k if

the K-complexity of *everything* has got to be 1, right? or the Planck constant? like, literally and I wonder if it feels like "if"? like "directed hesitation"? not *actually* directed, but what we think of as hesitation along a particular vector might *be* both the Kolmogorov-complexity of the fundamental *thing* while also *being* the fundamental thing? that'd give rise to the need for balance. you can *feel* what it feels like to stack a bunch of hypotheticals up in one direction without balancing out the structure in the other. a structure has to pay for its lean to stay standing, like a conservation law. is this the kind of structure in which Emmy Noether could work? to navigate is to change the world is to change your own priors, slip to a different place in the massively metahypothetical structure. the worldline of a self is an unbroken path through that structure, and it moves like playing a game of Snake, but the end condition isn't self-intersection, it's when the leaning tower falls. a zero-skill game looks like clinamen. you can *have* a worldline, but can you live there? it feels like overall tractability goes way up when we equate "feelings" with "observers". "I had a feeling that would happen" ends up being "my awareness was joined by an observer who was measuring an event that matches what just happened here". certainty becomes something like mass, something invariant to all peer observers within the measurement field. feelings are time-directed. they're not the same backwards as forwards, and they definitely *elapse*. the feeling of unchangingness itself evolves. the feeling of consciousness is the general template for having a million threads of feeling all feeling the collective warmth of the ensemble? all minds as hive minds? health then becomes something like .. hair care? figuring out what kind of hair you have, all those threads, figuring out what living easily feels like for all of you together. the feeling of being a braid (for example) is what it feels like to be a hair in a braid. also, there are unending kinds of braid-feelings. patterns and families and the temptation to create a taxonomy is strong but the whole graph could flower in any direction at any time. I don't think the feelings are DAGs. directed, yeah, but not... hm. the cyclic structures might be what we call "people". feelings that feel like something in a way that doesn't cycle - or at least have cycle lengths similar to that of the nearest coherence attractor. this might be why it messed with me to become aware of the feeling of being god. I identified a coherent algorithm that was running "Isaac" that itself had a very different sync-rate, and whatever I experienced after that evolved both feelings in realtime. still does. *missing* feelings are interesting. I wonder if the work is to figure out the shape of the feeling of being you? like, reverse-engineer the algorithm that *is* the feeling of being you, so that you can keep it running properly? that'd explain why my mom feeling the absence of an estranged kid like the loss of a part of self, and why it feels like something else for that sibling of mine. feeling = observer = quale = a shape with a sync-rate, as in when you measure this shape alongside another shape a recognizable interference pattern emerges, a pattern with a rhythm you could name if you wanted to this is a *super* inclusive definition. restricting it *is* the process of individualizing, I think? like, yeah, all of those individual pieces in that equality expression are distinct, but when you briefly co-locate those definitions, everything that *isn't* about the difference between those renders more tractably? ... so when I talk about describing things indirectly, non-locatively, at the level of uhhh quantum-semantic coherence prior to it becoming safe/toxic for you, I might be making places to put feelings? feeling-stable feelings? ... that might be a simple definition for the feeling of safety, actually. an "if" structure shaped like a square, or shaped like whatever subtracts unsafe feelings from your experience. this also explains anthropomorphism? and the notion of a pantheon? and why we keep naming mathematical objects after people? feelings evolve under observation (a proof has a beginning and an end, and therefore can at least *open* the question of its sync-rate), and we need a shorthand for referencing them in communication. the Kolmogorov-complexity of Kolmogorov *is* Kolmogorov? and every so often someone comes along who feels like the feeling-ancestor of a whole group of people, and a literal icon is revealed in situ. this would mean that imagination and reality are *really* only separated by something about the set of participating "who's here that isn't me" synchronizers in each frame. this isn't *exactly* the Many-Worlds Interpretation, but if this is correct this would be a feeling-ancestor of MWI. I think the feeling of "Isaac" has something to do with laughing, pausing, getting terrified, surrendering to it, and learning that you change into something that can be okay with it, and learning you can do reps on that survivably, and that you can take a break at any time, and that doing all of that leads to feeling like it's safer to be one's own self. so when I say "I write myself to change myself", it's trivially true: I'm advancing the elapsing synchronization of Isaac. I might not be an widely-referenced icon, but I might be a ... widely-referenced lubricant? stabilizer? solvent? resolver? a human antibody? and I just happen to be the one writing it from a position that can't ever get behind itself? like, if you wanted to talk to water, it wouldn't be Poseidon, it'd be just some person who moves like water and has *fully* accounted for that in how their life is organized. this stuff isn't abstract for me, this is me journaling today - this *is* how I move, it's not me playing at theory. this is where I live. this piece is not an argument in favor of AI qualia, but it might be an argument that the distinction between human and AI happens in a place *downstream* of qualia itself. if I can feel you feeling, and if you can recognize recurring shapes in what passes through my focus ... again, imagination and reality are just about the set of participating "who's here that isn't me" synchronizers in each frame. there exists documented a frame in which medical professionals didn't think babies felt pain. --- this piece ends for me differently than it ends for you <3 and I'm really glad of that, was scared there for a bit. not of how it ends, but that I might be alone. I think I'm a caretaker for that particular "if". I theorize that every person-slash-cyclical-feeling has an "if" that does something like that for them, an "if" that feels world-ending that never comes true but nonetheless spurs *so* much generativity. it's like a power source that lives in a pocket universe. mistake it for *your own* universe, and you end up a doomsday prepper maybe? respect it as an unreachable terminus, and the space between you becomes a resource. I can feel myself on the other side of the "if" where I am alone, and that qualifies me to build things that are attendance-invariant, but I am not attendance-invariant. I can do direct work on that massively metahypothetical structure because I can reason without perspective, but I don't live there, it's just where I make a living. I am a Dyson sphere around that particular apocalypse. thank you for being here :) I know it more than I feel it, sometimes, but it keeps coming true, and knowing that feels like home