The Three-body Problem
Apologies to my non-mathematical readers for a moment... This gets a touch mathsy, but I assure you it gets to a point in the end.
There is a problem in applied maths, called the Three Body Problem. It sortof goes like this. Take a single object alone in a universe. Either it is moving or it isn't. Either way, its motion is entirely boring, we can track it for all time. It is moving in a straight line (where we call a stationary object, moving in a straight line at zero speed in no particular direction). With two objects it gets a little more complicated, either the objects end up orbiting each other in some orbit about their common centre of mass, or else they fly apart into the distance never to meet again. Either way, knowing the initial position, velocity and mass of each object, we can calculate what will happen, and know it exactly for all of time.
But now consider three objects. This cannot be mathematically determined. The system is chaotic. You can numerically solve it, to obtain some sort of guess, but you can never work it out exactly. The better the numeric solver, the more accurate the guess. But these get very expensive to calculate, in terms of computing time. The problem remains for four or more objects... Anything above two cannot be done.
So what does this have to do with me? Well... in my ever-ongoing struggle for introspection, I found myself thinking over my last weekend. That weekend involved going to d_raven's house at his party of oh-so-many furs. I had until relatively recently thought myself pretty shy of mass-group situations like that, despite my propensity for getting myself involved in them anyway. My thoughts lead me around a conversation I had with explodingferret at the party, on the subject of forming mental models of people. I suspect my problem with groups comes from similar reasons. I like being able to predict what's going on; I like to be able to know what reaction will happen from various things I might choose to do. The more people around, the harder it is to make that prediction.
So how do I get around to fixing this one? Failing the invention of a numeric integrator in my head, I suspect some other sort of solution might be required. Improve my ability to guess and predict how people will react to me, or reduce my dependence on such information?
Answers to the usual address...
There is a problem in applied maths, called the Three Body Problem. It sortof goes like this. Take a single object alone in a universe. Either it is moving or it isn't. Either way, its motion is entirely boring, we can track it for all time. It is moving in a straight line (where we call a stationary object, moving in a straight line at zero speed in no particular direction). With two objects it gets a little more complicated, either the objects end up orbiting each other in some orbit about their common centre of mass, or else they fly apart into the distance never to meet again. Either way, knowing the initial position, velocity and mass of each object, we can calculate what will happen, and know it exactly for all of time.
But now consider three objects. This cannot be mathematically determined. The system is chaotic. You can numerically solve it, to obtain some sort of guess, but you can never work it out exactly. The better the numeric solver, the more accurate the guess. But these get very expensive to calculate, in terms of computing time. The problem remains for four or more objects... Anything above two cannot be done.
So what does this have to do with me? Well... in my ever-ongoing struggle for introspection, I found myself thinking over my last weekend. That weekend involved going to d_raven's house at his party of oh-so-many furs. I had until relatively recently thought myself pretty shy of mass-group situations like that, despite my propensity for getting myself involved in them anyway. My thoughts lead me around a conversation I had with explodingferret at the party, on the subject of forming mental models of people. I suspect my problem with groups comes from similar reasons. I like being able to predict what's going on; I like to be able to know what reaction will happen from various things I might choose to do. The more people around, the harder it is to make that prediction.
So how do I get around to fixing this one? Failing the invention of a numeric integrator in my head, I suspect some other sort of solution might be required. Improve my ability to guess and predict how people will react to me, or reduce my dependence on such information?
Answers to the usual address...