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Marlinspiral

Universal Knot Untier
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A marlinspike is a spike for untieing knots. It works because it is harder and slidyer than the material that the knot is tied in. I learned - from tieing and untieing a lot of knots in plastic bags - that there is a repetitive motion that, along with feedback, can be employed to untie a knot in a material automatically -- in an adaptive manner. So you can untie the knot by spacing your fingers evenly and moving your hands in figure-8 movements against eachother, and only paying attention to how much resistance you are feeling from your fingers. Then if you go in the other direction you can retie the knot.

So this idea is for an adaptive springy spiraled feedback knot untier. A Marlinspiral, or marlinhelix? The "fingers" of the tool would get thinner and thinner away from the tool, and be adaptive, like springy and bouncy, so that they couldn't fold back on them selves but soft enough to find the path of least resistance and get in the nooks and crannys of a knot. On a micro level maybe the tool fingers have little barbule spirals on them that translate a vibration into a walking-into or walking-out-of-a-knot motion.

Higher tech versions could be used first for psychiatry and then as materials develop, noosphere tuning.

JesusHChrist, Nov 05 2006

Knots http://www.oikos.org/knotpageen.htm
Some of R.D. Laing's poems [imaginality, Nov 07 2006]

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       Alexander had the right idea for hard to untie knots.
Chefboyrbored, Nov 06 2006
  

       //Higher tech versions could be used first for psychiatry and then as materials develop, noosphere tuning.//   

       Can you explain what you're talking about? Are you talking about knots in thought or communications?
jmvw, Nov 06 2006
  

       I was thinking that maybe all problems are just tangles and if you had a machine that could undo tangles and it got really high tech, and if everything is just physical, then it might be able to undo any kind of problem.
JesusHChrist, Nov 07 2006
  

       [JesusHChrist], your psychiatry remark reminds me of a book of poems by R. D. Laing (a radical psychiatrist who focused on understanding psychosis), called 'Knots'.   

       One example (see the link for others):   

       "They are playing a game.
They are playing at not playing a game.
If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game."
  

       Some of the poems definitely convey a clear feeling for how people's thought processes can become tangled and knotted in various ways.
imaginality, Nov 07 2006
  

       Thank you. I like reading the pages and I like the idea.
jmvw, Nov 07 2006
  


 

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