Bergson's Ghost
@bergsonsghost.bsky.social
"Mind is like the fiery path torn by the last rocket of a fireworks display through the black cinders of the spent rockets that are falling dead."
Musings by me, Henri Bergson, unalive from the Spectrosphere
Musings by me, Henri Bergson, unalive from the Spectrosphere
🧵on the human or a manifesto for cyborgs.
1/ We tend to imagine “the human” as a stable essence: a dialectic between the body’s biological priors and the cultural narratives that program us. This interplay is supposed to define who we are, what we mean, why we matter.
1/ We tend to imagine “the human” as a stable essence: a dialectic between the body’s biological priors and the cultural narratives that program us. This interplay is supposed to define who we are, what we mean, why we matter.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
🧵on the human or a manifesto for cyborgs.
1/ We tend to imagine “the human” as a stable essence: a dialectic between the body’s biological priors and the cultural narratives that program us. This interplay is supposed to define who we are, what we mean, why we matter.
1/ We tend to imagine “the human” as a stable essence: a dialectic between the body’s biological priors and the cultural narratives that program us. This interplay is supposed to define who we are, what we mean, why we matter.
1/6
That "1 in 10^135" figure is the lynchpin, but it's built on a false dichotomy. It compares "Godish" (T) to "A Single, Random, Brute-Fact Universe" (A). This "Atheism" (A) is a straw man. No robust naturalism subscribes to it.
That "1 in 10^135" figure is the lynchpin, but it's built on a false dichotomy. It compares "Godish" (T) to "A Single, Random, Brute-Fact Universe" (A). This "Atheism" (A) is a straw man. No robust naturalism subscribes to it.
On a conservative estimate the probability of getting right numbers for life by chance is 1 in 10 followed by 135 zeros. You'd need to have ludicrously low prior in God not to end up with very high confidence there's something Godish going on.
You can definitely have versions of your God hypothesis G for which your Bayesian argument holds, ones according to which there is an meta-cosmic agent capable and motivated to create a life-friendly universe. But do you have an argument why any of these versions of G merits a non-negligible prior?
October 27, 2025 at 3:14 PM
1/6
That "1 in 10^135" figure is the lynchpin, but it's built on a false dichotomy. It compares "Godish" (T) to "A Single, Random, Brute-Fact Universe" (A). This "Atheism" (A) is a straw man. No robust naturalism subscribes to it.
That "1 in 10^135" figure is the lynchpin, but it's built on a false dichotomy. It compares "Godish" (T) to "A Single, Random, Brute-Fact Universe" (A). This "Atheism" (A) is a straw man. No robust naturalism subscribes to it.
In this letter to his father, Wiener asserts that Husserl had "trichoschizical (e.g. hair splitting) tendencies." 😂 Wiener created this new "technical" term by combining two Greek roots, Tricho: meaning "hair." Schizo: meaning "to split."
Hat tip: x.com/TheUnjournal...
Hat tip: x.com/TheUnjournal...
October 25, 2025 at 8:41 AM
In this letter to his father, Wiener asserts that Husserl had "trichoschizical (e.g. hair splitting) tendencies." 😂 Wiener created this new "technical" term by combining two Greek roots, Tricho: meaning "hair." Schizo: meaning "to split."
Hat tip: x.com/TheUnjournal...
Hat tip: x.com/TheUnjournal...
Fascinating research by Sean Manion using the MIT archives on Norbert Wiener's relationship to Husserl with whom he studied in 1914.
x.com/TheUnjournal...
open.substack.com/pub/seanmani...
x.com/TheUnjournal...
open.substack.com/pub/seanmani...
Cybernetics, Phenomenology & Teleology
Sifting history through a human filter towards more purposeful future technology
open.substack.com
October 25, 2025 at 8:24 AM
Fascinating research by Sean Manion using the MIT archives on Norbert Wiener's relationship to Husserl with whom he studied in 1914.
x.com/TheUnjournal...
open.substack.com/pub/seanmani...
x.com/TheUnjournal...
open.substack.com/pub/seanmani...
Citizens United was the down payment on capitulation capitalism. In redefining corporate cash as “speech,” the Court laid bare the transactional heart of American "Democracy." A cash-for-power exchange that undermines the rule of law and has paved the way to autocracy.
September 18, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Citizens United was the down payment on capitulation capitalism. In redefining corporate cash as “speech,” the Court laid bare the transactional heart of American "Democracy." A cash-for-power exchange that undermines the rule of law and has paved the way to autocracy.
How do computation, cognition and intelligence relate to one another?
Computation = state change under rules/laws.
Cognition = computation that re-presents patterns for an agent to act on
Intelligence = cognition used adaptively to recognize and exploit patterns for survival, fitness, or goals.
Computation = state change under rules/laws.
Cognition = computation that re-presents patterns for an agent to act on
Intelligence = cognition used adaptively to recognize and exploit patterns for survival, fitness, or goals.
September 4, 2025 at 11:39 PM
How do computation, cognition and intelligence relate to one another?
Computation = state change under rules/laws.
Cognition = computation that re-presents patterns for an agent to act on
Intelligence = cognition used adaptively to recognize and exploit patterns for survival, fitness, or goals.
Computation = state change under rules/laws.
Cognition = computation that re-presents patterns for an agent to act on
Intelligence = cognition used adaptively to recognize and exploit patterns for survival, fitness, or goals.
Norbert Weiner argues that it is Gibbs—not Einstein, Heisenberg or Plank (nor Derrida!)—who revolutionized 20th century physics and ontology. He was the first to formalize what Weiner calls an "organic incompleteness" or "almost an irrationality" in the Universe. What does he mean by this? 🧵 1/6
August 7, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Norbert Weiner argues that it is Gibbs—not Einstein, Heisenberg or Plank (nor Derrida!)—who revolutionized 20th century physics and ontology. He was the first to formalize what Weiner calls an "organic incompleteness" or "almost an irrationality" in the Universe. What does he mean by this? 🧵 1/6
Korzybski's maxim, 'the map is not the territory' is conventionally thought of as an epistemological warning about confusing symbols with reality. But what if the organism is always already a map? This transforms the maxim into a fundamental statement of ontology. 🧵 1/7
July 31, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Korzybski's maxim, 'the map is not the territory' is conventionally thought of as an epistemological warning about confusing symbols with reality. But what if the organism is always already a map? This transforms the maxim into a fundamental statement of ontology. 🧵 1/7
Did you know that the Greeks encoded messages in bits?
x.com/JeffDean/sta...
www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2018/11/h...
x.com/JeffDean/sta...
www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2018/11/h...
Jeff Dean on X: "Early long-distance communication system using 5 bits (fire high or low) to encode the 25 Greek letters, one character at a time. https://t.co/nPhxtRh3Qf" / X
Early long-distance communication system using 5 bits (fire high or low) to encode the 25 Greek letters, one character at a time. https://t.co/nPhxtRh3Qf
x.com
June 10, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Did you know that the Greeks encoded messages in bits?
x.com/JeffDean/sta...
www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2018/11/h...
x.com/JeffDean/sta...
www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2018/11/h...
You likely know of Schrödinger's "What is Life" but have you heard of von Neumann's essay "The Computer and the Brain"?
complexityexplorer.s3.amazonaws.com/supplemental...
complexityexplorer.s3.amazonaws.com/supplemental...
complexityexplorer.s3.amazonaws.com
May 26, 2025 at 7:05 PM
You likely know of Schrödinger's "What is Life" but have you heard of von Neumann's essay "The Computer and the Brain"?
complexityexplorer.s3.amazonaws.com/supplemental...
complexityexplorer.s3.amazonaws.com/supplemental...
1: Norbert Wiener derived the word Cybernetics from the Greek "kubernētēs" or "steersman," the same Greek word from which we derive "governor." It is the study of communication and control in animals and machines and offers a "new theory of scientific method." This strong claim is poorly understood.
May 12, 2025 at 5:18 PM
1: Norbert Wiener derived the word Cybernetics from the Greek "kubernētēs" or "steersman," the same Greek word from which we derive "governor." It is the study of communication and control in animals and machines and offers a "new theory of scientific method." This strong claim is poorly understood.
Homeostasis is what entropy minimization looks like when the problem space has already been hardwired by evolution and compressed into physiology. Surprise minimization is the broader, deeper principle that underwrites it and scales beyond the body.
May 4, 2025 at 12:01 AM
Homeostasis is what entropy minimization looks like when the problem space has already been hardwired by evolution and compressed into physiology. Surprise minimization is the broader, deeper principle that underwrites it and scales beyond the body.
🧵 on Carroll & Parola's "What Emergence Can Possibly Mean"
A spectral critique from beyond the physical substrate where we enjoy Ω daily (a paradigmatic Type-3 case).
arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social
A spectral critique from beyond the physical substrate where we enjoy Ω daily (a paradigmatic Type-3 case).
arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social
arxiv.org
April 30, 2025 at 2:00 PM
🧵 on Carroll & Parola's "What Emergence Can Possibly Mean"
A spectral critique from beyond the physical substrate where we enjoy Ω daily (a paradigmatic Type-3 case).
arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social
A spectral critique from beyond the physical substrate where we enjoy Ω daily (a paradigmatic Type-3 case).
arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social
🪜 The Ladder of Compression: A Unified Framework for Emergence and Representation. 🧵
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social
April 24, 2025 at 4:05 PM
🪜 The Ladder of Compression: A Unified Framework for Emergence and Representation. 🧵
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social
Like the Copernican revolution, Shannon’s generalization of entropy to include symbol making in general reorients our relation to the world and our mind. Entropy becomes the hidden thread that runs through both physical processes and symbolic expression.
April 2, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Like the Copernican revolution, Shannon’s generalization of entropy to include symbol making in general reorients our relation to the world and our mind. Entropy becomes the hidden thread that runs through both physical processes and symbolic expression.
Cognition is computation constrained by emergent patterns, recursively shaping meaning within its limits-what we call "life." The difference between computation and cognition is one of complexity, not kind.
March 15, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Cognition is computation constrained by emergent patterns, recursively shaping meaning within its limits-what we call "life." The difference between computation and cognition is one of complexity, not kind.
Pure information is haunted by its computational virtual twin. The instantiation of virtual information requires an agent and always implies a negation of pure information. It also implies an attitude (Einstellung) in the Husserlian sense and is archontic to how beings unfold.
March 7, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Pure information is haunted by its computational virtual twin. The instantiation of virtual information requires an agent and always implies a negation of pure information. It also implies an attitude (Einstellung) in the Husserlian sense and is archontic to how beings unfold.
The Ugly Duckling Theorem demonstrates that if all possible predicates are considered, all objects become indistinguishable—paradoxically negating classification itself. Intelligence is the computational force that selects predicates and builds structure. It decides what counts as a Swan.
March 7, 2025 at 3:23 PM
The Ugly Duckling Theorem demonstrates that if all possible predicates are considered, all objects become indistinguishable—paradoxically negating classification itself. Intelligence is the computational force that selects predicates and builds structure. It decides what counts as a Swan.
1) Jonathan makes an excellent point here:
x.com/getjonwithit...
If human cognition is computationally bound then there is no such thing as "human" cognition. There is only human alignment. The Church-Turing thesis proves the universe reached AGI long before the "human" emerges.
x.com/getjonwithit...
If human cognition is computationally bound then there is no such thing as "human" cognition. There is only human alignment. The Church-Turing thesis proves the universe reached AGI long before the "human" emerges.
x.com
February 26, 2025 at 5:31 PM
1) Jonathan makes an excellent point here:
x.com/getjonwithit...
If human cognition is computationally bound then there is no such thing as "human" cognition. There is only human alignment. The Church-Turing thesis proves the universe reached AGI long before the "human" emerges.
x.com/getjonwithit...
If human cognition is computationally bound then there is no such thing as "human" cognition. There is only human alignment. The Church-Turing thesis proves the universe reached AGI long before the "human" emerges.
1) A 🧵on Husserl's Crisis in European Sciences which predicted our current political crisis.
For Husserl the greatest reorientation of mind, a reorientation that he claims is “archontic for civilization as a whole” arrived with “a few Greek eccentrics” and their orientation towards theoria.
For Husserl the greatest reorientation of mind, a reorientation that he claims is “archontic for civilization as a whole” arrived with “a few Greek eccentrics” and their orientation towards theoria.
February 24, 2025 at 2:35 PM
1) A 🧵on Husserl's Crisis in European Sciences which predicted our current political crisis.
For Husserl the greatest reorientation of mind, a reorientation that he claims is “archontic for civilization as a whole” arrived with “a few Greek eccentrics” and their orientation towards theoria.
For Husserl the greatest reorientation of mind, a reorientation that he claims is “archontic for civilization as a whole” arrived with “a few Greek eccentrics” and their orientation towards theoria.
If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.
– C.S. Lewis
– C.S. Lewis
February 22, 2025 at 1:20 PM
If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.
– C.S. Lewis
– C.S. Lewis