The Borges Test, Alex Nevala-Lee

J.L. Borges belief in compression for the conveyance of ideas is probably valuable. This is the age of a great textual flood (babble). I'm still struck by what could possibly be extrapolated from Borges' Library of Babel. Each of works in his short story collection Labyrinths modify and expand the way we think about the others.

Though if you are writing a work purely for yourself, you're free to do as you please.

Calvino on Borges

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Richard Hofstadter, 1964)

In American experience ethnic and religious conflict have plainly been a major focus for militant and suspicious minds of this sort, but class conflicts also can mobilize such energies. Perhaps the central situation conducive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency is a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular social interest—perhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands—are shut out of the political process. — The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Richard Hofstadter, 1964)

Think Pelle said as much but this essay is famous and and will probably be relevant until we go extinct (when all the Kool-Aids have been drunk and we're finally dead).

Some of the architecture combines human anatomy, astronomical data, history, particle physics, sound engineering all into the structure itself. — AngryBear

The insertion here of particle physics as having any plausible relation to the development of Egyptian architecture is at question. This is not a magical leap of dubious New Age speculation? What have you been reading or watching?

I think it is completely natural for human beings to see the world through a mythopoetic lens (thinking by means of intuitive forms, myths, narratives, metaphor, analogy, dream images). This is the freedom to think at all, comparative to the freedom to move. The problem lies in the belief that any of our unchecked or provisional intuitions, reified abstractions, say something true about the world (pointing beyond themselves).

It could as well be the case that one might not care much for truth beyond it being a means to acquire or sustain power, to serve others, to be part of a group, to fully express oneself, or to feel less alienated and more at home in the world (or to do anything seemingly worth doing).

No but will do. Though why seek out new nightmares... Everything can be nightmarish if you're in the wrong state of mind.

Was reading J.L. Borges short story about Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius, about a conspiratorial interpolation of a false world into the records of the real world by way of an enclyclopedia. As I was reading I thought pages were being magically added because the story seemed longer than I recollected. It made me terribly paranoid. The conspiracy in the story was also happening to me.

For a moment afterward I thought I was totally buried in my own solipsistic mind, that the surface of my vision was altogether too flat and close, smothering me, like I was stuck in a coffin or buried alive (my field of vision was the lid of my coffin). I was paranoid, panicked (felt like I couldn't breath).

I got up and started a Tai Chi program to try to anchor myself and improve mood.

I have a limited sense of what an absolute unmoored hell a severe schizophrenic episode might entail. Not to have recourse to a foundation of the real scares the shit out of me.

The Atlantic: When Hearing Voices is a Good Thing

But there was one stark difference, as Stanford News points out: "While many of the African and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely to report experiences as violent and hateful—and evidence of a sick condition." — The Atlantic: When Hearing Voices is a Good Thing by Olga Khazan

I remember now someone in a podcast brought up the work of Tanya Luhrman.

Seems to accord with Unenli's observation that the expression and reception of some (all?) kinds of mental illness is socially (culturally) mediated.

Absolutely, first person immersion helps with design. I imagine that was true for the ancient ivory carver who created the "Venus" figurine 35,000 years ago, found near Willnedorf, Austria, or whoever carved the Venus de Milo, or Jackson Pollock dribbling paint on canvas. — Bitter Crank

Well, furthermore, a first person immersion VR interface itself becomes as plastic as the thing being designed within it. So you can change scales, download pre-designed forms, project textures by various automated tasks and whatever else ingenious folks think up. VR would be a great way to collaborate across time and space while also saving energy compared to real world equivalent.

Though there is a sense in which it all seems rather absurdly redundant (as you are suggesting). The best 3-D printer is still probably the potters wheel and the potter, when all the machines go down. The fundamental virtual world is the one we experience sans all the fancy cybernetic extensions.

Has our grip on reality become so loose that we think the hardness of reality can just be waved away and depicted however we see fit? I hope we have not lost our grip to that extent. — Bitter Crank

We will be reminded of reality when the economy really collapses and all electronics stop. Then poof, no more The Philosophy Forum. Philosophy can take a back seat to the need to eat.

We should all be working on making this temporary reality less fragile.

The use of VR and 3D printing together has great potential. 1st person immersion helps with design.

Ted Talk: Anil Seth: Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality.

In the above talk Seth gives an example of audio hallucination by nudging our brain to make sense of meaningless phonetic sequence by a forced association. It would be interesting to come up with as many possible alternative sentences that map perfectly on the phonetic rhythm which he uses. Some could be terrible and hateful and some could be quite positive.

Apophenia is an interesting phenomena but it must also be an applicable term for the way in which average (non-shizophrenic) folks perceive the world. The positive aspect of apophenia is when it it is adaptive (when it wouldn't be classified as apophenia). Could we say that projection of analogy and metaphor (rudimentary modes of understanding) are essentially partially controlled apophenic events? Wherever thoughts help us to imagine (hallucinate) the world as we think it is we are on shaky (provisional) ground.

There was an anecdote I heard about paranoia in non-westernized countries as having a more benign and even positive quality, better defined perhaps as pronoia than paranoia. This could just be complete BS though.

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Berkeley's idealism is too simple for complex minds. You have to be dumb to understand it. Or maybe you just have to be dumb to believe in it because of the pressure of default materialism.

Philo (c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD), a Hellenized Jew, used the term Logos to mean an intermediary divine being or demiurge.[7] Philo followed the Platonic distinction between imperfect matter and perfect Form, and therefore intermediary beings were necessary to bridge the enormous gap between God and the material world.[33] The Logos was the highest of these intermediary beings, and was called by Philo "the first-born of God".[33] Philo also wrote that "the Logos of the living God is the bond of everything, holding all things together and binding all the parts, and prevents them from being dissolved and separated".[34]

Plato's Theory of Forms was located within the Logos, but the Logos also acted on behalf of God in the physical world.[33] In particular, the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was identified with the Logos by Philo, who also said that the Logos was God's instrument in the creation of the Universe.[33] — Wikipedia: Philo of Alexandria

Seems like Philo of Alexandria could partially responsible for how Christ became associated with the Word of God. It was a meme that took flight after the event. Some Christians were borrowing from Philo in preparing their propagandic literature.

Stranger still is that Philo (c25 BC-47 AD) was a contemporary of Jesus but does not bear witness to the historical man or events surrounding the man Jesus. (?)

jesusneverexisted.com: Philo of Alexandria

____________

"Now the image of God is the Word, by which all the world was made."

– Philo, "The Special Laws", I (81)

Not sure it is of any significance to the inquiry but when you stick λόγος into google translate, you get the following synonyms (uses):

reason
λόγος, αιτία, λογικό, φρένα

speech
ομιλία, λόγος, φωνή, λαλιά

ratio
αναλογία, λόγος, σχέση

word
λέξη, λόγος, είδηση

cause
αιτία, αίτιο, λόγος, υπόθεση, αφορμή, σκοπός

consideration
θεώρηση, μελέτη, αμοιβή, παράγοντας, λόγος, σεβασμός

oration
λόγος, αγόρευση, ρητό, δημηγορία

spiel
λόγος

It's a simple and good life, as the Cynic would tell you. — Wallows

Not only a Cynic might think so, but someone like Alexander the Great (perhaps a Cynic then). Anecdotally (or legendarily) he said to Diogenes after seeking the old dog out and getting an amusing response: 'If I weren't Alexander I'd want to be Diogenes.'

I thank Wallows for toughing it out in a tough world.

And to the moderators who put up with trespassers, migrants, tartuffes, feral cats and naughty boys and girls.

And to those who don't act in bad faith.

Amen.

I want to really learn a musical instrument (to cultivate any proficiency at music).

Also would like to understand some more basic physics in connection with doing home experiments:

1. Building a simple radio (receiving, transmitting, amplifying)
2. Photograph and experiment with Chaldni patterns.
3. Playing with object resonance (how to understand, determine or explain object resonance).

I think the resurrection refers to a metaphorical "second birth". Something akin to ego shattering and the possibility for a new orientation to life in which the Kingdom of God is now immanent (both interiorly and exteriorly). The self expands to incorporate the possibility of all beings as oneself (interchangeable with oneself). This doesn't mean things are all awesome, just that you're closer to recognizing the value of what the Buddha might term "right action" for the good of all beings.

Jesus' resurrection of course necessitated his death. For what are any of us willing to die? Of course we'd say we'd be more willing to make small sacrifices as a means to some end (for others for ourselves) but that isn't sufficient by Jesus' comparison given the degree to which we cling to our own lives (ie. we're all painfully attached to the world in its various manifestations).

A study of the notion of "sacrifice" through the ages might be an interesting pursuit to help shed light on the crucifixion/resurrection. Also I think the Buddha is in some way equivalent to Jesus, different historical manifestations of a similar root insight.

Cut back on the weed bro. — Jamesk

I'm sorry to hear that. One of the main reasons I abstain from smoking pot is due to not wanting to interfere with my dream recall. — Wallows

Haven't smoked weed in more than a decade. Don't jump to conclusions.

I stopped dreaming (or being able to recall them) along time ago.

Dreams used to be so great though. So stunningly brilliant and full of absurd enigma. Now we have movies to replace them.

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things. — Zhuangzi

Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! — Zhuangzi

Jorge Luis Borges (an idealist master of meta narratives):

No one is interested in saving endangered species unless it is in some way lucrative. Very few GMO's belong to the public domain. Even if there are public domain GMOs, a lot of folks are scared of them.

Banana plants are a case where genetic modification is most important. Cavendish is the banana you know, is basically one genetically-locked cultivar (apart from ongoing mutation between populations). 99% of banana exports to wealthier nations are Cavendish. The Cavendish replaced the Gro Michel (supposedly better tasting) when a fungus knocked them out. The only way to save the Cavendish is probably through GMO. Fortunately there is no way a company can really patent it without enforcing patent rights, by engineering some kind of auto-destruct sequence into the plants (if this is possible). These bananas are grown through vegetative propagation only, like the scions of a graft (ex. Orange or Apple varieties), so it makes it easy to steal if such organisms become proprietary.

In Hawaii the papaya industry was saved by our State University by genetic modification. It was a gift to farmers. I'm not sure what the trick is to getting a truly organic papaya, that is how widespread the introduced gene is in populations. No one is going through the expense of testing to see which papayas carry the gene (though I could be totally wrong). The expense to farmers would be absurd since the industry is so small.

What endangered species needs to be saved? Biodiversity is like tool diversity, the more tools you have in your tool shed, the more stuff you can do.

I believe public GMOs (given to all peoples) are possibly a useful tool for retaining the planets biodiversity. The problem is one of incentive. Does anyone really care about the ancestors of the beloved apple?

The imminent death of the Cavendish banana

Zeno might wonder how you traverse between discrete links in a "chain of moments" .

But every time his wife told him to take out the trash, he'd reply. "How possibly could I traverse that infinite distance."

Deep in the ocean, dead and cast away
Where innocence is burned, in flames
A million miles from home, I'm walking ahead
I'm frozen to the bones, I am

A soldier on my own, I don't know the way
I'm riding up the heights, of shame
I'm waiting for the call, the hand on the chest
I'm ready for the fight, and fate

The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head
The thunder of the drums, dictates
The rhythm of the falls, the number of deaths
The rising of the horns, ahead

From the dawn of time to the end of days
I will have to run, away
I want to feel the pain and the bitter taste
Of the blood on my lips, again

This deadly burst of snow is burning my hands
I'm frozen to the bones, I am
A million miles from home, I'm walking away
I can't remind your eyes, your face

I feel ya buddy.

Society is just changing a little to fast and culture is trying to play catch up.

My entire childhood I isolated myself by fear which I think probably has to do with a traumatic encounter in preschool. My development into an adult has been retarded. I'm afraid of my sexual preference. I work in a place where I don't want to work. I have no friends. I don't carry much value in these forums (i might as well be talking to myself). There has been little effort on my part to culture a discipline. I can't sleep and have stomach problems. Those whom I love will die when the next 10 to 20 years. My sister will go on to live her own life.

I think the best thing for me now is try to find good company and a discipline that will increase my market value. Changing my job would be an exercise in independence. Finding a friend that is embodied and is not flattened by the rules of language games and intractable puzzles (philosophy). The healthy often seek the healthy. Though a friend requires you to love as loving sustains the reciprocity of friendship. Friends require all the things that friends require.

How does one learn to love others? If one doesn't love oneself, how can one love others?

If one doesn't love or feel much, how can one possibly condition right action?

Submit yourself to a system of work and work that yields value. Work to work better. Try not to think so much about non-practical puzzles. Abandon the forum. Abstain from philosophy. Learn to play an instrument for someone rather than for yourself. Do good works for an audience. Dance (perform work) for an audience. Do something you can be proud of through the judgement of others.

We babes are all marionettes in the end, who dream of growing into ourselves through others.

This is a problem with unofficially published lyrics online. People write down what they hear and as a result I often look for more than two versions to compare. The two-facedness (or multivariablity) of word choice in song is interesting. We end up choosing the one's we like or hear.

There is a part in Health's album Death Magic: Drugs Exist (track) which reads:

"The dead will call us home."

vs. (what I saw posted as lyrics)

"The dirt will call us home."

Dead is likely intended based on theme but the substitution of dirt would make sense for someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife. The dead decay back into soil (dirt). It adds extra effect to the poem accidentally.

The archaic "nature" literally meant birth ("it natures" which is like our use of it nutures). That which births, nurtures. Take this as a psychological truth if not fact. Some mothers destroy their babies which might be arguably a type of nurture belonging to an indifferent nature, that of Darwininan selection which is not deterministic. Those that survive survive, those that die die.

Look at the word, nascent: "just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential."

Once you recognize the signs of future potential you put a child in an environment (group or mentor) that helps him/her to flourish. The recognition of a child's potential is the problematic part. Our monoculture can be somewhat preferential and brutual ( like a mother or father) selecting for some traits and being indifferent to others. For an adult it is like following their instincts and intuitions (which has become a nightmare of psychological tension for so many people). Signs of future potential can be hidden by maladaptive behavior but that in-itself is a sign that the organism needs a new type of nurturing environment.

I like Mircea Eliade's metamyth of the eternal return (though I'm not conveying his theory but borrowing bits of his structure).

Archaic time is circular. Periodic regularity of the world's performance is reflected in the behaviors of human kind.

To perform a ritual (to imitate the order of the universe) is to hold the universe together as it appears in a religious way.

This is to make philosophy religious (imbue its rituals with value by maintaining them). If we don't voluntarily perform the rituals of reason according to philosophic laws or sensibilities, ie. the arduous (or fun) task of mediating reason cooperatively by studying exemplars and the means of exemplars, they will die.

Reason by its (in)numerable modes coronates the philosopher and gives life (spirit) to the endeavor. The ability to reason endows the philosopher with value in the eyes of his peers. When you show that you can perform well you are coronated, but there are never ending levels to this (like martial art belts).

What does this have to do with God?

Nothing... as Black Belting Banno said, (the notion of) God is absurd.

Repeat the Bannonian mantra...

We must distill out the absurdity and live only the in the purity of a courteous surety.

How do you differentiate what is nurtured from the inside of what does the nurturing?

Nature nutures as much by the dominance of man as by the state of nature (whatever that is).

Man's dominance over nature is fundamentally subordinate to nature. But nature doesn't dominate anything, it selects for. Nature has selected for the adaption that dominates (makes a domain).

There is a sick brutality to nurturing (a form of dominance) which resembles the sick brutality of blind selection (shit happens in the absence of controlled selection).

Both man and nature select for one another rather than dominate one another.

Metaphysics is possibly destabilizing to one's sense of reality, possibly in similar way some drugs are.

The metaphysically adept are like deep sea cutters and welders. Their confidence and skill of logical consistency as well as their knowledge of prior arguments allow them to brave the waters of chaos to cut or fix something somewhere. What they are welding is like the structure of their own minds, which in effect restructures the world, but this is also true of everyone whether we are aware of it or not.

"He comprehended that the effort to mold the incoherent and vertiginous matter dreams are made of was the most arduous task a man could undertake, though he might penetrate all the enigmas of the upper and lower orders: much more arduous than weaving a rope of sand or coining the faceless wind." — Borges

~J.L. Borges, Circular Ruins

Metaphysics is like weaving a rope of sand or coining the faceless wind, toward what end?

In what substrate or form do they exist in? — Wallows

The exist in any substrate they do exist in as information, but they are something else.

Though maybe they don't properly "exist" until they appear by means of a particular cognitive processing. They are irreducible to theoretical script or physical processes because appearance is necessary for being recognized and recognition requires a whole train of relatively conditioned and logistically dynamic baggage.

Is appearance necessary for being recognized and is a particular recognition necessary for "existence"?

In what capacity does the unread and therefore unthought of fictional character exist? As potential and likely recognition of what appears, as scripts yet to appear and be interpreted by biological machinery.

Or fictional characters don't "exist" period.

Edit: deleted unnecessary Guru parody

I would say that the information does still exist, it just exists in an encrypted state. — DingoJones

The same information could have many encryption keys but the only encryption key that makes the information relevant (gives it a conditioned existence so to speak) is the one you have (ie. mind).

Suppose you have a book of gibberish that could be a possible language if you had an interpretive structure (a decryption key). If the key no longer exists to decode information (the language) then the information no longer exists. Information stands in relation to the decryption key in the same way as the world stands in relation to the mind.

They can exist without our minds. — DingoJones

But can they exist without any mind.

T-shirts are as categorically abstract as clothes, as trees are to matter when talking about abstracting properties from sense experience. We experience none as they truly are a part from mind, so their existence depends upon mind (any mind, including a mind that might transcend conventional mind, like a network of minds as mind). They aren't really anything besides what we perceive them to be, which includes the fundamentally or functionally pragmatic imposed categories of experience.

The in-itself outside of minds is not even an in-itself. There is not even nothing qua nothing.

The beauty of the message in the video is that those often thought as 'primitive' meditators adhering to mystic religious edicts are actually achieving quantifiable objectives. — BrianW

Personally I'm in an absurd position in my life. I owe my current job (income) to Yogananda Paramanhansa's dogma indirectly by charitable benefactors but don't believe in his metaphysics and have a cynical view about it akin to what Karl has expressed. Every now and then there is some admission that fundamentally appeals to me like "Yogi's aren't interested in phenomena" amidst vast tracks of dubious speculation about the "truth" underlying phenomenal world based on special privately experienced phenomena. Meditation is fine, and even good in light of evidence, but the dogma feels like a waste of time.

It makes it seem as if Yogananda's lies are a means to an end. Meditation is the greatest good in his eyes so it's ok to seduce folks into it by lying. If the structure for persuasion isn't there, no one will come. Or he is not intentionally lying at all from his point of view but is just a product of his lineage (an inherited metaphysics from his guru).

The instances of folks using sleight of hand to charm and beguile their adherents into believing dogma makes me very angry. Yogananda is very likely guilty of doing this. It conveys bad faith, that there is an ulterior motive going on.

Scientific American: Zen Gamma

The cost associated with Olympic level meditation is probably comparable to that of a disciplined scientific education across a life time. Probably both are possible, unless the brain state of ceaseless gamma waves interferes the ability to think as a scientist does. Apparently the opposite is true, gamma synchrony is associated with clear thinking and focus.

Someone invent a gamma wave feedback app for me. I'm willing to spend $5000 on it.

Why?

If I hang around magic monkeys maybe their magic will rub off on me, despite my incompetence.

De omnibus dubitandum est

Fish traveling upstream are going with the flow, just not the flow of water.