On a Mission

[Stella]

When it comes to the basic needs in life, it's not too hard to suppy those, assuming social/political conflicts don't enter the picture. The two most significant issues in terms of meeting basic necessities seem to me to be 1) whether people focus on fighting over scraps or instead help with the supply side and 2) a lot of time and energy can be placed into things that ... may not actually be very important.

I agree. Basic necessities don't include money in a classical sense, yet we've placed it at the top of Maslow's Hierarchy. Moreover we've manipulated it (interest/exchange rates/printing more & inflation, etc) to the point where it is losing meaning. The scraps being fought over the most are certainly financial, crime being proportionate to poverty. I tend to think of my time, working in finance, as being most valuable when dealing with the large figures and key issues but I find myself reduced to a $15 dispute quite often.

Capitalism in its simplest form is just carte blanche for competition. In the US anyway it's golden age was at a time when competition was innately linked to excellence in helping on the supply side. That was at a time when people slept with their doors unlocked. But now that loopholes, exploitations and downright fraud have entered the picture, even those who do uphold a standard of excellence will fail if they do not participate proactively in the fight over scraps. The people who disagree with the economic rescue of banks are in a way proponents that failure at excellence should constitute failure, period. I agree with that, but I'm pretty sure that the rescue constituted a tacit understanding that people would not be willing to lose all their scraps entirely to make their point.

Just FYI, I just did a little search on-line and apparently Einstein enjoyed Mozart and also played the violin. There is a very close correlation between music and mathematics.

There are ways that music can be interpreted as motions of objects and the harmonics or timbre of a note can be interpreted similar to the shape/form of the object. For example, if people are in a crowded room and talking, it's easier to hear what someone in particular is saying because of the specific characteristics of their voice. Those characteristics can be "mapped"/transformed similar to a specific shaped object moving a "sound space".

If you enjoy misc. subjects, here's a video showing one manner of mapping a stereo sound to images:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6UzyzF_9Fs&feature=related[video]

... I'll resist drifting further off into the subject of synesthasia, but we could probably find that some of Britney's dance moves have some "entertaining" mathematical features as well LOL, and it could be that depending upon how someone perceives things tend to affect what subjects they find most natural.

This is the third mention of the relationship between music and math in 24 hours I have heard, coming from unrelated random sources. Music IS math...tones are whole and half numbers, sounding through time in accordance with a rhythmic pattern, by means of timbre or shape. Silence is as critical as the sound to form these musical constructs. Frequency or key can change, but the essential patterns remain the same.

I think synesthesia is highly applicable to the perception of music. To some degree everyone experiences a type of synesthesia with music. Major = "happy"; minor = "sad"; 4.5 and -.5 = "dark". Perfect 5 is "Eastern" and major 3 is "Western", even though are both involved with the harmonic balance of "major", so the ideas and images of these intervals are actually cultural - to be accepted or rejected based on where you come from.

In general major scales are the domain of commercial music - "happy" and "safe"...have a coke while noncommercial and rock/metal genres also stay in strict boundaries of utilizing particular dark intervals. Everyone is acutely sensitive to this, and it is a kind of synesthesia that lets us be senstive to it. It defines genres and people often define themselves by the "genre" they like.

That was an amazing video - every time the notes being played return to the 1st note in the key used (the tonic) the shape of the waveform is round.

As for other thoughts the sun evidently creates sound. If our perception of stars involved an acute sense of sound (an impossibility yes considering the distance, but for the sake of supposition...) would it tell us more perhaps about how old it is? What else would we learn from the universe about its age?

I think there's actually a way to remove intellectual property, patents and copyrights etc. from "the system" and have most everything turn out better, not only for content creators, writers, designers etc., but for producers and customers and end users as well.

This is the reason commercial music is stuck in the "safe" parameters is because safety has appeal and sells...when copyrighted, it is at the heart of the billions made in the industry. This is why I dislike commercial music and feel it is ruining the art of composition. At any rate, Paul McCartney sold his music copyrights and later said that it is not possible to "own" music. His reasoning was in line with what Jefferson said in the link you posted about not being able to "own" in any true sense, a parcel of land. Once it's been created, it exists for anyone and everyone, for temporal experience or use.

It takes a bit of work to realize how things would tend to naturally shift without these, but it appears it can work out better for most everyone, except patent lawyers and companies that make a living off trying to deny others from doing something. I've had multiple times where I developed something for a company only to find out later that someone else appeared to have claimed that line of thought as their own private property (frustrating and wasteful). Basically, with privacy or private property providing the physical protections needed and the de facto monopoly an inventor/creator has over their creation (you don't need anyone else to tell someone whether or not their idea is unique or valuable - no lawyer or court should be involved in deciding this - it's the users/customers etc. that are what should really be determining the value) and given the consideration that people are willing to pay for such designs/creations, there are alternatives that have many benefits and even increase the value and usefulness of those designs/creations and similarly can have the writer/designer/engineer etc. receive more compensation with fewer middle men and no enforced single line of production, but instead open competition in the entire "path" (the main change would appear to be that such designs etc. can't be entirely released but instead marketted with various samples, claims that need to be met when released and so likely an alternative service similar to an escrow would appear the best alternative. For example, if someone discovered how to cure cancer with household chemicals , they could either directly sell the idea to someone else or market it with claims of the benefits and not release the novel aspects and if the claims aren't met then some arbitration could be necessary).

As another example, if Britney Spears made a new video, samples of it could be posted on-line and released when people have offered sufficient compensation to the producers. So they could ask for x dollars and various interested people could make offers toward having the video released. If or when the offers appeared sufficient, the rest of the video could be released. If there was any form of additional restrictions, that should be determined by agreements between the people involved (that could be difficult to trace and enforce though and would be unlikely, unless it's a very limited audience - the best bet is to simply ask for sufficient compensation up front and let people derive whatever benefit they can from there - attaching lots of strings simply lowers the value of the material).

I align with your thoughts. With medical products and testing the problem is much more complicated, imho it suffers worst. There are patients who can't get to new medicines. And of course now since ADHD medications have been tested, patented, and approved, its no wonder so many ADHD patients are being "found" by the ad campaign.

What gets me the most is Microsoft patenting technology and dispensing it over multiple editions. I thought planned obsolesence was bad enough!

[SteveA]

I agree. Basic necessities don't include money in a classical sense, yet we've placed it at the top of Maslow's Hierarchy. Moreover we've manipulated it (interest/exchange rates/printing more & inflation, etc) to the point where it is losing meaning.

Yes, it's an exchange of (enforced) icons of value and not an exchange tied to things people might truly prefer. The paper (and plastic) itself has little innate value beyond the convenience of exchange and the artificially imposed legal value (using alternate forms of exchange tends to be highly discouraged by most governments).

There's more to this and it's not simply in terms of currency but social/cultural concepts as well. Most political conflicts arise from similar "virtual extrapolations" or iconic (and often stereotypically acquired) values.

I'd normally consider myself "conservatively biased", but for example, the gay marriage "issue" is an artificially constructed one by government itself. Marriage was moved from a private institution and pressured to be a "publicly" controlled issue (in this "public" is really just some legislators that felt a need to decide who can marry whom - that was the beginning of it and it was an attempt to enforce caste, race and other factors). The question is fundamentally not over whether or not gay marriages should exist but instead why did government get itself involved in issues that should primarily be private social ones?

We can take the immigration issue as well and find that the main problem is not over people being freely able to move around. As long as property issues are respected and people "pay their own way" etc., I don't think many people have problems with someone of a foreign origin living in the area. The real conflict arose when government got involved and created public systems which can potentially be abused, and it's truly not just an issue that arose from immigration - these are systems that get abused by plenty of non-immigrants as well but it's always easier to try to point fingers at someone else and deny the problem at home.

Of course, what's the government "solution"? It's to imposed even greater control, restrictions and monitoring on everyone and create (another) virtual "Iron Wall" around the country ... which will not really fix those institutions that cause the problems, but instead will simply trap everyone inside. (It used to be that people could freely visit Canada and Mexico but now you've got to get permission first ... it makes me mad that some legislators assume that they were handed personal ownership of the place. I thought we were paying them for some services ... what do taxes buy? Apparently some think they "buy" a right to have the rest taken)

There are many issues like this where, when you trace it down to the roots, it's almost always layers of virtual/mental/cultural extrapolation away from the individual reality for people and collective thought processes that mask over the physical reality, until people start to get hurt or wonder why it's become harder to earn a living etc. and then the immediate problem can become noticed more clearer, but too few people see how that immediate problem arose from many layers of artificially created problems.

I think nature already has plenty of stuff for us to do and work on - there's little need for social conflicts to be added to that (there appears to actually be a cycle to this in history - people begin with agriculture and basic necessities. From there some proficiency is acquired in meeting those basic needs and then we add some entertainment to the mix ... which I think can still be great ... but along with this, some of that free time is used to create diverting problems that can accumulate and escalate to levels that become unbearable (ironically it's the areas of efficiency that enable such levels of inefficiency to survive ). Hopefully people can sort the good from the bad and help let the unsustainable components collapse while keeping the more beneficial aspects in place or at least keep a 'road map' to a quick recovery available. It would be a shame to see major problems pull everything down into the mud and have few people even understand what happened.

It's a shame that some of the kids nowdays have to live in these conditions, but then again, I'm certain every generation has its challenges and things are fine in many ways ... I also think there's a good possibility of a bright future as well I'm not all doom and gloom LOL! It's just that some issues appear very important and I'm personally anxious to see some changes ... seems like there's been enough "learning experiences" to last me for a while and I'd enjoy seeing some of the better ideas unfold into reality.

The scraps being fought over the most are certainly financial, crime being proportionate to poverty. I tend to think of my time, working in finance, as being most valuable when dealing with the large figures and key issues but I find myself reduced to a $15 dispute quite often.

It's interesting to consider cause and effect here. People have managed to live in areas of the world that seem almost destitute, yet you can still find kids playing in a tundra and a family telling stories around a campfire etc. I won't claim those conditions can't be harsh, but in most areas of the world, acquiring the basics for living is, IMO, not that difficult and that it's actually the crime and social/cultural conflicts that generate most of the true hardships.

On the other hand, few people are 'islands unto themself' and I guess much of the best and worst arises from such social interchanges, though I think with a bit of intelligence and desire, most of the poorer social aspects can be avoided for the benefit of everyone in the long run (yes, even for those who appear to be somewhat better off in the short run).

There's fundamentally little of any true social conflict except for what arises from an apparently natural scarcity of wisdom (and the frustrating part for myself is recognizing I've got some of the same problems ... it would be nice to be able to point a finger at someone else and not have that self-recognized twinge of hypocracy present ) Oh well, it appears things might always be a 'work in progress'.

In your case, in the Middle East, I know the same thing is true and even if one believes the official conspiracy theory, it's still government and miltary influences that create an on-going theme of conflict and (almost by definition) it's the private and voluntary side of things that keeps the peace, but when people are used to thinking in terms of using a hammer, everything else looks like a nail.

I'll can get off political stuff ... it's easy once I've off-loaded a couple volumes of random musings on the subject LOL

[SteveA]

I saw your reply on music and a couple reasons why minor chords tend to be more dissonant are that:

1) A major chord is very natural ratio of frequencies constructed by everything up to the 6th harmonic (actually this ties in with some of my ToE ideas).

If we played a middle C (440Hz note) on an instrument, the harmonics created are:

1st/fundamental: 1*440Hz=440 Hz
2nd: 2*440Hz=880 Hz
3rd: 3*440Hz=1320 Hz
4th: 4*440Hz=1760 Hz
5th: 5*440Hz=2200 Hz
6th: 6*440Hz=2640 Hz

If we played a major chord, 2 octaves higher, the frequencies for C, E and G would be (I'll use the equally tempered scale of 12 notes per octave):

C: 440*2^(24/12)=440*(2^2)=440*4=1760 Hz
E: 440*2^(28/12)=440*(2^2.333...)~=440*5.04~=2217 Hz
G: 440*2^(31/12)=440*(2^2.5833..)~=440*5.993~=2637 Hz

Notice that these are very close the ratio of 4:5:6 (only a 0.8% error in the E note and ~0.1% error in the G)

We can actually drop the G an octave (to ~1318 Hz) and describe this also as the ratio of 3:4:5 in frequencies (that's a Pythagorean Triplet as well)

So a major chord is effectively implicit in the beginning of a the harmonic structure of most any brassy sound (by changing the shape of the mouth, you can actually create resonant frequencies that can play a major chord one note at a time with a fixed glottal frequency ... anyway, just another little tidbit to mess around with )

2) The minor chord has two issues that make it more unnatural:

a) The minor 3rd is at a ratio of 2^(3/12)~=1.189:1, which can be interpreted as an approximation of 1.2:1 or 6:5, but the error is a bit larger (which makes it sound more dissonant due to the equally tempered scale ... instruments tuned to a minor key would sound better) and a ratio of 6:5 is further away from the fundamental than the 3:4:5 ratio of a major key.

So there's both a harmonic that's passed by in a minor chord and the equally tempered tuning isn't particularly adept at approximating the ratio.

Actually this stuff ties in very closely with some of my ideas for a ToE.

I simulated something similar to taking a pair of strings and stretching them and placing different "tap" points where the lengths of both ends of each string could be altered and then plotted a function similar to computing the greatest common divisor between wavelengths and how much mismatch or residual energies were left and generated these images (there's a binary version of the greatest common divisor and I also played a few tricks by masking out some binary digits to generate some of the more pyramidal and fractal features):







Those all use basically the same algorithm though I altered the number of frequency components, ways of masking bits and how I measured the residual energy and mapped these to colors.

I was thinking that it would be nice to remove the discontinuities and connect these forms altogether into a single space and the idea of using the chaotic orbitals of the 3 body problem in physics seemed like a fun thing to check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem

Here's the 4th image I generated from that!



Here's another interesting one using that 3 body algorithm:



I made a movie of the evolution of these over time and they're very fluid forms (some look like travelling wave or magna flows etc.)

Those last two images didn't include the resonance energy functions I was computing for the initial 3 images, so I never did get around to really tying those two ideas together, but I just had an idea of how to do it all with something similar to using a single rubber band! (Thank you for stimulating some ideas, that's always fun finding another little epiphany or two )

Enjoy,
Steve

P.S. If I can combine these two forms together, then you can basically "dive into" those images and similar to moving fractals, you could practically zoom in to moving grains of sand on a beach Now it could be fun to build some optimized hardware to compute those algorithms too and get some fast real-time framerates. The algorithms for the gcd images are actually rather efficiently implemented in electronic hardware using binary shift registers.

There are also programmable electronic circuits in which you can have specific algorithms run hundreds of times faster on a very inexpensive part compared to using a general purpose computer. It would actually be rather easy to build some high-performance hardware to impletement these algorthms ... could be a market for something along those lines in terms of something like a physics engine.

BTW, the basic idea for the resonance algorithms can be derived from most any form of computation. There's an easy way to remap these all to the equivalent of a "sprectrum of field lines" (discrete period wavelengths) surrounding an observational point and from there, the extent to which these appear synchronized and interacting or unsynchronized in motion can be determined by using the gcd algorithm and bingo - we can map most any form of Turing machine into spectral energies interacting in a physical space ... and yes, I think we can map all those into something like resonances within a non-linear responding rubber band (non-linearities can generate the harmonics as well) ... there's another cool effect that can arise with a quantized/discrete representation in that higher frequencies arising from such non-linear interactions can alias high frequencies back down to lower one and we can have something like conversions between kinetic and potential energy occuring as well or energy to matter and visa versa ... at least that should be possible in such a model.

Again, thank you much for stimulating a few new ideas