1. We have souls, but they’re a bunch of robots (strong AI).
2. We have souls, but they’re a bunch of quantum robots.
3. We don’t have souls, all is illusion.
4. We have souls, but they do not respect the laws physics.

I’m currently divided between 1 and 2, but leaning towards nº1.

  To the question “How can something with free will (us) be made out of lots of things without free will (atoms, cells) ?” one can retort with “How can something alive (a cell) be made of lots of things which are not alive (atoms) ?”. Well the answer to the second case will hardly cause much problems for most people. Atoms through a process of evolution have entered into complex structures, the organization of which is what we call life. Well, Daniel Dennett argues that the same is true of free will: cells have entered into very complex structures the net result of which is the emergence of consciousness and free will. 

 The main question of determinism vs free will is: If the the future is totally determined by the past (determinism), then how can we decide to do anything, how can we be moral agents ?

   Now, the exact meaning of the future being determined by the past is a tricky concept. What it actually means is that should we think of time like the timeline of Cubase, if we bring the cursor to a previous point and press play the same events would happen again. In that sense our actions are determined, that is, if I would bring the cursor of time one year back in time I would do the exact same things I did. Since I accept determinism, I believe this conclusion is correct. But the point is that we can never bring the cursor back, and “conditions can never be the same”, therefore it is for all practical purposes irrelevant the fact that if the cursor went back we would do the same, because those decisions we’re in fact our decisions, and what we are is caused by millions of causes such as the physics that governs the universe, the evolution on our planet, the social and cultural place we we’re born, our particular experiences. So it’s true that we are the net result of those causes, but one of the net results of those causes is the fact that we have consciousness, and in the parlance of Dennett, the ability to avoid things. Therefore things are not inevitable, since we can avoid them, although they are determined nonetheless. This argument is somewhat mind boggling, and I’m still trying to grasp it entirely.

Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition…

An army and navy represent the people’s toys. To make them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of toys. That was the purpose of the American government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made to feel the pride and glory of the United States.

source

Let’s say one has a data class MyCircle and a gui Class MyCircleGui which displays controls for this class.  The gui is constructed by calling aMyCircle.edit; 

MyCircle {

…

edit { ^MyCircleGui(this) }

}

Now, if I call  .edit again on a MyCircle I don’t want it to construct a new gui window if there is one already open: one must keep track of which windows are open. My solution to this problem was to have an IdentityDictionary as a class variable where I add the window of a MyCircleGui when the class is created and delete it when the window is closed.

MyCircle {

classvar <>instances;

*new{ |aMyCircle|

instances = instances ?? {IdentityDictionary.new};

if(instances.keys.includes(aMyCircle).not){

var view,window,flow;

window = Window(…)

// add guis to window here.

window.front;

window.onClose_{instances.removeAt(aMyCircle)}; instances.put(aMyCircle,window);

}

{ instances[aMyCircle].front }

}

*closeAll{

       instances.do{ |window| if(window.isClosed.not){window.close} }

}

…

edit { ^MyCircleGui(this) }

}

This takes care of the open windows, and if I want to close all the current open windows I just call MyCircleGui.closeAll.

The Yanomamö are a tribal people that live in the rain forest of the Amazon. They have a complicated mythology, with concepts of heaven and hell somewhat similar to christians. When a yonomamo dies he goes to  a place similar to purgatory  where he is asked if he was a good yanomamo, if he answer yes then he goes to heaven which consists of vilage similar to the one they leave in in this world, otherwise he goes to hell which consists of fire and the usual grim stuff. 

  An anthropologist once asked a yonomamo if he wasn’t worried of going to hell. He answered that it didn’t worry him the least, because when the moment came after dying he would simply lie and say he was a good yanomamo, thus entering heaven. If only christians would learn from the yanomamo…

Quote of anonymous protester in Burma in 2007, as seen in BurmaVJ.

A nice guide on how to setup an ambisonics based project in reaper. Btw, reaper 3, which supports multichannel is just out.

   The Juǀʼhoansi are a nomadic people living in the kalahari desert. Their society model is a band, with no permanent authority figures and without role specialization. The only divide is terms of taks is between women and man, women gatherers (which amount to 70% of the calorie intake of the group) and men hunt. In the Juǀʼhoansi there is no hunger, it takes about 2 hours to collect enough food to last for one week. Another interesting fact is that when hunters return with the meat, and since the meat is a valuable item for the band, people don’t show any gratitude towards the hunters and instead claim that the meat is not good enough or not in sufficient quantity. This is to put the hunters in their place, and avoid that they gain a higher role in society.

   Marshal Sahlins, author of the “original affluent society” theory argues that hunter-gatherers societies were affluent, and the switch to agriculture did not bring more affluence, it actually brought less affluence. So why would humans change to a new type of society which brings less resources to the people ? It is argued that it was because in order to have leadership it was needed to have sedentary people, and that therefore this change was because of political motives. It wasn’t more advanced societies that needed political leadership in order to appear, but it was leaders that needed a higher density of static population to be able to ascertain their authority. Archeological evidence demonstrates that early agriculture societies had worse health then hunter-gatherers, thus disproving the long held hypothesis that agriculture was adapted because it provided much more food with less work.

It appears I’m bound for glory… after the notority of (unknowingly) being the frontpage for the STRP festival webpage por weeks, It appears my gear is now decorating the sonospace blog.

In what regards music making.

Analog

Advantages:

• Inherent non-linearities of real world physics, electro-magnetics, mechanics, create unexpected results and rich sounds.
• Complex sounds with little effort.
• Usually analog devices have a direct control mechanism included (keyboard, faders, knobs) and operate “out of the box” , allowing for quick experimentation and (more or less) intuitive exploration.
• Don’t crash and don’t break that easily.
• Hackable: it’s possible to operate out of the designed specs.
• Future proof: just connect to 220 volts and it’s working 100 years from now (at least if you took good care of it).

Disavantages:

• Heavy, expensive, difficult to substitute if broken. Non-portable.
• Results cannot  often be easily replicated (might be a good thing depending on the objective).
• Limited control. Either because of two arms –  100 knobs ratio problem or because of having to patch 100 cables or splice 10000 segments of 1 second of tape takes a lot of time, and limits experimentation of new approaches. 

Digital/Computer

Advantages:

• possibilities are only limited by cpu power and programming capabilities. 100 sine-waves take the same time to “patch” as 1 (not so true in visual programming languages that try to emulate the visual paradigm of analog devices).
• Instant recall of a setup.
• Very portable. A recent powerful laptop can be taken anywhere easily, great for touring, and general traveling.
• Control can be very very complex, much more than anything possible in analog. 

Disadvantages:

• Complex sounds are quite difficult to obtain. Without care and expertise, digital synthesis sounds sterile and repetitive.
• Usually doesn’t operate out of the box. Things have to be setup, programs started, presets recalled, drivers loaded, sound cards selected, midi devices connected, etc.
• Cannot be easily hacked to operate out of the range where it was designed to operate. Randomly changing code will just crash the program, not get more interesting results.  
• Not future proof: high danger of  software becoming obsolete. Running a patch 10 years from now will be no easy task. 

Closed boxed digital devices seem to me to  join the bad parts of the analog world (poor control, not extendable, etc) with the bad parts of computer/digital (not very complex sound material), but they do operate out of the box, are more future proof and more portable than analog equivalents, and off-course sometimes that’s exactly what is needed in a concert situation or for intuitive approaches.

In terms of sound reproduction I don’t really see any advantages of analog vs digital, the best ad-da converters out there are basically transparent and inaudible, and if one wants the “sound” of vinyl or tape I would consider that part of the music making process and not of the sound reproduction.

Simple sound material with complex control VS complex sound materia with simple control

or…

none of the above.