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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 13, 2019 - 04:00pm PT
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I just took a closer look at the Meyerstein article Largo linked, the one about the nature of time. Although the mathematics he cites (he is a philosopher) is interesting, his conclusion that everything that has been, is, and will be, "exists", because of an existing codification scheme corresponding to it, is a stretch. One gets into "potentialities" vs realities. Topics Paul R. has discussed before.
The suggestion that each thing in the real world can be said to correspond to a particular infinite "number" is debatable, and I doubt many mathematicians would concur. But, who knows?
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 13, 2019 - 04:26pm PT
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“Probability of a single protein forming by chance”
Has never happened nor will it ever happen.
Only clueless and brainwashed fools believe such mental speculative horsesh!t.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 13, 2019 - 04:40pm PT
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Stuart Kauffman -- "Since humans invented God, he says, we can reinvent "God as the natural creativity of the universe."
What a clueless nutcase masquerading himself as imitator wannabee god, he's no better than a dog.
Humans have never invented God as God has always been there before st00pid humans came.
God cannot be invented.
Stuart Kauffman invented this horesh!t in his brainwashed run away out of control mind .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Mar 13, 2019 - 06:05pm PT
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eeyonkee, you think people (of the future; in a majority)*** could ever adjust to being automata (aka biologic machines)? Just look at WB here.
Personally, I'm always going back n forth on it. It's like M,W,F I think yes (after all, look how far we've come already since, say, the 16th century); but T,Th,S I think, no way, it's asking too much, it's not in our nature.
It's not just ST here either that's serving to shape my ambivalence.
*** I mean, in any kind of meaningful majority.
But don't get me wrong. I think Sapiens could adjust / adapt given enough time. But on those odd days, I'm struck by the feeling that we're running out of it.
The notion of just one radio-level civilization per galaxy is not reassuring.
...
It's a strange mix to have interests for mind and consciousness, nature and science, culture / civilization (which requires paying attention to sociopolitics, uggh), tbd ( how humans ought to live) and what it all means.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 13, 2019 - 06:29pm PT
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The Universe isn't here to reassure you.
Though I believe WB has already corrected me on that point.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Mar 13, 2019 - 06:37pm PT
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You're twisting my thought. I didn't say the universe, I said the notion of one radio-level civilization per galaxy.*** That's different.
***Which is a Brian Cox conjecture.
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People always ask me “Don’t we have an inherent human drive to see our species furthered? To take tender care of our young? To see the generations growing up?” They overestimate how much psychological sophistication is actually involved. -Diana Fleischman, evo psych
#evopsych
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 13, 2019 - 07:15pm PT
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Zay: Genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger, the soul shapes our perception.
What a great line.
MH2: The Universe isn't here to reassure you.
Well, it might be. According to some ancient religious views, the universe is what you are. Instead of you being something like a little pencil point on a really big piece of paper (reperesenting the universe), the universe is the pencil point in consciousness (yours, as it were). All this in front of you that you are aware of is simply mind (which is why it's challenging to say what mind "is.") Your consciousness (as content, as "things" existing and things "going on") encompasses everything that is perceivable. Without consciousness, there would be no perception, nothing to be perceived, and of course no perceiver. These are ways of speaking or talking.
Shiva sits in absolute tranquility, not moving, never moving, pure being, pure potentiality. It is Shakti (the personification of an emanation) that arises as untold energies and dynamisms. Energies, in turn, emanate into more and more concrete and material formulations. Jewish mystical tradition talks about the Hermetic Qabalah or Kabbalah, which could be metaphorically indexed to contemporary ideas in physics like dark matter, string theory, spooky action, big bang emanations, etc. From a notion of Godhead that cannot be conceptualized to the most mundane physical and material "matter," one can say through models like the Qaballah, what one is, is all what is everywhere. We may have it completely backwards when we say that consciousness resides in the universe. When you see yourself as consciousness, then the universe may well be here to reassure you of the recognition of what you are.
It may be no oddity to hear people regularly refer to things externally as being "in mind" or to refer to their sensations (I see, I hear, I tasted, etc.)--rather than to say that there are things "out there." Young people, for example, use the word "like" when attempting to describe things or their own experiences. "It's not this or that; but it's 'like' X." They can't actually say what things are.
The more people pay attention to their perceptions, the more they seem to recognize a tenuousness, a randomness, an indescribabilty of experience, an almost absolute probability (statistical nature) of events and things.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 13, 2019 - 07:44pm PT
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We may have it completely backwards when we say that consciousness resides in the universe.
--
The seeming impossibility of trying to define or "explain" mind is discrete terms should give us a hint that our ideas, if not bassackwards, are unlikely to ever let us bottle mind as we do with snowshoes, rabbits and white stars. The default position - that there were "things and phenomenon" that we once attributed to "God," but which eventually were seen as mechanical output of physical properties - is applicable only to the physical realm where this has always happened. Science as we now understand it has never been asked to "explain" in a linear/causal manner anything remotely "like" mind. Identity theory (mind itself is somehow physical, or in some way amounts to the same "thing") is incomprehensible. Appeals to God are only kicking the causal can from measurable stuff to the Big Dude.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 13, 2019 - 07:59pm PT
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According to some ancient religious views, the universe is what you are.
How much did these ancient religious views have to say about stars and galaxies?
It is both the strength and the curse of traditions that they hinder changing your mind when new evidence comes along.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 14, 2019 - 07:55am PT
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MH2: How much did these ancient religious views have to say about stars and galaxies?
Good question. I don't remember ever reading about stars and galaxies in the scriptures.
It is both the strength and the curse of traditions that they hinder changing your mind when new evidence comes along.
Perhaps. It might also be the case that there is little mind to change when beliefs have been minimized and thus seen lightly and evanescently. As one has beliefs that are seen as important and worth fighting over, one has married tradition and spawns progeny. Not to you alone, but I suggest taking any belief and putting it under the most intense light imaginable. See what's left.
BTW, in your practical and everyday life, how much would you say that stars and galaxies are an important part of it? I could imagine that if you were an astronomer, it might be quite a bit, but maybe those are simply concepts justified by beliefs. I would question that anyone here has any real experience of either of them. I mean, aren't they supposed to be really big and very hot?
Be well.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 14, 2019 - 07:58am PT
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The seeming impossibility of trying to define or "explain" mind is discrete terms should give us a hint that our ideas, if not bassackwards, are unlikely to ever let us bottle mind as we do with snowshoes, rabbits and white stars.
There is no need to define or explain "mind." You can see it for yourself at 9:20 of the CBC documentary On the Record of Glenn Gould recording in NYC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0MZrnuSGGg
"Mind" is the brain conducting itself. The brain has many groups of neurons which perform specialized roles using skills they have inherited or acquired through experience. Not unlike the musicians in an orchestra. Some part of the brain stands up above the orchestra seeing and hearing as much as it can and trying to coordinate and harmonize the whole. When the percussion needs to come to the fore and the strings should sit back, the mind directs them. Otherwise they carry on doing what they know without worrying about where it's all going.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 14, 2019 - 08:09am PT
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"Mind" is the brain conducting itself.
No ... the living individual self is manipulating matter thru the instruments of mind and brain.
The mind and brain are only the instruments of the machine of the person itself to control the body and be able to manipulate dead matter.
The person itself still has to be there within the material body as the operator first and is what gives matter intelligence and life.
You can have mind, brain, arms, legs, etc. but without the person there to begin with the whole package ends up in the morgue.
The gross materialists always miss the whole since they only focus on the parts ......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 14, 2019 - 08:18am PT
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Mike,
In my practical everyday life stars and galaxies matter little.
However, we now live outside the city and I have been re-learning the night sky. In my imagination, stars and galaxies are magnificent sources of curiosity and wonder. This includes both astronomy and science fiction. When we lived in South Africa I was able to see at least one of the Magellanic Clouds with binoculars.
I once picked up the factoid that the star Deneb was the most distant visible to the naked eye, and assigned it the mnemonic 'distant Deneb.' Now I find I am wrong. The most distant visible star is said to be Eta Carinae at 4,000 light-years. My memory puts Deneb at 800 light years but the current Wikipedia entry for it says that its distance is uncertain. For comparison, our galaxy is 150,000 to 200,000 light years in diameter.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 14, 2019 - 09:23am PT
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^^^a more banal but truly amazing realization is that you can see all the way to the "edge of the universe"
the universe, in between the galaxies, is so devoid of stuff that photons travel all that way without being scattered ending up at your eye...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 14, 2019 - 09:35am PT
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There is no need to define or explain "mind."
Then: "Mind" is the brain conducting itself.
You just "explained" mind, though incomprehensibly, as happens when you try and ground mind in matter, whereby mind "is what the brain is doing." Then people tie their minds in knots trying to sort through an obvious whopper. As Chalmers and others have pointed out, when you really bore into what is being said, "conducting itself" will always be carried out by way of magic or woo, as described.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Mar 14, 2019 - 11:16am PT
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"to make matters even creepier, the genes don't care about us." -Julia Galef
https://youtu.be/BRydJ7EvyDw?t=1103
"This is the bitter pill that science has offered us in response to our questions about what the meaning of it all is and where we all came from."
"If you don't want to be the captive of your genes, then you had better be rational."
-Keith Stanovich
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 14, 2019 - 04:17pm PT
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4Arctan(1) Day!
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 14, 2019 - 05:01pm PT
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Genes are back on top in my book after being swayed by Kauffman for a couple of days. I'm still early in the book (although I have been skimming ahead), but I realize something that seems to have been missed in the underlying assumptions. It's the fact that, once you have a system in place, there are various levels of control, and a slight change (via mutation) of any component (protein) in the system should not be expected to have the same punch as any other. A mutational change in some component that is high up the chain of command (a manager of some type) is going to have a potentially much bigger effect in fitness space than something lower in the hierarchy. Control hierarchy is a well-known software issue.
Here's my current way of looking at the big picture. Relatively early on in the history of life, Mother Nature discovered software patterns. The list below are some formal design patterns recognized in object-oriented software development that seem particularly relevant to genes and evolution. There are obvious examples of every one of these in the biological world.
* Template (copy negative)
* Iterator (iterate over)
* Factory (build)
* Composite (build from parts)
* Proxy (access control)
* Command (encapsulate do)
* Adapter (new responsibilities)
If you don't account for these in fitness space, you are not seeing the big picture. For instance, one amino acid change to a command component could result in an iterator module to suddenly make 10 more of something.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 14, 2019 - 05:35pm PT
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If you don't account for these in fitness space, you are not seeing the big picture.
You can't see any big picture period.
Everything you are looking at is dead matter .....
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