Author: jon

Bike Tour: Find the River

Post author By jon
Post date August 8, 2018

1,281 km (796 miles) over 16 days between Jul. 20, 2018 and Aug. 4, 2018. Read the full account on CycleBlaze here.

Taking the rivers Doubs, Neckar, Würm, Rhine, Mosel and Sûre across the Jura, Black Forest and Pfalz

The target of my tour of 2018 was to visit my friend Ben in Tübingen, where he was teaching. I wanted to combine France and Germany, so thought I would set off from somewhere in Burgundy, cross the Rhine, then check out the Black Forest. Unfortunately I dramatically underestimated the hilliness of that region, with exhausting consequences. Finally, in some record-breaking heat (some days were 41°C), I followed the Rhine back to the north and the Mosel into Luxembourg.

Books Epistemology Fiction Lit Crit Nabokov Philosophy Philosophy of Language

On Authorial Intent

Post author By jon
Post date May 14, 2018

This was originally written a comment on an episode of the wonderful Partially Examined Life (“A podcast by those who were once considering doing philosophy for a living, and then thought better of it”) – specifically Ep. 189 on Authorial Intent (Barthes, Foucault, Beardsley, et al).

Thanks guys for the great conversation: you do your usual wonderful job of presenting compelling readings for positions I am not particularly sympathetic to. In the same way as Robert Williams’ comment on part one – and as alluded to by Wes during towards the end – my general impulse is to bemoan the baleful influence some of these have had on the practice of criticism. I think you made good points on the potential breadth of “intention” and how it could be broader than the conscious. What I found curious though is that the survey (while seeming to be sufficiently broad to take in all of “art”) seems to leave out some very specifically intentional works.

This particularly chimed with me as I read Brian Boyd’s wonderful criticism on Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” (a previous Phi Fic read!) – “The Magic of Artistic Discovery”. Now Wes and Mark described several scenarios where the artist either (i) deliberately uncouples intention from the creative process, (ii) uses free association as a source of raw material which they actively shape into the product or (iii) act as readers of their own work, and create meaning therein. I don’t doubt that this is a major origin in many types of works. But I would argue that in writing prose and poetry, it is not a necessary component.

Arcana Backgammon Books Reviews

Review: Backgammon Magic

Post author By jon
Post date April 15, 2018

20 Lessons for the Developing Player by John Novak & Radek Dobias (2013)

Backgammon Magic is a slight book of 20 “lessons” – interesting positions with analysis – and a potentially interesting idea, which is that neural-net analysis renders many classic backgammon “rules” incorrect. There is a lot of emphasis on play against AI (and some dismissal of the advice and rules of thumb of backgammon greats), and all the problems purely concern checker play.

Interesting idea but major flaw in analysis

Cycle Touring Cycling European Tours Travel

Bike Tour: The Middle of Sweden

Post author By jon
Post date July 31, 2017

830 miles (1,336 km) over 17 days between Jul. 15, 2017 and Jul. 31, 2017. Read the full account on CycleBlaze here.

A meandering journey through the lakes, pines and gravel roads of inland Sweden

For my first major tour overseas after a long hiatus, I decided to see if I could get my home-built machine (the “Blue Shift”) right through the middle of Sweden. Most tourists either stick to the coasts, or go east-to-west from Stockholm to Gothenburg.

Philosophy Software Technology

Wilful Sven

Post author By jon
Post date June 16, 2017

So a minor act of stupidity on my part today got me thinking about cleverness of user interfaces, and when it can sometimes be a bad thing. Specifically: I managed to leave the (side)lights on my car switched on overnight, and sure enough in the morning the battery was pancake-flat. One rapid bike ride/train journey later and I was only the one hour late for work, but embarrassingly this isn’t the first time I’ve forgotten them – though I have been able to get the car started (and indeed open the doors) on previous occasions….

So what’s my excuse? Well, the reason I turn my sidelights on in first place is sort of complex.

We start to think of systems that enforce decisions based on encoded tables of values as being “wilful”. Even if we agree with these ends, it’s a very natural to resist the interference, especially when it comes out of a “dumb machine”

Epistemology Philosophy Philosophy of Science

Materialist science?

Post author By jon
Post date March 2, 2017

This is a reply I wrote in 2017 as part of an interesting discussion with a colleague concerning whether idealism, or anti-materialism, had any place in a naturalistic philosophy of science.

Even without going as far as scepticism surrounding causation or induction, there are plenty of problems if we consider the body of science to merely be a vast collection of perceptions. My main point of interest here – and one which I think has real relevance to data science – is the different between “knowledge” and “understanding”.

But I wouldn’t be too quick to write off Berkeley’s idealism (or anti-materialism, if you will).

Backgammon Epistemology Philosophy Philosophy of Science

The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

Post author By jon
Post date April 10, 2015

Do qualitative and quantitative changes in our capacity to gather and process (big) scientific data change the way we do science? Might they actually usurp the scientific method itself? In fact, is there anything more to the scientific method than just analysing data?

This is a discussion of an article that appeared in wired The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.

To me the article seems to be a little speculative – and gives a sense of philosophical deja vu.

Books Humour Lit Crit Pastiche Rand & Nabokov

The Roark Attack

Post author By jon
Post date July 23, 2014

Howard Roark was a chess genius. He had known this, utterly securely, since his sixth birthday, when he had discovered the chess set in his attic and immediately known how to play. Sitting on pile of magazines which contained the dreary, identical thoughts of the chess ancients, he had there and then created his own unique and devastating attack. He knew that any any honest chess player could not beat it.

Books Lit Crit Nabokov Rand & Nabokov The Defence

Execution

Post author By jon
Post date July 23, 2014

Let’s take some time to look in detail with how Rand executes the features we’ve identified. We can make the trouble with Rand’s writing stand out in bold relief when we compare Roark’s portrayal in The Fountainhead with Nabokov’s of Luzhin in The Defence in these terms.

Books Lit Crit Nabokov Rand Rand & Nabokov The Defence The Fountainhead

Luzhin, exceptional and familiar

Post author By jon
Post date July 23, 2014

Affirming our opposition to bad art and banal thought is satisfying and often necessary. In the few days after I’d immersed myself back into the sludgy consistency of Rand’s novel, with all its bald and unchallenged commonplaces, I felt a real need to vent distaste, even just as cathartic resistance. Schadenfreude is fun, but it can get close to bad conscience if that’s all we’re doing – often something of an online speciality. Spending our whole time decrying the bad doesn’t cut it – something that Rand herself would have done well to mark: for all her pleas of positive virtue created by individuals, the majority of The Fountainhead is spent sneering at the trivially dismissable.

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