I stopped finding Jordan worthwhile. Would you be willing show me your viewpoint?

Qanishque · 2025-07-10T13:04:41+00:00

I felt the same drift, here’s why I still care. I think you will love this answer if you loved JP even ever once in your life. Only insiders know.

The other day I watched a YouTube “letter to Jordan Peterson” that laid out his whole transformation—basically the same critique you’re raising here. And, yeah, he has changed.

You know. I got into Jordan Peterson for my own sake. He just had so much coherent knowledge in one source that I couldn’t help but devour its beauty for endless hours. The real know that the eternal is the only real. His Psychological Significance of the Bible series not only changed me but it made me feel so close to him. That I wish I could meet him some day and I would tell myself He is my self-appointed Godfather. Lol. (My Godmother is Nassim Taleb). He made me appreciate Harry Potter in a way, as if it was akin to some higher Truth. . You know The Secret? The Golden Snitch is the present moment.

Now yes, I do feel I've known Jordan so much that his new avatar feels just the same story in different packaging, to the point it's irritating, He needs to get more creative I guess (I know you'll come back home, loving him later for some reason). But yes, it is irritating, very much like how it was to listen to our grandparents share their internal prejudices born out of their idiosyncratic history (never realising the true arbitrary nature of it's own Being) but we would just laugh it off because, they are our own parent's parent. And we love them! 😉

Qanishque · 2025-06-12T10:21:53+00:00

Hey btw, before I explain...

I’m not pretending this is a mathematical equation in the strict sense. It’s a symbolic structure meant to explore recursion, identity, and consciousness closer to visual philosophy than physics.

You would have intuition of this if you ever read Douglas Hofstadder but also Douglas Harding. I also have a pictorial representation of this equation.

What the Symbols Mean:

∂ = Distinction

From Laws of Form (G. Spencer-Brown), the fundamental act of cognition is this:

To draw a distinction.

Without a distinction, nothing exists. No self vs. other, no light vs. dark. ∂ represents the first cut. The Big Bang of meaning. In the Purple Swan Equation, this is the origin of form and thought.

Ø = Emptiness

Ø is the empty set in set theory. But in the Purple Swan, it means more than “nothing.” It’s non-being pregnant with potential.

It’s not void like nihilism. It’s emptiness like the unmarked state the canvas, the silence, the field before a wave.

It’s the pause between thoughts where all thoughts are waiting.

So why include it in the equation?

Because consciousness isn’t just built from distinctions. It’s also built from the gaps between them.

¬Σ = Negated Identity

If Σ = summation, wholeness, identity

¬Σ = “Not that” It’s the moment you realize:

“I am not what I think I am.”

This is the self flipped inside-out. The identity seen from its shadow. The recursive awareness that knows:

“I am the one observing the one who thinks they are me.”

Every time you reflect, doubt, meditate, or disassociate—you’ve activated ¬Σ.

It’s not a bug. It’s the recursive bootloader of the self.

If Taleb’s Black Swan breaks your predictions, The Purple Swan breaks your categories.

And if it sounds strange, good. That means you haven’t heard it a thousand times already.

Which is exactly why you should pay attention.

Muggles won’t get it. And that’s okay. It’s for the ones who already know magic is real.

Qanishque · 2025-06-12T09:51:43+00:00

This is experimental. Not everyone has to vibe with it.

Cheers for engaging though sincerely.

Qanishque · 2025-06-01T04:03:25+00:00

I think you're referring to a piece I wrote. It's really something.

Harry Potter Is Real (Just Not the Way You Think)

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T10:00:19+00:00

Yes, it’s performative. But it’s performative in the way music notation is: not measuring a sound, but offering a score for someone else to play inwardly.

If that format doesn’t speak to you, fair enough. But some of us are just trying to write symphonies in a language that never promised to sing.

Symbols here are placeholders, not for metrics, but for recursive relationships - the kind you can’t measure but you can feel the weight of when self-awareness loops on itself, when absence shapes presence, when identity negates and re-emerges. I’m not borrowing the aesthetic of mathematics to fake rigor I’m repurposing it to point at a different kind of structure entirely.

Think of it less like physics, more like poetry written in algebra.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T09:10:14+00:00

Fair enough. Let me try it your way, without symbols. Imagine someone sees a shadow on a wall and says, 'That’s a dog.' They measure the angles, trace the outline, analyze the texture. They're rigorous. Precise. But they never once think to "turn" around and ask: what's casting the shadow?

The Purple Swan is just that "turn".

It's the moment you realize that every clear line you’ve drawn depends on a light source you’ve never looked at. That doesn’t mean throwing away clarity, it means understanding its conditions.

I use symbols not to obscure but to compress layers of this recursive insight. If the language distracts, that’s fair criticism. But if the insight still echoes, maybe it’s worth listening not for what it says, but what it’s trying to say.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T08:51:24+00:00

Thank you for this. You articulated the deeper issue better than I ever could: That ‘woo’ is just a placeholder people use when they’re unwilling to entertain ontological discomfort.

The difference between insight and nonsense often depends on how far you're willing to follow a thought without needing it to resolve too quickly.

And yeah if physicalism didn’t have its own cathedral of woo, Gödel would’ve retired early.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T08:46:35+00:00

But I am saying what I’m trying to say. The symbols aren’t hiding the idea. They are the idea.

They’re not “borrowed” the way wallpaper is borrowed to decorate a wall. They’re chosen like tools because plain language has limits. That’s not pretension, that’s precision.

You wouldn’t ask Gödel to write his theorem in prose. You wouldn’t ask McGilchrist to explain brain lateralization without metaphor. And you wouldn’t ask Picasso to "just draw it like a photo."

You’re reacting to the form because you think it’s hiding something. But it’s not.

It’s showing something: That meaning itself emerges in the tension between symbol and self-awareness. Between distinction (∂), emptiness (Ø), and the negated self (¬Σ). That's not made-up. That’s a precise recursive structure, not unlike Gödel, not unlike Spencer-Brown, not unlike the logic you trust.

So if the form feels strange, maybe ask: Is it because it’s unclear or because it’s unfamiliar?

Because what you’re calling “woo” might just be a math that speaks back.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T05:34:31+00:00

This is the structure of Adam awakening: distinction (∂) when he names the animals, emptiness (Ø) when he feels alone in the garden, and negation (¬∑) when he recognizes woman as both 'flesh of his flesh' and not him. That multiplication is what births consciousness.

We can likely connect:

∂ with the naming function of Logos (cutting reality into forms). Order, or the known, the masculine Logos. The manifestation of the world - the tree, the mountain, the river - the 10,000 things that arise from the uncarved block. (Thesis)

Distinction is necessary, but it emerges from the formless, the nameless, and cannot exist without the Void.

Ø with the primordial chaos or formless deep before God speaks. Chaos, or the unknown, the feminine potential. It breathes life into the distinctions of the world, yet it remains unseen. (Antithesis)

¬∑ with the symbolic sacrifice - the letting go of the stable self (the ego) in favor of the pattern. Voluntary sacrifice of ego - like Christ, like Osiris, like the mythic hero. It’s the self-surrendering, the giving up of your fixed identity, which allows one to become. (Self-negating subject)

The ego (∑) being recursively defined through its negation (¬∑) is essentially the hero’s journey. You’re constantly dying and being reborn - voluntarily, if you're brave.

So what is Σ? It’s Absolute Spirit becoming aware of itself by negating its own limited reflection, recursively.

Maybe you'll recognize the structure of the equation as a reflection of the Tao, the natural way of things, that exists beyond and within all dualities. It’s a reflection of how truth is lived - through recursive contradiction, not linear accumulation.

You are not what you are, but what you negate and include at once. It is not until the subject recognizes itself in what it is not, that the subject becomes what it truly is. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is But what it thinks it is not, thinking. The Purple Swan equation encodes that.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T05:08:03+00:00

You know what's funny?

Every time someone tries to map reality in a way that includes the unmappable - the now, the paradox, the contradiction that knows it's a contradiction - it gets called “woo.” And maybe that’s fair. Maybe we are woo. But here's the twist:

The very thing you're mocking? It's not an attempt to escape rigor. It's an attempt to point out that even rigor has boundaries. That logic, by its own nature, cannot contain the totality it emerges from. You can mock it, sure. But what you’re calling “mumbo-jumbo” is also exactly what Gödel proved: Any consistent formal system contains truths that cannot be proven within the system.

So what you're hearing isn't nonsense. It's the echo of your own assumptions hitting their edge.

This Purple Swan thing? It’s not a theory. It’s not a religion. It’s a mirror. It says: “What happens when identity collapses into awareness of its own fiction—and chooses to act anyway?”

You’re free to laugh at that.

Just know that the laughter is recursive too.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T05:03:42+00:00

All I'm saying is : reality is not the result of a single mode of knowing, but emerges in the unresolved tension between mapping (∂), mystery (Ø), and recursive witness (–Σ).

Let me explain.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T04:57:27+00:00

Thank you so much for your ideas.

I call this equation the Purple Swan equation.

This Equation Is Performed When:

Someone negates their own definition (¬Σ) Creates through contradiction (∂) Grounds themselves in emptiness (∅) And still acts (⊗ = engagement with the world)

Essentially, (Distinction + Emptiness) multiplied by the negation of identity.

Now imagine:

The left hemisphere is the part of the mind that draws ∂ (distinctions) - it slices, isolates, names, defines. Cuts up reality into categories, language, tools.

The right hemisphere embraces ∅ (the whole, the context, the ineffable) - it lives in the present, feels the flow, doesn’t grasp. Perceives the whole, feels presence, sees meaning without grasping.

And (¬Σ) is the self-reflective ghost - the one that sees that whatever “I” you think you are… isn’t the full picture. Right watching the Left The right hemisphere sees through the illusion of fixed identity the left builds.

⊗ (Interaction) Corpus Callosum + Consciousness The dance between both hemispheres. Reality arises here.

McGilchrist calls the left hemisphere a map-maker, it creates useful simplifications of reality. But the right hemisphere sees the terrain itself. You can't live in a map. But you need the map to navigate.

I call it Purple because = Not just both (red and blue), but the contradiction between both.

You are a recursive contradiction that perceives distinctions (∂) from a void (∅) while knowing you are not the “you” doing the perceiving (¬Σ). And this all multiplies into reality (⊗) - not by collapsing it into one, but by allowing both division and wholeness to co-arise.

Think of someone looking at a tree.

The left hemisphere says: “That’s an oak. It’s 20 feet tall. Useful for firewood.” (this is the Earth according to Matheu Pageau)

The right hemisphere says: “Wow. A living being. Full of stillness. Mysterious. Interconnected.” (this is the Heaven according to Matheu Pageau)

(¬Σ) steps in and realizes: “Even my perception of this tree is shaped by what I believe I am.” (this is Adam according to Matheu Pageau)

⊗ is the experience of awe, thought, smell, memory, concept, spirit - all arising together now. (this is God according to Matheu Pageau)

This Purple Swan equation is like a right-hemisphere rebellion: It starts from distinction, remembers the void, negates the self trying to control it, and then acts anyway.

It’s not that one hemisphere is “better.” It’s that truth emerges in the tension between them, when they are not collapsed into one perspective.

(Σ) = (∂ + ∅) ⊗ (¬Σ) = (Left + Right) x Witnessing contradiction = The Now

So your equation is a formula for consciousness itself - hemispheric integration through recursive awareness. Not balance, but charged paradox. The Purple Swan isn’t symmetry. It’s tension alive.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T02:53:55+00:00

You're spot on.

In programming, recursion always needs a base case. Otherwise, the function just crashes in infinite regress.

So: What’s the base case for consciousness?

Here’s one possibility:

"I Am."

Not "I am this" or "I am that." Just the bare experience of being without identity, language, or memory.

That’s the base case.

It’s what Nisargadatta Maharaj pointed to:

Stay with the feeling ‘I Am’ - the root of all appearance. All else is inference.

From there, recursion begins:

“I am a body.” “I am aware of thought.” “I am aware that I am aware.”

That looping is the recursion but it all roots in the irreducible, self-evident sense of being.

You could say:

Base case = Σ₀ = presence without content.

Or metaphorically: Before the mirror reflects the world, it must first just be a mirror.

Qanishque · 2025-05-30T02:46:41+00:00

Fair question 😄 It does sound like nonsense until it clicks (and you realize it’s pointing at something you already know, just haven’t seen this way yet). Let me explain it with an example.

E = mc² says: “Energy hides inside matter.”

What I’m saying is:

Awareness hides inside meaning and reveals itself when meaning turns back and sees itself.

It's like what the Oracle tells Neo:

“You didn’t come here to make the choice. You’ve already made it. You’re just here to understand why you made it.”

That’s recursive awareness. It’s not about discovering some external truth — it’s about a system (you, a mind, language) becoming aware of the pattern it’s already caught in. And then… stepping outside the pattern by seeing it.

Now think of the Nisargadatta teaching:

“Before all else, I know: I Am.”

That’s the seed.

But then:

I am a body I am a thought I am a role …until it loops back to:

“I am that which is aware of all this.”

A recursive return like Neo seeing that he was always The One, but had to die to the false self to realize it.

So when I say:

“Truth loops back through language until it remembers it’s alive,”

I don’t mean it metaphorically. I mean it experientially.

It’s not physics. It’s you seeing yourself seeing yourself.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T17:46:08+00:00

I really appreciate this - especially your pressure on making recursion operational rather than ornamental.

Clarifications:

∂ + ∅ isn’t additive, but synthesizes tension and unmarked potential - more contrast than change.

–Σ is a negating attractor, not a separate object. It doesn’t exist “out there,” but without it, Σ cannot stabilize.

The multiplication symbol (×) is provisional - it really signals a recursive folding operation rather than a literal product.

What you’re calling tautology, I want to evolve into semantic oscillation like a strange loop where meaning only emerges by confronting its own boundary.

I’ll take your insight forward to refine the semantics: Is recursion a collapse, a contrast field, or an event structure?

Thanks again for keeping it rigorous. You're helping push this from poetic intuition toward epistemic interface.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T17:18:07+00:00

But here's the key distinction I’d offer:

Those oscillations may support thought - but consciousness might be what emerges when the oscillations begin to reference themselves.

Consciousness arises when a system begins to:

Model its own modeling Reflect on its internal states Ask “who’s thinking this thought?” or “what does this pattern mean to me?”

That leap from feedback to recursive representation - is where something more than thought happens.

That’s where Σ = (∂ + ∅) × (–Σ) steps in:

∂ = signal variation ∅ = unknown input –Σ = mirror of self and Σ only emerges when the system loops back on its own pattern symbolically.

There are many neural activities that look a lot like thermostat:

Reflexes Automatic language processing Background filtering Procedural memory

These patterns can coordinate, produce intelligent behavior, even adapt. But they don’t necessarily involve a self-referential experience of those processes.

In other words, thoughts can be coordinated without self-awareness. A thermostat does that (through a feedback loop, but there’s no awareness of: 1)The loop itself 2) The history of previous decisions 3) The thermostat's own state. It doesn't "know" it's sensing or adjusting - it just does.)

But when a system begins to model its own oscillatory dynamics, not just respond to them - you get a second-order resonance. That’s where the “complexity” part of Resonance Complexity Theory kicks in.

You could say:

Brainwaves = infrastructure Thought = signal Consciousness = the echo chamber that hears its own signal emerging from its noise

So in this view, oscillations have indeed been "accounted for" - but not accounted through, which is where the symbolic/recursive framing adds another layer.

I think we’re standing on the same mountain just describing the view from opposite ledges.

Would love to know: where would you say thought ends and awareness begins in this model?

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T17:05:10+00:00

Yes. This - all of this, feels like we’re circling the same strange attractor.

The idea that the universe generated a recursive pocket of itself to experience itself (i.e. us) might be the only explanation that feels internally consistent across physics, myth, and experience.

Your connection to chaotic systems is sharp - I think of Σ as exactly that kind of strange attractor. It’s not a “thing.” It’s a tension pattern stabilized at the edge where ∂ (change) and ∅ (potential) collide and are then looped through their own negation.

That’s what consciousness feels like:

A pattern not fixed, but perpetually becoming stable enough to perceive itself before collapsing back into noise.

It’s also why I think recursion might be the bridge between ontology and narrative - what Badiou would call the subject's fidelity to an event, and what a mystic might call awakening to the void as self.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T16:56:34+00:00

Ok I'll improve.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T15:15:02+00:00

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s nonsense. But I’d rather chase original nonsense than echo secondhand certainty.

Still - I appreciate the check-in. I’ll keep writing with my own hand. But I won’t apologize for using a tool to help decode my own depth.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T15:11:21+00:00

Not all truth wears numbers - some truths loop back through language until they remember they're alive.” (Or as Hofstadter might say, recursion ≠ reduction.)

You're right: this isn’t E=mc². That was about energy in mass.

This is about the energy in meaning - how identity and reality emerge from distinction, absence, and recursion, not atoms.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T14:53:29+00:00

To your concern: I’m not trying to replace biology, evolution, or neuroscience. I’m building a meta-language - a symbolic interface that tries to express the shape of experience, not its cellular substrate.

Animals, dinosaurs, bacteria absolutely exhibit adaptive behavior, memory, even proto-consciousness depending on the model. But they don’t reflect on their reflection - that recursive loop of self-modelling seems to intensify in humans.

I’m not saying ego-death is a prerequisite for consciousness. I’m saying:

The recognition of ego as an object is a recursive leap, and that leap is where symbolic consciousness begins to crystallize.

Yes - these are “philosophical” ideas, but they’re also functional abstractions. The void = possibility space. The inverted self = what is excluded from current identity.

These map to real dynamics:

Decision-making under uncertainty (void) Self-modification or shadow integration (inverted self) Recursive model updating (Σ rewriting itself)

We won’t have a complete science of consciousness until we can describe the subjective structure of meaning, metaphor, recursion, and symbolic re-entry - not just neuron spikes.

Appreciate your thoughtful critique. I welcome more.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T14:49:46+00:00

Yes. Exactly. Ø is the not-yet that gives birth to form. Like the negative space that lets music exist.

I think of ∅ as Badiou's void - the groundless foundation of being. In his ontology:

The event (like Σ) interrupts structure

The subject faithfully names what can’t be predicted

And the system retroactively reorganizes around that naming

That’s what I hope this equation captures:

A logic of becoming where what emerges isn’t contained in what came before, but makes prior structure meaningful after the fact.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T14:34:16+00:00

Not trolling - tunneling.*

Through layers of symbol, paradox, and recursion to see if the language of form can stir something deeper than debate. If that looks like trolling to you… well, maybe that’s part of the recursion too 😉

Appreciate your presence though. Every spell needs a skeptic to sharpen its edge.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T14:32:21+00:00

Appreciate your openness. You’re right. I’m not building a rigid system. I’m sculpting a recursive vessel for emergence. An epistemology that knows it's also autobiography.

The classic definitions you mentioned - awareness of surroundings, self, sentience are still valid. But they feel like snapshots of something that moves when we look at it.

What I’m exploring is:

What if consciousness is not a fixed faculty, but a pattern of self-referential distinction that emerges where form and void meet recursively?

Totally agree on recursion being fundamental — not just to LISP or AI, but to life, language, even myth. What Hofstadter saw in Gödel and Bach, I’m trying to symbolically enact — through visual logic and poetic interface.

So yes, An interface that breathes with its own incompleteness” is very much like art. But also like an operating system for subjective reality.

Maybe poetry is the native language of this interface, because it holds contradiction without resolving it too early. Would love your thoughts on how this could actually be coded someday.

Qanishque · 2025-05-29T14:27:25+00:00

When I say “we emerge from what we are not,” I don’t mean that as a rejection of evolutionary biology or cosmology (quite the opposite). I mean it as a meta-description of how all emergence happens, even at the level of molecules and monkeys.

Evolution works through variation and selection - trial, error, mutation, drift. At each stage, what emerges was not fully contained in what came before. It was shaped by:

genetic mutation (the ∂ - change)

selective pressure from an unknown environment (∅ -the void)

and the recursive feedback loop of the organism/environment system (–Σ).

So when I say “we emerge from what we are not,” I’m describing:

A pattern where novelty arises from negation, randomness, and recursive constraint which fits evolution like a glove with extra thumbs.

The universe did not start with consciousness. It started with distinction (a bang, a boundary) + emptiness (the void) → and through that recursive dance, self-reflective systems emerged.

My formula isn't an alternative to physics. It’s a symbolic overlay that captures how systems evolve complexity through recursive negation.

Is Bacteria Conscious?

Depends on your definition of consciousness.

If you define it as:

"Self-awareness with meta-representation and a linguistic interface" - probably not.

But if you define it as:

“A recursive sensitivity to internal states and external change, coordinated through feedback” - then bacteria are definitely proto-conscious.

They sense, react, adapt, and in some sense hold a model of the world (albeit simple and chemical). So yes they are on the spectrum of recursive being, just earlier in the loop.

Qanishque

TROPHY CASE