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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com">Dude.
OK. The Angels becoming Demons isn't a duality, at least in my
intent raising it, here.</blockquote>
<p>Not clear which of the myriad usages of <i>dual</i> you are
saying it is not. But I will try to defer to your declaration that
such doesn't map onto your intentions in invoking them. Most
oft/recently here I think "duality" gets invoked in the sense of
mind-body and that definitely doesn't map. It is precisely a <i>dual</i>
in the metaphysical sense? My intention however, was a little
more structural, vaguely Cat Theoretic (any attempt on my part to
explicate that probably would be significantly bullshit)... The
tangent I was on had to do with the interplay between good
intentions and bad and the transition between them, how one can
maybe drive the other and vice-versa? Symbiotic Mutualism?<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com"> Our
want to, desire for, *fascination* is both good and bad and good
and bad aren't duals.</blockquote>
complements then, perhaps?<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com">
Regarless, even if you want them to be duals, that's fine. The
point I'm making is that this trait of ours, the desire to be
fascinated/ecstatic is hallmark/canonical. </blockquote>
Thus my reference to annealing schedules? Is this not how CAS and
life in general and human innovation itself explores the
possibility/probability space? It drives us beyond a "reasonable"
excursion from the existing problem/solution regime we are
"naturally" in?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com">Only
those of us hopped up on mediTation or drugs that blunt emotions
exhibit a reduced desire for things like profundity, awe, ecstasy,
etc.</blockquote>
I'm feeling this in the inverse of what I experience? Maybe my
experience with such things is enhanced sensitization rather than
suppressed.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com"> It
reminds me of the book "To Engineer is Human" ... but I'd
generalize and say that it's fundamental to biology for organisms
to seek ecstatic states ... the oneness of the universe, the
dissolution of the self, etc.
<br>
</blockquote>
yes and amen... <br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com">
<br>
But this desire for beauty, to escape our selves, IS the problem
as much as it is the solution. That's what I mean by Angels and
Demons.</blockquote>
I think it reflects the tension between individuation and synthesis
that comes with (not sure of a better word) levels of
organization/aggregation? Atoms/molecules on the edge between
individuation and collection are where chemistry happens? Teens
preparing to leave home into the "big world", same/same? I think
it transcends multiple "levels" of organization (being a good
true-to-self ego/id human vs a good spouse/partner/parent vs a good
neighbor/employee/citizen vs a good participant in an
ecosystem/biosphere) and this is where the "roil" happens, a dynamic
rather than a static balance?<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com"> Also
"bullshit" is fairly well defined. It's an artificial/false
construct constructed without regard to the Truth (where "Truth"
might mean any number of shared values, accuracy, usefulness,
etc.). This means that bullshit can accidentally be true, but
never True.
<br>
</blockquote>
I like this concise/specific definition, it rings True for the most
part. My own experience of (others') bullshit is that it is
ambiguous to me as to the full spectrum of intention. Sometimes it
is exquisitely the case that the BS is pure gaslighting, defined not
only to be not-true but to avoid True. Other times it seems to be
sheer laziness, a total disregard for truthiness which is maybe the
BS you are referring to? Or maybe you are invoking the sort of
deliberate injection of noise that sort of prevents coherent
truthiness?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com">
I don't know how much time y'all spend talking to, say, QAnon
believers ... or back in the day those who yapped about
Bilderberg, the Illuminati, speaking in tongues, or whatever. </blockquote>
Not much at all yet too much somehow.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com">But, for
me, the enthusiasm and ecstasy they exuded was infectious.</blockquote>
I know the feeling of acute jealousy of their ability to give over
so thoroughly. I get that among fundamentalist Xtians and Newagers
(rhymes with sewa..) as well. I get that here when the (other)
technophiles get really high on their own supply of some
tech-thingy... (we all know who we are?).<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com"> Even as
several of my homunculi knew it was bullshit-begetting, it was
downright fun; not so harmless as the mob behavior of a rave, but
still fun. I sought (still do to some extent) it relentlessly. </blockquote>
I grant everyone their own morbid fascinations, mine are legion. <br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com">It's a
miracle of happenstance (or genetics?) I was never engulfed by it.</blockquote>
I like the idea that "our allergies are also our addictions", I've
known people who really thrive on dancing the edges of dysfunction
and that it is easier/safer for them to do so by proxy. I have my
own element of that, but I respect/acknowledge those yet more drawn
to it.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:564d83e5-f3b0-4ba0-a4ad-0d9ea48812af@gmail.com"> I still
do, at least when it's not merely lazy. In order for me to feel
it, there has to be some *deep* bullshit ... you have to be able
to get lost in the bullshit. If you hit clay or sand in the first
hour or so, then it's just not that beautiful ... It has to be
like String Theory deep. Now that's far out, man.
<br>
</blockquote>
I like this stylization/ideation/characterization of "deep
bullshit", like the kind you can only find when you switch your
vision from raw to telescope to Hubble to Webb. <br>
<p>While I am fascinated by GPTs bullshit generation (maybe where
this discussion started?) but very disappointed by it's "dynamic
range"... I hit it first with DALL-E's image generation where
it's "hallucinatory" visual imagery offered up in response to a BS
session I'd had with GPT. Pretty quickly it "blew my mind" with
some imagery but then I found that if i settled in and tried to
fully inhabit/absorb/commune-with the imagery it got old and rite
really quickly... Perhaps that is the Achille's heel of these
transformers is that they manage to settle in on something which
has the statistical profile of profundity without actually being
profound? The more "interesting" superficially the text or image
generated, the more "hollow" it is? A good load of properly
"deep bullshit" is not hollow?<br>
</p>
<p>Did I just talk myself around to the point you have been making
all along? <br>
</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
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