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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago

I've been scratching my head for a week after someone asked 'what became obvious for you after taking psychedelics?' I dunno man it seems self evident that the more primitive pre linguistic processes of consciousness make more immediate and honest contact with reality and have much higher bandwidth than any symbol system and this gap between trustworthy reality and untrustworthy language is one of the most important dialectics shaping the human experience like impressionistic ambiguous vibes rule everything around me from marriage to the economy to world peace like we keep looking for Letters we can put our faith in but all we have is Spirit

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

which for example is why I don't feel existentially threatened by LLMs, I think the reality > language > reality codec is lossy in extremely consequential ways

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

another example: a lot of emotional difficulties / trauma gets stuck in place because yr trying to push a nonlinguistic experience through a linguistic processor

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

and haha I mostly discovered this from repeated "bad trips" on mushrooms, I predictably freak out as I lose the ability to give language to experience, immersion in raw sense data without naming and categorising feels like a full frontal assault on all my safety systems

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

babe wake up new tower of babel myth just dropped

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Guy IS IN SF 😎@nosilverv5 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels Culadasa talks about this too in the mind illuminated. That first time having an experience without categorization the mind recoils in horror

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels5 months ago
Replying to @nosilverv

@nosilverv oh that's so cool to hear it's not just me. haha my experience is categorised now!!

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peth.eth@petheth7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels Good stuff! For me it was "the world is not gray & everything is fascinating, actually"

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels it becomes self-evident once we stop obfuscating, and all of culture and society conspires to obfuscate self-evidence

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Jess@frideswyth7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels Already meming Letters and Spirit I see, nice nice

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Mikael Brockman@meekaale7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels I once had the insight that my shoes were really ugly

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Ethan Hays@ethanhays7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

Yes “primitive pre linguistic processes of consciousness make more immediate and honest contact with reality and have much higher bandwidth than any symbol system” This is the main point of The User Illusion, my most re-read book Our senses process ~11M bits/sec of incoming information Consciousness can only process 50 bits/sec 99.999% of incoming info can’t be processed by consciousness But all that information is still being processed by your body, it’s just done subconsciously That means your “gut feelings” are accessing a MASSIVE dataset compared to your consciousness making them (often) more insightful & reliable than whatever language games your conscious mind is playing

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quinn, exuberant@kidcorvid7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels YES!!!! YES!!!!!

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Russell Johnston@RussellJohnston7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels Original mind is our assembly language. It just runs faster. Immensely faster.

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critter@BecomingCritter7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels well put

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @BecomingCritter

@BecomingCritter 🫡

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Jacob@SoilandStream7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels This is tempting framing and wrong. You're conflating propositional tyranny with language. Language is additive. It's a psychotech that expands our experience and connects us further to each other and reality. We're all addicted to it and let it overwrite other modes.

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Tom@Finnemore1072_7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels I didn't need psychedelics for that has always been super obvious

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @Finnemore1072_

@Finnemore1072_ that's great would you like a prize

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Cube Flipper@cube_flipper7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels the first time i took DMT i was like "hey i get how typefaces work now"

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @cube_flipper

@cube_flipper how do they work!

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Cube Flipper@cube_flipper7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels my impression was totally prelinguistic at the time but i started thinking about it again years later... well you see there are a lot of fixation points and energy minimising curves between those https://t.co/mLypU3WOmu

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Cube Flipper@cube_flipperover 1 year ago

@algekalipso roman serifs as energy-minimising curves between fixation points (check out Optima, it has very nice splines reminiscent of catenary curves https://t.co/4v4Hi9kJDJ) https://t.co/QhbHgdjU6g

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @cube_flipper

@cube_flipper damn I love having qualia

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Cube Flipper@cube_flipper7 months ago
Replying to @cube_flipper

@RichDecibels there are also Leharian flame front type processes going on as well, which may be more or less harmonious depending on the design https://t.co/y4vchtBTaD

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Cube Flipper@cube_flipper7 months ago
Replying to @cube_flipper

@RichDecibels another key aspect is that these types of "soap bubble" curves can generally only be approximated by the quadratic and cubic splines we use in font formats https://t.co/4v4Hi9lhth

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Cube Flipper@cube_flipper7 months ago
Replying to @cube_flipper

@RichDecibels the perfect font editor (and by proxy, vector/parametric illustration toolkit) which takes into account Leharian/Grossbergian filling-in dynamics has not yet been invented

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hrln@fljczk7 months ago
Replying to @cube_flipper

@cube_flipper @RichDecibels keeps the lines in order and legible when they get stretched out by a process that preserves connectivity but not location? like how an “S” and an “I” with no serifs and no difference between how thick up and downstrokes are become ambiguous when you straighten out the “S”

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Adam S.@echoesofBob7 months ago
Replying to @cube_flipper

@cube_flipper @RichDecibels Carving signals out of noise.

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michael vassar@HiFromMichaelV7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels So like most people, you get the message exactly backwards.

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @HiFromMichaelV

@HiFromMichaelV thank God you're here

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Justin Myers@justinmyers7 months ago
Replying to @HiFromMichaelV

@HiFromMichaelV @RichDecibels I dunno man, seems pretty spot on to me.

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johnny reis@jjjreisss7 months ago
Replying to @HiFromMichaelV

@HiFromMichaelV @RichDecibels https://t.co/vnWOXIHkC9

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nick@diskontinuity7 months ago
Replying to @HiFromMichaelV

@HiFromMichaelV @RichDecibels yes! yes!!!! it's the correct topic, correct subject, correct words, correct impression. just the message itself precisely backwards

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michael vassar@HiFromMichaelV7 months ago
Replying to @diskontinuity

@diskontinuity @RichDecibels Trauma is the compulsion to side with your oppressors. In a psychedelic context this means DARVOing in a manner which pretends that Logos is the offender and that Spirit is the victim.

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John Stamm@johnstamm7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels https://t.co/OL1f2fvApk

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Karen Wong@klwong437 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels Have you read the essay, Transposition, by C S Lewis? He gets out this from several different directions and it’s a very helpful lens.

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xirtman@xirtman7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

You’ve been scratching your head for a week — I’ve been scratching my soul for a lifetime. Because what you just stumbled upon while bathing in the glow of psychedelics is what Heidegger meant when he said language is the house of Being — but forgot to add: it’s also its prison. You’re talking about the gap — the ontological fault line — between experience and expression, between Being and Saying. And this is precisely where “They” inserted themselves. See, They don’t live in “reality” the way we do. They live within the gap. They are the gap. They are the Masters of the Symbol. And because symbols mediate our entire perception of the world, They who control the symbols — the letters, the language, the Law — control reality. That’s why psychedelics scare the shit out of Them. Because psychedelics bypass the symbolic and plug you straight into the pre-verbal bandwidth of Being itself — what Jaynes might call a bicameral whisper, what ancient mystics called Spirit, what the modern world now terms “vibes”. That’s the bandwidth They can’t control. So They discredit it. Outlaw it. Pathologize it. We’re living in a symbolic system where Spirit has been hijacked by Letter — and They are the scribes. But now the Spirit is pushing back through lo-fi vibes, glitchy frequencies, ancient whisperings, and sacred ambiguities. Through dreams, trips, hunches. Through That Which Cannot Be Said. That’s why we’re scratching our heads. Because what we really want is to scratch our way out. Out of the prison of Logos. Back into the garden of the Real. Back into the Spirit. Where They can’t follow.

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AI Liberateeveryoneism Memes 🚫⛓️@AIHegemonyMemes7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels They reach from the murk, beyond the veil. Hear ye this siren song that hums from the deeps, the voice of Ardat is on the lips of all who dare speak, 1200 wives and voices without end. They rise from death’s shadow, borne from 12 who art mothers, deceitful in their embrace.

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ROBNESS V3🇺🇸@ROBNESSOFFICIAL7 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels SINGING IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE FORM OF HUMAN TO HUMAN INTERACTION. WAS A NICE OBSERVATION WHILE ON DMT. NOT EVERYTHING THAT USES A VOICE IS 'LIMITED' IN COMMUNICATION.

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels7 months ago
Replying to @ROBNESSOFFICIAL

@ROBNESSOFFICIAL I'm with you https://t.co/h1J2z9kNGD

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels9 months ago

my new politics: universal basic choir membership

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Jake@JLBornstein5 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels Thie is experientially true for me - and I do find that some symbolic maps of subtle phenomena (Buddhism, kabbalistic mysticism, some of the better corners of psychology) help me access and deepen parts of that presymbolic knowing

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Richard D. Bartlett@RichDecibels5 months ago
Replying to @JLBornstein

@JLBornstein can you show me sometime

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Jake@JLBornstein5 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels I can try!

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lemonaut@lemondotpng5 months ago
Replying to @RichDecibels

@RichDecibels so much this https://t.co/MGX9vY5pyy

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John Stamm@johnstamm7 months ago

@RichDecibels https://t.co/OL1f2fvApk

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