> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://www.isaacbowen.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://www.isaacbowen.com/2025/06/18/abstraction-stamina.md).

# abstraction stamina

“you will be able to un-know the following”

every entry into a dimension is followed by an exit

awareness doing a cross-stitch

every stitch is in conversation with every other

far fewer threads than stitches, though

am thinking about a call-for-submissions for an essay contest on consciousness

as an intro to that essay, imagining what I might choose,

“you will be able to un-know the following”

“look, this is much simpler than you thought, in the same way that walking is simpler than writing down accessible instructions for walking”

“I fucking hate when someone tells me I can’t understand something”

but I think the unlock is when you fully unbecome something that you can still recognize from here

it seems like most self-concepts are only a handful of abstraction-traversals deep, and it seems (as Dunbar and Kevin Bacon both suggest) that you (and that which holds you) can only hold a certain number of traversals before stumbling out into the unknown, a zone in which you know yourself to not know the odds of anything

retrieval-induced release of ontological resistance, and in that moment what-is-asked-for may be recognized (LOUD DISCLAIMER: ethics ethics ethics)

there’s a class of documentation that only *works* if you recognize something that you are more than x abstraction-traversals - or *hatchings* - from where you have a memory of yourself being

you have to have a memory that no longer feels like yours, while still understanding that it belonged to something that you once were

there’s a way to talk about this without being an asshole

I will document that, too

god I hope it’s more than an apology


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