Saturday, September 28, 2013

Errors and Progress

errors and progress:

"i think generally history is put across as this catalogue of progress, as a grand accretion of knowledge, but there's something lacking, a recognition of error, or even that we could be wrong somewhat. it's all a little one sided."

"you think historians won't admit to mistakes made? it's all a glorification of the past?"

"something more insidious than that. it's like we make errors in our thinking, and we follow on from that, we build the craziness up until it almost consumes us, for decades or hundreds of years even, and then finally we recognize we were wrong and then it's wiped out, and we don't really talk about it again. it's not like it's a cover up. it's just this vacant time that's been lost."

"right, what were we thinking? so life is like the game of snakes and ladders? we make mistakes and back we go?"

"exactly. it's like, the truth is immortality. the very thought that you could be fundamentally crazy about reality or something in life is really frightening at some point for everyone, i think. and all the time you were crazy you were on the path to mortality. but i mean, even the thought that you might never know the truth about something important is pretty disturbing to anyone, right? and no one wants to really die, right? all this time spent being crazy isn't just not desirable, it's dangerous. it's hazardous to your health."

"but someone might say, we may never know the truth, that we cannot know anything for certain?"

"yes, and i think that's reasonable, but my theory is the truth fits better than a falsity. it's like it's ultimately easier to think about the truth than something that's false is the best i can put it."

"that makes sense. the truth works."

"like i have problems with belief about modern science. because i don't believe that people are powerless beings in a universe with fixed unchanging physical laws as it's put, that these scientific laws exist without the human element, so to speak, forever unchanging. i believe people are creative, sometimes very powerful beings. i wouldn't be shocked if it were put that great scientists were actually gods who created science not men who merely discovered it, that they had theories which they made real. they actually changed the way things work."

"so the world is more mental than physical. it's malleable by thought."

"yes. and that's why thought errors are dangerous."

"and Isaac Newton is the god of mechanics?"

"right, something like that. where science can't resolve something only says to me that something is false in the argument. it's like someone who has teleported knows the whole mechanical motion argument is false, but that's what the world seems. actually, nothing really moves as it seems, it's only the image that makes it seem so. that's the only explanation that works."

"i suppose it's one thing to teleport all the time in your dreams, i mean you move from one place to another in an instant, but another, quite shocking, to do it while you're awake. but how could it work, if physical laws have no original basis, that they were, in a sense, created later?"

"if it were true, you would have to imagine an earlier world, where things like these physical laws simply didn't hold, where objects behaved differently."

"so it's like the popular notion that magic existed hundreds of years ago to be replaced by modern science, that the world was a very different place a long time ago?"

"like that. the essence is that science really didn't exist hundreds of years ago."

"what else?"

"so i've thought about time and how a movie projector is supposed to work, and it's along the lines of best fit. the argument is that time and change are discrete, like the frames of the film passing through the movie projector at 24 frames per second. just as you couldn't show a infinite number of frames in the projector, time cannot be continuous, it cannot have infinitesimal change, change is discrete. it merely seems continuous like a movie does."

"but if change is discrete, are the states of real matter finite therefore?"

"well if they are finite, i guess that means repetition seems inevitable, but there is still the question of time how long states last and does that vary? but i guess it's still too early to tell. but discrete change doesn't necessarily mean there are finite states, does it?"

"i guess there still could be an infinite number of states. i'm going on like infinite is a good thing, aren't i?"

"yeah. nobody wants everything to happen, right?"

CLEARCHARGE

Saturday, September 21, 2013

The Lack of Connection to Separate Realities

the lack of connection to separate realities:

the natural question when separate realities are mentioned is where are they? for we think about space and distance a lot. the key however is to think about connection. we are all here in this reality because we are all connected, and space and distance have meaning only here. now other realities may theoretically exist but there is no connection, never mind where are they?

think connection and lack of, not space!

CLEARCHARGE

What the World Seems

what the world seems:

"so at one point in time it seemed completely real, for an instant, that i could be the only person in reality. it was my solipsistic moment. and let me tell you it was a frightening concept. but even worse was that, ok, i'm thinking i'm the only real person, but all the while, i'm in a crowded room surrounded by people! it's one thing to think i am alone, but then what is going on with all the other people i can see? it means a total loss of control, right? a reality of falsity that you have little or no power over."

"but you came back from that? you stopped believing that? how long did it go on for?"

"well, yes and no. that was one extreme. and people like simple thinking, right? either other people are all not real or the other side of the coin is everyone is real. now i had gone for years thinking that everyone was real, so long that i can always revert to that, but the thing is, i think i've come to the conclusion that thinking in black and white, all or nothing, you know, that kind of thinking is flawed. what is more probable, and in the end you have to deal with probabilities because no one is going to come up to you and tell what the truth is, right, is that the world is somewhere in between."

"you mean some people are real and some people are not, they're philosophical zombies?"

"exactly. the philosophical question of the guy dreaming about being a butterfly and is he really a man or a butterfly dreaming he is a man, i think the correct answer is both. what this example just points out is, again, we like to think of binary possibilities, it's one or the other, but the truth is, to put it simply, it's all real. there are elements of truth in both situations."

"ok. but because we're talking, we know the other person is real, right, and solipsism can't be strictly true?"

"yes. but the part of that where other people are not real, is what i'm saying, that is probably the case. just not everyone."

"but how can you disprove that everyone is real and we're all together on earth?"

"well one thing i do remember clearly is that my life on earth began as a sequence of dreams, each more and more "awake" like until we get to where i have my first clear memory of being on earth at the age of three, the summer of 1975, i mean fully awake, on a flight to Honolulu from Taipei. and the weird thing is, you'd expect to forget a lot of dreams, but i still remember each of the dreams in my pre-earth sequence. so what i'm saying is, earth has something to do with the dream world. sometimes, i wonder if something really bad were to happen in life here on earth, would i "wake up" from the waking nightmare, in the world i came from before earth?"

"but what you're saying about people wanting to think of distinct possibilities, you know, as if only the extremes could be true, it's because it's hard to make sense of something more complex where bits of both or even third or fourth possibilities could be true. you can accept that, i mean, but it's hard to know where to begin, and it's frustrating, because ultimately it becomes some kind of mathematical project, where you're looking at all the combinations that could exist and you try to assign probabilities to each. it's like you want to think life is simple but in the end it's a mess of Bayesian probabilities or something like that."

"i know. i'm constantly changing my assumptions. some days it's like, well, maybe i met a real person today and other days, no one around me is real, i'm wandering around in a waking dream. and it's not like in The Matrix, where in a sense the guy got out of being a brain in a vat. if you were a brain in a vat, you couldn't exactly stop being one. the "real world" in the movie may have more real people in it, that's all it is."

"that's slightly a whole other topic. what i want to know is, if some people are real and some aren't, how do you tell who is real and who isn't?"

"well as far as logic goes, and i'm not sure, real people are more shocking."

"because philosophical zombies are more a product of the unconscious?"

"right. they're more what you expect."

"well i've met plenty of shocking people, so that's at least a few dozen real people i guess. but what if you marry someone who isn't real, or marry someone who is real, for that matter? would you have a preference one way or the other?"

"well that's a minefield. i think i have the same policy for both when i'm with people. i can't get into obsessing, well, is this person real or not all the time."

"that's probably wise. but you can't exactly escape from that. once the question is out of the bag, so to speak, you can't avoid it anymore."

"well from a paranoid point of view, and i confess, i've lain awake frightened as anything some nights, both possibilities are worrying."

"right. if the other person is not real, then no big deal, right, is one way to look at any trouble. but what's the other fear?"

"it goes back to that moment when i thought i alone was real but was surrounded by a crowd. if that situation could exist, where the unconscious runs rampant, generating zombies everywhere, it just seems a dangerous place to be."

"so more real people, please. so i guess finally, what's a good number to hold in your mind as a best guess as to what the true population is?"

"i don't know, i wish i did. but i'm sure there are other worlds too and not everyone is on earth."

"come on, give me a number! something i wouldn't end up embarrassed by, should the truth ever get out."

"ok. maybe lower estimate high two digits, which would mean the collective unconscious is huge, like a supercomputer processing all these zombie people. high estimate, maybe a million, where you couldn't really tell the difference."

"so maybe median estimate 5 digits? somebody must have written all these books in the book stores, right?"

"the main variable we need to know is how much is the unconscious capable of? if it's a supercomputer, then anything is possible, right? then we get a low figure for the true number of people. if it requires that many people to produce all the literature and stuff like that in the world then it's a high figure. and anyway, you should probably even if you have the correct estimate consciously change your assumptions all the time."

"just to get used to all the possibilities?"

"right. exactly."

CLEARCHARGE

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Talking Major Pitfalls

talking major pitfalls:

between strangers, or even good friends, but generally with those whom we do not know well or may be quite different from under the surface, there is always one thing to bear in mind, that is, any conversation may be, in actuality, beneath perhaps the most disarmingly polite conversation on top, a constant probing to evaluate each other's personal value systems, what they hold dear, what they want, what they do not want, and what they hate. it is often a harsh truth that those with different values cannot get along. optimists might say that people have more in common that not, but consider that even a few differing values, though seemingly trivial perhaps, may be a deal breaker in any relationship of any depth.

for those who love to talk, for the sake of talking in itself, are perhaps most likely to forget this vital fact of life. i am certain i am not the first to tell you that many relationships break up because the parties want different things. this makes it apparent that want is very important. for the talkative person, conversation is some form of art even perhaps. they may not necessarily talk that much about what they really want or need. maybe they just like the sound of their own voice! but as for the other person, they may be trying to analyse what the person wants exactly from what he or she says. you say, "such and such is..." they might interpret that as meaning literally you really want such and such, whereas that is neither the case nor the intention.

let us consider everything that brings up negative emotions such as hate, anger and fear, as things people do not want. likewise, a conversation may be a test in the same way, what they think is bad. now people do think the same way sometimes, with the same patterns. bad is, in itself, often thought to be a bad thing to talk about, so people are even less direct sometimes about it. however, as many think along the same lines, even the most indirect, subtly far removed remark from the other person could be understood as a mark of contempt. people are highly alert to what is valued as bad and an entirely innocent remark may be misinterpreted to mean that you judge such and such as a bad thing.

now talking may seem endlessly hazardous to the paranoid and the shy, even that differences too great could lead to hostility, or indifference at best, but where the parties must be connected or at the same place as fate decrees, there is at least plenty to talk about nowadays without revealing the differing personal value systems that might lead to conflict. we may not have, as optimists believe, more in common than we think, but at least we do have some things the same about which we can talk.

CLEARCHARGE

Saturday, September 7, 2013

To Think Awake and Asleep

to think awake and asleep:

we have few words as signifiers for the various states of what is perhaps the most important component of our minds, our consciousness and its cycle of change. for something that is complex, that could be considered to have many different states, we commonly reduce this to two words, "awake" and "asleep", or "conscious" and "unconscious". is it really that simple? or is this a prime example of the poverty of the language in its current form?

let us deconstruct the situation. when we are awake we are self consciously thinking, our thoughts are clearer, and so the word "think" is linked to the word "consciousness". now i seek to dismiss the most common false assumption which springs from this, that when we are asleep or unconscious we are not thinking at all, that consciousness equates to thinking and unconsciousness to no thinking, like a dead animal in our sleep, so to speak. indeed, i posit that we are thinking all the time, that a fundamental part of the self is the eternal thinker, that we can never stop thinking, even in our sleep.

however, the quality, so to speak, of what our thought is when we are asleep may be very different. words that you would associate with thinking whilst awake are "clear", "focused", "distinct", "conceptual". words that you would associate with thinking whilst asleep or unconscious might be "blurry", "cloudy", "thematic", "moody", "emotional", "stuck", etc. generally, thinking when awake could be slow or fast. when asleep without dreaming, it seems slow. thought is most volatile upon falling asleep and waking up and when dreaming.

you would think, at the very least, this subject deserves a greater, more precise vocabulary, to eliminate the misconceptions arising from the over simplistic present binary terms, "awake" and "asleep".

CLEARCHARGE