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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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DMT and HFCS,
Observing that the use of language refers to “us” and “we” may be the simple intuitive understanding that there is no real distinction between you and me. There is a rock-solid connection among every being.
Two cops were patrolling a mountain highway and came upon a fellow standing on the cliff-side of a wall, apparently about to jump to his death. They get out and cautiously approach and talk to the man. One cop gets close enough to grab the jumper, and at that time, the jumper jumps. The close cop grabs him but cannot stop both himself and the jumper from going over the wall—but the second cop grabs the first cop and manages to arrest the fall. After the event was over and the cops back in their car, the second cop looked at the first cop and said, “What the Hell did you think you were doing?! Couldn’t you see that you were going to go off the cliff with that guy?” The first cop says, “What the hell was *I* doing!!?? What the hell were YOU doing? What made you try to grab me while I was going over??” Both admitted to each other that they couldn’t help themselves. It was automatic, instinctual, without thought.
In every other being we see more of what we are (first person, second person, third person, singular and plural). In every story, in every myth, in every belief, we recognize parts of what we are showing up in an infinite variety of ways. And we love, hate, find curious all those other parts of what we show ourselves to be. Not only do we seem to be a complex constellation of characteristics, images, and personalities, much of it is invisible to us. We somehow feel that what we call “being” extends well beyond our bodies.
DMT: Well I think these are just modern expressions of an age old urge.
It could be an urge, or: archetype, the unconscious, genes, memes (cultural genes, as it were), belief systems, . . . . In any event, there seems to be a rock-solid connection, and it seems to extend to everything.
What sees this, is this. And this is you—as far as you know.
DMT: That knowledge [other life forms, God, eternal life] is not going to save me here and now.
First off, I’d say “knowing” doesn’t ever help or solve anything. Maybe that’s what you’re saying here. Thoughts, beliefs, cognitions are images and narratives. There remains the very living in experience, and that is being. Whatever it is that you think you know, being remains what it is experientially. As Buckaroo Banzai said, “No matter where you go, there you are.” Knowledge about anything doesn’t affect one’s being.
Secondly, . . . what do you mean by “save?”
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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If my proposal that the universe has no boundary is correct he had no freedom at all to choose how the universe began. He would only have had the freedom to choose the laws the universe obeyed. This, however, may not have been all that much of a choice. There may well be only one unified theory that allows for the existence of structures as complicated as human beings who can investigate the laws of the universe and ask about the nature of God.
A scientist doing philosophy of science badly.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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DMT: What, indeed?
You're avoiding the question.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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A scientist doing philosophy of science badly.
To me it read as speculation. Is that the connection to philosophy?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Entertaining dialogue between Hawking and Penrose, but I seriously doubt it was meant as "philosophy". More like a campfire chat between scientific giants, after a few beers. Thanks for posting it.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 9, 2018 - 10:50am PT
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Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence?
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Here you can see how Hawking was enmeshed with trying to explain/understand reality by way of physical causation, and how that search always harks back to first causes, which have no cause and no explanation.
Probably because (in my experience) they ain't there. No cosomological theory out there has reality being "brought about" from nothing at all. There is always some potentiality, some "unstable" X or Y which "allows" or makes possible the emergence of the whole shebang. But we can't talk about that much because there was no "before," since time began with the big bang. Strange, that, since we can talk all about math without a time vector.
Food for thought (from Popular Science):
Our illusion of the past arises because each Now in Platonia contains objects that appear as "records" in Barbour's language. "The only evidence you have of last week is your memory. But memory comes from a stable structure of neurons in your brain now. The only evidence we have of the Earth's past is rocks and fossils. But these are just stable structures in the form of an arrangement of minerals we examine in the present. The point is, all we have are these records and you only have them in this Now." Barbour's theory explains the existence of these records through relationships between the Nows in Platonia. Some Nows are linked to others in Platonia's landscape even though they all exist simultaneously. Those links give the appearance of records lining up in sequence from past to future. In spite of that appearance, the actual flow of time from one Now to another is nowhere to be found.
"Think of the integers," he explains. "Every integer exists simultaneously. But some of the integers are linked in structures, like the set of all primes or the numbers you get from the Fibonacci series." The number 3 does not occur in the past of the number 5, just as the Now of the cat jumping off the table does not occur in the past of the Now wherein the cat lands on the floor.
"What went bang?" become the million dollar question, then all the double talk about people not understanding the ...
This, BTW, is pretty stock Whitehead.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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There may well be only one unified theory....
This is the most problematical line. And physicists in general do believe something like this, which leads them to believe that they are seeking THE truth or that it's possible to discover THE laws governing reality.
In point of fact, an infinite number of mutually-inconsistent theories is consistent with any set of observations. Science is ever-progressing... just not toward anything.
Gotta run to the airport, and I'll be gone for a few days.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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The notion of "timeless physics" is certainly intriguing. Thanks for posting the Barbour piece.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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This is the most problematical line. And physicists in general do believe something like this, which leads them to believe that they are seeking THE truth or that it's possible to discover THE laws governing reality.
Well, they may be seeking the truth and laws underlying physical reality. Physicists in general have quite differing beliefs. They have found ways around that for the purposes of doing physics.
And a tip of the hat to DMT, for on-the-level engagement with MikeL.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 9, 2018 - 01:47pm PT
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Well, they may be seeking the truth and laws underlying physical reality.
My uneducated sense of what physics is DOING has to do with the physical nature, duration/continuity and linear (time bound) causal links of physical reality, to the exactness required to make predictions. Problem is when "reality" in it's entirely is viewed as a causal chain with a BEGINNING, before which you have no thing and no phenomenon, you have no thing or phenomenon to set it in motion.
This gets explained away, but to nobody's satisfaction. The strange part to me is that a lot of otherwise intelligent people still cling to the folk belief in "creation," and that somehow, future experiments and data will provide viability for causeless causality.
Dingus mentioned that immortality is apparently a kind of fixation in people's minds. I put creation right alongside it.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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DMT: I'm allowing you the uncertainty you crave. You may assign whatever meaning you choose to my characterization of 'save.' But personally, I think you know exactly what I mean.
Good lord. I don’t crave uncertainty. What I’ve written over and over is that I tolerate ambiguity, and I see ambiguity everywhere. (Uncertainty, by comparison, is trivial.)
I didn’t know what you mean by “save.” If you allow *any meaning,* then I’ll choose the one I hear around here most often: “save” = physical survival. (So, I still don’t understand what you meant by the sentence, but it's no matter I guess.)
MB1: . . . an infinite number of mutually-inconsistent theories is consistent with any set of observations.
Yes.
Largo: Dingus mentioned that immortality is apparently a kind of fixation in people's minds.
I just don’t see this in my life from the people I come in contact with around me. One might characterize folks that way who give no thought whatsoever to their inevitable demise, but I do not see anyone who is consciously fixated in any way on immortality. The statement seems to me to be a pure speculative intellectualism.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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The LAST thing that I would want is immortality. It would be even worse than celebrity.
120, maybe 125 tops. I mean Donini would probably still be climbing 5.10+.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 9, 2018 - 04:17pm PT
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I think immortality, as hinted at by Dingus, is most evidently seen in the strong AI camp who envision that their "selves" digitized and downloaded in a hard drive, a version of the old brain in a vat scenario. Never appealed to me, nor the folks I'm around.
The business of "meaning" as generally used here and elsewhere also comes from a time-based, causal mindset, whereby true meaning would have to be held and conferred to us by something external to ourselves.
This is a tricky one because perhaps few understand that living in a meaningless world in not a negative thing, which is a meaning. "Meaningless" is neutral to whatever arises.
People want an overarching meaning, a universal meaning, a fundamental meaning that transcends us. Religious folks say it is there to find if you seek it. Others want causal proof of same. Not the same wavelengths.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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"Meaning" is such a loaded term as to be almost meaningless. Ever the reductionist, I see you and mb1 on the same team in this sense -- you both cannot wrap your heads around a system that is self-described. You can't see how it works without injection (of meaning) from outside of the system. This is a failure of imagination, from my point of view. I can see how things like rules, consequences, and meaning can evolve in a mutually-dependent environment through time. This is what is called the World Stage. You (both of you's), apparently, can't (and neither could Kant).
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 9, 2018 - 05:30pm PT
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Ever the reductionist, I see you and mb1 on the same team in this sense -- you both cannot wrap your heads around a system that is self-described.
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You're drinking the bong water again, Eeyonkee. Reductionism is what we do with causal/temporal concerns, even though it dead-ends at first or imagined first causes once you reduce (reverse engineer) far enough.
If by "self-described" you are accidentally referring to systems theory, tell us more about what you mean. Self-originating is surely not what you mean. And so far as any system "explaining" itself, that, IMO, is another howler.
But perhaps I misunderstand.
And what, specifically, do you believe that Kant didn't grasp? Remember, the "world stage" has a boundary.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Yes, of course, you misunderstand.
You and mb1 and Kant have a relative contempt for history. You are 180 degrees turned around. Instead, history leads, inexorably to principles. The principles are intra-system. No need of injection from outside of the system.
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WBraun
climber
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The LAST thing that I would want is immortality.
You have zero choice since you're already immortal.
All you'll do is lose your material body and get another one according to the consciousness you develop in this lifetime.
The gross materialists will all suffer repeated birth and death until they self realize.
No amount of material science will ever save you from this .......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Reductionism is what we do with causal/temporal concerns, even though it dead-ends at first or imagined first causes once you reduce (reverse engineer) far enough.
Too simplistic. Also, reduction and reverse engineering are different.
There are various definitions of reductionism. I like: looking for the simplest shortest description of a complex system which still produces the behaviors of the system you are mainly interested in. In this sense, reductionism is an attempt to find the essential elements of a system.
You don't need to specify the workings of a clock atom-by-atom in order to describe, explain, understand, and build one.
Nor do you need to go back to first causes.
Unless you are God. And as my thesis advisor occasionally told me, "You aren't God." He did that to get me to stop worrying and obsessing about things outside my boundaries, and to point out that there were things I would probably never know.
edit for yanqui:
I am talking about clocks built before 1952.
Further evidence for Ed about the discussion harking back to the 19th century.
edit for other old stuff:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=972999&tn=818
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=972999&tn=881
The Sonny Rollins link needed bringing up-to-date from the 2009 version.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 9, 2018 - 07:28pm PT
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Too simplistic. Also, reduction and reverse engineering are different.
There are various definitions of reductionism. I like: looking for the simplest shortest description of a complex system which still produces the behaviors of the system you are mainly interested in. In this sense, reductionism is an attempt to find the essential elements of a system.
You don't need to specify the workings of a clock atom-by-atom in order to describe, explain, understand, and build one.
Nor do you need to go back to first causes.
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In a common sense way, you're right. That is, in a closed temporal way. For example, I don't need to go back to the big bang to "explain" how a three point anchor needs to be rigged. However, when we borne into why or because, the game changes.
What's more, even over the short haul, if we wanna know how something works, we start digitizing the parts, breaking things down to smaller and more fundamental elements, and seeing how A effects B, and so forth, so in this sense, we are reverse engineering insofar as we are running back the clock, and the causal chain, to see the causal connections, then running it forward to make our predictions. There is no analysis sans a time vector, with only looking at the static elements outside of a dynamic process.
When we take a wider view, we find there are no explanations, only descriptions of what is and what this and that does. From that we derive our laws, which in terms describe without influence or reason.
It's a provisional game we're playing with knowing anything.
And Eyonkee, where did you get the idea that we were suggesting "injection from outside of the system?" Is gravity outside the system? What you are talking about is a provisional orgainization, which can run the gamut from a clock to a tractor to a play. Of course, like baseball, this form can evolve it's own rules and meanings and so forth, but the idea that the game was itself self-organizing and drew nothing from outside it's own boundaries is pure fiction because there is not such thing or system that is inherently stand alone, with its own independent, self sustaining nature. It's all flux. It all comes and goes, blending seamlessly back in and emerging in another form. Only within a given time frame do things make sense. For the moment, may be even 10,000 years we can say this or that. A million years in the future - not so much.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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when we borne into why or because, the game changes.
There is your mistake.
When you take a wider view your vision may not be up to the task.
Keep a focus on the smaller view, too, like how to construct a safe anchor in good time with gear at hand, and how words get misspelled.
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