So let me correct myself, I don’t think full-out telepathic communication would be for the best, but I do think it would be better if telepathic communication were possible (or at least possible beyond the very few who claim to have the ability). It still wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better in ways, I think, for allowing communication and ideas to flourish. There’s always going to be communication problems and failures, but I just wish I didn’t have to rely on words to communicate experiences. That’s also why I like making music videos and want to be a filmmaker eventually, because I think movies/videos offer a better way to convey emotions, feelings, and experiences than just a book (though it is harder to master than the pen and paper).

On other terms, I think I’m approaching the “visual” understanding models that you seem to operate on. Language is becoming increasingly inadequate, and I’m always finding myself “losing a grip” on my language skills (ie. forgetting simple spellings, language structures spiraling out towards infinity, etc.). I truly wish we communicated telepathically, but for now, I guess metaphors and symbols will have to suffice.

Hopefully you aren’t going off into the “sand dunes”, Carlos, but if you are, best of luck to you.

thanx for the posts:

what eye mean is: a picture of a thousand santa clauses on a long, wide, green hilltop, dancing with children on a spring morning with the eye of thoth looking on from the clear, blue sky

“i’ve had it” definitely should have been a new paragraph, but i was suddenly (and similarly) frustrated with the limitations of language, not with you guys. i mean, i think in images and feelings, and grappling with words and concepts in order to translate my thoughts is becoming somewhat tiresome. besides, the thoughts are moving all the time, it’s hard enough to just catch a glimpse, let alone take a photo (which is why i like movie analogies so much). so carlos is finally going to shut his big mouth (hooray).

anyways, i really mean this: thanks tim (and friends), for a wonderful site and a shitload of inspiration. thanks for having me. i wish you all the very best.

eadem mutata resurgo

ps. “lemony snickett’s a series of unfortunate events” gets my gnostic movie of the year award for 2005. it truly is for those with eyes…

yes, ktulu, understand nothing. i think i’ve had it with this.

Carlos, were you agreeing with me, or was that sarcasm? I hate to be unable to perceive the subtle hints you lay, Carlos, but sometimes I really can’t tell where you stand on something.

1) the map is a real thing with an independent reality external to my mind. i can trace my finger along a road on a map, to the edge of the map, over the hood of my car, across the land (sea, space) to the same road indicated on the map. i have not breached any boundaries, my finger was always in the territory (even if the map itself was not in the part of the territory it describes).

2) the map only exists as an experience in my mind. “i saw a map / i made a map.” but the same is true of the road, and everything else.

then a map is interesting and useful precisely because it is simply a correlation between two parts of the same territory. an example of just one kind of synchronicity. it matters not whether the map or territory are real or imagined, natural or created. what is the difference? a synchronicity can potentially happen between any two (or more) things. may as well use reality as a map and navigate by the degrees of similarity between all the things you experience (and by the anomalies). how else could you navigate? it’s pattern recognition. it’s the clue to how reality behaves.

it’s the doctrine of signatures.

Using the reality as the map not only works “just as well” - it works better, because it’s not getting in its own way. It just is. Itself.

as above so below, now with fractals!

there are no maps, only territory, which is a map of itself, if you follow me…

yes, ktulu, understand nothing. i think i’ve had it with this.

so long guys, and thanks for all the fish.

And where your mom lives.

Dear Allison,

Please continue development of your epic four part series, “Yo mamma jokes as a vector for cognitive science metaphors”. I need an awesome Christmas gift idea, and this would fit the bill quite well.

Yo’ Mamma’ly yours

Me

Stop thinking and just feel.

Stop creating the map and be the territory. (Didn’t Christ say that with the faith of a mustard seed, one could move mountains?)

Stop trying to understand, and just know.

Goddamn it’s hard, but I know that it’s the way to go. One can think and analyze into infinity, but you have step outside your logical mind, expand into the “extra” or “super”-terrestrial circuits, to truly experience the territory, and change it.

It ain’t easy, but the reward of success, I imagine, is far beyond all the troubles, dissonances, and hardships of the journey.

Let’s get over all that and get on with IT…

One cannot even begin a successful journey, if you can’t even settle on what map to use as your guide. The best guides come from within, because if you look deep enough, you’ve already taken this journey before. You’ve been through it in your dreams, your alternate selves, your past lives, your future potentials, it’s all the same. The only question is whether you can finish the journey, right here, right now.

So yes, let’s get on with it!

The edge of the map, where it spills into reality, are where the sea serpents and dragons live.

And where your mom lives.

what i`m saying is that you can have a map that says anything you want it to, including any denial of reality that you wish, but eventually it has to function in a useful way.

I’m not saying you should deny reality. I’m saying perhaps you should deny maps. What I mean (for the sake of argument) is who cares how the brain works, who cares how NLP works, who cares how gnosticism works or christian fundamentalism? Let’s get over all that and get on with IT…

/Spooky

and i don`t think we could build a map that says there are no maps and have it lead to any sense of sanity.

Well why the hell not! It’s our map - we can have it say whatever we want to and go wherever we like with or without it!

Maybe the map could (or should) be a giant piece of paper that has a bunch of intersecting lines on it and in the middle it says in big block letters:

SURPRISE!
YOU’RE FUCKED.
SEE YOU LATER!

But the point is, that’s just your map saying this, that and everything else that you’re arguing. No arguments derive from reality - they all come from, are or support maps.

Since you’re the map-maker though, then you could conceivably make a new map that says differently. And you even said yourself above: “the map does become the territory if you build it right.” So let’s just build it so damn good that it vanishes and we only have the territory.

the map is surely not the territory simply because the territory came first.

But that’s just a map. We could make a map that says the territory comes after… or we could make a map that says theres no such thing as maps

If we really can go about changing our model of reality, then what’s to stop us from creating a map of reality wherein the map actually is the territory? Presumably nothing.

I’d have to say because it kinda contradicts the very premise of the statement. Or at least seems to, to me. To me, the concept has always seemed to imply that you can’t “know” reality/the territory, only your approximation of it.

You can, if you want, assume that your new model is actually the territory, is actually representative of reality, but that’s all anybody who fervently and honestly changes belief systems does.

“Ah hah! Now I really know what’s going on! This is the truth. This is reality.”

We need to tinker and follow the map to get to our destination (at least the novice minded). Once we know the route to your destination, SCREW THE MAP! You just go to that destination (territory) if you catch my drift, (unless, you forgot it)

It’s grappling with these kinds of questions that makes me want to screw reality altogether, live happily in my own map/world and quit worrying about it.

That’s funny, because it’s grappling with these kinds of questions that makes me want to live in reality and stop worrying about maps.

Of course I have huge doubts as to whether our maps could ever fully expand to match reality, unless we expanded our own identities to the point where we ourselves, experientially, became everything. But then, what about the experience of being nothing? Ohhh the neverending stream of questions continues. It’s grappling with these kinds of questions that makes me want to screw reality altogether, live happily in my own map/world and quit worrying about it.

…In that empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.
-Borges, Del rigor en la ciencia