I Just Can't...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Peter said:

I see little evolutionary value in my brain for those thoughts.

Peter,

What you described and concluded here is not the way it works.

The brain evolved over a long time and each part of the brain evolved for a different context. That means the brain is modular. Just look at any brain illustration and you will see the modules.

Sometimes, the different parts of the brain enter in conflict with each other because they evolved to serve different problems.

 

A great example is fear of snakes (or long twisty things that move in the grass or underbrush). This automatically triggers the amygdala, which makes almost all people jump in fear when they see it out of the corner of their eye. This fear response is universal to all humans except those with physical brain defects.

Note, in this case, the fear signal bypasses the normal processing center for sight and goes directly to the action parts of the brain. That's why you jump (this is called the startle reflex) as you feel fear.

Incidentally, you can see this drawn and explained clearly in layman's language in Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.

This startle reflex tinged with fear will happen even if someone who is not you is only winding up a garden hose and you did not perceive what was happening. You only laugh and calm down after you perceive that what you thought was a snake was not a snake.

Now, bring that process down to today. How many snakes do you encounter each day? I would guess very few if none at all. So that whole process is basically useless to us. We should be more afraid of automobiles or slippery floors than snakes. But we are not.

In ancient times, however, snakes were natural predators of humans, both with our really ancient ancestors who swung from trees and those who came after as they descended from the trees and started walking on two legs on the ground. Snakes were everywhere.

Those humans who evolved this automatic fear got to reproduce. Therefore they became our ancestors. Those who did not develop this fear became dinner for snakes (and other predators that caused other fears).

 

Now, in the mood swings you mentioned, the recurring thoughts, and so forth, they can be pegged to something like the above happening, or that happening in one part of your brain that developed to deal with a specific problem while colliding with another part of your brain that developed to deal with another problem, and the two routines from the different parts of your brain not being compatible.

This causes anxiety when there is no apparent reason for anxiety to exist.

The brain is complex, but his particular idea is simple.

That is how emotions evolve on a species level. As individuals, we all come with that baggage. This has nothing to do with the individual value choices we make. (But, to be clear, there are some emotions that come from individual value choices we make. Observation and study are your friends for learning about all this.  )

 

If one believes that emotions are added to a tabula rasa brain and operate like a computer program, like Rand postulated, one will miss all of the above. And believe me, there is so much more.

The massive quick growth of social media is just one example of what happens when engineers understand how emotions really work and devise manipulation systems based on that knowledge to make their programs addictive.

I have seen nothing like Facebook (and a whole lot of other companies) develop based on Rand's version of emotions. That doesn't mean she was completely wrong about emotions, she was right about some things within a limited scope and wrong about others. But, overall, it does mean her views need work before they can become useful or successful for engineering things.

Michael

[anthony]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

That is an ideological definition deduced from a principle.

It is not based on observation and it is not a biological definition. 

The bad guys are using, and using well, the biology.

They couldn't give two hoots for ideological definitions they can't do anything with--because, basically, nobody can.

Well, we can argue about them. That we can do with an ideology idea divorced from--and contrary to--biology.

 

Michael

Most distinctly it's biological, MSK. The "pleasure-pain mechanism", common to all mammals and animals. There's the neuro-biological base for: good for me/bad for me?

After that painful/etc. assessment is made by an individual - regarding some 'thing' - the evaluation is automatically filed away in his subconscious - he will know instantly by the pertinent emotional feeling what to do when confronted by the thing ever again. At its most simplified. 

As I'm always mentioning my dogs' emotions, the basic ones everyone observes, and even dog guilt is very recognizable.

Somewhere, as we evolved past cries, grunts and howls accompanying simple facial expressions and particular body antics, denoting the mammal's crude communication and its sense-based emotions  - to cognition and verbal articulation, the human emotional range also expanded enormously.  Now, one can conceptualize many scores of emotions by name.

[ThatGuy]

All emotions are the result of value judgements. All emotions. And hormones and chemicals never take over. Never, never, ever. And every woman's emotional roller-coaster ride during PMS is just the result of multiple value judgements super-colliding all at once...
 

(ducks for cover)

“The uterus has its reasons which Reason knows nothing of..."― NOT Blaise Pascal

[anthony]

If I Could Talk | Short Film

WWW.THEEPOCHTIMES.COM

---

A friend to share the ups and downs of life with him -- and, soon, his family. "If ...

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

And every woman's emotional roller-coaster ride during PMS is just the result of multiple value judgements super-colliding all at once...

TG,

LOL...

And sex sells cars for some damn reason, but I don't know anyone who wants to hump a car.

 

Michael

[ThatGuy]

17 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

TG,

LOL...

And sex sells cars for some damn reason, but I don't know anyone who wants to hump a car.

 

Michael

Well, I perhaps know of one person...

Queen- "I'm In Love With My Car"

 

[ThatGuy]

10 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

Well, I perhaps know of one person...

Queen- "I'm In Love With My Car"

 

Umm...so...I posted the above in jest, of course, but seeing as how this is the internet, the following video just had to show up on the list on the YouTube search results for that Queen video...
 

 

To quote the Ninth Doctor:

 

 

[Peter]

3 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

To quote the Ninth Doctor:

Nothing came up TG.

[Peter]

On 6/1/2022 at 5:16 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

What you described and concluded here is not the way it works.

Thanks Michael. Great post.

[anthony]

On 6/1/2022 at 7:24 PM, Peter said:

Some bad, mental phenomena I find interesting are: Worry and anxiety. Regret, even for things that happened years and years ago. Emotions experienced while dreaming and even though the dream is not true or reflective of anything that has happened to you, it still affects your waking, emotional life. Things you “can’t get out of your head.”

I see little evolutionary value in my brain for those thoughts.

Worry and anxiety - regret for past things. (Yes, regret - for acts undone or done that is felt as freshly today. Sometimes for a worthy opportunity, one appreciates better now, that was not pursued, was forever lost by one).

Remorse, delight, shame, excitement and so on, all relate to "things" you identified and you care(d) for - or, alternately - have learned are threats to what "you care for". Reminders, even in our dreams, you have a self-programmed, emotional consciousness which can be repressed but can't be avoided, whose single job is to send urgent signals - a jab of pain, the glow of pleasure - when *this* isn't good for you, (so to be avoided or changed) or *that* IS (therefore may be continued in action; pleasure, its own reward).

You, of course, set the standards and parameters based on your first, earliest sensory experiences of pain and pleasure and relocated into the subconscious. A 'habitual response' that reports in milliseconds to your brain, that saves one the time to consciously review every sudden happenstance, its merits or dangers.

The system, "mechanism", is a biological 'given' and automatic, while the setting of standards, i.e. values, is never automatic but made from one's free will. They can be 'wrongful' (based on non-objective thinking/evaluations) - however - the emotions report faithfully in kind what standards you set them. They do not 'think/evaluate' for you.

That good thing, that valued person, this act, that aspiration, these virtues one gained by effort (e.g. one's rationality and integrity),  -- all of which one might at any time abandon (so feel an instant prod of pain) or uphold and be loyal to -- further the ultimate self-value of the entire organism and consciousness that is "you"; and its continued good function which is your life.

Those emotions, in short, are on constant guard to protect those things and you from harm, physical and spiritual, or: signal all is well.

One can dig into the material (neuro-biological) substance of the parts which compose the system - and which can explain the physical features, the *what* and *how* - while such examinations never explain the "why": for what PURPOSE do we feel emotions? The 'parts' and the sum of the parts can't explain the necessity of the whole. That necessity and purpose can only be deduced from actions, (by experience and introspection), and reasoned from the nature of life. Synthesized, not just analyzed.

What you doubt, "evolutionary value in my brain" - a system elegantly 'designed' by nature (evolution)-  is quite simply to keep the individual organism physically, cognitively and psychologically alive and well. A complete, in itself, *selfish* function. More complex and much more palpably felt than another function, say, the blood circulatory system, but as complete and as self-serving. Difference, one can 'feel for' other individuals, (to a degree), one can't pump their blood at all (nor think and value on their behalf).

So yeah, those "value-judgments" some might doubt? Reducible to glows and jabs.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, anthony said:

Worry and anxiety - regret for past things.

Tony,

Scope alert.

SOME anxiety can be regret for past things. That does not mean ALL anxiety is regret for past things. Also, worry is often about the future, not the past, and it is fear-based. Sometimes the amygdala is just acting up and running the fear circuits without rhyme or reason.

Medicine and other pharmaceuticals could not work altering emotions using value judgments alone. 

Also, one cannot evaluate something correctly if one insists on identifying it incorrectly. Scope makes a great way to accommodate both biology and ideology. It's always an error to replace biology with ideology, or ideology with biology, for that matter.

In base-level emotions, biology has greater priority, but in the higher-level emotions, that is, emotions influenced by morality, ideology can have greater priority, but not all the time.

Both exist.

One cannot blank out one aspect of reality by another aspect of reality and call that objective.

 

A good metaphor for the biology versus ideology divide re emotions is an elephant with a person on top to ride and guide. The person can often get the elephant to go in the direction he wants, but if he thinks he's the elephant and can replace the elephant's will with his own, the real elephant will just go where it wants to--even at whim.

But there's more. If the elephant is hell-bent on going somewhere, no amount of coaxing by the rider and guide will make it change its course. Some training is possible for later tempering of the elephant's drive and instilling some obedience, but the elephant exists and has its own nature. If it is hell-bent on something and the intensity of its drive is high, the rider and guide is basically powerless to do anything except go along for the ride.

Now, if the rider and guide is hell-bent on going somewhere and does not convince the elephant to go there, it's simple. They will not get there. Or better, they may get there, but it will be sporadic and by accident, not based on any intent by the rider.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 6/1/2022 at 8:09 PM, ThatGuy said:

Umm...so...I posted the above in jest, of course, but seeing as how this is the internet, the following video just had to show up on the list on the YouTube search results for that Queen video...

TG,

That stuff can lead to bad things.

Remember Stephen King's Christine?

That car changed the entire personality of the new owner.

Dooooo-do-doo, do-do.. do.. do-doo...

Michael

[anthony]

On 6/4/2022 at 7:53 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

Scope alert.

SOME anxiety can be regret for past things. That does not mean ALL anxiety is regret for past things. Also, worry is often about the future, not the past, and it is fear-based. Sometimes the amygdala is just acting up and running the fear circuits without rhyme or reason.

 

Michael

Those three were from a direct quote of Peter's. Meant by him and me to be separate, distinct emotions, not lumped together. I ran with 'regret' to play out one example we know of, in real life.

Sure, worry is a form of fear (a primary emotion) in anticipation of the future - I'd remarked earlier, on how emotions strongly feature in one's recollection -and- anticipation. (Along, mostly, with the immediate present).

[anthony]

21 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

In base-level emotions, biology has greater priority, but in the higher-level emotions, that is, emotions influenced by morality, ideology can have greater priority, but not all the time.

Both exist.

One cannot blank out one aspect of reality by another aspect of reality and call that objective.

 

r.

Michael

Michael, the very point of this is that each and all emotions have a single, biological base - in one's senses: "the pleasure-pain mechanism".

Clearly I don't differentiate lower-level from higher level, causes of emotions. Moral, or not moral. (While there are primary emotions, and degrees of intensity)

Same for all: their (evolved) purpose for mankind is the survival and well-being of the individual organism and consciousness (my description, btw). 

What may confuse, is that very often one doesn't make a conscious "value-judgment", it would often be subconscious, from and by way of, the many actions, interest, time, care and attention, dedicated to a thing, person, event, etc. - which associate subconsciously with "good for me".

A responding emotion when that 'thing' is threatened, harmed or lost - equally as automatic as the conscious value-judgment - will instantly register as a negative one, in the "pain" range. 

That's the "self-programming" written of.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

11 hours ago, anthony said:

Michael, the very point of this is that each and all emotions have a single, biological base - in one's senses: "the pleasure-pain mechanism".

Tony,

Once again, scope alert. This is incorrect as a universal. Many emotions have a "pain-pleasure" base. Not all.

Whether conscious or subconscious, that has nothing to do with this point.

I already know where your premise came from, too. A Rand essay--"The Objectivist Ethics" and the passage is online here. I might was well quote it (the minor typo errors are from the "Ayn Rand Lexicon" site--I merely copy-pasted).

Quote

Now in what manner does a human being discover the concept of “value”? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of “good or evil” in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensations of pleasure or pain. Just as sensations are the first step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition, so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation.

The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard?* His life*.

The pleasure-pain mechanism in the body of man—and in the bodies of all the living organisms that possess the faculty of consciousness—serves as an automatic guardian of the organism’s life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action. The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body, which requires action to correct it. The best illustration of this can be seen in the rare, freak cases of children who are born without the capacity to experience physical pain; such children do not survive for long; they have no means of discovering what can injure them, no warning signals, and thus a minor cut can develop into a deadly infection, or a major illness can remain undetected until it is too late to fight it.

She said all that using her "argument by decree" method (which I try to recognize when she does it and I try not to use). She gave nothing to support her proposition except a few other propositions that were equally unsupported and an example of children (general unnamed children, not specific children) who, according to what she said, are born without the capacity to experience pain.

She simply said this stuff as fact and she was done. Granted, it does seem reasonable, but that does not make it universal for all cases. But she said it as fact with such certainty, people who love her works simply accepted it as the gospel truth. As axiomatic.

But pain-pleasure as the SINGLE cause of generating emotions is an unsupported proposition. It is not an axiom. As a a proposition, it is true insofar as it describes ONE biological mechanism that integrates with and causes emotions. But it does not describe ALL biological mechanisms that integrate with and cause emotions.

This is the scope problem I keep harping on and this is observable to anyone with eyes and a brain. 

What's more, if I have to choose between my own observation and accepting a proposition by Rand on faith, no matter how reasonable it sounds, I go with my observation. (I call this independent thinking. Rand herself called it checking premises.  )

 

btw - A very good place to observe things relevant to our discussion is the realm of scientific experiments. Another is literature on the brain written by neuroscientists. These people observe things with blood tests, fMRI scans and so on.

These places give observable proof for those who look. I have already pointed you to a few. I don't know whether you did not look, or if you did look, did not allow yourself to see the exceptions to Rand's propositions. It doesn't matter. You still keep proposing the single cause proposition Rand put out as if it were universal.

It is not. And I can prove it.

 

On another point, I even have proof from my own life that the pleasure-pain mechanism is not an "automatic guardian of the organism’s life"--if that proposition is to be accepted as a universal single cause of emotions. I was both an alcoholic and a drug addict in my past. You have no idea of the pleasure I got from abusing these substances. The pleasure was extreme and I loved it. And those substances were killing me.

This is important. I did not give up that pleasure because I was miserable from it. I gave up that pleasure because the substances themselves were degrading my body, my cognition and my emotional balance to the point where I might die.

I chose life, so I gave up those pleasures. But if I could have life and those pleasures, why not? That would be wonderful. But I can't. Reality does not let me.

Accepting that statement saved my life. It was not the pleasure-pain mechanism in that case. It's true that there was the pain-pleasure thing going on during the degrading effects of the substances on my body, but this was in direct competition with pain-pleasure generated by those substances from using them. 

 

I will grant Rand that as a general description, her proposition is pretty good. As an axiom--a universal truth--like existence, law of identity, consciousness, and so on, it is not true. Her description is not an axiom.

The hallmark of an axiom is that the agent has to use it in order to refute it. One has to be conscious in order to refute consciousness. One has to exist to say nothing exists. And so on.

This process does not exist with her proposition about pain and pleasure being the automatic arbiter and guardian of one's life, with one's life being the sole standard. That statement has way too many holes in it to be anything other than a description or a decree. And "somebody said something" is not the fundamental standard I use for evaluating an existent like emotions. I can take the description (or even decree) into account, I can even like it and praise the insight, but that is not my true-false standard.

Michael

[anthony]

On 6/4/2022 at 2:44 PM, anthony said:

 

"Axiomatic" proposition?

Self-evident, rather. Then - observable.

Not of course, the biological system and its inner functions, and 'how' all that works, etc., which are learned knowledge - but the physical sensations of pain-pleasure, that accompany an emotion.

Which one ~knows~ (self-evidently and intimately) corresponds to a specific emotion. Which one can and does put "a name" upon - a concept.

Delight, anguish, remorse, exultation, guilt, fear ...You physically feel them: the gut clenches, the throat tightens, breathing increases (or stops), heart pounds, perspiration increases, muscles tense, vision sharpens - and so on.

Therefore, the individual is experiencing and can simply deduce a self-evident causation. This -caused - that. Anger (e.g.) - causes "that" basket of sensations.

All exclusively physiological, up to this stage. 

Question is: Back before the chemicals/hormones that were released to cause those bodily changes - what was *first cause*? Back one step, yes there was a provocation/experience/etc. which could be cause for one's anger. But only look at several people in the presence of the identical provocation, and you can observe: amusement, or bored indifference, or irritation, or sadness - or anger or outrage. A good experiment is watching faces in an audience.

Meaning, there's no necessary commonality among people in emotional responses - the facility is automated for all humans but - individually varied in kind, according to  - what?  Here is the evidence, I think, of everyone -previously - having made - or subconsciously accepted (often) - "value-judgments" distinctly individuated. For each, many times very different.

Self-made, indeed.

Who is "right"?

The emotion plainly is faithfully accurate to one's previous value-standards, set and self-programmed: Obviously, not "an emotion" nor the brain/physiological processes which precede it to make it ostensibly "felt" in a physical reaction, have the power to identify/assess anything on their own.

If it is (as justified) the consequence of one's 'identification of something' -and- 'good for me, bad for me' judgment - the more objectively realistic is the identification and evaluation, the more "appropriate" to stimuli and situations will be the type of emotion.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, anthony said:

The emotion plainly is faithfully accurate to one's previous value-standards, set and self-programmed...

Tony,

Except those emotions that aren't.

   

Michael

[anthony]

On 6/5/2022 at 9:30 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

It is not. And I can prove it.

 

On another point, I even have proof from my own life that the pleasure-pain mechanism is not an "automatic guardian of the organism’s life"--if that proposition is to be accepted as a universal single cause of emotions. I was both an alcoholic and a drug addict in my past. You have no idea of the pleasure I got from abusing these substances. The pleasure was extreme and I loved it. And those substances were killing me.

This is important. I did not give up that pleasure because I was miserable from it. I gave up that pleasure because the substances themselves were degrading my body, my cognition and my emotional balance to the point where I might die.

I chose life, so I gave up those pleasures. But if I could have life and those pleasures, why not? That would be wonderful. But I can't. Reality does not let me.

Accepting that statement saved my life. It was not the pleasure-pain mechanism in that case. It's true that there was the pain-pleasure thing going on during the degrading effects of the substances on my body, but this was in direct competition with pain-pleasure generated by those substances from using them. 

 

 

Michael

Identification?

Michael: Well described. Your insights into substance addiction remind me of tourists in Africa, one or two of whom get killed by lions (or a hippo) every year. What it may be, is how many citydwellers commonly see animals on TV handled by game rangers and other experts familiar with each individual animal's behavior. They seem so tame! They look so cuddly! The young, especially. So one needs to get up close to touch them. The Mama lioness sometimes objects.

The caution and fear towards wild animals comes from education and learning, and others' experiences, preferably, not one's own experiences. One can hardly survive long in the wilds approaching everything in innocent ignorance, to discover by touch if they are painful or pleasurable.

Once learned ~ identified ~ the appropriate emotions when encountering anything dangerous, will surface.

What I'm driving at, our emotional faculty is based on pain-pleasure. But one doesn't and cannot identify anything by it. (Not tools of cognition). A particular emotional response merely gives an instant read-out from the value-standards based on one's identification - that you fed in. 

It seems then that if one has 'cuddled' a potentially harmful substance, and survived unscathed, and felt all the heightened senses and positive moods, and for a while experienced the pleasure without any pain - one's evaluation will respond in kind: this is "good for me". The positive emotions follow automatically.

Until the time comes you realize the self-harm they cause, up close, and decide to effortfully change your behavior.

A little I know about addiction, is that some remnants of "positive emotions" associated with substances may never leave one and need to be continuously over-ruled. Another necessary and conscious value-judgment to replace the first: "Not good for me". Then a new set of negative emotions about them arise.

So "the automatic guardian of the organism's life" - WHEN - the system receives the correct data.   

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Tony (and readers),

Rather than keep going around and around repeating, here is a monkey-wrench in the works that shows better what I am getting at.

The following video by Angus Fletcher on the difference between human thinking and computer thinking made many epistemological concepts we discuss in O-Land clearer to me than anything else I have come across so far.

Angus works at Ohio State University on neuroscience and narrative, and for DARPA in devising artificial learning systems, narrative systems, and so on.

 

He has a fantastic book I am studying right now, Wonderworks: Literary Invention and the Science of Stories. (Referral link.)

 

Here is just one tidbit from the video as a teaser--and one of the reasons that the computer model of the brain is inaccurate. (That is, some of the brain acts like a computer, but there are some fundamental functions that do not and are functions computers will never be able to do.)

Computers run on algorithms (equations). The only time frame where algorithms (equations) can operate is the present. "X equals Y." Never "X will equal Y." That is how computers "think" so to speak. They process only in the present.

Humans only act in the present, but they can imagine past and future for processing information. A computer cannot do that, nor will it ever be able to do that so long as it is based solely on algorithms. Even artificial intelligence is merely a a form of sorting and rearranging compiled data, not inventing what to do with that data as in a narrative.

Granted, computers kind of "create" stories and poems, etc., but they are not creating. They are taking a huge amount of data and rearranging it according to algorithms. That is why their efforts are so uneven and they have no faculty to distinguish between bad and good writing unless a new algorithm is programed in. 

Another way of saying this is that a computer can come up with a whole bunch of, say, narratives based on other pre-existing narratives (or better, schema) that are copied into its data bank, but it cannot create a narrative, especially not out of a small amount of data.

According to Angus, the way humans think is in terms of causality. And the way humans discover causes is generally by taking a guess based on some data (generally a small sample set), then trying it out and seeing what works and what doesn't work, then drawing conclusions from that, which is essentially the foundation of the scientific method. Note, this is often called induction, but it is different than induction (at least induction as understood in formal logic).

A computer needs to amass a huge data-set in order to be any good at what it can produce. And even then, it cannot discover causes of something new to it and create, say, narratives. It merely does what it is programmed to do. For example, it can sift a huge number of alternatives to 
 "discover" the best probable cause of a disease, but it take a new disease that looks nothing like what is in its data set and come up with causes. It takes a human being to do that.

Where a huge data set is needed, computers are vastly superior to humans. Where imagination is concerned, humans leave computers in the dust.

Angus's purpose in his research is to get humans to use computers better, not merge with computers as the transhumanists are proposing.

 

As an aside, I own a few GPT-3 programs for writing. These are artificial intelligence programs that write articles, stories and the like. The only way they function well is they serve up several options per run, then let the person edit, mix and match, discard or create new things with the results.

The results are always uneven.

In effect, they are massively great brainstorming programs, but only a fool would use them in the place of real writing. Once in a while a passage comes out that is really good on its own, but that means it happened serendipitously because the passage is compiled of snippets from other places, not because the computer decided to improve its writing technique.

But as a brainstorming tool, man, are they useful. Especially if one has to write about something and knows absolutely nothing about it. The GPT-3 program will spit out options for outlines, options for introductions, options for "how-tos" and so on and the results will be great brainstorms since they will be based on the data that others added in. You won't have to fish around wondering what is important to look at and where to get an elementary notion of the topic. However, to use this well, the author needs to do further research and then do some real writing.

Even if you have to write according to a template like AIDA (attention, interest, deliver, action), the GPT-3 program will give you several examples of each section per keyword set.

 

Anyway, enough of GPT-3. That is tangential to the video.

As for the video itself, I can't recommend it highly enough. Mankind and human progress will be moving in this direction. I am sure of that.

I hate to say it, but DARPA is really on to something by hiring Angus to do narrative research. Incidentally, "Story Thinking" is the title of Angus's upcoming book which, hopefully, will be released this year.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

On 6/6/2022 at 7:58 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony (and readers),

Rather than keep going around and around repeating, here is a monkey-wrench in the works that shows better what I am getting at.

The following video by Angus Fletcher on the difference between human thinking and computer thinking made many epistemological concepts we discuss in O-Land clearer to me than anything else I have come across so far.

Angus works at Ohio State University on neuroscience and narrative, and for DARPA in devising artificial learning systems, narrative systems, and so on.

 

He has a fantastic book I am studying right now, Wonderworks: Literary Invention and the Science of Stories. (Referral link.)

 

Here is just one tidbit from the video as a teaser--and one of the reasons that the computer model of the brain is inaccurate. (That is, some of the brain acts like a computer, but there are some fundamental functions that do not and are functions computers will never be able to do.)

Computers run on algorithms (equations). The only time frame where algorithms (equations) can operate is the present. "X equals Y." Never "X will equal Y." That is how computers "think" so to speak. They process only in the present.

Humans only act in the present, but they can imagine past and future for processing information. A computer cannot do that, nor will it ever be able to do that so long as it is based solely on algorithms. Even artificial intelligence is merely a a form of sorting and rearranging compiled data, not inventing what to do with that data as in a narrative.

Granted, computers kind of "create" stories and poems, etc., but they are not creating. They are taking a huge amount of data and rearranging it according to algorithms. That is why their efforts are so uneven and they have no faculty to distinguish between bad and good writing unless a new algorithm is programed in. 

Another way of saying this is that a computer can come up with a whole bunch of, say, narratives based on other pre-existing narratives (or better, schema) that are copied into its data bank, but it cannot create a narrative, especially not out of a small amount of data.

According to Angus, the way humans think is in terms of causality. And the way humans discover causes is generally by taking a guess based on some data (generally a small sample set), then trying it out and seeing what works and what doesn't work, then drawing conclusions from that, which is essentially the foundation of the scientific method. Note, this is often called induction, but it is different than induction (at least induction as understood in formal logic).

A computer needs to amass a huge data-set in order to be any good at what it can produce. And even then, it cannot discover causes of something new to it and create, say, narratives. It merely does what it is programmed to do. For example, it can sift a huge number of alternatives to 
 "discover" the best probable cause of a disease, but it take a new disease that looks nothing like what is in its data set and come up with causes. It takes a human being to do that.

Where a huge data set is needed, computers are vastly superior to humans. Where imagination is concerned, humans leave computers in the dust.

Angus's purpose in his research is to get humans to use computers better, not merge with computers as the transhumanists are proposing.

 

As an aside, I own a few GPT-3 programs for writing. These are artificial intelligence programs that write articles, stories and the like. The only way they function well is they serve up several options per run, then let the person edit, mix and match, discard or create new things with the results.

The results are always uneven.

In effect, they are massively great brainstorming programs, but only a fool would use them in the place of real writing. Once in a while a passage comes out that is really good on its own, but that means it happened serendipitously because the passage is compiled of snippets from other places, not because the computer decided to improve its writing technique.

But as a brainstorming tool, man, are they useful. Especially if one has to write about something and knows absolutely nothing about it. The GPT-3 program will spit out options for outlines, options for introductions, options for "how-tos" and so on and the results will be great brainstorms since they will be based on the data that others added in. You won't have to fish around wondering what is important to look at and where to get an elementary notion of the topic. However, to use this well, the author needs to do further research and then do some real writing.

Even if you have to write according to a template like AIDA (attention, interest, deliver, action), the GPT-3 program will give you several examples of each section per keyword set.

 

Anyway, enough of GPT-3. That is tangential to the video.

As for the video itself, I can't recommend it highly enough. Mankind and human progress will be moving in this direction. I am sure of that.

I hate to say it, but DARPA is really on to something by hiring Angus to do narrative research. Incidentally, "Story Thinking" is the title of Angus's upcoming book which, hopefully, will be released this year.

Michael

Coincidentally, I was just watching a documentary about 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that has an observation about HAL that reminds me of this post.

Basically, their was a part talking about the HAL-9000's claim to be infallible, yet proceeds to make several mistakes, namely in its attempt to kill Bowman. The commentator connects this to HAL's "ability [or inability, as the case may be] to plan when things get dicey" (here, I'm connecting this to Michael's post about machines being unable to think beyond the present, being algorithm-oriented). Interestingly, the commentator speculates that HAL may have been "planning ahead, in some way realizing" by sabotoging Frank Pool's space walk, and "in some way realizing that Dave...would go out and try to rescue Frank", and leave Bowman stranded.  In contrast, Bowman survives via creative thinking, and HAL doesn't anticipate the unorthodox re-entry Bowman uses (blowing himself into the airlock without a helmet on). Again, this  ties in to Michael's post regarding the creative ability of humans vs. computers.

(queued up at 26:27)

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

TG,

They knew even back then.

Here is a guy who works with Angus Fletcher:

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do by Erik J. Larson (referral link)

I'm not buying that book, though. The audiobook is on Scribd and I keep a subscription going there.

I think I'm going to go through this one because Larson will elaborate where Angus gives only an overview. 

 

Incidentally, re Angus, I wrote this to someone and I want to share it here.

Quote

 

I am studying Angus Fletcher’s work on creativity when I can find it. He talks about going to places, environments, contexts, and so on where we lack control. Most of all, rational control. That’s where creativity comes in. It’s not that rationality is bad, but rationality is for building, not “sparking” an idea. 

I wish Angus would stop talking like a woke idiot at times, though. Or a mind-hater in the way Ayn Rand described it. He’s doing awesome work on the mind, but then he denigrates one part of it with contempt. Why?

I have an idea. Angus works a lot with government grants, military grants, and he works at a university. The people who control the purse-strings of these places have their own jargon and it is often disparaging of the mind, especially an Ayn Rand version of the mind. So I’m not sure Angus believes everything he says, but he knows how to frame his thoughts so the money keeps flowing from those flawed funding masters of his.

 

I have to mention this because Angus rocks. But just like all humans, he has a blindside where he doesn't even see himself preaching one thing and doing another.

(Rand has this too, by the way. Hell, even I have it, I'm sure.  )

If you can detect when Angus is going south, you can ignore that part and glean what he is talking about to great profit.

 

I forgot to mention that Angus made a further identification about human thinking and computer processing. He said that computers are machines to process information. It makes a virtual thing out of a piece of information and processes that.

The human brain processes action far more than things. That is what it does with it's imagining the past and future, and even present. It is looking for causality in action. A computer will never find that unless it already exists and is in its database somewhere. A human will discover how the thing acts and what causes what.

Like I said, Angus is brilliant and his ideas tie brilliantly to an Objectivist perspective.

 

But when he starts framing things in woke-speak (using catch-phrases like literature teaching us to heal, or life has no point in existing, but we can make it have a point by helping others, and barf things like that), he can be a dick.

 

No matter. I'm going to study the hell out of this guy's work. I think my efforts will be worth it even in cases where I disagree with him. If he can't give me an answer, he can give me a question nobody else is asking. He's given me several of those so far.

When that happens, I'll let my creativity do the rest.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 6/7/2022 at 11:25 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I forgot to mention that Angus made a further identification about human thinking and computer processing. He said that computers are machines to process information. It makes a virtual thing out of a piece of information and processes that.

The human brain processes action far more than things. That is what it does with it's imagining the past and future, and even present. It is looking for causality in action. A computer will never find that unless it already exists and is in its database somewhere. A human will discover how the thing acts and what causes what.

I've been digging more into this and came across the following information.

I'm mentioning it for further research, but this one upended everything I thought I knew.

Friggin' awesome.

 

It appears that we have two main kinds of neurons in our brain that have processes that make it to our awareness, engage memory and so on. And that being the case, this makes hash out of other epistemological systems, including ITOE, at least as far as putting a big hole in the universal scope of Rand's theory goes (and others, for that matter).

Rather than rewrite what I came up with earlier today, I will simply quote from my notes.

My notes refer to the following video.

This is a long video, about 2 hours, but one of the best on YouTube with Angus.

My quoted comments below are from my notes and refer to somewhere in the second half. I had only seen the first quarter of this video before. Today I decided to pick it up where I left off, but I ended up going back to the beginning and watching the whole thing. It blew my mind.

Quote

There are two basic kinds of neurons for thinking with. The first is for processing sensory data (starting mostly with input from primitive eyes). This leads to the creation of an inductive system for representing the data, then other forms of logic. And mental image-making. (First the visual cortex evolved, then those neurons propagated forward to the neocortex with neurons that can do math, etc.)

The second kind of neuron is for controlling the body's motor functions, that is, coordinate muscles and actions. Motor neurons do not think in representations. They think in terms of actions and sequences of actions. Do this, then this, then this, etc. These are found in the motor cortex and the parts of the brain involved in moving our body, and in planning and processing action.

These two kinds of neurons are complementary, but distinct. 

The motor neurons operate well in little-to-no data environments. Something is observed that results in an action, then the brain guesses how it will work for the next time based on that observation. If the guess works out, the motor neurons have successfully navigated an unknown situation that can be useful for survival (threats, opportunities, etc.) through a single data point. And this is where narrative starts happening. 

This is not to discount the visual cortex and other representation parts of the brain. This part takes a huge amount of data points and creates images and logic and measuring systems with it. 

So one type of neuron needs a huge amount of data to create representations of sensory input, and another type of neuron needs very little data to make the body act. Together, they create narrative or story.

The action parts of story, including pretending to be another (transport) come out of the motor parts of our brain. And it deals with "why" questions (which basically boil down to observed actions).

...

The only kind of creative thinking a computer can do is divergent thinking, that is mixing and matching different data points. This is also co-relational thinking. The equation for this is a bi-directional equal sign that only works in the present.

The motor neuron kind of thinking only goes in one direction and is causal. This means the different causal points refer to different points in time. Computers can't do this on their own. They confuse people at times because they can mimic this--but when so, they are programmed to do it using the other way (in the present only with co-relational mixes and matches of data). But that depends on a vast data set. They can't do this at the base level with, say, only one data point.

 

Another way of putting this is story emerged from the motor brain, not the representational and measuring brain.

That representational and measuring brain enhances story with mental images, logic, even math and measurements, but it will never replace story. In fact one type of neuron cannot replace the other. They are both used at the same time by the same person--and this happens all the time.

I am almost certain this is where the story trance comes from. I am speculating right now, but I believe this is true. Our motor brain and our representational and measuring brain operate in a seesaw-like balance. At one moment, one of them are predominant and at another moment, the other is predominant. During story, the motor part of the brain has priority. This is why the critical thinking part of the brain does not operate during story. It's also why fantasy is possible and seems real even though pigs can't fly in reality. But in story they can.

I have a lot of work to do to dig into all this. Like I said, I only came across this earlier today.

But now I know where to put ITOE. If Rand's theory of concepts has validity, and I believe it does as a kind of description of what goes on with certain kinds of abstractions, this theory mostly applies to the representational and measuring brain, not to the motor brain, nor to both brains working together in a seesaw relationship. Or at least, when it works, it takes for granted the representational and measuring brain is always in the ascendant position.

That is not always the case in human cognition--and especially in human actions on the animal level (using Rand's definition of man as a rational animal). Muscle actions, including planning on what they are to do, are mostly governed by the motor brain. 

A hell of a lot more coming on all this. After I understand it well, I want to put it in layman's language in such a manner that even a caveman can understand it. Then I want to use this as a basis for showing how to create stories that engage the mind to the max.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I am almost certain this is where the story trance comes from. I am speculating right now, but I believe this is true. Our motor brain and our representational and measuring brain operate in a seesaw-like balance. At one moment, one of them are predominant and at another moment, the other is predominant. During story, the motor part of the brain has priority. This is why the critical thinking part of the brain does not operate during story. It's also why fantasy is possible and seems real even though pigs can't fly in reality. But in story they can.

Hmmm...this may provide a clue to something I've been puzzling over...I just recently read a piece by Michael Newberry criticizing fantasy art that uses "realist" techniques (basically saying that comics and fantasy art that are depicted realistically are offensive). And yet, Newberry himself depicts mythological themes in his own realistic way (with his emphasis on figure drawing, correct anatomy and proportions, etc.) For example, his newest piece in progress is two naked figures "making love" in outer space, or even his "Icarus Landing", which is based on Rand's rejection of the traditional meaning of that myth: instead of flying too close to the sun and falling into the ocean, he flies through it instead...He also does mention "Rewiring brains" and "brainwashing"; more on that in a second...

But here's the meat of his piece:
 

To my eye, most of the works had very little life to them. Art is made up of mental and perceptual connections: too mental and it goes dead; and too perceptual and it becomes a visual information dump. The mind helps guide the big picture, and direct perception gives freshness, gives life to the visual concept.***
 

Quote

 

Most people and children understand that superheroes and cartoon characters are make-believe, and they don’t literally try to be cartoon characters in real life. But there is an interesting development in the anime and fantasy art, many artists are trying to make the fantasies look real using fine art means. As in the Bjpentecost piece above.

The one thing I find weird about superheroes and cartoon characters is that you can’t fashion your life on them. You will never have a super power. A petite delicate young woman should feel afraid visiting dark alleys and seeking dangerous people at three o’clock in the morning, no matter how much Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, instills fearlessness. Can art impart irrational confidence, or inject self-loathing if one takes the art more real than reality?

Great fine art has a realistic feel to it, it feels literally believable. And benevolent fine art can inspire your most inspired dreams. To have love, to live in an exciting way, and to achieve your goals. The combination of realistic imagination and perceptual realism can give the viewer of certainty that with effort they live a great life in real life.

Anime and fantasy can’t be taken seriously in that regard.

 

Newberry's entitled to his opinion and preferences about fantasy art and such, of course, and it's tempting to use this to call him out, a la Jonathan, but that's not the intent, here. (This is not unique to him; he's not the cause, but a "symptom", for lack of a better word...) And I'm not personally going to get into a pissing match over the merits of fantasy art, or "high art" vs. "pop art". It's the reason for the blind spot regarding that opinion and his own work that fascinates me, here, in relation to MSK's post about computer thinking and storytelling, and the "scope" issue of Rand's ITOE. I'm wondering if that blind spot is due to this very thing...his comments about brain wiring and brainwashing come in, here:
 

Quote

 

Art is perhaps the most powerful psychological enhancer that exists. Visual art predates religion, philosophy, and the written word by 30,000; and it was the thing that rewired our brains that made us cognitive, self-aware, and realistically imaginative. Art is the thing that synergizes our thoughts, emotions, and perception as a whole unit.*

The predominate art of culture is a projection of where that culture is heading. Art is subliminally programing everyone one who spends serious time contemplating it. It is my belief that is the nature of art, it is a very sophisticated brainwashing mechanism, that can be used for good or bad depending on the emotional intelligence of the artists.**

 

 

Art Criticism Is Not Censorship, DeviantArtists Are Immature – Michael Newberry

NEWBERRYARCHIVE.WORDPRESS.COM

---

Most people and children understand that superheroes and cartoon characters are make-believe, and they don't literally try to be cartoon...

 

[ThatGuy]

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

There are two basic kinds of neurons for thinking with. The first is for processing sensory data (starting mostly with input from primitive eyes). This leads to the creation of an inductive system for representing the data, then other forms of logic. And mental image-making. (First the visual cortex evolved, then those neurons propagated forward to the neocortex with neurons that can do math, etc.)

The second kind of neuron is for controlling the body's motor functions, that is, coordinate muscles and actions. Motor neurons do not think in representations. They think in terms of actions and sequences of actions. Do this, then this, then this, etc. These are found in the motor cortex and the parts of the brain involved in moving our body, and in planning and processing action.

These two kinds of neurons are complementary, but distinct. 

The first thing that comes to my mind after reading this, and comparing it to ITOE, is what Rand theorized in THE ROMANTIC MANIFESTO, regarding her puzzlement over how music reverses the conceptual processes experienced via the other arts: "This brings us to the great, unanswered question: Why does music make us experience emotions?"

 

Quote

 

This brings us to the subject of music. The fundamental difference between music and the other arts lies in the fact that music is experienced as if it reversed man’s normal psycho-epistemological process. The other arts create a physical object (i.e., an object perceived by man’s senses, be it a book or a painting) and the psycho-epistemological process goes from the perception of the object to the conceptual grasp of its meaning, to an appraisal in terms of one’s basic values, to a consequent emotion. The pattern is: from perception—to conceptual understanding—to appraisal—to emotion.

The pattern of the process involved in music is: from perception—to emotion—to appraisal—to conceptual understanding. Music is experienced as if it had the power to reach man’s emotions directly. As in the case of all emotions, existential or esthetic, the psycho-epistemological processes involved in the response to music are automatized and are experienced as a single, instantaneous reaction, faster than one can identify its components.

 

And

Quote

Psycho-epistemologically, the pattern of the response to music seems to be as follows: one perceives the music, one grasps the suggestion of a certain emotional state and, with one’s sense of life serving as the criterion, one appraises this state as enjoyable or painful, desirable or undesirable, significant or negligible, according to whether it corresponds to or contradicts one’s fundamental feeling about life.

 

Ayn Rand. The Romantic Manifesto (Kindle Locations 659-663). Signet. Kindle Edition.

 

Perhaps those two kinds of neurons are the missing link in her scope, there...and especially the motor neurons: are they the link between music and emotion...MOTION, that Rand was missing, in her preference for the conceptual, the logical, the rational?

 

[ThatGuy]

2 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

Hmmm...this may provide a clue to something I've been puzzling over...I just recently read a piece by Michael Newberry criticizing fantasy art that uses "realist" techniques (basically saying that comics and fantasy art that are depicted realistically are offensive). And yet, Newberry himself depicts mythological themes in his own realistic way (with his emphasis on figure drawing, correct anatomy and proportions, etc.) For example, his newest piece in progress is two naked figures "making love" in outer space, or even his "Icarus Landing", which is based on Rand's rejection of the traditional meaning of that myth: instead of flying too close to the sun and falling into the ocean, he flies through it instead...He also does mention "Rewiring brains" and "brainwashing"; more on that in a second...

But here's the meat of his piece:
 

To my eye, most of the works had very little life to them. Art is made up of mental and perceptual connections: too mental and it goes dead; and too perceptual and it becomes a visual information dump. The mind helps guide the big picture, and direct perception gives freshness, gives life to the visual concept.***
 

Newberry's entitled to his opinion and preferences about fantasy art and such, of course, and it's tempting to use this to call him out, a la Jonathan, but that's not the intent, here. (This is not unique to him; he's not the cause, but a "symptom", for lack of a better word...) And I'm not personally going to get into a pissing match over the merits of fantasy art, or "high art" vs. "pop art". It's the reason for the blind spot regarding that opinion and his own work that fascinates me, here, in relation to MSK's post about computer thinking and storytelling, and the "scope" issue of Rand's ITOE. I'm wondering if that blind spot is due to this very thing...his comments about brain wiring and brainwashing come in, here:
 

 

Art Criticism Is Not Censorship, DeviantArtists Are Immature – Michael Newberry

NEWBERRYARCHIVE.WORDPRESS.COM

---

Most people and children understand that superheroes and cartoon characters are make-believe, and they don't literally try to be cartoon...

 

RE: Newberry's offense towards realistically-depicted fantasy (in spite of his own use mythological themes in his paintings): Kinda understandable, from a "romantic realist" view of an Objectivist. But there's one particular line where he diverges from Rand's own defense of fantasy:
 

Quote

The one thing I find weird about superheroes and cartoon characters is that you can’t fashion your life on them. You will never have a super power. A petite delicate young woman should feel afraid visiting dark alleys and seeking dangerous people at three o’clock in the morning, no matter how much Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, instills fearlessness. Can art impart irrational confidence, or inject self-loathing if one takes the art more real than reality?

Compare that to Rand's own defense of fantasy literature and art, both in THE ROMANTIC MANIFESTO and THE ART OF FICTION. She specifically addressed that criticism of Newberry's, and I have to believe that he's aware of it.


From RM:

Quote

 

It is easy to convince a child, and particularly an adolescent, that his desire to emulate Buck Rogers is adolescent, that his desire to emulate Buck Rogers is ridiculous: he knows that it isn’t exactly Buck Rogers he has in mind and yet, simultaneously, it is—he feels caught in an inner contradiction—and this confirms his desolately embarrassing feeling that he is being ridiculous.

...

Thus the adults—whose foremost moral obligation toward a child, at this stage of his development, is to help him understand that what he loves is an abstraction, to help him break through into the conceptual realm—accomplish the exact opposite. They stunt his conceptual capacity, they cripple his normative abstractions, they stifle his moral ambition, i.e., his desire for virtue, i.e., his self-esteem. They arrest his value-development on a primitively literal, concrete-bound level: they convince him that to be like Buck Rogers means to wear a space helmet and blast armies of Martians with a disintegrator-gun, and that he’d better give up such notions if he ever expects to make a respectable living. And they finish him off with such gems of argumentation as: “Buck Rogers—ha-ha!—never gets any colds in the head. Do you know any real people who never get them? Why, you had one last week. So don’t you go on imagining that you’re better than the rest of us!” Their motive is obvious. If they actually regarded Romanticism as an “impractical fantasy,” they would feel nothing but a friendly or indifferent amusement—not the passionate resentment and uncontrollable rage which they do feel and exhibit.

 

But more related to the idea of realism used to depict fantasy is her comment from THE ART OF FICTION. Regarding an excerpt from From Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen, Rand writes: 

Quote

 

This is one of the most beautiful descriptions I have read in the Romantic style. (Primarily a writer of fantastic stories, Isak Dinesen is hard to classify; but she is certainly nearer to being a Romanticist than a Naturalist.) First the author gives a general idea of the setting: it is a winding road rising through pine forest. Then she begins to give particulars: “Now in the afternoon sun the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and the landscape far away seemed cool, all blue and pale gold.” By means of a few essentials, the reader gets an attractive generalized picture. The author then does something unusual and difficult. To convey the mood of the landscape and to give the reader a wider, more essential impression of it than she could have done by describing more leaves or branches or grass, she introduces this peculiar device: “Boris was able now to believe what the old gardener at the convent had told him when he was a child: that he had once seen, about this time of the year and the day, a herd of unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the sunny slopes.” Observe the connotations. That an old gardener at a convent tells something to a child has in itself a fantastic quality; and when he tells him that he has seen unicorns, this impossible fantasy projects the exact eerie quality of the afternoon. “A herd of horses” would not have produced the same effect, because the purpose is to suggest something supernatural, odd, almost decadently frightening, but very attractive. The words “about this time of the year and the day” skillfully show the author’s intention: it is not to indulge in a fantasy for its own sake, but to convey that at this time of year and day, the sunlight on these trees and this slope has the eerie, fantastic quality that could make one expect the supernatural.

As the author goes on to describe the unicorns, they are made specific in an unusually artistic way. The description is almost overdetailed, but by essentials: “the white and dappled mares, rosy in the sun, treading daintily and looking around for their young, the old stallion, darker roan, sniffing and pawing the ground.” Observe how carefully the color scheme is projected: that the mares are “white and dappled” but “rosy in the sun” is another reminder of the late afternoon sunlight. That they are “treading daintily” connotes the steps of elegant racehorses; yet the mares are unicorns, which makes them even more dainty. This amount of detail gives reality to the fantastic; and by so doing, the author conveys the mood of the afternoon. The next sentence is completely realistic: “The air here smelled of fir leaves and toadstools, and was so fresh that it made him yawn.” It is a brilliant sentence: with great economy of words, the very essentials are selected so that one can almost smell the forest.

“And yet, he thought, it was different from the freshness of spring; the courage and gaiety of it were tinged with despair.” Since the freshness is different from that of spring, one can infer that it is fall. But what would imply, without the author saying it, that this is fall, is all the eerie fantasy that has gone before: the air of something supernatural, in gold, pink, red shades—the air of something decadent. The last sentence sums up the whole effect: “It was the finale of the symphony.” The author has given a specific description of this hillside and no other—at this time of year and day. To convey the mood, she gives specific images, such as the fir trees, the unicorns, their colors and gestures, and even the perspective, and the smell of the forest. These are concretes, as distinguished from: “It was an eerie, fantastic landscape; beautiful but tragic; lovely but heartbreaking.” Those would be floating abstractions.”

Ayn Rand; Tore Boeckmann. The art of fiction: a guide for writers and readers (Kindle Locations 2206-2210). Plume.

 

So there is Rand celebrating depicting fantasy as if it were real. (And/or, conversely, depicting the real as if it were fantasy?) Notice that while Rand still cautions against "fantasy for fantasy sake" her  last line quoted still provides a DEFENSE of depicting fantasy realistically, using a familiar Randism: "These are concretes, as distinguished from: 'It was an eerie, fantastic landscape; beautiful but tragic; lovely but heartbreaking. Those would be floating abstractions." Would Newberry argue that Rand was wrong, and that fantasy literature, like art, should only depict it non-realistically or cartoony, using "floating abstractions"?
 

It's a strange disconnect to me, but this brings the issue back to the power of storytelling, and how it seems to insist upon itself while defying "logic", even the "logic" of Ayn Rand...but even Rand saw something in fantasy, and even religious storytelling...(see her defense of the impulses of sacredness and such surrounding religion in her introduction to ANTHEM...)