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Topic: virus: stagnation = entropy = stagnation (Read 667 times) |
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deadletter-j
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virus: stagnation = entropy = stagnation
« on: 2005-04-02 08:16:05 » |
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I took a break for a little while for two main reasons - one relates to
my core perspective, and the other to my recent activities. After I
tell you about those two, I will take a moment to apologize if I came
off a little strong, last time. Finally, I will try to tell you what I
have learned, and ask you to help me understand it. And then I will
tell you a joke so funny I STILL laugh out loud every time I hear it.
First, my core perspective:
In systems theory, a 'system' is the holistic whole greater than the
sum of its parts. For a group, I believe that is an entity that is
comprised of the entire collection of individuals. Because I believe
that, I believe that I am trying to talk to the entire gestalt organism
at once, and I watch to see the entire organism learning to react.
I took a break from both MetaMage and virus because I detected what I
interpreted to be the beginnings of an autoimmune response - when I get
a little too excited, I have a tendency to gibber (imagine a 28-yo
wild-haired blond man excitedly yapping and gesticulating while staring
intensely and you'll have the imagery). The way I see the story is
that when I gibber too much, individuals begin to interpret me
negatively, and then they geek out that interpretation to others, and
the others begin to interpret me differently. So, to put in a little
'information prophylactic' (lovely image, eh?) I took a break.
My core perspective is, if I can get out enough information of what I
am _asking_, the group mind will put forth some effort to helping me
say what I am trying to say, and my life will be enriched.
So even though I talk a lot, I think of myself as _asking_ a question,
asking for help. Help?
Second, my recent activities.
I think memetics as it has been presented has been about getting a
group subconscious mind to move, take action, in a particular
direction. That implies a very manipulative (in a negative way)
connotation.
I've got some reasons to believe that memetics is going to really
spread like wildfire (as a meme) if we map it to a _conscious_ group
mind. Sounds very woo-woo mysterious, neh?
On one level, it is very prosaic - it's about getting a group of people
to consciously think together to collectively problem solve, to
collectively enact change upon the world, and then to watch the results
of their work. Wash, rinse, repeat. The difference is the point of
application for that work. On another level, it IS very profound, in
the way that Life itself is very beautiful and profound.
And I think we could agree that working together to enact change upon
the world is a good thing, or at least that it _could_ be a good thing.
So recently I have been trying to finish up the second of my attempts
to with a group that cares a whole lot about language -
level-3@yahoogroups.com In the two months that I spent talking and
talking and talking to level-3, trying to learn how to take negative
reactions that I engendered and turn them positive, I was still root
hacked by my first reactions on the group, in which I boldly announced
that I was
"There to restructure the thinking of every memetic community on the
planet."
Whoo! What a swarm of bees that stirred up! Immediately I saw my
mistake, (cause we have to make a mistake to see a mistake, right?) and
I watched that play out to the point where my words were interpreted as
having negative intent. Once systems grok me to be bad, whoops! I'm
finished. The message will have to come in from some other quadrant.
Apology:
a) Similar experiences for the CoV may have been my post "Warning!
Entropy sucks heart out of CoV" and for MetaMage, it was my post in
regards to the other woo-woo poster that showed up around the same time
as me - such fondness I have for other kooks (ah! grins).
b) I am here to apologize if it seemed that I was trying to 'teach my
grandmother to suck eggs' - rather, I am here trying to understand this
idea to better my own life, and to enact positive change upon the
communities that I care about. I know that many think I already
apologized, and true, I did. Always a good idea to try to keep checking
in to see if there are any lingering feelings unresolved.
Learnings:
What I have been doing is treating communities as a black box.
Information dumped in comes out. The community can be as small as one,
or as big as the planet. The way that we were talking about it on The
WELL the other day came up with this metaphor:
If we are thinking about a flock of 5 birds, we can be talking about 6
REAL entities. Or maybe more... Since information dumped into the flock
will be transmitted amongst the flock, we can look for learning cycle
behavior in the entire organism, as well as in the individual birds.
The same could be said for an entire species over time - and since the
learning cycle has some very interesting periods of refraction built
into it, I personally believe memetics will explain the punctuated
equilibrium model for evolution that gets bashed so by so-called
xtians.
Here's what I think I can show so far: If we take it as a given that we
want our meme to hit the sweet spot between ignoring (entropy) and
rejection (entropy) for _as long as possible_, then it is a matter of
avoiding the behaviors that knock the relationship out of equilibrium
into a system crash.
1) If the system reads the _meme_ OR the _messenger_ as 'negative
intent' for any reason, it will communicate that among its components
and auto-immune will kick in. While intuitively true, I can point to
lots of examples where teachers in my building, for example, don't seem
to care if the students interpret them as having negative intent, and
then they wonder why the community of students react. As far as an
organism is concerned, _who_ is speaking is interchangeable with the
idea, at first.
2) The meme has to be in local language, at least at first. Using the
wrong language cues alarm in a serious way among members. We might
think of a white teacher using the word 'punk' in a friendly way among
black students - the AA students think of that as a 'dirty faggot', so
it is a huge insult.
So where I am at now is trying to prove the next three components:
3) Less = more!
4) Do memes spread best with question marks?
5) If it ain't funny, it ain't funny.
So to conclude, a question, and then a memetics joke.
My question is, if I present to you some _actions_ that I am
undertaking in Seattle, in order to try dumping information into the
entire city as a black box and manage output, would you be willing to
consider those projects to lend me your perspective? The worst is that
it is only great entertainment - we'll be making films to try to spread
to you.
Thanks for reading!
On a scale of 1(incomprehensible) and 5 (clear), is this clear?
Also, in comparison to last time I was here, has my writing clearly
improved (1), stayed the same (3) or gotten more crazed (5)?
:-b
A memetics joke:
Wanna hear the funniest joke ever?
<scroll down>
so wickedly funny... so wickedly meta! I laugh out loud when I even
_think_ of it!
<scroll down>
it's like the funniest joke you ever heard, only ten times better!
<information without content>
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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RE: virus: stagnation = entropy = stagnation
« Reply #1 on: 2005-04-03 08:10:08 » |
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global_hijack
Sent: 02 April 2005 03:16 PM
<snip> <information without content></snip>
[Blunderov] Not sure that this one will become a staple of the stand-up
comedy circuit, good joke though it is. "That is", as bug-eyed Earl
might remark, "If you think spending a Rainy Johannesburg Sunday morning
in a state of perplexity is funny."
Surely, I comforted myself; these are the same things - information and
content? And yet it seems there are occasions one receives content
without information.
I recall the time when I was a child and just learning to read. The
signs on the shops in the town were at first completely inscrutable to
me but I gradually learned to make out the words they represented.
Eventually I could read them all and, most importantly, it was actually
possible to do so.
But not now. There is so much information bruted abroad that, most days,
I find myself mentally curled up in a defensive foetal position to
protect myself from the relentless onslaught of content that is of no
use to me. The net result is that I have once again entered that
childlike state where one pushes on doors clearly marked "pull". And
vice versa. (This, by the way, is quite literally true; no metaphor
this.)
Inescapably the mind is drawn to advertising (which I once read most
aptly described as "the Dadaism of Capitalism, the dreamtime of the
West"). The only content with which the advertiser desires us to become
informed is a name. How much, we have to wonder, do we gain by learning
a name? Especially if that name is associated with vapid and largely
imaginary characteristics or even plainly visible and completely
outrageous lies. It may be that St. Augustine, were he alive today,
might have felt compelled to add a ninth type of lie to his original
list of eight; one that harms everybody, even the liar who elects to
believe his own falsehood.
And here we may have tracked a toxic meme to its very lair. It seems to
me that, aided and abetted in no small part by misunderstandings about
post-modernism, Western society has become seduced by the idea that
because the truth is not always accessible to us, it is perfectly OK to
make up your own version of it and call that the "truth" instead; an
abdication which permits almost any absurdity to stand up and call
itself honest.
Anyway, getting back to cases, I'm not too sure that information is
possible without content. The other way round, though, seems all too
ubiquitous.
I suppose the joke must be that we live in the joke. Disco?
Best Regards.
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deadletter-j
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How many Engstrom's does it take?
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Re: virus: stagnation = entropy = stagnation
« Reply #2 on: 2005-04-04 15:07:13 » |
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<snip>
> Anyway, getting back to cases, I'm not too sure that information is
> possible without content. The other way round, though, seems all too
> ubiquitous.
>
> I suppose the joke must be that we live in the joke. Disco?
>
Information without content is the essence of synthesis. If I teach my students 5 math skills, and then we focus on _how_those_skills_fit_together_, that is information without content. It leads to the 'Aha!'
It's a matter of interpretation on the part of the recipient whether information coming in is 'new' information or 'information about previously received information'.
Oh wait, we have a word for that. "metadata". Layers of information about the raw data that parse it into comprehensible pieces are information without content.
For example: the punchline of a joke is information that resolves all the information before it into a comprehensible whole. Synthesis strikes, the person laughs, and now the joke is no longer bothering us. Which is what it did. Jokes _irritate_ us as we strive to predict the punchline.
For example, here's a joke:
I was watching "Ray" the other night, found it to be quite good. However, my girlfriend called with still 45 minutes left to go, and I chose to leave. Now, I do NOT let unfinished information bounce around my head. I have almost crystal clear access to the information in my brain, plus excellent metadata. not having the completion of the movie meant that I could not complete the reflective cycles on the movie, in order to chew it, digest it, and put it away.
That means it is still irritating me. That means I am thinking about it. it's freaking irritating.
Funny joke, eh?
Now here's another one - philosophers, science communities and religions have long posited that there is no 'base reality'. There isn't any specific set of 'givens' - Euclid's fifth postulate being unproven and unprovable, for example.
All information is 'information without content'. Now think about language. Every conversation is using words with some very, very interesting assumptives about what things 'mean' or what words 'mean'. And yet if we dig down, we can't even define 'chair'.
It's all contextual. And this is going to be the basis of memetics. to define context in a way that leaves a gaping vacuum at the center of their interpretation, just waiting for a new meme to fill that vacuum.
btw, it is my personal, implacable goal in life to be part of the Watson and Crick for this field. I believe that all of us will succeed, and we will have careers for life as consultants. I imagine going to schools with a DVD that shows how the ideas _actually_fit_together_ and explaining the memetic perspective.
Nice working with you, gentlemen!
coming up soon: Experiment N+1
:-b
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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RE: virus: stagnation = entropy = stagnation
« Reply #3 on: 2005-04-06 16:12:26 » |
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<information without content>
[Blunderov] I was quite tickled by these passages from and old favourite
"A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller jr. (Corgi 552 08401 
The scenario is some 300 years post nuclear apocalypse. Small
monasteries arise which attempt to collect and conserve whatever few
textual remnants of the dead civilization can be found, often without
being able to understand the material, in this case a blueprint of a
circuit diagram.
<snip>
"Brother Jeris, who had joined the apprentice copyroom at the same time
as Brother Francis, seemed to enjoy teasing him about the project." What
pray," he asked, squinting over Francis' shoulder, "is the meaning of
"Transistorised Control System for Unit Six-B" learned brother?"
"Clearly it is the title of the document," said Francis feeling slightly
cross.
"Clearly. But what does it mean?"
"It is the name of the document that lies before your eyes Brother
Simpleton. What does 'Jeris' mean?"
"Very little I'm sure," said Brother Jeris with mock humility. "Forgive
my density please. You have successfully defined the name by pointing to
the creature named, which is truly the meaning of the name. But now the
creature diagram itself represents something, does it not? What does the
diagram represent?"
"The transistorised control system for unit six-B, obviously."
Jeris laughed. "Quite clear! Eloquent! If the creature is the name then
the name is the creature. 'Equals may be substituted for equals,' or
"The order of equality is reversible,' but may we proceed to the next
axiom?" If 'Quantities equal to the same quantity may substitute for
each other' is true, then is there not some 'same quantity' which both
name and diagram represent? Or is it a closed system?"
Francis reddened. "I would imagine," he said slowly, after he had paused
to stifle his annoyance, "that the diagram represents an abstract
concept rather than a concrete thing. Perhaps the ancients had a
systematic method for depicting a pure thought. It's clearly not a
recognizable picture of an object."
"Yes, yes it's <i>clearly</i> unrecognisable!" Brother Jeris agreed with
a chuckle.
"On the other hand perhaps it does depict an object, but only in a very
formal stylistic way - so that one would need special training or -
"Special eyesight?"
"In my opinion, it's high abstraction of perhaps transcendental value
expressing a thought of the Beatus Leibowitz.'
"Bravo! Now what was he thinking about?"
"Why - 'Circuit Design'," said Francis, picking the term out of the
block of lettering at the lower right.
"Hmmm. What discipline does that art pertain to, Brother? What is its
genus, species, property, and difference? Or is it only an 'accident'?"
Jeris was becoming pretentious in his sarcasm Francis thought, and
decided to meet it with a soft answer. "Well, observe this column of
figures and it's heading 'Electronics Parts Numbers.' There was once, an
art or science called Electronics, which might belong to both Art and
Science."
"Uh-huh! Thus settling 'genus' and 'species'. Now as to 'difference if I
may pursue the line. What was the subject matter of Electronics?
That too is written," said Francis who had searched the memorabilia from
high to low in an attempt to find clues which might make the blueprint
slightly more comprehensible-but to very small avail. "The subject
matter of Electronics was the electron." He explained.
"So it is written indeed. I am impressed. I know so little of these
things. What, pray, was the 'electron'?"
"Well, there is one fragmentary source which alludes to it as a
'Negative Twist of Nothingness.'"
"What! How did they negate a nothingness? Wouldn't that make it a
somethingness?"
"Perhaps the negation applies to 'twist.'"
"Ah! Then we would have an 'Untwisted Nothing' eh? Have you discovered
how to untwist a nothingness?"
"Not yet." Francis admitted.
"Well keep at it, Brother! How clever they must have been, those
ancients-to know how to untwist nothing. Keep at it and you may learn
how. Then we'd have the 'electron' in our midst, wouldn't we? Whatever
would we do with it? Put it on the altar in the chapel?"
"All right." Francis sighed, "I don't know. But I have a certain faith
that the electron existed at one time, although I don't know how it was
constructed or what it might have been constructed for."
How touching!" chuckled the iconoclast, and returned to his work.
</snip>
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