On 30 Jul 2014, at 7:51 am, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I can't comment on that, "comp" means whatever Bruno wants it to mean, and >> that changes from day to day. > > Here I respectfully disagree, he seems more or less consistent to me, give or > take the odd ambiguity due to English not being his first language. But I > have to admit that I have yet to grok comp in its entirety.
Even Bruno himself, by his own admission has yet to grok comp in its entirety. Actually, I don't think the statement "to grok comp in its entirety" makes a lot of sense since with something like this, which has at its heart Gödelian notions of incompleteness and "infinities of computations" the possibility of tying the whole thing up in one clever and pretty package seems dubious at best. Comp involves enormous transdisciplinary or multidisciplinary knowledge. This is the incredibly hard part for people like Clark who hate to encounter knowledge fields in which they are out of their depth. John would prefer that things be rather more neat and that it all conform to the "laws of physics" as set out in some undergrad text. Wouldn't we all. Then we could all get back to whatever it was we were doing before we were rudely interrupted by the somewhat unsettling thought that matter is immaterial. Bruno is a polymath, a creative thinker and the explorer of a terrain few are equipped to traverse. He seeks the convergence point of disparate fields of knowledge and applies a special filter over them which allows him to see information and data that no one else sees. This is the very definition of creative perception, something that is not in the mental toolkit of your average science-mind. Bruno has invented tools of perception that produce results that raise eyebrows, yes. I have received the impression that there is enormous simmering jealousy amongst some (not necessarily on this list) concerning this ability he has. Comp is obviously going to mean different things to different people, but then this whole story is about the very notion of what a person is, and whether there in fact exists anything else at all in reality. As Bruno said to me last night when I was complaining about smug little atoms: we can't expect to be doing real science if we put our personal inclinations and preferences ahead of our inquiry. That he went on to say that in fact this is what we always do anyway - presumably, even if we don't actually notice this - strikes me as incredibly perceptive. Our starting point in all these discussions is someone's perception. Not facts. Not reason. Not observation. Not canonical scientific thinking. Someone's perception. Now that is what a person does. They perceive. That's "seeing" in the very broad sense of seeing with the mind, meaning seeing with your values, your memories, your knowledge, your desires, your needs and wants, your preferences and prejudices. All those things we are supposed to be able to put to one side when we do science, hardy ha-ha. No such luck. If we could do that, we wouldn't be real, we wouldn't be persons. K -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
