amimetobios

Descartes everywhere, and in particular in the theory of aether; excursus on the statue of Ether in the Public Garden; excursus on Rick Deckard; aether as extended substance; how waves work; how waves work in empty space; aetherial mechanics and dynamics; the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; Borges; the nature of space, in Kant and in William Gibson; the irrationality of the square root of 2

A class on Prisoner's Dilemma, via game shows based on it.  Making it vivid through fixing the stakes (Nazi reprisals instead of time in jail, for example).  Five game show versions.  Evidential decision theory and how to influence good readers of personality: by changing your beliefs about what you'll do, and therefore your commitments as well.  Just as in Pascal's wager.

Discussion about Pascal on the infinite.  Excursus on Einstein and the constancy of the speed of light.  Cost-benefits and how to think about Pascal's wager.

I meant to get us to game theory today, to talk about it with respect to the idea of other minds.  So, based on the 70% contest from the previous class (the winning number would have been 20.8)  we started discussing polls and Keynesian Beauty Contests.  My theory that people thought their candidate would lose was exploded (at least in the classroom).  Discussion of eternity in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and then of the meaning of its title.

A discussion about elementary ways of thinking about probability (which is always counterintuitive), as a way to start thinking about game theory, and the ways in game theory that we have to consider others considering what we'll do when we consider what they do, etc.  Pascal as founder of science of probability.  Peirce on cutting a deck once for the fate of the universe.  More discussion than anything else.

A class first on what it means to argue against the best version of an argument, including Darwin's approval of Plato's idea of pre-existence (as monkeys), then on to Pascal which leads to a discussion of the anthropic principle and of the sublime, in Kant but mainly in Burke: grasping in thought what could annihilate you in fact.

We consider the difference between infinity by addition and by division, in Aristotle and Cantor; the way the rationals are denumerable; Macbeth on the present moment vs. ownership of the future; Macbeth's syllables and Dickinson; the difference again between syllable and sound; and (naturally enough) iambic pentameter.

Augustine on meaning and understanding a sentence as instantaneous. His reading of the beginning of the Gospel of John. Ontology and its relation to language.  Berkeley. Occam's razor. Ptolmey, The Sheffer stroke.  Thought as the criterion for Occam's razor. Sentences and time.

Beckett.  Who he was.  His interest in Augustine.  Hilarity and depth of his work. Augustine.  Back to Poincarré on math induction.  What we can see here and now.  Difference between induction and deduction. Wittgenstein's point, from Poincarré, that proof by induction doesn't yield one QED, one string of symbols as the end-point of a mechanical process but two.  It's only in the mind that the two can be combined into a single insight: this is a synthetic activity.  We may make claims about an infinite number of examples but we have to synthesize those claims.  Turing machines (and who Turing was).  Relation to formal manipulation of symbols.  States and soda machines.

[Fixed: was missing audio file before] Why read Augustine if you're not religious?  What philosophical questions are like.  Motives to ask them: to prove that you're right, or to wonder.  How they questions are better than the arguments they're for: Zeno thought he was proving there was no motion, but in fact he raised very subtle questions about motion.  Why philosophy matters to people.  Kinds of questions that Augustine wonders about.  Math induction.