What are you currently reading

This thread desu

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Some stuff. I'm pretty much finished Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and his work Concerning the Formation of Languages, so I won't include that

Currently :

Witelo - Perspectivae (Bk. I + V)
Clive Granger and Michio Hatanaka - Spectral Analysis of Economic Time Series
Nicole Oresme - Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum
Jeremy Bentham - A Defence of Usury
Aristotle - Prior Analytics

After:

Roger Bacon - Opus Majus
Clive Granger and Oskar Morgenstern - Predictability of Stock Market Prices
Nicole Oresme - On Seeing the Stars
Jeremy Bentham - An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Aristotle - Posterior Analytics

I'm planning on reading a bit of Bentham. There's one more work by Bentham after this one too that I'll be reading.

In general, I'm learning quite a bit about electrical engineering from this economics books (since, like many economic works, it borrows heavily from engineering, this one specifically dealing with frequencies and filters and feedback occurring between different series)

:3

Lawrence Durrell The Curious History of Pope Koan (about the apocryphal case of a woman becoming Pope) and Korczbinski's General Semantics. I'm also thinking of re-reading Habermas's Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.

Durell is very funny, full of vitality and irony, though I expected something different from the mix of Anglo snark and genuine but humor-laden curiosity that makes up most of his book (what did I expect exactly? I'm not sure, probably some Broch-like meditation on the tarot along the mock-historical tale).
Korczbinski (I swear writing this man's name is harder than reading his books) is a tad autistic in a proto-LessWrong way (he seems to be their intellectual ancestor really) and gives off a slightly culty vibes at times. But his general insight is interesting I think, and it goes along some of the lines I've found myself treading lately. Anyway it offers a much-welcome criticism of some of our thought habits.

Habermas is very compelling and the presentation of the systems of various majors thinkers in his books (Hegel, the young Hegelians up to Marx, a bit of Schelling and Fichte, Heidegger, Adorno, Nietzsche, Bataille and Derrida among others) is not the least of its selling points. It makes for a nice introduction to them, on top of offering a (in my uniformed opinion) rather fair and measured criticism of what Habermas perceives as their fundamental mistake. I will definitely re-read it at some point, and take extensive notes.

Wouldn't it be better to get a background (however slim) on electrical filter from a more physics-focused book beforehand? From what I remember the basis of it is pretty straightforward, it's simply electrical quantities like inductance treated as complex numbers, and from that you can derive most of the main properties with simple multiplications in the complex plane.

Also are you reading Oresme in Latin?

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No, but the name of the book quoted on the Wikipedia page is part of some other encyclopedia I believe so I always use the latin name.

You -could- do that. Or you can learn by practice. Learning by practice is much more difficult, but if you're intelligent and resourceful (using Wikipedia most likely) you can do it. I learned quite a lot through this method.

Now I've learned quite a bit regarding electrical engineering.

Everything I know about set theory I learned in Von Neumann's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. (although that hardly counts as that book was designed for the layman) :3

It's hard, but nothing in life worth doing was easy. That's why I'm reading Aristotle, after all. I cherish the opportunities when authors like this mathematician or Aristotle ACTUALLY define the terms they use.

Typically I have to use the power of induction to determine what they are. Like for instance today Clive just used the word 'transposed matrix' and I assumed based on the surrounding text and mathematics it meant an inverted-diagonally matrix, and I was verified in my assumption by looking it up. Surely they taught you the power of induction to determine words you don't know in English class?

Mathematics is just another language.

I was lucky today when Aristotle ACTUALLY defined Elenchus for me so I didn't have to spend 20 minutes on one page using the power of induction to derive his system.

It sure takes a little while longer to read this way, but if you do this you will be less tainted by other's interpretations of the results or their collective interpretations of how things work. Because quite honestly, an intellectual work, whether written by one or two people, should be a somewhat controlled, personalized system.

Like Clive Granger's system to denote time series' feedback in a set by a | after the causality link. That was a personalized notation set up within his book.

Same with any other system in philosophy or logic or wherever. Like Aristotle's system of three different types of syllogisms and the different various elenchus' that sprout from those logical arguments. :3

GET OFF MY BOARD NOW!!!

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how do i become as intelligent as you?

Iraqi Mirages in Combat: The Story of the F. 1EQ in Iraq

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Read difficult non-fiction literature

throw me a few freebies. where to start?

The setting sun.
Although I usually rather watch Mushishi.

After reading the first 2 chapters, I decided to look up the book, and it turns out it's super popular especially amongst normies.

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Very demanding, but also very rewarding.

Reading Herodotus's Histories on the side. Finished The Sound and the Fury last week ama

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Thomas Bernhard - Old Masters

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So I find particular regions of thought to be intriguing to me personally, but everyone is different.

I would suggest you read The Wealth of Nations, it's a wonderful logical exercise and educates you a bit in history as well.

There are other important works as well. Broadly speaking, De Tocqueville and Rousseau will help you get acquainted with proper political philosophy.

In regards to early Greek philosophy, Aristotle's Metaphysics is a complicated must-read.

Plato's Laws is also completely necessary in my opinion, being very dilative upon the legislative nuances of older cultures. :3

I'm being a good Yea Forumsizen and reading GR, again. The second time around makes so much more god damn sense. I swear, the first time was all a blur, but I'm catching a lot this round.
I think I just like pomo tomes that pose as a challenge to me. At least right now. Can't decide if I want to get back onto some Greek shit, or read these Mcluhan books I've had stashed away for awhile.

The Plague
Novel by Albert Camus.

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Also, yeah, if you're interested in contemporary mathematics, I already mentioned it, but Von Neumann and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior is a brilliant masterpiece. :3

Not the guy you're replying to. Do you need a background in math to be able to understand theory of games?

No, unlike Von Neumann's other works, it was designed for the 'layman'.

All that's necessary is algebra and functional calculus. That's all man, he does use some vectors as well, so it wouldn't hurt to brush up on what those are, but everything you need to understand that work is actually defined for you within the work itself. :3

Did you know that polynoms are a vector space?

Thanks

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Yeah. Yeah that makes sense. Scalars are mostly what I think of when I think of vectors, because that is typically how they are used, to reference scalars which are the sum of many vectors of motion or utility, etc.

No problem man, hope you take your time with it, every ten pages of that book took me about 30 min or so. :3

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Your post gives off a cocky vibe when nothing in its content warrants it. It's like you're trying to arouse me through insolence. It won't work though.

>Surely they taught you the power of induction to determine words you don't know in English class?
I'm not an English native speaker, the best I learnt in English class was lists of irregular verbs and corny rules for writing essays.
Induction is something anyone can do and does regularly. Your example with transposed matrix is nice, but not really surprising, it's a very simple notion. Try understanding the definition of a martingale without knowing what a conditional expectancy his for, you'll see how far you get.

Your way of learning his better than passive memorization but reading dedicated textbooks (where people "actually degine the terms they use") would benefit you quite a lot I believe.

>Mathematics is just another language.
A common misconception. Mathematics crucially involves non-linguistic elements, see Dehaene's work on the neurological fondation of mathematical intuition. Learning mathematics is not like learning another language, most of the terms you will learn are about concepts that were specifically formed for mathematical purposes. While in any foreign languages most of the words you learn correspond to daily things you are used to (colors, days of the weeks, animals, familial relations, etc.).

>It sure takes a little while longer to read this way, but if you do this you will be less tainted by other's interpretations of the results
if you don't want to be "tainted" by others' interpretations you should stop reading right now and start doing your own field experiments.

But really your way of doing is pretty good, depending on your purpose. If you want to achieve mastery of, say, mathematics, you will have to accept reading some more formalized text at some point.

>Like Clive Granger's system to denote time series' feedback in a set by a | after the causality link. That was a personalized notation set up within his book.

Notations are often important, but never as much as the need to denote. Did Clive actually decide himself to denote the feedback, or did he just coin a particular notation of his own?
Anyway good luck on your reading, hope you enjoy it.

He's mostly tongue-in-cheek bragging you now. Dont take him that seriously. Just be dedicated and read difficult works.

I'm sorry I wasn't thinking right. You WERE referring to scalars, vectors that define the vector spaces.

I was referring to the sums of the vectors, which is actually just another vector.

will do. you have dethroned him and are now the smartest person in the thread

also, where do you recommend i start?

If there was causality in a set between two time series, say between time series X and Y in a set D, then he would denote this by
X Y | D
Y X | D
This would be an example of direct causality, and also feedback (but not instantaneous unlike electrical engineering)

Please note, I don't understand what you are talking about. No one else does either. You are actually insane, but if you're curious about anything else then I could define those for you as well.

If you don't start learning by reading the actual author's work then what is the point of learning? Learning mathematics by induction is not difficult, and as you've stated is a great way to do it. But you can learn languages through this method as well. :3

You don't dethrone someone by being insane, unfortunately. Sorry buddy.

There are supposed to be arrows going from X to Y but this isn't latex so they aren't showing up. Just please understand that.

Rainbow six

The Odyssey

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Guess

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Anna Karenina
I hate that bitch

Is that Nabokov?

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Nah it's Schopenhauer

A Scanner Darkly.
I like it better than Androids so far (not a hard feat). I just don't think PKD's style is for me

IT THINKS ITS SMART XD

Congratulations, you just wasted all of your time

I can guarantee I am in a more difficult position than you are, and I am in a relationship.

I am smart. Smarter than most. There is a reason why they said what they did, fucknuts.

How so? :3

Coin Locker Babies

A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett.

>using the power of induction
Oooh I love that power

As do I.

As do I, young chap. Not enough people do ;3

History of Salt By Jelly Reee

Reading this in one my uni classes atm

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

>Try understanding the definition of a martingale without knowing what a conditional expectancy his for, you'll see how far you get.

Would mind going into this, as far as you can. You won’t be judged but I like that this interests you and want to know more about what you know and interests you about it. At a quick glance, and I’m probably totally wrong, it seems to be a subject about the probability of random occurrences within a certain set of certain given variables? Is that right? More interested in why you are interested in such a thing. I don’t have many opportunities to talk to people (in general) but specifically about complex math. When I do it’s very very exciting

Blood Meridian
the author must be allergic to quotation marks

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Symposium

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Pic relate + Simone Weil

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That’s awesome. You can return to sci, this is a literature board, not literature bored

Depends on your interests. History might be a good start, enough action to keep a nonreader interested, but also enough perspective to make you question things you'd never question before. An interesting exercise could be to read three or four books on the same era and dwell on the difference. For instance a primary source by a contemporary (say Thucydid or Livy), then a secondary book but old and aimed at the layman (something in the style of Gibbon's Decline and fall f the Roman Empire) and then a more contemporary scholarly book.

Starting with the Greeks is also always pretty safe. Try reading some Greek mythology recorded by ancient writers (including ancient rewriting like Ovid's Metamorphosis, which is beautiful, especially in the original) then look at modern take on the same myths. That could be interesting.

TL;DR: Find some short annotated volumes of the surviving works of the Presocratics (Heraclitus and Parmenides being the most important), read Homer, read Hesiod's Cosmogony and Ovid's metamorphosis, then read Graves on Greek myths, then a Greek historian like Herodote or Thucydid, then a modern historian. This should kickstart the engine.

The Opposing Shore and 100 Years.

It's funny, I expected that I'd like Opposing Shore more than 100 Years, but the opposite is true. The prose in the first is great but it gets tough to follow, like wading through a thick bog. Everyone said 100 Years was a dense book to read and that you could only do so much at a time but I've been enjoying every part of it so far.

Moby Dick, almost finished it. God, I know so much about whales and ships now, boy I'm glad I've got memed into reading it!

So X -> Y|D ? Sounds a lot like the idea of conditional expectancy actually, although the latter is about all kind of dependance (in the probabilistic sense), while causality is a very specific (and hard to establish) kind of probabilistic dependance.

My question was more about whether Granger merely used a personal notation, or whether he also was the first to understand the importance of denoting that particular kind of causal dependance. Think of Pascal combinatorial symbol for "number of choices of k elements in a set of n elements". Modern notations for this quantity are arguably less unwiedly than Pascal's, but he was the first to understand the importance of that quantity (and to compute it explicitly).

>If you don't start learning by reading the actual author's work then what is the point of learning?
You can learn by any means, there's no point in restricting you like that. Your commitment to reading only primary sources is admirable but it's more a consequence of your own aesthetico-epistemological principles than of a thorough understanding of the needs of human cognition. Anyway to each his own, and you're right ultimately that it's up to each of us to devise his own method for learning.

>Learning mathematics by induction is not difficult, and as you've stated is a great way to do it. But you can learn languages through this method as well.
True, though there are limits to that, particularly in mathematics (depending on how far you're wanting to go of course). Sometimes it's not a bad thing to use a learning method that saves you a month, even if it relies on textbooks. However you learn, you will have to wrestle with the notions learned anyway (that's particularly true in mathematics).

>Please note, I don't understand what you are talking about. No one else does either. You are actually insane
I'm most likely not insane, but thanks for your psychiatric opinion. Most importantly what did you not understand in my posts? The only obscure part were reference to topic not everybody has studied (such as Dehaene's works and martingale), but they're not that important to my general point.

I gave that example out of personal experience (so brace for the silly anecdote, you asked for it). Once I was in the RER (a kind of train) and I wanted to read the two last (and yet uncovered by our professor) chapters of a probability theory course during the hour-long commute. But I had forgotten the first of them at home (which was about conditional probability and in particular conditional expectation), I only has the second one, which was about martingales. So I tried to understand the content of that chapter without the preceding chapter. Alas, the definition of a martingale crucially rests on the notion of conditional expectancy, which is not a trivial notion at all. I found myself unable to deduce the meaning of the notation from the context.

I'll talk about the actual notion in my next post.

Nice tastes user.
Don't be so narrow minded.

cont'd
So what is conditional expectancy? It quantifies the vague notion of "partial information about a random quantity".
More precisely, if you have a random variable X (which is then measurable relatively to a tribe, let's call it S), and if you have a smaller (hence coarser) tribe T, you might want to know how much of the "information" or "variability" of X is included in T (since T is coarser than S, at best there will be as much information as in X, in most case there will be much less). This calls for a T-measurable variable which is "close to" X or has "the same information relatively to T" as X does.

You can define it in various ways, but the classical one is that for any T measurable event A, E[1_A*X] = E[1_A*X_T] where X_T is the conditional expectancy of X relatively to T, E is the symbol of expectancy, and 1_A is the function that is 1 in event A and 0 outside of A. What this definition means is that within the smaller tribe T, any possible "test" or "observation" of the behavior of X within an event of T will be exactly the same as a "test" or "observation" of X_T within the same event. In others words the information contained in T doesn't allow to meaningfully distinguish between X and X_T, and if you're only interested about what happens to X in T, you might as well consider X_T.

Of course, X being measurable in a larger tribe S means there are behaviors of X that won't appear in T, so X_T doesn't contain all information relative to X, only the part of that information you can get through T. S is "finer" than T because it allows to distinguish things that aren't distinguishable in T (for instance X and X_T). In a sense X_T is "the closest thing to X that can be described entirely in T". X cannot (you need S for that, and S is a finer frame of description than T) so X_T is the next best thing.

It's really a fascinating, very general concept with a lot of nice properties far-reaching implications. Keep in mind I'm improvising a layman explanation of an advanced mathematical concept, so naturally it will turn out confusing. But it's really important both theoretically and practically. For instance if you're doing statistics and you want to explain an outcome Y (say the occurrence of diabetes in a set of patients) using some information (say the medical history X of those patients) then best theoretical best quantity you can use is the conditional expectancy of Y relative to the tribe generated by X. A lot of statistics is devising means to approximate that conditional expectancy, which is never known to absolute precision in practice.

Around 100 pages left, it's been a pretty great ride actually

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YAAAAAAAAAWN

some bullshit paper by a catholic faggot

Autonomia: post political politics (book about the Italian Years of Lead)
The Artist and the Mathematician (book about Grothendieck and the Bourbaki collective)
next-ish/now-ish: Cioran, The Fall Into Time

Next: Tiqqun #1, two books about the Book of Kells that I've read before.

Just cracked open Blood Meridian

I'm reading No longer human by Dazai but so far it feels like a bad, more autistic version of Notes from Underground desu
I think i just have to accept that i can't appreciate Nip literature

Really. The closest I can think to an excuse is that he's trying to force you to slow down. Realistically I think that he pulled it off smoothly in the early books then decided that it was his style and just rolled on even when it made shit painful to read.

Just finished 2 mins ago
>Don Carpenter - Hard Rain Falling

Also currently reading
>Alistair Horne - To Lose a Battle

Next:
>Joseph Roth - The White Cities
or
>Knut Hamsun - Victoria
or
>W.G. Sebald - The Emigrants

Finished that last week. Some parts really drag unnecessarily.
How are you finding it?

The explanation was not meant for you chump.

>The Artist and the Mathematician
Interdasting, who is the author?

Try Kawabatta's Tales of the Palm of the Hand.

user do you have any good sites for book DL to recommend?

Libgen. Mostly focused on scientific papers and books but there is a load of literature. As long as a book is not too obscure (and even then) you can probably find it.

Already knew about it, was hoping for something more meta
Anyway, i found the book, i'm gonna give it a try, i like short stories a lot, so i have high expectations

A Clockwork Orange

The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, alongside with the online MIT lectures.

Demons by that russian dude with beard

bro i will fucking live forever *dies*
what did Rob mean by this?

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Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism - Chogyam Trungpa

I'll give you this: you seem to be level-headed. I am impressed by your calm repose under the pressure of someone calling you insane :3

X -> Y|D would just be an example of direct causality in two different time series (from X to Y)

Y -> X|D would be an example of direct causality in two time series again (this time, the other direction).

For feedback to occur, electrical engineers understand that there has to be a feedback chain going from one series to another and then from that series back to the original.

This is how spectral analysis feedback works in economics, except the feedback is never instantaneous like it is with electricity. :3

Stiller (Max Frisch)

'feedback chain' should be 'causal link'.

Sorry.

Leagues Under the Sea. Pretty tight.

is it good?

Based. Finished it early this week. How are you liking it so far?

Cosmos by Carl Sagan