Heh - interesting day today.
Jul. 18th, 2004 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptFirst off, some bad news for us U.S.A. people - 2004 election postponed until 2008.
Second, just for you, TK - Thoughts in Captivity.
Third, for anyone who's ever wondered, the difference between n00bs and newbs.
Finally, the post I made earlier today has been knocking around my head for a while now - it's turned a few things topsy-turvy and set some others in motion. I'm beginning to think that the best retort to the question of "Who am I?" is "Tabula rasa." But it's a blank surface that everyone, has an irresistible urge to write on, and now there's all sorts of stuff scribbled on it, in the margins, in all sorts of hands of different sizes, styles, etc. And then the worst part is when the surface looks at itself in the mirror, it believes that the writing on the sheet is what's important. It's not! The writing can be scribbled anywhere, on anything. Depending on what sort of tool the writer is using, the writing may have varying degrees of effectiveness, (pen works nicely on paper, but isn't quite so effective on stone.) but in the end, it's just writing. At any time, the writing can erased, replaced, overwritten, appended, etc. Destroy the surface and the writing goes with it.
What's worse about the writing tools, is that each tool wants to write more of itself (or things that are like it) on the surface until it's completely covered with that writing. Since the space to write on is limited, they fight over how much writing is on the surface at any given time. Some tools will fight off other tools more successfully than others. Others will be elbowed out of the way by new tools that scribble themselves on the surface. And the surface looks at the writing on itself, and decides that it likes certain tools and doesn't like other ones, and so it will start letting the tools it likes write on itself more and getting rid of the other tools.
Then the surfaces started comparing the writings they had on themselves, and made exchanges of tools, and then began to think that whatever tools they thought wrote best would write best on everyone else. So they started to interfere with the other surfaces, trying to get them to write with particular tools and avoid other ones. They might even go so far as to destroy surfaces that wouldn't write with their tools. To combat this, some surfaces figured out a way to have tools write on them, but not permanently, so that they could see whether they liked the writing before they let it become permanent. While this helps the problem somewhat by preventing the aggressive tools from setting in permanently, the surfaces started arguing over whether or not having the layer was a good idea.
Wise is the surface that recognizes the writing for what it really is! The surface that recognizes that the important thing in dealing with another surface is not the writing, but the fact that there's a surface underneath all the writing is enlightened beyond measure. These surfaces often want to help the other surfaces realize that the writing is immaterial. So maybe "Tabula rasa" really is the right answer. This might just be the beginning of an Erisian myth. Anyway, I'm off to bed, having work in the morning and all that.
Second, just for you, TK - Thoughts in Captivity.
Third, for anyone who's ever wondered, the difference between n00bs and newbs.
Finally, the post I made earlier today has been knocking around my head for a while now - it's turned a few things topsy-turvy and set some others in motion. I'm beginning to think that the best retort to the question of "Who am I?" is "Tabula rasa." But it's a blank surface that everyone, has an irresistible urge to write on, and now there's all sorts of stuff scribbled on it, in the margins, in all sorts of hands of different sizes, styles, etc. And then the worst part is when the surface looks at itself in the mirror, it believes that the writing on the sheet is what's important. It's not! The writing can be scribbled anywhere, on anything. Depending on what sort of tool the writer is using, the writing may have varying degrees of effectiveness, (pen works nicely on paper, but isn't quite so effective on stone.) but in the end, it's just writing. At any time, the writing can erased, replaced, overwritten, appended, etc. Destroy the surface and the writing goes with it.
What's worse about the writing tools, is that each tool wants to write more of itself (or things that are like it) on the surface until it's completely covered with that writing. Since the space to write on is limited, they fight over how much writing is on the surface at any given time. Some tools will fight off other tools more successfully than others. Others will be elbowed out of the way by new tools that scribble themselves on the surface. And the surface looks at the writing on itself, and decides that it likes certain tools and doesn't like other ones, and so it will start letting the tools it likes write on itself more and getting rid of the other tools.
Then the surfaces started comparing the writings they had on themselves, and made exchanges of tools, and then began to think that whatever tools they thought wrote best would write best on everyone else. So they started to interfere with the other surfaces, trying to get them to write with particular tools and avoid other ones. They might even go so far as to destroy surfaces that wouldn't write with their tools. To combat this, some surfaces figured out a way to have tools write on them, but not permanently, so that they could see whether they liked the writing before they let it become permanent. While this helps the problem somewhat by preventing the aggressive tools from setting in permanently, the surfaces started arguing over whether or not having the layer was a good idea.
Wise is the surface that recognizes the writing for what it really is! The surface that recognizes that the important thing in dealing with another surface is not the writing, but the fact that there's a surface underneath all the writing is enlightened beyond measure. These surfaces often want to help the other surfaces realize that the writing is immaterial. So maybe "Tabula rasa" really is the right answer. This might just be the beginning of an Erisian myth. Anyway, I'm off to bed, having work in the morning and all that.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-19 03:54 am (UTC)Thanks.
Date: 2004-07-19 10:28 am (UTC)With regards to the author of that text:
Date: 2004-07-19 06:37 pm (UTC)remember how fools mock you all day long.
Do not ignore the clamor of your adversaries,
the uproar of your enemies, which rises continually.
--Psalm 74:22-23
Go here. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/torakiyoshi/388085.html)
-=TK
Re: With regards to the author of that text:
Date: 2004-07-19 07:56 pm (UTC)Re: With regards to the author of that text:
Date: 2004-07-20 03:57 am (UTC)-=TK
Re: With regards to the author of that text:
Date: 2004-07-20 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-19 09:21 pm (UTC)For a start, I'd really recommend you read Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. While the book itself is concerned with approaching the question of consciouness and self-awareness via a fairly mathematical route (and it's interesting just on that level if you have any interest inmathematics or artificial intelligence) it includes a lot of useful discussion and thought-provoking discussion that ranges from provability within formal systems right through to Zen.
One thing in particular GEB touches on is symbolic reasoning and isomorphism between symbolic systems (an isomorphism is an "information preserving transformation" - it's one way of saying two things mean the same thing. Sort of.) This has more than passing relevance to the question of "who are you" because, when you strip away all of the titles, names, roles, jobs and so on that most people would use as a basis for answering the question, what is left - the essense of who you are - causes a big problem: it is almost impossible to conceive it, let alone describe it, because it is hard (maybe impossible) to create an appropriate self-referential isomophic symbol of that essence. Any attempt to attach a symbol to it runs into the problem that Zen teaches is the barrier to enlightenment: the very words you need to use to describe it, the thoughts that go together to encompass it, invalidate it, break it, just get in the way. You can't say who you are because there are no words, no pictures, no thoughts - no symbols that your own mind can maintain let alone describe isomorphically to another mind - that can accurately describe it. The words in this case are the enemy and only by doing without words can you grasp who you are, but by doing without words you can not describe it to someone else.
Maybe. I'm not sure. But that's where it seems to go I think.
Yeah.
Date: 2004-07-20 12:37 am (UTC)And one of these days I'll go back over my LJ and start taking notes of which books I need to read - and maybe if I have a collection by then, I'll buy them for that and read them anyway. Or maybe I'll compile a list and aggravate the university's librarians tomorrow. Who knows?