Author Topic: “I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century"  (Read 1151 times)

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Nation of One

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Quote from: Holden
You were reading Infinite Jest,I think.I think when you work with codes ,think about imaginery numbers for 2-3 days at a time you go beyond time &space.I think a representational object such as a table does not correspond to a table-in-itself, but is a non-causal individuated manifestation of the thing-in-itself.While working with codes you focus on the thing-in-itself that is undifferentiated, spaceless, timeless and causeless.

Schopenhauer’s philosophy can be seen as a brand of what Meillassoux calls correlationism, which has it that subject and object cannot each be considered independently. We have access only to the correlation between them, and can never step outside of this relation to see how things “really” are. In introducing his argument against correlationism Meillassoux brings up ancestrality. If space, time and causality are mind-dependent, then what can it mean to say that the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, before the advent of life? Before any knowing consciousness existed, what do “years” and “the Earth” refer to, and what does “formed” mean, without space, time, objects and causality?

Schopenhauer sees the problem:

Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent on the first knowing being ; on the other hand, this first perceiving animal just as necessarily wholly dependent on a long chain of causes and effects which has preceded it . These two contradictory views, to each of which we are led with equal necessity, might certainly be called an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge .

His answer is that the past exists now, for us, and came to exist for the first knowing consciousness. When it made this first appearance, it already had the character of endlessness in both directions, past and future. So, oddly enough, time had a beginning but was and is inherently beginningless. The same goes for the world as representation in general. Objects of the past are objects for us just as much as present objects are. This does rather make it seem as if ancestral objects are nothing but fictions. At least with objects which exist among conscious beings in the present we can say that they are manifesting the will, but now it seems that the ancient Earth and its objects and events are nothing but convenient stories. However this is not quite right. We say that the moon is about 400,000 kilometres from the Earth, yet neither the Moon nor this distance have any reality beyond our representations. The ancient Earth, separated from us by time rather than space, is no less real than this – which is still as real as can be – though it can obviously never be an object of perception for us. It is “less real” only insofar as we ordinarily think of ancient objects as somehow less real.

Yes, it was Infinite Jest. 

Sometimes I lose interest in everything.  Just last night, after midnight, I began to question what the purpose was of me exploring different programming languages or "pentesting" manuals ... or even Bash scripting ... I would not want a position in some corporate enterprise, and I am fairly certain a corporation would not want me.  I am outside of all that, and thanks to ageism, I become more and more an outsider the older I get.   

I have to admit, I even felt a little awkward, socially, returning to the university at age 30, and that was 17 years ago!  F-u-c-k it, I have rebelled continuously, and I do not regret "not adapting to the New World Order". 

I still have a love for learning, and it may be for the reasons you stated.

I am responding to this particular thread because last night I began reading Infinite Jest again.  I had been reluctant to read it on a computer because of all the footnotes, but I am seeing if I can just get used to it.   At first I was thinking, this book is way too long, and it feels like a waste of time, but the author does introduce me to new words, so if I take my time and look up the words in a dictionary .... I might enjoy it.   

It gets me away from the "machine learning books" and the "math thinking books" ... still, the damn book is encyclopedic and I wonder if DFW committed suicide because no one who really mattered to him in his life would even consider reading a book that size.  Who knows?

I've known people who are offended by authors who use obscure words, whereas I see it as a "hunt" where I have to stop, to slow down, to be an HONEST READER --- looking up words I don't understand. 

Anyway, like I said, sometimes I lose interest in everything.

Thanks for floating around in my orbit.  I think it encourages me to continue to follow my bliss.  I will reflect on your above response.  It is very focused.
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Holden

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There is something about Wallace..
« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2016, 03:51:45 pm »
It may come as a surprise to learn that Wallace’s one formal, systematic contribution to the world of ideas was never published and remains almost completely unknown. This is his undergraduate honors thesis in philosophy — “Richard Taylor’s ‘Fatalism’ and the Semantics of Physical Modality” — which he submitted for a degree at Amherst College in 1985. Its obscurity is easy enough to understand. A highly specialized, 76-page work of semantics and metaphysics, it is not for the philosophically faint of heart. A sample sentence: “Let Φ (a physical possibility structure) be a set of distinct but intersecting paths ji–jn, each of which is a set of functions, L’s, on ordered pairs {t, w} ({time, world situation}), such that for any Ln, Lm in some ji, Ln R Lm, where R is a primitive accessibility relation corresponding to physical possibility understood in terms of diachronic physical compatibility.”
« Last Edit: January 20, 2016, 04:08:01 pm by Holden »
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