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

[Prof David West]

glen: " ... it's fundamental to biology for organisms to seek ecstatic states ... the oneness of the universe, the dissolution of the self, etc."

There is a lot of evidence that this is true, and perhaps it is a behavior that could contribute to the, apparently, abandoned discussion of consciousness.

It a creature actively seeks to get high, it is conscious. 

elephants do it, birds do it, I do it, you?

davew


On Tue, Aug 13, 2024, at 12:07 PM, glen wrote:
> 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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