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An Obscure Field of Math Might Help Unlock Mysteries of Human Perception | Discover Magazine
▻https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/an-obscure-field-of-math-might-help-unlock-mysteries-of-human-perc
▻https://images.ctfassets.net/cnu0m8re1exe/qRT8mLm2TDqhzSePqF5gS/7dcbc0cc1116822294bc9c089615aa89/hyperbolicmind1.jpeg
Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai challenged the rules Euclid had outlined more than 2,000 years earlier.
Credit: Science History Images/AlamyThe human brain is both a marvel and a mystery of evolution: Packed into a volume about one-quarter that of an inflated soccer ball, somewhere around 86 billion neurons form networks that enable us to do everything from mindlessly scrolling through Instagram to safely sending people into space. But a deeper understanding of the structure of those networks is still an open question.
Perception remains particularly vexing: How does the human brain turn the deluge of incoming signals — photons, odor molecules, sound waves, sensations on our skin — into an accurate mental simulation? What neural network could represent, say, the smell of chocolate?
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The idea of breaking Euclid’s Fifth attracted big thinkers of the time, including Carl Friedrich Gauss and Nikolai Lobachevsky. One of the most remarkable figures was János Bolyai, a young, aspiring mathematician from Hungary who was one of the first to forge the rules of this new geometry. In 1820, he undertook a radical plan to thwart Euclid. János realized that relaxing Euclid’s Fifth Postulate opened new windows to stranger, non-Euclidean geometries.His father, Farkas, was not pleased, using language we don’t often hear from mathematicians. Or fathers, for that matter.
“For God’s sake, please give it up,” Farkas wrote to János.
“Detest it as lewd intercourse,” his letter continued. “It can deprive you of all your leisure, your health, your rest, and the whole happiness of your life.” Farkas, himself a mathematician and a lifelong friend of Gauss, noted that he, too, had once challenged Euclid. “I have measured that bottomless night, and all the light and all the joy of my life went out there.”
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#Unlocked: a Twitter tour of the UK’s detention estate
In collaboration with other members of the Detention Forum, over the next few months Detention Action will be taking part in ‘Unlocking Detention’ – a Twitter tour of the UK’s detention estate. Digitally visiting a different site of detention each week, we will be ‘unlocking’ the gates of those hidden IRCs, short-term holding facilities and prisons, were people are detained without time-limit, for months, sometimes years.
The tour will ‘unlock’ the gates of these places of detention so we can have a hard look at the cruel reality for those inside.
This is a really exciting new awareness raising initiative but as well as re-tweeting our material during the tour (@DetentionAction or @DetentionForum) we also want you to take part too.
If you have direct experience of detention, are supporting or working with people in detention, or have anything you want to say about detention, then get in touch! Do you have any reports, photos, artworks or articles you want to share during the tour? Are you a Detention Action volunteer? Do you remember your first visit to a detention centre? We want to hear your reflections!
If so, don’t hasten to contact ben@detentionaction.org.uk or detentionforum@gmail.com to find out more or to send content over. For more information, you can visit www.unlocked.org.uk, which will go live in September. The schedule and suggested hashtags for the #Unlocked tour can be seen below:
WEEK WHICH CENTRE? SUGGESTED HASHTAGS
14 Sep to 20 Sep People held in prisons as immigration detainees #prisondetainees
21 Sep to 27 Sep Short Term Holding Facilities #sthf
28 Sep to 4 Oct Haslar #haslar
5 Oct to 11 Oct Campsfield #campsfield
12 Oct to 18 Oct Brook House #brookhouse
19 Oct to 25 Oct Morton Hall #mortonhall
26 Oct to 1 Nov Harmondsworth #harmondsworth
2 Nov to 8 Nov Dover #dover
9 Nov to 15 Nov Cedars #cedars
16 Nov to 22 Nov Yarl’s Wood #yarlswood
23 Nov to 29 Nov Tinsley #tinsley
30 Nov to 6 Dec Colnbrook #colnbrook
7 Dec to 13 Dec Dungavel #dungavel
14 Dec to 20 Dec Summary Week #detention #unlocked▻http://detentionaction.org.uk/unlocked-a-twitter-tour-of-the-uks-detention-estate
#détention #détention_administrative #rétention #UK #Angleterre #visite_guidée #centre_de_détention #migration #asile #réfugiés
cc @reka
