There is one absolute presupposition that is bound to change in time, primarily because it is a concept deemed necessary, experientially obvious, but also vague, unprovable and unquantifiable: the mind. The mind is not like the brain that can be surgically cut out, measured and physically tested, but is either the totality of experiences, impressions, thoughts that happen to each us individually, or the X that is itself beyond experience or description but is referred to as a conceptual node to which all experiences/thoughts are attributed, and this X is signified by the terms 'us' and 'individually'. This is a philosophically unsatisfactory description, and yet we are generally stuck with it, unable to add any deeper meaning to it because in anything that we do with it we just attribute another though or experience to the same X, without augmenting its description. It seems that we cannot uncover this X without attending to several other absolute presuppositions: thought, experience, intention, world, meaning, sense. The starting point in future analysis may be the possibility that the mind is Not fully individual, and insofar as it is not individual then how does it produce what we have taken thus far to be 'individual experiences' and 'individual intentions', and how does it connect to the individualised expressions in others.
Fantastic piece! Through my own Catholic lens this reminds me of a phrase I read that described history as God’s poetry. The idea of reality as a malleable creation, responsive to influence (not ‘dead’ as such) but also not a consciousness (a god?) in itself, certainly helps to explain those unmentionable heresies of modern materialism as described by Rupert Sheldrake.
I look forward to hearing what your own ‘escape pod’ might look like!
Great piece. It suggests to me that the flap over AI is just more physicalism, just more of looking at the world through our particular lens of presuppositions. The anthropomorphic language used to describe AI seems naive; people seeing what they are predisposed to see. I love your idea that the universe has a mind. If, as you say, reality is in conversation with us, then it makes ChatGPT look pathetic.
💬 we may one day move beyond the confines of our present Reality, and that Reality will adapt accordingly
Kinda how the ‘computer gal’ of gps navigator works in our homely realm: we go rogue and transcend her advice, whereby she instantly recalculates the new Gestalt 😉
I often remind myself that our perception of the world is completely flawed. We use the terrible system of sensing that we have, and we try to make sense of things like "time" (which might be something we just kind of made up).
We yearn for the familiar, but it is nowhere to be found in nature. "Familiar" isn't how she operates.
I think a big part of the problem is that we are fascinated by complexity, but that simplicity is more sublime. We can identify with the chicken, more than the egg.
For one thing, this interface our bodies have with their situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, because, as mobile organisms, we have to navigate. So our perception and experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future. It's the basis of culture, as narrative and physics codifies it as measures of duration, to correlate with measures of distance, to come up with spacetime.
The reality for those of us who prefer not always using the models, is that activity and the resulting change is turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential, actual, residual. Duration is the present, as the events coalesce and dissolve.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
The act of determination only occurs as the present.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism. The fact culture is about synchronizing society as one larger social organism, based on the same languages, rules and measures, it might seem like there should be one universal Newtonian flow of time, but the reason nature is so diverse and yet integrated, is because everything doesn't march to the beat of the same drummer. The turtle is still plodding along, long after the rabbit has died.
Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't assume them to be extensions of space, even though they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as sequence is too thought.
So the energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it is the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the information and the circulation system is feedback in the middle.
The left, logical brain is the clock and ruler, seeing the projections of the waves, while the right, emotional side is the thermostat and barometer, sensing the energies building and receding. Boxes versus vibes.
So we get wrapped up in these maps and models we construct from the signals we extract from the cacophony of noise and energy. Yet if we include too much information, the signals get lost back in the noise, so we can either be specialists, or generalists
Remember it's the generals running armies, while specialist is about one rank above private. Though in our world, where the specialists are god, the kids that would be generalists are the ones interested in everything, to eventually sense how it all fits together, but now they are diagnosed as attention deficient and medicated until their minds fit back in the boxes. So society is this global Tower of Babel.
As for space, three dimensions are a mapping device, like longitude, latitude and altitude. If we were to eliminate all physical properties from space, the two qualities left are infinity and equilibrium. Which is implicit int he fact that the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum, the unmoving void of absolute zero.
So what fills this space is the energy, which radiates out, toward infinity, while the structures it generates coalesce in, toward equilibrium. Thus galaxies. Between black holes and black body radiation.
As these organisms stuck pretty much in the middle, it is feedback between the anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement. Motor and steering.
I would also note the Big Bang is bunk.
When they first realized that cosmic redshift is proportional to distance in all directions, it either meant we are at the exact center of the universe, or redshift is an optical effect.
Given the one known reason, some medium 'tiring" the light, an optical effect was dismissed. So it was decided that space itself must be expanding, because Spacetime"
Which totally ignores the central premise on which spacetime is based, that distance and duration dilate equally, so the speed of light is always CONSTANT!!!! If space is expanding faster than the light crosses it, it's not Constant. The idea is that this expanding space "stretches" the waves crossing it, ignoring the function of speed. Yet that would mean two metrics of space are being derived from the same light, one based on the speed and one based on the spectrum. If the speed was the numerator, it would be a "tired light" theory, but as an "expanding space" theory, the speed is still the explicit denominator. The metric against which this expansion is being judged. When the train moves down the tracks, it doesn't stretch the tracks, only increases the distance. Lightspeed is still the tracks.
One way light does redshift over distance alone, is as multi spectrum "packets," as the higher frequencies dissipate faster, yet that would mean the quantization of light is a function of its absorption and therefore measurement, not fundamental to the light itself. We are sampling a wave front, not detecting individual photons, having traveled billions of lightyears.
Which gets to the issue of materialism.
Western thought is very object oriented, from atomism to individualism. Generally ignoring that these exist as nodes in networks, organisms in ecosystems, particles in fields.
What is it that draws structure inward? Basically synchronization. One big wave is more efficient than lots of small waves. Consider that what falls into galactic black holes and isn't otherwise radiated out, is shot out the poles as quasars, which are ginormous lasers and lasers are sychronized light waves.
So given these structures, no matter how large, exist in an infinite field, they are like waves out on the ocean. Which harmonizes the overall energy. So it's this dichotomy and tension between synchronization and harmonization.
Consider that there is a lot more of this centripetal dynamic, we refer to as gravity, than mass to explain it, given we assume it to be a property of mass. Yet what if this dynamic encompasses all structure and definition, from the barest bending of the light to the vortices at the center of galaxies?
Then mass is this intermediate, stabilized effect, that our tactile senses tend to concentrate on and so matter is just one more effect. We have a love/hate relationship with the boxes, as rebuild them up and break them down. When we get stuck in the boxes and can only "shut up and calculate," there is no way to figure out that "Garbage in," means "garbage out."
There is one absolute presupposition that is bound to change in time, primarily because it is a concept deemed necessary, experientially obvious, but also vague, unprovable and unquantifiable: the mind. The mind is not like the brain that can be surgically cut out, measured and physically tested, but is either the totality of experiences, impressions, thoughts that happen to each us individually, or the X that is itself beyond experience or description but is referred to as a conceptual node to which all experiences/thoughts are attributed, and this X is signified by the terms 'us' and 'individually'. This is a philosophically unsatisfactory description, and yet we are generally stuck with it, unable to add any deeper meaning to it because in anything that we do with it we just attribute another though or experience to the same X, without augmenting its description. It seems that we cannot uncover this X without attending to several other absolute presuppositions: thought, experience, intention, world, meaning, sense. The starting point in future analysis may be the possibility that the mind is Not fully individual, and insofar as it is not individual then how does it produce what we have taken thus far to be 'individual experiences' and 'individual intentions', and how does it connect to the individualised expressions in others.
Great essay! I'm thrilled to see the conversation ongoing. This is the way.
Fantastic piece! Through my own Catholic lens this reminds me of a phrase I read that described history as God’s poetry. The idea of reality as a malleable creation, responsive to influence (not ‘dead’ as such) but also not a consciousness (a god?) in itself, certainly helps to explain those unmentionable heresies of modern materialism as described by Rupert Sheldrake.
I look forward to hearing what your own ‘escape pod’ might look like!
Great piece. It suggests to me that the flap over AI is just more physicalism, just more of looking at the world through our particular lens of presuppositions. The anthropomorphic language used to describe AI seems naive; people seeing what they are predisposed to see. I love your idea that the universe has a mind. If, as you say, reality is in conversation with us, then it makes ChatGPT look pathetic.
💬 we may one day move beyond the confines of our present Reality, and that Reality will adapt accordingly
Kinda how the ‘computer gal’ of gps navigator works in our homely realm: we go rogue and transcend her advice, whereby she instantly recalculates the new Gestalt 😉
I often remind myself that our perception of the world is completely flawed. We use the terrible system of sensing that we have, and we try to make sense of things like "time" (which might be something we just kind of made up).
We yearn for the familiar, but it is nowhere to be found in nature. "Familiar" isn't how she operates.
Excellent point, "In other words, we may be interacting with a dynamic, living field of information."
For someone who needs "proof", examine StephanAScwhartz work on remote viewing. There is an information field not connected to space, time or brain.
I think a big part of the problem is that we are fascinated by complexity, but that simplicity is more sublime. We can identify with the chicken, more than the egg.
For one thing, this interface our bodies have with their situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, because, as mobile organisms, we have to navigate. So our perception and experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future. It's the basis of culture, as narrative and physics codifies it as measures of duration, to correlate with measures of distance, to come up with spacetime.
The reality for those of us who prefer not always using the models, is that activity and the resulting change is turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential, actual, residual. Duration is the present, as the events coalesce and dissolve.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
The act of determination only occurs as the present.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism. The fact culture is about synchronizing society as one larger social organism, based on the same languages, rules and measures, it might seem like there should be one universal Newtonian flow of time, but the reason nature is so diverse and yet integrated, is because everything doesn't march to the beat of the same drummer. The turtle is still plodding along, long after the rabbit has died.
Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't assume them to be extensions of space, even though they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as sequence is too thought.
So the energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it is the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the information and the circulation system is feedback in the middle.
The left, logical brain is the clock and ruler, seeing the projections of the waves, while the right, emotional side is the thermostat and barometer, sensing the energies building and receding. Boxes versus vibes.
So we get wrapped up in these maps and models we construct from the signals we extract from the cacophony of noise and energy. Yet if we include too much information, the signals get lost back in the noise, so we can either be specialists, or generalists
Remember it's the generals running armies, while specialist is about one rank above private. Though in our world, where the specialists are god, the kids that would be generalists are the ones interested in everything, to eventually sense how it all fits together, but now they are diagnosed as attention deficient and medicated until their minds fit back in the boxes. So society is this global Tower of Babel.
As for space, three dimensions are a mapping device, like longitude, latitude and altitude. If we were to eliminate all physical properties from space, the two qualities left are infinity and equilibrium. Which is implicit int he fact that the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum, the unmoving void of absolute zero.
So what fills this space is the energy, which radiates out, toward infinity, while the structures it generates coalesce in, toward equilibrium. Thus galaxies. Between black holes and black body radiation.
As these organisms stuck pretty much in the middle, it is feedback between the anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement. Motor and steering.
I would also note the Big Bang is bunk.
When they first realized that cosmic redshift is proportional to distance in all directions, it either meant we are at the exact center of the universe, or redshift is an optical effect.
Given the one known reason, some medium 'tiring" the light, an optical effect was dismissed. So it was decided that space itself must be expanding, because Spacetime"
Which totally ignores the central premise on which spacetime is based, that distance and duration dilate equally, so the speed of light is always CONSTANT!!!! If space is expanding faster than the light crosses it, it's not Constant. The idea is that this expanding space "stretches" the waves crossing it, ignoring the function of speed. Yet that would mean two metrics of space are being derived from the same light, one based on the speed and one based on the spectrum. If the speed was the numerator, it would be a "tired light" theory, but as an "expanding space" theory, the speed is still the explicit denominator. The metric against which this expansion is being judged. When the train moves down the tracks, it doesn't stretch the tracks, only increases the distance. Lightspeed is still the tracks.
One way light does redshift over distance alone, is as multi spectrum "packets," as the higher frequencies dissipate faster, yet that would mean the quantization of light is a function of its absorption and therefore measurement, not fundamental to the light itself. We are sampling a wave front, not detecting individual photons, having traveled billions of lightyears.
Which gets to the issue of materialism.
Western thought is very object oriented, from atomism to individualism. Generally ignoring that these exist as nodes in networks, organisms in ecosystems, particles in fields.
What is it that draws structure inward? Basically synchronization. One big wave is more efficient than lots of small waves. Consider that what falls into galactic black holes and isn't otherwise radiated out, is shot out the poles as quasars, which are ginormous lasers and lasers are sychronized light waves.
So given these structures, no matter how large, exist in an infinite field, they are like waves out on the ocean. Which harmonizes the overall energy. So it's this dichotomy and tension between synchronization and harmonization.
Consider that there is a lot more of this centripetal dynamic, we refer to as gravity, than mass to explain it, given we assume it to be a property of mass. Yet what if this dynamic encompasses all structure and definition, from the barest bending of the light to the vortices at the center of galaxies?
Then mass is this intermediate, stabilized effect, that our tactile senses tend to concentrate on and so matter is just one more effect. We have a love/hate relationship with the boxes, as rebuild them up and break them down. When we get stuck in the boxes and can only "shut up and calculate," there is no way to figure out that "Garbage in," means "garbage out."