Entries from January 2009 ↓

Of late, I’ve been reading I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. I am really enjoying this book - it may end up on that short list of books that change the way I look at the world. (I’ll have to post that list here at some point.)

The book is about human consciousness, about what makes up the “I” that we all feel in our heads. Hofstadter’s view is that the “I” is a special kind of feedback loop - that consciousness occurs when a logical system becomes complex enough to represent and reflect on itself in symbolic form. He ties this to the mathematical work of Kurt Godel (some of the most interesting math out there) and to feedback loops of the sort that you get when you turn a television camera to view the television that shows what the camera is “seeing.” Truly fascinating stuff.

On the way home tonight, I was listening to Radiolab. This is a public radio show and podcast about science, and I strongly recommend it. This week’s episode is titled “Yellow Fluff and Other Curiosities” and is about the nature of scientific discovery. In one part of the episode the hosts interview Paul Davies, director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at the University of Arizona. Davies is examining the question of why we are here - why human beings exist. His view is that human beings exist because we provide a mechanism whereby the universe can perceive itself, that because perception comes only from intelligence, the universe found it necessary to form intelligent life as the means by which it can consider itself. (Rather conveniently for him, this means that the highest purpose in life is to study the universe, for in doing so you are fulfilling the universe’s purpose.)

And the final piece of the puzzle: my view of the purpose of human life. Meaning and purpose are purely subjective constructs. They do not exist in the objective world - they only exist in human minds. Therefore, the universe itself would have no meaning, no purpose, were it not for humanity. If you think that meaning and purpose are important, as I do (though recognizing that “importance” is itself a subjective construct), then the fact that meaning and purpose only exist within human minds is the most important possible purpose of human life. (There’s clearly a lot more than just that. I hope to post more on this at some point.)

As I was listening to the Davies interview today, all of these ideas came colliding together. Suppose Hofstadter is right, and consciousness is a special kind of feedback loop that can understand itself. But if Davies is right, then what we are really considering is not only our selves, but the universe. And, of course, we are part of the universe. So the universe itself is a feedback loop that understands itself, but it does so by using us as its mind.

Break it down a little further. When you think of yourself, do you think only of your mind? Or do you think of your mind and body? I suggest that most people think of their mind and body. But if that’s the case, and if Hofstadter is right in his view of consciousness, then only part of your self (that part that you call your mind) contains the consciousness of the whole.

So apply that to the universe. Our minds are the part of the universe that contain its consciousness. Therefore, we are in a true sense the mind of the universe. And, of course, that ties in with my own views of the meaning of life, because meaning exists only in the mind, and therefore the meaning of the universe exists in its mind, which is our minds.

I’m sure all of this seems fairly confusing. I’m lost in a swirl about this myself. (I literally felt my flesh tingle on hearing the Davies interview as all of this started coming together in my mind, and it isn’t all together yet.) I could only babble about it to Julie at dinner as I ate a rather excellent chicken marsala that she made. And I’m not at all sure where all this is taking me.

But I can’t wait to get there.

On Saturday, with Julie ensconced in her studio all day, I decided to go for a walk in the woods at Mason Neck. This has recently become one of my favorite places to wander around - there’s a good view of the Potomac on one end and many lovely wooded trails going through the park.

Julie and I have gone on many walks there of late. But while we’ve wandered several of the paths, I’ve never managed to find the elusive Eagle’s Spur, a trail that supposedly leads to an overlook of Kane’s Creek. The trails near there are not well marked, and Julie is always resistant to striking off into the trees.  For some strange reason, she doesn’t much enjoy wandering off the path into unmarked woods. I just can’t figure out why.

I arrived at the park at around 3:30, complete with two apples, an orange, and a compass that Julie gave me for Christmas. I picked up a copy of the trail map (available from a link here, for those who care to play along at home), and I was off.

I missed one turning, wandered in a small loop, and finally found my way to the Eagle Spur trail. The joining point between it and Kane’s Creek Trail is hard to spot, which explains why we had never found it before. But once I wandered in the woods a little near where I thought it would be, the trees opened up into a neat little path, nicely blazed with white reflectors set every fifty feet or so.

The trail is a nice one, with several little hills, a number of small wooden bridges over marshy lowland, and lots of twists and turns through the woods. At the end it comes to a little stand overlooking a creek populated by several ducks. I quite enjoyed the walk.

But when I reached the end, the only marked route was to return the way I came, and I am not one to meekly retrace my own steps. So instead, I looked at the map, saw that the creek led to the Potomac, and the Potomac led to open parkland, and figured, hey, how hard can it be to find my way out? So, taking advantage of Julie’s absence (because she would not have approved this plan), I set out through the woods.

The sun was getting low in the sky, which was rather convenient, as my path was towards the southwest. At that time of day, at this time of year, it was a simple matter of walking straight at the sun. Well, simple if it weren’t for the swampy inlets that were in my way. I had to detour around them, staying to the hills overlooking the water.

After a while, the ground looked a lot dryer. So I came down off the ridge towards a little valley that led towards the southwest to another hill. Unfortunately, though, it turned out that the valley floor was covered with thick mud camouflaged by a layer of grass. I discovered this when, on taking my second step, both legs sunk down knee deep.

Standing there in the muck, I had a little thinking to do. Perhaps I had come down from the hill too soon. Perhaps, even, I should have stayed on the path, though since the trail was a good ten minutes behind me through unmarked woods, it was probably too late to have that thought. But in any event, it was time for a tactical retreat. So I lifted my leg and, with a little struggle against the suction, pulled my foot out of the mud.

Alas, while my foot came up, my shoe did not follow.  I stood there on one foot, and while I will admit that thoughts of quicksand crossed my mind, I did not dwell on them.  Instead, my mind filled with visions of a two mile barefoot hike through unmarked woods.  That didn’t seem like a terribly good option, so I reached down into the mud, into the hole left by my foot, and retrieved my rather mucky shoe with my now slightly less mucky arm.

After a little trouble getting my other foot and shoe up, I struck for high ground.  Once things were dry, I paused to put my shoes back on.  There was no real difficulty with that, though I did have the rather uncomfortable feeling of having decaying leaves surrounding my socks for the rest of the day.  But not being the sort to let a little thing like sludgy stockings bother me, I looked for a way around the bog back towards civilization.

It was now around 4:15, and the park gates were due to be locked at 5:30.  More importantly, the sun was getting low in the sky, and while my new compass includes a LED light, I did not relish the thought of a midnight stroll through unmarked paths.  And yet, I was not completely without resources.  One apple still remained, so I would not go hungry.  I had my compass and a map of the trails, though half of the map was decaying from where the mud splattered on it.  Most vital of all, I still had my native wits to guide me.

Of course, since it was my wits that had gotten me into this mess in the first place, some might say that they should not be counted as an asset.

After circling the muck some more, I found a spot that looked crossable. It was definitely moist, but there were tussocks that I might stand on.  At least, that’s how it appeared at first glance, but a closer examination, taken when I was halfway across, cast some doubts on that view.  In short, once again I was knee deep in bog.

I was tired of making like a frog (knee deep, get it?), so I decided to spread my weight a bit and ended up crawling out over the mud. I managed to avoid losing my shoes this time, though, so I felt I was doing well.I worked my way up the hill through some pretty thick underbrush, barely managing to avoid getting all scratched. The terrain was clearer at the top of the ridge, and I did my best to work in roughly the right direction. Before long, I noticed that there was a bit of a path through the trees. Soon after that, I spotted a white reflector blazing the way. Somehow, I had found my way back to the original trail. This time, I resisted the urge to avoid the beaten path.

I hiked back out to my car, covered with mud and grinning like a loon over my adventure. And thinking about Julie. I’m not quite ready to admit that she is right to always stay on the trail. But I will say that maybe, in some specific circumstances, she might have a point.

In any event, that was my weekend adventure.  Because while I went for a little walk on Sunday, it was in the tame environs of a shopping mall.

I had to, after all.  I needed a new pair of shoes.

It’s been several months since I’ve last listed what I’m reading.  I’ve read many good pages in that time, though, so let’s catch up with a special year’s-end edition.

- The Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.  A huge fantasy series, four books and counting, each book running from 800-1000 pages.  My kids love them, which pretty much make them required reading for me, if only so that I understand the dinner conversation.  I’ve read all four: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows.  The books center around a massive civil war set in a fantasy world that is a rough analog of England in the high medieval period, with some clear overtones of the War of the Roses, but with magic, undead, and dragons thrown in for good measure.

I’ve got a love-hate relationship with these books.  They are entertaining, with a vast array of generally interesting characters.  But they often lack narrative drive, they bludgeon the reader with ugly war scenes (please, George - I’ve read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror (which I highly recommend, by the way) - I get that medieval warfare is an ugly thing, one village full of raped and mutilated peasants is enough), and much of the plot is driven by characters doing truly stupid things, which always annoys me.  Most of all, we’re already at around 4000 pages, the story shows no sign of nearing a close.

I’m a fan of large sprawling novels: I don’t believe a book really gets going until around page 800.  But Tolkien and Tolstoy both managed to tell their war stories in around 1200 pages - does Martin’s war really require an order of magnitude more?

So tentatively recommended, but there are definitely some caveats here.  Most of all, Martin, who says there’s still at least three more volumes to go, is already three years late on volume 5, and is getting a little long in the tooth.  Commit to these, and you may be committing to a series that will never reach its end.

- No such caveats for The Graveyard Book, by Neal Gaiman.  Published as a young-adult novel, I found this to be an absolute delight.

The book opens with a dark stranger called “the man Jack” stalking through a dark house with knife in hand.  Having just killed the parents and older child, the man Jack is in search of one last victim, a toddler.  But the unnamed child slips away to a nearby graveyard where he is taken in by the Owenses, a couple of ghosts, who, after arguing about who he looks like, conclude that he looks “like nobody but himself.”  Thus, they name him Nobody Owens, or Bod for short.

The book recounts Bod’s childhood raised in the cemetery by the various ghosts who “live” within, with each chapter taking place two years after the last one.  Young Bod learns much from the ghosts, including how to fade into invisibility, how to instill a frightful chill, and to avoid the ghouls and the less reputable residents.  Finally, when the man Jack returns to take care of unfinished business, Bod is ready, and the final confrontation is a delight that ties together many of the threads that sprang up in the various chapters.

I always love Gaiman’s work, and I particularly loved this one - recommended for anyone.

- Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.  I was talking with a friend recently about the battle of Midway, the turning point in WWII in the Pacific, when the American navy, after being dominated by the Japanese for the six months following Pearl Harbor, finally struck back, sinking four Japanese carriers and seizing the initiative for the remainder of the Pacific war.  (Yeah, I know.  I’m a geek, with lots of geeky friends.  So?)  I mentioned a couple of the standard points told about that battle, how the American torpedo bombers came in low and were shot up by the Japanese fighters, but that put the fighters out of position when the American dive bombers came swooping down from on high to sink the carriers, and how the carriers blew up quickly because their decks were crammed with aircraft getting ready to go attack the Americans.  He gave me a knowing look and said that I really needed to read Shattered Sword, how it would change everything I thought I knew about the battle.  And so I did.

I’m happy to report that the book is excellent, and showed how wrong I was.  Shattered Sword is a revisionist history of the battle of Midway, told largely from the point of view of the Japanese forces, that challenges much of the common wisdom about the battle.  (Those two points I mention above, for example, don’t survive Parshall and Tully’s analysis.)  Apparently, much of the common wisdom was based on the writings of Fuchida Mitsuo, a Japanese officer at the battle, who wrote an early self-serving account of the battle, one that has shaped much of the American understanding of what was the Japanese experienced during the battle.  But Fuchida’s account has been largely debunked in Japan for the past 20 years, though that news hasn’t reached American historians until recently.

The book does an excellent job of describing Japanese naval doctrine, the political maneuvering in their naval command that led to the Midway plan, and the tactics and operational approaches that the Japanese navy used.  That is coupled by a detailed recounting of the day of the battle, one that covers both the military actions, the efforts of the crews of the damaged ships to save them, and detailed descriptions of what it was like to escape from the burning hanger deck of a bombed aircraft carrier.  If you enjoy military history, and thought you knew what happened at Midway, I strongly recommend this book.