0xc0495d62…0330sent to0xc0495d62…0330·#21,392,154·view on Etherscan
Very happy and excited to hear that, Sal. Let me know when we're in a position to feed it with Firstbase, for its incentivization capacities to be also tested out - as we've spoken about earlier. In its first phase I think the ability to tip micro amounts as and when certain parameters are met in a conversation or dialogue would be productive, then we scale to larger things. I trust you to manage that part exceptionally as well, and of course being the creator and conductor of this all, you'd be its first deserving grantee. By testing do you mean you've been privately using the Eliza framework and interacting with it?
Now, coming to the other part of your message. I, personally, do not see the implied connections as the "foundation of this experiment", far from it, in fact. Even if by this experiment you mean the entire experiment of Firstbase itself. Its ancestries and genealogies and past may be connected and possibly contribute to its speculative propulsion, but rather I see it as, or the way I saw it from the beginning, was it being antithetical to its connections and ancestries, a disowning of it, and not just of these specific relations but a disowning of the entire foundational structures of the larger ecosystem we're in. And of course by disowning I don't mean it in its exact aggressive connotations, it is a healthy and productive stance, a counterpoint. Now who and how the phantoms of the past or the connections decide to engage with the present Firstbase or don't is out of their own volition and at their own discretion. And I intend it to remain that way.
But now that you've given me the opportunity to wax philosophical or counterargue, though I rarely miss the chance, even if it may not be a call to opportunity, I'll go a bit into the final parts of your message, which is try and extrapolate and juxtapose these questions of yours and, as is my wont, make them analogous to singularity, before singularity, the universe, try the futile attempt of stretching cosmic flesh across an ever-expanding body - existence, which begins from our sense of it, which is merely seconds in universal time, then the existence of the universe itself. For the sake of maintaining some semblance of comprehension, I'll restrict myself to "the observable universe" and rule out the hypothesis of multiverses, which dilutes and further complicates all human notions, although if you believe in physics it is mostly confirmed: chiefly notions of belief, reality, truth, facts. We are, at best, a silhouette of verisimilitudes. And verisimilitude is where my life force lies and by extension of Firstbase. That is the irony. A wise person once told me "the point of a revolution is that it eventually ends." Being the contrarian, I disagreed. But, objectively, it is true, although no human revolution of any sort can be said to have ended, with its core values and demands met and consistently so, meaning becoming fixed, it's continual, and I'm afraid will be until the earth's revolutions end.
"Who is who, what is what, why is why...there is no way to confirm that it's so."
Confirm for whom? If it's your personal objective to essentialize that confirmation then that is your private duty I'm afraid. If a group wants to essentialize it, then it's the group's duty, nobody else's. If one were to cram the neutralizing idea of even agnosticism into this, because I feel it pertinent, and call it the agnostic paradox, which in essence means that even what agnosticism claims cannot be verified. Which simply translates to even if you claim that "as humans we cannot know whether a god or supernatural force exists" it is still only a human claiming it. It our double unknown conundrum, we can say we don't know, can never know, but even then it's us who are saying it, so we cannot even know that we don't know or can never know.
I am, in principle, enacting and trying my utmost best to mirror the universe, and my idea of verisimilitude, that is the very essence of Firstbase, through human form. Of course, as humans, things can be said to be known or be "facts", we have come pretty far. Fire will burn us, eating a poisonous berry will kill us, most generic human patterns are predictable and known etc etc, but as days go by I'm far more interested in wondering not even in what is fire or who made the fire or the flesh that'll burn when it comes into contact with it, but the extent of "proof" and what proof means in the context of being. And to whom? And increasingly I find myself leaning towards and looking for singularity, where it was one, no separateness, no proof, no life, no you, no me, no berries, no flesh, no fire, and therein lies the paradox, because they were apparently all there but contained in the singularity, intact. So every question can be said to be a sacrifice at the altar of singularity. And no number of questions are enough and that's what continues life.
The poet Marie Howe, in her poem "Singularity", comes close to this "Who is who, what is what, why is why..." of yours, and its futility yet its paradoxical necessity.
"For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you. Remember?
There was no Nature. No
them. No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf or if
the coral reef feels pain."
And if you're thinking in your mind, well all this is fine, but it doesn't answer my question, which you rightfully should think for everything, then that is the answer. The answer should always be: all this doesn't answer my question. If you want to call it answer, that is.
"It's time for me though to ask the question. Who is who. What is what, Why is why. A "proof-of-life" from @AndreCronjeTech on X seems necessary to put some questions to rest. A simple "14%" tweet perhaps."
Personally, it's always time for you to ask not "the" question, but only questions, inexhaustibly. And again, necessary for whom? If it's necessary for you then it's your prerogative and responsibility to try and fulfil the necessity. Putting questions to rest is, to me, I'm afraid synonymous to a mass extinction event. We came here and put a who, what, why to everything; there was before us, but now that we're here these are the engines that continue us, and I'll never choke that engine with "a rest" which doesn't put anything to rest, instead, I argue, even attention or meditation is a form of restlessness, but at its penultimate form, because then it doesn't feel foreign anymore, it feels like one is finally the inexplicable universe. Even this is verisimilitude. It's our personal objective to negotiate with questions, whether collectively or alone. We all have our ways, I don't ask questions because I think I deserve an answer or I'm looking for an answer, I ask them because, well, there isn't one.
Contrary to what t-shirts suggest and people quote, the actual Descartes quote is not "Cogito Ergo Sum," but "Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum."
I hope this doesn't answer your questions.