Applied v. Pure mathematics

I used to be having this huge internal battle between whether I wanted to do pure or applied Mathematics.  And, a long while back I met a while by the name of Robert with whom I discussed this at length.  And, I gave a lot of arguments that Hardy would've been proud of, but in the end, he ended up convincing me by noting that, "All applied Mathematics today is pretty pure, anyways."

And given a lot of the theoretical considerations that goes on, and the historical fact that a lot of Mathematics comes from Physics, and not the other way around as mathematicians would have you believe, gives some credence to this idea.

Plus, I did read Hardy's "Apology for the Mathematician".  He makes a lot of good points intellectual curiosity, professional pride, ambition are the dominant incentives (but no mention of Poincaré's dictum, "Mathematics for Mathematics sake", or of Turán's motto, "Mathematics is a strong fortress.").  The majority of his points on the aesthetics of Mathematics relate to an analogy to the arts:  Artists -> patterns, Painter -> shapes, Poet -> words, Mathematician -> ideas (Hardy holds a very Platonic view of the world, things are of ideal forms, and uses this as a huge justification throughout the entire essay).  However, this does not seem to deny the capability of applied mathematicians.  Moreover, and finally, my main point of contention is Hardy famously saying pure Mathematics is 'useless'.  This to me seems to be the crux of the matter between pure and applied Mathematics.  In particular, Hardy uses this as justification that Mathematics can 'do no harm'.  And uses the Mathematics of number theory and relativity not yet having uses for warfare as examples.

Which, we all know what happened to those two examples (HINT:  CRYPTOGRAPHY AND THE ATOM BOMB GUISE).....

Logic/(video?) Games: Do they have a cognitive effect?

Somewhere in this interview:

The guy mentions how just doing simple arithmetic problems influences depression rates.

I was wondering about the influence of logic games in general.  Since--as I noted in my bs knowledge of neuroscience back here--how the neocortex overlays all of the behaviorist bs.  The idea would be that logic games enhance the PFC, and that in turn enhances executive control and a whole host of other functions.

Which leads to another idea I'm kind of apprehensive to...do videogames have a cognitive effect?

I mean, in general, the people I know who play shittons of videogames...tend to not be altogether dumb people.

BS Attempt at Neuroscience

ARE YOU READY FOR ME STEALING STUFF FROM STUFF I'VE WRITTEN ELSEWHERE?

Anyways, this will hopefully fit into my next post...

I was into behaviorism for a long time, and I would use it quite often for self-motivational schemes (get myself to do exercises or read or etc.). But then I realized the hard way about the behaviorist regression problem (if X reinforces Y, and you use X to do Y, then problem is the same: you now have to reinforce X instead of Y (or if it naturally reinforcing, have some other scheme Z to keep X in check, and then Z has to be properly reinforced)). I realized it really wasn't working, although I might have had short term successes, it was no different than the yoyoing short term successes I had before implementing ridiculous behaviorist schemes.

So then I got off my high horse thinking the cognitive revolution was a bunch of bs and that Skinner was a God and started reading Chomsky's critique of Verbal Behavior, finally understood why the cognitive revolution took place and why all this fuzzy therapeutic nonsense is actually beneficial because...

The key idea I form around all of this is the triune model of the brain. To some extent, I already alluded to this in a previous long post. And I'll be brief because I know you're all a pretty smart crowd here, so this is more for my own benefit but...you have the brain stem-cerebellum which regulates hormones and base instincts/pleasures like eating and sex and what-not. The limbic system is the next layer on top of this, and for my purposes of thought here, regulates emotions, and reinforcement schedules, and basic learning and what-not. The neocortex is on top of that and controls our rational thought and interpretation of events and language and what-not.

The way I think of it now, is that the Behaviorist model hooks up with the brain-stem/limbic system. And the reason it can't explain where certain other reinforcement comes from--or the inability of it to explain cognitive reframing (a.k.a. "being positive")--is in part what I described of part of the problem with the regression problem above.

Therefore, there's actually something to be said about the importance of interpretation in motivating one self and all these 'fuzzy' sort of concepts (which is why I was so apprehensive to them, and I'll get back to this IN MORE DETAIL IN LATER POSTS (aside from what I've already said in that old post)).

Marriage

I was reading Strang's Applied Mathematics the other day.  He got into talking about the "Wedding Problem".  Right before this, he was talking about another problem you can apply some game theory to called "Escape".  He then likened the winning strategy of the "Wedding Problem" to the winning strategy to "Escape".

Conclusion?  I shall directly quote from Strang, I swear to you, no joke, this is printed in the Applied Mathematics book, I am not paraphrasing it, this is verbatim:

"Inside the wedding game, the real game is Escape."

Genius.  This guy is fucking genius.

Dealing with Anxiety: Seneca and Adam Savage

One of the better ideas I've gotten from Alain de Botton is his description of Seneca's guide to anger:

As with most of the videos in this series, I find their most applicable use in areas other than their target.  Here, instead of appreciating this as a guide to anger, I see it better as a guide to anxiety.  To wit:

When you feel panicked and want to do something else, look and create a plan (either 'plan' in remaining mentally prepared or 'plan' as in actually do have an alternative) for the worst likely outcome.  Often, you will come to terms with it and realize that it's not so bad, and therefore fear does not overtake your decision-making process.

I've done this quite a bit in my past.  In particular, I think this is how I got through most of uni.  I started with the thought that, "Well, if I fail my first year, then I'll use my anosmia to my advantage and get a decent job somewhere," and shot for my minor.  Once I had that, and had a minor in both Physics and Math by then, I did have a bit of a crisis, and ended up switching majors from Physics to Math; and then thought, "Well, if this shits up, I at least have the equivalent of an associate's to back up on."  I then plowed on.  Whenever I felt exam anxiety, I would be reminded of the fact that--in a sense--failure is just another form of freedom.

The best Senecan I've come across, comes from a story from Adam Savage:

Because of this, I have come up with the ultimate Senecan.

No, Adam Savage has GONE THROUGH the ultimate Senecan.

Whenever I've felt some extreme anxiety, I've imagined the above following scenario.  Whenever I am anxious about something, I imagine "The Adam Savage Senecan".  Wherein I imagine the person that I have some obligation that I am feeling anxious for, responds the same way Adam's boss did.

The crucial part is what I imagine I would do immediately after the chastisement ends, and I am alone in that 'warehouse', what would I do or where I would go from there.  Usually, it simply involves me realizing that...on the flipside, I don't have to talk to them anymore, and I am usually psychically set on simply moving to a different place.

Once I am good with this.  I typically have no more anxiety.

Is Meditation Bogus?

How trustworthy _is_ this neurological research?

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/acad/psyb/2010/00000050/F0020003/art00007 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation gives an idea of how large the corpus of research is now) (Most of my knowledge about meditation research, though, came from this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tRdDqXgsJ0).

Is working memory research purely a Hawthorne effect?

Is the research on meditation complete bogus and motivated completely from a desire to back up Buddhist meditation (look at who funds most of these studies...)?

I tried meditation for a month about a year back. I noticed no effect, but I don't know if it's because I wasn't doing it right, it did have an effect but I didn't notice, or if these studies really are bogus (it's not like I can have my own fMRI machine).

Another possible explanation, given the link you provided, is that most of the research is done on pathological cases. Knock on wood, I'm pretty sure I'm not one of those cases. Therefore, it could be the case that the marginal effect provided by meditation is so much significantly smaller for myself as it is for someone with ADHD that I get very little cognitive benefit (the same way that athletes hit plateaus in their training).

.....

I'm also tempted to link to the Skeptic's Dictionary's page on Transcendental Meditation here...(http://www.skepdic.com/tm.html)

Aristotle II: "Happiness"

As I mentioned before, my first beef with Aristotle is promoting this fallacy of false compromise throughout all of Western thought.  The second idea is the absolute infallibility of happiness.

I've talked before about my multiple criticisms of happiness as a good that we should all try to achieve.  My next criticism, and this sidles in with Aristotle, is what even is happiness?  The definition that Aristotle gives for happiness--eudaimonia--is not what people think of when they think of happiness.  Even when they agree that they wouldn't want to pump themselves full of heroin, and then smugly sit back in the comfort that they are going after eudaimonia, in my experience they still are going after happiness in the hedonistic sense.  Granted, it's more of an "arbitrary exception hedonia", but really under what I see, I see no difference between this and what is essentially hedonia.

(but then again, I've already gone into my beef with "happiness")

The problem, I think, comes in how Aristotle defined happiness:

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence” -Aristotle

How do most people really define happiness?  Probably like so:

"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory." -Albert Schweitzer

Say a person decides his goal in life is to study Platypuses. So, he goes through a lot of pain studying and making and compiling this humongous tome on platypuses. After 10 years he is finally finished. It gets a few reviews that say it's alright, and immediately after the man dies. The apparent paradox is that in one sense the man lived a horrible life suffering in the Australian savannah. However, the Aristotelian notion says that he is happy.

Simply creating a new definition for happiness, and then claiming that you should follow happiness, to get out of the logical v. emotional conflicts is a nice intellectual trick--if it weren't downright fucking dishonest.

Moreover, this definition of happiness leads to circular reasoning.  According to my rendition of Aristotle, virtuous thought supposes that a virtuous persons has a fairly explicit conception of "happiness" or eudaimonia. Thus a person can use that to create virtuous thought and thus virtuous action to produce a good, or eudaimonia.