Tag Archives: ai

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The week is like an engine

Actually, I call it Slot Achievement Engine.

This might be left-field: it’s the way I think (I’ve disccovered). It’s actually thinking, predicated on a corporeal sensation, in three dimensions. I’m reminded of when Aldous Huxley first took LSD. He was disdappointed that he, uniquely, did not see wild surrealstic scenes with millions of colors. In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley wrote about his mescaline experience in 1953, where he anticipated seeing “manycolored geometries, of animated architectures, rich with gems and fabulously lovely” but the experience focused on external reality. Well, that’s what it’s like being an “intellectual”. I’m not one. I DO see “manycolored geometries, of animated architectures”, but don’t need the LSD. In fact, it’s kind of a “disease” – chronic, I can’t get past it, or around it. Always with the geometries!

Quick plug: A fuller account of Huxley’s mescaline experience can be found on chiwijournal.substack.com. 

So this thing gets built inside me, and is tangible. I can find it, and access it. And I get “signals” from it, when the “slots” get filled.

Here’s how I make each week:

Slot Achievement Game – A mind-based achievement tracking system

This program implements a game with multiple fillable slots that track progress toward
completing an “engine”. Each slot can be customized with a unique name and assigned an
achievement level from 1 to 5.

Key Features:

  • Multiple customizable slots (default: 5 slots)
  • Each slot has an editable name field (format: “Slot:”)
  • Achievement levels range from 1-5 for each slot
  • Color-coded visual feedback:
  • Real-time progress tracking with progress bar
  • Completion notification when all slots are filled
  • Reset functionality to clear all slots and names

The “engine” is considered complete when all slots have been filled with some achievement level:

What I am doing here is “mocking up” something that I have felt, lurking in my psyche, for quite some time, in order to share it with you. It’s not an “app”, in the digital world. For some people, there have always been “apps” – in the cerebral world – although I don’t use “cerebral” or “corporeal” in my own language. These kinds of concepts belong to a childish, “Western” conception of the human. I tend toward the Vedic teachings, which allow for such mechanisms to be a part of the human experience. In this case, I would term the realm for my inner coding “subtle body”, in contrast, or in harmony with, the physical body:

**Sukṣma-śarīra (सूक्ष्म‑शरीर)**                                                                                 

In the Vedic, Upaniṣadic and yogic traditions the “subtle body” is called **sukṣma‑śarīra**, literally  
“*the fine or subtle body*.”  It is distinct from:

| Aspect | Sanskrit term | Rough English equivalent |
|——–|—————|————————–|
| Gross physical body | **sthūla‑śarīra** (स्थूल‑शरीर) | “coarse/dense body” |
| Subtle body | **sukṣma‑śarīra** (सूक्ष्म‑शरीर) | “subtle, fine body” |
| Causal or causal‑karmic body | **karana‑śarīra** (कारण‑शरीर) / **para‑rūpa** (पर‑रूप) | “causal/seed  
body” |

Terminology I use:

  1. engine: In computing, an “engine” refers to a core, specialized software component that provides specific functionality or “power” for a larger application, much like a car’s engine drives the vehicle but isn’t the whole car. It handles complex, repetitive tasks like processing data, rendering graphics, or running game logic, abstracting away low-level details and allowing developers to focus on the user experience, with examples including search engines, rendering engines, and database engines. Key Characteristics
    • Core Functionality: It’s the central processing part, handling the “heavy lifting” of a program.
    • Specialized: Engines are designed for specific tasks, like a physics engine for game simulations or a rendering engine for web browsers.
    • Abstracted: It often works behind the scenes, providing an interface for other parts of the software without exposing complex internal workings to the user or other modules.
    • Metaphorical: The term borrows from mechanical engines to signify a powerful, essential subsystem
  2. slot: A slot comprises the operation issue and data path machinery surrounding a set of one or more execution unit (also called a functional unit (FU)) which share these resources. A slot is a computer processor connection designed to make upgrading the processor easier, where the user would only have to slide a processor into a slot.
  3. game: In Wittgenstein’s theory, a “game” isn’t defined by a single set of essential properties but by a family resemblance: a network of overlapping similarities (rules, objectives, skills, fun) linking diverse activities like chess, cards, and ball games, showing no single common thread but rather a continuum of shared features, much like words in a “language-game” gain meaning through their use in specific contexts, not abstract definitions. To understand “game,” one learns its diverse uses and rules within a specific “language-game,” not by finding one universal essence

It’s easier for me to describe myself now, at age 63, partly because I have let my mind wander, and followed it closely. Now that I can “see” it, it doesn’t upset me so much.

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the intellectual is extinct

not intelligence – intelligence is a complex topic. I adhere to Howard Gardner’s 6 intelligences work (note that my spell checker “corrects” me for making “intelligence” plural). intelligence, as we humans understand it, easily extends to primates, dogs, cats…

intellect, though, is another thing: intellect is to intelligence as musician is to music (kind of – because what is music? what is a musician?) on a basic level, intelligence is the mechanics of solving problems, problems here meaning situations which one wants to alter, to be distinguished from whining on the potty with kleenex about all your “problems”. the mechanical intelligence is essentially unalterable, biological, and every creature possesses it, without acquiring it.

we acquire knowledge, which augments or supplies intelligence. the acquisition of that knowledge is widely varied in its method: some go to endless college, where they intake that which they think will augment their intelligence in beneficial ways – in ways that will allow them to solve specific problem sets. doctors want to solve medical problems. for this, they require medical knowledge.

but of course, intelligence, as Gardner tells us, is not generic – its variance is myriad. you could use a word like “aptitude”, if you fear intelligence types. So, a doctor with tons of medical knowledge, can be terrible at solving medical problems even worse, a doctor can substitute problem solving (intelligence) with sophisticated application of knowledge blocks – not unlike modern AI “RAG” retrievel mechanisms, where by questions are answered by retrieving appropriate text blocks from articles, rapidly, and collating them into actionable from. in AI, this uses vectors – long chains of similarity of ideas, from which the machine chooses “the best”. not to be too esoteric here – you know these people: they are great standardized test takers. there are legends of people who run a racket of memorizing huge chunks of written data, in preparation for competitive tests – even sell their skills on the black market.

But worse yet are those who flood the professions today, completely unequipped to apply intelligence – critical thinking, analysis, synthesis – all words gone by the wayside in modern times. This is the doctor who, in 15 minutes, discerns the type of cancer you have (this, discernment, is indeed a type of intelligence), but then skips the deduction, and jumps to sophisticated code matching, to produce the cause and the treatment of this type (“label”) of cancer that you have. and then they proceed to kill you – because the human body is so complex, as is a modern pathology like cancer, that text retrieval is highly likely to pick the wrong similarity. this is also compounded by the nature of the the texts which are produced today – also flawed by the industrial nature of research and research writing – there is no money in finding the needle in the haystack – in fact, that needle is usually the thing that disproves your whole thesis, and hell, you don’t have time to truly follow the scientific method!

I’ve wandered again. got hung up on widely diversified intelligence, battling with highly specialized knowledge storage and retrieval. what I was aiming at was a dinosaur – the intellectual; the intellect. a dying or dead breed of person who, through rigid social structure, was forced to learn a raft of non-specialized knowledge, for some unstated reason. the opposite of OBE (objectives based education). The “objective” was to become an intellectual – something pretty esoteric, but supported socially. It was part of social selection in the intelligentsia to regularly quote esoteric Heraclitus, in the context of rhetorically complex argumentation, to “win” a likewise intellectual point. mental masturbation, in its most common application.

to this end, one learned Latin, Greek, plus a modern language, and, not just at the SAT level. there were aged task masters, whose claim to position was exactly their pedantry. because you can’t really learn this shit without repetition and rote memorization.

I could take a moment here to talk about Picasso – this painter who is famous for abstraction. Picasso started out in the grueling, pedantic system of classical painting – did hundreds of non-abstract drawings of tables, flowers, etc., with no hope of abstraction – because he was the germinal inventor of abstraction! at some point, he began “cubism” – whereby you abstract simple geometric shapes, from those rigid “classical” 3-point-persepctive drawings. this process evolved into his ultimate abstractions. but none of this could have happened without his being inundated with the entire history of rendering, and forced to replicate it.

so the intellectual is the product of excessive education, an acuity to problem solving intelligence, and, of course, a wild spirit longing for freedom.

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the question being…

Do I need another – yet another – writing tool, like FreeWrite? Answer is likely NO. While it is critical to write all the time, for many reasons, this is not dependent on the tools. People have written entire novels on the floor of their prison cell.

But this is more easily supported by a common psychological construct of deflection: when a task is difficult, for any reason, or rather, when a practice, involving not-so-diffiult tasks, is difficult to establish, the human (21st Century Western Human) will tend toward buying something, rather than just doing something with the materials and tools at hand. We see it in everything from yoga to music – buy a yoga mat, a towel, special clothing, etc., instead of just getting on the mat, or the floor, or the grass. All these have been done by great masters.

Deflection is the killer. Will swamp you in a boat in a moat circling with a single oar.

Not to say that equipment – finely tuned, correctly engineered equipment – is the problem. It is not. Once deflection is ruled out, good equipment is essential. In music, great players can play well on shitty equipment. Beginners can play on shitty equipment, but can’t overcome the physical barriers on such equipment, as can the masters. The key here is positive reinforcement, because we are talking about the practice, more than the product. In order to establish the practice, the human needs rewards – even the most advance bodhi, no matter what they tell you. We are all creatures, and will remain so until we are liberated by death. Further, there is no shame in being a creature, no merit in disdain of motivation.

Simply, if the music sounds good, or, if the asana feels good, the mind-body will blossom, and motivation will be achieved. A poor instrument will cause psychological pain; an instrument capable of beautiful sound will inspire the player to hunt down the optimal physical application that produces that sound. But this beauty must be experienced at least once, and acknowledged by the player. Oftentimes, this is just a miracle – a happy accident. Indeed, in life, we don’t summon g*d – we are summoned; or, we stumble upon it. We commit a generous act, and get surprised by the return flow or reward – the sensation of oneness with the Lord.

So yes, by all means, get a wonderful Lamy ink pen; get nice paper; and get the FreeWrite. But be prepared for these tools to just sit there and gather dust; be prepared for the ink to dry up. Because the tool is not the maker. The spark, the holy spirit, the tao – whatever you have felt as the origin of creativity – is the maker. Sadly, the maker can’t be bought, and can’t itself be made. We often call it a gift – which must be given, and received. And no amouunt of money or hard work can make it. It must be found.

So much for equality or equity. Creativity is outside the purview of social order. Can’t be legislated into existence, the same way no law or social injustice can quell it: the more the artist is chained and beaten, fingers broken and tongue cut out, the louder the outpouring of creativity.

So, what to do, Dad? I don’t know. But I say: begin with the tools you have, to create the practice. Struggle with the limitations at the beginning. Find the spark, even in the dark. When the flow ultimately smacks up against a technical wall, afford yourself the next-level tech, and see if that re-opens or re-ups the flow. If it doesn’t, it wasn’t the blocker. Back to square one.