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

Tue Aug 13 13:52:51 EDT 2024

Years ago, a teacher offered me the following universal adage.

He who, he who,
He who, he who.

I have never been the same since.

It's nothing if not asinine.

N

On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 1:21 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:

> There's a large dog park where I walk my dog most every day.   One of the
> minor downsides of this park is that there are these geezers there that sit
> on the park benches and rant about various things.   Their dogs are puzzled
> because all the other dogs get walks, but they are expected to sit there
> with their diminished owners.   One of them is a RFKjr advocate.  Another
> is a Trump guy.   I try as I hard as I can to avoid talking to them, but
> others get drawn in.  It's occurred to me that it wouldn't take much for a
> guy like that to take a tumble into the water, especially if it were dark
> on a Friday evening.    That would really improve my walk with Abby.
>  Luckily, she's deaf and doesn't have to hear it.
>
> No, I don't get it.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2024 10:07 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] When are telic attributions appropriate in physical
> descriptions?
>
> Dude. OK. The Angels becoming Demons isn't a duality, at least in my
> intent raising it, here. Our want to, desire for, *fascination* is both
> good and bad and good and bad aren't duals. 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. Only
> those of us hopped up on mediTation or drugs that blunt emotions exhibit a
> reduced desire for things like profundity, awe, ecstasy, etc. 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.
>
> 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. 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.
>
> 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. But, for me, the enthusiasm and ecstasy
> they exuded was infectious. 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. It's a miracle of happenstance (or genetics?) I was never
> engulfed by it. 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.
>
>
> On 8/13/24 09:19, steve smith wrote:
> > 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.
> >>
>
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
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