Random thought about Zizek and the perversity of analyzing ideology

Today, it seemed to me, and I thought I would share with YOU, whoever you are, that Zizek is doing a sort of inverted teleology - for lack of a better term I will call it ideological teleology.

If teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature then Zizek is doing the "converse": He presumes a "natural" account (and by extension a deductively created meta-ideological reckoning) which holds that final causes exist in philosophy. That is to say the truth of the matter is driven backwards from an aggregation of existing "natural" logical-entities/frameworks/ideologies and then things are rearranged and flipped and spun to negate that aggregated/surveyed framework - i.e. the truth lies outside the current meta-ideological reckoning, but the work of finding it is done empirically and thus the belated "actual" truth is arrived at "honestly" at the cost of obliqueness and cohesion.

For example when asked about how he would go about accounting for the paradox of the emphasis of "freedom" (and thus culpability, guilt and persecution) in Stalinism, Zizek replied: "What I aim at in my rethinking of all of these problems is precisely not to draw this conclusion." ("this conclusion" being the expected and normal current tropes and thinking of the specific philosophy/meta-ideology at hand - i.e. what everyone else thinks the answer is). Footnote: Of course this one example is hardly proof, I present it as merely a possible example; with Stalinism he probably has a multitude of other reasons to want to come to a conclusion outside the current thinking.

He surveys the ideological landscape (the pre-existing natural set of beliefs and reactions to a topic) then he sets about, in an inverted-teleological way, making things fit the final cause, which is: there is a new simple truth that lies outside of the current consensus or analysis.

I am not simply saying that Zizek thinks other people are wrong and he is right (although I am sure he thinks that as well) - what I am saying is that there is an unconscious ideological teological first principle lurking in the background of any framing of truth or philosophical anaylsis. This accounts for his constant need to find shocking philosophical reversals in everything and this, of course, is the source of his current popularity I think. But it is not egotism or a desperate need to be right that is the engine behind all this, but rather a meta-ideological dogma and deductive first principle: philosophy is always as yet uncovered. And it goes without saying but I will say it: This is an inevitable pathological result of obsession with Hegelian processes, which, as far as I am concerned, form the only stable meta-meta-ideological teleology - not that anyone wants or needs such things to do philosophy but there are structural constraints on any such perversity and I think Hegel has already done the legwork of fleshing those possibilities out. None are left. Although that would make a fun topic for further posts.

ASCII and the Masons

You know what freaks me out? That a blank space is actually a character. It is a character where there is no character and instead there is a blank space. It is a symbol that is not a symbol. A paradox. A symbol hole (see my previous post for more on this notion). This blank space is ASCII character 32. That is right... there is actually a symbol for a blank space. If you think about it, it makes sense, a printer needs a symbol for a blanks space so that it can "know" that it is supposed to insert a blank spot between two symbols (or words etc.) . But why is it ASCII 32?

Glad you asked! It is because 32 is one level below the highest possible degree Mason (a 33° Mason). This means that anything less than the highest grand poohbah Mason is a nothing (an ASCII 32) or a less than nothing! (ASCII 0 to 31).

Is it any surprise that ASCII character 33 is an exclamation point? Those Masons are rubbing our noses right in their power structure every time we read anything on a computer screen.

I joke of course, but still... If I was a Mason and I invented ASCII, well... I would have done it just like it is.

Another weird thing, the last "control character" is 31 - this makes the blank space the first actual character - the "Zero" of the character set. The non-symbolic or "control characters" in ASCII tell a printer to do something rather than place a character.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#ASCII_control_characters

For instance, ASCII character 8 is a backspace - it tells the print head to go back one. I suppose so you can lay 2 letters on top of each other? This would correspond to an 8° Mason: The "Intendant of the Building" - whatever that is. I am too lazy to research this and elaborate further so if anyone wants to connect the ASCII control characters and what they do to a printer with what the corresponding degree of mason does to society then please let me know what you find out. Better yet, make a youtube video and post me the link so I don't have to use my brain.

Oh, it goes without saying that ASCII character 0 is a null. A void - a nothing worse than a symbolic nothing: A Non-Mason. The null character tells the printer to do nothing... this was helpful on older printers when the printer needed a bit of time to get ready to do its next thing, like a carriage return or something. ASCII 0 just buys some time but now that we have newer more efficient printers the character isn't needed any more. Like you. And me.

P.S. I just noticed that there are 33 vertebrae in the human spine. So maybe the mason numbering thing is a metaphor for their organization being a living entity created by god? The Masons are the spine of god? And ASCII is their Rosetta stone? The law of 5s is a wonderful thing!

Cryptological Applications of the Topology of Information Holes

A missing bit of information can be viewed as a hole. (Footnote: By 'hole' I mean, depending on the dimensionality, one of the following: A gap (1-D), a dent/chunk or cleaving gash (2-D), A tunnel, pocket, or hollow (3-D). I am unsure of what forms a hole can take in higher dimensions although I suspect that visualizing holes transforming over time would lead to other species of holes in 4 or more dimensions.)

Within a representation of data, any two missing bits that are 'adjacent' are then part of the same hole. But the concept of 'adjacent' depends on the structure of the information - i.e. how the information is laid out or represented in actual space (Footnote: and, as per Herny Flynt, how the "reader" is oriented to the data when "observing" it, e.g. his bivalent subtractive stroke equations: II - I = I vs. I = I - II when rotated 180 degrees). If the information is a one dimensional vector then 'adjacent' just means to the left or right. But if the information is in a 2-D matrix then 'adjacent' data becomes the neighbors to the left or right and also those above or below (but not diagonally). In other words, the notion of 'adjacent' depends on the "shape" of the container the data is placed within, that is, the containers, to some degree, constrain what shape is possible for the data. The container itself is usually implicitly a square or a cube with the bit/symbol placed "inside" it. The containers are then arranged in some orderly fashion (into a 1-D vector in the case of a string, or a 2-D marix or 3-D Cartesian grid space).

But the notion of 'adjacent' can take on other forms as well: First, the arrangement does not have to be orderly as long as the shapes of the containers are respected (Footnote: and what if we allow deformation of the shape of a container based on feedback?) so that arrangment could be staggered as with letters on a computer keyboard or bricks in a wall in the case of 2-D representation, or the containers are "shaken" randomly so there is space between containers and some are not touching their nearest neighbor - if so the concept of 'adjacent' again is changed. Secondly, any shapes can be used - tessalatable shapes (penrose tiles!) being desirable here, but not necessarily so. For instance, if the information was stored in hexagons, the concept of adjacent would need to include all six neighbors. Moving this up to higher dimensions (assuming orderly arrangement) the shape of the data can be placed into containers addressed via n-tuples (with n = to the dimension that the data structure resides within) with an extra bit for the storage of the information itself. Thus any ordered shape of data is isomorphic to a one dimensional vector.

There is nothing new in this linear data storage notion. But what is surprising is that the holes in the data are also implicitly there AS LONG as the data is permuted in the correct way within the correct data shape. Thus the holes (and any properties that they lend to the reconstitution of the deleted data that was used to create them) are permutationally sensitive in a way that the data, nor its deleted counterpart(s), is not - and this fact can be harnessed cryptographically.

The advantage to all this is, aside from the gross permutational possibilities derivable from the notion of data "shapes", that the topology and ontology of information holes become relevant assuming that they are irreducible to the topological information structures the holes are part of. For instance, a 3 dimensional solid mass with two independent tunnels through it is topologically equivalent to a 'y' shaped tunnel (owing to the ability to deform the mass contiguously and continuously from the one to the other), but they are two completely different forms of hole (the former structurally independent and the latter structurally dependent - i.e. holes that never meet are NOT the same as holes that intersect and form 'y's etc.).

What if an error correcting hash is applied based on the structure of the information AND the shape and type of the information hole (and is there any other way to apply one anyway)? If so, then the missing data deleted to create an information gash/tunnel that divides the data into two parts (or tunnels through a 3 or higher dimensional data structure) could be reconstituted using the hash, assuming the data was in that particular configuration when the hash was applied. This leads to a cryptological application, one version of which can be demonstrated in practice with the following algorithm:

1) Create a structure and place the data inside it.
2) Create the error correcting hash - possibly specificially modified to suit the form of information hole created in step 3.
3) Randomly gash it or create some other form of informational hole, preferably up to the maximum amount that error correction can reconstitute.
4) Merge the hash onto the information (or keep it as a secret key) and also add in a record of what sort of data structure was used when the hash was applied.
5) Scramble the data in a reversible way, e.g. swap each adjacent bit with its neighbor.
6) Then put the data into a new structure.
7) Repeat the whole procedure as many times as desired.

To retrieve the original message just reverse the algorithm, reconstituting the deleted data at each relevant stage.

Is this mode of working with data a form of compression? No, in that the hashes will add, not remove, information. But in a sense yes, because the amount of the original information present will shrink - concealment as a form of compression! This should be no surprise as compression is a form of concealment. Hiding is not the same as destroying. Implicit in all this is the assumption that what is missing from something is not functionally equivalent to a simple inversion of what remains, holes have their own rules counter-intuitively independent of the objects which instantiate them. That is to say, the ontology of holes is not reducible to the ontology of objects.

Lacan and the Ma(W).

This is a bit of poetry from a friend. He says he wrote it without intending for it to mean anything. The comic, that he did not create, is part of the bricolage aspect of it, it accompanies, clarifies, and unifies. To me, it is essential that the comic be inserted before the last line. To him it probably didn't matter and the comic was an afterthought. But art doesn't care about the artist. Art only cares about me. So this is the way it is.

1. Mother spins the Web minus the Baby. If M, then All - infant= 'WE'

The We entraps the negative baby, negative baby fails to see The Ma(W).
The Maw can see it all at once. In blindness, there is language.

The end time of language is the vision of blindness.

Blindness is the appearance of the Maw.

Lacan and happiness

So I am now reading Lacan. And while I haven't read enough to know whether what I am about to say is inherent in or already part of Lacanian psychoanalysis, I will say that, for me, it certainly seems to be a natural corollary to it.

And that is:

Happiness is the annihilation of the self as subject.

By "subject" here, I mean subject in all of it's multifarious senses: the linguistic subject created by the inside/outside division of self-predication, the fleeting ghost-like experiential subject of self-awareness, the lacanian split (or barred) subject as precipitate or breach, as a noun-ified-signification/signifier-complex entity, and yet also as a verb/process.

Happiness is fleeting because it exists only as a lacuna between the subject as chooser and the subject as self-perceiving understander. The act of choosing may not be conscious, nor must the subject exist temporally or logically at the moment of choosing. However, in the role of "understander" the mind is self aware of the process whereby the subject is recognized to be, retroactively & ex post facto, the source of the positive choice that created the causal condition(s) in which self-annihilation was possible. This entails, in Lacanian terms (I am guessing) the traversal of fantasy via the relation between the symbolization of the choice as an act and it's relation to the subject-less experience that was perceived after-the-fact as happiness. Happiness can be viewed as the signifierization of the Lacanian "Real" leaking into the symbolic order - but like quantum velocity or position, it doesn't exist until AFTER the measurement has been made, violently forcing it into the symbolic order.

Via the traversal, happiness can encompass a broad range of self-reported positive human experiences; from the satisfaction of reflecting on the successful accomplishment of complex life goals and also the simple decision to focus on warm pleasurable sensation of wind blowing on a spring day, etc...

When the self is annihilated the illusion of peace is created after the fact. It is, of course, a false peace, as it is transitory and ridiculously unstable.

Which brings me to the point... there is a broad family of self-annihilation seeking behavior, of which happiness-seeking is only one relative. People say they want happiness, when what they really want is the pleasure of self-annihilation. This accounts for the seemingly contradictory behavior of people and their paradoxical choices on a day to day basis. The alcoholic who loves hugging his girlfriend while drunk, knowing she is repulsed. The workaholic who won't make time for her boyfriend even though he brings her happiness. The environmental sustainability expert that creates superfluous poly-amorous relationships that she is incapable of sustaining. The spiritual tourist visiting the idea of meditation without real effort exerted to achieve the focus necessary. The decisions and behaviors and internal monologues all seem contradictory and competitive, when really they are all just decentralized expressions of the same pursuit.

And if people think that the goal of life is happiness, and happiness is really just a first name for a family whose last name is self-annihilation, perhaps one of the siblings, parents or cousins might be a better and more efficient path to get there.

Immanentizing the Eschaton via Superposition

Quantum superposition is a state whereby an object (a particle, atom, molecule or grouping thereof) takes on two (or more) states (or properties) at once - like a light switch that is both on and off. Superposition is one of the weirdest things ever discovered by humanity and it will have profound ramifications for years to come - the latest example being quantum computers, which are in their inchoate stage of evolution but will probably be fully formed in 10 or 20 years.

In any case, superposition ends when the Schrödinger wave equation collapses, forcing the superposition to fall into a "normal state" and pick one of the "opposing" states to fall into. The problem is that Physicists have NO idea what makes the wave collapse. Which, you would think, would be a problem that every particle/quantum physicist would be up all night every night trying to solve. Instead, they shoulder shrug. Bizarre reaction if you ask me. Anyhow... Supposedly, it is interference from the immediate surroundings of the object in superposition that causes the wave collapse. Up until recently, only incredibly microscopic particles were thought capable of being put into superposition because there is so much "interference" from the external world that anything larger than a particle is quickly knocked by gravity, or electro-magnetic forces, etc back into a normal state. The idea being that the world is filled up with all sorts of "interfering" influences. Now, it turns out macroscopic objects CAN be put in superposition (which, if you have half a brain, should at the very least be startling):

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18669-first-quantum-effects-seen-in-visible-object.html

I repeat: This means that macroscopic entities can be put into superposition. Hypothetically, we will soon be able to actually turn a regular cat into a REAL Schrödinger's cat (Schrödinger's cat was created as a thought experiment and so was meant and thought to be only a hypothetical possibility). This means that, very soon, we may be able to ask "What is it like to be in superposition from a subjective point of view?". In other words if you yourself were put into superposition, what would that be like? What would it be like to be in an environment that is in superposition - to be in a room where the light is off AND on? To think a thought and NOT think a thought?

Evidently the key to magnifying the effects of superposition is a "qubit bridge". From the above article:

The key was to connect the resonating strip to a superconducting qubit – a tiny electric circuit that can easily be prepared in a quantum superposition of two energy states. "The qubit acts as a bridge between the microscopic and the macroscopic worlds," says O'Connell. By tuning the frequency at which the qubit cycled between its two states to match the resonant frequency of the metallic strip, the qubit's quantum state could be transferred to the resonator at will.

Which brings me to the thrust of my posting. If:

a) it is the surrounding local environment that forces a superposition to end and

b) the effects of superposition can be magnified and

c) this magnification effect can be created to cascade such that condition a above is suspended in the immediate local area where b is happening and whereby this step c leads back to step b in a ever widening sphere of influence then

d) the whole universe could be put into superposition resulting in

e) a state whereby there is no outside locality with which to force the quantum wave collapse resulting in

f) the end of the causal universe since nothing can be truly said to happen if nothing is causing anything else meaning

g) the universe is destroyed because nothing is happening. Technically the universe would still "exist" but it would exist at that point only as a potentiality.

If the effect of this propagation occurred at the speed of light, in literally less than a second, the earth would be placed in superposition effectively stopping life as we know it and, assuming the effect grows without stopping, then the earth would be at the center of the propagation and would never fall out of superposition as the sphere of influence grew wider and wider, so even if the entire universe was infinite and it took an infinite amount of time for the effect to propagate throughout the entire universe that fact would have no bearing on earth where the propagation started.

What if the effect grew to the solar level or the galactic level and then collapsed back? Who knows? Maybe everything would snap back as if nothing had happened, but I doubt it as the time that would have elapsed would have been significant and then the question becomes "What happens to complex systems that are placed in superposition over extended periods?". My guess is that everything gets scrambled like an egg.

Three parting thoughts:

1) This all is yet another reason to fear science and/or the large hadron collider.

2) Maybe the rapture that Christians speak of is merely the superposition of all humanity.

3) Maybe being placed into superposition will be like a drug. Maybe it is an amazing unverbalizable orgasmic and yet terrifying religious epiphany. Perhaps within years we will have a whole new counterculture of superpositional addicts and superpositional psychonauts. Who then will be the Albert Hofmann of the future?

Destroying the Universe

Quantum superposition is a state whereby an object (a particle, atom, molecule or grouping thereof) takes on two properties at once - like a light switch that is both on and off. Superposition is one of the weirdest things ever discovered by humanity and it will have profound ramifications for years to come - the latest example being quantum computers, which are in their inchoate stage of evolution but will probably be fully formed in 10 or 20 years.

In any case, super position ends when the Schrödinger wave equation collapses forcing the superposition to fall into a "normal state" and pick one of the "opposing" states to fall into. The problem is, that Physicists have NO idea what makes the wave collapse. Supposedly, it is interference from the immediate surroundings of the object in superposition. Up until recently, only incredibly microscopic particles were thought capable of being put into superposition. Now that is no longer the case:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18669-first-quantum-effects-seen-in-visible-object.html

This means that macroscopic entities can be put into superposition. Hypothetically, we will soon be able to actually turn a regular cat into a REAL Schrödinger's cat (Schrödinger's cat was created as a thought experiment and so was meant and thought to be only a hypothetical possibility). This means that, very soon we may be able to ask "What is it like to be in superposition from a subjective point of view?". In other words if you yourself were put into superposition, what would that be like? What would it be like to be in an environment that is in superposition - to be in a room where the light is off AND on? To think a thought and NOT think a thought?

Evidently the key to magnifying the effects of superposition is a "qubit bridge". From the above article:

The key was to connect the resonating strip to a superconducting qubit – a tiny electric circuit that can easily be prepared in a quantum superposition of two energy states. "The qubit acts as a bridge between the microscopic and the macroscopic worlds," says O'Connell. By tuning the frequency at which the qubit cycled between its two states to match the resonant frequency of the metallic strip, the qubit's quantum state could be transferred to the resonator at will.

Which brings me to the thrust of my posting. If:

a) it is the surrounding local environment that forces a superposition to end and

b) the effects of superposition can be magnified and

c) this magnification effect can be created to cascade such that condition a above is suspended in the immediate local area where b is happening whereby this step c leads back to step b in a ever widening sphere of influence then

d) the whole universe could be put into superposition resulting in

e) a state whereby there is no outside locality with which to force the quantum wave collapse resulting in

f) the end of the causal universe since nothing can be truly said to happen if nothing is causing anything else meaning

g) the universe is destroyed because nothing is happening. Technically the universe would still "exist" but it would exist at that point only as a potentiality.

If the effect of this propagation occurred at the speed of light, in literally less than a second, the earth would be placed in superposition effectively stopping life as we know it and, assuming the effect grows without stopping, then the earth would be at the center of the propagation and would never fall out of superposition as the sphere of influence grew wider and wider, so even if the entire universe was infinite and it took an infinite amount of time for the effect to propagate throughout the entire universe that fact would have no bearing on earth where the propagation started.

What if the effect grew to the solar only level or the galactic level and then collapsed back? Who knows? Maybe everything would snap back as if nothing had happened, but I doubt it as the time that would have elapsed would have been significant and then the question becomes "What happens to complex systems that are placed in superposition over extended periods?". My guess is that everything gets scrambled like an egg.

Three parting thoughts:

1) This all is yet another reason to fear science and/or the large hadron collider.

2) Maybe the rapture that Christians speak of is merely the superposition of all humanity.

3) Maybe being placed into superposition will be like a drug. Maybe it is an amazing unverbalizable orgasmic and yet terrifying religious epiphany. Perhaps within years we will have a whole new counterculture of superpositional psychnauts. Who then will be the Albert Hofmann of the future?