Have You Ever Had an Epiphany of the Absurd?

[Triple Zero]

Ok, I was studying neurons. Neurons have a threshold for stimuli. If the stimuli falls below the threshold, no impulse is produced by the neuron. If the stimuli is above it, an impulse is produced. The textbook refers to it as an all-or-none principle. Of course, what this means is that our neurons create a false dichotomy where there's really this whole range of intensity. Scale it up, and our entire consciousness, though unfathomably more complex than a single neuron, is based on this false dichotomy at its most fundamental level. We have no way of knowing how much stimulation a single neuron is receiving, and that isn't really essential information for our survival, but it still means there's this whole dimension of information that we can't even comprehend.

Of course, I might be wrong about this whole theory. It was jarring when I figured it out, though.

Cool.

Reminds me a bit when, in Fooled By Randomness I read the line "Our brains did not evolve for Truth, but for Fitness."

[Cramulus]

A very interesting thought

But of a stretch though. I wouldn't really describe a neuron's binary states a false dichotomy. It's sort of like saying that digital data, which are made of 1s and 0s, are based on a false dichotomy.

[LMNO]

Perhaps, but that does explain why MP3s sound different than vinyl records.

[Lord Quantum]

A very interesting thought

But of a stretch though. I wouldn't really describe a neuron's binary states a false dichotomy. It's sort of like saying that digital data, which are made of 1s and 0s, are based on a false dichotomy.

What he's saying is still basically valid though, even at the macro level. Think about dog whistles. A dog hears something that you'll never hear simply because the dog whistle doesn't generate enough energy to pass the threshold of excitation. That doesn't mean that the sound the dog hears isn't real it's just that you're like a guy that's 7ft tall and has his neck and waist in a cast. If you can't bend down to look, there's lots of things you'll never see.

reminds me of the time i "discovered" that there has to be infinitely many dimensions.  took me about a week to get over it and at least a year to figure out why nobody else thought it was as awesome as i did.

You got over it? Maybe you should tell our good friends in the theoretical physics department how you achieved that. They've got this thing called the Multiple Universe Hypothesis and they haven't quite gotten over it yet.

[Triple Zero]

Perhaps, but that does explain why MP3s sound different than vinyl records.

No. But it does explain why CDs could possibly sound different than vinyl records.

[LMNO]

Perhaps, but that does explain why MP3s sound different than vinyl records.

No. But it does explain why CDs could possibly sound different than vinyl records.

Oh, come on.  the MP3 compresses digital audio.  IT'S STILL DIGITAL AUDIO, WHETHER IT'S A CD OR AN MP3.  Damn pedants.

[the other anonymous]

Vinyl records?

Ain't that, like, book-keeping for fetishists?

-toa,
new to the whole pun thing

[Triple Zero]

Perhaps, but that does explain why MP3s sound different than vinyl records.

No. But it does explain why CDs could possibly sound different than vinyl records.

Oh, come on.  the MP3 compresses digital audio.  IT'S STILL DIGITAL AUDIO, WHETHER IT'S A CD OR AN MP3.  Damn pedants.

Well yeah but the main reason you'd find a difference in sound in an MP3 would be the lossy compression, the watery warbly sound you can hear in a 128kbps mp3 in the background, which is a different kind of information-loss than you'd get from digitization itself.

I was just pointing out that the difference you hear between an MP3 and vinyl will most probably be due to the compression algorithm, not because it is digital.

Which is why it's kind of real hard to actually hear a real difference between vinyl and CD. Except if you count the clicks of dust (which can be nice, I agree) (they can also be sampled for that exact reason btw), or some specifics about how the wave signal of vinyl gets carried to the speakers versus how that works with the wave signal encoded on the CD.

But if you get down to it, CD is 44KHz, 16bit stereo sound. 44KHz means the max frequency is at 22KHz, which is nicely above the human hearing range. And 16bit means there is a signal to noise ratio which, I don't know how much dB, but also expect to be below human hearing treshold. Maybe it's frequency dependent, I could imagine you might hear some zipper noise in really low frequencies maybe. That's where vinyl might be superior, but I'd really want to hear and find out for myself one day.

So, your dog might be able to tell the difference, but you probably won't.

Oh and there's aliasing, but that's a question of bad analog-to-digital conversion, you can prevent that and keep the phase-shfit to a minimum too.

LALALALA SORRY I WAS A PEDANT

[hooplala]

Vinyl records?

Ain't that, like, book-keeping for fetishists?

-toa,
new to the whole pun thing

GO.  AWAY.

[Brotep]

A CD is just a string of binary information.  Neurons are interconnected.


A more convincing argument might be made by saying we perceive our surroundings in terms of what we can do with them.
It's not just the limitations of having five senses, but being human-shaped and human-sized.

Our perception of a chair will be far more focused on sitting than a rhinoceros' perception of the same chair.
We're not really wired to understand the universe, then--just what we can do with it.

[hooplala]

Our perception of a chair will be far more focused on sitting than a rhinoceros' perception of the same chair.
We're not really wired to understand the universe, then--just what we can do with it.

This is very interesting.

[Brotep]

Ok, spin-off thread!

[Lord Quantum]

So yeah...I looked into the  Chapel Perilous thing a bit more and I agree, it's very similar to what I'm talking about. But ,not surprisingly, I'm still more fond of my own terminology. But maybe that's because the experience isn't over yet. Wilson mentioned that one leaves Chapel Perilous with the help of some sort of "ally" and "then after that for the rest of your life you've got this question: Was that ally a supernatural helper, or was it just part of my own mind trying to save me from going totally bonkers with this stuff?"

[Jasper]

As far as a pragmatist is concerned, is the difference important?

[LMNO]

So yeah...I looked into the  Chapel Perilous thing a bit more and I agree, it's very similar to what I'm talking about. But ,not surprisingly, I'm still more fond of my own terminology. But maybe that's because the experience isn't over yet. Wilson mentioned that one leaves Chapel Perilous with the help of some sort of "ally" and "then after that for the rest of your life you've got this question: Was that ally a supernatural helper, or was it just part of my own mind trying to save me from going totally bonkers with this stuff?"

For Wilson, maybe that's true.  But he cannot possibly dictate the experience of any human being other than himself.