quickening
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With few apologize, I have not been contributing very much as of late. The last few months have offered new opportunities for work, meditations on new life, and a whole lot of commutative ring theory / algebraic geometry. Sometime soon, I hope to meet with my friend Ashley (an ex-Johnnie) whom it seems has thought quite a bit about consciousness and embodiment. She and I are in a D&D campaign together and we spend our `smoke` break talking about phenomenology and mind. I would appreciate any `concise` thoughts that members of FRIAM have on the subject, as sometimes I see it as my job to pollinate my environment with the thoughtful ideas of others. For those that do not yet know, Sarah and I are going to have a baby in March. This experience has me wondering about how it is that we `come online`. This tiny organism begins as Sarah and slowly develops a heart and a nervous system. Is it an eventual critical mass of neurons and the like that brings this thing (otherwise indistinguishable from an organ) across the threshold and into a cognitive being? I muse that the first experiences are proto-painful as I am not sure what a growing pain is when what is growing are the very first sensory organs the thing has. What is it to experience and then to become aware of experiencing? Unfortunately, I cannot remember. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Jon What on earth is a D and D campaign? Imagination runs wild. The first question to an evolutionist is, “what is a given pain for?” So, pain is a mechanism to get the organism to do or not to do something, including, in social species, to cry for help. Once you know what a pain is for, the next question is, “How can it misfire?” So, if a particular pain system is designed to operate with in some limits, forcing it to operate outside those limits will produce pain that is for nothing (Phantom Limb), or will produce no pain when there is something that needs paining (carbon monoxide poisoning). To a dualist, pain is kind of troublesome because, of all the senses, it is the once that is most about … itself! In other words, it’s not easy to designate the domain, external to the senses, that pain tells you about. But to a monist, all senses are like that, since the only thing that experience can “speak” of is other experiences. There. Is that friammish enough for you? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Jon Zingale With few apologize, I have not been contributing very much as of late. The last few months have offered new opportunities for work, meditations on new life, and a whole lot of commutative ring theory / algebraic geometry. Sometime soon, I hope to meet with my friend Ashley (an ex-Johnnie) whom it seems has thought quite a bit about consciousness and embodiment. She and I are in a D&D campaign together and we spend our `smoke` break talking about phenomenology and mind. I would appreciate any `concise` thoughts that members of FRIAM have on the subject, as sometimes I see it as my job to pollinate my environment with the thoughtful ideas of others. For those that do not yet know, Sarah and I are going to have a baby in March. This experience has me wondering about how it is that we `come online`. This tiny organism begins as Sarah and slowly develops a heart and a nervous system. Is it an eventual critical mass of neurons and the like that brings this thing (otherwise indistinguishable from an organ) across the threshold and into a cognitive being? I muse that the first experiences are proto-painful as I am not sure what a growing pain is when what is growing are the very first sensory organs the thing has. What is it to experience and then to become aware of experiencing? Unfortunately, I cannot remember. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by jon zingale
Jon - Congratulations on your fresh parentage... the perfect (long) moment to consider many issues around the meaning of life, consciousness, etc. (as you are). Of note it is interesting what you juxtapose: Playing D&D
with someone who you are also (out of band from the game)
discussing phenomenology and mind. I've never played D&D but
have a vague sense of the culture and experience and anecdotally
know it to be incredibly immersive for those who allow themselves
to trance into it as it were. Interesting also perhaps is the implication of that in the light of the Hoffman/Veridical thread? - Steve On 9/12/19 11:33 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by jon zingale
Thanks Steve! Playing in a D&D campaign with a small group of thoughtful individuals is a lot of fun. My upbringing tended to over-emphasize technical subjects at the expense of more humanistic and social fields. In many ways, this experience has been doing a lot to develop my inner theater kid. One member of the group is playing an automata named ASHA. ASHA was created to be a laboratory assistant to a wizard, and when the wizard died, ASHA gained sentience. Much of ASHA's journey now is coming to understand what it could mean to be sentient. The different members of the party bring insights into this question through interactions with ASHA and together we develop a possible world. Some prefer to express all change through their character and character-party-world interactions. Others prefer to express change through `meta-gaming`, ie. talking about their characters. In the end, there are many opportunities for very different minds to cast light on a single collective fiction, and to build a consensus about what kind of world these characters inhabit. The practice has done a lot for helping me to identify less with the various roles I exact in my life, and to understand the social value of improv games like `yes and`. The most difficult task for me remains in the immersion. I often am looking for a sense of embodiment with my character, that there may be some way to build meaningful models of the character's world and to correctly hypothesize more easily. I remember reading that Hoffmann paper sometime ago, and while it seemed interesting I wasn't sure where I could go deeper with the theory. Off the top of my head, it struck me as offering up API as metaphor for perception and on the whole I may be too personally invested in something more like direct perception. idk. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
8^) Since Jon didn't answer this directly, I'll stab at it. D&D is Dungeons and Dragons. It's a medieval/fantasy role-playing game where people draw up characters and interact within the bounds of a (fairly complicated) set of schema. The free variables in the schema can be filled by finer-grained rules or dice rolls. A Dungeon Master assembles the schema into a world that's then explored (and fleshed out) by the players.
And while many of the people who play it resemble Gollum, Jon's point is important, the world is co-constructed by the players. So, the wider mix of people playing, the more interesting the world. E.g. During the time I played it as a kid, I went through stints in band, cross country, weight lifting, and tae kwon do, over and above my schoolwork. So, most of the campaigns I played in required significant open space where I could physically demonstrate the various violent acts my character was supposed to carry out. I remember one argument vividly. A cavalry rider tried to poke me with his spear and I told the DM that I deflect it into the ground so that it would stick. I maintained that if successful, the rider would: 1) lose the spear, 2) get knocked off the horse, 3) break the spear, 4) or have to "roll a 20" and manage to ride by and deftly pull the spear out of the ground before attacking again. The DM (who sucked at math/physics, couldn't fight, and who eventually became a copyright lawyer) disagreed with all of that. He claimed that my guy (on foot) wouldn't be able to knock the spear downward at all. I could only dodge. We argued about that for hours. I lost because ... well ... he was the DM and he defines the physics in his world. Pffft. In college, a few of us continued the collaborative fiction by snail mail, writing a few pages of the cumulative story and passing it on, round-robin style. It was quite difficult because most of us (players) didn't like the other players' characters. So, while the document was in your hands you could write in embarrassing events that would happen to the other characters and they'd have to write in graceful recoveries. On 9/12/19 10:55 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > What on earth is a D and D campaign? -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Thanks, Glen. On reflection I did know what D and D was, but was confused by its pairing with the word campaign.
Also, I thought Dungeons and Dragons died years ago. The last time I saw D and D it was a reference to Dick and Dorothea in SWALLLOWS AND AMAZONS. I think I still don't understand the constraints that make the game possible. Just to put it bluntly, what keeps me from declaring that you all catch the plague and I win. Anyway, I shouldn't trouble you with this, when I am sure that Wikipedia will firehose me with information, if I need more than you have already provided. By the way, I keep hearing programs on NPR that suggest that 5G will eliminate life as we know it. Do you agree? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ? Sent: Friday, September 13, 2019 7:02 PM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] quickening 8^) Since Jon didn't answer this directly, I'll stab at it. D&D is Dungeons and Dragons. It's a medieval/fantasy role-playing game where people draw up characters and interact within the bounds of a (fairly complicated) set of schema. The free variables in the schema can be filled by finer-grained rules or dice rolls. A Dungeon Master assembles the schema into a world that's then explored (and fleshed out) by the players. And while many of the people who play it resemble Gollum, Jon's point is important, the world is co-constructed by the players. So, the wider mix of people playing, the more interesting the world. E.g. During the time I played it as a kid, I went through stints in band, cross country, weight lifting, and tae kwon do, over and above my schoolwork. So, most of the campaigns I played in required significant open space where I could physically demonstrate the various violent acts my character was supposed to carry out. I remember one argument vividly. A cavalry rider tried to poke me with his spear and I told the DM that I deflect it into the ground so that it would stick. I maintained that if successful, the rider would: 1) lose the spear, 2) get knocked off the horse, 3) break the spear, 4) or have to "roll a 20" and manage to ride by and deftly pull the spear out of the ground before attacking again. The DM (who sucked at math/physics, couldn't fight, and who eventually became a copyright lawyer) disagreed with all of that. He claimed that my guy (on foot) wouldn't be able to knock the spear downward at all. I could only dodge. We argued about that for hours. I lost because ... well ... he was the DM and he defines the physics in his world. Pffft. In college, a few of us continued the collaborative fiction by snail mail, writing a few pages of the cumulative story and passing it on, round-robin style. It was quite difficult because most of us (players) didn't like the other players' characters. So, while the document was in your hands you could write in embarrassing events that would happen to the other characters and they'd have to write in graceful recoveries. On 9/12/19 10:55 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > What on earth is a D and D campaign? -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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