2010.03.07 19:00 - Step 1 (of 12?)

The Guardian for this meeting was Calvino Rabeni. The comments are by Calvino Rabeni.

In which the intrepid denizens of PlayAsBeing contemplate whether they could think their way out of a cardboard box.

Mitzi Mimistrobell: n SL
Calvino Rabeni: I see something under preferences/sound
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Yes, Enable Voice Chat. "can you hear me now?"
Calvino Rabeni: I'm off to a slow start here - getting the UI set up
Mitzi Mimistrobell: no worries
Calvino Rabeni: On a laptop, the windows crowd and bury one another
Calvino Rabeni: Anyway, what do you think, can your audio work?
Mitzi Mimistrobell: I think it is set up. Ihave it set to voice when I press CTRL key. THen, theres a LOCK setting in "Talk window in lower right. Also a window "Activ e Speakers. But, I don't see you on that window.
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Yes, laptops and crowded windows ... I sympathize
--BELL--
Calvino Rabeni: The test is to speak and see if the green sound icon appears over the avatar heads
Calvino Rabeni: The speak button is a toggle
Calvino Rabeni: Hello Eos
Eos Amaterasu: HI Calvino and Mitzi
Mitzi Mimistrobell: I see something over your head Calvino
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Hellow Eos, I am trying to use voice chat, first time, not sure it's working
Eos Amaterasu: {: :}
Calvino Rabeni: A text icon with two smileys face to face
Eos Amaterasu: ^__^
Mitzi Mimistrobell: I see it over Calvino's head. Have you heardany of my utterances
Eos Amaterasu: no, I have not heard your voice
Calvino Rabeni: No
Eos Amaterasu: I can hear the water in the pool
Mitzi Mimistrobell: I can hear the water in the pool too. But, not voices
Calvino Rabeni: Well, perhaps another time - I suppose the habit of text chat :)
Calvino Rabeni: Mitzi did you hear?
Calvino Rabeni: Same here
Eos Amaterasu: Is this your fitst time to Play as Being, Mitzi? Or are you a veteran
Eos Amaterasu: Oh, I heard that
Calvino Rabeni: Mitzi has been here a couple times as a guest
Calvino Rabeni: That's a loud noisy channel :(
Calvino Rabeni: Anyway, the floor is open for a discussion :)
Eos Amaterasu: Still very noisy, like a buzzsaw in the background
Calvino Rabeni: Not too easy on the ears, unfortunately
Mitzi Mimistrobell: was that any better?
Eos Amaterasu: Didn't hear that
Eos Amaterasu: So calvino, is your "label" a description of PaB?
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, it well could be :) or a description of the greeting ritual of the Navi
Eos Amaterasu: What is that greeting ritual?
Calvino Rabeni: "I see You"
Eos Amaterasu: Hmm
Calvino Rabeni: Blue creatures from a recent blockbuster movie :)
Eos Amaterasu: Oh, right, Oscars tonight!
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Ah! I must see that movie sometime.
Eos Amaterasu: See it in 3D, Mitzi
--BELL--
Calvino Rabeni: They run around in loin clothes and appear to be very connected on a "spirit" level
Mitzi Mimistrobell: thank you both fo ryour patience. I think it's best to not try the voice chat now. Are you both OK with typing?
Eos Amaterasu: Oh yes, that's the default
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, quite accustomed to it :)
Eos Amaterasu: It slows things down, which can be good
Eos Amaterasu: but also allows more wraparound threads to emerge, sometimes confusingly
Mitzi Mimistrobell: The label - do you mean "cultivator:?
Eos Amaterasu: That's one, yes
Eos Amaterasu: Care to comment on "I see you", Calvino?
Eos Amaterasu: Means more than "you've finally rezzed " :-)
Calvino Rabeni: Sorry lag
Mitzi Mimistrobell: In second life, to say "I see you" could have yet another layer of meaning.
Eos Amaterasu: living in an async world....
Calvino Rabeni: It means, one consciousness regarding other as a conscious entity rather than an object
Mitzi Mimistrobell: because of the word ... you.
Calvino Rabeni: And I think the implication, is that real communication occurs when it goes a little beyond that even
Eos Amaterasu: me seeing you seeing
Mitzi Mimistrobell: me seeing you seeing me (seeing you)
Calvino Rabeni: Yep, that's it
Eos Amaterasu: me seeing you seeing being seeing
Mitzi Mimistrobell: I usually think - how can I "see" or (know) another? I will be creating a model in my mind, based on incomplete data subject to many of my own biases. Then I project that model onto you.
Calvino Rabeni: You get a tangible feeling of the presence of flexible intelligence
Eos Amaterasu: "the presence of flexible intelligence"
Eos Amaterasu: that's great
Eos Amaterasu: for one, that's probably not a collection of properties
Calvino Rabeni: The idea of representation has I think, become a kind of barrier for modern people
Eos Amaterasu: or maybe even describable as a collection of properties
Eos Amaterasu: the model model needs expansion
Mitzi Mimistrobell: well yes, I think I do get a tangible feeling of that presence ...
Mitzi Mimistrobell: .... but I hesitate to refe to that feeling ...
Mitzi Mimistrobell: ... thinking it's so subjective, unverifiable ...
Mitzi Mimistrobell: refer
Eos Amaterasu listens
--BELL--
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Eos - I agree that the"model" model needs expansion. I guess I don't trust my own model making very much.

Eos Amaterasu: I think that's a lot of what Play as Being is about
Eos Amaterasu: PlayDoh, where Doh is the model

Calvino Rabeni: @Mitzi, But that lack of trust, is not something coming from your own experience I believe - it is a conditioned attitude
Eos Amaterasu: we have no choice but to use models
Mitzi Mimistrobell: mmm!?
Eos Amaterasu: without models we are not just mute, but blind
Calvino Rabeni: SO they say - but take that as a modern mythology also
Eos Amaterasu: could be
Eos Amaterasu: but how would you say something without a model (model in a broad sense)
Eos Amaterasu: ie, sensemaking is model making
Eos Amaterasu: so you can't even perceive without models, because senses are the tangibility of models
Mitzi Mimistrobell: in exploring communication, I have found a shocking crudity in the precision of the content of speech ...

Eos Amaterasu admits that he's an inveterate abstraction junkie
Mitzi Mimistrobell: ... so much so that I'm more of the mind to regard speech...
Mitzi Mimistrobell: ... as a tribal bonding activity mostly, with a limited capacity to convey accurate meaning.
Eos Amaterasu: So it serves to mutually position people?
Eos Amaterasu: Here a grunt, there a grunt
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Yes, to establish dominance and submission, and to reinforce belongingness, much like a wolf pack.
Calvino Rabeni: I'm just suggesting, the modern notion of communication packs a lot of pretty questionable metaphysical baggage
Eos Amaterasu: You're probably right Calvino - it's just that it's hard to detect the baggage, it's so built in
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Can you specify some of those questionable attributes?
Calvino Rabeni: Your speech act comes with lots of context already
Eos Amaterasu: True, but also maybe not so
Eos Amaterasu: For example, the experience of meeting in RL avatars you've met in SL
Calvino Rabeni: Well, the idea of communication in the modern sense is that there isn't much intersubjective connection between the communcating individuals - that the act kind of squeezes a message through a narrow channel, and that you can't trust anything outside that
Eos Amaterasu: speech carries a lot independent of context, or such context, it turns out
Calvino Rabeni: It is a model for brittle technical communication between machines in the presence of a hostile environment
Eos Amaterasu: ah, I see
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Second life gives us a differrent set of aspects of that context which we can control, compared to RL
Eos Amaterasu: so it's useful in exposing contexts
Mitzi Mimistrobell: can I ask about the "modern communication" model that you refer to. ...
Mitzi Mimistrobell: what is considered the narrow channel and what might fall outside of that, which is not trusted?
Calvino Rabeni: Shannon information theory - somehow generalzed WAY out of reasonable context
Eos Amaterasu: whereas it's more biological to hide signal in noise
Calvino Rabeni: The idea that words "carry" a meaning
Eos Amaterasu: and to extract new signal from noise
Eos Amaterasu: as opposed to words enacting meaning...?
Calvino Rabeni: The idea that models are purely descriptive
Calvino Rabeni: Yes for example, Eos
--BELL--
Eos Amaterasu: Varela has this nice term "structural coupling"
Calvino Rabeni: The preference for a purely descriptive notion of language, or for that matter of models
Eos Amaterasu: On that note, must decouple....
Calvino Rabeni: Varela was thinking outside that conceptual box
Calvino Rabeni: OK, thanks for joining us Eos :)
Eos Amaterasu: nice to meet you, Mitzi - bye, and by Calvino
Mitzi Mimistrobell: Nice to meet you Eos. I hope to interact again.

Calvino Rabeni: So an idea from earlier - the standard idea of communication - would kind of exclude anything deep and meaningful happening when the other party is not an "entity" but is Nature or the "World".