[FRIAM] Reading

Thu Nov 7 15:50:45 EST 2024

Rings with the idea of psychedelics and electro-shock therapy, too. Given that most of us hold contradictory concepts, whether we're aware of it or not, I wonder if there's an architecture associated with the fetish for consistency. Someone with that fetish would be more likely to feel anxiety when the conflicts arose.

On 11/7/24 11:51, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Episodic vs. diachronic personality could be developmental.  Trauma or strongly dissonant experiences in childhood (say) could lead to a habit of periodic assimilation/release of information and preferences -- keeping the set of active axioms and foundational assumptions thin and explicit rather than allowing them to accrete.  Others might find they are able to interact with the world through an ever-growing entangled knowledge base -- not feeling constrained by their history.
> 
> There are times when programming that I feel like I understand what to do, and the code I am working with is not helping me to think or learn.   At those times, the best thing to do is to start fresh.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Thursday, November 7, 2024 11:43 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Reading
> 
> agreed.
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Nov 7, 2024, at 1:20 PM, glen wrote:
>> OK. That's a great point. I was a voracious book reader as a kid, ~2
>> books per day maybe, not including school work. And as an older kid
>> (peri-college) that incorporated lots of non-fiction and long essays
>> in publications like https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/et/current.
>>
>> So your hypothesis becomes something like: "Long-form reading during
>> one's formative years facilitates world-building and -integration into
>> a (dynamic) foundation into which short-form media snippets can be
>> woven. Without that long-form reading during the formative years,
>> either the built world/foundation is small or fractured or otherwise
>> susceptible to capture or bias." And, in this particular case, capture
>> or bias to authoritarianism.
>>
>> How'd I do?
>>
>> On 11/7/24 11:03, Prof David West wrote:
>>> Sorry I did not explicitly mention parallelism and continuous (re)integration. I am always reading between 2 and 4 books in parallel—often, in the case of non-fiction, books extolling opposing viewpoints. Also a mixture of media, print, video, F-F-t-F conversations, and Web.
>>>
>>> It is the tapestry, not any individual thread or local motif, that is valuable to me.
>>>
>>> When I do synthesize/coalesce into a stable opinion on some topic, e.g., my antipathy to AI and LLMs, it has a deeply entangled root ball. AI: Minsky, Simon, Winograd, McCarthy, Rumelhart, Dreyfus, Gabriel (https://dreamsongs.com/Essays.html#AIWinter), and my own work (first two professional publications were in AI Magazine and my Ph.D. thesis focused on human cognition).
>>>
>>> glen: I doubt, please correct me, that had you not laid a foundation with your history of reading books/print media, you would be anywhere near as successful integrating your 'non-reading'.
>>>
>>> davew
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 7, 2024, at 11:22 AM, glen wrote:
>>>> I actually land almost exactly opposite to Dave. Descent into
>>>> authoritarianism is *caused* by reading and the lack of reading
>>>> facilitates egalitarianism. That's an overstatement, of course. But
>>>> Dave did it first. 8^D
>>>>
>>>> As Marcus (unintentionally?) implies, inductive learning relies
>>>> fundamentally on this sequential beatdown ... a firehose (or
>>>> maddening drip, drip, drip) of entrainment. What saves us from the
>>>> entrainment is parallelism (?) ... parallelity (?) ...
>>>> interruptibility (?). When/if I do read books, I read them in
>>>> parallel. It used to be a steady stream of 1 fiction and 1
>>>> non-fiction, where fiction was reserved for evening when my mind
>>>> goes numb and it doesn't matter that much if I habitually read
>>>> entire pages without comprehending them. Non-fiction in taxis, on
>>>> planes, at lunch, focused efforts, etc. And I simply can't
>>>> overemphasize the fecundity of doing that. In every case, the 2 books fed on each other, cross-pollinated.
>>>>
>>>> The same is now true with my not-reading reading. I'll stop in the
>>>> middle of an essay on anarchism to dig back through a podcast on a Q
>>>> anon meme. Or stop in a neuroscience article and go look up some
>>>> Jungian archetype I thought I smelled from some sci-fi show. Etc.
>>>>
>>>> This world-integrating task switching inoculates (I claim) against
>>>> both lefty and righty authoritarianism. Whereas the more time you
>>>> spend consuming 1 narrative (e.g. all the Curtis Yarvin material or
>>>> whatever), you begin to think in terms of that 1 narrative. True,
>>>> for voracious readers who can consume Ulysses in an evening, there's
>>>> little risk of entrainment. But for us rabble with low cognitive
>>>> power, task-switching is better than the sequential beatdown.
>>>>
>>>> On 11/7/24 09:00, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>>> Gemini, Copilot, and Chatgpt all give responses like this:
>>>>>
>>>>> < It’s hard to pinpoint an exact number, but the data likely
>>>>> encompasses the equivalent of hundreds of thousands to millions of
>>>>> books' worth of text. This figure includes a mixture of genres,
>>>>> lengths, and types of writing, from novels and technical manuals to
>>>>> academic articles and historical documents. The aim was to capture
>>>>> a broad and varied perspective, rather than comprehensive coverage
>>>>> of any single source type or genre. >
>>>>>
>>>>> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David
>>>>> West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
>>>>> *Date: *Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 7:55 AM
>>>>> *To: *friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
>>>>> *Subject: *[FRIAM] Reading
>>>>>
>>>>> several people made comments about people not reading much and glen mentioned he has read maybe 2 books this year. This triggered me, a lifelong addicted bibliophile.
>>>>>
>>>>> I started reading (comic books with/Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land/
>>>>> and heroes like Lex Luthor) a couple of hears before starting school. I maxed out my Weekly Reader Book Club order every week during grade school. Weekly trips to neighborhood book store for 20-25 cent paperbacks (mostly science fiction, but a hell of a lot of non-fiction popular science books as well). A simple mention in a TV show, /Outer Limit/s, prompted a library trip to check out and read Kant's /Critique of Pure Reason/, My freshman year at Macalester required buying and reading over forty books—mostly monographs, not textbooks. I have read just over 10,000 books in my lifetime (a significant percentage being fiction—mysteries and science fiction). Until the past decade, I had subscribed to at least two local papers and one national paper. Before they descended to junk, read Newsweek and Time every week and subscribed to at least six-seven different periodicals (a lot of them computer journals). When I encountered a mention of Graeber, I bought and read one, then all, of his books (/Dawn of Everything /is, IMO, a really important book with insights that could inform much of the socio-political discussion on this list). Whenever anyone on this list mentions a book, I am on Amazon with seconds ordering it. When I attended FRIAM at St. John's, I visited the bookstore's new books table and always left with 3-8 books; every week.
>>>>>
>>>>> When speaking at professional conferences I always ask how many people have read 1-2 computer books this year. and most of the audience raises their hand. How many have read one book other than a computer book this year—less than half the audience. How many a fiction book—four or five people.
>>>>>
>>>>> Alan Kay once said, /"If you do not read for pleasure, you cannot read for purpose."/ An exaggeration perhaps, but a valid observation.
>>>>>
>>>>> My last three or four years teaching, I was not allowed to mandate any books for any class. I could recommend one text book.
>>>>>
>>>>> The year i spent teaching high school in Las Vegas, NV; not one student, outside of 'honors/AP' courses had read even one book in their entire 4-year high school career.
>>>>>
>>>>> Books are not the only medium of course, but I am deeply suspicious of the value of much of what is consumed from on-line and mass media sources.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would attribute any descent into authoritarianism, any demise of social order, and any succumbing to existential threats on humanity to nothing more than the massive ignorance of the vast majority of people who do not read.
>>>>>
>>>>> davew
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Nov 7, 2024, at 8:29 AM, glen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I would guess the majority of those who voted for Harris also
>>>>>> don't
>>>>>
>>>>>> read. Or, maybe it's better to say they don't read the same way we
>>>>>> used
>>>>>
>>>>>> to read: https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/the-future-of-reading
>>>>>> <https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/the-future-of-reading>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'll admit that I rarely read books anymore. I think I've read 2
>>>>>> this
>>>>>
>>>>>> year. The overwhelming majority of my reading is journal,
>>>>>> magazine, and
>>>>>
>>>>>> news articles. And I spend a LOT of time listening to podcasts and
>>>>>
>>>>>> video essays. Granted, my only social media is Mastodon. Though I
>>>>>> do
>>>>>
>>>>>> try to post to Instagram sporadically. I just have no idea why
>>>>>> serious
>>>>>
>>>>>> people still use eX-Twitter. I mean, WTF?
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> All this stuff plays an important role in "how democracies die".
>>>>>> And my
>>>>>
>>>>>> guess is we'll learn less from the deep thinking book writers or
>>>>>
>>>>>> essayists and more from attempts at network analysis across media
>>>>>> like
>>>>>
>>>>>> TikTok, Telegram, Signal, Discord, & SimpleX. There was this
>>>>>> (good)
>>>>>
>>>>>> article on Graeber in the Guardian:
>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit>.
>>>>>
>>>>>> And despite it tweaking my old philia, it just reads so empty to
>>>>>> me
>>>>>
>>>>>> now. A stroll through .5TB of leaked chat logs is much more
>>>>>> exciting
>>>>>
>>>>>> these days
>>>>>
>>>>>> (https://ddosecrets.com/article/paramilitary-election-interference <https://ddosecrets.com/article/paramilitary-election-interference>).
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 11/7/24 02:16, Sarbajit Roy wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> "> ..,The people who voted for him probably do not read Paxton, Arendt or Levitsky and Ziblat ..."
>>>>>
>>>>>>> The people who voted for him don't read...
>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> We have a similar problem in India, the great semi-literate masses have been handed cheap smartp[hiones with cheap data plans so they are connected 24x7 to the Matrix.
>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, Nov 6, 2024 at 2:04 PM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net <mailto:jofr at cas-group.net> <mailto:jofr at cas-group.net <mailto:jofr at cas-group.net>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>        I woke up today and saw the horrific news on TV that Trump has won again. It is incredibly bad on many levels. It is bad for the environment. The world will not be able to stop global warming without the U.S. It is bad for Ukraine as well. To me it feels like the end of civilization and democracy. The people who voted for him probably do not read Paxton, Arendt or Levitsky and Ziblatt. Or do not care.
>>>>>
>>>>>>>       
>>>>>>> https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-d
>>>>>>> ie-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/
>>>>>>> <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-
>>>>>>> die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/>
>>>>>>> <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-
>>>>>>> die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/
>>>>>>> <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-
>>>>>>> die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>        I was wondering how this is possible. If we define populism as an ideology that presents "the people" as a morally good force and contrasts them against "the elite", who are portrayed as corrupt and self-serving then this could be a reason why Trump is so successful. He is good at populism because he is corrupt and self-serving himself, and uses projection to accuse others.
>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>       
>>>>>>> https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller
>>>>>>> -jan-werner/9780141987378
>>>>>>> <https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-mulle
>>>>>>> r-jan-werner/9780141987378>
>>>>>>> <https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-mulle
>>>>>>> r-jan-werner/9780141987378
>>>>>>> <https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-mulle
>>>>>>> r-jan-werner/9780141987378>>
>>>>>

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