Pontificating, Teaching, Subverting or just Whacking Off?

[Triple Zero]

IMO, while "a buffer overflow means that you stick more data in an area than should go there. When that happens sometimes the system pukes the data into a different area, if that different area has higher privileges... then you might be able to execute a command that you shouldn't be able to." is one of the most concise and fully correct ways of explaining a buffer overflow in classic computer hacking i have ever seen, i don't really think it works as a metaphor for "mindhacking" or "brainwashing" techniques, because, TBH, the two don't have very much in common with eachother.

except that you can learn both best by unsatisfiable curiosity and an obsessive compulsion for tinkering, perhaps

IMO it would be more useful to explain these techniques from the usual psychologial point of view, or perhaps if you wanna give it some flair the magickal point of view (but i would advise against that, even though it just explains the same things with different words, people on this forum are kinda allergic to it, because they think psychology is actual science and therefore more valid ) um so that's really not going to go anywhere.

psychology it is.

[Forteetu]

Leary, when you look at his early work, seemed to have a pretty good handle on how brain washing worked. Wilson, from a philosophical position saw these basic brainwashing (programming) techniques used by societies on their children. This further extended then to connect Antero Alli's research on ritual (looking at psychological/physiological effects of the ritual, rather than some supernatural base). Alli considers ritual as a programming tool. Wilson seems to have connected this to rituals among the Freemasons and the Historical Chronicles basically appear as a study of how these rituals might have worked. One book I haven't mentioned, but really seems key to the whole paradigm is "Masks of The Illuminati", we get a very interesting view of how Bob felt that ritual could be used to change people's perceptions.

After processing all of that, I went back and reread the PD and Illuminatus!, in both cases I tried to look for intentional programming (assuming that I wasn't just seeing patterns for my prover to fit my thinker). It seems to me that there are a couple key tricks used. (I'm a hacker, please excuse the metaphors)

.............

In short, I think these little mental tricks are one of the key things that keep the PD relevant. Even if you don't get all of the period references, the mental programming still works.

Of course, I may be full of Bullshit (but it makes the flowers grow yadda, yadda, yadda)

I've been thinking on and off on this one for the past day. As a ritualist by practice I find a lot of relevance in what you are saying in your 3 techniques. There are similar techniques used in ritual space. Nice analogy to computer programming and one that I think works quite well. There is a potential trap in the analogy which is the over-mechanisation of the process. I find it near impossible to separate the psychological, physiological and "superantural" aspects of any event or reality. While the analogy to computer programming is an extremely valid one and holds much merit in the simple fact that our brains are (in one frame of reference) simply chemical computers, it does not complete the picture with regards to who/what is involved. I completely agree that ritual is a programming tool and there are many tools in the basket to choose from. At the same time, through personal experience, I have had to make room for the "ghost in the machine" or supernatural aspect of what is occuring in ritual. The one being programmed, the one programming and (for lack of a better term) the programer's programer all come in to play in significant ritual practice.

More to your specific point though. I couldn't agree more with the premise that the same technique works even if the period references are old. I also feel it is part of the reason why the PD was written and is perceived as a joke. Humour, its rythm, timing and technique is also similar to the computer analogies you made. Many of a good punchline was delivered as superfluous or unexpected data. I think that humor itself should not be excluded from the list of techniques used.

So its about updating the period references and finding updated metaphors to carry the payloads. Computer science, the internet, war in the middle east, global warming ... these are the kind of things that would replace Mao Buttons.

[Forteetu]

, i don't really think it works as a metaphor for "mindhacking" or "brainwashing" techniques, because, TBH, the two don't have very much in common with eachother.

except that you can learn both best by unsatisfiable curiosity and an obsessive compulsion for tinkering, perhaps

Not so sure I'd agree with that. Techniques like Mantra could be considered Buffer Overflows. Actaully, there are quite a few ritualistic practices that might fall under this category, Sufi dances is one and even self-flagelation could be in this pile. There is also a VERY hardocre Buffer Overflow feeling to Leary's "How to Operate Yor Brain" video

IMO it would be more useful to explain these techniques from the usual psychologial point of view, or perhaps if you wanna give it some flair the magickal point of view (but i would advise against that, even though it just explains the same things with different words, people on this forum are kinda allergic to it, because they think psychology is actual science and therefore more valid ) um so that's really not going to go anywhere.

psychology it is.

Reckon I'm screwed then, eh?

[Triple Zero]

Not so sure I'd agree with that. Techniques like Mantra could be considered Buffer Overflows. Actaully, there are quite a few ritualistic practices that might fall under this category, Sufi dances is one and even self-flagelation could be in this pile. There is also a VERY hardocre Buffer Overflow feeling to Leary's "How to Operate Yor Brain" video

is that video on youtube or googlevid?

i agree that the buffer overflow model works rather well, but the problem is, the metaphore doesn't really get you very far, if you delve deeper into the details (buffer overflow, data dumped, ok and now what) you'll be looking at shellcode for the brain, filter evasion, arbitrary code execution, etc. and while i'm sure you can hook up some sort of analogy between the brain and a computer system, it doesn't really get you very far, because at the fundamental level the things are very different, so you can't really extrapolate "ok if this works in computer hacking, i can do a similar thing to my brain", doesn't work, you can only (and always) connect the correspondences backwards.

though (and no offense meant by this) if you're used to magickal systems and occult, the fact that the correspondences can only be found after the fact shouldn't bother you too much

also i'd like to echo LMNO, of Ratatosk could elaborate a bit more on the injection attack, because IMO this is exactly such a where the correspondence seems to be superficially there but when you examine it close doesn't quite hold up. (but maybe i'm wrong and Rat will demonstrate)

IMO it would be more useful to explain these techniques from the usual psychologial point of view, or perhaps if you wanna give it some flair the magickal point of view (but i would advise against that, even though it just explains the same things with different words, people on this forum are kinda allergic to it, because they think psychology is actual science and therefore more valid ) um so that's really not going to go anywhere.

psychology it is.

Reckon I'm screwed then, eh?[/quote]

heh.

if you look in the archives of the BIP subforum you'll find some threads about symbolism and occult stuff.

we tried.

it's all very nice and easy, there's a few members on this board quite well versed in QBLH and the occult, but in the end we got hit on the head by Roger and a friend of his.
and in the end i think they were right. because connecting Tarot and Qabalah to BIP-topics is all very nice, but you tend to lose focus and start gnawing away at the menu while your steak is getting cold. what i mean is, it can be a very fun intellectual game to talk and chat about, but unless you really practice it all (with the meditation, visualisation and rituals etc) it is just intellectual sockfucking in the end. so i'm not saying it can't be useful at all, but you'll have a hard time getting anything fruitful from it by discussing it on this forum.

that, and you'll be dodging flames from the pragmatists hammering away at your more vague statements, that you won't have a chance to actually get anywhere either

i think that about sums it up from our past experiments connecting the occult and current-day discordianism.

[Forteetu]

is that video on youtube or googlevid?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQq_XmhBTgg

i agree that the buffer overflow model works rather well, but the problem is, the metaphore doesn't really get you very far, if you delve deeper into the details (buffer overflow, data dumped, ok and now what) you'll be looking at shellcode for the brain, filter evasion, arbitrary code execution, etc. and while i'm sure you can hook up some sort of analogy between the brain and a computer system, it doesn't really get you very far, because at the fundamental level the things are very different, so you can't really extrapolate "ok if this works in computer hacking, i can do a similar thing to my brain", doesn't work, you can only (and always) connect the correspondences backwards.

Again, I think this is where it becomes difficult to seperate the physiological/psychological and metaphysical aspects of reprogramming. It is these ritualistic "buffer overflow" techniques such as mantra that overflow the logical/rational mind to inject reprogramming directions directly to the psyche/metaphysical self while in gnostic state.

though (and no offense meant by this) if you're used to magickal systems and occult, the fact that the correspondences can only be found after the fact shouldn't bother you too much

None taken. I see great value in allowing personal experience to color perception and many times have my perceptions been changed "after the fact" of a ritual experience.

it's all very nice and easy, there's a few members on this board quite well versed in QBLH and the occult, but in the end we got hit on the head by Roger and a friend of his.
and in the end i think they were right. because connecting Tarot and Qabalah to BIP-topics is all very nice, but you tend to lose focus and start gnawing away at the menu while your steak is getting cold. what i mean is, it can be a very fun intellectual game to talk and chat about, but unless you really practice it all (with the meditation, visualisation and rituals etc) it is just intellectual sockfucking in the end. so i'm not saying it can't be useful at all, but you'll have a hard time getting anything fruitful from it by discussing it on this forum.

I fully support the idea that the occult is nothing without practice. Read all you want and brag about your library of tomes, but if you're not out there in rite, its just all meaningless drivel. I do think that modern-day Discordianism has a role in ritual practice. The message still has not gotten across to ritualists as spelled out in ON OCCULTISM, they're all to serious and gothy. There is a quickly growing community of ritualists out there, they should be reminded that laughter is an acceptable form of magickal practice.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

LMNO, Forteetu and Triple Zero

An injection attack occurs when you provide a system that is expecting DATA with something that looks like data, but is actually programming. In most cases, a web form is feeding the data you enter into a database... if you can send database commands instead of the data it expects, you can change the functionality of the program.

Illuminatus! does this (as does Schroedinger's Cat). I don't have examples in front of me (I really should do a more indepth analysis at some point)

Basically, Bob pulled this off by creating nonsensical paragraphs, or paragraphs that appeared to make sense but didn't. Sometimes, this happened with a single sentence than ran on for most of a page, or in at least one case, the descriptions you read in the paragraph are actually describing opposites (such as talking about the sun shinning , but within a sentence or two mentioning that it was dark).

When you see these sorts of blobs of data, there's often a philosophical SMACK either right at the end, or intermingled with the nonsense.

Basically, if your sucking up a load of nonsense, it seems common for people to set the "reading robot" on autopilot. Data gets sucked off the page and into the brain without a lot of filtering (maybe because you've had to shut off your filters to even process it I dunno). Along with the nonsense data, you get a bit of programming data.

The similarity with a SQL Injection attack is only so useful... but it seemed ok for a metaphor. I do agree that any computer programming metaphor is only partially useful and doesn't really get into the depths of the psychology involved. However, it seemed a useful way to lump the most obvious tricks used in some of the 'traditional' Discordian works which I think the BIP could benefit from.

Peter Carroll once said that every time your brain makes a new 'connection' between different bits of data, the natural reaction is laughter ("If you don't laugh after seeing a particularly clever bit of mathematics, then you probably didn't understand it"). I have no idea how scientific his view is, but it does often seem that new ideas/concepts/philosophies tend to be accepted by the masses when presented humorously. Maybe we tend to miss the serious stuff, maybe its just that the serious stuff makes us laugh, if its really a new idea... maybe all of this is bunk.

[Triple Zero]

well, IMO, a well-written mathematical proof is in structure VERY similar to a good joke with punchline.

so from that notion, i can totally understand where that Carrol guy is coming from.

BUT i'm not so sure about the "laugh when a new connection is made" thing. it may be true, but it sounds a bit like he's seen a few examples that seem to correspond with eachother and made up a rule about it. not very scientific indeed, but of course not necessarily wrong either.

did you know young kids laugh when they see something unexpected happen?
if they see a brick falling upwards, they'll start laughing.
if an adult sees it, it'll freak them out. unless they can quickly spot "the trick" and then laugh about "how clever" it was. but is that the same kind of laughter?
is there a difference between laughter at the unknown and some sort of relieved laughter of "getting it" ? or is it both the same thing, based on the experience of "learning", like mr Carrol says?

the above paragraph is probably important to take into account when designing O:MF mindfucks, street art, etc.

coming back to the math proof and humour. i once read John Cleese trying to give a (his) definition of humour: "two frames of reference that appear unconnected, being brought into correspondence/connection in an unexpected manner" (sorry this is retranslated back from the dutch translation of a book by him i once read).
the thing is, this is really the same structure as a mathematical proof. the one frame of reference is the premises/axioms, things that you already know. the other frame of reference is the thing you are setting out to prove.
all that a proof basically does is rewriting the premises according to their rules, until you end up with the sentence you were trying to prove. and that's when you write QED, "that which we set out to prove", which is the punchline.
the manner in which the correspondence is "unexpected" is a measure of how trivial the proof is. if you set out to prove that 2 + 3 = 5 (look it up, i have written the proof somewhere in the archives of this forum) it's not really interesting and a rather bad joke. but the proof that there's an infinite number of primes is already more funny. Turing's halting problem never fails to bring at least a smirk to someone who really gets it (and the implications) for the first time. and Goedel's Incompleteness theorem is so funny it's almost scary, in a very very similar way to the way we discordians laugh at the horrible troofs we write.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Triple zero,

I think you and I are on the same pages as to Carroll's commentary. I think it may be true in some sense, I'm just not sure that his explanation uses the traditional scientific models. But then, maybe it does... Carroll has some pretty deep ties in physics etc... so maybe there's something more behind it than metaphor....

[Triple Zero]

is he a good read, btw? got any suggestions (titles) for something i might pick up?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Carroll writes mostly on the Chaos Magic system... so depending on your choice of models, it may or may not be to your liking. "Liber Null& Psychonaut " is my favorite of his writings. He also wrote Liber Kaos which is good too.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I can't remember if it was psychonaught or liber kaos I read a few years back but I liked his take on quantum theory.

He wasn't really coming at it from the 'pseudo quantum' angle that a lot of the new agers and the like seem to have a field day with but he did suggest that quantum theory pointed to an indiscriminate universe where probability is only defined by point of observation.

Made me think of the old 'tree falling in the woods' gag - one of those things that a lot of people seem to think they 'get' but obviously don't fully, otherwise they wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

Also Pete Carroll has a writing style that totally blows away years of dusty archaic traditional bollix that occult theory has been needing to shake off for centuries now. He kinda ditches a lot of that kitschy mumbo jumbo that prolly sat a lot better with the neanderthals who came up with it. 

[Cain]

I just want to point out that every occult secret is either so banal that a sockfucker could figure it out, or so abstract as to be useless. 

You may now carry on.

[P3nT4gR4m]

There are no occult secrets.

Not any more.

Secrecy goes back to the days where you could get set on fire for things like knowing there's no such thing as god.

It's all just modes of consciousness that most people never think to experience.

[Cain]

Point.  If I can find the secrets of the Assassins and the OTO both by merely using Google, then they ain't that good at keeping them.

[Forteetu]

I just want to point out that every occult secret is either so banal that a sockfucker could figure it out, or so abstract as to be useless. 

You may now carry on.

There are no secrets. The same core concepts are told over and over again and in countless variant ways at different times and in different societies. Each time these core concepts are wrapped in the context of the reality grid of the audience. Understanding the "secrets" of each path is simply becoming familiar with the reality tunnel it was being delivered through. When times were more difficult for the radical free thinkers, "the burning times" ... (i hate that saying) ... then the concepts were concealed in more ambiguous "secrets". Not only can the secrets of the "mystery orders" be found on the internet now, but the same concepts are also plainly visible in other paths.