Coding and Thinking.

I'm spending some time today looking at refactoring a java application that was written in a more or less procedural style!
Reclassifying the classes and methods into 3 tiers: Presentation, business and data layers .

This process is interesting because it encourages abstraction from the very beginning of coding (recoding) a method.  It is a good exercise in preparation for larger issues in the daily world, I hope.

The tendency in the daily world is to allow abstractions to 'float' free of the facts and details that they are based on. I hear people reasoning by non-essentials, whimsical association, or emotional connotation all the time.  
(See Ayn Rand's discussion of floating abstractions -
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/conceptformation.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYahVMMxTwY   // Talking head, but he has a great joke about post modern thinkers.
)

I can't just use a compiler, or an IDE to show  the problems in design of daily use abstractions: rights, obligations, duties, freedom, responsibility, liberty, justice, happiness, money, inflation, prices, costs, health insurance, etc.  

We have to use our own reasoning as the 'compiler' of the concepts (abstractions) that are the tools of our consciousness.  This is part of the value of writing and talking. As I write and talk, my thoughts become clearer, more organized, and errors of logic or design clearer.

My thoughts and feelings begin to step out of the shadows and reveal themselves to me as long as I am a clearing for them.  But how do I become a 'clearing?'

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It's time to go back to school! Get the latest trends and gadgets that make the grade on AOL Shopping.

Attention is missing?

Hofstadter doesn't list attention in the index of his book  "I Am a Strange Loop."  He doesn't discuss attention in the book so I wouldn't expect to find it in the index. But it seems strange that an investigation into what is meant by "I" would leave out attention.  It is as if the entire issue of the book is an academic examination of ideas ignoring the process and effort of bringing these ideas to awareness.  I suppose a computer scientist has to look at it this way because his computers run by predefined programs i.e. recorded ideas.  If Hofstadter were to move beyond the domain of recorded ideas he wouldn't be a computer scientist then?  Yet he includes his chapter "On Magnanimity and Friendship." 

Hofstadter, a Friend

The best chapter of "I Am a Strange Loop" is 24, "On Magnanimity and Friendship." This chapter in isolation -- out of the context of the rest of the book, shows Hofstadter's profound spirituality. It is as if a "different I" wrote this chapter!