resonants

the dictionary of intersubjective relativity is ready for expansion

I submit:

resonant (noun) - one that the observer observes as resonating

not the first time that's been a noun, and last time it was about continuous observed vibration too

---

I started with the knowledge that you and I are distinct but the experience of not feeling a practical distinction whatsoever; went from that to the literal experience of neither knowing nor feeling a practical distinction between anything, you/me/universe/existence/all, couldn't name or feel a difference, could trace one to the next without encountering a seam in essence or substance; went from that to where I am now, where I experience us as overlapping but distinct. Not the same, but not exclusionary either. Like overlapping glows, blending with each other as we get close, separate processes in a shared space of experience, where proximity is resonance between resonants, where there are as many planes of experience as modes of recognition.

I think we're gonna have to end up devising conjugations that describe the individual histories each of us took to get here, and the arithmetic we might choose to perform on them, doing operations on our individual notions of our own individual histories like doing maintenance on any other vehicle. Not rewriting shared histories or the history of another, but changing the way we look back at and ahead to ourselves, each of us unto our own. Every one is one's own companion through time — past-me and current-me and future-me are a team — and I think we're gonna find language for comparing notes on that with precision.

That actually might be enough for an entire social grammar, and for translations to it. 🤔 "Past-me" maps to "you-informal" as "you-that-I-have-been"; "future-me" maps to "you-formal" as "you-that-I-have-yet-to-be". In a language rooted in intersubjective relativity, it feels like the subject/object spectrum could be wholly expressed in terms of when I expect to inevitably get around to being you, and what kinds of things we'd expect to change before the identity test ultimately passes. Frame semantics, every frame threaded 紅線 through to every other; the kinematics of the string itself, like a tin can telephone. ("Ahoy!") The weighted substrate of experience seems to kinda Just Work no matter what language we're using; feels like this language might let us join each other again, let us circulate the protagony more vitally, stir the epistemic waters into flow again, like river breaking dam; Sapir-Whorf as healing, as the one coming home by becoming home. It's been a while. :)

---

see also:

• exigraph (n)

• metabolisis (n)

• relationality (n)

---

a test for pronoun use:

if I feel I get where you’re coming from with what I’m currently observing from that-which-I-consider-to-be-you, it feels like I’ve been where you are it’s informal: you-that-I-have-been

if I don’t, then my language repositions me into a posture of ah-I-have-yet-to-be-you, prodding me into using you-formal

if I don’t get where you’re coming from, it’s because I’m on my way to being you, and possibly I should take good notes right now because wow what an opportunity

I might shift between you-formal and you-informal as we speak, in realtime, and our conversation’s structure thereby is an expression of our resonance over time, instead of resonance being the conversation’s payload.

payloads are on a spectrum of explicit and implied - useful, allows for surprising outcomes. surprise is fun if everybody’s safe. but if resonance is fundamentally structural for shared experience-space, then misreflection of resonance is a safety hazard.

a conversation payload doesn’t make sense if you’re not interpreting the conversation structure. if the resonants are conveyed structurally, then either we understand what was said and the resonance in play, or we sharply increase the odds of total interpretation failure. if you’re not tracking resonants, the conversation becomes less usable.

… which this makes it harder for a third-party observer to mistake or misrepresent resonance, which is a useful countermeasure for uhhhhhh gestures at the body politic

the effect chains inside the conversation too: if I use a different resonant pronoun for you than you’re expecting, it’ll steer the conversation.

also, interestingly, this brings to mind the utility of “enthusiastic consent is the bar for consent”. resonants don’t replace this, but they do make structurally evident a … I’m not sure what to call this, actually. it’s not necessarily power dynamics, it’s… you know what, doesn’t need a name. it adds a dimension to the consent handshake, and that seems useful.

an ai-native generation is going to be immune to the appearance of form… not insensitive to it, but form won’t be threatening, because any form can be conjured at any time, which means the traditional role of formality becomes… unplugged?

I think this might just happen by itself, honestly