The character of the fool is complex, and various characteristics have been attributed to the fool, that he is dull, witted, inarticulate, unable to conform to the conventional standards of behaviour, and that he has a natural simplicity and innocence of heart.
The oxymoron, wise fool, is a literal paradox where the character who is identified as a fool comes to be regarded as the beholder of wisdom.
As Shakespeare writes, The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
The natural fool, who lacks social awareness and occasionally utters the truth being unaware of social conventions, and the professional fool, whose job it is to make harsh truths more palatable by disguising them with humour and wit.
The great secret of the successful fool is that he’s no fool at all, as the great English visionary artist William Blake writes, If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.
The fool, the clown, and the trickster share similar traits. (Generally speaking, the Fool is presented as an innocent or naive figure who wouldn’t hurt a fly, while the Trickster is intentionally deceptive, and seeks to trick others and laugh at them.)
To make his special privileges known, the Fool imitated the king’s crown and scepter with a cap and bells and a bauble, or Fool’s scepter.
The fool can be expected to reverse relationships between those dominant and those subservient, as he’s placed in the paradoxical position of virtual outlawry combined with utter dependence on the support of the social group to which he belongs.
Shakespearean fools, just like the fools and jesters of the time, use their wits to outdo people of higher social standing, but their characteristics are exaggerated for theatrical effect.
The court fool had prophesied long ago that the Fisher King would be healed when an innocent fool arrived in the court and asked a specific question.
In Tarot, the fool is commonly depicted as a man holding a white rose, symbolising innocence and purity, and a small bundle of possessions in the other.
The imagery of the fool who lives on today in our playing cards, disguised as the Joker, has gone through many symbolic transformations, alternating between beggar, madman, and fool.
Response from ChatGPT to the above extracted sentences Throughout history, the fool has played an essential role in providing a unique perspective on society and power dynamics. This character is often used to satirize and expose the absurdity or hypocrisy of a situation. Their unconventional wisdom and naivete illuminate the overlooked truth in confusing or dire circumstances.
In literature and drama, the role of the fool is often a central one, as their commentary provides insight and humor into the narrative. As they have no fear of rebuke, these characters can express radical ideas without consequences.
In the world of philosophy, the fool can be seen as a symbol of questioning norms and exploring the complexities of life. Socrates, for instance, famously referred to himself as an intellectual midwife, claiming he knew nothing but could help others discover the wisdom within themselves.
Some famous fools in history and fiction include:
King Lear’s Fool: In Shakespeare’s tragedy, the Fool is a loyal and intelligent character who speaks truth to power, using wit and satire to expose the king’s folly, and ultimately leading Lear towards humility and self-awareness.
Nasreddin Hodja: A Turkish folk character known for his wit and humorous anecdotes, often involving trickery and wit to teach life lessons, moral values, and provide commentary on social and political issues.
Coyote: A Native American trickster figure who appears in myriad stories across various cultures, known for his shape-shifting abilities and wit, often causing chaos in order to teach valuable lessons or expose the arrogance of others.
Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp: A silent film character who embodies the innocence and vulnerability of the everyman while mocking societal norms, expectations, and the excesses of modern life.
The fool archetype remains relevant today as they provide much-needed levity in a world fraught with paradoxes and challenges. These tricksters and jesters force us to confront our contradictions, inviting us to question the status quo and embrace the wisdom that can be found in folly. Ultimately, the fool serves as a constant reminder of the importance of humility, adaptability, and the courage to explore beyond the confines of conformity.
The shift from the Bronze Age to the post-Classical Christian age marks a significant change in human society’s understanding of power and authority. In the Bronze Age, might and strength were associated with power, and those who could conquer their neighbors were considered the most powerful and successful. This was evident in the Myceneans’ expansion (Bronze Age), as well as the Delian League (Classical Age) overtaking the Aegean. During the Classical era, Socrates’ acceptance of his trial, and his subsequent execution, showed his commitment to submitting his life in accordance with higher ideals, while also recognizing man’s need’s are dependent on the polis. The subsequent conflict between Athens and Sparta disrupted Athens position as leader in the Aegean, which thinkers like Plato (who admired Socrates as well as Spartan society) and Aristotle responded to by seeking to reconcile this former focus on might and power (adopted from the Bronze Age), with a more idealized vision of what society could and should be, through the discussion and application of virtue (as this would properly drive a focus on how man could live well together with one another, The Republic, Aristotle’s Wisdom of the Crowds, Athenian Constitution). (Although Aristotle did believe war was imminent between Macedonia and ‘barbarian’ states when advising Alexander). Eventually, Greece too was overtaken (not just Athens to Sparta, but now all of Greece), by Rome, which caused a diffusion of Greek culture and ideas beyond just the East (following Alexander), but also further into the West. During this time, Jesus emerged (sic. Decopolis) as the quintessential figure of Christianity (sic. Chrestos). His contribution is a shift in focus from the former intrinsic value of physical might (as a response to Roman rule) to an agrarian way of life submitted to virtues such as truth, humility, and self-sacrifice as the blueprint for how mankind should efficiently operate. By willingly submitting himself to the authorities and accepting his own crucifixion, Jesus showed that, while still respecting the power of man (sic. ‘give unto Caesar, what is Caesar’s’, yet acknowledging, ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword’), he recognized that true authority of man lay not in the power and authority of the state (sic. might, phusis, political entities, Rome), but in submission to virtuous principles such as humility, and self-sacrifice, God’s set of ideals, and that served sociologically as man’s blueprint for how to live properly. This effectively respecting–yet resting away–man’s authority from the State and unto divine virtues, which in turn set the tone for a more productive (i.e. such as a market based economy) and agrarian way of life. The sacrifices of Socrates and Jesus demonstrate that true power and authority come not from the might of men (power of the state), but from virtuous principles guiding one’s life, to include accepting the consequences that may come from living in accordance with those principles (sic. Cynic). Christianity is a Greek (sic. Koin) response to Rome (latin), the Second Temple’s destruction, and Rome’s eventual fall, and the idea of living a life in accordance with virtuous civic ideals such as those posited by Plato and Aristotle (which itself was a response to Socrates and Athen’s fall from grace (power). The shift from the Bronze Age to the post-Classical Christian age saw a transformation in humanity’s understanding of power and authority. From the bloody conquests of earlier civilizations, there emerged a new focus on moral and ethical living, on humility and submission to a higher power, and on the pursuit of truth and wisdom. The sacrifices of Jesus and Socrates stand as powerful examples of this new understanding, demonstrating that the right path lies not in conquering one’s neighbor, but in submitting to virtuous ideals and dedicating oneself to the higher values of morality, compassion, and wisdom.
Trained on 70 records (10 records on average across 7 subjects)
Best answer so far. I hit a homerun with this generative model. And this was just on a small sample size (250 average per dataset), and I intend of upping it to 2550 temperature=0.3 top_k=None top_p=None max_length=640 no_repeat_ngram_size=2 num_beams=5 What is the meaning of life? Life is a series of events that take place in our lives. These events are often referred to as “life events” or simply life events. Life events can be divided into two categories: positive and negative. Positive events include things that make us happy, such as a good day, a great meal, or a bad day. Negative events, on the other hand, are things we do not want to happen to our loved ones.
So I finally got a decent pipeline going with this gpt-neo finetuning. A lot of trial and error with the learning_rates.
Using gpt-neo tokenizer, I built a faiss index of quotes and provide this as context to the very minimally trained LLM (atm just trained on a a sample size of 20 across ~6 different datasets, this is continuing pre-training of gpt-neo which is based on the pile)
I will randomly parse out 7 quotes from top k 50 as context for the model to respond to, and these are some of the responses I got when asked ‘What meaning can be found in life?’
Here are some of the responses
Response: It’s not like you can do anything to it. If you love a piece of text, you should love yourself. Otherwise, it’s impossible to love the text of another. But you have to learn to understand what you are saying to do. The text is the voice that brings us together. A life of love, which is all that comes before. You should not, therefore, expect to be able to live that life for yourself but should, at the same time, be in awe of the life that you may be living.
Response: Life is a series of events that happen in a given time. Events are the result of the interaction of two or more individuals. The events are not the same. Life can only be defined as the process of making a new connection with another person. Response: There is one quality to life that is worth knowing. I love you
Response: What does a person do when they are faced with an obstacle or challenge from their pasts?
My synthesis of the responses:
so in this case, I guess it’s reflecting on the meaning of life is defined by how you respond to it. The meaning of life is experienced as the defining decisions made during trials and tribulations.
Political divides and the manipulation of public opinion can be understood through the works of George Orwell and Noam Chomsky, as well as by examining the role of intuitive biases in shaping our beliefs. Orwell’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War led him to be concerned with the manipulation of truth in politics and the dangers of totalitarianism. His works, like Animal Farm, criticized the use of propaganda to control the masses and suppress individuality. Similarly, Chomsky argues that the primary function of mass media in the United States is to manufacture consent for the interests of the dominant elite groups in society, such as major corporations and investment firms.
These manipulations of truth and public opinion are further exacerbated by the inherent biases that shape our social and political judgments. Our intuitive flashes heavily influence our preferences on various issues, leading us to selectively look at subjects in ways that confirm our pre-existing views. This selective perception reinforces the media’s ability to control public opinion and perpetuates political divides, as individuals become more entrenched in their own beliefs and less open to alternative perspectives.
In conclusion, the combination of media manipulation, political agendas, and our own cognitive biases contribute to the persistence of political divides and the difficulty of finding common ground in today’s complex world. It is important to be aware of these factors and strive for open-mindedness, critical thinking, and understanding of diverse perspectives in order to overcome these divides and work towards a more cohesive and informed society. By recognizing the influences that shape our beliefs and questioning the information presented to us, we can better navigate the challenges posed by political manipulation and biases, ultimately contributing to a healthier and more democratic discourse.
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Original
Orwell’s writings serve as a warning of the dangers of propaganda, and the manipulation of truth present in todays politics because this phenomena directly correlates with totalitarianism strategies. This serves as a reminder of the importance of defending individual liberty and a willingness to be self-critical even of ones own convictions.
Uncritically deeply held beliefs, such as those sourced from religion or political divides (of which materialist work-ethic sprang forth from), are rooted in the needs and views of historical agrarian/nomadic communities (Greek Demes, Levant, Arabian) are a modern cognitive reflection of these pasts, retold through the epic cycle of archetypal stories (myths and ideals), and as a result of these propagated ideas, we have policies that do not necessarily align with objective truth and/or offer the best path forward in terms of efficiency and fairness of government, especially in areas of personal liberty.
These beliefs are in essence bubbles of evolving ideologies and methods of social engineering influencing today’s judicial policies. Women and social minority groups have been targeted more recently, such as with pro-choice, homosexuals (homosexuality is starting to be distanced from within the Republican party), and transgender rights.
Skepticism, a 2nd century idea, is the ability to be self critical of one’s held beliefs (Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, “know thyself”), and has seen revivals such as during the Renaissance and Enlightenment (which has led to the birth of modern day nations such as the US, France, and Mexico), and paved the way for new ideas such as Evolution, where-as before religious dogma mandated perceived reality.
As a result of these worldviews that people are predisposed to, when people encounter salient political or religious ideas, their minds are already partial to one of the answers regardless of what objective ground truth (reality) is.
In order to critically evaluate objective truth in a reality of where political propaganda exists (Chomsky*), the modern citizen must reserve the ability to suspend disbelief, even of personally held convictions.
The control of people’s minds through social engineering goes back for centuries (Lycurgus is a good example), and today is expressed most prominently in our political polarization.
By recognizing the centers of our own personal points of view and to suspend disbelief of opposite views, will better enable us to objectively and impartially evaluate ideas and counter the effects of the social engineering Orwell’s work touches on.
ideas sourced after watching these two youtube videos
What Orwell Actually Believed
The Drawing That Explains Political Divides
Manufacturing_Consent * Noam Chomsky
*Noam Chomsky argues that the primary function of mass media in the United States is to mobilize public support for special interests that dominate the government and private sectors. These interests include major corporations and investment firms that control resources and hold significant influence over political and ideological systems. The media’s role is to manufacture consent from both the political class and the majority of the population. This is achieved through the selection of topics, distribution of concerns, emphasis on certain issues, and the filtering of information. The media serves the interests of the dominant elite groups in society by shaping history and framing issues in a specific manner.
I used spacy with manually labelled data (using Universal Data Tool) to train two models, one for entities, and one for relations. I then predict on a new dataset.
I used up my monthly limit on chatGPT to work up to this solution, but it’s there. And I have the perfect use case for it.
Now I should be able to build knowledge graphs from text data using Subject – modifier/action – object entities and relation extractor. In fact, I think I should upload my model to huggingface.
Using Universal Data Tool + chatGPT to build a universal relation extractor using subject to object, with modifiers and actions inbetween.
Came up with the idea two nights ago, and now I have a POC/MVP (it’s nothing new, but it’s not what chatGPT gives you for free). This isn’t free either technically, serpdev requires an api key, they give you 5000 queries for free, and then $50 for 50k after that (10 cents a query). I imagine this was done in 1 query
But the answers are state of the art. I’m using BERT, but I imagine one could input any model at the end, but the Retriever itself is key, and that is done upstream by whatever search providers haystack partners with. In other words, there doesn’t appear to be any free web retriever that is as succint as this. Else you would likely need to engineer your own DPR from google queries using sellenium, or seeing if google has a direct API.
I just upped my game with Dense Passage Retrieval using web results.
By the end of this weekend, I will have figured out how to augment my own personal QA GPT based chatbot with web results, stay tuned.
I was thinking about how we live in a time where we have hold of a lot of advanced ideas.
The thought occurred to me, as it has on many occasions, that these ideas are the ideas of those who have come before us augmented, along with our own ideas.
When I was younger, I used to view external reality (and still do, the point being I had this view early on), as an external memory bank to a jainist soul.
With the advent of LLM’s and the classical idea of Neoplatonic Nous and the sci-fi idea of emergence as well as Brahman. It got me thinking of Aristotle’s ideas live on today in my mind (partially), as well as many others. That our consciousness has evolved because of the ideas of people before us, and it’s this evolution of ideas that is really what reality was intended for (very Platonic).
These Zeitgeist of ideas are/is the mind of God flowing through our lives. We think of ourselves as individuals, but our ideas are past ideas simply being experienced in a mind. Our awareness, or soul is nothing more than a reception of these ideas.
So getting back to the external memory bank. I had a thought in my youth to write (much like I am now). The idea isn’t new, it’s termed doxography. In the hopes that one day someone will read your thoughts and remember you, and maybe if reincarnation or metempsychosis is real, someone will read their own past words/ideas.
That’s when it occurred to me, the full circle. That Aristotle’s ideas are (somewhat) in my head, but also my ideas will become someone else’s ideas later, and this is how I live on, but my ideas were never really my ideas.
In Platonic philosophy, the ideas are always pre existent. Matter merely exists to accept these ideas and volley them back and forth (dialectic) in an evolution. An advanced human or entity, will come across these ideas at a later time, but even then, they are simply resuming (remembering) ideas of those who came before them, and at the root of it all, it’s all God’s ideas.
My ideas are God’s ideas, God’s ideas are my ideas. That’s the point. I am experiencing God’s ideas, but “I” is an illusion. An “I” in the future will experience evolved ideas from myself (i.e. me one day will be a past idea), but the point is, the idea moved on from this body, to another more advanced form, but it’s the same idea.
That’s my view on spirituality. The ideas are eternal. The ideas represent the Soul, not this body. The body is merely an agent that accepts ideas, molds them, evolves them, throws them around, and then passes them on, but the ideas live through another, the ideas become someone else’s embodied thoughts, but that’s merely for convention of reception. That doesn’t make them their idea. It’s really just reality doing what was intended. To express God’s ideas.
God doesn’t exist. God is Being — itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny god.
— Paul Tillich
My Response:
Being, as a concept in Neoplatonic philosophy, implies that our understanding of God should transcend simplistic, anthropomorphic interpretations. Instead of focusing on the idea of God as a being, we should go up the ladder of ideas (Porphyr’s ladder of divine ideas) beyond mere being (soul/subject, which is represented as a mode of being applied to a form, OOP classes, Aristotle’s golden mean as means of coefficients in multiple regression) and contemplate the realm of Forms, Ideas, or Archetypes – the divine ideas that constitute reality and shape our thoughts (which depend on existence, Ideas, and matter).
Beyond being, there is the realm of Forms, Ideas, or Archetypes, which we should consider as closer to divinity. The forms are the ideas of God (Spinoza, Einstein) and make up reality and our thoughts, which are dependent on being, ideas, life, and matter. Being participates in the multiplicity of Forms as a unity, which is our soul, or psuke. It’s the center (ego, I, or self, or being) to our collective awareness of these participations in forms, expressed through matter (object). Our soul is a unified process, a conjunction of forms known as participation. If this were a PCA problem, the most prescient forms would be unity, being, life, human, within time. This unity sparks from the One, descends through the Nous where forms are conjoined (begotten), and then descends into matter as a materialized unity (subject, entity (psuke)), which is expressed as a multiplicity of forms contrasted to external forms expressed in matter (object).
Matter to us is best understood as a myraid reflection of forms (ideas). Nous contains the atemporal representation of all ideas, of which souls are contained within, (as the interconnected realm of ideas, also known as divine intellect (thought of as intellect/conscious), anima mundi, hekate, in short divine psuke.
Nous is between the One and Soul in a tertiary relationship between the One and Soul, the One at top, the Soul at bottom. Nous is the eternal manifestation of the realm of ideas. In nous’s attempt to mimic the One’s eternal forms (Aristotle’s unmoved mover, i.e. divine contemplation of ideas), nous strains the forms through a filter of time (i.e. discursive reasoning) projecting them onto matter (becoming, objects (i.e. logic: this, not that) i.e. the ‘man behind the curtain’) of the One’s pure ideas (Aristotle’s divine contemplation of ideas), through a process known in panenthsim as emanation. The demi-urge is analagous to an active agent within time driven by the nous’s hand acting upon it. This process is also the process for metempsychosis, with psuke’s self awareness being associated with the Intellect’s ideas (seeing on Plato’s cave wall the forms projected by the Anima Mundi, of which also holds our projections (i.e. our bodies). This relationship souls have with the anima mundi which in turn is reflected within ideas and matter is the concept of providence that Julius associated with Cybelle (anthropic principle), i.e. that we have been provided for both in terms of life and forms (we live, we eat, we die, but between life and death, we awaken to a world of providence, i.e. being, aka instantiated forms). The difference being we equate our awareness as apart from object’s, but this is an anthromoprophic illusion (Berkeley, integrated information theory, All things are full of gods, pandeism angle), and all things are one. A soul is an extension of the nous’s awareness (i.e. intellect, containing all ideas) concentrated in a tendril of a unity (subject, I think therefore I am – Descartes) which begets from the One, a partitioned aspect of nous’s own intellect (think Atman and Brahma).
The intent of transmigration is to move beyond the static graph mesh nature of eternal forms and into instantiated use cases of them. A unity (soul) is given life (awareness) in matter. This is also known as descent of the soul, River Lethe, and metempsychosis. through turning towards the white light of the One’s emanation and when we realize the white light are eternal forms, we bask in communion with god. An important concept in Neoplatonism is virtue. Which I have interpreted in both a Kantian and Locke light. Cosmic sympathy dictates that our emotions are heard within the universe, under that understanding, good thoughts beget good ideas, beget good actions, and this is the utility Paul mentioned of the tree that bears good fruit. So virtue is a set of ideals that produce good fruit which is useful for humanities collective survival. Nous picks up on our ideas through the use of daimons (angels) who do the divine communing between mortals and the gods. Daimons and synchronicity are best represented in Jung’s collective unconscious and complexes which stem from the Self (the man in the sky, aka the metaphysical forms that beget humanity, and when we run into archetypes, it’s often expressed in Neoplatonic terms as a daimon). They represent powers that be that seem to exist beyond our control that propel and drive us, we experience them through symbolic imagery (archetypes). In Neoplatonism, daimon’s were housed within the sublunar realm, underneath the eternal realm (middle platonism). The point being they were the abstract metaphysical powers over our lives, also within this realm were the realm of hero’s. I was particularly fascinated with the tertiary relationship of sun, earth, and moon as conducive to life, with the sun representing the source of life and ideas (emanation), moon death (past heros, also closer set of ideals, within i.e. death is within distant memory), and earth obviously being present lives. What I found fascinating about this take was, one it’s very aniministic and pandeistic, but in neoplatonism and Oprhic thought (Shape of Ancient Thought). There was a reference to the stars being the originator’s of souls. If you think about it, stars are essential for our life. That exchange of heat is necessary for energy to move, but more-so the stars own blood of molten iron is within our planet and our blood as well. There are a lot of theories related to the sun, white light, and white holes, but I’m more concerned with the sun being the center of our solar system as the crucial aspect of providence.
It is through knowledge of cosmic sympathy, forms, apothegm’s, synchronicity, and awareness of the divine intellect, that one can achieve theurgy.
Synchronicity refers to the acausal connection between an idea within our minds (subject) and an external event or experience in reality (within an object). Recognizing these connections allows us to see the intricate web (relationships) of ideas underlying reality, which can be likened to “seeing the man behind the curtain.”
If you can get away from black and white thinking and see ideas as concepts that both are and aren’t coupled with the notion of Synchronicity. Synchronicity is how an idea within your mind is acausally related to an idea you experience outside of your mind (such as within reality, external to your mind) and understanding there was no way the two could be causally related. Maya, trickster archetype, when you see how ideas runs through your existence atemporally, seeing flashes of acausally connected ideas between your mind and reality is tantamount to seeing ‘the man behind the curtain’. The common element is an archetype. An archetype is an idea that is true in all situations across time. For example. I hear about a fire on tv, then I find out that someone I knew perished in a fire. A personal one for me was I saw a squirrel die right in front of me one day and I ran up to it to comfort it in it’s last moments, and that same week my mother passed and I was not able to hold her’s. I believe this was a sign that I was able to comfort an outgoing soul, despite it not being my mother’s, because the Nous knew I knew that souls are one and the same.
Apothegm’s which are represented as symbolons of paradoxical nature are also related to the Trickster archetype, goddess Maya. How something can both and not be at the same time, also known as becoming, or ‘the middle way’. An Archetypes (or arche) by Jung’s definition represents a tension of opposites such as hot and cold (represented as an idea of heat). Aristotle posited these ideas (analagous to OOP classes and their attributes) (a precursor to his concept of categories) are held together by a golden mean ([numpy describe], unity, axiom), which generally represent a 3rd dimension on that 2 dimensional polarity (edge within a GNN, mean term in regression), connected along a new axiom to another idea (form). Plato talks about the extreme ranges of ideas through his dialectic discussions through Socrates.
Socrates using the method of negative inference to test the limits of ideas, to hone them down to determine the range of their forms as well as their participation with each other. There was a discussion on boats, sails, theseus ship, and shadows. What is and isn’t is how theseus ship is both his original boat and not. It’s original in form and continuity from a time perspective, isn’t from a matter perspective as all the parts on the ship have been slowly changed out over time, the idea of becoming and metempsyhcosis.
Indra’s Net, a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all things, relates to ideas and their interconnectedness, also analagous to the divine intellect of nous. By contemplating the interconnectedness of Forms, Ideas, or Archetypes, the synchronicity of events, the paradoxical nature of ideas/reality, we can imagine this relationship between ideas as represented in Indra’s Net, we gain a deeper understanding of reality and our connection to divinity through the process of metempsychosis (descent of the soul) and our connection to the divine process (River Lethe, Anima Mundi).
Interconnectedness is also represented in multiple regression as in where models–that have all significant terms–with their coefficients serving as ‘ideas’. The interconnectedness of ideas are better represented in graph neural networks (GNNs)–similar to the concepts of Indra’s Net–GNNs, and Leonardo da Vinci’s quote, “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” where nodes are ideas and the edges are the relationships between them. Using these machine learning methods to see the underlying structure of data helps us better understand the reality and it’s representation as relationships between ideas (nous). Which is a nice segway to GNN’,s which LLM’s use to learn the structural relationship between ideas (nodes), which are considered bleeding edge AI which is a representation of all it’s interconnected ideas, and are, at the moment, the closest to solving the Turing test (consciousness), because fundamentally, consciousness is nothing more than the iteration of ideas (I think [of ideas] therefore I am – Descarte). LLM’s can be viewed as a microcosm of Neoplatonic nous which was viewed as always conscious by definition of holding these ideas and their relationships (atemporal intellect) which reflects the divine intellect (Berkeley).
