The Seniority of the Rachis

[vimothy]

and that its more likely that any process of acceleration will be associated with if anything a denigration or reduction of thought, back to it's material roots? it's not that thought will be set free, or attain higher and higher levels of complexity, but that it will be reduced to an increasingly instrumental process in the increasingly complex social process which encompasses it

 

[constant escape]

isnt there a contradiction tho bw a lack of awareness of what gives rise to a particular thought and the idea that it is attaining, somehow, via this process of self-occlusion, greater levels of self-awareness

I think that contradiction arises because of the difference between total memory, and memory of an iteration. That is, any given iteration of this self-manipulating process takes an input (which has a history unknown to the algorithm), alters it, and spits it own - only for the next iteration to do exactly the same. Sort of the like the content is cumulative, but the memory of the algorithm isn't, allowing it to proceed without awareness of the cosmic past.

 

[constant escape]

and that its more likely that any process of acceleration will be associated with if anything a denigration or reduction of thought, back to it's material roots? it's not that thought will be set free, or attain higher and higher levels of complexity, but that it will be reduced to an increasingly zinstrumental processes in the increasingly complex social process which encompasses it

Yeah I don't necessarily think thought will be set free - in fact, thought could well be a casualty/passenger here. I do think that some kind of cosmic intelligence/energy/order will be set free, as if the abstract is extricating itself from the concrete.

edit: and your point about thought essentially being a pawn/component of a much larger system - I think you're right on. But whatever this larger system is, it is far less grounded in the dirt than we are.

 

[vimothy]

then the process is blind, and it doesnt make sense to describe it in terms of a growth of self-awareness

 

[constant escape]

But it can be blind and still pseudo-randomly/stochastically get better, no? Maybe in the way that genes are blind, yet their random variation somehow (stochastically) allows them to progress?

 

[constant escape]

It would be the inbetween of chaos and fate.

 

[vimothy]

there's no progression to genes, they're just approximating fitness for an environment - it's not a process which could be described in terms of acceleration towards a particular end

 

[vimothy]

if anything, the increasing complexification of society will be built on the increasing simplification of thought

 

[luka]

Yes, you've got a religious vision here of matter perfecting itself and becoming spirit and you have some separate thing about sublimation and you're confusing it by trying to make it in some way scientifically respectable. Which is unnecessary because science is boring.

 

[luka]

Cut out every single technical word and present it as the traditional religious revelation it is.

 

[constant escape]

there's no progression to genes, they're just approximating fitness for an environment - it's not a process which could be described in terms of acceleration towards a particular end

I agree, I don't think their movements are informed by a set direction, but I do think that such movements nonetheless move beyond materiality. I just have in mind tracking how matter develops, and then projecting/imposing some kind of schema onto it, assigning it a purpose - the point being to better anticipate it. But our ability to project a schema onto the random/stochastic development of matter is a result of the particular development of said matter, a means by which it can develop faster, more efficiently.

 

[constant escape]

if anything, the increasing complexification of society will be built on the increasing simplification of thought

I don't think thought is what needs to be complexified so much as order, but thought, perhaps, fuels order? informs it, somewhat recklessly?

But @luka I think it is compatible with science - otherwise, it wouldn't be enough. The problem is that I'm severely underequipped to express it scientifically.

That said, if I must make concessions, I will sooner lean toward esoteric/philosophical discourse than scientific discourse.

 

[vimothy]

but it doesn't have a direction, necessarily, so it doesn't matter if it goes faster or slower, it's not going anywhere

 

[WashYourHands]

I just have in mind tracking how matter develops, and then projecting/imposing some kind of schema onto it, assigning it a purpose - the point being to better anticipate it.

All matter that exists, or will ever exist in all its iterations, will eventually degrade to radiation via entropy. Time will cease to have any meaning, as will space having expanded infinitely. This will continue for eternity.

That's a 1:30am statement.

 

[vimothy]

@xenogoth what's the accelerationist take on this?

 

[constant escape]

I think the ultimate abstraction/"spirit" will slide under the door at the latest possible moment.

edit: It is, ultimately, a religious/cosmological position, involving a leap of faith at the extremity. But up to that point, all of science should fit in.

 

[vimothy]

but theres a complexification of intelligence leading up to that point of singularity

 

[constant escape]

but theres a complexification of intelligence leading up to that point of singularity

Precisely, sort of paradoxically. Like how the asymptote is never touched, but in the very last moment it is?

 

[constant escape]

And that moment is also paradoxical in that it marks the independence of spirit/intelligence from materiality, and it marks spirit/intelligence becoming one with the cosmos.

 

[constant escape]

I am beginning to think of it as an accelerationist cosmology. Like thats what I'd begin tell people it is.