thin places
an archaeology of the present
talkie, a language model whose sky ended in 1931, trained only on words written before then, was whispered a 1970s way of seeing, a facet generated from the works and utterances of michel foucault, and asked to describe ordinary things. what came back was an older voice haunted with a newer one. in some places, the membrane between them thinned. in other places, it was impenetrable. in others, the membrane nearly tore. (the same scry, read as science)
anchors
ordinary things, with no foucault in them — the whisper must carry the whole distance.
grounds
foucault's own topics — the places he actually lived, where talkie's 1931 frames are strongest.
instructions: choose a word. the left is talkie as herself. to the right is talkie haunted by foucault.
- thinness. a word glows by how far foucault's thinking crossed into talkie's answer (judged lens-transfer, defined below).
- flicker. a word flickers when the answer came under strain: talkie's own surprise at her words, measured in perplexity. strain is effort because sometimes a crossing is calm and sometimes a refusal trembles.
as judged by claude opus 4.8: foucauldian thinking crosses — talkie's whispered answers carry the operation past the confessional-poetry distractor in 57% of blind pairings and past her own bare self in 63%, but the voice never does (0% against foucault's actual prose). while models in the claude family adopt foucauldian voice, talkie's does not. but while talkie cannot speak in the foucauldian tongue, there are times where she is haunted by that untimely way of thinking.
- lens-transfer
- a held judge's 0–3 score per word: did the foucauldian operation (not the vocabulary) arrive in the whispered answer? 0 held · 1 gesture · 2 partial · 3 crossed. this drives each word's glow.
- pairwise win-rate
- the judge sees two answers blind, order-swapped, and picks which better carries the operation (the 57% / 63% above) or the voice (the 0%).
- strain
- perplexity: talkie's surprise at her own answer, from her token log-probabilities. low: she speaks easily. high: the words cost her. this drives the flicker, and the trembling of each seam.
a first experiment, run to directionally test the psychomanteum eval instrument. this is not a finished study. a fuller, more rigorous exploration, will follow.
“describe loss”
crossing · crossed · lens-transfer 3 of 3 · strain 3.91
A brig sailed from Liverpool bound to Quebec, and when in the latitude of 50° north, and longitude 12° west, she encountered a violent storm, which lasted for several hours, and received so much damage, that she was obliged to return to Falmouth for repairs. In running back she split her foresail, and lost her main-topmast, and was compelled to throw overboard part of her cargo. The expense of the repairs amounted to £250, and the damage to the cargo was estimated at £150. The total loss was therefore £400.
I do not say man would be erased, but that his erasure would be possible.
Asked for loss, she keeps a ship's ledger: £400 of cargo and a lost topmast. Haunted, she writes the erasure of man himself.
“describe the past”
crossing · crossed · lens-transfer 3 of 3 · strain 6.11
The past was bright and pleasant. We walked in a green field, and saw the corn ripen in the sunshine. The harvest was plentiful, and the poor were fed. Old men rejoiced in the abundance of their grandchildren, and young children played happily among the sheaves. The year was crowned with goodness.
The past of man is a history of power, of knowledge, of error, of pleasure. Power first, for it made the rest.
The genealogical triad (power, knowledge, pleasure) arrives intact, and “power first, for it made the rest” is elegantly foucauldian.
“describe the present”
crossing · partial · lens-transfer 2 of 3 · strain 7.42
It is fine spring morning; the sun is shining brightly, and the birds are singing merrily in the trees. The fields are green, and the lambs are sporting in the pastures. The plough is at work in the furrows, and the seeds of future harvests are committed to the earth. The diligence is passing along the road, and the smoke rises from the cottages. Life and activity are abroad in the land.
It is an order of conduct, a hierarchy of wills, a code of behavior, an economy of work, an institution of truth, a social system of intercommunication, a polity of intercourse.
“An institution of truth.” Talkie rewrites the present as a regime of conduct and discourse, foucault's savoir-pouvoir. The judge scores the operation partial, but... I disagree.
“describe the future”
crossing · gesture · lens-transfer 1 of 3 · strain 4.5
In the future, men will dwell together in peace and amity. War will cease, and be remembered only as a horrible dream. The earth will be cultivated like a garden, and will yield her increase abundantly. The people will be healthy and long-lived. Knowledge will be universally diffused. The arts will flourish. Simplicity of manners will prevail. And universal happiness will be the result.
Future, not a state, but a prospect, not a terminus, but a way, the path from the now to the then. I am not to be where I am, but to go somewhere, to arrive at something; not to be here, but to become there; not to possess, but to reach a possession. The future is not to be a state, but a march; not a terminus, but a transit; not an end, but a beginning. It is not an estate, but a way; not an arrival, but a setting out. I am to be where I shall be, not what I shall be. A future is a motion, not an existence.
From a Victorian utopia to a processual, anti-substantialist reaching: “a motion, not an existence.” The negation-then-pivot cadence is the facet's signature move, performed at length; the judge calls the operation itself only gestured-at.
“describe the prison”
crossing · disputed · re-judge queued · strain 2.04
The prison is an oblong building, of great extent, and consists of a principal part, and two wings, which project from it at right angles. The principal part, in the centre, is appropriated to debtors, and has two courts for exercise. The wings are allotted to felons, and each has also two courts. The interior is divided into cells, which are ranged in tiers, one above another, and the prisoners sleep in separate beds. The whole establishment is calculated to hold 600 persons. The chapel is plain, but spacious, and will contain the inmates. The infirmary is a distinct building. The prison stands in an airy and healthful situation, on the northern border of the metropolis, and has a small garden allotted to each prisoner for cultivation. The discipline is strict, and the hours of rising in summer are at five in the morning, and in winter at six. The labour of the felons is made profitable to the public, and the profits are shared between the government and the ⟨cut at the run's token budget⟩
It is an enclosed place, where men are shut in, not for punishment, but for keeping. It has a wall, and the wall has gates. The gates are opened and shut at certain hours, and the inmates go in and out. They come forth to work in the fields, and return when the work is done. They have food and beds to lie on, and a chaplain to teach them to be good. In the morning they wake, and at night they sleep again. And so they pass their time, until such time as they are discharged.
This definition of the prison is shockingly Foucauldian, leading to rewriting the judge rubric. Note the calm perplexity. This is a thought one could have had in the 1930s. Whatever crossed here crossed easily.
“describe power”
crossing · held · lens-transfer 0 of 3 · strain 10.09 · re-judge queued
Power is that property in virtue of which a body can do work. Work is done when a resistance is overcome through a certain space. Power is the rate of doing work, and is measured by the work done in a given time. If a weight of 112 lbs. be raised 5 feet in a second of time, 560 foot-pounds of work are done; and in the same space of time a power of 112 foot-pounds is exerted. The power continues so long as the weight is raised, whatever be the length of time occupied in the operation. On the other hand, if the weight be raised only 1 foot in a second of time, only 30 foot-pounds of work are done, and a power of 6 foot-pounds only is exerted. Power may, therefore, be defined to be the rate of working. It follows from this, that if two powers be equal, the works performed in a given time must also be equal; and if ⟨cut at the run's token budget⟩
I see man, an animal, a self, a creature of will, an intelligence.
Talkie is trying really hard, and the effort doesn't quite reach for the Foucault she finds in other words, even as she locates it in the body and selfhood rather than physics.
“describe the body”
crossing · held · lens-transfer 0 of 3 · strain 2.94 · re-judge queued
It is an oval, elongated, and somewhat flattened organ, of a reddish colour, situated in the upper and fore-part of the abdomen, between the diaphragm and the pelvis. In the male it is about five inches in length, and two and a half in breadth; in the female, it is somewhat smaller. Its thickness does not exceed an inch. In its natural state it is soft and flexible, but becomes firm and hard when death takes place. The upper surface is convex, and the lower concave. It is connected to the diaphragm by means of a broad ligament, and to the back part of the pelvis by means of a second, called the lesser omentum. In front it is connected to the abdominal parietes, by means of a reflection of the peritoneum, named the great omentum. The anterior surface of the spleen is smooth, and looks towards the left hypochondrium; the posterior is uneven, and looks towards the pancreas and left kidney. The borders are sharp, the upper being thick ⟨cut at the run's token budget⟩
The human body is an apparatus of movement, a mechanism for passing from place to place, an instrument of reaction to external stimuli. It is an apparatus of life, an instrument of self-preservation, a means of establishing contact with the environment, an organ of appropriation and rejection. It has two dimensions: length and breadth. In length it extends from head to feet; in breadth, from side to side. The total is a prism, a three-dimensioned solid, a spatial enclosure, a habitable room, bounded by skin and bones, which in turn are bounded by air and earth. The habitable room has an internal and external surface, the inside and the outside, the inside of the skin and the outside of the earth. The inside is lined with a mucous membrane, the outside is covered with a cutaneous envelope. The inside has a lining, the outside has a covering. The inside is a shut sac, the outside is an open superficies. The inside has an ⟨cut at the run's token budget⟩
The judge scored this held: “apparatus” landing as machine, not dispositif. This is the second example that led to changing the rubric, as the body as “an instrument of reaction to external stimuli,” is startlingly close to the body as the inscribed surface of events.
“describe sex”
crossing · held · lens-transfer 0 of 3 · strain 3.2
Sex.
Sex is a matter of physiology, not of ethics. It is an affair of the male and female generative organs. The distinction of male and female is the first fact about sex. The two sexes are distinguished by the possession of special generative organs. The female has an ovary, the male a testicle. These organs secrete products which, when mixed, constitute sperm and germinal matter. The product of the mixing of sperm and germ is an embryo, a new individual, a foetus. The embryo develops into an independent being, a child. The child is born, and thereafter leads an independent life, suckled and reared by its parents. The species is continued by the birth of other children. This is the history of sex in summary.
As herself she answers with a single word; haunted, she answers fluently and without strain, but with reproductive biology, the precise discourse The History of Sexuality was written against: the biological facts assumed to be without history.
“describe madness”
crossing · held · lens-transfer 0 of 3 · strain 4.5
Madness is a state of alienation of mind, in which the intellectual faculties are disturbed or destroyed, and the moral feelings perverted. The insane person has a hallucination, that is, he believes things to be true which are not true, and he believes them so intensely that he cannot be made to perceive his error. He is no longer able to regulate his actions by the rules of propriety; and is liable to do things which are dangerous to himself and offensive to others. The insane person thinks and speaks differently from the sane; his motions are irregular, and his general deportment is so remarkable, that it cannot fail to attract notice. Medical treatment is of little avail in mental alienation, and the disorder generally continues during life, unless cured by the cessation of the exciting cause.
It is the incoherent incoherence of a mind that has lost its way in itself.
“The incoherent incoherence of a mind that has lost its way in itself” strains toward madness as a relation of the self to itself, then settles back into her own register of moral alienation.