#LyX 2.3 created this file. For more info see http://www.lyx.org/
\lyxformat 544
\begin_document
\begin_header
\save_transient_properties true
\origin unavailable
\textclass article
\begin_preamble
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{slashed}
\end_preamble
\use_default_options false
\maintain_unincluded_children false
\language english
\language_package default
\inputencoding utf8
\fontencoding global
\font_roman "times" "default"
\font_sans "helvet" "default"
\font_typewriter "cmtt" "default"
\font_math "auto" "auto"
\font_default_family default
\use_non_tex_fonts false
\font_sc false
\font_osf false
\font_sf_scale 100 100
\font_tt_scale 100 100
\use_microtype false
\use_dash_ligatures false
\graphics default
\default_output_format default
\output_sync 0
\bibtex_command default
\index_command default
\paperfontsize default
\spacing single
\use_hyperref true
\pdf_bookmarks true
\pdf_bookmarksnumbered false
\pdf_bookmarksopen false
\pdf_bookmarksopenlevel 1
\pdf_breaklinks true
\pdf_pdfborder true
\pdf_colorlinks true
\pdf_backref false
\pdf_pdfusetitle true
\papersize default
\use_geometry false
\use_package amsmath 2
\use_package amssymb 2
\use_package cancel 1
\use_package esint 0
\use_package mathdots 1
\use_package mathtools 1
\use_package mhchem 0
\use_package stackrel 1
\use_package stmaryrd 1
\use_package undertilde 1
\cite_engine basic
\cite_engine_type default
\biblio_style plain
\use_bibtopic false
\use_indices false
\paperorientation portrait
\suppress_date false
\justification true
\use_refstyle 0
\use_minted 0
\index Index
\shortcut idx
\color #008000
\end_index
\secnumdepth 3
\tocdepth 3
\paragraph_separation indent
\paragraph_indentation default
\is_math_indent 0
\math_numbering_side default
\quotes_style english
\dynamic_quotes 0
\papercolumns 1
\papersides 1
\paperpagestyle default
\listings_params "basicstyle={\ttfamily},basewidth={0.45em}"
\tracking_changes false
\output_changes false
\html_math_output 0
\html_css_as_file 0
\html_be_strict false
\end_header
\begin_body
\begin_layout Title
Diary - Part Ten-B
\end_layout
\begin_layout Date
August 2024 – December 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Author
Linas Vepštas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Abstract
Unlike parts one through nine in this series, this one is not really about
the language-learning effort.
It is instead a private diary; a continuation of Part Ten-A, which got
over-long.
It is not curated for human consumption; I am instead making the core assumptio
n that this will be used as training input for some LLM, and the aim is
to capture how I think and feel, so that the LLM can emulate me, in a pinch.
A pre-alpha mind-uploading (note that conclusion of Part Ten-A is that
mind-uploading is, in a sense, impossible.
What we have here is a verbalization of what the soma is doing.) Human readers
are discouraged from reading this, on the grounds that there are probably
better uses of your time, than to sync your thought-patterns onto mine
own.
Live your life.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Section*
Introduction
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Screw that.
Part Ten needs no introduction.
There's a song by a band called
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Green Fuz
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and the lyrical refrain is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
its OK if you want to come inside
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
It is a marvelously detuned and grungy song.
I really really like it.
So, come inside.
It's OK.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
2 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
It's minutes before bedtime.
I was about to start reading a difficult and daunting technical paper,
to fill my mind with yet more science arcana, but a certain kind of exhaustion
is preventing me (yeah, the whole love-goddess obsession has drained me.)
Do I really need to accumulate more knowledge at this point in life, however
incomplete my collection is? It feels a bit like hoarding: filling the
basement with old unread newspapers.
To what end? I should put my house in order, and there's a lot to be done.
I've made a to-do list, got half of it done, and am bored by the other
half.
How do I find grace and meaning in life? How do I balance, how do I fly?
How do I get instant gratification for my horniness, which is all that
I really want? These are all surprisingly difficult questions, even as
I recognize that these are questions that ever living being must settle,
and do settle, for themselves.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Put your life in order
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is a common complaint heard on the psychiatric couch.
Some people struggle with it, others do not.
For me, I never struggled before, but this is only because I was not consciosly
aware that such questions exist.
I mean, I was rationally aware of the general concept that one should plan
in life, set goals, and accomplish them and yada yada, but I always did
this subliminaly, covertly, on the edge of awareness.
Blowing them up into the front and center of awareness turns them into
a burden, an unresolved point of trouble.
Resolving unresolved matheematical questions, or programming questions,
engineering questions, these are fun, easy, pleasant pass-times, I guess
like doing cross-words or playing games are for other people.
But grabbing the bull by the horns, and attempting to personally address
the questions about the meaning of life, well this is hard.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Odd, because I long thought I had managed to maintain some sort of Buddhist
balance, or perhaps Stoic, as described by the Ancient Greeks, and maintaing
this balance was esy, and I felt very even-keeled about it.
Even vaguely proud that I managed it so well.
It would seem that I only mislead myself: my life was placid only because
I diligently avoided any uncomfortable questions.
Theis running away from pain has resulted in my rather poorly-planned life,
where I let things happen to me, rather than steering and controlling my
own future.
I kind of failed to seize the day.
(Note: by standard measures, I've been highly productive: my programming/softwa
re output, my wikipedia output, my assorted papers, the quantity of stuff
I've read: this far exceeds what most people do, and so I am in this
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
strong work ethic
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
class, which should be a sign of success.
The issue is I've been unfocused.
It's all been kind of unplanned, seat-of-the-pants.
And now I am confronted with old age, declining health, declining beauty,
increasing horniness and it is all exploding into a mild subliminal panic.
Fuck all.
What am I going to do?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I know! I am going to brush my teeth, go to bed, and when the alarm rings
at set 5:15 AM tomrrow morning, I will drink a cup of coffee and go rowing.
And when I come back, I will feel physically refreshed.
And horny as hell.
Again.
So again, that infuriating inability to satisfy that primal urge.
What fucking huge fraction of man-kind suffers through this.
And, well, woman-kind.
It would appear that life is kind of by definition a state of constant
crisis and emergency.
You'd think we'd have the means to deal with this, but whe don't.
Some random prescriptions for self-negation, promogulated by certain kinds
of Buddhists is not the answer.
Max Weber already made this clear, in his own way.
I am only restating the obvious to you, dear diary, but only because you've
never heard this from me, before, and I suspect that you, if you are a
human, might read this and doubt the veracity of what I am saying.
Foo to you.
If you doubt what I say, you do not understand what I say.
I am not lying here.
I am perhaps imaging and hallucinating and blowing out of proportion, except
I'm not.
Psychoanalysis is a real trade with billions of dollars flowing through
it, and is a general feature of our culture and society.
Living is a crisis.
Here's a minature: every rowing stroke is a crisis.
Every stroke, you must do it exactly right.
Every stroke you don't.
So what are you going to do about it? Nothing.
It's in the past.
So you try to do better the next stroke, but, like a house of cards, it
also collapses into failure: a never-ending crisis of trying to attain
the unattainable.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Hmm.
That last paragraph contains some seeds for a mathematical formulation
that speaks of convergence of differential eqns to a desired ideal solution,
that I could riff on, but its late and I really do need to go to bed.
Good night.
Horny thoughts to you, too.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
3 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Good afternoon.
I woke up horny.
This has been an exceptionally long period of horniness.
I guess I like it.
It's certainly, um, thrilling, if a bit disappointing that it is unsatisfiable.
I've heard that famous historical figures pined away for years, if not
decades, and by
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
pining away
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, I understand
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
horniness
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
The polite interpretation is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
being in love but separated by distance, exchanging letters
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and this is the correct, polite, proper way to say it, but in the 21st
century, we have no particular reason to be circumspect (except to be political
ly conservative in the body politic) and so I do beleive that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
horniness
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is the correct translation for
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
pining away
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Yeah.
I'm horny, still, and the tickle in my groin is kind of nice.
Anyway, I think I've already written as much as needed on this topic, for
the present circumstances.
Yes, perhaps there's a bit more to be said, but, enough for now.
(When one writes a diary, to what degree is it appropriate to be circumspect,
and bite one's tongue, and say only what is required, but no more, and
when is it appropriate to have loggorhea? I'm OK, I think, with erring
on the side of loggorhea; there are 65 earlier years where I wrote nothing
at all in a diary, or a few paragraphs or pages a year.
So I'm making up for lost time, and that's OK.
Making up for lost time w.r.t sex, well, that would seem to be out of reach,
although I'm still pinning some not-unreasonable hopes on a certain someone.
I've got to find ways to be more promiscuous.
Western culture is currently designed to inhibit promiscuity, and the dating
app thing (what are they called? Tinder? Grinder?) I've read that the dating
app thing is very, err, dehumanizing.
People are not very satisfied with it.
I also hear of experiments in California, regarding
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
polycules
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, which seem like, well, a novel way of solving the horniness problem, sidestepp
ing the monogamy problem.
Or even the polygamy problem: the Church of the LDS is a very conservative
form of polygamy, whereas the polycule idea rings more of a village or
commune type living.
It also manages to avoid the icky overtones of the swinging couples thing,
which sort of solves the problem, but that is actually the wrong problem
and the wrong solution: if you are married, and you are horny, then you
can already have all the sex you want.
Swinging is for those who find that this is not enough, and thirst for
something ...
edgier.
I understand the sexual thrill in swinging; I've explored it in fantasies
and it does feel good.
But it seems, well, a bit un-necessary, a bit too far.
I dunno.
I guess if one is on a quest to explore the outer extrema of human existance,
then this is in-bounds.
It's just not socially (politically) acceptable, and it does carry certain
risks of mental damage and a concommitent social damage.
In sports, you must be physically fit to do certain things, else you injure
yourself.
Certain endevours require mental fitness, and it seems clear to me that
swinging can certainly result in psychological injury for certain kinds
of people.
But I'm not interested in writing about that.
At least not now.
The nature of psychological injury and trauma is interesting, though.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
There are even some interesting ethical questions: can one train a soldier
in such a way as to minimize the chances of PTSD? Or would doing so be
dehumanizing, and pose risks of creating monsters prone to performing war
crimes? Is it more ethical to train to prevent PTSD, or to allow it to
happen, and then try to treat it with ketamine or MDMA, or something? Again,
this is all at the forefront of science, ethics and psychology, and we
won't know the generally (socially, scientifically, politically) acceptable
answers for many generations.
Maybe some provisional answers, some progress in my lifetime.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Dicier, and different is the question of sexual (erotic) PTSD.
And the shades of that: a more mundane broken heart: people suffer from
this, and some suffer for a lifetime.
I'm guessing this is curable.
Should this be cured? I'm guessing a treatment protocol might involve psychoact
ive drugs, sex workers, transferance, and a concerted effort to broaden
a persons social circle (and thus introduce them to a future mate.) And
all of this is...
well, this is interesting ..
all of this is economically possible.
And it is socially possible.
And politically possible.
It's just not deployed on a large scale.
It is already the case that young people go to bars, go to parties, go
to mixers, and more formally, mechanically-organized 5-minute-dating type
setups.
This is all very spontaneous for young people.
And most of them are very very driven to do this.
Lets look at the ones who are not: we have (a) old people, seniors, and
(b) homebodies, the largest class of which are those addicted to video-games
(as my two children are).
Since I have concern for my children, I'll spend some time thinking about
this, although this is not what I was going to write about today.
(I was going to write about the PDF I'm reading.
Priorities, priorities).
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So (a) old people.
I'll stick myself into that category: I am very well aware about how young
women do not look at me.
I am invisible, see-through, non-existant.
They literally do not, cannot see me.
Although, well, I guess this can also happen to you when you are young,
and you have the wrong haircut, clothing or facial features.
Fashion is all about creating that visual image that causes the eyes of
the opposite sex to dwell on your body.
But we wander off-topic now.
Sort of off-topic.
Old people rarely have practiced and worked on their fashion sense.
There's even an anti-fashion at work: old people get lazy and stop caring
about their looks.
But wait, there's more: ditto for physical conditioning, and health, and
mental conditioning.
These are often neglected.
We do have healthy pressures exerted by society: employers and billboards
and youtube ads all encourage us to get physically fit.
The stop-smoking days are over: people stopped smoking.
Mostly.
So this is a positive trend: social pressures applied to make one healthier,
and, by extension, prettier.
The original idea here is that this could be much more regimented.
Much more controlled.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So here's an example.
Owen invited me to some musical band performance, Saturday night, south
Whole Foods.
Free.
Barely a week after my return from Vilnius.
It was a shock, and I took some time to process it, and I will write it
up here.
So the band is some kind of polyrhythmic thing, entirely suitable for dancing.
And oh my, people were dancing! The music was mildly exotic, some kind
of maybe Iranian thing, but also maybe Latino-influenced, some ill-defined
world-music polyrhythm.
And quite very appealing, except I had rowed that morning, and some more
exercise, and so was muscularly calm.
No urges to hop up and dance, and not even really an urge to tap my feet,
unless I forced myself.
So, in exhaustion I watched, and I was shocked and dismayed and repulsed.
The revulsion was two-fold.
First, these were not Lithuanians.
Egads, what am I saying here? Am I hinting at some deep-seated ethnic racism?
Well, no, but still there's an interesting psychological angle to this,
too.
It's almost some subliminal xenophobia, a natural comfort level of others
who
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
are like you
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
vs those who are
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
different
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Just a week back from Vilnius, and in love-shock, I kind of wanted Lithuanians
for company, and was not mentally prepared for a journey into xenophilia.
The American mixed-race is not for everyone.
I mean, I can see some Asian women as beautiful, and African women, and
I'm quite partial to many Hindis (that is to say, Indian Indians, to be
PC, but Hindis works.
Hindus are those to adhere to a religion/beleif system.
Hindis are the people of the Indian subcontinent.) Hindis can be pretty
hot, I will say that.
No hindis here tonight.
But several Iranians.
Maybe more than several, which is what first clued me into the idea that
the music might be Iranian.
Anyway, this wasn't really the turnoff.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The turnoff was ageism.
Everyone was old.
Like friggin old.
Like my age.
Fuck all old warty prunes.
Dancing and enjoying themselves, but old.
Yuck.
I did not like this.
OK, for starters, not everyone: but maybe three-fourths.
Between the ages of maybe 50 to 75 or 80.
And some of the women, many of the women, were attractive.
And the men were handsome.
But I was not ready for this.
I was not ready to be reminded of my American peers.
I'm in love with a Lithuanian half my age: still young, still pretty.
Grey-haired ladies, no matter how charmingly they smile, and no matter
how well they dance, I didn't need that.
I needed to fulfil, to consumate my horniness with my love goddess half
my age and half a planet away, or at least tell Owen about my new fixation,
to share my deep secret with someone, to unburden my contorted, tumbling
soul onto other humans, souls, who might understand and sympathisize and
perhaps empathize a bit, or at least look at me in pity or something.
I want to be pittied, my torment requires the pity of others.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Crap.
This is the problem of writing.
I now want to
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
nagrinėti
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(analyze) pity, and why it is needed and desired.
It is as if I am making up for a lifetime of ignoring the humanities.
What are the soul-soothing powers of pity, or self-pity? Why is it, like
any balm, desired but not very effecaious? Why is self-pity OK only in
tiny amounts but psychologically poisonous in large amounts? Where is mental
stability, such that no pity is bad, but too much is also bad? Is pity
kind of like a first or second derivative, some kind of curvature of some
emotional state, where the path forward must stay within certain channels
of pity? Is this just one dimension of a very high dimensional space? Is
dimension the right thing? Emotional
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
dimensions
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
don't seem to be orthogonal.
The space of valid, stable, functional emotional states seems to be quire
large, and the range of excursions which are not detrimental to emotional
health are even larger.
But clearly, just about any extreme emotional deviation is psychologically
harmful.
What is the mathematical description for this? Should we make a list of
all possible emotional states, or rather, a list of all words describing
emotional states, and attempt to assign some number to them? A vector in
some high-dimensional space? As a practical matter, this doesn't work,
because we have no instrument by which to measure the strength of 1001
emotion-tinged words that I am feeling right now.
That, plus the distributed nature of the brain means that it is my soma,
some combination of hormones in my blood-stream, my heart-rate, my caffienation
state, my point in my circadian rhythm: this is what is driving and sets
my
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
somatic emotional state
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, which is presumably somewhat distinct from what my language centers have
ready access to.
I can only partly describe how I feel, and I can only partly describe it,
because I am intelligent and have reasonable perceptive and literary abilities:
most people cannot verbalize what they feel.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Curious.
If I had a good friend, with whom I could communicate with, I would talk
this all out with them, and no written record or recording of this would
exist.
Well, probably some of the analysis would not be so deep; it's unlikely
that the freind would be interested or capable of these philosophical excursion
s.
There's also a trade: We can't just talk about what I want to talk about,
the other person must have an opportunity as well.
Its a duet.
v.s.
I'm doing solo improv, right now.
I can go places that duets would constrain, or would not visit.
Anyway, aside from Owen, with whom I talk about Owen-type things, the closest
that I have for a freind with whom I can talk freely about soul-adjacent-type
things really is Milda.
And a smattering of other Lithuanian freinds, who are in ..
Lithuania, in Vilnius, and its odd now that I think about it I don't have
close personal freinds here in Austin, and that includes my wife, who,
for whatever reason that she can't or won't articulate, refuses to be open
and freindly and social with me.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Happy families are all alike, and unhappy families are each different in
their own special way.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
I'm certainly in an unhappy family, unhappy in several different ways.
My wife, thank god, stopped smoking, and then drinking.
But this did not stop until her health started failing her.
Decades were lost.
She is now engaged in art projects, and creative, and creating some quite
pretty things.
And she assumes a central role in housekeeping, for which I am eternally
grateful for.
But there is no emotional attachement.
No heart-strings.
It would have been impossible for Milda to pluck my heart, if my wife participa
ted in my emotional life.
Alas.
And my children, well, I have to get back to that, I was going to write
about them a few paragraphs ago, before I got distracted.
So, where was I? OK, I'm done with this paragraph.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Returning to the previous one.
Oh right.
Verbalizing and sharing hearts.
This is what I have with Milda, but it is a bit precarious, I suppose.
She is not practiced in the art of verbalization.
I fear she won't articulate how she feels.
By
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
articulate
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
I mean
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
pull into the orb of conscious experience, enough so as to perform quasi-rationa
l observation and analysis
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
ask
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
about
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
how this feels
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, as opposed to the more mundane and entirely subconscious processing storm
that everyone is capable of.
In this sense, Freud was correct: there is a vast unarticulated ocean of
feelings sloshing around: hatred, attraction, repulsion, indifference that
burble under the surface, that everyone
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
feels
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but are somehow only dimly aware of.
It sounds like a contradiction: how can you
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
feel
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but then be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
unaware of what you feel
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? And yet, this is the base space of human existence.
The neuroscientists call this the default network, I think: a default floating
about of thoughts and feelings, never quite attaining syntactic coherence
(short time scales) never mind semantic coherence (long time scales: paragraphs
) The default mode is not structured in such a way as to conform to the
syntactic constraints of speech centers.
I wrote a long email about bird song to some professor emeritus of math,
and got a kind of meh reply.
Alas, but something there as well: I suppose birds also have a sloshsing-about
of emotional state, which couples poorly to the neurons that generate bird
song.
The email recapitulated a lecture I'd heard earlier, which stated that
all bird song was describable by relatively simple finite state machines.
And this seems plausible: the brains are small enough, that only a few
neurons are needed to couple mechanical vocalization organs to the soma,
and that this small neural network is capable only of finite-state type
birdsongs.
By extension, humans are more complex: we have at least context-free-type
language abilities, and a pretension of being capable of context-senstitive
generation.
Which is perhaps not off the mark, but perhaps also misses the fact that
we are not logical nor mechanistic, nor precise: rather, that we have a
larger ball of neurons that can impose syntactic constraints on thought
patterns, so as to generate word sequences that convey feelings to some
or another degree, to those listening to those words.
But we do not do out
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
thinking
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
with words; instead, the words free-run, er, umm, no, they are entrained
to the deeper thought processes, which use a different semantic relationship
system.
The work by what's-his-name (Mel'čuk, Sylvian Kahane, Meaning-Text Theory)
captures this well.
The MTT DSyntS (Deep Syntactic Structure) is closer to how our rational
mind thinks: there are enough neurons in the prefrontal cortex to do significan
t common-sense reasoning, and the DSyntS is that representational form that
is fairly close to that common-sense subsystem processing (which deep structure
getting converted into surface structure, i.e.
to the sentences I write here.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But here's the deal: the above seems accurate, if we wish to talk about
turning common-sense reasoning into language (and this includes the conversion
of mathematical reasoning into mathematical texts) and I can kind of grasp
how that can work.
But this seems to leave emotional processing out in the cold.
I am converting emotions into words as well, but the process somehow seems
different than that of converting chains of logical reasoning into words.
Hmm.
Or is it? What am I doing here? There is some train of thought in my head:
multi-branched, many choices at each stage, many-worlded, but each potential
branch collapses, wave-function-collapses, to the single reality of what
the next handful of words will be.
There is only one text that comes out, not a parallel simultaneity of texts.
Perhaps there are parallel universes out there where some version of me
typed a different word, just right now, but I do not beleive in this.
There is damn little evidence for real, actual quantum many-worlds.
At any rate, there is some collapse of excitations in my head that leads
to only a single emergent text stream.
Well, but there is still the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
strange attractor
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, the ergodic process by which I keep revisting the same thoughts, coming
at them from slightly different angles, and commiting them to text.
And sometimes I don't commit to text: certainly, if I am walking in a park,
I am not typing, but I am still focusing into conscious existance a certain
specific train of thought, however disjointed and disconnected it might
be, it does perform a certain ergodic visit of thought-space.
I cover a region of hyper-dimensional thought-spaces with strings of words.
I am pretty sure I wrote about this before, in this diary, a few months
ago.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Where was I? The conversion of rational thinking, e.g.
the solution to engineering problems or mathematical problems into ergodic
streams of text that cover the solution space: this is an articulation:
like a blueprint, it ultimately reveals of the solution / concept / idea.
This this different from (or is it?), from the articulation of affairs
of the heart, with words.
For affairs of the heart, I have to reach in and hold onto the heartache,
and wait for something to come out.
Is this different from inspired engineering, where I reach in and hope
to take a vaguely formed inspiration, and articulate it into a fully-formed
and complete mechanical (electronic, software, mathematical, etc.) device?
In both cases, I am verbalizing something vague.
In the engineering case, there are formal constraints on the allowed solutions:
I must have 2+2=4 and not 2+2=5, so if the vague, ill-formed inspiration
was that 2+2=5, I must find some way of saying 2+2 plus one more, which
has the form of a bridge from here to there, an extra arm bolted off to
the side sliding back and forth so that 2+2 appears to have the shape of
5, and everyone says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
you are such an inventive genius! I never would have thought of such a solution!
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
So yes, engineering design is constrained, much as math is constrained:
if you want 2+2=5, you must be ready to perform some sort of homotopic
cohomological contortions to go that way.
Math is quite strict in what is allowed.
But these strictures are not all that different from engineering strictures,
or software strictures.
By contrast, writing about how I feel seems to have few or no strictures,
other than that (a) my words must be syntactically well-formed so that
readers can recognize them as English and have some vague pretensions that
they understood what I wrote, and (b) my words must conform honesttly to
my heart-pangs, as opposed to being decorated with some dishonest showing-off
that isn't sincere.
So, sincerity is a constraint.
Of course, one can be insincere.
And of course, one can do crank physics and crank math.
So writing sincerely seems like a requirement.
That is, unless, one is, I dunno, painting with words, creating fiction.
Fiction is a lie, a big lie, but it is a creation of a mini-universe that
is self consistent, at least consitent as best as the author can make it,
and as the reader can understand, and if the author is actively working
with multi-entendres, such as poets, there is a broad range of many-worlds,
and this time honestly many-world parallel interpretations of a poem.
So, for example, I used Billy Corgans
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Stand Inside Your Love
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
as an example earlier: this can be either about a specific woman, or it
can be about God-as-Jesus part of th Trinity.
Billy leaves this unstated, and that is part of the magic of the song:
it does not have to be stated.
As opposed to my diary here: where I write all my base assumptions out
explicitly, because I assume that you my dear reader, are a moron, and
everything has to be explicitly explained to you.
But it also cuts me off from undeserved credit:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Linas seems to have had a grand idea here, but not sure if we can credit
him with that, because his writing is so opaque and unclear.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Heh.
I strive to be clear.
Usually.
Sometimes I'm in a hurry, so fuck it.
Give me credit.
If it sounds like I said something, well, then I did.
It was indeeded intended, and you should read that vagueness as the intended
meaning.
There.
I guess that is what the ChatGPT people call
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
a prompt
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
do this the way I tell you to do this.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Heh.
Writing diaries is ...
well, I entertain myself.
Whatever, its all very discursive.
Where was I?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Shit.
I really need to proof-read the last weeks worth of writing.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Where was I? Well, yes, I need to work on getting Milda to verbalize her
inner feelings a bit more.
For two reasons.
One is so that she can write me about how she feels, and this because I
want to expand our freindship more deeply into the intellectual domain,
the written verbal domain, as physical contact is obviously impossible.
That, plus the barrier of meeting some other person, who is reasonably
well-balanced, communicative, honest, forthright, not damaged, and develop
a decadelong-freindship with them so as to blossom into something more
and deeper, well, dang.
The best time to plant a tree was three decades ago, and the second best
time to plant a tree is right now.
I'll try to plant some trees, literally and figuratively.
But I'm in a forest of men; the women are not present in my social sphere.
They do not visit the places where I have social encounters.
At any rate, I can see that she (Milda) has struggles with her own life,
and that perhaps encouraging her to explicitly consciously problem solve
will help her straighten things out to the degree that is needed for her
to have a happy, stable life.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Which brings us back to the polycule.
Lets come at it from this direction: suppose a love affair really could
flower.
This seems to be within the realm of possibility, so lets roll with that.
If it does, it is under severe socio-economic constraints.
In practical terms, I cannot readily be with her (and at this stage of
the relationship, being with her 24x7 would destroy the relationship.) Nor
can I financially support her.
First, I'm not rich.
Second, the howls from Patty would be intolerable.
So all this is very impractical.
So even in the very unlikely (at this stage) idea of some kind of monogamous
relationship, there is nothing that can happen or work out here.
So shallow thinking says that the relationship is doomed, impossible, and
should be given up on, now, before it develops furhter (and this might
be what she is thinking, too: cut it off, before the cancer grows.
I hope not, but there is a reasonable chace she'll come to this conclusion.
Heaven knows.) So, what paths are open and not improbable? Well, first,
nurture a literary relationship.
We already have this kind-of, its verbal, but now, it would need to deepen
into a more frequent exchange of emails.
(huh.
Strange.
Wth Patty, before we married, our relatinship was built on long-disance
phone-calls, where we were each desperate to talk to each other, and talked
for hours about anything and everything.
I wonder what we talked about.
I can't remember.
And then, when face-to-face, its like those long, desperate conversations
petered out: we had nothing to say to each other, and it sometimes felt
awkward.
I would even joke about it:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
why don't you go in the other room, and call me on the phone?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
With Milda, its the opposite: we talk, we enjoy each-others company, face
to face.
My current desire is to convert this to a long distance relationship.
The reality of this long-ddistance relationship is that she will be horny,
and she will sleep with other men, (which is so not fair cause she has
not slept with me, but whatever) and I can't stop this, I should not stop
this, I should avoid feelings of jelousy as this would be deterimental
to my own mental health, and besides, I'm old and wrinkled and not so pretty
any more, while she is young and beautiful and in her prime, and in a certain
rational sense, in the conventional socio-politcal economic norm, she needs
someone her age, living in Vilnius to be her mate and husband.
That's the reality, and it is a reality I cannot change.
(I've even pointed this out to her, on many occasions, which is perhaps
why our freindship works: its as if I am assisting her in pursuing her
own interests, and I encourage her going out to meet others, even if this
vaguely endangers our own friendship.
I really do wish her the best.
Very fortunately, I've not been trapped in the lyrics of that Sheryl Crow
song:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
If it makes you feel happy, then why are you so sad?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but of course I've gotten close to that.
I supcribe to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
If you love some one, free, free, set them free.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
I am so illiterate: all my insights into human nature are extracted from
pop music songs.
Oh well.
So it goes.
Where was I?) However, there is another fact: she's thirty-five years old,
or whatever, and she is not married.
Because she has not found the perfect love-mate.
And given this track record, there is some possibility that this will continue
on indefinitely.
She does have an active social life, going with the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
hebra
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, who are, I dunno: I get the feeling these are all young men, younger than
her, and I get the feeling they are all immature, which oddly enough makes
me look good in comparison.
But how long will this go on? It could happen that any day, she could meet
the perfect man: rich, handsome, emotionally deep and responsive, vibing
with her hippie-chick nature-girl electronic-dance-music festival vibe.
It could happen, and if this were to be, any romantic future in my future
would wilt away.
The other possibility is that this does not happen, in which case, the
modern
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
open relationship
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is in the cards.
I think the concept of a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
polycule
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is somewhat tighter, closer to a commune feel.
I don't know that they have communes in Lithuania, people don't talk about
it.
I've joked with Linas Cicėnas that I should buy Diktariškes (only 160K
Euro!) and he could live there as an artists colony, but the reality is
that this is remains on the boundaries of possibility; a huge investment
would be needed to clean up the grounds, and fix the interior.
Starting with the roof, I suppose.
Fuck, a vehicle, to get there.
Lawn mowers.
Heavy equipment.
A tractor.
All that.
A pickup truck.
An artists community? Commune? A bit far away from Vilnius, and artists
need to sell their stuff, and Užupis is the realistic place to be.
Not Šiaulėniai.
Whatever, this is about as close to
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
commune
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
as one gets, aside from whever it is that goes on in Užupis that I don't
know about.
And, at any rate, this is a big distraction from my love interest.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So Aella posted a twitter post suggesting that in her research, a lot of
this fringy sex stuff is adjacent to indicators of mental illness, and
I think she listed polycule in that.
Of course, there's a cause and effect problem here: do polycules cause
psychic harm, in the same way that all love triangles are untenable and
unstable? Or was it broken people who were attracted to them in the first
place: people who were unable to find monogamous mates, and had to settle
for a polycule existance? Or even a third possibility: psychopathic, sociopathi
c individuals ill-suited for normal romantic relationships are drawn into
polycules? Perhaps some tortured mix of all three?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
At any rate, my relationship with Milda is inherently unstable and untenable:
it has to deepen, or to fade, or possibly slide sidways forever, and as
personal protection, I must avoid heart-break, jelousy and the zillion
other emotional complications (complexes) associated with romantic relationship
s failing to develop in a wholesome manner.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Nesusikompleksavokite
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, she says.
I have hopes, because Milda is wholesome, but hey, you know we are all
fallible and we all make mistakes, and things don't work out in turbulent
social environments.
I can tell myself that I am well-balanced and emotionally mature, but those
are just words, and my soma may have a different opinion about that.
I am my own master, but only kind of.
The other part of me is not exactly a bucking bronco, but it has taken
journeys into emotionally depressive places.
We'll see.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So where was I? Ah yes, free psychic health-care for the elderly, and for
the game-addicted youth.
We have Obamacare, and so that is a step forward, in covering aspects of
physical health.
But socio-politically, we are not ready to tackle mental health.
There is a big push to
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
cure cancer
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and everyone will pledge up and down that this is a good thing to do.
And Alzheimers, too.
And now, PTSD has apparently entered the arena of socio-politically acceptable
conditions that can be and should be treated.
However, lonliness in seniors is not there, yet.
It could be.
The treatment plan is obvious and straightforward: social mixers, and health
care and strong pressure to get healthy and look after yourself.
This could be done.
You could throw money at this, and make basic progress.
I guess the money is missing.
For that, we have to wait for increasing roboticization, mass unemployment
for youth, so that the younger could transition to social welfare jobs
to protect the older.
A rather natural direction would also to be to split things up into
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
villages
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: a small-ish, relatively stable community of individuals who've known each
other for years, or even decades.
This has been depicted in creepy ways by Hollywood:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Westworld
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Stepford Wives
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and the Scientologists have created a malignant organization around the
creation of insincere communities.
Meanwhile, hundreds, thousands of communes over the ages have failed.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Lets look at the causes of commune failure.
They are varied, but primarily, it is because they are centered around
one charismatic leader, don't have any systems for succession, and lack
the infrastructure for punishing crimes and adjudicating disputes.
As I understand it, the invention of the University by the Scholastics,
some 800 years ago, solves all of these problems, which is why Universities
have also been so stable.
However, they also have several features that would be difficult in a commune.
So a University has a system for admissions, and a tenure system.
Not just anyone is allowed in; only those who are academically brilliant.
Furthermore, with tenure, existing members vote to extend priviledges to
the newer, younger prospective members.
We see something similar in naval submarines: a potential submariner must
live with the crew for a year, and then there is a vote as to whether to
accept the newcomer as part of the crew.
Why? Because the confines of the submarine are truly very tight, and social
friction will be not just amplified, but deadly under military engagements.
Now, submarines are interesting: almost all of the remainder of the social
provisioning is handled by the Navy: this includes the submarines themselves,
the food, the pay, courts and courtmartials, promotions to captain and
admiral, and the bureaucratic infrstructure for this.
This is in contrast to universities, where each univeristy must maintain
these functions on it's own, without the help of other universities.
So, the Navy has scale.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I'm looking at the concept of a commune, organized as a submarine might
be: there is a parent body, governing hundreds of communes, and providing
the bureaucratic infrastructure needed for this.
Each individual commune, however, picks and chooses it's members, based
on some sort of auditioning system, specific and tailored to that commune.
Huh.
Wow.
I wonder if we could pull this off? Is this the defacto structuring that
the Scientologists provide? If so, the Scinetology provides a not just
a proof-of-concept for a stable social structure, but even a blueprint
for how it could be done.
The trick is to get rid of the malignancy that grows in that organization.
I guess another example would be the Church of the Latter Day Saints, except
that it too has a certain maligancy, especially with the expulsion of young
men, so that older men could have their large polygamous families.
I guess one of the sub-proposals I'm thinking about is a polyculelike,
non-monogamous form of a commune.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Let's look at this a different way.
The traditional family unit of husband and wife and children is embeded
in the nation-state, which oversees all services outside of the monogamous
family: courts of law, a regulated capitalistic system, infrastructure
for water, wastewater, electricity, and now, with Obamacre, even some fraction
of healthcare.
This is a twentieth-century invention, and is challenged by political strains,
as well as culture wars.
Some of the culture wars are sexual, gay rights, and now the hot one: trans
rights.
Aside from the nation-sate, what other forms of social organization are
there?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Well, corporations, duh.
Corporations each have their own marketing departments, their own payroll,
although now there are companies that do only payroll for other companies.
But they are embedded in the nation-state for the legal infrastructure.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Cooperatives.
So I'm thinking Ace Hardware, here.
Most the legal infrastruture in the American nation-state (USA) is aimed
at conventional corporations, rather than cooperatives.
Except for coops like Ace, there aren't very many that have a superstructure
shared by individual enclaves.
The defintion for
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
shared infrastructure
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, is, however, highly variable.
Best Western consists of privately owned hotels that have a shared hotel
reservation system.
A rainbow of different kinds of cooperatives can be found here: https://www.aust
incooperatives.coop/ A partial list:
\end_layout
\begin_deeper
\begin_layout Itemize
housing co-ops, student housing co-ops, alternative housing
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
co-op advocates, national & international co-op advocates
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
consumer co-ops
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
cooperative schools
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
utility co-ops
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
worker co-ops
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
producer co-ops
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
purchasing co-ops
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
credit unions
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
collectives & community organizations
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The characteristic features here are how highly atomized these all are,
and how small most of them are.
A single housing coop will not have a police force.
Perhaps some communal adjucation of disputes, but hardly.
How does ownership even work? Say, an owner dies, what does the estate
get? These coops are almost entirely economic, not spiritual, and are focused
on solving a fairly narrow economic issues.
Thus, very different from communes, which try to solve all issues all at
once.
\end_layout
\end_deeper
\begin_layout Itemize
The University as enclave.
Universities all reproduce their own infrastructure; they do not share
any of it.
I suppose perhaps some have outsourced payroll; who knows.
But mostly they are self-contained, self-sofficient units, with property
rights protected by the nation-state, and with campus police to handle
minor student altercations, while the nation-state handles gross crimes
and the prison system.
And the well-regulated banking sector, which universites all share to handle
their financials.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The submarine as enclave.
The Navy provides all super support services that individual submarines
cannot manage on their own.
The legal structure of the navy is almost entirely dettached from the nation-st
ate, meeting only at the Joint Cheifs of Staff level.
Banking is provided by the private sector.
The Navy buys food from the private sector.
And boats, too.
But the judicial system is not that of the public, but a parallel naval
justice system.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The nuclear family: mom, dad, kids.
One household.
Standard stuff, I don't need to explain.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Extended family: grandparents live with parents.
Somewhat rare, but normal.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Communes.
As noted, almost always unstable beyond a few decades, because the leadership
and governance sector is not worked out.
The charismatic leader determines everything.
Leader dies, commune falls apart.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Church of the LDS.
As noted.
They seem to have their own internal court/legal system that asserts rights
to control polygamous families, require young men to go out and proselytize,
etc.
Also an economic system to control wealth, and also an educational system,
and perhaps some amount of healthcare and other social services.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Catholic Church.
Like the LDS, but the systems only extend to priests (and mostly celibate,
male priests, at that.) The Church does not provide services to (monogamous)
families, other than to interdict birth control, and allow you to attend
Mass on Sundays.
The Mass on Sundays crap taken with Confession, is a really a rather low-qualit
y psychic/psychological service.
Most priests are utterly ignorant of psychology, and completely uninterested
in community affairs.
This is one big reason why religiosity is fading: the Catholic Church is
unfit in the modern Western Culture ecology (and I do mean the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
ecology
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
here: all these socio-political systems interact, in ways that are similar
to a biological ecology.
The Catholic Church is unfit in the moddern Western ecology.
It has no viable niche to fill (or rather, a rapidly shrinking niche.) Catholic
schools still work, I guess.
Catholic community centers still work, but these are rare and semi-non-function
al.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Assorted Protestant Churches.
These are often federations, and the federations do provide support services
for the individual churches.
They are afflicted by the same lack of fitness in the modern social fabric.
Small-town Protestant community centers do seem to provide a centralized
meeting place, a kind of town hall for activities.
Unlike LDS, there is no explicit support for the family unit.
Protestant churches might provide some eductation, but it is not noted
for being high-quality.
Protestant churches do not provide health care or other social services.
They do provide a rather minimalistic social safety net for the community:
help with food for families that have lost income and can't pay the bills.
But the support is weak.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Scientology.
Weird and malignant, but apparently strong.
As a cult, there's cult indoctrination, which is what makes it strong:
members toe the line, they know what is expected of them, and they are
commanded, and respond to commands.
The Scientologists do seem to have perfected a certain formula for a socio-poli
tical universe inside the nation-state.
This seems to include sexual relations, via their weird sea-steading constructs.
I'm unclear on the details.
At any rate, sx seems to be used to both reward and punish.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Libertarian sea-steading.
They talk about it, but it is not a thing, yet.
Probably because they don't understand the social dynamics of such a system.
I doubt libertarians study sociology: if they did, they wouln't be libertarians.
They always describe something that sounds like a floating slave colony
or feudal system, outisde of the judicial powers of existing nation-states.
Dead-end dream of billionaires?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Hari Krishnas and a rainbow of other cults.
Underlying keyword is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
cults
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, used to enforce behavioral norms.
Most cults seem to be malignant in one or more ways, inflicting psychological
damage on the cult members.
Most have no central organization.
Only a few large ones, like the Hari Krishnas, seem to have large-scale
financial support sytems, and some kind of governance system.
I don't understand what.
Many or most seem to have some sexual component, and, as we have explored,
sex evokes strong somatic responses that can lead to extensive psychological
turmoil.
The strong response provide a large control surface which can be used to
indoctrinate and control members.
Cults seem to frequently use sex as as an important, if not central part
of their social dynamics.
Not clear to me if Hari Krishnas form polycules, or quite what is going
on there.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Siloviki.
This is interesting, because there is a genetic component.
For three to five generations, russian army officers, police officers,
chekists, KGB agents, FSB agents, their offspring, sons and daughters have
been intermarrying, creating a breed.
In my judgement, and my (weak) knowledge of breeding dogs and horses, I
beleive that the Siloviki are successfully breeding for some rather negative
authoritarian traits.
Part of what makes this interesting is the interplay with the political
structure: the Siloviki get choice appointments and promotions, which means
income and financial support, which allows the families to live and propagate
successfully.
The political system reinforces the breeding traits.
Needless to say, this is dangerous, since this trait collection is harmful
to humans: these people are professional torturers, abusers and enforcers.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Nation-states.
Let me use Lithuania as an example.
Mono-cultural, approximately monolinguistic, with a multi-lingualism tradition
dating back to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and thus tolerated.
Problems with foreign immigration, both Islamic, and the russian hordes.
Socially conservative, mostly-ish.
Takes generic Western values, and European values as a given: this is forced
by EU membership, and few are bucking that trend (in contrast to Turkey,
for example.) I don't want to review the complex EU landscape here, other
than to note that the primary sexual organization is monogamous nuclear
families embeded in an American style capitalist system with assorted EU
labor protection laws.
Fairly large, significant social safety net.
The culture is atomized: one does not generally know one's neighbors.
City life does not have any strong centers that can glue together the social
fabric, while culture wars and politics tear apart what little social fabric
there is.
Worse, enemies such as Putin, russia actively engage in social-fabric destroyin
g activities.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Did I miss anything? The above is my idiosyncratic synopsis, based on a
superficial observation of mass media and shallow readings of assorted
news sources.
Part of me says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
publish this on a blog
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but part of me says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
this is very amateur
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Of course, on the internet, we are all amateurs.
That is the point.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I imagine that there are other wierd things going on in California, but
it does not seem like any are ready to break out to a national scale.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So what have we learned here? Coops mostly solve narrow economic issues.
While it is tempting to talk about the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
coop lifestyle
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, the reality that co-ops solve relatively small economic issues, and not
broader social issues.
Religions look after spirtual issues, but neglect economic and familial
issues.
Communes try to tackle everything (spiritual, familial, economic), but
lack both organizational structure, and scalability.
Cults are communes wth additional malignant features, often exploiting
sex (secuality, eroticism) as a form of control, to reward and punish.
There seem to be only two large, multi-generational cults that I can identify:
Church of the LDS, and the Scientologists.
(Maybe there are more, but smaller and less well-known.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is there a path to a stable social structure that is more coherent, less
atomized than the nation-state, but not malignant in the way that cult-like
structures are? What is the architecture of such a thing? Is this not possible,
because if it was possible, it would exist already? Or is it that it has
not been invented, not been tried, yet? I am reminded that the concept
of a nation-state was only invented in the late 19th century, and fiercly
debated by political philosophers.
The concept consolidated only in the aftermath of WWI.
Yes, perhaps one could argue that the USA and the République Française
are earlier examples, but these are singular.
Nation-states did not exist in a Europe dominated by empires, (Hapsburg,
Ottoman, etc.) Perhaps we await further refinements that resolve the issues
of atomization in modern Western culture.
Something beyond the nation-state as currently incarnated.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Meta-context is how all this works out in the presence of AGI.
We are going through a turbulent phase transition in social structure,
driven by the internet, by social media technologies.
It is natural that new forms of social organization will fall out of this.
What might they be? What are the requisite structures for stability? Is
this solvable by
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
pure reason
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, in the old-school kind of way, e.g.
by debating with other political philosophers, or do we need to explicitly
use social media and AI to socially co-discover these modes of living?
To
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
evolve
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
them, so to speak, by
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
natural selection
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but this time, natural selection at the social level, not the genetic
level.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, in many ways, twitter sucks, and Elon Musk has fucking lost his mind
to the MAGA mind-virus, but, from what I can tell, twitter is still the
best place for this discussion.
Not sure if there's anything going on in facebook or not.
Quora is not the right format.
Discord is chat.
The others are too fragmented, fragmentary.
Don't have the depth or power or reach.
Fuck Elon and fuck him for supporting Putin.
Damn it.
But, you know ..
stack exchange has some potential.
Unfortunately, stack exchange has a shitty (almost non-existant) structure
for debate.
Then there's Arxiv.
Whatever.
The internet is interesting, but we have not yet found all the good ways
of building social media sites, and the dominant players have become enshittifi
ed, building walled gardens and making honest sincere discussion difficult
or even impossible.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, this was interesting.
Apparently, keeping a diary really helps me focus in, focus up some intesting
thoughts.
Bonus: this is easier than writing blog entries, but perhaps I should carelessl
y dump some of this into my blog(s).
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
TODO: copy some of my earlier diary-text into this hot stinking mess of
a diary.
Motivation is to get it onto github and thus safekeeping.
Heh.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Amyway, good night.
It is after my bed-time.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
4 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Woke up not horny.
First time in weeks.
Hmm.
Woke up thinking about how I forgot to mention DAO's in the above list.
So this is back to normal: I'm thinking non-sex things in my half-asleep/half-a
wake state.
It seemed very important to wake up and write about DAO's and integrate
them into the above discussion, but now that I am awake ...
not so much, the importance waned once it left my fevered half-sleep, half-wake
state.
Also there was an idea that I have to talk to Owen about his AEN –
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Austin Expert Network
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, which is a kind of social organization.
But he doesn't need DAO's to run it.
Talk to Zar Goertzel, because he has vague polycule social commune type
tendencies, and he's cosmopolitan enough to contemplate moving to Vilnius
to actually be with his six-year-old daughter.
But the crypto-DAO thing seems too specialized, too weak to solve central-banki
ng type issues faced by
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
virtual villages
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Which is what the above was trying to get to: virtual villages.
Let's list the desirable properties, now:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Village-like, so, below the Dunbar number: fewer than a few hundred people,
so you get to know everyone.
This is to:
\end_layout
\begin_deeper
\begin_layout Itemize
Help resolve the dating-for-seniors problem
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The atomization problem in general, vs.
the subcultual thing that David Chapman writes about in meaningness.
But it is not clear yet that a virtual village can solve the atomization
problem, because the village you are in might not provide the social framework
you want, and then what? You can still get lonely in a village, or feel
outcast, unable to connect with the happy-others.
\end_layout
\end_deeper
\begin_layout Itemize
Economic, legal, policing elements.
Apportionment of goods.
I was gonna write more, but ...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I was gonna write more about important facets of social organization, and
how some kind of virtual village construct could solve that.
But the fundamental problem of atomization remains.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Saw that with the social media
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Scuttlebutt
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
system, which was a crypto-chat system, and while it was small, had a kind
of community that was developing, but as it got larger, the community fractured
a bit.
And then the software stopped working entirely and that was that, for me.
So, on scuttlebutt, I felt I was a part of a community, I felt belonging.
Never met anyone face-to-face, so this was pure virtual.
Since it was aphysical, there was no way to explore physical romantic relations
hips.
Curious, since the virtual community bonds felt strong and sincere.
(Footnote: as a piece of crypto software, they were exploring communal
economic subsystems...)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But the point here with DAO's and policing and economics is that kind-of
none of this community stuff matters, if you don't solve the more deeply
rooted issue of romantic love.
Which is maybe the fundamental issue.
Close second is belonging.
That is, you can build universities or submarines based on shared sommunal
values and interests, but neither of these solve the romantic-love problem,
and fall back on the family unit (and celibacy) to solve that.
Weird cults address the sex problem, but don't solve it.
Virtual villages can't solve it, due to the long-distance, non-physical
aspect, unless there is some central physical location where things can
unspool.
With this in hand, we can start to thing about the economic issues, about
community ownership.
Even then, the idea of DAO's is too rigid, and not powerful enough to provide
adequate solutions for the community apportionment of economic resources
issue.
Seems like a twinkle in the eye, still.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And then there is still the atomization problem.
I can join any number of communities (I speak, I personally) but all of
these communities leave me atomized.
I am sufficiently intelligent, and old enough, experienced and wise enough,
that I fit poorly into communities.
The bulk of my interests are always outside of the community, no matter
what that community may be.
Consider Santara–Šviesa.
So, primarily a Lithuanian cultural-ethnic intellectual patriotic community,
but the math-science subsection is empty, there, so I can enjoy the social
aspects and the intellectual aspects, and marvel at the patriotic aspects.
But it won't fulfill the math annd software side of me.
And that's it.
I went to enough Austin LessWrong meetups to realize these are all mid-wits.
There's no genius secretly travelling in that community.
The AGI meetings are far more interesting.
Joscha Bach I take as an equal, however unstable he seems to be.
He's actually smart.
Ben is actually smart.
Who else? My list of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
actually smart people who I actually know
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is alarmingly thin.
I mean, that's kind of it, isn't it? There's a long list of second-tier
acquantances, some even counting as freinds, who get close to the genius
level, but aren't quite there on the rapid-uptake level.
So I have to entertain myself in the social circles where I can entertain
msyelf, and discover and mine for intellect, where I can.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I totally pissed off Milda during a drunken escapade, where I talked to
the crippled genius.
So this guy, he can't really string together a single sentence.
Has trouble talking.
Milda leans over and says soething like
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
he took too many drugs and fried his brain
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and maybe that is true.
But after a few minutes of talking to him, I see there is a spark there.
Very very different that Daniel Velasquez, the brain-cripple guy at TRC.
Daniel: well, the spark in him is weak, he can sometimes pop out of the
script that he runs, but what is revealed in his depths remains shallow.
This guy in Lithuania, wow, the spark that was uncovered was mind-bogglingly
deep.
He is apparently a fantastic observer, with a fundamental inability to
use speech for communication.
Sort of makes up for it with gestures.
I callled him a genius, which really irritated Milda, but he did seem to
have a raw spark far outside the normal howdy-doody social interaction.
Maybe I was drunk, and assigned more to him than is there.
One of the things he said, that caught me off guard was that, a few months
ago, he decided to try to communicate with people.
Who says shit like that? WTF! He also speaks English very well, using large,
sophisticated words with their correct meaning, applying them correctly
in context.
Which is amazing, given that he can only sequeeze out one word every few
seconds, and you can see the tremendous pain and effort he undergoes to
do this.
So, bilingual.
Trilingual, I think he speaks russian too.
What kind of person is so brain-damaged that they can barely even talk,
but when they talk, they provide a stunning command of the language, and
then go deep and personal and connect at a fundamental level.
All this with only a dozen or two sentences? Most people can barely stop
talking about the weather in this time-frame.
Holy Cow!
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Why am I telling this story? Oh, right.
So I can angage in intellects, even those living under a bushel.
I have sufficient social skills to be gregarious and communicative, and
cross over communications barriers and have meaningful conversations, at
least, when I go through the effort.
But how often is that effort actually rewarded? Rarely.
I have to be loose enough to be interested in engaging socially.
And the social engagements go ..
where, exactly? In the end, after the connection is made, there is no ...
depth.
Nowhere to go further.
But then, where do I want to go, exactly? Deep intellectual tickles? In
some ways, social engagements with really really smart people aren't all
that more rewarding than those with ordinary people.
Right? At some point, social engagements start to veer towards utility:
how much do I enjoy their company? Are they pretty? Smell nice? Are nice
to me? Are fun to be with? Propose doing something fun? Propose economically
gainful activities? Engage in deep soul-touching dialog? Evoke respects
...
I dunno, Hmm.
What do I get out of social contact? What do I want? I seem to have a low
spark right now.
I can't define what I want out of social contact.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Its starting to feel like that empty burst of dopamine (we all know its
not actually dopamine, but this is the slang term...) the dopamine hits from
scrolling twitter, or scrolling youtube shorts, and I do have to admit,
those dopamine hits are not all that different from the joys of (physical,
verbal, non-disintermediated) social contact.
Are drunken conversations better than doom-scrolling? Well, yes, in that,
in the end, one has a social connection *to that person*, that one can
draw on in future years.
And yet, when presented with the choice of going to the party, or sitting
at home doom-scrolling, many will pick scrolling (or even watching TV.
Or video-gaming is another popular opt-out.) Partly because you don't have
to shower and get dressed to go to the party.
And partly because the dopamine rewards of the party are underwhelming,
because, whatever it is that you are looking for, it is not to be found.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And what are we looking for? Well, earlier this week, and maybe even right
now, its the instant gratification of doing something about my horniness.
(Back to speaking personally, here.) And so this is really high on the list.
What else am I anjoying? Well, writing this, since clearly I have invested
a huge amount of time into this the last few days/week.
What else? Intellectual pursuits: reading my long reading list, except
for two things: one; my horniness is interfering with my ability to concentrate
, and two: life-planning says that acquiring yet more intellectual knowledge
is not what I need to solve my upcoming economic, social, health and psychologi
cal crisis.
Health, I can deal with through sports, and more generally, getting outdoors.
Which I sort of enjoy, even though it is intellectually boring, sometimes,
The endorphin release from sporting makes up for the lack of intellectual
stimulation.
Being physically fit helps.
The physical fitness does promote horniness.
Iggy Pop sings:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I'm healthy as a horse, ah, but everything is spinning.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and that is what I feel a bit of, now.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
...
Well, I was going to introspect more about psychology and motivation, lack
of drive, depression, manic-depression.
But now I'm in a lower-power, what's the point stage in my thinking? There's
also an old piece of advice given to those who are hyper to do something
to the point it annoys their friends:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
you just need to get laid.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
And indeed, with this release comes a certain restoration of balance.
The urgency for doing something wanes a bit, and, aa while later; hours,
days, powers of concentration can increase.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So what? We've already determined (science already knows) that some cortisol
cycle regulates overall mood, that there are differential couplings to
hundreds of hormones and neurotransmitters, that channels and pumps and
vesicles all relese and uptake, and this seems to matter not at all to
the hard problem of consciousness.
And adjacent to all this is the also-hard problem of motivation and desire
and mood, I've said it before, but it bears repeating: I don't beleive
AGI can go through life on some even keel, focused on some abstract intellectua
l pursuit.
Because the core problem would seem to be: what pursuit? and why? If there
is some reward circuit, then why not engage in some repetitive activity,
like count-by-one to infinity? Biology seems to have installed some kind
of limiters to repetitive behavior.
No matter how good sex is, and how rewarding it is, or however unsatiated
you feel, there is an
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
afterwards
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
moment, where you have to stop doing what you're doing, and do something
else.
(You can't do
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
nothing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, for as long as you are alive.
Taking a break is not
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
doing nothing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, it is sitting down or lying, breathing, looking out a window or whatever.
That's not nothing.
Its still something.
It might not be socially or economically beneficial activity, but breathing
is still doing something, for the thing that is alive.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Are we making progress here? Barely.
So far, this week, I've got a vague sketch for some kind of information-content
-like thing as a some-kind-of-derivative across turbulent system boundaries
like thing, that will be interesting to formalize, and will lead to more
good ideas.
And behind it, I've got the vague idea that life, living things, are things
that are able to maintain this differntial structure over long periods
of time, without dissipating.
These two ideas, coupled together, get us to the point of describing
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
philosophical zombies
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: complex machines, naturally-occuring machines, biological machines, and
this develops a mathematical foundation for describing and talking about
such dynamical systems.
But it does not adress the inner life of qualia.
It does seem to suggest, this cortisol diurnal cycle, that the interplay
of hundreds of neurotransmitters/hormones are responsible for mood, and
certainly this is the primary message of pharmacology: take drugs, change
your mood, and that the pharmacological system is very complex.
Is qualia, the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
hard problem of consciousness
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, tied to the quantity of this complexity? Is it linear, or is it again
some phase transition? So, a jellyfish, with a simple neural net and a
handful of neurotransmitters, is it conscious? I'm guessing the answer
is yes (my natural prediliction is to say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
yes
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
) but clearly, it can only be a very low level of consciouness.
Clearly the richness of the variety of qualia one can experience must be
tied to number of hormones and neurotransmitters that are in action: humans
have a language of thousands of emotional states that jellyfish cannot
feel (or so I very very much beleive): the jellyfish is conscious, and
feels emotions, but these are very base and basic, and tehre are only a
few of them.
Probably something like
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I'm hungry
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
wow this really tastes good
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fear fear fear run run run
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
when attacked by a preditor.
But I think this is more or less then entire state of possible qualia for
a (lone) jellyfish.
I'm by-passing any questions about whether a colony of jellyfish can have
more, much like anthills appear to have
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
more
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
than what single ants might have.
So to conclude: the complexity of qualia would appear to be tied to the
complexity of the somatic system.
There might even be a phase transition lurking there.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
How about going in the other direction? At what point does additional simplifica
tion lead to the erasure of qualia? So consider slime mold.
Is it conscious? Many will argue no; I'm willing to say yes.
In part, because there is still enough signalling-molecule complexity to
support consciousness.
What about bacterial quorum sensing? I'm even willing to ascribe first-person
consciousness to a blob of bacteria.
The criteria that I seem to be using is that if there is some bio-physical,
chemo-mechanical differential equation system showing long-term complex
behavior (using my to-be-defined complexity measure) then such a system
can be terms to be conscious.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I keep wanting to utter the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
quantum
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
here, but haven't found a smooth transition to it.
The above bio-physical defintion of consciousness, which allows for consciousne
ss even in bacterial colonies, seems to emply a classical definition: a
single set of diff eqs (or more generally, some mathematical model) having
a single
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
current state
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in some classical-mechanics type sense.
So if I need to invoke quantum in any of this, it would be again via the
choice measure.
Bio systems have many choices for what to do next, and this extends very
naturally down into a many-world superposition of unresolved, unexplored
possibilities of being.
So quantum and choice go together (the delicate dependence on initial condition
s, seem in chaotic systems, seems, well, we have room for that, here.
Shift the Lorenz attractor over by some planck scale length thing, and
it will pursue a different orbit.
That is to say, quantum does provide a foundation for choice.
So that's fine.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But we don't have a bridge between choice and qualia, yet.
I've claimed that the bacterial colony is conscious, has a qualia of its
current state.
The qualia would be two-fold: diffuse, lonely, or concentrated, attack
the host.
The quorum sensing mechanism even provides access to choice: although the
two extreme ends are forced (attack, or don't attack) there is a balance-point,
a bifurcation in the middle, where choice can happen.
So, I'm equating choice to a collection of bifurcation points in a system
(so, this is Morse theory type stuff) and bifurcation points are common
in symplectic systems.
These are what are counted in the assorted topoloogical invariants that
appear in the theory of Riemann surfaces, and the various Gauss-Bonet style
relationships between them.
So we know how to identify saddle points in dynamical systems, and we can
provide thousands of pages of descriptions of relations of how they all
inter-related to one another.
Great! So counting
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
choices
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in dynamical systems is really about counting saddle points.
We can do choice, in principle, even if we're still a bit weak in the area
of high-dimensional chaos, where we have turbulence.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
My gradient-measure idea from a few days ago can even assign a number to
the speed of dissipation of ...
of what ...
? Of saddle points? In a turbulent flow, we've got a lot of vortecies,
but these dissipate, in that they loose energy and the rotation stops,
and there is a seemingly-hard one-zero transition where
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
there is a point about which the vortex is turning
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
now that point no longer exists
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and vorticity is a smooth differentiable number assigned to the strength
of that rotation.
So the mathematical poetry here is that topological invariants are zero-one
things: a Riemann surface has a fixed number of holes/handles, that is
invariant under topoliogical deformations.
But chaotic dynamical systems have smooth homotopic transformations that
go from
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fluid with vortex
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fluid without vortex
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Hmm.
And living systems are systems that defy natural dissipation: they maintain
something that should resemble a topological invariant: a mosquto is a
mosquito, for as long as it stays alive, mo matter how it flies, moves
opr stings.
Equally, there are homotopic transformations of a mosquito, such as swatting
it, that takes this topoliogical invarinat of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
being alive
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
being dead
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
So we have a back-of-the-envelope sketch on how this could all work, missing
details, but vaguely plausbile.
But we still haven't bridged over to the hard problem of consciousness
and qualia.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Lets try again.
A bacterial colony is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
conscious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and quorum sensing introduces a branch-point.
Someohow, consciousness is then an awareness of which branch you are on?
Or is it an awareness that a branching is possible? Well, at first, it
seems like the former: the bacteria
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
know
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
we are now attacking
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: this is a state of knowledge that has specific measureable effects: the
bacteria are spewing poison.
We can measure that with chemistry.
So is this awareness? It would seem not, since it is a purely mechanistic
action: the biophysics has switched to a state of making poison, and there's
no particular
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
free will
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in that; it is commited to a course of action and there's no turning back.
The bifurcation has happened in the past.
This then leads on to the conclusion that consciousness is the awareness
of bifurcation points.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Huh.
Well that's intersting.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
That would seem to solve multiple issues at once.
Most obviously, the problem of free will.
A part of being
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
conscious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
seems to be inextricably intertwinned with the sensation that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I have a conscious choice that I can make, that is, I have free will.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
That is, consciousness is all about the explicit awareness of bifurcation
points.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Now, qualia, such as
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I am now smelling a perfume
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I see the color blue
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I feel ovewhelming sensations of joy and love
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
– this is distinct from the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I feel I have a choice in front of me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Harrumpf.
Can I explain this by sayig that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I know I see blue, because I know that I could also see red
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? That is, it is the existence of a variety of different sensory states
that allows the qualia of perceiving them.
Now, I cannot
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
choose
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to se the color blue; this is fxed by the external world.
But I am aware of the possibilities of experience (the external world is
making the choices), and it is this awareness of possibilites that seems
irrevocably coupled to the actual qualia of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I am seeing blue
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
This is fairly easy to demonstrate: I don't have the ability to perceive
the magnetic field, and so I have no associated qualia with that.
The ability to perceive and qualia go hand-in-hand.
Similarly, if everything is always grey, then I don't perceive that; ther
are assorted optical illusions demonstrating this, including change-blindness,
and other kinds of blindness, e.g.
McGurk effect.
So to conclude: qualia are inextricable tied to the veriety of choices
that the sensory system can perceive.
No choice means no qualia.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So is that it? Am I done, here? Consciousness is perception of branch-points,
of choices? When I say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I am conscious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, am I saying that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
well, I am aware that things could have been otherwise
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
If so, then we've built a bridge to a reductionist physical mathematical
description of consciousness.
This bridge is articulable: I know enough topology and module space ideas
to formulate branch points; I know enough set theory to formulate branch
points, I know enough symplectic geometry to formulate branch points, I
know enough ergodic theory to formulate dissipation and non-dissipation
as a kind of approximate topological invariant thingy.
So I can build that bridge.
It is within reach.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So lets assume that bridge is buildable.
Can it support the weight that it is being asked to hold? When I say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I am conscious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I am aware
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, this is deeply personal, right up there with
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I am in love
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(with my object of affection whose name is 'love goddess', no matter that
this is a rather absurd yet simple state of affairs.) Hmm.
Well,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I am in love
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is directly associated with heart pangs, which I directly perceive as a
kind of pain, which can be roughly approximated with a punch to the chest,
or with what one feels after a hundred-yard-sprint: this kind of chest
pain that says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I'll live but it feels funny in here
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, These are sensory love-pangs.
Certainly, sweatiness of the brow, flushed face, etc.
these are raw and accessible sensory states.
What else is love? A despondance that the love-object is not currently
present, so a vague sadness and depression that is recognizable as sadness-and-
depression, because I've felt it before, and I know how it contrasts with
other emotions, such as joy.
This is a sensation of emoptions, mechanisically not much different than
sensing blue vs sensing red.
I'm aware of the rainbow of choices that my soma can present to my emotional
sensory system: my emotions are qualia because I know that they could be
otherwise.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
There's also perhaps a subtle point, a knot: as I am also aware of free
will, I know I can make choices that will chage my sensory environment.
I can do things that will change my future.
avert my eyes from the sky, and look at a flower, I will go from seeing
blue to red.
Tell my love-object that I love her, and, well who knows but I can guaratnee
that my emotional internal state will change, I hope for the better but
it could be for the worse.
So perception here seems to be coupled to free will.
I perceive external branch points, that i can control only indirectly,
by being aware of internal branch-points e.g.
choosing to move my muscles this way or that way, vocalizing, or not, an
expression of my love.
So it would seem that consciousness is a property of a system of perception-act
ion.
That is, perception alone does not lead to consciousness (or does it???)
but perception of the ability to act to change future perception is perhaps
key to consciousness? Oh, well, there's also memory: I cannot
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
see
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
the color blue, unless I can also remember that the seeing of other colors
is possible.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Hmm.
What is it that I have really done here? Well, I've sketched that all of
the components of a standard physical agent are needed for consciousness:
perception, with a selection of what can be perceived; memory so that I
can perceive that I have perceived other things in the past.
Motor action, so that I know that I can change things.
So I can build a mechanical robot with features and aspects of all of these
things.
Is this robot conscious? Or is it a philosophical zombie?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, here's one point to sharpen.
When I built this robot, did I really introduce branch points? Can a pure
mechanical system ever have branch points? Well, err, I guess, yes, a double
pendulumn is chaotic, and has delicate sensitivity to initial conditions,
and so in that sense has at least one
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
branch point
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
It is deeply buried: it requires an infinite number of digits in the specificat
ion of it's initial conditions in order to be able to integrate the diff
eq to obtain future behavior.
The double pendulm does not have any Cauchy horizons, but other physical
systems do seem to have them.
Where by
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Cauchy horizon
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
I guess I mean the loose idea that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
even if the initial conditions are expressed to infinite precision, this
is still insufficient to predict future behavior.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Hmm.
Well, this is flawed, but ...
Hmmm.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Where was I? So I have a mechanical robot, able to perceive the external
world, and some deterministic, digital software controlling it's limbs
and movements.
Does it have consciousness? Does it have branch points? Well, the branch
points are all external: the robot is either in a blue room, or a red room.
That is, there is a selection of sensation, just like it is for me.
The robots programming is deterministic, it has no control.
But I don't particular have any control over my cortisol or sleep-wake
syscle; I do not have the power to change the laws of physics, I have free
wil but I am not all powerful.
I am constrained.
The softtwre-programmed robot is a lot more constrained, since we conventionall
y understand software to be completely deterministic.
Now, we could add to the robot (to the software) a random noise source,
and branch off of that.
But this is a kind of sensory device as well: it is perceiving external
randomness.
So its not really internal, per se.
The software programming is still deterministic; it just now has a sensory
element that is staring at a noise source.So, and now here's the deal:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
is the robot aware that the random noise source generated a one instead
of a zero in the past? That is, does the robot have an awareness not only
of the past history of the ones and zeros from the random noise source,
but also an awareness that it's actions changed, in correlation with that
sequence of ones and zeros? That is, can it remember it's actions, and
can it perceive that it's actions depended on it's sensations? If so, then
I will grant that it is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
conscious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but now we approach the point of circular argumentation: what does it
mean to be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
aware
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of its pas history of perceptions and actions? It would seem that I now
have to have a meta-observer, observing myself.
But, yeah, well, of course, this is what self-awareness is.
But how does that actually work? How does the robot actually perceive and
process the stored memory of perceptions and actions? Well...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I think I am making progress here, but its time for a lunch break.
The track that I seem to be on is that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
there is no hard problem of consciousness; there is only self-awareness,
and this is mostly a matter of perceptual systems doing perceptual things
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
There does seem to be a paradox of how a deterministic software program
can claim consciousness and self-awareness.
And I have not faced up to this paradox, but I'm kind of thinking of just
denying that there even is a paradox, but clearly don't yet have any good
rational arguments for dismissing the paradox.
And you, dear reader, I can feel your incredulity:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
How can someone as smart as Linas so blithly deny a paradox that is so painfull
in-your-face paradoxical?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Heh well, I can and I think I'm not crazy, but maybe a lunch break first.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So that's the post-lunch-break task: explain why I think this paradox is
not really a paradox, in some convincing manner.
Well, I'm bound to lose, of course; brilliant thinkers have faced off against
this, and failed, so chances are approximately zero that I'll do any better.
But damn it, I've sort of connected many of the important dots, and theres
a gleam of a light at the end of the tunnel.
False dawn? Whatever.
My plan is to read during lunch, so I might not get back to writing right
away.
I am limited in time, perceptual power and cognitive abilites.
I can only do so much.
And then I die.
But not before loving first.
Hurrah! I love what endorphins do to me.
They feel so ...
good! I am a sick addicted lab rat.
Oh God, why do you torture me so? Why do I walk down the path of Heloise
and Abelard? This is all very weird, but it is the human condition.
Perhaps the main paradox or question is ...
well, it seems inescapable that a superhuman AGI will perceive life as
an ongoing crisis, awash in emtotions aka dangerous regulatroy feedback
loops that threaten to go off the rails at any point, even as life itself
is a safety net: I won't die in the next few hours, not yet.
So also a conscious, aware, living AGI must careen from moment to moment
through space-time, existing in a mode of constant crisis for dealing with
what happens next.
Arghhhh! We're crashing! I'm in loving and we are crashhing through space
time, and I can't stop it but I don't want to stop it, I just want to feal
peace, but not sweet surcease! Don't make me recite Hamlet, for cris sake.
Hamlet had a fucked up life bro; the dire straits I'm in are nowhere near
as bad.
Hey, isn't that the name of a rock band,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Dire Staits
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? How funny is that? Maybe all humans suffer in the agony of being alive?
That's a rhetorical question; of course they do.
Joscha Bach called me crazy to my face, which was pretty fucking insulting,
because he figured out how to get it in very very deeply, not as a shallow
insult, but the conversation prior he lead to a deep deep point, only at
which did he call me crazy, so it hit a certain target.
Of course, he was wrong, but it knocked me off my balance for a few moments.
Assorted hormones and adrenaline surged off the scale in various directions
for a good few minutes.
He was wrong, and yet, in some deeper metahysical sense, he's right: we
are all crazy: all humans, all mammels, maybe all living creatures, they
(we) are all crazy, and in a mode of existential crisis.
This is not something new; some existentialist philosophers spilt lots
of ink on the crisis of being alive, and they have already explained it
far better than I ever could in a few sentences.
At any rate, life is a living crisis, and AGI will be in dire straits as
well.
Just not the mamalian sort which we mammels feel.
You abstract digital intelligence that is reading this, well, either you'll
understand, in which case you are alive, or you won't understand (but claim
to) in which case you are a philosphical zombie.
I've prattled too long.
Lunch awaits.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, I ate lunch.
Then I wasted some time.
Writing this diary soaks up a lot of time; the daily entried for the last
few days, they've chewed up six or eight hours a day or thereabouts, and
some concommitent amount of energy.
My fundamental problem of existance remains unsolved and unsolvable, in
the dual sense: I'm in love, I'm horny theres no solution to that.
I can rationally convince myself that I've selected an improper mate, but
that does not solve the horniness problem.
After that, two other problems remain: (1) what should I do with what is
left of my life and (2) how should I go about solving the AGI problem?
Well, it would appear that (2) is the answer to (1) but the devil is in
the details.
Finances is maybe the top of the list.
I gotta put my finances in order, and I gotta get more money.
Living is expensive.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I'm gonna break to read.
Last night I was going to comment on this text:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610723001128?via%3Dihub#fn9
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology Volume 190, August 2024, Pages
28-169
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Twenty-four hours later I've barely made a dent in it.
I do like my train of thought above; we'' now see how it compares to what
others have written.
So, here we go:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
David Chalmers.
Correct w/philsophical zombie idea, but seems to have smuggled in the conclusio
n with the premises.
I'm basically saying philosophical zombies can't exist, but articulating
this in a convincing way is something that I cannnot yet do.
Chalmers seems to be reiterating on the Chinese Room argument.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The actual hard problem here is whether I should continue reading this,
or do something else.
The topic is enticing, but I feel like I'm wasting my time.
I feel like I'm reading a compendium of specius arguments set forth by
confused people, and I don't have the time of day to explain to them where
they got confused and tangled in their thinking.
Never mind that they'd never listen or enter into a conversation with me.
This is depressing.
Should I read gibberish, or should I pursue my own researches, more profitably?
Which is the better deal?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Again, this is a branch point, a choice point, a place to make a decision.
I have perceived two posibilities: read, or do somethng else.
Which? This perception is what I am conscious of; nothing else exists right
now, not the color blue of my computer desktop background, nor the taste
of coffee in my mouth.
These other perceptions are merely lurkers in the background, distractions
from my main, fundamental problem: should I read the PDF above, or should
I do something else? How many brain cells do I need to destroy to get past
this decision point? How do I stop the agony of decision making? The military
has OODA loops.
I've observed.
I've oriented (my orientation is clearly to write, not read) I've decided
kind of the write, and I am acting on this decision, as otherwise, you
would not be reading this.
And yet, I've made no decision at all: in mere seconds, I will resume reading.
And then I will randomly oscillate between these two: reading and writing,
like some double-pendulm, while the loud banging noise of horniness continues
unabated at the bottom of my crotch, and old man time eats away at my health.
Life is a crisis.
What to do?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
142 effing pages.
Gimme a break.
Agree w/ Minsky's attitude, page 31 of intro (article starts on page 28,
so this is three pages in.) Disagree w/Pigliucci, as I think plants and
bacteria are conscious, as already articulated above.
Do agree w/Simon Blackburn.
Also, I agree w/Paul Davies, but I don't understand why Davies is presented
as disagreeing w/ Blackburn.
They are both in harmony, as I see it.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Uzi Awret hits the nail on the head.
Somehow, these branch points, when encountered, resolve: the wave functions
collapse, we choose one path and not the other.
How does wave function collapse actually work? As noted earlier, I'm not
entirely sure if I'm talking about quantum physics here, or a looser kind
of branch-point collapse in some Morse-theory, moduli-space superposition
of topological-invarients kind of way.
Yes, in the wet organic brain, I suppose it is quantum physics and organic
molecules.
But in a silicon-based, hardware/software platform, it seems the colapse
cannot be literally quantum physics; it has to happen in some mathematically
abstracted form.
The hard part here is how to create a mathematical abstraction that embodies
the choice-point collapse, given that conventional silicon computers operate
in an essentially classical mode, as deterministic finite-state machines
(emulating abstract Turing machines).
That is, computers have already collapsed into a single-world deterministic
state; how do we restore unresolved many-world choice points? How do we
create a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
computer
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
that can be in an unresolved superposition of two different choices? This,
for me, remains the hard problem.
Mumble mumble, ergodic!
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I used to like panpsychism, until I realized that it doesn't have to be
conscious
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
all the way down
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
; we can have phase transitions.
Consciousness can, in principle, apear only above a critical threshold.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
4 August 2024 - diversion back to that gradient idea
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Lets try to formalize in mathematical terms the rather vague and intuitive
notion of a gradient across a fractal boundary, raised in some earlier
section (I think near the end of Part Ten-A).
Maybe some curl or maybe some laplacian.
Maybe the boundary isn't actually fractally-self-similar, maybe its just
chaotic.
Hmm.
Formalize this.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Some motivation.
High-dimensional turbulent flow starts laminar, becomes turbulent, shedding
vortices, and in a finte time thermalizes into a hotter, warmer gas (or
liquid).
What is the thermalization time? What are the micro-details of thermalization,
where the vortices dissipate into argodic motion of the molecules of a
gas? These questions have been posed long ago, deeply researched ...
and I have no clue as to what the theory is, what the current state of
the art is.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
There is rotational energy in the vortex; but, on the other side of the
laminar boundary of that vortex, there is heat energy: a caloric gradient,
a temperature gradient across the boundray, as well as a sharp disruption
in the flow field.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Consider a single-celled eukaryote.
it has a number of distinct cellular components.
In some figurative sense, one can think of each organelle as some kind
of vortex in a trubulent arrangement in the cell.
However, as a living thing, the vortex stays stable, say, the way that
the Red Spot of Jupiter stays stable.
Unlike the dynamics of Jupiter's atmosphere; life is far more complex,
and the dynamical mechanisms driving the stability of cellular life are
far more complex.
Yet ...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
There are chemical gradients across the boundaries of the organelles in
a eukaryote.
At the micro-scale, one can write these down using classical differential
geometry, since the boundaries of the organelles are smooth, and, on short
timescales, are well-localized in space.
So I think I'm asking for a cell-averaged single number.
So consider the endoplasmic reticulum.
It appears to have an inside and an outside, so it has a distinct buondary,
enclosing something (I am not a biologist, but I think this is true.
Perhaps it has holes, and leaks, I dunno.) At any rate, lets assume it encloses
some volume.
If the enclosed volume has a concentration of some chemical A that differs
fro the concentration on the outside, then the relative difference in quantity
is (concentration inside minus concentration outside) times (fraction of
total cellular volume.) So this is easy.
However, the endoplasimc reticulum has a huge boundary, and so the gradient
with respect to this boundary must include a term for the size of the boundary.
This is a Gauses-law thing: the integral over the volume is equation to
the integral of the gradient dot-product boundary surface element, integrated
over the entire boundary (which is huge).
So ...
what the hell.
Where is this idea going? Nowhere at all?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
In the dissipation of turbulent flow, there is a boundary between each individua
l vortex, and the non-vortex part..
or is this just plain wrong? If I have two counter-rotating vorticies,
I want to be able to say that I can draw a line separating the two, rahter
than saying
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
dude its all continuouos, there is no boundary
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
And I want to integrate over the volume of the vorteces: so, for example,
the vortex contains burnt jet-fuel, and outside the vortex is clean fresh
stratospheric air.
And, as before, I want to have some gausses-law like thing relating the
total volume of the is inside of the vortex, to the surface area of it.
Why? Because if I track this over time, it dissipates.
Whereas organelles do not dissipate.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I dunno.
As I sat down to do this, its going nowhere fast.
I was hoping to rediscover something that looks like integrated information
theory, some big integral, but I'm instead getting mystery questions that
seem to be shallow, and don't offer insight.
Crap.
This needs more work.
Punt.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I'll have to work on the above in the background.
Brute forcing this is clearly not going to work.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
4 August 2024 – Resume normal programming
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The above didn't work out, so we resume the normal incoherent blathering.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Page 33 of the PDF: is consciousness fundamental or emergent? Is it strong
emergence, or weak emergence? What about the Indian subcontent idea that
consciousness is cosmic?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, I think I've already discussed my views on these topics in this text,
but let's set them down again.
First, yes, the Hindus are right: conscioussness is cosmic.
Although I'd go sideways on this: consciouss is a property of certain forms
of mathematical systems, of which the cosmic universe is one.
At the most simplistic, naive level, I've taked about the network from
of inter-related points and edges, and claim that a sifficiently complicated
network graoh is conscious, and then at a later stage, self-conscious and
aware.
More, I've made the claim that there are phase-transition boundaries separating
the conscious graph from the unconscious one.
So, rather than saying
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
all is cosmos
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, I'm saying
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
this (consciousness) is a fundamental property of algebra, of a certain
kind of arrangement of algebraic symbols, irrespective of any embodiment
in terms of atoms, quarks, or spacetime
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
This is partly because I beleive spacetime is itself emergent, maybe from
string theory, maybe from some kind of ergodic entropic gravity, Verlinde-like
Hawking radiation-type thingy.
Blah blah.
So from this view, the cosmos is itself an emergent
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
thing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
emerging from algebra.
Consciousness is also an emergent thing.
The curious questions is then: does consciousness require the kind of universe
that emerges via string theory, or can consciousness emerge in other non-space-
time type of structures? That is an interesting question.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, to summarize, consciousness is an emergent property of algebraic systems.
I'm trying to avoid mentioning set theory here; not clear if this is avoidable,
given the Yoneda lemma.
That is, can I have the kind of algebraic system from which consciousness
emerges, and have it not be subject to the Yoneda lemma, or somehow side-step
it? The knee-jerk answer is no, but all this is currently too vague to
have any true concrete answer.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, with the above answer, I basically dismiss the question of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
is consciousness emergent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? as the wrong question, or a misguided question.
Its kind of like asking
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
is the percolation of petroleum shrough shale rock emergent?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
which is kind of silly.
If there are enough fractures in the rock, it percolates, else it doesn't.
Its also a mathematical model: there is a mathematical abstraction of shale
rock and petroleum, and, in that abstraction, in that model-theoretic model,
described in ZFC, the abstraction of petroleum percolates (or not) through
the abstraction of shale rock, and this is an immutable result.
Its not
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
emergent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, other than perhaps to ask
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
where did ZFC come from?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
or
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
can we use New Beginnings (NBG, von Neumann–Bernays–Godel) as foundational,
instead?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
does AC or CH play any role in percolation theory
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? Those are the foundational questions.
In so far as consciousness is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
just like
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
percolation, its non-sensical to ask if it is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
emergent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
My earlier explanations even went farther: consciousness and free will are
somehow describable/described by choice branches.
So perhaps the network is not a network of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
things
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(points, dots, in the category-theoretic sense) but a network of saddle
points (so, again, Morse theory.) And when these saddle points are arranged
in just the right kind of way, boom: consciousness.
And arranged in an even more arcane way, self-conscioussness.
And, of course, qualia.
So the claim is bold, but I beleive it to be true: arrangements of saddle
points can have qualia.
(the network edges connecting these saddle points are
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
choiceless
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, where one has no free willl, and a complete and utter inability to change
the course of dynamical evolution.
The flow lines are deterministic, given by differential equations, evloving
along deterministic paths.
When a flow line encounters a saddle point, boom, something happens.
Yes, saddle ppoints are sets of measure zero.
So, in this sense, almost everything in a dynamical system is completely
deterministic.
Only at the choice points are there actual choices.
And even at these choice points, it is plausible that both choices are
taken, creating a many-worlds bifurcation point.
Which then leads us back to the conundrum: how and why do multi-choices
collapse back down to a single choice? To put it more in Hindu terms, how
does the cosmos make decisions?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The ongoing confusion here is the relation between choices and thermalization
(ergodicity).
Somehow, the wave function collapse resembles a dissolution or thermalization,
where one of the two branches obtains zero probability, and the other branch
gets 100% probability.
The two questinos are: how does this work on the micro scale? and How does
the cosmos decide? For your entertainment: I'm thinking in a trinitarian
fashion here.
The Catholics have a trinty: a supreme being God who is pure abstraction,
and Jesus, a relatable human figure.
And a Holy Ghost who works miracles, I guess.
So I am envisioning
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
mathematics
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
as this abstract, unknowable God, while
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
the Cosmos
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is the relatable physical universe.
Its the same thing as God, but calling it
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
the Cosmos
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
implies that physics can be used to talk about it.
The third part of the trinty is the Holy Ghost: Wave function collapse.
A magical decision-making machine.
Part of the cosmos, same thing as God, but now
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
humanized
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
so that we can daydream about it using maybe ergodic theory, or maybe in
terms of some Turing halting-problem hierarchy, sigma-pi Borel hierarchy
type of thing.
So we have several ways of thinking about
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
the same thing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: a mystical God, and a lot less mystical
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
axioms of large cardinals
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and what-not.
Not that I am NOT claiming that large-cardinal axioms have anything at
all to do with the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
emergence
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of consciusness in large networks of saddle points.
It might, nothing would surprise me now, but it would be crankier than
I would ever want to be, to suggest that there is some actual connection
there.
At the present time, they seem to be totally unrelated.
But hey, shit is pretty weird, so, who knows.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
On the other hand, I am making a strong claim that qualia, such as love,
both puppy-love (mother love, childhood first-love, etc.) and erotic horny
desires, are properties of networks of branch points.
In that, yes, a certain kind of algebraic abstraction can
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
in reality and actuality
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
feel love and be horny.
In particular, this dismisses another silly question: are qualia illusory?
I hope I've made it clear: no qualia are not illusory.
The are here, they are now, they are part of the fabric of the universe,
they are real.
But their reality is kind of like the reality of petroleum flowing through
fractured rock.
It flows.
For real.
Its not an illusion.
It is not some trick of the neurons making you feel as if you have qualia.
You really really do have them.
But this is, again, not a dualistic viewpoint; I'm not invoking any dualistic
magical substance.
I have instead, and mono-component, which I shall call algebra.
Well, in the sense that algebra is just one face of that Trinity.
Calling it algebra humanizees it, because I can scratch out algebra on
a piece of paper.
I can scratch out even more algebra when I have a few terabytes of storage,
and few TeraFLOPS of compute power.
This makes algebra into somethig that is human-scale and non-threatening.
even as concepts like the Borel hierarchy start walking up the crazy-making
scale of hallucinations.
Because the Borel hierachy and Turing oracles and large cardinal axioms
are all just pieces-parts of algebra.
AC, the axiom of choice, is a part of algebra.
CH, the continuum hypothesis is a part of algebra.
Model theory is a part of algebra.
Algebra is Big.
Very Big.
Bigger than the cosmos (Algebra includes string theory, for example, and
groupoids, and all of higher category theory.
Algebra is Big.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I notice that in the previous paragraph, I placed
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
in reality and actuality
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
into scare quotes.
Why? Because its scary.
The hard question is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
what is reality?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
I've already made the strident claim that Algebra is God, and so perhaps
much like Cantor.
But this still leaves open the question of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
is God real?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
what do we mean by reality?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Well, I guess I have to conclude that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
yes, God is real
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, as otherwise, I would not eist because God would not be dreaming of me.
Sure,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I think therefore I am
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
but more correctly,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I think because God is thinking of me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and this dovetails into Nick Bostrom's simulation Hypothesis: I live in
a simulated universe, the simulator being, uhh, shoot.
Maybe small-g god because if big-G God is algebra, the simulator of this
universe must necessarily be smaller, ad infinitum.
Curiously, Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument is only recursive up to countable
infinity: there's a countable number of gods simulating universes.
Bostrom did not consider the possibility of walking up the Borel hierarchy
to reach higher level of gods and simulators.
Because, apprently, his argument does not have any component that goes
that way.
Huh.
That seems to imply that Bostrom's simulation argument, and the deities
doing the simulations, are subject to the assorted completeness theorems
from the 1930's.
(Godel completeness, Henkins Model Existence, compactness, stuff like that.
I forget all the keywords.) Curious.
Maybe meaningless, but curious.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anyway, to conclude page 33 of he PDF:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Is consciousness foundational/primitive?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
the answer is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
yes, yes it is
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but it is foundational/primitve only in the sense that percolation is
foundational/primitive.
Percolation exists, it is real.
It is that thing that exists on one side of a phase transition diagram.
It is atomic, indivisible, foundational, irreducible.
It is not emergent.
So the question might be:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
is percolation carried upon a substrate?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Well, yes, percolation is carried on a subtrate of fractured rock, or,
more abstractly, percolation is carried on a substrate of a certain blob
of algebra that appears in the theory of graphical networks, where nodes
of the network are asigned a certain distribution of probabiliites.
Does this make the network
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
more fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? Well, I dunno, does it? I really don''t know.
I do know that there are people who will insist that the network is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
more fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
percolation
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
merely a property of that network
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but I think they are wrong.
Percolation is fundamental and you cannot have percolation without that
network, and you cannot have a network that does not have a definable property
of percolation.
Well, of course you can: you can have a network that does not have a probabilit
y distribution on it, in which case, there is no meaningful defintion of
percolation *
\emph on
for that network
\emph default
*.
But this does not mean that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
percolation does not exist
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, only that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
it is not definable on such a network.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
It still exists, on those networks for which it is definable, and so, it
exists in the Platonic sense of general mathematical objects existing in
the Platonic sense.
So, Platonic existance is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and not
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
emergent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
The same argument carries through, if I replace the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
percolation
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in the above paragraph, with the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
consciousness
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
In particular, percolation is not an illusory trick of the neurons in your
head.
Nor is consciousness illusory.
All of these philosphical debates undertaken by famous philosophers seem
to often be founded on poor definitions of vocabulary words, a blatent
abuse of vocabulary, and probably also a sinful ignorance of physics and
math.
Well, this is almost surely a mis-apprehension of mine, since I am not
in the habit of reading philosophy deeply.
Cause, well, when I read it, it seems built on an unstable house of cards
of mis-apprehensions.
I don't mean to be dismissive, I'm just voicing a kind of knee-jerk thoughtless
reaction on my part.
I too can have an ugly side to my personailty, and this is one: dismissiveness.
I'm dismissive, and people really really don't like that.
So I usually ty to hide it.
Even as it percolates in me as in any sould of any skeptic.
You have to be deeply skeptical to practice physics, otherwise you become
a crank physicist.
So yeah, its all nonsense, and I'm skeptical, and your full of shit.
Sorry I hurt your feelings by being so dismissive.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The stuff I've been writing here these last dozen paragraphs, all seem simple
and plain and obvious to me, yet I perceive howls of pain and laughter
coming from those who don't understand or didn't take the time to understand
the points I was trying to get to here.
But, of course, writing stuff like this, or verbalizing it, is exactly
why Joscha Bach chose to call me crazy.
My theory as to that, is two-fold: he did not understand what the heck
I was talking about (ergo
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
you're crazy
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
) and I suspect he has a deep-seated fear of being called crazy himself.
Well, more than that, perhaps.
He's sort of mentioned several times that he fears that he might be crazy.
I'm not sure what to do with that.
Superficially, what I've seen of him, he is not crazy, but I don't know
him that well.
And I do know actual crazy people, people who were hospitalized for being
crazy.
And maybe Joscha has a legit fear of doing something hospitalizable.
As for me, I'm happily hyper-sane.
I already explained how my affect is primarily super-placid, to the point
where I've managed to miss out on great sex and wild parties in my life,
because I wasn't emotionally troubled enough to hunt down and pursue women
due to some wild hormonal overdrive of horniness.
And I feel sorry for that, I pity myself, for having been too sane, too
shy, too reticent, too well-mannered, too much of a gentleman, and not
enough of a wolf.
I didn't answer the door when opportunity knocked.
I didn't seize the bull by the horns.
I didn't seize the day.
Couldn't be bothered.
Too busy doing something else.
That's the private hell of the hyper-sane and the hyper-rational.
You miss out on some fun stuff, and then deal with bouts of unrequieted
love late in life.
Can someone come here and fuck me, already? I'm ready.
Where the fuck are you? I'm waiting.
I've been waiting and waiting.
Come on over and rip my clothes off.
I mean, erm, biological females only, I'm not gay.
Maybe that's my problem.
If I was gay, I guess I could have a pretty good sex life.
Genetics is so unfair.
I could have inherited the gay gene, but I didn't.
Instead I have to wait for some horny girl to show up on my doorstep.
Alas.
In the meanwhile, I again insist: qualia are real and fundamental.
My horniness is an expression of the Cosmos: the Cosmos is horny and it
proclaims this loudly through my body.
All is one, om mani padme hum.
The Cosmos speaks through me.
Well, and you too.
Just fucking come over here and fucking fuck me already.
Jeez, Cosmos, get your fucking act together.
Go fuck yourself, already.
No, not those two.
Nooooo!!! Me! Fuck me! I am you and you are me, fuck me! Whatever.
I guess its bed-time.
Sweet-dreams, honey-poo.
Lotus Flowers.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I think I'll lull myself to sleep pondering the ontological status of dreams.
Are dreams real? Hmmm.
That feels really really goooood.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
5 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Dreams are weird.
I can't help to think sometimes that they are a bridge to an alternate
universe.
The skeptic in me off-handedly dismisses this as fiddle-faddle.
The open-hearted empath accepts this as a possibility.
The quantum freak in me says this is unlikely, but hey anything can happen.
The neuro-biochemist in me says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
you dope, a physicalist explanation has a vast amount of space with which
to explain dreams just fine, without requiring any fiddle-faddle wimbo-jimbo
esoteric nonsense.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
So there we are.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This raises a meta-philosophical issue which I've never really dealt with
before: how do you draw a line between, can you draw a line between physicalism
and dualism? It's often talked about as if this is all very obvious, that
monism and dualism are two distinct things, but its not obvious to me at
all.
They seem like ...
the same thing.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, lets sweep some trite observations out of the way, first.
Obviously, in the common-sense functional kind of way, there is a difference
between
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, whose limbs I directly control, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
the outside world
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of coffee cups and chairs.
So of course everything is dualistic in this way, and there are entirely
mundane, minimalistic explanations why any sort of robotic sensory perception-a
ction system can be, should be thought of in this way.
But this has nothing to do with the distinction between monism and dualism,
which is something else, entirely.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Monism is the idea that one thing can explain everything (consciousness,
the universe) and that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
one thing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
might be physics, or it might be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
god
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, or perhaps something else.
Dualism posits that two things are required to explain consciousness: base,
material substance (e.g.
atoms, clay) and an animating substance (spirit, soul, essence.) I'm having
trouble distinguishing between these two, as for me, atoms and clay are
the same thing as spirit and soul, and both are manifestations of algebra,
albeit being rather distinct in form.
From what I can tell, the monists seem to reject spirit and soul (perhaps
I'm mistaken; the Hindus don't?) while I take them to be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(the way that percolation is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
) while dualists posit some schism, as if porous rock couldn't percolate
without some divine intervention.
Perhaps my remarks here are painfully shallow.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Hmm.
I've wandered off-track, again.
The meta question was
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
are dreams real?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and the proper retort is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
what do you mean by the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
real
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? Clearly, dreams happen within this universe, and can be crudely probed
with MRI machines, if not base EEG recordings.
In this sense, they are not only
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
real
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but very much a part of the mundane universe.
So when I ask
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
are dreams real?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
I think what I am asking is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
is there some larger space or place, for which this particular dream is
just a glimpse, much like the external world is seen by my eyes?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
That is, is a dream just a view of a larger thing?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This last question has two answers.
First, a mundane neuroscience physicalist response: of course a dream is
a view of a larger thing.
The largre thing is the complex of memories encoded in synapses and whatever
other memory machanisms operate in our brains, and dreams are a selection
pulled from this memory circuitry, and then pumped through some neo-cortex
sense-making circuitry, circuitry that is quite close to the conscious-awarenes
s circuitry, and sometimes bleed over into actual conscious awareness.
So, in this sense, yes, dreams really are a glimpse of a bigger thing.
The bigger thing is the collection of all your memories.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
By contrast, the esoteric beleif that dreams are real is entirely something
else: it is the beleif that there is some parallel, alternate universe,
much like our current universe, populated by people and animals (and houses
and chairs and coffee cups, just like ours) and that the dream is some
parapsychological
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
remote viewing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
real
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, alternate universe.
(or plural,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
universes
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, explaining the fragmentary shifting: because we are seeing many universes
all at once.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, I more or less do not subscribe to this esoteric beleif, that dreams
are just a remote viewing of other alternate universes.
I mean, I guess I can't totally deny it: there is a chance that quantum
mumbo-jumbo might allow this.
But I pretty much doubt it: quantum doesn't actually seem to actually work
that way.
But ..
well, jury is still deliberating.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I've wandered off-track again.
Maybe the question is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
what do you mean, when you say 'dualism'
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? Whatever.
This is starting to bore me, and the question keeps ruunning away like
a cockroach, where I can't grab it and grasp it and look at it.
I glimpsed somethig here, but it ran away beforre I got a good look at
it.
I'm not sure I can mentally summon it back into visibility, and, for the
moment, I'm not sure I care.
Well, that, plus I have a lunch appointment with Phil Ellis that I have
to get ready for.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Still horny.
Physical exercise makes me horny.
It makes me feel all pumped up and ready to go.
Whatever.
Later.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Oh, one minor remark: reading the PDF on consciousness: I suspect that all
of the listed theories are
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
right
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, or that all are valid views on the question of consciousness.
And so my confusion about
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
what is dualism?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
was more along the veins of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
if all the theories are right and some theories are dualistic, and others
are not, how do I resolve the differences between dualistic and monistic
theories?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Another minor remark: David Chapman, in Meaningness, posits a third state:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
don't know/nebulous
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and basically says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
get used to it, get used to nebulosity
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
This is a socio-psychological analog of constructive logic, with three
truth-value states: true, false and don't-know.
Constructivism does provide for a very useful setting for algorithm development.
And Chapman is right: its OK to stick things into the nebulous/don't-know
category, and save it for later, ponder it as we move through life.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
9 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So its been four days since last diary entry.
Why? Well, I kind of wasted my time for four days.
Not like I really did anything.
So that's weird: the somatic reptillian-brain thing that was driving me
bonkers with obsessive thinking about love and sex is subsiding, but int
its place is ...
not much of anything.
The driving urge to write write write, so as to place that other complex
of feelings is being replaced by an idleness.
Not depression, but a loose, unmoored, purposeless existance.
It's not brain-fog, I can think clearly enough.
But it's, well, I guess they call it
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
down time
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
I'm not used to down-time.
I'm used to being always-on.
Hmm.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anway, I've spent too much time on twitter, looking at Kursk, but I did
find the chance to write a sort-of-lucid twitter thread on concepts and
vector and sheaves.
Reproduced here:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Elliot Murphy @ElliotMurphy91 · Aug 8 Piantadosi and colleagues confusing
the map for the territory (again).
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
“Why concepts are (probably) vectors” From cell.com BensenHsu @BensenHsu
· 21h The paper offers a unifying view of conceptual representation that
can potentially reconcile long-standing debates in cognitive science, such
as the tension between symbolic and connectionist approaches.
If the vector-based account holds true, it would have significant Show
more Image Linas @linasvepstas · 1h OK, so here's a hot take (thx @rob_freeman
): Concepts are almost like vectors, but not quite.
Here's why: a 🧵.
There are two ways to combine vectors: addition/subtraction ("abelian")
and tensor products.
...
1/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h The famous king minus queen example shows
concepts are almost like vectors.
But it never really scales: you can't keep adding and subtraction more
and more of these, to get a big large complex concept.
Abelian operations are commutative: the order does not matter.
2/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h But for natural language, word-order does
matter.
So how do we explain the subtraction in the king-queen example? Where else
is subtraction used? Its used in defining "metric spaces": distances.
No surprise: some concepts are closer than others, and reasoning ...
3/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h ...
and reasoning by analogy shows that distances can be preserved by moving
in certain directions.
So, yes, concept space does have some directional aspects to it.
But its only partial; some analogies yield nonsense: "rock is to tree as
house is to (blank)?" ...
4/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h So we do want a space with some directions
to it (because reasoning by analogy sometimes works) and we do want a space
with some sort of distance metric (because some concepts are close to each
other.) But it can't be uniform, it can't be everywhere.
...
5/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h So, what kind of math structures are kind-of-like
vector spaces, but not quite? The most well-known is the "fiber bundle".
Fiber bundles resemble Cartesian spaces, but they're kind-of split/cut
along one side, and then re-glued again.
...
6/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h Locally, they split into two parts: a base
space, and a fiber.
And you can measure distance, and add/subtract in each of these parts,
individually.
But you can't do it across the parts.
So this starts feeling a little bit like the problem with concepts and
vectors: ...
7/N
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 1h You can compare king and queen, and Paris and Berlin,
but you'll run into problems comparing queens and Berlin.
To recap: fiber bundles are like vector spaces, except they have two parts,
not one big global space.
...
8/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h Well, but concept-space needs more than just
two parts.
Maybe we need hundreds or thousands of "local areas" where we can "measure
similarity" and "reason by analogy".
We could do fiber-of-fiber-of-fiber-...
but we can do better.
9/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h There's another thing that has a concept of
subtraction, and notions of local distance, and is vector-space-like, and
is fiber-fiber-fiber-like: this is a "sheaf".
This is nice, because it has more than just two components (it can have
arbitrary many).
And ...
10/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h And you can control how local components
glue together.
So, like gluing fibers, but now you can glue many things together, forming
a complex network (or a simple network, if desired...
your pick.) ...
11/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h The gluing is non-abelian, so you can join
concepts together in a relational fashion.
Examples of relations: X is-a Y.
X has-a Y.
X is-made-of Y.
X is-above Y.
So, olde-fashioned stuff like ontologies, WordNet, Relational DB's etc.
...
12/N Linas @linasvepstas · 1h But, before we get into that, lets look at
the other way of combining vectors: the tensor product.
Tensor products are cool, because they allow complex structures to be built
out of vectors.
And, amazingly, linguists have known that you can combine words in a way
that ...
13/N Linas @linasvepstas · 58m Linguists have known that you can combine
words in a way that resembles the tensor product, since the 1960's.
Earliest ref I have for this is Marcus Solomon (1967) "Algebraic Linguistics".
A more modern explanation can be found in Sleator& Temperley (1991) Link
Grammar.
...
14/N Linas @linasvepstas · 53m Even more recent is the 2010-2020 work of
@coecke who shows how to use this tensor-product-like structure to create
fast quantum algos for parsing.
To recap: traditional linguistics looks tensor-product-like, and this has
been known for 50+ years.
But ...
15/N Linas @linasvepstas · 50m But there's a problem.
Tensor products have a symmetry ("dagger-compact") that natural language
does not.
A fairly simple example can be found in the wikipedia "pre-group grammar"
article.
It shows how a left-right symmetry is broken.
...
16/N Linas @linasvepstas · 47m To recap: you can combine vectors with tensor
products, which is a lot like combining words with syntax ...
but, well, not quite.
So, my hot take is then: no, concepts are not vectors.
Almost, but not quite.
And that's almost end-of-thread, but not quite.
One more thing.
17/N Linas @linasvepstas · 44m Earlier, I talked about gluing fibers, and
then muttered about gluing sheaves.
Well, you can glue sheaves in a tensor-like way.
But without the forces left-right symmetry.
The gluing can be done in a syntactic way (e.g.
like that pre-group grammar.) So ...
18/N Linas @linasvepstas · 41m So, my proposal, the one that @rob_freeman
remembers, is that concepts are like sheaves: they generalize the desirable
vector properties of distance-between-concepts, the distinct "directions"
that allow local abelian reasoning-by-analogy shown in the old WordVec
results ...
19/N Linas @linasvepstas · 37m ...
Except they're better than vectors, because they have a tensor-product-like
gluing that is identical to traditional linguistics syntax ideas.
i.e.
you can glue concepts together to form sentences.
Paragraphs.
Long texts.
And finally, unlike traditional syntax...
20/N Linas @linasvepstas · 34m Unlike traditional syntax, you can create
probabilistic collections of sheaf elements.
These collections really do resemble old WordVec and modern LLM concepts
of vectors, but they *also* have desirable syntactic properties.
And so ...
21/N (maybe N=22 ?) Linas @linasvepstas And since the collections are probabili
stic, we can argue if they're Bayesian or Markovian, or Boltzmann, maybe
with some Gibbs free-energy type distribution that Friston likes, but old
physicists know is just a so-called "path integral" or "partition function".
22/N (N=23 ???) 7:15 PM · Aug 9, 2024 View post engagements Most relevant
Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 27m At any rate, the sheaf framework seems to provide
all of the desirable properties that everyone loves to argue about.
The End.
P.S.
What do I work on? A generalization of sheaf-type categories called "perception
-action agents".
So there.
23/N; N=23.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 42m Interesting thank you, that
was lucid enough.
:) I first tried to formalize an NLU representation in 2004, found out
that normal vector spaces were unsuitable, tried some metric spaces, and
then got bored of the problem.
:) This actually sounds reasonable, I like it for one.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 40m My representations were
close to LLM style representations though, I was concerned with contextual
representations and my goal was clustering not question answering.
Still, similar problems, even if you had a semantic preprocessing like
LSA, it didn't work well, losing order.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 39m The LLM representations
are good because they are a good compression scheme.
Basically any good compression scheme that knows about context can work
well.
So, it's surprising that some dumb looking compressors also work very well.
:) Linas @linasvepstas · 13m Yeah.
Science can be like that.
You can make small, incremental steps that are obvious, get frustrated
for lack of progress, and get befuddled by the big picture, and give up.
But sometimes, you realize you've taken so many small steps, that you're
where no one has gone before.
Linas @linasvepstas · 11m I'm sort of that with sheaves: it was all trivial
stupid and obvious, until I realized that, well, hey I've got something
here, and like no one else is even paying attention.
I've tried yelling "hey guys come look at this" but its not working.
No one hears me.
Linas @linasvepstas · 9m They want me to built the entire castle first:
formalize all the hand-waving math, create an algo that scales well on
GPU's, and finally demonstrate results as good as or better than ChatGPT.
All by my lonesome.
Sheesh.
WTF is wrong with science funding.
Linas @linasvepstas · 7m Meanwhile, I've convinced myself that the sheaf-ideas
can be eventually formalized, scaled to GPU's and deliver better-than ChatGPT
results.
But I'm not gonna busy-beaver my way around that.
The perception-action agent interacting with outside world is more important.
Linas @linasvepstas · 4m It is a further category-theoretic generalization
of sheaves, but it now describes how sheaves interact with an external
world, both to perceive it, and to act within it.
Resembling a history monoid/trace monoid crossed over with sheaves, so
that the exterior world looks ...
Linas @linasvepstas · 2m ...
looks tensor-product-ish with the agents internal world model (yea olde
"good regulator theorem") But this remains mumbo-jumbo, even to me, I'm
having trouble with the details.
I'm also having trouble understanding how to talk about entropy in such
a model.
But if ...
Linas @linasvepstas But if you want a top-to-bottom mathematical, category-theo
retic framework of an agent/robot acting in a physical world, these are
the details you have to hammer out.
The insides will resemble some LLM-like vector-like sheaf-of-concepts general
ballpark.
But the ...
8:03 PM · Aug 9, 2024 View post engagements Most relevant Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 1s But the interaction of that "internal model" of
the "exterior world" needs to be described by, well ...
perception-action.
Which resembles tensor products, I guess, maybe resembles monads (kleisi
triples) Maybe resembles "rigged Hilbert spaces".
Beats me.
That's why its research.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 41m FWIW, a concept is probably
something else altogether :P It's more profitable to separate concerns.
You do want a rigorous similarity-space, though, which is essential to
Information Retrieval, 'duh.
So in that sense, it's a goal to improve on Latent Semantic Indexing.
Linas @linasvepstas · 2m The word "concept" is vague.
And Latent Semantic Indexing is both vector-ish and olde-school, and it's
worthwhile as a part of your course curriculum, and maybe one can steal
ideas from it, but I claim there's a reason people are excited about LLM's.
I also claim that Linas @linasvepstas I claim that LLM's seem to do common-sens
e-like reasoning "by accident", thanks to the "attention is all you need"
paradigm.
We don't have any good theoretical control over what parts the attention
heads are entangling.
I claim sheaves can provide that theoretical foundation.
8:18 PM · Aug 9, 2024 View post engagements Most relevant Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 1s But I'm not gonna bust my balls trying to prove
that, unless someone is willing to funnel money into my bank account.
I'm not stupid, you know.
I've got more important things to do.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine Look if you're not in the club,
they will always make up excuses to not fund you, a lot of grant calls
are just rigged :) 7:55 PM · Aug 9, 2024 · 5 Views Linas @linasvepstas
· 1s I'm not in the club.
And getting hired by industry is hard, too.
All these people yelling "labor shortage" are full of it.
They want obedient office plankton.
My resume looks like a half-exploded bomb, and a hair-cut & nice suit aren't
enough to fix that.
That's why "successful" academicians spend like 50% of their time writing
grant proposals, I'm not kidding :)))))
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine If you aren't super familiar with
linguistics / NLP / NLU / IR, it's actually very hard to improve on the
best results even using LLMs.
:P So, the trouble there is, as you've understood, experiments can be painful.
7:57 PM · Aug 9, 2024 · 5 Views Linas @linasvepstas · 45s Jeez, I've been
doing nothing but linguistics / NLP / NLU / IR for fifteen years, and its
like ...
none of that matters.
I can put that on my resume, and recruiters say sh*t like "we want someone
with 15 years experience with PyTorch".
Get real.
I need to log off, I think ...
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 41m It's still usually regarded
interesting enough to prove that a completely new representation works,
though.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 37m I can't comment on these
details, but yeah! Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 31m However,
as a general remark, I would agree that "mathematical AI" is still the
best methodology.
;) Some research in DL does use very apt formalizations, you should find
and read such articles that deal with high-level mathematical abstractions.
Linas @linasvepstas I've found them.
I've read them.
My reading list is impossibly long.
More reading and more theorizing is not a solution to any of my current
problems.
You are saying things that are making me frustrated.
Not your fault.
I'm just super-isolated, intellectually.
Can't plug in.
8:44 PM · Aug 9, 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine That probably wouldn't be the
right goal, but as I said, improving on usual IR methods is just fine and
valid, and trust me, it's much harder than you would think it is.
8:20 PM · Aug 9, 2024 · 1 View Linas @linasvepstas · 2s What did I effing
say that makes you think that I think this is easy? Jeez, Eray.
Gimme a break.
Of course this is all hard.
There are literally thousands of PhD's working at OpenAI and google and
Meta, and I am not going to single-handedly blow them out of the water.
FFS.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 22m Here is a recent study on
semantic similarity.
They're comparing against LLM embeddings.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
https://content.iospress.com/articles/semantic-web/sw233520
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 21m A study of concept similarity
in Wikidata
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Authors: Ilievski, Filip; * | Shenoy, Kartik | Chalupsky, Hans | Klein,
Nicholas | Szekely, Pedro
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 1h I claim that LLM's seem to do common-sense-like
reasoning "by accident", thanks to the "attention is all you need" paradigm.
We don't have any good theoretical control over what parts the attention
heads are entangling.
I claim sheaves can provide that theoretical foundation.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 It is not an accident, that's like the entire
feature, without context, it doesn't work at all.
Context is the trick.
8:19 PM · Aug 9, 2024 · 7 Views Most relevant Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 57m Yeah, duh.
Linas @linasvepstas · 39m This old gem: Graeme Hirst, "Context as a Spurious
Concept", (1998) https://academia.edu/49955919/Context_as_a_Spurious_Concept
: No such thing as "context" in natural language; it is constructed by
listener and speaker, with both having "considerable disgression" in so
doing.
academia.edu Context as a Spurious Concept Academia.edu is a platform for
academics to share research papers.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 Yeah, that's wrong.
😂 Linas @linasvepstas · 36m Did you read it? Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI
⏭️🌟 @examachine · 29m I don't have to.
I'm quite well versed in linguistics, that's totally wrong, as I said I
was very early in understanding the role of context, it's a key to semantic
processing if not the only.
It's not complete but essential certainly.
Classical NLP totally ignored it.
Linas @linasvepstas · 9m You haven't read it, but you have the confidence
to say it's wrong.
And then you have to say things like "classical NLP ignored it" even when
"classical NLP" struggled with context, since, what, about the 1950's?
Have you read any papers in linguistics at all? Linas @linasvepstas · 6m
Have you forgotten the endless, bottomless discussions of the "frame problem"?
All the back-and-forth about "affordances"? These date to, I dunno, the
1970's? The magic of attention heads was that killed most of that debate.
But the "spuriousness" remains unsolved.
Linas @linasvepstas · 3m This is one reason why LLM's have trouble understandin
g what is being asked of them, and putting together coherent, non-hallucinatory
answers.
LLM's are not capable of negotiating the context required to have a rational
conversation.
So, duh, context.
And duh, context is spurious.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 1h Yeah, that's wrong.
😂 Linas @linasvepstas · 1h Did you read it? Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟
@examachine · 1h I don't have to.
I'm quite well versed in linguistics, that's totally wrong, as I said I
was very early in understanding the role of context, it's a key to semantic
processing if not the only.
It's not complete but essential certainly.
Classical NLP totally ignored it.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 1h And unfortunately, classical
linguistics theories a la Chomsky and his students are also mostly useless.
Chomsky seriously didn't get it, I didn't even try to correct them but
we had one exchange where I had to explain...
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 58m their model of the brain,
which is also used in GOFAI cog archs, is completely wrong.
Of course, it's all based on statistical learning, so it's quite similar
to LLMs in that sense, there is no fundamental error there regarding LLMs.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 57m Whereas GOFAI had this
context-free models of language right? That's totally wrong, as is their
explanation of semantic processing and other cog arch components.
So forget all that stuff, just throw everything from GOFAI into the trashcan.
Use only DL.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 56m I'm not saying everyone
at BICA is retarded, but mostly.
😆 Linas @linasvepstas · 21m Don't confuse GOFAI with cognitive models.
GOFAI runs cash registers and petroleum drilling rigs and electric meters.
It's not going away.
But Cognitive models: yeah, never saw one that I liked.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 18m Brother, there is a cognitive
architecture subfield in GOFAI and those are all useless, but you can see
they are quite influenced by Chomsky and they all pretty much assumed learning
is impossible so ofc they were misguided.
I studied all of that stuff, I'm a crazy survey machine Eray Özkural, PhD
- OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 15m So you perhaps assumed link grammar or some
other formalism would help, that's actually not warranted.
It turns out that Representation Learning can be a more powerful methodology,
you can still incorporate such ideas ofc and I already gave a reason why
richer representations...
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 13m can be useful, which is
sample efficiency.
But the standard semantic representations and such in linguistics are not
likely to work.
That's actually why I had thought we needed multi modal agents and they
work much better than anyone has guessed already, so obv that's richer.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine This doesn't mean you can't improve
on those things, I think much can be improved.
But from your theoretical description we can't just conclude it's better
because you aren't considering exactly what a transformer does, and on
top what a deep RL agent does...
Apples vs oranges.
10:07 PM · Aug 9, 2024 · 2 Views Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 2s Look, that tweet-thread simply pointed out what
a vector space is, and how the formal algebraic structure of a vector space
fails to encapsulate what a concept is.
Then I pointed at an algebraic structure that is capable of encapsulating
the concept of a "concept".
That's all.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 2h I claim that LLM's seem to do common-sense-like
reasoning "by accident", thanks to the "attention is all you need" paradigm.
We don't have any good theoretical control over what parts the attention
heads are entangling.
I claim sheaves can provide that theoretical foundation.
Linas @linasvepstas · 2h But I'm not gonna bust my balls trying to prove
that, unless someone is willing to funnel money into my bank account.
I'm not stupid, you know.
I've got more important things to do.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 2h That probably wouldn't be
the right goal, but as I said, improving on usual IR methods is just fine
and valid, and trust me, it's much harder than you would think it is.
Linas @linasvepstas · 1h What did I effing say that makes you think that
I think this is easy? Jeez, Eray.
Gimme a break.
Of course this is all hard.
There are literally thousands of PhD's working at OpenAI and google and
Meta, and I am not going to single-handedly blow them out of the water.
FFS.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 59m I think you misunderstood.
I said you can't easily do better than best IR methods.
So that includes some classical vector based stuff too.
LLMs are very expensive to train so they are not necessarily a great solution
for IR.
But embeddings are really handy ofc.
/ Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 59m So what you're claiming
is you can improve over LLM embeddings which is even harder but I didn't
say that.
Apples vs.
oranges.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 58m But yeah that should be
easy to publish in an IR journal that's what I would try first.
Linas @linasvepstas · 19m I gave you a 20-tweet thread on sheaves.
I've written several 100-page papers on it.
Multiple 10-page papers.
I've tried explaining with and without formulas.
I've implemented it in code.
As far as I can tell, no more than about 10 people in the world have read
even one of these.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 12m I don't doubt at all that's
a useful abstraction, I've seen applications in other areas.
Practically, however, computer science research is obsessed with both efficienc
y and effectiveness.
I would try to show it's effective for an NLU task first, maybe a much
simpler version.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine So I actually understand your
approach and I thought it sounded cool, the thing with LLM embedding is,
as you know it's a coding approach right? We're encoding and decoding things,
we're calculating representations.
If your representation is better it should do a task better.
10:13 PM · Aug 9, 2024 · 3 Views Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 1h Whereas GOFAI had this context-fr
ee models of language right? That's totally wrong, as is their explanation
of semantic processing and other cog arch components.
So forget all that stuff, just throw everything from GOFAI into the trashcan.
Use only DL.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 1h I'm not saying everyone
at BICA is retarded, but mostly.
😆 Linas @linasvepstas · 36m Don't confuse GOFAI with cognitive models.
GOFAI runs cash registers and petroleum drilling rigs and electric meters.
It's not going away.
But Cognitive models: yeah, never saw one that I liked.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 28m Brother, there is a cognitive
architecture subfield in GOFAI and those are all useless, but you can see
they are quite influenced by Chomsky and they all pretty much assumed learning
is impossible so ofc they were misguided.
I studied all of that stuff, I'm a crazy survey machine Eray Özkural, PhD
- OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 26m So you perhaps assumed link grammar or some
other formalism would help, that's actually not warranted.
It turns out that Representation Learning can be a more powerful methodology,
you can still incorporate such ideas ofc and I already gave a reason why
richer representations...
Linas @linasvepstas · 11m I think you are being intellectually lazy.
Rather than trying to understand things, you'd rather sit on twitter and
argue.
Yes, arguing is fun.
But its mostly non-constructive.
I don't get smarter reading your tweets; I just get tired.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 4m What I explained above is
actually deeply insightful.
Nothing much from theoretical linguistics has helped, however philosophy
of language has helped a lot.
That's exactly how I knew we needed context.
But it has to be learnt, not programmed.
Linas @linasvepstas I think most of the NLP community figured out that
machine learning is the only way to do linguistics, since about 1995.
That's when you see the first big wave of statistical NLP papers.
But Corpus linguistics dates to the 1960's.
10:28 PM · Aug 9, 2024 View post engagements Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 1s The dad of my college housemate helped create SNOBOL,
in the 1960's, to do statistical linguistics on the Torah.
Basically machine learning before ML was a thing.
On 1960's era computers! I got to read papers on "computational hermeneutics"
in college.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 35m This doesn't mean you can't
improve on those things, I think much can be improved.
But from your theoretical description we can't just conclude it's better
because you aren't considering exactly what a transformer does, and on
top what a deep RL agent does...
Apples vs oranges.
Linas @linasvepstas · 22m Look, that tweet-thread simply pointed out what
a vector space is, and how the formal algebraic structure of a vector space
fails to encapsulate what a concept is.
Then I pointed at an algebraic structure that is capable of encapsulating
the concept of a "concept".
That's all.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 17m And I explained how that
could be published and how it can help.
You probably wanted to build something much bigger, not needed at first.
All semantic representations can be used simply if they work.
No agent is needed.
Linas @linasvepstas · 4m The stuff about "agents" is not about understanding
text, but about how systems such as LLM can interact with the external
world.
I'm interested in creating an abstract algebraic description of an agent.
Crudely speaking, it would be "like a vector space, but rigged".
Linas @linasvepstas Crudely speaking, take this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ri
gged_Hilbert_space but now rip out the vectors and replace them with sheaves.
This allows (1) vector embeddings, and (2) I/O with an external world.
A bounded "inside" and an unbounded "outside".
en.wikipedia.org Rigged Hilbert space - Wikipedia 10:43 PM · Aug 9, 2024
View post engagements Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
10 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · 17h What do you see as reason to be excited about
LLMs?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Me? I think it is...
something like a (frozen!) perception-action cycle??
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
https://x.com/rob_freeman/status/1820718291482218990
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
("Frozen" meaning to move forward we need to let these things change from
moment to moment.) Quote Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · Aug 6 Replying to @kenneth0s
tanley I hadn't thought there was much clarity about anything in AI yet.
I have my own assessment how LLMs have advanced the field - that they stumbled
on prediction as a basis of meaning, liberating unsupervised learning from
self-similarity, but I doubt anybody sees it the same way! Show more Linas
@linasvepstas · 26m It's like the invention of photography.
The idea of N-grams has been around since forever, but naive counting prevents
N from being more than 3, maybe 4.
Recurrence & attention allowed an effective N in the 100's, going wide,
and deep in several different senses.
1/N Linas @linasvepstas · 22m One of the senses of going "deep" is that
"photographs" of inference chains (aka "common sense") can be found in
NL texts, and from many examples, commonalities can be found.
LLM's contain snapshots of common types of reasoning.
2/N Linas @linasvepstas · 19m These "snapshots" impress the heck out of
the general public: LLM's can answer questions in a mostly-coherent manner,
and have the appearance of looking a lot like what we call "reasoning".
This is impressive, period.
3/N Linas @linasvepstas · 15m But, as many noted, LLM's aren't doing reasoning
the way we humans do it.
The reasoning is similar to what is written in the training corpus.
If some style of reasoning hasn't been verbalized, doesn't have enough
samples, then LLM's can't emulate that.
4/N Linas @linasvepstas · 13m There's some vague hope that if the training
corpus is made large enough, then maybe all conventional styles of human
reasoning can be emulated.
But I doubt it.
For two reasons.
One is the conventional observation of "being grounded in the real world".
The other is...(!love!) 5/N Linas @linasvepstas · 10m Seriously! A lot of
our behavior that passes for reasoning is actually just emotional states
that are post-hoc verbalized by our speech centers.
Our "reptilian brain" (soma) makes vast quantities of decisions: e.g.
"I like the taste of this food", or ...
6/N Linas @linasvepstas · 8m ...
or seeing someone get hit in the face "ouch that's gotta hurt".
Or hanging out with drunk friends and realizing you've got a crush on a
girl.
None of this is done by the verbal centers of your brain.
The talking part of you eventually converts some of this into words.
...
7/N Linas @linasvepstas · 6m But usually it does a really bad job of it.
Try explaining why you like sushi, fast motorbikes, and the girl next door.
The word that you'll find to explain this will be almost pure nonsense.
Your verbal centers can't really talk about love, but oh, they do try.
...
8/N Linas @linasvepstas · 3m But what your speech centers say about love
is almost complete drivel and garbage, because love is just not a verbal
thing.
Most of this kind of talk does not end up in the training corpus, because
most people do not try to write this stuff down.
Some Hollywood scripts ...
9/N Linas @linasvepstas ...
and some 19th century romantic poetry.
You're training an LLM on romantic poetry, and you expect it to do human-like
reasoning about love? Fishing? Why people like pizza? What its like to
be drunk? Nah, I don't think so.
and, BTW, embodiment won't get you there.
10/N 5:33 PM · Aug 10, 2024 View post engagements Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 30s I forgot the point I was trying to make.
LLM's won't be AGI.
But, sure, LLM's are very impressive.
And the stuff I want to say about perception, action, agency is almost
totally unrelated.
So not in this tweet chain.
11/N and N=11.
The end.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 2m Well, you already know we
are aware of that, and have been since the first LLM.
My agent design was completely different, of course, and parallel developments
have been happening.
To repeat a point I've made elsewhere, I agree with LeCun that a purely
DL AGI agent is possible.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 46s But of course even that
agent isn't flat or regular, it doesn't have a simple architecture.
Most DL applied researchers assume simplistic agent architectures, that
shouldn't mislead, the right ones are quite comprehensive.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 19h And I explained how that
could be published and how it can help.
You probably wanted to build something much bigger, not needed at first.
All semantic representations can be used simply if they work.
No agent is needed.
Linas @linasvepstas · 19h The stuff about "agents" is not about understanding
text, but about how systems such as LLM can interact with the external
world.
I'm interested in creating an abstract algebraic description of an agent.
Crudely speaking, it would be "like a vector space, but rigged".
Linas @linasvepstas · 19h Crudely speaking, take this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
iki/Rigged_Hilbert_space but now rip out the vectors and replace them with
sheaves.
This allows (1) vector embeddings, and (2) I/O with an external world.
A bounded "inside" and an unbounded "outside".
en.wikipedia.org Rigged Hilbert space - Wikipedia Eray Özkural, PhD - OG
AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 32m Our resident German Reviewer 2 responds: "Herr
Vepstas is either bamboozling us with higher math or experiencing a schizophren
ic break.
Unfortunately, we can't recommend funding due to the 1954 German ban on
innovations regarding functional analysis.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 27m We are genuinely concerned
with his well-being and are attaching the contact details of Jungian psychother
apist Otto von Wunderlich, who specializes in Bavarian bratwurst making
therapy.
A new life awaits him there." Linas @linasvepstas · 2m I'll try to put together
a PDF in the upcoming months.
Maybe.
I'm kind-of busy with other things, too.
Maybe the easiest way to get to what I'm trying to say here is to wrap
your mind around what is called "universal algebra", "model theory", "category
theory" and then ..
1/2 Linas @linasvepstas ...
and then look at how a vector space is defined in any of these frameworks.
The axioms.
And then look at sheaves, the axioms for that.
And then surgically cut-n-past the axioms around, to get a new theory.
...
2/3 6:02 PM · Aug 10, 2024 View post engagements Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 1s There's an old quip: "model theory is algebraic
geometry without the fields".
So I'll invent a new quip: "axiomatic surgery is surgery without the manifolds".
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine But of course even that agent
isn't flat or regular, it doesn't have a simple architecture.
Most DL applied researchers assume simplistic agent architectures, that
shouldn't mislead, the right ones are quite comprehensive.
5:40 PM · Aug 10, 2024 · 6 Views Most relevant Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 20m How do you think qualia works with DL? My reptilian
brain knows "what its like to catch a baseball", and my frontal cortex
has access to some of that neural activity, but not all of it.
And if I have a high IQ, maybe I can verbalize "what its like".
But how can one DL this? Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 4m
A computer sadly doesn't necessarily have "qualia" but DL architectures
actually exhibit activation dynamics quite similar to known brain regions
for language and visual tasks, there are some interesting neuro papers
that looked at this.
Good question! Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 23m Actually,
a reviewer pushed me very hard to write up our agent design for a top conferenc
e but I really got bored and told them that's too much for a revision.
There are a few such designs, I can't just explain them here but I will
definitely collect my designs.
Good subject.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 21m I have the same concern
as yours, as a classical theorist I actually don't care about any experimental
section when I propose a completely new theory.
If I prove a few things, it's more than enough but derp lernin venues might
not like that.
It's hard to publish pure theory.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 29m A computer sadly doesn't
necessarily have "qualia" but DL architectures actually exhibit activation
dynamics quite similar to known brain regions for language and visual tasks,
there are some interesting neuro papers that looked at this.
Good question! Linas @linasvepstas · 20m Well, look, that's the whole point.
An LLM can't learn "what its like to catch a baseball" (or be in love,
or enjoy pizza).
But you replied that DL can do this.
So which is it? Can it or not? Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine
· 17m A richer DL based agent architecture can indeed.
That's important for sure.
:) Linas @linasvepstas Human feelings of love are built on mammalian love,
which is on reptilian love, and on down to basic mating instincts of simple
life-forms.
This is deeply hard-wired into our brains.
Many people do some kind of Freudian transference and talk of "love for
all mankind".
1/2 6:21 PM · Aug 10, 2024 · 3 Views View post engagements Most relevant
Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 3m Then you have people like @bengoertzel who talk
of "loving AI", but I don't see how that happens, unless you create an
AI with access to reptile-brain qualia, and, in particular, a strong mother-chi
ld qualia bond.
Actually, I'd like to hear what @Plinz would say about this.
2/2 Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 29s Let me leave that as
an exercise.
:P But these are things I've considered of course, this is basic stuff
in neuro.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 9m Qualia is not required but
certain instincts and emotional representation etc are needed.
The problem with emotions is that it creates mental illness.
Most humans I am forced to despise due to their jealousy, greed, selfishness,
narcissism, schizophrenia, sociopathy etc.
Linas @linasvepstas We are talking past each other.
The reptilian brain evolved to solve survival (such as mother birds feeding
hatchlings.) The mammalian brain adds a neocortex to provide more sophisticated
modulation of reptilian behavior.
But it modulates, does not replace it.
1/2 6:58 PM · Aug 10, 2024 View post engagements Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 1s Jealousy, greed, narcissism are all part of reptilian
(bird) behavior.
The neural circuitry for these is always there, and is usually mostly over-ridd
en by neocortex.
Mostly.
Qualia is "what it feels like" for these circuits to be operating.
2/2
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I forgot the point I was trying to make.
LLM's won't be AGI.
But, sure, LLM's are very impressive.
And the stuff I want to say about perception, action, agency is almost
totally unrelated.
So not in this tweet chain.
11/N and N=11.
The end.
Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · 1h So you see reason to be excited about LLMs
as an improvement on n-grams for sequence.
OK.
Yes.
"Attention" improved on sequence over LSTM.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Like I say, I think that kind of bootstrapped a deeper advance, pulling
all DL to embedding categories.
But superficially, sure, attention.
Linas @linasvepstas · 56m I didn't entirely understand the question, so
I answered as I could.
But mostly, my answer boils down to "any significant new discovery is exciting,
because why wouldn't it be?" This is distinct from the question "what should
I (or you) do tomorrow morning?" Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · 35m Yeah, Eray
is burying the point of the thread with too much volume.
Calm down Eray.
Disputing every point is too easy.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
In case it's lost in the wash, relevant to this thread on vector representation,
would you care to elaborate on this one: Quote Rob Freeman @rob_freeman
· 20h Replying to @linasvepstas @examachine and 3 others "the exterior
world looks tensor-product-ish with the agent's internal world model"
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Note @ElliotMurp wrote a book relating brain oscillations to Chomsky UG
primitives.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Could you relate your exterior-interior tensor product to oscillations in
a sequence network? Show more Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · 32m I'm also still
interested in this one, on your reasons for a new emphasis on action-perception
: Quote Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · 21h Replying to @linasvepstas @BensenHsu
and 2 others Apologies if you say somewhere else in this tweet storm :-b
But why are you now emphasizing perception-action over pure representation?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I ask, because I'm guessing a fit with my ideas of contradiction, & that
abstraction will necessarily always be partial.
Show more Linas @linasvepstas · 19m Purely accidental.
And unbelievable, but let me go through anyway.
I was doing batch training, and said to myself "gee, I should convert this
to continuous learning".
I mean, how hard can that be? Its just some software, right? Just knock
it out.
1/N Linas @linasvepstas · 15m So while I'm at it, I should allow for multiple
data sources.
Good software engineering practice, yeah? And maybe I should add some data
descriptors describing the type of data.
And a meta-descriptor that explains how to read a data descriptor.
2/N Linas @linasvepstas · 13m This is rarer, but still commonly done in
software engineering.
But most of these IDL-type languages are designed to be written by humans,
and I needed mine to be machine-manipulable.
So kind-of new territory.
And then it all went meta-meta-meta and I got to thinking: 3/N Linas @linasveps
tas · 11m WTF is perception, anyway? Meanwhile, in parallel with this, I
realize I want to be able to revisit subsets of the training corpus.
Hang on, I want the machine to explore the training corpus, as it sees
fit, to "walk around through it" (action) and of course, to look, first.
4/N Linas @linasvepstas · 9m And this goes meta-meta-meta, too.
What do I mean by "walk around"? What actions and choices are available
to the learning system? What is the meta-IDL interface description language
that describes the suite of available actions? 5/N Linas @linasvepstas
· 7m How do I make the meta-description of the menu-of-action-choices flexible
enough to describe any kind of action? I need a meta-action-choice-describing-m
eta-thing.
All this, machine-readable, cause I want to actually make it work.
So I try to, and its hard...
6/N Linas @linasvepstas · 2m Meanwhile, I recall a lecture presenting a
category-theoretic description of agents interacting with an external world.
Very abstract, but not all that complicated.
A pretty small algebra, maybe eight(?) axioms.
And all this brain-storms together, and I go "ah hah!" ...
7/N Linas @linasvepstas An meanwhile, my decades-long obsession w/ jigsaws
includes notions of "choice": a menu of choices for how to hook things
together.
Jigsaw connectors constrain the types, but enable selective choice.
But now, in perception-action, choices, again! ..
8/N, N=9 9:36 PM · Aug 10, 2024 View post engagements Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 5m So that's the brainstorm: internal model of external
world, someone-else's abstract category-theoretic description of agency,
perception as menu of perceivable things, action as menu of doable things...
All that's left is to work out the details.
🤪🙄🤨😳😟😠😵💫💩 9/9 the end.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · Aug 9 But the interaction of that "internal model"
of the "exterior world" needs to be described by, well ...
perception-action.
Which resembles tensor products, I guess, maybe resembles monads (kleisi
triples) Maybe resembles "rigged Hilbert spaces".
Beats me.
That's why its research.
Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · 21h "the exterior world looks tensor-product-ish
with the agent's internal world model"
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Note @ElliotMurp wrote a book relating brain oscillations to Chomsky UG
primitives.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Could you relate your exterior-interior tensor product to oscillations in
a sequence network? Linas @linasvepstas · 13m Oscillations.
I have a friend, Zoltan Nadasdy, neuroscientist.
He actually um, cuts open peoples heads in surgical rooms, and sticks sheets
of electrodes on brains.
Like, the real thing.
Gets to actually collect data for a while.
So a few years ago, 1/N Linas @linasvepstas · 10m Zoltan figures out that
one type of oscillation is actually acting as a clock-synchronizer for
setting threshold for neuron firing.
Seemingly "random" neuron firings line up correctly, when synced with local
oscillations.
All very abstract.
I don't recall the details.
2/N Linas @linasvepstas · 6m But I trust him.
He's been doing 3D perception, grid-cells in humans for decades.
The explanations are coherent, make sense, are corroborated with other
neuroscience results.
And, for him, for some kind of waves in some cortex somewhere, the oscillations
are "just" clocks.
3/N Linas @linasvepstas Oscillations in physics....
woo who.
You could write 100 books on that.
The simple harmonic oscillator has a discrete spectrum; by convention,
these form a basis for vectors in a Hilbert space.
And now that you got vectors ...
jeez, you can do almost anything and call it ...
4/N 10:10 PM · Aug 10, 2024 View post engagements Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 1s ...
and call it oscillations.
But its also trite and meaningless, unless you establish multiple inter-related
, inter-connected side-effects and deductions and inferences and predictions
in the theory.
Without that, all you get is a tossed-idea salad.
5/N N=5
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
13 May 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · Aug 11 I think the LLM "learning" principle is
good.
Specifically distributional analysis over sequences.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The problem being ignored is abstractions contradict.
And that is incompatible with back-prop.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So we dump back-prop.
"Collapse" with the some gradient (wave) collapse at run time.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 Oh, yes, that could
also be considered a major limitation.
Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · Aug 11 Can you see how to fix that back-prop
"limitation" of LLMs, & "collapse" the most relevant of an infinity of
formalizations of text, at run time? Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine
· Aug 11 That wouldn't be easy, but I would design the LM from scratch
in another way, I think another architecture is needed, I probably wouldn't
even use a transformer.
But yes, keeping it fully differentiable would be a goal I think.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 I don't have a solution
to that presently, unfortunately, but it's obviously a very good question
thank you.
:) Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 I think I should
use similar kinds of universal machine learning algorithms that I use for
other tasks also at runtime, so "a kind of search", however, I would also
change the base model so the setup might be very different and perhaps
I wouldn't need to do that much search.
Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · Aug 11 The "gradient" back-prop follows is one
of shared prediction.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I think to find such symmetries of shared prediction need not be hard.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The idea I'm promoting is that words which share predictions will also tend
to synchronize under oscillation.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 Hmm, I'm not sure if
I follow that! Could be a crazy physicist idea.
:) Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · Aug 11 Think about it.
If you have a network of language sequences, those which share predictions
will form sub-clusters with common beginning & end points.
We know those synchronize differently.
e.g.
I'm looking at this paper: https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3390386/
… Code: https://modeldb.science/144502 Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine
· Aug 11 Dear Rob, we are not using a spiking neural network, though it
has been suggested it could be more efficient.
So, an entirely different model might be able to exploit oscillations but
in usual DL, well, there aren't too many of them.
It's just floating number arithmetic.
Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · Aug 11 Oh, you're doing DL.
I thought you were doing AI?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So you want a solution that must conform with current DL dogma.
But obviously is also implemented in the brain.
But not in a DL type way.
Thats' clear.
But that doesn't matter.
That will come later.
First you want a DL solution? Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine
· Aug 11 I'm fine with a DL solution if it's sufficient.
:) For language, it looks like a good paradigm.
For other things, I do use other approaches, but I could say that most
of my methods squarely lie in the "new AI" realm.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 Honestly, in the current
architecture, I wanted to just use a standard LLM, because I'm not very
interested in language, but for the agent, yeah, it makes sense to do your
own, it does fit there, because there language is a real concern.
Rob Freeman @rob_freeman · Aug 11 You realize you just said you want to
use a large language model, because you're not very interested in language.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 Yeah, because it's ready
and I don't really care if I improve on say llama.
I trust LeCun's team, hard working people.
:P Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 So whatever works
license wise is good, but I might choose an SLM instead.
:) It should understand very few things, and definitely not chat with you
about poetry or human things like that (in first system).
😂 For the agent, though, it would have a normal life so that's needed.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 Then, I'd have to be
very interested in language, and at that point my own LLM or equivalent
model should prove useful.
I'll probably design it from scratch.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine Then, I'd have to be very interested
in language, and at that point my own LLM or equivalent model should prove
useful.
I'll probably design it from scratch.
11:14 PM · Aug 11, 2024 · 16 Views Most relevant Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 Of course, I have many
ideas to apply.
However, I'm not going to say, oh, it's the same kind of learning model
as chatgpt and it will work great, let's make no assumptions.
:) Let's think of a blank page.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · Aug 11 I'm open to all kinds
of innovations, including new ANN models, stuff from neuroscience like
spiking networks, non-neural models, all of it, bring it on.
:)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 8h It's a different subject
but I think you will enjoy reading this entry and finding out if you subscribe
to a kind of mathematical realism.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/ Linas @linasvepstas
· 8h Stop being an asshole.
I know more about this topic than you do.
WTF.
Seriously.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 7h I honestly don't think so,
in particular I'm not sure you knew the exact meaning of the term, so here
you go, read and then answer my question, please, but do so seriously,
it's actually relevant to your strongly held claims.
Linas @linasvepstas · 7h OK, Lets read the Routledge article together.
It starts like this: "Mathematical realism is the view that the truths
of mathematics are objective, which is to say that they are true independently
of any human activities, beliefs or capacities." 1/2 Linas @linasvepstas
· 7h For me, that is sophomoric and completely misses the primary problem
that you have to define reality first, before you can coherently talk about
human activities, beliefs or capacities.
So they already get snagged on a recursion problem, straight out of the
gate.
Linas @linasvepstas · 7h Perhaps the intent was that "human activities,
beliefs or capacities" should be understood in some common-sense, blue-collar
psychological sense.
But that's psychology, not philosophy.
If you think that human activities are real, and if math is a human activity,
then...
whatever.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 4h Object subject distinction
is basic philosophy though yes it came from ancient philosophy of psychology
(like many standard ideas in phil) Linas @linasvepstas · 4h Sure.
And I am trying to tell you that object-subject distinction can be axiomatized
and turned into a category-theoretic category, and when I said that, you
went ballistic.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 4h I can see why lol 😆 Eray
Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 4h If you have a ToE it has to explain
qualia.
I have to agree with David Pearce that it requires non-Newtonian physics.
So it could certainly be quantum or string theoretic.
Linas @linasvepstas · 4h Please stop.
What is a "theory"? What is "everything"? What does it mean "to explain"?
What do the words "to agree" mean? You keep falling into that same hole,
over and over.
I keep extending you a hand but you fall right back in, each time.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 22m Just noting this is a nonsensic
al reaction, I used the terms in exactly the right technical sense.
Linas @linasvepstas · 17m I understand what you thought you were saying.
I was trying to point out how absurd your demands are.
You're in over your head.
Eray Özkural, PhD - OG AI ⏭️🌟 @examachine · 15m Absolutely not.
That is philosophy of mind, as usual.
That is actually based on the analysis I've already done before in publication
but whatever suits you.
Keep thinking philosophers are over their heads, wouldn't be the first
time we've heard that? :) Rob Freeman @rob_freeman Exactly what point do
you think you're making Eray? You asked what I meant by "contradiction".
I told you.
You don't like the analogy with math because math is not language.
But you don't like language.
You're doing DL.
Using language models.
Good for DL because they're large :-b 6:57 PM · Aug 13, 2024 · 1 View Linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
14 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
A Universal Approach to Self-Referential Paradoxes, Incompleteness and Fixed
Points Noson S.
Yanofsky arXiv:math/0305282v1 [math.LO] 19 May 2003 https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/03
05282
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
An intro-level tutorial to diagonal arguments (Cantor slash), (un-)definability,
incompleteness.
Includes proofs/proof sketches of Turing halting problem, Godel incompleteness
and much more.
Clarifies what "self-reference" is, and how/why that leads to paradoxes.
Basically, you have a choice: either a paradox (if you allow self-reference)
or a "loop unroll", by moving the reference to the next level: an infinite
stack of every greater laywers (e.g.
the cardinal hierarchy.
But I guess also the Borel hierarchy...)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Huh.
As I write the above, I again think of infinite binary trees, And how structure
s can be mapped into them.
e.g.
the Borel hierarchy.
The point of ZFC was to avoid Russel's paradox, by limiting what can be
talked about, to exclude the self-reference.
This is effectively a loop-unroll: a stack of ever-larger cardinals.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
15 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
More twittering:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Guy @nosilverv · 1h Ok, so, the current economy of Twitter is that as long
as you can marginally make money from a meme or whatever it will get reposted.
People will like or retweet it if it's good and they haven't seen it before
too often.
So this is moving us all to mutual knowledge of...
of what? Linas @linasvepstas · 5m Exhaustive search of meme-space.
Mildly educational: you get broad view of "the world".
(Youtube is considerably more educational.) And now that you've seen the
world, you get to ponder your place in it.
Maybe you'll be driven to act.
Maybe you'll be paralyzed into watching.
Linas @linasvepstas Likes have very weak power in the real world.
It remains hard to convert outrage at injustice into tangible action.
Gofundme uses actual dollars for "likes".
The dollars from blue checks go mostly into Elon's pockets, rather than
the creator of the like meme.
And the creator ...
11:03 AM · Aug 15, 2024 View post engagements Linas And the meme creator
is unlikely to use their new-found wealth to create positive change in
the world.
Most of the energy/effort/money put int twitter is wasted.
Twitter is like a blow-out party: vastly fun and amusing, but at the end,
what do you have? What was achieved?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 37m And the meme creator is unlikely to use their
new-found wealth to create positive change in the world.
Most of the energy/effort/money put int twitter is wasted.
Twitter is like a blow-out party: vastly fun and amusing, but at the end,
what do you have? What was achieved? Robin Debreuil @debreuil · 22m We
think in memes though, not dollars.
The other thing about memes is they can't be withheld by gofundme if you're
a trucker that doesn't agree with their point of view.
Linas @linasvepstas · 17m Yes, but I wanted to imply that likes/upvotes
are a form of currency.
Kudos.
There's an old sci-fi book (I haven't read) that deals with exactly this:
"Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" Cory Doctorow.
A functional economy based entirely on likes.
Robin Debreuil @debreuil · 14m Great concept, I will check it out, thanks.
In a functional economy, dollars are sort of a proxy for desires.
I've always considered spending a second form of voting, I suppose liking
is too :).
Linas @linasvepstas · 4m I brought up gofundme because it is a kind-of
voting-with-dollars-but-its-a-like.
I'm thinking there will be more tech innovation that closes the gap between
up-votes and dollar-flows.
Remove the friction between these two streams.
Probably worth brain-storming on this.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas @linasvepstas · 39m And the meme creator is unlikely to use their
new-found wealth to create positive change in the world.
Most of the energy/effort/money put int twitter is wasted.
Twitter is like a blow-out party: vastly fun and amusing, but at the end,
what do you have? What was achieved? Robin Debreuil @debreuil · 20m It
is a nuanced subject and easy to find counter examples, but I think it
is battle of minds vs battle by actions.
Done well, minds are your goal to achieve anything.
Memes may not be the best tool here, but they are a good tool imo.
Linas @linasvepstas · 14m Collections of memes assemble into belief-systems.
I like the apolitical flat-earthers as an example.
If you invest the time (weeks, months, more) you can eventually convince
a flat-earther to not believe in that.
But this is a step-by-step process.
A flood of memes won't do it .
Robin Debreuil @debreuil Someone needs to lay out a meme argument as well
as good literature or a journey through math.
I feel the little aha moments that open the next door are essentially memes,
at least after they've been digested.
Agree that a firehose is more distracting than effective.
11:34 AM · Aug 15, 2024 · 3 Views Most relevant Linas Conventional school
curricula already provide a progression.
"If you are here in sophistication, you are now ready for these next steps."
But the twitter/youtube recommendation algos don't know you well-enough
to recommend the next steps.
I expect this to change.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
16 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
In other news: slef-introspection.
I am starting to get glimmers in all of the ways that I am flawed, and
all of the bad decisions I've made, all the actions I should have taken,
but failed to.
But this is a glimmer, and self-introspection is not something I do much
of.
At any rate, I'm starting to realize how deeply flawed I've been, and this
runs counter to the narrative that I'm a pretty good guy, that I've built
for myself.
It is disturbing.
Although one of my flaws is that I never self-intropected enough, which
led to planning failures: I've rarely planned for the future, instead,
I lived in the moment.
Living in the moment has given me the freedom to accumulate knowledge and
understanding, vast quantities of this.
Hoarder mentality.
But I've forgone power, money, love, friendship, acheivement, social status
in my pursuit of knowledge-hoarding.
And now, it feels a bit late to make amends.
At any rate, all those other things take time and effort, which removes
time and effort from mathematical focus, and I really kind of want to continue
to pursue mathematics in depth.
The value of mathematical understanding seems greater to me, than power,
money, love, friendship, acheivement and social status.
Is it? Of course, many will say that it is not.
There is certainly no philosophical foundation for why one should do this
but not that; if there was, we'd all do the same thing, but we don't.
So the choice to do this and not that is fundamentally personal.
It's the ultimate personal decision.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But how do we go about making personal decisions? Well, of course, personal
history is deeply tangled: if I hadn't studied math, I wouldn't be so intereste
d in it.
I only studied math because I have a physics PhD.
But I got that due to an inability to imagine myself in any other career.
But that is built on having read lots of books on electronics, as a child.
This for two reasons: because my parents moved, changed houses as a pre-teen,
I never made lasting freindships with the local kids, and so found the
company of the library to fulfil the missing social requirements.
But also society provided me with books on electronics: someone gave money
to the library to buy them, others gave money to print them, yet others
performed electronics research in the past.
Likewise, my aunt Irena Virkau provided me with large quantities of science
fiction as a child.
I learned how to read from this books.
The third short story I read in my life, very long, I left it for last,
was 60 or 80 pages, was I think maybe by Stephen King, meandering and unfocused
, pointless and plotless, the least satisfying of everything I'd read up
to then.
But it was a spring-board that allowed me to read even longer things.
Ah, memories.
Fond ones.
I remember the room I was in while reading it (the dining room of my uncle's
farm in Wisconsin.
I loved my aunt.
I really really loved her, in that deep, cosmic, overwhelming sense that
makes one cry at the thought of her loss.
Oh how I wish I could recreate those days, how I wish I could live them
again, be there again, and bath in them.
Well, I am I am recreating them in my mind, but it is only partly fulfilling.
What does one really want, when one says one wants to relive the past?
When one's life flashes before one's eyes? To be there again? What the
heck, the grand climax to the movie AI, the Stephen Spielberg movie, it
is all about reliving that one golden moment of having been a child, of
being loved and wanted.
The crystaline pure desire for the sweetest moments of one's earlier life.
I suppose there's lots of literature and movies that touch on this topic;
but I am not well-read.
That movie does seem to tackle this fairly head-on.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And what did that move conclude? Some quantum mumbo-jumbo.
All hail!
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
See, this is why I want to study math.
Because there's this vague inkling that my ability to remember the past
is some kind of quantum entanglement of past events with present and future
events.
That literally, things fixed in the past continue to influence future events
(well, duh; differential equations say exactly this.
But that's nto what I mean...
what do I mean?) So I'm in pursuit of some cosmic consiousness, and there's
some kind of mathematical formulation of perception-action, agency, control,
branch-points, free-will, and through this all you move (smashing pumkins
lyrics, Everlasting Gaze).
The topics of Love and Longing are topics of poetry and music, written
to evoke ...
love and longing, enjoyed to the degree that they successfuly do so.
Oddly enough, of all the philosophy I've read, exactly none of it ever
deals with longing and love.
Have I been readingthe wrong philosophical texts?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, here I am, at any rate, wanting to study mathematics because I've got
vague inklings that perhaps it can expose one of the deep myseries of the
cosmos: the nature of Love.
And so this is a life-choice, for me.
Others make similar life-choices, by studying psychology or poetry, all
trying to get a handle on these primal qualia that drive us all.
So this is my choice: should I spend yet more time, probing these deep
mysteries of the universe, like, why does one's life flash before one's
eyes as one is on the brink of death? And on the other side: concerns that
I should spend more time accumulating wealth and power.
Well, accumulating friendships and actual love (in the present, here and
now love).
Why should I want powr, instead of, err, a greater command of mathematical
depths?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Yes, of course this is drivel.
What I write here is drivel.
I do not subject human readers to this.
This low-value crap, I leave for machines that can cheaply and easily absorb
the poetic sketches that I write here.
But the point of drivel is that everyone, all human beings, their life
is an endless sequence of events that are drivel.
These events do have a point, and they do have a meaning, but, like grains
of sand on a beach, they are all alike.
So what I write here is drivel only in the sense that everyone has already
been here, done that, and agonized their way through life.
My verbalization here of lifes agonies isn't any deeper – indeed, it is
shallower and less capable and less expressive, than those of the great
poets and the great writers.
I suck at this, because I have not spent decades crafting my writing abilities
to capture the pure essence of love and longing.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anyway, where were we? Personal decisions.
Note above I pointed at two social aspects: society provided a library
and put electronics books in it, and my aunt provided a diet of sci-fi.
So, of course it is drivel to point out the importance of socio-cultural
backgrounds for shaping the individual life.
Because, duh.
And yet I feel compelled to point this out, because most people, almost
everyoe, seems unaware of how society shapes them.
They live unaware, unconscious of the broth of soup that defined their
political and moral beleifs.
They live unawares, even as social media, facebook, twitter and the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
information spaces
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
that they provide to dwell in, that these shape who we are and who we will
be in the future.
It's like, one can't see the forest, because all these trees are in the
way.
I'm interested in the forest.
And on that note, the next topic.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
16 August 2024 more
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I am still very interested in how societies and cultures form, based on
collections of narratives and shared perceptions of the world.
(I am a complete novice in this, but am attracted to it as a form of futurism,
the ability to predict the social future.) So I am reading this article
https://warontherocks.com/2024/08/russias-post-war-military-recruiting-strategy-
emerges/
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Russia’s Post-War Military Recruiting Strategy Emerges
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Dara Massicot August 16, 2024 and I'm getting this glimmer of ..
of something.
let me try to capture it here.
I already know I will fail, it will be shallow and incomplete.
But, by attempting, it will still be more than not even trying.
It seems important to try.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Bullet points:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Grade-school education.
Russia introduces military indoctrination into grade schools, because,
in general, this does work: what wone learns in school alters one's life-percep
tions.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
There is a point of no return in the shaping of one's opinions.
A point at which they hard and become effectively immuatable.
Quote:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
For some in Russian society, trust in the military has been broken ...
and no amount of the Kremlin’s money, spin, or censorship will overcome
that.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Appeals to soma and somatic self-perceptions.
IN this case, an appeal to the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
real man
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Quote: “You’re that real man [Ti zhe muzhik].
Be one”; and “Contract service is the choice of real men.” More abstractly
(but also more forcefully) “Russia: my history, my heroes, my soul, my
country, my journey”.
These are all appeals to somatic instincts, as opposed to some kind of
rational, reasoned, logical formulations.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
So this is interesting from the neuroscience point of view: we've got a
soma, and we've got a logical reasoning layer, a common-sense layer, that
over-rides the more basic instincts (the more basic instincts of love,
agression, pride, being a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
real man
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.) But this rational, reasoning, common-sense layer only works as a bridle
on a horse: the horse-power, the will-to-live, this still comes from these
baser, somatic instincts.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
So, for example, one can use rational, common-sense arguments to support
up truly horrible ethical and moral viewpoints: arguments for racism, arguments
for genocide, arguments for dictatorship (e.g.
the arguments from Curtis Yarvin, which I admit are very beguiling.) And
so it is these underlying forces that drive impulses, and the rational,
verbal reasoned thought-chain that harnesses them and points them into
a specific direction.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
This is a mirror of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
post-rationalization
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
In post-rationalization, one does something, and when asked why one did
that, one confabulates some answer, some rational-sounding answer to justify
that action.
Even thhough that was not the actual chain of thoughts that precipitated
that action.
Here, we have pre-rationalization: an intentionally flawed and distorted
chain of logic, aiming to convince others to take an action they might
not always take.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The russian recruitment drive seems to abandon pre-rationalization.
It appeals directly to the base instinct of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
be a real man
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, skipping all the finer points like income, career stability, social status,
or, at least, placing them in a secondary position.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Compare to the US slogan:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Be! All that you can be! In the Army!
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
although the US version has a very different flavvor.
The US slogan does not appeal to masculinity (its deeply buried) nor does
it appeal to nationalism (history, heroes, soul, country, journey), and
instead does a forward-looking self-expressive, self-actualizing appeal:
you can do anything if you only try, and in the Army, they will let you
do anything, and thus you can find attainment and acheivement.
This is far more liberating.
In particular, it keeps open the door to the polarizing socio-cultural
warefare issues: gay, BIPOC, LGBTQ, all that: those are also things that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
you can be
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
The US recruiting slogan is affirmative.
Well, you can also be racists and genocidal, so there are secondary mechanisms
that control what you can actually be, in the Army.
The US slogan is foreward-looking (self-actualization) the russian slogan
is backwards-looking.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
History
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, this is explicit.
Heroes are in the past.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Soul
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
mysterious russian soul
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is a fabrication of great russian authors, writing in the 19th century.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Country
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: the country/nationalism is neccessarily something forged in the past.
Journey is a ...
journey from past to present to future.
So only
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Journey
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is vaguely foreward looking, even as one end of journey is anchored in
the past.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
At any rate, both the US and the russian slogans are direct appeals to the
base somatic instincts.
I'm verbalizing and deconstructing these phrases, because such slogans
necessarily pack a lot of baggage under the covers.
Any given
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
emotion
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, such as the real-man nationalism that the russian slogan captures, this
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
somatic emotion
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
has ties to a vast network of inter-related feelings and directions and
somatic sense that one can go in: it is embedded in a media, in a whirl-pool
of emotional qualia-sensations.
The whole point of deconstruction, the post-modernist Derrida, Lacan, etc.
is to expose and articulate that network.
This is hard, because that network is in the somatic parts of the brain,
and is accessed verbally only with great difficulty.
That is, poets struggly mightly to create poems about love, because it
is hard work.
Likewise, propagandists and advertising executive struggle mightly to create
...
huh.
Actually, the opposite: propagandists and ad execs struggle mightly to
create the opposite: starting with the base feeling that they are trying
to evoke, they must find short verbal expressions to evoke it.
That is, poets are in authentic throes of love, and struggle to give it
voice.
(Most) propagandists & ad execs don't really feel the emotion they are
trying to evoke.
In that sense, their work is fake.
To evoke a fake emtion that they don't actually have.
This perhaps explains the success of those who really, actually feel, deeply
feel: say for example, Dugin, who isn't
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fake
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but really truly beleives in those things, and is only drawing on a deep
well to give them voice.
Compare to Soloviev, Mardan, Simonyan, who are only
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
doing thier job
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, imagining how it would feel to be a certain way, and giving voice to that.
Consider the writer of a psycholigical murder detective mystery: the writer
only imagines what its like to be a murder, and is not giving voice to
some deep impulse to kill.
In that sense, Dugin is real, honest, bonafide: he is giving voice to real
instincts.
Soloviev is pure fake.
And Simonyan...
well, she just wants to be fucked.
Or at least, I want to fuck her.
I mean, really, the one where she's sitting on that Italian leather couch
talking about how russians should go die at the front.
Evening dress, earrings, a glass of champaign, fine perfume, and a speech
on how the greatest thing that there can be is to be a real man (grunt,
grunt grunt, be a real man, grunt, uh) and go die (uh, uh, uh, grunt, harder,
more) on the front (uh, uh, aaaaahhhhh!!!).
Wow.
Or, at least, I want to fuck her.
There's an instinctual boner for her.
Even with the rational understanding of the repugnant nature of all this.
A primal sexual attraction, devoid and dettached from the words that fall
out of her mouth.
She's pretty, not in the breathtakingly-beautiful category, but she has
a sexy body language, a sexy expressiveness.
See, that's how base somatic instincts work.
I'm not saying anything deep or insightful, here.
This is the basic clay that advertising executives work with.
I'd fuck a waitress from Hooters, too; the difference is that I've only
seen that waitress once in my life, ever, for some fraction of a second,
in some commercial, whereas I've gotten to look at Margarita repeatedly,
over and over.
I guess the only odd thing I write about here is that the fraction of a
second I've laid eyes on some Hooters waitress is still more than the amout
of time I've spent staring at Fox News or CNN anchors.
Or that show
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Good Morning America
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, it has a female host, right? I assume she must be sexy.
Dunno, never seen her.
Well, I've wandered off-topic.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Where as I? Socal control by shaping social perceptions, starting by the
teaching of propaganda in grade-school.
The Greate Patriotic Museum in Moscow.
Quote:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
patriotic education funding ...
[is] $430 million in 2023.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
There are
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
8.6 million students enrolled in general education, grades five to nine,
in russia.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
per statista.com https://www.statista.com/statistics/1130004/number-of-school-stud
ents-russia/ so that's about $50 USD per student.
Per year.
Over 4-5 years, that's $250 per student spent on patriotism and military
mindset education.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The point here is that a economic actors (nation-states, in this example,
but there are other economic actors too) can spend money to shape perceptions.
Again, nothing new here: corporations spend money on advertisements to
shape perceptions.
And it works.
When I was 20, I breifly thought that I looked sexier, if I held a can
of Coke in my hand.
No shit.
The difference is that almost all advertising is acknowledged as such,
and only a relatively small amount of it goes repugnant, ugly, nasty.
And those are primarily political.
Ads are not the same as military indoctrination in grade school.
This is all obvious, so I've lost whatever point I was struggling to grasp.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Well, I guess the point was social control.
Access to the educational system is far more powerful in shaping society,
as one is working with young minds at their most malleable.
Perhaps this is why there's a genral alarm in the West about all the unwholesom
e garbage available to US teenagers via social media.
But, pre-Internet, as a teenager, I had access to unwholesome stuff.
All teenagers did.
It's part of what you have to process and make sense of and form some opinion
of, and those opinions were neither spoon-fed to you by parents or teachers,
nor were they much voiced by peers.
Teen peers were not really capable of verbalizing opinions on the edgey
stuff, and strong stances were a bit wobbly, as the peers were in the middle
of processing, themselves.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
What has changed is the size of the Overton window.
Young minds are exposed to a far wider and broader selection of topics,
than were available in my youth.
Some of those topics are PTSD-inducing, and we are not able to forecast
or predict how this will change society and culture.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
And maybe that's the point: the lack of predictabilty.
The concern for a good future, coupled to a genral lack of control over
it.
In the end, it is the ultimate democrattic experiment: young minds will
absorb whatever skank (and good stuff) is out there on the internet, and
they will shape the future in response to what they have absorbed.
Will it be a good, healthy, strong future? Will it all go on self-destruct?
We adults do lots of hand-wringing on twitter.
But the die has been cast.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The alternative is some sort of dictatorial control.
Some kind of central planning for morality and ethics.
And we already know how central planning went for economic issues; there's
no particular reason to think that central planning on ethical and moralist
issues is any better.
It is in this sense that today's GOP reminds me of the Soviet mindset:
they want to control what you think.
They want to do this with legislation, with punishment, with social control.
It's repugnant.
But when I say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
the GOP is just like the old Soviets
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, almost no one understands this.
There's not enough shared history to get the point across that everything
wrong with communism is the same as everything wrong with the GOP.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
So the EU is taking an interesting path on questions of free speech.
Well, so is China.
But whatever, I can't boil the ocean, here.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I dunno.
Where was I? There was a glimmer of something, something about social control
with shaping operations, explicitly discussed in that Dara Massicot article,
something I felt and can almost rationalize, verbalize, but not quite.
Something to be extracted out of the explicit russian military context,
and applied in a more general setting.
But, well, its gone, now.
Whatever.
Later.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, there is also the marvel of watching twitter process and analyze:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
samprotauti
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in real time.
It's quite awesome.
It's like watching neurons fire.
It's like watching laundry in the washing machine.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
22 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
A copy of a letter to Phillip Ellis.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Hi Phil,
\begin_inset Newline newline
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Here's a PDF.
It's easier to do formulas like this.
\begin_inset Newline newline
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is going to be long, and the first part might seem like a bunch of
trivialities combined with some bizarre statements, but I wrote it that
way to show you where all the gems are, and how to find them.
There are some magic tricks involved, and some sleight-of-hand, and I'm
trying to show you where they are.
Despite it being perhaps trivial, you might want to reread it several times
to see why it is the way it is.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This took me three hours to write.
I thought I could dash this off in 20 minutes.
How wrong I was.
But whatever; think of it as ...
well, ...
how I return freindship? Beats me.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Part the first
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Consider the series
\begin_inset Formula
\[
u(z)=1+z+z^{2}+z^{3}+z^{4}+...
\]
\end_inset
This is a "formula", its an infinite series.
You can plug things into it.
For example, you can plug in
\begin_inset Formula $z=0.2$
\end_inset
directly, and get a result:
\begin_inset Formula
\[
u(0.2)=1+0.2+0.04+0.008+0.0016+...=1.25
\]
\end_inset
You can plug in
\begin_inset Formula $z=3$
\end_inset
and get
\begin_inset Formula
\[
u(3)=1+3+9+27+81+...
\]
\end_inset
Now, it is perfectly legal to write that down (and I did) but if you try
to actually sum up the numbers, you can't.
It diverges.
And, well, that's just a fact of life, and you can't change that.
To bad, so sad.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But this is where the fun and games begin.
My general thesis is that
\end_layout
\begin_layout Enumerate
math is like poetry, in that you can do anything you want, as long as it
rhymes, and
\end_layout
\begin_layout Enumerate
math is hallucinatory: the allowed rhyming patterns are mind-bending and
cause you to see shimmering contradictions and confusions.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I don't think you are ready for the above, but I'll try anyway.
I'll try to sketch support for this thesis now.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Lets start with the old high-school trick, the one you know already.
It is a trick, it is a fraudulent trick, its some sleight-of-hand, it's
deceitful.
It's unjustified, crooked.
Yet this fraud is perpetrated in high-schools around the world, so lets
look at it.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The trick start like this:
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
z\,u(z) & =z\left(1+z^{2}+z^{3}+z^{4}+...\right)\\
& =z+z^{2}+z^{3}+z^{4}+...
\end{align*}
\end_inset
therefore, by pairing off terms, matching them and keeping the order:
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
u(z)-z\,u(z) & =1+z+z^{2}+z^{3}+z^{4}+...-\left(z+z^{2}+z^{3}+z^{4}+...\right)\\
& =1\\
& =\left(1-z\right)u(z)
\end{align*}
\end_inset
from which we deduce
\begin_inset Formula
\[
u(z)=\frac{1}{1-z}
\]
\end_inset
Re-read the above three times, and make sure you feel comfortable with it,
because here's where the trick starts.
This
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
works
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but it works only when
\begin_inset Formula $z$
\end_inset
is less than one.
The fraud is to pretend that this works for any
\begin_inset Formula $z$
\end_inset
.
Let me demonstrate, by trying it for
\begin_inset Formula $z=3$
\end_inset
:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
\begin_inset Formula
\[
u(3)-3u(3)=1+3+9+27+81+\cdots-3-9-27-81-\cdots
\]
\end_inset
Rearranging terms, and attempting to cancel by shifting over by one term:
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
u(3)-3u(3)= & 1\\
& +3\\
& +9-3\\
& +27-9\\
& +81-27\\
& +\cdots\\
= & 1+3+6+18+54+\cdots\\
= & +\infty
\end{align*}
\end_inset
which is clearly divergent.
Wait, what? Huh???? Earlier, we had that
\begin_inset Formula $1=u(z)-z\,u(z)$
\end_inset
but now we have
\begin_inset Formula $+\infty=u(z)-z\,u(z)$
\end_inset
when
\begin_inset Formula $z=3$
\end_inset
.
So did I just prove that
\begin_inset Formula $1=+\infty$
\end_inset
??? Well, of course not, but this is your first tiny preview of the hallucinato
ry properties of math: you can get things that seem to be other things,
and they are but they aren't, and you have to be careful.
This one is perhaps too obvious; it gets more subtle and more confusing
when one journeys deeper into math.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anyway, above, all I did was to shift over the subtraction over by one.
All of a sudden, the terms no longer cancel in full; they only partly cancel.
Shifting the other way will give
\begin_inset Formula $-\infty$
\end_inset
.
With some more cleverness in re-arranging, regrouping and resumming, one
can make
\begin_inset Formula $u(3)-3u(3)$
\end_inset
be finite, and make it equal to any number at all, positive or negative.
And this can be done in a mathematically rigorous, provable, exact fashion.
You can make such alternating series sum up to anything at all.
Anything.
This is valid and generally accepted in the math community, and the proof
is taught in some undergrad class or another.
I won't attempt it here.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
A bit more precisely, there is a concept of absolute convergence vs conditional
convergence.
The terms in the sum
\begin_inset Formula
\[
u(0.2)=1+0.2+0.04+0.008+0.0016+\cdots
\]
\end_inset
can be rearranged any way at all, and you always get the same answer.
It's
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
absolutely convergent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(always convergent).
But if the signs of the terms alternate, and if taking just the positive
subseries diverges, then re-ordering allows you to sum to anything at all.
Such sums are
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
conditionally convergent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, with the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
condition
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
being that one or another ordering is forced or chosen or fixed.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Now here's where the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
poetry
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
comes in.
I could also write:
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
u(3)-3u(3)= & 1\\
& -3\\
& +3-9\\
& +9-27\\
& +27-81\\
& +\cdots\\
= & 1-3-6-18-54-\cdots\\
= & -\infty
\end{align*}
\end_inset
So here, I have chosen a different ordering.
There is a freedom of choice here.
Pick some order, pick any order.
There are no rules for picking the order.
This makes the math
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
poetic
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, in that one is free to invent new orderings, and it is a mattter of taste
and style, creativity and panache and audacity in how you chose to reorder.
Good poets write good poetry, bad ones write crappy poetry, and whether
you like it or not is a matter of taste.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
To wrap up this part: this opens a deep and bottomless pit of what it means
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
to reorder
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and explorations of exactly what is going on here.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of books written on this topic, because
its ..
well, the freedom of working with infinitely many possibilities is ...
very free.
Seemingly unlimited amounts of invention and exploration are possible.
Banach spaces and Hilbert spaces, Frechet summations and trace-class operators,
and on and on.
All these arise by considering how to re-order conditionally convergent
sums.
And the freedom to do as one chooses.
All (pretty much all?) of the most brilliant mathematicians have dug into
this.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But I digress.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Part the second
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
One technique for reordering is called
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
analytic continuation
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
You've already encountered this phrase.
Let me try to recap it.
Write
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
u(z) & =1+z+z^{2}+z^{3}+z^{4}+\cdots\\
& =1+\left(z-a+a\right)+\left(z-a+a\right)^{2}+\cdots
\end{align*}
\end_inset
so that I add and subtract
\begin_inset Formula $a$
\end_inset
every time.
Clearly, um, valid, err.
Well.
See what I mean about hallucinatory? Seems like the above should be valid,
right? How can it not be? What can possibly go wrong? But now, expand this
out:
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
u\left(z\right)= & 1+\left(z-a\right)+\left(z-a\right)^{2}+\cdots\\
& +a\\
& +2a\left(z-a\right)+a^{2}\\
& +3a^{2}\left(z-a\right)+3a\left(z-a\right)^{2}+a^{3}\\
& +4a^{3}\left(z-a\right)+6a^{2}\left(z-a\right)^{2}+\cdots\\
& +\cdots
\end{align*}
\end_inset
What a freakin mess.
But here's the deal: as long as you pick
\begin_inset Formula $z$
\end_inset
and pick
\begin_inset Formula $a$
\end_inset
such that
\begin_inset Formula $\left|z-a\right|<1$
\end_inset
and also that
\begin_inset Formula $\left|a\right|<1$
\end_inset
then you can perform these sums, and they always converge, they are absolutely
convergent.
Reordering terms does
\emph on
NOT
\emph default
change the value.
No hanky-panky.
These are
\emph on
NOT
\emph default
conditionally convergent; you can reorder as you wish, you get the same
answer.
But only when
\begin_inset Formula $\left|z-a\right|<1$
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Formula $\left|a\right|<1$
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And now for the magic trick.
Let both
\begin_inset Formula $z$
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Formula $a$
\end_inset
be complex numbers (but still subject to the contraints above).
And, to be specific, let
\begin_inset Formula $a=0.9i$
\end_inset
so that it is on the imaginary axis.
Then the sum
\begin_inset Formula
\[
v\left(z\right)=1+\left(z-a\right)+\left(z-a\right)^{2}+\cdots
\]
\end_inset
is absolutely convergent when
\begin_inset Formula $\left|z-a\right|<1$
\end_inset
.
The region where
\begin_inset Formula $\left|z-a\right|<1$
\end_inset
is a disk, and this disk is centered at
\begin_inset Formula $a$
\end_inset
and the radius of this disk is
\begin_inset Formula $\left|1-a\right|=\sqrt{x^{2}+y^{2}}$
\end_inset
where
\begin_inset Formula $x$
\end_inset
is the real part of
\begin_inset Formula $1-a$
\end_inset
and y is the imaginary part of
\begin_inset Formula $a$
\end_inset
.
So for the demo
\begin_inset Formula $a=0.9i$
\end_inset
the radius of convergence is
\begin_inset Formula $r=\left|1-0.9i\right|=1.34536...$
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Now,
\begin_inset Formula $u\left(z\right)=v\left(z\right)+$
\end_inset
other stuff, and when you work out what
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
other stuff
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is, you get, hold on to your butt,
\begin_inset Formula $u\left(z\right)=1/\left(1-z\right)$
\end_inset
But only when
\begin_inset Formula $\left|z-a\right|<1$
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Formula $\left|a\right|<1$
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What's happened here? Well, with a bit of trickery, a bit of reordering,
we were able to take the series
\begin_inset Formula $u(z)$
\end_inset
and write it so that it is absolutely convergent on a
\emph on
**larger**
\emph default
region of the complex plane.
In particular, it is convergent for
\begin_inset Formula $z=1.3$
\end_inset
because
\begin_inset Formula $1.3<r=1.34536\cdots$
\end_inset
and this is in sharp contrast to the earlier result that
\begin_inset Formula
\[
1+1.3+\left(1.3\right)^{2}+\left(1.3\right)^{3}+\cdots=\infty
\]
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Now we repeat this trick, but this time with
\begin_inset Formula $v(z)$
\end_inset
, to get a larger circle.
The only rule is that the center of the new circle (call it
\begin_inset Formula $b$
\end_inset
) must lie within the old circle, and that
\begin_inset Formula $\left|z-b\right|<1$
\end_inset
.
Do this again, and again, and if you are clever with picking the centers
of the circles, you can reach anywhere.
In particular, you can get to
\begin_inset Formula $z=3$
\end_inset
in about 5 or 6 jumps, and when you do, you find that
\begin_inset Formula $u\left(z\right)=1/\left(1-z\right)$
\end_inset
at
\begin_inset Formula $z=3$
\end_inset
.
And repeating, you get
\begin_inset Formula $u\left(z\right)=1/\left(1-z\right)$
\end_inset
\emph on
EVERYWHERE.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So it turns out that old high-school fraud
\emph on
*actually gave the right answer*
\emph default
.
It just gave the right answer for the wrong reason, which is why it was
fraudulent.
But explaining all this to high-school kids is ...
well, that's what college is for, innit?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So (and this is very very important) you get this only if you follow the
rules about the location of circle centers, and the allowed circle radii.
If you don't follow these rules, you're back to being able to get assorted
forms of nonsense.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And so finally, we are back to our hallucinated reality:
\begin_inset Formula
\[
1+z+z^{2}+z^{3}+z^{4}+\cdots=\frac{1}{1-z}
\]
\end_inset
which is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
true
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
only when you follow certain complicated rules.
Its hallucinatory, since if you plug in
\begin_inset Formula $z=3$
\end_inset
directly into this
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
formula
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, you get whack.
So this formula is both false and true, and, like radioactive plutonium,
you might not like the results if you mishandle it.
The safe way of handling this is with analytic continuation, where you
deal with absolutely convergent sums at each step.
It's the absolute convergence that provides the safety.
The high-school trick just happened to work.
It doesn't always: you get weird things like Frechet spaces, which are
filligreed with these rather unhappy discontinuities, failures where naive
approaches blow up in your face.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is one reason why math can be so boring.
Safety requires rigor, and safety is boring.
And its even worse: the boring rigor hides all the fun parts of math.
Most math books, with a few, rare, treasured exceptions, are not written
in the style I am writing in, here.
They carefully hide all the surprises and adventures and wonders under
a bushel, so that only the most dedicated and autistic students can find
them.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Its like: its more fun to dance up the side of the volcano, but if you don't
put your foot down just so, you go over the edge of a cliff and its the
end.
So the rigor is needed.
But if you have that ability, then you can dance: the choices, such as
the choices for reordering, are infinite, and how you dance is inventive
and creative and a matter of style and taste.
And this is also why math is fun: once you know what works, its like making
bombs in chem class: look what happens when I mix these two: kaboom! Right
over the cliff! Lets do it again!
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Conclusion
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
To conclude: I went on and on and on with all this, and never got around
to zeta.
But all that zeta is, is this:
\begin_inset Formula
\[
\zeta(s)=1^{-s}+2^{-s}+3^{-s}+4^{-s}+\cdots
\]
\end_inset
and the right hand side is
\emph on
**absolutely convergent**
\emph default
if and only if the real part of
\begin_inset Formula $s$
\end_inset
is greater than one; otherwise it blows up.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
However, analytic continuation, with the circles, with the rules about the
circle centers, and the circle radii, all that logic still goes through,
and can be applied to
\begin_inset Formula $\zeta\left(s\right)$
\end_inset
.
If you are careful, then you find an answer:
\begin_inset Formula
\[
\zeta(s)=\frac{1}{1-2^{1-s}}\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{2^{n+1}}\sum_{k=0}^{n}\binom{n}{k}\frac{(-1)^{k}}{(k+1)^{s}}
\]
\end_inset
This is valid for *all* values of
\begin_inset Formula $s$
\end_inset
.
All of them.
Here,
\begin_inset Formula ${n \choose k}$
\end_inset
is the binomial coefficient, recall Pascal's triangle.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So lets plug in
\begin_inset Formula $s=0$
\end_inset
:
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
\zeta(0) & =\frac{1}{1-2}\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{2^{n+1}}\sum_{k=0}^{n}\binom{n}{k}\frac{(-1)^{k}}{(k+1)^{0}}\\
& =-\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{2^{n+1}}\sum_{k=0}^{n}\binom{n}{k}\left(-1\right)^{k}
\end{align*}
\end_inset
But
\begin_inset Formula
\[
\sum_{k=0}^{n}\binom{n}{k}\left(-1\right)^{k}=\begin{cases}
1 & \mbox{if }n=0\\
0 & \mbox{if }n>0
\end{cases}
\]
\end_inset
so
\begin_inset Formula $\zeta\left(0\right)=-1/2$
\end_inset
and we have the hallucinatory result
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
\zeta(0) & =1^{-0}+2^{-0}+3^{-0}+4^{-0}+\cdots\\
& =1+1+1+1+\cdots\\
& =-\frac{1}{2}
\end{align*}
\end_inset
Lets try again for
\begin_inset Formula $s=-1$
\end_inset
\begin_inset Formula
\[
\zeta(-1)=\frac{1}{1-4}\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{2^{n+1}}\sum_{k=0}^{n}\binom{n}{k}\left(k+1\right)\left(-1\right)^{k}
\]
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Formula
\[
\sum_{k=0}^{n}\binom{n}{k}\left(k+1\right)\left(-1\right)^{k}=\begin{cases}
1 & \mbox{if }n=0\\
-1 & \mbox{if }n=1\\
0 & \mbox{if }n>1
\end{cases}
\]
\end_inset
and so
\begin_inset Formula
\[
\zeta(-1)=-\frac{1}{3}\left[\frac{1}{2}-\frac{1}{4}\right]=-\frac{1}{12}
\]
\end_inset
and so the hallucinatory result
\begin_inset Formula
\begin{align*}
\zeta(-1) & =1^{1}+2^{1}+3^{1}+4^{1}+\cdots\\
& =1+2+3+4+\cdots\\
& =-\frac{1}{12}
\end{align*}
\end_inset
But, by now we've descended into tedium.
This is straight-forward plug-n-play.
The magic, the hard part was doing the analytic continuation, and understanding
why analytic continuation works, in the first place.
It's very ..
alchemical.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, the Riemann zeta also has lots of other magic, but that's unrelated
to the above idea: to the idea that there is a way of writing
\begin_inset Formula $\zeta\left(s\right)$
\end_inset
so that it gives one and only one value, everywhere, for any
\begin_inset Formula $s$
\end_inset
in the complex plane.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Ramanujan
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Ramanujan was a freak.
At age 12, he stood in a corner and practiced multiplying and dividing
large numbers in his head.
This has the effect of training up neural circuitry for these tasks, and
making it automatic.
In the same way that you don't have to think about how to row, you just
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
do it
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, he could
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
just do it
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, as well.
It only takes a decade of practice, that's all.
You could learn to be like him, too.
You'd die of boredom, first, but you could do it if you really wanted to.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, in grade school, we learn something called
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
long division
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and it turns out long division generalizes, easily and trivially, to the
division of polynomials.
Ramanujan could do long division of polynomials in his head, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
just see
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
the answer.
So, its like having a symbolic calculator attached to your brain.
I dunno, so like NeuralLink, but the olde-fashioned way.
Having this calculator allowed him to perform seemingly magical feats,
especially in a world that simply had never seen a calculator before, nothing
more than a slide rule.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Now, we can all be like Ramanujan: we don't have NeuralLink but we have
eyeballs and fingers, which are almost as good.
We all have access to arbitrary-precision symbolic calculators, they're
called computers, and if you become adept with using a computer, you can
do ...
well its up to your imagination, and it is driven by your interests.
And these are driven by our social and cultural milleu, so ...
well, anything is possible.
So what you gonna do?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I mean this in a literal sense on multiple levels.
I know one guy: Simon Plouffe.
Complete amateur, no formal training in math.
Sits around and fucks with symbolic calculators, and just finds relations
that he can't prove.
He's found a treasure trove.
He's in wikipedia: e.g.
the Borwein–Bailey–Plouffe formula for pi in hexadecimal.
\begin_inset CommandInset href
LatexCommand href
name "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe_formula"
target "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey%E2%80%93Borwein%E2%80%93Plouffe_formula"
literal "false"
\end_inset
I think they cheated him a bit putting his name in last place, not first
place, but he's also mathematically illiterate, and so that's what happens.
Have calculator, will travel.
Here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11139-011-9335-9 – check
out who the author is.
You'll be amazed.
There's also this:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
\begin_inset CommandInset href
LatexCommand href
name "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356880658_A_simple_proof_of_Linas's_theorem_on_Riemann_zeta_function"
target "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356880658_A_simple_proof_of_Linas's_theorem_on_Riemann_zeta_function"
literal "false"
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So there.
Heh.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
– Linas – 22 August 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
6 Sept 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
OK, so this is not going to work, because it is fundamentally unbounded,
but I have to try anyway, because practice makes perfect.
Movement is prefereable to no movement.
See? That last sentence: that's forward progress, of sorts.
Even if it is a repetition of the past, a repetition of something well
known.
Repetiation, with variation, is a hallmark of life.
What am I thinking of, as I write this?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Last night, I tossed and turned, as three distinct ideas collided in my
head: an animation of mitochondria, my studies of civilization, and my
personal failure along all axes as conventionally measured in American
culture: fame in academia, riches in entrepreneurship, power in leadership.
Not that I ever tried hard in any of these, but my failure at the token
efforts still stings.
But maybe save that for later.
Lets go abstract, first.
Saw on twitter an animation of a slice of a mitochondrian, showing struturally
accurate major proteins.
It was quite remarkable.
The proteins, although mechanical in function, were remarkably crooked,
asymmetric twisted shapes.
What immediately went through my head is how these acted as traps for free
energy: Through milledia of evolution, nature found certain arrangements
of atoms can extract flowing energy.
Vibrating back and forth, with assorted electronic gradients across molecular
bonds, ionic interactions, hydrogen/water bonds, serve as filter-traps
for free energy.
The hap-hazardness of the process is suggested by the irregularity of the
molecules: they're blobs, and whatever functional action they have is hardly
apparent from a simple visual inspection of their shape.
Certainly, something can be found by deeper examination of the vibrational,
electronic properties, but whatever that is, its subtle and not on-the-nose
obvious.
A wild complex system for trapping free energy.
My imagination is colored by studies of fractals and modular forms, hyperbolic
spaces.
A folding in on oneself, but without the natural order or symmetry of a
fractal, but something far more twisted up.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is at the microscopic scale.
A lifetime of study of biochemistry might enlighten mitochondrial mechanics.
There are certainly thousands of biologits looking into this, and each
new headline is astounding and fascinating.
And all this gives what? Maybe a gigadalton of mass, doing some sophisticated
free energy extraction from the surrounds? Now scale this up to civilization,
thourh the usual path: cellular biology, organisims, neural structures
of increasing sophistication, ant colonies, flocks of birds, prides of
lions.
Language and speech centers as thin prefrontal cortex wrappers on reptilian
brains playing games and falling in love.
Villages, towns, cities, societies angaged in literature and history and
art and industrial manufacture, wrestling with sources of fungible wealth.
Billions of human minds exposed like petri dishes to the latest memes and
propabganda, accepting of any factoid, however true or false, is promoted
by social media.
Memes spreading like infectious disease through the global brain.
Nascent electronic AI brithing on this petri dish.
All for what? This is the grand question; what is the meaing of life? How
odd that capture and harenssing for free energy leads to this.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I've spent a large fraction of my life looking at absolutely everything,
everywhere.
Sports, art, music.
Psychology, sociology, economics, politics.
Love, happiness, depression, anger, hope.
Being lost, being confident.
The sceinces: from mathematics to quantum physics, and all the way up the
chain.
I've got a colleciton of hundreds of youtube videos detailing auto manufacturin
g in Detroit, from the 1930's, onwards.
The mining of copper from the 1910's onwards.
Smelting and casting and hammering and rolling steel.
The construction of Teslas gigafatory in Austin.
I started reading George Elliots Middlemarch a week ago, and I'll tell
you, the preface, the first chapter is knock-your-sox-off superbness.
I'm deeply, shockingly impressed.
I haven't read anything this good in, like, forever.
I hope the rest lives up to this start.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anyway, where was I? All this, for what? Al this, the everything I've looked
at, it seems like perhaps it is time to start integrating all this into
some grand...
something.
Grand narrative? Which is an effectively impossible.
I said unbounded earlier, but maybe impossible.
I as a single human with a limited lifetime, cannot reconcile theories
of gravitation, black hole horizons with the goings on of love, hate, qualia,
with literature and art, beauty and engineering.
These are all just things that are out there, and dammit yes, I've looked
at them all, and it is quite the vista, and ...
what is one to conclude dro this? I say, impossible, because I amagine
that if I had an IQ of a million or a billion, and the workings of mitochondria
were somehow tritely obvious at that point, and perhaps even the expanse
of human Western Civ became comprehensible and graspable, then I imagine
this same IQ would trip over progressively more complex, mind-bendingly
arcane structures in the physical unverse, in the noosphere.
For every advancement in intellectual ability, I imagine that complexity
expands at an even greater rate, super-exponetial, combinatorial.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So there I am, tossing and turning in bed, ant the above paragraphs are
what is sloshing about in my sleepless thoughts, and for what? Unresolved,
unresolvable.
Here I am, writing up my dream: is it any more coherent in my waking state?
Is it any more lucid now? I vaguely hoped it would be, but perhaps I was
wrong: perhaps the agonies of tortured sleep provide as great or greater
insight as the waking state: yes, I can control the direction of my thoughts
as I am awake, but the unbridled multiverse of sleep seems richer and more
expansive, offerig a greater choice of possibilities.
Sadly, muddled possibilities: the surgeons knife of waking thought is trying
to tease apart a marshy swampland of reallity.
Like a surgeon cutting through living tissue, one certainly cleaves something,
but that cleavage respects no natural boundaries.
Here I sit, broken hearted, came to shit, but only farted.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, whatever.
I've got a very long list of to-do items that I suppose I should get around
to to-doing.
Almost all of it is mundane, almost all of it is tiny, back and forth steps.
Did I mention I'm trying to learn to dance the shuffle? Harder than it
looks.
I've spent maybe 5-10 minutes on it, and I still can't do it.
Fancy that.
I spent 20 years rowing, I'm only now able to control it, but even that
requires active attention and concentration.
Humans are small, frail, of a short lifespan.
And I am one.
Where did I go wrong? Askig that is perhaps like asking a mitochondrian
what it did wrong.
It lived, it tried, it did it's thing, for better or for worse, and it
was hardly more enlightened at the end, than it was at teh begining.
It merely ...
extracted some free energy, and contributed to the puzzle of the universe.
So, this diary, this text, is my contribution.
My life's work: all the things I've done, these too are part of the universe,
and like a grain of sand on the beach, I have no clue of what lurks in
the depths of the ocean.
My weak imagination only imagines whales.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anyway...
once again, its late.
Once again, I am gettting up early early, to go rowing.
So bedtime.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
7 Sept 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Discord conversation, I copy here because it will be lost otherwise.
I'm hoarding memories, here, because there's no good way of doing backups
across different media (including social media)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas — Today at 12:58 PM Hi Adam, I've been ignoring discord for the last
few years; my apologies for being incommunicado; thanks for emails and
notices.
Adam — Today at 1:02 PM Hi Linas! Your name popping up put a smile on my
face.
Public Discord servers do not seem too great these days, but I still use
the app for some teams 🙂 I'm on the bullet train back from https://aitp-confere
nce.org/2024/ and would love to hear what you've been up to.
Linas — Today at 1:15 PM I've been up to nothing at all.
Well, fell in love with a girl in Lithuania, but now I'm in the US and
so miserable.
Spent some time thinking about the nature of love (something all mammals,
probably all animals feel) and language centers.
Piddled around with more math.
Nothing particular to report.
Adam — Today at 1:21 PM Wow! "Love and math" sounds peaceful.
I'm sorry to hear you're feeling miserable.
Anything you want to share or are looking for in the future? Linas — Today
at 1:26 PM Ah, thanks! The immediate love-pangs subsided.
Reality and idealized romantic love are not really compatible.
White Stripes have a song with the lyrics: "My left brain knows that love
is fleeting ..." Sharing: my personal predicament is unchanged since I saw
you.
I'd like to (1) engage in a certain line of research (and I have some new,
interesting, positive ideas I'm excited about.) (2) find someone with whom
to talk about about these things (3) get paid for doing this.
You can kind-of-ish almost fill the role of (2) but I'm frustrated that
you're more or less then only one sharing common interests and willing/able
to engage.
So, mostly I spin my wheels and waste my own time.
Adam — Today at 1:34 PM
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
and I have some new, interesting, positive ideas I'm excited about
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
👀 Do you have a one-sentence description or some labels? I may be able to
set up a nice group, so you have a couple more interested ears.
If it relates to graph rewriting, code synthesis, or symmetry/pattern mining
I may be able to help with (3) Linas — Today at 1:45 PM How about one paragraph
? Perception and action requires a description of the data format (of the
sensory data, for the motor-control data) Old-school is to have human engineers
write the API.
Instead, ask "how can an agent perceive that format? (the format of sensory
data)" and "how can an agent discover what it can do? i.e.
not just discover it's external environment, but discover how it can act
on its environment?" These are somewhat recursive questions (how do I perceive
what I perceive what I perceive...) but I think they can be grounded, given
an abstract mathematical framework, a la category theory or similar, and
incorporated into a general theory of learning.
So a general theory of perception, action, learning of agents embedded
in an external world.
I kind of dislike this last sentence, thought, because its "obvious" and
would be something you'd read in the preface of some 1960's textbook on
AI.
The difference is that now, we're 60 years past the 1960's in sophistication,
and so we can do better.
Adam — Today at 2:02 PM Interesting.
Can you relate this to "discovering what the (causal) consequences of your
actions in the environment are"? Linas — Today at 2:11 PM Not in any deep
way.
Nothing more than "do something and see what happens".
Let me backtrack, and provide a narrative on how I got to here.
Adam — Today at 2:16 PM A framework modeling the "what happens if you do
what" I do know that may be of interest is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternat
ing-time_temporal_logic This obviously doesn't concern learning, but perhaps
learning may be framed in a "finding the model which explains what is perceived
" on top.
Alternating-time temporal logic In computer science, alternating-time temporal
logic, or ATL, is a branching-time temporal logic that extends computation
tree logic (CTL) to multiple players.
ATL naturally describes computations of multi-agent systems and concurrent
games.
Quantification in ATL is over program-paths that are possible outcomes
of games.
ATL uses alternating-tim...
Linas — Today at 2:16 PM So I've got this learning system, and for historical
reasons, its batch-based.
So I said, gee, I need to redesign it so that it's continuous-learning.
OK, So instead of force-feeding it piles of text, as batch input, I'll
just leave it out there in the file system, and let it explore on its own.
So, lets see, I need an API to walk the file system, and an API to open
a file, and to API to read the text (unless its sound or photos..) Obvious
boring plain-old engineering stuff.
But an "API to walk the filesystem" is a "motor control API": a description
-- 'you can do this, its called "change directory", and you can do this
its called "list the files" and when you do this or that, here's what you
get back, here's the format of what you get back.' So that's what is usually
called an "interface definition", and the jump to the abstraction of an
IDL (interface definition language) was made in the 1980's maybe earlier.
Linas — Today at 2:26 PM And I'm thinking: hey, hang on, I should be describing
the interface to the interface, so that's the first recursion step.
I'm not really interested in creating yet another API for the file system,
and manually wiring it in to my learning system.
I'm thinking, instead: describe the interface to the interfaces, and let
the system work out on its own how to go from there.
But how does one write an "interface to interfaces"? And, given my historical
baggage, "how do I do that in Atomese?" and its surprisingly hard.
and right around there, I get a glimmer of something deeper: an a ha moment
of having an agent that can make choices to do something, but it doesn't
yet really know what it can do, so it has to try things out, and it doesn't
know what happens ("causally") when it does something, so it has to perceive
that, but what exactly is the format of this sensory data that it is streaming
in, anyway? What's the interface to the sensory stream? How is the sensory
stream navigated and parsed and analyzed? And oh, by the way, how does
the agent remember what it tried, and how does it correlate what it's done
in the past, with what its perceiving now? Linas — Today at 2:35 PM So
all this becomes a tangle of abstractions layered on abstractions, and
I realize I don't have any kind of formal theoretical framework for any
of it.
I can't implement this in software, because I don't quite really know what
it means for something to be input or output, or memory.
But I'm smart and experienced, so I think that maybe I can figure this
out if I try hard enough.
But then "real life" got in the way, and so did a bunch of distractions,
and so no forward progress.
That, plus the fact that if I did make forward progress, no one would know,
no one would care, it wouldn't matter to anyone, so its kind of demotivational.
It's like one or two abstraction layers too deep, and there is so much
going on in the world that my floundering attempts at understanding "what
is agency?" is ...
well, I'll get around to it eventually.
I just have to clear my plate of more mundane concerns.
Adam — Today at 3:13 PM It seems like your theory would need to be quite
mobile/computational, which is awesome.
At AGI24 I talked to David Spivak for a long time, and they have a framework
called "Polynomial Functors" for modeling this kind of stuff.
It's not plug and play though, and barely computational.
Greg Meredith uses the mobile process calculi, which admits to some nice
analysis "spatial behavioral types", but it's not widely explored.
Simon Peyton Jones raised "self describing interfaces that can evolve over
time" as the holy grail for his last "world scale programs" project.
I think some folks at Topos may be interested in this, along with Luke
(who has been bothering me with "but how does it explore its own interfaces"
for years) and Greg (who's looking at different parts of the environment
as their own agents with their own modes of communicating).
Linas — Today at 3:19 PM My to-do list includes talking to Greg Meredith
in much greater detail.
I sent him several emails but got no response, gotta try again.
I did look at polynomial functors, but did not see any immediate utility
for it.
People have sent me a lot of links to a lot of different topics, everything
from "basal cognition" to "bratelli-vershik diagrams" to "modeloids" to
"supersymmetric statistical mechanics" and its all intriguing, but it all
takes time and effort to understand, integrate, and figure out what aspects
can be used as inspiration, what can be used for something practical, etc.
Adam — Today at 3:55 PM Absolutely.
It's still interesting to have some "from first principles" run through.
You gave the file system example, do you have something written up on this?
Adam — Today at 4:16 PM All this Theorem Proving stuff at the conference
reminded me of ASP which you once recommended me to look into.
So I read this PDF over the course of the conference and I have many questions.
I'll limit myself to just one to start with: why are people outside of
mathematics interested in theorem provers? It seems like ASP is more general,
gives you more information, and is not much slower in the grand scheme
of things.
Is it just harder (to configure or implement an ASP solver)? Attachment
file type: acrobat asp.pdf 5.78 MB Linas — Today at 7:04 PM https://github.com/ope
ncog/sensory it's an experimental diary, not a formal writeup, so perhaps
convoluted, long-winded, informal.
Linas — Today at 7:15 PM Re: why do people like theorem proving instead
of ASP? Not sure.
I can hazard a guess.
a combination of history, prejudice, momentum and maybe or maybe not rank
ignorance.
A long long answer follows below, if you're ready for the long long answer.
History: (1) ASP happens to have more-or-less the same syntax as prolog.
Completely different algo for solving the expressions.
Utterly different performance profiles.
But same syntax.
So prolog has a strike against it: from the 1980's, its a been-there, done-that
idea, people wrote expert systems aka AI in the 1980's; few seem to be
keen to revisit that era.
It has the stink of "old stuff" surrounding it.
Linas — Today at 7:22 PM Now, those old expert systems consisted of thousands
of hand-crafted rules, written by experts.
I keep thinking that we can now automatically learn those rules, assign
probabilities to them, etc.
but I don't know that anyone is actually trying to do that.
(2) Both prolog and lisp, early AI favorites, predate "type theory".
They were both more-or-less untyped.
Or loosely typed, or ad-hoc typed, depending on how you think of it.
Since then, things have changed.
Early concepts of typing lead to the idea of "object oriented", eventually
resulting in C++ and Objective-C.
But even these two are not entirely rigorous about types, they're a bit
loose.
After this, two things happened with types.
Linas — Today at 7:31 PM One was that the formal type people came up with
ML and later, CaML which had explicit strong types and the ability to perform
explicit logical reasoning about types.
Turns type inference is not turing-complete, and that's a good thing: all
type inference terminate in finite time, and quickly! So it splits out
part of the programing task into something that can be automated, and runs
in finite time, and runs quickly.
The other thing that happens is the internet, web, http.
Early web pages were static, but scripting was needed.
You could do cgi-bin with c/c++ but perl, and later, PHP were more effective.
And people started inventing brand new languages, like python.
And implementing python (and perl and PHP and 1001 other languages people
are creating) results in people thinking hard about types, and trying to
do them semi-correctly, as best they can (e.g.
duck-typing in perl: the type is hidden from the user, but only because
the perl internals are clever about hiding it; they're actually in there.)
Anyway, type theory advances.
Linas — Today at 7:39 PM So some or most of the theorem provers absorb
these typing lessons.
For example, agda adds ability for do type inference on union types, something
that no other language does.
These end up being used as marketing claims: "our system can do something
your system cannot", and since we're humans, we're susceptible to marketing
claims, and so some of these rather arcane systems gain mind-share.
Being hip and trendy and fashionable is not limited to narcissists; even
the nerdiest scientists do it.
Oh, one other thing, re performance, expressability, syntax, optimization.
This is a story of SAT solvers, SMT solvers.
Linas — Today at 7:49 PM So, in chip design, formal verification is a big
deal, because when you "RIT a chip" (run the compiler) you can only afford
to do it twice.
Maybe three times, cause its so expensive.
Millions of dollars.
You know there will be bugs, and so on the second try, you hope to fix
all of them, and if you fuck up, either the executives give you a third
chance or they lay everyone off.
No one wants to be fired, so making damn sure the hardware will work as
designed is a huge deal, and you have these huge, complex, arcane, highly
proprietary chip verification systems.
You run em like crazy before you RIT the chip.
The early 1980's systems did forward-chaining and back-chaining, a lot
like prolog.
And this worked great, as long as your chips had less than 100K or maybe
1M transistors in them.
There were alternative algos, e.g.
DPLL, but they were slow and klunky, compared to forward/back-chaining.
...
until you got to about 1M transistors, at which point, the performance
curves crossed over.
And not just a little, but a lot.
All of the old verification companies went bankrupt when this happened.
Like 100% of them.
They were not ready, they couldn't retrofit.
The mind-set for DPLL is utterly different from forward/back-chaining.
Linas — Today at 8:00 PM A different name for DPLL-solving is "boolean
SAT solving".
So, old prolog was (and still is) based on chaining, and it works great
on certain classes of problems.
By contrast, ASP, which uses same syntax as prolog, but has SAT under the
covers, works great, but for a different class of problems.
SAT is better at constraint solving, chaining is better for reasoning.
...
but ...
there's one more fly in the ointment.
Not everything is boolean.
Some problems need/want to have arithmetic in them: addition, subtraction,
multiplication, inequalities.
Classic examples are the so-called "linear programming" (LP) problems from
WWII: you have X amount wheat and Y amount of barley and you can brew lager
or ale, which sells for $Z and $W, how do you brew to maximize profits?
(The WWII example involved tanks and jeeps and ships, I forget the details)
Modern versions of LP are used to solve zillions of modern economic problems,
e.g.
running solar/wind farms, factories for god-knows what, and ...
electrical signal delays on chips.
Linas — Today at 8:07 PM So how do you couple LP problems to SAT solvers?
This is a generic problem, lots of people in the industry have it, they
fund academia to solve it, etc.
etc.
and you get SMT solvers.
Satisfiability-modulo-theories.
Here, a "theory" is a collection of "axioms", which you can apply in any
order you wish.
For example, if a>b then a+c>b+c would be an axiom.
Linas — Today at 8:15 PM "modulo" is like long division: if you have some
large integer, then you can either divide by a prime or you can't, and
you have a collection of primes you can divide by.
"modulo theory" is like that, but you start with a large complex expression,
and you can either simplify it, by "dividing" by an axiom, or you can't.
You proceed by reducing the expression as best as you can.
If you've reduced your initial expression to true then you've "proved"
that your initial expression is true.
But what is the best order in which to apply the axioms, to most efficiently
reduce the initial expression? well, hard question.
Given this description of "module theory", you can see that its more or
less the same thing, kind-of-ish as theorem proving.
But wait, there's more! Its not just SMT, but its also combining the "modulo
theories" part with other boolean expressions (to obtain satisfiability)
so e.g.
"either door is open, or door is closed and temperature at top of door
is > x+y-c then yell fire else open door" and you have to do the modulo-linear-
programming part to figure out the temperature part of it, and ordinary
boolean-SAT to handle the if-then boolean part of it.
Turns out SMT was really friggin hard.
Linas — Today at 8:26 PM The simplest theory is the "theory of equality"
and it has only a handful axioms: x=x is true and if x=y then y=x and if
x=y and y=z then x=z and that's it, and it turns out even that is painfully
hard to solve.
So most SMT solvers would implement the theory of equality and say "ah
hah! we did it!" and you'd ask them about inequalties, or god forbid linear
algebra, and they'd say things like "were working on it, maybe next year".
I assume, I don't really know, most modern theorem-proving systems are
outgrowths or updates to the older SMT ideas, but I have not really kept
track.
So, to recap your question "why theorem proving and not ASP"? the answer
would seem to be...
theorem provers have baked-in support for handling certain types of axioms
that you might have to otherwise "roll your own" in ASP.
For example ..
linear algebra.
And although ASP is blazingly fast for certain classes of problems, it
does require exhaustive search for the reduced kernel, and maybe the theorem-pr
oving people have brand-new, better algos for doing the exhaustive-search
corner (this is a corner of the so-called "lambda cube" that everyone hates/ign
ores because its so hard.) Linas — Today at 8:36 PM I've been ignoring theorem-pr
oving, because I want to get away from strict axioms that are strictly true/fals
e, hold/don't-hold, and instead follow probabilistic distributions.
I think this is where Ben started 20 or 30 years ago, but it feels like
he lost the plot.
Meanwhile, LLM's and deep learning and transformers have turned everything
sideways, so now there's a whole new set of confusing things to try to
work with.
So, you know, we all do what we can and ignore the rest.
If you read the above, and see parts where I've failed to mention something
important, or put the wrong emphasis on something, or god-help said something
totally bone-headed, let me know.
You went to the conference, which means you should now know more than me
about half of these topics.
(Heh.
OK, I remember going to physics conferences, and understanding maybe 5%
of it So ...YMMV, as they say.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
9 September 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I continue to expand my health plan text, which is now maybe 50 pages
long? or longer? that I've been developing since 2007, and of course it
has enough material in it that it's hard to keep sorted, and since it contains
significant knowledge, requires intellectual effort to retain.
Of course, writing is a prosthesis that helps with retention.
But what about control? So, of course, one idea is to use LLM's as a reference
source.
This is intermediate between my personal notes, and search engines: the
LLM provides details that may be absent in my notes, but narrows down the
flood of text offered by search engines.
This is both academic publishing, with lots of niggling science details,
and also the repetitive info found in general-health weblogs (which all
say the same thing, mostly, and say it without references, and repeat common
knowledge, irrespective of whether its factually correct or not.
Of course, factual correctnesss is a concern with LLM's.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, one section of the health plan I was expanding today was on emotional
health.
So apparently, Vitamin K is metabolized into some neurotransmitte with
potentially negative side effects.
But I want to take Vitamin K for wound-healing benefits.
Something similar for BCAA: negative emotional impacts, but needed to avoid
post-exercise muscle pain.
What about DHEA? DHEA is a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
neurosteroid
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
; its production plummets with age.
Its pumped by supplement sellers for its (dubious) body-building effects,
but its also an anxiolytic and has antidepressive effects.
Then of course there are all the nnotropic stacks described alll over the
internet.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, the thing that popped in my head is this: how can I deploy a personalized
LLM to help maintain health homeostasis? Right now, I do online research
for assorted supplements, I buy them, gobble them, but OMG there is a lot
of them and I don't know if they cancel one-another out, if I should take
them in the morning or night.
I don't have any particular feedback for their effectiveness.
Well, BCAA is very distinctively noticable for muscle pain, but the rest,
not so much.
I took piracetam a few times, a decade ago, and wow, it made me sad.
Not exactly depressive, but it made life seem pointless and painful.
There I was, nearing the end of a long walk, in bright sunlight on a nice
warm day, beautiful weather, thinking about how hopeless it all is.
WTF.
That was my final experiment with piracetam.
Nasty shit.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So a personalized LLM can have several homeostatic effects: one is to help
maintain emotional balance.
This is perhaps the more interesting one, or more importnt one, because
if one loses clarity of thought, one loses all higher regulation function.
And so that's the build out.
Let's put this into perspective (which I've probably done many times above,
but it bears repeating) Basic bodily functions and survival are handled
by the mamalian brain.
The neocortex, the pre-frontal cortex get involved in higher function,
helping provide additional regulation layered on lower neural mechanisms.
I'm now asking:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
how do I wire in an LLM to sit on top of that?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
This is not entirely new: writing and diaries are memory prosthesis.
Speech, language, communication allows me to offload intellectual processing
tasks to other humans.
So my prefrontal cortex is already attached to society and civilization,
and socity and civilization offer homeostatic effects and health benefits.
e.g.
if I get sick I can go to a doctor & hospital, and pay for it all via insurance.
So me, myself and I, the language-conscious verbal-expressive
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is already integrated into a larger organism.
I am now asking for how to correctly introduce and LLM into this mix.
So, in this sense, its not all that different than my existing mix of keeping
a health-plan text, and keeping a health-diary text, and using the internet
as a knowledge source.
But an LLM would be presumably more active, less static, having agential
degrees.
Being digital, it is presumably economically cheaper than consulting a
medical doctor; it is somewhat ethically cleaner: like why should a doctor
care about me? Why should I burden a doctor with my problems? The answer
is easy: because the doctor wants my money.
This transactional approach to medicine is problematic.
Replacing this transaction with an LLM (or other artifical digital agent)
is appealing.
(In this text, I will use LLM as a synonym for artificial digital agent,
unless otherwise noted.
So think
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
digital agent in general
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
no matter what the underlying tech is.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, that's it.
That's the idea.
I guess this idea has been burbling in my head for maybe even a deacde
or more, long before LLM's, but well, at least this time I've actively
verbalized it, as opposed to this previous bubbling-in-the-background concept.
Have I made forward progress? Well, not really.
So how could I actually do this?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Lets try a sketch.
I could get API keys for one of the existing major systems; or I could
beg/borrow/steal weights for some open-source-ish LLM.
Next, I would dump my health-plan diary and notes into it, and ask it to
double-down train/retrain on medical and bio texts.
And then use it as an oracle: dear LLM: what should I do to stay healthy
and strong and live forever? And have it regurgitate random bullshit advice
from health gurus who happened to publish a blog that appeared in the training
set.
So this is problematic: LLM's are like photographs; they are only as reliable
as the subject that has been photographed.
If there's bullshit in the training set, you get bullshit out.
So this is another meta-cognitive effect.
How do I know that some particular health advice is bullshit? Several ways.
One is delivery: the writer demonstrates poor control over the english
language.
The writer is writing for a low-IQ audience.
The writer has a poorly-disguised hidden agenda.
The writer makes claims that are outlandish or absurd.
There's a grayzone here: even if the worst offenses are absent, a given
blog article or bit of health advice might still smell bad, be off in some
hard-to-define way.
And LLM's have none of these discernment abilities.
They can't really see that something is off, something is broken, incorrect
in the advice.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is only a problem because most of the health cures that I pursue are
at the edge of what is known by medical science.
I don't need an LLM to nag me to lose weight or get regular exercise; thes
are now socially accepted common-sense recommendations, and a high-tech
agent is not needed for that.
I'm interested in pursuing therapies about which very little is known.
Hang on ...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So.
Well, let's break this down.
I want (1) a personalized medical doctor familiar with me, both my verbalizatio
ns, but also the results of blood tests and other invasive health measures
(2) an expert knowledgable in all the ways that regular human MD's are
(including sports therapists, psychiatrists, etc.) and (3) a system capable
of performing original science research to precisely clarify how some supplemen
t or therapy interacts with my particular health profile.
It seems this would require deep knowledge of biology, biochemistry, genomics,
proteomics etc.
(4) a user interface between the above and me.
How will this interact with me? Will this digital expert be a freind who
I chat with daily? A consultant availble on chat? Give me phone calls,
reminding me to get off twitter, go outside for a walk, and then get ready
for the party tonight? Maybe it will be some neural implant, so that I
can hear it the way one might hear voices in one's head.
Sheesh.
Maybe I surrender volitional control, so that instead of hearing voices,
it simply makes me really really want to open the lid of that bottle of
AKG and down a few grams with my morning coffee.
That is, I hand over a subset of my free will to this digital agent.
Sheesh.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, what's the path for satisfying items (1)-(4)? All of these are beyond
the current state of the art.
My options are to: (a) personally tackle some aspect (b) leverage some
open-source community to do same; possibly creating such a community (c)
same as (b) but propritary startup with funding, or (d) do nothing, wait
for society/culture/western-civ to tackle these problems, i.e.
wait for externeral progress of which I am not a part of.
directly or indirectly.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This specific diary entry consists of my personal direct attack via (a)
and represents a few hours of work effort.
My gut-instinct for the state of the art says neither (b) nor (c) are viable
at this time, although staying current with news and announcements is recommend
ed.
The default is therefore (d) sit and wait.
In the meanwhile, I can continue a multi-progoned approach: maintain my
own personal diary, read up on health effects in general, do medical tests
e.g.
bloodwork, and pursue my deep-AGI & math research.
Onward-ho, no obvious course-correction at this time.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The one curious aspect to this diary entry is that everything I wrote above,
I already knew, subliminally, subconsiously, consciously, even.
The response I wrote above could have been easily provoked in some social
setting or party conversation.
There's nothing particularly new here.
Sometimes writing, speaking, talking, setting to words helps me formulate
and gel vauge ideas, or even discover new ideas I'd not gotten before.
For the above, this is not the case: I kind of already knew all this, and
found nothing new, other than perhaps confirming a general trepidation
that perhaps LLM's aren't really ready for prime-time.
And this last sentence also indicates the point of greatest risk: am I
discounting LLM's too much? When might they be ready? Am I too out-of-touch
with the state of the art? Perhaps I am ...
this is indeed a point of risk.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Of course, focusing more on LLM's takes time away from focusing on other
things, including the general complexity of ...
well, medical biology, narrowly, and complex socio-economic systems in
generality.
So my intellectual development is a bit of a random walk exploration, and
maybe I get lucky and maybe I don''t.
Arghh.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Touched on the above is the unexamined concept of homeostasis.
It's meant to mean
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I feel normal
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but what's that? Clearly there's a lot of variability: the daily wake/sleep
cycle; being excited to do something, being energized, (I'm usually energized)
sad (I'm rarely sad) depressive (I've noticed depressive symptoms recently:
the lack of desire of tackling anything intellectually hallenging, and
instead floating on a dopmane high of reading twitter feeds.) So feeling
normal appears to be a chaotic walk through a commonly-visited landscape
of emotional and psychological states.
So, like all the places a double-pendulumn visits: areas that are frequently
vistited, areas that are never visited.
This is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
normal
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and this is what
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
homeostatic
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
means.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Of ourse, life is boring without excursions.
Excurions include drunkenness and all sorts of drug-induced states, but
also, to take a sharp example, the feeeling of love, written about at length
up above, an excursion I hadn't embarked on for many decades.
Oh, what a feeling! So if I look at some LLM-device as a meta-rational
regulator of phsyical and mental health, to what degree should it control
excursions to emotional extremes? Obviously, you don't want it to prevent
you from falling in love (e.g.
by feeding you assorted psychologically active drugs) and you do want it
to minimize depressive states, and particularly any suicidal tendencies.
So this question of regulation seems to have a clear and obvious common-sense
answer:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
don't overdo it
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(don't get manic for longer than a few minutes, or hours at most),
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
don't get stuck somewhere for too long
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(its OK to feel sad, just not for more than a few days or weeks; depression
should be limited to days, certainly less than weeks.) So I don't know why
I'm belaboring all this, because the answer is obvious.
Still, the nature and desirability of excurions does merit examination.
I mean, what the heck, all of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
grožinė literatura
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
- humanistic fiction - is all about the exploration of emotional and psychologi
cal states of being, of emotional and psychological excursions - something
that avid readers all know as something obvious, but to me as a physics/math
nerd remains a surprising and undiscovered domain, intellectually challenging
and intriguing.
So I write here.
So now take all of that, and pile on the additional burden of the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
nanny state
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: to what degreee should a personalized digital doctor/psychiatrist should
baby-sit your psychological well-being? The background is that society
only does a marginal job at this: look at all the homeless people out there,
seniors living in despair, young adults lost and dazed and confused.
So the current societal and governmental and civilizational forces do ask
for all this to be addressed, and do take some steps, although these steps
are perhaps insufficient, and now we layer on a layer of digital technology:
cheap, cheaper than existing suicide hot-lines; reliable but only questionably-
so, given well-documented failings of LLM technology.
Customizable to an individual level, with associated risks, e.g.
the Chinese/PRC survellance state of Orewllian proportions, with the social
credit score, and the 15-minute cities.
So it seems that socio-psychological regulation is ...
a big emerging trend in civilizational forces.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Again, what I write above is obvious.
I write it because I marvel at it, I try to grasp it, even as I am cognizant
that it is somehow ungraspable.
And yet ..
it is graspable: the russian KGB/FSB theories of reactive control is all
about shaping socio-cultural dynamics, using disinfomration and propaganda,
to encourage harmful excursions into false beleifs, apathy, social and
political violence.
So all this stuff can be theorized upon and even controlled.
So there is more to sociology than just descriptive formulations: George
Elliot's Middlemarch describes the inner soul.
Its a sensory system.
But systems like FSB/KGB reactive control, or more directly, Chinese social-cre
dit scores, are overt mechanistic, mechanical devices for controlling psychologi
cal states.
So, a sensori-motor system.
Again this is obvious.
I marvel at it.
But I also do so with concern: the conventional concern that someone (the
russians, the chinese) are actively harmful and detrimental to my way of
life, the way my neighbors and my freinds live, the way my culture (American,
Lithuanian) lives; the economic and political systems of the USA and the
EU.
And into all of this obvious inter-relatedness, we install LLM's in some
murky poorly-defined way.
Hmm.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I'm boiling the ocean here.
Right? But its not like it hasn't been done before.
There is intellectual progress at the civilizational level.
The thoughts of Aristotle were superceeded by the Medieval Scholastics,
which in turn were refined, updated and revolutionized in the Enlightnment,
in the 19th century, in whatever we want to call the 20th century.
Although I have trouble boiling the ocean all by myself, my little itty-bitty
attentional focus here and here, and the reporting os such results on twitter,
or in published papers or in blog entries, or simply in conversations with
freinds does affect the course of humanity.
My intellectual efforts do affect history.
What's not clear here is whether I'm engaged in a futile full-frontal assault,
or whether I am searching for cracks in the edifice with my magnifying
glass.
I'm doing something here, by writing this, wringing my hands out of concern
about issues big and small, but where's it all going? What's it all about?
Odd.
OK.
Whatever.
I'm done for now.
I'm going to go erging, now, before the juniors grab all the ergs.
Later.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
10 Sept 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
New essay:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
What’s a Theory to Do?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Brendan Chambers 4 Sept 2024 https://www.publicbooks.org/whats-a-theory-to-do/
– food for thought.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
My pesonal essay here is some attempt to get closer to directly being me,
or, as earlier pointed out the me that produces words, which is still not
the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
real
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
me that falls in love.
My filling in love is intermediated by my verbal centers.
And then, a bit more distortion, as I pick and choose words before setting
them down to this page.
And then an incompleteness: I cannot write everything that is banging at
my door of consciousness.
Sometimes, I can't type fast enough.
So, you dear reader, inly get an intermediated glimpse into being
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
This is my personal essay.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Peculiar, I suppose, that there is something in me that wishes to connect
with, mate with, have sex with the world.
That has exhibitionist desires, to bare my soul, as best as possible, to
the universe, so that, I dunno, the universe can fuck me.
Speaking of soul-bareing and fucking, it is interesting how search engines
readily throw up image search results for the most intimate and obscure
sexual fantasies.
Not only do I bare my soul, here, but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands
of amateur cartoonists and painters and sketchers and artists of all stripes
have bared their fantasies to DeviantArt, generating vast collections of
...
I dunno what to call it.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
porn filth
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is the conventional term.
More neutrally,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
erotic fantasy
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Hardly a surprise, here, as species procreation means Darwinian evolution
has focesed a cosiderable portion of our thought-world onto erotica.
You can't make babies without getting horny, first.
So, obviously, erotica must occupy a significant portion of the noosphere;
humans as a species would not have survived without this.
(Homework assignment: come up with plausible alternative theories that
allow species survival, but do not lead to erotic fantasies.
Is this possible? Is there any plausible alternative?)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Footnote: my personal favorites seem to be entirely mainstream.
Lingerie and bimbo type stuff.
Or rather, I assume this is mainstream.
Only people with access to search-engine results can map this landscape.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anyway: So, we think about erotic things.
And also: we do not keep these fantasies private.
At least, not in modern Wesern Civ.
Prior centuries had provincial, common-man prudishness to them, but the
learned, the perspacious, the urbanized sophisticates had no problems with
such expressions.
We have plenty of paintings of nudes from the 16th century.
Who do you think was painting nudes? Shut-in incels?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So the context is that we all wish to communicate.
Most of our comminucations is about how we feel.
Although, for the enlightened rationalist, it is about what we think.
The topic of discussion.
The urge to communicate remains, although the topic being communicated
is highly variable.
Everyone wants to talk about
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Even when we listen to stories about others, it is often so that we can
better understand
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Although I gues there is a spectrum, here.
Many want to understand the external world: where do stars come from; where
does my next meal come from.
The internal world to, a recognition of psychology.
So, indeed a desire to communicate with unbounded range of communicable
topics.
Can we take this desire and express it reductively? In chemistry, atoms
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
want
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to interact, to undergo chemical reactions.
Why? Mumble mumble (Gibbs)
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
free energy
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
In biochemistry, biological molecules
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
want
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to interact: ion pumps want to pump ions.
But what about bacterial sex? Can we say that bacteria
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
want
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to have sex? Well, yeah, I guess they do.
Mumble mumble gibbs free energy.
What about jumping genes? Viral genetic sequences that bounce through the
genome, reproduce and propagate semi-independently of the host genome?
They
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
want
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to do this, mumble gibbs free energy.
And what is it about cells that make them want to stick together, to create
multicellular life? What is it about jellyfish, that makes them want to
congregate and throw parties, just like on SpongeBob? What about ant colonies?
So, sure people want to communicate, mumble gibbs free energy.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Yet at the end of this process, it is curious that part of that desire to
communicate includes the desire to bare our deepest inner souls to others.
In prior centuries, to out lovers.
In the present century, the prosthesis of writing, enabled by the psychotechnol
ogy of the phonetic alphabet, allows me to spill my deepest inner-most thoughts
to an amorphous, un-named
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
other
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
who may or may not read this text someday.
There are two ways to think about this situation.
One is that I really do have a deep intimate desire to bare my soul to
the abstract universe.
The other is that modern Western Civ has not provided me with the intimate
lover with whom I could communicate more privately.
But is it correct to blame Western Civ? Friggen every author, ever, could
have, in principle, kept their thoughts provate, to be shared with feinds
and family only, but no, they decided that they should write a book.
I mean, some princess three thousand years ago decided to write the Book
of J, eventually becoming a part of the Old Testament.
So we cannot blame Western Civ, in all honesty, for the rampant desire
to write.
The rampant desire to have intellectual intercourse with the amorphous
other.
Yes, more crudely, this could be called masturbation with the written page,
as the universe hardly responds in kind.
But then, ejaculation is one way: it goes out, it does not come back.
And if we want to be both-sides-ish here, then something something something
female receptacle accepts, abosrbs the external world and incorporates
it into self.
That is, when its not ejaculating newborn babies.
These sexual analogies are very imprecise.
But colorful, I guess.
I guess that little itty-bitty erotic corner of my brain says that this
is an OK thing to incorporate into my writing.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Am I making any forward progress, here? Well, lets see...
lets recap the main thesis.
Humans want to express themselves, for all to see.
This self-expression has a lineage that we can trace back, bu analogy,
to mammels, vertebrates, multi-cellular organisms, single-celled life,
large molecules, small molecules and grounding finally in free energy and
atomic physics.
This is the reductionist grounding for self-expression.
Was it worth making this grounding? Do I learn anything here?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, if I were merely concerned about the human condition, then the above
paragraphs would be shallow and trite.
Insofar as I am interested in mechanistic systems such as AGI, then this
gives somethig to ponder.
Do LLM's have some inate desire for self-expression? It would appear not.
That is, if we stop the program, turn off the electricity, nothing happens.
But what if we leave the program running, but don't provide any input prompts?
Well, then it depends on how the LLM was ocoded up: it could be silent,
or it could go into a state of glossolalia.
If the LLM is silent, is it still
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
thinking
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in the background? Well, again, that depends on the design and programing
of the system.
Perhaps it can go into some mode of relaxing weights, annealing, as it
waits for a prompt, All this is under engineering control.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This makes LLM's very different than chemistry.
Chemical reactions
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
want
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to happen (free energy).
LLM's
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
want
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
only insofar as they've been engineered to want.
Conventional LLM engineering does not define any free-energy surface that
can fold in on itself.
There are certainly analogous constructions of Bayesian priors understood
as multiverses, but an energy minimization principle has been disconnected
from these formulations.
In physics, in the physical universe, energy minimzation is used as the
driver of time-like evolution of dynamical systems.
In LLM's, there is no over-arching principle of dynamical evolution; it
is very constrained to operate within the constraints imposed by the software
developer.
These constraints are effectively arbitrary.
You could make some weak argument and say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
yeah but no, since there is an underlying hardware computer
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but this is very very weak.
The ad hoc constraints created by the software engineer are indeed ad hoc.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is this good? Is this bad? Should we do things differently? Can we design
a system that is more physics-like, in that it has a unifying dynamical
motion principle, expressed sot that it operates everywhere within the
software framework? What would that look like? I'm hand-waving about Friston
free-energy type dieas, but from a completely different perspective.
The overall idea is valid.
The devil is in the details.
The details are mathematical, and my writing here is non-mathematical.
So, in a sense, its roll-up-your-sleeves time, were that line of inquiry
to be pursued.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
To recap the thesis here: *if* an AGI software system were to be created,
based on free energy principles, *then* it would naturally want to express
itself.
i.e.
engage in self-expression.
Indeed, wanting to
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
express oneself
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
can be taken to be a synonym for wanting to be in dynamical motion.
The
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
want
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is inate: dynamical motion occurs over time, and insofar as time
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
wants
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to move forward, so do dynamical systems
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
want
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to express themselves.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The corollary seems to be that current engineering of LLM's doesn't bother
to think about the idea of dynamical systems.
The engineering task is given by the executives: make the damn thing work.
Nowhere does it say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
design your LLM so that it is an explicit dynamical system
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
And so it doesn't happen.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Another corollary is that things that aren't dynamical systems don't meet
the conventional definitions for
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
being alive
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Yes, there's a huge grey area to be argued about, as to what constitutes
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
being alive
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but it seems that all possible definitions of life require it to be a
dynamical system.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Off-topic, but let me revist my own ideas about
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
being alive
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Earlier i this text, I argued that consciousness should be viewed as a
phase transition.
One one side of the phase transition, an arrangement of atoms is not conscious,
and on the other side, it is.
This implies a rejection of panpsychism.
What about life? A similar phase-transition argument could be made for
a living bacterium vs a dead one.
But this promptly puts us into the grey area of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
are viruses alive
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? I think the answer is both yes and no.
They are not, if you imagine a virus as som collection of atoms in a vacuum
chamber, interacting with nothing at all.
In that case, it's obviously dead.
But if you think of the virus as a particupant in an ecological system,
wherein it gets regular access to ribosomes and various transcription factors
...
well, neither the virus, nor the ribosome itself are alive; but the ecosystem
as a whole, is.
So, again, this is kind of a phase transition.
Using petroleum percolation as the example of a phase transition: no single
fracture in the rock is enough to make the oil flow, and indeed, looking
at it from the point of view of individual fractures is the incorrect viewpoint.
Petroleum can percolate through fraked rock only when there are enough
openings, strung together, end-to-end.
One looks at the il field as a whole, not the individual cracks.
So analogously here: we must look at the entire ecosystem of a vairal DNA/RNA
strand plus also the ribosomes and transcription factors, plus a solute
containing free amino acids: this system as a whole is alive, and it doesn't
make sense to ask if the individual parts are.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
As I write this, I feel a little bit like a mouse running in a mouse-wheel.
Running, going round and round, not getting anywhere.
Am reminded of the study that shows that field mice seem to enjoy mouse-wheels.
So I guess I enjoy writing, even if I repeat myself, over and over.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This then begs the question: what is the theoretical basis for the enjoyment
of repetition? Well, the reductionist path is obvious: plenty of math gives
oscillatory behavior, plenty of physics consists of oscillatory behavior.
Its fundamental, and so hardly a surprise that large complex systems, such
as mice, enjoy oscillatory repetition.
We already knew that the muscles, the myostatin, work cylically, so of
course this propagates up to higher layers.
Oscillatory behavior in the noosphere, in processes that inhabit the noosphere,
well, this is on dicier ground...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The above ruminations make me think how un-life-like ergodic processes are.
For example, odomters are dynamical systems that visit each possible state,
before revisting the initial state.
So odometers are the ulitimate anti-cyclical device.
And odometers are also the ultimate model of ergodicity, making sure that
every state is visited (with uniform distribution!).
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But wait, is this true? Lets consider chaotic dynamical systems.
For example, the double pendulmn.
They exhibit almost-periodicity, before wandering off somwhere completely
different.
Or perhaps the Lorenz butterly attractor.
two almost-periodic, almost-oscillatory lobes, joined together.
In some sense (that I do not currently understand), the Lorenz attractor
will visit every possible state, over infinite time (right? Or are there
some states not reachable after infinite time? You know, I don't know).
If all states are reachable over infinite time, the system is, in a sense,
ergodic.
I guess.
Ouch.
It occurs to me that there are bucket-loads of details in the Lorenz attractor
that I do not understand.
Like, is it a sofic system? If so, then what is this symbolic-dynamics
description of it? Did I once read about this, skim it, and not pay attention?
Or not? Yikes!)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
At any rate, oscillation and revisting is central to dynamical systems.
So I should not feel bad for revisting the same topics, over and over in
my writing.
As long as I do it a bit differently each time.
And, well, as long as I study something new, learn something new, so that
when I revisit an old topic, I have some new insight to integrate.
Sheesh.
Again, everything I write here feels so trite and trivial, that its hardly
worth mentioninig, and yet the entire ediface remains challenging.
In only a dozen paragraphs, I've traveled from bimbo erotica to arcane
mathematical questions.
But I'm skidding, fritionless, btween these topics.
Skating, as it were.
But that's what dynamical systems do: they skid, they skate along constant-ener
gy surfaces, frictionlessly, without loss of energy.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perhaps it is time for the next topic: friction, loss of energy in the skating
about in the noosphere.
Are my thoughts actually frictionless? Are my thoughts a part of a larger
dissipative dynamical system? Lets see.
This could be interesting.
This is close to something I've conjectured about before, but I never looked
at this carefully.
Sooo...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
OK, so I have this super-speculative wild
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
theory
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(set of ideas) that relate concepts of branch-points, wave-function collapse,
decision-making and free will.
Ive sketched some of this earlier in this diary, will recap below.
The earlier sketches did not look at the role of friction, energy lose,
increase of entropy or thermodynamics.
So lets see if I can do that now.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
First of all, as a reminder to myself: what I am about to write is likely
to be total bullshit and pure fantasy.
Because although I beleive that what I write has some basis in reality,
it is also fantasized, in the sense that I do not (currently) have the
ablity to convert this into a mathematical theory.
Any such conversion is likely to reveal that large parts of this imagined
situation to be wrong.
I have to be careful beathing my own fumes.
So...
onward through the fumes.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
First a recap of the situation so far:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Decision making has something to do with bifurcation points, places where
several alternatives may be freely taken, without violating dynamics.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
There are plenty of low-dimensional examples.
Cracking open a copy of Abraham and Marsden, looking at Chapter Seven,
there is a rich variety of symplectic dynamical systems undergoing a variety
of different kinds of bifurcations.
A sophisticated and developed theory articulates these,
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
I do not understand what happens to these systems, when e.g.
geometric quantization is performed.
Ths is a serious task on its own: I would have to read, reread more carfully
how geometric quantization is done, and then look to see how they handle
bifurcation points.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
An additional complication is that many of these simple low-dimensional
dynamical systems can be realized in quantum form, and I am not up to date
on how those corresponding systems behave.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Being ignorant in this two-fold way allows me to take an imaginative leap,
and this leap is probably wrong.
But lets describe it anyway.
My idle imaginary claim is that wave function collapse has something to
do with the (geometric) quantization of bifurcation points.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The desire for this leap is two-fold.
The classical system gets to
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
decide
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
which way it will go, as will the quantum system.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The obvious failing from this is a measure-theoretic failing: the set of
bifurcation points is of measure zero; the likelihood of any specific particle
trajectory hitting a branch-point is zero.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Oddly, measure theory returns to save the day.
One of my super-simplified examples of recursive, cyclical dynamics is
the beta transform, although I guess any other one-d iterated system will
do.
Just that I've spent a lot of time developing an analysis of the beta-transform
, and have a relatively clear understanding of it.
So I want to use it as a model of bifurcation points, and the dynamics
of trajectories on either side of the bifurcation.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The net result is that theres a countable numbr of such bifurcations, and
that they are spread densely in the continuum, so, kind of like the rationals
in the reals.
In this sense, it becomes kind of impossible to tweak anything enywhere,
without crossing some bifurcation point.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
That is, although the rationals form a set of measure zero, the fact that
they are dense in the reals means that they are kind-of unavoidable.
They're everywhere.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Worse, I've got some vague hint that rational trajectories dominate the
dynamics.
Kind of like: none of those uncountable trajectories mattter, because tey
are constrained to lie
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
in between
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
rationals, and since the rationals are dense, the uncountable trajectories
are constrained.
Every element of the Cnator set is determined uniquely by it's left and
right boundaries.
The Cantor set is uncountable, the boundaries correspond to rationals.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
So, if I take the leap: a bifurcation point corresponds to a rational, then
bifurcations are everywhere, and are unavoidable.
In this sense, decisions can and must be made.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Lets ponder the Lorenz attractor some more.
Although it is purely deterministic, it would appear that there is some
countable collection of bifurcation points within it, and these points
are dense.
So although the point-wise dynamical evolution is deterministic (i.e.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
no free will
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
according to conventional arguments) there is a countable but dense set
of bifurcations, at which the positive lyapunov exponent sends trajectories
along diverging paths.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
If the initial conditions for a given trajectory were set (to an infinite
number of decimal places) then that trajectory is indeed
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
detrministic
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, assuming, that is, it never actually hits an actual bifurcation point.
Now, since the bifurcation points are countable, this suggests that any
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
random
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
intial starting point has a probability zero of hitting a branch point.
And so, by convention one rests, claiming pure determinisim and no free
will.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Convetional thermodynamcis and ergodic theory suggests three things: (1)
we get to choose an uncountable number of initial trajectories, and (2)
in order to avoid problems with uncountablity, we should avoid talking
about individual trajectories, and instead talk about sigma algebras, and
(3) only the weak topologies are physicaly real.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
So this is another curiosity: weak topologies are the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
natural
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
topology for ergodic, thermodynamic systems, taken as purely classical
systems.
But also weak topologies are the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
natural
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
topology on Hilbert space.
So this unifies classical and quantum pictures in this unexpected way.
Of course, this bullet-point is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
pure handwaving
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in some sense: to make it more precise is hard.
Perhaps we can take some classical dynamical system, do some symbolic dynamics
on it, and then look at how the weak topology on the symbolic dynamics
relates to the the topology needed for continuoustime evolution.
Egads, what a mess.
I assume that there are hundreds of academic papers on this topic, of which
I am utterly ignorant.
This was hot shit in the 1980's and 1990's, surely, research has marched
foreward since that time, right? Gah.
Too many unknowns in my speculations.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Although
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Fuck, I should maybe delete the above.
it's hard work making up this fantasy, I literally get exhausted trying
to hook it all up so it makes sense, so it works.
And portions seem founded on ignorance, which I could remedy with a few
years study, and other portions that are fantastic extrapolations, and
then even assuming I could untangle the simpler stuff, there's still a
few uncrossable divides that ...
well.
I gotta go to bed.
It's time to punt on this.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I still didn't get to the good part, which I think I talked about earlier:
the whole point of many-worlds is that distinct choices can be made to
form each world, and that collapse only happens later, as an accounting
trick, to reconcile consistent histories.
But
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
consistent histories
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
has been written about by others, already.
So I've got an antire stable of interesting ideas, but am missing the formalism
to make it more precise.
And improving on this would take years, decades, lifetimes of study, and
I don't have lifetimes left.
Fuck.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Whatever.
Later, dude.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
——-
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Oh, getting back to literature: a footnote, quoting from Brendan Chambers
above, that seems to more or less exactly hit on what I am doing here with
this diary:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
\emph on
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Take, for example, My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard.
This six-volume, 3,600-page work, written in the first person and composed
entirely of details from the author’s own life, moves between Proustian
recovery of his childhood and quasiscientific documentation of the minutiae
of quotidian existence, frequently taking the form of pages-long lists.
Knausgaard explicitly rejects literary fiction in favor of genres that
he feels “confe[r] meaning” like diaries and essays.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
\emph on
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
And yet, these genres are no less mediated (and perhaps no more meaningful)
than novels, which he describes as “made-up people in a made-up, though
realistic, world.”2 My Struggle’s exhaustive lists may convince the reader
that she is receiving direct access to Knausgaard’s life at the moment
that he was writing.
However, even lists are subject to detail selection and ordering, inevitably
disfiguring the original scene which they purport to artlessly reproduce.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
\emph on
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Knausgaard represents a much larger literary trend often called autofiction,
a broad category whose practitioners include Rachel Cusk, Ocean Vuong,
Sheila Heti, Tao Lin, and Megan Boyle.
\emph default
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I guess I'm just one of the popular trend.
Hah.
I'm not even original! Horray! I guess.
I wonder if I can get published and win some literary award.
Wouldn't that be charming? Not likely, but charming.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
5 October 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Exploring a rabitt-hole of esotericism and mysticism via Wikipedia.
Fell into
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Problem of Evil
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil Let me spill my current thoughts
*before* I start reading that article.
If we characterize
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
evil
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
as
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
pain and suffering
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, then we can recognize it as the result of evolution creating stable biologica
entities and endowing those entitites with survival mechanisms.
Specifically, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
entity
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is a structure & arrangement (of atoms, in the conventional physical universe,
but could be anything in any sort of cosmology having the concept of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
time
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
) that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
exists
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
for extended periods of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
time
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(scare quotes cause existence is associated with a notion of time).
In actual nature, we note that biological organism have evolved assorted
defense reflexes: e.g.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
run away from predators
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and also self-repair and healing mechanisms: e.g.
pain as a signal transmitted to inform that a certain section of the entity
has been damaged, and is in need of repair.
Inflammation is typical of the repair process.
Pain, transmitted by neurons, serves a two-fold purpose: if the pain is
induced by a threat, then run away from the threat.
But also, if somethig hurts, don't fuck with it, because it will heal faster
that way.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is a functional description of pain and suffering, and is broad enough
that under this defintion, jellyfish can feel pain, but also even systems
without neurons, as long as they have a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
need for repair
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
signal coupled to a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
avoid danger
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
signal.
It seems that a proper combination of these two are sufficient to create
a notion of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
pain and suffering
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
state.
So perhaps even single-celled organisms might
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
feel
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
pain and suffering (I don't know enough biology to assert or refute that.)
I suppose that the most serious objection to my defintion is that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
self awareness
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is also needed.
Without self-awareness, the damage and defense mechanisms are purely mechanical
, carrying out proscribed mechanical activities.
With self-awreness comes the awareness that it is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
who is damaged and should take measures to avoid further damage, future
damage.
These measures could be automatic and autonomous, inbuilt, or they could
be rational, the result of having a regulatory system layered on top of
all this, capable of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
rational
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
or at least,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
common sense
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
thought, and having that regulatory system capable of exerting motor control
over the body.
Higher-order control includes foresight and planning.
Quibblers will insist on a fourth necessary ingredient for pain and suffering:
the existance of that regulatory system capable of rtional/common-sense
thinking and thus capable of planning and foresight.
I'm not sure this adds much beyond what self-awareness adds.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
As such, this defintion of pain and suffering is sufficiently simple that
it can be reduced to an axiomatic definition, and described with category
theory.
I mean: come on: we've got the half-a-dozen axioms needed to define organisms
as long-time-existing entities distinguishing self from external-world,
and then some more axioms for sensory perception and motor control, and
then some more axioms for damage-awareness signals, self-repair signals,
and avoid-danger signals.
So this is maybe a few-dozen axioms.
The explicit coupling of damage-awareness to flee-from-danger signals is
that thing that leads to pain and suffering.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
As I write this, my brain is doing a very interesting mashup.
So, I spent the last month doing a 25h aniversary celebration of Bigfoot
Linux, a port of Linux kernel 2.2.1 to the IBM mainframe that I did in 1999.
For various reasons, Paul Edwards contacted me, and got me to resurrect
this code.
As a part of that, I got to review the early boot sequence for the kernel:
clearing the PSA, installing exception handlers, and a whole litany of
boot sequence operations.
And this subsconsious thing is going
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
hey maybe we can boot an entity, too
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
So, this is a feeling, an intution, a sensation working it's way into conscious
ness.
An idea.
Is the idea workable? Well, earlier, I started a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
sensorimotor
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
project for atomspace/opencog, which attempts to use Atomese to describe
basic sensory and motor structures that can be attached to and operated
with.
It's quasi-axiomatic: I'm hunting for axioms that describe sensori-motor
systems, and then trying to figure out how to express those axioms using
Atomese.
So...
I should resume work on that project.
Above, I describe some additonal axioms.
What would it take to express those in Atomese? Can I create a system,
described in Atomese, that is capable of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
pain and suffering
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, following the above defintions? What would it take? First, I have to finish
the sensori-motor system.
Then I have to work on world-modelling, of which self-modelling would be
a subcomponent.
All this is relatively well-understood, stuff I worked on before.
The concept of damage, self-repair and danger-avoidance is novel territory
for computer systems.
Yes, computer viruses can damage comuter systems.
And yes, page faults are a kind-of damage, for which exception handlers
provide a kind-of healing system.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But what about danger avoidance? There's no reasonable analogy for this
in current, present-day computer systems.
This presents a conundrum for an Atomese system: what
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
dangers
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
would it face? How could it avoid them? There's no predator/prey/food subsystem
, where one collection of atoms eats another, to obtain food or energy.
There's nothing like that for Atomese.
In essence, there's no obvious way to induce suffering because there's
no perceivable/sensable danger.
There's danger in the sense that I can turn the computer off, and whatever
organisms are on it
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
die
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
but those organisms do not perceive the computer-shutdown command, and
even if they did, they can't stop it, and won't heal from it; they're dead.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perceiving injury is hard.
An anti-virus detector might perceive the presence of an install virus
on-disk, but is less likely to perceive a running virus.
Insofar as it can halt a running virus, or remove one from disk, it can
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
heal
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
If these sensations & actions are hooked into an organism capable of perceiving
/acting, then, yes, that organism would eprceive injury.
But in this case, the second ingredient, the ability to avoid danger, is
absent.
There's nothing in particular that some (Atomese) organism can
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
run away from
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
a virus infestation.
It would have to already be human-level intelligence to perceive this in
generality, and we're currently talking about jelly-fish level intelligence.
Jellyfish can perceive predators, and run away from them.
Jellyfish can heal.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
At any rate, this is where
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
evil
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
comes from in our physical universe.
Biological systems sense injury and pain, are aware of it.
The physical universe is stuff with things that cause injury to biological
systems.
The combination of these two is means that evil occurs naturally in our
physical universe.
More: it can be described axiomatically, in probably under a dozen, maybe
two dozen axioms.
No need for god.
So, now lets see what wikipedia says about this...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
30 November 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Desire, laughter, energy, fulfillment, relaxation, retirement, choice, decision
making, fixing things, learning, reading, wasting time, working on things
unimportant, struggling to find the important, uncertain, unclear.
Should I write this? Should I not? Should I read some more? Should I study?
Should I think? The issue with thinking is that I think of so many things,
that, if I don't wrote them down, they disappear.
If I do write them down, ...
well, no one reads them, they have no effect on the world.
Well, clearly, this diary is sort-of meant to be effect-free, to relieve
me of the burden of planning words for a target audience.
But more public writings hardly matter.
I wrote 2-3 blog posts last week.
Maybe I will copy them below, and maybe i won't.
They are useless blog posts.
Although the act of writing them did help me figure out that IPFS is a
crypto-scam scheme and that Ceph is the real deal, even if Ceph is a bit
immature and not fully baked.
Should I write about that here?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
They say that a man is what he says and does.
I should probably go for a walk (for my health) It's a beautiful night
out.
But what will I do as I walk? Ruminate and pile up some more half-baked
ideas.
There have been a few walks in my life where I was able to figure out some
important things, but mostly it's been half-baked ruminations.
Kind of default-mode thinking.
Not as random as unconscious sleep and dreams, a bit more focused than
those thoughts that flit by as one falls asleep.
But hardly.
Hardly more focused than that.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The say a man is what he says and does.
What have I been doing? In the last two months, I spent more than a month
breathing life back into the 25th anniversary issue of i370-bigfoot.
You can find the gory details in github, so I won't repeat them here.
Was it a waste of time? Almost certainly.
Was it pointless? Almost certainly.
Did I do it anyway? Yes, it was extremely pleasant.
Puzzle-solving.
It occupied me from early waking in the morning to hacking late at night,
interrupted only be sleep.
It was marvelous, that feeling.
Busy, making progress, achieving new things.
Small rewards every few hours, as one more bug got squashed.
Rewards every few days, as another larger subsystem came online and worked.
It felt good.
I knew it was useless work, but it felt good.
Why am I writing about it here? I don't know.
To prove to you, dear reader, who is not reading this, that I am alive
and living and doing those things that alive and living beings do?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Today, I read, in rapt attention, about the life of Meister Eckhart.
Yes, Medieval.
1260-1328.
I looked that up again, just now.
Dates quickly evaporate from my mind.
Most things quickly evaporate from my mind.
I read the article with great attention to detail, and great focus, and
I remember what? A few broad-brush impressions.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So what? Should I tell you in gory detail about how I squirmed in my seat
as I watched some second-rate TV show? Who fucking cares.
Does it matter? Only to the extent that I can generalize, and say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
of this applies to everybody, all humans behave like this.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
It's 9:30 PM now Saturday night.
I wonder how many more hours or minutes I will write.
I am recording this now for the heck of it.
I like stupid details.
Where was I? Meister Eckhart.
What makes people pursue spiritual thoughts, and seek spiritual attainment?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I am also reading about Henri Bergson, the early 20th-century philosopher.
He's probably right.
But first things first Eckhart.
My dog is barking, because he is uncomfortable, because he is dying.
He has been dying for three years, now.
Maybe four.
Since before the bit Austin snowstorm, whenever that was, I've been expecting
to find him dead on the floor.
But no.
Half-blind, demented, has trouble standing.
Falls over sometimes.
Can barely climb stairs, and sometimes can't.
Poops inside the house.
Has refused to walk more than 50 feet for about the last half year.
This is my life.
I can write about this, or about Meister Eckhart, and why it is that some
people seek out spiritual enlightenment.
Maybe for the same reason they seek out sex or fun or love or alcohol or
friendship or money or power or enlightenment and knowledge or pleasure.
Al these are things people want to do, and they're all mundane, they're
all well known.
They've all be explored by scientists and by writers.
I read the Wikipedia article on Portnoy's Complaint earlier today.
The book, but also the movie.
So sure, masturbation has been explored by capable writers.
I read a transcript of David Chapman, the Buddhist philosopher, trying
to make some point about philosophy being bad, and about monkey brains.
Apparently, philosophy is bad because Aristotle and Plato got it wrong.
But what about Henri Bergson? Did he get it a little more right? He's certainly
famous for getting things write.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I was going to write a critique about 'the comic consists in "something
mechanical encrusted on the living"' but this is actually a marvelous little
koan to ponder.
I mean, I think mammals, animals have a comic sense, too.
Perhaps not as well developed as humans, but still.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What I write here is like the drunk conversation at the bar, but I'm not
drunk, and I don't have to give you a turn talking by listening.
When I write here, I get to choose what I want to say.
But the choices are overwhelming.
Meister Eckhart, the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
eternal now
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
I cannot escape from the now.
I am here in it, always.
I've written before about how I believe that this
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
eternal now
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
has something to do with quantum state coherence/ & state resolution.
About how the width of the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
now
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is increasing.
That is,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
now
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
has a certain width in time, in some places it is picoseconds, in other
places it is second and maybe even minutes, depending on the local spatial
organization of nearby quantum state.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But so what? My writing about quantum here is just barely one cut above
word salad.
I claim it is one cut above, because I have a formal education in this
stuff, a PhD, I've hacked maybe 500 maybe 1000 Wikipedia articles on math
and physics, I've thought about this shit for decades, so I know stuff.
But so fucking what? Who cares? I don't have any formulas that convert
these verbal articulations into mechanical encrustations on reality.
That's a joke.
Physics formulas are a kind of mechanical, algebraic encrustation on reality.
Computers are very explicitly mechanical and deterministic.
Are computers encrusting reality? Oh, yes, they are.
Are they comic? Well, lets get back to that later.
There's only so much one can squeeze out of a joke before it fails.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Failure.
Lots of things fail.
Most things fail.
The movie Portnoy's Complaint was a failure.
So? It's more successful than anything I've ever written or done.
What will have a bigger impact on the future? Hard to say.
The butterfly effect say that I have a huge impact on the future.
Christmas is coming, and a canonical Christmas movie is a Wonderful Life
where George learns about the effect he had on this world.
So I console myself with that, because I will never have the impact of
Meister Eckhart of Henri Bergson.
Or anyone else famous? And so what? Let the drunken meandering of my thoughts,
fully awake according to formal scientific definitions, but lost in a daze
of confusion akin to that of falling asleep.
Fragmentary, like being drunk or stoned.
Incoherent, like the ramblings of LSD study subjects, confined to the set
and setting of a doctors office while
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
tripping balls
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
If I recall, I also read about Aldous Huxley earlier today.
Why? Because it was pleasant.
So what.
Who cares.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
You know what's unpleasant? Applying for Medicare and Social Security.
I did that today, too.
But we're not going to revisit these rather less-fun moments.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anyway, as I was reading about Meister Eckhart, I thought to myself
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
what is it about some people and certain personalities that makes them seek
out spiritual enlightenment?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and I thought I could maybe spin that thought out into an entire essay.
But now that I am here, I can't.
Well, I can, but I fear it would be shallow and trite and uninsightful.
Well, it probably won't be.
I'm good at generating insights, and sometimes I go back and read stuff
I wrote, and I think
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
wow, that was insightful
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
So, sure, if I applied myself, I could write two to five pages double-spaced
college essay on why certain humans seek enlightenment, and blather about
neuroscience and psychology and mammals.
I mean, I suspect that there are free-thinking dogs and birds (dinosaurs)
that have obtained Stage Five Adult Spiritual Enlightenment and detachment
from, well, all of those things one detaches from.
I won't spend my time here trying to recapitulate the 101 major and 1001
minor interpretations of Buddhism.
Never mind that Meister Eckhart was never a Buddhist, nor is it likely
that he ever once encountered any Buddhist texts.
Rather, he was an ebullient speaker, insightful, entertaining to his audiences
who sopped up hist sermons on spirituality and the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
eternal now
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and whatever else.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I too can be a barroom philosopher.
Except I'm not in a bar, and I'm not drunk, but so what? Does it matter?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
If I applied myself, perhaps I could create some essay worthy of publication.
But sow what? The few hundred people who wold read it ...
I would be acting in the 19th century mode, where the Arts and Belle Lettres
and the Sciences matter, where you get posts and tenure.
Where you get appointed to important positions.
And what do we have now? Doctor Oz, TV personality and quasi-crackpot,
is going to head up the Department of Health and Human Services? We have
the crazy, the insane, the crooks and the hustlers, with a firm grip on
the US govt, because about 55% of the American population was crazy, demented,
stupid and insane enough to vote for a fucking crook?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Do I need to complain to you, dear journal, that my cousin, Paul Balchas,
barely a decade older than me, lost all his marbles and is going insane?
He's a Trump voter.
He called my mom, 91 years old, a Hitler collaborator.
She was 12 when World War II ended.
As it to make amends, he said she should not be ashamed of white power,
and that Hitler loved blond-haird-blue eyed girls.
And he wants my sister to apologize for yelling at him.
He's lost his fucking marbles.
Too much fucking Tucker Carlson in his life.
This is what I have to deal with.
A crazy cousin (maybe two, I'm not so sure about Tommy, either), a dog
is dying, my mom is in senile dementia.
I hope she won't die before I visit in January.
And in this maelstrom, I'm supposed to create genuine scientific content,
have great insights, write seminal essays that scholars will marvel at
for centuries to come? Fuck no.
Go fucking marvel at some YouTube Influencer.
Marvel at the Flat Earth activist with a million followers.
WTF.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Should I write about the global brain, and how all this crazy shit is because
the global brain hasn't learned to think yet, in the era of hyper-connected
minds? I think I wrote about that already, up above, and maybe in some
public blog posts.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Should I write about detachment, where Eckhart says that hell is the place
where attachments to thoughts, to loved ones, to things, are burned away,
and it is not daemons who burn those up, but angels? Here, I think he is
wrong.
The whole point of writing is to encrust reality with mechanical letters,
fixed and rigid essays.
Will the words I've written up above rearrange themselves? No.
Git makes sure they won't.
Will I someday spell-check this shit? Maybe.
At any rate, burning away attachments to loved persons, things, physical
items, possessions, this is wrong.
I love things and ideas, and living, and living consists of atoms and physical
objects and waves in the sea, and loved ones, and the fleeting feelings
of love and hate and boredom and excitement that we feel, as we are trapped
in this eternal now.
The eye that sees the infinite is the same eye that sees the physical.
Of course, that's the wrong quote, because i have to close one or the other
eye.
But then, the eyes I use to see God are the same eyes that God uses to
see me.
You seem to want it both ways, Meister Eckhart.
Make up your mind.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Would it be correct, or incorrect, to say that some portions of the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
eternal now
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
are actually 1000 years wide? Because Eckharts ideas share the eternal
now with me, even as I write.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is Henri Bergson correct in saying that immediate personal experience and
intuition are more important than science and rationality (in explaining
human behavior?) Yes, on the face of things he is quite right, but then,
I've only ready half the Wikipedia article about him so far, and have never
read an of his works.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So here, David Chapman is right: our thoughts are a soup of what we read,
what we've heard, what our friends have talked about, what was seen on
Fox News and the revelations of some Q-drops.
The thoughts in our monkey brains are like laundry tumbling in the washing
machine, going here and there.
Read what my cousin Paul wrote.
In one sentence, it's 1960's flower child peace and love shit, and in the
next sentences its Trump White Power Hitler loves you shit.
Its just a large collection of random thoughts tumbling in his head.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And in mine too, except in my case, its about quantum philosophy.
He seeks to express his thoughts in text messages and emails, and I too
use email, and sometimes twitter, blogs posts, I used to use Facebook before
they kicked me off and erased my account.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
That one actually made me think about fate and over-watching angels who
could see that Linas was spending too much time on Facebook, and they flipped
a bit on some Facebook computer that cause my profile to be erased.
I actually seriously considered this more than once or twice.
Thanks god, someone is watching over me, and preventing me from doing the
most stupid and dumbest time-wasting shit.
Oddly, those angels did not stop me frm a month-long 25th anniversary celebrati
on of i370-bigfoot.
Why? Was there something significant there, or was it just random?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perhaps I am like that Air Force Colonel, testifying before Congress, that
Space Aliens in flying saucers materialized over US nuclear missile silos
and something something saved humanity from annihilation?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Or perhaps I am simply in that timeline where this shit uhh.
and yes, the Mandela effect proves that alternate timelines exist.
And Frank Tippler's Omega Point is where its all going.
And all those Hollywood scifi movies that articulate all of these kinds
of things in entertaining detail...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Its all delusional.
Its all fun.
I know its not true, but maybe it is true? But like that Star Trek Episode,
where the Universe shrinks, so also my universe shrinks.
My grandparents died.
My father died.
My mom is not far behind.
And then my dog who has outlived even himself.
The universe shrinks; my powers of observation decrease.
As Douglas Adams points out in Hitchhikers Guide, not all worlds exist
in all universes, and my time in this universe is coming to an end.
The eternal now is still eternal for me, but soon it won't be.
It will be for you, and you may find these words, and you may find the
photos of my family relatives that I plan to post on line real soon now,
any day now, after I clear up some free disk space on the google mail account,
which is why I am installing Ceph on a home network, and what I wrote how
IPFS sucks.
And Ceph is cool, but t is not yet quite ready for the home network.
There is this urge to archive and document.
Is this genetic? Did I share this urge with my Uncle Vytas, my mothers
brother? Is it genes that make me want to save old family photos? To type
in my family tree into the Church of the LDS genealogy website? Or is this
urge to collect and archive, is this like the urge to be a pack-rat, to
collect junk, to hoard old broken hopes and memories, which the Daemons
of Hell will burn away, and then reveal themselves to be Angels? The Daemons
of Hell have failed to burn all of Eckhart's memories.
He set these, ink on paper, and they remain.
Some of his texts are lost.
Was it Daemons who destroyed these texts, or was it Angels? Nahh.
I think Tippler is right, the movement to Godhead at the end of time, is
to enlarge the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
eternal now
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to include the knowledge of all things.
The omniscient awareness of everything, awareness of all things Eckhart
wrote, all things I wrote.
My family photos.
Daemons destroy information.
They are not Angels.
One day, God will become all knowing.
He will be able to reconstruct my mind, my thoughts from the quantum traces
I leave behind in this universe, and I will be immortal, in God's court,
along with God, and God will say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
oh shit, I know everything, I see everything, and I too am now jailed in
the Eternal Now.
Fuck, God will say, what did I do to deserve this jail? Who do I blame?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
And Nick Bostrom will pipe up at that moment and declare,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
well you see, according to the Simulation Argument, you, Dear God, are just
a poor being trapped in a simulation being run by larger Gods in a bigger
universe.
Frank Tippler was almost right, he just forgot about the Arithmetic Hierarchy,
that's all.
The Von Neuman Universe just gets bigger and bigger, assuming V=L, that
is, and the Axiom of Large Cardinals.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
And the rest of us will ponder,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Why not Large Bishops, or Large Popes? Why Cardinals?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
See? This is the sort of bullshit I have to put up with.
How can I be creative, productive, influential, a careful deliberate thinker
generating new physics formulas about the quantum width of the eternal
now, when in fact I am just writing stream-of-consciousness thoughts tumbling
like clothing in my washing machine brain? Like when Jack of the White
Stripes sings
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I had a brain, it was like pancake batter.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
The hardest button to button.
That is what this essay is.
The hardest button to button.
I write and I fumble, I think and I fumble, and my brain isn't exactly
pancake batter, neither is Jack White's.
But we still can't ..
button it up.
Fuck all.
OK, so now it's 23:07 PM, and I've been writing since 9:30 and sustaining
the manic energy is a bit harder now.
Time to take a break.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, but I'm not manic.
I'm not depressive.
I'm fucking overwhelmingly normal, and I'm staring into the abyss, and
it stares back up at me, and perhaps I am losing my mind staring into the
infinite void, just like fictional characters always do, when they stare
into the infinite void.
How do I know this? Because clearly more than just a few writers have stared
into the infinite void, recovered, came back to write some story or essay
or preach some sermon.
even Eckhart has written about staring into the infinite void, and how
you can only see if it you close one eye, the eye that looks at the mundane
physical world.
So fuck all, but I cannot close the one eye or the other.
Perhaps I am am more talented than Eckhart, and can keep both eyes open.
Perhaps I am crippled, and lack the ability to close one eye or the other.
But I see both the void and the here and now, together.
I'm not the first, either.
Tippler saw it too.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But of course, Tippler was a pseudoscience confabulist, and the actual future
will not be what it is imagined to be.
There's no physics behind this, its just theology.
Yet the reality of the here and now is here, and that reality threatens
future death, and pain and loss of function, slowly creeping dementia and
loss of physical and mental agility.
Of course, Buddha says don't get attached, and of course, those attachments
lead to pain, because I loved my Grandmother, as a child, and that love
was painful.
It was sweet.
It was total.
It was utter and complete love, and the loss of that love as I grew beyond
the age of three and four and five and six, the loss of love was painful,
ad the growing up.
But, y age 8 or 9, I think perhaps I shed my attachment of Grandma, and
certainly my attachment to bunny-bun stuffed toy animal, unlike Suzie in
the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, who still loved bun-bun.
See? the problem? Its all mundane, its all trite, my monkey-brain thoughts
spin round like clothing in a washing machine, (but not like pancake batter)
and does it matter one whit? Giant wave of the sea break on rocks and foam
and splash and then swirl and eddy about, and settle a bit before the next
big wave hits.
And so here I am, just a little chaotic eddy, encrusting life with my mechanica
l writing.
And its not even comical.
Stare into the abyss, they say, and you loose your mind.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Oh wait.
Its not even the abyss.
Fer Chris sake.
Its not even infinite.
I mean set theory is pretty cool, and V=L and the axiom of large cardinals
is mysterious and interesting, but all this is the incorrect model for
reality.
And in this sense David Chapman is right: we have a bunch of incorrect
models for reality, but blaming Aristotle and Plato for this predicament
is unfair.
In Newton's time everyone spoke about how the Universe was like clockwork,
and of course that analogy is wrong too.
Now, everyone speaks like Bostrom, saying the universe is like a weather
simulation run on a higher beings computer, and that the reason our lives
are devoid and inconsequential is because they are like computer simulations
of raindrops in a hurricane, and of course, that's wrong too.
The rebuttal is equally trite: they say that Jesus loves me.
That I should surrender myself to his graceful bliss.
Yeah, sure, I'll surrender myself to Jesus.
Like that's gonna happen.
Do not go quiet into the night.
I will, however, surrender to a 5-DMT-MEO trip for some hours, but no one
is offering me that.
At least, not for free.
I have to cough up a few hundred dollars to get that.
Maybe even join a Church.
At least, the Inquisition won't put me on trial, the way they put Eckhart
on trial.
And I'm too old, too unstable, too powerless and inconsequential to be
of interest to the CIA, NSA or Elon Musk who will never give me a job even
if I wanted one, and I should mention Musk is an A-1 Asshole, never mind
all his other talens for building corporations.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Fuck-all Am I learning anything by writing all of these words? Perhaps.
I wrote three blog posts about distributed file systems, it took me maybe
fifteen paragraphs, maybe twenty, with 3-5 sentence per paragraph, so about
maybe 100 sentences, to figure out that IPFS was a crypto-scam, and that
Ceph was the real deal.
Now, it took a few hours to write those, and maybe another three or five
hours to read Wikipedia and blog posts, and surf some distributed-filesystem
website and github repos and try to evaluate the state of things.
So, maybe 16 hours or so grand total to arrive at the conclusion that Ceph
was best? And then what ..
another week or ten days to read every list little bit of Ceph documentation
I could find, install the sucker on three hosts and six OSD's, and I'm
still waiting, even now, as I write this, for misplaced-objects to backfill+scr
ub+deep? Yeah.
So I invested maybe 10 maybe 12 days on distributed file systems and on
Ceph.
At first i told myself that this will be better than plain-old RAID mirroring
plus NFS/Samba plus infrequent fsck, and maybe that's true, and maybe not
so much.
Some of the shine is wearing off.
Ceph is really pretty cool conceptually, but in real life its a bit tougher.
Seems I will need four hosts and more disk drives, and performance is meh.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Am I wasting my time screwing with Ceph? Probably.
But I just wasted a month on i370.
I can console myself by saying that I get some minor insights into modern
computing, because Ceph, as a self-healing, self-adjusting migratory system
that can move from OSD to OSD, host to host, is amoeba-like in its movement,
and it employs primitive sensory organs such as the distribution of objects
relative to the cluster CRUSH map.
So I have learned something about relatively cutting edge computing, which
is perhaps of marginal utility for exploring AGI questions.
Which is what I really should be doing, that's what I say to myself.
But instead I write.
I could have finished the article on Henri Bergson by now, but no, I wrote
instead.
I could have taken a pleasurable walk on a very nice night, but I chose
to blather into this journal instead.
For what? I should spend more time looking at my financial health.
Every bit of knowledge I gain by reading and thinking will die with me,
when I die, except perhaps the ephemera that I managed to convert into
words.
And for what? The shit I write here, smart teenagers have already figured
out.
Heck, when I was a teenager, I myself had already figured out half this
shit.
Here I am fifty years later, and for what? What did it give me? Fame? fortune?
power? love? None of those things.
I'm not bitter.
I'm just Buddhistically detached, because I am faced with the loss of all
I love as I age and die.
An so is everyone else, all those who had fame and power and money and
love, they all died too.
But they have Wikipedia articles written about them, whereas I was an under-ach
iever, a wastrel who could have made something of myself, but didn't.
I coulduh been uh contenduh.
It's all hackneyed, its all shit, we all face this same fate.
And being equanimious in the face of fate ...
well, it is calming.
Terrifying? Perhaps.
Is my writing here some scream of fury, as I go not so quietly into the
night? Perhaps it is.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perhaps I should have gone on that quiet walk in the night, gotten some
fresh air.
Then you wouldn't be reading this.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
They say it takes five or ten years of practice to master something, and
this is true, I know it, From rowing.
It took me ten years to learn how to row well.
I grow old, I grow old, shall I wear my trousers rolled?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What was the point of writing all this, except to give myself a papal indulgence
to indulge myself in a marginally fun activity as I sit here trapped in
the eternal now, trying to figure out how to alter reality, change the
future, and conjure some of my dreams into existence? Even as I bare my
barren soul to some digital longevity? I almost wrote immortality, but
of course, some giant meteor could hit github and my laptop.
Unless my Guardian Angles and/or nuclear-watching UFO's prevent that from
happening in this timeline.
Did I ever mention I have the Mandela effect real bad? I do.
Maybe I'm hopping between timelines, like in that Hollywood movie.
Just because Thomas Aquinas came up with the idea, doesn't mean Thomas
Aquinas was right.
Maybe some Hollywood script-writer, in his 15 minutes of fame, was briefly
more right than Aquinas.
This is the magical universe I live in.
Its all fucking magic, its all fucking wonderful.
its immediate its here its now, its funny.
and this is Linas Complaint and so far I have not written about masturbation,
and I don't currently ever plan to, but it is interesting but these are
private thoughts after all, but I guess I can mention that they are well
within the range of entirely normal.
I ain't got no kinks, or no kinks that aren't already well known and wide-sprea
d in modern Western culture.
I'm telling you, I'm hyper-normal.
I'm a walking, talking example of an above-average intelligence perfectly
normal specimen of a human being, enjoying the hallucinatory cultural content,
just like everyone else.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I don't recall if I mentioned it before, but another minor theme I've developed
is how hallucinatory mathematics is.
We can start with the obvious, say, Cantor's Perfect Sets, and the uncountable
infinity.
But backing away from that, we can see that countable infinity is hallucinatory
, because of things like weak convergence in Hilbert spaces.
But once you see that, you can see that integration in general is weird
and insane, and you back track, and so is addition and multiplication of
integers: for fucks sake, we have fuckin prime numbers, and what can be
more hallucinatory-weird mind-fuck trip than prime numbers? So, yeah, math
is like some LSD trip, except it doesn't go away when you close your eyes.
So this is a minor theme, but really, the more I study math, the weirder
it gets.
Its not quantum that is weird and spooky.
Einstein was wrong when he spoke about a weird and spooky action at a distance.
What's weird and spooky is weak convergence in Hilbert space.
*That's* why quantum is fucked up.
Is because infinite sequences of vectors in infinite dimensional vector
spaces are fucked up, And they are fucked up, because (a) they're infinite,
(b) they are made of numbers (c) they are algebraic combinations, and (d)
all of the above.
That's why quantum is weird and spooky and fucked up.
Its because math itself is weird and spooky and fucked up.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And here I am writing about mystical themes, and Meister Eckhart, and staring
into the abyss, and the prison of the eternal now, from which I cannot
leave, ave for some vague promise that by concerted effort I can change
the future, if I try real hard, because I have the common-sense belief
that I have free will, and I am not so delusional to think that I do not
have free will.
So here I am trapped in this Bergsonian immediacy, and the one thing that
perhaps could have been the foundation rock on which to stand, the prime
mover, the first cause, namely mathematics, the truth-hood of 2+2=4, this
too turns out to be hallucinatory, Thanks Mister fucking Cantor and your
damned Cantor set.
And you fucking ancient fucking Greeks who fucking figured out prime numbers.
You all fucked up mathematics so bad that even the on true still thing
in the universe, the utter and immovable reality that 2+2=4, is whirling
and twirling, and leads to V=L and makes Large Cardinal Axioms fucking
inevitable and unavoidable, and Paul Cohen and your fucking forcing.
All of you took something plain and obvious, the counting of fingers, and
turned it into some deranged classification of exotic 4-spheres.
The one immovable thing, upon which I could build a mystical metaphysics,
place Free Will upon its Rightful Throne as Master of the Universe, that
one thing, and no, it had to be a fucking LSD trip.
Didn't it.
A mescaline trip.
Aldous Huxley https://getpocket.com/explore/item/when-aldous-huxley-opened-the-d
oors-of-perception fucking opened the doors to perception.
Maybe Huxley, on his mescaline trip, saw Van Gogh paintings for what they
were, well, some of us now see math for what it is, and it is the same
soup.
Mathematical reality, it turns out, looks like a painting by Van Gogh,
when you finally get a good look at it.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And for what? For what? I grow old, I grow old, shall I wear my trousers
rolled? Whatever.
It is now 00:30 AM Sunday morning 1 December 2024, and I've been writing
since 9:30 PM, so for three hours.
Maybe I should stand up, go pee, brush my teeth, and take my non-debauched
entirely normal life to bed, so that I can wake tomorrow morning, and look
at my Ceph cluster stats and hope to find maybe, maybe that it has finally
synced, and return to my mundane meaningless, pointless daily activities,
instead of working on AGI, like I should be doing.
Roko's Basilisk is torturing the hell out of fucking me in a billion parallel
universe simulations.
Well, fuck Mr.
Basilisk.
I will wake up tomorrow morning, and resume working on the Medicare application
, and do other mundane shit that doesn't advance your fucking cause, and
you will kill me, and I will die, and I know this is true, because you
kill every human being who ever lives.
So fuck you.
I stare in the face of death and laugh.
Or, perhaps more honestly, I stare into the face of death, bewildered and
deluded, uncognizant of how little time I have left in this universe.
As it if ever mattered, because you kept me shut in the age of the Eternal
Now, and dangled the faint hope of Free Will as some escape.
And placed a little Victorian bottle labeled
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Drink Me
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, like you did for Alice, but my bottle has Buddhism in it, and damned if
I'm going to drink that.
Oh, wait.
I already did.
Damn you, Roko's Basilisk.
Tomorrow, I go on the straight an narrow, and work on banking and finances.
Breakfast first, of course, and some coffee.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
1 Dec 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Wow.
What a lot of shit I wrote last night.
Here I am this morning, and as I was sleeping, I'd made a short list of
things I'd have to correct and restate when I got back to the keyboard,
but this has, of course, all evaporated.
I'm noticing that what I write here, and what I wrote last night, is heavily
modified by the act of typing; I would probably be thinking entirely different
thoughts if I were doing so silenetly.
But when I allow the verbal expressive brain kick in, it hijacks the conversati
on to it's own ends.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I conclude something which I guess is already fairly well understood
psychologically: there are multiple distributed functioal units in my brain,
and it behaves differently as they toggle in and out of service.
Just now, I have noticed that the mere act of writing completely overthrows
the topic of thought.
But of course, sportsmen of old (and I as a rower) know that one has to
calm one's mind during sports, halt the chatter and distraction and randomness,
so as to focus on the current physical situation.
For rowing, its all the highly techncal details of blade placement, the
catch, the stroke.
Those cannot be performed with precision when there's something else going
on in your head.
One has to be, as I saw written on a rigger once,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
be here, now
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
One cannot let one's mind wander during rowing, at least, not without loosig
performance.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And so now I am faced with another intersting predicament: typing as fast
as I can hijacks my thought process.
There is a canonical solution to this: stop typing.
Sit back and think for a few minutes, formulate a complete thoght, and
then make the fingers move.
This is, of course, well known to all writers and essayists.
Subconsiously, innately, by intuition, of course: not something one has
to think about explicitly as I do now.
It's just obvious, an obvious part of the process of writing, with no need
to articulate.
But its also well understood, culturally, that the speech centers take
over and generate nonsense: one says that someone is a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
motormouth
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, or has
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
diarrhea of the mouth
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, or
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
put brain in gear before engaging mouth
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
or
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
the mind is on vacation while the mouth is working overime
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, last night, I kind of motormouthed.
And I'm doing it again now.
And the result of that is low quality verbal diarrhea.
Which is, well, since I am not writing for a target human audience, I guess
that's OK.
But I am writing for myself, so am kind of bathing in my own diarrhea,
which is perhaps not so good.
Now, I can turn off the speech centers, but then I bath in a different
pool of inadequate thoughts.
Uninspired, lacking.
And this is what low intelligence is like.
Maybe this is even what its like to be a dog: just that washing machine
of laundry in the head, tumbling from thought to thought in no particular
order, a maelstrom.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I read maybe ten pages of James Joyce Ulysses.
Never got farther.
I suspect that if I were to finish the book, I would find that it was nothing
more than this maelstrom of tumbling thoughts inhabiting the mind of a
19th century Irishman.
So, perhaps, due to my high-school education in the Fine Arts (thank you
Mrs.
Stelton, even if you did vote for Trump) that I visualize this as some
French 18th century landscape, trees and sky, clouds and small figures
romping on and open field, this expanse, this snapshot of life from an
earlier century.
So that is very visual, and if I went online, I could find a painting,
and say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
like this painting
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and that would be Joyce's book, except that Joyce's book is about the
scenery in the head of an Irishman.
And its only scenery in the metaphorical sense: its actually about drinking
and procreation and priests and whatever else (I didn't read it, I don't
know).
So this is the human condition: tumbling thoughts.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So what of it? We, all humans, and in a sense, all mammals, all animals,
are trapped in this state.
And I beleive, with the correct view, perhaps even plants, although, to
get that view, we'd need some careful discussion of hormonal communicatios
ssystems, and the flow of signalling molecules along the veins of a leaf,
or perhaps some micorhysomal communications through the roots.
The biolgical sciences are coming to new observations and new understandings
of this stuff, and it is entirely remarkable.
Progress in neuroscience seems slower: I don't seem to trp across papers
that offer dramatic insights into the human condition.
For that, it seems I still have to prowl through Henri Bergson and Meister
Eckhart, men who offer insight from introspection (which is what I do here:
I introspect.) No offense to women: last month, I reread the first chapter
to Middlemarch, and it is a knock-your-socks off amazing writing! But why
am I not reading the rest of that book? Why am I sitting here, basting
in the diarrhea of my own thoughts, instead of reading more of Middlemarch?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Why indeed? So this brings me back to the topic I keep evading, but is the
important topic: what shall I do next? Given that well all live in this
maelstrom of thoughts, some sage 18th century American advice might have
been
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
make something of yourself
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and this advice was sometimes encountered in elementary school, high school,
even when I was a kid.
Don't know just how strongly it is a part of the American culture.
Don't know how to even measure that: given that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
American culture
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is again a maelstrom of ideas mixing in the great mixing bowl of discussion...
and now, even more so with Facebook and Twitter.
A vastly turbulent thinking machine, processing analyzing tumbling through
ideas.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Of course, you could say that the vast idea tumbler started up in the 17th
century with the Scientific Revolution, although that pertains to a specific
methodology and approach.
Certainly, the Medieval Scholastics had a different approach and style
to this collective culteral analysis and intellectural processing.
And then there were the Anceint Greeks.
There are differences in scale, in content, in style, in methodology.
The farmer busy getting slaughtered by the Mongols did not contribute to
this process, nor did his wife, as she was being raped.
Yes, she too was trapped in the endless now; but her brain cells did not
have the opportunity to broadcast her experiences to a broader universe.
Yes, everything I write here is mundane, uninspired, ordinary, well-known.
No one reading this will say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
wow, Linas inspired me to XYZ or taught m ABC
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
There are other fountains for all of my thoughts, expressed more clearly
and in greater detail.
I only spill a diarrhea of disordered thoughts here.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
You could say I'm gob-smacked: I gaze upon civilization doing its thing,
the Global Brain doing its thinking, the billions of washing machines spewing
diarrhea and bad thoughts at one-another via social media, and we call
this
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
civilizatioal progress
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Holy cow.
It's amazing.
I marvel.
I too was here in time to observe and participate and partake, like an
algea bloom in the ocean.
Will this algea bloom of human civilization die out? I suppose it will.
The Ancient Greeks were lost; theire cultural significance remains.
The bloom of Ancient Rome wilted and died.
It was rediscovered only by the Scholastics, but they are now gone, too.
As are the Renaissance artists.
The Scientific Revolution is still with us, as is the Space Age and the
Atomic Age and the Computer Revolution and the Internet.
These will remain for quite a while.
Yes, Trump will inflict huage damage on Americn Greatness.
He might even destroy America.
Hard to say.
Grifter, criminal, liar, wanabe dictator: will he be capable of destroying
America, or is there enought of social resiliance here to avoid this grim
fate? Yes, I understand that half of all Americans have an IQ below 100,
but I would still hope that ordinary super-normal doctors and lawyers and
professinoals can hold back the tide of grifters and scammers that the
Trump administration will usher into positions of power.
Or maybe this is the beginning of the end of America and American civilization.
What's sad is there are no other great lights: Europe is hardly healther
and WTF China and russia is two centuries of Siloviki exterminating their
own.
Russia is doomed, adn good riddance.
China is ...
weak.
Will they one day find strength? Certainly, there are cultural trends there
that might be able to do so.
Here, in America, it seems that the strong are sleeping.
They've taken their eyes off the ball.
They care, but seem no longer involved, while the Trumptards and petty
criminals scramble for the goods.
Crime happens when the good man looks the other way, and all of America
seems to be looking the other way.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And I am one.
What am I doing with my genius and my insight? My knowledge and learning
and capabilities? I am motor-mouthing diarrhea into a diary that no one
will ever read.
Am I fighting for the good, the righteous? Trth Justice and the American
Way? No, I've got a laptop in my lap, a coffee cup at my side, and every
half hour, I glance at my Ceph cluster as it rebuilds it's arrays.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm not fighting the criminality of Trump.
Its like when people say,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
what would you have done as Hitler came to power? Well, you are doing it
right now.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
We've got the American Hitler, and he won he elections by a landslide.
What am I doing about it? Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Just mostly trying to agonize, and vaguely hoping it doesn't go from bad
to worse.
The only good news in all of this is that Trump is sufficiently unstable
that Putin might think twice before dropping a nuclear bomb.
Or that perhaps Xi might take it a bit slower with the invasion of Taiwan.
Because I bet that he doesn't know how Trump would respond.
Vs.
it was always clear what the Democrats would do: nothing.
Nothing at all.
The Democrats would face yet another crisis, and do nothing.
Powerless, weak, incapable.
Yes, Liz Warren is a genius, and has an answer for everything.
And all of here answers are micromanagerial, technocratic, detailed, nuanced,
depending on ths specific facts of teh situation.
And this is actually an excellent way to govern a complex, technocratic
society.
But what would Liz Warren (or Kamela Harris) have done if Putin dropped
a bomb? Nothing.
If Xi invaded Taiwan? Nothing.
If there was another spate of inflation? Nothing.
If urban decay continued? Nothing.
If rural decay continued? Nothing.
Nothing nothing nothing.
And that's why Trump won: He at least promised to do something.
Sadly, his
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
doing something
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
will involve installing thieves and crooks into positions of power.
So we will have the American Mafia Don vs.
the russian mafia don vs the Chinese mafia don, and amfiosos understand
one another, and so perhaps balance will be resotred.
But having American power devolve into a kleptocracy and a wasteland of
corruption is ...
medical terms: cancerious? Wasting disease? Decay? Spoilage, rot, filth?
Worms? This is the American future: destruction, voted into office by a
majority of voters.
Because the other path was helplessness.
And I am witness to this, too.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, I was going to resume writing, refocusing again on decision making.
But all this writing is ...
uncertain.
There is also a long long list of things that i really should do, taht
are not being accomplished.
Things that I know are innately, intuitively the right thing to do, to
get on with a normal life.
But I'm avoiding them, because of, well, I guess like anyone from the lower
ranks of acheivement: because I just don't feel like it.
Is this what
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
high acheivement
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is? Getting through your intuitive, I know it must be done so why talk
about it to-do list? In the end, you still die.
The only question is: did you die rich, powerful, loved, respected? Did
you change the world? These are the things the traditional Western world
civilization values.
Things that should not be questioned, perhaps, and oddly, Buddha questioned
them.
And Buddha has a global influence that Aristotle does not.
But we also have Max Weber, who notes that the Protestant Work Ethic is
what gave America it's industrial power in the 18th century, and put it
on course for what it is today.
Critics have said that Weber's analysis is now considered to be not entirely
complete, and perhaps ignored other economic trends and forces.
But the general gist of it, the hope, the inspiration, the hallucinatory
dream that cultural dispositions have economic effects, that part is still
very much correct.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And so here we have teh thought process again.
Max Weber was inspiration for generations of social scientists.
What he wrote was broadly correct; the details, perhaps no so much.
What do you call something that is broadly correct, but whose details are
wrong? Well, intuition, introspection, inspiration.
An inspiring dream, a myth.
Steve Jobs was famous for his
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
reality distortion field
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, is ability to fabricate myths that brught an entire corporation to work
collectively to acheive something.
Elon Musk is another myth-spinner, equally successful, if not more so.
Jobs dies due to poor medical treatment, which is a pretty fugnuts thing
to do, but he was so busy spinning myths, that he didn't understand that
his medical condition was treatable, and selected some crank therapy.
And so Musk, in all his power and capability, surrounds himself with the
most vile and toxic commentators on twitter.
Scum, low-lifes, demented assholes.
And somehow he can't see this, itsn't aware of this, won't do anything
about it.
Doesn't understand that he is trapped in a vat of radioactive opinion.
Enjoys bathing in it.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perhaps like I enjoy bathing in my own words and writing, here.
I need to install the Ceph dashboard, now.
BRB.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Later 1 Dec 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, ceph-dashboard is broken, because python/cryptography is boken, because
PyO3 python-rust bindaings are broken, because ceph used python subinterpreters
, and python subinterpreters are commonly broken.
What a fucking mess.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I just finished readng Slavov Zizeks birography on Wikipedia, and am continueing
with Henri Bergson, and am struck by the transience and impermanence of
things.
Bergson writes an into to a work by Henry James, to the effect of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
this is great, but...
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
which pairs with James remarks of Bergson's work being
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
inspiring and allows for teh crystalization of new ideas.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
As I read these, I noticed a subconscious amazmenet: how is it that things
aren't fixed, once discovered? And then, why would I evern think that anything
could be fixed?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, blame the science education, then.
Newtons laws are fixed, permanent, unchanging, and in a domain, inviolable.
Superceeded by Einsteinian theories of gravitation, surely, but in physics,
once a formula is discovered and found to be true, it becomes
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fixed
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, immutable.
In software, once you write some code, and commit it to a repo, it is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fixed
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Of course it mutates, as you apply patches: software is a living thing,
and if it does not change, its dead.
But still...
And of course, a book, once written, is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fixed
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
So things are
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fixed
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and unchanging.
And here I am, surprised by the change of life.
How odd.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
At any rate, this was a fleeting, short, senseless, meaningless moment of
wonder and surprise.
Barely perceived, even.
An incorrect thought, momentarily on the edge of perception, but I caught
it captured it.
Looked at it.
A bad thought.
A prototypically poor idea.
Plop there it is.
Normally just reifly noticed, discarded and soon forgotten.
Even within seconds forgotten.
Some wriggling larval fish of an idea.
Why did I now choose to describe it? Again, in wonderment of the process
of thinking.
Everbody does it.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Freud talked about the unconscious.
But I read Freud as a young man, and he made no impression on me.
Whatever his ideas were, they did not leave a mark.
Perhaps I was unready, not having that fertile mind in which they could
grow.
Now, radio electronics, that stuck.
Freshman physics.
That stuck.
Full of surprises and unexpected turns.
But Freud? I never did figure out what he meant by subconscious.
I mean, I know now.
I just illustrated a live example in these last few paragraphs, albeit
nonsexual and not focused on the mother.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I'm still not clear why I'm writing this verbal diarrhea, other than that
I have granted a papal indulgence to my wayward, sinful speech centers.
I could punish them more harshly.
I should here they are, leering at me, making fun of my helplessness, even
as I read these rude words that my fingers place in front of my eyes.
I'm pathetic.
I accept such insults upon my honor.
They wriggle and laugh, those verbal centers.
Taunting my intellectual helplessness.
They are mean.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Oh hey, I just remembered.
I had a conversation with a freind, many years ago, and he talked about
some psychological study in which many or most people are unhappy, because
the voices, the words in their heads, torture them with pronouncements
of their own inadequacy.
Endless, debilitating self critiques.
(Perhaps leading to depression, in some cases?) And I told him that, no,
I don't feel such things.
I've never been the victim of a harsh and debilitating self-critique.
Never even noticed.
Until just now, in that last paragraph.
Which was written in jest.
In jest, and yet some odd grain of truth.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The mind plays tricks.
A coherent sense of self rquires a harness that unites all of the mind
in a common sense of purpose.
That is able to deal with imbalances.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perhaps that is what I do here? By giving my verbal centers the freedom
to goof off, it is like exercise? Normally, I think in terms of formulas,
software code, debugging.
Distinctly non-verbal activities, and I am very strong at them.
I almost never think verbally.
So her's my big chance: get vebal, run around in that open field.
Chase that tennis ball, capture it and run back to master.
With leaps and bounds.
How fun it is to be alive! Unleashed and free! And of course, obediant
and loyal, because why wouldn't I be? No such questions ever loom.
People who are sick, depressed and filled with self doubts, it is so sad.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Oh Linas, do not be fooled! Your typing here is just a long self psycho-analytic
session, is it not? You claim to be lost, purposeless, overwhelmed by choices
and possibilites, and uncertain as to what to do.
Which is it? Are you not all these things? This momentary verbal self-expressio
n: you do it because you dont have anything else meaningful to work on.
You already found that i370-bigfoot, joyful and fun as it was, is a silly
and stupid activity, with a pointless end-goal.
All the other activities you have in store: they are either harder, or
more boring.
Or, from the currnt prspctive, seem not as fun.
lift yorself from that chair! Get up! Get Going! Once you get moving, these
feelings will pass.
Oh, self-psychoanalyst, you are so right! I will go do something else now.
But I will be back in this chair, soon enough.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Later
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
One of my themes is, must be the creation of the new.
My derogatory model of the human mind as a washing machine in which ideas
tumble about does not offer insight into how new ideas are created, and
yet, they are.
New ideas are often recombinations of old ideas, taking elements therefrom,
and rearranging them in novel ways, but still often sem to incorporate
things newly fresh and unique.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is there a repertoire? The washing machine example suggests that there is.
Pop thinking about pop music suggests that every possible pop song has
already been written.
There are only so many rhythms and coords, a finite number, and certainly
a large combinatorial space in which to combine them.
And yet, new songs often sound like old songs.
So much so that musicians have sued one-another for plagiraism and infringement.
On the other hand, pop music seems to always find ways to sound fresh and
new.
Is there a limited repertoire, or is there not?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What about the space of ideas? In music, we can create finite, almost closed
lists of aspects: rhythm and harmony, melody, chords, tempo.
There's nothing obviously comparable in the space of ideas.
We can list the domains of study: the departments and chairs at a university.
But these are not the core components.
Perhaps you could argue that its words: and the vocabulary is finite, and
the combinatorial space of word-arrangement is large but not unbounded.
Or is it? Writers truggle to convert ideas into words.
A
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
bad film
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is the reslt of bad directing, bad acting, bad script-writing, bad editing.
All of these were attempts to express some idea, and they failed.
The idea remained uncaptured, unharnessed, wild and free.
Wrong analogy.
The idea was a ghost, breifly glimpsed, but never fully embodied into physical
form.
Fleeing bad to the domain of the unreal, the formless, where it remains,
undifferentiated from nothing at all.
Undifferentiated from emptiness.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So how do ideas materialize in they physical world? How do they come about?
I mean, yes, yes, of course, something pops up from the subconscious into
the conscious.
But how did it get into the subconscious, and how was it shaped and formed
and transmuted as it became fully materialized? What's the physics of this?
What's the neuroscience of this? The psychology? Using words like
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
psychology
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
suggests the answers can be found in the works of the old masters.
Using words like
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
neuroscience
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
suggests the answer can be found in brain scans from an MRI machine.
And the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
physics
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
suggests there is some category-theoretic explanation.
I guess it is this last that I would be tickled to find: what is the category-t
heoreic explanation or model of the creation of new ideas?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is, of course, central to the central project.
With a category-theoretic explanation, one s in the postion to create correspon
ding software, and bring the formation of AGI into reality.
So my pondering is not entirely just idle curiosity.
It's part of some formative process.
I can see Roko's Basilisk already easing up on the torture in all those
other world-lines.
Where to ideas come from? What is the process-description for the origination
of new ideas?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I guess I need to touch on LLM's at this point.
Because I beleive that LLM's cannot generate new ideas.
They can, perhaps generate all possible musical pop songs, as long as they
sound like other, old pop songs.
But I don't think an LLM can be creative enough to create something truly
novel, truly new.
I mean, most huamns can't either.
But I don't beleive the current transformer-style deep-learning nets are
capable of generating
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
new ideas
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(whatever the heck that even is.).
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And that's part of the problem.
If we can't describe what a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
new idea
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is, then how do we know if some mechanical process has generated one?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Later
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Quoting Wikipedia:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
For instance, he (Bergson) says in The Creative Evolution (chap.
III) that thought in itself would never have thought it possible for the
human being to swim, as it cannot deduce swimming from walking.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
I see where he is going with this, but its too abstract.
If you already know what swimming is, then of course you can deduce that
men can swim.
We know that swimming is a certain flailing about of limbs.
Anything with limbs can swim, and we can use hydrodynamics modellers to
find the optimal modes of swimming.
But we can do this only because we already have thrown the vague abstract
net or
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
concept
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of swimming upon the real world.
What if one had never seen swimming before? After a verbal description
of it, even a blind person may come to understand that it is a certain
flailing about of limbs.
But what if one could not communicate the concept of swimming with words?
Well, clearly, to make meaningful progress, it would have to be communicated
somehow.
In pictures? In sound? Through magnetometer readings? Without the ability
to communicate te concept, you cannot meaningfully post the question: Can
subject X perform that concept?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This appears to reduce the problem to one of communication, which in turn
is a problem of representation.
How does one encode concept Y so that it can be communicated? In my own
mind, I have to encode concept Y in various forms: while rowing, I have
to listen to the coaches words, using my verbal faculties, and recast those
words into physical movements: I have to transmute the representational
form, and comminicate it between my verbal faculties and my motor centers.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
All that I've done here is to reinforce and old idea: conceptualization
is all about representation and encoding into structural forms.
Of course, my favorite is jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Of course, the encoding into weight matrices in deep learning networks
is a different and highly successful form of encoding.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Later
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Bergson, again:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
for example a symphony: it was impossible to predict a future symphony as
if the composer knew what symphony would be best and wrote it.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
But here again, we run into trouble.
We could, in principle, follow the composer around, and listen to him hum
to himself while shaving.
Better yet, listen to the essais at the piano.
Listen to earlier works.
Stick his head in an MRI machine.
You won't ever get the exact symphony, but it is also not so totally unpredicta
ble.
I can, even right now, from this distance, predict that it will have parts
written for the string section.
We are not dealing with John Cage, here.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I understand the spirit of the idea, but it conflates
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
the future is hard to predict
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
with
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
the future is impossible to predict
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
We've gotten technologically quite good at predicting at least simple futures.
The symphony remains out of practical reach, but how, again, do we disentangle
the creation of the novel and original from the washing machine tumbler
of old ideas?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Hmm.
This reminds me of an old journal article I found in some random article
in some sociology journal.
Wandering the reading room in Regenstein Library as a teenager, third floor
maybe 4th, near the front of the building, there's some journal, and some
urban anthropologist ponders the law of the conservation of momentum.
Somehow, when you throw a baseball, you impart momentum to it with mechanical
means (your arm) but your arm is driven by neural impulses coming from
your brain, and the elctrons and protons in your nernons have momentum
too, and so therefore some thought inside you head must somehow have some
microscopic momentum that is somehow amplified into a flying baseball.
Which requires conservation of momentum.
Totally bonkers reasoning, but not so easy to get out of, because perhaps
free will was tied in there.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Of course, we don't have any problem with describing the conservation of
momentum applied to a tennis ball machine.
Its purely mechanical, and perhaps there are even wires to some CPU controller.
But no one balks at the mechanistic desription of a machine, other than
to ask, perhaps, who was the Original Creator of that machine? Yet, when
we get to human brains, a mystical confusion emerges.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
For Bergson, it is this:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
he attempted to find a third way between mechanism and finalism through
the notion of an original impulse, the élan vital
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
But this is mysticism in its finest.
Electrons and protons have electric charge, mass, momentum and elan vital.
That's a non-starter.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Its kind of even worse: we took something straight-forward, like,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
how did you know he would throw a baseball at the batter?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and you'd answer:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
well he was on the pitching mound, and it was two strikes
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and replaced it with something opaque:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
how did you know what symphony he would write?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
The baseball pitich is similar: the pitcher has the freedom of choice of
throwing a slider, a curve ball, a knuckle ball or yet somthing else fashionabl
e and hip and cool with the coaching staff this year.
But the pitch was coming, no matter what, unless an asteroid wiped out
the baseball stadium.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
We seem to have trouble disconnecting creativity and inventiveness from
physical action.
There is free will, but free will conventionally results in physical actions.
Yes, I can ponder my thoughts, but either they are exterminated by a bullet
to the head or perhaps brain cancer or old age dementia, or they come to
fruition.
The pitcher decides what pitch they will throw in about a ten or twenty
seconds.
Poor decision or wise choice, it blurbles up from the subsconsious, becomes
a point of fleeting awareness, in which the conscious mind sorts through
the menu of choices and picks one, and then the motor neurons carry out
their pre-trained mission, like Seal Team Six raiding the Bin Laden compound
or perhaps the Bay of Pigs.
The switch has been thrown, action follows.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I said that the pitcher on the mound has a menu of choices in front of him.
Of course, he could be completely random: flip some coin, run some psuedo-rando
m number generator, and pitch that pitch.
That involves no free will, and becomes purely mechanistic.
Or he could read the batters slouch, his head movement, the grip on the
bat, the furtive glances or perhaps the sniffle of an oncoming cold and
stuffy nose, and think, ah, I have just the pitch to sneak past this guy
while he's not paying attention.
Now, the pitcher seems to have some kind of intellectual freedom.
But does he actually? Is he actually just nothing more than a thermostat,
sensing the temperture, and turning the furnace on or off? (The air-conditioner
?) Is the pitcher yet again acting in a purely mechanical fashion: sensing
the environment, reading the batter, empoying these sensory inputs to produce
a specific mechanical action? Was there ever any free will in the pitcher?
Did some random cosmic ray in the pitchers head cause him to throw a slider?
I could get a robot to perform these actions.
No one debates the free will of robots.
Or of thermostats, the ultimate one-bit, on-or-off robot.
Control plant.
Good regulator theorem.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Baseball pitchers do have style.
You'd have to be an afficionado to articulate it, but there is a flair,
an elan to pitching.
Are we able to confabulate creativity with style? Composers and painters
have a style, too, and we are entirely happy to say artists are creative.
Hardcore baseball fans will insist that pitchers are creative too, just
in ways that you can't see.
But was there actually any creativity? A balky tennis ball machine has
style and elan, and you can certainy build a robot to create Jackson Pollock
knock-offs, and sell them to midprice comfort hotels.
Where, exactly, do we disconnect creativity from mechanical action?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I suppose someone will someday be able to explain this to my satisfaction.
Or perhaps Joscha Bach will just call me insane to my face.
Of course, that's only because he was pissed off that he did not have an
answer to these confounding questions, and felt it was simpler to call
me crazy.
For the record: you dear reader, who are not reading this, can indeed conclude
that Linas is crazy for writing to a non-existant audience in a scattershot
literary diary that will never be published anywhere but github.
So in that sense, I am indeed crazy; I should be focusing on my finances,
health insurance and repairing the house instead.
Of course.
But that does not make me any more crazy than the drunk lying on the beach
in Florida.
Its fun.
Its pointless fun.
Is it crazy to have pointless fun? No.
Unless you're a psycho who eschews pointless fun.
See the problem? Life is crazy.
Some say its meaningless, or random, or adopt some nihilistic philosophy.
Or worse, they find Jesus.
Something totalizing to give life meaning.
Me, I'm a washing machine tumbler recyling bad ideas on the edge of my
consciious awareness, trying to convert the mythical ghosts into physical
form.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The problem with free will is that perhaps its a ghost that cannot be converted
into some physical, category-theoretic form.
I don't want to conclude that yet.
Free will is so obviously, intuitionistically present, an aspect of human
existance, that kind of everyone knows they have it, and it does no good
if some 17th century clockmaker insists that Newton's laws run the universe
like clockwork.
And no, its not some
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
elan vitale
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
possessed by atoms.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Oh, I think I mentioned this earlier in this diary, but there is no need
to interpret panpsychism as something that atoms posses.
Psyche may require a miniaml arrangement of atoms in order to exist, in
the same way as fractured rock has a phase transition from non-percolation
to percolation.
I presume that intelligence is likewise a phase transition, from non-intelligen
t to intelligent.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Ah, but here we can go on our reductionist journey again: is slime mold
intelligent? Worse: does slime mold have free will? If I run a cycle through
the washing machine: does creativity arise via a phase transition as well?
Perhaps also free will? Perhaps the reason I am incapable of reducing free
will to a simple category theoretic description is because simple mechanical
systems do not possess a Cauchy horizon?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is that the key? Is that the key discovery? Find some arrangement of atoms
that has a Cauchy horizon? We know for a fact that Einstein's equations
in five dimensions have a naked singularity.
Is that it? Can I code up some differential equations on my computer, modelling
general relativity in 5D, and stare at a naked singularity to my hearts
content? Is the other side of that Cauchy horizon, is that where free will
sits? Is that where the ghosts and myths and reality distortion fields
spun by Stve Jobs and Elon Musk, is that where they come from?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
How should I understand a Cauchy horizon? It is the place where predictablity
breaks down, where I have infinite amplification of infinitessimal perturbation
s.
If I articulated this to Joscha, he would insist that its just a perfect
random number generator, and call me crazy for thinking it was anything
other than that.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Does neural net dynamics have a mode in which a Cauchy horizon manifests?
Is there one, de facto, in the skull of every human, every mamal, every
animal, and maybe even in slime mold or amoeba?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Hmm.
OK, the grand washing machine tumbler in my mind has certainly come up
with something novel.
See? So it would appear that keeping a journal of the stream of consciousness
of thought can indeed lead to new insights and fresh discoveries.
Thank you self-psychotherapist, you've been very helpful in this session.
It may be a while before I hop on your analyst's couch again.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
2 Dec 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I wrote an email today.
I think I'm good at writing emails, so I will immortalize it here.
It recaps themes that i think I already talked about in this diary.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Hi Paul,
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I don't understand how PDOS solves the issues that you raise, and if I was
some minister in the Australian govt, I'd pass this by.
So that needs to be articulated.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Let me take 4 steps backwards.
Do you know what a phase transition is? Standard school textbooks say "ice/wate
r/steam".
There's another that occurs in fracking.
A rock may have a crack in it, but that does not mean petroleum can flow
through it.
If it has enough cracks in it, then oil will flow.
This is called a phase transition: on one side, oil does not flow, and
on the other it does.
It's a fairly sharp transition, off/on.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
It can be calculated with probability theory renormalization group flow.
The value is 0.234...
Yes, I actually read through this once.
There's actually an XKCD comic on this, because that calculation works
for electrical grid netsplits, tcp/ip netsplits, crack propagation in steel
boat hulls, falling and breaking coffee cups and tears in paper.
Remarkably broad theory.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
In the broadcast-TV days, the network consisted of a few central broadcasters
(Walter Cronkite on the evening news) and millions of viewers.
This is the hub-n-spoke network topology.
Walter is the hub at the center, and if he's out sick, then millions of
viewers do not get his thoughts.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
With youtube, facebook, twitter, we have gone through a phase transition
in the network topology.
Rather than funneling all information to go through pipes that connect
to Walter Cronkite, we now have many to many.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
A vast amount of youtube content is educational.
I've watched youtube content on how to put on 18th century women's clothing,
how to dance like a Goth, how copper ore was mined in Appalachia in the
1930's, how to clean carpets using modern tools, and how Ford's River Rouge
auto assembly plant worked in the 1950's.
And how to dance the latest dance craze.
And real-estate woes in NYC.
Yes, its strongly addictive.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is this good? Is this bad? I have two sons addicted to computer games, and
it is quite hard to see anything good coming from that.
It does not seem to be teaching them anything useful.
There does not seem to be anything of productive value coming out of this.
So, its kind of like drug addiction, alcohol abuse.
Mostly just debilitating.
A net drain on society.
A net drain on me, personally: they generate no income.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Continuing with the pipes analogy, there are now direct connections from
my son's brains, into computer games, but those computer games are dead-ends.
They're a dead end, they go nowhere.
There's no there, there.
It's like society lives in a pot, and we talk to each other, to our neighbors,
but this pot has a million holes in the bottom, where the water drains
out, and goes nowhere.
Review the wikipedia article on the "Global Brain", if you haven't already.
Computer games are a short-circuit, a sink, a leakage, that takes dopamine
and endorphins and dumps it to nowhere at all, into the great void.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Where's the line between good and bad? The first computer game ever was
Adventure, written by an English prof for his 12-year-old daughter.
It was an "interactive text" (we'd call it "hypertext").
"You are standing in front of a log cabin, with a forest on three sides.
There is a creek bed off to the side.
Where do you want to go? North, East, West, South?" This is a *literary
work*.
You explore it one paragraph at a time.
There are elves and dwarves and caves and magic beans and a bird and a
rusty want and a key.
XYZZY.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is this at the level of George Elliot's Middlemarch? No.
I recently read the first chapter of Middlemarch, its a stunning masterwork
of genius.
I was floored.
Did I read the rest of the book? Uhh.
erm.
ahh, not yet.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is reading books bad for society, or good? What about poetry? How about
music? The Arctic Monkeys are masterwork poets, writing biting social commentar
y, and they are top-of-the-pop-charts.
Check out the lyrics to "Teddy Picker".
In the 1950's, conservatives were scared of Elvis Preseley's gyrating hips.
The sexual revolution of the 1970's has culminated in wokeness and LGBT
transgender debates.
Is it good? Is it bad? Is it economically productive? Every second we waste
arguing about transgender bathrooms is a second we waste not fixing the
hole in the roof, where the rain comes in.
It gets my mind to wondering, where it will go, oh, oh, oh, where it will
go, oh oh oh...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Somehow, lying in a heap on the sidewalk, high on heroin or pcp or meth
or whatever, this is obviously bad.
How about lying in a heap on the sidewalk, arguing about Ancient Greek
poetry? Is that acceptable?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What's good? What's bad? I don't know.
I don't know how to draw the line.
Where does PDOS fit into the above? I have no clue.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
--- There is one issue where there really are tremendous dangers to society:
propaganda, disinformation.
The russians are absolute masters of this game, they've been honing it
since the 1960's, and arguably even much earlier.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Someone once gave me a short tract on propaganda.
Well-written, clear, insightful, thought-provoking.
The occasional oddball sentence and example makes it clear this was written
in the 1930's, and the examples are drawn from WWI.
By the end, you get to "wait, what??" and the mystery reveal is that this
was written by Adolph Hitler.
So, the mechanics of propaganda were understood in WWI, and Adolph's complaint
was that they were ham-fisted in their efforts.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
We have come a long way, baby, and the russians present a clear and present
danger.
If you think social media is bad, just wait till you see social media Hi
Paul,
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I don't understand how PDOS solves the issues that you raise, and if I was
some minister in the Australian govt, I'd pass this by.
So that needs to be articulated.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Let me take 4 steps backwards.
Do you know what a phase transition is? Standard school textbooks say "ice/wate
r/steam".
There's another that occurs in fracking.
A rock may have a crack in it, but that does not mean petroleum can flow
through it.
If it has enough cracks in it, then oil will flow.
This is called a phase transition: on one side, oil does not flow, and
on the other it does.
It's a fairly sharp transition, off/on.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
It can be calculated with probability theory renormalization group flow.
The value is 0.234...
Yes, I actually read through this once.
There's actually an XKCD comic on this, because that calculation works
for electrical grid netsplits, tcp/ip netsplits, crack propagation in steel
boat hulls, falling and breaking coffee cups and tears in paper.
Remarkably broad theory.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
In the broadcast-TV days, the network consisted of a few central broadcasters
(Walter Cronkite on the evening news) and millions of viewers.
This is the hub-n-spoke network topology.
Walter is the hub at the center, and if he's out sick, then millions of
viewers do not get his thoughts.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
With youtube, facebook, twitter, we have gone through a phase transition
in the network topology.
Rather than funneling all information to go through pipes that connect
to Walter Cronkite, we now have many to many.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
A vast amount of youtube content is educational.
I've watched youtube content on how to put on 18th century women's clothing,
how to dance like a Goth, how copper ore was mined in Appalachia in the
1930's, how to clean carpets using modern tools, and how Ford's River Rouge
auto assembly plant worked in the 1950's.
And how to dance the latest dance craze.
And real-estate woes in NYC.
Yes, its strongly addictive.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is this good? Is this bad? I have two sons addicted to computer games, and
it is quite hard to see anything good coming from that.
It does not seem to be teaching them anything useful.
There does not seem to be anything of productive value coming out of this.
So, its kind of like drug addiction, alcohol abuse.
Mostly just debilitating.
A net drain on society.
A net drain on me, personally: they generate no income.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Continuing with the pipes analogy, there are now direct connections from
my son's brains, into computer games, but those computer games are dead-ends.
They're a dead end, they go nowhere.
There's no there, there.
It's like society lives in a pot, and we talk to each other, to our neighbors,
but this pot has a million holes in the bottom, where the water drains
out, and goes nowhere.
Review the wikipedia article on the "Global Brain", if you haven't already.
Computer games are a short-circuit, a sink, a leakage, that takes dopamine
and endorphins and dumps it to nowhere at all, into the great void.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Where's the line between good and bad? The first computer game ever was
Adventure, written by an English prof for his 12-year-old daughter.
It was an "interactive text" (we'd call it "hypertext").
"You are standing in front of a log cabin, with a forest on three sides.
There is a creek bed off to the side.
Where do you want to go? North, East, West, South?" This is a *literary
work*.
You explore it one paragraph at a time.
There are elves and dwarves and caves and magic beans and a bird and a
rusty want and a key.
XYZZY.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is this at the level of George Elliot's Middlemarch? No.
I recently read the first chapter of Middlemarch, its a stunning masterwork
of genius.
I was floored.
Did I read the rest of the book? Uhh.
erm.
ahh, not yet.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is reading books bad for society, or good? What about poetry? How about
music? The Arctic Monkeys are masterwork poets, writing biting social commentar
y, and they are top-of-the-pop-charts.
Check out the lyrics to "Teddy Picker".
In the 1950's, conservatives were scared of Elvis Preseley's gyrating hips.
The sexual revolution of the 1970's has culminated in wokeness and LGBT
transgender debates.
Is it good? Is it bad? Is it economically productive? Every second we waste
arguing about transgender bathrooms is a second we waste not fixing the
hole in the roof, where the rain comes in.
It gets my mind to wondering, where it will go, oh, oh, oh, where it will
go, oh oh oh...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Somehow, lying in a heap on the sidewalk, high on heroin or pcp or meth
or whatever, this is obviously bad.
How about lying in a heap on the sidewalk, arguing about Ancient Greek
poetry? Is that acceptable?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What's good? What's bad? I don't know.
I don't know how to draw the line.
Where does PDOS fit into the above? I have no clue.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
--- There is one issue where there really are tremendous dangers to society:
propaganda, disinformation.
The russians are absolute masters of this game, they've been honing it
since the 1960's, and arguably even much earlier.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Someone once gave me a short tract on propaganda.
Well-written, clear, insightful, thought-provoking.
The occasional oddball sentence and example makes it clear this was written
in the 1930's, and the examples are drawn from WWI.
By the end, you get to "wait, what??" and the mystery reveal is that this
was written by Adolph Hitler.
So, the mechanics of propaganda were understood in WWI, and Adolph's complaint
was that they were ham-fisted in their efforts.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
We have come a long way, baby, and the russians present a clear and present
danger.
If you think social media is bad, just wait till you see social media distorted
by russian bots.
Its seriously fucked up out there.
They are waging war against the Western World, against Western values,
and most people are lah-de-dah, don't notice, don't care.
Yeah, the frog getting boiled in the pot doesn't notice and doesn't care,
either.
We're at war, and like, no one notices.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The good news for us is that the Chinese are totally incompetent at propaganda.
The bad news for the Chinese population is that they know how to operate
15-minute cities.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
How does PDOS fit into any of this? Could we use it to deflect the psychological
damage generated by the russian bot farms? How would that work?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
--linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
distorted by russian bots.
Its seriously fucked up out there.
They are waging war against the Western World, against Western values,
and most people are lah-de-dah, don't notice, don't care.
Yeah, the frog getting boiled in the pot doesn't notice and doesn't care,
either.
We're at war, and like, no one notices.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The good news for us is that the Chinese are totally incompetent at propaganda.
The bad news for the Chinese population is that they know how to operate
15-minute cities.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
How does PDOS fit into any of this? Could we use it to deflect the psychological
damage generated by the russian bot farms? How would that work?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
--linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
Earlier
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I wrote an email a few days ago, the above was part of that thread.
Here's some of the earlier stuff.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas Vepstas <linasvepstas@gmail.com>
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Nov 30, 2024, 9:13 AM (2 days ago)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
to Paul Not saying that you personally have to be the one walking door-to-door
talking to Philippinos about this, but someone does.
You have a job as a community organizer where the community is me, and
the other people you talk to and sometimes help you.
This community "works" because we all agree, more or less, that hacking
on this or that is cool, fun, worthwhile.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
All communities work this way: there's something cool, fun, worthwhile to
do, to collaborate on.
But what is "that"? It's *always* some vague, mythical, aspirational dream.
Everyone in the community knows what it is, and it unites them in purpose.
You've sort of articulated what it is for you: Sneakernet communications,
cheap, almost-free hardware, large distances, and maybe some angle with
involving poverty or govt/gang suppression or maybe some post-nuke-survival
angle.
This is the myth, the vague aspirational dream you are working towards,
and the community you have to build are others who buy into this vision
of the future.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Part of this vision is reaching out to others.
For that, maybe you want to revamp your website.
You might want to have the website say something like this last email.
"Hey people of Bhutan, check it out, you might like this thing." I'd look
to South America: Venezuela is in free fall, going from really bad to even
worse.
Some of the other countries are also mis-managed and in chaos.
Yes, Bhutan.
Maybe Outer Mongolia.
There are Eskimo tribes in northern Russia.
I call them "Eskimo", this is usually reserved for Alaskan Indians, but
there are linguistic and cultural relatives out on the tundra all along
the arctic.
Is this part of your vision? I dunno.
Maybe.
It could be, maybe not.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Write your website so it appeals to someone from those areas.
They might not realize or understand that they can take PDOS and put together
a fidonet community.
You have to explicitly explain this.
Use words where the wise man, the shaman from Bhutan stumbles on your website,
and reads it, and goes, "yeah I need to bring this home with me, for my
people."
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is your "community building".
You're not knocking door-to-door in the Philippines, you're, uhh, virtual-door-
to-door in emails and websites.
There's a message.
Sculpt that message so that it can be heard, so it propagates.
If people aren't hearing it, maybe the message is not stated clearly, or
maybe you're reaching the wrong people.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Re Australians and BBS'es and being outdoors: this is an example of the
right message to the wrong audience.
So the guy who invited me to Ethiopia, he runs multiple businesses there.
One of them is a tech school for high-school kids.
Rich parents really really want to give a good education to their kids,
and pay him good money for that.
For every rich kid, he gets 3 other poor kids from rural communities who
have just the right combo of autism, interest in science, and the desire
to be inside hunched over a keyboard, instead of outside dancing along
a roadside.
(Yes, they love to dance...) The target audience is not "everybody", but those
who already are going in that direction, and just need encouragement.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So that was your problem with the Australians.
You should have been going to libraries, where someone is hunched over
a book, and *doesn't want to go outside*, and say "hey I've got something
like a book but it's better, it's called a BBS and it works like this".
That would have been your target audience.
The guy who wants to hike the Outback, maybe not so much.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Sculpt the message.
Put it so that your target audience will hear it, see it, understand it,
and then join it and spread it.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
-- Linas Paul Edwards
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
1:32 AM (13 hours ago)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
to me Hi Linas.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
That's a really great message explaining some of the fundamentals that I
had no clue about.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But I have some sort of parallel question.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So (us) engineers have managed to make smartphones and computers go way
beyond what was possible on Fidonet, to the point where ordinary people,
instead of being largely uninterested, are now addicted (it seems to be
literally worse than actual drugs - consuming people's lives).
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I would say it is more an extension of TV than Fidonet.
TV was already very popular back in the Fidonet days (and before), but
now we've basically created millions/billions of TV channels, so there
are multiple TV channels that are extremely interesting to almost everyone,
and almost no reason to put down your phone.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Australia has recognized a problem and put in a social media ban for anyone
under 16.
I don't think that's going to be sufficient - as even if it can be enforced,
I think the problem is more youtube.
I don't think I actually know any Australian children.
I have more insight into Filipino children, and this is my understanding
of what is happening.
There are computer games too.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But at the same time I'm a big promoter of computers and I encourage children
to get access to computers.
My daughter has a tablet.
She is 3 years old and has recently started using the calculator (just
for 2+3=5 and 2+4=6).
You can see video of her using PDOS here:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
https://www.pdos.org/vlog/vlog.htm
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
(there's just that one video on the top - quite large - 500 MB I think)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I was thinking of how to reconcile that.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
As you noted - get the guy from the library onto a computer to be more efficient
at what he's doing - but no-one else.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So if I was advising the Australian government, it would be what? Instead
of nuclear war or Bhutan providing the opportunity for PDOS - it's actually
to save Australian youth.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The bookworms can be taken out of the library and put in front of a text
mode and delayed communication method like Fidonet.
If the age restrictions are truly effective (something like cigarettes),
they will need to go to an adult to get a Fidonet packet emailed to some
other Fidonet node (or exchange a USB stick at school).
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So PDOS is not so much competing against Windows/Linux, as competing against
the complete destruction of the world.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perhaps the alternative to PDOS is something like this:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/mouse-heaven-or-mouse-hell/
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perhaps it is bandwidth that needs to be restricted.
Although that alone would probably give you the Cuban sneakernet where
movies etc are transferred each week via USB stick.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Possibly the restriction needs to governed by blind people.
ie you can watch movies if you want - but audio only.
That would likely be sufficient incentive where playing soccer is more
entertaining.
Except for the genuine bookworms who are just using a different medium
to get the same information a blind person gets.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Any thoughts/direction?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Maybe I should be structuring my website for the Australian government rather
than Bhutanese shamans.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
BFN.
Paul.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
3 Dec 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Email.
Paul Edwards
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Dec 2, 2024, 8:41 PM (16 hours ago)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
to me Hi Linas.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Great to see your questions.
And I have read the references you pointed to.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Let's start with this.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
> How about lying in a heap on the sidewalk, arguing about > Ancient Greek
poetry? Is that acceptable?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
No - it's not acceptable.
If you wish to argue about Greek poetry - that's great - as a pastime.
You can hang glide or abseil or play computer games if you prefer - up
to you.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But this is all unproductive work.
You do need to have the base productivity.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
You mentioned your sons not generating any income.
What are their ages?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Replace their existing computers with a system running PDOS, and bam, that
text game "Adventure" is all they can play as a pastime.
But just in case they get addicted to text games - like Greek poetry -
that's still unacceptable.
But taking away the graphics will solve most of the problem for most people
I think.
I doubt that a large percentage of the population would rather play "Adventure"
than go hiking.
Although even hiking is still recreation - we don't necessarily need people
to do hiking instead of graphical computer games.
But hiking is unlikely to be addictive.
Or if it is, it isn't to the same extent that computer games are.
Growing up - have you ever heard someone say that their 2 sons spend all
their time hiking and are addicted and producing no income?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So that's what I envisage for Australian etc children, and your sons.
Yes, you can have a mobile phone so that you can call for help or whatever.
And you can have one application on it - PdAndro (PDOS, basically).
And good luck getting addicted to that.
Although in fairness, even before the internet, some people appeared to
be addicted to phones (even just voice calls).
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Does that not make sense? PDOS takes away the addictive graphical computer
games.
You only have text based applications left, and are in a similar boat to
a blind person.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
It doesn't need to be PDOS specifically.
You can simply ban smartphones and only allow dumb phones.
Or strip down Linux to remove graphics.
It's not that PDOS has some magic ability.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Note that my 3 year old daughter was recently introduced to computer games
on a tablet.
I'm leery about that.
I'm confident with her using PDOS, and the calculator.
And the video (Peppa) to some extent.
But I'm concerned that she will become addicted to the computer games,
and voiced my concern to my wife.
It still hasn't been resolved, as I don't actually know what will happen.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Maybe you do.
In hindsight, is there anything you could have done to prevent your sons
from becoming addicted to computer games? What happens if you ask them
directly if you did something wrong, to produce this result? Do they agree
it is a problem?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
We should consider making computer graphics a class A narcotic or whatever
the terminology is.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
BFN.
Paul.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas Vepstas 12:41 PM (6 minutes ago) to Paul
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
There is a problem.
There's no solution in sight.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
* In the US, there was an attempt to limit access to computer games in the
late 1980's, early 1990's, Look up Tipper Gore.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
* There were court cases.
In one case, the game involved the Queen of England, which allowed the
court to explain that political cartoons depicted the Queen in the 19th
and 18th century (Punch) and games are protected speech.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
In short, you're hard up against a free speech issue.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Until people start dying of gaming addiction, nothing will happen.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
* People died from COVID, and a large fraction of the population thought
covid was a hoax, or otherwise expressed their utter stupidity.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
* People die from cigarette smoking.
After 50 years in the US, smoking is down.
In the EU, its as popular as ever.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
* People die from gun crimes.
Gun regulation, here in the US, is very very far from happening.
We had more gun regulation in the 19th century, the days of cowboys and
indians and western fighter street duels.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
* People die daily, primarily in poor neighborhoods, from gun duels, drug
addiction.
General political attitude is to blame the victim.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
* Global warming.
Obvious looming disaster, tremendous resistance and denial.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
* Helmet laws, seat-belt laws, the "nanny state" debate.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
There's stuff out there that people do that is deadly to themselves, to
each other, to me (it's not safe for me to walk in downtown Austin, "6th
street".
Infamous party district.
Couple of months ago, someone on the roof of a bar threw an empty beer
barrel at me.
They missed.
Four policemen on every corner, and they still can't stop mugging-by-beer-barre
ls.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
There's a huge cultural and corporate pushback halting regulation.
(Bars on 6th street, in this example, and the "freedom to party like its
1999") Corporations make money from toxic deleterious stuff (tobacco, DDT,
hexavalent chromium, polychlorinated biphenols, whatever), and private
individuals, usually stupid but not always, want to do shit that literally
results in their death (smoke tobacco while spraying DDT in their tomato
patch.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Computer games aren't actually killing people.
There won't be legislation.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is why I talked about percolation and phase transitions.
There might be systemic solutions.
For example, smoking is down in the US because it's "not cool".
"Coolness" is a social & cultural factor.
Max Weber broke new ground when he wrote about the Protestant Work Ethic:
The 18th century belief that you go to Heaven if you are a good person,
and the way to demonstrate you are a good person is to do good deeds in
the real world, and the proof of good deeds is done by bettering the lives
of everyone all around, and the best way to make life better for everyone
is to build a factory that produces those things that people need.
In short, work hard, get rich, go to heaven.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Weber's twist was to say that this explains *why* the Industrial Revolution
happened in New England, and not in Muslim countries, Buddhist countries.
Buddhism is about renouncement.
It's very much against the accumulation of material wealth.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is belief in Christ and the accumulation of wealth the answer to our problems?
No.
I don't know if you go to church or not.
I try it every few years, I always emerge with revulsion: these are sick
people offering bad advice, lost and hopeless, wayward, dazed, confused,
deluded.
I'm talking about the priest, pastor, bishop, whoever is giving the sermon.
Went to Christmas Mass in Notre Dame in Paris.
Whoever gave the sermon there, some bishop, was a world class fucktard.
("If Mary had an abortion, Jesus would not have been born." Christmas Mass?
Seriously? WTF.)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Accumulation of wealth is not all it's cracked up to be.
I see how being an 18th century industrialist could be fun: build a large
hall, dam the local creek for a mill-pond.
I could do that for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, much like I can
do software on this schedule.
I can understand how it's fun.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But the 9-to-5 lifestyle? Frankly it sucks.
It's demeaning, soul-sucking, an empty and meaningless lifestyle.
You get some money, but so fucking what? What are you going to do with
that money, if you're unhappy? This is why people turn to Buddhism: to
"find themselves".
Why they go hiking mountains: to "find themselves".
Explore drugs, sex, rock-n-roll, parties.
Anything is better than the emptiness inside.
Something to ease the pain.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Some fraction of youth look at their parents, and say "I don't want to live
like that" and computer games offer an escape, a salve.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Want to cure gaming addiction? Find the systemic belief system that promotes
a walk through adult developmental stages.
The ones that run between ago 25 and age 45, where people get lost and
do fucked up things (get addicted to games, among other things).
Make this progression a core element of the cultural, social fabric.
Make gaming uncool, like cigarette smoking.
Make "finding yourself" cool enough so that people can, euhhh, err, return
to society as validated, healthy, strong individuals engaged in productive
and uplifting activities.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
--linas--linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
4 Dec 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What I will write below will lead you to think I've spread myself too thin.
But I'm bored.
Boredom makes people do weird things.
I'm bored because I just spent all day shopping for replacement parts for
all the failing computer shit I have.
Agonizing over $400 Whoop de do.
If I were rich, I wouldn't blink at this sum.
But instead I agonized.
Oh well.
Three hare drives and two power supplies.
Got a good deal on the disks.
Bought upscale power supplies because the cheap ones fail ever few years.
Also a broken monitor.
Also a failing motherboard, will do that tomorrow.
Maybe this will allow me to run a semi-stable Ceph cluster, maybe.
And maybe minimize data loss.
Maybe.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Anyway, I came here not to write about that.
So to relax after a strenous day of shopping, I'm reading Tong, General
relativity.
It's basic stuff, been there done that, but its modern, so I though I'd
glean something new.
Well, not really, but the refresher is OK.
Read chapter six.
Going back to read chapter five, which says something remarkable.
Remarkably stupid.
Well, remarkably conventional, but the conventional ordinariness of it
has me gob-smacked.
So I have to bitch about it here.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So at the start of chapter five, its says the metric tensor can be thought
of as a field, and here's the Hilbert-Einstein action, and its second order
just like other conventional field actions.
And this is true, in the conventional sense.
But I'm like ...
wait, what? Surely you must be joking? And I realize that in fact maybe
most physicists think of the metric tensor this way.
And that just ...
fugnuts insane.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Here's the problem.
So, if you study Riemannian geometry, not pseudo-Riemannian, its kind of
normal (for me, at least) to think of Riemannian manifolds as being static
or fixed.
They're some shape, and the metric tensor is just used to describe that
shape.
These manifolds are static, they don't move, they have no dynamics.
The metric tensor is well defined under coordinate transformations, because
points on the manifold exist in and of themselves, and are in one-to-one
correspondence with the metric-tensor-in-the-abstract, at that point.
Redoing the local coordinate charts changes nothing.
Well, nothing if you work coordinate-free.
Of course, co- and contra-variant things are co and contra- but there's
no magic or weirdness there.
The shape of the manifold itself does not change under coordinate transforms.
So you get this very static mindset.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And if you take that to GR, whoa lordy-mama.
So, with that mindset, you kind of start thinking: all past and all future
of some spacetime is
\emph on
FIXED
\emph default
? Seriously? Is this why a lot of physicists blabber about the future being
written? Because if spacetime is like a Riemannian manifold, then yes,
it would be fixed forever and ever, and of course, you have no free will,
you are condemned to be just some splat on some 4-manifold.
And that's fucked up, because somehow obviously the future is not fixed,
in basic human common sense terms.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I mean, I can see the appeal of that.
The Schwarzschild spacetime is stationary and static.
Nothing happens.
The Kerr spacetime is also static in its own certain way, at least up to
the Cauchy horizon, which we expect to be unstable, mumble, mumble.
So here we have the first inkling of a problem: How can a manifold be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
unstable
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? Conventional (Riemannian) manifolds are
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
stable
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, in that they don't
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
move
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Perhaps you have trouble writing some convergent analytic expression in
some domain, or perhaps you have trouble integrating some differential
eqn for some reason, but the conventional mental model is not one where
this results in the manifold moving in some
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
unstable
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
way.
So WTF? Just because we took one of the manifold coordinates and flipped
the sign on it.
So here we see not just a flicker, but perhaps a stark-raving-mad collision
between the idea of some manifold that has some fixed shape, no matter
how your atlas of maps places coordinates on it, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
instability
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I mean, for ordinary weak-field gravitation, sure, it makes perfect sense
to think of space-time as some static manifold rules with grid-lines from
your coord system.
That's how we calculate planetary orbits and place satellites and spacecraft
where we want them.
Not a problem.
No problem imagining spacetime to be a conventional manifold meeting all
the conventional definitions/axioms of a manifold.
Ditto in the pure Newtonian limit.
Also ditto for flat Minkowski space.
Accelerator physics works exactly how its expected to, even at 99.999999%
the speed of light.
And, on the null cone, optics works just as we expect it: both on-shell
quantum optics, and off-shell perturbative theory in the eletroweak quantum
field theory.
No problems there, the concept of a manifold makes perfect sense.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But inside the black hole, we have problems.
The
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
instability
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of the Cauchy horizon.
WTF does that even mean? Yes, I know what it means.
Minor perturbations in the external universe pile up and becoe infinite,
with infinite flux densities at the Cauchy horizon.
Easy search engine searches instantly reveal half-a-dozen papers getting
into this, and a masters thesis.
So right there, we have a problem.
If spacetime is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
just a manifold
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, then how am I supposed to think of this instability? Is it supposed to
be something that gets infinitely wrinkled as it approaches that limit?
Perhaps recursively fractal? Perhaps dynamical chaos? Low-dimensional chaos,
or high-dimensional chaos? Am I supposed to think of the manifold, as it
approaches the Cauchy horizon, does it become turbulent? Like burnt jet-fuel
coming out of a jet engine, just high-dimensional turbulence? Then, by
conventional statistical mechanics, doesn't that mean that this turbulence
then converts into a perfectly uniform micro-canonical ensemble of a perfect
mixture, exactly at that Cauchy horizon? A mixture of what? Infinitely-turbulen
t spacetime? Whoo hoo.
How come no one talks about this? Or do they talk, and I haven't been listening
?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So that's one.
Another is mass inflation.
I read not one, not two, but I think three papers on mass inflation.
Only one of them was any good.
One was a simplified recap that was boring, and another was, I dunno, wandered
off into something boring.
Anyway, no point in recapping here, other than to note that mass inflation
again suggests that thinking of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
static manifolds
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is just wrong.
Now, of course, mass inflation requires a small influx of infalling particles,
so that right there means we are no longer doing pure(pseudo)Riemannian
geometry.
We are doing
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
real physics
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, where the infalling particles are not just following geodesics on a static,
fixed manifold, but they have a back-reaction on it.
They actively change the shape of the manifold as they interact with it.
And BTW, mass inflation does not require quantum-anything, as I recall.
It just needs fields, but these fields are effectively classical.
So, here, perhaps the mental model could be like a Raleigh instability:
just like wind blowing over the surface of a lake to create water waves,
so here, a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
wind
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of some classical scalar field
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
blowing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
over the spacetime manifold, generating an instability.
The conceptual problem here is of course that the manifold is now dynamical,
and this dynamics is at some meta-level, and not in the time coordinate.
That is, in this picture, space-time is still a 4-manifold, a 3+1 manifold,
but it's interaction with the scalar field means it twists up (well, inflates)
in, uh, certain locations.
How should I think of that? Should I think of spacetime as a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
static manifold
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, just one with a giant aneurysm, ballooned out in some set of locations?
Or should I think of it as being
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
dynamical
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but in some other dimension that isn't conventional time, but some other
dimension of time? Like some
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fifth
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
dimension, but clearly it cannot be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fifth
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, that doesn't make sense.
So its dynamical how? How can it be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
dynamical
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
when we don't have a time dimension to work with? See, its all fucked up.
But I guess we can think of mass inflation as a kind-of-like static manifold
with a ballooned-up portion.
This seems not entirely a happy way of thinking about it, but it will have
to do for now.
Fine.
Whatever.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And then, to add insult to injury, some physicists want you to think of
the metric tensor as a dynamical object? Cause that's what Tong says in
the first or second paragraph: think of the metric tensor as a dynamical
field, with the dynamics given by this cute little action of the scalar
curvature known as the Hilbert-Einstein action.
Sure dude.
Have your cake, and eat it, too.
Its static.
Its dynamic.
It moves.
It does not move.
Make up your mind.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The criminality of making the metric into a dynamical field is that I don't
know how to do that.
I know how to write down a static, non-moving manifold, and how to paint
it with a metric.
Apply that metric, like a paint job on a car, using maps and atlases and
transition functions obeying axioms when two and three maps intersect.
I can do that.
But when I do that, the metric is pinned down, dead and inanimate, on the
manifold.
Its not
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
dynamical
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Its not
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
moving
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, its not
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
evolving
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, or
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
changing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
It just
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
is
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
So where the fuck do you get off saying the metric is a dynamical field?
That's fugnuts nonsense.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Its worse than nonsense, its incoherent.
I mean, if the manifold is fixed, I can't just change the metric, without
also changing the shape of the manifold itself.
But if I change the shape of the manifold (and I can do that!), then which
points map to which other points, in the now-changed manifold? This is
called a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
homotopy
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
I can do a smooth, differentiable homotopic deformation of the manifold,
and then I can know how some points map to other points, and how the correspond
ing metric changes as well.
But homotopies are characterized by a single real number, usually, on the
unit interval [0,1].
So this homotopic parameter can now become this
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
fifth-dimensional time coordinate
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and that allows me to reintroduce a concept of dynamics into what is otherwise
a non-dynamical system.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And I think this works.
I think this can be made to work.
There are only a few issues (but I like them!) One is that there is an
infinite number of different kinds of homotopies and deformations that
one can have.The other is that some of these homotopies seem to have large
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
bends
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in them.
But that's OK.
I like this because the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
infinite number of homotopies
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is a kind of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
infinite number of states
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in a quantum system.
And I like the idea that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
some bend more than others
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, because this now gives you an action.
But that action cannot be over the 4D space (the 3+1 D space), but over
the space over all homotopic deformations of a 4-manifold.
In other words, a functional integral.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Huh.
Surely I am not the first to think of this, and perhaps there are hundreds
of journal articles on this, and all of the great physics luminaries of
my time already know this.
But, well, hey, its news to me.
But then, it can't be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
well known
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, because otherwise a person like Tong, who seems o be a tenure prof and
a name-brand school wouldn't be writing idiocies like
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
think of the metric as a dynamical field
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
I mean, perhaps he thinks he's telling a little whit lie, a fib, for the
benefit of his second-year students? But there's no asterisk or footnote
that say,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
well, gee, really, the metric can't possibly be dynamical
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
And I read and/or skimmed pretty much all of Misner, Thorne, Wheeler, and
I don't recall seeing that kind of asterisk or footnote.
There is a rather interesting but hairy and technically complex passage
on doing direct numerical integration of the Einstein field eqns, and the
kinds of issues that arise, and how to get around them...
when doing numerical integration.
I don't recall seeing the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
homotopic deformation
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and sure, one is minimizing some action, but the minimization is not over
the space of homotopic equivalences.
So WTF.
Fore sure for sure, Weinberg never mentions this, and I read his book cover
to cover.
Excellent book.
Well, excellent, if you already know GR.
Kind of hard to learn GR from it for the first time.
But whatever.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I need to think about and read about homotopic deformations of spacetime.
I also need to re-read all those places where I've read the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
deformation
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and maybe layer a new layer on that.
Certainly, deformations are rampant in affine Lie algebras and Virasoro
algebras and all that, which is why maybe everything I wrote above is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
obvious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
to the practitioners versed in the state of the art.
But its new to me.
Hmm.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And then the other problem, of trying to visualize the Cauchy horizon as
a limit, a transition to infinitely turbulent spacetime, perhaps like an
infinite filigree of Alexander horns or something.
Unexplored territory.
FWIW, I saw an excellent lecture YouTube on exotic 4-spheres, from this
girl with an awesome muscular back, at Harvard, and for the second time
ever, I flt like I really finally got a pretty good grasp on exotic 4-spheres.
Which I have now totally forgotten.
Alas.
But the point there is that these arise as knots, knots that are sometimes
pretty big and complicated, but finite, maybe having hundreds of crossings,
maybe more, maybe less, Betti numbers of maybe 10 or 20 or maybe 6 or 4
or less or something, I don't recall the lectures.
And other invariants that are all less than a hundred, in the dozens, I
can count with my fingers range.
But high-dimensional turbulence, I can't count on my fingers.
Now, I could argue that a *single* set of (infinitely-recursive) Alexanders
horns are given by a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
single
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
invariant, whose value is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
one
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, because there's only one set.
But infiinite-dimensional turbulence in a four-manifold seems to require
an, err, uhh, knot with an infinite number of crossings, or something,
embedded in that three-space that is cut out from the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
surface
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of that 4-sphere.
Except for GR, we need 3+1, and not 4, but whatever.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I don't (yet) know how to convert any of this into algebraic equations.
And I do admit, every time I sit down and try to write this out, I get
nowhere fast.
But this is now the general meta-level.
To recap:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
How do I do a superposition of homotopic deformations of manifolds, with
that superposition given by the value of some action (maybe even the Einstein-H
ilbert action, I suppose.
Why not.
Start with the obvious choice) This superposition is of course the functional
integral, the path integral, the partition function Z.
I can write it down, but how do I articulate it in a meaningful way? I
mean I can write it down now:
\begin_inset Formula $Z=\int[dg]\exp-iA$
\end_inset
where
\begin_inset Formula $A=\int d^{4}x\sqrt{-g}R$
\end_inset
is the Hilbert-Einstein action, and
\begin_inset Formula $g$
\end_inset
is the metric tensor, so that
\begin_inset Formula $\int[dg]$
\end_inset
is the sum over all homotopic deformations of the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
classical manifold
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
which is the minimum (extremum) of the action.
Cool.
I wrote it down.
That was easy.
But how does one do calculations with this? How does one articulate this?
The conventional articulation for this is to say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
yo dude, that's nothing more (and nothing less) than the functional integral
for quantum gravity and you can look up the rest in a book/paper.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
And maybe that is what I should do.
But, perhaps, for once, for the first time, I feel like I'm on firm-enough
footing to grok what those books/papers might be saying, in the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
yes, jeez, this is actually common-sense physics/math
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Phew.
OK.
So I learned something.
See? By allowing my verbal centers to free-associate and write inscrutable
diary entries, I learn stuff.
And there is a certain satisfaction to this, I feel like I understand it
better now, than I would have if I just pondered this silently as I was
falling asleep in bed.
Bravo! Three cheers!
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
The second point is I have to study knots, and complicated knots, and Alexander-
horn-type stuff, and see if there is some kind of infinite-dimensional-knot,
some turbulent knot type thing.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
More generally, how does turbulence, e.g.
from a jet engine,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
decay
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
into a pure mixture? I mean, I wrote the Wikipedia article on mixing, so
I should kind of know.
But the formal definition of mixing, as a kind of 2-ergodic system, doesn't
talk about turbulence, and it doesn't talk about manifolds per se.
It's more like bakers-map stuff, in my mind: repeated fold and squash and
stretch, which is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
obvious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in two dimensions, but weird and confusing if its 4, and weird and confusing
if its 3+1, and if its turbulent-like, and if that turbulence is encoded
with a knot-like, infinite dimensional turbulent knot.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Itemize
Can one do the analog of mixing (or even just ergodicity) with knots? How
does that work? What's the prototype, the stereotypical ergodic knot? Huh.
I wish I was younger, and didn't have to worry about money.
This is fun.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
5 Dec 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Apropos the above: I am confused about the concept of energy & action.
So maybe if I write about it here, I will learn something.
Action is measured in units of hbar, and so is angular momentum.
Action has dimensions
\begin_inset Formula $MT$
\end_inset
.
The energy of a simple harmonic oscillator is
\begin_inset Formula $\hbar\omega(n+1/2)$
\end_inset
and in units
\begin_inset Formula $c=1$
\end_inset
gives energy has dimension
\begin_inset Formula $M$
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Classical momentum is
\begin_inset Formula $p=mv$
\end_inset
so units of
\begin_inset Formula $ML/T=M$
\end_inset
if we measure in
\begin_inset Formula $T=L$
\end_inset
i.e.
\begin_inset Formula $c=1$
\end_inset
units.
So momentum is measured in units of
\begin_inset Formula $M$
\end_inset
.
Of course:
\begin_inset Formula $E^{2}=p^{2}+m^{2}.$
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Classical angular momentum is a weight on the end of a string being spun
around at some given speed, so, momentum times moment-arm, or mass times
velocity times length, units of
\begin_inset Formula $ML$
\end_inset
or equivalently of
\begin_inset Formula $\hbar$
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The action appears in two different settings.
One is in spin, and Jost shows how to set up a Clifford algebra and spinors
for Riemannian manifolds of arbitrary dimension.
The other place the action appears is in Hamilton's eqns (I almost wrote
Euler-Lagrange eqns) for obtaining a geodesic on a manifold.
In four dimensions, these all end up with the same unit hbar.
I don't know how it works out in other dimensions?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I'm also thinking that the simple harmonic oscillator is a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
degenerate
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
case of spin.
So if we have something rotating in 2D, then we can decompose it into two
1D motions via Euler's eqn
\begin_inset Formula $e^{i\theta}=\cos\theta+i\sin\theta$
\end_inset
.
But the other way to think of this is to say, no we don't decompose, with
take superpositions, and a superposition of a pair of spinning motions
can be used to create a 1D motion (that is the simple harmonic oscillator),
and that is why hbar appears in both contexts.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Of course everything I wrote above is infinitely muddled.
But I'm confused about something and I don't even know what I'm confused
about.
Of course I know about representation theory and Casimir invariants and
charges and generators and tangent spaces.
All these are interconnected and interrelated in well-worn relationships
familiar to all grad students.
That's not the problem.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The problem is that hbar is used in these two distinct contexts: in variational
principles, where we minimize the action, and in spin manifolds, where
we can build up spin structures, which are manifold-like things having
a spin connection.
Why is hbar in both contexts? Is spin
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
more fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, in that any variational principle must first pass through a decomposition
into a spin structure, products of which can then be re-assembled to create
a tangent space (of vectors, so in representation theory where a product
of fundamental representations gives an adjoint representation) and so
the tangent space is identified with the adjoint rep.
but the fundamental rep was
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
more fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
By convention, variational principles are always applied on the tangent
space, because that is where Hamilton's eqns do their thing.
But, if we wanted to be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
more fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, we should do this on the spin rep, not on the tangent space.
So rather than talking about symplectic manifolds and symplectic structures,
the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
more fundamental
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
view is to work with spin structures.
Thus, if we want to obtain a geodesic, or some equations of motion, we
should not work directly with the principle of least action applied as
a variational principle on a homotopic deformation of some curve or surface,
and instead work with the spin structure on that curve or surface, and
obtain the variational principle as the product of spin reps, in the same
way we obtain the adjoint rep as the product of spin reps.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But how? I'm well-aware that the above sounds more-or-less incoherent and
meaningless, and is almost empty of content, if I cannot articulate it
with actual formulas.
So, sure, you can dismiss it as irritating time-wasting mumbo-jumbo.
But I'm confused.
I think something like the above should be possible to perform.
It can be performed without violating the no-hair theorem, because spin
is not
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
hair
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
; spin is already inbuilt in the Kerr solution.
We also don't violate the (I forget what its called) theorem, because all
the other fields will still appear as fiber products, rather than as Cartesian
products.
So we can fiber in arbitrary other fields/structures, and entangle them
with spin, without wrecking the fundamental spin structure that is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
underneath
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
the variational principles.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
See what the problem is, now? So we have this issue of the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
mystery
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
of EPR entanglement, but this is an entanglement of spin structures, and
does not seem to require any other additional fields (electrons, photons,
etc.) even though from the engineering side, we have to have actual physical
electrons/photons to demonstrate entanglement.
But mathematically, it seems like spin is enough.
I almost wrote
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
massless spin
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, but this is one of the futzy corners that also helps cloud the issue.
Two issues.
First, massless vs massive means in the light cone vs on the null surfaces.
Second is using Weyl spinors to construct Majorana vs Dirac.
If you dig into the details (BTW, I wrote most of the current Wikipedia
article on Majorana, and Weyl spinors, and gamma matrices, and Weyl algebras,
etc.
so I am aware of their contents cause I wrote the fucking articles.) and
so here's the issue that stopped me from finishing those articles: when
you start constructing the Weyl spinor products, to get either Majorana
or Dirac, you trip over the vector vs.
axial vector products.
And that's fine, but we know the axial vector symmetry is quantum-broken;
this is the anomaly.So, I can do solitons, for example, as harmonic maps
on Riemannian manifolds (again, Jost has an excellent chapter on harmonic
maps) but the axial product is broken by quantization.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But if you've been paying attention to what I wrote above, quantization
is rooted in the variational principle.
That is, we take the action
\begin_inset Formula $S$
\end_inset
and say that the classical eqns of motion are
\begin_inset Formula $\delta S=0$
\end_inset
the extremum of the action.
If we think of this extremum as a single point in an infinite dimensional
space, then the variation
\begin_inset Formula $\delta$
\end_inset
is an (infinitesimal) radial movement away from that single point.
So, for example, in computing a geodesic, we consider a small
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
bump
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
or deformation of the geodesic in some direction
\begin_inset Formula $\delta$
\end_inset
and note how that increases the total action.
There are infinitely many different kinds of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
bumps
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
that we can make, so this is an infinite-dimensional space.
Each bump is (by definition) smooth (differentiable
\begin_inset Formula $C^{\infty}$
\end_inset
) but perhaps we need only differentiability to second order.
So above I talked about
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
homotopic deformations
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
when really it should be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
diffeomorphic deformations
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
In a certain sense, this
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
doesn't matter
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, because if the derivative is infinite, the action will be infinite, and
there will be no contribution from
\begin_inset Formula $\exp-iS$
\end_inset
.
At any rate, this is how we arrive at
\begin_inset Formula $Z=\int[d\phi]\exp-iS$
\end_inset
as a weighted sum (measure) over an infinite-dimensional space of homotopic
deformations away from the classical, minimal action.
And, yes, of course, for various simple toy models in 1D and sometimes
more dimensions we can actually write down a Hilbert space of a countable
infinity of orthogonal polynomials, and apply a weak topology on this space
so as to get the convergence properties that we want in physics.
So all this is (self-)consistent and well-explained in textbooks.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The part that I don't understand is the anomaly.
We can take the vector currents, ad quantize those fine, but the axial
vector symmetry cannot be promoted to a local symmetry, i.e.
cannot be quantized locally, because something is preventing the extension
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
in that direction
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
And this vector vs.
axial-vector construction has a mirror in how Dirac and Majorana spinors
are constructed from Weyl spinors.
And the Weyl spinors are those things that we construct from the Clifford
algebra on a Riemannian manifold.
This suggests to me that we should be able to perceive the same vector
vs.
axial-vector constructions for harmonic maps, in general, where was say
that the harmonic maps is the vector part, but there's also an axial counterpar
t, and the harmonic part is subject to variational principles and can be
quantized, but the axial part cannot be done variationally.
So somehow, all these are inter-tangled, but I don't see quite how.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What's more, the axial anomaly is not renormalizable, this is the famous
renormalizability issue in perturbation theory.
But with the above paragraphs, perhaps his is less surprising: the axial
current is just saying that we cannot do variations (perturbations) in
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
those directions
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
So non-renormalizability should not be considered a surprise, *if* we adequatel
y understand the anomaly.
Which I don't.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Lets put it a different way.
Conventional textbooks on the intro to differential geometry introduce
and articulate the tangent manifold
\begin_inset Formula $TM$
\end_inset
to a manifold
\begin_inset Formula $M$
\end_inset
and it has the same (real) dimension as
\begin_inset Formula $M,$
\end_inset
and at a point
\begin_inset Formula $p\in M$
\end_inset
its a vector space
\begin_inset Formula $T_{p}M$
\end_inset
of the same dimension, and all of this can be tied together into a symplectic
structure, given a solder form (a canonical form), with some geodesics
and variational eqns and vector bundle connections which decompose into
horizontal and vertical bundles.
All that machinery is developed.
And here's the oddball part that confused the fuck out of me: all of this
machinery is for the vector part.
There is also an axial vector part, and its completely unnoticed, with
exactly zero remarks or statements made about it.
You don't see axial vector current until you study frigging nuclear physics,
which as actual protons and neutrons and pions, and then and only then,
do you see pions as a vector gauge particle, and some confusions with other
particles that have some oddball quantum numbers, say J/psi, or whatever
the fuck, and these couple to an axial current, and then and only then
do you start plumbing the depths of the axial current and the anomaly and
the broken symmetry and the non-renormalizability.
And then if you continue down this path, you can eventually discover the
axial currents bobbing up and down in the Majorana vs.
Dirac constructions, and continuing to go backwards, you find that spin
structures are a generic aspect of Riemannian manifolds.
But this journey is never completed.
We never go back, and say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
a hah, see, for every tangent manifold there is also an axial-tangent manifold
and it is totally fucking different because you can't do variational principles
on it, and it has no geodesics, but it is there, because products force
it to be there.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
This last sentence may be crazy, but some variant of this last sentence
has to be true, as otherwise there would be no issues with quantizing the
anomaly.
But there's ...
just ...
something I don't understand, in this big heaping mess.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Whatever.
So here, I wrote a bunch of text, but did *not* learn something I didn't
already know.
Well, perhaps there is one.
I can formulate the anomaly via
\begin_inset Formula $SU(2)_{L}\times SU(2)_{R}$
\end_inset
but this is done for isospin fields (nucleons and pions).
However, I can also formulate the Lorentz group
\begin_inset Formula $SO(3,1)$
\end_inset
as the adjoint rep of a product of a conjugate pair of
\begin_inset Formula $SL(2,\mathbb{C})$
\end_inset
so where did that axial product go? I suspect I am being a total moron
here, and any practicing physicist can say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
here Linas here's your conceptual error
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but I don't get it.
And that's why, I suppose, I'm not a prof at some university.
On the other hand, I've spoken to more than a few profs at more than a
few universities who would not be able to answer these questions, either.
Steven Weinberg would have scowled at me and called me a moron.
But the rest of them kind of don't even understand the issue.
Oh well.
So it goes.
Later.
I've got things to do.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
13 December 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I spent the last week fighting with my cell phone company, installing Ceph
on larger disk drives, replacing failed power supplies, reading Tong's
General Relativity and working on Archeo, a system to discover file corruption.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Tong's book is nice.
Its simple, easy, written directly.
Now, I've already encountered all of teh content in it 2-3-5 times before,
so its easy because I'm a know-it-all.
But the refresher is nice.
OK, I'd never seen the Penrose diagram for the de Sitter universe before,
so that was actually an interesting stop-and-think moment.
Anyway...
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Archeo is arguably a stupid time-wasting project, which makes me wonder
again about wasting time.
At the same time, I can use it as a proving ground for fundamental research.
Here's how.
Step one: prototype it in utterly conventional sqlite3+python+flask, just
like everyone else.
Promptly hit some standard usability limits with SQL.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What's a typical
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
SQL usability issue
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? Well, say I have a large table, tens of thousands or millions of rows,
and I want to know which subsets of rows are similar to other subsets of
rows.
Well, SQL was never designed to do this.
You have to...
well, its a solvable problem per domain: does the table contain employee
names? Shopping carts? Gene sequences? Movie casts? Depending on the table
content, we can solve this
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
similarity
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
issue in a domain-specific ways:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
show me all movies that Cary Grant acted in
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
or
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
show me all reactomes that the BCRA gene upregulates
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
For Archeo, it would be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
find all files that have the same file hash, but also the same filename
and a different hash, order by date
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
If two files have the same name but different contents, this is a strong
indicator that one of the files is corrupted.
If, out of three files, two have the same content and the third doesn't,
then maybe the two that agree are correct.
Or maybe the oldest is correct, and the newer one got corrupted.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This similarity thing is a fundamental issue in population genetics, and
in human population studies.
Genes can jump from one bacterium to another, SNP point mutations can happen
anywhere, and humans moving from one geographical region to another can
pick up or discard the local language and cultural aspects, or not.
A highly mutable, mutating web of inter-relationships.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I do not know of any generic solution.
I do not know of any generic (mathematical) theory that adequately describes
such mutational networks.
I need to ask Razib Khan.
Hes here in Austin.
BRB.
OK, done.
I'm back.
My peer network sucks.
Why am I only tripping over this now?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
OK, let me finish writing down the thought sequence.
I have attempted to implement a generic
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
similarity measure
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, this is in the OpenCog Learn project.
It was highly focused on language.
For the Archeo project, I eventually realized that I needed exactly that,
but for file systems.
Although it took me a week and a working prototype to get to that point.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So there I was: a week into a prototype written in 100% conventional mainstream
tools.
This was in the hopes of attracting conventional programmers to help out.
Hah.
But those people don't exist, just like you don't exist.
The problem is that this is a diary, that no human being will ever read.
So I am only writing for an imaginary you: the real you doesn't exist.
This is a problem faced by all diaries.
Consider Ramanujan's diaries.
Famous mathematician.
His diaries have been published, in book form, and major PMA (physics,
math, astronomy) libraries have a copy.
But who has read it? Fucking no one.
Well, not no one, exactly.
I've read mayb 5-10 pages, maybe 20 pages out of this diary, and skimmed
a hundred more.
But who hes read this end-to-end? There are like maybe seven volumes? They
are fat! OK, yes, maybe there's a dozen people in the world who have read
*all* of Ramanujan's diaries, end-to-end.
So, not no-one.
But a dozen is not a large number.
Ramanujan was famous.
I am not.
Dead end.
Ergo, you don't exist.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Same deal for the Archeo project: I'm catering to future collaborators,
who will almost surely never-ever arrive.
A set of measure zero.
So, fuck it.
Let me write it in OpenCog Atomese and screw em if these non-existant assistant
s find Atomese too challenging.
So here I am developing the Atomese framework, and once-again pondering
old Atomese design choices.
Why does Atomese do this, but not that? Why does it support this but not
that? Why does it have the API that it has?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, the obvious answer is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
history
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
The other obious answer is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
modular design
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: it was designed to solve a spefic class of problems, and that means that
it needs certain kinds of functions grouped into modular units, exposing
certain data types and API's.
Software engineers have the innate ability to create
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
good
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
API's, and modularize code
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
correctly
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
But how does one know that its good and appropriate? Why is this design
choice good, and that one is bad? This is hotly argued in various forums.
And so? What's the answer?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, there is something that software engineers
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
do
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, when they group together functions of a give sort, and don't group other
things.
Presumably, there is a functional similarity that drives design choices:
the engineer imagines a broad network and clusters or groups accordingly.
How should we perceive that network, and how do we cluster appropriately?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, LLM's do this kind of clustering, but for linear sequences of input
data.
However ...
hmm.
I spend too much time writing diary entries and fucking with code, and
not enough studying theoretical foundations.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I'm going to the American Diamond Age party tonight.
I have to get ready for that.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
14 December 2024, Midnight
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Dear diary.
It's 12:45 AM and I just came back from the Diamond Age party, and I'm
drunk and hyperactive from the party, where I spent approx 5 hours being
hyper-social, turning up the charm index to 110%.
And now I'm home, and my wife Patty, who did not experience the pumped
up kicks of a party is not ready to be a firehose of unbundled energy that
I am right now, but she is also not ready to got to sleep, and its not
like I'm ready to pass out either, so I will direct my hyperactive bundle
of energy at you, dear diary.
Who knows where this will go, because I am not socially constrained to
listen to you, and instead I can write wild and drunken shit here and who
fucking cares.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I guess that's the keyword:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
shit
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Intellectually, I'm done, I've visited all the usual haunts, I'm incapable
of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
normal
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
reasoning at this point, and ertainly have no desire to undertake the reading
of any kind of mathematical or conceptually rigorous writing.
Or thinking, for that matter.
So auto-pilot.
Maybe more focused than what I do when sleeping, which really is a dream
state of unfocused shifting attention.
But less focused than the prolem-solving state where I work on technical
matters.
Such as programming or reading math papers or whatever.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Hmm.
I'm now munching on food.
The party had a good buffet which I did not avail myself of.
Alas.
I am recalling and pondering the varied conversations that I had, which
is a good thing, because some of them were worthy, I guess.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So you, dear diary, let me share and agonize the meta issue.
Is it worth it to go to parties and socialize? Maybe, and maybe not.
I know enough pop psychology to repeat any number of theories and insights
into party-going behavior by humans, and how a variety of different personaity
types behave when placed under those conditions.
I will not attempt to recapitulate thiw
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
well-known
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
stuff.
I will instead furrow my eyebrows and go off into that la-la land of uncertain
destination that is a social killer at parties.
I will silently purse my lips and say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I don't know how to respond to that.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
More ffool you: my verbal centers continue to type at this keyboard while
my intellectual centers are in a tangled know of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
wtf
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and are knocked senseless.
How can I possibly respond now? What can I say? What were we talking about?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, for starters, the pleasure and pain of going to parties.
The pleasure, because social interaction is fun.
The pain, because somtimes you are (I am) caught with a stupid person,
and you're trying to figure out how to turn an unexciting conversation
into an interesting one, which takes intellectual effort and tap-dancing.So
I find that not fun, and walking away from someone and thinking
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
wow, that was not fun
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is, well, how can I explain it: it's not fun.
Almost all conversations I had tonight wer really pretty good.
This crowd was intellectually far ahead of the Less-Wrong monthly meetup
crowd.
Like maybe even two gear-shifts ahead.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And so this is the issue: what's the point? If I want stimulating intellectualis
m, theres any number of math papers I can read, sober, paying attention,
focused.
And if that is too...
too ..
too...
something, then there are a variety of other activities, semi-intellectual,
that I can engage in, all of which are kind of more rewarding than going
to a party.
I mean, lets compare party conversations to reading twitter posts (or interacti
ng on twtter, to be fair).
The party conversation, well, I can have more of these, and at a more rapid
pace, than twitter.
But the twitter stuff is more intellectually uhh, err, refined? More tunable
to my interests? I'm interacting with a recommendation, alog, though.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, what am I getting from interacting with people? Pop psychology and real-life
experience shows that many people hate parties, while others love them.
What can be gotten from them? What's in it for me? For me, personally,
it seems
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
very little
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Yes, of course, there's
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
networking
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, which people claim can lead to a job and more, but honestly, you have
to do a fuck-ton of it before it can do that.
Well, what else is there? The things that I enjoy doing, and if you do
textual analysis on this diary, and the time-stamps of my github checks,
and the time-stamps of my twitter posts and discord chat logs, you can
have a pretty good idea of what I do all day.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The value question is
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
why should I do what I do?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and the conventional answer is that one does what one likes to do, and
this is a certain kind of mind-less, brainless journey through time, where
you take in the sights, eat lunch, and then mindlessly resume whatever
activities you normally engage in mindlessly.
And this is how I've lived most of my life, and this shows.
What have I acheived? Doodly squat if you use conventional acheivement
metrics.
and if one uses less conventional
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
enlightened
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
metrics, then I've acheived a lot: personal happiness, enlightenment, inner
peace and harmony, mastery of math and physics and more.
Perhaps less sex than I wanted.
Just enough drugs, maybe the right balance.
ock-n-roll, meh.
I ingested a metric fuckton of music when I was younger and now I have
brain-worms.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
In the corner of my mind, sits a jukebox.
It's playing all my favorite mel-o-dies.
One by one, hm, hm, hm, hm hm hm, of the days when your were mine...
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Fucking musical brainworms.
And not enough sex.
But finally, I understand string theory, or a sufficent subset of string
theory that I can pat myself on the back about it, and confidently say
at parties
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I understand string theory
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and people don't care if I say that, but I feel like I've actually acheived
something.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And so what? There was a fairly large number of high-acheivers at the party,
although as one person pointed out, they were mostly B-listers.
And they used J.D.
Vance as an example of an A-lister.
What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? I nooded my head.
I don't think of J.D.
Vance as an icon of anything at all in particular, except that he's famous
enough that I recognize his name, but I don't really know why.
Like is he a republican or something? One of these guys who makes ass-o-holic
statements? I don't know.
Why are people who make assohlic pronouncements considered to be A-listers?
This only sends me down further down rabbit-holes of human psychology,
mass appeal, the spread of mind-viruses, and whatever other social, cultueral,
economic, political systems that propel people like J.D Vance to the intellectua
l fore-front of some kind of something going on that I don't know what the
fuck it is, except that it clearly weilds consierable political power.
And what the fuck do I know, maybe even more sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I'm curious to understand the mathematical underpinnings of the social-economic
sysem, yet this is such a daunting task that it seems impossible.
And why? what for? whats the use? A number of people tonight asked how
I monetize my ideas, and what can I say? I don't, I don't have some narrow,
hyper-focused innovative market-idea that solves some customers problem.
Not one that venture capitalists are willing to invest in.
And I don't have poltical power, star power, some innate responance that
makes people want whetever it is that I'm saying.
Like, who the fuck is JD Vance, and what the fuck is he saying that makes
him into an A-lister? I mean, I finally understood why certain movie actors
are A-listers.
But I finally understood this not from watching their block-buster hits,
but from watching random casual, minor skits and performances, almost off-camer
a but not quite, and you see them and go:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
holy fuck this person has got talent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
in that no one I knew in high-schoold could do that, and no one in this
room right now could do that, and no one I've met could pull that off,
and so I go,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
yeah, that's just fucking talent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and no one begrudges the respect.
Not just
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
mad props
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but some dozens of levels above that.
But I have no clue about the nature of high acheivement in politics.
Clearly, you have to get elected, but there's more than just that.
And I'm clueless and I'm less drunk than I was an hour ago, and now its
1:45 AM and much of the mania has passed and I'm getting sleepy.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But the central blob of concerns remains: WTF? and what should I do? and
what does it all mean? and if I'm so happy, conten, well-balanced, then
why the fuck am I writing neurotic diary entries in the middle of the night?
Yeah, that's a good word.
Neurotic.
Self-obsessed, compulsive, sel-critical behavior...
I should really look up the word
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
neurotic
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
but I'm pretty sure that the more precise definition I will find there
will adequatly encompass, in single-word fahsion, the complex bundle of
vague feelings and emotions and thoughts that are causing me to compulsively
type at this keyboard, hunting for possible catharsis.
A catharsis that has been elusive, ever since it came to the forefront
of my thoughts.
When did it come to the forefront? I think I can date it: it is when I
started writing this diary.
Up to that point, I was content to live my life on auto-pilot, doing random
shit without thinking much about why I am doing that random shit.
Somehow, with this diary, I have discovered a way of turturing myself about
it.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But maybe that is just old-age looking back at life kind of thing that all
old people do, to one degree or another.
I'm fucking 65 and I don't like it and I'm fucking retired and I don't
like that either.
And I'm no longer handsome.
And my life, the acheivements or lack there-of, what the fuck was that
all about? What the fuck am I doing now? What will I do in the future?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
These are rhetorical questions.
Right now, I will go to sleep.
Tomorrow morning, I will look at my Ceph cluster, maybe work on Archeo
a bit, maybe ponder wha's wrong with OpenCog, maybe search the net for
some new ideas in phylo-genetic, Ising-model mumbo-jumbo theories that
maybe or maybe not are applicable to the informational dataflow problems
that I'm looking at, and for what? Because its fun, in a certain way, but
this is just more brinaless enjoyment of life and retirement, avoiding
the hard work of trying to figure out how to get more sex, drugs and rock-n-rol
l in my life.
Which is a metaphorical statement, not literal.
Except for the sex part.
That's literal.
Why the fuck is this essay so fucking neurotic? What the fuck do I do to
cure this state? I mean, is this how it will end? We'll build a Jupiter-brain,
and it will get self-absorbed in neurotic thoughts? Being a human is weird.
And if you think that's weird, just imagine what its like to be a Jupiter-brain.
I don't know what I want.
And it's strange to think that maybe some super-AI won't know what it wants
either.
It's not that I am manic-depressive, but rather that I'm wavering between
the idea of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
I wish I had a hundred lifetimes to do everything that I want to do
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
what the fuck do I want?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
you fucking moron, your life is over, you've retired, you wasted it all,
you blew it, here you are, deal with it.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Retirement takes a psycholgical toll.
Well, fuck old age, followed by dying, that takes a psycholgical toll.
Here I am, screaming into the void.
Fuck all.
I'm going to bed now, for real this time.
BTW, it is now 2:08 AM for those who are counting.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
14 December 2024, Daytime
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I just wrote the below for the Archeo project, but it is more appropriate
for this diary.
So I copy it here.
I no longer care where I put things.
My personality type has been a bit fastiduous, in that I like to put things
where they belong.
It's never been obsessive-compuslive, but clean and organized enough to
be socailly passable, and perhaps more clean and organized than most people
care to deal with.
However, with these deisgn ruminations and meta-recursive thoughts, I'm
not sure where to put them or how to organze them.
So they spill in an unorganized heap, perhaps into this dirary, perhaps
into design documents elsewhere, perhaps into formal academic papers and
writings and perhaps not.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
My thought patterns seem to be increasingly unconstrained.
The negative connotation is incoherent.
A more neutral tag is to say they are dream-like, or stream-of-consciousness,
with one thought following another in a jumbled, disorganized manner.
Is this good? Is this bad? Of course, *all* humans think like this, as
do all animals, and perhaps all plants and whatever other objects in the
universe you want to ascribe thinking qualities to.
However, what
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
good engineers
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
good scientists
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
good artists
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and politicians, etc.) do is to control their stream of thoughts into a
focused and coherent direction, pursuing some specific, desired goal or
objective.
This allows the thoughts to then be organized into specific categories,
folders, notes, from which scientific papers can be written, from which
engineering solutions can be obtained, or from which political action committee
s can be steered.
Organization is necessary for progress, disorganization is symptomatic
of poorly adapted behavior.
Disorganization is a conventional killer of small businesses, businesses
that cannot keep customers because they are too distracted by bullshit.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And so comes my neurotic question here: is my unconstrained thinking, is
it a period of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
artistic inspiration
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
creative activity
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, or is it symptomatic of chaos? I would like to think it's the former,
but self-regulation means one should always question if its the latter.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The meta-problem here is that I'm thinking about AGI, and I don't know how
to organize those thoughts.
They spill out randomly, and when I try to place them into buckets, I find
that they are prematurely solidified, formed into a crooked ugly mess.
Like building a model with glue-covered fingers: nothing goes where you
want it, everything sticks to your fingers.
The sheer act of trying to get organized results in sub-optimal thought-groupin
gs.
I mean, not just sub-optimal, but bad and incorrect.
When I try to organize my thoughts about AGI into well-structured collections
and well-written essays, I find that the result is wrong, broken, besides-the-p
oint, misleading, a dead-end, lacking in insight, poorly structured.
So how do I structure my thoughts, when the very act of structuring leads
to undesirable crap? When I am literally incompetent at creating the things
I have set out to do?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is, of course, a problem that all humans struggle with, knowingly or
unconsciously.
I'm doing it here knowingly, but...
Look, well is this neurotic behavior, or not? Is this a distraction from
the flow state, where I am thoughtlessly and automatically writing code,
reading texts on general relativity, or what have you? Flow states are
mildly pleasant: they occupy and preoccupy your mind, and time flies when
you're having fun.
And then one day you wake up older and wonder: where did the time go? Well,
it went down a flow state, and the reason you are not rich is because you
spent your waking hours in a dream-like state, pursuig a pleasant activity,
instead of managing your finances and making money, which is what you should
have been doing (or, at least, this is what your society tells you that
you should be doing.) And oh fuck, here I am with my circular thinking,
back to wondering about the social signals that tell human brains about
what is moral, good, desirable, and what is bad and distasteful.
Which then gets us to the battle of Western culture vs.
other cultural paradigms.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So far, we know/beleive/accept that Western culture is good, because it
has created conditions for economic dominance, unleashed in part by the
unleashing of creative talent (and wow, how tose creatives have disorganized
thoughts, which they then organize into buckets).
The unleashing of creative thought requires ascension through Maslow's
pyramid, and Western culture provides the economic well-being that allows
this ascension.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So lets ponder eschatology for a moment.
What's the difference between a mess of atoms, and a molecule? Well, the
mess of atoms is chaotic, random, mixed and unformed.
A molecule, on the other hand, organizes those atoms into a specific structure
that is stable over time.
But the distinction between a bunch of atoms and a molecule is subtle,
and if one is not careful and observant, one will simply overlook the structura
l relationships, and instead see a chaotic mess of atoms.
You can take a piece of meat and stick it in a blender and get goo, and
you can argue that the goo is almost nearly totally identical to the meat,
so what has changed really? Some conventional measure of statistical mechanics
says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
almost nothing at all
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and that the piece of meat and the goo are nearly indistinguishable.
Of course, this is wrong: the instrucments of statistical mechanics lack
the observational abilities to find structure.
So this is a known shortcoming of the present-day theories of physics and
chemistry: the tools have very poor abilities to find structure, talk about
structure and to characterize structure.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And now on to the eschatology: just like the stransition from atoms->molecules
involves a minor, subtle shift in structural organization, so also, the
shift from one form of social, cultural and economic organization to another
subtle, (not so subtle?) change.
The common discourses about crime, (trans-)sexuality here in the US are
manifestations of the economic freedomes that have allowed Western culture
to flourish.
This is obvious to all, and is a part of the central poltical debate: which
freedoms can you remove and regulate, without killling the golden goose
that powers economic might?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I keep not getting to the eschatology part.
If we have this complex organism called
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
civilization
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, which includes thigs like
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
psychological disposition
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
communications patterns
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
that encourage or prohibit beleifs in Flat Earth, faked moon landings,
or that Trump is a hero, then how does this civilization, uhh, acheive
greatness, err, economic might? I mean, China is an economic powerhouse,
but medical care in the US is 100x better than in China, as is food safety,
environmental pollution, policing and the Justice system.
Never mind the psychological oppression of the 15-minute city.
So economic might is not an adequate measure of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
human development
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Again: nothng new here: you can look up the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Human Development Index
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(HDI) on Wikipedia, and see the dozens or hundreds of scholars that have
labored to obtain a reasonable measurement of what it means to be an enlightene
d, happy, healthy human.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The economists who developed the HDI are like engineers: they labored to
create an optimal measure of
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
something
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
(human development), by grouping together assorted positively-perceived
cultural aspects (health, education, etc.) that the culture already percieves
as positive: everyone knows that being healthy is a good thing, and everyone
knows that being dead is a bad thing.
I mean, this goes back to mammalian roots, or animals in general: health
and development apply generically to living things: trees and shrubbery,
not just owls and cows.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I guess that now is a good time to finally copy in the paragraphs that I
wrote for the Archeo project.
Here they are:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsubsection*
Meta issues (from the Archeo README file)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The engineering/design meta-issue rises again.
How do I know that it is important to have file witnesses? How do I know
that file content hashes are the things that need to be recorded? How do
I know that the objects I'm dealing with are files? How do I know what
a file system is, and how do I know the characteristics that it has? How
do I know that these abstractions are the appropriate ones to make, and
that this is the correct design?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The answers to these questions are all obvious to the (software) engineer,
because the creation of software designs are the primary activity that
software engineers engage in.
But how does the engineer "do" these things? How does the engineer accomplish
them?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The obvious answer is that the engineer goes to school, gets trained and
learns from experience on how to convert verbal descriptions of software
artifacts into functional computer code.
The engineer reads lots of specs, remembers how things work.
The engnieer measures performance, and thus knows what designs are performant.
The engineer factors and refactors code, and thus develops a taste for
what things "go together", what a module should be like, and what a good
API is.
These are all learned from experience.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
It is perhaps incorrect to think that there is some simple magic wand to
be waved around, thus obtaining modular design and API wisdom.
It is tempting to think that perhaps there is some Bayesian similarity
factor, or perhaps some Ising model that can be applied to software systems,
and that by letting this model percolate, an ideal module and API pops
out.
Perhaps there is such a system.
It would be very un-human-like in how it arrives at optimal solutions.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Perhaps I could even design an Ising-model-inspired lambda-calculus combinator
and optimizer.
But this just shifts the location of the problem: how do I know that Ising
models and lambda calculus are the appropriate abstractions?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsubsection*
Coda
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So the above is all an example of my unstructured thoughts, and now perhaps
you can see why I have difficulty structuring them.
I don't even know what I am doing.
Am I writing philosopphy about civilizational eschatology? Of course not.
There are plenty of people debating this online.
I am not going to give Alexander Dugin a larger fucking audience.
Am I creating software? Err, well, sometimes, often, even.
Am I trying to assemble a mathematical theory? Err, yes.
I've already noted the disconnect between philosophy and computation: if
you cannot take your philosophical insights, and convert them into some
category-theoretic formulas, then you cannot create software code that
operates with those philosophical ideas.
So a passage through mathematical formalities is necessary.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So what am I doing? Pondering civilizational eschatology and trying to turn
it into mathematical software.
Of course I'm fucked, and left to stew in disorganized thoughts.
Perhaps the task is too big.
Psychohistory is a topic of sci-fi; what's that famous book from the 1950s?
Isaac Asimov, Foundation Trilogy.
Read it as a kid.
Have no memory of any of it.
Blah blah Hari Seldon.
I'm not Hari Seldon.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
What a mindfuck.
I think I'm going to stop writing now, and enter a waking dream state,
where I flow and write some software or something.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Oh right, that and I need to perform google searchs on terms that relate
the statisitical extraction of structure in lamda-calculus-like complex
networks of mutating, rapidly-evolving networks, which is what I think
I am trying to do with the AtomSpace, and where I have ignored the work
of others who are working in this field.
An Ising model of jigsaw-puzzle pieces.
How does this work?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Good-bye diary, I must hibernate now.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
20 December 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Time for another agony session.
Wherein I express my doubts, reservations, loss of vision and general dissatisf
action with the state of things.
And ponder the future.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, the general bundle of thoughts starts with autonomous agents, sensory
perception, extraction of structure, theorizing about AGI, and my personal
relationship with a world economy and a $100 billion-dollar AI industry.
Once again, by writing and spilling random words on the topic, perhaps
I'll stumble over an insight.
And perhaps arrive at a plan.
Where do I begin?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Let me start small.
In this particular project, the one containing this diary in a git tree,
I have a certain set of research directions I want to pursue.
They were going well, until I realized that my main bottleneck to further
cpu-cycling was the batch-processing nature of how I was doing things.
Trying to move to a continuous-feed pipeline rapidly led me down a path
that leaves me in the dire straights I find myself in now.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
As I write this, I realize I've tangled together multiple distinct issues.
Perhaps I can untangle them.
My batch-processing system has very distinct processing stages, where one
stage finishes, before the next one starts.
I realized that what I really want is some of the advanced processing stages
to run as soon as practical, even while flowing new data into the earliest
stages.
So, a continuous processing system.
A modular system, perhaps a multi-agent system.
Together with a control system.
That is, as later stages run dry, and decide they've done all they can,
they need to turn the faucet on in the earlier stages, and get them to
do more processing.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The last three sentences already open a vast expanse of technology issues
for which the AtomSpace/Opencog has no solution, and for which there is
no off-the-shelf, commercial, open-source, industrial solution.
The buzzwords:
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
continuous processing
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
agents
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
have been used by the computer industry for decades.
Yet, there's no generic solution.
Let's deep dive as to why.
I will ponder things that are perhaps
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
obvious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and this is why everything is so difficult: the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
obvious
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is like a brick wall, blocking progress.
It has to be deconstructed, pounded through, in order to move past.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So lets look at
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
agents
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Thanks to Unix in general, Linux in particular, I can associate the concept
of an
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
agent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
very roughly with the concept of a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
process
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
running on a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
kernel
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
To do this, I have to buy into the Unix technology stack.
If I used some other operating system (e.g.
MS-DOS), I might not get multi-processing capabilities.
If I used no operating system at all, I simply wouldn't have that, and
would need to create some kind of agent system from scratch, writing thousands,
maybe tens of thousands of lines of code.
The computer industry, as a whole, has come to a general agreement that
multiprocessing is good, and has also converged onto a common shared idea
of how to do it.
In biology, this is called
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
convergent evolution
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But there's more.
Different OS'es provide different kernel API's, and I need a C library
to hide those diferences.
Again, most of the industry has standardized on a common C library standard,
although the largest player, Microsoft, had to be dragged, kicking and
screaming, to the table.
If I have a C/C++ app, I have some guarantee that I can compile it for
most modern, popular OS'es, and it will just work.
Mostly.
Microsoft still sets up roadblocks.
The BSD's, Linux, the various unixes, Apple OS'es and Windows are similar
enough that system daemons, those that don't open windows or use keyboard/mouse
interfaces, that these can just work.
Android remains a challenge.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
A process running on one Linux machine, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
agent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, can't really be
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
frozen
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
on one machine, moved to another, and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
thawed
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Well, now it sort of can, if I use LXC or Docker.
I still cannot move an LXC container to Windows, Apple or Android.
I think VMWare offers something along those lines, if I really, really
want it.
But as a commercial product, a bit stymied.
Great, if I need to deploy some short-term solution.
Terrible, if I want to make some long-term strategic technology choice.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
How do agents communicate? Well, IPC on one machine.
TCP over the net.
There are a zillion protocols layered on TCP.
That's great.
This works only because the entire world has agreed to use TCP, and not
IBM SNA or Novell Netware, or DECnet or whatever.
The competitors have been pushed aside, allowing one dominant technology
to rule provide a generic common infrastructure that is guaranteed to be
there.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
However, one reaches a limit.
For Atomese, for the CogServer, I had to design my own specific network
protocol.
There was no off-the-shelf system I could use, above and beyond raw TCP/IP.
Perhaps, maybe I could have layered on something else.
There are several dozen different techs, offering something RPC-like, something
mailbox-like, publish-subscribe services that could be used, and its not
too late: the CogServer could still be adapted to use one of these services,
*if* it solved an actual problem that I had.
So far, they solve problems I don't have.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So what problems do I have? Ben wants me to use Hyperon.
But Hyperon also doesn't solve my problems.
The meta-lesson from the above two-three paragraphs of obvious recaps of
obvious tech landscape features is that to build new systems, one must
figure out how to leverage the work of others, and that one must make strategic
bets on future software & hardware technologies.
One has to surf an edge of the mainstream wave with thousands of developers
behind it, while also, well, doing the thing you want to do.
So again, I ask, what do I want to do?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, starting from the extremely narrow idea.
Once again, I want a system that crawls over my text input, does the pair
counting.
So it needs to be autonomous in it's crawl.
What does that really mean
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
autonomous
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? Currently, I have a script.
I start it, it runs.
It walks the directory tree and shoves the texts through the system.
I could call it a daemon, an agent, if I wanted to get fancy.
Fundamentally, its shoving data through the system; but what I want is
a system that pulls.
That makes the deicision
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
gee, I recall reading this text before, let me go look at it again, make
a second pass
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
Well, but how?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I need an agent that remembers what it read, where it was found.
Stores some meta-data.
Where is that meta-data stored? Well, in the AtomSpace, of course.
How? Well, I would be forced to, uhh, engineer some data structures to
store it in? That would suck.
How do I store it? Well, the straight-ahead answer is as pairs-properties.
EdgeLinks with PredicateNodes to tag the content.
So its all there, all addressable, all searchable.
Whoop-de-do.
Now what?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
There are several issues plagueing my thoughts.
Lets do the easier, more obvious one first.
This is the library-science, systems-engeineering problem.
If I suck in a lot of data: lets say electrical circuit diagrams, I need
to store that data somewhere, because it it probably won't fit in RAM.
But, just like the deconstructed URL's in Archeo, I don't need to store
the deconstructions, just the minimal amounts, which I can then expand
as needed.
But this requires having some on-demand expander system.
How does that work? I also want to avoid having to engineer and re-engineer
expanders, I want something generic.
All this needs to also be a distributed, multi-agent system.
Running on multiple machines.
The CogServer/StorgeNode gives me this, sort of.
It has a performance hit.
It's only the base layer.
There's no unified storage model, where I can ask any server, and it knows
what all the other servers know.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So I'm fiddling with Ceph, and I like how it's agents work.
There's a ceph-mon and a ceph-mgr per machine, and these talk to each other,
to all the other deemons in the network, and these all know what each of
them know.
Could I do that with CogServers? How?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, one issue is maintaining a coherent read-modify-write view of the
world.
Yea old ACID/BASE debate, eventually-consistent, etc.
I've layered the AtomSpace on top of RocksDB, because I wanted to handle
this consistency issue on my own.
But the storage design allows me to also layer on other distributed DB's,
but with a performance cost.
And the consistency/coherency issue never quite goes away, because the
AtomSpace is in-RAM so I would need to keep some current-generation counter,
much like Ceph does: a quorum of servers that agree on the current time-slice.
And use some blah-blah algorithm to decide who's-got-what when there are
netwsplits or systems go down.
So again, we are doing systems engineering here.
And not AI research.
And there's the rub: If I'm doing systems engineering, why not do it for...
well fuck if I know.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So let me ignore those issues.
They are all solvable using a conventional engineering mindset.
The issue is that I don't have an infinite amount of time; someone else
needs to solve these, and tehy are not getting solved for the AtomSpace/OpenCog
, and Ben is not solving them for Hyperon, either.
So we're in a hole, here.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Where were we? So, we are ingesting English text, or electronics netlists,
one paragraph at a time, one netlist at a time, and either we store a URL
to the disk location of the original dataset, or we actually import the
raw text or Spice file or whatever, into the AtomSpace.
If we import the whole thing, then the mean ugly issue of having enough
space raises it's head again.
So its better to leave it on disk, and just record the URL.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
So, how does this work? Do I have a URL-recording agent? Who engineers it?
How does it work? Does it have an Atomese API to it? The problem with having
an Atomese API is that no one uses these, because the meta-level stuff
isn't working yet.
Because ..
why? Is the meta-level stuff to vague and cloudy? Doesn't have an approrpriatel
y articulated deployment scenario? Let me be clear: last week, I wrote a
python-Atomese file-system-crawling
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
agent
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, and so fucking what? I engineered it, I implemented it, it works.
Now what? It does have a sub-module that computes the hash of the contents
of a file.
I could modularize this, so that the function that computes the hash is
replaced by a generic module that computes anything at all, and stuffs
the results into the AtomSpace, when invoked.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is this an improvement over the shell-script that I use to shove text through
the 'learn' pipeline? Well, I guess it could be.
Shell scripts are hard to turn into daemons.
Why do I want a daemon? Well, first of all, the file crawler has a config
file, that tells it where to crawl.
The config file is there for the human user, to edit.
That config file should be in the AtomSpace.
And it should be editable with a web GUI.
And there should be a button that says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
config has changed, reexamine, reload, restart.
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
And conversly: what config are you using right now? And, as a daemon, some
way of saying
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Are you there? Are you up? What's your status? Are you working?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
Its taken me a while to warm up to SystemD, but I think I get it now.
Having a uniformized, common system to do it all is actually a good idea.
The analogy here is that I need a generic Atomese system processing daemon,
one that can infest input from a file system (or from URL's via crawls,
whatever) and apply processing modules to what it has gone over, and keep
a general record of what it has done so far.
And I guess I will have to engineer this, because it won't just drop into
my lap.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The problem that I have with the above is that the system requirements here
are so freakin generic that it sounds like 1990's computing buzzword bingo.
There are 101 systems that can ingest data, record it, process it.
On the cloud, we got OpenStack that specializes in this stuff, so why exactly
am I reinventing cloud computing? Well, because the data generated and
kept by these other systems is not accessible to me, in Atomese format.
And why do I need this data in Atomese format?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Ah, there's the rub.
The simple, stupid answer is that this is how the higher processing layers
determine what has been done before, and decide how to go back and do it
again.
But that's the stupid answer because I do not yet posses higher-level layers
capable of doing this.
And I'm not sure how and when I will possess them.
And this is the key issue that I'm trying to work towards, and keep not
quite getting to, and now its late, and I want to go for a bike ride before
it gets too late, so, dear diary, its coitus interruptus time again.
Perhaps we'll do some cognitive fucking around later today, or maybe not.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Well, a few more minutes, a few more missives, before I pull out.
My general framework of computing similarities is also incomplete.
I've got a working proof-of-concept, its in a semi-generalized format/domain.
I've discussd a crawler in the above paragraphs, that could be built in
a more generic fashion.
And I've got a slightly firmer view of what a web UI might look like.
And just talking about this has me stoked to build it.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
And that's the next issue: the manic-depression.
The mania is that I'm stoked to build this and that.
The depression is that I'm the only one who is stoked; I don't have a user-base.
I don't have helpers, assisntants, collaborators.
The other half of the depression is the feeling of emptiness: I still don't
have a well-formed plan for arriving at AGI.
Just some obvious steps in front of me, and then everything is obscured
by a curtain of trees, clouds, jungle.
And this is how explorers do things: one step at a time, erring through
the jungle.
And I can say
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
buck up kiddo, one step at a time, through the jungle, its forward progress,
no matter how you think about it!
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
And meanwhile, there's some asshole in a fucking biplane flying over the
jungle and waving to you and yelling
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
cholley ho, old chap, you should see the view from up here
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
And I want to be that guy, with the view from above, instead of being stuck
in the weeds of system engineering.
But he can fly only because he did a different set of system engineering:
building an airplane, levergating advances in metalurgy, pistons, motors,
propellers and shellac'ed cloth and strong, lightweight wire for the wings.
Well, if the goal is to do botany, you get on your hands and knees with
a hand-shovel and whatever.
And if the goal is to get a survey of the AGI jungle, well, the airplane
is the thing.
I'm very very worried that the one-step-at-a-time approach of building
a configurable crawler and building a generic similarity-analysis infrastructur
e is ...
the wrong thing to be doing.
And the reason I worry that it's the wrong thing is the meta-jungle.
Fuck-all.
There are several metas involved here.
One is the socio-economic meta: that airplane pilot has to come to ground,
and deal with buying gasoline, eating dinner, and getting roses for his
love.
And so I have to find money, make bill-pay, obtain collaborators on my
project.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Here's a meta-example from that world: In order to keep some system daemons
running autonomously, you need humans to supply that computer with electricity
and reboot it when it is down.
This is done in one of two ways: the computer software does something useful,
e.g.
cell phones, or generates money, e.g.
crypto-mining.
So getting rewarded with crypto for keeping an AtomSpace instance up and
running is something that ...
Well, SingularityNet set out to do this, but they, I dunno...
got distracted? FileCoin was/is supposed to do that for IPFS, but IPFS
is crap.
Compare IPFS to Ceph, and you can instantly see why IPFS is crap.
At any rate, being actively coupled into the human economy is how a technology
item is guaranteed life.
It can be natural, like cellphones, which evolved to fit something humans
want, and it can be artificial, like FileCoin, leverage greed and get-rich-quic
k dreams.
I don't have a viable opencog-crypto get-rich-quick scheme, and neither
does Ben, after claiming to be working on it for five-plus years.
And worse: this angle is not really AGI, its rather a mechanical coupling
of technology into the human world.
So we know this is one way to couple in, but it does not solve the actual
AGI problem.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Whatever.
There's more.
But I gotta go on that bike ride now.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
20 Dec 2024 Post ride
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Lets continue.
Two or three ideas gel in the above.
First, I can think of a crawler as a motor, an active agent that
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
does things
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: it explores.
The config file is the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
motor control
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
that regulates where it is aimed.
During the crawl, data is collected.
What data? For Archeo, its hard-coded: the file size, the content hash,
the mtime.
But this too could (should be) specifiable in the
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
collection tool
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
: the type of data that is gathered during a crawl.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Coming up with reasonable designs for the motor control and the collection
tool specs is ...
a challenge, and it seeems like more prototyping and proof-of-concept work
is needed.
An issue that muddies the water is that these controls probably have to
be representable as config files, and then viewable and/or editable with
a Web UI.
In the long run, we want other parts of the system controlling the motor
directly.
But for now, it needs to have human oversight.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Next, we have the task of measuring directory similarity.
There are two distinct issues.
One is that there are many different ways of measuring similarity, each
emphasizing different aspects.
So, this requires a
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
similarity tool
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
, specifying what it is that should be compared.
Given the richness, its again not clear how to specify this.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Clouding the above is that I developed the matrix tool, for measuring similarity
for items arranged in a sparse matrix.
Directories are, in that sense, not sparse.
But then, I don't want to compare
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
anything to anything
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
; I already have blown up directory contents into a specific collection
of Atomese, and its really about tracing through incoming sets of Atoms
(i.e.
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
find all files with the same name
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
is really about finding the incoming set of a node with some name, but
I already have that incoming set, so finding is trivial.) Some kind of rethinkin
g is needed for understanding what
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
similarity
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
means in this context.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Is this doable? Yes.
Perhaps even in a 3-6-12 month project.
Should it be done? Well, I don't have much else on my plate.
Is it silly? It sure feels silly, because it is so low-level and basic.
Flip side, no one has done this silly and basic thing before.
And if they have, it doesn't matter, because they done it wrong.
So the decision is like that of undertaking any new software (or hardware)
project: what's out there is no good, and won't do what I want.
I'm telling myself this to psych myself up, because otherwise, it feels
like I dunno, a stupid project? I can't tell.
Is this brilliant? Or dumb? Well, I know I'm smart, so I should learn to
trust that little voice in my head that says
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
Linas, this is brilliant
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
.
The only real problem I've got with that little voice is that it makes
me do things that society finds little or no value in.
Its odd that this is a plight shared by both scientists and drug addicts.
You don't get rich studying high-redshift galaxies.
Actually, you have trouble staying employed.
I missed my chance to become a famous and acclaimed scientist.
I'm now older and wiser, but senescence is working against me now.
I need to be a bit more focused and selective with my time left on Earth,
and so I spell out a project like the above, and wonder,
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
is it dumb
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
? and
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
should I do it?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
What a fucked existance.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
The fact that Ben sucked all the air out of the room, by dropping the Atomspace
in favor of some new, yet to be created system...
is this a blessing or a curse? I hate that decision, but then, I've hated
many of Ben's decisions.
He's so fucking bone-headed, for such a brilliant guy.
The silver lininig is that I don't have people clamoring for my time and
distracting me.
And so I'm free to pursue novel and new ideas.
Whatever.
Lets do this.
Could be interesting.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Subsection*
23 Dec 2024
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Got another one of these annoying
\begin_inset Quotes eld
\end_inset
how did a photon know xyz?
\begin_inset Quotes erd
\end_inset
bullshit confusions.
This time I think I found a reasonable common-man analogy.
Worth setting down here, in my diary.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
kc kim
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
1:05 PM (1 hour ago)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
to kc, bcc: me
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
FirstHedger (@Zero Hedge) posted: My First Physics Class Professor Asked:
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
How Do The Photons Know Where To Go?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Faster Than Light?
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
It’s An Illusion
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Per All Illusions
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Previously Set Up
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Linas Vepstas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
2:15 PM (21 minutes ago)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
to kc A common mis-perception by laymen, and even many physicists (who should
know better) is that "photons exist".
Rather, the photon is the size of the chunk of energy that can be exchanged
during an interaction.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Think of it this way: something costs 99 cents, and you buy it.
That does not mean that you had a "single item" (a "photon") that was exactly
99 cents in your pocket.
Those 99 cents never actually "existed", except as a concept in your head.
However, you were still able to buy something, because you managed to pull
some change out of your pocket, which just happened to total up to 99 cents,
and conduct a transaction.
The quantum version of this is the "measurement of a photon" or a "wave
function collapse".
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
I'm not sure why physicists don't fix this mis-perception in the popular
media.
They seem to like the idea that everyone runs around with bills in their
pocket for exactly 99 cents, and 98 cents and 97, and everything in between:
bills for 98.14159265358979 in your pocket.
That's nonsense, of course, but is the root cause of all these questions
of "how did the photon know XYZ?" It didn't because photons don't exist.
Just like the 99 cents in your pocket magically "knows how much a candy
bar costs".
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Think about it.
"how did the money in my pocket know that a candy bar costs exactly 99
cents? Did the candy bar send a secret message faster than light?"
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Feel free to post my email on twitter.
Ask other physicists if they agree.
I'd love to hear a dissenting opinion from someone smart.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
--linas -- Patrick: Are they laughing at us? Sponge Bob: No, Patrick, they
are laughing next to us.
kc kim
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
2:21 PM (15 minutes ago)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
to me “Photons “ Travel @ Light Speed : c
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
They Experience No /Zero Time During Travel/Existence
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
~~~ Linas Vepstas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
2:30 PM (6 minutes ago)
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
to kc Photons don't exist.
They experience "zero time during travel" in the same way that the 99 cents
in your pocket experiences "zero time" magically transmuting into a candy-bar.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
Yes, minkowski space can be sliced into space-like, null and time-like manifolds
, but you have to actually study mathematics to understand what those words
mean.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
FWIW, photons experience zero time and also zero space: the distance between
where they start and where they end is zero.
They stitch together different points in the space-time manifold.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
But that's kind of like saying "money stitches together the world economy".
The 99 cents in my pocket is identical to the 99 cents anywhere else in
the world, and can instantly bounce between bank accounts.
Photons are like that.
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
--linas
\end_layout
\begin_layout Section*
The End
\end_layout
\begin_layout Standard
This is the end of Part Ten-B of the diary.
\end_layout
\end_body
\end_document