Julian Jaynes On What Consciousness Is(n’t)
Again, I’m reading Jaynes’ Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind because it’s an odd and influential work, described as genius and madness by the same people. I’ve found it a very accessible and interesting read, regardless of the literal truth claims. Metaphors and Understanding Generations ago we would understand thunderstorms perhaps as more »
Anatomy of a Metaphor
This week’s post are likely to be mainly about my recent book reading. — Essences and Surfaces argues that analogy is the basis of all thinking. This was an idea I already entertained, so maybe that’s why I have found the book to be a bit too repetitive although some of the examples were fun (ex. more »
November 02013
So ends the month of November. 21 posts in 30 days. Wrote about UpWing/DownWing thought, networks (as a form of human organization), proceduralization of decisions, and a little bit more on the Dark Enlightenment, among some other smaller one-shot posts. I experimented with different ways of writing, compiling notes from my own private online discussions (which more »
In-Flight Notes II
Packing to go down to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. I. Soon, I’m gonna finally reduce my writing frequency here as I start new projects. The norm might return to 2 posts/week. I’m going to launch a second blog on this site specifically for logging project development/production, coming soon. The kinds of stuff I’m working on: some more »
My Life with Games
I. I hate the word “gamer”. I don’t particularly like the idea of a “gamer culture” either, because it draws a circle around a small subset of games and a small, unrepresentative group that plays them and says, “these are what games strive to be, and these people are the essence of folks who play more »
Legitimacy
About a month ago, I wrote this: “Power finds a narrative to justify itself. Humans are naturally social, and so tribes are to humans as ant hills are to ants. Institutions are not called forth by supernatural means- they propagate themselves naturally through coercion, utility, or the appearance of utility. Often a mix of the more »
Even More Mulling: Themes, Readings, and Bacteria
I. The Apparent Direction of My Writing The Fogbanking Blog, an only-vaguely-planned expression of my day-to-day thoughts on my reading, revolves around my interest in building things that consciously change behavior. I’ve posted notes and summaries about alternative historiographies, convergent evolution, games, design, organizational behavior, culture, apologetics, and philosophy with that same broad theme: the more »
Networks/Crowds
Machines are incredibly intelligent in many ways (I hope that’s not you mumbling at the use of ‘intelligent’ that way…), but in the universe of possible minds, it’s clear that the set of machine cognition only slightly overlaps with the set of human cognition. Ignoring concerns about energy use, there are problems that standard commercial computers more »
Open Source Warfare
DownWinger John Robb believes that crises will continue and that recognizable middle-class life will collapse. Nation states around the world will decay from the inside, keeping the vestiges of legitimacy but becoming, in reality, hollow states. Alternative forms of organization, such as the narco-state in Mexico, will propagate. Robb’s interest in resilient communities is very clearly more »
Institutionalism I
The year I was born, Douglass North published a paper [pdf] in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, titled “Institutions”. Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights). Throughout history, institutions have more »