![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.conversiondiary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/7_quick_takes_sm1.jpg\" "\\"7_quick_takes_sm\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Happy Feast of All Saints!<\/em><\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/a>\u2014 1 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nThis week\u2019s quick takes theme is transposition, and there are few people as in love with stories and patterns as Douglas Hofstadter, author of G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid<\/a><\/em> and his recent work on analogy: Surfaces and Essences<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0In a recent interview with\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, he talked about what he sees as the heart of human intelligence:<\/p>\nCognition is recognition,\u201d he likes to say. He describes \u201cseeing as\u201d as the essential cognitive act: you see some lines as \u201can A,\u201d you see a hunk of wood as \u201ca table,\u201d you see a meeting as \u201can emperor-has-no-clothes situation\u201d and a friend\u2019s pouting as \u201csour grapes\u201d and a young man\u2019s style as \u201chipsterish\u201d and on and on ceaselessly throughout your day. That\u2019s what it means to understand. But how does understanding work? For three decades, Hofstadter and his students have been trying to find out, trying to build \u201ccomputer models of the fundamental mechanisms of thought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nAnd a tumblr user had an unexpected thrill of recognition when ze discovered that \u201cthe addition of \u201cHarry\u201d to almost any Plato quote makes it seem legitimately like a nugget of wisdom out of the mouth of Albus Dumbledore<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0Here are some of the blogger\u2019s alterations:<\/p>\nDeath is not the worst that can happen to men, Harry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHarry, good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it, Harry.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Note, this does\u00a0not<\/em> work for Nietzsche. \u00a0A few of my own attempts:<\/p>\n\u201cThe true man wants two things, Harry: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHarry, it is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFear is the mother of morality, Harry.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Fifty points to the house of anyone who works one of these into their fanfic.<\/p>\n
Fun fact: when my college debate group was coming up dry on debate topics, we\u2019d try just stealing Nietzsche quotes. \u00a0Turns out \u201cResolved: Christianity gave Eros Poison to drink\u201d is a pretty terrible choice but some of the others turned out better.<\/p>\n
<\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nA writer at\u00a0The New Inquiry<\/em> did an amusing job of reinterpretation when he decided to review the new DSM as a work of dystopian literature<\/a>.<\/p>\nThis is not to say that there is no setting, no plot, and no characterization. These elements are woven into the encyclopedia-form with extraordinary subtlety. The setting of the novel isn\u2019t a physical landscape but a conceptual one. Unusually for what purports to be a dictionary of madness, the story proper begins with a discussion of neurological impairments: autism, Rett\u2019s disorder, \u201cintellectual disability\u201d. The scene this prologue sets is one of a profoundly bleak view of human beings; one in which we hobble across an empty field, crippled by blind and mechanical forces whose workings are entirely beyond any understanding. This vision of humanity\u2019s predicament has echoes of Samuel Beckett at some of his more nihilistic moments \u2013 except that Beckett allows his tramps to speak for themselves, and when they do they\u2019re often quite cheerful. The sufferers of\u00a0DSM-5<\/em>, meanwhile, have no voice; they\u2019re only interrogated by a pitiless system of categorizations with no ability to speak back. As you read, you slowly grow aware that the book\u2019s real object of fascination isn\u2019t the various sicknesses described in its pages, but the sickness inherent in their arrangement.<\/p>\nWho, after all, would want to compile an exhaustive list of mental illnesses? The opening passages of\u00a0DSM-5<\/em>\u00a0give us a long history of the purported previous editions of the book and the endless revisions and fine-tunings that have gone into the work. This mad project is clearly something that its authors are fixated on to a somewhat unreasonable extent. In a retrospectively predictable ironic twist, this precise tendency is outlined in the book itself. The entry for obsessive-compulsive disorder with poor insight describes this taxonomical obsession in deadpan tones: \u201crepetitive behavior, the goal of which is [\u2026] to prevent some dreaded event or situation.\u201d Our narrator seems to believe that by compiling an exhaustive list of everything that might go askew in the human mind, this wrong state might somehow be overcome or averted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>\u2014 4 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nAnd, in an even more delightful transposition, after the husband and wife team at DarwinCatholic were piqued by an update of\u00a0Sense and Sensibility<\/em><\/a>, they started thinking about how to make the plot hold up in modern times<\/a>, especially when engagements aren\u2019t really binding. \u00a0I love what they came up with:<\/p>\nElinor Dashwood meets Edward Ferrar (the brother of John Dashwood\u2019s wife) and they are attracted to one another, but for reasons that do not become clear for a while he makes no move to enter into a relationship with her. In the book, it is eventually revealed that this is because he long ago entered into a secret engagement with Lucy Steele. He knows that if he admits to the engagement, he\u2019ll be disowned by his mother which will impoverish him, and he\u2019s since fallen out of love with her (and realizes that she doesn\u2019t really love him) but he\u2019s too honorable to break off the engagement with her (because, the nature of marriage at the time having strong financial aspects, Lucy has staked her economic future on this offer), so he\u2019s unavailable but can\u2019t talk about it.<\/p>\n
[\u2026]<\/p>\n
I wanted to come up with a reason why Edward could not ethically enter into a relationship with Elinor, and also couldn\u2019t tell her why. My solution is that Edward is a lawyer. He\u2019s been hired by Lucy Steele to investigate a possible legal action against the Dashwood company (intellectual property or something else fairly secrecy related such as that.) Edward has come to think that Lucy\u2019s case has no merit, but he\u2019s convinced that he\u2019d be accused of a conflict of interest if he started a personal relationship with Elinor while still representing Lucy, while he\u2019s afraid that if he dropped Lucy and started a relationship with Elinor, she\u2019d accuse him of violating confidentiality. Further, because of the nature of the case, he would compromise Lucy\u2019s case if he told Elinor the nature of his entanglement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Meanwhile, in stranger updating Austen news, someone is kickstartering an Austen MMORPG<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s quick takes theme is transposition, and there are few people as in love with stories and patterns as Douglas Hofstadter, author of G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid<\/a><\/em> and his recent work on analogy: Surfaces and Essences<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0In a recent interview with\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, he talked about what he sees as the heart of human intelligence:<\/p>\n Cognition is recognition,\u201d he likes to say. He describes \u201cseeing as\u201d as the essential cognitive act: you see some lines as \u201can A,\u201d you see a hunk of wood as \u201ca table,\u201d you see a meeting as \u201can emperor-has-no-clothes situation\u201d and a friend\u2019s pouting as \u201csour grapes\u201d and a young man\u2019s style as \u201chipsterish\u201d and on and on ceaselessly throughout your day. That\u2019s what it means to understand. But how does understanding work? For three decades, Hofstadter and his students have been trying to find out, trying to build \u201ccomputer models of the fundamental mechanisms of thought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And a tumblr user had an unexpected thrill of recognition when ze discovered that \u201cthe addition of \u201cHarry\u201d to almost any Plato quote makes it seem legitimately like a nugget of wisdom out of the mouth of Albus Dumbledore<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0Here are some of the blogger\u2019s alterations:<\/p>\n Death is not the worst that can happen to men, Harry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHarry, good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it, Harry.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Note, this does\u00a0not<\/em> work for Nietzsche. \u00a0A few of my own attempts:<\/p>\n \u201cThe true man wants two things, Harry: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHarry, it is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFear is the mother of morality, Harry.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fifty points to the house of anyone who works one of these into their fanfic.<\/p>\n Fun fact: when my college debate group was coming up dry on debate topics, we\u2019d try just stealing Nietzsche quotes. \u00a0Turns out \u201cResolved: Christianity gave Eros Poison to drink\u201d is a pretty terrible choice but some of the others turned out better.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n A writer at\u00a0The New Inquiry<\/em> did an amusing job of reinterpretation when he decided to review the new DSM as a work of dystopian literature<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is not to say that there is no setting, no plot, and no characterization. These elements are woven into the encyclopedia-form with extraordinary subtlety. The setting of the novel isn\u2019t a physical landscape but a conceptual one. Unusually for what purports to be a dictionary of madness, the story proper begins with a discussion of neurological impairments: autism, Rett\u2019s disorder, \u201cintellectual disability\u201d. The scene this prologue sets is one of a profoundly bleak view of human beings; one in which we hobble across an empty field, crippled by blind and mechanical forces whose workings are entirely beyond any understanding. This vision of humanity\u2019s predicament has echoes of Samuel Beckett at some of his more nihilistic moments \u2013 except that Beckett allows his tramps to speak for themselves, and when they do they\u2019re often quite cheerful. The sufferers of\u00a0DSM-5<\/em>, meanwhile, have no voice; they\u2019re only interrogated by a pitiless system of categorizations with no ability to speak back. As you read, you slowly grow aware that the book\u2019s real object of fascination isn\u2019t the various sicknesses described in its pages, but the sickness inherent in their arrangement.<\/p>\n Who, after all, would want to compile an exhaustive list of mental illnesses? The opening passages of\u00a0DSM-5<\/em>\u00a0give us a long history of the purported previous editions of the book and the endless revisions and fine-tunings that have gone into the work. This mad project is clearly something that its authors are fixated on to a somewhat unreasonable extent. In a retrospectively predictable ironic twist, this precise tendency is outlined in the book itself. The entry for obsessive-compulsive disorder with poor insight describes this taxonomical obsession in deadpan tones: \u201crepetitive behavior, the goal of which is [\u2026] to prevent some dreaded event or situation.\u201d Our narrator seems to believe that by compiling an exhaustive list of everything that might go askew in the human mind, this wrong state might somehow be overcome or averted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/a>\u2014 4 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And, in an even more delightful transposition, after the husband and wife team at DarwinCatholic were piqued by an update of\u00a0Sense and Sensibility<\/em><\/a>, they started thinking about how to make the plot hold up in modern times<\/a>, especially when engagements aren\u2019t really binding. \u00a0I love what they came up with:<\/p>\n Elinor Dashwood meets Edward Ferrar (the brother of John Dashwood\u2019s wife) and they are attracted to one another, but for reasons that do not become clear for a while he makes no move to enter into a relationship with her. In the book, it is eventually revealed that this is because he long ago entered into a secret engagement with Lucy Steele. He knows that if he admits to the engagement, he\u2019ll be disowned by his mother which will impoverish him, and he\u2019s since fallen out of love with her (and realizes that she doesn\u2019t really love him) but he\u2019s too honorable to break off the engagement with her (because, the nature of marriage at the time having strong financial aspects, Lucy has staked her economic future on this offer), so he\u2019s unavailable but can\u2019t talk about it.<\/p>\n [\u2026]<\/p>\n I wanted to come up with a reason why Edward could not ethically enter into a relationship with Elinor, and also couldn\u2019t tell her why. My solution is that Edward is a lawyer. He\u2019s been hired by Lucy Steele to investigate a possible legal action against the Dashwood company (intellectual property or something else fairly secrecy related such as that.) Edward has come to think that Lucy\u2019s case has no merit, but he\u2019s convinced that he\u2019d be accused of a conflict of interest if he started a personal relationship with Elinor while still representing Lucy, while he\u2019s afraid that if he dropped Lucy and started a relationship with Elinor, she\u2019d accuse him of violating confidentiality. Further, because of the nature of the case, he would compromise Lucy\u2019s case if he told Elinor the nature of his entanglement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, in stranger updating Austen news, someone is kickstartering an Austen MMORPG<\/a>.<\/p>\n