Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

I think you could relate this passage to unboxing a black box. Since the output (record player) wasn't exactly to the turtoises' specifications and wasn't "perfect" he set out to have one created that was indeed "perfect". This meant he had to think about the details of the record player, the sounds it made and the materials it was made of. Many times we just accept the completed product and even if we are not completely happy with it we do not make suggestions to the manufacturer on ways to make the product better or more to our individual likings, we assume that we are the only ones who would want a specific detail added or removed. He also mentions the workings of musicians and poets as well and what goes into creating their masterpieces as well.

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• laws: 
• what goes up must come down
• once you have a law there is a possibly that there is a contradiction to the law
•  how do we figure out truth?
• dialectic to create rhetoric (Plato)
• Contracrosticpunctus: acrostics
• levels of hidden meaning
• if you had a machine that could fix itself before it broke, could it ever be broken?

Self Made Man by Jonathan Kingdon

• can history be scientific?
• we can use scientific measures in historical manners
• is history fact?
• Dates, names and locations can be factual
• there will always be bias depending on who is relaying the history
• history is based on experience
• we are constantly learning about history, and the learning will be never ending since each present moment eventually becomes history
• what history is the most important, recent history or the origins of mankind?
• what can we learn most from?

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• we come from a common ancestry--
• spasms of sexual chemistry, that pass on their genes
• everyone that has come before us had sex, eaten, lived
• acknowledging those who came before us
• sex as passing on a baton

J.B.S Haldane: On Being the Right Size

• no matter what size, shape, composition you are, everyone has problems and inconviences
• "the higher animals are not larger because they are more complicated, they are more complicated because they are larger"
• evolution has allowed them to adapt
• so who is the most efficient?

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• giants are impossible if they have the same proportions of anatomy as regular humans
• the case of insects
• need to be small for the way they "breathe"
• "Super Bugs" would not exist
• Interesting how this is kind of disapproving of the creatures that are used in horror films
•  How do we get the common man (working man) to want to read science?

Alan Turing: Computer Machinery and Intelligence

• humans can be "machine-like" too
• when we are simply relaying information or reading from a script, are we actually "thinking"?
• The robot cannot write poetry, why?
• poetry is creative
• it could tell a joke and pull from a database, write an essay and use facts and reason
• human experience can be genetically passed down as well and our relationships can affect how we deal with later experiences and how our children do
• language can be taught with punishment and reward--social synapse
• predicting other's behavior based on past history (experience)

LIttle Men and Flying Saucers by Loren Eiseley

• Is there a point to learn about our origins or worry about the future?
• If we all come from different paths, what is the reason for us trying to find out about them? 
• Can our past really tell us about our future, and why should we want this?
• I think the problem is that, even though we may be the only species who can "think" it is also possible to think too much, to worry, and have anxiety about the past and the future.
• It would be better to simply accept who we are and where we came from and live life in the present, and then maybe we wouldn't be so lonely.
• We wouldn't be lonely because we would be interacting with others who are also living in the present instead of trying to relate with people who aren't alive anymore or who aren't alive yet.

The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin

• Is life as we know it a result of a mathematical model?
• How is it that we are able to change our futures based on our present actions?
• I do not believe there is simply one concept of reality, reality is however an individual sees the world, which is far from the same for everyone.
• I think there may have been some mathematically explained beginning, but since then we change the world in unmathematical ways.
• You could use faith and religion to describe everything, or you could say that God has given us mathematical models in order to explain this phenomenon. Either way, mathematics alone cannot explain reality, there must be a combination of theories and subjects to explain it.

An Instinct to Acquire an Art from “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker

• language is control, language can make others feel emotion, perform certain behaviors, believe certain things--we can change people's thoughts through language
• In speech we learn to inform, to persuade and to entertain
• each technique is different but each technique gives the reader or listening something they didn't have before or changes something they did have
• we all find a way to communicate somehow, even if at first we are unwilling or uncomfortable
• language is a part of all of us 

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2/27/15

•  everything in the world is based on language
• "a common language connects the members of a community into an information-sharing network with formidable collective powers"
• First sentence = hook
• Starting on the journey...

•  automatically persuasive
•  making arguments by examples
• language helps solve problems BUT it also creates conflicts, divides
• knowledge gap
• the more your vocabulary grows...does this help you find the words you need or complicate things
• Last line: is language everything? If we take away language/communication, do we take away personhood?

A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking

• science and math try to be so definite in their findings, but can we produce a mathematical model for everything?
• nature is interpreted differently by everyone, so is history, therefore nothing is really a "fact", per say, even time
• time, although numbers, again is not definite because it all depends on where you are--time zones--something is happening at the same "moment" but not the same "time"
• religion, philosophy and science used to be intertwined but science has since removed itself from these specialists and yet we still ask philosphical questions in science--aren't theories just philosophy?
• and if we had an answer to everything, wouldn't that just make us God?

The Tragedy of The Commons by Garrett Hardin

• are commons a good thing?
• does have commons/public areas --> communism?
• it is impossible to please everyone, and we shouldn't try to
• In America we focus more on individualism, and everyone for himself
• each person/farmer pursues his own interests on this common ground, which will make that one animal gets more than his share, limiting that of another animal's
• commons is the opposite of individualism, and if we keep commons then we have no more room to grow
• so should we eliminate all commons, or in a step-wise fashion?
• do commons mean "free" or "freedom"
• $$ or availability

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2/13/15

• similar to diffusion of responsibility, bystander effect
• common sharing of the quad vs. private
• tragedy of private ownership
• good capitalism, bad communism

Religion and Science by Albert Einstein

• we create beings and existential theories to explain what we cannot figure out ourselves
• who should then be the leader of a religious sect, if leadership only leads to corruption?
• no mortal being is infallible or pure enough

• are gods just an excuse to form a community? 
•  do we need religion to have morals/ethics?
• cosmic religious feeling:
• born with something "special"
• need some way to communicate to others
• my supervisor at work--Head of Orthopaedics, a scientist, says that throughout his career in science is faith has only gotten stronger (as a Catholic) because the more you learn, the more you realize that there has to be something higher that created all of this so perfectly

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 2/13/15

• cosmic religious feeling: what you put into it, your own feelings
• no expectations of a god, make choices without the fear of what a god would do
• God isn't "up there" but exists within us, with us--"you can see god in everyday life, but he is not necessarily an object or person"
• about curiosity, not necessarily a being
• science and religion can go hand in hand--
• they have the same end goal (figure out the world)--but in different ways
• trying to redefine religion
• need to give up the source of fear than religion was originally based on/created from

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

• the Earth is a pale blue dot
• everything we know is contained on that blue dot
• all of life's complexities, triumphs, problems are contained on that blue dot
• what seems to be big and unreasonable are tiny in comparison to the scheme of things
• the Earth is just a miniscule piece of meaning in the universe
• it could be the center of the universe, and the most important thing we know