Answer Quickly Now

Answer Quickly Now
Are You Your Hardware;
Or Are You Your Software?
Or Both?





Robert Anton Wilson

Promethius Rising


Exercise after Chapter two

All of which is robotic, until one learns how to reprogram and
reimprint one's own brain circuits. In most cases, such metaprogramming
skill is never acquired. It all goes by in a flash, on
mechanical auto-pilot, in zero time. "I just found myself doing
it," says the soldier as he is being court-martialled for cowardice
or decorated for bravery.

Promethius Rising





[edit on 28-12-2008 by whiteraven]

Mod Edit: All Caps – Please Review This Link.

Mod Edit: External Source Tags – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 28/12/2008 by Mirthful Me]

[edit on 28-12-2008 by whiteraven]

i believe myself to be the software.
the hardware is the one fumbling around with the keyboard while i type this haha.

I'm software that is currently rewriting itself to battle some virus' that caue me to "sleep". I believe my software is "wireless", or can be. And my body's a hard drive.

I think everyone is a bit of both software and hardware that needs a reboot, an update, and a BIOS flash.




Cheers!!!!

Sorry mods I changed the all caps...it was a cut and paste

I believe we are Hardware and Software.....it is really a matter of believing that the world we view is viewed via the 5 senses. The Sense world and the world outside of our 5 senses exist.....we basicly are programed to live using the 5 senses as soon as we are born.

When was the last mother you saw teaching her baby telkenisis? Not that some has or has not it just is not something inate in the human life as of yet.

The sofware or spirit is the strength behind the flesh/hardware giving it purpose in the realm of the 5 senses.

I am neither. I do not control my body and I do not control my own mind. Therefore I feel that these two are not a part of me. I am simple the connection between my body and my mind. I do not consider myself software nor hardware for that reason.

reply to post by whiteraven


I think the Hardware vs Software question is the same as the Nature vs Nurture debate..

Interesting...

The hardware that is my body needs a serious update. Better and more memory, at the age of 48 my RAM isn't what it used to be. Hell my BIOS doesn't even work anymore until it's had a cup of coffee and a cigarette. In the day my anti-virals were state of the art, now I cough when a cool breeze hits my main board wrong.

The software on the other hand is holding up pretty nice. The system only crashes two or three times a day. Not too shabby considering it first booted up in 1960.

All in all, it's good to still be running.

Originally posted by whiteraven
Are You Your Hardware;
Or Are You Your Software?

I'm often hardware when I wake in the morning but it doesn't last long. Quick trip to the bathroom and back to software I go.

reply to post by MemoryShock


Yes...with a twist. language seperates us from ideas..RAW

Good observation.

Excellent post, question, author, book... I love all of it.

"We" are obviously both, and more.

Originally posted by schrodingers dog

Originally posted by whiteraven
Are You Your Hardware;
Or Are You Your Software?

I'm often hardware when I wake in the morning but it doesn't last long. Quick trip to the bathroom and back to software I go.

Wow...good observation.....here is a link to RAW Promethius Rising....states your idea in different terms.www.rawilsonfans.com...

I think the Hardware vs Software question is the same as the Nature vs Nurture debate

I disagree. Nature and Nurture are both components of software. With nature, the software is released as-is. With nurture, the same software is constantly being patched.

And whiteraven, I think you might have missed schrodingers dog's innuendo which, from me at least, got a lol

Edited for typo.

[edit on 28-12-2008 by TheStev]

Originally posted by TheStev

I think the Hardware vs Software question is the same as the Nature vs Nurture debate

I disagree. Nature and Nurture are both components of software. With nature, the software is released as-is. With nurture, the same software is constantly being patched.



And whiteraven, I think you might have missed schrodingers dog's innuendo which, from me at least, got a lol

Edited for typo.

[edit on 28-12-2008 by TheStev]

Yes...I see your nature versus nurture......although I broke down nature as robotic in the end....a machine whose every move can be predicted......and nurture...as created yet allowed to evolve into creatures of whom we can barely imangine....those who walk in an common human utopia idea........that is one way I broke it down....so nature is much more harsh, calculated etc if you were to flesh out the myth and nutrure would be more motherly etc if you flesh out the myth...

And Yeah...I got the bathroom take a snip thing and then back to software...lol Very true..

Originally posted by whiteraven
...I got the bathroom take a snip thing and then back to software...lol Very true..

I know not of what you speak.
Once again I am being victimized.
It's not right I say!

Making fun of a man's software, what is this world coming to?

So my software controls the hardware, but my software has a lot of auto-updates from other hardware...and that hardware is controlled by other software doing the same thing?

I guess I am both and neither then...maybe in the future their will be different analogies.

Is the mind the result of the brain or the brain the result of the mind?

i think i'm hardware when i'm supposed to be software, and software when i'm supposed to be hardware. and at work, whether i'm hardware or software, i'm supposed to be the opposite. although to suceed you just need to be someone else's software while greasing their hardware.

when i'm at home i'm pretty much all hardware. or is it software? how can you tell?

Software doesn't really exist as anything but a transient state in your computer, a bunch of variables that change from moment to moment on hardware. So if your brain is hardware, then software might be your neurons flashing across it at any given moment. Or if your fingers are hardware, the software is the neurons controlling their movement. But the action itself, which defines "you" in a given instant, requires both.

In a human being, the software can actually change the hardware, unlike a real computer. This is because we have a lot of absolutely amazing biological (living) processes always going on inside of us that computers do not have access to. Truly all of our potential is already sitting within us, just waiting for us to balance things out and tune them up from a "higher level," That for which our brain is just a medium. We have genes that re-write genes, and plenty of DNA (instructions for your body) still waiting to be unlocked in the cell by the right environmental stimulus.

You have "upper-level software" that re-writes other software to make it conform to higher standards, for example. You might realize something profound, which changes your perspective and causes you a particular kind of emotional excitement, exciting your ductless glands into releasing new quantities of certain hormones, and then causing your cells to unlock additional DNA so they can know how to best adapt to this change in the larger system of your body. All this is constantly going on if you are on a path of learning, growing, expanding as a person.

And even if you aren't, your body is still constantly changing anyway, just in a different, perhaps less-controlled manner. There are "cancer genes," but in some people they are never activated. In most people that contract cancer, these genes aren't activated until a few decades into life, either by exposure to toxins or a negative disposition that ultimately has the same effect on your cells. So even when you aren't making positive decisions, you're still choosing something. What happens to you is in your own hands.

[edit on 29-12-2008 by bsbray11]

Two thoughts

I disagree. Nature and Nurture are both components of software. With nature, the software is released as-is. With nurture, the same software is constantly being patched.

BSbray broke down your statement very nicely. Maybe he did not intend to to it but it seems to me he expanded on your thought.

ie...upper software that repairs and the idea that software release as is can change by switching on "indicators" or dna

Also...I looked at the Mods statement in a non linier fashion ....I call it "dream language" as it rests its layout in non linier association. lol


This brings us to the second part of the exercize. It seems.....

We, as a species, exist in a world in which exist a myriad of data
points.1 Upon these matrices of points we superimpose a structure2
and the world makes sense to us. The pattern of the structure
originates within our biological and sociological properties.3
— Persinger and Lafreniere,
Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events

Why is this planet capable of supporting life, and why did it
produce the kind of life that would dream up an exercize of this
sort?
Repeat this exercize a few days later, trying to ask and answer
fifty questions you didn't think of the first time. (Note that you
cannot ever ask all possible questions.)
Avoid all metaphysical speculations (e.g., karma, reincarnation,
"destiny" etc.). The point of the exercize will be mindblowing
enough without introducing "occult" theories, and it will
be more startling if you carefully avoid such overtly "mystical"
speculations.

www.rawilsonfans.com...

I will do this exercise again today and post it to the ATS sight if anyone is interested.....as you will once you see your results since it seems to me that they are mind blowing...lol