Author kevinbinz

[Sequence] Demystifying Physics

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Perceptual Tunneling

Introductions

Natural History

Miscellaneous Topics

Relevance To Perception

Organisms like you are immersed in a sea of particles – particle soup, if you will. Your ability to know – your epistemology – must somehow reside in connections between your mental representations, and the soup.

An Introduction To Electromagnetic Spectra

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Part Of: Demystifying Physics sequence
Content Summary: 1200 words, 12 min read

Motivations

Consider the following puzzle. Can you tell me the answer?

We see an object O. Under white light, O appears blue. How would O appear, if it is placed under a red light?

As with many things in human discourse, your simple vocabulary (color) is masking a more rich reality (quantum electrodynamics). These simplifications generate the correct answers most of the time, and make our mental lives less cluttered. But sometimes, they block us from reaching insights that would otherwise reward us. Let me “pull back the curtain” a bit, and show you what I mean.

The Humble Photon

In the beginning was the photon. But what is a photon?

Photons are just one type of particle, in this particle zoo we call the universe. Photons have no mass and no charge. This is not to say that all photons are the same, however: they are differentiated by how much energy they possess.

Do you remember that famous equation of Einstein’s, E = mc^2? It is justly famous for demonstrating mass-energy interchangeability. If you are set up a situation to facilitate a “trade”, you can purchase energy by selling mass (and vice versa). Not only that, but you can purchase a LOT of energy with very little mass (the ratio is about 90,000,000,000,000,000 to 1). This kind of lopsided interchangeability helps us understand why things like nuclear weapons are theoretically possible. (In nuclear weapons, a small amount of uranium mass is translated into considerable energy). Anyways, given E = mc^2, can you find the problem with my statement above?

Well, if photons have zero mass, then plugging in m=0 to E = mc^2 tells us that all photons have the same energy: zero! This falsifies my claim that photons are differentiated by energy.

Fortunately, I have a retort: E = mc^2 is not true; it is only an approximation. The actual law of nature goes like this (p stands for momentum):

E = \sqrt{\left( (mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2 \right) }

Since m=0 for photons, we can eliminate the left-hand side of the equation. This leaves E = pc (“energy equals momentum times speed-of-light”). We also know that that p = \frac{ \hslash }{ \lambda } (“momentum equals Planck’s constant divided by wavelength”). Putting these together yields the cumulative value for energy of a photon:

E = \frac{\hslash c}{\lambda}

Since h and c are just constants, the relation becomes very simple: energy is inversely proportional to wavelength. Rather than identifying a photon by its energy, then, let’s identify it by its wavelength. We will do this because wavelength is easier to measure (in my language, we have selected a measurement-affine independent variable).

Meet The Spectrum

So we can describe one photon by its wavelength. How about billions? In such a case, it would be useful to draw a map, on which we can locate photon distributions.  Such a photon map is called an electromagnetic spectrum. It looks like this:

spectrum

Pay no attention to the colorful thing in the middle called “visible light”. There is no such distinction in the laws of nature, it is just there to make you comfortable.

Model Building

We see an object O.

Let’s start by constructing a physical model of our problem. How does seeing even work?

Once upon a time, the emission theory of vision was in vogue. Plato, and many other renowned philosophers, believed that perception occurs in virtue of light emitted from our eyes. This theory has since been proven wrong. The intromission theory of vision has been vindicated: we see in virtue of the fact that light (barrages of photons) emitted by some light source, arrives at our retinae. The process goes like this:

Spectrum Puzzle Physical Setup

If you understood the above diagram, you’re apparently doing better than half of all American college students… who still affirm emission theory… moving on.

Casting The Puzzle To Spectra

Under white light, O appears blue.

White is associated with the activation of all of the spectra (this is why prisms work). Blue is associated with high-energy light (this is why flames are more blue at the base). We are ready to cast our first sentence. To the spectrum-ifier!

Spectrum Puzzle Setup

Building A Prediction Machine

Here comes the key to solving the puzzle. We are given two data points: photon behavior at the light source, and photon behavior at the eye. What third location do we know is relevant, based on our intromission theory discussion above? Right: what is photon behavior at the object?

It is not enough to describe the object’s response to photons of energy X. We ought to make our description of the object’s response independent from details about the light source. If we could find the reflection spectrum (“reflection signature“) of the object, this would do the trick: we could anticipate its response to any wavelength. But how do we infer such a thing?

We know that light-source photons must interact with the reflection signature to produce the observed photon response. Some light-source photons may be always absorbed, others may be always reflected. What sort of mathematical operation might support such a desire? Multiplication should work. 🙂 Pure reflection can be represented as multiply-by-one, pure absorption can be represented as multiply-by-zero.

At this point, in a math class, you’d do that work. Here, I’ll just give you the answer.

Spectrum Puzzle Object Characteristics

For all that “math talk”, this doesn’t feel very intimidating anymore, does it? The reflection signature is high for low-wavelength photons, and low for high-wavelength light. For a very generous light source, we would expect to see the signature in the perception.

Another neat thing about this signature: it is rooted in properties of the object atomic structure! Once we know it, you can play with your light source all day: the reflection signature won’t change. Further, if you combine this mathematical object with the light source spectrum, you produce a prediction machine – a device capable of anticipating futures.  Let’s see our prediction machine in action.

And The Answer Is…

How would O appear, if it is placed under a red light?

We have all of the tools we need:

  • We know how to cast “red light” into an emissions spectra.
  • We have already built a reflection signature, which is unique to the object O.
  • We know how to multiply spectra.
  • We have an intuition of how to translate spectra into color.

The solution, then, takes a clockwise path:

Spectrum Puzzle Solution

The puzzle, again:

We see an object O. Under white light, O appears blue. How would O appear, if it is placed under a red light?

Our answer:

O would appear black.

Takeaways

At the beginning of this article, your response to this question was most likely “I’d have to try it to find out”.

To move beyond this, I installed three requisite ideas:

  1. A cursory sketch of the nature of photons (massless bosons),
  2. Intromission theory (photons enter the retinae),
  3. The language of spectra (map of possible photon wavelengths)

With these mindware applets installed, we learned how to:

  1. Crystallize the problem by casting English descriptions into spectra.
  2. Discover a hidden variable (object spectrum) and solve for it.
  3. Build a prediction machine, that we might predict phenomena never before seen.

With these competencies, we were able to solve our puzzle.

Deserialization: Hazards & Control

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Part Of: [Deserialized Cognition] sequence
Followup To: [Deserialized Cognition]

Preliminaries

Two major differences exist between conceptiation and deserialization:

  1. Deserialization Delay: A time barrier exists between concept birth & use.
  2. Deserialization Reuse: The brain is able to “get more” out of its concepts.

Inference Deserialization: Obsolescence Hazard

Let’s consider the deserialization delay within inference cognition modes:

Deserialization- Inference Cognition

If you think of an idea, and a couple hours later deserialize & leverage it, risk will (presumably) be minimal. But what about ideas conceived decades ago?

Your inference engines change over time. Here’s a fun example: Santa Claus. It is easy to imagine even a very bright child believing in Santa, given a sufficiently persuasive parent. The cognitive sophistication to reject Santa Claus only comes with time. However, even after this ability is acquired, this belief may be loaded from semantic memory for months before it is actively re-evaluated.

The problem is that every time your inference engines are upgraded (“versioned”), their past creations are not tagged as obsolete. What’s worse, you are often even ignorant of upgrades to the engine itself – you typically fail to notice (c.f., Curse Of Knowledge).

Potential Research Vector: The fact that deserialization decouples your beliefs from your belief-engines has interesting implications for psychotherapy, and the mind-hacking industries of the future. I can imagine moral fictionalism (moral talk is untrue, but useful to talk about) leveraging such a finding, for example.

Social Deserialization: Epistemic Bypass Hazard

Let’s now consider deserialization reuse within social cognition modes:

Deserialization- Social Cognition

Let me zoom into how social conceptiation is actually implemented in your brains. Do people believe every claim they hear?

The answer turns out to be… yes. Of course, you may disbelieve a claim; but to do so requires a later, optional process to analyze, and make an erasure decision about, the original claim. If you interrupt a person immediately after exposure to a social claim, you interrupt this posterior process and thereby increase acceptance irrespective of the content of the claim!

Social conceptiation, therefore, is less epistemically robust than inference conceptiation. Deserialization simply compounds this problem, by allowing the reuse of concepts that fail to be truth-tracking.

Potential Research Vector: Memetic theory postulates that, in virtue of your belief generation systems having a shape: that certain properties of the belief themselves influences cognition. I imagine that this distinction between concept acquisition modes would have nteresting implications for memetic theory.

How To Select Away From Hazardous Deserialization

Unfortunately, from the subjective/phenomenological perspective, there is precious little you can do to feel the difference between hazardous and truth-bearing deserializations. The brain simply fails to tag its beliefs in any way that would be helpful.

Before proceeding, I want to underscore one point: the process of selecting away from hazards cannot be usefully divided into a noticing step and a selection step. If you notice hazard, you don’t need “tips” on how to select away from it: your brain is already hardwired with an action-guiding desire for truth-tracking beliefs. No, these steps remain together; your challenge is “merely” to learn how to raise hazardous patterns to your attention.

Let’s get specific. When I say “raise X to your attention”, what I mean is “when X is perceived, your analytic system (System 2) overrides your autonomic system (System 1) response”. If this does not make sense to you, I’d recommend reading about dual process theory.

How does one encourage a domain-general stance favorable to such overrides? It turns out that there exists an observable personality trait – the need for cognition – which facilitates an increased override rate. Three suggestions that may help:

  1. Reward yourself when you feel curiosity.
  2. Inculcate an attitude of distrust when you notice yourself experiencing familiarity.
  3. Take advantage of your social mirroring circuit by surrounding yourself with others who possess high needs for cognition.

How can you encourage a domain-specific stance favorable to such overrides? In other words: how can you trigger overrides in hazardous conditions, in conditions where obsolescence or epistemic bypassing has occured? So far, two approachs seem promising to me:

  1. Keep track of areas where you have been learning rapidly. Be more skeptical about deserializing concepts close to this domain.
  2. Train yourself to be skeptical of memes originating outside of yourself: whenever possible, try to reproduce the underlying logic yourself.

Of course, these suggestions won’t work exceptionally well, for the same reason self-help books aren’t particularly useful. In my language, your mind has a kind of volition resistance that tends to render such mind hacks temporary and/or ineffectual (“people don’t change”). But I’ll leave a discussion for why this might be so, and what can be done, for another day…

Takeaways

In this post, we explored how the brain recycles concepts in order to save time, via the deserialization technique discussed earlier. Such recycling brings with it two risks:

  1. Obsolescence: The concepts you resurrect may be inconsistent with your present beliefs.
  2. Epistemic Bypass: The concepts you resurrect may not have been evaluated at all.

We then identified two ways this mindware might enrich our lives:

  1. Getting precise about how concepts & conceptiation diverge will give us more control over our mental lives.
  2. Getting precise about how deserialization complements epistemic overrides will allow us to expand memetic accounts of culture.

Finally, we explored several ways in which we might encourage our minds to override hazardous deserialization patterns.

Deserialized Cognition

kevinbinz 1 Comment

Part Of: [Deserialized Cognition] sequence
Followup To: [Why Serialization?]

You’ve heard the phrase “pre-conceived notion” before. Ever wonder what it means? Let’s figure it out!

Cognitive Style: Conceptiation

Your mind is capable of generating concepts. Let us name this active process conceptiation.

How does this process work in practice? There are only two ways concepts are created: from oneself (inference conceptiation), or from others (social conceptiation):

Deserialization- Conceptiation

Inference Conceptiation attempts to get at self-motivated, non-social cognition. You process information, you form a conclusion (a result), you save this result to memory, and then you pass it along to other cognitive process. Examples:

  • A scientist trying to make progress in string theory
  • An artist teaching herself to speak Spanish

Social Conceptiation summarizes the thought process of someone immersed in a more social setting. Examples:

  • An engineer picking up an proverb (e.g., “no analogy is perfect”) from Facebook, without thinking about it much.
  • A socialite half-listening to some guy at a dinner party describing nuanced work tasks.

During both types of conceptiation, concepts are saved to your long-term memory. Call this serialization.

Cognitive Style: Deserialization

You are a lazy thinker.  Don’t take it personally, though – so is everyone else. How can we explain our inner cognitive miser? It turns out that there are at least two biological reasons for this failing:

  • Brains are slow because they rely on chemical synapses; they run at 100Hz (vs the 2 billion Hz of computers)
  • Brains are metabolically expensive, burning 800% more energy than other organs (20% of total organismic load)

Serialization techniques (discussed previously) allow our brains to be lazy. Not all concepts need to be created from scratch; if, at some point in the past, you have acquired the requisite mindware, you can always resurrect it from long-term memory, in virtue of your built-in deserialization mechanism:

Deserialization- Deserialization

Two Inputs

As mentioned, deserialization (loading) only works if the requisite concepts have been serialized (saved) at some point in the past. Since serialization comes in two flavors, we can now refer to two different kinds of deserialization:

Deserialization- Deserialization Modes (1)

Call the former inference deserialization, and the latter social deserialization.

Application: “I Love You”

Imagine you were raised to believe in the importance of regular expressions of affection to your significant other (SO). So, you say “I love you” to him/her every day. At first, you are eager to tell them the reasons behind your feelings, but after a while, novelty becomes increasingly effortful. Eventually, you settle into a simple “I love you” before falling asleep. Fast forward two years, and your SO says “I don’t feel like you are being affectionate enough”. How can we explain this?

We are now equipped to describe the “I love you” pattern as an instance of deserialized cognition, no? This form of cognition (more specifically, a behavioral pattern) was established previously, and no longer requires active conceptiation to perform. Why should your SO wish for you to employ active processing, especially if such processing yields content very similar to your habituated behavior?

Why would your SO wish you reject serialized cognition? Here’s one path an explanation may take: such an override goes against the instinct of the cognitive miser. Costly signaling is a staple concept in ethology: effort filters between those who truly hold the recipient in high regard and those who only wish to appear that way.

Speaking more generally, it seems to me that our itch for originality come from precisely this will to demonstrate rejection of deserialized cognition.

Takeaways

In this post, we explored how the brain uses concepts via two distinct mechanisms:

  1. In conceptiation, the brain actively constructs & uses novel concepts.
  2. In deserialization, the brain simply reuses pre-existing concepts.

The brain also employs two different ways to create concepts:

  1. Some concepts are constructed by one’s own mind.
  2. Concepts constructed in a social setting are constructed externally, but are (optionally) evaluated by the self.

Putting these together, we are now equipped to refer to four different types of cognition.

Deserialization- Cognition Taxonomy (2)

This new vocabulary opens many doors to explanation, including the question “why do people value originality?”

Credit: Some of the ideas of this post come from previous speculations about cached thoughts. However, compared to deserialization, caching has a weaker analogy strength: concept reuse has precious little to do with enforcing consistency within a memory hierarchy.

Until next time!

Why Serialization?

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Part Of: [Deserialized Cognition] sequence

Introduction

Nietzsche once said:

My time has not yet come; some men are born posthumously.

Well, this post is “born posthumously” too: its purpose will become apparent by its successor. Today, we will be taking a rather brisk stroll through computer science, to introduce serialization. We will be guided by the following concept graph:

Concept Map To Serialization

On a personal note, I’m trying to make these posts shorter, based on feedback I’ve received recently. 🙂

Let’s begin.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

In the long long ago, most software was cleanly divided between data structures and the code that manipulated them. Nowadays, software tends to bundle these two computational elements into smaller packages called objects. This new practice is typically labelled object-oriented programming (OOP).

OOP- Comparison to imperative style (1)

The new style, OOP, has three basic principles:

  1. Encapsulation. Functions and data that pertain to the same logical unit should be kept together.
  2. Inheritance. Objects may be arranged hierarchically; they may inherit information in more basic objects.
  3. Polymorphism. The same inter-object interface can be satisfied by more than one object.

Of these three principles, the first is most paradigmatic: programming is now conceived as a conversation between multiple actors. The other two simply elaborate the rules of this new playground.

None of this is particularly novel to software engineers. In fact, the ability to conjure up conversational ecosystems – e.g., the taxi company OOP system above – is a skill expected in practically all software engineering interviews.

CogSci Connection: Some argue that conversational ecosystems is not an arbitrary invention, but necessary to mitigate complexity.

State Transitions

Definition: Let state represent a complete description of the current situation. If I were to give you full knowledge of the state of an object, you could (in principle) reconstitute it.

During a program’s lifecycle, the state of an object may change over time. Suppose you are submitting data to the taxi software from the above illustration. When you give your address to the billing system, that object updates its state. Object state transitions, then, look something like this:

OOP- Object State Transitions

Memory Hierarchy

Ultimately, of course, both code and data are 1s and 0s. And information has to be physically embedded somewhere. You can do this in switches, gears, vacuum tubes, DNA, and entangled quantum particles: there is nothing sacred about the medium. Computer engineers tend to favor magnetic disks and silicon chips, for economic reasons. Now, regardless of the medium, what properties do we want out of an information vehicle? Here’s a tentative list:

  • Error resistant.
  • Inexpensive.
  • Non-volatile (preserve state even if power is lost).
  • Fast.

Engineers, never with a deficit of creativity, have invented dozens of such information vehicle technologies. Let’s evaluate four separate candidates, courtesy of Tableau. 🙂

memory technology comparison

Are any of these technologies dominant (superior to all other candidates, in every dimension)?

No. We are forced to make tradeoffs. Which technology do you choose? Or, to put it more realistically, what would you predict computer manufacturers have built, guided by our collective preferences?

The universe called. It says my question is misleading. Economic pressures have caused manufacturers to choose… several different vehicles. And no, I don’t mean embedding different programs into different mediums. Rather, we embed our programs into multiple vehicles at the same time. The memory hierarchy is a case study in redundancy.

CogSci Connection: I cannot answer why economics has gravitated towards this highly counter-intuitive solution? But, it is important to realize that the brain does the same thing! It houses a hierarchy of trace memory, working memory, and long-term memory. Why is duplication required here, as well? So many unanswered questions…

Serialization

It is time to combine OOP and the memory hierarchy. We now imagine multiple programs, duplicated across several vehicles, living in your computer:

OOP- Memory Hierarchy

In the above illustration, we have two programs being duplicated in two different information vehicles (main memory and hard drive). The main memory is faster, so state transitions (changes made by the user, etc) land there first. This is represented by the mutating color within the objects of main memory. But what happens if someone trips on your power cord, unplugging your CPU before main memory can be copied to the hard drive? All changes to the objects are lost! How do we fix this?

One solution is serialization (known in some circles as marshalling). If we simply write down the entire state of an object, we would be able to re-create it later. Many serialization formats (competing techniques for how best to record state) exist. Here is an example in the JavaScript Object Notation (.json) format:

{“menu”: {
“id”: “file”,
“value”: “File”,
“popup”: {
“menuitem”: [
{“value”: “New”, “onclick”: “CreateNewDoc()”},
{“value”: “Open”, “onclick”: “OpenDoc()”},
{“value”: “Close”, “onclick”: “CloseDoc()”}
]
}
}}

Applications

So far, we’ve motivated serialization by appealing to a computer losing power. Why else would we use this technique?

Let’s return to our taxi software example. If the software becomes very popular, perhaps too many people will want to use it at the same time. In such a scenario, it is typical for engineers to load balance: distribute the same software on multiple different CPUs. How could you copy the same objects across different computers? By serialization!

CogSci Connection: Let’s pretend for a moment that computers are people, and objects are concepts. … Notice anything similar to interpersonal communication? 🙂

Conclusion

In this post, we’ve been introduced to object-oriented programming, and how it changed software to becoming more like a conversation between agents. We also learned the surprising fact about memory: that duplicate hierarchies are economically superior to single solutions. Finally, we connected these ideas in our model of serialization: how the entire state of an object can be transcribed to enable future “resurrections”.

Along the way, we noted three parallels between computer science and psychology:

  1. It is possible that object-oriented programming was first discovered by natural selection, as it invented nervous systems.
  2. For mysterious reasons, your brain also implements a duplication-heavy memory hierarchy.
  3. Inter-process serialization closely resembles inter-personal communication.

Policy Proposal: Metrication

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Table Of Contents

  • Back To Basics
  • Meet The English System
  • A Cognition-Friendly Design
  • Global Trends
  • Policy Proposal
  • What Use Are Policy Proposals?
  • Bonus Proposal!

Hm. So, I enjoy discussing this topic. Maybe if I write about it, my Will To Rant will weaken! (Family & friends will be thanking me in no time. 😉 )

Back To Basics

Do you remember how long one meter is? Extend your arms to approximate its length. Now say “meter” about eighteen times, until you achieve semantic satiation. Okay good, I’ve confused you. Your familiarity high was stunting your ability to learn.

Why must a meter be that long? What forbids it from being defined differently?

Nothing. All measurement conventions are arbitrary. Thus, it is possible for every person to use different measurement rules.

But that isn’t how society operates. Why? How do we explain measurement convergence?

It is a cultural technology: it moves attention away from the communicative vehicle and to its content.

Does the above remind you of anything? It should. If I swap out the nouns, I’d be talking about language. The analogy strength is considerable. (Have you yet figured out the mechanism that underwrites analogy strength?)

The funny thing about language is that globalization is murdering it. Of the 6500 languages alive today, fewer than half will survive to 2100 ACE. If you combine this fact to our analogy, you are mentally equipped to forge a prediction:

  • We expect the number of measurement systems to be decreasing.

Meet The English System

In fact, only two comprehensive measurement systems remain. Here is a snapshot of one of them, the English system:

english_system

 

Chances are that you live in the US, and chances are you’ve wrestled with the question “how many ounces in a quart” once in your life.

Let’s be explicit about why we don’t like the above:

  • There is no discernible pattern between the equivalency values (e.g., 2, 1760, 2240, 43,560…) or words (e.g., “cup”, “pint”, “quart”, “gallon”)

Do you agree? Is this is the reason why you winced at the above table?

Even if we agree, we aren’t done. We still need to explain where our complaint comes from. And that explanation is, of course, cognitive:

  • Patterns facilitate memorization, improving performance of long-term memory.
  • Patterns allow for compression, reducing the load on working memory.

A Cognition-Friendly Design

If you were to design a solution to the above problems from scratch, how would you do it?

I doubt I would have been able to invent this technology independently: it is intimidatingly brilliant. Time to meet the quantitative prefix. The basic idea is: why don’t we link equivalency values to the grammar, and infuse mathematical meaning into our prefixes?

The metric prefix is a kind of quantitative prefix. It encodes scale, in increments of 10^3 (i.e., 1000), by the following:

metric_prefixes

 

You can allow your sense of familiarity back in the room. You have, of course, used quantitative prefixes all your life. Do you recognize the words “milli-meter”, “kilo-gram”, “giga-byte”? Well, now you have another tool under your belt: you can now precisely understand words you’ve become accustomed to, and rapidly absorb the meaning of new combinations. Two examples:

  1. If someone were to ask you “what does a micro-gram mean?” you could answer “a millionth of a gram!”
  2. If someone were to ask you “how many bytes in 4 gigabytes?” you could answer “4,000,000,000”! *

(* Unless the person who said gigabyte ACTUALLY meant 4 gibibytes, which is NOT the same thing, and a totally separate rant. 🙂 )

metric_system

Notice that, with this technology, we have the same root word, and only need to modify the prefix to expand our vocabulary. More pleasant, no?

Global Trends

Recall our prediction, that the number of measurement systems would decrease over time. And it has. All countries marked in green use the Metric system:

Global Metrication Status

Notice any outliers? 🙂

It’s not like the United States hasn’t tried. In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act… but its efforts were largely disbanded in 1982. You can read more here if you like.

Policy Proposal

  • Proposal: The United States should pursue metrication.

Some drawbacks: Such legislation will cost money, and be inconvenient in the short term.

Some benefits: Improved international relations, promotion of less fuzzy thinking, working memory generally freed up for other tasks.

To me, I’m more worried about the possibility of systemic failure: perhaps any political action that incur short-term-cost in exchange for long-term gain are generally considered hazardous. Perhaps, for example, we could introduce a legislation timers so that the fallout from “eat your vegetables” bills don’t fall on their signatories.

Yes, I’m aware the above example is completely broken. But it is meant to signal the kind of thinking we need: infrastructure refactoring.

What Use Are Policy Proposals?

A large amount of ink has been spilled on the metric system. Many of these contributions dive to a depth greater than mine. I do not expect my career to involve the comprehensive analysis of policy ramifications, the meticulous construction of actionable proposals. I am a voice in the wind. Why do I bother?

I will be collecting policy proposals on this blog for several reasons. Beyond my philosophy of politics, I write because it may bring value to the world, and it helps organize my mental life. I also would like to ultimately find collaborators, like-minded individuals interested in researching with me. But I also write because I hope my unconventional emphases will someday unlock relatively-novel ideas that are of good quality. Here’s an example of an idea that may come from my cognitive emphasis above (no promises on quality though :P):

The above solution of quantitative prefix was ultimately a marriage of mathematical reasoning and grammatical systems. I am unable to technically specify the full cognitive algorithm for why this combination works (yet, darn it!). But it opens the door to brainstorming: how else could we leverage language to crystallize and augment our rational capacities? And then you start casting around for ideas.

Bonus Proposal!

A stream-of-consciousness illustration of the kind of transhumanist creativity I am encouraging.

For me, I recall reading speculations that perhaps one reason Chinese kids tend to score highly in math is because the digits are easier to pronounce. I then search for “chinese digits pronunciation” and find this paper. An excerpt:

These data offer support for the hypothesis that differences in digit memory between Chinese and English speakers are derived, in part, from differences in the time required to pronounce number words in the two languages.

I then wonder if a numeric system could be engineered to supplant our “one”, “two”, “three”, etc with a system more like Chinese, to enhance students’ cognitive capacities. But not exactly Chinese numerals – that phonetic system carries other disadvantages. I envision a new numerical phonetics that, engineered with state-of-the-art computational models of working memory, brings empirically-demonstrable cognitive advantages over its “natural” competitors.

See you next time.

A Secret In The Ark

kevinbinz 6 Comments

Part Of: History sequence
Content Summary: 1500 words, 15min read

Context

Today, I want to try something unusual: I want to analyze the story of Noah from a literary perspective. Some surprises lurk beneath the surface.

A Fresh Take On Noah

Try your utmost to read the following with fresh eyes. There will be a quiz after! (Okay, so you can review its four question above, and there is no grade. :P)

Ready to begin? Okay. See you soon!

Source: https://kevinbinz.com/2014/06/21/the-story-of-noah/

Examining The Text

Q1. How many animals?

You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female

Now, the above seems contradictory.  The difference seems to be:

  • { “clean”:”1 pair” ; “unclean: “1 pair”}     vs    
  • { “clean”:”7 pairs” ; “unclean: “1 pair”}

Is this apparent contradiction a real one? Can it be resolved? Such questions are irrelevant to the argument. The simple point is: there is tension in the narrative.

Q2. How long did the flood last?

Another hard question. Take your best guess.

As you re-read the story, you are probably struck with the fact that there is A LOT of temporal information in this story. The task of constructing a coherent answer is hard. Especially when you compare quotes like these:

For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

Again, the point here is about tension. Notice your confusion.

Q3. How was the narrative flow?

Yes, the narrative had structure. Yes, its plot holds together. But was it a pleasure to read?

Well, I didn’t think so.

To most modern readers, perhaps, the level of detail is painful, the amount of repetition tiresome. What are we to make of this? Are we to judge the story’s author as less enlightened regarding narrative structure?

A typical counter-argument appeals to chronological snobbery. Writing styles change, and over the millennia they plausibly change a lot.

But this response misses the point. For it turns out that these Israelite authors were better at constructing prose than the text might suggest at first glance.

Q4. What is the point-of-view of the author?

Could you create a compelling answer to this question, dear reader? I’m not sure if I could. My answer would be vague, and would lean heavily on the contents of story itself.

A New Hypothesis

Okay, so we’ve identified a few points of discomfort within the story.  If we modify our beliefs about how it was constructed, can we better explain our confusion?

Consider what happens if we view this text as the work of two different authors. We’d then need to get out two highlighters, and guess which passages come from the first, and which come from the second. Let consider one such guess now. I’d like you to just briefly skim through the following:

Source: https://kevinbinz.com/2014/06/21/the-story-of-noah-with-sources-revealed/

Notice anything cool?

As an aside: I want you thinking about how we could automate this “highlighter procedure”. Could we teach a computer how to reconstruct multiple authorship, if and only if such blending had occurred? How would we make it learn the process? How could we test it?

Okay, time to name the authors.

  • The author of the orange text we shall call J: the Jahwist source (because he likes to use the YHWH title).
  • The author of the pink text we shall call P: the Priestly source (for reasons I’ll explain in my next article).

Refining Our Hypothesis

Imagine for a moment I have written a novel. Do you think you would be able to carve my novel into two pieces, and preserve the structure and coherence of both halves?  I suspect not.

Let us name our hypotheses:

  • Let H1 represent the original, one-author hypothesis.
  • Let H2 represent the new, two-author hypothesis.

H2 can be visualized as follows:

Compilation of Noah (2)

I’ve already shown you the right hand side (the previous excerpt). Now, I’ll introduce you to the (more exciting) left hand side: the original narratives.

From https://kevinbinz.com/2014/06/21/the-original-noachian-narratives/

Evaluating The Evidence

Like good little Bayesians, we have H1 (one author) and H2 (two author) floating around in our mental apparatus.  Which hypothesis best explains this document?

To find out, let’s revisit the evidence.

Q1: How many animals were brought onto the ark?

  • The Jahwist narrative has the rule: 7 pairs for clean animals, 1 pair for unclean animals.
  • The Priestly narrative has the rule: 1 pair of all living creatures.

The tension dissolves.

Notice that the burnt offering only occurs in the Jahwist tale, and he is careful to describe the sacrifice of only clean animals (which in his version, has 7 pairs). No more need to worry about burnt offerings causing extinctions! 🙂

Q2: How long did the flood last?

  • The Jahwist narrative has the flood lasting for 40 days.
  • The Priestly narrative has the flood lasting for 150 days.

The tension dissolves.

Q3: How would you rate the narrative flow?

… it’s a lot better!

Q4: How well can you make out the author’s point-of-view?

Recall that, before, we didn’t have much of an answer: we just mumbled something about the story. But now, look:

  • P only uses the more universal term God (16 times). J uses the more personal YHWH exclusively (10 times).
  • P is interested in details such as ark dimensions, and lineages (only he names the sons of Noah). J is more oriented around the events.
  • P uses very precise dates, reminiscent of a calendar. J uses the numeric theme of 7 and 40.
  • Stylistically, P reads like the work of a scribe. J reads like an epic saga, like the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Epistemic Status

I am not a philologist. I did not make this argument. What do the experts think?

The multiple authorship solution to the story of Noah (H2)  is the consensus of modern academia. It is not a contentious issue.

That this consensus is not public knowledge to those who would like to know is a rather interesting cultural failure mode.

Parting Thoughts

I hope that learning about the two authors of Noah elicited an “aha moment” from you. A few parting thoughts:

  • The debates surrounding apparent contradictions in the Bible would be more useful if they incorporated source criticism results like these.
  • It seems long overdue for resources like BibleGateway to offer different versions of authorship highlighting, just as they do for translation options.
  • Which narrative did the Noah movie borrow from the most, and will the OTHER STORY also land a blockbuster hit? 😉

Next time, I will be immersing this example of multiple authorship inference within the context of the Documentary Hypothesis and the modern atmosphere of Biblical studies. See you then!

References

During the construction of this article, I drew from this textbook and this UPenn resource.

The Original Noachian Narratives

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[Parent Article]

The Jahwist Version

YHWH saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. YHWH regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So YHWH said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of YHWH.

YHWH then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family,because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

And Noah did all that YHWH commanded him. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood.  And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. Then YHWH shut him in.

For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.

Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. 

And the rain had stopped falling from the sky.The water receded steadily from the earth. After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

Then Noah built an altar to YHWH and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. YHWH smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.

The Priestly Version

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah.

Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

And he sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”

So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

“But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

The Story Of Noah, With Sources Revealed

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[Parent Article]

Genesis 6:5 – 9:17

YHWH saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. YHWH regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So YHWH said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of YHWH.

This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

YHWH then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family,because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

And Noah did all that YHWH commanded him.

Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then YHWH shut him in.

For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and he sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”

So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

Then Noah built an altar to YHWH and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. YHWH smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

“But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

The Story Of Noah

kevinbinz Leave a comment

[Parent Article]

Genesis 6:5 – 9:17

YHWH saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. YHWH regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So YHWH said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of YHWH.

This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

YHWH then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family,because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

And Noah did all that YHWH commanded him.

Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then YHWH shut him in.

For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”

So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

Then Noah built an altar to YHWH and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. YHWH smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

“But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”