worlds
establishing a frame for everything that follows: alterity is inviolable. this doesn't have to be lonely. :) I think I'm building an open-source toolkit for intersubjectivity that approaches safety over time?
theory: the destiny of every world is to become a portal to all the others
see also (and I'm so sorry for this but it can't be helped): Zawinski's Law
in an information-theoretic construction of universe predicated on the observer, information about the thing is the thing for the observer
(this necessarily and mechanically corresponds to the freely-unfolding abstraction source that is experience itself: you can have the thing, or the experience of the thing, or the experience of the experience of the thing, and so forth, and they are all equivalent to the observer. if you're in the reality platform business, this free abstraction series is where you get to play with refactoring without destabilizing userland.)
if you're building something, as long as it contains a working interface to the unknown it'll be a portal from the get-go, and won't need to chase a weird evolutionary path to achieve that status later
the unknown can only be interfaced indirectly: a knower must access novel information via information it already has. I've been thinking of this as known/knowable/unknown, but tripartite navigation systems abound, take your pick
a system with three terms can represent anything over time - think three-body dynamics, think morse code
in an information-theoretic construction of universe, representation is the thing
a three-term system is already a portal to everything else
or: a system with a functional interface to the unknown is already a portal to everything else. not because you can step directly into the unknown (you can't, not while maintaining continuity of "you" - "you can't" is a statement where both terms are meaningful), but because you can achieve a model of anything using that system. if the observer can rotate through ontological frames like they're dimensions, signaling == portalling, yeah?
all of this to say, a two-player rock-paper-scissors platform will never of its own accord list towards developing email, because it is already a complete signaling system.
but no platform based solely on binary reflection can afford to stay that way over time while remaining itself - "you can't", so to speak, not without guaranteeing that people will move on, and it takes a particular kind of investor to see that model through
and - epistemic foveation being what it is - a platform based on more than three terms is a good place to discover unlimited evolutionary paths, because everybody's gonna see something different ahead. :) best not to demand consensus
rock-paper-scissors is not the universe, but you can tell the story of the universe with those tools, and for the observer I don't think it gets better than that
I mentioned "the unknown" earlier: in rock-paper-scissors, the observer is the unknown. that's not adding a fourth term; it's the arrival of a second dimension.
tacking this bit on just because I'm reading Discworld right now (for the first time!!): christianity is tight (that trinity!) but is a great way to take the fun out of multidimensional consciousness the pantheon. (but if you need a clean/uncomplicated escape hatch I get it - take one salvation to forget the whole thing. christ-as-complexity-drain? oh, maybe if you land christianity you can safely begin again in the wider playing field? why is my 49th-floor condo surrounded by crows
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