« Euphonious Apophenia »
Sunday, October 24, 2010 1.
Unsolicited, reality streams.
If your ear’s already trained to the sound of reality, you hear nothing but random noise.
If, however, your ear is epistemologically* still new, you hear marvelous melodies of meaning.
2.
We all start out as equal.
But then we get preferred, selected, chosen.
In: the beautiful (as the mind’s eye sees it)! Out: the ugly!
3.
We keep trying to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio**.
We seek more signal, we seek less noise.
We find more discrimination, we find less harmony.
4.
Reverse the polarity of your preference:
Let the pattern-hunting mind find nothing but noise.
Heal thyself from your euphonious apophenia***.
5.
In: beautiful!
In: ugly!
Out: no difference!
*Epistemology, or theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? What do people know? How do we know what we know? (source: wiki)
**Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR): is a measure used in science and engineering to quantify how much a signal has been corrupted by noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power corrupting the signal. A ratio higher than 1:1 indicates more signal than noise. “Signal-to-noise ratio” is sometimes used informally to refer to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant data in a conversation or exchange. (source: wiki)
***Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad who defined it as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness.” (source: wiki)