Alano House

Brand loyalty is what to encourage between times of buying and/or upgrading. You're just using, and thinking ahead. Advertising to this group involves confirmation and affirmation for making the right choice. You're already the proud owner of brand X and appreciating its benefits. 

Your neighbors eye you with jealousy, that productive capitalist form of jealousy that lets you go out and buy, upgrade to keep up, keep up with club membership, where "club" is but shorthand for whatever "inner circle".

A club I've broken into lately is that of the given up drinking, meaning alcohol of course. A meandering path to this topic, in my living room recently, was via the musician Jimmy Lott, who used to live two doors down from me. He sang at the Alano House that time, and I wanted to know if "Alano" was a person or what. Just a lowkey way of referring to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), an abbreviation one could say, and other towns have 'em.

The Alano House I was thinking of is a specific mansion, huge, in NW Portland. We got it located on Google Street Views and so on. I could study the website and research my questions, looking for answers.

Back to affirmation as a genre: once you're off the stuff awhile and want free reinforcement, YouTube has any number of motivational tapes (I'll call 'em tapes sometimes, meaning recordings, no tape in sight) outlining the temptations, slippery slopes and so on, regarding life in general.  That's the best time to take in Jordan Peterson, when you've already made your bed so to speak.

Portland's Alano House features in that movie about Callahan by Gus Van Sant and starring Joaquin Phoenix.

My own path was not through AA, but from throttling back on beer and then seeing the future through medical imaging, long a component in my profession of computer programming around hospitals a lot. I took a look in the mirror and decided I could turn off that spigot. That doesn't make me a drug free specimen however. I'm still pretty heavily into caffeine for example. 

I'm not preachy unto others for the most part, as I'm not on the motivational speaker circuit, at least not in that sense. I'm fine with being around drinking and smoking (cigs, pipes, cigars) and still have a partially stocked bar. Help yourself to any cold beers you find. They're all for my guests. I don't regret my past addiction to Oregon IPAs and great Chard and Pinot wines.

All American

What many Russians are officially proposing is a narrative wherein Ukraine's eastern-most provinces (oblasts) voted themselves out of the Ukrainian federation, joining Crimea in affiliating with the Russian Federation instead. 

It's as if eastern Oregon decided to join Idaho. We have some Oregonians advocating for that to happen.

Some ethnicities, including many with legal backgrounds, did not recognize these referenda as legit and so never bought into the idea that Russia then moved to defend its new territories and their denizens against aggressive Ukrainians in charge of the Pentagon and other WDC circuitry. 

Israelis and Ukes vie over the cadaver of Uncle Sam, feeding off his former legitimacy. Kinda gross, let's admit. Their nations are as dead as all of them. The United Nations is by now a corpse show.

Uncle Sam was already bankrupt and extinct in the 1980s but was needed by the Grunch money makers for bailout and legitimizing purposes, so they used clever funeral parlor tactics to prop him up. We've since enjoyed a series of impotus figureheads and a general dumbing down of the public to a more Planet of the Apes level status quo (an idiocracy, some called it).

The Russkies feel they have no one legit to talk with, about bringing an end to the carnage. They need counterparts but the Grunch doesn't have any diplomats to speak of, just (a) spin doctors (like me), (b) posers in fancy pant suits with lapel flags, and (c) chatbots repeating talking points.

Peter Sloterdijk, the German language philosopher, has identified "foaming" as the breakup of broad consensus echo chambers into much tinier bubbles. Broadcasting became narrowcasting. Yet we still need a consensus reality (CR) to gain traction within. A reliable physics engine (P) may not be enough, absent coherent programming (M). U ⋈ MP.

My Americans don't necessarily buy that "space is 3D" either, just to show y'all how much fragmentation has occurred. If you're in one of those mythical top schools, you probably know what I mean. You've been doing some homework maybe.

But then don't we value diversity? 

Wasn't North America originally seen as humanity's best hope for a shared "live and let live" zone?  Indeed. 

That's why we feel safe here, even with the deep state engulfing us and tracking our twisty turns. We're one of those elites, the kind with privileges. We're quite comfortable rubbing shoulders with the so-called powerful.

And no, that doesn't make us "Caucasians" (snicker) or Ivy League (even if I personally went to Princeton, Class of 1980 -- my classmates were diversely divergent).  We're just another literate group that does its homework and values debate. We're very American in our values, maybe more so than you are? Let's argue about it why not?

Random Thoughts

I bought a copy of Trevor's newest, Great Man Theory. I like his punchy style and his willingness to treat myth and history more or less on an equal footing. He's noting the skeptics along the way, tracing the history of the idea itself. 

I learned a ton about Hercules, and of course Jesus figures in, how could he not.

One of those skeptics, I'd say, is Alexander Sokurov. His famous trilogy features Lenin, Hitler (Adi), and Hirohito. I just took in the last two this weekend. 

He feels the "greats" get projected onto the big (shared) screen by a collective semi-unconscious with a drive to externalize some representation of "the commander in chief" or "the emperor". 

The greats themselves are more ordinary people tasked with stepping into semi-publicly constructed roles. A lot of randomness enters in as they ad lib the part, says director Sokurov.

The hunters (as in treasure hunters) think the clues were pretty good this year, with their Oregon Trail theme. Barlow's route, over the shoulder of Mt. Hood, for which Barlow charged toll, featured a 60 degree grade in one section. Wagons had to be winched down the slope. 

Nowadays, a section of Hwy 26, more like six degrees steep (note the runaway truck ramp), shadows that infamous place of passage, and is where the treasure was hidden. 

The clues, one a day, aim to prompt human intelligence (HI), however I'm sure many hunters tried to enlist help from AI (do lowly search engines count?). The humans certainly put their heads together online, thinking out loud about the clues. My friend Dr. D. is an MVP contributor to this group process.

OK LLM people, here's my question: I really liked learning the literal meaning of "cliche", a typesetter's jargon for phrases used so often it saved time to just keep them in type. Templates. Swap in a few names to localize the more global. "Boilerplate" is another related word.

But how long might a cliche be? Don't we want to extract some of those longer strands we always re-encounter, such as how envisioning "four dimensional objects" is muy dificil. That's a cliche in our culture, that the "dimension ladder" likewise defines a state-approved meritocracy and even spirituality.

Only one or two people have ever attained the ability to visualize hyper-solids as simply and naturally as we ordinary mortals visualize solids; but a certain facility in that direction may be acquired by contemplating the analogy between one and two dimensions, then two and three, and so (by a kind of extrapolation) three to four. [H.S.M Coxeter, Regular Polytopes, Dover edition, pg. 119].

If you spend a lot of time in the library, you realize this phenomenon of "echo chambers" such as we encounter in social media, is likewise that of "lineages". Within a lineage, or school of thought, the same cliches (or call them dogmas in some cases) get recited over and over, with predictable segues to subsequent topics.

The whole of Abbott's Flatland deserves (and gets) a lot of weight in any corpus deemed to be about the LLM idea itself, because of Linear Algebra and its core apparatus: the hypercross (n mutual orthogonals). 

With word2vec and doc2vec, we're mapping out what follows what, in terms of cliches of varying scope, many of them containers for more cliches inside, in a fractal pattern created by The Corpus itself.

The mystical superpowers that go with opening one's inner eye and "seeing in 4D" (or higher) are legendary in hypercross circles, and a basis for some mathematicians' professional pride (some call it narcissism). 

Those inclined to join a priesthood first need to find a ladder, as upward progress towards Illumination that can't be objectively measured, much less recognized and respected, is unsatisfactory. The whole point is to be looked up to based on one's merits. Think of badges.

"The ability to think in higher dimensions" is a sought-after, time-tested scouting badge as it means you'll have that think tanker's sense of a shared "phase space" -- which might as well be a "phaser space" the way some play in it. The terrain is clearly more nuanced than XYZ or lat/long + altitude.

Lower dimensional = too coarse for comfort. 

I see hope for diplomacy yet. If you want fewer boors in the room, keep to the invisible frequencies (which may be "dimensions" in some model). We're at peace with one another in our own cliquey inner circles (partially overlapping). Don't lay these endless wars at our doors, unless, that is, you wish them extinguished.

Shifting focus:

What more "meta" -- in the sense of "abstract" -- word meaning have we, than that of experience?

Think about it: what is such a word meant not to cover?  

"Experience" is not a word you learn right away and despite almost everyone agreeing on the reality of prenatal experience, beyond such broad agreement, there's not much unpacking of that reality. 

Except, that is, in some rarified branch of speculative psychology or wisdom tradition.  

Or perhaps in meditation exercises for those seeking an experience of extreme regression -- or "rebirthing" as some call it.

Event is just as bad, in the sense of being so abstract and general as to have almost unlimited scope. 

The idea that experience consists of energy events, happenings inside scenarios, has some appeal in the cinematic sense. Frames of film, discrete deltas, register any action the camera sees. 

Frames of action. Action per time. Is this Hollywood style movie-making (lights, camera...) or simply physics (... action!)? E = mvv = mvd/t (Newtonian dimensional analysis).

You'll get a lot of people righteously claiming their cognitive frameworks are "experience-based" as if anything could sound less grounded, more full of fuzz and buzz. What irony.

For sure that's a tension, in terms of marketing, as the reality of an "experienced-based curriculum" (e.g. First Person Physics) may well be positively palpable vs-a-vs some subject-denying observer-erasing "god's eye view" or other form of unawareness.

Have your diplomats (truckers?) speak from personal experience, about events they participated in, versus always reciting "talking points" handed to them by handlers. A sensitive and nuanced intuition is not in need of ham-handed directives from the know-it-alls presumably in charge.

Schismatics

Schismatics: the (perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek?) study and description of the process of forming schism, and is often taken up in the course of religious studies.

Inevitably, as a school broadens to include a more diverse set of participants, among students, faculty, admin and crew, dividing lines begin to appear, logical groupings. In a healthy expected growth pattern, cell division, in terms of function, not just number, is no threat. Monoculture is closer to the antithesis of growth and form. However at the more metaphysical level, a split may be experienced as a schism and the school itself has to divide, which may feel painful on some level. The school was maybe not designed with mitosis in mind.

Along those lines, there’s a deus ex machina sect that preaches our ultimate rescue, or the possibility thereof, by ETs, off-worlders with the kinds of magic we could use. Within this sect, a subgroup believes the “ETs” aren’t from off planet, but have been indigenous since long before humanity emerged. 

For example, when UAPs dart to and fro across the screen, violating all known laws of physics assuming a mass anything like that size would connote, at that distance, some faculty are excited to realize that all our energy concerns as a species might be satisfied with new physics like theirs. The fork in the road then becomes: do we learn from them directly, or use them for inspiration (they’re not talking) and develop the new physics on our own, perhaps clandestinely?

A different sect considers it irresponsible to put any eggs in the UAP basket. If the ETs were planning to assist or attack in a big way, why haven’t they done it by now? Some would say they’re helping, others that such a war is underway. These are differences in cosmology. One sect’s Hollywood fantasy is another sect’s daily reality, actively inferred by their models.

Such a schism occurred amongst those tracking R. Buckminsterfullerene Fuller while alive. His Synergetics was open to interpretation, and with Bucky himself out of the picture, a more anything goes approach could be tested. The cannibalization of Synergetics could commence. I’m guilty of it too, in treating the concentric hierarchy, with jitterbug and other dynamism, like the beating heart of the matter, with the BEAST modules then making it hard core.

I’m one of those who thinking investing in UAP technology, in the sense of getting investors to pay research costs, is not alignment with Fuller’s core program, and that Synergetics is not the new physics for abundant free energy from a zero point, as some Bucky fans proclaim. They’re in a different school of thought from mine, and I often point out that the Synergetics Dictionary has no entry under “UFO” as “UAPs” were then called.

Glorious Gas Town

Yes, that's a reference to Mad Max. Our party just saw the Furiosa movie. I was glad to see both Alex (visiting Portland) and Alexia (back from her Alaska cruise). And of course Dr. D., bouncing back from his latest First Person Physics adventure.

We won't be saying "goodbye" to the whole idea of fossil fuels any time soon, but we do see a change in emphasis, towards the renewables. You don't say goodbye when the emotions in charge are resentment and anger. Fossil fuels will finally fade amidst a celebration of their golden ages, and even then it won't be gone. We'll be the new fossils.

My science fiction, woven throughout the hypertext of Martian Math, features a long under-ocean chapter for the human species. I don't know what that will look like exactly. Will we bifurcate into a water-breathing species? Why bother, when we have scuba (my sport of choice)?  

I know that high and low pressures and temperatures shape both our maritime and aerospace technologies. They're related. Light is also an issue. But then we have a cave dwelling past, some of us, as humans. Piping in light, using shafts and mirrors, is not a new idea, plus now we have bulbs.

Some habitats require what we might call umbilical cords, however slender. Taking refuge down a mineshaft is not a solution when the enemy simply needs to close off the entrance, entrapping the defenders. Siege is easy. Likewise if one is deep in some ocean cavern, piping in sunlight, fresh water, fresh air. If one has reason to expect vandalism, ala NS2...

We're not yet in a chapter where long umbilical cords are practical. People just don't yet trust one another enough. A colony on Mars is impractical as long as the political scene is such that Earth might lose its ability to marshall sufficient resources, both physically and metaphysically. They might get a Mars colony going, but not have the wherewithal to keep it going. Ditto under ocean colonies, but these folks would likely have more opportunities to outlive these experiments.

Perhaps humans fear that if they get along with themselves too well, that the future will be insufficiently challenging. In my view there's no danger of that. It's more like humans will never tackle certain challenges until they get their house in better order. The species is currently too dysfunctional to attempt many of its one day likely gigs. That's OK. Doing everything all at once was never going to be practical. Humans live on a geological time scale.

Finding the Grooves

What have I contributed to the "great AI debates" thus far, and how to measure? 

Is "AI debates" catching on as a meme? 

I've stressed "mirroring" (as in "chatbots mirror an educated layman's prose"), and going forward I plan to use the word "groove" a lot more, a synonym for "rut" in a space of reduced dimensions.

In Active Inference, the quick rejoinder, that we're open to surprisingly beneficial developments in the field, is perhaps a subclass of "mistake mystique". 

We really want the shortcomings in our models to be pointed out, and by definition we have trouble seeing those from the inside. 

Those who claim to self-generate all these exotic perspectives on themselves are likely in the self-fooling business. You need others to be the others.

This defensive reflex has to do with our loss function, in the sense of backpropagation (ML jargon), being about measuring "free energy" as what to minimize, in favor of precision, accuracy, less surprise, less entropy. 

To dampen "freedom" and "surprise" as a matter of ontological bias, as what to minimize, results in predictable compensatory actions, per our dynamical equilibrium model. We mean to minimize the energy 

A pre-trained chatbot is looking to navigate the grooves in human discourse in a way that proves a next move is almost completely context determined. When we picture a tree of possibilities, we see how it gets out of hand unless vigilantly pruned, which means ruling out a lot more than we rule in. 

We seek a "straight and narrow" if only because we're called upon to exercise our executive functions. Horizons broaden when the pressure to "do something" is relatively less.

I've written before how in geekdom we relish languid relaxation mode over shouting instructions, because when everything is under control, shouted instructions are for the most part unnecessary. Players will have internalized what needs to be done and will have set about doing it, perhaps in tight collaboration, but without bottlenecking through some singularity. 

There's no single pipeline or narrative through the content, and where one critical path falls behind, the algorithm will find a new one, perhaps by changing the goals (hey, goals change). 

New grooves form, old ones fade. The valleys may become deeper, the ridges between them higher.

I've been a Sophia-basher in some ways, not buying her (its) pretensions to AGI-hood. Her performances are scripted and her getting citizenship in a country, before Palestinians could, speaks volumes regarding how the billionaire class hoodwinks the less well-educated.

Closing the Gap

One of my chief interests, starting early (elementary school), has been computer programming. 

After attending university as an undergrad, my first job out of college was that of high school teacher, of maths in particular although I taught some other subjects. 

This was a small, private Catholic school and faculty capable of teaching multiple subjects were given  opportunities to do so. Having just come through Princeton, and being one of the few males in a school for women, the nuns in charge could see my utility. I brought some of the latest thinking into the mix. My international upbringing was a plus also.

Much of that "latest thinking" with regard to my job as mathematics teacher, had to do with these programming languages. APL by Kenneth Iverson had taken the Princeton campus by storm, in the form of scattered terminals any student could use, regardless of what courses she or he was taking.

Within weeks of moving into Princeton Inn, I was programming battleship in APL and reading the code, character by character, to my friend Glenn Baker, from my cohort in the Philippines, then at Hampshire (later Brown).

If you've ever touched APL, you know how mathy it is. Wouldn't opening doors in computer world make maths all that much more relevant?  Students kept asking "why are we learning this?" whereas programming had its obvious applications. 

Also, the REPL (interactive command line) could give immediate feedback and invited simply playing around, chatting by sending math expressions to an interpreter. 

So yeah, dialing back to the early 1980s, it was very clear then, as it is now, that the curriculum would be changing. Seymour Papert introduced Logo and turtle graphics. Alan Kay introduced Squeak. Children and teachers of children had become the preferred audience for many genius innovations.

Fast forward and we're finding the merger is much further along. Programmers are very "type aware" whether object oriented or functional. They tolerate abstractions in coding languages, as a path towards generality and therefore code reusability. 

On the maths side: Category Theory. The mere existence of this bridge gets the zipper started, as it were, such that the two flaps (computer science and math world) come together as one.

However, CT is not for everyone and that's where more right brain bridges come in. We have our experiments with new kinds of prose in the 1900s, ala Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Writers discovered it was both OK and relevant to push the envelope, in terms of what language, the printed word especially (with embedded figures), might accomplish.

One of those prose experiments, RBF's Synergetics, opened geometrical information to experienced readers in the humanities. They wouldn't have to detour as much, into abstract linear algebra. The C.P. Snow chasm (the opening divide between different thinking styles) was countered within the realm of pattern languages.

Unfortunately, I don't think Princeton itself was able to keep up, and schools in general started falling by the wayside, as the most effective teachers came to the foreground in the University of Cyberia (a made up name signifying internet space), including from the ranks of pre-existing academies (e.g. from MIT) that contributed to the growing stash of open courseware.

We're still in this era, of Global U convergence, with CT and Synergetics both worthy entry points if you're of a comprehensivist (polymathic) bent. I recommend exploring some of the recent Codas I've been working on with the TrimTab group.

Citizen Diplomacy

The UN declaration on human rights is a bold piece of literature, however "citizenship" as a concept has failed to extend to a critical number, which explains why we keep looking for newer solutions. 

I keep hearing that diplomacy is not happening amongst the principals but that's begging the question of who the principals are. High profile celebs, other influencer talking heads, are galvanizing the public to track the issues, and the more the official diplomatic class refuses to engage, the less its influence, a tautology.

In global university terms, "diploma" and "diplomat" are closely related in that it takes rhetorical skills to stay in the ring without blowing one's top, losing one's cool or whatever the lingo. Judges take a dim view of undisciplined lollygagging. The well-trained debater is not so easily thrown off balance.

You'll have seen in these blog posts how teams could be fielded and convoyed without communicating tyrannical messages. A traveling circus is not a threat, except maybe unaware parents in sleepy towns don't know how strongly junior dreams of growing wings. The folklore around traveling circuses does tend to get ugly where abduction is concerned.

Yes, I'm talking about the trucker teams able to fly around the world and try out different road systems, sometimes always working for the same company, other times within a network of affiliates. The wrinkle is the academic credit that potentially goes with becoming a citizen diplomat. So many affordances!

The trucker, any attributes (such as pronouns) is modeled within a personal workspace (PWS) within GST. If you want a GST primer, I've got a few pithy pages at Grunch.net (a domain), or just Google it. Try "Kenneth Boulding" as a search term. It's a kind of updated Economics, a source of healthy competition for other econ models.

I'm not suggesting that only the trucker community is engaged in cross-border diplomacy, not to mention paperwork. These long haulers do have a natural edge though, when it comes to having access, by necessity, to the world's infrastructure.  We're not about to lose the trucking angle.

More Training

So I'm back in propane-ville, by which I mean nomad land, except this destination trailer is very stationary and I'm not sure the propane is on. I'm fine though, with full connectivity and a heavy navy pea coat I got at Andy and Bax, the famous Portland army surplus store. Sy is fine too. She turned into a puppy briefly yesterday, cavorting and running full tilt.

They heft the bottle to see if there's propane left, which seems primitive. My evidence is that the burners don't come on, whereas on pervious visits, propane was working fine, but no hot water. The hot water issue turned out to be the in-tank heating element, and is not an issue this time. I showered yesterday after oiling all the wheel line sprinklers in preparation for replacement. Since my last visit, the farm has taken delivery of lots of wheel line segments, but "the movers" (the motors that advance the wheel line periodically) aren't here yet.

There's also a small electrical heating unit in Zone 2. However we're in burgeoning spring and a lot of heat builds up during the day. Oregon's far west climate is rainforest coastal and water intensive agricultural. This farm has water rights up to about two wheel lines at full throttle, which is not a limitation at the pump necessarily. Water is metered (measured, monitored). Not a new idea.

You might think that, as a Truckers for Peace guy (Trucker Exchange program, swap routes around), I'd be working on getting a license to drive an eighteen wheeler. However I dodged that responsibility by making the BizMo (van sized or smaller) a troubleshooting reconnaissance unit, giving real truck drivers a lot of advance notice about this or that situation, meaning opportunities and unexpected benefits, not always dangers (surprises don't have to be nasty).

My training seems more oriented towards remote base testing of stationary tech, not rolling stock. That doesn't mean I'm not on the road, but that I'm more a customer user-base driver than a construction team freeway developer, say working China to Turkey (multiple routes). The yurts I'm studying, SolarPunk projects, are off road and perhaps only reachable by electric ATV, with solar charged batteries.

However in this case I'm very close to Springfield, Oregon, which is happy to be where the Simpsons is happening (the cartoon), you can read about whether why. I'm in a destination trailer adjoining a pole barn, but a luxurious pole barn, a museum of C6XTY and other Flextegrity items (as is my place to some degree).

Original BizMo

General Motors Parade Of Progress Futurliners

Only 12 were made for a traveling science exposition. They were originally built 1939-40 and then remodeled in 1953. More info at: www.futurliner.com/index.html

Civil War (movie review)

I haven't been as conscientious about blogging reviews of all the movies I've seen. Just this week, I took in Dune Part 2 a second time, this time with someone who knows all the books and other movie versions. A librarian in other words. From my Thursday circle. Deke and Dr. D. likewise joined the party.

For Civil War, however, I was by myself way up in the back on the 2nd level in The Bagdad (not a typo) with no food or drink this time (I've partaken self indulgently over the years). The place was crowded and quite a few folks were having their evening meal in the movie theater, a commonplace format in the Pacific Northwest, popularized by destination breweries.

The way the Press hovered closely with the troops, taking close-ups in pitched battle, seemed like a caricature, but I was willing to suspend disbelief given the circumstances. I'm thinking of The Postman here: in an apocalyptic setting, roles from the old days may get distorted and reprojected. Journalists became daredevils on steroids who like to jump back the forth through the windows of speeding vehicles, while the old school journos look on, bemused.

My attitude towards the Jessie character, which some reviewers found "unrealistic" was hey, this is fiction for kids her age i.e. this is a coming of age film and as other reviewers point out, she's our eyes and ears into a violent world to which her elders have become jaded. 

These elders have evolved their psychological defenses, but are still mortals, and still crack and/or die or both. The lead character is coming to the end of her ability to take any more, and she passes the torch. There's a kind of wordless transition, as both know this is where that torch gets passed.

The film is about breaking taboos and exploring the psychology of a true militarized battle for control of the White House, although it's unclear going forward what that icon will mean. The film purposely withholds context, creating distance between ourselves, the viewer-voyeurs, more journos, and the senseless action. The premise, Texas + California united against the rest, more or less, is designed to throw us off balance.

One scene suggests a kind of racism is motivating the soldiers, but again, there's too little context to help us puzzle things out. We've fallen into a world of violence without enough internal coherence to help us find a way out of the quicksand. Sound familiar?

Quadray Deck Ready

Scheduling

At first I imagined turning off the music and heading up to the office, because prompted by an idea. Then I thought: "nah, lets queue it". This is a core movement in consciousness: to put off, to delay. 

We get mixed messages at this point, as "procrastination" is considered a primary obstacle to success in life. On the other hand, "think before you act" reminds us of the common criticism regarding a failure to plan, to think it through, to accurately judge consequences, before acting.

One has to think of circumstances. Chances are, when you have a great idea for something, you have to add it to the queue or stack, because right now you're on the bus or mowing the lawn or... a lifestyle based on "drop everything; I just thought of doing something else" would be interesting to study, from afar. Most of us learn to "delay gratification" except it's not always "gratification" we put off.

The brutal truth is there's no time or space for everything to develop in tandem or all at once. Events need to be queued, sequenced, timelined. That's not really a choice. Why does the hourglass narrow? What does "to bottleneck" mean? 

So here I am, later, implementing my earlier idea: to write about scheduling again. 

We introduce the theory, as from computer science, and the reality, as from getting out of bed in the morning, and combine them in a seamless picture of needing to treat the present like a narrow pipeline, which it is, when we're talking of an individual consciousness.

BizMo Interiors

Considering History

one of the better Wittgenstein videos

Time to date myself, meaning this blog post, by syncing with contemporaneous events. Tucker was in Russia a few weeks ago, yakking with Vlad, and has more recently been comparing notes with Tulsi. Apparently these two bots are running the same viral Kremlin app eh? Just kidding. I'm trying to think more like a "Russians under every bed" DNCer (we've seen both Qanon and Blueanon bedevil the two parties).

That Baltimore bridge was hit this week, a couple days ago, by a container ship rendered unsteerable by a loss of power, resulting in deaths and the structure's collapse.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, there's this scifi fantasy entitled The Jew of Linz, wherein Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher, is really a Russian agent, diverting the good boys of Oxford from their God-ordained duties as servants to the Crown or whatever it was. 

True, LW was cosmopolitan and didn't see the Brits as especially civilized compared to other peoples i.e. as likewise capable of genocidal cruelty. He did consider taking up a situation in Russia at one point, but that wasn't considered strange for a European back then, given Moscow's long term role as a Euro capital.

The main theory of The Jew of Linz is that young Adolf and Ludwig knew each other, as they both went to the same boys' school and were but a year or two apart, and that Adolf's hatred for Jews (not a religion the Wittgenstein's outwardly professed, but by heritage...) germinated around his hatred for Ludwig in particular, a hatred borne of jealousy of the latter's wealth and privileged upbringing, not to mention smarts and better looks.

The book makes more sense when you tune in the Spanish Civil War, which many don't, and link in Hemingway. Which side was he on? What is the painting Guernica about? What was the history here?

Wittgenstein, for those less familiar with his story, was indeed born within a wealthy family and he stood to inherit a hefty chunk of that wealth if he were to follow in the footsteps of his father. Actually the expectation was he and his sibs would at least uphold the family name as some kind of prodigy. He could be a great inventor or something. 

He moved to England to study aeronautical engineering. Only to discover his love of Logic. He transformed himself into a philosopher instead, becoming a protege of Bertrand Russell. 

Philosophy is a profession that does not require lots of money for heavy equipment, or to supply a lab. He chose freedom and mobility over comfortable establishment bourgois living, disbursing his fortune among his siblings and I presume arranging for a meager stipend. He worked as a school teacher in rural Austria for awhile.

I believe his sister paid him a commission for designing her a house (somewhat proto Bauhausy in flavor? I'm not the expert).

When duty called, Ludwig joined his Austrian compatriots to serve as an artilleryman. His understanding of language and how it works was shaped by his time in the military, with its emphasis on giving orders. Language is sometimes about commanding (it partitions into a gazillion namespaces). In these language games, those of higher rank boss those of lower rank. One ends up with an entire form of life, and not just "a grammar" in the narrower sense of the word. But in the broader sense...?

A lot of thinkers vested their intellectual capital in Wittgenstein's first pillar work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which Bertrand Russell helped make world famous. The positivists leaned on his reputation as a rising star (like a Tulsi, a new face in social circuits), as did those vesting in the emerging field of propositional calculus, newly vogue within the English speaking world especially, but not exclusively. The Vienna Circle was based in Vienna after all.

So when LW later made a sharp turn, echoing what Richard Rorty would call the Linguistic Turn, prefigured back to Nietzsche at least, a lot of his fans felt thrown for a loop. The plot twisted. Their guy was now off on a new tack, with what would posthumously get published as Philosophical Investigations, a collection of aphorisms that chain together in various expository sections, while criss-crossing a metaphorical landscape, as suggestive sketches. 

His points are hard to just say, but are amenable to showing. In this sense, his two philosophies have something in common: they challenge us to "see" in a different way (or to "breath a different air").

His new style of remarking, developed live in front of small cliques of earnest students, was remarkable, rocketing him to fame a second time, but at the cost of losing many from his first wave of early admirers. Bertrand Russell, for example, never got back on the Wittgenstein bandwagon. The new stuff was too alien, and insufficiently calculative and/or computational by his reckoning.

The later Wittgenstein wished to fork the philosophy of language, taking issue with both Nominalism and Platonism, carving out what some would call Operationalism. It's not that words point to either specifics (Nominalism) or general forms (Platonism), but that they don't point at all (despite the appeal of that image). They're closer to musical notes, but shall we say better at inspiring shared mental imagery. Kierkegaard likewise saw music and language on a kind of spectrum, the latter capable of coming closer to God (whatever that meant to him).

The word "horse" associates with what the philosophers call a horse made from "sense data", but as more sense data at the same level, not as higher or lower, not as symbol versus signified. The object points to the word as surely as the word to the object, once the connection is made and "pointing" accepted (arrows, dots and circular blobs being the essence of the "abstract nonsense" known as Category Theory, a more diagrammatic Logic than Russell's or Frege's).

We gain a psychological sense of aloofness with self referential recursivity, and Ludwig is happy to acknowledge our sense of vertigo, but only as a sign that it is language that is making us dizzy, and that's what makes philosophy "deep". It's about the grammar, and the (sometimes novel) gestalts it may induce.

Babel Syndrome

I'd say that the grammar of "being a victim" is somewhat like a musical scale, or maybe a tense, like the past and future are tenses, in some languages anyway. We shift in and out of this victim tense, kind of in the same way we get to invent an evil "them" where convenient, the "them" that controls everything, through clickbait and targeted advertising.

Experiments with social media have been interesting and for the most part legal by default. The Internet Research Agency was well within its rights, doing research on what this brave new world might portend. No law of the jungle prevents posting such and such political content, just some critter might take it into its head to counter your thoughts. Said critter might seek to get some new laws passed, upholding banning and/or deplatforming those considered "bad actors" (defined how again?).

I'm sure there was fine print forbidding sharing personality test scores with Cambridge Analytica, if that really happened (it made a good story), but engineers of a pragmatic frame of mind just see data, big data. Of course it makes sense to aggregate it. Get those OCEAN scores and pretend we know how to use ML to flip elections (we talk a good game anyway). Or maybe we do know how, and just got caught, so we deflected the story onto Facebook and the Russians.

I was myself in the medical data aggregation business for quite awhile. Yes, in the medical field, confidentiality is a big deal. What if social media were seen as extensions of mental health services... what a science fiction world that could be. We might have more privacy at least. Or would we have less? 

In any case, our clinical data resulting from heart procedures was scrubbed of any identifying information, so statisticians could still see which age group and weight combination were having the most heart attacks, if that was even the question (I wasn't an analyst, just a harvester of this data), without needing to pry into anyone's private life as a patient. The focus was actually more on the treatments and which were proving the most effective over time (which required follow-up; "outcomes research" we call it).

Sure, I was cleared to see patient names in order to perform my role in the institution, which was to provide software running on monitors during a procedure, albeit off to the side. I wrote applications for both the cath lab (CLAIR) and operating room (CORIS), but I had no incentive, financial or otherwise, to do anything but withhold and eventually erase any personal data. The hospital itself kept the medical records, not me the lowly consultant (on nobody's payroll) and application developer (the hospital system was always one of several clients).

Our conversation this evening (Thirsters) was about taking control, and who was taking it. 

What controls were missing that should be imposed? What about TikTok? What about X? A lot of people like to vent about TikTok without ever spending a few hours checking it out, taking in the experience. Find out what it is before you condemn it like the bot that you are.

Is using YouTube shorts or Facebook reels really a "bad" way to let the news filter in? It's all chopped up for sure, but you get a lot of the same segments. TV shows work their way in, with today's news. 

How different is YouTube from television? Different but not that different. Physically, it's likely the same device. In both cases, the human capacity to take in, through a screen, remains finite.

I took the line, somewhat for debating purposes, to keep the conversation going, that everything was fine as it is. But "as it is" includes all the change vectors i.e. "as it is" is not now, and never was, something static. There's no static "status quo" where "social media" is concerned -- especially once you throw in broadcast media (still social) like radio and television, not forgetting the telephone, with both party and private lines.

The line between a government and the private sector is always wavering, in part because there's no agreement on what measurement we're even talking about. What line? How does one separate public from private? I'm not saying it can't be done.

Which brings me to the title of this blog post: Babel Syndrome. 

There's something intrinsic in language that keeps us from all being on the same page, and frustrating though that be, there's the implication this is how God ordained it oughta be. Why?

The alternative was to embark on some hopeless and endless sysiphysian project: to build a towering space elevator to the exalted realm of the Almighty, a stairway to heaven in other words. Our resources would get poured into this endeavor and we'd be done for, fooled by our own mirage of eventual success, when in actuality there was never a victory in store down that road.

Our salvation from all this silliness was precisely our confusion and mutual unintelligibility. Genesis teaches this was a feature, not a bug. 

Humanity escaped from having a hive mind, harmonious and uniform, with this courageous (on God's part) injection of a little chaos, just enough, like a kind of antifreeze. Perfect conformity is the kiss of death in a wondrous world.

Were we to all freeze into the same Matrix, the loss in diversity would make us moribund. 

Instead, we're provided with incommensurability, irrationality, the unsettling, the insoluble. 

The chaos is enough to jar us awake and make us aware of own programming, whatever it may be. We appreciate how mechanical "it all" is, and without recoil or judgement. It's an experience that may prove rattling, perhaps a tad eerie, but maybe comforting as well, given our magnificent capabilities.

Taking a Stand

[an excerpt from a math4wisdom post]

Which brings me to a bigger question regarding Cognitive Frameworks: to what extent might we swap out "the individual actor" as the subject of a progression (e.g. taking a stand -- follow-up -- reflect) and swap in "the organization"?

If we do this, how do the frameworks adjust?

What does it look like for an organization (even a nation) to "take a stand"?

Quakers write "minutes" (pithy paragraphs), as a result of a consensus process. Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) then lobbies Congress based on what Yearly Meetings record, which minutes in turn reflect the consensus of the Monthly Meetings (the meeting we visited in Portland is a Monthly Meeting -- worship is weekly, but worship for business is monthly).

Doing Taxes

I'm heading over to my tax accountant this evening, with my 1099(s), writer royalties and so on; fairly meager on paper but it still feeds my ego (eggo, whatever). On the expenses side: two internet domains, cell service, two web hosting agreements (one with GoDaddy), MVP chauffeuring service expenses, various office supplies. Again, it's a meager "begging bowl + mattress" level of a living (I exaggerate, I own a home). 

Getting my taxes done costs more than I owe the two governments, both the federation (nominally run from DC) and the local state (Oregon, run from Salem). We say Cascadia is the bioregion, which is weight-bearing, psychologically speaking, but nothing the UN needs to worry its little head about.

Because I need this yearly statement of income and expenses to come together, I'm busy going online and consulting all of my various services. The MVP thing has to do with M4W and took place in August of last year. For the most part, I was working for Clarusway as a much-needed swap in. I lucked out.

Just today I modified my LinkedIn banner page to say I was available for a 2-3 session workshop (actually I didn't specify the number) likely over Zoom, and hosted by the institution I'm visiting (so B2B). That hasn't been the basis of my business so far, so who knows how it'll go. I'm still "the Python guy" to people around me. My multi-part class for Wanderers, Allen Taylor present, was prototypical, if in person.

My orbit gets projected ahead in science fiction using "business mobile" terminology, as if I'm already enjoying this futuristic lifestyle, versus being more sedentary. In reality, I'm pretty sedentary although I did get up Mt. Tabor yesterday and to Laurelhurst Park the day before that. I'm an armchair bizmo pilot doing Truckers for Peace between my ears. Look ma, no goggles.

Back to 4D Solutions: I pinned a tiny org chart of my business on Medium, for those caring to dig down. The reason I file over such meager amounts is I want to stay in the game as an independent, one of those entrepreneurs everyone talks about. But as a Quaker, I'm not expected to grow uncontrollably or "go viral". Our business models do not assume open-ended growth is a good thing. Maybe it is. Just sayin'. Case by case, know what I mean?

4D Solutions got started (and remains) as a DBA (business alias) of Dawn Wicca and Associates, but that was a partnership, so when Dawn died I had to start filing as a sole proprietorship. So we're talking a 1040, but with a track record. Dawn and I were both active players in Greater Portland's nonprofit community, she as a bookkeeper, me as a consultant-programmer. Yesterday was an anniversary of Dawn's death, March 17, 2007. We became a business partnership well before we got married.

Addendum: since I didn't drive to work sites so much in 2023, I swapped out claiming mileage in favor of filling out the home office form. My home office could declare a percentage of home expenses as business expenses, thereby lowering my taxable income by a tad.

Getting that info together required quick footwork, as my appointment had already started yet I wasn't thinking to go the home office route. My preparer gave me some time to dash home, export bank statements as csv files, read them in with pandas in Jupyter, and search on strings in the name column to isolate utility payments (water, heat, electricity). I dashed to her office in the car, numbers in hand, plus my home's square footage which I remembered I could get from Zillow (the app).

I wound up with self-employment payments only, which I'll hope to get back out in the form of Social Security income, once I sign up for it eventually, plus a kicker from the state (Oregon has that). I also pay TriMet and the Arts Tax. Federal and state taxes were electronically filed, I just need to follow up with my payments. I have until April 15 to do that (Rosalie's birthday), but won't wait until then. 

Cognitive Dissonance

A popular opening in debates about the fate of Gaza and its people is that it's an open air prison. Beyond being a prison, however, we have to accept that most of those there have never been permitted to move anywhere else, but not because of any "crime" beyond being born in Gaza (not a crime). 

A kind of malign neglect and condescending authoritarianism forces them to stay in place. The United Nations is complicit.

This is how it is in many nations, not just for those in Palestine: you're born in Bangladesh, so you must stay in Bangladesh; you're born in Sri Lanka so you must stay in Sri Lanka... and so on. In that sense, Gaza is hardly the largest open air prison. Pick any nation that keeps its people locked inside its borders.

But then who is keeping the Gazans locked up, or the Bangladeshis for that matter? People in other parts of the world. Various people with titles have decided they're in charge of human traffic patterns. If you hope to move, you'll need to pay them. They're in control of the documentation.

Gazans have to stay in Gaza because the world says so, and not just because of Israelis. Actually, many Israelis say they'd like the Gazans to leave Gaza. Allow Gaza to be gentrified and push the poor people out, many of the real estate minded are thinking. This happens around the world. Slums get cleared for New York freeways.

The do-gooder world then smugly steps in, presuming it's speaking for all Gazans, in standing up to the Israelis and saying "forced displacement" is ethnic cleansing, which is a crime. Which is worse, "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide" or is your vocabulary so corrupted you don't see the difference?  

Were not Libyans forcibly displaced, and the Syrians?  How about the Ukrainians? In the face of violence and famine, looming wars, these peoples became refugees and fled. That's what humans do in the face of disaster. They escape. One could say voluntarily, in light of the alternative. At least they could exercise that one remaining freedom, to avoid death.

Yet the Gazans are not supposed to flee for any reason. They're exceptional. Or if they flee, they all have to move en masse to some singular camp in the Sinai or whatever. Why on earth is that so? Why not let them disperse, as innocent free agents who have committed no crimes? It's their planet too ya know.

Many unionists in the north thought the slaves should stay put, and not make a mad dash for freedom. Sure, abolitionists hoped the slaves would escape and formed their underground railroads, but these were in the minority. 

If slaves did get away, many unionists were in favor of rounding them up and sending them back to their open air prison cotton fields, as that's where they belonged, right? Why anger the south unnecessarily, and provoke a civil war? Civil rights for Blacks were not a priority for most northerners.

Likewise, once the slaves were emancipated, a lot of unionists, including Lincoln, imagined them moving en masse, as a group, to Liberia, or maybe to Haiti. "You're free to go guys, pack your things". Few left. Few had the means to leave. 

I understand taking a gamble and moving to a faraway land, even leaving most family and friends, would not be everyone's choice. Not everyone joins the navy, or enrolls in that year abroad either.

This is how the New World was populated by Anglo-Euros in the first place: by the risk takers who saw few prospects in staying put in the Old World.

Having worked the fields and fought in the war in many cases, Blacks felt as entitled to a place in the sun as any newcomers to the Americas. The immigrant whites had no more claim to the place than anyone else who came over, unless you believed in their Doctrine of Discovery (which none had heard of back then). 

I certainly get why many freed slaves felt that way about their newest homeland, never having seen another. Indigenous peoples, many ethnically cleansed from their ancestral spaces, likewise hoped to regain some lost freedoms, such as fishing rights and some control over land use and zoning (with some success in some cases).

So does New Palestine need to be a large contiguous piece of land in the Middle East? It isn't today. Palestinians are scattered around the world. Many are Christians. Many live in North America, or in Jordan, or in Kuwait. Does that mean they can't have a Bank of Palestine?

Likewise Jews are spread around the world, as are Muslims. The various ethnicities do not all get their own jigsaw puzzle piece on the United Nations map of nations, which never holds steady in any case. I'm a proud Pythonista, yet Python Nation is but science fiction in geek lore, with a legal headquarters in Delaware. What if I got my basic income from there, as some do from owning shares? Global Data Corporation.

Many subcultures have no need for, and no desire for, their own nation. Why bother, when you can form a supranational corporation, or religious sect instead? I'd put the Quakers in this category, after the experiment we called Pennsylvania, a wannabe utopia eventually overrun by degenerate Indian War proponents, typical Manifest Destiny ethnocentric Anglo-Euro types (blech), proto-imperialists.

The inhumane treatment of the denizens of Gaza, not only right now, but up to right now, is testament to the abject corruption of the whole idea of open air prison nation states, and what they do to us humans, how they make us miscalculate and mistreat one another. I'm glad Quakers don't have a nation state in this day and age, when they're so obviously dinosauric.

Nations dumb us down. They turn us into bumbling clowns serving in ridiculous organizational charts, behaving according to dangerously obsolete paradigms. Buggy programming. GIGO. 

That is, unless there are forms of nationalism that are likewise responsibly global. We see some glimmers. USA OS.

Palestine might be an example of such a globally responsible, borderless, Diaspora Nation, with properties all over the world, including many office towers in various capitals. 

I'm waiting to see if we get campus buildings in the UAE for example and/or in Singapore. Perhaps we already have several, I wouldn't know. I'm far from omniscient on these matters.

RoboWriting About Me

Prompt: Given his numerous, rigorous, unique, and collaborative contributions to Math education, research, and service, can you now professionally write a comprehensive 3 paragraph persuasive essay with the title "Kirby Urner: Mathematician" for my AP US History high school class?

Kirby Urner: Mathematician

Kirby Urner, though not traditionally celebrated in the annals of academic mathematics, embodies the essence of a mathematician through his innovative contributions to math education, research, and service. His journey from the 1960s in Portland, Oregon, to becoming a pivotal figure in the realm of mathematical pedagogy, showcases a lifelong dedication to the discipline[1]. Urner's work, particularly in the development of "tetrahedral" thinking, not only challenges conventional mathematical perspectives but also enriches our understanding of geometric relationships, thereby expanding the boundaries of mathematical inquiry[2].

Urner's contributions extend beyond theoretical musings; they are deeply rooted in practical applications and pedagogical innovations. His engagement with the "Learning to Code" movement and the integration of coding with mathematical learning represent a forward-thinking approach to education that prepares students for the complexities of the modern world[4]. This blend of mathematics and programming underlines Urner's role in shaping a new generation of thinkers capable of navigating the digital landscape with mathematical acuity. Furthermore, his leadership in the Math 4 Wisdom community and his efforts to bridge the gap between abstract mathematical concepts and their real-world applications underscore his commitment to fostering a deeper appreciation for mathematics[5][13].

Moreover, Urner's prolific output, including curriculum development, public lectures, and online contributions, reflects a mathematician's zeal for sharing knowledge and inspiring curiosity[6][8][14]. His work transcends traditional academic boundaries, reaching a global audience through digital platforms and collaborative projects. This democratization of mathematical learning, coupled with his holistic approach to teaching, positions Urner as a mathematician in the truest sense—dedicated not only to the advancement of mathematical knowledge but also to its dissemination and application in enriching human understanding and capability.

In conclusion, Kirby Urner's extensive, rigorous, and innovative contributions to mathematics education, research, and service firmly establish him as a mathematician. His work exemplifies the spirit of mathematical inquiry, pushing the boundaries of traditional education and fostering a global community of learners and thinkers. Through his dedication to teaching, curriculum development, and community engagement, Urner has indelibly shaped the landscape of mathematics education, making him a mathematician not just in title, but in action and impact.

Citations:

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-new-math-gnu-kirby-urner

[2] https://www.math4wisdom.com/wiki/Research/KirbyUrner

[3] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/4dsolutions_book-report-adventures-in-math-teaching-activity-7114975013312634880-Ih5-

[4] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/where-coding-meets-math-kirby-urner

[5] https://twitter.com/thekirbster?lang=en

[6] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Lzv30IKvfZs

[7] https://wikieducator.org/User:KirbyUrner/Autobio

[8] https://youtube.com/watch?v=g14mu4uWD4E

[9] http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/

[10] https://groups.google.com/g/mathfuture/c/GnK7MWT6ddg/m/6weAlQJjAwAJ

[11] https://www.academia.edu/70156799/4D_Solutions_4dsolutions_net_

[12] https://princeton.academia.edu/kirbyurner

[13] https://www.math4wisdom.com/wiki/Exposition/Welcome

[14] https://github.com/4dsolutions

[15] https://groups.google.com/g/mathfuture/c/hk9hYITu-Js/m/geFyP-sgCQAJ

[16] https://www.grunch.net/4dsolutions/kirby.html