Earwa > General Earwa
Stuff To Blow Your Mind: Bonus: R. Scott Bakker, Consciousness & Consult
profgrape:
--- Quote from: tleilaxu on October 03, 2017, 09:42:02 pm ---
--- Quote from: profgrape on October 03, 2017, 09:25:43 pm ---After listening to the spoiler section a few times, it's pretty revealing as far as Bakker goes. In describing the relationship between the Gods and the World, Bakker draws from Kahneman's two distinct modes of decision making: System 1 (fast, unconscious, automatic, error-prone) is the Gods; and System 2 (slow, conscious, deliberate, reliable) is the World.
What kind of blew my mind (hey, that's the name of the podcast!) was how these constructs relate to several other metaphysical concepts raised in the series:
System 2 => World, Conscious, Object, Watched
System 1 => Outside, Subconscious, Subject, Watcher
System 0 => No-God, Unconscious, Absolute
In short, the series itself is an allegory of human cognition! Which is pretty cool.
A spoilerific thought stemming from this way of imagining the world:
(click to show/hide)Bakker shared a theory on Meaning in an article that preceded TDTCB by a few years:
http://www.sffworld.com/2000/06/why-fantasy-and-why-now/
Imagine that Meaning is the distance between Subject (irrational) and Object (rational). So Meaning and value increase as a function of the difference between Subject and Object. Ascribing the sun rising to a Sun God is Meaningful; Heliocentrism, on the other hand, is not Meaningful, it just "is".
So when Kellhus describes the No-God as collapsing Subject and Object, it follows that it is also collapsing Meaning! Which was, you may recall, how Bakker described Kellhus' mission, to bring meaninglessness to a meaningful world.
--- End quote ---
So that's why sealing the World is necessary, not just because of damnation but because it removes the subject (God) and everything collapses into object...
--- End quote ---
Yes. To be clear, though, the interpretation about meaning and the NG is mine, not Bakker's. :-)
Also, the NG facilitates the sealing rather than doing the sealing. But I think that the method of sealing is only possible with the God of Gods (and therefore, the Gods) removed from the board.
MSJ:
Just listened to the part about the books. Its funny to know that there would be such a huge divide in the ending of TUC. Also, I thought it funny that his hard drive crashed a month or so after turning in TUC. He lost all his meaning too, lol. I'll check the rest out later
Madness:
--- Quote from: tleilaxu on October 03, 2017, 06:13:21 pm ---...
--- End quote ---
Oh, he's mentioned Bicameralism before. I thought H was asking if he's mentioned that concrete real world analogy to the Gods before, as profgrape is dissecting above.
--- Quote from: profgrape on October 03, 2017, 09:25:43 pm --- (click to show/hide)So when Kellhus describes the No-God as collapsing Subject and Object, it follows that it is also collapsing Meaning! Which was, you may recall, how Bakker described Kellhus' mission, to bring meaninglessness to a meaningful world.
--- End quote ---
Lol, glad you posted ;).
As per this portion, I'm not sure Bakker ever said it like that. It seemed more a question of what a meaningless character would make of a meaningful world.
Now I need to find the quote... Making me search :P...
--- Quote from: Bakker, 2005 ---I thought to myself, what would a story of a protagonist stranded in a meaningful world struggling to hold onto meaninglessness look like?
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: MSJ on October 04, 2017, 04:31:47 pm ---Just listened to the part about the books. Its funny to know that there would be such a huge divide in the ending of TUC. Also, I thought it funny that his hard drive crashed a month or so after turning in TUC. He lost all his meaning too, lol. I'll check the rest out later
--- End quote ---
Lol, I think we see it firsthand, MSJ.
And yeah, he was shook about losing his hard drive.
H:
--- Quote from: profgrape on October 03, 2017, 09:25:43 pm ---System 2 => World, Conscious, Object, Watched
System 1 => Outside, Subconscious, Subject, Watcher
System 0 => No-God, Unconscious, Absolute
--- End quote ---
I think I would (prehaps incorrectly) label System 1 as Unconscious (which I think Bakker does actually say) and label System Zero as Non-conscious. The implication here would be that Conscious and Unconscious speak to the "awareness" where the Non-conscious is not a part of the duality at all. This isn't perfect though, because in reality, the gods would seem to be both Unconscious and Subconscious, so perhaps the distinction doesn't really matter.
Madness:
I'm fairly sure subconscious or unconscious - especially citing Kahneman - are the same term, whichever is in fashion now.
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