Know what else certain people at that time thought was controlled by the Devil? Television animation! Having studied its history I know how absurd that proposition is. But that's the way Christians roll: anything they don't approve of is logically the Devil's work.
"This can lead to unintentional cherry-picking whenever we’re trying to decide whether something is a good idea."
But you haven't addressed a key scenario here: What if the thing I'm trying to decide on is whether I should pick a particular cherry? In that case, wouldn't cherry-picking be the very thing I'd want? Would my attempt to cherry-pick the right set of assumptions about cherry-picking to decide which cherry to pick create a circular logic paradox that would paralyze me into inaction? The jury is out, but all signs point to: Yes!
As for the malleability of memory and the impossibility of storing all video/audio/etc input, I'd like to share a slightly edited comment I left on Suzi Travis's article about human memory a few days ago:
It struck me how much more similar our memory creation/retrieval process is to LLMs than to e.g. file storage software.
Creating new memories is a bit like pre-training an LLM - you're not loading every single piece of information into your brain and storing it in its entirety. Instead, you encode relationships between people, events, smells, etc., much like LLMs encode relationships between tokens.
And when you're retrieving a memory, you're not pulling it out of a file cabinet wholesale, but you're "generating" a plausible version of events based on the encoded connections, much like LLMs generate different but broadly similar responses to the same query.
The same goes for LLM hallucinations and our memory hallucinations, which explains why my wife and I have very different recollections of the events of the day of our first kiss. That, and she's objectively wrong....according to my memory, that is.
You are onto something here, for sure. We humans are beginning to understand how it is that we think, and it's by comparing ourselves to things we've created!
I think about how there's a blind spot in your vision that your brain just kinda pretends isn't there, and that's happening in real time. if anyone is still unconvinced that memories are malleable (or even more like summaries or, as you call them, plausible scenarios), then knowing about the visual blind spot that's really there should be more than enough to convince you otherwise.
Umm… I can think of something that lead to Nov 6th. I’m hopeful many will realize what they’ve done before too much damage has been done… or I’m at least still able to move someplace like Australia or New Zealand.
How ever did I miss the whole Satanic Panic? It must’ve skipped LA. I feel like you missed out on an opportunity here for one of those awesome demonic pentagram images with goat
The absurdity of the Satanic Panic is definitely part of the reason I embraced the goat as a symbol. It was like the dumbest sort of persecution ever! Also, there were lots of evangelicals in SC back in the day.
“Binary terms” seems a good metaphor. Being that you like numbers, because they help you make sense of the world, we begin with everything (0) and then split it so now we have 0 and 1. To make it more nuanced, we continue splitting (adding numbers). Like the drawing of a circle, we keep adding line segments of smaller and smaller dimensions and come to a point where it gives us the illusion of being a continuous circle. So too with our dualistic thought pattern. We begin with a holon and continuously split reality to make sense of it. We might begin with everything (0) and then split it into good and evil (0,1). Then the nuances begin to be added, like morality and law (3,4?). Does that make any sense to you?
Do you think all human thought is dualistic (stems from binary)? If that's what you're saying, I agree, but I'm not sure that's settled psychology, exactly. Hope that makes sense!
Yes, from my perspective, the dominant thought paradigm is dualistic. Being enmeshed in the paradigm, the psychology will never be settled! There is alway another split/distinction to be made that “clarifies”yet never proves. It’s like telescopes; the resolution keeps getting better, yet the big questions are never “resolved”.
Know what else certain people at that time thought was controlled by the Devil? Television animation! Having studied its history I know how absurd that proposition is. But that's the way Christians roll: anything they don't approve of is logically the Devil's work.
Fantasia was a really good example, right? I remember some pitchforks coming out during the 80s.
Nobody told them that the film was made in the early 1940s....
I knew it was from the 40s back then, but of course that didn't stop the mania. The whole thing was absurd to live through.
"This can lead to unintentional cherry-picking whenever we’re trying to decide whether something is a good idea."
But you haven't addressed a key scenario here: What if the thing I'm trying to decide on is whether I should pick a particular cherry? In that case, wouldn't cherry-picking be the very thing I'd want? Would my attempt to cherry-pick the right set of assumptions about cherry-picking to decide which cherry to pick create a circular logic paradox that would paralyze me into inaction? The jury is out, but all signs point to: Yes!
As for the malleability of memory and the impossibility of storing all video/audio/etc input, I'd like to share a slightly edited comment I left on Suzi Travis's article about human memory a few days ago:
It struck me how much more similar our memory creation/retrieval process is to LLMs than to e.g. file storage software.
Creating new memories is a bit like pre-training an LLM - you're not loading every single piece of information into your brain and storing it in its entirety. Instead, you encode relationships between people, events, smells, etc., much like LLMs encode relationships between tokens.
And when you're retrieving a memory, you're not pulling it out of a file cabinet wholesale, but you're "generating" a plausible version of events based on the encoded connections, much like LLMs generate different but broadly similar responses to the same query.
The same goes for LLM hallucinations and our memory hallucinations, which explains why my wife and I have very different recollections of the events of the day of our first kiss. That, and she's objectively wrong....according to my memory, that is.
You are onto something here, for sure. We humans are beginning to understand how it is that we think, and it's by comparing ourselves to things we've created!
I think about how there's a blind spot in your vision that your brain just kinda pretends isn't there, and that's happening in real time. if anyone is still unconvinced that memories are malleable (or even more like summaries or, as you call them, plausible scenarios), then knowing about the visual blind spot that's really there should be more than enough to convince you otherwise.
Umm… I can think of something that lead to Nov 6th. I’m hopeful many will realize what they’ve done before too much damage has been done… or I’m at least still able to move someplace like Australia or New Zealand.
"Virtually harmless by Australian standards" is still one of my favorite comments.
https://goatfury.substack.com/p/virtually-harmless-by-australian
How ever did I miss the whole Satanic Panic? It must’ve skipped LA. I feel like you missed out on an opportunity here for one of those awesome demonic pentagram images with goat
The absurdity of the Satanic Panic is definitely part of the reason I embraced the goat as a symbol. It was like the dumbest sort of persecution ever! Also, there were lots of evangelicals in SC back in the day.
Thank you I just learned about Baphomet; I can see a goatfury origin story …
Our thought patterns are dualistic, so I use that reigning paradigm to make sense of the world.
“Binary terms” seems a good metaphor. Being that you like numbers, because they help you make sense of the world, we begin with everything (0) and then split it so now we have 0 and 1. To make it more nuanced, we continue splitting (adding numbers). Like the drawing of a circle, we keep adding line segments of smaller and smaller dimensions and come to a point where it gives us the illusion of being a continuous circle. So too with our dualistic thought pattern. We begin with a holon and continuously split reality to make sense of it. We might begin with everything (0) and then split it into good and evil (0,1). Then the nuances begin to be added, like morality and law (3,4?). Does that make any sense to you?
Do you think all human thought is dualistic (stems from binary)? If that's what you're saying, I agree, but I'm not sure that's settled psychology, exactly. Hope that makes sense!
Yes, from my perspective, the dominant thought paradigm is dualistic. Being enmeshed in the paradigm, the psychology will never be settled! There is alway another split/distinction to be made that “clarifies”yet never proves. It’s like telescopes; the resolution keeps getting better, yet the big questions are never “resolved”.
Science will always approach reality, but may never touch it.
I'm not totally convinced that the universe doesn't use binary at certain points, for what it's worth.
Everything belongs, so that doesn’t leave out a binary universe! Neither does it leave out a non-binary universe, if that makes sense!🤣
Can you elaborate a bit? You're saying we think in binary terms, so knowing that helps you smooth things out and add nuance?