20 March 22
We have themes running through our lives. Venn diagrams that circle back around and overlap. Everything is connected. Except most likely it’s probably not. We instead have a tendency to link things together in our quest to make coherent stories of life. In short, our minds are forever playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Behind our backs.
Kevin Bacon being the victim of a Ponzi scheme, ah, before we make that quip there’s a little more background required1…
Six degrees doesn’t rely on Kevin Bacon’s prolific output, due to his having to accept any part that’s offered to him. The six degrees of connectedness works with anyone. Including you. You being connected to anyone, anywhere, within six “hops”.
It’s the math. Let’s assume you know roughly a hundred people you can call up and chat with, that’s your first degree. They know a hundred people too. That’s a hundred times a hundred, we’re already at 10000. By the time we hit six degrees that number of connections has grown to 10,000,000,000. The total population of earth is approximately 7,934,491,2992. That’s covered everyone alive, and then some. Bubble burst. What’s really astounding is our ability to see and find the connections so quickly amongst this wealth of data. We have a bias for it.
I had intended to riff on t-shirts, Yukio Mishima, David Bowie and perfume, but ended up thinking about the simulation argument. A Ponzi scheme by the way is the idea that you give me a sum and later I give you back that sum plus an extra half. That’s because I give you half the money from a second investor. You then reinvest and recommend your friends. Exponential growth. The same principle as Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. So him making so many films due to losing millions in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is somewhat apt3. Of course we’re seeing patterns. Pattern seeking.
Also mildly amusing is Harvard Business school doing an article about the science behind Six Degrees without doing the math4. That’s clickbait for you, really they are looking at network theory, with the fantastic answer of ‘no-one really knows yet’. Microsoft also proved it analysing a billion emails5. Shame they didn’t just multiply ten times ten times… although good of them to admit they read our mail. Allegedly WhatsApp records all the keystrokes of your messages including the delete key, and keeps deleted chats unencrypted on your phone6. Please note a new theme: paranoia.
Everything is connected. Last weekend I devoured The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier. Which is an Oulipian thriller. Of course it is. I discovered it through Tony White’s blog. The Anomaly is very good. Very good indeed. Because I wrote about White’s novel “The Fountain in the Forest” and made facetious remarks about 3am Magazine and their love of French intellectuals including George Perec, I glanced at the Twitter of Andrew Gallix, 3am’s editor and discovered “The Jacques Lacan Foundation” by Susan Finlay. Which looks good, also very good indeed. I’ve ordered a copy. (Lessons learnt. Not before reading an excerpt).7 You wait all year for a deconstructed thriller featuring French intellectuals and then two come along at once.
The Simulation Argument is of course the idea that we are living in a computer simulation8. First postulated by philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2001. Like all philosophy and religion it’s utterly impossible to prove or disprove, and like all philosophy utterly useless. Religion can be too dangerous to call useless. I heartily recommend The Anomaly, and after reading it check out the Wikipedia page9 to see all the really clever things that bypassed you, flying over the top of your head. Twice. An anomaly joke there.
I originally toyed with featuring it as my recommendation. But didn’t. A jump cut to pattern recognition. William Gibson has a novel by that name. With, as far as I can tell, has absolutely nothing to do with pattern recognition in it. But then again I failed to decode the subtext of The Anomaly. I just enjoyed the words for the story telling. La Jefa is reading “To Paradise” by Hanya Yanagihara which is about alternative realities. Judging by the blurb on the back it sounds very deep and very clever. I was going to buy a copy myself, but was refused purchase when unable to produce a printed copy of a degree certificate, as requested by the nice lady at the till in Waterstones. As I said to Anne though “that’s a nice green they used on the cover don’t you think?”.
William Gibson’s latest two novels do have a lot of Simulation Argument in them, he’s normally at the forefront of everything. Alfred Bester, a relatively unsung hero of sci-fi, used pattern recognition as a plot device in The Deceivers, which I read back in ‘83. It’s stayed with me ever since. We see what we want to see. We see things that aren’t there. We join invisible dots.
There’s a name for suddenly noticing something that previously you hadn’t been aware of, or indeed even knew existed - it’s called the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon. Although no link to David Bowie and perfume springs to mind, my education on the Red Brigade started with seeing Joe Strummer wearing an RAF t-shirt when The Clash headlined the Rock Against Racism concert.
In a recursive moment the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon10 occurred while discussing Baader Meinhof because of Gerard Richter11, only for Baader Meinhof to appear in Adam Curtis’s “Can’t get you out of my head” that very same evening. Spooky. Spooky interaction at a distance. Pretty sure quantum realities are going to turn up at any minute. And the multiverse. Adam Curtis is even more infuriating at stringing things together than me.
Where is all this heading with themes of pattern recognition, paranoia, etc, all convoluting in ever decreasing circles down the rabbit hole? “Rabbits” by Terry Miles is where. Being shallow, I freely admit it was purchased mainly on the strength of it being entitled Rabbits. And there being a rabbit on the jacket too.
Originally a podcast, it’s fairly indescribable except to say if you enjoy the sort of semantics and armchair pop culture pattern seeking this column indulges in, but feel it needs more paranoia, then this is a novel for you. I loved it. A compulsive read.
Actually the best thing about it is perhaps, having read it on the Kobo (it’s a non-evil-empire-Kindle type ebook reader), when finishing it, where the device then recommends other similar books - it couldn’t find anything.
Rabbits is Ready Player One written by Kafka. By the way, I thought Ready Player One was overrated, with Spielberg utterly muffing the adaptation. He didn’t go full meta, and instead removed all references to himself that occur in the book - simulation argument indeed, hiding the hand of the creator.
Don’t get me started on monkeys and typewriters and an infinite amount of time.
“Rabbits” by Terry Miles
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/604640/rabbits-by-terry-miles/
Buy here
Further reading
“The Anomaly” by Herve Le Tellier
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/676052/the-anomaly-by-herve-le-tellier/
Buy here
“Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/3BA/blue-ant
A shift to writing a more humane emotional narrative than previous works. The first in the Blue Ant trilogy.
Buy here
“The Peripheral” by William Gibson
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/TJ3/the-jackpot-trilogy
…and back to futuretech. First in the Jackpot trilogy.
Buy here
“Can't Get You Out of My Head” directed by Adam Curtis
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p093wp6h/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head
Addendum
The idea that six degrees is a networking theory is bolting meaning on. It’s from the short story “Chain-links” by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929.12
If you’re really into databasing and how six degrees of Kevin Bacon might work, yes, you, then the Flerlage Twins have just the article.13
References
https://www.flerlagetwins.com/2017/04/six-degrees-of-kevin-bacon-with-graph_37.html
Legally I have to tell you I might get five pence or something from Bookshop dot org should you purchase something, but really I just want to stick it to Amazon and keep independent bookshops alive. Yeah, rebel me, bringing the man down from the inside etc etc.
More lovely stuff. I’ve been thinking about false legs, oddly, so something may emerge.
Rabbits has joined the guilty pile! Doubt Vestoj will join it. My "wardrobe" reflects my total indifference! ;)