for Craig
Terren Suydam
Why do you focus exclusively on electromagnetism as the fundament of
"sensorimotive"? Wouldn't strong and weak nuclear forces have the
same basic "sensorimotive" properties?
Terren
Craig Weinberg
I use electromagnetism because it has an iron clad association with
sensroimotive experience. That is the main symmetry I want to get
across. Once we understand that, all forces, strong, weak,
electromagnetic, and gravitational would be different inertial frames
of reference of the same thing. They make sense in different ways, as
would be appropriate when you are talking about density of large
objects versus charge of atoms or how atoms are held together and fall
apart, but to me these are just computational details. It's *all*
sensorimotive-electromagnetism.
The most provocative possibility of this is that rather than a
Classical limit in the microcosm at which QED supersedes Newton, there
is a Copernican limit at which we stop detecting objects per se and
begin detecting our own instruments sensitivity itself. Atoms are
antennas, and quantum mechanics are the exterior most aspects of the
broadcasts. The form of the broadcasts looks electromagnetic to us
(from the outside) but feels sensorimotive to us from the inside. Not
that our perception is literally atomic, just as TV programs aren't
only pixels, but our perception is figuratively meta-meta-meta-meta
atomic.
Craig
Stephen P. King
Right on, Right on! That is most telling to me is that what you are
saying here is just another way of thinking about what Bruno calls the
"level of substitution".
Onward!
Stephen
Terren Suydam
I don't understand why you don't allow machine consciousness if in your theory all forces give rise to sense. What is special about the kinds of "forces" inherent in a biological organism? It smells like vitalism.
What is especially confusing about your position is that you allow that structure puts limitations on subjective experience (I.e. lack of rods and cones will prevent one from seeing color). Based on that you are already close to comp. It is very hard for non-comp theories to account for the changes in subjectivity that occur in tandem with brain damage, psychoactive drugs, and so on.
Somewhere in your theory must be an account of the differences between biological cell and a functional silicon-based equivalent, since the same low level forces are involved in both. Why does the substance matter when any physical substrate is subject to basic electromagnetic and nuclear forces? If that silicon version has the proper structure (organization) then why in your theory wouldn't it have subjective experience?
Terren
Craig Weinberg
> I don't understand why you don't allow machine consciousness if in your
> theory all forces give rise to sense.
appearance of force.
> What is special about the kinds of
> "forces" inherent in a biological organism? It smells like vitalism.
survive. Most matter is not alive and we cannot eat it. This isn't
some flaky theory, it's just pointing out the obvious. We distinguish
biology from chemistry for a reason. It's only special to biological
organisms. They have an opinion about whether they keep living or not.
>
> What is especially confusing about your position is that you allow that
> structure puts limitations on subjective experience (I.e. lack of rods and
> cones will prevent one from seeing color). Based on that you are already
> close to comp. It is very hard for non-comp theories to account for the
> changes in subjectivity that occur in tandem with brain damage,
> psychoactive drugs, and so on.
If you change one, it can have an influence sometimes on the other.
Not always though. They overlap and diverge. I can consciously
breathe, or I can observe that I am breathing. I can control my body
in important ways, my body can control me in important ways.
>
> Somewhere in your theory must be an account of the differences between
> biological cell and a functional silicon-based equivalent, since the same
> low level forces are involved in both. Why does the substance matter when
> any physical substrate is subject to basic electromagnetic and nuclear
> forces? If that silicon version has the proper structure (organization)
> then why in your theory wouldn't it have subjective experience?
without a space suit. Why are all cells made of carbohydrates and
amino acids and not silicates and sulfuric acid? Why is 79 protons
gold but 79 golf balls just a bucket full of balls? Because the
universe that we see as matter and machines is only the exterior. The
interior is a universe of private narratives that accumulate over
time. The carbon based story turned out to be more interesting for us.
Is it because we're made of carbon or are we lucky that carbon
happened to be interesting. My hunch is a little of both.
Craig
meekerdb
Biological organisms are alive. They eat other living organisms to survive. Most matter is not alive and we cannot eat it. This isn't some flaky theory, it's just pointing out the obvious.
I guess plants and photosynthesis are obscure to you.
Brent
Terren Suydam
makes life its own ontological primitive. There is a difference
between living things and non-living things, and the gap between them
cannot be bridged. Life is magical, in the sense that it cannot be
explained.
I cannot subscribe to such a "theory" because it draws a line where no
more questions can be asked (like religion). Anyway, I think it's more
interesting, challenging, and rewarding to consider possible theories
and explanations of how living things can and do self-assemble from
non-living parts.
Terren
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Craig Weinberg
consciousness is not a product of plant experience. Of course eating
other animals is considered pivotal in the development of hominid
intelligence. That may not be the case, but we certainly eat a lot of
animals now. Plants don't seem to have developed much of a
consciousness that we can relate to.
Craig Weinberg
On Jan 29, 10:20 am, Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, I think I understand you a little better. You are a vitalist who
> makes life its own ontological primitive.
Neither are primitive. There is only one primitive and that is ense,
aka sensorimotive electomagenism. Biology is important to us because
we are biological. Animals, people, and members of our social groups
are imporant to us for the same reason. Life is as special and not
special to the universe as it seems. Now sacred and protected.. now
forsaken and cursed.
> There is a difference
> between living things and non-living things, and the gap between them
> cannot be bridged. Life is magical, in the sense that it cannot be
> explained.
crystals bridge life and abiotic structures. Life is important to
living things. That you must admit. If you think that is a mistake
that should be corrected, I understand, but I disagree. The
significance of survival is not an illusion.
> I cannot subscribe to such a "theory" because it draws a line where no
> more questions can be asked (like religion). Anyway, I think it's more
> interesting, challenging, and rewarding to consider possible theories
> and explanations of how living things can and do self-assemble from
> non-living parts.
>
form cells, etc. It's sense. Not just logic or arithmetic or physics,
but experiences of worlds.
>
Craig
Terren Suydam
organic molecule to biological cell", then why is that one could not
make a similar step from a synthetic (silicon, say) substrate to a
synthetic cell? What is the difference? Both the organic molecule
and the silicon (or whatever) substrate are subject to the same
electromagnetic (and nuclear etc) forces, so what specifically makes
life possible with one and not the other?
Terren
Craig Weinberg
> So if in your theory life is explainable in terms of a "step from
> organic molecule to biological cell", then why is that one could not
> make a similar step from a synthetic (silicon, say) substrate to a
> synthetic cell? What is the difference?
that lives and dies and grows by itself, then you might indeed have
synthetic life. The problem is that it would be uncontrollable to the
same extent that it is alive. If we could make computers out of living
tissues or organisms now, we would do it, but they aren't reliable.
They have their own agenda. I don't see why silicon life would be any
different.
> Both the organic molecule
> and the silicon (or whatever) substrate are subject to the same
> electromagnetic (and nuclear etc) forces, so what specifically makes
> life possible with one and not the other?
1. Carbon happened to get lucky first but anything can become alive
under the right conditions. Everything will come to life eventually or
some things will randomly.
or
2. Carbon is uniquely chemically friendly because of it's atomic
properties. Maybe no other atom can substitute. Synthetic life may
never be conscious and DNA is a unique recipe.
3. Life may be a top down phenomena with a cell as it's irreducible
unit, like a language, which uses a particular range of low level
molecular configurations as we use circles, lines, dots, and loops to
form our written language. Life can't make it's complex genetic
spaghetti out of just any substance, it has to be able cook itself al
dente, just as we can't build our computers out of pasta. We could
make synthetic life from another recipe, but it has to be similar to
DNA.
4. Life may be in the eye of the bolder. If we were the size of
Jupiter and lived for billions of years, our scope of perception might
be such that the atmospheres of planets were like waltzing cells or
faces that sum up the content of the entire planet's activities as our
perception sums up our brain's activities. We could be neurons in the
Earth's brain, who knows? In which case, life vs non life is a matter
of perspective - anything can come to life under the influence of the
right stuff.
5. Life may be relative to a point, but have invariant properties as
well. Maybe even at a rate of a thousand years a minute, the solar
system is still too dull to be thought of as life. Maybe it's a
different kind of sensemaking than life. Synthetic life could be life-
like, but never really alive.
6. Comp - Life is a degree of complexity and self-reflexivity in
logic. Intelligence and compassion are just an android away...
Terren Suydam
Now my next question is, why can't a synthetic organism (like one made
of silicon that you have allowed may be alive, given the proper
organization) have subjective experience? Again with the usual
reminders that carbon-based and silicon-based life forms would both be
subject to identical electromagnetic/nuclear/gravitational forces.
Terren
Craig Weinberg
> OK, great, we're on the same page.
>
> Now my next question is, why can't a synthetic organism (like one made
> of silicon that you have allowed may be alive, given the proper
> organization) have subjective experience?
limited one. If you can get a synthetic organism to grow out of
silicon and write it's own program like a human cell does, then it's
subjective experience will reflect that. If you just make a silicon
machine, that has no idea what kinds of symbolic intentions are being
projected onto it's one dimensional subjectivity, then you have a
clever design of a microelectronic puppet.
> Again with the usual
> reminders that carbon-based and silicon-based life forms would both be
> subject to identical electromagnetic/nuclear/gravitational forces.
They aren't. This doesn't even get into my view that forces are
behaviors of matter and not disembodied metaphysical principles. If
I'm right, ALL forces (experienced changes over time) are
interphysical.
Craig
John Mikes
On Jan 28, 5:20 pm, Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't understand why you don't allow machine consciousness if in your
> theory all forces give rise to sense.
Craig wrote:Biological organisms are alive. They eat other living organisms to
survive. Most matter is not alive and we cannot eat it. This isn't
some flaky theory, it's just pointing out the obvious. We distinguish
biology from chemistry for a reason. It's only special to biological
organisms. They have an opinion about whether they keep living or not.
>
Craig wrote:
It matters for the same reason that we can't survive on the Moon
without a space suit. Why are all cells made of carbohydrates and
amino acids and not silicates and sulfuric acid? Why is 79 protons
gold but 79 golf balls just a bucket full of balls? Because the
universe that we see as matter and machines is only the exterior. The
interior is a universe of private narratives that accumulate over
time. The carbon based story turned out to be more interesting for us.
Is it because we're made of carbon or are we lucky that carbon
happened to be interesting. My hunch is a little of both.
Craig
John Mikes
--
Terren Suydam
Great, still on the same page. Without getting into speculations about the kinds of subjective experience a synthetic organism might have, we agree that whatever they do experience would be shaped in some way by their organization (like having rods and cones or the silicon equivalents would allow for the possibility of the experience of color).
We also apparently agree that it is the interactions among the parts (eg the forces), and not what the parts are made of per se, that determines the subjectivity (granting your point that different substrates might not have identical dynamics). If a silicon organism and a carbon based organism did hypothetically experience identical forces, as you say, they would be identical.
Terren
Craig Weinberg
>
> > On Jan 28, 5:20 pm, Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I don't understand why you don't allow machine consciousness if in your
> > > theory all forces give rise to sense.
>
> > survive. Most matter is not alive and we cannot eat it. This isn't
> > some flaky theory, it's just pointing out the obvious. We distinguish
> > biology from chemistry for a reason. It's only special to biological
> > organisms. They have an opinion about whether they keep living or not.
>
> JM: as I like to say: a sperm and an egg are alive, because you would not
> get conception from dead material. The reason we distinguish chemistry from
> biology is our ignorance: we know precious little of the so called
> 'chemistry' and much much less from what we like to call 'bio'. Just think
> about the alterations in the past about those (conventional) science terms.
> Atom? explanation mainly matheamtical, on the so far available
> (misunderstood?) observations - changed whenever a new item (aspect?)
> emerges from the unknown.
entertainment industry. Titillate the public with exotic scenarios to
cover up the fact that we have no idea what is actually going on.
> What is the opinion of your sperm to keep living?
>
>
>
> > *Craig wrote*:
> > without a space suit. Why are all cells made of carbohydrates and
> > amino acids and not silicates and sulfuric acid? Why is 79 protons
> > gold but 79 golf balls just a bucket full of balls? Because the
> > universe that we see as matter and machines is only the exterior. The
> > interior is a universe of private narratives that accumulate over
> > time. The carbon based story turned out to be more interesting for us.
> > Is it because we're made of carbon or are we lucky that carbon
> > happened to be interesting. My hunch is a little of both.
>
Right, if 79 protons are gold, then that must make a proton 1/79th of
a gold atom. We could make a whole chemo-arithmetic out of that. A
proton is .25 of a Boron atom, 0.004201 of a uranium atom. We could
announce that as a certainty. Ta-daa, this is where qualia comes
from.Never mind that it's meaningless...it's a fact!
> I like your "univers that we see *AS *matter and machines" - I don't.
> I have no idea what that "infinite complexity" is constructed of that is
> beyond our 'model' of our universe in which we think we live.
> It is (according to MY narrative) necessarily exuding universes of quite
> (unrestricted) qualia and re-absorbing them into the complexity. Tima
> and Space are OUR coordinates for THIS universe of ours. Carbon???
> Matter? I don't speculate beyond the capabilities of human thinking.
It's great to be able to peer into other levels of the universe, but
ultimately the only universe we can ever really know is the one that
is presented to us directly. Everything else is important only to the
extent that it translates into something meaningful to us in the here
and now as humans.
Craig
Craig
Craig Weinberg
> Great, still on the same page. Without getting into speculations about the
> kinds of subjective experience a synthetic organism might have, we agree
> that whatever they do experience would be shaped in some way by their
> organization (like having rods and cones or the silicon equivalents would
> allow for the possibility of the experience of color).
They are part of the same thing, although perpendicular (organization
is material forms across volumetric space, experience is entangled
perceptions through sequential time...exact opposites, always.)
>
> We also apparently agree that it is the interactions among the parts (eg
> the forces), and not what the parts are made of per se, that determines the
> subjectivity
civilization arises from a history of actual human beings living and
working together. The culture is not an expression of abstract forces
among people, it is a concrete realization of people themselves, just
as a coral reef is an expression of coral, not reefness.
> (granting your point that different substrates might not have
> identical dynamics). If a silicon organism and a carbon based organism did
> hypothetically experience identical forces, as you say, they would be
> identical.
physical beings (person, asteroid, star, atom, etc). When we
experience our own forces, it's consciousness, life, work, family,
friends, dreams, etc. When we experience something else's forces, it
depends how similar that thing is to us. If it's pretty similar, we
say it's an animal, and it's forces are instincts. If it's a cell or
molecule, we say it's chemical reactions. If it's a physical substance
we say it's energy. It's all one thing - stuff being and doing. Not
beingness and doingness pretending that it's stuff. Again, it's more
useful to model it the wrong way, because that's how we can figure out
how to cheat the system, but if we want to understand what is actually
going on and what consciousness really is, we need to turn it inside
out and come to our own senses.
Craig
Terren Suydam
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:35 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
> They are part of the same thing, although perpendicular (organization
> is material forms across volumetric space, experience is entangled
> perceptions through sequential time...exact opposites, always.)
This contradicts what you said earlier, when you said experience and
organization overlap and influence each other, but not always. I can
dig out the reference if you need me to, it was just a couple days
ago.
>>
>> We also apparently agree that it is the interactions among the parts (eg
>> the forces), and not what the parts are made of per se, that determines the
>> subjectivity
>
> No, the interactions arise from the parts themselves, just as
> civilization arises from a history of actual human beings living and
> working together. The culture is not an expression of abstract forces
> among people, it is a concrete realization of people themselves, just
> as a coral reef is an expression of coral, not reefness.
We are basically saying the same thing here. To disagree is to get
caught up in semantics.
>> (granting your point that different substrates might not have
>> identical dynamics). If a silicon organism and a carbon based organism did
>> hypothetically experience identical forces, as you say, they would be
>> identical.
>
> Right, because forces are figurative. All forces are experiences of
> physical beings (person, asteroid, star, atom, etc). When we
> experience our own forces, it's consciousness, life, work, family,
> friends, dreams, etc. When we experience something else's forces, it
> depends how similar that thing is to us. If it's pretty similar, we
> say it's an animal, and it's forces are instincts. If it's a cell or
> molecule, we say it's chemical reactions. If it's a physical substance
> we say it's energy. It's all one thing - stuff being and doing. Not
> beingness and doingness pretending that it's stuff. Again, it's more
> useful to model it the wrong way, because that's how we can figure out
> how to cheat the system, but if we want to understand what is actually
> going on and what consciousness really is, we need to turn it inside
> out and come to our own senses.
OK, but I will just add my voice to the chorus and ask: how do you
know this? Just as Bruno says, you speak as if you know the truth of
the matter, when at best all anyone has is a nice model that explains
what is happening, and/or simulates such a model to make predictions.
After all this time I still don't understand your model, and you
haven't made any predictions in spite of your religious confidence in
your theory.
My hunch is that you have developed strong intuitions over the years
and formulated what, to you, feels like a cohesive integration of all
your intuitions about the way the world is, and gave it a name. The
funny thing, to me, is that many of your intuitions *would* make you a
computationalist, except that you have an even stronger intuition in
the primacy of "sense" and its assumed symmetry with electromagnetic
force (and nuclear forces, and gravity). However, once you make
"sense" primary, you assume what is to be explained (as Bruno says),
and just as bad, there is still the mystery of how the sense/force
symmetry works, how it can have "bidirectional causality", and so on.
It has never been clear what the payoff is for going along with all
that - it's an awful lot to assume out of the gate.
I hope it is apparent that I have made an honest attempt to understand
your ideas, but I don't really expect you to be able to answer my
queries in a way that satisfies my curiosity and desire for coherence,
because my impression is that you are too invested in your worldview
to look at it from a skeptical outsider's point of view. Instead, my
expectation is that you will tell me I'm wrong, or that I haven't made
the effort, or you will continue to use imprecise language and
metaphors to explicate what is ultimately a haphazard pile of
disconnected and fuzzy intuitions, when what would make me happy is
some equations and some predictions. That's why Bruno's ideas are
compelling, because he actually has equations and predictions and a
story for the mind/body problem that doesn't assume anything but
elementary math... pretty awesome when you think about it, wouldn't
you say? Even if he's wrong, that's a hell of a contribution.
Terren
Craig Weinberg
> > They are part of the same thing, although perpendicular (organization
> > is material forms across volumetric space, experience is entangled
> > perceptions through sequential time...exact opposites, always.)
>
> This contradicts what you said earlier, when you said experience and
> organization overlap and influence each other, but not always. I can
> dig out the reference if you need me to, it was just a couple days
> ago.
want an app on my Droid and go seek it out and install it, or I might
get a message to update an app that causes me to install that. There
is the possibility of causal influence going in both directions, but
that doesn't mean that I am becoming software or software is becoming
me. We are still always 'opposites' in this context.
>
>
>
> >> We also apparently agree that it is the interactions among the parts (eg
> >> the forces), and not what the parts are made of per se, that determines the
> >> subjectivity
>
> > No, the interactions arise from the parts themselves, just as
> > civilization arises from a history of actual human beings living and
> > working together. The culture is not an expression of abstract forces
> > among people, it is a concrete realization of people themselves, just
> > as a coral reef is an expression of coral, not reefness.
>
> We are basically saying the same thing here. To disagree is to get
> caught up in semantics.
conventional notion of 'forces' like 'laws' which govern interaction
rather than what I am talking about which is sense and motive. There
are no forces floating around free, it's all layers of different kinds
of motive capacities of different molecules, cells, bodies, brains,
etc.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >> (granting your point that different substrates might not have
> >> identical dynamics). If a silicon organism and a carbon based organism did
> >> hypothetically experience identical forces, as you say, they would be
> >> identical.
>
> > Right, because forces are figurative. All forces are experiences of
> > physical beings (person, asteroid, star, atom, etc). When we
> > experience our own forces, it's consciousness, life, work, family,
> > friends, dreams, etc. When we experience something else's forces, it
> > depends how similar that thing is to us. If it's pretty similar, we
> > say it's an animal, and it's forces are instincts. If it's a cell or
> > molecule, we say it's chemical reactions. If it's a physical substance
> > we say it's energy. It's all one thing - stuff being and doing. Not
> > beingness and doingness pretending that it's stuff. Again, it's more
> > useful to model it the wrong way, because that's how we can figure out
> > how to cheat the system, but if we want to understand what is actually
> > going on and what consciousness really is, we need to turn it inside
> > out and come to our own senses.
>
> OK, but I will just add my voice to the chorus and ask: how do you
> know this?
> Just as Bruno says, you speak as if you know the truth of
> the matter, when at best all anyone has is a nice model that explains
> what is happening, and/or simulates such a model to make predictions.
> After all this time I still don't understand your model, and you
> haven't made any predictions in spite of your religious confidence in
> your theory.
progress, civilization, as well as randomness, chaos, meaninglessness.
I don't understand what it is that you want it to predict? It's like a
general picture of a car, showing that the interior is a certain way
and the exterior is a certain way, and how the two relate, why they
relate and why the thing as a whole is a car. It's not a manual for
manufacturing or repairing cars. As for speaking as if I know the
truth, I don't know how else I'm supposed to speak. Obviously these
are my own ideas, I have only thought experiments to support them,
should I say 'maybe' in every sentence? I'm really only interested in
the ideas, not the politics and persuasion. I'm happy to clarify
anything, answer questions, collaborate, debate, but I don't see the
relevance of my writing style or attitude. If I say something that
seems untrue, tell me why you think it's untrue, otherwise, why not
entertain the possibility that I might be right and see if makes sense
to you?
>
> My hunch is that you have developed strong intuitions over the years
> and formulated what, to you, feels like a cohesive integration of all
> your intuitions about the way the world is, and gave it a name. The
> funny thing, to me, is that many of your intuitions *would* make you a
> computationalist, except that you have an even stronger intuition in
> the primacy of "sense" and its assumed symmetry with electromagnetic
> force (and nuclear forces, and gravity).
experiences, reasoning. But yes, it feels like a fairly cohesive
integration and I gave it a name. Computationalism I think it almost
exactly true, but if you are trying for a more absolute understanding,
then comp is exactly inverted. Sense can make information but
information cannot make sense without something to make sense of it.
> However, once you make
> "sense" primary, you assume what is to be explained (as Bruno says),
of the other, even though they are both symmetrical parts of the same
thing. I think that there is no better or simpler way to model the
cosmos.
> and just as bad, there is still the mystery of how the sense/force
> symmetry works, how it can have "bidirectional causality", and so on.
do you change your mind? How do you pay attention to something? You
just do it. It doesn't matter what mechanism lies on the other side of
your feeling of doing it, the reality is that in your natural
experience of yourself, in the part of the cosmos that is you and your
life, the rules are such that this is how you think and do things. You
generate a motive impulse out of your sense of what may fulfill
various sensorimotive agendas, or you suppress your inhibition of a
motive which is already present, and the result is that the motive is
felt to be realized as a motor effect of your body. You don't need to
exercise any mechanism to do this, the mechanism follows your lead,
because it is in fact you. The chunky side of you that lives in space,
as opposed to the sentient side that lives in time.
> It has never been clear what the payoff is for going along with all
> that - it's an awful lot to assume out of the gate.
of reconciling the hard problem of consciousness and the explanatory
gap. Reimagining physics and the cosmos is the gravy.
>
> I hope it is apparent that I have made an honest attempt to understand
> your ideas, but I don't really expect you to be able to answer my
> queries in a way that satisfies my curiosity and desire for coherence,
> because my impression is that you are too invested in your worldview
> to look at it from a skeptical outsider's point of view.
a skeptic. You have to at least entertain the idea and suspend
disbelief for long enough to see what it's about. This is indicated
within the theory as well of course. The universe is only half facts.
The other half requires a personal investment. You don't have to join
the circus, but you at least have to attend the show. I can't prove
that you exist, so you have to allow for yourself that what you
experience is actually part of the universe. Not that the content has
to be factual - the strong man might not actually be the strongest man
in the world, but the existence of the fiction itself, as a
phenomenon, is real.
> Instead, my
> expectation is that you will tell me I'm wrong, or that I haven't made
> the effort, or you will continue to use imprecise language and
> metaphors to explicate what is ultimately a haphazard pile of
> disconnected and fuzzy intuitions, when what would make me happy is
> some equations and some predictions.
the weakest approach in others. The universe is not just an equation.
If I made a universe out of equations and predictions, there would be
no universe there. No stories, no meaning, no life, no show. You need
both. You cannot collapse one into the other. There may very well be
some equations and predictions from more capable minds based on my
ideas. I did a simple linguistic equation which I thought had
promising results:
http://s33light.org/post/3618355716
http://s33light.org/post/3619294469
> That's why Bruno's ideas are
> compelling, because he actually has equations and predictions and a
> story for the mind/body problem that doesn't assume anything but
> elementary math... pretty awesome when you think about it, wouldn't
> you say? Even if he's wrong, that's a hell of a contribution.
from Bruno's work or comp. In fact, I would rather that nobody even
consider my ideas unless they are already familiar with comp. My ideas
come out of comp, just as empiricism came out of hermetic mysticism.
The problem with comp is that it is only one of four cardinal points
on the multisense continuum. It's logos: 50% subjective, 50%
objecitve, 99% figurative, 1% literal. You can make sense of the
universe in many other ways and the universe would not be real without
them. I'm only here because I don't know of any other place to go with
this idea. There is no audience for this idea yet because most people
are committed to some particular point or range along the continuum.
They don't want to, or can't consider the possibility of other ways of
making sense.
Craig
Terren Suydam
> There is an important difference though. You are using the
> conventional notion of 'forces' like 'laws' which govern interaction
> rather than what I am talking about which is sense and motive. There
> are no forces floating around free, it's all layers of different kinds
> of motive capacities of different molecules, cells, bodies, brains,
> etc.
But then it sounds like you're saying that by force of will we cause
forces to take shape. By your own admission this includes gravity and
nuclear forces. So my will causes gravity? Why can't I fly? What I
really mean is, what is your explanation for why my "motive capacity"
is so limited by these forces that are so reliably characterized as
"laws" which govern interaction?
>> OK, but I will just add my voice to the chorus and ask: how do you
>> know this?
>
> I don't know it, I suggest that it seems true.
You say that now.
>> Just as Bruno says, you speak as if you know the truth of
>> the matter, when at best all anyone has is a nice model that explains
>> what is happening, and/or simulates such a model to make predictions.
>> After all this time I still don't understand your model, and you
>> haven't made any predictions in spite of your religious confidence in
>> your theory.
>
> My model predicts order, life, feeling, emotion, significance,
> progress, civilization, as well as randomness, chaos, meaninglessness.
> I don't understand what it is that you want it to predict? It's like a
> general picture of a car, showing that the interior is a certain way
> and the exterior is a certain way, and how the two relate, why they
> relate and why the thing as a whole is a car. It's not a manual for
> manufacturing or repairing cars.
You're not predicting any of that stuff, you start with it. What I
want you to predict is something that the standard models don't. If
your theory is so revolutionary, then surely you can use the
differences between your account and the standard account to find ways
to imagine some future reality in a way the standard model can't. IOW
find a significant point of divergence between your account and the
standard account and use that to make a claim that the standard models
disagree with. Then we can test your ideas. If we can't test your
ideas it's just mental masturbation.
Failing that, at least try and explain something that the standard
models can't explain. So far you haven't convinced me that there's
anything that comp can't account for (including blindsight, etc). But
maybe you have an explanation for dark matter - that would be
impressive. But it wouldn't even have to be a big mystery. Just
explain a small mystery that the standard models currently can't.
Failing that, how's this. You seem like you have a good imagination
and a gift for prose. How might you write a short story that somehow
integrates the key ideas of your theory, yet clearly sets it apart
from mainstream ways of describing the world? What form would that
story take? If you wrote it, I would read it.
> As for speaking as if I know the
> truth, I don't know how else I'm supposed to speak. Obviously these
> are my own ideas, I have only thought experiments to support them,
> should I say 'maybe' in every sentence?
I'm not going to tell you how to present your ideas, but having the
humility that comes from the understanding that we do not have access
to the truth would go a long way. All we have are conceptual models
(conscious or otherwise) that somehow (amazingly) correspond to the
way the world, as we experience it, works.
> I'm really only interested in
> the ideas, not the politics and persuasion. I'm happy to clarify
> anything, answer questions, collaborate, debate, but I don't see the
> relevance of my writing style or attitude. If I say something that
> seems untrue, tell me why you think it's untrue, otherwise, why not
> entertain the possibility that I might be right and see if makes sense
> to you?
You're communicating with humans, so style matters. And as above,
asserting that you know the truth of deep matters is a pretty clear
signal to those who know better that you don't know what you're
talking about.
I am open to new ideas or I wouldn't be here. In fact, exposing myself
to Bruno's ideas has set me back in terms of ideas I had been
developing on my own, as I struggle to reconcile my thoughts with
Bruno's (and the thoughts of the many other excellent thinkers on this
forum). If I was emotionally invested in my ideas it would have been
difficult for me to take UDA and particularly AUDA seriously. So your
accusation that I am closed minded is unfounded. The reasons I find
your ideas unpalatable are:
- overconfidence in the truth of your claims
- closed mindedness in considering alternatives and the arguments of others
- imprecise language and metaphor
- fuzziness of concepts, no ability to formalize your ideas
- contradictions with well established models with no apparent payoff
- constant usage of new words and phrases
- pettiness in your argumentation style
You said earlier (to someone else) that you are here to learn, not to
push your ideas on anyone. I have found your overall presentation to
completely contradict that assertion.
>>
>> My hunch is that you have developed strong intuitions over the years
>> and formulated what, to you, feels like a cohesive integration of all
>> your intuitions about the way the world is, and gave it a name. The
>> funny thing, to me, is that many of your intuitions *would* make you a
>> computationalist, except that you have an even stronger intuition in
>> the primacy of "sense" and its assumed symmetry with electromagnetic
>> force (and nuclear forces, and gravity).
>
> I don't know that I would label them intuitions. They are thoughts,
> experiences, reasoning. But yes, it feels like a fairly cohesive
> integration and I gave it a name. Computationalism I think it almost
> exactly true, but if you are trying for a more absolute understanding,
> then comp is exactly inverted. Sense can make information but
> information cannot make sense without something to make sense of it.
>
>> However, once you make
>> "sense" primary, you assume what is to be explained (as Bruno says),
>
> Yes, because that is the explanation. You cannot explain one in terms
> of the other, even though they are both symmetrical parts of the same
> thing. I think that there is no better or simpler way to model the
> cosmos.
Well, I think that's where just about everyone else on this list
disagrees with you. You make arguments based on refusal to see other
possibilities... aka argument from ignorance. Just because *you* don't
think sense can be derived from something more fundamental, doesn't
mean it can't. Go ahead and assert it - but if your only argument is
"it's not possible", then nobody is going to take you seriously.
>> and just as bad, there is still the mystery of how the sense/force
>> symmetry works, how it can have "bidirectional causality", and so on.
>
> Because you are privileging the what and how over the who and why.
There are accounts of who and why that come out of the what and the
how. Again, just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not
possible.
> How do you change your mind? How do you pay attention to something? You
> just do it.
Ah, the Nike theory of intention. Obviously we have a lot to learn
about human psychology and things like attention and how we update our
mental models. But our lack of understanding should not be confused
with lack of mechanism.
To bring the level down a little bit (from human psychology). Are you
familiar with autopoiesis? It's a description of a system formulated
by Varela and Maturana that describes "organizationally closed
systems" that continuously produces themselves out of the very
processes they are comprised of, within some topological domain
defined by those processes. They invented this description to try and
characterize the autonomy exhibited by a single biological cell. The
cell has a well defined boundary and produces itself completely within
that boundary, maintaining its organization. More importantly, all
actions taken by that cell operate inside that boundary as well. It is
a nice definition of autonomy. Nothing is controlling it. But there's
no magic, either. Autopoeitic systems don't have to be made of organic
material. Some researchers have tried to characterize social systems
like corporations as autopoeitic.
So once you have a system that has evolved to persist, you can see its
behavior as goal-seeking in terms of maintaining its organization. The
who and the why come out of the what and the how.
> It doesn't matter what mechanism lies on the other side of
> your feeling of doing it, the reality is that in your natural
> experience of yourself, in the part of the cosmos that is you and your
> life, the rules are such that this is how you think and do things. You
> generate a motive impulse out of your sense of what may fulfill
> various sensorimotive agendas, or you suppress your inhibition of a
> motive which is already present, and the result is that the motive is
> felt to be realized as a motor effect of your body. You don't need to
> exercise any mechanism to do this, the mechanism follows your lead,
> because it is in fact you. The chunky side of you that lives in space,
> as opposed to the sentient side that lives in time.
OK, but as a story of my will this is pretty unsatisfying. Especially
because I am aware of the vast biases and heuristics literature that
shows the laughable number of ways my will can be manipulated with
simple tricks (for a gentle introduction see the blog
http://youarenotsosmart.com). The biases and hueristics stuff is
really only comprehensible in terms of mechanisms brought about by
evolution, most likely around survival adaptations that speed up
decision making at the cost of what you might call "accuracy of
modeling". So clearly, mechanism is at play with my will to a large,
quite possibly total degree.
>> It has never been clear what the payoff is for going along with all
>> that - it's an awful lot to assume out of the gate.
>
> I'm not assuming anything. I only say that I may have found a new way
> of reconciling the hard problem of consciousness and the explanatory
> gap. Reimagining physics and the cosmos is the gravy.
You just replace one mystery with another. Two actually. The first is,
how does the qualia experienced by atoms etc form up into the holistic
subjectivity experienced by a person? Answering this is an excellent
opportunity for you to formalize some arguments, and to make
predictions. The second is, if forces aren't fundamental and sense is,
then whose sense caused the universe to form the way it did into its
present state of affairs? Do you reject big bang?
I see you reject quantum mechanics... so how do you account for all
the experimental results it confirms so consistently?
>>
>> I hope it is apparent that I have made an honest attempt to understand
>> your ideas, but I don't really expect you to be able to answer my
>> queries in a way that satisfies my curiosity and desire for coherence,
>> because my impression is that you are too invested in your worldview
>> to look at it from a skeptical outsider's point of view.
>
> It may be the case that my worldview is not possible to understand as
> a skeptic. You have to at least entertain the idea and suspend
> disbelief for long enough to see what it's about. This is indicated
> within the theory as well of course. The universe is only half facts.
> The other half requires a personal investment. You don't have to join
> the circus, but you at least have to attend the show. I can't prove
> that you exist, so you have to allow for yourself that what you
> experience is actually part of the universe. Not that the content has
> to be factual - the strong man might not actually be the strongest man
> in the world, but the existence of the fiction itself, as a
> phenomenon, is real.
At least with a circus I know I'm going to enjoy myself. I still don't
understand after all this time what the big payoff is... again, some
predictions or explanations of misunderstood phenomena would go a long
way here.
>> Instead, my
>> expectation is that you will tell me I'm wrong, or that I haven't made
>> the effort, or you will continue to use imprecise language and
>> metaphors to explicate what is ultimately a haphazard pile of
>> disconnected and fuzzy intuitions, when what would make me happy is
>> some equations and some predictions.
>
> Equations and predictions are a powerful approach in some ways, but
> the weakest approach in others. The universe is not just an equation.
> If I made a universe out of equations and predictions, there would be
> no universe there. No stories, no meaning, no life, no show. You need
> both. You cannot collapse one into the other. There may very well be
> some equations and predictions from more capable minds based on my
> ideas. I did a simple linguistic equation which I thought had
> promising results:
>
> http://s33light.org/post/3618355716
> http://s33light.org/post/3619294469
Oh, now I see what is going on. You found someone to program those and
that's how you generate your posts on this list. ;-]
>> That's why Bruno's ideas are
>> compelling, because he actually has equations and predictions and a
>> story for the mind/body problem that doesn't assume anything but
>> elementary math... pretty awesome when you think about it, wouldn't
>> you say? Even if he's wrong, that's a hell of a contribution.
>
> Absolutely, and it's never been my intention to take anything away
> from Bruno's work or comp. In fact, I would rather that nobody even
> consider my ideas unless they are already familiar with comp. My ideas
> come out of comp, just as empiricism came out of hermetic mysticism.
> The problem with comp is that it is only one of four cardinal points
> on the multisense continuum. It's logos: 50% subjective, 50%
> objecitve, 99% figurative, 1% literal. You can make sense of the
> universe in many other ways and the universe would not be real without
> them. I'm only here because I don't know of any other place to go with
> this idea. There is no audience for this idea yet because most people
> are committed to some particular point or range along the continuum.
> They don't want to, or can't consider the possibility of other ways of
> making sense.
>
> Craig
Well at some point, after a fair number of intelligent people have
criticized your ideas, you have the choice to reflect on that and come
to the conclusion that
1) the ideas need to be changed
2) the presentation of the ideas needs to be changed
3) the world is not yet ready for these ideas
#3 is probably the most comforting. But it is also the least likely to
result in advancing anyone's understanding of the world, particularly
your own.
Terren
Craig Weinberg
wrote:
> > There is an important difference though. You are using the
> > conventional notion of 'forces' like 'laws' which govern interaction
> > rather than what I am talking about which is sense and motive. There
> > are no forces floating around free, it's all layers of different kinds
> > of motive capacities of different molecules, cells, bodies, brains,
> > etc.
>
> But then it sounds like you're saying that by force of will we cause
> forces to take shape.
we change our mind or move our arm, we do just that. We are the arm
and the mind, they are only different levels and categories of
description.
>By your own admission this includes gravity and
> nuclear forces. So my will causes gravity? Why can't I fly?
as this planet. I think it is possible to conceive of it like a
Kryptonite effect for motive. The greater the size and density of the
nearby object, the more your body's density counts toward the averaged
inertia of the total group (inertial frame) of objects and the less
effective your motive to separate yourself from that group will be.
The observation and calculation is the same, only interpretation is
different. Instead of seeing gravity as an invisible force that warps
space I see it a coordinated logic of physical dependency. We fall
because the scale of the Earth makes our body unable to resist it.
> What I
> really mean is, what is your explanation for why my "motive capacity"
> is so limited by these forces that are so reliably characterized as
> "laws" which govern interaction?
happening because of scripted computational laws that circumscribe
space, they are happening because of how matter makes sense of matter.
The sense it makes can be reliably characterized by our mental models
and computations because at some level, we too are matter, as well as
computers. In a sense, we 'remember' how to read matter as matter
reads itself.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting throwing out our 3p models of
gravity. I only suggest an alternative 1p interpretation for the
observations those models are based on to bring them into line with a
unified experiential cosmos.
>
> >> OK, but I will just add my voice to the chorus and ask: how do you
> >> know this?
>
> > I don't know it, I suggest that it seems true.
>
> You say that now.
>
certainly would not expect anyone to believe me.
> >> Just as Bruno says, you speak as if you know the truth of
> >> the matter, when at best all anyone has is a nice model that explains
> >> what is happening, and/or simulates such a model to make predictions.
> >> After all this time I still don't understand your model, and you
> >> haven't made any predictions in spite of your religious confidence in
> >> your theory.
>
> > My model predicts order, life, feeling, emotion, significance,
> > progress, civilization, as well as randomness, chaos, meaninglessness.
> > I don't understand what it is that you want it to predict? It's like a
> > general picture of a car, showing that the interior is a certain way
> > and the exterior is a certain way, and how the two relate, why they
> > relate and why the thing as a whole is a car. It's not a manual for
> > manufacturing or repairing cars.
>
> You're not predicting any of that stuff, you start with it.
them in the right places, and that's all I'm trying to do. Through
that, I predict that photons do not exist independently, which has a
lot of implications, I predict that morality can be described
effectively with a gravitational model, I predict that sanity and free
will can be described in terms of figurative association thresholds
and impulse control induction. These are just the early hints of
possibilities to explore. I'm only trying to get to step one, not
rewrite every equation in physical science to apply to awareness.
> What I
> want you to predict is something that the standard models don't.
that's easy. My model predicts that mania and depression can lead to
delusion and catatonia. It predicts that Buddhist monks have more in
common with mathematicians than either of them have with salesmen. It
predicts reality TV and celebrity branding. It predicts the hard
problem of consciousness, the effectiveness of metaphor... for all
comp's complete dependence on symbol manipulation, does it have any
theory at all about how something can come to represent something
else? Can comp explain how something is actually named or numbered?
How a set of pixels become an image? My model does.
> If
> your theory is so revolutionary, then surely you can use the
> differences between your account and the standard account to find ways
> to imagine some future reality in a way the standard model can't. IOW
> find a significant point of divergence between your account and the
> standard account and use that to make a claim that the standard models
> disagree with. Then we can test your ideas. If we can't test your
> ideas it's just mental masturbation.
It cannot prove that you or I exist at all, that we have lives or care
about anything. According to the standard model *you* are just
particle masturbation. The next scientific revolution is not going to
be like the last one. It's not going to be a matter of empirically
demonstrable facts displacing long held religious and philosophical
orthodoxy.
I and many other people sense that it is going to necessitate the
reclamation of subjective awareness as primary - a dis-disenchantment
of the self and the universe. We can no longer progress only by
folding are arms and saying "I'm from Missouri. Show Me.", we have to
look to our own experience without doubting that it is a part of the
universe on it's own terms as well as a consequence of other levels.
The future reality I imagine is one of profound leisure as people are
freed from the Feudal yoke of urban machines without fear or guilt.
>
> Failing that, at least try and explain something that the standard
> models can't explain. So far you haven't convinced me that there's
> anything that comp can't account for (including blindsight, etc).
It's the mirror image of religion, so that instead of 'God/Spirit/Fate
did it', it's 'Evolution/Arithmetic/Probability did it.'. Religion has
it's paradise and immortality, and mechanism has it's promise of
digital transubstantiation. Nothing can convince you that there is
anything that comp can't account for because you stipulate from the
start that it accounts for everything. I say comp can't account for
blue or pain, because it obviously can't, but all you can say is that
it's a non-comp consequence of some unknown form arising from comp.
That can be said about anything that comp can't explain. Energy,
matter, feelings, etc..
> But
> maybe you have an explanation for dark matter - that would be
> impressive.
diffracting. Case closed. ;)
> But it wouldn't even have to be a big mystery. Just
> explain a small mystery that the standard models currently can't.
explains why we are justified in our feeling that we are actually in
the world and not inside of a skull. It explains how we are able to
look into a mirror instead of at it and why tilting the mirror doesn't
distort the image. It explains why the implications of quantum
mechanics don't make any sense on a macro level. These are just a few
things off the top of my head.
>
> Failing that, how's this. You seem like you have a good imagination
> and a gift for prose. How might you write a short story that somehow
> integrates the key ideas of your theory, yet clearly sets it apart
> from mainstream ways of describing the world? What form would that
> story take? If you wrote it, I would read it.
If I can think of some way of demonstrating the ideas beyond just
talking about them I would rather do that.
>
> > As for speaking as if I know the
> > truth, I don't know how else I'm supposed to speak. Obviously these
> > are my own ideas, I have only thought experiments to support them,
> > should I say 'maybe' in every sentence?
>
> I'm not going to tell you how to present your ideas, but having the
> humility that comes from the understanding that we do not have access
> to the truth would go a long way. All we have are conceptual models
> (conscious or otherwise) that somehow (amazingly) correspond to the
> way the world, as we experience it, works.
>
> > I'm really only interested in
> > the ideas, not the politics and persuasion. I'm happy to clarify
> > anything, answer questions, collaborate, debate, but I don't see the
> > relevance of my writing style or attitude. If I say something that
> > seems untrue, tell me why you think it's untrue, otherwise, why not
> > entertain the possibility that I might be right and see if makes sense
> > to you?
>
> You're communicating with humans, so style matters. And as above,
> asserting that you know the truth of deep matters is a pretty clear
> signal to those who know better that you don't know what you're
> talking about.
see it, just as anyone who has ever asserted a model of the cosmos.
>
> I am open to new ideas or I wouldn't be here. In fact, exposing myself
> to Bruno's ideas has set me back in terms of ideas I had been
> developing on my own, as I struggle to reconcile my thoughts with
> Bruno's (and the thoughts of the many other excellent thinkers on this
> forum). If I was emotionally invested in my ideas it would have been
> difficult for me to take UDA and particularly AUDA seriously. So your
> accusation that I am closed minded is unfounded. The reasons I find
> your ideas unpalatable are:
>
> - overconfidence in the truth of your claims
> - closed mindedness in considering alternatives and the arguments of others
years already. I can see why they are wrong now so there is nothing
more to consider.
> - imprecise language and metaphor
> - fuzziness of concepts, no ability to formalize your ideas
being inadequate to express universal patterns.
> - contradictions with well established models with no apparent payoff
before you can see the reason why it is necessary.
> - constant usage of new words and phrases
electricity?
> - pettiness in your argumentation style
Every one of these objections has only to do with my credibility as a
person, a writer, a debater, etc. None of them even mention any
objection to the ideas themselves. Only broad generalizations about
how the sound of them impresses you as unworthy. That's all I hear you
saying to me. I don't claim to have a Nobel Prize winning thesis here,
I only present a completely new model for the universe in it's
earliest stage.
>
> You said earlier (to someone else) that you are here to learn, not to
> push your ideas on anyone. I have found your overall presentation to
> completely contradict that assertion.
of my idea, not the rehashing of what I have already considered many
many times.
>
>
>
> >> My hunch is that you have developed strong intuitions over the years
> >> and formulated what, to you, feels like a cohesive integration of all
> >> your intuitions about the way the world is, and gave it a name. The
> >> funny thing, to me, is that many of your intuitions *would* make you a
> >> computationalist, except that you have an even stronger intuition in
> >> the primacy of "sense" and its assumed symmetry with electromagnetic
> >> force (and nuclear forces, and gravity).
>
> > I don't know that I would label them intuitions. They are thoughts,
> > experiences, reasoning. But yes, it feels like a fairly cohesive
> > integration and I gave it a name. Computationalism I think it almost
> > exactly true, but if you are trying for a more absolute understanding,
> > then comp is exactly inverted. Sense can make information but
> > information cannot make sense without something to make sense of it.
>
> >> However, once you make
> >> "sense" primary, you assume what is to be explained (as Bruno says),
>
> > Yes, because that is the explanation. You cannot explain one in terms
> > of the other, even though they are both symmetrical parts of the same
> > thing. I think that there is no better or simpler way to model the
> > cosmos.
>
> Well, I think that's where just about everyone else on this list
> disagrees with you. You make arguments based on refusal to see other
> possibilities...
be a supporter of them myself.
> aka argument from ignorance. Just because *you* don't
> think sense can be derived from something more fundamental, doesn't
> mean it can't. Go ahead and assert it - but if your only argument is
> "it's not possible", then nobody is going to take you seriously.
less.
>
> >> and just as bad, there is still the mystery of how the sense/force
> >> symmetry works, how it can have "bidirectional causality", and so on.
>
> > Because you are privileging the what and how over the who and why.
>
> There are accounts of who and why that come out of the what and the
> how. Again, just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not
> possible.
quantity of whats or hows adds up to be a single who or why. I have
explained this over and over again, but if you believe in comp then
the simple fact that a player piano is never going to start dancing
becomes a philosophical conundrum. There is no arguing against that
kind of unrealism, it is true believer delusional.
>
> > How do you change your mind? How do you pay attention to something? You
> > just do it.
>
> Ah, the Nike theory of intention. Obviously we have a lot to learn
> about human psychology and things like attention and how we update our
> mental models. But our lack of understanding should not be confused
> with lack of mechanism.
of experience.
>
> To bring the level down a little bit (from human psychology). Are you
> familiar with autopoiesis?
> It's a description of a system formulated
> by Varela and Maturana that describes "organizationally closed
> systems" that continuously produces themselves out of the very
> processes they are comprised of, within some topological domain
> defined by those processes. They invented this description to try and
> characterize the autonomy exhibited by a single biological cell. The
> cell has a well defined boundary and produces itself completely within
> that boundary, maintaining its organization. More importantly, all
> actions taken by that cell operate inside that boundary as well. It is
> a nice definition of autonomy. Nothing is controlling it. But there's
> no magic, either. Autopoeitic systems don't have to be made of organic
> material. Some researchers have tried to characterize social systems
> like corporations as autopoeitic.
universe, then I think autopoesis is the way to go. It is still a de-
presentation though. It doesn't explain feeling or being, only acting
and organizing.
>
> So once you have a system that has evolved to persist, you can see its
> behavior as goal-seeking in terms of maintaining its organization. The
> who and the why come out of the what and the how.
from the foregone conclusion of the end product in who and why.
Without that foregone conclusion, you have only a 3p view of automatic
self-maintenance.
>
> > It doesn't matter what mechanism lies on the other side of
> > your feeling of doing it, the reality is that in your natural
> > experience of yourself, in the part of the cosmos that is you and your
> > life, the rules are such that this is how you think and do things. You
> > generate a motive impulse out of your sense of what may fulfill
> > various sensorimotive agendas, or you suppress your inhibition of a
> > motive which is already present, and the result is that the motive is
> > felt to be realized as a motor effect of your body. You don't need to
> > exercise any mechanism to do this, the mechanism follows your lead,
> > because it is in fact you. The chunky side of you that lives in space,
> > as opposed to the sentient side that lives in time.
>
> OK, but as a story of my will this is pretty unsatisfying. Especially
> because I am aware of the vast biases and heuristics literature that
> shows the laughable number of ways my will can be manipulated with
> evolution, most likely around survival adaptations that speed up
> decision making at the cost of what you might call "accuracy of
> modeling". So clearly, mechanism is at play with my will to a large,
> quite possibly total degree.
an increase in brain activity associated with free will if subjects
themselves believe in free will, so that factors in as well. There are
all kinds of evolutionary residues that shape our awareness. That
doesn't change the fact that it is the meaning of our own life, the
semantic momentum of our day to day biography that is just as
influential.
>
> >> It has never been clear what the payoff is for going along with all
> >> that - it's an awful lot to assume out of the gate.
>
> > I'm not assuming anything. I only say that I may have found a new way
> > of reconciling the hard problem of consciousness and the explanatory
> > gap. Reimagining physics and the cosmos is the gravy.
>
> You just replace one mystery with another. Two actually. The first is,
> how does the qualia experienced by atoms etc form up into the holistic
> subjectivity experienced by a person?
is the polar opposite of objectivity, and objects scale up
quantitatively through density and literal mass or weight, then
subjects scale up qualitatively through semantic richness -
significance and depth of quality. There is no process of scaling,
just as there is no piling that takes place once a pile of stones is
in place - it is only that we are the highest level slice of the pile.
The figurative pile of experience streams in time rather than literal
objects across space. That's the big difference from conventional
neurological models. There is no homunculus or other mystery
electromagnetism to qualia converter necessary because
electromagnetism already is the same thing as sensorimotive qualia,
only felt from the inside instead of measured from the outside.
> Answering this is an excellent
> opportunity for you to formalize some arguments, and to make
> predictions.
multisenserealism.com, so there's no need to act like you are
bestowing such a generous gift to me. If you are curious, I'm happy to
oblige, but I can do without the condescending gestures.
>The second is, if forces aren't fundamental and sense is,
> then whose sense caused the universe to form the way it did into its
> present state of affairs?
> Do you reject big bang?
for the singularity to expand into and no time in which the event can
take place.
>
> I see you reject quantum mechanics... so how do you account for all
> the experimental results it confirms so consistently?
reject. It's inside out. We are measuring the sense of our own
instruments, not external independent phenomena.
>
>
>
> >> I hope it is apparent that I have made an honest attempt to understand
> >> your ideas, but I don't really expect you to be able to answer my
> >> queries in a way that satisfies my curiosity and desire for coherence,
> >> because my impression is that you are too invested in your worldview
> >> to look at it from a skeptical outsider's point of view.
>
> > It may be the case that my worldview is not possible to understand as
> > a skeptic. You have to at least entertain the idea and suspend
> > disbelief for long enough to see what it's about. This is indicated
> > within the theory as well of course. The universe is only half facts.
> > The other half requires a personal investment. You don't have to join
> > the circus, but you at least have to attend the show. I can't prove
> > that you exist, so you have to allow for yourself that what you
> > experience is actually part of the universe. Not that the content has
> > to be factual - the strong man might not actually be the strongest man
> > in the world, but the existence of the fiction itself, as a
> > phenomenon, is real.
>
> At least with a circus I know I'm going to enjoy myself. I still don't
> understand after all this time what the big payoff is... again, some
> predictions or explanations of misunderstood phenomena would go a long
> way here.
explains the existence of life, meaning, perception... It explains why
QM seems so counter-intuitive. That's what I like about it.
>
> >> Instead, my
> >> expectation is that you will tell me I'm wrong, or that I haven't made
> >> the effort, or you will continue to use imprecise language and
> >> metaphors to explicate what is ultimately a haphazard pile of
> >> disconnected and fuzzy intuitions, when what would make me happy is
> >> some equations and some predictions.
>
> > Equations and predictions are a powerful approach in some ways, but
> > the weakest approach in others. The universe is not just an equation.
> > If I made a universe out of equations and predictions, there would be
> > no universe there. No stories, no meaning, no life, no show. You need
> > both. You cannot collapse one into the other. There may very well be
> > some equations and predictions from more capable minds based on my
> > ideas. I did a simple linguistic equation which I thought had
> > promising results:
>
> >http://s33light.org/post/3618355716
> >http://s33light.org/post/3619294469
>
> Oh, now I see what is going on. You found someone to program those and
> that's how you generate your posts on this list. ;-]
are only interested in telling me that you don't like my writing
style. You ask me for equations and predictions, and here I give you
something and you ignore it completely except to make yet another
disparaging comment. I know it's goofy but it works pretty well. It
produces viable truths about the universe consistently.
> Well at some point, after a fair number of intelligent people have
> criticized your ideas, you have the choice to reflect on that and come
> to the conclusion that
>
> 1) the ideas need to be changed
ideas. They are criticizing my disrespect for their ideas.
> 2) the presentation of the ideas needs to be changed
matters. I'm open to presenting it in different ways, but this is not
the worst possible presentation to start out with.
> 3) the world is not yet ready for these ideas
present them in April, so someone is ready for them in the world.
>
> #3 is probably the most comforting. But it is also the least likely to
> result in advancing anyone's understanding of the world, particularly
> your own.
logical plan to disseminate ideas, I'm trying to figure out what the
universe actually is. That's my only goal.
Craig