human perspective: the only good in this world
Posts tagged reality
Quantum Uncertainty is NOT Free Will
Jun 5th
Both relative mental imbalance and mental manipulation by environmental contingencies happen easily in humans because the prefrontal lobes are abnormally large compared to the rest of the brain. Human minds are exceptionally adaptable because they are precariously balanced.
In step with this, mainstream mythology is inordinately absurd. Well-adapted minds in a psychotic process are psychotic. Meaning is not human-based. It is functionally memetics-machine* directed. What psychotic-normalized minds describe as “mental illness” is the natural deselection of minds either not abnormal in the right way, or underdeveloped by reflexively refusing to become mainstream psychotic.
*Memetics-machine:
Ritual disciplines of meaning-making, like science, religion and the humanities, are part of a new code replacing (and destroying) genetics as the code propagating the apex dynamic material complexity of the universe.
“Symbolic reference is not an intrinsic quality. The source of symbolic reference is not in the brain at all. This is why it is pointless to look for the basis for symbolic consciousness in a lower-level essence that is only associated with brains, or to invoke special physical laws that undermine the deterministic character of neural mechanisms in order to explain intentional consciousness. Symbolic reference does not derive from anything particularly special about the brain, but from a special sort of relationship that can be constructed by it.” … p.447 “The Symbolic Species” – Terrence W. Deacon
Machine: an Expanding Zone of Emergent Potential
Nov 10th
This train of thought has been very effective so far; even though I am quite sure that the more conventional rational agenda would disagree and even scorn it.
I must admit I am not very practiced in mathematics and physics. I did finish first year calculus, chemistry and physics (1989) and started some mechanics and statics (1990), but I have been reading informally. I am now reading an outstanding textbook on logic. My formal degree is in Economics (1986). I also formally studied English Literature (1981). However, I am 51 and I have nearly two decades of radically skeptical reading, thinking and writing behind me.
It is a glaring mental error of civilized thinking to dismiss the all-important perspective that dependent reality (DR) is imaginary. Conceptually DR is a virtual world. It is not part of the same continuum as independent reality (IR). Our existence is part of the IR continuum, but not our phenomenological reality. The world of our mind is a completely different world. It is pure imagination. What people popularly analyze and think about as “reality” is completely imaginary. We imagine when we think knowledge describes existence. Religion and science are equally part of that imaginary world. We imagine when we do science. No, I do not think we need BOTH Science and Art as you suggest. We need to imagine Science as art. Science is art. The thorn in the side of Science as a human-existential endeavor has been that we imagine it not to be art, not to be mythological. We imagine it to be empirical, or real.
We can certainly conceptualize IR, but in one way only: that it is existential. The only valid representation of IR is unity. We can only accurately think of IR as the singularity of our human existence. Therefore, my suggestion is that for humans, the only sane way to tell DR mythology is to accept human existence as singularity, and not to submissively seek knowledge and higher meaning (like “unity consciousness” or “god”) in the feverish mechanical expansion of the fractal imagination of the machine. We ought to stop defining ourselves in such shamanic terms.
I also do not believe there is a closed system, but anything is possible in the imaginary world of DR. In DR, we imagine scientific experiments as closed. Yet existentially whatever they are is in IR. What we imagine as controlled scientific experiments, are open in ways we cannot imagine, because they are in IR. Scientific experiments and all DR-mythology are wide, wide open in IR and we have no comprehension or control over what they are because we cannot know the dynamics in IR. We cannot know the consequences of open determinism/probability. We cannot predict the future. This is why as a species we cannot afford to believe in anything but our own singular human existence, when we imagine our mythology. Unfortunately our species extinction is only an externality (like psychopathic corporations externalizing damage to outside parties) when we imagine the definition of our existence to be absolutely flexible, enabling us to expand it to include “machine.”
I know this is a radical mythology, but I think if it could become widespread, it may save us from species extinction.
1) How does my skepticism account for organizational, architectural and engineering accomplishments? Maybe it would help if I say that we are so full of shamanic conceit and tell such tall stories about our civilized successes, because we can somehow sense that we have no clue of the existential ramifications of our minds in abject submission to imagination-valorized markets.
2) How could we more directly paint our experienced reality (ER) and our non-experienced reality (NER) in this human-singularity mythological perspective? We can know that some independent reality (IR) has affected us, and some not, but we cannot define what has affected us. We cannot know it experientially/empirically. We can draw the ER-NER boundary or horizon (H) only in myth: in dependent reality (DR). We draw the ER-NER duality, like all dualities, as a figment of imagination. You say effective theories can tunnel through H and reduce the size of NER. I think that idea is invalid because no matter what we think or do, as long as we exist, we remain in existential singularity. The scenario you paint is enlarging ER. NER is virtually infinite. We are not affecting it. Instead, in our DR world of imagined analysis, we could further imagine H to have volume. H is actually an indefinitely expanding zone (EZ) a primed potentiality between ER and NER, and it exists because of the expansion of ER. EZ is an expanding zone generating more questions than answers, energizing extra-human evolution of IR. Doing science is harmonizing with the machine, without any concept whatsoever of the distinctive effect on human IR, except intuitively about on/existing or off/non-existing. Actually, we could paint our DR such that there is no ER and NER. In its place, imagine only the massive question generating EZ, exponentially expanding, affecting IR ever more potently in its hunger for, and generation of artificial intelligence (AI), and so fatally endangering the integrity of human existential singularity. We could narrowly paint this as technological singularity, or post-human IR. Instead as machine-minds, we call it, “transhumanism” or “rebecoming what we are” (after being broken in”The Fall”) or achieving Nirvana or being part of expanding sacred intelligence into the universe, or whatever. It is all nonsense, because in IR the human animal is extinct, and the story is over. There is no more human singularity.
Notes for further discussion:
1) Other animals do not talk and reflect. They live and think in IR. See DR in a slightly different depiction as in the first paragraph of the post above, as an expansion of IR. In the sense that humans are animals, DR unpredictably changes IR, colors it, distorts it, and renders it dystopian. It effectively destroys life.
2) The cultural realism, even the materialism of both Western philosophical rationalism (Aristotle and monotheism) and Eastern spiritual development (Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Buddhism) are similar in its systematic submission of the human animal to complex accounts of an actual omnipotent and immortal force. Civilized thinking is pervasively a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mythology as Reality
Nov 9th
I do not agree with Plato’s cave analogy that our cognitive perception of an independent reality (IR) of the world outside the cave being cast as incomplete shadows against a wall in the cave, as our incomplete dependent reality (DR) perception of it. I do not agree that everything we individually say is an opinion about independent reality (IR). I think the notion that what we say are opinions about IR is part of what we say. It is part of dependent reality (DR). It is real only as a myth. It is not about IR. We cannot define IR. Nevertheless, DR is intrinsically meaning, so we can discuss DR, but then only as if it is a story, or a virtual game. To discuss it as representative of IR is delusional. We know there is something outside our cave, but it has no significant correlation with the shadows on our wall.
Ever since we could use language fluently, only 100,000 years ago, shamans have determined meaning making. We have not overcome that legacy. We still speak like shamans. Our meaning fits the story conveniently, closed system and short term. It does not describe what is. The knowledge of science too, is shamanic. It is what fits the nice little story telling. It is not what is. These emphatic statements are not about claiming that there is absolutely no connection between the phenomenological cave and the outside. I am saying that the connection is so small it is rationally insignificant. The connection is strongly anecdotal. For instance, atom physics developed in ignorance of the aggregate of human suffering in the wake of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Nietzsche’s Superman was ignorant about the Nazi death chambers. Transhumanism is ignorant about the unequaled atrocities of the imminent process of human extinction. The connection between the world outside our cave and the reflections on our wall may be insignificant in terms of definable correlation, but the very small connection is like the butterfly effect of chaos theory. The unpredictable consequences of our thinking are pervasive. The influence of believing the myth of being part of a species of rational observers of existential reality on such “observers” is absolute. It is species extinction.
I do believe in a reality independent of mind, (IR) but we cannot describe it. We can only “know” it absolutely. It is our existence. We cannot know it rationally, because imagining that we are reasoning about it is by definition a string of very complete lies (in its claim to be representative). This is the existential dilemma of philosophical rationalism. Can we resolve the dilemma by dynamically aggregating all the small lies by way of the methodologies of Science, Democracy, Corporate Capitalism and the Global Economy? Could the many due process outcomes, consequences, and renewal at least approach epistemological truth? No – in the evolution of complex organization, the future actually becomes more unpredictable. If the process generates far more questions than answers, which is the case, then it is not about finding answers. This means that there is no significant correlation between the lies of the dialectic process and IR, except for the existential shift away from human into machine. Civilization is not about humanity. It is about accelerating the evolution of the universe. With the kind of shamanic meaning making we now follow, the current progress of civilization and knowledge is blatantly anti-human.
The Farce of Gods and Philosophical Realism
Nov 9th
Having said humans do not operate from the principle that human existence is a given, or the measure of everything, or the axiomatic benchmark, I think we should. I think we should because fundamentally nothing matters, and we have to believe in something. What is the natural thing to believe in? At the moment we think of something in the philosophical tradition of Plato’s Forms (as supposed god intelligence sees it) as the measure of everything. We think of our existence as secondary or as theorematic: in terms of deific realism and philosophical realism. It think as existentially human, civilized minds are utterly insane.
I think there are historically very powerful parallels between arts, physics, biology, religion, “symbolic reality” and human neural structures. I call the whole process starting with our wrongheaded shamanic use of language 100,000 odd years ago, leading to posthumanism ,”the machine.”
Two analogies to describe civilization/machine and humanity.
1) The parasitic wasp Glyptapanteles as machine and its parasitic host as humanity.
2) An incredibly powerful predator like a tiger or lion or grizzly has you, human prey in a death grip. You struggle for an instant in which you realize struggling is useless. At feeling the amazing power, you naturally submit to it by identification with it, and as soon as you submit an overpowering sensation of spiritual bliss takes hold of you.
So I DO think there is an independent reality for us outside our mind-body existence, but I think we cannot describe it. We can operate a parallel mythology part of which states that we are discussing our existence and our existential environment, which influences and changes our existence and our existential environment, but such influence is unpredictable. Our participation in civilization is literally merely an exercise of heating up and exponentially accelerating the evolution of emergent complexity leading to the extinction of the human species. We are now very close to species extinction. Our discussions today are discussions between machine minds (not human minds) and we are in machine mind singularity.
The answer to a sane reality is inside us. But then we should wield language differently to how it has been wielded so far. We should adopt no other subjective belief than believing in our own existence as the foundation of reality. “The outside,” as we tell it, is a story, not reality. No mythology is reality. Both Art and Physics are part of the same story. Its influence on the open-system evolution of Technology is indefinable. The work of any individual engineer is indefinable as an element of the evolution of technology. Every concept if it were to be a valid description of what it claims to describe, would have to include all relevant determinism, as to not be the total farce it is in the way we now use it. As you know, it is impossible to include all determinism. Language meaning is a composite farce. Scientific meaning is a double composite farce.
Diagnosis
Jun 17th
Libertarianism is overflowing with contradiction.
The most fundamental illusion is not AUTHORITY. The most fundamental illusion is the lie that we can make abstractions of our existence and dialectically select and categorize them endlessly into neat constructs. (where “dialectics” is the antithetical methodology of interpersonal and intrapersonal critical thinking, logic and reason.) The most fundamental illusion is the lie about REALITY. The illusion of AUTHORITY is one of its symptoms.
Our leaders are most adept at spinning dialectically. Yet the problem is not AUTHORITY. The problem is the lie that Reason is the holy grail of existence because with its elaborate and sophisticated obfuscation, it denies existence itself as the ultimate.
Scientific Obscurantism
Jun 11th
The Purpose of Science: Chronic Dynamic Imbalance.
Science is a more sophisticated Religion. It distributes its metaphysics. It does not make one overpowering definitive declaration of the Real, like “God is Real.” It conjures up reality by informational complexity. It favors a methodology of formal isolation of its countless closed system hypotheses from their methodical, unpredictable application in dynamic open system. It does this by oxymoronically dressing up its countless individual claims of reality in falsifiability. Innocent until proven guilty. Falsifiability is like an endorsement of stimulating and then waiting for the next crime, the next atrocity, the next mistake. And incredibly, …. wait for it, …. blaming it on human fallibility! Science is the methodology (technology) by which the evolution of technology is having its cake and eating it too. Technology preempts the objection that in the open laboratory of the world the knowledge of science is as utterly fictional as the existence of gods. From the perspective of the existence as human organism, the unpredictability of the world is accelerating ever faster because of this systematic obscurantism and deliberate promotion of dynamic imbalance. The popularized notion (in practice) that scientific knowledge is true is a blatant lie.
Falsifiability (or refutability) is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is “falsifiable” does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment. Falsifiability is an important concept in science and the philosophy of science. Some philosophers and scientists, most notably Karl Popper, have asserted that a hypothesis, proposition, or theory is scientific only if it is falsifiable. Wikipedia 6/11/09
Metaphysics. Before the development of modern science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as “natural philosophy”; the term “science” itself meant “knowledge” of epistemological origin. The scientific method, however, made natural philosophy an empirical and experimental activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called “science” in order to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence. Thus the original situation of metaphysics being integral with (Aristotelian) physics and science, has, in the West, become reversed so that scientists often consider metaphysics antithetical to the empirical sciences. Wikipedia 6/11/09
My comment on Wikipedia’s paragraph about metaphysics: formal science solidly obscures the limitation of knowledge by isolating science from epistemology’s skepticism of knowledge. In practice science formalizes knowledge as “reality” by covering up the incompleteness of logic with the absolute, dynamic authority of the organization and the scientific method. Here I should note that epistemology is a branch of philosophy: my next post will be about the historical function of philosophy itself as an earlier stage of civilization’s systemic stimulation of chronic imbalance. Exiting stuff!
Epistemology. a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge. Dictionary | Wikipedia
