Are you hallucinating ?
We are all constantly hallucinating, and what we perceive as reality is simply when we agree on these hallucinations. Anil Seth
It’s Sunday, and, as usual, I am trying to figure out what’s happening in the world.
How can one know when the media is mostly fiction?
When was the last time I could believe in the “news” ?
Why are the “experts” so often wrong?
Do LLMs “hallucinate” because the world is one big hallucination?
Fortunately I have cats.
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” – Ernest Hemingway.
Operational Art
My last post was about “operational art”—in the narrowest sense, Russian military philosophy, which is behind Putin’s “slow SMO”. Many people find it frustrating because for the most part we are taught a different way of thinking — the kind referred to in Kahneman’s Thinking Fast Thinking Slow. It’s something we learn in grade school.
“Fast” is heuristic thinking, hardly thinking at all— but programmed reaction.
Slow” is deliberative, which involves linear logic. Both forms of cognitive response depend on “Executive Function” in the brain. which is a function of the frontal cortex relying on what might be understood as learned, socially directed cognitive algorithms as well as fixed data sets . As I said, you learn it in grade school .
Neither “Fast” nor “Slow” are creative. Neither are of much use in dealing with unique, unexpected, or new situations, without precedents.
US military thought uses Type One and Type Two both tactically and strategically.
The Russian military uses them tactically — where convenient. But, in addition, you also have Type 3 thinking which the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari described as “rhizomatic thinking. It does not use “Executive Function” (so-called) or linear thinking ,but contextual or or organic logics—dynamic fluid, interconnected, and open-ended systems of thought.
The metaphor of the rhizome has always been implicitly present in the nature of knowledge as an unending network of connections and interconnections. It is a powerful metaphor, and new tools and digital technologies have affordances that allow rapid, networked, and often sprawling uninhibited communication that embodies the metaphor more powerfully than many pre-digital tools could. This has itself led to global cultural shifts in societies, and new perceptions of knowledge. Dr. Danah Henriksen & Dr. Punya Mishra (We Have Always Been Rhizomatic)
This kind of thinking is the basis of operational art, but also of a lot of other things — like a rhizome — it is multicentric and multilateral. It is nothing new. It is a function of about a hundred or so genetic factors that distinguish us from Neanderthals and confer adaptability.
And creativity.
Agancement, roughly translated as “assemblage” in this case, is a whole lifeform with many different parts of any and all kinds — ideas, people, or technologies — which interconnect adaptively.
In the case of Russia and the SMO, that is the war in Ukraine, the war against Western aggression, political systems, economics, civilizational development, new technologies, spirituality.
That is also the conceptual framework for BRICS, China, and even Iran in its war with the West. The roots of their power are everywhere. Pull out one and the plant continues to grow.
Which brings me to Iran.
A lot of people were upset about my comments on Larry Johnson and his story about Iran getting nukes. I lost a few subscribers.
To his credit, Nima talked to Seyed M. Marandi, who reiterated the points I made before but with an eloquence I can only admire and respect. I wish I were that good. He also managed to do it in a non-confrontational way . Maranda and “dear friend” Larry meet online and talk, so Marandi is careful not to impugn Johnson’s values. Listen to what he says.
No, Iran isn’t going to get a nuke. Just as I said.
Marandi’s explanation of the historical and theological record is particularly informative and his comments on public polls are interesting. The polls all used small; samples and were conducted by organizations outside of Iran,which do not have a good record and tend to be biased. That said, it is likely that there is a slight shift in public opinion in favor of Iran getting a nuclear weapon, certainly in the event of an existential crisis.
In the meantime, the Iranian rhizome grows and spreads.
Lebanon, Yemen, Oman Not to mention the GCC countries . Such things were once thought impossible.
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'
”I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Now, it being Sunday night, can I go to bed?
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I too am a homeless puppy raised by cats.
Just yesterday I was thinking about how some philosophers tell us that what we perceive is not necessarily reality. In about one minute I concluded that it doesn't matter, because it's the best we are getting. If I see, hear, and smell a bull in a field, it may really be a nine-dimensional yellow and blue octopoid floating in a tank of methane on a different time axis. But as long as all my senses tell me it's a bull, experience says I won't go wrong by treating it as a bull.
Channelling Sam Johnson, "I refute it *thus*!"
Seyed M. Marandi is totally wrong as it would be foolish if not dangerous to NOT have nukes, just ask North Korea what can of noise they've been hearing from the West (mostly the US)? SILENCE! POINT-SET-MATCH!