Living with Kryptonite: July 2024

2024-07-29

2024-07-28

2024-07-26

Self-critique: The left front leg is a bit wrong, it the tibia (upper arm) was meant to be hiding the coxa and a forced perspective femur. There are too many legs on the left side--that hand sticking out connects to nowhere. It was supposed to be the back leg, but then I added the hand in the back on the left side. I think it's good though--the fibulas, tibias (ulnas), and forearms all need to be about the same length so the knee/patella can also be a "shoulder" for the arm to come down from.

模倣子 Idiocracy, The Big Other, and existential anxiety

Macromemetic Index

Contact memes are evident here as well, i.e., if somebody virtue signals the right buzzwords, they are seen as credible. The abdication of authority, knowledge, whatever to dumb and unqualified virtual big others is also deeply macromemetic since it's probably an example of memetic nexus. Subscribers to a memetic nexus know that others in their shared cohort are also subscribed, and so any use of memes coming from this source, no matter how ridiculous, will be accepted by everybody else.

2024-07-25

模倣子 Comments on Faspeel Game

Yes, I like the "caramenti" name. The Mexican name for tic-tac-toe is "el gato" (a sharp or pound sign is "el gatito"), so there might also be another name possibility in there someplace. The more memes the merrier!

I just wrote this new page in which I took a deep dive into how the game works using the memetic modeling techniques I've been working on. It might or might not be interesting, or shed light on how the game works. Hopefully it appeals to computer science types. I am working on another page where I'll try to analyse strategies. Ultimately I should knock up a programmed interface where one can play against the computer, and maybe the computer against itself.

I devised the game as a simple model wherein you can look at strategies based on the state of the game and also beliefs about what the other player is trying to tell you. They can be trying to cooperate, deliberately lying, or random (or a mixture).

The point of the game is that you can "signal" the other player with your "show" coin (on the board) and your "cover" coin, to give them an idea of what your "secret" coin is, which is what determines the outcome of a bump, i.e., each player gets two points, or a "conflict" in which both flip coins to arrive at a random outcome (see below)

The game is played in "rounds" of whoever gets to ten points first. Cooperation is where each player gets as close to ten as possible each time. How well you're doing could be expressed as a ratio or a rolling average, e.g., 7/10, 9/10, 10/6, 10/8, 10/10, 10/10, 10/10, as opposed to where you just try to beat the other player as badly as possible.

I don't have this on the page (I may add it) but you can play in "passive", "even money", or "aggressive" mode where a "conflict bump" is different depending upon what you do if both players flip coins. The bumped player always gets three points on both tails. On a double-heads, the bumping player either gets zero points, one point, or two points, and one point for one heads, one tails. In "even money" the average result is the same as cooperating and each player getting two points every time. In aggressive mode, there is an average advantage to a player trying to bump regardless of what they think is going to happen. In passive ("simp") mode, one tends to lose over time with devil-may-care bumping.

In any case, if you bump without any idea of what the other player is trying to tell you (assuming they are not just playing randomly) there is a 25% x 25% x 25% chance that the other player will get right up to nine and you've practically lost the round.

Would it be useful for me to put up another page showing some samples of play? Like a few moves with some bump results?

2024-07-24

模倣子 Horrible Women Roaming Unchecked

Macromemetic Index

Horrible women running around abusing people in public.

This happened to me a few years back.

We don't have immunomemes for this stuff. Actually a woman came up and defended me when this happened to me, but otherwise we don't have immunomemes against this kind of behavior.

2024-07-23

模倣子 Faspeel State Diagrams

Macromemetic Index - Rules of Faspeel

Introduction

There are states of the game, and later I also want to explore the states in the minds of the players, the "belief systems." I may get into the latter in a separate essay, if not here.

Herein I deal with how there are "orthogonal memeplexes" which may be represented much more economically than if they were all completely entangled. As I'll show, the fact that the board locations are clear and distinct ("Near" vs. "Away") and the move positions are all "heads" or "tails" along with the turn-taking of the game, means little or no ambiguity, no "jinx events" (10) or race conditions.

In other words, the superficial states of the system are "well-marked." When it comes to the "belief system memeplexes," I think we can start to look at dynamic learning (forming of new links and matrices, adjusting of weights, etc.). Again, with the orthogonal memeplexes idea--the belief memeplexes of each player are driven by the same memetic deployments, each making state changes within their own confines, for example, when one player does a flip! it changes the state of the whole objective system on the board, and also the "belief systems" (12) of both players, i.e., their "beliefs" about what will happen next.

The Game Memeplex

The board contains the relative positions of the two players "show" coins, either Away or Near. This state we call R. Either player can deploy away! or near! to change to the other state. When Near, a player may bump! the other player's "show" coin, thus reverting the system to Away and revealing their "secret" coin and if it matches the bumper's "show" coin it's a share! otherwise it's a clash! (2).

fig. 1. States of the Board

There are two players, each with state systems, P and Q. Each player's state consists of their "show" coin (on the board) and their "cover" coin (on the top of their "message," covering their "secret" (1)). The state of player P's "show" is Sh or P.Sh and the state of their cover is Co or P.Co. The "show" may be either "heads" or "tails" which we represent as Sh.Ta or Sh.He respectively. Transitions between these states are accomplished by the meme deployments flip! and shuffle! which symmetrically switch the states back and forth. The "show" and "cover" are also independent, effectively.

fig. 2. Coin States for Each Player

What about the "secret" coin? That works out to be an immunomemetic/alliance deployment that immediately follows a bump! deployment (5). It is not part of the visible state of the system (hence the term "secret").

The Overall System


R: State of the Board

P: State of Player 1	Q: State of Player 2

So we see how any one of the deployments depicted above may happen, according to which player's turn it is. Switching between Away and Near states does not impact the state of either player's "show" or "cover" coin, for instance. These states are all orthogonal to, or independent of, one another.

So we can denote the state of the whole system as RPQ, or for instance, QRP--more on this (7) when I get into the deployment descriptors, next. Note that the state of player one's things is P, and player one as an agent is p.

Deployment Descriptors

Deployment descriptors describe all of the individual actions, or memetic deployments, which may take place in this system. In a shorthand, I can describe all of the things that can happen in this system with the following few lines:

PQR.Away.[p, q].near! <=> PQR.Near.[p, q].away!

A word or two of explanation about this equation. Note that PQ appears on both sides. This indicates that the states of players one and two don't change, they remain the same on both sides of the transitions. Note the [p, q] and how it indicates that either agent may deploy the away! or near! meme when it is their turn.

Moving on to the descriptors for the memetic transactions when each player changes their own states.

R[Q, P][P, Q].Sh.[ Ta, He ].[p, q].flip! <=>
R[Q, P][P, Q].Sh.[ He, Ta ].[p, q].flip!

Here we see how the flip! meme changes the "show" state, Sh, from "heads" (He) to "tails" (Ta) and vice-versa. Note how the board state, R, stays the same across the transaction. One of the two player states [Q, P] remains static, while the other [P, Q].Sh changes.

R[Q,P][P,Q].Co.[[Ta,He],[Ta,He]].[p,q].shuffle! <=>
R[Q,P][P,Q].Co.[[He,Ta],[Ta,He]].[p,q].shuffle!

Here's a bit of a twist. The shuffle! meme can either swap the "cover" (Co) from "heads" to "tails" or it can remain the same (6), hence the [[Ta,He],[Ta,He]] to [[He,Ta],[Ta,He]] which denotes how the "cover" may switch or stay the same. The secret, of course, may or may not change as well, but that's not a visible aspect of system state. That is, the other player knows that you shuffled, but not whether you actually changed the "secret" or not, or, of course, whether it's "heads" or "tails."

And then there's the bumping, which is a little different. It only works in one direction, sending everybody to the Away state.

PQR.Near.[p, q].bump! => PQR.Away (8)

Of course, the bump! meme goes into a "compelled state" (5) which results in the deployment of either a share! or a clash! deployment, depending upon the "secret" of the bumped player, before returning to the Away state. This could be represented as an additional state (8) in the R submemeplex, but just putting the bump! meme is a kind of shorthand. Written out:

PQR.Near.[p, q].bump!clash! => PQR.Away

PQR.Near.[p, q].bump!share! => PQR.Away

This is kind of weird and non-deterministic, since in a given system a compelled state could lead to disparate states depending upon the "random" outcome. This is the nature of immunomemes, of course. When we say or do something we hope it will be well received and will lead to a good following state, but we also fear that there will be a bad reaction that we did not expect, and we shall lose face as a result. In an agent's "belief system" they might do a game-theory-like analysis of probable outcomes, but that is for another investigation. For now we just want to describe all of the possible states of the Faspeel game.

Break-Out of All Deployment Descriptors

PQR.Away.p.near! <=> PQR.Near.p.away!

PQR.Away.q.near! <=> PQR.Near.q.away!

PQR.Near.p.bump! => PQR.Away bump! is a shorthand for the two possible outcomes (8)

PQR.Near.q.bump! => PQR.Away

PQR.Near.p.bump!share! => PQR.Away (8)

PQR.Near.q.bump!share! => PQR.Away

PQR.Near.p.bump!clash! => PQR.Away

PQR.Near.q.bump!clash! => PQR.Away

RQP.Sh.Ta.p.flip! <=> RQP.Sh.He.p.flip! Pp flips tails to heads

RQP.Sh.He.p.flip! <=> RQP.Sh.Ta.p.flip! p flips heads to tails

RPQ.Sh.Ta.q.flip! <=> RPQ.Sh.He.q.flip! Qq flips tails to heads

RPQ.Sh.He.q.flip! <=> RPQ.Sh.Ta.q.flip! Q fliips heads to tails

RQP.Co.Ta.p.shuffle! <=> RQP.Co.He.p.shuffle! P shuffles cover tails to heads

RQP.Co.He.p.shuffle! <=> RQP.Co.Ta.p.shuffle! P shuffle heads to tails

RQP.Co.Ta.p.shuffle! <=> RQP.Co.Ta.p.shuffle! P shuffle tails no change

RQP.Co.He.p.shuffle! <=> RQP.Co.He.p.shuffle! P shuffle heads no change

RPQ.Co.Ta.q.shuffle! <=> RPQ.Co.He.q.shuffle!

RPQ.Co.He.q.shuffle! <=> RPQ.Co.Ta.q.shuffle!

RPQ.Co.Ta.q.shuffle! <=> RPQ.Co.Ta.q.shuffle!

RPQ.Co.He.q.shuffle! <=> RPQ.Co.He.q.shuffle!

The foregoing should encompass all of the possible moves at any point in the game.

Implications for Chess

My initial impetus was to model the game of chess as a two opposing societies comprised of individuals cooperating competitively with each against the other society. There might be some kind of evolution process taking place between the memetic systems of each side. Each piece would have its own ideomemplex (14) and the whole "team" would have a kind of shared endomemeplex (11) which would be effectively what was competing against the other side.

My problem was that I was mixing up the rules and strategies of chess and the actual play with the attitudes and decisions of the individual pieces (agents). I think what I've come up with here will prove useful. The state of the game is the separate, external memeplex, and each player has their own ideomemplex. In Faspeel there is no "deployment decision" problem as between the chess pieces, since there is only one "player" effectively.

Next steps might be to make the "cover" and the "flip" and the "Away/Near" all separate "agents" who try to decide which of them has the better chance of advancing the game, as opposed to that decision being monolithic.

It looks like the "game theory" (Nash equilibria) aspects lie primarily in the endomemeplexes, rather than an analysis of the board state (exomemeplex). This is the AI implication of this approach. A brute force, or optimized brute force approach to chess (or any such game) consists in looking at the board and deciding the best move based upon projected possible countermoves. The approach I suggest looks mainly at the other's likely intensions. In Faspeel, there is only the board situation, and what I think the other player is trying to tell me. There is never enough information to pick the next best move based just on the board itself.

If I can learn that the other player favors advancing their bishops in certain situations, is generally cautious about getting their queen out, is excessively willing to sacrifice pawns, or do trades, and so on, I can focus on what they are likely to do, and maybe where that will land me, and not worry about what they are very unlikely to do. Also, it might allow me to play an "intimidation game" or a "tricky/trappy game" which might otherwise be impossible to attempt.

Such a model, if computerized, could potentially learn the play style of any number of master chess players, based upon the moves of their documented games, perhaps later beating them at their own game, or allow more junior players to "play with the Big Boys" without actually having to schedule a match (13).

Conclusions & Further Investigations

I've put forward the idea of "orthogonal" or "independent" submemeplexes, and also a notational system for these in terms of state transition diagrams and deployment descriptors which appear to be useful. The hope is that these concepts and techniques will go a long way towards reducing the complexity associated with description and analysis of (some) memetic systems.

There may be implications for long-standing real-world modeling problems which I've yet to effectively address (10). Submemeplexes, artificial as they may or may not be, provide a way to represent the system without "everything being connected to everything".

One idea I had, which I will explore in a future essay, is how to model "belief matrices" or "belief endomemeplexes" (11) which govern how each player "thinks" the other player is going to act. The bad news is that these will certainly be messier that what we've seen here, but the good news is that they may be orthogonal to the physical state memeplexes in a similar way to how these are orthogonal to one another. In other words, adding an increasingly complex, or one for which there may be multiple possible implementations, system for modeling things like strategies, beliefs ("they want to cooperate" or "they're trying to trick me" or "they're just playing randomly" etc.) will result in no linking between the submemeplexes. The other playing flipping their coin is a meme that changes the physical states of the system, and it may also change my beliefs about what is happening, but the state changes in both of these memeplexes will be decoupled. At least that is my hope.

Ultimately, I have the goal in mind of modeling chess as a memetic system. It occurs to me that rather than modeling the ideomemetic behavior of each player in Faspeel, it might be more in the right direction to model the "show," the "cover," and the near! away! or bump! meme decision all as separate agents that then use game theory considerations to decide which one goes. Hopefully that will be "cleaner" than what I was thinking of, and be a step in the right direction for the chess project.

_____________________________

(1) Per the rules, each player has a stack of two coins, one on top of the other,

(2) This rule may vary (3) but when the coins (share!) match each player gets two points and when they conflict (clash!) both players flip coins to work out the result (3).

(3) In a clash! both players flip coins, and if they both come up "tails" the bumped player gets three points. Otherwise, the bumping player gets one point. (4)

(4) Variations on this, which comes to "The Dating Game", are that on double heads the bumping player either gets zero points, or gets two points, and otherwise gets one. The zero points one is the "cautious version", the two-pointer the "aggressive version" and the one-pointer the "even money version." So called because with "even money" there is no advantage to trying to work out the other player's signals and just "going for it."

(5) There is an "implied" or "constrained" state (9) that exists between the bump! deployment and the immediately clash! or share! deployment. This means that the bumper initiates the action, but has no power over what happens next, which is effectively an immunomemetic/alliance deployment by the bumped player.

(6) A player may shuffle their "message" coins without actually changing anything, or by changing the secret and keeping the covering coin the same.

(7) Orthogonal states may be listed in any order, and without period delimiters between. Contrast this with the state of the show coin of, say, player 2, being "heads" which we denote as Q.Sh.He in other words, the "show" coin state, and the value of that state are substates of player two's state, hence, period delimiters. The state of player two "contains" the substates of "cover" and "show" and each of these may have a state of "heads" or "tails" so all possible states are: Q.Sh.He, Q.Sh.Ta, Q.Co.He, and Q.Co.Ta. If the state Q is mentioned without substates on both sides of a deployment descriptor, this means that nothing about that state has changed during the deployment.

(8) The two memetic pathways, in immunomemetic/alliance notation look like: PQR.Near.[p,q].bump!share! => PQR.Away and PQR.Near.[p,q].bump!clash! => PQR.Away. There are several options for representing this on a state transition diagram. One is to have a "compelled state" or "virtual state" (9) into which the bump! meme enters, and two memes, clash! and share! exit. Another is to have two compound memes going from the Near to the Away states.

(9) I have not as of yet officially settled upon a notational convention for a compelled state, that is, like the "cloud" symbol I use for regular states. What I have been using more or less consistently so far is a cloud with no name on it, indicating that once entered the state is immediately exited and nobody has any decision power in the choice of the outgoing memes.


fig. 9.1. compelled State form		fig. 9.2 immunomemetic form

(10) Some things that come up in modeling multi-agent, real-world memetic modeling are jinx events, race conditions, and deployment decision. If two agents "want" to deploy a meme at the same time, or actually deploy memes at the same moment, or the relative time it takes agents to "get ready" to deploy a meme, or to decide to do so, or even stages of deploying memes based on growing or dwindling support of other agents. The artificial turn-taking associated with a game simplifies things, obviously. But orthogonal submemeplexes are a away to think about more complex systems without it all rapidly turning into one giant blob with all states potentially connected to all other states via all possible memes, ultimately with a plethora of "weights" attached to every possible interaction. I may have to deal with that soon enough in the next essay on endomemetic systems to do with Faspeel and "belief matrices" and such.

(11) An endomemeplex (as opposed to an "exomemeplex," i.e., an externally visible memeplex (13), which we usually just call a "memeplex") is a system internal to an agent which that agent uses to decide how to interact with an (the) exomemeplex. The endomemeplex accepts external (and internal) stimuli, deploys internal memes (which we can call "decision processes" (12)) based on internal states (which could be termed "beliefs" (12)), and finally produces memetic deployments into the exomemeplex (which could be termed "decisions" (12) or "actions" (including the "null meme" or "doing nothing").

(12) "Beliefs," "decision processes," and "decisions" in the phraseology of macromemetics may or may not resemble what one conventionally regards as such, naturally.

(13) When we consider the interaction between an individual's endomemeplex (or ideomemeplex in the case of a single individual (14)), one can see the possible therapeutic value of such activities as playing video games. A primary anxiety of the individual in taking decisions is immunomemetic pushback from others, or more to the point, that the system state will be pushed into an unfavorable configuration for said individual by their making a misstep. A video game, for example, provides a "state reset" wherein the individual's mistakes do not have permanent effect. One is able to play out the same series of memetic deployments over and over without that primary fear of long-term consequences. However, the ability to "roam around" for an extended period in an environment where immunomemetic consequences are suspended may have many benefits, even therapeutic ones.

(14) A subtle distinction may be drawn between endomemeplexes and ideomemeplexes. In memetic hacking (15), one tries to get a picture of a cohort's overall propensity to respond to given stimuli, e.g., likelihood to vote for a certain candidate, buy a certain product, engage in racist/sexist behavior, etc. Members of a memetic cohort share large portions of a "shared endomemeplex," e.g., speaking the same language or dialect, religious beliefs, recognized symbols, preferred foods and activities, etc. and also, importantly, fears about being bullied by their fellows about things, even if nobody in reality "believes" them. Every individual has their own internal ideomemeplex that governs their behavior, and this tends to be an "overlapping set" with the cohort/societal norm endomemeplex. You could say that an ideomemeplex is an "implementation" of an endomemeplex, which is in turn an "abstraction" of a group's "values and predilections."

(15) Memetic hacking (a term I invented long ago and which I've stuck with) is the process of probing individuals to try to get an idea of what sort of memetic responses they exhibit, and possibly are likely to exhibit later. An example of "passive" memetic hacking might be wearing a T-shirt with a certain slogan or image around, to see what response it gets. No response anywhere might suggest that there is no resonance in the cohort to the given meme. Active positive or negative response, or just widespread recognition might suggest that the given meme could be used to influence the cohort. "Active" or "aggressive" memetic hacking consists of asking individuals questions or posing hypotheticals, or offering free/discounted items to see if they are accepted, or even more nefariously, perhaps, seeing how individuals respond to things like "confidence schemes" or "fake news." In memetic hacking, we are ostensibly trying to get a picture of the endomemeplex of a cohort, but we are doing it by investigating the ideomemeplexes of a collection of individuals.

2024-07-22

模倣子 it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity

Memetic Index

Hey howdy 🤠

How is the heat down there?

It’s been around a hundred around here a lot, and a scientist 👨‍🔬 buddy says that’s 15 degrees above the fifty-year average for this time of year.

We may all be doomed. Past a certain 🌧️ 🌡️ humidity and temperature, it’s impossible for the human body to shed heat, no matter how much we perspire 💦

I’ve been to Egypt 🇪🇬 a couple of times and it’s 130 in the shade there, but it’s a dry heat and if you stay hydrated 💧 you can sweat 😅 it out, but in huge swaths of the planet 🌍 🌏 where billions live, India, China, Southeast Asia, central Africa, etc., life may simply become impossible, and quite suddenly, millions left dead ☠️ almost overnight, as though a giant bomb 💣 had gone off.

I read about the idea a “wet bulb 💡 🌡️ event” which I need to follow up on, since I recall reading 📖 that it had already happened at least once in India 🇮🇳 with entire villages, regions, simply wiped out overnight, tens of thousands of bodies literally strewn everywhere, lying where they had collapsed, as if from a kind of sudden suffocation, to be discovered by troops and would-be rescue 🛟 workers who came in after the heat had subsided.

I wonder which of the three horses 🐎 🐴 🐎 of Thomas Malthus that counts as? He didn’t count on technology 🤖 getting us out of the resource/subsistence hole 🕳️ we dig for ourselves, but he also didn’t count on our destroying the climate such that we can’t live there anymore.

The USA 🇺🇸 military apparently take climate change VERY seriously.

2024-07-20

模倣子 TOOL The Dispossessed

Macromemetic Index

The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Introduction

I read the book through once and listened to it another couple of times. It's the story of a man who is something of a fish out of water, a brilliant physicist, living on a planet, Annares, in an orbital dance with another planet, Urras. Annares is an anarchy, controlling the whole very poor planet. Urras is rather like Earth, full of different cultures, capitalist, communist, military dictatorship, and wars and exploitation.

It's one of the best books I've read, definitely my "top shelf." It's a wonderful example of the science fiction oeuvre, using a futuristic or alternate reality premise as a launching pad for a eloquent allegory for exploring social issues, in this case weighty ones.

Names & Places

I wonder how Le Guin cooked up her names. I wonder if "Urras" and "Annares" were somehow "Earth" and "Anti-Earth" in some way. I like the way she "Japanified" Einstein's name, for one. Annaresti names are cooked up by computer. I wonder if names throughout the book were full of deep and interesting hidden meanings. "Hain" means "hate" in French, for example--perhaps a long shot, that. I liked her neologisms, such as kleggage and nuchnebi. I felt they carried a lot of narrative load for her.

Storycraft

I thought her use of interleaved narrative exquisitely done. I reread the story a number of times, and I picked up on more and more of the foreshadowing, and it seemed that she "spread the load" with how she structured the story, giving us details and then switching to how that fit into the story on the other planet. It made things more dynamic, and I think if it had been Part I: Annares and Part II: Urras, for instance, there would've been a bunch of foreshadowing at the start, straining the memory of the reader, and making the payoff at the end less impactful.

Linguistics & Physics

Le Guin's expositions into the Pravic language and the General Temporal Theory were lengthy when compared to many "soft science fiction" authors who tend to put actual enabling scientific concepts on as a kind of "band-aid" or which with much briefer expositions revealing a profound lack of understanding of their subject matter. Everybody's got faster-than-light travel, subspace communications, teleporters, laser-blasters, in-ship gravity, light sabers, Babel-17 languages, universal translators, telepathy, empathy, and on and on and on (sorry to pick on Star Trek so much). Le Guin makes no such slip-ups. She never misses a step. I didn't catch anything to suggest that she was anything other than a polyglot linguist and a physicist conversant in special & general relativity as well as quantum physics. She somehow skirted the landmines, quicksands, and pitfalls one could easily fall prey to in trying to fold such topics into a fictional narrative, including the ones I specifically had my ear out for. For example, she set me at ease by making the point that while months passed on the near-lightspeed Hainish interstellar ships, decades passed on the home world. Typical of her extra dollop of scientific detail, which would require some scientific training to recognize, to anchor her point, smear on another thick brushstroke rather than leave an irritating swath of naked gesso.

Pravic shares characteristics with Japanese and Spanish, for instance, in which it's rude to employ the genitive case for parts of one's own body, or lack of curse words except for very specific descriptions, lack of superstitious, religious references, or convoluted ways of expressing ideas which would otherwise cut against the grain of social harmony, e.g., "that's mine" or "give me that" or "would it bother anybody if I were to partake of this one" or "I've come to bother you" or "the way of doing this might be the suggested one" and so forth, or just simply dispensing with grammatical gender or other such forms which gobble up linguistic resources, often leaving room for discord in the process.

Socio-Politics and Economics

One began to get the impression that the story was to be a straightforward analogical contrast between communism and capitalism, but things got more muddled and interesting as they went on. First, when the ambassador from Thu, Chifoilisk, makes his frothy protestations to Shevek about how different his "communist" society is to A-Io, the propretarians, the unbridled laissez-faire capitalists, it becomes clear that from the perspective of Shevek's homeland of Annares, the two are at best superficially different, at worst virtually indistinguishable.

The Battle of the Sexes

I was glad that the book is penned by a woman, as it lent weight to Le Guin's comments about female power and the relationship between men and women, the power dynamics, etc.

The women on A-Io go around topless (at least in the company of those who "own their nudity"), bejeweled, hair shaven, have no responsibilities or jobs or academic or intellectual standing, and yet Vea claims that the women control everything because they in fact control the men. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, which sounds like Voltaire, but apparently isn't:

"The business of society consists in men pretending that they themselves are in charge and women pretending that they themselves are not."

So there is some substance to Vea's assertion, à la "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World," and so on.

Meanwhile, while great material and political egalitarianism reigns on Annares, statements are made that "men may learn Odonism, but women are fundamentally propertarians" because they own men, are able to take possession of men (rather like on Urras), and as Shevek's partner Takver admitted, a pregnant woman is constitutionally unethical, having no other loyalty than to the fetus.

One contrast was Shevek's talk with Takver and others about how infidelity in a partnered relationship was about trust, while Vea's protestations when Shevek was coming on to her were to do with her reputation and keeping secrets from her husband and her maid. I liked Takver's term, "body profiteer." Matter-of-fact and free of loaded expressions.

I was gratified at how deeply and thoroughly Le Guin dove into and elaborated this subject, more so than a male author might have dared to, or even had the insight to attempt.

Freedom and Dictatorship

We have the planet Annares, a planet-wide anarchist commune, and Urras, home to multiple languages and cultures and countries, notably A-Io, Thu, and Benbilli.

The Ioti are propertarians, with some super-rich enjoying luxury amidst starvation, want, and squalor. We don't get to see the interior of Thu, but we learn that it is a kind of communist country run by a presidium, by which one of the main characters, Chifoilisk is "called back."

The Annarasti make the assertion that the Urrasti are slaves to their possessions.

On Annares, we see the dictatorship and problems of government represented by Sabul, the physicist mentor, and by Tirin, the playwright. By contrast to Urras, specifically A-Io, Annaresti culture shows itself to be egalitarian, anarchist, caring, coping with and trying to survive and thrive in a world of scarcity, but then we see the ugly underbelly of power plays in committees, creeping bureaucracy in the face of repeated crisis, and the helplessness of individuals when things don't go their way.

Law versus Custom

Takver, Shevek, and Bedap discuss the fate of their friend, the playwright Tirin. He was criticized for his art, for his parody play about Urras, and he wound up in an institution. They said how "customs" have even more power than "laws" which they abhorred in the Urrasti. Shevek observes that while both scientists and artists are creatives, the scientist can appeal to "objective truth" to defend his work while the artist has no comparable defense.

I was deeply intrigued by this contrast. It's a deeply memetic question. Customs are "stronger" and more efficient, laws are more easily configured, downloaded if you will. Customs are hard to fix when they go wrong, as they tend to do.

Shevek observes how military "discipline" is nothing of the sort, but merely a way of spreading responsibility for decision around so horrors may be committed, effectively on command. It's not actually stated, but it also means that new hands may take hold of the levers of power and nothing changes--just put somebody new's picture up behind the front desk. It's clean, efficient, and effective, and easy to change as needed. It's also great for consistent commission of cruelty and horror on a mass scale.

We see Sabul's self-serving, Machiavellian machinations, keeping his place despite lack of merit, controlling others, we see Rulag's dictatorship through controlling committees, envious neighbor Binub's whinging about being mistreated by committees.

We could fault the manipulativeness of Sabul's power-grabbing, Rulag's dogmatic grandstanding, and Binub's whining, but what choice do they have? Binub has no power to petition, to vote, to lodge a complaint, or so we are led to understand. Rulag has no court to plead to, no petition, no vote to get out, and also nobody has any course to resist her. And her cronies have no other resort than to violence. Sabul has no title, no chairmanship, no desk, no office, ostensibly in an anarchy, but it's really a meritocracy with no measuring sticks. He has to struggle to cobble together his own, and guard it at all times against all comers, especially up-and-coming physicists with real talent.

One wonders if Annaresti society would function as well as it does in a less spartan environment. What if there were more resources to squabble over, more room for people to slack off in either protest or apathy, less impending doom at every turn, less threat of Urrasti invasion? I can only imagine that's why Le Guin painted the Planet Annares as she did.

Can an anarchist society function without singleness of purpose?

Checks but no Balances

Karel van Wolferen wrote in The Enigma of Japanese Power that Japan is a system of balances but no checks. One might say something like "a deep keel but no rudder." Annaresti society might be quite like this.

Rulag makes the point that Shevek and his Committe of Initiative are behaving just as the propertarians said anarchists would eventually devolve into, i.e., taking selfish decisions without considering the welfare and traditions of the society as a whole.

We may have a scaling problem, and a centralization problem. What is Le Guin showing us about dictatorship and democracy, their practical aspects, their fatal flaws? Is it possible to run a government without offices, votes, petitions, courts, and are there substitutes? Is it possible to run a society without certifications, official conveying of responsibility, that sort of thing?

Final Remarks

I was intrigued by Le Guin's depiction of the role of women in society. I think she gave us a lot to chew on and can't ignore in terms of Realpolitik vis-à-vis the Women's Liberation Movement.

Her analogy of the two worlds supported well the political and economic contrasts she showed us. The setting is so richly drawn as to give us a lot to talk about and speculate on on our own.

I felt we were left largely to draw our own conclusions.

2024-07-19

漫画 Pen & Ink of Woman Looking Down with Glasses

Manga Index

Self-critique: Need to work on the perspective on the glasses. Mouth position, overall realization, and perspective. Nose not too bad, but still. Work on hair--lots of lines, perhaps could have better impact. Eyes a bit askew, asymmetrical, could telegraph what they're looking at...better.