The Logic Off Topic list

--- In logic-ot@y..., GAmoore@a... wrote:
> Isn't it about time to change the title of this thread to "NLP"?

No. It's also about how culture has effect on science and mathematics. I find it very interesting how people, with different backgrounds, can talk about the same thing from a different angle. Let me be more explicit.
Mathematics, a field I know more about than other fields, uses a certain language to communicate ideas.
Psychologist and sociologists mostly talk about patterns to explain behaviours they observe.
NLP, put in a kinda New Age corner and which IMO fits the field of psychology, also has it's language.
As long as you don't play by the culture these fields are used to, you will have a hack of a time getting your ideas across. I'm thinking of how difficult it was for people to accept Einstein's ideas when they were used to Newtonian concepts.

IMO, the same is for NLP vs psychology. Mind you, I don't have a large knowledge of NLP, but I've seen it's effects when used as a tool. I'm talking personal experience here. I don't pretend that it works for everybody. Just the same as it is not easy to everybody to learning a foreign language.
Still, I think western psychology underestimates the power of NLP.

The same goes for a lot of 'alternative' solutions for problems in western science. What I find the most annoying is, as long as it doesn't fit into the current knowledge, scientist spend more time in trying to disprove something that is working, instead of trying to prove that it works. I understand the reason for this attitude in western science; it's the arrogance that is in the culture. It's like an attitude like "these guys can't be as smart as us, so we are going to prove them wrong". I can mention a whole bunch of alternative, non-western solutions to problems, like acupuncture, natural medicine, etc., which science spends more time saying that it's a crock, than trying to explain why it works.

Anyway, sometimes I find science to be disappointing. More to be about politics than solving of problems. Why not investigate what kind of effect music has on people? I know it has an effect on my mood. There has been some research on this with plants, AFAIK. Maybe there is something about that on humans out there?

Why is it so much more easier to understand the language of music than for example the language English? Is it maybe that music can be listened to without the knowledge of the double meanings that fe. words can have in the English language? You have the freedom of interpreting music without much rules; only rules you may have is that your ears and brain have to detect the frequencies and relate them to previously heard characteristic sounds.

This email was in a way inspired by something Marc Lindahl metioned in a mail a while back. He said that the representation of two differently sounding sounds could be the same. That was a real shock to me when I heard that. So there is no 1-on-1 mapping of hearing of sounds to wave representation. It started me thinking that a couple of things could be going on here:
1) Either the representation of waves is not complete, or
2) We who hear the sounds are contributing to the fact of hearing different sounds with our ears and brains, or
3) both

My guess is that it's alternative 3) that is at work here. I may be wrong here, but it doesn't matter, 'cause something is not complete here; the 'language' shows some inconsistencies here.
Maybe we have to re-think wave representaions or at least state under which assumptions the current wave representations are valid.
Any thoughts?
Yoonchi.