Learning from Fictions
I wanted to make some broad strokes to tie together some previous posts before I move on from this thread of thought. Below, two tangentially-related ideas. I. “What is true is to be believed; what is fictional is to be imagined.” -Kendall Walton I have long talked about ‘apologetic‘ as an operation for cohering tribes. more »
Law of Unrecognized Novelty
I. “Nothing new under the sun.” I think that any sufficiently new idea will be confused for a repudiated old one. Nuance regularly dies in-transit from speaker to listener, due to lack of a shared episteme (and the social pressure to properly understand in the first place may not be there either). An idea cannot be so freakishly new that nothing more »
Unknown Knowns
Note: I thought that “Totalizing Views” was a perfectly cromulent and useful phrase when I first noticed it, when it was announced as the theme for Keith Adams’ upcoming blogging residency at Ribbonfarm. Since then, the Baader-Meinhof effect has been in full swing. I’ve certainly seen it from the anti-essentialist crowd, including in Unit Operations. I have myself used the phrase more »
Unit Operations II
Notes from around the neighborhood: Jordan Peacock recently wroteon the idea of the episteme and a “miscommunication-reduction strategy”. Also, Adam Gurri recently wrote an excellent piece in response to the neoreaction that articulates a view of institutions that I particularly appreciate. (There’s also an annual roundup post by him on his personal site that I intend more »
Unit Operations I
I first really engaged with Bogosts’ work in college, a few years ago, as I dug into Games Studies seriously for the first time. I’ve expressed slivers of his work before- one of my earliest posts was a rather dry excerption of a college essay of mine, on the Simulation Gap, Procedural Rhetoric, and Sim City. I more »
Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy IV
(Tomorrow I post my first post on Unit Operations. I’ll probably be reading it at a slower pace, though.) This is Part 4, on “Virtuality and the Laws of Physics”. Part 1 (on “The Mathematics of the Virtual”) Part 2 (on “The Actualization of the Virtual in Space”) Part 3 (on “The Actualization of the Virtual more »
Mulling: Multivocality, Cities, Currency
This might not seem like the kind of urgent material that would require immediate posting, but I prefer to record my readings and reactions roughly as they occur, in whatever incomplete form they take. I might make prettier, denser posts if I collected myself first and edited longer after, but that hasn’t been how I’ve more »
Seven Fundamental Laws of Spiritual Ecology
Two posts in one day- This breaks one of my unwritten rules, but I need to clean house and I’m not going to store a post for a rainy day, because on that rainy day the post may no longer seem relevant. Below: Some quotes+notes on Greer’s Seven Laws, from Mystery Teachings From the Living more »
Why DeLanda
My backlog is huge. It’s much easier for me to type than it is to edit. Hm. It’s also easier to type on the plane than it is to read sometimes, too- bumpy flight. I’ll wrap up Intensive Science shortly. I wanted to give a brief account of what, exactly, I find interesting in DeLandan/Deleuzian thought, because more »
Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy III
Also, it’s the Year of the Horse! That’s my year. It doesn’t mean anything to me but I’ll own anything if I’m told that it’s mine. — This is Part 3 of 4, on “The Actualization of the Virtual in Time”. (The final chapter will be “Virtuality and the Laws of Physics”). In Part 1 (based more »