We had an amazing experience today. I feel culture might be healing, and Gaby was present all day. I really enjoyed that.
The dialogues were powerful, and I just felt amazed every little second. Never in my life I had cried towards a scientific reading. And this. This is what I live for. For this moments of AWE and beauty present in every second.
"But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee."
Ah, Emerson. You just keep on conquering my heart. I have this opinion on how history actually can help to not repeat mistakes, but we don't rely on history. Awareness of history keeps us innovating and not recreating a loop on our existence.
Our own actions are harmonious. Imperfect but harmonious.
We had a little insight on why Emerson is using the analogy of Joseph. Well, my insight is, he was a great man and greatness works in long terms. He acted according to his own understanding, and we have to leave our dead theories before they eat us.
Today we spoke of a really beautiful topic: of Epigenes.
Before starting my insight, I want to mention that Bert decided to step away from the circle. I feel that made this dialogue something really interesting. We actually got to learn from each other.
"What is Human Nature?" Carmen asked.
"It has something to do with epigenes" Marcela mentioned.
BUT WHAT IS AN EPIGENE?
Ah, and there the journey started.
The first paragraph mentioned by Kata:
"As recognized in biology, epigenetic rules comprise the full range of inherited regularities of development in anatomy, physiology, cognition and behavior. They are the algorithms of growth and differentiation that create a fully functioning organism."
Epigenes are not exclusive from culture, they're not exclusive from genes. They're the link that make these two interact.
"Etiology of culture its way tortuously from the genes through the brain and senses to learning and social behavior. What we inherit are neurobiological traits that cause us to see the world in a particular way and to learn certain behaviors in preference to other behaviors. The genetically inherited traits are not memes, not units of culture, but rather the propensity to invent and transmit certain kinds of these elements of memory in preference to others."
Ah, this is an amazing part of the topic. Actually, our mind is wired. I see this like a set of connections, and if you use one, it's somehow programmed and these systems have more propensity to be repeated. But yes. We have space for freedom. And this part stroke my heart.
Epigenetic rules "... leave open the potential generation of an immense array of cultural variations and combinations."
Where do these rules come from? Are they part of this tendency of growth? Because these rules leave open a space for people to change and reprogram these rules. We're a species that can perfect themselves. Individually!
We presented today Proposition 11 through 16.
The class was divided in two: those who didn't understand the first propositions and the others that were on track.
It was productive for both of the sides, and we made a great progress.
We took yesterday's and today's morning meeting to talk about our heritage.
It was pretty cool. We got to know so much about our families, and about the tendency of grandparents being so crazy!
Diego, for example, is related with Amable Sanchez.
I talked about my heritage with my mom today and believe me. It was amazing. I will share it eventually, but what really strikes me are the little things and crucial little facts which the moment and space defined what the whole future is going to be!
We had a dialogue on the fourth chapter of the book Taming the Infinite, in which Ian Stewart talks about Algebra.
The beauty of Algebra is something that a lot of people have observed in the dimension to be actually aware that Algebra is a meta-cognition of the rules of mathematics. It actually begins the language, and recalls the possibilities.
Carmen made an excellent connection to Consilience. I made a connection with Euclid.
"In advanced mathematics, the use of letters to represent numbers is only one tiny aspect of the subject, the context in which it got started. Algebra is about the properties of symbolic expressions in their own right; it is about the structure and form, not just number. This more general view of algebra developed when mathematicians started asking general questions about school-level algebra. Instead of trying to solve specific equations, they looked at the deeper structure of the solution process itself."
So, for programming Marce, Carmen and I will be making a mini project which will inform the user about the percentage in which people have been absent.
For this, there will be needed an input of the amount of days people haven't attended the MPC, and the program will print out the percentage you've been out.
This dialogue concentrated on the following part of The Apology, in which Socrates explains why he is being accused. And this is because he is wise.
"Is he boasting?" Bert asked. "Is he being charged because he is human?" Carmen asked.
Well, he is saying he is wise, and he is accepting his human wisdom, which is the one the gods agree that is the real human wisdom. And in that case, Carmen, I think he is being accuse for being a human!
It was Majo's morning meeting, and I would say, it was pretty fun! We watched three of her favorite videos of VSauce. The first one was What Color Is A Mirror? and this one explained how the mirror is some kind of a smart kind of white. It reflects all colors that are put in front of it. But they're a little bit green because they are imperfect.
Something really beautiful about these colors is that, one has to count the fact air when talking about colors, because our atmosphere lets us perceive certain kinds of colors because we of the traveling wavelengths.
Other videos we watched from the same channel. One that talked about how many times we type, and the other one about Dejavu. It is amazing how our brain reacts in certain unconscious forms (Consilience) and still, we are not aware of that happenings.
On the last chapters we got to explore new terms like WYSIATI. (What You See Is All There Is). This is used to explain that overconfidence that we humans suffer. That illusion of knowledge we tend to have. A lazy System 2 would recall to the known, instead of doubting the known.
Another term learnt was Mental Shotgun, it means that one is predisposed to compute more than the things we actually want to compute. For this, I might give the credit to the unconscious computations that Wilson speaks about in Consilience.
Since the impact of first impressions are great, one of the habits we want to improve is the habit of being amazed with the ordinary. That is what constitutes an extraordinary man.
Besides, I was really amazed in our matching skills with sounds. For this, I am asking myself the question: why do we react in certain forms toward a kind of musical scale or chord? Is there a language behind this?
Dylan told us something about how the frequencies are a tool for us to have a perception of this matter, this was really interesting: Primitive men designed their caves in a certain way that the waves perceived by the brain are below the 20Hz our ears perceive. For this, the cavemen just felt weird vibes, these were infrasonic vibes!!
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