Glen -
I'm still enjoying my illusion of free-will and get a little skitchy
around overstated pre-determination (or a fully mechanistic model of the
universe?). This is probably just a twitch itself?
Well, the twitch ontology doesn't make any statements about free will or
illusions or any of that. It only minimizes what would be inside an
actor's boundary if such a boundary exists. That's why it will work for
objectivists or constructivists.
do you have any references I could follow? The "Twitch Ontology" would
be new to me (excepting what you just wrote). It felt as if it
explained human behaviour as an automaton, but obviously more than that?
That minimal kernel is simply a source of "energy", the impetus to move,
say, do, act in whatever way your constraints allow you to. If you only
have 1 DoF, then every twitch will place you on points in that
dimension. If you have N DsoF, then you'll (eventually) end up sampling
the space bounded by those constraints.
So, there are no types of twitch, there is only twitch. That doesn't
imply any sort of determinism. In fact, it might argue for nondeterminism.
I like to distinguish determinism from predictability. If I understand
your concept of twitch, there is no choice to be made, but the outcome
of coupled, cascading twitches (actors acting interactively?) can only
be determined by running the twitching simulation forward?
You have referred to yourself in the past as a "simulant" which I took
to mean that you are a professional creator of "simulations" (simulation
scientist?) despite the fact that it was too close to "Replicant" from
Blade Runner and sounded more like you were claiming that "you" were
just a somewhat modularized region in a giant simulation.
I mean it in both senses, circularity, ambiguity. I am part of the
simulations I help create.
I think Rich and I (at least) would grant you that.
But I don't say it to distinguish me from
anyone else. I actually think we're all simulants.
A given in the rhetoric of the discussion I think.
The manifested
effects of your twitch may seem to fall into an entirely different
taxonomy (e.g. music or paper mache bagels with cream cheese)
yes...
, but it's
still constructed and it's still _similar_ to something else. Hence
everything we construct is a simulation of something. And everything we
construct is a (complementary, reflective, inverted) simulation of
ourselves, like a glove is a simulation of the hand.
Echoes of echoes of reflections of folds of reflections of
postive/negative space.
In some circles it is a truism the "we are what we eat"... which
suggests that someone who "eats simulations" for a living is likely to
"become a simulation" at least in their own mind. Or perhaps it is your
twitch that you *are* a simulation scientist *because* you see the world
as one grande simulation and the ones you create and execute are just
modularized simulations within the simulation?
Excellent! But, no. I'm the type of simulant I am because, for
whatever ontogenic, hysterical constraints, the only/best thing I can
manipulate is rhetoric (which includes deduction in the form of
instructions for machines).
Well said.
That region of my constraint box was more
open, perhaps more densely meshed than other regions. If my twitch had
emerged in a baseball player's constraint box, then the simulations I'd
be a part of would be much different.
Flingin spittballz?
"I" am also not completely an illusion.
Right. You're a wiggly twitch exploring your constraints. So say we all.
So say we all!
- Steve
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