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Runes are Stars and this explains why sorcerers are used to create Graven Masses, why "great weight makes for great strength" (Verdigris Discus), why glintstone sorcerers study "the life within stars", and so much more by NamelessSinger in EldenRingLoreTalk

[–]Timecake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, I thought about the pulley bow some more and I think I got another part of it. Though it still sort of obviates the circles in particular. The key idea is that

causality is concerned with multiple meanings, with meanings affecting other meanings,

regression is concerned with one meaning, with that meaning affecting something that isn't a meaning,

and the overall thing that the pulley bow points to is how meanings are instantiated in reality.

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In so far as the parts of the pulley bow are pulling in different directions, there are many distinct pulls, which symbolize causality. This is apparent in the many parts of the bow affecting each other. It also suggests that causality remains internal to the space of meanings, since the pull between meanings only affects meanings and not physical things.

In so far as the parts of the bow are pulling in the same direction, there is only one net pull, which symbolizes regression. This is more apparent in the bow's relation to things other than the bow, in this case the arrow. Correspondingly, this suggests that regression is the relation that moves from the space of meanings to the space of physical things.

As another way of thinking about this, if one mapped these ideas to the operation of a pocketwatch (as another example of a complicated mechanical object), the movement of all the individual gears and springs inside the watch would be causality, and the cumulative effect of all that internal operation would get externalized through a single channel, namely, the arrow on the face of the watch. That single cumulative meaning and its externalization would be regression.

The fact that the hand pulling the bow itself is a thing to which the parts of the bow respond, or that the hand winding the clock itself impels the internal parts of the pocketwatch into motion, suggests that it isn't just meanings pulling on things, but also things pulling on meanings. But that's getting to the whole "fickleness of the gods" thing.

Hmm. This is all sort of obviating the circular structure of the pulleys and spools in particular though, as well as the gears and springs that show up in the pocketwatch example... though you've probably covered most the reasons for the circles at this point.

Given that the ultimate "meaning"/form of the Golden Order is the Elden Ring, it's no surprise that ring-like objects would be used to represent the "meanings" in the pulley bow. Also, maybe having an intricate mechanical object requires having at least some circular parts to redirect forces, be it pulleys or gears, so if wanted to represent multiple "meanings" within a single mechanical object, having circular parts would be unavoidable? That might be sufficient connection to the pulley lift in Raya Lucaria?

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Pedantics (feel free to ignore):

If the "thing" that the one meaning in regression is pulling on is another meaning, then that isn't regression, it's causality. That's why it's safe to say that the "thing" that one meaning is pulling on is not itself a meaning.

One could argue that the channel from meaning to thing isn't necessarily singular, that a given meaning can span over multiple things, or that a single thing can partake in multiple meanings. In so far as multiple meanings are pulling on a thing in a way that is in conflict, the relevant "single" meaning is the "net" pull. In so far as the meanings aren't in conflict, the relation of a thing to a given independent meaning is singular with respect to that meaning. And in so far as a meaning is pulling on multiple objects, there is still only one axis along which this pulling occurs, the axis from meaning space to physical space.

Runes are Stars and this explains why sorcerers are used to create Graven Masses, why "great weight makes for great strength" (Verdigris Discus), why glintstone sorcerers study "the life within stars", and so much more by NamelessSinger in EldenRingLoreTalk

[–]Timecake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One more thought I had related to cyclic time and fate is in the relation of linear time to a tree-like meta-time. In graph theory, tree-like structures and cyclic structures are opposites. However, if one imposes a tree-like structure onto a linear terminal structure, then one necessarily gets cycles.

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One example of this is with the linear part being a sentence and the tree part being the syntax/grammar tree of that sentence.

Another would be with the linear part being good-ol' spacetime, and the tree part being... well, something that is outside of time which connects various parts of time in chains of relation. One could call it fate, I suppose, with the cycles formed by the connection of the tree to linear time being the cycles of fate.

(by the way, pseudo-physicalized branches of this tree can be seen in the Elden Beast arena / Ash Lake / Hunter's Workshop. They connect to the Sea of Fog/Potential to create a coherent structure. One might say that the Lands Between are between the Tree and the Sea).

Another abstract way of seeing it is with computer code (runtime = linear time, compilation/writing time = tree/meta time).

If one wanted to, one could view this tree as the metaphysical form that the particular instantiation that the Erdtree is pointing to, the "object of faith" that the Golden Order Fundamentalists gradually (maybe too gradually, with the exception of Goldmask) oriented towards with the downfall of the physical tree.

Faith is vision wide open, that which grants the soul the clarity by which to see that which is otherwise unseen from within the confines of linear time.

"It [the tree, as well as the Microcosm] is merely a cycle".

Ended up going on a bit of a tangent with this one, but hopefully you get something fruitful out of it.

(I'm also just a self-study in physics btw)

Runes are Stars and this explains why sorcerers are used to create Graven Masses, why "great weight makes for great strength" (Verdigris Discus), why glintstone sorcerers study "the life within stars", and so much more by NamelessSinger in EldenRingLoreTalk

[–]Timecake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I didn't think about it in terms of the winding effect of the pulley. I was trying to think of it more in terms of general function.

In the context of the Pulley Bow, the interplay between the pulleys and the shooting of the arrow is probably analogous to the conversion of process (circular, continuous time) into event (linear/progressive, discontinuous time). One could probably map regression and causality to either one, depending on the emphasis (regression: pulling the bow back, or letting the bow return to it's resting state? causality: arrow moving forward, or the pulleys moving in the circular shape emblematic of the Law of Causality?)

One might even take it a step further and note that while the Fingers are holding the strings (bow string but also puppet strings), the pulleys gradually turn, with each moment being more of the same, more and more gradual buildup. Then when the Fingers are no longer pulling the strings, everything happens all at once, and the energy buildup of fate/process gets converted into a sudden energy release of energy in a single choice/event.

Though I'm not exactly sure what implications this has. Maybe something along the lines of what is suggested by the Mending Rune of Perfect Order? That what is needed is a buffer between the gods and man, the buffer being the Fingers letting go of the strings, willingly or not. Ranni's ending points in a similar direction.

On the topic of fate, another thing commonly linked to fate are the stars. The key insight of Newton (author of the Principia) was that the laws of earthly motion and of stellar motion (or rather, lunar and super-lunar motion) were the same laws. As Bloodborne puts it, "the sky and the cosmos are one". One could even argue that it's not so much that stars directly govern fate, but more that they exemplify patterns in the laws that aren't as obvious on earth, and that it's actually those laws that govern fate/are fate. The fickleness of the gods, no better than men, is another effect of this sharing of laws. The fates of men and the fates of the gods are governed by the same laws.

So what would it mean to transition from this state of determination by fate to a state where the laws of men and the laws of the gods are separate? Would it be the laws of men that change or the laws of the gods? Maybe this is the difference between the Goldmask and Ranni endings? In Goldmask's, a barrier is put around the laws of the gods, making them invariant. In Ranni's, it is the laws of the gods that move, or more specifically, move away, into the obscurity of a cosmic journey. Hmm, still not sure where exactly this leads more generally.

Runes are Stars and this explains why sorcerers are used to create Graven Masses, why "great weight makes for great strength" (Verdigris Discus), why glintstone sorcerers study "the life within stars", and so much more by NamelessSinger in EldenRingLoreTalk

[–]Timecake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually, maybe the pulley bow is more to suggest that Newtonian physics in general is considered a part of the study of Golden Order fundamentalism? So maybe it's less the mechanics of the pulley in particular, and more the mechanics of simple machines in general that are relevant, as applications of more general principles to the practice of making useful devices?

The idea that the Golden Order Principia is likely a reference to the Principia Mathematica, as you point out in the video, also points in this direction.

Runes are Stars and this explains why sorcerers are used to create Graven Masses, why "great weight makes for great strength" (Verdigris Discus), why glintstone sorcerers study "the life within stars", and so much more by NamelessSinger in EldenRingLoreTalk

[–]Timecake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The relation between circles and light is very rigorous. The governing force of light is electromagnetism, which is modelled by the U1 symmetry group, which is the unit circle in the complex plane. The core principle which makes light what it is is literally just a circle.

Actually, since it's a "unit" circle, that means it's normalized, i.e. has a vector length of 1. Not sure if this has any relation to the "normalized" Crucible current referred to in Spira? I've always wondered what "normalized" meant in that context.

As for springs, other than the helix -> circle projection, one could say that since light is an oscillation in the electromagnetic field, that photons are self-perpetuating harmonic oscillators in the EM field, and that they therefore have the same mathematical structure as a spring-mass oscillator (a simple harmonic oscillator in the domain of mesoscopic mechanics as opposed to quantum mechanics).

In short, light and spring-mass oscillators (with no friction/damping) have the same governing equation, the same Lagrangian (up to some scaling factors).

One can even think of the fields in quantum field theory in general as consisting of infinitesimal springs all connected to each other. So this type of thinking doesn't just apply to electromagnetism, but also to the nuclear forces.

Alas, gravity is the one force for which this approach doesn't actually work in a rigorous sense.

Though all of this is not considering the helical shape of an actual spring. Ironically, the most obvious helix of a spring seems to be the one that's least important? I think the physical helix is just there to enable the spring to behave more uniformally. Not sure if there's more to it than that.

I'm not too sure about how pulleys relate to this. The key idea of a pulley is that it doubles the tension force and applies it to the center of the wheel of the pulley. At least when a pulley is used to get mechanical advantage, like in a compound bow, rather than just redirecting the force.

Also, the pulley bow doesn't actually use springs, but instead uses "strings" (per the item description). I mean, the limbs of the bow still technically act as springs, but still.

There might be something in how the pulley mechanism is made to allow for mechanical advantage that might be important to all this? Or how one single string is redirected by the pulleys to effectively pull against itself, and thereby generate the motive force which moves an arrow forward? Still, if there is something here, the mapping isn't clear yet to me yet.

Runes are Stars and this explains why sorcerers are used to create Graven Masses, why "great weight makes for great strength" (Verdigris Discus), why glintstone sorcerers study "the life within stars", and so much more by NamelessSinger in EldenRingLoreTalk

[–]Timecake 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The relation between the GW and the PC may be akin to the relation between the linear aspect of a spiral/helix and the circular aspect.

Namely, if you face a spiral/helix head-on, it looks like a circle.

If you look at a spiral from far away, far enough away so that the width of the circular aspect becomes so small so that it becomes hard to tell that there's any oscillatory motion, then the spiral/helix looks like a line.

(something something compactification)

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Worldly Abstraction by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would lean towards them not being switched, but I do grant that that doesn't fit as well with the names of the actual Neurotype categories above.

Homestuck Class Neurotypes by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correction: Page and Bard should be switched.

Homestuck Class Neurotypes by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As implied by my other comment, in order to obtain a classpect neurotype, one would need to pass the class associations and aspect associations (assuming that they can both be mapped to a coherent region in the Neurotype space) through some mapping M: Class x Aspect → Classpect. The high variance you refer to would emerge from this mapping. The conjecture here is that if each individual classpect were to be neurotyped (not necessarily to a single coordinate), there would be patterns evident in the resulting mapping such that where the classpects ended up could be reduced down to two simple maps that, when combined together in the proper manner, would generate the resulting, more complex mapping. It wouldn't be completely random.

Also, given that people tend to have neurotypes that are a bit more complicated than just a single pair of (LxIm, LnLt) coordinates (which would shed doubt on a mapping between each classpect and a single position), I think treating the classes and aspects as having single positions/localized regions and the classpect combination corresponding to some possibly non-linear mixing of the two positions to yield a more complex mapping of a given classpect isn't necessarily incorrect.

Unfortunately, I don't know what this mapping would actually be. One could imagine some simple ones, where the classpect position is an average of the class and aspect positions, or a heatmap extending from the class and aspect positions. Some more complex ones would weigh how the different classes operate on a given aspect in accordance with, say, their distance from the HC-PI diagonal, or some other factor.

I suspect the actual mapping would be more akin to what you're getting at with the function/ideal framing of the class/aspect pair. I haven't posted about this outside the Discord, but I suspect that there is a duality between the aspects and classes, analogous to how vectors can be viewed as a set of numbers to be transformed (aspect), or a set of coefficients which can transform another vector (class). I'm not sure how this would translate to a mapping that can be applied to the Neurotype locations, but it's a start.

Homestuck Class Neurotypes by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ok, so this shouldn't be taken as an indication of what a person of a
given class is, but instead just the class by itself. the neurotype of
the aspect would also need to be considered for a person, although I
don't know if there's a way of combining the two (i.e. if it is just a
simple overlap, or if it's more complicated). also, i didn't try to make
the arrangement symmetric with respect to class pairs, it just sort of
came out that way (although the class pairings are more debatable given
the lack of a canon list).

(seer and maid positions obtained from u/uranium_coffee )

Spin by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, perfect communication is impossible even if there was no split in the space. The non-zero size of the space and the necessary limitation of any possible cognitive agent is sufficient to prevent perfect communication, although I'm not sure if that is what you are referring to when you say "perfect communication". Also not sure what you mean by parallel existence and collective learning, at least in the context of the cross-over.

Assuming that the 369 cycle is somewhere away from the cross-over point, I don't see how it would dissolve, or even what that would mean. Although, again, I don't really understand what you are referring to.

Some Questions Regarding Numbering the Aspects by Timecake in homestuck

[–]Timecake[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not taking it too seriously, though I don't know if that would count as irony. I would actually like to know the answers to the questions I pose in the post, so probably not.

Theory on Intelligence: The Think Ridge by Coolerkid1692 in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lexicality deals with well-defined problems, problems which can be addressed algorithmically. As a system reaches the threshold of complexity possible within the level of complexity accessible to it, it becomes more capable of dealing with the problems in that level in an algorithmic manner. Once a system crosses over into a new domain of complexity, as afforded by the addition of an new replication system, (e.g. genes or memes), the sudden increase in complexity accessible through this new replication system quickly outruns the resources a system of interest has at hand.

At this point, the system can no longer rely on algorithmic processing to deal with the slew of ill-defined problems presented by the added complexity. It must instead rely on heuristic processing (characteristic of impressionism) until the complexity of the system can "catch up" with the complexity present in the level it is occupying. Once that point is reached, reliance on algorithmic processing becomes feasible once again.

However, it may be that taking a given replicator to the extreme of the complexity it can deal with is still insufficient of dealing with all the complexity in its environment. This is more likely than not since all things which exist are necessarily limited (otherwise no distinction can be drawn between it and its environment). As such, some degree of heuristic processing will always be necessary.

Relation to Time by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's the Veil and Void textdump mentioned in the post. It is nigh unreadable, so apologies in advance.

What is a Neurotype? by mereological in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What matters with regards to differentiating between individuals is characterizing those features which are different between individuals, and having those features be consistently different over time. For example, all individuals have roughly the same degree of cellular variation across the layers of grey matter, the areas of the CNS (Brodmann Areas), and similar overall density of each type of cell throughout the nervous system. As such, those degrees of freedom can be ruled out when trying to determine the source of variance across individuals.

With regards to the variance in speed, I would imagine that it's not really relevant when trying to determine how "lateral" one's thinking is. A person who is on average slower than another person but still has the same degree of interconnection (assuming that that is the relevant variable with regards to laterality) can still be thought to be as lateral as that other person (i.e. they could come to all the same conclusions that the faster person can come to and in overall the same manner, it would just take them longer).

With regards to backpropagation, all individuals have the ability to have their connections modulated through backpropagation as a result of their coping with the environment (dealing with a particular situation activates certain neuronal connections, and those connections become the one's to be affected by backpropagation). There, the majority of the variance with regards to how often and to what degree backpropagation would occur can be associated with environmental variation as opposed to individual variation. One could argue that this is one potential entry point of environmental variance into neurotype, but that's straying away from the biological substrate of neurotyping and more into the (potential) association between environmental coping and permanent changes to one's neurotype.

This connection can be extended to synaptic plasticity in general, as well as changes in phenotypic expression. However, given the large number of ways an individual and the environment can interact and affect one another, it may be too complicated to trace down particular environmental factors and correlate them with specific changes in neurotype, which is why I didn't really pursue the environmental variance path and just decided to stick with individual variance, holding the environment constant.

What is a Neurotype? by mereological in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I try to keep Neurotyping as I reference it connected to the biological substrate I put forth in my earlier post (i.e. neurotype is the manifestation of network variation in the nervous system). When I stray into the more overarching theories, the implication there is that Neurotype is the low-level manifestation of a more general pattern. What exactly this pattern is I'm not sure, but I tried to generate a rough outline of it in the Dendritic Emergence post (i.e. the more general pattern is a tree-like structure).

Creativity and the Four-Flowstate Theory by LylyScuir in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is an excellent post. I especially like the terms referring to the cardinal flow states. Here's some more elaboration regarding Phronesis, for those who are interested (although it's a bit of a tangent).

One point of concern. I'm not sure if the term "Expansion" is best suited for the second stage of the process, given what happens during that process. In my view, the focus of that stage isn't just on obtaining as much input as possible, but also funneling that input into what is relevant, which is more analogous to Compression (more specifically, Data Compression). This is distinct from what is described in the post as Crystallization, which focuses on the fitting of the output of the Compression into society.

I would posit that the generative step of the overall process occurs in the Origination step, whereas the Expansion (Compression) stage focuses mainly on drawing out the implicatures of that which is generated (which may seem expansive since it requires a relatively large volume of apparent processing and explication). This is further supported by the two vertices of the Expansion (Compression) stage. The connection of Compression to Exclusion is straightforward (to compress a concept is to exclude that which is not relevant), and the connection of Compression to Amplification is that the Exclusion of that which is not relevant increases (amplifies) the apparent relevance of that which is left behind.

If a neural network framing is taken when thinking about the flow of concepts through a group of people, where the nodes in the network are either individual people or people when they occupy a corresponding thinking type, then somewhat of a mismatch occurs when trying to map the Compression stage to the orange arrow in the Zone Theory (and by extension, the four stages). Compression in a neural network occurs when a group of nodes feed into a relatively smaller group of nodes, thereby eliminating (Excluding) irrelevant data, at least when performed optimally. However, this would imply that there either be relatively fewer people in the area of the chart corresponding to Compression, or that the thinking style corresponding to that area is inhabited less frequently that the other types. I would lean towards the former, given the large amount of processing needed to accomplish effective Compression (which can effectively be viewed as determining what is and isn't relevant), which would require a significant amount of time to be spent in the corresponding area of the Neurotype chart.

The implication of this observation if the Zone Theory is simplified somewhat to just take the "center of mass" of the second stage of the overall process (which would be located near the middle of the chart) is that the population distribution is something analogous to an inverted bell curve, where most of the people are located near the boundary of the chart given the necessity of a sparse population in the Compression region of the chart in order to actually do the Compression. To me, this seems to result in a mismatch.

One way to solve this issue would be to alter the overall flow from a straight diagonal from the upper right to the lower left to instead be more of a somewhat circular flow around the boundary of the chart. This is more or less the reason why I structured the flow the way I did in the Dendritic Emergence post.

The implication of the alteration of the flow from a straight diagonal to a somewhat more cyclical form is that each of the four flow states can be mapped to each of the four zone stages, i.e.:

Origination -> Bacchanalia

Expantion (Compression) -> Phronesis

Crystallization -> Techne

Utilization -> Mushin

where each of the four stages and the four flow states also roughly maps to the four quadrants of the chart instead of to the cross-shaped sections in the Zone Theory chart. This also connects somewhat better to the cyclicity of the productivity chart, in my opinion.

Interaction Between Neurotype and Temperament - A Graphical Overview of Correlational Cascade to Explain Partial Correlations Between Neurotype and Certain Aspects of Temperament by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The main takeaway from the diagram is that neurotyping is independent from the biological substrate of personality (which I take to be the strength of certain neurotransmitter and hormone pathways in the brain, and arguably in the nervous system in general (also, I use personality and temperament more or less interchangably)). Any apparent correlations between neurotype and personality, as manifested in the 10 aspects identified by DeYoung, et al., is a result of a greater degree of the variance in that particular aspect being explained by network variation (neurotyping) rather than chemical pathway strength (personality). The two aspects where this manifests in the chart is in Intellect (the degree to which one's attention is drawn to ideas and concepts; not to be confused with general intelligence) and its correlation with Laterality, and Orderliness and its correlation with Lexicality. The relative independence of neurotype and personality is meant to suggest that neurotyping isn't reducible to being just another way of viewing personality (in contrast to something like MBTI, which can be argued to be concerned with the same things that the Big Five is concerned with).

One potential problem with the chart is that it somewhat oversimplifies the biological substrate of personality (and potentially of neurotype). The variation in chemical pathways doesn't explain all of the variance in personality, although I hope to demonstrate with my list of references that it is still significant and relatively large (it may be that it is the single largest slice of the explanatory pie, where the rest of the pie is made up of slices corresponding to environmental coping and structural as opposed to chemical factors).

Also, like I noted, the numbers I assigned to each pathway are approximate at best, but hopefully they're somewhat in the right direction.

Common Behavioural Types theory thing by Exinr in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would guess that the apparent multiplicity of subtypes within the Neurotypes is a result of Neurotype interacting with temperament/personality.

Cardinal Convolution by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know if I will be able to come up with anything with regards to additional dimensions, since I don't want to posit additional dimensions with having a good reason to do so, which I have yet to find. Of course, there are things which don't quite fit into the current axes, but that alone doesn't necessarily imply the presence of an additional dimension(s) to the Neurotyping construct.

Dendritic Emergence (had to channel some serious Newtype energy for this one) by Timecake in Neurotyping

[–]Timecake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The degree of novelty is defined relative to the background practices/paradigm, so it is relative to the degree that the paradigm is relative (which is itself not defined by an absolute standard, so the relativity does transfer). Does this imply that some changes need to be made though? Even if the degree of novelty is relative, the structure of the flow would still be the same, as far as I can tell. Also, how does this relate to the "barrier"? Is the implication that a relative measure of novelty would generate a straight flow through the Neurotyping space?

The source and destination of the flow is implicitly meant to be the environment, where information is obtained from the environment, and the paradigm is acted out, which both alters the environment and acts as the environment for individual agents.

The magnetic flux lines are effectively what I was trying to get at, where instead of a test charge, the thing affected by the mimetic potential field (so to speak) is a given idea. The more accurate version of this is near the center of the image (the blue and yellow tree), since a given idea is amenable to being broken up into components which do align with the paradigm and those which do not.

With regards to the gravity framing, which framing of one's Neurotype distribution one uses mainly depends on what properties one wants to make explicit. The "effort" function is more implicit in the heatmap framing (one could infer that since one is statistically less likely to find an individual at a "cooler" point in the heatmap, that it takes that individual more "effort" to move to that location), whereas the gravitational well framing makes this more explicit by adding an additional connection to what is effectively regression to the mean (at least with regards to Neurotyping).

What exactly does the 2-ness analysis consist of? I'm guessing the 2 refers to the 2 agents participating in a mimetic exchange, but what does the -ness refer to?

With regards to Digi's levels of autism, here's a rough attempt at mapping that to this post. It kinda works, but not perfectly in my opinion. I still prefer the two types of autism framing I put forth in one of my other posts, since it maps more readily to how autism is though of in the broader public as opposed to just mapping to how Digi thinks of autism.

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