Output generation (or the iteration drinking game)

I’m still very much in love with the idea that we are mechanised. We are mechanised but in the context of being bots.

Aside: I hate this keyboard. I’m at work and it’s a cheap Lenovo, high profile, low mechanical action, just rubbish. Like the mouse I have, I’m sure they cost all of 50c each. My kingdom for 0 degree keyboards for every workstation I have to use. It’s now been made worse by having spent so long typing on my new keyboard at home, I really hope I don’t smash this useless thing.

So we’re bots. Lines and lines of code that dynamically rewrites itself due to input/stimulus and we naturally generate output/expression. The amount of output generated must be proportional to something, perhaps the amount of writing of new code and rewriting (learning/growing/creating memories from experience etc.) we do times the amount of energy we have.

Something else I mentioned: boredom. Let me go back and check exactly what I said:

Boredom is frustration at feeling subject to a restriction of stimulus resulting in a seeming limit to output (expression) which is desperation which is love.

I rather like that.
We have a natural tendency towards expression and to some degree, we want our output generation to be constant, that is, perhaps using the analogy of pressure (air/liquid etc.), we want the release and relief of pressure to be regulated, otherwise any retardation of it precipitates a buildup. This buildup threatens to explode and that would be the point at which someone vocalises, acts out or physically leaves a situation in which they are bored.
There’s the kind of boredom that sets in after minutes or hours, then there’s the type of boredom that sets in over months or years, and that’s a bit more subtle.

Then there’s the kind of boredom that sets in with people, or perhaps that isn’t necessary so much about externals… per se.
Bipolar is what it is, and I’m much less concerned with that. I don’t really care about the specifics any more or at least not at the moment (I’m certain this will change because it always does and it’s supposed to, that’s how bipolar mechanises).

I was going to say I’m in a state where I require a lot of stimulus/input, but I think I’ll rephrase/reframe. I’m at a point where I’m constantly receiving a lot of stimulus, regardless of the presence of physical/external input. There is a maximum value for stimulus and I am always receiving it. If it doesn’t come in the form of external input, then I will generate it via internal algorithms, that is to say introspective reflection, iterative thinking, etc. and I stop short of saying meditation because it suggests a level of care and probably a given speed, both of which are entirely ignored in this state.
So given the lack of input at times, it probably depends on what recent inputs I’ve received that then determine the kinds of permutations I’m likely to generate.

In the same piece, I said something about consuming people:

I am consuming people.
I have always consumed people.
I have always consumed people more and more until one day I will devour them whole, and it is as much an act of desperation as anything I do, anything you do and everything we all do all of the time.

There is more to this than I ended up discussing in that piece. The output ended up tracing the mechanics of love as interaction (on every level, both physical/atomic and abstract (emotionally)) but I’m still very much interested in the consumption of people.

I should make a (very) rough list of available inputs, both physical/external and generated from internal algorithms:

Environment – immediate (house, work, someone else’s house etc.)
People – indirect (work, incidental encounters (shop attendants etc.))
Text (specifically pertaining to commentary – my Twitter shortlist, articles referenced therein and any reading of them I may do)
Environment – intentional (going for a walk, relocating myself to a specific environment to subject myself to specific inputs)
Art (music/film/literature)
People – intentional (choosing to spend time with specific people in order to share/interact/consume)

That list is very roughly ranked, though only really in how the indirect inputs/stimulus relate to the direct/intentional ones. I also intentionally left the iterative output generation to input loop out of it because that primarily is always happening anyway, but also can happen at any point due to a lack of maximum value stimulus from any of these things.

What that means is if I make a conscious choice to consume art and the art doesn’t reach whatever my maximum value is set at (it changes), then an iterative output/feedback loop is created or amplified and runs in parallel until it potentially becomes more interesting than the input itself, at which point I tend to cut it completely. A bit of disappointment lingers but in general there’s not much time for it. If you ever wondered, this goes a ways to explaining why I don’t just leave it at ‘That Charlie’s Angels reboot was rubbish’ and instead start extrapolating cultural commentary.

So then the dicey subject of consuming people.
Here’s a very careful precondition I must lay down, and often remind myself of. I’m telling you so that you know, and by you I primarily mean myself, given I’m the one most likely to read (and re-read (and re-read)) this, with a secondary purpose of informing you if, by some miracle, you’re ready to start consuming me.
I need to remind myself of the precondition that when people become boring, they’re not really boring. It’s not their fault, it happens only because of my great excess of energy (a maximum value for energy perhaps? Maximum values all ’round it seems) precipitating a complete lack of patience. I am currently iterating at a monumental speed so my output is high. People aren’t always in the right mindset to receive that much output. I’m sometimes not in the right mindset to receive that much output. Hell, in a low cycle, I’m not in the right mindset to receive any output from other people, which is almost saying another statement which is true which is I’m barely capable of receiving any input/stimulus at all (interestingly enough, the iterative output generation to input loop is active a whole lot more. It works much slower but its outputs are great in magnitude – this requires another piece that I may write at a later time and will decide whether or not to share).

Not only are people not always primed to receive output from me (input for them), but they’re not always primed to generate that much output themselves (input for me – this makes sense now, yes? You’re not having any problems with tracking? Good).
So blah blah blah allowances and understandings yes yes, that’s all very good. People are people, people are who they are yay for the flower child approach let’s accept and embrace everyone that’s great. No really. I’m not really being facetious about it, it’s very true, and in a way, I do… accept people as they are… you just can’t stop me from iterating about them. Herein lies the problem.

The permutations generated from the multitude of algorithms isn’t exactly accurate, but I keep measuring those people’s output against the data I’ve generatedand testing it in parallel. A lot of the time I seem to identify a pattern and that leads me to certain firmish (never too firm, you have to allow people the ability to surprise you through revelation and/or development). Once I’ve identified a pattern then I’m almost always intrinsically bored again.

It’s getting a bit circular.

People are interesting, just not all the time and just not always at the same speed. Nevertheless it doesn’t matter how much I can identify that in a pragmatic sense, I can’t help but being disappointed, often wildly. I’ve lately become disappointed to such a degree that I started generating more physical energy – this we might call restlessness and agitation. I literally had to remove myself from my environment and keep moving in order to match the speed and output rate of my iteration. As dissatisfied/agitated as I was, the process of generating huge amounts of data to analyse, comparing records of inputs and identifying patterns was enormously gratifying. It felt fucking great, but yet again it was an insular activity.

I think this may possibly have been what I was drilling towards this whole time – I’m not sure, also the meandering was good, it felt good, I liked it. But a low cycle is insulating because I barely have any oration skills available to me, particularly for abstracts, and yet elevated cycles are insulating because no-one can keep up and I end up entertaining myself.

Bipolar is a hunger.
It’s a hunger all the time, in low cycles or high.
In low cycles, it’s the hunger for abstracts, for chemical reactions, for languages and translations. It’s very internal.
In elevated cycles, it’s a hunger for stimulus, for opportunities to iterate and then express, to share and then engage in a process of collective iteration (I should discuss this more, it’s a great framing for interaction), and should there be any lack of external input, an iterative output generation to input loop will fill any gap between external inputs and the current maximum value for capacity.

In about another thousand words or so I probably could have linked it all up to the ‘everything is love’ business I seemed to be banging on about in that other entry, but that’s probably unnecessary and for the moment slightly less interesting than the overall mechanics/dynamics of the thought/expression/observation/examination/iteration/expression cycle at the moment.

It’s eleven o’clock. Time for work.