a really broad picture of symbols and communication: a given thing can be more or less networked into the messy causal web of the world. as you start to learn the structure of things, you can make inferences from seeing a just a slice of the web around you at the moment
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from this perspective, communication is wiggling parts of the web so that when others see the wiggles, they make certain inferences. communication at the level of signals (bacteria signal) is wiggling and responding to wiggles without reflection of the dynamic
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everything "signals". signalling is only sorta interesting when you see it arise "spontaneously" with simple learning mechanisms. much cooler is language that's "representational". you wiggling makes me infer something, as opposed to directly casing on your wiggle
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things being wiggled are symbols. if something is deeply networked into the web, it'll probs make a shitty symbol. "i'll pelt you with rocks, and the number of rocks I throw will encode information" lol, your chosen symbols have too many side effects
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i'm imagining tendrils of correlation coming out of what you've chose as a symbol. these are colored in intensity to how important/salient these connections are to you. u getting hit by rocks is way more salient than the fact that the cadence encodes winning lotto numbers
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if you use a medium as a symbol that is already brightly connected to the web of the world, that will outshine new info encoded by your use of the symbol. og communication is physics 2nd g communication is "agents" learning to use "inert" parts of their local web to encode info
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Replying to @natural_hazard
This is kind of similar to the view in Brian Cantwell Smith's Origin of Objects which I've been trying to get my head round. Representation as 'middle distance' between direct causal pelting-with-rocks and disconnected irrelevance. Hard book thoughhttps://drossbucket.com/2019/10/24/the-middle-distance/ …
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Lucy Keer Retweeted David Chapman
Also, if you like the tendrils metaphor you might like this. 'Lovecraftian penumbra of monstrous shadow phalanges'.https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1059189937973551104 …
Lucy Keer added,
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Replying to @drossbucket
yooooooo the origin of objects post is exactly the thing, and also I love the shadow fingers :) thanks!
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