BC LIFE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

I woke up realizing that there is something very wrong with thinking in categories and classifications. Many people accept the idea that this kind of thinking is at the core of abstract thought.

 Douglas Hofstadter argues otherwise in a very thick (not dumb in the Brit sense) book of his ('Surface and Essences') where he argues that analogy is at the core of thinking. You'll have to read his book, specifically the last chapter to understand what he means.
The problem with categories is that they create artificial boundaries that are too crisp. But we know that when we master any subject that there is a distinct fluidity between concepts. The master seems wrong from a by-the-book novice because he keeps on breaking definitions.
Analogy making employs the tacit knowledge gained through experience to adroitly navigate between similar and competing concepts. A master has an intuitive feel of the vocabulary he employs to create expressions that have previously never been heard.
Biological brains feel their way through their realities. Something feels like red because our interactions with that thing feels the same as if it was red. We do not see the color red, we feel the color red. There is no red in this picture:
Analogy making is the interplay between the iconic and the indexical (see Peirce). We land on each relevant sameness and make cognitive leaps between relevant distinctness.
A master sees the implicate wholeness of process rather than the fragmented collection of classifications. Analogy making is that just-in-time thought process that connects thoughts together.
Analogy is therefore that bridges thoughts or concepts together. Categorization or classification is just a subset of this concept. It is the assignment of a thought to a classification. A bridging of something that is observed to what was previously categorized.
In psychology, tests for general intelligence typically involves tests of analogy making (see: Raven progressive matrices). There has been some Deep Learning research to solve these, but most of them had unsatisfactory results.
I conjecture that the same process that an animal employs for navigation is the root of analogy making. https://t.co/lNqClJLE8W
Unlike animal navigation that connects what is perceived to internal concepts, analogy making internal concepts with each other. Indeed this capability is critical for any creature that needs to follow a complex conversation. You cannot converse if you can't analogize!
But analogizing bridges two concepts together, what's the process of bridging three concepts together?
100 years ago Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced 'purse') introduced his method of triadic thinking to William James. Peirce believed it to be the core of all his insights. William James however never understood it!
Which finally brings me to the reason I woke up and wrote this tweet storm. Peirce triadic reasoning is the core of thinking about emergent phenomena.
Emergent phenomena is a difficult to grasp because it appears like magic. In simple terms, the interactive behavior of parts leads to an emergent behavior of the parts. Think of the phenomena of 'rubber-necking' as an emergent one.
Peirce's triadic thinking connects the parts with the whole in a systematic way. When one first here's about firstness, secondness, and thirdness, it sounds extremely weird.
But baked in the approach is an explicit expression of how concepts progressively constructed. The problem with symbols (or even categorization) as a starting point is that it never expresses how a mind actually arrived at a symbol.
C.S.Peirce's writings are all about a meta-level evolutionary process. The method always begins with firstness. That is something that is (well) first and by itself. Firstness is defined as the characteristics of being first!
It is here where I will lose most of my audience. It's perhaps also the point where William James also lost the plot! But let me assure you that if you ever want to seek out the 'big picture' of intelligence then you aren't going to find it without knowing Peirce.
@threadreaderapp unroll

More from Carlos E. Perez

Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Nice to discover Judea Pearl ask a fundamental question. What's an 'inductive bias'?


I crucial step on the road towards AGI is a richer vocabulary for reasoning about inductive biases.

explores the apparent impedance mismatch between inductive biases and causal reasoning. But isn't the logical thinking required for good causal reasoning also not an inductive bias?

An inductive bias is what C.S. Peirce would call a habit. It is a habit of reasoning. Logical thinking is like a Platonic solid of the many kinds of heuristics that are discovered.

The kind of black and white logic that is found in digital computers is critical to the emergence of today's information economy. This of course is not the same logic that drives the general intelligence that lives in the same economy.
FOR LATER READ
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
Interesting to realize that the living things that lay the foundation of the biosphere are extremely robust as compared to the humans that are destroying the biosphere.

Seed can remain dry and dormant for ages only to reborn when provided the proper nutrients. In contrast, most animals require a continual living vessel to reconstruct itself from its DNA.

Evolution appears to constantly perform tradeoffs between robust organisms and organisms that are adaptable. Co-evolution makes possible the development of complex species as a consequence of robust organisms.

We exist as a consequence of the multitude of less complex individuals that make up our biosphere. We are in fact symbionts that are in constant cooperation with our microbiome. Absent our individual ecologies leads to death.

We are inseparable from our microbiome, we are inseparable from our societies, and we are inseparable from our biosphere. The biggest lie we are told is that as individuals, we are independent of our world.
WORLD
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Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
All Biological life on earth is possible because of a discrete digital mechanism of preservation and replication.

The mechanism of signaling between the superorganism we know of as bacteria and its ongoing war against viruses is through a digital mechanism.

The source of innovation in biology is in this milieu of microbiome and viromes that are ubiquitous in every complex multicellular organism on earth. Humans are walking ecologies and cannot survive stripped of these ecologies.

We can picture this as a cloud of digital interaction that surrounds all of us.

The cells of multicellular creatures however do not communicate in the same way as bacteria. The DNA of mammals are sequestered from daily activity so as to prevent wear and tear.
SCIENCE
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
A good theory of consciousness is one that predicts behavior that is unexplained by other current theories of consciousness. Einstein's General Theory was given credence because it predicted the bending of light.

What do current theories of consciousness predict that is outside common intuition about the nature of consciousness?

Many theories of consciousness are elegant, but do they predict anything out of the ordinary?

A theory of consciousness must be expressed in a formulation, consists of interpretations that are valid and predict something unexpected.


A bad theory of consciousness has ambiguous interpretations and predicts nothing out of the ordinary.
FOR LATER READ
Carlos E. Perez
Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine
It's a very different perspective when we realize that our bodies consist of an entire ecology of bacteria and viruses that are also passed to our ancestors. Mammals rear their young and as a consequence transfer the microbiome and virome to their offspring.


What does it mean to treat our individuality as ecologies? We are all ecologies existing in other ecologies. Nature is constantly performing a balancing act across multiple scales of existence.

There are bacteria and viruses that are unique to your ancestry as that of your own DNA. They have lived in symbiosis with your ancestor and will do so for your descendants.

It is an empirical fact that the microbiome in our stomach can influence not only our own moods but also our metabolism and thus our weight and health.

It is also intriguing to know that brains evolved out of stomachs and that our stomachs contain hundreds of millions of neurons. Humans can literally think with their gut.
HEALTH

More from Life

Mo Rajabifard
Mo Rajabifard
@morajabi
👨‍💻 Last resume I sent to a startup one year ago, sharing with you to get ideas:

- Forget what you don't have, make your strength bold
- Pick one work experience and explain what you did in detail w/ bullet points
- Write it towards the role you apply
- Give social proof

/thread


"But I got no work experience..."

Make a open source lib, make a small side project for yourself, do freelance work, ask friends to work with them, no friends? Find friends on Github, and Twitter.

Bonus points:

- Show you care about the company: I used the company's brand font and gradient for in the resume for my name and "Thank You" note.
- Don't list 15 things and libraries you worked with, pick the most related ones to the role you're applying.
-🙅‍♂️"copy cover letter"

"I got no firends, no work"

One practical way is to reach out to conferences and offer to make their website for free. But make sure to do it good. You'll get:

- a project for portfolio
- new friends
- work experience
- learnt new stuff
- new thing for Twitter bio

If you don't even have the skills yet, why not try your chance for @LambdaSchool? No? @freeCodeCamp. Still not? Pick something from here and learn https://t.co/7NPS1zbLTi
You'll feel very overwhelmed, no escape, just acknowledge it and keep pushing.
LIFE
Alexander J.A Cortes
Alexander J.A Cortes
@AJA_Cortes
The most interesting people defy categorization

Live an interesting enough life, and you’ll never be easy to describe
LIFE
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ArmaniTalks \U0001f399\U0001f525
ArmaniTalks 🎙🔥...
@ArmaniTalks
Manipulation Sign:

If you are compromising too much, there is a chance that you are getting manipulated.

Why are you the one that's always compromising?

How come the other person always gets their way?

Be more curious.

If something seems off, stick up for yourself.

'Wait, you sure I am being manipulated?'

I have no clue, that is only something that you can decide for yourself.

'Dang is there anything I need to look out for?'

Plenty..

But let me give you a few things to look out for.

👇

I see manipulation as skillfully controlling someone's behavior for egotistical or unethical purposes.

'How come people don't leave when it's happening to them?'

Because most people have 0 clue that they are being manipulated.

1. Guilt Trip

You ever made a mistake around someone, only for them to hold it over your head?

The will always bring up the mistake when you 2 are not seeing eye to eye.

These people will use that mistake as leverage to get what they want from you in the future.

Look out.

2. The Rationalizer

This person will commit the worst acts & find a way to rationalize it.

Example: cheaters when they get caught.

They have every excuse in the book for why they did it.

Heck, they are so good at rationalizing, they will make it seem like your fault.
LIFE
Mona Eltahawy
Mona Eltahawy
@monaeltahawy
Three years ago today, I was icing my knuckles because I’d beaten the fuck out of a man who had groped me in a club a couple of nights before. I wrote about it in my new essay https://t.co/SqzluTtJKb 📷 @rerutled #IBeatMyAssaulter


After I explained to a club manager what had happened, he ooked at my Beloved and asked me “Why didn’t you let your husband take care of it?” I almost beat him up too.

“First of all, he’s not my husband. Also, this is my body, I take care of it.”

Patriarchy enables and protects men who sexually assault women, and it demands that only other men “protect” us.

As long as we obey and behave in ways it approves of, of course. Protection is conditional.Because if we disobey, ha! I don't want to be protected. I want to be free

I started #IBeatMyAssaulter and women from around the world shared stories.

Five days earlier, I had started #MosqueMeToo to talk about being sexually assaulted during pilgrimage and women from around the world shared stories 🎥 @rerutled


And between the two #, men were showing me how easily the goal posts can move.

Under #MosqueMeToo men asked me, “Why didn’t you make more of a fuss?” Under #IBeatMyAssaulter men said, “You made too much of a fuss. You were too violent. Don’t you think you overreacted?”
LIFE
silkcoeur
silkcoeur
@silkcoeur
[🔞 hopekook, rimming] happy vday if you celebrate it, last night i fell asleep thinking about a horny hopekook date where they set aside time to cuddle and watch something soothing and mindless. jk chooses a nature documentary, more for background ambiance than anything else.

they start out with hobi laying crosswise on the couch, and jk crawls between his legs, rests his head on hobi's sternum. he likes to cuddle like that because he can hear hobi's heartbeat. also hobi will usually skritch his scalp when they're in this position.

he's doing that now, running his fingers from jk's forehead to the nape of his neck, but then he scoops along jk's ear instead. fingertips smoothing along the shell curve and then gently tugging on his earlobe. he keeps doing it, repetitive. the apartment is warm.

and quiet, too, except for the doc in the bg and the soft sounds of their breathing. hobi's fingertips keep tugging easily, gently on his ear lobe and all of a sudden jk realizes he's getting hard. he doesn't pay it much mind, one or both of them often do when they cuddle, even

if it's just a cuddle session & not anything further. but then hobi moves his leg, feels it, laughs softly, & moves his leg again - this time, deliberately. jk smiles, rubbing his mouth against hobi's sweatshirt. he rolls his hips, real slow like, and feels hobi's dick, too.
LIFE

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Reshu Nath
@ReshuNath
'Tera mera rishta kya, hindu, hindu,hindutva' is a clear take on 'tera mera rishta kya,la ilaha illallah'. As much as Hindutva hates the monotheistic religions especially Islam, there's a strange wistfulness and subliminal need at display now, to BE that they hate. 1


Charlie Hebdo doesn’t come up as a cautionary tale now but rather 'why cant we be like that'?
Growing up, Hanuman was an adorable deity for us, who swallowed the sun, or who couldn’t figure out what was Sanjeevani booti so he picked up a whole mountain and came back with it. 2

Or he was loyal, admirable and when he cleaved his chest, you saw both Ram and Sita. Now we have a lot of “Angry Hanuman” stickers. Why is a cute childlike God angry? We don’t know. It's a convenient blank space where to paint all the angst of Hindu Khatre mein hain narrative. 3


The other strange thing that has started happening is pictures of Ram appearing sans Sita. “Jai Siya Ram” has become “Jai Shri Ram”. Some people disingenuously explain it as being the same thing - because Shri is a name of Lakshmi. Not really. Siya is an apbhransh of Sita. 4


Shri is a prefix of respect in this case. Hinduism is being militarised. A woman/Sita has no place in it. Even the militaristic Goddess that is Durga has no place in this conception of neo-Hindu divinity, as evidenced by Dilip Mandal wondering where Durga came from. 5
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Julien 🌲
@julien
1/ there is this sense when you are young that your accomplishments need to be a list of things that seem impressive to others. A list of several items you did.

This isn't actually right, so here is another suggestion.

2/ I remember being 26 and writing about reading 52 books a year. I wrote blog posts about it. They got copied. It became "a thing." Now it's in Twitter bios. It looks impressive but it's insanely useless and I shouldn't have done it.

3/ what I should have known at that time is that only young idiots like myself, with no accomplishments, find list of tiny achievements impressive. Anyone who has actually done anything of substance doesn't gaf

4/ what is actually difficult, and worthwhile, instead is to do ONE single thing for a very, very long time. It's much harder and much rarer and results in outlier outcomes much more often.

Of course you can find this out too late if you are chasing the dragon of Ted talks etc

5/ if I had only worked on a startup for a year, I would've gotten nowhere, the same way that if you lift for 3 months, it achieves nothing. Everything good in life comes from perseverance, but at the beginning, you're just like "I need to be somebody!!!"
LIFE
Shalini Singh Sengar
Shalini Singh Sengar
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Post Independence, Army wanted to select the most experienced Indian commander as Army chief. But Nehru without consulting anyone appointed Gen Rob Lockhart, a senior British Army officer as the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the Indian Army.


Most people were shocked to know that Nehru selected a British Man after fighting for independence for over 200 years! Major Gen A A ‘Jick’ Rudra of the Indian Army was completely upset with the decision.


One day Lockhart met Nehru with a strategic plan and proposed many government directive defence policies for the country. He placed it on the table and explained the point to PM Nehru. After a while Lockhart walked out of the room and met AA Jick Rudra,+

Lockhart looked shell shocked and stunned. When asked what happened he said “The PM took one look at my paper and blew his top. Rubbish! Total rubbish! We don’t need a defence plan. Our policy is ahimsa (non-violence). We foresee no military threats. Scrap the army!”

One year after the incident the Kashmir crisis had increased and Gen Lockhart used to exchange ideas with the Gen Douglas Gracey who was commander in chief of Pakistan Army.There were many infiltrations along the border which Lockhart knew and took no action. But Lt Gen Cariappa+
HISTORY
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
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Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

(end)
SOCIETY