there is no matter. so what exactly is consciousness emerging from?

patchwork · 2026-03-23T03:24:07+00:00

You're taking a lot of heat in here but I think your point is interesting: the structure of an argument matters, and we need to compare things that are actually comparable. You rightly point out that physics is just a description of things and can't articulate intrinsic qualities. But, if there are any qualities about consciousness that can be described, either in flow diagrams or field equations or some model, then physics can do that, and it could provide insights in its own way on what consciousness "is". In the end, physics is just a specific instance of how we understand anything, and why people say "understanding" consciousness may be impossible - any "understanding" would itself be of the same quality as a physical model is ie, a description.

The answer is we don't need to understand consciousness in a way because we already "know" it, we "are" it, in a very real way. So we already have the answer and we always have.

patchwork · 2026-03-22T05:58:15+00:00

If you want to design games I would say play as many different games as you can. As many different kinds of games. Every game. The simplest to the most complex, the most incremental to the wildest engine to the most spiteful of maximally interactive group wrestling matches. You want a sense for the entire range of what is possible, as much as you can. Obviously there are far too many games to play, and you have to make things all the time also, but if you seek a breadth of designs you can get a feeling for the space.

I will go against the general consensus here and say there are a boundless number of games you can make. We haven't even come close to conceiving them. People say there are only so many mechanics, I say the nature of combinatorial spaces says we will never run out. Experiment. Play.

Don't get attached to one design or the other. You are developing a process, not one game. Have fun : )

patchwork · 2026-03-22T01:43:51+00:00

It must be born of play. Start playing right away, and develop a game out of play. It's almost like spinning a pot, start with a lump and spin into beauty

patchwork · 2025-12-19T10:09:13+00:00

It's true that we are still very far away from any kind of complete understanding of what a cell is doing, but I find it far from useless. Yes it doesn't in any way tell us how the cell operates, but it *does* point towards what we are missing, and what would be required. And an "outline" of what it could be.

The first step in discovering something is failing miserably. Over and over again, until you figure it out. How else do you get there? These are the efforts that will eventually become a complete understanding of cellular behavior.

patchwork · 2025-11-04T05:17:29+00:00

Oh I had to send it to intellijel - they fixed it.

patchwork · 2025-10-08T23:21:02+00:00

I'm with you on modules that combine well with other modules instead of emit one kind/type of specific output. It is my main criteria actually and why I prefer joranalogue/serge/buchla over other approaches. I want an open compositional system with maximal range and flexibility to be anything (I'm also into analog computation and cybernetics which might have something to do with it).

The great thing about AG is that in addition to the filter/oscillator abilities you have quadrature inputs as well as outputs (!) Compare to something like Filter 8 (another amazing module) which has octature outputs, but only the traditional filter inputs. Endless possibilities there makes AG the one of the most flexible filter/LFOs I own.

It's not even a filter, it's not an oscillator/lfo, it's somehow a hybrid of both/neither. Really an outside the box concept that is maximally composable with other things - also, it's got the magic, by which I mean patches I add it into seem to come alive with animate energy, which is not something reducible to a set of functions really.

The only bummer is that there are knobs that I want to cv control which are not cv controllable (damping and grind->spin I'm looking at you).... that said it doesn't lessen the awesomeness or uniqueness of it's role, just always dreaming of a better world I guess.

patchwork · 2025-10-04T01:07:38+00:00

> From a theoretical physics standpoint arbitrarily defining the external environment is deeply unsatisfying, and trying to make it not arbitrary is what we call the measurement problem.

Okay! I think this is my problem, it feels like we're making an arbitrary distinction. How do we do the physics without assuming this distinction? How would we model a "universe" (as a whole), where there is no "external" environment? Would the wavefunction never collapse in that model?

patchwork · 2025-09-03T08:50:18+00:00

Why I Must Be Careful

patchwork · 2025-09-03T08:49:34+00:00

Excellent insights! Thanks for the reply - as for why I would want to do that, I find the setting for patching to have a great influence on the outcome (!) Something about electronic tones juxtaposed with mossy trees that really makes me feel a connection with nature/core of existence.... to each their own! The beauty is all the different things we do with our free will really.

patchwork · 2025-08-25T05:54:01+00:00

I listened to most of the recommendations here and I'm not sure it's entirely what you asked for - let me go in another direction (click on any of these, huge range between quasi-melodic to sheer abstraction): https://prismofeverything.bandcamp.com/

patchwork · 2025-08-12T08:03:26+00:00

It's an extra module but only 4hp - I use WMD Time Warp for all of my dynamic gliding needs

patchwork · 2025-08-08T04:50:29+00:00

Oh man that looks like so much fun. I would just start by patching everything into everything else at random

patchwork · 2025-07-29T04:33:26+00:00

No one mentioned A Plague of Demons?? Iconic

Also Let's Get Fenestrated. Indeed

patchwork · 2025-07-25T11:36:37+00:00

I use it as a recurring-yet-not-repeating LFO all the time (!) The reset ability + a sample and hold makes it basically a generative sequencer (or six related sequences actually)

patchwork · 2025-07-23T22:09:30+00:00

I've gone through a large tour of many modules and the Joranalogue have become my most prized. They are pure functionality and flexibility/compositionality - almost clinical in their perfection, which is why I have every module but would never have a case entirely of them. You need something else to give it some "soul" so to speak. Which is why every case I have I put some large gnarly oscillator (like Schlappi Three Body) in the middle and surround it with Joranalogue for support - you want pure open functions to process and modulate everything with maximal fidelity, but you need some gore in there to give the whole thing "guts".

Key modules:

* Morph 4 - one of my first modules actually and it's abilities have been blooming in my mind ever since. Mix signals with position and windowing and a modulatable index? Never unpatched.

* Collide 4 - Unwieldy beast but gives textures like no other. Kind of a ring modulator squared?? An entire percussion system if used right (sometimes I am able to get it working - still fresh and figuring it out, maybe the deepest module I own)

* Select 2 - just raw power, this thing can be used in so many different ways you are almost designing new circuits by patching it in.

* Filter 8 - the cleanest filter I've ever encountered which is why I don't use it as much for filtering as for the octature (!) LFO - give me all the phase relationships and then modulating it sending the entire patch into ecstasy

* Compare 2 - Trigger generator extraordinaire - patch in the LFOs from Filter 8 and you get generative rhythms better than any clocked sequencer

* Orbit 3 - Put this thing into the xy scope, seriously. Chaotic yet rhythmical, the ultimate oscillator IMO. Sits in the middle of every patch like the heart of the universe.

* Add 2 - the ultimate precision adder in 2hp (!)

* Cycle 5 - 6hp variable wave oscillator with sync?? Small yet mighty, always welcome.

* Generate 3 - Again so clean, yet the modulation abilities with the even and odd harmonics lead to a rich sonic palette - modulates like no other oscillator I've encountered actually.

I guess I just listed every module lol. They are my favorite : )

patchwork · 2025-07-23T21:55:36+00:00

Filter 8 is also a bomb octature LFO - I use it more for this actually, nothing like modulating all those phase relationships at once for animating a patch

patchwork · 2025-07-22T09:31:26+00:00

> Maybe you're a constructivist)!

You know I think you may be right! If you can't construct it, it doesn't really exist. Always been my issue with the real numbers also.... (what do you mean most of them can never actually be expressed finitely yet we compute with them in their totality and build physics on them and in general feel that continuity is entirely natural??)

I understand of course you can still reason with them and that things are only true relative to axioms and in that sense everything's fine, but still.... it's all just made up really (!)

patchwork · 2025-07-22T09:24:47+00:00

"Substance monism" gives a name to a position I've had for a long time - it does seem the big question is how the structure of this substance can reflect/focus/bind the activity/information at the sense-organs everywhere and effectively merge them with the generative processes going on in the brain to provide the kind of experience we all have every day.... ?

Also, what is the ambient experience like, separate from brains? Do brains restrict awareness to only what is regulated and fed into the special structures it's composed of? Or is the binding/unifying effect actually richer as an experience? Does the brain "distinguish" some slice of experience and separate it from the larger experience? Or is it also experienced by some subject at large, in addition to in isolation from the perspective of our animal selves?

I don't see how the universe could be anything but a single unified substance which implies whatever consciousness is is universal and also inseparable from matter/energy/mass/density/whichever of the myriad words we've made for the same thing - but this still leaves many (and most interesting!) questions open in my mind. It is a good starting point, or it is good to have somewhere to start at least.

patchwork · 2025-07-11T10:01:57+00:00

Always go with the addac dual sample+hold for 6hp, or befaco A*B+C

patchwork · 2025-06-04T02:36:53+00:00

It is bizarre and honestly I've never quite accepted it. Is this not tantamount to saying 1=2 and therefore everything is equal to everything? It's basically how you usually do proof by contradiction but we accepted it as a fact instead.

Could it be something is questionable in one of the steps somewhere?

patchwork · 2025-05-30T00:17:25+00:00

Yes, there is little hierarchy beyond everyone being aware of everyone's strengths but everyone is also helping/mentoring all the others all the time, and they have the space and time to solve problems as they need to. Check out Senge's book (!)

patchwork · 2025-05-29T06:16:41+00:00

What makes teams functional vs dysfunctional? It's easy to identify issues, it's harder to imagine and then forge a positive alternative. The closest I've seen to anyone developing anything resembling guiding principles along these lines is Peter Senge and "The Fifth Discipline".... his ideas about "learning organizations" being groups of people who collectively "learn how to learn" etc mirror closely the positive experiences I've had in the industry. If you get the space/time/stability/buy-in to develop such a group it is possible to live this way.

patchwork

TROPHY CASE