familiar faces

"All around us today are artifacts that were generated in the
technological dramas of their time: railways, canals, aviation
artifacts, radios, and more. And yet their meaning, together with
their location in what was formerly a deeply felt grammar of political
action, is utterly lost; in their place is what appears to be nothing
more than a material record of `technological progress.' What was
once the conscious product of human cultural and political action,
passionate and meaningful, is now a silent material reality within
which we lead our daily lives, mutely acting out patterns of behavior
that once had obvious connections to the root paradigms of our
culture... To become fully aware of the political circumstances of
their lives, new generations of students, at every level of education,
must be trained (as Hughes suggests) to `fathom the depth of the
technological society, to identify currents running more deeply than
those conventionally associated ith politics and economics.' Because
Social Study of Technology offers a way to recontextualize
technological artifacts, it is therefore the political philosophy of
our time, and it deserves to stand at the center of any curriculum
that teaches political awareness and civic responsibility." Brian
Pfaffenberger, "Technological Dramas", quoting Thomas P. Hughes,
American Genesis; cited in "Commons Based Peer Production" by Benkler
and Nissenbaum

the white queen hypothesis

(Quotation 1) Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said `one
ca'n't believe impossible things.'

`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was
your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've
believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes
the shawl again!'

(Quotation 2) `Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a
little, `you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast
for a long time, as we've been doing.'

`A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. `Now, here, you see, it
takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you
want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as
that!'

(Quotation 2) inspires the Red Queen Hypothesis about co-evolution
(evolutionary change is faster when it runs against a system that is
also changing).

(Quotation 1) should inspire a complementary White Queen Hypothesis,
perhaps a sort of "Fourier Transform" of the Red Queen Hypothesis.
The "impossible thought" might be any given quasi-evolutionary move,
the ability to "try something out" (as when exploring counter-factual
future-histories on the chess board).  Perhaps it describes something
happening in some sort of "co-tangent space": it might be much like
what Tim Teravainen said to me about how it is good to be able to rule
out ideas or variations quickly.

They say that master chess players don't "think", they just "pattern
match".  Not only should selection pressures be consistently high, but
variability must also be consistently high. But I also want to
consider changes enacted *on* the system.  The real "orthogonality
condition" here would say: evolutionary change is faster when
throughput between the evolutionary agent (species, learner) and the
system (antagonist, environment) is richer.  So, the more
intelligible/palpable and, especially, the more semantically
fine-grained the channel that communicates between agent and system,
the faster the agent can learn.

(In a way this is a corollary of the Red Queen Hypothesis, but one
would *study* it in a very different manner.)

random silence (the knife vs pale fire)

/ Whatever in my field of vision dwelt—
/ Stilettos of a frozen stillicide—
A cracked smile and a silent shout
Yes, in a dream all my teeth fell out
/ Or, with a silent shiver order it,
He'll have you later 'cause it's never free
/ And while this lasted all I had to do
I caught a glimpse, now it haunts me
What you are and what you mean to me
/ Took photographs. Whenever I'd permit,
/ Was close my eyes to reproduce the leaves,
In a dream I lost my teeth again
Instead I mumble randomly
You stand by and enlighten me
/ Was printed on my eyelids' nether side
/ Or indoor scene, or trophies of the eaves."
Calling me woman and half man
/ An indoor scene, hickory leaves, the svelte
You were at the gigantic spree
"All colors made me happy: even gray.
If I explain it once thoroughly
A cracked smile and a silent shout
I know now fragility
Wish I could speak in just one sweep
/ My eyes were such that literally they
+ know of people who are getting old
+ never knew this could happen to me
+ caught a glimpse, now it haunts me
+ know there's people who I haven't told
/ Where it would tarry for an hour or two

is it zen, or just meaningless drivel?

http://objects.icanhascheezburger.com/

coevolution ftw

"The Red Queen hypothesis proposes that coevolution of interacting
species (such as hosts and parasites) should drive molecular evolution
through continual natural selection for adaptation and
counter-adaptation. Although the divergence observed at some
host-resistance and parasite-infectivity genes is consistent with
this, the long time periods typically required to study coevolution
have so far prevented any direct empirical test. Here we show, using
experimental populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens
SBW25 and its viral parasite, phage Φ2, that the rate of molecular
evolution in the phage was far higher when both bacterium and phage
coevolved with each other than when phage evolved against a constant
host genotype. Coevolution also resulted in far greater genetic
divergence between replicate populations, which was correlated with
the range of hosts that coevolved phage were able to infect.
Consistent with this, the most rapidly evolving phage genes under
coevolution were those involved in host infection. These results
demonstrate, at both the genomic and phenotypic level, that
antagonistic coevolution is a cause of rapid and divergent evolution,
and is likely to be a major driver of evolutionary change within
species." -- Michael J. Benton, Antagonistic coevolution accelerates
molecular evolution, Nature 464, 275-278 (11 March 2010) abstract

Cf. Leigh Van Valen. (1973). "A new evolutionary law". Evolutionary
Theory 1: 1—30.

nerd love?

"If positive emotions are to occur in a close relationship, then one's
partner must have sufficient resources so that he or she can remove
interrupting stimuli or accelerate the completion of plans. However,
these acts of removal and acceleration must be unexpected if they are
to generate positive emotion. Furthermore, an individual must have
plans or dreams that he or she cannot complete alone so that a partner
can make a difference. This last condition is hard to meet in most
close relationships because each partner usually drops plans that
cannot be accomplished or accomplishes them by some other means. If
positive emotions are to occur at all, each person needs to keep
adding new plans that cannot be accomplished alone, but they also have
to be plans that the partner cannot predictably accomplish either.

The implications of these propositions about positive emotions for the
development of relationships is sobering. As the other person in the
relationship becomes more predictable, and as a partner expects that
person's help, there should be fewer occasions for positive emotion to
occur." -- Karl E. Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, page 47

the pre-mature autopsies on mermaid avenue

This seems like a really interesting opinion piece:

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/31/arts/music-what-jazz-is-and-isn-t.html

Which forms a sort of prequel to this:

http://www.mdcbowen.org/p1/cobb/premature_autopsies.htm

And all of this forms a setting into which we could transpose other
sorts of controversy taking place outside of the Jazz world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Wright_controversy

Further, as a contrasting case, it is interesting to examine the
intellectual property transfer and/or "collaboration" style employed
by these singer-songwriters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid_Avenue

They say there is no accounting for taste, and maybe even for opinion
(Is "free jazz... JAZZ"? -- Gosh, who knows!). Still, I think these
discussions about Jazz are an interesting nexus of the aesthetic, the
political, and even the technological -- e.g. how do we think about
musical art in world in which recorded music is so easily shared by
file transfer? Presumably not the same way we thought about it when
it was shared on LPs or radio broadcast, etc.

To compare:

* this rather horrible recording by Billy Bragg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Ib0-yKmoA

* a *potentially* slightly less awkward one by Woodie Guthrie and pals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcKwGS7OSQ

Of course, we can't think about the technologies of war the same way
we once did, either -- e.g. consider this statement by Jeremiah
Wright, made in his capacity as 'controversial figure': "The
ambassador said the people that we have wounded don't have the
military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are
willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to
grips with that."

I don't think this statement implicates only "terrorists"; e.g. some
variant would apply to "internet pirates", another to
"third-worlders", another to "drug overlords", etc. At question is
the relationship between individual and society.

To bring in another familiar angle:

"[Reading 'And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks', w]e have, in
essence, finally come full circle after almost six decades, turning a
corner into a blind alley and walking smack-dab into a mirror image of
ourselves, credit-crazed zombies with the dropping eyelids of a
Burroughs morphine addict, hungover from the post-war boom, slogging
through a nightmarish netherworld [...] In a bleaker assessment than
those of most private forecasters, the World Bank predicted a
shrinking of the global economy for the first time since World War II
[...] We are not exactly sailing into uncharted waters here, but until
our new artists arrive to help us understand what we have done to
ourselves, it would probably be best to heed the words of Henry
Miller, a writer who wielded great influence on the Beats: 'I am
against revolutions because they always involve a return to the status
quo.'" -- http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/71573-little-murders-and-the-hippos-were-boiled-in-their-tanks/

To wind this up: it seems Miller would agree with Marsalis and Crouch
in this matter?

the untold hazards of backromology

From the software-based Greek-to-English dictionary Magenta, the
actual definition of "paragogy" (παραγωγή):

generation [dzhenerEishn] ουσ. παραγωγή: generation of heat παραγωγή
θερμότητας # γενεά, γενιά: for many generations για πολλές γενιές §
from generation to generation από γενιά σε γενιά § the younger
generation η νεώτερη γενιά # γενεσιουργία, γένεση: alternate
generation βιολ. γένεση κατ' εναλλαγή

output [Autput] ουσ. (συνολική) παραγωγή: average output μέση παραγωγή
§ daily output οικον. ημερήσια παραγωγή # ηλ. ισχύς παραγωγής: the
unit has an output of 400 megawatts η μονάδα έχει ισχύ παραγωγής 400
μεγαβάτ # τεχνολ. απόδοση ή παραγόμενο έργο Η/Υ # ΦΡ. output bonus
οικον. επιμίσθιο αυξημένης παραγωγικότητας # output conditions (στη
γλωσσολογία:) όροι εξόδου

production[prodAkshn] ουσ. (ως διαδικασία και ως αποτέλεσμα:)
παραγωγή: increase the production of.. αυξάνω την παραγωγή τού.. §
increased production of wine αυξημένη παραγωγή οίνου # οργάνωση και
παρουσίαση θεάματος, "παραγωγή", "ανέβασμα": spectacular production
υπερθέαμα, επική παραγωγή

turnout [tErnaut] ουσ. πλήθος συνάθροισης, "προσέλευση": count the
turnout μετρώ το πλήθος των παρισταμένων # αμφίεση, περιβολή:
inappropriate turnout ακατάλληλη περιβολή # παραγωγή (κατά ποσότητα)
συνολική παραγωγή: the actual turnout was over one million a year η
ετήσια συνολική παραγωγή ξεπέρασε το ένα εκατομμύριο

the country doctor effekt

We discussed the general idea last year (thanks go to correspondent
Ian Coe), but since I *use* the result a lot, it is worth noting the
proper citation:

"Connections From Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit
Learning of an Artificial Grammar" by Travis Proulx and Steven J
Heine, Psychol Sci 20(9):1125-31 (2009)

The abstract is as follows: "In the current studies, we tested the
prediction that learning of novel patterns of association would be
enhanced in response to unrelated meaning threats. This prediction
derives from the meaning-maintenance model, which hypothesizes that
meaning-maintenance efforts may recruit patterns of association
unrelated to the original meaning threat. Compared with participants
in control conditions, participants exposed to either of two unrelated
meaning threats (i.e., reading an absurd short story by Franz Kafka or
arguing against one's own self-unity) demonstrated both a heightened
motivation to perceive the presence of patterns within letter strings
and enhanced learning of a novel pattern actually embedded within
letter strings (artificial-grammar learning task). These results
suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly
learning patterns are enhanced by the presence of a meaning threat."

Of course, there's plenty of chances for just this sort of "uncanny"
stuff on the internet -- including this video by Rich Ragsdale, which
both explains and illustrates the idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqcx6r57GRI

"The story of The Sandman as told by E. T. A. Hoffman intrigued the
great Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Freud attempted to
describe Nathaniel's state of mind upon realizing that his true love
was in actuality a mechanical doll! He labelled this confusion
between the human and the artificial 'The Uncanny!'"

Such "artificiality" can include many things. Consider *this*
marvelously "flat" beginning:

"I was in great difficulty. An urgent journey was facing me. A
seriously ill man was waiting for me in a village ten miles distant. A
severe snowstorm filled the space between him and me." -- A Country
Doctor, Franz Kafka

In the world of the story, of course, the premise is not flat -- it's
urgent, there is a seriously ill man, etc.! However, my confusion is
oh so real, and it is precisely the confusion between this
"artificial" story and my real life and emotions. Hence, a little
later on in the story when we read --

"The servant girl stood beside me. 'One doesn't know the sorts of
things one has stored in one's own house,' she said, and we both
laughed." -- ibid.

we're likely already to be caught up in the story, but perhaps also
somewhat uneasy about this fact. As the poor girl (whom we have known
for all of a few hundred characters) is quite brutally victimized in
very short order, I'm sure I care about her more than the narrator
himself, who gets swept up in his own story, and he, almost
conveniently, appears to meet his own doom by the end of the story
anyway. We need not go into further detail:

"Once one responds to a false alarm on the night bell, there's no
making it good again—not ever." -- ibid.

That's just the point: this is all of us responding exactly to such a
false alarm at each moment! This is *how* we "learn novel patterns",
precisely *through* our response to "unrelated meaning threats". In
other words, we emote about whatever it is that comes to mind, our
feelings become "ingrained" or learnt -- in an effort to maintain some
kind of self-unity, say -- and meaning is built and/or maintained as
an end or as a side-effect (it almost doesn't matter which one)
through or throughout this process.

Kafka has a way of showing precisely how uncanny and even sinister
*life* is in its essential nature...

mathematical models of emotion

Suppose I want a *banana*. If I get a banana, I am happy. If I don't
get one, I am slightly or even significantly less happy.

This forms the basis of a mathematical model for emotions based on
*pattern matching*. Does this seem like a good start for a "real"
model?

spectres of capitalism

"A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism."
-- http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

Perhaps it is time to consider a sort of reversal of the above axiom:

"The World is presently haunted by the spectres of capitalism."

In any case, such an idea may be useful as the basis of a 3D game
entitled "PacMan 2010".

To make this more clear:

PacMan 2010 : Welltris :: PacMan : Tetris

Note in particular the Hammer and Sickle appearing centrally in the
cover art for Welltris:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welltris

Here's PacMan interviewed:

Question: What's life like in the 3-torus?

Answer: Comparing the 3-torus to the 2-torus is sort of like comparing
the Internet to books. The higher dimensionality means it is easier
to get lost, but somewhat harder to get cornered. You know what
Hamlet said, "I could live in a walnut shell and feel like the king of
the universe. The real problem is that I have bad dreams." That's how
I feel sometimes, too. I mean, I know they say I'm crazy... but you'd
go crazy too if you were locked in here with those ghosts! No, I'm
just kidding. But seriously, it's a continual struggle just to stay alive.

> 3:14 PM me: i've done my best to create a derridian pac-mashup
>   communism is being chased by the spectre of the dollar [0]

[0]: "· · · · · ✺ · · · ·☭ $"

paragogical principles

Paragogy is a name for the theory of peer-to-peer or
peer-based teaching-and-learning-between-equals.

A more informal synonym is "peertagogy".

The theory of paragogy is developed in opposition to
"andragogy". Here are its defining principles as I see
them today.

1. CONTEXT AS A DECENTERED CENTER

A paragogic view suggests that everyone has a mixture of
"dependent", "self-directed", and "other-directed"
behaviours, without saying that any of these is "good" or
"bad". It suggests that a self-concept may be less
important than the concept of "shared context in motion".
This has various consequences, e.g. as to the relative
value placed on social intelligence and so-called "mental
age". It also de-emphasizes personality-based critiques
in favour of a critique of social/dynamical systems.

2. META-LEARNING IS A FONT OF KNOWLEDGE

A paragogic view says that we all have a lot to learn
about learning.

3. PEERS ARE PEOPLE WHO LEARN TOGETHER

A peer isn't necessarily someone who happens to be stuck
in the same ruts you are stuck in. In fact, the paragogic
view says you can learn from practically anyone, and that
people who learn from one another are "peers".

4. LEARNING IS DISTRIBUTED AND NONLINEAR

Learning, whether with a given application in mind,
or for some other reason, can come from many different
sources.  Part of paragogy is learning how to work one's
way around a given social field.

5. REALISE YOUR DREAM AND THEN WAKE UP

Realising a motivation seems at least as important as its
existence in the first place. Merely indicating that a
given motivation is "internal" or "external" is likely not
to be fine-grained enough to be very useful. Paragogy is
the art of realising motivations when possible, then going
on to the next thing.

dualisms

I think it is important to understand a few things occuring in
opposition or in pairs, it doesn't matter so much which way; these
aren't just your standard vocabulary words. Presumably tons of
philosophy books could be written about them (and already have been).
This note is just meant to be a quick reference guide.

1. ANATMAN and ANAMNESIS

The idea of "anatman" is usually taken to mean that there is no
"permanent, integral, autonomous being within an individual
existence". The common translation is "the Buddhist doctrine of
no-self". However, a more literal translation would probably be "the
Buddhist doctrine of no-soul"; and an even more literal translation
could be: "there is no single universal self shared by all persons".
(It is interesting how Buddhist terms are often mis-translated; cf.
this earlier blog post:
http://gathatoulie.blogspot.com/2009/10/dukkha.html.) So there is no
"holy ghost" or what have you (contrast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iandi,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogen), and from there the rest of the holy
trinity topples along with any other transcendent quantity, including e.g.
the Self (to recover the standard interpretation).

The idea of "anamnesis" is related to the "sophistic paradox" which
says you can't look for something you don't know anything about; in
other words, learning by doing is impossible... unless it is
constrained to function within a certain axiomatic system, say.
Anamnesis is the idea that the soul does know things, but it forgets
them; we then un-forget as we encounter things in the world,
especially if we look at them the right way. This idea is the
theoretical justification for the "socratic method", which basically
takes the sophistic paradox and turns it into a tool. The key thing
for this discussion is that, for all of this to work, we need a soul,
and the soul needs to be inscribed or imbued with something we could
call eternal knowledge.

It seems to me that whether this eternal knowledge is idiosyncratic or
universal, the theory of anamnesis is in sufficiently direct
opposition to the theory of anatman that we should all perk up our
ears a bit, especially given some of the other more superficial
similarities. Whereas in the greek theory, knowledge awakens, in the
indic theory, one awakens (if at all) to the absence of knowledge in the platonic sense, and moreover to a profound contingency.  (I won't say a "field of immanence", because that just makes immanence transcendent.)

Note, however, that this puts us back at the prologue to the greek story, with
Socrates, who says "all I know is that I know nothing" or "OK, I know
something about 'love', but that's it!"

2. MATHESIS and POEISIS

Mathesis means "lesson" and it comes to mean "mathematics", as well as
"science". For Foucault is it is "a general science of order".  (I've written enough about this topic elsewhere, so I won't go on here, but this seems a good place to mention that the pegagogic bent of these various dualisms is worth paying attention to.)

Poiesis means "making" or "genesis" and it comes to mean "poetry".
Some would see fit to oppose "making" with "faking" (mimesis), but of
course simulation combines the two. It would also be possible to
think of a "general science of disorder", but in fact we seem to
require a double deviation; we would then ask for "songs of
exception", for example in punk rowk.

3. NOMIC and LUDIC

Nomos means "law" or "custom", but in a rather amazing way, Deleuze
and Guattari connect it with numbers, names, and nomads. Perhaps the
idea is to continue the sophist's distinction between nature (physis)
and convention (nomos); the state or city requires its own physics,
e.g. gravitation, above and beyond the "law", whereas the desert or
steppe requires only, and exactly, conventions -- i.e. if its inhabitants are to survive.

Ludus means "play", or "sport", including e.g. gladiatorial combat,
and circuses more generally, but also "play schools" for youngsters.
The notion of "ludi votivi" was that in the sport one fulfilled a vow
to some deity. Circuses could also feature executions, which would of
course be a chance to show off the "transcendent" power of the local
tyrant. "Ludicrous" (causing laughter because of absurdity; provoking
or deserving derision; ridiculous; laughable) might be a term one
would apply to someone sentenced to die in such a setting.