The presentation in this video is a great example of metaphors gone wild:
https://furm.org/misc/andrius.mp4 The presenter is Andrius Kulikauskas: https://github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute/Symposium/blob/main/outputs/2025_symposium/people/Andrius_Kulikauskas/Andrius_Kulikauskas_background_research.md To start, let me say I absolutely loved his part of the talk. Please don't take my words in this post as an indication that there's anything wrong with what he says or works on. Having said that, let me echo one of the chat posts: It's amazing how much meaning we can pack into those symbols. I've been following AII for awhile (even participated today, presenting our lived experience workflow). And it's giving me very *cult* vibes. Obviously, it's not a cult. But as Andrius says near the end, "... like with our active inference community, you can drink the Kool-Aid ...". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid It's difficult for me to *decide* whether Andrius "buys into" his own narrative or not. My cynicism is so ingrained ... I don and doff occult beliefs so often, I tend to commit something like an "assumed similarity bias". That's one of the reasons I tend to think people like, say, Sam Altman or Keith Raniere (both cult leaders) *must* be grifters (Sam for money, Keith for sex). They can't possibly really hold these beliefs. But my bias is most likely too intense. The gurus probably *do* get wound up in their own rhetoric. They must get wound up in order to tell such enchanting stories. I'd find it very hard to believe that, say, Ursula Le Guin, a master storyteller IMNSHO, doesn't *believe* the stories she's told ... at least a little bit. That's part of being a good storyteller. And the better the storyteller, the more *ridiculous* the story can be, it'll still rope you in. The very best stories are absolutely ridiculous. It re-evokes the argument I had with EricC and Nick, who claimed one *cannot* doubt everything. My objection to their claim was that doubt/belief are matters of degree, not kind. And you can doubt everything, at least a little bit. Likewise, you can believe everything a little bit. Anyway, I loved Andrius' story, even if I don't believe it. -- ¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
