EGON FORUMS

Shit. Damn precognition.

Like I said there are many limitations on the human body but most of the time people never get to those because they cannot will themself up to that point. Their mind gives out way before their body does. Either to the pain of in their muscles, lack of imagination, or just from not knowing how to use their muscles more efficiently.

My philosophy is fairly simple and straightforward, unless you actually try to describe it in words. Then it gets slightly more complicated. The problem is, I borrow my ideas from far too many sources. I'm basically a postmodern zen taoist-existentialist with pantheistic tendencies and a strong philosophical attraction to chaos theory and quantum mechanics.

I don't believe philosophy is really about discovering "truth", since, even if truth exists, we can never know it. I myself don't believe that truth exists; actually, I believe the very concept of "truth" is meaningless. Philosophers since (at least) Plato have struggled to define truth, and to figure out how we can arrive at truth, but it's gotten us nowhere.

"Truth" is usually defined as the correspondence between "objective reality" and "subjective reality", but both concepts are really meaningless. After all, what we only encounter "objective reality" through our sensory perceptions. What we call objective reality is really just an extrapolation, not necessary in any way, from these perceptions. But our perceptions themselves are really specialized forms of thought in our mind. The perception of a flower is merely a more vivid form of the same sensation we have when we think of a flower. Thus, everything we encounter in "objective reality" is happening in our head. So where exactly is the distinction? It seems to me as if the idea of "objective reality" is a superfluous add-on that's used as an "explanation" for our perceptions, in much the same way that God is a superfluous add-on that's used as an "explanation" for the universe.

Even if we temporarliy assume that an "objective" reality exists, it seems that we could never truly learn ANYTHING about it. We can't even really learn whether there is a good probability that something is or isn't true. For example, I say that there is no invisible pink unicorn in the room with me right now (or, if I'm the cautious scientific type, I say that it's highly unlikely that there's an invisible pink unicorn here[/i]) because of Occam's razor. Occam's razor states that we should only believe in as many entities as are necessary to explain our observations. When you think about it, however, there's no real reason this statement should be true. Hell, there could easily be a whole bunch of things that exist that simply do not effect us in any way. Maybe being able to be perceived, even indirectly, by humans is an exception in the universe rather than a rule. Once you take all this to its logical conclusion, it kind of gets a little silly, and demonstrates that the very concept of the "objective world" is utterly without meaning.

So we have an utterly silly, complicated, and maybe even meaningless concept that is created to explain our perceptions, when we could just as easily say that our perceptions just are. I mean, don't get me wrong, the idea that an objective world exists can be very useful in day to day life. However, it's still bullshit, albeit useful bullshit.

Since truth does not exist and is meaningless as a concept, philosophy cannot be the search for truth. If this were the case, if philosophy were simply the investigation of something meaningless, then it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. We all share a set of basic assumptions about the world, and from these assumptions we logically derive our worldview. Philosophy is simply playing these assumptions against each other, so to speak. Philosophy is showing how some of our assumptions contradict others, and (somewhat arbitrarily) picking which assumptions to keep and which to lose. At its most fundamental level, it is about creating pictures of reality which are beautiful and elegant (although perhaps not in the normal sense of these words). Truth doesn't enter into it. I'd consider philosophy a particular specialized genre in fictional literature.

Although I am not a true Taoist, I would say the principal of wu-wei (do nothing) is mostly related to my outlook. Just go with the flow, don't stress out. Enjoy life. Live the big easy lifestyle and just chill...

My personal philosophy isa really, really odd, because half the time I'm not sure if it's due to spontanteous mass hallucination or my own gullibility.

First Belief: If someone tells me something, it is better for me to question it in skepticism, or else I could never believe it is true.

Second Belief: If I see something, probably my eyes are playing tricks on me.

Third Belief: If I see this "thing" again, then it is real, insofar as I am willing to take the concept of real.

Fourth Belief: Even without sensual evidence of a thing, if there is sensual evidence of the existence of said thing, I believe in it.

Fifth Belief: Free Will may or may not exist. Being someone who, by causal chains or some other fuckup, is forced to believe in free will to keep his sanity, I believe free will exists and my actions are my own.

Sixth Belief: There is a purpose to the universe. I just don't know what it is.

Seventh Belief: Quantum Mechanics/Physics makes life a VERY interesting fing.

Enjoy dissecting these concepts, I'll be off to bed soon anyway.

How can you know that a purpose exists if you don't know what it is?

In my opinion, the universe has no purpose. Each individual has to create his or her own purpose in life.

Ties in with the Fourth Belief. I see no proof of a purpose, but the universe works, and the odds of anything in the universe working at any moment in time are astronomical, so I must (in my own faulty logic, anyway) accept that there is a purpose, as well as a god of some kind, because how else would there be enough control to break the odds and get anything done?

Well, can't say you didn't ask for it. But seeing as how I have not the focus, endurance, or inclination to do so at the moment, I shall instead respond to a few random comments that jumped out at me from this thread.


While I have expressly avoided the Free Will debate thread due to my experiences in a Philosophy class which convinced me that there is basically no real progress which can be made on the subject, Kitsune's comment above reminded me of this little gem which I was quite proud of and greatly enjoyed starting my first paper with.
So while you have a 50-50 chance of being wrong, depending on which side you pick it doesn't have to be your fault! Not only that, but only Libertarians can actually claim personal credit for their accomplishment in the event that they are right. (Now if only there were some way of determining who was correct, this might actually mean something. :P )


I think your Seventh Belief ("Quantum Mechanics/Physics makes life a VERY interesting thing.") definitely applies here. If one subscribes to the many-worlds implementation of the assertion that "anything that can happen will happen," (or rather, "must happen") there really isn't anything surprising about the existence of our reality (or any other) at all. It just happens to be one of the corners of possibility where life arose, and so here we are going "Oooooooo! So much order, so much life, so much variety and beauty and design! It must be created for our benefit, or at least by some wondrous Architect™!" Of course, in all those realities where conditions don't allow for life to arise, there just isn't anyone around to complain about it. The irony is that there are many parts of our reality which are inconvenient, chaotic, and downright ugly, and presumably any designer which was really good and great and all-powerful could have avoided or eliminated these things. But never mind that. Two things we excel at are maintaining an optimistic outlook and rationalizing just about any belief.

Oh, and thanks for all those links, Wandering. I now have more reading and procrastination material than I know what to do with! 8)

being somewhat new to the forums, and having read the posts on here a bit, i can't help but jump in and 'enlighten' some people on my own twisted and warped views of the world thanks to a wide variety of sources i've read over the years. hopefully some of it will make sense *s*

1. faith is all about belief in the possibility of an object which may or may not exist, yet has great emotional or spiritual significance to you. The moment it is proved or disproven that the said object exists, you no longer are required to believe in it, and therefore faith ceases to have any meaning.

2. although there may be an eventual underlying to the purpose of the universe, we as humans may likely never know.

3. Free Will. one of the biggest philosophical debates in human existence. i found some great material on it on a website the other day, but i'm not even going to attempt to repost it here simply because it would make my brain hurt too much.

4. on evil and stuff. Why is there evil in the world? what exactly is evil? for a lot of people that's a clear-cut answer, but let's take it a bit deeper.

during the garden, when adam and eve were still in it, there was no evil. sure, the rebel angels had been kicked out of heaven, but there still wasn't exactly evil yet. all they had to do to remain perfectly happy and content, was not touch the apple. by eating the fruit from the tree, they knowingly disobeyed a direct command from god, and were suddenly made aware of what the difference between good and evil was. alot of people say that it was some kind of mystical quality about the fruit itself that made them know the difference, but perhaps it was something more subtle. such as knowing that they weren't supposed to eat the fruit, but doing it anyways. and when they did eat the fruit they became aware that they had committed an act of evil. So what is evil you ask? committing an act that you know to be wrong, and you shouldn't be doing, yet doing it anyways. at least that's my take.

anyway, enough from me until my brain gets back up to being functional again.

Very good point, Yevaud; I'm suprised I didn't think of it sooner. What you're basically talking about is the strong anthropic principal - the idea that our universe has to operate by laws of physics that allow us - the questioners - to arise, and thus there's really no suprise that our universe is the way it is. Really, a complex universe is a prerequisite for the existence of intelligent life.

(The weak anthropic principle states that we should not be suprised that conditions in our area of the universe seem especially conducive to the emergence of intelligent life, since if the conditions weren't thus we wouldn't be here to worry about it. For example, we should not be suprised that the planet we live on is one of the very few planets in the galaxy that is just the right size, distance from the sun, and composition required to support life.)

I have some problems with the Many-Worlds interpretation however. For one thing, it does not sufficiently explain the very thing it was created to explain - that is, Quantum Probability. What exactly does it mean to say that the probability of an atom decaying within a certain period is 75%? How can the world where the atom doesn't decay be more "improbable" than the world where it does? Since there are an infinite number of universes, and dividing infinity by anything other than infinity results in infinity, then no particular universe is less "probable" then another.

Allright, here's how I see it. First, the only thing I can be sure of is that I experience things, so I know that something exists in order to experience them. Yes, I'd like something more definite than "Cogito, ergo sum" too, but it's the only real starting point we have. I'd prefer to state it as "I experience, therefore I exist", though, since it's entirely possible to experience the world without "thinking" about it in the usual sense (I''ve done it myself, after a night of no sleep. No, drugs *weren't* involved ;) Although it proves, as much as anything can be proved, that something exists, it does not in itself prove what the nature of that existence really is. However, our experience does have one very interesting property- that of repeatability, and consistency. By which I mean, when I think in a certain way it always makes it appear and "feel" as if my arm is trying to move, and my visual input tells me that if something is not supported by a solid object, it seems to fall downward, etc. I've gotten used to the visual appearance of objects, and how that seems to correlate with the tactile input I get when I seem to "touch" them. These things remain more-or less consistent. If the properties of the universe around me changed at random, it would be rather hard to make even the limited amount of sense that I do out of it. I noticed that there seem to be other beings who look and behave much like my concept of the way I do. We are able to communicate, albeit imperfectly, and from this I learned that they seem to "think" and experience the world in a manner similar to me. In communicating and observing them, I learned that we share common concepts about the repeatable and consistent aspects of reality. Sometimes things happen which contradict my concept of what should have happened, so I either have to adjust my methods of prediction, assume that my methods of prediction were fine but the information I was using them with was inaccurate, or simply ignore the discrepancy (something humans are fairly good at :)

I could go on like this, through the derivations of higher and more abstract concepts like History, Society, even Quantum Physics, and the ways in which the input of our senses can be mitigated through our need to exist in "consensus reality", but I think you get the idea. I (and, I assume tacitly for the moment, the rest of you, since my senses tell me you are similar) experience a world in which certain actions seem to result in certain effects, which allows us to learn.

Now, whether or not that world is "real" I cannot say- perhaps we are all simply aliens lying in pods, dreaming we are humans. Perhaps those aliens are themselves part of some larger dream, and when the totality of existence ceases to exist the words "GAME OVER" will blink over the darkness, just before *something* goes back to its normal life. I cannot know, but what I do know is that at this point the repeatability of cause and effect appear to give us the opportunity to learn more about the universe, whether or not it actually exists. And, in my opinion, that's just what we should do.



Absolute Truth may indeed be impossible to arrive at, or even define properly. Truth within a limited scope, however, is more approachable. Within my own experience, for instance, if I let go of a pen from a height, it falls. This has come true numerous times, and is supported by experienced with other objects that I classify as "similar" according to my senses. So, I could say that, within my own experience, pens fall when dropped. Now, if I were to visit outer space and drop a pen, I would have to modify this to include the idea that pens only drop close to Earth. And so on. I do not believe that absolute Truth can ever be reached, even within a limited scope*. I think of it as being similar to the asymptote of an equation- we can always get closer, but never *quite* reach it. Hofstadter has a nice 2-D analogy of this concept in a more limited setting on page 71 of GEB (although it think it would have worked better had he used an actual fine-grained fractal, rather than relying on his own artistic skills ;) Hopefully, someday humanity will have learned enough to make the current amount of knowledge we possess approach 0 in comparison. Which wouldn't be too hard, really...

* You might think it odd that I would make such a direct statement, when I've been circumspect about things like whether or not the rest of you exist. The reason is that this is such speculative, almost aesthetic territory that I think the qualifiers are implicit (of course, if I thought they were that implicit I wouldn't be writing this lengthy and now self-referential footnote, would I? I blame having talked about Don Coyote recently- if you ever read it, you'll understand).


*Ahem* Occam's razor is a scientific rule of thumb. Science concerns itself only with phenomena which are either directly or indirectly observable, or which are implied by observable phenomena. Within this purview, we can indeed "learn" things. I would imagine that you yourself have learned that when your sensory input tells you that you're falling from a height of 10 feet in the air or so, the sensation of pain usually follows. You learn things all the time, one of which being the existence of similar beings to yourself, some of whom, coupled with your own observations, lead you to believe in thing like "gravity" or "India" or "Quantum Physics", even though you may not have experienced them directly. You could be entirely correct in saying that the majority of objects in existence are made of some material which is not in any way observable (and the existence of which is not implied by any phenomena which are). But even if you're right, from the standpoint of Science, they don't exist. It's rather solipsistic of Science to say this, but quite understandable. Scientists have plenty of work trying to explain phenomena that are observable. If they had to explain the infinite set of possible non-existent phenomena as well, they would be a bit swamped, to say the least :) I think most of them are happy to leave the speculation about non-existent entities to science fiction and fantasy writers (unfortunately few of whom take advantage of the fact)


Eh, if it's just about aesthetics, I'd put that as a subset of magick. Of course, one might say that Scientists find a world made of consistent rules aesthetically pleasing, and so Science is just another subset of magick ;) (*Squints at Icy* You'd make a decent enough Chaos mage, methinks, if you ever decided to go insane…)


Ha! Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. Congratulations, you just made it into my quote file :)



Hey, don't blame me- Icy dragged me into it! Honest! He's Evil™! After I realized that one could get stuck in a quagmire of criticism, meta criticism, meta-meta-criticism, etc., I had to get out. I swear, I don’t usually go around discussing postmodern theorists. *shudder* And that determinism bit probably would have made my quote file, if it wasn't so long (and it I didn't already say much the same thing whenever I'm within 10 ft. of a determinism debate. Apparently, smartasses everywhere think alike… ;)


Heh. Finally saw it, did you? To the Reloaded rant thread with you! (EDIT: Oh, wait... it's all buried now. Bah. Ah well, it's in my sig if you're curious. Put a side-note in your next post that tells me whether I'm insane, eh?)


Pah. I just wish I could find a copy of Don Coyote somewhere.. Nothing like voluminous semi-random footnotes that tell stories so tangential to the main one that you forget there *is* one for wasting time…



See here. Specifically, this. That explanation is rather technical (to the point where one might accuse the author of obscuring one of the theories' weak points with specialized jargon), but what it boils down to is that from an observers point of view, the normal statistical rules apply. Which universe you exist in depends on how probable it is. It's late; I'll see if I can make a more complete stab at the manifestation of probability in M-W in the morning…

I'm somewhat partial to the M-W (or Everett, if you prefer) interpretation myself, although I'm not a quantum physicist (yet). It avoids the nasty Solipsistic/Vitalist tendencies inherent in the Copenhagen explanation, for one. Quite frankly, the whole issue of making interpretations of Quantum Mechanics has a slight tendency towards loopyness, given the general weirdness of QM from our point of view to begin with, so it's not too surprising that there are so many objections to the current ones. The Everett interpretation, or some derivative threreof, just seems like the most reasonable one at the moment.

And for good measure, here's another page, somewhat more critical of M-W.


It's late, so the above post may be somewhat rambling, particularly the first part. I'll have to see if it still makes any sense in the morning…



Extra-useless bonus MOOism links!
I went searching to see if I could possibly find a mention of Don Coyote in Google's USENET cache, but all I came up with were some old posts I made in the Kibology (a relatively tame absurdist pseudo-religion I tried to assault with the power of MOO) newsgroup that kind of cracked me up (possibly out of nostalgia). Enjoy! Or, more likely, Justifiably Ignore!

I tried, honestly. Some people just won't be helped…

You don't fuck with the MOO. Read carefully, for the full effect. Or full stupidity. Whichever.

(Minor note: In MOOist writings, all instances of "-ist" and "-ism" are replaced by "-BLATT". Thought you should know.)

Two problems. First of all, you used logic to derive everything you just said, and logic must be based on assumptions. You do a good job of hiding the assumptions, but they are there. I'd find them and point them out, but I'm too lazy to. The point is, logic is usually based on assumptions we get from our intuition. Thus intuition is the basis of logic.

Secondly, most modern philosophers think Descartes "Cogito ergo sum" thing was either totally wrong, or slightly mis-stated. See, saying "I" think automatically presumes that "I" exist, thus you're using circular reasoning. The fact is, the idea of a unified "self" is much more a social construct than anything else. The mind is more like a landscape, where thoughts arise, often independent of other thoughts, and sometimes these thoughts form connections with each other. The concept of selfhood is a thought which, in humans at least, tends to put all other thoughts and perceptions in a subordinate position to itself. Suffice to say that the human mind is far less unified an entity than we'd like to think it is. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say, "There is a thinking, therefore something is." However, even this rests on the assumption that there is a thinking, which could be just anothe illusion somehow.



But again, the "truth" you're talking about has nothing to do with actually knowing about reality. It has more to do with creating models of what human beings *think* is reality that can predict results (in the context of this "reality") well. Being able to predict results and knowing truth are not the same thing. They may not even be related, though it is the usual human presumption that they are.



Thus, you've proven my point. Science does not care about what's true. It cares about what works. Unless you define Truth as "what works" and completely disregard the idea of objective reality, then science is not the pursuit of truth. Keep in mind also that Occam's razor is not just used in science. It's one of our fundamental intuitional assumptions about reality - we use it every day. My dad just came in to hand me the latest issue of Scientific American that came in the mail. Now, I could just as easily say that the person who gave me the magazine wasn't my dad, but an evil alien clone of my dad who happens to act in the same exact way as my dad would. I *don't* say that because of Occam's razor. When you get right down to it, Occam's razor is one of the most important, if not the most important, postulate in logic and science. However, as a postulate, Occam's razor cannot be proven logically. It simply has to be taken on faith. That is why I say that the concept of objective reality has no inherent meaning (though it is "true" insofar as it is useful) - the only way we can meaningfully understand the concept of truth is that "truth is what is useful". Luckily, human beings have at least somehwat similar ideas of what is useful (i.e. being able to predict events using the simplest models possible is useful). However, truth has no meaning beyond this.



Yay! 8)

By the way, if you find the view of philosophy as ficitonal literature interesting, I *strongly* suggest you read the story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges. It's about an imaginary planet called Tlon where solipsism is the assumption and materialism is the "crazy theory". On Tlon, no one believes that philosophy can actually describe reality, and yet they have more philosophies there than we do, because "they judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature". Actually, I suggest Jorge Luis Borges in general - he's one of my all-time favorite writers. If you have the chance, pick up the anthology Labyrinths, or anything by Borges you can get your hands on. He just comes up with these... really cool concepts, like:

• "The Library of Babel" - This is about an entire universe that consists of a library that has books with every single combination of letters possible (in this world, 'library' and 'universe' are synonymous).
• "Funes the Memorious" - This is about a man who fell off his horse one day and all of a sudden gained a perfect memory - The smallest detail is more vivid to him than the most important experience of our lives would be to us. However, this causes him to lose the ability to make generalizations, and he kind of goes a bit crazy.
• "The Lottery of Babylon" - About a city where everything is determined by lottery, and slowly the lottery becomes so secretive and all-pervasive that people can no longer distinguish between it and simple, unguided random chance.

I'd mention more stories, but unfortunately with a lot of them the story would be spoiled if I mentioned what made it interesting. Anyway, read some of his stuff when you get the chance - check out your local library or bookstore, he's fairly well-known - and tell me what you think of him when you've read some.




MUAHAHAHAHA! All is going according to plan.



Thanks. I'll check out those links when I get the chance.



You know, MOOism reminds me of Zen Buddhism, except even more blatantly absurd. Some Zen koans, though, come pretty close.

HAPPY FUN BONUS ABSURD ZEN KOAN TIME! WAI!

• A monk told Joshu: `I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.'
  
  Joshu asked: `Have you eaten your rice porridge?'
  
  The monk replied: `I have eaten.'
  
  Joshu said: `Then you had better wash your bowl.'
  
  At that moment the monk was enlightened.
  
• A monk asked Tozan when he was weighing some flax: `What is Buddha?'
  
  Tozan said: `This flax weighs three pounds.'
  
• A monk asked Ummon: `What is Buddha?' Ummon answered him: `Dried dung.'
  
• Roshi Kapleau agreed to educate a group of psychoanalysts about Zen. After being introduced to the group by the director of the analytic institute, the Roshi quietly sat down upon a cushion placed on the floor. A student entered, prostrated before the master, and then seated himself on another cushion a few feet away, facing his teacher. "What is Zen?" the student asked. The Roshi produced a banana, peeled it, and started eating. "Is that all? Can't you show me anything else?" the student said. "Come closer, please," the master replied. The student moved in and the Roshi waved the remaining portion of the banana before the student's face. The student prostrated, and left.
  
  A second student rose to address the audience. "Do you all understand?" When there was no response, the student added, "You have just witnessed a first-rate demonstration of Zen. Are there any questions?"
  
  After a long silence, someone spoke up. "Roshi, I am not satisfied with your demonstration. You have shown us something that I am not sure I understand. It must be possible to TELL us what Zen is."
  
  "If you must insist on words," the Roshi replied, "then Zen is an elephant copulating with a flea."

Similarly, then, as your subject line implies, you cannot use logic to disprove the existence of Truth, reality, etc. The assumptions I made are, as I see it, the absolute bare minimum to talk about anything at all. Shall we tacitly accept logic for the time being, if not necessarily the subjective data it is applied to, or should I just stop talking? :)


Then the illusion exists. There is illusion, therefore there is *something* to experience said illusion. I used "I" because it's convenient- I'm actually rather skeptical of the concept, from a psychological point of view. Still, it's a useful grouping strategy, like pretty much all of our language.


Never said they were. You're talking about Absolute Truth, which as I said is hard to define, let alone arrive at. I'm talking about noticing patterns within our subjective experience. You could call this Repeatable Subjective Truth, I suppose, but since we deal with it so frequently, I prefer to simply call it "truth", while acknowledging that it is a different beast than Absolute Truth.


I thought we gave up on strictly objective reality 3 threads back? Of course Truth is "what works". How else would one define it? Again, you seem to be hung up on this Absolute Truth thing. I would think that living as a human for as long as you have, you would have gotten over that by now...


I say, Icy old chap, why do we always end up arguing if we more-or-less agree on everything ? :) Aside from the unnecessarily derogatory tone you take towards subjective usefulness, I pretty much agreed with everything you put there. I thought I said as much myself, albeit with a different emphasis, but perhaps I wasn't clear enough.



And once again, you demonstrate the depths of your Evil™. My reading list is backed up as is, and now you go adding philosophical sci-fi to the pile! Eeeevil! (I’d heard of Borges- didn’t know he wrote fiction. I’ll have to check it out)

I’ll do something on M-W later, when I’ve got more time.



That's one of its main influences. If you took Zen and added (in a somewhat satirical way) the elaborate traditions of western magick, a healthy dose of science fiction, paranoid conspiracy theory taken to ridiculous heights, a dash of Quantum Physics, and a Hofstadter-ian sense of elaborate bad puns, you’d get something not quite but almost entirely not unlike MOO. (And Don Coyote is like the refined and distilled essence of MOO, which I why I'm so anxious to find it)

As long as we're swapping koans, here's one I like from the Principia Discordia (one of the spiritual predecessors to Thee Book ov MOO, and the coolest thing *ever* to come out of the fifties):




Oh, and

Well, I think that I can disprove that truth and reality exist logically, even though logic is based on the fundamental assumption that they do. By disproving the assumptions of my logic logically, and by disproving the validity of logic itself logically, I'm simply showing that I can use logic to point out its own inconsistency and incompleteness. This is kind of similar to the way we can relativistically show that relativity breaks down inside a singularity, or how Godel mathematically proved that you can't mathematically prove anything. It's simply using a system to demonstrate that very system's incompleteness.



Well, the illusion's existence could itself be an illusion, and that illusion could be an illusion. It could be turtles all the way down, to quote the first chapter of "A Brief History of Time".

As for the concept of "I", I agree that it's useful - although I also think that it may be for the best if we can escape the illusion of selfhood, although that might just be my Zen Buddhist side talking. The concept of "I" (like free will and the idea of an objective world) is like a pair of binoculars; it's very, very useful to have, but you wouldn't want to view the world through a pair of binoculars 24/7.



To be quite honest, I just like to debate...



I suppose in the end it is really a question of perspective and emphasis. We're basically aknowledging the same things; however, we're placing importance on totally different areas. Whereas you seem to acknowledge these ideas an move on with life, I like to think about them (probably too much), and how they could effect my view of the world. See, I feel that, though a lot of people realize, at the intellectual level, that what I'm saying (and you're saying0 is true, they don't quite realize it. Hopefully I'm making some sense here.




Patent pending.



You didn't know Borges wrote fiction? I though that was what he was most famous for. BTW, he only writes short stories... He'd never written anything over about 30 pages in his life IIRC. Check it out as soon as you can though... And tell me what you think. I wouldn't pigeonhole him as Sci-Fi though... most of his stories don't involve technology, although some have mathematical and scientific themes. Genres are pretty artificial categories anyway. (But then, isn't everything? :P)

Anyway, I liked the Koans. I'll read up some more on MOOism and Discordianism when I get the chance...

So, I guess we've pretty much resolved that debate... Now let's find something we actually disagree on .

Heh. You did read my description of your future in the "Khymforums 10 years from now" thread, right?

(And Godel didn't really prove that you can't prove *anything*, only that you couldn't prove some things that are mathematically true within mathematics itself)


Then the stack of illusions exists, continuing on to infinity. And perhaps the stack is an illusion, and so on. Maybe illusion is itself an illusion, and *everything* actually exists :) Really, when talking about the experiential quality of existence, it's a bit silly to claim it doesn't exist. It's just about the only thing we can individually be sure exists. How we choose to interpret it is another matter...


Yeah, I figured as much. (Evil™!) For what it's worth, this has helped solidify my position on objective reality, which I've held for some time but haven't thought about seriously for a while.


I know what you mean. Sometimes I wonder how often quantum physicists actually think about mundane objects being made of quarks, like the steering wheel on their car, or the toilet handle. One could ask the same thing of Philosophers, some of whom would staunchly deny the existence of reality but still be quite upset if they didn't receive their non-existent paychecks. I've always thought that if you can't think of a theory as being true while you're taking a piss, then perhaps you should question whether you really believe it.

I suppose I could worry a lot about the non-provability of objective reality and go running through the streets shouting at people "I don't know if *you're real*!!", but I choose not to, and to pursue whatever knowledge can be gained from the subjective reality I find myself in, tacitly accepting it as "real". It's a somewhat arbitrary choice, but it's the one I prefer (which is why Philosophy frequently comes down to aesthetics in the end).


Damn it all. You would have loved Don Coyote. You know the old Chang Tzu quote in which he wakes up not knowing whether he's a butterfly dreaming he's a man, or vice-versa? Imagine that, only with about seven or eight entities instead of two, including insane ancient alien computers, the post-Singularity manifestation of humanity, and the top-ranked player of a byzantine planet-spanning game which somehow involved upholstery... Ah well, maybe I'll find it again someday. In the meantime, here's a page which contains an HTML version of the Principia that includes the pictures, if you're interested (I prefer the plain-text version meself, but to each his own…*)

* Unless each doesn't want his own, in which case, don’t. Or do, just to spite me. You are hereby prohibited from following any of this advice, including this sentence.


I always thought he was just a cultural critic (probably because that's what the only thing I've read by him was). And categories are vastly useful simplifications of the world, without which we probably wouldn't be able to communicate at all, although it is best never to forget that they *are* simplifications. So there :P


You could always insult Reloaded (or do like The Baron did, and claim that Snow Crash isn't the best cyberpunk novel ever written. The impertinence!)

...

Knowing you, I should probably retract that, lest you go changing your mind about things just for the sake of an argument ;)

I think I see where you are getting caught up. It makes little sense if universes can only split into two new universes. However a single event can spawn any number of new universes. For instance if said atom has a 75% chance of decaying in a certain time frame then there will be four new universes. Three in which the atom decayed, and one in which it did not.

Atleast that is how I had always understood it.

I haven't read the rest of the thread yet due to my sluggy at-home connection and present need for sleep, but I scanned for my name and wanted to respond briefly to this. The sad part is, Wandering, I still haven't seen it! :( All I know about the Architect comes from your posts and PMs, and I really just meant the "Architect™" comment to refer to any architect anyone wanted to posit, from a god to a machine and/or anything in between. (Personally, I figure our universe is a part of God's car, or at least exists within part of it. A combustion chamber, to be precise. See, in goes the Heavenly Petroleum, ZAP! goes the Divine Spark Plug, and voila - big bang, rapid expansion, a Pious Piston gets shoved and the Lord of All gains a little more momentum. Soon, however [soon being a matter of his perspective, not ours] the piston will come down and SMASH! our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren get a big crunch before the leavings of our universe are flushed out the Celestial Tailpipe. Rinse and repeat, at least til God gets where he's going....)

EDIT: And P.S., thanks to the Wandering Idiot for including me in his predictions for the "Where They''ll Be in Ten Years" thread! :D It's since progressed too far for me to thank you there, but I knew you'd read this so I figured I'd post it here instead. Hooray for trans-dimensional portals! And if it does happen, I'm taking you with me... as a tour guide. 8)

And, may I note (being just past that point) that just because you can use the rules of reality to disprove the rules of reality, doesn't mean they're any less valid . . . it's merely the viewpoint you wish to use. Euclidean geometry is still "true," just as hyperbolic and elliptical geometry are also "true." You just can't use rules from one set in another--well, technically you can, because they only differ by one postulate . . . as long as you don't care about whether none or many lines can be parallel to each other, you save yourself a lot of hassle ^^

Of course logic will contain concepts it cannot prove, just like reality holds in its bowels, somewhere, concepts that cannot be proven by it. Miracles, for example ^^ (And I just HAD to say it, to piss Icy off. Of COURSE they can't be proven. But who's to say they aren't true by reality? It's only that reality can't prove their truthfulness.)



Wasn't that what my belief system was trying to say, in a vey simplified manner? It's far too difficult for humanity to deal with absolute truth--you can never know the Truth. So, I choose to accept what I experience in a consistent manner as true, and ignore anything else. Subjective reality is so much easier to deal with. We, as humans, are (by my experience) naturally subjective creatures. Thanks to Godel (damn his pesky Theorem!) we can understand objective truth, and hold its concept, but because we are subjective creatures, we can't prove objectionability. It will always be inabsolute (yes, probably not a real word, but it gets my meaning across concisely, so I'll use it). Look at it this way, Icy: you are the Phonograph. You're trying to be perfect and play every sound imaginable. Absolute Truth is the Phonograph-breaking sound. If you play it, you will break. End of story. You would not be human if you could understand Absolute Truth.



Ah, WI, you never cease to amuse me. Truly, "Pedantic Absurdist" fits you perfectly.

[quote]And categories are vastly useful simplifications of the world, without which we probably wouldn't be able to communicate at all, although it is best never to forget that they *are* simplifications. So there :P[quote]

Without GEB, I'd never have seen any humor in that sentence.

Now, it cracks me up immensely.

. . . run away screaming, or jump for joy?

Never said he did. I said he proved that you couldn't prove some things (i.e. the postulates of mathematics) through mathetmatics.



I thought I just got through proving that reality does not exist. We don't know the rules of "reality", because there most likely are no rules of "reality". Our experiences do seem to follow some kind of repeating pattern, but sometimes I wonder whether this is more of a product of the human ability to find meaning in meaninglessness than anything else. Mathematics is not inherent in nature - it is a creation of human beings, which we force upon nature. The fact that we have found mathematical equations that approximately describe what we call "reality" is more a testament to our own amazing ability to find patterns in chaos.

[digression]
Don't get me wrong, I love mathematics, and I believe that it is incredibly beautiful; however, I admire it the same way I admire Go, or Chess, or any other complex game built upon simple rules. That's what mathematics is, in the end; a game. I'm defining "game" here as an arbitrary set of relations in the context of which human beings can construct complex patterns, the goal of which would be to create a pattern with certain very particular qualities (e.g. a Go board on which you have more territory than your opponent). The key feature of games is that the "pieces" of the game have no meaning outside of their relation to each other. A black Go stone is simply a funny-looking rock. It only gains significance when it becomes a part of the web of relations that are the rules of Go. We could just as easily use a red stone instead of a black stone, or we could use a paper-clip, or we could eliminate the stones entirely, as well as the board, and simply remember the positions of our pieces on a mental Go grid. Similarly, the number 5 has no meaning in and of itself. It only has meaning when we understand that it is "less than" 6 and "more than" 4. Language works this way as well, as do concepts in general. The idea of a tree has no substance in and of itself; it only gains meaning in relation to other things. It's more accurate to think of the universe as a set of relations rather than a set of things. Thus, everything we think of as consistituting existence, including logic, mathematics, and language, can be thought of as a game.
[/digression]



Once again, I'd like to point out that there's no such thing as reality. Reality is a human-created concept. Thus, the idea of something being "true" without being proveable is meaningless.



You're talking about Absolute Truth as if it exists. The fact is, as I've said, "truth" and "reality" have no meaning except as shorthand for models or ways of thinking that are useful to us. The dichotomy between "objective reality" and "subjective reality" is an artificial one. If Absolute Truth cannot be directly experienced, it does not exist.

Now, before anyone responds to any of this, please re-read this and my previous post very carefully. My ideas can easily be dismissed as radical solipsism or subjectivism, but they're really more complicated and subtle than that. I don't believe that the subjective world is the only "real" anymore than I believe that the objective world is the only "real".

[EDIT: Okay, in responding to Kit's post, I kind of overexaggerated my position on the subject of truth. Yes, I *do* believe that there is something beyond experience that could be called reality, but what I would call "reality" doesn't share much in common with the "traditional" idea of reality. Among other things, it is irreducible to dualisms, including the one between subject and object, and it is also indescribable in terms of human concepts.]

The Forum ate my post. I'll put something up here later, after I get done kicking and screaming in frustration.

That's hilarious, not to mention morbid. I loved it, of course :)
(EDIT: Ooh, that reminds me- I'll have to put up the Douglas Adams-esque "humanity as universe-mechanic" bit I wrote a while ago- it's in a similar vein)

Oh... Er, you didn't read my Reloaded-rant did you? o_o;; It was meant for people who had already seen the movie. I don't think I left any stone unspoiled... Anyway, if you do plan on seeing it sometime soon (that reminds me, I've got to go catch the IMAX version meself) I'd recommend watching the original again first, because-
1. It'll remind you that good as it was, the first movie was still made by the hand of man, which some reviewers apparently have nostalgized themselves into forgetting (at least for the purpose of bashing the newer movie in comparison)
2. Reloaded depends explicitly on knowing the first movie- if you don't remember what bad-asses the Agents are, how important the prophecy is to the rebels*, or that Neo is now "The One" who can defeat an Agent one-handed, you wouldn't get as much out of it. It also helps if you know the original score almost by heart, but I suppose that's asking a bit much :)

* In the original version of the Matrix script, Morpheus fired that electron-cannon at the Sentinels as they were entering. In the filmed one, he simply kept his finger on the EMP release switch, presumably to underscore his confidence that Neo would survive, as he was the One (and that he himself would survive because he had to in order to save Neo). And now, I'll put my inner fanboy back into the box… (Honestly, I've bought both the Reloaded soundtrack and the Animatrix... that should tell you how much I liked the movie, because I normally steer clear of anything that could be labeled "franchise merchandising")



I'm sorry, I must have been confused by this bit: (emphasis mine)

;)
[/smartass]



There you go again, using your "logic" and "reason". Honestly, I though we gave those up? And Mathematics is a creation of the evil god Loki, meant to lead us astray from the true path of Eternal Kaos. I thought everyone knew that.


Y'know, you're coming dangerously close to recreating a fictional universe I came up with a while ago. Stop it. I plan on using it in my eventual webcomic. (It also involves the Godelian paradox at the heart of the concept of God, and other fun stuff. Just as background, you understand…)



Lemme guess… Invalid_session? Annoying as all hell, that. Does anyone know what causes it, or if Khym would be able to do some sort of maintainer-fu to get rid of them?


NOTE: Hmph. Normally, I browse these forums at work with images disabled, so I don't even see the avatars. Now I feel all left out... Fine then, I'll put up my ugly mug tomorrow! But I won't be naked! (Unlike Krylex, whose avatar scares the holy shit out of me! Seriously, man, a guy could get badly burned that way! I wonder, why am I using so much unnecessary exclamatory punctuation when this sentence obviously requires a question mark! I blame Discordianism! You should too!)

-The Wandering Idiot
Paragraph-Length Postwhore