axioms of ideas

  A while back I thought of this idea that is somewhere between math and philosophy. The goal was to mimic geometry but apply the rules to ideas instead. So, in geometry they have points, I thought in my system I would have ideas like big, small, loud, inside, outside, etc as "points". In geometry the second thing they have is lines made up of points. In my system I have comparisons as "lines". An example line in geometry might be said to be "drawn" between two points. In mine, I "draw" a comparison between two ideas. Like "big is to loud". This compares big and loud. In geometry they have circles, in mine I have concepts. A concept encompasses several ideas, more general concepts include more ideas. The word encompasses is even similar to that in geometry of drawing a circle with a compass to include points on the inside. Also in geometry they have an axiom about parallel lines, remember in mine a line was a comparison like "big is to loud", so a pair of parallel comparisons becomes an analogy... "big is to loud as small is to quiet". If you took the SAT's this might look familiar. An analogy is a correlation between two comparisons... correlation in Latin literally means "running alongside" the way two parallel lines run alongside one another.
So to recap:

1. Ideas = points
2. Comparisons = lines
3. Concepts = circles
4. Analogies = pairs of parallel lines

Now for the more mathematical bit I need to set up the definitions formally the same way they do with geometry.

On Wikipedia it gives these as Euclid's axioms:
    Let the following be postulated:
    1. to draw a straight line from any point to any point.
    2.To produce [extend] a finite straight line continuously in a straight line.
    3.To describe a circle with any center and distance [radius].
    4.That all right angles are equal to one another.
    5.The parallel postulate: That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if                   produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.

And these are the ones I made with the words in bold above instead of the elements of geometry.
    let the following be postulated:
    1. to draw a comparison from any idea to any other idea
    2. to extend a comparison continuously through more and more ideas
    3. To describe a concept with any idea as it's center and to the increasingly more general (including more ideas)
    4. That all orthogonal comparisons are orthogonal in the same way    (More on this below)
    5. For every comparison there is an analogy, the second comparison not including elements of the first

Ok, so I've made a geometry with different words than they used in the original, right? 

An extended comparison is comparing even more ideas such as "big is to loud is to bright" (this could go on and on)

A pair of orthogonal comparisons is like "big is to loud" and "big is to wet" They're orthogonal in the sense that they both include the same point: {"big"}, and "loud" and "wet" are as different from one another as they can be without being closer to opposites.  This visual for this is "big is to loud" and "big is to wet" are like perpendicular lines that both start at the word "big".

The notion of parallel relates to analogous comparisons like this one "soft is to hard as inside is to outside" This is an analogy relating opposites, but "inside" might be on the extended comparison "inside is to core is to brain"(things within other things) and "soft" on the extended comparison "soft is to dim is to quiet"(matters of degree) and the two extended comparisons not share any ideas in common.

Upshot

So anyway the idea is that having defined these axioms in the same way as the ones for geometry, any proof in geometry will apply to these axioms of thought as well. 


Conclusion:
The cool thing is that I made a system for the words: ideas, comparisons, concepts, and analogies that is exactly the same as the system for geometry using the words: points, lines, circles, and parallel lines, everything that has been proven in geometry over the centuries is instantly known about this new topic as well. 


The best part was the funny way the words for the geometrical ideas were always very fitting to the way I had my system worded. Like a comparison is "drawn" between two ideas and a line is "drawn" between two points...every single word I used in mine was like that... Like people were thinking about ideas geometrically already but hadn't put it all together.  

Words and People

  It seems to me that trying to describe another person with words either in your mind or to another person always amounts to an oversimplification or an over generalization. I feel pretty cynically about the reason people attempt it at all. Also, I'll discuss why I think words are not the tool that philosophy seems convinced that they are.
  People are always talking about other people; sometimes in a positive light, sometimes a negative one, but that's not what I'm focusing on today. What I want to talk about is my idea that no matter how many words one uses, even a whole book of words, or how well chosen they are, they are going to fall way short of giving an adequate explanation of any human being. I think it's worthwhile to keep in mind that no matter how much you hear about someone, all that's been said relates to the person the same way that a drawing of the person relates to the person. There are some major differences, the person is flesh and blood the drawing is ink or whatever on paper. Also, it's a special faculty of the mind that enables a person to look at such a drawing and relate it to the person being depicted, and it's also a peculiar faculty of the mind to think that words about a person relate to the person being described. My point is that this faculty relating the abstract to the real works quite a bit too well a lot of times.
  I mentioned that I feel cynical about the reason people abstract away from the actual complexity of the person and deal with the abstraction in their mind as if it were the actual person. I think first and foremost people like to operate as if they know enough about things that are unknowable. I think really this is probably practical for the inquisitive human brain not being able to know something would be like an itch that could never be scratched. And also people oversimplify the person they're thinking about's attributes so they can attempt to make informed decisions as to whether they should associate with the other person and social things like that. Which is born of a certain practicality as well, but I feel that except in the most extreme cases the oversimplification of the person doesn't relate to the actual person well enough to be able to make that informed decision that they want to make. It's the best way people have of sorting through and acting on their social life so we can't abandon it, but my point is just that I think people should be aware of how faulty the process is. Some people are very confident in their correct judgement of other people and I think that the best judgement possible is going to be way off.
  The next thing is sort of tangentially related is what I see as the folly of philosophy. In the case of philosophy people are arguing about ideas with words. Now as impossible as it is to describe a person with words, a concept is not even something you can interact with in the real world. I mean if there were such a thing as more impossible that would be what philosophy tries to do with words. I love words, but describing ultimate reality with them is like trying to build a bridge out of spaghetti. As great as spaghetti is it's probably not useful in that way. I still think philosophy is fun and interesting just I wish they wouldn't get so upset with each other when they disagree, I mean, realistically, they probably aren't even talking about the same thing! Like if they are discussing transcendental reality or some phrase like that, what happens in each one's brain when they hear those words is likely completely different, and trying to sort that out with words is futile, something that can be fun but shouldn't be taken seriously.

About the Facebook movie The Social Network

   So overall I think this is a pretty good movie, though I don't think it's good enough to win Best Picture in the Academy Awards. I do see several ways the film could have been better... Mostly this has to do with the writer of the movie not really understanding why Facebook became popular and various issues with how technology is covered. Also, the film might have been better if it covered a longer span of time in the history of Facebook and explained a bit more about some of the events that were covered. Also there is one part that could have been left on the cutting room floor.
   First and foremost of all is the writer of the movie doesn't seem to understand why Facebook became popular. It is mentioned in the movie that there was already MySpace and even before that Friendster, which if you've forgotten were social networking sites like Facebook that existed before Facebook was even created. The only clue given in the movie that Facebook could succeed in a world where sites almost just like it existed already was that Facebook was going to be "exclusive". Of course now a days anybody can subscribe to Facebook but originally it was only open to certain colleges starting with being only available to students of Harvard. Now maybe the exclusivity had something to do with it in the beginning, that it was directly advertised to certain college students at first so they might use it instead of MySpace for example, but could that really be the reason why it ended up completely supplanting MySpace, just that less people were allowed to join Facebook? I don't think so. Personally I think the flaw in MySpace was that it actually let people customize their pages too much, and the average person has terrible taste in how a web page should look. I estimate that 60% of MySpace pages were unreadable because they chose a background picture or background color or font style that made it impossible to read what the person had written on the page. Add to that that as soon as you loaded the page some song that you hated blared out of your speakers and it wasn't very much fun looking at people's pages. So I think the movie should have mentioned that the reason Facebook was better than MySpace is actually that it didn't allow you to do certain things that would make your page unbearable rather than the issue of exclusivity or any additional functionality that Facebook offered. The movie even goes out of its way to show some moment of inspiration on the part of Mark Zuckerberg where he discovers that he could put a line on the Facebook profile that said whether you were single or seeing someone or married. As I recall you could tell this about any MySpace member already and also if you knew the person enough to friend them on Facebook you almost certainly would know if they were single or not already. Maybe if you were randomly searching for people on Facebook you might like to know if they were single or not, but is this actually how Facebook is used? I don't think so.
   A sign that the writer of the movie doesn't really understand computers and technology is the scene where the protagonist is seen defending himself against the charge of "hacking" the school's network. It's hard to believe that the security officer at Harvard wouldn't realize that what Mark Zuckerberg had did wasn't hacking at all, it was just saving all the pictures of all the publicly available Facebooks at Harvard (an online version of a pamphlet that has pictures of the people in a dorm with their names)  and putting them all on one webpage. This has nothing to do with bypassing security in any way, in fact one of the dorm's Facebooks wasn't online and apparently he wouldn't be bothered with getting a physical copy and scanning the pictures in with a scanner. So anyway if the school was mad about anything it must have been that they felt the pictures were copyrighted or they disliked what he was doing with them, the whole notion that Mark Zuckerberg was doing some "hacking" is just a transparent attempt by the writer to make it seem more interesting to people who don't understand what he was doing.
   A completely different issue is the period of time covered in the movie. At the end of the movie it says as the credits are about to roll that the people suing Mark Zuckerberg won their cases. I really think it would have made the movie better if they had actually covered how the case concluded, and the people's reaction to winning the case. I have a feeling that even though they won a lot of money in the settlement they still might not have felt completely all right about it. I think after building up through the whole movie about the case it ended kind of suddenly just saying in text that they won and how much they won- not very satisfying at all. Also it ends with him checking the one lawyer's Facebook page, but doesn't even include in text whatever happened between Mark Zuckerberg and her if anything. I think also it would have been important to include, either by extending the time frame of the movie or in text at the end, that Mark Zuckerberg recently decided to give away half of all his billions of dollars to charity and convinced a bunch of other billionaires to do so as well. This would show that it really wasn't about the money, apparently, that he didn't want to give into those people suing him. Tt was just the principle that he didn't feel they deserved it.
   Also it feels to me like a major part of the movie is missing, It is explaining why he treated the twins the way he did and why he didn't want in the exclusive club that at the beginning of the movie he would have given anything to be in anymore. I mean the twins wanted to work with him and it might have led to him getting in the Phoenix club but at some point he decided to randomly not want in the club anymore. I mean did the twins really offend him that much by only inviting him into the bike room? It seems like he would have understood that having been so amazed by the exclusitivity of the club in the opening scene.
   There is also a part of the movie that is covered that isn't really that important to the story. The fact that he had a girlfriend that broke up with him because he was so obsessed with getting in the Phoenix club and he tried to get back together with her but she wouldn't. And then later he forgets all about her. It was kind of funny the way they introduced her like she was going to be a major character, and then went out of their way to show him trying to get back together with her but she wouldn't, only to have that thread of the story completely become irrelevant by the end. It seems with it never resolving itself that they could have just started the movie a little while after they broke up and not even have her as a character. That is, given that she wasn't really that important in the grand scheme of things anyway. Or at least left out the scene were he tries to get back together with her, which is really completely pointless considering that she just said no. It's not like even at the end of the movie he was still pining for her or anything.
   So anyway those are my thoughts on the movie, like I said overall I thought it was pretty good but there are a couple things that could have been handled differently. I don't think it should win Best Picture, I'll be disappointed if it does. I'm not even sure it should have been nominated even though they picked nine movies to nominate this year.
*Edit
  Another important reason Facebook became popular was because they encouraged you to use your real name for your profile, so it was actually possible to search for people you knew without knowing that, for instance, some girl you used to know went by kitty99 on MySpace. This was also not mentioned in the movie.
  The movie also could have pointed out that the twins certainly shouldn't have won the case as they did, because Facebook wasn't really a revolutionary idea but a slight tweak of the formula of MySpace. They didn't have any patents that he was violating so really what was it that he stole from them? If anything both parties stole an idea from MySpace. and other sites like it.