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(can't remember if Hofstadter did)
Douglas Hofstadter and his butterflies.
Didn't know he was also a famous philosopher (at the same time, weren't they all philosophers, the physicists of old times?)
Yeah, gone are the times that scientists (or specialists from any technical field, for that matter) could have a decent grasp of the whole field, or even several fields. I barely understand what my office colleague is working on.
Yeah, it's pretty cool that he made this huge contribution to math during his graduate studies and then mostly switched fields to become even more prolific.
Very humble guy, it seems. He knew he could not solve those (Harper) equations analytically, so he provided one of the first computer-assisted solutions to them.
I have generated many such butterflies in my work in recent years. His mathematical curiosity from 1976 was realized experimentally only a little more than 10 years ago.
it always starts me down a rabbit hole that becomes more consuming than the book
This is kind of the norm for me with any inspiring book. The first time reading The Sovereign Individual took me years. I'd just get sidetracked every few pages and be thinking about something and then this whole universe to explore would open. For some books I really have to force myself to get back into it after having my own thought trains - that can last months. I'm more relaxed now though - I guess age allows us to have some existing perspectives and not need to explore as much - but I still experience this a couple of times per book, even when re-reading. Thus why I'd need a vacay to touch this one. Maybe a sabbatical. haha.
truth is absolute enough [..] push against its boundaries [..] which is to say it's not very useful.
Hah! Kind of disagree with this though. Being insane can be a superpower, you just have to learn to wield it. Plus, you have to be a little bit insane if you're a Bitcoiner, especially a stacker - the masses are definitely not here with us. Enjoy being a little insane.
yes, the saying it's not very useful isn't right.
I was thinking of why we seek "absolute" truth rather than something softer (eg true enough, true in this context). I have looked for absolute truth because I want a sense of safety that comes from certainty and having something decided and knowing where it stands. But the liars paradox points out some holes in that safety, so what I was calling "not very useful" is the sense that I think I can only have absolute truth as long as I'm not very rigorous about it -- which sort of defeats the purpose.
I've been thinking about doing a Sovereign Individual book club on SN. I enjoyed having a reason to push through the Praxeology of Privacy (gotta read my chapter so I can talk about it on SN...) but perhaps the thing I really should do is a GEB book club.
Ah! I just always assume that after doing something or studying something, I am perhaps closer to the truth (well... a truth) than I was before. But thanks to it all being circles, no matter how hard I accelerate[1] I still won't ever catch up. I just end up having a higher velocity. I get loads of things wrong though... So maybe its all just subjective crap we tell ourselves to feel better about our insignificance.
PS: book club is a great idea. I had trouble keeping up in reading along with you but you did point me to interesting things.
just did a year of massive
dv/tand I feel like I'm only getting started. I curse the universe for no longer being 20 tho. Today's tech came too late for my bodily form so I guess i will have to find a way to digitize and upload myself and pester the world forever. ↩
@optimism beat me to the Eternal Golden Braid reference. I've tried to read it three times and never finished -- it always starts me down a rabbit hole that becomes more consuming than the book, even though the book itself is very engaging. It's probably the first time I bumped up against the liar's paradox.
I was glad to see that the OP brought up Daodejing (can't remember if Hofstadter did). I used to enjoy reading the dao and zen koans principally because I thought I could crack it/them and find some iron truth. At some point I wondered if it wasn't the case that such things don't have the truth as their point -- perhaps not even a truth.
It seems to me that truth is absolute enough for us to stay sane but if you want to push against its boundaries you can easily discover that truth isn't absolute but firmly convincing yourself of this is no different from being insane -- which is to say it's not very useful.
It is insane to believe that truth is absolute, but you can't stay sane if you don't have some such thing to hold on to. So I fear that my answer is that you probably shouldn't think about it too much.
can't really say it much better than this.