Greta wrote:Life would survive better if it didn't experience anything and instead simply operated informationally, selecting optimal approaches for every situation like a well programmed computer.
Well suck it up, baby, because that ain't the way it is. Without question the embodied mind is a computer but it's not like the Newtonian contraption we have sitting on our desktops because we are a computer without a programme. We get the hardware as part of our genetic inheritance and we get an operating system of sorts with a few free bits of trivial software chucked in to get us started but after that we're on our own. We begin writing our own software before we're even born and this process never stops until the day we die. We quite literally MAKE OURSELVES and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that happens to us in our lives is pre-programmed because our entire life's journey is a process of making it up as we go along. Furthermore we only get one crack at it so it behooves us to give it our best shot. If you make a mess of it, stiff shit.
Greta wrote:You referred to subatomic particles travelling at the speed of light,
No I didn't. What I said was that the sub-atomic particles are CHANGING at the speed of light but events which are occurring on the Planck scale at the speed of light within these particles confer a mass on them in their emergent form and therefore in their emergent form they cannot travel at the speed of light. However some of them can get awfully close to it, neutrinos for instance, and electrons are also speedy little buggers, but no entity with mass can move through time at the speed of light in its emergent form. You might say that the act of Becoming Something slows information down.
Greta wrote:To be aggregated by gravity is to be compressed into a smaller and denser space, like gas and dust clouds that eventually formed the planets and other entities.
We already know that when matter and energy aggregate under the influence of gravity this causes time to slow down so I have no idea what physical meaning you're attaching to a "denser" space. How does one determine the density of a co-ordinate system?
Greta wrote: Greta wrote:
You sound like a big chicken - did you faint when your wife was delivering?
Obvious Leo wrote:
No. I was out in the carpark smoking cigarettes.
Spoken like a real Chuck Norris!
I had a good excuse. In the case of both our boys childbirth was an emergency drama for my wife and I was banished to the hinterlands to sweat it out alone. In both cases everything turned out fine but after all that anxiety I decided that the unkindest cut of all might be a more sensible option. So I missed out on daddy's little girl which may have been all for the best in hindsight. By this time she would have long ago brought home some arsehole not good enough for her for me to bitch about.
Greta wrote: It's up to you to find a way to get your concepts across if you want to spread your memes.
I'm still rather conflicted about this because I live a very private life. To be honest I'd rather somebody else did it, which was a task I had Steve lined up for. I told him there'd be a Nobel in it for him but he has a young family and thus more important matters on his mind.
Greta wrote:You used informal language so it's not as though you were aiming for academic purity.
I'm only a bloody story-teller, Greta, not the fucking messiah. It's not even a very original story because every major philosopher in history has been telling the same story since philosophy began. All I'm saying is that existence is about Being and Becoming. Even the god-folk managed to work that bit out and all I'm trying to do is locate this ancient story within the modern parables of science. It's still a work in progress and in all honesty I haven't quite figured out how to write it. If I had any talent for poetry I'd probably try a Rubaiyat in elegant quatrains but I fear that my natural voice is the Aussie vulgate.
Greta wrote:
You are too sure of your position IMO. When you think of the advances that will be made in the future, what makes you think that you have fully cracked the mystery just 7,000 years after we started organising agriculture. Are you so sure that our descendants in a million years will say, "Most of them didn't have a clue but, hey, this guy's on to something"? I don't mean to be critical, just to challenge some ideas.
I certainly don't claim to have cracked any mysteries and I can't quite see how you might think I have made such a claim. What I'm actually saying is that there are no mysteries to be cracked because reality is exactly what it appears to be. Nothing of what I'm saying is original although the way I interpret old ideas in a new context might reasonably be described as "eccentric". Personally I reckon academics in both science and philosophy have spent the last century trying to make an easy job look hard so that they can keep their snouts in the public trough. What the fuck are qualia?? I've got enough trouble trying to figure out what it is like to be me without worrying about what it's like to be a fucking bat. I rely heavily on thought experiments because I spend many hours of most days in my garden. Have you ever tried to project yourself into somebody else's mind and thing the way that they do? Take it from me, it can't be done. There is nothing that consciousness is "like".
Greta wrote:We are relationships.
Agreed. Process philosophy is ONLY about relationships because everything in the universe is causally connected to everything else because of gravity. Even Newton knew this and he was by no means the brightest penny ever minted.
Greta wrote:I suspect that time is not so definitive and that the past does not just disappear.
Omar can have the last word.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
From “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”