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?

Cattell's 16 Factor Test Results Warmth ||||||||||||||| 46% Intellect |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Emotional Stability |||||||||||| 34% Aggressiveness |||||||||||||||||| 58% Liveliness ||||||||||||||||||||| 66% Dutifulness ||||||||||||||| 42% Social Assertiveness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Sensitivity ||||||||||||||| 46% Paranoia ||||||||||||||| 42% Abstractness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Introversion ||||||||||||||| 46% Anxiety ||||||||| 30% Openmindedness |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 86% Independence |||||||||||| 34% Perfectionism ||||||||||||||| 46% Tension ||||||||||||||||||||| 62% Take Cattell 16 Factor Test (similar to 16pf) personality tests by similarminds.com

Discrete Group Theory, Finite State Automata and music.

Idea:

A finite state automaton accepts two initial values (or a single 2 letter word, however you want to look at it).

The initial values are 2 numbers between 1 and 128 (the numbers correspond of course to MIDI notes).

Then, then the automata uses the group operation (via a lookup matrix or whatever...) to reduce the 2 numbers resulting in a single number (the "product" of number 1 and number 2 via the group operation). The output is now the second number, the old second number becomes the new first number. This process then repeats ad infinitum in the same sort of way that fibinacci numbers are generated recursively/iteratively.

Some details to work out:
1) Are only notes mapped to the group elements? Or perhaps volumes or durations too? Would they be produced via seperate processes into a long list and then the ordinal values of the list would be combined into tuples? Or would each group element be assigned to a single note/volume/duration tuple? If the latter the group would need around 128 * 128 * 32 + 128 elements. (128 notes, 128 volumes, 32 types of note durations - I made 32 up, sue me - and 128 types of un-notes, i.e. rests - I also pulled the 128 un-notes out of my ass, but you get the idea.) This is 524416 elements. Ssubscript9 has 362880 elements. Too little. Ssubscript10 has 3628800, far too many. Not sure what group would work best. Some subgroup of Ssubscript10. Or you could up the amount of volume possibilities to be up to 256 or something. This would give a value of 1,048,704 elements. Asubscript10 has 1,814,400 elements which is getting closer... you get the idea.
2) What pair of initial values produces the longest melody before the melody repeats? I am assuming that since it is a finite group there will eventually be a repeat. My knowledge of group theory is novice at best so this assumption may not be true.
3) Which mapping between musical tuple elements and group elements will produce the most interesting melodies? Is there anyway to make educated guesses rather than poke around randomly?
4) Will melodies wander and then get trapped in subgroups? e.g. if there is a cyclic subgroup of order two contained in the more massive group (which I would imagine would not be uncommon) then if the automata stumbled into the subgroup the melody would eternally cycle between the two values of the subgroup. How to avoid this issue? Or at least have a method whereby the initial 2 seed values garauntee a looooong melody before the problem is encountered. Is this overall issue a solvable/decidable problem?
5) what algorithm can be used to reduce to elements given that groups of the order of x will require a matrix of x^2 elements - using a matrix/lookup table is not efficient when the group is Ssubscript10!

NOTE: googling around about this idea lead me to this very interesting looking book:
http://www.worldscibooks.com/mathematics/7107.html

(and also this one called the "Topos of Music" but I am not quoting it: http://www.springer.com/birkhauser/mathematics/book/978-3-7643-5731-3)

APPLICATIONS OF AUTOMATA THEORY AND ALGEBRA
Via the Mathematical Theory of Complexity to Biology, Physics, Psychology, Philosophy, and Games

by John L Rhodes (University of California at Berkeley, USA)
edited by Chrystopher L Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
foreword by Morris W Hirsch (University of California at Berkeley, USA)

This book was originally written in 1969 by Berkeley mathematician John Rhodes. It is the founding work in what is now called algebraic engineering, an emerging field created by using the unifying scheme of finite state machine models and their complexity to tie together many fields: finite group theory, semigroup theory, automata and sequential machine theory, finite phase space physics, metabolic and evolutionary biology, epistemology, mathematical theory of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and game theory. The author thus introduced a completely original algebraic approach to complexity and the understanding of finite systems. The unpublished manuscript, often referred to as "The Wild Book", became an underground classic, continually requested in manuscript form, and read by many leading researchers in mathematics, complex systems, artificial intelligence, and systems biology. Yet it has never been available in print until now.

Speculative Metaphysics #4939834987 - Death is the end of the personal multiverse

If the universe splits everytime a quantum wave collapses then there are an infinite amount of mes and yous across all the universes. But all the us-es have a limited time span. As each of us dies in our own particular world we return to heaven where we conglomerate with the us-s that have already died. When all of the mes die the soul is complete. When all of the yous die your soul is complete. This also explains why when we die we can no longer interact with the world. Since we are dead and removed from the quantum universe splitting we can not progress forward in time with the rest of the non dead universe.

Death is the end of the personal multiverse.

Speculative Metaphysics #1249783492749 & Conspiracy Theory #1089402840280000

Pentemychos

In this work, Pherecydes taught his philosophy through the medium of mythic representations. Although it is lost, the fragments that survive are enough to reconstruct a basic outline. Aristotle in Metaphysics (section 1091 b 8) thus characterized Pherecydes' work as a mixture of myth and philosophy.

The book "Pentemychos" is an elaborate version of cosmogenesis, describing how three eternal "things" or "beings" beget (or become, depending on how you read) a number of principles or forms before the ordered world, the cosmos, appears. The three eternal principles are Zas ("he who lives"), Chronos ("time"), and Chthonie ("underlying the earth").

So, uh... yeah, I had a lot of coffee today. Waaaaaay, too much. Anyway, while surfing about who OWNS our banks here in America - which is impossible to do! Really! Try it. I mean, get a list of the individuals and/or corporations with the largest number of shares (besides pension funds, etc.) I gave up, or rather got distracted because looking for banking information of course led me to rothschild conspiracy junk, and then I OF COURSE wanted to find a high rez picture of the rothschild coat of arms, which is also seemingly impossible to do and then I wound up reading some art criticism of edward rothschild's called "the meaning of unintelligibility in modern art" which sounds great but I couldn't find the original text and then I wound up on another conspiracy website even though at that point I wasn't even looking for conspiracy stuff and then of course that led me metatron's cube (not to be confused with megatron!) which led me to pentemychos. Don't ask me how. I think.

ANYWAY... Pentemychos was mentioned in Damascius' "De Principiis" and it is some sort of mystic ordering principle and also the place where, well, read for yourself:

The ancient Pythagorean pentagram was drawn with two points up and represented the doctrine of Pentemychos. Pentemychos means "five recesses" or "five chambers", also known as the pentagonas — the five-angle, and was the title of a work written by Pythagoras' teacher and friend Pherecydes of Syros (This is actually a lost book whose contents are preserved in Damascius de principiis, quoted in Kirk and Raven, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1956, page 55.). It was also the "place" where the first pre-cosmic offspring had to be put in order for the ordered cosmos to appear. The pentemychos is in Tartaros.

So uh... Note the H.P.Lovecraftian connection with the Cthulhu-esqe original before-creation uggga ugggga incomprehensible old gods monsters yadda yadda etc. I won't bother with the whole Pentagram = sign of satan crap. If you believe that, then you are retarded because the pentagram was around long before our modern notion of Hell/Satan. I mean it does mean that NOW, but not back then... Anyway... if the pentemychos isn't the starting point for a Hellblazer comic book plot then I don't know what is. I think if memory serves me correct, Pente = 5 and Mychos was the god of darkness, of which the greeks didn't seem to say much even though he was one of the original gods. So yeah, here we are back at the Law of Fives again. Ugh.

I digress of course. But on coffeee that is the pooooooiiiinnnntttt. Anyway, to make this fit into the 2 themes of this blog: Artificial Conspiracy Theories & Pataphysical Speculative Metaphysics I will now get to the point:

Speculative Metaphysics #1249783492749 & Conspiracy Theory #1089402840280000

A conspiracy dates back to the pythagoreans which of course include Pherecydes and before him Heraclitus and any process philosophy is written by a secret member of the conspiracy which includes the illuminati and masons etc and alfred north whitehead and your mother and the whole point of the conspiracy is this:

The three eternal principles are Zas ("he who lives"), Chronos ("time"), and Chthonie ("underlying the earth").

Zas is CONSCIOUSNESS
Chronos is TIME
Chthonie is SPACE/MATTER

But there are 2 things missing. Duh! You need FIVE things to complete a pentemychos. The conspiracy is desperately looking for those 2 missing metaphysical entities outlined in Pherecydes' writings. Both gulf wars were to gain unlimited access to the MULTITUDES of cuneiform tablets located in Iraq.

What are these entities? Obviously, they will need to be completely seperate ontological categories which mankind up until recently could not concieve of.

They are:
1) "Infomorphs"

They are beings of pure information which access our monkey consciousness. Instead of us passing around information as memes or oral tradition, the reverse is the case, they literally pass us around which is how thought is created. Thought is a byproduct of being touched by an infomorph. Thinking about the number 5? That is an infomorph using you for amusement or some other incomprehensible function. Then 10 seconds later thinking about feeling happy? Well you just got handed from one informorph to the next. Sleep is when the infomorphs get bored with playing hot patato with your consciousness and you are put in some cosmic playbox a la that Star Trek episode that got lampooned on the Simpsons. Coffee, accellerates their ability to hand us from one infomorph to the next. Death is when they break us.

In this metaphysics, we are not made of matter. We are made of the causal succession of hot potato infomorph intersections that result in our full stream of consciousness. But our monkey body still exists. The intersections occur in a monkey body that falls into one of the causal streams of hot potato passes. This explains memories of past lives and reincarnation. Our current monkey body is just picking up where the last monkey body left off. Those poor monkeys... possessed by something that is just a by product of non-dimensional infomorph interactions.

Or something like that. I don't even know what the fuck I am saying anymore I am so caffinated.

On to:

2) Fucking. Yeah, I said fucking. Well it turns out that fucking, be it your partner or your hand, is really... crap, my phone is ringing. This is an important call. Gotta go.

Okay, I am back now. Turns out I was wrong and fucking has nothing to do with it.

A comparatively large number of sources say Pherecydes was the first to teach the eternality and transmigration of human souls.[12] That he was the first to teach such a thing is doubtful, but that he was among the first and that he did profess this teaching is certain. Professor Hermann S. Schibli, the most acclaimed scholar on Pherecydes, concludes that Pherecydes "included in his book ["Pentemychos"] at least a rudimentary treatment of the immortality of the soul, its wanderings in the underworld, and the reasons for the soul's incarnations".[13]

So 2) is obviously...

9/11 predicted by our money.

This is freakin' hilarious. Or downright scary. Depending on your take on the Law of Fives.

http://thebiggestsecretpict.online.fr/nwo/20$+911.htm

Conspiracy Theory #148923987349 - American Indians

In this post I will be taking the "Money Masters" conspiracy thoery (that international banking controls the world) and doing something common: juxtaposing it with the current U.S. financial meltdown; but I will be giving it a new twist: American Indians.

After being lied to repeatedly by white europeans, the American Indians (one or more tribes - doesn't matter which ones, use your imagination!) created a plan. That plan was a) learn and understand who and/or what controlled the white men & b) utilize this fulcrum of power to exact revenge for decades/centuries of haphazard genocide and exploitation.

Item a) was easy. Money controls white men. b) was harder and took a century or so of interbreeding and tightly hidden subterfuge to accomplish. Of course, by the time the American Indian Conspiracy had succeeded in getting the power it needed, most of the American Indian population was already dead and gone, which of course only fueled the revenge motivated conspiracy onward. That time, of course was 1913. The creation of the Fed.

Once the fed was created, they had a 100 year plan to destroy the anscestors of their oppressors. 2013. All the conspiracy nuts missed it by one year with all the 2012 blah blah blah stuff. And they got the wrong indians! Not the Mayans and their calendar! But the American Indians and their hidden control of the American banking system.

Anyway, once the American economic system is destroyed (which of course is happening currently!) there will be some sort of cataclysm that will wipe any white man lacking American Indian (or possibly also Inuit) mitochondiral DNA out. If they are into irony the method of delivery will probably be the modern analog of small pox filled blankets.

Of course the nice thing about the creation of the Fed in 1913 is that you can insert ANYONE you want into the picture provided they start early enough (I am guessing 1813 would be around the right year for the start of the conspiracy - everyone loves 100, right? Besides those wacky Mayans and their 22 based numeral system, of course.)

So, if you don't know the details about the fed, below is a bit I grabbed off some other site, I don't know if any of the facts are true but I am guessing they are, as it all jibes with what I currently know. Which frankly, even though I am joking around here, is actually quite frightening!

For extra fun, insert your favorite conspiratorial entity as the founder and controller of the Fed and banks (like I did randomly with the American Indians):

Question: What caused the US Housing market collapse?

Answer: The Real Causes of the Housing Market Collapse, by Patrick Carmack,

The National Debt now exceeds $9.2 trillion dollars. In Fiscal Year 2006 the U.S. Government spent $406 billion on interest payments.to holders of that debt. Why do we have such a gigantic debt? Because Democrat and Republican officeholders spend far more than the Government receives in revenue.

In 2007 alone, the US government paid out roughly $430 billion in interest to pay for money borrowed to finance previous deficits. The interest total for just the last 20 years – back to 1988 - is well over $6.5 trillion. Interest payments in 2008 alone will again exceed $400 billion. Where on earth will all that money come from? If the government borrowed it all from the credit markets (i.e., sold US Treasury bills, bonds and notes – government IOUs) to raise the money it would dry up all available credit. Interest rates would skyrocket and the economy would collapse. So how does it do this year after year without such dire effects?

Here is the trick. Take, for example, a year like this year in which the government runs a $400 billion dollar deficit. The Treasury Department has to sell $400 billion in US Treasury bills, bonds and notes (government IOUs) to buyers at a rate of interest sufficient to attract their money (and beat the interest competition of other banks' CDs and other governments' bills, bonds and notes). To avoid a credit squeeze, the Federal Reserve System Open Market Committee in Washington directs the NY Federal Reserve Bank to purchase roughly 10% of that total (or $40 billion in our example) in existing US bills, bonds, and notes from the current holders. To pay for them it creates the $40 billion out of nothing, merely with keystrokes on a computer. Through more keystrokes, this new $40 billion is deposited into the banks of the various bill, bond, and note sellers, thereby increasing the reserves of those banks by $40 billion.

Pursuant to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 those banks must keep only 10% of those new deposits on "reserve." (Because these banks do not have to keep 100% on reserve, this banking system is called a "fractional reserve" system.). So of the $40 billion deposited, the banks must keep 10% on reserve ($4 billion) and may loan out $36 billion (90%), for business loans, mortgages, credit card loans, to purchase government bonds - for whatever borrowers want. Those loans (and payments) are in turn deposited in banks (very few folks put their money in mattresses). So of the $36 billion loaned out and then re-deposited, the banks receiving the new deposits can then loan out 90% or $32.4 billion, retaining 10% or $3.6 billion as reserves.

Banks repeat this redeposit-reloan process, reduced 10% each time, until the 10% reserves retained have reduced the funds available for loan to zero. This cunning process allows the banks to create out of nothing nine times the original $40 billion in new deposits received from the Federal Reserve (the "Fed"), or $360 billion dollars. This total is concealed from the public by the only partial expansion of the loan total at each repetitive step.

We can easily see that even by the second re-loan step mentioned above, the banks have loaned out $68.4 billion based on the original $40 billion deposited. The end result of the process is that the banks receiving the deposits and re-deposits collectively have loaned out $360 billion dollars, which they created out of nothing, and have retained $40 billion in reserve. The Fed created the first $40 billion, the banks $360 billion, equaling $400 billion dollars. Thus the credit markets are stabilized even though the US government has borrowed $400 billion.

But notice, the Fed only created the initial 10% ($40 billion). Privately owned banks created 90% ($360 billion) out of nothing, and loaned it out at interest. At even 6% that is $21.6 billion dollars per year in interest. Some of this profit goes to the private stockholders of the banks. However, the banks conceal much of this vast profit from the public as undistributed or retained earnings. Five banks hold over 50% of all deposits in the United States. This means that in a year with a $400 billion deficit (such as FY 2007-2008), those five banks will receive over 50% of approximately 6% interest on the newly created $360 billion: over $10 billion per year, from now on, for creating money out of nothing. This is profoundly unjust, and dangerous to any government, especially in a country that prides itself on being a democracy.

Note that the Fed, not the United States Treasury, created the initial $40 billion in our example. The 12 Federal Reserve banks are private corporations the stock of which is owned by private banks in their districts, not by the United States Government. The United States Treasury pays the Fed interest on the US bills, bonds, and notes the Fed buys with the money it creates out of nothing. The Fed routinely holds about 10% of the United States National Debt (US Treasury bills bonds, notes), which it has accumulated to provide the base for the rest, as explained above.

6% interest on the nearly trillion dollars in bonds it now owns provides the Fed with roughly $50 billion in revenue. With this money the Fed (1) pays some money to its private banks stockholders, (2) uses some to create giant unaudited slush funds to manipulate currency and stock markets (ostensibly to help avoid economic crises such as the one we are currently in), and (3) then takes out whatever it wishes - without any Congressional oversight or external audit - for expenses, salaries, perks, jets, lavish parties, etc.. The rest it returns to the US Treasury. In this manner the Federal Reserve operates independently of our elected Congress and external oversight.

A well-meaning, but later-disillusioned President Woodrow Wilson signed into law The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 that authorized this profoundly unjust system. This law transferred money creation from our elected government to private banks. The vast economic wealth that contorted and deliberately complex law of 1913 concentrated in the hands of the privately-owned national banks is almost incalculable. It is concentrating the wealth of the nation in fewer and fewer hands as they create over 90% of our new money, year after year, and receive the interest tribute on it from the American people to whom they have loaned it.

Deficits fuel the fire of economic injustice by requiring borrowing which requires new money creation, by the private banks. Wars fuel deficits. Conflicts and fear fuel wars. The mass media fuels conflicts and fear. The bankers own and/or control the mass media. Full circle.

And one last addendum that I dug up which suggests that the conspiracy started or is run from the New York area:

". . . [E]ach commercial bank receives one vote regardless of its size, unlike most corporate voting structures in which the number of votes is tied to the number of shares a person holds. The New York Federal Reserve district contains over 1,000 member banks, so it is highly unlikely that even the largest and most powerful banks would be able to coerce so many smaller ones to vote in a particular manner. To control the vote of a majority of member banks would mean acquiring a controlling interest in about 500 member banks of the New York district." [Prof. Edward Flaherty, University of Charleston, "Who Owns and Controls the Federal Reserve?" (July 18, 1997); citations omitted.]

Conspiracy Theory #12408484894

The current economic meltdown is the result of a financial bubble (and monetary expansion) produced by the fed in conjunction with lax and predatory lending standards, etc...

The conspiracy is that the end goal was not the economic destruction of the U.S. or capitalism or a market implosion. The goal was simply to produce more houses faster. This could be because there will be an all out attack on the U.S. that will wipe out the entire population while leaving the housing and other infrastructure completely intact. Or maybe aliens just like the way houses look from space and wanted more of them. Did I mention the reptile people who control everything and to humans look completely human? No? That's because I am a reptile. Just kidding. I am normal. But if you are paranoid you will never know, huh?

Things to Ponder #1023981208

What are the metaphysical assumptions about causality inherent in a statistical analysis of DNA SNP's? Or more broadly in statistics in general?

Things to Learn #934872937823

Cholesky Decomposition
Path Analysis

Speculative Metaphysics #6245245555

From Wikipedia (about the cathars):

They did not believe in one all-encompassing god, but in two, both equal and comparable in status. They held that the physical world was evil and created by Rex Mundi (translated from Latin as "king of the world"), who encompassed all that was corporeal, chaotic and powerful; the second god, the one whom they worshipped, was entirely disincarnate: a being or principle of pure spirit and completely unsullied by the taint of matter. He was the god of love, order and peace.

According to some Cathars, the purpose of man's life on Earth was to transcend matter, perpetually renouncing anything connected with the principle of power and thereby attained union with the principle of love. According to others, man's purpose was to reclaim or redeem matter, spiritualizing and transforming it.

It is the last part that I find interesting. How does a human reclaim or redeem matter? Obviously by "spiritualizing it". But what does that mean?

Perhaps, this is done by focusing the will on the object in question. Praying that god enters the object (a la PKD's Zebra - see earlier blog) and reclaims it. This transubstantiates the object permanently from base matter into god or some other sort of extension of god (something that is not matter but functions like matter yet is lacking the evil and baseness of matter).

Obviously, the most import matter to transform is the human flesh. I suppose spiritual contemplation alone (or saintly acts etc.) is all that is needed to accomplish this. But what does it mean for a lamppost to be removed from the power of Rex Mundi and placed into the arms of the True God of Love?

Perhaps, once the job of the cathars is completed by humanity (or whomever) and all has been spiritualized, the universe will cease to exist (like in Arthur C. Clark's Nine Billion Names of God).

Wishing upon a star now makes complete sense. The wish isn't for the wisher but for the star.

Speculative Metaphysics #04853508921

Nothing is real. Everyone makes up a reality or buys into the reality of someone else. All realities are equally as good as any other.

For instance, some believe there are mind control weapons being used on them. And that they are being "gangstalked".

See for instance: http://www.gangstalkingworld.com/

If that doesn't work try:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080121103228/http://www.gangstalkingworld.com/

Hilariously, when I tried to visit it for the first time, I couldn't access it. If I believed I was being gangstalked, the fact that I couldn't reach the site would seem intentional and related to me as opposed to being causally unconnected to me. Perhaps you too will be unable to access it.

The point is that any sufficiently large group of people is all that is needed to validate a reality. It doesn't matter if anyone is actually being gangstalked. If enough people can find one another and share details, and the details match, then the reality becomes fact for those who believe it. This means they ARE being gangstalked.

Soon, the gangstalkees will form a collective plan. This plan will obviously seek to rectify the greivances of the gangstalkees - to stop the stalking.

The plan will probably go something like this:

Since the mind control and stalking cannot be falsified nor can it be detected, the only way to fight back is to attack the system. The system, is of course, to the gangstalkee, the symbol for all that cannot be controlled but is created by a group of sentient beings acting in concert, the source of all that is the causally desirable and undesirable (beyond the immediate social circle of the gangstalkee).

The system has many parts. Some parts are engaging in mind control and gangstalking. These parts are forever hidden. Sometimes they might be exposed and dealt with but one can never be sure. Perhaps the suspected perpatrator is truly innocent. Who can know?

But other parts support the hidden system. These parts can be attacked. The scoffers, especially the ones who seek to publicly undermine the efforts of the gangstalkees. The psychiatrists that fail to admit that there is too much cohesion to all the collective stories of the gangstalkees. Scientists and others who create technology or ideas that can be used for mind control and terrorization.

The gangstalkees and mind control victims will soon form a seperate society. Unlike anything mankind has ever seen. It will have its own manifesto. Its own constitution. And it will be its own system. It will do things. Terrible things in the name of survival and truth and justice.

And it will be justified. By common brain chemistry and the self-validation that comes with sheer numbers.

Unfalsifiable theories are and will increasingly be the bread and butter of belief.

Speculative Metaphysics #2503498273

There is space. There is time. There is matter. There are human monkeys. The human monkeys have skulls made of bone. Inside the skulls are brains. The brains give the monkeys consciousness. The brains are made of matter too. The brains think via the re-arrangement of matter and energy. The brains are constructed so they detect patterns. Detecting patterns is the main purpose of the brains, without pattern detection the monkeys cannot function and cannot create more monkeys.

Anything that is not a pattern cannot be seen by the brains - it is Aussersein. Because the brains see patterns they look for patterns related to the patterns they have previously detected (and believe to be true/existant-in-the-world-outside-the-brain). This is the law of fives.

Empirical verification is the only reasonable way to separate patterns that exist in the world from patterns merely imagined to exist. Unfortunately, no one person can engage in the empirical verification necessary to support a functioning in-the-world metaphysics. Therefore, others must be trusted to give testimony/witness to the patterns that the brain has detected. This testimony elevates the patterns to truth.

Who should a monkey trust? Expert monkeys who claim to have spent many years investigating a particular aspect of reality? The writing of long dead monkeys? What the majority of other monkeys believe?

If the monkey believes only what he can verify the monkey will be very busy verifying all the time. And some patterns cannot be falsified. Ever. What should a monkey think about those?

It is hard to be a monkey. So many choices to be made.

Girlfriend Update 2008-10-27

Not sure how things are going right now.

She seems to be avoiding fighting right now.

I took my son to see my mom (his grandmother) down in virginia (because my mom was vacationing there with my crazy annoying niece). Girlfriend was pissed at first because I didn't tell her about all the events over this weekend (bandpractice sat, driving to see my mom, gone sunday with my mom, back to work monday, band show on monday night). I told her. But not that they would all be on the same weekend and I didn't remind her the week of.

Anyway... Drove car in middle of the night. Slept until 11:00 the next day (AWESOME!) while my mom took niece and my son to ride horses. Then we went to the mall and bought crap, and noticed the large number of hispanics out in the middle of mall in bumfuck virginia - wierd.

Came back and went out to dinner. Dinner was a disaster - crying niece and whining son and cold food. I realized I was that guy in the restaurant that everyone looks at and says "man I am GLAD I am not THAT guy". Fuck.

Drove home and girlfriend was thankfully asleep. She didn't give me crap that I didn't call her saturday night to let her know that I was okay. She didn't give me too much crap that I took my son out to eat too late for him to want to eat.

Her not giving me crap is a good sign. We'll see how it goes as winter progresses. I really should buy her a sunlamp but part of me wants to see how bad things will get natrually because I don't think she will really use a lamp over the long run if at all - I don't think she think she has SAD.