{"id":5468,"date":"2024-08-29T14:36:46","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T14:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=5468"},"modified":"2024-08-29T14:36:46","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T14:36:46","slug":"tendrils-of-mess-in-our-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/29\/tendrils-of-mess-in-our-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Tendrils of Mess in our Brains"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ribbonfarm.com\/2017\/01\/05\/tendrils-of-mess-in-our-brains\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/IMG_6105.jpg?w=625&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a lovely meditation from Sarah Perry on the meaning of mess. I don&#8217;t think that I agree with her conclusion (I agree that &#8216;high-entropy&#8217; isn&#8217;t sufficient, but maybe something like Murray Gell-Mann&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Effective_complexity\">effective complexity<\/a> would work?) but it was a joy to read.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Watts observes that elements of the natural world \u2013 clouds, foam on water, the stars, human beings \u2013 are not messes, though the nature of their order remains inscrutable, and Watts doesn\u2019t try to pin down its precise nature. Mess seems to be somehow a property perceptible only in the presence of human artifacts. Is this the result of some kind of aesthetic original sin on the part of humans, uncanny beings severed from the holiness of Nature? I hope not. \u201cHumans are bad\u201d is a boring answer.<\/p>\n<p>We can learn something about order from the mystery of mess. We start here: a cloud is not a mess, but an ashtray full of cigarette butts is a mess. In tracking down why this is so, we will find, through the lens of the mess and the non-mess, a clue to the hidden orders in our minds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ribbonfarm.com\/2017\/01\/05\/tendrils-of-mess-in-our-brains\/\">Tendrils of Mess in our Brains<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a lovely meditation from Sarah Perry on the meaning of mess. I don&#8217;t think that I agree with her conclusion (I agree that &#8216;high-entropy&#8217; isn&#8217;t sufficient, but maybe something like Murray Gell-Mann&#8217;s effective complexity would work?) but it was a joy to read. Watts observes that elements of the natural world \u2013 clouds, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1qc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5470,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468\/revisions\/5470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}