Pikkulog

A shorter gemlog for rambly things.

2021-11-24 (Thu)

I was not expecting this when I wrote yesterday's post, but the Kazuo Ishiguro novel *The Remains of the Day* touches on similar points.

2021-11-23 (Wed)

I came across a post from CAPCOM from a writer at low-key.me (link below) writing about Gemini, how the lack of reaction tools such as likes or +1 buttons, etc. affects the way we interact with content, and how Gemini's lack of any such affordances makes any interaction we have with content deliberate and effortful.

low-key.me - Oct 10, 2021

I also particularly liked the notion of treyf, which low-key.me quotes Moxie Marlinspike's post "Career Advice", in which Marlinspike quotes Aaron Cometbus, as follows:

> "'Things that are treyf, you avoid, not because you hate them per se, but because in avoiding them you keep yourself from becoming like the people you hate.' [...] Like Aaron, I have my own list of things that are treyf, not because I find them necessarily unenjoyable, but because they add up to something I ultimately dislike.

A useful concept, particularly given Moxie's elaboration afterwards of seeing people in first class seats on flights:

> For instance, whenever I get on an airplane and walk past first class, I inevitably go through a familiar mental process. First, I’m envious. The passengers are already in their comfortable seats, drinking from champagne flutes, contemplating the moment after takeoff when they can recline into their cocoons and watch a movie of their choice on demand.

> But then, I register who is sitting in those seats. It’s usually almost all predominantly unhealthy looking middle-aged white men, who it is clear from a glance have spent literally hundreds of hours of their lives over the past year in these airplanes. And suddenly, I’m glad that I’m not sitting there.

> Those seats are treyf for me, not because I don’t envy extra leg room, but because I don’t envy the people sitting in them. There’s a reason the bulk of the first class passengers resemble each other, just as there’s a reason prison guards tend to act the same. I know that by making choices designed to land me in the first class cabin, it would be difficult to avoid also inheriting the dreariness associated with its current occupants.

It's kind of funny that I'm coming across this now, of all times, because Marlinspike's post is about career advice after all, and the notion of treyf he brings in here is part of his wider argument about how the jobs we pick change who we are -- and I've been asking myself similar questions about whether I really want to become like many of the people I meet at work. (Not becoming like them, on the other hand, is its own problem: that of not belonging, of being something of a stranger and misfit.)

2021-11-22 (Mon)

I recently picked up René Girard's *Violence and the Sacred* for a read, after seeing his work be recommended by one or two people I follow.

Girard is an interesting fellow, and one who has received a good deal of attention in the past for his work. At the same time, much of that attention has been focused on his idea of mimetic desire and his idea of the special status of Christianity as an escape from the scapegoat cycle of violence, with relatively little concerning other aspects of his philosophy.

This is a bit of a shame, because so far, just reading *Violence and the Sacred* has been interesting. In the first few chapters alone he makes points about the reality of endless reciprocating violence and tries to explain how it affects people in the absence of any sort of equivalent to a modern judicial system — but he also talks about how violence negates differences and turns everyone alike, and how it is not similarity that makes for peace but difference.

It's also worth noting that there's more to Girard's idea of mimetic desire than it's elevator-pitch summary, i.e. "we learn what we want not because we want them in themselves, but because others also want those things". That in itself is useful, though perhaps it's also somewhat more obvious when most things today are advertised not based on their utility or some other value-based proposition, but literally via models — we buy things because we want to be like the people that we see modelling the product.

For instance, Girard writes at one point (and I am paraphrasing, quite likely badly) that people experience themselves as a lack of being, so they want to be like others who they see as having being. Or, in other words: we don't see ourselves as being anything particular at all, but we see others as being cool, or being attractive - and so to become as cool or attractive we mimic them, and as part of that we want the same things they want. But this also creates conflict over the objects of desire.

I've enjoyed reading his work - having said that, while I would be happy to read more of it, I wouldn't jump at the opportunity in the same way that I would David Graeber's writing. It's on the list of things I eventually want to read, but the "eventually" is the main qualifier here.

2021-11-21 (Sun)

Just like that a quarter of a year has gone. A good part of it was spent resolving some uncertainty regarding life choices, though there are still questions that I still need to figure out, and more importantly I need to get some things started.

That aside, though, it's been a fairly relaxed period at the end of the year - enough that I can hopefully catch up on some of my own reading and writing. I've been trying to put my thoughts together on a number of topics for some time - the issue of theodicy, most of all, but also some of the things I've picked up from the odd book or two this year.

I've also uploaded, finally, an essay on what transhuman agents might be like. (It was mostly finished a year ago, but well...) So that's finally out of the way!

EOF