[FRIAM] Science Fiction Books

[Steve Smith]

Great observations as usual Glen...   I have lapsed into *listening* to 
almost all long-form writing, whether fiction or non....  and it 
definitely distorts (torts?) my perception/conception of the 
material/subject/message.   A corollary to McLuhan's Medium/Message 
duality?

  I find the "output" side to be more specific (or conscious) for me 
than the "input" side.   Your point of cuneoform 
sticks/quills/pencils/keyboard/gestural-interpreters being part of our 
extended phenotype is very apt as is the idea that (if I understand your 
intentions) it (intrinsically) effects our interoception and 
inter-subjective realities.

I also appreciate your reflections on "mal" and "dis" which I have lived 
with all of my life... "judging" or "discriminating" in ways which 
themselves are "adaptive" for one suite of purposes but perhaps 
"mal"/"dis" for another suite.   Having a vector or tensor fitness 
function with (arbitrary) signs on the elements doesn't guarantee they 
themselves are "fit" for what you think they are.

Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?   Do LLM's (or larger adaptive 
systems they are embedded in?) dream of the tensor fields they are 
embedded in or create or co-create with the fields of human 
activity/history/knowledge/experience/future/manifesting-destiny they 
were designed to model/emulate/expose/facilitate/co-evolve with?

I dunno,  but it sure is a fascinating milieu to be surfing through in 
these auspicious days at the beginning (or end) of the Anthropocene.

  - Steve

On 9/7/23 1:01 PM, glen wrote:
> Both keyboards and pencils are part of our extended phenotype and play 
> (multiple) roles in interoception, including the induction of 
> inter-subjectivity. I've forgotten who it is, but there's someone on 
> this list who *listens* to our posts, rather than reads them. I tried 
> that with a blog post this morning during my mobility routine:
>
> https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/preferences-can-be-sick-mental-illness
>
> <tangent>
> Then because I had an allergic reaction to what I heard, I *read* it 
> later. Listening to it disgusted me. I came away thinking this 
> Kirkegaard dude's akin to a scientific racist ... or maybe a 
> eugenecist. I admit to being a fan of Thomas Szasz back in the day. (A 
> friend's mom actually dated him at some point ... allegedly.) But at 
> this point, I've been infected by the Woke Mind Virus; and it's 
> difficult to stomach phrases like "strict homosexuality is more 
> disordered than bisexuality." Reading it, however, helped me remember 
> that maladaption is part and parcel of adaption. Disorder is part and 
> parcel of order. The "mal" and "dis" prefixes are nothing but 
> value-laden subjectivity. The goo of reality extruded through the mold 
> of the author/thinker/subject. For someone like Kirkegaard to claim 
> they're being "objective" while using the "mal" prefix is not even 
> wrong. It's just bullshit. Apparently, my Woke Virus infection is 
> worse near my ears than near my eyes.
> </tangent>
>
> But the point is that *which* extended trait you use (pencil, audio, 
> text, etc.) chooses which interoceptive cycle you engage. And when you 
> pretend to make such a choice on purpose, at will, any assignation of 
> fault would be transitive. Which wolf do you feed?
>
> On 9/4/23 10:29, Steve Smith wrote:
>> I'm not sure my facility with the keyboard actually serves me. As 
>> many of you may suspect, and I suspect so myself, it allows me to be 
>> much less thoughtful and rigorous than I would be in handwriting or 
>> if I had some other throttle or impedance elements between linguistic 
>> centers and "paper"?
>