I'm Mik. Model, mother, moron. Future meta-magician. Former logic clinician.
My better half and I own Brainfood Bookstore in Longmont, Colorado. It is the only exclusively indie- and local-lit bookstore in the nation. We meet a lot of crazy folks.
Testimonial from a former roommate:
"Living with you was like living with a quiet little opinionated deer person who floated around like a ghost and said smart/nutso things and ate seaweed. "
I love Colorado. I love mountains. I love hiking. I read and write. I raise my children to the best of my ability. I have lupus and have defeated early-stage cancer twice, so I pretty much fully support the use of medical marijuana.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (via philosophy-quotes)
This is about Circles. Just read it. I kinda just blew my own mind right now.
My friend Chris is an electrical engineer and he thought of something one day. Pi, because it is an irrational number, it is basically just an infinite string of numbers that is pretty much random. It doesn’t have a repeating pattern, it’s just a bunch of numbers that are pretty much meaningless. However, because he’s an electrical engineer and is thinking about computers when he isn’t sleeping or eating, a thought occurred to him. If you took any set of information and coded it in base-10 (digits 0-9), it would also appear as a random string of numbers.
For anyone not familiar with how computers work: All computers use binary (digits 0 and 1) to code information. This is because of the physical characteristics of data storage. Early computers had lights on or off, cards punched or not punched, and now hard drives, for example, are magnetized in patterns of reversing or not reversing direction. Coding in base-10 means that there are 10 options for any specific bit of information (imagine each lightbulb has 10 different brightnesses instead of simply on or off). This means more information could be stored in less space. Genes are coded in base-4 (ATCG), and English words are coded in base-26 (a through z).
Back to Pi. Because pi has an infinite string of random numbers, at some point, any string of numbers will exist somewhere along the line. Using this idea, any piece of information could be stored in base-10 inside pi. You could code the text of the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the Mona Lisa, the Star Wars trilogy, or even this blog and find it somewhere in pi.
Think about it for a sec. Let it blow your mind a little bit.
Now. Here’s the best part.
I asked myself, “What is pi, again?” Right, the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter. π=c/d
Every circle inherently stores every single piece of information that has ever existed or ever will exist from the big bang to the end of the universe.
Circles are literally everything.
Mind blown.
(Source: stickyembraces)
Firstly I would recommend you undergo and intense psychological evaluation. You may suffer from delusions or one or more personality disorders.
I kid, I kid. But I honestly can’t imagine learning logic from a book, outside a classroom. The ‘textbook’ I used for introductory (or informal) logic was really a loose-leaf composited by the professors at my university. I also took formal logic. The textbook our class used was The Logic Book by Merrie Bergmann et al. According to one of my colleagues, the textbook as well as the answer key can be purchased for about $6 from ABE books.
I’ll start off assuming you don’t know what logic is. Logic is part of epistemology, which is a branch of philosophy. Epistemology is the study of what we know and how we know it. Logic is the study of valid reasoning. Logic comes in two types: Deductive and inductive logic. Inductive logic is essentially statistics (If something that is a dog has a 95% chance of having a tail, and Fido is a dog, than I can that there is a 95% chance that Fido has a tail).
Deductive logic comes in two types: Sentential logic and predicate logic. These are both systems (math is another type of system) of symbolizing ideas in English syntax (obviously, it could be done with other languages as well). For example, I want to say that apples fall from a tree only if they are ripe. In sentential logic, it would be something like f—>r. In predicate logic, it would look like (x)(Ax—>(Fx—>Rx)), or “For all things X, if it is an apple, then if falls from a tree only if it is ripe.”
As you can imagine, courses in logic are rather confusing and move rather quickly. My university employs several philosophy majors (myself included) to work in a room in the basement of the Philosophy department. It’s called the Logic Lab or Logic Clinic, but the room is more of a cross between an office and a library. We assist logic students. Mostly we deal with either students who haven’t read the textbook and have no idea what’s going on, or we provide emotional support and counseling for the students who have broke down and insist they will never understand logic (despite the fact that often do). Please see my page Why Do People in the Logic Lab Need Logic? for further clarification.
Wise men talk because they have something to say. Foolish men talk because they have to say something.
Plato (via philosophy-quotes)
God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.
Francis Bacon (via philosophy-quotes)
Thank you very much! Actually, I’ve recently been reading Scruton’s Brief History of Philosophy. Anyway here is the link to the lectures in clickable form for anyone interested! This is a great resource.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx (via philosophy-quotes)
It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
Rene Descartes (via philosophy-quotes)
The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (via logicallypositive)
Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
David Hume (via philosophy-quotes)
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle (via fyeahphilosophy)
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
Friedrich Nietzsche (via philosophy-quotes)
Morality is like golf. I know people play it, but I just don’t care.
Stuff I take out of context from my Moral Issues class
