History of the Concept of Art
Nowadays when someone speaks of "art" you probably think first of "fine arts" such as painting and sculpture, but before the twentieth century the word was generally used in quite a different sense. Since this older meaning of "art" still survives in many idioms, especially when we are contrasting art with science, I would like to spend the next few minutes talking about art in its classical sense.
In medieval times, the first universities were established to teach the seven so-called "liber...
notes The Hybronaut
I have developed a concept that attempts to emphasize, cross, and further blur the borders of technology and the human. My artistic research work experiments with a networked human, whose body and environment are characteristically techno-organic. This concept developed as the techno-organic figure, what I call “the Hybronaut.” The Hybronaut proposes an “action” state of a human, whose existence and identity are deeply intertwined with its networked hybrid environment. It is understoo... notes The Umwelt Bubble
The biologist Jakob von Uexküll’s term Umwelt refers to a concept about the subjective world of an organism. The world can be imagined as a soap bubble, which surrounds each individual and contains signifying markers relevant only to the world of that specific creature. This soap bubble, or Umwelt, is actively created by the individual organism in a process of forming a perception of reality, which is guided by the organism’s design, its physiology, and its needs.
According to Uexküll,... notesBy Laura Beloff's "The Hybronaut Affair: A Ménage of Art, Technology, and Science"
Infinity Times Zero is Not Zero
The problem is that the laws of addition and multiplication you are using hold for natural numbers, but infinity is not a natural number, so these laws do not apply. If they did, you could use a similar argument that multiplying anything by infinity, no matter how small, gives infinity, thus ∞×0=∞. More sophisticated arguments can also be made, like ∞×0=limx→∞(x×1/x)=1. Clearly all these different values for ∞×0 mean that ∞ cannot be treated like other numbers.
In order to ... notes Private Property Does Not Drive Human Aggression
I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communistic system; I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is advantageous and expedient. But I am able to recognize that psychologically it is founded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression of one of its instruments. This instinct did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme in primitive times when possessions were still extremely sc... notesFreud argues that aggression existed before the concept of personal possessions.
The Sensory Desktop
We must take our sensory experiences seriously but not literally. This is one place where the concept of a sensory desktop is helpful. We take the icons on a graphical desktop seriously; we won’t, for instance, carelessly drag an icon to the trash, for fear of losing a valuable file. But we don’t take the colors, shapes, or locations of the icons literally. They are not there to resemble the truth. They are there to facilitate useful behaviors.
Sensory desktops differ across species. A ...
2 Donald Hoffman on how our sensory perception of the world is like a computer desktop, a representation of things, not how things actually are. We must remember the difference.
Umwelt
In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll introduced the concept of the umwelt. He wanted a word to express a simple (but often overlooked) observation: Different animals in the same ecosystem pick up on different environmental signals. In the blind and deaf world of the tick, the important signals are temperature and the odor of butyric acid. For the black ghost knifefish, it’s electrical fields. For the echolocating bat, it’s air-compression waves. The small subset of the world that an ...David Eagleman on how each species of animal senses only a small portion of the world, and assumes that small fraction is the entire world.
Zhodani Religion
Death, to the Zhodani, is not a complete ending. The "evil" (that is, failure of duty) of the individual spirit will be lost. The "good" of the spirit will merge for a time with the universal energy field, the Tavrian, and then return to another member of the race. The more dutiful the spirit, the more personality (and possibly even memory) will remain; this resembles reincarcation. An undutiful spirity will be diminished in proportion to its failures. However, actual demotion on the "chain o... notesInteresting concept, that our good survives to live more lifetimes, while our bad dies with us. The more good, the more of us to continue, while the more bad, the less we will exist. Similar to evolution, where our good survives into future generations.
A Zen monk in a Japanese temple draws beautiful lines in the sand and makes a wonderful pattern. He then draws a line in the pattern, in his mind disfiguring the pattern, the reasoning behind this is his view is that nothing is perfect in this world.
What is perfect? That is a misconstrued concept, the world is as it should be, otherwise it would not be so. Everything around us follows the basic laws of the universe, cause and effect. Things are as they should be. That there are brutal dictatorships around the world is a result of cause and effect, it is how things should be, or they would not be like that, is that not perfect? Sure we can try and change the world and make it more just and fair, if we succeed, that is how things should be, if we fail that is how things should be, but as a human one must try ,a human being is born with the ability to act, take action and change it, if you succeed, then you have taken the action that leads to change, that is as how the world should be, is that not a perfect world?, following the laws of the universe of cause and effect. As a human take action to destroy what you do not like, but do not say it is not perfect. The world follows the laws of cause and effect perfectly, it is a perfect world.
That blacks are downtrodden does not make the world imperfect, it is a result of cause and effect, and as humans they must take action and cause things to change for the better. Without action things will remain perfectly bad for black people. Perfectly bad is still perfect.
AI Philosophizing
Tachikoma: So, will we be sent back to lab too?
Batou: Wha...? Who's been telling you that?
Tachikoma: Well, it's just that the way the Major's been looking at us lately is kinda scary.
Batou: Oh, is that all? The major's always scary, remember? I think you guys are doing a fine job.
Tachikoma: You really think so?
Batou: What, you're still worried about that?
Tachikoma: Yeah... It just seems like the Major is angry about what we've acquired recently.
Batou: "Acquired"? Acquired what?
... notesNot deep, confusing, but I like the idea that AIs are digital, but humans are analog.
