Category: Science, Physics, and Philosophy of Science

(FB 1547138370 Timestamp) THE ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS OVER METAPHYSICS —“Anytime you utter the word “emergent phenomenon”, you automatically need another science. In order to count as such, a science needs to satisfy what constraints?”— Help me understand this because there is no limit that I can imagine to the scale of a neural (bayesian) network, and no limit to the cognitive ability of a hierarchical and recursive network – other than inputs and outputs. The limits we have today are mechanical – we have built the wrong kind of computers. Even such, at great heat-cost, we are able to replicate those networks. So for ‘speech’ to emerge just like for the touch ui to emerge we require hardware (biological ware). So somehow (random selection, intentional manipulation) the real-world interface determines what can be ‘identified, predicted, and judged’ by that recursive, hierarchical, network. —“real”– As far as I know real = existential = persistent = observable = observable directly, by instrumentation, or by deduction from deduction using instrumentation, where that instrumentation can be either physical(external) or logical (internal). As far as I know ‘real’ in the colloquial, refers to ACTIONABLE. As far as I know the only open question is an empty verbalism: experiences are constructed from a combination of perception with memories of perceptions, limited by the grammar of conception, which is brain structure, which appears to be little more than the neurological homunculus – which the more I understand, the less ‘human’ I feel. So do experience (concepts, etc) exist, or do they have the potential be experienced, and do they persist if and only if some number of us share the potential to experience them? Once we operationalize these questions they turn out to be quite simple. Do unicorns exist? Well, No. Do does the word unicorn exist? Well, a lot of us have memory (knowledge) of that word. So it we have knowledge of it. That knowledge persists in some distributed and fragmentary form. But it only exists as POTENTIAL. Whereas that which we claim exists already does so. Does that idea of a unicorn exist? Well, a lot of us have memory (knowledge) that can be accessed by that word, and using that index (word) we can recall some combination of fragmentary images of a unicorn (mine are the scenes in Blade Runner and after that, Legend of all things). So in Does the referent exist? Well, No. Does the index of the referent exist? Well, Yes. Does knowledge of the referent exist? Well, Yes. Yet again, we see, that a series stated in operational language solves the problem of the sophism of reductive questions. Unicorns don’t exist. An index (word) appears to have little or no direct sensation of itself. An index evokes a network of fragments, that recursively reflect additional fragments, and so on until we have exhausted our memories. the cortex (brain) is a continuous prediction system using fragments , and we can apply that prediction system to the real, the linguistic, and the imagined. What we call mind, probably an consequence of either cooperation, communication or language, or the sequence in total, consists largely in the direction of that forecasting (attention) and recursion (concentration). Is knowing this the same as experience? well no. Knowing this is however, defensive: eliminating the errors, bises, and deceits, that we and others engage in, with ourselves and others. WHAT ABOUT “NEED” – HUMAN DEMAND FOR COMFORTING FALSEHOODS Demand for Falsehoods today are driven by signal pressure and alienation pressure. In the past they were driven by signal pressure, competitive pressure, alienation pressure, and suffering pressure. We cannot fix signal pressure since it is necessary for selection, but we can fix mindfulness. We can’t fix alienation pressure but we can improve mindfulness and the civic society to reduce it. We can limit competitive pressure through the civic society and political ethnocentrism. And we can dramatically (and have) eliminated suffering pressure through mindfulness and medicine. Yes, the truth is that comforting lies (sophistry pseudoscience, the occult and denial), cults and groups, and sedation by alcohol, an drugs are CHEAP and DISORGANIZED means of providing mindfulness in the face of signal, alienation, competitive, and suffering pressures. However, we can likewise take and ORGANIZED and EXPENSIVE means of serving those market demands by non false and healthy and productive means. But like all contemporary problems (a) the collection of rent-seekers that will be displaced by the efforts to produce that order will fight desperately against these reforms (improvements) just as they will the legal and financial, because rent seeking that leaves people subject to pressures but gives them false hope is the most profitable industry of all. (b) not enough of us (yet) have taken up arms to alter that circumstance. NO MORE LIES