Exiting Reality

i thought you ran an electric bicycle shop? since when have you been into computers? you\re having me on.

That was years ago. I was building websites on the college X terminals back in 1994. I created and ran the world's first website dedicated to funicular railways for a laugh and every penny I've earned since has been off the internet, one way or another.
 

sus

Well-known member
Stan, our protestant work ethic made them feel something; they had to come guck it up with the old British irony
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I'm blanking on the name of it, but there is some diagram someone made about how unvoiced opinions remain unvoiced if there is an apparent consensus otherwise. It was a sort of stabilizing feedback loop: nobody voiced their dissent because the collective was operating otherwise, and the collective was operating otherwise because nobody voiced their dissent.
 
Sorry if my comment killed momentum. that’s me posting after a few beers again. After reading @you comment on another thread I’m committing to more serious engagement
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Just listened to a talk Robert Anton Wilson gave about general semantics. He's a good speaker, humorous. He mentioned reality tunnels a few times, talked about confusing the map with the territory, which I guess comes from Korzybski.

Didn't really get into the topics at hand, here, though. Just mentioned it cause it was the first time I've heard/read "reality tunnel" coming from him.

A reality tunnel seems to describe a particular view of shared reality, a view that imparts a particular perspective, a perspective against which values are formed.

Something about values/positions are necessarily limited in scope - positions can only be taken from perspectives that only get part of the picture. Seemingly, the kind of all-knowing perspective described indirectly by certain enlightenment discourse is a perspective that does not take positions, does not even speak, or if it does it does with marvelous discretion.

But perhaps there are still positions available to such a perspective. Such positions would be the sort of higher order net-schizo-meta-position I was describing in some other thread, maybe this one.

But the thing with reality tunnels, if we do consider them perspectives with different value frameworks, is that a shift in such a perspective does not merely provide a different angle on the same system. It does, but it is not felt that way, at least not always. Rather it may be felt as a restructuring of the system itself, a restructuring of reality, which impresses upon you in a phenomenally despotic manner, no?

Perhaps it is worth remembering that the particular nature of this despotic ambiance is, itself, contingent upon your situation. That is, your reality is contingent upon the forces of influence you are subject to.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Part of this would have to do with, or could be exercised by, switching around the esteem in which you hold certain figures, figures from which cultural-ideological influence proliferates.

Like its much easier for most of us, myself at least, to access the reality in which Hitler is evil, but perhaps its not so easy for us to access the reality in which, say, Lenin is evil. Just an arbitrary example that popped up, seeing as the likes of Lenin and Marx still carry a sort of deified image for me.

Insofar as ideological categories/branches can be encapsulated in the social/legacy image of a figure, those figures can be rearranged in your semiotic ideological network so as to get multiple "views" of them, multiple states they could occupy.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
what's the best video game for RAW lectures
Generally, I would say anything that is a low commitment, cognitively speaking. If the game takes too much of your attention, then the lecture-material would just become noise. I think a good balance would involve the game serving as an outlet for restless energy, while you allocate however much brainpower as possible to the educational material.

Specifically for Wilson, not sure.

I'm not sensing as much potential, regarding this game/lecture multitasking, as I once did. The primary function of it would be that it lets you dip your attention in and out of some lecture material, rather than forcing yourself to listen to 60-90 minute lectures. I'd also recommend the latter, if for no other reason than for exercising the attention span. (edit: whereas I once thought the primary value had something to do with mapping the information of the lecture onto the world of the game, such that if you traffic heavily in certain areas of the game-world, you would be adding more and more layers to it, psychogeographically)

Attention can reasonably be figured as our top asset, in the information age. Also our currency.

Gurdjieffians talk about attention as our central psychic tool, and how it is almost constantly being taken by various stimuli or mental preoccupations. A lot of the exercises associated with his work deal with observing where you attention meanders, and exercising control over it.
 

woops

is not like other people
having internet at home since the march lockdown has really hammered home the fact that my attention span is f'd and i'm not immune to screen addiction after all
a good balance would involve the game serving as an outlet for restless energy, while you allocate however much brainpower as possible to the educational material.
the problem in a nutshell
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I mean I haven't really experienced any kind of addiction or withdrawal from substances, but I'd imagine it would feel like a magnified version of the kind of addiction we have in mind. Ever since I started on Dissensus, I feel much more plugged in, whereas beforehand the internet was effectively a solitary realm for me, save for email.

Ultimately the game/lecture combo is good if you want to decompress but also passively learn. Even if you don't retain much of the information from, say, a series of lectures about the formation of the Soviet Union, you'd still feel oddly more familiar with the topic, which arguably makes the retaining of future information easier.
 
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