...content
22/4/26 11:51![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rugessnomeThis semester I've been in a thermodynamics class that introduced the extremely generically named concept of quality: the ratio of mass in vapor phase to mass in liquid phase in a mixture at the ~boiling point.
I've also been reading Underwood Dudley's Numerology: What Pythagoras Wrought, a disapproving but light-hearted commentary on numerology, where at one point he introduces a similarly generic name and concept, for the context of dealing with the mutterings of charletans: content, or the probability of people disagreeing with a statement. Where a statement resulting in unanimous agreement such as "You regularly drink something containing water" would have a content of 0, and "You are Carl Frederick Gauss" (his example!) is so improbable as to be approximately 1.
And, juxtapose this with my randomly getting back into the_miracle_aligner, who does song covers in mostly ancient languages, but who chose "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" to put into his own tribal language, with a remark about what but an extremely relatable song?
aaand furthermore, the idea that what we know about other people's inner lives is inevitably curated...
eta: the point I am circling around is that we are privy to others' misery (and indeed any other emotional state) only inasmuch as that emotion is expressed to us, and our perception of the ubiquity of a given emotion is based on how much whatever our social circle+media has expressed that emotion.
"content" is a rather inapt or cruel lens for this idea, but something like its... complement (1-content) might be a better expression of the idea that you are likely not alone in a given emotion...
I've also been reading Underwood Dudley's Numerology: What Pythagoras Wrought, a disapproving but light-hearted commentary on numerology, where at one point he introduces a similarly generic name and concept, for the context of dealing with the mutterings of charletans: content, or the probability of people disagreeing with a statement. Where a statement resulting in unanimous agreement such as "You regularly drink something containing water" would have a content of 0, and "You are Carl Frederick Gauss" (his example!) is so improbable as to be approximately 1.
And, juxtapose this with my randomly getting back into the_miracle_aligner, who does song covers in mostly ancient languages, but who chose "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" to put into his own tribal language, with a remark about what but an extremely relatable song?
aaand furthermore, the idea that what we know about other people's inner lives is inevitably curated...
eta: the point I am circling around is that we are privy to others' misery (and indeed any other emotional state) only inasmuch as that emotion is expressed to us, and our perception of the ubiquity of a given emotion is based on how much whatever our social circle+media has expressed that emotion.
"content" is a rather inapt or cruel lens for this idea, but something like its... complement (1-content) might be a better expression of the idea that you are likely not alone in a given emotion...
