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January 31, 2005
Wisdom of the Rocks
It also follows from a strict adhesion to parallelism - and in this, Spinoza had perhaps anticipated that mind, or consciousness, would be the last bastion of transcendence and resistance to secular machinisation - that even rocks have ideas. The name of idea, in fact, should be subject to a deflation that uses it as the name for extremely elementary operations, leaving ideas of ideas (of....) as the reflexive ideas we recognize as such. The mind of a rock, a rock's ideas, consist of the abstract, differential 'states' of its matter (abstract matter considered as information, as opposed to (but in reciprocal presupposition with) concrete ideas considered as physical entities (concepts as vibrations)) - As Manuel de Landa once said (erstwhile VF attendees will know how to do the accent) 'the wisdom of the rocks'.
Posted by robin at 01:24 PM
January 30, 2005
I, Neurobot
Some thoughts on Badiou (arising from the Dedekind chapter), with an unexpected opportunity to clear some of my archive-vaults:
We get a very clear statement of Badiou's position on 'truth' in this chapter - truth is not calculated or deduced, it is a matter of a decision - very persuasively argued with respect to Dedekind's audacious reversal of Galileo's argument against infinite sets. Where Galileo decided with scrupulous policing instincts that, since for an infinite set such as the whole natural numbers, a proper part of the set could be of the same power as the set itself, one must not think of such sets, Dedekind made his founding axiom this very definition of the infinite, and derived the finite from it.
Another favourite example of mine would be the decision - neither deduction nor calculation - to assume the existence of the square root of -1, 'fidelity' to which decision certainly has massive consequences for mathematics whilst being in some sense strictly undecidable (does sqrt -1 "really" exist? Is the question even meaningful?).
But I am still asking
(a)whether these examples can be analogised to "art, politics and love" (and if so would they constitute more than mere analogies?)
and (b)why are they called 'truths' (rather than, say, 'fertile axiomatic assumptions') - given what a great deal of baggage the word carries, this needs to be explained. I am still convinced that the use of 'truth' stows away a bit of transcendence. It is also not easy to see how such decisive truths relate to the being of that which they decide upon (surely the eternal, exanthropic 'being of number' is not affected, let alone created by such decisions).
My second point concerns the fascinating argument against Spinoza (4.21-4.22)*, where Badiou seems to indicate that a fault opens up in Spinoza's parallelism at the level of what we might call 'secondary ideas'.
Given that every idea is the idea of a body, and given that ideas are able to be reflexive, that is, given the existence of "ideas of ideas", then, Badiou argues, these latter reflexive ideas would have to correspond to something like 'bodies of bodies', the existence of which we cannot conceive (I had translation difficulties with this passage, but I'm fairly certain that's what he's saying). Therefore, the argument runs, Spinoza's use of parallelism fails as a device to obviate the cartesian problems of internality/externality.
This dismissal of the 'body of a body' might be slightly too quick. What is suggested by this 'of'? Not belonging, but appertenance to, reflexivity, or representation, of course. A body of a body would be the function b (to be a body of) applied reflexively. So is Badiou saying that bodily reflexivity is an incoherent concept, that reflexivity or representation can only be thought in terms of thoughts? From a self-proclaimed materialist, this would seem problematic. For, given that we accept the possibility and existence of reflexivity, a materialist needs to allow it to be a property of some material body or other.
I'll now draw on neuroscientist Antonio Damasio's argument, in 'Searching for Spinoza'. A great book, a resounding reproach to the sadness of philosophy: a joyful neuroscience against the dismal legacy of phenomenology (hi, Bloot:), a liberation from ineffable ghosts.
Damasio's argument from neuroscientific evidence (and one shouldn't understate the extent to which Damasio is out on a limb with some of his suggestions - but then, et tu, Badiou!) sets out that feelings are the mental correlates of changes in body-state (emotions) which (in a reminder not only of Spinoza but of Nietzsche also) can precede and cause the rationalisation of the feeling ("the feeling of sadness came after the display of sadness [induced neurally-externally through electrical current]- and only then thoughts of sadness"**)
According to Damasio, the body states that constitute emotion engender feelings, which bring to mind thoughts connected with that emotion, which then can cause "more of" the emotion, "in a process formally similar to a virus entering the body".
There is a kind of abstract 'body map' in the brain, says Damasio. This is not exactly the 'neural homunculus' that was postulated before the birth of neuroscience, but something more distributed and consisting of correspondences more oblique but nonetheless consistent. The map is basically a representative apparatus that provides a transduced image of the state of the body at any moment. At moments of crisis (in response to certain species of sensation), specific combinations of signals trigger the neural reactions we call 'emotions'. Now, although animals have emotions, they do not have feelings. For animals, the experience of the change in body-state, the emotion, as communicated through the body-map, is as far as it goes.
Damasio's argument is that the human brain includes at least one additional level of reflexivity, a monitoring-of-monitoring of the body that makes feeling possible as a second-level reflexive monitoring of changes in emotional (=body) states. In consequence, emotional states can be reverse-engineered by other parts of the brain in the absence of emotionally-competent stimuli; for instance a certain set of high-level suppositions or memories can trigger off a 'sinking feeling' or a 'fight or flight' fear response in the body-map - which in turn can then trigger the emotional state. Retroviral emotion. The body as a reality-amplifier, a nexus of loops of bodily-intelligence, truly a logic of sensation that would justify the magical spinozan immanence of mind, body, and matter. Reality equals simulation (Damasio talks about "as if body-loops"). (I would interpolate here - quite irrelevantly, I know - that given these conditions art can truly aspire to Michel Leiris' formula for Bacon's "realism": "the desire to create something which, at least, has as much weight as reality." And we can fully appreciate the importance of suggestion rather than representation, particularly in Bacon.)
Damasio argues that what is necessary (though not sufficient) to the ontogenic and phylogenic emergence of the mind (consciousness) is the reflexive apparatus of these body-maps in the brain: thus, with Spinoza, the mind really is the idea of the body (not the mind has an idea of the body). Rhythms of sensation, waves of feeling, are constitutive of the subject, body and thought are inseparable.
Once more:
1)The brain is part of the body
2)The body (including the brain itself) is 'monitored' by this neural mapping apparatus (which may in turn be monitored...)
3)The Mind is constituted by the procession of intensities registered in this apparatus
4)so : the mind only exists in parallel with the body; the mind is the idea of a body (or equally, the body is the matter of the mind).
I may go into this in more depth later on, but I think this establishes at least the coherence of the statement that the brain (or a part of it) can properly be called the body of a body, a material organ of reflexivity, in parallel with the self-consciousness of the subject being a 'mind of a mind'.
Ideas of ideas, could quite happily be said to be parallel to bodies of bodies or "matters of matter": they might well, at a high stages of reflexivity, correspond only to neurophysical changes in the brain, but this would not be the same thing as the catastrophic flight to internality that Badiou suggests. Not infinite thought, but the infinite depths of the body. Immanent identity of perception and expression. (Who is it that finds such relief in the peremptory dismissal of parallellism....?)
To be more precise, and put this in quasi-Dedekindian terms, we would have to ask what kind of mapping does the function b "to be the body of" operate, and in what domain? Because if we want to be able to say that second-order ideas, ideas-of-ideas, correspond to bodies-of-bodies, we need to know what 'first-order' bodies are. If a body-of-a-body is b(b), and a (first-order) idea is the idea of any object whatsoever i(x), what is 'x' for a first-order body b(x) ? To which we could offer a tentative melodramatic answer of: its own death, its absolute unbinding.
Rilke's Knight:
Yet, in the armour of the knight,
behind the sinister rings,
Death squats, brooding and brooding:
When will the sword spring
over the hedge of iron,
that strange and freeing blade,
to fetch me from this place
that has cramped me many a day,
so that at last I can stretch myself
and sing
and play?
A body is always the bodying of flux, the capture of energies that are fleeing towards heat-death. A body is a labyrinth of energy, a body of a body is a mazed maze. And a body of a body of a body...., etc.
Zero is cosmic heat-death, the immanent destiny from which we begin our body-count.
I'd like to end this (conscious of having dérived quite considerably, but I have a whole ream of Damasio-related stuff that, having been consigned to the bottom drawer for a while, is delighted to find a way back in***) with a quote from Joseph Beuys:
Brain as the material substrate of thought: an organ of reflection, hard and shiny as a mirror. Once you realize that this is a mirror organ, it also becomes clear that thought finds its consummation only in death, and that thought faces something higher: its resurrection in the freedom that death gives, a new life for thought. And that in the future this can happen in a completely different way; that it is conceivable that in some future age one will be able to think with the knee. And I maintain that one already can.
-----
* I am aware that in what follows I do not draw any conclusion regarding the use to which Badiou puts Spinoza's "problem", for the time being I have simply been intrigued by the argument itself.
** For anyone who's suffered any kind of depression, Damasio's electrodes-in-the-reptile-brain anecdote is wonderfully cheering; freeing you from the compulsion to dredge up reasons for depression: confirmation of Nietzsche's thesis that reasons always follow on behind the unknown, abyssal stirrings of the body .(we do not know what a body can do) Who ever would have guessed it would feel so joyful to be a robot? I, Robot had things round the wrong way - one does not introduce consciousness through programming only to be surprised by the machine's sheepishly asking about its stirring feelings: on the contrary, it is through feelings that consciousness arises.
(Incidentally, I don't have a copy of Damasio so this is all from notes and memory.)
***Reading this classic piece of warwick-madness from 1995 I realised how many pieces of this neo-neuro-spinozan model were in place with 'libidinal ballistics' (but the rigorous connection to emotion/feeling is notable for its absence.) And one important future factor (for me) is the promise of the integration of aesthetics-1 and aesthetics-2 (feeling as in tactile systems and feeling as in emotion and experience, which is part of what I was working on last year. Damasio's models are more sophisticated than the vague 'neural homunculus' hypothesis obviously. As ever, things go in cycles, and are never the same when they return.
Posted by robin at 06:37 PM
January 27, 2005
What is going on, indeed
John Effay writes on the resurgence of christianity in contemporary philosophy:
One of the main reasons I got into philosophy was that Christianity was so
patently ridiculous. Now all I find myself doing is arguing about Catholic doctrine and reading reams of associated material.
I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see someone else saying this, if only to prove to myself that I'm not merely a stubborn crazed lunatic alone in a world of bible-scholars, and to finally provoke me to get this post out.
Of course many of those 'infected by the Badiou virus' are lapsed religious types all-too-happy to quietly relapse. Monotheistic plague injected in childhood, and subsequently suppressed through years of 'acting secular', will naturally rejoice in the opportunity to resurface and roll out the litanies of theological 'debate'. It puts me in mind of the aliens in V, at the moment you suddenly realise that an apparently human character was 'one of them'...the skin ripping away and unfurling to reveal the lizard beneath.
Horror of realisation...they are among us....(in V it was just a matter of nazi lizards from space, reality is far worse, they're born-again lacanian jesus-freaks)
My belief from childhood was always that christianity was essentially an anachronism, a pathetic dying animal. Growing up with no contact (unless vanishingly ambient) with religious practice, except for the forced, tedious recitation of hymns at school, which convinced me even as a child that whatever this thing was, it was oppressive, patently ridiculous, and in its current condition simply a matter of lies and sanctimony. I remember complaining so insistently to a teacher that rather than write about a bible story I was actually allowed to write about why it was ridiculous nonsense, LOL!
Now bizarrely things seem to have got to the point where I feel I should apologise for not feeling any compulsion to immerse myself in christian theology. When indifference to all theology has always been the only honest option. A historical appreciation, an academic interest, is one thing, but this current quasi-piety is something different, and makes me rather uncomfortable. Of course, I understand the hyperstitional position that beliefs express a potency regardless of their "truth-claims". But this position seems twisted out of recognition into an interpretationist programme whose only apparent outcome is to send secular thought into a scholastic ghetto of self-important sermonising. And of course, since it is against all the ills of post-structuralist 'liberation' that this thought sets itself up - its mission is to pipe the foggy, dreary mood-music of the messiah into the smooth space of machinically-evacuated materialism, to save us from the evils of capitalism, from a freedom that is 'not real freedom' because it answers no theopolitical plan.
I assume John's point about analytic philosophy isn't entirely rhetorical - he's quite right, whatever the problems of analytic philosophy the cryptotheological wing of continentalism, indulged for far too long, is far more sickening, and despite its sophistry has nothing to offer to secular thought (I still haven't worked out quite how Badiou's razorsharp rubbishing of romanticism and elevation of mathematical thought segues so easily into his pious calls to the cause of truth). What is especially disturbing is the implanting in people of a supposed obligation to abandon their hostility to monotheist oppression and go back and read the bible a bit more (need we ask why this tendency is so indulged in the academy and its outposts? ...well, what could be safer than a bunch of priests poring over scripture in the safety of their offices?)
Isn't this, in fact, a psychoanalytical gambit - you can't presume to think for yourself until you have 'dealt with' or 'talked through' your christian heritage, until you have thoroughly convinced yourself that you are saturated with god-plague, always have been, always will be, that a smart interpretive subtilization, a minor heresy, is the best you can hope for. That it is "naive" to think that you can ever free yourself, let alone be born free, of god-plague? Go on, admit it, it's God. But I believe the price to be paid for this talking cure, for admittance to the polite chattering society of lapsed-relapsed interpretationists, is too high.
No, I was right all along, in my naivety, in my dogged adherence to the obvious, in my ignorance and indifference? Thanks to all those destroyers who came before me, who made it possible for my parents not to ever mention God to me, to inject me with his poison, I really am an orphan despite what they may think, and I don't feel the need to fabricate a divine affiliation (historically- or personally-lapsed, or otherwise), a belonging, just so I can join the dinner-party disquisitions.
Resist. Long live enlightenment.
Posted by robin at 07:02 PM
January 19, 2005
I Ching : A More Complex Model
NB. Subject to revision.
Still working through this obsession :
Thinking about the process involved in the yarrow-stalk method of I Ching divination led to a problematising of the provenance of the probabilities given for each line:
-x- 1/16 (0.0625)
--- 5/16 (0.3125)
- - 7/16 (0.4375)
-o- 3/16 (0.1875)
Given that the process begins with the person consulting the I Ching dividing the stalks, thus presumably providing the basis for the end result, it makes sense to ask whether any systematic factor (that is, any factor other than the specific number of stalks in each of the divided piles, which numbers are analytically tied to a specific result) could be identified as having an effect on the probabilities of obtaining the different types of line. It didn't seem at all obvious that however unequally the pile was divided the probability distribution would remain identical.
The experiment described below suggests that the division of the stalks 'into two equal piles' represents a 'perfect model' or limit of the system, a limit, moreover, from which the system has to stray in order for it to 'work' (the constitutive importance of human error, noise or 'randomness'). Furthermore, it shows how the tolerated range of this straying from the 'perfect model' affects the probability distributions, and ultimately, the judgments obtained through this method of divination. Although 'noise' plays a random-like role, the amount of noise as a measurable quantity is correlated with definite changes in the system.
Algorithmic Model;
The random seeding takes place with the removal and discarding from the entire pile of 50 stalks P; of one stalk and the splitting of the remainder into two piles: so the initial domain is
all (a,b) where (a+b=P);
or, I suggest,
all (a,b) where (a+b=P and (.5P-x)<a<(.5P+x)));
Where x; is the limiting factor of how differently-sized the two piles may be (how far either may diverge from P/2; or half of the original pile size) before they are no longer to be realistically considered an intuitive "half-and-half" split. I would suggest that rather than a constant, x; should be proportional to the pile size, so :
all (a,b) where (a+b=49 and (.5P-(P/x))<a<(.5P+(P/x)));
Whether or not the variation of x; has any bearing on the probability distribution of the final result is an interesting question in regard to the possibility of the person consulting the oracle's subconsciously influencing the result (say, if the more equal the piles were, the more likely one was to obtain moving lines, or something of that nature).
One of the stalks from the right pile is 'stored' in the left hand, following which the left pile is counted out modulo 4 (four at a time, with the remainder, <=4, being stored). At this time the total of "stored" stalks is then:
1 + a mod 4;
[I'm aware that this is a misuse of 'mod' - if anyone can suggest the right notation let me know]
Next the right pile is similarly counted out and the remainder stored:
1 + a mod 4 + (b-1) mod 4;
Where the possibilities are:
1+4+4, 1+2+2, 1+1+3;
so either 9 or 5, with a 2/3 chance of 5.
In this first count, with its extra stalk, 9 counts for 8, 5 for 4: so
r1 = (1 + a mod 4 + (b-1) mod 4 ) -1;
The tricky part is that 4 is considered a "whole", thus it is ultimately counted as 3, and 8 a "double", counted as 2. But we will deal with this later.
Now we divide the remaining stalks again, giving a member of :
all (a,b) where (a+b=(49-r1) and (.5P-(P/x))<a<(.5P+(P/x)));
and once again:
r2 = (1 + a mod 4 + (b-1) mod 4 ) -1;
and a third time, where we yield a member of:
all (a,b) where (a+b=(49-r1-r2)) and (.5P-(P/x))<a<(.5P+(P/x)));
ending up with:
r3 = (1 + a mod 4 + (b-1) mod 5 ) -1;
Our three results will be:
r1-1 = 8 or 4
r2 = 8 or 4
r3 = 8 or 4;
which together make up one line (which can be 6,7,8, or 9):
12 (4+4+4) = (3+3+3) => 9
16 (8+4+4) = (2+3+3) => 8
20 (8+8+4) = (2+2+3) => 7
24 (8+8+8) = (2+2+2) => 6
;
The order reversal (the smaller values becoming the larger) arises from the intermediate translation of 4 to 3 ("unity") and 8 to 2 ("double") which is an axiom of the system. The same result can easily be obtained as follows
12 - (((r1-1)+r2+r3) / 4);
So, given that each subsequent line will be probabilistically independent, and assuming that x; remains constant through the three draws (not unreasonable since persumably we would attribute x; to the person consulting the oracle) our question will be: what is the probability of obtaining 6,7,8 or 9 with the following algorithm:
F = 12 - ((r1-1)+r2+r2 / 4)
given (P,x,a,b,a',b',a'',b'',r1,r2,r3)
where:
a+b=P and (.5P-P/x)<a<(.5P+P/x),
r1 = (1 + a mod 4 + (b-1) mod 4),
a'+b'=(49-r1) and
(.5(P-r1))-(P-r1/x))<(P-r1)<(.5(P-r1)+(P-r1/x)),
r2 = (1 + a' mod 4 + (b'-1) mod 4 )
a''+b''=(49-r1-r2)) and
(.5(P-r1-r2)-(P-r1-r2/x))<(P-r1)<(.5(P-r1-r2)+(P-r1-r2/x)),
r3 = (1 + a'' mod 4 + (b''-1) mod 4 );
<center> * * *</center>
Testing the New Model;
Testing this for every combinatorial possibility of a,b,a',b',a'',b'';, for different values of x; would therefore yield the probabilities for each line for each x;, from which we could proceed to the combined probabilities for whole hexagrams.
A perl program was written to sum results from all combinatorial possibilities given x;. As might be expected, the results show that the initial division of the pile acts as the random "seed"; this done, the outcome is fixed. However the real question was whether the probabilities would be as stated.
An initial run was tried with x=16;, meaning that the size of the divided piles could not vary more than P/16; from P/2; - in the initial division this means that neither pile can be less that (49/2)-(49/16)=24.5-3=21.5 or more than (49/2)-(49/16)=24.5-3=27.5, giving a total of 6 possible divisions (22/27, 23/26, 24/25, 25/24, 26/23 and 27/22). With the disparity of the piles thus limited, the probabilities of obtaining the different lines, expressed in percentages and probabilities, are as follows:
6 Old Yin - x - 3.157 (0.3157) - suggested (0.0625)
7 Young Yang ----- 38.421 (3.8421) - suggested (0.3125)
8 Young Yin -- -- 39.473 (3.9473) - suggested (0.4375)
9 Old Yang - o - 18.947 (1.8947) - suggested (0.1875);
As can be seen, the relationship between these probabilities follows proportionally that suggested, but the fit is by no means exact. This once again returns us to the intuition that the role of x; is non-trivial, and that the probabilities given were the result of fixing x;.
Modifying the program to iterate x; from 20 down to 2 (that is, from P/20; to P/2;) yielded a matrix of the probabilities of obtaining each type of line given these different values of x;. The results are surprising. Although some noise could be expected in the progression, due to the effect of rounding to the "nearest stalk", the graph below shows clear divergences as x; drops.
<img alt="graph.gif" src="http://blog.urbanomic.com/dread/archives/graph.gif" width="394" height="120" />
Of course, our limit case of x=2; is unrealistic (we can safely assume that no-one, asked to split a pile of 49 stalks in half, would split them into two piles of 48 and 1 stalks respectively), but the data shows that a significant divergence between 7 and 8 (yin and yang) lines begins much earlier, at around x=15;. This value of x; describes a situation where a disparity of 49/15=3.26 stalks between divided piles would be tolerated, a level of 'human error' that is not at all unreasonable to expect (indeed, arguably the whole system depends on such human 'noise'). Moreover, the probability of obtaining a 6 (Old Yin) line, the least probable outcome, actually doubles; from 2 to 4 percent between x=20; and x=14;, a very significant shift.
The obvious conclusion from the data is that x; plays a non-trivial role in the distribution of probabilities when using the yarrow-stalk method of I Ching divination.
It is important to note that what has been demonstrated is not ;merely that the division of the stalks acts as the 'random seed' for the judgment: this much is obvious. The significant result has been the revealing of a continuous, systematic change in the distribution of probabilities correlated with a variable that could be a possible candidate for subconscious influence. For instance, a line of interpretation that could be developed is that a mind in turmoil is more conducive to a disparate split, so increasing the likelihood of obtaining the Old Yin and Young Yang lines.
The results suggest positioning the given probabilities for the I Ching system within a larger field of "possible systems", with different values of x;, and different values of P; also. In this expanded context, the probabilities would represent the basic, continuously variable quantities of the system, with their distribution being limited by the choice of x; and P;. The divergences shown above would form a local feature of this expanded system.
(We might want to suggest a range of x; that is to be considered 'realistic'. One issue that needs to be addressed is the fact that as x; increases, it becomes increasingly possible that one of the piles will fail to yield any line, because it contains too few stalks, which may skew the results. That said, however, the point of divergence at x=15; would surely fall within such a 'realistic' range.)
The Hexagrams Re-Ordered;
The real question is whether the divergences in the distribution of probabilities relate to any cogent change in the sorts of hexagrams, and therefore judgments, likely to result.
What remains then, is to process the probabilities of the hexagrams again, this time factoring in different values of x; and if possible including moving lines. The results from those values of x; corresponding to the significant divergence points of the data will then be examined to see the results of these divergences in the judgments.
Posted by robin at 09:47 AM
January 16, 2005
Lovecraft
The Houellebecq Lovecraft book in PDF format:
houellebecq-lovecraft.pdf (172kb)
Posted by robin at 04:30 PM
January 14, 2005
The Anomaly, the Bastard, and the Group
14. Ta Yu (Possession in Great Measure)
| 8. Pi (Holding Together)
|
"It might be supposed that HOLDING TOGETHER (8) would be a more favourable hexagram than POSSESSION IN GREAT MEASURE (14), because in the former one strong individual gathers five weak ones around him. But the judgment added in (14), "Supreme success," is much the more favourable. The reason is that in the eighth hexagram the men held together by the powerful ruler are only simple subordinate persons, while in (14) those who stand as helpers at the side of the mild ruler are strong and able individuals."
"I didn't bond with anyone. I saw myself as a hostile witness" - Germaine Greer
If Germaine Greer's stated reasons for her departure from Big Brother seem weak (and it's true that she ought to have known what she was in for, after all), it is important to realise that it was not a solitary gesture but a group decision, albeit an unspoken one. One must grant to reality TV its ability to demonstrate to what an extraordinary extent, even in a totally artificial environment, the basic loathsome human herd-instinct rules. People would, in general, rather be lied to, manipulated, enslaved, so long as they retain the comfort and security of a group.
Both times I have seen BB the same situation emerges: there is one person, let's call her "The Anomaly" or A, who is more outspoken than the rest. Greer, or in the previous non-celebrity series, the brilliant and witty Emma. While this person is present, the rest of the group remain quiescent, friendly to them, but invisibly, quietly resentful.
Now, there also exists person B, or "The Bastard" (John, or the appalling duo of Jason and Victor) who is an evidently unpleasant and juvenile bully, or at least has decided to take on this persona. In between these two there are the rest of the group who represent various personifications of banality, the desire for ease and the gregarious instinct.
For a while the group, together with A, will appear to be united against B, since it seems that B's negativity is creating schisms and discomforting the group.
But at the first opportunity you can be one hundred percent sure that the group will savagely turn on A (or in Greer's case, maintain a steely silence as she exiles herself from the group). And then the group will reunite enthusiastically and with great relief with The Bastard. The group may even appear to follow A in her uncompromising ideas: Greer's revolution against the abjection of Big Brother's tasks was not dissimilar to Emma's revolution against the underhand plotting of The Bastards themselves, both had access in different ways to the underlying ugly truth of the group situation and attempted to reveal the truth to the group. But if they do so at all, the group will only join A's campaign under duress and with great discomfort that they are leaving the safe bounds of safety, petty politics and authority (Lisa's refusal to let the crown go.) As soon as they can break from A, they will.
"We had our moment, when we could have had a revolution." - GG
This swift regrouping after the exit of the Anomaly can only be explained by the fact that there is a perennially reserved place in the group for The Bastard, and he has only been kept out of this rightful place by the perceptive eye of A, who asks questions concerning the legitimacy and function of this pre-ordained order. Questions that would take group conversation out of the realms of ineffectual chatter.
Whatever the counterindications, it is The Anomaly who represents an actual disturbance of the group, whereas The Bastard is an economically-afforded factor within the group. B fits where A cannot. It's only the group's residual fear of A that makes them hesitate in assassinating her.
Perhaps, then, realising the situation, A will remove herself, as Greer did. Or, as in the case of Emma, she will be removed by authority on some trumped-up charge (the group will find numerous "reasons" to dislike her whilst remaining unable to articulate the actual reason).
Of course, people "respect" A's intelligence and spiritedness. They just don't want it in their backyard, they don't want it to cause trouble. And it doesn't really matter whether A says or does anything anomalous, since it is clear from the start that her unwillingness to submit her intelligence to the security-pact of the group marks her out for slaughter or exile. She doesn't belong.
Group-members, as a species, would rather be humiliated by submission to the rule of a transparently insincere manipulating fool like Lisa precisely because they know that she is as enslaved to her own stupidity and cowardice, and to the law of the group, as they are ("we want a leader who is just like us, a people's leader"). They know she will not encourage them to break the rules. In fact, any one of the group could take up this "leader" role; it is a merely contingent matter of the loudness of their voice, or the effort they are willing to put in to gain this marginal increase of power (a power that is constitutively only exercisable by the mutually-agreed pretence of its absence - "we're all just friends" - since its public display would disrupt the miserable ease of the kingdom). There is a clear, almost symmetrical pact betwen humiliating and humiliated, even without Big Brother's games to make this explicit.
So, even in a situation which will only last two weeks, which is utterly artificial, people feel the need for this comfort. If this is the case with a game (and the same pattern is certainly identifiable in other micro-social situations, from Dogville to blogville), how much less likely are people to pay heed to the Anomaly in "real life"? The clarion call of the group is: "that may be true, but it is not conducive to group life." The zombie chant of the future as they lead you to the pyre - "...she was not a team player..."
What is most sinister is the speed with which the wound left by the departure of A always heals. It is the silence of the closed ranks of a Hammer-horror village inn when the husband comes looking for his ritually-sacrificed wife. The Anomaly will be forgotten almost immediately, in fact they never existed, they are mentioned only as a distant, blurry memory, a fable. "She was once here...things didn't work out..."
Whilst we might regret her lack of persistence in the role of irritating anomaly in a TV genre she avowedly hated, we can perhaps understand that Greer was not prepared for such a concentrated demonstration of the terrifying tenacity of the banal.
At least we can stop watching now in the sure knowledge that nothing is going to happen, nothing ever happens, nothing will happen...there are winners and losers, leaders and followers, but in reality TV as in life, nothing happens. We can only hope for the smallest pleasures..."I want Lisa to go really soon...with maximum humiliation."
[thanks to eleutheria for her observations and discussions on the above - also see her BB series!]
Posted by robin at 12:42 PM
The Chronic
Exquisitely detailed and preconception-pulverizing disquisition on Islam and its (non)apocalypse over at Hyperstition
Posted by robin at 10:31 AM
January 13, 2005
No Blame.
Full results (machine-processed, but programmed by me so it still might be wrong ;)) of the yarrow-stalk I Ching, ordered by probability (and secondarily by value*). (Meanwhile please note that my original post had several errors, but the point still stands that the two 'poles' of K'un and Ch'ien are statistically separated by an order of magnitude when using the yarrow stalks, whereas using the coins they would have exactly the same probability of turning up. Hence I would suggest the use of coins has to be regarded as an degraded mode of access to the I Ching that gives the false impression of the absence of internal systemic bias or difference.)* By "value" I mean the hexagrams' binary value as per Leibniz. The asymmetrical probability of obtaining yin or yang lines has as its consequence a rather nice asymmetrical clustering of the probabilities of these binary values occurring:
|
{63} hexagrams with only broken lines | 117649 / 16777216 |
{62,61,59,55,47,31} hexagrams with one whole line | 84035 / 16777216 |
{60,58,57,54,53,51,46,45,43,39,30,29,27,23,15} hexagrams with two whole lines | 60025 / 16777216 |
{56,52,50,49,44,42,41,38,37,35,28,26,25,22,21,19,14,13,11,7} hexagrams with three broken, three whole lines | 42875 / 16777216 |
{48,40,36,34,33,24,20,18,17,12,10,9,6,5,3} hexagrams with two broken lines | 30625 / 16777216 |
{32,16,8,4,2,1} hexagrams with one broken line | 21875 / 16777216 |
{0} hexagrams with only whole lines | 15625 / 16777216 |
The same clustering applied to the hexagram's order numbers in the book:
{2}
{24,7,15,16,8,23}
{19,36,46,51,40,62,3,29,39,45,27,4,52,35,20}
{11,54,55,32,60,63,48,17,47,51,41,22,18,21,64,56,42,59,53,12}
{34,5,58,49,28,26,38,30,50,61,37,57,25,28,33}
{43,14,9,10,13,44}
{1}
<table cellspacing=5 width=700><tr> <td>Hexagram;</td><td>Name;</td><td>Binary Value;</td><td>Order;</td><td>Probability;</td></tr> <tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>K'un ; (The Receptive)</td><td>63</td><td>2</td><td>117649/16777216 <br>(approx 1/142)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Fu ; (Returning)</td><td>62</td><td>24</td><td>84035/16777216 <br>(approx 1/199)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Shih ; (The Army)</td><td>61</td><td>7</td><td>84035/16777216 <br>(approx 1/199)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Ch'ien ; (Modesty)</td><td>59</td><td>15</td><td>84035/16777216 <br>(approx 1/199)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Yu ; (Harmony)</td><td>55</td><td>16</td><td>84035/16777216 <br>(approx 1/199)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Pi ; (Union)</td><td>47</td><td>8</td><td>84035/16777216 <br>(approx 1/199)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Po ; (Falling Apart)</td><td>31</td><td>23</td><td>84035/16777216 <br>(approx 1/199)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Lin ; (Approach)</td><td>60</td><td>19</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Ming I ; (Darkening of the Light)</td><td>58</td><td>36</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Sheng ; (Ascending)</td><td>57</td><td>46</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Chen ; (Thunder)</td><td>54</td><td>51</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Hsieh ; (Removing Obstacles)</td><td>53</td><td>40</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Hsiao Kuo ; (Small Excesses)</td><td>51</td><td>62</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Chun ; (Initial Difficulty)</td><td>46</td><td>3</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>K'an ; (The Perilous Pit)</td><td>45</td><td>29</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Chien ; (Arresting Movement)</td><td>43</td><td>39</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Ts'ui ; (Gathering Together)</td><td>39</td><td>45</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>I ; (Nourishment)</td><td>30</td><td>27</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Meng ; (Youthful Inexperience)</td><td>29</td><td>4</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Ken ; (Mountain)</td><td>27</td><td>52</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Chin ; (Progress)</td><td>23</td><td>35</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Kuan ; (Contempation)</td><td>15</td><td>20</td><td>60025/16777216 <br>(approx 1/279)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>T'ai ; (Peace)</td><td>56</td><td>11</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Kuei Mei ; (The Marrying Maiden)</td><td>52</td><td>54</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Feng ; (Abundance)</td><td>50</td><td>55</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Heng ; (Perseverance)</td><td>49</td><td>32</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Chieh ; (Regulation)</td><td>44</td><td>60</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Chi Chi ; (Completion)</td><td>42</td><td>63</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Ching ; (A Well)</td><td>41</td><td>48</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Sui ; (Following)</td><td>38</td><td>17</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>K'un ; (Oppression)</td><td>37</td><td>47</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Hsien ; (Influence)</td><td>35</td><td>51</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Sun ; (Decrease)</td><td>28</td><td>41</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Pi ; (Adornment)</td><td>26</td><td>22</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Ku ; (Arresting Decay)</td><td>25</td><td>18</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Shih Ho ; (Biting Through)</td><td>22</td><td>21</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Wei Chi ; (Before Completion)</td><td>21</td><td>64</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Lu ; (Travelling Stranger)</td><td>19</td><td>56</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>I ; (Increase)</td><td>14</td><td>42</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Huan ; (Dispersion)</td><td>13</td><td>59</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Chien ; (Gradual Progress)</td><td>11</td><td>53</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>P'i ; (Stagnation)</td><td>7</td><td>12</td><td>42875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/391)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Ta Chuang ; (Power of the Great)</td><td>48</td><td>34</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Hsu ; (Waiting)</td><td>40</td><td>5</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Tui ; (Joy)</td><td>36</td><td>58</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Ko ; (Revolution)</td><td>34</td><td>49</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Ta Kuo ; (Excess)</td><td>33</td><td>28</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Ta Ch'u ; (The Great Taming Force)</td><td>24</td><td>26</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>K'uei ; (Disunion)</td><td>20</td><td>38</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Li ; (Clinging)</td><td>18</td><td>30</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Ting ; (The Cauldron)</td><td>17</td><td>50</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Chung Fu ; (Inmost Sincerity)</td><td>12</td><td>61</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Chia Jen ; (The Family)</td><td>10</td><td>37</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Sun ; (Gentle Penetration)</td><td>9</td><td>57</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Wu Wang ; (Correctness)</td><td>6</td><td>25</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Sung ; (Conflict)</td><td>5</td><td>28</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Tun ; (Retreat)</td><td>3</td><td>33</td><td>30625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/547)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Kuai ; (Removing Corruption)</td><td>32</td><td>43</td><td>21875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/766)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Ta Yu ; (Great Possession)</td><td>16</td><td>14</td><td>21875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/766)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Hsiao Ch'u; (The Taming Force)</td><td>8</td><td>9</td><td>21875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/766)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Lu ; (Treading Carefully)</td><td>4</td><td>10</td><td>21875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/766)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> ________<br> </td> <td>T'ung Jen ; (Fellowship with Men)</td><td>2</td><td>13</td><td>21875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/766)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ___ ___<br> </td> <td>Kou ; (Coming to Meet)</td><td>1</td><td>44</td><td>21875/16777216 <br>(approx 1/766)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr><tr><td> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> ________<br> </td> <td>Ch'ien ; (The Creative)</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>15625/16777216 <br>(approx 1/1073)</td></tr> <tr><td colspan=5> <br></td></tr></table>
Posted by robin at 09:00 PM
That Sister, What a Bitch! (Lou Salomé - Part III)
Once again, apologies for any interlinguistic infelicities (there's a highbrow euphemism waiting to happen). But it's free, what do you expect...
Posted by robin at 05:47 PM
quranumerics, randomness and hazard
One fascinating example of borderline-numerological 'quasi-empirical mathematics' (a 'phenomenological law' as this site has it) is Benford's law, which states that in a wide variety of empirical circumstances, "as diverse as the drainage areas of rivers, physical properties of chemicals, populations of small towns, figures in a newspaper magazine, and the half-lives of radioactive atoms" numbers will have "1" as their first non-zero digit disproportionately (about 30% of the time).
This remarkably counterintuitive fact was first discovered a century ago by an astronomer who remarked on the relative wear on the front pages of logarithm table books. It was only in 1996 that mathematician Tod Hill established that the "law" can result from the characteristic types of series produced by amounts being inflated according to compound interest ($1,000 takes a long time to grow past $2,000, and a lot shorter time to make it up to $10,000). However he also proved a more puzzling wider applicability: given any random collection of random data samples, Benford's law seems to apply. (That is, given that the collections are not "truly random" (which would require that they had been artificially created) but are "phenomenological". Randomness is basically an uninteresting fiction. The Hazard of the Real is never featureless and this may be the founding intuition of numerology. You'll notice that we're getting closer here to my repetitious and vague intuition about the convergence of the close-at-hand numero-phenomenological and the 'evacuated' mechanism of materialism [undercurrent,dread & hyperstition passim] ).
The immanent patterning described by Benford's law in real-world numbers has been demonstrated so persuasively that it is used as a fraud-recognition tool for accountants: if a company's accounts do not conform to Benford's law there is likely to have been some tampering going on. Applied in this way, it's an interesting amalgam of mathematical truth and empirical-synthetic principle, which demonstrates that 'exploitation opportunities' in number can often appear causally disconnected, magical or random, being the result of the interplay between number and the use of number, and that in the real world, numbers stubbornly hold on to their peculiarities despite the mathematical drive to indifference.
You may also wish to consult this site for some interesting suggestions on the applicability of Benford's Law to the Quran...
Posted by robin at 02:00 PM
January 12, 2005
Empiricism and Delirium
Deleuze on Hume (Desert Islands):
"[I]f it is true that the principles of association determine the mind by imposing on it a nature to discipline its delirium or fictions of the imagination, conversely the imagination uses those same principles to pass off its fictions and fantasies as real...the imagination forges fictive causal chains, illegitimate rules, simulacra of belief...It is no longer on the path of science that we go beyond experience, confirmed by Nature itself and a corresponding calculation; we go beyond it always and everywhere in our delirium, which dreams up a counter-nature and ensures the fusion of anything whatsoever. The imagination uses the principles of association to redirect these principles themselves, giving them an illegitimate extension...We're not threatened by error. It's much worse: we're swimming in delirium."
John Nash (fictionalised version): "Like a diet for the mind: I choose not to indulge certain appetites, like my appetite for patterns."
Posted by robin at 11:08 AM
January 10, 2005
The Occultism of Stock-Picking
There is no contradiction between apparent lack of mathematically-tractable pattern and the existence of "exploitable opportunities" for prediction. If the market is not totally random (that is, if it has some 'memory', if every movement is not causally isolated from those that precede it) then such opportunities should exist. But these opportunities may be in the form of inexplicable, and probably impermanent, correlations between apparently unrelated factors.
In Paulos' view if a tip was good traders would not find the want of explanation troubling (they may even quietly admit that the situation was similar with their analytical systems...) Making superlative hyperstitional use of Plato, he states that traders would not care whether the shadows in the cave were 'real' or not so long as they turned a profit, and would regard the cave as a "bargain basement"
Given this, Paulos suggests that the supposedly rational, but scarcely successful, predictions of technical analysis might profitably be replaced by a "counterintuitive investment strategy" based on Parrondo's paradox.
Parrondo's paradox states that two dice-games in which the trend is towards loss can be combined randomly to produce an game where the definite trend is in the opposite direction. The two games represent in abstract two types of ratchet mechanism, which combine in this unexpected way. The paradox has a direct physical analog in a process whereby grains on a sloped surface, when shaken in a certain repetitive way, counterintuitively move upwards rather than down the slope.
In Parrondo's paradox the rules of the two games are apparently arbitrary: they have no special relation to the playing 'surface'. Paulos suggests then that a successful trading strategy may well take a similar form "depend[ing] in some way on the cross-correlation between a pair of stocks or...on some value being a multiple of 3:" ...that is, occult numerology, simply trusting blindly in pattern-matching, may be the most mathematically-informed approach to the stock-market!
By forcing apart explanation and prediction (the only rational course), we have made our stockpicking procedure by definition clairvoyant or magical.
The cause of so many people avowedly believing numbers to be "boring", and money to be a vacuous circulatory medium must be the learnt conviction that the actual amounts, sums, exchanges of number in everyday life, and their relationships, are "arbitrary", that there is nothing to say about them. Whereas this may seem a thoroughly rational position, it is fairly obvious that it militates against some basic cognitive instincts (pythagorean intuitions, we might say). Indeed it is arguably the role of mathematical education to beat such tropisms toward numerological play out of us, to make numbers work for us rather than enchant us with their limitless combinatorial richness. All the 'superstitious' qualities of number-relation are supressed in favour of a utilitarian approach to quantitative calculation. We are all aware that superstitious or irrational approaches to number abound in our 'inner life' (especially with respect to money) but it is not generally considered polite or sane to propose them as being socially or politically significant. To the extent they are acknowledged at all, they remain faintly embarassing and deplorable infantile tendencies with regard to the serious business of number-crunching.
My father, who taught mathematics to children for over a decade, conducted research with primary-school-age children which showed that many of them developed private methods for carrying out mathematical operations differing procedurally from those they had been taught; the children created well-defined working patterns, coping prcedures that made things work for them, and sometimes displayed intuitive insights into numerical relationships beyond what was strictly required for the operation in question. Such "vernacular mathematics" or popular numeracy will maintain a stubborn social inexistence unless one actually sets out to expose it, because it is systematically supressed by "royal" mathematics, which would have all qualitatively distinct routes reducible to one analytical truth, and any remaining difference marked as trivial or arbitrary. A huge variety and richness is concealed beneath the metanarratives of royal mathematics. (The introduction of 'investigational mathematics' into schools is IMHO a rare example of truly progressive change in the [UK] schools curriculum, that is if it hasn't already been reversed by those regular anticounter-revolutionaries' back-to-basics campaigns.)
A telling symptom of the deep ingrainedness of the received principle of the 'uninterestingness' of number qua number is that laypeople asked to simulate the result of random coinflips tend to make them overly featureless: They do not include enough of the 'surprisingly' long runs of heads or tails which would occur in a truly random sequence. Inversely, when presented with actual random data displaying these 'patterns' the non-statistician is tempted to furnish unwarranted explanations (the flipside of the occult stockpickers "unwarranted success").
Paulos suggests that in particularly intractable situations, the autocensored vagabond arithmetic of "popular numeracy" may be of as, if not more, effective than its imperial captor.
Posted by robin at 06:34 PM
January 09, 2005
A Mathematician Plays the Market....and Loses.
After losing his shirt on WorldCom stock, mathematics Professor John Allen Paulos took a sceptical tour through the multitude of pseudo-mathematical, statistical, and outright mystical theories of the financial markets, concluding from their average ineffectiveness and the constant hidden role of faith-based psychology in their advocates' behaviour, that the movements of the market may after all be beyond our 'complexity horizon'. In his final chapter he makes passing reference to Chaitin.
Effective scientific or mathematical modelling requires the construction of a set of instructions that accurately predict the appropriate outcomes whilst being simpler, more tractable, or quicker to compute (these three being arguably more or less identical) than the system in the entirety of its workings.
The relationship between system and model is what Chaitin calls program-size complexity, the bit-size of an algorithm as compared to that which it is designed to compute. Paulos' conclusions suggest that the only feasible way to 'model' the market would be to create an atom-perfect simulacra of it; like Chaitin's Ω, it cannot be explained (= predicted) in any terms simpler than the sheer enumeration of all its interactions in their entirety. (We would concur here with Ray B's hypothesis that "Ω...indexes the uncomputability of the real...the objective randomness of Capital's non-computable dysfunctions...").
Explanation and its cognate, prediction, rely on the principle of sufficient reason, which bespeaks a faith in the greater simplicity of the essential as compared to the real - a faith which founders in situations, paradigmatically weather-systems, where what is essential is an irreducible mass of real interactions.
We can suggest a direct connection here to Kittler's argument in "There is no Software". Phenomena such as weather systems, argues Kittler, cannot be modelled by discrete computers anything like fast enough to predict their movement - the massive density of interactions makes this technically impossible (this is a strong claim, of course, stronger than merely saying we do not yet possess the computational power. It needs further examination.) The only way, suggests Kittler, that our digital computers could begin to approach the task would be to reverse the fundamental microelectronic engineering trend of the last century - towards discrete components designed so that their operations can be isolated from crosstalk and noise - and build computers that actually take advantage of this excess connectivity.
The Hilbertian paradigm of the formal system, having already been irretrievably damaged by Gödel, transformed into an engineering rather than a syntactic problem by Turing, now displays in a more crushing sense its constitutive insufficiency. Given Kittler's strong hypothesis of discrete-uncomputability, it would not matter at all how much we tinkered with ideas like connectionism, distributed computing, or any imaginable elaboration of the Turing paradigm.
If you think about it, the obvious corollary to the universe being conceived as a giant information-processing device is that digital computers are bound to be a relatively computationally-poor subcomponent of that device. But on the other hand the pragmatic problem with Kittler's "noise engine" is one of throwing out the computational baby with the discrete bathwater; for how could such an aformal system, open to contingent interference, be programmable in any useful way?
The computational corollorary to Chaitin's vision of a "quasi-empirical" mathematics may be that the quest for ever-growing computational power necessitates a fraught trade-off between the instrumental use of bounded, discrete computational systems and their apparently necessary escape into unbounded, nondiscrete materiality and contingent utilisation. The boundary between a system's internal model of the world, and that world's concrete impingement on the system's physical instantiation has never seemed so close to collapse.
We could venture a speculation that is is on this collapsing boundary that synthetic intelligence is likely to be forged, as an as-yet obscure function of the interplay between matter-as-computational substrate and matter-as-uncomputable-turbulence. We may need to accept that beyond certain unrealistically simplistic cases, we cannot usefully define formal systems without reference to their aformal environments. AI may need to refocus from bounded discrete information spaces to messy margins of interpenetration between the real and the virtual...and stop hoping to create intelligence in a box.
The strong discrete-uncomputability hypothesis suggests that the incapacity of formal reason (understood as discrete computation) is a fundamental consequence of its conditions of possibility, the virtual separation from matter and the machinery of representation and modelling. The labyrinthine convolutions of matter necessary to instantiate apparently substrate-indifferent reasoning (Kittler's "software") are the very conditions of such reasoning's inherent limitation.
Godel would not, of course, have raised an eyebrow...
Posted by robin at 04:55 PM
January 08, 2005
The Moral Centre Doesn't Count
(On the occasion of being unfortunate enough to see "Churchill - The Hollywood Years")
An American who lived in China tells a story of how he asked a friend to find him a maid. Taking the request, in keeping with the principles of guanxi, as both an opportunity and a request of the greatest earnestness, he began a three-month quest to find the perfect maid, by which time the American had already found one and did not hesitate to say so. On this occasion, because of his understanding of the cultural differences involved the Chinese friend was able to explain how such a faux pas would usually spell the end, or at least the severe cooling, of a friendship, and the American saved face eventually by finding another job for the woman.
Guanxi is unequivocally a currency, a system in which transactions are well-defined, memorised, and not to be reneged upon. By doing others favours, one builds up a store of endebtedness, an insurance policy for the future. Asking for favours, and giving them, is a transaction to be taken seriously by both parties.
I recount this story only to contrast it with our own confused outlook. Of course, in fact things work similarly in western countries, but lamentably it's often considered vulgar to explicitly refer to personal favours as anything resembling a financial transaction. As a consequence, although favours do change hands much as currency, between close family and friends a fatal supplementary dimension is added.
One is certainly expected to repay, but what is expected above all is a mystification of the exchange - you must act as if you were doing the favour out of inner generosity and kindliness, and would do so regardless of any precedent exchanges.
This level of dissimulation, particularly among family, can lead to simmering unspoken resentments lasting whole lifetimes. Moreover, by substituting an unknowable relation for a relatively straightforward one it is ensured that debts can never be truly resolved; once you become involved in this vague market where everything happens under the counter and all prices are obscured, you submit yourself to an indefinite voluntary servitude.
As Nietzsche so clearly saw, "kindness" is one of the grappling hooks of resentment. Instead of being able freely to enter and leave relationships of power, the weak can get their hooks into you forever, slowly leeching your energies in amounts that never quite suffice for manumission but serve to exhaust and enervate, and generate resentment. This is perhaps why family relationships in the West (and one might say particularly in England with its proud tradition of repression) are so fraught, English literature is full of examples of simmering, angst-ridden family relationships whose obscure and damaging bonds can never be broken.
We might even say that the quintessentially Western practice of commercial psychoanalysis is the only mechanism yet discovered to liquify these bonds and plug the embargoed emotional trader back into the exchange economy (with a good cut going to the analyst, of course).
As in this emotional market, so in the actual market. In England money is often considered to be vulgar (especially by those who have it) and as something to be cunningly hinted at rather than celebrated. Why else do middle-class westerners find other cultures' - and their own underclasses' - taste for the bright and showy so vulgar or - to use the inverted form of the insult - so "charming" and "colourful"? Even the hiphop culture of "Bling" can only be imported into the middle England as an ironic statement, a patronising pastiche of those who can't afford the gold and diamonds they aspire to, by those who can and who therefore consider them amusingly gauche.
This is our problem. We are unable to submit ourselves to currency, believing it to be an empty and vacuous form of exchange (rather than the endlessly convoluting and fascinating numerical game that it obviously is). Rather than submitting to its magical power to elevate and ruin people and to create and dissolve bonds by purely arithmetical means, we invent this ironical dimension of interiority to save our souls.
Is this why English capitalism, now in its dotage, turns increasingly to the cultural production of decadence, backward-looking reruns of the glorious past, and xenophobia, accompanied by jeremiads against the corrupt forces of the global market? Whilst on the other hand, for Western businessmen guanxi often has negative connotations of bribery and corruption, a muddying of the pure waters of "relationships" with cynical exchange?
Whilst the cult of "moribundia" has a positive role to play in generating interest in neglected and peculiarly local forms of culture, and in encouraging appreciation of richly historical mongrelised artefacts veneered over by visions of globalised blandness, dwelling on those things that "money can't buy", feeding off corrupted empire-ROM, and maintaining a suspicion of all things new to the point of sickening self-satisfaction and hypocritical disavowal is the very opposite of culture.
How pathetic must the English look to the outside observer when a sneering parody of the perceived American lack of or disregard for culture and history, a film fabricated by adolescent-rebellious port-quaffing cantabrigians, is passed off as a celebration of our famous sense of humour? Whilst patently unable to take on board any of the craft skills of filmmaking of the last half-century (they are, of course, of foreign origin) the filmmakers presume still to vaunt some ineffable superiority. It is a sight that would be comical if it weren't so terribly unfunny.
The want of, or dissimulation of, any cognate principle to guanxi is a part of the same obstinate and misguided chauvinism, a desperate clinging to pretentions we can no longer afford, even if it means our sole remaining activity is self-abasement.
For a member of the English middle-class, whose every professional move depends on family and other connections, to demand a favour as recompense for one previously done remains a last resort, something that comes, if ever, at the desperate climax of an whining, insinuating argument where every type of emotional blackmail has been exhausted. It represents an unacceptable level of obscenity because it exposes the human social being as mere decentred counter of an external nomos, an arithmetical rule to which, it seems, the average Englishman prefers the oppressive, inescapable, nerve-fraying uncertainty of subjection to the constitutively unknowable (read uncountable) vicissitudes of an internal oracle. A "self" whose incessant demands for attention stem from sublimated aggression and egoic self-centeredness.
The English culturally valorize (more or less ironically) this repressed character. We love stories of closed little villages where everything is under the surface (even if inevitably it erupts into murder ). In the field of music Britain can still claim vitality andd global influence, but its stars are invariably those open to the vulgar outside influences ignored or sneered at by the substandard film products we churn out. Hugh Grant and his fellow simpering screen clowns may well turn out to be the last "truly British" export in history, a fittingly sorry monument to wilful decline.
Considering again the context of the family, one thinks of the Lovecraftian malevolence of Agatha Christie's Mrs Boynton in Appointment with Death, a puritan New England mother from whose "black, smouldering eyes" comes forth "a power, a definite force, a wave of evil malignancy", a woman who by cynical, sly use of her invalidity controls her adult children who cringe around her like tamed and servile animals.
Let's hope that Britannia, a similarly dissimulating matriarch, will find soon that her children have at last built up the strength to escape from the clutches of their mysteriously-enforced servitude. And it is difficult to think of a more succinct description of what it means to be English than 'servitude', whether to the Empire or its absence, whether empowered or embittered.
"Mrs Boynton might be old, infirm, a prey to disease but she was not powerless. She was a woman who knew the meaning of power, who had exercised a lifetime of power, and who had never once doubted her own force...[H]e understood now what that undercurrent to the harmless family talk had been. It was hatred, a dark eddying stream of hatred."
(Mrs Boynton is of course murdered -" but not by her "dumbly enduring" children who, although they constantly plotted her death, remained too terrified to carry it out.)
All of this renders even more darkly comic the fact that the mutually-hallucinated realm of ego-fugged altruism is hailed as the moral command centre that makes us so special, so that even the unleashing of markets cannot corrupt our liberal democracies' supposed tendency to betterment and fellow-feeling.
What if it was the other way round, and it was the market, as locus of generalised unbinding, that had unleashed us from shadowy, irresolvable obligations; and, to our shame, we had failed to live up to the task, preferring to scoff, wallow and decay?
Posted by robin at 01:06 PM
January 03, 2005
¿Qué es el número Ω?
Brisk Chilean interview with Chaitin here. I just love those upside-down questionmarks, that's all.
Posted by robin at 03:11 PM
Nietzsche as chaperone
..Part II
Posted by robin at 02:53 PM
HyperCamo
Excellent Reza post on hypercamouflage...brings me back to my (infinitely more mundane, or course...) memories of being 'immersed' in the corporate world; that at that time I actually believed in it (even found myself picking up horrible US biz-slang, circa late 90s - that vomitous linguistic concoction that resulted from the head-on collision of programmers, venture capitalists and californian futurologists ), so I was in some respects 'fully assimilated', and yet somehow, at a certain time, something pulled me back and out of there, and I realised "I" had never wanted to be there; the same with the academic world.
No, It's too easy to suppose that you suddenly came back to your 'real' self, that you finally knew your mind.
How do you know where camouflage ends and where you melt into the place you're going to - what I once called 'Kurtz-Gradient'...Intoxication: becoming the poison. Or simply, becoming.
And it's the only way to learn, get inside something and take it as far as it can go, but the mystery is how something manages to come back, when so many people seem to happily give themselves up to the certainty of permanent intoxication (I'm playacting the superior intellectual, of course: their achievements outstrip mine by any known measure - but still, it seems despite my best efforts to sink, it couldn't be any other way.)
Posted by robin at 01:09 PM
January 02, 2005
Lou Salomé - The Story of a Free Woman
As promised...part 1...apologies for imperfect locutions ;)
Posted by robin at 05:22 PM