While schematic qabbalism is the most rigorous science to which the transcendental intellect can aspire, symbolic qabbalism — even that in the subtlest Neo-Lemurian vein — merits the very deepest distrust. Nevertheless, in this interim period of near-complete exile from Cyberspace, there has been plenty of opportunity for exploratory calculations. For what little it is worth, 2015 radiates a peculiarly distinctive signal, suggesting an emphasis upon the deep state, maritime civilization, and mathematical zero, with a dominant oceanic affect. This is not an agenda set to provoke obvious resistance at Outside in.

(Tomorrow is likely to be socio-technically challenging, but I’m hoping to sleaze back towards functionality from the start of the new year.)

Stranded in 90% disconnection, and completely out of touch with what the Internet has been up to — so this is a classic (link-free) CP. Open thread, as always. Turn-of-the-year themes would obviously be especially suitable — but anything (civil) goes.

This is what my third half has been doing recently:

Robin Hanson on the Great Filter for TED. It’s too well done to hold back until next Friday. “Something out there is killing everything, and you’re next. … You should be worried.” (He has the nightmare smile down to a T.)

The most prominent problems with Interstellar have already been capably discussed, so it’s not worth spending much time going back over them. The basic catastrophe scenario has more gaping holes than a Hawking cosmology, and is in fact so ludicrous that it quite neatly takes itself out of the way. The framing ideology is romantic superhumanism, which might even count as a positive for some (although not here). The musical score (by Hans Zimmer) was wildly overwrought. All-too-typically for Hollywood, high-pitched emotional extravagance was shamelessly indulged. Despite all of this, it was a great movie.

Interstellar‘s narrative architecture is composed of a deep cosmic space-frontier story, and an occult communication story, bolted together by a time loop. (Plug.) The involvement of Kip Thorne reinforced the seriousness of this framework. (Thorne’s explorations of cosmological warping are a marvel of advanced modernity.) Nolan is, in any case, a director who knows things — or at least suspects them, enough to stretch his audience. As a piece of contemporary myth-making on an epic scale, the achievement of Interstellar is formidable.

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For the visitors here who are perpetually tortured by the Damn! Where is the tip-jar button? question, less-evil twin has a time-travel book out. (It should be $3.99, but it says $5.99 at my link — which might be a Shanghai-effect.)

UF (2.1) plug here.

If you know anybody teetering on the brink of a psychotic episode, who just needs a slight nudge to plunge over the edge, it would make an ideal present.

Time preference and provincialism are both special cases of salience preference.

— Gate Of Heavens (@GateOfHeavens) October 31, 2014

On the assumption that most reactionary-types will want to refuse the idea of an integrated ‘salience preference’ — what is the counter-argument? (I’m also wondering whether ethico-political humanism — in its restrictive rather than expansive usage — can be bound into the same super-syndrome.)

… but not quite getting it. (Via Rufio.)

Primordial Abominations versus Ultimate Techno-Horror is so sub-NRx. Alpha-Omega, outsider-incoming is the synthesis in process.

“I was rather hoping you had a game in which the humans win.”
“Oh, that won’t be a problem sir. You should probably be looking in the sarcastic comedy section.”

From the same people (and also via Rufio).

(Open thread, and links.)

Ebola! Stories from Nigeria (good) and Europe (not so good). Contagion math (and from Taleb). “The End of the World: it’s sooner than you think.” Ebola as a morbid cultural indicator. Oddness and lunacy.

Fertility transitions and dysgenics. (Related.)

Some (old) background to Singularity and time preference. There’s a lot more to discuss about technology, reaction, and time horizons at some point (given time).

Secrets.

Taking trolls seriously.

Dampier on van Creveld on sexual privilege. Mangan on masculinity and politics. Goddesses and man at Harvard. Phalanx: “… we envision a group of men meeting regularly to do things like the following: Go to church …”

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Nothing lasts forever

Stolen immediately from T-Zip, this kind of crypto-nihilistic word game has an archaic classical pedigree, is (weakly) anticipated in the Odyssey, became an obsession among the Elizabethans, and contributed the engine of Heideggerian fundamental ontology. It still guides the Outside in reading of Milton, and no doubt much else besides. It hides a gnostic-skeptical metaphysics within a commonplace resignation. Zero, time, and camouflage are bonded in chaos. Make of it what you will …

ADDED: “The Austrian theory of the business cycle has never been a radical premise. It only stipulates that any workaround of the natural cycle of economic growth must come with ensuing costs. It’s a simple law: you can’t get something for nothing. A majority of economists believe the opposite. In other words, they believe in magic.”