Claus Metzner

(as an aside, I liked it better when you posted these inline on friendfeed) - Nathaniel Thurston

Cool, never saw that article. I didn't know Michael before I got active on FriendFeed. In fact, I think I still wouldn't have known him. So I consider that one of my biggest gains from FriendFeed. (let just say I hold Michael in high regard) - Meryn Stol

I would like to reflect the problem of information overload in a series of short posts. Since this problem is yet too complex for me for analyzing it in a coherent essay, I'll try adding small ideas, one at a time, just as they come to mind. Each idea will have a label for cross-referencing. Comments are welcome, of course. In the end, I hope to arrive at a set of basic insights and principles for a personalized information diet plan. - Claus Metzner

One of the most important habits, I think, is an avoidance of advertising -- advertising is designed to stay with us for months or even years after the impression, and has effects that are often subconscious. - Nathaniel Thurston

In the remote past, human beings lived from the food that nature provides. This food was sparsely distributed and thus it required intelligent search or hunting strategies to get it. As the success of a food-gathering excursion was not guaranteed, such people had to store any extra (surplus) food in reservoirs, such as their own body or a safe place at home. Many of us still show hunter-gatherer behavior, in particular when information food (compare [2]) is concerned. We surf the Web and bookmark and download whatever might become useful at a later time. We have not properly adapted to the new situation that (information) food is not rare any longer. It remains available in the Web forever, and, thanks to ever better search engines, it can be accessed quickly when the concrete need arises (And just as overeating can lead to a fat, less mobile body, an uncontrolled information in-take may on the long run result in an immobile mind - excuse my little joke). - Claus Metzner

Interesting. This suggests that we should care what prospective friends are reading/listening to/watching. If, for example, they are overfed on limbaugh et al, then we shouldn't expect to be able to make a dent in their convictions unless their basic "dietary" habits change. - Nathaniel Thurston

Our body is a complex structure of biochemical components. This body-structure is subject to permanent remodeling processes: Components are added to the structure, others removed, while (in the healthy individual) all those parameters and functions of the body that are essential for daily life are preserved or even improved (training). Due to that impermanent nature of the body-structure, the organism needs a constant in- and out-flow of bio-material. In analogy, our mind is also a complex structure of components (ideas, information fragments, patterns, mems, concepts, beliefs..) that are constantly remodeled. The mind-structure is changed whenever we learn or forget. As we must behave in an intelligent, adaptive way in everyday life, the mental functions have to be maintained, or better improved. New components for our mind-structure are available by absorbing information from the environment. We break down that information into small reusable items and incorporate them somehow into our mental machinery. - Claus Metzner

According to Wikipedia, "Hygiene" refers to the set of practices associated with the preservation of health and healthy living. The word seems to be used almost exclusively in the context of our material body, but the basic idea can be extended to the field of our mental well-being. For instance, one can ask questions such as what kind of information we should absorb, what is the proper amount and timing for that in-take, and if the concepts of fasting can be applied to our mind. - Claus Metzner

In the last years of the 20th century new editions of the music scores for Beethoven's symphonies have been published, in which, for the first time, the worst errors of the older editions are corrected. In retrospect, some of these accidental mutations in the historic scripts did not damage the quality of the music. On the contrary: "Jonathan Del Mar's recent edition of the Ninth Symphony amply illustrates the embarrassing fact that some of the most imaginative and original moments in the canon [of classical music] have been the result of printer's errors." (From Nicholas Cook, "Music - A very short introduction", page 88). - Claus Metzner

http://www.scribd.com/doc... - Goran Zec

The second law of thermodynamics forbids a decrease in entropy of an isolated system. However, in statistical mechanics this strict prohibition is softened to a probabilistic statement, which allows transient decreases in entropy to occur with a small probability. The likelihood of such fluctuations is vanishingly small in macroscopic bodies, but in smaller systems, such as a stretched DNA molecule, they can actually be observed. This possibility has motivated recent work on fluctuation theorems, which compare the probability of a system reducing its entropy (over short times) in out-of-equilibrium processes to those in which the entropy increases. In a paper appearing in Physical Review E, Arnab Saha of the S. N. Bose National Center For Basic Sciences in Kolkata, India, and Sourabh Lahiri and Arun Jayannavar, of the Institute of Physics, in Bhubaneswar, India, build on this work and study the total entropy produced in a simple system that is driven out of equilibrium. They model a... more... - Claus Metzner

So may this have anything to do with the low entropy initial conditions of the singularity that gave rise to the universe as we know it? - Alexander Kruel

I wonder why some students are consistently so much "better" than others. I don't really believe it is only due to talent. Sometimes it seems that human beings can undergo a kind of "brightness phase transition". Once this happens, they improve themselves more and more. The question is how to get people to the critical point of that transition. - Claus Metzner

Nietzsche's Zarathustra zum abgestürzten, sterbenden Seiltänzer-Akrobaten: "<<.. du hast aus der Gefahr deinen Beruf gemacht, daran ist nichts zu verachten. Nun gehst du an deinem Beruf zugrunde: dafür will ich dich mit meinen Händen begraben.>> Man kann die Pointe des Dialogs nicht mißinterpretieren. Er hat die Bedeutung einer Urszene, da in ihr eine communio neuen Typs konstituiert wird: kein Gottesvolk mehr, sondern ein fahrendes Volk, keine Gemeinschaft der Heiligen, sondern eine der Akrobaten, nicht Beitragszahler in einer versicherten Gesellschaft, sondern Mitglieder des Vereins der gefährlich Lebenden." - Claus Metzner

Message encryption, Monte Carlo simulations, and electronic gambling machines all rely on random number generators. With a computer algorithm, it is only possible to generate numbers in a pseudorandom way, since once one figures out the algorithm itself, the sequence of numbers can be known. For applications that require higher security, means of generating true, or nondeterministic, random numbers become necessary. The intensity fluctuation in light from a chaotic laser, made chaotic by external optical feedback, has an unpredictable output, which approximately repeats itself at the round trip time of the external cavity. If this quasiperiodicity can be eliminated, the signal can be used to rapidly generate sequences of nondeterministic random bits. In a paper appearing in Physical Review Letters, Igor Reidler, Yaara Aviad, Michael Rosenbluh, and Ido Kanter from the Bar-Ilan University in Israel use a simple edge-emitting semiconductor laser to create a chaotic signal with a broad... more... - Claus Metzner

Hey I was just going to post that too... - Alexander Kruel