rigorousintuition.ca

Jeff Wells wrote:Vallee, who is both a computer scientist and a UFOlogist, invested his energy in Information Theory, which led to his model of an Associative Universe.

Jacques Vallée wrote:Time and space may be convenient notions for plotting the progress of a locomotive, but they are completely useless for locating information.... What modern computer scientists have now recognized is that ordering by time and space is the worst possible way to store data. In a large computer-based information system, no attempt is made to place related records in sequential physical locations. It is much more convenient to sprinkle the records throughout storage as they arrive, and to construct an algorithm for retrieval based on some type of keyword.....

The Melchizedek incident that I experienced on February 21, 1976 suggested to me that the world might be organized more like a random database than like a sequential library. Since there is only one person named Melchizedek in the LA phone book, I have to conclude that mere coincidence cannot explain this incident. Alternative explanations are equally inadequate, unfortunately. I did not discuss my research with the driver, so a hoax is out of the question. There could be a well-organized conspiracy against me, of course, to put lady taxi drivers on my path with names related to my current reading interests, but the motivations of such conspirators would be rather obscure! Fortunately, another avenue of explanation exists.

If there is no time dimension as we usually assume there is, we may be traversing events by association. Modern computers retrieve information associatively. You "evoke" the desired records by using keywords, words of power: you request the intersection of "microwave" and "headache" and you find 20 articles you never suspected existed. Perhaps I had unconsciously posted such a request on some psychic bulletin board with the keyword "Melchizedek." If we live in the associative universe of the software scientist rather than the sequential universe of the space-time physicist, then miracles are no longer irrational events.

[...]

If our universe functions associatively - which we might expect, if both it and our consciousness are holographic - then our dwelling upon a subject may be the equivalent of an evocation: a calling forth of information both useful and irrelevant. If we are using the associative tools of computer science to enhance our cosmic file request, what we conjure up could appear both miraculous and terrifying. Or a conspiracy so vast, with ourselves in the middle of it, that we can hardly conceive it. Though it is our conception, our meta-fiction, unaware.

Some things - some stories, places, and names - are simply strange attractors. Invoking them is to create a gravity well, a distortion of reality, in which everything else seems to run towards them.

82_28 wrote:My brother's name is Joey, his birthday is tomorrow -- May 19th. My "best friend co-worker person"? Her birthday is tomorrow, May 19th as well.

anothershamus wrote:

I didn't feel like typing this out earlier, but since I got nothing else to do, here goes. . .

When I turned 18 some 18 years ago (Jesus Christ 18 years!!!) my friend and I thought that on my 18th birthday a fun and "adult" way to spend it would be going to a strip club.

He was my best friend. We were both raised fundie assed Christian. My birthday is on the 10 plus 2 day of December.

That night it was snowing like crazy. Denver Colorado. The place was the "Red Garter". Completely empty, besides me and my buddy drinking four dollar cokes.

We stayed back a bit during the initial "dances". Nervous as fuck. Completely naked chicks showing us their "pink" from a ways away. Very odd for an 18 year old I would imagine. Then they started beckoning us to the stage with the pole and all that. With mucho trepidation we followed the orders. We were alone, mind you again, 18 years old, during a blizzard in a deserted downtown Denver strip club. Club deserted and city itself deserted. It was very eerie and very weird.

As for myself, my initial feelings were feeling sorry for these girls. But their pu__ies were there, smack dab essentially in our faces. One would thing AWESOME!!!! Right?

Yes, it was absolutely a fucking 18 year old kid's turn on. I do in fact, miss that hormonal response. It was very exciting.

But the night was so goddamn weird. And it got weirder.

The girls came to us when they weren't dancing and made us feel as though we were something special. After we'd gotten done staring up their vaginas, they'd put on their clothes and come sit with us. As a virgin at the time, I didn't understand this at all. In fact, it scared the living fuck out of me. I guess no pun intended.

But, as I said, me and my buddy were brought up fundie. We really felt like we had sinned, as the say.

So having had enough of it, we step outside and the entirety of downtown Denver was covered in about a foot of snow. Untouched! No tracks. No footsteps. Just my car sitting there in a pristine white parking lot, all alone, completely silent.

About now, my friend and I just simply could not believe what we had just witnessed. It was a whole other world of existence. But naturally, we felt the soggy sinful feeling, being virgins as we were, of sex, of women's bodies. But nothing warm! It bothered me that I could never look at my mom or his mom in the same way again. Because, after all, we were "sneaking around" by using our 18ishness to see what the rock looks like on the bottom once you unearth it. Our mommies would not have been happy knowing what we had done.

As I said, about a foot of snow now.

I start the car up and navigate to I-25 to begin heading south to a b-day party others were holding for me. Unlike the surface streets, the freeway seemed clear and ready to at least drive 65. And I did. I was cruising along, passing people going so slow it was crazy. I was too much of an idiot 18 year old to even consider the existence of black ice. But 65 did I drive.

As I was driving, my friend and I reflected on the "sinful" and very weird at that time in our lives' thing we had just done. We both kinda apologized to God as we were speeding along. Whisking past everybody -- wondering why everyone else was driving so slow.

Well, all of a sudden this yellow Subaru puts on its left signal and gets into my lane. I barely tap my brakes and that was all it took to send my car out of control. The girl driving it was at mostly a complete stop. There had been an accident on one of the right hand lanes.

As I am spinning out I say to my buddy, "I think we're dead". I think I said "goodbye" to him. My car is careening, my door headed directly to her stopped car's back right bumper, my tires are turned completely to the right, I'm basically going 55 or 60 MPH.

We impact. Nothing at all happens! Nothing!

I am gently pushed away from the car, wind up facing oncoming traffic -- which itself goes out of control on the ice. But I did not hit her car!!

Well, here's the deal. Both myself and she pull to the side and we are wondering what the fuck happened. How it wasn't a wreck of deadly proportions. We look at my tire, that had been cranked ALL THE WAY to the right and we realize, that that little "window" of rubber, where the tire exposes about an inch of itself outside of the plane of the vehicle's side is what impacted her bumper. That one inch of rubber, combined with the ice, is what saved possibly four people's lives.

Ah, fuck it. Rubber saves lives.

But that is my over-arching "porn story" and why basically I don't like it to this day. Something of a spiritually moral "dataset"
intervened for me on that day -- my birthday.

Perhaps even, porn saved my life. Whatever. But there you have it from me. . .

82_28 wrote:...birthday... cats... birthday... strippers...

82_28 wrote:Crazy thing is, is one of our other cats looks exactly like Sepka's weasel avatar. I'll see if I can't snag a pic. It's uncanny.