Dude. OK. The Angels becoming Demons isn't a duality, at least in my
intent raising it, here.
Not clear which of the myriad usages of /dual/ you are saying it is not.
But I will try to defer to your declaration that such doesn't map onto
your intentions in invoking them. Most oft/recently here I think
"duality" gets invoked in the sense of mind-body and that definitely
doesn't map. It is precisely a /dual/ in the metaphysical sense? My
intention however, was a little more structural, vaguely Cat Theoretic
(any attempt on my part to explicate that probably would be
significantly bullshit)... The tangent I was on had to do with the
interplay between good intentions and bad and the transition between
them, how one can maybe drive the other and vice-versa? Symbiotic
Mutualism?
Our want to, desire for, *fascination* is both good and bad and good
and bad aren't duals.
complements then, perhaps?
Regarless, even if you want them to be duals, that's fine. The point
I'm making is that this trait of ours, the desire to be
fascinated/ecstatic is hallmark/canonical.
Thus my reference to annealing schedules? Is this not how CAS and life
in general and human innovation itself explores the
possibility/probability space? It drives us beyond a "reasonable"
excursion from the existing problem/solution regime we are "naturally" in?
Only those of us hopped up on mediTation or drugs that blunt emotions
exhibit a reduced desire for things like profundity, awe, ecstasy, etc.
I'm feeling this in the inverse of what I experience? Maybe my
experience with such things is enhanced sensitization rather than
suppressed.
It reminds me of the book "To Engineer is Human" ... but I'd
generalize and say that it's fundamental to biology for organisms to
seek ecstatic states ... the oneness of the universe, the dissolution
of the self, etc.
yes and amen...
But this desire for beauty, to escape our selves, IS the problem as
much as it is the solution. That's what I mean by Angels and Demons.
I think it reflects the tension between individuation and synthesis that
comes with (not sure of a better word) levels of
organization/aggregation? Atoms/molecules on the edge between
individuation and collection are where chemistry happens? Teens
preparing to leave home into the "big world", same/same? I think it
transcends multiple "levels" of organization (being a good true-to-self
ego/id human vs a good spouse/partner/parent vs a good
neighbor/employee/citizen vs a good participant in an
ecosystem/biosphere) and this is where the "roil" happens, a dynamic
rather than a static balance?
Also "bullshit" is fairly well defined. It's an artificial/false
construct constructed without regard to the Truth (where "Truth" might
mean any number of shared values, accuracy, usefulness, etc.). This
means that bullshit can accidentally be true, but never True.
I like this concise/specific definition, it rings True for the most
part. My own experience of (others') bullshit is that it is ambiguous
to me as to the full spectrum of intention. Sometimes it is exquisitely
the case that the BS is pure gaslighting, defined not only to be
not-true but to avoid True. Other times it seems to be sheer laziness,
a total disregard for truthiness which is maybe the BS you are referring
to? Or maybe you are invoking the sort of deliberate injection of noise
that sort of prevents coherent truthiness?
I don't know how much time y'all spend talking to, say, QAnon
believers ... or back in the day those who yapped about Bilderberg,
the Illuminati, speaking in tongues, or whatever.
Not much at all yet too much somehow.
But, for me, the enthusiasm and ecstasy they exuded was infectious.
I know the feeling of acute jealousy of their ability to give over so
thoroughly. I get that among fundamentalist Xtians and Newagers
(rhymes with sewa..) as well. I get that here when the (other)
technophiles get really high on their own supply of some tech-thingy...
(we all know who we are?).
Even as several of my homunculi knew it was bullshit-begetting, it was
downright fun; not so harmless as the mob behavior of a rave, but
still fun. I sought (still do to some extent) it relentlessly.
I grant everyone their own morbid fascinations, mine are legion.
It's a miracle of happenstance (or genetics?) I was never engulfed by it.
I like the idea that "our allergies are also our addictions", I've known
people who really thrive on dancing the edges of dysfunction and that it
is easier/safer for them to do so by proxy. I have my own element of
that, but I respect/acknowledge those yet more drawn to it.
I still do, at least when it's not merely lazy. In order for me to
feel it, there has to be some *deep* bullshit ... you have to be able
to get lost in the bullshit. If you hit clay or sand in the first hour
or so, then it's just not that beautiful ... It has to be like String
Theory deep. Now that's far out, man.
I like this stylization/ideation/characterization of "deep bullshit",
like the kind you can only find when you switch your vision from raw to
telescope to Hubble to Webb.
While I am fascinated by GPTs bullshit generation (maybe where this
discussion started?) but very disappointed by it's "dynamic range"... I
hit it first with DALL-E's image generation where it's "hallucinatory"
visual imagery offered up in response to a BS session I'd had with GPT.
Pretty quickly it "blew my mind" with some imagery but then I found that
if i settled in and tried to fully inhabit/absorb/commune-with the
imagery it got old and rite really quickly... Perhaps that is the
Achille's heel of these transformers is that they manage to settle in on
something which has the statistical profile of profundity without
actually being profound? The more "interesting" superficially the text
or image generated, the more "hollow" it is? A good load of properly
"deep bullshit" is not hollow?
Did I just talk myself around to the point you have been making all along?
- Steve
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