In The Geometry and Topology of 3-Manifolds, Thurston speaks of the “extrinsic” vs “intrinsic” view of {the 3-sphere − a knot}.
I like learning words for something that’s been kicking the walls of my head trying to get out. Sometimes I can look at the world in an objective way, and sometimes everything centres on me.
- Extrinsic I and you and they are cerebral plains-apes, doing all of the things one would expect such to do. Chasing after money, status, sex, it’s all pretty simple when you see things this way.
- Extrinsic your exotic mind-expanding holiday is just a status signal.
- Extrinsic the hobby or job you hang your identity on tells me that you’re bourgeois and therefore define yourself through your activities or achievements.
- Intrinsic reinterprets monkeys’ “social grooming” as an activity that actually feels like something.
- Intrinsic is being in love.
- Extrinsic is love as a neurochemical sequence–dopamine, adrenaline, vasopressin, norepinephrine, oxytocin–generated by chance mutations and selective reproduction in response to an evolutionary problem.
- Extrinsic is 5,000 applicants for 5 jobs = 1‰ chance of getting it.
- Intrinsic my application was rejected so I’m a failure.
- Extrinsic is the pale blue dot, spaceship Earth, a wet rock bearing eukaryotes.
- Extrinsic I’m one of 10000 options s/he has on this dating site.
- Intrinsic is me; my likes, my interests; the homunculus behind the camera, 我, my life. Extrinsic this display is again an outgrowth of my bourgeois background.
- Intrinsic is exotic Peshawar, a world away and uncomfortably hot.
Extrinsic is more primates with a different culture-function applied to them. Going through the same life-stages, wearing different customs. Instead of going to a pub they do some sober, Pakistani alternative–but it’s all the same, all human stuff just expressed differently. - Extrinsic when Parisians kiss each other on the cheek it’s not romantic, it’s just like a handshake.
- Intrinsic it’s gross that my parents have sex.
- Intrinsic I hate this town I hate the football games I hate the fakeness I hate the parochial small-mindedness there’s something better in store for me I need to get out of here I will get out of here
- Extrinsic is a visitor look how excited these people are about their quaint sports and amusements! That’s so nice.
- Intrinsic is being engrossed in reading.
- Extrinsic is seeing someone sitting still looking at paper with glyphs on it.
- Intrinsic is noticing how Thomas Piketty’s lower teeth are not-at-all straight like George Clooney’s, and being taken back a bit. Extrinsic is knowing that Piketty earns his stature from books and papers (arrayed behind him) whereas Clooney earns based on his looks.
- Intrinsic is waking up in the morning driven by the will to understand pseudo-Riemannian metrics and thereby, the Universe.
Chanting “sheaf cohomology” like a shamanic totem, carving it into my forehead my topknot my yarmulke my niqab, showing the world what’s inside my head and wishing they love me for it.
- Extrinsic I’m yet another plains-ape distracted by ego, status-signalling, and a scientific religion, cultured by stimuli that practically guaranteed I would behave this way.
- Intrinsic my new friend is so cool! She is friends with someone famous!
- Extrinsic of course she leads with her connection to the desirable; it’s all part of her personal branding scheme.
- Intrinsic is the many self-serious songs about my chain, my ding-a-ling, whatever.
- extrinsic is a boy in love with his homeostatic skin flap.
- Intrinsic is watching an ad targeted at you, and just reacting.
- Extrinsic is watching an ad that makes no sense to you, and thinking about the ad on a higher level.
- Intrinsic is appetite; craving; addiction.
- Extrinsic is flavourful sustenance.
- Extrinsic is asthexia; cachenia; syncope; renal failure.
- Intrinsic is the only death that matters (mine).
- Intrinsic is write drunk.
- Extrinsic is revise sober.
Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human. –George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
