Re: RE Lobian Machine

From: Kim Jones <kimjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 17:49:05 +1100

Thank you Jose, for your slightly more civilised approach to my
(admittedly) provocative thought about music's relation to our
discussion on this list. Many people would argue (Edward de Bono as a
primary example) that the whole meaning of any artistic product is
the meaning that our minds bring to bear on it, whatever the author
says. If that is "true" then the whole of art is a 1st person
experience and cannot be reduced to anything else. I take it that we
are investigating the ultimate mystery of 1st person experience
(amongst other things) here. My point of view on that is surely as
valid as yours since neither you nor I can appreciate (ie experience)
each other's experience of anything.

  I feel that a little provocation from an "outsider" would actually
help the discussion find new and fertile terrain - this is called
lateral thinking. If you reject without some form of investigation
the notion that music is encoded mathematical reality then I feel
very sad for you. Many musicaians have striven to understand the link
between music and mathematics. You cannot "play" a quadratic equation
on your piano. Yet you can appreciate a melody by Mozart or a guitar
break by Joe Satriani in JUST THE SAME WAY that you experience the
elegance of a mathematical sentence. Do not physicists and
mathematicians have a certain feeling for "elegance" and
"symmetry"???? Is it not at least slightly interesting that composers
and other artists strive for something like that as well????? What if
we are all talking the same language but simply don't have the
intellectual grunt to PERCEIVE that?

Notating music is a very simple problem for a computer to solve,
admittedly. Composing music is a very controversial problem that
people are trying to enlist the help of machines to solve at this
time. UNDERSTANDING music takes a n EDUCATION in it. Just like
understanding math requires a solid grounding in that discipline.

Do not undedrestimate the power of the simple. There is a lot of talk
on this list about complexity but I have had enough dialogues with
other minds to be convinced that simplicity is a higher value in life
than complexity. After all, simplicity and elegance is what
physicists and philosophers are hankering after.

Musicians have been dealing in that since the time of Machaut in the
15th century. Let's get together and talk seriously about this link.
There is something vaguely ridiculous about playing this eternal game
of trying to "prove" each other wrong.

There are quite as many points of view on this issue as there are
heads in the room thinking about it. There is great meaning in what
you say. There is great meaning in what I say. Don't ATTACK me and I
promise not to attack you.

Kim Jones






On 31/12/2005, at 5:17 PM, Jose Ramón Brox wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kim Jones" <kimjones.domain.name.hidden>
>
>
>> So apparently those who do not scale the dizzying heights of
>> metamathematics have no hope of understanding reality?
>
> I never said that, but you simply can't take a theorem about a
> specific area, that is true
> within a context and take it out from that context to try to use it
> "in reality", to
> "give" social explanations. That's what pseudoscience do.
>
> I will say that without mathematical (not methamatematical)
> knowledge, one cannot aspire
> to understand reality (in the terms a physic understand it).
>
>> There will come a time very soon when all of this comp stuff will
>> need to be translated into terms the LAYman can understand easily.
>> Russell Standish has already made the attempt. I appreciate gratly
>> his attempt. Stop wanking off that mathematics is the ONLY script in
>> which reality is encoded. It could well turn out to be music.
>
> You are thinking it the other way around - the incorrect one. Music
> is a small, small part
> of physics, and therefore, it's represented by a (quite simple)
> mathematical model.
> Reality is more complex than that model, and other aspects of
> reality can be modelled by
> math different from the one used in the music model, so the reality
> can't turn out to be
> music in that sense.
>
> Well, I'm speaking about the mechanical phenomena of music, that
> are simple, not about the
> way our brains interpret it, that can be quite complex and
> enjoyable (that's why we say
> it's an art).
>
> Jose
Received on Sat Dec 31 2005 - 01:51:00 PST