Mark Isaak <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> writes:

> On 3/25/24 1:13 PM, Richmond wrote:
>> Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 11/03/2024 17:14, Richmond wrote:
>>>> Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> writes: > [Origin of "The
>>>>Matrix"] > I interpreted wiktionary as saying the sense 11 was a new
>>>>> sense inspired by the film - so clearly not the meaning that
>>>>inspired > the choice of the title for the film. Maybe, but it
>>>>cites 1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer, for sense 11, so such a
>>>>sense must have existed before 1999.
>>>
>>> It may have been mentioned, possibly by me, that _Doctor Who_ story
>>> "The Deadly Assassin" in 1976 presented "The Matrix", a computer
>>> which contains memories of the Doctor's people, "Time Lords". It's
>>> experienced as a rather dangerous "virtual reality".
>>>
>>> William Gibson used "matrix" for - what being inside the internet
>>> looks like, basically. A space in which most online resources have
>>> a visual representation, and you fly around (virtually) like
>>> Superman to get to the data that you want to deal with.
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer> mentions that Gibson's
>>> short story "Burning Chrome" used the term in 1982. "Burning" is
>>> story slang for hacking, and Chrome is a person in the story whose
>>> money, not personality, is under attack. >> Another example of
>>> Gnostic ideas resurfacing in popular culture is >> 'Forbidden
>>> Planet'. The surface of the planet has a small settlement >> with
>>> only two people, some animals, and a robot. This surface settlement
>>> >> represents consciousness. But hidden beneath it is something
>>> vast, and >> from which the powers of creation come (the
>>> unconscious). And demons >> which lurk there are projected onto the
>>> outside world, the planet >> surface outside the settlement. >> If
>>> the settlement corresponds to the island in The Tempest, then the >>
>>> vast space under the planet surface represents the ocean around the
>>> >> island. Water is the symbol of the unconscious in mythology. >>
>>> Why is it necessary to have mythology to understand things? Because
>>> >> mythology points to things which cannot be described in
>>> words. All words >> have opposites and so cause division. This is
>>> shown by this newsgroup >> which is doomed to polarised arguments
>>> for all eternity.
>
> Nitpick: Not all words have opposites; probably most do not. (E.g.,
> what is the opposite of "broccoli"?, of "modem"?, of "scissors"?) What
> words do, which I think supports your point at least as well, is
> corral ideas into discrete categories.

The opposite of broccoli is not broccoli, or the absence of broccoli. It
is from the idea of absence that we conceive the idea of non-existence,
and then puzzle over why anything exists. But we don't know if there is
any other option. We leap from the idea of an absent object, to an
absent universe, but the universe is not an object in the way every day
objects like broccoli are.