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Eh! Ingegnere! Aspetti! Che cosa fa!
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| Today, I sit here pissed that I have been working my ass off for two months on a project that nobody gives a shit about.
How much time do you think it takes to properly prepare oneself for the GRE's? | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment   |
| A trip to Ikea almost inspired me to respond to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) secretspice's 'Capitalism' prompt. But I was too busy assembling furniture.
My new neighborhood grows on me daily. I think I made a good decision coming here.
Yesterday I bumped into somebody I knew from high school who I haven't seen in years and years. She is living just a couple blocks away from me. Tomorrow a couple friends from work and I are meeting to do some volunteer web GIS work for the Obama campaign in a coffee shop that's nearby all of us. It is a coffee shop with free wi-fi and good taste in music. It is the coffee shop where I am sitting right now.
For the first time in my life, I am living in a place where I am a racial minority. More on that later.
Joshua the Poet is in the city for a month getting certified for teaching ESL. I met up with him and showed him The Strand. I bought too many books: They included Menand's Pragmatism reader, Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals (my first Kant purchase, which I think I'm going to actually make good use of soon), and an academic compilation of essays on semantics from philosophy, linguistics, and psychology that I'm actually pretty psyched about.
I also got some sort of crazy tripped out 70's guru's weirdly printed dharma manual. I got it because the Trinity College library's books on exhibit reminded me that I have a thing for weird text and typesetting. More on this later too, I hope.
Oh, and I got two of those cartoon "Introduction[s] to..." Jung and Lacan. Because they are fun and I don't at the moment have any respect for those guys, but might if their ideas were presented to me in an accessible, witty way. I'm afraid to bring them into my apartment, though, because I'm sure that Hal will give me disparaging look if he finds them.
And I got a nonfiction book about the history of cryptography. I'm going to totally geek out about that when I get around to reading it. Just you wait.
Maybe THIS SHOULD BE MY POST ABOUT CAPITALISM! I BOUGHT LOTS OF BOOKS FOR CHEAP! Nope. Not now. This is not the time.
Speaking of books, Hal's bookshelves have basically every book on my "I probably should read this classical/continental philosophical monster of a book to edify myself" list. Except maybe not much Husserl? Anyway, I'm taking suggestions. What's worth reading? | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| Written Monday, failed to post
Red eye flight to Dublin night after intimate dance party in DC until four in the morning and now I am sitting here, quite awake, already with a new appreciation of Irish history and folk music. It is getting late here. I think I will try to tuck myself in before the clubbers get back.
Began reading Coetzee's Disgrace, on the recommendation of many. I don't identify with the main character nearly as much as Hans Castorp, but there is plenty to it; definitely boldness. And a crispness to the writing that I've missed. Should discuss it with Melanie some time once I'm done with it.
Written today:
FUN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND
From the Things You Don't *Really* Know Until You Try It department
- The Guinness is really fucking good here.
- One good way to endear yourself to an Irishman is to offer to buy him a drink.
- Things are expensive in Ireland nowadays.
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| I just finished The Magic Mountain minutes ago. The narrative takes seven years. In the second to last section, there is the final confrontation between the rational humanist Settembrini and Naphta, the who advocates terroristic religiosity through contradiction and casuistry. The the last section dramatically unveils the horrors of World War I:
"Then came the rumble of thunder--
But modesty and reserve keep us from turning that thunderng rumble into a blustering narrative. No bombast, no rodomontade, her. With appropriately lowered voice, we shall say that the thunderbolt itself (with which we are all familiar) was the deafening dtonation of of great destructive masses of accumulated stupor and petulance. It was, to speak in subdued, respectful tones, a historic thunderclap that shook the foundations of the earth...."
I think it took me approximately a year of sporadic reading to complete it. Throughout, I have drawn parallels between the story and my own life. What a year! But where am I now? Surely not at war.
I am on a bus, actually. ( Read more... ) | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | I should be sleeping | | Time: | 02:00 am |
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| I am going to deliberately deny my better judgment and write this instead of going to sleep.
So, word on the street is that Dewey has an argument for distinguishing between the good and the right (and arguing that neither can be reduced to the other) which goes something like this:
They are phenomenologically different. The experience of the good is one of attraction to an object. The experience of the right is one of valid authority based either socially or impersonally or something. That's way different! They shouldn't be conflated with each other.
So, on the one hand, this feels like a compelling argument to me. Brushing aside that 'good' seems to be a property of objects and 'right' a property of actions (and the result that directly identifying them would be a category error?*), it does make it really hard to see how one could *reduce* to the other. In other words, reduce the right to 'those actions that maximize the good.' On the other hand, the general form of the argument doesn't seem to hold. I would argue that, for example, H2O and water are prima facie phenomenologically different (wet stuff vs. a molecule discovered experimentally) but the we discover their identity after rigorous study.
Maybe there's a useful concept of a phenomenological 'definition' which could work here. Two different definitions, like "the lowest even prime number" and "the square root of four" can be distinct yet refer to the same thing. But then what is the object itself, if not the content of the phenomena we're talking about?
Nevertheless, I feel like there's got to be something subtler going on here. Some extra condition that the good/right case has that the water/H20 case doesn't. What is it? I'm going to keep writing on the assumption that there's something.
And another thing. So, one obvious reason why arguments like Dewey's above don't seem to get a lot of currency is that phenomenological claims aren't really intersubjectively verifiable at all. It's just pragmatically hard to start accepting that form of argument in a field of social inquiry. But what about this as an alternative to the sort-of Deweyan argument above:
They are totally psychologically different. The psychology of the good is desire for an object. The epsychology of the right is of a sense of obligation. That's way different! They shouldn't be conflated with each other..
So, that seems to make essentially the same argument, and suddenly it deals with psychogical entities, which we can observe in action all the time. So that's pretty rad. Or, just to piss some of you off, you could say this instead:
They are totally biologically different. The good stimulates the amygdala and primes the relevant areas of the motor cortex. The right is realized as jumpy mirror neurons. That's way different! They shouldn't be conflated with each other..
Ok, my neuro is mad rusty. And I actually don't think this is as strong an argument, so really it's a red herring**.
But back to the psychological argument. Here is the point I'm tempted to make, and would like feedback on:
(1) The Dewey-esque,phenomenological argument is good.
(2) The Dewey-esque argument is has fundamental implications for moral philosophy.
(3) The psychological argument is as strong as the Dewey-esque argument.
(4) A psychological argument can have fundamental implications for moral philosophy.
(5) ZOMG! naturalized ethics.
There are some obvious issues there--what the hell is a 'fundamental' implication; what's with the leap from the relatively minor conclusion that the study of psychology can inform the study of ethics to the much stronger conclusion, But it seems like there's something going on there.
Shit shit shit I need to go to sleep so I can move apartments tomorrow.
* Interesting to consider what would have to be the case for it not to be though.
** It's not as strong because it depends on lots of other empirical results about the functional roles played by the biological areas. Nothing a priori prevents different biological entities from realizing the same psychological function. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Time: | 02:15 am | | Current Mood: | empowered |
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| Today my boss bequeathed unto me his old laptop, which is 'one of the best laptops ever made' according to a surprising number of people. I'm never really been into hardware, or computers per se at all really, so I was unable to really appreciate the glory I was and apparently am apparently basking in. It's and IBM something something. But it feels robust. It does feel powerful. It's running Ubuntu.
I am quite happy. Partly I'm happy because this means that I will be able to do parts of my job that I care about better (long story here). But I'm also happy because (a) I've never had a laptop before, and (b) I've never had a Linux machine before.
I am in a whole new world now. In the past several hours I've attempted to upgrade Ubuntu, apparently broken it in a fundamental way ("Kernel panic!" is a great error message...), found a way to partially recover it, remove the unnecessary kernel images that seemed to be causing the problem, and... well, that's it. But that's pretty exciting. I'm not even totally clear on what a kernel image is, but I know it's important, and I know I deleted one and it made a lot of things better. I am becoming more awesome by the minute. Any hour now, I will actually accomplish what I set out to do, which is upgrade Ubuntu.
It's hard to express what a transitional moment this is for me, and how important a part of my development I see it as. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I met up with Hal in person for the first time in many months to sign a lease. Afterwards, we took a walk around Williamsburg, catching up.
Hal just recently graduated with a degree in Philosophy. I asked him about his focus. "Classical philosophy," he said, "I just finished my thesis on Plato."
"Plato?"
"Yes, he's great. It's like striking oil everywhere you look." He paused. "But I'm less interested in philosophy and more interested in the history of thought."
"Ah," I said. The subtle tension was resolved. "I think I would be frustrated by having to read so much that was so wrong. Like, this Althusser picked up for the train. You read it and you think, 'This is wrong. This is stupid.'"
"True. There is...there is the epistemic drive, which carries with it epistemic urgency. And there is the aesthetic drive, which wants to see how things unfold." | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Discomforting meme | | Time: | 12:26 pm |
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| From everabridged and branwen_sophia:
Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | First reaction to Althusser | | Time: | 11:21 am |
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| Picked up some Althusser for the bus ride this weekend. Got some first impressions.
He seems to be saying some interesting things. But he doesn't seem smart to me (unlike, say, Lukacs). The writing is crisp on the micro-scale, which I appreciate, but often childish or tedious on the scale of organization and logic. Whole paragraphs that do nothing, etc.
Also, I get the sense already that his results are going to be either fairly wrong or fairly trivial and inapplicable (I get this from what looks like an effort to get substantive results from basically analytic claims.)
That said, I've got maybe 25 or so more pages printed, and they look like they might actually get to the point. Perhaps more on this later? | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4:1 | | Time: | 04:06 pm |
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| | "If the inward power that rules us be true to Nature, it will always adjust itself readily to the possibilities and opportunities offered by circumstance. It asks for no predeterminate material; in the pursuance of its aims it is willing to compromise; hindrances to its progress are merely converted into matter for its own use. It is like a bonfire mastering a heap of rubbish, which would have quenched a feeble glow; but its fiery blaze quickly assimilates the load, consumes it, and flames the higher for it." | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Growth | | Time: | 04:55 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/happy.gif) pleased |
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| I think I have just managed to successfully write something in Python to solve an actual problem for the first time in my life.
What a good day. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| The question at stake is something like: can a rational system be totalizing? And the critique is a theoretical argument that concludes that no, it can't. There are domains of the unintelligible.
The counter (from, for example, Habermas) is that the theoretical argument presupposed the very rational principles that are allegedly undermined.
In only the most uncharitable readings does this render the critical project completely impotent. For if the logic of the critical argument is sound, then it does in fact force an opening of the conception of rationality into something else; most likely something broader, perhaps more formal, and probably something that contains the previous conception of rationality as something like a special case--hence preserving the pedigree of the current perspective. The metanarrative remains, but in an evolved form. This is probably where Habermas is going, in shifting the locus of rationality away from the individual subject into the communicative realm. The individual talking rationally to himself remains as a degenerate case.
But what if the critique cuts deeper; what if it simply scuttles the raft, or severs the chain between the earth and the sun. It might be that then, we are just completely fucked. Or maybe we can find a new foundation for validity. Maybe our own hot tongues can lick the salty ice of chaos into form.
For now I am dragged along with one foot dragging in the water; from this rapid vantage point I can examine the ecosystem that lives in the wake and foam. If there is a secret to life there, I want to know it. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | On being unresolved | | Time: | 12:13 am |
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| So, a long time ago I had this evening that I thought was personally interesting for sort of Life Story kinds of reasons, and so decided that I would write down what happened in it. Since there was a lot of it, I decided to--what the hell?--write it sort of as if it were a short story. Structured that way or whatever. But it was still basically autobiographical.
I recently finished the first draft of it finally, and sent it to a close friend of mine who happens to be a major character in the story/memoir.
His #1 criticism was that the narrator needs to be "worked out." "What's the narrator's deal?---is his style of narration consistent?"
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I don't know. What's my deal? Is my style of narration consistent? What would it mean if it was? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Ambiguity | | Time: | 12:18 am |
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| So, sure, words are ambiguous. Marks and scratches underdetermine their own meaning. In any act of interpretation, we must hone away at all the potential meanings with the chisel of context.
But this too is true: our own thoughts are ambiguous. There are subtle voices we do not hear clearly, and they interrupt and distract the louder ones so that we do not even hear all of their words. Not to mention the inarticulate thuds of our lungs and bowels and heart which demand expression as well.
A proposal: that we abandon the protocol that demands that we say just one thing at a time, and instead represent the cawing flocks of our inner world with our expression's full plumage of insinuation. However "analytically correct" it would be to articulate more minutely, it would be "downright life-denying" to do so. Better to speak untidily of untidy things; "the result is perfect clarity in ambiguity." | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Time: | 08:17 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/thoughtful.gif) contemplative |
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| I lay on my back adjusting the dial that raised and lowered the frequency. I could lower it to a point of stillness, to a silence that drowned the music from the speakers. And I could raise it so that it was so fast that it, too, was a kind of stillness.
The span in between the extremes was more complex. Some patches bore sweet notes. Others sad ones--which I would twist the dial past quite quickly. The same with the signals coming weakly through the static, although they might have been important.
And then I realize it's always like this. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | MIT Collaboratorium | | Time: | 10:01 pm |
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| I think that basically this, plus a little UI work, could save the world.
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| | I am electric; I cannot express the sharpened crystalline nature of my phenomenal body now; I cannot really convey its airlessness. But I can tell you that its catalyst is on page 585 of my copy of The Magic Mountain, and some parts before and especially afterwards. | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Notes | | Time: | 10:43 pm |
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- The problem with The Strand: I went in intending to get one book (as a gift), and instead bought seven. This is absurd--I definitely don't have time to read them.
- I think the implications of the APML (Attention Profiling Mark-up Language) are pretty profound. I also think its going to fall short of expectations for the same reasons that a lot of statistical natural language processing falls short. Still, it's pretty scary/cool.
- I've got a lot of projects on the side which I'm excited about. All three are currently secret. But one of them you can get involved in if you live in New York City and are mischievous. Another you can get involved in if you have aptitude/interest in fiction writing and don't mind licensing some of your scraps under the LGPL...and are a little mischievous. Let me know by--by some other medium, preferably, but commenting here is fine--if you're curious.
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Eh! Ingegnere! Aspetti! Che cosa fa!
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