A.I. assistants are now being developed. Apparently they can be set to roam the internet and like bloodhounds to endlessly search for information you’re interested in without constant attention. The assistant could be programmed to act like a Baleen whale eating data and filtering for connection, leads, idea inventory, etc. I suspect this must be one of the techniques being used by material scientists and pharma companies.
May i ask here what it might "mean" for a (non-ortho) GA understanding to accept as best such recourse to metaphor? I mean, does a Baleen whale filter for anything whilst nainlining krill? Has some dreadful missplicing been made here twixt the purely appetitive and the always freshly aroused desire for more information? Did not GA intrinsically make the promise of moving somewhere "beyond" metaphor...?
I was looking in my own replies, and now I see your'e referring yo James's comment. The baleen whale filters out the water to hold the krill, right? AI filters out what it is programmed to see as "noise" so as to hold on to relevant "messages." "Filtering" is a way of speaking about attention--you pay attention to one thing by neglecting and ignoring everything else.
Yes. I see now that James' commemt is just fine. Funnily eniugh it was "payiing attention to one thing and ignoring everything else" (very late at night) that made me 'jump the gun' there..
Ha! You can get around the formulaic to some extent by working on you biography. I tell I want evidence based responses using academic articles and to provide citations. Probably other specifiers as well to get me out of the everage type of answers it give to save time and energy. Try playing with that. Give yourself a nickname.
Right, keeping up a dialogue with more precise and detailed prompts in response to previous answers will improve performance. Ultimately, it would be necessary to train a personalized AI specifically on selected data--e.g., everything published in GA plus everything I've written plus other interlocutors (e.g., history, anthropology, literary, etc., texts) so that the discussion can be framed in the way and at the level one would like. I would want to be able to ask the AI, for example, how Dostoevsky might have made sense of the differences between mimetic theory, GA and Center Study and have it give an informed answer in Dostoevsky's voice--then you'd really get something no human could provide.
Yes, I first asked Bard for a definition of GA just to have it on hand. Then I asked it to analyze your critique of GA based on the information on GA it came up with. I was just curious what it would come up with. I think I might drop the whole conversation into ChatGBT4 to watch what it comes up with. It’s interesting to play the two AI’s against each other. I’ve been following GA since the early 90’s after reading Girard. I am a little annoyed by Gans political opinions, but I typically read past it because the basic theory is so compelling. Your critique is welcome dialog.
I've played around with it a bit like that as well. It does OK for a while but then gets swallowed up in formulaic "on the one hand... on the other hand" phrases which it has to find a way to plug in, however inappropriate. But they will get better.
Anyway, thanks--I don't know what your politics are but from some angles I may be way more annoying than Gans.
(Ahem) speaking of which, in linking to and re-reading the negative capability post (was very hesitant to mention this but it's persisting in bugging me), i was jarred in the midst of much fine stimulation when i came to "pathetic liberal concept of empathy". Does not such comment err rather badly on the side of gratuitous? I mean, i'm fully aware of the ghastly magnitude of what one thinks of as 'the empathy industry', but the very concept itself, in the raw? Funnily enough. I had not long after reading been idling in a store where two ladies were conversing, and it was easy to hear that their exchange basically consisted of nothing but enthusiastically empathising w/ one another, in a sort of cascade.
What if i had approached them and enquired if they were aware that their attentions were not sufficiently attuned to the entirety of the scene in which this, their present conversation, was taking place?
Speaking of being way more annoying than Gans politically? Anyway, regarding those women, it would be interesting to know what either could or was ready to do for the other regarding the topic of empathy. But if the cascade makes them feel good, who could object? But empathy, to refer back to that post, does seem to me incompatible with negative capability, which requires entering into the life and thinking of that which you don't empathize with, and even that which causes the suffering of those you're inclined to empathize with. Maybe we could pose a question: what kind of scene does empathy generate?
You never need to hesitate to mention anything of theoretical importance. And I'm probably past the point where I need to take gratuitous shots at liberalism.
Hesitation (ironically enough given the core-thodox theory!) is indeed too great a part of what modus i might be said to have. I guess my hope is that, by feeling free to comment more 'openly' hereabouts regardless of how much of theoretical import. I judge the effort to bringeth, i might loosen things up to the point where that *does* begins to kick in..
"Pointing to the same thing means pointing to a center and the more precise and differentiated the central thing we point to is to be the more everything else must be held constant and so one redeems to idioms effecting that constancy in presenting to some community the sample."
Sentences like that one suggest to me that emulation of center study practices may still be a long way off!
When you're pointing to one thing, for that thing to be seen, everything else (the background) has to be held constant. That means one redeems the idioms making that constancy possible--one "affirms" the names and places of whatever is needed to keep the background secure. And this is done while and by presenting the sample--let's say what I'm pointing to some particular criminal act made possible by a lapse in law enforcement resulting from some political power move. I can only point to that act if I presuppose the entire edifice of "law order" and assume enough agreement on that to make what I'm pointing to meaningful. Even though I might question or probe further into that edifice on some other occasion, here I simply presuppose it, and the possibility of an authority that can maintain it. Of course, it might turn out that such assumptions are so untenable as to make my sample dissolve. At another level of inquiry, the oscillation between what I'm presenting and the assumptions I need to maintain might become more fluid.
Wouldn't this fall apart in any scene of war? When the secure 'background' could be breached at any moment by allies of those you are advancing on at center?
I suppose i'm not getting the full sense of a 'redeemed idiom', let alone how same 'makes constancy possible'?
As ever, one needs to clearly recall so much earlier Bouvard to make what you write readily intelligible
Yes, the scope of sustainable inquiries is much narrower in war.
More importantly, I agree with your last sentence--my writing is increasingly "intra-referential," and I don't see any other way of doing things right now. I'm assuming readers who are invested, and who knows how many there can be; but there's no way of really developing concepts other than by this constant recycling of them in new contexts and combinations. I'm following leads opened up by previous work.
I am definitely "invested", but experience extended bouts of despair when there seems to be just no way of 'bridging' what one one reads here with what one gets to/manages to talk about to otherwisely intelligent others, most of whom cannot even cotton to so much as the essentials of 'basic GA' , and being a communally-impelled creature, one wants to 'press on' regardless somehow...to *do something with* what one reads at any cost, to avoid that turning back to nothing.. one might even say the intra-referential idioms seem...publically unredeemable!
Comparing Generative Anthropology (GA) and "Infra-Humaning"
Both articles deal with the question of human language and culture's origins, but from different perspectives:
Generative Anthropology (GA):
Originary event: a single point of crisis and symbolic communication emergence.
Mimetic desire: we desire what others desire, potentially leading to conflict.
Language as fundamental in culture's origin, mediating desire and the object.
Ethical implications: recognizing others and deferring violence through symbols.
Interdisciplinary approach.
Strengths: Offers a coherent explanation for language and culture's origins.
Emphasizes the importance of symbolic communication.
Opens new avenues for understanding human society.
Weaknesses: Lack of empirical evidence for the originary event.
Interdisciplinary nature can be challenging in traditional academia.
Risks overgeneralizing from specific contexts.
"Infra-Humaning":
Central argument: Criticizes GA's rigidity and proposes a more dynamic understanding of human communication. Humans constantly "human-humaning" through learning and creating new idioms (ways of using language). No fixed definition of "human," as we continuously expand our possibilities.
Strengths: Challenges and complements GA with a focus on the ongoing process of communication. Emphasizes the fluidity and context-dependence of language.
Provides a fresh perspective on human identity and meaning-making.
Weaknesses: Less structured and theoretically cohesive than GA.
Relies on personal interpretations and metaphors.
Doesn't offer a complete alternative to the originary hypothesis.
Comparing the Criticism:
Logic and consistency: The criticism in "Infra-Humaning" focuses on GA's limitations based on the lack of concrete evidence for the originary event and its potential rigidity. These points are logically presented and consistent with the proposed alternative of constant "human-humaning."
Accuracy: While the criticism touches on valid limitations of GA, it might oversimplify some aspects. For example, GA acknowledges the need for further research and encourages interdisciplinary discussions, not just a fixed interpretation.
Success of the criticism: "Infra-Humaning" offers a thought-provoking critique that pushes GA to refine its claims and embrace a more dynamic view of human communication. However, it doesn't completely dismantle GA's core concepts, suggesting a potential co-existence of both perspectives.
Conclusion: Both GA and "Infra-Humaning" offer valuable insights into the complex question of human language and culture's origins. GA provides a theoretical framework with a specific event as a starting point, while "Infra-Humaning" highlights the ongoing process and context-dependent nature of human communication. Their differences and criticisms encourage a nuanced understanding of these issues, reminding us that there might be multiple facets to this fascinating puzzle.
Bard refers to "both articles," but what's the other one? "Generative Anthropology"? It's still interesting to see what these things can do and what they can't.
Supporting him the way his family is supporting him, with love only.
A.I. assistants are now being developed. Apparently they can be set to roam the internet and like bloodhounds to endlessly search for information you’re interested in without constant attention. The assistant could be programmed to act like a Baleen whale eating data and filtering for connection, leads, idea inventory, etc. I suspect this must be one of the techniques being used by material scientists and pharma companies.
Yes, I wonder when that will be come more generally available or how it is possible to get access to it.
May i ask here what it might "mean" for a (non-ortho) GA understanding to accept as best such recourse to metaphor? I mean, does a Baleen whale filter for anything whilst nainlining krill? Has some dreadful missplicing been made here twixt the purely appetitive and the always freshly aroused desire for more information? Did not GA intrinsically make the promise of moving somewhere "beyond" metaphor...?
Which metaphor are you referring to?
Ok so strictiy speaking it's a simile. "Like a Baleen ehale ...."
I was looking in my own replies, and now I see your'e referring yo James's comment. The baleen whale filters out the water to hold the krill, right? AI filters out what it is programmed to see as "noise" so as to hold on to relevant "messages." "Filtering" is a way of speaking about attention--you pay attention to one thing by neglecting and ignoring everything else.
Yes. I see now that James' commemt is just fine. Funnily eniugh it was "payiing attention to one thing and ignoring everything else" (very late at night) that made me 'jump the gun' there..
Oh, yeah. Massachusetts born Irish/US Kennedy Democrat.
So surely you're supporting RFK Jr. this time around.
Ha! You can get around the formulaic to some extent by working on you biography. I tell I want evidence based responses using academic articles and to provide citations. Probably other specifiers as well to get me out of the everage type of answers it give to save time and energy. Try playing with that. Give yourself a nickname.
Right, keeping up a dialogue with more precise and detailed prompts in response to previous answers will improve performance. Ultimately, it would be necessary to train a personalized AI specifically on selected data--e.g., everything published in GA plus everything I've written plus other interlocutors (e.g., history, anthropology, literary, etc., texts) so that the discussion can be framed in the way and at the level one would like. I would want to be able to ask the AI, for example, how Dostoevsky might have made sense of the differences between mimetic theory, GA and Center Study and have it give an informed answer in Dostoevsky's voice--then you'd really get something no human could provide.
Yes, I first asked Bard for a definition of GA just to have it on hand. Then I asked it to analyze your critique of GA based on the information on GA it came up with. I was just curious what it would come up with. I think I might drop the whole conversation into ChatGBT4 to watch what it comes up with. It’s interesting to play the two AI’s against each other. I’ve been following GA since the early 90’s after reading Girard. I am a little annoyed by Gans political opinions, but I typically read past it because the basic theory is so compelling. Your critique is welcome dialog.
I've played around with it a bit like that as well. It does OK for a while but then gets swallowed up in formulaic "on the one hand... on the other hand" phrases which it has to find a way to plug in, however inappropriate. But they will get better.
Anyway, thanks--I don't know what your politics are but from some angles I may be way more annoying than Gans.
(Ahem) speaking of which, in linking to and re-reading the negative capability post (was very hesitant to mention this but it's persisting in bugging me), i was jarred in the midst of much fine stimulation when i came to "pathetic liberal concept of empathy". Does not such comment err rather badly on the side of gratuitous? I mean, i'm fully aware of the ghastly magnitude of what one thinks of as 'the empathy industry', but the very concept itself, in the raw? Funnily enough. I had not long after reading been idling in a store where two ladies were conversing, and it was easy to hear that their exchange basically consisted of nothing but enthusiastically empathising w/ one another, in a sort of cascade.
What if i had approached them and enquired if they were aware that their attentions were not sufficiently attuned to the entirety of the scene in which this, their present conversation, was taking place?
Speaking of being way more annoying than Gans politically? Anyway, regarding those women, it would be interesting to know what either could or was ready to do for the other regarding the topic of empathy. But if the cascade makes them feel good, who could object? But empathy, to refer back to that post, does seem to me incompatible with negative capability, which requires entering into the life and thinking of that which you don't empathize with, and even that which causes the suffering of those you're inclined to empathize with. Maybe we could pose a question: what kind of scene does empathy generate?
You never need to hesitate to mention anything of theoretical importance. And I'm probably past the point where I need to take gratuitous shots at liberalism.
Hesitation (ironically enough given the core-thodox theory!) is indeed too great a part of what modus i might be said to have. I guess my hope is that, by feeling free to comment more 'openly' hereabouts regardless of how much of theoretical import. I judge the effort to bringeth, i might loosen things up to the point where that *does* begins to kick in..
We'll see!
"Pointing to the same thing means pointing to a center and the more precise and differentiated the central thing we point to is to be the more everything else must be held constant and so one redeems to idioms effecting that constancy in presenting to some community the sample."
Sentences like that one suggest to me that emulation of center study practices may still be a long way off!
Small fix, but, anyway, I can wait.
I lose it from "and so one...."
OK, let me take a look.
When you're pointing to one thing, for that thing to be seen, everything else (the background) has to be held constant. That means one redeems the idioms making that constancy possible--one "affirms" the names and places of whatever is needed to keep the background secure. And this is done while and by presenting the sample--let's say what I'm pointing to some particular criminal act made possible by a lapse in law enforcement resulting from some political power move. I can only point to that act if I presuppose the entire edifice of "law order" and assume enough agreement on that to make what I'm pointing to meaningful. Even though I might question or probe further into that edifice on some other occasion, here I simply presuppose it, and the possibility of an authority that can maintain it. Of course, it might turn out that such assumptions are so untenable as to make my sample dissolve. At another level of inquiry, the oscillation between what I'm presenting and the assumptions I need to maintain might become more fluid.
Does that help?
Wouldn't this fall apart in any scene of war? When the secure 'background' could be breached at any moment by allies of those you are advancing on at center?
I suppose i'm not getting the full sense of a 'redeemed idiom', let alone how same 'makes constancy possible'?
As ever, one needs to clearly recall so much earlier Bouvard to make what you write readily intelligible
Yes, the scope of sustainable inquiries is much narrower in war.
More importantly, I agree with your last sentence--my writing is increasingly "intra-referential," and I don't see any other way of doing things right now. I'm assuming readers who are invested, and who knows how many there can be; but there's no way of really developing concepts other than by this constant recycling of them in new contexts and combinations. I'm following leads opened up by previous work.
I am definitely "invested", but experience extended bouts of despair when there seems to be just no way of 'bridging' what one one reads here with what one gets to/manages to talk about to otherwisely intelligent others, most of whom cannot even cotton to so much as the essentials of 'basic GA' , and being a communally-impelled creature, one wants to 'press on' regardless somehow...to *do something with* what one reads at any cost, to avoid that turning back to nothing.. one might even say the intra-referential idioms seem...publically unredeemable!
Bard comments:
Comparing Generative Anthropology (GA) and "Infra-Humaning"
Both articles deal with the question of human language and culture's origins, but from different perspectives:
Generative Anthropology (GA):
Originary event: a single point of crisis and symbolic communication emergence.
Mimetic desire: we desire what others desire, potentially leading to conflict.
Language as fundamental in culture's origin, mediating desire and the object.
Ethical implications: recognizing others and deferring violence through symbols.
Interdisciplinary approach.
Strengths: Offers a coherent explanation for language and culture's origins.
Emphasizes the importance of symbolic communication.
Opens new avenues for understanding human society.
Weaknesses: Lack of empirical evidence for the originary event.
Interdisciplinary nature can be challenging in traditional academia.
Risks overgeneralizing from specific contexts.
"Infra-Humaning":
Central argument: Criticizes GA's rigidity and proposes a more dynamic understanding of human communication. Humans constantly "human-humaning" through learning and creating new idioms (ways of using language). No fixed definition of "human," as we continuously expand our possibilities.
Strengths: Challenges and complements GA with a focus on the ongoing process of communication. Emphasizes the fluidity and context-dependence of language.
Provides a fresh perspective on human identity and meaning-making.
Weaknesses: Less structured and theoretically cohesive than GA.
Relies on personal interpretations and metaphors.
Doesn't offer a complete alternative to the originary hypothesis.
Comparing the Criticism:
Logic and consistency: The criticism in "Infra-Humaning" focuses on GA's limitations based on the lack of concrete evidence for the originary event and its potential rigidity. These points are logically presented and consistent with the proposed alternative of constant "human-humaning."
Accuracy: While the criticism touches on valid limitations of GA, it might oversimplify some aspects. For example, GA acknowledges the need for further research and encourages interdisciplinary discussions, not just a fixed interpretation.
Success of the criticism: "Infra-Humaning" offers a thought-provoking critique that pushes GA to refine its claims and embrace a more dynamic view of human communication. However, it doesn't completely dismantle GA's core concepts, suggesting a potential co-existence of both perspectives.
Conclusion: Both GA and "Infra-Humaning" offer valuable insights into the complex question of human language and culture's origins. GA provides a theoretical framework with a specific event as a starting point, while "Infra-Humaning" highlights the ongoing process and context-dependent nature of human communication. Their differences and criticisms encourage a nuanced understanding of these issues, reminding us that there might be multiple facets to this fascinating puzzle.
Bard refers to "both articles," but what's the other one? "Generative Anthropology"? It's still interesting to see what these things can do and what they can't.