building a nest on water

Spring has sprung, which means the temperature is uncomfortably variable, and I still haven't bought detachable pants.

I decided to take a walk around my block clockwise in order to check out the green and the flowers. Since my street borders a canal, this means it's a rather long walk (more than 1km). I had the pleasure of observing these pigeon-like birds building a nest on water. One bird (probably the male) was going around picking up sticks and giving them to a bigger bird sitting on the nest (probably the female). I think this is only possible because the nest is situated between a boat and some sort of navigational structure which blocks most of the waves.

Further down this circuit, I went inside this colorful modern art exhibition, where you could buy snacks & drinks as you hang out and admire the art (well, not BUY, actually you drink it in exchange for a pre-specified donation).

It's sunny and warm, and people are happy. I should avoid getting too happy, as is my tendency, in order to avoid wild swings.

Draft: Education & Code Reuse

This paper draws a parallel between programming and learning science as dynamic processes. While the goals of these two activities are on the surface different, they both consist (when done well) of building complex, abstract logical structures.

Just as it is possible to achieve the goals of programming by a "hack", likewise one can achieve the goals of a particular learning goal by senseless memorization. Both solutions, however, are in general costly in terms of memory(program-size complexity), expensive to scale, lack modularity (hard to edit), and hard to relate/incorporate with other structures.

The challenge, for both problems, is "How to handle complexity". This question has been extensively approached from the side of software engineering, but has not generally been considered on the education side, because the formalization of scientific arguments is generally viewed with pessimism.


PROGRAMMING

Programming is a dynamic process. In order to meet the specifications, the programmer refines his code in an iterative process.

The challenge of software engineering is how to optimize this interactive process, how to eliminate the "busy work". Among the many techniques and paradigms for minimizing time spent, error and confusion, some include meta-programming (teaching the program to program itself), standardized processes and structures (UML, Design Patterns). The latter consists of learning standard solutions to standard problems, and attempting to encode your requirements in terms of standard problems.

While the problem of writing simple, elegant code may be seen as the problem of approximating the Kolmogorov Complexity of your function (the function which the program computes), it can be also seen as one of Communication Complexity: how do we create a meta-protocol which minimizes how much the programmer needs to tell the machine?

Abstraction: (1) the dynamic process (2) the modular structure which makes things more elegant and efficient.


REASONING

Reasoning is, likewise, a dynamic process. One does not construct a theory, an argument or a proof all at once, but rather these structures get refined step-by-step by logically incorporating desired properties.


EDUCATION

It is obvious that knowledge of logic provides the basic building blocks upon which scientific knowledge (and ALL interesting knowledge, I would say) is constructed.
It is in fact easier to encode and remember things when you use logical structures: things just "fall into place".

People construct examples, models (Exner, MvL)

Standard argument forms as "code reuse": mathematicians use standard forms to a very limited extent. I argue that we could benefit by creating and using them a lot more.


, but this is precisely how most students are taught today.



REASONING ASSISTANTS FOR RESEARCH
I am not smart enough. -John McCarthy

The structure of scientific theories can get quite complex, and even experts are expected to make conceptual mistakes once in a while. Since there isn't a standard, it's not always straight-forward to "debug" one's argument.



OUR PROGRAM

painting of the kitchen

The noise isn't as annoying as it was last week, but they have finally made it impossible for us to eat during the day. All kitchens in the building are on the same situation. They also attempted to bribe us with movie tickets (which I didn't find out about until just now), and are terrible at giving us advanced warning. Not only that, but they have no respect for their own schedule. This building is officially a construction site, and the only rules are those given by the foreman.

We are demanding a reduction of the rent, and for the first time, I think we can confidently say "WE HAVE A CASE!".

Also, thanks to Steunpunt Wonen, I know that there are two legal-invalid clauses on my contract (one of which means I can leave with just a one-month notice), and that I have the right to outright *REFUSE* their "offer" to paint my room.

De Key abused our rights by persuading us that we didn't have a choice. Fortunately, I did my research. You might ask why they don't simply do this on the summer when the buildings are temporarily (more) empty, and I can only think of one explanation: the painters are cheaper now, since there is a greater demand for them in the summer.

... and our inconvenience is free, or so they thought.

Fucking insensitive corporations.

J. van Benthem, 1982, 'The Logical Study of Science'

Johan van Benthem has something to say about my ideas!

also, this reference:
J. van Benthem, 1982, 'The Logical Study of Science' , Synthese 51, 431-472.

is not to be found in the Netherlands!

from http://staff.science.uva.nl/~johan/298-2003.html

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