Philosophy

Note on Data

Fri, Feb 23, 2024 - 600 Words

tags #philosophy A note on some thoughts around ‘data’. Inspired, in the first instance, by this discussion on hacker news. TODO Summarise some key points from the Hickey/Kay discussion The starting point of the discussion is the questioning of the assumption that ‘data is a good idea’ from Kay Hickey challenges the assumption that data has any innate value at all.
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The Undeath of the Author

Sun, Oct 8, 2023 - 1700 Words

Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water In 1967, Roland Barthes published his influential essay “The Death of the Author”. The essay was a key reference point in the structuralist and post-structuralist movements and called for the abandoning of the idea of the ‘author’ as the focal point for meaning when interpreting a text.
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#hermeneutics

Sat, Aug 26, 2023 - 100 Words

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Hermeneutic Understanding

Fri, Aug 25, 2023 - 1300 Words

tags #philosophy, #hermeneutics In a certain sense, the measure of hermeneutics is understanding. Through careful interpretation, we begin to grasp the meaning of the text. Through careful listening and active engagement, I begin to understand, more deeply, what you are communicating to me.
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Chaos

Tue, Apr 25, 2023 - 200 Words

tags #books Some alternative formulations of Chaos, taken from Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick The complicated, aperiodic, attracting orbits of certain (usually low-dimensional) dynamical systems. Philip Holmes A kind of order without periodicity.
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History of Being

Wed, Feb 22, 2023 - 900 Words

tags #philosophy An (in)famous concept from the hermeneutic philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Difficult to explain/simplify, but I will try my best here. I think a good starting point for thinking about this idea is David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech for the graduates of Kenyon College.
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Appropriation

Thu, Jan 5, 2023 - 800 Words

tags #philosophy I am rooted, but I flow. ― Virginia Woolf The concept of appropriation is one of the key ideas within hermeneutic philosophy. It arises from the idea that we are embedded (thrown) into a world.
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Concrescence

Sun, Nov 13, 2022 - 700 Words

tags #philosophy Gilbert Simondon Process Philosophy The term ‘concrescence’ was coined by Alfred North Whitehead and figures strongly in his systematic account of process. Roughly, it means the coming together of multiples into a unity.
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Phenomenological Method

Sat, Oct 8, 2022 - 700 Words

tags #philosophy A difficult term to explain in a brief note, but I’ll try anyway. Phenomenology is a philosophical approach that aims to move away from the subject-object division that pervaded modern philosophy and science prior to the 20th century.
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Bernard Stiegler

Mon, Aug 8, 2022 - 100 Words

tags #philosophy years 1952-2020 notable works Technics and Time An influential philosopher of technology.
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Stiegler - Technological Infancy

Mon, Aug 8, 2022 - 500 Words

tags #technology I putting this note here more as a reminder to go an do some actual research on this topic. This is not in any way an authoritative note.
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The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness

Tue, Jun 7, 2022 - 800 Words

tags #philosophy The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness is one of those philosophical ideas that has stayed with me ever since someone first told me about it. These are some notes about it.
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Gemtext and Image

Thu, Apr 14, 2022 - 2800 Words

One of the most noticeable things about Gemini is that it is text-based. Sure, it can support images but, depending on the client, these are mostly left hidden. Gemini gains a lot of its identity from this emphasis on text.
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Kafka: toward a minor literature

Mon, Mar 14, 2022 - 600 Words

:END: tags #books #philosophy Clippings p. 17 The second characteristic of minor literatures is that everything in them is po- litical. In major literatures, in contrast, the individual concern (familial, marital, and so on) joins with other no less individual concerns, the social milieu serving as a mere environment or a background; this is so much the case that none of these Oedipal intrigues are specifically indispensable or absolutely necessary but all become as one in a large space.
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Deleuze's Timed Logic

Sat, Aug 28, 2021 - 400 Words

tags books #philosophy A series of posts by James Williams. First part here. This reduction of the real to the possible is exactly what Deleuze seeks to avoid, because he wants the potential of radical novelty in every part of his system.
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Journal - Melancholy

Sun, Aug 22, 2021 - 900 Words

I’ve been experiencing moments of melancholy and nostalgia over the past months. Nothing too intense, just notable. It’s an old, familiar feeling, but one I hadn’t felt in a long time.
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Cage and Feldman in Conversation

Sat, Mar 6, 2021 - 1300 Words

The 4 hour conversation, available on youtube: Cage & Feldman I originally wanted to upload this here so that I could talk about some of the topics that Cage and Feldman discuss.
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Problems with Gemini 1

Sun, Feb 21, 2021 - 900 Words

Problems, in the best sense Much of the Gemini ‘content’ I’ve found so far, at least, some of the most engaging and unique, centers on technical questions about Gemini itself - how to set it up, navigate it, write in it, etc.
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Problems with Gemini 2

Sun, Feb 21, 2021 - 1000 Words

Navigation Part 1 A problem: ephemerality: content seems less ‘solid’ than on the web, less well mapped out and less defined. A corresponding idea: ‘Maps’ are ways of drawing boundaries, of creating identities.
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The Leftovers - Part 3

Sun, Dec 13, 2020 - 3000 Words

Lindelof, HBO, 2014-2017 Part 2 Part 1 What’s Next As I mentioned in the initial post, the show persistently subverts the audience’s perspective by portraying both sides of a divide - between the religious and the secular - as being both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
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The Leftovers - Part 2

Fri, Dec 11, 2020 - 2500 Words

Part 1 Lindelof, HBO, 2014-2017 No Miracles in Miracle When I was an undergraduate, I took an English Literature class. One section of the module was on Macbeth, and the lectures were given by the Donegal playwright Frank McGuinness.
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The Leftovers - Part 1

Wed, Dec 9, 2020 - 2400 Words

Lindelof, HBO, 2014-2017 \ The Horses of Disaster Indroduction The Leftovers is about a lot of things. Too many things to write about here, unfortunately. Nora is my favorite character in the show, and Season 3 was my favorite season the first time I watched it.
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Satin Island

Sun, Oct 25, 2020 - 2500 Words

Tom McCarthy. Alfred A. Knopf, 2015 Writing the Malaise Incomprehensible, except when read as a footnote to Remainder. Then, it becomes an author’s expression of his own struggle with feelings of inadequacy in an (academic-literary) milieu dominated by cults of personality.
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This is How You Lose The Time War

Fri, Sep 25, 2020 - 2100 Words

Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. Saga Press, 2019 And Through All the In-Betweens To be sensitive to signs, to consider the world as an object to be deciphered, is doubtless a gift.
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Spool Five