Abduction

folk art

I think most of us know what "abduction" means in a popular (folk) culture context, as in "abducted by aliens". Or rather, we may not know precisely what abduction would entail, but we have a ballpark meaning, and leave it to the science fiction author to spell it out in more detail.  What happens to a person when abducted by aliens?  The same question arises as with kidnapping:  are they ever returned?  Were persons sold into slavery "abducted"?

However, what I didn't know, until today, was that the pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce had introduced "abduction" in concert with the more familiar induction and deduction i.e. in the namespace of logic and its mental processes (algorithms).  The process of abduction involves improvisation, coming up with a ready explanation.  The question is how does one do that effectively.  Another related question is how does one test one's abduction through deduction and/or induction, by way of verification?

A word similar to Peirce's meaning of "abducted" might be "adduced".  However, "to be abducted" in the passive sense, as if by aliens, is closer to that sense of intervention by divine grace and/or demonic possession.  The impulse comes from outside, inspiring the intuitionist.   Ramanujan said as much.

The latter intuitionist, lightning struck by some insight, then needs to perform reality checks, as to whether A really does provide insights regarding some surprising development C (these are the letters Peirce uses).

In the folk religion of the Subgenius (Church of), the aspiration to be abducted on X-Day (one of the dogmas), might be understood as metaphoric, but also as a prayer for ascendancy and revelation, through moments of Genius and/or Gnosis.

One visits (passes through) a genius state ("cosmic zero"), from a default awaiting state of sub-genius-hood.  

A "higher power" (a deity, muse or spirit) has to provide the juice, the impetus, the catalyst, in order for the sub-genius to "make the leap" (through that moment of enlightenment) and then return to the default (faulty?) or deficit state.  

From the perspective of genius, the sub-genius state may indeed be considered fallen or faulty, which is why the proper attutude of humility is chosen by Subgenius disciples.  Bob gets lucky.  Bob bumbles.  Normalizing the faulty state is the business of the normative bureaucrat, lost in the Matrix, out of touch with how weird that is, to be "normal".

To excerpt from Mapping the Mapper, by Paul Taylor & John Wood in 1997 [1]:

The mathematical concept of mapping

This project attempts to map the ideas and designs of Buckminster Fuller, who himself developed maps: actual geographical maps and intellectual maps of fields of study relevant to design. In conjunction with a mapping of his totalistic conception of design thinking, the notion of mapping itself underpins the application of Peirce's notion of abduction, here construed as a mechanism of conceptual development and problem solving. The facilities afforded by hypertext enable the user to abductively relate disparate ideas within the field of design and outside it, in such a way that, in the process of mapping the range of concerns presented by Fuller, the user becomes aware of the issue of mapping itself, and thereby increasingly self-aware in respect of the mappings she herself develops in interaction with this hypertext environment. Thus, the user is enabled to develop a mental map of the inter-relationships between various fields and ideas relevant to the specific issues, which concern her. Beyond this, however, lie questions of mapping and modeling, which arise in the particular case of the subject matter of this hypertext. Fuller's geometrical theories can be conveniently investigated in this form, and can be tested and applied to other aspects of his work, as well as to other design questions.

Finding closer affinity with Pierce comes as a surprisingly valuable puzzle piece.  The gist of Richard Rorty's somewhat autobiographical Achieving Our Country was to put patriotism on a psychologically  secure basis within an American context that included Pragmatism, followed backward through certain writers, many of them activists.  

Moving forward, we have the Buckminster Fuller lineage, inheriting from Transcendentalism, itself a literary movement.  In Synergetics we find the integration of the visually vectorial with the more viscerally incommensurate, a marriage of Eulerian and Gibbsian attributes, in that namespace.

Patriotism might be construed as the free flow of libido (free love, not costly in karmic terms) within a personalized or customized Universe, containing ones folk, people or peeps.  

From the outside, a patriot appears as a specimen of some proud ethnicity, a member of some subculture, with patriotism emanating as a sense of "we" i.e. of community and shared subculture.  "We the people" suggests a pueblo, or a folk.  A spirit of inclusivity and/or diversity need not necessitate surrendering one's sense of taste nor one's powers of discrimination.

Per the James Hillman doctrine and discipline of soul-making or self-making, one might locate a self within an environs, as the complementary semantic space.  The two grow and develop together, one's self and one's country (a space of others in relationship), which country may be: a whole planet; some bordered region thereof; and/or a network of affiliated campuses -- all depending on one's sense of selfhood.

The IDEAbase idea of Paul Taylor and John Wood involves consciously thinking about hypertext in connection with the abductive process.  Hypertextual approaches to a discipline involve assembling a puzzle, piecing together structures, establishing mnemonic - neuronic highways and byways.  These structures are non-linear and their traversal is by default somewhat plodding.  However, when the insights kick in, harmonic resonance is achieved, in the form of epiphanies, fits of genius, related to concepts of "possession" and "seizure", or "abduction" in other words [2]:

Work on the IDEAbase system has focused on the abductive aspects of design thinking, as this provides an identifiably typical thinking process. This use of the notion of abduction is attributed to C.S. Peirce : "A surprising fact, C, is observed. But if a proposition, A, were true, C would be a matter of course. Hence, there is a reason to suspect that A is true." It has been recognized (Wood & Taylor, 1994) that designers rely heavily on abductive modes of thinking because it helps them to seek answers to immediate problems that cannot be found within the problem space itself. In other words, they will probably have to look beyond the confines of the design problem itself to find a workable solution.

[1] Taylor, P., & Wood, J., (1997), "Mapping the Mapper", a chapter in "Computers, Communications, and Mental Models", eds. Donald Day & Diane Kovacs, Taylor & Francis, London, ISBN 0-7484-0543-7, pp. 37-44, January 1997.

[2] Wood, J., (1994), "Chaos and the Virtual Library - strange attractors in the design studio", paper given at IDATER "94 conference (International Design and Technology Education Research) at Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK, (August, 1994). 

comical nation

 

High School in the Silicon Forest

Back to School

Those of you following my several efforts already know I have a goodly amount to say on the matter of "maths pedagogy" (my US heritage spellchecker says not to pluralize "math"). 

I also take up the term "andragogy" for good measure, meaning why give up on the adults?  Let them experience high school again too, not because they've failed but because of Future Shock per Toffler.  

Things change enough in one lifetime now, that going back to high school is not seen as a dis. The challenges are logistical.  The devil is in the details (a great cliche).

Actually, "Pythonic Andragogy" (spellchecker goes wild, "adding to dictionary" twice) is more what I'm known for on the Pycon and OSCON circuits, per whatever buried archival footage (I've curated some of it).  Part of maths pedagogy is to phase in a computer language and mix the two:  maths and programming.  Not really a new idea.  Lots of curricula explore these possibilities.

High school for adults would allow for more adult behaviors.  We'd have an outdoor camp-site based aesthetic in part to cut costs, in part to impart "camping skills" to a largely civilian population.  Come to one of our campuses and camp out.  If you want a dorm room in an apartment complex, we likely have those options.

A question is what adults have time to take off work and abandon their families in order to regress to a high school existence, much as some might like to.  This conjures the wrong picture.  A lot of high schoolers keep mixing it up (deliberately) with work and don't need to go anywhere.  Others might opt for a campus experience, but as a family camping expedition.

Another feature of high school for adults is they don't make you rack up debt.  Society benefits from your efforts to stay abreast societal changes, picking up another language (human or computer), learning to run a lathe, other power tools (3D printer, electric ATV...).

One reason I label it "high school" is to underscore the fundamental nature of this layer, already, in the present day.  Driving habits, dating habits, study habits... this is a formative time in the teen years, wherein various self disciplines become established, or don't.  We connect high school to the process of becoming who we will be.

What about designers who choose not to adopt this model and insist on "re-education camps" or "college" where adults (some with kids) are concerned.  The PR around "re-education camps" is already very negative and is associated with brainwashing.  Such camps are at the bottom of the barrel, like Guantanamo (a military prison).  

That leaves "college and university" as institutions we keep going back to, for another dip in the well of knowledge.

I'm planning not to quarrel too much about how other designers design their semantic spaces.  I've got the namespaces I've got, and those who take up studying my stuff end up knowing their way around from the inside.  Such is the pattern, vs-a-vs just about anyone.

Why I'm pitching my curriculum at more or less the high school level is I think our maths especially is in that sweet spot.  We have a geometry of vectors in a vector space, but with some alternative stipulations as to apparatus, making our IVM-based system "an API" to the more conventional XYZ one.  

Having two geometries going in tandem is eye-opening, not to mention enlightening.  As maths should be.

Another reason I focus on "high school level" is probably political, in that we still do associate the institution of high school with juveniles, and what's being revealed about so many in the political cast (or class) is their oft times juvenile habits, inculcated, likely as not, in their habit-forming teen years.  

Making more room for young adults to assume responsibility involves deprecating the namespaces frequented by adults with stale skills and stale views.  Some adults in expensive clothes, appearing on TV, would not appear so fashionable if we could see more directly into their profiles.  They rely on screenwriters for lines anyway, most of them.  Producers and directors like to stay off camera.

Many politicians continue operating in delinquency, way past a decent pull date.  

But why not follow Hollywood with the extreme makeover schools and trainings (no, I'm not just talking about Scientology)?  

Go back to school and learn some new language games.  Then rejoin the youth more productively, with a shiny new education, more as contributing members of society than as an elderly boor stuck in pig-headed complexes from whatever past military-industrial age.

Again, the science fiction with the many campuses (converted bases in some cases), happy campers, sound stages, prototypes, is for a more mature and science-minded civilization than this one.  It'd take a lot of work (including planning) to get there (Asylum City) versus indulging in tawdry war crime melodramas or worse.  

Some of the upcoming designers appear up for doing some serious overhauls, and not in the genre of reckless accelerationism, another juvenile behavior.  

Designing is a process and requires feedback loops to stay in touch with reality.  Many designs remain science fiction, yet nevertheless tantalize us with their realism in some cases.

Antsy Engineers

One can sense the engineers are unhappy.  Why not let us play with the new toys?  We'll keep gas levels where you need them politically, but let us test the new equipment.  You need to afford us that opportunity if you want us to stay in your employ.

The politicians do not want that to happen.  The newly completed NS2, the second nostril, must not be used, even though NS1 is now closed and Germany is not getting enough gas.  It can only hold its breath for so long.  The engineers want to breathe through the other nostril.  

The politicians, lawyers for the most part, do not buy into "code is law" or any of the "world domination"  bull crap.  Engineers do not really exist as a class.  Said the Eloi, about the Morlocks.

The Geoscope

Fuller's critics may object that he no more invented the idea of a globe than Copernicus discovered the sun, and this is true. 

What he invented he named the Geoscope and once you have a word to your name, it's yours to aim and fire, so to speak, meaning it's up to you to impart spin and trajectory.  

In Bucky's case, this meant another overture to the United Nations, as his crowning achievement in the geoscope department would have been the one in the East River.  In his oeuvre Critical Path, in conjunction with Kiyoshi, Fuller was celebrating the UN even as he claimed to chronicle the twilight of the world's power structures.  Erhard's group was celebrating the UN around the same time.

If you wonder about where the Foster Gamble camp inserts a bifurcation, distancing itself from the Fuller School, it's in its choice of conspiracy theories that cast the United Nations as a bad egg.  Bucky is less interested in goodies versus baddies, first of all, nor is he against the spread of rights to humans, versus to pseudo-humans (the bots, the corporations).               

The Geoscope would not have meant what it did had the same inventor not come up with a certain world map, deemed by analysts to be unique, less for its mathematics (it achieved the same low distortions as the best of them) than for its deployment of the sinuses to echo new Cold War themes, and also the themes of commercial jet travel.  

In both cases, the polar route, and in particular the north polar route, had become center stage. As development moves to that arctic circle, the same configuration of the continents is likely to suggest itself.

However, missing from the above analysis is the more obvious distinction:  the Dymaxion Map was not about the political anatomy of the world as dreamed up by skilled imagineers (a term from Disney).  

The Fuller Projection was not especially friendly to the nation-state jigsaw puzzle in other words, a way of keeping it less dated, more timeless. 

Maps go out of date as nations come and go.  Not so the Dymaxion.

Those of us who do care about the mathematics are more interested in the tiling algorithms, and how these design and serve hexagons and pentagons from any stash of global data.  Or do they serve other polygons, perhaps trapezoids.  The latitude-longitude grid lines define a trapezoidal framework.  Those could be useful too.

Showing several hexagons around the Texas-Mexico border, when doing weather for example, would help burn in the major towns and roads, mountains and rivers.  Weather reporting is a daily geography lesson. As truckers become accustomed to a driving region, they come to know its highways and byways.  

This is what truckers come to know:  their GPS systems.  The first thing any truck simulator should provide is one of those hexagonal tile displays with global data.  How do we know it's hexagonal?  I'm talking about commercial branding.  I'm talking about World Game now.

A Saturday FSI Meetup

what is a field?

That was an illuminating FSI meeting.   Let me journal some content while memories are fresh.

Gary Doskas, a talented engineer, showcased some tetrahelix-making software of his own devising, but in this rendition, the tetrahedra have disappeared (optionally, a toggle) and we're looking at the "pipes" inside.  

Yes, back to pipes.  A duct works.

Picture a tetrahedron as an elbow joint with a pipe connecting two holes at the centers of adjacent faces (any two faces are adjacent in this shape).  

Now start face-joining ghost tetrahedrons, pipe to pipe, starting with a simple helical tetrahelix.  

 "Ghost tetrahedra" means they're allowed to interpenetrate (my word for it) i.e. conduit-defining tetrahedra comprise a coordinating system for laying pipe in space, and need not "get in the way" of each other.

"Interweaving pipe loops" characterizes the Don Bridell models of field structures pretty well.  Gary is approaching the ability to weave these, and in so doing, give them unique labels in terms of a genetic code.

The sense of hydraulics and electrical circuits was strong in our session, meaning a sense of physics was in the air, intentional in the case of field structures.

Elastic Interval Geometry (EIG) already had me in the mood to imagine long balloons or cigars, as the visible compression elements in a tensegrity. Gerald was on this same call by the way, from Europe, making astute observations.

Then came Flextegrity in my experience, no mere metaphor either, in terms of museum-quality models.  Flextegrity is about load-bearing, stress-managing extensible lattices, against the backdrop of the IVM apparatus (similar to XYZ, also ghostly).

Now I have acquired this new hyperloopy drinking straw metaphor with a lot of hypertoon associations, and I'm learning more about how the sausage is made so to speak. 

"Partially overlapping scenario Universe" (a Buckyism) is what it all looks like to me, or flying spaghetti monsters (that's local esoterica). Make them as hyperdimensional as you wish, in whatever phase space. Continuity is what's key (smoothness of action, in the sense of logic followed).

Speaking of riding the rails, I think of theme park roller coasters (e.g. Twisted Dragon), but also of what the industry calls "dark rides" meaning indoor scenario more simulated experiences, also usually rail-based.  Disney specialized in these, but also roller coasters. The genres are to some extent blendable.

Anyway, what one mentally maps to these mental maps is their business mostly, with role model examples trending towards physical interpretations, and with attention to the precise geometry, the engineering.  

Science takes in interest in the details, where the devil is, they say (as in "the devil is in the details"). 

In this case, the tetrahelix was king, but in a ghostly background kind of way.  Snaky pipe networks were in foreground, like rides in a water park.

Gary shared some amazing animations showing us twisty pipe loops that could get more and more twisty, changing symmetries and finally ending up in a simple base loop pattern.  

That's not easy to visualize without more information, I realize.  You had to be there I guess.  Actually the talk was recorded, so maybe it will surface on the FSI YouTube channel eventually. Bravo Gary!

Here's a screenshot of my recent use of Don's field structure model, in a hypertoons talk.

A Political Recap

You might get from my critics that I'm close to incoherent when it comes to stating my views.  That's hardly the case.  

When it comes to recent domestic politics, I stood up for General Flynn at first, on the principle that new administrations need a long leash.  Let them bark up the wrong trees at first.  Don't undermine a president too early or you risk making a mockery of the office, from which legitimacy extends.

So yes, I thought the FBI was playing a risky game, and as it came out the game was mainly against Trump himself, it became increasingly a story of a deep state against an elected president, a descent into Banana Republic status.  No, I was never a Trump fan.  I'd voted for Hillary, and Obama before that.  I was attracted to Tulsi for her good American Samoan sense, her Hindu leanings not a problem, but I had no illusions that she could ever be enough of a scoundrel to occupy the post constitutional oval office.

Through the unraveling of Russiagate, three things became clear (a) the UK was still Meddler in Chief when it came to pulling strings in DC and (b) there would be no recovery from Banana Republic status (the presidency had pretty much died as an office) and (c) the insanity of the "rigged voting machines" crowd, which included the former president and his waylaid general.

Going forward: (c) interests me most, all insanity aside, as voting machines continue to be susceptible, just probably not in ways invented by amateurish storytellers with no real street smarts or savvy.  I think the Trump camp's rush to concoct fables regarding these particular voting machines was ill-fated from the get go, though they had little choice but to go with the hand they were dealt.

The beleaguered voters were trying especially hard to get it right in a pandemic.  Yes, certainly last minute measures were taken to let mailed-in ballots pile up.  Those would run through the counters after the votes cast on election day, and would outnumber in-person voting (again, because pandemic).

Because voters were trying so hard to have integrity, as a way of clinging to remaining sanity in hard times (they knew their critics were harsh and vigilant), the accusation of widespread hanky panky with the voting machines was just too much of an attack on the heart of the country's pride.  

The implication that Venezuelan malware had outwitted and subverted hard-working college-educated IT bureaucrats, or that vote counting had been outsourced to foreign agents in league with globalists, just seemed too great of an insult to ever forgive in some cubicles.

Our president was saying we can't or don't have free and fair elections no matter how hard we try, and  wanted to substitute his own judgement in such chaotic circumstances, to impose fairness by other means, never before attempted in United States history.  Talk about a Mad Cow disorder. 

People were not up for this circus.  The coup attempt collapsed because it relied on the slippery lie-for-money strategies of the so-called intelligence community ("my cousin overheard Hugo Chavez brag at a party that..."), as unqualified to define intelligence as Mensa.

Yes, beyond these foreground stories, of the District losing its grip, comes a longer backstory in which journalism managed to stop updating people on a lot of the intellectual happenings.  YouTube and such media came to the rescue on that front, and education acceleration with automation is getting us back on track to some degree.

Regarding Storytelling

In this blog, which I mix with the idea of Quaker journal (Quakerism encourages journaling), I spend a lot of time wondering what's up with the storytelling industry.  Why do they have such crushing and unimaginative stories for us to live through?

Obviously, I am not the only one asking this question, and after looking into it for awhile, one realizes one is looking at a bucket full of writhing snakes, the "narratives" or "stories" or "scenarios" I'm talking about. I see a lot of them, and I see they're roiling i.e. not lying still.

A narrative is a mnemonic device in large degree.  That doesn't equate to a record of what happened exactly. Maybe a precise factual account is a part of some story somewhere.  Maybe not.  We weave stories to hold facts in our head, or rather to hold points of view.  The latter factors in the aesthetic and moral dimensions of concern to philosophers, if only to keep quiet about say in Wittgenstein's case.

Some stories are considered toxic and/or poisonous in some way.  These stories intertwine with ideologies, sometimes in the form of myth.  To those holding to these stories, they may be comforting and useful. Stories clash, snakes fight, or seem to.  Anything going on this long has to be seen as a natural process, a characteristic of the species.

Have we only been fighting over narratives since the Tower of Babel?  That's a funny question, given how few believe in that story.  Do I mean it seriously?  The question simply points back to our current state of confusion, post Tower.  The confusion seems deep seated.  But was there a time when we didn't have it?  Is that a sensible question at all?

In the primordial or archetypal sense of mythic objects, or guiding lights, we're happy to admit we're not doing physics.  A person interested in physics stories might find the archetypal realm a neighbor because of the continuity we impute, to electrons on the one hand, and to the psychological phenomena on the other.

I've been delving into the literature around the Wolfgang Pauli - Carl Jung collaboration, reminding myself of the tenuous relationships between physics and psychology.  Carl wanted to hold on to his credentials as a man of science, goes the narrative, and his work on "synchronicity" as a concept was an attempt to contribute to the literature of causality.  He was avoiding being labeled a theosophist for example. He didn't want to be a Rudolph Steiner.

Another contributor oft referred to in this context is Isaac Newton, one of the greatest of the physicists. He did not abandon his psychological fascinations either.  The publishing industry and those who sort narratives by genre, probably had more to do with making physics and psychology go their separate ways, than the principal authors, but they never fully succeeded with their enforcement, and the two are always coming together here and there, especially in California.

Told a different way:  alchemy, astrology and religion, rebranded as psychology and thereby remained rooted enough in the sciences to continue making alliances with other sciences.

Goofing Up

Just a little pin prick, a drop of blood, and a spendy strip that feeds the blood into the machine.  I got trained, I performed fine in the training.

It's not my finger.  The poking device elicited the expected "lady bug" size droplet.  However, applying it to the strip wasn't working.  The strip appeared to suck up the lady bug, but the machine refused to process.

Going back to an earlier archeological level, me at Overseas School of Rome (OSR), I remember losing at ping pong in a tournament setting.  In frustration, I threw the racket, pretty hard, and smashed a window.

Dr. Gillespie as was a real MD.  He wasn't licensed to practice in Italy however, and I don't think he needed the work.  He was happy to teach 8th graders instead, and joined the faculty as a full time biology teacher. He taught it like first year medical school in some ways.

Dr. Gillespie extracted my confession. I was hoping no one one notice, or if they did notice (how could they not?) maybe the didn't need the whole story.  However letting me get away with vandalism would've been bad for my character.

What I remember more than dodging blame at first, was how I'd choked in the tournament. I knew that feeling of panic, at a low level, this was ping pong.  But I knew what it meant to wipe out.  I wasn't that great at ping pong to begin with.

I'm scheduled for a retraining with the device, meaning I'll have to get mom over to the medical office buildings again.  We have a date.  I left the first training full of confidence this would be a piece of cake.

I don't see myself as unreliable, but nor do I see myself as immune from wiping out, especially when operating technology I'm unsure about.  Lots of steps, lots of do this then that. I get riled, I get frustrated.  I get this way when I lose stuff, like my car keys, like right before I need to go somewhere, like to teach a class.

I remember going over to assist with that est stuff in the 1980s, taking the PATH train to the New York Area Center in the East Side Port Authority Bus Terminal building.  Sometimes I would be late.  Since the whole assist gig was about looking at oneself and one's patterns, I would get confronted and asked some questions.  

I remember saying how I felt like a caged animal, being late yet unable to go any faster.

Another time I've felt panic is when I'm supposed to go on stage in a cyber environment (on Zoom), not as the host, but as the instructor.  A DJ is supposed to show up and get the meeting going, by showing a banner page with my name on it, and playing music.

When the DJ didn't show up that time, I could do nothing except dismiss the students via Slack, in real time, after an appropriate waiting interval. I felt like a fish out of water, a beached whale.  I tried contacting my counterparts on another continent.

These glitches happen.  I am happy to have a DJ host the channel and still appreciate that setup, even though it has more moving parts.

A sense of goofing up may be multi-level.  One my go through it as an individual, but also as a member of a group or cult (subculture).  

I remember when Multnomah Quakers got thrown into an international controversy when a couple of its volunteer, temporary leaders, promised the meetinghouse to a Radfems, a controversial group, without running it by Business Meeting for prior approval.  

There was a sense of disorientation among the members and attenders, once this news became known. The meeting ended up breaking its promise, from the point of view of the would-be renters of the space.

What I imagine goes on in the District from time to time, is a kind of awakening from groupthink of one kind or another. A collective bubble bursts.  A reality crumbles.  Trump's not getting a second consecutive chance at bat, as the POTUS, was reality-crumbling experience for some.  JFK's abortive presidency was even more jarring.

The goof-up might have been putting too many eggs in one basket.  That happens.  But do the groupthinkers eventually come to see it that way?  

Maybe we have other eggs in other baskets outside the District?