Speculative Orientation S.C.N.E #6
Many things are on my mind. But they drift by like clouds. I have not written them into existence - at least not in 2023. Then I had a vivid blue lotus-infused dream of continuing with my S.C.N.Es. So that is what I am doing.
Continuations & Computation
To go on — to not stop! I am in a group art show on April 20 in Ridgewood called “Press On.” Yes! Press on! Keep going, and don't stop. Stop some things, and continue others. The act of discernment is between the caesuras and the continuations.
In Computer Science, a continuation is the execution state of a computation. For example, we have some pseudocode:
line = new Line([[w,x],[y,z])
line.draw()
line.curve([a,b])
Every line in this program represents a state in the program - a state of the world. Each line of the program is a possible world.
Sometimes the state is not yet defined, if, for example, a variable waits for definition. If this happens, the program cannot execute. We do not want the program to halt but to go on! So, the program sets aside this code in memory and continues. When the variable is ready, the program will pick up and execute this code.
Some events in life are not ready for you. Sometimes events are exceptions or errors, and we throw them away - with try…catch… syntax. Other times we store these events, these continuations, in our pocket. We assemble the rest of the computation, and one day return to the continuation in our pocket to complete the event. In this way, cause and effect do not exist — since they do not — only sequences exist — as they do.
Chronotopes?
Some moments of time feel different than others — this is not a new thought - but a medium thought - a Bergsonian/Proustian thought. Factory time, the clock time of the computer, and the execution of the steps of a computation obfuscate and erase the qualities of moments.
“Temporality is an ordering of experience,” a quote from the text but not my notes. Is a temporality an ordering experience? I attended many seders recently — or tried to. Seder means “order.” How peculiar!
Some seders are longer than others — am I right? Temporality is the imposition of duration on the orders of experience — it is not the ordering — there is an original MF analysis.
Truly, all my notes on this page seem banal. Not all notes are equally profound. But my final note seems worthy — “Nature escapes {} by creating a CNS (central nervous system).” I call this worldbuilding. Now I call this set building, the building of mathematical sets — the great mathematical innovation of the 20th century. A set is a world. I had a typo — a set is a word — maybe that too.
The central nervous system (CNS) is the engine of action. In Advaita Vedanta, we talk about non-doership. We are always doing, but who is doing the doing? What is animating the CNS? Only with a CNS do we have the ability to contemplate non-doership through doership — the dialectic!
“Orientation has a prehistory.”
In Plato’s Timeus, there is no straight or queer — because there is no differentiation — the prehistory to orientation is a boulder.