what does it mean for a dyad (Joyce and Hubby) to exchange tokens with
the distinct (but recursive) goals of minimizing surprisal (Friston-esque)?
/"I did what you think I think I did"/
They might not be converging on *truth* (Hubby and Joyce both want to
suppress the fact of him having just left the motel with a cinnamon
candle and a hooker, for different reasons) so they co-conjure a story
about cinnamon sprinkles on a cupcake to resolve the (potential)
discordant alignment between marriage and cinnamon-candle facilitated
(in)fidelity@motel6? And the yokel in Iceland telling a story about a
guy, a hooker, a candle and a wife is swirling the bottom of the same
attractor?
On 2/5/26 6:48 am, glen wrote:
Most definitions I've run across talk about some kind of logical
abstraction layer, a decoupling of some full state from some
sign/symbol sub-state or encoding. Then communication is the assertion
that the sub-state can stand in for the full state.
We can do this where we can get a perfect match between one scale and
another (physics/math) or between one machine's full state an
another's (e.g. Steve's serialization+semaphor), at least until the
machines degrade.
But *that* use of the token "communication" is pure jargon, hijacked
from the laity. When Joyce uses it at the pub to lament how she and
her husband don't communicate very well, that's not at all what she
means. What she means is closer to a leap of faith that she and her
husband can somehow *think* the same things when triggered with the
same token. (Or worse, that when some stranger in Iceland says the
same token on the TV, all 3 of them, the Icelander, her, and her
husband all resonate.)
This is pure fantasy. The hairball of feedback(s) between Joyce and
her husband might allow that resonance to be somewhat actual when they
see each other every day, garden together, whatever. But as soon as
they part, Joyce goes to the pub to lament and her husband goes to the
Motel 6 to fornicate, "communication" becomes more
fantastical/hallucinatory.
The deserialized state triggered by the cinnamon sprinkles on Joyce's
latte is VERY different from the state of her husband triggered by the
cinnamon candle the hooker lit in the hotel room. Any pretense
otherwise is not even wrong.
Meaning comes from the hairball of feedback(s). Degrade the feedback
and you degrade the meaning ... as witnessed by this very conversation
... so many words ... so many useless words.
On 2/4/26 7:50 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
I guess I need to know what "cause" means to you. To me it means
that ceteris paribus, if you havent flapped your lips in that manner
I would not have passed you the salt.
On 2/4/26 4:14 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
When I first fiddled with distributed computing with early RPC
technology... synced models with serialization of internal state
transmitted, recieved and semaphored I came to appreciate obliquely
just how "fragile" this idealized conception of "communication" was.
That gave me sympathy with *one* conception of why you might say
"communication doesn't exist" but continuing the spirit of paradox
and oxymoron, here I am trying to "communicate" such to you and the
rest of the group.
Can you offer a better suite of terminology, a better framing for
just what the *experience* I impute on group behaviours of
impedance-coupled "agents", resonating (and dissonating?) amongst
ourselves with linguistic signifiers (or signs) being the
"intermediate vectors"? "coupled phonemics"?
Just what is it we might be doing when we think we are
commune(icate)ing?
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