Spinal Catastrophism - Notebook Exegesis #1 (henceforth S.C.N.E)

My notes from the book I read during COVID lockdown March 2020

In March 2020, I flew from Atlanta to New York. I returned in time for the COVID-19 lockdown. The following week I spent in isolation with a single book — Spinal Catastrophism by Thomas Moynihan — a speculative philosophical fiction that traces the history of the world through geology, embodiment, and trauma.

A friend just finished this book, and I told him I would type my notes, and maybe something interesting would arise.

Structure and Reason

What is the relationship between structure and reason? Does geology make us reason differently? We cannot use a syllogism to understand how the Scottish Highlands and the Appalachian mountains are connected, but we can use the Caledonian Orogeny.

Is this a genealogy? In my first page of notes, we might call this a hyper genealogy - the genealogy of structure.

Hyper Genealogical A.I.

Right now, there is a lot of talk about A.I. The A.I. tools are built using logical systems and neural network feedback systems. They are forward-looking from data to one final answer. Genealogy looks backward through data to provide interpretations. Hypergeneaology looks back through structure and creates possibilities.

Hypergenealogy is the structure of the neural network.

We are beyond reason.

S.C.N.E. 1 is on medium and my blog.

You may have noticed I have a new handle - aleatoric_ops. Forget psy_ops or dev_ops, or operations research. We are in the field of chance - to live without laws only to sense make at the moment.

Thank you for reading. See you in 2023.