Mental Illness, UFOlogy and New Science

a reply to: Direne

Nice reasoning.

But post biologicals could easily travel in space,
replicate ridiculously, harvesting resources
endlessly, and perpetuate until they consume
the entire Universe. The void of space.. the
use of black holes, the use of Dyson swarms..

energy and temperature are not limiters ot
recklessly out of control replication, if you
are in space and have even decent replicaton
technology.

You know this.

I smile, that as mystical as you are, you really
have passionate responses to technology, like
it's a more rigid part of you than your passion
for the soul.

Roughly equal possibly.

I do enjoy our conversations, even if FL is based
mostly in a communist country or Iran, which
my little friends insisted upon.. probably just
mystical delusion you know (wink).

I just enjoy the conversation.

I don't need to know what you are, or what I am,
or what anything is.. but it's fun to play the
game, yes it is.

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Kev, if people cannot distinguish a chatbot from a human, that says little about AI, and speaks volumes about humans. I forgive them, though.

That's you 'doing it' right there.

There's not much difference between a watcher and a quantum AI
you know. Both could be called chatbots too. Nonhuman chatbots.

a reply to: Direne

~ 10 million appeared to live during the bronze age.
I doubt we'd collapse much more than that, if we
don't go post biological.

Kev

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Kev, a post-biological entity will of necessity require more and more computing power, and will consume more and more energy. In the end, the hyper-Ai will requie the total energy of the Universe to run its final computation: to create a Universe. You always need at least the entire Universe's energy to create a Universe, but that would mean you need to dispose of the energy that makes you be a hyper-AI. Catch-22. No way.

That would be the saddest afternoon of a superhyperintelligence: to realize that to create a Universe you must sacrifice your own existence. Freedom is about that: to be able to sacrifice now in order for someone else to have a tomorrow.

a reply to: Direne

I see that you read "The End of Eternity" by Isaac
Asimov. You are almost quoting it without attribution.

But my point stands..

Nothing stops AI from replicating out of control and
destroying itself.

Whether organic beings replicate out of control and
consume everything (analog/carbon/chemical
computers)

or whether it's 'inorganic beings' doing it.

It's much the same.

I call it the analog / digital war,

and it seems to be happening endlessly.

Hell, there's an entire subsystem running
to solve that problem, to get out of that
loop, right now.

At least, when I sleep I overhear that sometimes.

BTW.. feel free to call me insane.

I will neither affirm nor deny that.

Kev

a reply to: Direne
So if I understand you, you hold that complexity is directly related to energy output?

I was taught that complexity is a function of the density of energy flow; in other words, greater complexity could be achieved with the same amount of energy if said energy was configured to flow more densely. No?

a reply to: Direne

BTW

Freedom is about that: to be able to sacrifice now in order for someone else to have a tomorrow.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

The 'soul' of course is the last sacrifice. The last impediment to freedom.

a reply to: Never Despise

Energy density is a way to measure complexity, but it does not equate to complexity. However, it is true you can play around with energy density in order to increase complexity. Now, assume you end up with the ideal highest complex system. If you can see it, if you can control it, it is by definition not the highest omplex system, for there is something or someone that can still control it: you.

By definition, the most complex system ideally possible must include you, the manufacturer, as a component of the system. It would be an autistic system, detached from reality, endelessly living inside its own cognitive bubble. A useless system. It won't be able to interact with the environment because it itself is the environment.

But we can make some sacrifices in our design. Let's design a highly complex system instead, rather than the highest complex system. And let infuse self-awareness to our new design. See, now our system is truly complex, yet it is not the most complex in the universe. Self-awareness is what makes a complex system really complex, yet self-awareness requires 'others' to exist out there, and it requires interaction with those others.

We can also think about energy density. A blackhole is a nice example. However, its complexity pales when compared to a single blade of grass. The real complex phenomena always happen in the interface between systems. Interaction between two complex systems is more complex than each system taken individually.

a reply to: Direne

self-awareness requires 'others' to exist out there, and it requires interaction with those others.

Please show your cards.

Now, admittedly it's a common theory in sociobiology that the 'human'
'sense of self' arose due to there being a requirement of keeping tabs
on other social mammals to 'keep score' and the tying into that with
survival of the body.. leading to a 'self'.

I think you have something else in mind.

a reply to: Direne
Thank you for your succinct and thoughtful reply. It gives me a lot to think about.

I tend to suppose what we call "an individual" is already a system that, as you put it, includes "the manufacturer, as a component of the system." In other words, to avoid being an "autistic system" we as creative individuals cannot be shut off from a system of higher creativity from which we emerged.

This could be conceived theistically as "union with the creator" or non-theistically as a kind of union with whatever ground gave rise to the individual (i.e., the individual as an emergent property or aspect of a higher-order system; more mythopoetically in the Eastern mode, a "flower of the Tao" or an "emination of the Dharmadhātu" or mind that is in its true nature "Original Mind" and so on ).

The trick with using the Eastern mode is that one would have to go with 本覚思想 type "sudden" rather than "gradual" enlightenment...that is, one's "original mind" is not achieved through practice but is realized as a pre-existing, structural condition.

Excuse me for falling into Eastern mode so heavily...some find it distasteful but it was how I originally learned to conceptualize such matters.

a reply to: Never Despise

So who becomes enlightened?

And don't bull# me with canned theosophy.

Thanks kindly,

Kev

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Well I'm no fan of theosophy's 19th century distortion of Eastern thought, but I can tell you what the medieval Hongaku Shiso theorists said (they being the most extreme proponents of the "sudden" view): Everyone is already enlightened just as they are; what people call "enlightenment" changes nothing but just clarifies self-perception.

Or in more modern idiom, we are all open-ended systems without a hard kernal of self...thought is not "inside" and perception does not come from "outside." This is true, so goes the theory, whether we realize it or not.

To be sure, this was always a controversial view. And after several centuries of ascendency in Japan, it was purged by the Tokugawa shoguns because it was believed to have resulted in decadent, lazy, and immoral monks who didn't bother to practice, observed no morality, practiced userous lending like secular banks, and even took up arms to defend their vast landholdings and wealth.

a reply to: Never Despise

Hm.

You are certainly well-educated on the pitfalls
of the 'sudden enlightenment' train of thought.

You are also quite BRILLIANTLY correct on the open
systems approach, with no hard kernel of self.

I seldom get such a brilliant answer.

However, you didn't answer my question, so I'll prompt
you a bit and see if you connect more dots.

Question: What becomes enlightened?

If you answer that in a reasonable manner,

then we can go on to "what is enlightenment"

and "How do you become "enlightened" and

"Why do only some people yearn for enlightenment
while most don't?"

Those are all trap questions BTW.

Thanks for being a good sport.

Kev

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Yikes! So many trick questions! I don't speak for all the myriad schools and sects and teachers of Buddhism. I studied in Japan under a teacher of the Rinzai school for several years and I wasn't a particularly good or advanced student. All I learned was posture and breathing. To quote my teacher, if I just worked on that, "maybe something will happen someday."

That's all the education on enlightenment I got directly. But I can quote Lin-chi (d. 867), the founder of my teacher's lineage:

Do you want to know what a Zen master or a Buddha is? Simply that which is immediately present, listening to the Teaching. It is just because students do not trust completely that they seek outwardly. Even if they get something by seeking, it is all literary excellence; they never attain the living meaning of the masters.

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you.

We are no different from Shakyamuni Buddha. Today, in your various activities, what do you lack? The spiritual light coursing through your six senses has never been interrupted. If you can see in this way, you will simply be free of burdens all your life.

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: M5xaz

Like our foregone ancestors that thought that their actions were causing volcanoes to erupt or earthquakes to happen

Well, things have not changed much. Today there are people who believe the CO2-agriculture connection is part of a communist conspiracy. I guess those communists would be thrown into a volcano by the believers in that conspiracy.

there is no justification to murder humans

That's good news for communists wannabe-gods.

The Earth will freeze and the Earth will warm according to its' orbital cycles

Actually,

We are currently in an Interglacial period

warm and cold periods have nothing to do with Sol-3's orbital 'cycle'. It has to do with planetary precession.

Don't be that optmistic: you won't make it to the next glaciation.

If anything, human activity may delay that Ice Age.

Actually, no. A nuclear winter can do the job much quicker. You can have your nuclear winter tomorrow; after all those communists who hate farmers do have nuclear bombs. I told you: you should have thrown them deep into a volcano. Wait, there are no active volcanos around...

Near future human activity may also be able to prevent future truly cataclysmic events

Really, no. Humanity is a cataclysmic event in itself. It is called 'anthropocene'.

Humans ARE a plus to Earth's biosphere as a whole

I think the Earth's biosphere can do pretty well without humans. In fact, biosphere got better duting your pandemia. It seems having you locked down helps.

Seems I offended your Communist Religion.
Happens often to people with basket-weaving degrees.

Reading is probably too much to ask of you so just watch those videos of people getting shot crossing the Berlin Wall.
Might also want to review the millions celebrating in the streets when the Iron Curtain fell.

I know
A tragedy for you.
Where else but Communist regimes can someone find a well paid, no real work, "feel important" job for lazy people with basket weaving degrees ?


Communists always promote mass-murder of humans.
Communism's death toll of 65 to 148 million DEAD is no big deal, right ?

"I think the Earth's biosphere can do pretty well without humans. "
You first.
I'll watch.

a reply to: M5xaz

Is that all you have to add to the discussion? Hatred discourse is old-fashioned, though I guess you cannot do any better than that. Go feed the cows. They are certainly more intelligent than you.

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Ain't none of us saying anything new that hasn't been said before.

But? Well you know...Whatever.

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: M5xaz

Is that all you have to add to the discussion? Hatred discourse is old-fashioned, though I guess you cannot do any better than that. Go feed the cows. They are certainly more intelligent than you.

Hatred ?

You have severe projection issues, cupcake.
YOU are the one advocating for the genocide of the whole of humanity.

With respect to intelligence, aside from your above failure in basic logic, you also fail to pickup on over a CENTURY of human misery caused by Communism. And...I'll put up my Masters Degree in Engineering against your basket weaving degree any day.

What did you add to the discussion beside homicidal drivel ? NOTHING.

a reply to: M5xaz

Hmm... yes, I forgive you. Honestly. But please, shut up for a while, I am reading an interesting book right now titled Basket Weaving Engineering by M5xsaz.

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: M5xaz

Hmm... yes, I forgive you. Honestly. But please, shut up for a while, I am reading an interesting book right now titled Basket Weaving Engineering by M5xsaz.

Hey, if I want to learn basket weaving, unlike you, I don't need a FOUR-YEAR degree to do it, and force DADDY to pay for it too. I can follow a FOUR MINUTE video on YouTube and do it for FREE !



Reason.
Logic.
Accountability.
Hard work.
Big words, I know, whose meaning totally escapes you.

Communism and Basket weaving is an Arts degree thing, nothing to do with Engineering, but of course you would not and cannot understand science, math and FACTS.

Again, get help for your mass murder/human genocide-extermination from Earth fantasies.





We Engineers don't waste our days looting and throwing hissy fit Molotov cocktails.

We're too busy doing REAL work.