Harrison Ainsworth

The way to the truth is to build.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

It is the structural essence of the internet, in its insatiate info-ouroborocisation, to suspend and surround us all in symbolism, while desiccating and abrading the life from all symbols.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

@zetalyrae Replacing the word 'premise' with 'hypothesis' would be a very good start.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

💬 "It is clear enough from this material what the ultimate aim of alchemy really was: it was trying to produce a corpus subtile, a transfigured and resurrected body, i.e., a body that was at the same time spirit."
‒ Jung, CW12 3.5.2.h ¶511

(ie, a self-model)

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

@GrantHBrennerMD https://t.co/ZKA0sSBtf0

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

Think of the brain as a bodily organ for the metabolisation of abstract patterns.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

Think of the brain as a bodily organ for the metabolisation of abstract patterns.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

We have been inducted by birth to enact an information complexification transcendence. Our summum bonum, our purpose, our goal, beyond which there can be none more elated, is to construct a new universe before this one dies.

Are you giving your 100% today ???

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

Concepts, categories, have robust meaning: an inside, an outside, criteria of entry. And in those an analysis articulable with other elements of knowledge. What does 'family resemblance' have? None of those, no substitutes, no structure, nothing.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

A way to see that 'family resemblance' can only subtract from any understanding and adds nothing, observe its usage. It is only ever summoned to deny a concept, or accept its absence, and replace it with nothing. To cite 'family resemblance' is like saying 'it is just magic'.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

What is 'agency'? How about anti-entropic action: first in concentration of energy, second in generation of more complex information …

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

@michaeloburns If technology can take on the characteristics of anyone who uses it, surely it must be unbiased, ie neutral.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

If a sign says "I am conscious.", it is like it saying "I have three lungs.", or "The sky is green.".

There is no 'symbol grounding problem': there is no fault in its meaning and it is completely understandable. It is simply wrong.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

If LLMs have a 'symbol grounding' problem and are hence meaningless, then books must be too. Because books are a limit case of LLMs: they just always give one answer.

Books are meaningful, like LLMs are. Both are info components of patterns of action.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

💬 "For these scintillations are not the accension of the air, upon the collision of two hard bodies, but rather the inflamable effluencies or vitrified sparks discharged from the bodies collided."
‒ b2 c1 'Pseudodoxia', Browne

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

Forget Rust and Zig.

The real optimal performance programming language is the original ❄️ C++85 minus inheritance and operator-overloading (to accompany the lack of templates and exceptions).

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

No single model can express all details of reality, but every detail of reality can be expressed by some model.

Each model is defined in terms of the others, but all form a fully connected network.

This is the structure of language, meaning, and understanding.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

@keithfrankish Ah, I need to report a problem with that. The sight of fresh snow in the morning, the texture of velvet, the whirl of air in dark room, just don't seem quite as full of life as they did decades ago …

[Manuel Simoni @msimoni]

"So I don't think they think they're writing software. I think they're midwifing a deity here."
I misread that as "midwitting a deity".
Make of that what you will.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

@msimoni Perfect.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

"In the Rosarium [Philosophorum (1550)] the prima materia is called 'radix ipsius' (root of itself)."
‒ Jung, CW12 3.4.1 ¶429

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

Religious myth, alchemy, Jungian individuation ‒ these can all be seen more abstractly as guides for a system to build a good agentic self-model.

[Harrison Ainsworth @hxa7241]

Functionalism is right because it is uniquely productive of empirical exploration. From it you can build, and building alone is proof.

Functionalism encompasses all knowledge generating theory. Theory infertile of artifact will be destitute of novel truth, and lead nowhere.