Chuang-Tzu wrote: 'The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish. Once the fish are trapped, the trap is no longer required. The springe is to catch hares. Once the hare is caught, the springe is no logner needed. Words are to capture ideas. Once the idea is caught, you no longer require words."
A fun read. I've wrestled with this many years ago shortly after not-finishing my physics degree. You video link has brought me up to date with the research which, I am rather delighted to say, aligns with my conclusions that I had reached from the initial (1980s) results from Bell's theorem. This goes straight to yogic thought: there is only a present that is infinitely evolving. The physical appearance is a manifestation of one aspect of the infinite, and itself seems to have an infinite set of mandlebrot sets that swim together. Fun stuff.
Smiling in recognition. Birds of a feather, I can imagine passing a bong back and forth with you back in undergrad days. We could probably come up with all kinds of pro-social, Monty Pythonesque mischief.
Yes. In the last six to twelve months, I may have loosened up enough to do exactly that. OMG, I have changed since 2018, and in quantum leaps since the summer of 2021. El gato the cat guy in substack likes the humour of memes to quickly disempower the henchmen and their posers. I worthy endeavour I've yet to jump into. I seem to be too busy with sadhana (extended yoga of poses, breath and mantra), properly eating and writing 'serious' stuff.
I didn't know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Using a liberal interpretation of fractal, I would understand you mean to say that these constructs are just origami-equivalent? I mean to say by that, that we could fold and morph one into another without loss?
I really like the idea, but what I rescue from relativity is not that all reference points are the same, or that truth is impossible, but rather that what is important is knowing that our map is *local* and how to relate that local map to other maps.
I did not expect anyone to carefully read through my first post ... was more intended as a bootstrapping to get me started here on substack. Quora has dropped in quality and Facebook seems to presume to have a monopoly on at least two of the Platonic ideals ... truth and goodness. So I thought I would throw out my version of Wittgenstein's Ladder here, pull it up, and move along to using language as therapy and for problem solving.
Verbal origami sounds as good as my liberal use of fractals. but rather than 'loss' or 'gain', I prefer the metaphor of an emerging or submerging mandelbrot set, a bit like similar patterns appearing between different scales and domains.
You are correct in that I don't believe the reference points are the same. and that I don't dismiss truth as impossible. And yes, you correctly understand that I can only express my self within limited, local contexts.
That 'truth' may be my version of Platonic ideals ... too subtle and simultaneously all encompassing to be reduced to the limits of language and logic. Words can only point to it, and threrefore my preference for the strong version of linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf).
But similar to the danger of those who hedge and hide behind 'moral relativity' ... I think most of us intuitively 'know' 'the right thing to do, or recognize 'quality' when we experience it.
Ha ... with the mention of 'quality', I recall a favorite book from my undergrad years ... Robert Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. Regarding aesthetic choice, I would rather write like Pirsig than Wittgenstein, but I have to start somewhere.
Much thanks for the time and effort it takes to untangle me. Who knows? Maybe I will find my stride in a melody rather than words. Stranger things have emerged.
Second, I do go down the rabbit hole of "I think therefore I am" as a metaphysical statement. In my What is Reality? playlist, I look at whether our minds exist in the world or whether the world exists in our (singular) mind. It's really different to say 'nothing is real' than it is to start with Descartes' revelation that consciousness exists, is self-evident. FYI: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS5WYJBpd75vCQeiHmz4jbOpgu9Scnr4f.
And last, I love your post and its thoughtfulness and humility. In my original intro video, I stressed that I was an uncredentialed, unpublished, unemployed nobody--and nobody is perfect! My book bio says, "Tereza Coraggio offers no market credentials by which you can determine her worth or the value of this book. Open it and decide for yourself." Here's the OG intro (which is no longer up on my YT page) and I look forward to your next post!
Still at the bottom of the S curve for learning how to use substack.
A new morning in Japan, new ideas and re-arrangements for my beginning to come.
I don't know how this will effect comments and potential readers, but my plan is to go back and keep polishing that beginning ... expanding here, trimming there, until it pushes the boundaries of what can be said, until it necessarily has to take that jump from the literal to the metaphorical.
Following one of your links, I came across a reference to two influences on the current 'me' ... Russell Brand and (prior to his vaxx stance, and post 'linguistic deep structures) Noam Chomsky. Now doing a combination of house cleaning and listening to a listener reaction to a recent Russell Brand-Noam Chomsky interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9AuMILSA9g (though this interview is probably later than the one you referenced.
As I mentioned earlier I am also going to let late-morning Steve, react to last night's 'Beginning' Steve ... and edit. This may be jarring to any who read, and I expect some, if any, comments will be edited to reflect my edit. But I will get back to your comments and follow up on links as time permits.
p.s. The reactor laughs at how Russel Brand poses 4 questions at a time to his guest. I really like Russell Brand, and there is very little I disagree with him. But I think he is a bit heavy handed in the way he heavily frames his questions, and focuses but colors the answer, with his own mind-set in those loooong questions. It is as if his questions are being used as a platform for expressing his own opinions. I guess our questions do expose our assumptions, but meh ... his approach may be a calculated trade-off necessary for the constraints of this medium. Ha, remember Marshall McLuhan ... 'The medium is the message?'
Just finished the video ... and though it turns out to not be about the interview you were referring to, I liked what host Sabrina Salvati says, and subscribed to her channel. A lot of what she is saying post-reaction is similar to what I've experienced in Japan. She also repeatedly mentions Chris Hedges ... sometimes a dark and gloomy voice, but I am one of his fans.
Will look through Rumble for that initial Brand-Chomsky interview you were referring to.
Found lots of reaction videos ... so I went straight to the Russell Brand page and started looking ... far too much scrolling to find the video you were referring to, and the video search algorithm doesn't seem to be of very much help.
Back to house cleaning and a bit of editing of my beginnings ...
Hi, Steve. This is the same interview of Noam I responded to. This is just a clip of it that Russell posts but the entirety is on his Under the Skin podcast on Luminary, so behind a paywall.
I don't think it's healthy for me to watch people covering the same topics as me with 20,000 subscribers, merch, Patreon, reminders to hit the like button (as 500 people did) and over 100 comments. It makes me feel like I've wasted the last 20 years of research and analysis and would be doing much better just repeating what people want to hear. But clearly I'm just a bitter old woman and, as I say in one video, Envy is my go-to deadly sin, especially of people who have an audience. Disclaimer: I didn't get past the Freedom of Speech speech, so maybe there's deeper content later.
Russell's much more subdued and reverential in Noam's interview than most. Some of my favorites are his interviews of Gabor Mate, which I respond to in The Epiphany Jumpstart: https://youtu.be/erwJwvid4o4.
On the Substack of Noam IS the Problem, there's a viewer named Jack who starts out objecting to my analysis, then listens to the podcast interview twice and changes his mind. It might be interesting to read that comment thread. And I don't mind Hedges being gloomy but I do mind his holier-than-thou superiority. I feel he talks down and his divinity school comes out in being preachy.
LOL ... of course friends. I also find Chris a bit preachy, and also a bit too much self promotion for my taste creeps into his speeches now and then (Arabic speaking, Pulitzer Prize, New York Times, etc.). I like his eloquence, but I prefer the bluesy gut-bucket style of Cornel West.
I hear you about wasting time in the echo chamber. I have a couple of hundred posts on Quora, and multiples of that in comments ... both often several pages with links and taking several hours, if not days to write ... and getting maybe a dozen upvotes by the same group of friends. Meanwhile, someone young enough to be my grandchild posts a twitter length witticism that goes viral. Depressing.
I have another problem somewhat related. I live in Japan. The meta-discourse of talking about talks is wasted in trying to find people over here who are biculturally conversant. And I can't claim to be even conversant in Japanese culture. Other than weather forecasts, occasional documentaries, and movies ... I don't watch TV any more. Japanese television is arguably more banal than the bread and circuses of its American counterparts.
And I don't hang with American ex-pats. Never have. They tend to band together and share similar sob stories about Japan. My friends are almost all Japanese, but with an occasional Westerner or Chinese thrown in the mix ... and few, if any, are well read enough to have even heard of Chomsky, much less thought of how he fits into the current social milieu.
Oh ... you mentioned Aaron Maté! I am familiar with his face among independent journalists and like him. But I am more familiar with his dad, Gabor. For about a decade now, I occasionally hang with an NPO supporting the homeless in Tokyo ... Soup no Kai (The Soup Group), and for exchanging chats over beer after a night of chatting, eating, and sharing practical information with the homeless, I decided to do a little research about those working with the homeless in the West, and came upon Gabor Matés work with the homeless in Vancouver, through his book 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts' ... which is more about the addictions which are the proximal causes of homelessness. He is doing some interesting work now with the spiritual aspects of ayahuasca as a treatment for addiction ... but so much of his stuff is behind a paywall that I don't follow him now.
Will check out those links you included a bit later. At the moment while house cleaning (and prepping for an ocean kayaking-fishing trip next week), I am listening to your what, why, and who video and responding.
And still trying to figure out how to go back and edit my beginnings post last night to reflect today's Steve.
There is a lot here. It seems appropriate to mention "The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusians, and the Unmaking of the World" by Ian McGilchrist.
Then there is Linguistic Determinism. It seems like an area where our intuitions betray us. I'm with John McWhorter on this. Here is an easy-to-follow discussion: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/sapir-whorf
Chuang-Tzu wrote: 'The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish. Once the fish are trapped, the trap is no longer required. The springe is to catch hares. Once the hare is caught, the springe is no logner needed. Words are to capture ideas. Once the idea is caught, you no longer require words."
A fun read. I've wrestled with this many years ago shortly after not-finishing my physics degree. You video link has brought me up to date with the research which, I am rather delighted to say, aligns with my conclusions that I had reached from the initial (1980s) results from Bell's theorem. This goes straight to yogic thought: there is only a present that is infinitely evolving. The physical appearance is a manifestation of one aspect of the infinite, and itself seems to have an infinite set of mandlebrot sets that swim together. Fun stuff.
Smiling in recognition. Birds of a feather, I can imagine passing a bong back and forth with you back in undergrad days. We could probably come up with all kinds of pro-social, Monty Pythonesque mischief.
Yes. In the last six to twelve months, I may have loosened up enough to do exactly that. OMG, I have changed since 2018, and in quantum leaps since the summer of 2021. El gato the cat guy in substack likes the humour of memes to quickly disempower the henchmen and their posers. I worthy endeavour I've yet to jump into. I seem to be too busy with sadhana (extended yoga of poses, breath and mantra), properly eating and writing 'serious' stuff.
I didn't know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Using a liberal interpretation of fractal, I would understand you mean to say that these constructs are just origami-equivalent? I mean to say by that, that we could fold and morph one into another without loss?
I really like the idea, but what I rescue from relativity is not that all reference points are the same, or that truth is impossible, but rather that what is important is knowing that our map is *local* and how to relate that local map to other maps.
Hello Aion,
I did not expect anyone to carefully read through my first post ... was more intended as a bootstrapping to get me started here on substack. Quora has dropped in quality and Facebook seems to presume to have a monopoly on at least two of the Platonic ideals ... truth and goodness. So I thought I would throw out my version of Wittgenstein's Ladder here, pull it up, and move along to using language as therapy and for problem solving.
Verbal origami sounds as good as my liberal use of fractals. but rather than 'loss' or 'gain', I prefer the metaphor of an emerging or submerging mandelbrot set, a bit like similar patterns appearing between different scales and domains.
You are correct in that I don't believe the reference points are the same. and that I don't dismiss truth as impossible. And yes, you correctly understand that I can only express my self within limited, local contexts.
That 'truth' may be my version of Platonic ideals ... too subtle and simultaneously all encompassing to be reduced to the limits of language and logic. Words can only point to it, and threrefore my preference for the strong version of linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf).
But similar to the danger of those who hedge and hide behind 'moral relativity' ... I think most of us intuitively 'know' 'the right thing to do, or recognize 'quality' when we experience it.
Ha ... with the mention of 'quality', I recall a favorite book from my undergrad years ... Robert Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. Regarding aesthetic choice, I would rather write like Pirsig than Wittgenstein, but I have to start somewhere.
Much thanks for the time and effort it takes to untangle me. Who knows? Maybe I will find my stride in a melody rather than words. Stranger things have emerged.
Cheers Aion, and followed.
Looking forward to reading you.
steve
Also, I found Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk, which I'll link here. I'll watch it and respond later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU
I love being your first commenter on your first post! What an honor!
So many possible responses, infinite time.
The first is that the prelude to my book is called In the Beginning Was the Purpose, which I reproduced on my Substack: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/in-the-beginning-was-the-purpose. You might like it.
Second, I do go down the rabbit hole of "I think therefore I am" as a metaphysical statement. In my What is Reality? playlist, I look at whether our minds exist in the world or whether the world exists in our (singular) mind. It's really different to say 'nothing is real' than it is to start with Descartes' revelation that consciousness exists, is self-evident. FYI: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS5WYJBpd75vCQeiHmz4jbOpgu9Scnr4f.
And last, I love your post and its thoughtfulness and humility. In my original intro video, I stressed that I was an uncredentialed, unpublished, unemployed nobody--and nobody is perfect! My book bio says, "Tereza Coraggio offers no market credentials by which you can determine her worth or the value of this book. Open it and decide for yourself." Here's the OG intro (which is no longer up on my YT page) and I look forward to your next post!
What & Why & Who Am I? https://youtu.be/oc4w9Do_tSQ
Hi Tereza.
Still digesting my first cup of caffeine.
Still at the bottom of the S curve for learning how to use substack.
A new morning in Japan, new ideas and re-arrangements for my beginning to come.
I don't know how this will effect comments and potential readers, but my plan is to go back and keep polishing that beginning ... expanding here, trimming there, until it pushes the boundaries of what can be said, until it necessarily has to take that jump from the literal to the metaphorical.
Following one of your links, I came across a reference to two influences on the current 'me' ... Russell Brand and (prior to his vaxx stance, and post 'linguistic deep structures) Noam Chomsky. Now doing a combination of house cleaning and listening to a listener reaction to a recent Russell Brand-Noam Chomsky interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9AuMILSA9g (though this interview is probably later than the one you referenced.
As I mentioned earlier I am also going to let late-morning Steve, react to last night's 'Beginning' Steve ... and edit. This may be jarring to any who read, and I expect some, if any, comments will be edited to reflect my edit. But I will get back to your comments and follow up on links as time permits.
p.s. The reactor laughs at how Russel Brand poses 4 questions at a time to his guest. I really like Russell Brand, and there is very little I disagree with him. But I think he is a bit heavy handed in the way he heavily frames his questions, and focuses but colors the answer, with his own mind-set in those loooong questions. It is as if his questions are being used as a platform for expressing his own opinions. I guess our questions do expose our assumptions, but meh ... his approach may be a calculated trade-off necessary for the constraints of this medium. Ha, remember Marshall McLuhan ... 'The medium is the message?'
Just finished the video ... and though it turns out to not be about the interview you were referring to, I liked what host Sabrina Salvati says, and subscribed to her channel. A lot of what she is saying post-reaction is similar to what I've experienced in Japan. She also repeatedly mentions Chris Hedges ... sometimes a dark and gloomy voice, but I am one of his fans.
Will look through Rumble for that initial Brand-Chomsky interview you were referring to.
Found lots of reaction videos ... so I went straight to the Russell Brand page and started looking ... far too much scrolling to find the video you were referring to, and the video search algorithm doesn't seem to be of very much help.
Back to house cleaning and a bit of editing of my beginnings ...
Hi, Steve. This is the same interview of Noam I responded to. This is just a clip of it that Russell posts but the entirety is on his Under the Skin podcast on Luminary, so behind a paywall.
I don't think it's healthy for me to watch people covering the same topics as me with 20,000 subscribers, merch, Patreon, reminders to hit the like button (as 500 people did) and over 100 comments. It makes me feel like I've wasted the last 20 years of research and analysis and would be doing much better just repeating what people want to hear. But clearly I'm just a bitter old woman and, as I say in one video, Envy is my go-to deadly sin, especially of people who have an audience. Disclaimer: I didn't get past the Freedom of Speech speech, so maybe there's deeper content later.
I'm not sure if it's as obvious from my Substack, but I started my YT channel to respond to Russell's interviews, and have at least 40 that do: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDmO99Pl8y7I2qnYjpA_njQ.
Russell's much more subdued and reverential in Noam's interview than most. Some of my favorites are his interviews of Gabor Mate, which I respond to in The Epiphany Jumpstart: https://youtu.be/erwJwvid4o4.
On the Substack of Noam IS the Problem, there's a viewer named Jack who starts out objecting to my analysis, then listens to the podcast interview twice and changes his mind. It might be interesting to read that comment thread. And I don't mind Hedges being gloomy but I do mind his holier-than-thou superiority. I feel he talks down and his divinity school comes out in being preachy.
I hope we're still friends!
LOL ... of course friends. I also find Chris a bit preachy, and also a bit too much self promotion for my taste creeps into his speeches now and then (Arabic speaking, Pulitzer Prize, New York Times, etc.). I like his eloquence, but I prefer the bluesy gut-bucket style of Cornel West.
I hear you about wasting time in the echo chamber. I have a couple of hundred posts on Quora, and multiples of that in comments ... both often several pages with links and taking several hours, if not days to write ... and getting maybe a dozen upvotes by the same group of friends. Meanwhile, someone young enough to be my grandchild posts a twitter length witticism that goes viral. Depressing.
I have another problem somewhat related. I live in Japan. The meta-discourse of talking about talks is wasted in trying to find people over here who are biculturally conversant. And I can't claim to be even conversant in Japanese culture. Other than weather forecasts, occasional documentaries, and movies ... I don't watch TV any more. Japanese television is arguably more banal than the bread and circuses of its American counterparts.
And I don't hang with American ex-pats. Never have. They tend to band together and share similar sob stories about Japan. My friends are almost all Japanese, but with an occasional Westerner or Chinese thrown in the mix ... and few, if any, are well read enough to have even heard of Chomsky, much less thought of how he fits into the current social milieu.
Oh ... you mentioned Aaron Maté! I am familiar with his face among independent journalists and like him. But I am more familiar with his dad, Gabor. For about a decade now, I occasionally hang with an NPO supporting the homeless in Tokyo ... Soup no Kai (The Soup Group), and for exchanging chats over beer after a night of chatting, eating, and sharing practical information with the homeless, I decided to do a little research about those working with the homeless in the West, and came upon Gabor Matés work with the homeless in Vancouver, through his book 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts' ... which is more about the addictions which are the proximal causes of homelessness. He is doing some interesting work now with the spiritual aspects of ayahuasca as a treatment for addiction ... but so much of his stuff is behind a paywall that I don't follow him now.
Will check out those links you included a bit later. At the moment while house cleaning (and prepping for an ocean kayaking-fishing trip next week), I am listening to your what, why, and who video and responding.
And still trying to figure out how to go back and edit my beginnings post last night to reflect today's Steve.
Catcha later Tereza!
I think you meant Aaron as the son. I love them both! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on my What & Why, etc.
Ooops my mistake. You mentioned 'Aaron'. Gabor is his dad. Will correct that and you can keep or delete your heads up.
There is a lot here. It seems appropriate to mention "The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusians, and the Unmaking of the World" by Ian McGilchrist.
Then there is Linguistic Determinism. It seems like an area where our intuitions betray us. I'm with John McWhorter on this. Here is an easy-to-follow discussion: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/sapir-whorf