RE: [-empyre-] Accidents (was for example)

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> .... seems to reduce gesture - and embodied perception more
> generally - to a
> sort of call-and-response activity linked to a relatively limited
> repertoire
> of codes - a definitional framework that aims not just to
> construct the body
> but to prescribe 'every possible signifying and countersignifying
> move as a
> selection from a repertoire of possible permutations on a limited set of
> predetermined terms'
>
> .... that last little bit is lifted from Brian Massumi's 'Parables for the
> Virtual', and i'm roping him in here because he argues much more
> eloquently
> than i do against frameworks which propose a determinitive
> structure (i.e. a
> code) first, and movement or gesture second. these sort of models leave no
> room for change - qualitative material transformation. in other words they
> suggest that embodiedness itself is historically static and the
> only things
> that change are the codes/inscriptions that make it legible.

Hi Eugenie,

We make decisions, of course. But are those decisions inevitable in the
sense that were time replayed, we would necessarily do the same thing? When
I say 'replay time', I mean every circumstance is as it was before,
including our state of knowledge.

We can't answer this question because we can't 'rewind' time.

A computer would have to do the same thing it did initially. Random() is
pseudo-random in the sense that if the precise situation is duplicated, it
will produce the same output it did initially.

I don't think we sacrifice any of our humanity, Eugenie, by supposing that
we would necessarily do the same thing. We will never know, I suspect, in
any case.

I have never heard about any proof that anything we think or do cannot be
algorithmic in nature. Which doesn't mean such a proof doesn't exist. But my
intuition is an answer would amount to an answer of the question I raised
above. If there was one, it would be big news, much bigger than Fermat's
theorem, for instance.

There are tasks for which no algorithms can *ever* exist. The 'halting
problem' (
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22the+h
alting+problem%22 )is a famous example. Henry mentioned Godel several posts
ago. The halting problem is a proof by Alan Turing that 'undecidable'
problems exist in computing.

Even still, though there are 'undecidable' problems, that doesn't imply that
we ourselves do anything that isn't algorithmic in nature, even in
formulating and proving the halting problem.

Also, as Henry pointed out, there will always be the unknown, there will
always be mystery. Our total knowledge will always be a drop in the bucket
of the knowable. But our drop. Our drop of sweat to know about ourselves and
the universe.

We can learn from our mistakes. We are free to act as we may, given
circumstances and who and where we are and what we know. But even God has
limitations. Can God create a stone so big God can't lift it? If yes, then
there's something God can't do. If no then, again, there's something God
can't do.

ja