Re: virus: Virian Tarot

zaimoni@ksu.edu
Thu, 3 Oct 1996 23:45:56 -0500 (CDT)


On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Jason McVean wrote:

[CLIP]

> > Not having done my research on the tarot system yet,
> > I give an example of a trio (I'm sure it's much more than
> > this, but for argument's sake...) Art-Degeneration-Civilization.
> > One meme would ask it's host to believe that Art is bringing about
> > the Degeneration of Civilization, whereas it's anti-meme would
> > have the host thinking Civilization is Degenerating Art.
> > Many other memes might also be detected from such a combination.
> > Does this do justice to the brain-in-the-black-box idea, where random
> > inputs help define the contents of the processor?
>
> I think this could potentially be useful but perhaps not for solo
> usage: Would you need to know all (or many of) the possible
> interpretations? Or perhaps more importantly, would you need
> another person to interpret your interpretations? What I'm
> getting at is that one would draw conclusions from how one
> interpreted the 3-card combination, but in order to do that, you
> would need some objectivity. If you were able to summon that
> objectivity, why would you be doing this in the first place? And
> would another person bring hir own subjectivity to the equation?
> Not that I think this can't be useful... but then again, if one
> were able to muster enough introspective power to benefit from
> this, would you really need it?
>
> Just playing the bad cop,

[Playing broken record ;)]

Objectivity isn't the problem here. It's data access: critical parts of
one's emotional/rational responses are not easily accessible, since we
usually don't have full access to our memory. [Not surprising; insofar
as memory is physical encoded, it is obviously storing multiple data
items in the same physical space. This causes automatic access problems,
worthy of PhD research in computer science.]

The above technique is 'a priori' most useful for solo usage.

[I have NOT seen convincing evidence that human memory is physically
encoded! Please don't tell me about the hippocampus, amygdala, etc--all
that current research (I have seen) positively demonstrates is that the
primary physical interface to various parts of human memory is there. If
any of you have something more specific, I'd like to know about it.]

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/ Kenneth Boyd
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////