Comments on: Noise and nonsense

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:04:36 +0000

Mark – no, that was a tyop^HHpo.

By: Dave F

Dave F — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 13:06:48 +0000

Doesn’t this load of crap translate as “we need more academic jobs and we must publish?” Noise-shaping, incidentally, is used in digital recording, but don’t ask me to write a dense paragraph on it. Yes, I know you weren’t going to.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 25 Jan 2004 02:54:00 +0000

Scott, was this intentional?

If cognition is algorithmic, then comprehension needs to be synonymous with a kind of algorithmic compression, otherwise all we’re doing is memorising sequences uncomprehendingly - turing ourselves into nothing more than behaviourist drones.

By: Marco

Marco — Sat, 24 Jan 2004 05:32:08 +0000

Sorry, that repeated on me. rude noise

By: Marco

Marco — Sat, 24 Jan 2004 05:28:27 +0000

If cognition is algorithmic, then comprehension needs to be synonymous with a kind of algorithmic compression, otherwise all we’re doing is memorising sequences uncomprehendingly – turing ourselves into nothing more than behaviourist drones. Could one of the names of this algorithmic compression possibly be “narrative”?

By: Marco

Marco — Sat, 24 Jan 2004 05:27:54 +0000

By: robin green

robin green — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 23:32:49 +0000

No, I find it refreshingly honest in its self-referentiality! Would that other pompous nonsense-emitters be so honest…

By: sidereal

sidereal — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 19:57:38 +0000

“postmodern academicism continues to adopt theory as ballast” Please make it stop.

By: anon

anon — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:57:07 +0000

From the papers: “noise is noise noise is noise noise is noise noise is to me noise noise is to me noise noise is to me noise to me noise nose is to me noise nose is to me noise to me noise is noise to me an unprecedented unprecedented noise is to me an unprecedented noise is to me unprecedented harbringer an unprecedented harbringer of noise is noise is to me noise …” I guess I see how that is as good as the theoretical approach.

By: cd

cd — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 16:00:17 +0000

With regards to noise as “non-music”, I can only echo the immortal words of Masami Akita (better known as Merzbow): “If ‘noise’ means uncomfortable music, then pop music is noise to me.”

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:40:31 +0000

The most profound noise-music you will find is on the fantastic, newly opened Bleep website. (There’s a ‘play’ option so you can sample a lot without having to buy…)

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:29:14 +0000

Ever heard of ‘spread-spectrum’ communication? It’s a way to encode a signal so that it looks like noise. Basically, you spread the signal over a bandwidth that’s much larger than necessary. BTW, one of the inventors of the spread-spectrum method was Hedy Lamarr (yes, the actress), who, evidently, was beautiful and not a dope.

By: jeremy hunsinger

jeremy hunsinger — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:14:20 +0000

well, noise actually has some philosophical importance, especially in the philosophy of information… it might be worth your time to look at some of michel serres work on the topic, or to look up luciano floridi’s work which deals with it.

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:07:23 +0000

Damn! Another perfectly good bit of theory shot down just because it conflates several mathematical concepts with things that they have nothing to with. :^) Hmmm… I suppose it depends on what you think “expressed” expresses. If cognition is algorithmic, then comprehension needs to be synonymous with a kind of algorithmic compression, otherwise all we’re doing is memorising sequences uncomprehendingly – turing ourselves into nothing more than behaviourist drones. (As a sign of just how addicitive this sort of thing is, I can actually think of a serious cognitive science paper by Barsalou that heads in that direction.) To comprehend is to internalise, and since cognition is algorithmic, internalisation effectively entails compression. (Worse still, this is not only almost identical to the claims of a serious school of machine learning, it’s the school of machine learning that I’m paid to work in.) Thus, I might instead of saying “cannot be expressed algorithmically” have said “isn’t worth expressing algorithmically”, which is basically what you said, but brings us back into the very realm of aesthetic judgement that I think I was denying we ought to be in, if I am reading myself correctly. God, I had better stop before I find myself submitting a paper.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:37:16 +0000

Fantastic stuff, Scott, and a clear example of how a dense paragraph isn’t necessarily Bad Writing. But a minor slip from the master of Pedantry: Noise is merely that which cannot be expressed algorithmically Simple transcription is an algorithm, so you mean “cannot be expressed by an algorithm of shorter length than the original”. I think the rest goes through.