undershirt

Finally found my notes on it, and threw this quick page on it since the original website doesn’t seem to work:

https://observablehq.com/@shaunlebron/meaningful-color-names

I had not heard of Werner’s, but I like the idea of colors based on animal, floral, and mineral, thanks for the reference!

I can’t find the source now, but does anyone remember the collection of color names based on real things? It felt meaningful to remember the spectrum of colors that way (instead of arbitrary qualifiers), but now I can’t find it.

I thought for most my life that the domain of the objective and the domain of the real were equivalent. But I missed the subtle gradation toward uncertainty, maybe seen as concentric concepts starting from center: commonality of perception (objective) -> body’s reaction to reality (subjective) -> reality itself (unknowable totality).

The God Helmet is an objective thing you wear (with magnetic property on/off), with a linguistic component (the story of what it will do), and a subjective component (the unique experiences the person brings to it and from it). If the resulting experience has no measurable/repeatable effects across all people, then it is by definition not admissible as an objective phenomenon (i.e. it does not fit the lowest common denominator of experience).

From what I’m able to summarize:

The reporter was invited to do a piece on them, and while visiting had trouble reconciling their secrecy with their ethos of openness. She was not allowed to interact with the actual researchers where they were doing their work, and her lunch was pushed out of the building so she couldn’t overhear their all-hands meeting. (My take is that their openness extended to the curated fruits of research, but their process itself was guarded from any communication channel they couldn't control i.e. the reporter).

This seems related to the second part, where they discuss the pressures toward profit, from strings attached to corporate investments, which they suggest would be different under traditional long-term gov investments. And they talked about the paradox of adding a for-profit branch to a non-profit org, without resolution.

I’m a bit unsettled recently when listening to podcasts and stories like this that seem to end on a note of “shrug, capitalism, isn’t this an interesting problem?”. I’d be more encouraged to see folks talking about post–game-theoretic social structures that can categorically solve for these issues, that can allow us to transition out of capitalistic dynamics rather than trying to fight them in order to get work done. This seems to be the rallying call of the nebulous ideas behind “game~b”. Wondering if anyone here has been seeing that yet.

> Technological proliferation is not a list of principles. It is a deep, multivalent historical process with many radically different stakeholders over many different time-scales. People who invent technology never get to set the rules for what is done with it

Well said. Pessimism is a reasonable reaction to this sweeping line, but I offer a quick summary of what I hope is non-naive optimism:

1) Problem: When we think technology is neutral, we miss how it creates niches outside our intended design and social/political constraints, since the environment of economics thwarts all. We have agency as individuals, yes, but the environment rewards and select for any uses of the technology which yield advantage. “If you incentivize something, it will happen.”

2) Solution?: Nobody fucking knows. But “Game ~B” is what people are calling a nascent research effort to identify what attributes a more cohesive civilization must have to allow better collective “sense-making” and “choice-making” so we may become capable of directing technology instead of leaving it to the emergent dynamics of hapless competition. What's also interesting are the considerations for employing antifragile, transitionary social structures that can thrive in our current entrenched “Game A” dynamics to plant said attributes. Gotta change the underlying rules instead of designing atop those which are broken.

3) Future Ethics: I've also seen some excitement about a so-called non-relativistic ethical framework within Game~B, called The Immanent Metaphysics. It claims to be commensurable with — but not derivable from — science, rigorously formalizing intuitive ethical principles, to at least create a consistent grounding for making effective ethical choices.[1] The hope is to better inform (but not determine) our use of technology after we step into a more coherent phase of civilization. Tech can NOT be put back in the bag, so we must develop our wisdom to carefully wield the godlike powers they give, which we are currently making a mess of.

[1] only a few people currently understand the dense framework, but I'm currently working through it and may be able to offer a summary of what I know so far here. neat stuff

Try using Wikipedia through Mac's Dictionary app. I never touch my browser for that anymore.

A girl i always chatted with at chipotle finally sat down with me the other day during her break. I told her I was a writer, and was elated when she handed me her phone to let me read a dark poem she had written. I asked if I could read it back to her out loud and she let me. It was nice.

I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been reading to myself out loud recently, and also at workshops where we have the opportunity to recite after doing writing prompts. I always like hearing people nervously sharing meaningful experiences.

In Houston we have something called Gentle Hour, where people gather in a rather cozy circle, taking turns to read something they wrote. Storytime is alive and well, and not just the “Grown-up Storytime” you find at open-mic bars!

I think I remember hearing that companies stay elusive about the concrete parts of their business because a simplified description may be easily dismissed too soon.

The full context may be hard to explain on paper in our climate of impatience. So necessitating a higher bandwidth conversation to learn about the business allows them to free you from your own prejudices with a realtime description catered to your needs.

Infuriating and interesting.

thank you for that. reminds me of the end of The Wrestler (2008): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Yn2xOGNhI

The first one looks like pictures of my eye taken after my doctor scans it with a light (I suppose that's just an angiogram you mentioned later). Those rasters were my favorite, and I love the artful clarity of complexity you achieved. I came away appreciating emergence a bit more. Interesting how the complexity resisted the contrivance during attempts to press it into shapes! (subscribed to your newsletter)

Thanks! An NSA project, named after Godzilla’s archenemy. Also:

> Ghidra's existence was originally revealed to the public via WikiLeaks in March 2017

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghidra

I used to dabble in Cheat Engine, Tsearch, and IDA Pro, for reversing games. Recently, a nice guy randomly showed me a demo of a modern tool called radare[1]. I was floored by the IDA-like flow-diagrams that it spit out in the terminal[2], and the short commands for navigating/bookmarking/documenting. Nice to see hobbyists don't need to buy IDA anymore!

[1]:https://www.radare.org/r/

[2]:https://www.radare.org/r/img/r2cg.png

A weird hypothesis is that a dream might not even be a story until you wake up—like a wave function collapse[1] of abstract brain activity. Freud wrote about a man being jolted awake by his headboard falling on his neck the very moment he had been guillotined in a dream, and I think most of us have examples.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function_collapse

Google Fi lets me text and call people from my computer if i lose my phone (through Hangouts). Not sure there's a replacement for that.

somewhat buried in the helpfile is context (pasted below). Seems to be based on Tim Sweeney’s first attempt at gamedev, a text editor in Pascal that he turned into a game called ZZT[1]. Users could create their own games with the scripting language. MegaZeux is an offshoot.

    Overview of MegaZeux

    ...

    As you may already know, MegaZeux is a game system which
    allows you to play almost limitless worlds with
    dated-yet-charming graphics and with excellent digitized music
    and sound. Not only are there several MZX worlds out there
    already, but new worlds are being uploaded to large websites
    like DigitalMZX. However, the best feature of MegaZeux is the
    World Editor.
    
    Using the World Editor, ANYONE can create the world of their
    dreams. Make it as simple or complex (well, almost), as easy
    or difficult, as long or short as you please. We aren't just
    talking about worlds made up of petty, pre-programmed enemies
    and objects; MegaZeux has its own, easy-to-use PROGRAMMING
    LANGUAGE called Robotic that allows you to create objects,
    engines and worlds that do almost anything you desire. Not only
    can you make your own game with the editor, but every world
    MegaZeux can play can be opened in the editor. Take a look at
    how other games tick!
    
    For the newest user, it's recommended that you play Caverns,
    the first ever MegaZeux game, to get the feel of simple yet
    well-designed games in MegaZeux. You may wish to read the help
    section entitled "Controls" to learn how to play MegaZeux.
    
    If you're more adventurous, start with a more complex game like
    Demon Earth or Bernard the Bard, or a prettier game like & or
    Fritz Blitz to see what kind of graphics functions, bells and
    whistles MZX can offer.
    
    Once you have the feel for the game, feel free to dive into the
    World Editor and get messy! You should probably read the help
    section entitled "The World Editor" first.
    
    To go to one of these sections now, hit Enter after aligning
    the arrows with one of these choices. Press ESC now to exit to
    the game.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZZT

i wandered into a talk at MAA ~2006, where an old professor spoke deadpan on how he “wasted his life” on this problem. it was a poignant comedy, and he delivered it well. dont fuck with this problem.

My favorite living tech critic has a newsletter, The Convivial Society[1], based on the title of this book and Ellul’s The Technological Society. Highly recommend it for people who want serious philosophical context to current events.

[1]:https://tinyletter.com/lmsacasas/archive

“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.”

—Oppenheimer

Yeah, I would discern personal bias from institutional distortion.

I can deal with biases because like you said I can sense truthfulness (good faith), and triangulate multiple sources to form an image by trusting my own bias. Bias and different perspectives are everywhere and carry valuable signals.

What I can’t sense is that I can check all sources to find what is actually true. His solution is to proxy our sense-making to some collective intelligence (community) grown in a positive-sum game. But our current game is zero-sum, and information becomes competitive rather than collaborative, which incents (guarantees) institutional distortion (e.g. obscuring, disinforming, context-shrinking).

Aside for describing the problem, I think he covers some practical ways to make sense of things in the broken information ecology, but I haven’t gone over that part in any detail yet.

It’s mentioned in the first minute of Schmachtenberger interview linked in the first footnote above (now corrected!). Rebel Wisdom might be the forum/community you’re looking for. Also, I do like Chomsky’s notion that manufactured consent is not a concerted conspiracy, but a collective disposition unconsciously enacted. I find it compatible with these other concepts.

> “Courage is the solution to despair. Reason can provide no answers.” –Ernst Toller (First Reformed, 2017)

I’ve felt the despair of this article for a time (and the quote above gave me some peace), but some recent hope came from Daniel Schmachtenberger[1]. He postulates that our conception of debate in our current information ecology selects and optimizes for bias. He refers to the Hegelian dialectic as an alternative to debate—of an earnest synthesis from understanding both a thesis and its antithesis, resolving paradox with a higher order model. I’ve heard this described as steel-manning[1] another’s argument to find its signal (as opposed to straw-manning the noise).

But Schmachtenberger, as well as Bret Weinstein I believe, proposes that the game-theoretic win/lose dynamic of our current system is so entrenched that it really selects for this type of narrative warfare which doesn’t promote this type of open and honest information ecology for this to really work yet. So there’s something to their post-game-theoretic frameworks (Bret’s “Game B”) that make me a lot less fatalistic and anarchist about the whole complexity game.

[1] The War on Sensemaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqaotiGWjQ

[2] a.k.a purva paksha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purva_paksha

I first read about the Epic of Gilgamesh at the start of a history textbook, where it was told as the ultimate origin myth of our civilization, raging against the beast of nature itself to conquer it. Though, that seems less accurate from reading this account and the one on wikipedia.

But, Daniel Quinn’s reading of the Fall of Man in Genesis[1] is an antithetical account of the same story. Man did not seek to overcome nature, rather Man was banished from the garden (nature) by his own temptation to seek the knowledge to take care of himself—thus becoming captured and tortured by this original sin, accumulating into agrarian-fueled violence and expansion. All now rationalized[2] by our proclaimed knowledge of Good and Evil.

My favorite part of this interpretation is that this story was not told by our ancestors, because if it was, they would’ve sanctified this knowledge-seeking as the Ascent of Man, not the Fall. So it’s hypothesized that the story was told by the herders and hunter-gatherers trying to formulate a story to explain the violent and toilsome lifestyle of the agrarians.

Neat that there is also a mythic tree that Gilgamesh finds in the cave after hours of darkness. That he had returned to the garden somehow, and that he either wanted nothing to do with it or could find no answers there for him anymore.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel)#Reinterpretati...

[2] “The Creator? My mines run dry, my city withers, it must be fed. And what has he done? He cursed us to struggle by the sweat of our brow to survive. Damned if I don’t do everything it takes to do just that. Damned if I don’t take what I want.” —Tubal-Cain in Aronofsky’s Noah (2014)

From: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479

> Compiler writers let C programmers pretend that they are writing code that is “close to the metal” but must then generate machine code that has very different behavior if they want C programmers to keep believing that they are using a fast language

A cloud of malaise in the miasma sky—suffused by Kelly’s technium, by Mumford’s megamachine, et al.

SETI pointed at the sky, with intelligent species abound at home.

Wasn’t Ad Astra the antithesis of Interstellar though? Ad Astra seemed to argue against horrors committed for the sake of achieving greatness, eventually destroying us when we lose sight for what it is all for—people. Interstellar seemed to argue for the necessity of losing this humanity on the chance that it will work out anyway (an optimistic take on Murphy’s Law)—Cooper abandoning his daughter; Brand pushing the artifice of Plan A; Mann sanctifying his survival instinct; all to “rage against the dying of the light”.

For example, look at Clifford McBride of Ad Astra. He’s the “best of us” succumbing to the same tests of character as Dr. Mann of Interstellar—even repeating his same poignant line “yes…yes…yes” to affirm absolute commitment to the mission: the fall of the brightest angels to evil committed for an ostensible good. The difference of messaging is in the outcome of their missions: the failure in Ad Astra to find intelligent life, versus the success in Interstellar to save the species.

Also fun mentioning that Ad Astra ends like Blade Runner 2049, where the cold protagonist, employed as the system’s greatest weapon, regains a sense of humanity after subverting the system’s mission. Though Roy actually completes it for them, still pedaling the propaganda that you should ultimately still serve the oppressive system.

“It” being what I understand about your philosophy of truth and what you mean by “accurate”. It’s hard to describe directly, since I’ve thought about this from a bunch of different sources that I struggle to synthesize, but I recommend this short story by Ted Chiang, The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling[1], which I think does a great job of capturing that ineffable, paradoxical nature of truth.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterrane...

Not sure if you got it, but it’s myths all the way down. It’s only by the values of one myth that another should be “stamped out.”

The book Sapiens covers this well, that you cannot escape the prison of a myth without being contained by one larger.

I wonder if you might try the subtler word myths instead of lies.

Reality is formless, and we reason about it through what Foucault called grids I think, where every structure that we impose on it to bring something new into view necessarily obscures something else.

This is a bit like what Alan Watts talks about when saying that stories are like music, in which it wouldn’t have any form unless there were notes left out.

I think of a fact as a compressed statement of experience in service to some story. This is like the surprising observation that bits of information seem to always have some color that cannot be captured[1].

And there is the type of myth I like to call Fruith, as opposed to Truth. Most myths comprising culture might be these—in that we pretend things are true in the belief that it brings something more important to fruition, and that is the truth which overrides the seminal “lie”.

I see your despair, but I think it’s bigger than what you may be suggesting.

[1] https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

More energy is required to create or obtain higher quality content. Some call this the “energy primacy” of the economy that is often not accounted for when talking about GDP growth—which I suspect is one of the reasons economics has been termed “the dismal science.”