There are no brains in the inner model. "Brain" is a concept of the outer model of our experience. Within the inner model, there are states that correspond to what we'd call brains in the outer model. That's it.


Again, "voltages" are a concept of the outer model. Within the inner model, there are states that correspond to what we call electrical voltages in the outer model.

All of these states are the same "stuff", just in different configurations and accepting different types of transformations. The laws of physics determines the types of configurations and transformations that are possible.


Within the inner model, there is no distinction between internal and external. There are just states. Some of these states have enough degrees of freedom to become what we call in the outer model "stars". Some of these states have enough degrees of freedom to have what we call in the outer model "the property of life". In the outer model, we recognize these "life" states as self-replicating transformations. The states within states capability of the universe allows these "life" states to become more complex, which we describe not just as self-replicating, but self-organizing. This "self-organization" is nothing more than the dependency of higher-level states on the lower level states. To use an analogy from the outer model, the high-level organization of a wallpaper pattern is nothing more than a repeated dependency on a low-level structure.

Of course, the million dollar question is How does this lead to consciousness? If I knew the precise mechanism, I'd be busy working on a publication. But I do know that complexity leads to all kinds of unexpected emergent phenomena. And I can recognize that the apparent degrees of consciousness strongly correlate with the degrees of cortical complexity in biological life. So, it's not a hard leap of faith I'm making here.

Ok, inner-model/outer-model stuff I'm fully on-board with above (we talked about that once before, but that's a good further delineation you're making). I say we color-code the inner-model stuff as some color in order to keep it discrete.

In the inner-model we have states, but I have a little issue with this word "states." When I hear it, I think "status" 98% of the time, vs. like "nation state." What is the "state" of your job? "State" of the union address? The "state" of your marriage?"

In short, the term "state" denotes condition to me. Condition of what? Stuff. So I say stuff is more elemental than state semantically. Unfortunately "Stuff" feels about as formal as two teen girls talking about the condition of their closet ("OMG BECKY YOU SHOULD GET THAT STUFF OUT OF YOUR CLOSET HAHA LOL SMH.")

I would say "thing" is better than stuff, but it's got some issues too. At least it is dimensionally agnostic. A logic state is as much a thing as is a dog.

In any case, "things" can be brought together to create other things which act in predictable or unpredictable ways.

Yes?

 

Just a note to try make clear the distinction between information and meaning. In 3rd grade science class we learned about the Greek alphabet. My best friend at the time, Peter, used this newfound knowledge to write \( \mathrm{A} \Sigma \Sigma \) on a piece of paper that he later handed to me. When I responded with a quizzical look, he encouraged me to say the letters out loud and think of the word it spells. By now I had gotten the joke, but it occurred to me that a Greek person would not get it. The Greek letters spelled an English word. Even though the symbols were part of the Greek alphabet, even though the string is formally a valid string of the Greek language, it has no more meaning to a Greek person than the valid English string "hrgevt" has to us. There is another level of abstraction at work when we ascribe meaning to words.

A string of symbols holds information by virtue of its configuration, independent of any meaning, Consider an 8-bit string. It can convey 8 bits of information, as there are 256 possible states (configurations) of the string. We can think of the 256 possible states as the space of the string, and any particular configuration as a point in that space. (Incidentally, this space is a vector space, and with a suitable inner product, we can induce a finite geometry on it in which the length between strings is the Hamming distance between them.)

Consider the string "01000001". By itself, without any context, such a string has no meaning. We can't even say that it conveys 8 bits of information unless we contextualize it as an 8-bit string, or as a point in a 256-dimensional vector space. Once so contextualized -- i.e., once it has a framework of reference -- then the string conveys precisely 8 bits of information.

What about the string's meaning? That's several levels up. First, we may decide to treat the string as an 8-bit integer, or as an ASCII character, or as elevator instructions for stopping on floors. Whatever this framework is, we still haven't given the string any meaning. To do that, we need to associate the various things we know about integers, natural languages, or elevator design with the string. For example, under the interpretation that the string is an ASCII character ("A", in fact), we still need to associate the string to what the symbol "A" itself means. To do that we need to know about alphabets and forming words, which encompasses a tremendous amount of knowledge, far more than can be conveyed by 8 bits of information.

This is how symbols work. We use a small amount of information (the symbol itself) to convey a much larger amount of information by associating the symbol with a meaning. But if we zoom in on any one meaning itself, we find that its meaning comes from its connections to other meanings. Like the definitions in a dictionary, it's all ultimately circular and self-referencing. States of states.

Information is the low-level stuff that allows information processors to form meaning by organizing the information.

 

Because spatiality is the key to the "feeling-grokker" property of living consciousness in my estimation, and is wholly independent, stand-alone from non-dimensionoal information, that's why... There is a difference between a "logic state" and a gazelle, a number, light rays, and an iPhone.

So what happens if we claim that information is 3D?

 

Considering "being" is so "up in the air here" and we have no idea how to apply it to a "computer" at present, I say we nix the use of it along with REALITY/REAL for now and use "conceptual" vs. "physical" to distinguish these things.

It's all physical to me. Maybe you could try to explain how a non-physical "thing" can interact/interface with a physical thing.

 

It's all physical to me. Maybe you could try to explain how a non-physical "thing" can interact/interface with a physical thing.

You refer to concepts as not directly physical, correct? There are no numbers in a machine, but there are in you. So where are the numbers *precisely* in relation to the physical system interpreting the "concept?"

 

So what happens if we claim that information is 3D?

Well, I think it ultimately is actually. The "dog" in the light is true 3D, and that's why light gives us 1D bits about it and we are programmed to "assemble" the imagery of those bits as reflective of its true nature, otherwise we wouldn't be bothering to have a discussion about the difference. The difference exists or it wouldn't be semantic legal tender for discussion. There is a direct connection between the programming, the dog, and light itself, and the words to describe it to "make such a thing happen."

 

Darwinian/evolutionary axiomatic basis may look like:

"Life is a physical, mechanical, emergent, naturalistic machine that arose by chance mutations over billions of years."

Prior to this axiomatic basis in mainstream thought, a metaphysical explanation was considered axiomatically obvious.

A Newtonian/Leibniz/Pythag/Tesla/Einstein, etc. axiom might be:

"Life is a stand-alone, infinite, spatial, extra-dimensional substance independent of material mechanical function and physical complexity, and was placed within a material programmatic frame as its interface to the physical world."

Those are not axioms, they are hypotheses. And the former has far more experimental evidence than the latter!

Science is not about axioms, nor is it about what "feels" right. Science is about empirically testing a hypothesis as rigorously as possible. There is zero rigor in claiming that life is an extra-dimensional infinite substance. It's not even falsifiable. I have as much weight behind the claim "Life is the mucus of a green unicorn that exists in the ninth dimension."

All "evidence" seen in the fossil record is also implicitly speaking to evidence of a physics engine and origin at the same time, because these things are not divorceable ultimately. This is why "the evidence" suggests "no metaphysics" to most. But this is not proper thinking!

What exactly is improper about it? I get the sense that you want to avoid any path that could lead to a "nothing ultimately matters" conclusion.

But MOST people default to an axiomatic difference between their computer and another human being, and it's not just a function of "mechanics" and "complexity." Humans FEEL, LOVE and MEAN. Machines do not.

I get it, computers aren't humans. But neither are snails and something connects them ("LIFE!", I hear you shout). And to me, the miracle of life is DNA, and DNA is a program that makes proteins. And so we do have a connection with computers. I'm willing to explore how deep that connection runs.

You say that macro evolution is bunk, but then why do we have 100 million year old viruses in our DNA? Why do we share genetic code with plants and insects? Evolution by natural selection can explain that.

The very fact that we as physical beings have a grokkable definition for "METAPHYSICS" and that life as a metaphysical thing seemed axiomatically OBVIOUS to the highest of genius minds is entirely evidence that it exists on some level.

C'mon, that's such BS logic. Humans invent stories to explain things they don't understand. At one point in time, most humans believed that night happened because a chariot dragged the sun across the sky. The highest genius of minds!

 

Ok, inner-model/outer-model stuff I'm fully on-board with above (we talked about that once before, but that's a good further delineation you're making). I say we color-code the inner-model stuff as some color in order to keep it discrete.

In the inner-model we have states, but I have a little issue with this word "states." When I hear it, I think "status" 98% of the time, vs. like "nation state." What is the "state" of your job? "State" of the union address? The "state" of your marriage?"

In short, the term "state" denotes condition to me. Condition of what? Stuff. So I say stuff is more elemental than state semantically. Unfortunately "Stuff" feels about as formal as two teen girls talking about the condition of their closet ("OMG BECKY YOU SHOULD GET THAT STUFF OUT OF YOUR CLOSET HAHA LOL SMH.")

I would say "thing" is better than stuff, but it's got some issues too. At least it is dimensionally agnostic. A logic state is as much a thing as is a dog.

In any case, "things" can be brought together to create other things which act in predictable or unpredictable ways.

Yes?

I can dig your connotative angst with "state". I suppose I'm just used to thinking in terms of state machines and state spaces, so the word "state" automatically implies "configuration" without needlessly specifying what exactly is being configured.

My problem with "thing" as a replacement is that "thing" implies a discrete object, whereas "state" has no such implication. I'd definitely like to leave it open whether the fundamental stuff is discrete, continuous, or neither. We could say "configurations of stuff" to give "stuff" a bit more formality than a teen's closet, but that's too much typing (smh).

I dunno. I'm open to suggestions, though.

 

You refer to concepts as not directly physical, correct? There are no numbers in a machine, but there are in you. So where are the numbers *precisely* in relation to the physical system interpreting the "concept?"

No, I distinguish between levels of abstraction, and I distinguish between the referents of these abstractions. The abstraction of numbers is certainly a physical phenomenon -- i.e. occurring within the inner model -- but in the outer model we describe it as an internal abstraction.

In outer model terms,. there are no numbers in me or the machine. Unlike apples, numbers are not physical things. We can't point to numbers or put them in our pockets.

 

Well, I think it ultimately is actually. The "dog" in the light is true 3D, and that's why light gives us 1D bits about it and we are programmed to "assemble" the imagery of those bits as reflective of its true nature, otherwise we wouldn't be bothering to have a discussion about the difference. The difference exists or it wouldn't be semantic legal tender for discussion. There is a direct connection between the programming, the dog, and light itself, and the words to describe it to "make such a thing happen."

I'm willing to call information 3D, the dog in the light 3D, and anything else you want, if it will end the Dimensions War (good sci-fi title).

 

Those are not axioms, they are hypotheses. And the former has far more experimental evidence than the latter!

They are treated as axioms in academia per Oxford's 1st definition: "a self-evident truth that requires no proof."
All its "observations" are considered "evidence" to validate that core starting truth.

"God" or "metaphysics" (short-hand for "generic otherworldiness which is not knowable directly, and as equal as saying "unicorn" or "flying macchiato" since "God" is a catch-all phrase for any-spatial-character) is a built-in, congenital notion to the human race, or it wouldn't make ANY discussable sense whatsoever to even broach the topic, let alone make it a principal portion of the lives for those of immense intellect, including the very forefathers of science. The question is a legitimate question within each's being that one must answer in some way: either "Yes, "No," or "Indifferent." That in and of itself is evidence beyond anything else of legitimacy to the question in a supposed closed-system mechanical entity.

One could even posit that people's informational and emotional innate desire for "higher meaning" or to connect to a metaphysical origin point in any adverse condition ("near death") is just as evidentiary of the potentiality, as is the question "what happens after death" or the felt experiences of "love" or "meaning" or any other such "human" things.

Science is not about axioms, nor is it about what "feels" right. Science is about empirically testing a hypothesis as rigorously as possible. There is zero rigor in claiming that life is an extra-dimensional infinite substance. It's not even falsifiable. I have as much weight behind the claim "Life is the mucus of a green unicorn that exists in the ninth dimension."

There is ZERO rigor in large scale "speciation" claims whatsoever. There is ZERO observational connection between the innumerable species. Perhaps "small scale mutation." "Intra-specious mutation with natural selection" vs. global information genomic augmentation and speciation to connect the OS (yes, the OS!) of a moth to a jaguar to a spider to a human is the difference between calling a 5th grader doing basic arithmetic a mathematician, vs. a real one.

Fossil records are no different than the fossil records we will see in a few hundred years that show "primitive computers" "evolving" to large scale ones. We built them, there was no direct connection between any of them other than their makers.

Do you realize if there IS a metaphysical source, and each life was programmed specifically no different in approach than a human programming a TV, a watch, or a laptop that the entire concept that is being called "evolutionary science" is 100% bunk no matter "how much evidence it seemed like?"

What exactly is improper about it? I get the sense that you want to avoid any path that could lead to a "nothing ultimately matters" conclusion.

Positively not. Nothing "matters" even if there is a God. Existence is about experience in the end. Experience, pleasure and love is what matters.

I get it, computers aren't humans. But neither are snails and something connects them ("LIFE!", I hear you shout). And to me, the miracle of life is DNA, and DNA is a program that makes proteins. And so we do have a connection with computers. I'm willing to explore how deep that connection runs.

So the miracle of DNA that is in the guy in the casket isn't quite as miraculous is it? No, because no "life" is there to give it miracle.

You say that macro evolution is bunk, but then why do we have 100 million year old viruses in our DNA? Why do we share genetic code with plants and insects? Evolution by natural selection can explain that.

Why does any organization of programmatic order, like Mac OS, share tons of code with another order like UNIX? Same programmers.

C'mon, that's such BS logic. Humans invent stories to explain things they don't understand. At one point in time, most humans believed that night happened because a chariot dragged the sun across the sky. The highest genius of minds!

I see your "BS accusation" and raise you a "100% entirely naturalistically biased handwave HS logic!" (horse vs. bull) ;--)

I'm talking about ones of the last 200-300 years after Newton in the modern scientific era, even post Darwin. Darwin himself believed in God even after inventing his theory, considering himself a Theist and believed in God as a first cause. What does that say?

Look Newton in the eye and tell him that, or again, all the dozens of names of the greatest scientific giants that ALL took it as GIVEN that there was a non-naturalistic metaphysicality and origin point. They did NOT "invent" it. They took their innate experiential supposition as part of the package built in, including the "axiomatic theorems!"

Maxwell, Marconi, Keppler, Planck, Pasteur, Faraday, Descartes, Schrodinger, Bacon, Copernicus, Heisenberg(!), Kelvin... the list goes on and on.

These men are all just "storytellers," eh???? "C'mon, you can do better than that.™" :--)

 

No, I distinguish between levels of abstraction, and I distinguish between the referents of these abstractions. The abstraction of numbers is certainly a physical phenomenon -- i.e. occurring within the inner model -- but in the outer model we describe it as an internal abstraction.

In outer model terms,. there are no numbers in me or the machine. Unlike apples, numbers are not physical things. We can't point to numbers or put them in our pockets.

If you are a machine, with presumably physical stuff + voltage states, and you insist there are no numbers even in Siri, yet she will "refer" to them and "compute with them," why are there no "numbers" in her/it vs. you?

 

I'm willing to call information 3D, the dog in the light 3D, and anything else you want, if it will end the Dimensions War (good sci-fi title).

Nah, can't do it yet, we need to build those dimensions. :--)

 

Just a note to try make clear the distinction between information and meaning. In 3rd grade science class we learned about the Greek alphabet. My best friend at the time, Peter, used this newfound knowledge to write \( \mathrm{A} \Sigma \Sigma \) on a piece of paper that he later handed to me. When I responded with a quizzical look, he encouraged me to say the letters out loud and think of the word it spells. By now I had gotten the joke, but it occurred to me that a Greek person would not get it. The Greek letters spelled an English word. Even though the symbols were part of the Greek alphabet, even though the string is formally a valid string of the Greek language, it has no more meaning to a Greek person than the valid English string "hrgevt" has to us. There is another level of abstraction at work when we ascribe meaning to words.

A string of symbols holds information by virtue of its configuration, independent of any meaning, Consider an 8-bit string. It can convey 8 bits of information, as there are 256 possible states (configurations) of the string. We can think of the 256 possible states as the space of the string, and any particular configuration as a point in that space. (Incidentally, this space is a vector space, and with a suitable inner product, we can induce a finite geometry on it in which the length between strings is the Hamming distance between them.)

Consider the string "01000001". By itself, without any context, such a string has no meaning. We can't even say that it conveys 8 bits of information unless we contextualize it as an 8-bit string, or as a point in a 256-dimensional vector space. Once so contextualized -- i.e., once it has a framework of reference -- then the string conveys precisely 8 bits of information.

What about the string's meaning? That's several levels up. First, we may decide to treat the string as an 8-bit integer, or as an ASCII character, or as elevator instructions for stopping on floors. Whatever this framework is, we still haven't given the string any meaning. To do that, we need to associate the various things we know about integers, natural languages, or elevator design with the string. For example, under the interpretation that the string is an ASCII character ("A", in fact), we still need to associate the string to what the symbol "A" itself means. To do that we need to know about alphabets and forming words, which encompasses a tremendous amount of knowledge, far more than can be conveyed by 8 bits of information.

This is how symbols work. We use a small amount of information (the symbol itself) to convey a much larger amount of information by associating the symbol with a meaning. But if we zoom in on any one meaning itself, we find that its meaning comes from its connections to other meanings. Like the definitions in a dictionary, it's all ultimately circular and self-referencing. States of states.

Information is the low-level stuff that allows information processors to form meaning by organizing the information.

This is great. And totally what I'm about to pitch to you about the inner-model's next step!

I just have one nitpick: "Information is the low-level stuff that allows information processors to form meaning by organizing the information."

We didn't invent axioms. We discovered them, and attributed symbols to them to uncover them. They are absolute and irrespective to us. This speaks to the true nature of information being "self-organized" to begin with.

It's all information, but meaning is "specific organizations of information" that yield more meaning, and meaning is the experiential element that says one meaning is different from another. I would call this "ORDER". My little "Grokk" story (that you incidentally... entirely... ignored?, lol) was about that because it completely touched on this element.

"hrgevt" is not order until it is contextualized. Context is the basis of reason. "hrgevt" might be someone's password, in that they manufactured a new word based in stringing those meaningful symbols together. It now has meaning with respect to something in physical space and is a personal vs. universal meaning. Meaning is all about information within us and its experiential relationship to physical space primarily. If you took all sensation away from knowledge, no desire to know, no satisfaction from knowing, who would bother knowing?

 

I can dig your connotative angst with "state". I suppose I'm just used to thinking in terms of state machines and state spaces, so the word "state" automatically implies "configuration" without needlessly specifying what exactly is being configured.

My problem with "thing" as a replacement is that "thing" implies a discrete object, whereas "state" has no such implication. I'd definitely like to leave it open whether the fundamental stuff is discrete, continuous, or neither. We could say "configurations of stuff" to give "stuff" a bit more formality than a teen's closet, but that's too much typing (smh).

I dunno. I'm open to suggestions, though.

Where there is no sufficient term that is association-free and clean of baggage, people roll their own; obvious examples include: "Hamming," "Euclid," "Hilbert", etc.

I would say "point," but that's got all sorts of baggage.

So I propose we roll our own or use Latin here simply for the reasons above, and we use a different color for inner-model. "Animo" is Latin for "mind." Considering the mind itself is its first-order conception, what about:

Animo: The most elementary thing conceivable by the human mind bivalent with its Animo Space.
Animo Space: The human mind conceptual space that contains animos.

Illud is latin for point — another possibility...

Thoughts?

 

They are treated as axioms in academia per Oxford's 1st definition: "a self-evident truth that requires no proof."
All its "observations" are considered "evidence" to validate that core starting truth.

I noticed that you qualified your statement with "in academia". Whatever you meant by that, the science of evolution has no axioms. We are discussing the science, yes?

"God" or "metaphysics" (short-hand for "generic otherworldiness which is not knowable directly, and as equal as saying "unicorn" or "flying macchiato" since "God" is a catch-all phrase for any-spatial-character) is a built-in, congenital notion to the human race, or it wouldn't make ANY discussable sense whatsoever to even broach the topic, let alone make it a principal portion of the lives for those of immense intellect, including the very forefathers of science. The question is a legitimate question within each's being that one must answer in some way: either "Yes, "No," or "Indifferent." That in and of itself is evidence beyond anything else of legitimacy to the question in a supposed closed-system mechanical entity.

You don't actually specify what question you're referring to, so I'll assume you mean "Does 'god' exist?" The question is of course legitimate (few questions aren't), but it has nothing to do with closed systems or the fact that humans sometimes ask themselves such questions. The issue with the question is that it is entirely too vague.

Does the god of Zoroastrianism exist? Does the god of Catholicism exist? Do the gods of pantheistic Hinduism exist?

Before one can reasonably address the question "Does god exist?", one must have a notion of what 'god' means. This requires an analysis on the nature (ontology) of god, which is much more difficult than simply answering "yes", "no", or "indifferent". In order for such an analysis to be effective, it must go beyond short, ambiguous claims ("god is infinity") and attempt to characterize what god might be, and the consequences therein. A deep enough dive leads to a full on theology, and if other people agree with you, a religion.

Personally, I quickly grow tired of religious discussions/debates when I have them with people of average faith. I find that most people simply don't give much thought to the articles of their faith -- their parents were Christian/Jewish and went to church/temple, so they're Christian/Jewish and go to church/temple. However, I relish the opportunity to talk shop with priests/rabbis/imams/etc. They're experts in their faith (some downright scholars) and have grappled hard and seriously with ontological and spiritual questions.

But my willingness to have a serious metaphysical discussion does not change the fact that scientific theories, such as evolution, stand or fall on their own, irrespective of anyone's spiritual beliefs.

One could even posit that people's informational and emotional innate desire for "higher meaning" or to connect to a metaphysical origin point in any adverse condition ("near death") is just as evidentiary of the potentiality, as is the question "what happens after death" or the felt experiences of "love" or "meaning" or any other such "human" things.

One could also posit that humans find god in a foxhole simply because the thought is comforting.

There is ZERO rigor in large scale "speciation" claims whatsoever.

You strongly exclaim "ZERO rigor" but then weakly qualify it with "large scale". What exactly do you mean by "large scale"? If you mean global, then -- duh -- no one can afford an Earth-sized speciation experiment. The most rigorous experiments are conducted in a laboratory, and these provide ample evidence of speciation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_experiments_of_speciation

If you want something larger scale, how about the finches of the Galapagos Islands?

There is ZERO observational connection between the innumerable species.

What are you talking about? Look around you! Enormous variety of plant species, and most look like plants. Enormous variety of insect species, and most look like insects. Etc., etc.

Perhaps "small scale mutation." "Intra-specious mutation with natural selection" vs. global information genomic augmentation and speciation to connect the OS (yes, the OS!) of a moth to a jaguar to a spider to a human is the difference between calling a 5th grader doing basic arithmetic a mathematician, vs. a real one.

The OSes of humans and amoebas are indeed connected! You acknowledge this fact. You acknowledge that mutation and sexual breeding can cause genomic changes. Evolution explains the mechanisms and dynamics of how environmental isolation can cause speciation. Life has had a billion years, on a constantly changing Earth, to put these processes in motion. And yet you refuse to believe in evolution!

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, given your previous dismissals of the power of complexity. It's very strange to me, though, that you'd abandon such a reasonable and well-evidenced theory on a hunch (I don't know how else to describe it). Evolution has a century of active and rigorous scientific research behind it, and every experiment is a chance to falsify the entire theory. Yet it still stands! How many scientific papers have been written on your personal theory of the origin of species?

Fossil records are no different than the fossil records we will see in a few hundred years that show "primitive computers" "evolving" to large scale ones. We built them, there was no direct connection between any of them other than their makers.

This is very confusing to me, because the history of computers clearly shows an evolutionary path! We don't have the Intel i7 without the 386, without the 8086, without the 4004, and so on.

When our future Silicon Overlords write their biology books, they will probably say that carbon-based life was nature's way of making better computers.

Do you realize if there IS a metaphysical source, and each life was programmed specifically no different in approach than a human programming a TV, a watch, or a laptop that the entire concept that is being called "evolutionary science" is 100% bunk no matter "how much evidence it seemed like?"

Erm, that's not an effective argument. You could equally say, "If the universe is the fever dream of an interdimensional unicorn, the entire concept of evolutionary science is 100% bunk."

Correspondingly, I could equally say, "If a metaphysical source designed evolution, then your hypothesis that evolution is bunk is bunk."

Woop-dee-doo.

So the miracle of DNA that is in the guy in the casket isn't quite as miraculous is it? No, because no "life" is there to give it miracle.

What kind of an argument is this? Seriously, logic? No DNA, no life. The converse relationship does not hold.

Why does any organization of programmatic order, like Mac OS, share tons of code with another order like UNIX? Same programmers.

Huh? If an OS uses tons of code from a previous OS, we would specifically say that the former evolved from the latter.

I'm talking about ones of the last 200-300 years after Newton in the modern scientific era, even post Darwin. Darwin himself believed in God even after inventing his theory, considering himself a Theist and believed in God as a first cause. What does that say?

What does any person's spiritual beliefs have to do with a scientific theory?

Maxwell, Marconi, Keppler, Planck, Pasteur, Faraday, Descartes, Schrodinger, Bacon, Copernicus, Heisenberg(!), Kelvin... the list goes on and on.

Sigh.

 

If you are a machine, with presumably physical stuff + voltage states, and you insist there are no numbers even in Siri, yet she will "refer" to them and "compute with them," why are there no "numbers" in her/it vs. you?

Machines, voltages, numbers are outer model constructs. It's only in the outer model where we distinguish between internal and external "things".

 

We didn't invent axioms. We discovered them, and attributed symbols to them to uncover them.

On one level I agree with this. We didn't invent, for example, the possibility of commutativity -- it just so happens that the universe allows for certain processes to be performed sequentially in any order.

They are absolute and irrespective to us.

On this level, I disagree. We choose which axioms to include in a theory, and we can always choose otherwise. If we include the axiom of commutativity in the theory of groups, then we get the theorems of abelian group theory. If we choose not to include commutativity, we get a different theory, non-abelian group theory. There is no sense in which abelian group theory is "better" or "more right" than non-abelian group theory.

My little "Grokk" story (that you incidentally... entirely... ignored?, lol) was about that because it completely touched on this element.

Yeah, sorry, it was too metaphorical for me to dig into.

"hrgevt" might be someone's password, in that they manufactured a new word based in stringing those meaningful symbols together. It now has meaning with respect to something in physical space and is a personal vs. universal meaning.

Fully agree, though I can't think of anything that has universal meaning, so I take all meaning to be personal.

Meaning is all about information within us and its experiential relationship to physical space primarily.

I agree that human baseline meanings primarily come from their experiences of the physical world. The meaning of apple is very much tied to its physical tokens (though I'd suggest that our visual percepts of physical apples are also symbols). The meaning of eat quickly follows from a common use of apples and other similar things. But the further we get from the baseline one-to-one mapping, the more complexity we find what something's meaning is. The meaning of dinner, for instance, isn't that far removed from "eat", yet each of us brings significant and varied associations to its connotation. Ask ten people what "dinner" means to them and you'll get all kinds of answers. Now ask them what "justice" means. ;--)

All of this complexity of meaning stems from the complexity of experience itself. Of course, it's significantly further complicated by the peculiar way that human physiology entangles biological needs (for food, sex, safety, etc.) with experience. A human's qualitative experience of something is very much a function of how much dopamine, et al, were released.

If you took all sensation away from knowledge, no desire to know, no satisfaction from knowing, who would bother knowing?

Not sure why it matters, but I can certainly imagine an organism that acquires knowledge without actively seeking it.

 

So I propose we roll our own or use Latin here simply for the reasons above, and we use a different color for inner-model. "Animo" is Latin for "mind." Considering the mind itself is its first-order conception, what about:

Animo: The most elementary thing conceivable by the human mind bivalent with its Animo Space.
Animo Space: The human mind conceptual space that contains animos.

Well, I don't believe in the distinction between brain and mind, so that's not gonna work for me. I do like the Latin idea.

How about res, which is Latin for "things". It's easy to type, isn't pre-loaded with baggage as an English word, and makes a nice pun with "resolution". Res is the highest resolution, the stuff that things are made of.

 

I noticed that you qualified your statement with "in academia". Whatever you meant by that, the science of evolution has no axioms. We are discussing the science, yes?


You don't actually specify what question you're referring to, so I'll assume you mean "Does 'god' exist?" The question is of course legitimate (few questions aren't), but it has nothing to do with closed systems or the fact that humans sometimes ask themselves such questions. The issue with the question is that it is entirely too vague.

Does the god of Zoroastrianism exist? Does the god of Catholicism exist? Do the gods of pantheistic Hinduism exist?

Before one can reasonably address the question "Does god exist?", one must have a notion of what 'god' means. This requires an analysis on the nature (ontology) of god, which is much more difficult than simply answering "yes", "no", or "indifferent". In order for such an analysis to be effective, it must go beyond short, ambiguous claims ("god is infinity") and attempt to characterize what god might be, and the consequences therein. A deep enough dive leads to a full on theology, and if other people agree with you, a religion.

Personally, I quickly grow tired of religious discussions/debates when I have them with people of average faith. I find that most people simply don't give much thought to the articles of their faith -- their parents were Christian/Jewish and went to church/temple, so they're Christian/Jewish and go to church/temple. However, I relish the opportunity to talk shop with priests/rabbis/imams/etc. They're experts in their faith (some downright scholars) and have grappled hard and seriously with ontological and spiritual questions.

But my willingness to have a serious metaphysical discussion does not change the fact that scientific theories, such as evolution, stand or fall on their own, irrespective of anyone's spiritual beliefs.


One could also posit that humans find god in a foxhole simply because the thought is comforting.


You strongly exclaim "ZERO rigor" but then weakly qualify it with "large scale". What exactly do you mean by "large scale"? If you mean global, then -- duh -- no one can afford an Earth-sized speciation experiment. The most rigorous experiments are conducted in a laboratory, and these provide ample evidence of speciation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_experiments_of_speciation

If you want something larger scale, how about the finches of the Galapagos Islands?


What are you talking about? Look around you! Enormous variety of plant species, and most look like plants. Enormous variety of insect species, and most look like insects. Etc., etc.


The OSes of humans and amoebas are indeed connected! You acknowledge this fact. You acknowledge that mutation and sexual breeding can cause genomic changes. Evolution explains the mechanisms and dynamics of how environmental isolation can cause speciation. Life has had a billion years, on a constantly changing Earth, to put these processes in motion. And yet you refuse to believe in evolution!

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, given your previous dismissals of the power of complexity. It's very strange to me, though, that you'd abandon such a reasonable and well-evidenced theory on a hunch (I don't know how else to describe it). Evolution has a century of active and rigorous scientific research behind it, and every experiment is a chance to falsify the entire theory. Yet it still stands! How many scientific papers have been written on your personal theory of the origin of species?


This is very confusing to me, because the history of computers clearly shows an evolutionary path! We don't have the Intel i7 without the 386, without the 8086, without the 4004, and so on.

When our future Silicon Overlords write their biology books, they will probably say that carbon-based life was nature's way of making better computers.

Lol... "Nature's way" is the Winner of the Ambiguous Term Awards™ 2020. For someone who is the CEO of Formali, Exactman & Sons, I literally cannot believe you are using one of THE most ambiguous phrases I have ever seen in a scientific-minded discourse!?

The nature of the term "evolution" must be VERY specifically defined here.

Let us compare the two briefly from a very modern awareness approach (and then get back to what we're building here, that might address this stuff in the end):

Computer fossil record:
"Evidence of billions of combined hours of millions of individuals' non-chance-driven, determined blood, sweat, and tears to intentionally understand and synergistically apply the chemistry, physics, information theory, and mathematics to create something as small as 1 WORKING transistor, let alone the <7 nanometer billions in the space of a square inch to create ONE chip, let alone the millions of other similar chips, boards, ports, screens, gears, etc. that interrelate under other processes (many of whom have NO CLUE about the science of the other areas). And this is just the hardware side — millions more employ billions more hours to make software. Not ONE element of "chance" is involved other than the serendipitous chemical-relations discovery process that permits further non-chance based synergistic work to create every single "stage" of evolution, which speaks not at ALL of one functional, manufactured computer "morphing" into another, but of the intelligence within the minds of each living human being that worked with millions of others to specifically build each component of a single computer representing one computer of said fossils."

"EVOLUTION" here is defined specifically as: "The individual creators' collective intelligence augmentation and synergistic implementation of said intelligence to create computer hardware and software that functions. Any additional functioning or intelligence for any "stage" is not at ALL a function of any connection between one piece of hardware and software to another, but is exclusively defined as a separate, discrete event rendered on PURPOSE by any one or more living (not dead) human beings. "Evolution" here means: This record is one of the increased intelligence of the creators creating new things after further learning, not a record that one machine coming from another by entirely undefined means.

"Life" fossil record
Life of which is ENTIRELY undefined by biological sciences beyond being a soft, carbon-based, state-processing machine without any metaphysical component, and which is essentially identical to the above "computer fossil record". By this definition, every element in the fossil record is a discrete, state-processing machine. "Evidence" that one piece of hardware-software "came from the other" as being different from the "computer fossil record" above must be seen in light of how machines work and are made.

To put it into perspective, to contrast with the above:

"EVOLUTION" here is defined specifically as:
New "hardware" and software literally appearing out of thin air with no external "intelligence" as above, due to an arbitrary "necessity" metric called "survival" (as if a machine cares or even knows wtf is up! Lol!). From a modern 2020 awareness, and not the 1859 pre-information, pre-computer, pre-electronics age paradigm that created this utterly antiquated hypothesis, which by our understanding TODAY is 100% identical to saying that a "printer" eventually spontaneously "grows" more IC's and a parallel port ALONG with the instructions(!) to connect to another computer, or a USB port to connect to a different one, because some weird-ass "survival" concept (whatever that is to a machine!!) just simply "insists" the printer function more "complexly."

Let's "listen in" on the printer "pre-evolution": "Hell, you know—in order to survive better in this office, I really need an 802.11n WiFi, and I'm thinking battery power might even help before the "elements I know not of" — Michael Bolton from Office Space — takes me out in the field to destroy "me" with his coworkers. Actually, you know what? F*ck it. I'm going to grow a dong and "iSperm" and spawn a new printer entirely by mating with the deskjet across the hall that I heard grew a "reproductive port" so that ultimately we can all "share" the paper and toner resources (you check out the legs on that Canon?)), and come up with an "offspring" offset printer that will "carry on my binaries in my firmware" (because I care SO MUCH that I "live on" LOL! I'm so "selfless"!) because that's going to improve my individual chances of "surviving," because you know, surviving is "everything" and drives my "evolution" here in this game. Because I give such a profound sh*t about whether or not I can print or not. You know the refrigerator in the break-room just "evolved" due to its lunch-room circumstances too? Thing f*ckin could not STAND the janitor — constantly complaining (you should hear the texts!) — so it grew a guillotine apparatus and Guillotine OS, to cut his arm off as soon as it goes for its lunch. A kind of "teeth." Imagine that? Survival of the fittest, bro. Gotta do what you gotta do. Also, I got an email from the fax-machine. It said it's going to self-terminate because e-mail is going to survive further. I forwarded it to Darwin's morgue, I'm hoping he sees how laughable it is to "compare machinery hardware and software" now that humanity knows what machines and computers are 100 years later!"

I promise you, if Darwin was exposed to 20 hours of a computer science hardware/software course, he would NEVER have come up with this theory on hardware and software, whatsoever. The man himself said, "When I look at the eye, I shudder."

He meant, "You know, this whole ill-advised concept that there was NO SPECIFIC intelligent INTENTION behind the creation of life may not be true after all!"

Also with this laughable wiki article (ROFL):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_experiments_of_speciation




You think this says anything of large scale speciation and not just intra-species mating-preference mutation??? Who wrote this sh*t? C'mon, you know EXACTLY what this says from a computer science hardware/software perspective! There were existent INSTRUCTIONS in the flies such that when specifically encountering an external stimulus, their preference would INCORPORATE the external stimulus into the preference code. Says NOTHING about "increased hardware" to change the flies into DIFFERENT species of flies!! Or "increased software"! Which is what "speciation is!" Nothing!

Again, this is evidence of nothing but fruit fly hardware and software PREFERENCE code that has INSTRUCTIONS that say "these routines can make slight changes to behavior" and "these things cannot!" It's a tiny learning "artificial intelligence," that's all it is. It says NOTHING of how that species (hardware and software!) turned into "ANOTHER" one!!

Seriously, "get back to me" when you can create a model that connects an asexual amoeba's (UNIVAC) code-base and INCREASED HARDWARE to even a fruitfly (XT), to a rodent (80286) to cat (80486) and EVERY SINGLE STAGE IN BETWEEN, and have the exact physics and information theory to back every supposed stage of EVERY SINGLE cell machine, every process that instructs the RNA and DNA, every single nano-sub-machine and routine, using ANY model that makes sense in parallel to the "computer fossil record" above.

There are none, because when you zoom into what's REALLY going on — the causation of and augmentation of information component and thin-air “new hardware“ appearance — it's literally as philosophical as metaphysics (think—why are there even “creation vs. evolution” debates if they are not intellectually discussable philosophies on equal footing!!?) and the reason I mention those great names in science, is not to name drop, but as an instrument of attestation: that it is positively sane to believe in an intelligent, determining, programmatic causative agency on a generic level. Even one of a "deist"-flavored nature, where the creator "created it" and flew away makes more sense. This does not speak to "comfort" whatsoever, unless it does personally for someone. It speaks first to bare logic.