On 28 Aug 2011, at 13:50, benjayk wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Aug 2011, at 23:31, benjayk wrote:
I won't answer to this post in detail, simply because I find it
unsatisfying
to discuss details that are very easy to see for me, yet hardly
communicable.
Honestly, for all intents and purposes I have come to the conclusion
that it
is just totally irrelevant to me whether COMP is true or false,
which
renders the discussion about it's consequences moot. I believe in
the
consequences that I like either way.
It seems to me all theoretical understanding is just a tool for
emotional
understanding anyway.
I think it is a bit dangerous to believe in things we like, just
because we like them. That is call wishful thinking.
I don't think I do this. If this were true I would just deny the
existence
of suffering... Which I don't.
Of course. I did not say you do that error all the time. I suspect you
want to do it on a fundamental matter. I suspect you to be correct on
that, but wrong in believing this preclude a simple reasonnable, still
a bit mysterious, possible origin.
Nevertheless I think truth and goodness are
very intimately related.
Plato and Plotinus identify God and the Good. Now, this is related to
very subtle point with the comp hyp.
Like you, and like all Platonist, I certainly wish and bet they have
very intimate relations.
It is perhaps my faith in the Good, which makes me no worry to take an
hypothesis seriously enough to push it to its apparently extreme (for
an Aristotelicians at least) conclusion.
It just seems true to me that emotional (or
intuitive) understanding is the ultimate goal,
Of course. The point is that this might be true for machines too, or
the (first) person relatively manifested by that machine.
simply because I don't see
how theoretical understanding can serve any purpose in and of itself.
Understanding is always theoretical, even if it drinks at the
intuition source, which kept intact the umbilical
chord intact with "Truth".
Feeling, smelling, seeing are not theoretical, but Feeling something,
smelling something and seeing somethings, lead you in one second in
the theory. And the theory intended meaning is always a modest
interrogation.
It
only does this if it leads to good / less bad feelings (which I would
roughly equate to emotional understanding).
You are probably using "understanding" in a larger sense than I do.
Emotional "understanding" can be very large.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Theoretical understanding and emotional understanding provides a two-
way road. They complement each other very well, but can also be
orthogonal on some point. Comp itself is a locus where the theory
predict an opposition between reason and heart, with the explanation
that they are both right from their point of view, yet the view are
not entirely conciliable. Science will favor Bp, and religion will
favor Bp & p. Truth, the "& p", plays the role of a mystical
element.
OK. For me, I found that in case of doubt it seems to be better to
follow
the heart.
In case in doubt? Only reason doubt, the heart does not. But reason
can foresee probable consequence.
Reason is only doubt, and the heart never doubt, except for ... a
reason.
Well, I just reason in he machine's theory. But, let me tell you this:
it is my heart which pushes me to listen to the machines.
But only if you know yourself well enough to see what your heart
really wants! There is no rule here.
The (ideal) heart knows exactly what he want, but the (ideal) reason
can see the "shut happens" type of consequence.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Just that current humans still look for authoritative
arguments, in
all direction. I'm afraid I will have to come back next
millennium.
You are right. I am more optimistic, though, I would advise you to
take a
shot next century ;).
When I was young I was sure that computers, the UMs, would become
personal objects, but I thought it would take one of two century,
not
1/2 century; so you may be right. I was also pretty sure
prohibition
would fall down before 2000. I was wrong.
So you may be right: next century perhaps. But I maight be right
too.
On conceptual thing, human are slow. Look how much people around
you
still believe that cannabis should be illegal, and that is only
about
a century of brainwashing. Aristotle theology is more than 1500
years
of brainwashing, helped by billionth years of evolution. Those
things
will take time, even if salvia and plants might accelerate
things, a
little bit.
I think if enough people discover genuine love, there might be a
chain
reaction that gets us to heaven on earth quicker than we can
imagine :).
I've come to the belief that's it's really ALL about love (first and
foremost love towards yourself).
I agree with this, but "love" is of the type [ ] *. It is
spontaneous,
and get destroyed by coercion. We cannot enforce it. We can only
illustrate it.
Yes, in general your right. But even on this we can't be dogmatic.
Sure.
At least
I saw it in me, that when I am dogmatic on not using coercion towards
myself, this sometimes leads to greater (but more unconscious)
coercion!
If I really think I have to do something, it might be better to coerce
myself to do it, rather than suffering the consequences of not
following my
own sense of responsibility.
OK. I was thinking about coercion on others. But social life can
explain acceptance of form of coercion, but not argument by authority,
or any dogma, in any matter.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Love toward oneself is alas very dependent on contingence.
The secret of self-love consists in having a self-loving mother/
father, which needs a self-loving grandmother, which ...
The ultimate fate of the humans might depend on the self-loving
quality of the first amoeba!
This should not be taken without adding some grain of salt, of
course.
I am not sure if your not thinking a bit materialstically here.
Gosh!
It become
more and likely to me that we are not here contigently, but actually
to
learn a "lesson" (not like in school, just have intuitive insight
about
yourself) - and apperent contigencies are just part of the lesson
(or truly
don't matter for our lesson).
This does not contradict anything I said.
The apparently materialst world may just be a
simplification of spirit to learn the basics about how the "world"
works
(action and reaction, clear rules, strong and obvious consequences
to many
of our actions, good and bad, importance of love - stressed by the big
amounts of suffering we have to endure, impossibility of being in
control
all of the time...). In the world of spirit our unexperienced souls
may just
be lost, and not learn much (like in dreams, which are generally not
very
consistent and clear experiences for us).
From the point of view of the waking self.
Of course there is no clear evidence that any of this is true. We
can just
trust in our own intuition. This does not mean believing all
esoteric stuff,
just being open to the possibility of something way vaster than this
realm.
Which realm?
The inside-arithmetic mindscape is already much vaster than the
physical universe, even seen at the level of galaxies filaments.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Even science is about love (towards
knowledge, progress, modesty,... - actually all very important
things even
outside of science).
Yes. Reason is the best servant of the heart, but only when the heart
can respect and listen to reason.
The heart without reason leads to sort of hot madness.
Reason without heart leads to a sort of cold madness.
Happiness and love needs both reason and heart: it is cool madness :)
Hm, I guess you didn't wrote what you intended to here. Anyway, I
still
agree. Though I would say there are some situations where it may be
good to
relinquish all reason (like when meditating), but I can't imagine any
situation where it is good to not use the heart at all.
Sure.
But my heart fears those who use their reason to preserve their heart.
"Tout va très bien Madame la Marquise".
That is the bad sort of wishful thinking, the root of the self-lies
(which makes Lady sally so nervous, it seems).
Bruno Marchal wrote:
We just need to see that and then the rest will follow!
Yeah ... that is just easy to say, but hard to implement.
It's subtle. Loving is not really hard. It just seems hard as long
as we
don't see that it is easy :). But we can't just insist that it has
to be
easy, because this is hard, also (I am often stuck at insisting it
has to be
easy and make myself suffer this way).
Good you see the difficulty here.
So, as long as we are not aware that
our nature is effortless love we are a bit in a catch-33... We just
have to
learn to become conscious of it at the pace of our own ability,
there are no
permanent shortcuts here. Insisting to be in an effortless state of
love is
like beating your child to grow up faster ;).
That technics does not work well indeed.
It may be obvious, but if we really are conviced that it is possible
to be
in an effortless state of love, we may make a lot of subconscious
struggle
out of that, by wanting to force it, because we are used to force
things we
want in some way or another (not forcing violently, but being
stubborn about
having to have it).
Right. We can even transform little tasks into insuperably hard tasks.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
With man made machine, it will be like that: either we recognize
ourself in those machine, and love them, or we don't. If we don't
their "heart" will not develop, and we will get the cold madness. I
think. But this, of course cannot be normative. Nobody can force
someone to love anything. In fact, and that is a reason you might one
day ... love comp, is that with comp the reason build theories and
warn the heart for NOT using them. Love and intelligence, like God,
has only "negative theological feature". The theories are
metatheories
pointing on the pitfall of taking anything there too much literally.
Comp is really the most opposite thing to reductionism, despite its
main precise looks, and is often described as a form of reductionism.
But it is not, and people have to do some work on Gödel's technic to
understand that the reductionist appearance of the numbers is the
main
illusion.
Hm, OK. It still seems to me reducing the ontology to numbers is a
form of
reductionism as well.
It can be seen as an ontological reductionism, but it is not a
reductionism of what really counts: matter and consciousness.
I can relate your feeling only to the intuition that our "generalized"
brain might be non turing emulable, or to a reductionist view of what
the (admittedly immaterial) machines are really capable of, especially
when connected to truth in its necessary and contingent
manifestations. It is certainly an ontological reductionism, but it is
is close to a maximal anti-reductionism of what are persons, and it
gives to persons, mind, and consciousness a leading role in the
selection and development of realities (samsara if you will) and their
exit doors (nirvana for example).
If we are machine, the cardinality statements on the ontological
reality is simply absolutely undecidable. It does not matter, because
Goddess(es), consciousness, Matter, histories and geographies, and
many layers of realities develop and can be observed from inside, and
it seems to me that it is what "really" counts.
I understand it might be sees as shockingly new for the Aristotelian
believers. But nobody forces you to take the comp red pill. Keep this
in mind.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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