From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-07-31T00:36:18+09:00
Subject: Re: How do you think of...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng" <hgs@dmu.ac.uk>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 10:49 AM
Subject: Re: How do you think of...


> On Fri, 26 Jul 2002, Michael Campbell wrote:
> 
> > <chuckle> yes, it was a merely syntactic (phonetic?) question; what
> > does the line sound like.
> 
> I don't understand what is behind the original question.  Why do you
> want to know?  Isn't this close to "If I could copy the patterns of
> activation in your brain when you see the colour red, and if I put them
> in my brain, would I see red as well?"?  This seems to be related to the
> idea of "qualia" which, as they relate to the question "what is
> consciousness?", are interesting.  But I don't know what use you can
> possibly make of the answers.

I am reminded of the question, "If Helen Keller 
fell over in the forest, would she make a sound?" 

:)
 
Actually, I hate to admit it, but I understood his question 
(I think) and it's rather the kind I would ask.

Although I'm a very visual thinker, sometimes I do translate
code into English phrases in my head. Sometimes I even "speak"
in code, as when I'm explaining something to another 
programmer.

For my part, a.each {|x| p x} sounds something like:
  Given a, for each x in it, do p(x)

And I have to admit that there is always the ghost of a 
distant, small voice in my head saying "x such that..."
because of the old mathematical notation which I learned
as a child (for describing sets):
  {|x| x>5 }
read as: "the set of all numbers x such that x > 5"

Although, of course, this doesn't relate to Ruby.

Hal