Stress and Exertion

Chart of Stress vs. Exertion

Current Project Dump – Open Projects, Discussions

1)

A model of people, data and groups. In particular, people as nodes. If the throughput of information(->) is limited to the processing capabilities of people are limited to +/- 7 chunks of information (minus X, where X is the number of R-operator chunks)* The limits of the throughput operator are:

chunk size, vocabulary, language, most highly valued representational system, the number of interfaces, the Gravesian level, Morphological cross-map tolerance operator**, most highly valued logical level, overall I/E orientation (introverted extroverted.)

Then in the analysis of groups people Group analysis is affected by

a) identifying subgroups and the internal (->) score, with attention to which if any particular nodal throughputs are reversible.

b) identifying aggregate (->) scores for subgroups.

*the R-operator refers to what chunks we are attending to consciously (see Patterns 2, which you have.)
**the “Morphological cross-map yadda-yadda” is just a way of describing 1 of two things; how well a piece of information functions as ametaphor or analog of another piece of information, and the threshold of a person’s ability to draw connections between two dissimilar kinds of information (i.e. “How is a raven like a writing desk?.”

2)

Ecological Systems/ Games – Neural Net/ Evolutionary Progression

Starting with a post from SP on 9/11/2002:

The Existence of Morality and Karma as Scientific Entities

I was in a car tonight thinking of Dave and his constant references to ‘karma hits’. I let my mind wander, because i haven’t ever let myself take karma seriously in a mystical sense, but the idea of things coming back to you has clearly, at least for most people i know, manifested itself enough times to leave its existence as a given. ‘How can this be?’ i thought, ‘there must be an underlying principle I’m missing.’ Anyone at the summer meeting will remember my numerous references to systems. For those of you not there, currently , the best model for living i can come up with right now is based on the idea of everything being a part of a hierarchal set of systems, anything that relies on recurrent patterns to perpetuate is a system, so for purposes of my philosophy, everything from hurricanes, to people, to civilizations are systems. Visually systems are like overlapping and concentric circles (well, spheres are better, but no need to make this more complex than necessary). Incidentally there is an uber-system that everything is a part of, and effects from actions ‘bubble down’ through internal systems. For a bit of clarification for instance – a sociological phenomenon would be systematically BELOW humans, as sociological hoo-ha relies on the existence of humans. For anyone confused of interested i can explain further, or go out and mix fractal geometry with game theory and you’ll have an idea, but for now i’d like to move on to the main ‘thrust’ of what i wanted to write.

Imagine we have a relatively isolated system, which we will call ‘Herbert’ (are you ‘one’ Herbert?)

here he is!

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|x o x o x o x o x o x|
|x o x o x o x o x o x|
|x o x o x o x o x o x|
|x o x o x o x o x o x|
|x o x o x o x o x o x|
|x o x o x o x o x o x|
|x o x o x o x o x o x|
—————–

boy he looks primitive, doesn’t he? – Let’s begin with the obvious; if you look at him, he has an internal pattern. This is something a system must have by definition, some sort of recurrence. (incidentally recurrence is a function of self reference, another important systemic idea). anyhow if Herbert stays in this particular configuration he is ‘healthy’. He will live until his ‘disorder factor’ reaches more than say 85%.

It is then obvious that [for Herbert's purposes] order=good, disorder=bad. this is because there are only a limited number of configurations that will allow Herbert to continue living his primitive, boring existence (just like you and me!).
first let’s set aside the whole idea of recency vs. primacy – it fits into the framework of my ideas, but is cumbersome to work around (and we ARE dealing with a simplified model here)

generally Herbert only likes to do things that increase or hold steady the amount of order in his system,
BUT he is also a moral system – this is because:

he will often sacrifice order in lower systems to increase or maintain order in his
he will sometimes sacrifice order in sideways placed systems to increase or maintain order in his own
he will almost never sacrifice order in a system above his (it would be counterproductive, and in reality, pretty difficult anyhow)

amoral actions , or random actions both increase the disorder of a system. in my observation, a good 80% of amoral actions are the result of someone wanting to do less work. Usually bad and random things require less work than doing something moral [in Herbert's frame-or reference] or good. What makes a system amoral is when it refuses to aknowledge the harm or disorder its actions will cause other systems (which like Herbert can only function in certain configurations) luckily a system can absorb a fair amount of disorder before they are completely destroyed. Unluckily increasing disorder in something else causes it to seek order [(if it can) in order to preserve its own existence, or when order is the least-energy state], which often causes disorder elsewhere, as self-reference is created by involvement, the more disorder you introduce into systems the more likely the disorder will find its way back to you in one form or another, while by the same token, working to increase order in a completely ‘moral’ manner increases the ‘environmental’ order around you, ensuring, for systems like Herbert a [somewhat precarious] life of leisure.

Now some notes from 2008 regarding a drawing of “Herbert” in the context of a mind map I made.

By definition Herbert is non-static … disorder from other isolate/systems feeds back into Herbert by his “self-actualizing processes” among which are scabs, amputation (only effective for removing non-crucial sections when an individual system becomes so disordered that by removing it, the overall disorder % drops to a significantly non-critical level.)

Disorder “bubbles up” through logical levels into higher systems, but once the environment (ecological level) becomes disordered, then the bits that Herbert brings in to self-actualize will negatively effect his disorder level.

Herbert’s “self” is a combination of components. The animate other, the non-animate other, the nutrative other, the non-nutrative other, and that which is not other. Understand that in this case, nutrative merely refers to something that can be used in self-reconstitution once disorder begins to manifest.

As stated, Herbert must monitor his internal consistency to make sure the disorder factor doesn’t drop below a critical %, but the monitoring process must also be monitored for process consistency. And so on. The trick here is that there must be a maximum monitoring depth. Herbert must be mindful and on guard for “convergent autism,” that is – he is so concerned about monitoring for consistency that he becomes “neurotically autistic” – he fixates on consistency and a lifetime of energy is spent on an instant’s worth of monitoring. In this case, the answer to “Quis custodiet ipsos custoded.” is nobody, hopefully. In the human mind this is usually resolved by both architecture and by electronics. Because recursion is so important to the way that the human brain operates recursive autism is a danger but because neurons and neural connections don’t get smaller than a certain level. Also electrical charges that travel along neurons need to be a certain strength before they get passed along to other neurons, and so the fact that recursive convergent autism is pathological and maladaptive prevents the neural pathways that would constitute it don’t get reinforced, there isn’t enough charge to overcome the resistance.

ugh – I am tired, I will continue in another post tomorrow.

Incidentally to see what Dave and Angeli had to say about this the first time around: here

Apartment Photos

East Garfield Park Apartment

Our current place

NY Times: Lacking Credits, Some Students Learn a Shortcut

April 11, 2007
By ELISSA GOOTMAN and SHARONA COUTTS

Dennis Bunyan showed up for his first-semester senior English class at Wadleigh Secondary School in Harlem so rarely that, as he put it, “I basically didn’t attend.”

But despite his sustained absence, Mr. Bunyan got the credit he needed to graduate last June by completing just three essay assignments, which he said took about 10 hours.

“I’m grateful for it, but it also just seems kind of, you know, outrageous,” Mr. Bunyan said. “There’s no way three essays can possibly cover a semester of work.”

Mr. Bunyan was able to graduate through what is known as credit recovery — letting those who lack credits make them up by means other than retaking a class or attending traditional summer school. Although his principal said the makeup assignments were as rigorous as regular course work, Mr. Bunyan’s English teacher, Charan Morris, was so troubled that she boycotted the graduation ceremony, writing in an e-mail message to students that she believed some were “being pushed through the system regardless of whether they have done the work to earn their diploma.”

Throughout the city, an ad hoc system of helping students like Mr. Bunyan over the hump is taking root in public high schools, sometimes over the protests of teachers, who call credit recovery programs a poor substitute for classroom learning and say they ultimately devalue the diploma. In interviews, teachers or principals at more than a dozen schools said the programs ranged from five-day crunch sessions over school breaks, to interactive computer programs culminating in an online test, to independent study packets — and varied in quality.
more

A personal extracurricular syllabus

This syllabus is meant to express a convergence of the networks of personal interest I maintain. In a broad sense the syllabus represents what I think I need to know in order to accomplish what it is I want to accomplish – but more on that later. I have all of the books that I reference except for Polya’s Solve It! and Ray Jackendoff’s Languages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation which are on my list of “someday books.” The books are in order as well as I can figure it now, though I am sure that all of this will change shape and shift as I go.

Math
1.
A. Technical Calculus with Analytic Geometry
B. Understanding Infinity
C. A Vector Space Approach to Geometry
D. Introduction to Partial Differential Equations with Applications
E. Differential Geometry
F. Complex Analysis with Applications

2a.
A. Differential Games
B. Evolutionary Games an Equilibrium Selection
C. Combinatorial Algorithms
D. Information Theory

2b.
A. Matrices and Linear Algebra
B. Modern Algebra

Philosophy

1. 1000 Plateaus
2. Difference and Repetition

Systems/Heuristics

1. Code Complete
2. The Mathematical Approach to Physiological Problems
3. An Experience with Populations and Communities
4. Solve It!
5. Spiral Dynamics

Brain Stuff

1. Accelerated Learning for the 21st Centrury
2. Mind Performance Hacks
3. Flow
4. Lifehacker
5. Speed Math
6. Photoreading

NLP/Linguistics/Semiotics

1. Patterns 2
2. NLP vol 1
3. Changing Belief Systems with NLP
4. Modeling with NLP
5. The Spirit of NLP
6. Semantic Structures
7. Languages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation

Whew- well that should be easy. Also, then there are “assignments” which I ought to be adhering to; writing based on what it is that I am studying at the moment, for instance, as well as writing for writing’s sake, that is to say organizing and collecting the various ideas that i get from time to time that I think are work remembering. Not to mention the school work I get from actual school and maintaining a healthy marriage/social life.

And then there are the long-term projects which I would like to complete: My as-yet unnamed prime number inquiry, analyzing a city block both ecologically and semiotically, priming essays and works of fiction to communicate deliberately with both the conscious and unconscious mind.

What I suppose I should start with is a project that integrates what it is that I am currently learning at any given moment and can be easily scaled to match the resources I am able to commit at any given moment. And I am totally willing to take suggestions as that goes. Currently it seems to me that the most easy project is to try an post an entry here as often as possible.

Rhizomes in Action

Wal-Mart has expressed interest in this technology.

This is also interesting. Valuable tool or one more thing to learn?

Working Definition of “Body Without Organs”

This is a link to a page with a working definition for BwO which I found to be helpful in understanding the concept. It seems like D&G are interested in a sort of “flow permanence” or “process logic” which jives with NLP, but they express it through particularly idiosyncratic language. There are, of course, other facets to the concept, and the author of the page goes out of their way to make a point that this definition applies more to Anti-Oedipus than any of the other areas that the concept appears, and I found it to be useful nevertheless.

Additionally this is a concept linked to the BwO (in my mind) which I came across while looking into the BwO. It feeds into an idea I have been developing internally regarding information throughput in social systems.

Filters

I found this quote in “David’s Sling” – a pretty good book altogether, in a similar vein with “Dune” in my mind. Anyhow, this quote has always been something I appreciated:In the Information Age, the first step to sanity is FILTERING.
Filter the information; extract the knowledge.
Filter first for substance. Filter second for significance.
These filters protect against advertising.
Filter third for reliability. This filter protects against politicians.
Filter fourth for completeness. This filter protects against the media.
-Zetetic Commentaries

As a different kind of set of filters, there are these 9 Well-Formedness Conditions for goals:

1: Positive – What do you want? (vs. what do you not want) Are your reasons for pursuing the goal clear?
2: Evidence – How will you know you’ve succeeded?
3: Specifics – How, Where, When and With Whom?
4: Resources – What resources do you have? (objects, people, role models, personal qualities, time, money) Are they adequate?
5: Control – Can you start and maintain the outcome?
6: Ecology – What are the wider consequences?
7: Identity – Is the outcome consistent with who you are?
8: Cooperation – How do your outcomes fit together? Are there any mutually exclusive or incompatible outcomes?
9: Action – What do you do next?

Memes, Epimemetics, and Religion

I was talking to a friend of mine recently about memes, and their relative adaptivemness, or rather, how adaptive a meme might be to its host. What strikes me in particular are memeplexes for instructions like consumerism and the like. I take it for granted that memes can communicate on some level, and swap adaptive pieces of meme-code. I wonder what a conversation between two self aware memes would be like for us, as we are ontological prerequisites for their communication, but also party to the epiphenomena of memes. A meme trying to exaplin to other memes about what a meme’s purpose in life might be, and the god of the memes. If I may be so bold for a moment to think that a meme may conceive somehow of humans, (say someday that a human creates a submeme that allows the person to communicate with a submeme, which would doubtless be a difficult and labor intensive one-off) how this meme may try to communicate to other memes about this god of memes it received a message from.
Did Meme-god create us?
Um sort of, we are actually the thoughts and the words of god.
So god spoke and we came to be?
Well, a bit, you see we are sort of by-products of speech…
Why did god create us?
Well – in a broad sense to increase god’s utility, though that is a bit of an exaggeration…
Why do we memes suffer so much, living in constant battle and then perishing?
Well.. god doesn’t allow these things so much as these things are necessary for us memes to have utility for god.

on and on and on.
Not that this scans or maps exactly, but it has some interesting paralells with our own experiences.

Organization and Collapsable Heirarchy

I have found the concept of collapsibility increasingly interesting, especially as it relates to networks of information.

It occurred to me yesterday that while we generalize, distort, and delete to experience the world, these three processes can be generalized to any set of information and any organizing structure. The best way for me to articulate this is to refer to the way we read handwriting. Handwriting that is readable (i.e. has an arbitrarily low level of noise) is read by identifying the idiosyncratic structure of familiar letters as interpreted by whoever created them. This rationalization of the squiggles and lines continues until we impose the nearest analog structure we have available to us (i.e. “t”.) We perform this task for an entire reference structure, generalizing on a number of levels (perhaps a short word). Once we have a reference structure, rather than repeat this process, we make a generalized version of semantic units- “the” something. As we move up in the hierarchy of generalized semantic structures, we begin to develop a limited concordance, we generalize the handwritten letter to whatever idealized letter we have stored in our mind, and then delete the messy scribble we are left to interpret. As we proceed through the process while we go through this process with the written letters (information) we are performing a highly analogous process to the information that the written letters represents, so that interpreting another person’s writing is a very personal process – we impose order and practice philosophical apohenia among other things, meaning we can never read what anyone ever wrote, we can only read what we put there.

Resonance

The purpose of learning to write is to understand how language fails. Language fails to express those things that are contrary to its nature. Excepting those of us who can experience synesthetic reactions, language cannot create a duplicate of the thing it describes. A language cannot do anything without people, frankly, but that is separate from the point. Language cant tell us how any person among us feels, so much as it can tell us how a society feels about an idea, or more precisely, a word. Part of the art of writing is misusing the social construct of language to create a personal experience, and then share it with your audience. The issue with having an audience is that you assume a passive and static group who is unable to or unwilling to interact. Or does it? Perhaps that is an assumption on my part. I dont think beyond the point of consumption, because that is not how we all work: we consume and shit, but never digest. The issue with using a social artifact to create a personal artifact, which becomes a social artifact, is just that: it is a personal social act, and so personal expression fails to express those things that are contrary to its nature, expression artifacts of social importance or relevance. The exception to this is personal social expression artifacts that are resonant, resonant being the quality of the ability to perform an internal transderivational search and come up with a relevant application of the expression artifact that is encountered. Things that have the greatest relevance are retroactively referred to as parables, or metaphors, or in some unfortunate instances, allegories. These things are relevant because we can add them to our ad hoc instruction manual for life. This does make it difficult for non verbal art to have resonance, and even more so for non-narrative art, because non-narrative art is a comment, not an instruction, and so while it is not so pretentious, nothing ventured nothing gained, a well placed comment can never live up to a well received instruction.