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* histrionics
@ 1999-09-09  0:00 G
  1999-09-08  0:00 ` histrionics Preben Randhol
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: G @ 1999-09-09  0:00 UTC (permalink / raw)




Matthew Heaney wrote:

> G:
>
> What is your name, BTW?

  My name is Graeme... from Australia... sorry for the histrionics... my
dad is dying
of prostate cancer, I am currently very much unemployed,
I have had to teach myself (from scratch) as much as I can about
programming
because the courses are out of my financial reach
and my nation is (probably) about to go to war (Indonesia is doing
something
very Evil just now - shades of Kosovo)
and I tend to get a bit touchy
at times of stress.  That and the fact that one never can tell
what someone means just through their words...
*sigh*
sorry...
  It is very intimidating to learn a language like this and I am
grateful
for all the support that I have received at times from the many experts,

specialists and poly-capable programmers who frequent here.

>
>
> > I studied systems theory.  This relates to set theory but is
> literally a more
> > dynamic interpretation and extrapolation.  I was working on a
> specific systems
> > theoretical construction involving complexity and elaborating it
> through a
> > spatiotemporal model (yes.. I know its all a tad obscure).
>
> I too study systems theory.  I just finished Introduction To
> Cybernetics, by
> Ross Ashby.  Great book.

  I came through philosophy.  I was attempting to decipher the work of
Niklas Luhmann
in cybernetics, among other things, subjects, intellects and theoretical
abstractions.
 It is not all that I have read but my education has been both
predominantly
autodidactic and eclectic.

  My interests were specifically in the global structure of a system.
Which is to say -
in what ways can we model "total" and "complete" structures.  So,
because I figure that
programming is at least (in some measure) a matter of entities, of
objects persisting
over time (either the patterns of bits which constitute software or the
notional
"objects", control structures and so on of the coding end of things) and
as such is a matter of
ontology.  I had a terrible time at University attempting to use
concepts from
complexity theory, chaos theory and so on (in a non-specialist sense) to

conceptualising social systems, psychological systems and philosophical
models in and with which to
model such structures.  Had I been in Germany, I would have had every
opportunity - but universities
tend to maintain territorial intellectualisms.  (The same undoubtedly
occurs in computer science (?))
  I have studied martial arts practise and philosophy for many years, so
an interest in non-linear strategies is aquired.

>
>
> > I have been trying to find a way to elaborate what is in my mind's
> eye.  Thus
> > ADA has been useful.
>
> In general, that's true.  Ada is a very good language for constructing
> large
> systems, and very good at exactly capturing the nature of an
> abstraction
> (because of its very rich type facility).

   I do not think that I have the comprehension of programming yet to
know
whether or not ADA95 will let me do what I would like to.
  The ability to cast one's own types is certainly appealing to me, from

what I have seen of other languages.  Ada appears to make the matter
so very much less cryptic than Java, for instance... for a novice's
eyes anyway.



>
>
> > But as it seems to me as though I may be the "idiot" referred to
> earlier.  I
> > don't think I should say anymore.
>
> I don't think anyone is calling you an idiot.  The only reference to
> "idiots" that I can recall was by me, and I was referring to the
> members of
> the Kansas State Board of Education who voted against teaching
> Darwin's
> Theory of Evolution in Biology class.

  OK.  Perhaps the Board of Education in Kansas has done something
unique
and proven by their own mental prowess that retrograde evolution is in
fact possible.
We have people like that here...

>
>
> > Inasfar as simulation is concerned - I desire to employ the systems
> theory in
> > battlefield simulation.
>
> I apply systems theory to the construction of software systems too.
> It
> seems we have a lot in common!
>
> > As I am an idiot, I don't suppose I ever will and I am sad that I
> have been
> > deleted from this group every time I have posted.
>
> No, you are not an idiot, nor is anyone deleting your posts.

  It is very difficult to know when one is progressing with this
language.  I try
to learn about four different languages and when I find one stumps me I
turn to another for a while.
For instance, I recently began looking into C++ and found that having
spent some time with Java texts
and manuals had already opened the concepts up for me.  Also, that
spending time in ADA let
me understand more easily the dot notation call to procedures or
function/methods elsewhere.
  Anyway, having said that I probably got it wrong and I should say - I
was originally studying
to be an academic philosopher but things went off that path.  As things
do.  So, I hoped that
I could discuss issues with people such as yourselves.  Issues
pertaining to structure and system.
But it is difficult to insert myself conversationally because the nature
of conversation
is so specialised and cryptic to the novice...

>
>
> Please don't leave the group.  I, and I'm sure others, welcome your
> contributions and questions on comp.lang.ada.
>
> > G
>
> Matt

Thanks Matt.  What you said about the ability of ADA to capture
abstraction through its type
facility - that is why I am more attracted to Ada.

I have a certain mental construct which has been bouncing around my
neuronal architecture
for several years and which I am attempting to find expression for.

It is related to cybernetics, too, I suppose inasmuch as the system is
composed of elements
which support the replication of themselves and through them the global
structure.  I have to think this out a bit
because I am rusty in elaborating these things.

I guess, and it is all but impossible (for now) to explain the system I
will eventually attempt to simulate/model with ada (as
perhaps a seed for more practical enterprises, if I am very lucky),
well... I looked into the philosophy of
space, time, of spacetime and anamorphic (i.e. relativistic) distortions
of such.  What fascinated me was that what may be happening
in biological, cosmological (and several other -"logicals") systems is
that at the level of sequence and time it is the
replication of a process, not of purely (or purely of) static elements
within a system of process.  The process which is being replicated
is precisely the process of replication itself.  Now, there may be a
variety of symmetries to such things, symmetry in
an abstract sense (much as electron may rotate through 720 degrees
before returning to its start point, implying
a dimensional depth of a counter-intuitive nature).

The symmetry involved is the mental image I think will be something to
which Ada could be applied for modelling
and simulation.  Not as a fundamental system, but an extension of
existing systems.  Which may be all that we ever do anyway, extend,
modify and even the Kansas Board of Education is but an example of the
progressive sedimentation of complexity
in biological, cosmological and other systems...

But I am not very good at explaining this.

I don't even know if I can model this mental image.  Something like
Menger's sponge meets a logarithmic spiral and
onto the spiral is mapped an accleration or otherwise increase in
complexity.  There is a subtle dimensional depth though,
drawing this spiral around a conical shape.  The central axis of the
conical structure is itself no less than precisely the same
spiral running orthogonal to the cone.

I just had a gut feeling about this system.  I read all the popular
literature from Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach and onwards.

Are there ways within software systems to model structures which on
every scale of magnification replicate themselves ?  I
do not mean purely materially, say as Cantor's dust and it's (infinite)
structure might represent, but in the sense that the
process of replication is itself what is replicated at every scale of
magnitude.

I just had a feeling that it may be possible to represent this in Ada.

Also... because I am interdisciplinary... it may turn out to be not a
computer-reprsentable concept and
fall through as a horrendously complex social, psychological theory.  I
just have a hunch... and simulation
is a current obsession of mine.

So... I have questions to ask anyone here who will answer... because I
AM a novice.
It is NOT off subject because I am trying to determine how to use Ada
for a theoretical
abstraction.... for modelling that abstraction and then eventually to
employ the structure
as a base structure for simulation.  I enjoy the challenge and the
learning curve of this
fascinating language.

I suppose that one must build such systems from the ground up in Ada.
So, I must be looking
at years of learning.

-Graeme

A wise man once said that :" 'tis better to keep one's mouth shut and
appear the fool
than open it and remove all doubt."

 I may have now achieved the latter twice in one day. Impressive.  I
could say more...
but I have been vociferous enough as is.
:-)







^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1999-09-27  0:00 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 31+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
1999-09-09  0:00 histrionics G
1999-09-08  0:00 ` histrionics Preben Randhol
1999-09-09  0:00   ` histrionics G
1999-09-09  0:00     ` histrionics Nick Roberts
1999-09-09  0:00       ` histrionics Robert Dewar
1999-09-10  0:00         ` histrionics Vladimir Olensky
1999-09-10  0:00           ` histrionics Robert Dewar
1999-09-10  0:00             ` histrionics Ted Dennison
1999-09-11  0:00               ` histrionics Bob Collins
1999-09-12  0:00                 ` histrionics Vladimir Olensky
1999-09-13  0:00                 ` histrionics Ted Dennison
1999-09-11  0:00             ` histrionics Vladimir Olensky
1999-09-11  0:00               ` histrionics Robert Dewar
1999-09-11  0:00                 ` histrionics Vladimir Olensky
1999-09-14  0:00                 ` histrionics Robert I. Eachus
     [not found]                   ` <7s2l7b$kmr$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
     [not found]                     ` <37E81661.6DCA23E4@mitre.org>
1999-09-22  0:00                       ` histrionics p.obry
     [not found]                       ` <7saju5$6h6$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
1999-09-22  0:00                         ` histrionics Robert I. Eachus
1999-09-22  0:00                       ` histrionics Ehud Lamm
1999-09-23  0:00                   ` histrionics Ehud Lamm
1999-09-23  0:00                     ` histrionics Ehud Lamm
1999-09-23  0:00                     ` Sums of cubes (was Re: histrionics) Robert I. Eachus
1999-09-24  0:00                       ` Wes Groleau
1999-09-25  0:00                         ` Robert Dewar
1999-09-24  0:00                       ` Robert Dewar
1999-09-24  0:00                         ` Robert I. Eachus
1999-09-24  0:00                       ` Wes Groleau
1999-09-24  0:00                         ` Robert I. Eachus
1999-09-27  0:00                           ` Wes Groleau
1999-09-11  0:00               ` histrionics Robert Dewar
1999-09-11  0:00                 ` histrionics Vladimir Olensky
1999-09-13  0:00                   ` histrionics Robert Dewar

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