The Garden of Forking Paths
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sus
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Ok so here's a cool thing: "empowerment" in a concept in machine learning that basically means "maximum opportunity." All else being equal, maximise for quantity of options ("keep your options open").
In the garden of forking paths, this more or less means being at the very center: minimising the number of steps or forks required to get to any other point in the maze
In addition, getting a map of the maze allows you to traverse the forking decisions most rapidly
So when we talk about how having savings in the bank, or owning a car, "empowers" you, I think this is sorta what we're talking about. The ability to go whichever direction one ends up deciding one wants to go. You "work for" empowerment in order to later reap the payoff.
In the garden of forking paths, this more or less means being at the very center: minimising the number of steps or forks required to get to any other point in the maze
In addition, getting a map of the maze allows you to traverse the forking decisions most rapidly
So when we talk about how having savings in the bank, or owning a car, "empowers" you, I think this is sorta what we're talking about. The ability to go whichever direction one ends up deciding one wants to go. You "work for" empowerment in order to later reap the payoff.
sus
Moderator
I think this is basically the state our society is in: values are unclear, i.e. no one knows exactly which "direction" in the garden to invest in. So people wanna keep options open, to hang out in a position in the maze where, when or if they eventually decide to, they can invest and strike out in a specific direction.
sus
Moderator
sus
Moderator
luka
Well-known member
yes this is probably true. we've lost the ability to value one thing over another. i've got a cousin like this. he can see no reason not to suffer. it's a very serious malaise and impossible to think your way out of.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Same can be said for Buddhism, but from this starting point it goes off in a very different direction.
shiels
_
sick graph bro. That’s how I imagine great breakbeats in my head
luka
Well-known member
my cousins brain has been affected by buddhism in this case. this is where he got the idea that there is no reason to value and strive for the absence of suffering. hes lost his compass.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Talk to your kids about Buddhism... before somebody else does.
sus
Moderator
Mark Fisher:
[Depressive ontology] is, after all and above all, a theory about the world, about life. [...] Depression[‘s]… difference from mere sadness consists in its claims to have uncovered The (final unvarnished) Truths about life and desire… there’s no point, everything is a sham. [...] A student of mine wrote in an essay recently that they sympathise with Schopenhauer when their football team loses. But the true Schopenhauerian moments are those in which you achieve your goals, perhaps realise your long-cherished heart’s desire—and feel cheated, empty, no, more—or is it less?—than empty, voided. Joy Division always sounded as if they had experienced one too many of those desolating voidings, so that they could no longer be lured back onto the merry-go-round. They knew that satiation wasn’t succeeded by tristesse, it was itself, immediately, tristesse. [D]epressive ontology is dangerously seductive because, as the zombie twin of Spinozist dispassionate disengagement, it is half true. As the depressive withdraws from the vacant confections of the Lifeworld, he unwittingly finds himself in concordance with the human condition so painstakingly diagrammed by Spinoza: he sees himself as a serial consumer of empty simulations, a junky hooked on every kind of deadening high, a meat puppet of the passions. The depressive cannot even lay claim to the comforts that a paranoiac can enjoy, since he cannot believe that the strings are being pulled by any One. No flow, no connectivity in the depressive’s nervous system. It is a ‘dry brain’ (Eliot) condition.
[Depressive ontology] is, after all and above all, a theory about the world, about life. [...] Depression[‘s]… difference from mere sadness consists in its claims to have uncovered The (final unvarnished) Truths about life and desire… there’s no point, everything is a sham. [...] A student of mine wrote in an essay recently that they sympathise with Schopenhauer when their football team loses. But the true Schopenhauerian moments are those in which you achieve your goals, perhaps realise your long-cherished heart’s desire—and feel cheated, empty, no, more—or is it less?—than empty, voided. Joy Division always sounded as if they had experienced one too many of those desolating voidings, so that they could no longer be lured back onto the merry-go-round. They knew that satiation wasn’t succeeded by tristesse, it was itself, immediately, tristesse. [D]epressive ontology is dangerously seductive because, as the zombie twin of Spinozist dispassionate disengagement, it is half true. As the depressive withdraws from the vacant confections of the Lifeworld, he unwittingly finds himself in concordance with the human condition so painstakingly diagrammed by Spinoza: he sees himself as a serial consumer of empty simulations, a junky hooked on every kind of deadening high, a meat puppet of the passions. The depressive cannot even lay claim to the comforts that a paranoiac can enjoy, since he cannot believe that the strings are being pulled by any One. No flow, no connectivity in the depressive’s nervous system. It is a ‘dry brain’ (Eliot) condition.
sus
Moderator
Here's the free energy principle / predictive hypothesis that cognitive scientists are increasingly advocating:
An organism, at its core, is a model of its environment. Cognition is about anticipating possible futures and making the choice that optimizes one's own survival/reproduction/happiness. In some versions of the theory, this is the definition of intelligence. To choose the better future over the worse future, and to model the world well enough to understand the steps which get you there. We do this through a combination of mental simulation (visualization) and intuitive pattern-matching, such that often we do not even feel like we are "deciding"; rather, there is an "appropriate" action or response. What makes it appropriate? It walks us into our desired telos.
Thus just a fish's body is a model of the water it lives in (it has gills; we do not), our neuronal structure is a model of the social and physical world we inhabit.
from the Good Regulator Theorem Wiki page:
The good regulator is a theorem conceived by Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby that is central to cybernetics. It is stated that "every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system".[1] That is, any regulator that is maximally successful and simple must be isomorphic with the system being regulated. This result is obtained by considering the entropy of the variation of the output of the controlled system, and shows that, under very general conditions, that the entropy is minimized when there is a mapping from the states of the system to the states of the regulator. The minimum is obtained when the map is an isomorphism, that is, when the regulator models the system.
An organism, at its core, is a model of its environment. Cognition is about anticipating possible futures and making the choice that optimizes one's own survival/reproduction/happiness. In some versions of the theory, this is the definition of intelligence. To choose the better future over the worse future, and to model the world well enough to understand the steps which get you there. We do this through a combination of mental simulation (visualization) and intuitive pattern-matching, such that often we do not even feel like we are "deciding"; rather, there is an "appropriate" action or response. What makes it appropriate? It walks us into our desired telos.
Thus just a fish's body is a model of the water it lives in (it has gills; we do not), our neuronal structure is a model of the social and physical world we inhabit.
from the Good Regulator Theorem Wiki page:
The good regulator is a theorem conceived by Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby that is central to cybernetics. It is stated that "every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system".[1] That is, any regulator that is maximally successful and simple must be isomorphic with the system being regulated. This result is obtained by considering the entropy of the variation of the output of the controlled system, and shows that, under very general conditions, that the entropy is minimized when there is a mapping from the states of the system to the states of the regulator. The minimum is obtained when the map is an isomorphism, that is, when the regulator models the system.
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constant escape
winter withered, warm
I'm having trouble with Gibb's free energy and the equations surrounding it. Dipping my feet into biochemistry, and it came up. Something about how enzymes administer this change in Gibbs free energy.
@suspendedreason @Mr. Tea any thoughts on Gibbs free energy? What exactly does it mean? Feel free to take a philosophic approach, which is my usually tactic for breaking into this stuff.
My attempts: the chart seems to map some transformation in equilibrium (equilibrium of energy in some closed system?). The "Exergonic" and "Endergonic" points make sense, with the former involving energy leaving the system, and the latter involving energy entering the system?
@luka heres a deleuze podcast for you: Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Club - The Garden of Forking Paths. As if the literature wasn't tricky enough, here's a bunch of guys throwing around Deleuzian terminology about it.
@suspendedreason @Mr. Tea any thoughts on Gibbs free energy? What exactly does it mean? Feel free to take a philosophic approach, which is my usually tactic for breaking into this stuff.
My attempts: the chart seems to map some transformation in equilibrium (equilibrium of energy in some closed system?). The "Exergonic" and "Endergonic" points make sense, with the former involving energy leaving the system, and the latter involving energy entering the system?
@luka heres a deleuze podcast for you: Deleuze and Guattari Quarantine Club - The Garden of Forking Paths. As if the literature wasn't tricky enough, here's a bunch of guys throwing around Deleuzian terminology about it.