Dear Readers,
It's been a long time since I've updated either of these projects and it's time to formally move on from them. They had a good run. They saw my writing evolve into what it has now become and that is so far divorced from the initial conception of the project, that it seems more fitting to begin a new one than to continue with these.
The hiatus was more a result of coming to this conclusion than anything else, coupled with the depletion of energy directly following the IM3 generator. I mean, I actually wrote my own programming language for that project -which was fun, don't get me wrong, and necessary conceptually. But I needed a break, so I took it.
Anyway. I look forward to future projects and I hope you do too. So stay tuned.
Cheers,
JYNX
Friday, February 12, 2016
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Infinite Monkeys n-gram algorithm in JavaScript
Hello all. I would like to announce a new version of Infinite Monkeys written in JavaScript, which is available online to all those interested.
http://baseinfinity.blogspot.com/p/helper-functions-function-splitover.html
Though the program lacks some of the functionality of Infinite Monkeys v1.99 it does allow a user to generate text via the self-same n-gram algorithm used in the original. Have a look..
~dave
http://baseinfinity.blogspot.com/p/helper-functions-function-splitover.html
Though the program lacks some of the functionality of Infinite Monkeys v1.99 it does allow a user to generate text via the self-same n-gram algorithm used in the original. Have a look..
~dave
Monday, August 5, 2013
Infinite Monkeys: The Philosophy of Template Generation
In the construction of Infinite Monkeys, I was concerned primarily with Western Ontology and its tendency toward modes of compression that function via abstraction. For instance, ontological systems in Western metaphysics have a tendency to want to admit as few values as possible. Things such as properties, attributes, objects, actions are linguistic umbrellas that operate much in the same manner a set would. Sets of actions for instance would be verbal in accent, eating, thinking, doing, making, sleeping, dreaming, all come under the aegis of the verb. In so translating, however, information is lost, and so this tendency has its most practical expression in terms of lossy compression, a mode of compression where information is lost but the overall size, shape, and in general the quality of the image remains more or less intact. It is precisely quality here which is sacrificed in the grand scheme of things. The image becomes blurrier, but still passable and understandable within the visual acuity of human perception. Western metaphysics presents us with an extreme form of lossy compression. By abstracting an object into one of its qualities (for instance sleeping becomes an action) we are losing everything that defines the individual act. This may be useful categorically, but sleeping can also transmute itself into a thing (a noun) for instance (sleep). Infinite Monkeys draws this to a literal extreme via the use of its dictionary editor. Though poems can be translated into their grammatical equivalents, the words themselves can express their polymorphous nature in any of the categorical sets inherited through grammar. Verbs can become nouns, nouns can become verbs, adjectives can become adverbs and verbs and nouns can also become adjectives. It is largely because of (and not in spite of) this polymorphic quality that human language is so powerful. So when you are talking about a verb, a noun, or an adjective, you must do so in the context of a single sentence, and not (per se) in the abstract. For instance, the term abstract here is a noun in the preceding sentence. However, I can use it as a verb in another sentence. So to say “abstract” is a noun void of context, is to say nothing at all about the term. Not only are we losing information, but we're misleading ourselves into believing that the term can have only one expression grammatically. Another key part of this Infinite Monkey's philosophical underpinnings is the idea that this is basically a mechanical process which does not require the agency of a human being. Any poem can be translated into a grammatical template and then be repopulated via a supplement. The dictionary allows words to be tagged which in turn allows for restrictions in searches by association. Users can also create a phonetic code which allows words to be associated by sound. The scripts function as a markup language. Grammatical translations can be bracketed off and restricted by association or phonetic component within the brackets. The principle part in play with such an algorithm involves translation as a kind of mapping. When a translation occurs between language there is not necessarily a one to one correspondence between one language and another, but a choice must be made which collapses all of the possibilities into one “best” possibility. In Infinite Monkeys and as I am arguing here, the modalities which govern Western ontology, there are far more possibilities than you would have in a natural translation between two human language. Ontology works in this manner for a reason, and it is reason that has been the bane of set theorists since Russel himself devised the theory. The question involves the scope of inclusivity and its expansion (abstractly) as an “upward” movement. If we imagine a set of all teaspoons we have a category which includes everything which is described by the term teaspoon. Such a set would predict another, the set of all things which are not teaspoons. This got Russel thinking. The set of all things which are not teaspoons is itself not a teaspoon. Thus it is includes itself in the set, which allows us to surmise another dichotomy of sets: those which include themselves as members, and those which do not. When you ask yourself if the “set of all sets which do not include themselves as members” includes itself you are left with a vicious circle. If the set includes itself as a member, it violates the terms upon which set membership is allowed. If it does not include itself as a member, then logically, it should be allowed within its set. This problem so perplexed Russell that he had to invent an entirely new axiom to explain it away, as well as a new ontological formality. The idea was that in order for categorical reason to be mathematically formalized it could not move “upward” or via abstraction. The prohibition itself was termed as an anti-abstraction axiom. Types on the other hand allowed you to move horizontally, but vertically. Sets of sets led to paradox, and paradox and logic are mutually exclusive. But still, Western ontology wants to be able to make these abstractions which function as a form of generalization, which is permitted in mathematics to deal with objects which have more than the basic three spatial dimensions. Though they may be impossible to visualize, the basic premises that operate for a three dimensional object can be abstracted to a four dimensional one, allowing one to handle the object mathematically if not visually. Key to understanding this concept is a question of mapping. When you have a map of the world you are dealing with a similar phenomena. It is a three dimensional object which has been forced to fit on a two dimensional plane. A paradox emerges. At opposite extremes you have continuity, a loop which maps the one end back around to the other. It is indeed the alpha and the omega, side by side, and yet they could not be further apart. Another key point to be made here is that the number of terms that map onto something as general as the “set of all things that are not teaspoons” is immense, and this is similar to the Western ontological impulse toward abstraction and the modality of Infinite Monkey's template generator. The abstraction, functioning by reduction and compression has the latent ability to become generative. Though reduction in critical theory and philosophy may be unavoidable this is not an altogether pleasant revelation, and has led to cultural catastrophes such as the partitioning off of non-whites and barbarians alike. Where set theory overlaps with identity theory it becomes pernicious and degrading. It is precisely the question of hierarchy and the vertical privileging of this over that thing that pervaded Derrida's critique on Western metaphysics, where all paired opposites are set at the detriment and elevation of the other. This fundamental question of opposition is itself subject to a kind of archaic dualism which fragments all things into two parts. Things and actions can be set in opposition to one another. The function as contraries, in contradistinction, co-defined and co-dependent. But other distinctions can be made. Action and inaction for instance, where the contradistinction is formed out of the negation of one thing for another, as in the case of our set of all things which are not teaspoons. In summation you are set (ontologically speaking) with a system of attributes, abstracted in the same shape as an original differentiated and individual. The ontology is merely a degraded copy of the original but in all fairness, may allow you to get a better sense of the shape when certain information is considered negligible. We must be careful here, however. Our language allows for infinite mutability among terms and our attempts to categorize it fail outside of the context of a specific sentence. The need to generate composite terms (like gerund, for a verbal noun) runs anathema to Western ontology's core impulse, which is why the Derridean critique is so relevant and revolutionary. It is also caught up in this very question of translation, where choices are made by translators who are privileging this over that term. Indeed there are an entire set of possibilities which could be equally possible. So Infinite Monkeys was basically a means by which a poem could be abstracted and then reproduced, and this was fundamentally understood as a kind of satire on Western metaphysics. As humanity advances in the realm of computer science these philosophical concepts become strategies (for instance) to save space on a web server. Lossy compression works by substituting specific colors for a pixel value into a range of values which is basically averaged. So four pixels in a square, with four distinct color values can be swapped out for a single color which is the average of all four. Another key aspect to Infinite Monkeys was the choice of name. Swift's satire forms the basis of a provable mathematical axiom that given an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of monkeys randomly smashing keys, the works of Shakespeare would be inevitably reproduced. It is no accident that this theorem is associated with brute force, a technique of traversing a password file by trying every possible permutation and translating it by algorithm into its encoded variation. Such a technique may not be elegant, but given a powerful enough processor and enough time, success in decoding the entire passwd file would be inevitable.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Mezangelle: A Reading Strategy
Based heavily in a Derridean universe of words within words, Mez Breeze's poetics works in an almost antithetical manner. Whereas Derrida and James Joyce operate fundamentally on a linguistics of implosion (or compression; portmanteaus and puns), Breeze operates by explosion. It is easy to dismiss her work as a pastiche on “l33t sp33k” but there is far more happening here than such a superficial read would avail a careful critic. By breaking words down into their principle parts, Mez operates on a principle of addition as opposed to subtraction. A linear read of such a poetics is frustrating if not impossible. A vocal or speech oriented read would likewise require a translation that would require a sound poet's finesse and needless to say, would seem arbitrary or unintelligible in the light of the original. Derridean anathema to the anthropological/structuralist supposition that speech is a privileged form of communication and that writing is a mere byproduct is necessary to the anti-Logos verve of Mez's work. So instead of a linear read, you have a poetics which trains the reader to confront it with a sense of simultaneity. That is to say, these poems are often easier to read if you process them holistically (in this sense, to take them as a whole) rather than moving from a beginning to an end as you would with a typical English sentence.
Considering this as a creative process, one would begin with a word, and operate outward; by seeing the potential for more words within and without an original word. For instance the term 'operate' is contains two other words, opera and ate. A Mezangelle style operation on this term would fraction off the 'a' which belongs to both terms equally. The uniformity in segmentation (for instance in the 'word' [h]ov[er] .. ) causes the eye to see the multiple possibilities as on hover/her/over as opposed to the banality of the mere word, hover. Phonetically speaking the term still reads as 'hover', but visually it comes to life, multiplies and expands.
Other various strategies she employs is the extensive use of code operators such as + and &. Brackets, braces, and parenthesis provide further elaboration. In essence, where Derrida and Joyce employed reduction, Mez employs expansion, and the effect (in my opinion) is not only brilliant, but exclusive to Mezangelle.
Considering this as a creative process, one would begin with a word, and operate outward; by seeing the potential for more words within and without an original word. For instance the term 'operate' is contains two other words, opera and ate. A Mezangelle style operation on this term would fraction off the 'a' which belongs to both terms equally. The uniformity in segmentation (for instance in the 'word' [h]ov[er] .. ) causes the eye to see the multiple possibilities as on hover/her/over as opposed to the banality of the mere word, hover. Phonetically speaking the term still reads as 'hover', but visually it comes to life, multiplies and expands.
Other various strategies she employs is the extensive use of code operators such as + and &. Brackets, braces, and parenthesis provide further elaboration. In essence, where Derrida and Joyce employed reduction, Mez employs expansion, and the effect (in my opinion) is not only brilliant, but exclusive to Mezangelle.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
(1) Not a Book
“This (therefore) will not have been a book.”*
Some of the most enigmatic sentiments that we can find in a book (let alone its introductory sentence): (1) for it to proclaim its otherness to itself; (2) for the book to begin with a conclusion; (3) for it to begin by referencing itself. But then again, there is a sort of perfection here, in this line, if not every line, for this essay is a meditation on prefacing, and the preface.
This sentence, like the preface itself, is exemplary of how a reader interacts with a preface. The preface frames the book. It is usually written by author after the book has been completed, and is read by the reader before he reads the book.
It, in a sense, begins by representing the book. It prefigures several aspects of what you-the-reader are going to see. In this statement is the compressed essence of the rest of the essay.
In order to make this argument, a thinker would have to construct a definition of the book which was something other than what Derrida is claiming his own work as. I have a copy right next to me. It's shaped like a book. If I referred to it as a book, people would certainly know what I was talking about. Even if there was great distance between me and the book. So what's the issue here? Why is Derrida self-excluding his own work from book-hood?
Well, what have we so far is:
1. Self-reference
2. Conclusion at the end
3. Negation
4. Self-exclusion
And that is just the first sentence! Derrida goes on to deny that this (now ambiguous) thing on my desk is a collection of three essays (despite appearances). No, Derrida prefers the term assemblage and thrusts upon us another nerve wracking instance of self-reference: that this is a meditation (my term) on presentation, or perhaps more to the point, presenting.
So the quality we are dealing with here is verbal in nature, and we should be paying special attention to the treatment of nouns in Derrida's essay; particularly the nominalization of verbs or action words.
-=***=-
*Barbara Johnson translation
Some of the most enigmatic sentiments that we can find in a book (let alone its introductory sentence): (1) for it to proclaim its otherness to itself; (2) for the book to begin with a conclusion; (3) for it to begin by referencing itself. But then again, there is a sort of perfection here, in this line, if not every line, for this essay is a meditation on prefacing, and the preface.
This sentence, like the preface itself, is exemplary of how a reader interacts with a preface. The preface frames the book. It is usually written by author after the book has been completed, and is read by the reader before he reads the book.
It, in a sense, begins by representing the book. It prefigures several aspects of what you-the-reader are going to see. In this statement is the compressed essence of the rest of the essay.
In order to make this argument, a thinker would have to construct a definition of the book which was something other than what Derrida is claiming his own work as. I have a copy right next to me. It's shaped like a book. If I referred to it as a book, people would certainly know what I was talking about. Even if there was great distance between me and the book. So what's the issue here? Why is Derrida self-excluding his own work from book-hood?
Well, what have we so far is:
1. Self-reference
2. Conclusion at the end
3. Negation
4. Self-exclusion
And that is just the first sentence! Derrida goes on to deny that this (now ambiguous) thing on my desk is a collection of three essays (despite appearances). No, Derrida prefers the term assemblage and thrusts upon us another nerve wracking instance of self-reference: that this is a meditation (my term) on presentation, or perhaps more to the point, presenting.
So the quality we are dealing with here is verbal in nature, and we should be paying special attention to the treatment of nouns in Derrida's essay; particularly the nominalization of verbs or action words.
-=***=-
*Barbara Johnson translation
Monday, February 6, 2012
The Wager
As an undergraduate student at UB, I took a critical theory class that focused on Derrida. From that point onward I was enthralled by the man's work, slightly peevish at the scope and brilliance of its achievement. I've gone back to the text on numerous occasions and back again to figure out what sort of logic was at work here. Was it really a game, and if so, what were the stakes? Could I win this game if in fact I was playing by its maker's rules? Did it matter if I did or not?
What my professor called a language of secrecy, I saw as a poetics of deception. A game which hides its own rules, a game, perhaps, in which meta-gaming was the only possible avenue to win. Perhaps part of the game is convincing you that there is a game to be played. It would be an anomoly for sure seeing how the logical opposite of this supposition is far more rampant in our culture. But is it truly honesty to say that Derrida's work is a game and play? Especially when it comes from the mouth of the man himself.
So, what I wanted to do is perform an intolerably close reading on Dissemination for as long as I can possibly stand.
But here's the hook. I'm going to be playing my own game. My game is master Derrida's game (to my own satisfaction but-) using Derrida's definition of mastery (which is dubious and impossible). I must master ALL the threads in the quilt, to win the game.
This ensures that even if I lose I will be lauded for my gumption and gravitas and each snagging of a thread will be lauded as a battle won for me, and if I win... well I won. Also, the journey will be worth it, because despite the fact I may seem an impossible underdog in this battle. To be honest I think I've already mastered this game and such arrogance should not go untested. Do I have a right to make a claim of mastery of Derrida's game?
This I don't know. I think I know, and at some point, am surely to be proven wrong. But one loss does not ensure I lose this game. For even if I pull out a majority of the threads, and can synthesize them into a conceptual network, I will (as I -think- I will show) have delineated the rules of the game, which in essence is to master the game (but is it to win?)
I will begin playing within the next couple of days, starting with the first essay in Dissemination, “Outwork”.
What my professor called a language of secrecy, I saw as a poetics of deception. A game which hides its own rules, a game, perhaps, in which meta-gaming was the only possible avenue to win. Perhaps part of the game is convincing you that there is a game to be played. It would be an anomoly for sure seeing how the logical opposite of this supposition is far more rampant in our culture. But is it truly honesty to say that Derrida's work is a game and play? Especially when it comes from the mouth of the man himself.
So, what I wanted to do is perform an intolerably close reading on Dissemination for as long as I can possibly stand.
But here's the hook. I'm going to be playing my own game. My game is master Derrida's game (to my own satisfaction but-) using Derrida's definition of mastery (which is dubious and impossible). I must master ALL the threads in the quilt, to win the game.
This ensures that even if I lose I will be lauded for my gumption and gravitas and each snagging of a thread will be lauded as a battle won for me, and if I win... well I won. Also, the journey will be worth it, because despite the fact I may seem an impossible underdog in this battle. To be honest I think I've already mastered this game and such arrogance should not go untested. Do I have a right to make a claim of mastery of Derrida's game?
This I don't know. I think I know, and at some point, am surely to be proven wrong. But one loss does not ensure I lose this game. For even if I pull out a majority of the threads, and can synthesize them into a conceptual network, I will (as I -think- I will show) have delineated the rules of the game, which in essence is to master the game (but is it to win?)
I will begin playing within the next couple of days, starting with the first essay in Dissemination, “Outwork”.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
A Brief Argument for “Uncreative” Writing
I'm not even going to quibble the term itself, though I could, for valid reasons, take offense to it. For me, let it be said, that to be creative is to make connections, and that there is a certain benefit to reusing famous lines because not only do they refer to themselves in the new context of their re-uttering, but they saturate the label/signifier with a doubled reference back to the original utterance.
The tension between the old reference, and the new reference, could be said to create some sort of energy between the two which has infinite literary possibilities.
The idea then becomes a resonance.
Take for instance:
Now I lay me down to sleep / Ere on my bed my limbs I lay
I pray the lord my soul to keep / It hath not been my use to pray
If I die before I wake / By moving lips or bended knees
I pray the lord my soul to take / But silently by slow degrees
There is enough metrical similarity between Coleridge's beginning to The Pains of Sleep, and the child's prayer that we're all taught, for a case to be made, that the one is the sublimation of the other. An echo of the prayer is there, and whether Coleridge intended this or not, the effect is subliminal (if not sublime).
So I think there is a lot to be gained by exploring “uncreative” approaches which in fact, may excel in a way in which “creative” approaches are not designed for.
The tension between the old reference, and the new reference, could be said to create some sort of energy between the two which has infinite literary possibilities.
The idea then becomes a resonance.
Take for instance:
Now I lay me down to sleep / Ere on my bed my limbs I lay
I pray the lord my soul to keep / It hath not been my use to pray
If I die before I wake / By moving lips or bended knees
I pray the lord my soul to take / But silently by slow degrees
There is enough metrical similarity between Coleridge's beginning to The Pains of Sleep, and the child's prayer that we're all taught, for a case to be made, that the one is the sublimation of the other. An echo of the prayer is there, and whether Coleridge intended this or not, the effect is subliminal (if not sublime).
So I think there is a lot to be gained by exploring “uncreative” approaches which in fact, may excel in a way in which “creative” approaches are not designed for.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The Poetics of Random Number Generation
I don't know how much has been discussed about this already by other gnoets (at gnoetry daily), but I wanted to touch on what I consider to be a very important element in text generation, which is random number generation. We must make a formal distinction here. Pardon me. There is no such thing as random number generation, and the notion of “random” is ontologically exterior to generation. Before you agree with me, fight this statement. Fight it with all your mental might. Try to develop a method for generating anything truly random. The problem isn't generating the random, I have no ability to explain why “gafar gen flaw” was the first thing to pop into my head as I tried. For all intents and purposes, the statement is random, or why 2,172 was the number that just popped into my head. The fact is, I seem to able to do this quite easily. Why then, should it be so difficult to devise any method?
Well, firstly I point this out, because “random number generation” really describes the impulse or desire and not the actuality of the process which is referred to as pseudo-random number generation. Most compilers use random numbers generated by twister algorithms, which approximate well the distribution patterns of an ideally random set of numbers. The result of these numbers is offset by a seed which can be input by the user, or (and more often) is generated from the computer's timer.
I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, because of the role time plays in acting as the seed for the generation. Time is a very loaded concept, rife with mythological and metaphysical potential. It's strange ability, to be measured indefinitely, allows us to make distinctions between instances, in essence, to linearize time. Linear time, however moves in circles, with familiar continuity between the extremes. A counter is set to turn once for each complete turn of another counter. And another counts the amount of full turns for that counter. It operates perhaps as dials, perhaps like your electric meter. Perhaps a face clock, perhaps a digital clock. Lines running in circles at different speeds. Repeating toward its limit, which is its modulus, its denominator. The time of day is its remainder. It loops always back to its beginning. In mathematics, this is called its base, the upper bound for a full turn.
Secondly the distribution pattern demands that the period (or size) of the upper bound of the random number to be generated not repeat itself, and this (and only) this qualifies it for “randomness.”
Much like trying to be spontaneous, generating random anything negates its own possibility before it even begins. But the urge to try is real.
Well, firstly I point this out, because “random number generation” really describes the impulse or desire and not the actuality of the process which is referred to as pseudo-random number generation. Most compilers use random numbers generated by twister algorithms, which approximate well the distribution patterns of an ideally random set of numbers. The result of these numbers is offset by a seed which can be input by the user, or (and more often) is generated from the computer's timer.
I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, because of the role time plays in acting as the seed for the generation. Time is a very loaded concept, rife with mythological and metaphysical potential. It's strange ability, to be measured indefinitely, allows us to make distinctions between instances, in essence, to linearize time. Linear time, however moves in circles, with familiar continuity between the extremes. A counter is set to turn once for each complete turn of another counter. And another counts the amount of full turns for that counter. It operates perhaps as dials, perhaps like your electric meter. Perhaps a face clock, perhaps a digital clock. Lines running in circles at different speeds. Repeating toward its limit, which is its modulus, its denominator. The time of day is its remainder. It loops always back to its beginning. In mathematics, this is called its base, the upper bound for a full turn.
Secondly the distribution pattern demands that the period (or size) of the upper bound of the random number to be generated not repeat itself, and this (and only) this qualifies it for “randomness.”
Much like trying to be spontaneous, generating random anything negates its own possibility before it even begins. But the urge to try is real.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Infinite Monkeys v1.50
I wanted to announce that Infinite Monkeys has gotten a major upgrade. The new feature allows you to "eat" text into memory, and then generate new text from the old text, using bigrams (for now). The bigrams associate the word that comes before with the word that comes after, cataloging also the number of times it occurs. I'm going to be experimenting with the routine which draws words so updates will be forthcoming and most likely rapid.
https://code.google.com/p/infinitemonkeys/downloads/list
Also, if you choose to eat scripts to generate other scripts, please be aware that your bracketing of tags and the like may not be properly closed. Improper code may produce unexpected results. I'm not the greatest programmer on earth.
https://code.google.com/p/infinitemonkeys/downloads/list
Also, if you choose to eat scripts to generate other scripts, please be aware that your bracketing of tags and the like may not be properly closed. Improper code may produce unexpected results. I'm not the greatest programmer on earth.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Recursion and Infinity
According to Chomsky, a fundamental property of language is that any grammar can produce infinitely many sentences. However, an ethnographic study on the Piraha tribe of Brazil reveals that there is a grammar which lacks recursion, and is thus only capable of producing a finite number of possible utterances. My first reaction to this was: impossible! As I read through the article I noticed some things, and I basically want to sketch out a few of the things that I noticed.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/everett07/everett07_index.html
On this level, we have the last output of "John's" being re-entered into the meaning, so that we know it isn't John we're talking about, but his brother's house.
Let's contrast this to what the Piraha would say:
On the level of the sentence, there is no possibility of chaining possessives, but the overall meaning of one sentence is carried over into the next and in fact it would make no sense to say "this brother" without the preceding sentence. "This brother" in fact refers back (self-refers, calling itself...) and is therefore fundamentally recursive. Because the chunking system does not allow recursion within sentences, it must allow recursion between sentences. "This" is an earmark of recursion because it is infinitely various, it refers to "the last thing" and is still built on LISP-like linked list principles which are different from "Infinite Language" that "uses recursion" only insofar as the rules which allow it to be employed.
Recursion is not permitted on the level of the sentence, because the sentence, like a word in English, conveys a single thought. On some level, every language is finite. Containing a finite set of agreed upon meanings regardless of articulation. The finitude in fact allows us to define. Without it, everything would remain undefined.
The endlessness with which such a culture could string their sentences together shows me that the set of all things described in tandem is up to the author's attention to detail, and does not limit the possibility of what things can be described. It may refuse certain possibilities but (Infinity - Any number), does not mean that number is finite.
At any rate, my only knowledge of this culture is from the aforementioned article so I take it on faith that these people have violated one of Chomsky's laws. However, we can still say that recursion occurs within this language, so Chomsky's law can be relaxed without causing a cascade failure of Chomskyan linguistics. My only point in making this argument is to corrupt previously held ideas about finite-ness and recursion. The idea of referencing back is necessarily recursive, in fact "this" is a tell tale sign of recursion. But perhaps not the kind Chomsky is talking about.
The essence of human language is, according to Chomsky, the ability of finite brains to produce what he considers to be infinite grammars. By this he means not only that there is no upper limit on what we can say, but that there is no upper limit on the number of sentences our language has, there's no upper limit on the size of any particular sentence. Chomsky has claimed that the fundamental tool that underlies all of this creativity of human language is recursion: the ability for one phrase to reoccur inside another phrase of the same type. If I say "John's brother's house", I have a noun, "house", which occurs in a noun phrase, "brother's house", and that noun phrase occurs in another noun phrase, "John's brother's house". This makes a lot of sense, and it's an interesting property of human language.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/everett07/everett07_index.html
On this level, we have the last output of "John's" being re-entered into the meaning, so that we know it isn't John we're talking about, but his brother's house.
Let's contrast this to what the Piraha would say:
So in the case of Pirahã, the language I've worked with the longest of the 24 languages I've worked with in the Amazon, for about 30 years, Pirahã doesn't have expressions like "John's brother's house". You can say "John's house", you can say "John's brother", but if you want to say "John's brother's house", you have to say "John has a brother. This brother has a house". They have to say it in separate sentences.
On the level of the sentence, there is no possibility of chaining possessives, but the overall meaning of one sentence is carried over into the next and in fact it would make no sense to say "this brother" without the preceding sentence. "This brother" in fact refers back (self-refers, calling itself...) and is therefore fundamentally recursive. Because the chunking system does not allow recursion within sentences, it must allow recursion between sentences. "This" is an earmark of recursion because it is infinitely various, it refers to "the last thing" and is still built on LISP-like linked list principles which are different from "Infinite Language" that "uses recursion" only insofar as the rules which allow it to be employed.
Recursion is not permitted on the level of the sentence, because the sentence, like a word in English, conveys a single thought. On some level, every language is finite. Containing a finite set of agreed upon meanings regardless of articulation. The finitude in fact allows us to define. Without it, everything would remain undefined.
The endlessness with which such a culture could string their sentences together shows me that the set of all things described in tandem is up to the author's attention to detail, and does not limit the possibility of what things can be described. It may refuse certain possibilities but (Infinity - Any number), does not mean that number is finite.
At any rate, my only knowledge of this culture is from the aforementioned article so I take it on faith that these people have violated one of Chomsky's laws. However, we can still say that recursion occurs within this language, so Chomsky's law can be relaxed without causing a cascade failure of Chomskyan linguistics. My only point in making this argument is to corrupt previously held ideas about finite-ness and recursion. The idea of referencing back is necessarily recursive, in fact "this" is a tell tale sign of recursion. But perhaps not the kind Chomsky is talking about.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
The Opening of Closure II
In any one single statement, the implications of the fact of its capacity to be stated, is implicit in the meaning of the statement. A single statement means the entire reality in which it is produced, there are layers upon layers overlain in a sequence of causes which extends back to the beginning of time.
Closure is an effect of separation. There is no such thing as a discontinuity between an single individual and everything else.
Closure is an effect of separation. There is no such thing as a discontinuity between an single individual and everything else.
Friday, July 15, 2011
The Opening of Closure
The first time I read The Rejection of Closure I had a very emotional reaction to it. Perhaps because I am a naturally irate person, or perhaps because I felt there was an advocacy for something I couldn't abide. I haven't read Lyn Heijinian's text in a very long time, but I'm always struck with the same problem: closure can not be opened by rejection. Rejection is a kind of closure. Closure turned on closure. When we reject something we deny its possibility. The very fact that could be "true".
The target is closure. The strategy is closure. The system is rejection. When we think about closure, we can think of it along an isomorphic echo as encasement, encapsulation, containment, envelopment, often in terms of human affect as being "closed off", or "not open", or "not-openminded." And it's really there that we get stuck.
In the end you're left with another kind of closure. A tacit acknowledgement in the reality/possibility of a "closure" and the rejection of part of that reality. I have in my lifetime found it far more liberating to reject the possibility of a closure. There is always a veritable regress of information implicit in even the simplest of utterances.
The target is closure. The strategy is closure. The system is rejection. When we think about closure, we can think of it along an isomorphic echo as encasement, encapsulation, containment, envelopment, often in terms of human affect as being "closed off", or "not open", or "not-openminded." And it's really there that we get stuck.
In the end you're left with another kind of closure. A tacit acknowledgement in the reality/possibility of a "closure" and the rejection of part of that reality. I have in my lifetime found it far more liberating to reject the possibility of a closure. There is always a veritable regress of information implicit in even the simplest of utterances.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Self-Similarity
Throughout the course of my work, I've implicitly made reference to a type of similarity which also different, giving numerous interpretive schema along the way that was capable of at least tacitly accounting for this repetition. The foundation for this has been a thorough investigation into fractal geometry in which each part of a whole is more or less an exact copy of the whole. That is to say, if you take a look at a fractal, and then proceed to zoom in at various scales of magnification, the fractal will keep its overall shape, or you will be able to see little copies of the whole as you zoom in. This is known as self-similarity.
The sort of logic that can be drawn out of such a shape is one of scale invariance. To use a social sciences example, the same laws that apply to individuals, would apply en masse to societies, cultures, groups and so on.
During the course of my work, I have tried to point out the fractal nature of self-referential utterances such as $This Sentence is False$ which relies on a specific kind of recursion. That is to say, the last output becomes the next input into the function. This sort of recursion is implicit to fractality and is also a prevalent motif in Hofstadter's great work _Godel, Escher, and Bach_.
The eternal golden braid is the helicoid acid and holomorphic structure of none other than the bodies that constitute life. They too have an image of the whole present at each indivisible unit known as the cell.
The implications of this self-similarity resound within a new geometry in which each of the parts reflect each of the other parts within a reflexive and undifferentiable matrix of re-entry.
This (to a certain extent) can resolve the paradox of Western Ontology which was discussed in the Lossy Compression post.
It will be interesting to see how far self-similarity and fractal geometry can be taken as literary devices.
The sort of logic that can be drawn out of such a shape is one of scale invariance. To use a social sciences example, the same laws that apply to individuals, would apply en masse to societies, cultures, groups and so on.
During the course of my work, I have tried to point out the fractal nature of self-referential utterances such as $This Sentence is False$ which relies on a specific kind of recursion. That is to say, the last output becomes the next input into the function. This sort of recursion is implicit to fractality and is also a prevalent motif in Hofstadter's great work _Godel, Escher, and Bach_.
The eternal golden braid is the helicoid acid and holomorphic structure of none other than the bodies that constitute life. They too have an image of the whole present at each indivisible unit known as the cell.
The implications of this self-similarity resound within a new geometry in which each of the parts reflect each of the other parts within a reflexive and undifferentiable matrix of re-entry.
This (to a certain extent) can resolve the paradox of Western Ontology which was discussed in the Lossy Compression post.
It will be interesting to see how far self-similarity and fractal geometry can be taken as literary devices.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Cascade Failure
We've, I've begun to think, identified ourselves ideologically with our strategies. The strategy of more government, more “oversight”, more “supervision” or less of it. As a result, we've failed to see an important part of the overall picture.
Namely, the corporate controlled government is no better than a government controlled capitalism. In fact the two, coming from different directions as they do, amount to the same thing, the emergence of a surveillance based fascism where the activities of the individual are all dictated from a single source. The question that we need to sit down and consider is to what extent this isn't already the case.
The impulse of the corporation is in fact the same as the impulse of the government: to consolidate power. Mergers and buyouts are the name of the game. Amass as much of the market as you possibly can. The latest company to prove this true is Microsoft.
The only way to thoroughly separate the government from its market, is for it be regarded as a conflict of interest to represent both the interests of a corporation through the government. In fact, what you have now is corporate controlled capitalism, which is sliding into a state controlled capitalism.
By and large the reason that this happened was that we had a fiscal conservative in GWB who outspent his “liberal” predocesser while simultaneously lowering taxes. It was a deficit that could only cause one outcome: bankruptcy. I believe that Barak Obama inherited this deficit from Bush Era spending. Bush in fact is perhaps the worst president in American history. Here is a quick look at his resume: http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushresume.htm.
It is ironic that his failure is so abolute in large part because he is a terrible businessman. The delicate balance achieved by former presidents was thrown completely out of wack. It could be argued that bankrupting the federal government is a really effective way to weaken it, and may very well have been intentional.
Now, if I'm philosophically committed to a decentralist impulse (which I am) how do I reconcile the fact that I think this is one of the worst catastrophes in American economic history with a weakened federal government teetering on the brink of death. On some level, we must face the fact, that this was by and large, a corporate orchestrated attack, and face down the realization that the oil companies have more government protections and personalized government influence than any other corporate power in America (other than perhaps banks).
So the real question becomes, what in pragmatic reality would happen if we allow the current federal government default on it's debt? The answer is something akin to an apocalypse (generally speaking) this is the terminology that has been used to describe it. The following results are probable:
1.The dollar would be worthless
2.Lending would stop
3....causing a large portion of the population to lose their jobs
4....businesses would shut down, collapse and the burden of unemployment benefits would fall on bankrupt companies, and the federal/state government
5.Mass bankruptcy
6.Famine
7.Most of our debt would fall to China
Many Republicans in congress have signed a pledge not to raise taxes, and this is primarily the reason why we cannot balance the budget, and why the debt ceiling keeps climbing. My sense of this is that while philosophically I'm opposed to it, the burden of higher taxes, must be borne in order to avoid a cascade failure of epic proportions. The New Deal is irrelevant if we don't have the money to borrow and our credit is worthless. There won't be any deal at all because there won't be anything to deal with. For the time being, the debt ceiling must rise, and if it is not going to rise again we must figure out to avoid an inevitable situation like this one from recurring, or else we won't face any more easy choices.
Namely, the corporate controlled government is no better than a government controlled capitalism. In fact the two, coming from different directions as they do, amount to the same thing, the emergence of a surveillance based fascism where the activities of the individual are all dictated from a single source. The question that we need to sit down and consider is to what extent this isn't already the case.
The impulse of the corporation is in fact the same as the impulse of the government: to consolidate power. Mergers and buyouts are the name of the game. Amass as much of the market as you possibly can. The latest company to prove this true is Microsoft.
The only way to thoroughly separate the government from its market, is for it be regarded as a conflict of interest to represent both the interests of a corporation through the government. In fact, what you have now is corporate controlled capitalism, which is sliding into a state controlled capitalism.
By and large the reason that this happened was that we had a fiscal conservative in GWB who outspent his “liberal” predocesser while simultaneously lowering taxes. It was a deficit that could only cause one outcome: bankruptcy. I believe that Barak Obama inherited this deficit from Bush Era spending. Bush in fact is perhaps the worst president in American history. Here is a quick look at his resume: http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushresume.htm.
It is ironic that his failure is so abolute in large part because he is a terrible businessman. The delicate balance achieved by former presidents was thrown completely out of wack. It could be argued that bankrupting the federal government is a really effective way to weaken it, and may very well have been intentional.
Now, if I'm philosophically committed to a decentralist impulse (which I am) how do I reconcile the fact that I think this is one of the worst catastrophes in American economic history with a weakened federal government teetering on the brink of death. On some level, we must face the fact, that this was by and large, a corporate orchestrated attack, and face down the realization that the oil companies have more government protections and personalized government influence than any other corporate power in America (other than perhaps banks).
So the real question becomes, what in pragmatic reality would happen if we allow the current federal government default on it's debt? The answer is something akin to an apocalypse (generally speaking) this is the terminology that has been used to describe it. The following results are probable:
1.The dollar would be worthless
2.Lending would stop
3....causing a large portion of the population to lose their jobs
4....businesses would shut down, collapse and the burden of unemployment benefits would fall on bankrupt companies, and the federal/state government
5.Mass bankruptcy
6.Famine
7.Most of our debt would fall to China
Many Republicans in congress have signed a pledge not to raise taxes, and this is primarily the reason why we cannot balance the budget, and why the debt ceiling keeps climbing. My sense of this is that while philosophically I'm opposed to it, the burden of higher taxes, must be borne in order to avoid a cascade failure of epic proportions. The New Deal is irrelevant if we don't have the money to borrow and our credit is worthless. There won't be any deal at all because there won't be anything to deal with. For the time being, the debt ceiling must rise, and if it is not going to rise again we must figure out to avoid an inevitable situation like this one from recurring, or else we won't face any more easy choices.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
The Western Metaphysic of the End
Continuing from Lossy Compression
The issue then becomes not one of modeling, or mapping, but containing. The problem of the essence-that-contains is one of generality. Western Ontology is deeply rooted in the desire to set everything under a solitary system. The problem of the system is on the one hand a matter of properties becoming objects, and adjectives becoming nouns, it is also irresistably reconfigurable, and herein lies its redemption. The category is not a set containing objects, but a blueprint from which many models can be built. The category as an object of realism, a reality, objectifies each of its members by reducing it to a subset of qualities.
In the end of it all, you are left with a black hole signifier, that sucks everything under one sign. Even the qualativity of qualities, or an essence of the essence can begin to collapse this system, for its own externalization of this blueprint impresses it onto reality, and thus comes to manufacture reality. This is both “the Language of Eden” and the “Curse of Revelation.” What God would leave out of the Bible, is the fact that we are agents in our own creation. To a large extent, we've been making it up all along.
With our history mostly scripted by our mythologies, hurdling toward an apocalypse that even scientists are beginning to buy into, the majority of the resistance is ironically coming from a Christian dominated right.
Their arguments are based at least partially on science, citing a liberal usage of rate multipliers in producing projections.
At any rate, the multipliers do impact how the projections would pan out. The seemingly alarmless rate of one degree over the past 100 years has mollified the possibility of any consensus. The oil companies stand the most to lose and can no doubt afford to fund their own research projects. Since the oil companies have been a major target of environmentalists, one of the few government controlled industries within our sense of capitalism, the issue is on both sides politicized. The sense that one can take either side in earnest is intellectually dishonest. The speculations are all over the place for the projections. We could end up like Venus, or we'll kill off ourselves but life will continue. It's certainly possible that some tipping point will be reached triggering a chain reaction, which causes some sort of atmospheric cascade failure and kills off everything or most of everything. Maybe only insects survive, or bacteria. Certainly this is frightening to contemplate. And worse still it is all distinctly feasible.
So it's an interesting point for Western metaphysics. Will it have its apocalypse after all? Has our blueprint for disaster finally been realized? Never has it been more cleverly argued than by environmental scientists and perhaps never before has been felt the more pressing reality of an end that has been enacted several times before in history.
But the end is everywhere in every disaster, and apocalypses proliferate. Beasts are indeed everywhere, whores of all sorts, but no horsemen yet. We fantasize about it in movies and books. Two series in the last ten years dealt specifically with the apocalypse. Jericho and Jeremiah. Both were cancelled after showdowns with fascist police states. So we survive, perhaps, but suffer the death of our way of life.
But whatever the outcome, this will be remembered as a time when apocalyptic fears were very real.
The issue then becomes not one of modeling, or mapping, but containing. The problem of the essence-that-contains is one of generality. Western Ontology is deeply rooted in the desire to set everything under a solitary system. The problem of the system is on the one hand a matter of properties becoming objects, and adjectives becoming nouns, it is also irresistably reconfigurable, and herein lies its redemption. The category is not a set containing objects, but a blueprint from which many models can be built. The category as an object of realism, a reality, objectifies each of its members by reducing it to a subset of qualities.
In the end of it all, you are left with a black hole signifier, that sucks everything under one sign. Even the qualativity of qualities, or an essence of the essence can begin to collapse this system, for its own externalization of this blueprint impresses it onto reality, and thus comes to manufacture reality. This is both “the Language of Eden” and the “Curse of Revelation.” What God would leave out of the Bible, is the fact that we are agents in our own creation. To a large extent, we've been making it up all along.
With our history mostly scripted by our mythologies, hurdling toward an apocalypse that even scientists are beginning to buy into, the majority of the resistance is ironically coming from a Christian dominated right.
Their arguments are based at least partially on science, citing a liberal usage of rate multipliers in producing projections.
At any rate, the multipliers do impact how the projections would pan out. The seemingly alarmless rate of one degree over the past 100 years has mollified the possibility of any consensus. The oil companies stand the most to lose and can no doubt afford to fund their own research projects. Since the oil companies have been a major target of environmentalists, one of the few government controlled industries within our sense of capitalism, the issue is on both sides politicized. The sense that one can take either side in earnest is intellectually dishonest. The speculations are all over the place for the projections. We could end up like Venus, or we'll kill off ourselves but life will continue. It's certainly possible that some tipping point will be reached triggering a chain reaction, which causes some sort of atmospheric cascade failure and kills off everything or most of everything. Maybe only insects survive, or bacteria. Certainly this is frightening to contemplate. And worse still it is all distinctly feasible.
So it's an interesting point for Western metaphysics. Will it have its apocalypse after all? Has our blueprint for disaster finally been realized? Never has it been more cleverly argued than by environmental scientists and perhaps never before has been felt the more pressing reality of an end that has been enacted several times before in history.
But the end is everywhere in every disaster, and apocalypses proliferate. Beasts are indeed everywhere, whores of all sorts, but no horsemen yet. We fantasize about it in movies and books. Two series in the last ten years dealt specifically with the apocalypse. Jericho and Jeremiah. Both were cancelled after showdowns with fascist police states. So we survive, perhaps, but suffer the death of our way of life.
But whatever the outcome, this will be remembered as a time when apocalyptic fears were very real.
Monday, June 27, 2011
The Book of the Damned
This is a prototype for a book of poems, many of which were constructed with Infinite Monkeys and are now available for download vis a vis the Infinite Monkeys homepage on google code.
It contains roughly 4-5 years worth of poetry, which much like The Gospel of Echo, is a significant time investment in the construction of the work. It lacks the visual flair of TGOE, but retains the pseudo-religious feel for which I am prone.
Have a look if you please:
http://code.google.com/p/infinitemonkeys/downloads/detail?name=The%20Book%20of%20the%20Damned.pdf&can=2&q=#makechanges
It contains roughly 4-5 years worth of poetry, which much like The Gospel of Echo, is a significant time investment in the construction of the work. It lacks the visual flair of TGOE, but retains the pseudo-religious feel for which I am prone.
Have a look if you please:
http://code.google.com/p/infinitemonkeys/downloads/detail?name=The%20Book%20of%20the%20Damned.pdf&can=2&q=#makechanges
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Lossy Compression
It's akin to a mandate, an impulse, a drive, an energy, a desire, things only in an abstract sense, energies, causes, processes, pulses, motion, things too unstable to become "a-thing", thinged nonetheless.
When I think about the impulse of western ontology, I think about it in terms of a mapping of a set of objects onto a smaller set of objects. The ontological impulse being always a reduction of the number of the objects in the explanation set. If this process is carried out to its logical extreme you are generally left with a choice between the following things: Being, Time, Nothingness, objects, properties, nouns and adjectives and sometimes even verbs.
The impulse here then in terms of functionality is then to create a sort of meta-map. What is crucial and irreducible, is also vague and all-encompassing. But it is precisely this impulse to encompass that allows it to be the container with the most objects.
The question now of the map becomes crucial, for it is precisely a matter of mapping that is relevant to this process, and an issue of scalability becomes central. Scaling out of the actual terrain is an image of it as a totality. In the process new information is gleaned but several details are lost. A new perspective is gained but the old one is (temporarily) lost. If the map "maps" to reality, then the map itself is included in one of the objects that the map represents and this is manifested in the ever-present desire to find yourself on the map.
What is present now is a mere antagonism, an uncertainty principle which pervades the pervasions of the map. This principle can be described as follows:
The more you know about the overall shape of an object, the less you will know about its details, and the more you know about the details, the less you know about the shape and as we can readily intuit, this would also apply in the world of objects as distance.
The pervasion of self-containment destabilizes the container logic of the set, and this is the technique I would argue Derrida uses in attempting to deconstruct western metaphysics. The search also yields the desire to externalize the set from its own self-membership and relay it to something on a "higher" hierarchical chain. The chain itself will point to either Being, Time, Nothingness, God or an origin which itself implies the mandate to relay it on a higher link.
The highest link is also the vaguest. In it all manner of potentialities roil. Nothingness is not an emptiness, it is absence of a "thing" which is here defined as an object in the world. No-Thing-Ness itself a transcendental noun of a thing which is no-thing. The image of the thing-in-space, its apparent self-containment, has been transmuted from a property as in a the transcendental noun, onto the image of an object.
So in the process of mapping, things are abstracted into sets of things, which are themselves object-after-transcendental-function with actual things-in-space as properties, potentialities, variations of, etc...
...more to come...
"Lossy Compression" in framing this ontological impulse, has cast it in the best possible light. Filtration issues are present when transcendental-objects are treated as things-in-space. There is also generally a degradation in the awareness that all things-in-space are not static unitary images, but processes which our senses have not evolved to process such as the dynamic processes of atoms and interactions with the environment, which are both intrinsically connected with the real-object which is at this point in human understanding a matter of guesswork.
In delineating these issues of ontology as such I hope to define a link between these processes and projection geometry.
When I think about the impulse of western ontology, I think about it in terms of a mapping of a set of objects onto a smaller set of objects. The ontological impulse being always a reduction of the number of the objects in the explanation set. If this process is carried out to its logical extreme you are generally left with a choice between the following things: Being, Time, Nothingness, objects, properties, nouns and adjectives and sometimes even verbs.
The impulse here then in terms of functionality is then to create a sort of meta-map. What is crucial and irreducible, is also vague and all-encompassing. But it is precisely this impulse to encompass that allows it to be the container with the most objects.
The question now of the map becomes crucial, for it is precisely a matter of mapping that is relevant to this process, and an issue of scalability becomes central. Scaling out of the actual terrain is an image of it as a totality. In the process new information is gleaned but several details are lost. A new perspective is gained but the old one is (temporarily) lost. If the map "maps" to reality, then the map itself is included in one of the objects that the map represents and this is manifested in the ever-present desire to find yourself on the map.
What is present now is a mere antagonism, an uncertainty principle which pervades the pervasions of the map. This principle can be described as follows:
The more you know about the overall shape of an object, the less you will know about its details, and the more you know about the details, the less you know about the shape and as we can readily intuit, this would also apply in the world of objects as distance.
The pervasion of self-containment destabilizes the container logic of the set, and this is the technique I would argue Derrida uses in attempting to deconstruct western metaphysics. The search also yields the desire to externalize the set from its own self-membership and relay it to something on a "higher" hierarchical chain. The chain itself will point to either Being, Time, Nothingness, God or an origin which itself implies the mandate to relay it on a higher link.
The highest link is also the vaguest. In it all manner of potentialities roil. Nothingness is not an emptiness, it is absence of a "thing" which is here defined as an object in the world. No-Thing-Ness itself a transcendental noun of a thing which is no-thing. The image of the thing-in-space, its apparent self-containment, has been transmuted from a property as in a the transcendental noun, onto the image of an object.
So in the process of mapping, things are abstracted into sets of things, which are themselves object-after-transcendental-function with actual things-in-space as properties, potentialities, variations of, etc...
...more to come...
"Lossy Compression" in framing this ontological impulse, has cast it in the best possible light. Filtration issues are present when transcendental-objects are treated as things-in-space. There is also generally a degradation in the awareness that all things-in-space are not static unitary images, but processes which our senses have not evolved to process such as the dynamic processes of atoms and interactions with the environment, which are both intrinsically connected with the real-object which is at this point in human understanding a matter of guesswork.
In delineating these issues of ontology as such I hope to define a link between these processes and projection geometry.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Is Literature Intrinsically Evil?
.
According to Georges Bataille writers are guilty of a kind of evil. I have my own thoughts on this, and I think it's an interesting and worthy question to ponder, but will pace my response for later this week. In the meantime, enjoy Georges, and try to remember that the greatest evil committed by either of the authors mentioned by Bataille was the unnecessary guilt that they placed on themselves for being writers. This was also true of Chaucer and is something that has really haunted Western literature for many centuries: the fact that a well written book is a distraction from the "real truth" of the Holy Bible.
More soon,
Dave
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