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Stunning. There are elements here I want to deploy for my book about MAINTENANCE and for The Long Now Foundation.

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Very flattered :)

I’ve read your first draft chapter, but didn’t think to connect these particular dots. Maintenance narratives like the sailing and pursing motorcycle stories are obviously protocol narratives in hindsight. Looking forward to seeing the connections you make.

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Aug 18, 2023Liked by Venkatesh Rao

I wonder if you can map such infinite, yet constrained narratives to tiling, like Penrose tiling or the Einstein tile. The "protocol bible" is (rather rigidly) encoded in the shape of the tile. Not sure if you can actually compress such a tiling. this paper suggests to me that not really: https://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0107008.pdf

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Yep, I’ve explored this in the past https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2023/03/30/tessellations-for-the-end-of-history/

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Nice show. tessellations here seem to focus on what is meaningful and what is not, not in mapping the shape of the tile to where one can get to

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yeah. starting with "perhaps aperiodicity is all you need, and the complexity and variety follow? Perhaps the single hat tile is rich enough to describe what I’m gesturing at here?"

what i am asking is how do we map a narrative to a particular ABC? not the way you mapped the lord of the rings to changes in tessellation patterns

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Your conclusion sounds like the opposite of Viktor Frankls conclusions in Man's search for meaning. Why do you think that is?

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Never did read that, though I’ve read bits quoted in other books. Can you quote the bit that seems like opposite conclusions?

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Aug 14, 2023Liked by Venkatesh Rao

Frankl emphasizes the importance of finding meaning in life as the primary motivational force for humans and this becomes even more important during times of crisis (e.g. life in a concentration camp, about which Frankl writes). People living for something "abstract" fared better than those who didn't.

"Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."

Perhaps I am conflating meaning and purpose here when they should be distinct concepts.

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Interesting. I’d suspect meaning in his sense is likely very close to reality ground, not abstract like the Purposes I’m talking about. Other concentration camp stories I’ve read seem to involve concrete survival strategies. I recall one quote from the book was something like “between stimulus and response there us a gap, and in that gap we have the power to choose” ... this dies not seem abstract. More like mindful step-by-step deliberation.

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