[FRIAM] When are telic attributions appropriate in physical descriptions?

[steve smith]

Ideaphoria as part of an annealing schedule perhaps?


A possibly self-referential example of what we are speaking of follows, 
as triggered by the topic and substance itself:

On he angel-demon duality...

Escher's famous hyperbolic tesselation on the same subject reminds me a 
bit of rayleigh-bernard convection cells?  I haven't seen (but may have 
imagined?) the kind of convection/involution patterns we see in the 
classic demonstrations in the context of the churn of good vs evil, and 
the the foreground/background exchange?

As Dennis Miller used to smirk at the beginning of his "don't let me get 
off on a rant here"...

I'm honestly trying to explore this "riff" as an example of what I think 
you are speaking of?   We were talking about the generality of 
"profundity as a breeding ground/enabler/masker" for "bullshit" (not 
precisely defined, but we probably all share an intuition of the 'know 
it when i see it' style?).

Your mentioning of the Angel-Demon duality triggered in my (too near the 
edge of chaos?) fecund (fertile/feral?) mind and Escher's image 
overlayed with R-B convection cells roiling (my first experience was in 
metallic model airplane paints when disturbed and left open to 
evaporate? would roil until the metal particles settled to the 
bottom?).   Without trying (but perhaps being compelled by an inner 
nature or drive, possibly what you refer to as the "orgasmic feeling" of 
"paradox or sophism") I found myself tangenting (as explored above) on 
the Angel-Demon implications of good/evil and the way one might be the 
fuel for the other and vice-versa.

Having veered from the original question of Telic and perhaps Teleonomic 
(applied recursively to the RB-convection phenomenon) I would sit and 
stare (inadvertantly huffing the volatiles?) at the roiling cells in the 
model-airplane paint with a fascination as to whether there was 
intention or goal or purpose in that activity? I did not know much of 
any of the technical details of these things and while I had been 
instructed by elders in no uncertain terms not to impute either 
perpetual motion nor animism into such things,  it was hard not to be 
deeply fascinated by said roiling.   I don't know that I as the R-B 
cells in Escher's image the first time I saw it, but probably not long 
afterwards.

This is the type of tangent I often delete, understanding it might well 
be taken to be deliberate bullshit generation (disguised as 
profundity)?   My threshold for <delete before sending> varies.   I 
haven't been on any pain meds beyond acetominophen since my (first) hip 
replacement a week ago, but the strange euphoria residue from the 
dissociative sedative (ketamine?) used during the extremely 
precise/surgical yet nevertheless invasive surgery, and the whole new 
suite of pains emanating from the hips and the introspective 
consequences are quite mind-bending.  As we know, I don't need this kind 
of (mild?) altered state to wax "profound", but it does change it 
qualitatively (from the inside)  a bit...

On 8/13/24 9:05 AM, glen wrote:
> It's reasonable to ask what proportion of profundity is a cover for 
> something versus a marker for something. I still tend to give people 
> the benefit of the doubt. So when I see either something that seems 
> profound (to me) or others saying or acting as if something's 
> profound, it's a marker for my or their confusion, respectively. While 
> it may be true that there are grifters out there who sow profundity, 
> purposefully, in order to mask their rational plans, that sounds 
> conspiritorial to me. A good edge case might be Elizabeth Holmes. To 
> what extent did she know her claims were bullshit? Or to what extent 
> did she convince herself that her bullshit was true/useful?
>
> Regardless of the proportions, the grifters don't breed bullshit so 
> much. They prop it up artificially. Bullshit begetting more bullshit 
> (i.e. breeding) has another home. I grant that it may not be 
> profundity, directly. Maybe it's the confusion underlying the 
> profundity. But the reason I think it's more the profundity is because 
> the people I see who are most guilty of it are attracted by the "awe" 
> or the "beauty" of some thing. They *want* to get stoned on some 
> aesthetic, whatever it is ... carried away, ecstatic, blissful, etc. 
> Like a paradox or sophism, there's a kind of orgasmic feeling to 
> profound things ... "like. whoa, man."
>
> And *that's* the breeding ground, where Angels become Demons.
>
> On 8/8/24 11:03, steve smith wrote:
>>
>>> Maybe. I'm not convinced. Profundity is THE breeding ground for 
>>> bullshit. 
>> I'm more inclined (in the context of my own profundity or perhaps 
>> more aptly prolificness or prolixity) to suggest that it is more of a 
>> mask (and therefore enabler?) of bullshit than a breeding ground. 
>> Could be a fine hair I suppose.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20240813/164222c8/attachment.html>