In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph

[Bled Welder]

Reason is inherently conservative...
Shet like I haven't already had enough coffee fine let's have more let's return to the counter again and then again.

From: bledwelder at hotmail.com
To: brook7 at sover.net; pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: RE: In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:56:18 -0500







Here's an awesome video explaining how this piece of advanced technology works, worth the 4mins. length:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2GNHxlEnXg

I used to think Absurdity was the grounding of all existence, whether you claim it to be metaphysical or not.  Went something like:
things-->reason-->imagination-->being-->Absurdity

You could throw substance in there.  Maybe power, will to power.  These days I might throw in paranoia for good measure....but Absurdity precedes them all--
Reason seems like an advanced technology.  But it's hard to think of consciousness as a technology.  I think Reason itself is a tautology.  It can only speak of things in terms of itself.  It can never not imply itself.  Reason by its own existence sets its absolute limitations and boundaries beyond which it can never pass.  Life is inherently conservative, and thus to a degree life-negating.  Reason has a real moral quality to it.
Oh, speaking of chess and paranoia.  B.Fischer is an excellent specimen for the study of paranoia.  Well many chess players become paranoid, if you've ever spent more that five hours at a board playing game after game...But Fischer especially for the study of grandiose delusional paranoia.  Damn I had a novel mapping out about him late last year whatever, what the hell happened to th--
Mathematics as world-paranoia.  


> Subject: Re: In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph
> From: brook7 at sover.net
> Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:33:03 -0400
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> 
> Well I just wrote a longish answer to your question, then somehow disappeared it. But here is the essence.
> I don't know what thought is. I am open to the possibility that what we call consciousness is really one of the dimensions of reality that is as fundamental as space or time and that thought is  a form within that dimension.  Of course it could be more a practical aspect of biological survival, but I have a hard time with the idea of wings coming from random mutations. Too much like rolling a rock down a mountain and getting the Nike of Samothrace. I suspect there is a deep connection between mind and body  or even mind and life that has a role in evolution.     
>  I listened to Rupert Sheldrake yesterday talking about homing pigeons. Scientists have studied them a lot and they don't know how the pigeons do it. They have done experiments to test all the ideas that seem to fit what we know: sight, smell, ability to discern and remember the path away from home, celestial navigation, sun navigation, magnetic field of earth. It appears you can completely block any and all of these and they still fly home, though without sight they can only get a couple hundred feet from home.  Science has no explanation for how they do it and there are several similar mysteries, that point to the possibility that we may be missing some real basic parts of our picture of consciousness.
> 
> Still it is a lot about how you define intelligence.  Chess programs beat chessmasters and computers can be programmed to solve very hard problems. But will they ever ask their own questions and want an answer? But maybe that isn't really what Pynchon is talking about , but more what happens when machines can do anything we can do faster and with no mistakes. 
> 
> 
> On Mar 15, 2012, at 11:26 PM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 
> > But do you imagine that thought is something
> > more than a physical process, or just some
> > physically embodied process that is way too
> > complex and self-referential to program from
> > the top down?
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> > To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Thu, Mar 15, 2012 2:25 pm
> > Subject: Re: In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph
> > 
> > 
> > I personally think every prediction of AI so far is absurdly premature. The
> > premise still seems fundamentally bizarre to me. I just can't imagine self
> > generated thought apart from the kind of innate will that comes with being in a
> > bodily form with natural desires attributes and limits. The idea that you can
> > program curiosity, or desire to formulate and solve a problem into an electronic
> > device designed only to process  binary code just seems real iffy.
> > 
> 
 		 	   		   		 	   		  
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