Hey everyone. I'm not sure what this post will be about yet, but I guess I'll get started by talking about Pi.
The first part of Pi was definitely well done. Aronofsky really has a talent for bringing all the artistic aspects of a film together. In that way it really reminded me of Requiem for a Dream (which everyone should watch at least once because it's insane).
The discussion of patterns was also very intriguing. It kind of brings up the distinction between the way people see patterns and the way a computer does. The human brain is extremely good at recognizing patterns (I mean this very generally, like recognizing a tree in a photograph), but it's interesting to think about which ones are real and which are misinterpretations. It's tricky because we can think independently about the information we're given to draw conclusions that aren't necessarily based on anything concrete. We can convince ourselves of things. On the other hand, a computer can only recognize a pattern that it's already been told exactly how to recognize. So it's very difficult for a computer to pick out a tree in a photograph. However, it's also harder for it to get sidetracked since it can't "convince itself" that a certain pattern that it hasn't been told about is important, like the number 216.
Just a random musing
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Patterns
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I agree with your comment, “We can convince ourselves of things.” We humans are meaning making machines. We will make anything mean something. Someone looks at us a certain way and we make it mean that they don’t like us, or that they are jealous of us, or maybe that they have indigestion. We are constantly making things mean something. That’s just what we do. Patterns are the same thing. We can make any pattern mean something too.
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