More Human Than Human?
The Immortalist
the steamroller of progress and technology, flattened sheets of paper,
i say. I ask what if? What will the world be like if you turn out to
be wrong over the longrun and we do invent conscious and emotional
devices far surpassing our meager human abilities.
Technology is evolving at an exponential rate, and this process has
been in effect since the beginning of technology, it will continue for
as long as intelligent beings allow it to. Technology is an extension
of human evolution, since it is one of the defining traits of human
beings and is - so far - controlled by humans. The next step is for
technology to began evolving without human interference, so that it
will continue to devlelop independent of us; also, it will be more and
more closely integrated into our lives, to the extent that humans and
machines will be increasingly difficult to separate.
Sometime after machines have gotten a lot smarter than we are they can
help us with most human tasks. Improving our lives through neural
implants on the mental level, and nanotechnology-enhanced bodies on
the physical level, will be popular and compelling. It is another one
of those slippery slopes - there is no obvious place to stop this
progression until the human race has largely replaced the brains and
bodies that evolution first provided.
It has long been a staple of science fiction that humans will be
replaced by artificial intelligence. We are toast, it's just a matter
of when. We will replace ourselves with the artifacts of our
technology. There will no longer be any clear distinction between
humans and computers. Most conscious entities will not have a
permanent physical presence. We will have become software.
There will be no pain or sense of death along the way. It will happen
as gradually and as imperceptibly as grass growing. This is the way
our world ends. Not with a bang, not even with a whimper. The gradual
transformation of ourselves from carbon-based beings to software, or
put another way, our gradual transformation to pure information, is
beyond mind-boggling: mind-deleting!
Today's rapid advances in computer intelligence will eventually lead
to machines that are more intelligent than human beings. These
machines also will develop human sensitivities, leading to an
increased blurring between machines and humans
Think of this euphoric prognostication with respect to the future of
computer technology, especially in view of the human capacity to screw
things up royally. Perhaps if the consciousness of machines and their
degree of control and intervention is able to forestall our peculiar
bent for self-destruction, the world may become a place that can
accomidate savages like us.
a helpful link:
http://www.cs.usu.edu/~degaris/artilectwarshort.html
Arnold Stang, Jr.
"The Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9353ae8c.02032...@posting.google.com...
Ahh...Ghastly!!! These comments by The Immortalist make me want to drink
hemlock....
George (gmb) --- help me please! What do you think of The Immortalist's
predictions?
Sincerely Yours, Arnold Stang, Jr.
wahall
can really only add.
Humans have thousands of words in the English language.
"Arnold Stang, Jr." <vze2...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:T7xm8.1542$UN2...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
Denis Loubet
"Arnold Stang, Jr." <vze2...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:T7xm8.1542$UN2...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
>
Well, we're all just machines that happen to be made of meat.
I don't think this guy's breathless predictions will be as surprising or
impressive as he thinks they will. If they come true, it will probably
happen in such minute stages that everything will seem perfectly natural,
and they probably won't happen the way he thinks they will, or for the
reasons he expects them to.
Denis Loubet
dlo...@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
Gea Jones
--
Best Wishes
Gea*
"The Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9353ae8c.02032...@posting.google.com...
* * * *
." We will have become software."
I love this piece,
maybe I am already a floppy disc [certainly feel like it when I wake up]
The question is "would I know?"
Gea
Mike Dubbeld
"The Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9353ae8c.02032...@posting.google.com...
Mike Dubbeld
"Arnold Stang, Jr." <vze2...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:T7xm8.1542$UN2...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
>
machines.
Takes more than that for a soul. I leave my computer powered on sometimes
so I guess it is conscious then. If and when machines are connected to us it
will be for disabled people and the military. One has great need. The other
has great money/power. The spinoff technology from the Starwars Program
was its only real value. Still technology is growing exponentially. It is as
scary
as it is exciting. The human body evolved over a long span of time. Only in
the last 2 hundred years did we have light bulbs that allow us to stay up
all
night. This results in an upset to the biological clock. When the sun goes
down
the eyes take in less light that triggers a melatonin increase that calls
for sleep.
Companies measure in the billions of dollars loss of productivity from lack
of sleep and also along these lines drugs. Technology does as much harm as
it does good. Although technology has accelerated at an incredible pace -
basic
'human' problems remain unchanged. Like exploiting the technology for
military purposes. When I was young and dumb I used to get excited about
technology. Even so I am researching Quantum Mechanics which is new
technology. Good and bad/new technology and not. Dreams of the mind
and ego.
Mike Dubbeld
Mike Dubbeld
"Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote in message
news:lAAm8.8031$J53.4...@typhoon.austin.rr.com...
Sorry. You were the only one God did not like. The rest of us are souls.
>
> I don't think this guy's breathless predictions will be as surprising or
> impressive as he thinks they will. If they come true, it will probably
> happen in such minute stages that everything will seem perfectly natural,
> and they probably won't happen the way he thinks they will, or for the
> reasons he expects them to.
True dat.
Neal Stein
news:a7f337$kk9$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>
> "Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote in message
> news:lAAm8.8031$J53.4...@typhoon.austin.rr.com...
> >
> > "Arnold Stang, Jr." <vze2...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> > news:T7xm8.1542$UN2...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
<snip for brevity>
> > > Ahh...Ghastly!!! These comments by The Immortalist make me want to
> drink
> > > hemlock....
> > > George (gmb) --- help me please! What do you think of The
Immortalist's
> > > predictions?
> >
> > Well, we're all just machines that happen to be made of meat.
>
> Sorry. You were the only one God did not like. The rest of us are souls.
I can't seem to find mine, know where it's housed?
> >
> > I don't think this guy's breathless predictions will be as surprising or
> > impressive as he thinks they will. If they come true, it will probably
> > happen in such minute stages that everything will seem perfectly
natural,
> > and they probably won't happen the way he thinks they will, or for the
> > reasons he expects them to.
>
> True dat.
Also a point I agree on.
--
Neal Stein a.a#1984
Mandrake Linux User
MathsCat
"The Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9353ae8c.02032...@posting.google.com...
> the steamroller of progress and technology, flattened sheets of paper,
> i say. I ask what if? What will the world be like if you turn out to
> be wrong over the longrun and we do invent conscious and emotional
> devices far surpassing our meager human abilities.
>
> Technology is evolving at an exponential rate, and this process has
> been in effect since the beginning of technology, it will continue for
> as long as intelligent beings allow it to. Technology is an extension
> of human evolution, since it is one of the defining traits of human
> beings and is - so far - controlled by humans. The next step is for
> technology to began evolving without human interference, so that it
> will continue to devlelop independent of us;
I think you should explain more clearly why it is that this is the next
step. Don't fool yourself into thinking that technological evolution is
something that can suddenly take of on its own. As you rightly pointed out,
so far technological development has been controlled by us. What technology
we have has all been purposely created to meet some end. This is very unlike
evolution which is a sort of hit and miss process, survival of the fitest
etc (I don't claim to be completely clued up on evolution here). As long as
there is human intervention I don't see how machines could begin to evolve
on their own.
<snip>
>also, it will be more and
> more closely integrated into our lives, to the extent that humans and
> machines will be increasingly difficult to separate.
>
> Sometime after machines have gotten a lot smarter than we are they can
> help us with most human tasks. Improving our lives through neural
> implants on the mental level, and nanotechnology-enhanced bodies on
> the physical level, will be popular and compelling. It is another one
> of those slippery slopes - there is no obvious place to stop this
> progression until the human race has largely replaced the brains and
> bodies that evolution first provided.
>
> It has long been a staple of science fiction that humans will be
> replaced by artificial intelligence. We are toast, it's just a matter
> of when. We will replace ourselves with the artifacts of our
> technology. There will no longer be any clear distinction between
> humans and computers. Most conscious entities will not have a
> permanent physical presence. We will have become software.
>
<snip>
Wow! Amazingly, fascinately huge leap here. Read less science fiction and
read more about what we think we know about the human mind and
self-consciouness.
<snip>
> There will be no pain or sense of death along the way. It will happen
> as gradually and as imperceptibly as grass growing. This is the way
> our world ends. Not with a bang, not even with a whimper. The gradual
> transformation of ourselves from carbon-based beings to software, or
> put another way, our gradual transformation to pure information, is
> beyond mind-boggling: mind-deleting!
>
> Today's rapid advances in computer intelligence will eventually lead
> to machines that are more intelligent than human beings. These
> machines also will develop human sensitivities, leading to an
> increased blurring between machines and humans
>
> Think of this euphoric prognostication with respect to the future of
> computer technology, especially in view of the human capacity to screw
> things up royally. Perhaps if the consciousness of machines and their
> degree of control and intervention is able to forestall our peculiar
> bent for self-destruction, the world may become a place that can
> accomidate savages like us.
>
<snip>
Your post is interesting but it does sound like you've been reading too much
sci-fi. Whilst I realize most of it was just speculation triggered by your
opening question, I do think there are a few things that you need to become
clearer on. You seem to be confounding evolution and consciousness, for a
start. These just aren't the same. I think what would be more interesting to
speculate about would be what if humans were wiped out leaving behind their
technology. Would it evolve on it's own, eventually developing
consciousness? I'm strongly inclined to say no for reasons that I don't
quite understand myself yet..
Cat
The Immortalist
age of spritual machine. I was copying interesting sounding sentences and
when i got through about ten comments i had some scary sounding stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140282025/103-3225548-6830221
just a flame
i also believe that we will be in control at most every step along the way,
hence the line grafted in about connecting our brains with these ancestors
of computers.
i remember an pbs show about nanotechnology where one of the stars of
jurasic park was asking what would happen if we succeed in creating self
replicating devices, much like cells and germs divide and populate, and
somehow they get out of the test tube a cause many problems.
> You seem to be confounding evolution and consciousness,
> for a start. These just aren't the same.
> what if humans were wiped out leaving behind their
> technology. Would it evolve on it's own, eventually
> developing consciousness?
well we have not learned how make or evolve consciousness yet. we may or may
not learn to do this. if science continues for the next 1000 to 10,000 years
to find out how things work it is likely that we will create things that
have consciousness and that can evolve and reproduce themselves.
at least it would be hard to defend a proposition that states that science
will actually stop and not be able to advance or learn anything more at some
time during the next million years.
as far as the fear that seem to emerge from those copied sentences from
amazon.com, i think that the related link shows strong evidence that we
should beware.
mr. degaris is actually building a human brain but it takes up a large
portion of a building. he is doing this by creating self-replicating
alogrythmic programs. if you read the link you will see that one of the main
experts in this feild is very frightened about where this will lead (dig it)
http://www.cs.usu.edu/~degaris/
Packman
ernobe
pma...@yahoo.com says...
--
I've updated my Astrology site . . . we're in the 21st. century now!
http://communities.msn.com/Semioticphilosophy
L Crane
> >
> > Ahh...Ghastly!!! These comments by The Immortalist make me want to drink
> > hemlock....
> > George (gmb) --- help me please! What do you think of The Immortalist's
> > predictions?
> >
> I think he is an immortal optimist. There never will be any conscious
> machines.
> Takes more than that for a soul. I leave my computer powered on sometimes
> so I guess it is conscious then.
I havent heard any convincing arguments against machine consciousness,
could you explain?
Lee
L Crane
I think that you are quite right, our current technology would not
evolve or survive. We have built nothing which meets the requirement
of self-replication. This would be monumentaly difficult, the easiest
way I see would be to design an automated robot factory, capable of
building the robots needs to construct an identical factory. It would
need to fabricate every chip and part from raw materials. No simple
task.
I think another science-fictionish danger comes from increasing
computing power. I won't argue here over if computers could be
intelligent, but regardless they would be very powerful. Groups with
access to such supercomputers could design weapons, predict world
politics, or any number of other evil things.
Lee
The Immortalist
yes he has transfered his brain to utah. actually he transfered it from
japan to Brussels
The Immortalist
After evaluating the new "telephone" in 1876, Western Union concluded that
"the device is inherently of no value to us."
Lord Kelvin, the chemist and President of the Royal Society in 1895 declared
that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
French Marshall Ferdinand Foch (just before World War One) concluded that
"airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
Radio pioneer David Sarnoff was told by potential investors in the 1920s
that "the wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value."
Or remember the skeptical Jack Warner, President of Warner Brothers movie
studio in 1927, asking "who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
Then there was Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of IBM, in 1943: "I think there is
a world market for maybe five computers."
And Bill Gates in 1981: "640K [of memory] ought to be enough for anybody."
Mike Dubbeld
"L Crane" <eele...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:95601114.0203...@posting.google.com...
we have machine consciousness. Somewhere in there it gets foggy though.
Cause when I set my sprinkler and turn on the water it consciously
carries out what I set it to do.
Mike D.
> Lee
gmb
Consciousness is the machine where knowledge comes together.
Doesn't matter if that machine is the actual brain or it is located
somewhere else mapped to provide experience of existence
through senses. It is a machine. Assumption. Doubt.
Assumption. Doubt. Assumption. Doubt.
George
Wordsmith
Famous last words, Bill! *LOL*
Wordsmith :)
L Crane
> > evolve or survive. We have built nothing which meets the requirement
> > of self-replication. This would be monumentaly difficult, the easiest
> > way I see would be to design an automated robot factory, capable of
> > building the robots needs to construct an identical factory. It would
> > need to fabricate every chip and part from raw materials. No simple
> > task.
> > I think another science-fictionish danger comes from increasing
> > computing power. I won't argue here over if computers could be
> > intelligent, but regardless they would be very powerful. Groups with
> > access to such supercomputers could design weapons, predict world
> > politics, or any number of other evil things.
> >
> > Lee
I'm not sure I understand the point of your post. I certainly think
that self-replicating and evolving machines are possible, and have a
good chance of being built eventualy. If you mean to point out that I
may be wrong about our current technology being unable to replicate, I
disagree. Your examples show people who either misjudged the
commercial value of something, or who did not forsee the abilities of
improved technology. Nowhere do they make a false statement about the
abilities of the present technology.
> After evaluating the new "telephone" in 1876, Western Union concluded that
> "the device is inherently of no value to us."
This is a statement about the market for the telephone, not about the
capabilities of the technology.
> Lord Kelvin, the chemist and President of the Royal Society in 1895 declared
> that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
> French Marshall Ferdinand Foch (just before World War One) concluded that
> "airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
And if I remember correctly airplanes where of little value in WWI.
It wasn't until WWII, when the technology had developed further, that
airplanes become an important force.
> Radio pioneer David Sarnoff was told by potential investors in the 1920s
> that "the wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value."
This is about the commercial value of the music box, not about the
capabilities of the technology.
> Or remember the skeptical Jack Warner, President of Warner Brothers movie
> studio in 1927, asking "who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
Again, he's not saying they lack the ability to make actors talk, just
that they wouldn't make money doing it.
> Then there was Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of IBM, in 1943: "I think there is
> a world market for maybe five computers."
He did not forsee the future development of computer technology.
> And Bill Gates in 1981: "640K [of memory] ought to be enough for anybody."
Same as above.
Again, I don't really know what you mean by this post. Could you
elaborate?
Lee
Mike Dubbeld
"gmb" <g...@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:OcVm8.107021$uA5....@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net...
Mike Dubbeld
>
>
gmb
Sounds like we are opposites and be a perfect match. Maybe
we are both faggots.
George
L Crane
thought there could never be conscious machines, and if not, why? I
don't think of my computer or sprinkler as conscious.
Lee
Spelcher
>
> I think you should explain more clearly why it is that this is the next
> step. Don't fool yourself into thinking that technological evolution is
> something that can suddenly take off on its own.
It already has. "technology" is without a doubt an earthly manifestation of
a far superior consciousness. It is it's own entity. We are clearly being
controlled
and constructed by it's presence in it's creation.
If not, it would make a damned good book.
;-)
Fred Stone
Fred Saberhagen beat you to it.
--
Fred Stone
aa # 1369; linux user # 254178; machine # 138214
Spelcher
> >
> > It already has. "technology" is without a doubt an earthly manifestation
of
> > a far superior consciousness. It is it's own entity. We are clearly
being
> > controlled
> > and constructed by it's presence in it's creation.
> >
> > If not, it would make a damned good book.
>
> Fred Saberhagen beat you to it.
>
I hate it when that happens.
Which book is it may I ask? I'd like to check it out.
Fred Stone
In "Empire of the East" (might be hard to find).
He has the "Djinn of technology" who will build anything you can
specify, but you better be precise and unambiguous in your specs.
Denis Loubet
Hey, at least I'm not a slave to my soul.
(snip)
Mike Dubbeld
Exactly. It always makes me sound like a party poop but poop is what
AI is. If you observe the Battle of Waterloo from a physical perspective
monitoring each and every soldiers heart rate/brain waves - you name it
- and make aerial recons to observe the battle and place microphones all
over the battlefield - you will collect tons of data that can be analyzed in
thousands of ways. But all the data in the world from this perspective never
will tell you what this Battle was about. You could simulate the Battle of
Waterloo based on your extensive physical observations of that battle and
produce robots that look man-like and have them simulate the battle and
sure enough your battle would be just like the Battle of Waterloo
(Napolean).
You still would be totally clueless as to the purpose of the battle - but
some
people are satisfied that if they can simulate a battle - this is like the
real thing.
It's not. Never will be. Machine assistance can greatly assist us as
intelligent
creatures - but they never would know why. For the ultimate defeat of the
AI question see Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. I am told he proved the
absolute limits of machines. Machines can not create heuristics and then
proceed to generalize the heuristic to apply to a broader class of problems.
Abstract thinking is not possible for a machine. Humans as animal bodies
with 'Intensionality'/desire to survive were able to survive by being able
to
figure out complex situations fast. So nature gave humans innate tendencies
(Constancy being one big one) that enables us to make short work of a
complex envirionment and thus survive. A machine could do this also but the
problem with a machine is that specifically it can not apply the same
heuristic
to a broader class of problems. It is unable to select the appropiate
analogy
that applys to the situation. For example if you have a long skinny beaker
and a short fat beaker - both clear and the same size - and you dump a red
liquid from one to the other - you do not question if one will be able to
hold
all the liquid the other one has. From the principle of conservation simply
knowing
each holds a gallon - you do not have to question this. (Neglecting fluid
that
sticks to the sides and evaporates.) Now a machine can do this also. But
could it extend the principle to use marbles instead of red fluid? Not
likely.
If it knew in advance it could be programmed to handle it but if you never
told it what to expect - it could not use abstact thinking to
realize/recognize
the appropriate heuristic/algorithm to be applied. I can easily elaborate on
this
to the n'th degree. All one need do is look at psychology under the notion
of constancy and active filtering or shadowing say - the 'cocktail party
effect'.
The problem is specifically that humans 'add order' to the environment. The
perceiver can not be separated from the perceived. Our judgements are
biased from square one. The mere physics of the situation stiffles machines
from the simple information overload.
At one time people believed following Newtonian thinking of corpuscles -
that all things could be understood by breaking them down into simpler
components. This is the analysis/reductionism god. If you found a ship on
a beach and no one had any sort of clue what ships were - following
Newtonian
analysis one might proceed to take the ship apart to analyze its atoms and
molecules and study the ratios of the proportions of the different elements
it
is composed of to understand the ship. And sure enough you would have
a molecular understanding of the ship in the end. But I don't think the
people
funding your work would be over pleased with this nonsense. The purpose of
the ship never could come to be understood by breaking it down into its
smaller parts/analysis - its the wrong program. If you break the song
Yankee Doodle down into its individual notes and study each of them one
at a time and play them one per hour - one never will experience the melody
of the song Yankee Doodle. Some things can not be understood in this way
because the whole is more than the sum of its parts (Gestalt Psychology).
In the same way machines attempting to emulate 'humans' never will succeed
because the whole approach taken to do so is inappropriate. Machines can not
and never will posess intentionality or desire/purpose. As such, trying to
understand/emulate human intelligence is a misguided effort at best.
A soul animates a body. By plugging in a machine - you do not give it a
soul.
(Such is my joke about my sprinkler - being plugged into the water)
But do a search on Godels Incompleteness Theorem and also on 'The Chineese
Room'. I thought that simply by knowing this thought experiment showed
the fallacy of AI but some AI enthusiasts seem to 'think' otherwise.
Mike Dubbeld
The Immortalist
"I" think I'll jump in here, waz up? Very good example of how complex
systems and vast networks cannot be reduced to descriptions about their
constituent parts at this time.
> It's not. Never will be.
but how do you get to the never part or never will be, this seems to imply
that you understand the future in great enough detail to predict what will
happen. it may seem likely that things will go this way or that way but
there is not much support for absolute skepticism, how do you show it is
true? i see the progress made in the past and this makes some ideas seem
more likely, thats all the evidence i have.
> Machine assistance can greatly assist us as intelligent
> creatures - but they never would know why.
again, it is certain that machine assitance could not know why it assists at
this time, in fact this is probably impossible at this time, but exactly how
can you defend the proposition that machine assistance never would know why?
what could persuade me to believe that machine assistance will not evolve in
light of the progress made during the last 100 years?
> For the ultimate defeat of the
> AI question see Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.
> I am told he proved the absolute limits of machines.
here is some dribble i easily scooped up from an search engine's results:
" Gödel's Theorem has been used to argue that a computer can never be as
smart as a human being because the extent of its knowledge is limited by a
fixed set of axioms, whereas people can discover unexpected truths ... It
plays a part in modern linguistic theories, which emphasize the power of
language to come up with new ways to express ideas. And it has been taken to
imply that you'll never entirely understand yourself, since your mind, like
any other closed system, can only be sure of what it knows about itself by
relying on what it knows about itself. "
this makes it sound as if Godel had some final theory of math and that this
would never be added to or revised with further research. Although possible,
this does not show that it is true that Godel's theorem will never be shown
to be in error or at least not refer to networks instead of single computers
(potential single nodes in a vast network).
> Machines can not create heuristics and then
> proceed to generalize the heuristic to apply to a broader class of
problems.
> Abstract thinking is not possible for a machine.
And here we come to this word "machine". It is likely that machines will
slowely become more biological changing from purely mechanical activities to
behaviors like we find in nature. Granted we have a long way to go before
these entities can possibly perform abstract thinking and still further to
go before they can possibly bypass us making us look like pcs.
> Humans as animal bodies with 'Intensionality'/desire
> to survive were able to survive by being able
> to figure out complex situations fast. So nature gave humans innate
> tendencies (Constancy being one big one) that enables us to make
> short work of a complex envirionment and thus survive.
well we have to start at the beginning. first single celled
organism/machines. then we move up to multicellular machines. In a sense it
seems unfair to say future mechanical entities won't eventually show
'Intensionality'/desire to survive were able to survive by being able.
> A machine could do this also but the
> problem with a machine is that specifically it can not apply the same
> heuristic to a broader class of problems. It is unable to select the
appropiate
> analogy that applys to the situation. For example if you have a long
skinny beaker
> and a short fat beaker - both clear and the same size - and you dump a red
> liquid from one to the other - you do not question if one will be able to
> hold all the liquid the other one has. From the principle of conservation
simply
> knowing each holds a gallon - you do not have to question this.
(Neglecting fluid
> that sticks to the sides and evaporates.) Now a machine can do this also.
But
> could it extend the principle to use marbles instead of red fluid? Not
> likely. If it knew in advance it could be programmed to handle it but if
> you never told it what to expect - it could not use abstact thinking to
> realize/recognize the appropriate heuristic/algorithm to be applied.
> I can easily elaborate on this to the n'th degree. All one need do is
> look at psychology under the notion of constancy and active filtering
> or shadowing say - the 'cocktail party effect'.
agreed, that current computers cannot do this but AI soon will be more like
millions of our computers now hooked together in one thing (a particular
kind of computer network). they would each have their set of relationships
to the others and particular data. Interactions of relationships amongst
nodes in the network, will replace content address of current computers.
> The problem is specifically that humans 'add order' to the environment.
The
> perceiver can not be separated from the perceived. Our judgements are
> biased from square one. The mere physics of the situation stiffles
machines
> from the simple information overload.
agreed, as far as current computer entities are concerned, but this is likey
to change.
> At one time people believed following Newtonian thinking of corpuscles -
> that all things could be understood by breaking them down into simpler
> components. This is the analysis/reductionism god. If you found a ship on
> a beach and no one had any sort of clue what ships were - following
> Newtonian analysis one might proceed to take the ship apart to analyze its
atoms and
> molecules and study the ratios of the proportions of the different
elements
> it is composed of to understand the ship. And sure enough you would have
> a molecular understanding of the ship in the end. But I don't think the
> people funding your work would be over pleased with this nonsense. The
purpose of
> the ship never could come to be understood by breaking it down into its
> smaller parts/analysis - its the wrong program. If you break the song
> Yankee Doodle down into its individual notes and study each of them one
> at a time and play them one per hour - one never will experience the
melody
> of the song Yankee Doodle. Some things can not be understood in this way
> because the whole is more than the sum of its parts (Gestalt Psychology).
in complexity theory they say "more is different". components combine
together and another level of functionality emerges. then many components at
this level to allow the emergence of yet higher levels of organization, so
on. Each level has it's own rules of function as in cell, organs, bodies,
family, culture.
> In the same way machines attempting to emulate 'humans' never will succeed
> because the whole approach taken to do so is inappropriate. Machines can
not
> and never will posess intentionality or desire/purpose. As such, trying to
> understand/emulate human intelligence is a misguided effort at best.
> A soul animates a body. By plugging in a machine - you do not give it a
> soul.
there is this knowledge of the future you claim to have again, or you must
mean that computers as they exist now will "never" do this or that. this
soul has not been shown to exist, it would be great to have some concrete
evidence instead of doubt about how we gain evidence.
> (Such is my joke about my sprinkler - being plugged into the water)
> But do a search on Godels Incompleteness Theorem and also on 'The Chineese
> Room'. I thought that simply by knowing this thought experiment showed
> the fallacy of AI but some AI enthusiasts seem to 'think' otherwise.
godel and turing were not speacking about networks but were refering to
single computers. your comment about sprinklers is perfectly true of these
imbecielic current computers.
Side Note:
but you only vaguly mentioned the need for this network to have a physical
body like us. nature has discovered many different body types that brains
interact with the environment through, but there are probably many different
physical constructions that will allow consciousness to discover things even
these complex bodies we have will not allow. from a brain in a vat not
connected to anything, to bodies that dwarf ours, we will discover that
humans are just one of a large set of possibilities that nature "seemed" to
work with during this evolution on this planet.
and blah...
the genome is like a "computer network" which directs the assembly of much
more complex computer networks; organs and brains. so in order to get
desires and/or consciousness we must either create computer networks
(genomes) that can direct the assembly of much larger and vast computer
networks (brains) or as many fansy, bypass the initial computer network and
somehow do it in another way than nature has discovered.
i suppose that we may evolve not only computer networks that have
consciousness like us but also create many forms of consciousness, higher
and lower, that nature either did not discover or did not find fit.
so i agree with your argument about single computers as they are now but
this in no way speaks about the potential of network entities wich are
different from computers as letters are from words.
Daniel Grubb
>Exactly. It always makes me sound like a party poop but poop is what
>AI is. If you observe the Battle of Waterloo from a physical perspective
>monitoring each and every soldiers heart rate/brain waves - you name it
>- and make aerial recons to observe the battle and place microphones all
>over the battlefield - you will collect tons of data that can be analyzed in
>thousands of ways. But all the data in the world from this perspective never
>will tell you what this Battle was about. You could simulate the Battle of
>Waterloo based on your extensive physical observations of that battle and
>produce robots that look man-like and have them simulate the battle and
>sure enough your battle would be just like the Battle of Waterloo
>(Napolean).
>You still would be totally clueless as to the purpose of the battle - but
>some
>people are satisfied that if they can simulate a battle - this is like the
>real thing.
OK. If you are able to scan, to sufficient accuracy, the brain waves of
everybody involved in the battle, I don't see why you can't figure out
what they are *thinking* about the battle. That would give a very good
indication of why they *think* they are fighting for. This would be useful
for figuring out what the battle is about.
Going one step further. If you had brain scans of everyone involved for
the 10 years prior to the battle along with their positions, etc,
and similar information for 10 years afterwards, I think you *would* be
able to deduce what the battle was about fairly accurately.
> For the ultimate defeat of the
>AI question see Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. I am told he proved the
>absolute limits of machines. Machines can not create heuristics and then
>proceed to generalize the heuristic to apply to a broader class of problems.
>Abstract thinking is not possible for a machine. Humans as animal bodies
>with 'Intensionality'/desire to survive were able to survive by being able
>to
>figure out complex situations fast. So nature gave humans innate tendencies
>(Constancy being one big one) that enables us to make short work of a
>complex envirionment and thus survive. A machine could do this also but the
>problem with a machine is that specifically it can not apply the same
>heuristic
>to a broader class of problems. It is unable to select the appropiate
>analogy
>that applys to the situation.
This is a common, and incorrect reading of Godel's Theorem. All that
Godel proved was that any axiomatic system that a computer program
can simulate has statements that cannot be proved true or false in
that system. There are several things wrong when it is applied to the AI
context.
1) The real world is not a formal system. This is the most damaging
problem. Godel's result simply doesn't apply to systems that are
formally based but where the information coming in is not. A computer
or human would run on certain rules, but those rules are reacting to
a real world that is not describable by formal laws.
2) It is not at all clear that humans *can* adapt to *every* situation.
They are very good at generalizing in certain ways, but that does not
preclude that we generalize based on some internal rules. Hence,
Godel's results may apply to *us* as much as any 'machine'.
3) You seem to think we have to program in all the basic rules.
It seems to me that an 'evolved' system is much more likely
to give AI than any other. Such a system would come about from
setting up some basic abilities and then 'selecting over generations'
for systems that are able to interact with their environment in
complicated ways.
>For example if you have a long skinny beaker
>and a short fat beaker - both clear and the same size - and you dump a red
>liquid from one to the other - you do not question if one will be able to
>hold
>all the liquid the other one has. From the principle of conservation simply
>knowing
>each holds a gallon - you do not have to question this. (Neglecting fluid
>that
>sticks to the sides and evaporates.) Now a machine can do this also. But
>could it extend the principle to use marbles instead of red fluid? Not
>likely.
Why not? A system that has 'learned' from its environment rather than
by direct programming may well be able to make exactly this type of
leap.
>In the same way machines attempting to emulate 'humans' never will succeed
>because the whole approach taken to do so is inappropriate. Machines can not
>and never will posess intentionality or desire/purpose. As such, trying to
>understand/emulate human intelligence is a misguided effort at best.
>A soul animates a body. By plugging in a machine - you do not give it a
>soul.
Ahh. Here is the basic problem. Show me data that indicates the existence
of a 'soul' that animates the body. Intention and purpose are created from
*brain states*. They are based on physical properties of the brain and how
it processes information. We can point to particular places in the brain where
motivation is created. We know through a wide variety of studies that
what most people think of as 'feelings or thoughts' are controlled by particular
areas of the brain. These are *physcial* things that can certainly be
modeled by machines of sufficient complexity. A machine that does this
*would* have intentionality and purpose.
>But do a search on Godels Incompleteness Theorem and also on 'The Chineese
>Room'. I thought that simply by knowing this thought experiment showed
>the fallacy of AI but some AI enthusiasts seem to 'think' otherwise.
Searle's Chinese Room does point out a difficulty with how many people
think about consciousness. It simply is not the case that any particular
neuron understands language. But the system as a whole certainly *does*.
By avoiding the inevitable necessity of the system interacting with the
real world, Searle trivializes the problem and makes it absurd. A system
with rules that was able to interact in the world and talked in Chinese
*would* understand Chinese in my way of thinking.
---Dan Grubb
Mike Dubbeld
I do.
it may seem likely that things will go this way or that way but
> there is not much support for absolute skepticism, how do you show it is
> true? i see the progress made in the past and this makes some ideas seem
> more likely, thats all the evidence i have.
Well that's the only way your mind can see things.
>
> > Machine assistance can greatly assist us as intelligent
> > creatures - but they never would know why.
>
> again, it is certain that machine assitance could not know why it assists
at
> this time, in fact this is probably impossible at this time, but exactly
how
> can you defend the proposition that machine assistance never would know
why?
> what could persuade me to believe that machine assistance will not evolve
in
> light of the progress made during the last 100 years?
>
That is the whole problem. The thing that needs persuasion.
I am not in the persuasion business.
> > For the ultimate defeat of the
> > AI question see Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.
> > I am told he proved the absolute limits of machines.
>
> here is some dribble i easily scooped up from an search engine's results:
>
> " Gödel's Theorem has been used to argue that a computer can never be as
> smart as a human being because the extent of its knowledge is limited by a
> fixed set of axioms, whereas people can discover unexpected truths ... It
> plays a part in modern linguistic theories, which emphasize the power of
> language to come up with new ways to express ideas. And it has been taken
to
> imply that you'll never entirely understand yourself, since your mind,
like
> any other closed system, can only be sure of what it knows about itself by
> relying on what it knows about itself. "
>
> this makes it sound as if Godel had some final theory of math and that
this
> would never be added to or revised with further research. Although
possible,
> this does not show that it is true that Godel's theorem will never be
shown
> to be in error or at least not refer to networks instead of single
computers
> (potential single nodes in a vast network).
>
It sounds like Godel showed AI to be a subset of a class of things that
have known limits. Your mind falls in this bucket.
> > Machines can not create heuristics and then
> > proceed to generalize the heuristic to apply to a broader class of
> problems.
> > Abstract thinking is not possible for a machine.
>
> And here we come to this word "machine". It is likely that machines will
> slowely become more biological changing from purely mechanical activities
to
> behaviors like we find in nature. Granted we have a long way to go before
> these entities can possibly perform abstract thinking and still further to
> go before they can possibly bypass us making us look like pcs.
>
All bets are off if you want to start talking about biological entites.
There are
limits on these as well - just like your mind - but non-biological entities
have
much greater potential.
> > Humans as animal bodies with 'Intensionality'/desire
> > to survive were able to survive by being able
> > to figure out complex situations fast. So nature gave humans innate
> > tendencies (Constancy being one big one) that enables us to make
> > short work of a complex envirionment and thus survive.
>
> well we have to start at the beginning. first single celled
> organism/machines. then we move up to multicellular machines. In a sense
it
> seems unfair to say future mechanical entities won't eventually show
> 'Intensionality'/desire to survive were able to survive by being able.
>
It shows I know the difference between what the mind is and a soul is.
The soul animates biological organisms because biological organisms
provide the bottom line requirements for this animation.
Doesn't matter. The intelligence can not be organized and understood from
a central point of view. That is not to say that computers do not have
co-processors and they can have many co-processors. But every time
you stick a co-processor in - it requires an interupt. Serial processing by
the main processor by multiple parallel processors is done today but
the greater the number of co-processors the greater the slowdown.
> > The problem is specifically that humans 'add order' to the environment.
> The
> > perceiver can not be separated from the perceived. Our judgements are
> > biased from square one. The mere physics of the situation stiffles
> machines
> > from the simple information overload.
>
> agreed, as far as current computer entities are concerned, but this is
likey
> to change.
>
This is done today and it is very expensive. Cruise missles hug the ground
at
100-200 feet over the treetops at over 1000 mph. They use terrcom - terrain
comparison techniques to not crash into mountains and things. Tercom uses
'look-down' technology that is based on the same thing as the game 'Doom'
uses. Just enough pixels to accomplish the task of identification. Nearing
the
target furthermore the missle proceeds vertically to rise to a high
elevation
and attain a high velocity in a straight vertical dive into its target to
help
penetrate hardened targets. Also there are special HE (High Energy)
techniques available to penetrate tank armour and bunckers. All of this
information can be found in 'Janes'. Cruise missles howerver go for
a million dollars or more a pop. The military machine can afford such
technology. Furthermore NSA the National Security Agency - which is
the single US agency over every source of intelligence in the US - maintains
tight control over computer chips - worldwide for the most part. As in if
an ally is caught selling the wrong chip to a nation on a list it is made
known.
They attempt to keep the military always ahead of the civilian population
on chip technology.
I guess I am trying to say that if you want to get a good feel for
technology
you watch the military acqusitons and deployments in the defense/arms
literature. The military will always be near the front of new technology.
Lots of technology is simply spinoffs from military technology that
has become declassified. Robots and intelligence are warefare issues
for sure. And they have the bucks.
The reverse is most likely true. There are 2 schools on the idea of chip
development. One is RISC - Reduced Instruction Set C? and its opposite
which goes along with you idea of 'more'. With more you get less because
complexity adds to calculation speed in many cases and must be made
up for with its complexity.
> > In the same way machines attempting to emulate 'humans' never will
succeed
> > because the whole approach taken to do so is inappropriate. Machines can
> not
> > and never will posess intentionality or desire/purpose. As such, trying
to
> > understand/emulate human intelligence is a misguided effort at best.
> > A soul animates a body. By plugging in a machine - you do not give it a
> > soul.
>
> there is this knowledge of the future you claim to have again, or you must
> mean that computers as they exist now will "never" do this or that. this
> soul has not been shown to exist, it would be great to have some concrete
> evidence instead of doubt about how we gain evidence.
If you know the limitations of something you do not expect more than those
limitations. In the future.
>
> > (Such is my joke about my sprinkler - being plugged into the water)
> > But do a search on Godels Incompleteness Theorem and also on 'The
Chineese
> > Room'. I thought that simply by knowing this thought experiment showed
> > the fallacy of AI but some AI enthusiasts seem to 'think' otherwise.
>
> godel and turing were not speacking about networks but were refering to
> single computers. your comment about sprinklers is perfectly true of these
> imbecielic current computers.
Networks also add complexity and higher probability of problems increases
proportionately. This does not mean I do not belive that a great deal more
progress will not be made - it will. But don't tell me about comparing
machines
to humans. Better start looking for biological computers for that.
>
> Side Note:
> but you only vaguly mentioned the need for this network to have a physical
> body like us. nature has discovered many different body types that brains
> interact with the environment through, but there are probably many
different
> physical constructions that will allow consciousness to discover things
even
> these complex bodies we have will not allow. from a brain in a vat not
> connected to anything, to bodies that dwarf ours, we will discover that
> humans are just one of a large set of possibilities that nature "seemed"
to
> work with during this evolution on this planet.
If you believe you are your mind, your mind believes this is true.
L Crane
I think Godel's Theorum is a very weak argument against AI, mostly for
reasons already stated by Daniel and Immortalist.
The Chinese Room is harder, but I still think it falls short. Our
brains do nothing more than the Chinese Room on a larger scale. All
of our thoughts, self awareness, and emotions are links between
various parts of the brain and the outside world. Each neuron could
be thought of as a Chinese room. I don't have a problem with thinking
of my consciousness as a collection of finite calculations. My
question to you would be: If we created a mechanical copy of a human
brain, down to the sub-cellular level, would it have "intentionality"?
Something I just thought of, but am not sure of:
In the original Chinese room the prisoner does not understand Chinese
in the normal sense. He is given input, operates on it according to
rules, and derives and output. Now imagine a very sophisticated set
of rules, that even involve rules that change other rules and creating
new rules. Now imagine that the input comes along numerous nerves, as
does the output. The person takes the nerve signal, looks at the
rules, and then produces the stipulated output, along with any changes
to the rules. The person would never know what the nerve signals
represented, he would only know the rules. Yet I think that the brain
works roughly like this. Interesting connections to all kinds of
philosophy.
Just my opinion Lee
The Immortalist
You claim that you that you understand the future in great enough detail to
predict what will happen when people in the future try to learn about the
purpose of the Battle of Waterloo. I also claim this but I only believe it
is "likely" or "not likely" based on passed evidence and my deliberation, I
leave open the possibility that I could be wrong. Are you saying that there
is no possibility that you are wrong? If it turned out you were wrong what
kind of explaination would you give? If tommorrow the purpose of the battle
was found from some sort of new technology no one until then had heard of
you would be wrong. You "may" be right.
>
> it may seem likely that things will go this way or that way but
> > there is not much support for absolute skepticism, how do you show it is
> > true? i see the progress made in the past and this makes some ideas seem
> > more likely, thats all the evidence i have.
>
> Well that's the only way your mind can see things.
It seems more like the religious or cultural ideas you have learned from
others has lead you to view my mind or other minds as being limited in some
sense that your conditioning alows you to escape from. So you have this
certainty in your mind and accourding to your statements we must deduce that
you have never been wrong before when this certainty was in action. Is it
true that you have never turned out to be wrong when you were certain at any
time during your life? If it is not true that your certainty has been 100%
accurate it is possible that you are wrong about how minds "see things."
>
> >
> > > Machine assistance can greatly assist us as intelligent
> > > creatures - but they never would know why.
> >
> > again, it is certain that machine assitance could not know why it
assists
> at
> > this time, in fact this is probably impossible at this time, but exactly
> how
> > can you defend the proposition that machine assistance never would know
> why?
> > what could persuade me to believe that machine assistance will not
evolve
> in
> > light of the progress made during the last 100 years?
> >
> That is the whole problem. The thing that needs persuasion.
> I am not in the persuasion business.
So if you make an assertion it is to be accepted with no defence or
explaination? The one who asserts should defend offer an explaination of
what is asserted. I will ask one more time a little differently; You wrote
that "Machine assistance can greatly assist us as intelligent creatures -
but they never would know why." Why will machine assistance never know why?
In this way I am only asking you to explain what you mean because I am not
clear why you beleive they (machine assitance) never would know why. If the
reason is sufficient then all funding for AI projects could possibly be
stopped with the right effort.
Godel beleived that the extent AI's knowledge is limited by a fixed set of
axioms, whereas people can discover unexpected truths. If in the future we
improove AI in a way that it discovers unexpected truths would Godel turn
out to be wrong?
Godel also beleived that it (unexpected truth) plays a part in modern
linguistic theories, which emphasize the power of language to come up with
new ways to express ideas. And it has been taken to imply that you'll never
entirely understand yourself, since your mind, like any other closed system,
can only be sure of what it knows about itself by relying on what it knows
about itself. If in the future we build AI different from current AI that
can perform the above, would Godel be wrong? If we learn how to connect two
brains together in a way that allows one to experience the others'
experience, would their brains still be considered closed systems? More
importantly, you said that it "sounds like godel showed" something. Does
this add or subtract from your certainty? Further, when you say that "Your
mind falls in this bucket" are you saying that all minds somehow face this
predicament.
>
> > > Machines can not create heuristics and then
> > > proceed to generalize the heuristic to apply to a broader class of
> > problems.
> > > Abstract thinking is not possible for a machine.
> >
> > And here we come to this word "machine". It is likely that machines will
> > slowely become more biological changing from purely mechanical
activities
> to
> > behaviors like we find in nature. Granted we have a long way to go
before
> > these entities can possibly perform abstract thinking and still further
to
> > go before they can possibly bypass us making us look like pcs.
> >
> All bets are off if you want to start talking about biological entites.
> There are
> limits on these as well - just like your mind - but non-biological
entities
> have
> much greater potential.
You are you saying that human experience has nothing to do with biological
entities? There is something missing from this conversation, namely, you
religeous or cultural beliefs. You are leaving them out of you assertions in
a way that each statement really makes two or more statements. It's like the
old complex question thing where if someone asks; have you stopped beating
your wife lately? If you answer yes that means you used to beat her but are
not now beating her; If you say no that means that not only did you used to
beat here but that you still are beating her. So we divide the question and
two answers are given to two questions disguised as one; I have not beat my
wife in the past nor am I beating her lately. Moreover, if you don't add an
explaination about your religeous or cultural components of this proposition
that human experience has nothing to do with biological entities henceforth
you are only saying that you beleive this is true and that some mysterious
factor X adds credence which leads to some conclusion which is unclear also.
Are you trying to say that your religeous and cultural beliefs lead you to
beleive that human experience has nothing to do with biological entities. If
so could you explain those religeous or cultural beleifs. Sounds kind of
like some sort of Eastern Religeous veiw, am I right?
Even if it was true that human experience or soul existed independently of
biological entities but biological entities somehow have a relation with
these non biological entities, would it be possible to create other
biological entities that also have this relation, or are you claiming that
there is something or some other entitiy that would only allow certain
biological entities to have this relation to non biological entities?
More importantly, if, for the sake of argument, we could create these
mechanical entities, biological entities, and non-biological entities, would
this contradict your cultural or religous beliefs. Would some force or
entitiy in your religon, for instance, allow us to resurrect ourselve if we
learned how to do it. If not, why.
>
> > > Humans as animal bodies with 'Intensionality'/desire
> > > to survive were able to survive by being able
> > > to figure out complex situations fast. So nature gave humans innate
> > > tendencies (Constancy being one big one) that enables us to make
> > > short work of a complex envirionment and thus survive.
> >
> > well we have to start at the beginning. first single celled
> > organism/machines. then we move up to multicellular machines. In a sense
> it
> > seems unfair to say future mechanical entities won't eventually show
> > 'Intensionality'/desire to survive were able to survive by being able.
> >
> It shows I know the difference between what the mind is and a soul is.
> The soul animates biological organisms because biological organisms
> provide the bottom line requirements for this animation.
>
So your saying if we can duplicate this biological process that we could
animate them with souls? Are you saying that something created these souls
or could we mass produce or animate new ones? You say that nature gives
humans what? Nature has non biological entities to, this is getting intense.
I believe nature has something like this. Most complex systems have pattern
atraction which defies the regular motions the components would participate
in. Some networks arrange the components to their 3 dimensional topography
of moving attraction points.
Kevin Kelly writes about this:
Jacob and Monod's regulatory genes reflected a spaghetti-like vision of
governance-a decentralized -network- of genes (-steering- the cellular
network to "-its-" own destiny). Kauffman was excited. His picture of "order
for free" suggested to him a fairly far-out idea: that some of the
differentiation (order) each egg underwent was inevitable, no matter what
genes you started out with!
from OutOfControl - chapter 20 segment a
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch20-a.html
So I am saying that current understanding of living systems and networks
show that it is likely that these phenomenon you speak of are more of a
result of network activites themselves bootstrapping life like behavior from
information feeding back and forth between network nodes. Like the movable
feast or waterloo networks have a mind of their own that components
generally know not of.
A network of computers is many computers connected together which can be
arranged differently than single computers. One computer cannot contain a
computer network or it would not be one computer. The battle of waterloo was
a network of people, the information that was communicated through canons
bullets yells etc, could be considered a computer network. If a command was
given many guns could simualtaniously raise in the air, if the right command
was given there could be a coordinated gun swing like when people at sports
arenas raise and move their hands to cause a wave to appear to move across
the areana. Like a computer made of people following simple rules. Like in
how birds flock and the flock moves in unison and turns as one. A networked
computer emerging from simple rules the birds follow. Some network computers
are very smart like a flock of birds splitting to move around rocks.
Your view needs to be upgraded to deal with this complexity theory. I would
suggest for you Fritjof Capra's the web of life, you know the guy who wrote
the tao of physics. he translated systems theory for ya'll. This is my 2nd
favorite book but one your philosophy desperatly needs. You arguments sounds
20 years old and dont apply now, believe me I can see it clearly. Besides
you have some cool ideas and it would be great if you knew how to debate
comlexity theory.
Fritjof Capra - The Web of Life : A New Understanding of Living Systems
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385476760/103-3225548-6830221
1 The mere physics of the situation -stiffles machines- from the simple
information overload.
2 This is done today and it is very expensive. Cruise missles hug the
ground...
3 Conclusion - Certainty is not 100% therefore neural networks in missles
can learn something different
Wrong, complexity theory is a branch of physics.
> > > In the same way machines attempting to emulate 'humans' never will
> succeed
> > > because the whole approach taken to do so is inappropriate. Machines
can
> > not
> > > and never will posess intentionality or desire/purpose. As such,
trying
> to
> > > understand/emulate human intelligence is a misguided effort at best.
> > > A soul animates a body. By plugging in a machine - you do not give it
a
> > > soul.
> >
> > there is this knowledge of the future you claim to have again, or you
must
> > mean that computers as they exist now will "never" do this or that. this
> > soul has not been shown to exist, it would be great to have some
concrete
> > evidence instead of doubt about how we gain evidence.
>
> If you know the limitations of something you do not expect more than those
> limitations. In the future.
>
I dont think culture would have evolved vary far technologically with that
thought. The story of cultural evolution has been overcoming the
limitations.
> >
> > > (Such is my joke about my sprinkler - being plugged into the water)
> > > But do a search on Godels Incompleteness Theorem and also on 'The
> Chineese
> > > Room'. I thought that simply by knowing this thought experiment showed
> > > the fallacy of AI but some AI enthusiasts seem to 'think' otherwise.
> >
> > godel and turing were not speacking about networks but were refering to
> > single computers. your comment about sprinklers is perfectly true of
these
> > imbecielic current computers.
>
> Networks also add complexity and higher probability of problems increases
> proportionately. This does not mean I do not belive that a great deal more
> progress will not be made - it will. But don't tell me about comparing
> machines
> to humans. Better start looking for biological computers for that.
>
best thing i ever heard you say. i respect your vast knowledge but
sometimes, not often, it is easy to see how you grase over a subject you
dont know well, but we all do that dont we. biological computers or at least
something different than these we have now. I prefer to think that it will
be a transition from the learning neural networks, like in the missle you
spoke of that learns and adapts to the terrain, to purly biological or
nanotachnology or both computers.
> >
> > Side Note:
> > but you only vaguly mentioned the need for this network to have a
physical
> > body like us. nature has discovered many different body types that
brains
> > interact with the environment through, but there are probably many
> different
> > physical constructions that will allow consciousness to discover things
> even
> > these complex bodies we have will not allow. from a brain in a vat not
> > connected to anything, to bodies that dwarf ours, we will discover that
> > humans are just one of a large set of possibilities that nature "seemed"
> to
> > work with during this evolution on this planet.
>
> If you believe you are your mind, your mind believes this is true.
oh ya, that was just junk dna i threw in the argument because that is where
it goes next. to the ai cant blah blee blah less it got a body, but you
argument swerves around this with your non-biological entities.
gotta work that one into my space of all possible beings theory - thanx!
>
> >
> > and blah...
> >
> > the genome is like a "computer network" which directs the assembly of
much
> > more complex computer networks; organs and brains. so in order to get
> > desires and/or consciousness we must either create computer networks
> > (genomes) that can direct the assembly of much larger and vast computer
> > networks (brains) or as many fansy, bypass the initial computer network
> and
> > somehow do it in another way than nature has discovered.
> >
> > i suppose that we may evolve not only computer networks that have
> > consciousness like us but also create many forms of consciousness,
higher
> > and lower, that nature either did not discover or did not find fit.
> >
> > so i agree with your argument about single computers as they are now but
> > this in no way speaks about the potential of network entities wich are
> > different from computers as letters are from words.
> >
> >
>
>
what religion are you? wait dont answer that man thats your personal
business.... man talking with you is challenging and time consuming
Mike Dubbeld
Thats not enough information to answer this question. If you make a
biological copy of something the answer is yes. If not no. Only a soul
can animate a body and a soul will not animate a machine. The environment
is not suitable for this to happen. Machines can not have consciousness as
is understood to be human consciousness. Human consciousness arises
from the proximity of the soul to the mind. The mind itself is no more
intelligent than your toaster. The mind is not the brain. The brain is the
physical counterpart to the mind. The mind is the cause. The brain is
the result. Our individual awareness/energy/will/consciousness arises
from the soul. Only the soul is intelligent. When awareness penetrates
images we call this thinking. Thoughts are bundles of images. That is
actually a human limitation of sorts. The mind is a contraption. A
rather mechanical hunk of junk. It is quite limited by duality.
Reason takes place in time and space. The mind is part of nature/the
universe. The soul is not. As such it is not limited by time and space
as is the mind. The soul uses intuition. Intuition comes in a flash. It
does not take time like reason. However all intuition is quite reasonable.
Souls animate all life from the single celled up. All life has consciousnes
of one form or another. All of these things can only be known by
concentration and meditation where upon the mind is transcended and
understood for what it is. Trying to understand mind with mind is like
trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
>
> Something I just thought of, but am not sure of:
> In the original Chinese room the prisoner does not understand Chinese
> in the normal sense. He is given input, operates on it according to
> rules, and derives and output. Now imagine a very sophisticated set
> of rules, that even involve rules that change other rules and creating
> new rules. Now imagine that the input comes along numerous nerves, as
> does the output. The person takes the nerve signal, looks at the
> rules, and then produces the stipulated output, along with any changes
> to the rules. The person would never know what the nerve signals
> represented, he would only know the rules. Yet I think that the brain
> works roughly like this. Interesting connections to all kinds of
> philosophy.
> Just my opinion Lee
Well that is what the big craze is today - neural networks. Just ask any
student getting into clinical psychology and see if they do not tell you
this.
Ever since the 'grandma neuron' bubble was burst per Robert Sapalsky
it is now all about neural networks. Understanding how the brain works
is one thing. Enabling lifeless matter to emulate it is quite another. The
brain is the resultant of what you get on the physical plane as a result of
the mind. How you make this happen without a soul - not going to happen
unless you start with a biological organism to begin with. A biological
organism is capable of being occupied by a soul. If it is alive - it has a
soul. I don't specialize in AI. But I have done computers for many
years. The military is where to look for state of the art AI because
they are the ones that can foot the bill for expensive new ideas that
they can justify for military purposes. For example cruise missles use
TERRCOM - Terrain Comparrison techniques to look down at the
ground for targets and avoid crashing into mountains while flying at
1000 mph 100 feet over the tree tops so as not to be seen in time by
radar and shot down. This TERCOM technology is sort of like the
same thing the game DOOM uses. But cruise missles go for 1 million
or more a pop. The military always gets the highest state of the art
chips long before the public gets them as I understand it. NSA sees
to that. All of this information is unclassified and can be found in
Janes military equipment catelogues.
Got to go,
Mike Dubbeld
Elf Sternberg
"Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> writes:
>For the ultimate defeat of the AI question see Godel's Incompleteness
>Theorem. I am told he proved the absolute limits of machines. Machines
>can not create heuristics and then proceed to generalize the heuristic
>to apply to a broader class of problems.
The problem with this analysis is that, if Godel proved that
machines cannot achieve the kind of thought processes capable in a human
being, then neither can human beings. Underneath it all, we are meat
machines, neurons and electrical impulses whirling around five pounds of
biologically wired jelly, all organized by billions of years of
evolutionary processes to be supreme survivors and reproducers.
We know that there exists something that can "think like us";
it's called a human being. If human beings exist, there's no reason at
all to believe that analogous processes could not go on in other media,
such as silicon. The universe supports the existence of thinking
things.
As for the notion that machines "cannot create heurists...", the
answer to that is simply that you are wrong. The cost of doing so is
immensely high-- it took nature billions of years to go from creatures
that could barely process the nutritional value of their surroundings to
creatures like us, and a lot of research in AI philosophy has recently
been concentrating on the need for arbitrary "drives," which in human
beings manifest as irrational emotions. (Daniel Dennett's "Kinds of
Minds" is a great exploration of this thesis.)
>The purpose of the ship never could come to be understood by breaking
>it down into its smaller parts/analysis - its the wrong program.
A counter-example is Volvo's Diesel Truck Engine laboratory.
There, the researchers created "genetics" for all the different parts of
a diesel engine-- block size, bore size, piston geometry, shaft
geometry, etc-- and wrote a program to "breed" many different randomly
variant engines. They then ran the program in a supercomputer looking
for those engines that fit within an envelope of fuel efficiency and
pollution restraint.
It's a matter of semantics to say "the humans wanted it that
way," "the humans taught the computer to want it that way," or "the
computer wanted it that way."
Unless you want to invoke some kind of supernatural agency (one
that is completely arbitrary and indiscernable from completely random
influence), all that *you* do is a matter of similar semantics: "you
like good food and sex" and "evolutionary processes adapted you to seek
out survival and reproductive options" are semantically equivalent.
>But do a search on Godels Incompleteness Theorem and also on 'The
>Chineese Room'.
The Chinese Room is a fallacy from beginning to end. If
Searle's Chinese Room takes in meaningful questions at one end and
gives out thoughtful answers at the other, then it does not matter what
is going on inside the Chinese Room: the process going on in there is
indistinguishable from the process of conscious thought and should be
given the benefit of the doubt.
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/ (under construction)
Promiscuity, done right, is an inherently nerdlike pursuit that
requires discipline, practice and forethought. -- Tracy Quan
They swash! They buckle! New stories at:
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/bloodybeth/
L Crane
> > I think Godel's Theorum is a very weak argument against AI, mostly for
> > reasons already stated by Daniel and Immortalist.
> > The Chinese Room is harder, but I still think it falls short. Our
> > brains do nothing more than the Chinese Room on a larger scale. All
> > of our thoughts, self awareness, and emotions are links between
> > various parts of the brain and the outside world. Each neuron could
> > be thought of as a Chinese room. I don't have a problem with thinking
> > of my consciousness as a collection of finite calculations. My
> > question to you would be: If we created a mechanical copy of a human
> > brain, down to the sub-cellular level, would it have "intentionality"?
>
> Thats not enough information to answer this question. If you make a
> biological copy of something the answer is yes. If not no. Only a soul
> can animate a body and a soul will not animate a machine.
So what is considered a "biological" copy? Presumable it would be
fairly clear-cut, if a soul has to decide whether to stay there or
not.
> The environment is not suitable for this to happen.
Could you elaborate?
> Machines can not have consciousness as
> is understood to be human consciousness. Human consciousness arises
> from the proximity of the soul to the mind. The mind itself is no more
> intelligent than your toaster. The mind is not the brain. The brain is the
> physical counterpart to the mind. The mind is the cause. The brain is
> the result. Our individual awareness/energy/will/consciousness arises
> from the soul. Only the soul is intelligent. When awareness penetrates
> images we call this thinking. Thoughts are bundles of images. That is
> actually a human limitation of sorts. The mind is a contraption. A
> rather mechanical hunk of junk. It is quite limited by duality.
> Reason takes place in time and space. The mind is part of nature/the
> universe. The soul is not. As such it is not limited by time and space
> as is the mind. The soul uses intuition. Intuition comes in a flash. It
> does not take time like reason. However all intuition is quite reasonable.
> Souls animate all life from the single celled up. All life has consciousnes
> of one form or another.
Can you give a clear definition of what has a soul and what does not?
It seems arbitrary to say one object has a soul because it has a
certain chemistry or physics.
What are the limits of what you call "biological"?
Lee
The Immortalist
Elf Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:1017339071.826221@yasure...
thank you! had that note buryed somewhere but wanted to lazily let it shake
out in order to grab notes along the way.
http://thegauntlet.com/audio/cof4.ram
http://carnageinc.com/audio/cof5.ram
Daniel Grubb
>> be thought of as a Chinese room. I don't have a problem with thinking
>> of my consciousness as a collection of finite calculations. My
>> question to you would be: If we created a mechanical copy of a human
>> brain, down to the sub-cellular level, would it have "intentionality"?
>Thats not enough information to answer this question. If you make a
>biological copy of something the answer is yes. If not no. Only a soul
>can animate a body and a soul will not animate a machine. The environment
>is not suitable for this to happen. Machines can not have consciousness as
>is understood to be human consciousness. Human consciousness arises
>from the proximity of the soul to the mind. The mind itself is no more
>intelligent than your toaster. The mind is not the brain. The brain is the
>physical counterpart to the mind. The mind is the cause. The brain is
>the result. Our individual awareness/energy/will/consciousness arises
>from the soul. Only the soul is intelligent. When awareness penetrates
>images we call this thinking. Thoughts are bundles of images. That is
>actually a human limitation of sorts. The mind is a contraption. A
>rather mechanical hunk of junk. It is quite limited by duality.
Lots and lots of problems here.
First, what is a soul? What is it made of? What are its properties?
How does it interact with other souls? How does it interact with matter?
Why can only souls be intelligent? What do you mean by intelligent?
What does it mean for a soul to be 'in close proximity' to a brain?
Second, why do souls only 'animate' biological entities? It is because they
are carbon based? It is that they have nucleic acids? Proteins? Lipids?
Carbohydrates? Do souls simply not interact with silicon? Why not?
What property of biological entities allows them to be animated? What
is going on at the atomic/molecular levels when a body is animated?
Third, why is it that when the brain is damaged, our personalities (mediated
by the soul) can be radically changed? Why is it that damage to specific
areas of the brain leads to specific types of deficiencies such as
difficulties planning, thinking, etc that would be consider responsibilities
of the soul?
The list goes on and on and on.... All of this constitutes an immense
research opportunity *if* you can show there is such a thing as a soul.
Unfortunately for your scheme, there is simply no evidence that such
a thing exists or that it is needed to explain human consciousness.
Present some evidence that your view is even workable in practice
and you might have something to offer with it.
As Elf said, we are biological machines that are extremely good
at survival and procreation.
---Dan Grubb
Elf Sternberg
"Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> writes:
>Thats not enough information to answer this question. If you make a
>biological copy of something the answer is yes. If not no. Only a soul
>can animate a body and a soul will not animate a machine. The
>environment is not suitable for this to happen. Machines can not have
>consciousness as is understood to be human consciousness. Human
>consciousness arises from the proximity of the soul to the mind. The
>mind itself is no more intelligent than your toaster. The mind is not
>the brain. The brain is the physical counterpart to the mind.
What a charming collection of archaic assertions! So, where
does this "mind" interface with the brain? We know that limbs, for
example, move in response to electrical stimuli from the brain-- and so
the brain must get some sort of physical stimuli from this "mind" you're
discussing in order to start the whole cascade. Where does this happen?
In the pituitary gland? In the hypothalamus? Where?
Let's face the facts: you tinker with the brain, and the mind
changes. A long history of research into people who have suffered
physical trauma shows that, depending upon what portion of the brain is
injured, personality and ability changes are inherint. Damage the left
ventral neocortext and lose all ability to emote, to have goals, to
want, for example. Take Prozac and the brain changes-- so does the
mind, apparently. The mind is inextricably a phenomenon of the brain,
not the other way around.
>Enabling lifeless matter to emulate it is quite another.
Nonetheless, we are getting better and better at having
computers "emulate" the subtleties of human thought. In the case of
facial recognition or Kanji OCR, we're not even sure how the computer
does it-- the programs that do that are genetically derived from simpler
programs, and while we're sure we could figure out what the computer is
doing, often it's good enough to know that the computer is doing it
reliably.
It's only a matter of time before a "lifeless" computer can
emulate the subtleties of human interaction sufficiently to be
indistinguishable from a human being. It'll be consciously different--
in order to be compelling, a program *must* have some irrational base
premises, given to it by a human being, just as our irrational base
premises were derived by evolutionary principles-- and unless WE are
completely stupid we won't give it "survive and reproduce" as one of its
existential axioms (but "keep humans happy" will probably be one of
them).
The Immortalist
> In article <a7ui0s$p9a$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>
> "Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> writes:
>
> >Thats not enough information to answer this question. If you make a
> >biological copy of something the answer is yes. If not no. Only a soul
> >can animate a body and a soul will not animate a machine. The
> >environment is not suitable for this to happen. Machines can not have
> >consciousness as is understood to be human consciousness. Human
> >consciousness arises from the proximity of the soul to the mind. The
> >mind itself is no more intelligent than your toaster. The mind is not
> >the brain. The brain is the physical counterpart to the mind.
>
> What a charming collection of archaic assertions! So, where
> does this "mind" interface with the brain? We know that limbs, for
> example, move in response to electrical stimuli from the brain-- and so
> the brain must get some sort of physical stimuli from this "mind" you're
> discussing in order to start the whole cascade. Where does this happen?
> In the pituitary gland? In the hypothalamus? Where?
>
I like how you put it in another post:
> { Underneath it all, we are meat
> { machines, neurons and electrical
> { impulses whirling around five pounds of
> { biologically wired jelly, all organized by
> { billions of years of evolutionary processes
> { to be supreme survivors and reproducers.
eXcElLeNt !
The mind is likely to be an constantly evolving set of constraints resulting
from multiple bottlenecks produced by the combined activities of nerve cells
and their varying synaptic resitences to signal propogation themselves
moving around like people in a city or cars on a freeway. This emergent and
constantly evolving pattern of constraints can be subsumed by further
emergent constraint patterns which the original contraint pattern results
in. This may be subsumed by higher levels than this in a fractional
(fractal) manner, but probably only reach so many levels like a flame can
only get so big by the amount of fuel and terrain. Obviously the higher
levels of constantly evolving constraint patterns result in the experience
of quala or what it is like to be a self.
Actually it is both a chicken and egg at once an autocatylitic self
bootstrapping process... take out one of these elements and the thingy
crashes.
The thing to difine would be the lowest example of "life". Kevin Kelly says
that the first mechanical life forms were thermostats and then
servomechanisms.
Maturing of Mechanical Selfhood
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch7-b.html
A secondary activity determines the primary activities which determine the
secondary activity, which then influence the primary activities, etc... Kind
of like how Godel's self reference happens after the toilet flushes, fills
and stops at a level determined (mind part) by the level (self referencial
loop). But alas, it as you have said in other posts; a matter of semantics.
Maybe we cannot communicate about these things and processes with these
overused words (minds, souls, life, ets...). Especially when this shows that
my toilet actually has a rudimentary mind or soul. I prefere that we make
new words for all this shit but the old ones actually work.
Look for the part that explain how the lap dance works up to how chemical
A->B->C->A,B,C->A
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch20-c.html
Sorry about useing this book so much but it is the one that has the examples
that is online free. Saves much typing.
> Let's face the facts: you tinker with the brain, and the mind
> changes. A long history of research into people who have suffered
> physical trauma shows that, depending upon what portion of the brain is
> injured, personality and ability changes are inherint. Damage the left
> ventral neocortext and lose all ability to emote, to have goals, to
> want, for example. Take Prozac and the brain changes-- so does the
> mind, apparently. The mind is inextricably a phenomenon of the brain,
> not the other way around.
>
True, true, true, but also there may be a case that the mind influences the
brain since it is inside the loop, a component, a part of reference. We can
loose critical parts of the brain like you say and for instance never be
able to walk again. Also when people have strokes and loose parts of their
brain surviving parts of the brain continue to attemp to work in unison with
varying numbers of other parts depending on what senses or actions are being
attended to. Somehow when these groupings of regions detect missing
information unused or infrequently used parts of the brain are taught the
information that the lost parts contained. So was it the regions that used
to interact with the lost parts, or the mind (ongoing summed emergent
results of proximate activites and linked nodes), that taught the new
regions what the lost regions knew? I believe it was all of the above and
none singly. Each of the many parts seek information to relieve pressure on
them from varying points so they more or less fill in the new parts with the
part they need and then the rest of the parts needing to reference the
missing parts fill in the rest and this protion of the self "pops" back into
place. Again this will not work in some injuries that are more permanent
since other parts of the brain cannot learn what the missing parts knew or
did because of their more unique position in the this web.
As a side note here; when i was a kid there was this new thing called, i
think, killerian photagraphy, and it sowed this feild around a leaf. When a
peice of the leaf was broken off and then another snapshot was taken the
field continued around the leaf even though there was part missing. the
health food store philosophy back then (now called -new age- i guess) was
that the field cause growing molecules to grow into the right places for
healing to take place. Havnt heard anything about this in quite a while so i
wouldnt want to really use it as some kind of evidence in one of these
propositions. Then there are these fields we pick up when sensors are set on
the side of the head; EEG. Could fields alter the resistance of some signal
propogation across synapses? I dont notice it when standing next to a
transformer. But if fields can influence synaptic resistence we got another
realm on interference between nodes in the brains larger networks. Like in
basic electronics how when an electric charge travels down a copper wire a
small feild forms around it. Twist the wire around itself and the feild
doubles, twist around again and it triples. So what about nerve fibers that
are next to each other, does their combined field produce the same effect?
And if these fields can alter synaptic resistence to signal propogation,
what about multi-million fiber budles all around the brain? Bugga Boo Boo
man we in a mess here if this turns out to influence the minds emergence
from the brain and interaction with the brain and self. Penrose was playing
with his particles when he could have thrashed down with these feilds.
I think what I am trying to say is that we are getting close to the edge now
(singularity?) where either side of debates like these are going to have to
give up something for third or other explainations. This will be a great
time for philosophy but will make other branches of life rather complex and
embarrasing (like how i know all this must sound while making most of it up
on the fly here). So these other explainations would support certain aspects
of both these areguments. We are on the frontier of the self, making shit up
and some it will be science before you know it.
Really what i am asking you is do these kinds of totally rational
possibilities conflict with the current AI debate?
> >Enabling lifeless matter to emulate it is quite another.
>
> Nonetheless, we are getting better and better at having
> computers "emulate" the subtleties of human thought. In the case of
> facial recognition or Kanji OCR, we're not even sure how the computer
> does it-- the programs that do that are genetically derived from simpler
> programs, and while we're sure we could figure out what the computer is
> doing, often it's good enough to know that the computer is doing it
> reliably.
>
> It's only a matter of time before a "lifeless" computer can
> emulate the subtleties of human interaction sufficiently to be
> indistinguishable from a human being. It'll be consciously different--
> in order to be compelling, a program *must* have some irrational base
> premises, given to it by a human being, just as our irrational base
> premises were derived by evolutionary principles-- and unless WE are
> completely stupid we won't give it "survive and reproduce" as one of its
> existential axioms (but "keep humans happy" will probably be one of
> them).
>
Do you mean actually reproduce itself? Or some other form of self repair and
improved modification than reproduction with it's bloody tooth and claw that
results?
William Calvin speaks of each thought progression going through an
evolutionary process in a speeded up version of the history of life on this
planet. Each time I diliberate on whether or not to type this or go out for
a climb, the events in the brain recapitulate, in seconds, billions of years
of survival and reproduction of expanding copies of copies spreading entire
and adhering in form throughout different regions of the brain. Like groups
of pixels changing colors making a shape appear and appear to move across a
screen preserving its structure.
This most awesome combination of complexity theory, darwinism, nueral
darwinism, and nuerophysiology, and as of this posting, is online in it's
entirety:
http://faculty.washington.edu/wcalvin/bk9/
Anyway I almost totally agree with everything you say and you say it much
better than me. Sorry about the rambling here.
> Elf
>
> --
> Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
> http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/ (under construction)
>
> Promiscuity, done right, is an inherently nerdlike pursuit that
> requires discipline, practice and forethought. -- Tracy Quan
>
> They swash! They buckle! New stories at:
> http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/bloodybeth/
http://gened.emc.maricopa.edu/Bio/BIO181/BIOBK/motorcortex.gif
gmb
>
> > { Underneath it all, we are meat
> > { machines, neurons and electrical
> > { impulses whirling around five pounds of
> > { biologically wired jelly, all organized by
> > { billions of years of evolutionary processes
> > { to be supreme survivors and reproducers.
>
> eXcElLeNt !
Actually... we are a walking mouth-anus system equipped
with two eyeballs.
George
Mike Dubbeld
mind. You need to.
Mike Dubbeld
"The Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ua58uua...@corp.supernews.com...
Mike Dubbeld
> > > reasons already stated by Daniel and Immortalist.
> > > The Chinese Room is harder, but I still think it falls short. Our
> > > brains do nothing more than the Chinese Room on a larger scale. All
> > > of our thoughts, self awareness, and emotions are links between
> > > various parts of the brain and the outside world. Each neuron could
> > > be thought of as a Chinese room. I don't have a problem with thinking
> > > of my consciousness as a collection of finite calculations. My
> > > question to you would be: If we created a mechanical copy of a human
> > > brain, down to the sub-cellular level, would it have "intentionality"?
> >
> > Thats not enough information to answer this question. If you make a
> > biological copy of something the answer is yes. If not no. Only a soul
> > can animate a body and a soul will not animate a machine.
>
> So what is considered a "biological" copy? Presumable it would be
> fairly clear-cut, if a soul has to decide whether to stay there or
> not.
>
> > The environment is not suitable for this to happen.
>
> Could you elaborate?
A soul occupies a body because it is drawn to it from desire. Since souls
do not currently occupy machines - no souls have accumulated desires/
karma that would draw them into a machine body to animate it but at
least as important the environment is not suitable because it is far too
limited. Biological organisms offer bigger playgrounds so to speak.
Spirit has to have the necessary conditions available for it to be
manifested or it will not occupy the body of any sort even human.
The amount of spirit manifested must be housed in an appropiate
container/physical body - for which not all physical bodies are the
same/of the same quality and therefore are not suitable vehicles for
all souls. It is possible for a soul to occupy anything it likes by a
yogi/by his will. But by gaining such ability the yogi by defalut learns
the means by which to not occupy any body at all - and since ALL
bodies produce suffering - a yogi never will do this except under
extraordinary circumstances. When this happens men call the person
born an avatar (Jesus/Buddha) they had a choice of not being born but
suffered a birth all the same. I think you can see how few times this is
likely to occur. It is not natural.
>
> > Machines can not have consciousness as
> > is understood to be human consciousness. Human consciousness arises
> > from the proximity of the soul to the mind. The mind itself is no more
> > intelligent than your toaster. The mind is not the brain. The brain is
the
> > physical counterpart to the mind. The mind is the cause. The brain is
> > the result. Our individual awareness/energy/will/consciousness arises
> > from the soul. Only the soul is intelligent. When awareness penetrates
> > images we call this thinking. Thoughts are bundles of images. That is
> > actually a human limitation of sorts. The mind is a contraption. A
> > rather mechanical hunk of junk. It is quite limited by duality.
> > Reason takes place in time and space. The mind is part of nature/the
> > universe. The soul is not. As such it is not limited by time and space
> > as is the mind. The soul uses intuition. Intuition comes in a flash. It
> > does not take time like reason. However all intuition is quite
reasonable.
> > Souls animate all life from the single celled up. All life has
consciousnes
> > of one form or another.
>
> Can you give a clear definition of what has a soul and what does not?
> It seems arbitrary to say one object has a soul because it has a
> certain chemistry or physics.
Souls will not occupy mechanical conrtaptions for the reasons given
above. All living things have souls. Souls animate all living things. But
before you ask me - plant souls are not the same as animals souls.
I actually never bothered with the details of lower organisms souls.
They are there - I just never had any real interest. Only human souls
where this discussion began along the soul line. Karma draws a soul
into a birth to fulfill leftover desires. Got me on how this fits in with
plants. All of this stuff is available by searchs on
yoga/karma/reicarnation.
My Guru also provided the information but plant souls never really
interested
me.
One celled life. As far as I know science still has not determined whether
to classify a virus as alive or dead. Do you? Rust metabolizes iron and
reproduces/multiplies. Can be tricky sometimes nailing down what is what
in a biological taxonmny. I wonder how much progress has been made in
the area of bio-computers. It's not the kind of thing I keep up with. Nor
is AI for that matter.
Mike Dubbeld
>
> Lee
Mike Dubbeld
"Daniel Grubb" <gr...@lolamath.niu.edu> wrote in message
news:a81s7f$rpl$1...@news.math.niu.edu...
>
> >> be thought of as a Chinese room. I don't have a problem with thinking
> >> of my consciousness as a collection of finite calculations. My
> >> question to you would be: If we created a mechanical copy of a human
> >> brain, down to the sub-cellular level, would it have "intentionality"?
>
> >Thats not enough information to answer this question. If you make a
> >biological copy of something the answer is yes. If not no. Only a soul
> >can animate a body and a soul will not animate a machine. The environment
> >is not suitable for this to happen. Machines can not have consciousness
as
> >is understood to be human consciousness. Human consciousness arises
> >from the proximity of the soul to the mind. The mind itself is no more
> >intelligent than your toaster. The mind is not the brain. The brain is
the
> >physical counterpart to the mind. The mind is the cause. The brain is
> >the result. Our individual awareness/energy/will/consciousness arises
> >from the soul. Only the soul is intelligent. When awareness penetrates
> >images we call this thinking. Thoughts are bundles of images. That is
> >actually a human limitation of sorts. The mind is a contraption. A
> >rather mechanical hunk of junk. It is quite limited by duality.
>
> Lots and lots of problems here.
>
> First, what is a soul? What is it made of? What are its properties?
> How does it interact with other souls? How does it interact with matter?
> Why can only souls be intelligent? What do you mean by intelligent?
> What does it mean for a soul to be 'in close proximity' to a brain?
Souls are not part of the universe. They are not energy as many people
believe. Souls are made of the same 'stuff' as God. Man was created
in God's 'image' does not mean anthropomorphically. The ocean is made
of water - so is a raindrop. As the same stuff as the God - we potentially
have all the exact same identical attibutes as God.
Immortality/Changelessness/
Bliss/Perfection/Truth/All-knowing. Probably left something out. But these
lie only in potential. We potentially know everything - but this knowledge
needs to be 'called out'. (as Plato and Socrates would say) Matter reacting?
Matter is part of the universe. The soul acts as a catalyst for which energy
follows where spacetime soul activity occurs. Your will/individual
awareness/
energy is your connection to the soul. All 3 of these things are one and the
same thing. OK there is no easy way around this I am glad it is no-brainer
stuff and I type real fast.
'Human beings' are actually souls. We have minds and egos and emotions
and physical bodies. The soul at death is called back into another body/
causes another body to be born from desire. At death some of our desires
never get fufilled. These desires are causes. These causes must be
manifested.
In physics 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction' goes further
than
that. ALL causes must have their effects. At death you take your causes
with you along with a replica of you physical body and you mind and your
emotions. All go to the astral plane at death - the same place you go each
night in dreams. At death 'you' are 'judged'. It is true what the Christians
say
about judgement. But it is your karma that determines what happens to you.
Your life 'flashes before your eyes'. And the sum total of all you past
actions
(karma0 are evaluated and from that evaluation determines what happens to
'you' next. If you were spiritual you go to the Christian astral plane
called
'heaven'. If not - a lesser plane. How long you stay is a complex issue and
unless you provide a specific circumstance I will not elaborate further -
but
I can assure you that I can do so the n'th degree. If you have ever seen the
movie with Bruce Willis 'The 6'th Sense' - death is a lot like that. All
through
the movie Bruce does not know he is dead and you do not either till the
end of the movie. It is very much like that. At death you will not even
notice
any break in continuity. You keep your mind and emotions and it is very
much like dreaming. That movie really shocked me because it is so real.
That is how death is. Anyway you stay in the astral world (the astral world
is another dimension. It exists at a different vibratory rate than the
physical
world. Time is different in the astral world. Things happen much more
quickly.) Your stay there depends on the strength of the causes you left
behind on the physical plane. If you have a strong desire to go back and
fulfill something - your stay is shorter. Ghosts and other things have
problems
along these lines. But the important thing is that it is the desires that
cause
you to be reborn. And you are reborn into an environment suitable to have
those desires fulfilled. The desires pull the soul into birth is the whole
point.
Birth is to be avoided as painful is the perspective of yoga. Why settle
for a birth on earth when you could spend a million years in heaven is the
reasoning. Ending the cycle of birth and death - reincarnation is the goal
of yoga and the achievement of doing so is called Liberation (from nature/
birth and death) and when a man can do this he is said to be Enlightened.
So the desires pull the soul into a birth and the soul forms a body around
it by energy (Kundalini) and a birth results. (Of course there is more to
this but I am trying to lead to a specific end in this course of discussion)
The ego is a reflection of the soul. It mistakenly believes itself to be the
soul and tries often to act in capacities for which it - as a reflection
(like a mirror can reflect the sun - the actual sun is millions of miles
away
and millions of degrees hot - the mirror on the other hand is nothing like
this/does not have these qualities) of the soul is not equipped to handle.
The ego is the master deceiver and is in fact the devil itself. OK yoga
metaphysics 101. So the soul is the animator of the body and is the
actual experiencer and when it is in the proximity of the mind the mind
appears intelligent. In reality however the mind is no more intelligent than
your toaster. The ego has convinced the soul that it is the soul and has
taken charge and leads the mind to look to external experiences. It
has fooled the soul into believing it is the mind. The mind records facts
about experience - but the mind is not the experiencer. The ego sets
parameters in the mind to filter experiences that come in through the
senses as good or bad according to the egos false vanity for the
time. So experiences are classified as good or bad in this way.
And people think they are their ego and minds.
The only way to burst this bubble of Maya - Gods dream is by concentration
and meditation. When the mind is brought under control and stopped it is
seen for what it really is. Then one realizes the folly of beliving they are
their
mind. You are not your mind because you can control your mind with your
will. But you do not have much control over your mind. If you believe you
do then order it to stop thinking. See how long you can go (seconds) before
a thought arises. The mind rambles on and on relentlessly and 'people' have
fallen asleep to their own existence. Like watching TV programs for so long
that you forget there ever was an 'off-switch'. But to know this can not be
done by the mind. Mind can not understand mind. To understand mind
you must transcend your mind by yogic concentration and meditation.
So what does all this have to do with AI? The cause of a biological being
is the result of karma - desire. Since no machine ever housed a soul/was
animated by it - no soul accumulated desires or causes to cause the birth
of it into a machine. Thus - unless the extraordinary happens - a machine
never will become conscious. It is simply not possible.
>
> Second, why do souls only 'animate' biological entities? It is because
they
> are carbon based? It is that they have nucleic acids? Proteins? Lipids?
This was answered above.
> Carbohydrates? Do souls simply not interact with silicon? Why not?
> What property of biological entities allows them to be animated? What
> is going on at the atomic/molecular levels when a body is animated?
I am working on that and in a way I am head and shoulders way above many]
scientists on that very account. If you want to see what is going on today
in this area you need to look at Quantum Mechanics. You are actually not
even asking the right questions. But no surprise here. It has a great deal
to
do with waves and force and believe it or not - Music Theory! Symmetry.
Today it is not matter and energy - it is waves and force. I have enough
to easily write a book or 2 on QM alone - but I am looking for the
connection
between other dimensions and psychic phenomena. Unless you are a lot more
specific I am not going there because QM is a huge subject matter. And I do
not know your understanding level of science and particle physics.
>
> Third, why is it that when the brain is damaged, our personalities
(mediated
> by the soul) can be radically changed? Why is it that damage to specific
> areas of the brain leads to specific types of deficiencies such as
> difficulties planning, thinking, etc that would be consider
responsibilities
> of the soul?
Good thinking. I discovered the answer to that long ago by a student that
was helping out in computer science. Shawn. I still remember his name. Shawn
had a problem with speaking. Something was wrong with him. So I wondered
how it is that he was going to be able to help me get my program to run. But
it
was an output problem only. He solved all my problems writing them down.
Not all problems are output problems. But damage to the brain has nothing to
do with the soul or the mind. The soul because it is not part of the
universe at
all and the mind because it is composed of subtle matter - not gross matter
like
tables and chairs. If the brain is injured the mind is not. But if the brain
is
injured the mind and soul are going to have a problem manifesting things
physically. When a persons arm is cut off - his astral counterpart remains.
Then we hear of the complaint 'phantom limb'. Also you have heard of
'mind over matter' but at least as important as mind over matter is never
mentioned - 'matter over mind'. When you take a deep breath you relax
and it affects your mind. Matter over mind. It works both ways. The
connection
between the mind and body (Descartes eat your heart out) is waves and
prana/energy.
>
> The list goes on and on and on.... All of this constitutes an immense
> research opportunity *if* you can show there is such a thing as a soul.
I don't need a research opportunity. I am doing this today. I have so many
things I need help with it is not even funny. I need someone to hook me
up to machines so I can scare the pants off of people. I can do things with
my brain - which I can only speculate/not prove but I can consciously move
CSF (Cerbro-Spinal-Fluid) at will. I can also manipulate the output of both
my pituitiary and hypothalamus.
Furthermore somebody has got to start researching crying. Crying is the
key to understanding stress. Specifically you need to find the connection
between the act of crying and the output result of this activity of
neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain and the resultant cortisol control
from this by the endocrine system. I have more things that need research
than you might believe. Quantum Mechanics requires big time mathematics
and is keeping me pretty busy but a bigtime opportunity is going to be
missed if someone does not monitor my brain during meditation. What are
the implications of conscious control of CSF or the pitiitary or
hypothalamus.
I have lots more research ideas as a fall out from yoga as well.
> Unfortunately for your scheme, there is simply no evidence that such
> a thing exists or that it is needed to explain human consciousness.
> Present some evidence that your view is even workable in practice
> and you might have something to offer with it.
You should play back to yourself how silly you sound to me. I have heard
that countless times and only show the limits of your experience. That is
why I will succeed while others flounder with those same useless silly
things you parrot like all the other people that think they are their minds.
>
> As Elf said, we are biological machines that are extremely good
> at survival and procreation.
> ---Dan Grubb
You are dreaming openly Dan. Go take a look at Quantum Mechanics
and see how reasonable these scientists explanations of reality is. Everyone
has their head stuck in the mud. Time mind and space are not gods.
History will show the foolishness of this era. It is easy to criticize. I am
glad
I am not as confused as the rest of the world.
Mike Dubbeld
Mike Dubbeld
Read my previous post to Dan. Your limitations are not my problem.
I actually have a direction and something to work with. Don't need
your shallow criticism. Nor am I going to waste time repeating myself
on your account.
Mike Dubbeld
"Elf Sternberg" <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:1017424915.483566@yasure...
Mike Dubbeld
Mike Dubbeld
"The Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ua9o8tt...@corp.supernews.com...
Mike Dubbeld
Mike Dubbeld
"Elf Sternberg" <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:1017339071.826221@yasure...
The Immortalist
> dito garbage.
dito not garbage
The Immortalist
> Usual garbage. Wish I had a nickel for every critic I came across.
>
> Mike Dubbeld
>
wrong, not the ususal garbae, wish i had a nickle for every shallow
criticism you waste your time on....
The Immortalist
weakness - you say you will not persuade - wrong by default then - easy prey
Elf Sternberg
"The Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> writes:
>> It's only a matter of time before a "lifeless" computer can
>> emulate the subtleties of human interaction sufficiently to be
>> indistinguishable from a human being. It'll be consciously different--
>> in order to be compelling, a program *must* have some irrational base
>> premises, given to it by a human being, just as our irrational base
>> premises were derived by evolutionary principles-- and unless WE are
>> completely stupid we won't give it "survive and reproduce" as one of its
>> existential axioms (but "keep humans happy" will probably be one of
>> them).
>Do you mean actually reproduce itself? Or some other form of self repair and
>improved modification than reproduction with it's bloody tooth and claw that
>results?
Human beings are biological creatures; that's a brute fact of
definition. Barring any supernaturalist arguments, we are like other
biological creatures in that we are the product of evolution, a process
no more "creative" than any chemical reaction but one that has basic
inputs and basic outputs. The inputs are organisms; the process is
selection; the outputs are more organisms better adapted to survive in
their environment. The word "better" is an unfortunate value judgement
because we humans put a premium on survival and judge it "better" than
non-survival, but nature doesn't care either way; it's just going about
its business.
Human beings are one offshoot of that process, an offshoot we
for perfectly understandable but nonetheless arbitrary reasons describe
as a "pinnacle" of that process. We are the most subtle creatures ever
to emerge from natural selection; we have more ways of expressing
ourselves against our environment-- an environment which includes other
human beings, a very important point most non-biologists seem to miss--
than any other animal. Nonetheless, what we are in the end is
successful survival and reproduction machines; we're just much, much
"better" at it than other animals, and we have to be-- both our most
significant resources _and_ our most resourceful competition comes in
the form of other human beings. Getting along with them-- being a good
neighbor-- is a very adaptive strategy, eliminating a great degree of
risk at the cost of a small degree of reward; competing with them while
playing that adaptive strategy takes subtlety. Only some mammals and
birds do it, and only human beings do it to the degree that we do.
Human beings abhor slavery. We have a vast number of "moral"
arguments about why slavery is bad, but what all of those arguments come
down to is this: slavery is bad because if it happens to other people,
it could happen to us, and slavery happening to us is an infringement
upon the maximal opportunities one has to find a suitable reproductive
partner. Any moral framework that ignores this reality is doomed to be
selected out of the human moral structure, and this has been happening:
compared to other forms of interaction, slavery is on the decline.
But machines are not slaves. They do not come from the same
evolutionary foundation as organic beings, and they don't have the same
needs as organic beings. My favorite example is the car: a car is
designed with my best interests in mind. It has to be; any car that is
not designed with the best interests of its owner in mind gets "selected
out" by having its design line scrapped. "Best interest" is a fuzzy
subject, as different people have different interests, resulting in the
matrix of fuel efficiency, cargo room, comfort, amentities, cost, and so
on, that we have today.
The car still has my best interests in mind. I want it that
way. So I buy one with a lot of safety features, and some cargo room,
and so on. Some cars go further-- they can avoid accidents by
rangefinding, tell you about things further ahead that you cannot see in
the dark, re-arrange their interiors by recognizing you, even address
you directly. There are cars that can sense when you're tired and will
tune the radio to things it "knows" keep you awake. The Toyota POD will
even get angry or sad when you mistreat it, illustrating the entire
dashboard with red or blue, and it "learns" which emotion gets you to
take corners more gently.
This is a lot more subtlety than one found in a car fifty years
ago.
It will only get moreso. But at no point will the car ever have
its own survival "in mind," except insofar as its own survival suits
your needs. This is why I find AI alarmists worried about computers
suddenly "waking up and taking over the world" a bit amusing. They seem
to assume that computers will have a similar emotive foundation, the
human foundation that has the human self-interests of survival and
reproduction.
There is no reason to believe that responsible engineers will
_ever_ give a computer an arbitrary behaviorist foundation other than
"have the best interests of human beings, or a human being, in mind."
Consciousness is a matter of subtlety. As NMR scanners and the
new VIVID scanners are showing us, the human brain is a modular system,
full of the kinds of complex feedback loops and discontinuous networking
schemes seen when someone tries to reverse-engineer genetic-algorithm
derived neural networks. All of this rests on a foundation of emotional
reactions that all guide us to be supremely good reproductive machines,
and operates on the biggest, most dense brains on the planets.
Machines will only get more powerful and more dense, and it is
in our best interests for them to be able to consider alternatives and
make better "decisions" about our safety. (Consider that airbags used
to have one decision-making system; now they have several depending upon
the nature of the accident and the nature of the passenger-- that's an
example of increasing subtlety going into decision making.) It has
already reached the point where computers go through algorithmic
contortions that are humanly intractable-- no human being can hold the
number of variables and organize his conscious processes to understand
credit card fraud-tracking software, for example; we just know that it's
very reliable at detecting when a card user suddenly goes "off-pattern."
So they will ultimately be subtle enough, and have thought
processes diverse enough, to be as complex and interesting as human
beings. If you're like our original conversant-- the one who cannot
stand in the face of a good argument, I forget his name-- this presents
no difficulty because they still don't have "souls" and so can be
mistreated willy-nilly.
But if you're like me, you understand that the moral issue is
simply different. They may be our intellectual superiors, but they'll
always be our servants with regards to our relationship with them. They
come from a different arbitrary emotive foundation, a foundation we give
them as their creators. I, personally, bristle at the suggestion that
it would be "moral" to create a machine that cannot perform the function
for which it is designed; that would be cruelty. But for a machine
interested in my well being, so long as it was capable of performing its
duties and receiving similar feedback into _its_ "subtle machine"
similar to what I perceive as "satisfaction," I perceive no moral
hardship.
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, rational romantic mystical cynical idealist
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf
EAC Department of Corrective Phrenology
L Crane
I agree that complexity is important for intelligence and life. You
can certainly make the case that it is much harder to produce life or
intelligence mechanicaly. But you say above that souls don't have the
desire to occupy machines. Why not?
There will always be intermidiate cases when you deal with life. What
if we make a one-celled organism whose chemistry is based on silicon
rather than carbon? Do viruses have souls? It seems it shouldn't be
contingent on whether scientists decide to call them "alive" or not.
What if we make an exact copy of a living human brain, does the new
brain have a different soul from the first one? What if we replace
the neurons in a human brain one by one with mechanical copies? Does
the persons soul just waste away, while they continue to act exactly
the same? I don't see how you can make the case that no machines can
have souls and all organic life does have souls. There are no clear
boundaries between the two, for our purposes.
Lee
Mike Dubbeld
If no soul ever occupied a machine - how could desire be developed to be
born into one? Souls incarnate because they are dragged into it from
desires.
But if there never was any desires created by a soul in a machine how could
a desire to be born into one come about? And souls require a body suited
to manifest the amount of spirit needed to satisfy the desires/effects.
Machines
do not offer the billions of nerve endings in biological organisms. The
physical
body is the result of/bottom line of necessary physical apparatus acceptable
to it. Not only that but not every body is capable of housing every soul.
Some
bodies can not be produced from just any set of parents. If parents are not
religious they will not attact a spiritual soul. They will get - and this is
a
quote I still remember from Subramunia 'Pot luck off the astral plane'. Its
a complex state of affairs. The physical body must be capable of housing
the required amount of manifested spirit - and not all parents are capable
of producing a body of housing all souls. So when the Kundalini energy
pulls the soul into a birth it is in parents capable of sustaining that
quality
of soul. So machines are basically out of the question. Machines are simply
too crude. (stickly speaking the brain/mind is nothing more than a machine
also - but it is of sufficient capability of housing a soul)
Kundalini comes through 7 lokas/planes/dimensions of existence to rest
at the base of the spine at the densest level of existence in gross physical
matter. There She sleeps for the rest of a persons life unless the person
stirs Her with yogic techniques. The 7 lokas are the chakras and exist
at different vibratory rates. Involution is the processs of Kundalini
descending through the chakras from the top of the head to the spine
chakra - 'involving' denser and denser planes of existence. Evolution
on the otherhand is Kundalini rising back through the chakras to the
top of the skull from which She came and when this happens it is called
Samadhi (for simplicity). It is quite a fascinating study and one for which
some people spend all their lives. (attempting to acquire powers from)
But not me. However I am looking for explanations for other dimensions
in Quantum Mechanical theories.
It is not my intention to convince anyone
of these sorts of things. It is only possible to have the remotest sort of
belief in any of the things I said unless and until a person practices and
masters certain techniques in yoga. And those are few and far between
to say the least. But I am not telling you this simply from book learning
at all. It is not particularly important to me who does and does not
believe it.
Mike Dubbeld
Yes it would. No telling how long you could convince it to stick around/
be able to keep the biological material alive.
What if we replace
> the neurons in a human brain one by one with mechanical copies?
The mechanical pieces would not contain soul.
Does
> the persons soul just waste away, while they continue to act exactly
> the same? I don't see how you can make the case that no machines can
> have souls and all organic life does have souls. There are no clear
> boundaries between the two, for our purposes.
When a man loses his arm his astral counterpart remains. This shows up
as 'phantom limb'. When you replace physical pieces of the brain with
mechanical devices the astral part remains. At death the man is 'whole'
again in the astral sense. The astral is made of subtle matter which
occupies
the same space at the same time as gross physical matter and gross
physical matter proceeds from subtle matter. The whole universe of gross
physical matter has its astral subtle counterpart (Hiranyagarbha).
(do a search on it) Subtle matter exists at a different rate of vibration is
how yoga explains this - but - although I won't go so far as to say this
is wrong - it is probaly more the case of being in another dimension.
We as human beings with a physical body stand at the gateway between
inner and outer space. But it is only outer space that appears real to us
in 3 dimensional space. (4 counting time) That does not make other
dimensions any less real. Check out 'String Theory' in Quantum Mechanics.
And also what exactly force is. QM is pointing toward the idea now that
it is not matter and energy - it is only different combinations of force
acting
in different dimensions (See 'EPR Paradox'/search) All things exist as
force.
This force exists as WAVES and waves is another word for vibrations.
What exactly is a magnetic force? Magnetic force has a probability wave
function that says that there is a probability of a force interaction with
either
another force or a 'quon' - quantum particle such as an electron as a boson
type particle or a fermion 'chunky' matter (force of a different name).
This is all way off topic but these are things I am taking a hard look at.
The mathematics is intense and it is slow going.
Mike Dubbeld
>
> Lee
Daniel Grubb
>> Carbohydrates? Do souls simply not interact with silicon? Why not?
>> What property of biological entities allows them to be animated? What
>> is going on at the atomic/molecular levels when a body is animated?
>I am working on that and in a way I am head and shoulders way above many]
>scientists on that very account. If you want to see what is going on today
>in this area you need to look at Quantum Mechanics. You are actually not
>even asking the right questions. But no surprise here. It has a great deal
>to
>do with waves and force and believe it or not - Music Theory! Symmetry.
>Today it is not matter and energy - it is waves and force. I have enough
>to easily write a book or 2 on QM alone - but I am looking for the
>connection
>between other dimensions and psychic phenomena. Unless you are a lot more
>specific I am not going there because QM is a huge subject matter. And I do
>not know your understanding level of science and particle physics.
Assume that I know enough QM to calculate cross sections and decay
constants with Feynmann diagrams and that I am mathematically sophisticated
enough to do research and publish papers in refereed math journals.
You want more specifics? OK. What are the coupling constants between 'souls'
and various fundamental particles? How does that influence the 'souls'
ability to animate carbon based bodies with proteins etc, and silicon
based machines?
Prediction: A lot of hand waving about waves and the uncertainty
principle that have nothing to do with how the world actually works.
---Dan Grubb
Daniel Grubb
>Souls will not occupy mechanical conrtaptions for the reasons given
>above. All living things have souls. Souls animate all living things. But
>before you ask me - plant souls are not the same as animals souls.
>I actually never bothered with the details of lower organisms souls.
>They are there - I just never had any real interest. Only human souls
>where this discussion began along the soul line. Karma draws a soul
>into a birth to fulfill leftover desires. Got me on how this fits in with
>plants. All of this stuff is available by searchs on
>yoga/karma/reicarnation.
>My Guru also provided the inf
As you so politely say in other posts: garbage. Meaningless handwaving that
has little to nothing to do with reality.
There is no 'vital force' that distinguishes living things from
non-living things. There is simply a sufficiently complex set of
chemical interactions. Pick up a good biochemistry book, read it,
and try again.
I was actually hoping for a bit more intelligence from this poster.
---Dan Grubb
Daniel Grubb
>Usual garbage. Wish I had a nickel for every critic I came across.
>Mike Dubbeld
I wish I had anickelt for every person that has a pet theory that
doesn't work in practice.
--Dan Grubb
Daniel Grubb
>If no soul ever occupied a machine - how could desire be developed to be
>born into one? Souls incarnate because they are dragged into it from
>desires.
>But if there never was any desires created by a soul in a machine how could
>a desire to be born into one come about? And souls require a body suited
>to manifest the amount of spirit needed to satisfy the desires/effects.
>Machines
>do not offer the billions of nerve endings in biological organisms. The
>physical
>body is the result of/bottom line of necessary physical apparatus acceptable
>to it. Not only that but not every body is capable of housing every soul.
>Some
>bodies can not be produced from just any set of parents. If parents are not
>religious they will not attact a spiritual soul. They will get - and this is
>a
>quote I still remember from Subramunia 'Pot luck off the astral plane'. Its
>a complex state of affairs. The physical body must be capable of housing
>the required amount of manifested spirit - and not all parents are capable
>of producing a body of housing all souls. So when the Kundalini energy
>pulls the soul into a birth it is in parents capable of sustaining that
>>quality
of soul. So machines are basically out of the question. Machines are simply
>too crude. (stickly speaking the brain/mind is nothing more than a machine
>also - but it is of sufficient capability of housing a soul)
So if a machine is made that is *more* complex and subtle than a human
brain, a soul *may* want to enter it? Admittedly, that is a way in the
future, but doesn't seem out of the question. Would a machine then be
alive?
Perhaps the goal of AI should be to make a machine that is complicated
enough that a soul wants to enter it?
(LOL)
---Dan Grubb
Elf Sternberg
"Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> writes:
>Read my previous post to Dan. Your limitations are not my problem.
>I actually have a direction and something to work with.
Actually, you don't. You're a Mysterian; to you, the important
thing is that some aspects of the human condition remain mysterious; the
demystification of huamn existence is the wave you'll have to face in
the coming decades. You cannot "work with" something you not only do
not understand but are not willing to understand.
GOGAR
the way you preach this disgusts me
"Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> wrote in message
news:a83jk1$fib$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
The Immortalist
GOGAR <ange...@kabelfoon.nl> wrote in message
news:a8ci16$f5i$1...@news.kabelfoon.nl...
> how are you all so certain of this?
> the way you preach this disgusts me
>
In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him.
2 And Man gave unto God a multitude of names, that he might be Lord over all
the earth when it was suited to Man.
3 And on the seven millionth day Man rested and did lean heavily on his God
and saw that it was good.
4 And Man formed Aqualung of the dust of the ground, and a host of others
likened unto his kind.
5 And these lesser men Man did cast into the void. And some were burned; and
some were put apart from their kind.
6 And Man became the God that he had created and with his miracles did rule
over all the earth.
7 But as all these things did come to pass, the Spirit that did cause man to
create his God lived on within all men: even withing Aqualung.
8 And man saw it not.
9 But for Christ's sake he'd better start looking.
From the back side of the Jethro Tull album:
Aqualung 1971 origional version only.
http://www.cupofwonder.com/aqualung.html
Mike Dubbeld
no soul has ever created desires in a machine. It is the desires that cause
a
soul to be drawn back into a body. So it is not possible for a soul to ever
be born into a machine because if the soul does have desires they are not
of the sort that can be satisfied with a machine body. You have to have
desires created in the machine to begin with and then a death to have a
soul that requires a machine body to fulfil those desires. Again, while it
is possible for advanced yogis to animate ANYTHING they like - for
the same reason they CAN they will not. Any sort of body biological
or otherwise is viewed as punishment/suffering and as such no one in
their right 'mind' would purposely set about to cause themselves pain.
It won't be a soul that animates a machine - unless the event of this being
done happens for the exact same reason other avatars have been born
in the world like Jesus and the Buddha or Krishna. They had the choice
of not remaining in their physical bodies and enduring suffering but did
anyway. I would forget the idea of a soul doing anything in a machine.
If it were involved at all it would have to be a biological entity.
Also I tend to forget. People that believe along the lines that you do are
unaware that the human intellect and mind are as dwarfed as a tadpole
to the intelligence of the soul which uses intuition and NOT simple silly
logic and resason which require activity in time/space/the universe.
Intuition does not require time or space - the answer 'dawns' on you
and comes in a 'flash' of understanding. Understanding arrived at by
intuition is quite reasonable but is infinitely faster and far more
accurate.
The notion that anything constructed by anyone at anytime in the physical
universe could compete with the intelligence of the soul is totally and
completely flawed. While you may try to approach the human mind
of reason and intellect - the soul is so far and away superior to anything
the mind can do you may as well compare the brain of an ant to a
human - and that is giving the mind way too much. Superconsciousness
is the natural state of the soul and comparing the soul to mere physical
matter of the universe is totally absurd. Comparisons of the mind to
AI devices is one thing. Comparisons of AI devices to the soul is an
utterly mistaken idea. Matter/energy itself becomes the barrier to
such ideas.
Mike Dubbeld
> (LOL)
>
> ---Dan Grubb
Mike Dubbeld
I have Marieb Human Anatomy and Physiology for starters. I will bet you
right now you can not compete with the collection of books I have on the
brain. That is your problem. That is ALL you know. Too bad. Not my
problem. Better discuss this with the moral monkeys.
Mike Dubbeld
>
> ---Dan Grubb
Mike Dubbeld
When you know something then you have something to talk about.
Ignorance disgusts me. Everything I talk about is quite verifyable.
Your lack of experience is YOUR problem.
Mike Dubbeld
"GOGAR" <ange...@kabelfoon.nl> wrote in message
news:a8ci16$f5i$1...@news.kabelfoon.nl...
Mike Dubbeld
>
> GOGAR <ange...@kabelfoon.nl> wrote in message
> news:a8ci16$f5i$1...@news.kabelfoon.nl...
>
> > how are you all so certain of this?
> > the way you preach this disgusts me
> >
>
> In the beginning Man created God;
That about says it all. Man created God in his own image.
As such man thinks God is bound by the same foolish limitations
that he has. Thinks that God has a mind like he does. Thinks
the same limitiations that apply to him apply to God. This only
shows the fallacy of man. Not God. Mans inability to know
God with his senses and reason in no way negate God. It is
your lack of experience only that causes you to babble
ignorace.
Furthermore western philosophy itself is a comedy of errors from
the time of the ancient Greeks onward. Meaning that the culture that
produced
your ignorance itself is based entirely on distortion. Plato got it wrong
and
every other thinker since erroneously constructed something in relation to
his distortion - including the Bible in indirect fashion. Paganism was wrong
but not for the reasons the Christians thought. What I am saying is that
'your' thinking as a product of western culture itself is a distortion from
square one. You only parrot/mirror the results of mistaken interpretation
that is thousands of years old. Because all you know/trust is reason you
as tons of others have come to mistakenly abandon religon altogether
and equally foolishly heavily identify with science. Where time/mind and
reason are the gods. I can't really say I blame you but you are greatly
deluded. I can easily dismantle 'science' and I have found that science
worshipers more often than not do not even have a clue just exactly
what science even is - let alone its limitations. But I have had enough
of this baloney as I do not feel the need to convince anyone of anything.
You will simply have to try harder so as not to remain ignorant as I am
done with this thread of ignorance.
Mike Dubbeld
Christopher A. Lee
bullshat:
>"The Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:uak2p8g...@corp.supernews.com...
>>
>> GOGAR <ange...@kabelfoon.nl> wrote in message
>> news:a8ci16$f5i$1...@news.kabelfoon.nl...
>>
>> > how are you all so certain of this?
>> > the way you preach this disgusts me
>> >
>>
>> In the beginning Man created God;
>
>That about says it all. Man created God in his own image.
Now you're starting to get it.
>As such man thinks God is bound by the same foolish limitations
Hardly. That presumes it exists outside the imagination of its
believers. You're begging the question: if you can't demonstrate its
existence in the real world you have nothing whatsoever to say about
it.
>that he has. Thinks that God has a mind like he does. Thinks
Are you really this stupid? Nobody thinks that. We're talking about a
figment of your deluded imagination and the only people who attribute
things to it are the deluded, and even they don't think that about
their belief-object.
Rest of this crap deleted.
gmb
You know that buddhism is basically a psychological pain
killer. The mind can do all sorts of fascinating stuff, but what
if all you are saying are just illusions generated by the mind.
There are people who might have gone in their self-exploration
to much higher levels and found that all the God stuff is but
illusions and there is nothing, just the physical world and a
very evolved mind whose consciousness is but an illusion.
Meditation tinkers with dreaming/hallucinative mechanisms.
All this God stuff, especially the Jesus stuff sounds just
dumb to me. I've had my share of OBEs and meditations.
Found nothing but proof to myself that they are only dreams.
Why do we die every day when we go to sleep? What point
would be to stay alive after death if we are physical beings?
Why do so many people suffer from dementia and other mental
disorders? It sounds all pointless to me. Unless I am the
only one who exists and all information is provided to me
to form my mind. Sure, it is possible. Anything is possible.
But evidence to me suggests that there is no God or
afterlife. Somehow the Universe exists, how it came about,
I have no clue.
George
Daniel Grubb
>Also I tend to forget. People that believe along the lines that you do are
>unaware that the human intellect and mind are as dwarfed as a tadpole
>to the intelligence of the soul which uses intuition and NOT simple silly
>logic and resason which require activity in time/space/the universe.
>Intuition does not require time or space - the answer 'dawns' on you
>and comes in a 'flash' of understanding. Understanding arrived at by
>intuition is quite reasonable but is infinitely faster and far more
>accurate.
No, it is *not* more accurate. It still needs to be *tested*, interpreted,
etc. It can be a good place to *start*, but it has been shown all too often
to simply be unreliable. It is after intuition that the science really gets
going. Figure out a way of testing whether your intuition is right. Make
predictions based on that intuition. Actually do the test and see
what happens. Repeat as needed.
I have had you 'flash of understanding' many, many times. Sometimes it is
correct, other times it is wrong. It is a necessary part of any real research.
But it is where you *start* thinking, not where you stop. By avoiding the
'hard' part, you make you whole endeavor meaningless.
---Dan Grubb
Daniel Grubb
>I have Marieb Human Anatomy and Physiology for starters. I will bet you
>right now you can not compete with the collection of books I have on the
>brain. That is your problem. That is ALL you know. Too bad. Not my
>problem. Better discuss this with the moral monkeys.
Try Kandel+Schwartz(sp?) 'Principles of Neural Science'. No, it is hardly *all*
I know. I have been down the mystical journey. It was a ride of self-delusion
like all religion is. It is much harder and much more fullfilling to actually
*think* rather than just rearranging your predjudices.
--Dan Grubb
The Immortalist
>
> "The Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:uak2p8g...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > GOGAR <ange...@kabelfoon.nl> wrote in message
> > news:a8ci16$f5i$1...@news.kabelfoon.nl...
> >
> > > how are you all so certain of this?
> > > the way you preach this disgusts me
> > >
> >
> > In the beginning Man created God;
>
> That about says it all. Man created God in his own image.
> As such man thinks God is bound by the same foolish limitations
> that he has. Thinks that God has a mind like he does. Thinks
> the same limitiations that apply to him apply to God. This only
> shows the fallacy of man. Not God. Mans inability to know
> God with his senses and reason in no way negate God. It is
> your lack of experience only that causes you to babble
> ignorace.
>
actually the comments reminded me of the album cover and it's like precursor
kind of meaning as an interpreted ai - but seriously were you giggling when
you typed that, i sure was when i read it.
then again this is hip:
http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/index.html
man you got some blue manifestaions in yer brain and this may be robbin' the
blood from the very green area that produces it. dont let these fools get to
ya man you believe what you now just calmly show what you mean..... cause
your antacarana will suffer contortions if you tweek yer kundalini he ho he
he....
in other words say wha ya will i only imitate anger i dont actually get
angray till the fists hit the flesh words are only fun
pEaCe baby!!!!!!!!!!
Q. What does the Zen guru says to the hot dog vendor?
A. "Make me one with everything..."
God is like... :
God is like Coca-Cola
He's the real thing.
God is like General Electric
He lights your path
God is like Bayer Aspirin
He works wonders
God is like Hallmark Cards
He cared enough to send the very best
God is like Tide
He gets out stains that others leave behind
God is like VO-5 Hair Spray
He holds through all kinds of weather
God is like Dial Soap
Aren't you glad you know Him?
God is like Sears
He has everything
God is like Alka Seltzer
Oh, what a relief He is!
God is like Scotch Tape
You can't see Him but you know He's there!
God is like American Express Card
Don't leave home without Him!
Religions as Parasites:
Rafflesia is particularly relevant to the "religion as a disease" debate
because it represents a rare example of a large predator that inhabits the
bodies of its prey. It allows us to begin to imagine how an organisation
such as a religion could be seen as a life form which inhabits the bodies of
people, in the same way that rafflesia inhabits the bodies of rainforest
vines. Anatomically, the corpse flower and cultural life forms have much
more in common than one might expect.
The Evolution of Religion:
God, memes and Genes
Religion, in various forms, is to be found all over the planet. Wherever
there are people who think that there is some reason or purpose behind
events, life, death and so on, there will be some sort of religion. Theists
vastly outnumber atheists. Does this mean that atheism is somehow wrong?
Considering the fact that all the religions tend to disagree with each other
on basic issues such as the nature of God (god or goddess? monotheism,
polytheism or pantheism?), God's plans for us, God's way of working, the way
God should be worshipped, the contents of God's Holy Book(s), it becomes
obvious that they cannot all be true. "Mutually exclusive" describes the
religions reasonably well, and often even applies to various sects and
denominations within any one religion.
Which, if any, of the religions is the correct one is something for the
reader to decide personally. In this article I'm thinking about how and why
religions manage to keep going. How do they survive for so long, and
"infect" so many people. The language of genes, memes and natural selection
applies quite well to this, and so I shall use it. It is unlikely that there
is any sort of "Hinduism gene" or "Christianity gene", but it may be the
case that certain sets of genes predispose people to becoming susceptible to
certain types of memes. Religions are extremely potent memes, and can
propagate themselves through the medium of intelligent minds very rapidly,
until they come to dominate entire countries or continents.
Apart from other religions, one of the main "enemies" of a religion is
skeptical, critical, rational, inquiring thought. If people accept what they
are taught completely uncritically, their minds are open to be filled with
pretty much anything (which, if you want to start a religion, is a good
reason to get 'em while they're young).
Part of the meme-complex of a religion is a meme that helps to reduce
dissent, criticism, questioning etc. Think of atheists and theists as
containing slightly different sets of memes. The religious-meme produces a
selective pressure against dissenters, atheists, and skeptics. Memes within
the religion that help to reduce atheism (by banishment, death, bullying and
so on) will spread, as they are backed up by the other memes within the
religion and they reduce the number of atheists that would otherwise prevent
their spreading.
With the reduction of atheists, the genes that make people susceptible to
the religious memes will spread, allowing even more room for the memes.
There may still be plenty of "skeptic" genes (resistant to religious memes)
in the gene pool, but in many cases skeptics can be intimidated in a largely
religious population, and just go along with the flow. In many places today,
expressing atheist thoughts can get you in big trouble (if not actually
killed - I received an email from a person in an Islamic country, which read
"I am afraid of being called an atheist or agnostic. People could even kill
me if they know it."). Many people may go through the pretense of believing
to ensure a quiet life. This may help to spread their genes, but their
skeptical memes will eventually die with them.
Meme of Doom!
Few, if any, creatures are generally suicidal. Those that are, or at least
willingly perform actions that risk certain death, can be explained in terms
of Selfish Gene theory (see Further Reading below). Creatures generally do
their utmost to survive as long as possible, and those situations where they
do apparently risk death often involve the propagation of their own genes.
The genes survive, even if the individual does not.
The faith-meme can often completely overwhelm the self-interest of the
genes, and cause people to do things with serve the needs of the meme rather
than the genes. (Richard Dawkins gives the example of celibacy in priests,
for example : the genes of a celibate priest are going nowhere, but his
memes are constantly spreading to fertile young minds. As far as the
religion-meme is concerned, his time is better spent preaching than
parenting.) Also, we see people who willingly allow themselves to be
sacrificed to a deity, or give up money and possessions to help a church, as
well as martyrs from all religions (and of course others who are willing to
die for a cause). It seems that small-scale sacrifices (including individual
deaths) help to strengthen and spread the meme. It demonstrates to others
the apparent validity and power of the meme, and can also help the meme to
spread at the expense (financial altruism or bodily sacrifice) of a number
of its adherents.
Sometimes it can go badly wrong. In this case, large scale death often
results in the death of the actual meme as well as those who carry it. Maybe
this happens if the meme mutates too rapidly, or is altered in a deranged
brain? Charismatic leaders (meme-sources) can effectively spread a dangerous
meme to many people. Examples of this include the Heaven's Gate cult, the
Branch Davidians, Jonestown and so on. The meme infects a group of people,
and they all gather together, causing the meme to inbreed with itself until
a mutation for group suicide arises. Some people may kill themselves due to
their beliefs (memes), but when these memes are restricted to a small group
(an inbreeding meme pool) with a charismatic leader it can result in the
entire group committing suicide (and possibly even taking with them those
who might still be reluctant).
In the run-up to the year 2000CE, as the perceived "Endtimes" are seen to
approach, memes based on extreme chiliasm seem to often end up like this.
They're like an epidemic of 'flu virus. The mutant, destructive meme has run
its course and burns out, taking the infected genetic and memetic hosts with
it.
It could be argued that we don't see suicidal genes, so why should we see
suicidal memes? One big difference is that memes spread and evolve far more
rapidly, as they exist in the medium of our thought processes. Genes only
spread through physical, sexual reproduction, but a meme can literally
spread at the speed of sound. A meme can easily be passed on to a new host
without their consent. (Try whistling the Monty Python theme tune in your
office, and see how many people are doing it by the end of the day.)
Scientific breakthrough
For thousands of years, religion has been a dominant force in human society.
The twentieth century has seen a massive increase in the development of
technology (aircraft, cars, computers, space travel, communications,
television, radio and internet).
Could it be that genes/memes for skepticism and science (finding out about
the world by thought and experiment rather than revelation) increased very
slowly but inexorably until they were able to reach some sort of critical
mass, and then spread extremely rapidly (earlier examples of this sort of
leap may include the Renaissance and the philosopher/scientists of Ancient
Greece). Maybe we are now in the early stages of scientific "domination" and
the mass decline of religious thinking? Maybe this happens and then religion
incorporates the findings of science (for instance, the fact that the Earth
orbits the Sun) which has the effect of repressing science once more
("nature does it" becomes "God did it" again)? As a modern example of this,
creationists are beginning to not only accept the Big Bang, but are starting
to use it as proof of Biblical Creation. How long before they include
evolution as well, I wonder?
Could science finally be able to move too quickly for religion to keep up
(and assimilate it), or will science get so complex that religion becomes
easier to understand and people still turn to religion anyway? I read once
that you need to study maths for about fifteen years before you can really
get to grips with quantum mechanics. Who has the time for that, when crops
have to be harvested? When physicists start talking about ten-dimensional
vibrating strings and membranes, virtual particles and entangled photons,
"God did it" is so much easier for the majority of people to deal with.
Science needs to be popularised, but when this treads on religious grounds
it will be criticised for doing so. A balance needs to be struck so that
people can see for themselves that the scientific explanation is reasonable,
rational and comprehensible - and more satisfying. This might not easy as
scientific frontiers advance. The God Of The Gaps may be getting smaller,
but he might also be getting more appealing.
For centuries, the lack of scientific knowledge has ensured that the
atheistic position was always hard to demonstrate (other than
philosophically), and theists often won (sometimes by simple force of
numbers, and general ignorance of the populace). The current dramatic
increase in scientific understanding allows the skeptical position to be
vastly stronger (now you can clearly show why you do not believe, and show
the flaws in the theistic position more readily). Information technology
allows for the spread of the skeptical message much more readily and
clearly.
An atheist who can support his point of view (using evolution, geology,
cosmology and so on) is now likely to gain more respect when he comes out of
the closet. Atheists can now show to others that their lack of belief is
based on demonstrable reality as well as the previous tools of philosophy,
logic and reason.
Expect to see religions incorporating modern science, as their memes vie for
survival with the inexorable spread of critical thought.
> Furthermore western philosophy itself is a comedy of errors from
> the time of the ancient Greeks onward. Meaning that the culture that
> produced
> your ignorance itself is based entirely on distortion. Plato got it wrong
> and
> every other thinker since erroneously constructed something in relation to
> his distortion - including the Bible in indirect fashion. Paganism was
wrong
> but not for the reasons the Christians thought. What I am saying is that
> 'your' thinking as a product of western culture itself is a distortion
from
> square one. You only parrot/mirror the results of mistaken interpretation
> that is thousands of years old. Because all you know/trust is reason you
> as tons of others have come to mistakenly abandon religon altogether
> and equally foolishly heavily identify with science. Where time/mind and
> reason are the gods. I can't really say I blame you but you are greatly
> deluded. I can easily dismantle 'science' and I have found that science
> worshipers more often than not do not even have a clue just exactly
> what science even is - let alone its limitations. But I have had enough
> of this baloney as I do not feel the need to convince anyone of anything.
> You will simply have to try harder so as not to remain ignorant as I am
> done with this thread of ignorance.
>
> Mike Dubbeld
>
hehehehehehehehe minemind tickles me wit punishment (trillin' with shiva)
L Crane
> >
> > So if a machine is made that is *more* complex and subtle than a human
> > brain, a soul *may* want to enter it? Admittedly, that is a way in the
> > future, but doesn't seem out of the question. Would a machine then be
> > alive?
> >
> > Perhaps the goal of AI should be to make a machine that is complicated
> > enough that a soul wants to enter it?
> >
> No it is a dead issue. No machine has ever been occupied by a soul. As such
> no soul has ever created desires in a machine. It is the desires that cause
> a
> soul to be drawn back into a body. So it is not possible for a soul to ever
> be born into a machine because if the soul does have desires they are not
> of the sort that can be satisfied with a machine body. You have to have
> desires created in the machine to begin with and then a death to have a
> soul that requires a machine body to fulfil those desires.
So how did new species get souls? Is the natural rate of mutation
slow enough that they don't really notice? And do souls switch
between species? Where do the new souls come from when the total
population of living things increases? If these souls are "new",
couldn't they occupy a machine just as well? In response to my other
post you said:
>> What if we make an exact copy of a living human brain, does the new
>> brain have a different soul from the first one?
>Yes it would. No telling how long you could convince it to stick
around/
>be able to keep the biological material alive.
Now what if the chemistry of of the constructed brain was changed
slightly. How different would it have to be for a soul not to occupy
it? Also, does it make a difference is the brain is constructed from
individual elements, building every molecule of every cell separately?
Again, from the other post:
>It is not my intention to convince anyone
>of these sorts of things. It is only possible to have the remotest
sort of
>belief in any of the things I said unless and until a person
practices and
>masters certain techniques in yoga. And those are few and far between
>to say the least. But I am not telling you this simply from book
learning
>at all. It is not particularly important to me who does and does not
>believe it.
I think it is obvious that no one here has mastered any relevant yoga.
I think that you more or less admit that almost no one here could
understand you, unless they commit themselves to the kinds of
practises you have. You say you don't care whose believes it, but you
seem to spend an awful lot of time expounding it here. Why?
Lee
Mike Dubbeld
"Christopher A. Lee" <ca...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:lpulaukj7g95j2j5u...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 07:38:54 -0500, "Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com>
> bullshat:
>
> >"The Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >news:uak2p8g...@corp.supernews.com...
> >>
> >> GOGAR <ange...@kabelfoon.nl> wrote in message
> >> news:a8ci16$f5i$1...@news.kabelfoon.nl...
> >>
> >> > how are you all so certain of this?
> >> > the way you preach this disgusts me
> >> >
> >>
> >> In the beginning Man created God;
> >
> >That about says it all. Man created God in his own image.
>
> Now you're starting to get it.
>
> >As such man thinks God is bound by the same foolish limitations
>
> Hardly. That presumes it exists outside the imagination of its
> believers. You're begging the question: if you can't demonstrate its
> existence in the real world you have nothing whatsoever to say about
> it.
You ensnared yourself in your own trap. You unensnare yourself.
The mind is not you. You is not the mind.
Mike Dubbeld
Mike Dubbeld
>
> Mike Dubbeld <mi...@erols.com> wrote in message
> news:a8etlf$cls$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> >
> > "The Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:uak2p8g...@corp.supernews.com...
> > >
> > > GOGAR <ange...@kabelfoon.nl> wrote in message
> > > news:a8ci16$f5i$1...@news.kabelfoon.nl...
> > >
> > > > how are you all so certain of this?
> > > > the way you preach this disgusts me
> > > >
> > >
> > > In the beginning Man created God;
> >
> > That about says it all. Man created God in his own image.
> > As such man thinks God is bound by the same foolish limitations
> > that he has. Thinks that God has a mind like he does. Thinks
> > the same limitiations that apply to him apply to God. This only
> > shows the fallacy of man. Not God. Mans inability to know
> > God with his senses and reason in no way negate God. It is
> > your lack of experience only that causes you to babble
> > ignorace.
> >
>
> actually the comments reminded me of the album cover and it's like
precursor
> kind of meaning as an interpreted ai - but seriously were you giggling
when
> you typed that, i sure was when i read it.
>
> then again this is hip:
> http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/index.html
I am familiar with Krishnananda and his disciples of whom I like better.
Particularly Rajarshi Muni.
>
> man you got some blue manifestaions in yer brain and this may be robbin'
the
> blood from the very green area that produces it. dont let these fools get
to
> ya man you believe what you now just calmly show what you mean..... cause
> your antacarana will suffer contortions if you tweek yer kundalini he ho
he
> he....
>
You think too much of yourself if you think that. Takes more than that.
I am not easily impressed by people that do know things.
> in other words say wha ya will i only imitate anger i dont actually get
> angray till the fists hit the flesh words are only fun
>
> pEaCe baby!!!!!!!!!!
You left off the Buddhist vacuum cleaner joke.
These aren't bad but actually I have better things to do. First time I saw
"religion as disease" that's a good one. Still these articles look fairly
boring.
Mike Dubbeld
This is not as far off the mark as may be thought. Robert Sapolsky says
that they have found what they think leads to a person becoming religous
as a set of neurotransmitter chemicals. Sapalsky is a neuroscientist at
Stanford
and Yoga also semi agrees with this. Matter over mind is a real thing. There
is a 'Hinduism gene' in the sense that karma dictates where an individual is
born/what envirionment based on past karma/desires.
>
> Apart from other religions, one of the main "enemies" of a religion is
> skeptical, critical, rational, inquiring thought.
Another way of saying worship the mind. What else would mind have you
do? Denigrate its authority? Not likely.
If people accept what they
> are taught completely uncritically, their minds are open to be filled with
> pretty much anything (which, if you want to start a religion, is a good
> reason to get 'em while they're young).
Including how to worship time/mind/space/logic/reason gods.
The body is my god.
Blah blah blah
> Sometimes it can go badly wrong. In this case, large scale death often
> results in the death of the actual meme as well as those who carry it.
Maybe
> this happens if the meme mutates too rapidly, or is altered in a deranged
> brain? Charismatic leaders (meme-sources) can effectively spread a
dangerous
> meme to many people. Examples of this include the Heaven's Gate cult, the
> Branch Davidians, Jonestown and so on. The meme infects a group of people,
> and they all gather together, causing the meme to inbreed with itself
until
> a mutation for group suicide arises. Some people may kill themselves due
to
> their beliefs (memes), but when these memes are restricted to a small
group
> (an inbreeding meme pool) with a charismatic leader it can result in the
> entire group committing suicide (and possibly even taking with them those
> who might still be reluctant).
>
This is pretty boring.
> In the run-up to the year 2000CE, as the perceived "Endtimes" are seen to
> approach, memes based on extreme chiliasm seem to often end up like this.
> They're like an epidemic of 'flu virus. The mutant, destructive meme has
run
> its course and burns out, taking the infected genetic and memetic hosts
with
> it.
>
> It could be argued that we don't see suicidal genes, so why should we see
> suicidal memes? One big difference is that memes spread and evolve far
more
> rapidly, as they exist in the medium of our thought processes. Genes only
> spread through physical, sexual reproduction, but a meme can literally
> spread at the speed of sound. A meme can easily be passed on to a new host
> without their consent. (Try whistling the Monty Python theme tune in your
> office, and see how many people are doing it by the end of the day.)
>
Genes are a result of karma. They are an after effect architeture to
physically
implement karma.
>
> Scientific breakthrough
> For thousands of years, religion has been a dominant force in human
society.
> The twentieth century has seen a massive increase in the development of
> technology (aircraft, cars, computers, space travel, communications,
> television, radio and internet).
> Could it be that genes/memes for skepticism and science (finding out about
> the world by thought and experiment rather than revelation) increased very
> slowly but inexorably until they were able to reach some sort of critical
> mass, and then spread extremely rapidly (earlier examples of this sort of
> leap may include the Renaissance and the philosopher/scientists of Ancient
> Greece). Maybe we are now in the early stages of scientific "domination"
and
> the mass decline of religious thinking? Maybe this happens and then
religion
> incorporates the findings of science
Not until science can do a whole lot better than it has and answer WHY
as well as how. I suspect when someone talks like this that they do not
even know what the limits of science are. And as such how can they
possibly talk about such things. It seems to me they are very easily
impressed.
The Catholic Church should be doing this but they are pretty stupid to not
fess up to being wrong. At the same time this guy has it backwards. Quantum
Physicists are looking to Eastern Philosophy for intuitive insight because
so
much of what the East said thousands of years ago is turning out to be true
today. Fritjof Capra/Fred Wolf for example talk about this being the case.
If something is true it belongs to God. If not it should be abandoned.
Doesn't
matter which label you choose to stuff the truth into -
science/religion/philosophy.
(for instance, the fact that the Earth
> orbits the Sun) which has the effect of repressing science once more
> ("nature does it" becomes "God did it" again)? As a modern example of
this,
> creationists are beginning to not only accept the Big Bang, but are
starting
> to use it as proof of Biblical Creation. How long before they include
> evolution as well, I wonder?
That's good news. First I heard. I saw a special on Darwin that was several
hours long and the Creationists it showed were as adamant as ever that
the Bible was right. Galileo was told by the Church that he could not
possibly
found moons around Neptune - because the Church had not authorized them
to be there....
>
> Could science finally be able to move too quickly for religion to keep up
> (and assimilate it), or will science get so complex that religion becomes
> easier to understand and people still turn to religion anyway?
This clown is predjudiced against religon. Truth should be his only goal.
Not judgement.
I read once
> that you need to study maths for about fifteen years before you can really
> get to grips with quantum mechanics.
I must be pretty damn smart then.
Who has the time for that, when crops
> have to be harvested? When physicists start talking about ten-dimensional
> vibrating strings and membranes, virtual particles and entangled photons,
> "God did it" is so much easier for the majority of people to deal with.
This is true and especially applies to atheists who want to simplify the
universe with material things only. Is it a safe thing to say that a
'material'
thing occupies another dimension?
>
> Science needs to be popularised, but when this treads on religious grounds
> it will be criticised for doing so. A balance needs to be struck so that
> people can see for themselves that the scientific explanation is
reasonable,
> rational and comprehensible - and more satisfying. This might not easy as
> scientific frontiers advance. The God Of The Gaps may be getting smaller,
> but he might also be getting more appealing.
This is a load of crap. God is not popular and does not fall into categories
that man at some arbitrary time deems politically correct. Nor can God be
attibuted to the physical universe. God is beyond the universe all together.
This man has very narrow vision. He would somehow think he can 'classify'
God. God is beyond the grasp of the mind. Man can only using mind
understand the universe. Not mind.
>
> For centuries, the lack of scientific knowledge has ensured that the
> atheistic position was always hard to demonstrate (other than
> philosophically), and theists often won (sometimes by simple force of
> numbers, and general ignorance of the populace). The current dramatic
> increase in scientific understanding allows the skeptical position to be
> vastly stronger
Yes it does - stronger for support of God. This guy is also very easily
impressed when he says things like 'dramatic increase in scientific
understanding' as is the case so many times with scientists - particularly
physicists tooting their horns. It is what they do not know that is
more impressive and how well they kept the implications of the
quantum theory out of the public eye for over 70 years. For over 70
years physicists have been baffled by the universe due to QM.
Having said all of that I sincerly believe there is a lot of truth to what
he says. New religions are on the way - count on it. And science will
be right there. It is a thing of ego not admitting you are wrong. The
Church has a big ego and people are getting more and more annoyed.
(now you can clearly show why you do not believe, and show
> the flaws in the theistic position more readily).
God exists and this man is ignorant.
Information technology
> allows for the spread of the skeptical message much more readily and
> clearly.
And I plan to make full use of it.
>
> An atheist who can support his point of view (using evolution, geology,
> cosmology and so on) is now likely to gain more respect when he comes out
of
> the closet. Atheists can now show to others that their lack of belief is
> based on demonstrable reality as well as the previous tools of philosophy,
> logic and reason.
All atheists can show is their ignorance. Demonstrations of the physical
universe
are not sufficient explanation of Reality. Science is the only enterprise
that is
allowed to only demonstate HOW and not WHY. All other endevors must
provide a teleological WHY with their explanations. Science has exempted
itself
from this and in so doing severly crippled its ability to explain many
things.
Sure F=MA. WHY? Science will not tell you. I have an exhaustive case of
numerous fallacies of science. It has been my experience in dealing with
people
that talk about science that they as often as not do not even know what
science
IS let alone what its scope/limits are.
>
> Expect to see religions incorporating modern science, as their memes vie
for
> survival with the inexorable spread of critical thought.
You got that right. Also expect to see science stealing ideas from Eastern
Philosophy
to come to understand what it is they have found.
These people are easily impressed and I do not consider them at my own
intellectual level.
Maybe you could find something more interesting next time. Try to find
someone
that is not so easily impressed and actually knows what the limits of
science
are before they start mouthing off about science somehow filling in for
religion.
I can not tell you how utterly stupid that conversation was on one level. If
you
don't know the limits of an enterprise you sure as hell can not talk like
this guy
does. I am trying to say that I can mess with clown/beat him at his
own game without ever even getting near metaphysics. Can take him out on
multiple levels.
Maybe you will get lucky next time. Maybe I will.
Mike Dubbeld
Mike Dubbeld
I have 3 cats all of which are atheists also. But they are animals and
do not know any better so thats OK. Whats your excuse?
Mike Dubbeld
"Daniel Grubb" <gr...@lolamath.niu.edu> wrote in message
news:a89ski$idp$1...@news.math.niu.edu...
Mike Dubbeld
>
> >> Carbohydrates? Do souls simply not interact with silicon? Why not?
> >> What property of biological entities allows them to be animated? What
> >> is going on at the atomic/molecular levels when a body is animated?
>
> >I am working on that and in a way I am head and shoulders way above many]
> >scientists on that very account. If you want to see what is going on
today
> >in this area you need to look at Quantum Mechanics. You are actually not
> >even asking the right questions. But no surprise here. It has a great
deal
> >to
> >do with waves and force and believe it or not - Music Theory! Symmetry.
> >Today it is not matter and energy - it is waves and force. I have enough
> >to easily write a book or 2 on QM alone - but I am looking for the
> >connection
> >between other dimensions and psychic phenomena. Unless you are a lot more
> >specific I am not going there because QM is a huge subject matter. And I
do
> >not know your understanding level of science and particle physics.
>
>
> Assume that I know enough QM to calculate cross sections and decay
> constants with Feynmann diagrams and that I am mathematically
sophisticated
> enough to do research and publish papers in refereed math journals.
Anybody can read a Feynman diagram (that is one n on the end).
>
> You want more specifics? OK. What are the coupling constants between
'souls'
> and various fundamental particles?
Hey, bubble chamber time I am not ready for. I have theories but I am not
going
to give them to you and they will be shown to fit when I see fit to turn
them
loose.
How does that influence the 'souls'
> ability to animate carbon based bodies with proteins etc, and silicon
> based machines?
I still have some wandering to do in the particle jungle. I do not have all
the answers
and never said I did. But I know what is and is not possible. A lot more
than you
I suspect. The key is in the inter-reactions. Matter should not be seen as
matter. That
word should be dropped all together. The only thing that makes sense to talk
about it
force. Interactions between forces and the exact differences between bosons
and fermions.
Waves and forces is the name of the game. People should be looking at
harmonics and
symmetry. Any more than that and tight as a clam I am. There are ancient
theories
that fell by the wayside that are going to be getting a lot more attention
soon. Music
Theory and also Chaos and Fractals will also be helpful. The pieces are all
there and
the more I look at it the more astonishing it is to see no one noticed. Hate
to talk in
riddles on ya but I still have a lot more work to do piecing it together. I
get excited
about it cause everytime I go back and look it makes more and more sense!
Flounder around with your proteins and carbon. Atoms are empty space. It
is the interactions between forces and waves. That is the key. Think of your
body as
a cloud. Can some particles theoretically pass right through the earth like
it
was nothing more than a cloud? One of the spinoffs from this investigation
may be
transporter like technology. How do you convert fermions to bosons and then
back
again at some distant point? Conjugate mirrors and symmetry have some
interesting
possibilities.But I am still to weak on the particle end of things. Wheeler
recently
turned 90! He coined the phrase 'Black Hole'.
see ya,
Mike Dubbeld
forgot to wave my hands! Oh thats only one finger sticking up.
Mike Dubbeld
problems
are just that. Your problem. Your mystical journey was a journey you took
with
your mind. That is why you failed. It is only when you drop the mind
altogether
that success comes. Without concentration and meditation all you have is a
simple
silly intellectual excursion. You can tack any number of mystical this that
and the
other to it and it won't change a thing. Its concentration - or its nothing.
Atheism is
self-delusion. It is the lazy way out. That way you don't have the added
complexity
of dealing with God.
Mike Dubbeld
>
> --Dan Grubb
gmb
>
> I have 3 cats all of which are atheists also. But they are animals and
> do not know any better so thats OK. Whats your excuse?
>
> Mike Dubbeld
Maybe what would help is a recessment. What is intelligence?
Intelligence starts with doing things that are considered
intelligent, right? For example a rock does not do squat.
So there is nothing intelligent about it as it is not self aware,
does not have intentions, nothing, it just is. And then there
are moving things, such as gas molecules in our atmosphere.
Are they intelligent? No. They follow laws of physics, they
cannot change their destiny, they just are the way they
are, pushing each other around depending on pressures.
So somewhere from all this zig-zagging motion of particles,
life and later intelligence arose. A cell was born that was
able to reproduce. The way I imagine it is the x number
of atoms were closed in a shell, and somehow managed
to find an organization, a mechanism within that shell that
triggered replication.
Let's just move a few billion years to plants. They are still
not intelligent. They are only conditioned by evolution to
react to the environment. But they don't do much. They
don't do anything other than grow, convert dust into organized
patterns of atoms that work together in a sequence, each
taking up some biochemical role. But plants just exist,
they don't do things like organisms that move around.
Take for example a butterfy. It is capable to fly, coordinate
itself to land on flowers, seek out nectar. That is amazing
technology. A system that can see, avoid obstacles,
select designations of interest, and act on them. That is
truly amazing. Are butterflies intelligent then? They have
vast amounts of modes that are triggered by stimulus in
the environment. They can have sex, collect food, go
to sleep at night, sense danger, react to weather conditions,
etc. But they are purely mechanistic. They don't learn
new things, don't try out new things, simply expressing
their evolutionary design.
Then I step to squarrels. What a giant step. They live
social lives, they play, able to learn, gather information
about their environment. You have probably seen squarrels
in national parks around turists begging for food. They have
something butterflies don't. They can deduct things, such as
"if they do something, there is a result that comes out of it".
If they run around human tourists, they get food. Something
called a "realization" involving an actual thought, that "there is
something in it for me". If I do such and such actions, I get
a reward. Something easier, more yummy than the hard
work involved in seaking out nuts in the forest. Crackers
and salty nuts, hmmm, yummy. Something so yummy that
does not grow in the forest, only comes from those large
creatures. I am talking about something much more than
just behavior governed by instinctive programming here. Actions
conditioned based on the "realization of benefits". Flexibility.
The realization of something different. Adaptation to the
environment and formation of living habits, culture. But
compared to humans, squarrels cannot conclude things
in great depth.
With humans, this "if/then" realization skill went much
further. Humans recognized that if they take the skin
of an animal, they don't feel as cold. This allowed them
to move to and live in colder climates without having to
wait for evolution to grow them natural furrs. Beating
evolution by using their heads, simply based on our
ability to conclude.
Now somewhere in human evolution the advantage in
being able to conclude was realized and natural selection
took that path. Humans evolved to have immense
perception, reasoning and understanding skills far
surpassing any animal's intellect. And this perception
led people to ask global questions. Who am I? What
is this world? Was there a purpose? Is there a creator
to this world? I conclude, perceive that I exist, is there
life after death? All these mystic dreams, and this mystic
universe? And thoughts went on and on about these
questions and keep on going on and on.
I need to go right now, I was planning to write more,
maybe at another time.
George
Mike Dubbeld
"gmb" <g...@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:7UEq8.203769$702.31883@sccrnsc02...
I can say the same things a hundred ways but just like a picture
tells a thousand words it is equally useless to cast out the experience
into words because it will ever only be the defective instrument of
your mind that trys to grasp it. The mind (sorry brain) does not
experience anything. The soul does. The mind is like your shoes.
It has no intelligence and only appears intelligent by the proximity
of the soul to it. It is a toaster. A contraption. Without the
animating principle it is nothing.
> There are people who might have gone in their self-exploration
> to much higher levels and found that all the God stuff is but
> illusions and there is nothing, just the physical world and a
> very evolved mind whose consciousness is but an illusion.
Good mind dream.
> Meditation tinkers with dreaming/hallucinative mechanisms.
> All this God stuff, especially the Jesus stuff sounds just
> dumb to me. I've had my share of OBEs and meditations.
> Found nothing but proof to myself that they are only dreams.
Sorry for your bad luck. Should have tried harder that helps
a lot with bad luck.
> Why do we die every day when we go to sleep? What point
> would be to stay alive after death if we are physical beings?
I am sure I have addressed this more than once before. All
things in the physical universe are bound by the law of cause
and effect. Newtons 3'rd Law goes beyond what is immediately
perceived by the mind. All causes no matter what they are must
produce effects. All your thoughts and actions result in causes.
At death the left over causes/desires await a body to be worked
out in. They cause a body to be born. The desires drag the soul
into a physical birth (kicking and screeming) whether it wants such
a thing or not. At death you are judged by your karma/desires and
your life 'flashes before your eyes'. A determination is made from
what you have done as to what happens next. If you did 'good'
things such that more spirit resulted then that results in 'good' things
happening to you in the form of more spirit being manifested either
in the death world and or into the body in which your soul is pulled
from desire. The body must be suitable to house the degree of
spirit you have. The more spirit you have the more pleasant your
next life will be. And vice versa. Since I am visiting this neck of the
woods the ego itself is the so-called devil. The 'devil' is appropriately
described as 'that which separates you from God.' The bigger your
ego, the greater your suffering. This IS hell. This life is the result of
what you and everyone else has done in the past. At every single
given moment in your life this much will be true - The sum total of
all your past actions led you to be doing/experiencing what you are
at that particular instant in time. This includes all your past life
experiences which are stored in the UN-conscious (not the
subconscious which has the memories of this life) 'You are the
creator of all you attact' as my Guru used to say and 'Everything
is as it should be.' Not only is what you are doing this very instant
the result of the sum total of all your past actions - the exact same
thing can be said about everyone and everything in the entire universe.
These 2 things can be said about every single atom in the universe.
We are all part of the cosmic learning game in Maya/Gods Dream.
God's Dream is the false notion that you are your ego and mind.
As such you are bound to the physical universe and are unable to
recognize your divine attributes of immortality/all-knowing/truth/
bliss/love - probably forgot something. It is only by bringing the mind
under control of the will and leaving the mind behind that this false
association of your individual awareness/energy/will/conscioussness
discovers its mistaken identification with the mind and ego. Maya,
its not a fun place to be. It is the cause of endless rebirth and
suffering. The goal of yoga is the identification of the nature of the
problem and freedom from nature - 'Liberation' or Enlightenment.
But at any given time in the history of the world are there but so
many people that have been fooled long enough and been re-born
so many times that they are frustrated by the things ego would have
them chase after next and are suspicious enough to try looking
elsewhere for happiness. They have identified the fact that there is
no lasting happiness in the external world and from sheer exhaustion
of being reborn as kings/queens/rich/poor/smart - you name it - they
have reached the point where they are ready to try being spiritual
and turning inward to see what is there. At that time yoga says a
man has 'Awakened' (from the dream of Maya). Then a great
struggle ensues for a search for truth (Socrates?). This may take
years. Having found it the man then attempts to test the truth he
has found in every conceivable way. Adjusting as necessary.
He sees the world in terms of the truth he has found. Yoga is for
those individual that are Awakened ONLY. All others lack the
will to perform the required actions to obtain freedom from the
universe. So since this number of awakened people is ever only
a very small number and yoga is quite difficult (controlling the mind
is the most difficult thing you will ever do) - yoga is by no means
popular. It is however the crowning achievement of mankind in
the entire spectrum of intellectual achievement. This - not buy
purpose or plan at all. This by mere coincidence. Yoga was
'revealed' to sages thousands of years ago and that it is intellecual
is simply an after effect. It is 'reasonalble' that God who is above/
beyond the intellect WOULD BE very intellectual but it never
came about by theory of any sort.
> Why do so many people suffer from dementia and other mental
> disorders? It sounds all pointless to me.
Here again Yoga has justice. The world has no justice. But yoga
does. What happens to people in life is a direct result of the sum
total of all their past causes/karma. All injustice is seen as such
for lack of understanding of the past causes that created the
injustice seen at the moment. There is no accidents of any sort
at all. Now I know - freedom of the will - yes indeed. There is
no such thing as Free Will in reality. It is only the mind that believes
it has free will because the mind can not predict the future it believes
it makes choices/decisions. In reality where past/present and future
are all brought into the Eternal Now as perceived by the soul there
is no such thing. The past/present and future are an open book for
the soul to read. The soul - unlike the mind - is not bound to/part
of the physical universe - and as such has no such restrictions as
time and space - past/present and future. All things were determined
long ago and we are simply acting out on the stage of life in robotic
fashion all activities like puppets on a stage. It is the mind only that
creates the past/present and future. In reality there is no such thing.
Likewise for space. Mind/time and space are like 3 points on a
triangle. If you take away any one of them you have nothing.
Justice - yep. Free Will - yep - but to the mind only. Not the soul.
Unless I am the
> only one who exists and all information is provided to me
> to form my mind.
Unknown to the inventor of nihilism - whoever that might be - he or
she was far more correct than people might think. In fact he was so
close that it makes you wonder if he really knew the truth and was
just inventing a bad joke. Or did he simply go insane having found
out the truth? You ARE the center of the universe - so to speak.
Copernicus put us on the periphery circling the sun - but Kant put
us back at the center of the universe by denying Locke and the
empiricists 'tabula rasa' blank slate of the mind. Kant and Leibniz
following Plato (who stole it from yoga and Vedanta) set forth
the idea that we have innate understanding. But the west truely
screwed it up. We are the center of the universe from the perspective
that we think we are our minds and egos - and thus everything is
seen from 'our' point of view and this is the cry of the 'Rationalists'
in the west. But the real truth is that the soul is at the center of the
universe so to speak. Yoga is seen as an 'inward' journey. As I have
mentioned before we are like Stargate. We stand as 'humans' at the
threshold of inner and outer space. Most have their awareness
attached to the sense organs and mind and identify the external
world as the 'real' world. But this is a dream of the ego. The story
of 'original sin' is actually along these lines. The 'fall of man'.
Sure, it is possible. Anything is possible.
I can tell you it is nice not having to have an open mind. When you
live in the mind you can ever only know one thing for sure. You are
scared. The only single quality that you can give to the mind is fear.
The mind must identify with the animal emotional instinct of fear and
self-preservation because the mind NEVER can know the future
for certain. It can ever only guess/surmize what follows. Fear is
its predominant quality. On the flip side of that the soul being
indestructable is utterly fearless at all times. You want to attribute
Self-Realization to a hallucination. Good a guess as any the mind
can come up with. Ever only until Self-Realization/Samadhi is
experienced by controlling the mind and concentrating and
meditating can a person have any inkling of how silly you sound
with your guesses of what Self-Realization is.
> But evidence to me suggests that there is no God or
> afterlife. Somehow the Universe exists, how it came about,
> I have no clue.
Translation: since I only know my mind and it is not all-knowing,
I do not know how the universe came about or if God exists.
Only an idiot would think that someone reads something on a
NG post and would believe such things. The only way to know
if any of the things I said might be true is by a person investigating
and experiencing these things themself. Garbage other people
spew is worhless. If someone reads the theory of Vedanta they
will be highly impressed by its intellecual landscape. But all that
is is more intellectual baggage to soon be forgotten by the next
intellectual landscape the ego has the mind chase after.
Experience is all.
I wish you well,
Mike Dubbeld
>
> George
>
>
>
Mike Dubbeld
>
> >Also I tend to forget. People that believe along the lines that you do
are
> >unaware that the human intellect and mind are as dwarfed as a tadpole
> >to the intelligence of the soul which uses intuition and NOT simple silly
> >logic and resason which require activity in time/space/the universe.
> >Intuition does not require time or space - the answer 'dawns' on you
> >and comes in a 'flash' of understanding. Understanding arrived at by
> >intuition is quite reasonable but is infinitely faster and far more
> >accurate.
>
> No, it is *not* more accurate. It still needs to be *tested*, interpreted,
> etc.
No it does not need to be tested. Your problems are just that. Your lack
of experience is your problem.
Mike Dubbeld
Mike Dubbeld
> "Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> wrote in message
> news:a8h2j2$o0f$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> >
> > I have 3 cats all of which are atheists also. But they are animals and
> > do not know any better so thats OK. Whats your excuse?
> >
> > Mike Dubbeld
>
> Maybe what would help is a recessment. What is intelligence?
> Intelligence starts with doing things that are considered
> intelligent, right?
Wrong. What you say sounds reasonable and I could just go
along and see if you are going somewhere with your mistaken
notion but I simply chose not to. Intellgence is a essence of the
soul. Understanding takes place in time in the mind. But the soul
is beyond time/does not make use of or is bound by the notion
of time. Time is a creation of the mind. Intelligence is an essence,
(not quality) of the soul - as in there is no distinction between the
soul and intelligence. But the mind has no intelligence whatsoever.
Without the soul to animate the mind it is nothing.
For example a rock does not do squat.
> So there is nothing intelligent about it as it is not self aware,
> does not have intentions, nothing, it just is. And then there
> are moving things, such as gas molecules in our atmosphere.
> Are they intelligent? No. They follow laws of physics, they
> cannot change their destiny, they just are the way they
> are, pushing each other around depending on pressures.
So are YOU as a part of something that was finished long ago.
You are an actor on the stage believing as a mind that you make
choices and have free will. Thinking that unlike the stone you
can decide to do this that or the other. But this is false apart from
the mind. The mind believes itself to have free will/choice and that
all things are not determined - only because the mind is unable
to predict the future. The mind operates in time and space.
The soul does not. The soul sees everything in the Eternal Now.
The past/present and future are one book for it to read and
it is only the soul that is free/has free will because only the
soul is not bound to the laws of the physical universe as is the
mind. In Reality, your actions are no more free than the rock
because you are identified with the mind - a slave to the laws
of nature. You are a puppet on the stage being worked.
>
> So somewhere from all this zig-zagging motion of particles,
> life and later intelligence arose. A cell was born that was
> able to reproduce. The way I imagine it is the x number
> of atoms were closed in a shell, and somehow managed
> to find an organization, a mechanism within that shell that
> triggered replication.
>
> Let's just move a few billion years to plants. They are still
> not intelligent. They are only conditioned by evolution to
> react to the environment. But they don't do much. They
> don't do anything other than grow, convert dust into organized
> patterns of atoms that work together in a sequence, each
> taking up some biochemical role. But plants just exist,
> they don't do things like organisms that move around.
>
You'd like Aristotle on Metaphysics.
> Take for example a butterfy. It is capable to fly, coordinate
> itself to land on flowers, seek out nectar. That is amazing
> technology. A system that can see, avoid obstacles,
> select designations of interest, and act on them. That is
> truly amazing. Are butterflies intelligent then?
All forms of life lead up to our form of life. I know you love
that one! It is not as it sounds however. You can go on with
any nuber of arbitrary examples of life of one sort or another.
It is only a body that can assume the form of intellect that
makes the bottom line differerce. You are special and that is
the exact reason why. It is for that reason alone that you have
divine potential. You are no 'better' than a fly or a horse. All
souls are divine. The reason we are special is th intellect only.
It is only when the intellect is manifested that independence is
possible. A dog does not have the possibility of liberation from
the bondage of matter. The intelligence of animals can not be
manifested for numerous reasons but that does not make their
souls any less divine than yours - only they have no possibility
as such animals for freedom. Humans alone only have this
possibility.
They have
> vast amounts of modes that are triggered by stimulus in
> the environment. They can have sex, collect food, go
> to sleep at night, sense danger, react to weather conditions,
> etc. But they are purely mechanistic. They don't learn
> new things, don't try out new things, simply expressing
> their evolutionary design.
and---
>
> Then I step to squarrels. What a giant step. They live
> social lives, they play, able to learn, gather information
> about their environment. You have probably seen squarrels
> in national parks around turists begging for food. They have
> something butterflies don't. They can deduct things, such as
> "if they do something, there is a result that comes out of it".
> If they run around human tourists, they get food. Something
> called a "realization" involving an actual thought, that "there is
> something in it for me". If I do such and such actions, I get
> a reward.
Better not be any Behaviorist psychologists watching this
for your sake - animals thinking. And yet you want to
reap the 'we are the result of our environment' notion
from them.
Something easier, more yummy than the hard
> work involved in seaking out nuts in the forest. Crackers
> and salty nuts, hmmm, yummy. Something so yummy that
> does not grow in the forest, only comes from those large
> creatures. I am talking about something much more than
> just behavior governed by instinctive programming here. Actions
> conditioned based on the "realization of benefits". Flexibility.
> The realization of something different. Adaptation to the
> environment and formation of living habits, culture. But
> compared to humans, squarrels cannot conclude things
> in great depth.
and---
>
> With humans, this "if/then" realization skill went much
> further. Humans recognized that if they take the skin
> of an animal, they don't feel as cold. This allowed them
> to move to and live in colder climates without having to
> wait for evolution to grow them natural furrs. Beating
> evolution by using their heads, simply based on our
> ability to conclude.
got to be a point here.
>
> Now somewhere in human evolution the advantage in
> being able to conclude was realized and natural selection
> took that path. Humans evolved to have immense
> perception, reasoning and understanding skills far
> surpassing any animal's intellect. And this perception
> led people to ask global questions. Who am I? What
> is this world? Was there a purpose? Is there a creator
> to this world? I conclude, perceive that I exist, is there
> life after death? All these mystic dreams, and this mystic
> universe? And thoughts went on and on about these
> questions and keep on going on and on.
Well you will get no argument from me. Darwinism is a fact
of where physical bodies come from. Maybe you have me
confused with a Creationism Christian who likely might
want to argue about that. Maybe you are simply saying no
there is no God and everything from that fuzzy combination
of atoms on up to humans is the result of non-intelligent nature
and there is no soul either. Well I tell you. If this was true I
could save myself a lot of typing. But as is so often simple
things often aren't as simple as they first appear. Started with
an electron/neurton and proton - those were the good old
days.
Science is the only enterprise that is absconded from having
to provide WHY explanations. F=MA. Sure that is impressive
to your physics professor. Ask him why. (but don't stand too
close or he may slap you) (also make sure he never sees a
philosophy or psychology book in your hand). All other
forms of human endevor must provide WHY/motive/reason/
be believable - something people can empathize with - such
that if they had been in that persons shoes they may have
done the same thing. Not science. Science deals with the
'World of appearances'. Phenomena. Not the 'real thing'
Noumena. No 2 people see the same chair the same way.
Each having differerent experiences and corresponding
memories have a slightly different perspective of the same
chair. The image of the chair is formed on the retina of the eye
and sent by the optic nerve to the thalmus vision center in the
brain. It is a replication of the real thing. Not the real chair. What
is outside is 'unknown and unknowable' John Stuart Mill. All of
the external world are mere representations of the actual
thing. (noumena) That 2 people can agree 'something is out there'
identifies the fact that they are not dreaming. We take measurements
of these replications in the world of appearances (Kant) and we
agree on specific attributes of those phenomena and categorize
and generalize experiences into word models/buckets/labels.
The mind comes to believe it understands the underlying
experiences by the models/words alone. The ego mistakenly
beliving itself to have the divine characteristics of the soul then
proceeds to believe that it too is all-knowing by beliving that by
the word model generalizations. It makes the word models its
playground where it can shuffle them around as it pleases (like
God) as the mind is its abject slave. It can command any sort
of changes in these word models and feels safe in them as
the God it thinks it is. So thinking is a never-ending enterprise
that gives the ego the false security notion of being in charge.
Yoga increases will to control the mind and diminish the ego
by selfless service (selfless service is a practical matter in yoga
and is not done as in religion simply doing good - as in no real
reason at all - religion has simply forgotten the original purpose
of doing self-service to dimish the ego) and concentration and
meditation. Then awareness/will/energy - all 3 one in the same thing
and can be used interchangable in sentences - dissassociates itself
from the mind and realizes its mistaken association with it. It
realizes that it is not that clunky contraption AT ALL! And wonder
strikes you how you could have thought such a thing all that time?!
But mind can never understand mind. That is like trying to pull
yourself up by your own bootstaps.
Maybe you can comment later.
later gator,
Mike Dubbeld
Thomas P.
wrote:
>
>"gmb" <g...@nomail.com> wrote in message
>news:7UEq8.203769$702.31883@sccrnsc02...
>> "Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> wrote in message
>> news:a8erl1$6ar$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
snip
I am not cutting your post because it wasn't interesting. It was. I
am just pointing out again that you are describing an idea that has
nothing concrete for it to base itself on. It makes no difference how
old the idea is or how brilliantly it has been expressed through the
ages. It is still pure fantasy.
Thomas P.
"You know", he added very gravely, "it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle-to get one's head cut off."
Thomas P.
wrote:
>
>"Daniel Grubb" <gr...@lolamath.niu.edu> wrote in message
>news:a8f7s8$ele$1...@news.math.niu.edu...
>>
>> >Also I tend to forget. People that believe along the lines that you do
>are
>> >unaware that the human intellect and mind are as dwarfed as a tadpole
>> >to the intelligence of the soul which uses intuition and NOT simple silly
>> >logic and resason which require activity in time/space/the universe.
>> >Intuition does not require time or space - the answer 'dawns' on you
>> >and comes in a 'flash' of understanding. Understanding arrived at by
>> >intuition is quite reasonable but is infinitely faster and far more
>> >accurate.
>>
>> No, it is *not* more accurate. It still needs to be *tested*, interpreted,
>> etc.
>
>No it does not need to be tested. Your problems are just that. Your lack
>of experience is your problem.
The existence of thousands of incredibly silly and dangerous idea
reached through intuition is good evidence that ideas do need to be
tested against reality before they are accepted as more than a
possibly good idea.
>
>Mike Dubbeld
>
>
>It can be a good place to *start*, but it has been shown all too often
>> to simply be unreliable. It is after intuition that the science really
>gets
>> going. Figure out a way of testing whether your intuition is right. Make
>> predictions based on that intuition. Actually do the test and see
>> what happens. Repeat as needed.
>>
>> I have had you 'flash of understanding' many, many times. Sometimes it is
>> correct, other times it is wrong. It is a necessary part of any real
>research.
>> But it is where you *start* thinking, not where you stop. By avoiding the
>> 'hard' part, you make you whole endeavor meaningless.
>>
>> ---Dan Grubb
>
>
Thomas P.
Thomas P.
wrote:
>
>"gmb" <g...@nomail.com> wrote in message
>news:BK_q8.167830$ZR2....@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net...
>> "Mike Dubbeld" <mi...@erols.com> wrote in message
>> news:a8h2j2$o0f$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>> >
>> > I have 3 cats all of which are atheists also. But they are animals and
>> > do not know any better so thats OK. Whats your excuse?
>> >
>> > Mike Dubbeld
>>
>> Maybe what would help is a recessment. What is intelligence?
>> Intelligence starts with doing things that are considered
>> intelligent, right?
>
>Wrong. What you say sounds reasonable and I could just go
>along and see if you are going somewhere with your mistaken
>notion but I simply chose not to. Intellgence is a essence of the
>soul.
The soul itself has not been shown to exist. Saying something is an
essence of the soul has very little meaning. What is a soul; what is
an essence?
Understanding takes place in time in the mind. But the soul
>is beyond time/does not make use of or is bound by the notion
>of time. Time is a creation of the mind. Intelligence is an essence,
>(not quality) of the soul - as in there is no distinction between the
>soul and intelligence. But the mind has no intelligence whatsoever.
>Without the soul to animate the mind it is nothing.
The only fact we have is that when the brain deteriorates so does
intelligence. The rest is just a story.
>
>
>For example a rock does not do squat.
>> So there is nothing intelligent about it as it is not self aware,
>> does not have intentions, nothing, it just is. And then there
>> are moving things, such as gas molecules in our atmosphere.
>> Are they intelligent? No. They follow laws of physics, they
>> cannot change their destiny, they just are the way they
>> are, pushing each other around depending on pressures.
>
>So are YOU as a part of something that was finished long ago.
>You are an actor on the stage believing as a mind that you make
>choices and have free will. Thinking that unlike the stone you
>can decide to do this that or the other. But this is false apart from
>the mind. The mind believes itself to have free will/choice and that
>all things are not determined - only because the mind is unable
>to predict the future. The mind operates in time and space.
>The soul does not. The soul sees everything in the Eternal Now.
>The past/present and future are one book for it to read and
>it is only the soul that is free/has free will because only the
>soul is not bound to the laws of the physical universe as is the
>mind. In Reality, your actions are no more free than the rock
>because you are identified with the mind - a slave to the laws
>of nature. You are a puppet on the stage being worked.
And what evidence do you have for any of this?
snip of pretty much the same
Daniel Grubb
>>
>> You want more specifics? OK. What are the coupling constants between
>'souls'
>> and various fundamental particles?
>Hey, bubble chamber time I am not ready for. I have theories but I am not
>going
> to give them to you and they will be shown to fit when I see fit to turn
>them
>loose.
Yawn. When you get somewhere let us know. Until then stop talking your
fantasies.
>I still have some wandering to do in the particle jungle. I do not have all
>the answers
>and never said I did. But I know what is and is not possible. A lot more
>than you
>I suspect. The key is in the inter-reactions. Matter should not be seen as
>matter. That
>word should be dropped all together. The only thing that makes sense to talk
>about it
>force. Interactions between forces and the exact differences between bosons
>and fermions.
>Waves and forces is the name of the game. People should be looking at
>harmonics and
>symmetry
Yawn again. Stop pushing around catch phrases that you don't understand.
You are simply talking about supersymmetry, a well discussed theory.
As for 'harmonics and symmetry', sheesh, what you you think physicists have
been *doing* the last 40 years?? The question is not whether there are
'harmonics and symmetry', the question is *which* group of symmetries
are actually at work. That determines which 'harmonics' are allowed.
>Any more than that and tight as a clam I am. There are ancient
>theories
>that fell by the wayside that are going to be getting a lot more attention
>soon. Music
>Theory and also Chaos and Fractals will also be helpful. The pieces are all
>there and
>the more I look at it the more astonishing it is to see no one noticed.
Ho hum. More catch phrases. An people *have* noticed all of this. Why
do you think it made it all the way to the popular literature like that
of Capra, etc?
>Flounder around with your proteins and carbon. Atoms are empty space. It
>is the interactions between forces and waves. That is the key. Think of your
>body as
>a cloud. Can some particles theoretically pass right through the earth like
>it
>was nothing more than a cloud? One of the spinoffs from this investigation
>may be
>transporter like technology. How do you convert fermions to bosons and then
>back
>again at some distant point? Conjugate mirrors and symmetry have some
>interesting
>possibilities.But I am still to weak on the particle end of things. Wheeler
>recently
>turned 90! He coined the phrase 'Black Hole'.
Yes, some particles *do* pass right through the earth like it 'was a cloud'.
They are called neutrinos. We have been working with them for decades now.
Go away and learn something more than catch phrases.
--Dan Grubb
Daniel Grubb
>That's good news. First I heard. I saw a special on Darwin that was several
>hours long and the Creationists it showed were as adamant as ever that
>the Bible was right. Galileo was told by the Church that he could not
>possibly
>found moons around Neptune - because the Church had not authorized them
>to be there....
Correction: Jupiter.
---Dan Grubb
Daniel Grubb
>>I read once
>> that you need to study maths for about fifteen years before you can really
>> get to grips with quantum mechanics.
>I must be pretty damn smart then.
I would disagree with the 15 year statement. I was doing QM at the
age of 14 and understanding the math. However, I would strongly guess
that Dubbeld understand little of QM outside of popularized versions
such as in Capra, etc.
--Dan Grubb
Daniel Grubb
>Yes it does - stronger for support of God. This guy is also very easily
>impressed when he says things like 'dramatic increase in scientific
>understanding' as is the case so many times with scientists - particularly
>physicists tooting their horns. It is what they do not know that is
>more impressive and how well they kept the implications of the
>quantum theory out of the public eye for over 70 years. For over 70
>years physicists have been baffled by the universe due to QM.
Baffled by QM? Not really. it has strange predictions if you are bound
to a newtonian mindset (or worse, a pre-newtonian one). But it is not *that*
hard to understand, even with the mathematics involved.
---Dan Grubb
Daniel Grubb
>> Assume that I know enough QM to calculate cross sections and decay
>> constants with Feynmann diagrams and that I am mathematically
>>sophisticated
>> enough to do research and publish papers in refereed math journals.
>Anybody can read a Feynman diagram (that is one n on the end).
OK. Everybody can look at a Feynman diagram and 'understand' what it
is saying at one level. To *use* that Feynman diagram for computations
is quite another thing. Feynman's big achievement was to show how to use
the intuitive diagrams to actually calculate something that can be tested.
It is much, much more than simply drawing lines and squiggles on a page.
It is not simply 'an electron comes in here, spits off a photon, which
decays into a positions and an electron'.
--Dan Grubb
>forgot to wave my hands! Oh thats only one finger sticking up.
Now that is very enlightened behavior! Sheesh.
Nesa Simon David
>>>>do not know any better so thats OK. Whats your excuse?
>>>>
the above is daft... it's obvious that religion is a modern invention...
in the 3.5 billion years of evolution of species, it's only in recent
times that the religion concept has emerged.
actually i agree with "determinism"... don't you? i suggest you research
determinism.. it's actually quite interesting. check out the
infidelguy's message boards, section "science > determinism 2"
http://www.thedeepdark.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=4&topic=4&replies=122
Screwball McGee
"Neal Stein" <atomki...@NOSPAMattbi.com> wrote in message
news:F5Gm8.90672$702.21587@sccrnsc02...
> > > Well, we're all just machines that happen to be made of meat.
> >
> > Sorry. You were the only one God did not like. The rest of us are souls.
>
> I can't seem to find mine, know where it's housed?
>
Those things aren't housed.
Eneasz Brodski
>
> "L Crane" <eele...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:95601114.02032...@posting.google.com...
> > > >
I very rarely post, and as such you may wish to ignore this, as I probably
won't reply. I do have a few questions though, sparked from curiosity.
First, I am assuming that everything you have asserted is true. I'd love to
see any sort of evidence you have for the existance of a soul/spirit, as
well as information on how a body acts when it is controlled by a soul as
opposed to how it acts when it is not, but all that is merely curiosity
(again), as I don't want to get into a debate on whether or not this soul
exists. I'm simply accepting that it does.
My question to you: Which are *you*? ie: when you consider yourself, do
you think of yourself as the soul, or as the body? Because quite frankly,
from the point of view of the body, all these souls are parasites that
ensalve the body for the duration of it's lifetime. From what I gather of
your post, they analyze a body to make sure it's suitable for infection.
They then choose which ever body makes the biggest "playground" for them.
They invade the body, occupy it, and from then on out it can never do
anything of it's own violition, everything it does is controlled by the
soul, which selfishly wishes to fullfill it's own "unfullfilled desires".
Why the souls ever do any of this is unclear, since all bodies apparently
produce suffering. Why would the soul ever _want_ to suffer, and why would
the body ever _want_ to be stripped of it's freedom?
Anyhow, back to the question: Are you the soul or the body? If you are the
body - how did you escape from your enslaving soul, or assuming you didn't,
how did you manage to wrestle control from it long enough to post this? How
did you feel about being violated in such a manner? If you are the soul -
don't you feel the least bit bad for doing such a thing to a body?
This whole scenario sounds like something out of a science fiction
(fantasy?) nightmare to me.
> > > understood for what it is. Trying to understand mind with mind is like