[PD] CVs

Mathieu Bouchard matju at artengine.ca
Mon May 23 18:37:29 CEST 2011


On Fri, 20 May 2011, Chris McCormick wrote:
> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 05:12:09PM +0200, Bryan Jurish wrote:
>> If forty-two trees fall in a forest and no one is around to count them, __forty-two__ trees have still fallen.
>
> I am not sure about that. To think is to model small chunks of the 
> universe. Very small chunks, quite inaccurately. The thought itself, the 
> model, exists in the physical universe, as part of a human brain. In the 
> words of Carl Sagan, "we are a way for the Universe to know itself."

Ok. You guys are confusing « construct » with « mere construct ».

You both agree that there _ideas_ that are _made_ and that are kept or 
rejected on the basis of whether they are useful to talk about reality.

The number «42» exists in nature in this way : it is a pattern that cause 
human minds to come up with a concept that is the number «42» in order to 
describe what's going on.

> When you look at a Salvador Dali painting, where does it exist? I think 
> it exists physically encoded on the chemical-electrical substrate of 
> your brain. I don't think it exists outside of that.

Dammit Chris, it's a PAINTING. It's made of PAINT.

Even when YOU look at it. ;)

(and non-paint reproductions are made of something else that isn't in the 
brain)

> The painting itself exists as chemicals on canvas, but until someone 
> looks at it, models it, computes it with their brain, the scene it 
> depicts does not exist anywhere in physical reality.

The depicted scene is not the painting itself.

I'm trying to say « the map is not the territory » in another way so that 
I get understood.

you need to look at this (copy of a) painting instead :
http://lyc71-dumaine.ac-dijon.fr/upi/img/guillaume/tableau_guillaume.jpg

or the modern version on the side of the Royal Victoria College of 
Montréal :
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/010/0/3/ceci_n__est_pas_un_tag__by_ben_zen-d36vmd9.jpg

  _______________________________________________________________________
| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC


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