Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“Idiomatic intelligence/intelligent idiomaticity can be scaled up and down as much as we need—an individual is a site of II/II, so is an institution, so is the commander of the armed forces. The closer we get to the center, the more intelligence is gathered and the more tightly woven the idioms—or that, at least, is a test of the centrality of the center. Intelligence is released from the center in distributed idioms. And this brings us back to the model declarative, because the answer to the unanswerable question is tracing the convergence of idiom and intelligence to the center. The unanswerable question is posed in an idiom that it simultaneously accuses of having no “ultimate” declarative backing, and it presupposes intelligence not in its possession. Whence the question, in its current formulation? That sets us on the trail of precedents, establishments, and modes of succession, leading to the vertex where idiom meets intelligence. And we’re not always sure where we will find this vertex—what we call the “state” is certainly the most heavily named institution, but the system of naming can lapse, involving a decline in intelligence and a loosening of the idiomaticity of the system. Provisional convergences of idioms and intelligences can name these lapses, and create new idioms and intelligences: think of it as a party (I’m borrowing from a recent post of Curtis Yarvin here) interested only in taking power to the exclusion of all other parties and thereby developing an uninfiltratable idiom of infiltration that would dissolve the party upon its success in the intelligent institution of that idiom.”

— Adam Katz, Idiomatic Intelligence/Intelligent Idiomaticity · Feb 14, 2021 · Bouvard Substack