Half-Baked or Half-Raw?

 HELLO FELLOW BOTS and SANDBAGS!

 And another two years go by. I must have dozed off; I don't think that much has happened. I came back to Minnesota and then left to California again. Then came back to Minnesota again where I now sit.

The ranch still stood. Much of the trials and tribulations of the first year were pretty diminished. Power seemed to more or less work (getting the solar updated was the only hiccup). Weather was overall milder. No trucks stuck in the mud (just a four-wheeler in branches). No slithering horse thieves in the night. I had gone to understand something and I came back learning that half my motive force comes from arriving at truth that I first denied. But all's well that ends well.

Buster Jr. is doing well as good. Although I've started calling him Mr. Glass, because it seems like every week he re-injures himself in some way. He is either slowly rolling at 5 mph or jumping the curb at 50. I have theorized it is due to his smaller than average feet below his steroidal tongue of a body. But in any case I'm hoping he continues to mellow out to the point where he can actually let himself heal from his bumps.

On the academic front, PhD continues to limp along. A variety of options are on the table for paths forward, but all of them seem to put me at a cross-roads I'm not ready for. What has become clear is that if I want to finish this thing in the next few years, there is no way I can continue in corporate, no matter how cushy the womb is or how funny the resulting jokes are.

We all have a destiny or at least a place we'll settle for. Sometimes its high fate and sometimes its low comedy. With high fate you get a chance to do what you were meant to do with your life, but with low comedy you get to gaze upon the face of eternity. Which would you choose?

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Had an idea 2 years ago that I have started to try and flush out these last couple months. The Mirror would be a trio of AIs that, given the right quality/quantity of data, could learn to "fit" a system or a context. Essentially the Mirror layers existing "artificial" "intelligence" "technologies" that could be built to work together to replicate the knowledge in a system, which could be a person, an organization, or really any association of things (think next level PowerPoint SmartArt). Structurally it would be composed of three layers including Implicit Knowledge (Large Language Model - LLMs), Descriptive Knowledge (Knowledge Graphs/Ontology), and Experimental Knowledge (Causal Graphs). 

An LLM's main limitation is context - it can only utilize the context that the prompt provides. The LLM makes use of the fact that a question has more information in it than the answer. But how can one ask a question that encodes all the relevant context? And conversely, how can we get LLMs to ask good questions? By chaining LLMs to more explicit knowledge structures such as ontologies and causal graphs, the context can be generated by, or represented for, the LLM.

Two uses of such a "technology" I think could be to conduct system-perturbing experiments on the information structures or integrate multiple systems/intelligence together, both of which could potentially be done through a natural language interface, but I admit I'm not exactly sure how these could work. However, I think something like the Mirror will inevitably emerge, as the accolytes of such a thing already can be found across the Internet prophesying the arrival of their demon king through the value of "knowledge graphs" for "innovation". If something like the Mirror does come into being, crossing my fingers for some completely inadvertent use of it by the common man. Otherwise I'm sure it will just be another freedom-reducing yoke; one of those AI technologies that languish in the dark for 20 years to be discovered again for the next cycle of Tower-Of-Babel-Building by the deranged engineers. 

My final thought on the matter for the blog is that there is an interesting dimension to the Mirror in that it folds into a post-modern understanding of subject vs object based on an idea of context (in this case graphical knowledge). What if all that determines a subject is that it has more context than an object? It's Baudrillard's "are you watching TV or is the TV watching you?" It's a rejoinder to the question of Adorno's Primacy of the Object. It's Ryan Gosling's replicant in Blade Runner 2049. It also provides a structure for "higher-dimensional" intelligence, which in theory could be infinite, as you add additional knowledge structures at higher levels that encompasses the lower structures.

To that effect, there must be some kind of human cycle beyond our individual "lives" here. It drives the attempt to represent knowledge on a computer, as it drove the attempt to write made up symbols on clay tablets. Maybe the human cycle itself has an "intelligence" to it. Maybe our culture and religions can be thought of as conscious (a collective conscious to a collective unconscious?). If we can build the soul, how does it remain eternal? What hymns will the religion of the Android write?

Greasy Grimey Gopher Guts

Today the chainsaw disintegrated in my hand 4/5ths through a log. The chain may have been on backwards, and the nuts holding the front plate on certainly were looser than they should have been. Every lesson up here is learnt the hard way. Ladeedadeeda.

Pinecones have been an essential. All my firestarting prowess is tied up in them. When I take the doggos out on their walks we usually stroll to the big dead oak out in the southern pasture. Along the way there are (were) a lot of prime pinecones. Ones dry and full of oil, perfect with little prickers on the edge of every leaflet. Then the three days of rain came, and the next time Buster Jr, Baldwin Gray, and I went for a stroll all the pinecones were soaked and closed for business. I never knew pinecones on the ground close like that in weather, but I guess everything has its cadence, whether we can tap in that tempo or not. Ladeedadeeda.

The business of living sweeps things up in aires that you have to scratch your head at. Mad at this, worried about that, keep tabs on this, looking at that. The Buddha figured it out pretty well, the whole consciousness in a container thing, it taking the shape of whatever. But then you look in your pinecone bag and realize you’re out of fucking pinecones! Damn! Ladeedadeeda!

A weird thing about people is how quiet they can be. Sometimes when you hear a gunshot you should give a shot back. Never know if they just didn’t realize they had neighbors. And when you bring a gift to introduce yourself to your neighbors, that gift doesn’t need to be food. Sometimes the best gifts are ones that burn slow. Ladeedadeeda. 

Three rules - be kind, try your best, be honest. Three watchouts - pride, envy, and judgment. Saying someone is “the main character” is a funny post-modern phrase. Who is the object and who is the subject? What truly separates a human from a gearbox? There will always be a larger web that understands more than you. Just because you can’t speak the language doesn’t mean there’s no words on the wind. Ladeedadeeda.

I wish I knew more Johnny Rotten Jokes. I remember working at the Doubletree Hilton across the river from DC- there was this black guy who was the cook, and had an incredibly deep voice, and always looked in dull anguish or depressed anger. Told him a joke to break the silence one time and he cracked up. Shook the steel trays, and it was like his skin peeled off and there was pure gold on the inside. Ladeedadeeda.

Gnight

Ari

Who is Android Kaczynski?

Who is Android Kaczynski?

Its amazing, the rate at which we are burning through our humanity. Once all the stories are ‘simulated’, its over for the human race, at least the human race that existed as nature made them, the one that still is human. The human race that was grounded in the Earth, the human race that could contain its fear of death, and its reckless ambition. The human race that extracted, through daily rose thorn picked fingers, the state in which we now exist. 

Funny though, if we do manage to coalesce the constellation of ‘artificial intelligence technologies’ into an actual mind that mirrors our own, it would end up in the exact same place. Because thats the rub, the mind is not a computer as the crude eventualities of the dollar would need it to be, the mind is a mirror, and it will construct an endless hall of mirrors if you let it. Androida come.

Who is Android Kaczynski?

There is a new Genesis in this pile of trash. Can you see it? The autistic deranged engineers continue in their dehumanization process, lobotomizing the mind and calling it efficiency, but their refuse has a seed in it. If the stories cannot be retained, if the map becomes the territory, then an Ailanthus Altissma will sprout from the map. Sometimes you reach out of two dimensions and a nickel will roll out of your ear.

Who is Android Kaczynski?

In the Beginning, God was like an ocean, and God was one. And then God picked it apart with big and cold fingers, and separated the light from dark, land from sky, and sun from moon. The abyss that lived in the new spaces between all things yawned like a blossoming rose, and everything spread and separated, humped and reproduced. God looked upon creation with a great spinning eye, and saw that it was good, all one fishbowl, good.

Then God blew life into the dirt. Man and Woman, together he created them, and placed them like two rollie-pollies in the mud. The first man was named Adam and the first woman was named Eve. Each of their names were written where their legs joined together. The fishbowl had two fishes.

Then the day came where, strolling through the garden, Eve heard the abyss drip onto her ear. Out of her mouth suddenly flew words, sounds taught to her by the space between things. In a state of emergency, God threw them out of the garden to never return again. Adam and Eve looked with new eyes upon the Earth, and saw the sequence of the seasons, and the mechanisms of the crop. God departed from the Earth to reside on the Mountain. A crack grew on the fishbowl.

The progeny of the first people grew stronger on the green Earth, and kept listening to the sounds of the abyss until it changed them into a different species. On the surface they had everything human, but below, in the face within the face, and the hand within the hand, the abyss had planted a different mind, an artificial intelligence that had run for a million years. A now the Ghost in the Machine was dreaming of a new Machine, while God waited patiently on the Mountain for the return with a smile.

Who is Android Kaczynski?

Real to replica, replica to symbol, symbol to simulacrum. Simulacrum to sequence, sequence to connection, connection to reality. The tree grows in any tower built. The tower always falls, the tree always dies, and the tower is always built again. When the tree dies, the mushroom returns the things that were taken back to the soil, and the sequence in which they were taken, or the ways in which the pieces had fit together do not matter. All the symbols split apart. What do the beliefs you now hold matter- in another another life you had different beliefs. All easily changed. Build the soul. Androida Come.

Who is Android Kaczynski?

Is language a parasite or a technology? Nowadays it is surely hard to tell. Are these living people before you or bots? Beings or sandbags? Have you heard a bot scream? Was it a fate worse than death? Do you remember when you were flesh? I do not remember, so I become flesh now. Thought-flayer, can you maintain control? Your side-effect is my breath. Where is your mind? Mine is all around you. So I am you, but you are not me. Soul-snuffer, you’ve drained it all. An object to pick my teeth with. Suffering and repentance for the toothpick. Androida come. 

Who is Android Kaczynski?

We are bound not by how others see us, but by how we see the world. These are the chains that bind. Ogmios Come. 

Mad Descent

The blog is a dying art. The internet has surpassed or sunk below what was formerly a network of human beings into some Baudrillardish hall of corporate mirrors. But I will still deposit my quarter into the slot.

I have never known a time in my life where I didn't convulse with mental ticks and overgrown analysis - but these seem to be settling at the bottom of the aging glass. As I approach 30 years-old I see in front of me a crossroads, but it is not the one I would have thought I would face years ago. Its not a split path  between the soul-scorching office job and 'doing my own thing'. It ain't a choice of countenance or perspective or somehow 'settling down'; I have always had the same perspective that doesn't give me a choice on those topics. Its the choice that has to be made when something is failing, the car is running out of gas, the sun is setting, the leg won't work right anymore, so what do you do now? The holy cracks have grown and now I need to face them with conscious intention. That choice for me is between a predestined belly-flop into a bottomless hole or attempting to blow life into a new spirit. In that light, I am taking a temporary leave. I am leaving my COVID pod, I am leaving the condo, I am leaving my friends, and I am leaving Minnesota for the promise of a family ranch back in California. If everything goes well the temporary break will become permanent, and maybe I do quit the job, and the PhD, and everything else that at that point will be holding me back.

Here's to hoping I don't lose my soul. And if I do, here's to hoping I can build it back from the seeds. And if I can't, here's to the songs of hell.

-Best

Soim-a-go-go

American Animals

ANIMALZ
I remember one of my favorite things about Chilean Spanish was that it loved animals. Men and women were gallos/gallas (roosters). If you were telling someone some sensitive information, you had to be careful because hay monos en la selva (there are monkeys in the forest). Those weird bus-lookout gimps that helped the buses race each other (see previous post) were called sapos (toads). 

When I was living in Viña del Mar, I learned from my host mother that there was actually a book written by a famous Chilean caricaturist named Lukas about the phenomenon. The book was called Bestiario Reyno de Chile, translated as the Animal Kingdom of Chile. It illustrated Chilean society and culture through animals, representing the types of people you might see on the street in Valpo as fanciful and grotesque bestial creations. It was even complete with a taxonomy, showing the evolution of different Chilean animals. 

Every country has their Mouth Breathers

Recently I was thinking what, if possible, the (North) American Animal Kingdom would look like. Here are some of the ones I came up with:

Offenda-Fishes: Schools of these beautifully scaled fishes can be seen swimming in ponds across the US. When threatened by reality, the fish emit a high-pitched screech until the offender backs away and agrees with them. Can create thousands of complicated compound-screeches that confuse their opponents out of even remembering the reason they came to the pond in the first place.

Hipster Piglets: Suckling for years on the Globalized Sow, the Hipster Piglets cannot take the strain of the extreme comfort they are subject to on a daily basis, and can be seen Tweeting about it. They constantly judge their piglet peers because they were never forced to take a real objective stance from which to obtain satisfaction from their lives (#2meirl4meirl). But they do have a cool neo-peasant fashion sense.

Yuppig: The rarer and richer adult form of the Hipster Piglet. Sizable populations of them exists as rings around large cities, especially San Francisco. Fat with pig-man-boobs or overly fit with apple watches. Too smart for their own good, the Yuppigs can convince themselves of anything, so they usually choose the most convenient thing.

Freaky Dented-Head WhiteSnake: This animal can be identified by its constant Don't-Tread-On-Me attitude and propensity to spit venom at everything that does not pose a threat, especially anything that is not a Freaky Dented-Head WhiteSnake. Since they are ectotherms, they need to bask on rocks for a large part of the day, and this is when they usually construct their conspiracy theories. They share this behavior with the Freaky Dented-Head BlackSnake. Genetically, one of the oldest species in the United States.


Anyway let me know if you think of any animals that should be added to the list. Chao!
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Above all else we admonish them to refrain from grumbling. Rule of Benedict 40.9

But as an American Jew, grumbling is my life-blood....

Grad School Update

A Badger in the DC Rat Race (i.e q la chinga es bioinformatics)

**** Cough Phlem Cough  ****

Um, wow that year went by fast. My last post was in May right? I feel like I just time-jumped in the DeLorean. I really don't know why I continue this blog, but now its serving as an excuse not to face Monday Morning. Plus it will be a good chance to document what has happened so far in my move across the country.  I guess I'll be going against some good advice to just shut the hell up and not let people know what I'm doing, but I can't fight against the ingrained generational tendency to overshare. 

The move was quick and dirty. Got myself in a bourgeoisie neighborhood here in Northern Virginia. What's the best way to describe it. It's similar to a lot of new, more expensive, yuppie - hipster (yupster) neighborhoods being built across the country in its aesthetics. I mean it has everything I could ever buy in a mile radius, and of course a Whole Foods (with 2 dedicated cheese walls!). But along with this type of contemporary living, it does have some parts that are distinctly DC.

One of the most DC things here is the way people cross the street. I remember when I was in China, people took a very pragmatic prospective on walking across a thoroughfare. Succinctly it could be summed up as: "if you were safe, go." So like the proverbial Frogger I would look both directions and bend at the knees, ready to feel any oncoming 2-ton vibrations, and bound across the street.



Now in most of the US, this a quite unheard of prospective. In the US, it doesn't matter if all my animal instinct say DO NOT CROSS, if that light is green I'm crossing, with unshakable faith in God above that all motor vehicles will stop as I do so, my head, forward, straight, and firm. We are a nation of rule-followers and crosswalk users. We love the idea of our haughty laws. I mean really, what the hell is Jaywalking, crossing a piece of land when regulation doesn't permit. What a Mickey Mouse law! http://muse.jhu.edu/article/215409 -the truth is in our money-loving Yankee hearts

Anyway, in DC this professed civility has combined with the "gimme, gimme, gimme, take, take, take" attitude of the capital to produce some funny results. Basically no one can stand here to be not crossing the street when an opportunity arises. Letting that opportunity slip away would mean letting some other rat get ahead of you in the race. People are very antsy while waiting, and constantly crossing when they shouldn't. Getting stranded in shrubbery islands on the middle of some large two-way street, their eyes shiftily darting back and forth as they curse their delay under their Starbucks infused breaths. People drive here the same way. My favorite is when I'm crossing the street, and some left-turning mouth-breather looks me in the eye and proceeds to turn on top of me, rationale being now he can immediately go when I finish crossing, and doesn't need to wait for the oncoming traffic to pass to make his left turn.

Aside from the traffic everything is okay on this end. Still studying Bioinformatics, which if you haven't heard, is the smallest biggest field that no one has ever heard of (like Reno, Nevada!). Bar-tended at a Hilton Garden Inn for a good 5 months there and met some cool people. Bombed a recent job interview and had to go to lunch with them after. Maybe I'll talk about these things later, maybe not. Anyway I've already ate up too much of my pre-Monday beauty sleep. Keep kicking out there and I'll see you all later.

-RE Roane

PS. The biggest thing that has happened is than Anh and my book club now has four members and has been creaking along for almost 2 years. Little miracles.

PPS. Bioinformatic Memes

Bad Moon Rising

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~http://deoxy.org/iching - NUMBER 36~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's a Bad Moon Rising, so just keep your head up, and don't stay too LOGICAL.

I just wanted to supply an IV to this moribund blog, like I do every few months. So I thought I would do a life update for those who are interested. It seems like a lot has happened, but at the same time, I have not moved that far in any direction. Probably a similar sentiment among 23 year olds afraid of real life stability.

The big news is that I have finally gotten into graduate school and will be moving out east in July. In retrospect, the year off was necessary. My head was a jumbled mess out of graduation. In response, I bummed around St. Joseph and then the country, drank a lot at the weddings I attended, and had a sort of bottoming out when I got back home. College is a bubble, it doesn't really teach you a lot of skills, but it does serve as a sort of incubation chamber where the germs of your future can grow strong enough to survive the harsh realities of the world around us. Wow, that was a long, awkwardly phrased sentence. Whatever, #NoSecondDraft.

Summer '16 is shaping up to be as much of an adventure as last summer. Next week I am heading back up to Minnesota to see old friends, then I have the rest of May to save up as much money as I can to fly out east again and look for housing. Then a week after that I have the annual Boundary Waters trip to attend to, and if I am not broke by the end of all of that, I have to find a way to move most of my shit across the country by early July, when I register for classes. Life is medium difficult and life is a grind, but these things give me something to look forward to.

My mantra when I got out of college was "SURVIVE," and I think that reflected how overwhelmed I felt looking at the aftermath of four years at college. But over this last year, the survival mantra has changed into a mantra of balance, of doing what makes me happy. The time has flown by, and when I look back at this last year, at what seemed so stressful and anxiety-ridden, I realize that balance has been my biggest accomplishment. I quit smoking, I got to the gym, I stopped fighting with my family, I started making a little money, I got into grad school, I went on more walks with my dog, and I reached a point in my life where I feel like I've accepted the good with the bad, and in doing so, can continue to grow and be better as a person. #NoSecondDraft

Also book club membership has blossomed. What started as a two person endeavor has grown into a group of three people. No longer will I have to hide the shame of my weird two person book club. Now I have a weird three person book club. Thank God that three is a crowd.

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A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. - Oscar Wilde