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.