COMPLEXITY, randomness, intelligence:

a  new  kind  of  science
j o h n   k i e h l
Engineer, musician

Thursday, September 16, 7 PM
Albert Ellis Institute, 45 East 65^th Street
N Y S G S Members  Free
Non-members     $5

Stephen Wolfram has caused quite a stir in the scientific community with the publishing of his book A New Kind of Science.  Why a “new kind” of science?  Because, in Stephen’s words, “I have mostly ended up having to start from scratch – with new ideas and new methods that ultimately depend very little on what has gone before…To absorb in any real way what the book has to say requires a fairly major shift in intuition and thinking.”  Could this be the next “paradigm shift” as predicted by Thomas Kuhn in his seminal book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?

For Stephen Wolfram, physicist, the single greatest mystery of the natural world is: how does nature so effortlessly produce so much complex-ity.  His long awaited book, A New Kind of Science, published in 2001, chronicles his 20 year pursuit of this mystery which began for Stephen in 1981 with a simple “cellular automata” computer experiment – which had not such simple results!  In fact, the results were so surprising and dramatic that they forced him to change his whole view of science, and in the end to develop the intellectual structure of the “new kind of science” he describes in his book.

Using Stephen’s striking computer graphics, lecturer John Kiehl will review the process that Stephen went through in his explorations and summarize his many discoveries – the source of complexity in the Universe, the source of randomness, the Principle of Computational Equivalence, the limits of mathematics, a truly fundamental theory of physics, and the character of intelligence in the Universe.

John Kiehl has a Bachelor degree in electrical engineering from MIT, but his love of music led him to a lifetime career in music and the recording industry.  Currently John is developing a computer music program that employs Stephen Wolf-ram’s NKS as a pattern generator in the hopes of creating a “new kind of musical instrument.”

Check the website www.stephenwolfram.com 

 interactive

general semantics

 An Evening of Learning Demonstrations
Led by G S Members:

 Thursday, October 14, 7 PM
Albert Ellis Institute, 45 East 65^th Street
N Y S G S Members   Free
Non-members   $5

 

     Come for an evening of participation in upgrading your G S software, the tools and techniques you can use in everyday living and learning: how to interact more effectively in business and interpersonal relations.

     We’ll bring education and entertainment together as we practice G S extensional tools such as

    We’ll study some of these G S critical thinking and evaluating tools, and work on others at future sessions of “Interactive General Semantics.”

     Rachel Lauer’s pamphlet “Some Basic Ideas of General Semantics” will be given out, for you to keep as a handy reminder.

      If you think the study of “General Semantics” refers to the meaning of words, and how words can deceive us, look at this drawing and determine if your eyes can deceive you, too.  The light that enters our eyes must be processed through the neurology of our past experiences and future expectations.  Try measuring the two “table tops” and determine their similarities and differences.  Korzybski said “the map is not the territory.”  What do you think?

     Why does a line that seems to go into the distance look longer than a line going left and right?  What are our assumptions about “depth” in a two-dimensional drawing?  Are there similar distortions involving size and shape in interpersonal relations?  Or involving present effort and future reward in working on a project?  Or speed and momentum  in  automobile  driving? 

     What can this illusion teach us?

     Think about it !

     Think G S !

   Ron Gross is Socrates !

     The author of Socrates’ Way: Seven Master Keys to Using Your Mind to the Utmost, Ron Gross will facilitate our learning to use Socratic dialogue.

  Neil Postman Memorial Symposium

     Co-sponsored with the Media Ecology Association, with Lance Strate, PhD, President, and the Institute of General Semantics, the Symposium will honor Neil Postman as educator, author, social critic and editor.

  Robert Carneiro, PhD, Korzybski Memorial

     Author of Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology and The Muse of History and The Science of Culture, Dr. Carneiro is Curator, Department of Anthropology, Ameri-can Museum of Natural History.  This will be the 53^rd Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture of the Institute of  General  Semantics.

 

For links, including  Psychophysiology & Biofeedback, Goddess Myths, Gregory Bateson, Alphabet vs. the Goddess (Leonard Shlain), Socrates’ Way (Ron Gross), SevenSimpleSteps^TM Way (Jeff Mordkowitz), Center for Symbolic Studies (Stephen and Robin Larsen) and many more.

 

 “ Q U O T E S “

            “It is often said experiments must be made without a preconceived idea.  That is impossible.  Not only would it make all experiment barren, but that would be attempted which could not be done.  Everyone carries in his mind his own conception of the world, of which he cannot so easily rid himself.  We must, for instance, use language, and our language is made up only of preconceived ideas and cannot be otherwise.  Only these are unconscious preconceived ideas, a thousand times more dangerous than the others.”

Henri Poincare

The Foundations of Science

 

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