what are you reading?

[kanafani]

That's the one! Switching is the correct answer. The way I process it is that when you pick a door, the probability that you picked correctly is 1/3, and the probability that you didn't (i.e. that it's one of the two other doors) is 2/3. We know that at least one of those two doors you didn't pick is empty, so what the host is essentially allowing you to do is to pick 2 doors instead of one. It's like he asked you "do you want to stick to your door, or do you want to bet it's behind one of either the other two?" You'd naturally change your bet in that case. The funny thing is that some established mathematicians refused to concede that you must switch for a long time.

[thoxans]

your odds go up to 50%

66% (but i know that only now cuz i googled it )

[Holymanm]

That problem is the stupidest-dupidest thing ever, because 99% of the time when it's formulated it doesn't include the VERY IMPORTANT note that the host DELIBERATELY chooses a door without the prize behind it. It just says "the host, who knows what's behind the doors". How does that necessarily mean that he deliberately chooses an empty one? Wtf?

...so then when you explain it to someone who doesn't understand it, you say "yeah, but the host chooses that one because he knows there's nothing behind it". So say that when you explain the problem in the first place....

[brian d]

your odds go up to 50%

66% (but i know that only now cuz i googled it )

MATH! will we ever know how it works???

[Abe]

Finally got around to reading Krasznahorkai’s Satantango. I’ve been wanting to read him for a long time, given my interest in Tarr’s adaptations and other films with Krasznahorkai, but was a little wary because I kept hearing about these insanely long sentences and I gave up on Proust for that very reason. But it wasn’t so difficult as I expected, and the long sentences and monologues ended up being part of its charm. The film follows the book very closely, though there are naturally some deviations. Nonetheless, the book helped fill me in on some things that my brain did not grasp from watching the film alone. I also appreciated the very clever structure. I have Melancholy of Resistance and War & War sitting on my bookshelf, which I plan on getting to soon.

[wba]

I never understand a single page of Kant, I literally don't understand what he's trying to tell me

https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jnitrous.html
William James
Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide

Some observations of the effects of nitrous-oxide-gas-intoxication which I was prompted to make by reading the pamphlet called The anaesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy (Blood, 1874), have made me understand better than ever before both the strength and the weakness of Hegel's philosophy. I strongly urge others to repeat the experiment, which with pure gas is short an harmless enough. The effects will of course vary with the individual, just as they vary in the same individual from time to time; but it is probable that in the former case, as in the latter, a generic resemblance will obtain. With me, as with every other person of whom I have heard, the keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intence metaphysical illumination. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The mind sees all the logical relations of being with an apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its normal consciousness offers no parallel; only as sobriety returns, the feeling of insight fades, and one is left staring vacantly at a few disjointed words and phrases, as one stares at the cadaverous-looking snow peak from which the sunset glow has just fled, or at the black cinder left by an extinguished brand.

The immense emotional sense of reconciliation which characterizes the "maudlin" stage of alcoholic drunkeness -- a stage which seems silly to lookers-on, but the subjective rapture of which probably constitutes a chief part of the temptation to the vice -- is well-known. The centre and periphery of things seem to come together. The ego and its objects, the meum and the tuum , are one. Now this, only a thousand-fold enhanced, was the effect upon me of the gas: and its first result was to make peal through me with unutterable power the conviction that Hegelism was true after all, and that the deepest convictions of my intellect hitherto were wrong. Whatever idea of representation occurred to the mind was seized by the same logical forceps, and served to illustrate the same truth; and that truth was that every opposition, among whatsoever things, vanished in a higher unity in which it is based; that all contraditions, so-called, are of a common kind; that unbroken continuity is of the essence of being; and that we are literally in the midst of an infinite , to perceive the existence of which is the utmost we can attain. Without the same as a basis, how could strife occur? Strife presupposes something to be striven about; and in this common topic, the same of both parties, the differences merge. From the hardest contradition to the tenderest diversity of verbiage deffierences evaporate; yes and no agree at least in being assertions; a denial of a statement is but another mode of stating the same, contradiction can only occur of the same thing --- all opinions are thus synonyms, and synonymous, are the same. But the same phrase by difference of emphasis is two; and here again difference and no-difference merge in one.

It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxixation, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thous, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgement of opposition, as "nothing--but," "no more--than," "only--if," etc., produced a perfect delirium of the theoretic rapture. And at last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with itself, differently emphasized, or shorn of its initial letter. Let me transcribe a few sentences.

What's mistake but a kind of take?
What's nausea but a kind of -usea?
Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment.
Everything can become the subject of criticism --
How criticise without something to criticise?
Agreement -- disagreement!!
Emotion -- motion!!!!
By God, how that hurts! By God, how it doesn't hurt!
Reconciliation of two extremes.
By George, nothing but othing!
That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure onsense!
Thought deeper than speech...!
Medical school; divinity school, school! SCHOOL!
Oh my God, oh God; oh God!

The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this: There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.

But now comes the reverse of the medal. What is the principle of unity in all this monotonous rain of instances? Although I did not see it at first, I soon found that it was in each case nothing but the abstract genus of which the conflicting terms were opposite species. In other words, although the flood of ontologic emotion was Hegelian through and through, the ground for it was nothing but the world-old principle that things are the same only so far and not farther that they are the same, or partake of a common nature -- the principle that Hegel most tramples under foot. At the same time the rapture of beholding a process that was infinite, changed (as the nature of the infinitude was realized by the mind) in to the sense of a dreadful and ineluctable fate, with whose magnitude every finite effort is incommensurable and in the light of which watever happens is indifferent. This instantaneous revulsion of mood from rapture to horror is, perhaps, the strongest emotion I have ever experienced. I got it repeatedly when the inhalation was continued long enough to produce incipient nausea; and I cannot but regard it as the normal and the inevitable outcome of the intoxication, if sufficiently prolonged. A pessimistic fatalism, depth within depth of impotence and indifference, reason and silliness united, not in a higher synthesia, but in the fact that whichever you choose it is all one -- this is the upshot of a revelation that began so rosy bright.

Even when the process stops short of this ultimatum, the reader will have noticed from the phrases quoted how often it ends by losing the clue. Something "fades," "escapes"; and the feeling of insight is changed into an intense one of bewilderment, puzzle, confusion, astonishment. I know no more singulr sensation than this intense bewilderment, with nothing left to be bewildered at save the bewilderment itself. It seems, indeed, a causa sui, or "spirit become its own object."

My conclusion is that the togetherness of things in a common world, the law of sharing, of which I have said so much, may, when perceived, engender a very powerful emotion; that Hegel was so unusually susceptible to this emotion throughout his life that its gratification became his supreme end, and made him tolerably unscrupulous as to means he employed; that indifferentism is the true outcome of every view of the world which make infinity and continuity to be its sessence, and that pessimistic or optimistic attitudes pertain to the mere accidental subjectivity of the moment; finally, that the identification of contradictories, so far from being the self-developing process which Hegel supposes, is really a self-consuming process, passing from the less to the more abstract, and terminating either in a laugh at the ultimate nothingness, or in a mood of vertiginous amazement at a meaningless infinity.

ah, the well-known effects of drugs! after the up comes the down, after the intoxication the disillusionment, after doing sports you have to rest, for after straining your muscles you must stretch and relax them, after breathing in you have to breath out... I always found it strange of philosophers making so much out of the simplest physiological truths (matter is always stronger than the mind, alas..).

[kanafani]

Finished Native Son, which I found gripping and powerful in its depiction of the psychological perversion and degradation brought on by racism and segregation. It disturbingly presents murder as some kind of an ultimate, highest level of human expression and self-actualization, but I guess disturbing is what Wright was after. And the depiction of clueless, well-meaning, condescending white liberals of course I found delicious. The first two parts work very well as straight-up crime and thriller material as well. But those speeches and diatribes in the last part, especially that long one by communist lawyer Max, good lord. Buzz kill. Turns the novel into a pamphlet. It takes it down a notch for me.

[thoxans]

good god i wish i could be an editor for textbooks. love how simple, straightforward stuff gets turned into a fuckin cyoa book. 'use table e2 on page 237 to find z to determine x using equation 6.3 on page 252 to create a table for plot y in order to graph points a, b, and c found in example 23.d.1 on page 249 to help solve for problem 5 on page 266'

um ok so you lost me after the third part of the second part's first part. can you also give me your phone # at such a high speed that i miss everything after the area code? thx...

[wba]

Currently reading Buddhadeva Bose's WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT (called "Tithi Dore" in Bengali and published in 1949), and it is excellent! Maybe a new personal favorite. Definitely want to read more great literature from India.
Any recommendations?? I would need translations into English or German, though.

When The Time Is Right is so gripping, that I'm trying to read 100 pages a day, so hopefully I'm finished the day after tomorrow. I just read the chapter about the death of Rabindranath Tagore this morning.

[Holymanm]

Anyone else who's read Abelard's Adversities aka Calamities think it reads exactly like a kung-fu movie about warring schools and masters, complete with petty envy, revenge, and, umm, highly disturbing and gory consequences? Ay caramba! My style is the best!

[nrh]

finally got to in a lonely place by dorothy b hughes after having seen the film a half dozen times over the years, and it's a great book in its own right, an incredibly harsh serial killer novel that at points is as cold as the simenon roman durs, with ex airforce pilot (this is a great book if you are interested in noir as response to american soldiers failure to readjust after ww2) lying and murdering his way through a bleak, fog shrouded los angeles.

ray's changes are very strange and totally ray - making bogart not a murder but keeping the seething violence that hughes puts at the forefront of her actual killer, and making the film some kind of genuine romance (the romance between the graham character is more or less there in the hughes but because we only see throw steele's eyes we are always at an arm's distance from understanding how she feels about anything at any given point).

[wba]

^ Yeah, a wonderful book, one of my best reads in 2019, and close to being a favorite. I merely disliked the ending, everything else was brillant from the first page onward.

[wba]

currently reading a georgian book by Aka Morchiladze, Journey to Karabakh (1992), which is fantastic. I think I'll be reading much more from this guy in the future!

[---]

That problem is the stupidest-dupidest thing ever, because 99% of the time when it's formulated it doesn't include the VERY IMPORTANT note that the host DELIBERATELY chooses a door without the prize behind it. It just says "the host, who knows what's behind the doors". How does that necessarily mean that he deliberately chooses an empty one? Wtf?

what's the alternative? he's obvs not going to open a door with the prize behind it... how would that game show work?

also it's implied. "he picks a door sans prize." this isn't a one-off, it's an idea. if he has knowledge (stated) and he (every time the show runs) is doing something he could only possibly do with that knowledge, he must be doing it deliberately

[Holymanm]

"the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3"

"Opens", not "chooses".
"Another door, say no. 3", not "one of the doors with nothing behind it".

what's the alternative? he's obvs not going to open a door with the prize behind it... how would that game show work?

maybe he presses a button, or the producers randomly press a button, to choose which door will be opened? It could be the one with the prize behind it already? That would still be tv! It's a dumb gameshow! And he already knows which door has the prize, but that's part of the fun of his acting, where the audience tries to guess if he's really nervous or concerned or happy or what.

Maybe it is 'implied' - but NONETHELESS, with this question, people don't get it at first, but after you explain it it's (relatively) obvious. It's just the wording that makes it weird. If you explain the question properly, with words like "deliberately", it's 5x easier. So is the point that the probability issue is difficult to conceive, or just that it's a tricky word question? I don't like it!

[---]

some selective clipping there

"You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has nothing behind it."

also if the door did have the prize behind it... why would the player have the option of switching? the location of the prize is already shown

i think it's a probability thiing, not a word thing. The logic is

- he had 1/3 chance of being correct
- if he switches, he'll have a 1-1/3=2/3 chance of being correct

apparently this is counterintuitive for a lot of ppl?

here's how i would break it down for someone for whom this is counterintuitive:

Assume you ARE going to switch.
Then you are not picking which door has the prize, you're picking two doors (the two you don't actually pick) to see if they have the prize

If one of them has the prize (which is 2/3, you're picking 2 of the 3 doors), the host will tell you which one doesn't have the prize, leaving the door that does have a prize

If neither of them has the prize (which is 1/3, the 1/3 chance the door you omitted has the prize), the host will select one of the two doors at random, but the remaining door does not have a prize

===============================

this reminds me of an issue I had in grade 12 math. in math you get stupid questions like "you select four cards from a deck. what is the probability that the fourth card is a spade?"

it's 1/4

so on my exam i'd write 1/4, and get incomplete marks for not showing my work

apparently DUMBASS HIGH SCHOOL MATH TEACHERS (i'm still mad), think you have to do some complex calculation, like, well what if the first card is a spade, then there are only 12 left, blah blah

no, you don't. so i explained this to my teacher, but he was inferior to me so he did not adjust my marks. so the next day i brought a deck of cards to school. I said "what is the probability that the top card is a spade". he said "1/4". i said "1/4 that this card is a spade?" he said "yeah". i took a small post it and put it on the top card. "1/4 chance that this card is a spade?" "yes" he says again. I took three cards off the bottom and put them on the top of the deck. "so what's the probability that the fourth card is a spade?" and i was kicked out of class for the remainder of the semester (old white men cannot handle having their inferiority demonstrated by children, it is one of many weaknesses they possess)

the idea is that it doesn't matter what other information you are getting, because the question isn't changing. you have a 1/3 chance of being correct at the beginning. therefore you have a 1/3 chance of being correct after one of the doors has been eliminated. nothing has changed. it exists physically. the door is there, and there is or isn't a car behind it. if you acknowledge that you have a 1/3 chance of Door A has the car, then why has this change once one of the other doors has been eliminated?

[Holymanm]

"You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has nothing behind it."

bear with me here... why is it 'which' instead of 'that'? "The host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door that has nothing behind it." boom, no ambiguity. here it's just part of the probability problem. but if it's 'which', then it's just adding extra information to the door... it just so happens that that door has nothing behind it -_-

at the very least, from the original wording of the question, it is entirely logically possible that the host doesn't deliberately choose an empty door. and why? when it's so easy to remove that possibility with clearer wording? eh

-----

yeah math teachers are crap. i didn't study math a day in my life after the age of 5, and when i tutored math classes last year, my ~12-year-old students told me no one had ever explained math as clearly as i did, and that they suddenly got it. true story. why are math teachers failing these kiiiiiiids?

[flip]

the version of the monty hall problem on wikipedia: Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

it depends if you'd prefer a goat or a car. assuming a car: 1/3 of the time you picked the car to start with. 2/3 of the time you didn't, and you automatically win by switching.

but there is something important unstated in the problem: under what conditions does the host offer you the opportunity to switch? that's not mentioned in the wording above and it's actually fundamental to the question. 2/3 is the probability that switching is good only if you know the host always offers the opportunity to switch. but the problem doesn't say that. if the host is more likely to offer that opportunity when you picked the right door than when you picked the wrong one, switching is good less than 2/3 of the time.

[flip]

this reminds me of an issue I had in grade 12 math. in math you get stupid questions like "you select four cards from a deck. what is the probability that the fourth card is a spade?"

it's 1/4

so on my exam i'd write 1/4, and get incomplete marks for not showing my work

apparently DUMBASS HIGH SCHOOL MATH TEACHERS (i'm still mad), think you have to do some complex calculation, like, well what if the first card is a spade, then there are only 12 left, blah blah

i can't count how many actual math teachers i've seen make that mistake, it is a bit shocking. i really like how you showed your math teacher the answer. it's not like when a magician fans a deck and asks a spectator to pick a card, and the spectator picks the 4th from the top, the magician is doing some elaborate "if the first card is a club and the second is a diamond..." mental calculation to work out the probability you picked a spade. the other way to persuade someone the answer is 1/4 is to ask: is the fourth card more likely to be a spade, a diamond, a heart, or a club? pretty much everyone will recognize each suit is equally likely, so the fourth card must be a spade 1/4 of the time.

[kanafani]

I would have handled it by asking you a harder question a few days later, something you'll struggle with and fail to answer, put you in your place in front of your buddies

[thoxans]

financial and managerial accounting. been doing my own business/personal taxes already for nearly ten years, so i'm really really really really really hating this one...

[rischka]

i'm reading middlemarch! i may never watch films again!! (jk)

i hope kanafani is coming back sometime.

[thoxans]

middlemarch!

luvvv george! such effortlessly precise prose. started reading george after reading ozick's the puttermesser papers (a book, i think, you'd actually really enjoy, rischka)

[nrh]

i bought dickens little dorrit last march, thinking this would be the time to read a huge book. haven't opened it till this month, but it's kind of an amazing book so far...

[rischka]

middlemarch!

luvvv george! such effortlessly precise prose. started reading george after reading ozick's the puttermesser papers (a book, i think, you'd actually really enjoy, rischka)

Noted. I think I've read an ozick but don't remember which

Edit: it was heir to the glimmering world

[wba]

As I wanted to read at least half a dozen 1000+ pages thick novels this year and was doing a "warm-up" with some 700+ pages novels in January and February, I've finally started to read one of those huge "monsters", and it's quite nice: an Italian epic from the 19th century about Venice and life in the region between 1775 and 1850: Ippolito Nievo's Confessions of an Italian (1858/1867).

After I finish this one, I'll start Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Especially looking forward to that one and the supposedly endless "buildup" during the first 500+ pages till "something" finally starts happening, as I expect to love this kind of writing.

Of course I'm also reading "smaller" and shorter books in-between all of the time, as well. Today I started a short bestseller about the Covid-Virus co-written by Alexander Kluge from 2020, and yesterday an academic essay I bought about Michael Ende's first novel Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver (1960) - one of my favorite books when I was a child - and its connection to Charles Darwin and the famous stories and novel about Jemmy Button as well as to a childhood spent under National Socialism in Germany (Ende was born in 1929 and deserted from the army in 1945).

[sally]

was a bit down so reached for a reserve 'guaranteed to like' - vila-matas' montano (it's actually mildly irritating, i guess i'm really not in the mood) but the island of pico in the azores features rather prominently and delighted to discover that there's a portuguese film from 2015 set there, nice coincidence will watch

[nrh]

was a bit down so reached for a reserve 'guaranteed to like' - vila-matas' montano (it's actually mildly irritating, i guess i'm really not in the mood)

not sure how far into it you are but the book sort of transforms partway through in a way that explains some of the earlier tone, not sure it will help though. i love the book but it's the one from this period i always think twice before recommending to people.

[sally]

oh i just finished part 2 the dictionary. it's not unbearable, and i am chuckling occasionally, and i can't actually dislike anything that gives so much time to gombrowicz and walser & generally love vila-matas etc etc, but the chatty neurotic thing which is usually what i'm there for is grating a little. i knew i should have picked up a gothic romance or something instead...

on the other hand to be given the opportunity to watch an o so serious film set on pico and yell 'moles!' at the screen every so often is a joy

[---]

part 2 of the dictionary? you mean the thesaurus?