Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

[David Eric Smith]

Hi Nick,

It’s such a broom of things going on, that it is hard to respond to with 
orderly thought.  

0. If I had a motto, it would probably be something like “Nothing is 
impossible; everything is hard.”  But that oversimplifies too much, so I don’t 
have mottos.

1. To have people unable to understand you seems to me like the default 
expectation.  So, from Dylan: No reason to get excited.  Or from Pete 
Townshend: This is not a social crisis.

2. Before commenting on resolutions, maybe a comment more to clarify the 
experience of the problem.  The use of some of these words in the various posts 
leads to a reading experience for me that is like garden path sentences.  So it 
is not so simple as “defining” a term.  It is that the semantic work the usage 
of a certain term does in someone’s mind percolates down to lots of levels in 
the forming and the reading of text.  

3, Often, there are cadences in your use of the term function that feel 
familiar to me from evolutionists, whose use of it also is a garden-path 
sentence for me.  So for that I know you are at most partly idiosyncratic, or 
that the behaviorist conventions are only partly distinctive.  Some of this 
goes back a level in generality and community.  Since the evolutionists don’t 
use the word “goal” the way you do, the things in that that seem strange to me 
are more particular to this discourse.

4. Many things in the evolutionists’ discourse feel neo-Platonist to me.  
Whether they “are” that or not I am not claiming.  I am saying that I 
experience them that way.  So I wanted to cheer for Glen’s “no epiphenomena” 
post, which (again, perhaps alone, and due to my bias), I read as a pushback 
against the neoplatonist habits.  Of course, the evolutionists would assert 
loudly, as the last thing before executing me, that they are nothing of the 
sort.  Afterward, they would feel bad and say that was a mistake; that I wasn’t 
worth having explained to.

4a. I happen to feel like this is something I run into in the “beyond fitness” 
exercise.  So in being concrete I can allow others to tell me how I am 
misunderstanding everything they say.  I experience the evolutionists as 
thinking about things like sporophytes, gametophytes, spores, gametes, etc. — 
the various objects in the lifecycle of ferns — as epiphenomena of the 
fitnesses of units of selection.  As for Plato, the Unit of Selection, and its 
Fitness, are the true Forms, and all those objects and transitions are just 
shadows on the cave wall.  The “no epiphenomena” is for me the pushback that 
says: No, start with the things that are there and do stuff; whether it fits 
the frame you want to put on it (Glen’s pre-emptive registration) can come 
later, or not at all, as appropriate.  Of course for the narrow cases I treat 
it is easy, like Godel’s demonstration of the limitations of arithmetic was 
easy because explicit constructions can be made: that the Platonic Form of 
fitness and the unit of selection to which they wish to make everything else 
epiphenomenal can be shown to exclude quite concrete and specific things that 
are included if one starts with just what happens and constructs, to find that 
other registrations are consistent while the fitness and the unit of selection 
are not.  I know this is not germane to the topic you were discussing, but I 
cannot help have it as part of the experience set that parses styles of 
speaking.

5. I assume the resolution is a sort of AA resolution: to admit the 
conversation has a problem.  Probably to expect, too, that the problem doesn’t 
really go away.  So one just deals with it one day at a time. 

I have to comment that in one other post, you gave three assertions that made 
me sure (and also probably wrong) why DaveW says you are a mystic, whether you 
will admit it or not.  They are not entirely out of context of the above.  You 
said:

I don't know what world you are talking about if you [think you] are talking 
about a world beyond experience. 
I don't know what existence you are talking about if you [think you] are 
talking about existence apart from experience.
I don't know what fidelity you are talking about if you [think you] are talking 
about fidelity apart from experience.

I think that hits my neoplatonist triggers too.  It’s an interesting exercise 
for me to try to find a locution that captures the right concept.  The visceral 
response, which I also have to religious people, and which makes the 
contemplatives angry when I tell them they are hitting the same triggers as the 
religious ones do, is to scream at them IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU.  The religious 
ones don’t want to live in a world that isn’t all about them.  I think the 
mystics and the contemplatives want to say they are not that breed of cat.  I 
will take them at their word, but I can’t picture myself doing a good job of 
arguing on their behalf, which is usually the measure for whether I understand 
something.

But what then is the careful version?

Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

[⛧ glen]

That post, taken as a whole, with an arc, is excellent. But I want to violently 
slice out the part below because it's an expression of 'the Will to Simulation' 
that I may want to borrow one day. Your expressions retain a humanity mine 
never do. In particular, within this excerpt, you treat both the structural and 
phenomenal strengths of any particular analogy/simulation in one fell swoop. 
The you manage to toss in the necessary participatory requirement, as well.

Thanks! If I manage to use it, I'll ask first.

On September 16, 2021 9:55:15 PM PDT, David Eric Smith  
wrote:
>But what then is the careful version?
>
>Well, my discourse can never happen except within the larger field of my 
>experience, and I would do well to always keep that in mind.  That seems good. 
> But what is there of the language I produce, and that we produce together?  
>It is generated within behavior, it is transacted in experience, indeed.  But 
>what forms is it desirable for me to endow it with, or in which to try to use 
>it and develop it?  Suppose it is capable of having forms that refer to an 
>existence in ways such that that referral doesn’t care how my experience is or 
>isn’t involved.  A biosphere could have sprung up on this planet, with all 
>these insects and plants and fish and so forth, and with never people to 
>comment about them.  They would be no less themselves.  A language capable of 
>expressing (or aspiring to express) that frame is one I would like to use.  To 
>conceive of a language that has structures in common with a world beyond 
>experience, even though my talking in it is an event within behavior or 
>experience, does not seem to me obviously logically incoherent.  Any more than 
>living in a world that would have been much the same if I hadn’t been living 
>in it seems incompatible with the inherent coherence — of a thing’s being 
>whatever-all that thing is — of existing.
>
>The question of “how would I know whether the language had ever achieved such 
>an alignment, since my knowing takes place within experience” is of course 
>fine to pursue.  But I think I can express a preference for trying for a 
>language with that overall form, even if I don’t know how to answer the 
>question about validation.  There is the issue of how I participate in a 
>language, given whatever it is and whatever I am.  I have a mode of 
>participation in, or engagement with, or use or receipt of, a language that 
>refers to a world beyond experience, that I imagine I would not have if it 
>didn’t.
>
>

-- 
glen ⛧


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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[uǝlƃ ☤ $]

To be clear, I'm not calling you names for not reading a particular document. 
I'm simply trying to point out that this particular document [⟁] addresses your 
ongoing issue with epiphenomena directly and explicitly, albeit with tortuous 
and torturous formality. Also, your past exploration of Robert Rosen addressed 
it explicitly, with less formality, and perhaps a less satisfactory result than 
Wolpert's.

But what comes to the fore is that you refuse to play anyone else's game. Your 
game is the only game you're willing to play. I can sympathize with not playing 
Wolpert's game or Jon's game, because they have steep learning curves. Rosen's 
game is a bit obtuse ... and after hours or years of playing it, you'll be left 
with little that translates to other games. So, I can see why you might avoid 
that, too.

IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen is a 
great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, causing him to 
be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, followed only by a few 
brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain hoppers. And maybe little p 
pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not willing to tilt windmills long 
enough to push through a paradigm shift, compromising away the baby, happy 
enough with the bath water. I have no hill to die on. Maybe that makes me 
pathetic.

[⟁] https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362

On 9/16/21 5:55 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> Please stop telling me that I am a Scurrilous Heathen for not having read 
> stuff.  
> Furthermore, I stipulate that you have read more than I have, and will read 
> more than I will in the future.  So, guess you don't have to say that, 
> either. 
> I daresay you haven't read von Uexkull on the Umwelt.  I don't think you are 
> a Scurrilous Heathen for not doing so.  I hope I can expand your 
> understanding of your experience by occasionally mentioning it.
> I assume that we come as we are to FRIAM, giving fragments of our time, and 
> receiving fragments of one another's time.
> Thank you for giving me just a taste of what I would have gotten from 
> Wolpert.  
> I stipulate that all experiences are just that, and that the distinction 
> between epiphenomena and phenomena is a distinction built up from experiences 
> that prove out in different ways. 
> I don't know what world you are talking about if you [think you] are talking 
> about a world beyond experience. 
> I don't know what existence you are talking about if you [think you] are 
> talking about existence apart from experience.
> I don't know what fidelity you are talking about if you [think you] are 
> talking about fidelity apart from experience.
> 
> I think you use epiphenomenon in two quite different senses in your two 
> paragraphs.  
> 
> Another day almost over and the income tax not done.  
> 
> If I can get there tomorrow, I will miss you.  You are one of the people in 
> the world who scourges me to think. Hopefully, others can wield the scourge 
> on your behalf.
> 
> Nick 
> 
> Nick Thompson
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2021 3:08 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc
> 
> I doubt I'll make it to vFriAM tomorrow. My schedule hasn't been conducive 
> lately. So, I'll take the nugget in your text below that I can reply to best. 
> My claim is *not* that the distinction between phenomena and epiphenomena is 
> relative to a point of view. That's *your* claim, not mine. My claim is that 
> epiphenomena do not exist. They are figments of your imagination ... or, more 
> generously, your calculus for analyzing the world. They are purely *formal*, 
> syntactic things with no correlate in the world.
> 
> If we can carry multiple frames around with us, we can swap them in and out 
> and rank them according to which frames produce more or fewer epiphenomena. 
> Those that produce fewer should be prioritized over those that produce many. 
> In that, I think, we agree. If we refuse to carry around multiple frames, 
> then we're (preemptively) stuck with whatever one we've landed on. But none 
> of this should be taken as a claim that epiphenomena exist, only as an 
> indicator for how articulated and complete our frame is ... i.e. its fidelity 
> to what does exist.
> 
> Re: your claim that monism unifies epistemology and ontology -- I've cited 
> Wolpert's "Limits of Inference" several times and I doubt citing it again 
> will be helpful. But if we think of all the ways we can think about the 
> universe as part of the universe, then we can see that there might be a 
> smaller set of ways to think that have high fidelity than the number of ways 
> that have low fidelity. Wolpert's argument is that there can be only 1 
> maximally faithful way to think. It's a strong argument. It's stronger than 
> Rosen's argument that there does not exi

Re: [FRIAM] in the interest of consistency

[Barry MacKichan]

Masks are unneeded for those with their heads up their *sses.

On 17 Sep 2021, at 1:53, Marcus Daniels wrote:

In the interest of consistency:  No vaccination then no hemorrhoid 
medication!


 
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/hospital-staff-must-swear-off-tylenol-tums-to-get-religious-vaccine-exemption/





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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[uǝlƃ ☤ $]

More mob justice:

US rightwing group targets academics with Professor Watchlist 
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/sep/17/turning-point-usa-professor-watchlist

And because the Guardian doesn't seem to link directly to it:
https://professorwatchlist.org/

Is this different from doxxing nazis? It would be a badge of honor to be on 
that list, I think. But their violence isn't merely implied.

On 9/16/21 6:09 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> The Chronicle of Higher Education noticed that there have been two massive 
> cancellation protests against fraternities where sexual assaults were 
> reported in the past few months, in Kansas and Nebraska.  Is group 
> cancellation better/worse than individual cancellation?   Are students at 
> Kansas and Nebraska really liberal lynch mobs out to destroy the glorious 
> traditions of greek life?
> 
> https://www.chronicle.com/article/at-kansas-another-confrontational-protest-against-greek-life
>  
> 
> 
> They also incidentally brought up recent research on trigger warnings, a 
> crowd sourced clinical intervention for PTSD dating to the 1970's and a long 
> time tough-guy bug-a-boo.  
> 
> https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-data-is-in-trigger-warnings-dont-work 
> 


-- 
"Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
☤>$ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

My first thought in reading this (Glen and Jon in response/elaboration)
is that we are discussing whether the universe of comprehensions is
(fully) metrizeable or not.  I have some conjectures about (weighted)
graph and network metrization which may or may not have a play in
this.   I'm not enough of a math-hole to really properly think (much
less speak) about the higher order abstractions of topology that are
invoked/implied in all this...  

I'm also puzzled by the distinction between epi-phenomena and
phenomena.   I suspect the principals in this discussion here to be
using similar but different reserved terms from overlapping but distinct
lexicons.   My entirely intuitive/vernacular response to this is that it
feels like epi-phenomena "all the way down".  

Glen invoked "epi" as "nearly" and yet in vernacular use, I feel it
always carries the extra connotation of "on top of" or "in addition to"
or "composed with".   Cycles and epicycles in the copernican sense?  
Isn't the "billiard ball model" of molecular dynamics an "epiphenomen"
when compared to a quantum wave formulation of the "phenomenology of
particle physics"?

I'm probably not reading/thinking/expressing this nearly carefully
enough to be relevant.

bumble,

  - Steve

On 9/16/21 8:03 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> """
> Were M absolutely, perfectly faithful to W, there would be no
> epiphenomena in M. I.e. epiphenomena do not exist...
> """
>
> I read Glen as saying that the collection of all comprehensions forms
> a space equipped with a meaningful notion of distance, and that if one
> were to treat the space analytically, one can arrive at a satisfactory
> definition of local epiphenomena.
>
> For what it's worth, I still feel that free-constructions may be an
> insightful way to model epiphenomena, or maybe even (as in EricS's
> t-shirt post) the relationship that Lie groups have to their algebras.
>
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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Marcus Daniels]

Just look at those crazies in their Brooks Brothers suits!

On Sep 17, 2021, at 8:04 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:



My first thought in reading this (Glen and Jon in response/elaboration) is that 
we are discussing whether the universe of comprehensions is (fully) metrizeable 
or not.  I have some conjectures about (weighted) graph and network metrization 
which may or may not have a play in this.   I'm not enough of a math-hole to 
really properly think (much less speak) about the higher order abstractions of 
topology that are invoked/implied in all this...

I'm also puzzled by the distinction between epi-phenomena and phenomena.   I 
suspect the principals in this discussion here to be using similar but 
different reserved terms from overlapping but distinct lexicons.   My entirely 
intuitive/vernacular response to this is that it feels like epi-phenomena "all 
the way down".

Glen invoked "epi" as "nearly" and yet in vernacular use, I feel it always 
carries the extra connotation of "on top of" or "in addition to" or "composed 
with".   Cycles and epicycles in the copernican sense?   Isn't the "billiard 
ball model" of molecular dynamics an "epiphenomen" when compared to a quantum 
wave formulation of the "phenomenology of particle physics"?

I'm probably not reading/thinking/expressing this nearly carefully enough to be 
relevant.

bumble,

  - Steve

On 9/16/21 8:03 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
"""
Were M absolutely, perfectly faithful to W, there would be no epiphenomena in 
M. I.e. epiphenomena do not exist...
"""

I read Glen as saying that the collection of all comprehensions forms a space 
equipped with a meaningful notion of distance, and that if one were to treat 
the space analytically, one can arrive at a satisfactory definition of local 
epiphenomena.

For what it's worth, I still feel that free-constructions may be an insightful 
way to model epiphenomena, or maybe even (as in EricS's t-shirt post) the 
relationship that Lie groups have to their algebras.



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Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

[thompnickson2]

Dear EricS,

 

So much here, and yet I wanted to take baby steps.  

 

Let me just announce something personal, in case it’s relevant.  I never had a 
religion.  My father was an announced a-religonist (i.e., he asserted his right 
not to give a damn about any of that crap) and my mother an announced agnostic. 
 My closest pass to religion was when – in lieu of a baby sitter and because 
there were cookies I liked – she took me to an occasional hymn-singing, hosted 
by different neighbors “on The Road” who had a piano where hymns were sung and 
psalms were read because she liked the words and the music.  {She was, 
literally, tone deaf.}  So, for me, in my childhood, there was literally no 
organization outside my immediate family that claimed any authority.  I say 
this because many of the people who have said they don’t understand me …. 
Including some of my collaborators, by the way … were beaten by nuns in their 
childhood, or some spiritual equivalent.   I say this not to spur a response, 
but to identify an area in which I simply don’t share much of human experience. 
 I am religiously deaf and dumb.   I say this so that you will not suppose that 
I am pushing  for any Establishment.  I would have no idea what an 
Establishment was.  

 

Moving right along … baby steps.  I am going to annotate your note below as 
plainly as I can until I get too confused or run out of steam and then stop, so 
I don’t blather.  So, I will see you below.  

 

N 




Nick Thompson

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2021 12:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

 

Hi Nick,

 

It’s such a broom of things going on, that it is hard to respond to with 
orderly thought.  

 

0.  If I had a motto, it would probably be something like “Nothing is 
impossible; everything is hard.”  But that oversimplifies too much, so I don’t 
have mottos.

[NST===>I do have mottos and that is one of them. <===nst] 

 

 

1.  To have people unable to understand you seems to me like the default 
expectation.  So, from Dylan: No reason to get excited.  Or from Pete 
Townshend: This is not a social crisis.

[NST===>No, but it is a kind of call to action when somebody whom I respect 
disagrees with me.  <===nst] 

 

 

2. Before commenting on resolutions, maybe a comment more to clarify the 
experience of the problem.  The use of some of these words in the various posts 
leads to a reading experience for me that is like garden path sentences.  So it 
is not so simple as “defining” a term.  It is that the semantic work the usage 
of a certain term does in someone’s mind percolates down to lots of levels in 
the forming and the reading of text

[NST===>I think what you PERHAPS identify as a FRIAM bug, here, is actually a 
feature.  Words are like flotation devices which, when abused, can deliver one 
to unsafe depths and leave one to drown.  But I find the challenge of that 
really exciting and was largely missing from University life.<===nst] 

.  

 

3, Often, there are cadences in your use of the term function that feel 
familiar to me from evolutionists, whose use of it also is a garden-path 
sentence for me.  So for that I know you are at most partly idiosyncratic, or 
that the behaviorist conventions are only partly distinctive.  Some of this 
goes back a level in generality and community.  Since the evolutionists don’t 
use the word “goal” the way you do, the things in that that seem strange to me 
are more particular to this discourse.[NST===>My confusions arise, it turns 
out, from those of Edward Chase Tolman, famed “cognitive” psychologist and 
freedom of speech advocate.  When I arrived at Berkeley, he had just died, and 
I got an extremely heavy (but inexplicit) dose of his thought from a mourning 
faculty.  Tolman was raised in the same New England milieu that I was and even 
though I never met him, I seem somehow to have identified with him.  I say that 
Tolman was confused because his roots were in the Neo-Realist and neutral 
monist movement of the Harvard Teens, but for reasons I have never understood, 
those roots were cut off and any shoots sprayed with herbicide after James 
died.  I say “cognitive” with scare-quotes because those should have 
predisposed Tolman to be against the very ideas for which he became famous much 
later on. Tolman was, in this sense, a deracinated thinker.  <===nst]  

 

4. Many things in the evolutionists’ discourse feel neo-Platonist to me. 

[NST===>Let’s say, ex hypothesi, that you called me an ignoramous, and, 
further, that I did not know what an ignoramus was.  Would my lack of knowledge 
o

Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

[Steve Smith]

EricS -

>
> 2. Before commenting on resolutions, maybe a comment more to clarify
> the experience of the problem.  The use of some of these words in the
> various posts leads to a reading experience for me that is like garden
> path sentences.  So it is not so simple as “defining” a term.  It is
> that the semantic work the usage of a certain term does in someone’s
> mind percolates down to lots of levels in the forming and the reading
> of text. 
I appreciate what I presume might be a Borges reference and my own
apprehension (expressed quite lamely in my last post/response) of these
things as "fields of meaning" which may or may not be
continuous/differentiable if even ultimately defined over metric spaces.
>
> 3, Often, there are cadences in your use of the term function that
> feel familiar to me from evolutionists, whose use of it also is a
> garden-path sentence for me.  So for that I know you are at most
> partly idiosyncratic, or that the behaviorist conventions are only
> partly distinctive.  Some of this goes back a level in generality and
> community.  Since the evolutionists don’t use the word “goal” the way
> you do, the things in that that seem strange to me are more particular
> to this discourse.

This description bumbles me over from Borges "Garden of Forking Paths"
to "the Library of Babel".

Of course, you may only be using "Garden Path" in the more vernacular
sense of being "lead astray" or "wandering amongst constraints imposed
by the garden designer but mostly occult to the wanderer".  Or something
else entirely?


> 4a. I happen to feel like this is something I run into in the “beyond
> fitness” exercise.  So in being concrete I can allow others to tell me
> how I am misunderstanding everything they say.  I experience the
> evolutionists as thinking about things like sporophytes, gametophytes,
> spores, gametes, etc. — the various objects in the lifecycle of ferns
> — as epiphenomena of the fitnesses of units of selection.  As for
> Plato, the Unit of Selection, and its Fitness, are the true Forms, and
> all those objects and transitions are just shadows on the cave wall.
>  The “no epiphenomena” is for me the pushback that says: No, start
> with the things that are there and do stuff; whether it fits the frame
> you want to put on it (Glen’s pre-emptive registration) can come
> later, or not at all, as appropriate.  Of course for the narrow cases
> I treat it is easy, like Godel’s demonstration of the limitations of
> arithmetic was easy because explicit constructions can be made: that
> the Platonic Form of fitness and the unit of selection to which they
> wish to make everything else epiphenomenal can be shown to exclude
> quite concrete and specific things that are included if one starts
> with just what happens and constructs, to find that other
> registrations are consistent while the fitness and the unit of
> selection are not.  I know this is not germane to the topic you were
> discussing, but I cannot help have it as part of the experience set
> that parses styles of speaking.

To the extent I *think* (hope?) I parsed this paragraph correctly, it
feels like it gets to the root of our (collectively mutual) confusion
over epi/phenomena and exposes a complement of meta/object distinctions?

The rest of your treatment of the larger weave of this discussion that
follows is equally rich albeit sometimes ambiguous/arcane (to my
unsophisticated ear/eye) but I wanted to thank you for your repeated
attempts at "effing the effable" or perhaps "locuting the locutable"?

Carry on!

 - SteveS

>
> 5. I assume the resolution is a sort of AA resolution: to admit the
> conversation has a problem.  Probably to expect, too, that the problem
> doesn’t really go away.  So one just deals with it one day at a time. 
>
> I have to comment that in one other post, you gave three assertions
> that made me sure (and also probably wrong) why DaveW says you are a
> mystic, whether you will admit it or not.  They are not entirely out
> of context of the above.  You said:
>
> I don't know what world you are talking about if you [think you] are
> talking about a world beyond experience. 
> I don't know what existence you are talking about if you [think you]
> are talking about existence apart from experience.
> I don't know what fidelity you are talking about if you [think you]
> are talking about fidelity apart from experience.
>
> I think that hits my neoplatonist triggers too.  It’s an interesting
> exercise for me to try to find a locution that captures the right
> concept.  The visceral response, which I also have to religious
> people, and which makes the contemplatives angry when I tell them they
> are hitting the same triggers as the religious ones do, is to scream
> at them IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU.  The religious ones don’t want to live
> in a world that isn’t all about them.  I think the mystics and the
> contemplatives want to say they are not that breed of cat.  I will
> take them at their word, 

Re: [FRIAM] in the interest of consistency

[Steve Smith]

Marcus wrote:

> In the interest of consistency:  No vaccination then no hemorrhoid
> medication!

Tangentially but not orthogonally, I take this as notice that that
list of OTC meds should also not be considered Vegan, Kosher, nor
Halal as well...  


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[FRIAM] levels of consciousness

[Prof David West]

Yes, the subject line is a bit of a troll aimed at professed behavioralists.

Using a single quantifiable measure - degree of diversity in brain activity:

People have a 'baseline number' established when "awake" and "aware."

People asleep, under anesthesia, in comas, or in vegetative states, have 
decreasing numbers — "lower levels of consciousness."

People under the influence of psychedelics have larger numbers — "higher levels 
of consciousness." 

Michael M. Schartner, Robin L. Carhart-Harris, Adam B. Barrett, Anil K. Seth, 
Suresh D. Muthukumaraswamy. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46421

davew


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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

> IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen is a 
> great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, causing him 
> to be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, followed only by a 
> few brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain hoppers. And maybe little p 
> pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not willing to tilt windmills long 
> enough to push through a paradigm shift, compromising away the baby, happy 
> enough with the bath water. I have no hill to die on. Maybe that makes me 
> pathetic.

What a great medley of colorful idioms... 

I was acutely taken by "I have not hill to die on" and your
characterization of the "small p pragmatist"...  

I can't find (in my fragmented associative memory, aided only by my
flimsy google fu) the historical/mythological reference
(Scythians/Parthians/Greeks) to the small band of warriors who
deliberately trapped themselves on a ledge or a blind canyon (or their
leader contrived it), knowing that having no other option than fighting
their way out, they gained an advantage over the larger force who could
always retreat to avoid individual self-extinction, supporting a
collective will to yield to a smaller force?

I believe this is one of the charms/seductions of extremism...   and in
the historical anecdote above, is that not a highly pragmatic
tactic/strategy?

If we think of ourselves as cartographers/naturalists/archaeologists,
mapping a landscape, rather than trying to control it, perhaps the
strategies shift?

- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[uǝlƃ ☤ $]

Yes, if the extremism is taken on as the mechanism implementing the function 
(e.g. fighting advantage). But if the extremism is accidental, like most 
preemptive registration is, then No. Where one accidentally stumbles into an 
extremist position, it's not pragmatic at all.

Now, if you're a tool like our conservative SCOTUS Justices and your 
registration is a result of your manipulation by *others*, then we have an 
interesting question. As a mere pawn in the larger game, which we all are to 
some extent, which is more pragmatic on your (the tool's) part:

1) resist your overlords from effectively and efficiently using you for your 
pragmatic purpose, or
2) or grease the skids, play along, allow your overlords to use you well?

In either case, the tool who doesn't know she's a tool cannot be a pragmatist.


On 9/17/21 9:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Glen -
> 
>> IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen is 
>> a great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, causing 
>> him to be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, followed only 
>> by a few brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain hoppers. And maybe little 
>> p pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not willing to tilt windmills 
>> long enough to push through a paradigm shift, compromising away the baby, 
>> happy enough with the bath water. I have no hill to die on. Maybe that makes 
>> me pathetic.
> 
> What a great medley of colorful idioms... 
> 
> I was acutely taken by "I have not hill to die on" and your
> characterization of the "small p pragmatist"...  
> 
> I can't find (in my fragmented associative memory, aided only by my
> flimsy google fu) the historical/mythological reference
> (Scythians/Parthians/Greeks) to the small band of warriors who
> deliberately trapped themselves on a ledge or a blind canyon (or their
> leader contrived it), knowing that having no other option than fighting
> their way out, they gained an advantage over the larger force who could
> always retreat to avoid individual self-extinction, supporting a
> collective will to yield to a smaller force?
> 
> I believe this is one of the charms/seductions of extremism...   and in
> the historical anecdote above, is that not a highly pragmatic
> tactic/strategy?
> 
> If we think of ourselves as cartographers/naturalists/archaeologists,
> mapping a landscape, rather than trying to control it, perhaps the
> strategies shift?
> 
> - Steve


-- 
"Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
☤>$ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

> More mob justice:
>
> US rightwing group targets academics with Professor Watchlist 
> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/sep/17/turning-point-usa-professor-watchlist

Just now reading a biography of Thoreau and learning a little more about
the Transcendentalists and Utopians of that stripe makes me realize that
this was also the era of Abolitionism and the Fugitive Slave Law which
makes the TX Abortion shenanigans seem very tame.  Discussions about
abolitionism often started with absurdisms such as trying to decide
*when* it was OK to "own another human being" without the inverted
perspective of "when is it ok, as a human being, to be owned"?

I chatted with a good friend this week, in CA after Newsom was absolved
(or more to the point, Elder was rejected?) and he used the phrase "now
that Texas has legalized hunting women from helicopters" and I nearly
fell into NST's famed "Giggles" over the dark twistedness of it all (not
to mention the oblique Palin reference).

I share Glen's multi-valence about being on the list being a badge of
honor, yet also having real consequences.   I haven't seen any stories
coming out of TX yet where individuals (say an Uber driver) have
deliberately provoked an Anti-Choicer by say... claiming on social media
that he/she had just driven a woman to an abortion clinic and asking 
them to "bring it on".   Can only ONE person bring a lawsuit per
incident?  What is the modern day Gibson/Sterling/Stephenson equivalent
of Ambulance-Chasers???   Uber-stalkers I suppose?

>
> And because the Guardian doesn't seem to link directly to it:
> https://professorwatchlist.org/
>
> Is this different from doxxing nazis? It would be a badge of honor to be on 
> that list, I think. But their violence isn't merely implied.
>
> On 9/16/21 6:09 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>> The Chronicle of Higher Education noticed that there have been two massive 
>> cancellation protests against fraternities where sexual assaults were 
>> reported in the past few months, in Kansas and Nebraska.  Is group 
>> cancellation better/worse than individual cancellation?   Are students at 
>> Kansas and Nebraska really liberal lynch mobs out to destroy the glorious 
>> traditions of greek life?
>>
>> https://www.chronicle.com/article/at-kansas-another-confrontational-protest-against-greek-life
>>  
>> 
>>
>> They also incidentally brought up recent research on trigger warnings, a 
>> crowd sourced clinical intervention for PTSD dating to the 1970's and a long 
>> time tough-guy bug-a-boo.  
>>
>> https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-data-is-in-trigger-warnings-dont-work 
>> 
>


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[FRIAM] That was fun!

[thompnickson2]

I can buy this car travel adapter for 16 bucks and it will come tomorrow.
Shall I bite?

 

https://www.amazon.com/Buywhat-Inverter-Converter-Adapter-Computer/dp/B07QPS
15YK/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1
 &keywords=automobile+travel+adapter&qid=1631903687&sr=8-11

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

thompnicks...@gmail.com  

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 


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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[thompnickson2]

Steve, 

Isn't this the story of the 500 Spartans who, in defending Greece, backed 
themselves into a canyon and fought off the Persian hoards successfully, until 
some traitor showed the Persians a path around the canyon and they were 
attacked from behind?

N

Nick Thompson
thompnicks...@gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2021 12:32 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

Glen -

> IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen is a 
> great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, causing him 
> to be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, followed only by a 
> few brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain hoppers. And maybe little p 
> pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not willing to tilt windmills long 
> enough to push through a paradigm shift, compromising away the baby, happy 
> enough with the bath water. I have no hill to die on. Maybe that makes me 
> pathetic.

What a great medley of colorful idioms... 

I was acutely taken by "I have not hill to die on" and your characterization of 
the "small p pragmatist"...  

I can't find (in my fragmented associative memory, aided only by my flimsy 
google fu) the historical/mythological reference
(Scythians/Parthians/Greeks) to the small band of warriors who deliberately 
trapped themselves on a ledge or a blind canyon (or their leader contrived it), 
knowing that having no other option than fighting their way out, they gained an 
advantage over the larger force who could always retreat to avoid individual 
self-extinction, supporting a collective will to yield to a smaller force?

I believe this is one of the charms/seductions of extremism...   and in the 
historical anecdote above, is that not a highly pragmatic tactic/strategy?

If we think of ourselves as cartographers/naturalists/archaeologists,
mapping a landscape, rather than trying to control it, perhaps the strategies 
shift?

- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

Nick -


> Steve, 
>
> Isn't this the story of the 500 Spartans who, in defending Greece, backed 
> themselves into a canyon and fought off the Persian hoards successfully, 
> until some traitor showed the Persians a path around the canyon and they were 
> attacked from behind?

Probably, sounds good to me...   it is all useful (or not) as a parable
juxtaposed with Glen's "no hill to die on" which I am intuitively
aligned with.  Subsequently this demanded I seek a little more parallax.

Do you have "a hill to die on"?  Or are you more prone to the taking the
"Spartan's route" (don't forget, they are also reputed to leaving their
(male?) newborns out in the elements for a day or two at birth to weed
out the weak...   raises the threshold on the "viability" measure of
when a potential-human becomes a human, no? 

 For your interest in Corvids crossed with
viability, I should  let you know my resident pair (giant cottonwood out
back) have just fledged 2 new offspring (first brood in 5 years at this
location, best I can tell).   I don't know what happens   Their
hatch-to-fledge period seems to be at least 6 weeks...   I think our
Jays are more like 3 weeks-to-fledge.  Humans (except for Oliver Twist,
Mowgli, and Tarzan) seem to need at least a decade and a half to fledge
fully.   There must be some moral implications to this.

I also have a resident pair of Doves who have settled in year-round now
that there is always cracked-corn out for the chickens.  

We get a slew (slough?) of Jays in the shoulder seasons, but I believe
there are a single mated pair at any one time (serial monogamists?) who
have staked a claim to my pond and chicken-scratch area (the jays, the
doves, the chickens and the rock squirrels all seem to share well).

- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] That was fun!

[Tom Johnson]

That's a good price.  However, I can give you one should you get to Santa
Fe.
Tom

On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 1:01 PM  wrote:

> I can buy this car travel adapter for 16 bucks and it will come tomorrow.
> Shall I bite?
>
>
>
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Buywhat-Inverter-Converter-Adapter-Computer/dp/B07QPS15YK/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1&keywords=automobile+travel+adapter&qid=1631903687&sr=8-11
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

I agree that to the degree we might be tools in any context, it
undermines the efficacy of our pragmatism, not matter what our
aspirations might be. 

Is "toolism" or "being a tool" formulable in terms of co-option or
(voluntary) deference of personal agency?  Is there an ad-hoc formula to
describe the relationship between toolism, agency, pragmatism (+ what else)?


On 9/17/21 10:45 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> Yes, if the extremism is taken on as the mechanism implementing the function 
> (e.g. fighting advantage). But if the extremism is accidental, like most 
> preemptive registration is, then No. Where one accidentally stumbles into an 
> extremist position, it's not pragmatic at all.
>
> Now, if you're a tool like our conservative SCOTUS Justices and your 
> registration is a result of your manipulation by *others*, then we have an 
> interesting question. As a mere pawn in the larger game, which we all are to 
> some extent, which is more pragmatic on your (the tool's) part:
>
> 1) resist your overlords from effectively and efficiently using you for your 
> pragmatic purpose, or
> 2) or grease the skids, play along, allow your overlords to use you well?
>
> In either case, the tool who doesn't know she's a tool cannot be a pragmatist.
>
>
> On 9/17/21 9:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> Glen -
>>
>>> IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen is 
>>> a great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, causing 
>>> him to be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, followed only 
>>> by a few brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain hoppers. And maybe 
>>> little p pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not willing to tilt 
>>> windmills long enough to push through a paradigm shift, compromising away 
>>> the baby, happy enough with the bath water. I have no hill to die on. Maybe 
>>> that makes me pathetic.
>> What a great medley of colorful idioms... 
>>
>> I was acutely taken by "I have not hill to die on" and your
>> characterization of the "small p pragmatist"...  
>>
>> I can't find (in my fragmented associative memory, aided only by my
>> flimsy google fu) the historical/mythological reference
>> (Scythians/Parthians/Greeks) to the small band of warriors who
>> deliberately trapped themselves on a ledge or a blind canyon (or their
>> leader contrived it), knowing that having no other option than fighting
>> their way out, they gained an advantage over the larger force who could
>> always retreat to avoid individual self-extinction, supporting a
>> collective will to yield to a smaller force?
>>
>> I believe this is one of the charms/seductions of extremism...   and in
>> the historical anecdote above, is that not a highly pragmatic
>> tactic/strategy?
>>
>> If we think of ourselves as cartographers/naturalists/archaeologists,
>> mapping a landscape, rather than trying to control it, perhaps the
>> strategies shift?
>>
>> - Steve
>


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Re: [FRIAM] That was fun!

[thompnickson2]

Thanks tom,

 

The ultimate catch 22.  I can have the device if, and only if, I don’t need the 
device.  

 

I still think of your coffee maker with gratitude. 

 

Nick

 

Nick Thompson

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2021 4:36 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] That was fun!

 

  

 That's a good price.  However, I can give you one should you get to Santa Fe.

Tom

   

 

On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 1:01 PM mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > wrote:

I can buy this car travel adapter for 16 bucks and it will come tomorrow.  
Shall I bite?

 

https://www.amazon.com/Buywhat-Inverter-Converter-Adapter-Computer/dp/B07QPS15YK/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1
 

 &keywords=automobile+travel+adapter&qid=1631903687&sr=8-11

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

thompnicks...@gmail.com  

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

[thompnickson2]

I think the broadest characterization of the genre is unanticipated 
consequences.  In every case we have to specify the anticipated consequences, 
the unanticipated consequences, and who and what is doing the anticipating.  

 

   

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2021 4:59 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

 

Hi Steve,

 

No, not a Borges reference in that case.

 

“Garden path sentence” is a technical term used in linguistics, specifically by 
syntacticians, to express nonlocalities in the parsing of sentences that are 
left ambiguous by subsets of the exact word sequences, but which normally take 
conventional forms, and in the garden-path sentence are resolved at the end in 
an unconventional way.  The experience of reading them is that the mind is 
setting up an understanding, letting drop the details of sentence structure 
early as they get replaced by semantic representations, and then at the end 
realizing that those expectations have no resolution with the actual words, so 
one has to go back and re-load all the specifics to try to re-parse the 
sentence.  It essentially halts the process of sense-making that is normal in 
reading, as one “reads through the text”, and returns one to the pre-K level 
when one isn’t really reading, but looking at the literal text and wondering 
what one is supposed to do in response to it.

 

I heard a nice one in a talk years ago, which I could not remember exactly and 
could not find on the internet yesterday.  But if you look at Wikipedia, you 
will find that canonical examples are things like:

 

The horse raced past the barn fell.  

 

The old man the boats.  

 

To say that reading something in the evolution literature has an alien feel to 
me that reminds me of reading garden-path sentences is an attempt to point to 
the non-local nature of meaning carriage and to express an aspect of an 
experience; I did not make a claim that some particular sentence in some 
particular post “is” a garden-path sentence by some criterion of alternative 
parse-trees that I can deliver upon demand.  It’s more like saying Gosh, being 
hit in the head with a piece of a cinder block feels somewhat like falling off 
a bike and hitting my head on the ground (just to be sure I use two events I 
have really experienced, so I do not have to speak metaphorically).  

 

Thanks,

 

Eric

 

 

 





On Sep 18, 2021, at 12:56 AM, Steve Smith mailto:sasm...@swcp.com> > wrote:

 

EricS -

 

2. Before commenting on resolutions, maybe a comment more to clarify the 
experience of the problem.  The use of some of these words in the various posts 
leads to a reading experience for me that is like garden path sentences.  So it 
is not so simple as “defining” a term.  It is that the semantic work the usage 
of a certain term does in someone’s mind percolates down to lots of levels in 
the forming and the reading of text.  

I appreciate what I presume might be a Borges reference and my own apprehension 
(expressed quite lamely in my last post/response) of these things as "fields of 
meaning" which may or may not be continuous/differentiable if even ultimately 
defined over metric spaces.



 

3, Often, there are cadences in your use of the term function that feel 
familiar to me from evolutionists, whose use of it also is a garden-path 
sentence for me.  So for that I know you are at most partly idiosyncratic, or 
that the behaviorist conventions are only partly distinctive.  Some of this 
goes back a level in generality and community.  Since the evolutionists don’t 
use the word “goal” the way you do, the things in that that seem strange to me 
are more particular to this discourse.

This description bumbles me over from Borges "Garden of Forking Paths" to "the 
Library of Babel".

Of course, you may only be using "Garden Path" in the more vernacular sense of 
being "lead astray" or "wandering amongst constraints imposed by the garden 
designer but mostly occult to the wanderer".  Or something else entirely?





4a. I happen to feel like this is something I run into in the “beyond fitness” 
exercise.  So in being concrete I can allow others to tell me how I am 
misunderstanding everything they say.  I experience the evolutionists as 
thinking about things like sporophytes, gametophytes, spores, gametes, etc. — 
the various objects in the lifecycle of ferns — as epiphenomena of the 
fitnesses of units of selection.  As for Plato, the Unit of Selection, and its 
Fitness, are the true Forms, and all those objects and transitions are just 
shadows on the cave wall.  The “no epiphenomena” is for me the pushback that 
says: No, start with the things that are there and do stuff; whether it fits 
the frame yo

[FRIAM] Mmm...my copy of...

[Jon Zingale]

"Partial Differential Equations and Related Topics" just arrived via Amazon.
Reuben has two articles:

0. The Method of Transmutations
1. Stochastic Solutions of Hyperbolic Equations


New Orleans, LA, USA, May of 1974. It must have been another time.
The opening article in the collection:

Nonlinear Diffusion in Population Genetics,
Combustion, and Nerve Pulse Propagation


Oh, Joy.

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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[⛧ glen]

Well, as always, some of us who are steeped and invested in some ideology will 
say something different from this. But pragmatic implies a set of actions, an 
artifact, a thing manipulated. So the million dollar question is whether any of 
us actually intend some outcome, and then act to obtain that outcome via 
busyness. To the extent that all our intentions are, at least in part, 
illusory, we can't be entirely pragmatic. (Or, i.e., the mindless amongst us 
are entirely pragmatic, their lives nothing but busyness. To be pragmatic is to 
be gloriously idiotic.) We will always be [ab]used tools. Do ants have their 
own objectives? Or are they tools of the colony?

My preferred metaphysics is that awareness comprises reflectivity. And to the 
extent we can interfere with our overlords' plans, we retain our agency. Even 
if our only interference comes in the form of psychosis or idiopathic 
irritability, our individuality requires it. Of course, some of us 
[coughmarcus] are deeply strategic in their interference. 8^D


On September 17, 2021 1:54:25 PM PDT, Steve Smith  wrote:
>I agree that to the degree we might be tools in any context, it
>undermines the efficacy of our pragmatism, not matter what our
>aspirations might be. 
>
>Is "toolism" or "being a tool" formulable in terms of co-option or
>(voluntary) deference of personal agency?  Is there an ad-hoc formula to
>describe the relationship between toolism, agency, pragmatism (+ what else)?
>
>
>On 9/17/21 10:45 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
>> Yes, if the extremism is taken on as the mechanism implementing the function 
>> (e.g. fighting advantage). But if the extremism is accidental, like most 
>> preemptive registration is, then No. Where one accidentally stumbles into an 
>> extremist position, it's not pragmatic at all.
>>
>> Now, if you're a tool like our conservative SCOTUS Justices and your 
>> registration is a result of your manipulation by *others*, then we have an 
>> interesting question. As a mere pawn in the larger game, which we all are to 
>> some extent, which is more pragmatic on your (the tool's) part:
>>
>> 1) resist your overlords from effectively and efficiently using you for your 
>> pragmatic purpose, or
>> 2) or grease the skids, play along, allow your overlords to use you well?
>>
>> In either case, the tool who doesn't know she's a tool cannot be a 
>> pragmatist.
>>
>>
>> On 9/17/21 9:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>>> Glen -
>>>
 IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen 
 is a great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, 
 causing him to be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, 
 followed only by a few brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain hoppers. 
 And maybe little p pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not willing to 
 tilt windmills long enough to push through a paradigm shift, compromising 
 away the baby, happy enough with the bath water. I have no hill to die on. 
 Maybe that makes me pathetic.
>>> What a great medley of colorful idioms... 
>>>
>>> I was acutely taken by "I have not hill to die on" and your
>>> characterization of the "small p pragmatist"...  
>>>
>>> I can't find (in my fragmented associative memory, aided only by my
>>> flimsy google fu) the historical/mythological reference
>>> (Scythians/Parthians/Greeks) to the small band of warriors who
>>> deliberately trapped themselves on a ledge or a blind canyon (or their
>>> leader contrived it), knowing that having no other option than fighting
>>> their way out, they gained an advantage over the larger force who could
>>> always retreat to avoid individual self-extinction, supporting a
>>> collective will to yield to a smaller force?
>>>
>>> I believe this is one of the charms/seductions of extremism...   and in
>>> the historical anecdote above, is that not a highly pragmatic
>>> tactic/strategy?
>>>
>>> If we think of ourselves as cartographers/naturalists/archaeologists,
>>> mapping a landscape, rather than trying to control it, perhaps the
>>> strategies shift?
-- 
glen ⛧


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[FRIAM] Fwd: the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

Poifekt!



 Forwarded Message 
Subject:Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc
Date:   Sat, 18 Sep 2021 06:16:56 +0900
From:   David Eric Smith 
Reply-To:   The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 



What do you call a Jewish Uber driver in Texas who takes women to
clinics, because an upstander accepts danger and difficulty?

An Uber-mensch.


> On Sep 18, 2021, at 2:20 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:
>
>
>> More mob justice:
>>
>> US rightwing group targets academics with Professor Watchlist
>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.com%2feducation%2f2021%2fsep%2f17%2fturning-point-usa-professor-watchlist&c=E,1,miq5rO3fImgOymXC9vDCVrtvmJneWtPFoCQS6bYK6nwxon3gkbrfCOHTq0XiRE3Sy5KnnET1iXU4J7WNGpDFt8YeKyCIMJxIojA4qr73rYk44TPWbop9bZs,&typo=1
>
> Just now reading a biography of Thoreau and learning a little more about
> the Transcendentalists and Utopians of that stripe makes me realize that
> this was also the era of Abolitionism and the Fugitive Slave Law which
> makes the TX Abortion shenanigans seem very tame. Discussions about
> abolitionism often started with absurdisms such as trying to decide
> *when* it was OK to "own another human being" without the inverted
> perspective of "when is it ok, as a human being, to be owned"?
>
> I chatted with a good friend this week, in CA after Newsom was absolved
> (or more to the point, Elder was rejected?) and he used the phrase "now
> that Texas has legalized hunting women from helicopters" and I nearly
> fell into NST's famed "Giggles" over the dark twistedness of it all (not
> to mention the oblique Palin reference).
>
> I share Glen's multi-valence about being on the list being a badge of
> honor, yet also having real consequences. I haven't seen any stories
> coming out of TX yet where individuals (say an Uber driver) have
> deliberately provoked an Anti-Choicer by say... claiming on social media
> that he/she had just driven a woman to an abortion clinic and asking
> them to "bring it on". Can only ONE person bring a lawsuit per
> incident? What is the modern day Gibson/Sterling/Stephenson equivalent
> of Ambulance-Chasers??? Uber-stalkers I suppose?
>
>>
>> And because the Guardian doesn't seem to link directly to it:
>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fprofessorwatchlist.org%2f&c=E,1,CN6uubvqiBZOZ48aFda2mtxMvH1uuHSpCH9dYyz3owF4ICWAQ-X9M8K83QrzyxLvSoGP_tAFEWYpVspowq-BeNJuKIAEivs5yjzmvdMHAg,,&typo=1
>>
>> Is this different from doxxing nazis? It would be a badge of honor to
>> be on that list, I think. But their violence isn't merely implied.
>>
>> On 9/16/21 6:09 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>> The Chronicle of Higher Education noticed that there have been two
>>> massive cancellation protests against fraternities where sexual
>>> assaults were reported in the past few months, in Kansas and
>>> Nebraska. Is group cancellation better/worse than individual
>>> cancellation? Are students at Kansas and Nebraska really liberal
>>> lynch mobs out to destroy the glorious traditions of greek life?
>>>
>>> https://www.chronicle.com/article/at-kansas-another-confrontational-protest-against-greek-life
>>> 
>>>
>>> They also incidentally brought up recent research on trigger
>>> warnings, a crowd sourced clinical intervention for PTSD dating to
>>> the 1970's and a long time tough-guy bug-a-boo.
>>> https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-data-is-in-trigger-warnings-dont-work
>>> 
>>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

I appreciate the complex candor here...  at least what I parsed out
while trampling all over the text of your post , as it were (nod to
EricS).  But is the garden a Labyrinth, a Maze or a Fukuokan One-Straw
Revolution
?

SteveS

On 9/17/21 5:41 PM, ⛧ glen wrote:
> Well, as always, some of us who are steeped and invested in some ideology 
> will say something different from this. But pragmatic implies a set of 
> actions, an artifact, a thing manipulated. So the million dollar question is 
> whether any of us actually intend some outcome, and then act to obtain that 
> outcome via busyness. To the extent that all our intentions are, at least in 
> part, illusory, we can't be entirely pragmatic. (Or, i.e., the mindless 
> amongst us are entirely pragmatic, their lives nothing but busyness. To be 
> pragmatic is to be gloriously idiotic.) We will always be [ab]used tools. Do 
> ants have their own objectives? Or are they tools of the colony?
>
> My preferred metaphysics is that awareness comprises reflectivity. And to the 
> extent we can interfere with our overlords' plans, we retain our agency. Even 
> if our only interference comes in the form of psychosis or idiopathic 
> irritability, our individuality requires it. Of course, some of us 
> [coughmarcus] are deeply strategic in their interference. 8^D
>
>
> On September 17, 2021 1:54:25 PM PDT, Steve Smith  wrote:
>> I agree that to the degree we might be tools in any context, it
>> undermines the efficacy of our pragmatism, not matter what our
>> aspirations might be. 
>>
>> Is "toolism" or "being a tool" formulable in terms of co-option or
>> (voluntary) deference of personal agency?  Is there an ad-hoc formula to
>> describe the relationship between toolism, agency, pragmatism (+ what else)?
>>
>>
>> On 9/17/21 10:45 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
>>> Yes, if the extremism is taken on as the mechanism implementing the 
>>> function (e.g. fighting advantage). But if the extremism is accidental, 
>>> like most preemptive registration is, then No. Where one accidentally 
>>> stumbles into an extremist position, it's not pragmatic at all.
>>>
>>> Now, if you're a tool like our conservative SCOTUS Justices and your 
>>> registration is a result of your manipulation by *others*, then we have an 
>>> interesting question. As a mere pawn in the larger game, which we all are 
>>> to some extent, which is more pragmatic on your (the tool's) part:
>>>
>>> 1) resist your overlords from effectively and efficiently using you for 
>>> your pragmatic purpose, or
>>> 2) or grease the skids, play along, allow your overlords to use you well?
>>>
>>> In either case, the tool who doesn't know she's a tool cannot be a 
>>> pragmatist.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/17/21 9:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
 Glen -

> IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen 
> is a great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, 
> causing him to be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, 
> followed only by a few brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain hoppers. 
> And maybe little p pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not willing 
> to tilt windmills long enough to push through a paradigm shift, 
> compromising away the baby, happy enough with the bath water. I have no 
> hill to die on. Maybe that makes me pathetic.
 What a great medley of colorful idioms... 

 I was acutely taken by "I have not hill to die on" and your
 characterization of the "small p pragmatist"...  

 I can't find (in my fragmented associative memory, aided only by my
 flimsy google fu) the historical/mythological reference
 (Scythians/Parthians/Greeks) to the small band of warriors who
 deliberately trapped themselves on a ledge or a blind canyon (or their
 leader contrived it), knowing that having no other option than fighting
 their way out, they gained an advantage over the larger force who could
 always retreat to avoid individual self-extinction, supporting a
 collective will to yield to a smaller force?

 I believe this is one of the charms/seductions of extremism...   and in
 the historical anecdote above, is that not a highly pragmatic
 tactic/strategy?

 If we think of ourselves as cartographers/naturalists/archaeologists,
 mapping a landscape, rather than trying to control it, perhaps the
 strategies shift?

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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[David Eric Smith]

Quick answer to your specific question below, Steve.

Whether or not it says more about the concept or about my accidental window on 
it, of course, I cannot know.

But to me, the cleanest example of a true epiphenomenon is the way neoclassical 
economics in its pure Arrow-Debreu form treats institutions.  The abstraction 
at the foundation is that there are these individuals — meant to somehow stand 
for people — who have well-formed preferences for their part of every possible 
allocation of some scarce basket of resources in every possible state of the 
world.  The General Equilibrium solutions are any allocations such that nobody 
in the society would be willing to accept any differing contract from the 
present one, which anybody else would be willing to offer.  There are issues of 
locality and connectedness of the set of all equilibria, etc., but let me not 
get off into the weeds of that here, which are not to this point.

Anyway, the GE economists of course understand that institutions exist.  They 
use money at the supermarket within the conventions of the laws, etc.  But in 
their foundation abstraction, whether any of those institutions exist or not is 
immaterial to the allocation of the resources basket achieved at the end, 
because that allocation is ultimately determined by the collection of all the 
individuals’ complete preference functions.  There is no work for an 
institution to do, so the institutions do no work.  In that sense they are 
epiphenomena.  

Martin Shubik’s pushback against the GE psychosis was the endlessly-repeated 
expression “Institutions are the carriers of process”.  Just for completeness’ 
sake, let me mention that Ken Arrow was wonderfully clearheaded about the 
pathology of the Arrow-Debreu foundation, right from the beginning, and in 
everything he did thereafter.  He put it out because it was a problem that 
could be solved, and occasionally the abstraction would have enough of an 
overlap with some case that it might be useful.  But it never was a religious 
icon to him.  Shubik and Arrow worked in quite different ways and styles, but 
in understanding that the ephiphenomanon characterization of institutions was a 
serious problem to be overcome, there was no struggle between them.

Eric



> On Sep 18, 2021, at 12:04 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:
> 
> My first thought in reading this (Glen and Jon in response/elaboration) is 
> that we are discussing whether the universe of comprehensions is (fully) 
> metrizeable or not.  I have some conjectures about (weighted) graph and 
> network metrization which may or may not have a play in this.   I'm not 
> enough of a math-hole to really properly think (much less speak) about the 
> higher order abstractions of topology that are invoked/implied in all this... 
>   
> 
> I'm also puzzled by the distinction between epi-phenomena and phenomena.   I 
> suspect the principals in this discussion here to be using similar but 
> different reserved terms from overlapping but distinct lexicons.   My 
> entirely intuitive/vernacular response to this is that it feels like 
> epi-phenomena "all the way down".   
> 
> Glen invoked "epi" as "nearly" and yet in vernacular use, I feel it always 
> carries the extra connotation of "on top of" or "in addition to" or "composed 
> with".   Cycles and epicycles in the copernican sense?   Isn't the "billiard 
> ball model" of molecular dynamics an "epiphenomen" when compared to a quantum 
> wave formulation of the "phenomenology of particle physics"?
> 
> I'm probably not reading/thinking/expressing this nearly carefully enough to 
> be relevant.
> 
> bumble,
> 
>   - Steve
> 
> On 9/16/21 8:03 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
>> """
>> Were M absolutely, perfectly faithful to W, there would be no epiphenomena 
>> in M. I.e. epiphenomena do not exist...
>> """
>> 
>> I read Glen as saying that the collection of all comprehensions forms a 
>> space equipped with a meaningful notion of distance, and that if one were to 
>> treat the space analytically, one can arrive at a satisfactory definition of 
>> local epiphenomena.
>> 
>> For what it's worth, I still feel that free-constructions may be an 
>> insightful way to model epiphenomena, or maybe even (as in EricS's t-shirt 
>> post) the relationship that Lie groups have to their algebras.
>> 
>> 
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[FRIAM] torn

[⛧ glen]

Ugh. I hate it when one homunculus argues with another.  But w.r.t. Boghossian, 
I say good riddance.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/my-university-sacrificed-ideas-for

I've been to a few of his public seminars. And he embodies the vapid atheist. 
When I think about my emotional response to his rhetoric, I can't help but 
channel Dave ... Scientism at its worst.

-- 
glen ⛧


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Re: [FRIAM] torn

[Marcus Daniels]

He’s been carrying on like this for a while, right?  Come on.  Crybaby.

> On Sep 17, 2021, at 5:33 PM, ⛧ glen  wrote:
> 
> Ugh. I hate it when one homunculus argues with another.  But w.r.t. 
> Boghossian, I say good riddance.
> 
> https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/my-university-sacrificed-ideas-for
> 
> I've been to a few of his public seminars. And he embodies the vapid atheist. 
> When I think about my emotional response to his rhetoric, I can't help but 
> channel Dave ... Scientism at its worst.
> 
> -- 
> glen ⛧
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[⛧ glen]

I couldn't credibly reject epiphenomena and claim it's a labrynth. To boot, I 
think the purpose of life is to find and explore the most unique niche you can, 
preferably some subspace nobody else has ever been or will ever be. So, I 
choose maze ... or worse ... a combinatorial infinity of fractal 
near-similarity.


On September 17, 2021 5:06:01 PM PDT, Steve Smith  wrote:
>Glen -
>
>I appreciate the complex candor here...  at least what I parsed out
>while trampling all over the text of your post , as it were (nod to
>EricS).  But is the garden a Labyrinth, a Maze or a Fukuokan One-Straw
>Revolution
>?
>
>SteveS
>
>On 9/17/21 5:41 PM, ⛧ glen wrote:
>> Well, as always, some of us who are steeped and invested in some ideology 
>> will say something different from this. But pragmatic implies a set of 
>> actions, an artifact, a thing manipulated. So the million dollar question is 
>> whether any of us actually intend some outcome, and then act to obtain that 
>> outcome via busyness. To the extent that all our intentions are, at least in 
>> part, illusory, we can't be entirely pragmatic. (Or, i.e., the mindless 
>> amongst us are entirely pragmatic, their lives nothing but busyness. To be 
>> pragmatic is to be gloriously idiotic.) We will always be [ab]used tools. Do 
>> ants have their own objectives? Or are they tools of the colony?
>>
>> My preferred metaphysics is that awareness comprises reflectivity. And to 
>> the extent we can interfere with our overlords' plans, we retain our agency. 
>> Even if our only interference comes in the form of psychosis or idiopathic 
>> irritability, our individuality requires it. Of course, some of us 
>> [coughmarcus] are deeply strategic in their interference. 8^D
>>
>>
>> On September 17, 2021 1:54:25 PM PDT, Steve Smith  wrote:
>>> I agree that to the degree we might be tools in any context, it
>>> undermines the efficacy of our pragmatism, not matter what our
>>> aspirations might be. 
>>>
>>> Is "toolism" or "being a tool" formulable in terms of co-option or
>>> (voluntary) deference of personal agency?  Is there an ad-hoc formula to
>>> describe the relationship between toolism, agency, pragmatism (+ what else)?
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/17/21 10:45 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
 Yes, if the extremism is taken on as the mechanism implementing the 
 function (e.g. fighting advantage). But if the extremism is accidental, 
 like most preemptive registration is, then No. Where one accidentally 
 stumbles into an extremist position, it's not pragmatic at all.

 Now, if you're a tool like our conservative SCOTUS Justices and your 
 registration is a result of your manipulation by *others*, then we have an 
 interesting question. As a mere pawn in the larger game, which we all are 
 to some extent, which is more pragmatic on your (the tool's) part:

 1) resist your overlords from effectively and efficiently using you for 
 your pragmatic purpose, or
 2) or grease the skids, play along, allow your overlords to use you well?

 In either case, the tool who doesn't know she's a tool cannot be a 
 pragmatist.


 On 9/17/21 9:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Glen -
>
>> IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen 
>> is a great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, 
>> causing him to be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, 
>> followed only by a few brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain 
>> hoppers. And maybe little p pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not 
>> willing to tilt windmills long enough to push through a paradigm shift, 
>> compromising away the baby, happy enough with the bath water. I have no 
>> hill to die on. Maybe that makes me pathetic.
> What a great medley of colorful idioms... 
>
> I was acutely taken by "I have not hill to die on" and your
> characterization of the "small p pragmatist"...  
>
> I can't find (in my fragmented associative memory, aided only by my
> flimsy google fu) the historical/mythological reference
> (Scythians/Parthians/Greeks) to the small band of warriors who
> deliberately trapped themselves on a ledge or a blind canyon (or their
> leader contrived it), knowing that having no other option than fighting
> their way out, they gained an advantage over the larger force who could
> always retreat to avoid individual self-extinction, supporting a
> collective will to yield to a smaller force?
>
> I believe this is one of the charms/seductions of extremism...   and in
> the historical anecdote above, is that not a highly pragmatic
> tactic/strategy?
>
> If we think of ourselves as cartographers/naturalists/archaeologists,
> mapping a landscape, rather than trying to control it, perhaps the
> strategies shift?

-- 
glen ⛧

Re: [FRIAM] torn

[Jon Zingale]

"""
When I am king
You will be first against the wall
With your opinion
Which is of no consequence at all
"""
*— Thom Yorke*

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Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

[David Eric Smith]

Hi Steve,

No, not a Borges reference in that case.

“Garden path sentence” is a technical term used in linguistics, specifically by 
syntacticians, to express nonlocalities in the parsing of sentences that are 
left ambiguous by subsets of the exact word sequences, but which normally take 
conventional forms, and in the garden-path sentence are resolved at the end in 
an unconventional way.  The experience of reading them is that the mind is 
setting up an understanding, letting drop the details of sentence structure 
early as they get replaced by semantic representations, and then at the end 
realizing that those expectations have no resolution with the actual words, so 
one has to go back and re-load all the specifics to try to re-parse the 
sentence.  It essentially halts the process of sense-making that is normal in 
reading, as one “reads through the text”, and returns one to the pre-K level 
when one isn’t really reading, but looking at the literal text and wondering 
what one is supposed to do in response to it.

I heard a nice one in a talk years ago, which I could not remember exactly and 
could not find on the internet yesterday.  But if you look at Wikipedia, you 
will find that canonical examples are things like:

The horse raced past the barn fell.  

The old man the boats.  

To say that reading something in the evolution literature has an alien feel to 
me that reminds me of reading garden-path sentences is an attempt to point to 
the non-local nature of meaning carriage and to express an aspect of an 
experience; I did not make a claim that some particular sentence in some 
particular post “is” a garden-path sentence by some criterion of alternative 
parse-trees that I can deliver upon demand.  It’s more like saying Gosh, being 
hit in the head with a piece of a cinder block feels somewhat like falling off 
a bike and hitting my head on the ground (just to be sure I use two events I 
have really experienced, so I do not have to speak metaphorically).  

Thanks,

Eric




> On Sep 18, 2021, at 12:56 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:
> 
> EricS -
> 
>> 
>> 2. Before commenting on resolutions, maybe a comment more to clarify the 
>> experience of the problem.  The use of some of these words in the various 
>> posts leads to a reading experience for me that is like garden path 
>> sentences.  So it is not so simple as “defining” a term.  It is that the 
>> semantic work the usage of a certain term does in someone’s mind percolates 
>> down to lots of levels in the forming and the reading of text.  
> I appreciate what I presume might be a Borges reference and my own 
> apprehension (expressed quite lamely in my last post/response) of these 
> things as "fields of meaning" which may or may not be 
> continuous/differentiable if even ultimately defined over metric spaces.
>> 
>> 3, Often, there are cadences in your use of the term function that feel 
>> familiar to me from evolutionists, whose use of it also is a garden-path 
>> sentence for me.  So for that I know you are at most partly idiosyncratic, 
>> or that the behaviorist conventions are only partly distinctive.  Some of 
>> this goes back a level in generality and community.  Since the evolutionists 
>> don’t use the word “goal” the way you do, the things in that that seem 
>> strange to me are more particular to this discourse.
> This description bumbles me over from Borges "Garden of Forking Paths" to 
> "the Library of Babel".
> 
> Of course, you may only be using "Garden Path" in the more vernacular sense 
> of being "lead astray" or "wandering amongst constraints imposed by the 
> garden designer but mostly occult to the wanderer".  Or something else 
> entirely?
> 
> 
>> 4a. I happen to feel like this is something I run into in the “beyond 
>> fitness” exercise.  So in being concrete I can allow others to tell me how I 
>> am misunderstanding everything they say.  I experience the evolutionists as 
>> thinking about things like sporophytes, gametophytes, spores, gametes, etc. 
>> — the various objects in the lifecycle of ferns — as epiphenomena of the 
>> fitnesses of units of selection.  As for Plato, the Unit of Selection, and 
>> its Fitness, are the true Forms, and all those objects and transitions are 
>> just shadows on the cave wall.  The “no epiphenomena” is for me the pushback 
>> that says: No, start with the things that are there and do stuff; whether it 
>> fits the frame you want to put on it (Glen’s pre-emptive registration) can 
>> come later, or not at all, as appropriate.  Of course for the narrow cases I 
>> treat it is easy, like Godel’s demonstration of the limitations of 
>> arithmetic was easy because explicit constructions can be made: that the 
>> Platonic Form of fitness and the unit of selection to which they wish to 
>> make everything else epiphenomenal can be shown to exclude quite concrete 
>> and specific things that are included if one starts with just what happens 
>> and constructs, to find that other regis

Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[David Eric Smith]

What do you call a Jewish Uber driver in Texas who takes women to clinics, 
because an upstander accepts danger and difficulty?

An Uber-mensch.


> On Sep 18, 2021, at 2:20 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:
> 
> 
>> More mob justice:
>> 
>> US rightwing group targets academics with Professor Watchlist 
>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.com%2feducation%2f2021%2fsep%2f17%2fturning-point-usa-professor-watchlist&c=E,1,miq5rO3fImgOymXC9vDCVrtvmJneWtPFoCQS6bYK6nwxon3gkbrfCOHTq0XiRE3Sy5KnnET1iXU4J7WNGpDFt8YeKyCIMJxIojA4qr73rYk44TPWbop9bZs,&typo=1
> 
> Just now reading a biography of Thoreau and learning a little more about
> the Transcendentalists and Utopians of that stripe makes me realize that
> this was also the era of Abolitionism and the Fugitive Slave Law which
> makes the TX Abortion shenanigans seem very tame.  Discussions about
> abolitionism often started with absurdisms such as trying to decide
> *when* it was OK to "own another human being" without the inverted
> perspective of "when is it ok, as a human being, to be owned"?
> 
> I chatted with a good friend this week, in CA after Newsom was absolved
> (or more to the point, Elder was rejected?) and he used the phrase "now
> that Texas has legalized hunting women from helicopters" and I nearly
> fell into NST's famed "Giggles" over the dark twistedness of it all (not
> to mention the oblique Palin reference).
> 
> I share Glen's multi-valence about being on the list being a badge of
> honor, yet also having real consequences.   I haven't seen any stories
> coming out of TX yet where individuals (say an Uber driver) have
> deliberately provoked an Anti-Choicer by say... claiming on social media
> that he/she had just driven a woman to an abortion clinic and asking 
> them to "bring it on".   Can only ONE person bring a lawsuit per
> incident?  What is the modern day Gibson/Sterling/Stephenson equivalent
> of Ambulance-Chasers???   Uber-stalkers I suppose?
> 
>> 
>> And because the Guardian doesn't seem to link directly to it:
>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fprofessorwatchlist.org%2f&c=E,1,CN6uubvqiBZOZ48aFda2mtxMvH1uuHSpCH9dYyz3owF4ICWAQ-X9M8K83QrzyxLvSoGP_tAFEWYpVspowq-BeNJuKIAEivs5yjzmvdMHAg,,&typo=1
>> 
>> Is this different from doxxing nazis? It would be a badge of honor to be on 
>> that list, I think. But their violence isn't merely implied.
>> 
>> On 9/16/21 6:09 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>> The Chronicle of Higher Education noticed that there have been two massive 
>>> cancellation protests against fraternities where sexual assaults were 
>>> reported in the past few months, in Kansas and Nebraska.  Is group 
>>> cancellation better/worse than individual cancellation?   Are students at 
>>> Kansas and Nebraska really liberal lynch mobs out to destroy the glorious 
>>> traditions of greek life?
>>> 
>>> https://www.chronicle.com/article/at-kansas-another-confrontational-protest-against-greek-life
>>>  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> They also incidentally brought up recent research on trigger warnings, a 
>>> crowd sourced clinical intervention for PTSD dating to the 1970's and a 
>>> long time tough-guy bug-a-boo.  
>>> 
>>> https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-data-is-in-trigger-warnings-dont-work 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] torn

[⛧ glen]

Ha! Which would be interesting if he didn't resign. Like his course in how to 
create atheists, he offers a course in how to create victims of the King.

On September 17, 2021 5:44:25 PM PDT, Jon Zingale  wrote:
>"""
>When I am king
>You will be first against the wall
>With your opinion
>Which is of no consequence at all
>"""
>*— Thom Yorke*

-- 
glen ⛧


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Re: [FRIAM] torn

[Marcus Daniels]

Best ever.

> On Sep 17, 2021, at 6:30 PM, ⛧ glen  wrote:
> 
> Ha! Which would be interesting if he didn't resign. Like his course in how 
> to create atheists, he offers a course in how to create victims of the King.
> 
>> On September 17, 2021 5:44:25 PM PDT, Jon Zingale  
>> wrote:
>> """
>> When I am king
>> You will be first against the wall
>> With your opinion
>> Which is of no consequence at all
>> """
>> *— Thom Yorke*
> 
> -- 
> glen ⛧
> 
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc

[Steve Smith]

Glen -
> I couldn't credibly reject epiphenomena and claim it's a labrynth. To boot, I 
> think the purpose of life is to find and explore the most unique niche you 
> can, preferably some subspace nobody else has ever been or will ever be. So, 
> I choose maze ... or worse ... a combinatorial infinity of fractal 
> near-similarity.

Thus the trampling, fertilizing, reseeding, serendipity-doo-dah of a
one-straw style "farm".   More Julia or Mandelbrot than Serpenski but
nevertheless self similar from the scale of microbe and micorhyzome on
up through tree or forest or savannah.

I agree with your "purpose of life" in a yet-more fundamental way... my
pan-consciousness leanings have me saying life itself (and/or
consciousness) is the never-tiring exploration of an as-yet-discovered
fractal landscape of possibilities.   A funky/fecund variation of
Kaufmann's Adjacent Possible?   Reflection (self modeling self?) is in
fact key to consciousness (beyond mere "life"? if they are in fact not
(in some sense) the same thing?).

- Steve





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