Science

[Clinamenic]

The term is a real salvage-title, unfortunately. Caught up, to some degree, in the tye-dye/peyote association cloud, i.e. New Age.

That said, I see potential for a thermodynamic mythos, and extropy would be a key concept there.

 

[Clinamenic]

In any case, a mythos richer than Marvel.

 

[Clinamenic]

I'm interested in extropy beyond just its relevance to humanity and its advancement.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

What do you think about online education formats? Surely new accreditation mechanisms need to be worked out, as well as proper interfacing opportunities between pupil and professor, but in principle such a shift could lower the costs of operating such institutions, no?

But I would agree with you that we need new ones, ones perhaps built for the digital age.

Yes, they are amazing, obviously. Khan academy, endless YouTube, even Tiktok. I learnt how to cut a piece of wood using round diagonals yesterday. Splendid wisdom.

Universities are well known to be a scam. Primarily financial and ideological these days.

The last five years' advancement in novel ways of ingesting THC deserve some credit I think.

Is that science, it feels like it is

It's more engineering of consumer technology. Not science.

The Breakthrough projects are interesting, like Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Starshot: ambitious, grand science in the old style

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

But I would agree with you that we need new ones, ones perhaps built for the digital age.

They're here. Someone now alive is or will be the equivalent of a renaissance man, availed of all knowledge, and immensely influential and creative as a result.

We're in a hiatus. The signs of novelty are there: DeFi, virtuoso video editing, memes, but the neoliberal establishment that holds sway cannot compute and it will hopefully be the DEATH of them.

 

[Clinamenic]

My current semantic understanding, for the record:

Entropy: the tendency of a system to approach thermal equilibrium; to relax at the expense of order and thermally differential organization.

Negative entropy: the tendency of a system to move away from thermal equilibrium; to increase organization through work of some kind.

Extropy: the degree to which a stable state of a system admits order and organization.

There could be more technical and/or conventional definitions out there, these are just my understandings.

 

[luka]

Extropy is kitsch, it’s like watching 50s sci-fi films.

but what does this mean? it must be a tv show or something? whats he talking about?

 

[Clinamenic]

They're here. Someone now alive is or will be the equivalent of a renaissance man, availed of all knowledge, and immensely influential and creative as a result.

We're in a hiatus. The signs of novelty are there: DeFi, virtuoso video editing, memes, but the neoliberal establishment that holds sway cannot compute and it will hopefully be the DEATH of them.

I do think that some of such recent innovation is amazing largely because shutting it down is more expensive than it is worth. Especially if you consider the geopolitics of clamping down on it.

Say what you want about the neoliberal establishment, but the US congresspeople, or their equivalents elsewhere, who may otherwise oppose DeFi may actually nurture it expressly to prevent China from figuring it out first, no?

And what about the generations who grew up on the internet? I don't expect them to take up the sclerotic mantle of today's establishment, at least not without major renovations.

 

[Clinamenic]

but what does this mean? it must be a tv show or something? whats he talking about?

The term could have a facile apprehension here and there, evoking sci-fi imagery and gadgetry. A trite transcendence.

edit: a sort of pulp futurism

edit edit: and compound that with all the new age stuff, and we're left with something fairly describable as kitsch.

 

[Clinamenic]

Really my apprehension is startling alien from that.

 

[Clinamenic]

 

[Clinamenic]

Whereas my conception is more along the lines of:

 

[Clinamenic]

That there is already of a staggering thermodynamic complexity, and I'd guess its happening on the scale of, what, tens of nanometers? How do we get from there to organisms? And what kind of value judgements will make such an understanding more expedient?

 

[luka]

what does thermodynamic mean?

 

[Clinamenic]

The complexity is bewildering, aporia-inducing, perhaps mythically appropriatable.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

I do think that some of such recent innovation is amazing largely because shutting it down is more expensive than it is worth. Especially if you consider the geopolitics of clamping down on it.

Say what you want about the neoliberal establishment, but the US congresspeople, or their equivalents elsewhere, who may otherwise oppose DeFi may actually nurture it expressly to prevent China from figuring it out first, no?

And what about the generations who grew up on the internet? I don't expect them to take up the sclerotic mantle of today's establishment, at least not without major renovations.

The China bitcoin ban was a strange misstep.

Yes, the internet natives, their time will come. Fallout from covid might usher them in all the sooner.

My generation is a disappointment. Politically disengaged and irrelevant.

Whereas my conception is more along the lines of:

Live footage from the Wuhan institute of virology, covid-23 loom

 

[Clinamenic]

what does thermodynamic mean?

As I understand it, thermodynamic means pertaining to shifts in energy/temperature, which personally I have a tough time understand at these scales.

Think about a glass of water with ice cubes, loosely speaking as a system, which has a differential arrangement of temperature that evens out as the ice melts and the water acquiesces to room temperature.

Something to do with vibrational frequency of atoms, which may have something to do with how much energy they have absorbed, all a ton of higher highly general stuff I've yet to wrap my mind around enough to explain.

 

[craner]

The Extropians were a Silicon Valley cult who were into bodybuilding and AI.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

That there is already of a staggering thermodynamic complexity, and I'd guess its happening on the scale of, what, tens of nanometers? How do we get from there to organisms? And what kind of value judgements will make such an understanding more expedient?

It's almost as if there was some vital spirit and meaning to it all.

 

[Clinamenic]

Think about a glass of water with ice cubes, loosely speaking as a system, which has a differential arrangement of temperature that evens out as the ice melts and the water acquiesces to room temperature.

This "evening out" of the organization of temperature is an example of entropy, as I understand it.