http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/FW-Fractal-discussion-Landscape-bird-songs-tp7589163p7589193.html
Hi Glen,
What you describe as
flow or being
in the zone has been precisely
written and
talked about by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the Optimal Experience. No one will experience this quite the same way, as the flow experience requires both skill and challenge in an area where flow will occur. By his own statements, Einstein is said to have been in flow when he synthesized the concept of General and Special Relativity. At the time he was arguably very skilled in math and physics and, of course, very challenged.
However, I prefer Alfred North Whitehead's (et al.) concept that we are all always in flow. We just don't alway realize it. In his Process Philosophy, as conveyed in his Process and Reality, he writes about the two modes of perceptual experience: (1) Presentational Immediacy [the bits of data that get presented to us through our senses--or imagination] and (2) Causal Efficacy [the conditioning of the present by the past]. Curiously, Csikszentmihalyi says that we can only process data from our senses at a rate of 110 bit/sec. Reading this post likely will chew up 60 bits/sec. of that bandwidth. 😴
Why I bring this up at all is that Whitehead thinks that what integrates these two modes into the whole of what we perceive is Symbolic Reference. Symbolic reference is kind of like how we tag bits of our real-world immersion for building a largely symbolic but sustainable--for us individually--worldview. Most time these symbolic references are provided to us--inculcated--by others like with a religion or by our parents. Most are satisfied with that. In your friend's case, I believe it is possible that y' all were unsettling--challenging--his worldview ... or, he challenging yours.
Flow is not likely to be aroused in a social context. It is an inner state ... what the Greeks and Csikszentmihalyi would say is the entering into an alternate reality devoid of our sense of self. Your existence melts away in such a state. So our symbols get challenged or, perhaps, disappear as well. French social philosophers Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze also talk about symbolism, but it was at a social level. As far as I am concerned, Flow can't be achieved at the level of society ... but, boy I wish that that were not so. Csikszentmihalyi talks about the opposite of Flow that occurs on a social level that often occurs when society has been thrown into a chaos as with war or Trumpism. 🤔
Is mathematics invented or discovered? This is a perennial topic that arises within my philosophy group. It never really gets resolved, but how could it be? It is the ultimate of symbolic reference systems because of its precision in predicting the way the world manifests itself to our perception. This is not so true of our other symbols or abstractions. So are they any different? In a way, they are because mathematical symbols form from an axiom-driven language. But, notwithstanding Jerry Fodor's "built-in" syntactic language of thought, languages are human inventions based on metaphors [if you like George Lakoff]. Languages work among cultures because they are more or less conventional (acceptable) to a culture. The fact that they can be translated into other languages is because we are all immersed in the same reality. In this way, I tend to think of mathematics as invented. If you are a Platonist--a worldview--you will likely disagree.
As I often do, I kind of resonate with Vladimyr's thought, which you included in your post. It is very Csikszentmihalyi-est. I do think that simulations can lure us into thinking that they are an exact dynamic facsimile of the reality which they try to abstract into an analytical model. There are all kinds of things about simulations that can lead us astray. Fidelity is one thing, obviously. But, I think that the worst thing--and this is often the fate of a simulator because of time and funding--is when they get so complicated that no one understands the process for how the results were computed. This--like with many neural networks--is when the simulator just become an Oracle. This is kind of what happened with
Henry Markam's Blue Brain Project, building a simulation of something for which they didn't know the first principles. I think also this is what John Horgan wrote about concerning what was going on at the Santa Fe Institute in his
SA article
From Complexity to Perplexity.
But, as Vladimyr muses, maybe this is the best we can do ... and symbolic reference is what nature served up for us to cope, concerning what we are perceiving. But, as with all smart systems, a smart entity will always try to challenge and refine those symbols with continuous feedback--FLOW. However, in the larger scheme of things, it really doesn't matter if mathematics was invented or discovered. I mean, where did the concept of a hammer come from? 🤔
Cheers
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
by Dr. Strangelove