> >> >I'm currently studying both Quantum Mechanics and General
> >> >Relativity on the side, and computational difficulties abound.
> >>
> >> So what d'you think? Are we getting close to the powers of information
> >> processing which exist as a PART of the universe, to describe the MECHANICS
> >> of the universe?
> >
> >The stall in the progress in this area indicates some sort of blatant
> >oversight. I prefer more rationalistic terminology for this concept.
>
> Sorry? I... genuinely don't quite follow you here... am I right... you...
> think there's a big oversight in QM... but you don't think it's to do with
> the Godel problem of the universe being fundamentally unable to understand
> itself? I mean, fair enough, I was just a bit unsure about what you were
> getting at.
1) If the universe is trying to understand itself, I'm not in a position
to see it. What I see is a "tiny" piece of the universe trying to
understand not only the universe, but utterly nonphysical abstractions as
well.
2) There's a big oversight when you have two high-power theories [explain
much, extensively verified] that are immiscible [like oil and water].
The problem is, *where* the oversight is, is unknown.
> >> >> I get a buzz from the idea of explaining meta-spiritual
> >> >> information-processing as being as deterministic and physics-bound as
> >> >> chemistry... the definitions are so lax here, though.
> >> >
> >> >In this case, I don't view information-processing as spiritual. I view
> >> >programming the information processing as spiritual. [No, a genetic
> >> >algorithm hunting for an efficient program is still raw information
> >> >processing; it isn't getting to spiritual *yet*.]
> >>
> >> Hmm... I'm not saying that ALL information processing is spiritual. I'm just
> >> interested in entertaining the idea that what people tend to get spiritual
> >> about (consciousness, souls etc) might arise from information processing.
> >> And, well, they must, surely, as they're an emergent of neural processes?
> >> Your "programming the information" is kind of like layers of information
> >> processing itself at lower, more concrete, levels, isn't it? So, memetic
> >> structures in the programmer's brain manipulate information in the
> >> computer... but then, they also manipulate perceptual/motor neural
> >> information in the programmer's brain. Above a certain number of iterations
> >> in this self-referential process, maybe that's what we consider to be
> >> "spiritual"?
> >
> >Not in my framework, but it's formally workable.
>
> So... if you don't mind me cutting right in here... where do you think
> consciousness comes from? (simple terminology, please!)
I'm considering spiritual and mental to be different primitive traits.
This is obviously a hack; you describe a metaworkaround above.
With enough relations described, one could figure out a better description.
I've done accurate calculations without much awareness [mental up,
spiritual crashed], and total garbage calculations while being completely
aware that they're garbage [mental crashed, spiritual up].
In general, I find that my "spirit" boosts my "mind", but my "mind"
cannot boost my "spirit". The metaworkaround, above, *might* explain this.
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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