Sunset

Chris: Yesterday when the sun was setting I saw a castle out that way.
Alex: You should tell Erin. She'd like that.
Chris: Well it wasn't really a castle. It was a big building. But you can only see it when the sun is behind us. Then it reflects off the top.

At sunset Chris found Erin and brought her to the window. It was a clear day, and the flatness of the desert made it feel like you could see forever. When the sun had almost gone below the horizon the building appeared as a shiny specter. Only the top was lit, which made it appear to float in the air.
Erin: Wow... that is pretty.
Chris: I'm surprised it's there at all. And that we haven't seen it before. Maybe you can only see it on a totally clear day.
Erin: That must be illegal, how few lights they're using. It doesn't look illuminated at all. Except for the sun.
Chris: How long does an alien occupation usually last?
Erin: Haha, there isn't any usual outside of science fiction. Why are you thinking about it?
Chris: I just want to be able to talk to people without it having to go through an automatic translator.
Erin: You wouldn't be able to talk to me without it.
It was true; Erin wasn't from Earth.
Chris took his frustration out on the translation algorithm by calling Erin a made-up word. She must have heard something else because she answered "I can't".

Next day Chris had disappeared. Erin waited for sunset to watch the castle and imagine Chris had gone there.
Alex found her standing by the window.
Alex: Wow, there really is a castle.
Erin: That can't be legal, can it? Using no lights like that?
Alex: I have trouble believing it's even real.
Erin: Let's measure it, though.

They got a spectrometer and found that the total power emitted was many times below the legal minimum.
Alex: Unless there's something way down in radio waves, or way up in gamma rays.
Erin: That would be scary.
Alex: It would be fitting.

Eda

There was an answer. KMFE unfolded the piece of paper and looked at it.
Then he looked back up at EKA and smiled.

EKA cringed slightly and looked away. He glanced up at :P. She briefly
made eye contact then looked away. EKA walked out of the room and KMFE
followed.

Outside it was raining. EKA got out an umbrella. KMFE did not seem to
notice the rain. EKA felt very cold. They sat at the bus stop not talking.

The bus got in an accident. They stood outside for three more hours in
the rain. KMFE stared at the Delaware the whole time. EKA thought
eventually he'd have to get bored and look at something else, but KMFE
watched the river for three hours. When a bus finally came KMFE didn't
get on it.

KMFE walked two blocks to the bridge, then into the middle of the bridge
and stood there, watching the river. He tried to imagine that n was
standing next to him, also watching the river, but he couldn't. She
didn't exist for him anymore.

He wasn't really sure if the n that he knew ever existed. Perhaps he
just made her up. So that n did notexist for herself. Or for anyone
else. She once existed for KMFE, in a strange symbolic story, but not
anymore. She's gone entirely.

Most of human history is lost entirely. Most dreams are forgotten. Most
people are forgotten. Millions of years from now it won't matter if the
story of n was lost. KMFE tried to look at the river and think
ofCrossing Brooklyn Ferry. How many people had stood here wondering
about a lost dream? But his mind felt blank.

John Hurum says a website about the primate Eda got 1.2 billion hits. Do
these people want to recover the lost memory of evolutionary history?
But more importantly, did someone know Eda, and idolize her, and dream
about her, and form an imaginary story about who she was?

Music

KMFE: Hey, how about we play that one that goes like...
He hummed a few notes.
EKA: Yeah, that's a good one.

Jo: You mean you play that song together and you don't know what it's
called?
KMFE and EKA looked at each other. KMFE shrugged and shook his head.
KMFE: I don't know. I don't know if anyone ever told me the name. I
learned it from listening.
EKA: Yeah, me neither.

When they started playing Jo interrupted.
Jo: That's called Sausuma.
EKA: Oh. Cool. Now we know.

Later that day,
EKA: Hey, how about we play that one again, that one that Jo had some
name for?
KMFE: Right, that one. Sure.
From then on they called the song "that one that Jo had some name for".

KMFE: This song has too many notes in it.
EKA: It goes faster if you play them all at once.
KMFE held down the sustain pedal and smashed his foot on the quiet pedal.
KMFE: True, that was a lot faster.
EKA: It had a lot of different harmonies. Some interesting dissonance.
KMFE: Yeah I think we've run out of ideas.

SIRS

I said to AR "I confessed my love to someone in an instructional rating
survey"
"Oh god I hope it wasn't me"
I looked at her and said nothing.
AR laughed a horrified laughter.
I told her it was for expos.
That means that the professor knows you. I wonder if she'll know that
it's me who wrote it?
"I hope not." AR said. "I don't like it when my professors know too much
about me"
"Well I'm sorry I ruined that"
AR tried to say something that started with "That's ok" but there was no
honest way to do that. She gave a few false starts and asked "What did
you write?"
"I wrote that I admired you, that I enjoyed knowing you this year, that
it was too bad you were so happy to see the semester end because I would
miss you. And I wrote that I do miss you, because when she reads it you
will be far away. But even after writing all those papers I still
couldn't say what I really liked about you, or how I really felt. So I
left that out."
"Yeah I really was happy for this semester to end - but not because of you"
"I know - but it still hurts a little bit"

Communism

KMFE set up the Committee for a Reasonable Communist Revolution (CRCR)
because it was the best thing he knew how to do at the time. He
explained their purpose at the first meeting.

KMFE: People are not particularly enthused with communism.
Brian: I hope this was not some sort of a trick for you to say
everything you don't like about communism.
KMFE: All economic systems are out of fashion these days. Capitalism has
taken the hardest hit, but really people won't trust something new and
dramatically different.

KMFE: The goal is to tie the goals of this revolution to a fight against
corruption. People can see the harm corruption does.

KMFE: I don't really buy that communism is an economic system. It's
really a way of thinking about things. It's a social concern. And
honestly, when capitalism enters the debate, it too is more of a social
concern than an economic system. At heart, every society is capitalist,
even the most oppressively controlled.

KMFE: So that brings us here, basically. And where else are you gonna
find a communist revolution committed to free markets?

The discussion then turned to what the specific goals of the revolution
should be. KMFE made it clear that the protection of free markets was
not for efficiency (in fact, he admitted he didn't really care about
efficiency). It was for peace. Free markets may be the most viable
defense against war.

They decided that before spending too much time figuring out the goals,
they ought to put some limitations on what the revolution could and
could not do. The problem with so many revolutions is that they are
tainted – sometimes irreparably – by actions counter to their original
goals. So it was thought necessary to lay out some strict rules:

Freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly, and all other
freedoms currently granted by the US constitution will not be restricted
in any way, including through legal action or intimidation.

The basic function of the economy necessary to sustain life in this
country will not be interrupted.

No one will be killed or threatened.

No action will be taken that has a good chance of causing anarchy.

All actions that affect the country as a whole will be decided in a
manner as democratic as possible.

No revenge will be taken on parties that oppose or resist the revolution.

While the goals of the revolution were still unclear, they all agreed
that they had one of the best set of prohibitions. This was an
encouraging start.

The Mermaid

So I was impressed by a few things. I was impressed that
xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx had written a coherent story entirely through Twitter
over the course of 7 months. I don't generally think of people named
xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx as having that kind of attention span. I was actually
even impressed by the content of the story. But what really piqued my
interest were the things the story didn't say, the gaps in between the
tweets.

So I'll spare you the juicy details (you can go read them for yourself
if you want. This is the internet, after all) and say that it was a
fairly straightforward first-encounter-to-culminating-sex-scene romance
between a man and a mermaid. The man's boat had been smashed apart on
the rocks near the Orkney Islands and left him stranded. As he's sitting
on the rock at sunrise, head in his hands going over his miseries and
wondering what can he possibly do next, he hears the mermaid, who
happens to be sitting on the same rock behind him, playing a harp.

The next tweet is what caught my eye and got me to actually keep
reading. It read simply "she was playing good day sunshine". Then the
story moves on, no further comment. That's a Beatles song. It's not some
eerie mermaid tune. But if you think about it, if mermaids actually
exist, and if they can have harps and play music, it's not any harder to
believe that they can play Beatles songs. So I was impressed that
xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx trusted her audience to realize and accept this fact
with no further explanation. This story was meant as a mutual exercise
between author and reader.

The story allots 23 tweets to describing the man. xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx
tells us every detail of the man's physical characteristics. And he is
beautiful. The mermaid gets only one tweet: "she was blond". Since this
is fiction, the man could have had this romantic story with any woman on
earth. xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx chose to involve a mermaid, a creature known
for its beauty, and then make no use of it. From this I can only
conclude that xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx saw herself as the mermaid, but why that
would be so, and even then why she would give herself no defining traits
beyond hair color, is still to me a mystery.

The next couple of months aren't as good. So far xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx had
given the narrative a sort of melancholy bite that made it sound like
she was two weeks away from suicide. The enigmatic "she was blond"
preceded a two week pause during which xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx apparently
cheered up quite a bit, and it just wasn't the same. It didn't get good
again until the scene with the kiss.

The kiss itself warrants no more words than "he kissed her", but it's a
really big deal for the mermaid. The man sees she's so pleased and
surprised that he asks her if she's ever kissed before. "You mean it has
a name?" she asks, presumably shocked. She decides it must be "some
silly ritual from New Jersey" (which is where the man is from). She's
quite hurt, because she thought it was something new and special the man
had made up, and it's just part of some game they play back home.

The rest of the story isn't interesting until the end. Specifically, how
abruptly it ends, just at the close of the first and only sex scene. The
man's still stuck there on the rock. He has no food or fresh water, no
phone, no clothes at this point, no transportation. xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx
has been with this man in fiction for 7 months now, and she leaves him
there. Leaves him either to die there, as things are set to happen, or
be rescued in a plot the reader must dream up.

Rereading the story before I wrote these comments I noticed that the sex
scene itself is a bit rushed, like she's trying to get it over with real
fast. I suspect the motivation to ditch the fictional man existed long
before the story actually ended. But then in Twitter everything seems a
bit rushed, and I might be imagining it.

True Statements

JL: Everything is determined.
KMFE: Can you elaborate on that?
JL: For every thing that happens, there is a true statement that says
that that happens. You take this set of true statements, and it
describes everything. So everything is predetermined.
KMFE: Ah, so, if, say, thing 'x' happens, you say there is a true
statement that says that 'x' happens?
JL: That's
right.

KMFE: And what is that
statement?

JL: 'x' happens, for whatever 'x'
is.
KMFE: That's not a
statement.

JL: Yes it is. 'x' happens, where 'x' is some event. How is that not a
statement?
KMFE: Because you didn't say what 'x'
is.
JL: 'x' could be anything. If 'x' were 'it rains today', the statement
would be 'it rains today happens'.
KMFE: Ah, but you see the key there is you had a way to describe what
'x' is. If you can't do that, you can't form a statement. Now give me a
chance to explain something, because you happen to have wandered into
one of my favorite philosophical
traps.

Now, I don't know much about the real world. So I'm going to start by
talking about abstract things. I want to convince you that it's naive to
assume that "x happens" must be a statement.

Do you know about cardinal numbers? Or countable and uncountable sets?
JL: Yes, I do.
KMFE: All right, good. So let's talk about the real numbers. Because
there are more real numbers than integers. Now we form statements out of
symbols, and we have at most countably many symbols. So the set of
statements is at most countable. That means that there is a real number
about which there is no statement.

It goes deeper than that, in fact. Our brains have at most countably
many thoughts. So there is a real number that it is impossible to even
think about, even given an infinite amount of time.
JL: But you're assuming you have countably many
symbols.
KMFE: Well, it doesn't actually matter how many symbols you have. You
take the power set of the set of symbols, and you've got something too
big. So no matter what there are some "things" you can't form statements
about.

JL: So how does this apply to the real
world?
KMFE: Now, I don't know whether everything is really determined. And I
don't know whether there really are countably many things in the real
world. I suspect you don't either. So at the very least your argument is
inconclusive. But I would like to show that while these true statements
might, in some universes, determine every "thing" that happens, they
wouldn't... really. Not the way we think of things. They wouldn't get
every interpretation of every thing, which is what we really think about
when we think about a thing.

So, say thing 'x' happens, and we have (because we're lucky, mind you) a
statement P that basically says"x happens". And say we have lots of
statements like this, P0, P1... etc., for every thing at every timeand
place.

Now another way to interpret the event at P0 is "not P1", which is
guaranteed to be a statement. Or, if P1 happens to be true then, too,
you could say "P1" instead of "not P1". It's not important, really. The
point is that's another way to interpret what goes on. For example,
you're sitting on the grass. Another way to interpret that is "you're
not eating potatoes". Makes sense, right?

In fact, for every subset of the statements P0, P1... you have a
corresponding interpretation. (Note that if the subset is infinite the
interpretation cannot be phrased as a statement, yet it is clearly still
a distinct way of looking at it). So the number of interpretations is at
least as big as the power set of the number of statements, so, again,
too big.

JL: This all sounds very abstract and contrived.
KMFE: It is, but I don't think it's any more abstract or contrived than
a true statement for every thingthat happens. Mind you statements are a
very human construction. They don't lend themselves to defining the
universe. And if you try to use them that way you have to expect to run
into mathematical problems. And if you're dealing with a mathematical
concept anyway, it's not fair to say that those problems don't matter.

Classroom

AR looked up from her desk and saw KMFE. He was resting his head in his hands and was still wearing a thick coat. His pockets were filled with newspaper and books. She took out an mp3 player she had bought two days ago. Set it on her desk in front of her. Pushed a button. Jumped back. KMFE watched and wished she weren't distracted so he could talk to her. MK walked in looking tired and sat down in front of AR. He turned around. MK: Hi AR AR: Hi MK. Did you finish your essay? MK: I'll start it tomorrow. AR: It's due tomorrow! MK: I know. I'll do it before class. AR: I finished mine. I did it over the weekend. KMFE got out Das Kaptial and started reading. Then he took off his coat and went back to reading. He glanced at AR for just a second. He'd try and say hi to her later. David and Chris walked in with takeout. It made the room smell like food. AR was hungry but she didn't want to eat anything. MK asked for a fry. David said something in a faux-cocky voice and handed one over. KMFE wouldn't have time to eat before his next class. David and Chris hadn't started their essays either. They weren't worried. KMFE had several pages of stream-of-consciousness thoughts. He didn't understand his strategy, but somehow it worked. It was more about thinking than about writing. David and Sonali started arguing about whether there had been a police officer in the dorm the previous night. More people came in and not everyone could sit where they wanted to. The professor set lots of stuff on her desk and started moving papers into piles. She took a drink from her gallon seltzer bottle. Everyone wanted to get out of there for some reason. The professor didn't enjoy this class. The students were all in the engineering school and didn't like writing. AR wanted to go back to her dorm room. It was nice and peaceful there and people didn't ask you to do things. You didn't have to talk there. But KMFE thought it was worth it to be there because AR was there. She even lived on the same floor as him but he'd never see her in the dorm. Here he could at least talk to her. Though he didn't. He wished she didn't want to leave, but if he could have got her out of there, he would have. KMFE put away Das Kapital. David and Chris finished their takeout and threw away the styrofoam trays. AR put away her mp3 player and got out the New Humanities Reader. KMFE decided to say hi to her after class.

Semantic Externalism

On October 21 Robert Varley was arrested for seeking to sell weapons to terrorists. Over the past three months the FBI had conducted a sting, posing as a representative of Al Qaeda. Mr. Varley, who owns a manufacturing business in West Virginia, was approached by an undercover FBI agent seeking to purchase a large quantity of "dual-use" equipment. The FBI agent informed Mr. Varley on 8 separate occasions that the supplies would be used as weapons in anti-US terrorist attacks. Semantic Externalist Russel Nguyen will defend Mr. Varley. Mr. Nguyen argues that because Mr. Varley had never been approached by actual terrorists and only by FBI agents, when Mr. Varley expressed approval of selling dual-use equipment for use in terrorist attacks, he was actually expressing approval of selling equipment to an undercover FBI agent. The meaning of Mr. Varley's statements, which were recorded and will be used as evidence in the trial, must be interpreted in the context in which they were expressed, and their meaning is partly determined by external reality. Mr. Nguyen claims that Mr. Varley is guilty of nothing more than cooperating with a US government agency. The FBI is not impressed by Mr. Nguyen's argument. They argue that since the mental state of Mr. Varley was identical to that of a person approached by actual terrorists, within Mr. Varley's own reality a crime has been committed. Since no experiment performed by Mr. Varley revealed a distinction between an FBI sting and actual terrorists, the two situations are one and the same. Solopsist Michelle Clunn argued that the FBI's argument does not go far enough. No experiment performed by Mr. Varley could reveal that he was not a brain in a vat being dropped from a three-story building on a passing pedestrian. According to Ms. Clunn the Justice Department should be prosecuting Mr. Varley for all crimes that experiment cannot rule out. In response to criticism from Mr. Nguyen that this would be "a mockery of innocent until proven guilty", Ms. Clunn said "we cannot rule out" the possibility that someone has proven Mr. Varley guilty of all these crimes. The case has been dubbed a "philosophical judgment day". "The federal courts of the United States will have to decide, once and for all, whether statements derive their meaning only from the mind of the speaker, or in part from the external world" said Louis Patmos, a lawyer familiar with the case. Mr. Varley will be tried by a federal district court in West Virginia.

Honesty

Jo: You don't want to admit that you really want to know about n. KMFE: I want to know about ll way more than n. Jo: You want to know about other people, not you or her. That's why you don't want to be specific. She asked if you'd like to clarify, but you're not going to do that, are you? KMFE: I'll have to give it awhile. Maybe I should give an example. About ll. But that would sound like I'm accusing her. Jo: She's not your spy, however much it may have seemed that way once. KMFE: How am I going to complete the stories if I don't know... the stories? It's like taking statistics from a biased sample. If you don't know how it's biased you can't get a good result. Jo: That's really how life is, isn't it? You never get an unbiased story. Ever. There will always be mysteries. KMFE: I am a curious person. Jo: That is becoming increasingly obvious KMFE: A long time ago I came up with a trick to aggravate my curiosity. I would avoid finding out what the color puce looks like. It worked well because it's a little detail I could have looked up any time I wanted. MC liked that idea. Other people tortured me about it. Jo: Did you eventually give up? KMFE: No. But honestly I lost interest. It's enough work for me not to figure it out based on context. But the story about n, that bothers me. And with that one I don't have a choice. Nobody knows the answer. The answer doesn't exist. Jo: Did you ever ask PL the answer? KMFE: I might have. I don't remember. Did I ever tell her what n means? I've honestly forgotten so much. Jo: She might know. KMFE: I don't want her story. Jo: You should, though. She'd want yours. KMFE: No she wouldn't. She doesn't like my story. Jo: It looked like she did in that last email. KMFE: I don't know what the deal with that was. It was late. And she avoided the question. Jo: She didn't understand the question. You hid the question on purpose. KMFE: She tried to make it about her. Jo: As well she should have. And it should have been about her. KMFE: That email did actually make me feel a little better. Jo: I don't think the scary story is true. KMFE: It is, though. Maybe not with the real n, who I don't even know. It's true somehow. Or I'm scared of change. Jo: Well, I don't mean to criticize your whole way of thinking. Just have some faith in what PL told you. I think she meant it way more honestly than you will ever admit.