scribblings
Diary: Week of 23/10: University, Mathamatics, lots of films, Emotional Weakness and Sexism
Monday began with the usual lecture on Nietzsche, not my favourite philosopher, but the lectures aren't bad and I'm confident at writing something interesting in my coursework and exams. The lecture was mostly a discussion of Nietzsche's 'Naturalism' and what it meat to attribute that word to him, nothing too profound or enlightening to be honest.
Philosophy of Mathematics was more interesting, though it feels like we've been talking about Cantor's thoughts on infinite 'numbers' for a long time now. Still, is an interesting subject and I'm not entirely at peace with it yet.
The main issue is about comparing 'cardinalities' of 'infinite' 'sets' and whether one can be bigger than another. By set all that is meant is the things that belong to a concept, like 'is blue'. By Cardinality all that is really meant is 'amount', so the cardinality of the set of 'Is a Beatle' would be four, because there are four Beatles. The more complex issue is comparing the cardinality of infinite sets like 'whole numbers' vs 'even numbers'.
To some thinkers it seems like surely there must be twice as many even numbers as whole numbers, because there would presumably be the same amount of even numbers as odd numbers, and whole numbers are both even numbers together with odd numbers. Cantor doesn't agree because he feels you could make a numbered list of even numbers, hence meaning for every whole number there is a corresponding even number.
What Cantor doesn't agree with is a list of all real numbers (including rational and irrational decimal numbers), feeling that there is more real numbers than whole numbers, and the maths he gives does seem to work.
So I do agree that the cardinality of the set of real numbers is larger than the cardinality of whole numbers, but I don't like to outright say that there are differently sized infinities because I feel like I'm tripping over my language when I say something like that.
I still take the description of an amount as 'infinite' to refer to a type of innumerability, hence it doesn't refer to a number, but it refers to a situation where a number can't be given because no matter what number you would attribute it would never be high enough (because the list goes on forever)
But yet I am inclined to respect Cantor's Mathematics on the issue anyway. However, I think I can just about get away with saying that sets that are infinite have different cardinalities. I take the idea that infnite cardinalities can be different in a way somewhat similar to the way that I might say that cardinalities larger than three can be different. Infinite in that sense can be taken as a description of the type of quantity rather than an ascription of number, in this sense '>3' and 'Infinite' are alike.
Tuesday's Ancient Philosophy on Permanides was a little sleept, and I can't quite recall what was discussed in the two Philosophical Pyschology lectures, though I'm enjoying the latter module quite a bit anyway. I had hoped to see David Pugmire between the two lectures in order to discuss the title for my Dissertation which I want to do on Kantian metaphysics, but he wasn't in during his office hours. He says he just isn't very used to them yet, so hopefully I'll be able to catch him next time.
Unfortunately the gap wasn't spent otherwise productively as I found myself just chatting inanely with others, at one point about if a sandwich was concious what it would want to happen to it (part of a discussion starting from a shop called 'The Happy Sandwich' that contained no sandwiches, and whether or not it was the 'not being eaten' part of the shop that made the sandwiches happy). Some people felt that sandwiches would want to be eaten because it was their purpose, but I felt that if sandwiches were anything similar to Muffins then they wouldn't be.
Wednesday saw a somewhat less sleepy lecture on Permanides, and an Unfortunately delayed lift back home. I had only intended to go home to sort out some stuff to bring to Gamesoc that afternoon, but unfortunately my younger brother had managed to get himself locked out of the car, nor due to much obvious fault of his own but some problem with his locking system, so my lift home didn't occur until rather later as mother wanted to make sure that he got back okay.
Still, I managed to get home, put my Necromunda terrain, books and models into a big bag and head to Gamesoc, where my little trenchcoated bald headed Delaque gang went into the dark and dangerous underhive of Hive Primus on the planet of Necromunda to get attacked by some annoying noble toffs in ancient battle armour and get largely shot to pieces before running away and managing to leave one behind to get captured. The rescue mission went better when I managed to kill two of the Spyrers, which ended up making them decide to leave that area of the Hive (meaning the player is planning on making a new gang of Spyrers and start again). Although I still ended up having one of my characters made all dead it wasn't so much of a loss and thus I think I'm doing rather well thus far :oD
Can only hope I have a similar level of success in future games, hopefully this time against this well armoured opponents (underhive gangs may have access to the sorts of heavy weapons that are needed for such opponents, but it's a waste of money against most of the opponents, I could have bought a Lascannon but anti-tank weapons are rather overkill when you're shooting at mostly unarmoured opponents...)
Thursday I spent some time on the Internet but more entertainingly was the time I spent immersed in a Philosophy of Mathematics book called 'The Mathematical Experience' by Davis and Hersh. There are some very good and easily accessible articles in that book, including 'The Ideal Mathematician' (which even manages to be funny) and some very interesting thoughts that echo some of the things I want to say in my Dissertation in 'A physicists thoughts on Mathematics' (or some such title) where he refers to science and Mathematics as being 'models'.
Friday I had thought myself rather organised as I had already checked my email and read about the new Discussion Hour seminar I needed to be at on eleven in the mornings on Friday on floor seven of the Mathematics building, and hence when I got there and rushed up seven flights of stairs I was a bit bewildered to realise the room was already being used. Upon rechecking my email I then read the other half of the text 'Begins 3rd November'. Blah!
The Nietzsche lecture on the formation of conciousness was quite interesting, though I think Nietzsche is doubtless way to simplistic in his account of things, and whilst some of the things he says may have a grain of truth to them, I find it hard to believe that he criticised previous genealogists of morals for not looking at history but yet so clearly seems to be basing so much of his philosophy on speculation anyway.
fraggleonspeed came over that night to see me, and we probably watched something either on DVD or cable, I think cable, but I can't remember what we watched in hindsight.
She was off come the morning anyway to work, and in my own time I followed her up to town where we ate at KFC and then wandered around a lot dropping of her CVs in many places. When we got back to her's I ate mass quantities of ice cream whilst we watched dvds.
Fifty First Dates is a good film, worth watching, though not worth raving about. I enjoyed it anyway. The Hills Have Eyes (original version) however annoys me just because the amount of hysterical women.
Now I hate hysteria anyway, because it's an emotional weakness, obviously. I hate the fact that women are often expected to go into hysteria, and are often excused for it (particularly in older films). It's weak, it's ill-controlled, and it's selfish. In particular regard to these movies hysteria often gets people killed, and is generally rather a pain. Is it too much to ask people to just shut the hell up sometimes?
It reminds me rather of a time when I was still working at Subway, and a man stormed in and punched another man in the queue in the back of the face sending his head into a collision with the glass in front of the food and shattering part of it. The man ended up having blood all over his face and bits of glass embedded in him.
Now, he himself was rather controlled and dealt with the situation rather admirable in that respect, he waited calmly for the ambulance and generally stayed in good condition. What I think was his girlfriend however couldn't stop screaming and wailing about the whole issue, and was generally a pain in the ass. It didn't help us help him, in fact all it did was distract from helping him because people were needed to help her (that's right you selfish bitch, make all the attention about you instead of him who actually needs the help).
Of course, such behaviour is historically accepted amongst women. After all, 'Hysteria' was originally diagnosed as a 'female disorder', it's just part of being a woman that they are emotionally weak (so it would have been held).
Of course, this is the double standard, men are expected to be more in control of themselves, to act more responsibly, hence when we see men become hysterical in movies there is a lot less sympathy, often with other characters insulting them or perhaps punching them to get them into order. Further, I often find myself agreeing with the anger, when things get tough and dangerous, it is -not- the time for hysterics, and I don't care whether you are male or female.
The whole thing reminds me of something that was brought up in a discussion about Racism called 'White Woman Syndrome', though it strikes me that the same behaviours are generally seen in many situations.
Imagine the following situation. White Woman says something racist, black person calls her on it, White Woman gets upset about being called racist and starts crying and sobbing, everyone around comes to see if she is okay, black person demonised for upsetting poor fragile White Woman. In the same situation I'd probably very quickly start to dislike that woman, not only is it weak, it's so incredibly unfeminist that I'd lost all respect for her.
I've heard even more outrageous stories, like a black person in class talks about his expierences with racism, White Woman states 'telling me about your story really upsets me!' and starts sobbing, all the sympathy of the class goes to White Woman, black person who has experienced the racism that apparently upsets the weak feeble woman so much is forgotten about. Self-centred and selfish to the extreme!
Fortunately we are going into a society where we expect women to hold themselves together more, I know a lot of strong women, and a lot of strong women appear in cinema. Thank god for Characters like Riply in Aliens whom we wouldn't expect to start crying when faced with the Aliens and become useless and have to be protected by the male marines, and it's nice in some ways to see her have to shout at and calm down increasingly hysterical male marines (but note if they had been female we'd be a lot less sympathetic to her criticism, instead she might be perceived as being callous and harsh for ignoring their polite, make her male and that would certainly be the case)
Just one of the many things that annoys me about our modern sexist culture. I know that some women may sometimes prefer to be treated 'as women', and protected like 'poor weak women' and courted romantically like 'ladies', but they can go screw themselves. As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to treat you fairly and a like a person whether you want it or not, try to aim for the 'weak woman' role and I'll treat you the same way I'd treat a weak man.
We managed to watch half of Memoirs of a Geisha but the second dvd it was copied onto didn't work properly, which was annoying. I wanted to see how far they were going to go in romanticising Japanese prostitutes.
Then we watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I thought was fairly entertaining. Despite how fake all the string special effects were, there was something enchanting (if incredibly cheesy at points) about it all.
Saturday we made out way back to mine after a certain amount of pointless walking about Shirly and watched Battle Royale, which is admittedly rather good despite the lack of much of a strong plot, or much point, however the whole scenario is very interesting, almost mirroring themes you might see in Lord of the Flies, though not quite the same by any means
Quiz: Depression Test
DisorderYour ScoreMajor Depression:Very SlightDysthymia:SlightBipolar Disorder:Very SlightCyclothymia:SlightSeasonal Affective Disorder:Very SlightPostpartum Depression:N/ATake the Depression Test
Meme: My Egos
Link: 'Global Policeman' is only nation to oppose arms treaty
Link: Odd tattoos
Link: Pole Dancing toy for children
Link: One person can be seen naked accidently from thier window, another person is secretly filming them from a bush, which is in the wrong? well, obviously answer, the man
Monday began with the usual lecture on Nietzsche, not my favourite philosopher, but the lectures aren't bad and I'm confident at writing something interesting in my coursework and exams. The lecture was mostly a discussion of Nietzsche's 'Naturalism' and what it meat to attribute that word to him, nothing too profound or enlightening to be honest.
Philosophy of Mathematics was more interesting, though it feels like we've been talking about Cantor's thoughts on infinite 'numbers' for a long time now. Still, is an interesting subject and I'm not entirely at peace with it yet.
The main issue is about comparing 'cardinalities' of 'infinite' 'sets' and whether one can be bigger than another. By set all that is meant is the things that belong to a concept, like 'is blue'. By Cardinality all that is really meant is 'amount', so the cardinality of the set of 'Is a Beatle' would be four, because there are four Beatles. The more complex issue is comparing the cardinality of infinite sets like 'whole numbers' vs 'even numbers'.
To some thinkers it seems like surely there must be twice as many even numbers as whole numbers, because there would presumably be the same amount of even numbers as odd numbers, and whole numbers are both even numbers together with odd numbers. Cantor doesn't agree because he feels you could make a numbered list of even numbers, hence meaning for every whole number there is a corresponding even number.
What Cantor doesn't agree with is a list of all real numbers (including rational and irrational decimal numbers), feeling that there is more real numbers than whole numbers, and the maths he gives does seem to work.
So I do agree that the cardinality of the set of real numbers is larger than the cardinality of whole numbers, but I don't like to outright say that there are differently sized infinities because I feel like I'm tripping over my language when I say something like that.
I still take the description of an amount as 'infinite' to refer to a type of innumerability, hence it doesn't refer to a number, but it refers to a situation where a number can't be given because no matter what number you would attribute it would never be high enough (because the list goes on forever)
But yet I am inclined to respect Cantor's Mathematics on the issue anyway. However, I think I can just about get away with saying that sets that are infinite have different cardinalities. I take the idea that infnite cardinalities can be different in a way somewhat similar to the way that I might say that cardinalities larger than three can be different. Infinite in that sense can be taken as a description of the type of quantity rather than an ascription of number, in this sense '>3' and 'Infinite' are alike.
Tuesday's Ancient Philosophy on Permanides was a little sleept, and I can't quite recall what was discussed in the two Philosophical Pyschology lectures, though I'm enjoying the latter module quite a bit anyway. I had hoped to see David Pugmire between the two lectures in order to discuss the title for my Dissertation which I want to do on Kantian metaphysics, but he wasn't in during his office hours. He says he just isn't very used to them yet, so hopefully I'll be able to catch him next time.
Unfortunately the gap wasn't spent otherwise productively as I found myself just chatting inanely with others, at one point about if a sandwich was concious what it would want to happen to it (part of a discussion starting from a shop called 'The Happy Sandwich' that contained no sandwiches, and whether or not it was the 'not being eaten' part of the shop that made the sandwiches happy). Some people felt that sandwiches would want to be eaten because it was their purpose, but I felt that if sandwiches were anything similar to Muffins then they wouldn't be.
Wednesday saw a somewhat less sleepy lecture on Permanides, and an Unfortunately delayed lift back home. I had only intended to go home to sort out some stuff to bring to Gamesoc that afternoon, but unfortunately my younger brother had managed to get himself locked out of the car, nor due to much obvious fault of his own but some problem with his locking system, so my lift home didn't occur until rather later as mother wanted to make sure that he got back okay.
Still, I managed to get home, put my Necromunda terrain, books and models into a big bag and head to Gamesoc, where my little trenchcoated bald headed Delaque gang went into the dark and dangerous underhive of Hive Primus on the planet of Necromunda to get attacked by some annoying noble toffs in ancient battle armour and get largely shot to pieces before running away and managing to leave one behind to get captured. The rescue mission went better when I managed to kill two of the Spyrers, which ended up making them decide to leave that area of the Hive (meaning the player is planning on making a new gang of Spyrers and start again). Although I still ended up having one of my characters made all dead it wasn't so much of a loss and thus I think I'm doing rather well thus far :oD
Can only hope I have a similar level of success in future games, hopefully this time against this well armoured opponents (underhive gangs may have access to the sorts of heavy weapons that are needed for such opponents, but it's a waste of money against most of the opponents, I could have bought a Lascannon but anti-tank weapons are rather overkill when you're shooting at mostly unarmoured opponents...)
Thursday I spent some time on the Internet but more entertainingly was the time I spent immersed in a Philosophy of Mathematics book called 'The Mathematical Experience' by Davis and Hersh. There are some very good and easily accessible articles in that book, including 'The Ideal Mathematician' (which even manages to be funny) and some very interesting thoughts that echo some of the things I want to say in my Dissertation in 'A physicists thoughts on Mathematics' (or some such title) where he refers to science and Mathematics as being 'models'.
Friday I had thought myself rather organised as I had already checked my email and read about the new Discussion Hour seminar I needed to be at on eleven in the mornings on Friday on floor seven of the Mathematics building, and hence when I got there and rushed up seven flights of stairs I was a bit bewildered to realise the room was already being used. Upon rechecking my email I then read the other half of the text 'Begins 3rd November'. Blah!
The Nietzsche lecture on the formation of conciousness was quite interesting, though I think Nietzsche is doubtless way to simplistic in his account of things, and whilst some of the things he says may have a grain of truth to them, I find it hard to believe that he criticised previous genealogists of morals for not looking at history but yet so clearly seems to be basing so much of his philosophy on speculation anyway.
fraggleonspeed came over that night to see me, and we probably watched something either on DVD or cable, I think cable, but I can't remember what we watched in hindsight.
She was off come the morning anyway to work, and in my own time I followed her up to town where we ate at KFC and then wandered around a lot dropping of her CVs in many places. When we got back to her's I ate mass quantities of ice cream whilst we watched dvds.
Fifty First Dates is a good film, worth watching, though not worth raving about. I enjoyed it anyway. The Hills Have Eyes (original version) however annoys me just because the amount of hysterical women.
Now I hate hysteria anyway, because it's an emotional weakness, obviously. I hate the fact that women are often expected to go into hysteria, and are often excused for it (particularly in older films). It's weak, it's ill-controlled, and it's selfish. In particular regard to these movies hysteria often gets people killed, and is generally rather a pain. Is it too much to ask people to just shut the hell up sometimes?
It reminds me rather of a time when I was still working at Subway, and a man stormed in and punched another man in the queue in the back of the face sending his head into a collision with the glass in front of the food and shattering part of it. The man ended up having blood all over his face and bits of glass embedded in him.
Now, he himself was rather controlled and dealt with the situation rather admirable in that respect, he waited calmly for the ambulance and generally stayed in good condition. What I think was his girlfriend however couldn't stop screaming and wailing about the whole issue, and was generally a pain in the ass. It didn't help us help him, in fact all it did was distract from helping him because people were needed to help her (that's right you selfish bitch, make all the attention about you instead of him who actually needs the help).
Of course, such behaviour is historically accepted amongst women. After all, 'Hysteria' was originally diagnosed as a 'female disorder', it's just part of being a woman that they are emotionally weak (so it would have been held).
Of course, this is the double standard, men are expected to be more in control of themselves, to act more responsibly, hence when we see men become hysterical in movies there is a lot less sympathy, often with other characters insulting them or perhaps punching them to get them into order. Further, I often find myself agreeing with the anger, when things get tough and dangerous, it is -not- the time for hysterics, and I don't care whether you are male or female.
The whole thing reminds me of something that was brought up in a discussion about Racism called 'White Woman Syndrome', though it strikes me that the same behaviours are generally seen in many situations.
Imagine the following situation. White Woman says something racist, black person calls her on it, White Woman gets upset about being called racist and starts crying and sobbing, everyone around comes to see if she is okay, black person demonised for upsetting poor fragile White Woman. In the same situation I'd probably very quickly start to dislike that woman, not only is it weak, it's so incredibly unfeminist that I'd lost all respect for her.
I've heard even more outrageous stories, like a black person in class talks about his expierences with racism, White Woman states 'telling me about your story really upsets me!' and starts sobbing, all the sympathy of the class goes to White Woman, black person who has experienced the racism that apparently upsets the weak feeble woman so much is forgotten about. Self-centred and selfish to the extreme!
Fortunately we are going into a society where we expect women to hold themselves together more, I know a lot of strong women, and a lot of strong women appear in cinema. Thank god for Characters like Riply in Aliens whom we wouldn't expect to start crying when faced with the Aliens and become useless and have to be protected by the male marines, and it's nice in some ways to see her have to shout at and calm down increasingly hysterical male marines (but note if they had been female we'd be a lot less sympathetic to her criticism, instead she might be perceived as being callous and harsh for ignoring their polite, make her male and that would certainly be the case)
Just one of the many things that annoys me about our modern sexist culture. I know that some women may sometimes prefer to be treated 'as women', and protected like 'poor weak women' and courted romantically like 'ladies', but they can go screw themselves. As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to treat you fairly and a like a person whether you want it or not, try to aim for the 'weak woman' role and I'll treat you the same way I'd treat a weak man.
We managed to watch half of Memoirs of a Geisha but the second dvd it was copied onto didn't work properly, which was annoying. I wanted to see how far they were going to go in romanticising Japanese prostitutes.
Then we watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I thought was fairly entertaining. Despite how fake all the string special effects were, there was something enchanting (if incredibly cheesy at points) about it all.
Saturday we made out way back to mine after a certain amount of pointless walking about Shirly and watched Battle Royale, which is admittedly rather good despite the lack of much of a strong plot, or much point, however the whole scenario is very interesting, almost mirroring themes you might see in Lord of the Flies, though not quite the same by any means
Quiz: Depression Test
DisorderYour ScoreMajor Depression:Very SlightDysthymia:SlightBipolar Disorder:Very SlightCyclothymia:SlightSeasonal Affective Disorder:Very SlightPostpartum Depression:N/ATake the Depression Test
Meme: My Egos
Link: 'Global Policeman' is only nation to oppose arms treaty
Link: Odd tattoos
Link: Pole Dancing toy for children
Link: One person can be seen naked accidently from thier window, another person is secretly filming them from a bush, which is in the wrong? well, obviously answer, the man