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Day: January 21, 2002

Ellipsis

2002-01-21 John Winkelman

I have been crazy busy at work. A project which we started this past Thursday needs to be finished tomorrow night. This will not be a problem. I am just that good.

Nothing new to report of the memetics front, other than this: Have you ever noticed that when you develop an interest in something, that something seems to pop up all over the place? I am reading The Cassini Division by Ken MacLeod, wherein memetic viruses are used as a kind of instant post-hypnotic suggestion to either frighten enemies or keep servants in line. And get this: They seem to be transmitted by ‘swirling patterns’ on the hulls of ships, or in visual broadcasts. Could they be using archetypal symbols to cause this effect?

In other news my two Hofstader books ( Metamagical Themas and Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies ) have arrived. I started reading FCCA yesterday.

The chapter titled “To Seek Whence Cometh a Sequence” explores the methods by which patterns are recognized, and the processes we use to extend those patterns beyond the information we are given. The idea being, I suppose, that what humans and computers consider meaningful are not at all the same thing. If I see a sequence {1,2,3,5,7,11,13} I know from experience that these are prime numbers. A computer doesn’t care if they are prime numbers. It won’t discover that they are primes unless we ask it to test the sequence for the possibility that they are primes.

And that is the fundamental conceptual stumbling block in building a thinking machine. Computers don’t out of habit, attach significance to symbols. Things are not “interesting”. They don’t have subconscious biases toward recognizing familiar patterns.

Or maybe they do. What do I know?

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JohnWinkelmanJohn Winkelman@JohnWinkelman·
11h

4 of 5 stars to Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson https://www.goodreads.com/review/show?id=4732930726

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JohnWinkelmanJohn Winkelman@JohnWinkelman·
13 May

It was withdrawn after they couldn't successfully add an exemption for wealthy white families.

Reuters@Reuters

A bill in the Louisiana legislature aiming to charge women and their doctors with murder for obtaining or providing abortion services was withdrawn from consideration amid outrage and a successful effort to amend it https://reut.rs/3w8Tn4B

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JohnWinkelmanJohn Winkelman@JohnWinkelman·
13 May

HA HA!

The Call is Coming from Inside the Nash@Nash076

Yup, figured this would happen.

Musk is now trying to cobble together a consortium of buyers to prevent having to take a loan on his Tesla stock.

So he's not so much buying Twitter as loading Twitter with debt that can't be repaid. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-seeks-scrap-tesla-153641078.html

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