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EpicMegatrax writes more bullshit
 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 09:30 [#02502641]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



lol


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 09:39 [#02502642]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



a few times i've mentioned i should wish to become virtual
reality's first great painter. i've been working on a
dancing game and a cartoon series in my mind to this end.
i've also got a bit going on a musical driving game, like
audiosurf plus indy 500. i'm not worried about anyone
stealing that last one, because if/when i get to it, i'll
mop the floor with anyone who tried to do it.

google's self-driving cars are limited to 35-mph for safety
reasons. they drive like an old man. my autopilot drives
with equal parts insanity and poetry and wisdom and respect
for safety. sometimes i'll snap out of my train of thought:


oh, i just hit a manhole cover perfectly on time right as
the chorus of this kmfdm song is about to take back. let's
stop writing forum posts and enjoy this. just as i finish
that thought, i hit another manhole cover in time. i feel
the curves for a bit -- not too fast, just brisk and in beat
-- then go back to alpha wave science.

tonight, i noticed all sorts of deep black tread marks on
the road. i was like: whoa, was that someone jamming on the
breaks? but it's all over, like crazy. then i notice it's
regularly spaced, like putting a blotch of ink on one part
of a wheel. the construction i'd just went through clearly
did this to everyone's tires. i worked to sync it up to the
kmfdm song and surmised that this was the speed of your
average driver. 33mph, which was dead on from my personal
experience. slow tempo, average of most drivers.

later, on the highway, new bumps had been installed.
regularly spaced. the song i had on was fast; syncing it up
required me to push 10mph over the limit. the proportion of
the difference between the two tempos vs. average speed in
these two different situations jived nicely. there's all
sorts of deep math with sine waves in putting a dot on a
wheel, but i wasn't thinking about that at all.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 10:14 [#02502643]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



the cartoon show (previous post) is the oldest of the three,
and also the most complex. the others, if i get to them,
will come first. ground zero for it all happened in 2012 as
i listened to "polygon" by shock one. that track has easily
made a decade of work for me... no, it's not drukqs, but it
hit me in the right spot at the right moment to trigger and
explosion that may very well keep me busy for the rest of my
life... but that's another story.

it is essentially redline plus star trek. again, not
too worried about anyone else taking the concept for a spin,
because mine will be better.

redline is hand-animated in the brutal japanese style. you
know, the progenitors of my neighbor totoro almost
coming to blows about the right shade of green for the
forest admist drawing everything manually. anime is
low-framerate because drawing it all is hard.

the first time i saw it was amazing. i was with four people
who either liked beer or complete sobriety, but i'd snuck
off for a smoke on my own. i'm glad we had the lights off
because i was crying a lot. it was so. fucking. intense.
afterwards, a beer chap said, "what drugs was i just on?"
he's never tried drugs.

the guy who made redline said something like, "i wanted to
make a film that americans could enjoy and show what
japanese animation is capable of." he meant this is the
nicest possible way, really. making something wonderful but
digestable. i thought: "i should like to return the favor,
and make a cartoon series that japanese can enjoy and show
what an american with a computer is capable of."

i'm not sure if i'll get there, but i will sure as hell
try.

the dancing game is the most developed. what i really want
is full-body motion-capture, but i'm chewing on to scale
that down to sony wands or mo-cap plastic knuckles or
whatever. definitely need more than two yoga mats, though.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 10:31 [#02502644]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i've not even used VR since a long-dead chain named
cybersmith. i still keep the card they used in place of
tokens because it opens the doors to ATM kiosks... but, yes,
i already have my first bug report for VR:

- inadequate drainage for tears occuring when the user
becomes verklempt.

it sounds like a joke. if i filed it now, it would be
snobbishly reacted to: "c'mon, this is a serious bug
reporting system." my ticket would be closed. a few betas
later, the ticket is re-animated with, "ok, yes, this is a
bug."


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-31 08:04 [#02502670]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



alright, alright. i suppose i should give my googlefone
credit, even though star trek invented it and steve jobs
made it something worth having. google provided the path of
least resistance to having a stock nexus whatever, pretty
much the standard dev unit for that generation. then finding
a carrier that would take a stockfone instead of a
verizonnorovirusfone. verizon says: no sir. i don't like it.
you can have that same model, but you have to buy it from
us, with lots of crap on it. you can't root it, you have to
live with it. google did not fix this for me. apple could
have fixed it for me, but then i couldn't root it either.

but, really, i got into the post box meaning as an
aesthetic, i suppose. i'm sitting here typing on my laptop
as my phone shuffles camerafonefotos and videos over
gruetoof to my solid state thinkpad. it's sitting there on
the table, no wires, glowing, and i got precisely the same
tingle i did when i admired my minidisc recorder. very
johnny mnemonic feeling. virus was on the playlist, though,
concord landing. johnny menomic, paulie reviere.

but to get there, i had to fight. can i go to bluetooth in
settings and send file from that? no. can i send gruetoof
thru file explorer? no. can i go into "gallery" and
presshold album "camera" and then the menus... oh, thank
god! the gruetoof icon. a toofy bee. slow. 50k/s. buried in
shit menus. but nice, once i get it to work


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-31 08:48 [#02502680]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



tonight the cop lights on the cop car parked for
constructionizing calzonination were precisely in tempo with
a john b song i had on. no drift at all. the lights were not
simple, either. all sorts of crazy trippy patterns. it's as
if a cop was in that car, heard my music, and was djing the
lighting controls. but, no, it's just mad good programming
on the part of whoever made the lights and it's exactly the
same tempo as the song. i rave along to it, gesticulating at
the cop lights like -- yeah, hit it! bring it up. take it
down. smash it, yes, that's it


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:01 [#02502750]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



cops are a huge data file, obviously. i've come down to
something that's rather nice, actually: show respect for the
badge, and you generally won't have problems.

there will always be the occasional snag. i was out for an
evening walk -- the same route i'd doggedly taken every day
for like six weeks -- and a cop car is slow cruising.
immediately i get a bad vibe. his crosshairs are on me.

i'm shitting a brick, but functioning on some level. how do
i handle this? i'm at a T section at the end of a street and
i can either turn towards him (my usual route) or take the
other way; my back to him. i think: i'm not doing anything
wrong, and changing my usual behavior because the cop is
clearly eyeing me is exactly the way to telegraph that i'm
shitting a brick. i've done nothing wrong, mind you, i just
smelled trouble and wanted out of there.

so i walk towards him. nervous as shit. sure enough, he
pulls up. demands to see ID. i have none. i'm on my evening
walk, sir. i almost let off something about nazi germany.
this is the real shit: i'm going from scared to annoyed, and
trolling cops is going to get me up shit creek. it almost
does.

i get testy and curt. he puffs up. i feel like a rabbit
staring down a hungry wolf. i can see it: he's waiting for
me to run. if i do, he's ready to tear right on my tail. it
actually makes me want to run. intimidating as shit. so,
sense prevails and i back down and apologize in the right
ways. he was looking for a guy in dark clothes and a hoodie
who committed a crime he never specified. i was wearing a
hoodie and my clothes were not particularly dark. he was mad
he lost the guy and picked someone to bother.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:10 [#02502751]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



95% of what cops do is understandable and sane. it's the
other 5% you have to worry about: maybe his water heater
just blew and his basement was flooded and now he has to sit
here with a radar gun and stew about it. that's not normal,
though.

pretty much, if there are cops around, i drive properly. if
there are always cops around, well, they clearly care about
this patch of turf and i should respect it and drive
***correct.

that was easy enough. after a while i started thinking about
the places they hang out in general patterns: town centers.
lots of people there. kids goofing off. makes total sense.
the times, too: wow, lots of cops! 11pm, they're probably
watching for drunks. drunk drivers are scary to see and i am
all for this. i drive correct.

i even have this idea that: hell, the cop is watching me,
and i love driving. he knows driving damn well, and so i do
my best to demonstrate things like crisp and roboticly
following the double yellow line around complex curves. at
the speed limit, or if they're tailgating me -- cops are
human and in a rush sometimes; it's not always about the
tickets -- a bit above. maybe they notice, maybe they don't,
but it's a sweet thought and keeps me from stewing in
anxiety and consequently acting nervous.

in general, the more i see of cops, the more it makes sense
and the more i understand about how to act. if cops were not
around, speed limits would not be enforced, and driving in
massachusetts can already be pretty intense even with speed
limits. the polite thing to do is note where they seem to be
concerned with and do your crazy shit elsewhere. at a
carefully chosen time and place....

*** that word is from the wire.. the car should look
correct. a man getting himself correct.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:13 [#02502752]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02502750



the officer was looking for a man wearing a hoodie, and i
was clearly not wearing a hoodie. i pointed this out
to him, before the conversation got tense, and he replied:
"well, you could have ditched it." my father refers to this
as cop logic


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:23 [#02502753]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



once i saw a cop car doing really weird shit. sudden
braking. erratic darts to the side of the road. are they
having a fight in there or what? no.... this is on-the-road
training. rad. makes total sense. it was lovely to watch. i
was a bit jealous


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:41 [#02502754]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i read my daily horoscopes. not every day, just a good many.
i'm going to check them now...

yes, anyways, my core theory for synchronicities pretty
much... i went to wikipedia for the thing but it'd been
replaced by something even better. i haven't even read this
yet and it already seems mustard: Onsager reciprocal relations. now i'm
going to read it.

ok, now i'm realizing this is too far into chemistry. now
i'm giggling at words like galvanomagnetism. no, too
silly. abort vector

off to google and i find the right ramble tip:
MERGEN_COMPLEXIT

emergent complexity, that shit. entropy always increases,
but order can increase in a local pocket at the expense of
increasing entropy outside of it. my metapfthot here is: a
seeded random number generator. to generate a random number,
the computer function is provided with a seed number.
random(3) will generate: 391, 18, 4719, 1, 888, whatever.
random(4) gives 2871, 155, 9, 21, whatever.

the key point is that it's not really random, it's
"pseudorandom." the seed number is taken, multipled by
three, then it adds the weight of the programmer's
girlfriend in kilometers, divides by six and rounds the
integer, subtracts three, goes modulo the initial seed
number... pretty much, it's like a raffle. putting all the
names in a hat and shaking it up good. imagine being able to
shake the hat precisely the same way, should you choose too.
random(3) will always produce the same "random" sequence.

standard programming practice is to feed in the current time
since 01/01/70 in seconds as the seed so it's always a new
stream of not-random psuedo-nonsense.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:44 [#02502755]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



the classic synchronicity is this: you think of an old
friend for the first time in ages. right as you do, the
phone rings, and it's them.

i feel there's always a root to it: national news coverage
runs a story on a band you both liked on the 20th
anniversary of the day you met. then they're on your mind,
and you're on theirs. someone makes the call first, but both
people are equally surprised and charmed by the
situation...

people you spend a lot of time with? well, lots of random
number generators get seeded and rhythms synchronize and a
message in a bottle washes up.

i'm very proud of this because it essentially allows for a
level of psychic activity without breaking the laws of
physics. or, as above, thermodynamics.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:45 [#02502756]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



pseudorandom number generator. gesundheit.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:51 [#02502757]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



so, yes, i read my horoscopes.

the horoscopes divvy the people up into segments with
different motions. there's a pseudorandom waltz in between
all the segments that"s tied to absolutely massive spheres
off in space somewhere.

there's some old uncanny psychological insights buried in
the star signs; i'm sure. i don't put much faith in that.

my theory is that many, many people read horoscopes. many
people even read the same web ones i do. it has a limited
but real effect on how the person goes about their day.
they're somewhat inter-networked. so if i read the
horoscopes, i will be rhythmically synchronized to millions
of people who also read them.

some days it seems dead off. but, the more i follow them,
the more uncanny, weird things have begun to crop up. it is,
again, like gardening. i'm not latched onto it going
anywhere, but i went with it for a bit, and it's growing
into something laid-back but genuinely useful. it must be an
indica


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 10:56 [#02502758]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



there are things that really tear into me, though. such a
huge question mark i'm convinced it's either the real deal
or i'm an idiot. seeing it in someone else is useful because
i can be more objective, but even still...

a friend of mine told he thought of a friend he hadn't
thought of in a while, and it wasn't a warm and fuzzy. it
was terrible. then his phone rang, and it was the guy,
saying he'd just been in a car crash. like, five minutes
ago.

trying to explain that one is definitely a black spot in the
fractal. one of those spots where it goes off to infinity so
quickly that i can't interact with it in a meaningful way.
you tear into a fractal by going for the edges. that's where
the interesting things are. not a solid gradient blob, but
not black infinititus. growing jagged edges to infinitely
explore


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 11:19 [#02502759]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular





The unfortunate answer, as pointed out by Hazen in Genesis:
The Scientific Quest of Life’s Origins, is that we may
simply not have the tools or language necessary to define
complexity yet. Hazen likens it to the effort to define
water before understanding atoms. We now know it as H2O,
but before defining water’s atomic constituents there was
no binding theme. Is it a solid, liquid or gas? The answer
is ‘yes’. A similar conundrum emerged when scientists
tried to classify the interrelation between animals before
the theory of evolution. Do we group them by size, shape,
color…?4

I really hope that a new thermodynamic law describing
emergence is on the horizon. I find satisfaction in
encompassing theories that, like evolution, are simple,
elegant, and obvious in retrospect.


the weasels are pleased with this.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 11:22 [#02502760]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



the weasels are also pleased with having spotted proof of
loolean humour in another actual human. see, someone else
did exactly the same weird shit in his own weird article
about self-organizing structures, complexity, and
information theory. i'm weird, but i'm not that
weird. and i'm surprisingly lucid


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 11:27 [#02502761]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



ages ago it was discovered that lab miced behaved
differently to a lab full of all-female researchers than a
lab full of all men, or a lab full of both. i don't hear
about this fact as much as i'd like to. bias is everywhere.


i'm waiting for the science bit where they realize their
little pocket of experimental self-organizing crystal begins
forming whatever they visualize in their minds. at first
it's: oh, that's cute. it looks like my girlfriend. then it
keeps happening, and there's a floaty sense of dissociation.
next, shame: i'm not being scientific. this is crazy. i have
to keep it to myself. after it happens to half the people
working on it, someone talks after a few beers, and the
gates of chaos break open

before they get to that point, there's all sorts of work in
isolating it from the microwave's RF and coffee pot's
seismic clunk as the timer switches the hotplate off


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 11:33 [#02502762]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



six months later, they change out the microwave, and the
mechanism stops working. patterns they visualize no longer
appear. bearded men, out of shape, bust a lung trying to
rescue the old unit from the skip. but it's too late.
science magazine never believes them and they move to
better-paying jobs applying thermodynamics to the stock
market


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-01 11:35 [#02502763]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



think of that microwave when i'm taking about how my lighter
and cigarettes are stacked in a particular pocket of my car
like the fate of the universe depends on it.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 01:29 [#02502793]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



so, yes, i'm human. i fuck up sometimes. we've
covered this, but it's worth doubling-down.

there is a steady and almost reliable stream of small
mistakes i make every day. an example from tday: i switch
out of thinking about information theory and realize i'm
tailgating the other car a bit. nothing too bad, just a bit
close. no, bad weasels! i chide them, and consciously
back off. keep on it consciously for a linger or three. next
time i tune back in, i've maintained the new level of
distance i set.

if i didn't constantly keep on myself to stay tight, it
would gradually unravel.

there are other reasons things can break down. the absolute
worst is when i'm really tired. it's very simple: i start
missing things. not noticing what i usually do. some of it
can be let go, some of it can't, and it's entirely random
which things i miss.

picking up that my lane is about to slow way down and
getting out before i'm stuck can float off and i won't care
about being stuck because i'm tired.

picking up that a car is attempting to merge into the right
lane when i'm in the left lane is on the edge. it may be
irrelevant, or if the guy does something crazy it may spill
into my lane, and it's best i keep half an eye on it.

then the absolute worst is when the old, familiar demon
comes out: i snap out of brain theory zone and realize i'm
about to run a red light and have to jam on the brakes. i
used to be like this all day, and now it only happens when
i'm too tired to drive.

once i see two or three of these missed things i get myself
home as quickly as possible and get to sleep. the one time i
could tolerate google's grandpa autopilot is on a long-haul
drive, pretty much as a backup. to catch those things i
miss. but i'd rather find a hotel and do the driving myself
as much as humanly possible.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 01:39 [#02502794]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



there are plenty of bad habits that go deep to the core of
human nature, and i barely wrestle them back. example from
today:

i'm blasting around one of my favorite back roads. this is
pretty much my road; i love it and it loves me. we know each
other supremely well. there's been a yellow jug of some sort
on a particular curve for around two and a half-weeks. i see
it every time: yep, still there. widen my turn slightly to
leave it where it's been since i first spotted it. so, yes,
i'm going fast, because i have the whole thing memorized and
deer won't charge the road at this time of day.

i come around a down a curve hill and i'm eyeing the feeder
street off to the left that i know has a tendency to vomit
cars at random. i see a guy whiz up; fast. stops way over
the line, but he stops. he rolls a little further as he's
looking. sees me. stops.

i've let go of the gas and am hovering over the brake,
waiting to see if he punches it. but, no, i saw him see me,
and he stopped. so i speed back up, figuring he'll wait.

then he promptly blasts out, forcing me to jam on the brakes
hard. i am furious. two and four tenths of a second of angry
horn as i fly right up on his bumper like an orbital
lander.

then i catch myself. i take a deep breath: no, let it go.
it's over. you've appropriately expressed your discontent;
move on.

i back off. i forget about him and zone out. his driving is
quick and professional, since i'm not harassing him from
behind. two or three years ago i would have stayed mad,
tailgated him rabidly, and generally behaved like a jerk. i
knew it was shit but i couldn't stop myself. once that ball
gets rolling it's hard to stop it, and you have to learn to
catch it before it's flying out of control.

all the same, it was a dick move, and i gave myself no grief
for my explosive symphony of discontent. really, i was
saying: good weasels. thank you for not running off on me
again.



 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 01:52 [#02502795]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



most habits are not obvious. they require thought and
testing. all of them are context-dependant: within reason.
mind the conditions. cornering when it's wet is different.
all of it is ruthlessly baby-sat and helicopter mom'd.

some even seem like a bad idea until i realize they aren't.
like, the weasel were fighting me on tapping the gas pedal in time
to the music.

it struck me as a bad route. braking in time is something i
already do super-well. stuck in traffic? robot arm dance and
brake in time as traffic creeps along. it's slow and boring
and there's not much lane-weaving craziness to be done. i
have safety covered ten weasels over and throwing one or two
of them into relvelous frivolity is the only thing i can do
to keep them from getting bored and misbehaving.

the gas, though? that speeds you up. it's more sudden and
dangerous. yes, i'll give it little gooses of gas in time
all day long, but i guess i'd say i'm limiting it to a
half-note or whole-note. and, jesus shit, it wanted to go
quarter note so bad. perhaps behind.

i've fought that urge for months, and joked: they usually
don't fight me this doggedly, perhaps i should let it go.
then i realized that was a fine idea, and i let it go.

i've realized this was the right move. being able to drop in
a series of discrete pulses rather than constraining myself
to larger swoops and curves opens the door for additional
strategies of control. it also allows me to be much more
expressive when i drive.

but, i'm keeping a firm eye, hand, leash, complicated pants,
all that on it at all times. if i let it become unconcsious
too quickly, it won't have the nuance it needs. i need to
consciously think about how to use it; develop it. then i
can let it float off as a thread.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 02:16 [#02502796]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



a good friend of mine is a diagnosed schizophrenic. let's
call him lewis -- as in carroll. he's a big fan. he's like a
brother to me, really.

if i had to sum lewis up, one moment fits best: it's a muddy
spring day, and we're in a parking lot, walking back to my
car. he starts hopping around, jumping in the puddles.
trying to make the most gigantic splash he can.

i quietly start to flip a shit: he's going to get mud over
my car. this has to be stopped immediately. but, he's
my friend, and i'm not going to just bark orders at him. i
have to approach it with the right measure of respect.

so, i say: "jesus, what the heck are you doing?" ok, next
he's going to say something. after that, i can stress about
my car's upholstry.

here's what he says: "i'm galavanting!"

i was gobsmacked. it was just such a brilliant response to
me. he came out with a beautiful and wonderful word that
pretty much no one else would ever use, and now, instead of
being OCD, i want to cry because i love him. he's like a
child, but with the intellect and wisdom of an adult, and
it's wonderful.

so, i forgave him. since then, when he does something like
that, i habitually remind myself about his galvanting.

i took a moment to tell him all this recently. i feel like
it's one of the best compliments i've ever given anyone: you
can be so frustrating at times, but it's worth it because
you're wonderful... and if you weren't frustrating, you
wouldn't be wonderful, and please never ever change.

he also has the patience of a saint. if he didn't, he'd
probably have said in response to my compliment: "right back
at ya." i don't know how he puts up with me, really.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 02:28 [#02502797]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



lewis and i have quite a bit in common: absurd mental
fluidity. trouble managing adult life. a taste for chess,
cigarettes, and cannabis. a thirst for brutal amounts of
exercise (but he goes bike when i take a hike). we've been
roommates in the past, and i lived with him and his family
for a few weeks when my shit hit the fan and i need a place
to get it together.

he has been there to talk me back down to sanity when i'm
flipping out over something like bank fees.

i have been there when he begins to take the galavanting
thing so far he's in danger of shooting himself in the foot.
some stupid document is holding up his whole life and he's
even worse than me at managing an agenda. he's been talking
about how he can get this bureaucratic shit fixed for weeks,
argued with people on the phone, gotten turned away from
places because he missed some sub-requirement they
demanded... and shit, he's frustrated as hell.

one day, he starts talking about "lifting a letter" and how
no one on IRC knew what he meant, but he found it it
anyways. i confessed: "i have no idea what you mean,
either."

it turns out he was being vague because he was thinking
about trying to forge the old expired thing and get around
the whole mess. i got cross with him, exactly like i do with
myself:

"no! don't do that! that thing has a unique number and when
you hand them their forged document they will just type it
into the computer and it will say THIS IS EXPIRED and you
will be in a shitload of trouble."

he was a bit miffed, but it didn't take much to talk him out
of it. then i said: let me know what i can do to help you
get it done properly. i will drive you to that stupid
government building in the center of boston, if that's what
it takes.

it's exactly what i do with myself: consider an idea
thoroughly, yell at myself it it's terrible, then nurture
and support the right ideas.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 02:52 [#02502798]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



lewis will throw me the most brilliant curve-balls ever.

it's protocol for me to completely misunderstand what he
means, at first. i say: "wow! that's a great idea!"

then we get into it, and i realize he meant something else
entirely. once he clarifies, i say: "wow! that's also a
great idea!" even the noise has a signal.

he will patiently listen to me ramble for an hour;
occasionally asking for clarification on something. then
i'll finally finish the thought (or run out of spit) and
apologize for rambling for the 9000th time. there's a moment
of quiet.

at this point, he will reliably dump out a single sentence
that will blow my mind. and i'm misunderstand it at
first...

i was rambling: emotion is a state machine. it switches
between different function libraries. angry reactions are
different from happy reactions.... how should the different
emotions should be programmed. anxiety? the rhythm layer...
blah blah. we came to a break.

he asks: "what about a package manager? do you have one of
those?"

i don't answer. my jaw hangs open. my brain is exploding
with ideas: "i've never sat down and charted out the
dependances on paper -- and that's what a package manager
does, it manages the interrelated dependances to free you
from having to give a shit about them. hell, i've never even
listed them out on paper, because..."

i finally manage: "no... i'm in the kernel layer... that's
the OS layer..." and then i'm quiet again. i'm thinking:
bite-size challenges keep it do-able, yes, but i've been
lasered in on one layer... perhaps that should change. it's
why i got into studying breathing again.

since i'm mute, he starts explaining his package manager
idea. reliably, it has nothing to do with any of what i was
thinking, and once he explains it, my nose bleeds again.

then he darts back to my rambling on predictive CPU
branching to suggest i look at predictive threading on the
OS layer. my nose bleeds

this is largely my work, but it wouldn't be what it is
without l


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 02:54 [#02502799]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



this is largely my work, but it wouldn't be what it is
without lewis. he galavants through unix while i'm stressing
through it. he knows unix as ridiculously well as i do, and
he can keep up with all the tech shit. he listens to it all,
digests, and then promptly kicks me in the pants. let's call
this mechanism stimulated annealing.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 03:10 [#02502800]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



part of what i like to think lewis gets out of me and my
nonsense is a bit of help with his own condition. i have
grilled him for hours about the voices he'll hear. it began
as deep and intense curiosity, and it's graduated into me
practically being more frustrated with his problems than he
is himself most days.

it's worth stating directly: lots of what he described,
well, i've been through it before, on psychedelics or in
dreams or while stoned. or sober. a couple months in, he
said something like, "i can't believe we're actually having
a conversation about this. no one else has even understood
what i meant before."

he'd been describing it and i thought something like: oh,
yes, i got that on acid in 2007 and i always wished it had
cropped up again so i could explore it more. it's just
something he lives with, but he's never really thought about
it. i touched it a few times and i have a whole list of
theories and an even longer list of unanswered questions.

i'm trying to remember what "it" was. it wasn't voices, it
was something more subtle and esoteric and dreamtime.

i've always said part of the problem with psych doctors is
that they spend, at most, a few hours a month with your
brain. you live with your brain all day; take some
responsibility or it'll never get fixed.

but with schizophrenia, you can't trust your own brain. that
would drive me mad. even seeing it at a distance bothers me
a hell of a lot. pretty much, anything unknown tantalizes
me, and anything broken infuriates me. on top of that, he's
my friend, and i want to help. i've spent a ridiculous
amount of time with him and it's put me in a position where
i really can. like, sort of be his auxilliary brain to give
him enough room to bootstrap himself out of chaos. teach him
the strategies i use to attack my own problems.

yesterday i had a weird moment when he said something i say
exactly like i say it. he didn't do it consciously. i don't
think he even noticed. but i did, and i smiled.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 03:39 [#02502802]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



a good a point as any to point out that there's oh-so-much i
don't write about. i made a rule to keep my friends and
family out of all this as much as possible. it's one thing
to put myself in a glass house somewhat, but putting other
people out there without giving them a say in it does not
strike me as the best idea. it's super-tough at times,
because it leaves large gaping holes i have to work around.
slight fibs are crafted and stressed over: since i can't
write the literal truth, how i can i get what i want in
there with the minimum of obfuscation and twisting?

lewis is so deep in all of this, though. i sat on the last
few posts for like two weeks. finally caved. i realized: i
know him well enough to know what he'll be OK with me
saying, and saying some of it matters for cache coherency in
my xltronic thread."


 

offline Foht-Garlanger from dong on 2016-09-02 03:48 [#02502803]
Points: 190 Status: Regular



you have a lot of words in there ..


 

offline Foht-Garlanger from dong on 2016-09-02 03:58 [#02502804]
Points: 190 Status: Regular



LAZY_WORDS


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 05:47 [#02502805]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i've so many words that i'm reasonably sure i've written a
good many things twice. then a rapidly disintigrating
histogram for thrice, four-bird, pentachronic, etc. until
you get to terse reminder sentences i throw in to give
theoretical readers (should they exist) some sort of
mooring, and then it spikes to over 9000. sort of.

using these concepts as part of a written monologue is
tantamount to inducing the whole system of weaseldynamics to
explain itself, in terms of itself, and obviously, the O(n)
on this is a clusterfuck.

linear scrubbing for the service of transcription results in
slight edits as the transcription is performed. when i sit
down to re-read this whole thread (i yield to reality, here.
i'll get to it when i have time. oh well) i'm sure i'll find
the same post on page two and page seven. then little
scattered bits of a post on page eight on four different
pages.

like regressive combinatorial attacks on the human DNA to
figure out the whole darn family tree: your DNA started in
africa, migrated to the middle east, split off three ways,
then one split off four ways, and one of those four got to
know absolutely every one of the initial three [biblically]
and it's a circular graph for a bit instead of a tree in
[some country you want to troll]).

figuring that out by collecting lots of DNA, working in
historical assumptions, existing geneology databases...
pretty holistic, really. but done in math, so it feels solid
enough to science....

anyways, i'm curious to see what i've written multiple
times, how many... if one hits, say, five... did it stay the
same? did it mostly stay the same, but wobble? did it evolve
linearly? did it evolve, devo track, then fix itself by page
five?

yes, i've realized that scrubbing the whole cache dump is
something to wait for when i have a shitload of time. lord
help anyone trying to read it from page one


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 06:11 [#02502808]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i started writing the previous post before i sat down
properly. i was crouched on my toes the way i do if i'm
checking something quickly and intend to stand back up.

as soon as i clicked "reply" i realized my toes were
screaming for mercy. i stood up, and began to pace, but i
got about three steps before something new was already
screaming at me: writing about lewis's package manager
metaphor has given me another spin on it.

if you're the guy who develops the package manager (aren't
you?), you don't do it by manually working it out on a piece
of paper, no sir. it's too busy: new packages are added, old
ones are dropped, dependancies change, politics cause
irreconcilable conflicts...

this shit be automated. also farmed out: the developers of a
package are responsible for listing the packages their
package depends on. this puts the nuances of the decisions
in the hands of the people who should handle the nuances,
while you -- mr. package manager developer (aren't you?) --
maintain the automation infrastructure, and solve high-level
problems that cannot be automated, like the ego of the
firefox development team.

i dust off my XLT thread downloader; download this whole
thread. have the computer drop some bomb-ass lexical
analysis: a list of every word i've used; how many times.
where the word was used first. use a dictionary to cull
words that don't need hyperlinks. i could continue on to
cluster analysis...

eventually, i tear through the output of the automation on a
macroscopic level and look for strategic in-points.

"gps weasel" is a good start. a PHP script takes my notes:
"gps weasel depends on: weasel, brain software, automatic
driving..." whatever comes to mind quickly.

"notion-layer" next: "notion-layer depends on notion,
layered systems, magick..."

after a while, i'll have built up enough connections
manually that a computer will be able to compile the whole
of the law. back to the automationmaton, mon


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 06:38 [#02502809]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



there have been a few times that i've met people and gotten
a really intense feeling: my best friend from high school.
my first serious girlfriend. lewis.

when i said lewis is like a brother to me, i meant that
thoroughly. we are not brothers, we just met on IRC one day.
he knew about unix, and his IP address said he lived across
town. oh, you don't have a car? i'll give you a lift to the
store, then.

we hit it off immediately. by the time i was driving him
back to his place i knew i wanted to hang out with this guy
a lot. you what? you rebuilt your computer in the crawlspace
so it's ventillated but quiet? what's zfs? no, i use ext4
still

second or third time we hung out, he hit me with what i
lurkingly suspected: at the door, ready to drive him home,
now's the moment, i see it in his body language before he
essentially asks: so, uh, you wanna fuck?

i rambled about how i was a messed-up bastard and i need to
fix that, so no, no thanks, nothing personal.... but,
really, in retrospect, i said "no" because it felt vaguely
incestious. the brother from another mother metaphor
continues

anyways, when i say i love him, i mean i love him like a
brother, and i really mean that. love is a terrible word
that means thousands of things and i think i should stop
using it. i hate it. grrr


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 06:56 [#02502813]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i'm generally a believer in the idea that time moves
forwards in a linear, plodding manner... but, there are
things that cause me to question the linearity of time, at
times.

tactical weasel scolds me already; his metaphor shows no
mercy: "allowing myself to realisticly entertain the idea
that i'm receiving a direct beam of data from the future
sounds like the tactical equivalent of wading into a swamp
full of alligators wearing a meat speedo."

ouch. as the weasel of tactics, he can tactically hit
me where it's most tacticle.

if time stops, well, how would anyone ever notice? it would
stop and resume and there'd be no time for anyone to miss
it. perhaps it takes sundays off and no-one ever notices...
sure, alright, i can't rule that out.

i also can't rule this out: for three minutes in the third
quarter of 2017, gravity will also cease to function on
planet earth when a chinese billionare drives his BMW into a
ley line.

i used to wonder, though. it was as if i felt the depth of a
relationship that was going to get really deep before it
happened. like a backwards echo, with a floaty feeling of
dissociation. for a fleeting moment, did i go from david
copperfield to merlin?

a seductive thought -- too seductive. too infinititus. i
probably just got a flood of subconscious signals that
indicated this guy was good news, and no, it is not the
non-linearity of time burping backwards. parsimony,
goddammit.

much more confusing to me was getting what i called a
"future vu." like deja vu, but with the future: "i swear
i've seen this before, weird. also, it hasn't happened
yet... wait, what? my weird's not usually that weird..."

perhaps it is what it said it was, but i'm leaning towards
it being a neurotransmitter glitch until the future gets
around to sending back its rationale for this bullshit. it
hasn't yet.

is time discrete or linear? that one's much more
interesting. summary is: yes


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 07:05 [#02502815]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



discrete vs. continuous, sorry.

i can see why i said linear by mistake:

i spent a bit fussing with the opening paragraph of the
post. "in a linear manner... in a linear plod... a quadratic
trot... heh, no, tangent... in a linear, plodding... ok,
yeah"

so, either time is linear, and the first-paragraph tuning
leaked into the last paragraph... or time is non-linear, and
the last paragraph leaked into the way i wrote the first.

logisitical weasel and tactical weasel have come back from a
huddle and told me that this has gone into low-priority
thread turf, and that i'm standing on my toes again, for how
long? and also my laundry is probably done


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 10:40 [#02502817]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



lewis and i don't have a schedule for hanging out. if it
feels right, i'll text him, or vice versa. it's spontaneous.
a pseudorandom slurpie of how bad traffic is, how far away
he is, how long it's been since i've seen him, whether the
cops are all over today bla bla

there is no way he can predict this shit, because, hell,
even i can't.

ditto on my end: i have no idea what he's up to. is he out
somewhere already? is he busy? yes, but he needs to
shower/eat first?

sending texts while driving is full of bees. trying to make
myself do it spikes my blood pressure within seconds. not
only is texting terrible for safety, but i absolutely hate
it. in and of itself. so, i can't really reply easily.

next bug: i have no idea how long he'll take to get back to
me... next bug: if i give him an ETA before he replies, it
will never be accurate. next bug: if he takes a half hour to
reply i may have changed my mind.

on and on. we snagged on it so many times that i felt
something had to be done.

i sat down; had a good solid think (as a ginger would say)
and came up with an algorithm to fend off my systemic
frustration with the chaos. a protocol.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 11:08 [#02502819]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



first(a): { i text (["wanna cruise?"]) }

it's all over the message history; i can spare myself
chicklet agony via copypastination.

second(a): if (he texts [ya, yes, ok, absolutely, ... ,]) {
=======> second(aa): i text ([brutally accurate ETA])
=============> second(aaa): if (he texts ["OK", ...]) {
====================> second(aaaa): ETA confirmed. =>
(END). }
=============> second(aab): if (he texts !["OK", ...]) {
====================> second(aaab): > (IT'S
COMPLICATED). } }

"it's complicated" means replying, and i can't reply without
having a conniption or pulling over. END means i collect him
with no snags or conniptions.

third(b): if (he texts ![ya, yes, ...,]) {
=======> third(ba): it's never just no
=============> third(baa): (IT'S COMPLICATED) }

there are obvious spots for the snags to burp themselves and
make sure we're both flexible. no one's time is wasted; no
nips are unduly conned. no plectix are apo'd. already,
though, this trashbat psneudorandalchode is irritating me.
so:

example: he texts (back that [he needs an hour/etc before he
can hang]) => i'll text back either "ok" or "nm".

"ok" means (it's complicated) has been negotiated into a
(yes); ergo (end).

"nm" means (it's complicated) on my end too. abort vector.
nm; let's do it tomorrow. implied is that i'll explain what
was behind that "nm" and that i'm not being curt, i'm just
driving.

he patiently listened to this whole ramble train, all twenty
minutes of it. then he more or less said, "sounds good."

i love him because that's all it took. he had it, and the
algorithm ran smoothly. 9/10 snags have ceased to happen;
the rest we work out.

it took twenty minutes because i got into why texting sux,
how we need a protocol since i can't reply fully, how my
algorithm is designed for mutual respect and good times, and
that i spent so much time thinking about it because i care
and it will work. and it does.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 11:13 [#02502820]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



implied is that the whole thing pretty much works in
reverse, for the times when he texts me and asks if i want
to hang out.

except for one thing -- easily 2/3 of his opening lines to
this effect involve cookies, wanting cookies, suggesting we
go out to get cookies... it's continued regularly. we
haven't gone to the au bon pan at the mall for, like, two
months, but he's texting me about cookies. it's just his way
of saying he's bored and i understand him perfectly.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 11:34 [#02502822]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



even the snags have become wonderful, sometimes, instead of
frustrating. i text him, "wanna cruise?" one day. i get back
an "it's complicated" -- yes, but i'm at the grocery store;
meet me there?" i text back "10m" and i get back a stream of
charming irrelevancy that more or less means "OK." i program
GPS weasel and off we go.

the snags begin: i'm stressing hardcore that, shit, he's at
the store, he never walks, he's on his bike, his bike won't
fit in my car, shit, this is a problem, shit, it's too
complicated for text, shit. i try to call him but his
paranoid rat's nest of obscure internet phone relays is out
of marbles for the month. brick shitting increases.

the snags continue: i have trouble even getting to the
store. traffic is so bad i give up on the route and make a
turn the other way to avoid some hair lady in a BMW who
repeatedly almost hits my fender trying to squeeze by me to
make the turn i didn't want to make. so i made it, and i
wind up more or less where i started when i sent the "wanna
cruise" and i am starting to get properly mad.

texting back "sorry nm" is like asking a mama bear
protecting her cub to just "talk it out" with the man in the
day-glo vest, but i manage. i feel so bad about it, too.
he's been waiting and i bailed. sorry mang.

later, it turns out he had the whole thing already: waiting,
he looked at his bike and began formulating his own plans
about how to deal with it: tie it up? bring it home first?
he knew i'd be shitting a brick and he was already on it. i
felt bad about bailing with a vague text, but he already
knew exactly what i was dealing with -- he even noticed that
the traffic was obscene -- and that i was driving and i
couldn't explain myself. that i didn't know his watFone was
out of minutes.

then i'm guiltily explaining myself a day later, and all
that comes out. who needs psychic activity? this is better.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 12:06 [#02502823]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i've been gradually building up a toolkit in my mind,
really.

driving, i notice i'm no longer almost running red lights
when my mind wanders. i'd become so used to screwing up like
that, really, and that alone was a miracle to me. i wanted
more of it.

so, brain software became a thing. studying it led to
weasels. the weasels tore the whole system wide open (with
their sharp little claws/teef) and it exploded into a
mosaic/fractal that has had me plumbling the depths of
disruptive innovation ever since.

as i got into studying it i found the part of my brain that
got used for sweeping a fader up in the perfect logarithmic
surge (and do it in time to the beat, at the right moment to
cut off the first measure of the drum loop, at the right
time in the three-minute track...) was now handling how i
looked at cars on the highway and judged what the various
lanes were going to do and when.

then rhythm, and more mechanisms. counting a two-bar loop is
so deep and reliable that i can really turn that into a
machine in its own right.

studying breathing while lying in bed, my heart rate becomes
deafening, my sense of time wobbles and flexes, and i get
nowhere. i'm hiking and i notice my feet counting a two bar
loop; i never actually taught them to do that. i say: wow,
that's in there. if i can learn to breathe in a two-bar
loop, that will let me meaningfully study the heart-layer
without it being chaos.

when i'm gluing the two-bar loop onto whatever, first it
feels useless. orchestral arrangements being dialed into
metaphorical mammals with operant conditioning in the form
of emotional self-ranting. but, eventually, it takes.

some time after that, i begin to feel a limited form of
parallel processing. it's automatic, but i'm aware of it
down there, being automatic, like i am various cars on the
highway.

the whole process is becoming quicker/easier. beginning to
get automatic in and of itself. i'm going to go take a
moment to be smug.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 12:24 [#02502824]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



right, that's long enough. back to it.

i've not done much sitting there and studying breathing,
recently, as i concluded i need a firmer footing before that
would get anywhere. instead i focus on my feet as they hike,
mostly letting my mind wander, letting breathing do as it
does without my meddling.

but, sometimes i bump into it, and when i do, i rope my feet
into the equation and try to get breathing to come along. at
this point, the level of glue is tantamount to the effect
the suction of my car has on the leaves of trees i zoom by
at incredible speeds: it's pulled along, subtly but
undeniably, then it pulls back to its usual settled
patterns.

even this is ridiculously complicated. i catch it being
tugged a bit, and i catch it in my internal cache of what
i'm doing with my muscles. then i catch the same muscles
doing all sorts of stuff as i'm driving, later.

day one or two of breathing study, the image of a caduceus
popped into my head. i never even thought to note: my
internal screen is largely a two-dimensional thing.

if i work on visualizing a room and walking around, well, i
can do that... but, if i'm remembering someone's face, it's
a screencap of what my eyes saw. there's some depth
information, but i have one shot from a particular
perspective and the best you can get out of that is like
what you get out of those foil hologram stickers.

yesterday, out of nowhere, i got a ridiculously specific...
synaesthetic... thing... while hiking. it was like someone
bodged together a wind gauge and a bellows accordian
thing, and yes, here it is sir, roughly behind the bottom of
your liver, and here it is in an absurdly strong sense of 3D
you've never experienced without chemical aid. and all i was
really after was getting breathing to be dependable rather
than a noisy variable.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 12:39 [#02502825]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



lewis has heard plenty about how all my car is essentially a
nazi regime from the planet camazotz. all the things have
places. don't even bother trying to put that whatever back.
give it to me and my existing architecture will have it
over-with in half a second. trying to explain it takes
twenty seconds, and you won't ever get it right.

i don't have to think about whether i've taken the lighter
out of its nook or not; having me put it back is actually an
important part of the mechanism/ritual. if i don't do it, i
no longer know whether the thing is there or not. any
automatic behavior that depends on it will mindlessly
barrell along until it falls into a pit of question marks,
my conscious mind is dragged away from beautiful alpha
waves, and i get superbly cross.

even still, he's kept up. just on his own; not even rambling
from me. i didn't even notice until the other day, when he
was going for things in the old spots and getting massively
confused. no, no, that's not weed. that's tobacco. you just
packed the whole thing with tobacco. i'll puke, i insist.
empty it now

then the weirdness continues: thinking about the nauesa of a
full-tilt nicotine overdose sets off a feedback loop, and
for a brief moment, it feels like it's happening.

i start explaining this to lewis, and as i do, i catch a bit
of the muscle cache before it drains off. it's a 2D
perspective shot, like an X-Ray of my neck, shot from
behind, above, to the right, slightly. close, zoomed. a spot
in the center strobes like a camera flash, and it bleeds off
into a bunch of vague whatever. it is, i am all but certain,
the spot in my neck i clamped down on to set off that loop.
then i'm off explaining the visualization i just go to him.
this was, obviously, a good bit before we managed to get the
weed smoked. it's even thicker afterwards


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 12:44 [#02502826]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



weird thing happens. i catch a brief flash of it. i figure
it out, wire myself in, and even weirder things begin
to happen. i catch a brief flash of it. i figure it out


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 21:35 [#02502888]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



today's spotted in the cache: yes sir, just now,
there was lag in between that notion and your execution of
the notion (pressing "next track") and the notion layer is
fidgeting like crazy because it's frustrated; have a nice
day sir.

in attempting to verbalize how that felt, precisely, i hit
on some real juice: i know this. it's a unix system
it's exactly how i feel when i'm trying to suss out the
spelling of a novel nonsense word, but i can't seem to get
it right. i can feel what i want, but i can't get it.
it's like aphasia. it's on the tip of my tounge...

working out how to explain this on a forum full of confused
onlookers was a huge help, here. it was spewing off all
sorts of sub-plots. alone in my car, i say aloud: "god damn
it, latency." then, a quarter note later, i say fuck
emphatically, because this is at least 2^4 posts. this may
be my first proper glimpse of the architecture of the
notion-layer itself. i need to break the notion-layer into
notion-sublayers.

standard procedure here is rectally venting parsimony: i
figure it tries the obvious notions first, and those that
pan out, bubble up. because this is what makes the most
sense.

notions are evaluated, then either rejected or promoted.
promoted notions rise to the next sublayer. pruning of
poor-quality notions occurs when the layer tries to jump to
the superceding sublayer. like sperm, winner takes all. glue
together enough of these notion-sublayers to cover anywhere
from a tenth of a second to half a second.

god damn it, it's not lag. it's latency. fuck, that's
big. notions already have basic granularity: weak, average,
strong. now they have a latency, too: quick and strong.
average and slow.

quick and weak means the obvious stuff may sorta pan out.
slow and average mean it's an unusual thing, but likely
happening at the current moment. that i'm noticing the
timing of them at all means i can get better at gauging it.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 21:48 [#02502889]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



this is exactly how you attack a certain class of problems
on a computer: time is limited before the relevancy of the
calculations expire, and you will never be able to get
through every possible permutation. you have four CPU cores.
initially they're all working on the easy answers, and with
all four cores, it eats through them quickly. then it scales
down, gradually: three cores on obvious. two. one. the cores
move over to evaluating the more unlikely scenarios.

striking the balance between low-hanging fruit vs. the cost
of missing the deep, interesting stuff pretty much goes to
the core of why O(n) matters. i need to dust off a few
college textbooks because i'm getting that aphasia again:
dammit, there is a thing for this. a comp sci professor
thing that matches this exact structure. it's on the tip of
my toung. augh


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 21:56 [#02502890]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



i'd figure all the various notion-sublayers have offramps to
my conscious mind. if any sublayer discovers something
really, really important -- a strong notion, or perhaps even
a bad vibe -- the progressive filtering is bypassed and it
does a kool aid man right through the wall of my ranting
inner monologue: there is a cop camped up there. please tune
in consciously to make sure you are driving correct,
because, as a notion-sublayer, i'm not really set up to
judge that... all i know is: shit, dude, that's a cop.
abort

the idea, as always, is a tiered cache of relevancy
(designed to squeeze the illusion of impressive performance
out of crap cheap parts). start with the obvious solutions;
breadth first. then when you've polished off the simple
ones, go deep.

since you always get the obvious ones and occasionally get
the deep ones, it's natural to start to feel like this thing
knows a lot more than it does. no, a notion is just that.

here's a decent metaphor: in trying to guess a password,
you'll have the computer hammer through a list of the four
most commonly-used passwords, then all the other common
passwords, then dictionary words, then finally you resort to
walking through every potential string, one bit flip at a
time. if you get mired in that for too long, it starts to
feel like more of a pain than it's worth, and you move on to
trying to guess the password of an easier mark, like guy
fieri, paris hilton, or joyrex thomas


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 22:07 [#02502893]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



there is also another phase of lag: obviously, my conscious
mind needs to accept the signal from the notion-sublayer,
parse it, and react.

say a notion is feeling quick and urgent; it's burning to do
a kool-aid man into my rambologue. this requires a context
switch from whatever i'm rambling about to the
notion-parsing logic. this incurs a delay of... i really
can't say, exactly, but anywhere from 100ms to a second
depending on how deeply up my own butt i am that day. if i'm
hardcore, deep, lost in thought, it takes longer for that to
clear out so i can consciously evaluate the notion.

if i consciously ask the notion-layer its opinion of
something, though, i'm already waiting for the answer, and
i'm on it immediately. i also am more apt to notice the
latency/magnitude of the notion, since, like all cache, it's
constantly leaking out to make room for new data.

practical example: after a lengthy 600ms context-switch from
a super-deep think, the details of the notion are already
fading away. magnitude is vague and latency/timing is
outright lost.

paired alternate example: i've been dancing for three hours,
everything is in sync, now i'm stoned, and i start
essentially working the notion-layer like a data terminal as
i drive around automagically. barring a vehicular abort
vector, i'm getting a flood of bits and bobs as different
trains arrive from the station, simply because i've
positioned myself at the station to watch before they began
arriving.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-09-02 22:11 [#02502894]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



obviously, when i start dropping "600ms" i'm venting from my
rectum, and it's no longer parsimonic. it's extremly
subjective. if i'm in the middle of jamming on the brakes to
avoid hitting a car that ducked in without looking, that
600ms can feel like it's more than a second. my clock rate
has spiked and my latency has plunged in order to enable me
to avoid a fiery wreck, and then i context-switch over to
two and fourth tenths of a second of angry horn, then next
the anti-mad ritual i do six dozen times a week when
something gets to me, then back to architecture.


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2016-09-02 22:13 [#02502895]
Points: 31145 Status: Regular | Show recordbag



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