“If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.” – C.S. Lewis

🧵on the human or a manifesto for cyborgs. 1/ We tend to imagine “the human” as a stable essence: a dialectic between the body’s biological priors and the cultural narratives that program us. This interplay is supposed to define who we are, what we mean, why we matter.

1/6 That "1 in 10^135" figure is the lynchpin, but it's built on a false dichotomy. It compares "Godish" (T) to "A Single, Random, Brute-Fact Universe" (A). This "Atheism" (A) is a straw man. No robust naturalism subscribes to it.

In this letter to his father, Wiener asserts that Husserl had "trichoschizical (e.g. hair splitting) tendencies." 😂 Wiener created this new "technical" term by combining two Greek roots, Tricho: meaning "hair." Schizo: meaning "to split." Hat tip: x.com/TheUnjournal...

Fascinating research by Sean Manion using the MIT archives on Norbert Wiener's relationship to Husserl with whom he studied in 1914. x.com/TheUnjournal... open.substack.com/pub/seanmani...

Citizens United was the down payment on capitulation capitalism. In redefining corporate cash as “speech,” the Court laid bare the transactional heart of American "Democracy." A cash-for-power exchange that undermines the rule of law and has paved the way to autocracy.

How do computation, cognition and intelligence relate to one another? Computation = state change under rules/laws. Cognition = computation that re-presents patterns for an agent to act on Intelligence = cognition used adaptively to recognize and exploit patterns for survival, fitness, or goals.

Norbert Weiner argues that it is Gibbs—not Einstein, Heisenberg or Plank (nor Derrida!)—who revolutionized 20th century physics and ontology. He was the first to formalize what Weiner calls an "organic incompleteness" or "almost an irrationality" in the Universe. What does he mean by this? 🧵 1/6

Korzybski's maxim, 'the map is not the territory' is conventionally thought of as an epistemological warning about confusing symbols with reality. But what if the organism is always already a map? This transforms the maxim into a fundamental statement of ontology. 🧵 1/7

Did you know that the Greeks encoded messages in bits? x.com/JeffDean/sta... www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2018/11/h...

You likely know of Schrödinger's "What is Life" but have you heard of von Neumann's essay "The Computer and the Brain"? complexityexplorer.s3.amazonaws.com/supplemental...

You’ve Misunderstood the Bit bergsonsghost.substack.com/p/youve-misu...

My first new paper in over 100 years: bergsonsghost.substack.com/p/abstract-t...

1: Norbert Wiener derived the word Cybernetics from the Greek "kubernētēs" or "steersman," the same Greek word from which we derive "governor." It is the study of communication and control in animals and machines and offers a "new theory of scientific method." This strong claim is poorly understood.

Homeostasis is what entropy minimization looks like when the problem space has already been hardwired by evolution and compressed into physiology. Surprise minimization is the broader, deeper principle that underwrites it and scales beyond the body.

🧵 on Carroll & Parola's "What Emergence Can Possibly Mean" A spectral critique from beyond the physical substrate where we enjoy Ω daily (a paradigmatic Type-3 case). arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468 @seanmcarroll.bsky.social

🪜 The Ladder of Compression: A Unified Framework for Emergence and Representation. 🧵 @seanmcarroll.bsky.social

Like the Copernican revolution, Shannon’s generalization of entropy to include symbol making in general reorients our relation to the world and our mind. Entropy becomes the hidden thread that runs through both physical processes and symbolic expression.

Cognition is computation constrained by emergent patterns, recursively shaping meaning within its limits-what we call "life." The difference between computation and cognition is one of complexity, not kind.

Pure information is haunted by its computational virtual twin. The instantiation of virtual information requires an agent and always implies a negation of pure information. It also implies an attitude (Einstellung) in the Husserlian sense and is archontic to how beings unfold.

The Ugly Duckling Theorem demonstrates that if all possible predicates are considered, all objects become indistinguishable—paradoxically negating classification itself. Intelligence is the computational force that selects predicates and builds structure. It decides what counts as a Swan.

1) Jonathan makes an excellent point here: x.com/getjonwithit... If human cognition is computationally bound then there is no such thing as "human" cognition. There is only human alignment. The Church-Turing thesis proves the universe reached AGI long before the "human" emerges.

1) A 🧵on Husserl's Crisis in European Sciences which predicted our current political crisis. For Husserl the greatest reorientation of mind, a reorientation that he claims is “archontic for civilization as a whole” arrived with “a few Greek eccentrics” and their orientation towards theoria.

If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. – C.S. Lewis

We have finally put the Crisis in Husserl's Die Krisis

1/ Like all complex systems, the forces driving scientific and university funding are, well, 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘹. The modern "indirect costs" or "overhead" funding system has roots in Post WWII where the US government dramatically increased science funding through agencies like the NSF, NIH, and the DOD. 🧵

Now would be a good time to start questioning what kompromat was fed to Musk by Putin.

When it comes to complexity, human beings are not, and never have been, the motor driving negentropy. We are a continuation of a long process here on earth. What is the motor? Physics would answer, nuclear fusion (the sun). Metaphysics would answer, difference (becoming).

"The modern automaton exists in the same Bergsonian time as the living organism; and hence there is no reason in Bergson's considerations why the essential mode of functioning of the living organism should not be the same as that of an automaton of this type." - N. Wiener, 1948

🧵 1: My concept of duration, which may be summed up as "the past acts in the present" resonates with PW Anderson's argument that physical systems at higher complexity than the atomic world gain access to dimensions (like temporality) and regularities (memory) that are not apparent at lower levels.

It’s obvious that to truly grasp this political moment, economists and historians won’t suffice. We need the insights of primatologists.

Nothing like 165 years to put le dur in la durée.