fucked up how the more i learn, the less i know
each new bit of knowledge contains some novelty I hadn't previously considered, a degree of freedom I wasn't aware existed. a new dimension along which information can lie
the space of possible knowledge grows exponentially
while I now know much more than I did a few years ago, I also know how much more I don't, & not just in terms of the possible knowledge domains, but the fractal dimension of information too, how deep reality goes, how much space there is for nuance & fine structure, everywhere.
it can feel overwhelming at times, especially when inhabiting my traditional frame of hypermodern epistemics, wherein one must understand the totality of human knowledge to be able to contribute useful insights; its become clear to me how unrealistic this is.
its most definitely a cope, but a necessary one; even an immortal being wouldn't be able to acquire & comprehend the entirety of existence, even in a universe w/o a time limit; the world simply changes too fast to keep up with. the only viable strategy is to identify what matters
by studying the nature of knowledge itself, one can identify its critical dimensions, the aspects most salient to understanding whatever subset of the universe one wishes to model; not all knowledge is created equal, as some bits contain more novelty than others, which is key
each new bit of information one acquires can be compared to the existing knowledge base, quantified in terms of its novelty delta, and used to inform the next phase of exploration; ore tends to run in veins, and the juiciest tidbits of information, similarly, tend to coexist
the end goal of this exploration is, ofc, to maximally compress your conceptual structures, to achieve the most efficient representation of your world-model; the simpler it is, the more powerful & generalizable, and hence a that much more useful tool
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RT @pee_zombie
this is a natural cycle; we start off with way-too-simple conceptions of reality, iteratively greeble them to capture nuances we discover in our search for truth, and th…
https://twitter.com/pee_zombie/status/1389245862606516224
each semantic dimension you discover presents a new degree of freedom, a way to fold reality along its seams, uncover its inherent symmetries & reduce its relative complexity. the more your thinking becomes multifaceted, the simpler the world appears.
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RT @pee_zombie
@AbstractFairy perceptive origami
https://twitter.com/pee_zombie/status/1437542878004252674
to achieve this, one seeks out the most highly-greebled bits of reality, those with the most unique textures, the highest information density. autists tend to be particularly good at this, being genetically predisposed to excel at high-res info processing
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RT @pee_zombie
greebledness is an intuitive measure of an object's Kolmogorov complexity
the more greebled something is, the more incompressible (aka asymmetric) detail it posses…
https://twitter.com/pee_zombie/status/1391565187719761930