Author Topic: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance  (Read 3161 times)

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Nation of One

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How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« on: July 15, 2014, 09:38:30 pm »
Usually I am able to lose myself in studying, but today I was just depressed for no particular reason ... I wondered if it would pass ... It is still with me so I am going to probe for what it is that is ailing me.  I reflect on this very significant observation made by Horkheimer and Adorno:

“Anyone who does not conform is condemned to an economic impotence which is prolonged in the intellectual powerlessness of the eccentric loner. Disconnected from the mainstream, he is easily convicted of inadequacy.”

I would think I would be used to being disconnected from the mainstream by now.  It's the conviction of inadequacy that is much harder to cope with.  This world is stranger than science-fiction.  The slave mentality sees those who walk away from slavery as somehow inadequate.  It is maddening to think about this.  The worst kind of prison is the prison of the mind. The prison of the mind has no need for walls or guards. Escape is as simple as walking away, yet few people leave.  When I experience depressive feelings, I have to remind myself that these feelings are part of the reason why so few walk away from the quarry.  They don't have to think as long as they are employed and "occupied." 

There is a price one pays for facing down the slave mentality.  One has to develop psychological strength if one is to stand alone against the herd, against the masses.  This is related to the topic of living in A Strange Orbit.  Often I am writing to myself, talking myself through the uncomfortable passage of time.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2014, 09:41:42 pm by H »
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

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Holden

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #1 on: July 16, 2014, 04:59:39 am »
I hope you are feeling better now.Take care of yourself.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2014, 08:15:10 am »
I watched the documentary and jotted down a couple things.  I have some code I will tweak to see if there is a pattern to primes twins (prime numbers that differ by 2: {5, 7}, {11, 13}, ...).

Does it matter if one can not prove that there is an infinite set of such pairs?  According to our mutant metaphysics, the ultimate question is Why Bother?

Wasn't the premise of this message board that in writing Better Never To Have Been, David Benetar was tackling the great problem that had gotten Schopenhauer's attention, Cioran's attention, even that hack, Camus: is life worth living?

Do I identify myself as a mathematician?  I think I am anti-academia, and even though I will hack away at some code and ponder non-countable infinities, I am in the camp of thinkers who declare, "Why bother with such trite matters when we experience the futility of existence in our bones?"

The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions, and yet, a considerable amount of life-forms evidently continue to reproduce without requiring any meaning or sense to life.  Therefore, perhaps the meaning of life is irrelevant.

Is this why I am impressed with suicides and those who go mad?

I have been wondering what is the line a demarcation between the human and the gort.  The gort believes that that which is so, is so.  Not to pick on anyone in particular, but I notice there is a great deal of hoo-ha around professional athletes.  I would venture to guess that the lot of them, along with their fans, are gorts.

Now I am considering those who identify themselves as mathematicians with their glorious proofs.  I will dabble in their craft, but are these academicians not gorts as well?  I notice a great deal of posturing in the academic world ... elitism and snobbery. 

Question: Are certain infinities non-countable?
Answer: Someone blows their brains out.   :o

Now, a deeper question might be, "Does the creature, in destroying itself, destroy the entire Creation?"

Is the entire objective a product of our imaginations that disappears when the brain goes to the worms?   But the worms exist ... eating the inorganic matter of the dead brain!  Do the worms exist when they are eating our dead brains?   ;)


Nation of One

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #3 on: July 16, 2014, 08:29:47 am »
There is no way to prove that the worms (the objective world) exist since the brain that poses the question no longer exists.

Does one experience a sense of horror that some are in ivory towers writing proofs in mathematical journals while others don't even know how to read?  I guess one has to learn how to detach in order to be able to concentrate on the abstract.

Maybe I will work on that code ... list_twin_primes.c ... The most liberating activity seems to be laying down for a nap ... Virginia Woolf was sure right about that.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2014, 11:50:12 am by H »
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

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2014, 07:09:55 pm »
Mathematical Mystery Tour

I changed my prime factor code a little, making the array of primes 50000 instead of 6666.

Of the first 50000 primes, there are 5423 "twins".

I put the output in the file test.txt if you want to look for some kind of pattern.

The first 21 pairs:

{3, 5 } are twin primes set # 1
{5, 7 } are twin primes set # 2
{11, 13 } are twin primes set # 3
{17, 19 } are twin primes set # 4
{29, 31 } are twin primes set # 5
{41, 43 } are twin primes set # 6
{59, 61 } are twin primes set # 7
{71, 73 } are twin primes set # 8
{101, 103 } are twin primes set # 9
{107, 109 } are twin primes set # 10
{137, 139 } are twin primes set # 11
{149, 151 } are twin primes set # 12
{179, 181 } are twin primes set # 13
{191, 193 } are twin primes set # 14
{197, 199 } are twin primes set # 15
{227, 229 } are twin primes set # 16
{239, 241 } are twin primes set # 17
{269, 271 } are twin primes set # 18
{281, 283 } are twin primes set # 19
{311, 313 } are twin primes set # 20
{347, 349 } are twin primes set # 21


The last  (of first 50000 primes):

{608591, 608593 } are twin primes set # 5401
{608609, 608611 } are twin primes set # 5402
{608897, 608899 } are twin primes set # 5403
{608987, 608989 } are twin primes set # 5404
{609359, 609361 } are twin primes set # 5405
{609599, 609601 } are twin primes set # 5406
{609617, 609619 } are twin primes set # 5407
{609779, 609781 } are twin primes set # 5408
{609911, 609913 } are twin primes set # 5409
{609989, 609991 } are twin primes set # 5410
{610217, 610219 } are twin primes set # 5411
{610541, 610543 } are twin primes set # 5412
{610739, 610741 } are twin primes set # 5413
{610781, 610783 } are twin primes set # 5414
{610847, 610849 } are twin primes set # 5415
{610877, 610879 } are twin primes set # 5416
{610919, 610921 } are twin primes set # 5417
{611069, 611071 } are twin primes set # 5418
{611111, 611113 } are twin primes set # 5419
{611549, 611551 } are twin primes set # 5420
{611801, 611803 } are twin primes set # 5421
{611837, 611839 } are twin primes set # 5422
{611951, 611953 } are twin primes set # 5423

One of the problems in the above video was to prove that there are an infinite amount of these sets of twins.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2018, 04:28:08 pm by Non Serviam »
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 ~

Nation of One

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #5 on: July 16, 2014, 07:52:03 pm »
Using our power against ourselves?

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: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #6 on: July 17, 2014, 04:05:40 am »
That's amazing Mr.H! Maybe you should try to solve one of the problems mentioned in the video.
Here, check this out- I found it fascinating-Quest for ultimate nature of reality:
Only drawback of the video is that risque woman in it.

« Last Edit: July 17, 2014, 04:07:37 am by Holden »
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Holden

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #7 on: July 17, 2014, 03:06:29 pm »
Was Hegel a gort?
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #8 on: July 17, 2014, 05:08:16 pm »
Was Hegel a gort?   That clumsy and nauseating charlatan, that pernicious person, who completely disorganized and ruined the minds of a whole generation!   Hegel - a commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive and ignorant charlatan, who with unparalleled effrontery compiled a system of crazy nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his mercenary followers.

The Hegelian philosophy of history is meaningless. Worse yet, it is cruel and coercive. What is a gort?   There is no definition out in gortville.  The gorts have not defined themselves?

Have we a definition?  Then I can tell you whether Hegel fits the description.  We can't just throw the word around pointing out misdemeanors.  The only place on this entire planet where we find any public record of "the gort" is at a URL address, http://xhentric.wordpress.com/scholar-warrior/gort-busters/what-is-a-gort/


What is a Gort? ( The Short Answer )

A gort is someone who believes that “That which is so, is so.”


What is a Gort? ( The Long Answer )

The generic term “gort” springs from the colloquialisms of the greater Baltimore area, where, when someone is perceived to be a sucker, he is considered a gort. Whether this term is still used there today is beyond my measure. However, a Baltimorian once recounted to me the story of a guy who bought a used car from a dealer, and, when it wouldn’t start, he helped the salesman push it off the lot. Brothers and sisters, that is a gort!

Essentially, a gort is someone who has missed the bottom line in human consciousness. There is a point beyond which one may not be using one’s brain to the full extent necessary to qualify for a membership card to the human race. The question is not who are these people, for I imagine we are all quite well acquainted with these folks in our own lives and in our society and even in the world generally. The question, rather, is how to define that point of demarcation where the dividing line between the human and the gort is distinct.

After much study and consideration, Gortbusters believe that that line begins with a conscious realization of dualism. Yes, that’s right…TWOness, the split, the crack, the break in the cosmic dam through which floods the reality of our ability to think. Experiencing consciousness means experiencing duality, that is, the truism that everything we know must be processed one way or the other. There is no up without down, no cold without hot, no man without woman, no left without right, no old without new, no power without virtue, no life without death, no reality without illusion. Every sword has two edges. Only when one is aware of this, may one proceed to the next consideration.

Of course, the next consideration is, “Well, who would NOT understand this?” The answer, of course, is the gort. The Great Bard, Shakespeare, captures the delicious irony of duality when he writes, “Nothing that is so, is so.” This is like the endless images of two mirrors facing each other, each playing off the reflection of the other. The gort does NOT understand this. In fact, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the gort believes, “That which is so, is so.” He believes that perception equals reality. Therein lies the danger.

Before going any further, it behooves us to clarify an issue regarding who is the most dangerous gort of all. Fortunately, this question is easily dispensed with. For you guys, just look in the mirror while shaving. The beady-eyed, snickering creature staring back at you is the most dangerous gort. Ladies, you may see her as you comb your hair and apply your lipstick. Yes, of course, the most dangerous gort of all is the small-minded, self-serving, illusion-embracing part of ourselves, which is dedicated to the status quo, frightened to death of change, and in denial regarding what price must be paid for fully human powers of perception.

As we rail and rant, sweat and cry, bleed and heal, let us never forget the first repsonsibility we have, which is to recognize the gort inside ourselves, and to insure that it will never take control of the human consciousness control panel in the brain’s command center. We owe this not only to ourselves, but to our families and to posterity itself. There IS a tradition of human awareness in the history and evolution of our species. Let us be part of it.

Is the term gort some sort of insult?

Absolutely not, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone on this site using it as an ad hominem attack. The difference between gort and non-gort, or gortbuster, is just a reference point. Gort is just a moniker – a short hand – for a million different kind of ways of living. It is merely a term to help create a sense of difference between the status quo and whatever change you might see fit.


Well, now, let's see, did Hegel believe that perception equals reality?  What has been the consequence of Hegel's principles?  With this one question you ask us, Holden, it's as though we are now hacking at the roots of a poisonous tree.   This term, gort,by the above definition, appears to merely be a term to help create a sense of difference between the status quo and whatever change you might see fit

Let me tell you, Hegel was an UPDHOLDER OF THE STATUS-QUO ...

Fabian practitioners developed Hegelian principles which they taught alongside Morgan bankers. One Hegelianism was that to push ideas efficiently, it was necessary to co-opt both the political left as well as the political right. They work with military precision to get control of the education of the children of the land, to program the masses.

Was Hegel a gort?    Since our time era, Hegel, that charlatan, is still regarded as “the most influential intellectual thinker in modern history” – what a scandal!  From deep within the bowels of the earth, I see that Hegel's principles have been important wherever strict social control has been an issue.

“Ambitious states couldn’t let a single child escape,” said Hegel!

Pompous bastard.

Existentialism itself began as a revolt against Hegel.  Even in your time-era - NOW - the ghost of Hegel dominates the hallways, institutions, syllabi, instructional practices, and journals of Euro-American philosophy. 

An African Phenomenologist, Olufemi Taiwo, has written, "... Given that the 'West' presents itself as the embodiment and inventor of the 'universal', we must protest even more loudly that its universal is so peculiar and that its global is so local. That is, the West, in constructing the universal, instead of truly embracing all that there is, or at least what of it can be so embraced, has merely puffed itself up and invited the rest of humanity, or the educated segment of it, to be complicit in this historical swindle."

So Hegel has had something to do with (mandatory public education) and the masses thinking that that which is so, is so, when the fact is that nothing that is so, is so.
 
If Hegel was not a gort himself, he certainly promoted the farming and manufacturing  of gorts ... the mass-transformation of human energy into the gort-hive mind.

Holden

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #9 on: July 18, 2014, 01:25:59 pm »
Why the math videos, if we are bothered about nothing? You asked me that, I have been asking that to myself.
Well, its a little difficult to explain, I'd give it a try- I often imagine myself as a concentration camp inmate like Trachtenberg,a Russian Jew who narrowly escaped dying in one of the camps.Let me tell you his story to explain what I mean.
Part-1-
He was shipped in a cattle car to a concentration camp-one noted for its brutality. The slightest variance from the rules resulted in outrageous forms of punishment. Daily the ranks of the prison were decimated by the ruthlessly random selection of victims for the ovens.

To keep his sanity, Trachtenberg moved into a world of his own-a world of logic and order. While his body daily grew more emaciated, and all about him was pestilence, death, and destruction, his mind refused to accept defeat and followed paths of numbers that, at his bidding, performed miraculous feats.

He did not have books, paper, pen, or pencil. But his mind was equal to the challenge. Mathematics, he believed, was the key to precise thinking. In happier times, he had found it an excellent recreational outlet. In a world gone mad, the calm logic of numbers were like old friends. His mind, arranging and rearranging, found new ways of manipulating them.

He visualized gigantic numbers to be added and he set himself the task of totaling them. And since no one can remember thousands of numbers, he invented a fool-proof method that would make it possible for even a child to add thousands of numbers together without making a mistake-without, in fact, ever adding higher than eleven.

During his long years in the living hell of the concentration camp, every spare moment was spent on his simplified system of mathematics, devising shortcuts for everything from multiplication to algebra. The corruption and misery, the cries from clammy cells and torture chambers, the stench of ovens, the atrocities, and the constant threat of death, faded as he doggedly computed mathematical combinations-reckoning rules, proving and proving again, then starting over again to make the system even simpler.

The hardships acted as a spur to his genius. Lacking paper, he scribbled his theories on bits of wrapping paper, old envelopes, the back of carefully saved German worksheets. Because even these bits of paper were at a premium he worked everything in his head, putting down only the finished theories.


Think of me as Tratchenberg & the world as a big concentration camp.
Part-2
As A YOUNG SCAMP in my wild years, nothing had so grieved me as having been born at a time which obviously erected its Halls of Fame only to shopkeepers and government officials. The waves of historic events seemed to have grown so smooth that the future really seemed to belong only to the 'peaceful contest of nations'; in other words, a cozy mutual swindling match with the exclusion of violent methods of defense. The various nations began to be more and more like private citizens who cut the ground from under one another's feet, stealing each other's customers and orders, trying in every way to get ahead of one another, and staging this whole act amid a hue and cry as loud as it is harmless. This development seemed not only to endure but was expected in time (as was universally recommended) to remodel the whole world into one big department store in whose vestibules the busts of the shrewdest profiteers and the most lamblike administrative officials would be garnered for all eternity. The English could supply the merchants, the Germans the administrative officials, and the Jews no doubt would have to sacrifice themselves to being the owners, since by their own admission they never make any money, but always 'pay,' and, besides, speak the most languages.
 Why couldn't I have been born a hundred years earlier? Say at the time of the Wars of Liberation when a man, even without a 'business,' was really worth something?!


I could say the same thing about math -math has been turned into a mechanical,materialistic,spiritless discipline.No, to me math is not just something engineers use,but the doorway to Lovecraft's old ones.Also,unlike Trachtenberg's math,which wears a smiley face,mine wears Cthulhu's mask & yet I prefer it to saccharine fiction as it may be bitter,yet it’s the truth.

Oh,today I punched  these words into the search engine –Mathematics,bitter,truth,life,hate(all together).What did I find-lo & behold- Xhentric (blog).THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE.

(What I’ve written, did it make any sense to you? I am not sure it did to me :P) I'd  miss you Mr H.


« Last Edit: July 18, 2014, 01:39:23 pm by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
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Holden

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #10 on: July 18, 2014, 02:44:38 pm »
Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine. It isn’t money, for genius seldom gets any. It isn’t fame: fame is too uncertain and, more closely considered, of too little worth. Nor is it strictly for its own pleasure, for the great exertion involved almost outweighs the pleasure. It is rather an instinct of a unique sort by virtue of which the individual possessed of genius is impelled to express what he has seen and felt in enduring works without being conscious of any further motivation. It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish."

I think this quote is about you.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #11 on: July 19, 2014, 01:30:36 pm »
To be honest, Holden, I wish I could sleep through this life.  Consciousness is a burden.
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: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #12 on: July 19, 2014, 02:09:29 pm »
1.Thanks for the link,much appreciated.God! I don’t want a single penny from you,you greatly underestimate my ambition,what I want are your note-books :D. I am certain that posterity will consider them more valuable than van Gogh paintings,believe it or not.

2.Alcohol-I have thought about it long & hard & as your well-wisher I’d suggest you to stay as far from it as possible,really, its not something to be taken lightly.
You know much better than I do that  our lives,just as they are, are wretched enough without alcohol,drinking only makes the blind will stronger.

Here-

Cardiomyopathy[edit]
Large amount of alcohol over the long term can lead to alcoholic cardiomyopathy. Alcoholic cardiomyopathy presents in a manner clinically identical to idiopathicdilated cardiomyopathy, involving hypertrophy of the musculature of the heart that can lead to congestive heart failure.[73]
Hematologic diseases[edit]
Alcoholics may have anemia from several causes;[74] they may also develop thrombocytopenia from direct toxic effect on megakaryocytes, or from hypersplenism.
Nervous system[edit]
 
 
Results of the ISCD 2010 study ranking the levels of damage caused by drugs, in the opinion of drug-harm experts. When harm to self and others is summed, alcohol was the most harmful of all drugs considered, scoring 72%.
Chronic heavy alcohol consumption impairs brain development, causes alcohol dementia, brain shrinkage, physical dependence, increases neuropsychiatric and cognitive disorders and causes distortion of the brain chemistry. At present, due to poor study design and methodology, the literature is inconclusive on whether moderate alcohol consumption increases the risk of dementia or decreases it.[75] Evidence for a protective effect of low to moderate alcohol consumption on age related cognitive decline and dementia has been suggested by some research, however, other research has not found a protective effect of low to moderate alcohol consumption.[76] Some evidence suggests that low to moderate alcohol consumption may speed up brain volume loss.[77] Chronic consumption of alcohol may result in increased plasma levels of the toxic amino acidhomocysteine;[78][79] which may explain alcohol withdrawal seizures,[80] alcohol-induced brain atrophy[81] and alcohol-related cognitive disturbances.[82] Alcohol's impact on the nervous system can also include disruptions of memory and learning (seeEffects of alcohol on memory), such as resulting in a blackout phenomenon.

Brain[edit]
Main article: Long-term impact of alcohol on the brain
Alcohol abuse is associated with widespread and significant brain lesions. Alcohol related brain damage is not only due to the direct toxic effects of alcohol; alcohol withdrawal, nutritional deficiency, electrolyte disturbances, and liver damage are also believed to contribute to alcohol-related brain damage.[89] The long-term effects of alcohol on brain chemistry is an important cause of chronic fatigue.[90]
Cognition and dementia[edit]
Excessive alcohol intake is associated with impaired prospective memory. This impaired cognitive ability leads to increased failure to carry out an intended task at a later date, for example, forgetting to lock the door or to post a letter on time. The higher the volume of alcohol consumed and the longer consumed, the more severe the impairments.[91] One of the organs most sensitive to the toxic effects of chronic alcohol consumption is the brain. In France approximately 20% of admissions to mental health facilities are related to alcohol-related cognitive impairment, most notably alcohol-related dementia. Chronic excessive alcohol intake is also associated with serious cognitive decline and a range of neuropsychiatric complications. The elderly are the most sensitive to the toxic effects of alcohol on the brain.[92] There is some inconclusive evidence that small amounts of alcohol taken in earlier adult life is protective in later life against cognitive decline and dementia.[93] However, a study concluded, "Our findings suggest that, despite previous suggestions, moderate alcohol consumption does not protect older people from cognitive decline."[94]
Acetaldehyde is produced from ethanol metabolism by the liver. The acetaldehyde is further metabolized by the enzyme acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. A deficiency of this enzyme is not uncommon in individuals from Northeastern Asia as pointed out in a study from Japan.[95] This study has suggested these individuals may be more susceptible to late-onset Alzheimer's disease, however this higher risk is associated with the enzyme deficiency not with alcohol consumption. Individuals with this defect generally do not drink alcohol.
Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome is a manifestation of thiamine deficiency, usually as a secondary effect of alcohol abuse.[96] The syndrome is a combined manifestation of two eponymous disorders, Korsakoff's Psychosis and Wernicke's encephalopathy, named after Drs. Sergei Korsakoff and Carl Wernicke. Wernicke's encephalopathy is the acute presentation of the syndrome and is characterised by a confusional state while Korsakoff's psychosis main symptoms are amnesia andexecutive dysfunction.[97]


Herr H,your nietzchean counterpart ,for all his faults ,was a teetotaler.If he’d have met someone like you just after the first world war, I feel that he may have become one of the metaphysical mutants.Imagine Herr H. replying to our posts on this message board!,alas,instead he got into this-

(by the way,you posted that German song,can you speak German?)
3.Hey, I really,really liked the new name of the message board, its marvelous .
 I have been experimenting with mental math lately(your thesaurus will tell you that mental means mind disorder also, have I lost my marbles?:P )Though logically I know its my delusion, while doing mental math I start to believe that I am going to discover some fabulous new mathematical principle that will transform the way we view universe.I tell no one about these thoughts. I keep looking for clues to this mathematical theory in math books I find at the library.I spend hours day dreaming ,trying to think of new ,undiscovered relationships between numbers,symbols & the objects of the real world.I tell myself that I am always on the verge of discovery & I haven’t discovered the right idea because I am just not thinking hard enough.

Try this: 978 * 567 =? (don’t use pencil & paper,just try to think what the answer may be)


Here's another metaphysical mutant-


« Last Edit: July 19, 2014, 02:45:15 pm by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #13 on: July 19, 2014, 03:06:07 pm »
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Clearly, many writers (and viewers) fear and dread mathematics. On rare occasion, a character is found who possesses a defining trait of having delved deeply into the study of profound mathematical knowledge. These characters are, as a rule, insane. It is not necessarily clear whether advanced number theory is itself destructive to sanity (as with some forms of Formulaic Magic), or whether the insane are drawn to maths; nonetheless, the correlation seems to exist.
Bunny-Ears Lawyer mentions some Real Life examples of mathematicians who were a bit unhinged, so it's not completely unfounded in reality.
Many Mad Mathematicians will have a Room Full of Crazy with math equations.
See also Mad Scientist.
Examples:

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While he's not crazy in the usual sense, Daichi/Bastion Misawa of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX does snap a bit more... strangely... during the White Society arc in season 2. The way he snaps out of it ain't pretty. His going insane was canonically because people weren't worshiping him as the brightest guy around anymore, but the snap back (which involved stripping, and then racing around in his birthday suit) was indeed, induced by math. As a side note, before the Freak Out he was the proud owner of a Room Full of Crazy that he regularly repainted just so he could cover the walls with formulas all over again.
Moriaki-sensei from Soredemo Machi Wa Mawatteiru looks like your average Stern Teacher at first, but he takes Mathematics way too seriously.
Gamble Fish's Heavy Abandi is revealed to be one of these. In specific, he believes to discover a message from God itself within his mathematics. He tests whether or not he should share his discovery with anyone by suicidal exploits in hopes of testing whether or not God would protect him, ultimately leading to his Start To Darkness when he's electrocuted and believes he came Back from the Dead.
    Comic Books
In The DCU, the sentient Green Lantern mathematical progression Dkrtzy RRR was discovered by mad mathematician Timph Rye, who sought to prove that willpower could be derived formulaically. Dkrtzy RRR is itself of suspect mental stability; its tendency to corrode the minds of its enemies from the inside is... controversial among the ranks of the Corps.
Fantastic Four: The Mad Thinker is a big brain mathemagician as well. He once managed to calculate how long it would take the Fantastic Four to invade an enemy fortress, take out the enemies, and escape, and had planted a bomb to go off exactly as they had left the building blowing up their mutual enemy but not the Four. How on Earth did he do that? 10 minutes to go in, factoring in the Human Torch's average temperature of 2000 celcius... carry the 2... divide by 5... leave 2 minutes for electric signals...
*grabs black marker and crosses through entire sum* AARGH.
    Film
A Beautiful Mind. The whole movie, as well as the real person (John Nash) on whom it was based. As noted elsewhere, while the movie depicted his bout with schizophrenia, he wasn't exactly 'normal' before or after either.
π. Max Cohen lives like a hermit, plagued by migraines and social anxiety as he dives into the mathematical heart of the universe. The closer he gets to the ultimate answer, the more insane he becomes. The only way he can achieve peace is to physically burrow out his mathematical ability by trepanning himself with a power drill.
"That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me."
Proof. Entire movie (and, earlier, stage play) about a woman obsessed with the idea that she inherited both her father's mental illness and math abilities.
John Givings from Revolutionary Road. After a mental breakdown, he's placed in the care of his parents. At first, he praises and admires the Wheelers for their desire to have something more out of life, rather than a conformist suburban existence. After they've abandoned these plans, he calls them out on their hypocrisy.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows conflates Professor Moriarty's legitimate mathematical research with his criminal career, especially if you read any of the articles on the actual (non-evil) mathematicians the filmmakers consulted with in order to design his personal financial code. [1]
    Literature
Sigismund Arbuthnot the mad maths master, in the Molesworth stories.
Sir Austin Cardynge in the Lensman books, who in this respect can outthink even the superman Second Stage Lensmen (but not Arisians). We are told that he can actually think in the symbology of higher mathematics.
In the Sherlock Holmes canon, Professor Moriarty is described as having a background in mathematics, although that doesn't really figure into his criminal career. (Some of the many adaptations place more emphasis on it, though.)
John Givings from Revolutionary Road (see above).
Mavolio Bent from the Discworld book Making Money. A man who could see the answer to an equation just by looking at it. Considers making a mistake to be the worst of sins one could ever do. Absolutely abhors all things he considers silly, which includes most things. Once strangled a professional assassin to death with a humorous pink elephant made of balloons when his tenuous hold on reality went bye-bye and he embraced his clown heritage.
A more harmless example is the Talkative Loon Bursar of Unseen University. Mad as a spoon (in recent years, he's gotten better, mostly because the university staff hit upon the idea of using medication to have him hallucinate he was sane, the same way most people do), but can be calmed by asking him a complicated mathematical question, which he can figure out in about a second.
Or rather, asking him the mathematical question can be used as an effective gauge of his health; it won't necessarily calm him down, but, if you consider that he's a bursar as well as being The Bursar, making sure he can actually do his job is pretty much the only thing you can really ask of him. Unfortunately, in The Science of Discworld he discovered advanced mathematics, and as of Unseen Academicals it's up to Ponder Stibbons to make sure things add up because the Bursar now "regards the decimal point as a nuisance".
In Dragaera, the Dragaerans of the House of the Athyra who study pure logic and philosophy tend to become cold and evil, driven to pursue their studies at the expense of anything and anyone.
The math monks of Anathem probably aren't mad, but their very sequestered lifestyle gets them pretty close. Of course, many in the outside world believe they actually are Mad Mathematicians. In the past, several Centenarian "math monks" actually did go mad, resulting in the coining of the slang term "to go Hundred", meaning "to go mad".
H.P. Lovecraft was never outright against mathematics, but it did seem to have some unfortunate consequences for his characters. For what is probably the most obvious example, in "Dreams in the Witch-House" a brilliant young mathematician moves into said house precisely because of hints that its most infamous former inhabitant of over two hundred years ago might have possessed certain mathematical knowledge — notably about the geometry of space and time — not yet actually (re)discovered by modern science. It does not end well, partly because it turns out that said witch is actually still alive and still as nasty as ever.
    Live Action TV
The client in the Burn Notice episode "Signals and Codes" is a cryptanalytic genius who's uncovered a conspiracy to sell government secrets, but he believes it's a conspiracy by evil aliens against good aliens who send him messages on beams of light. He's a schizophrenic who's been in and out of psych wards for years. He eventually gets a job and meds.
Winifred Burkle in Angel was a gifted young physicist who got trapped in Another Dimension (more specifically, a demon-ruled, medieval-level Crapsack World where humans are treated like cattle) for five years. She quickly recovered and became one of the main characters after returning with the heroes to Los Angeles, but when they first met her she'd taken to scribbling equations on cave walls...
Angel: Fred here might be able to help us with that. She knows a lot about portals.
Fred: Not a lot. The trionic speechcraft formulation/modification has to alter the dynamic-reality sphere. Lutzbalm predicted it at Zurich in '89. Laughed him off the stage, although this slavery and degradation's no laughing matter. (suddenly laughs insanely for a minute and then abruptly stops) It's no Crug-grain and Kalla berry breakfast alright.
Angel: ...she's been here a while.
In the sitcom Committed, this is a Defied Trope for Nate, who comes from a family of geniuses who tend to eventually go insane. Though he studied physics at Yale, he works in a used record store in an effort to avoid his relatives' fate. It's only partially successful.
The Doctor from Doctor Who, to some extent. According to The DW Wiki, the Time Lords used rather scary mathematics to grow TARDISes, among other things. The Doctor is no exception to this.
"Any number that reduces to one when you take the sum of the square of its digits and continue iterating it until it yields 1 is a happy number, any number that doesn't, isn't. A happy prime is both happy and prime. Now type it in! I dunno, talk about dumbing down. Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?"
Excess math would certainly account for The Doctor's eccentric nature, not that he needs another excuse.
The unsub in the Criminal Minds episode "Derailed" had to take a few years off from his groundbreaking work on M-theory to be involuntarily committed due to his violent schizophrenia.
    Music
Doctor Steel is a mad scientist who sings about the Fibonacci Sequence.
Jonathan Coulton is apparently of the opinion that now and again, a great mathematician will come along and actually decrease the madness of the field by solving or figuring out something that had been flummoxing his compatriots, if the first verse of the song Mandlebrot Set is anything to go by.
"Pathological monsters!" cried the terrified mathematician
Every one of them is a splinter in my eye
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve, I fear the Cantor Ternary Set
And the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry
And a million miles away, a butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day, a man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born
    Video Games
The World Ends with You has Sho Minamimoto, who shouts trigonometric functions when attacking, gives out missions like "Beat the bosses of 2.2360679's 0 + 5. t = 60 min."note The game is about a "Reaper's Game" where you try to win back your right to exist through missions assigned by the Punch Clock Villain who supervises the contest (Sho being the second one to get the job). This particular mission means you have to beat two minibosses in areas 0 and 5 of Route 5 (2.2360679 being the square root of 5), which are the scramble crossing and the Udagawa district, respectively., is the trope image for Mouthful of Pi and is also a complete psychopath. To get an idea, see the quote page. (You zetta sons of digits.)
The game Pi R Squared has the Excuse Plot that you're a mathematician who's gone inside his own mind to try and collect various mathematical formulas and avoid going insane.
The BioShock DLC Minerva's Den has Reed Wahl, the co-inventor of the supercomputer known as The Thinker whose splicing induced madness manifested in a delusion of the existence of a 'predictive equation' that would allow him to see the future, the "discovery" of which depended on The Thinker. The titular Minerva's Den is covered in numbers and algebraic symbols in paint, chalk and blood from dozens of corpses, all presumably Wahl's work. Wahl also has the habit of stating that pretty much all of Sigma's actions (including dying) have either been foreseen by the Thinker or that they're "slightly behind schedule".
Wahl: Sigma must be removed from the equation.
N from Pokémon Black and White shows tendencies towards this. He adores functions and formulas, carries a Menger Sponge accessory, and he's trying to "solve the equation to change the world". His One-Letter Name even fits, since "n" is frequently used as a variable in math equations. However, he's not so much insane as he is... horribly misguided, a sheltered and abused Man Child Tyke Bomb designed to destroy Unova's political system so his Treacherous Advisor can take over, and convinced that Humans Are Bastards.
OFF has Theme Naming in the attacks of all characters and most enemies. Guess what the attacks of the most powerful non-boss enemies, the Secretaries, are named after. The Zone 3 Secretaries Vertical Limit is easily the hardest-hitting attack in the game. The same Zone 3 Secretaries can also Divide By Zero, which doesn't cause a Reality-Breaking Paradox (maybe because reality is already broken) but can inflict some nasty status conditions.
    Western Animation
Kim Possible: The Mathster
Dexter's Laboratory: The Evil Math-Magician
    Real Life
As mentioned above, there seems to be a tendency for mathematicians to go mad.
Although, in the same vein as a Psychic making 50 correct predictions and 7,000 incorrect ones, the exceptional examples tend to be remembered. It should also be noticed Human Calculators are not mathematicians, merely very good at one task through repetition, so any of those who go mad don't count. We do tend to die young though, as G.H. Hardy notes:
Galois died at 21, Abel at 27, Ramanujan at 33, Riemann at 40...
Worth nothing, perhaps, that Galois was shot in a politics related duel, while Abel and Riemann died of tuberculosis and Ramanujan of misdiagnosed Amoebiasis. So perhaps the real lesson is Try not to get sick while you reinvent mathematics.
It's a common opinion that math and physics are fields for young people since they require an ability to learn very quickly and see things creatively, implications that weren't even dreamed of before. As one ages, these abilities dull. This same creativity is also often held to be responsible for the eccentricity in many great mathematicians. This being said, truly great practitioners of anything are inherently exceptions.
Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) was a mathematical prodigy who earned his doctorate in one year before he sent 16 bombs to targets including universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23.
Paul Erdős lived as a virtual vagrant and yet was so influential and prolific that he's the Kevin Bacon of mathematics. (That is to say, mathematically inclined people have an Erdős number, as opposed to the film industry's Bacon number. Some people in show business who have also seen certain forms of higher education even have an Erdős-Bacon number. They are deeply envied.) Not to mention he had an interesting Personal Dictionary. He said that all the great equations were written in The Book. Which book? God's (or as he put it the "Supreme Fascist's") book, which was selfishly guarded - most likely in the same place He hid socks, passports, and other small items.
More precisely, Kevin Bacon is the Paul Erdős of show business. Erdős came first.
It was really a thing he was playing around with - even calling it a joke several times when asked about it in the biographical film N Is A Number. It's a bit easier to understand when you realize English was not nearly his first language. Though he sometimes had difficulty expressing himself, he used English like an ordinary person the vast majority of the time he used it.
Erdős, like many great mathematicians, was a phenomenal amphetamine addict. As any longtime user (mathematician or otherwise) will tell you, speed tweaks your brain.
Um, no, noooo he wasn't. He had ADHD. And amphetamine is a medicine for ADHD. There is some speculation as to whether or not this is true.
Additionally this article suggests that his use of amphetamine began shortly after his mother's death, beginning after he had tried antidepressants for a time.
According to The Other Wiki, Erdős was bet a sum of money by a fellow mathematician that he couldn't give up the amphetamines for a month. He did, won the bet, and went right back to taking amphetamines, claiming that while he was abstaining, it destroyed his ability to do math ("Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper.").
Georg Cantor, a little bizarre to begin with, ended up spending much of his last years in sanatoriums - still trying to correlate the various orders of infinity.
Lewis Carroll was a mathematician. Coincidentally, he also allegedly suffered from epilepsy and a rare condition that causes a person to perceive the size of objects incorrectly which is actually named after Alice in Wonderland. His background as a mathematician and logician, as well as his experiences with mental illness, were the inspiration to some of the more cerebral elements of his writing. Drugs on the other hand, not so much.
In fact, the Wonderland series was an attack on the "new mathematics" coming into vogue in Carroll's time. This included such things as imaginary numbers, abstract algebras, nondecimal bases, and limits. As usual, TOW has something to say on the subject.
The mathematicians of Dangerous Knowledge (including the aforementioned Georg Cantor) went mad trying to figure out infinity.
In his later years, Kurt Gödel began to suffer mental instability, to the point where he started to think someone was trying to poison him and asked his wife, Adele, to taste every meal he ate. When Adele was hospitalized, Gödel refused to eat anything, eventually dying.
The introductory history-of-the-field segment of Advanced Logic classes seem to go: Brilliant Theorist -> Spectacular Achievement/Contribution -> Insanity -> Bizarre Death -> Rinse and Repeat. It instills some serious trepidations about entering the discipline.
John Nash.
Nikola Tesla was brilliant at math. He was also nuts. Luckily, he wasn't evil or violent.
Though he did claim to have designed a Death Ray capable of obliterating any target on Earth at the drop of a hat. Presumably the only reason he didn't take over the world was that investors weren't sure what place they would have in Tesla's New Order.
He also claimed that his resonator could cause earthquakes, and at one point calculated that if he ran it for long enough, it would shake the earth into pieces. He commented "I considered this an undesirable outcome and switched it off." See? Not crazy at all.
In the text the first page quote came from, Chesterton attributed Poe's madness to his obsession with math puzzles instead of poetry.
Andrew Wiles (the man who finally proved Fermat's Last Theorem) claims that he'd probably have gone mad from the effort of doing so, if he hadn't made time to play with his children every day.
He once noted that he almost did go insane out of frustration in 1993, when he found a fault in his almost complete proof. Luckily he was able to patch it up in just one year, though he still took some time to polish it, finally publishing in 1995.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: How To Cope With The Consequences of Defiance
« Reply #14 on: July 19, 2014, 03:24:23 pm »
One of the consequences of being contemplative is that it is more difficult to blame an abstract enemy ... when we know our life is our biggest problem ... that enduring ourselves is the greatest challenge we face.  It is difficult even to blame the gorts.  I guess it is just for fun, blaming the masses ... We all seem to be victims of our very own flesh and blood, as paradoxical as it sounds.

The notebooks simply contain the complaints of an honest man ... thoughts and feelings experienced by the multitudes.  They are nothing special, really.  A great deal of redundancy.  The notebooks that contain records of the frustrations of unrequited romantic feelings are rather pathetic.  Their greatest purpose may have been to discourage me from such delusions ...

In the end, it is better to be a deeply reflective creature with insight into the unpleasant nature of being alive than to become a leader who can manipulate the fears and hatreds of the people ...

I only know a few German words, but the Rammstein videos with subtitles help me learn a few more ...

I'm much too reflective to ever be a nationalist ... On some level, yes, I do have insecurities that someone like Hitler would tap into ... but I have spent a lifetime facing these insecurities, and I am actually harmonious with the idea of extinction, as I have explained already.

As for alcohol, it is one of my weaknesses.  I drank a pint of vodka last night, and I feel crappy today.  Some lessons I have to learn over and over again.  Once in a while is OK.  I will just have to be careful when I relocate as I will be spending all my days alone, which is when I tend to lose control of "my demons".

Madness and mathematics - definitely.  In fact, when I find myself becoming too frustrated with "forcing understanding," I tend to get drunk.  So, I don't push myself ... I dabble a little then I leave it alone.  It can give you a nervous breakdown (higher mathematics ... alcohol too).

Sometimes it's all I can do just to endure being alive ... and then it is beyond words.  I have to remember that there are so many different temperaments in human beings.  Maybe I am blessed to have a reflective mind.  I have compassion for myself.  Maybe there are countless people who torment themselves with expectations and demands.  Pity them.

Many years ago, when I was a child, I remember some things my Great Grandmother told me.  She did speak German.  ["I don't speak my mother tongue" ~ Rammstein]  Anyway, she told me she would not want to be a young man in this society of ours, and she could understand why a man might "sneak through life" avoiding marriage and procreation ... (hint, hint, great grand mother?).   For what its worth, I don't think my ancestors would blame me for prefering non-existence ... for this longing to return to inorganic nothingness.  Hell, my Great Grandfather, her husband, committed suicide as did Heinrich Schopenhauer, Arthur's father.

At least they had the bull by the horns and did not try to dump the blame for all of life's inherent misery on some foreign/alien other.

Just being alive is so infuriating and aggravating.  Each of us must have a hostile killer within us that we must tame.  I tame this inner beast by breathing deeply and cursing having been born rather than looking for an enemy to destroy.  As far as I'm concerned, if people want to compete to rule this world, let them have it.   I'm not interested.  I really think I am resigning from the species ... maybe the whole idea of being a self is an illusion created by the brain.  Somewhere in here is "consciousness" ... and it is miserable.

There is humor in this.  I've encountered some extremely funny grouches in my life ... I can tell just by looking at someone's facial expressions that they are miserable, and it is most likely a sign of intelligence!   :D

As for the arithmetic, I was once told that a mathematical mind will be satisfied with approximations, and will not fret over exactitude.  So, for 978 * 567, I just see 1000 * 555 = 555,000 which turns out to be fairly close.

Of course, if it is a money calculation, being the primates we are, we will want our calculations exact to the dollar.

Quote from: Holden
I really,really liked the new name of the message board

Do you mean {∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} ?

Talk about going mental.  My brain wouldn't stop mentally constructing these ordinals out of the void ... I think that's what drove me to drink the vodka!   :-\

It's OK though ... I heard that mathematicians can drink people under the table, but I don't see how that can be since I know from experience that they don't mix well, math and booze.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2014, 05:01:55 pm by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

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