Tag: meaning
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All Communication is Manipulation
All communication is manipulation. Some manipulation is mutually advantageous. Alternatively phrased, the purpose of communication, broadly, is the alteration of others’ actions. Or, Communication is defined by its interest in altering the receiver’s actions. Actions, expressions, and speech that do not attempt to manipulate receivers’ behavior are not, properly considered, communication. It’s clear how this…
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Aesthetics vs. Microsociology
The problems of perception, assessment, category, association, prestige… What we are coming to call generalized reading.
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Notes on the Inexact Sciences
“Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness.”
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Barry Lyndon, Man of Games pt. 1
Our lives, being a kind of game—an attempt at optimization, within constraints and laws—are subject to four interwoven influences which determine the game’s outcome. Who we are, the choices we make, the abilities we carry, and the luck which accompanies them. In other words, our status, our selections, our skills, and our stars.
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A Possibility for Artistic “Meaning”
Interested in literary or artistic “meaning” as the sum of all infinite interrelationships between a work of art/literature and the equally infinite set of all data points which exist both inside the work and out in the world. These data points include, but are not limited to, the composition of society in its entirety, both…
Suspended Reason 