When the University Discourse Becomes a Mass Formation Psychosis

Excerpt:

Gustave Le Bon in the 19th century century already wrote in his book "The Psychology of the Crowd" he said like, "the higher the level of education, the more people will fall prey to mass formation."

Self-Sacrificing Individuality for Group Identity and the Guilt-Pride Spirit..

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:50 Mass formation and totalitarianism 00:10:02 Totalitarianism vs dictatorship 00:18:18 War narratives and media power 00:20:30 Education propaganda and democracy 00:32:18 Mechanics of mass formation 00:43:40 Breaking the spell with sincerity 00:50:40 Truth reality and the observer 00:57:42 Final thoughts and where to follow

Salvador Dali, "The Enigma of Hitler" (1939)

Experiencing, then Escaping, Trauma...

Transcending it...

...because Survival is NOT Enough!

The Importance of Interpreting Earnest...

Oliver Hardt, "The brain forgets in order to improve your memory: You need to forget to remember what matters"

Forgetting is usually seen as a flaw in the human brain. But neuroscientist Oliver Hardt argues that forgetting is in fact crucial for some of the most important parts of our brain function. If you remembered every version of every face you'd ever seen, you wouldn't be able to recognize anyone. Your brain needs to erase the clutter to generalize and see patterns. Our capacity to forget isn’t a flaw of human memory, it’s an incredibly useful part of its design.

--- 

Every seven to thirty seconds, Clive Wearing appears in the here and now from nowhere, suddenly regaining consciousness out of nothingness. He cannot explain these extraordinary events, and so he records them in his diary immediately: “9:06 Now I am completely, overwhelmingly awake (for the first time).” But then he sees a previous line and reads “8:31 Now I am truly fully awake (for the first time)”—recognizing his handwriting, he realizes that he had just documented that very experience, but that is impossible because he has no memory of it, and he crosses out the earlier entry, as it must have been a mistake. So it goes, page after page.

When his wife Deborah visits him in his hospital room, he greets her effusively because he cannot remember when he last saw her—years might have passed. And when she leaves the room briefly and returns a few minutes later, this moving scene repeats itself with the same intensity as before, as Clive has no memory of it. Like the townspeople of Punxsutawney in Groundhog Day, he completely forgets everything he experiences, but the reset happens every waking minute of the day, not once every 24 hours.

Clive once worked at BBC Radio 3, played several instruments, and conducted an amateur choir, a renowned expert on early music, specializing in the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso. But in 1985, herpes simplex virus caused a brain inflammation that damaged several parts of his brain and completely destroyed the hippocampus. Since then, Clive has lived perpetually in a moment that is no longer than a minute, and, stripped of past and future, he requires permanent care.

Clive’s diary is like a desperate attempt to replicate the function of a failed hippocampus, which normally would continuously store what just happened and where. We are completely unaware of this, cannot consciously control it, yet it is this built-in logbook of experiences that details why we are where we are and what we have done before, so that we can make sense of our current situation, firmly linked to our past.

___

As essential oils concentrate what defines a scent, forgetting distills the gist of memories by removing what is irrelevant.

___

If no lasting memory is formed when we experience an event, it is as if it never happened. One cannot decide after an experience whether it may be important and should be remembered, because that only works if there is a memory in the first place. Therefore, the brain has no choice but to automatically, indiscriminately, and comprehensively record what just transpired—a promiscuous encoding device steadily logging the events of our lives.

This necessary strategy reliably locates us in space and time and ensures that we rarely fail to commit something important to memory. But it comes at a significant cost. After a short time, most of the remembered events have turned into outdated signposts to the past that are no longer relevant to explaining the present. Even more problematic, most of them detail trite everyday occurrences that are little more than mnemonic dead weight.

Indiscriminate collection of memories can only work in the long term if it is accompanied by automated forgetting as a corrective counter-process. In other words, indiscriminate retention requires systematic forgetting—remembering having taken the daily heart medication this morning will prevent a potentially fatal double dose hours later, but why retain that specific memory for days, weeks, or years? Eventually, this will lead to uncontrolled mind-wandering causing near constant confusion. We can get glimpses of this in daily life—waiting in our car at a red light we catch sight of a pedestrian who reminds us of someone we knew in high school and remember that once in art class she painted the strikingly lifelike portrait of an actress we deeply admired, and didn’t she play the lead in that movie with... until angry honking takes us back to the fact that the light has long turned to green. If we retained all our memories, ordered thinking and effective behavior would be overwhelmed by a permanent barrage of intruding memories. Clive Wearing lost the connection to the present moment because he forgot too fast, but remembering too much can have the same effect.

That memory will inevitably fail without forgetting is an insight as old as the scientific study of memory itself, which began in 1885 with the publication of Über das Gedächtnis (“On Memory”), in which Herrmann Ebbinghaus provided sobering evidence with the famed forgetting curve that even well-learned material has the tendency to largely disappear from memory rather rapidly. Yet, five years later, the American philosopher William James arrived at a more positive outlook. Reviewing those and other related findings, James concluded in his textbook on Psychology that “if we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.”

What James meant has been best illustrated by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who explored living with “perfect memory” in a short story. Having provided a foreword for a Spanish translation of William James’ Pragmatism, Borges clearly was intimately acquainted with his philosophical work, but we can only speculate whether James’ remarks on forgetting were what drew him to this subject.

Borges tells us the fantastical tale of Ireneo Funes, who lived at the end of the 19th century (curiously enough, just around the time James published his textbook) in Fray Bentos, a town in the Western part of Uruguay. Ireneo was a young man of modest education and rough reputation, but with some unusual intellectual qualities. He was known in town as the chronometric Funes because he could always tell exactly when—to the minute—he had seen someone last, even if it was just for a few seconds when passing each other on the street, even if this had been months ago. But a fall off a horse grotesquely enhanced this talent, crippling body and mind. From then on he was largely confined to his bed, facing the world through the window in his room with a mind that could no longer forget anything.

This had some advantages. For example, thanks to his immaculate memory, he learned a foreign language to fluency simply by reading a book written in it once. He readily retained the entire text and, much like modern large language models, used it to produce likely phrases, which might have been mostly performative rather than genuine comprehension. But this meticulous memory was also the reason why it would take Ireneo one entire day to recall what happened on a day in the past because every event had been preserved in all its details, including his emotions and thoughts. William James raised exactly the same issue to illustrate what minds face without forgetting, and it may have been this that had inspired Borges.

Truly problematic, however, was that perfect recall turned identity into a matter of perspective: looking out his window on the street, he would see a dog from the front in the morning, and then, in the afternoon, the same dog would pass by, and he would see him from the side—but, for Ireneo, these were two different dogs. His unfailing high-fidelity memory for all the precise visual detail of the dog as seen in the morning did not match what he saw in the afternoon. Self-similarity became the exception, not the rule, that we depend on to identify objects and people despite their constant changes in appearance.


As essential oils concentrate what defines a scent, forgetting distills the gist of memories by removing what is irrelevant. This leads to what psychologists call semantic memory, general knowledge that grew out of specific experiences. It allows us to immediately recognize novel objects as what they are; for example, we readily identify a plant we have never seen before as a flower. For humans, these abstractions form the basis of communication. If someone tells us that they climbed a tree to pick cherries but unfortunately slipped and fell, we will immediately understand what happened and can even picture it vividly in our mind if we wish. We will not imagine exactly the tree that was climbed, but that does not make any difference as the essence of the event was transmitted. This is also the case for the person sharing this episode, whose memory will not have preserved the experience in high-fidelity but rather in a compressed form that allows re-imagining a sufficiently similar version of it, not an accurate reproduction.

Similarly, forgetting helps with extracting rules from concrete life experiences. When a child touches a hot plate, she will soon not only be wary of that particular oven in that particular kitchen, but also of surfaces of appliances where food is heated, from coffee makers in offices to airplane galleys, but not play ovens in a toy store. Forgetting the details of the specific event in which something was experienced makes it independent of this context, and the knowledge contained can be applied to various future situations.

A memory stripped of its original context provides the raw material for thinking in analogies. We can use it to understand a new problem by likening it to a familiar one, as we are applying memories from which the specific details that would otherwise obscure the similarities between the two situations have been removed. It is also what allows us to immediately know what to do when a road sign instructs us to use the zipper method as two lanes merge—no explanation is necessary. This way, forgetting can shape our memories into powerful tools for thought.

Since forgetting is fundamental to adaptive behavior, it cannot be left to chance—there must be dedicated mechanisms in place that bring it about. These were discovered about twenty years ago, first in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. These animals can be trained to fear an odor, such that when given the choice between a smell that was present when they received an electric shock and a neutral smell, they will fly towards the latter. But after some time, they forget, and no longer express this preference. Ron Davis’ group at the University of Florida discovered that specialized neurons in the fly brain are responsible, as their activity erases the memory that links the odor to experiencing electric shock.

Around the same time, we found that similar principles also govern forgetting in the mammalian brain. We trained rats to remember the location of objects and found that they would forget this in about seven to ten days. It was known that learning and memory depend on changing the strength of connections between neurons. Speculating that the memory loss in our rats reflects reversing this change, we prevented it in the hippocampus, the brain area critical for spatial memory—and the same region whose destruction left Clive Wearing unable to remember where he had been moments before. This preserved memory, and our rats remembered the location of the objects even after fourteen days. Since then, mechanisms that target such memories for removal have been found in other animals as well, like the microscopic nematode C. elegans and mice. Clearly, brains are wired for forgetting.

In animals, too, it has been discovered that active forgetting supports adaptive behavior. Like the child that learns not to touch hot plates, rats can learn to generalize from specific experiences. After receiving a mild electric shock in a chamber (causing a sensation similar to static electricity), rats will fear this locale, but not novel ones—they seem to know where the unpleasant event took place. But wait two weeks, and they will fear any box that vaguely resembles the one where they experienced the shock. In other words, like the child learning to avoid hot plates in general, they start to fear boxes in general. However, when we stopped active forgetting in the hippocampus, there was no generalization of fear after two weeks, as the rats were only fearful of the place where they experienced the shock, but not of other boxes, even similar ones. It seems this form of generalization occurs because memory for exactly where the original experience occurred was stripped away, which left behind only the gist: when someone suddenly puts you into some box, there is good reason to be cautious.

Another form of adaptive behavior is cognitive flexibility. Anybody who has had to navigate road traffic in countries that drive on the opposite side of the road will know how fundamentally important cognitive flexibility can be for survival. In animals, this capacity is often studied with reversal learning. This involves, for example, an initial cue that signals safety and then another cue that signals danger. Then, after some time, these are switched, such that safety is now linked to the cue that had indicated danger, while danger is associated with the one that had announced safety. The animal has to learn to change its behavior, avoiding what it once sought out and approaching what it once avoided. Usually, animals are quite good at this.

But when active forgetting was genetically impaired in fruit flies, reversal learning failed. Unlike their unmodified counterparts, they continued to avoid what had previously been unpleasant but no longer was. They simply could not let go of their behavior—the fruit flies needed forgetting to revise their knowledge about which of the two odors to approach after the dangerous odor had been switched. Without forgetting, they were stuck in a past that was no longer relevant to present conditions. Similar effects have also been documented in rats.

___

Remembering and forgetting are so intertwined that neither can exist without the other.

___

Clearly, forgetting helps to adapt to changing circumstances, so it is no surprise that humans have long been interested in suitable performance-enhancing drugs to better deal with the dynamic nature of life that can quickly turn memory assets into liabilities. In ancient Greece, for example, the souls of the deceased needed to drink from the waters of Lethe, the river of oblivion that flows through Hades, the mythological underworld. It would erase all memory of their former lives, and they could reincarnate without mourning what they had lost. Tabula rasa for a fresh new start is also why the poor souls in Diyu, the Chinese version of hell, are offered a magic potion before reincarnation. It comes in the form of a bowl of Mi Hun Tang, a flavorful soup that the Goddess of Forgetfulness, Meng Po, brews out of carefully selected herbs, the tears shed in life, and waters from a nearby stream. While in Diyu, the souls experience all kinds of torture and malice, and Mi Hun Tang wipes out these traumatic memories and dissolves all knowledge of the former life—the next cycle of existence commences unburdened of the weight of the past.

Remedies that further forgetting to promote liberation and renewal raise difficult ethical questions. Total obliteration of the past certainly works for souls about to be reborn, but losing memories of aspects of our past while on this side of the underworld can affect our personal identity, the knowledge about who we are. This is why forgetting enhancers are best when they target specific memory components, and Homer seems to have been aware of this when he tells us in his Odyssey about nēpenthés phármakon, the not-(nē)-sorrow-(pénthos)-drug-(phármakon) offered to Telemachus and Menelaus, who grieve the loss of their comrades and loved ones. It leaves memory for the deceased untouched, but induces amnesia for the painful emotions. Modern interventions to accelerate forgetting work similarly, reducing the emotional burden of traumatic memories without touching memory for what happened. Even long-held memories of past events can become malleable again under specific circumstances, and if at that moment beta blockers are given—the same drugs used to treat hypertension—it can significantly dampen the emotional part of the memory of the event. This life episode can still be remembered in the future, but the emotional impact is less than before.

Clive Wearing and Ireneo Funes both fell victim to broken forgetting. Clive forgets too fast, and his world is reduced to brief periods of sustained consciousness as he wakes up minute by minute on a different isolated island of awareness on the vast uncharted sea his life has become—without a past to anchor him, or a future to orient him. But Funes fared no better—no longer able to forget, he is swallowed by an infinite rabbit hole of memories upon memories upon memories that he cannot organize into knowledge, making ordered thought and understanding impossible.

Forgetting shapes memory, and what we call memory is in no small part the remains of dedicated forgetting processes built into the brain. Remembering and forgetting are so intertwined that neither can exist without the other. The brain promiscuously encodes ongoing experiences because it cannot know in advance what might be important, but as most of it does not matter in the end, it also must forget systematically, so we will be spared the life of Funes. Our well-developed capacity to forget is not a flaw of human memory, but its basic design.

Tammanend Foundations

Kawanio che Keeteru!

Is Slavoj Zizek Freely Chasing a Dancing G_d?...

from Google AI:

In Plato's Symposium, Diotima explains that mortals achieve immortality not through everlasting life, but by creating a legacy that survives the body's death. The three primary ways to achieve this immortality are through physical procreation, the creation of virtue and wisdom, and the contemplation of the eternal Form of Beauty.

1. Physical Procreation (Biological Immortality)

• Definition: The most basic form of reproduction, where individuals seek to leave behind children.
• Purpose: According to Diotima, this allows mortals to perpetuate their existence and name, as the offspring carries forward the parents' likeness.

2. Creation of Virtue and Intellectual Legacy (Cultural Immortality)

• Definition: Creating "immortal" works, such as poetry, laws, art, or virtuoso deeds (as described in LitCharts).
• Purpose: These creations, particularly in wisdom or civic virtue, offer a more profound, lasting legacy than children, keeping a person’s memory alive forever.

3. Contemplation of the Form of Beauty (Spiritual Immortality)

• Definition: The final step of the "Ladder of Love," where the soul leaves behind physical and intellectual pursuits to behold the absolute, unchanging Form of Beauty itself.
• Purpose: By connecting directly with the divine and immortal, the philosopher's soul attains a form of "earned immortality" or "divine status" [5, 14, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews].

These forms represent an "ascent to immortality", where one moves from seeking ephemeral, physical reproduction to achieving a permanent, divine-like existence through philosophical contemplation of truth.

Walpurgisnacht

Up into the evening sky rise Tonight the magic melodies Wild folk and Lilith's ways Luring winds, secretly ride Let us wander to the fires Whispering, reaching for the stars Good and evil words alike Let us carry them on and on tonight In the willows our dreams will resound And the winds will sing our songs Let us leap with the sparks over the fire On Walpurgis Night! Hear the violins, hear the violins The fires are lit! Follow the dance, follow the dance On Walpurgis Night! Impetuous in the play of the violins Our nightly dance spins And we join, wild and free, This ancient magic Just once in the great circle We dance in this way Until the first light of dawn Our dream woven fabric breaks In the willows our dreams will resound And the winds will sing our songs Let us leap with the sparks over the fire On Walpurgis Night! Hear the violins, hear the violins The fires are lit! Follow the dance, follow the dance On Walpurgis Night!

On Saint Walpurga

Right Angle Simile in Multis (Shapes vs Virtues)

 

Commensurating Pythagorean InCommensurables

Cardinal Virtues-

Courage:Temperance::Wisdom:Justice

Life Origins: The Impact Hypothesis

On Man Made Asstoorhoids...

from Google AI:

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the US-Israel-Iran conflict in early 2026 has triggered a global fertilizer crisis, with roughly 30% of global urea and nitrogen exports restricted. As of April 2026, over 220,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizer are stranded daily, pushing up prices by over 30%. This impacts essential crop yields—including maize and rice—at the height of spring planting, threatening global food security.

Key Impacts of the Nitrogen Crisis: 

• Stranded Supplies: Over 1 million metric tons of nitrogen fertilizer are trapped in the Gulf.
• Price Shock: Nitrogen-rich urea prices have surged over 30%, increasing food production costs worldwide.
• Production Halt: Major producers are declaring force majeure, reducing global supply and increasing the likelihood of long-term shortages.
• Global Exposure: Developing countries in Asia and South America are most affected, with countries like the Philippines facing risks to their agricultural sectors, says the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• Food Insecurity: The inability of farmers to access or afford fertilizer to fertilize crops is expected to result in significantly reduced crop yields in the coming months.

The Fertilizer-Fuel Link

Nitrogen fertilizers are produced using natural gas. The crisis in the Gulf has caused both a scarcity of fertilizer products and a rise in energy costs, creating a "perfect storm" for agricultural production, notes Adam Hanieh. Fertilizer manufacturers, unable to ship their products, face operational shutdowns.

Impact on Food Production

According to War on the Rocks, the interruption of urea shipments occurs during critical planting times, threatening the maximum yields of crops like corn, wheat, and rice. Many farmers may reduce fertilizer usage or skip the planting season, creating a lingering effect on food availability.

Long-Term Consequences

Experts warn that the disruption could lead to prolonged food shortages and higher food prices, as stated in UN News. Even if the blockade ends, the time needed to restart production and restore supply chains will likely lead to a "new normal" of elevated prices, according to Reddit and The Verge.

mr. ducky's obsession...

...and tribute.  I miss you!

Slavoj....

Neutrinos: Back to the 4th... er-r-r-r 8th Dimension!

...and then there were none.

Ten Little Indians

Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; 

One choked his little self and then there were nine. 

Nine little Indian boys sat up very late; 

One overslept himself and then there were eight. 

Eight little Indian boys traveling in Devon; 

One said he'd stay there and then there were seven. 

Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks; 

One chopped himself in halves and then there were six. 

Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; 

A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. 

Five little Indian boys going in for law; 

One got in Chancery and then there were four. 

Four little Indian boys going out to sea; 

A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. 

Three little Indian boys walking in the zoo; 

A big bear hugged one and then there were two. 

Two Little Indian boys sitting in the sun; 

One got frizzled up and then there was one. 

One little Indian boy left all alone; 

He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

The Event: Particles, Primes, and Other Fundamental Ontological Building Blocks

 

Badiou vs Deleuze & Guattari

The Simili in Multis

from Google AI:

Particles, in modern physical and philosophical interpretations, are increasingly understood not as fundamental, enduring "little balls of matter," but as ontological events or ephemeral, local, and discrete manifestations of underlying, continuous fields. This perspective treats particles as "primes"—the irreducible units or "atoms" of interaction—that only exist when they are created, destroyed, or exchanged, effectively making the act of interaction (an event) the fundamental reality.

Particles as Ontological Events

Epiphenomena of Fields: In quantum field theory (QFT), particles are interpreted as localized excitations or "ripples" of quantum fields, acting as "epiphenomena" rather than the fundamental substance.

Interaction-dependent Existence: A particle is better understood as a conserved exchange of properties (energy, momentum, charge) rather than a continuously existing object. They are "events" that occur when fields interact, not permanent, independent entities.

Events over Substance: This view shifts the ontology from a "substance ontology" (fields or particles as things) to an "event ontology," where the basic building blocks of reality are events of measurement or interaction, such as those described in Haag’s Local Quantum Physics.

Particles as Primes (Irreducible Units)

Indivisible Interactors: Particles are "prime" in the sense that they are the minimal, discrete units of energy or angular momentum exchanged between systems.

Prime Matter (Aristotelian view): Some modern interpretations draw on Aristotelian "prime matter," seeing it as an "indivisible and atomless bare particularity" that acts as an enduring substrate of fields, which manifests as particles.

Numerical Identity: In Quantum Field Theory, particles of the same type are conceptually indistinguishable, meaning they lack individual identity, which reinforces the view that it is the type of interaction (event) that defines the particle, not its own intrinsic nature.

Implications of this Ontology 

Primitive Ontology: PO approaches in quantum mechanics, such as the "flashes" theory (GRWf), suggest that these "events" or "spots" in spacetime are the fundamental, primitive entities from which macrophysical objects are composed.

Measurement and Time: These models suggest that quantum events (such as wavefunction collapse) occur in a present-centered way, emphasizing that the "event" or "interaction" is the moment that makes reality definite.

Ontic Structural Realism: Given that particles cannot be clearly defined, some philosophers argue that the fundamental, persistent entities are actually the mathematical structures (relations) of the fields, rather than the particles themselves.

More from Google AI:

Prime numbers are considered the "atomic particles" of mathematics because, like physical atoms, they are the fundamental building blocks from which all other integers are constructed via multiplication. Recent research has furthered this analogy by modeling prime numbers as physical particles to discover hidden patterns.

Key Aspects of Particles and Primes:

• The Analogy: Just as physical particles combine to form complex matter, prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, ...) multiply to form composite integers, as outlined by the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.
• Modeling as Physical Matter: Researchers, including Salvatore Torquato, modeled prime numbers as a one-dimensional "liquid" or "solid" of particles (spheres) to study their arrangement.
• Hidden Structure: By subjecting this "prime gas" to virtual X-ray diffraction, researchers discovered that primes behave like a quasicrystal—a material with ordered, but non-repeating, aperiodic structure.
• Surprising Order: Contrary to the belief that primes are distributed randomly, this "particle" approach shows they possess a "hidden order" or "fractal chaos".
• Connection to Physics: This "prime-number-as-particle" approach allows mathematicians to use tools from material science and statistical mechanics to analyze the distribution of primes. Some researchers even link prime structures in complex fields to particle physics concepts like leptons and hadrons.

This perspective offers a new way to understand the Riemann hypothesis and the overall distribution of prime numbers.

May the 4th Be with You!

Progressive Liberals Weaponized "Shame"...

 ...and Monetized Trauma thru DEI Racial Guilt-Pride and Academic Post-Colonialism, and so now Leftists can complain about the Right's "Shamelessness".  Talk about wanting to have their cake and eat it too...

 "Postcolonialism is the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals"

-Slavoj Zizek

So "who" do you think Shamed the Right into Shamelessness, Slavoj?

Symmetry: Where the Universe and Physics (and Consciousness) Begins - The Origin of Causality (the c in e=mc^2)

Plato, "Philebus"

SOCRATES: What, then, is there in the mixture which is most precious, and which is the principal cause why such a state is universally beloved by all? When we have discovered it, we will proceed to ask whether this omnipresent nature is more akin to pleasure or to mind.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right; in that way we shall be better able to judge.

SOCRATES: And there is no difficulty in seeing the cause which renders any mixture either of the highest value or of none at all.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Every man knows it.

PROTARCHUS: What?

SOCRATES: He knows that any want of measure and symmetry in any mixture whatever must always of necessity be fatal, both to the elements and to the mixture, which is then not a mixture, but only a confused medley which brings confusion on the possessor of it.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And now the power of the good has retired into the region of the beautiful; for measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue all the world over.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Also we said that truth was to form an element in the mixture.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then, if we are not able to hunt the good with one idea only, with three we may catch our prey; Beauty, Symmetry, Truth are the three, and these taken together we may regard as the single cause of the mixture, and the mixture as being good by reason of the infusion of them.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right.

Then what does it mean to "break symmetry"? (from Google AI): 

Symmetry breaking in physics occurs when a symmetric system (ordered or law-based) transitions into a less symmetric, often more ordered, state, or when fundamental laws lack symmetry. Key mechanisms include spontaneous symmetry breaking (e.g., Higgs mechanism, phase transitions like freezing) and explicit symmetry breaking (e.g., gravity, magnetic fields).

Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking: The underlying physical laws are symmetric, but the actual state of the system is not. As explained in the Wikipedia entry on Symmetry Breaking, a common analogy is a ball on a symmetric hill falling to one side; the hill is symmetric, but the ball's final position is not.

• Higgs Mechanism: Gives mass to particles; the vacuum breaks electroweak symmetry.
• Phase Transitions: Water freezing into ice (loses continuous translation symmetry) or magnets forming, as discussed in this Reddit thread and this Quora answer.

Explicit Symmetry Breaking: The fundamental equations or Lagrangian of a system themselves lack symmetry, as detailed in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.

Gravity: A magnetic field or gravity pointing down breaks rotational symmetry.

Commonly Broken Symmetries

• Rotational Symmetry: A system changes when rotated (e.g., a stick buckling), noted in this Youtube video.
• Gauge Symmetry: Fundamental symmetries of nature that, when broken, allow particles to acquire mass, explains the Department of Energy.
• Parity (P-Symmetry): Left/right reflection symmetry, broken in weak interactions.

Examples in Physics

• Magnetism: Atoms align in one direction below the Curie temperature, as mentioned on Quora.
• Cosmology: The inflationary field decay after the Big Bang.
• Fluid Dynamics: Water flowing from a tap forming distinct, non-circular shapes as shown by Sabine Hossenfelder.

As highlighted by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, these concepts are foundational to understanding the diverse structures in the universe, as a perfectly symmetric universe would be uniform, massless, and essentially featureless.

Space Symmetry Conserves Momentum:Time Symmetry Conserves Energy:Space:Time

from Google AI:

Energy is fundamentally divided into kinetic (motion) and potential (stored) types, taking forms like mechanical, thermal, electrical, radiant, and nuclear. Potential energy includes gravitational, elastic, and chemical forms, while kinetic includes motion, sound, and electromagnetic waves. Energy converts between these types, obeying conservation laws.

Primary Types of Energy

Potential Energy (Stored Energy)- Time:

• Gravitational: Stored based on an object's position, such as a ball at the top of a hill or water in a dam.
• Chemical: Energy stored in molecular bonds, such as in food, gasoline, or batteries.
• Elastic: Stored by stretching or compressing, like in a rubber band or spring.
• Nuclear: Energy stored in the nucleus of an atom.

Kinetic Energy (Energy of Motion) - Space:

• Motion/Mechanical: Energy of moving objects, such as a car driving or wind.
• Thermal (Heat): The movement of atoms and molecules within substances.
• Radiant (Electromagnetic): Energy traveling in waves, such as light, X-rays, and radio waves.
• Sound: Movement of energy through substances in longitudinal waves.
• Electrical: The movement of electrons.

Momentum and Related Energy Concepts

• Momentum: While not a type of energy, momentum (p=mv) is directly related to kinetic energy (Ek=p^2/2m), representing the "quantity of motion" in an object.
• Mechanical Energy: The sum of an object's potential and kinetic energy.
• Internal Energy: The total energy contained within a thermodynamic system, often the sum of microscopic potential and kinetic energies.
• Rest Energy: The energy associated with an object's rest mass, described by E=mc^2

Forms of Energy Conversion

Energy is rarely found in only one form and frequently converts between potential and kinetic. For example, a falling ball converts potential energy into kinetic energy. Chemical energy in fuel is converted into thermal and kinetic energy to propel a car.

Celebrating St. George In London and the Colonies

from the Royal Society:

Prior to the formation of The Royal Society of St. George in 1894 and before the American Revolution, Societies of St. George had been founded in the then North American Colonies for the relief of British immigrants and to give them general assistance in the new country. Today there are societies all around the world branching from the historical legacy of St. George, the Patron Saint of England.

The earliest branches of which there are any records are those of New York (1770), Philadelphia (1772) and Charlestown (1773). Subsequently branches were formed in all the great cities of the North American continent and celebrations were always held on St. George's Day. Initially following the Revolutionary War the activities of the societies diminished, but within 20 years the strongest societies regained their footing as we can see with Philadelphia where they filed a legal constitution in 1797. At the time of the War of Independence many Loyalists moved to Canada and founded similar societies in Halifax (1786) and other cities.

In 1769 St. George was used as the patron saint for the building of the first Methodist church in America in Philadelphia. In the 1800's several churches were erected in the United States bearing St. George as their defender including the St. George's Cathedral in Philadelphia.

In the 1920's the Society of the Friends of St George's and Descendants of the Knights of the Garter, a constituent group of the Foundation of the College of St George, Windsor Castle was established.

Shortly thereafter, a separate Philadelphia-based group, the Society of Descendants of Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, was founded in 1929 according to the group, the Hereditary Society Blue Book and the Hereditary Society Community of the United States of America

The Kingsessing Morris Men

The Vacuum of Space is Full of Virtual Particles

...and they are REAL!

Virtual Aether

What was once Old has become New again!

Robert Green on Human Nature and the Games of Power

Appearance can be Power, But "leverage" is ACTUAL Power.  Power is a Multi-Player Game of Getting people in your Side (RICE).  People are NVS.  Self-Deprecating Humour can be a counter to NV.

Trump is a Master of Law #6: Court Attention at All Cost, but he's not a "Big Picture" guy.

Powerless people become passive-aggressive and play "Negative" power games.

Nietzsche, "Beyond Good & Evil" (#36)

If we assume that nothing is "given" as real other than our world of desires and passions and that we cannot access from above or below any "reality" other than the direct reality of our drives - for thinking is only a relationship of these drives to each other -: are we not allowed to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this given is not a sufficient basis also for understanding the so-called mechanical (or "material") world on the basis of things like this given. I don’t mean to understand it as an illusion, an "appearance," an "idea" (in the sense of Berkeley6 and Schopenhauer), but as having the same degree of reality as our affects themselves have - as a more primitive form of the world of affects in which everything is still combined in a powerful unity, something which then branches off and develops in the organic process (also, as is reasonable, gets softer and weaker -), as a form of instinctual life in which the collective organic functions, along with self-regulation, assimilation, nourishment, excretion, and metabolism, are still synthetically bound up with one another - as an early form of life? In the end making this attempt is not only permitted but is also demanded by the conscience of the method. Not to assume various forms of causality as long as the attempt to manage with a single one has been pushed to its furthest limit (- all the way to nonsense, if I may say so): that is one moral of the method which people nowadays may not evade; - as a mathematician would say, it is a consequence "of its definition." In the end the question is whether we acknowledge the will as something really efficient, whether we believe in the causal properties of the will. If we do - and basically our faith in this is simply our faith in causality itself - then we must make the attempt to set up hypothetically the causality of the will as the single causality. Of course, "will" can work only on "will" - and not on "stuff" (not, for example, on "nerves"-). Briefly put, we must venture the hypothesis whether in general, wherever we recognize "effects," will is not working on will - and whether every mechanical event, to the extent that a force is active in it, is not force of will, an effect of the will. - Suppose finally that we were to succeed in explaining our entire instinctual life as a development and branching off of a single fundamental form of the will - that is, of the will to power, as my principle asserts - and suppose we could trace back all organic functions to this will to power and also locate in it the solution to the problem of reproduction and nourishment - that is one problem - then in so doing we would have earned the right to designate all efficient force unambiguously as will to power. Seen from inside, the world defined and described according to its "intelligible character" would be simply "will to power" and nothing else.-

6. . . . Berkeley : George Berkeley (1685-1753), Irish bishop and philosopher

.

Further Entrenching Technofeudalism by Psychedelically Modifying the Western Episteme...

The Never Ending Re-Cycling of Bad Ideas...

The Platonic Realm of 'Forms'...

Chris Reynolds, MD, "Engram as a Pattern of Cortical Attractors"

Memory, Loop Geometry, and the Shape of Conscious Thought

Figure 1 — Temporal Sculpting of Attractors: Recursive loops reshape the cortical probability landscape over time. Through repeated cycles of prediction and reinforcement, shallow probability fields evolve into deep, stable attractor basins — forming the building blocks of long-term memory and conscious recall.

I. Introduction: Memory Isn’t a File — It’s a Shape in Time

What if memories aren’t stored, but sculpted? Not filed away like a photograph, but carved into the dynamic folds of brain activity — shapes in a probability landscape that emerge, deform, and reappear with each act of remembering.

In traditional neuroscience, memory has long been associated with the elusive concept of the engram — a physical trace of learning somewhere in the brain. But as our understanding deepens, the idea of a static trace becomes less satisfying. In its place, new models — like the Probability Clock theory — suggest that memory is not a place, but a pattern.

And not just any pattern. An engram, in this view, is a constellation of attractors, each shaped by recursive loops of brain activity flowing through the Synaptic Probability Field of the Cortex (SPFC).

II. What Is an Engram, Really?

The term engram was first proposed by Richard Semon in the early 20th century, describing a hypothetical physical change in the brain that encodes memory. Later, researchers like Karl Lashley and Wilder Penfield searched for it — unsuccessfully, in the form of discrete “memory centers.”

Today, we understand that memories are distributed. They don’t reside in one place, but in networks of neurons that fire together when an experience is recalled. Optogenetics has shown that activating certain neural assemblies can evoke learned behaviors in mice. That’s as close as we’ve gotten to “seeing” an engram.

But even this modern view misses something. If memories can shift, update, fade, and return altered — how can they be fixed entities?

III. Attractors: The Brain’s Hidden Geometry

In complex systems like the brain, an attractor is a stable configuration that neural activity tends to fall into — like a groove in the brain’s activity landscape. But these grooves aren’t fixed. They can deepen with reinforcement or fade with disuse, and they aren’t purely spatial — they’re spatiotemporal, shaped through recursive loops.

Figure 2 — Engram as a Pattern of Attractors: In the SPFC, attractor basins represent neural configurations that are recursively reinforced. A memory, or engram, is composed of multiple attractors forming a stable geometric pattern in probability space.

IV. The Synaptic Probability Field of the Cortex (SPFC)

The SPFC is a conceptual model: a dynamic probability landscape representing the readiness of neurons to fire together. Recursive reinforcement from loops like emotion, attention, and context modulates this field.

In PC theory, reinforcement is not static — it’s temporal sculpting. Time isn’t a backdrop. It’s the very medium that gives attractors their structure and durability.

Figure 3 — Synaptic Probability Field of the Cortex: This stylized “bubble wrap” landscape shows how some synaptic sites are more likely to activate than others. Depressions in the surface represent attractors forming under recursive reinforcement. Over time, this probability field evolves to stabilize patterns of memory and cognition.

V. Loop Geometry: How Memory Takes Shape

Here’s the key: recursive loops sculpt the shape of the SPFC over time.

TAPP, MAPP, and recursive attractor evolutions (rAEs) don’t merely route data — they reshape the terrain.

Figure 4 — Recursive Loop Pathways: Recursive cycles deepen attractor basins by reinforcing activation patterns.

VI. Engrams as Topological Objects

If attractors have shape, then engrams are topologies — they are structures, not snapshots. Each engram reflects not just spatial distribution, but recursive time evolution.

Figure 5 — Stable Engram in the SPFC: Multiple attractors distributed across the SPFC form the core of a stable memory trace.

Sidebar — Deepening the Basin: How Emotion Shapes Memory

Emotionally intense moments reinforce attractors. Neuromodulators deepen synaptic grooves. These emotionally-weighted loops are replayed more frequently — during sleep, reflection, or trauma — embedding them deeper in the SPFC.

VII. Implications: Memory as Momentum

We often think of memory as something static — like a file we “open” when needed. But in the Probability Clock (PC) model, memory is more like momentum moving through time. It’s not just stored information; it’s a pattern of neural activity that continues to loop, evolve, and shape future thought.

Each memory is a trajectory, not a location. It’s built through recursive loops that revisit and reinforce certain attractors — regions in the brain’s probability landscape where patterns of activity tend to settle. These attractors become more stable the more often they’re used.

Trauma: Hyper-Stabilized Attractors. Trauma doesn’t just “get stored” in the brain — it gets looped into. It becomes a set of deep attractor basins that are revisited repeatedly, sometimes involuntarily. These attractors are emotionally weighted and so stable that even small cues can pull the brain back into that pattern — like falling into a groove that’s been worn too deep.

Therapy: Perturbing the Loop. Therapeutic interventions work not by erasing memories, but by perturbing those deep attractors — introducing new emotional context, new attention patterns, or alternate interpretations. This weakens the old loop and allows new ones to form. Therapy doesn’t “fix” memory — it changes its momentum. It redirects the flow of recursive activity toward more adaptive paths.

AI: What It’s Missing. Current artificial intelligence systems don’t operate with recursive momentum. They store information as static parameters — not as attractor patterns that loop, stabilize, and evolve. That’s why AI can “remember” facts but doesn’t truly “relive” them. If future AI were built with recursive loop structures like those found in the brain — dynamic attractors in time — it could begin to develop experiential memory, where past events shape future thinking through active re-entry and emotional weighting.

Why Memory Feels Like Something. In this model, memory isn’t accessed — it’s relived. You don’t just “look up” the past. Your brain flows back into a familiar shape. That recursive loop is what gives memory its qualia — the feel of remembering.

VIII. Conclusion: The Shape of Remembering

To truly understand memory — and maybe even consciousness — we must think topologically. You don’t just recall a moment. You revisit a loop. You reshape the basin. You carve your mind forward in time. Consciousness, in this view, is recursive attractor geometry in motion.

Jaynes & the Dawn of Consciousness

Index:

0:00 The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind  

10:00 Consciousness generally  

17:11 What Jaynes means by consciousness MUH QUALIA 

19:43 What should we expect from the Bicameral Mind  

22:39 Emails and User Comments Economics, quantitative methods, Marxism, Big-Branded Nihilism, Emergence, Are rocks conscious?, J.F. Gariepy, Don't go to college. 

34:00 A Greek Vocabulary Lesson 

38:57 Le Bronze-Age Collapse Mindset (the Chad Achilles)  

43:05 The Eternal Odysseus and Solon  

44:50 Whomst are all these voices in my head?  

46:53 The Trump inside your head 

48:28 How to Organize a Bicameral Theocracy (Not saying it was aliens, but...)  

54:39 Amos and Ecclesiastes  

57:53 The Rise of the Fedora in the Middle East  

59:28 The Words for the Bicameral Voices  

1:01:46 Prophecy  

1:07:20 Music and Poetry  

1:10:40 Psychological states, schizophrenia and possession  

1:11:43 The best of the theory and lacunae  

1:14:58 Extensions and the Julian Jaynes Society  

1:16:17 Big-Braned Levels of Consciousness  

1:18:00 Anime pillows