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Monthly Archives: April 2021

“What’s that Lassie? Timmy Fell Down the Mine Shaft … Again?!”

21 Wednesday Apr 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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fiction, story

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Which came first? The chicken or the egg? 

(It’s meant to be a conundrum).

Now, of course, science knows the answer. And the answer is … the egg. Something almost like a chicken laid an egg with a novel cross-over or mutation and that egg grew into a chicken.

Here’s another conundrum and so far as I know, science does not yet know the answer.

Which came first?

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com



The word or the story? 

Let’s expand the question a little. Did humans first come up with nouns — names for particular things or perhaps verbs referring to actions and then later, string some of these together to make the first stories?

Or, did stories come first and later, the names for things and objects were excised from these stories? 

Most likely, the two co-evolved — language and stories. But I will argue that story is actually more fundamental. 

Why? 

It turns out that my cat Luna is a storyteller. 

Remarkable cat? Perhaps. But I think after I explain just how she’s a storyteller, you’ll remember other times that animals used “storytelling” in your own life. 

When Luna was a kitten, she loved to chase the laser pointer. At the ripe old age of three, she’s far less enthusiastic about it. But she still likes the idea of playing laser pointer. She may or may not recognize the words “laser pointer” but she definitely can’t reproduce it. She vocalizes a lot and it seems as though she’s “taking turns” with me when we “talk.” But, at least to my ear, she’s always saying the same thing which sounds much like a plaintive chirp of a question. 

Her repertoire of actions however, is much more varied. At night, which is when we play laser chase, she often comes up to me and “chirps.” She looks at me while she chirps and when I look at her, she goes into phase two which is to “re-enact” chasing the laser pointer. It is possible that she re-enacts chasing the laser pointer to “communicate” with me that she wants to do it. Or, it’s possible that she just “imagines” chasing the laser pointer and the imagining is associated with the actions. It is also possible that at first, she simply recreates the associated actions, but, since it reminds me of the laser pointer and I often play with her at that point, the reinforcement could turn a passive re-enactment into an instrumental and perhaps “intentional” behavior pattern. 

In a similar way, it’s easy to imagine one of our distant ancestors re-enacting a struggle, finding and digging up roots, picking berries, running away from a particular form of danger, etc. For our ancestor too, it might be that they begin by simply remembering something, and in so doing, they re-enact some of the actions they took. Eventually, they come to realize that their re-enactment encourages others in the tribe to follow and do their own berry picking. 

We can easily imagine that in a particular region there might be several kinds of berries; some kinds might sport thorns; some not. Some might require bending over to reach (like strawberries) while other might require reaching up like high-bush blueberries. Re-enacting a story of berry picking might easily be repeated on many occasions. Eventually, the motion of picking a particular kind of berry might become ritualized or routinized. Some other clever ancestor may have trapped a small rabbit by using a strawberry as bait. He might use the same gesture(s) for strawberry that others used earlier in order to indicate that strawberries exist. This gesture, or sequence of gestures, over time, comes to indicate “strawberry” in many different stories. Eventually, it becomes the “word” for “strawberry.” 

Photo by Nadi Lindsay on Pexels.com

But the stories came first. 

All right, you might say, but such stories are all reconstructive stories. How did fiction arise?



To answer that question, let me tell a tale about another cat from a much earlier point in my life. That cat was named Eva. She was an indoor/outdoor cat. We didn’t even have a litter box for her. Whenever she wanted to go out, she would go to the front door and scratch at it. There were five of us in the house so someone was likely to be close by. Whoever was nearby would open the door; she’d go out & do her business and then come back to the door and scrape it on the outside. Unlike my current crop of cats, Eva pawed gently at the door. She didn’t seem bent on destroying it. She was simply signaling that she wanted in or out.

In a similar fashion, when Eva was hungry, she would go to the kitchen and paw on the little wooden doors under the sink. This was where the cat food was kept. Whoever was near would pour out some cat food for Eva. 

It’s not necessary to invoke stories here. She was reinforced for scratching the front door by having us open it so she could go out or in. She was reinforced for scratching the doors beneath the sink by being fed. 

Eva, in due course, as an indoor/outdoor cat, became pregnant. Three tiny kittens were born to her. One nice spring day, a few months later, Eva left the living room and trotted into the kitchen and scratched on the cupboard door. I was nearby, so I brought out the cat food and filled up her dish. Instead of digging in, however, as she usually did, she instead, left immediately and trotted to the front door. She hand’t taken even a single bite!

 This struck me as odd. I wondered whether she had a sudden urge to go relieve herself. Such a sudden and overwhelming urge that she ignored her food? I don’t recall a cat ever doing that while I was observing. But there she was at the front door. Okay. 

I opened the front door, and out she went. I closed the door so she could do her business. But almost immediately, she pawed at the door to be let back in! What was going on? Eva was a smart cat. She wasn’t like our poor cat Shasta who would go to the door of the back deck and meow loudly to be let out…even when the door was already open. 

But Eva was a smart cat. Why was she back so soon? I wondered about it as I opened the door again. Guess what?  In tumbled her three little kittens. She led her furry trio to the kitchen where they chowed down on the meal I had just “prepared” for Eva. 

Had Eva just “told me a story” in order to manipulate me into doing her bidding? I’m not sure we can really call what she did a story. But I’m not sure we cannot call it a story either. It certainly seems as though Eva did some nice problem solving behavior. It seems most likely that Eva had heard her kittens outside. She was much closer to the source and her hearing was much better than mine. It’s also possible that she “remembered” that they were out there. I had not let the kittens out and had not known they were out there. 

It seems as though Eva was using her “mental model” of how I would react to various stimuli and put together separate elements. She devised a multi-step plan which included my predictable behavior in order to reach her goal of feeding her cats. 

It seems as though Eva was using her “mental model” of how I would react to various stimuli and put together separate elements. She devised a multi-step plan which included my predictable behavior in order to reach her goal of feeding her cats. 

Photo by Mareks Steins on Pexels.com

When I was an undergraduate, I trained a rat to do a sequence of five behaviors in order to get a reward. That was completely contrived however. In order to train this behavior, I had to go through a very careful sequence myself. I first trained the rat to press a lever. Pro tip. You can’t simply wait for the rat to press a lever in order to reinforce it with a food pellet. First, it helps to “click train” the rat. Even after they get a food pellet, it takes time for them to find the thing and devour it. And it takes time. It turns out that in the long run, it’s more efficient to first train the rat that a “click” happens when the food pellet is delivered. The click is quite salient to the rat and can be heard everywhere in the cage. So, it’s “better” as a reinforcement in some ways than food. However, every so often, you still need to reward the rat with an actual food pellet or it will stop paying attention to the click. In much the same way, most dog owners teach their dogs that “Good Boy” is a kind of signal associated with a head being petted and occasionally a food treat. That’s much more practical than giving the dog a treat every time. 

If you are trying to teach an animal a multi-stage trick, you need to “thin out” the schedule so that they are not reinforced every time they execute the required behavior, but only occasionally. And, at every step, it took a great deal of attention to “lead” the animal to the intended behavior. At every step, beyond the first few, it is easy to “break” the chain of behavior by waiting too long to deliver reinforcement. Remember, these chains of behavior became trained in rats trapped in a cage. Their environment differed considerably from the one they evolved in. These rats, by the way, are almost like identical clones. How hard would it be to train a rat to execute a chain of five random behaviors in the wild? It took a lot of patience and attention to carry it out in the lab. I think it would be much harder in the wild. 

What if there’s another way? What if, in at least some cases, you establish a “relationship” with another animal so that you are able, at better than chance, to “read” each other’s intentions and desires. You can “tell” when your dog really needs to go out even if you haven’t trained him to a specific behavior. Your dog knows when you are about to go out for a walk, even if you carefully avoid using the forbidden word “walk” out loud! 

I’d be curious what you think about pets and whether you have any stories about them using stories. 

Real stories. 

I’m not talking about the typical Lassie episode which goes something like this:

Lassie: “WOOF! WOOF!” 

Timmy’s Dad, Mom, or Uncle: “What’s that you say, Lassie? Timmy was playing in the abandoned mine shaft again?” 

Lassie: “WOOF! WOOF!” 

Adult: “Well, didn’t you try to talk him out of it?”

Lassie: “WOOF! WOOF!”

Adult: “Oh, I see. Yeah, I agree, he can be pretty recalcitrant. Did you mention that last time he did this, I told him I would ground him for a month if he ever did it again?” 

Lassie: “WOOF! WOOF!”

Adult: “Right. Of course you did. Sorry. Well, what tools do I need to get him out this time?” 

Lassie: “WOOF! WOOF!” 

Adult: “Dynamite? Why would we need dynamite?” 

No, not that kind of story, but stories about things that actually happened. Have your pets ever tried to “manipulate you” into doing something by telling you a “story”? 

——————————————-

The Story of Story: Part One

You Gave me no Fangs

The Creation Myth of the Veritas 

Fool me! 

DreamGlider

15 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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Tags

poem

If you go gliding on a dream, Sir, 

You’d better know the weather, wouldn’t you say?

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

If you’re biding your time, Sir, 

Waiting for a better day, 

Week
Month
Year
Lifetime

To come and make it all:

SO

MUCH

easier.

Everything must be breezier! 

It seems so on TV! 

Easy Peasie If you Pleasie

Photo by Bagus Pangestu on Pexels.com

But if you’re gliding on a dream, Ma’am,

You must know and not-know 

You must see and not-see

You must love and not-love.

(Or, so I’ve been told). 

Be bold.

Maybe you were never meant to be enrolled

In the School of Division.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

What good is precision,

After all, when you are answering entirely

Most assuredly, most completely, 

The wrong question entirely?

Photo by Nikolay Ivanov on Pexels.com

And, yet we are given glimpses, are we not?
A nod, just, here and there. That there might indeed,

May be connection without the necessary knot.
We will see ourselves at last as same-treed.

We really don’t have to chew on the skulls of enemies 

To get what we want in this life.
It’s just a way of thinking — a limited way of thinking 

A way of really stinking up the works for all and shrinking 

The pie for everyone in a pathetic attempt

To take more than a fair share. 

So, if you care attentively

Please entertain for a moment or two

That what’s good for me —

Could also be good for you! 

Astounding truth, the Sea is parted! 

The Way is clear!

Everything Floats.

And, then, the Dream Glider sets you down upon the ground again and 

Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com

Maybe it never really happened and of course how could there be you would have to change your life and that’s a pain so you’d really rather not think about it and you’ll just parrot back the words of …

Photo by Leonid Danilov on Pexels.com

But somewhere underneath all that plastic, 

You saw the truth; You know the truth. Fantastic.

You know we’re all in this together; 

And not just the birds of a feather.


Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Listen! You can hear the echoes of your actions

Imagine all the people

The only them that counts is all of us

Ripples

You Know!

Toddlerhood Nation

Somehow

08 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ecology, sustainability

And then, at that precise moment: that’s when the trouble really began in earnest. 

Of course, looking back on it now, there were plenty of signs, if one cared to look. 

But one did not care to look, did one? Why would one? After all, it was so much easier to pretend it didn’t matter; to pretend everything would work out ‘somehow.’ 

‘Somehow.’ 

Was there any word in the English language so destructive or at least so self-delusional as ‘somehow’? 

Because ‘some’ is not your typical ‘how.’ A typical ‘how’ is a plan put together by knowledgeable motivated people and executed by knowledgeable motivated people. Some such plans are more detailed and some less so. Some have very well-defined responsibilities and some do not. But none of the real ‘how’s that I have ever seen happened by accident. 

‘Somehow’ is too rare; too unreliable; too fickle to pin your life on, and way too fickle to depend upon for the life of your kids and grandkids. 

Rely on ‘somehow’ and here is what you get — multiplied by a billion. 

Photo by Leonid Danilov on Pexels.com

————————————————————

“Come on, Margery, look at me. It could have happened anywhere. Come on! You think I’m not devastated too? He was my son too, you know. I loved him too, you know.” 

“Why, Jim? Why? It didn’t have to be this way. It really didn’t. People have known those chemicals were carcinogenic. What were they thinking?”

“I know, Marge. I know. So many innocent lives lost.”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

———————————————————-

“Nothin’? Nothin’ for you either, George?” 

“Nothin’! Again! I’m tellin’ ya Lennie; it ain’t like it used to be. Not at all. It’s not bad luck. It’s no luck. There is literally nothin’ out there, Lennie. Well, leastways, nothin’ edible.” 

“Just may be that it’s time for the likes of such as us to find us somethin’ different to do. Ya know?”

“Lennie, don’t be startin’ again about a rabbit farm. I done told you that already. Fishin’ is what we know and it’s all we know.” 

“I know. I know you’re right George. But just — there ain’t no fish any more. That ain’t good if you’re a fisherman.” 

Photo by Mau00ebl BALLAND on Pexels.com

———————————————————

“They’re so beautiful, Daddy! Can we go see some real stars some day, Daddy?”

He bit his lower lip. He sighed. How had it come to this? “No, darling. We could go to watch a car race though!” 

“Mmm.” (Softly). “I’d rather go see some real stars. Why can’t we?”

(Sighs). “I’m sorry, sweetie. There’s just too much … “stuff” … in the sky to see the stars. Except for our sun, of course. That’s a star!” 

She bit her lower lip. “Daddy, is that the same “stuff” in the air that killed all the bees, and birds, and butterflies?” 

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

—————————————————-

“Another down day for the dow, breaking down below 5000, but an up day for Air Quality Kills. For the first, time, world-wide, the EPA says we’ve finally broken the 10K per day barrier. Details at Five at Five on at Five. 

“Now, back to the international women’s lingerie no-holds barred jello wrestling quarter finals. In the pink, …”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com



——————————————————

“So. It’s come to this. I never believed it would happen, Ahmed.”

“Nor I, Saul; nor I. But, it’s not like we weren’t warned. And, even that it would be about water.”

“I know; but still. Nukes? Really? What’s the point? No-one can live in the whole region for centuries. Who won, Ahmed? Who won?” 

——————————————————-

[The following passage is translated from the original Arcturian. It’s a “literal” translation; or, at least as “literal” as any translation can be when the target language is English.]

“Blue Hike Candle, Please to report scan results of not-so-very-far-away gray brown rock planet.” 

“Amber Saddle Wave, Please to report scan results of not-so-very-far-away gray brown rock planet as:

No evidence of intelligent life.”

“Mauve Crest Bucket, Please to report recommendation action of not-so-very-far-away gray brown rock planet.”

“Amber Saddle Wave:,Please to report recommendation action of not-so-very-far-away gray brown rock planet as:

Ignore and revisit in 50 millennia rather than the run-of-the-air-turbine 5 millennia. The tailless monkeys are learners of many silly tricks. But they still sewer-stinky most of their time and energy and [Here, on the recording wails an untranslatable cross between the percussion of a jack-hammer and the trumpet of an elephant with a sad whale song weaving in and out of counterpoint]  trying to steal from each of the other of the other of the other.”

“Mauve Crest Bucket, Please to report recommendation action of not-so-far-away gray brown rock planet as ignore and revisit in 50 millennia accepted. NEXT!”

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

—————————————————— 

Ah Wilderness

The Forest 

Skirting the Turtle 

Math Class: Who are you?

Don’t they realize how much better off they are now?

You Must Remember This

Screaming out a Warning

Roar, Ocean, Roar

The Teeth of the Shark 

The Walkabout Diaries: Life Will Find a Way

Yum! How About Some Ground Glass?

05 Monday Apr 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

collaboration, greed, lies, politics, truth, USA, veracity, Veritas

Photo by David Geib on Pexels.com

Lies in civilization are much like ground glass in an otherwise nutritious, delicious  buffet. They are dangerous. They are potentially deadly if undetected. Quantity matters. One piece of undetected ground glass is serious. One hundred pieces means that some people will die. Twenty thousand means everyone who partakes of the buffet will likely die. 

If one side lies constantly and one of the things they lie about is saying the other side lies, then, of course, your “loyalty” to your own side may get you to thinking: “Both sides lie equally.” Or, even more sadly, “The other side lies!” 

Imagine Rembrandt’s Mona Lisa: a beautiful painting. Now, imagine painting a red stripe one inch wide diagonally through the painting. It’s only a small part of the painting, after all. Maybe 10%. But is the value decreased by only 10%? Of course not. 

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Ever use a dictionary? How much would you pay for a really good dictionary? How about a dictionary with 1% errors? How about one with 10% errors? How about one with 50% errors? How about one with 100% errors?

Imagine you finally manage to save up enough money to buy your dream house. Location: near highways, shopping, & parks. Style: perfect. Condition: perfect. Except for one small thing. 

It reeks. 

Living in a society that is perfused with lies is like living in a house situated right next to a sewage plant. 

Photo by Designecologist on Pexels.com

The *only* advantage humans have in their struggle to survive is their ability to cooperate and communicate. A lie diminishes that ability to coordinate. The impact is not just that one lie. It’s the spread of skepticism. It’s the felt need to double and triple check everything. 

In a complex society, even a tiny bit of deception can multiply far beyond the immediate effects. That is particularly true if a deception passes through a number of weak points in what could be and should be the world-wide web of wisdom. 

For example, an employee at a drug company might be pressured to downplay side effects in a report. He does so. But in a corporate culture of honestly, someone will catch the lie and patiently explain that this is not the way things are done around here. The error will be corrected.

And no-one will die from that lie. 

On the other hand, the same employee doing the same act in a company with a sociopathic corporate culture might well have that lie not only propagated but further elaborated. As a result, the drug is over-prescribed and over-used. Millions of dollars, and then, that money is like seed money to buy layers and layers of political protection and press protection. At last billions of dollars flow from the pockets of customers into the pockets of the drug company. And, when I say “the drug company” of course, ultimately it ends up in someone’s pocket. Whose? A little of it goes to workers within the company. A huge amount goes to the top executives. But a huge amount also goes to the major stockholders — people who did nothing to discover or promote the drug, but in some sense provided money to support the company. 

Guess what? It might even turn out that the drug’s drawbacks outweigh the benefits. In the short run, that might not diminish profits at all. 

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Again though, we need to realize that the damage to society is not limited to the effects of this particular drug (though those can in and of themselves be devastating effects). It is experiences like this, for instance, that play into vaccine reluctance. Because some drug companies have done some unethical things, people naturally have some degree of mistrust for *all* drug companies for *all* drugs. Nor is the mistrust that such a scheme produces limited to the drug industry. If people believe corruption is widespread, they may themselves become more tempted to engage in it. Even if they don’t themselves engage in lies, deception, bribery, etc., they will certainly be on the lookout for such schemes. It will be harder to take people at their word. 

Putting crushed glass in a buffet injures people and ruins the buffet. And, if it happens often enough, it can turn you off from going to any buffets or any restaurants. 

Lying can seem attractive in the short term. But in the long run, it will be found out. It will ruin your individual reputation, but it will also tarnish the reputation of your organization and even, to some extent, your entire industry. Beyond that, lies work to spoil society as a whole.

Imagine that a well-functioning society is something like a well-oiled machine. One part connects to another and things function smoothly. Lies are like pouring sand in the gears. Things will move more slowly. Parts will also wear out more quickly. Add enough sand and the motor will burn out or the machinery may catch fire. Would you put sand in your gas tank? Would you add sand to the oil in your auto? Of course not! Why would you support lies in your company or in your society? 

Photo by Stephan Streuders on Pexels.com

Apart from the societal disintegration that lies promote, if you actively pursue a policy of lies to benefit yourself, you are basically taking a kind of informational poison into your own psyche and eventually it will poison your mind. You’ll become more and more addicted to a strategy of relying on lies rather than relying on doing a good job or learning from your mistakes. When someone asks a perpetual liar a question, they will not be able to simply answer. They will have to calculate who knows what and how easily the lie will be found out and try to recall what lies that they have already told to whom. 

Just as more and more of an addictive painkiller must be used to achieve the same level of pain relief, so too, an addicted liar will find that they have to tell more and more lies. The lies may at first be “reasonable” lies. That is, at first, a liar may tell lies that are plausible. Over time, they will have to tell more and more absurd lies. If the liar is a popular figure, his or her fans may echo the lies despite not having any relevant direct knowledge. As the lies become more absurd, the fans echo not only plausible, lies but also echo absurd lies. To those who are not addicted to the lies, fan behavior becomes more and more ridiculous and pathetic. 

—————————————

Happy Talk Lies

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit 

The Update Problem

You Gave me no Fangs

Myths of the Veritas: The Orange Man

Essays on America: Addictions

Bounce

Claude the Radio Operator

https://petersironwood.com/2020/07/11/plans-for-us-some-gruesome/

A Lot is not a Little 

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