3d • General discussion
Do avalanches enjoy falling?
My work involves lots of digital signal processing, frequency-specific filters and whatnot, and occasionally machine learning. I was looking at cepstrograms, and wondering if there's another way to look for oscillations layered on oscillations. I finally found some documentation on wavelet transforms, generalizing the Fourier transform by leaving some uncertainty in both frequency and time, with band resolution varying by frequency.
Wavelet techniques are popular for image compression, and now recognition, as machine learning algorithms decompose images in order to identify important components. A popular neural network for such tasks is the convolutional neural network (CNN), which adjusts scalar weights to extract information from images in order to assign labels to the input. There was a beautiful insight in recent years to use the cascading structure of a CNN to iteratively apply filters to different regions of the signal, namely decomposition by wavelet convolution. Different layers of scalar 'neurons' correspond to different categories of resonances in the input signal, and more weights per layer yields sharper resolution.
Remarkably, neural networks were originally developed to model human thought. This effectively means that the most efficient algorithm for time-frequency analysis is based on an abstraction of how people think. So, I've been thinking about the duality of time-frequency analysis and its applications, and considering the possibility that a mind, regardless of its material substance, could have varying levels of awareness of different components of reality. It is conceivable that such a cascading process could occur emergently in some natural systems, and perhaps can't not emerge. That is, the mechanical equivalent of thought may come to exist in systems we wouldn't consider sentient, much less alive. Neither the material substance nor the dimensional presence need be constant throughout such an experience; I think of the CKM or PMNS matrix. It sounds trite, by way of spiritual awareness and relationship with the Divine, but to understand the way broadly is to see it in all things.
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Do avalanches enjoy falling?
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