Tunnel Vision

magilum
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Tunnel Vision

 There's no indication that there is an overarching mentality which pervades the cosmos, nor that the minds we're familiar with here on our own planet are, by some undiscovered means, connected. We have, rather, individual instances of very similarly-patterned minds, working within similar parameters of pattern recognition, and by definition unaware of patterns which do not concern them. Why does a cloud that looks like a rabbit "look like" something, while another configuration isn't recognized as anything at all? Is there some internal rationale to the water vapor that pursues some benefit in resembling a small, furry animal? Indeed, it's only our confirmation bias that recognizes a shape's significance, when any such shape is equally significant (or insignificant) once you remove the impositions of the observer.

What we forget is that the sum of all thought that's influenced our respective cultures thus far has been limited to a single species, over the course of a (cosmically, or biologically) short time.


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magilum wrote: There's no

magilum wrote:

 There's no indication that there is an overarching mentality which pervades the cosmos,

Do you mean that there are no indications that mind is not a special property exclusively characteristic of complex biological organisms? Actually, there are plenty indications of it, you just have to remove some of the assumptions you look at this with.

For example, one makes the assumption that the anatomical structure of a brain possessed organism is prerequisite to mind, but there is a hidden cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in that assumption that is rarely (well never, really) contested. We don't know that biological anatomy causes mind, it may be simply that our experience of mind-like real phenomena is shaped by biological anatomy, that is, the brain doesn't create mind - it is a way of using it, and mind not unlike physical matter, is composed of smaller atoms which directly share it's properties.

When you remove this assumption it follows that this condition of special-ness, which we perceive concerning our mind, is nothing more than the product of our physical configuration, the mind atoms of us express through sensory organisms and animate limbs, therefore they must necessarily have a distinct character compared to 'mind' atoms expressed through a heap of sand and the distinct character is simply physical.

So you may say it is absurd to suppose that tiny pieces of glass possess any kind of mentality, no matter how rudimentary, yet there is no basis on which to say that it is absurd beyond the assumption that they do not physically do anything which betrays the presence of mind in terms which we can cursorily relate to our physical anatomy. This is not enough. We can't just presuppose a basis for human vanity and use it to infer the nature of everything.

The fact is that they exist, as it has come to our attention that existence is conjoined to measurement, they, therefore, measure, and this is easily half of the requirements for atoms of 'mentality' fulfilled.

 

Magilum wrote:

nor that the minds we're familiar with here on our own planet are, by some undiscovered means, connected.

There are rather strong indications, in physical science, that individuation is wholly arbitrary. It's real, of course, but arbitrary. You need go no further than some of the simplest components of atomic theory in the Bohr model to see how arbitrary it is. There simply is no fundamental outer limit of anything.

We explain molecular individuation using the Pauli exclusion principle, the polarisation effect of electron states in a cloud of probable states, if these electrons can be said to have a real objective polarisation then individuation is a deterministic function of Pauli Exclusion, chances are, however, that they do not. That is, in other words, you must redefine your finger as a finger at every instance of existence or it will electromagnetically become part of your keyboard, if you must necessarily do this then a grain of sand must necessarily do this and thus Matter must necessarily be self aware in a world without objective realism. In the universe where neither matter=awareness nor objective realism, we cannot exist. If we lose objective realism, we must assume in turn that matter is self aware. If matter is self aware then the conglomerate body of all minds is one mind individuated.

 

Magilum wrote:

What we forget is that the sum of all thought that's influenced our respective cultures thus far has been limited to a single species, over the course of a (cosmically, or biologically) short time.

This is as much my contention as it is yours, actually. Millions of other species known to us visibly possess mind to which we can relate, and our concept of it is based only on our species, we've anthropomorphised it beyond nature's recognition. Consider an ant, with a body and mind and life totally devoted to shifting and moving things, we realise that the ant makes a summary contribution to the environment which sustains it, without ants (and other bugs), the environment becomes hostile, filthy and uninhabitable to the ants sources of food, without ants, no food for ants, without food for ants, no ants. Does the ant reference this loop in abstract like we do? And if it doesn't, does that mean it has no mind?

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 I'm not really sure what

 I'm not really sure what your first argument is beyond the hope of a future discovery to affirm a panentheistic view.

I don't pretend to know anything about QM, but I think your second argument resembles a composition fallacy. A physicist could use QM to explain a phenomena, but the phenomena has to exist as more than a nebulous possibility. We should be seeing frequent and repeatable examples of telepathy and telekinesis, for instance, before we should be forced to explain them. Saying that there are complexities at a certain level doesn't demonstrate anything about our experience.

My argument wasn't directed at you, though, if that was your impression. It was mainly inspired by Paisley's asinine view of (anthropocentric) emotions as fundamental components to the cosmos.


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Yeah, I had figured that

Yeah, I had figured that this question was probably intended to catch Paisley's eye, but I wasn't quite sure because I posted just last night on this subject in that thread, I thought that maybe your thoughts might be linked to that.

Anyhow, it's always good to get your view on things Magilum, so I'll continue if you don't mind, til Paisley arrives.

magilum wrote:

 I'm not really sure what your first argument is beyond the hope of a future discovery to affirm a panentheistic view.

It took me a few arguments to get round to the point, there. Basically it hinges on what the best alternatives in the list of last pieces of atomic theory will most likely tell us about the world. I've set it up by challenging the assumption that mind is special or distinct in any way, even as a property. The most compelling indication that we should dispose of this first assumption is that we even have it; that we have referred the sum of our hard earned knowledge only within it.

We all hope for a future discovery, for one reason or another, but I won't say I hope for panentheism to be confirmed by future discoveries, I'm just not that invested in it. What I am invested in is our potential to discover and what potential we might deny ourselves by not questioning assumptions when they have lead us to the end of their tether.

 

Magilum wrote:

I don't pretend to know anything about QM, but I think your second argument resembles a composition fallacy.

No it's not, Pauli exclusion definitely applies to your finger and keyboard. It is used in chemistry to determine the energy inhabitation of electron shells and the potential for electromagnetic interaction between substances. Electrons are absolutely the Lego bumps of matter and their polarity is the reason for interaction on the macro level, they exist as waves of probability and they are the outer extremity of any macro material object. Yes, on our scale reality is fuzzy at the edges. That it does not, generally speaking, act fuzzy at the edges was the source of some confusion before Pauli advanced the concept of spin numbers.

 

Magilum wrote:

A physicist could use QM to explain a phenomena, but the phenomena has to exist as more than a nebulous possibility. We should be seeing frequent and repeatable examples of telepathy and telekinesis, for instance, before we should be forced to explain them. Saying that there are complexities at a certain level doesn't demonstrate anything about our experience.

Just for the record, I'm not advancing a hypothesis of complexity, I'm rebutting hypotheses of complexity.

That quantum information exists in multiple states simultaneously is not a theory it's an empirical observation. The phenomenology of probabilistic fundamental units gives us pause to reconsider whether mind is actually as complex as we imagine, to wit, it looks like having the properties that compose mind is pretty ordinary to an electron. To an electron, it is merely one probable self.

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Eloise wrote:That quantum

Eloise wrote:

That quantum information exists in multiple states simultaneously is not a theory it's an empirical observation. The phenomenology of probabilistic fundamental units gives us pause to reconsider whether mind is actually as complex as we imagine, to wit, it looks like having the properties that compose mind is pretty ordinary to an electron. To an electron, it is merely one probable self.

This might be where a lot of confusion starts. "Information" in the context of quantum mechanics, is really a branch of probability theory (as I'm sure you're aware). To someone who might not be familiar with information theory, the mistake could easily be made that "information" requires mind. Naturally, it's counter-intuitive to state that communication could possibly happen without mind, and information theory is also about communication. But most of what we could describe as information (for instance, the spin of a specific electron) goes unobserved. Not until it's observed does it become information to us, so someone like Paisley could come to the conclusion that our observation is fundamental to the universe, and our mind is fundamental, since our perception of the fundamental parts of the universe is dependent upon mind. It's the most obscene stretch, just to arrive at the tail wagging the dog.

That's why I get so upset about the use of quantum theory as though it's some kind of magical hammer of debate victory. The issue there is basically measurement. Even on the every day common-sense level, measuring something four or five times, you still have a margin of error. That margin of error comes from the same place that information theory comes from: statistics and probability.

To abuse indeterminacy by stating that it has a serious metaphysical side beyond tongue-in-cheek speculation is to distance yourself from serious work on the problem.

Not to imply that's your position, Eloise. But what IS your position? A sort of natural order by supernatural means?

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magilum wrote:My argument

magilum wrote:

My argument wasn't directed at you, though, if that was your impression. It was mainly inspired by Paisley's asinine view of (anthropocentric) emotions as fundamental components to the cosmos.

You mean that "God is love" tripe? I gave up at that point. Having someone accuse me of being irrational and then saying "the universe is love" ... well, their opinion of what rational would be isn't all that important.

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HisWillness wrote:Eloise

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:

That quantum information exists in multiple states simultaneously is not a theory it's an empirical observation. The phenomenology of probabilistic fundamental units gives us pause to reconsider whether mind is actually as complex as we imagine, to wit, it looks like having the properties that compose mind is pretty ordinary to an electron. To an electron, it is merely one probable self.

This might be where a lot of confusion starts. "Information" in the context of quantum mechanics, is really a branch of probability theory (as I'm sure you're aware). To someone who might not be familiar with information theory, the mistake could easily be made that "information" requires mind.

Yes, I know what you mean there, Will, but I try not to let what I write give any cause to confuse information with human observation.

HisWillness wrote:

Naturally, it's counter-intuitive to state that communication could possibly happen without mind, and information theory is also about communication. But most of what we could describe as information (for instance, the spin of a specific electron) goes unobserved. Not until it's observed does it become information to us, so someone like Paisley could come to the conclusion that our observation is fundamental to the universe, and our mind is fundamental, since our perception of the fundamental parts of the universe is dependent upon mind. It's the most obscene stretch, just to arrive at the tail wagging the dog.

The biggest mistake I see with this is that people who would do this, conflate it then with the notion of some hoodoo spirit consciousness situated behind their eyes.  That's not reality, as you've noted, the vast majority of quantum information is not classically observed by anyone or anything.

Rhetorically speaking, most healthy people with five full working senses have a tendency to rely heavily on only one of them and filter out the signals that come from others, so then even in the classical sense, the average person's concept of observation is informed by the barest and most misleading of experience. Any notion of measurement or observation is habitually framed in this veiled anthropical assumption and so equated with what that assumption represents to the person, which is our special 'minds'. Quantum observation is about as alien as aural observation to a person who equates their mind almost entirely with their visual experience, the problem is, there can be a lot of distance between a persons concept of mind and one or more of their classical senses. For example, one can be psychologically affected by white noise, probably not noticing that they are hearing it and attribute the headache, instead, to something they were looking at simply because they have no concept of background aural data being related to the state of their mind.

In the basic lack of understanding that 'mind' is not composed merely of one's conscious egotistical thoughts, we have an easily identifiable and distinct gap between the average anthropical concept of mind, and the reality of it. A gap that almost never fails to be projected into woo woo talk about the measurement problem. It is just my opinion, but I think that most people could better understand how quantum observation works if they stepped out of the box of this false equating of mind with a smaller structure composed within mind.

 

HisWillness wrote:

To abuse indeterminacy by stating that it has a serious metaphysical side beyond tongue-in-cheek speculation is to distance yourself from serious work on the problem.

Not to imply that's your position, Eloise. But what IS your position? A sort of natural order by supernatural means?

I refer to indeterminacy in my post only passingly (ie: "they {electrons} probably do not. {have an objective state of polarisation}), there is some experimental evidence to this statement. And my point in having done so is that objective material ground is an assumption which we need to replace if this sort of result continues.  Statistical material ground is a freakishly messy idea, we can't do science with the new super planet Jupiter-Saturn popping in and out of existence in our equations, there has to be a way for the universe as we have experienced it to be constant in calculation. Assuming an atomic unit of self-measurement is a realistic alternative. It's not a natural order via supernatural means, it's a supra natural order within which natural order has relative constancy.

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magilum
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Eloise wrote:Yeah, I had

Eloise wrote:

Yeah, I had figured that this question was probably intended to catch Paisley's eye, but I wasn't quite sure because I posted just last night on this subject in that thread, I thought that maybe your thoughts might be linked to that.

Anyhow, it's always good to get your view on things Magilum, so I'll continue if you don't mind, til Paisley arrives.

magilum wrote:

 I'm not really sure what your first argument is beyond the hope of a future discovery to affirm a panentheistic view.

It took me a few arguments to get round to the point, there. Basically it hinges on what the best alternatives in the list of last pieces of atomic theory will most likely tell us about the world. I've set it up by challenging the assumption that mind is special or distinct in any way, even as a property. The most compelling indication that we should dispose of this first assumption is that we even have it; that we have referred the sum of our hard earned knowledge only within it.

We all hope for a future discovery, for one reason or another, but I won't say I hope for panentheism to be confirmed by future discoveries, I'm just not that invested in it. What I am invested in is our potential to discover and what potential we might deny ourselves by not questioning assumptions when they have lead us to the end of their tether.

If a mind is a manifestation of deterministic forces in progress, it calls into question just what this dynamic, the mind, is. But, regardless of how it's recognizable, it is recognizable, and I think it would be something of a composition fallacy to see a mentality where it isn't specifically familiar as a mind. Perhaps a mind isn't the exception, but we'd have to broaden our definitions in specific ways for it to be meaningful. There would have to be something distinguishable, something that definitely is without a mentality.

Eloise wrote:
 

Magilum wrote:

I don't pretend to know anything about QM, but I think your second argument resembles a composition fallacy.

No it's not, Pauli exclusion definitely applies to your finger and keyboard. It is used in chemistry to determine the energy inhabitation of electron shells and the potential for electromagnetic interaction between substances. Electrons are absolutely the Lego bumps of matter and their polarity is the reason for interaction on the macro level, they exist as waves of probability and they are the outer extremity of any macro material object. Yes, on our scale reality is fuzzy at the edges. That it does not, generally speaking, act fuzzy at the edges was the source of some confusion before Pauli advanced the concept of spin numbers.

 

I meant the suggested implications would be a composition fallacy.

Eloise wrote:

Magilum wrote:

A physicist could use QM to explain a phenomena, but the phenomena has to exist as more than a nebulous possibility. We should be seeing frequent and repeatable examples of telepathy and telekinesis, for instance, before we should be forced to explain them. Saying that there are complexities at a certain level doesn't demonstrate anything about our experience.

Just for the record, I'm not advancing a hypothesis of complexity, I'm rebutting hypotheses of complexity.

That quantum information exists in multiple states simultaneously is not a theory it's an empirical observation. The phenomenology of probabilistic fundamental units gives us pause to reconsider whether mind is actually as complex as we imagine, to wit, it looks like having the properties that compose mind is pretty ordinary to an electron. To an electron, it is merely one probable self.

None of which contradicts my original point; it may actually advance it.


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Sorry for being short about

Sorry for being short about this but I'm on borrowed time right now, as I have important tasks to complete and I can't neglect for long. I just quickly wanted to reply to your correction in my understanding, I'll post something more substantial soon.

 

magilum wrote:

There would have to be something distinguishable, something that definitely is without a mentality.

But we have done that, and suffice it to say we haven't made much progress in that specific area since. This is possibly because no such thing exists.

 

Magilum wrote:
 

 

I meant the suggested implications would be a composition fallacy.

Ahh, yeah OK, no the implications are in the realm of extreme possibility, the composition is normal, I'm just talking from the tails of its distribution so to speak- we need explanations why we do not appear to be as reactive as some evidence suggests we should be.

Magilum wrote:

A physicist could use QM to explain a phenomena, but the phenomena has to exist as more than a nebulous possibility. We should be seeing frequent and repeatable examples of telepathy and telekinesis, for instance, before we should be forced to explain them. Saying that there are complexities at a certain level doesn't demonstrate anything about our experience.

Eloise wrote:

Just for the record, I'm not advancing a hypothesis of complexity, I'm rebutting hypotheses of complexity.

That quantum information exists in multiple states simultaneously is not a theory it's an empirical observation. The phenomenology of probabilistic fundamental units gives us pause to reconsider whether mind is actually as complex as we imagine, to wit, it looks like having the properties that compose mind is pretty ordinary to an electron. To an electron, it is merely one probable self.

None of which contradicts my original point; it may actually advance it.

I can see how it does, this is probably because we are both reaching for the same position and it is only the implications which we see differently. But both of us can only augment our positions on implication with particular bias to certain logical systems. I will admit I happen to believe that the systems I am biasing have more explanatory power. But that would take a great deal more explaining and I have to go. For now, I simply concede you are right on this point.

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I'm not really understanding

I'm not really understanding your response; either because you're using terms I'm unfamiliar with, or I'm unwilling to accept similar initial assumptions.


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magilum wrote:I'm not really

magilum wrote:

I'm not really understanding your response; either because you're using terms I'm unfamiliar with, or I'm unwilling to accept similar initial assumptions.

Okay, Sorry Magilum, I was rushed. I have a little time spare now so I'll go over it again in better detail.

magilum wrote:

There would have to be something distinguishable, something that definitely is without a mentality.

I don't think I can state my response to this any more clearly, but I'll try. We have distinguished mentality, originally we excepted everything but human intellect, and that became our basis for comparison. From that basis we have detected responses which physically match the human behaviour we ascribed to intellect in all biological organisms down to plants.  Yes, plants respond to stimuli in ways we would have only expected to be able to attribute to something with intellect. The likeness can only be noted in careful time-lapsed experiments, it's not an ordinary observation that suggests plant life possess some form of recognisable mentality; one might say that plant life thinks very slowly compared to human life, but this would be quite obviously opposed to It does not think at all.

The Dodder Plant (this Blog cites it's sources at the footer)

Ultimately it may be that there is no such thing as not mind-like. It is a possibility which we can justifiably consider.

 

Magilum wrote: 

I meant the suggested implications would be a composition fallacy.

 

I'm presuming by implications you mean what I said about your finger reacting electromagnetically with your keyboard. Is that right?

If so, I admit this is an extreme example, but the point ultimately is that if the electron polarities of object surfaces are not determined by some objective law of the universe, then we get left with no hypothesis as to how we actually can exist. At the moment we are still assuming an objective universe exists, of course, but we have also begun to violate this assumption at the quantum level. It would appear as though, eventually, we will face the need to come up with a better assumption to replace it.

 

Magilum wrote:

A physicist could use QM to explain a phenomena, but the phenomena has to exist as more than a nebulous possibility. We should be seeing frequent and repeatable examples of telepathy and telekinesis, for instance, before we should be forced to explain them. Saying that there are complexities at a certain level doesn't demonstrate anything about our experience.

Eloise wrote:

Just for the record, I'm not advancing a hypothesis of complexity, I'm rebutting hypotheses of complexity.

That quantum information exists in multiple states simultaneously is not a theory it's an empirical observation. The phenomenology of probabilistic fundamental units gives us pause to reconsider whether mind is actually as complex as we imagine, to wit, it looks like having the properties that compose mind is pretty ordinary to an electron. To an electron, it is merely one probable self.

None of which contradicts my original point; it may actually advance it.

 

Because we are both arguing for monism, no doubt. Probably nothing I say will contradict your point, most likely I will only advance the same basis in a slightly different direction relying on different models to explain circumstances along the way. I am thinking you would probably draw on evolutionary theory a lot more than me, which would bring evolution's assumptions of time contiguity, independent space and classical locality into your explanation. I avoid these because in my opinion they have lost a lot of weight in explaining reality to us - even though sciences outside of physics and mathematics still frequently rely on them.  Not that I would ignore evolution, I would just be fitting it to a different background picture (there is no contradiction between quantum and evolution, it just offers a slightly different worldview), but my foundational assumptions would be of a quantum universe rather than a classical one, evolutionary theory that relies on a classical universe would not inform my explanation as it would yours.

Because of this gap we'd see very different implications from hypothesising simple mind. Time is always an easy one to demonstrate so I'll use that - the implications you see would be bounded in time, this is necessary to the model that has explained those implications. On the other hand, I don't see implications bounded in time because I do not assume, nor can I, that time bounds physical phenomenon. Time is relata, the idea that time constrains cause-effect events to occur is cum hoc and can't be implied here.

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Eloise wrote:. . .I can see

Eloise wrote:

. . .

I can see how it does, this is probably because we are both reaching for the same position and it is only the implications which we see differently. But both of us can only augment our positions on implication with particular bias to certain logical systems. I will admit I happen to believe that the systems I am biasing have more explanatory power. But that would take a great deal more explaining and I have to go. For now, I simply concede you are right on this point.

It sounds (from my brief perusal of the gob of text here) like you might be advancing some particular interpretation.


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Eloise wrote:It's not a

Eloise wrote:

It's not a natural order via supernatural means, it's a supra natural order within which natural order has relative constancy.

Is this where we find philisophical panentheism? In an underlying order?

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Eloise wrote:Ultimately it

Eloise wrote:

Ultimately it may be that there is no such thing as not mind-like. It is a possibility which we can justifiably consider.

It would make sense if we considered the universe "mind-like", considering we're made of universe, and we have a mind. I'm not sure we could separate ourselves from the universe enough to consider it to be not mind-like.

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HisWillness wrote:Eloise

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:

It's not a natural order via supernatural means, it's a supra natural order within which natural order has relative constancy.

Is this where we find philisophical panentheism? In an underlying order?

Um, yes and no. No if you're thinking I mean to establish that an intrinsic order exists, point to it and say "God did that. The End". But otherwise yes, that is my claim, that an "I am in the father and the father in me" is detectable in an underlying order to the universe. 

PS. I didn't like making that claim in such a bare way, establishing it could be a long process.

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inspectormustard

inspectormustard wrote:

Eloise wrote:

. . .

I can see how it does, this is probably because we are both reaching for the same position and it is only the implications which we see differently. But both of us can only augment our positions on implication with particular bias to certain logical systems. I will admit I happen to believe that the systems I am biasing have more explanatory power. But that would take a great deal more explaining and I have to go. For now, I simply concede you are right on this point.

It sounds (from my brief perusal of the gob of text here) like you might be advancing some particular interpretation.

Yes, that is right, but it is not all I that go on.

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HisWillness wrote:Eloise

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:

Ultimately it may be that there is no such thing as not mind-like. It is a possibility which we can justifiably consider.

It would make sense if we considered the universe "mind-like", considering we're made of universe, and we have a mind.

I agree with this, it forms part of the philosophy.

HisWillness wrote:

I'm not sure we could separate ourselves from the universe enough to consider it to be not mind-like.

No, we probably can't, and there's good and bad in that. A best hypothesis of mind will have to render this issue neutral, I think.

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Eloise wrote:Um, yes and no.

Eloise wrote:

Um, yes and no. No if you're thinking I mean to establish that an intrinsic order exists, point to it and say "God did that. The End". But otherwise yes, that is my claim, that an "I am in the father and the father in me" is detectable in an underlying order to the universe. 

PS. I didn't like making that claim in such a bare way, establishing it could be a long process.

That's okay, I've just been unsure exactly where you stand. I don't think it's even necessary to get too heavy with proofs of things - your version of the universe is interesting.

For instance, when you say "detectable", what do you mean?

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Eloise wrote:HisWillness

Eloise wrote:

HisWillness wrote:

It would make sense if we considered the universe "mind-like", considering we're made of universe, and we have a mind.

I agree with this, it forms part of the philosophy.

Okay, now I see where you would think that magilum and I would approach this from a different angle (you mentioned evolution before). Not that I can speak for madge, but from an evolutionary standpoint, a creature's adaptation over generations is a kind of confirmation of the physical limitations of its environment. That is, the mind tunes to the universe. So to me, the fact that we describe the universe in terms of mind is circular. But I'm not clear on how your philosophy handles that.

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HisWillness wrote:Eloise

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:

Um, yes and no. No if you're thinking I mean to establish that an intrinsic order exists, point to it and say "God did that. The End". But otherwise yes, that is my claim, that an "I am in the father and the father in me" is detectable in an underlying order to the universe. 

PS. I didn't like making that claim in such a bare way, establishing it could be a long process.

That's okay, I've just been unsure exactly where you stand. I don't think it's even necessary to get too heavy with proofs of things - your version of the universe is interesting.

For instance, when you say "detectable", what do you mean?

By detectable I mean that you can see it, of course. I'm not using the term too loosely here, I mean that it is not invisible, it is not excepted from empirical proof.

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HisWillness wrote:Eloise

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:

HisWillness wrote:

It would make sense if we considered the universe "mind-like", considering we're made of universe, and we have a mind.

I agree with this, it forms part of the philosophy.

Okay, now I see where you would think that magilum and I would approach this from a different angle (you mentioned evolution before). Not that I can speak for madge, but from an evolutionary standpoint, a creature's adaptation over generations is a kind of confirmation of the physical limitations of its environment. That is, the mind tunes to the universe. So to me, the fact that we describe the universe in terms of mind is circular. But I'm not clear on how your philosophy handles that.

Yes, and I'd rather make it clear than jump to claims, naturally. The fact that we have minds and thus must conceptualise the universe in terms of mind is circular, but alternately we must describe mind in terms of the universe and the theory shouldn't have to fight with any of the evidence, wherein, not only are we running out of distinctions between intellect and the ground of intellect, we have major physical theories which reject events bounded in time. This does not mean that evolution is suddenly no longer bounded in generations, it means generations bounded in time is an assumption which has much less weight. 

{Aside: You can drop that assumption and the theory still works, time only dangles on the outside of generations anyway, so it's not really necessary to anything but the implications you're left with { Or Drop independent space it strengthens evolutionary theory, but it should also make you rethink adaptation.} }

If intellect is of the universe (and it is unless we claim dualism which goes nowhere) then it is not bounded by time, space or locality, the ground of intellect cannot be separated from intellect by an independent agency. This takes away all the constraints that would force the notion of a mind-like universe to be circular. It is now a direct, justified assumption, intellect is only separated from its fundamental unit, by its own manifestations.

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Eloise wrote:[...] we have

Eloise wrote:

[...] we have major physical theories which reject events bounded in time.

This idea of "bounded in time" is, I think, new to me. Can you give me an example of an event bounded in time that is rejected by a major physical theory?

Eloise wrote:
[...] time only dangles on the outside of generations anyway, so it's not really necessary to anything but the implications you're left with [...]

At this point, I realize that my bias is toward a mathematical representation of time. So I'm confused by time "dangling on the outside of generations". I'm having a hard time figuring out what that could mean.

Eloise wrote:
If intellect is of the universe (and it is unless we claim dualism which goes nowhere) then it is not bounded by time, space or locality, the ground of intellect cannot be separated from intellect by an independent agency.

I don't see how it follows that if intellect is of the universe, then it is not bounded by time, etc. Are you suggesting that the mechanisms of the intellect are not time-dependent? I know I must be missing something here.

As for intellect being separated from an independent agency, there's certainly evidence that humanity operates as a hive, just as much as there is evidence that we're "individuals". (I put that in quotes because the idea of one of us attempting to survive entirely alone is ridiculous.) Or even that the entirety of life on the planet display such similar patterns of behaviour that our "intellect" is a very specific refining of those behaviours. But there are inanimate objects - are you suggesting that they're the least "intellectual" of matter? Or does their potential to express what I think you mean by the universal intellect make them just as full of intellect as any person?

Obviously if I'm way off base, let me know. These ideas are pretty novel to me.

PS - love the "pouting blue-shirt wearing closet atheist" avatar.

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HisWillness wrote:Eloise

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:

[...] we have major physical theories which reject events bounded in time.

This idea of "bounded in time" is, I think, new to me. Can you give me an example of an event bounded in time that is rejected by a major physical theory?

Okay, I can answer this. The first thing to note is that I am assuming a quantum universe initially. So that means I am working bottom up from the smallest known elements of existence and using them to describe the universe.

If I were to presuppose the classical description of the universe then my initial assumption includes what is agreed "anthropically" as being ordinarily perceptible time. I would describe ordinarily perceptible time as the asymmetrical distribution of quantum ensembles approximated by entropic asymmetry. But one can just call it an independent passage of time moving forward from past to future.

There is a more fundamental classical time assumption than that which is the time-space continuum. The Time-Space continuum is the manifold upon which a universe sits. Limited interaction is allowed for between the topology of time-space and the events of the universe.  

What I am assuming is in contrast to both of these.

By assuming a quantum universe I have taken the road whereupon I cannot presuppose that the asymmetry of our ordinary perception of time is necessary or explained. Instead, I have given myself to explaining it or finding it necessary by deduction.

The second thing to note is that I've actually made an error of communication in what I said in my last post. It should not read - major physical theories which reject events bounded in time. I meant something more along the lines of - major physical theories which reject that events are bounded by time.

That is: Relativistic theory demonstrates a limited interaction between the time-space manifold and events within it thus those events are not bounded by time, they can push it around, so to speak. And: Quantum theory demonstrates an event-field interaction that produces time, thus quantum events have even more play over time.

In neither case are events bounded by some independent existence of time.

Is that helpful?

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:
[...] time only dangles on the outside of generations anyway, so it's not really necessary to anything but the implications you're left with [...]

At this point, I realize that my bias is toward a mathematical representation of time. So I'm confused by time "dangling on the outside of generations". I'm having a hard time figuring out what that could mean.

Generations have a representation which is independent of time, morphology. You don't need to wrap time around the morphologies of generations for them to have a coherent representation. We see generations, we assume classical time, not the other way round, and such an assumption of time is just extraneous matter (not to mention failed as a hypothesis).

So, I say, evolution appears bounded in generations, but generations are not bounded in time.

 

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:
If intellect is of the universe (and it is unless we claim dualism which goes nowhere) then it is not bounded by time, space or locality, the ground of intellect cannot be separated from intellect by an independent agency.

I don't see how it follows that if intellect is of the universe, then it is not bounded by time, etc. Are you suggesting that the mechanisms of the intellect are not time-dependent? I know I must be missing something here.

Assuming intellect is of the universe is to assume it is the manifestation of a physical event. If I assume a quantum universe, then, yes, the mechanism of intellect is not bound in time because the mechanism is the ensemble of quantum physical events, this mechanism bounds time asymmetry, it is not in any way, evidently, bound by time asymmetry (nor the appearance of space nor locality)

 

HisWillness wrote:

As for intellect being separated from an independent agency, there's certainly evidence that humanity operates as a hive, just as much as there is evidence that we're "individuals". (I put that in quotes because the idea of one of us attempting to survive entirely alone is ridiculous.) Or even that the entirety of life on the planet display such similar patterns of behaviour that our "intellect" is a very specific refining of those behaviours.

Because I reject the complexity theory, I would refer to the subject of your last sentence, here, as a specific ordering of the ensemble that produces a distinct time-information interaction.

HisWillness wrote:

But there are inanimate objects - are you suggesting that they're the least "intellectual" of matter? Or does their potential to express what I think you mean by the universal intellect make them just as full of intellect as any person?

The latter. Which is a large claim, I realise.

HisWillness wrote:

Obviously if I'm way off base, let me know. These ideas are pretty novel to me.

No, everything you've asked is relevant.

HisWillness wrote:

PS - love the "pouting blue-shirt wearing closet atheist" avatar.

Thanks Sticking out tongue I thought it was time for an update, my old avvie was boring the hell out of me, and when I came across that pic I couldn't resist it.

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Eloise wrote:By assuming a

Eloise wrote:
By assuming a quantum universe I have taken the road whereupon I cannot presuppose that the asymmetry of our ordinary perception of time is necessary or explained. Instead, I have given myself to explaining it or finding it necessary by deduction.

If I understand this paragraph correctly, you mean to find the asymmetry of time (that it "goes forward"?) necessary by deduction. Here's my mathematical bias again, but I think that convention is something like all the other dimensions. So, for instance, you wouldn't say that a piece of paper is -10cm by -20cm, you just say it's 10cm by 20cm. Time being the fourth dimension, we have the convention of expressing it in positive terms.

Eloise wrote:
That is: Relativistic theory demonstrates a limited interaction between the time-space manifold and events within it thus those events are not bounded by time, they can push it around, so to speak.

I've never heard relativity put this way before. In my (admittedly limited) experience, events within four-dimensional space are part of that space, and time is just a dimension within that framework of description. So I'm not sure how events can not be bounded by time unless they're instantaneous, moving along no dimension, which I would characterize as a one-dimentional point.

Eloise wrote:
And: Quantum theory demonstrates an event-field interaction that produces time, thus quantum events have even more play over time.

I'm not sure where you could find a quantum event that produces time. From what I understand, there are events that appear instantaneous (like the "quantum leap" ) but are actually modeled as effective nonlocality, whereby a particle pair creates a situation that appears to be instantaneous movement along a path because of an opposite charge (say with a positron and electron) that annihilate one another. But actually "producing time" is a new one to me.

Eloise wrote:
Generations have a representation which is independent of time, morphology. You don't need to wrap time around the morphologies of generations for them to have a coherent representation. We see generations, we assume classical time, not the other way round, and such an assumption of time is just extraneous matter (not to mention failed as a hypothesis).

So, I say, evolution appears bounded in generations, but generations are not bounded in time.

Certainly a morphology is a snapshot, and thus time is irrelevant to its representation, but that's the nature of a snapshot - it's the freezing of the fourth dimension. In the context of "generations", there's little point in discussing them outside of a measurement of time, considering their description implies time. Rabbits do not simply appear, they have parents. Despite the newborn rabbit's new 100-or-so mutations in its genetic code (most of which affect inactive DNA), we still content ourselves with describing this rabbit with the same characteristics of its parents, most or all of which it will still have.

If you mean that several morphologies exist at one time of the same species, that's certainly true, but there you have one of the simple problems of describing species.

Eloise wrote:
Assuming intellect is of the universe is to assume it is the manifestation of a physical event. If I assume a quantum universe, then, yes, the mechanism of intellect is not bound in time because the mechanism is the ensemble of quantum physical events, this mechanism bounds time asymmetry, it is not in any way, evidently, bound by time asymmetry (nor the appearance of space nor locality)

You'll have to show me what you mean by quantum events not being bounded by time, since nothing I've seen suggests that.

Eloise wrote:

HisWillness wrote:

But there are inanimate objects - are you suggesting that they're the least "intellectual" of matter? Or does their potential to express what I think you mean by the universal intellect make them just as full of intellect as any person?

The latter. Which is a large claim, I realise.

Well it's an interesting claim, but it wouldn't be a stretch by way of most abiogenic hypotheses. By that definition of "intellect", though, you'd be saying "anything that interacts with nature" which is circular if everything is in nature.

The chemicals that made up pre-life somehow became configured so as to continue to replicate in a similar form, exhibiting simply a different kind of chemical bias than that of inanimate objects. If we skip a couple of billion years to the part where we define the word "intellect", it makes sense that we'd describe our capacity in terms of our differences with the inanimate configuration of matter, but inanimate matter would naturally have the capacity to create intellect given our original configuration. But there again we would have the problem that expressing "intellect" would be describing the capacity that we have, and that inanimate matter could potentially have. Ultimately we wouldn't be saying anything that isn't obvious, given an abiogenesis.

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HisWillness wrote:Eloise

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:
By assuming a quantum universe I have taken the road whereupon I cannot presuppose that the asymmetry of our ordinary perception of time is necessary or explained. Instead, I have given myself to explaining it or finding it necessary by deduction.

If I understand this paragraph correctly, you mean to find the asymmetry of time (that it "goes forward"?) necessary by deduction.

No, not that I mean to find it necessary, if I find it necessary to a quantum universe then all very well, otherwise I have required myself to find explanation for the observation of forward moving time within the universe.

HisWillness wrote:

Here's my mathematical bias again, but I think that convention is something like all the other dimensions. So, for instance, you wouldn't say that a piece of paper is -10cm by -20cm, you just say it's 10cm by 20cm. Time being the fourth dimension,

A single dimension of time is axiomatic. I am not assuming it, no. I assume as many degrees of freedom as the course of the consideration dictates, but I do not limit it a priori to a single dimension of time. As such I am given to explaining why a single dimension of time is what accords with empirical observation.

HisWillness wrote:

..we have the convention of expressing it in positive terms.

This is, generally speaking, a convention of Euclidean axioms, which I have not assumed. I am supposing the use of a Constructive Quantum Field theory to derive the analogue of Euclidean space from schotastic vectors. It's not an outrageous proposition, but it is fairly uncommon.

 

HsWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:
That is: Relativistic theory demonstrates a limited interaction between the time-space manifold and events within it thus those events are not bounded by time, they can push it around, so to speak.

I've never heard relativity put this way before.

The most well known version of this description is 'Time is relative to the observer'. Velocity and Mass distort time, given enough of either, one could potentially slow time to a halt on an infinite gradient.

HisWillness wrote:

In my (admittedly limited) experience, events within four-dimensional space are part of that space, and time is just a dimension within that framework of description.

That is a good description.

In this sense the bound of time is mitigated in terms of relativity. The simplest example is the time rate difference between the space on the surface of the earth and the space in orbit of the earth. The mass of the earth influences the gradient of the manifold giving the earth a somewhat unique rate of time. So the earth is an example of an event which pushes time around, the mass of the earth gives its local time a unique characteristic rate and time 'bounds' the event of the earth in only a limited fashion. However, this is still not my assumption.

HisWillness wrote:

So I'm not sure how events can not be bounded by time unless they're instantaneous, moving along no dimension, which I would characterize as a one-dimentional point.

This is why we have no bound in time from the assumption of a quantum universe, because we have just such events in a quantum universe. Where you are supposing a bit, at the one dimensional point, I am supposing a qubit prior to that. The qubit represents a phase space of states in superposition. I must collapse this 'bloch sphere' into a point relative to its initial and final conditions in order to describe the bit which is the presupposition of a classical universe.

To collapse the qubit into a bit I am given to describing a mechanism. It is from satisfying this "collapse" with a mechanism that one can derive an atomic unit of mentality.

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:
And: Quantum theory demonstrates an event-field interaction that produces time, thus quantum events have even more play over time.

I'm not sure where you could find a quantum event that produces time. From what I understand, there are events that appear instantaneous (like the "quantum leap" ) but are actually modeled as effective nonlocality, whereby a particle pair creates a situation that appears to be instantaneous movement along a path because of an opposite charge (say with a positron and electron) that annihilate one another. But actually "producing time" is a new one to me.

Quantum events 'producing time' is implied by the 'collapse' from superposition to determinate state, but in any case I am sure you have heard of a quantum event that produced time before, see Big Bang theory.

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:
Generations have a representation which is independent of time, morphology. You don't need to wrap time around the morphologies of generations for them to have a coherent representation. We see generations, we assume classical time, not the other way round, and such an assumption of time is just extraneous matter (not to mention failed as a hypothesis).

So, I say, evolution appears bounded in generations, but generations are not bounded in time.

Certainly a morphology is a snapshot, and thus time is irrelevant to its representation, but that's the nature of a snapshot - it's the freezing of the fourth dimension. In the context of "generations", there's little point in discussing them outside of a measurement of time, considering their description implies time.

Yes their description implies time, but the general inference is an inaccurate description of time and there's the rub.

For clarity I am not proposing that we discuss generations outside of a measurement of time, only that we do not assume the implied arrow of time a priori to the discussion. As such, we would not consider a generational snapshot as a freeze-frame of a continuous dimension of time, but as a quantum of morphology. Time could then be discussed in terms of how it interacts with the quanta of morphology.

HisWillness wrote:

Rabbits do not simply appear, they have parents. Despite the newborn rabbit's new 100-or-so mutations in its genetic code (most of which affect inactive DNA), we still content ourselves with describing this rabbit with the same characteristics of its parents, most or all of which it will still have.

The smallest unit of a rabbit remains a rabbit, but I don't think we can say for sure that they don't just appear, any more than we can say they are formed over time. Of course we can observe what appears to be the formation of a rabbit from the genes of it's parents over time, but we have no cause to take for granted that we are proving anything in regards to a description of time by having done so. The external passage of time here is an a priori assumption, and one that doesn't hold much water as of late, in any case.

Now we can say that the rabbit generations are formed over minute fluctuations in morphology. An we can say that it appears fluctuations in morphology of rabbit generations are separated into homeomorphic fields of action, and that an ensemble of these fields of action constructs a generational sequence over a degree of freedom which we can call time. In which case time can not be constrained to a single dimension, it is only constrained to the homeomorphisms. That is to say, a rabbit's tail can assume a longer length or a shorter length, both events are equivalent conditions for the existence of generational time. On the other hand a rabbit cannot suddenly grow gills given generational time because the homeomorphism condition is not satisfied on this scale.

What this basically boils down to is time as a probabilistic degree of freedom within the 'rules' of a geometric pattern. You may have heard of a similar idea as this, known as the 'Fractal' Universe.

P.S. I have realised in this paragraph that I may have cut some corners of introduction, so here's an excellent book on the subject of category modelling.

HisWillness wrote:

But there are inanimate objects - are you suggesting that they're the least "intellectual" of matter? Or does their potential to express what I think you mean by the universal intellect make them just as full of intellect as any person?

Eloise wrote:

The latter. Which is a large claim, I realise.

Well it's an interesting claim, but it wouldn't be a stretch by way of most abiogenic hypotheses. By that definition of "intellect", though, you'd be saying "anything that interacts with nature" which is circular if everything is in nature.

I don't require the assumption that leads to that circularity. I do not require intellect to interact with nature. Intellect is, itself, an interaction of nature.

 

HisWillness wrote:

The chemicals that made up pre-life somehow became configured so as to continue to replicate in a similar form, exhibiting simply a different kind of chemical bias than that of inanimate objects. If we skip a couple of billion years to the part where we define the word "intellect", it makes sense that we'd describe our capacity in terms of our differences with the inanimate configuration of matter, but inanimate matter would naturally have the capacity to create intellect given our original configuration. But there again we would have the problem that expressing "intellect" would be describing the capacity that we have, and that inanimate matter could potentially have. Ultimately we wouldn't be saying anything that isn't obvious, given an abiogenesis.

Note that I am saying a firm no to the question of inanimate matter being a least degree of intellect.  That inanimate matter has the capacity to create intellect is non-sequitur, it is already configured into a state of intellect.

 

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Eloise wrote:This is,

Eloise wrote:

This is, generally speaking, a convention of Euclidean axioms, which I have not assumed. I am supposing the use of a Constructive Quantum Field theory to derive the analogue of Euclidean space from schotastic vectors. It's not an outrageous proposition, but it is fairly uncommon.

Oh, NOW I know what you're talking about. That's some heavy, heavy math. The last thing I read about CQFT was that it had been solved to Minkowski 3-space, but not to 4. It's not an outrageous proposition at all, it's just very difficult math.

HisWillness wrote:
The most well known version of this description is 'Time is relative to the observer'. Velocity and Mass distort time, given enough of either, one could potentially slow time to a halt on an infinite gradient.

But at that point, causality gets a little fuzzy - that's why I was confused when you said one pushes the other around. Provided time is the dependent variable of the function, is I guess what you meant.

Eloise wrote:
This is why we have no bound in time from the assumption of a quantum universe, because we have just such events in a quantum universe. Where you are supposing a bit, at the one dimensional point, I am supposing a qubit prior to that. The qubit represents a phase space of states in superposition. I must collapse this 'bloch sphere' into a point relative to its initial and final conditions in order to describe the bit which is the presupposition of a classical universe.

But nobody would take the idea of a point in Minkowski space as actually being part of the physical universe, whereas the qubit distance is actually considered a modelling of a physical distance. I know it's a distance in a Hilbert space, but at least that's a "space", whereas the point can only be location.

Also, I was wrong before to say "one-dimensional space" - I think I was confusing myself. We were talking about a point in Euclidian or Minkowski space, and I got muddled.

Eloise wrote:
To collapse the qubit into a bit I am given to describing a mechanism. It is from satisfying this "collapse" with a mechanism that one can derive an atomic unit of mentality.

... which presents the whole of the observable world as data (or "information", to stretch it a bit). But how does the gigantic mass of data produce "mentality"? Maybe I'm stuck on that because to me, information doesn't equal mentality.

Eloise wrote:
Quantum events 'producing time' is implied by the 'collapse' from superposition to determinate state, but in any case I am sure you have heard of a quantum event that produced time before, see Big Bang theory.

Well, at the point of quantum gravity, I'd say there are plenty of mysteries to be solved. I suppose you could say time was produced during the big bang, but to say there's a physical collapse from superposition to determinate state ... I'd have to argue that we make that leap. We understand that do have happened because we write it down, or take the measurement in some way. To say that there's a physical collapse there is speculative.

Eloise wrote:
For clarity I am not proposing that we discuss generations outside of a measurement of time, only that we do not assume the implied arrow of time a priori to the discussion. As such, we would not consider a generational snapshot as a freeze-frame of a continuous dimension of time, but as a quantum of morphology. Time could then be discussed in terms of how it interacts with the quanta of morphology.

That wouldn't be a big deal, since biologists kind of approach it that way anyway. It's a bit of a probabilistic model in some parts of evolutionary work, since paleobiologists, for instance, can often confuse which fossil came after which. Obviously it's less formal than in the physical sciences, but reasonable conclusions can be reached based on evidence.

Eloise wrote:
The smallest unit of a rabbit remains a rabbit, but I don't think we can say for sure that they don't just appear, any more than we can say they are formed over time. Of course we can observe what appears to be the formation of a rabbit from the genes of it's parents over time, but we have no cause to take for granted that we are proving anything in regards to a description of time by having done so. The external passage of time here is an a priori assumption, and one that doesn't hold much water as of late, in any case.

But it remains more reasonable to say that rabbits formed over time. As Haldane said, all we'd have to do to disprove evolution is "rabbits in the precambrian". The passage of time in Minkowski space still doesn't make it as "external" to me, so maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean there. If you mean that it's difficult to place fossilized remains in time, it certainly is. But to say that it's equivalent to saying things just popped out of nowhere ... I don't know if I would take that as equally reasonable.

Eloise wrote:
What this basically boils down to is time as a probabilistic degree of freedom within the 'rules' of a geometric pattern. You may have heard of a similar idea as this, known as the 'Fractal' Universe.

So are you still talking about extrapolating from the quantum level to produce a fractal universe? Nothing outlandish about that, I suppose. The physical universe seems to be fairly consistent, and modelling it as a fractal at least intutively make sense.

HisWillness wrote:

I don't require the assumption that leads to that circularity. I do not require intellect to interact with nature. Intellect is, itself, an interaction of nature.

What is nature interacting with? Since I think of nature as being all there is, maybe that's where I'm confused.

Eloise wrote:
Note that I am saying a firm no to the question of inanimate matter being a least degree of intellect.  That inanimate matter has the capacity to create intellect is non-sequitur, it is already configured into a state of intellect.

Okay, so intellect is ... everything already? I'm missing a step here, I know I am. If nature is already intellect, then what people do when they think is ... an indeterminate process because of a fractal extension of quantum indeterminacy?

EDIT: PS - Thanks for introducing me to category theory. It's a strange way of looking at math, but very interesting.

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Hey Will, just a quick note

Hey Will, just a quick note to say I haven't abandoned this discussion, I moved house on the 4th on really short notice and should be back to the forums in a few more days.

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Eloise wrote:Hey Will, just

Eloise wrote:

Hey Will, just a quick note to say I haven't abandoned this discussion

That's good, because I was beginning to believe that I understood what you were talking about! But at least this gives me time to look into category theory.

Good luck with the move!

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I still have a dozen boxes

I still have a dozen boxes to unpack, and my phone isn't connected, whoever lived here before screwed with the television aerial connection so I have virtually no TV reception and I have to wait on cable... donchya just love moving? Anyhow, I thought I'd get back into the swing of things here to raise my mood.

In reply to post #25

Cool, Will. I just want to say first..

HisWillness wrote:


..then what people do when they think is ... an indeterminate process because of a fractal extension of quantum indeterminacy?



Close! That's really close to what I am saying - only you're citing just a little too much indeterminacy, it's more a relative process.


HisWillness wrote:


Oh, NOW I know what you're talking about. That's some heavy, heavy math. The last thing I read about CQFT was that it had been solved to Minkowski 3-space, but not to 4. It's not an outrageous proposition at all, it's just very difficult math.



Yeah, it sure is, so lets just say I am supposing it and skip the rigour. Since we both know solutions exist and are predicted to exist, would you agree that I may assume, say, a Wightman reconstruction to justify the step?

Aside: noting that posting one on a public forum would be akin to doing myself out of a million dollars from Clay Mathematics Institute and probably a Nobel prize.


HisWillness wrote:


Eloise wrote:
The most well known version of this description is 'Time is relative to the observer'. Velocity and Mass distort time, given enough of either, one could potentially slow time to a halt on an infinite gradient.


But at that point, causality gets a little fuzzy - that's why I was confused when you said one pushes the other around. Provided time is the dependent variable of the function, is I guess what you meant.



Ah I see, and I understand, sorry for phrasing it that way. I was trying to emphasise the contrast by inverting the causality, but I do agree with you. Which direction it goes is not a given in general relativity. This is another good reason to strip phenomena to the sub-atomic level and work from interactions rather than causes.


HisWillness wrote:


Eloise wrote:
This is why we have no bound in time from the assumption of a quantum universe, because we have just such events in a quantum universe. Where you are supposing a bit, at the one dimensional point, I am supposing a qubit prior to that. The qubit represents a phase space of states in superposition. I must collapse this 'bloch sphere' into a point relative to its initial and final conditions in order to describe the bit which is the presupposition of a classical universe.


But nobody would take the idea of a point in Minkowski space as actually being part of the physical universe, whereas the qubit distance is actually considered a modelling of a physical distance. I know it's a distance in a Hilbert space, but at least that's a "space", whereas the point can only be location.



We'd better drop the talk about general relativity cause it's getting confusing and I'm not sure what you're referring to here.  Can I assume that you mean to raise the point that a Minkowski equivalence is not sufficiently real so it wouldn't be right to leap from there, and because a more substantively physical field theory doesn't necessarily exist (Yang-Mills gauge being open ended for example) my suppositions are somehat sky castles, would I be assuming correctly?

I'm actually fine with that as we can get around it later.


HisWillness wrote:


Eloise wrote:
To collapse the qubit into a bit I am given to describing a mechanism. It is from satisfying this "collapse" with a mechanism that one can derive an atomic unit of mentality.


... which presents the whole of the observable world as data (or "information", to stretch it a bit). But how does the gigantic mass of data produce "mentality"? Maybe I'm stuck on that because to me, information doesn't equal mentality.



This problem doesn't exist, it's more like 'mentality' that doesn't equal mentality, in a sense you could say this concept of mentality which we might attempt to equate with information is illusion. You simply have the correlation of information and nothing more, mentality as it were, is some remnant of that function at it's fundamental level.

The question is not of information constructing mentality, but rather of a lossy processes forming subclass heirarchies that appear exclusive, and thus mentalistic. 



HisWillness wrote:
To say that there's a physical collapse there is speculative.


Agreed, and I put it in quotes to indicate that I was only using the term "collapse" in a colloquial sense, I don't mean to infer that a physical collapse occurs. Synonymously I might have used 'decoherence' or 'symmetry breaking', all of which would have generally indicated the lossiness in transition between phase space and classical units that I intended to convey in the picture.
 




HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:
The smallest unit of a rabbit remains a rabbit, but I don't think we can say for sure that they don't just appear, any more than we can say they are formed over time. Of course we can observe what appears to be the formation of a rabbit from the genes of it's parents over time, but we have no cause to take for granted that we are proving anything in regards to a description of time by having done so. The external passage of time here is an a priori assumption, and one that doesn't hold much water as of late, in any case.


But it remains more reasonable to say that rabbits formed over time.



I wouldn't say it's more "reasonable" so much as it is a more comfortable assumption. It seems greatly simplified and unconfronting to have a pot of time and throw things in it, rather than to take a pot of things and try to extrapolate time from them, it is empirically justified in the sense that you can put water in a pot of clay easier than you could take clay out of a pot of water. The empirical justification does not, of course, indicate that water must necessary be contained by clay, or that clay cannot be contained in water, it is simply more user friendly to use clay to contain water.


 

HisWillness wrote:


 As Haldane said, all we'd have to do to disprove evolution is "rabbits in the precambrian". The passage of time in Minkowski space still doesn't make it as "external" to me, so maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean there. If you mean that it's difficult to place fossilized remains in time, it certainly is. But to say that it's equivalent to saying things just popped out of nowhere ... I don't know if I would take that as equally reasonable.



What you appear to mean by 'things popping out of nowhere' is a bit loaded. What I am suggesting by it is that Rabbit generations, to continue with the example, do not pop up out of nowhere any more than Quark soup can, just that sans time, they are quark soup.

HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:
What this basically boils down to is time as a probabilistic degree of freedom within the 'rules' of a geometric pattern. You may have heard of a similar idea as this, known as the 'Fractal' Universe.


So are you still talking about extrapolating from the quantum level to produce a fractal universe? Nothing outlandish about that, I suppose. The physical universe seems to be fairly consistent, and modelling it as a fractal at least intutively make sense.



I'm somewhat only referring to the empirical support which the fractal universe model has. I'm inclined to think of it as the right thing to be looking at, the wrong way to be looking at it. The Fractal model also shares the independent time assumption which I prefer not to make.


HisWillness wrote:

Eloise wrote:


I don't require the assumption that leads to that circularity. I do not require intellect to interact with nature. Intellect is, itself, an interaction of nature.



What is nature interacting with? Since I think of nature as being all there is, maybe that's where I'm confused.



Nature is all there is, in that sense nature can't interact until it breaks from what it is somehow. Ifwe say we have a block of data which is all of nature and thus everything, it is clear that if interaction is to occur it must necessarily only occur between individuated sub blocks. Individuated being the key word here. The individuation of these sub blocks is encapsulated in the formal concept of state "selection" in QM. Using classical reasoning you can apply state selection to an non-individuated everything for eternity and never achieve a singular identity, it will always be nature and will not be able to break from being nature. However a quantum statistical tunneling event, in which you may have an abstract object surmount an infinite gradient by having a statistically true value on the other side of the gradient, can achieve this individuation thus by  a quantum statistical distribution of its possible states lying outside of its definition. Once a state outside of the definition is broken to via the tunnelling event, individuated states exist to interact.

Some are tempted by this explanation to jump to the conclusion that the original individuated state is supernatural, "outside of nature", it would seem as though nature in it's completeness stepped outside of itself into a new state of supernature. But it makes no sense to me to do that, if nature is everything, then the new state just adds to the whole and we still have no subblocks and no intrinsic means of interaction. This cannot be right, so suppose it rather that nothing is added to the tunneling object, not even temporarily as in virtual particles or higgs fields but that the quantum leap is, in it's entirety, a net loss of energy from the system.


This makes much more sense (The second law temporarily does not apply here so it is OK). Take the block of data that is nature and everything, it's quantum statistical distribution allows it a definition oustide of itself, and that definition is equal to a data loss. The remaining data considers itself individuated from the lost data. It interacts with the lost data as though with something outside of itself, and within this interaction are intersections which contrast information structures against analogues of varied construction, such is the origin of intellect.
 

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Eloise wrote:donchya just

Eloise wrote:
donchya just love moving?

My phobia of moving is so acute that I own fewer and fewer things every year. I can definitely relate.

Eloise wrote:
HisWillness wrote:
..then what people do when they think is ... an indeterminate process because of a fractal extension of quantum indeterminacy?

Close! That's really close to what I am saying - only you're citing just a little too much indeterminacy, it's more a relative process.

That's a really interesting way of framing things, and I have to say I agree. That is, if you're saying essentially that we're an extension of the way the universe operates already. (I guess that's not saying much, but the way you frame it is still interesting.)

Eloise wrote:
so lets just say I am supposing it and skip the rigour. Since we both know solutions exist and are predicted to exist, would you agree that I may assume, say, a Wightman reconstruction to justify the step?

Fine, but you'll never live it down. Especially with your reservations about the unresolved sections of evolutionary history.

Eloise wrote:
Can I assume that you mean [...] my suppositions are somehat sky castles, would I be assuming correctly?

I'm actually fine with that as we can get around it later.

I was picking on you a bit, it's true. But "sky castles" would be a bit harsh. You're not being all that wacky with your train of thought, it's just unusual (to me, at least).

Eloise wrote:
The question is not of information constructing mentality, but rather of a lossy processes forming subclass heirarchies that appear exclusive, and thus mentalistic.


Here you're hinting that the process merely appears mentalistic. I could see that, since projection is very common. But I'm not sure what you're driving at, here. Why would these natural processes necessarily be lossy? Are we back in communication theory?

Eloise wrote:
I wouldn't say it's more "reasonable" so much as it is a more comfortable assumption. It seems greatly simplified and unconfronting to have a pot of time and throw things in it, rather than to take a pot of things and try to extrapolate time from them, it is empirically justified in the sense that you can put water in a pot of clay easier than you could take clay out of a pot of water. The empirical justification does not, of course, indicate that water must necessary be contained by clay, or that clay cannot be contained in water, it is simply more user friendly to use clay to contain water.

Absolutely. There's no question that there are parts of evolutionary history that are up for debate. Population bottlenecks by disease or natural disaster are good examples of purely random effects that aren't a cut-and-dried process of natural selection. There are definitely sections of time and groups of samples that present nothing but questions to the scientists analyzing them.

However, when so much geological and physically dated material are strung together, to lean towards an evolutionary explanation is quite reasonable. It isn't as much of a jumble as material all thrown together in a clump (or a pot).

I have to pick on you again, since your shrewd misgivings about evolutionary history are equalled only by your allowances to unresolved theoretical physics. One can be afforded its reasonably supposed mathematical future, but you cast a doubting eye where physical evidence is concerned.

Eloise wrote:
Some are tempted by this explanation to jump to the conclusion that the original individuated state is supernatural, "outside of nature", it would seem as though nature in it's completeness stepped outside of itself into a new state of supernature. But it makes no sense to me to do that, if nature is everything, then the new state just adds to the whole and we still have no subblocks and no intrinsic means of interaction. This cannot be right, so suppose it rather that nothing is added to the tunneling object, not even temporarily as in virtual particles or higgs fields but that the quantum leap is, in it's entirety, a net loss of energy from the system.

Where do you see this net energy loss? I follow what you're saying, but I'm not sure where you get the idea that the system can take a net energy loss like that. 

Eloise wrote:
This makes much more sense (The second law temporarily does not apply here so it is OK). Take the block of data that is nature and everything, it's quantum statistical distribution allows it a definition oustide of itself, and that definition is equal to a data loss. The remaining data considers itself individuated from the lost data. It interacts with the lost data as though with something outside of itself, and within this interaction are intersections which contrast information structures against analogues of varied construction, such is the origin of intellect.

Quite the punchline! I love the poetry of the statement, but I still can't see the necessity for the energy (or data) loss that creates individuated packets of natural space. If there were such pieces of lost data, and those created an interaction, wouldn't they be more like the wake to nature's boat (very causally defined) rather than a driving force in the process? Is nature then the transmitter, and extra-nature the receiver? Wouldn't that make all data "lost"? If you're shaking your head right now, I'm probably more confused even than I think I am.

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Hey Will, long time no yak

Hey Will,

long time no yak on this thread, sorry I've been neglecting it, I'm a bit fickle when it comes to interesting discussions and there are often plenty here to choose from. Anyhow, continuing where we left off...

 

HisWillness wrote:

That's a really interesting way of framing things, and I have to say I agree. That is, if you're saying essentially that we're an extension of the way the universe operates already. (I guess that's not saying much, but the way you frame it is still interesting.)

Yeah, that's basically it, well you could even consider it in the form that we (read historical anthropic notion) are a contraction as opposed to extension, as well. This makes an even more relevant point which we will get to eventually.



HisWillness wrote:


Eloise wrote:
The question is not of information constructing mentality, but rather of a lossy processes forming subclass heirarchies that appear exclusive, and thus mentalistic.


Here you're hinting that the process merely appears mentalistic. I could see that, since projection is very common. But I'm not sure what you're driving at, here. Why would these natural processes necessarily be lossy? Are we back in communication theory?

Good catch, Will, but this is not communication theory, yet. What's lost is correlation data, ie computational resources, not 'source' data.

To make this more accessible, I'll approach it from another angle. What level of precision do our 'human' instruments have? We could say that they are pretty coarse instruments in the basic sense, right? This is kind of true, not the essential point, but keep it in mind.

It's somewhat established in the observations of SQUID experiments that Leggett macrorealism is false; that is, macroscopic "objects" are known to have the characteristics of superposition at their centre of mass. So we can infer that it is yet possible that macro-objects are in a visible superposition, and we simply do not see it.

Why do we not see it? Well it has been supposed, as I did above, that our instruments are too crude, that is, through no fault of our own our predetermined physical structure is a clunky instrument. I depart from this proposal somewhat, I think "we" do the computations, but they are waste to our final state, filtered out by the clamber to this mentalistic physicality. 

So what is lost? Well with superposition remaining detectable at the centre of mass the likely answer to that question is given by what is at the edge of mass where the superposition appears to vanish? The answer is Space-time curvature, or gravity. (Quantum Gravity Computer)

 


HisWillness wrote:

However, when so much geological and physically dated material are strung together, to lean towards an evolutionary explanation is quite reasonable. It isn't as much of a jumble as material all thrown together in a clump (or a pot).

Fair point, it's not really a jumble, I know, the point I meant to emphasise was that in using time as the organiser we need not necessarily jump to it doubling as the cause as well. It feels comfortable because time is the organiser of conscious experience, so envisioning a consistent basis for extrapolation sans time is counterintuitive. The 'pot to put things in' contrasted with 'things to put a pot in' was meant to reflect the intuitive nature of time organised data, rather than reflecting on the nature of the data itself. I'm sorry for seeming dismissive of the logic behind useful science in my analogy.

 

HisWillness wrote:

I have to pick on you again, since your shrewd misgivings about evolutionary history are equalled only by your allowances to unresolved theoretical physics. One can be afforded its reasonably supposed mathematical future, but you cast a doubting eye where physical evidence is concerned.

Well really the doubtful eye is only cast over the subjectively comfortable intuitions about the evidence, not the evidence itself. The evidence that our universe is cast in string of time is ultimately subjective and compoundedly so in the hard problem of consciousness.  The evidence of time-like evolution is obviously an accurate depiction of a dependent state of the present, it is the nature of the dependency relation which I am hesitant to prescribe to, not the hard evidence of dependence.

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Track Bump, wouldn't want to

Track Bump, wouldn't want to miss anything, that was great. Bright Will brings out the genius of Eloise. A lesson of the "Oneness".  A new RRS fav of mine, now pasted into a folder for further digesting.  Thanks,    LOL


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Eloise wrote:long time no

Eloise wrote:
long time no yak on this thread, sorry I've been neglecting it, I'm a bit fickle when it comes to interesting discussions and there are often plenty here to choose from.

I'm just glad we're back to the discussion. Onward!

Eloise wrote:
 you could even consider it in the form that we (read historical anthropic notion) are a contraction as opposed to extension, as well. This makes an even more relevant point which we will get to eventually.

A contraction? New and interesting concept! Okay, so we as an anthropic group infesting the earth actually make for a contraction of the universe's information? Here I was thinking of "extension" as a wording for abiogenesis. That is, given abiogenesis probably happened by molecules interacting in ways already available to matter in the universe, then our eventual existence is simply a matter of giving those rules time. Maybe "extension" was a bad choice of word for that.

But I don't get "contraction" - do you mean a kind of summary compression of universal data? I know I'm having trouble with all this - bear with me.

Eloise wrote:
It's somewhat established in the observations of SQUID experiments that Leggett macrorealism is false; that is, macroscopic "objects" are known to have the characteristics of superposition at their centre of mass. So we can infer that it is yet possible that macro-objects are in a visible superposition, and we simply do not see it.

Yeah, that's not much of a jump. If an object's centre of mass can be held as a superposition, and the centre of mass is arbitrary for macroscopic objects (which it is in time), then we witness possible superpositions constantly.

Eloise wrote:
I think "we" do the computations, but they are waste to our final state, filtered out by the clamber to this mentalistic physicality.

We definitely have our limitations - no argument there. But you're talking about us creating such a filter on reality that reality in its fullest form could never reach us; that there's something to our reality forever hidden because certain aspects of reality can't touch other parts of reality. I could see that in the matter/antimatter context, but you'll have to tell me where you're placing this absolute limit on the unknowable.

If you're expressing a kind of fuzzy determinism here, that too is a strong argument considering abiogenesis or Dawkins' selfish gene.

Eloise wrote:
So what is lost? Well with superposition remaining detectable at the centre of mass the likely answer to that question is given by what is at the edge of mass where the superposition appears to vanish? The answer is Space-time curvature, or gravity. (Quantum Gravity Computer)

Yikes. I'm not really sold on quantum gravity just yet. I mean, I understand what kind of tantalizing missing gap it is, but we're a long way off from observation there, and the theory, to me (as explained by a former physics professor) is in very early stages.

Don't get me wrong, I see what you're saying: time in the way we interpret it doesn't necessarily capture the entire essence of reality. It is, however, a vantage point. Any "one true" reality should find at least a decent description regardless of the position of the observer.

But that just points out that any descriptive framework supplies inherent limitations. Are those manufactured limitations then the inevitable result of our own human-macro-object's always-lossy waste-computation? And can we not come to a point of calculating the loss, and thus diminish our computational limits?

Eloise wrote:
I'm sorry for seeming dismissive of the logic behind useful science in my analogy.

You really didn't seem dismissive - I was teasing. The point that time is a big unknown -- especially when piecing together scant historical data -- is well made.

Eloise wrote:
Well really the doubtful eye is only cast over the subjectively comfortable intuitions about the evidence, not the evidence itself. The evidence that our universe is cast in string of time is ultimately subjective and compoundedly so in the hard problem of consciousness.  The evidence of time-like evolution is obviously an accurate depiction of a dependent state of the present, it is the nature of the dependency relation which I am hesitant to prescribe to, not the hard evidence of dependence.

As I said, it's a point well made. That's exactly the point where I believe strongly that the humility of the scientist should kick in. For example, the straight-line-to-present evolutionary model isn't taken very seriously outside of museum tours or elementary school classes. It's fair to say that any evolutionary biologist worth their salt knows there were all sorts of odd happenings along the road of evolution. So there's some healthy doubt there in all sorts of places.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that with our limited capacity to measure for most of our history, who's to say massive time dilations haven't, in fact, occurred? It's a definite possibility.

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HisWillness wrote:Eloise

HisWillness wrote:


Eloise wrote:
you could even consider it in the form that we (read historical anthropic notion) are a contraction as opposed to extension, as well. This makes an even more relevant point which we will get to eventually.


A contraction? New and interesting concept! Okay, so we as an anthropic group infesting the earth actually make for a contraction of the universe's information? Here I was thinking of "extension" as a wording for abiogenesis. That is, given abiogenesis probably happened by molecules interacting in ways already available to matter in the universe, then our eventual existence is simply a matter of giving those rules time. Maybe "extension" was a bad choice of word for that.



No not a bad choice of words at all, we were previously framing this point in the context of fractal extensions so your point was a logical step from that.

HisWillness wrote:


But I don't get "contraction" - do you mean a kind of summary compression of universal data? I know I'm having trouble with all this - bear with me.



egad! you got in in one, again. You're not having trouble with this, Will, believe me.

explaining more below..

HisWillness wrote:


Eloise wrote:
I think "we" do the computations, but they are waste to our final state, filtered out by the clamber to this mentalistic physicality.


We definitely have our limitations - no argument there. But you're talking about us creating such a filter on reality that reality in its fullest form could never reach us;



Important footnote- yes that is reasonably accurate, however, this 'us' is an arbitrary form, that is to say, it might never reach 'us', but yet it probably bombards 'not us'. The defined 'us' and the filter are not technically distinct things. So to say, for example, in theory you could see vastly more causally indeterminate structure, but then, you wouldn't technically be 'you'. And this is hardly any different to just stating the obviously true maxim 'You change and you learn', sure, but I hope that it doesn't get lost in the telling that this demonstrates as I promised earlier 'universal consciousness' doesn't get excepted from the usual standards of proof. It cannot be 'invisible' because it proposes an explanation for quite universally recognisable events, thus it must be capable of prediction re: said events and equally be available to empirical examination.
 


HisWillness wrote:


that there's something to our reality forever hidden because certain aspects of reality can't touch other parts of reality. I could see that in the matter/antimatter context, but you'll have to tell me where you're placing this absolute limit on the unknowable.



I should have been more direct about this, I'm placing a limit on the observer, and the qualification that the observer imposes that limit by it's definition. You could phrase this using Einstein's question "Do you really think the moon is not there when you aren't looking at it?" responded to with, "I think that I am, not the moon when I am looking at it." (Ok, I'd better clarify this in case it takes on too much of a mystical bent for you to see what I mean, the point is to imply a sort of "I'm not there either so the moon can come and go as it pleases" relation exists because of the dependence of my temporal state on the filters which define it, one of which would translate generally to the act of observing the moon.) So I'm saying, I'm not really placing an absolute limit on the unknowable only on the manner in which things are knowable.

HisWillness wrote:


If you're expressing a kind of fuzzy determinism here, that too is a strong argument considering abiogenesis or Dawkins' selfish gene.



Yes, but as I am really just an infrequent tourist of the evolutionary biology and psychology fields I'm unsure of how exactly to connect it to those particular theories for you. I'll do a little reading on them.

HisWillness wrote:


Yikes. I'm not really sold on quantum gravity just yet. I mean, I understand what kind of tantalizing missing gap it is, but we're a long way off from observation there, and the theory, to me (as explained by a former physics professor) is in very early stages.


I agree, gravity as a computational resource is not an entirely speculative proposition, but to leap from there to saying it is 'the' computational resource of consciousness is a bit large without a proper theory of quantum gravity to shed light on it. I don't intend to press the issue but if you're willing to explore the idea the work done on QGC will inform some of it.


HisWillness wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I see what you're saying: time in the way we interpret it doesn't necessarily capture the entire essence of reality. It is, however, a vantage point. Any "one true" reality should find at least a decent description regardless of the position of the observer.


Well this relates back to the frameworks in which we are looking at fuzzy determinism. I will have to familiarise myself with yours before, I think, I can properly clarify for you. However suffice it to say that you can change the rule of the observer to affect change in time and there's nothing new about that, obviously.

HisWillness wrote:
  

But that just points out that any descriptive framework supplies inherent limitations. Are those manufactured limitations then the inevitable result of our own human-macro-object's always-lossy waste-computation?


Yes. But note as I said above, this is a static rendering of the situation which is liable to make predictions about its proclivity to change.

HisWillness wrote:


 And can we not come to a point of calculating the loss, and thus diminish our computational limits?


I imagine we can, actually.

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