I woke up with about 3 hours of sleep. It was now 1PM. I took it pretty easy for most of the day. I watched a few TED videos, one was on the word "simple" versus "complex" ... very interesting. The message it made was from simple things do we really make these complex things, which, because of what they are built from, can be used in a simple way. For example, a cell phone; he broke it down into the circuitry, showing that the circuit boards were nothing but a combination of simply made parts, and the chain goes on. I specifically found this related to the human body, in almost every aspect, we are a complex being made out of simple parts. If I go for one example, I would say take a look at our sight. To see boarders and edges of light alone we have something called "simple cells" which respond directly to orientations of light. These simple cells make up something called "complex cells" which respond to movement and movement direction. The complex cells make something up called "hypercomplex cells" use all of this information and respond to the length of light. Everything starts with something simple, and builds up from it.
"You know you have achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away." - Karel Vredenburg.
So let me continue. After this I watched one on the computational universe by a man named Stephan Wolfram. This man is a genius. He has spent his whole life on working with algorithms and other methods of computation, in hopes he can make all data accessible and useable one day. Well, he has made tremendous progress, he has one program called Mathematica, and another called Wolfram|Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html) I would suggest just going on and taking a look at the latter. It is a search engine, but it works differently than most search engines. Instead of having spiders roam the web and find relevant information, the information is pulled from large databases - for example - if you have a health based question, it will go to a health journal, guide, etc and give you related information. It can do any sort of math problems, and give you must more than just your answer (although that is given too). Very cool and handy tool for the future. He also showed how our universe could be made by a simple algorithms which is just repeating time after time. There are simple rules that can be repeated to form more complex looking patterns, but these are plainly repetitions of things. However, every once in a while, he explained, there can be a very simple rule - that produces results that are very out of the ordinary. In that, this simple rule produces very random things. It can be used to produce random event generators, and Wolfram argues that something like this rule can probably be shown one day to be the reason our universe is unfolding the way it is. There is much repetition in our universe, but it also has some deviations, something like this rule would account for those.
After I got done doing all this good stuff, Daniel had called me up and asked if I wanted to grab something to eat and talk. So we headed to the golf tavern down stairs. We had some great conversations; about life, social rules, the universe, aliens, our thought processes, past experiences, the brain, music, and more. Definitely a rewarding dinner, which was delicious as well. To get an idea of how far we were going in discussing these matters, when Daniel and I got our food, I was in the middle of explaining something. He finished 90% of his meal, before I took more than two bites of mine. Then when I was done talking, I was able to finish my whole meal while he was talking! These were giant back and forth dialogs, all the more meaningful. I feel to understand someone you really need to let them speak until they feel like they have explained it well, so constantly I see people fighting for the time to talk during a conversation. That isn't a conversation at all, it isn't some deep desire to be heard the most, it is truly for expressing values, ideas, thoughts. Going on a tangent here, there are two models to language that are largely accepted. One is a cognitive model, in which it is posed that talk is merely spoken language. It must assume 3 things to work; 1) the function of talk is to convey information, 2) the model of language is based on the syntactical rules, 3) talk is an activity of an INDIVIDUAL person. The last point is where I feel it goes a bit astray, now don't let me mislead you, this doesn't mean that they think you only talk to yourselves. It means that our brains are involved in processing what we want to say, and in hearing something, it is somewhat the same processes to tell us what people said. In that it is the activity of our brains that convey the information that is inputted and outputted (to explain it briefly and vaguely). Anyway, the other model is the social-pragmatic view of talk. This view says talk is a form of social interaction. In that the only time you talk, is in a joint-activity! Participants co-construct personal, social and cultural worlds as well as do things together when talking such as getting directions or requests. One must be good at turn-taking in order to interpret the talk, and relate it to the issue at hand. Language is truly fascinating, and I have built up much appreciation for it this year in studying it so much. Okay, tangent over, Daniel and I talked for a few hours and then headed to meet up with the rest of our crew to go see Iron Man 2 !
Shannon, Rebecca, Daniel, Rob, Benny, Kyle and myself went to go see the movie. It was definitely a good movie, lots of battles and what not. The graphics were amazing. Afterwards we the girls and Benny split off. Benny is flying to Canada on Sunday, I won't see him again until he visits the states. It is crazy to think I will be leaving all of my friends that I have built up such great relationships with here. Then again, I am sure we will keep in touch and even visit each other. Anyway, we had met up with Dave now as well, so the remaining 4 of us went back to my flat. We stayed and talked for a few hours, mostly about music to start - but this brought me into bringing up binaural beats, which I have spoken about in a previous blog I am sure. I told them about my experiences with them, Dave agreed with what I had to say, as I have got him into them as well. They are pretty amazing, well, our brains are pretty amazing. In short, everyone left with binaural beats on the mind. Tomorrow I am headed over to Daniel's place for some guitar lessons, should be good!
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