Hide Idle (>14 d.) Chans
← 2022-04-15 | 2022-04-17 → ↓
signpost intends to sit down with g-e-b, what is called thinking, and similar with a vial of acid in retirement.
asciilifeform: since already commited the 'sin' of including schoolbooks, will also throw in palmer&colton's 'history of modern world'. have fed it to 'curious adults' w/ some success.
asciilifeform: ^ reasonably good engl. treatment of 'what, who, whom' in europistan of past 500y
asciilifeform went to (american!) school where worked from text, and made to draw the movements of the borders, with the fixed ref landmarks, etc. hated at the time, but all still 'in head' today fwiw, muchly useful in making sense of over9000 things, and in e.g. not being the slightest 'awed' by mp's fomenko-style 'historical' excursions
scoopbot: New article on A Syndication of Verisimilitudes: A Review of the ``Empire of Dust: China in Africa'' Documentary
verisimilitude: That's the book with which I shifted from ``Recommend Reading'' to ``A Review of''.
verisimilitude: I made a mistake.
verisimilitude: That's the book with which I shifted from ``Recommended Reading'' to ``A Review of''.
verisimilitude: To adlai: I've fixed that horizontal screen space waste issue on my website. Look at the Iframe option added to the grey bar of the prime index.
mangol: crtdaydreams: re these things, see "metacircular interpreter" in SICP or elsewhere
bitbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 01:00:27 crtdaydreams: I wrote a http://paste.deedbot.org/?id=QrgS any tips?
bitbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 01:46:38 crtdaydreams: would also like to know if there has ever been (or ever will be) a use-case for homoiconicity
bitbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 02:44:57 crtdaydreams: what am I doing wrong?
mangol: you can write a lisp interpreter in lisp, and a lisp interpreter that runs in a lisp interpreter written in lisp, etc. most of the time, you don't.
mangol: normally it's simpler to use `defmacro` (or `define-syntax` in scheme)
mangol: often even simpler to use a readily available function or macro that someone else wrote and debugged.
mangol: re: homoiconicity, i still don't understand what it means. like others on this chan, i'm skeptical that "programs as self-manipulating strings" makes sense. the fact that lisp macros work on syntax trees, not strings, is the right thing.
verisimilitude: Lisp is represented as lists; Lisp manipulates lists; that's homoiconicity.
crtdaydreams: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096159 << I know that is possible, metacircularity != homoiconicity.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 04:37:43 mangol: you can write a lisp interpreter in lisp, and a lisp interpreter that runs in a lisp interpreter written in lisp, etc. most of the time, you don't.
crtdaydreams: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096162 Lisp isn't "strings", as verisimilitiude mentioned, the feature of lisp code itself being a data structure -- lists -- is why it's homoiconic in nature. I am also skeptical that it should be used for use cases such as how I've used it, smells fishy
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 04:40:22 mangol: re: homoiconicity, i still don't understand what it means. like others on this chan, i'm skeptical that "programs as self-manipulating strings" makes sense. the fact that lisp macros work on syntax trees, not strings, is the right thing.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 04:57:46 verisimilitude: Lisp is represented as lists; Lisp manipulates lists; that's homoiconicity.
crtdaydreams: like generating new symbols with name-extensions.
crtdaydreams: mebbe I'm the only one mad enough (or stupid) to even try something like this, but 'twas fun experiment
verisimilitude: No, symbol-creation is a recognized advantage Common Lisp has over Scheme.
shinohai: hlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-15#1096139 << asciilifeform sry this lives @ http://btc.info.gf/devel/warez/ForrestMims3rdEdition.pdf
shinohai moved his entire www to server under own control and left sdf behind.
mangol: crtdaydreams: verisimilitude: i'm not convinced you've got the right definition of homoiconicity
mangol: i've never taken the time to parse that essay, but he seems to say the term should be reserved for programs-as-strings languages
mangol: (why not taken the time to parse? because i don't find the question itself very interesting and CS terminology is generally half-baked, so not necessarily worth the effort to "understand" it)
mangol: but what that essay made me do was to stop saying "homoiconic" as if i understood what it means
mangol: http://logs.bitdash.io/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096164 << you were essentially making a little meta-circular interpreter, without realizing that that was the main point of what you were doing
bitbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 09:43:57 crtdaydreams: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096159 << I know that is possible, metacircularity != homoiconicity.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 04:37:43 mangol: you can write a lisp interpreter in lisp, and a lisp interpreter that runs in a lisp interpreter written in lisp, etc. most of the time, you don't.
mangol: one of the stepping stones to getting lisp is to understand that lisp can interpret lisp
mangol: eval does that; macros do that; tailor made code generators do that
mangol: my point was, that with lisp as with psychedelics, http://logs.bitdash.io/asciilifeform/2022-03-17#1085322
bitbot: Logged on 2022-03-17 19:13:21 signpost: verisimilitude: "When you get the message, hang up the phone." - Alan Watts
mangol: just because you can pile any number of lisp interpreters on top of each other doesn't mean there's a point to it. it's fun to know how you can.
mangol: and it's occasionally very useful, but generally not
mangol: another step on the way, which i can't tell whether or not you and/or verisimilitude are missing, is that macros and eval are not that different. some people say "wow, you can do stuff at runtime". but one of the points behind things like lispm and forth is that there doesn't have to be a clear separation between various "time"s.
mangol: eval isn't more impressive than macros, or vice versa.
mangol: eval is just a baked-in version of stuff you can do by rolling your own metacircular interpreter
mangol: defmacro is there so you don't have to roll your own preprocessor (which you'd again implement as a metacircular interpreter)
mangol: basically, at some point (when you're ready), stop thinking about "wow, i can do stuff at runtime" or "wow, i can do stuff at compile time", "wow, eval", "wow, macro", etc.
mangol: replace all that in your head with "i can make domain specific languages". the specific detail of how you happen to make the DSL at any given time - use macro, eval, `compile`, preprocessor, lisp interpreter written in Python, etc. is not very interesting re: the fundamental activity
mangol: more generally, there are a lot of people around lisp who fetishize things that are more properly viewed as implementation details and historical accidents
mangol: "wow, linked list is so much better than vector", etc.
mangol: these people are active on every lisp forum and they slow the evolution of lisp. try to avoid becoming one of them.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 09:14:59 shinohai: moved his entire www to server under own control and left sdf behind.
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096188 << removal of batch processing (an archaicism of paper card era that lives on to this day in shitwaredom) is impressive to noobs, in exactly the same way penicillin was impressive
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 10:02:40 mangol: another step on the way, which i can't tell whether or not you and/or verisimilitude are missing, is that macros and eval are not that different. some people say "wow, you can do stuff at runtime". but one of the points behind things like lispm and forth is that there doesn't have to be a clear separation between various "time"s.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 10:05:53 mangol: replace all that in your head with "i can make domain specific languages". the specific detail of how you happen to make the DSL at any given time - use macro, eval, `compile`, preprocessor, lisp interpreter written in Python, etc. is not very interesting re: the fundamental activity
asciilifeform: ( even if from mathematical pov 'the fundamental activity is same' )
asciilifeform: they're 'equivalent' only in the sense that the chair yer sitting on and a pile of rusty nails are 'equivalent'. 'could sit on it'
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096184 << that 'phone' is still talking tho, is saying 'throw out the idjit impedance-mismatched cmachine irons!'
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 09:55:57 mangol: my point was, that with lisp as with psychedelics, http://logs.bitdash.io/asciilifeform/2022-03-17#1085322
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096150 << imho belongs squarely on the 'for children' list.
mangol: asciilifeform: the point i was clumsily making is that the power of DSLs is you can hide stuff, but a lot of lispers get on the opposite track and like to show off the minutiae of how lisp implements the scaffolding for DSLs
mangol: for me, "peak lisp" was when i stopped caring about which particular lisp implementation/dialect i'm using, and how it translates a DSL to runtime and/or compile time behavior, and just started designing DSLs that are good to use
mangol: when you adopt that frame of mind, you also start designing DSLs that translate easily to different environments
mangol: which gets you to the point of DSLs, which is that they capture only the essential aspects of a problem domain
mangol: "low-level programming = you have to pay attention to the irrelevant" (said by fred brooks iirc)
mangol: a lot of lispers (maybe most of the current crop) revere at the high-level nature of lisp, but then go on to be concerned with the lowest-level aspects they can find within the high-level framework that was handed down to them
mangol: one of the luxuries DSLs afford is "timeless" programming; instead of thinking about compile time vs run time, you can design a DSL that works at any "time"
mangol: (note: it took me many years to grasp the above. as a noob i was also fetishizing cons cells and eval, because that was the culture that i picked up by osmosis. i assume the original culture around the AI Lab was based around more high-level thinking.)
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 10:05:53 mangol: replace all that in your head with "i can make domain specific languages". the specific detail of how you happen to make the DSL at any given time - use macro, eval, `compile`, preprocessor, lisp interpreter written in Python, etc. is not very interesting re: the fundamental activity
phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096179 << there's no meta-circularity in his code. the language he's constructing can't express any other thought beyond `expt` for which he wrote a creative translator. ffs.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 09:53:33 mangol: http://logs.bitdash.io/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096164 << you were essentially making a little meta-circular interpreter, without realizing that that was the main point of what you were doing
phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096216 << that whole subthread is silly and self serving. the whole DSL movement was part and parcel of the second lisp revival. paul graham's two lisp books, on lisp and ansi common lisp explicitly explored the subject of DSLs (he credited the success of yahoo stores to his ability to write small languages). the idea of DSLs was also picked up by python and ruby developers around
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 11:35:32 mangol: (note: it took me many years to grasp the above. as a noob i was also fetishizing cons cells and eval, because that was the culture that i picked up by osmosis. i assume the original culture around the AI Lab was based around more high-level thinking.)
phf: that same time, because there was a lot of cross polination. that was also the period when both of your profound thoughts were driven into the ground: people abused python/ruby's syntax to create cute dsls for everything, and the format of "X is good enough lisp" essays started popping up, expressing very similar thoughts. "it's all turing complete maaan, you just need to thiiink like a lisper"
phf: dsls mindset died outside of lisp very rapidly, because outside of a handful of domains (HTML generation primarily) they had problems, of which there was many which i can go into if there's interest. in the lisp community dsls mostly died out because there was a pushback on the following grounds: most devs are not language designers, their dsls are half baked, they often ignore or attempt to intentionally replace existing approaches
phf: the scars of the later are still all over lisp code: various compatability libraries, that bring "modern" practices, which are simply attempts to bring ruby's or clojure's way of handling basic types (strings, or lists) into the language core. consider something like https://github.com/magnars/dash.el. it's called dash because there's a my little pony called dash, but they also use dash to prefix all their functions! isn't it cute!
phf: teeeheee!
phf: btw the "it's all lisp" mindset is fundamentally anti ai lab. not because those guys were some kind of language purists, but on purely pragmatic grounds: lisp is a family of languages, which at some point all coexisted in the ecosystem. when you said "lisp" you meant a derivative of maclisp (lisp machine lisp later to become zetalisp, perq's spicelisp, interlisp), and the code was close enough to portable between systems. you can take
phf: zetalisp non-system code and run it on sbcl providing a handful of compatability functions, and it will have similar semantics and work against a similar idea of a "machine"
phf: so yeah ai lab people wrote a bunch of high level stuff and plenty of dsls, but they wrote it in a specific language, to the language's strengths, etc.
verisimilitude: I'll write ``homoiconicity'' as I please, mangol.
verisimilitude: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096188 Common Lisp has a sickening amount of ``times'', actually.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 10:02:40 mangol: another step on the way, which i can't tell whether or not you and/or verisimilitude are missing, is that macros and eval are not that different. some people say "wow, you can do stuff at runtime". but one of the points behind things like lispm and forth is that there doesn't have to be a clear separation between various "time"s.
verisimilitude: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096195 This be compared to people who think exactly the opposite, the people who have eliminated the very idea of lists with ``amortized'' vector ``lists''?
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 10:06:57 mangol: "wow, linked list is so much better than vector", etc.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 11:18:04 mangol: a lot of lispers (maybe most of the current crop) revere at the high-level nature of lisp, but then go on to be concerned with the lowest-level aspects they can find within the high-level framework that was handed down to them
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 12:34:03 phf: teeeheee!
verisimilitude: Live a little, phf. I'd rather be silly than ``professional''.
verisimilitude: The better approach, mangol, is to discard entirely the model of programming ``languages'', and to move towards programming tools.
billymg: !c trb-status
crawlerbot: 75.106.222.93 (Could not connect!), h=732153, v=99999, United States - peers: 239 - last probed: 23m ago
crawlerbot: 103.36.92.112 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, Singapore - peers: 70 - last probed: 27m ago
crawlerbot: 205.134.172.4 (Alive), h=732160, v=70001, United States - peers: 59 - last probed: 27m ago
crawlerbot: 54.38.94.63 (Alive), h=732160, v=88888, France - peers: 57 - last probed: 28m ago
crawlerbot: 54.39.156.171 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, Canada - peers: 55 - last probed: 27m ago
crawlerbot: 82.79.58.192 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, Romania - peers: 43 - last probed: 27m ago
crawlerbot: 208.94.240.42 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, United States - peers: 42 - last probed: 27m ago
crawlerbot: 205.134.172.28 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, United States - peers: 38 - last probed: 28m ago
crawlerbot: 94.176.238.102 (Alive), h=731204, v=99999, Lithuania - peers: 30 - last probed: 27m ago
crawlerbot: 71.191.220.241 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, United States - peers: 27 - last probed: 28m ago
crawlerbot: 205.134.172.6 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, United States - peers: 22 - last probed: 28m ago
crawlerbot: 103.6.212.28 (Alive), h=457749, v=99999, New Zealand - peers: 22 - last probed: 23m ago
crawlerbot: 205.134.172.26 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, United States - peers: 15 - last probed: 27m ago
crawlerbot: 205.134.172.27 (Alive), h=732160, v=99999, United States - peers: 9 - last probed: 27m ago
billymg: new site is up and all crawler related stuff has been temporarily moved to ec2. the logger is still on the rk in asciilifeform's rack, only now with more resources to itself
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 15:08:32 verisimilitude: Live a little, phf. I'd rather be silly than ``professional''.
billymg: http://logs.bitdash.io/asciilifeform/2022-04-12#1095303 << i actually just spent a couple days last week putting together a gentoo file server / htpc out of some spare parts. was a fun project
bitbot: Logged on 2022-04-12 00:42:35 phf: i've routed everything to the server at this point. i.e. music plays from a 10T freebsd backup
billymg: http://logs.bitdash.io/asciilifeform/2022-04-14#1095624 << i'll add this if asciilifeform doesn't beat me to it, i have a list of a few other UX tweaks i've been meaning to make
bitbot: Logged on 2022-04-14 15:32:43 asciilifeform: prolly oughta make it bidirectional. has been on pheature wishlist for aeons
verisimilitude: What's the point, then, phf? It's fine to fuck goats, but not to fuck horses?
phf: verisimilitude: a master of craft can make a joke whenever he pleases, but lack of seriousness is a compounding factor of amateurish work
verisimilitude: I don't see how the name dash makes it less serious.
verisimilitude: Even when I be not serious, I still be not amateurish.
phf: verisimilitude: they are amateurish therefore their lack of seriousness is compounding, not the other way around.
verisimilitude: How is the work amateurish; I've not inspected it beyond looking for malicious code, when I took a copy as a dependency for something else I was loading.
phf: verisimilitude: if you were to reflect upon the thread from which you've extracted this immaterial bit, what would be your assumption as to what i consider amateurish in this case?
verisimilitude: I'd think it would be the very existence of the library, right?
phf: verisimilitude: well, that's true, but that's evident from structure of the text, i'm bringing up the library as an example of bad things that exists, but what's the substance of the text? specifically why would writing a compatability library to another language be amateurish?
verisimilitude: That depends.
verisimilitude: One reason would be the language being bad.
phf: verisimilitude: that is not the answer to the question i posed though. you can test it yourself: "writing a compatability library to another language is amateurish because the language is bad"
verisimilitude: That's a valid sentence to me.
verisimilitude: It screams that one would rather use that language than Lisp.
verisimilitude: However, the advantage of Lisp is that it can do this, so I don't necessarily see an issue.
phf: verisimilitude: you're not working with the sentence though, you're working with a point that you're trying to make. "writing a compatability library to another language, because the language is bad" is what you're discussing. /how does it make it amateurish then?/
verisimilitude: I'll be blunt: I'm writing several different things right now, so I may not be all here.
signpost: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096264 << moreover the novice uses "tee hee ponies" to deflect being evaluated by *others* seriously.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 15:41:52 phf: verisimilitude: a master of craft can make a joke whenever he pleases, but lack of seriousness is a compounding factor of amateurish work
signpost: when they want their dicks sucked, it's their greatest work. when they're embarassed about their shrinkage, it's just a silly lib named after ponies.
signpost: isn't even an idle use of mp's everything-is-sexual schtick. the form of it is hiding from elder male's wrath with subbie signaling.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 15:07:52 verisimilitude: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096226 That's bad compared to FUCKGOATS?
signpost: hey I thought it was funny
signpost: IMMORTALEYE, etc
asciilifeform: signpost: notion iirc wasn't even the funny, but to troll idjits. (imho wasted effort, they wouldn't have mentioned it in any case)
signpost: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096207 << I'm entertained by arrogant, broad hypotheses. see also: Jaynes
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 10:21:37 asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096150 << imho belongs squarely on the 'for children' list.
signpost: asciilifeform: yeah, "this will trigger the Very Serious"
asciilifeform: fwiw pete d.'s lulzy seekrit reseller shop (fughet how , but he renamed it) sold 0
asciilifeform: whole exercise went moar or less as asciilifeform expected it would go.
signpost: woof, guy's pimping NFTs now.
asciilifeform: for coupla yrs nao
asciilifeform: lamer needs a trng like dog needs beets. afaik of the 200 sold, maybe handful ever plugged in.
signpost: low effort to jam a minus sign in front of tmsr, not surprised.
asciilifeform: ( recall, per orig. charter, 100% of onus for marketing was on mp )
asciilifeform: charter naturally was worth approx. as much as the minsk accords.
signpost recalls a thread I had with mp on how to generate demand for products.
asciilifeform: (pissed on immed)
signpost: long and short of it was "You loudly be a man, and everyone falls at your feet!"
dulapbot: (trilema) 2019-09-07 mircea_popescu: market schmarket, markets are created not identified.
signpost: arrogant drivel
signpost: in other news, grunted gmp, mpfr, mpc, isl, cloog outta the binutils and gcc trees into their own patches.
signpost: so much shit keistered in these projects.
signpost: phf: getting closer to sharing something with ya, but I'm going to wait until the bootstrap works completely.
signpost: nothing worse than picking up someone else's code that almost does something that's easier to explain when it... does!
signpost: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092895 << how much of this is steel sharpening steel, and how much a runaway game of status trivia?
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-05 00:29:36 phf: most people for whom that music was compose could also play it, so it wasn't just listening, it was listening with a professional's ear. "oh that's a very sad take, but that's because your beloved died from plague my dearest richard" or whatever
signpost: not the man who plays the sad take, but the man who knows each player's variation for the purpose of saying so.
signpost: in the former case, best example I care about is voodoo chile, hendrix vs stevie ray vaughan.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 16:57:08 asciilifeform: ( recall, per orig. charter, 100% of onus for marketing was on mp )
dulapbot: Logged on 2019-11-08 20:36:20 asciilifeform: dorion: i'ma however support the 'forcibly reformat' claim. observe the charter section 3.2c :
signpost: hendrix has that funky, sexy, acid drenched falling down the rabbit hole. roaring chaos. vaughan, hauling ass in a desert, cigarette hanging from lip, girl's hair blowing, top down, etc.
phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096311 << is the implication that it's mostly runaway game of status trivia? i don't think so, not from historic accounts anyway
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 17:10:30 signpost: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-05#1092895 << how much of this is steel sharpening steel, and how much a runaway game of status trivia?
signpost: no, I see both ends, and gave an example closest to my own experience.
phf: thread was about culture that en mass existed in 19th century last and maybe survived into early 20th. not talking about modern "appreciation"
phf: "variation" here is a live experience from a party of friends
phf: like imagine everyone of your friends could play, all "passably", some good, and a handful exquisite. you go to a party and at some point it's like "jack play us a tune" and he's like "oh no i wouldn't" and everyone's like "jack, please" and eventually he starts playing and it's liszt's mephisto waltz no1
signpost: it's noteworthy that it didn't survive, and I'm more curiously contemplating the limits of the social process than dismissing it.
phf: signpost: it's not survived because it's demanding
phf: there was a point in time, when e.g. hendrix, if he was alive and playing what he plays would've been considered "folk" art, because requires no skill to appreciate, and less than total skill to play
signpost: yeah, that was the unquestioned elitism I was trying to surface, haha
phf: hendrix was inspired, but he also hams all the time, because it still sounds good with the electric distortion
signpost: there was another gent mentioned.
phf: signpost: i think it's /a shame/ and nothing else to throw out baby with bathwater
signpost: at any rate this thing's a social filter.
phf: god damn it
signpost: you're really easy to rile up, my dude.
signpost: perhaps you can instead say which baby is lost in what bathwater.
phf: signpost: some of this subjects is like banging the head against wall
signpost: only because you're intent on perceiving the other as holding a particular view.
phf: signpost: i can't react to anything but words! and the views ultimately manifest in actions
signpost: there are these topics you consider holy, that no one may map by questioning.
phf: signpost: i think some of this subjects ebb and flow, and i often observe them collapse to the same handful of tropes
phf: everything of high culture ultimately collapse to "thems cigar smoking aristocrats just pretend"
phf: why does everything needs to be deconstructed?
signpost: heh, the very idea that I, being representative of the low, deconstructed the thing.
signpost: thing was in pieces well before I fell out of my mother.
signpost: and yes, I know the other definition, but they're not unrelated.
signpost: anyway, the post-sovworld screeching at a question that may not be answered is a descendent of the interpersonal hatred that system mass produced.
signpost: it has very little to do with anything I said here.
phf: signpost: some of these stories we tell each other are myths, in the anthropological sense. my frustration is that of a little boy telling other little boy about magical pixie land just past the bend of the river, and getting back "it's all fairy tales, there's no magical pixie land" :p
signpost: this must be a tiring headvoice with whom to talk indeed.
phf: signpost: my choice is basically between hard realists for whom all high culture was a bunch of inbread posers if it existed at all, and high culture sycophants that just looooove brahms. i want more people to penetrate between those two, into the transcendental realm
signpost: one might want to parse through this, and find the pieces of that culture that broke, parts that didn't.
phf: i'm going to ride horses, god damn it, because andrey balkonsky did, and i will ride it the way he did it, and i will thus hold myself to higher, unrealistic standards
signpost: I'll feign a problem with this if it will keep your blood pressure high. :)
signpost: didn't I just write a piece about the broken mechanism of conceptualizing the ideal man?
signpost: phf: how is this "I will hold myself to" distinguish itself from verisimilitude's autoeroticism?
signpost: *does
signpost: try to not get galled, and bother to say. does it make you better generally, or specifically?
signpost: say you claim generally. how does someone come along and see the distinction between the paths that build a whole man, and not?
phf: signpost: but that's easy, matthew 7:16 :D
phf: i like how christians have their own "log"
signpost still reads the bible in this manner.
signpost: on the long view of history yurp's fruits are pretty rotten.
signpost: what I'm saying is not that the men you admire were not great, some trope.
signpost: there's a problem, in the hardest sense, that the magnificent machine breaks this way.
signpost: and there is no known other.
signpost: believe in god again, say. I'll wait.
phf: signpost: but machines tend to break
phf: i can't resent yurp for being born at the time everything broke, past that time significantly.
phf: well, we're all over the place now. as far as "what makes a whole man", there's more to say: there's plenty of available blueprints to go by, even maybe a mixture of, but the problem is in my mind that the solipsists refuse to choose any, staying instead in this detached "all things are equal, and all things are equally stupid" kind of state
signpost: nah, and the resentment would be pleading to absent god, which is incoherent.
signpost: we're not, it's the same topic.
signpost: it's entirely unclear how you separate the solipsists, and I say that fully aware that I use that hammer myself regularly.
phf: i'm not saying that andrey bolkonsky (one of the main characters in war and piece) is the blueprint any more then natty bumppo is
phf: i'm saying that there's plenty of blueprints which are there exactly for that purpose. the three musketeer's unabashed swagger and bravado should be an inspiration to young men
phf: war and piece is written as a struggle between characters, so that the reader can try on a variety of opinions and views to himself, and see the outcome of his decisions without having to comit to them irl. i mean it's at least partial purpose of most fiction, the didactic element
signpost: mhm, and the end result, the culture of men with shared context, flows out of a process of selection where men with the most useful models end up at the same parties.
phf: (brb)
phf: maybe common rather than same models, and then parties in a broad sense
signpost: yes, there are many useful models, and much interesting conversation involves transforming concepts between them.
phf: if you hunt from your pickup truck, you'll be having coors with like minded individuals around where you parked, but if you're a few hours in on foot, walking with your scout rifle, likely you've at least read gary snider
signpost: see, I've done the deep hike, but would've passed on the beatnik if I ever encountered him. this is no measure of the beatnik's value.
phf: signpost: this also doesn't detract from the deep hike
phf: but that actually goes back to the "many useful models" comment, which i find suspicious. some kind of all permisive pluralism hides there :>
signpost: not stepping into the adversarial role for which you have a precached attack, heh!
signpost: I was leading up to there being *too many*
signpost: and this thwarting the synthesis of a culture.
phf: signpost: i don't actually agree that there's too many. i think it's the mass of model-less that create this illusion, and mostly from their own words
signpost: this algo that everyone who matters will have already walked the correct path was run.
signpost is a thief in this regard, rather than someone who remembers the old culture.
phf: models are archetypal, as per joseph campbell
phf: signpost: that's a very tmsr position though, i think a softer version would be "inform of the path", "help take first step along the path", "guide further along the path" etc. applies to different people at different times
signpost considers that which tells phf there is a "the path" will die next.
phf: i look at people who have their own thing going the way a black panther might look at a skin head. "i'd kill you, but i respect you, because you do for your own people" or whatever :>
signpost: sure, I went headlong into a few german philosophers, and then look at topics like these and wonder that anyone can author a traditional identity.
signpost: notably their cultural branch lost the hell out of a war.
signpost: late heidegger benefits from it, I think. he's dead/free.
signpost: fwiw I don't begrudge the ability to construct such a meaningful place to sit. at all.
phf: signpost: i don't believe that was a point of contention either
signpost: to make things practical, we appear to be approaching the culmination of whatever european culture has been.
signpost: splat.
signpost: you could be entirely right, that there is no such thing as a stable culture.
phf: signpost: it was customary in roman empire to hire greeks as teachers. not implying i'll be one, saying that cultures die.
phf: i'm convinced though that this "european culture" we're discussing died sometime in the 1920s, was supported by sons and grandsons, out of habit, or more likely proper upbringing through the next 40-50 years.
phf: there's been like a few decades where old men, who remember the war, lamented that "they no longer teach physics at school". could've been the case of "old man yells at cloud", but i've read my fair share of literature, and the amount of "they no longer.." in the 80s and 70s is overwhelming. makes me think that we're simply living the time when "they no longer.." is catching up with us
signpost: friend of mine's grandfather had an applicable line, that "nature extends a lot of credit, but never forgets to send the bill"
phf: hah
phf: i am, by the way, unconvinced of this death narrative
phf: in fact, despite the pervasive doom and gloom, i think the narrative is wrong
signpost: I'm quite happy, but how do you reconcile that with the decay of teaching?
signpost: for context, I'll be a father before long. I'd like nothing better than for the 2030s to begin a golden age.
phf: i think that we're experiencing future shock. i think progressivism is a death cult, that arose as a psychological defense against the future shock
signpost: expand future shock? overwhelm at what we can wield/know/etc?
phf: i think a lot of things that are happening are "first" in the new post-future reality
phf: signpost: i'm just talking boring old internet becoming a thing that everyone has in their pocket over a handful of years, within our lifetimes
phf: and the "firsts" are basically new modes of operation (and dysfunction) that were discovering with this new technology
phf: i mean covid, IMHO, was a first case of global mass psychosis mediated by a new form of a reality substrate
phf: i mean, why is nobody even questioning this aspect? the millions of compounding effects that pervasive internet has on humanity as a whole?
signpost: I agree entirely.
signpost: this was the reason for the dumbphone, since the readiness-to-hand of the other one made ignoring it not matter.
signpost: the ignoring it is still an awareness of paths one can take.
signpost: but, this is entirely possible, that this is the new way of being.
phf: well, yeah, the technological avantguard (time to start sounding like bOINGbOING magazine) has been aware of this situation for years, yeah? all kinds of creative solutions to "tame" internet
signpost: by talking here, and a few other places, and opting out of the others, I'm not abstaining from a distributed technological hivemind, just selecting which position on the graph.
signpost: sure, hence the "hay I know a word in sanskrit" branding of the phone
signpost: elsewhere I've said that identification-with-the-graph is the self that comes after being a soul-before-god
phf: signpost: would like to point out that i grok why you bought that phone, while if this was a reddit conversation or whatever, i'd just be raging for people performing a superficially similar action :>
signpost: yeah, I noticed distress in my head and removed it.
phf: *at people for performing
signpost: not everything is a signal of the populist variety.
signpost: (is still certainly a signal)
phf: so going back upstack, i'm all for whatever means of stabilizing this situation, particularly considering that it has very concrete and real implications beyond "everyone's retweeting kardashian's butt"
phf: like if you think about it, most of the countries are run by basic bitches at best, lots of old people, they've gotten "on facebook" couple of years ago, and "omg! there's putin!"
signpost: yep, miracles of medicine clinging on everywhere you look.
signpost has been working on restating the problem as seen.
phf: why would an 80 year old senator be any more immune to this? i'd say even more susceptible. so the uncle that just keeps retweeting worst fearmongering propaganda is now making gov decisions
signpost: why's he afraid?
signpost has this relative, for sure, Q in the messiah-slot.
phf: in the void! because it's a lolcat meme
signpost: I mean what makes him so terrified; the "rattle" as asciilifeform puts it is there for me to.
signpost: *too
signpost: I'm not calling myself special here. It's not a trivial question.
phf: i don't think it's existential
signpost: yeah, we differ there, but I'd like to know what you think.
phf: i don't think it's anything, i think it's literally an equivalent of a movie jump scare
signpost: what is the thing that makes one susceptible to the porn and the next not?
phf: you could tenuously connect it to some higher functioning reflection, in a sense that both rely on the same primal biological mechanism, but i think that the memetic jump scares are totally disconnected
signpost: you don't think that one's fragility factors into the urge to distract?
phf: signpost: at this scale? imho it's purelly statistically biological. maybe some outliers that have willpower, but then hard to say where will where biology to be a meaningless imho exploration
phf: why is "autism" only one form of mental condition, dark triad has all kinds of implications, there's more mental states than "narcissism"
phf: "the world's on fire, i'm just out riding horses" might not be a pose, i might not actually really grok at all that the world's on fire :>
signpost: haha
phf: because the world is actually not on fire, and a non trivial number of citizens are having a psychotic break
phf: ^ "i looked into this fellow citizens, i've concluded that the train is fine"
phf: etc.
signpost: well, there's a long list of things we believe we need to keep functioning to maintain processes that keep the food flowing, aside other things.
signpost: some of these are looking pretty rough, but you can fill in the list.
phf: what if you prep, but the collapse never comes?
signpost: I'm not that guy either, worried about the apocalypse.
signpost: might well be that we adapt astonishingly rapidly when things break, and only when.
crtdaydreams: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096369 << IMHO the moment you start making decisions for yourself you are a man. All social preconditions are unnecessary, manhood is derived from the uptake of personal accountability. This holistic approach to defining a man won't get you very far, if it is your decision to research men of past and imitate them, the
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 18:17:59 phf: well, we're all over the place now. as far as "what makes a whole man", there's more to say: there's plenty of available blueprints to go by, even maybe a mixture of, but the problem is in my mind that the solipsists refuse to choose any, staying instead in this detached "all things are equal, and all things are equally stupid" kind of state
crtdaydreams: action is the defining factor. (apologies if I misinterpret)
signpost: phf: it's evidently *not* a problem for everyone to author a model of oneself which is intelligible.
signpost: in that, sure, common man have rectangle, push thing, see butt.
phf: signpost: also re collapse, ancestors lived through wwii and the great depression, why would be different? it'll suck if collapse happens just as i'm old and infirm, but on the other hand will see world burn, die shortly, win :>
signpost: way upstack, the question I have about the old way of culture, is whether the egotism it produced is useful.
signpost: useful as a model of reality. not whether it is sinful or virtuous.
signpost: the head full of culture is a local cache of things produced by *other men*.
phf: signpost: i don't think egotism was inherent, it's a later addition, because of the reason you alluded to: monkeys living in the houses built by men are prideful because better than monkeys living without
signpost: isn't clear this is a necessary because.
phf: why not?
signpost: because what the hell of "me" was novel data produced at this node, and I don't mean just me.
phf: i'm afraid to continue with this line because i know it'll sound like aristocracy apologism. asci will pounce with his "the sound of breaking baguette"
signpost: maybe it veers into the religious, and that would tie in with our discussion re: that being a necessary ingredient.
signpost: aaa you already said by implication.
signpost: get him.
signpost: only point is that the greatest man ever to live was this connected thing, not unlike in kind from your technological blob-monster.
signpost: just latter is astonishing scale.
signpost: maybe later we get good at contending with it.
signpost imagines there were a few kings along the way that had this expansive notion of self, embodying not just their entire country, but the whole line preceding, and etc
mats: you are a king
signpost stands butt naked in his room, arms out, waiting for his damned clothes.
phf: signpost: but also like where egotism? should we maybe define it? i took it to mean a reference to "classical music appreciators", which is one thing, but extending it to the point of "I, the Wrath of God will marry my own daughter and with her I will found the purest dynasty the earth has ever seen." takes it in a different direction
signpost: what's a man? this is the question the authorial voice answers in one's own head if it speaks at all, right?
phf: because the later egotism is archetypal, part of human nature, see shakespear
signpost: I'm not proposing you decide you're something else; I'm saying it's already the case.
signpost: you're this composite being comprised mostly of packets sent your way from elsewhere.
phf: signpost: but that's a property of socialization and immitation. to question this goes way beyond the scope
phf: some packets sent, some packets collected, building up on what was sent. if i was born german would read goethe in native language
phf: is the contention that we can really become whole without external input? the noble savage?
signpost: nah, this isn't a sketch of a fallen state. it's a sketch of *the* state, was true wherever humans spoke and wrote.
signpost: distributed meat computer running language.
signpost: at least the part which contains your "I"
signpost: doesn't mean now dispense with it; how would you even?
phf: signpost: ironically it's been tried, explicitly, back when you could run such experiments on children and wives :D
phf: was a big thing with rousseau's noble savage was not just a look outward, it was also a blueprint for various questionable experiments
signpost: mhm.
phf: eh that sentence was of two parts, "was a big thing in the late 18th century", then "rousseau.."
crtdaydreams: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096485 << by that extension would modern egotism be memetic?
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 19:45:52 phf: because the later egotism is archetypal, part of human nature, see shakespear
signpost: or take any enlightened messiah's hilarious personal life, like alan watts.
signpost: "we're all us, baby, so of course I can fuck your wives"
phf: signpost: well, that has a blueprint, buddha allegedly shed his conditioning :>
phf: tried to flush own firmware, failed at it, in the process of replacing bits of firmware with "better" bits :D
phf ^
signpost: problem's always where to stand from where to know what to EVAL
signpost: the literary process you described isn't a bad algo for that at all.
signpost skeptical entirely of "flush own firmware" ftr, not for lack of having tried.
signpost: can shut off the internal monologue any time one likes. I'm not convinced this is a state in which to remain.
phf: signpost: i don't actually think that finding the point of eval is the problem. most people who even look smh magically find one. that's going back to the whole "on the path" thing
signpost: no, I mean who is this other you that acts upon you?
phf: i read some paper that implied that greek philosophy was mostly esoteric. teachings were supposed to be taken as a kind of transformative path, through which you work, over a lifetime, eventually getting to the same point as the author of th teaching
signpost: if this other you's inside the same head, that's at least interesting, and more complicated than "Hi, my name is Michael Trinque."
signpost: yes, zen's even worse, where what was written is a tool for exhausting the argumentative mind entirely, letting the other thing slip by.
signpost: then you try to say what slipped by, and that's what the old man's stick is for.
phf: signpost: keep your eastern spirituality away from me! one theory i have as to the collapse of the west is that the culture discovered india, and could no longer rationalise itself into action
signpost: bwahaha
signpost: I said even worse!
signpost: it's definitely a mind-bomb.
phf: john woodroffe, "arthor avanxlon", single handedly wrapped up the whole europa project ha
phf: "arthur avalon"
signpost: "wait, I can just make myself cum on demand?"
signpost: I don't see what's demotivating about a composite self.
phf: there's all kinds of woo woo stuff in those texts
signpost: not terribly familiar, was distinguishing the notion I was describing from tantric w/e
phf: and they wrote that woowoo all the while europe was trying to mathematics, so by the time two cultures met there was plenty of backlog "why live in hut, and cum on demand" instead of "city plumbing"
signpost: say I recognize that this stuff rolling around in my head, which I refer to as myself, my knowledge, was the output of this beautiful machine.
signpost: why doesn't my self-preservation urge extend to that machine?
signpost: bumps into my motivation to participate in tmsr. it wasn't "hueee, this rich guy thinks I'm a lord"
phf: wait, what's the machine in this case? tmsr?
signpost: w/e processes are running the nodes sending me useful packets. the most successful topology of these looks to be a republic.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-11 10:59:31 phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-10#1094941 << i had a sepsis. as far as mp and best ambulance, de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est
signpost: I'm not speaking ill of the dead.
phf: no no i was going to comment on "why not preserve" republic, but necessarily requires to say some shit about mp :D
signpost: isn't so much a point about tmsr, though this was my most intense, if brief, experience of such a culture.
signpost: "why the hell don't we think of ourselves as nodes-with-*edges*" is maybe just an abstract restatement of the virtues of statesmanship, etc
phf: well that was what we wanted wot to be :>
signpost still considers how to infect people with this notion, if nothing else.
verisimilitude: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096280 Most any programmer on Github will pull some shit like that, signpost.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 16:47:06 signpost: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096264 << moreover the novice uses "tee hee ponies" to deflect being evaluated by *others* seriously.
signpost: oh sure, they all inflect their voices gay in the office too
signpost: more or less *is* the california accent now.
signpost bbl, errand
verisimilitude: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096352 I'd rather ride horses because I like them, than that.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 18:06:28 phf: i'm going to ride horses, god damn it, because andrey balkonsky did, and i will ride it the way he did it, and i will thus hold myself to higher, unrealistic standards
verisimilitude: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096355 Well, I'm not going to have a heart attack over it, for one.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 18:09:13 signpost: phf: how is this "I will hold myself to" distinguish itself from verisimilitude's autoeroticism?
phf: verisimilitude: and yet you don't. i have no interest in talking to you again.
verisimilitude: I'll ride a horse one day.
phf: god damn looser sniping other people's conversations with innane points, i don't understand asciilifeform how you tollerate this bullshit. if i wanted lainchan, i'd go there.
verisimilitude: Whatever; I'd prefer to discuss programming anyway. Have your conversations going in circles, forever.
verisimilitude: I'll concede my second message shouldn't've been submitted, phf.
verisimilitude: Still, I'd like to see a real answer to that question, as well.
signpost: we discussed the answer to my question at length later in the thread.
signpost: rather, inquired into it.
signpost: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096359 << if one needs a single line answer, it'd be this.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 18:12:25 phf: signpost: but that's easy, matthew 7:16 :D
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096348 << 'reverse cargocult'(tm)(r) -- 'there were no airplanes'
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 18:03:24 phf: signpost: some of these stories we tell each other are myths, in the anthropological sense. my frustration is that of a little boy telling other little boy about magical pixie land just past the bend of the river, and getting back "it's all fairy tales, there's no magical pixie land" :p
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096350 << afaik there were patrons (for whom brahms et al was a req'd component of tea ceremony, and some genuinely appreciated and even attempted to brahms w/ own hands) and there was brahms et al per se, who certainly not 'posed' but composed.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 18:05:17 phf: signpost: my choice is basically between hard realists for whom all high culture was a bunch of inbread posers if it existed at all, and high culture sycophants that just looooove brahms. i want more people to penetrate between those two, into the transcendental realm
asciilifeform: bach et al in fact created the instruments in their present form..
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 18:06:28 phf: i'm going to ride horses, god damn it, because andrey balkonsky did, and i will ride it the way he did it, and i will thus hold myself to higher, unrealistic standards
asciilifeform: ride horse. iirc signpost occasionally flies prop plane.
asciilifeform didn't yet buy plane, tho new pad is 5min walk from airstrip. 100 octane leaded petrol is ruinously costly , fly to next town and blow $1k..
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096369 << aaha, and typical destination is the reddit drain.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 18:17:59 phf: well, we're all over the place now. as far as "what makes a whole man", there's more to say: there's plenty of available blueprints to go by, even maybe a mixture of, but the problem is in my mind that the solipsists refuse to choose any, staying instead in this detached "all things are equal, and all things are equally stupid" kind of state
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096473 << asciilifeform is an unapologetic 'baguette cruncher', was installing e.g. non-vinyl su-style wallpaper, non-mdf furnitures, etc. in new pad, lol
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 19:39:05 phf: i'm afraid to continue with this line because i know it'll sound like aristocracy apologism. asci will pounce with his "the sound of breaking baguette"
asciilifeform: ( quite a feat, incidentally, in current reich, to find these 'baguettes', req's moar legwork than dough )
asciilifeform: 'porche for folx who dun like leaving house'
asciilifeform: strictly because likes. 'civilization sim', in the 'flight sim' sense, strictly for own pleasure.
asciilifeform: ( if could similarly simulate the actually operative aspect of aristocracy also, lol, the part where they didn't have to work.. if wishes were horses )
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 19:44:32 phf: signpost: but also like where egotism? should we maybe define it? i took it to mean a reference to "classical music appreciators", which is one thing, but extending it to the point of "I, the Wrath of God will marry my own daughter and with her I will found the purest dynasty the earth has ever seen." takes it in a different direction
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096551 << #a saloon dun have a door atm, is the crux of it. but in re verisimilitude in particular, imho is occasionally stimulating dervish, if e.g. terry davis were alive and tuned in, would prolly play similar part
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 20:34:29 phf: god damn looser sniping other people's conversations with innane points, i don't understand asciilifeform how you tollerate this bullshit. if i wanted lainchan, i'd go there.
asciilifeform pictures the fella living in 'unabomber cabin' w/ sat dish or similar
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2022-04-16#1096526 << over9000 funnily, the brahmins also 'tried to mathematics', in fact had almost all of the ffa algos! simply had nowhere to 'put it'.
dulapbot: Logged on 2022-04-16 20:07:18 phf: and they wrote that woowoo all the while europe was trying to mathematics, so by the time two cultures met there was plenty of backlog "why live in hut, and cum on demand" instead of "city plumbing"
asciilifeform: e.g. g.boole would likely be remembered similarly, if digital comp had not been built.
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