Sense, Reference, and Demons

Sense, Reference, and Demons

This might serve as a helpful primer:  Gottlob Frege: Sense and Reference

Since we drew an analogy to computer programming, we can run with that analogy to help explain this topic.  Signs are like the little bits and symbols you operate upon, senses are like programs or functions that operate, and references are like problems you're trying to solve.  You can imagine creating all manner of different application ensembles involving multifarious combinations of these things.  You'll notice that you could have different foci; you could create a more reference-centric application, or a more sense-centric application.  For example, a calculator program is a very reference-centric application.  The specific procedures you use in the calculator app don't matter intrinsically, as long as they deterministically and efficiently solve the mathematical problems that you want your calculator to be able to tackle.  You still have to have sense/procedures of course, it's just that they serve the reference, or the problem being solved, entirely.  An application that erects a website is a slightly less reference-focused example .  You will have certain parameters and specifications for the website you want to build to perform whatever tasks you desire of it, but there's more wiggle room and less mathematical determinism in putting the website up than there is in performing mathematical calculations.  The program is not quite as explicit, and will contain more proxies.

A more sense-centric application still would be that of a machine learning algorithm that places captions under photos to narrate them.  The number of ways you could potentially narrate a given photo is immense.  Overall, you'd just want to be sure that the application narrates efficaciously, and as long as it did that, you wouldn't be able to use much straightforward mathematics or many straightforward parameters to detect whether it does that exhaustively.  Thus it is more sense-centric; the problem being solved is less of the focus, and the procedural program that determines it is more of the focus.  It's not as easy to tweak and tinker with based on the problem you're trying to solve.  An overwhelmingly sense-centric application would be a general artificial intelligence.  The task is to display something like general human intelligence.  The reference is so vast, fluid and vague as to be basically non-existent.  The process itself begins to matter evermore than keeping a close eye on the specific problem it's trying to solve.  Looking at it this way, we can see reference as associated with results, and sense as associated with process or methodology.

We live in a self-organized universe.  Within that spectrum, there are positive forces that are flowing heroically in productively harmonious stories, and relatively deleterious forces that are more lacking in purpose and increasingly demonic.  Either way, these forces have a life force to them, and they will protect themselves from dying out, even including the demonic forces.  The productively harmonious forces are powerful because they serve a Natural Law given purpose, but the demonic forces are formidable as well.  The power of the demonic forces is not derived from Natural Law optimized practicum, but instead comes from the fact that our demons held us in their proverbial arms when nothing else would.

Demons were our defense mechanisms when we didn't know what to do with ourselves, and when we didn't have the strength to be heroes.  They are addictive, as we've discussed, because they in turn implement defense mechanisms so that they can remain nested in our psyches and fleetingly sustain their ultimately unsustainable existence.  We needed the demons at one point, not in an optimized best practices sense, but in a reactive, scrambling sense.  In turn, once summoned, the demons need us to sustain their existence as knots in our Peak Pathway flow, and without the parasitic nourishment they imbibe from our Peak Pathway, they would be instantaneously reconsigned to Oblivion.  They will fight and scrap to persist in our world.  It is from this place that we can enter into a conversation about seeker dialogues, in which we are all agreeing to try to ferret out the demons that take their refuge among us.  Demons are False Forms, but we obviously don't recognize our demons as False Forms since they are tricksters, and if we did recognize them as such, we would not allow them to siphon our precious psychic energies.

One of the central tenets of the meaning of existence that we live by is striving to be a heroic pioneer truth seeker at all times.  We have manifold programs, senses and ideas running around in our head like one massive seeker application.  Their purpose above all is gain acquisition, which is about communing with productive harmony.  Loss prevention comes only secondarily, which can be thought of as keeping the demons out.  This is a task of gargantuan complexity, as productive harmony is an ever-shifting landscape, but it is the best, most worthwhile journey that there is.  Under the lens of our computer programming analogy, demons are like problems that we are trying to solve, and sometimes bugs.  In order to defeat a demon, you have to give them the correct truth value, and as we've seen, that requires proper reference.  To defeat a demon, you must bravely call it out as a False Form in some way.  If you see a demon as a True Form, then you are in danger because you are to some degree possessed or at least blinkered by some demonic force.  You also do not want to find yourself in the unenviable position of calling out real True Forms as if they were False Forms like demons, because you will alienate heroes, your loving spirit mentors, and the light in process.  That will only make it easier for demons to drag you down into the darkness.  Demons don't want to be called out as False Forms because that is how they are smote, so the defense mechanisms that demons weave in the psyche of the Chosen One are designed to do precisely what was discussed above.  First and foremost, demons need you to see them as True Forms, and at their most dire need, they will deceive you into thinking that real True Forms are False.  Demons want to minimize the latter form of subterfuge because they know that if you call out too many True Forms incorrectly, then the demons are in more danger of being uncovered and slain.  The more powerful and sinister the demon, the better they are going to be at lacing your blind spots and character weak points with these smoke and mirrors.