J. Bullock is doing a great job anchoring Comprehensivist Wednesdays, originally anchored by CJ.
CJ (Chris Fearnley) was one of the original World Gamers (if I may be permitted that shorthand), a cofounder of the Synergetics Collaborative, and the original compiler of the Fuller FAQ, when the web was still new. I'd visit CJ in Greater Philly, both when I lived nearby in Cosmopolis (Northeast Corridor megalopolis, with Philadelphia a center of gravity), and when NPYM (regional Quakers) flew me to Friends Center for AFSC summit meetups. I didn't skip out on my AFSC functions but would have enough time off to hookup with my designer chums, Kiyoshi also.
Twas my privilege this Christmas Eve to join Bullock and company in a continuing drill-down into the many finepoint distinctions we might want to make, between say "reasoning and understanding" (above the line) versus simply optimizing for predictability ala LLMs (below the line). Several of us engaged with his model, already clearly worked out. Like Shrikant, Joe is into diagrammed heuristics, and that works well given our medium (recorded synchronous Zoom meetup).
I thought the funniest part of the meetup was when the PowerPoint creative confessed to using old fashioned cut and paste techniques, but telling the client this was AI, because the client wanted AI irrespective of the aesthetic impact, which might've been subpar had one of the AI solutions actually been used.
I think what Glenn Stockton found mystifying, and also maddening, was how academics seemed so hell-bent on disagreeing, seemingly only for the sake of being disagreeable. Growing up in the military, but later Antioch (a university without walls), his disposition was to make allies and even friends, and not engage in any aspect of mutual tearing down; that's what one does with an enemy.
My take, coming from videos on digestive juices (I like to study metabolics), is some folks "digest" another's thinking much the way a digestive tract would: by secreting corrosive acids and other chemicals good a breaking something down, because at some level "understanding" is achieved by "eating" (incorporation) which is the opposite of "just leaving it alone".
I'll cop to being "digestive" in my approach to most philosophies simply as a consequence of my "no globals" approach, meaning I test to see if the system has pretensions to ruling the world (most don't). Like in the chat, I invoked my hero Ludwig Wittgenstein again:
2025-12-24 18:54:51 From Kirby Urner to Everyone:
A favorite quote of mine, from Philosophical Investigations (L. Wittgenstein):
We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound, essential, in our investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable essence of language. That is, the order existing between the concepts of proposition, word, proof, truth, experience, and so on. This order is a super-order between — so to speak—concepts. Whereas, of course if the words “language”, “experience”, “world”, have a use, it must be as humble a one as that of the words “table”, “lamp”, “door”. (#97)
D LJ:👍🏼
And then later, further down:
2025-12-24 19:51:38 From Kirby Urner to Everyone:
Hinton’s use of high dimensional geometry does not imply people think geometrically i.e. conceive of thinking in geometric terms. LLMs process mathematically in ways we might characterize as geometric.
2025-12-24 19:52:20 From Kirby Urner to Everyone:
Agreement on what all these terms mean: understanding, intelligence, reason, is always going to be limited, as these are token we compute with, not fixed stars in anyone’s private sky.
D LJ:👍🏼
Yeah, typo, shoulda been "tokens" (plural).
My point being: we can't simultaneously all agree on what all these key terms mean and keep computing with them (an ongoing computation) at the same time. We're coming to terms with our terms, always. They're not a means to an end so much as our continually adaptive framework.
That being said, I do think it obvious that standardization and agreement within and even among networks (schools, professions, subcultures) is possible and I understand the frustration when people want to pointlessly frustrate the task.
But maybe they're just helping us hammer it out more, in light of feedback?
That's the attitude Joe takes, and it works. He's learning from whatever pushback he's getting. This won't deter him from continuing to add value to his theory, model or system. That's a good attitude for a group discussion leader and moderator. He's an eager consumer of whatever we have to contribute, which invites participation.
Having a lot of regulars helps too of course. When a meetup is all strangers (to one another), there's a kind of ice-breaking that needs to occur, whereas if the meetup centers around some well-established core dynamics, then it's more a matter of breaking in to something structured, which is often a lot easier, not to mention more efficient, than starting over from scratch every time.
