• Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    1. my friend and I were walking and came up with a video game idea: On one level its a macro-game like Sim City but the focus is on individuals. There are thousands of individuals. They all have a measure of good/evil or happy/sad or creative/destructive. You can monitor this from above. But the other part of the game is first person, like in folk tales when a disguised monarch goes out at night to meets his subjects and so you encounter these people and there's dialogue trees. You can't change their outlook in one fell swoop but can slightly nudge them in either direction.

    2. I only know pop science so this is that. Electrons, so I'm told, exist in some kind of weird probability space. They don't exist anywhere but are smeared proabilistically with some places more likely, others less, and are effectively nowhere til [something] collapses them. I know no science but if an electron collapses in an improbable place does that radically alter what's probable after?

    3. A cycle that repeats itself in endlessly, only occasionally a slight disruption changes the cycle minimally. This changes the cycle slightly but more importanly changes what future disruptions the cycle is open to.

    4. a vessel made using a potter's wheel.

    5. A crouched animal in the bushes observing a repetitive movement of prey. Patient, quiet, and immediately attuned to an eventual, inevitable discrepancy, which it moves toward.

    6. A pagan society observes astronomical cycles. Realizes there's moments when, due to some cosmic confluence, a certain light will shine here, on this day, rarely, as though there is a transmission from one cosmic level to another.

    7. A musical ensemble playing the same standards, and someone plays one note wrong, and everyone else instinctively works it in. and the song is different now and here is jazz.

    8. Oysters, irritation, pearls.

    9. [political example]
  • javra
    2.6k


    What comes to mind:

    All our choices between alternatives we sense, regardless of how trivial, are us standing at crossroads. The path we choose obliterates the path(s) we thereby choose against. Each choice leads to its own domino effect of future choices where we will stand at crossroads not yet materialized. But not all of our crossroads are of the same magnitude. The larger the importance of the crossroad, the greater the change in the course of our future lives—and of everything which we affect.

    IMO echoing your own examples, this being a kind of chaos theory, replete with the butterfly effect, that is applied to a compatibilist reality.
  • Galuchat
    809
    7. A musical ensemble playing the same standards, and someone plays one note wrong, and everyone else instinctively works it in. and the song is different now and here is jazz.csalisbury

    Ignorant view of jazz.
    Better view: cooperative improvisation.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Lucretian swerves?
  • Galuchat
    809
    I think the collection hangs separately, not together.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Who is NOT mad here?
  • frank
    15.8k
    These ants always walked single file to the pumpkin patch when one day Crazy George veered off, leading the colony to eventually discover Australia.
  • S
    11.7k
    8. Oysters, irritation, pearls.csalisbury

    Pearl necklace!
  • BrianW
    999
    Pseudo-science is just a misstep between logic and empiricism. Our understanding can never be as definitive as logic is. Logic is just a connection between events. In one sense, it is the link between cause and effect. Our perspective is limited, it cannot fill the holes of ignorance in our consciousness. For example, tell a child (who hasn't learnt the alphabet) that there is an 'A' an 'M' and a 'Z'. Then ask the child to fill the gaps between those letters. Considering a child's mind, the answers one gets are likely to completely lack perspective and proportion. It's the same with us when we observe events which we are not familiar with. Our answers are just speculations to various degrees in relation to possible and probable occurrence of events with respect to our perspectives. And even when we can predict various outcomes in patterns, there's still a lot of gaps with regard to the why, how, what, etc, of those events especially when they have a relation to a much larger scheme of occurrences (e.g. quantum phenomena).

    I think, ultimately, it's our language and attitude that fail us because deep down we know our knowledge and understanding is not absolute.

    As to jazz, I would say that, we had not realised how tenacious a musical pattern could be, such that, certain dynamic irregularities would still not collapse it. But then I suppose the intent was always to enhance the music positively. Jazz is amaze-balls! :wink: :cool:
  • T Clark
    13.9k
    I know no science but if an electron collapses in an improbable place does that radically alter what's probable after?csalisbury

    Well, you know a little science, as do I. Together we can be dangerous, or at least ridiculous. Now @StreetlightX, you stay out of this. It is my understanding (hush now Streetlight!!!) that some people think that the same processes that may make an electron suddenly appear in "empty" space may be the same processes that lead to the creation of the universe.

    8. Oysters, irritation, pearls.csalisbury

    @S, irritation, insults.
  • T Clark
    13.9k
    9. [political example]csalisbury

    In case there is any doubt, these are intended as serious contributions. Very stream of consciousness based on impressions from your list.

    • Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Nixon's southern strategy, Donald Trump
    • Proteins interacting, membranes developing, enzymes spontaneously forming, chemical cycles starting, life
    • The derivative of e(x) = e(x)
    • In German, "faust hand schuhe" = fist hand shoe = mittens
    • Jawbone in fish evolves into ear bone in primates.
    • In the beginning was the word, The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
    • Irony, Emergence, Unintended consequences, Chaos theory, Serendipity, Self-reference, Entropy

    Actually, the last line started out as my attempt to find a common theme in your list. Then it struck me it might fit in as an entry. I don't really think "entropy" belongs. I just wanted to make myself look smart. You should put "entropy" somewhere in every post that involves science.
  • T Clark
    13.9k
    Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Nixon's southern strategy, Donald TrumpT Clark

    By way of history - After signing the CRA in 1964, Lyndon Johnson said "We have just lost the South for a generation." Boy, was he wrong.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    "Pseudo-Intellectual collection of things that all fit together hopefully"

    I thought you were maybe proposing a new name for this message board.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    I'm not totally clear at what I'm getting at. A lot of things keep rolling together in my head, on threads with @unenlightened & @fdrake and my own reading.

    I def think free will is part of it. I have this feeling that free will, at least at first, doesn't involve making a choice, but rather refusing to identify as the chooser. There are those famous studies where we appear to make a choice before becoming consciously aware of it. Free will, at this stage, would involve putting the brakes on our automatic choosing.

    Maybe similar to how the goal of meditation isn't to produce deeper, mystical thoughts, but rather to note how the thoughts we've grown accustomed to see as 'ours' - thought by us, the subject - are more like a chaotic, phantasmagoric landscape that unfolds by itself. But still, with a strange order. To me, my thoughts seem cyclical on a broad scale, chaotic (or over-simple and calm) moment to moment

    And how the same thing is true of our actions. They're not directed by a 'free' 'subject' but are a chaos of subselves acting impulsively.

    So the initial free act would be not to stop acting (as the meditator does not try to stop thinking) but to observe how one acts, without feeling identified with it. (Husserl is saying somethig similar when he connects freedom and the ability to perform the 'epoche')

    This is not an amoral fatalism because the purpose is to observe what change is possible despite ourselves. And then to nudge ourselves in the right direction when some event happens that provides an opportunity to disrupt our cycles. I think those events are similar to what you describe as those crossroads with massive ramifications. But to make an actual choice you have to be equal to the event, if that makes sense.

    Those are my thoughts recently anyway.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Ignorant view of jazz.
    Better view: cooperative improvisation.
    Galuchat

    Totally ignorant, for sure. I do agree that jazz is cooperative improvisation. My thing was a tongue-in-cheek theory of the origin of jazz, along the lines of the Lucretian swerve @StreetlightX brought up. In the beginning all standards were played perfectly in the void until one fateful moment one swerving musician fucked up. And instead of him, embarassed, correcting himself, the other musicians said 'yes and' and a beautiful tradition of cooperative improvisation was born.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    These ants always walked single file to the pumpkin patch when one day Crazy George veered off, leading the colony to eventually discover Australia.frank

    I'm listening to the audiobook of Sapiens and it's funny he just mentioned the conquering of Australia by prehistoric sapiens as a momentous event that changed the course of human development (the first time we ascended to the top of the food chain) Though he also described the cultivation of pumpkins, obliquely, as equally momentous (one agricultural revolution, independent of others, involved pumpkins.)

    On an even more crackpot, mystic note, Gurdjieff's law of seven purports to show how a kink is built into any straight line and deviation is inevitable - the twist is , in deviating, we think we're following the same line - new things always emerge under the banner of something old.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Lucretian swerves?StreetlightX

    Yes, definitely. But not only. I've been trying to wrap my mind around Rovelli (halfway through The Order of Time) and the idea that even though time is one thread of the physical everything, still the physical everything can change. And how to understand that in my scientifically illiterate mind without introducing a illegitimate higher-order timeline in which the everything is embedded. So its not the swerve as big bang, I'm trying to think, but as an inherent part of it, thats constantly in play. Thats why the 'potters wheel.' In this self-contained space which is quasi-timeless, something shapes itself and emerges. Only the potter has to be part of the wheel now too.

    This is all slightly manic, of course, and not rigorously thought out by any stretch, but for the moment I'm just letting it play out. I'll show my gnostic cards, a little, and say Zizek's (recycling of the) idea that christ truly forgets he's god on the cross deeply intrigues me. How does the everything modify itself if it can't be modified from without? It contracts time. ('contract' with all the zizekian-schellingian resonance.)
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    I'm glad you brought up entropy because, tbh, the OP is an explanation - the first true explanation - of entropy. Though of course the scientific community will, irritatingly, never admit it. Pearls before swine.

    (fave example of yours btw is german mittens. Read any thinkpiece in a reputable newsorgan about the current state of whatever and its almost always a clunky collage of old concepts, meant for another era, awkwardly trying to express something currently inexpressible. And all with the stolid know-how of those who have so symbiotically made a career with those concepts, that the very idea of new concepts is unthinkable. Like a european anthropologist translatig another culture into the actual truth, not realizing their objects of study are consciously feeding them bad info because its funny. I'll edit in a link to one good example once I find it again.)
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Pearl necklace!S
    hey thats somebodys daughter!
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Would I be reading you wrong, if I said it sounds like you're saying that the 'spookiness' of QM (a human model of an extrahuman thing) )is due to an epistemological, not ontological, gap? As in all the weird and wild theories are the adult equivalent of filling in the alphabet?

    If so, I'm inclined to agree. only my gut tells me its even weirder than we think. Maybe at the limit, though, the weird and the familiar converge.
  • Galuchat
    809

    Whatever gets you thru the night.
  • unenlightened
    9.2k
    Well since I have been invoked like a common demon, here is my contribution:

    Tononi's hyper-scientific explanation of consciousness is here discussed by the hyper-rational BBC in terms that recapitulate in effect the wackiest outreaches of Jungian theory, the collective unconscious.

    And in terms of politics, Jung's theory was intended to address such political phenomena as the sudden slide into fascism of Germany which many are finding echoes of in current affairs.

    As if what fits together is not so much the things themselves as stereoscopic conflicted way one is obliged to look at them.
  • frank
    15.8k
    new things always emerge under the banner of something old.csalisbury

    I used to be fascinated by astrological symbolism. Scorpio is a symbol of a hidden destroyer like a little boy squirming on a pew in a church. No one realizes that he's going to grow up to become a powerful religious reformer.
  • BrianW
    999
    As in all the weird and wild theories are the adult equivalent of filling in the alphabet?csalisbury

    Yes. I don't believe in randomness or the supernatural or miraculous because I believe everything is within the purview of nature. The weird stuff is just stuff we're unfamiliar with.
  • Moliere
    4.7k
    Man I'm gonna need more to go off of. Sorta seems ineffable. Which means . . .
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    that's fair. All I know is it's something to do with cycles and swerves. And how cycles can only modify themselves from within, by swerving. And then something about free will being the ability to nudge a swerve in one direction, rather than choosing freely from many options.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k

    Not a batsignal, but an appreciative nod.

    The article makes sense to me. The summary sounds like german idealism + neurocomputation. Instead of a worldspirit, theres a world-computer. I'd only object to the (implicit) claims to newness, as you did. There's additional experimental verification, of course, but there's the itchy feeling theyre verifying things in a certain self-confirming way. Like what's being chosen to be measured somehow, through that choosing, is already smuggling in the conclusions it advocates. do you get that vibe too?

    As to to stereoscopy, what if its stereoscopic all the way down?
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Yes. I don't believe in randomness or the supernatural or miraculous because I believe everything is within the purview of nature.BrianW

    Fair, but what is 'nature'?
  • frank
    15.8k
    An earthquake nudged a coffee cup off a table in a restaurant and the sound caused a man and woman to look at one another. They eventually have three kids.

    Put me in place of the earthquake and it turns out I have supernatural powers. I can cause humans to come into existence.

    That's one way to see why Schopenhauer said there is only one Will. We analyze events and whatever we identify as causal (usually the subject of an action sentence) is in possession of will. The object of action does not have will until it becomes the subject in its own sentence.

    Subject and object are two sides of one concept. They imply one another and only have significance relative to one another. Some take that as a sign that this a pattern that is an aspect of mind (is projected by mind?)

    Schopenhauer theorized that the human body is a representation of the one Will.

    Ramble ramble.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    I think what I've always objected to in Schopenhauer --- and not even 'objected', it's not really a theoretical quibble --- it's that I never understood what he meant by saying the Will was 'one.' I agree with the breakdown, where there is not a single thing (humans) with this power (will) and it extends beyond all of us. But Oneness historically has implied unity, cohesion (often spherical representations.) To say that the One is prism'd out into self-clashing, makes me wonder what work 'one' is actually doing?
  • frank
    15.8k
    Will is whatever it is that makes things move. The explanation for a softball's movement is the same (fundamentally) as the explanation for the movement of galaxies.

    Since time is an aspect of movement, it's an aspect of what Schopenhauer meant by Will. If we say there is only one time, or one entropy, it's like that.

    Although now that I'm saying this, maybe I should go reread and see if I understood what he meant (vs. what I wanted him to be saying).
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