Re: WmRm2, #1 "Synchronise rhythms now..."

[nichols@math.umn.edu (Preston Nichols)]

In article <C4xMJK.43o@chinet.chi.il.us> jorn@chinet.chi.il.us (Jorn Barger)  
writes:
> Yeah, okay....  I'll just tune em out.  It ain't like they're sayin'
> nuthin' new!
>

Well said!! 

> [residual bile and pomposity deleted]

(The following takes the discussion Jorn initiated on the path I think it  
should have taken from the beginning.)

> 
> But this, now, is important.  Here's a little piece more, for the chain 
> of causality I'm trying to postulate:
> 
> When Kate says, "Synchronise rhythms now," maybe it's not "just a 
> metaphor."  Maybe *emotions* in the brain and body (and breathing) *do* 
> have distinct, someday-scientifically-mappable *rhythms*, so that people 
> can move *into* phase (if their emotions have the same cycle-length) or 
> out of phase (when they don't). (Don't kid yourself that science knows 
> anything much yet, about emotions!  Psych 101 is still a long long long 
> long way from "The Dreaming".)
> 
> So when we listen to emotional music, ***maybe*** our emotional rhythms 
> naturally move *into* phase with it, the better to savor it at full 
> intensity, and our *brainwaves*, or the slow rhythms of our breathing, or 
> our heartbeats, or a billion other sorts of rhythmic biological signal, 
> really maybe might *gently color*, in a perfectly *asimovian* way ( ;^),  
> the physical fieldstrengths thruout the room, including necessarily the 
> *read* mechanism of the stereo as it plays, to any least infinitesimal 
> degree *sufficient to leave a mark*...
> 

Sure (especially with that "***maybe***").  This raises the question of how  
strong a mark such a process leaves, and in particular whether such a mark is  
strong enough to be perceived on playback, and under what circumstances.  This  
seems to be a plain empirical question, but perhaps is not.

> (But CDs, see, being digital, can't take *any* mark, unless it's 
> imprinted thru a zero toggling into a one, or back, which, *by design* 
> almost literally *never* happens... )
> 

I think you are wrong that this "almost literally *never* happens".  Here's  
why:  Numerous processes, including surface damage and oxidation of the  
aluminum, degrade (sic) the the stream of bits as read by your CD player.  For  
this reason ( and because the manufacturing process introduces errors), CD  
players incorporate so-called error-correction circuitry, and a lot of  
bit-toggling can go on before it's easily noticable.  However, the  
error-correction circuitry will inevitably fail to correct some possible errors  
(this is a mathematical statement), so some "marks" made on the CD, by whatever  
processes, will show up in what you hear.  

Moreover, the playback process itself introduces some "fuzziness" into the  
correspondence between the sequence of bits on the master tape and what you  
hear from your CD.  For example (in the spirit of Jorn's tentative theorizing  
above), a given disc might have certain bits which are only partly eroded or  
obscured, so that under "ordinary" circumstances the electronics can read the  
laser reflections "correctly", but if (say) the humidity is high or certain  
"physical fieldstrengths" are sufficiently "colored" by someone's emotional  
condition, the tolerance of the device is exceeded and the bits are read  
"incorrectly".

I grant, as a reasonable guess, that a CD will not "take a mark" (by the  
processes you suggest) as easily as a magnetic tape, but I would be slow to  
exclude the possibility at least until we have detailed knowledge about the  
processes in Jorn's second paragraph.
> ----
> Resume normal consensus consciousness...