Author Topic: The Economy of Fear  (Read 338 times)

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Nation of One

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The Economy of Fear
« on: July 10, 2021, 05:35:32 am »
HP Lovecraft on Eugenics, Economics, and the Great Depression

https://www.academia.edu/19676748/The_Economy_of_Fear_H_P_Lovecraft_on_Eugenics_Economics_and_the_Great_Depression?email_work_card=view-paper

Note:  I am walking a little better now since I have been wrapping foot with bamboo sticks for added support.  It is the right foot of the right leg which was broken in 2012, so maybe this is why it is healing slowly.  It's been like 7 weeks.

All in all, my heart is sad, but I try to keep it light, not too heavy - and yet!  I am becoming more and more disgusted with life in general, and there is very little keeping me going.   Watermelon, cantaloupe, bananas ... pipe tobacco, coffee ... Tumeric ...
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Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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raul

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Re: The Economy of Fear
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2021, 10:43:48 am »
Hentrich,

I hope you get better. I am sure it must not be a pleasant experience. Now in our late 50s we must take things easy.

Walk carefully.

Holden

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Re: The Economy of Fear
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2021, 05:03:16 am »
I hope in a couple of weeks you would be much better.You might think about getting an inexpensive cast. Termeric is very popular here and is used in many food products and would certainly help your body.

I have been looking into Da Vinci’s notebooks for his thoughts on mathematics.Like a tortoise, I continue to study mathematics slowly ,along with what the great minds of history had to say about it and I might be slightly better now than I was in 2018.

I do relate to Lovecraft in more ways than one. However,unlike him, I would not like to fall for a woman. Also, I would like to have studied more mathematics( and to greater depths) than he did.

Get well soon.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2021, 10:30:04 am by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: The Economy of Fear [links to Wildberger]
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2021, 10:25:31 am »
Thank you, Holden and Raul, for your concern and moral support.   It has been my habit upon awakening (slowly) to at first crawl, then stand with cane.  This morning I was able to stand up without the cane, just pushing up on a door knob.  So, I was able to limp without cane to the toilet.

This is a good sign.  My first thought was that there was nothing worth gettting up off the mat on the floor for except that I could not stand to lay down any longer.  I am walking carefully, Raul.  I have no choice but to walk carefully, if I am to walk at all.

Holden, I have studied enough mathematics to know that the fundamentals are far more important than the "sexy discoveries" and mystical sounding breakthroughs or mental "tricks" ... and yet, in our ego-oriented status-obsessed societies, it would be quite rare for one of these pompous academic prodigies-turned-professors to be able to clearly and coherently explain [even to him-or-herself] certain fundamentals in "pre-calculus" ["School Algebra," Trigonometry, etc].

On the other hand, there is also this awful sense of having spent decades mastering fundamentals of something patched together and kept rolling even if it has proved to be confounding to one generation of students after another.    (See    Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry by NJ Wildberger who I mention in several threads you might wish to explore in the event I disappear into the Great Void.)

- Re-Imagining Mathematics

- Arctangent without a calculator

Quote
We're going to need an eternity to get anywhere, so why bother?

Well, if you download the book, on page 11 I notice the very wall I have repeatedly hit is discussed.

The section title sounds Schopenhauerian:  "1.3: Why classical trigonometry is hard"

Quote from: Wildberger
For centuries students have struggled to master angles, trigonometric functions and their many intricate relations. Those who learn how to apply the formulas correctly often don’t know why they are true. Such difficulties are to an extent the natural reflection of an underlying ambiguity at the heart of classical trigonometry. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but can be boiled down to the single critical question:

What precisely is an angle??

Hooo Ha!   :D  Great question!

That sounds like something Holden would say!  He does not want a standard textbook definition. 

He goes on to say that the problem is that defining an angle correctly requires calculus.  This is precisely the "angle" taken [pun intended] by the young graduate student author of BURN MATH CLASS (Jason Wilkes).  Wilkes had suggested we learn calculus before learning about the tangent function since it turns out to be the slope ... but ... around and around ...

Quote from: Wildberger
Let’s clarify the point with a simple example. The rectangle ABCD in Figure 1.5 [see Library Genesis] has side lengths |A, B| = 2 and |B, C| = 1. What is the angle θ between the lines AB and AC in degrees to four decimal places??

And this is how I know this Wildberger is a gortbuster.   He is pointing out that elementary as well as advanced geometry texts are reluctant to make this supposedly basic idea clear.  Then the student is made to feel "stupid" or "lazy" for not having a grasp of it ... so we resort to memorizing SOCATOHA and all these algorithms ... and, of course, the calculator and tables ... and numerical approximations.

Quote from: Wildberger
Without tables, a calculator or calculus, a student has difficulty in answering this question, because the usual definition of an angle is not precise enough to show how to calculate it. But how can one claim understanding of a mathematical concept without being able to compute it in simple situations? If the notion of an angle θ cannot be made completely clear from the beginning, it cannot be fundamental.

He goes on to say, "If the foundations of a building are askew, the entire structure is compromised."

Quite Holdenesque!

In the introduction he states, "Mathematics is a conservative discipline, and it is not easy to acknowledge that traditional thinking might involve elements of misunderstanding."

And, of course, eventually we have to sleep.  We can only focus on so much at a time.   

At least here is someone facing the abyss.  It is not just me who has difficulty with this.  It is a universal phenomenon.  What is an angle, anyway?  Why is it so difficult to get the arctangent without calculators - and why do the calculators resort to approximations using infinite sums?

Quote from: Wildberger
Students are constantly given examples that deal essentially with 90 ◦ /60 ◦ /30 ◦ or 90 ◦ /45 ◦ /45 ◦ triangles, since these are largely the only ones for which they can make unassisted calculations.

Exactly, those are so crystal clear!  But stray from these and one is left feeling mentally impotent ... or, worse, like a FRAUD!    :-\

Quote from: Wildberger
Small wonder that the trigonometric functions cos θ, sin θ and tan θ and their inverse functions cause students such difficulties. Although pictures of unit circles and ratios of lengths are used to ‘define’ these in elementary courses, it is difficult to understand them correctly without calculus.

And then he introduces "Rational Trigonometry"  ....

1.4 Why rational trigonometry is easier


I sure don't want to get sidetracked, but it really does irk me that we must rely on approximating infinite sums (which is what the calculators do) or even that our grandfathers relied on tables ...

How is it we lack clarity on something supposedly so fundamental as this angle that, as Schopenhuer would say, is clearly apprehended in every way by our faculties of perception?  When it comes to expressing it in terms of numbers and measurement, wow ... there seems to be no exact representation, but only approximations.   Oh well, the truth is out of the bag.  Math is not an exact science after all, but an approximate one. 

Maybe it is not so fundamental after all ... maybe what is presented as elementary depends on much more advanced mathematics that are left out of the explanation because it is not known (and taken on faith) ...

Hence, those who are most intellectually honest will call the bluff and admit there is mass confusion throughout the entire edifice in universities around the globe.

The most honest students, like Holden, will be mocked and accused of not studying (memorizing) enough, and yet he has realized that teacher may be lacking in understanding himself and that there is a great deal of monkey business having to do with "acting as if" everything were crystal clear, when in fact, some of the so-called basic ideas, like angles, are glossed over.

Have you ever noticed that when you set a calculator's mode to EXACT, as opposed to APPROXIMATE, and enter arctangent(-1/3) or most any other value, it spits out the very question you asked?

It is unable to give an exact answer except in terms of the expression, arctangent(y/x) ...

It can only approximate.  We can only approximate.

The trains have to run on time.  Most do not have the leisure to demand more understanding.

So, what is the point of our educational institutions if there is no time to understand things?

All the questions involve 30-60-90 angles or 45-45-90 angles.  It makes us feel smart.

We are deluded ... Only those with intellectual honesty allow themselves to face this confusion squarely. 

Confucius said, "Rest in confusion".

- Quasi-Religious Speculation on Things Which Don't Exist

- Fundamentals as kindling and tinder (Imitating Herr Hentrich's Mathematical Endeavors)

- Modern Mathematics as Religion (long)



« Last Edit: July 11, 2021, 09:35:34 pm by "No No Bad Dog!" »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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Re: The Economy of Fear [about Lovecraft's FEARS]
« Reply #4 on: July 11, 2021, 11:13:36 am »
I did not wish to sidetrack this paper on Lovecraft.  I was reading it late into the night ... I had to admit to myself that these fears of his can become quite intense, that is, that it is quite believable and understandable that he would proclaim a "sensitive Nordic" would be filled with anxiety were he to make his way through daily life in any city in the world, especially places like Camden, New Jersey.

This paper, much like Francis Welsings "The Isis Papers," explores the fear for what it is - minus the moralistic condemnations for the "racism" ---- that is, the fear of genetic annihilation is explored in the context of global politics as well as the phenomena of the modern industrial city, the so-called "melting pot" ...

The very subject typing these words has questioned the hypothesis of the self, and so the only "I" "in here inside the skin" is a fictional narrative, just like the concept of "whiteness" - a mental construct, an abstraction.   And yet, the fears of the city and other peoples are as real as it gets since the only Subjects out there are our Animal Bodies.  I am my animal body, this protoplasmic mesh of nerve-endings and sensations.

To be one of these creatures whose core reality is FEAR ... all creatures, all protoplasmic forms manifested as Will-to-Live.

What is going on?  Everyone knows that cities are dangerous to all inhabitants, not merely the palefaced "Nordic" types.  The modern cities are death traps for all, and each individual phenomena is made of the raw minerals of the earth, of the cosmos.   

Ape kills ape.  Cain kills Able.  Brother kills brother.  Life feeds on itself.

to what end?

Where do the lives of all the denizens lead?

Who holds anyone's hand during all this?
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: The Economy of Fear
« Reply #5 on: July 12, 2021, 03:18:06 am »
Schopenhauer, P&P, chapter 8, On ethics:

“This is Samsara, and everything in it proclaims it; but more than anything it is the human world, in which morally speaking badness and baseness, and intellectually speaking incompetence and stupidity reign to a horrifying extent.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.