All of TheMatrixDNA's Comments + Replies

You said: "Well, an embryo develops a mind because it's got the genetic code for it - which, yes, comes from the larger external system that evolved that code. Is that what you meant?"

Our conflict is due two different interpretations of genetic code. You think that biological systems (aka life) evolved a genetic code, so, you think that had no genetic code before life. It is not what is suggesting the results from my different method of investigation. There is no " code" in the sense that are composed by symbols. Each horizontal base-pa... (read more)

-2MugaSofer
Wait, you think human genetic code has existed, unchanged, since the beginning of time? Yeah, I can see how that would lead to human exceptionalism and such. Pretty sure it's physically impossible, though. Or do you just mean it's the result of a causal chain leading back to the beginning of time?
-2MugaSofer
Heavily compressed, mind, but it's technically true that a superintelligence could deduce us. I'm pretty sure that doesn't imply it was deliberately designed, though; we could just be an emergent property of the universe, not it's object.
0CCC
I'm confused; I can't understand what you are saying. I think that part of this is the language barrier (what is your first language, by the way?) and part of it is probably an inferential distance issue (that is, what you're saying is far enough away from anything that I expect that I'm having trouble making the mental leap). So... would this mean that a typewriter contains the information for anything that can be typed on a typewriter? Including... say... the secret of immortality, plans for a time machine, and a way to detect the Higgs Boson? That seems a rather broad definition of 'information'.
-2MugaSofer
It certainly is that. So ... what's left? Doesn't that explain everything we mean by "mind"? I've replied to this assertion elsewhere; hope I got the interpretation right. You know, I'm not sure what you mean by "chaos". If it's just randomness, rationality can tell you how to choose ptimally using probabilities; perhaps that's not what you mean? Is it complexity? Oh, I think I get it; the Amazon is emblematic of Earth before civilization, right? The ancestral environment. Which is, naturally, where we evolved. But even the biosphere follows laws, even if sometimes the results are so complex we have trouble discerning them. Sorry; by "evolution" I meant natural selection. You know, Darwinism? Well, I understand physically entropy is always increasing, and replicators tend to overrun available resources and improve via selection, but I'm not clear on these "cycles".

Thanks, Estarilo. I really need to fix my world vision and thoughts.

You said: " More ordered states could prove to be unsustainable whether or not there's some sort of overarching system such as you describe at play."

I think yes, more ordered state must be unsustainable, eternally. But, chaos also must be unsustainable. If so, there are these cycles, when chaos produces order and order produces chaos. The final results is evolution, because each cycle is a little bit more complex. There is hierarchy of systems. Overarching systems can be two ty... (read more)

0Estarlio
You're putting the cart before the horse here. You've said that they must be - why must they be? If they are then what predictions does their being so let you make and how have you tested them? What, for that matter, are your formal definitions of order and chaos? The way I'd define them, chaos exists mostly on a quantum level and when you start to generalise out correlates start showing up on a macroscopic level really quickly, and then it's not chaos anymore because it's - at least in principle - predictable. I mean it's not silly to suppose that selection and mutation - with the former being the order enforcing part of evolution and the latter being the 'chaotic' part, operate in cycles. I believe if you model evolution of finite populations using Fokker Planck equations you tend to have an increasing spread of phenotypes between periods of heavy selection - but it's not really an area I've much interest in so I couldn't say for sure. I don't know what this means. You're assigning an overarching system agency. But agency tends to mean that something is alive and thinking in English. Like a human would be said to have agency, whereas a computer - at least in the common "I've got one under my desk" sense - wouldn't. Systems don't tend to be considered to have gender in English either. In French lots of words are gendered but in English very few are. The only English things I can think of that are gendered other than living creatures are ships; traditionally thought of as female. The second system just seems to be undefined. If you want to find a human how easy is that for you to do? Turn out of your front door and go to town and you'll probably find a fair number of them. If you want to find a specific human how much information do you need? I believe if you start off knowing nothing about them other than that they're somewhere on Earth you only really need something like 32 bits of information but in any case it's a lot more. If you want to create a table yo
-2MugaSofer
Well, an embryo develops a mind because it's got the genetic code for it - which, yes, comes from the larger external system that evolved that code. Is that what you meant? I must admit, I don't see how that follows. Are you suggesting our universe was designed specifically as a "womb" to create us? That's the only analogy I can see, and evolutionary advantage seems a simpler reason for sentience to evolve - although I guess those aren't mutually exclusive, if this "natural super-system existing beyond our universe" anticipated that would result in us. But why postulate this? It could as easily have designed the universe as a "womb" to produce muffins! We could as easily be part of this muffin-womb. (Man, there's a sentence I never expected to type.) But science again and again has discovered that what we thought was "chaos" is merely the complex result of simple rules - order, in other words, that we can exploit with rationality. If rationality works in ordered states, what's the analog that works in "chaotic" states?
2CCC
It is possible to create something without having the information for it. The classic example; if enough monkeys type at random on enough typewriters for long enough, then sooner or later (probably much, much later) one of them will randomly type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Even if none of the monkeys have ever heard of Shakespeare.

There is an issue never remembered here, about the question that we believe the world is X but it is Y: Are you sure that rationality is pure product of brains... Are you sure that mind is pure product of brains... What if mind is product of a hidden superior natural system whose bits-information are invading our immediate world and being aggregated to our synapses... If so, rationality as pure product of mind will make the most evolved rationalist a loser, by while... Or don t... (sorry, I have no punctuation mark in this keyboard)

Here, in Amazon jungle, ... (read more)

1Estarlio
More ordered states could prove to be unsustainable whether or not there's some sort of overarching system such as you describe at play. Your assumptions seem to be quite complicated and thus get a low probability ahead of time, there's no specifically supporting evidence (indeed it's not even sure what supporting evidence for some super system sending down information would be.) Basically the idea falls beneath the noise level for me in terms of credibility. Maybe ordered systems lose because the magical unicorns have a love of chaos in their hearts. I consider the two ideas about as seriously.
-2MugaSofer
Well, our personalities, memories and so on can be affected by interfering with the brain, and it certainly looks like it's doing some sort of information processing (as far as we can tell), so ... seems unlikely, to be honest. Also, our minds do kind of look evolved to fit our biological niche. I'm having real trouble parsing this. Are you saying evolution will make us irrational? Or that rationality is incompatible with lovecraftian puppetry? Or something completely different? You ... realize human's didn't evolve in the Amazon, right? I'm not sure I'd characterize the natural world as "chaotic" as such. Complex, sometimes, sure, but it follows some pretty simple rules, and when we deduce these rules we can manipulate them. The universe is definitely ordered, but don't forget evolution can produce some pretty "designed" looking structures. I think you sound kind of like a crank, to be honest with you. You seem to be treating "order" and "chaos" more like elemental forces or something, and generally sound like you've got problems with magical thinking. That said, I had some trouble understanding bits of what you wrote, so it's possible I'm inadvertently addressing a strawman version of your claims. Tell me, are you a native English speaker?