2018.04.27 - Day 44

Thanks for the links Storm and Riddle. Poor Jimi. It seems that sensitive, creative artists very often can't handle the pressure associated with the music industry. Like Avici, who I was reading about this morning.

Mastodon seems like a very well organised social platform. I might try it but I am trying to cut down my use of social media. I try to limit myself to 30 minutes per day on Facebook, for example.

Charles Tart asks the question "If perception involves a complex, active construction of a simulation of reality, why aren't we aware of the construction process?" This shows the problem for me when doing reality checks about dreaming. Apparently, our brains construct their ‘world simulation’ so quickly and automatically we aren't even aware of it, though it took longer when we were children.

Pity the poor reader...

Not sure where to start, what order to put items, so many voices. This will be an even less coherent entry then usual. :)
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OtherLand series finally gets to the AI (OS and virtual world creating/running system) having been trained by the songs, stories, fairy tales of disturbed children. An attack on it becomes a 'Perception' that it is just like the little boy in the old folk tale.
*
Band mates, plus a guest, (all have D.A.D. Adult Distraction Disease) simply had to hear "Colin" (did not get to say last name) and had them all burst out. Each of their personal stories screamed over the others for more importance and to be heard. So very loud when we all have microphones and a big PA. 5 VU meters pegged in clipping.
*
Even before reading Zen's paragraph on Perception, several worlds had presented lectures on their simulation of reality.
*
the 3-5 local AI projects are all in indeterminate phases. Really, actually can not determine what is going on. e.g. One, can see a cat. How many CPU years will it be before it knows there are 2 different cats here? How many more years before it can 'tell' which one is Niomi (aka Face Cat)? These are new-born babies on the edge of recognizing mother's face. Constructing their world and probably pushing the constructors and processes ever deeper.
*
There was a baby Aha moment this morning with a leg and arm over the edge of the bed. A view that mind-memories were replaying sense tapes in a dream world in a sequence to simulate getting out of bed. A moment just before a foot construct would collide with a seemingly solid felt floor. Was this "Real or Memorex?" moment. Which direction is the input coming from?
*
Same moment. An Alt saying isn't it the same as my foot is finishing a step and bare feet making contact with fresh sprinkled grass. "I feel it" as real.
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As those feet are moving toward floor, the to do lists start their voices. Need to pee, cat wants water, today is homebrew bottling day, what was that last dream? Alice is going to wake up, remembering is a bot body again, on the plot, won't be walking as much today, need to switch who messages are sent to, hope to read email today. Botty, still dreaming of electronic sheep, will wake standing, puts on to do list the desire to have a bed to lay down in tonight, should write thank you note to Eliza, email needs fixing, will send an IM.
*
remember to bow to banana. a bow to everything behind the banana. Gratitude. history, health, earth, peoples, banana boats. At peace bowing to all that... Except for the sticker!! what is it with almost each banana getting a sticker? who put those on? really hard to be grateful to the persons that put stickers on this creation. The peace of the moment is gone!

Wow, Riddle. This reminded me of an overlap/time-lapse video, seeing traces of a
figure run through several years of waking in a room…then multiplying out. In one
of Stim’s classes he asked, “How do you know you’re in the room?” Which is still
a koan for me many years later, or a dream test(?).

One savoring today took the form of ‘Loving Vincent’. Rather than following closely
to the playing out of the story, I let the brushstrokes and deep color happen, was
there to see, or seeing was there with me in it. For how long? How could I know? The
film length is one thing but when was I there? Also parts of attention have not yet left.

Eliza notes graciously unnecessary thank you note and is thankful back. :)

Zen - you and Charles Tart ask the question "If perception involves a complex, active construction of a simulation of reality, why aren't we aware of the construction process?" My guess is simply evolution. There is probably a survival advantage to layering brain functionality. In building simulations and other software, I would do exactly the same thing to make most efficient use of each part of the program so it is not distracted from its function by things it doesn't need to know. Thus the organism as a whole functions most efficiently. When we have leisure time, we can delve into these things, but such availability is a fairly recent thing in human history and it's not something we'd be able to do to survive in the wild. We are unused to such awareness ("of the construction process") and parents usually have more things to do than interact with their young children to research it!

Riddle and Eliza - I apologize for my insensitive rant yesterday. I was inspired by your words, and even after I discovered Eliza had deleted half of hers in the period I was typing up my comment, I still decided to leave them there - such is the power of feeling at the time. I realize I'm just an old lefty. But my comments were tangential to your points and probably shouldn't have been made in this forum, if at all, so I'm happy to edit or remove them at your advice.

Hi Storm,

When I saw your comments I wished that I could put mine back. It was totally a self-reigning-in thing for me. :) Have much regard for 'old lefties'! I just realized I'd been drifting off from my own focus.

As for sports, I like tennis and basketball, but don't follow any team. I'll get attached to players, like Dwane Wade. And I like the live environment of any game I get to go to, even football. I do have a friend that basically disappears for the whole of football season and I think that's a bit much, but well, Broncos fans... ;-)

Oh, wait, I like soccer too. I spent much of a World Cup in a hotel room next to Disney World once. haha edited 21:25, 27 Apr 2018

Thank you Eliza! <3 And yes Broncos fans. At least we're not Eagles fans, or... [ducks and runs] ;->

Back to Homo Ludens, and going back over material in order to resync...

** In an early chapter, Johan Huizinga says that metaphors are plays on words, but in a true sense. He suggests myth takes this further like "a fanciful spirit is playing on the border-line between jest and earnest" seeking to "to account for the world of phenomena by grounding it in the Divine." No wonder the Israeli historian Yuval Harari sees religion, as a ritual form of myth, as a virtual reality in which we can play. (See Day 41.)

** Huizinga says, "... all play is a voluntary activity. ... By this quality of freedom alone, play marks itself off from the course of the natural process. It is something added thereto and spread out over it like a flowering, an ornament, a garment." I just thought that was beautiful! :)

** Play is "a stepping out of 'real' life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own." I'm reminded of Confucian ritual spaces and transforming power of ritual within them.

** On Day 42, I mentioned about how not too many decades ago it felt shameful as an adult to be using a computer for the purpose of play. Huizinga says the "'only pretending' quality of play betrays a consciousness of the inferiority of play compared with 'seriousness', a feeling that seems to be something as primary as play itself." Does this mean we, in Play as Being, carry a massive chip on our shoulder? ;-)

** Play is limited in time and space. It has bounds. It begins, plays itself to the end, and is over. Again, the idea of a ritual space.
. I am conscious of my playful nature and how it has annoyed some people over the years. Since play is a voluntary activity (see above) and those people haven't at those times wished to partake in it as I did, feeling it an imposition or being outside a suitable time and space for them, who can blame their attitude towards me?
. Outside Britain, one can sometimes get away with being a whimsical English eccentric, but not so much in Britain itself.
. In that respect, play has been an elusion for me. Elusion is a typical and (according to Albert Camus) sub-optimal reaction to encountering the Absurd. I agree with him on that. And yes, I have been part of other more common elusions, such as religion, which Huizinga suggests is related to play anyway.

Not meaning to write more today... lol
As an "Old Lefty", As a soapbox speaker. As an Absurdist. As a clown. Playing Elusion and Illusion. As the odd duck that quacks during serious cerial sessions. I resemble all that you said and do not accept apologizes from people that have not done any wrongs! Carry on, dear friends.

Re: "How do you know you are in the room?"
Seem to have missed Stim's class on that. (please send link only if you easily have it)
Have a personal koan on the same thread:
1.In an earliest memory of a marvelous glowing box (TV) is a "Hallmark Television Playhouse"(maybe?). A play set in a stark white room. One actor had to stay in the box. Other people entered, said odd things and exited. Absolutely no details of dialogs are remembered. The whole thing feels exactly like a partial dream remembrance. An old friend dream. A box of a room that is the working laboratory most times.
2.So many other Rooms and Boxes and Spaces.
3.Lately, having seen the NY staging of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", the Room/Box personal Space comes back. Empathy with the star for where is the safe coordinates now?
4.The Koan solves for only this person at this time with the simple statement, "Don't KNOW, let's dance".
5.Let us dance in the room and know how wondrous the room is decorated. Let us be outside the room and looking in in envy of the dancers. Let us ... is that a butterfly? etc. edited 01:33, 28 Apr 2018

It was a cooler day.