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Serpent logic and related

[ by Charles Cameron — where paradox begets form in phrasing, redux ]
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Here for your entertainment and entrainment are some further instances where the tweet doubles back on itself, bites its tail, or otherwise embodies some form of “form” that’s noteworthy in its own right, and possibly indicative of the heart of a problem — think of these tweets as eddies in the flow of things, knots in the wood…

Two arms crossed as in that MC Escher hand-draws-hand piece:

And a net version of the same, aka “tit for tat”:

Speaking of economics, here’s a bit of spiral logic — the economics of spiralling out of control?

And here’s an example of “endless” recursion, as featured in two tweets about “end” times from Barth’s Notes:

and its 2013 equivalent:

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Okay, here are some simple sample opposites. First, the weather forecast for Syria:

— spelled our explicitly by Andrew Stroehlein, who tweeted “Sunny with a chance of cluster bombs…” in response.

That one seems fairly fair, but click on the links yourself to see the nuances in King‘s actual statements.

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Now for some regular serpents’ tails, from the reasonably light-hearted to the heavier end of the scales:

Okay, here are two from Mikko Hypponen, the first of which is frankly outdated, but still fun:

— Angela Watercutter caught the tide at just the right moment with her Wired piece, Skynet Becomes Self-Aware: How to Welcome Our AI Overlords:

The time has come. According to the Terminator clock, at 8:11 p.m. Tuesday, Skynet will become self-aware. And humanity will be screwed. Going by canon set out in the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, Judgment Day should hit Thursday.

Never mind Mikko, this one’s funny too — if and only if one’s also familiar with Wikipedia, which seems plausible in all cases for those who follow twitter — it wins double-honors in fact, hitting it out of the self-reference ball-park and into parallelism as satire:

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Namarupa, or “name and form”, has to do with parallelisms between a name and its referent — or what zen might call the “finger pointing” and the moon — always fun:

The next one depends on your knowing that the Greek mythological creature known as a Naiad refers to “any of the nymphs in classical mythology living in and giving life to lakes, rivers, springs, and fountains”:

— aptly named indeed.

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We’re almost done — here’s one with a built in time-factor:

It it still there? Aha!

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Finally, this isn’t a serpent eating its tail by itself:

— but it becomes one, I’d suggest, when Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US from 2008 to 2011, retweets it!

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Until next time…

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 14th, 2013 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Apocalyptic, Charles Cameron, complexity, economics, egypt, form, hard problem in consciousness, Lebanon, logic, pakistan, paradox, philosophy, quant & qualit, Religion, sports, statistics, syria, twitter, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Serpent logic and related”

  1. Charles Cameron Says:
    September 28th, 2013 at 5:34 am

    Here’s another example of “the economics of spiralling out of control” — this time from a blogger in Tajikistan:

    The main reason why I support [Emomali Rahmon’s] candidacy is because he has already led the state for more than 20 years. As people say, he is already “fed up” with stealing and taking bribes. His children and relatives are also already fed up. Now ordinary people have a chance to benefit a little from the country’s economic development.
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    If another person becomes president, they will first of all begin “feeding” themselves as well as their children and relatives. In this case, ordinary people will continue suffering for years.

    Via Global Voices Online.

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