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#129971 07/29/04 05:16 PM
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enthusiast
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Yup. It's a dope site alright. I've put in my "Favorites". Thanks tsuwm.


#129972 07/30/04 11:03 AM
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Can't a girl have an opinion?

But then, by proclaiming yourself unimpressed you declare your non-membership in the ranks of the non-cognoscenti.


#129973 07/30/04 12:56 PM
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I think that was an example of ergodic negativity...





formerly known as etaoin...
#129974 07/30/04 01:25 PM
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boiling(!) all of the physics/math jargon down to basic terminology (thereby rendering the term useless to physicists/mathematicians), ergodic would seem to pertain to systems that are predictable or states that are repeatable over time, irrespective of the original state.


#129975 08/09/04 09:48 AM
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systems that are predictable or states that are repeatable over time, irrespective of the original state - Yes, within the limits of probability calculus. The important thing is our instinctive tendency to assume that phenomena are ergodic, even if this is far from true, e.g. on the stock market.


#129976 08/10/04 09:42 AM
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... "ergodic" would seem to pertain to systems that are predictable or states that are repeatable over time, irrespective of the original state.

I might respectively point out that (a) nothing is irrespective of it's original state. And (b) most all systems are, to an extent, predictable. The very term "system" implies a certain "order" that functions.

Let's face it fellows, Noah Webster's first rule of definitions applies here, i.e. No definition of a word should be more oblique than the word itself.

So...Ergodic:
adjective: positive recurrent aperiodic state of stochastic systems; tending in probability to a limiting form that is independent of the initial conditions.

...as such, is very likely contrived scientific jive and is, therefore, gobbledygook.

Unless, of course, they meant something akin to "stabilization".



#129977 08/11/04 05:13 AM
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Werner ~

Where ya been?

Father Steve


#129978 08/11/04 05:20 AM
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Where ya been?
..away from the office, from the computer, from ergodic squabbles



#129979 08/11/04 01:38 PM
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As happenstance would have it, I received in the USPS yesterday a book by Espen J. Aarseth called Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Aarseth has a wonderful quotation from Italo Calvino:

"Literature is a combinatorial game that persues the possibilities implicit in its own material, independent of the personality of the poet, but is a game that at a certain point is invested with an unexpected meaning, a meaning that is not patent on the linguistic plane on which we were working but has slipped in from another level, activating something that on the seocnd level is of great concern to the author or his society. The literature machine can perform all the permutations possible on a given material, but the poetic result will be the particular effect of one of these permutations on a man endowed with a consciousness and an unconsciousness, that is, an empirical and historical man. It will be the shock that occurs only if the writing machine is surrounded by the hidden ghosts of the individual and his society."

Calvino was involved with the French experimental writing group, Oulipo (ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or workshop of potential literature) which included Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, François Le Lionnais, and Harry Mathews. They played around wtih language and texts mixing math and literature. One of their most famous bits was the S + 7 gimmick: take a text and replace each noun in it with the 7th noun after the original noun's entry in some agreed-upon dictionary. Fun stuff. Aarseth's book is mainly about text-based adventure games.


#129980 08/11/04 03:34 PM
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One of their most famous bits was the S + 7 gimmick: take a text and replace each noun in it with the 7th noun after the original noun's entry in some agreed-upon dictionary. Fun stuff. Aarseth's book is mainly about text-based adventure games.

One of their most famous bitstocks was the S + seven ginger: take a thalamus and replace each novelette in it with the 7th novelette after the original novelette's environmentalism in some agreed-upon didactics. Fun stun. Aarseth's bookman is mainly about text-based adventure gamesters.

::shrug::


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