Natomics
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
Natomics General Thread - Starter Edition
Welcome to the first of this season's Lainfagging circlejerk hosted by some dude you don't care about. Contained in this thread is an analytical scheme for language that almost certainly never heard of.
Natomics is the study of the units of language (narreme) that we use to convey meaning, most readily shown by narratives but applicable in any instance where a created linguistic artifact of some sort can be subject to analysis. We track these units to uncover patterns in their usage that differs from person to person in unique ways. Being able to do this enables a casual user to be more aware of their manner they convey their intents, while a detailed analysis can identify authors of unknown artifacts (assuming the authors have been analyzed in the past.)
Natomics is something you've never heard of because it's pretty freakin new. It's a very structural approach as it highlights the mechanisms by which your brains conveys meaning between abstract variables and focuses the analysis at the moment of internal interpretation before the word is spoken, shown from the function of the words themselves in their most base unit form. As such it's fairly procedural but also incredibly tedious.
Every Saturday Night around 11PM American Central I've set aside the time to make a thread and spend the next several hours working on various documents. I'll post what I'm working on and field questions about either the method itself or (hopefully) an analysis of your own.
Shoot the theory full of holes if possible, it's appreciated.
Tonight's possible victims, i can probably get a page done every 20 minutes or so if I'm typing it up:
1) Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card
2) Haunted, Chuckie P
3) Dianetics, L Ron Hubbard
4) Changes, Jim Butcher
5) Anything in Lopate's Personal Essay's collection
Vote on your cellphones now.
Links:
An old presentation showing out of date data- https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GQIDLEOToSSUHYZY7MISREozF6G6pFgqZD-niF91t1A
Working Glossary - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i2y2n8NP587S9EwR50JsPRorrPCjoRXk3GrJSA01vAc
Past threads - https://warosu.org/lit/thread/5253469#p5253469
- http://4chandata.org/lit/Here039s-a-new-thread-for-the-ongoing-semiotics-discussion-focusing-on-narramemes-Old-thread-https--warosu-org-lit-thread-5253469p-a733683
>yes, I am autistic
Cool
>What is Natomics
The study of the employment of linguistic units to create meaningfully conveyed relationships between abstracts among parties.
We watch how people talk to see how people think.
>What is the linguistic unit?
It's called a narreme and is defined here as "a change in world state" http://www4.ncsu.edu/~abaikad/narreme-proposal-compressed.pdf
In practice any time an image is conveyed or altered, we mark it, catalog it, and repeat.
>What good is that?
The units strung together hold patterns that are often times unique to the author and their personal library of patterns creates an incredibly reliable map of the way they use language to convey ideas.
>Isn't this just trope theory?
Naw bro. Tropes are content based and this is about the way images are strung together in the first place. We could care less if this is de Sade or Dr. Seuss, we're only interested in the way you're manipulating another person into understanding your intents. You use tropes actively. Basically no one uses narremes actively.
>Well what are the units?
I'm glad you asked, docs.google.com/document/d/1i2y2n8NP587S9EwR50JsPRorrPCjoRXk3GrJSA01vAc/ That's the list at last update.
>So if I were to do this myself what would it take?
A book about to get a lot of pen marking and a numberline. Box in narremes, identify their usage, note it and repeat that 10,000 times. Then you'll have data to work with.
>What can you use this for?
Identifying a known author in a set of unknown data is the most forward. You can establish a natomic profile of a subject and then look for their patterns within large sets to identify their contributions. With a database you go go the other way and compare a long enough instance of communication to establish a profile and then identify them based on a pool of potentials.
There's more but that's the easy stuff.
>There's a lot of languages that aren't English, have you ever done one?
I'm VERY interested in the multinational/cross-lingual aspects of natomics and have worked with a few translators and interpreters and we've got a workable method for dealing with natomics in translated language and it's literally 3x the work. You're better off just training someone else who knows the language and have them do it in natural tongue cause it works the same in all the languages because it's a required feature of language.
>What have you done so far?
Not a lot. Chunks of Cloud Atlas, Name of the Wind, Infinite Jest, my own work, and the Amber Chronicles. Never a whole book, and rarely full chapters. It takes about 15 minutes a page going at a pace I can sustain for eight or nine pages at most.
I gotta step out for a hot minute, when I get back I'll either pick a book or go with whatever one has votes.
This was labeled out of date but it's the most coherent explanation of the concepts to most new people.
- docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GQIDLEOToSSUHYZY7MISREozF6G6pFgqZD-niF91t1A
I'll be reading this thread when ı have some time.
PS: Lain is life.
>>7855847
I'll be doing Speaker for the Dead, a book written before I was born. Starting with the Prologue I'll get done...it and the beginning page or two of chapter 1. Isolate, identify, catalog, isolate, identify, catalog, etc. Welcome to the most tedious thing you can do with a book, counting words is more fun.
>>7855954
I refuse to miss a chance for Lainfagging
No idea what is happening here but Lian is coo
>>7856002
I isolated the entire prologue. It's Card at some of his best so there are some pretty neat tricks in some of the paragraphs. He made me scribble out my lines and I hate having to do that. Now comes identification. I think I have a name for everything I found, so nothing outstandingly new. Should be a routine 20 minute pass.
>>7856002
Tell me what you think it sounds like and I'll tell you how you're wrong.
>>7856013
And you don't seem to understand,
A shame you seemed an honest man.
And all the fears you hold so dear,
Will turn to whisper in your ear
And you know what they say might hurt you
And you know that it means so much
And you don't even feel a thing
holy fuck i remember reading through all the old threads when i accidentally stumbled on them in the archive, it was a fucking trip believe me. glad to see a comeback, godspeed
>>7855954
Maybe your time would be better spent writing a program to do it for you?
What are some books with the atmosphere and setting like Lain, like a mystical Internet?
I can't think of any. Will I have to write it?
Oh boy, so anyone watching me type noticed that I had to actually edit the Glossary, we found a new term. There's a whole process for restructuring the glossary in light of a new term but for now I'm just slapping it on the end of the family and moving on. It was the 4.8 family and stems from the first sentence on the second paragraph. "So it was". There's a declarative in the exposition tree, 2.3, and had even come up before in the paragraph prior, but this is at minimum a mixed narreme of the two. Since it's such a standard meta concept to employ that I almost think it's just a solo 4.8.1.
I don't know how I'd not seen one of those yet, but yaaaaay productivity. Go team.
>>7856051
Glad to welcome you to the fold. Love Lain anon.
>>7856064
I know how to do that but unless you've got a team and 5 million dollars to let me build a thinking machine just for the sake of automating this process along the way then you're welcome to sponsor me. Until then, this is how we do it.
Lain risen in popularity recently for some reason
>>7856079
>unless you've got 5 million dollars
PayPal?
So in your presentation you gave [it was night again.] as an example narreme, but why couldn't this be split into two, one for it being night and the other it being night again, as in it is a repetition? I may just be misunderstanding the basic unit but it seems like there are a lot of discrete thoughts that a sentence could be conveying which could be literal or implying something plot important. If there are two authors who use that example sentence, but only one is making the implication that it matters that it was night not for the first time, isn't there a difference in how they are distributing thoughts in their writing?
>>7856104
if u got 5 mil and the willingness there's like a dozen ways to figure out who i am irl from these insane threads i do. Figure it out.
>>7856121
when I read it in ur post i assumed it was listed as 2 as well, [it was night] [again]
>that presentation was back from before my glossary was nested
>don't hate me for it
and yes, you have to be able to discern what the unit is doing and the same words might do different things depending on the ones around them. there are mixed narremes and a discrete system that is evident from the way I box phrases in books. It shows a level of distribution the raw numbers dont. This is the first handful of narremes from tonight's gig for example.
[1.1.1] [1.2] [[[3.2] 2.2] 2.4.3] [3.2] [[3.2.3.1] 2.4] [3.2 [3.2.3] 3.2] [[2.2] 2.3] [4.8.1] [3.2] 2.2/.2.2.5] 3.2.1] [3.2.1] [3.2.1] [[4.6.3] 1.1.1] [[2.3.1] 2.2] 2.4] 2.4] 3.2.3][2.3.1]
It's late enough I've got to go to sleep so I can be up in the morn for pagan worships. I'll keep checking back until the thread dies and will post the full analysis of the prologue at the foot of the Working Glossary. It along with some non-narrative artifact will be posted for sure next Saturday night.
/lit/'s a slow board though. Infrequent on topic posting might be enough to keep the thread alive a while.
>>7856160
And there I go missing my chances to lainfag again, I'm the worst.
>>7856162
Good night lainon, you're doing good work. You got at least one convert tonight.
>>7856021
I AM FALLING
I AM FADING
I AM DROWNING
HELP ME TO BREATHE
>>7856182
Good to hear. If you have any questions feel free to ask!
>>7856250
>I am hurting
>I have lost it all
>I am losing
>Help me to breathe.
>>7856085
Kids these days are obsessed with 90's culture. Not surprising to see them go back to older anime (back when anime was still decent).
This is fascinating stuff OP, will be reading eagerly. Hardly understand it yet though.
>>7857392
Lain is also an increasingly relevant piece of media. The current US elections only look like they do due to the very electronically networked social consciousness. I use her because she makes a great God of the internet and I have problems and own a bear kirgurumi. She's also autistic as fuck.
Back on subject, I'll be finishing last night's translation tonight so check either this thread (assuming it exists) or the doc link above for the update after I get off work.
In the coming days I'll likely do some spoken word stump speeches for the current candidates for next Saturday's thread. The method itself doesn't change but the approach to it in non-narrative does. Instead of this being a conveyed shared reality it's pretty much painted DECLARATIVE in general and the protagonist either either you or the speaker or someone they know so you get this dual layer of noise that, while fascinating to note, is obnoxious to work inside. That said, I've got a good feeling about the contasts that will be highlighted.
>ps
I can translate the numberlines into colorlines and it makes learning it a lot easier but it's a lot of effort and I don't do it when I'm not expecting to be showing other people. In the future posts I'll be sure to do it. It turns narremes into color cells, one guy proposed in a group I was teaching that we should use this to paint pictures using words. I cringed, having already considered it and realized how HARD that would be to do well. Looked him in the eye, "YOU could do that, but I certainly won't."
>>7855847
OP did you develop this yourself? Google isn't turning anything up but /lit/ threads?
I'm not sure if you're a genius or insane(or both) but this whole idea sounds pretty interesting. Please continue making threads, I'll read your ramblings.
>>7857850
yeah, google scholar's not revealing anything. when op mentioned the thread being about the meaning behind languages, i immediately through "natomics" was somehow related to semiotics or some kind of semantic study. i think op made it up.
really confused as to the merit of this desu. it seems like storyboarding hidden behind impressive sounding (keyword: sounding) concepts. not that i fully claim to understand it, but it does seem a little worthless
so its close reading (with a touch of autism) then extrapolation?
>>7858119
does that mean only autistic people could engage in the study? RACIST. lulz.
>>7858116
I've only heard of this field of study today, but it does seem to have some merit when it comes to revealing an author's narrative structure, which isn't really USEFUL, but it is interesting and I remember that one document talking about eventual sociological data possibly becoming available if enough ground is covered. Sorry for rambling!
>>7858128
If you're not autistic by the end of it then you did it very wrong.
>>7857850
I am the originator of the analysis, yes. The unit comes from the more-or-less one-off paper noted above but had yet to be utilized in any meaningful manner and I NEEDED this to exist for a final I had backed myself into a corner for. After looking I found out no one had ever figured out how to make one and made my own in a couple days. It has improved a lot since the first presentation. It's the analytic of a semiotic approach to linguistic construction.
>>7858101
Correct on all accounts. Irl I've got about two dozen people who understand it and a handful who have done it.
>>7858116
You can use it to provide productive variety in your own work. You can use it to identify with clear cut evidence various features of a person's preferred (and available) methods thinking that can be identified across multiple formats. Think of it as a fingerprint of your ability to process information and convey inference about it, as seen by your choice in narreme production. What >>7858137 is talking about is the possibility of unique patterns being available to specific populations, which gives one the ability to generalize a profile of any unknown author given a database to compare.
So either using them yourself or others, there's multiple things that a person could be using it for. Even fundamental literary analysis suddenly becomes a quantitative event, showing how an author strings images together to create meaning out of a thing that didn't have any to start with.
>>7858119
Tracked on a unit to unit basis, evaluated at the specific angle of narreme translation, and presented in a strictly cause and effect fashion. One focusing on the manipulated form of a series of base intentions.
>>7858137
It's certainly been a useful thing to know in my life both interpreting the actual intentions of others and conveying my own to others.
>>7857432
Tell me what it sounds like and I'll steer you in the right direction where you need it.
>>7858560
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narreme
As the originator of the analysis, are you named on this page?
I am this guy
>>7858116
and remain sort of confused. I get the structural element of the analysis, that was really apparent from the start thanks to copious Levi-Strauss in undergrad. I guess first off I wonder why you work on so many authors at once? Wouldn't it be better to completely analyze one author's oeuvre and pick out the patterns from that? I guess what I mean to say is that there's so many ways that a talented writer (or even an only somewhat talented one) could develop a story/narrative structure, you'd need a large data set from them (i.e., their complete analyzed works) to see what techniques are statistically significant. Does that make sense? Not sure I worded it well.
Even in my skepticism, this is one of the more interesting things I've seen on /lit/ in a long time OP.
>>7858642
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narreme
Nope, most of the things talked about here are not narremes as defined for this purpose. "The narreme, however, has yet to be persuasively defined in practice." Ours is very clear, as defined in the link above, "A change in world state." Narremes were a hot topic for like a day and a half back in the 70s and then abandoned because none of the definitions produced anything worthwhile and no one had ever formalized a method of analysis. Most articles you'll hit with the word are circlejerks about things closer to trope theory or traditional linguistic phraseologies.
As for your confusion: I work on so many authors because I get bored and haven't been doing a lot of this because Life and other projects. It's a side thing I develop that I wish I could do more but unless someone's paying me to do it full time, I'm a bit tied up.
Additionally there's not as many units as I think you're assuming. We've got about 100 in the glossary and I'd expect that to only triple or so in my lifetime. You don't NEED a lot of them to operate on a day to day basis. Sure the suuuper complicated like Joyce or Danielewski or Wallace are gonna have huge libraries at their disposal and have complex patterns, but most people are very very simple with their natomic usages due to comfort and availability. This is a FIELD OF STUDY and I'm one dude who kinda-does-it-sometimes. Once there's others on board for some rigorous work, I have the whole system outlined for how people working on live material can participate with one another. As is, it's me, five good students, and the people who listen without strictly calling me a lunatic.
>>7858642
>narration is the projection of a narreme N0, the abstract head of a narrative macrostructure where Nn dominates immediately Nn-1 (Wittmann 1995).[1]
So it's a derivative?
>>7856077
Bleeding Edge has a mystical Internet, but a pretty different feel.
>>7858785
I personally find Wittmann's definition to be rather silly as it describes the narreme as a single instance altered irreparably as it moves forward, being replaced as the reader moves through, but that ignores the very temporal nature of the recipient themselves.
His definition only works if you suppose the recipient of a natomic structure is entirely at the whims of the one creating it. That they aren't natomic beings to begin with. Natomics is exploited by linguistic beings to achieve a middle-ground by which intents are actually transferred and PERFORMERS are aware of that, it's what makes them performers in the first place.
If everyone was really really shitty at words just all the time, only then does Wittmann get to be true.
>>7855847
I need to rewatch Lain
>>7858771
From the screenshot in our old google docs presentation it looks like you're working with a spreadsheet.
Barring how incredibly labour intensive your process is, are the documents you're creating amenable to automated analysis?
I don't know enough about computer science/data structures but I'm concerned that you're creating an unworkable text file.
Also, what about starting with shorter stories?
An author like Borges could be much more productive.
His work is regularly features multiple layers of metafiction and as a whole is quite self reflexive. A good way to test your narremes and how they fold in on themselves.
Plus his style is so idiosyncratic is could be proof for whether your system identifies authors.
>>7858771
Hm. Honestly senpai, that doesn't sound like a very well defined unit of analysis. Again, I'm not just trying to be a deflating cunt about your project, but "a change in world state" -- so we could be talking a temporal shift, a geographic one, a new set of characters. I guess it's just sort of very different from the kinds of analysis I'm used to (in anthropology). Further, what kind of backing do you have? Is there any institutional network to this or is it just you, the Internet narreme Jesus who has a few others on board?
>>7859178
I usually do a spreadsheet when doing comparisons or a natomic translation. For presentation of data at this point I've got a scorecard that I fill out on a piece or author that utilizes a color pallet system rather than numbers and helps non-Me people understand what they're looking at. I can have a digital one in next week's thread.
As far as automation, you have to ask yourself "do I have a database with every possible instance of any given narreme?" Since your answer is No, you're required to make a machien that is capable of interacting with Language natively in order to automate. That's a singularity level machine. In action the machine has to interact with knowledge and language in a manner equal to that of a person.
I know how to do that.
I do not have the funds or social networks to pull it off. It would require me teaching several neat things to someone that could program in CNET and had access to a Hololens cause you have to simulate something. I live in a city suburb but the city itself has a not small technology community, I introduced myself and met with very highly respected people and explained how to do it and those that appreciated my existence couldn't help while those that could help very much didn't want me around. At the same time they all agreed they had no reason why it wouldn't work, which at that point was even more infuriating. That was December.
Getting the damn machine built was what put the whole thing on back burner to begin with.
>>7859258
>https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i2y2n8NP587S9EwR50JsPRorrPCjoRXk3GrJSA01vAc
A lot of that is explained by looking at the glossary. You bring up good points that are addressed in its structure.
I did this for a couple papers back at college, it was my final in Folklore (first thing I did with it), my capstone was a presentation on how david mitchell was a shitty writer if Cloud Atlas is supposed to be indicative of his work.
>>7859309
Must be that time of the night again.
>>7859294
I'm not talking about a machine that would provide the translation of narrative into naremes.
I mean when you've collected these datasets can it then be skimmed over by algorithms in order to make visualisations/patterns or create whatever outputs you need in order to automate the process of analyzing your findings.
>>7859390
apologies, any typed ones are usually in an excel spreadsheet
>>7859436
i clearly need more coffee
>>7858371
>not checking your privilege because not everyone is autistic
>>7855847
Wow anon you should seek someone fund your research. It has a lot of potential applications and specially for people with autism or language problems.
I hope you keep doing it in a free (as in free software) way like this. After all, knowledge must be free.
>>7858844
>If everyone was really really shitty at words just all the time, only then does Wittmann get to be true.
true. humans are auto-correcting systems when it comes to language and they get better at it the more they are properly exposed to the source material.
>>7855847
>We track these units to uncover patterns in their usage that differs from person to person in unique ways. Being able to do this enables a casual user to be more aware of their manner they convey their intents,
isn't this the same as simply teaching "context," and that words' values and meaning change based on the social and cultural context from which they come?
This seem similar to social-constructionist theories, noting how language shapes culture and vice-versa. it seems rather difficult to identity each unit of a word on a separate basis since the meaning of the separate units themselves are basically structured by context. the other thing is that context is cultural and constantly changing. the possibilities of different combinations and interpretations would be infinite in scope. in other words, it just doesn't seem feasible to try and identify and class them all from some kind of structural perspective. perhaps i'm misunderstanding your study's intent.
>>7859688
Nope. "Context" has to do with content. Being aware of how you're employing singles strung together images to warp an intent for reception is usually something to regard sans-content except to note distribution.
It's closest to a very rigorous close reading, but on a unit to unit basis, and specifically examining the point of creation for an image or relationship rather than simply the artifact left over afterwards.
>>7859663
There was a young autistic boy in the last threads and he adored the system. It's got bigger applications outside of language coaching, but like how it's helpful for LSAT training, Natomics is useful for coaching as well.
I feel bad for other autists because the way we're taught to think about language and the way language actually works is so different it's a little embarrassing. And autists NEED to be told the truth about how things actually work otherwise they take action based on inappropriate instruction which creates predictably bad scenarios.
>>7859688
So i apparently missed your second paragraph.
Then words themselves don't matter, so the "infinite combinations" of english without recursion are not an issue. We're not studying or marking what the words ARE or what they MEAN but how that meaning is achieved with those words as they evolve a shared world with the reader through time.
As such, you should look at the glossary to note exactly what the units are that I use so you can see how it's different than a TVTropes database or the like (which is, in it's own right, a BEAUTIFUL database).
> /docs.google.com/document/d/1i2y2n8NP587S9EwR50JsPRorrPCjoRXk3GrJSA01vAc
