λ calculus ode

λ, the true beginning
of α and ω,
you must be grinning
from the bodega:
cans of curry
maintaining states
in quantum wells,
and in a flurry
forming the logic gates
of heaven and hell.

"The λ calculus can be called the smallest universal programming language of the world." A Tutorial Introduction to the Lambda Calculus

Flow analysis, linearity, and PTIME


from "Odes To Codes"

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a more."

( biological code { *? ) moral code }

As biological beings, there is a lot biology, neuroscience, evolutionary theory, etc. tells us about our biological code. But humans are creators of moral code, and this comes from everything from analytic philosophy to the arts. There is something in the overlap of the two codes, some we know (*), and some we don't (?).

Chimps may have something like a "hard-wired" moral code, but they are not creators of new codes as humans are (as far as I know, but maybe some primatologists say they are). Species of the genus Homo, except for ours, are extinct, so we don't know a lot about them.


Related: Formal Philosophy? A Plea for Pluralism. Here Susan Haack (professor of philosophy and law at the University of Miami) gives her perspective on the "proper role of philosophy in relation to other disciplines" and says "It also falls to philosophy -- and this is my third theme -- to inquire into the relations among other disciplines, or other fields of human endeavor."

The title quote comes from Steve Gimbel of Philosophers' Playground.

Go ode

Go on, make a show,
but without the exclamation!
Where did your semicolon go;
are you the next sensation?
Tune in to its channel.
Make it a goroutine.
Dude, gopher it.
Come under its spell.
Code lean and mean.
Looks like a hit.



from "Odes To Codes"

JavaScript ode

O JavaScript, you must be pissed
when people write your name
with a lower case 's'.
It's just not the same.
You have a strict European stepdad,
and soon you'll be multitasking,
raised on Mozilla's knee.
Don't get mad,
but I'll just call you JS asking
WWJSD.



from "Odes To Codes"

America the Codiful

America is bountiful with codes.

There's Dr. Phil's Life Code.

The Leadership Code.

The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative to decode the brain's code.

The mapping the genetic code with the Human Genome Project (HGP).

Bible codes of all kinds, The Da Vinci Code, astrology codes, codes of secret societies. (One could call these bunkmates.)

Coding schools are popping up to train budding code jockeys. (Coders are the new rockstars.)

People endlessly debate over moral codes.

Handshake codes and handkerchief code (or is it hanky-panky code).


I could code on, but you get the idea.


References:
Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World
The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By
Obama's Plan To Explore The Brain: A 'Most Audacious' Project (NPR)
Coding boot camps promise to launch tech careers
The Universal Moral Code

The Book of Codes Understanding the World of Hidden Messages: An Illustrated Guide to Signs, Symbols, Ciphers, and Secret Languages

Hankerchief code

Coditrons and codes

As the Standard Theory has particles and fields, Codifism has coditrons and codes.

Coditrons are the "hardware" elements^* that, in combination, run the "software" of codes.


* cf. logic gate, quantum gate, Fredkin gate, Toffoli gate, etc.
resources:
Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation
Rebooting The Cosmos: Is the Universe The Ultimate Computer?

Dart ode

O Dart, where art
the JavaScript killer?
Do web coders give a fart
about the better-OO distiller?
You must be speedy,
just like your name,
to be in contention.
Then of the needy
coders of games,
you'll get the attention.


from "Odes To Codes"   #NaPoWriMo

machine ode

What could my code be running on?
What lies beneath the codes?
It's made of quantum coditrons.
(I hope my program loads.)
The deus of the machinus
turns out be the particles
that make the big machine:
the cosmic home of all of us
from seas to wayward seagulls —
and all that's in between.


The material mechanism which executes codes is the universe of coditrons.


from "Odes To Codes"

PTML for crease patterns

The working draft specification PTML: Pattern-Theoretic Markup Language now includes preliminary coding^* for origami crease patterns.

^*based on The grammar of developable double corrugations (Ankon Mitra, 2009)

Gun worshippers, Son worshippers

It is an odd and misguided exercise to attempt to find particular politicians or the NRA to blame in the defeat of the latest gun bill effort. The blame actually goes to a large chunk of the American people: the ones for whom gun worship is as much a part of their psyche as the worship of God or Jesus. This widespread, religious-like worship of guns is the reason nothing will happen in gun-control legislation.

re:
nytimes.com/2013/04/20/opinion/nocera-the-spineless-gun-vote.html
nytimes.com/2013/04/21/opinion/sunday/dowd-president-obama-is-no-bully-in-the-pulpit.html

Biological vs. Cultural Coding

The debate over whether our biological coding (from the code in our genes to the code in our brains) is the basis of what we believe and how we act or whether our cultural coding (from our philosophy and politics to arts and sciences) is the basis goes on. (This is sometimes seen as a debate between scientists and philosophers.)

Our biological coding seems to have an impact on what moral perspectives and politics we adopt, and scientific research into this inquiry is ongoing as is criticism of this approach.

But it is the province of science to identify and differentiate biological from cultural coding and to determine the relative significance of each.

The Codifist Manifesto

The universe is made of code.

There is nothing outside the code

All that is tangibly written today is typed via computer/electronic QWERTY keyboards.

All writing is coding — e.g., XML+HTML+CSS+JS — for the electrates.

Monkeys typing LaTeX/Mathematics could make all Tegmark's computable universes.

There is nothing outside the code.

Code is all that exists.

Codifism

This is the philosophy of codifism: Codes are the substrates of existence. What is thought, said, written, created is based on a code. All that is is based on a code. Codifism comes from digilectical materialism.

Codifism emerges from semiotics and electracy, pragmatists like Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty, programmers like Alan Turing, Donald Knuth, and Tim Berners-Lee.

Codifists can be programmers, philosophers, poets, mathematicians, semioticians, ...

What can be expressed at all is expressed in the language of a code (a.k.a. a coding language).

Coding languages are everywhere: HTML, CS, JS, SVG, LaTeX:Math, XML, DNA, Twitlish, ...

Facts are just expressions in the language of a code that are useful.

All that is can be expressed in a coding language.

There are many codes, natural and invented. No one code rules.

Humans are natural codifiers. Codifists strive to codify.

Codify or die.


Codifism can be seen as a digital philosophy.


...

Digilectical materialism

Digilectical materialism is the theoretical basis for codifism.

All codes have a language (the coding language) consisting of a finite alphabet and rules for forming syntactical units. Digilectical materialism is the theory that codes underlay all that exists. Code theorists discover these codes.

To posit the world is made of coditrons and codes is no more strange than to posit it is made of particles and fields or strings and branes.

coder, codifier, codist, code theorist, codifist

coder - A writer and tester of codes (e.g., a computer programmer).

codifier - An inventor of codes.

codist - A codifier.

code theorist - Someone who discovers and studies codes; a digilectical materialist; an armchair codifist.

codifist - A supporter and promoter of codifism.

Digilectics

Digilectics is the set of principles and practices of codifism and digilectical materialism.

The world is observed as phenomena and coded in theories which model the phenomena:

P: P1|P2|P3| ... levels of phenomena (read by measuring devices)

T: T1|T2|T3| ... levels of theories (written in coding languages)

The lowest level could include, for example, the measurements made in the Large Hadron Collider (in P1) and the Standard Model (in T1). Higher levels could include chemistry, biology, psychology, politics, ...

Attention is paid to correlations (P), consistencies (T), and agreements (T with P).

Codes vs. code

      Re: codifism


1. There are codes.

2. Associated with each code there is a coding language.

3. A "sentence" (document, program file, ...) in a coding language is called code (used as a mass noun).


Example:

   (1) chemistry → (2) CML <xml-cml.org> → (3) a CML document

Tractatus Logico-Codifist

The world is all that is the case.

The world is the totality of codes, not of things.

The world is determined by codes, and by their being all the codes.

For the totality of working code determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.

The codes in logical space run the world.

The world divides into codes.

…


(via Wittgenstein)

Brain codes

The human brain is a protoplasmic machine that generates new codes which it then uses to make programs to be run on itself.

Human brains biologically evolved to be able to generate new codes and therefore new culture.


Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.
~ Henri Bergson (@philo_quotes)


The universe is a machine running codes. Living things are machines running codes. We can create new codes.

read more ...

Polycodifism

There may not be a single primal code ("Theory Of Everything"), but a multiplicity of codes born in The Big Bang.

Archi-coding

One of the core ideas from Jacques Derrida is archi-writing: Regarding the relationship between speech and writing, Western philosophy has in some sense 'dissed' writing as a pale form of speech. It has been a mistake to see writing as just an artifact of speech. Archi-writing refers to "a kind of writing that precedes both speech and writing."

This may not be very clear (or some may think it's not very right), but there is an analogue that is more clear: The relationship between math and code.

By "math" I mean the writing of mathematics as seen in articles from arXiv, or in mathematical texts in general. A popular, expressive language for this math is \(\LaTeX\) math mode. While this math appears in an article, code (written in a programming language) that is associated with the math (e.g., numerical simulation) is generally relegated to final sections of the article, or is merely referenced. The idea that "math precedes code" is a mistake, just as "speech precedes writing" is a mistake.

Archi-coding would be a kind of coding that precedes both math and code.

-isms

Deleuzism: Philosophy is the production of concepts.
Ironism:     Philosophy is the production of vocabularies.
Codifism:   Philosophy is the production of codes.

Codes and Forms

Are codes (from Codifism) like Forms (from Platonism)?

I argue no. Forms are nonmaterial abstractions outside nature, whereas codes are just as material as particles, fields, spacetimes, strings or whatever is currently in the world of physics. Codes are not final idealizations, there may be many competing codes^*, and codes may not be perfections.

So the "Theory of Codes" is not like the "Theory of Forms": Codifism is not Platonism.


* This Compulinguistic Universe Hypothesis would be a materialist version of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. (See also The Computable Universe Hypothesis.)

The compulinguistic universe hypothesis

The compulinguistic universe hypothesis (CLUH):

All physical reality is the output of code "written" in a coding language.

compulinguistic - Of or relating to computer coding languages.

CLUH can be seen as a concrete version of MUH and CUH:

The mathematical universe hypothesis (arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646 [1]):

All physical reality is a mathematical structure.

The computable universe hypothesis (arxiv.org/abs/1003.5831 [2]):

All the laws of physics are computable.

(Note: [1] has this definition for a computable universe hypothesis: The mathematical structure that is our external physical reality is defined by computable functions.)

An alternative name for CLUH could be PUH: the Programmable Universe Hypothesis (but compulinguistic seems to be a more accurate descriptor).

Code forth

Codes are being created and discovered every day. Code forth and make or find your own.

FORTRAN ode

Or do I CALL you Fortran now,
the verse of numerical analysts?
O VAX, where art thou?
Have you fallen off programmers' top lists?
No longer for BLOCK heads,
you now look rather cool.
Once an ugly ducking,
you can actually be read.
Let you be taught in school!
Ignore programmers' chuckling!


from "Odes To Codes"

Ruby ode

Ruby,
you have class.
But you're no newbie.
Will you last
another decade?
What will save the day?
Webmasters hailed
and history was made
in a fortuitous way
when you jumped on the Rails!



from "Odes To Codes"

Conservative/Liberal mind

- The conservative mind^* is hierarchic, foundationalist, and tends towards closedness.
- The liberal mind^* is rhizomic, nonfoundationalist, and tends towards openness.


This is my takeaway from Chris Mooney's The Republican Brain, which I enjoyed very much, and his subsequent posts on this subject at Mother Jones and other places. With these two descriptions, much can be understood. It explains why conservatives end up in the Republican Party, which is the home to people with strongly held Christian and "patriotic" beliefs, and liberals in the Democratic Party. Libertarians now end up as Republicans given their religion-like devotion to the "free"-market, a devotion that is shared with conservative Christians.

It is useful to replace the terms 'conservative' and 'liberal' (which have political baggage associated with them) with the descriptors (in italics) above (which are politics-free and have to do with how one perceives the world). One can predict to a fair degree of accuracy one's politics (and today, Party) based on them.

Economic libertarians and conservative Christians are on the same page when it comes to the the belief in the supremacy of the "free"-market: The conservative Christian (calling it "Biblical Capitalism") believes it is God-ordained. This shared belief is how they will stay together in the GOP — the rift between them is exaggerated. Rand Paul is called a "libertarian" by the media even though he has a "life begins at conception" bill that would outlaw just about all abortions (he says this is the true "libertarian" position), but he melds so well with the economic libertarians that it doesn't separate them into different Parties.


* 'Brain orientation' is a better term than 'mind'.

see also Rationally Speaking: Understanding the conservative mind, without brain scans

Haskell ode

What Category (theoretically) should I put you in?
You may be the λ knight,
and it's with some chagrin
that I say to LISPs goodnight.
But your separators trouble me:
the whitespaces of your soul.
Are you the Eddie to the Wally?
But at least you come for free.
I can declare and not control,
while your type can be so poly.



from "Odes To Codes"

J ode

O J —
you left APL in the dust bin.
But what can I say
of its notable kin?
Who knew character actors
could be so strong
in such wide array?
You may have your detractors
but not for long.
And what wonderful play.



from "Odes To Codes"

Forth ode

Go Forth, and multiply
in your pushdown stack
all the words as I supply
until there's nothing lack.
Push,
push,
add one more,
push,
push,
pop the store.



from "Odes To Codes"

PTML: Pattern-Theoretic Markup Language

A link to a working draft specification is here:

cloudversed.com/ptml-pattern-theoretic-markup-language

LaTeX ode

I begin you with a slash:
I hope it isn't total dreck.
Let me not be so rash
but I fell in love with you, \(\LaTeX\).
You make it easy as can be
to write mathematically,
whether calculus or trig.
Even Einstein would like thee
for your practicality.
I, like you, hate WYSIWYG.


from "Odes To Codes"

Perl ode

When all is sed and done,
you have your own ambitions;
never is it so much fun
to speak with regular expressions.
Give me a stream
and i'll teach you to fish
for that hidden-text pearl,
or is it a pipe dream
that i can squish?
Give me a whirl.



from "Odes To Codes"

Intentionalism

The Meaning of Pure Mathematics
Jan Mycielski
Journal of Philosophical Logic
Vol. 18, No. 3 (Aug., 1989), pp. 315-320
jstor.org/stable/30227216

Platonism is unsatisfactory because it violates our instinctive drive to obey Ockham's principle of parsimony.

Intentionalism says that pure mathematics is a description of finite structures consisting of finitely many imagined objects.

The term intentionalism is chosen for its contrast with extensionalism which accepts actually infinite sets and leads naturally to Platonism.

This is intentionalism as developed by Jan Mycielski. The following are links to what I have written about this mathematical philosophy:

Persons without infinities
Closing Plato's Cave
Three paths to becoming a mathematical anti-platonist
Transfinity
Mathematica materialis, or How not to be lured into Plato's cave

Also by Jan Mycielski:

Locally Finite Theories
Analysis Without Actual Infinity

(Mycielski's approach is presented in two chapters of Understanding the Infinite by Shaughan Lavine: "The Finite Mathematics of Indefinitely Large Size", "The Theory of Zillions")

IBM/360 Assembly ode

I need you like a punch hole in the head
(while APL\360 responds right away,
you make me wait instead)
after a fitful delay.
It's all in the cards
that fill up a box.
I'll just mill about
a waste can of shards
until the wall clock's
hands hand me my printout.



from "Odes To Codes"

CLUH: The compulinguistic universe hypothesis

The compulinguistic universe hypothesis (CLUH):

All physical reality is the output of code "written" in a coding language.^*

compulinguistic - Of or relating to computer coding languages.

CLUH can be seen as a concrete version of MUH and CUH:

The mathematical universe hypothesis (arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646 [1]):

All physical reality is a mathematical structure.

The computable universe hypothesis (arxiv.org/abs/1003.5831 [2]):

All the laws of physics are computable.

(Note: [1] has this definition for a computable universe hypothesis: The mathematical structure that is our external physical reality is defined by computable functions.)

An alternative name for CLUH could be PUH: the Programmable Universe Hypothesis (but compulinguistic seems to be a more accurate descriptor).

* I take as the most basic language the probabilistic lambda calculus, which introduces a pure randomness element. So CLUH is a stochastic computational universe hypothesis.

HTML+CSS ode

One is the <head> of the household,
the other gives it <style>.
To browsers-by you are gold.
They stop, and stay awhile.
You let screenwriters in
to write on your <canvas>.
Their oddball <script>s:
They make us grin
or drive us to madness.
Hey, where's your zip?


from "Odes To Codes"


see Tunnel Vision 3D CSS

Codes and Forms

Are codes (from Codifism) like Forms (from Platonism)?

I argue no. Forms are nonmaterial abstractions outside nature, whereas codes are just as material as particles, fields, spacetimes, strings or whatever is currently in the world of physics. Codes are not final idealizations, there may be many competing codes^*, and codes may not be perfections.

So the "Theory of Codes" is not like the "Theory of Forms": Codifism is not Platonism.


* This Compulinguistic Universe Hypothesis would be a materialist version of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. (See also The Computable Universe Hypothesis.)

LISP ode

(You took a stand
  (lost the upper case
    (became a Common man)
    (but kept your grace))
  (You curry favor
    (with coding logicians)
    (and are used still))
  (though your mixin Flavors
    (in your next editions)
    (may (return NIL))))


from "Odes To Codes"

Pattern Theory, PTML, and Probabilistic XML

In Prolegomena to an XML schema for pattern theory, a genesis for PTML (Pattern-Theoretic Markup Language) is specified. A key aspect of pattern theory is being able to define probabilities over structures in the theory (configurations). The following developments in XML could be a useful connection to the probability model of PTML:

Probabilistic XML: A Data Model for the Web
Pierre Senellart
Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France, June 2012
pierre.senellart.com/publications/senellart2012probabilistic.pdf

Here, a probabilistic XML space, abbreviated px-space, is defined as a probability space over XML documents. Random sample documents are generated from a p-document, a tree model similar to an XML document that includes a probabilistic process for generating a random document. (See above reference for details.)




Pattern Theory references:

Lectures in Pattern Theory: Volume 1: Pattern Synthesis
Author: Ulf Grenander
Publisher: Springer, 1976
ISBN: 0387901744, 9780387901749
Length: 509 pages

Lectures in Pattern Theory: Volume 2: Pattern Analysis
Author: Ulf Grenander
Publisher: Springer, 1978
ISBN: 0387903100, 9780387903101
Length: 616 pages

Lectures in Pattern Theory: Volume 3: Regular Structures
Author: Ulf Grenander
Publisher: Springer, 1981
ISBN: 038790560X, 9780387905600
Length: 569 pages

-isms

Deleuzism: Philosophy is the production of concepts.
Ironism:     Philosophy is the production of vocabularies.
Codifism:   Philosophy is the production of codes.

Prolog ode

You seek to unify us
On our own terms.
We blow our own Horn clauses,
Your logic affirms.
Cut to the chase!
No backtracking now.
Don't make a goof.
Query dat base.
I'm sure you know how.
Ah, there's the proof.


from "Odes To Codes"

Archi-coding

One of the core ideas from Jacques Derrida is archi-writing: Regarding the relationship between speech and writing, Western philosophy has in some sense 'dissed' writing as a pale form of speech. It has been a mistake to see writing as just an artifact of speech. Archi-writing refers to "a kind of writing that precedes both speech and writing."

This may not be very clear (or some may think it's not very right), but there is an analogue that is more clear: The relationship between math and code.

By "math" I mean the writing of mathematics as seen in articles from arXiv, or in mathematical texts in general. A popular, expressive language for this math is \(\LaTeX\) math mode. While this math appears in an article, code (written in a programming language) that is associated with the math (e.g., numerical simulation) is generally relegated to final sections of the article, or is merely referenced. The idea that "math precedes code" is a mistake, just as "speech precedes writing" is a mistake.

Archi-coding would be a kind of coding that precedes both math and code.

APL ode

Your spinning balls of alien glyph
were born at IBM —
the language was a radical diff
from others not so trim.
When we had thought you'd lost your balls
you blended
with FP.
Where once there was that quirky scrawl
you friended
with QWERTY.


from "Odes To Codes"

BASIC ode

You are the adorable glow
of a coder's history
in a TRS eight oh.
Thanks for the memory.
You got critiqued
for being the GOTO guy
(which your descendants try to repress).
Back in your peak
you made Dijkstra cry.
CLS.


from "Odes To Codes"

C ode

Why are you just a C when you are so above average?

Does a double + really make you better?
Some want you in an Objective marriage.
Your # nephew tries to be so hipster.
You give out a lot of good pointers
Though you've left some garbage linger.
Still, you have gone very far.
Here are the rejoinders:
Just look at your offspring, sir!
But I like you just as you are.



from "Odes To Codes"

Odes To Codes

For National Poetry Writing Month, I am writing "Odes To Codes": for each day in April, an ode to a programming language. (Thirty codes in thirty days.)

The codes: C, BASIC, APL, Prolog, LISP, HTML+CSS, IBM/360 Assembly, Perl, LaTeX, Forth, J, Haskell, Ruby, FORTRAN, ..., machine, Dart, ..., JavaScript, ..., Go, λ calculus.


National Poetry Writing Month
National Poetry Month

#NaPoWriMo #NPM