AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
PF likes Mythbusters but does not like the default naturalism
JFM: Spinoza Ethics as mindblowing (I did listen to this before I think). He coes off as fanatic rationalist but in 5th book goes off on new plane.
Marshall Sahlins, last book, The Enchanted something or other. Sounds very WS. "St Augistine was actually an animist".
PF: the modern as a meditation (?)
> You know, it's the nature of the modern, it seems to me, is removing the stops to that process of collective meditation. And so the nature of modernism actually is to go there. And what you see in the history of the modern is a series of stops that are being imposed to prevent us from getting to the place that modern thought wants to go, where it must naturally go.
metapersons (not quite human, eg the dead)
> Suppose all the, quote, magical things that make our current lives, all the appurtenances,
meaningful and technical, whose substance and forces we did not make ourselves. I'm assuming he's
talking about things like, you know, your phone or whatever. Imagine that such things were
recognized by and as their humanized effects. Suppose they were proper subjects with real agency.
JFM goes on to make the usual mistake, that agency and naturalism are opposed. I'm tired of that.
YEah I don't disagree with any of this I just find it a bit tedious, I've already figured this shit out.
> Charles Taylor calls the subtraction
hypothesis, which he finds Right. Highly unconvincing. The idea that the universe is exactly as
naturalists understand it, and that all we needed to do was subtract the enchantments of religion,
the the false consciousness of religion, in order to see the universe as it truly is, from which
point of view this the mental style of scientific modernity isn't a style at all, but simply, what
we see when we finally, you know, clean the window
Also conflating consciousness and agency.
Churchlands get mentioned. Sigh.
Spinoza: one substance, constitutes both matter and god, manifests as both thought and extension
(this just seems like common sense to me)
WOnder if AI people (MInsky esp) talk Spinoza at all
Mythbusters as dwarves (fabricatorrs)
cool they appreciate it, it means I might be able to explain Minsky to them (sort of)
Can't believe I hadn't heard this term previously, but it comes up in WS more than once.
Ask Claude
Marshall Sahlins' Concept of Metapersons
Marshall Sahlins developed the concept of "metapersons" as part of his anthropological theory examining how different cultures understand personhood beyond the Western notion of humans as the only beings with agency, intentionality, and social significance.
Metapersons are non-human entities that various cultures recognize as having person-like qualities, including:
Consciousness
Intentionality
Agency
Social relationships
Ability to influence human affairs
These metapersons can include:
Ancestral spirits
Deities and gods
Animals with special status
Natural forces (rivers, mountains, storms)
Objects with spiritual significance
For Sahlins, the Western separation between humans and non-humans (where only humans have full personhood) is not universal but culturally specific. Many societies throughout history have operated with an understanding that personhood extends beyond human beings.
This concept challenges the modern Western ontological division between nature and culture, suggesting instead that many cultures operate with what anthropologists call "relational ontologies" - worldviews where relationships between various types of beings (human and non-human) are fundamental to understanding reality.
Sahlins argued that recognizing these alternative conceptions of personhood is crucial for understanding different cultural systems and avoiding imposing Western assumptions about personhood onto other societies. This concept has been particularly influential in studies of Indigenous cosmologies and religious systems.