Journal 2025-07-27

tl;dr Problem-solving is the navigation of scale-free conceptual spaces to achieve intentional state changes, where agents with finite working memory dynamically adjust their viewport through decomposition and abstraction operations until unknown system patterns align with known behavioral templates.

Micro Burn-Out

I wish to mint this phrase. You know exactly what it means without any more explanation. I've been hit by one, was overwhelmed by what I was working on, while also determined to give myself a holiday. So after months of fairly intensive work on code projects, I switched off for a couple of weeks. Now, totally lacking momentum. Ok, figure out where I was trying to do.

Adaptive Problem-Solving through Scale-Free Knowledge Navigation

An approach to problem-solving is to regard it as navigating between different scales of conceptual representation to fit patterns within the constraints of finite working memory. This is the motivation behind the Ragno and ZPT ontologies, and what I've been playing with in the Semem project.

Ragno is an attempt to capture a knowledgebase, independent of domain. That is the corpus. ZPT and attempt to describe a navigation system over that corpus. The controls are : Zoom (abstraction level), Pan (conceptual domain), Tilt (representation perspective) - serving to find the optimal knowledge frame for pattern matching within memory constraints.

Consider :

• Pattern Matching as Navigation - Problem-solving involves finding the right "view" into a knowledge space where unknown patterns match known ones
• Working Memory as Viewport - The agent's finite capacity defines the maximum complexity processable at once (like a camera's field of view)
• Scale-Free Architecture - Concepts exist at multiple abstraction levels simultaneously, allowing zoom in/out navigation Dynamic Chunking - Decomposition/abstraction operations adapt the knowledge representation to fit the working memory constraints
• Dynamic Chunking - Decomposition/abstraction operations adapt the knowledge representation to fit the working memory constraints

What I'll do when I get cancer

Dramatic title, but legitimate. I estimate there's 1/3 probability cancer sees me off, 1/3 general decline because aging, 1/3 hit by a bus/asteroid. I still smoke, spent most of my life drinking at a risky level. So I can do a first-person view on this.

I'm actually prompted because a friend's mother got a bad diagnosis. Wish I could help. I'm a little embarrassed about how little I know the science around cancer. I lost my wife to a very aggressive leukemia. I think it was the aggressive chemo that did for her, but I do believe the medics were doing their best.

What do I know? Well for starters, despite the cultural norm on it, it's not a death sentence. My dad got bladder cancer 4? decades ago. Had radiotherapy, left him with a tangerine for fluid storage, but he's still happily plodding through his 90s.

What do I know? Well quality of life is the overarching principal. Health issues are monsters at sapping the will to live. One day at a time, sweet Jesus H. Yeah, that's a thing - religion can mitigate the deathiness. I don't think it's necessary for making the best of things. One of the physicists' models of the universe ("block"?) has reality as a smear over space-time. Also, like butterfy wings, a person's existence modifies the universe. Caroline has persistence.

Sod Dignitas. I have a serious phobia there - suicide, and nearby capital punishment. I'm blubbing up now, cannot think on such things. Bit ironic given that I repeatedly have the ideation, very prone. Actually got ropes hanging from the ceiling in most of my rooms, for fun stuff. Loads of sharp things and toxins. But just no. Point there, IMHO, if you're thinking Dignitas, you are missing the point. And being a drama queen.

The only good suicide : Cheree

I have very strong reservations about the power of positive thought in fixing physical problems. But there's no argument against the converse, if you have negative thoughts all the time, you have a shit life. Very likely to cause physical problems.

What? Ok, practically. Cancer is cells that have slipped out of kilter, reproducing when they shouldn't be. So on an intuitive level I think this suggests that encouraging the norm is likely to be helpful. We have evolved to be creatures to survive in this bizarre environment. Got brains even. I don't know, it sounds nonsense as I type, but bear with me. We move around, gather food, are very sociable, procreate.

Oh yeah, first, that's a point. When I get my own bad cancer diagnosis, all kinds of crank ideas will be worth considering. It might be nonsense, but if there's a 0.001% chance of some Siberian tree snot being helpful, why not.

Nobel prize smartypants Linus Pauling got convinced Vit C was the cure for cancer. I remember throwing the notion to AaronSW and he threw it back, he said it speaks for itself - no supporting evidence, and prostate cancer got Pauling.

But I do suspect high dose Vit C might be useful. What I think is important is that the human body doesn't neatly categorise its subsystems. When I'm crashing with my internal organs destroying themselves at a cellular level, I will be extremely vulnerable to external forces - viruses, bacteria, yeasts and the crew. Vit C is good for boosting immune system before infection, Vit D good for chasing off the infection after it's got you (I read a lot during Covid).

As far as I can gather, an awful lot of the human system relies on gut bacteria. To the pile of Vit C & D, plus a multi I'll add Saccharomyces boulardii as a supplement worth taking. Lactic stuff is probably useful if you like cheese. Water kefir aka tibicos (lovely word, like chisanbop) is a bit pot luck, but I grow it, it has sorted bad guts for me more than once. Avoid heavily processed food, yadda yadda...

I'm about to make myself blush. The feeling that doing the stuff that we were built to do, normalise the system : forage/hunt, socialise, procreate. The first is well-documented, physical exercise and creative thought is good for you. People are massive, community, friends - health issue, bring people closer. Ok, blush time : have sex, or more conveniently : masturbate a lot. Do you see now why I'm narrating this cancer as my problem? Suggest to my friend to suggest to his mother that she masturbates a lot. Laughing is medicine for aching wrists. I'll get my coat.

Daft RAG

After 8 months of concerted effort, I have invented a new paradigm for open-domain question answering systems.

Here is the question:

Which University, The University of Saskatchewan or The University of Detroit Mercy was founded first?

If I ask Mistral Chat it responds :

The University of Detroit Mercy was founded first. It was established in 1877. The University of Saskatchewan was founded later, in 1907.

Semem, my oh-so-sophisticated Semantic Web Memory for Intelligent Agents (which along with a lot of other things uses Wikipedia calls and mistral-small-latest under the hood) says :

The University of Detroit Mercy was founded first, in 1990. The University of Saskatchewan was founded later, in 1907.

According to Wikipedia :

• The University of Detroit Mercy was founded in 1877
• The University of Saskatchewan was founded in 1907

It's ok, this result was actually very pleasing. I have only just started kicking the tyres of what's been implemented. The graph (in a SPARQL store) is getting very nicely populated/augmented using a bunch of different algorithms and the retrieval steps are basically working. It looks like the issue here is simply that the generated corpuscles (what I'm calling little bits of a corpus) are not being SELECTed properly to go into the final results.

PS. Yes, it was a mismatch between the shape of the query and the shape of the graph. After fixing that, for this question Semem now gives :

The provided context does not contain information about the founding dates of the University of Saskatchewan or the University of Detroit Mercy. Therefore, I cannot answer this question based on the given context.

Which is a correct answer.

Even more pleasing is the result of one of the other test questions :

Are Sorghastrum and Artabotrys found in the same areas?

Based on the provided context, there is no information suggesting that Sorghastrum and Artabotrys are found in the same areas. The context only provides specific details about Sorghastrum in Paraguay and some species of Artabotrys, but it does not indicate any overlap in their habitats or geographical distribution. Therefore, I cannot confirm whether they are found in the same areas.

Ok, Mistral chat gave a much more detailed answer in 1s after having done a Web search. But I'm still calling this a win.

Here is BeerQA Enhanced Workflow (v2)

Voltage Controlled Motor Module

Demo vid : VCMM

Schematic :

This worked on the 3rd attempt. First try, nothing happened but one transistor got hot. Then I discovered I'd got the collector wires the wrong way around. I thought I must have fried the transistors, but maybe not, after I'd replaced them I experimented a bit more. My estimate for a resistor to go in series with the motor had been way out (120R), it needed something really low. But it occurred to me that an inductance should work there, and I had a old PCB (from a satellite tuner PSU) on the desk next to me with the perfect candidate. I'd got the old board there for the 1000uF 16v caps. I didn't bother breadboarding, went straight to stripboard. It would either work or not. The components that were candidates for tweaking were easy access.

This time it actually worked. After trying it for a few seconds I felt to see if the transistors were getting warm. Burnt my fingers. Motors really aren't my thing. So I made a couple of little heatsinks and hooked it up to the modular for the vid.

I think what I'll do is try it with a PSU of its own next. With a dummy load first, to see if the circuit is behaving as I'd expected. I really don't get why it should be drawing so much current with such a farty little motor, unless the transistors are biased on when they shouldn't be. Dunno. The motor is the main unknown for me.

Distortion Module

I think I already posted this schematic :

Since then I soldered it up and made a front panel. It worked on the second attempt!

First time I'd labeled the power connector back-to-front. Which was annoying since I knew the red wire on Eurorack cables was perversely the negative. I must have doubled on it. Anyway, it fried the op-amp. Horrible to desolder.

The front panel went well :

One Simple Trick! - print onto glossy paper, laminate.

End result was reasonably smart -

I couldn't be bothered tweaking the layout further.

The font is Thrums Serif, btw. I designed it a few years back because I wanted to see how it was done, and wanted one that worked for me on web pages. I didn't really get it to look good on web pages, but serendipity - exactly what I want for front panels.