We're currently in Boston for a conference. Being whatever it is that I am,
I've had 2 confrontations with (seemingly) native Bostonian men, both grokable
in terms of OCEAN (Openness to new experiences, Conscientiousness,
Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism).
The first confrontation was a vendor in the Expo Hall who decided *very*
quickly that either I had no latent structure *or* that whatever latent
structure I had was of no interest/use to him. He brushed me off quickly, which
is always reasonable. What I objected to was the rudeness with which he
effected the brush off. I chose tit-for-tat that time.
The second confrontation was at the dance party for the conference goers. Two bros unaffiliated with the
conference were there in the bar (with hundreds of dancing nurses and very loud DJ music) trying to
"watch the game". One nurse (who shall remain nameless 8^) was dancing in front of them and one of
the bros told the dancing nurse to "Fuck off!" For this one, I chose manipulative schoolmarm and
coerced them with something similar to NLP, to admit their rudeness; and they grudgingly admitted that it was
a stupid place to "just watch the game". I didn't get them to admit an ulterior motive for their
choice, though it was obviously there. A failure of my abilities to manipulate bros in bars.
Ultimately, I find the brash posture of Boston Bros a bit refreshing ... it's
more like Texas here and very unlike the OR and WA places I've lived. But it's
nice to know I still have strategies other than tit-for-tat, including those
that rely on teasing out some latent structure I can use to my benefit.
On 4/8/25 09:03, steve smith wrote:
Both Dave's and Steve's responses are useful. Thanks.
It hit me this morning reading the latest 404 media story:
https://www.404media.co/elon-musk-was-a-prolific-money-launderer-for-hackers-and-drug-traffickers-it-was-secretly-the-fbi/
Joseph has done a LOT of work. The text I read is just a lens onto that work.
The same is true of good writers. I think in both [non]fiction, but especially
fantasy. It's become (to me) fairly obvious when the author has built an entire
world and the story I'm reading is merely one of many lenses onto that world. I
never feel like the author has wasted my time if it's obvious they put a lot of
work into their story ... even if they're a terrible writer.
Thanks for the article link... i don't know the author, barely the 404media publisher but
I very much appreciate your references to "world building"... which leads us
to the point perhaps of the effect of LLMs (in particular) on this phenomena.
This is also true of science articles. I have several colleagues who seem to "phone
it in". I guess it's akin to Brandolini's Law. What the LLMs do in their chat mode
just feels like phoning it in, vapid gum flapping for no other sake.
To the extent that LLMs have no agency or volition I think this is accurate, on the other hand, I would say in
trying to find/follow a submanifold in the training set they can very effectively adopt or project or amplify the
"intentions" of one or (more to the point) many world-builders (e.g. Q-nuts, MAGA hats, maybe overly-woke
folke). Under the term of art "intersubjective reality", we have grown (at least as long as
civilizations?) a self-supporting set of stories with enough internal consistency to be self-supporting/bouyant a
bit likeFuller's Cloud9 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Nine_(sphere)> concept. A thin skin of
rhetoric managing to contain a large volume of concepts which are mutually self-supporting thermally to yield
enough bouyancy to keep the whole mass somewhat coherent and afloat in spite of whatever infiltration/exfiltration
the "skin" facilitates.
Kelley-Anne made "alternative facts" a household word and Nicolle Wallace
pegged it pretty well by appealing to the DC? Universe concept of Earth1 and Earth2.
I suspect that for myself and other's who keep LLMs as their "familiars" that I am at risk of
being scattered (even more) across too many submanifolds in the human experience, across too many Earth#s
in the Multiverse to the point of losing all coherence. A few years ago, I read PK Dick's posthumous
collection of journal entries "the Exegeses
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exegesis_of_Philip_K._Dick>" and found them wonderfully
disturbing for just this courting of the edge between coherence and chaos. I believe he was both drug
and psychosis addled much of is writing career, but it yielded some fascinating near-adjacent worlds
(e.g. the Adjustment Bureau).
It doesn't even rise to the functions gossip implements. Of course, some of us are
less like idle gossipers and more Machiavellian, planting seeds like your Allison
Hargreeves <https://umbrellaacademy.fandom.com/wiki/Rumor>. (Fun fact, we used
to live in walking distance from Dark Horse Comics.) When you prompt an LLM, you
*could* be like Allison or you could be like her victims.
Thanks for binding this properly for me.
I'd much rather play Allison's role than have the LLM play her role. When you
chat with actual humans (or dogs), you're both a little bit Allison.
Mary (even more than I) speaks to our dog Hank in exactly this mode... everything is a
world-building exercise to help him know it is time to play, eat, potty, settle, sleep. Like Gary
Larson's universe where all he hears is "blah blah blah blah HANK blah blah", he listens
to the emotional content and follows her lead very well. I do throw in my own encouraging phrase
now when her leading isn't enough. "Better go See!" is my most common one. But my best
experience with pets (and domesticates, and semi-domesticates like birds at the feeder) is to
watch/listen to their world, to imagine their umwelt, their apprehension of the physical world we
share and the intersubjective reality they build with one another (and I may or may not have a
glimpse into?)
You and I have spoken of NLP offline before I think... and I find Allison's "power" very
compelling, not because I want to manipulate others myself but because it is such a blatant thing
to watch when one or more folke get entrained in someone else's nonsense, including myself... maybe
most fascinating when *I* catch myself drooling and repeating after some "dear leader"
(if only in my mind). The WormTongue trope/figure?
I guess what I need to build are facile heuristics for world-building. That
feels, to me, a lot like detecting the presence of latent/occult structure ...
evidence for intentional balance between over- and under-sharing, and evidence
that the occult structure is stable and rich. Then pretty much anything that
person/machine generates may not be a waste of time.
I very much appreciate your reference here to "occult structure"... it is what I think I learned to
appreciate about science and engineering as I got exposed to it growing up... the math/formulae were like
spells and as I learned to chant (or write them) and fill in the variables and weave different ones together,
it was powerful stuff... even though I am now neo-luddite feeling like most if not all is actually dark-magic
(unintended consequences) or at least practiced as such (self-indulgent/gratifying greed-mongering). I'm
still fascinated by the myriad "hidden meanings" in the world-as-percieved as well as the
models-of-the-world-as-applied, just less excited about exploiting them with too much fervor. My main
interest in manipulating the world with these "spells" is now to validate them rather than to
obtain specific leverage from them...
Over/under-sharing is fascinating to me too, we know where I am biased on this. You
have acknowledged being a fan of Roger Zelazny's writing yourself... he used to hold free
half-day writing workshops in Taos and Los Alamos every year. I attended a few. His
best advice was "for every character, write a scene describing a pivotal
moment/scene in their life/formation which you will never publish". This style of
undersharing and occult-gesturing was very compelling. Once I internalized that I began
to see it in his characters, realizing there were things he (the author) knew about the
character that I could only guess at, and it enhanced the experience a great deal.
and if I'd had more time (discipline) I would have written a shorter response
here...
- Steve
PS.(responding to DaveWs assertion, "I write because it is a compulsive addiction
with reading having been the gateway")
On 4/7/25 07:57, Prof David West wrote:
I read because it is a compulsive addiction.
--
glen
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ...
--- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
