Per God & Nature's Operating System...

[BeholdTheTruth]

"... Nowadays, with a daring that might have dazzled St. Augustine and St.
Thomas Aquinas, two titans of the computer world argue that everything in
the universe is a kind of computer. Their sensational idea originally enjoyed
a brief flurry of celebrity in the late 1980s, when one of the two, Ed Fredkin,
proposed a particularly grandiose version of the idea. Now the idea is enjoy-
ing renewed publicity thanks to the publicity campaign run by the other man,
[mathworld.com CEO] Stephen Wolfram, to promote his book on the topic... "

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer, Mon., July 1, 2002 (SF Chronicle)



Human intelligence is a product of analogy & combinatorics. Analogy allows the mind to use a few innate ideas -- space, force, essence, goal—to understand more abstract domains. Combinatorics allows an a finite set of simple ideas to give rise to an infinite set of complex ones. Pinker's First Law
Steven Pinker via http://www.edge.org/q2004/q04_print.html



"In a word, I suggest that the supernatural entities of religion are, in some sort, cybernetic models built into the larger cybernetic system in order to correct for noncybernetic computation in a part of that system.

"I do not believe anybody has said this but I do not think that this view of religion contradicts what has been said by others - the religious, the mystical, and the scientific. There is therefore no conflicting hypothesis against which mine can be tested.

"I have been reading over The Cloud of Unknowing and most of the traps against which the author warns the would-be contemplative are precisely the patterns of purposive thought."

Gregory Bateson, They Threw God Out Of The Garden
(published in CoEvolutionary Quarterly, Winter 1982, pp. 62-67)




The goal of mechanizing logical reasoning has had a long and colorful history,
which long predates the advent of computers. For example, in the 13th century
a Franciscan monk named Ramon Lully constructed wheels that would assist
people in reasoning about the God's glorious attributes, and in the 17th cen-
tury Leibniz wrote of a grand, symbolic logical calculus that would reduce rea-
son to calculation. In the 18th century, Stanley Jevons constructed a "logical
calculator" to implement some of George Boole's ideas, affectionately known
as "Jevon's logical piano." Martin Gardner's book, Logic Machines and Dia-
grams, provides a very nice history of such efforts. www.andrew.cmu.edu/~avigad



"At the heart of what I have to say is the view that knowing occurs in action in the temporal
'now' at once being determined by one’s lived history and providing possibilities for future
occasions for knowing. In such knowing humans express their nature as auto-poietic in the
sense that they necessarily transform "inputs" from the world of their existence for their
own use and are closed in that operational sense...

"I feel I have been doing what Varela would call 'laying down the path in walking' ".



Thomas Kieren, Professor Emeritus, Univ. Of Alberta
jwilson.coe.uga.edu/DEPT/TME/Issues/v12n1/5Kieren.pdf




Bisociation: The mixture in one human mind of visual [or verbal] physiognomies
from two contexts or categories of objects that are normally considered separate
categories by the literal processes of the mind. The thinking process that is the
functional basis for metaphoric thinking. This is a term coined by the author
Arthur Koestler in his book "The Act of Creation." Koestler invented this term
to distinguish the type of analogical thinking that leads to the acts of great
creativity from the more pedestrian associative (purely logical) thinking, with
which we are so familiar in our everyday lives. Arthur Koestler's definition via
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~design/ART/NAB/Bisoc.html



"This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Pantokrator, or Universal Ruler. For God is a relative word..."
From The General Scholium of Newton's Principia, as per http://members.aol.com/stevesnobelen/scholium.htm



"I read the [The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin] just as I was
starting my academic research career, and I was deeply impress-
ed by his central thesis: The primary barrier to progress is not
ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge and expertise."

Jim Collins, author of Good To Great



One man's constant is another man's variable."

A. Perlis, first president of the Association of Computer Machinery
and first winner of the ACM's Turing Prize



"... paraphrasing Leibniz' Monadology... should this growingly large host of impositions prove to be generally amenable to such systems (this is the hard and a priori neither obvious nor reasonable part of the discussion) then we shall ultimately discover these disparate systems to all be identically constrained by an infinite number of qualitatively, and if you will, self consistent, requirements." Mitch Feigenbaum, finder of the "Butterfly Effect".



"We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted."

H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense.



"... something of the use and beauty of mathematics I think I am able to understand. I know that in the study of material things, number, order, and position are the threefold clue to exact knowledge: and that these three, in the mathematician's hands, furnish the first outlines for a sketch of the Universe." D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson




We are given to boasting of our age being an age of Science! And if we are thinking merely of the dawn compared to the darkness that went before, up to a point we are justified. Something enormous has been born in the universe with our discoveries and our methods of research. Something has been started which, I am convinced, will now never stop. Yet though we may exalt research and derive enormous benefit from it, with what pettiness of spirit, poverty of means and general haphazardness do we pursue truth in the world today! Have we ever given serious thought to the predicament we are in?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN

[Zep]

OK...




What exactly are you trying to say here? Is there a point?

[BeholdTheTruth]

Originally posted by Zep
OK...




What exactly are you trying to say here? Is there a point?


I am quoting experts from quite diverse disciplines who seem to agree on something that makes sense to some people and is silly to most others. As the members of this forum tend to be of above average intelligence and education, I am inclined to believe there is going to be much disagreement here with these quotes. Am I wrong in that assumption? For example, what do you think?

[INRM]

Originally posted by pupcos
"... Nowadays, with a daring that might have dazzled St. Augustine and St.
Thomas Aquinas, two titans of the computer world argue that everything in
the universe is a kind of computer. Their sensational idea originally enjoyed
a brief flurry of celebrity in the late 1980s, when one of the two, Ed Fredkin,
proposed a particularly grandiose version of the idea. Now the idea is enjoy-
ing renewed publicity thanks to the publicity campaign run by the other man,
[mathworld.com CEO] Stephen Wolfram, to promote his book on the topic... "

Okay, so basically... You're saying the universe is a computer simulation like the matrix? That's what you're saying?

You're going to need heavy proof to back that. Remember, more grandiose the claim, more proof required to justify it.

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer, Mon., July 1, 2002 (SF Chronicle)


Human intelligence is a product of analogy & combinatorics. Analogy allows the mind to use a few innate ideas -- space, force, essence, goal—to understand more abstract domains. Combinatorics allows an a finite set of simple ideas to give rise to an infinite set of complex ones. Pinker's First Law
Steven Pinker via http://www.edge.org/q2004/q04_print.html

So basically you're saying that take a simple set of ideas, with enough time and and room for evolution, you can get an infinite set of combos?

"In a word, I suggest that the supernatural entities of religion are, in some sort, cybernetic models built into the larger cybernetic system in order to correct for noncybernetic computation in a part of that system.

What does this mean? Can you put this in English?

To me it sounds like Gods and such are put into the "machine" to correct for glitches in the machine.

"I do not believe anybody has said this but I do not think that this view of religion contradicts what has been said by others - the religious, the mystical, and the scientific. There is therefore no conflicting hypothesis against which mine can be tested.

I don't get this...

"I have been reading over The Cloud of Unknowing and most of the traps against which the author warns the would-be contemplative are precisely the patterns of purposive thought."

Gregory Bateson, They Threw God Out Of The Garden
(published in CoEvolutionary Quarterly, Winter 1982, pp. 62-67) Sounds like an appeal to authority to me.


The goal of mechanizing logical reasoning has had a long and colorful history,
which long predates the advent of computers. For example, in the 13th century
a Franciscan monk named Ramon Lully constructed wheels that would assist
people in reasoning about the God's glorious attributes, and in the 17th cen-
tury Leibniz wrote of a grand, symbolic logical calculus that would reduce rea-
son to calculation.

What does this have to do with his theory... yeah, you can make grids and wheels and referrences to determine how things work...

In the 18th century, Stanley Jevons constructed a "logical
calculator" to implement some of George Boole's ideas, affectionately known
as "Jevon's logical piano." Martin Gardner's book, Logic Machines and Dia-
grams, provides a very nice history of such efforts. www.andrew.cmu.edu/~avigad

And this proves what?


"At the heart of what I have to say is the view that knowing occurs in action in the temporal
'now' at once being determined by one’s lived history and providing possibilities for future
occasions for knowing. In such knowing humans express their nature as auto-poietic in the
sense that they necessarily transform "inputs" from the world of their existence for their
own use and are closed in that operational sense...

My brain's jello right now. Say this in english... regular english.

"I feel I have been doing what Varela would call 'laying down the path in walking' ".



Thomas Kieren, Professor Emeritus, Univ. Of Alberta
jwilson.coe.uga.edu/DEPT/TME/Issues/v12n1/5Kieren.pdf




Bisociation: The mixture in one human mind of visual [or verbal] physiognomies
from two contexts or categories of objects that are normally considered separate
categories by the literal processes of the mind. The thinking process that is the
functional basis for metaphoric thinking. This is a term coined by the author
Arthur Koestler in his book "The Act of Creation." Koestler invented this term
to distinguish the type of analogical thinking that leads to the acts of great
creativity from the more pedestrian associative (purely logical) thinking, with
which we are so familiar in our everyday lives. Arthur Koestler's definition via
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~design/ART/NAB/Bisoc.html


"This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Pantokrator, or Universal Ruler. For God is a relative word..."
From The General Scholium of Newton's Principia, as per http://members.aol.com/stevesnobelen/scholium.htm

It sounds like another appeal to authority.

"I read the [The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin] just as I was
starting my academic research career, and I was deeply impress-
ed by his central thesis: The primary barrier to progress is not
ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge and expertise."

Jim Collins, author of Good To Great

Can someone explain this in normal language.


One man's constant is another man's variable."

Good point, but it sounds like an appeal to authority... pupcos... if you wish to explain, please do.

A. Perlis, first president of the Association of Computer Machinery
and first winner of the ACM's Turing Prize

I don't recall the Turing Award *EVER* being given... any detail in this?


"... paraphrasing Leibniz' Monadology... should this growingly large host of impositions prove to be generally amenable to such systems (this is the hard and a priori neither obvious nor reasonable part of the discussion) then we shall ultimately discover these disparate systems to all be identically constrained by an infinite number of qualitatively, and if you will, self consistent, requirements." Mitch Feigenbaum, finder of the "Butterfly Effect".



"We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted."

H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense.



"... something of the use and beauty of mathematics I think I am able to understand. I know that in the study of material things, number, order, and position are the threefold clue to exact knowledge: and that these three, in the mathematician's hands, furnish the first outlines for a sketch of the Universe." D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson



We are given to boasting of our age being an age of Science! And if we are thinking merely of the dawn compared to the darkness that went before, up to a point we are justified. Something enormous has been born in the universe with our discoveries and our methods of research. Something has been started which, I am convinced, will now never stop. Yet though we may exalt research and derive enormous benefit from it, with what pettiness of spirit, poverty of means and general haphazardness do we pursue truth in the world today! Have we ever given serious thought to the predicament we are in?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN

Can someone explain all this?

-INRM

[Suggestologist]

Originally posted by pupcos
Bisociation: The mixture in one human mind of visual [or verbal] physiognomies from two contexts or categories of objects that are normally considered separate categories by the literal processes of the mind. The thinking process that is the
functional basis for metaphoric thinking. This is a term coined by the author Arthur Koestler in his book "The Act of Creation." Koestler invented this term to distinguish the type of analogical thinking that leads to the acts of great creativity from the more pedestrian associative (purely logical) thinking, with which we are so familiar in our everyday lives. Arthur Koestler's definition viahttp://www.public.iastate.edu/~design/ART/NAB/Bisoc.html

Bisociation is also related to Bateson's "Poly-ocular viewing", and to DeBono's "Po", and of course, to Fauconnier's poly-blends.

[BeholdTheTruth]

Originally posted by Suggestologist


Bisociation is also related to Bateson's "Poly-ocular viewing", and to DeBono's "Po", and of course, to Fauconnier's poly-blends.


Suggestologist, it is always a pleasure to meet someone who is a lot more knowledgeable than I am. If I was wearing a hat, I'd take it off for you! BTW, what do you think of what these quotes are pointing to? Non-sense or uncommon common sense?

[INRM]

Originally posted by pupcos



Suggestologist, it is always a pleasure to meet someone who is a lot more knowledgeable than I am. If I was wearing a hat, I'd take it off for you! BTW, what do you think of what these quotes are pointing to? Non-sense or uncommon common sense?


WAIT WAIT WAIT...

Pupcos...

If you're saying we're in a "Matrix"... you have one major problem...

Do you know what a paradox is? Chicken and the egg? ETc...

Either way... one little problem...

Who created is supposed "Matrix"... they would have had to have been creative to create something of this calibur... They would have at least had to be able to create artificial intelligence.

To do that would almost certainly require both metaphoric and analytical thinking... Definetly creative to think "you know what, I'd like to make a computer that can behave and think like a human being".

But you're making it seem as if it's because of this "matrix" that we have our creative and metaphorical thinking...

Think of it this way...

For B to exist, A must happen first...

But if A was a result of B, but B couldn't happen if A didn't exist, but B created A....

See the error here...

And another thing...

Your views seem to state that Religion and Paranormal was created to obscure or cover up mistakes in this matrix... well, why? Obviously to make it appear like an ordinary universe, and not a simulation of one...

So theoretically this thing makes a paranormal event to cover every single glitch in the machine, or simply covers it up, right?

So, how come we are having this conversation right now, wondering if there is a "matrix" if it is so good at covering itself up that we couldn't know if it existed because it could either correct itself up, or make it off to be a paranormal event?

Think about it.

-INRM

[BeholdTheTruth]

INRM,

I'll think about what you said -- and you think about this: they are not my quotes.

[INRM]

Originally posted by pupcos
INRM,

I'll think about what you said -- and you think about this: they are not my quotes.

That is correct,

-INRM

[Suggestologist]

Originally posted by pupcos
"... Nowadays, with a daring that might have dazzled St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, two titans of the computer world argue that everything in the universe is a kind of computer. Their sensational idea originally enjoyed a brief flurry of celebrity in the late 1980s, when one of the two, Ed Fredkin, proposed a particularly grandiose version of the idea. Now the idea is enjoy-
ing renewed publicity thanks to the publicity campaign run by the other man, [mathworld.com CEO] Stephen Wolfram, to promote his book on the topic... "

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer, Mon., July 1, 2002 (SF Chronicle)

I agree with Kurzweil's assessment of Wolfram. Information is just a metaphor; there's nothing wrong with thinking about physics as the transformation/transmission of information; but there's no reason to beleive that that's what is fundamentally important about it.

Human intelligence is a product of analogy & combinatorics. Analogy allows the mind to use a few innate ideas -- space, force, essence, goal—to understand more abstract domains. Combinatorics allows an a finite set of simple ideas to give rise to an infinite set of complex ones. Pinker's First Law
Steven Pinker via http://www.edge.org/q2004/q04_print.html

Fauconnier thinks it's a specific type of analogical capacity that makes us different from the animals. The combinatorics are guided by analogy.

"In a word, I suggest that the supernatural entities of religion are, in some sort, cybernetic models built into the larger cybernetic system in order to correct for noncybernetic computation in a part of that system.

Ah, Bateson cybernetically describing an idea about cybernetics. How... cybernetic of him. Cybernetics does not necessarily have anything to do with computers; Bateson is using it in the context of social systems.

"I do not believe anybody has said this but I do not think that this view of religion contradicts what has been said by others - the religious, the mystical, and the scientific. There is therefore no conflicting hypothesis against which mine can be tested.

"I have been reading over The Cloud of Unknowing and most of the traps against which the author warns the would-be contemplative are precisely the patterns of purposive thought."

Purposive thought means you have to have an outcome in mind; but this clouds one's thought process with preconceptions which shape the sensory input one uses to come to conclusions; and eventually to a solution that fits the purposive outcome.

Gregory Bateson, They Threw God Out Of The Garden
(published in CoEvolutionary Quarterly, Winter 1982, pp. 62-67)

[/QUOTE]The goal of mechanizing logical reasoning has had a long and colorful history, which long predates the advent of computers. For example, in the 13th century a Franciscan monk named Ramon Lully constructed wheels that would assist people in reasoning about the God's glorious attributes, and in the 17th cen-tury Leibniz wrote of a grand, symbolic logical calculus that would reduce rea-son to calculation. In the 18th century, Stanley Jevons constructed a "logical calculator" to implement some of George Boole's ideas, affectionately known as "Jevon's logical piano." Martin Gardner's book, Logic Machines and Dia-grams, provides a very nice history of such efforts. www.andrew.cmu.edu/~avigad[/QUOTE]

That's the major problem with AI today, it's all build out of logic; but people don't think in terms of logic.


"At the heart of what I have to say is the view that knowing occurs in action in the temporal 'now' at once being determined by one’s lived history and providing possibilities for future occasions for knowing. In such knowing humans express their nature as auto-poietic in the sense that they necessarily transform "inputs" from the world of their existence for their
own use and are closed in that operational sense...

"I feel I have been doing what Varela would call 'laying down the path in walking' ".

Autopoesis is self-organization. This overlaps somewhat with cybernetics; which is more interested in self-correction. Same problem as that with Purposive thought, above.

Thomas Kieren, Professor Emeritus, Univ. Of Alberta
jwilson.coe.uga.edu/DEPT/TME/Issues/v12n1/5Kieren.pdf

Bisociation: The mixture in one human mind of visual [or verbal] physiognomies from two contexts or categories of objects that are normally considered separate categories by the literal processes of the mind. The thinking process that is the functional basis for metaphoric thinking. This is a term coined by the author
Arthur Koestler in his book "The Act of Creation." Koestler Invented this term to distinguish the type of analogical thinking that leads to the acts of great creativity from the more pedestrian associative (purely logical) thinking, with which we are so familiar in our everyday lives. Arthur Koestler's definition via http://www.public.iastate.edu/~design/ART/NAB/Bisoc.html

All of the ideas about idea generation/processing I've already mentioned (Bateson's "poly-ocular viewing"; Edward DeBono's "Po"; and Fauconnier's poly-blends (See: The Way We Think, by Fauconnier)) all have in common the view that ideas can emerge out of lesser ideas in non-logical ways. In ways computers cannot accomplish with pure logic. So, now 1+1 = 27 sometimes; but much more often: 1+1 = 0.

[QUOTE]"This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Pantokrator, or Universal Ruler. For God is a relative word..."
From The General Scholium of Newton's Principia, as per http://members.aol.com/stevesnobelen/scholium.htm

"I read the [The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin] just as I was
starting my academic research career, and I was deeply impress-
ed by his central thesis: The primary barrier to progress is not
ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge and expertise."

Jim Collins, author of Good To Great

Experience blocks progress; preconception blocks perception. Paradoxical?

One man's constant is another man's variable."

A. Perlis, first president of the Association of Computer Machinery
and first winner of the ACM's Turing Prize

Was that a cybernetics joke?

"... paraphrasing Leibniz' Monadology... should this growingly large host of impositions prove to be generally amenable to such systems (this is the hard and a priori neither obvious nor reasonable part of the discussion) then we shall ultimately discover these disparate systems to all be identically constrained by an infinite number of qualitatively, and if you will, self consistent, requirements." Mitch Feigenbaum, finder of the "Butterfly Effect".

Autopoesis.

"We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted."

H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense.

"... something of the use and beauty of mathematics I think I am able to understand. I know that in the study of material things, number, order, and position are the threefold clue to exact knowledge: and that these three, in the mathematician's hands, furnish the first outlines for a sketch of the Universe." D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Essentialism. Like the quote of Pinker.

We are given to boasting of our age being an age of Science! And if we are thinking merely of the dawn compared to the darkness that went before, up to a point we are justified. Something enormous has been born in the universe with our discoveries and our methods of research. Something has been started which, I am convinced, will now never stop. Yet though we may exalt research and derive enormous benefit from it, with what pettiness of spirit, poverty of means and general haphazardness do we pursue truth in the world today! Have we ever given serious thought to the predicament we are in?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN

I don't see a clear unification of these haphazard quotes. The combinations of a few concepts become many/new concepts in a self-organizing manner/system; which preclude us from seeing even further as long as we allow them to guide us; which they must. Perhaps Bateson attempts to point out that cybernetic models embedded in the larger system may help keep us looking in the right directions; working toward the proper higher purpose.

[BeholdTheTruth]

I don't see a clear unification of these haphazard quotes.


That is very odd as the title of this topic is "per God and Nature's Operating System". Could it be that there is something about the topic's title that strongly bothers you?


The combinations of a few concepts become many/new concepts in a self-organizing manner/system; which preclude us from seeing even further as long as we allow them to guide us; which they must.


Can you explain this further? Because although I like you idea of something in ourselves cognitively guiding us (just as, in the same vein, the same thing or something else is cognitively protecting us or at least our knowledge bases and belief systems) I am unclear about what you are suggesting.


Perhaps Bateson attempts to point out that cybernetic models embedded in the larger system may help keep us looking in the right directions; working toward the proper higher purpose, possibly for you to reflect upon further if experience sometimes aids in your attaning objectives, and if sometimes your pre-conceptions eventually enhance your perceptions.


Perhaps.

OTOH, I take Bateson to mean something more like ... while what became modern science has shown itself to be useful in solving many old problems, it has on occasion given us even bigger ones; and these days seems much disinclined to serve us in "moral" ways that any legitimate religion early on is also meant to.

I.e., today the temples of science have been taken over by the moneyed class the way the Second Temple two thousand years ago was taken over by antiquity's version of the same.

[Suggestologist]

Originally posted by pupcos
[B]Can you explain this further? Because although I like you idea of something in ourselves cognitively guiding us (just as, in the same vein, the same thing or something else is cognitively protecting us or at least our knowledge bases and belief systems) I am unclear about what you are suggesting.

I'm thinking of Derrida's "differAnce" concept; which I might call unconscious or even collective or social unconscious. Functional Fixedness: once you see something as an element of one pattern; it becomes more difficult to see it as an element of a different pattern.

The more we develop the patterns we see; the harder it is to notice the possible alternatives. Preconception blocks perception.

OTOH, I take Bateson to mean something more like ... while what became modern science has shown itself to be useful in solving many old problems, it has on occasion given us even bigger ones; and these days seems much disinclined to serve us in "moral" ways that any legitimate religion early on is also meant to.

That might make more sense in the larger context of the quote; but I haven't read the larger context, so I don't know.

[BeholdTheTruth]

I'm thinking of Derrida's "differAnce" concept; which I might call unconscious or even collective or social unconscious. Functional Fixedness: once you see something as an element of one pattern; it becomes more difficult to see it as an element of a different pattern.


Yes indeedie. And yet functional fixedness is not -- necessarily -- fixed! After all, while almost every scientist at the time studying electricity and magnetism saw them as two totally different phenomena, one day guys began more and more finding the amazingly enlightening (and magnetic :-) connection connecting them. And of course a couple of hundred years before them Sir Isaac had also broken through the same Functional fixedness tendency/habit of thought, and by doing so had seen that one force was operating on bodies in the heavens and on the earth!



The more we develop the patterns we see; the harder it is to notice the possible alternatives. Preconception blocks perception.


However, is not any unquestioned willingness to accept such a counter to the goals of science -- and philosophy, more and more cognitively self-limiting habit of thought simply a bad case of intellectual defeatism? Sugg, lest you think me too harsh, consider this: the lives/discoveries of all great scientists clearly demonstrate that our brains and/or minds do not have to become or remain increasingly straight-jacketed and thus condemned to seeing things only through the lens of what we already know and have stored in our knowledge bases and belief systems. What clearly separates most of the rest of humanity from the Newtons and Plancks and Einsteins and Saulks is that most of us are unwlling to wrestle with concepts which when grasped (and a as Derrida points out) immediately also get a grasp on us. Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning is "...a far-reaching, illuminating study synthesizing research and analysis from many disciplines--neuroscience, archaeology, literature, religion, mythology--to delineate, or map, the primary structures of human behavior and motivation." I think that Derrida' concept of Functional Fixedness can become a suffocating cognition-limiting myth if not seen in the larger context of what most people do and don't do as compared with what a few people do and don't do.

You might also find interesting or at least intriguing the source of the various quotes I began this topic with. http://neo-gnosis.org is a very counter-to-conventional wisdom website by a very odd duck indeed who seems at least sincere in his quite unorthodox views. Furthermore, while his ideas are very problematic to those who suffer from especially bad cases of functional fixedness, he does seem to get interesting feedback from visitors who enjoy wrestling with new concepts -- particularly strange, and yet strangely familiar ones.

[INRM]

Originally posted by Suggestologist


Ah, Bateson cybernetically describing an idea about cybernetics. How... cybernetic of him. Cybernetics does not necessarily have anything to do with computers; Bateson is using it in the context of social systems.

Then, what does cybernetics mean?

-INRM

[BeholdTheTruth]

Great question!

see http://www.pangaro.com/published/cyber-macmillan.html for an equally great answer!

[INRM]

"In a word, I suggest that the supernatural entities of religion are, in some sort, cybernetic models built into the larger cybernetic system in order to correct for noncybernetic computation in a part of that system.

What exactly does this mean, Pupcos?

-INRM

[INRM]

"In a word, I suggest that the supernatural entities of religion are, in some sort, cybernetic models built into the larger cybernetic system in order to correct for noncybernetic computation in a part of that system."

Hey, I'm not being unreasonable in asking for an answer. This is a very ambiguous and I'm having trouble interpreting it.

-INRM

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Originally posted by INRM
Okay, so basically... You're saying the universe is a computer simulation like the matrix? That's what you're saying?

You're going to need heavy proof to back that. Remember, more grandiose the claim, more proof required to justify it. Any set of interactions can be modelled by any one of an infinite number of more complex systems. Saying "the universe is a program running in an even more complex computational system" is a logical tautology. We can easily prove that it is correct.

Now a program that could be altered, a la the Matrix, isn't guaranteed. So they are not saying that the universe is a computer simulation "like the Matrix".

[BeholdTheTruth]

All of these quotes are from a site (http://Neo-GNOSIS.org) that seems to be for "HiGHer-minded" Free Masons and others so inclined to speculations much outside the scope of this forum. BTW, I could be wrong about that view of this section's visitors and contributors as this God and Nature's Operating System thread suddenly got kind of "resurrected" out of the blue.

In any case, if you are not a Free Mason, you won't understand much of it. That I am sure of.

[Beerina]

> Who created is supposed "Matrix"... they would have had to
> have been creative to create something of this calibur... They
> would have at least had to be able to create artificial intelligence.

Not necessarily. There's no reason evolution inside such a physics simulation wouldn't work there, too, with intelligence as one possible development. (The subjective perceptual experience is an interesting property of real-world atom configurations, but it's not necessary for intelligent-like processing of your environment.)

Remember the old Twilight Zone episode where a tiny world is created, and not only do people evolve, but a god evolves from their worship. The god then challenges the scientist who created the mini world.

In a super-universe where computing horsepower and storage space are much more plentiful, I can easily conceive of people creating simple computer simulations with standard physics that run a googol of particles of various kinds and properties, to see what's the average number of "years", or nanoseconds in their time, for life, then intelligent life to emerge. Might some life, like the god of the Twilight Zone episode, become so smart so fast it can find a way out, or "up"?

Perhaps a flawed analogy, but how do we know quantum randomness in measurements isn't due to limits in the "number of bits" in the simulating computer's CPU registers?

It might be interesting for physicists (in cocktail discussions) to try to see where such limits could be tested. Any problems that should be doable in reality, but would give the world supercomputer a computationally difficult fit?

Of course, don't crash the computer...

[INRM]

Originally posted by Beerina
> Who created is supposed "Matrix"... they would have had to
> have been creative to create something of this calibur... They
> would have at least had to be able to create artificial intelligence.

Not necessarily. There's no reason evolution inside such a physics simulation wouldn't work there, too, with intelligence as one possible development. (The subjective perceptual experience is an interesting property of real-world atom configurations, but it's not necessary for intelligent-like processing of your environment.)

True. You mean just by simulating the molecules, you actually simulate the mind too?

Remember the old Twilight Zone episode where a tiny world is created, and not only do people evolve, but a god evolves from their worship. The god then challenges the scientist who created the mini world.

Never saw that episode... but just curiously... if we were hypothetically inside some kind of simulation.

Why would a God exist? It doesn't quite make sense, unless a God was *believed* to exist (or actually existed) in the real world.

In a super-universe where computing horsepower and storage space are much more plentiful, I can easily conceive of people creating simple computer simulations with standard physics that run a googol of particles of various kinds and properties, to see what's the average number of "years", or nanoseconds in their time, for life, then intelligent life to emerge. Might some life, like the god of the Twilight Zone episode, become so smart so fast it can find a way out, or "up"?

If it was discovered that this was all a simulation, it would almost certainly be irrefutable proof that a God couldn't exist right? Or just highly improbable?

Perhaps a flawed analogy, but how do we know quantum randomness in measurements isn't due to limits in the "number of bits" in the simulating computer's CPU registers?

We don't. Although some aspects of quantum physics, particle's taking on wave characteristics almost certainly would occur since matter and energy are almost inexplicably linked. It gets so small that it turns briefly into energy and back and forth.

But if there was a superuniverse (or a world outside the simulation)... that aspect of quantum physics would most likely occur at a smaller size scale than at the electron level.

It might be interesting for physicists (in cocktail discussions) to try to see where such limits could be tested. Any problems that should be doable in reality, but would give the world supercomputer a computationally difficult fit?

I wouldn't even want to tempt scientists with that. Who knows, they'd be creating their own worlds and creating creature-simulations who'd be forced to live a lie without even knowing it, and deceived into believing they're real with no chance of escaping. Creating sentient life is a serious thing... remember, sentient life doesn't have to be here, but if you create it, you'd better damn well be willing to give it freedom!

Of course, don't crash the computer...

I'd prefer not to build the computer.

PLEASE GIVE SOME REPLIES TO THIS TOPIC... THIS IS AN INTERESTING CONVERSATION...

-INRM

[INRM]

My question is, how would a God pop up?

That part doesn't exactly make sense...

If it was a non-intelligent supercomputational simulator... it would just move the particles around...

And if it was intelligent, it would most likely, to preserve the simulation, hide it's existance... not act openly like "God".

----------------------


And the bonus question for the day is:
"If it was proven that the whole world as we knew it was a computer-simulation-- would it 100% disprove the existance of a God or an afterlife?"

[scribble]

Some short stories you may enjoy...

<a href=http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/>The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect</a> a very short story.

Then there is What Happened at Cambridge IV which you may purchase and read <a href=http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook158.htm>here</a> for less than a dollar.

The beginning of the latter story is particularly gruesome - but as someone who waded through American Psycho, it was nothing. The story itself is, in my opinion, particularly well written. The ending may disappoint somewhat but the ride is great.

These peices of fiction examine a slightly different idea, perhaps, but they were on my mind and if this sort of thinking amuses you, these stories are sure to.

Edited to add: Dear me, I may have gotten the reviews of those backwards. Well, I read them at the same time, a few months ago, at any rate, so forgive my confusion.

[BeholdTheTruth]

Originally posted by INRM
My question is, how would a God pop up?

That part doesn't exactly make sense...

[unquote]

It makes as little or as much sense as the idea of an emergent property. As I said (in part) above... "All of these quotes are from a site (http://Neo-GNOSIS.org) that seems to be for "HiGHer-minded" Free Masons and others so inclined to speculations much outside the scope of this forum. BTW, I could be wrong about that view of this section's visitors and contributors as this God and Nature's Operating System thread suddenly got kind of "resurrected" out of the blue.

In any case, if you are not a Free Mason, you won't understand much of it. That I am sure of."

Masons use terms like "emergent" and "right angle", and it is interesting to note that when you or I or a natural process or a social situation "turns a corner", a new stage of the process or a new situation "emerges" -- or in your terminology "pops up".

http://Neo-Gnosis.org seems to be making the case (but just for HiGHer-minded" Free Masons, of course) that "God" is the word that HiGHer masonic meta-physicists use for Nature's principal principle, a PP that has probablistic aspects like certainty and contingency that map into terms of morality. For example, if something must happen it is a "must", if something is likely to happen it "should" happen.

[quote]
If it was a non-intelligent supercomputational simulator... it would just move the particles around...

And if it was intelligent, it would most likely, to preserve the simulation, hide it's existance... not act openly like "God".


HiGHer Masons seem to prefer to see Change in a way that is at right angles to the way you see Change. Maybe it's because they have turned a corner that followers of conventional wisdom prefer to not turn because they are afraid of what will emerge?


----------------------


And the bonus question for the day is:
"If it was proven that the whole world as we knew it was a computer-simulation-- would it 100% disprove the existance of a God or an afterlife?"

Here's one for you: If it were proven that all of Nature operates with just two operators, "going away from" and "coming towards", and if the first were represented as a O and the last were represented by a 1, would infinitely long strings of O's and 1's be a simulation, an emulation or an operation, or a trinity of choices with the answer depending on which corner the observer turned during his quest to answer the question?

[INRM]

Originally posted by pupcos


HiGHer Masons seem to prefer to see Change in a way that is at right angles to the way you see Change. Maybe it's because they have turned a corner that followers of conventional wisdom prefer to not turn because they are afraid of what will emerge?

Change at right angles... please say this in english. I'm having trouble. Sounds very abstract...

do you mean, different ways to ways most people see it?

-INRM


----------------------


Here's one for you: If it were proven that all of Nature operates with just two operators, "going away from" and "coming towards", and if the first were represented as a O and the last were represented by a 1, would infinitely long strings of O's and 1's be a simulation, an emulation or an operation, or a trinity of choices with the answer depending on which corner the observer turned during his quest to answer the question? [/B]

I didn't understand a single word of that...

-INRM

[INRM]

AND FOR EVERYBODY:
The bonus question for the day is:
"If it was proven that the whole world as we knew it was a computer-simulation-- would it IRREFUTABLY disprove the existance of a God or an afterlife?"

-INRM

[Wrath of the Swarm]

No, not at all. In fact, it would make it substantially more likely than either or both exist.

It depends on how this point is demonstrated. I assume you're talking about discovering ways to transmit information to and from this "deeper" level of reality, which would mean the program wasn't closed.

[BeholdTheTruth]

Originally posted by INRM


Change at right angles... please say this in english. I'm having trouble. Sounds very abstract...



I did say it in English. And not at all like the way you paraphrased it.

In any case, are you saying that: a) you cannot understand abstract concepts; or b) are you saying that you prefer not to think abstractly; or c) are you saying that you are intellectually lazy?


do you mean, different ways to ways most people see it?



Well, we have now established that you [i]can</> understand abstract concepts, so there are only two other possibilities. If b) is thecase, then studying what is at http://Neo-GNOSIS.org will be good practice for you. OTOH, if c) is the case, then you are wise not to do so. Neo-GNOSIS will only frustrate you further.


-INRM


----------------------




I didn't understand a single word of that...

-INRM

These days, both uneducated people and well-educated people often think that if they can not understand some concept quickly then it is not understandable. Those kinds of people are correct. Others, well educated or just street-savvy, believe that what is initially not understandable may become understandable if they invest sufficient time and effort trying to understand it. They too are correct, at least about ideas that can become understandable if enough time and effort is risked.

As I've said above, http://Neo-GNOSIS.org seems to be for a very special kind of HiGHer-minded speculative Free Mason, which you obviously are not. I am sure that it is not just for that kind of Free Mason, but rather the kind of free thinker who is not disinclined to thinking differently than one's habits of thought usually dictate to lazy minds and fearful psyches.

[INRM]

Originally posted by pupcos


I did say it in English. And not at all like the way you paraphrased it.

When someone says "say that in english" it means you're using terms that are too complex. And then try using a simple explanation.

In any case, are you saying that: a) you cannot understand abstract concepts; or b) are you saying that you prefer not to think abstractly; or c) are you saying that you are intellectually lazy?

Not really any of them... I just had difficulty understanding *THAT* concept.

Well, we have now established that you [i]can</> understand abstract concepts, so there are only two other possibilities. If b) is thecase, then studying what is at http://Neo-GNOSIS.org will be good practice for you. OTOH, if c) is the case, then you are wise not to do so. Neo-GNOSIS will only frustrate you further.

Understood

These days, both uneducated people and well-educated people often think that if they can not understand some concept quickly then it is not understandable. Those kinds of people are correct. Others, well educated or just street-savvy, believe that what is initially not understandable may become understandable if they invest sufficient time and effort trying to understand it. They too are correct, at least about ideas that can become understandable if enough time and effort is risked.

Depends on the idea... some can be understood, others may not.

As I've said above, http://Neo-GNOSIS.org seems to be for a very special kind of HiGHer-minded speculative Free Mason, which you obviously are not. I am sure that it is not just for that kind of Free Mason, but rather the kind of free thinker who is not disinclined to thinking differently than one's habits of thought usually dictate to lazy minds and fearful psyches.

It definetly requires a unique thinking process.

-INRM

[INRM]

Originally posted by Wrath of the Swarm
No, not at all. In fact, it would make it substantially more likely than either or both exist.

How so?

If it was discovered that life as we knew it was an illusion, wouldn't it make all the NDE's, and Paranormal-Events illusions also?

It depends on how this point is demonstrated. I assume you're talking about discovering ways to transmit information to and from this "deeper" level of reality, which would mean the program wasn't closed.

Possible, but there could be two simulations, one running inside another, and a person could simply see the outer one from the inner one, but not see outside the outer-simulation into the real world.

-INRM