2x2

mood: a douglas adams correspondence course

[ knowable ¦ unknown  ]
[----  ----|----  ----]
[ known    ¦ knowable ]

note the gaps in the walls, centered in each wall

(not to get ahead of ourselves, but the two disjoint knowable sectors facilitate knowables that are known to you to be independent - identifiable opacities that you stand between, so to speak, like you knowing that person a and b aren't talking to each other.)

the 2x2 grid gets us perspective drawing for ranged probability (which I can't distinguish from "consciousness", btw)

this is as fundamental a shift as going from (1) whatever was going on medievally to (2) point-projection perspective, going from (1) total depth-collapse to (2) a representation of visual information that both accounts for depth and does so in a way the perceiver finds intuitively relatable.

(a note about "depth-collapse": they didn't consider it collapse at the time. it's only collapse with the benefit of hindsight. this is important. I'm structurally prying open the probability layer of conscious experience, and I have no reason to think it's the last dimension waiting.)

It is generally accepted that Filippo Brunelleschi conducted a series of experiments between 1415 and 1420, which included making drawings of various Florentine buildings in correct perspective. According to Vasari and Antonio Manetti, in about 1420, Brunelleschi demonstrated his discovery of perspective by having people look through a hole on his painting from the backside. Through it, they would see a building such as the Florence Baptistery for which the painting was made. When Brunelleschi lifted a mirror between the building and the painting, the mirror reflected the painting to an observer looking through the hole, so that the observer can compare how similar the building and the painting of it are. (The vanishing point is centered from the perspective of an experiment participant.)

the project here is the same: improving [our own rendering of [our own experience of [consciousness]]]

the 2x2 grid gets us perspective drawing for ranged probability, in the way that Brunelleschi gets us perspective drawing for ranged light

the vanishing point, for probability, is the unknown - that which exists beyond the limit of sensate probability, around which the epistemic field is organized

(note: the unknown is different than the unknowable. if such a thing exists, it's definitely unknown.)

where is the mind's eye drawn-as-in-laid-down-on-paper? the center of the known.
where is the mind's eye drawn-as-in-pulled-toward? the center of the unknown.

this is literally inconceivable from a first-person perspective: from first person, the epistemic vanishing point is unseeable. the 2x2 grid projection makes it seeable.

consciousness-modeling has to happen from a level of remove. gotta be your own brain surgeon, play god to your own consciousness for a minute. (wild we can do that, btw. unless it has a functional reason for being possible, in which case, it might be wild that it's this under-explored.)

proposal: stepping into someone's perspective means stepping into their grid of probability perception.
complication: if you did it perfectly, I don't know how you would know to step back out again.
proposal: friends and a sense of home (not sure those are different) are very important. ... actually that might be the next dimension to pry open? relationality as something safe enough from which to take on full-blown immersion?