24-02-11
One can know what it's like to not-know even with the poorest memory, but one cannot not-know what it's like to know, however much one tries to forget.
Does the mind seek to know itself? How do we know? Or does it even make sense to ask that?
What is the compulsion to externalize? How does this affect the ontological precedence of thought and work in relation to freedom?
When we are distant from being distant from reality, do we find ourselves even farther away from being or do we find ourselves feeling away from being farther?
Given the physical equivalent of the brain to an electrical / chemical switchboard, can a self-awareness of indeterminacy be put down to quantum physics? Can we be Scrödinger's Cat? That is, are memoryless thoughts quantum ensemble switching for catastrophic error correction?
Can hemispheric asymmetry be put down neuronal maps that are hemispherically symmetrical, but are each linked in a one-to-one symmetrical correspondence contrapositively to the equivalent neuron in the opposite hemisphere? I.e. as a 0 (left) or infinity (right) but not both and not neither?
How are the non-linear relations created by machine learning analogous to quantum jumps? Does this describe metaphorization of the difference between the ways that humans should be replaced by computers (exhaustive) versus the ways that computers must be replaced by humans (creative)? [Never play cards with a man named Doc]
Because of relativity, we are told that there is no absolute frame of reference, because of quantum physics, we are told that there is no absolute ground; thus, any "truth" should be universalizable, that is, considered true in all cases; thus it must either have a logical basis (internal deduction) or have existential potential (external exhaustion).
In our current economic climate, if we prioritize the subject-subject relation, we are only ever managers and johns or performing artists and prostitutes; if we prioritize the subject-object relation then we are either turning resources into wealth (physical or existential) or wealth into resources, and thus slavery becomes an optimization problem that depends on your definition of "wealth".
The four pillars of contentment are work, hobbies, routines, and community. For as Durkheim says, ritual is the basis for all of humanity, and as fMRIs suggest, neurotopology is toroidal (i.e. consists solely of loops). Loops around what? Whatever you have defined as your origin over a given temporal interval of your life. But infinity will always remain where it is, as a horizon rather than a location. [Forever shall I be a stranger to myself. -- Albert Camus
The Private Language Argument implies that an internal result or pursuit that is entirely solitary cannot be measured. If a tree falls in the woods? So to be is to be perceived, but in what sense and by whom?
All of work is process and representation, and both have their respective ontological merits: "I can do that" versus "I can make that". Is it any wonder that in many languages, "do" and "make" are represented by the same word?
How does one define the optimal extent of "open-mindedness"? How much of it is structure to allow one to know, and how much of it is scepticism to allow one to not believe?
There can only be was, is, and could be—memory, experience, prediction—all relative to the present moment.
Ungrounded = running to stand still
24-02-12
Computers can only combine existent information because they have no existential experiences. So they can't discover anything new that is not a recombination of existing samples of information. Would a robot that could sense be considered to have existential experiences? No, because how would they "learn" to interpret their physical environment? Existential implies at least the illusion of choice.
If everything else is equivalent, women should be more likely to be able to succeed than men because of history due to their being more likely to be taught the essential skills needed to survive (e.g. cooking, cleaning, routine, care of others) and understand what the consequences will be if they don't succeed (i.e. likely to end up powerless). Yet men should be more likely to be successful because of history due to a biased perception that the future should be reflective of past momentum. [Three stages of truth / Kuhnian paradigms] [Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses. -- Plato] [Zizek: "It is easier to imagine a total catastrophe which ends all life on earth than it is to imagine a real change in capitalist relations."]
Existential greed (expanding outward, maximizing external value) versus material greed (drawing inward, maximizing internal value) [Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it. -- Freud]
Why do only humans create non-functional artistic abstractions? [Robin May, YouTube, "Why is there only one species of human?"]
Schopenhauer: art and music (will)
What is a mythology and why is it necessary for us to create one?
[Stoicism?]: "Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor." -- Alexis Carrell (A version of "Drawing Hands" before Otto Neurath's Ship... the causa incausata problem)
Every life is an experiment that cannot be replicated.
Taylorism is the basis for both Fordist and Leninist conceptions of directed (as opposed to creative) work (i.e. mass production). The difference is who makes the decisions and what values should be prioritized regarding the outputs.
[Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible the price that must be paid. -- Aldous Huxley] Which reality? The subjective reality of what we should do and who we should be in order to be ourselves, or the objective reality of what we must do and who we need to be in order to be what hegemony and society suggests we are?
The only way that a statement can be properly assessed objectively is if its building block inputs and the process of its formation and formulation are both completely transparent and universally understandable. It must be treated as if it is having its day in court and the plaintiffs are all of humanity. This is the only way that we can conceive of a judgment worthy of the Rousseauan legislator. [Okshevsky, certainty, geopolitical decision making, international courts]
My second life is in its infancy, and I don't know where it will lead.
24-02-13
When the market decides on leaded gasoline for the better part of the twentieth century, what does it say about the inherent interests of capitalism? (https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secret-history-lead/)
How much more restrictive is one's version of reality if they have never felt the otherworldly effects of a psychotropic substance? What does a normal reality look to a brain that has only ever had their normal faculties? And to what extent are the effects of such a perturbation physically neuroplastic versus mentally mind-expanding? Is there a one-to-one correspondence between the physical changes (chemicals, physical structure, electrical activity and connections) and those that are purely mental-historical (visual imagery and trauma)? A very fascinating thing to discuss... For example, does every memory (that can be recalled) have a physical correspondence in the brain? An imperceptible scar or fold in the physical brain? An added connection to the neuronal circuitry (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230301141432.htm)? A new recombination of existing neuronal paths (gestalt and Bergson's creative mind), does the number of available neurons at birth suggest a predictable limit for knowledge? Or does infinite potential existential experience in a finite temporo-spatial world always ensure that limits can be broken? What happens if you run out of memory or space to organize existing memories? Does your mind force a hard reset (e.g. ecstatic seizures) or an emergency arc to a new island of neuronally-grouped information to connect to? Or is it impossible to run out of memory due to forgetting? What about the role of dreams in reclustering / realgorithmizing our neuronal pathways? How do we make the phenomenal physical / chemical / electrical switchboard correspond to the noumenal mind? Should go into this in more detail...
[FB User: I think history has proven that when government takes over a program it becomes rationed with less coverage, exorbitant wait times, and waste. Everything to government touches turns to crap. Me: Yes because the government has a legal and constitutional commitment to treat all of their citizens equally. Privatized healthcare only "works better" because they only have to see the patients that they want to, i.e. those with money. So privatized for-profit healthcare, for example, only leads to a might makes right system like in the US. If you want a system that works better and more efficiently, you have to find better ways to cater to everyone equally, and that is extremely difficult in such an unequal society and an unequal world. Or did you not think this part through?]
Malagasy slaves abandoned for 15 years on a small 1 km2 island of essentially just sand. And yet they survived. Think of the hope, despair, creativity, and resilience required. Incredible. // Archaeologists that went back later were astounded at the level of development of this micro-society with so little materials: sand, mud, grasses, turtles, seabirds, fish, and everything they could salvage from the ship. They found copper utensils made from melting parts of the ship down. // The incredible ingenuity and resilience of slaves. Something great for Black History Month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRFyVqpNlgw
Other extreme: Bill Gates https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland
Samori Toure of Wassoulou Empire. Anti-colonialist kingdom-making. Grandfather of Sekou Toure.
Contingency, Solidarity, Irony, p. 33. (Freud and critiquing the relative self)
24-02-14
Objective truth as a goal is incompatible with the reality of subjective relations. Truth must be supported by a community before it is objectively accepted. Analogously, the point in life is not to be right all the time unless one wishes to forego entirely any commitment to one's peers.
The basis of an ahistorical mythology: what should I do in this one life? The basis of a historical mythology: what could humanity achieve during this one life?
“What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.” ― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
What comes first: mind that creates meaning or meaning that motivates mind?
Eventually, you must do before you understand.
24-02-15
Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things? Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue. -- Lao Tzu
"Four stages of life": Richard Lang. Anomie: Christ, Pan, Sisyphus, God; Space, Other, Self, Negation; https://www.headless.org/headless-blog/4-stages-of-life
We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph. -- Elie Wiesel
Neurodivergence: invention versus innovation, Globalization and Technocapitalism, The Birth of the Clinic, "Reality and its discontents".
"What could humanity be capable of when it's not just about survival and competition for power?"
Emotional reactions are not just instinct but also culturally learned. https://neurosciencenews.com/emotional-processing-language-culture-25617/
"What do I want to do?" versus "What do I want to learn?"
24-02-16
There is no deeper feeling of existential despair than what results from believing that you spent your life doing something that you felt humanity needed you to do, only to feel rejected by humanity at the end of it all. For then what is humanity? And what was life? And where can meaning come from?
"The Kantian categorical framework breaks down in psychosis, if only temporarily, and a regression to the pre-categorical mode of thinking is necessary to forge novel associations. Linking remote elements into new combinations is at the heart of the creative process (Mednick, 1962), with a “cognitive flux” as its essential precondition." From "Nietzsche: Bipolar disorder and creativity. Wow. Just. Wow. So "psychosis is the synthetic a priori" is not just my idea.
24-03-09
We are led to believe that humanity and the issues that it faces are so complex and multi-faceted. But in reality, can we not say that all of humanity only wants two things, namely their dignity and meaningful work?
24-03-14
No one wants to live in Cuba because the US blockaded it for 50+ plus so that it can say "communism is a bad system because you don't want to live in a blockaded country". Okay then.
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