23: Nerdout! Fuzzy and crisp systems

Morgan is in the final crunch of finishing her dissertation draft, so Chris's brother Steve Webber joins us for a special "nerdout": analyzing the dual nature of fuzzy vs crisp systems! From physics to biology, from programming languages to human languages, the duality of fuzzy and crisp is everpresent.

Yes, this really is what Chris and Steve sound like whenever they get together...

Links:

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (but this version looks better on the web) and the 1980s lectures (also on Internet Archive but the YouTube uploads are more recent and higher quality)

• Lisp and Scheme

• Lambda Calculus

• The Little Schemer

• The Most Beautiful Program Ever Written by William Byrd

• Lisp 1.5 programmer's manual, which also now has a lovely reprint for sale (see Appendix B for Lisp in Lisp, albeit in m-expression rather than s-expression format... m-expressions never took on)

• Javascript: The Good Parts

• The narcissism of small differences

• To Mock a Mockingbird by Raymond Smullyan. Also, presumably not the link Steve had shared with Chris back in the day (but maybe it was?) but here's a more math'y breakdown of some of the ideas, To Dissect a Mockingbird: A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus with Animated Reduction

• Duality (mathematics)

• Fuzzy and crisp sets

• Neats and scruffies (see also our previous episode about machine learning)

• Alan Watts' lecture on "prickles and goo"

• Carcinisation (convergent evolution on "crabs")

• Lisp vs APL: "Mud and Diamonds"

• Guix

• Jonathan Rees's website

• Lojban, and here's a pretty good Lojban intro

• The infamous Lojban "bear goo" debate