Comments

  • Is 'information' physical?
    Within that metaphorical framework, enlightenment (both scientific and spiritual) represents the culminating stages of that awareness becoming self-aware.Wayfarer

    That's nice, but I don't think human intelligence is the crown on evolution. All life can be seen as culmination. With different degrees of knowledge, awareness, and self awarenes. Science and spirituality are just forms of knowledge and awareness.
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    Photons just travel through space. They possess potential energy only. Massive particles possess real kinetic energy. Photons have potential momentum, matter spin 1/2 particles (massive or massless) have actual momentum.
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    In the double-slit experiment, the electron is interacting with the Higgs the whole time.Kenosha Kid

    That's the question. There are more theories accounting for mass. The Higgs particle has been found. The Higgs mechanism has never been seen.
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    You could find the law though to which the non-conserved energy obeys. There has to be some law of this kind of energy as the non-conserved energy develops deterministic. Also non-conserved entities count, but it's us who do the counting. Computers don't know anything. They are just structures of zeros and ones derived from a physical memory, from the outside pushed around on straight conducting wires, by the same kind of memory-based structures of zeros and ones on a physical memory (quantum computers are not fundamentally different). The computer clock determines the time between successive pushes. Leading to the desired final state of zeros and ones on a physical structure. This is not how nature works. There are no zeros and ones, no programs, no initial and final states. It's one process going on from time zero. Hence computers can never be consciousness by definition.
  • Is 'information' physical?
    But again, DNA encodes and conveys information.Wayfarer

    It only encodes for proteins only. The ribosome is used to read it and deliver proteins. But the ribosomes are made from proteins too. Which came first? It must have been proteins, "creating" the economical means to evolve. One can even imagine that the same kinds of building blocks are used to construct vastly different living structures. Once they came in existence, they stayed in form along the line. Inserting riceplant genes in a fertilized dog egg cell might give a riceplant (here I'm talking nonsense, but I wonder what would happen). Riceplants contain more or less the same number of genes as dog cells. Maybe they are smaller. But the overall structure of the dogcell can shape the proteins from the riceplant genes into a dog, more or less. This won't happen of course, but the structure the proteins form determines holistically what happens to the building blocks. Intelligence isn't contained in the genes. Nor are feet and noses.
  • Double Slit Experiment.


    Careers at stake, satisfaction with the status quo, no imagination, calculations (and shutting up) done within the classical framework usually do the trick of delivering, etc. Physicists really trying to go all the way down are rare, and circumstances can impede. Some simply don't have the time to think about it. Universities have policies. Etcetera. Diverging from the norm can get one in trouble. Powerplay, competition (which can be a good thing though), and simple indifference (the most common attitude: don't even try to understand the quantum apple, once bitten, though I never understood the innocence lost after the bite. Which innocence? No need for explanation?
  • Should and can we stop economic growth?


    Inlation is always present. Prices go up generally, earnings follow. Minimum wages are kept low. Work scarse (unemployment). "We can always give the job to someone else". The people at the base are the modern slaves. Loan slaves. Keeping a system working designed to create material wealth for a few, less for the people with knowledge without whome the machine couldn't be constructed and without whome no global advertising could be invented and projected, and at the broad base the loan slaves, keeping the machine clean. Rich gets richer. Poor gets poorer. And nature suffers
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    It's probably going to go the way of the ether though, just an idea dead people once believed in out of ignorance.Kenosha Kid

    Indeed. It's a shame that Copenhagen set the metric for evaluating the wave function. All QM courses are based on it. Shutting up and calculate was made the norm. Leaving those longing to relieve their ignorance in the dark. Giving way to strange distractions like the measurement problem, observer induced collapse, the MWI, Schrödinger's cat, and Wignerfriend. If only de Broglie was taken seriously and more would have been supportive. Powerplay...
  • Should and can we stop economic growth?
    Reminds me of how many people have told me to exercise more self-control. Humanity, it seems, is running amok on planet earth. No sense of restraint, temperance, or moderation. We're multiplying like Fibonacci's rabbits. We'll eventually have to, as they say, pay the piper. For better or worse I probably won't be around when the shooting starts.TheMadFool

    Almost :100:

    It's not people though that are Fibonacci-struck. It's their need to materially dress up their pathetic empty lives. Making it seem full. Covering up emptiness, stimulated by a system based on artificial material knowledge only. While population is 5 times as big than 150 years ago (and growing slowly linearly), the stuff created has exploded and increases linearly in the exponential. Nature will shoot back indeed.
  • Should and can we stop economic growth?
    It seems as though population is the root cause of our problems.TheMadFool

    It seems indeed. Nothing les further from the truth. Global population has risen (multiplicated) only by facto 5 or so since 1900. Nature was fine. And just look now...

    Once there lived 100 000 people. That they lived 12 years max is just propaganda.
  • Bannings
    Would Heidegger be banned? Or is any Nazi, racist, or sexist (are homophobes or misogynists aexists?)welcome as long as he keeps his mouth shut?

    One can hate women or white folks. Making their lives impossible or like a stay in hell is something completely different.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties


    Well, a block universe needs matter in it. It is a static entity but not eternal, as time already stretches in both ways to eternity. All the worldlines of particles are already there. Particles can only move in positive time direction. Why not in the negative direction? Because in that case, time would be reversed. This would amount to a beginstate at infinity, i.e, no begin state at all. Only around t=0 there can be a beginning state, evolving irreversibly to infinity. The begin state can occur many times. So behind us a new beginstate will develop. Before us there are other block universes with their own beginning of time. They are the cause of our universe. Likewise, our universe precedes the one coming behind us, though preceding is not the exact expression, as every new block has it's own shaky beginning. While this infinity of spatially 3D closed universes (spatially 6D with 3 curled up ones) are following each other up, they are causally disconnected as they are accelerating away from each other on a 4D (7D) hyperbolic space, signaling a next universe (and its mirror part on the other side) to start from time-around-zero via that space that has one spatial dimension more than the universes it spawns that are embedded in it (ll matter confined to 3D space).

    This image entails a complex network of worldlines. They are spatially and temporarily disconnected and originate shortly àfter time-zeros, which are actually states where time fluctuates up and down, as expressed by fluctuating worldlines, corresponding to fluctuating (virtual) matter fieĺds.

    The static structure of the wordline spaghetti doesn't impede my free will a bit.The strict structure doesn't pull me through in predetermined fashion. The structure offers me and all a means. Only in the eyes of detached observers, like yours, there is no ego or free will. All matter crawling along the myriads of the worldlines is free as long not forced. Worldlines don't force. People do.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    the only thing that exists is one eternal reality. there is no people. there is no youMiller

    If only it were that easy...
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    Proteins can’t have existed first. That fact is written into the architectual history of the molecular machine that synthesises all proteins - the ribosome.apokrisis

    Thanks for all the great stuff you write! I come back later. Before leaving, I quoted this piece, because that's essentially the chicken/egg problem. I think posing abiogenetical existence of proteins solves the chicken egg problem, while it fits rather nicely in my approach to life. I have some entropy/free energy considerations for later on (physical as well as informational). I'm off for now! Later!
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    Complete self recursion is impossible, this is what causes the illusion of free will, and the ego.Miller

    So if I have complete knowledge of you you and your illusion of free will no longer exist (for me)?

    I get your point. If I know all about what will happen to you, then in my eyes you are not free anymore and you wrongly think that it's you who acts. Everything is determined. But I don't think the ego and free will are dependent on knowledge about the free will and the ego. It depends on what you call the ego and free will.
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    You surely show that you know your stuff! You truly try, I have seen that already. I will come back later. Interesting stuff! Before I take off, one last question. Before RNA came on the scene, how looked life, according to you? RNA? I think proteins came first.
  • Rittenhouse verdict


    The link works. Same picture. The first one. I check the second. Both same picture. Great one, by the way!
  • Music and Mind
    Besides a heavy emotional impact, like from the heavy contrary and agressive distorted punk guitar blasts and aggressively fat swollen bass shootings, seasoned with machine-gun drums, to the sweet violins accompanying Nat King Cole, and the madness accompanying "Horse Latitudes", from the outwordly anxious Bartok, the alienating experiments of Holger Czukay, to the naive joy of early Depeche Mode, or from the sounds of Philip Glass accompanying Koyaanisquatsi imagery, to the nervous and jittery VU, to absolute silence, from the soothing sounds of Coldplay, the ecstatic dance drives of house, and the soundscapes of Jean Michel Jarre, from the pumping guitar and synth of the Krupps, you can make up all kinds of contextual stories. Or movies, and even life itself. It can even be thought provoking. Mostly, when not dancing on it, it's just nice or fun.

  • Rittenhouse verdict


    I didn't see the accompanying picture...
  • Rittenhouse verdict
    Don't think 20mm will do. Grenades, too, definitely.
    Yes yes, that's escalation, but I have a god-given right to defend myself. Against all of them.
    Do you know how many heavily armed gangs are out there? And dangerous lunatics?
    And, for proven deterrent, I'd want setups with mutually assured destruction.
    That's safety. Then there will be peace. One way or other.
    jorndoe

    Is this serious or meant to provoke?
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    "This feeling arises from moment-to-moment ignorance of the prior causes of our thoughts and actions." -Miller

    Even if I knew these causes, I could still have the feeling my will is free or unfree.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties


    The feeling I am talking about isn't part of emotions. Emotions come and go. The feeling of a free will determines if the will is free or not. Not an abstract theory that according to you is keeping the will in its grip and chains it.
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    Life was an accident waiting to happen. It just needed a coding mechanism - RNA. The coding system needed to be able to produce nanoscale switches or entropic ratchets - enzymes. The rest was evolutionary history.apokrisis

    Here I partially agree. Once the first protein structures had formed from amino acids, their tendency to grow and pass on their life, created the need to economically pass on their proteins. RNA-like stuff did the job.
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    So there is just the one "stuff". You are making some kind of panpsychic claim in regards to your ontological commitments?apokrisis

    I wanted to write that. Luckily I didn't. You have found it yourself!
  • The dark room problem
    For a lively state to energy, free energy simply has to be increased. If there is a huge number of interacting particles, the state of the least free energy or the least chemical potential, is a dead one. Structures evolving in a constantly non-equilibrium dynamical dissipative state (between starlight on the day and the dark in the night, to and fro, every time a bit further away from equilibrium)) always away from, and not towards that equilibrium, are bound to evolve in life. I saw a seemingly dead trunk of tree. But a newly forming bark structure was evolving on it! Truly a beautiful miracle to see. Hence the need for the least of free energy is nonsense. Maintaining free energy means maintaining the status quo. Some organisms, like viruses, have chosen for this. Others like to evolve. People have reached the level to freely play with free energy.
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    So there are two kinds of descriptions, not two kinds of “things”? There is epistemic duality but not ontological duality?apokrisis

    Two kind of things belonging to the same stuff. They are inseparable. So actually there is a unity. On the outside the stuff is material, on the inside, it's consciousness. On the boundary, they are one and the same. The degree of consciousness depends on the structured matter involved.
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    In what sense is consciousness a “thing”. Do you want to say it has substantial being? Explain to me how that works.apokrisis

    There are sticks and stones, noses and bones. Likewise, there are conscious experiences.The dual framing of things means indeed there are two kinds of things. Conscious experiences are irrefutably there. So are sticks and stones. They are two sides of the same medal, framed by a two-sided frame, and depending on from which side you look at the medal, the face of matter or consciousness will be seen and framed. You can look at consciousness within the frame of things or structured processes. That's usually the outside. It's you who sees the structured processes in me.You can look at the same stuff from the other side. That's usually the inside. That's me experiencing stuff. The one who looks and sees the sides of the medal lies in between.
  • Music and Mind
    It does often seem that those who are good at maths are also good musicians too and I have often wondered about why that relationship exists. Perhaps, the symbolic aspects of both involve the same aspects of the brain, including the reading of music.Jack Cummins

    Douglas Hofstadter is a pianist. Queens guitarist Brian May is cosmologist. The brother of Killing Joke singer Jaz Coleman is particle physicist. The grandson of Hugh Everett (many worlds interpretation of QM) is Eels member. Stevon Alexander is a jazz musician. Etc. See her also. The other direction is less common. There are more musicians with no interest in math than math people with an interest. Good musicians not interested in math make better music in general than musicians interested. Math confines.
    Sometimes a single transgression from one tone to another can already evoke emotion. Even 4:03 minutes of silence can be music. How experimental can it get? You can see music just as painting with tones. Some like abstract expression (it's my view that the most abstract paintings are the hyper realist ones, but that aside), some like easy viewing or easy listening, some like march music, some like dance, jazz, punk,, etc. There is no universal formula.
  • Consciousness, Mathematics, Fundamental laws and properties
    Either way you have no free will.Miller

    That ďepends on who you are with and in what culture you are in. If you feel that your wil is free than it's free..
  • Music and Mind
    Many mathematicians or computer scientists like classical music. Because it's nicely structùred probably.
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    Nope. I’m just asking you to attempt to justify your dualist framing of things.apokrisis

    The justification is that there are two different things. The material structured processes, as seen from the outside, and the conscious experiences felt on the inside. You see structured processes when observing my central nervous system, I feel the things it accompanies.
  • The dark room problem
    dunno. Just a vague idea regarding that but it's probably nothing. Muddled-thinking at best.TheMadFool

    It's muddled thinking that paves the way to the biggest breakthrough. Together with fuzzy logic. It's an explosive cocktail. Fuzzy mud.
  • The dark room problem
    whatever you mean.TheMadFool

    I mean the metaphysics of the dark room.
  • The dark room problem
    Keep what up? I haven't done anything that's worth...keeping up. :chin:
    now
    TheMadFool

    Well, take it up then...
  • The dark room problem
    I don't think what I say matters anymore.TheMadFool

    Keep it up...
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness


    I see your point. A consciousness experience is not the structured process by itself, as observed in brain scans or imagined in your mind. It is, well,... the conscious experience itself. As experienced by the structured process it is attached to. So by looking at structured processes you can say if there is consciousness inside, but that doesn't explain the conscious experience. Only by considering the structured processes as the only base consciousness becomes an illusion.
  • The dark room problem


    I totally agree. To every claim that one has found a ToE on can counter that it is just a fantasy in the mind's eye, constructed to evade the the abundance we see and experience. You can even sanely-minded contend that reality as encountered in video games is the physical reality and every deviation from it an illusion. No matter what physicists might say. You have to be carefull though on high roofs, because there reality is lying to you.
  • The dark room problem
    Alas, I'm too uneducated to compose a sensible reply.TheMadFool

    There is no sensible reply. How would that look like? Untill now, hidden variables are just an assumption. But more "satisfying" than the orthodoxy ruling.
  • The dark room problem
    I thought that was a open-and-shut case: the hidden variables question i.e. there are none and QM is complete in its probabilistic qualities.TheMadFool

    It's not shut by far. This is what the majority of physicists want to belief. They just shut up and calculate, leaving a trail of confusion in philosophers who try to solve Schrödinger's cat, Wigner's friend, and the measurement problem. There are no experiments done which exclude their existence. Maybe they even constitute space. Connecting gravity to QM (which doesn't imply a quantum gravity though).
  • Solution to the hard problem of consciousness
    So does the function ever in fact happen “in the dark”? Is there any reason to believe that?apokrisis

    If you consider structured matter processes just that, yes. But reality proves you wrong. I feel structured processes. If I hear a piece of music, there are structured processes going on in my brain (looking at it from the outside). But why should they be conscious experiences? Because of the very fact there is structure? I can imagine the same processes going on without a conscious experience.

    I was very much deterred from thinking of particular functions as in any way capable of being carved out of the whole and considered in a vacuum. It's not that their not contributing to consciousness, rather that they do so in the context of everything else.Kenosha Kid

    t's possible to approximately carve out conscious experiences like colors, shapes, motion, sounds, pain, thoughts, dreams, emotions, despite them being part of a coherent structure. A blind person (with the retina in good shape) who still perceives motion and misses parts of her visual system that are responsible for color, intensity of light, shape, and visual depth perception can still see, to a certain extent, moving objects. Other brain parts can partially take over. See here.

    While these experiences are embedded in a larger living structure, you can still track the sub processes. If one of my visual V regions, or parts of it, give up, this will have an impact on my visual experience. Of course it's impossible to isolate visual processes and place them in a vacuum.
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