Soup.GroundPlane.org

“ If there exists one unique great imperial power which is always convinced that its most brutal interests coincide with the Good; if it is true that every year the USA spends more on their military budget than Russia, China, France, England and Germany put together; and if that Nation-State, devoted to military excess, has no public idol other than wealth, no allies other than servants, and no view of other peoples apart from an indifferent, commercial and cynical one; then the basic freedom of States, peoples and individuals consists in doing everything and thinking everything in order to escape, as much as possible, from the commandments, interventions and interference of that imperial power.

From Philosophy and the 'war against terrorism' in Infinite Thought: truth and the return of philosophy.

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“ Where thought comes to a standstill in a constellation saturated with tension, there appears the dialectical image, it is the caesura in the movement of thought. It is to be sought at the point where the tension between the dialectical oppostions is the greatest"

--Walter Benjamin, "Erkenntnistheorietisches, Theorie des Fortschritts" (1937)
Introduction to "Tantra

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“ Our job is not to make up anybody's mind, but to make the agony of decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking.

Fred W. Friendly

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“ We asked human observers to adjust the color of natural fruit objects until they appeared achromatic. The objects were generally perceived to be gray when their color was shifted away from the observersal gray point in a direction opposite to the typical color of the fruit. These results show that color sensations are not determined by the incoming sensory data alone, but are significantly modulated by high-level visual memory.

[Entasis in action? -bdt] ”

Reposted by hungryforlife

“ The ability to meet anticipated and unanticipated information needs is rapidly emerging. Information sharing is becoming a reality. Stove-piped systems, unique and tailored programs, hard-wired connections, point-to-point limitations, and information hoarding are becoming a thing of the past. Strategies that ensure the visibility, accessibility, usability, and trust worthiness of information by the entire enterprise are in place. Common needs are being met with programs and services that can be leveraged by the entire community.

Moving from a culture in which information is considered power and something to be “owned”, to one that leverages the power of information and becomes its stewards, requires both senior leader priority and long-term persistence. It will not happen overnight. It must be a sustained effort. The policies and practices are in place. Much experience has been gained. Programs have been expanded, others curtailed. The road is long and has many twists and turns, but our mission, Enable Net Centric Information Sharing, must be our common goal. ”

“ intelligent data fusion is the combination of unbiased pattern recognition techniques with expert information about the strengths and weaknesses associated with the data acquisition techniques and expert knowledge of the geology, foliage, and man-made features located at the site under scrutiny. Data from multiple sensing modalities are utilized in an overall decision-making algorithm that is theoretically more accurate than any individual sensor on its own.

The two most well-known theoretical data fusion approaches are those formulated by Bayesian inference theory and by Dempster-Shafer theory. Bayesian theory, the older and more established of the two, is founded on a rigorous statistical framework and generally requires significant statistical assumptions regarding the input data. Dempster- Shafer can be thought of as a relaxation of Bayesian theory in which subject belief assessments are utilized and can be assigned to supersets of hypotheses as well as to single hypotheses.  ”

“ Now, facts and analysis may be shared, vetted, sourced and debated internally, with a focus on discovery instead of control. Notably, the suite of social computing tools that are being used are distributed throughout the sixteen different intelligence agencies. Where analysts once might have used email and slides to share knowledge, now they can move their insights ont othe platform. Agents in Iraq can (and do) edit and collaborate in real-time with great effect with the distributed global intelligence community, posting videos, documents and commentary. Simply replacing Powerpoint with a wiki turns out to an incredibly powerful tool. ”

“ In his blogpost Al Selvin quotes this paper, quite adequately depicting what moved me towards my "restricted case" method:

"As an individual moves through an experience, each moment is potentially a sense-making moment. The essence of that sense-making moment is assumed to be addressed by focusing on how the actor defined and dealt with the situation, the gap, the bridge, and the continuation of the journey after crossing the bridge." --- Brenda Dervin, “From the mind's eye of the user”

To show this graphically, the Quest Map presentation of a discussion ... what I wouldn't touch with a barge-pole. ”

“ It went on like that for two hours, with each person speaking only once. As it proceeded, I noticed that speakers were increasingly taking into account what previous people had said. Even though there was no back-and-forth, and no facilitator, the monologues began to sound more and more like dialogue. I was REALLY blown away when one speaker after another began saying things that had only occurred to me moments before. I heard the ambivalences and nuances in my own head and heart being spoken and wrestled with in the public conversation I was part of. I started to sense us all working our way into what some native peoples call "One Big Mind." From the inside, I could feel that big Peace March Mind struggling to come to terms with all the elements of this difficult problem that it faced. It was doing just what my own mind does: "Well, let's see, if I do THIS, then.... but no, that wouldn't be so good. So I should try THIS, and then... But I need to take into account this other thing... etc."

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Years later I read that Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onandaga Iroquois, said of his tribal council tradition: "We just keep talking until there's nothing left but the obvious truth." Once "the obvious truth" has been found, there is no need for a "decision." Such truth not only sets people free -- it allows a group or community to self-organize. ”

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You have to understand that I’m very much “out of the loop” so my use of terms is heh quite other than hermetic. My take on things is probably more abhidharmic than cog-psych.

“Discourse variance” isn’t well enough known; depending on context (i.e. situational motivation) individuals can adopt quite different rhetorical positions, each one showing some consistency. That, for me, is seminal. In designing a soc-psych experiment (Dalhousie) is occurred to me that control of discourse via computer might “tease out” a person’s “cast of characters”. By an accident of scholarship I happened to have a Jurgen Habermas text at my left elbow one evening and I realized such an approach might simulate an honest interlocutor … drawing out the subjective narrative w/o doing violence to shared facts.

So … entasis curves a line so that it appears straight, yes? My “gnodal” approach follows the bends that are introduced by individuals who wish a given argument to appear true. (If I were a scholar I’d explore this as an aspect of rhetoric … aesthetics and communicative gestures?)

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“ Recently I’ve been playfully applying the term entasis; data might have some ontic / objective value but what I’m grappling with is the way the human individual projects meaning … cognitive schema in action … valence. I think that’s the hidden variable in decision making. ”

“ [W]hile busied in considering the manners of other men, I found here, too, scarce any ground for settled conviction, and remarked hardly less contradiction among them than in the opinions of the philosophers. So that the greatest advantage I derived from the study consisted in this, that, observing many things which, however extravagant and ridiculous to our apprehension, are yet by common consent received and approved by other great nations, I learned to entertain too decided a belief in regard to nothing of the truth of which I had been persuaded merely by example and custom ”

Reposted by hungryforlife

“ [I]t occurred to me that I should find much more truth in the reasonings of each individual with reference to the affairs in which he is personally interested, and the issue of which must presently punish him if he has judged amiss, than in those conducted by a man of letters in his study, regarding speculative matters that are of no practical moment, and followed by no consequences to himself, farther, perhaps, than that they foster his vanity the better the more remote they are from common sense ”

Reposted by hungryforlife

“ Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
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