Ahh... he has ventured into Cortazar. How did you find it, friend? I love your piece. I love the ties you tethered to Rayuela's meandering realities. You have called out one of my 12 (or 10... or 7... or 15) great problems, about which I have been writing so extensively, I have failed to post anything at all in 2024. But you've given me some passages and thoughts, a great many quotes, and beautiful perspective, as always. The snake eating its tail is my favorite part of magic realism -- some find it frustrating.
In all your exploring into philosophies and theories, what would you call the "life as simulation" interpretation of reality? By that I mean our five senES as five sensORS that collect data from "reality," assimilate those data in the brain, and produce "interpretations," e.g. totally subjective. Perspectivism and Fictionalism come close... just wondering if you have seen something in your travels that maps more closely.
As always, thank you for writing. I thoroughly enjoy it!
I loved it. I can see myself coming back to it many times. There is so much in there (that I couldn’t cover in this post) that really really resonated with me, and tickled a lot of my curiosities. In particular I think the Oliveira/La Maga juxtaposition is very profound and moving. I am a lot like Oliveira and Hopscotch really illustrates how that is not an entirely good thing.
Okay so experience as simulation: worthy of an essay of its own, certainly, but my general feeling is that while it is an acceptable description of reality, I don’t particularly like the way it has the feeling of downplaying the importance of experience—that’s why I prefer descriptions of experience as a reality of its own. With that being said I am very fond of the Bayesian brain hypothesis, which is fascinating to me and ends up making this sort of description of conscious experience.
Thanks for the comment, and I hope I get to read what you’ve been working on :)
It's intuitive to me too, but a few years ago it definitely would not have been. And there is another commenter here clearly does not find it intuitive, so yeah I think it depends
But what if fully objective knowledge could be achieved? What is mathematics? But that is not about the world, you will say, but haven't we just basically removed the distinction between reality and text?
It is life-destroying to deny the possibility of objective knowledge. The quest is to achieve mutual understanding and agreement - the point of a mathematical proof is to convince everyone, reader and author alike - rhetoric pushed to its limit - and that is the alpha and omega of our social desires. Deny its possibility, and nihilistic generations will follow.
Math is great but it cannot provide truly objective knowledge because (for instance) it relies on axioms that are assumed and can never be proven. Truth in mathematics is only “true” from the within mathematics itself. Wrote about this here:
What other proper context is there for an all-out conception of truth except in an agreed-upon (read: social) framework? One doesn't simply talk about physical "truth."
By objective I don't mean physical but entirely independent of subjective interpretation.
You are right in that for all practical purposes math is as pure a truth as we can hope to understand. The type of ultimate truth I'm talking about that mathematics (and nothing else) can ever attain is really only of interest to philosophers
Hey. Kinda weird question, silly way to ask it. But idk how to dm on substack and can't find an email or other sensible way to contact you (feels wrong to msg on linkedin lol). But I was really struck by this piece, and I've really liked some of your past writings, and I've been feeling a growing will to engage w you and other interesting writers in a non-passive way. And I feel that if I do not do so now in this silly half-assed way I may well never.
So the question: are you open to / interested in communicating with your readers? I don't have a specific topic in mind at the moment, but we have a number of shared interests and sensibilities. I could come up w something if you were open to talking.
One-on-one communication aside, I wanted to suggest you consider starting a discord server or something like that for your readers. A podcast I follow (Musing Minds - you might find it interesting. I first encountered Erik Hoel and other interesting people there) had a server for paid subscribers, and while it was never super active, there was some good convo there and people shared other interesting links. I wish that sort of thing was more common. Like-minded people are drawn to unique projects like this, and it seems like a good idea to me to have a forum for them to connect w one another.
Hi, first of all thank you so much. It is amazing to hear that you have been stirred in this way. I’m glad you chose to embrace silliness.
I am absolutely interested in communicating with other readers and writers. You (and anyone else) can feel free to send me an email at dawsoneliasen@gmail.com (you can also typically reach writers on Substack by sending replies to the newsletter emails). I love it when anyone sends me anything, whether it’s just saying hi and introducing yourself, a link to something interesting, an essay draft, or a vicious teardown of one of my arguments. I’ve had a couple longer correspondences through connections over Substack which are always very fulfilling.
While I like the idea of having a discord server or something like that, I fear there may simply not be enough people coming through here to support any amount of discussion in a separate forum. I also don’t really know how to run a discord server, never been a power user myself. I remain open to the idea though, so let me know if you have any other thoughts—I’ll be looking forward to your email :)
Ahh... he has ventured into Cortazar. How did you find it, friend? I love your piece. I love the ties you tethered to Rayuela's meandering realities. You have called out one of my 12 (or 10... or 7... or 15) great problems, about which I have been writing so extensively, I have failed to post anything at all in 2024. But you've given me some passages and thoughts, a great many quotes, and beautiful perspective, as always. The snake eating its tail is my favorite part of magic realism -- some find it frustrating.
In all your exploring into philosophies and theories, what would you call the "life as simulation" interpretation of reality? By that I mean our five senES as five sensORS that collect data from "reality," assimilate those data in the brain, and produce "interpretations," e.g. totally subjective. Perspectivism and Fictionalism come close... just wondering if you have seen something in your travels that maps more closely.
As always, thank you for writing. I thoroughly enjoy it!
Thank you so much!
I loved it. I can see myself coming back to it many times. There is so much in there (that I couldn’t cover in this post) that really really resonated with me, and tickled a lot of my curiosities. In particular I think the Oliveira/La Maga juxtaposition is very profound and moving. I am a lot like Oliveira and Hopscotch really illustrates how that is not an entirely good thing.
Okay so experience as simulation: worthy of an essay of its own, certainly, but my general feeling is that while it is an acceptable description of reality, I don’t particularly like the way it has the feeling of downplaying the importance of experience—that’s why I prefer descriptions of experience as a reality of its own. With that being said I am very fond of the Bayesian brain hypothesis, which is fascinating to me and ends up making this sort of description of conscious experience.
Thanks for the comment, and I hope I get to read what you’ve been working on :)
Perspectivism seems entirely intuitive to me, is that unusual? 🤔 Or maybe I need to study it more 😅
Also, I salute your footnotes section 🫡
It's intuitive to me too, but a few years ago it definitely would not have been. And there is another commenter here clearly does not find it intuitive, so yeah I think it depends
(That’s why I asked haha)
But what if fully objective knowledge could be achieved? What is mathematics? But that is not about the world, you will say, but haven't we just basically removed the distinction between reality and text?
It is life-destroying to deny the possibility of objective knowledge. The quest is to achieve mutual understanding and agreement - the point of a mathematical proof is to convince everyone, reader and author alike - rhetoric pushed to its limit - and that is the alpha and omega of our social desires. Deny its possibility, and nihilistic generations will follow.
Math is great but it cannot provide truly objective knowledge because (for instance) it relies on axioms that are assumed and can never be proven. Truth in mathematics is only “true” from the within mathematics itself. Wrote about this here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/orbistertius/p/real-morality?r=5clxo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
What other proper context is there for an all-out conception of truth except in an agreed-upon (read: social) framework? One doesn't simply talk about physical "truth."
Thanks, will give it a read.
By objective I don't mean physical but entirely independent of subjective interpretation.
You are right in that for all practical purposes math is as pure a truth as we can hope to understand. The type of ultimate truth I'm talking about that mathematics (and nothing else) can ever attain is really only of interest to philosophers
Hey. Kinda weird question, silly way to ask it. But idk how to dm on substack and can't find an email or other sensible way to contact you (feels wrong to msg on linkedin lol). But I was really struck by this piece, and I've really liked some of your past writings, and I've been feeling a growing will to engage w you and other interesting writers in a non-passive way. And I feel that if I do not do so now in this silly half-assed way I may well never.
So the question: are you open to / interested in communicating with your readers? I don't have a specific topic in mind at the moment, but we have a number of shared interests and sensibilities. I could come up w something if you were open to talking.
One-on-one communication aside, I wanted to suggest you consider starting a discord server or something like that for your readers. A podcast I follow (Musing Minds - you might find it interesting. I first encountered Erik Hoel and other interesting people there) had a server for paid subscribers, and while it was never super active, there was some good convo there and people shared other interesting links. I wish that sort of thing was more common. Like-minded people are drawn to unique projects like this, and it seems like a good idea to me to have a forum for them to connect w one another.
Hi, first of all thank you so much. It is amazing to hear that you have been stirred in this way. I’m glad you chose to embrace silliness.
I am absolutely interested in communicating with other readers and writers. You (and anyone else) can feel free to send me an email at dawsoneliasen@gmail.com (you can also typically reach writers on Substack by sending replies to the newsletter emails). I love it when anyone sends me anything, whether it’s just saying hi and introducing yourself, a link to something interesting, an essay draft, or a vicious teardown of one of my arguments. I’ve had a couple longer correspondences through connections over Substack which are always very fulfilling.
While I like the idea of having a discord server or something like that, I fear there may simply not be enough people coming through here to support any amount of discussion in a separate forum. I also don’t really know how to run a discord server, never been a power user myself. I remain open to the idea though, so let me know if you have any other thoughts—I’ll be looking forward to your email :)
This was really cool. Thank you for writing it.
Where is your illustration from?
Most of the illustrations here are edited paintings by 18th century painter Luigi Mayer
can you make your point in fewer words?
There is no point and I cannot
XD