[FRIAM] Ralph Abraham, Rob and Chris Shaw (was: Re: Zoom Friam)

[Stephen Guerin]

*On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
<sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:*

> *THE Ralph Abraham
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Abraham_(mathematician)>?  Or the
> OTHER Ralph Abraham
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Abraham_(politician)>?  Or Yet
> Another... ?*
>
Yes, the first :-)


*On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
<sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:*

> *The Trialogues
> <https://www.sheldrake.org/videos/trialogues-at-the-edge-of-the-millennium>
> comes to mind...  I didn't realize how young McKenna was when he passed
> just a few years later.  I still can't get past most of Sheldrake's
> hyperbolic-woo-pseudoscientific framing, and do wonder at how Abraham sorts
> all that out internally.   It isn't surprising to find a pure Maths guy
> engaged in very mystical thinking, no fundamental contradictions required I
> don't think.*
>
Ralph credited some high-dimensional math insights to hallucinatory
experiences with DMT - an interest shared with McKenna. As you know my
interest in Transactional Intepretation of QM
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation> with
"advanced" reverse-time waves "handshaking" time-forward "retarded" waves,
Sheldrake's morphic resonance fields aren't too many nodes of crazy away
from me - though, I prefer the duality of woo-oow science :-)


*On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
<sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:*

> *I don't think I've ever met Ralph and I could never quite suss out how
> much influence he had directly (certainly indirectly?) on
> Shaw/Farmer/Packard/Crutchfield's "Chaos Cabal"...   *
>
UCSC Faculty Bill Burke and Ralph were supporters of the Cabal as they
worked on their PhDs with some shared pub credits.  Rob refers to Burke as
the Godfather to the group. (mentioned in the Gleick's chapter on Santa
Cruz that you linked to).

Last time I saw Ralph in Santa Fe, I asked him about the group and that Rob
was with us at SFx. He said "Rob was the smartest one" - high praise given
the other three :-)

Full disclosure: I once slept with Ralph's brother, Fred, director of the
Blueberry institute <http://www.blueberry-brain.org/>. They were out of
hotel rooms at the SCTPLS 2002 Portland conference, and Fred asked to bunk
with me :-)

*On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
<sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote: *

> *Does anyone know how to find Julia Landau's strange documentary
> tangenting "Strange Attractors <https://vimeo.com/129239092>"? *
>
Such a cool project.You can see it trying to get off the ground in 2008.
<http://reelchanges.org/projects/show/ef3718b0-4176-012b-7345-005056c00008/>  I
emailed Rob in 2013 to find out status and he said Julia was still looking
for funding to complete. Beyond the trailer, did you notice:
Clip 1 Intro <https://vimeo.com/344238322>
Clip 2 - Imagining Rob, Meeting Howard <https://vimeo.com/344238191>
Clip 3 - Finding Rob in Chaos Theory <https://vimeo.com/344238021>
Finding Rob in the Chaos  <https://vimeo.com/136946323>

I ran into Rob in Honolulu in 2017 - I asked him about it again and still
the same status.

BTW, check out the other couple of clips on Julia's Vimeo. I found her
father's "will the real terrorist standup <https://vimeo.com/125292604>"
somewhere online about the Cuban Five. When I was in Havana with Tom
Johnson for ABM Workshops he helped organize, I learned more about the
Cuban Five and for a couple years followed all news stories and histories I
could find on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles and
Americam-sponsored terrorism in Cuba. Pretty f&#ked up.


*On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 3:45 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
<sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:*

> *Gleick's book <https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4822680> was
> the first time I realized that Doyne and Norm came from Silver City, and
> then I discovered that my sister with to Kindergarten with Norm's brother
> Vance...   Rob used to hang out at SFx from time to time and his brother
> Chris would drop through and talk about his Haptek-sponsored
> "chatterbot"/avatar/PeoplePutty work:
> https://aidreams.co.uk/forum/haptek/chris-shaw-talk-at-chatbots-3-2/
> <https://aidreams.co.uk/forum/haptek/chris-shaw-talk-at-chatbots-3-2/>
> which was pretty advanced, considering what we are getting excited about
> with deepfakes/AI-art these days.   I knew Haptek when it formed originally
> to develop haptic hardware interfaces for VR a decade earlier... *
>
Cool, hadn't seen Chris's chatbot video. And in addition to illustrating
Rob's papers and books, I think you know about Chris and Ralph Abrham's
collaboration on the four volume classic Dynamics: Geometry of Behavior
<https://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Geometry-Behavior-Ralph-Abraham/dp/0201567172>
with
Chris providing beautiful technical illustrations of attractors and
dynamical flow fields.

On 10/14/22 12:56 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>
> What did everyone think about this last hearing?  I watched it with Ralph
> Abraham, whom some of you might know of.  He is visiting me for a week here
> in Santa Fe and had some interesting perspectives on our present politics.
>
> Of course Ralph and I are also having fun conversations about the
> ever-present and unknowable electromagnetic field.  Life is good, despite
> the possibility that I am but a hologram in a random universe heading down
> a Black Hole.
>
> On Thu, Oct 13, 2022 at 10:56 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Several people, including me, want to watch the hearing.  When I left
>> Dave West and Jon Z were the only ones there.
>>
>
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