Manibus Lavabit

Day 15.

Pull recent things from stack, pick one striking most interest. Pull from memory things related to this particular piece. Pick one that strikes interest, ad infinitum. Or at least until some semblance of structure is self-evident. Write down the structure.

If it were this simple, I’m done. Yet there are bottlenecks. One is the fleeting nature of it all. Unless one can type at the speed of thought, there is great chance to lose the thread while pulling it. The fractal nature of the contents is bound to disorient. It’s hard to make up anything from things that are self-similar.

If the choice in the trolley problem is about pulling a lever to sacrifice one to save many, people choose to pull. But if the choice is to push a person in front of the trolley, people start to hesitate. In most versions of this example, the nature of the problem requires that the person to push be fat. That’s the source of hesitation right there. A lever is easy. To exert effort is hard.

This moment is an inflection point. One has arrived at some definable position at random. But to make a first-order point this way has no instructive utility. To only scratch the surface is unsatisfactory. One then has to think about what to do with it. A common recourse is to try to refute the point. Or describe its mirror image. Or transform it and derive a new point of view.

So let’s question whether the onus to do something about the trolly falls on oneself. After all, if anything happens, it’s given that somebody else could have made a bigger difference. Why push a person who could choose to jump?

Enough for today.

Some things I noticed 03/04/2020:
  1. 향 – 융진, 캐스커, 성용욱, 짙은, 가사, 영어