On 25 May 2014, at 02:43, Kim Jones wrote:
On 25 May 2014, at 4:23 am, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
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).
Woooops! OK - some of these monster threads become a bit confusing
as to who has their mouth open and in whose direction
On 23 May 2014, at 10:00 pm, [email protected] 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.
Exactly! The choice of the starting axioms is always "arbitrary" at
some level. This is surely because what motivates our freedom of
decision is something we rarely admit drives our human enterprises -
our creativity (lateral thinking) - which reaches out ahead of our
logical vertical thinking, which we prefer to think is always in the
driving seat. This is at once the great virtue and the great failing
of the human mind. Virtuous because a creative insight or bet CAN
leapfrog over decades of plodding step by step vertical, logical
thinking and laser-in on a goal (cf de Bono-think) and a failing
because unless we realise we really are governed by some deeply
illogical, desire-laden set of values we wish to promote, our
actions in the world often reek of unconscious motivation that we
then seek to justify or "sell" by logical argument. Any travesty at
all can be justified by logical argument. John Ross is demonstrating
this right now. He is convinced that there is a place on his mantel-
piece that is reserved for a little gold statue and everything he
writes is motivated by his egoic desire to realise that prize that
he believes he was always destined for but will never admit to
publicly.
A "person" is not a logical being. Smullyan explores this terrain
regularly. I am standing on top of this hill because I am standing
on top of this hill and that is no reason at all.
I am not sure what you mean by "logical being". I agree that
arithmetic and universal machine are already not logical being. I
guess also you think about the unique classical logic, but there is an
infinity of logic, and some are quite "illogical" compared to others.
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.
What if we are born complete and whole and perfect, brimful of
creative illogicality?
I am currently open to the idea that all universal machine/numbers are
creative (they are so in the sense of Emil Post, which has been proved
equivalent with "universal").
I would call such a being a "child".
OK. Virgin computer are baby gods, but once programmed, they "fall",
and they get stupid and forget their "divine" origin.
Life would then would be a process of degeneration into cynicism,
prejudice and conformity.
That seems to happen, after puberty. But thanks to neotony, this seems
to take more and more time.
We should die young
I would not go that far, and sometimes, with age, we can come back to
the baby state.
and move to our next instantiation via FPI. Nature does not care if
we live beyond 40...
But who care on nature? Ah yes! the greens. "Caring" is only relative.
usually people beyond 40 cares a little bit about this.
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.
You have just said what I said above, but from a slightly different
perspective.
Concerning what you can discover from the first person point on
view, I think shortcut exists.
I feel this is true. Dreams, visions, psychedelic experiences,
revelations etc. - these things happen and produce results.
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).
Ditto
About aliens I don't know. Not bothering to learn just means that
you can copy others.
But if they are natural-born lateral thinkers with childlike
inquisitiveness, perhaps they copy no one and invent, innovate
continually. Life would be a constant voyage from what doesn't work
to what works. "Suck it and see" would be their eternal motto.
OK.
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.
Maybe the truth is the end of the line - in which case best not head
in that direction. Life is about fun. Play. I think the aliens want
to get laid by humans so they can perpetuate themselves in a new
part of the galaxy by mixing their genetics with ours. Aliens just
wanna have fun. I think...
May be. Hard to say. It might depend of which aliens. Like Calvin, I
am not sure Aliens find the humans attractive:
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/calvin-on-intelligent-life.jpg
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.
Why barbarians though? Isn't the essence of "smart" to copy what
works as opposed to what doesn't? Isn't this how humans managed to
swing down from the treetops to the savannah in the first place?
Yes, "copy" is smart when you copy smart things, but not when you copy
horrible and destructive things, and intend to use it on those who
invented/discovered the thing.
Eventually cleverness needs to be evaluated not from their
technology but from the way they show respect to us.
But surely they witness regularly how humans lack respect for one
another. We cannot underestimate how our own barbarism may blow back
onto them. If they turn out to be barbarians, perhaps they have
decided that this is the only language the human knows how to speak?
We can speculate a lot on this.
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.
Well - something tells me that this has already happened but you
would have to crack open the Black Ops going on behind many closed
doors of government...
I am quite agnostic on this. To be honest, I am not so interested. The
fact that we have evidence that some bacteria might survive long
travel in space is interesting, as it opens the possibility of a
common origin for different lives on different planets, but it is a
bit like a contingent historico-geographical facts. I prefer to
concentrate myself with the "aliens" which are in arithmetic, because
they are not speculation (at least in the 3p way), and they are many.
If not, it looks hoping the solution to our problem will come from the
sky, where I think we should concentrate on the inward research.
With salvia, many people met quite alien entities, for example. Salvia
seems to go quite farer than all known fiction, but perhaps not farer
than logic + arithmetic.
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.
Indeed. There are now two classes of UFO: ours and theirs. We can no
longer distinguish between them. This is very scary because whatever
we have learnt from "them" is not knowledge that is being shared
with you and me.
A reason more to trust only yourself and the solid things you can find
in your head, perhaps.
I am not criticizing the search for extra-terrestrial life, nor the
study of exo-planets, but I find the evidences for ETI weak and
frustrating, and the fact itself not that much astonishing compared to
the genuine magic that we can prove in arithmetic, or more simply
observe on this planets. The rest are contingent histories. Of
course, that's why I am a mathematician. Arithmetic generalizes biology.
As I said, we need all interests and opinion to have a world. But
there are so many interesting things that we have to make choice, in
the course of a probable connected life.
Of course if Aliens are really like Scarlett Johansson, I might need
to revise my interest on Aliens!
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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