Or, actually, Gould is talking about representation at different level and you're interpreting it as measuring, a la Mandelbrot. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
This makes facts a little slipperier than most people realise. But as long as we're all (more or less) in the same headspace, no major reality dislocations are likely.
Unfortunately, sooner or later someone comes along and spoils the neat picture.
The best way to avoid any danger of unwanted metaprogramming is to ignore them.
(Which I think links to Fran's point about right brain-left brain. The left brain uses langauge and linear models, and anything that can't be explained via language and linearity "makes no sense" = "is nonsense" to the left brain. The right brain experiences differently, and sees the limits of language...back to Wittgenstein's point: language has its limits as an experiential tool. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Was it Gould who talked about how gravity had no importance below a certain size, hence the structure of insects?
Maybe two things: One is how different features become emphasised at different scales, t'other is how at different scales different rules (systems) apply.
Durrr. Note to non existent self object: switch brain on. Where'd I put the switch? Zzzzzip!
Ah, there it is.
Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Gould didn't discover that, he just popularised it.
I hate to quote myself, but
Beginning with the 18th century naturalists a movement arose that sought to understand the "universal laws of form" in order to explain the observed forms of living organisms. Because of its association with Lamarckism, their ideas fell into disrepute until the early 20th century, when pioneers such as D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson revived them. The modern understanding is that there are indeed universal laws (arising from fundamental physics and chemistry) that govern growth and form in biological systems.
The basic scaling law here is that the surface to volume ratio is inversely proportional to the linear dimension. If you're really small, surface effects dominate: surface tension is actually stronger than gravity, or pressure. This is why insects can walk on water. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
I thought they hadn't found any underlying law(s), laws I mean that dealt with the super-micro (quantum) and the super-macro (relativity)? We understand certain processes, but I don't think we understand exactly how a cuckoo upon breaching its shell will immediately kick any other baby birds out of the nest(did you see the film of this? I think it was on one of Bill Oddie's nature watch shows.) We call it "instinct", but I don't think...well, I don't know how science explains the process of knowing something so complex and so variable...what are the instructions in the D.N.A. for kicking live chicks out of a nest?
Yadda. Sommat along those lines.
(I think in terms of the measurement and understanding...a foetus cannot concieve of the world beyond the womb. Humans cannot conceive of...whatever is beyond their current measuring devices. Yet the baby in the womb responds to and is aware of "something" beyond the womb--e.g. music, its mother's hearbeat etc. I'm trying to get at something like that, I think. The western science descriptive model as a tool, a measuring device...) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Fancy a game of Go? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Could you expand on that? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
It probably isn't correct to think of DNA as containing instructions - you have to see the DNA in the context of the environment it finds itself in and in the context of the development process. Cuckoo DNA, when it is decoded by the egg cell in the context of a cuckoo egg and an acceptable environment, produces over time a small bird that pushes other small birds out of nests.
I see these variations as being one potential source for so-called genetic memory. You can't be me, I'm taken
I think a more likely and simpler explanation for such things as imprinting ("just-born duck thinks any moving object is mother, and thus thinks wayward football is parent" type of thing), is that for entirely physiological reasons, the chick is sensitized.
The sensitization could be (and I am only guessing by way of example) a flood of internally generated endorphins combined with some vision/motion phenomenon that is hardwired, not by learning over time, but almost instantly in the way that crack or meth can change behaviour very fast.
The 'flood of endorphins' is not some 'genetic memory', it is simply a function of the system that has been 'described' somwhere in the 800 bible's worth of DNA.
I throw in the bible reference to further confuse the homonculii ;-) You can't be me, I'm taken
In humans - very much so.
Sven suggests this is an automated process based at its lowest level on amoeba-like attract/repel etc. forces. Did I undestand that right, sven? All complexity is built as these small parts aggregate. This suggests that me typing this and you typing that are to be understood as physically determined processes.
As I understand it, though, the idea of the meta-programmer introduces some extra space between input and output (action-reaction). A contemplative area where choices can be made. The speiciesists among us (not you) see a division between us humans and every other living thing.
I think any drawing of this line is impossible (levels, degrees etc.)
So...contemplation and choice. I know that's an unfinished thought.
Their structure is determined during development by an interplay of the decoding and transcription process of DNA with the foetal environment
And an interplay between the foetus and the external world, and all those levels of action-contemplation-reaction...a pure mechanical process has no space for contemplation (chance?)...which (to go back to the subject of the diary) is the element science has to avoid--controlled experiments--trying to nail the moment and see finally everything that is happening, and what is proposed as an alternative view, where Chance is a key and un-removable attribute to the system. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
This suggests that me typing this and you typing that are to be understood as physically determined processes.
As I understand it, though, the idea of the meta-programmer introduces some extra space between input and output (action-reaction).
When I said "foetal environment" I meant the inclusion of the outside world.
Chance is part of the physical world, so it's constantly an influence.
So thoughts are physically determined? (I mean, if you think you have a choice, then that thought is also phsyically determined etc. ad infinitum back to the...well...whatever was the first step in the physical process...linearity all the way...so "Chance" is another word for "We haven't described--perhaps we can't describe--the whole system, but in it's possible in principle.)
No-one said the processing of input had to be simple or immediate.
It's the processing that is the issue, I think. Because each process, when examined becomes a simpler process until you have simple input-output. Or, and careful with the coffee folks--
Our brain is a physical thing. Thoughts are physical processes. So how does quantum behaviour translate in the human brain? And where lieth the necessity there?
(cue a hundred AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!s)
But seriously, either we--our thoughts, our identity, etc--are part of the physical manifestation of the universe and are therefore quantum at heart like all other physical systems, or, well, I feel those edges overlapping... Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
My suggestion for a definition of the soul: Those statements that cannot be proven true or false within the (formal?) system of our thought. Why not? As good as any I have heard.
And there's also that tiny problem left over from quantum mechanics about whether or not perception changes the workings and outcome of an experiment.
So at this point assuming that thinking is physical is a supposition that can't be proved or disproved.
In metaprogramming terms you're chunking information more or less in behavioural terms, and - as long as you don't get impatient - that's all you need to do. There is no complete functional disassembly of minds, souls, thoughts or even brains to refer to, so it's impossible to state categorically that X, Y or Z are the cause of any inner experience. You can't even do this with drugs. Just because the effects of LSD or ayahuasca are fairly reliable, doesn't mean anyone really knows what they change, or how.
All you can do is give the black box a prod every now and then, try to learn from what it does, and look at other people's incomplete ideas about how to make changes, and the kinds of changes that can be made.
I take this to be basic linearity: input (before) output(after and as a result of.) B follows A in time and is caused (at least partly) by A, and before A was something else all the way back into the mists.
"Chance" means (on this scenario, I think) side hits from other ABC causal (linear) events.
Put the whole lot together and you have chaos, but only because we can't put ourselves in the position to follow each line.
If I have understood the intro. to the I-Ching (me and understand=big IF), the (ancient?) chinese attitude didn't hold to this model. It didn't follow past to present to future, but rather saw present spreading out in all directions.
I'm assuming that what we have discovered so far of what we call the quantum world does not follow the ABC model of reality.
If our brains are quantum in their centres (inside the inside the inside etc.) then they, too, cease to be simply ABC boxes.
Which is why I would enjoy reading a diary by Migeru on anything quantum-related. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Did you read this?
What's difficult about Quantum Mechanics is that it is contextual, non-counterfactual and nonlocal.
Our brain is a physical thing. Thoughts are physical processes. So how does quantum behaviour translate in the human brain?
I saw something faintly suggestive somewhere recently that indicated it might possibly be possible for QM to have some influence, but neurons are pretty big things.
I'll point out, for the general edification of those reading rather than for your benefit, that classical computation considers a very small class of devices that don't seem to be anything like the brain. And we don't really understand the details of those devices anyway.
T'was in fact Penfold. Here he is.
You know, I suppose I have broken the golden rule:
"Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent."
Really, I wanted to clear my head of some heaviness, the I Ching did the job (as melo said, the sound of something elegant being hit lightly), and I thought it was humorous that the I Ching brought up 20 - "It does not further one to go anywhere," which my brain translated as DO NOTHING, THERE'S NO POINT AT THE MOMENT, but I had a moving fifth line, did I not mention this?
...which I also found humorous...I know I know, it's just rorschach. Anyway, the moving line created Hexagram 23 which was all about how benevolent rulers should behave.
There's a reference to your key point in the judgement.
And I'm hoping that reading a bunch of non-science types bandy words about wildly hasn't made you despair.
Regarding Jerome, for yes I read him (as head of ET) straight into Hexagram 20, "Contemplation / View"...
I thought this was humorous as I thought it (rorschach rorschach!) summed up the current attitude in re: (yes, you guessed) the structure of ET as it stands. But I was doing this in real time, so then I read.
And because I was questioning this (questioning the judgement--I suppose the answer to my unanswered question "Whither ET?" which may be my own personal question, but I think others ask the same thing...
(And I thought it was humorous that the I Ching symbol up top looks a bit like a starfish...)
So anyway, I added my snarky comments re: "But we don't believe in rulers, do we?" etc. to counter the supposed truths being listed by the I Ching in its role as Oracle.
So here's me fessing up to you senor in the hope of cheering you up or letting you give me up as a lost cause. And hmmm. What can I give you? Something powerful.
But also something funky.
Something tasty.
Something beautiful
Ach, laddie, I must dash! May all your pleasures be very pleasurable!
To all of yez, of course! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
