On the socialization of children

[Cosine 5]

Perhaps he already has. Or maybe that's just me with my irrationally persistent fear of math class.

[Telarus]

As far as the knot in the rope question, it's semantic.  We use the word "knot" to describe a configuration of rope.

No, it wasn't. Well I didn't mean it that way.

You can call it "configuration", but that was not what I was talking about. Yes the configuration is part of it, and so is the physical rope. But put those two together and they attain an emergent property which we call a knot.

Easiest example is to take two circular pieces of string. One is a circle, the other is the trefoil knot. Physically they are equivalent, their configurations are different. But there is more to it than that. You can fiddle with both pieces of string and make them into diferent configurations, but you can never turn one into the other.
That is a new property, it emerges from the knot and its configuration as more than the exact sum of its parts.

Another example. In space, floating a flat triangle. It has the property of two-sidedness. You can move and stretch and bend the triangle, but it remains two-sided. Now add another triangle. Put them together, stretch and form a strip, bend, flip and attach and you just made yourself a Moebius strip which has a new property: one-sidedness (and if you don't flip, this space still has the property of two-sidedness as well).

This is the simplest example I've come across that shows that Emergence is in fact a real phenomenon and not just semantics. This new property of one-sidedness is explicitly more than the sum of its parts, neither of which had that property before.

This is exactly the metaphysical side of Bucky's physicalUniverse/metaphysicalUniverse distinction.

The knot example is a great one, here's an expansion I just picked up from Synergetics:

-Assume 2 strings, (one knotted, one unknotted)
           [Bucky notes that all knots, and thus all sustainable emergent properties**, require 2 full circles (the rope kink 360degrees twice) and are all related to the number 720(degrees)]  **haven't seen this play out yet or gotten quite what he meant by that

-Now join the 2 strings with a dab of glue, end to end

-If the knot is loose enough you can move it down the string and 'onto' the other string.

-At this point, 2 inferences can be made about reality. There are special-case events (events witnessed from a viewpoint), and there are generalized principles - metaphysical events. The example is a special-case (temporary, non-simultaneously apprehended), but "the knot" has a metaphysical component (metaphysical-"knot" is independent of size... i.e. an imaginary knot has no need of a 'scale' until applied, _and_at_the_same_time_ if we keep upgrading the string to rope or even wire, end to end, and keep sliding the knot along, we can end up with "the same knot" on huge steel bridge cable).

Similarly, the 'idea of /Triangle/' is size independent and material independent but always follows certain rules (based on the relationship of 3 angles). One of the interesting things about triangles is you can't bend them without breaking them (adding new verticies, and making new edges - snap). You can only tumble them in space and change the relationships between the angles and edges.

[Adios]

As far as the knot in the rope question, it's semantic.  We use the word "knot" to describe a configuration of rope.

No, it wasn't. Well I didn't mean it that way.

You can call it "configuration", but that was not what I was talking about. Yes the configuration is part of it, and so is the physical rope. But put those two together and they attain an emergent property which we call a knot.

Easiest example is to take two circular pieces of string. One is a circle, the other is the trefoil knot. Physically they are equivalent, their configurations are different. But there is more to it than that. You can fiddle with both pieces of string and make them into diferent configurations, but you can never turn one into the other.
That is a new property, it emerges from the knot and its configuration as more than the exact sum of its parts.

Another example. In space, floating a flat triangle. It has the property of two-sidedness. You can move and stretch and bend the triangle, but it remains two-sided. Now add another triangle. Put them together, stretch and form a strip, bend, flip and attach and you just made yourself a Moebius strip which has a new property: one-sidedness (and if you don't flip, this space still has the property of two-sidedness as well).

This is the simplest example I've come across that shows that Emergence is in fact a real phenomenon and not just semantics. This new property of one-sidedness is explicitly more than the sum of its parts, neither of which had that property before.

This is exactly the metaphysical side of Bucky's physicalUniverse/metaphysicalUniverse distinction.

The knot example is a great one, here's an expansion I just picked up from Synergetics:

-Assume 2 strings, (one knotted, one unknotted)
           [Bucky notes that all knots, and thus all sustainable emergent properties**, require 2 full circles (the rope kink 360degrees twice) and are all related to the number 720(degrees)]  **haven't seen this play out yet or gotten quite what he meant by that

-Now join the 2 strings with a dab of glue, end to end

-If the knot is loose enough you can move it down the string and 'onto' the other string.

-At this point, 2 inferences can be made about reality. There are special-case events (events witnessed from a viewpoint), and there are generalized principles - metaphysical events. The example is a special-case (temporary, non-simultaneously apprehended), but "the knot" has a metaphysical component (metaphysical-"knot" is independent of size... i.e. an imaginary knot has no need of a 'scale' until applied, _and_at_the_same_time_ if we keep upgrading the string to rope or even wire, end to end, and keep sliding the knot along, we can end up with "the same knot" on huge steel bridge cable).

Similarly, the 'idea of /Triangle/' is size independent and material independent but always follows certain rules (based on the relationship of 3 angles). One of the interesting things about triangles is you can't bend them without breaking them (adding new verticies, and making new edges - snap). You can only tumble them in space and change the relationships between the angles and edges.

Bucky was.is a fucking idiot.



I am 300 years old tomorrow.

[Cramulus]

uh, you care to expand on that?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

As far as the knot in the rope question, it's semantic.  We use the word "knot" to describe a configuration of rope.

No, it wasn't. Well I didn't mean it that way.

You can call it "configuration", but that was not what I was talking about. Yes the configuration is part of it, and so is the physical rope. But put those two together and they attain an emergent property which we call a knot.

Easiest example is to take two circular pieces of string. One is a circle, the other is the trefoil knot. Physically they are equivalent, their configurations are different. But there is more to it than that. You can fiddle with both pieces of string and make them into diferent configurations, but you can never turn one into the other.
That is a new property, it emerges from the knot and its configuration as more than the exact sum of its parts.

Another example. In space, floating a flat triangle. It has the property of two-sidedness. You can move and stretch and bend the triangle, but it remains two-sided. Now add another triangle. Put them together, stretch and form a strip, bend, flip and attach and you just made yourself a Moebius strip which has a new property: one-sidedness (and if you don't flip, this space still has the property of two-sidedness as well).

This is the simplest example I've come across that shows that Emergence is in fact a real phenomenon and not just semantics. This new property of one-sidedness is explicitly more than the sum of its parts, neither of which had that property before.

This is exactly the metaphysical side of Bucky's physicalUniverse/metaphysicalUniverse distinction.

The knot example is a great one, here's an expansion I just picked up from Synergetics:

-Assume 2 strings, (one knotted, one unknotted)
           [Bucky notes that all knots, and thus all sustainable emergent properties**, require 2 full circles (the rope kink 360degrees twice) and are all related to the number 720(degrees)]  **haven't seen this play out yet or gotten quite what he meant by that

-Now join the 2 strings with a dab of glue, end to end

-If the knot is loose enough you can move it down the string and 'onto' the other string.

-At this point, 2 inferences can be made about reality. There are special-case events (events witnessed from a viewpoint), and there are generalized principles - metaphysical events. The example is a special-case (temporary, non-simultaneously apprehended), but "the knot" has a metaphysical component (metaphysical-"knot" is independent of size... i.e. an imaginary knot has no need of a 'scale' until applied, _and_at_the_same_time_ if we keep upgrading the string to rope or even wire, end to end, and keep sliding the knot along, we can end up with "the same knot" on huge steel bridge cable).

Similarly, the 'idea of /Triangle/' is size independent and material independent but always follows certain rules (based on the relationship of 3 angles). One of the interesting things about triangles is you can't bend them without breaking them (adding new verticies, and making new edges - snap). You can only tumble them in space and change the relationships between the angles and edges.

Bucky was.is a fucking idiot.



I am 300 years old tomorrow.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HAWK!!!

[Cosine 5]

Happy birthday! 

[Adios]

uh, you care to expand on that?

No, because I don't remember posting it. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

uh, you care to expand on that?

No, because I don't remember posting it. 

Fuck yeah! 

[Cramulus]

  it's all good

[LMNO]

Easiest example is to take two circular pieces of string. One is a circle, the other is the trefoil knot. Physically they are equivalent, their configurations are different. But there is more to it than that. You can fiddle with both pieces of string and make them into diferent configurations, but you can never turn one into the other.
That is a new property, it emerges from the knot and its configuration as more than the exact sum of its parts.

This doesn't make sense to me, because you included a self-imposed frame of reference; that is, the thought experiment began after you had already taken two identical pieces of string, and made a trefoil knot out of one of them.

I can turn a circular string into a trefoil knot by cutting the string, and then re-attaching it using the same techniques as I did to make the first knot.

[Cramulus]

from Crowley's translation of the Tao Te Ching, chapter XX:

Fearful indeed is death, since all men fear it; but the abyss of questionings, shoreless and bottomless, is worse!

seemed quite relevant