On 24 May 2014, at 06:47, Kim Jones wrote:
Actually, the below quoted text I was responding to was by Bruno.
(OK, just to be clear the quote was from Hibbsa).
On 23 May 2014, at 10:00 pm, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:
I've been saying that it isn't necessary to refute something that
contains no knowledge about something fundamental to its claim.
Consciousness was never understood...and it's reasonable to think
it is the more important mystery of computation, than anything
contained in the discovery of computers, so far. It would be like,
as I said, assuming something vast about matter in 1700 before
anything about matter had been discovered, and building streams of
logic from that along. What we'd have missed out on, was the
discovery of chemistry, the scientific method and eventually atoms
and QM, if we'd gone a way like that. Why would it be any
different here?
This is very interesting. Are you saying that if we somehow get our
assumptions right - in whatever period and under whatever
framework, theory etc. - and this, quite apart from the level of
our knowledge, then it might be possible to circumvent the need for
the endless search for the knowledge that would eventually get us
closer to the truth?
This would mean that a lot of science might be the "try hard" view
of achieving cultural goals if all we must do is to assume the
correct things at the outset and then build our knowledge
downstream of these foundational assumptions.
I think in this context of extra-terrestrial technology, supposed
to be more or less undeniably real and evident, if you believe the
supposed evidence for it these days. Perhaps aliens have not
bothered with all the streams of learning in science, computing,
mathematics etc. and have gone straight to the cultural goals they
envisaged however inconceivable this thought to us might appear. I
mean, it is said to be quasi-impossible for beings to cross the
vast inter-galactic distances and this is the main argument used in
answer to Fermi's Paradox, yet are we not almost certainly - to
take a leaf out of GHibbsa's manual momentarily - unconsciously
assuming that all sentient, intelligent beings, wherever they arise
in the universe, will do the try-hard human thing of slowly and
painstakingly amassing their knowledge in painfully slow and
logical steps? Why do we assume this? What about Lateral Thinking,
where the trick is to bypass logical correctness at every step of
the way and to use some very novel and highly illogical procedures
to forge previously unseen connections in information that were
hidden to our logical mindset? What if the aliens are masters of
Lateral Thinking?
The connection are the choice of the axioms. They can't be logical.
They are the product of creative insight and bet.
Then we would ipso facto have no way of understanding how they
arrived at their technological level, yet we might emulate in some
way the spirit of their enterprise which has self-accelerated in a
way we can only dream of? Why do we have to spend forever working
things out? Surely this is a plodding homo sapiens thing...
Concerning what can be suggested in the third person way, I think the
shortcut is provided by abstraction, and hypothetical generalization.
Like with embryogenesis, there are pedagogical shortcuts, but it is
always more easy for the kids, which have less prejudices. But those
leads to creative things, which can just perpetuate the samsara, so
that it does not lead per se to truth, but it can provide less and
less inappropriate pictures.
Concerning what you can discover from the first person point on view,
I think shortcut exists.
It might always be a remind of what you already know, but just don't
really focus on. Sleep, drugs, art, science, religion, trauma and
death might provide shortcuts (as far as we know assuming comp).
About aliens I don't know. Not bothering to learn just means that you
can copy others. You don't need to understand relativity and quantum
mechanics to make an atomic bomb, although you need the understanding
to discover it by yourself, or to figure out its working. Nor do you
need to understand how work a brain to copy it, nor does the amoeba
needs to understand Kleene's theorem to reproduce itself, but again,
that kind of things does not per se lead to being closer to the truth.
So if aliens (relatively to us) did exist, and would be more clever
than us, it would be impossible for us to judge if they are really
clever, or if they are just barbarians copying still other aliens.
Eventually cleverness needs to be evaluated not from their technology
but from the way they show respect to us. Technology is not a
criteria of intelligence (but of some competence only). The "real"
criteria of intelligence is more about what you do with the
technology. If they are good, we might indeed learn something.
About the evidences for aliens, my admittedly meager look at this
tended me to think that there are evidences that some people wanted
us to believe in aliens, at least at some period. A war against aliens
might benefit those who search to control people, like in case the war
on drug and/or the war on terror was not enough. Yet, I would not bet
on that theory either.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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