Axions and Chameleons

"Web of Flies"
benjamin harubin 2016
digital superimpositioning

We have found a new particle.
>possibly is dark matter.
>possibly is gravity.
We have named the particle.
We are protecting the particle.
The particle is ours.  
We trapped, measured it, weighed it
and put it in a box, with a guard cat.
The guard cat shields against fields that surround the particle.
Once the particle interacts with its field, it vanishes.  
So we must be very careful because conceptually we cannot have a particle and a wave at the same time!
The cat shield is made of a dense metamaterial of woven conceptrons.
Above all, WE are not the subject.  

The subject IS we.
Or should i say was.
Then it became the object.

Does science have a problem with objectivity, its holy grail? 
All the confusion of description could just be a language problem.
What we've got here is failure to communicate.
All suppositions, theories, particles, words, pictures, dreams, visions, angels and demons are composed of code.
Most of it is unexamined biomachine code. 
Starbaby blinks.
Twice. 

You Can't Tell People What to Think

this text is kind of a way of consoling scolding those progressives who are surprised, scared or depressed by the Tuesday tally.

"The Elephant IS the Room"
benjamin harubin 2016
a mashup

if you read the comments on the losing side, you'll find many examples of  'the failure on our part to engage with others in a meaningful way'.
this failure is blamed on individual failure as well as the nature of social media itself and the actors who send their robot fleets on the high media sea.
and yes it's all true.
...and it's true that there's gonna be a/another actor in the whitehouse.
whether or not there's a Man behind the man behind the man,
or a secret cabal.

but whatever.  there's still this feeling of insecurity.
it doesn't really make much functional difference what the actual mechanisms of state are.
i for one am not a proponent of 'conspiracy theories' in the sense of a discrete body of people who are pulling all the strings.

but there are interests...  forces...  groups...  bodies.

science tells us that our social structure is built on top of our individual biology, and that our biology is built upon chemistry,
the way that chemical interactions are built upon the laws of physics.
in other words, politics, power and the state are extensions of who we are as a species, currently.
they are as much biological in nature as our hair.
and also like hair, there are gaps in our understanding of them.
indeed, legally corporations are people i hear.
are they not men?
so i don't see the election as hiring one idiot over another, but as more of a compass direction indicator; a meme war; just the pulse of the drivers of state.

clearly there are forces at work that are beyond anyone's comprehension.
combined with artificial agents, this is a complex system indeed.
if you have any scientific bent, then see that our technologies are also an extension of our biological brains,
so we can cut to the chase and just proclaim that we don't understand ourselves.  

here philosophy can merge with science.
the resurgence of references to Karl Marx and Marxism is interesting.
although you may agree that the applications of the his theories have been disasters, his was an early attempt to wed rationality and science to human economic behavior.
since then, information scientists and evolutionary biologists have added their studies.
maybe what we need is even more rationality.  more consilience.

what would a new rational approach to economics or politics look like.
it's up to us to create it.

what kind of experiment can we as scientists run?
and i say 'scientists' in quotes because we DO have an agenda; there is a built-in bias: that is, some kind of concern for human welfare, or at least our own welfare.
but before you start screaming about advanced social engineering nightmare dystopias, realize that
a: we already have one, and
b: the engineering is by itself not the issue, whether it is used asymmetrically against others or voluntarily to help all humans is.

so we're all more like creative technologists insomuch as we interact socially.

but marxism, or anti-capitalism as understood is not the solution.
to somehow ban the acquisition of wealth is to deny certain biological traits,
and hence is doomed to failure.
and clearly Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' has theoretical validity.
if we can just balance the table and keep the damn thing running!

socialism and capitalism don't actually exist!

what kind of experiments can we as creative technologists run?

what does medicine do we it can't run fully rigorous experiments as in other sciences?  it runs trials.  and that is what political people are doing.  governments are trials, flourishing or collapsing under their own weight.

so much media focus has been set on the presidential election, where your voice is heard (probably) but is very tiny.
whereas an individual's immediate sphere probably contains many more avenues of action, local though they may be.  the world doesn't really depend solely on one big shit show.

what matters are individual actions, inasmuch as we can act.

in the micropolitical sphere of our everyday lives, it's up to us to construct alternate modes of action- to solve our dilemmas in creative ways.
if you surrender to fear in your immediate thoughts and actions, you are helping to spread that meme.

while i acknowledge that a destructive attack (virtual or physical) on 'the enemy' has its purpose,
there is a limit to it's effectiveness, as we have seen.
but for those who have to fight, be positive and fight smart.

wait, instead of creative technologists, we should emulate horticulturalists,
and grow better social and economic structures, on whatever scale,
through patience, love and understanding.
and paying attention to what works.
what's so funny about that?

the responsibility rests where it always has, and not in some all encompassing "choice" that will take care of everything once and for all.

the experimental opportunity that lies before us is on a unique scale, because of internetivity.
it is voluntary, and it is of the crowd and of the individual person.
our jobs should be to create successful models of human interaction that can serve as meme germs.  every time you even talk to someone of a different class or viewpoint than you, you are creating new structures.
it is in this way perhaps that THE MACHINE can be steered more towards human benefit and long term survival.

because You Can't Tell People What to Think.

but cheer up,
keep your eyes open,
no fear.
and fight the good fight.
rock on

Dem Robots Ain't Gonna Buy Your Crap

OR WILL THEY?

"Dem Robots Ain't Gonna Buy Your Crap"

benjamin harubin 2016

electronic collage

"...more than half of humanity as yet exists in miserable poverty, prematurely doomed, unless we alter our comprehensive physical circumstances. It is certainly no solution to evict the poor, replacing their squalid housing with much more expensive buildings which the original tenants can’t afford to reoccupy. Our society adopts many such superficial palliatives. Because yesterday’s negatives are moved out of sight from their familiar locations many persons are willing to pretend to themselves that the problems have been solved. I feel that one of the reasons why we are struggling inadequately today is that we reckon our costs on too shortsighted a basis and are later overwhelmed with the unexpected costs brought about by our shortsightedness."
     -R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth


Worldwide commonwealth credit is both needed and achievable to provide mass-produced sustainable housing for all. That in turn frees up the five billion poor to create “infinite wealth” by combining their intellect with infinite free energy to advance civilization.
     -REVIEW: Buckminster Fuller’s 1928 Ideas & Integrities

That’s because you forgot that your workers are also consumers. As you’ve pushed wages downward, you’ve also squeezed your customers so tight they can hardly afford to buy what you have to sell.

      -Robert Reich, An Open Letter to the Republican Establishment

Lord Turner argues that countries facing the predicament of onerous debts, low interest rates, and slow growth should consider a radical but alluringly simple option: create more money and hand it out to people.
       -John Cassidy, the New Yorker


Bandar thinks that a digitally preoccupied society will come to appreciate the pure and distinct pleasure of making things you can touch. “I’ve always wanted to usher in a new era of technology where robots do our bidding,” Bandar said. “If you have better batteries, better robotics, more dexterous manipulation, then it’s not a far stretch to say robots do most of the work. So what do we do? Play? Draw? Actually talk to each other again?”       -A World Without Work, DEREK THOMPSON

Rapid technological improvements have created unforeseen societal chaos and this change is just starting to pick up speed. Our economic operating system—the “program” at the heart of Capitalism itself—is deliriously out of control. The economy no longer serves the human race, just a tiny elite sliver of it. The rest of us, whether we realize it or not, to a certain extent toil on their behalf.

      -CAPITALISM’S OPERATING SYSTEM HAS GONE OFF THE RAILS: AN INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

This time it’s Karl Marx, not Groucho, who comes to mind with the idea of giving people a universal basic income (UBI). This is raised as a possible remedy to any misery caused by rising unemployment from job automation.

       -What to do when machines take our jobs? Give everyone free money for doing nothing

primum movens the thing in itself the mother of all causations

"there are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

-Donald Rumsfeld

adjusting parameters
benjamin harubin 2015
(digital manipulation)

what if one of the unknown unknowns turns out to be that one of the known unknowns isn't really unknown?   

or
you don't really know how much unknown there is in this known area of unknown,
so much so that it affects all the known knowns, unknown unknowns, and the other known unknowns.

what if
one of the unknown unknowns is the degree to which our table of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns is a useful categorization that reflects some kind of workable reality?

hmmm?

thank you rum for meme pie in face.

but now you got me all dissonanced about the word known.  
known known known known? 
klown?
klone?
knoun?

alright back to the serious.

so we have the search for what determines all this stuff,  
the quest for the theory of everything.  
ultimately it's the Big Bang 
(is the Big Bang one of the known knowns or known unknowns?)

or is everything just is?  (and everything causes everything else).

does it violate the Second Law to have everything cause everything else?

like,
the energy has to come from somewhere and go in one direction in time and get progressively more diffuse.

brain in vat says any given sensation or "thing" is connected by a trilliondyplex web of interactions- 
what gives with this question?-  
although it concedes that there are some processes that appear to operate at a higher frequency than others.

but then, 
what of the Anthropic Paradox?  
why is everything from Planck's Constant to the molecular structure of water ice just right to enable the existence of critters that can ask these questions?

one is tempted to invoke a creator, a Primum Movens, a mother of all causations.

others just shrug and watch the show.  
shut up and watch the show.  

throw that beat in the garbage can.  drop it in the oubliette.  
too bad Screamin' Hawking ruined the infinity of the cosmic Black Hole by making them leaky.  
it's bad enough the BB started from infinity without having an infinitely sucky suck hole to worry about.   
no help for it but to ask the aliens, i guess.  

brain in vat says there's NOTHING in the blind spot.  
you're pointing at that ONE seam?!  
it's evidence of computational processes at work.  
what do we want?
we want information… information… information.

i ask brain in vat what how it scratches when it gets an itch. 























  

the growing concern about death

Like an individual, society also ages, and as it (all connected earth human society) ages; as the civilization process continues, greater resources are directed at improving and extending human life and preventing death. 

Crazy City
benjamin harubin 2015
digital media

...and more vocal become the civilized voices that deplore violence and preventable injuries. also warfare becomes surreal.  the first world increasingly recognizes the value of trained human soldiers and so is more reluctant to lose them.  such reality was used against the USA by the Vietnamese.  and the actual killing is increasingly done by employing devices that operate at a safe distance.  this society is like a baby waking up and realizing its existence and thence its mortality.   all the tantrums won't do no good except for the fear-porno mongers.  we are the world humans.  the osmotic pressure is too high- all humans are in the same room now.  all your walls are porous as fuck, or will come down.  
cheer up little space egg, the Space Sperms are coming!

TECHNOLOGY ON A HUMAN

CORDYCEPS FRUIT BODY
LIKE TECHNOLOGY ON A HUMAN
benjamin harubin 2016
(.jpg)
click for higher

as science and philosophy advance (and yes it is advancing, at least as far as we will ever be able to tell, at least as far as this local planet is concerned),  so technology does.

turns out Skinner, BF could only think in terms of a box for the geometry of his behavior modification devices, or that the human subject had to be inside of the enclosure.

but we are actually living inside of bubbles.  
but box-like bubbles.  
but the paradigm has changed.  
but we still think we are living in 1999.

you don't actually have to eliminate all signals outside of what you deem to be beneficial ones, 
you just have to make sure that your inputs dominate the traffic.  
        buy most of the radio stations.
    that way, all these weeds become nutrition for the disinformation machine.  

you don't have to put people in a box if they will willingly stare into a little box.  
     but the box is simply a window on the concave spherical surface of a bubble.    

I am he as you are he as you are me as the fungus connects our brains together,

           pimple on a boltzmann brain-ass.

how?  any way it can.  because it can.  who is outside the bubble looking in?
                                                                          who is to judge?
because
                  it
                                   came 
                                       in 
                                            a dream
                                                         and then
                                                                      it wasn't 
                                                                                                     a dream
                  and
               the 
                            memory
                                                                 got re-written 

                again

                 and 

                again.

just like the plasmatic electrofungus wants.

Memory Palace GUI

want a better OS?  virtual office, just saying.  now that we got decent graphics and those goggles and stuff.  now all we need are reliable robots to tell us where exactly on the floor did we throw the McMahon account.  

"objectous"
benjamin harubin 2016
electronic media

where are the controls for this thing?   
life II storage-  build your private kingdom/bedroom. 

don't let your data fall into the wrong hands.  
buy insurance.  
encode into DNA and sow the little von neumanns. 

like prove that the aliens aren't here.  
or that we are not, in fact, the extaterrestials, giorgio. can any you coneheads?
the cloud is a pastiche, a palimpsest of geologic stratification with degradation 
and transformation, burial and retrieval.
but the current state of information flow is not omni omni.  or even beer.
  
so, does information ever get lost- 
forever in a black hole, 
or will it hawkingly radiate,
chaotic patterns emerging like hot minerals from a mid ocean vent plume, 
fed on by ravenous crawlers and spiders and vac bots, 
which in turn eventually provide food for information scientists. 

millions fragments of chats survive in icechunks, 
in fragmented rock.
but we are yet nowhere near actually cloning that dinosaur 
let alone the mammoth.
nay, 
even,
the uncertainty of history (and knowledge) is increasing, 
increasingly at a greater rate.
do we know who we are and where we've been?

blur the line between fact and fantasy cause now gaming is top biz.
-and the media modulates the matrix. 

so, we don't can't really prove our point.  
we make it up as we go along.  naive, i know.'/

to be all scientific and shit, you gotta be very organized; rigorous, even.  files.  
organized by you  
in your memory palace  
where there's a door behind a cabinet in the attic that you haven't seen in a long long time   and it leads to unused wings that you never knew were there.  

Grab Power Lines

(Onomatopontology)

(sounds like winning theory)

"Contact Binary (Plexified)"
benjamin harubin 2016
microprocessed paste-up image (.mpui)

can you prove that the universe exists outside of your own skull (if you own a skull)?

how could you tell whether or not this was true?
at whatever level of complexity the simulation is.
everything we know is thanks to our senses, 
but there are also innate feelings of (in)appropriateness
(as to what the nature of reality is, beit rational or faith based).

...because "you" are a part of the machinery, 
biological or artificial as it may be.  
you are a part of the master program; 

part of the total game package,
necessarily because each universe must exchange information with all of itself, 
otherwise parts will pinch off (into new universes?) 
and no longer be part of this universe.  

but black holes do evaporate.  
and we learn new things all the time- 
izzat the leakage from another universe?  
a higher plane?  
izzat god or the intelligent life principle that guides the cosmos?  
or leakage?  
how could you tell?  
don't you also have to prove that we are NOT living in a simulation?
also prove there is no "life principle" or "antientropic force", let alone "higher intelligent influences" .  no i mean really like prove it or shut up.  i know you may feel one way or another, but that and a cellphone will get you around the city. 

and all those things we talk about such as god, the devil, 
objective reality, scientific facts, other people, etc,
are a part of you whatever you is, 
sprites in the connectome. 
 

that's the godlike responsibility you gots.    
is this all just, seriously, just a non topic, yawn.  
aren't you left with pretty much the same thayng?  
just sayng.

so those feelings of (projected, long term, sustainable?) appropriateness-
are those the learning new things leakage-y Great Dispersor  of all cool shit?

True Polar Wander

[shot of raging flood]

Bec + O
benjamin harubin 2016
digital collage

a dream of a flood

preparing for flood
studying buoyancy theory

a scattering of Noah MacGyvers 
scavenging abandoned fuel tanks
and saving polyethylene liter bottles;
stocking weapons and tools and food and medkits.
they're living in tiny houses on wheels;
houses that walk on the strand like beests;
Up houses with limpet teeth balloon bags
(what about how a mysterious Czech is rumored to have achieved blimp to orbit with a homemade fusion powered airshiphome- en route to an exile in the bome?)

emulating the botanical seed, 
ready to detach from the grid,
self sufficient but seeking,
designed to exploit resources under a variety of scenarios
(note to self: make it float?  make it pressurized?)

are you ready for the flood of a thousand faces?


>a journey at sea; sifting for protein.

a society at sea

(chapters like mini games, like serials)

waterworld temporary aquatic caravans,
harvesting plastic flotsam,
that strangely now we eat,
forming symbiotic colonies
searching for the half remembered Denver.


what good are your guns now?
orcas are sated but anyhow an orca gun was one thing omitted. 
someone had one, but declined to waste the precious rounds on mere mammals.


...then i remembered not to be afraid, and yet the lure of the sea remained.
-to laughing play in the surge and flow, 
easy flight, 
the current brings breakfast and muscles rejoice unstuck from hard dry pavement.  

return, return, return,
there is a season, for the rest of your life.

Slugfest

Parasitical Demagogue Flayed in Public!

Slugfest
benjamin harubin 2015
digital collage

...but that doesn't seem to stop it,
for it is a multicelled, multi-armed and -legged protoplasmic web,
with a great sticky corpulent orange head, 
it's mouth and anus being one opening.
it spews fecal matter which is further processed by peripheral corpuscles,
which, in turn, provide a fresh hydrogenated paste
that enables the swiveling mechanism of the bloated head.
thus it is as a puppet wobbling about on strings of gelatinous nutrients. 


it's taking over my mind
i can't believe i said that
eats garbage on the garbage a foamy edge with eyes on it
all of this
this normal life
this ordinary stuff
some kind of alien virus
else we could explain it with more satisfaction
but nobody can remember
it's beyond our control
are you a real boy?
we are symbiont.

Death Lively

"deathlively"
benjamin harubin 2015
digital collage

PATTERN RECOGNITION/PAREIDOLIA, LSD, 2 AND 3 D CONSCIOUSNESS, THE PERVADING META ORGANISM(S), RADIO WAVES, THE INFORMATION COSMOS AND THE VOICES IN THE MORPHIC FIELDS:

ok supposing you believe in some kind of Higher Power or you believe in the possibility of Intelligent Life somewhere out there, or you believe in God, or for that matter the Devil, or Angels, Elves, the Singularity, Human Goodness, Global Consciousness or an Abstract Concept of a Higher Order.  
all these concepts, these ideas... even The Future... 
and we just don't know the literal truth about them or agree what these things mean.  
do we? (collectively: not)  
and there are also feelings.
when, a scientist even, feels that there is a greater truth, waiting to be discovered
then is that the same thing as Religious Certainty or True Belief?  

(Search your feelings; you know it to be true!)

it CAN all be explained by observing that human intelligence operates as the supreme example (that we know for certain) of a pattern recognition and anticipation engine.   

you anticipate favorable outcomes, and discern survival relevant patterns in the sensory jungle.

that is a basic functional definition of intelligence generally.  

it has to have enough flexibility to operate in varying and chaotic environments, 

and having the ability to model numerous improbable scenarios does this.   

and it's always on- essentially creating appropriate responses to the environment, 

whether that be immediate or sometime in some mad dream.

that's what day and night and drug dreaming,  

and seeing faces in the clouds (pareidolia) is. 

we create models of events, including events like encounters with our cell-mates.

and so we model each other, creating voices in our heads:

what would Jesus say?

or Mom?

and how am I going to respond to that?

hence the voice of I.

the self speaking.  

and, anticipating favorable behavior, 

we create ideal situations and beings, 

in the attempt to emulate those patterns,

and hence achieve greater success, 

or perhaps merely to maintain a level of success.  

so is any notion of "greater intelligence" just a kind of wishful thinking or randomly evolved survival strategy?

instead is this evolutionary tendency just a reflection of an "intelligence principle" in the cosmos? 

how would you know the difference?

perhaps we humans are becoming (like) God, if not by instruction, then by creation?

will we invent this higher consciousness and become gods?  

why is the brain folded up in convolutions like a walnut?  

and why are highly convoluted brains associated with high intelligence?

why is the brain like a big piece of paper all crumpled up?

the cerebral cortex, at least, is two dimensional.

wouldn't it be better if it was a three dimensional blob?

you wouldn't have to go the long way round to get from one part of the cortex to another.

if the most advanced part of the brain were more three dimensional, 

you could have shitloads more connections, couldn't you?

maybe that's why some people find the concept of God a little thin.  

maybe 2D representation of reality is an efficient compromise, after all, the economy of words or pictures on a page is extremely flexible and useful.  

or maybe the foldedness of the brain makes it a good antenna for electromagnetic radiation.  

how would you know the difference?

the history of modern thought is one of decentralization of the human ego.
the concept of our unique place in the universe has been steadily eroded over the centuries into the present day.
from the realization that the earth revolves around the sun rather than everything revolving around us, 
to having our distinction from other animals destroyed piece by piece,
and almost all aspects of our valued intelligence discovered existing 
in monkeys, crows, octopuses and even slime molds can out-think the post office.
and now we make machines that can out-Jeopardy us.  
and now we find life existing in more places than seemed possible previously.
and hundreds of new planets where life could also have evolved.

it's hubris, hubris i tell you, to think.  
wait, what?
to think, that is, that the truth is out there.

greater speed of transmission

blort
benjamin harubin 2015
digital collage

the value of science is undeniable, 

although the achievement of absolute objectivity is impossible.   

forever. 

we are never going to understand the absolute truth about gravity (or whatever), but we may uncover increasingly useful laws of its operation.

what is the puzzle that jars so much as to be ignored?

it is that the machine that is formulating scientific theories and laws and making experiments and observations has unknown unknown biases and limitations.  

thus there is subjectivity. 

subjectivity is the limitation to a particular device or set of devices.

subjectivity (the machine that uncovers the facts) cannot therefore be separated from objectivity (just the facts, ma'am). 

although we could say that something is more objective than something else

(when sharing information across a greater network, greater pattern recognition and creation ability can be achieved).

the distinction depends on the definition of the network size.  

so perhaps at best the distinction between these two concepts (subjective & objective) is fuzzy at best, and not useful at worst.  

when a bunch of machines are in agreement that the information they are sharing is identical- errror free-  you have repetition and reproducibility, i.e., objectivity.  

but for that subset of information to be useful in pattern recognition and creation, it must be corrupted, adulterated, edited and distorted, thus rendering it less "objective"- thus becoming the new information state, the new paradigm.

i'm not sure that really there is any justification for using the terms objective and subjective in an information science context, even if it's the information science of your personal experience.  

thus we can strive for, instead, simultaneity (or a least, greater speed of transmission).

thus maybe we explain the hunger and expectation that c is not ultimate speed limit of the universe. 

are people machines, and likewise the universe?

or would any insufficiently understood set of operational behaviors (i.e., physics stuff) (perhaps forever, on account of that people are a knock off of; a derivative of those behaviors) be indistinguishable from magic?