Cybotron5000

“… maybe that makes eye contact the very essence of music.” …tell that to Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder!

I _love_ my Mockulus Qwest no. 9. I’ve taken to wearing it to bed so I get to earn Zuckbucks whilst I sleep! [P.S. Palmer Eldritch is a genie, Suckerberg’s man boobs are the digital reincarnation of those of Augustus Caesar, and Peter Teak is a modern Medici (and all-round handsome rake)!]

I would recommend anyone interested in this topic read ‘Dawn of the New Everything’ by Jaron Lanier, which is really quite honest about both the positives and negatives of VR. Having only recently had a chance to try it out, I feel like it’s really just another medium (a rather intense and currently flawed one I find), like other interactive media, with potential for expression, utility, unique communication and imagination, but also for disconnection from reality/escapism, addiction, dystopia, tracking, control etc. A lot of pronouncements in this article and the Wired one feel as overblown and one-sided as the hype is on the other side of the fence… There are perfectly good use cases for VR/AR whereby we could save on travel/pollution by telepresence collaboration, help people with eg. disabilities, perform remote work in hostile environments, offer therapeutic treatments, experiment with identity etc. or just as another form of daft escapism or art (and a potentially more active one than some at that). Nothing stops people from using it for short periods and then enjoying rich and fulfilling real lives, in the same way that you’ve got couch potatoes vs. people who just enjoy the escapism of occasionally watching a couple of tv shows/playing games etc. …I do find FB’s closed/sign-in etc. subsidised uber-tracking thang is worrying though…

Last Ninja’s music was super cool also! …had completely forgotten about that game - going to check out the Fastloaders asap :)

Here’s a great article by Kenneth McAlpine: https://www.gamejournal.it/the-sound-of-1-bit-technical-cons... …An interview with Michael Land and Clint Bajakian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0EqG6RYn9Y …an article about iMuse (used from M.I.2 I think): https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/LucasArts-Secret-... Hope that helps! (this site is amazing btw… :)

Passenger: “…so, driving about in tunnels everyday… must be a bit weird - what’s the pay like?”

Driver: “You’d be barking mad not to invest in Dogecoin!”

Oh, so they’re ‘rebooting’ it. I wish they would hire a writer with the imagination to do something completely new without all that baggage. …I agree - there’s darkness in Columbo, but it’s much subtler and is tempered by the kindness and charm of Columbo himself. I see why they do it, but the ‘just one more’ episode netflix-thing easily gets tiresome and ends up prolonging some plots/story arcs unnaturally and unsatisfactorily. The little of ‘Discovery’ I watched I felt no engagement with at all - the writing I thought was generic and boring and the characters seemed two-dimensional - but maybe I’m just behind the times: ‘Enterprise’ grew on me a few years down the line (though not the opening theme!)

…or possibly someone else (Samuelson? Romney/Churchill? Groucho Marx?) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/

That’s a really good point: like having a degree of immunity through prolonged exposure! Though couldn’t all that disinformation also mean that they eventually are bludgeoned into believing in whatever version of ‘reality’ has been constantly presented/ represented (or that they just simply ‘switch off’)? …reminds me of the idea of the ‘Overton Window’: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

That’s an interesting question. I’m sure as you say that there probably are such operations (…do you have articles/information you can find to link to?), but perhaps they are disguised differently, more effectively countered or perhaps subtler/different in nature? I would guess: firstly the KGB doesn’t exist any more, its successor (for the Russian Federation) is the ‘FSB’, but I would imagine that there’s a lot of crossover between the two in terms of tactics/specialities? (…esp. given the president started his career in the KGB…). Agencies on all ‘sides’ always have used various disinformation campaigns historically at one time or another (ideas of P.R./public relations initially concretized by Edward Bernays?: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays ). You could cite that the CIA would sometimes fund ‘soft power’ media like artists/films/music etc. that perhaps ‘worked’ in different ways, whilst KGB famously planted eg. fake news articles/plants to journalists etc.? The USSR seemed to excel at finding weak points in political/civic culture/society and exploiting those pressure points? Maybe the countering of these types of tactics is part of the idea behind isolating Russia’s internet, as China has more or less effectively done - also this could be an exportable commodity to authoritarian regimes - you can see the attraction perhaps to eg. customers of NSO group …counter to the old quote from Bill Clinton about ‘nailing jello to a wall’. The Russian Federations’ political model differs, perhaps in degree at least, to eg. the U.S.’s in that although a ‘representative democracy’, there is maybe a higher degree of integration, even if that is through networks of money/power/influence/intimidation etc. between the state and media and a higher acceptance of suppression of counter-narratives? The USA/Europe’s strength is partly built on freedom of information/ travel/ diversity/ flow of goods/services I would argue, but that can also be (rather cleverly) used against them in a kind of low-level assymetric ‘warfare’. A lot of ordinary people on both sides have neither the time nor will (and maybe effective education?) to try and separate facts from fiction basically and so these types of ops succeed... So: a difference in operational ‘philosophy’ and a historical/cultural background of different areas of ‘success’ to draw on maybe?

Why though? What is it that has changed their business model or people’s minds? Ask yourself that. What is it that is particularly biased? Opinion pieces and ‘advertorials’ etc. that they are forced to adopt because of falling revenues and fragmented attentions are bound to be biased.

"When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?" ― John Maynard Keynes

This is so messed up. If you’re reading this and are in this ‘business’, or associated with it/supporting it, please, for the sake of yourself, your families, humanity and the planet we live on, get out if you have any choice! It’s been bad enough with state actors, lobbyists etc etc. for years anyhow - don’t make it worse for the sake of a quick buck!

Fiction (/well-written fiction at least) is an artform, like music or, um, art, or even design you know? It’s a communication medium meant (amongst other things) to convey something of the human experience that is perhaps intangible or illogical. Fiction is normally very honest and open about not being factual. I take your point though that when people take fictions as truth, whether through the reader’s ignorance, or the writer’s misrepresentation, that can be extremely problematic - that is not the fault of fiction I would argue though, but rather of the context/audience that receives it/the manner in which they interpret it (I suppose there are exceptions like parodies/eg. ‘War Of The Worlds’ or something?). I currently read much less fiction than I used to when I was a kid (my mum was an English teacher), but I can assure you that my brain is almost always perfectly capable of distinguishing between the two on some level. I may choose to suspend my disbelief or feel feelings prompted by the material, but am simultaneously aware that this is not objective reality. I agree with your point though that much fiction/fictionalised material that has been interpreted as real has caused much damage - people really like stories (isn’t this an inherent part of our psychology?) and tend to inevitably construct them around even the most dispassionate material (in the same way we tend to anthropomorphise stuff I guess?). Trick is we need some training to help us ‘read’ media with a questioning/‘between the lines’ sort of rationale/focussed attention/looking for bias/manipulation/being self-aware etc etc…

I tried last year to model/animate a butterfly for something I was working on/to learn how to use Blender - found this video as a reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7a7ZAqWBIs …also this previous HN post about butterfly flight is very interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25928796 …+ quite a few previous articles on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=butterfly+wings …awesome bugs that they are! :)

‘…where are you going, with your fetlocks blowing…’ :) https://youtu.be/Nxf6ECuRcWM

I’m a fan of the potential of these technologies, but I’m guessing that sadly FB’s subsidised/closed VR/AR systems will have a ‘hidden’ (& frankly creepy) cost that is unfortunately characteristic of their business model: https://itif.org/publications/2021/03/04/balancing-user-priv... https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/publications/reimagining-... https://www.reedsmith.com/-/media/files/perspectives/2017/06... [pdf]

Do you think? …impressive technology perhaps, but it still just looks like really poor pastiche to me… I don’t really understand why putting artists out of work is a useful boon to society/focus of research? Is it mainly to do with having easy access to large datasets to rip off/mulch?

Ok - please forgive/correct/help me out here if I’ve got the sticky end of the stick, but both the premise and conclusion, very clumsily put, seem to me to be: ‘formal or classical systems of logic are more limited/not as rigorous/less useful/less challenging than some people believe them to be, especially when applied to Aristotelean/Thomist philosophy/conceptions, because of their ‘merely’ relational syntax/nature and because they cannot adequately express/encapsulate concepts/‘things’ that the author holds to be true or self-evident features of his perceived reality/received wisdom/everyday utility/a priori metaphysics. The author concedes its usefulness in certain contexts: particularly when combined/in conjunction with his favoured philosophical ideas, or used in support of them, but that it does not present a challenge/undermine the author’s ideas/beliefs in ways that presumably some prior/present critics might suggest.’

Good point: perhaps I have an unrealistic, dumb, ill-educated or otherwise malformed ideal/view that philosophers should somehow be constantly challenging their own ideas, using their writing/discourse as an instrument to help them reach better conclusions through statement/contradiction (something like constructing an academic essay using thesis/antithesis/synthesis I guess?) and disputing them internally… Actually, as you suggest, the ‘correct’ approach to philosophy, or at least the only realistically possible approach, is to repeatedly state prior beliefs in the most persuasive way possible and then presumably to defend your a priori views from any challenges by others - only ‘testing’ those ideas in reaction by engaging in external debate rather than an internal one… I wonder though, doesn’t the outcome/process of that debate have to register internally somehow, for one side at least, for it to have any point? …for an evolution of the thinkers involved’s ideas to take place, is it not necessary for one/both sides in a debate to have at least a somewhat open mind, even as they strongly debate their particular ‘side’? …to allow one side to change its mind when the arguments put forward by the opposition are significantly strong - otherwise the debate would inevitably become stale, never-changing and circular? If one side is fixed in its beliefs, why would the other side bother debating them at all? If they were interested in adopting those ideas they should merely ‘receive’ them, rather than engage in an inevitably fruitless debate? I suppose if you have an unshakable belief that there exists an eternal and ever-present truth that you are inalterably sure of, and others who don’t agree with you are simply less enlightened, then you may feel that you should never have cause to change your mind - why should you, as you are already privy to the ultimate truth? Your task then, if you are communicative/evangelical/missionary in some way at least, is only to expound that truth to others? Your writing becomes a vehicle to promote your ‘truth’ - truth informed by mystically or intuitively received wisdom, never conjecture… Your debate/writing etc. is not a way to clarify your own ideas, but rather to show others the folly of contrary thoughts?

So is Thomism(/forms of Neo-Thomism) the be-all-and-end-all of philosophical enquiry then? If an argument is based on unexamined prior positions how can it be considered sound? (I suppose there is a problem of infinite regress here/some form of ‘Russell’s teapot’ or something! :) Thomas Aquinas was/is an extremely influential and interesting thinker (especially for his time!), but I find that sadly I don’t necessarily see proof of/share his revelatory faith in the existence of a traditional Catholic God. When I try and boil down various arguments into comment form I cannot definitively argue against those ideas because, for all I know, they may be true, at least on some level... The problem is rather that, as I understand him at least, I see that equally they may not be true and that they derive in part from hefty presuppositions about the existence of god, denial of possible kinds of physical/metaphysical infinite regression (not sure I’m using that term entirely correctly, but what the hey…) /infinite universes/multiverses/even voidist/illusory universes, various other theisms (pantheism, panpsychism or ‘idealism’ for example), atheism and probably a lot more -isms that I can’t think of right now or am just not aware of… If your argument is that philosophy based on formal logic is devalued somehow because it is merely relative/can only express relations between ‘things’ and not ‘things’ in themselves, well, what’s to say that the universe isn’t entirely informationally constituted/‘mathematical’ and therefore able to be defined solely relationally in some form? (not putting that very well - but along the lines of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe ). I don’t immediately see how ordinary language is any more potentially categorical than formal logic in such a context - though the power and beauty of words/mathematics is undeniable in a human context, is it not potentially dangerous arrogance to think that we currently/could ever hope to understand God/universal meaning on any definitive, ethically actionable or universally communicable level? Doesn’t the unchallenged adoption of such concretized beliefs invite inevitable abuse and corruption when flawed humans distort them and undesirable actions arise from calcified dogmatism/extremism/literal interpretations? Here’s some Kant, for good measure: “Thinking for one's self is to seek the chief touchstone of truth in one's self (id est, in one's own reason); and the maxim, to think for one's self at all times is Enlightening. Thereto belongs not just so much, as those may imagine who take knowledge, to be enlightening; as it is rather a negative principle in the use of one's cognoscitive faculty, and he, who is very rich in knowledge, is often the least enlightened in the use of it. To exercise one's own reason, means nothing more, than, relatively to every thing which one is to suppose, to question one's self.” — from ‘What it Means to Orient One's Self in Thinking’ ((& Monty Python’s Philosophical Football Match: https://vimeo.com/84600758 )

Perhaps you’re right and I was overly harsh or critical of him personally. All I am trying to say, crudely put, is that it seems to me that the author has started from his prior positions and then constructed an argument that reinforces them. That’s fine by me (if he is honest about it), but I hope you can see it is hard to stomach if you don’t agree or can’t see the proof of those prior positions. Specious = “…plausible but false; based on pretense; deceptively pleasing: ‘His incorrect conclusion arose from specious reasoning.’”. For example, a statement like: “…an analysis that simply fails to capture what Aquinas is talking about is hardly rigorous…” (sorry taking that out of context) seems bizarre to me when I consider (the little I know of) the history of philosophical thought since Aquinas… I apologize if I have offended you or the author- that was not my intention - perhaps I am merely showing my ignorance…

What do you consider to be my assumptions? As I said in the comment below, I am not attacking the guy personally (that’s what ad hominem means) - I’m sure he may be perfectly lovely and if he is genuine in his pursuits then I genuinely wish him (and you) all the best in life…

…and yes I think that challenging one’s suppositions ought to be the first task of any aspiring philosopher. Isn’t that the whole idea?

…catholic with a small ‘c’: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/catholic (…sorry I couldn’t resist the pun…). Personally I think there have been many wondrous, uplifting and glorious achievements of the Catholic church/its followers …and, I’m sure you would agree, some not so much, as is the case with many human institutions… What is it I’m subscribed to? Edward Feser may be a wonderful fellow in person for all I know - I would like to think at least that he is a decent, upstanding, law-abiding, moral etc. citizen - he certainly comes across as erudite and indefatigable in his writing… I just get the feeling that the two blog posts I have read of his that have been posted on this site were both designed solely to reinforce his particular presuppositions? Perhaps I am judging him unfairly - would you recommend something else of his that I should read instead? As I say, if his philosophy/faith works for him, gives him meaning and hope and joy etc. and he genuinely believes in those ideas, I wish him all the best… I worry a little about (perhaps less enlightened) people wanting to apply those ideas to society at large though... You must surely also be aware of examples from history where things have not gone so well? (not least for Catholics at various points in time - incl. ancestors of my own). What do you think?

I think that sometimes being overly opinionated and incapable of changing your mind is potentially harmful to others, yes… Is it not potentially dangerous to advocate for various political realities based solely on unexamined/individual opinion-based constructs? Maybe I am wrong, though… I’m curious what you think of the ideas in this article?: https://aphilosopher.drmcl.com/2007/08/26/is-philosophy-just...

Edward Feser doesn’t seem to me to be genuinely interested in challenging his own presuppositions through metaphysics or philosophy, or in communicating the work of others to a wider audience. If the posts that appear on this site are anything to go by, he seems to specialize in a specious species of polemic and obfuscation designed solely to justify and promulgate his political and religious views. If it lends a sense of purpose to his life, makes him a living or gives him a feeling of self-importance/bolsters his worth among his peers, who am I to criticize? Perhaps it is actually a deep satire with some ulterior motive. As an agnostic, one can only hope that a capital punishment for more catholic thinkers is never re-introduced. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Feser

“jest-monger” is my new favourite insult - kind of a subtler way of calling someone a clown… Thanks for the interesting article btw.!

+1 for Miller Puckette’s book (and Pd) - might be a bit hardcore as an intro. for some, but if you’re technically inclined it’d be a great overview… If the second option is more important, there’s no substitute for messing about starting to get familiar with how different primitive oscillators/filters sound in subtractive synthesis maybe first, then moving on to explore other types from there… (FM for example is less intuitive) …recreating/ researching your favourite sounds from records, synth internals, or just trying to make whatever you’ve dreamt of/heard in your head/twiddling ‘til you find something you like and then trying to work out what makes it sound cool… (‘The Computer Music Tutorial’ is a beast of a book, if you wanted an all-in-one reference: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computer-music-tutorial )

Ooft …’trendiness’/hype to blame…(for want of a better way of describing it - nothing against trendiness per se… :) …short-sighted also as technology moves so fast and what garnered the highest salaries in this generation could easily change in the next… (esp. if over-subscribed)… I teach guitar/bass/music production (though trying to slowly educate myself about CS as much as I can), but I get what you’re saying about learning basics - you can go blue in the face trying to explain to someone that if they learnt eg. basic harmony or acoustics or how MIDI works etc etc that they would understand eg. how to make any style of music they happen to like potentially more quickly/effectively, or that instead of learning eg. only specific interfaces/ individual siloed DAWs/platforms, they would see that they all work on basically the same underlying principles and be able to pick up and use any they wish from then on/make their own… (…counter to a lot of ‘magic’ marketing speak/youtube vids etc…). Perhaps as CS ideas become more widely used/diffused/familiar to teachers/practitioners of all other subjects, and indeed programming etc. potentially becomes ‘higher level’/more abstracted/built on specialised API’s/libraries/AI/autocomplete/visual paradigms etc. those subjects will incorporate the teaching of CS/programming/AI and eg. biology will inevitably integrate teaching of what might at the moment be called ‘computational biology’, or literature will incorporate analysis of texts using AI as a standard component of the course etc. etc.? …that might then free your dept. to focus on core concepts/constructing the underlying platforms that all these other subjects use as a base? all the best! (good article btw.)