven Guilty" seems like a wonderful idea, but its practical application seemed to leave much to be desired. At least half the jurors seemed to start from guilty and wanted the defense to back them up from guilty towards innocence. I would postulate that there is a psychological basis for this. When involved in a criminal case where a figure with vested authority (in this case, the city - this was municipal court) presents charges against an individual, there seems to be a stronger impetus for the herd instinct of starting from the point of view of the authority figure. In retrospect it makes the defense's opening statement and closing argument more understandable. I had been underwhelmed with both during the course of the trial. They seemed to be mostly admonishments that the burden of proof was on the state and the assertion of innocence until proven guilty. These things needed to be rehashed because in reality we often do put the burden of proof on the defense, regardless of the instructions. And I think that the admonishments fell on deaf ears in this case.
So, with no help and what at times appeared to be an un-hearing wall of stupid, I buckled on the one point and went against what I felt should have been the correct decision. I regret that to a degree. Should I have sat there for days refusing to budge? Would a hung jury and a retrial give the defendant a better mix of his peers to determine his fate? How much would my personal life have been impacted by doing so? And my work life? Would the other jurors eventually have said uncle and ruled Not Guilty to appease me and get back to their jobs? Is it better to have one person vote Guilty with reservations then to have 5 people vote Not Guilty while only doing so to get back to their lives? These are the questions that will plague me.
Or how about the perceptions of the defendant by the other jurors? Would they have been as quick to jump to guilty if it was a middle aged white guy? A young woman? A car (instead of a motorcycle)? Gah. What ifs will ruin me.
This is the stuff that will make me expatriate. But where to...
Monday, April 20, 2009
Chapter 4, Nomic
The first three chapters were fun. They got my head going around in circles chasing the demonic logic of sentence structure. Chapter 4 was viral though. It made me want to go out and get other people involved.
Chapter 4 revolves around a game called Nomic, conceived by a professor at Earlham College by the name of Peter Suber. The game in its original form was presented in appendix to his book The Paradox of Self-Amendment.
At its heart, the game of Nomic is based around the concept of Constitutional law and how the properties of self-amendment and reflexivity interact. For more information about nomic, you can get some details at the following locations:
http://www.nomic.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/nomic.htm
The game starts off with a base set of rules. Much akin to Calvin Ball (and the law in general), these initial rules form a mutable foundation upon which players propose new rules, modify existing rules, or nullify existing rules. The last of the above links contains the starting rules as originally laid out by Suber. The starting rule set includes a mechanism for determining a winner. The rule as stated is:
112. The state of affairs that constitutes winning may not be altered from achieving n points to any other state of affairs. The magnitude of n and the means of earning points may be changed, and rules that establish a winner when play cannot continue may be enacted and (while they are mutable) be amended or repealed.
As a note on this, while the rule itself states that "the state of affairs that constitute winning may not be altered...", it is in itself a rule. The initial starting state lays out that there are two tiers of rules, those designated with a number in the 100s and those with a number in the 200s. The starting rules designate that rules in the 100s are immutable, while those in the 200s are mutable. One of the immutable rules indicates that rules that are immutable can be made mutable by unanimous vote of the players. Once a rule is mutable, all bets are off.
And by the end of reading the chapter, I wanted to gather a group together and get a game together.
Chapter 4 revolves around a game called Nomic, conceived by a professor at Earlham College by the name of Peter Suber. The game in its original form was presented in appendix to his book The Paradox of Self-Amendment.
At its heart, the game of Nomic is based around the concept of Constitutional law and how the properties of self-amendment and reflexivity interact. For more information about nomic, you can get some details at the following locations:
http://www.nomic.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/nomic.htm
The game starts off with a base set of rules. Much akin to Calvin Ball (and the law in general), these initial rules form a mutable foundation upon which players propose new rules, modify existing rules, or nullify existing rules. The last of the above links contains the starting rules as originally laid out by Suber. The starting rule set includes a mechanism for determining a winner. The rule as stated is:
112. The state of affairs that constitutes winning may not be altered from achieving n points to any other state of affairs. The magnitude of n and the means of earning points may be changed, and rules that establish a winner when play cannot continue may be enacted and (while they are mutable) be amended or repealed.
As a note on this, while the rule itself states that "the state of affairs that constitute winning may not be altered...", it is in itself a rule. The initial starting state lays out that there are two tiers of rules, those designated with a number in the 100s and those with a number in the 200s. The starting rules designate that rules in the 100s are immutable, while those in the 200s are mutable. One of the immutable rules indicates that rules that are immutable can be made mutable by unanimous vote of the players. Once a rule is mutable, all bets are off.
And by the end of reading the chapter, I wanted to gather a group together and get a game together.
Chapters 1-3, Fun With Sentence Structure
The first three chapters deal with the property of being self-referential, with a particular focus on language, and the various ways that language and grammar can communicate about itself. As I saw in I Am a Strange Loop, these chapters tied heavily into the idea of identity with tendrils of Godel enmeshed heavily throughout.
The first thing of import is to clear the notion that self-referentiality equates to paradox. Some sentences that make reference to themselves do espouse paradox, such as:
This sentence is false. p.7
However, this is not a universal characteristic of self-reference. For example a sentence such as:
You may quote me. p.17
speaks about itself, but does not generate a paradoxical situation in the process. The general gist of these chapters seems to be to set the stage for Godel, and get readers of Scientific American warmed up to the particular style of mental free roving that seems characteristic of Hofstadter. A more specific interpretation would be to, by comparison, associate language more closely with the self-building machinery of mathematics. The latter articles in the series of three in particular start to challenge the readers to create sentences that are viral in nature. By viral the idea is that the contents of the sentence contain instructions that allow it to generate a replica of itself. Something on the order of:
after alphabetizing, decapitalize FOR AFTER WORDS STRING FINALLY UNORDERED UPPERCASE FGPBVKXQJZ NONVOCALIC DECAPITALIZE SUBSTITUTING ALPHABETIZING, finally for nonvocalic string substituting unordered uppercase words
(p. 62-63)
The above sentence contains instructions (the lower case words) and a seed contained within it (the upper case words). When the instructions are followed on the contained seed, it results in a semi-perfect reproduction of itself. The instructions are translated perfectly, and the internal seed is preserved, but without restriction on the seed ordering (which is unnecessary due to the instruction to alphabetize). The above example is related back to DNA/RNA, which is later tackled on its own in a separate article.
Fun, fun, fun.
The first thing of import is to clear the notion that self-referentiality equates to paradox. Some sentences that make reference to themselves do espouse paradox, such as:
This sentence is false. p.7
However, this is not a universal characteristic of self-reference. For example a sentence such as:
You may quote me. p.17
speaks about itself, but does not generate a paradoxical situation in the process. The general gist of these chapters seems to be to set the stage for Godel, and get readers of Scientific American warmed up to the particular style of mental free roving that seems characteristic of Hofstadter. A more specific interpretation would be to, by comparison, associate language more closely with the self-building machinery of mathematics. The latter articles in the series of three in particular start to challenge the readers to create sentences that are viral in nature. By viral the idea is that the contents of the sentence contain instructions that allow it to generate a replica of itself. Something on the order of:
after alphabetizing, decapitalize FOR AFTER WORDS STRING FINALLY UNORDERED UPPERCASE FGPBVKXQJZ NONVOCALIC DECAPITALIZE SUBSTITUTING ALPHABETIZING, finally for nonvocalic string substituting unordered uppercase words
(p. 62-63)
The above sentence contains instructions (the lower case words) and a seed contained within it (the upper case words). When the instructions are followed on the contained seed, it results in a semi-perfect reproduction of itself. The instructions are translated perfectly, and the internal seed is preserved, but without restriction on the seed ordering (which is unnecessary due to the instruction to alphabetize). The above example is related back to DNA/RNA, which is later tackled on its own in a separate article.
Fun, fun, fun.
And The First Period Gets Underway
So, I promised some posts, and after finishing Metamagical Themas last week, I'm ready to get underway. At first I had anticipated something like a 1 to 1 ratio on chapters (which corresponded directly to articles) to posts. But. There are a number of reasons that I'm thinking otherwise now. Firstly, there is some significant overlap between a few of the chapters (articles). There are series which entail an article. Then a followup to the article, covering essentially the same points. Then a followup to the followup. That makes for a nice compression of three down into one. Then there are the articles that just didn't tickle me particularly. Not a whole lot in that boat. But there were definitely some on Rubik's Cubes and Rubik's Cube alternatives that were more fun then thought provoking. So those go out the window. And then there's the always looming spectre of laziness. So let's get ready to rumble and start going through these bad boys.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Silence Breaking
It's been a bit, and the lack of attention has been more a product of laziness then things to say. Sometime in this upcoming week I plan to sit down and start doing article by article responses to the collection of Metamagical Thema essays. Not every article. Just the ones that happened to strike me as worthwhile to remind myself of later. Or that were interesting. Or just because I happened to have a pen and index card that I made use of while reading some. For now though, I thought it might be nice to set down a few things that are indicative of where my whole cognitive science/AI interests are taking me.
Parallelization - From Chomsky and Pinker, there seem to be a number of elements related to language that are driven by a parallelization of the process. Both verbal and written elements of language are received as a serial feed, but parsing is done at a level that looks at the component parts in parallel and establishes meaning from the whole. I think that the mechanism is more integral to thought in general. I can't recall Hofstadter making an explicit statement of this, but it seems implied in the analogies that he makes.
Epiphenomena - A word picked up from one of the more recent (personally, not historically) articles read. Epiphenomena are emergent macro level behaviours from micro level phenomena. Which leads into the next bit.
Complexity - I just bought a book by Melanie Mitchell (a professor at Portland State University, and former student of Hofstadter) on Complex Systems. The idea here is the study of complex behaviors arising out of simple rules. Insect colonies, the economy, traffic jams, weather. All would fall into this field to some degree. I'll see what kind of taste this leaves when I get into the book.
Theory of Computation - I really want to dig more into Theory of Computation stuff. One of the classes that I regret not being able to take while I was at UPS.
Symbols and Representation - Encoding and decoding meaning. You are on a computer now. Everything that you are seeing is the result of 1s and 0s (on/off). Layers upon layers of abstraction bring us color, words, images, etc... And further, anything could potentially be used to represent any other thing. Morse code is another binary system wherein letters are represented by short and long beeps.
And the list could likely go on.
Parallelization - From Chomsky and Pinker, there seem to be a number of elements related to language that are driven by a parallelization of the process. Both verbal and written elements of language are received as a serial feed, but parsing is done at a level that looks at the component parts in parallel and establishes meaning from the whole. I think that the mechanism is more integral to thought in general. I can't recall Hofstadter making an explicit statement of this, but it seems implied in the analogies that he makes.
Epiphenomena - A word picked up from one of the more recent (personally, not historically) articles read. Epiphenomena are emergent macro level behaviours from micro level phenomena. Which leads into the next bit.
Complexity - I just bought a book by Melanie Mitchell (a professor at Portland State University, and former student of Hofstadter) on Complex Systems. The idea here is the study of complex behaviors arising out of simple rules. Insect colonies, the economy, traffic jams, weather. All would fall into this field to some degree. I'll see what kind of taste this leaves when I get into the book.
Theory of Computation - I really want to dig more into Theory of Computation stuff. One of the classes that I regret not being able to take while I was at UPS.
Symbols and Representation - Encoding and decoding meaning. You are on a computer now. Everything that you are seeing is the result of 1s and 0s (on/off). Layers upon layers of abstraction bring us color, words, images, etc... And further, anything could potentially be used to represent any other thing. Morse code is another binary system wherein letters are represented by short and long beeps.
And the list could likely go on.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
A Four-word. But more like Golf.
So a quick post on a general impression about the ideas in I Am A Strange Loop. His book GEB (Godel, Escher, Bach ...) was written in 1979 and predates I Am A Strange Loop by 28 years. The ideas in I Am A Strange Loop were (if I'm to understand the foreword correctly) initially to be a restatement of the ideas of his earlier book. The author states that this did not end up being the case.
In between the publication of GEB and I Am A Strange Loop, Hofstadter's wife died (1993, 14 years after the initial publication of GEB, 6 years prior to the edition that I currently have yet to read, and 14 years before the publication of I Am A Strange Loop) under tragic circumstances. The writing in I Am A Strange Loop seems charged with this event. It was something that I didn't notice at first. I think that the opening chapters are likely very similar in content to the earlier work. After the first mention of his wife's death, the tone changes. He details the period of time immediately after, and the restless thrashing and emotional turbulence that resulted. All of which led to a period of intense self-reflection and the revisitation of his earlier ideas through a tinted lens. At times it seems like the ideas that are generated through that time period are simply a means of reconciliation with the tragedy. But despite this, they maintain a sense of rationality and consistency that typically falls apart through emotional instability.
In between the publication of GEB and I Am A Strange Loop, Hofstadter's wife died (1993, 14 years after the initial publication of GEB, 6 years prior to the edition that I currently have yet to read, and 14 years before the publication of I Am A Strange Loop) under tragic circumstances. The writing in I Am A Strange Loop seems charged with this event. It was something that I didn't notice at first. I think that the opening chapters are likely very similar in content to the earlier work. After the first mention of his wife's death, the tone changes. He details the period of time immediately after, and the restless thrashing and emotional turbulence that resulted. All of which led to a period of intense self-reflection and the revisitation of his earlier ideas through a tinted lens. At times it seems like the ideas that are generated through that time period are simply a means of reconciliation with the tragedy. But despite this, they maintain a sense of rationality and consistency that typically falls apart through emotional instability.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Gray! Gooey!
The first part of this is extracted from another post that I started working on. Reading back through, the jump just didn't seem to work. But I wanted to make sure I set it down in some form. So happy birthday little post.
Our brains are made of a large number of interconnected nodes. An individual node takes as input the current state of the nodes it is connected to, and running through a quick tabulation, decides to fire or not fire based on those inputs. Further, the nodes that it fires to are determined by the inputs (it doesn't flail out to every node that it "knows" to say that its on). That's a somewhat simplistic description but provides a nice trace back to the approach in AI that attempts to model the brain's structure by the use of neural networks.
The usages of neural networks in AI that I'm familiar with focus on matching particular inputs to particular output states. For an example, such networks have been used to teach computers to recognize the difference between photographs of men and women. The process starts with a significant training period. The trainer provides an image. The image is fed through the network (which has no meaningfully set nodes yet). The trainer then looks at the output from the network and indicates whether the network's output is correct or not. If correct, the network sits tight. If wrong, the network runs through a process whereby it adjusts impedance levels between nodes so that given the particular input (and with something like this it gets a bit tricky defining what the specific input is. Do you just feed it raw .bmp or .jpg data? Probably not if you want to differentiate gender. You probably pre-process to break out particular characteristics of the subject of the photograph, especially in regards to relationships between the parts and then feed those into your network), the output corresponds to a value (or series of values) you've designated as male or female (maybe your output string could have a strength of prediction component to it. Rather then simply 01110101 = male and 11010010 = female, the real measure of male/female is the position/quantity of ones and zeros. Perhaps the first half of an 8 bit sequence represents non-overlapping male characteristics, and the second half non-overlapping female characteristics. If there are more ones in the first half then the second half, then it indicates male. If there are more ones in the second half, then it indicates female. The degree of prediction certainty could be based on the difference in # of 1s and 0s from expected 100% certainty subjects. 11110000 would be an output that it was 100% certain was male. 00001111 would be 100% certain that it was female. Then along the way you might get 11010010 or 10010001. Both examples would register as males, however, the fact that the first was missing one indicator of maleness and had one indicator of femaleness would indicate a degree of uncertainty. And of course, this would leave an out for complete androgyny - 11111111).
So to get back on track, the trainer feeds the network input conditions and lets the network know if the output is right or wrong. The network updates, and the trainer feeds the network another image. This is repeated through a large set of inputs. With nothing other then right/wrong as guidance, the network of nodes begins to have encoded in it, an ability to correctly categorize this particular kind of input (although, it is very limited. Try feeding it a picture of a female giraffe. Or a bowling ball. Or any other curve ball that you can think of, and it will still give an answer, but the answer won't be grounded in anything). The outputs are symbolic representations of categories that have been built up and defined.
And because insertion and deletion have made things a bit disjoint, here's a random chunk:
When a symbol is represented, it is not realized in a single location in the brain, but is a diffuse pattern across a subset of the collective. Further, any individual node may be enmeshed in a large number of particular symbol patterns. So neuron #23646 may be one bit in the chain of firings that may represent your sister, but it also is one bit in the chain of firings that represents lizards. And also, one bit in the chain that represents paper. As an added level of complexity, within any pattern of firings, there's enough redundancy that the death of any one node (or number of nodes), would not break the symbol (otherwise, a night of drinking would signal the physical death of any number of things that you know about the world).
A great deal of criticism regarding neural networks emerges from the "amount of training required for real world training" (see the wikipedia entry). So another little jump. Does the time line of human development (in terms of our bits and pieces coming online - by which I mean when particular senses become more attenuated, motor skills develop, etc...) make sense in this context? From what I've read thus far, it seems to lend itself some credence. The most crucial categorization that we need for more complex learning is the differentiation between I/not I. And it seems that early on we are confined to a much smaller bubble. Here's a bit on eye sight in infancy:
The time line of a child's development seems keyed in to allowing for specific categorizations to develop at specific times. (Looking at the above excerpt, I'm drawn to particular parts of it. Black and white vision to start - colors get integrated into our mental representations later. 8-12 inch vision range - keeps focus on objects that are closer to our physical space. Independent eye motions - start seeing in two dimensions as opposed to three? Depth perception added later? Move whole head to move eyes - we must face in the direction of the things we want to see, body is not allowed to partially take part in stimulus, we've got to about face the whole thing if we want to engage. All things that indicate that our senses - or at least sight in this case - prevent overwhelming complexity early on in learning processes)
With that I'll stop for the moment. There are definitely things there that I want to get more information on. I haven't really looked at anything related to neural networks since the Artificial Intelligence class I took senior year (2003). Hofstadter's talk of the Careenium and Simmballs got me thinking in that direction a bit. And the bits and pieces I've seen on child development tend to separate everything out based on the kind of function (vision gets its own section, hearing another,...). It'd be a nice exercise to cross reference the different senses to see where the various milestones (large and small) fit into context with each other.
There are three other posts related to things that have popped up while reading Hofstadter being smacked around in various forms to try and get them somewhat cohesive. Hopefully I'll get them together sometime in the next week.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Venomous Clash of Broken Sound
I still have not finished Hofstadter. And I would say that its mostly a lack of.... discipline... on my part. I've found some rather uncreative ways to piss away the days (not to say that I haven't had some creative ones as well). But despite all this, I am closing on the end. And as I get closer, I'm of the inclination that it's time to start poking bits and pieces of it with a stick. Otherwise, I'll end up with a tangled, incoherent mess (which it may turn out to be anyway) that rambles on for a span long enough to kill the attention span of a birdwatcher, let alone myself.
So. On to the potatoes (I'll save the meat for another day).
The first bit that I want to get to (and will in all likelihood come back to at a later date as well) concerns something that pokes its head out at various points throughout the book (and if Wikipedia is any indication, comes through in much of his other work and thought as well). This is the notion that the mechanism of human cognition is based around analogy.
A few quotes (ordered in level of abstractness):
"thanks to a mapping, full-fledged meaning can suddenly appear in a spot where it was entirely unsuspected" p. 148
"Virtually every thought in this book (or in any book) is an analogy, as it involves recognizing something as being a variety of something else." p.xviii
"Standing in line with a friend in a cafe, I spot a large chocolate cake on a platter behind the counter, and I ask the server to give me a piece of it. My friend is tempted but doesn't take one. We go to our table and after my first bite of cake, I say, "Oh, this tastes awful." I mean, of course, not merely that my one slice is bad but that the whole cake is bad, so that my remark exemplifies how we effortlessly generalize outwards. We unconsciously think, This piece of the cake is very much like the rest of the cake, so a statement about it will apply equally well to any other piece." p. 149
Analogy is about relating symbols (or strings of symbols) to each other. On a concrete level, this can amount to the simple act of relating the properties of a part to a whole (this piece of cake is bad, thus the entire cake is bad), or similar objects to each other (this one cookie I took from the plate was good, so the other cookies must be good), or dissimilar objects (I think these wool gloves will keep my hands warm and dry, because my wool hat keeps my head warm and dry). In the last case, it's easier to think of things in terms of categories (which is a nice concise way of saying "things that are similar" in a particular way X). Categories get established to account for the way in which we experience objects in the world.
Name 10 green things. Name 10 sharp things. Name 10 hot things... From the day we are born, the learning process is associative. We're given 5 different ways to experience our external environments. Sight. Hearing. Touch. Taste. Smell. (and in further pursuit of that, it's interesting to think that the same internal symbol is triggered by the senses individually as well as in conjunction. If you were blindfolded and put in a room, and you were to hear purring and meowing, you'd think cat. Similarly, if you were to walk by a pet store and see whiskers, tabby markings and a tail, you'd also think cat. In either case, a small subset of characteristics allow you to relate a specific instantiation to a general concept).
And as sleep creeps up on me, I'll post what likely amounts to a stub. The idea of thought as analogy is quite alluring to me. For another day, I would like to look at this idea in the light of behaviorism.
So. On to the potatoes (I'll save the meat for another day).
The first bit that I want to get to (and will in all likelihood come back to at a later date as well) concerns something that pokes its head out at various points throughout the book (and if Wikipedia is any indication, comes through in much of his other work and thought as well). This is the notion that the mechanism of human cognition is based around analogy.
A few quotes (ordered in level of abstractness):
"thanks to a mapping, full-fledged meaning can suddenly appear in a spot where it was entirely unsuspected" p. 148
"Virtually every thought in this book (or in any book) is an analogy, as it involves recognizing something as being a variety of something else." p.xviii
"Standing in line with a friend in a cafe, I spot a large chocolate cake on a platter behind the counter, and I ask the server to give me a piece of it. My friend is tempted but doesn't take one. We go to our table and after my first bite of cake, I say, "Oh, this tastes awful." I mean, of course, not merely that my one slice is bad but that the whole cake is bad, so that my remark exemplifies how we effortlessly generalize outwards. We unconsciously think, This piece of the cake is very much like the rest of the cake, so a statement about it will apply equally well to any other piece." p. 149
Analogy is about relating symbols (or strings of symbols) to each other. On a concrete level, this can amount to the simple act of relating the properties of a part to a whole (this piece of cake is bad, thus the entire cake is bad), or similar objects to each other (this one cookie I took from the plate was good, so the other cookies must be good), or dissimilar objects (I think these wool gloves will keep my hands warm and dry, because my wool hat keeps my head warm and dry). In the last case, it's easier to think of things in terms of categories (which is a nice concise way of saying "things that are similar" in a particular way X). Categories get established to account for the way in which we experience objects in the world.
Name 10 green things. Name 10 sharp things. Name 10 hot things... From the day we are born, the learning process is associative. We're given 5 different ways to experience our external environments. Sight. Hearing. Touch. Taste. Smell. (and in further pursuit of that, it's interesting to think that the same internal symbol is triggered by the senses individually as well as in conjunction. If you were blindfolded and put in a room, and you were to hear purring and meowing, you'd think cat. Similarly, if you were to walk by a pet store and see whiskers, tabby markings and a tail, you'd also think cat. In either case, a small subset of characteristics allow you to relate a specific instantiation to a general concept).
And as sleep creeps up on me, I'll post what likely amounts to a stub. The idea of thought as analogy is quite alluring to me. For another day, I would like to look at this idea in the light of behaviorism.
Friday, January 2, 2009
This Song At Half Speed Resembles a Waltz
The holidays are nearly past and I get back to business. Almost. The punctuated week (running something like Monday. Tuesday. Fake Wednesday. Holiday Stop.... Friday), gave a bunch of opportunities for distraction, and in a fashion true to form, I took it up on its offer. At points in there I thought that I'd get back to book like pursuits, but that ended up being a no go until last night.
I'm about half way through the first of my Hofstadter books right now and I'm enjoying it immensely. I posted this quote elsewhere, but it deserves a bit more immortality then the zen garden scratch that I made of it.
"...and we were both exploring mathematics with a wild kind of intoxication that only teen-agers know."
To go off on a mild tangent. When I read something that really strikes me, I tend to get a sense of immersion in ice cold water. My skin prickles, and I can feel the words crash against my skin. Little darts of piercing thought. A few books I've read in the past five years or so have hit like that. Fahrenheit 451. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Ishmael (at points). Enders Game.
Hofstadter hasn't quite hit me like that thus far. There's more of a familiarity then a sense of exterior stimulus. There's a lot in what he's saying that I've had an internalized sense of. Some bits kind of point me towards new things to read (I hadn't previously had it on my list, but I think I'm going to look into Godel a bit more), but in general it's like looking in a circus mirror. There's some distortion and transformation, but the general shape is something that I see on an everyday basis. I'm looking forward to the end of this first book, so that I can see where he takes it all.
I'm about half way through the first of my Hofstadter books right now and I'm enjoying it immensely. I posted this quote elsewhere, but it deserves a bit more immortality then the zen garden scratch that I made of it.
"...and we were both exploring mathematics with a wild kind of intoxication that only teen-agers know."
To go off on a mild tangent. When I read something that really strikes me, I tend to get a sense of immersion in ice cold water. My skin prickles, and I can feel the words crash against my skin. Little darts of piercing thought. A few books I've read in the past five years or so have hit like that. Fahrenheit 451. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Ishmael (at points). Enders Game.
Hofstadter hasn't quite hit me like that thus far. There's more of a familiarity then a sense of exterior stimulus. There's a lot in what he's saying that I've had an internalized sense of. Some bits kind of point me towards new things to read (I hadn't previously had it on my list, but I think I'm going to look into Godel a bit more), but in general it's like looking in a circus mirror. There's some distortion and transformation, but the general shape is something that I see on an everyday basis. I'm looking forward to the end of this first book, so that I can see where he takes it all.
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