Natural Language Accelerators

I had an interesting conversation with a peer this morning, which touched on where things might be going with the various MEMEX type devices, chatbots and so on. 

Of course MEMEX is not a term of art in current shoptalks, but does come to us from the 1940s with the right connotations and expectations. Rather than clinging to LLMs + LMMs as the presumed architecture, or otherwise overfitting, we bring back an old bottle ready for new wine.  

MEMEX was a term coined by Dr. Vannevar Bush, the original National Science Foundation chief, when describing his vision of today’s AI but in terms intelligible at the time. Microfilm was a big part of it.

Everyone knows the direction in computing is towards ever smaller (vs ever larger) leading Bucky Fuller to propose his UMC (his ultra-micro computer), whereby human subjects might become pinheads in a good way, as metaphysical components within some “hive mind” or “zeitgeist OS”.

The picture on many drawing boards is of massive centralization in the cloud (much talk about data centers), whereas many social engineers are planning for the individual school-level MEMEX, picturing both a physical campus and a virtual sphere in Cyberia (cyberspace), in user space.

The logical boundaries for a typical school would be inclusive of theater and sporting events, debating events, any number of extracurricular, as well as curriculum-related, activities (chess club, glee club… specifics are obviously per school). 

Year books, course readings, pages for faculty (active and retired), pages for students, past research… all would be raw material for the MEMEX, the computer that makes sense from a bewildering variety of saved goodies, with more always being added.

My expectation is Princeton’s MEMEX will be usable by alumni and in aggregate alumni across classes will represent the bigger slice of the pie, based on demographics. Those currently enrolled are the pipeline into the alumni tiger tank (where we tigers hang out).

However, similar to what happened in the music industry, with barriers to entry falling, thanks to the technology, a smaller personal MEMEX is also forecast and indeed is what many are busily building right now today, after which they make public videos about it. To what degree these individual onboard models are given agency varies of course. 

Clearly we’re in a transitional period with AI, where many small experiments provide the feedback the bigger solution providers will need, if their relatively large scale affordances are considered affordable, meaning worth their cost. 

Many possible scenarios we simply cannot afford, only fantasize about, and maybe get people to pay for anyway, as they share the same fantasy without critical insights into the practical feasibility of whatever crazy plan. Groupthink is like that. People feel safe and secure as long as they’re not alone i.e. as long as they have a critical mass of true believer subscribers to whatever vision (one would hope for more than a mere vision).

Those with a stronger sense of the Reality Principle serve to help filter out the truly crazy schemes. Some do get through though, and those involved find out the hard way why they should never have gotten funded in the first place. By the time that becomes obvious, it’s too late to course correct, while meanwhile the crazy think tank professors who dreamed this stuff up, are off to other assignments. There’s no one to call.

When the game is to try many things, going with fast and small over slow and big, the consequences of a scenario failing or wiping out will be manageable as well as instructive. 

Some plans look like they could work and one only realizes in hindsight about some of the obvious flaws.

Learning from one’s mistakes is of prime importance, in order to avoid one of those doom loops we always hear about, wherein a failure to realize what’s self-defeating is in itself a blind spot in the analysis.

Investigating English

Let’s look some more into English, in the sense of “investigate”, a verb already colored, by me, for me, by the Wittgensteinian corpus. I’m referring to an Austrian philosopher, first name Ludwig, who also spent a lotta time around military hospitals, as well as in academic settings. 

Mostly LW preferred staying by himself (he secluded himself in Scandinavia somewhere) and thinking deeply about language and how words mean. Our contemporary philosophy owes a lot to this thinking, in synergy with the thinking of others.

The verb that comes to mind this morning is “to rationalize” which usually means “to contrive a rationale in retrospect” when something, likely unbidden, is already a fait accompli yet maybe still in need of some justification, explanation, or excuse. When one endeavors to “rationalize” whatever, one strives to fit whatever into some schema whereby it seems planned, intentional, or at least explicable, and therefore more acceptable.

From the previous paragraph you may gather, correctly, that rationalizations often ring hollow, as they’re used to justify the unjustifiable sometimes. So there’s a negative connotation to the word, as rationalizations have a poor reputation. 

But you might wonder, seeing how “rationalize” is so close to “rational” and also “reasonable” in semantic space that it’d have more of a luster to it, more of a positive connotation. Finding ways to make something seem more reasonable in retrospect should not be judged a weakness. It’s when the reasoning seems “forced” and/or “sketchy” that the proffered rationalizations are adjudged “empty”.

I’d say our ability to rationalize in the sense of “smooth over by applying one’s reasoning powers retroactively” is a part our ability to self heal. In other words, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with making the best of new developments by incorporating them into one’s emerging sense of reality.

The active inferencer, or inferant, seeking to minimize uncertainty (free energy), is always using the wisdom of hindsight to retell a tale already told. 

Revising is not a crime as there’s always more than one way to tell a story when facts underdetermine the spin we put on them. Sometimes the retelling seems phony, no question. We call that “putting lipstick on a pig”. A poor excuse might be a considered a failure to sufficiently rationalize. No rationale seems to work.

We’re taken to task for being “revisionist” sometimes, as thats another verb (“to revision”) with a bad reputation. 

But here too: isn’t revisioning a responsibility more than a sin? 

Both rationalizing and revising may be part of a healthy self-updating process. 

Don’t deny yourself the privilege of seeing events, or even your whole life, in a new light, given the advent of new information, new experiences. A willingness to revise is often called “being open minded” which in most walks of life is at least given lip service as a positive. To be “closed minded” is to be “stuck in a rut”.

Synergetics for Seniors

Curating Propaganda

I especially like this one; I made it myself, using Gemini.

 

XREF: 

The Rabble Babble

Geek Lore

National Intelligence Director

Mood Music

Coasting to a Close

Having reminded presenters, especially the new ones, how I’m role modeling “place based”, I’m coasting through to the end of Spring’s term, looking forward to Summer’s. I’m referring to my School of Tomorrow, which takes a placed-based approach to pedagogy-andragogy (from child to adult).

However, “coasting” does not mean “not busy”. Thanks to co-presenters on social media, I’ve been going deeper into my studies and sharing results, both in terms of Project QuadCraft (“a world beyond MindCraft”) and in the matryoshka department (concentric dolls). I’ll use the balance of this blog post to summarize these results.

First thing first though, instead of FIFA we watched a Euro-made version of Dracula which was in some ways better than expected. Let’s see if I can write a tagline: a self righteous church has ways of dealing with overly-liberated women. Nah, that wouldn’t resonate with most people. Anyway, some of my friends are watching FIFA on Fox. I do get broadcast television, but not cable.

Project QuadCraft is about using Quadray Coordinates internally, although conversion to XYZ is naturally needed to make the computations intelligible to other software, which have more MineCrafty APIs. No problemo. We’ve had XYZ output since the beginning. But not everyone adopts the same conventions when it comes to the R-edged and D-diagonaled cubes, where R and D are radius and diameter of our closest backed balls (yes, the IVM or CCP).

Per our Volumes Table on Synergeo, used by many presenters who are not necessarily subscribed, our R-edged cube is irrationally volumed vs unit, even as our D-diagonaled cube is wholesomely whole numbered, and that difference in design throws off a lotta people. That’s why presenters have done some homework to keep peeps on track.

As for the dolls (the poly-guys matryoshka), we’ve been focused on an Italian Renaissance figure who lived around the same time as the Dracula in the Euro-movie: in the 1400s. He was a polymath (“Renaissance Man”) who made contributions across the spectrum, and gets a lotta credit for that icosa-inside-octa (faces flush), an arrangement of two Platonics that’s not a dual pair so much as a bridge, between 4- and 5-old symmetry fams. That’s another ongoing discussion on Synergeo.

Per said Volumes Table, our canonical octahedron has volume 4, whereas the faces flush icosahedron (Piero’s) is closer to 2.917 in volume. We have ways to express this “icosa within” (IW) volume in terms of algebra, which in this context means in terms of surds. Synergetics has always used surds, contrary to some boomer-led dumbing down campaigns mostly led by the math averse. As a presenter, you’re always welcome to take it away into new dimensions, but lets remember our source and its original design.

However, our middle schoolers are getting the art of programming through their homework anyway, we hope remuneratively although School of Tomorrow isn’t itself running a payroll. The presenters of which I speak have their own various ways of capitalizing on curriculum content. In my case, I’ve worked per hour on synchronous and asynchronous projects. I’ve joined as a W2 employee far less frequently (O’Reilly) but have done that too. Mostly I’ve been agreeing to teach online, and in live events around town, for example in the public and private middle schools (I’m thinking of Coding with Kids and Sunshine Elite).

The new-to-me Koski Identity, 60 S + 60 s3 for the RT built from Piero’s IW, gets snarfed up by Python and worked with algebraically, keeping the surds in play until we wanna tap those sympy expressions for decimal digits (that’s usually our base). S is of course from BASKET (K for 1/120th of a 7.5-volumed RT — not mentioned in the original two volumes, but included in the Wikipedia table). s3 means “S phi down” meaning “all edges shrunk by phi” (multiplied by 1/phi — or use the Greek letter) meaning “volume shrunk by phi to the 3rd”. 60 of each (big guy and little) add to the same volume as said RT.

We’ll celebrate closure of our Spring Term in the form of a Wanderers gathering at the Linus Pauling House, our temple to engineering. It’s not like we’re too snobby to admit non-engineers or topics outside of engineering. We’re actually not a membership organization, even if we accepted donations (Jon Bunce did) for the coffee fund. That’s when we’d meet weekly. My template for presenter meetups, locally arranged, derives from this model, and from Meetups more generally, especially those of the Thinking Society of Greater Philadelphia (CJ) and 52 Living Ideas (Shrikant). Our Shaman of Synergetics knows what I’m talking about as do others you’d be able to seek out for more context.

Disclosure Day (movie review)

A movie concept 

(inspired by Disclosure Day)

I’m aware as of this posting that critics are panning this film for the most part, and are applying the worst epithets, such as “Boomer Movie” (gross). However I’m planning to dissect it differently and find it to be an interesting exploration of “intelligence” and what that even means.

Wardex is Urizen and the sense of security that gives us. The movie critic audience, which grew up on ET and Close Encounters, complains bitterly they don’t feel sufficiently secure, seeing as how said DoD daddy Darth Vader is so incompetent, echoing their disappointment with the whole ET story. 

The nerdy two, or two point five (there’s both a girlfriend and a fellow abductee) keep eluding Urizen, but then we realize: it’s Urizen (CIA) subverting itself, as the employees inside include Snowden types who want the world to know what they already know: that their government engages in torture not to mention domestic surveillance (we’re their enemy too).

Once Mickey (the military industrial complex) becomes schizo, it’s no wonder that it finally succumbs to the reality of reality television. 

They know, as do the Snowdens, that once the new reality comes into frame like that, there’s no point fighting it. People will finally believe, even the Russians and North Koreans.

Again, movie critics think the intelligence community coulda shoulda gone berserk at that moment and panic-protected its big secrets, maybe killing everyone in the TV studio. No lessons about empathy or animal intelligence really got through their thick skulls all these years. 

But even from a practical standpoint, a big show of force would only backfire. You can’t be seen to be keeping secrets secret, or they’re not really secret anymore. The cat has left the bag at that point.

Where it gets interesting is when Catholicism comes into it and is characteristically catholic (open minded) about ETs. Genesis says hominids rule the roost here on Earth as a dominant intelligent life form (whales take a back seat) but other planets are out of scope. The Bible is Earth focused. 

Once we’re outside the biblical context, the sky’s the limit as to what’s possible, given God’s track record for being highly imaginative. 

Religion teaches us techniques for staying open minded, even into adulthood if that’s possible.

Disclosure Day (the day the truth is revealed, that ETs are real) is therefore really a kind of Rapture, to bring the Protestants into it, and their literal-mindedness. There’s gotta be this one day of reckoning, when nonbelievers repent.

The dream of ETs literally comes true in our literal universe, which means “on television” as TV is reality’s gatekeeper.  The movie spends a lot of time looking at this TV network gatekeeping environment and how people do as they’re told once they accept you as their boss. 

Our abductees have a knack for emanating persuasiveness (they’re basically mind readers, a lot like Lucy who also has a Morgan Freeman type on her side). They’re “est people” to use an outdated jargon (from even before the est Training). Shades of Olivia Butler right?

The same movie critics who wonder at the lack of violence (Wardex seems so nonviolently tame but for the aggressive mind control experiments) plus can’t imagine that their little ET friend from that first Spielberg movie, is now all grown up, just as are they. If there’s any alien intelligence in the pipeline, it must be inside us, because clearly the Rapture isn’t happening. We’re not getting to X-Day in time.

Catholicism and ETism both have a lot in common: they keep us waiting, in expectant anticipation, for the Judgement Day that seems always just around the corner. A few maybe seem to get something from “the now” (mundane reality) but that’s too Zen. Mostly ETism is about the endless suspense, that state of waiting (so more like Quakers then?).

Incommensurability

The term “incommensurability” is more encompassing than mere “irrationality” as it embraces “transcendental” as well. That was a topic this morning over breakfast. Terry Bristol bounces around among the Greeks, such as Archytas of Tarentum (c. 435–350 BC) and  Eudoxus of Cnidus, precursors to Euclid, and inspirational for Archimedes. 

Incommensurability opens a space of incremental or successive approximations, each closer to some ideal, but perhaps with insufficient means to ever reach that ideal, even in principle. For example, by means of specific algebraic operations, one may reach closed form expressions for certain irrational numbers, but not for pi or e.

The analogy to geometry is deeper than mere resemblance; it’s a tighter mapping. Given the conventional Euclidean constraints of straight edge and compass, what are the limits to construction? The classic example was squaring the circle: by simple construction, construct a circle and square of identical area. This proved elusive, leading to a maturing of the concept of incommensurability itself.

Terry has been exploring the not-commutative aspects of geometric procedures. The order of instructions clearly matters and going forward (picture an arrow) does not always imply going backward. Some functions are what we call one way.

What I added to the discussion was a quick recap of that Python generator function I learned about from Guido and Tim, which in just a few lines using rational steps, creates a pi digits generator. Somehow remembering state may lead to chaotic output, as we also learn from Wolfram. A deterministic generative process may not imply any shorter or more compact expression is out there, other than the generator itself, in whatever language. Ramanujan’s generators are a case in point.

Terry parked his car in front of my place and we walked to Bread and Ink on Hawthorne. Passing under the Bagdad marquee, we came across a free books pile, not unusual in Portland. I set aside the Narnia books 2-5 (hard cover), resolving to take them home if they were still there after breakfast. They were, and I did.

Rounding Out Spring Term

What themes are we getting back to, now that we’re winding up the Spring Term, which in Portland means Rose Festival? Our school is async so it’s not a matter of everyone being on the same page. Rather, it s a matter of students being encouraged to chronicle their journeys, with teachers role modeling how that’s done. “Where am I in the curriculum?” is always a relevant question.

Speaking for myself, I find myself circling a well-known meme in these parts, namely 4D vs 4D vs 4D, by which I mean to define a triangle of three namespaces, kind of how DAF does the triangle between his, professor Jiang’s and William Blake’s namespaces. 

In my case, I’m mapping what I consider to be the primary shoptalks talks making use of 4D by the end of the 1900s, with all of them having trajectories since then, up to the 2020s where we are at this tick mark. Those three shoptalks would be: that of Hilbert Space and linear algebra; the non-Euclidean geometry of the Relativity Theorists; the lesser known esoteric geometry of the American pragmatist R. Buckminster Fuller.

Linear algebra took off with the emergence of computing power, while Relativity continued to wrestle with its quantum mechanical counterpart. Fuller’s namespace emerged as a more distinct entity thanks to the self-reinforcing feedback loops of the LLMs, which thrive on stochastic alignment. 

Whereas the subculture was small, the usage patterns were consistent enough, when coupled with Synergetics itself, to preserve a lot of the patterns, even as a few were adding even more refinements (e.g. the Koski Identities, Gerald de Jong’s Pretenst, more computer languages, such as my own Pythonic implementation of the concentric hierarchy, using quadrays).

On Synergeo I’m looking into a Pandora’s Box of issues regarding the power of Synergetics to assist us in reaching escape velocity vs-a-vs obsolete patterns in the Anglosphere (the world of English speakers), by jiggering with the logic and showing us some off ramps from Ye Olde English juggernaut. Debugging takes work, including trial and error. 

America has always been a meme pool in ferment, a confluence of many cultures, so it’s not that surprising that its curricula would morph accordingly, even if exactly what that looks like remains unpredictable. On Synergeo I’ve been recalling the New Math, if only to remind readers that curricula, including in Math World are not static. High school in 2026 might be a lot different from what you remember from your own experience, to the point of unrecognizable in a lotta ways, but then quite familiar in other ways. Times change in how they express the generalized principles, even if those principles stay eternal in principle.

Rose Festival in Portland

The Rose Festival is in full swing. The Grand Floral and Starlight parades were combined this year. That happened yesterday and I was not in attendance. 

Nor did I make it to the Criterion Collection BizMo that came through earlier (not as a part of the festival), filming visitors as they perused the merch. I could have recorded myself for up to 3 minutes.

However I did come across the floats, all lined up in Waterfront Park, instead of in the Lloyd Center area per years past. Some years I’ve stood in the crowd watching the parade. With kids. As a kid.

I arrived at Waterfront Park on my bicycle, coming over the Hawthorne from the OMSI area, with a plan to join another Wanderer for the next segment of my intra-modal loop. 

The Fun Center (by Funtastic) was happening; the annual carnival. I remained outside the fenced-in areas, being a cyclist, but stopped to take pictures or walk the bike.

The next segment was along Springwater Corridor to Sellwood, left on Linn, and continuing on Springwater to the Tacoma-Sellwood Max station, while my riding partner, on an e-trike, continued onward, back to Gresham. 

This paved network of carless roads is quite extensive, often thanks to paved-over train lines from  previous chapters.

Upon first arriving in the OMSI area, before taking the Hawthorne Bridge to see those floats (I didn’t know in advance that they’d be there, a fun surprise), I’d come across a Roaming Library full of high brow pro-chaos (aka discordian) literature in languages I can’t read. But I recognized the name David Graeber, another Occupy guy like me.

I grabbed some copies, per signs saying I was welcome to do so.

Occupy Portland (OPDX) is well documented in these blogs, and should not be confused with what I call the Joker Riots that came later, as we descended into idiocracy. 

Our Food Not Bombs group helped establish a temporary community, like a Hooverville, re-enacting the Bonus Army encampments of an earlier chapter. Our relations with the police were civil and we ended the occupation voluntarily with only a few incidents (not everyone got the memo).

Food Not Bombs was already going strong when our household got involved and became a hub for storing both food and bike trailers used to haul the food, from warehouse to church or house kitchen, and on to the park for public food sharing. 

Free food; no charge; no means testing; bring your own bowl and utensils but we have extra of you forget or didn’t know. 

We managed to interest the local Quakers in our project and for some months or years (I forget how long) and used the Stark Street kitchen from time to time. We also used the bigger kitchen at St. David of Wales.

I’m not currently actively involved with FNB. I’m glad I was though, and that I pulled food trailers around town a lot on my bicycle, a good workout for some guy in his 50s. 

Most my cohort was younger but I didn’t experience a lot of age discrimination. 

My mother also stayed with us while Occupy was going on, and came downtown to visit the tent city, including the FNB tent. Some of my friends were camping there in the park, but I stayed in my own home.

Happy Birthday to Tara. Looking forward to our next fam call.