Arrest This Man, He Talks In Maths 
With your feet in the air, and your head on the ground . . .
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With your feet in the air, and your head on the ground . . . |
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| Impact | Journal (times cited) |
| 20.95 | Nature Reviews Neuroscience (3) |
| 14.67 | PLOS Biology |
| 14.30 | Neuron (4) |
| 10.23 | PNAS |
| 9.78 | Annual Review of Psychology |
| 9.16 | Trends in Cognitive Sciences |
| 8.57 | Current Opinion in Neurobiology |
| 7.56 | Journal of Neuroscience |
| 5.29 | Neuroimage (6) |
| 5.00 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B |
| 4.53 | Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience |
| 4.50 | Psychological Science |
| 4.12 | Neuropsychologia |
| 3.58 | Cortex |
| 2.30 | Brain Research |
| 2.00 | Neuroreport (2) |
Thursday, April 26, 2007
(0) comments
Okay, after I just posted, when I clicked "view blog", talksinmaths came up, but so did an obnoxious, big pop-up ad. I think my brother had mentioned something about this before. If you see this as well, can you leave me a comment below? Even better, if you can look at the source code, or otherwise figure out how I can make it stop, that would be much appreciated!
posted by Miles 8:29 AM
You know you've been spending a little too much time in front of your computer when you notice your mouse-clicking finger is fatigued . . . after a night's sleep, when you first sit down in your office in the morning to start working.
But: I will get this thesis done, damnit!
I got a nice jolt of positive feedback this morning from my advisor, after she read my second paper (of the three constituting the thesis):This is a gorgeous paper -- my favorite as well.:-)
I've made some suggested changes, mostly with the view that it's better to let other people tell us how elegant this is, etc. But not much. It's just so so so pretty already.
bravo!
Definitely helped me feel like I really am going to make it . . .
posted by Miles 8:07 AM
Friday, April 20, 2007
A compendium of minor league baseball stats - mostly for my own use, but maybe it will be of use to someone else, too.
Minor League Statistical Leaders
Pitching Leaders:
- AAA International League Pitching Stats
- AAA Pacific Coast League Pitching Stats
- AA Texas League Pitching Stats
- AA Eastern League Pitching Stats
- AA Southern League Pitching Stats
- A+ California League Pitching Stats
- A+ Carolina League Pitching Stats
- A+ Florida St League Pitching Stats
- A South Atlantic League Pitching Stats
- A Midwest League Pitching Stats
- A- Northwest League Pitching Stats
- A- NY-Penn League Pitching Stats
Batting Leaders:
- AAA International League Batting Stats
- AAA Pacific Coast League Batting Stats
- AA Texas League Batting Stats
- AA Eastern League Batting Stats
- AA Southern League Batting Stats
- A+ California League Batting Stats
- A+ Carolina League Batting Stats
- A+ Florida St League Batting Stats
- A South Atlantic League Batting Stats
- A Midwest League Batting Stats
- A- Northwest League Batting Stats
- A- NY-Penn League Batting Stats
Also, if anyone out there knows how to automate grabbing this kind of data, pipe up; I'd love to combine all the data and see the leaders amongst all minor leaguers, regardless of level.
posted by Miles 11:23 AM
Friday, April 06, 2007
My brother came up with a list of "middle names" for all of the presidential candidates, that's pretty entertaining. Highlights include:
Rudy "Dear Evangelicals, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, You Don't See The Drag Video Online, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, Nor The Bit About Living With A Couple Gay Guys, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, Also I'm Not Corrupt, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11" Giuliani.
Tom "I Hate Mexicans" Tancredo.
Duncan "I Hate Mexicans More Than Tancredo" Hunter.
<digression>
I've gotta go search youtube for "Giuliani in drag" . . . hold on.
Whoa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IrE6FMpai8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sCKPC8bTsA&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb2y1IM17sM&NR=1
I did not know that about Mr. Giuliani. Pretty cool. You know, George Bush is loosening up a lot in his second term . . . I wonder if someone could talk him into dressing up as a woman at some point.
</digression>
Anyway, the "middle name" that popped to mind for me was:
Mitt "Sweet Jesus, Mormons know how to raise money" Romney
Like, aren't you the slight bit curious what percentage of his money has come from Mormon folks, even if unsolicited? Is this bigoted of me to even suggest?
Googling it, the NY Times beat me to it by two days:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/us/politics/03money.html?_r=1&ref=politics
And then there's this article apparently from the Boston Globe, though I found it on what seems to be a mormon-friendly, Salt Lake City newspaper's site; it goes into Romney's strategy & planning concerning fundraising amongst & through Mormons:
http://webserver.desnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,650200100,00.html
It's technically illegal for a church itself to "advocate on behalf" of a specific candidate, so they kind of tip-toe around it . . . I wonder if this will become the subject of smear attacks (re: "illegal" fundraising tactics) at some later point in the campaign.
Actually, even if he doesn't win the nomination, he might be a lock as the vice-presidential candidate, because Mormons would still contribute in droves. What the heck would happen if there were a Giuliani-Romney ticket? Could the Republicans win Massachusetts and New York? Could they lose the South to the Democrats over Giuliani being a transvestite and Romney being a Mormon (which seems to be least palatable to evangelicals)?
Politics can definitely make for good entertainment, at times. Maybe Harrison Ford will run.
posted by Miles 11:50 AM
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
After watching the NCAA Championship game with Francis, the other night, I read Bill Simmons' take on the game, and felt compelled to respond. He actually answers a lot of reader queries in mailbag columns, so maybe I'll even get a response. :-p
Here's what I wrote him:
Bill, in your April 3 column you noted that Florida had 5 players projected as top-10 (Noah, Brewer, Horford) or second-round (Green, Richard) picks. I know he's one dimensional, but Lee Humphrey absolutely shoots the lights out and clearly already has NBA 3-range, so why isn't he considered potential NBA material, as a Steve Kerr type specialist? While watching that game didn't you find yourself thinking, every time Humphrey drilled a 3, "Oh, man, that was a dagger!" In the first half, Ohio St. went on a 7-1 run to close within 2 with about 5 minutes left in the first half, and then Humphrey hit a stopper three; Ohio St. never closed the lead to less than 5 the rest of the game. With 9 minutes left in the game, Ohio St. went on a 5-0 run to bring a 14-point deficit back under double-digits; bang, Humphrey stops the momentum with a dagger 3. Anyway, maybe it's reading too much from a few clutch performances (6-12, 4-8, 4-8 and 4-7 on threes in the '06 & '07 final four games), but . . . damn, the kid is just Money. If I were an NBA coach I'd sure want him on my bench, ready to come into the game when my team's down by 3 with 4 ticks on the clock, and in that role he'd be a heck of a lot more useful than most of the DNP regulars cluttering NBA rosters.
Also, on a far more important note, the funding finally came through to make my postdoc at RPI official. Woo-hoo!
Switching back to a far less important note, allow me to introduce the 2007 model of the Ragin' Rhinos: (my keeper-league fantasy baseball squad)
Active:
C: Chris Ianetta (COL)
1B: Albert Pujols (STL)
2B: Chase Utley (PHI)
SS: Miguel Tejada (BAL)
3B: Miguel Cabrera (FLA)
OF: Jason Bay (PIT)
OF: Chris Young (ARI)
OF: Scott Podsednik (CHW)
DH: Jim Thome (CHW)
SP: Johan Santana (MIN)
SP: Ben Sheets (MIL)
SP: Greg Maddux (SD)
SP: Doug Davis (ARI)
SP: Adam Eaton (PHI)
SP: Edgar Gonzalez (ARI)
RP: Jorge Julio (FLA)
Bench:
OF: Matt Kemp (LAD)
OF: Josh Hamilton (CIN)
RP: Jonathan Sanchez (SF)
RP: Octavio Dotel (KC)
SP: Roger Clemens (Unsigned)
On the Disabled List:
OF: Carlos Quentin (ARI)
SP: Freddy Garcia (PHI)
SP: Bartolo Colon (CLE)
SP: Pedro Martinez (NYM)
SP: Francisco Liriano (MIN)
In the Minors:
OF: Adam Lind (TOR)
SP: Mike Pelfrey (NYM)
SP: Tim Lincecum (SF)
SP: Micah Owings (ARI)
SP: Scott Elbert (LAD)
Huh . . . only in writing this down did I realize how tilted my team is towards the NL: 22 of 30 players. Anyways, that's the team. With Clemens, Colon, & Martinez stashed away until later, and loads of young new talent with high upside (Ianetta, Young, Quentin, Hamilton, Kemp, Pelfrey, Lincecum) it's a team that I clearly built with the playoffs in mind. I don't expect my team to lead the ZHL (Zen Holist League . . . okay, keep it clean, kids) in regular season total points, as it has the last three years, but I think I should be really strong come September. If everyone's back in action, I'll be able to run out a pitching rotation of Santana, Sheets, Clemens, Martinez, Garcia, Colon, & Maddux, to go with my all-world Pujols-Utley-Tejada-Cabrera infield. Not bad.
Oh, and my crop of rookie "flyers" includes four (Hamilton (2 votes), Lincecum (1), C. Young (5), & Pelfrey(2)) who were picked by 10 different members of ESPN's panel of 17 experts to win the NL rookie-of-the-year.
posted by Miles 10:24 AM
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Inspired in part by reading the Dalai Lama's book "The Universe in a Single Atom", I've recently taken up daily meditation - a simple form, for now, just trying to attend to my breathing, and let thoughts go when they come, with my eyes open but sort of allowed to defocus. This is per the instruction of a fellow at a local Tibetan Meditation Center, and I've really been enjoying it (by which I don't mean "blissing out" or anything, just appreciating the peace, the focus, and the "presentness".)
Anyway, today I meditated for about 15 minutes, and when I got up my vision was blurry! I could only see clearly at very short distances. It's been over an hour, now, and although my distance vision is improved, I'd say it's still not entirely back to normal. Anyone out there ever heard of this kind of thing before? Any guesses as to how or why it would have happened - in terms of anything from biophysical mechanism to chi?
I've never needed corrective lenses of any kind, and normally I have essentially perfect vision - I actually just had it checked a few weeks ago. What my experience today reminded me of was when the ophthalmologist gave me eye-drops to dilate my pupils (or something); the same sort of thing happened then, with my vision going all blurry for a long period of time, and then slowly coming back, near vision returning sooner than far. Jess said then that what the eye-drops do is just paralyze a muscle (or nerve?) that controls . . . I forget, either dilation & contraction of the pupils, or the shape of the eyeball / lens, or something. Anatomy is not a strength of mine.
Comment away!
* * * *
p.s. - I couldn't post this the first time around, because Google's automated checker algorithm decided talksinmaths was a likely "spam blog", and made me jump through hoops to prove that I'm human, just to get them to have an actual human check on it. Weird.
p.p.s. - Jess says her best guess is actually that my visual cortex started adapting; I fed it defocused input for long enough that it "decided" that must be normal & tried to adjust, somehow.
posted by Miles 7:33 PM
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
"I tend to err on the side of objectivity, even when not warranted."
- Me (in conversation)
posted by Miles 11:12 AM
Thursday, February 22, 2007
You know the old cliche phrase "think outside the box"? Sometimes I feel like I have a hard time thinking inside the box. I've cultivated abstraction, objectivity and introspection for so long that even when I'm just trying to reason coherently within a conventional framework, my mind insists on digressions into epistemological questions about the validity of the framework, or metacognitive observations of what it's doing and why, or metametacognitive consideration of these metacognitive observations. It's not just distractibility; it's too systematic and consistent. If you want to characterize it as pathological, it's closer to obsessive compulsive: it's hard for me to just be in the world, in the moment, perceiving, problem solving, and acting, because my mind pulls me away, down into itself or off into the abstract, conceptual world, depending on how you want to look at it.
Like now: I'm trying to work on a paper, develop an analysis, and instead I feel compelled to think out loud, here, about things like my obsession with metametacognition.Labels: meta metacognition epistemology
posted by Miles 9:39 AM
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Albany, NY - Valentine's Day
It is a genuine blizzard outside:
posted by Miles 3:13 PM
Saturday, February 10, 2007(1) comments
Infinity is, in a way, a simple concept. It's a magnitude; a scalar. It's just the biggest one there is. Or maybe more accurately, it's where you never get to even if you just keep going and going (to the right, in the Cartesian plane.)
I've been thinking, lately, in terms of a different kind of infinity: epistemological infinity.* This term has obvious ambiguity, but it's the best I've come up with. To really get across what I mean, I think I'll have to take the long way around. There is a well known proverb that says "The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know." There are two interpretations of this: the one I think is more common parses "how much you don't know" as "how much you have left to learn [and could learn, given sufficient/infinite time]"; the second is a more epistemologically nihilistic version that parses "how much you don't know" as "how little you truly can know". This second interpretation is a decent starting point for understanding what I mean by epistemological infinity. From my phrasing, it seems like it has more to do with the infinitesimal than the infinite - and I think this is how people usually think about it. However, you can flip it around to become "how much there may be that is beyond your capacity to know or understand." In a way, this is still a simple concept; I can't know the position and momentum of every fundamental particle in the universe, because that much information won't fit in my brain. This doesn't seem very deep or meaningful.
Where I think things get more interesting is if you think about unknowability in computational terms. I'm not talking about the issue of Turing computability.** Suppose you write a program, and set it running on your computer - and for now lets assume for simplicity that your computer is not connected to a network. If the program is sufficiently complex, it might have the capacity to access anything in the computer's memory, and in that sense everything in that memory is "knowable" to the program. The program cannot, however, no matter how diligently it searches, or how hard it thinks, learn something outside of its scope: how many coins are in your spare change jar, or the name of your neighbor's cat. If you give it sensors, you can expand its scope: with an aimable camera and some exceptional AI, it might be able to estimate the number of coins in the jar. An internet connection is just a special case of such a sensor. It is more to the point, however, to note that you can also restrict its scope in a fundamental way. If you create a "virtual machine" - a software instantiation, or "simulation" of a computer, that runs on your ("real") computer, and you run a program on that virtual machine, it can't get out: its scope is limited to the virtual machine. In practice, this can be very useful for some things, since it can prevent a potentially "dangerous" program from crashing your ("real") machine by, say, overwriting some bits the OS needs to function properly. In theory, you can create any number of layers of virtualization: no program running on the Nth-layer virtual machine will have access to any information on any layer M < N.
Now, if you're in the know, you're probably aware of the concept of the universe as a computation; google yielded a nice little essay on the topic on a blog with an exceptionally clever name: Gnostical Turpitude. As the blogger says, the idea is not especially new, and he dismisses it as facile and trivial (a la The Matrix: "Dude, what if we’re all living in, like, a computer?"). I think it's much more interesting than this.
Before going further, though, there's one thing I have to clear up. We generally think about computations teleologically: in terms of the purpose they serve. This makes sense, because this is how we use computers: to accomplish things***. But computation can be thought of nonteleologically, as well, and for present purposes (sorry) teleological reasoning just muddies things up. A computer, in the abstract, is simply a state machine; a program is a set of rules that govern transitions between states, and a computation is simply the sequence of states produced by that program, given some initial state. When stated (again, sorry) this abstractly, it's pretty clear that the physical universe, as we understand it, fits the definition pretty well. No purpose required.
Okay, so:
(1) The universe may accurately be described as a computation
(2) Any number of layers of virtualization are possible, and no program running on the Nth-layer virtual machine will have access to any information on any layer M < N.
Now we're getting to my concept of epistemological infinity: everything outside of the "scope" of the physical universe we have the capacity to perceive.
I'm greedy. It's not enough to think about the trillions upon trillions of teeming quarks that make up my body and everything around me, that I'll never see. I could study quantum electrodynamics and visit an accelerator, see evidence of quarks, and suppose myself to understand something about them. But beyond all of this - not at smaller or larger scales in any conventional sense, but simply outside, outside of that outside, and so on - there could be infinitely more to the world. Is there? It should be obvious that the answer is simply that we can't know. We can't even guess, since probability doesn't seem like it applies.
*Bizarre footnote: I googled the term"Epistemological Infinity" to see if it's been used before, and what came up? Gay hardcore and prescription drugs. Huh?
**If after reading this, you would argue that I haven't really gone beyond the issue of Turing computability, please leave a comment, and explain why!
***The time we waste reading news and farting around on the web notwithstanding.
posted by Miles 10:50 AM
Two short, elegant books recently leapfrogged all the others into the "finished" stack:
The Alchemist ranks as one of my favorite books in years.
posted by Miles 10:44 AM
Thursday, February 08, 2007
I liked the world better when cool was real to me;
When I saw characters, rather than charicatures.
If I could put you in a frame
I'd draw you smiling
With a cigarette in your mouth
And your hands reaching out for something [...]
And if I had your speaking voice I'd never whisper
I'd talk and talk and talk
It's not a matter of being jaded
If anything maybe I see more depth in people
I see human universals
There is beauty in the soft greys of twilight
But it is not the same
As the vibrancy of bright color on a sunny summer day
Don't put me in a frame upon the mantel
For memories turn dusty, old and grey
Don't leave me alone in the twilight
Twilight is the loneliest time of day
Restricting yourself to reality
Is limiting;
There is a richer life to be lived
Dancing amidst the clouds
With eyes open to metaphor, myth, spirit, art, beauty, and cool
Or floating with eyes closed
Letting all that is not real but can still be felt
Flow through your unreal soul
posted by Miles 9:49 AM
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Here's what I'm currently reading:
Yes, I'm legitimately in the middle of all of these books. It's not actually as bad as I thought it would be.
Here's what I've recently finished:
posted by Miles 9:00 PM
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Randy Newman, on the State of the Union:
A president once said,
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid
It’s patriotic in fact and color coded
And what are we supposed to be afraid of?
Why, of being afraid
That’s what terror means, doesn’t it?
That’s what it used to mean
posted by Miles 7:09 AM
Thursday, January 18, 2007(0) comments
My link of the day: Leibniz's Monodology. A wikipedia summary is also worth a read, for perspective.
posted by Miles 1:50 PM
I went to my high-school class' 10th reunion back in November - and actually had a great time (who knew?). Anyway, a friend of mine mentioned that he'd heard that one of our classmates, Tyree Simmons, had gone on to become a big name in hip-hop . . . so we were all wondering whether he would show. He didn't, unfortunately, and I hadn't thought anything of it since. But then today an email came in to the class mailing list that was set up for announcements related to the reunion, with a link to a story in today's NY Times:
With Arrest of DJ Drama, the Law Takes Aim at Mixtapes
Turns out, my classmate Tyree Simmons is DJ Drama, a big name in the production of hip-hop mixtapes, as well as the DJ for "King of the South" rapper T.I., who's 2006 album King was reportedly the top-selling hip-hop/rap album of 2006, with over 500,000 copies sold in the first week of its release alone.
Tyree was arrested yesterday by law enforcement working in collaboration with the RIAA, because they regard his mixtapes as no different from bootleg / counterfeit CDs . . . this despite the fact that (according to the NY Times) he has been a major factor in launching many rappers careers, and artists line-up to get their tracks included on his mixtapes for the promotional benefits. Kinda bizarre.
posted by Miles 12:14 PM
Monday, January 15, 2007
What is the power in stories? I know of no other way to phrase the question. If I frame my life within a story, I can feel, and act, and be; if I try to abstract myself out - if I do no more than try to see the world simply for what it is - I am an empty shell by comparison.
posted by Miles 2:03 PM
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Hypothesis: Consciousness is not an emergent property of sufficiently complex neural (or more generally, computational) circuitry.
Many scientists have made remarks to the effect that the most remarkable thing about the universe is that it is understandable; that it is subject to scientific examination and so perfectly describable by mathematics. It seems to me that there's a kind of epistemologically anthropic principle worth noting, with regard to this kind of statement: Some aspects of the universe happen to be understandable (by us; through a scientific approach), and it is precisely these aspects which constitute the whole of a scientist's perception of the universe. Whatever is not understandable is either simply unseen, or dismissed as not measurable, and thus not an appropriate thing for a scientist to ask questions about. Indeed, the universe might be packed infinitely densely with activity of an infinite variety of different kinds, and so long as none of them are measureable and understandable, we will be utterly blind to them so long as they do not disrupt what regular (measureable & understandable) activity we do see. From this view, the understandability of "the universe" is not a surprise at all; it is in fact inevitable as long as some subset of the universe - even if it is a relatively infinitesimal subset - is understandable.
A pragmatic scientist is perfectly correct to ignore the rest, and focus only on what is measurable; on scientifically testable hypotheses. It's the right way to get things done. However, there is no justification for taking the position that it is the only valid way to look at the world, or understand it. Consider this hypothesis: some real truths are directly knowable, without proof, evidence, or instruction. This doesn't seem so outlandish to most people; for the 90+% of the population with religious convictions it's unquestioned, and it even features prominently in the constitution: "We hold these truths to be self-evident:" Yet it is anathema to the cognitive scientist's view of the world: knowledge, from a materialist, computational perspective, consists of a cognitive state brought into a correct correspondence with the world. On the assumption that the world is fundamentally mechanistic, this kind of correct correspondence can only be reached via processes like deduction, induction, dictation, or (if you're permissive of some degree of nativism) evolution. So who's right? Well, there's no way to tell. It depends on the validity of the scientist's assumption of a mechanistic universe, which is untestable: no finite body of data on mechanistic, rule-abiding behavior actually constitutes evidence against the existence of unobservable behavior of other kinds, as discussed above.
So: Consciousness.
The conscious experience of something like the color yellow is not "the same" as even a theoretically plausible complete description of the neural process of perception, from the retina on as far as a signal could be traced. There is a certain relationship, to be sure: if I had an appropriate instrument, I have no doubt I could measure a characteristic response somewhere in my CNS that would correlate strongly with my perception of yellow. However, I also have no doubt that, with an appropriate instrument, I could measure some characteristic of a rock that would correlate strongly with yellow light being shone on it. So a certain stimulus (yellow light) seems to produce both a characteristic CNS response and a characteristic quale, in me; it also seems to produce a characteristic response in a rock. I have access to my own qualia, but not to those that the rock might hypothetically possess. If it is sensible to ascribe a causal role to my characteristic CNS response in the "generation" of my quale, what does that say about the rock's hypothetical quale? It doesn't say anything definitive, to be sure, because as mentioned, I have no way of obtaining any data about any conscious experience the rock might be having. But this lack of data also means there's no justification for arguing that the difference between the (arguably complex) response produced in me and the (arguably simple) response produced in the rock corresponds to any difference in conscious experience. The data simply aren't there, and can't be obtained.
So what is a rock aware of?
It is possible, of course, to collect data on what types of signals - and what types of responses - correlate with our own consciously experienced qualia, or those communicated by others. But I would argue that what we've found even here doesn't suggest a requisite level of complexity. Brevity of a stimulus, or the presence of distractors, can prevent conscious experience; more dramatically, so can (e.g.) cutting the spinal cord. But very simple stimuli & responses - like pain signals, or white light - can induce conscious experience.
posted by Miles 11:15 AM
