motion to recommit, with instructions

Hey, it's another spare blog!  So I can dump some posts here which are ... interesting enough to be public, but not really "Medium" post-worthy.  Here goes.  originally written October 21, 2015.

and how do you like your blue-eyed boy mister death

and how do you like your blue-eyed boy mister death
the chorus of the rowdy revelers is loud tonight
maybe i should have joined them
each conversation becomes a word in their song
and i can hear the energy and i can feel the energy as if
i were there

this whole city howls(*)
with the best minds of my generation
in houses hidden away ...
... or even reveling on the street
a celebration of some event unknown to all but those
who celebrate it tonight
a bacchanalian festivity
screaming maenads tending the flames

i see and feel things i spend my days blind to
preferring to stare at other walls in the cave
walls of iron and stone
walls of logic and reality
walls of the light that shines so bright that it blinds you to everything around it


what is this thing that you love anyway


... when the character plays the actor, or the other way around?  does the meaning change for the thing being only the thing in the play?  is teaching just a series of buffer override attacks?  "what is your name?" "my name is NOBODY" "ok hi nobody" "bye!" "hey NOBODY stabbed me" ... and now you have the riddle: what does "NOBODY" mean?  and if you can't figure it out, you die.  or you just kill the guy the next time he tries it.


... and a king came forth, and he said "for thousands of years this city has been run on the grounds of equality.  now we suffer.  we starve when we should feast.  promise me that every year i shall get one wish, and in 20 years we shall feast instead of starve".  and they decide to let this guy who claims to be "king" to be claiming to be king.  and then you have all sorts of terrible rules that he enacts because he's kind of an asshole. [or are they not terrible?]  so you try to get around the rules, but they have other rules about that.  and at some point, the king comes to him and says "ok, i see you know what's going on.  we only care about the rules for the peasants.  do you want to be 'a manager'?  we just don't care about the rules for you".

... that got definitely not about crop rotation leading to the development of feudalism.  i'm projecting ideas into ideals into views of my life. that could be mathier.  so i know what the vector [crop rotation -> feudalism] is, by some concept of meaning.  and then i see what that concept means when applied to my situation.  and if it's an accurate philosophy (eigenvector?) it should work.  and if it's inaccurate, it should work occasionally by chance.  and we have to use this same damn algorithm to figure out what the winning condition is.

i win.  i win i win i win.  that annoying "i win" button.  that makes your head hurt.  use that key on the edge flip

didn't want to type that but flip

anyhow.  i have projections that are described in a constant way across all of my thoughts.  you have two parts.  defining what a "thought" is, and what a projection is.

to long timed out didn't quite figure it out sorry.

yeah you have vectors.  and somehow they do have fundamental meanings or at least are fundamentally equivalent to a pointer lookup.  a shared memory for the whole system on a delay.  so you can just do "call 0033" and then that executes on an 8 stroke lag.  or whatever.  and the lag is tunable.  so we've boot-strapped a programming language on top of this.  and we need to use that language to write a higher language.

except the higher language isn't at all like python or whatever.  maybe mysql.  an imperative language.

the three key operations.  lookup (tree lookup? pattern lookup?).  based on a series, look up a pattern.  this is stored as a tree.  the pattern can have a "repeat" symbol.  as long as you send data, you get data back.  something like an 8-second lag.  and the meta-program is just "input data until we know what program you want, and then run that program" and that solves the "repeat" and the "what data to send back" part.  so yeah, you send "10110101abcadag" and we run whatever "10110101" is and you can link that to everything as a shared memory.  and the fractal program thing should be able to do it if you always include a backlink up.  and of course sometimes we just get in a section with no working links out.  that's a program.

it's just like those room choose your own adventure things.  text adventures.  you're exploring a tree and it has back-links and all of a sudden now you're trapped and you can't get out until something changes everything.  and the only back-link we need is the one back up to the parent or a copy of the parent or ... no we have something doing a random-walk over the neural network, and that value is the return value of the network as a whole.  that's the computational model here.  we get some data and then it sends down to some function and that function may or may not even bother to listen to the input data at all but it sends out values by some pattern, until we stop listening to it.

and so all the input has to be in unary, 11010110101011101111 ... which is like 3/5 or something.  i don't want to count.  but the ratio of 1s to 0s is the value.  and when we have a program we can also call input() which takes all the input up to this point and returns a value.  we have a shared input read as well.  and most of the neurons ignore the input. ... you're just walking a pattern.  you're just walking a pattern.  and the pattern exercises lots of useful skills like remembering english.  and we have enough space to actually learn words.  so many that we're still inventing useful words to be able to teach them.

so we have

GLOBAL INPUT

neurons + inter-connections

GLOBAL OUTPUT

and global input is only connected to the head.  or rather, the head is where the global input is.  we have lots of these topologies.  so we have a monad? input

nope.  too much.

so you have 96 neurons.  all hopelessly mangled.  but each node has either 1 input or 1 output attached to it.  and you have inter-connections hopefully pre-weighted to tie inputs and outputs together.  and then you may or may not be able to solve it it shouldn't be that hard these are just giant clos networks and you can do a lot of interesting things with that many connections that much bandwidth mental bandwidth we're building up cables wires things and that's biologically maybe how we can send signals because we have a highway of 24 neurons and they serve as 24 parallel bits of input and we can just use a 24-dimensional vector and then do all the math at a higher level.  (and we get a 24x speedup by using binary rather than unary.  or maybe we do stick to unary for now. ... unary lets you program the *timing*.  which is important.  anything at a value of 2/3 on the unary input runs at 2/3 the speed as if it had input of 1.  because you have quantum neurons.  not like microphysics, like

because funny things happen with large integers because there is still a smallest integer even though it's really small.  and unary doesn't have large integers.

well the algorithms for doing it in unary would be interesting.  every 16 bits, you take the average, you get 1/4, and you spit that back out elsewhere.  and you have some conservation of energy here so you have parallel directions of "1" and "0" so you can violate that as long as the attention spent still sums up. because really you're just hiding things.

algorithms.  yeah, algorithms.  we have a stream of 4-bit integers.  we want to calculate what the next integer will be.  so we have 3 8 3 8 3 8 3 ? ... well, 8.  or maybe 9 or 7, counting is hard.  or maybe just 15 since it will be bigger.  or maybe 0 because this was a phone number.

...

so other than lookup, the other two key operations are:
* addition.  a + b has to be defined.  there are many ways of doing that.  mean, error function, etc.  we need to hard code 2 or 3 ways everywhere.  a + b = (a + b) / 2 is good.  a + b = (a - b) / (a + b) can work.  we have two signals and we need to combine them.  a merge gate.  2 inputs, 1 output. though possibly you can just do any one of these, even a + b = max(a, b).  if you can hard code 6 or 8 and keep track of the math to pick them, do that.  parallel dimensions are your friend.
* learning.  truth.  what is the desired value here.

hah.  really.  truth and love.  and algorithms.

---

i hate when i figure out what i'm thinking of and it's so disgusting that's related to what i was thinking.  or i'm just connecting ideas in my head and then typing them out so there's some sense of whether it's working and most of it should mostly be true by the rules i am using.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave


... when was the 4-field crop rotation invented?



the feudal lord, part 2: st anselm's feudom.

after 478 years, the feudal lord has made 478 rules.  some of the rules apply to some people, some to others.  some people fancy themselves duchess, presidents, kings.  can you topple the feudal lord?  or do you just want to be the king.  and if you can't topple the system, do you still want to be king.  the system will progress without you.  but you get to be the king.  or the avatar of the gods.  do you really want to have to do that?  and you might even get to guess what direction the feudal lord might change his mind next.  and maybe it will be to some madness that will cause empires to fall.  or maybe it will be a rule that moves it forward.  and maybe it will be a rule to put things on auto-pilot until things start to collapse.  and you get to live like a king.

this is once again on that uncomfortable border of "giving myself suggestions i don't believe"


... the feudal lord, part 3: when i mention st. anselm i'm lying.

for seriously.  it's a fundamental logical paradox.  that all things exist.  if all things exist, then "the thing that doesn't exist" exists.  then you have a contradiction.  it's godel mark-0.

so some things are fiction.

set theoretically that's: with E for there exists and A for for all

not E S: A x: x in S

we first assume
A x: x in S
"x: x not in S" <- b="" is="" p="" that="" thing="">b in S
g in b  # Logical error if we have the empty set!
g in S
g not in S
CONTRADICTION
... therefore not S.

if you apply formal logic to formal logic you get Godel.  and then you starve yourself to death, and consider yourself lucky not to have been died like Keats and Ramanujan.

so the paradox is:
There exists the empty set.
There exists the full set.
The system can be fully expressed by a language written in the system.

turing-complete.

and then "what is the nature of the good?  what is 1 and what is 0 and what is -1"

... the lie is the full set.  the empty set exists all the time.  it is the world of ideas.  anything you can imagine that is not real, is the empty set.

is this the difference between "pursuing truth" and "defeating falsehoods"?  is this once again some map that we build up. we have a map of "the truth" and we have a "not" button that flips us to the other map.  and then we progress there, but with everything backwards and in high heels.  and once we're done with that, we flip back to the main part.  that word again.  in the right spot.  we pursue truth in the world.  we defeat falsehoods in our minds.  you will never find truths in your mind unless you find falsehoods so outrageous that people are determined to prove you wrong.  and then you may or may not know how they will prove you wrong.  anything outrageous must be an invitation to be proved wrong.  you're searching on a map and sometimes you go beyond what the borders of the map are supposed to be, and maybe you live and maybe you die.  and maybe you missed something about the map and it was actually on the map after all.  this is a literal "go off the map" metaphor isn't it.  like "take the piece of paper, flip it upside down, and go to sleep" off the map.  this is literally an "it's 11:30pm the part of me that wants to go to sleep is suddenly triggered".

i should just sleep now NOW see if it's great.

This week's sign of the apocalypse

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40820669/ns/us_news-life/

TLDR: There's no evidence that putting seat belts on buses would make kids safer, but because one kid died on a bus, some parents want them to be mandatory.

Why is this so bad?
* The "we have to do something, even if it isn't helpful" philosophy of governance, seen in almost every bill named after a person, is pretty obviously harmful.
* The complete lack of concern for the actual facts is generally bad.
* When it is pointed out that kids may not be the most fastidious users of seat-belts, the response is generally "oh, we'll have to punish them if they don't wear it".
* People assume "just because it's cheaper, it has to be worse", or rather "because it would be expensive to install seat belts, they must be helpful".

Being Opinionated

I can't help but think of things as a formal system. For example, when I think along the lines of "I don't have enough opinions about certain types of things", my reaction is "I should do a blog post with the pretense of '20 things I like'". In particular, stuff along the lines of "my life". Secondarily, "positive" things, rather than a list of annoyances (since really, I can list more than enough about dealing with the DSL connection for any 12 people). And thirdly, things that I am keen to admit to (as opposed to various random internet-based addictions).

[I just realized why I find it annoying when people say the word is "arbitrary" and not "random" for choices that are the result of a random walk. This digression brought to you by the fact that it is 5 characters longer than Twitter allows]

I don't like having to walk down two flights of stairs to do laundry.
I like being within 1 block of at least half a dozen restaurants.
I don't like that the bathroom in my apartment is half a size too small.
I love lamp. Actually, Mr. Burgundy, I rather prefer when it's dark enough to see the stars. Or 75-degree nights with no humidity.
I don't like folding clothes after doing laundry, even without the stairs element.
I like cooking ... when I actually have food and a clean kitchen. And when it is followed by eating.
I don't like buying large amounts of food that will go bad ... or cleaning the various papers on my kitchen table.
I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. - wait, see, that's what I'm saying about gratuitous references to anything under the sun to avoid talking about myself.
I don't like scheduling appointments at businesses I've never been to.
I like cute girls wearing orange.



... and now I read http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/10/22/incredible-growth-of-the-internet-since-2000/ and am more interested in what the book The Internet Chronicles would contain.

This world has lost its glory, let's start a brand new story now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnpaMPmivPE

Once upon a time, sheet music was the canonical form of popular music. Then Elvis happened.

If you look at the Billboard Top 100 charts, you can clearly see the jump in 1956. We have songs like The Poor People of Paris, Lisbon Antigua, and The Wayward Wind atop the charts, any of which could have been from 1946 or 1926. And then there is Hound Dog. And it's impossible to separate the performance from the music; you can either do a cover of it or do a separate version of it. Nobody was ever a cover band of Mozart or Billie Holiday or Cole Porter.

God Sex Money Love Football

These seem to be the most popular results for a search of "what is the most important thing in the world". There's a bit of grouping (I throw family in with love most notably), but that's a pretty good breakdown of the results online.

If I were to really work at it, I could probably get some form of a pentagon of equivalence of these (God is Love and the like). But that would be too clever by half. The more interesting ordering is linearly looking at God Love Football Money Sex, where we go from the heavy to the trivial, the permanent to the ephemeral, the communal to the individual, but also from the painful to the pleasurable or the immaterial to the concrete.

It's probably most peculiar having Football being listed as more weighty than Money. But football and similar contests are by necessity about "us v. them", while money is "me v. the world". Money may bring power, but football can bring glory. And conversely, it's a lot easier to get pleasure out of money than it is football.

Webrings and Blogrolls

Is the web at large too big and impersonal to support community?

Not a community of people, a community of web sites. The sense of implicit camaraderie that caused the development of one of the popular features of 1990s Geocities pages, the Web Ring. For those that choose not to remember, a web ring was a collection of sites that had a banner on them "This site is part of the Terry Pratchett Web Ring", with a link to the "previous" and "next" sites, and a link to the web ring home page (which had a link to all of the sites). You don't see this type of thing any more (except possibly for irony) and for good reason: It was pretty much a terrible idea all around.

1) Most of the sites were lousy even by 1990s web standards.
2) Because most of the sites were lousy, the good sites wouldn't join, causing the quality to get even worse.
3) Who really wants to look at 57 different Terry Pratchett Fan sites?
4) Not only were the sites lousy, a bunch of them were almost certainly going to be broken links or unrelated pages by the time you looked at it.

With all those caveats (and I could have listed more), the question remains: Did they support community on the web? Did "Joe's world of Klatch" belonging to the prestigious "Top Pratchett Fan Sites" web ring make Joe feel like he was a part of the Pratchett fan site community?

In a scientific sense, it would be hard to tell, since Joe probably has tried to forget about the site for the past 10 years, and now that Geocities is dead it is probably offline entirely. And since there may not have been more than 4 or 5 people that cared about the web ring at any one time, it's hard to say that there ever existed a community in the first place. Maybe Joe felt he was now part of the world of the internet with a real web page , who knows.

Anyhow, we now have something that we didn't have in the 90s, blogs. (Dave Winer aside, blogging didn't really take off until the 00's.) And the thing about blogs is that it's immediately obvious whether they are completely out of date or not, since each pot has a nice timestamp at the top. Blogs can try to be topical, but they generally meander from their ostensible topic somewhat. And blogs can have the aforementioned blog roll. The list of 20 to 500 "blogs we like". Arguably a relic of an earlier era, thse are still present on virtually every major blog-like site, be it Kos or Huffington Post or Matt Drudge or the New York Times' blogs. And while many of these have the soft personal touch that only a faceless corporation can provide, there's definitely some sense of association associated with those.

Trying to Essay

( with inspiration from http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html )

The astute reader may note that this follows a long period of silence here. This derives less from a lack of time compared to a lack of topics to write about. There's nothing happening in my life so thrilling that I feel it obligatory to expound in long form; 140 characters is generally more than plenty for daily occurrences. It avoids the forced literary diarrhea of excessively long and descriptive sentences, filled with a multitude of adjectives and words of more than 8 letters. It is an avoidance of technical exercises in tempo and rhyme and 14-line poems.

But if clear thinking begets clear writing, and clear writing conveys meaning, then unclear, meandering writing is certainly the sign of a mind trying less to be clear as it is looking for a therapeutic release of thought. The goal is less to present a coherent thought, but a picture of sorts, with sentences providing brush strokes towards the final result, a mosaic that portrays a general sense of feeling. And if art can exist for art's sake, then so too can there be writing for writing's sake, writing that strives to convey emotion or confusion, writing that is deliberately obtuse.

I say this in the context of a recent century where many of the literary greats prided themselves on such obtuseness. Joyce's later works are notorious for such, and later authors such as Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace are even more in such a line. Henry Miller may be less difficult, but is just as meandering, and makes up for it in obscenity.

Anyhow, maybe I should work random anecdotes from my life into 500-word treatises; maybe I should spend that doing circumlocution of interesting work happenstance; maybe I should just post more book reviews and constrained poems. None of those sound terribly exciting, but they might be better than the alternative.