Author Archives

• Anthrax, strychnine and the fallacy of Antigone’s argument

  By rtraba on November 10, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  One should feel grateful to Princeton molecular biology professor Lee Silver for this wonderful video, detailing the main points of friction between the full materialism of contemporary biology and the hidden resurgence of metaphysical thinking sub specie of the idea… Read More ›

• Recursion: Cortázar and Antonioni

  By rtraba on November 10, 2015 • ( 0 )

  Continuity of the Parks, by Julio Cortázar He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it aside because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by… Read More ›

• Software engineering & competence without knowledge

  By rtraba on October 1, 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  While writing software and endlessly refactoring to reach the ‘ultimate’ structure, one finds oneself often wondering that truly Dawkins’ ‘blind watchmaker’ metaphor must be correct, that competence without knowledge is a fact of life, and no amount of speculation on… Read More ›

• Uberize the economy and the social fabric

  By rtraba on August 13, 2015 • ( 1 )

  The Emerging Platform Economy is the new way to do business. Legacy business models are asymptotically doomed. But: What shape will the elimination of the information brokering layer assume? The p2p ubiquity – p2p credit, Hayek Money, p2p economy with… Read More ›

• Popper on demarcation and the power of epicycles

  By rtraba on August 12, 2015 • ( 5 )

  

  Suppose you had a standard Fourier series representing an arbitrary function. Suppose now this function is the periodic movement of some celestial body. As the following video explains, what the Fourier coefficients stand for are the usual Ptolemaic epicycles. A… Read More ›

• Chomsky & Hobsbawm or: Homage to Catalonia

  By rtraba on August 11, 2015 • ( 2 )

  

  Let’s start again with late Tony Judt’s comment about Eric Hobsbawm autobiography, where one can read the following: Eric Hobsbawm is decidedly a man of order, a “Tory communist,” as he puts it. Communist intellectuals were never “cultural dissidents”; and… Read More ›

• On mandarins and epistemological fallacies

  By rtraba on July 28, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  Reading late Tony Judt’s appraisal of Eric Hobsbawm autobiography, one meets a very interesting remark: Eric Hobsbawm is decidedly a man of order, a “Tory communist,” as he puts it. Communist intellectuals were never “cultural dissidents”; and Hobsbawm’s scorn for… Read More ›

• “Galileo was no idiot” (or “Wir werden wissen”)

  By rtraba on July 1, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  What is the exact meaning of Hilbert’s famous remark that: “Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom – that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself”? Why… Read More ›

• “To enquire and to create”

  By rtraba on July 1, 2015 • ( 4 )

  

  There used to be an old concept in classical philosophy, the concept of the full and meaningful life, creative and inquisitive. German classical philosophy recovered that from the ancient Greek civilization, in particular from Ⅴ century Athens. Unfortunately, that was… Read More ›

• “The Look of Silence” and Antonio Gramsci

  By rtraba on June 13, 2015 • ( 2 )

  

  Watching the stunning documentary “The Look of Silence” by Joshua Oppenheimer is a moving experience. Of almost enlightening nature. The titles at the end, full of “Anonymous” references, are a powerful reminder that the grim events of  Indonesian genocide of… Read More ›