threshold

[luka]

and this means consists of a threshold, a threshold that, if passed by the levels of input, triggers a signal.

Have you ever played Age of Empires? And when your civilization reaches a certain stage of development, of centralised wealth and organised manpower, it raises a monument?

The English countryside is like that, villages raise a vertical, a church spire as a certain threshold is crossed.

Locusts (derived from the Vulgar Latin locusta, meaning grasshopper[1]) are a collection of certain species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae that have a swarmingphase. These insects are usually solitary, but under certain circumstances they become more abundant and change their behaviour and habits, becoming gregarious. No taxonomic distinction is made between locust and grasshopper species; the basis for the definition is whether a species forms swarms under intermittently suitable conditions. Orgasm (from Greek ὀργασμός orgasmos "excitement, swelling"; also sexual climax) is the sudden discharge of accumulated sexual excitement during the sexual response cycle, resulting in rhythmic muscular contractions in the pelvic region characterized by sexual pleasure.[1][2]

 

[constant escape]

Love the prospects of a thread strictly about thresholds.

Interesting etymology, too. Didn't know about orgasm. But it does indicate the kind of binary output of an organ, whereby it needs to be activated/excited past a certain threshold in order to give the output. So the input is continuous, a gradient, whereas the output is discrete, a binary.

Its a way of translating between the modes of spectrum and binary, and it seems integral to the way humans organize and facilitate systems.

Clearly demonstrated, from what I gather, in the US electoral system, wherein there is a strict threshold which need to be passed by vote count, in order to activate the output of that particular organ, that particular state.

 

[constant escape]

Granted, the popular vote isn't strictly speaking a continuous input, but compared to the binary output it's practically continuous.

 

[constant escape]

The organ which translate continuous to binary is a sort of mechanism that ingests a vast spread of information, and digests/collapses that information into a binary expression/output.

 

[catalog]

Road to Damascus moments? or is that something else?

 

[luka]

Love the prospects of a thread strictly about thresholds.

Interesting etymology, too.

This keeps you in the in-between, the moment of transition.

 

[luka]

Road to Damascus moments? or is that something else?

if you do a dissensus search it's usually indicating the moment at which quantitive change becomes qualitative

 

[constant escape]

The flatulent liminal

 

[constant escape]

Road to Damascus moments? or is that something else?

Could be, I just don't know what this means.

 

[luka]

Increase heat till water becomes steam

 

[luka]

Could be, I just don't know what this means.

Saul becomes Paul on the road to Damascus. Conversion. Sees the Light.

 

[constant escape]

Ah, a grace threshold. Filled with ethereal majesty past some certain quota, output being rebirth.

 

[luka]

Ah, a grace threshold. Filled with ethereal majesty past some certain quota, output being rebirth.

Possibly. You could argue it's something else though couldn't you.

 

[constant escape]

Totally, just spewing some theory.

 

[sus]

nitrous oxide on acid

 

[sus]

I remember as a young child my obsession with the scene in Phantom Menace, maybe you've seen it: Qui-Gon and his padawan, Kenobi, are facing off against their enemy Maul, on the catwalks of a power generator. Their combat takes them through a series of timed gates, which separate them, break them apart. Kenobi is a split-second too slow behind them: when the gates come up, he cannot get across before they lower again; he is caught behind the final, transparent gate, watching through the lasers as his master is killed.

These things seem to be about gradients and binary switches, the way these systems collide. You're 15 seconds late to catch the tram and now it's 15 minutes til the next comes. Going 15 kph faster will get you there the same time, if you don't beat the impending red light.

 

[constant escape]

Precisely. The continuous is subordinated, structurally, to the binary. As a control mechanism. A mechanism by which a more or less chaotic input can be collapsed into more meaningful signal, a more easily processable signal, albeit with a profound loss of information.

 

[sus]

Starts at like 1:27

 

[sus]

Not totally sure how "bottlenecks" and "thresholds" are related, but there's a connection there

 

[constant escape]

Whats fascinating is that you can discern such mechanisms various orders of physical magnitude. The municipal level, such as the stop lights and transit schedules you mention. The federal level, with electoral majority thresholds for votes. The cellular level, with neurons only firing if the neurotransmitter levels surpass a certain threshold.