Re: [math-fun] Pauli-Covid Exclusion Principle
It’s perfectly fine to have an opinion, and I don’t care who you like more. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings or stop me from writing. Alan’s is the original, and that is important. The only thing relevant to the list is what is your procedure for deciding P2 << P1 for two similar poems P1 & P2? Here are more of my reasons for wanting an alternative: -use of “is” verb to define COVID too authoritative. -COVID cancelled more events than class. -should “germ” and “term” be singular? -graduation happens after spring not before fall. Please also notice that I did not say “my poem >> Alan’s”, because first of all, it is rude to say such a thing, and even then it isn’t provably true. But if you think you can prove “Alan’s poem >> Brad’s alternative”, well let’s hear it, how do you decide? —Brad
On May 9, 2020, at 9:56 AM, Gareth McCaughan <gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On 08/05/2020 18:23, Brad Klee wrote:
The poem is a good start but not that easy to read. IMO, too much like prose. Here is an alternative version, roughly equivalent: These COVID, the cancelling germs, Sickened spring and summer terms. Should they plan to attend next fall, we mightn’t commence any at all.
Allan's version is much better, sorry.
-- g
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On 09/05/2020 16:59, Brad Klee wrote:
It’s perfectly fine to have an opinion, and I don’t care who you like more. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings or stop me from writing. Alan’s is the original, and that is important.
The only thing relevant to the list is what is your procedure for deciding P2 << P1 for two similar poems P1 & P2?
I run them both through a large and complex neural network trained on a modest-size of highly relevant data and a colossal amount of other training data that presumably informs the weights in the net somehow. Understanding the reasons for a neural network's judgement is notoriously difficult even when the network in question is implemented in wetware and coupled to sophisticated communication hardware, but I think some of the things that make the difference for me are: - "These COVID" is not grammatical. - "COVID" is the name of the disease, not the germs. (Allan has "the COVID virus", which I think is OK; the virus that causes COVID[-19].) - Antecedent of "they" in line 3 is unclear. I guess it's meant to be the germs? "Attend" seems a weird word to use for them, even with humorous intent. - Too many syllables in line 3. - Metre of line 4 is completely wrong. - "mightn't commence any at all" seems ungrammatical to me (but this may just be a usage I'm not familiar with; do universities commence students, rather than students commencing intransitively?)
Please also notice that I did not say “my poem >> Alan’s”, because first of all, it is rude to say such a thing, and even then it isn’t provably true.
I thought that was the clear intention, and it was exactly because it seemed kinda rude that I felt OK offering my contrary opinion, quod erat disputandum. -- g
Hi Gareth, Thanks, those comments are helpful. Mike Stay also said that Alan's original had better meter. I don't disagree, but don't care that much either. These are not the days of Tennyson, and the idea that a lyric poem needs iambic tetrameter is, to me, anachronistic. I was telling Mike that a famous counter-example is Charles Olson's "The Kingfishers", and see also: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69406/projective-verse To get back to the matter, compare Alan's poem with the following prose: "Due to COVID-19, spring and summer terms have been cancelled. If COVID-19 cases persist until fall, classes will be cancelled again, and students might not be able to graduate." Changing the language slightly or adding a meter and rhyme scheme does not really fix the problem that the subject matter is prosaic. We are disputing what poetry really is, not the constraints it could obey. My idea was to introduce some ambiguity into the word choice, and allow for multiple valid interpretations. This can backfire, but oh well, no harm in trying. I still think the two alternatives are roughly equal. There probably will be good or even great poems written for dealing with death and poverty, especially in segments of the population disproportionately affected. As hinted by Cris Moore's comments, black inner-city populations have seen the worst of it. So if some grammatically-incorrect rapper comes up with a few interesting lyrics on his or her experience, should we then complain about formalism, or that the writing is not mathematically clear due to non-standard usage? Personally, I don't. Another lyrical work I like is Kendrick Lamar's "Sing about me, I'm dying of thirst" (warning: this song is horribly explicit in its description of urban poverty). The meaning of "dying of thirst" is not clear, but that is a poetic virtue. It can be taken literally, but also has obvious biblical overtones. --Brad On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 7:06 PM Gareth McCaughan <gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On 09/05/2020 16:59, Brad Klee wrote:
It’s perfectly fine to have an opinion, and I don’t care who you like more. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings or stop me from writing. Alan’s is the original, and that is important.
The only thing relevant to the list is what is your procedure for deciding P2 << P1 for two similar poems P1 & P2?
I run them both through a large and complex neural network trained on a modest-size of highly relevant data and a colossal amount of other training data that presumably informs the weights in the net somehow.
Understanding the reasons for a neural network's judgement is notoriously difficult even when the network in question is implemented in wetware and coupled to sophisticated communication hardware, but I think some of the things that make the difference for me are:
- "These COVID" is not grammatical.
- "COVID" is the name of the disease, not the germs. (Allan has "the COVID virus", which I think is OK; the virus that causes COVID[-19].)
- Antecedent of "they" in line 3 is unclear. I guess it's meant to be the germs? "Attend" seems a weird word to use for them, even with humorous intent.
- Too many syllables in line 3.
- Metre of line 4 is completely wrong.
- "mightn't commence any at all" seems ungrammatical to me (but this may just be a usage I'm not familiar with; do universities commence students, rather than students commencing intransitively?)
Please also notice that I did not say “my poem >> Alan’s”, because first of all, it is rude to say such a thing, and even then it isn’t provably true.
I thought that was the clear intention, and it was exactly because it seemed kinda rude that I felt OK offering my contrary opinion, quod erat disputandum.
-- g
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(This may or may not be fun, but it sure isn't math. Should we stop?)
Mike Stay also said that Alan's original had better meter. I don't disagree, but don't care that much either. These are not the days of Tennyson, and the idea that a lyric poem needs iambic tetrameter is, to me, anachronistic.
I completely agree that these days (where "these days" have been in place for a century or so) poetry is in no way required to have regular metre. But I don't think that applies to light comic verse, which is certainly the genre of Allan's ditty and I thought was what you were aiming for too. There are exceptions, but the only ones I can think of are either parodying specific poems or poets (and hence mimicing their diction) or _using_ metrical oddities for comic effect (e.g., something perfectly regular concluding with a last line that's 3x longer than all the others). And, comic or not, other than that last case it's super-unusual for a poem to be _mostly_ in strict metre and then abandon it for one line.
"Due to COVID-19, spring and summer terms have been cancelled. If COVID-19 cases persist until fall, classes will be cancelled again, and students might not be able to graduate."
Changing the language slightly or adding a meter and rhyme scheme does not really fix the problem that the subject matter is prosaic. We are disputing what poetry really is, not the constraints it could obey.
There's much truth in the last sentence. I don't think prosaic subject-matter is a problem in comic verse, which often gets some of its effect from the combination of "high" diction with "low" material. Consider one of Ogden Nash's: I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. In fact, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. If you paraphrase that in prose then it likewise comes out as prosaic and pedestrian. "Trees are nicer to look at than almost all billboards -- and there are so many billboards that one can hardly see any trees these days." But as a piece of comic verse it works just fine, and would do even without the deliberate reference in the first two lines (though presumably that was its original motivation).
My idea was to introduce some ambiguity into the word choice, and allow for multiple valid interpretations. This can backfire, but oh well, no harm in trying. I still think the two alternatives are roughly equal.
This is a thing done often enough in "serious" poetry, but again it seems out of place in comic verse. (Of course, you absolutely could write a serious poem about the effect of the pandemic on education, but it wouldn't look at all like either yours or Allan's.)
So if some grammatically-incorrect rapper comes up with a few interesting lyrics on his or her experience, should we then complain about formalism, or that the writing is not mathematically clear due to non-standard usage?
Nope (and the only person so far asking for anything mathematical in this discussion has been you, with requests for _proof_ that one poem is better than another). A good rap should obey (or break for deliberate effect) the conventions that apply to rap. These are different from the conventions that apply to English-language comic verse (though they have a thing or two in common). Perfect grammar is not among those conventions, nor is mathematical clarity. -- g
Gareth wrote:
There are exceptions, but the only ones I can think of are either parodying specific poems or poets (and hence mimicing their diction) or _using_ metrical oddities for comic effect (e.g., something perfectly regular concluding with a last line that's 3x longer than all the others).
I presume you're referring to this famous example...? There was a young man from Japan Whose limericks never would scan. And when they asked why, He said "I do try! But when I get to the last line I try to fit in as many words as I can Best wishes, Adam P. Goucher
On 10/05/2020 11:16, Adam P. Goucher wrote: [me:]
There are exceptions, but the only ones I can think of are either parodying specific poems or poets (and hence mimicing their diction) or _using_ metrical oddities for comic effect (e.g., something perfectly regular concluding with a last line that's 3x longer than all the others).
[Adam:]
I presume you're referring to this famous example...?
There was a young man from Japan Whose limericks never would scan. And when they asked why, He said "I do try! But when I get to the last line I try to fit in as many words as I can
Among others. I think there are also some like that by Ogden Nash. Though looking quickly for examples, what I actually find is a related phenomenon: he wrote some verse in which the rhymes are perfect but the metre is pretty much entirely absent, many of the lines being absurdly long. Again, done for comic effect. Here's one called "Everybody tells me everything" that's kinda half way between what I thought I remembered and what I described above: I find it difficult to enthuse Over the current news. Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens, And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. (Not one of his best, I think.) -- g
On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 12:00 PM Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
Please also notice that I did not say “my poem >> Alan’s”,
You didn't say it explicitly. but it's certainly implied by your actions. After all, would anyone respond to a poem by saying "If you just change a few words here and there, you can come up with a similar, but worse, poem."? Or even "You can change some words in this poem, and it doesn't make it any worse"? The only reason to post a modified version is if you think that in your view, it is better.
because first of all, it is rude to say such a thing, and even then it isn’t provably true.
No-one here thinks that aesthetic judgements are provable like mathematical theorems. You posted your version because you think it has greater aesthetic appeal, and someone else commented that their aesthetic judgement differed from yours. If someone else's stated opinion that they prefer the original is rude, then so is your clearly implied statement of the opposite is equally rude. Andy
-- Andy.Latto@pobox.com
Hi Andy, I apologize if I sounded rude, but what I did say explicitly is that I thought the poems were "roughly equivalent", or P1 ~ P2. Gareth used the phrase "much better", which I took to mean P1>>P2. P1>>P2 is stronger than P1>P2, and much stronger than P1~P2. I still believe the two versions are comparable to one another, and that either could be "a good start", but would need more development to become poetry.
From a diversity perspective, I don't see why it would hurt to have multiple alternatives and then argue their relative merits. This does not have to be done with an absolutist voice saying that one is better or much better than the other.
If the poet is willing to go through subsequent iterations, then there will likely be a sequence P1, P2, ...PN, in which finally PN>PM for any M<N, and then PN is the final draft. It's up to Alan if he wants to develop the idea, perhaps add some literary devices, and a few more stanzas. Personally I'm more interested in insects as a subject matter. Thanks for your comments, --Brad On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 8:20 PM Andy Latto <andy.latto@pobox.com> wrote:
On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 12:00 PM Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
Please also notice that I did not say “my poem >> Alan’s”,
You didn't say it explicitly. but it's certainly implied by your actions. After all, would anyone respond to a poem by saying "If you just change a few words here and there, you can come up with a similar, but worse, poem."? Or even "You can change some words in this poem, and it doesn't make it any worse"? The only reason to post a modified version is if you think that in your view, it is better.
because first of all, it is rude to say such a thing, and even then it isn’t provably true.
No-one here thinks that aesthetic judgements are provable like mathematical theorems. You posted your version because you think it has greater aesthetic appeal, and someone else commented that their aesthetic judgement differed from yours.
If someone else's stated opinion that they prefer the original is rude, then so is your clearly implied statement of the opposite is equally rude.
Andy
-- Andy.Latto@pobox.com
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I apologize if I sounded rude, but what I did say explicitly is that I thought the poems were "roughly equivalent", or P1 ~ P2.
I took "roughly equivalent" to mean roughly equivalent _in meaning_ rather than _in merit_. It would never occur to me to give it the latter meaning. -- g
On 10/05/2020 02:19, Andy Latto wrote:
You didn't say it explicitly. but it's certainly implied by your actions. [...]
No-one here thinks that aesthetic judgements are provable like mathematical theorems. You posted your version because you think it has greater aesthetic appeal, and someone else commented that their aesthetic judgement differed from yours.
If someone else's stated opinion that they prefer the original is rude, then so is your clearly implied statement of the opposite is equally rude.
This was exactly my thinking, for what it's worth. -- g
=Gareth McCaughan This may or may not be fun, but it sure isn't math. Should we stop?
=Andy Latto After all, would anyone respond to a poem by saying "If you just change a few words here and there, you can come up with a similar, but worse, poem."?
OK! This language virus is a worm That tangles up our phrase's turn So acorns unintentional Grow oaks that really seem to gall See? Poetry is why we can't have nice things!
participants (5)
-
Adam P. Goucher -
Andy Latto -
Brad Klee -
Gareth McCaughan -
Marc LeBrun