• In total there are 0 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 0 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 699 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 12:57 am

Why is there something and not nothing?

#131: June - Aug. 2014 (Non-Fiction)
User avatar
Interbane

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 7203
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2004 12:59 am
19
Location: Da U.P.
Has thanked: 1105 times
Been thanked: 2166 times
United States of America

Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

Unread post

David wrote:This is inevitable because the brain can process orders of magnitude greater amounts of information, than the conscious stream can handle. When you have experienced the continuity of mind without thought, there is no real going back.
Our mind does a great deal that is outside conscious thought. I don't follow how that leads to continuity. The background processing is still reliant on the firing of neurons.
David wrote:There is a great security in living in experience rather than belief in general, which is ironic as so much belief is constructed as a form of security. Life is actually beautiful, when the lumps are removed… like custard, and engines that run perfectly, and fast downhill activities, and well written songs, and lounges, and days without dickheads, and pretty much everything. Continuity is an end in itself, as life’s struggle to survive would suggest. I am also fond of logic, so I like a bit of crunch too.. only so many carrots and crisps, till I am ready for something smooth. In martial art, the pinnacle of achievement is being able to deal with the angular difficult heavy and emotionally fractured, with smoothness, lightness, minimum effort, and calm poise. This is why martial arts embraced mediation and working towards the experience of mind many years ago. It provides the perfect context for action. It also provides the perfect context for thinking.
If you're wondering why I haven't replied in a while, I think your philosophy is a healthy one. I disagree with the details, but the end on effect result is better than my own. So who am I to judge?
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
David Rain
Getting Comfortable
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Nov 18, 2014 3:41 am
9
Been thanked: 6 times

Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

Unread post

Our brain, not our mind, does a great deal that is outside of conscious thought, but with the paradigm of the mind as a product of the brain, rather than a discovery of it, nothing I say will really make sense to what are obviously excellent logic circuits. You are obviously capable of the NOT function though. Self reflection is a condition made possible by the NOT function. We worked out that we "were" by working out what we were not. Ants don't seem to have the not function, and in my experience of cows, (dairy in the family) they don't either, hence I don't worry about eating them. I am not sure about dogs, cats and other higher mammals though, they seem capable of separation. The not function is a basic tenet of separation from experience. Mind is found in the experience of NOT. Not this bit, not that bit, not this way and not that. Apparently being and individual is achieved by not being as others. (I deal with a lot of teenagers...ugg) The mind in experience is vulnerable and insecure and seeks to clothe itself. The forces of biology seeking reproductive continuity through social status certainly don't help the mind be relaxed about its naked apparent vacancy of state. Nihilism in its many manifestations is a natural cultural evolution in a culturally diverse community because the arbitrary nature of clothing the mind creates an ambivalence about what constitutes meaning on a social level. Scientific materialism is a profoundly nihilistic force as it only provides material and mechanistic reasons for social cohesion. Being IS more than that. No matter how hard you try to eradicate it, eventually a connected transpersonal sense will emerge, unfortunately it tends to emerge with weird magical beliefs that are created for social gain and control by very clever manipulators.
The core of reflective experience is a condition of NOT, and the loneliness and insecurity of such a situation demands a resolve. Perhaps mind was discovered by this simple logical operation. I am sure you are aware of and or and not operators as the basis of all Turing machines. All that discrete existence in the presence of “not that” computation reveals what is in fact not that. Beside, within, and behind all that is discrete is what is not discrete. The only existence that is not discrete is continuous in an absolute sense. Choice is ontologically impossible without NOT as a function.
NOT leads ultimately to continuity because it leads away from the discrete. When you are ultimately sick of choosing and thinking this and not that, and the situation becomes “not anything”, ambivalence sets in, and with enough generalised ambivalence, a window opens. None of it matters, all that stuff is not ultimately you, and then another window opens. The source of self experience; unformed continuity. Maybe that is an emergent function of computation of the Turing type, maybe it is a valueless value that the “pervasive NOT” that the computation reveals as an answer. I prefer the latter because of my experience, but I am not really saying anything different to a computational argument. The language of collapse is a step towards the real informational reality, and it is best to start with others language in communication if you can, if you want to build a bridge. There is no collapse, there are just wave functions within the universal wave function. Decoherence looks like a classical world, and that is the discrete domain realised as information entangles in spreading waves. It’s an entirely fleeting thing. In my computational argument I just put something like a zero in the calculation to account for the quantity that ISN”T there, like the zero used in mathematical expressions of quantity. I gave the zero the property that my experience of it provides.
My communication is actually meant for people who are a lot less bright than you, simply because that is most people, and tight philosophical arguments alienate them, and achieve nothing. This world needs people to get a sense of continuity with others and their entire physical context, if it is to change its diabolical course. All forms of narcissism, sociopathy, and exploitative criminality are built on a delusion of separateness. This sense of continuity between people and the world can only be built from an experience of continuity.
If the effect of your philosophy is not as good as you would like it to be, you are always free to change it. This however is where belief becomes a stumbling block. If you believe that belief needs to be the foundation of thinking, you are trapped in inescapable circles. Experience is always there prior to assumptions, but when you live with belief between you and the direct experience of life, you cant really be that well informed about what fresh experience is like.
I was born a strange animal with two very distinct sides. This internal division is what I think may have led me to spend so long finding what was at the root of my experience. The prospect of being mistaken in the final interpretation of how continuity and discreteness interact in the creation of the transitory illusion of the discrete doesn’t bother me because being right is not the purpose. The purpose is to use my limited time and resources to hopefully make some sort of positive difference to the isolation of people and the destructive effects of antagonistic beliefs.
Feel free to judge me and my silly book, in fact you should, because in the patterns within the judgments will be a bunch of insights for you about you that only you can find. I have found in some rather severe negative reactions I have had in the past to truly fucked up circumstances that I have upon reflection on the patterns that emerged, learnt a great deal about myself, and thereby managed to cast off hidden shadows. Some seriously ugly shit I can assure you :)
User avatar
Interbane

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 7203
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2004 12:59 am
19
Location: Da U.P.
Has thanked: 1105 times
Been thanked: 2166 times
United States of America

Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

Unread post

Since you don't seem to mind discussing this, I would be more than happy to continue poking at your thoughts.

David Rain wrote:Our brain, not our mind, does a great deal that is outside of conscious thought
But that sentence goes against a vast amount of evidence. From everything we know, the mind supervenes on the brain.
David Rain wrote:You are obviously capable of the NOT function though.
Yes, which requires self-awareness in order to make a comparison of "other" things to ourselves in order to determine what we are not. Self awareness requires a bit more complex circuitry than a cow or a dog. Monkeys have it a little. A lobotomy or electrical stimulation removes it.
David Rain wrote:but when you live with belief between you and the direct experience of life, you cant really be that well informed about what fresh experience is like.
I think that no matter how strongly you may claim otherwise, it's impossible to "directly" experience reality, without some intermediary belief. The context of past experience is where our perceptions of the world are shunted to be decoded in order to make sense of what's going on around us. Tied to this past experience is necessarily belief, and much of it goes unnoticed by our conscious mind as we filter the wheat from the chaff. But I do understand what you're saying. It can be minimized, to an extent. Meditation can get you close, but the lone birdsong still activates associative stores in your mind even if you aren't aware.
I have had in the past to truly fucked up circumstances that I have upon reflection on the patterns that emerged, learnt a great deal about myself, and thereby managed to cast off hidden shadows. Some seriously ugly shit I can assure you
Demons and final demons with many lives? I'm glad you were able to cast them off. Sometimes that means they're lurking deeper and being more sly. A sustainable philosophy for living a healthy wholesome life is the safest ward against demons returning. I'm happy for you.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
User avatar
Movie Nerd
Intelligent
Posts: 560
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:36 am
9
Location: Virginia
Has thanked: 30 times
Been thanked: 178 times

Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

Unread post

Chris OConnor wrote:Why is there something and not nothing?
I'm asking this, having not had a chance yet to read through all the subsequent posts.

When you ask why is there something and not nothing, are you talking about life and the universe in general?
I am just your typical movie nerd, postcard collector and aspiring writer.
David Rain
Getting Comfortable
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Nov 18, 2014 3:41 am
9
Been thanked: 6 times

Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

Unread post

Firstly in response to Movie Nerd, Yes life and the universe in general. There isn’t really something the way something is generally regarded. This moment of discrete physical existence of bits of things is crystalizing and disappearing in the space of a non instant as creation evolves through its set of possibilities as defined in the universes total wave state. There is only information and us. The past is only information that can be determined from the present and is already just possibilities. Hawkings consistent histories (plural) already concedes that a single past is not really tenable. Obviously a single future is ridiculous. Decoherence looks like the quantum ensemble becoming “something” but all that happens is quantum information advances as waves of entanglement. I am presenting to Interbane the notion that the context of all this discrete information interacting is non discrete and so by predicative logic, absolute continuity, and the mind is simply the presence of this absolute context within the computational processes, (which are discrete) in consciousness. Probably worth reading the previous posts to get a handle on what absolute continuity means. Interbane quite reasonably dislikes the notion of mind as a window in consciousness and an absolute all pervasive aspect of the universe, and even worse a condition that is present without space or time and the universe as it appears. Obviously this makes absolute continuity a “mystical” state. Feel free to join the hate of this concept, though Interbane is very reasonable and forgiving in his dislike, as it has qualities that appear as “good” on the human level, even if deluded….
Does the mind supervene the brain? Mind will appear in time anywhere that it is given space in computational structure to appear. Perhaps this is the nut of a paradoxical causal situation. If you give something space to appear, is it resolvable that it was there, and was given space to be present or was created? Mind as absolute continuity can’t have a cause. Cause and effect is a function of time and discrete processes, so if a non discrete presence was there, when you revealed it, how can it be untangled from the idea of being created by the cause and effect machine? This is a conundrum that science can’t tackle because science has a cause and effect paradigm. Headline…”Science discovers uncaused presence!” ..Sub-headline “Physicists can’t agree about how it got there”
The paradigm in science is that it can explain everything. Sure, everything with causes. Philosophy has the advantage over science in this because philosophy is open enough to consider the concept of “uncaused”
Self awareness IS the NOT function. In a highly sophisticated pattern recognition machine, that “NOT” becomes clearer, as it is applied to more and more patterns. Because one “not” is not distinguishable from any other “not” as per the properties of the empty set, and so the terminology of “the” empty set, rather than “an” empty set, there is a single centre of “not” and a single self awareness. Split the computation machine into two and you get two awareness centres, just like in split brain procedure patients.
You can directly experience reality but the “you” part is not a pattern. There are two levels in that direct experience. Patterns and mind. The unlocking of the pattern aspect is why people take LSD, psilocybin and DMT. The mind is the experiencer of patterns. You are right about the past experience building filters and decoders, that’s also why people mess around non euphoric and not fun hallucinogens like DMT. They want to change and grow but it’s very hard to interrupt belief patterns, because a loss of sense in interpretation is a risk to psychological safety. I am not suggesting using hallucinogens, as I don’t think it is necessary. Questions without answers are pretty strong stuff, and can be interrupting enough. People want to grow, but don’t want to lose anything, so change is elusive. Habituation is not just a drug problem, it’s a thought problem also.
Meditation is awesome, and it certainly doesn’t mean believing new things, just getting your awareness less polluted and fragmented. Essentially simpler and closer to absolute continuity, and in my version, just more mind like. Those associations are in your brain, not your mind… Yes I know it’s a distinction you just won’t be having!
I think if science could philosophically cope with the presence of real absolute continuity, it might just get a better idea of where to head to. All the narcissistic possibilities of transhumanism are driven by personal agrandizment, and insecurity, and the social consequences are ugly. We need to have more than just better clothes for the mind.
Back to the collapse silliness, even if it were true, given that all that is crystalized is only present for at most a planck time of 10 to the minus 34 seconds and then is gone and replaced by the next “event” . Real becomes a very ephemeral situation. The crests of spreading waves at best. “Real” does not end with physicality, physicality is just an effect end of what is truly real.
Post Reply

Return to “The Big Questions: Philosophy - Simon Blackburn”