murder of the unova-verse
as someone with great difficulty properly processing emotion, and an amazing partner with savant levels of emotional intelligence, it brings me hedonistic pleasure to realise that a seedling of a flowery feeling had managed to bud in the alien hellscape that is the folds of my brain, and that species was alien also to her.
wait shit uh not that kind
when times are hard, there are few things more effective to my brain than the escapism offered by the mainline Pokemon games. a world in which for however long it takes me to complete (sadly shorter and shorter with each escape) i can become completely immersed in a world void of the spectres haunting my mind, of situations i have not the resolve or ability to escape properly.
each of these creatures is fundamentally nothing more than a series of bits given semantic meaning by whatever version of the game im playing, however (as all fans of the series will be able to explain) these series of bits go beyond mere interpretation. they are the vessels of our stories, our internal mythos. we prescribe temporal continuity to these specific series of bits, to our specific series of bits, to others specific series of bits.
we are given some tools to have these monsters follow us throughout multiple games, we create our own tools when the above prove insufficient. we deem it necessery enough that we prescribe what amounts to a soul to these specific series of bits, beyond any capability any game has of doing.
it is not wrong to say that these series of bits create emotion within us, in much the same way that relationships with other people can.
in which i vouch for more non-prescriptivist methods of inter-game information sharing.
what is a game, but a system of constraining some data such that one or more people can reason about it in a fixed and well understood manner. our need for conformity, for well-assuredness in a capitalist landscape of software production, has blinded us to the beauty that could exist.
we insist that “rules” of a game be enforced, that “hacks” be violently snuffed and draconian methods of conformity be placed upon CPUs. yet what is a house-rule if not a method of taking a previously prescriptivist program, and altering the semantic meaning it imparts whilst keeping the inputs profile the same.
a romhack is nothing more than flipping the established paradigm on its head, of returning the freer ways of running one input on multiple interpreters, of breaking the chain that entangles subject and object, and instead placing that power to the observer, to the ego, to the unique.
yadda yadda halting problem etc etc go touch grass.
it is silicon valley hubris that states the software we use is our new diety, that it is above us in knowledge, capability.
it is marketing that drives tech companies to attempt to replace the churches of old, with product being the new Lord.
they would have us believe that we bring our wares, our series of bits, to this god, and this god will bestow upon us some new series of bits, and in doing so announce to us the meaning of these bits, the correctness of these bits.
we cannot allow this to continue.
the emotions in our heads and our souls and our systems are chaotic and uncalculatable and scary and beautiful, and the origins of these come from our surprise at something being interpreted differently to our expectations.
as always i do not know where i intended for this to go, nor when it should end. i see it as my attempt to express how these series of bits representing funny little digital monsters that i have been able to find, lose, transfer, alter, corrupt, and ultimately input to many programs - some intended, some unintended - has cemented a place in my brain as producing the good toxins
its my frustration at a system of computing that continually attempts to lockdown the usage of data in a prescriptivist matter, that ties the output to the program “““intended”“” to interpret it, and that blatantly ignores the new emotions we as egos are able to impart to said data, the semantic meaning we impart solely for the purpose of experiencing it, and of sharing it.
it is my wish for a more freeform method of creating and sharing games, something easily editable, houserulable, hackable.
something we view as a method of temporarily restricting our courses of action such to aid creativity, rather than as a series of laws that must be violently enforced.
ultimately its the wish that i understood my defective brain enough to be able to share with my partner an means of feeling that has helped me through many hard times, and my wish to continue feeling that well into the future, should any hard times come upon me again.
:wq
im sorry i really couldnt come up with a better title than this i just wanted something with the ancronym “NFD” because this is in part about normal form designators
so with that out of the way…..
I must try to keep my focus. I must try to keep my head together. I might not be there when you need me but. I must try to keep my head down.
Brian Cantwell Smith is one of the many people who are far smarter than i am. i learnt of them through their MIT thesis Procedural Reflection in Programming Languages which is something else hoooo mama
as always, the ideas expressed through this post were taught to me first through the above paper, as such im unsure whether to attribute these ideas to Brian, but will do so as im not sure who to attribute otherwise. knowledge is a shared exercise and i welcome and thank everyone who had a part to play <3
another disclaimer but its highly likely im misusing terminology here, if thats the case please replace all occurences of phrases that appear in brians book with made up words that take up the meaning i have expressed here.
**pripl* is about the development of LISP-3
, which is a scheme endowed with reflective capabilities. the scope of this is outside of my brain ability this blog post, but im sure i will post about that also. however, one idea that came up a lot was of normal form designators and i thought they were neat.
at its core, an NFD is the semantic grouping of the result of evaluating a statement, regardless of how far it has been evaluated.
as such, the following scheme statements all relate to the same normal form designator:
(if true
(* 23 (+ 4 2))
0)
(* 23 (+ 4 2))
(* 23 6)
69
note that the set need not be every step of a single evaluation, the following also is part of the same NFD set:
(- 70 1)
i liked this idea for a few reasons, but the reason for this post is because it lets me complain about computers and software yet again.
it feels to me like all the “““progress”““, specifically in the modern web, fails to be meaningful improvement in the sense that we arent really changing the NFD groups that the technology claims to improve.
we still use the internet to do a few basic things:
and rather than find efficient and context focussed ways of doing so, we end up just building…. larger and larger expressions that evaluate to the same thing, and claim that because its more complex for the average person to understand, its “progress”.
we still claim that “operating system improvement” is reinventing (or many times, building yet another abstraction layer on top of) the same empty signifiers of what people expect in an operating system.
we keep building up, rather than building different.
im just tired of seeing the latest new thing being some massively bloated piece of software that requires a corporation in the middle and ever more powerful computers, just to impliment the same functionality that we’ve had forever.
im tired of people being trained in the same tools industry decided is the fad this month and never trying something truly unique.
i want to find new normal form designators, and have that uniqueness being a virtue in of itself.
C-c C-x
this velociraptor can open doors much easier than a normal one
for the uninitiated, Dinobot was (;0;) a character in the 1995 cgi television show Transformers: Beast Wars. T:BW was a soft reboot that was later revealed to be a prequel to the 1984 Transformers cartoon, in which instead of turning into vehicles, the robots turned into animals.
Johann Kaspar Schmidt (more commonly known as Max Stirner) was (;0;) a 17th century German philosopher, most well-known for his philosophy of “the unique self”, commonly known as Egoism, which is a radical extension of the idea that self-interest motivates human behaviour slash moral relativisim. Egoism is consistently and frustratingly mis-represented and mis-understood.
it is my intention to put forth that the character of Dinobot, whether intentionally or not (probably not), exhibits mannerisms i would attribute to Egoism.
egoism famously employs the word “spook” to describe its unique social construct / non-material force. later in history this word was seperately used as a slur. while i do still use the term, i recognise that i shouldnt, and thus will attempt to use some other word such as “ghost”, “phantasm”, “spectre” etc etc. i will however use adjectives such as “spooky” or “spookify” or “spooked” (i will also probably use the word “spook” as ya girl is too lazy to do a find and replace).
egoism does not make moral judgements, to do so would be against the point of egoism. it is very common to see the claim that egoism means you are “allowed” (whatever that means) to murder people. this indicates to me, a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that words used in egoist discussion are used.
murder is “allowed” in the egoist sense that moral judgements dont exist, they are a phantasm. that is not to say that egoists believe people should murder.
any definition of what egoism “is” is itself a phantasm, and as such my own interpretation (what i will be basing this post off of) should not be taken as gospel, however i think we can all agree its important to make this distinctions explicit, as otherwise ancaps will co-opt yet another cool thing and ill be unable to refer to myself as an egoist without cringing (i will never forgive them for taking the term “libertarian”).
furthermore, Dinobot is one of the few characters to get permanently killed (at least in og T:BW, i have not and dont really care for the new show, which i forget the name of but i saw a dinobot figure so i assume he’s in this show too).
furtherermore, Hasbro have no clue how to name things, and have also named a (more popular) team of transformers as “The Dinobots”. They suck and I do not honour them. neither should you. whenever i refer to “dinobot” in this post and in real life, i am talking about actual Dinobot, unless im talking about how stupid the dinobots are.
first, a quick overview of the plot that dinobot was involved in.
tbw follows two groups of animal robots, the “good”-coded Maximals (the shows equivilent of the autobots), and the “bad”-coded Predacons (decepticons).
early on, Dinobot attempts to overthrow megatron (a different character to regular megatron, but with same name). this fails, and so he attempts to do the same to the maximals. this fails too, however optimus primal offers Dinobot a space on the maximal team, which he accepts.
over the course of the series, Dinobot learns more about the golden disk, the macguffin of the series, and ultimately dies destroying it to keep it out of megatrons hands (in doing so he also teaches early humans how to use tools).
“honour” is a phantasm, its a spooky thing that doesnt really exist, and thus should not be the basis of your idealogy.
however, this does not preclude somebody from “acting honourably” for some self-definition of what it means to act honourably, in fact it may please an ego to do so, as is the case with Dinobot.
Dinobot followed his own code of honour, something that while not explained on the show, is obvious Dinobot has an explicit definition of in his mind.
a key part to this observation, in my opinion, is him taking actions that would not be described as “honourable”, but nevertheless are consistent with his actions.
during his attempted mutiny of the maximals, Dinobot has the chance (due to luck) to kill optimus, but refused to do so, claiming that it would not be a fair fight.
however, later in the show he takes no qualm at attempting mutiny again, and attempts to do so multiple times, even briefly switching back to predacon alliance, as well as being a third party independent in the beast wars.
to me, the defining piece of evidence in egoist!dinobot theory, is how much dinobot seems to understand his actions, he is remarkably consistent, indicating that his internal code of honour is well understood and well defined, and that he follows it (even when disadvantageous to himself or displeasing) not for any religious faith in the idea of “honour”, but because it pleases his ego to act “honourably”
egoism, to me, is an ideology that states it is important to self actualise, and that external restrictions (phantasms) limit our ability to self actualise. placing an “ought” on how we “should” act turns us from “people” (for an extremely liberal description of that term, bravo Lana for geting it right in film).
this does not preclude us from choosing to act in a certain manner, and i would argue doing so is an important aspect to acting in a non-spooky way.
Dinobot as a character found it pleasing and self-actualising to live according to his own, well-defined, code of “morals”. He was fully aware of what it “allowed” and “disallowed” and chose to act in ways that followed this.
The question that once haunted my being has been answered - the future is not fixed, and my choices are my own - and, yet… how ironic! for now i find i have no choice at all. i am a warrior… let the battle be joined!
yeah idk whatelse to write but this is my headcanon and ny’all cant tell me otherwise.
egoism is empowering and i believe something more people should study, but it displeases my ego to have to listen to people trying to claim it means ancaps are cool.
dinobot is my favourite transformer and i am so sad that they’re gone :(
:wq
i do not step shyly back from your stack, but look upon it always as my stack, in which i respect nothing
where did we go wrong? accidentally discovering and rediscovering the joy of computing, and ending up with what we have, instead?.
all tech stacks and standards are spooks in the spookiest sense of the word, and any grand idea of what a computer aught to be is inseperable from the ramblings of a god-faring human, or an appeal to societal norm, or the allure of the athiest god in scientus
yet materially what is a computer? it is a black box by which we may in some way of many ways signal to it our intention which it may then attempt to understand, and likewise it may in its own way of many ways interact back to us its thoughts.
this could happen with the computers of old, in which after a bios event of me describing lambda calculus to a person, i could then interact with them through a mile long piece of paper with the grammar of the lambda calculus, and thus recieve back something of supposed value to myself
yet today i cannot, i instead must fill my drive to the brim with spooky bits until i have the socially necessery software to do whatever the societal spook decides a computer should be used for: business? entertainment?
imagine for a second we are transported to the library of babel, never to escape. imagine our physical needs are met magically, yet we may never (or rarely) meet another soul again.
all we have are the books we can find, and the meaning we can ascribe to the permutation of symbols in those books.
we would lose our current language, instead to be replaced by a much more personal one, one unrestricted by the societal demands, instead only shaped by our own egos, and the whims of the randomness powering this mystical library.
where i to be in vacinity to some book reading apparatus, i could describe a certain grammar to it, and have it find books for me accepting that grammar. suppose i found or made a book containing that description, i could share it with others, and have us both read books that are based in some mutually decided upon basis (although we would still have to ascribe the same meaning to those symbols).
should a technical computer be any different? should it not be the case that as i describe things to it, it should be capable of adapting its perception of the tippy taps of my keyboard (the one true human - computer interface) and responding in increasingly personal ways over time?
we started with the standard, posix unix intended to be used as a basis we could all express computation on, and from there we expressed, higher and higher towers without ever looking down.
but perhaps it would be more useful, no, to look down, and realise that in not looking below posix, in not looking and focussing on the ability to describe tippy taps to this box and over time invent new and temporary and permanent and important and unimportant languages for describing specific computations in, we have taken posix to be our god? our deity and spook that lords above all humans souls as something that we must base our computations in, rather than something that must be based in computation only for the purposes of portability (as much as that word can be used today for “posix” applications).
we based our computations in the societal spook of “a machine to be used for business applications”, rather than in the personal idea of “a machine we interact with personally” and this has lingered and haunted every development made so far.
my dream computer, that lonely soul wandering the shelves of babel that is my interactions with it, does not exist as it does in my mind. i can imitate it crudely but i will forever be left with the cruft of that spectre that doth haunt my drives
:wq
the past me who writes shitty code? or the current me who thinks they no longer
so i recently set up a hydra jobset that builds all my haskell libraries
AHEM
so i recently set up a hydra jobset that will build all my haskell libraries when i write them, and so i took it upon myself to rewrite the generator for this site in order to have something test it.
the goal will eventually be to write some nixos configs that’ll automate pulling in the source for this blog seperate from the program that builds it, and bring up the entire serve.
is one of the best animated movies of all time, and also (as i have learnt when telling people they should watch the point) a documentary about professional tennis player maria sharipova?
anyway the point to all of this is that i recently had to look over code that i wrote when i started this blog. code that was written from when i was a crappy haskell newbie and definitely not the totally real and not kidding myself good programmer and competant computer scientist that i am now.
when i say “rewrite” what i actually mean is “wrap”, because the large effort (outside of the hydra project infastructure) was just adding things that the old program didnt have, such as command line arguments and the what-not to seperate it from the data source.
i would like to rewrite it when i find time and motivation to (sadly i have a job again, and thus have neither the time nor energy to spend a lot of it on creative pursuits)
the reason i have not is because its honestly just a complete pile of shoddy code from someone who in hindsight did not know what they were doing. most if it is copied from random tutorials i found on the internet, and there is a massive amount of repeated code because to the untrained eye, monad and applicative combinators look like high-school me’s emoticon dictionary.
you thought this post was going to be self-abusive misery porn didnt you? that would be on par for this blog but in another entry in the long running series:
tA’s gf proves she’s the smartest
reading through this code and feeling crappy about how crappy it was hit home to something she says a lot, that the only reason i can feel that way is because i have gotten smarter than i was when i wrote this.
i know enough that i can cringe at everything i now realise was a crappy way to do things, i know enough to have a much better working solution to building this project than the crappily hacked together bash script + nix code i used previously
and you know, maybe its my partners influence rubbing off on me, but the more i think about it, the prouder i am of that crappy code that past me wrote because when i think about it:
so there you go ${partnerOf tA}
, you win and youve made me feel good about myself (im being shitposty here you always make me feel good about myself).
reread your old code, improve it, but be mindful and thankful of the lineage of that code, of how its essential lessons led to your ability to talk shit about it
and most of all, remember to watch the point.
:wq
after so so long its finally here, the movie weve all been waiting for - the third installment in the serial experiments of lain, a modern take on the story showing the experiment playing out in a world far past the cusp of consumer onboarding of the internet, and how her story would play out in a world where the very ties that bind have been weaponised by the powerful for control and exploitation.
i kid, of course, but how cool would that be huh? we can only dream.
i talk of course about clears throat EVANGELION: 3.0 + 1.01 THRICE UPON A TIME, a name only exceeded in length by the one thing dear to my heart (other than my amazing partner), the aptly named 1998 neon genesis evangelion cardass masters g trading card game.
it should go without saying that a lot of people have a lot of thoughts regarding this film and film series, and i am no exception, so without further ado, lets get on with it.
of course not, in no way is this reboot series anything close to the masterpiece that is the original series plus the end of evangelion - possibly the greatest piece of animation to ever exist.
the sole reason for these films to exist is money, and a capitalistic need to rehash old ip for cash. the originals had some need to exist, their purpose is to express what anno could not himself, and for that they shine.
these films were not made with a true purpose, and exist simply to fill a void of there being a lack of marketable evangelion since the mid 90’s. they have succomb to the flanderisation of every aspect avaliable - in many cases the cause of rather extreme irony.
for this reason alone, i dont expect the critical reception to be great, however i think it would be doing disservice to the films to call it there. regardless of franchise they exist in their own sphere, and can be read and analysed seperately from their lineage.
these films say something different to the original series.
the original series is about validation, and the self actualisation of its characters. it is about flawed humans who come to learn that heedless escapism is something to avoid, no matter the comfort it provides.
it is a message to grow oneself above the troubles, to accept them, and to move on.
this is the reason this series has resonated with so many people, why evangelion fans seem to treat this franchise with such revere, to look above all its superficial flaws (you didnt really think people where in it for the freudian aesthitic and faux-christian veneer did you?) and appreciate it as exactly what many a misguided teenager needed to hear.
this movie was released almost a decade after the previous entry. this film series has taken over fifteen years to conclude. this movie marks twenty five years since the original series first aired.
this series has existed for my entire life, and almost half of my life has passed since the moment i first saw this series.
waiting for this series to conclude has lasted a long time relative to the other events in my life.
i have started and graduated university.
i have started and lost my first professional job.
i have been unemployed and moved town and country multiple times.
the wait for this conclusion has lasted longer than every relationship i have ever had, combined.
this connection to this franchise, to the result of a miserable creators plea for help, is one essentially the longest running constant in my life, and it is no exaguration to say it has shaped who i am today, for the better or for the worse.
however this story, the original series plus the end of evangelion, cannot be our guiding light forever.
all things must come to pass, and perhaps many of us have taken too much comfort, too much escapism, in the end of evangelion.
i believe the purpose of these films, whether coincidental or not (death of the author baybeeeeee) is to show that at some point we must move on, we must continue with our lives and grow from who we were when we were teenagers. we need to take heed of the lessons of the original series, and put this into praxis.
we are introduced to characters we are meant to know and love, yet they are all different. they have become simulacrum of their previous selves, each taking on the extreme of the singular character trait they are most known for. the routine has worn thin and everything about these characters feels a little off - not unlike those of us continuing still to deal negatively with our childhood stresses, those of us who have yet to move on in some way.
it speaks to the people of the fandom clinging to the escapism that is what they first felt, the first time they watched EoE, neither moving forward or back, but just still, motionless.
its like he doesnt wanna live but he doesnt wanna die either
and this is exactly what we see in shinji for a large portion of the start of this film, a motionless, expressionless person, effectively not a part of this movie outside of the rememberence of who they used to be.
we see rei as a rather explicit caricature of the steriotypical weebshit fan - unable to perform even the most basic of social interactions and - in what i see as a very nice piece of symbolism - finally starting to learn that they can, and will enjoy, living in a world outside of evangelion.
asuka sits around playing video games, angry at everyone, but continuing to take part in the system that led to her being as angry as she is, something thats only gotten more and more ingrained over the last fourteen years - until we finally learn that she is essentially a completely new person, one solely defined by her relationship to the evangelion (literally, rather than figuratively as before).
the film ultimately ends with the only ending that needs to be said for its audience, and for anno.
shinji rewrites reality into one in which the evangelions do not exist, and everyone can continue on with their normal lives, experiencing social progress and the highs and lows that come with it.
notably, he does not erase the events of the films - we should not conflate moving forward from our days of finding comfort in evangelion, with the lessons we learnt doing so. however the message could not be more clear:
endless escapism is a proxy life at best, and antithesis to progress at worst
the main character we’ve come to know was able to find happiness by letting go of the evangelion, and i believe it is anno’s way of telling us we should do the same.
thank you hideaki anno, for creating something that has truly changed my life for the better. i cant know your thoughts on the film series, and i suspect you, like i, are not amazingly fond of them - however i am glad to finally have the closure to this series that we all needed.
:wq
kamo no itte
anarchist theory is one of, if not the, most important things to learn. the way we as a species of individuals interact with each other is a universally relevent thing and its a disservice to yourself to not further your knowledge of that.
as a side note, many people in this world are not fortunate enough to have the luxory of choosing to educate themselves on this topic - many people have not been given the necessery conditions to have that priviledge, due to the effects of capitalism, imperialism, and heirarchy. of these people, many have had to learn these interactions the hard way - something many of us in the west have never had to. i will be writing this with the perspective of one such person, as that perspective is mine. i mean no disrespect.
back to our regularly scheduled programming
the game of go - igo, baduk, weichi - is probably the oldest game still played today. in my mind, it is the game equivilent of the lambda calculus. while chess is obviously designed by humans, the game of go seems to emerge from the idea of points on a grid. in the same way that the principles of the lambda calculus seem to be discovered, rather than invented, so to are the rules of the game of go.
if we ever meet with aliens, they will probably also have discovered the lambda calculus, and will probably also play go (although with some weird scoring rules, if humans are anything to go by).
i am not a good player at the game of go. i will probably never be good for as long as i watch hikaru no go instead of studying the game live. i also can not claim to have a enormous understanding of anarchist theory, i believe it would be arrogant and hurtful to assume i knew it all, or that it was a field possible to “know it all” for.
however, i will not allow that to prevent me from speaking about it. knowledge naturally wants to be shared, and with the correct disclaimer that i may be completely wrong about everything im saying, i will talk on.
lets GO haha get it?
the game of go, when played “correctly”, is not about winning. the act of playing a game with another person is an intimate converstion - if you will let it be, and play with the respect that another person deserves.
when played with respect, the game becomes an act of mutual aid, it becomes a way for both players to test their skills, with the testing of skills becoming the main aim of the game.
handicap stones and altered komi can be - and should be - handed out freely. we strive for an even playing field - not one in which both players start with the same resources.
if we let it, the game can become one of the few times we are allowed to exist in perfect freedom. for just a moment in time we place ourselves in mutual standing and allow ourselves a conversation from that base.
every day i wake up, and i long for the rest of the world to be that way.
if we were to play with the mindset of heirarchy, i would not be allowed that conversation. i would not see my friends and family grow at the game, and i would be disincentivised from teaching them.
i find no joy in winning an unbalanced match, and i would not find the game satisfying if that were the case, yet i am told that life is such, that there is no other way.
we are all motivated by profit, nothing more and nothing less.
closing thoughts
i may not have said much in this article, i simply wished to mention the feeling one gets when utilising a system, and paying the proper respect to another living person.
communication can be hard, and sometimes impossible feeling. many times i wonder if i can ever truly communicate with another person, however the simple act of playing a game with someone, in a setting in which we are both equals.
that is a feeling that comes close.
if i were to become immortal, and live on a beach, i could place stones for an eternity and simulate a computer.
those same stones could be used to play the game of go, and with that , i could communicate with someone on a new level.
i wish to get better at go, and to learn more about the interaction between persons.
:wq
johnny says stay cool
our brains are big dumb hunks of meat that are uncooperative at the best of times and actively self saboutaging at the worst of times.
any form of praise they get is due to their ability to self inspect, to understand their own workings and (allegedly) create a feedback loop of self improvement.
it is due to this ability that i can write this piece. my brain is sending the results of its activating neurons to my finger muscles to talk about that very same process.
as far as its understanding of science goes, rationally, it is no different to a neural network. it is a big dumb bag of random neurons that may or may not behave like they want to behave, and its complicated enough that we say its sentient because while we may know how it works in general in some areas, its either too complex or no-one can be bothered to figure out the specifics of why it decides to act like the mismatched set of gears it is.
take a minute out
this decision making “““process”“” is the result of the set of inputs it has. its view of the world, its senses, its feelings and thoughts on the matter it percieves.
this brain, as a self percieving entity, is completely capable of realising that if anything were to alter those inputs, its perceptions of reality would change.
its reality is those perceptions, and it realies on the inner workings of a thing it knows to be unreliable and uncooperative to process those inputs.
let her come to you
this is solipsism, the idealogy that you are the only conscious entity and everything else is a figment of your imagination. its favourited by people who dont care to understand much about the purpose of idealogy, and narcissists.
there is a trend to favour the cold hard facts over anything else in this world, that you can only be a real smart person if you disregard those pesky feelings.
the second you say anything faith based, the reddit intelligencia will come with their pitchforks.
however, rationally we can and should discard solipsist escape fantasies from our minds.
they can serve us no good, they are unhelpful, and most importantly: they do not allow for a worldview in which we are able to practice our rationality.
if all of reality is the perception of an unreliable and uncooperative brain, capable of self programming without its knowledge, then nothing can be logically sound. we forfeit our ability to make meaningful reaction to our environment, and we lose our ability to individualise to our escapist desire to not have to worry.
regardless of if it is true, we must, as the only rational thing to do, take faith in the idea that we do not live in solipsism, we must believe as one would in a diety of choosing that we exist in a reality capable of challenging us in ways that force us to adapt, to improve, and have the ability to be a person to however extent we wish to.
we must realise that we have actual power over this reality, in the form that we have collectively chosen to percieve it, and all we need to do is interact with any of the other living, percieving entities that are equally as alive as ourselves.
breath in, breath out
anti-solipsism is the new rational-stan armchair idealogy. it requires faith when you dont trust your brain to cooperate with you, and that faith must be unwavering.
regardless of what turns out to be true, this faith will allow us the best experience with what we percieve.
:wq
and you don’t seem to understand…
present day, present time, and a much more hostile than before world to try and leave my mark on.
amidst living in a soul crushing neolib nightmare world, the feelings of a rage against the machine swell high. simple, it would be, to mistake this as anger against all machines, to fall victim to the media and wish not for anarchy, but for chaos and lawlessness.
and simply not the abolishment of social laws, the removal of all rules as determined collectively (or allegedly collectively, as in our current machine), but those of physics too, perhaps further, the abolishment of those laws of logic result in the lambda calculus being discovered and rediscovered time and time again as if the purest form of DMT hallucination between ancient shamans and urban stoner kids.
step forward once again and we may disolve the idea of the laws that result in that discovery. by refusing the very law of our ability to make substitutions, to create sympathy magic and assign some proverbial link between two entities, real or imagined. to defeat time itself.
this however, is not anarchy proper, this is a reactionary fever dream masquerading as a vision, fueled by propoganda about those who wish for destruction and chaos.
and without these tainted connotations, we instead find something beautiful. not the target of rage, but an intricate idea more powerful than any other.
we arrive upon systems.
and all the things you hold so dear…
in times where the macro is unweildy and impossible, we can find solace in the micro.
a system, a collection of anything that can even in some part be abstracted as stuff, and rules for how they will interact, or change form, or be interacted with, or any other number of words as long as they can be made into some new collection of stuff.
the beauty of a logical system is not in some vain notion of one truth above all else - some arbitrary feeling that facts trump feelings in all cases, that by argument to authority of that supreme, singularly defined overlord of capital ‘l’ logic, the divine truth may be revealed.
rather, the beauty of logical systems is that there are infinitely many, that one may invent on the spot a logical system, creating its being by the simple act of acknowledging it through thought.
one can appreciate them as an art form, as something wholely unique in its representation, and that regardless of its ability to be embedded in other logics, the representation is what gives a system its character, unique from all other representations. it inspires ways of interaction, whether directly or just in observation, that other representations may not.
a logical system is the definitive experience in having control. it is a plaything of pure interaction, one where every single ability one has can be known, whether infinite or finite, whether deterministic or not. the very act of a system being completely defined allows us as individuals to experience the act of true freedom in the context of the self contained universe that is a logical system.
in the context of no users, a system acts as a process to be marvelled at, as analogous to a piece of moving art, to a flower blooming or a tower of cards tumbling down. in showing that amongst all percieved chaos, there can be order.
in the context of a single user, a system acts as a puzzle, as a means of expression, as a rubiks cube of infinite possibility, as an exercise in analysis. interacting with a logical system can be a zen garden of the mind, it can be a method of meditation, or of exploration. interacting with a system is an explicit act of defining the self, of proof that we are able to have an effect on this reality, if even solely in thought.
in the context of two users, a system acts as a perfect equalizer, as a method of compitition in which two users are truly equal in all but their ability to prioritise certain interactions. no amount of physical, social, cultural or any number of other differences can take action other than those the system has been designed to test, or compliment (in the case of lo ka na jivna
) their differences to explore this system in however their heart desires. interacting with a system with another is the purest form of discovering anothers soul, an intimate exercise in which there is a perfect metric to discover the intricacies of how one thinks, and an important method of introspection, discovering how oneself interacts with others, and a mirror for seeing the oneself that exists within the otherself - shown by their interactions in anticipation of your own.
in the context of more than two users, a system acts as a humbling entity. a proof that in many cases we as an individual have less than majority or equal influence on the places and realities we inhabit. it is proof of mutual aid, proof hat we can and must work together in order to further our own goals in a system where many others too have the power to alter it. it is a stark realisation that the specific systems we are part of can favour strategies and means of manipulation, and that specific systems can drift towards certain accumulations or outcomes, inevitably.
and you know what they say may hurt you…
in a harsh world, we can all take solace in appreciation of a good system. we can relish in the accumulation of knowledge of any system we desire, we can meet in equal competition in our card game of choice.
we can theorise how to make this world fairer for everyone.
we can watch the clouds and appreciate their form, perhaps despite our knowledge of their formation, or perhaps because of it.
at times when we are forced to use systems we may hate, we can instead appreciate the unique qualities they give (except for Javascript which has none).
in a world of ever increasing commodification, we can dream of beauty in the free, in the libre, in the realm of pure thought.
:wq
we all live in a yellow submarine
guys gals and enpals im honestly pretty tired of how life works on this hellscape of a ball we call earth. its depressing and tiring and it seems like theres no end in site unless we all follow the example of our brave troops in the us fighting against the forces of bacon.
great another angsty rant from totalAngstlord
please refrain from giggling at the word society, i have already made a shitty meme about it in both the title and opening quote so we should all have it out of our system right?
good.
the society we live in has become increasingly transactional and boy do i hate it. every single gorram tiny aspect of it, someone over in silicon valley, or elsewhere, have found a way to monetise it, and force it upon everyone through years of propoganda until i cant even go sit somewhere in town and group code with my buds without having to buy coffee.
moreso and moreso, thanks to the forty hour working week, are people relegated to this cycle of; work buy repeat
everyday we get closer and closer to our only interaction within society being one of transactions. you work, you go out to a restaurant, and you pay to be a part of society for the evening.
you work, and you and your friends buy tickets to a sportsball thingo, and you get to be a part of society for the afternoon.
our cultural trends are increasingly transactional too.
you want to be part of society thats talking about the latest capeshit movie? better fork over so you and your friends can go see it.
well, kinda yeah, nobody on this earth should have to live in poverty and go without actual substantial access to their basic human rights such as food, shelter, medicine, contact with society and so forth.
but on a deeper level, it just feels like its making each of our interactions less natural.
my ability to enter wider society now depends on the house i can afford to live in, the town i can afford to be in.
i need to fund it with the promise of spending hours of my limited life working not to provide my society and those i know and care for with benefit, but in order to make a stranger rich at my expense.
its even worse than that, in order to get a sandwich i need to BEG someone to allow me to work in a modern dictatorship microcosm for such a time that i can “earn” (massive fuarking emphasis on those quotes) what i need to get that sandwich.
its time to stop letting our ability to have meaningful, societal interactions depend on how well we can beg the modern oligarchs to allow us to sell our bodies to them in order to increase their yearly riches.
short post cos im angry and tired and have to send out more resumes begging people to allow me to eat and not be homeless, yada yada yada
:wq