Ernst Mach is such an interesting guy! I’ve started working on a synth which is named by him [1] and I believe he needs much more recognition - this self portrait exactly captures his philosophy - there’s no absolute frame of reference, everything is relative, which leads directly to you know what. I wish he would be remembered for more than just Mach number.
Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
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Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#12The article mentions Mach numbers, but it leaves out what is most interesting about Mach’s place in the history of science, which is as a bridge to Einstein and General Relativity. Essentially Einstein read Mach and took a bunch of mind-bendingly profound but vague philosophical ideas like Mach’s Principle[0] and put together General Relativity out of it. And this self portrait gives that side of Mach too - the philo…
As a side note, Einstein read Mach but strongly opposed logical positivism[0].
[0]: https://philosophynow.org/issues/133/Einstein_vs_Logical_Pos...
Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#13I like how details fade around the edges -- though for maximum accuracy, there should only be a tiny area of high detail in the center, with most of the visual field being indistinct (as well as a total blind spot to one side). The brain just knows how to fill in remembered details of stuff you're not looking at directly, same way you tune out the sight of your own nose. Gaze-tracking and foveated rendering is a neat…
And the eye's periphery, while it isn't sharp, is highly sensitive to movement. Which is "obvious" if you ponder the question where dangerous things appear first. Thus things dangling from the rear mirror in a car are a bad thing, they need (subconscious) attention.
The cone cells in the eye's center are color sensitive, but need a lot of light, while the rod cells at the edges are highly sensitive to motion, even in low light. And that might be one of the reasons why flicker is strenuous for the eyes. Funny side effect is that looking at stars in the night sky seems to work better when you look slightly besides a star, I guess that's because then the low light parts take over.
Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#14If I remember correctly, this picture is commented in the very good book "Exact thinking in demented times", together with Mach's ideas.
Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#15I've always been struck by how long sentences are in writing from a century or more ago. To my mind whose attention-span has been poisoned by YouTube Shorts (even if they are mostly about trigonometry) and Tweets (even if I tell myself that's the new newspaper), they are most difficult to read. I often have to restart from the beginning. Albeit an extreme example, here's a sentence from Henry James' "The Ambassadors"…
Likewise! I often marvel at the patience of readers of earlier times. Of course, they had more time and fewer distractions, and I suspect that there was a dynamic at work in which both the writer and reader derived a certain satisfaction from long meandering sentences, the writer proving their skill, and the reader proving (to themselves) their stamina.
Nowadays we tend to write in a plainer style demanding a smaller “parser stack”. Some style manuals have excellent examples of sentences of equal length but very different “stack depth” and thus ease of comprehension.
Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#16I like how details fade around the edges -- though for maximum accuracy, there should only be a tiny area of high detail in the center, with most of the visual field being indistinct (as well as a total blind spot to one side). The brain just knows how to fill in remembered details of stuff you're not looking at directly, same way you tune out the sight of your own nose. Gaze-tracking and foveated rendering is a neat…
And the eye's periphery, while it isn't sharp, is highly sensitive to movement. Which is "obvious" if you ponder the question where dangerous things appear first. Thus things dangling from the rear mirror in a car are a bad thing, they need (subconscious) attention. The cone cells in the eye's center are color sensitive, but need a lot of light, while the rod cells at the edges are highly sensitive to motion, even in…
> Thus things dangling from the rear mirror in a car are a bad thing, they need (subconscious) attention.
And open offices with the associated foot traffic. Constant distraction quite apart from the noise factor.
Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#17I've always been struck by how long sentences are in writing from a century or more ago. To my mind whose attention-span has been poisoned by YouTube Shorts (even if they are mostly about trigonometry) and Tweets (even if I tell myself that's the new newspaper), they are most difficult to read. I often have to restart from the beginning. Albeit an extreme example, here's a sentence from Henry James' "The Ambassadors"…
Long sentences can serve as a way to break up the rhythm of prose: after a series of short sentences, a long sentence can force the reader to mentally "pause" to parse the contents of the sentence, or even just to figure out what the resulting sentence structure conveys, especially when a later part of the sentence calls back to an earlier part, turning the prose from a straightforward linear expression to a rhythmic loop, or even a self-referential construction.
Short sentences are fun too.
Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#18This drawing influenced Douglas Harding in developing "The Headless Way", a recognition that in immediate experience there is no head or self (and influential on Sam Harris).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Harding#%22Headlessnes...
Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#19I've always been struck by how long sentences are in writing from a century or more ago. To my mind whose attention-span has been poisoned by YouTube Shorts (even if they are mostly about trigonometry) and Tweets (even if I tell myself that's the new newspaper), they are most difficult to read. I often have to restart from the beginning. Albeit an extreme example, here's a sentence from Henry James' "The Ambassadors"…
>I've always been struck by how long sentences are in writing from a century or more ago.
One book to rule them all:
https://dn721807.ca.archive.org/0/items/InSearchOfLostTimeCo...
Many one-sentence paragraphs extend for more than one page.
Re: Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886)
#20I've always been struck by how long sentences are in writing from a century or more ago. To my mind whose attention-span has been poisoned by YouTube Shorts (even if they are mostly about trigonometry) and Tweets (even if I tell myself that's the new newspaper), they are most difficult to read. I often have to restart from the beginning. Albeit an extreme example, here's a sentence from Henry James' "The Ambassadors"…
> how long sentences are in writing from a century or more ago
Those were hunted down to extinction for ratings, about the time audience ratings were figured out. Not a reader left behind, so to speak ...
Most really deserved to be taken out and shot, they just demonstrated how lazy and unkempt the writer was. Editing was hell.