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Fractal Cult

Started by Cramulus, October 29, 2010, 04:25:36 PM

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Cramulus

ahh it turns out tessellation does not imply uniformity.  my bad, I was thinking too hard about those escherian lizards

Brotep

#31
Quote from: Cramulus on October 31, 2010, 03:04:33 PM
Quote from: Aleister Growly on October 31, 2010, 02:52:41 PM
If this is to be taken as reality rather than a way of thinking, it strikes me as sweet, delicious bullshit. The kind you know you should stop eating but you can't.

I think we are only capable of describing models. I don't think anybody is presenting this as a really for real true description of the universe - more of a thought experiment so far.
Okay, just checking. In that case, I really like this. I am in love with metalanguage and metadescriptions that can carry over from one thing to another--in fact, it is the key to the way I learn--synthesizing and analogizing. For a musician, dancer and martial artist, this is pure gold.

Quote
QuoteI have desperately wanted and tried to believe in a Jungian or Campbellian universal motif, but it's seemed wrong from any approach outside wishful thinking. Not only are archetypes ill-defined, they are supposed to be ineffable.

models cannot be true or false, they can only have degrees of usefulness.

While models can and will reshape redistrict experience, I believe we can identify patterns in our experience and thereby construct a true processual understanding of it.

QuoteIn this case I do think they are useful in that we can learn something about humanity, and ourselves, by examining the patterns which recur in nearly every culture.
For William Blake via Northrop Frye, humanity is a single being which has fallen and forgotten itself. The highest aim is the remembrance of the identity of the great and primordial man, and to be a visionary who sees the unfallen world of wholeness. But, I'm wandering a bit afield.

Do you see any incompatibility between archetypes and an almost mathematical similarity?


Quote
QuoteFor same-level and interlevel pattern similarity, I would use the terms 'tesselation' and 'homology', respectively. Homology is the term we used in History of Chinese Religion class to describe the notion of the link between the microcosm and the macrocosm--e.g., between the health of the emperor and the wellbeing of the state. Tesselation refers to a shape that can fill a space with copies of itself all placed side-by-side. While that in and of itself does not require or directly suggest reproduction, I like the idea that certain shapes create a negative space patterned after themselves.

good notes... I wrote the bullet points in the above post before I saw this.. I think you're onto something with the homology.  This calls for more research on my part.

Tesselation is definitely a nod in the right direction but I think it also implies uniformity, which does not sit well with complexity.

Quoteahh it turns out tessellation does not imply uniformity.  my bad, I was thinking too hard about those escherian lizards

Even so, perhaps it is better to speak of people, situations, beliefs, things, etc. as having tesselational properties. A particular instantiation of interest is interpersonal dynamics. In a two-person interaction pattern there are two roles. We learn our role by participation, and the other person's role by observation. Obviously you will not become the same person as the other person, but once a pattern is established, we often try to (or inadvertently do, as dynamics function as attractors) recreate said pattern in other interactions. This is how, to use a trite example, abusees can become abusers.

Golden Applesauce

I understand that if you look hard enough, you can see recursive patterns in the world.  I just don't see the point.

If two things are similar enough that understanding one helps you understand the other, cool.  If not, then trying to draw too many parallels obscures the object under study.
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Cramulus


QuoteIf two things are similar enough that understanding one helps you understand the other, cool.  If not, then trying to draw too many parallels obscures the object under study.

I'm not sure that this method of thinking is ideal for academic study, it's too hard to get swayed by confirmation biases.. Instead maybe the fractal cult experience is found by intentionally embarking on that now and then. I imagine a kind of "fractal meditation", where one contemplates complexity and interconnectedness until they are overwhelmed by it.

and maybe jacks off or something, i dunno



Quote from: Golden Applesauce on October 31, 2010, 08:24:52 PM
I understand that if you look hard enough, you can see recursive patterns in the world.  I just don't see the point.

The "point" of any belief system is to help understand the world through a certain lens.

I mean, what's the "point" of Discordia? or of buddhism? or anything for that matter

Speaking personally,

I've been fascinated by fractals since I first discovered them. At age 14 I was downloading the latest version of fractint and spending HOURS getting lost in mathmatic worlds. I became obsessed with pattern finding. In my teen years I read a ton of Piers Anthony and a ton of Douglas Hofstadter, both of whom were really interested in the hidden worlds that the latest developments in mathematics had revealed.

Fractals are a new concept. A system of thought involving fractals couldn't have existed prior to 1975. To me there is something "spiritual" about them. They are an excellent illustration of the correspondence between the micro and the macro, the interconnectedness in any complex system, and the dizzying amount of complexity in our lives.

The latest motif in my headspace was initiated by the chaos marxism blog - the idea is to connect the spiritual trails of the Higher Self with the mundane trials of the Lower Self. I sought out a symbol which I could use to remind myself of this connection. Originally I wanted something I could meditate on, some mantra I could hum to get me through my day, maybe something to doodle on my hand so I'd keep it in mind. (I guess that's why people wear crosses, right?)

The fractal was staring me in the face the whole time.




bds

Cram - I love this concept. I don't really have a whole lot to add, only to say that I'm really enjoying reading your ideas - you're thinking about things that I kind of never have, and it's really interesting to observe how this is impacting on my worldview (or lack of it, really)

Triple Zero

I made this (based on the Cantor Set, one of the simplest fractals), it's not particularly anything, except of course all sorts of symbolic:




Also, a question, maybe a dead end, ignore it if you like, but I remember the trippy and cheesy and fractal patterns on covers of psychedelic goa-trance albums, and always thought they looked like that partly because it was an attempt at trippy computer stuff but in the early 90s (when goa-trance was at its peak) computer graphics just looked kinda cheesy. Computers nowadays can produce gorgeous psychedelic eyecandy of incredible complexity. Then I did my first mushroom trips, and saw those patterns, behind closed eyelids mostly. I was amused, the early 90s goa-trance psychedelic imagery was spot-on, and a modern highly complex 3D ray-traced animated morphing fractal contraption would have shot lightyears past its goal. Apparently my "psychedelic graphics" module in my mind about has the power of an early 90s pentium :-P

Anyway I digress, as I said maybe it's a dead end, but in this context of the Fractal Cult, would there be a reason to see fractal patterns while on hallucinogenics? I know that I also had a bunch of thoughts about the entire universe being inside the tip of a grass blade I was looking at (recursively), but I might have been primed for that thought by hippie literature I had read earlier on, so I dunno exactly where that thought came from (it echos in Shpongle's Around the World in a Tea Daze : "So you take this whole universe, and you put it inside a very tiny head, and fold it ... and you take this whole universe, and you put it inside this very tiny head, and fold it ... so you take ... etc").

Or maybe I'm just babbling, in which case, enjoy the picture :) Afterwards, I kinda wish I had made the recursion go both up and down, but I constructed it by hand so I didn't want to redo the thing.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.


Triple Zero

Only read the first few lines (will consume the rest later), but yeah, that's pretty much it.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Golden Applesauce

Quote from: Cramulus on October 31, 2010, 09:04:04 PM
Quote from: Golden Applesauce on October 31, 2010, 08:24:52 PM
I understand that if you look hard enough, you can see recursive patterns in the world.  I just don't see the point.

The "point" of any belief system is to help understand the world through a certain lens.

I mean, what's the "point" of Discordia? or of buddhism? or anything for that matter

I think I asked the wrong question, or asked it in the wrong way.  What I meant to get at, is there are a ton of philosophies / models / thought systems that deal with the holistic-ness and whole-ness and interrelated-ness of the universe.  There's obviously something to those, or so many people wouldn't have spent so much time on them.  What I'm not getting is how the "fractal" part specifically adds to the framework.
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Cramulus

Quote from: Triple Zero on October 31, 2010, 09:32:33 PM




that's brilliant!


Quote from: Golden Applesauce on October 31, 2010, 11:20:53 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on October 31, 2010, 09:04:04 PM
Quote from: Golden Applesauce on October 31, 2010, 08:24:52 PM
I understand that if you look hard enough, you can see recursive patterns in the world.  I just don't see the point.

The "point" of any belief system is to help understand the world through a certain lens.

I mean, what's the "point" of Discordia? or of buddhism? or anything for that matter

I think I asked the wrong question, or asked it in the wrong way.  What I meant to get at, is there are a ton of philosophies / models / thought systems that deal with the holistic-ness and whole-ness and interrelated-ness of the universe.  There's obviously something to those, or so many people wouldn't have spent so much time on them.  What I'm not getting is how the "fractal" part specifically adds to the framework.

I'm not trying to add to their framework.  :wink:

Cramulus

I want to reiterate (no pun intended) because I don't want to brush off your question GA- it's definitely a good one.

This idea is still in development, so I couldn't yet tell you exactly what advantages it will have over existing stuff. Speaking personally again, I have this drive to make new things, to have thoughts that nobody's ever had before, to develop something (a lifestyle?) which fits my life perfectly.

This may sound a bit circular, but because we live in a fractal universe, I know that there must people out there who share my needs, other people for whom a fractal is the best symbol for the universe.

Krez

Because there is a drive to make models of the universe in one's own head and personality drives us to make those models uneque or drives us to follow a well established (I don't say correct) model that has been accepted by some portion of the thinking universe. As a thought experiment this is great.  It is a Zen Koan. It seemes suceptable to falling into thought loops though. like finding the number 23 all over the place because you are looking for it and the processes of how the brain work reinforce the finding such patterns. As a thought experiment this can lead to levels of complex thoughts on all types of subjects (just like trying to talk in E-prime) but the brain is a fairly low power processor and the programing often falles back to simple binary pattern recognition of things being one thing or the other. The model of something can be seen in the model of something else but they are still both models. Of course all we preceve is just a model of the universe so picking this one is just as valid as any other. It is a pretty model after all.

Cramulus


Triple Zero

For your terminology, how about homomorphism and related terms? "Isomorphism" is used a lot in GEB, iirc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphism

An isomorphism is a bijective homomorphism.
An epimorphism (sometimes called a cover) is a surjective homomorphism.
A monomorphism (sometimes called an embedding or extension) is an injective homomorphism.
An endomorphism is a homomorphism from an object to itself.
An automorphism is an endomorphism which is also an isomorphism, i.e., an isomorphism from an object to itself.

especially endomorphism sounds interesting. I forgot the difference between injection and surjection, but epi-* and mono-* are probably also useful terms.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Brotep