Tic Talk
The (Barkerian) Tic Xenotation provides a numerical semiotic adapted to the Naturals with special affinity to Euclid's Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic. The TX constructs numbers in terms of their basic arithmetical features as primes or composites in a notation without modulus (base), place-value or numerals.
The exact circumstances among which D.C.Barker formulated the TX remain deeply obscure (for a number of reasons best explored elsewhere). For our immediate purposes it suffices to remark that the broad research context within which TX emerged was a highly abstract SETI-oriented investigation into minimally-coded intelligent signal, without presupposition as to origin (e.g. 'xenobiological organisms') or theme (e.g. 'cosmo-chemistry').
The investigation, situated in the jungles of Borneo, was entitled 'Project Scar' and received a high-level security classification. In keeping with this research topic, Barker proposed TX as a maximally abstracted or ultimately decoded numerical semiotic, stripped of all nonconstructive (or symbolic) conventions (and initially named 'Goedelian hypercode'.)
While the raw numeracy of TX is most accurately conceived as sub-qabbalistic, due to its indifference to modulus notation (the primary motor of qabbalistic occulturation), its very independence from convention makes it a valuable tool when investigating the basic features of numerical (arithmetical or qabbalistic) codes.
Among the notation-related features most prominently exposed to rigorous scrutiny by TX is ordinality.
AOsys
Within the Anglobal Oecumenon, the most pragmatically prevalent ordinal functions are alphabetical, utilizing the ordering convention of the Neoroman letters to arrange, sort, search and archive on the basis of Alphabetical or Alphanumerical Order, organizing dictionaries, encyclopaedias, lists and indexes 'lexicogrpahically.' The word 'alphabet' itself performs a (Greek) ordinal operation.
'Lexicography' - dictionary-type order - is used here (as in various fields, such as compilations of number series) to designate a mode of ordering (an ordinal-numeric function) rather than a definite topic ('words'). Although a relatively neglected numerical operation, lexicographic ordering plays a crucial role in concrete (popular-Oecumenic) ordinal practices. It is characterized by:
1) Popularity. Facility at lexicographic sequencing is considered a basic social competence, inherent - or even prior - to literacy, whilst pedagogically separate from the acquisition of numerical ('maths') skills. At the pedagogical level, Oecumenic societies tend to distribute ordinal/cardinal competences in accordance with the distinction between literacy/numeracy, thus establishing the basic division between linguistic/mathematical abilities from a primal nomofission (ordinal/cardinal differentiation). Literate citizens of the Oecumenon - those able to use a dictionary - are ordinally competent, through lexicographic conventions.
2) Pure ordinalism. Restricted entirely to sequencing problems, cardinal values remain entirely alien to lexicographic practices, to such an extent that rigorous ordinal-numeric operations are typically divorced entirely from numerical associations.The ordinal function of numerals (1st, 2nd, 3rd ...), in contrast, remains relatively impure - at least psychologically - since in this case a persistent cardinal temptation confuses sequencing function with the spectre of quantity. For this reason the alphanumerical subsumption of the numerals into lexicographic practices can be considered 'clarifying' in respect to ordinal operations.
3) Fractionality. Simulating lexicography within arithmetic requires the employment of modular (e.g. decimal) fractional values. Arithmetical listing by cardinality will be isomorphic with ordinal-lexicographic sequencing for all numbers of the format '0.n'.
4) Sequential diplocoding. Lexicographic systems require twin ordering conventions. They draw upon an alphabetical code and an ordinal place value convention (principally, left or right ordering, equivalent to the behavioural scheme for the movement of a reading-head). The alphabet instantiates the ordering scheme, but does not (internally) describe it - 'reading' the alphabet to extract the ordinal code ('abcd...' or 'zyxw...') itself presupposes an extrinsic sequencing convention (Alpha-Omega, from first to last).
5) Infinite potentiality. Any lexicographic system allowing interminable strings has a code potential (cardinally) equivalent to Aleph-0, with an infinitity of virtual Dedekind cuts (entry insertions) between any two terms, however close, and virtual isomorphy between any segment of the list/archive and the whole. It thus attests to a 'literate' infinity isomorphic with that of mathematics, drawing upon a common but culturally obscured digital source.
Intercoding Arithmetic
An intermediate semiotic attuned to purely demonstrative engagement with Euclid's Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic (FTA) can be generated by transforming the standard Oecumenic decimal notation (*) by:
1) Employing the full Alphanumeric series 0-Z (0-35) for notational convenience, and
2) Raising all signs to their first hyprime power, from 0 = Prime-0 = 1 to Z = Prime-35 = 149.
The purpose of these transformations is to eliminate polydigit (place-value) numbering and expose the radical disorder implicit in the FTA. All integral numbers in the FTA intercode consist either of single figures or plexed-compounds of the form (...), with numerical clusters synthesized through multiplication rather than modular-positional construction.
Consider a number picked entirely at random, *86, disassembled by factorization in accordance with the FTA down to the listed components *2 and *43, the *1st and *14th primes, hence: 1E. The expression of this number is no longer under any positional constraint, '1E' or 'E1' are equally valid on numerical grounds and strictly equivalent. Shuffling a string of intercode figures (FTA components) of whatever length makes no difference whatsoever to the number designated, with the ordering of the series being subject only to an extrinsic convention (of minimal - even vanishing - importance from a (cardinal) arithmetical perspective, where it is relevant only 'psychologically', for convenience in assimilation and comparison).
Once the merely inertial and peudo-numerical order inherited from uninterrogated tradition is subtracted from FTA-intercode strings, dissociating all components from quantitative ordering, they are freed for lexicographic re-ordering as decoded series - an ordering which will deviate from the series of quantities, liberating an Autonomous Ordinality whilst de-cardinalizing the number line.
Consider *172, or 11E. Oecumenic-lexicographic procedures ensure this number precedes 1E (*86), as will all its successive binary multiples. Evidently, such procedures ensure that the infinite series of binary powers must be completed before arriving at 2 (*3). 'Natural' counting no longer has any prospect of reaching a nonbinary power, just as alphabetical-lexicographic 'counting' would proceed 'a, aa, aaa, aaaa ...' without ever arriving at 'b'. Reversing the problem and it is equally evident the lexicographic-ordinal line is never counted.
The Kantian assimilation of arithmetic to temporality models elementary time-synthesis as n+1, +1, +1 ... an intuition rendered questionable by the rigorous lexicographic disorganization of the number (listing) line. Once ordinally purified, the number line becomes uncountable by any supposed finite (temporalizing) subject, even from moment n to moment n+1. Instead, the line is synthesized by sorting (lexicographic sequencing) of prefabricated strings, whose quantities are determined on a different axis to their linear-positional codings. A prolongation of the time-arithmetic association would thus require a remodelling of time as nonprogressive synthesis without consistent scale or continuous-quantitative trend, no longer intelligible as passage or development. Such ordinal-lexicographic time maps a 'templexity' that is uncountable, fractured/fractional, erratic and heterogeneous, sequential but nonsuccesive.
Of course, all of this needs re-approaching on a far more rigorous basis, with a consistent focus on the topic of templexity - suffice it to say for 'now' that Kantian intuitions of number, time and their intermapping are themselves structured by notationally-problematizable constructions, since time-mapping has a hypothetical rather than essential relation to arithmetical common sense (with its undisturbed assumption of straightforward ordinal-cardinal interconvertability).
Note-1. Elevating this intermediate semiotic to a functional numeracy, with a semiotic power commensurate with the set of Naturals (including primes above Prime-Z), requires a final step:
3) Adopting Tic Xenotative plexion, where '(n)' = Prime-n.
Thus 0 = 1, (0) = Prime-1 = 2, ((0)) = Prime-2 = 3, etc.
The inefficiency of this semiotic relative to TX is demonstrated by its redundancy, most dramatically:
V = (B) = ((5)) = (((3))) = ((((2)))) = (((((1))))) = ((((((0))))))
Note-2. TX shares the intrinsic disorder of FTA-intercode. *86 = :(:(::)) or
(:(::)): or :((::):) ...
Out Of Order
TX/FTA-intercode numerical construction is indifferent to semiotic sequencing, position or grammar. A number expressed in either system could be distributed randomly within a space of n-dimensions, requiring only a cohesion convention (semiotic particles 'belong together' irrespective of order). Apprehended in their fully decoded potentiality as efficient number-signs, such formulae are clusters, not strings.
The TX case is still more extreme than that typical of FTA-intercode, however, since here even the spectral residue of sequential coding is erased. Given two complex TX-formulated numbers, correct order (quantitative comparison) requires - perhaps highly elaborate - calculation, eliminating entirely the practical usage of disordered TX clusters for ordinal operations.
For anything but small numbers, Euclidean cluster-stringing conventions (by ascending cardinalities) become procedurally complex, perhaps inoperable, for TX numerical formulas. This is evident even from small numbers, such as *149, TFA-intercode Z or (34), TX (((:))(::)). As the 35th prime, with 35 the product of *5 and *7, the sequencing of hyprime sub-factors (factors of the prime-ordinate, i.e. *35) is no longer facilitated by lexicographic codings drawn from the numeral sequence. That '5' precedes '7' is evident from the numeral code, but the ordering of ((:)) and (::) cannot similarly rely upon intrinsic lexicographic guidance. In the TX case, it is only by constructing the numbers and sequencing them arithmetically that the 'notational' question of their order can be resolved. In other words, the sequencing of the sign has ceased to be a notational or preliminary problem, becoming instead inextricable from the arithmetical construction of the number. This results inevitably from the elimination of notational redundancy in TX, with concomitant erasure of procedural 'intuition.'
Because TX number clusters are intrinsically disordered, a consistent and functional TX semiotic requires re-ordinalization through autonomous (extrinsic) lexicographic procedures, inevitably constructing a cardinally erratic 'number-line' or list/search sequencing protocol. The semiotic economy of TX makes this procedural problem easy to define. As an approximate AOsys analogue, lexicographic TX requires a variant of sequential diplocoding:
1) Cluster stringing. Sequencing the components of composite TX-formula numbers.
2) Number listing. Meta-sequencing of properly sequenced TX strings.
It might seem sensible to assume the Oecumenic left-to-right reading procedure, since the arbitrariness of this rule makes it unexceptionable, but the diplocoding option matrix necessitates a substantial question as to the consistency/inconsistency of this decision as between (1) and (2) above. Even allowing for this complication, the option matrix for a mechanical lexicographic TX ordering protocol remains highly constrained, consisting merely of twin decisions as to the sequencing of the tick [:], open plex [(] and close plex [)] signs.
Irrespective of the Cluster stringing decision, tick-precedence sequencing of the number list results in a the AOsys analogue previously mentioned (a, aa, aaa ...) 'counting' through the infinite series of binary powers before reaching any nonbinary number. The list is initiated by TX *2 = ':'.
Plex-precedence produces a far more anomalous list-line, one that is non-originating because it 'begins' with a series of arbitrarily large hyperplexed primes, notationally initialized by unending open-plex signs [((((((((((((...], since '...((' precedes '...(:'. Listing practices following a plex-precedence protocol necessarily begin in the middle.
[My assumption is that semiotic consistency (across clusters/lists) is to be preferred, with the sheer weirdness of plex-precedence sequencing making a strong case for its adoption. The 'alphabet' (ordinal code) would thus be described by TX *3 = (:).]
In his own brief comments on the cluster sequencing problem in the Project Scar report, Barker restricted himself to the observation that Euclidean (cardinally consistent) ordering was no more than a "provisional and arbitrary convention" which would quickly break down "given nondemonstrative numberical values [anything but very small Naturals]" that the problem should be considered "merely technical and extrinsic" and "probably best decided on communication-engineering grounds."
Given Barker's Project Scar research orientation, focused on "nonlinear recursively-embedded planar semionomic dot-groupings of cryptogeologic origin" - anomalous cryptoliths - it is not surprising that he came to the notational ordering problem late and distractedly. Just days after completing the "Appendix on Notation" Barker came entirely unstrung.
Stricken by revolting tropical diseases, increasingly obsessed with an interwoven tangle of cosmopolitical conspiracies of various scales, and multiplicitously agitated by teeming microparasites of dubious reality, Barker's plummet into noncommunicating delirium is charted by the digressions into doggerel annotating his Project Scar research report:
A chittering tide
Devouring my hide
Starting from the Outside
This is the slide ...
And Yet
In the same twitchy, spintered handwriting Barker remarks:
The xenotation continues to disorder itself as it condenses, tearing up the number line, devastating time and sleep. Perhaps it is a weapon from outer space. I say that seriously, even if it is a sickening kind of joke. There is no sleep, everything is broken, everything connects without joining, swarming, pulsing, dots, specks, dust particles dancing inside my eyes, continuously ripping ... thought has become a disease ... I even heard a voice (how ridiculous) saying: 'You must isolate the xenotation before it disintegrates the time-line.' It's just the fever of course, but the tic systems are all shuffled together now, shuffled together with this filthy disease and its cavernous speckled dreams and even Jolo admits that the markings are spreading over my skin, bites or rashes or maybe even colonies ... so the line has rotted through, disintegrated ... there's no line, that's the message, and yet ... And Yet. ... counting is ineluctable and unsurpassable ... You have to check it, re-check it continuously, but it's true. How could the hyprime indices be decided without a countable ordinality? They have to come from somewhere, from a matrix, a culture, even if the clusters seem to rip everything apart they MUST HAVE BEEN COUNTED at some stage, before dissimulating themselves and scattering again ... And yet we can only make sense of these dots and ripples by counting primes on a line that remains successive and integrated, developing reliably, communicable, they have a past, a true lineage, even if it's difficult to think, even if they tear it apart and make of it something shattered and insane, something diseased ... but really I don't blame them, NASA of course knew nothing, but even they knew nothing, they just arrived, why should they remember? Memory is impossible for them. In any case, it's just a disease, I understand that now. There's no malice ... not even real cruelty ...
Note. While there is no reason to believe Barker had exposure to, or interest in, the Anglossic Qabbala, the emphatic reiteration of 'And Yet' suggests he had feverishly identified it as a synonym for counting, perhaps even for temporality. (AND YET = 123).
Posted by Nick Land at February 22, 2005 08:37 AMto start, tentatively, at the beginning (and given the density of the above I'll allow myself the position of naive devil's advocate to open up discussion):
It might be that the claim of TX to be 'the most radically decoded semiotic' slightly premature given that the set-theoretical conception of number (as described in detail by la Badiou) counts the natural number line but _without_ recourse to anything as outrageously unseemly as Barker's "deplex", requiring only the notion of membership, and including 0 and 1 simply through a shelling procedure
0
(0)
(0,(0))
(0,(0),(0,(0)))
where each number consists of its predecessor's elements plus the 'name' of its predecessor.
Here, also, it is a matter of non-ordered 'clusters' (what else is a set?) each with a unique internal structure.
Barker's approach understandably valorizes the primes for their robust uniqueness, using them as particles of absolute difference; thus primes become the 'substance' of a radically-differentiated number system. However this is done without reflecting that extraction of the primes is itself a complex secondary (operational) product of the number line (though I guess we will have to explore this point a lot more). Since Barker then denies access to the number line, is it any wonder that the number line has to be 'retrosynthesized'? This has all the makings of a 'philosophical' system, the untransparency resulting from the immediate interment of the conditions of its own possibility serving as a sign of its radicality or primacy.
The set-theoretical conception is stronger insofar as it does not require _any_ 'substance' in order to create the number line, it really does create difference from nothing. In contrast, if one were to pick apart all of the 'primitives' and operations of Barker's scheme it would reveal a lamentable weight of assumption. How could you trust it without already having absorbed a headful of oecumenical convention?
Excellent, Nick ... just skimmed through this (need more time to process and read it completely)
Posted by: R at February 22, 2005 03:13 PMafterthought: maybe I'm confusing what is intended as 'a semiotic' with what is intended as 'an ontology'. But that would be more than a 'mere' confusion - it would relate to the vexed question of the relation between ontomath (the 'being' of number(s)) and popular numerics (their empirical variety and semiotic proliferation).
ps. R - hope you're not in vicinity of apparently savage seismic activity over there ?
Posted by: u/c at February 22, 2005 03:23 PMI really can't make head or tails out of the dry (hardware - hotwhore?) side of this but the storyline evokes a few things, the coincidence of recent surfage and memories of tic delirium (instrumental to my soft landing in the lap of the rainbow family):
. . . .continues to lead the country down a Death Star-lit path.
Nice turn of phrase used in a HST obit; 3 guesses who this is said of?
apropo anthrobot:
conceptlab.com 120.000 visitors per day to see a whole bunch of nightmare scenery, amongst which a cock roach 'coach' at work . . .
this is how inhumanities creep into already loveless places (didn't northanger warn about venus' abominable position?), what they call 'the coach' is a robot the cockroach is tied up and condemned to learn control if it wants to make anything of it's life (or so, I presume, goes the assinine reasoning; I haven't the stomach to find out how many of them die before they manage to control their feeding reflexings remotely).
http://www.pdcnet.org/machine.html machine consciousness (a reader)
William Irwin Thompson
The Borg or Borges?
It is a paradox of the work of Artificial Intelligence that in order to grant consciousness
to machines, the engineers first labour to subtract it from humans, as
they work to foist upon philosophers a caricature of consciousness in the digital
switches of weights and gates in neural nets. As the caricature goes into public
circulation with the help of the media, it becomes an acceptable counterfeit currency,
and the humanistic philosopher of mind soon finds himself replaced by the
robotics scientist. This atmospheric inversion from above to below, one in which
a sky turns into the smog of a thickened air, happened once before in the world of
knowledge, when Comtian positivism inspired a functionalist approach to the
study of the sacred.
www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/WI_Thompson.pdf
With Rosamond I lately went abroad to walke i'th' fielde,
Wee tooke two lutes for our delighte, which might us solace yeelde:
I tunde the one iuste to the other, and layde a strawe o'th'one:
So soone as both these tunes agreed the strawe lept thence anone.
Looke Rosamonde, so you, (quoth I) doe move mee without touch,
And without handes can drawe: for loves conditions are such
That whosoever Venus bringes, within her power, to lye,
Shee makes them feele and see what they before coulde not descrye.
BESET THY PARASITES WITH PARASITES sounds like an eye for an eye type strategy to me; far from the tic for tac correspondence Jacob Cats was rhymin about.
But the more I thought about the algebraic mentality, the more I
thought that it had never really become as globally extensive as the
geometrical, which externalized itself in the expressions of architecture
all around the world, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, India, China,
Mesoamerica, and medieval Europe. The geometer of the kind of
civilization that expressed itself in classical and high medieval architecture
was not simply a technician but more like a public health officer
responsible for the harmony and just proportion of the polity; he
was more of a Pythagoras or Confucius than a wild Gallois or a paranoid
Gödel.
The thought of paranoid Gödel, who starved himself to death
because he was afraid that people were trying to poison him, made
me stop to reflect on the paranoid’s fascination with secret code,
with an entrancement for notation that held the sacred hieroglyphs
of cosmic meaning. The substitution of code for concrete experience
is a primary characteristic of the ‘paranoid cosmic synthesis’ in
which everything is explained. I thought of all the paranoid conspiracy
mail that I had received over the years: manuscripts without any
margin, with a whole separate text circling around the central transcription,
and with keywords like ‘world order’ or ‘Rothschilds and
Rockefellers’ colored over with highlighting pens. The paranoid had
a terror of empty spaces; no space could be left unfilled or
uncolonized by his imperious obsession.
WhenI was living in Bern, I became acquainted with the psychotic
art of Adolf Wölfli, for the Kunstmuseum in Bern holds his primary
6 Self and Society
collection. Wölfli is so great an artist that it seems unfair to pigeonhole
him in the category of psychotic art. Psychosis may have driven
Wölfli and given him his ‘horror vacui’ and provided the content for
his visions, but his uses of multiple spaces, his sense of design and
structure, raise him to the level of art as art and not just psychotic art
and clinical data. In Wölfli’s 1904 work he was coeval with Cubism
in breaking down linear perspective, and in his ‘Samoaaden Brücke’
he envisions the bridge from multiple and simultaneous perspectives.
Rational, linear perspective is abandoned and space becomes
curved as beings from multiple dimensions leak through the holes in
space and time. Thinking of Ralph’s comments about the
‘entrancement with notation’, I went back to give Wölfli another
look, and much to my astonishment I found that Wölfli had written
an ‘Ode to Algebra’, that he had filled in whole notebooks to algebra
with his fascinations with cosmic calligraphy and esoteric notation.5
Perhaps, I thought, Wölfli was the end of a process, the algebraic
mentality carried to its extreme.
that last quote from 'Studies in the
Evolution of Culture'
ps: another large article by WIT: www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ imp/jcs/2000/00000007/00000007/1032 Speculations on the City and the Evolution
of Consciousness
.. .. and who's reading all that? Well, "Chaos, War and Business" for example, cause one man's warning is another's inspiration..
Posted by: piet at February 22, 2005 05:35 PMto cite from my quote: "The paranoid had
a terror of empty spaces; no space could be left unfilled or
uncolonized by his imperious obsession."
before yall think this is a self-indictment I'll have you know that close packing texts is only meant/done to mimick/honour the compactness, integrity faultlessness, rich- and fullness, in short the being consistent of rock ... of course.
Posted by: piet at February 22, 2005 06:25 PMnow all I'll have to do is tie Andrew Lehman to WIT to John Hamaker and patent resulting flavor
Posted by: piet at February 22, 2005 06:34 PMbut first the concluding lines of the essay I posted the larger quote from already: Neither abstract nor concrete, this new way of knowing
seems to us to be a kind of visual math that is also musical, and perhaps
just that kind of music of Strings the Calabi-Yau topologies
make as they pulse with the fabric of space-time in ways imaginable
for heads that have the heart for it.7 To get ready for this new planetary
culture, we climb and turn on the spiral and blink our eyes in
wonder and disbelief as we see a history we missed in the settled cities
of the plain where the universities lie.
8 Self and Society
mathematical sensibility. The Algebraic mentality could then be seen as a
transition state between the Geometrical and the Gailean Dynamical to come.
http://www.metahistory.org/ETArchonNav.asp
The material on Gnostic Archon theory in Metahistory.org is unique to this site and essential to the Gaia Mythos. Various articles and Lexicon entries describe the origin, nature and activities of the Archons, a species of predatory inorganic beings who may be equated with the Annunaki of Sumerian myth, as well as with ETs (Grays and Reptilians) in the intervention scenario of modern UFO lore. Gnostic texts cited throughout the site present a comprehensive view of alien intrusion.
piet, OT. what does your chromosome set look like?
nick, i'm illuminated by this piece. shit! you should have written it long before.
Posted by: northanger at February 22, 2005 08:05 PMUlam spiral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral
OGSYIAC
AQ 317 {prime} = HYPERSTITIONAL = HANDBOOK TO THE GAME = PSUEDO-CHRISTOS = THE HOLY OF HOLIES = THE ONE GREAT UNIT
Posted by: northanger at February 22, 2005 10:06 PMpiet - "didn't northanger warn about venus' abominable position?)" - interesting venus position in hyperstition's chart. investigating VENUS / 2003CO1 influence. venus "called 'wasp star' or 'spearing star,' was said to be malefic and dangerous" - CO1 "not very good for aircraft war", "very bad for aircraft / flying in general". see http://www.onereed.com/journal/archives/00000006.php for Venus synodic cycle analysis concerning socio-political events: "during inferior sun-ven conjunction – impulsive actions, premature decisions, errors in judgment, sex scandals, big mistakes, etc. The idea is that desire runs ahead of reason"; eg, Abu Gharib 'torture memo' released, 9/11 Commission issues initial report, etc. will write more @ livejournal.com. PLUS, hyperstition chart re venus & co1: interesting grand cross with pluto aiming ve/me and jupiter-co1 opposite uranus. question is piet (cos i know there is one): what is the tic-prime connect with this bizness?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prison
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26401-2004Jun8.html
u/c - try to respond to you first because you're speaking numbo ;)
your key point (hope i've got this right) that Peano axiomatization of arithmetic through set theory provide construction of the naturals no less decoded than those of TX. Don't want to rush this 'cos i think it's important (and we should come back to the Peano thang anyway - interesting that both (inc. TX) rely on recursive embedding) - also key topic for 'meaning' of decoding
but (for moment):
1) Peano Naturals can be 'decoded' by simply tallying - why are they a superior code in this (pop. numeracy, pragmatic, or properly arithmetical) sense - in contrast to a logical one- than a simple tally I, II, III, ... (as employed in the dreadful 'Contact' movie mentioned in first TX post)
2) Peano's system also raises none of the ordinal/cardinal disjunct problems mentioned in this post - OK, this ambivalent topic at least, since this problem seems fairly brutally intractable, and also made points to an axis of ciphering rather than 'coding' ...
Gotta go right now ... more ...
Piet, you ever had the feeling you were talking to yourself?
Posted by: Tachi at February 22, 2005 11:52 PMnot just the feeling tachi, the will, thoughtfulness and the good senses to too
Posted by: piet at February 23, 2005 12:03 AMnorthanger - "question is piet (cos i know there is one): what is the tic-prime connect with this bizness?" - thanks for that ;)
u/c - [MiNiDoGon issues partly scrambled last comment] ... kicking myself for not addressing Peano construction in post (maybe next time) ... IMHO Euclid (FTA), Goedel and Barker grouped together over against Peano, Russell (Badiou(???))
on numerical vs logical construction of the Naturals.
As sets, Peano number constructs virtually disordered in way profoundly analagous to tic-plex clusters, but when it comes to a synthetic ordering protocol (i.e. extrinsic notational rule for ordering semiotic, akin to a grammar and list-sequencing principle) Peano constructs achieve ready isomorphy with Natural number line by coding treating '0' as 0, close plex ['}'] as '1' and open plex ['{'] as '2' (for both clusters (sets) and lists). Thus:
0 = 0
1 = {0}
2 = {0{0}}
3 = {0{0}{0{0}}} etc.
Arithmetically and lexicographically consistent.
TX indexing function, which derives code from number line, rather than overcoding the number line with a logical code, accounts for its vastly more complex ordinal-notational behaviour
"primes become the 'substance' of a radically-differentiated number system. However this is done without reflecting that extraction of the primes is itself a complex secondary (operational) product of the number line[?]" - this question reveals complete intellectual resonance with Barker's slide into tic psychosis - the number line is 'ineluctable and unsurpassable' for exactly the reason you indicate, but it is also notationally (culturally) inaccessible from starting point of tic-system assembly - an intriguing dilemma when pushed (virtually mapping an intrinsically (hyper)parasitic semiotic/culture as that most attuned to a pure numeracy (freed from exogeneous lexocoding)) - highly suggestive of Shoggoth intelligence (essentially nonoriginal but autonomous)
"the vexed question of the relation between ontomath (the 'being' of number(s)) and popular numerics (their empirical variety and semiotic proliferation)" - hope we can get back to this
piet - "the humanistic philosopher of mind soon finds himself replaced by the
robotics scientist" - popping the champagne already ;)
Woelfli ref. highly interesting
u/c,
>>> ps. R - hope you're not in vicinity of apparently savage seismic activity over there ?
Hey thank you; yes, I’m far away ... It’s a long time that geo-conspiracist speak about two earth-shuddering catastrophe in Tehran and Shiraz (the Fars province) ... for centuries Shiraz has escaped all kind of xeno-invasion and disaster, the crafty Shirazians bribed the Mongolian Golden Horde, these sly dogs also welcomed the Timurids and betrayed their own ruler and surrendered him to Agha-Mohammad Khan (of the Qajar dynasty) to escape his wrath, so speaking of a possible upheaval is fun. ;)
>>>Nick: Reza - so no geotraumatics for you then?
In Iran, you never know ;) ... maybe the next week or next year.
Posted by: Reza at February 23, 2005 09:20 AM- processing tic-matierial (apologies for previous comment was the acronymic yowl of a tired-and-emotional brain hoping to find 7 new comments about neogodelian hypersemiotics and discovering a volume of hypertexted beatpoet memoirs)
re. Rz/geotraumatics : the old ones will find him eventually....don't get too confident...
Posted by: u/c at February 23, 2005 09:22 AM>>> re. Rz/geotraumatics : the old ones will find **him** eventually....don't get too confident...
who, the faceless Nyarlathotep? ;)
Posted by: Azer at February 23, 2005 09:29 AMIn fact Badiou's criticism of Peano is that he is stil too concerned with semiotics, with the operation of signs, rather than the 'being of number'. The Peano axioms propose too many irreducible signs, define zero negatively, and rely too much on meaning, which for Badiou means Peano is classed with (or represents the numerical root of) postmodern semiotic relativity, for which 'everything is sign':
"
a (member) N --> a+1 (member) N, an implication that involves three undefined signs, and which "means" that, if a is a number, its successor is also a number. The force of the letter is here at the mercy of signification.
...Peano thus explicitly renounces all definition of number, of succession, and of 1....
"
In contrast Badiou's conception is that numbers simply "are" as form of being (they are not _produced_ through additive coding mechanism, number exists independently as a unique way-in-which-being-can-be-multiple). So:
"Every attempt to reduce the matheme to the sole spatialised evidence of a syntax of signs runs aground on the obscure prodigality of being in the forms of the multiple."
So he contrasts Peano and other failed attempts at producing an operative definition of number with Von Neumann Ordinals (transitive sets of which all the elements are also transitive - transitive meanig that their elements are also parts - understood by B as a sort of 'maximal internal consistency' which distinguishes number from all other forms of being-multiple, which at a certain level break down into inconsistency: "number is a figure of natural being")
Von Neumann Ordinals use only membership to define the natural numbers. The 'ordering' part comes 'for free' (each ordinal's successor defined as that one which contains its predecessor and its predecessors 'name' - and it can be proved that no other natural number can possibly come in-between, so that each natural number creates a 'fault' that makes it radically differentiated, utterly cut off, from its predecessor (this distinguishes successor from limit ordinals...)
Don't want to lose the plot (any of them) here, I'd like to go really slow on this : for instance, I'm not even sure what you (or Barker) means by a 'superior' coding system - one that's easier/difficult for humans to decipher? One that requires fewer axioms? What?
Apologies if I'm wrong on who (cantor, peano, von neumann) is responsible for what here - I've only Badiou for reference...but there is something important at stake in this semiotics/being question, because obviously barker is quite horribly aware that he is not dealing with 'mere' signs...
Posted by: uc at February 23, 2005 11:44 AM[once again, sorry if I'm sounding like Badiou's latest trumpeter. But he does have the skill of making this stuff seem at once comprehensible and important, which can only be a good thing]
Posted by: uc at February 23, 2005 11:46 AMjust to clarify:
0
(0)
(0,(0))
(0,(0),(0,(0)))
is von neumann ordinals, not peano arithmetic, right...!
VNO given by:
- the empty set is 0 (in badiou's terms the necessary founding 'decision')
- given any ordinal a, the successor of a is a (union) {a} (transfinite recursion)
http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/VonNeumannOrdinal.html
Posted by: uc at February 23, 2005 11:56 AMahem...one last amplification...as I understand it, for B. this system gives the same robust, radical difference to _every_ whole natural number that Barker wants to 'borrow' from the primes.
Posted by: uc at February 23, 2005 12:00 PMuc - "von neumann ordinals, not peano arithmetic, right...!"
VN Ordinals certainly, but I'm unclear exactly what Peano's axioms imply for constructing the Naturals (I'm probably just assuming that a set theoretic definition would look like what we've been seeing). Peano axioms (note especially #5):
1. Zero is a number.
2. If a is a number, the successor of a is a number.
3. Zero is not the successor of a number.
4. Two numbers of which the successors are equal are themselves equal.
5. (induction axiom.) If a set S of numbers contains zero and also the successor of every number in S, then every number is in S.
My brain slides off logic without really engaging - wondering also if the same true vis Badiou 'being' - point of 'semiotic' IMHO is nothing to do with ontology (positive or negative) but with practices, micropragmatics - how does logical redefinition or ontological dignification effect in any way what can be done with the sign systems in question?
(genuine - rather than rhetorical - question, but probably missing 'the point')
VNO of course ordinality comes for free, but that is because it defines the number rather than indexing it - this to say, approaching conventional ('Hindu-Arab' decimal) number-signs from TX (rather than VNO) is to treat them as indices, tagging numbers they do not construct - a kind of abstract empiricism in which the referent is not conceived by the process which identifies it, but merely 'named' (as you say). Numerals 'single numbers out' - accessing them (this v. quick i know) a function dramatized by TX or any other semiotic emphasizing prime ordination (since primes elude logical anticipation(?) and thus temptation to lend semiotic construction a conceptually generative role). Assuming this somehow connects with Badiou's ontology shtick since "[numbers] are not _produced_ through additive coding mechanism" sounds exactly right ...
"for B. this system gives the same robust, radical difference to _every_ whole natural number that Barker wants to 'borrow' from the primes." - interestingly enough (?) Crowley is with Badiou on this. Don't want to be dogmatic in opposition, but remain sceptical (due to danger that dissociating numerical singularity from the primes re-opens possibility of logicizing numerical difference)
also (from position fusing ignorance intimately with technical incompetence) still wonder about Badiou's tone (as relayed) - isn't he still employing the ontological 'genre' as a master concept under which number finds a subordinate place as a "form of being-multiple"?
Hobbes says: "thinking is merely reckoning" - tendentious gloss: numerical calculation and associated semiotics are not overcoded by or subordinated to 'deep concepts' of a supposedly less technicist, more profound kind. On the contrary, deep thought is arbitrary vaporizing in contrast to the apprehensive, synthetic purchase of calculative innovation ...
"'superior' coding system" - did someone really say that? - crude and fuzzy expression, at best
quick answers.
Let's leave to one side the peano/von neumann/whoever point...although btw badiou goes way beyond VNO...I need to read more textbooks...you need to read my dodgy badiou translation
>how does logical redefinition or ontological dignification effect in any way
>what can be done with the sign systems in question?
aren't you partly answering this question by saying:
>VNO of course ordinality comes for free, but that is because it defines the
>number rather than indexing it -
In order to 'index' something (or to posit a difference between defining and indexing) that thing has to 'exist' independently of whoever's doing the indexing, so the question of 'ontology' or at least priority must come in somewhere..?
>dissociating numerical singularity from the primes re-opens possibility of
>logicizing numerical difference)
but there is no 'logic' as such in set-theory, is there?
>isn't he still employing the ontological 'genre' as a master concept under
>which number finds a subordinate place as a "form of being-multiple"?
In a restricted sense, since for him the ontological genre _is_ set-theory - set-theory _is_ contemporary ontology, i.e. currently the most powerful and rigorous way to speak about the being of things regardless of their specificity. Numbers are, I am glossing wildly here, the most direct access 'we' have to being, to the structure of being as such. Thus an ontological interrogation (aiming at statements of the widest possible validity ie philosophy) begins with an interrogation of number. But in order to make this interrogation we have to dissociate the being of number (its internal consistency) from our operative use of numbers. So:
>how does logical redefinition or ontological dignification effect in any way
>what can be done with the sign systems in question?
is a moot point for B insofar as it is already posed in language of operativity (but there must be some way to tackle this wihout declaring it an insuperable 'differend'?). The most pragmatic question for him is 'what is a situation','what does any given situation consist of, how can it best be analysed qua situation'; and he believes that the only way to answer this is by asking 'how is a situation _counted_'. Which in turn is a question about the internal consistency of multiple-being as such. In turn I think you (or Barker) needs to define what Barker means by pragmatics. What _can_ be _done_ with coding systems? How does one distinguish between their relative merits or capacities...? Isn't there the danger of getting caught up, relativistically, enthusiastically in the infinite combinatorial variety of possible 'slices' through number whilst missing out on the possibility of pursuing to the root the wonder of their being qua being... (obviously playing angel's advocate here, but not entirely, since I _do_ think that the 'ontology' is more interesting than the multitude of coding systems.)
>(practical-calculative) polytics precedes being
how can this declaration be justified (if not phenomenologically, ie 'numbers wouldn't exist if the state didn't support my existence thus allowing me to count' ;)
Posted by: uc at February 23, 2005 01:35 PMuc - slow thinning of haze (think a lot of erratic zig-zagging still up the road)
"you need to read my dodgy badiou translation" - pdf problems, but might get acrobat to work here (not in the office)
"In order to 'index' something (or to posit a difference between defining and indexing) that thing has to 'exist' independently of whoever's doing the indexing, so the question of 'ontology' or at least priority must come in somewhere..?" - key point (think we're agreed 'cos we keep spiralling it). Might be nothing but terminological quibbles at stake here, since 'empirical' (synthesis) exactly marks out this topic for me while 'ontology' sets off alarm bells - it's the '-ology' part particularly, implying a higher discourse on the nature of beings, but then 'how is a situation counted' sounds unexceptionable.
Really not clear about 'logic' in set theory - number theory 'saved' from logic by the primes, what marks the irreducibly synthetic element in set theory? (again, genuine question) - issue obviously whether an apparatus of rational construction is predictive of its product - the logicist dream - (which seems to be the case for VNO, for instance, at least insofar as its notational regularity is concerned (obviously no idea how calculative operations would proceed in such a semiotic))
"Thus an ontological interrogation (aiming at statements of the widest possible validity ie philosophy) begins with an interrogation of number. But in order to make this interrogation we have to dissociate the being of number (its internal consistency) from our operative use of numbers." - accepting i need to immerse myself in your Badiou translation, this is obviously another critical argumentative point, and it triggers all kinds of allergic reactions. A dissociation from the operative use of number seems to imply a thinking of number that is no longer numerical, no longer guided or processed by the workings of number - by 'being' if you/B. prefer - but instead 'interrogates' number from philosophy, ontology (?), from somewhere that does not itself function in accordance with numerical procedures (through numerical synthesis, operationalizing the calculative outsideness of number ('calx' are pebbles, distributed technical multiplicity)). What 'authorizes' ontology? Back here to my partisan 'empiricism' over against a dubious (ontological) conceptualism.
"I think you (or Barker) needs to define what Barker means by pragmatics" - operationalizing the outside (calculation, rigorously effected (machinism))
"Isn't there the danger of getting caught up, relativistically, enthusiastically in the infinite combinatorial variety of possible 'slices' through number whilst missing out on the possibility of pursuing to the root the wonder of their being qua being..." - can see this risk of ineffectual diffusion - but quite distantly (think your polytechnical competence actually makes you more vulnerable to this) - there is a requirement of convergence (questionable perhaps, but think we agree at least), the issue IMHO is whether such convergence is calculative-numeric in nature (or 'ontologico-transcendental'). Goedel strikes me as a crucial reference, since his 'transcendental arithmetic' raises the potential for any 'master discourse' to be re-immanentized within the number line (it's like that Douglas Adams "what's the ultimate answer? = 42" joke, the qabbalistic fetish of 'special numbers' over against arcane doctrines) - that "wonder" (angel whispering in your ear, i know) couldn't be some religious stuff creeping in around the back, could it?
Barker is making machinery for the outside, prior to any insight or understanding that might produce ...
"polytics precedes being" - a DG skit (original was v. popular with pomoleftists at one point)
in this version - concrete hypertactical operations of multiplicities cannot be transcended by realities at a higher or more fundamental level
A bit more (perhaps too 'philosophical' ) advocacy:
>wonder...religious stuff creeping in around the back,
remember, twas you who coined 'hypercosmic delight'!!
> polytechnical competence actually makes you more
>vulnerable to this) -
but surely no 'nobility' in basking in technical incompetence for the sake of a bit of 'wow' ?
>operationalizing
Think the problem might be that whereas you see any logos (as in ontology) as the sneaking-in of an illegitimate teleology, it is possible, inversely, to see the valorization of 'function' and 'operativity' as an illegitimate imposition ; isn't ontology _more_ abstract, _deeper_ in nihilistic indifference to anthropocentric teleologies, than any quest for the functional, operational, or 'exciting' could ever be? What if the universe doesn't "function" at all (with Badiou, what if there is not becoming, but being, and being is nothing?)
The point is, why is enquiry into 'how different things work differently in interesting ways' _more_ extropic, more "for the outside" than an explicit enquiry into 'how things are constituted at the most fundamental level'....? If the experimentation is non-goal oriented, then how is the research guided except by anthropo-fiat? If it's a matter of amphibiousness, we need to discuss precisely _how_.
Will try to process this again more slowly so as not to crash the spiral....get back on substantive (ie properly numerical) points later so you don't just go Kattak against my onto-advocacy (esp Godel re-immanentization, which I agree really important....but still, doesn't this reinforce the importance of understanding what numbers _are_ ;) ?).
Posted by: uc at February 23, 2005 05:09 PMbtw this
> polytechnical competence actually makes you more
>vulnerable to this) -
was what I was trying to get at with previous comments on glossolalary : the equation "enthusiasm + meagre evidence = functional mysticism" should perhaps be "enthusiasm - evidence = functional mysticism" meaning that the more you 'molarise' (tendentious term though) mass data the less 'exciting' it becomes (perhaps in direct inverse of science where the more comprehensively an axiom covers totally indifferent masses of data the more scientifically exciting it can be said to be).
- would it be imprudent to ask whether pure' pragmatism anything more than a philosophical (yes, still philosophical) advocacy of idiocy ?
Posted by: nathan b. laruelle at February 23, 2005 06:07 PMhttp://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?050228crat_atlarge Goedel and Einstein
Posted by: piet at February 23, 2005 09:54 PMuc - "The point is, why is enquiry into 'how different things work differently in interesting ways' _more_ extropic, more "for the outside" than an explicit enquiry into 'how things are constituted at the most fundamental level'....?" - key for me is 'explicit enquiry' i.e. what raises this beyond its own functioning (Hobbesian 'reckoning') as if choosing a topic ('functionality / ontology') were a decision transcendending the functioning of a disjunctive operation.
It's not a matter of thematizing 'the Outside' (calculatively distributed machinism) but of immanentizing thematization to the machinery that processes it, collapsing the meditative-reflective stance in the name of experimentation.
"What if the universe doesn't "function" at all [?]" - bypassing the universe ('what if there is no universe?') response would be: no functioning - then no reckoning - then no thinking ('high level' or meta-reckoning) - then no 'what if?' of any kind ...
[not gloating at (my) technical incompetence i assure you - accusations of vague envy would be more germane - if you see 'wow' think you're gently hallucinating ... but MiNiDoGon calls ...]
Posted by: nick at February 24, 2005 12:18 AMsome diverse carriers would be productive at this point, because obv. i'd like to see how the B. nummysticism (with Lovecraftian resonances) unfolds in all its cosmic grandeur ...
Don't think Barker ever obsessive on the 'pragmatism' issue (despite engineering background), it's just that the tic delirium provides a model of connective anti-epistemology, dissolving thinking into microparticle (dust) dynamics
Also think it's important to note that the popular numeracy / pragmatics pole inevitably eclipsed by the 'superior' lucidity of an academically consolidated meditative thinking and tends to get lost, even when it is supposedly being discussed (don't mean this at all snarkily, merely addressing uncontroversial (?) sociological fact that 'the philosophical' is advantaged by a reflective articulacy that draws upon specific social and institutional resources - it is supported by career advocates, over against a mute unreflecting distributed pragmatics (e.g. AOsys praxis) lacking even self-identification or the sense it has anything to argue about, let alone an 'archive' of models and references equivalent to the 'master texts' of professional thought). For instance, alphabetical sorting evidently a popular practice of inestimably greater magnitude (social impact) than metamathematical axiomatics, yet due precisely to its pre-reflective, diffuse, sub-articulate and operational 'mode of existence' it slips readily into invisibility - doesn't topic of 'popular numeracy' - however slippery - capture something about the (concrete, empirical, distributed) 'existence' of number that onto-philosophical reflection misses? (even if the inverse is also true) - numeracy as a social 'force of production' for instance? or as a catalytic component of planetary mutation under conditions of (K+) intelligenic runaway? numbers and masses (which is not to say measurable quantities)?
"enthusiasm - evidence = functional mysticism" - to take this further, think discrimination required between evidential accumulation and molarization - nano-experimentation surely possible? with its own mode of cumulative molecular development ...
also might involve some degree of 'anthropological' subclassification of religious phenomena (on a spectrum from hyperstitional unbelief (neutralized religiousity as abstract intensity (?)) to theocratic dogmatism (thought police) - with various 'mysticisms' scattered throughout)
You're quite right, to speak of Badiou in the same sentence as "the universe" was a mistake for which I would be strung up in some european cities.
Think you're right that the philosophy needs to be reigned in to keep this moving but....
I still think your points (ie 'importance' of alphabetic sorting or a fortiori planetary mutation) infected by a [deliberately?] unreflected valorization of 'function' ultimately derived from anthro-history ('social impact').
Still think 'pragmatics' little more than an order-word used to justify what it has already been decided is Good (bit like 'rationality'). Surely from a materialist pov everything is pragmatic (has a material effect) ? And what pragmatic effects did e.g. Crowley's work have? Pragmatic for what purpose/who....? And in what sense can it possibly be cumulative except in the sense of a planetary-scale bricolage....?
Topics of (a)amphibiousness (=priority of manifest entrapment in the strata over merciless programme of abstraction) and (b)experimental types (molar/molecular) suggest themselves: Merging in the definition of the lineaments of a 'methodology' that could be called metallurgical, artistic, occult, tracking, vagabond etc...where the qualities of matter (all those things Badiou wants us to ignore) directly influence the course of the experiment. (especially in french experiment=experience), but how to think a 'vecu' without the subject and its 'explicit enquiries'?
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 08:32 AMsorry for revoltingly pious 'how to think' locution - been spending too much time with the wrong sort of batrachians.
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 08:35 AMnick - how is the Baker Tic related to ((num(ogram)mysticism))?
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 09:59 AMnick - if i understand the problem with "pragmatic", wouldn't there be a bigger problem with "mysticism"?
"'general purpose decryption protocol' for identifying intelligent signal from alien sources"
there's nothing "mystical" about a protocol?
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 10:22 AMyes, but then what use exactly would TX be in building such a protocol... (not that ontology would be greatly helpful, of course)?
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 10:34 AMnorthanger - 'mysticism' still pretty much free floating at the moment, perhaps even a token of mild and unformalized abuse (?? (can't even remember who 'started it')) - anyway, Barker a definite nuts-n-bolts type of guy until tic-plague plugged him into the xenoplex - don't think he should be blamed for what various wacky 'neo-barkerians' have done with him ...
uc - guess i'm thinking 'pragmatics' in terms of self-regenerative machines (without extrinsic teleology), but getting the feeling these 'pragmatism' q.s beginning to clog things up right now, i'll do some serious meditatin' and try to assemble a post ;)
Main thing is not to let jagged edges of the zig-zag chop anything out before its potentials have been effectively exhausted, so worried that crystallization my end of a (bizarrely oxymoronic) 'pragmatist ideology' beginning to have an oppressive influence on 'ontological' inquiry - but still be interested to get a sense of what the programmatic consequences of particular ontological stances might be. Given a hypothetical working consensus on the 'being of number', what follows? [I'll get Acrobat re-sorted soon, honest!]
nick - "'mysticism' still pretty much free floating at the moment, perhaps even a token of mild and unformalized abuse" - well, mysticism is sorta "free floating" anyway, lol. maybe you can do a micro-"pin down" on the Tic that might help the rest of us figure out the wider ramifications of mysticism and hyperstition.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 11:06 AMuc - "yes, but then what use exactly would TX be in building such a protocol... (not that ontology would be greatly helpful, of course)?" - why is ontology important in developing a communication protocol between machines? bringing up the question: did TX work? was it able to decode alien communication? seems like it did.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 11:15 AMuc - don't misunderstand. trying to formulate intelligent question to your "differend".
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 11:18 AM>(bizarrely oxymoronic) 'pragmatist ideology'
yes, this IMHO not just a cooked-up problem or a 'mere paradox'...
An interesting point is that, given that B selects Deleuze (and particularly, although, or perhaps becuase, he never mentions them, D&G) as 'enemies', what 'exactly' is the Capitalism&Schizophrenia 'position' on number - AFAIK no-one ever tried to explicate this at length (except for 'mechanomics', and that hardly 'explained' anything ;)
Just thought I'd point out, since it might help smooth things over between Badiou and Barker, that the former's preferred description of what Numbers, in their (one might say 'noumenal' ie beyond what we do _with_ them) Being is 'fourmillement' = swarming or tingling.
uc - i thought the "differend" (can you unpack that one?) was between number theories. sounds like it's between Badiou and Barker? Badiou = mystic and Barker = ???
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 11:35 AM(time-thingy there...probably another one by the time I've finished typing this)
> why is ontology important in developing a
>communication protocol between machines?
No, it's not, that's what I was saying.
This question of signal-processing is massive....It seems there are two different questions which might be asked:
(1) Given a hypothetical ergodic signal, what procedures can be used in order to extract signal from it, or to determine whether it contains signal
(2) What _methods_ might be useful in opening up 'human' semiotic systems to interference from "intelligences" immanent to "the universe" (or at least, distributed and communicating in ways non-analogous to two tin cans strung together)
The first is presupposes a channel of communication (carrier signal) through which a 'message' might be being sent, so it proceeds at once through a selection and assumed stratification (something like SETI, for instance).
The second is asking a question about matter "itself". It connects obscurely (I've been thinking about this for a long time but haven't got anywhere) to a kantian 'aesthetic judgment' or what Reza called the psychogeographical 'event'.
The first is more 'scientific' but in a sense far more scattershot and rather lame. The second is open to charges of being 'subjective'
Where ontology fits into all of this, I don't know....
There is a lurker round here who I'm sure could sort this out for us....
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 11:40 AMnorth: B-du not mystical; rather, he believes that inquiry into number goes by way of an understanding of what it _is_ independent of all usage, therefore the 'differend' (=assumed-irreducible difference of position between two parties) is (schematically) philosophical/pragmatic
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 11:42 AMuc - "B-du not mystical", well, i will leave you two to it then. lol. me clueless. too much math.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 11:51 AMuc - "B-du not mystical; rather, he believes that inquiry into number goes by way of an understanding of what it _is_ independent of all usage" -- (sorry) if you switch "god" with "number" you have mysticism.
"therefore the 'differend' (=assumed-irreducible difference of position between two parties) is (schematically) philosophical/pragmatic" -- and isn't this the problem (argument) between monotheism and atheism? (forgive me if i'm totally off the wall with this)
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 12:31 PMleaving aside the fact that the last thing I want to do right now is have another discussion about atheism....B-du's position is staunchly atheistic and non-anthropocentric in that there is no 'all of being' (ie god) and that being is not defined by our access to it. It's not really mystical to say that there are things to which we have no access, is it? But you're right, I'm not entirely clear on what 'mysticism' does mean now ...
IMHO the only element in B-du that can be called 'mystical' (apart from an occasional 'wonderment' at the sheer immensity of number) is that he distinguishes between being and event, event being the irruption(=something you didn't count on happening) of the 'uncountable outside' of (being=what can be counted).
But let's not get into that (unless someone else wants to try to explain it).
Anyway, the little manouevre of 'Switching "god" with "number" ' is bound to move the goalposts somewhat, don't you think...
the difference is more to do with (a)wanting to build a theory that will endure and that will enable you to analyse anything whatsoever, ie philosophy/mastery/phallocentry; and (b)wanting to make things happen, just to see what happens with whatever happens to be at hand ie pragmatics/participation/idiocy. The question is whether one of them is a bizarrely contorted version of the other (or whether they're both bizarrely contorted versions of something else)
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 12:49 PMuc - can't help but put these two together:
"And what pragmatic effects did e.g. Crowley's work have? Pragmatic for what purpose/who....? And in what sense can it possibly be cumulative except in the sense of a planetary-scale bricolage....?"
"(2) What _methods_ might be useful in opening up 'human' semiotic systems to interference from "intelligences" immanent to "the universe" (or at least, distributed and communicating in ways non-analogous to two tin cans strung together)"
i don't know crowley's system very well, but your #2 sounds like him. and, from my experience, the taro and astrology are two semiotic systems open to "interference". they're just not "pragmatic".
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 12:50 PMprecisely. They don't actually have any appreciable effect on reality whatsoever (unlike, say, Turing's work). So in what sense can taking inspiration from Crowley and his ilk be said to be 'pragmatic'?
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 01:03 PMand insofar as they are open to interference without 'topdown' guidance as to what is being looked for, do the results collected add up to anything more than a mere blow-by-blow phenomenal description of experience...?
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 01:11 PMuc - "appreciable effect on reality" - oh yeah? (i'm working on the C part).
uc - don't worry, not a discussion about atheism.
imo, critical issue about Barker's TX:
[1] no it doesn't work, let's find something new.
[2] yes it works, but it drives you nuts.
[3] yes, spot on!
what evidence do we have that TX worked as intended?
"...unscrambling cryptic dot-clusters and factor-strings into hints of alien contact. Xenotation is clicking together, a mathematical antimemory where things meet ... Try to figure it out and somewhere you cross over, which is problematic in various ways. Unexpected difficulties infiltrate the calculations tick-systemic interchatter implexes through plutonic torsion, a descent into the Outside. When NASA sees Barker's report, it flips - nonmetaphorically - into another phase. A passage through institutional criticality occurs spontaneously, a conversion of stack-tectonic torsion, triggering some kind of latent security-reflex, or bureaucratically fabricated suppressor-instinct, extrapolating the exact affective correlate of Anthropol. They were waiting for this. Waiting for a long time."
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 01:12 PMuc - "pragmatic" and "topdown guidance". off the top of my head: guerrilla tactics, large companies spinning off smaller companies, judo strategy.
what do you mean by topdown guidance?
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 01:20 PMuc - "It's not really mystical to say that there are things to which we have no access, is it?"
after reading about differend, i agree.
"IMHO the only element in B-du that can be called 'mystical' (apart from an occasional 'wonderment' at the sheer immensity of number) is that he distinguishes between being and event, event being the irruption(=something you didn't count on happening) of the 'uncountable outside' of (being=what can be counted)."
surely this isn't mystical, it's life itself? it's a miscarriage, an earthquake, a car wreck, a bad bit of undigested beef.
"Anyway, the little manouevre of 'Switching "god" with "number" ' is bound to move the goalposts somewhat, don't you think..."
no. this goes back to "access" and "differend". for one person it *is* moving the goalposts, for another it's not. ever get a SHOCK and when you look around, life is still lifing unaware that it should "stop"? you've just had this EVENT - but everything does not stop. and when there is no language for that to be expressed ... silence.
my experience with crowley falls under that.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 01:40 PMuc - ever read or watch "the right stuff" by tom wolfe? those first astronaunts were *drilled* on what to expect & how to handle every situation. imo, crowley does the _same_ thing. the difference? one group had a president and a nation behind them -- the culture was impacted. their experience was never questioned.
that's topdown guidance.
imo, Outside contact IS occurring already. but there is no structure in place in which the culture can experience and validate it.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 02:03 PMtopdown guidance = simply, deciding parameters of the research programme in advance
events, etc. OK, we're going to _have_ to get into it now...For B-du the event only 'exists' as such through collective fidelity to it after it has happened - since the event 'itself' is of the uncountable real, what is essential is for those who experienced it to literally 'realise' it (make it real) by remaining 'true' to it (=making a truth out of it).
All a bit hyperstitional, if you ask me.
But you're right, this process of truth-fidelity does seem, if we allow ourselves a non-technical use of vocabulary, to refer to 'life as it is lived' as opposed to the 'brute facts of being', and there is definitely this explicit division in his thinking. Maybe the 'pragmatics' of hyperstition is entirely on the evental side of the B-duian divide, and wants nothing to do with Being at all.
But (and I'm getting into territory which I'm not at all sure about here) what makes an event important or effective, I would have thought, is that fidelity to it makes a real (=universal or potentially universal) difference in the way being is perceived. So the crowley-event wouldn't fully qualify in the same way as the turing-event, even if it changed _your_ life. In this way, B-du reveals his communist as well as his mathematical roots (and this is why he criticises D&G for putting forward a model where each individual can tend to their little intensities and BwOs) ....
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 02:05 PMwhich is to say - brutally - that unless you can create a truth out of a mystical experience, that is to say realise it, then in a very real sense, nothing has happened. The world of phenomena, and ones lived experience relating to those phenomena = nothing happening = no subjects, simply mechanistic persistence. Collective production of paradigmatic shifts in conditions of possibility=something happening=emergence of subjects.
You realise I'm now in the position of neither arguing my own position nor being sure I'm arguing any other assignable person's either....I'd better stop.
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 02:11 PMuc - "collective fidelity"? i would rather be murdered than raped. imo, american culture does not support "uncountable real" (if i understand your meaning.
"essential is for those who experienced it to literally 'realise' it (make it real) by remaining 'true' to it (=making a truth out of it)." - it's slightly easier to say you've been raped, sexually harassed, abducted by aliens. maybe someone will believe you if you keep pushing the issue. why bother at all?
"Maybe the 'pragmatics' of hyperstition is entirely on the evental side of the B-duian divide, and wants nothing to do with Being at all." - yes, i'd agree to that to a point. which is why i want nick to pin down "mysticism" bizness.
"what makes an event important or effective, I would have thought, is that fidelity to it makes a real (=universal or potentially universal) difference in the way being is perceived. So the crowley-event wouldn't fully qualify in the same way as the turing-event, even if it changed _your_ life." - exactly what do you mean by "fidelity"? i'm a black slave in 1826 and i must maintain fidelity to the fact that i am human, even though i am viewed as property. what are my choices exactly?
"In this way, B-du reveals his communist as well as his mathematical roots (and this is why he criticises D&G for putting forward a model where each individual can tend to their little intensities and BwOs) ...."
gosh. don't tell me D&G had anything to do with the "ME Generation".
uc - "which is to say - brutally - that unless you can create a truth out of a mystical experience, that is to say realise it, then in a very real sense, nothing has happened." - that's not brutal, that's fact. it can also be cognitive dissonance for the unfortunate. something that you have to learn to shut down (if you experience the mystical) in order to keep playing the game of "Being".
"Collective production of paradigmatic shifts in conditions of possibility=something happening=emergence of subjects." bingo. now you're talking. collective production = hyperstition. purple monkey wants to know what are the parameters?
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 02:36 PMuc - "unless you can create a truth out of a mystical experience, that is to say realise it, then in a very real sense, nothing has happened." - revisiting this: define "create a truth" & "realise it". culture may determine what is "real / not real" & the mystical may be a subset of the unreal. however, mystical tradition provides ways for individuals to validate their experience and know the difference between hallucination, schizophrenia, and mysticism. can be extremely thin lines however.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 02:49 PMyo, yall are on a trawl, I'm tickled to a tangle, .. . . in pure gratitude I offer a rusty little suppressed premise mistifyer belowprint I have in the upstairs chockra for free, somebody better come pry it loose and carry it of before the bodybuilding collapses, and I meta it.
Posted by: p at February 24, 2005 02:49 PMnorthanger:
why is ontology important in developing a communication protocol between machines?
we need an ontology to help () communicate between protocols = protoplasmatics and vica versa by the way . .. which is why neither end of the ludilubology looks very rosy rite now.
Posted by: p at February 24, 2005 02:58 PM>uc - "collective fidelity"? i would rather be murdered t
>han raped. imo, american culture does not support
>"uncountable real" (if i understand your meaning.
uuhh, well I don't understand yours...."collective fidelity" means, basically, a bunch of people get together and talk about what the event means and what they should do in order to 'stay true' to it (ie after the initial, unplanned irruption of the bloody upheaval of a revolution)
>making a truth out of it)." - it's slightly easier to say
>you've been raped, sexually harassed, abducted by
>aliens. maybe someone will believe you if you keep
>pushing the issue. why bother at all?
not sure where the rape meme came from...not sure what you're saying here...
>changed _your_ life." - exactly what do you mean by
>"fidelity"? i'm a black slave in 1826 and i must
>maintain fidelity to the fact that i am human, even t
>hough i am viewed as property. what are my choices
>exactly?
exactly the opposite, B-d would say that a slave revolt or (better example because pinpoints the event to a particular moment in time) the event of refusing to go to the back of the bus (an 'unthinkable' occurrence in the status quo) would provide the event, BUT in order for it to become REAL, would require the fidelity of thousands, sometimes working extremely hard with little apparent progress, sometimes feeling that the truth of the event had been 'lost' - but it would take their collective fidelity to the event and the truth that it proposed (the universal declaration that henceforth blacks are people and equal members of the community) to become an ACTUAL universal truth, a reality....(and in some sense the 'work' of fidelity is never over). Obv. you can see why in some sense this is something like a politicised hyperstitional position.
>gosh. don't tell me D&G had anything to do with the
>"ME Generation".
yes, well, this is exactly what is at the root of B-d's antagonism towards "postmodernism", precisely that. He sees the current state of affairs as the result of the failure to tend to the truths that the enlightenment, as event, produced, and a takeover by mere combinatory mechanism (capital).
>however, mystical tradition provides ways for
>individuals to validate their experience
think you can see from the above why 'an individual validating their experience' would be in certain respects an oxymoron for the Big Bad. (and btw I'm sick of answering for him and refuse to do so any longer! Consult Mr MKP in future...)
p - "we need an ontology to help () communicate between protocols" - i see your point. in software development ontology=specification. are hyperstition protocols similar to internet protocols?.
"I offer a rusty little suppressed premise mistifyer belowprint I have in the upstairs chockra for free" - for free? only have to jump through one hoop. okie dokie.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 03:16 PMuc - rosa parks experienced a lifetime of inequality prior to refusing to get up. what kicked her over that day? THAT WAS THE TRIGGER. would i rather be raped daily, or get it over with once and for all? she could have died that day.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 03:26 PM"therefore the 'differend' (=assumed-irreducible difference of position between two parties) is (schematically) philosophical/pragmatic"
you ever tried organizing a debate between idiot savants? Say, between Bill Meegan and Dolf Boek (I did and failed, but Szabo and the torah science fella fell out with each other). Try and you'll find your formula don't apply unless of course you shine (diffmakin) light across the pragmatic end of the stick -- -- some walls are made of doubt, keeping in and keeping out . .and if there is any hope for our love at all, some walls must fall -- Maura O'Connell
I suppose that severely contaminated rubble is indeed rather irreducible and even if not, will only support the thinnest of slowly toxicity diluting populations full of incommensurable venom neighbour learn to be wary of. The most extensive form of differend: after aeons and aeons of physical versions, now even tiniest (mental) space stuffed up defined as/with 'terra nullius'
"wanting to build a theory that will endure" -- I have heard of penis envy but now propose to rename it rockhard-envy or rocksoliditeitneid if you wanny be nitwitty about it.
uc - "It's not really mystical to say that there are things to which we have no access, is it?"
after reading about differend, i agree.
I should probably 'clarify'the poetpietistic resolution for myst = mist = mix = mud = dry (heavy dark) + wet (clear and readily alighting) oxides = spray = sproutable, after all, how would we find the time to read and come up with the gems after a dig and be down with the presumptiating fuel and fun ingene operating dept
uc - "It's not really mystical to say that there are things to which we have no access, is it?"
after reading about differend, i agree.
I should probably 'clarify'the poetpietistic resolution for myst = mist = mix = mud = dry (heavy dark) + wet (clear and readily alighting) oxides = spray = sproutable, after all, how would we find the time to read and come up with the gems after a dig and be down with the presumptiating fuel and fun ingene operating dept
Posted by: p at February 24, 2005 03:49 PMp - mist = gas.
uc - we're back to square one then i think. TX and hyperstition. in the face of this "severely contaminated rubble", exactly what type of agnositic "protocols" can be created to deal with another universal truth? human beings don't like one another, don't understand one another, etc. and that's the problem, imo, with communicating with the Outside. if being human provides no openess, as something easy & fun to be, then we will continue to create protocols, paradigms, whatever that are limited before they become operational.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 04:01 PMuc - however, the purple monkey recognizes inherent value in hypersition protocols and wants to pitch in. PM just wants to make very clear who the HNIC is.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 04:04 PM
"imo, Outside contact IS occurring already. but there is no structure in place in which the culture can experience and validate it."
ever read any arguelles? here's the first of 260 postulates, one of my favorites: http://www.earthascending.com/time/postulates1.htm
here's a sample (from elsewhere): Quote
14.11 The self-evolving planetary network of radiosonic architecture registering the analog functions of the life of higher analog functions is enhanced by the development of “soul boats:” radiosonically crafted carriers of the fourth-dimensional double that extend the activity of the double far beyond the biological life-span of the present era. The human species itself evolves into a race of wizard people whose third-dimensional bodies take root in a type of elementary garden culture, while forms of deep meditation and trance activity allow the projected doubles greater and greater extension into the galactic order of the universal life.
I have them all someplace, probably still online too.
For those who like a lot of numbers with their reality his other work is better, or start here:
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe. The Mathematical Archetypes of
Nature, Art, and Science. A Voyage from 1 to 10. By Michael S. Schneider. ...
www.phanes.com/beggui.html -
Too many acronyms flying about now...
think we need to hush up the Big Bad and start again on TX....
>if being human provides no openess
reza has a lot of interesting stuff to say on this, of course...maybe we could even map some of the things we've been talking about onto his distinction between 'affordance' and 'communication'.
uc - i knew day one i couldn't afford hyperstition. i mean, i enjoy chatting and everything, and the occasional mystic potshot is ok, but really, other than piet's poeticity, your toys, and vauung's tut-tutting - really, hyperstition is just my favorite internet serial show. very amusing waste of time.
but i love it!
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 04:24 PMp - "ever read any arguelles?" - yup. not that i believed it exactly.
Posted by: northanger at February 24, 2005 04:28 PM"emergence of subjects."
that is a mighty accurate 'cross' from which the crushage of rock can begin, proper 'placement' and leisurely score to follow falllow; scarecore cared for, punto, period.
oxides = spray = sproutable =spoutenabled = accesoraised =
Posted by: p at February 24, 2005 04:37 PMI think to really get a grasp on the TX I'll have to.....build a new gadget....sweet dreams thanger ;)
Posted by: uc at February 24, 2005 04:54 PMDynamics of time -- whatever you might think of substance choice, he scores hi on attempts to rigorize and materialize the elusive.
http://www.pan-holland.nl/downloads/DynamicsofTime.pdf
Uc - "to really get a grasp on the TX I'll have to.....build a new gadget" - [swoon]
Posted by: nick at February 25, 2005 02:07 AM"build a new gadget" - the visual always works best with me :) (actually, i'm kinda beginning to understand the TX thingy)
Posted by: northanger at February 25, 2005 04:48 AMnorthanger - don't let the philosophers (not to mention poets) muddy the water - practice using it ;)
"spot on!" - deliberate joke?
p - "protoplasmatics" = shoggoth engineering? (If so, agree we should be doing a helluva lot more of it)
uc - obviously have issues with your formulation of philosophy/pragmatics 'differend' - 'i'll be back' ...
Posted by: nick at February 25, 2005 05:38 AMnicky - "don't let the philosophers (not to mention poets) muddy the water - practice using it ;)" - okie dokie :)
"spot on!" - deliberate joke? - nope! honest.
yes. solar tadpoles, the fanged noumenon. (what's a fanged noumenon anyway?)
Posted by: northanger at February 25, 2005 07:34 AMnorthanger - you think solar tadpoles are avatars of the fanged noumenon? that wasn't an angle of the story i'd picked up on ...
Posted by: nick at February 25, 2005 08:29 AMnick - "you think solar tadpoles are avatars of the fanged noumenon?" - qabbalistically speaking. the unpragmatic esoteric side of things.
Posted by: northanger at February 25, 2005 08:52 AMHOLY DAEMON ANGEL = 286
(((:))) = 11
((:):) = 13
: = 2
(i saw that mistake buster!)
"Damn!!" - yeah, i copied it and thought to myself: this is w.r.o.n.g! (not going to tell you what that helicat of a purple monkey said! nope, not me)
Posted by: northanger at February 25, 2005 12:29 PMnick - ok spill. hand over the rest of the tic or i let the monkey go. (which reminds me! what animal is hyperstition) brb.
Posted by: northanger at February 25, 2005 12:36 PMhyperstition is THE GREEN MONKEY!
http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2004.htm
northanger - "i copied it and thought to myself: this is w.r.o.n.g!" - thank the wellspring of archaic evil that i switched it before anyone else noticed - as it is, they'll just put the whole episode down to thangeroid hallucination and delusions of grandeur
Posted by: nick at February 25, 2005 02:50 PMnick - "as it is, they'll just put the whole episode down to thangeroid hallucination and delusions of grandeur" - you're a small man nicholas. a small man.
Posted by: northanger at February 25, 2005 03:06 PMwhat is this bizness? "Bwahahahaha" evil laughter? hey! are you ever going to give us that tic list?
Posted by: northanger at February 26, 2005 04:27 AMnick, are you familiar with 'surreal numbers' (on which Badiou bases 'his own' theory of Number-with-a-big-N)?
It's pretty strange...each number is composed of two ordinals, the matter and the form, and the 'difference' between any two numbers is determined by the smallest ordinal which discriminates between the two (is in the matter of one but not the other, or is in the form of one but not in the form [or in the 'residue'] of the other).
uc - utterly unfamiliar, but sounds fascinating - if not Acrobatized by end Sunday I'll start whinging, but anyway will google my way to some crude approximation of comprehension on this specific topic ... (twin ordinalization clicks onto all kinds of stuff ...)
Posted by: nick at February 26, 2005 12:14 PMnick - gee, that means we're not getting the ordinated tic clusters anytime too soon.
Posted by: northanger at February 26, 2005 02:37 PMdon't worry, I'm working on some tic-related goodies (by ordinated tic clusters do you just mean an ordered list of numbers in Tic-language?
And just to prove that programming languages can be beautiful, how about this supercompressed (46 char) Perl sieve of Eratosthones that I came across in the process (btw practical use of this system surely compromised by the need to do this first):
sub sieve {
sub p{$_[0],$#_?p(grep$_%$_[0],@_):()}p 2..pop
}
...pure poetry! And, AZer, my fellow fan, it looks like one of the ideographic swear-words out of Asterix, too...
Posted by: uc at February 26, 2005 03:33 PMif that appeals to your sense of poetry you might like a fella called Sondheim, talk about runny and run on .. .except it seem rather lobotomized compared to Rickels most of the time
Posted by: piet at February 26, 2005 10:16 PMuc - if you can pull this off you'll simultaneouly produce a humungous discussion topic (stretching from cryptography and erratic series to AI and shoggothic cultures)
northanger - "we're not getting the ordinated tic clusters anytime too soon" - if uc hasn't got his miracle machine up and running by monday i'll put up a modest list (1st 127 primes) as a provisional resource ...
Posted by: nick at February 26, 2005 11:32 PMuc - lots of q.s of course, but mostly i'll wait - one i can't refrain from: how are you sorting out the cluster-ordering problem?
Posted by: nick at February 26, 2005 11:35 PM::scratching head::
sub sieve {
sub p{$_[0],$#_?p(grep$_%$_[0],@_):()}p 2..pop
}
poetry. ::nodding head vacuously::
Posted by: northanger at February 26, 2005 11:52 PMsince the clustering doesn't matter, I'll just sort it out by leaving them however they happen to come out (probably in prole-numerical order)
nb. surreal numbers comment above slightly misleading : not a question of 'pairs of ordinals': the 'form' is a _part_ of the matter; so it can be more than one ordinal, even a 'holey set' of ordinals
- Examples :
N=(1,0) - matter is 1, form is 0 (which is contained in 1) - [this Number is -1]
N=(w, w) where w=first limit ordinal(aleph 0) - [this number is w 'itself']
N=(w, (3,587,1165)) - 'dispersed' form in the matter of w [he doesn't tell what this number is in 'normal' terms (haven't finished the book yet!)]
uc - uhuh.
ROBINHOOD [ALCYONE] (NW by N :: 03Ge00 :: CROWN CHAKRA {Sahasrara}) 332º FROM YILDUN @ PATH 1: ADMIRABLE or HIDDEN INTELLIGENCE–The FIRST (1) Path is KETHER (Crown) = I THE MONAD (Aces) :: EON PHASE: 36 (Phase Arc 330º ~ Semi-Sextile) : Fruition, Creative Imagination, "Last Judgement", Closing.
NASH [DENEB KAITOS] (West :: 03Ar14 :: SOLAR PLEXUS CHAKRA {Manipura}) 272º FROM YILDUN @ PATH 19: INTELLIGENCE of all the ACTIVITIES OF THE SPIRITUAL BEING–The NINETEENTH (24) Path from Netzach to Tiphereth = ATU XI LUST = LEO = TETH :: EON PHASE: 28 (Phase Arc 270º ~ Square) : Integration, Vision, Crisis of Meaning, Congruency.
Posted by: northanger at February 27, 2005 12:27 PM"uc - i know you're trying to be helpful ..."
rotflmao
Posted by: northanger at February 27, 2005 12:28 PMI ought to shut up until I understand what he's on about, really - it's just so intriguing...
anyway, back to tics:
http://www.urbanomic.com/cgi-bin/ticx.pl
does the first 500 - Haven't checked thoroughly but I think this is right (prime factors shown in brackets to the right).
You may be interested in the rather nice recursive procedure for ticnotation (even if I'm not such a great poet...). @primes is the array from the Erastosthenes' Sieve (all primes up to n).
sub tic{
my $num=shift(@_); #$num is the number to convert
my $count=0; #counts the prime index
if ($num==1){return;} #nothing more to do in this case
foreach $prime (@primes){ #cycle through primes
$count++;
if ($num/$prime==int($num/$prime)){ #if divisible
if ($prime==2){
return ":".tic($num/$prime);
#divide & recurse, adding ":"
}else{
return "(".tic($count).")".tic($num/$prime);
#divide & recurse, adding "( )"
}
}
}
}
This results in ordinal ordering of clusters (but you could easily do it the opposite way by changing "@primes" to "(reverse @primes)". Any other requests should be easy given this basic procedure...
Posted by: uc at February 27, 2005 12:35 PMsorry, all the carefully formatting of that code got lost ;)
Actually it's not just recursive, it's syzygetic-recursive, since it often shoots off in two directions, recursing the prime count inside the brackets and the remainder outside.
just out of interest (??) here are the first 9 numbers according to the set-theoretical interpretation, showing their formidable 'internal consistency':
http://www.urbanomic.com/cgi-bin/sets.pl
Posted by: uc at February 27, 2005 01:03 PMand the correspondingly elegant code:
sub ordset{
my $num=shift(@_);
if ($num==0){return;}
else {return ordset($num-1)." (".ordset($num-1).")";
}
}
realistically speaking, can anything except for its 'icy desuetude' and anthropo-unfriendliness stop this from taking the crown of 'the most radically decoded semiotic ever to exist upon the earth' ??
Posted by: uc at February 27, 2005 01:08 PMuc - 'internal consistency' - yes, it is formidable:
GON1 77 = DECODED SEMIOTIC = BEHOLD IT IS REVEALED.
lol
Posted by: northanger at February 27, 2005 01:28 PMuc - well that's got them (500 TX clusters) down cold (should keep northanger happy for a moment - thus putting me out of a nicely mechanical post), but when you say 'gadget' you set all kinds of weird neural juices flowing for dynamic machines - am i to assume your program description would do the job?
hope the ghastly impracticality of the VNO now exposed for all to see ;)
Posted by: nick at February 27, 2005 02:03 PMhttp://www.urbanomic.com/cgi-bin/sets.pl
http://www.urbanomic.com/cgi-bin/ticx.pl
these need to be added to the hyp-index.
Posted by: northanger at February 27, 2005 02:15 PM"hope the ghastly impracticality of the VNO now exposed for all to see" - um ... never mind. lol.
Posted by: northanger at February 27, 2005 02:54 PM
Just had a thought - Would be fairly easy to define ontology simply as the shortest program-length (qv.Chaitin, Kolmogorov) definition of Number. Modifying this to 'the shortest program-length definition _we can think of_' and defining it as the upper limit of a 'perfect minimum description' would nicely "define out" any relation to the practical/human/etc. This could easily run 'automatically' and independently of any of the suspect connotations of 'ontology' - it would be an attempt to get as close as possible to the (assumed but not absolutely posited) 'way things are' defined simply as maximum compression.
On the other hand, is "practicality" the criteria for a 'semiotic', as you seem to suggest: if so, once again, practicality for who/what?? And if 'purposeless practicality' does this simply index an azathothic drive for "more stuff"? All this meant as an attempt to break through possible ideological troll-barriers rather than to erect them.
...I'll certainly take any suggestions for gadgets (but what about decaplex, goddammit!) - don't think these really warrant wider promotion, just a test really...
Posted by: uc at February 27, 2005 03:51 PMamplification: you'd need to _include_ the VNO in order to get the ordinals to run the sieve of eratosthenes on. Remember, the program for ticx has to iterate through an ordered set of numbers to get the primes, then iterate through them to make the ticx numbers. VNO program just needs to iterate (transfinite recursion plus membership is all it needs)
So if we're talking complexity/compression then it's not 'more practical' - if there is another criteria (practicality? 'outsideness'? But what could be more 'outside' than VNO's abysmally intricated holey spaces that are totally intractable to human eye?) , let's hear it....;)
Posted by: uc at February 27, 2005 03:59 PM>thus putting me out of a nicely mechanical post),
I'm sure I detect a hint of wistful regret
Posted by: uc at February 27, 2005 05:33 PM# No need to work out the primes in advance
$max = ($ARGV[0] || 100);
$[ = 1;
@primes = (2);
%tics = (2, ':');
%decomps = (2, '2');
newprime(2);
print "ticX 2 = $tics{2} [ $decomps{2} ]\n";
for $n (3 .. $max)
{
if (!defined($tics{$n}))
{
push(@primes, $n);
$index = $#primes;
$tics{$n} = "($tics{$index})";
$decomps{$n} = $n;
newprime($n);
}
print "ticX $n = $tics{$n} [ $decomps{$n} ]\n";
}
sub newprime
{
my ($n) = @_;
for $m (2 .. $max)
{
if (defined($tics{$m}))
{
$tics{$m*$n} = "$tics{$m}$tics{$n}";
$decomps{$m*$n} = "$decomps{$m} $n";
}
}
}
# If you take the slight liberty of saying 1 is the zeroth prime
# and represent 0 by the empty string, then you can do away with ':'.
$max = ($ARGV[0] || 100);
@primes = ();
%tics = ();
%decomps = ();
for $n (1 .. $max)
{
if (!defined($tics{$n}))
{
push(@primes, $n);
$index = $#primes;
$tics{$n} = "($tics{$index})";
$decomps{$n} = $n;
newprime($n);
}
print "ticXm $n = $tics{$n} [ $decomps{$n} ]\n";
}
sub newprime
{
my ($n) = @_;
for $m (2 .. $max)
{
if (defined($tics{$m}))
{
$tics{$m*$n} = "$tics{$m}$tics{$n}";
$decomps{$m*$n} = "$decomps{$m} $n";
}
}
}
So that would give you
ticXm 0 =
then
ticXm 1 = () [ 1 ]
ticXm 2 = (()) [ 2 ]
ticXm 3 = ((())) [ 3 ]
ticXm 4 = (())(()) [ 2 2 ]
ticXm 5 = (((()))) [ 5 ]
ticXm 6 = (())((())) [ 2 3 ]
ticXm 7 = ((())(())) [ 7 ]
ticXm 8 = (())(())(()) [ 2 2 2 ]
ticXm 9 = ((()))((())) [ 3 3 ]
ticXm 10 = (())(((()))) [ 2 5 ]
You could allow for infinite numbers by having infinite strings that satisfied recursive equations, eg:
X = (X)
would be satisfied by
(((((((( ... ))))))))
and
X = :X
would be satisfied by
:::::::: ...
Although it would make much sense to try and work out which was the larger infinity (as you can with ordinals), the two examples are nontheless distict infinities, as the first is a prime number whereas the second is a power of 2.
My second comment was bollocks. Given that concatenation of strings is multiplication, the empty string mustn't be 0, as you'd never be able to tell if a number had been multiplied by 0 or not. Whereas if the empty string is 1 then this doesn't matter. This would leave 0 unrepresentable:
$max = ($ARGV[0] || 100);
@primes = ();
%tics = (1, '');
%decomps = (1, 1);
for $n (1 .. $max)
{
if (!defined($tics{$n}))
{
push(@primes, $n);
$index = scalar(@primes);
$tics{$n} = "($tics{$index})";
$decomps{$n} = $n;
newprime($n);
}
print "ticXn $n = $tics{$n} [ $decomps{$n} ]\n";
}
(newprime as before)
This gives:
ticXn 1 = [ 1 ]
ticXn 2 = () [ 2 ]
ticXn 3 = (()) [ 3 ]
ticXn 4 = ()() [ 2 2 ]
ticXn 5 = ((())) [ 5 ]
ticXn 6 = ()(()) [ 2 3 ]
ticXn 7 = (()()) [ 7 ]
ticXn 8 = ()()() [ 2 2 2 ]
ticXn 9 = (())(()) [ 3 3 ]
ticXn 10 = ()((())) [ 2 5 ]
(Shame the comment system here mucks up the spacing.)
Posted by: Robin at February 28, 2005 12:07 AMi don't think these things work. i usually use periods to space stuff.
here's another idea tho (testing...)
Posted by: northanger at February 28, 2005 01:02 AMok! first idea worked: use " " - remove quotations.
Posted by: northanger at February 28, 2005 01:03 AMit works so well, lol! &.nb.sp; (remove periods)
Posted by: northanger at February 28, 2005 01:05 AMRobin - yes, your tic-less tic xenotation carves out an interesting diagonal between VNO / TXv1.0 - excellent contribution to polysemiotic delirium
On comparison of systems, obviously we have to get beyond zero-sum brutal darwinian survivalism - it's not as if we have to 'choose' a single 'winner' - different semiotics optimize along different dimensions.
TX features of special interest include:
1) Cryption (use of primes and decryption matrices align it with cryptographic problematics)
2) Rhythm (drawing on non-metric (and obscure) pattern of prime distribution)
3) Semiotic economy - this topic divisible into at least two parts: (a) notational 'base' (VNO also v. strong here), (b) expressive concision (this source of VNO impracticality, except as logico-demonstrative tool, since even a machine intelligence would be swamped by a numeracy whose expression increased exponentially relative to the numbers expressed). 'Practicality' worth examining at greater length, but one ateleological criterion is sheer propagative power: 'pulp potential'. Agree, of course, that 'abstract practicality' a crude and misleading idea.
As far as Surreal Numbers are concerned, seems there are quite a lot of them ...
Posted by: nick at February 28, 2005 05:31 AMThanks, northanger.
$max = ($ARGV[0] || 100);
@primes = ();
%tics = (1, '');
%decomps = (1, 1);
for $n (1 .. $max)
{
if (!defined($tics{$n}))
{
push(@primes, $n);
$index = scalar(@primes);
$tics{$n} = "($tics{$index})";
$decomps{$n} = $n;
newprime($n);
}
print "ticXn $n = $tics{$n} [ $decomps{$n} ]\n";
}
sub newprime
{
my ($n) = @_;
for $m (2 .. $max)
{
if (defined($tics{$m}))
{
$tics{$m*$n} = "$tics{$m}$tics{$n}";
$decomps{$m*$n} = "$decomps{$m} $n";
}
}
}
ticXn 1 = [ 1 ]
ticXn 2 = () [ 2 ]
ticXn 3 = (()) [ 3 ]
ticXn 4 = ()() [ 2 2 ]
ticXn 5 = ((())) [ 5 ]
ticXn 6 = ()(()) [ 2 3 ]
ticXn 7 = (()()) [ 7 ]
ticXn 8 = ()()() [ 2 2 2 ]
ticXn 9 = (())(()) [ 3 3 ]
ticXn 10 = ()((())) [ 2 5 ]
Robin - think you've hit the fundament - don't see how notational economy could be pushed any lower without mindless tallying.
You going to name this thing (without triumphalistic TXv2.0-type nomenclature's ;))?
How about 'Nullotation'?
Aesthetically, i'd favour emphasizing the absent inner '0' with a space ['( )' rather than '()'] to mark the founding deletion of unity supporting the whole machinery.
TX machine-processible into Nullotation by find-and-replace ':' with '( )'.
Assuming VNOs similarly notationally evacuable, since the zeroes/empty set markers have no semiotic value beyond '( )'.
Intriguing emergence into apprehension of a whole array of such 'pure plex' semiotics ...
Hey, guys ... i regret that i accepted so many projects this month; before lurking off:
1. Robin, please feel free to rename the new links at the crypromat section.
2. i cast my vote with Nick; open '( )' [with an evaporating W] instead of the standard and digitally bugless '()'. '( )hole complex' rocks ;)
http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004341.html
btw, in case any (quite understandable) confusion (in fact, it's almost a crime against hyperstition to admit this) - "Robin" is not me (uc), but even more bizarrely, another Robin who I know but I haven't met for over 15 years (and, actually, never met sober).
Posted by: uc at February 28, 2005 02:40 PMuc - "0 unrepresentable" - this from where?
On the 'other Robin' - kind of bemused that 2 Robins would be simultaneously programming pure-plex number systems, but hey: 'coincidence engineering' (or hyperhoaxing)
0 unrep. in nullotated TX2, according to Robin.
Yes, I'm still somewhat overwhelmed by coincidence explosion (but it's true that although it was never mentioned as such, in former life of sitting around parks in Cambridge, we were both equally reliant on blocking out the mundane world through alcohol-abuse until such time as noumenopocalyptic calculus became available and made life worthwhile).
Realise would be the most futile imaginable gesture to 'deny' a hoaxing charge at Hyperstition HQ...LOL. The guy's obviously a better Perl poet than me, anyhow ;)
Posted by: uc at February 28, 2005 03:14 PMYou make a good team :)
Don't think '0' problem need be too oppressive, nullity dilates to swallow unity, making the system deeply zerotic
btw re Surreal Numbers - it's Conway's Surreal Numbers you want...this is a nice brief expo:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SurrealNumber.html
this is a more indepth intro (but in PDF!):
http://www.tondering.dk/claus/surreal.html
But Badiou's version as you can imagine has a
different bias (but - so he claims - he doesnt make any substantive mathematical changes)