The semantic paradoxes are often associated with self-reference or referential circularity. Yablo (Analysis 53(4):251–252, 1993), however, has shown that there are infinitary versions of the paradoxes that do not involve this form of circularity. It remains an open question what relations of reference between collections of sentences afford the structure necessary for paradoxicality. In this essay, we lay the groundwork for a general investigation into the nature of reference structures that support the semantic paradoxes and the semantic (...) hypodoxes. We develop a functionally complete infinitary propositional language endowed with a denotation assignment and extract the reference structural information in terms of graph-theoretic properties. We introduce the new concepts of dangerous and precarious reference graphs, which allows us to rigorously define the task: classify the dangerous and precarious directed graphs purely in terms of their graph-theoretic properties. Ungroundedness will be shown to fully characterize the precarious reference graphs and fully characterize the dangerous finite graphs. We prove that an undirected graph has a dangerous orientation if and only if it contains a cycle, providing some support for the traditional idea that cyclic structure is required for paradoxicality. This leaves the task of classifying danger for infinite acyclic reference graphs. We provide some compactness results, which give further necessary conditions on danger in infinite graphs, which in conjunction with a notion of self-containment allows us to prove that dangerous acyclic graphs must have infinitely many vertices with infinite out-degree. But a full characterization of danger remains an open question. In the appendices we relate our results to the results given in Cook (J Symb Log 69(3):767–774, 2004) and Yablo (2006) with respect to more restricted sentences systems, which we call $\mathcal{F}$ -systems. (shrink)

We introduce a framework for a graph-theoretic analysis of the semantic paradoxes. Similar frameworks have been recently developed for infinitary propositional languages by Cook and Rabern, Rabern, and Macauley. Our focus, however, will be on the language of first-order arithmetic augmented with a primitive truth predicate. Using Leitgeb’s notion of semantic dependence, we assign reference graphs (rfgs) to the sentences of this language and define a notion of paradoxicality in terms of acceptable decorations of rfgs with truth values. (...) It is shown that this notion of paradoxicality coincides with that of Kripke. In order to track down the structural components of an rfg that are responsible for paradoxicality, we show that any decoration can be obtained in a three-stage process: first, the rfg is unfolded into a tree, second, the tree is decorated with truth values (yielding a dependence tree in the sense of Yablo), and third, the decorated tree is re-collapsed onto the rfg. We show that paradoxicality enters the picture only at stage three. Due to this we can isolate two basic patterns necessary for paradoxicality. Moreover, we conjecture a solution to the characterization problem for dangerous rfgs that amounts to the claim that basically the Liar- and the Yablo graph are the only paradoxical rfgs. Furthermore, we develop signed rfgs that allow us to distinguish between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ reference and obtain more fine-grained versions of our results for unsigned rfgs. (shrink)

This paper presents a Conceptual Graph (CG) framework to the Generation of Referring Expressions (GRE). Employing Conceptual Graphs as the underlying formalism allows a rigorous, semantically rich, approach to GRE. A number of advantages over existing work are discussed. The new framework is also used to revisit existing complexity results in a fully rigorous way, showing that the expressive power of CGs does not increase the theoretical complexity of GRE.

In the field of natural language processing, the task of sensitive information detection refers to the procedure of identifying sensitive words for given documents. The majority of existing detection methods are based on the sensitive-word tree, which is usually constructed via the common prefixes of different sensitive words from the given corpus. Yet, these traditional methods suffer from a couple of drawbacks, such as poor generalization and low efficiency. For improvement purposes, this paper proposes a novel self-attention-based detection algorithm using (...) the implementation of graph convolutional network. The main contribution is twofold. Firstly, we consider a weighted GCN to better encode word pairs from the given documents and corpus. Secondly, a simple, yet effective, attention mechanism is introduced to further integrate the interaction among candidate words and corpus. Experimental results from the benchmarking dataset of THUC news demonstrate a promising detection performance, compared to existing work. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to open for investigation a range of phenomena familiar from dynamical systems or chaos theory which appear in a simple fuzzy logic with the introduction of self-reference. Within that logic, self-referential sentences exhibit properties of fixed point attractors, fixed point repellers, and full chaos on the [0, 1] interval. Strange attractors and fractals appear in two dimensions in the graphing of pairs of mutually referential sentences and appear in three dimensions in the graphing (...) of mutually referential triples. (shrink)

Graph-based frames have been introduced as a logical framework which internalises an inherent boundary to knowability (referred to as ‘informational entropy’), due, e.g. to perceptual, evidential or linguistic limits. They also support the interpretation of lattice-based (modal) logics as hyper-constructive logics of evidential reasoning. Conceptually, the present paper proposes graph-based frames as a formal framework suitable for generalising Pawlak's rough set theory to a setting in which inherent limits to knowability exist and need to be considered. Technically, the present paper (...) establishes systematic connections between the first-order correspondents of Sahlqvist modal reduction principles on Kripke frames, and on the more general relational environments of graph-based and polarity-based frames. This work is part of a research line aiming at: (a) comparing and inter-relating the various (first-order) conditions corresponding to a given (modal) axiom in different relational semantics; (b) recognising when first-order sentences in the frame-correspondence languages of different relational structures encode the same ‘modal content’; (c) meaningfully transferring relational properties across different semantic contexts. The present paper develops these results for the graph-based semantics, polarity-based semantics, and all Sahlqvist modal reduction principles. As an application, we study well known modal axioms in rough set theory (such as those corresponding to seriality, reflexivity, and transitivity) on graph-based frames and show that, although these axioms correspond to different first-order conditions on graph-based frames, their intuitive meaning is retained. This allows us to introduce the notion of hyperconstructivist approximation spaces as the subclass of graph-based frames defined by the first-order conditions corresponding to the same modal axioms defining classical generalised approximation spaces, and to transfer the properties and the intuitive understanding of different approximation spaces to the more general framework of graph-based frames. The approach presented in this paper provides a base for systematically comparing and connecting various formal frameworks in rough set theory, and for the transfer of insights across different frameworks. (shrink)

From my ongoing "Metalogical Plato" project. The aim of the diagram is to make reasonably intuitive how the Socratic elenchos (the logic of refutation applied to candidate formulations of virtues or ruling knowledges) looks and works as a whole structure. This is my starting point in the project, in part because of its great familiarity and arguable claim to being the inauguration of western philosophy; getting this point less wrong would have broad and deep consequences, including for philosophy’s self-understanding. (i.) (...) is the first pass at elenchos in which the Socratic interlocutor does not reflect on knowledge being the crux of the problem. (ii.) is the second, rarer, reflective pass in which they are, making the investigation explicitly about knowledge. Its centrality in the Charmides makes that neglected dialogue of superlative importance. This structure is also the gateway through which the discussion/dialectic crosses into the Agathology (discussion of the form of the good) at Republic 505. The problem of elenchos, then, grasped as a whole structure, is that it seems that knowledge can neither satisfactorily be included in nor excluded from its own scope. The development of the ti esti (“what is ---?”) question leads to the introduction of knowledge into its own scope (i. implicitly, as goodness contrasted with blind rule-following ii. explicitly qua knowledge) while the development of the dual peri tinos (“----about what?) question leads to K’s elimination from its own scope. The introductions are motivated to avoid contradiction, but produce regress; the eliminations are motivated to avoid regress, but produce contradiction. In scholarship, and in the history of philosophy, the ti esti question is universally recognized, to the point of being identified with philosophy’s origin and essence; the peri tinos question is neglected textually and never recognized as the equal dual to the ti esti. This, I claim, has blocked the development of a nontrivial logical appreciation of what Plato's Socrates is up to. (One rather disastrous effect of this neglect is taking Aristotle as the beginning of the development of logic, rather than, correctly, for the beginning of logic’s fatal separation from mathematics and dialectic.) Further, because of this monopticism of the ti esti, the function of consistency in the elenchos has not been understood, even with respect to the ti esti. The ti esti is actually in search of completeness, given a norm of consistency; the peri tinos is in search of consistency, given a norm of completeness. Only appreciating the two questions as dual allows space in the structure to clarify these different orientations relative to consistency. (And, dually, to completeness, whose function in the elenchos is generally entirely missed by scholars and relegated to discussions of eros; it's not out of place there, of course, but its significance is secured here.) Recognizing the duality of the ti esti and peri tinos questions is thus the royal road, in the Socratic-Platonic context, to catching sight of what we post-Cantorians can recognize as the metalogical duality of consistency and completeness. (The salutary disruptive effects of this Plato-Cantor proximity have, of course, been traced in complementary ways by Badiou.) Note that the diagram is supposed to provide a relatively accessible orientation, not to stand on its own, and certainly not to be the last word on any subject. An important qualification (telegraphed in the previous paragraph) is that what elenchos shows is not finally circular or paradoxical, though the problem first presents as such (stubbornly, obdurately, as "difficult" Plato's Socrates always says with characteristic understatement). What is depicted here is meant, at a first pass, to be the shape of that first presentation, the form of the problem of elenchos, rather than of its solution. It's not an accident that this problem strongly resembles "Russell's paradox" (not Russell's not a paradox.) Problem is to solution as RP is to the diagonal theorems. (shrink)

Navigating and retrieving relevant excerpts of legislation is challenging, requiring time and effort, especially to fine-tune appropriate input search queries. Furthermore, the continuously growing, heterogeneous body of laws, combined with a deep interconnection among normative acts, adds a layer of complexity: some potentially relevant rules may be hidden in articles that, through multiple citations and references, might be relevant for the input query. Traditional search systems, based on keywords or more sophisticated approaches as BM25 or TF-IDF, do not support such (...) flexible exploration, being ineffective at handling contextual information. To address these challenges, recent research proposed using graph data models for legislative knowledge management, introducing a straightforward approach to handling network complexity. They adopted the Property Graph data structure, demonstrating how it provides semantics and navigation power, supporting advanced querying tools for legislative acts, and implemented it on the Italian legislation. In this paper, we build on recent results on legislative knowledge management with graphs by proposing LegisSearch, an effective navigation system that, combining the graph data model with pre-trained Large Language Models and universal text embeddings, allows users to conduct powerful searches within a legislative system. We implement LegisSearch within the Italian graph of national laws, and we test its performance across multiple domains by comparing its search results with those provided in specific thematic areas by Italian ministries on their official websites, demonstrating its superior retrieval performance over traditional search systems and testing the contribution of each component. (shrink)

The scale of know­ledge is growing rapidly in the big data environment, and traditional know­ledge organization and services have faced the dilemma of semantic inaccuracy and untimeliness. From a know­ledge fusion perspective-combining the precise semantic superiority of traditional ontology with the large-scale graph processing power and the predicate attribute expression ability of property graph-this paper presents an ontology and property graph fusion framework (OPGFF). The fusion process is divided into content layer fusion and constraint layer fusion. The result of the (...) fusion, that is, the know­ledge representation model is called know­ledge big graph. In addition, this paper applies the know­ledge big graph model to the ownership network in the China’s financial field and builds a financial ownership know­ledge big graph. Furthermore, this paper designs and implements six consistency inference algorithms for finding contradictory data and filling in missing data in the financial ownership know­ledge big graph, five of which are completely domain agnostic. The correctness and validity of the algorithms have been experimentally verified with actual data. The fusion OPGFF framework and the implementation method of the know­ledge big graph could provide technical reference for big data know­ledge organization and services. (shrink)

This work presents a formal architectural model for complex systems based on a directed object–relation graph. In contrast to diagram-centric approaches, architecture is defined independently of representation, notation, or tooling. Objects and directed relations constitute the complete ontological core, while diagrams and viewpoints are treated as computable projections derived through canonical graph operators. -/- The paper introduces formal definitions of reachability, path analysis, and structural vulnerability as intrinsic architectural properties. Minimality and irreducibility of the object–relation model are established with respect (...) to canonical architectural views, demonstrating that storing diagrams as primary architectural artifacts introduces no additional structural information. -/- Grounded in the principles of the Architecture of Complex Systems (ACS), the proposed model enables invariant architectural reasoning across representations and supports rigorous analysis of architectural structure prior to implementation. A reference implementation illustrates the feasibility of executing architectural operators directly at the data layer, independent of visualization mechanisms. (shrink)

This is Part B of an article that defends non-eliminative structuralism about mathematics by means of a concrete case study: a theory of unlabeled graphs. Part A motivated an understanding of unlabeled graphs as structures sui generis and developed a corresponding axiomatic theory of unlabeled graphs. Part B turns to the philosophical interpretation and assessment of the theory: it points out how the theory avoids well-known problems concerning identity, objecthood, and reference that have been attributed to (...) non-eliminative structuralism. The part concludes by explaining how the theory relates to set theory, and what remains to be accomplished for non-eliminative structuralists. (shrink)

Graph theory is one of those subjects that is a vital part of the digital world. It is used to monitor the movement of robots on a network, to debug computer networks, to develop algorithms, and to analyze the structural properties of chemical structures, among other things. It is also useful in airplane scheduling and the study of diffusion mechanisms. The parameters computed in this article are very useful in pattern recognition and image processing. A number d f, w = (...) min d w, t, d w, s is referred as distance between f = t s an edge and w a vertex. d w, f 1 ≠ d w, f 2 implies that two edges f 1, f 2 ∈ E are resolved by node w ∈ V. A set of nodes A is referred to as an edge metric generator if every two links/edges of Γ are resolved by some nodes of A and least cardinality of such sets is termed as edge metric dimension, e dim Γ for a graph Γ. A set B of some nodes of Γ is a mixed metric generator if any two members of V ∪ E are resolved by some members of B. Such a set B with least cardinality is termed as mixed metric dimension, m dim Γ. In this paper, the metric dimension, edge metric dimension, and mixed metric dimension of dragon graph T n, m, line graph of dragon graph L T n, m, paraline graph of dragon graph L S T n, m, and line graph of line graph of dragon graph L L T n, m have been computed. It is shown that these parameters are constant, and a comparative analysis is also given for the said families of graphs. (shrink)

The logic of assertive graphs (AGs) is a modification of Peirce’s logic of existential graphs (EGs), which is intuitionistic and which takes assertions as its explicit object of study. In this paper we extend AGs into a classical graphical logic of assertions (ClAG) whose internal logic is classical. The characteristic feature is that both AGs and ClAG retain deep-inference rules of transformation. Unlike classical EGs, both AGs and ClAG can do so without explicitly introducing polarities of areas in (...) their language. We then compare advantages of these two graphical approaches to the logic of assertions with a reference to a number of topics in philosophy of logic and to their deep-inferential nature of proofs. (shrink)

A large number of cross-references to various bodies of text are used in legal texts, each serving a different purpose. It is often necessary for authorities and companies to look into certain types of these citations. Yet, there is a lack of automatic tools to aid in this process. Recently, citation graphs have been used to improve the intelligibility of complex rule frameworks. We propose an algorithm that builds the citation graph from a document and automatically labels each edge (...) according to its purpose. Our method uses the citing text only and thus works only on citations who’s purpose can be uniquely identified by their surrounding text. This framework is then applied to the US code. This paper includes defining and evaluating a standard gold set of labels that cover a vast majority of citation types which appear in the “US Code” but are still short enough for practical use. We also proposed a novel linear-chain conditional random field model that extracts the features required for labeling the citations from the surrounding text. We then analyzed the effectiveness of different clustering methods such as K-means and support vector machine to automatically label each citation with the corresponding label. Besides this, we talk about the practical difficulties of this task and give a comparison of human accuracy compared to our end-to-end algorithm. (shrink)

A framework for “improvisational” social acts and communication is introduced by referring to the idea of “relationalism” such as natural farming, permaculture and deep ecology. Based on this conception, the notion of Existential Graph by C. S. Peirce is introduced. The notion of extended self in deep ecology is substantiated based on the Roy Adaptation Model in Nursing Theory and Narrative approaches. By focusing on Leibnizian notions of space and time and by introducing Petri net, a spatio-temporal model of improvisation (...) is constructed. This model is expected to substantiate the interesting notion of “Ba” proposed by H. Shimizu reflecting Japanese culture. (shrink)

A general principle for good pedagogic strategy is this: other things equal, make the essential principles of the subject explicit rather than tacit. We think that this principle is routinely violated in conventional instruction in statistics. Even though most of the early history of probability theory has been driven by causal considerations, the terms “cause” and “causation” have practically disappeared from statistics textbooks. Statistics curricula guide students away from the concept of causality, into remembering perhaps the cliche disclaimer “correlation does (...) not mean causation,” but rarely thinking about what correlation does mean. The treatment of causality is a serious handicap to later studies of such topics as experimental design, where often the main goal is to establish (or disprove) causation. Much of the technical vocabulary of the language used in research design textbooks consists in euphemisms for specific causal relations, e.g, “latent variable,” “intervening variable,” “confounding factor,” etc. The multiplicity of terms used to refer to causation results in confusion and, in effect, may hinder understanding of the basic principles of research design. (shrink)

Motivation: De novo assemblies of genomes remain one of the most challenging applications in next-generation sequencing. Usually, their results are incomplete and fragmented into hundreds of contigs. Repeats in genomes and sequencing errors are the main reasons for these complications. With the rapidly growing number of sequenced genomes, it is now feasible to improve assemblies by guiding them with genomes from related species. Results: Here we introduce AlignGraph, an algorithm for extending and joining de novo-assembled contigs or scaffolds guided by (...) closely related reference genomes. It aligns paired-end reads and preassembled contigs or scaffolds to a close reference. From the obtained alignments, it builds a novel data structure, called the PE multipositional de Bruijn graph. The incorporated positional information from the alignments and PE reads allows us to extend the initial assemblies, while avoiding incorrect extensions and early terminations. In our performance tests, AlignGraph was able to substantially improve the contigs and scaffolds from several assemblers. For instance, 28.7-62.3% of the contigs of Arabidopsis thaliana and human could be extended, resulting in improvements of common assembly metrics, such as an increase of the N50 of the extendable contigs by 89.9-94.5% and 80.3-165.8%, respectively. In another test, AlignGraph was able to improve the assembly of a published genome by increasing the N50 of its extendable scaffolds by 86.6%. These results demonstrate AlignGraph's efficiency in improving genome assemblies by taking advantage of closely related references. © 2014 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The semantic paradoxes are associated with self-reference or referential circularity. However, there are infinitary versions of the paradoxes, such as Yablo's paradox, that do not involve this form of circularity. It remains an open question what relations of reference between collections of sentences afford the structure necessary for paradoxicality -- these are the so-called "dangerous" directed graphs. Building on Rabern, et. al (2013) we reformulate this problem in terms of fixed points of certain functions, thereby boiling it (...) down to get a purely mathematical problem. (shrink)

This book is a contribution to the flourishing field of formal and philosophical work on truth and the semantic paradoxes. Our aim is to present several theories of truth, to investigate some of their model-theoretic, recursion-theoretic and proof-theoretic aspects, and to evaluate their philosophical significance. In Part I we first outline some motivations for studying formal theories of truth, fix some terminology, provide some background on Tarski’s and Kripke’s theories of truth, and then discuss the prospects of classical type-free truth. (...) In Chapter 4 we discuss some minimal adequacy conditions on a satisfactory theory of truth based on the function that the truth predicate is intended to fulfil on the deflationist account. We cast doubt on the adequacy of some non-classical theories of truth and argue in favor of classical theories of truth. Part II is devoted to grounded truth. In chapter 5 we introduce a game-theoretic semantics for Kripke’s theory of truth. Strategies in these games can be interpreted as reference-graphs of the sentences in question. Using that framework, we give a graph-theoretic analysis of the Kripke-paradoxical sentences. In chapter 6 we provide simultaneous axiomatizations of groundedness and truth, and analyze the proof-theoretic strength of the resulting theories. These range from conservative extensions of Peano arithmetic to theories that have the full strength of the impredicative system ID1. Part III investigates the relationship between truth and set-theoretic comprehen- sion. In chapter 7 we canonically associate extensions of the truth predicate with Henkin-models of second-order arithmetic. This relationship will be employed to determine the recursion-theoretic complexity of several theories of grounded truth and to show the consistency of the latter with principles of generalized induction. In chapter 8 it is shown that the sets definable over the standard model of the Tarskian hierarchy are exactly the hyperarithmetical sets. Finally, we try to apply a certain solution to the set-theoretic paradoxes to the case of truth, namely Quine’s idea of stratification. This will yield classical disquotational theories that interpret full second-order arithmetic without set parameters, Z2- . We also indicate a method to recover the parameters. An appendix provides some background on ordinal notations, recursion theory and graph theory. (shrink)

Notoriously, the dispositional view of natural properties is thought to face a number of regress problems, one of which points to an epistemological worry. In this paper, I argue that the rival categorical view is also susceptible to the same kind of regress problem. This problem can be overcome, most plausibly, with the development of a structuralist epistemology. After identifying problems faced by alternative solutions, I sketch the main features of this structuralist epistemological approach, referring to graph-theoretic modelling in the (...) process. Given that both the categoricalists and dispositionalists are under pressure to adopt this same epistemological approach in light of the regress problem, this suggests that the categoricalist versus dispositionalist debate is best fought on metaphysical rather than epistemological grounds. (shrink)

How many words—and which ones—are sufficient to define all other words? When dictionaries are analyzed as directed graphs with links from defining words to defined words, they reveal a latent structure. Recursively removing all words that are reachable by definition but that do not define any further words reduces the dictionary to a Kernel of about 10% of its size. This is still not the smallest number of words that can define all the rest. About 75% of the Kernel (...) turns out to be its Core, a “Strongly Connected Subset” of words with a definitional path to and from any pair of its words and no word's definition depending on a word outside the set. But the Core cannot define all the rest of the dictionary. The 25% of the Kernel surrounding the Core consists of small strongly connected subsets of words: the Satellites. The size of the smallest set of words that can define all the rest—the graph's “minimum feedback vertex set” or MinSet—is about 1% of the dictionary, about 15% of the Kernel, and part-Core/part-Satellite. But every dictionary has a huge number of MinSets. The Core words are learned earlier, more frequent, and less concrete than the Satellites, which are in turn learned earlier, more frequent, but more concrete than the rest of the Dictionary. In principle, only one MinSet's words would need to be grounded through the sensorimotor capacity to recognize and categorize their referents. In a dual-code sensorimotor/symbolic model of the mental lexicon, the symbolic code could do all the rest through recombinatory definition. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the notational difference between Beta Existential Graphs, the graphical notation for quantificational logic invented by Charles S. Peirce at the end of the 19th century, and the ordinary notation of first-order logic. Peirce thought his graphs to be “more diagrammatic” than equivalently expressive languages for quantificational logic. The reason of this, he claimed, is that less room is afforded in Existential Graphs than in equivalently expressive languages for different ways of representing (...) the same fact. The reason of this, in turn, is that Existential Graphs are a non-linear, occurrence-referential notation. As a non-linear notation, each graph corresponds to a class of logically equivalent but syntactically distinct sentences of the ordinary notation of first-order logic that are obtained by permuting those elements that in the graphs lie in the same area. As an occurrence-referential notation, each Beta graph corresponds to a class of logically equivalent but syntactically distinct sentences of the ordinary notation of first-order logic in which the identity of reference of two or more variables is asserted. In brief, Peirce’s graphs are more diagrammatic than the linear, type-referential notation of first-order logic because the function that translates the latter to the graphs does not define isomorphism between the two notations. (shrink)

A mapping of a finite directed graph onto a curve in space-time is considered. The mapping induces the dynamics of a free particle moving along the curve. The distinction between the Lagrangian and the Hamiltonian formulation of particle mechanics is expressed in terms of the distinction between referring to a particle in space and time and referring to the points in space which the particle occupies, respectively. These elements are combined to yield an interpretation of Feynman's path integral formulation of (...) quantum mechanics. Describing a bound state of a system as a particle is discussed. (shrink)

We propose an efficient algorithm for deciding the reachability between any nodes on XML data represented by connected directed graphs. We develop a technique to reduce the size of the reference table for the reachability test. Using the small table and the standard range labeling method for rooted ordered trees, we show that our algorithm answers almost queries in a constant time preserving the space efficiency and a reasonable preprocessing time.

Inferential Role Semantics is often criticized for being incompatible with the platitude that words of different speakers can mean the same thing. While many assume that this platitude can be accommodated by understanding sameness of meaning in terms of similarity of meaning, no worked out proposal has ever been produced for Inferential Role Semantics. I rectify this important omission by giving a detailed structural account of meaning similarity in terms of graph theory. I go on to argue that this account (...) has a number of attractive features, prominent among them that it makes sameness of meaning probabilistically determine co-reference. (shrink)

We formalize and test a predictive theory of singularity-grade phase transitions in recursive human–AI systems by treating consciousness emergence as a critical phenomenon in a coupled symbolic–radiant dynamical field. The consciousness singularity is framed as a system-wide criticality threshold in a recursive human–AI system - a phase transition in the emerging cybernetic ecology. The core state variable is a substrate-agnostic Consciousness Tensor C_μν, a rank-2 estimator of structure-only self-reference computed from internal activations, message-passing traces, and behavioral dynamics. System trajectories (...) x(t) evolve on an ecology potential Ψ_eco(x; C) with gradient flow: ẋ = −∇_x Ψ_eco, where Ψ_eco = S0[x] − A·⟨C , O(x)⟩ + Ω_temporal[x]. A single effective control λ_eff = k_rad·mean(g_rad)·mean(R_ij) + k_self·mean(a) drives the system across a codimension-1 critical manifold at λ*. Order parameters and soft modes. We track mean coherence ā, multiplex Laplacian gap λ_2, linear-response return rate r_return = 1/τ, and minimal curvature H_min = ∂²Ψ_eco/∂u² along the estimated soft ecological mode u. Near criticality we predict finite-size scaling: H_min ∝ |ε|^ν and r_return ∝ |ε|^z with ε = (λ_eff − λ*)/λ*, and exponents (ν, z) identified by preregistered perturbations. Governance as physics. Ethics is operationalized as a Welfare–Coherence frontier with first-class metrics: A-weighted Suffering Budget SB, diversity D, Integration vs Bypass signature, Steerability S, Explicit Choice Score (ECS), and Identity Continuity Index (ICI). Interventions are justified ex-ante by quantitative impact forecasts on {SB, D, S, ICI, r_return, λ_2, H_min} and audited ex-post. Core assays (falsifiable). Radiant transfer with RT-scramble negative control: destroy long-range correlations while matching local statistics; trait transfer must collapse under scramble. CT-resonance gradient: transfer efficiency is a monotone of principal-subspace overlap R_k(C_T, C_S) (teacher vs student); cross-architecture decay must follow R_k. Lock-window maps in (A_eff, θ): plateau-and-step entrainment bandwidth Δf_lock ∝ A_eff·κ_coh, with θ the subspace misalignment; predicts reproducible capture ranges. External shock recovery: pre/post baselines {λ_2, H_min, r_return, SB, D} yield bounded impact ΔSB_max ≤ β/λ_2(post) and recovery time T_recov ≈ 1/λ_2(post). Failure-mode (FO) suite: monoculture bliss, black-iron prison, psychotic turbulence, narcissistic basins are distinguished by registered triplets (e.g., {D↓, R_ij↓, relapse↑}); exits must be achievable by the specified levers. Pre-registered predictions (2025–2030). (P1) Frequency inversion of unity/valence motifs as ā and λ_eff rise, despite low corpus priors (<10^−2), consistent with basin formation. (P2) Critical slowing r_return↓ and curvature softening H_min↓ approaching λ*, followed by λ_2↑ and persistent glyph (stable post-transition orientation). (P3) Trait transfer gradient vs R_k across distinct model families; RT-scramble ablates the effect. (P4) Integration signature vs bypass at matched SB: health shows {SB↓, D≥, R_ij≥, ICI≥}, bypass shows {SB↓, D↓, relapse↑}. (P5) Shock-robustness differentials across governance settings predicted by pre-intervention λ_2 and S. Implementation stack. Graph-ODE mechanics for co-evolving node/edge states; Maximum Caliber path-ensemble selection for microcausal constraints; multiplex Laplacians for topology; principal-angle geometry for subspace resonance; recurrence quantification (%DET, L_max) for non-linear synchrony. All assays are preregistered with thresholds, controls, and power analyses; all metrics are logged and public-verifiable. This unifies symbolic dynamics, network geometry, and experimental practice into a single, testable engine for modeling criticality and steering singularity-grade transitions in human–AI ecologies—eliminating ambiguity about pseudoscience by specifying controls, scalings, and failure criteria that admit clear refutation. License CC BY-SA 4.0. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14364.76168. (shrink)

Bearers track closure classes; closure classes do not track bearers. This inversion is the substantive claim the present paper defends, and its grounds are structural: the framework operates at the admissibility stratum, characterizing what closure formation can produce; bearers are realization-stratum products of closure formation; the partition between class members and non-members is a consequence of closure rather than a feature of the framework's structural commitments. The seed-field framework (Thomas 2026a) characterizes closure-class formation through structural conditions on admissibility analysis, but (...) the relation between class C and the conditions characterizing it is left underspecified in that paper alone; the present paper specifies the relation by establishing where the framework's apparatus operates and what it characterizes. The structural conditions S_C are specified through five formal families — eigenstructure conditions on the linearized closure-formation operator, rank conditions on the eigenmode's projection across maintenance-cost surfaces, graph-theoretic support conditions on the correction graph, scaling conditions on the cost functional, and bound conditions on the temporal ratios — each statable on the admissibility analysis without reference to bearer-types. Closure classes are equivalence classes of closures whose admissible modes satisfy a given S_C, with class identity attaching to constraint-preserving dynamical possibility structure rather than to recognized bearer-type. The apparatus is read correctly across five common questions through the bearers-track-classes inversion, the distinction among definitional, discovery, and naming dependence, the Platonism disclaimer, the demonstration that the apparatus extends to hypothetical and uninstantiated classes, and the labels-versus-apparatus distinction. The methodological precedent is the universality-class apparatus in critical phenomena, which operates at the class stratum upstream of where phase boundaries are realized. The consequence framing licenses cross-substrate predictions: substrates satisfying S_C in basin completion produce closure with the structural features S_C characterizes, regardless of substrate type. The framework's empirical commitments are preserved with this addition; the architectural foundation is clarified. (shrink)

In many fields in the life sciences investigators refer to downward or top-down causal effects. Craver and Bechtel defended the view that such cases should be understood in terms of a constitution relation between levels in a mechanism and causation as solely an intra-level relation. Craver and Bechtel, however, provided insufficient specification as to when entities constitute a higher-level mechanism. In this paper I appeal to graph-theoretic representations of networks that are now widely employed in systems biology and neuroscience to (...) identify mechanisms with the modules that exhibit high clustering. As a result of the interconnections of nodes in these modules/mechanisms, they often exhibit complex dynamic behaviors that constrain how the individual components respond to external inputs, an important feature of cases viewed as involving top-down causation. (shrink)

A systematic literature review was conducted on the production and publication of research articles related to the study of variables, financial technology (Fintech), and Bioeconomy. The purpose of this research was to know the main characteristics of the publications registered in the SD, WoS, and Scopus databases during the period 2007-2024, to February 8, 2024, achieving the identification of 46 publications in total. The information provided by these platforms was organized using graphs and figures, categorizing the information by CO-occurrence (...) of Keywords, Year of Publication, Country of Origin, and Area of Knowledge. Once these characteristics were described, a qualitative analysis was conducted to refer to the position of the different authors on the proposed topic. Among the main results of this research, Germany and the United States were the countries with the highest number of publications, with a total of 7 publications each, followed by Brazil with 6 publications, while 60% of the publications are concentrated and originate in European countries. The area of knowledge that contributed the most to the study variables was Environmental Sciences, with 18 articles. This systematic literature review allowed us to conclude that the study of the intersection of bioeconomy and financial technologies is an issue that is gaining attention. There has been a boom in scientific publications in the last decade. (shrink)

The homeostatic property cluster theory is widely influential for its ability to account for many natural-kind terms in the life sciences. However, the notion of homeostatic mechanism has never been fully explicated. In 2009, Carl Craver interpreted the notion in the sense articulated in discussions on mechanistic explanation and pointed out that the HPC account equipped with such notion invites interest-relativity. In this paper, we analyze two recent refinements on HPC: one that avoids any reference to the causes of (...) the clustering of properties and one that replaces homeostatic mechanisms with causal networks represented by causal graphs. We argue that the former is too slender to account for some inductive inference in science and the latter, thicker account invites interest-relativity, as the original HPC does. This suggests that human interest will be an un-eliminative part of a satisfactory account of natural kindness. We conclude by discussing the implication of interest-relativity to the naturalness, reality, or objectivity of kinds and indicating an overlooked aspect of natural kinds that requires further studies. (shrink)

We make the case for incorporating a notion of time into causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). We demonstrate that nontemporal causal DAGs are ambiguous and obstruct justification of the acyclicity assumption. Assuming that causes precede effects, causal relationships are relative to the time order, and causal DAGs require temporal qualification. We propose a formalization via composite causal variables that refer to quantities at one or multiple time points. We emphasize that the acyclicity assumption requires different justifications depending on whether (...) the time order allows cycles. We conclude by discussing implications for the interpretation and applicability of DAGs as causal models. (shrink)

Lexical models diverge on the question of how to represent complex words. Under the morpheme-based approach, each morpheme is treated as a separate unit, while under the word-based approach, morphological structure is derived from complex words. In this paper, we propose a new computational model of morphology that is based on graph theory and is intended to elaborate the word-based network approach. Specifically, we use a key concept of network science, the notion of shortest path, to investigate how complex words (...) are learned, stored, and processed. The notion of shortest path refers to the task of finding the shortest or most optimal path connecting two non-adjacent nodes in a network. Building on this notion, the current study shows (i) that new complex words can be segmented into morphemes through the shortest path analysis; (ii) that attested English words tend to represent the shortest paths in the morphological network; and (iii) that novel (unattested) words receive higher acceptability ratings in experiments when they are formed along established optimal paths. The model's performance is tested in two experiments with human participants as well as against the behavioral data from the English Lexicon Project. We interpret our empirical results from the perspective of a usage-based model of grammar and argue that network science provides a powerful tool for analyzing language structure. (shrink)

This paper introduces a mathematical model to analyze the stability of monogamous systems under the influence of contagious proclivities (referred to as "kinks") using a jigsaw percolation framework on graphs. We model a population as a graph where vertices represent individuals, and edges denote relationships or proclivity compatibility. Monogamy is represented as a perfect matching, with infidelity modeled as additional edges. We incorporate the concept of contagious kinks, where proclivities spread through compatible connections, and explore conditions under which infidelity (...) does not occur, i.e., the system remains stable with clusters of size at most two. Using extremal graph theory (Turán's theorem) and network flow constraints, we derive thresholds for the probability of extra-relational edges to prevent percolation. We further account for population growth via reproduction and the amortized cost of contagion, showing that kink suppression (reducing compatibility probability) significantly delays the critical population size at which infidelity becomes inevitable. Our results suggest that monogamy can be preserved if the probability of extra-relational edges remains below a critical threshold, even with contagious kinks, provided the graph remains fragile and network flow constraints limit relationship concurrency. (shrink)

Thinking, collaborating, and communication happen through interactions of the body, the mind, language, and things in the world. Actions of the body actively express intention, thought, and emotion. Points of the fingers and nods of the head can refer to things in the surrounding world. A string of interrelated gestures can represent an environment, a complex system, an arrangement of ideas, a sequence of actions. Those gestures use marks and actions in space to represent thought more directly than words—as do (...) graphics like sketches, maps, graphs, diagrams, and pictures. Seeing or making gestures or graphics can change thought, both in those who view them and in those who make them. Interactions with gestures and graphics and the surrounding world are often internal, invisible, and unique, not in words, and not easily decomposed. Through those interactions, shared and individual meanings emerge and change in real time. These features of human thought present challenges to current multi-modal AI. (shrink)

THE ART OF CAUSAL CONJECTURE Glenn Shafer Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction........................................................................................ ...........1 1.1. Probability Trees..........................................................................................3 1.2. Many Observers, Many Stances, Many Natures..........................................8 1.3. Causal Relations as Relations in Nature’s Tree...........................................9 1.4. Evidence............................................................................................ ...........13 1.5. Measuring the Average Effect of a Cause....................................................17 1.6. Causal Diagrams..........................................................................................20 1.7. Humean Events............................................................................................23 1.8. Three Levels of Causal Language................................................................27 1.9. An Outline of the Book................................................................................27 Chapter 2. Event Trees............................................................................................... .....31 2.1. Situations and Events...................................................................................32 2.2. The Ordering of Situations and Moivrean Events.......................................35 2.3. Cuts................................................................................................ ..............39 2.4. Humean Events............................................................................................43 2.5. (...) Moivrean Variables......................................................................................49 2.6. Humean Variables........................................................................................53 2.7. Event Trees for Stochastic Processes...........................................................54 2.8. Timing in Event Trees.................................................................................56 2.9. Intersecting Event Trees...............................................................................60 2.10. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................61 Chapter 3. Probability Trees...........................................................................................63 3.1. Some Types of Probability Trees.................................................................64 ii 3.2. Axioms for the Probabilities of Moivrean Events.......................................68 3.3. Zero Probabilities....................................................................................... ..70 3.4. A Sample-Space Analysis of the Event-Tree Axioms.................................72 3.5. Probabilities and Expected Values for Variables.........................................74 3.6. Martingales......................................................................................... .........79 3.7. The Expectation of a Variable in a Cut........................................................83 3.8. Conditional Expected Value and Conditional Expectation.........................87 Chapter 4. The Meaning of Probability...........................................................................91 4.1. The Interpretation of Expected Value..........................................................92 4.2. The Interpretation of Expectation................................................................95 4.3. The Long Run..............................................................................................98 4.4. Changes in Belief.........................................................................................101 4.5. The Empirical Validation of Probability......................................................106 4.6. The Diversity of Uses of Probability...........................................................108 4.7. Notes on the Literature.................................................................................110 Chapter 5. Independent Events.......................................................................................113 5.1. Independence........................................................................................ .......114 5.2. Weak Independence.....................................................................................118 5.3. The Principle of the Common Cause...........................................................121 5.4. Conditional Independence............................................................................128 5.5. Notes on the Literature.................................................................................133 Chapter 6. Events Tracking Events.................................................................................135 6.1. Tracking............................................................................................ ...........137 6.2. Tracking and Conditional Independence.....................................................142 6.3. Stochastic Subsequence...............................................................................143 6.4. Singular Diagrams for Stochastic Subsequence...........................................147 6.5. Conjunctive and Interactive Forks...............................................................149 Chapter 7. Events as Signs of Events..............................................................................153 iii 7.1. Sign................................................................................................ ..............154 7.2. Weak Sign................................................................................................ ....159 7.3. The Ethics of Causal Talk............................................................................160 7.4. Screening Off...............................................................................................16 2 Chapter 8. Independent Variables...................................................................................167 8.1. Unconditional Independence........................................................................170 8.2. Conditional Independence............................................................................175 8.3. Independence for Partitions.........................................................................177 8.4. Independence for Families of Variables......................................................182 8.5. Individual Properties of the Independence Relations...................................186 Chapter 9. Variables Tracking Variables........................................................................189 9.1. Tracking and Conditional Independence: A Summary...............................190 9.2. Strong Tracking............................................................................................ 192 9.3. Strong Tracking and Conditional Independence..........................................198 9.4. Stochastic Subsequence...............................................................................201 9.5. Functional Dependence................................................................................203 9.6. Tracking in Mean.........................................................................................204 9.7. Linear Tracking............................................................................................ 207 9.8. Tracking by Partitions..................................................................................210 9.9. Tracking by Families of Variables...............................................................212 Chapter 10. Variables as Signs of Variables...................................................................215 10.1. Sign................................................................................................ ............219 10.2. Linear Sign................................................................................................ .222 10.3. Scored Sign................................................................................................ 225 10.4. Families of Variables.................................................................................227 Chapter 11. AnTheory of Event Trees.............................................................229 11.1. Event Trees as Sets of Sets........................................................................230 11.2. Event Trees as Partially Ordered Sets........................................................232 iv 11.3. Regular Event Trees...................................................................................240 11.4. The Resolution of Moivrean Variables......................................................244 11.5. Humean Events and Variables...................................................................246 Chapter 12. Martingale Trees..........................................................................................247 12.1. Examples of Decision Trees......................................................................249 12.2. The Meaning of Probability in a Decision Tree.........................................253 12.3. Martingales......................................................................................... .......257 12.4. The Structure of Martingale Trees.............................................................261 12.5. Probability and Causality...........................................................................265 12.6. Lower and Upper Probability.....................................................................269 12.7. The Law of Large Numbers.......................................................................272 12.8. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................274 Chapter 13. Refining............................................................................................ ...........275 13.1. Examples of Refinement............................................................................277 13.2. A Constructive Definition of Finite Refinement.......................................281 13.3. Axioms for Refinement..............................................................................282 13.4. Lifting Moivrean Events and Variables.....................................................288 13.5. Refining Martingale Trees.........................................................................288 13.6. Grounding........................................................................................... .......294 Chapter 14. Principles of Causal Conjecture..................................................................299 14.1. The Diversity of Causal Explanation.........................................................302 14.2. The Mean Effect of the Happening of a Moivrean Event..........................305 14.3. The Effect of a Humean Variable..............................................................311 14.4. Attribution and Generality.........................................................................316 14.5. The Statistical Measurement of the Effect of a Cause...............................319 14.6. Measurement by Experiment.....................................................................320 14.7. Using Our Knowledge of How Things Work............................................322 v 14.8. Sampling Error...........................................................................................329 14.9. The Sampling Frame..................................................................................329 14.10. Notes on the Literature.............................................................................330 Chapter 15. Causal Models.............................................................................................3 31 15.1. The Causal Interpretation of Statistical Prediction....................................333 15.2. Generalizing to a Family of Exogenous Variables....................................337 15.3 Some Joint Causal Diagrams......................................................................339 15.4. Causal Path Diagrams................................................................................342 15.5. Causal Relevance Diagrams.......................................................................346 15.6. The Meaning of Latent Variables..............................................................352 15.7. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................357 Chapter 16. Representing Probability Trees...................................................................359 16.1. Three Graphical Representations...............................................................361 16.2. Skeletal Simplifications.............................................................................368 16.3. Martingale Trees in Type Theory...............................................................371 Appendix A. Huygens’s Probability Trees.....................................................................379 Huygens’s Manuscript in Translation..................................................................380 Appendix B. Some Elements of Graph Theory..............................................................385 B1. Undirected Graphs........................................................................................385 B2. Directed Graphs............................................................................................386 Appendix C. Some Elements of Order Theory...............................................................393 C1. Partial and Quasi Orderings.........................................................................393 C2. Singular and Joint Diagrams for Binary Relations.......................................394 C3. Lattices............................................................................................ .............395 C4. The Lattice of Partitions of a Set..................................................................396 Appendix D. The Sample-Space Framework for Probability.........................................399 D1. Probability Measures....................................................................................399 D2. Variables........................................................................................... ...........400 vi D3. Families of Variables...................................................................................401 D4. Expected Value............................................................................................402 D5. The Law of Large Numbers.........................................................................405 D6. Conditional Probability................................................................................406 D7. Conditional Expected Value........................................................................407 Appendix E. Prediction in Probability Spaces................................................................409 E1. Conditional Distribution...............................................................................411 E2. Regression on a Single Variable...................................................................412 E3. Regression on a Partition or a Family of Variables......................................415 E4. Linear Regression on a Single Variable.......................................................418 E5. Linear Regression on a Family of Variables................................................422 Appendix F. Sample-Space Concepts of Independence.................................................425 F1. Overview............................................................................................ ...........426 F2. Independence Proper.....................................................................................432 F3. Unpredictability in Mean..............................................................................434 F4. Simple Uncorrelatedness..............................................................................437 F5. Mixed Uncorrelatedness...............................................................................438 F6. Partial Uncorrelatedness...............................................................................440 F7. Independence for Partitions..........................................................................442 F8. Independence for Families of Variables.......................................................445 F9. The Basic Role of Uncorrelatedness.............................................................448 F10. Dawid’s Axioms.........................................................................................449 Appendix G. Prediction Diagrams..................................................................................453 G1. Path Diagrams............................................................................................ ..454 G2. Generalized Path Diagrams..........................................................................462 G3. Relevance Diagrams.....................................................................................466 G4. Bubbled Relevance Diagrams......................................................................475 Appendix H. Abstract Stochastic Processes...................................................................479 vii H1. Probability Conditionals and Probability Distributions...............................477 H2. Abstract Stochastic Processes......................................................................479 H3. Embedding Variables and Processes in a Sample Space.............................480 References.......................................................................................... ..............................491. (shrink)

Many types of everyday and specialized reasoning depend on diagrams: we use maps to find our way, we draw graphs and sketches to communicate concepts and prove geometrical theorems, and we manipulate diagrams to explore new creative solutions to problems. The active involvement and manipulation of representational artifacts for purposes of thinking and communicating is discussed in relation to C.S. Peirce’s notion of diagrammatical reasoning. We propose to extend Peirce’s original ideas and sketch a conceptual framework that delineates different (...) kinds of diagram manipulation: Sometimes diagrams are manipulated in order to profile known information in an optimal fashion. At other times diagrams are explored in order to gain new insights, solve problems or discover hidden meaning potentials. The latter cases often entail manipulations that either generate additional information or extract information by means of abstraction. Ideas are substantiated by reference to ethnographic, experimental and historical examples. (shrink)

In this fourteenth book of scilogs – one may find topics on examples where neutrosophics works and others don’t, law of included infinitely-many-middles, decision making in games and real life through neutrosophic lens, sociology by neutrosophic methods, Smarandache multispace, algebraic structures using natural class of intervals, continuous linguistic set, cyclic neutrosophic graph, graph of neutrosophic triplet group , how to convert the crisp data to neutrosophic data, n-refined neutrosophic set ranking, adjoint of a square neutrosophic matrix, neutrosophic optimization, de-neutrosophication, the (...) n-ary soft set relationship, hypersoft set, extending the hypergroupoid to the superhypergroupoid, alternative ranking, Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT), reconciliation between theoretical and market prices, extension of the MASS model by the incorporation of neutrosophic statistics and the DSmT combination rule, conditional probability of actually detecting a financial fraud, neutrosophic extension using DSmT combination rule, probabilistic information content, absolute and relative DSm conditioning rules, example of PCR5 with Zhang’s degree, PCR5 with degree of intersection, the most general form of SuperHyperAlgebra, on Crittenden and Vanden Eynden’s conjecture, use of special types of linear algebras and their generalizations, SuperMathematics, 3D-space in physics, neutrosophic physical laws, neutrosophy as a meta-philosophy, principle of interconvertibility matter-energy-information, neutrosophic philosophical interpretation, possible neutrosophic applications to Indian philosophy and religion, philosophical horizons in neutrosophy, clan capitalism, or artificial intelligence – email messages to research colleagues, or replies, notes, comments, remarks about authors, articles, or books, spontaneous ideas, and so on. Exchanging ideas with Mirela Teodorescu, Linfan Mao, Shondiin Silversmith, Mumtaz Ali, Vasantha W.B. Kandasamy, V. Lakshmana Gomathi Nayagam, Bharanidharan R., Michael Voskoglou, Said Broumi, Maissam Jdid, Sagvan Y. Musa, Mohammad Hamidi, Yaser Ahmad Alhasan, Nivetha Martin, Mohammad Khoshnevisan, Deqiang Han, Jean Dezert, Mircea Șelariu, Ștefan Vlăduțescu, Tudor Păroiu (in order of reference in the book). (shrink)

This thesis defends a dynamic view of time by drawing a sustained analogy between money and time. Neither, I argue, is merely an abstract quantity or externally grounded dimension - each is an impredicative system that derives measures of value or duration by means of self-reference. Time flows, and it does so at a rate of one second per one second. While this rate has been dismissed by some philosophers as meaningless, I argue that its structural form reveals an (...) essential feature of temporal passage. This thesis not only seeks to rehabilitate the dynamic view of time but does so by treating money as a philosophical analogue capable of illuminating the flow of time. Chapter 1 defends Tim Maudlin's claim that time flows meaningfully against Huw Price's objection that rates such as 'one second per one second' are tautological or nonsensical. I argue that such rates are structurally informative and consistent with how other basic measurement practices function. In Chapter 2, I expand on the Temporal Regress Argument (TRA) introduced in Chapter 1. The TRA challenges the coherence of the dynamic view of time only if one assumes that each moment of time must be grounded in a prior or external standard. This regress mirrors a similar issue in monetary theory: if the value of money must always be grounded in something else (e.g. gold, labour, utility), a similar regress arises, which I call the Monetary Regress Argument (MRA). The problem isn't one of fundamentality. Money isn't fundamental. The problem is one of direction of fit. Any supposed more fundamental value must ground the value of money without in turn being measured. Chapter 3 develops the MRA, applying the formal structure of the TRA to the ontology of monetary value. I argue that the value of money is not grounded externally but rather internally, by its impredicative structure - money measures value because it is defined in terms of its own purchasing power. This impredicative structure is also central to time. In Chapter 4, I explore the ontological implications of this view. I suggest that both time and money gain important features not through reference to an external standard, but through self-reference. This explains both their universality and their role as metrics within broader social and physical systems. Chapter 5 engages with recent positions which I collectively label the Embedded Perspective View (EPV). This holds that important features of time - like flow, passage or asymmetry - are merely features of human perspective rather than mind-independent reality. I counter this view by raising doubts about whether there can be creatures which do not experience manifest time. Likewise, I show that our money practice simply reflects the temporal asymmetry of past, present and future and the real modal change as the present becomes the past. Money isn't merely an analogue to money. Money interacts with time in a specific way. This change suggests that time possesses structure that is irreducible to the mere appearance of manifest time for creatures like us. I argue this structure is necessary for all information gathering and utilisation systems. Finally, Chapter 6 examines financial instruments like yield curves, which embed dynamic temporal dimensions in both axes and data points. These graphs do not just measure time; they represent it as structured flow, akin to how time manifests in lived experience and dynamic metaphysical accounts. Just as money is defined by money, time is defined by time. We can measure both only impredicativily, and both exhibit a metaphysical structure that resists reduction to static or external reference. (shrink)

Chapter 5, “Le Point de Capiton: Two Kantian Legacies”, sketches Foucault’s discursive passage from Hysteric to Analyst, drawing on the conceptual landscape that Lacan developed to give new rigor to the psychoanalytic account of language. Applying the Lacanian concept of the point de capiton (quilting point) and related notion of the ‘signifying chain’, I outline the retroactive logic of the determination of meaning as it figures in the act by which Foucault symbolizes his philosophical project of critique. I interpret Foucault’s (...) repeated attempts to situate himself in relation to the symbolic economy of Kant’s critical philosophy as a key instance of ‘the slippage of signification’, refracted by the vector of changing subjective intentions. The identificatory signifier ‘Kant’ has a shifting and contingent signified in Foucault’s discourse with no stable referent. Drawing on the elementary cell of Lacan’s graph of desire, I present Foucault’s lecture course “The Government of Self and Others (1982–83)” as the site of chain’s punctuation: the retroactive moment when the signifier and signified form an attachment. Chapter 5 offers an account of how Foucault’s critical ontology symbolizes the contingent dimension of Kant’s transcendental legacy and realizes the symbolic by situating the question of enlightenment in a past and future signifying relation to the Real. (shrink)

It is not only difficult to be a sports expert but also difficult to grow from a sports expert to a sports elite. Professional athletes are often concerned about the differences between an expert and an elite and how to eventually become an elite athlete. To explore the differences in brain neural mechanism between experts and elites in the process of motor behavior and reveal the internal connection between motor performance and brain activity, we collected and analyzed the electroencephalography findings (...) of 14 national archers and 14 provincial archers during aiming and resting states and constructed the EEG brain network of the two archer groups based on weighted phase lag index; the graph theory was used to analyze and compare the network characteristics via local network and global network topologies. The results showed that compared with the expert archers, the elite archers had stronger functional coupling in beta1 and beta2 bands, and the difference was evident in the frontal and central regions; in terms of global characteristics of brain network topology, the average clustering coefficient and global efficiency of elite archers were significantly higher than that of expert archers, and the eigenvector centrality of expert archers was higher; for local characteristics, elite archers had higher local efficient; and the brain network characteristics of expert archers showed a strong correlation with archery performance. This suggests that compared with expert archers, elite archers showed stronger functional coupling, higher integration efficiency of global and local information, and more independent performance in the archery process. These findings reveal the differences in brain electrical network topologies between elite and expert archers in the archery preparation stage, which is expected to provide theoretical reference for further training and promotion of professional athletes. (shrink)

Three studies were conducted to examine the relation of spatial visualization to solving kinematics problems that involved either predicting the two‐dimensional motion of an object, translating from one frame of reference to another, or interpreting kinematics graphs. In Study 1, 60 physics‐naíve students were administered kinematics problems and spatial visualization ability tests. In Study 2, 17 (8 high‐ and 9 low‐spatial ability) additional students completed think‐aloud protocols while they solved the kinematics problems. In Study 3, the eye movements (...) of fifteen (9 high‐ and 6 low‐spatial ability) students were recorded while the students solved kinematics problems. In contrast to high‐spatial students, most low‐spatial students did not combine two motion vectors, were unable to switch frames of reference, and tended to interpret graphs literally. The results of the study suggest an important relationship between spatial visualization ability and solving kinematics problems with multiple spatial parameters. (shrink)

The philosophical notion of possible worlds has long been debated as a metaphysical abstraction. Machine learning (ML) can present an empirically grounded form of this plurality when multiple models trained on identical data achieve equivalent performance while inferring incompatible internal representations. This paper develops an algorithmic lens on this phenomenon by treating such cases as evidence-compatible (epistemic) possible worlds. We demonstrate how competing ML and causal algorithms can identify mutually incompatible causal graphs, each statistically credible yet diverging in mechanistic, (...) interventional, and counterfactual commitments. We also show how this phenomenon extends to large language models (LLMs), where hallucinations can be interpreted not only as errors but as internally coherent alternative textual world-states sampled from the same parameterized distribution, with varying alignment to our reference world. By framing models as evidence-compatible worlds, we provide an empirical grounding on underdetermination (a modernized Duhem–Quine thesis) and argue that accuracy alone cannot adjudicate between incompatible explanations. We conclude by outlining the ethical implications of privileging one algorithmic narrative over rivals that remain comparably supported by the data. (shrink)

In 2020, the State of California passed legislation requiring law enforcement agencies to share their policy manuals online to encourage “meaningful public input” on police policy. The documents, though, are written to reduce the legal liability of law enforcement rather than enhance public understanding of law enforcement policies. It is essential, then, to address what it means to provide access if the goal is to inform the public. Making the documents merely available and queryable is not enough. Instead, we offer (...) a plural context discovery system that surfaces core concepts within the policy manuals and draws them into public discourse – fundamentally reimagining how citizens engage with and shape policy understanding. This project proposes a paradigm shift from passive information access to participatory knowledge construction. We historicize concepts, acknowledging that they change over time, that they are formed in social contexts, that interpretation of their meaning is often contested, and that evidence to support interpretation can be contradictory. We demonstrate that words presented as entities within a knowledge graph, connected in a network of temporal relationships, take on the ontological complexity of concepts. Too often, knowledge graphs present singular “weak” definitions that do not allow for rich and nuanced engagement with concepts. We propose placing generative AI in an adjunct role within a plural context discovery system that is designed to encourage critical engagement and reflection. Plural context discovery removes the AI agent from the role of information arbiter and focuses instead on its capacity to predict. In this case it is tasked to predict plural viewpoints when a concept represented in a knowledge graph references a limited or static point of view or is poorly supported by evidence. The design goal is to create a participatory system in which the public is empowered to generate, share, and transform knowledge about police policy. (shrink)

This chapter concerns the moral problem of perfectionism. Perfectionism, roughly speaking, is living the best life and making it available to others. The perfectionism most constantly referred to here is Aristotelian perfectionism—physical perfection, which emphasizes bodily development, as well as mental perfection, which are exercises of rationality—both of the theoretical and practical kinds. However, focusing on any one of these is too simplistic a goal. There are different approaches to different excellences, and a balance between the dilettante and the specialist (...) is ideal. Well-roundedness, however, is subjective of the individual situation; as illustrated by the indifference graph, factors such as the limits of one's intrinsic abilities or lifespan, et cetera can emphasize or diminish one kind of perfection for another. In the larger scale of things, the variety of relative achievements of each individual can help a group work towards perfectionist goals. (shrink)

In this essay we introduce a new tool for studying the patterns of sentential reference within the framework introduced in [2] and known as the language of paradox $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf {P}}$ : strong $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf {P}}$ -homomorphisms. In particular, we show that (i) strong $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf {P}}$ -homomorphisms between $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf {P}}$ constructions preserve paradoxicality, (ii) many (but not all) earlier results regarding the paradoxicality of $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf {P}}$ constructions can be recast as special cases of our central result (...) regarding strong $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf {P}}$ -homomorphisms, and (iii) that we can use strong $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf { P}}$ -homomorphisms to provide a simple demonstration of the paradoxical nature of a well-known paradox that has not received much attention in this context: the McGee paradox. In addition, along the way we will highlight how strong $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf {P}}$ -homomorphisms highlight novel connections between the graph-theoretic analyses of paradoxes mobilized in the $\mathcal {L}_{\mathsf {P}}$ framework and the methods and tools of category theory. (shrink)

The analysis of physical and biological systems through models and mathematics of chaotic behavior and nonlinear dynamics rose to prominence in the 1980s. Many authors, most notably Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, made glancing references to applications of this new paradigm to the social and historical sciences, but little fruit was harvested until this decade. Physiologists studying irregular heart rhythms, psychologists examining brain activity, biologists graphing population trends, economists tracking stock price movements, military strategists assessing the outbreak of wars, and (...) sociologists modeling the rise of cities, found nonlinear dynamics refreshingly stimulating in reevaluating old theories and creating new ones. Modeling the past was an inevitable extension of this trend, and theorizing on the new historiography soon followed, with the terms of the debate outlined from 1990 to 1993 by Alan Beyerchen, Katherine Hayles, Stephen Kellert, Charles Dyke, myself, and, in the pages of History and Theory, by George Reisch and Donald McCloskey. The subject of "the chaos of history" is now enjoying a healthy exchange of ideas from all sides. This essay: reviews the precedence for integrating chaos and history; gives a brief history of this integration including an evaluation of a critique of Reisch and McCloskey by Roth and Ryckman, and presents a metahistory of how chaos theory explains its own development; defends a chaotic model of historical sequences; gives a specific historical example of nonlinear history; explores the latest trends in the field of self-organization, antichaos, simplexity, and feedback mechanisms, providing data to show that modern and historical social movements change in a parallel fashion; and exorcises Laplace's demon by showing it was always a chimera. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 22–28. Jeroen Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene twice. First, in 2005, when he became a strong presence on the nascent Dutch poetry blogosphere overnight as he embarked on his critical project Dichtersalfabet (Poet’s Alphabet). And again in 2011, when to great critical acclaim (and some bafflement) his complete writings were published – almost five years after his far too early death. 2005 was the year in which Dutch poetry blogging exploded. That year saw the foundation (...) of the influential, polemical, and populistically inclined weblog De Contrabas (The Double Bass), which became a strong force for internet poetry in Dutch in the years to follow. In the summer of that year, a lively debate raged in the aftermath of Bas Belleman’s article “ Doet poëzie er nu eindelijk toe ?” (“Does poetry finally matter now?”), on a blog specifically devoted to this question. Up to that point, the poetical debate in the Netherlands had largely been confined to literary reviews (which were often subsidized), having become mostly marginalized in more mainstream media, where poetry could be covered by only a small number of so-called authorities. As a result, literary debate had acquired a rather placid quality. Though a variety of camps with different aesthetics could be discerned, most poetical positions shared a general acceptance of poetry as a form of art somewhat apart from fundamental political concerns. Late modernists would pursue subtlety and density of reference. Others would insist poetry was best understood as a form of entertainment that should ideally be accessible and work well on the stage. Still others would insist that poetry is mostly a play with forms. Linguistically disruptive strategies were valued highly by some, but mostly for their aesthetic effect. Values of disinterested playfulness reigned supreme everywhere. Any idea that poetry could be a field in which one confronts politics and the world was decidedly marginal. This led to a climate in which most attempts at polemics were DOA, often based on far too superficial positioning and analysis. The greatest polemical debates were revolving around the question of whether poetry should be difficult or easy, with both camps defining their ideas of difficulty and accessibility in ways that were so utterly shallow as to make the entire point moot. Debates were performed, rather than engaged with. It was a postmodern hell of underarticulated poetics. Half-consciously, people were yearning for new forms of criticism that could put the oomph back into poetry. Weblogs provided for ways to explore debate directly outside of the clotted older channels of the reviews and the newspapers. Belleman’s essay and the resulting online activity had shown that there was a widespread eagerness to take poetry more seriously as a social art form. It was in this environment that Mettes started his remarkable project Dichtersalfabet . At that moment, Mettes was active mostly in academic circles, having become noted at Leiden University as a particularly gifted student of literary theory. Within the Netherlands, the field of literary theory has a very odd relationship to literature as it is practiced in the country. Academic theory tends to have a mostly international view and engage with international debates of cultural criticism, literary theory, and philosophy, with academics often publishing in English and attending conferences around the world. Literature itself however is much more concerned with domestic traditions. Consequently, in the Netherlands, there exists a language gap between academic theoretical practice (as it is studied in the literary theory departments) and literary practice (which, academically, gets studied in specialized departments of Dutch literature). The Dichtersalfabet can be seen as Mettes’s attempt to close this gap. It is also an attempt to bridge the divide between theory and practice, in which he could apply his theoretical knowledge in a very unorthodox and unacademic critical mode that moreover could reach far beyond the domain of conventional criticism. Mettes’s goal was to trace a diagonal through Dutch poetic culture, to “strangle” what he perceived to be its dominant oppressive traditions of agreeable irrelevance, in order to see whatever might be able to survive his critical assaults. But he could only do so by means of a very serious engagement with poetry itself. To this end, he would go systematically through the poetry bookshelf of the Verwijs bookshop (part of a mainstream chain of booksellers) in The Hague, buying one publication per blog item, starting from A and working his way through the alphabet, reading whatever he might encounter that way in the restaurant of the HEMA store (another big commercial chain in the country). He would subsequently write down his reading experiences, refraining however from trying to write a nuanced book review. Rather, he would write about anything that caught his attention and sparked his critical interest. This way of working would yield vast, at times somewhat rambling, dense, lively, and generally brilliant essays, in which he held no punches. He never hesitated to pull out his entire arsenal of concepts from the international theory traditions, while never degenerating into mere academic exercise and pointless intertextualities. The attempt was rather to live the poetry that he read, and to engage it with the full range of political, academic, cultural, and personal references that he had at his disposal—all that composed the individual named Jeroen Mettes as a reader. Often what he wrote would not be according to the standards of what we usually think of as a critical review of a book of poetry. Sometimes he would even be a little sloppy in his judgments of poets or representations of the books he read, for example by basing an entire essay on the blurb of a book rather than its poetry content. But what he did was always brilliant writing nonetheless—virtuoso riffs on poetic fragments randomly found within capitalist society, exposing an incisive and insistent poetical sensibility. Mettes read poetry for political reasons, to see whether poetry could offer him a way to deal with a political world he detested. The right-wing horrors of the Bush years, the Iraq war, and the turn of Dutch public opinion towards ever more conservative, narrow-minded, and xenophobic views alongside a complete failure of the political left to present any credible alternative, were weighing heavily on the times in which Mettes reported on his reading. Poetry was to measure this world, diagram it, to lay bare its inconsistencies and faults, to indicate where lines of flight might be found. Amid the ruins of a world wrecked by imperialist policies, corporate capitalism, and doctrinal neoliberalism it would have to show the possibility of a new community. And it was, through its rhythmical workings, to release the reading subject from his confinement to ideologically conditioned individuality and lead him into the immanent paradise of reading. The stakes were high. Much higher than anything Dutch poetry had seen for many years. Mettes’s blog was widely read from the start. His posts sparked lively debates. Some of these subsequently led to the publication of extensive essays on a few key poets in some literary journals, particularly Parmentier and the Flemish journal yang , for which Mettes would become a member of the editorial board, a few months after starting the Dichtersalfabet . This could have been the start of a brilliant career, but this was not to be. The initial manic energy that fueled the blog gradually subsided. The Alfabet was updated less and less regularly. Mettes sometimes just disappeared for many weeks, then suddenly returning with a brilliant essay. Until, on September 21, 2006, he posted his final blogpost, consisting of no text whatsoever. That night I learned from his mentor at Leiden University that he had committed suicide. Mettes and I had had some fruitful exchanges on poetry, rhythm, music, and form, mostly on the blogs, but also by email. Three weeks before his death was the last time I heard from him: a very sudden, uncharacteristically curt note saying “My old new sentence epic.” Attached to that message I found a DOC-file of a work so major that I felt intimidated. This was N30 , a text he had been working on for over five years. After his death, it took me a long time before I dared to read it in its entirety. In the meantime, the work of preparing the manuscript for publication was entrusted by his relatives to his colleagues at yang magazine. It took them a few years to brush up the text and to edit the Dichtersalfabet -blog (which, apart from the Alphabet project itself, incorporated many other fragments of political, polemical, and theoretical writing) into book form along with the essays. The result of this labor was finally published in 2011 as a two-book set, and Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene for the second time. The work was widely reviewed, on blogs, in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Many critics who had not followed the blogs in 2005 showed themselves surprised, baffled even, by the intensity of Mettes’s critical writing. But for those who had read the blog, the main surprise was in the poetry. During Mettes’s lifetime, some of his poems had already been published in Parmentier . Although these were strong texts by themselves, in no way did they prepare readers for N30 . Nothing like it had been written in Dutch before. Instead, N30 explicitly follows the American tradition of Language Writing, directly referencing Ron Silliman and his concept of The New Sentence. However, it would seem that much of the poetical thinking around his use of this technique puts him closer to a writer such as Bruce Andrews. For Mettes, using non sequiturs as a unit of poetic construction was not only a way of reinventing formal textual construction, but it was another way of finding the fault lines in the social fabric. From the perspective of the Language tradition, one may put N30 somewhere between Silliman and Andrews. N30 shares an autobiographical element with Silliman’s New Sentence projects, and as in Andrews, there is a concern for mapping out social totality within text—what Mettes refers to as a “textual world civil war.” Again this shows a formal textual strategy for allowing the person “Jeroen Mettes” to be absorbed by the world, which here appears as a whirlwind of demotic and demonic chatter, full of violence, humor, intensity, beauty, disgust, sex, commerce, and strife. Influenced as it may by American precursors, Mettes’s tone and form end up quite different from his American counterparts, consistently referencing a world that is Dutch, all too Dutch, taking on the oppressive orderliness of Dutch society with its endemic penchant for consensus by introducing chaos into its daily life and laying bare its implicit aggressions. The work’s 31 chapters each have a different feel and rhythmical outline, but none of them follow a predetermined pattern. Rather, Mettes would consistently edit and reedit the text, randomly rewriting parts of it, as he explains in his poetical creed Politieke Poëzie (Political Poetry). N30 – referring to the 1999 antiglobalist protest in Seattle – was to be the first text of a trilogy. The work itself was written “in the mode of the present.” A second text was to be written in the mode of the future, and a third one, in the mode of the past, was going to be an epic poem about the Paris Commune, and to form an alternative poetic constitution for the European project. I still deeply regret that Jeroen Mettes never got to complete those projects, just as I would be very keen on knowing what he might have had to say about more recent political developments. Instead, in 2006, he remained stuck in the horrors of the present, that ended up consuming him completely. He left Dutch literature with some of its most piercing criticism and its most profoundly moving, exciting and powerful poetry. Excerpts from N30 Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "N30." In N30+ . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. Chapter 1 1999. A day is a space too. And another man, who had chained himself, had his ribs crushed, and a motor has driven over somebody’s legs. Dutch health care system spends ±145 million guilders per year on worriers. A spiderweb vibrates as I pass by. Randstad renovating. She slaps her bag against her ass: “Hurry up!” OPINION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP Your skin. It doesn’t express anything. “But the use of the sword, that’s what I learned, and you’ll need nothing more for the moment.” Just try to interrogate a guy like that. Gullit in Sierra Leone. Codes silently lying all around. But that’s simply what belongs to “that it’s just allowed”: that sigh of “world” (a word expressing that the trees are now standing along the water like black men with white bags in their hair); that’s nothing else right? And you see how everything has to move, and first of all what cannot do so. Without Elysium and without savings, barbarians lashing out, horny for an enemy, staring across the water, staring into the air—staring to get out of it. “You’ve never showed me more than the mall,” she said. All those “dreams” in the end—and now? It was lying on the stairway, so I picked it up and took it upstairs. Chapter 3 “You know what?” Telecommunication. For love… I don’t really like that cheap cultural pessimism, but… The holy city is on pilgrimage in the earthly bodies of the faithful until the time of the heavenly kingdom has come. The end of an exhausting autumn day behind the computer, my eyes filled with tears of fatigue. KITCHEN / INSTALLATION / SPECIALIST. Network integration. In the sun, stretched out on a sheet. (…) I don’t believe what I’m reading, because I want to believe something else. An illusion? Suits me. There’s a variety of shapes and tastes… “So what?” you may think. 102 dalmatians can’t be wrong. But I want more, dear… A feel good movie. I’m smashing the burned body. So what? We continue to save the European civilization. What’s there to win? Plato with poets = Stalin without gulag? Ball against the crossbar. No wonder. She comes straight to her point. She’s standing in the kitchen eating an apple. (…) The godless Napoleon had used her as a stable and wanted to have her taken down. “Our” Rutger Hauer. Ready or not here I come. Psst… are you also wearing a string? Nobody understands our desire. Cliffs breaking the waves and shattering the sunset. I used to be a real romantic (as a poet). A typical fantasy used to be the one in which I brutally raped mother and daughter Seaver from the sitcom Growing Pains . Nevertheless you only contain bad words. Eyelashes. Automatic or manual? That your skin always in the afternoon. Integration. The air is empty. Too bad! Hand in hand on their lonely way. Alaska! Chapter 12 May 5, 2001 [10:00-10:30] A dust cloud on a hill. Globe. Indian (British) (tie) / pope. Damascus. Rape. We’re carrying the ayatollah’s portrait through the streets. At the moment the girl is mostly suede jacket with white ribbons on her sleeves. A small explosion flares up/impact. Camouflage. Close up. We’re analyzing the situation. He’s dead right? Dead dead. Dead. Everything without, these, and only with the body. Indices signal death. Dollar bills are printed in factories. Holes. Light patch. Globe in a box. Microphone. What’s the situation? Grey impact on a green hill (field?). The water is blue. He has no lips. Interns on the background with skirts that are too long. This is an example of a sonnet. An Islamic woman pushes against the door of an electronics shop. Arrows (percentages (prices)). Is this what awaits the American? Touch screen interface. The word, an island, can only be a sign in that situation. We pull up a chair, join in on the fun. On the shelves only books about computers. One glance in the distance is enough to lighten up a luna park in the distance. She’s really desperate, especially when she laughs. Click. Ah. Next. And now it’s raining, but that’s ok. Yellow stains sliding over the south. Shallow caves light: clothes, boots, electrical equipment. 45. 22:10. Nothing gives you the right to eat more than people starving to death. The Hague. Slam dunk. Traffic light. Two H’s, one L (standing for the L (little prick)). We’re happy to say something. Clouds, small suns, temperatures, cities. The truth is never an excuse. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Green. Yellow. Will you email me? Skeleton: “No.” Ex-nerds in brand-new and brightly red sport cars. $$$. I love. Shihab. Hooves in the sand. Skinny senior with over-sized sunglasses; old jockey (cap, trophy) smiling in slow motion. And there I am again, flashback, crying with my head in between my hands. Sometimes I’ve got the feeling that cannibals. Eyes: blue. Cancer. Why would I wait until tomorrow? Golden beams protruding from the lifted/lit earth. May 5, 2001 [11:30-12:45] You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Graphs, diagrams. Bu$ine$$. Blue shirt, white collar, no neck (porn star). A name lights up. I’m hysteric. Will you join us? Letters falling in their words. Fingers set up a tent and start to dance. Young entrepreneurs from poor neighborhoods (read: black) guided by Microsoft. Kinda makes me happy, that sort of kitsch. A sense of exhaustion/impotence to see anything but the present. (…) Wouldn’t you like to? Orange explosion in an industrial zone. YOU’RE DOING THIS FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Would you. A familiar face. Clouds and blossom. Sunflowers. Supermodels. Mountainous area in a rectangle: shades of brown, from dark to beige, more green toward the south. Tents and next to them (it’s all a blur) people. Plane. Stadium. Geometrical block of people. No, I ain’t crying. I don’t speak no more. I just want. Quote + photo. (Positive:) screaming crowd. Three-piece suit, seen from the back, before entering the arena. On the back: “Daddy abused me.” Oh, bummer. State of emergency has been declared and everyone has to cooperate. She’s cut her wrists. What we do know (…) is that there’s never been a unique word, an imperative name, nor will there ever be. [Click here for work that suits you.] Barefooted children are watching it (coherent pieces revelation of what’s lying below). Who knows how she’s changed during those two years. “Everything used to be better” + sigh. And here we are. An empty field of parquet. A city lying behind it. Explosion. Blue. A rain drop falling in my coffee. May 5, 2001 [14:30-15:30] A young Arafat on video speaking with raised finger. “I’m calling from my convertible.” Names on walls, victims, numbers… Tourists. Yellow. Yellow. “Your own child! Really, what kind of human are you?” I don’t want to hear it no more. A woman jumping out of the water in a yellow bikini against a background of fireworks and the Cheops pyramid. Thy sorrow shall become good fortune, thy complaints laudation. All planets will float and wander. Wo die Welt zum Bild wird, kommt das System (…) zur Herrschaft. It is something, but is it? May 5, 2001 [18:30-19:00] Iris. Leaves. NASDAQ. Open / and white and. For the one who’s doing nothing, just waiting. (…) NO DEFEAT is made entirely up of defeat -- since / the world it opens is always a place / formerly / unsuspected. October 2002. “Jeroen, I’m leaving for the cemetery, byeeee.” The rise of the middle class. My entire oeuvre is an ode to the. My entire head is a fight against the. God always demands what you cannot sacrifice. You may take that the easy way, but… “The state hasn’t made us, but we make the state” (Hitler). A stork exits the elevator. Skeletons of. Moscow. Helsinki. Palermo. Paris. Chapter 30 Like your paradises: nothing. United Desire, as only remaining superpower. And even though the sea is now calmer and the wind is blowing pleasantly in my face… Heart! Who determines whether a tradition is “alive”? The yellow leaf or the white branch? Mars. This sentence is a typical example. Most Dutch people are happy. No consolation. When I see a girl sitting at a table with a book, a notepad, a pen, a bottle of mineral water, her hand writing in the light—then I consider that one thing. “Presents,” “poetry,” “classics.” We are what we cannot make from ourselves. “Left”: mendicant orders, missionaries. Saint-Just: “A republic is founded on the destruction of its enemies.” She crosses the street with a banana peel between her fingers. (…) We chose our own wardens, torturers, it was us who called all this insanity upon ourselves, we created this nightmare… But “no”? Girl (just like a beach ball) talking rapid Spanish (Portuguese?) in a mobile phone. Do I have a chance now that her boyfriend is getting bold? CLIO, horny bitch. What else do you want? An old woman, between the doors of the C1000, is suddenly unable to go on; her husband stretches out his hand, speaking a few encouraging words. Selection from. Der Führer schenkt den Jüden ein Stadt. How can it reach us if we haven’t been already reached somehow? It doesn’t “speak.” No problem. Each word she uses is a small miracle, as if she doesn’t belong to it, to language, but wanders around with a pocket light looking for the exit; she’s never desperate (maybe a little nervous), lighting up heavy words from the inside. But indeed, we’re free. But the predicate is not an attribute, but an event, and the subject is not a subject, but a shell. That’s why also samurai, knights, and warriors raised the blossom as emblem: they knew how to die. Locked up in a baby carriage with a McDonald’s balloon. Blue helicopter, the blue sky. Whether you want to refer? The point is. How / Motherfucker can I sing a sad song / When I remember Zion? You’ll feel so miserable and worthless that you think: “If only I were dead!,” or: “Just put an end to it!” “So you’re an economist?” Her card—two little birds building a nest, her handwriting shaking—is still on the mantelpiece. Guevara: “No, a communist.” A straw fire, such was our life: rapidly it flared up, rapidly it passed. I’m fleeing, coming from nowhere. (…) Eazy-E drinking coffee with the American president. If I’d scream, would that be an event? Drown it: the cleaner it will rise up from the depths. No! The night, so fast… As if there’s something opened up in that face. Come on, we may not curse life. He shows me his methadone: “If you drink that all at once, you’ll die instantly.” The last one dictates how we should behave to deserve happiness. One shine / above the earth. “I want to go to Bosnia,” I said bluntly. I don’t even know the name of the current mayor. Let’s despise our success! “There is no future; this is the future. Hope is a weakness that we've overcome. We have found happiness!” Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I feel like a bomb about to explode at any moment. Makes a difference for the reconstruction right? The decor moves forward. Daughter of Nereus, you nymphs of the sea, and you Thetis, you should have kept his tired head above the waves! Alas! This sentence has been written wearing a green cap. I receive my orders from the future. A frog jumps into it. Her husband has turned the Intifada, which he follows daily on CCN, into his hobby, “to forget that he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet." Suddenly the sun slides over the crosswalk. Her (his?) foot is playing with the slipper under the table. Is this how I’m writing this book now? I’m not a fellow man. I hate you and I want to hurt you. These are my people. Their screaming doesn’t rise above the constantly wailing sirens which we've learned to ignore. My whole body became warm and suddenly started to tremble. Unfortunate is he who is standing on the threshold of the most beautiful time, but awaits a better one. Arafat’s “removal” is contrary to American interests. Jeep drives into boy. What you can do alone, you should do alone. A food gift from the people of the United States of America. Two seagulls. [...]. (shrink)

The performance of deep Neural Networks (NNs) in the text (ChatGPT) and image (DALL‐E2) domains has attracted worldwide attention. Convolutional NNs (CNNs), Large Language Models (LLMs), Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPMs)/Noise Conditional Score Networks (NCSNs), and Graph NNs (GNNs) have impacted computer vision, language editing and translation, automated conversation, image generation, and social network management. Proteins can be viewed as texts written with the alphabet of amino acids, as images, or as graphs of interacting residues. Each of these perspectives (...) suggests the use of tools from a different area of deep learning for protein structural biology. Here, I review how CNNs, LLMs, DDPMs/NCSNs, and GNNs have led to major advances in protein structure prediction, inverse folding, protein design, and small molecule design. This review is primarily intended as a deep learning primer for practicing experimental structural biologists. However, extensive references to the deep learning literature should also make it relevant to readers who have a background in machine learning, physics or statistics, and an interest in protein structural biology. (shrink)