Gnostic Nihilism

Here's my take on it. God actually exists. It's the world that doesn't. It's just that when you leave a being like that all alone in nothingness for an eternity, it starts to dream up all sorts of amazing and insane things.

Or to put it in mathematical terms (incidentally also being my unbound alternative to "42" for half my life):

0 * oo = x, where 0 < x < oo.

("oo" is for 𝌺, i.e. "eternity", of course.)

Take that you goddamn realists! I laugh in your general direction! Ha. Ha I say.

If you nevertheless find a discrepancy in my flawless argument, I'd gather you're just cheating by using rationality. How gnostic is that? I suppose next you're going to argue that there is logical truth in empirical facts.

Have you ever

stayed within your own contemplation
long enough,
to realize
that you're never
outside
of your contemplation?

Leave.

Brave New World

[I wrote this little silliness more than a year ago. Didn't find an appropriate time to post it (it served mostly as critique of the computerized semantics I usually like so much). Now, with Sweden (where I live) on the brink of legalizing a little Echelon of our own (or their own, as it were), it seems as good a time as any.]

.. Sometimes I wonder if what we do is just a fancy way of digging our own graves.

Echelon> Event 116822052.26#113967:
  Instant Message detected: thinking.. done (in 0.032 ms).
  Storing inferred knowledge as:
   [ foaf:mbox_sha1sum "286e3265...";
     emo:likes <urn:bbdb:1997:python> ].
  in context:
   <urn:gov:surveillance:event:116822052.26:113967>
     a :NLPResult;
     :timestamp 116822052.26032;
     :trustability 0.681132 .
  Done. Running ruleset..
   CoreBot>
     - No known subject for:
       owl:inverseFunctionalProperty
         foaf:mbox_sha1sum with "286e3265..."
       , using BNode _:a21c3dd723ffe39
       (subject of 31102 previous facts).
     - rdf:type foaf:Person inferred for _:a21c3dd723ffe39.
     - No unknown knowledge gained. Done.
   EmotionTracker>
     - increasing likability of <urn:bbdb:1997:python> .
   MicroSoftAgent>
     - increasing demand of <urn:bbdb:2006:ironpython> .
     - increasing threat of <urn:bbdb:1998:opensource> .
  Backtrack threshold at 1337
    - refactoring reasoner dependencies.. Done.
  Done (passed through 4211 reasoners).
  Done (in 0.11 ms).

Echelon> System Update:
  "Owner Change. Renaming."
  Done (in 0.002 ms).

SkyNet>

Point of Data

(Read all of this, it is a Zen Koan.)

Been thinking about data lately (possibly "in" as well). And information, content, metadata, meaning, knowledge, taxonomies, ontologies.. Ontology. Flashbacks of never-ending philosophical debates, epistemology, Plato's Ideals, empiricism, positivism, all of that. Well not so much of the latter really, I guess I've learnt to recognize mental swamps before I go trekking nowadays.

But data. I think a little clarification could be in order. I'd say it goes like:

Data

Particulars (atoms if you will) of that which compose our impressions. Not the world, but that stuff from which we "get the world".

Information

I just quote Gregory Bateson: "a difference that makes a difference". The part of data we can use, as opposed to "noise" or "void".

Content

A tricky thing. "Composited information with a bound context" perhaps, with varying (often hard to measure) complexity.

Metadata

Let's say "added bits used to externally correlate content". I'm not much of a fan of the word anymore. I may deprecate it in favour of just "context-providing statements". The stuff that turns data we don't get into data we get.

I often just call content and metadata "data in" and "data about" nowadays.

Of Content

Content is perhaps the most widely used and less defined stuff. It's abundant, the substance which we structure (and in so doing "contentifying" it further). It is the composition from which richer meaning can be derived. By it's virtue of having a context. This article is "content". That last statement is information (this was a reification, but I digress). Possibly "metadata". Now it's just getting funny. Anyway, content is stuff which can be molded to gain shapes and shades, color and tone; somewhat "synergetical" effects which may or may not add meaning — more often than not depending on cultural aspects (part of the implicit context).

It is stuff which we leave semi-formal at best, the information we hardly can process by anything less than our own neural networks (brains). Somewhat pessimistically perhaps, information which during interpretation gain illusory qualities (akin to optical illusions) which either enhance or corrupt the bringing of meaning.

I won't get into information theory nor semantical discussions. Neither into a discussion of techniques of how to "fluff" expressions to become more sympathetical, making the receiver prone to interpret them as "meaningful".

To the Point

If you're still reading, this is the part where I intend to make a point. Binding the context by which this becomes meaningful.

This content bears no inherent meaning. It's all in your head. Perchance it may have conveyed a structure which made sense, put your mind into a state of "ah, ok". I really just needed to externalize that first part of categorizing some terms that continue to come up in discussions, and for which I needed some binding interpretations.

Perhaps you detected an "anomaly" if you tried to interpret the terms in a hierarchical fashion. "Data in" and "data of" was my differentiation of Content and Metadata, seemingly "instances of Information". But Data isn't necessarily Information. The thing is, that "thing that makes the difference" is where the "meaning", "semantic relevance", "precise form" comes in, and what that is my current state of mind can only grasp by intuition.

We use Content, and the more fine-grained and "to the point" context-providing statements (Metadata), one as compositions within a context, the other to bind both particulars and contexts by means of relations and characteristics. To have a feel for the difference is important, for it is the key by which to understand why Knowledge Representation is the missing piece in many Information Technology issues today.

And this is where How To Tell Stuff To a Computer, and then The Semantic Web FAQ comes in, as my recommended reading of the week, to get you going. Those sources of information will hopefully make the difference that eluded you here.

That's the point.

(Or is it?)

Ode To Keepers of Yaks

I am the Yak Shaver
The digression gangsta
I cannot concentrate-ah
I'm living it badd *word it up*

[there would be more verses but right now I'm off to a bookstore shopping for synonym books in urban language - on the way of course realizing I should order one online and become occupied by downloading the latest Opera to my phone so I can view the online shops better - then realizing my battery is low and divert to an electronics shop to get an USB recharger - all in due course for my promising career as a lyricist of course]

The art of Yak Shaving must never be lost to the world. It's my way of life (do the detriment of any spare time of course).