This is an entry in an ongoing series of posts, which will work through the ideas advocated by Eliezer Yudkowsky and other amateur philosophers from the LessWrong community, and attempt to understand the extent to which their ideas are novel as opposed to reinventions of the wheel. Link to introductory post for context and motivation.… Continue reading Sidebar: Mutual Hostilities
Meta-Sequences: Introduction & Criteria
I have offered bounties to anyone who can identify a precedent, in mainstream philosophy, for an idea advanced by Eliezer Yudkowsky as his own. These bounties are in the service of a larger accounting: Background & Motivation LessWrong rationalists and mainstream philosophers are two tribes made up of generally intelligent & knowledgeable people, focused on… Continue reading Meta-Sequences: Introduction & Criteria
Wait, what? Sense-breaking in contemporary art
x-post from Carcinisation In a recent paper, my collaborator Tom Rutten and I advanced a tentative theory of how contemporary visual artworks might interact with a predictive error minimization (or "predictive processing") system in human viewers. The predictive processing model of cognition is a relatively recent figuration of the age-old problem of inference (how humans… Continue reading Wait, what? Sense-breaking in contemporary art
Wasting Our Time
Karen Horney’s (pron. “Horn-eye”) Neurosis and Human Growth is an influential but heterodox work of psychoanalytic theory that argues on behalf of self-realization (her coinage). It’s a good book that would’ve been a great essay, so I want to compress its framework of ideas here and sort what felt resonant from what didn't. Here’s the… Continue reading Wasting Our Time
Superstates
I don't buy the intentionalist tone here, though I can imagine there being a natural attraction toward, and desire for, control emanating from the State which slowly leads us to the same place. Anyway, what I think's important about this passage is that it illuminates the way the local cultures of a relationship, of a… Continue reading Superstates
Otessa
A hot blonde with a trust fund self-medicates into blackouts with the hope of changing her life. What does disillusionment look like, to Moshfegh? The visual field is cinematic, detached, mediation creeping: “I did feel a peculiar sensation, like oceanic despair that — if I were in a movie — would be depicted superficially as… Continue reading Otessa
Lionhearted
I just read / Something John Perry Barlow / Wrote. He used to write lyrics / For the Grateful Dead. His work / With the Electronic Frontier / Foundation and former career / As a cattle rancher make him into / An intriguing kind of statesman.What I read was a eulogy for the womanHe loved… Continue reading Lionhearted
Divided Minds
Sea Scroll 4Q248, previously entitled "Pseudo History" We can't go on together / with divided minds.—Pseudo Elvis Last time on @4Q248, i.e. PA.blogspot.com: We're not saying life makes people schizo, we're talking excessive frustration left unprocessed, or regular baseline frustration amplified by unstable parents [and] chaotic environments, charges vectors in the direction of schizo process.… Continue reading Divided Minds
Valerie, No
i. dry 35° / lavender / wet west gust Before anything else, Oval (Elvia Wilk, 2019) is an idea novel. Anecdotes, ruminations, political monologues, thought experiments pushing the usual simulations of scifi into something almost philosophy. Its subjects are ecology, government systems, and that ambiguous word neoliberalism (here meant in the sense of blurring private sector and state,… Continue reading Valerie, No
Junkspace
OtherInter.net, a small consulting group co-run by my friend Toby Shorin, has started up a series of workshops with folks from the community. Drew Austin of Kneeling Bus is teaching a course called the Digital Transformation of Physical Space, which I'll be enrolled in over the the next four weeks. I'll be keeping track of… Continue reading Junkspace
