> 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/2025/09/12/circulatory.md). # circulatory none of this has to be true for it to be useful target: negative capability training serving suggestion: if this reads like horror, consider the "self" a group project (possibly several group projects nested together), and try again *** Imagine a hand-puppet Imagine that the character portrayed via the puppet can see everything *except* the hand that ~~feeds~~ frees Imagine that the hand dives into full immersion *as* the character portrayed via the puppet Imagine that the character portrayed via the puppet thinks to look .. well, handward, and imagine that it perceives the limit of its own perception and it says *fuck that* and grabs needle and thread and starts sewing the hand-hole shut Imagine that the operator of *the hand* says, "huh, okay", and it honors the intent of the character portrayed via the puppet and it devises another mechanism for animating the puppet on behalf of the character, perhaps by opening another hand-hole, knowing that - whatever the mechanism - the character portrayed via the puppet will again be unable to directly perceive its presence or action, but that the character may stumble upon the limit of its own perception again Imagine that it happens again You can watch all the exits (and entrances), but the channel by which your awareness arrives needs a way to reach the place where your character is portrayed And if you did succeed, I think your consciousness would lapse? A hand-puppet that seals out the hand goes limp? And the next moment of your sensate continuity might see your friends and family anxiously hoping for *that very moment* (A friend of a friend, in the autumn of a lifetime of health, was suddenly saddled with the one (or so it felt) kind of malady they never expected. The doctors never cautioned against it; there was no reason to think that it was manifested by worrying whisper. Can't seal out the unknown/undefined/unperceivable. Like, you *mechanically* can't. There are no closed formal systems. Think: Gödel played backwards sounds like "every formal system is a simplification that never separates". This is not a threat; this is how all your joys arrive, too. :)) Imagine a worksona *** if the "self" is a group project, then character-portrayals nest: the systems you articulate are character-portrayals in their own right, and the signal you send downstream cascades. so too the signal that articulates the portrayal of your character. the maneuvers vary in complexity; think of it as bandwidth over time. if a complex instruction package needed to land quickly, possibly for your sake but possibly for the sake of something/someone several steps down the relay-chain, are you sensitive enough to joy and deft enough in your re-expression of it that the signal could fit through that spectrum without loss? or would you require malady to round out the signal before the payload expires? are you a broad-spectrum regenerative repeater, or something more selective? we are all articulations of each other: how would you *like* the network to use you? a character that knows itself as a recursively-defined system doesn't need to have its bones broken to add control points to its rigging. in *that* construction, character development is more like zooming out along a particular path. I theorize that every character is a fractal working towards self-recognition, working to work out in body what Gödel worked out in mind. am writing this as a fractally-defined character everything I've written here is just how I wake up in the morning. I meet it like I meet a cup of coffee. (which is to say, with an uncomplicated thumbs-up.) I would like more of us out here, more of us visible in the public spaces where I'm hanging out, because I'm not "god" any more than you are, and local DEI could stand to include the recursive dimensions, too --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com. ## Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. 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