Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach contained some interesting musings on recursion, computation, self-reference, and so on. But of course is main "oomph" was that it was going to use all of these musings to explain consciousness. And the explanation? "This is it -- this is what consciousness is . Consciousness is that property of a system that arises whenever there exists symbols in the system which obey triggering patterns somewhat like the ones described in the past several sections" (385). Can you imagine someone in a real science, one that makes real discoveries, offering an "explanation" like that? "Planets just are those celestial objects that move in the sky in that funny way." "Atoms just are those things that cause chemicals to form in the patterns they do." "Evolution just is the process of new species coming into being." Such a phony would be laughed right out of the scientific community. In a real s
Manhattan, near Little Italy.
ReplyDeleteI was wrong, you're in Philly.
ReplyDelete1. Philadelphia City Hall, courtyard, looking south.
ReplyDelete2,3. South street between 4th and 5th, looking north.
You a Philadelphian, argosy?
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DeleteNever been there... I figured it out with google/tineye to see if I could. I can't resist a challenge.
I figured it must be somewhere in NY or Pennsylvania based on reading your blog, and the street signs are in English. So then I googled 'beyond the wall' which seems to be a defunct poster store headquartered in Pennsylvania with at one time 5 retail locations... anyways there are still addresses for it online, with one in philadelphia, which Google Maps street view confirmed as image #1. From there, the birdseye led me immediately to the location of #2, by the distinctive black roof of one building.
#1 was the hardest, although a city hall was actually my first guess, The shot from inside the courtyard threw me off the scent, since the architectural ornament is quite different on the inside (and i was assuming a shot from a sidewalk). I tried to track it down from the art-deco skyscraper in the background, which only lead me back to the city hall, which I had already discarded. So I reverse-image searched it on tineye and google image search, which turned up one almost identical but unlabeled shot. "visually similar images" eventually got me the answer.
If you ever come to Toledo, OH (before I move away, of course) I'll give you a tour of the highlights.
Nice work, Argosy!
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