User:KatherineCottrell
Contents
This Page Is For Explaining Who I Am
Which I think is a lot of pressure on me.
Who Am I?
I'm Kat Cottrell, a class of 2021 undeclared Pratt student from the Tampa area of Florida who likes cats.
Contact Me Elsewhere
If you have a legitimate reason to contact me (questions/answers, comments, concerns, just saying hi), please feel free to contact me by:
- Duke email: kmc113<deletethispart> [at] duke [dot] edu
This Guy Thinks The Mind Is Too Quantum To Be Computable!
Roger Penrose On Why Consciousness Does Not Compute, Steve Paulson, Nautilus, 4 May 2017, accessed 14 September 2017 (Reverse-engineer the brain)
My Favorite MATLAB
I had some problems pulling up the examples on my version of MATLAB, but the ones I couldn't get from the program documentation I got online, and I think I have two favorites. First, the Lorenz Attractor Animation. Back in high school, I got really into chaos theory. I'm not actually interested in nonlinear dynamics mathematically, it's too algebraic for my tastes, but I think the culture is hilarious. I MOOC'd a couple courses of Stephen Strogatz's course on it, and the only things I remember are that he was really gruff and this anecdote about how chaos theory has some of its earliest roots in weather from when Edward Lorenz was working on it back in the early sixties, but it took a while to catch on because it was in this journal about meteorology and none of his math peers would read it. I was also in this Facebook group for posting photos of fractal art created using the Chaoscope attractor-generating program, and it was always slightly sad because the only posts were made by the group admin and half of them were begging members to post and invite their friends, which I found relatable but couldn't indulge because I also didn't have any friends who loved strange attractors.
My other favorite is the Game of Life one. I got into cellular automata last summer after getting my wisdom teeth removed. My memories here are fuzzy, because I was pretty drugged up, but I do remember waking up, assuring my mom that I felt really lucid, going home, teaching myself to knit, falling asleep midpurl, and then waking up and watching like two hours of Rudy Rucker videos on Youtube about cellular automata. I'd never done it before and I haven't done it since, but I think there's something to be said for learning about something new for the first time under the influence of anesthesia, because ever since then I've maintained a weirdly mystical appreciation for both knitting and cellular automata that I think probably originated in having been halfway on another plane of consciousness the first time I engaged in them. (Not that I'm recommending it. It was just an unexpectedly positive experience.)
