Questioning Consciousness

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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby DrEvil » Sat Sep 08, 2018 5:58 pm

Not quite sure if this is relevant here, but it's fascinating stuff anyway:

Surprising hidden order unites prime numbers and crystal-like materials

Kevin McElwee for the Office of the Dean for Research
Sept. 5, 2018 11:41 a.m.


The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are similar to those found in the positions of atoms inside certain crystal-like materials.

The researchers found a surprising similarity between the sequence of primes over long stretches of the number line and the pattern that results from shining X-rays on a material to reveal the inner arrangement of its atoms. The analysis could lead to predicting primes with high accuracy, said the researchers. The study was published Sept. 5 in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment.

“There is much more order in prime numbers than ever previously discovered,” said Salvatore Torquato, Princeton’s Lewis Bernard Professor of Natural Sciences, professor of chemistry and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials. “We showed that the primes behave almost like a crystal or, more precisely, similar to a crystal-like material called a ‘quasicrystal.’”

Primes are numbers that can only be divided by 1 and themselves. Very large primes are the building blocks of many cryptography systems. Primes appear to be sprinkled randomly along the number line, although mathematicians have discerned some order. The first few primes are 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11, becoming more sporadic higher in the number line.

Torquato and his colleagues have found that that, when considered over large swaths of the number line, prime numbers are more ordered than previously believed, falling within the class of patterns known as “hyperuniformity.”

Hyperuniform materials have special order at large distances and include crystals, quasicrystals and special disordered systems. Hyperuniformity is found in the arrangement of cone cells in bird eyes, in certain rare meteorites, and in the large-scale structure of the universe.

The team showed that the order they found in the prime numbers maps to the pattern that results when X-rays interact with certain forms of matter. As a chemist, Torquato is familiar with X-ray crystallography, shining X-rays through a crystal’s three-dimensional atomic lattice. With diamonds or other crystals, this will result in a predictable pattern of bright spots or peaks, known as Bragg peaks.

Compared to typical crystals, quasicrystals yield a distinct and more complex arrangement of Bragg peaks. The peaks in a typical crystal form at regular intervals with empty gaps between them. In quasicrystals, between any two selected Bragg peaks is another Bragg peak.

The pattern that Torquato and his colleagues discovered in the primes is similar to that of quasicrystals and another system called limit-periodic order, but it differs enough that the researchers call it “effectively limit-periodic” order. The prime numbers appear in “self-similar” groupings, meaning that between peaks of certain heights, there are groupings of smaller peaks, and so on.

The team discovered strong indications of such a pattern using computer simulations to see what would happen if prime numbers were treated like a string of atoms subjected to X-rays. In work published in the Journal of Physics A in February, the researchers reported finding a surprising pattern of Bragg-like peaks, indicating that the prime patterns were highly ordered.

The current study uses number theory to provide a theoretical foundation for those previous numerical experiments. The researchers realized that although primes appear random over short intervals, Torquato said, at sufficiently long stretches of the number line, sense can be made out of otherwise seemingly chaotic numbers.

“When you go to that distinguished limit, ‘Boom!’” he said, snapping his fingers. “The ordered structure pops out.”

Torquato co-authored the paper with Ge Zhang, who earned his doctorate in chemistry in 2017, and mathematics graduate student Matthew de Courcy-Ireland.

De Courcy-Ireland said that similar numerical patterns were described by the “circle method” developed nearly a century ago to find patterns in primes. “For me, what is interesting is taking these results that go back to 1922 and reformulating them in some way that gives you a new example, a system with a bunch of properties that is very interesting, and one that maybe could point the way to where you could look for more physical examples,” he said.

The discovery may aid research in both mathematics and materials science. “Prime numbers have beautiful structural properties, including unexpected order, hyperuniformity and effective limit-periodic behavior,” said Torquato. “The primes teach us about a completely new state of matter.”

“What’s fascinating about this paper is that it gives us a different perspective on the primes: instead of viewing them as numbers, we can view them as particles and try to map out their structure via X-ray diffraction,” said Henry Cohn, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research who was not involved with the study. “It turns out to give us the same sort of information as traditional number-theoretic methods, and to tie in beautifully with previous work. It’s a beautiful new perspective on this information, and it opens up new connections with materials science and scattering theory.”


The study, “Uncovering multiscale order in the prime numbers via scattering,” by Salvatore Torquato, Ge Zhang and Matthew de Courcy-Ireland, was published in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment on Sept. 5 (DOI: 10.1088/1742-5468/aad6be). It was supported by the National Science Foundation (DMR-1714722) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. A more detailed set of proofs is also posted online.


https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/09/ ... -materials
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Sat Sep 08, 2018 10:36 pm

"The prime numbers display a range of behaviors depending on the interval under consideration."


What appears to be a random progression expresses surprising order in various ways, depending on scale length. Yes, I think that's pretty relevant to the thread.

"While prime numbers are deterministic, by some probabilistic descriptors, they can be regarded as pseudo-random in nature. Indeed, the primes can be difficult to distinguish from a random configuration of the same density. For example, assuming a plausible conjecture, Gallagher proved that the gaps between primes follow a Poisson distribution."


Randomness.

Our primary observation is that for these longer intervals, the primes are highly correlated and ordered on multiple length scales and hence are drastically different from a Poisson distribution. This is demonstrated by the identification of sharp peaks in the structure factor of the primes...

In particular, we use the structure factor to detect a large-scale order known as hyperuniformity, very different from the uncorrelated behavior one sees in short intervals.


Orderedness.

Same prime numbers, starkly different statistical behavior. Pretty neat.

But I'm such a sucker for this kind of thing, I know. When I was a kid I used to fantasize that I'm a hyperuniform statistically homogeneous point process in d-dimensional Euclidean space. Left on my parents doorstep in a basket.

"The effective limit-periodic form of the structure factor allows one to predict the Hardy-Littlewood constants for the frequency with which p and p + r are both prime. Of course, it remains an open problem to prove a lower bound establishing that there are infinitely many twin primes. As a more tractable open problem, we ask what further patterns can be found by considering three-particle and higher statistics, beyond what we could discern from the two-particle statistics."


Wonder what further patterns they'll find. Maybe an easter egg hidden in there. At mind-bendingly large scales, the peaks of three-particle prime statistics start to form pictures...


"Remarkably, this exactly matches the structure factor of the eigenvalues of a random matrix in the Gaussian unitary ensemble... This implies that the normalized Riemann zeros possess an unusual type of correlated disorder at large length scales known as hyperuniformity."


Correlated disorder. Love it.

Alright, I better stop. Probably breaking some universal law having this much fun. Now I'll have to go underground, on the lam from the timespace alien police. Gee, thanks alot, Dr. Evil.

pdf of 'Hidden Multiscale Order in the Primes' by Salvatore Torquato, Ge Zhang, Matthew De Courcy-Ireland found here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.06279

Don't worry, I don't understand the math, either. But you don't really need to, to get the basic gist. Just have to work at it. Might help to have some previous experience in trying to wrap the head around these types of things, familiarizing yourself with some of the concepts. Otherwise even the english will look greek to you.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby DrEvil » Sun Sep 09, 2018 1:45 am

I don't understand the math either, I just love big ideas, and this stuff is pure daydream-fuel. First thing that popped into my head when I read it was "digital physics". Maybe we're getting a peek at the code. It would be awesome (and scary as fuck) if there was a watermark hidden in the far reaches of primes, or maybe in the number PI. As long as we don't cause the universe to have a buffer overflow. That could be bad; it's really hard to turn the universe off and on again.

On a slightly different tangent, I've been thinking a lot about the movie Arrival and the short story it's based on lately. The central premise is that language shapes how you think, and I've been trying to imagine what it would be like if language was pure math. You could still have art (symmetry, complexity, etc.), humor (equations that give absurd answers) and other abstract forms of expression. You could maybe even have concepts of good (beautiful equations) and evil (infinity) and a religion based on math (God would obviously be the theory of everything).

But I'm sure someone else has already thought this through better than me, because there always is. I hate retro-causal one-upmanship.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby BenDhyan » Sun Sep 09, 2018 2:55 am

Fwiw, the real is not dependent on concepts of any type, verbal, mathematical, symbolic or otherwise. Concepts are meant for understanding and describing reality, and the application thereof to the benefit or otherwise of the cosmic sentient entities involved. By the real I mean cosmic existence itself, meaning THAT reality which is on the other side of the concept of cosmic existence itself.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Sun Sep 09, 2018 4:17 pm

BenDhyan » Sun Sep 09, 2018 2:55 am wrote:Fwiw, the real is not dependent on concepts of any type, verbal, mathematical, symbolic or otherwise. Concepts are meant for understanding and describing reality, and the application thereof to the benefit or otherwise of the cosmic sentient entities involved. By the real I mean cosmic existence itself, meaning THAT reality which is on the other side of the concept of cosmic existence itself.


One way of looking at this that I find interesting would be as three 'spaces' or levels; the cosmic sentient entity 'space,' the concept/language/symbol space, and that which is on the other side. In this view, the middle 'space' is transactional, a level in between the cosmic entity and cosmic existence. Looking at it this way, I can consider that the 'symbols and language' space may be the means for cosmic existence to understand and describe the cosmic entity, as easily see that the 'meaning' may flow in that direction as the other way around.

And where is 'man,' then. 'Man,' as a concept, becomes part of the symbolic level, the second, middle space.

There is naturally the question which arises, if the first and third 'spaces' are really one and the same. I prefer to leave that question unanswered for the moment, leave it aside and continue with the 'three levels' thought experiment.

What the experiment suggests to me is that cosmic existence and symbol - the third and second levels, respectively - are the two levels which may be one and the same. Or if not one and the same, there is an essential connection. The symbols are symbolizing something. The symbolized is cosmic existence, but it isn't the symbol which symbolizes it. The first level, the cosmic sentient entity 'space,' then, is just an illusion, a 'nonexistent byproduct' of the unity/duality of the second and third 'spaces,' like a shadow that only has appearance of reality. The concept of the cosmic sentient entity itself, in fact is in the second 'space.'

Now I can throw away the first level, like casting off a shadow. There's no need for me to worry about it, it didn't exist in the first place. It was just an illusory byproduct.

Anyway, that's the kind of experiment I like! haha

---

DrEvil wrote:I don't understand the math either, I just love big ideas, and this stuff is pure daydream-fuel. First thing that popped into my head when I read it was "digital physics". Maybe we're getting a peek at the code. It would be awesome (and scary as fuck) if there was a watermark hidden in the far reaches of primes, or maybe in the number PI. As long as we don't cause the universe to have a buffer overflow. That could be bad; it's really hard to turn the universe off and on again.


Ya, hi-energy food for the mind of the sci fi writer.

Well, as long as they don't discover the Qoran in there. Could you imagine? Or maybe the Bene Gesserit Orange-Catholic Bible. That would be even worse.

um, Dr... the buffer has already been overflown. We've been working on the reboot problem for a while, now. I thought we cc'd you in that email. And yes, it's even more difficult than it sounds. But we're going to try it anyway. Figure if we fuck it up, we probably won't know about it, anyway.

On a slightly different tangent, I've been thinking a lot about the movie Arrival and the short story it's based on lately. The central premise is that language shapes how you think, and I've been trying to imagine what it would be like if language was pure math. You could still have art (symmetry, complexity, etc.), humor (equations that give absurd answers) and other abstract forms of expression. You could maybe even have concepts of good (beautiful equations) and evil (infinity) and a religion based on math (God would obviously be the theory of everything).

But I'm sure someone else has already thought this through better than me, because there always is. I hate retro-causal one-upmanship.


Love the concept. But I wouldn't worry about the retro-causal thing; just because someone has thought it through better, doesn't mean they've written a better story using the concept. Someone might work up a super-elegant, working math-language system, but use it in an unstory-like science-y book. Might be an enjoyable read, but it ain't a good story. Or they might make it the center-piece that a story hangs on like an afterthought, then it's just a gimmick, the story serves the concept instead of the other way around. Good concept, weak story. But when a concept really comes alive is when it serves in the telling of a good, strong, solid story. Good story is what matters, what does a concept justice.

My opinion, of course. I mean, I go read the PhysicsForums, some highly intelligent theoretical physicists, experts in their fields over there. But they're so close-minded. I think, 'what a waste.' The difference between a 'super-smart' person and an 'evolved' person is made very clear in a place like that. And who is going to write a better science fiction story. I'll put my money on the evolved person. They're just more creative.

I messed around with the idea of a math-language at one point. It was the language spoken in Atlantis. But we blew up Atlantis in that story. Sank that sucker like an old battleship.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby DrEvil » Sun Sep 09, 2018 6:01 pm

^^Obligatory XKCD:
Image

And yeah, my speculations in this area are highly informed by scifi. I've been considering trying to write some short stories, but a) I'm lazy as fuck, and b) I haven't really come up with any good stories. Or rather, stories are simple, ending them is the hard part.

Couple of random ideas: AI learns sigil magic and starts doing all kinds of fun stuff with it, like recursive sigils.
Spaceship enters hyperspace via ritual magic/human sacrifice (this one I actually have an ending for, but I don't want to spoil it. Who knows, I might write it someday).

Anyway, how on Earth do you plan on rebooting the universe? Have you seen the size of the thing?
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 1:17 am

DrEvil » Sun Sep 09, 2018 6:01 pm wrote:Couple of random ideas: AI learns sigil magic and starts doing all kinds of fun stuff with it, like recursive sigils.


You know, when I think of how similar simple chaos sigils and circuit schematics are, I have to say that one is not so far-fetched.

Image

circuitsymbols.JPG



Spaceship enters hyperspace via ritual magic/human sacrifice (this one I actually have an ending for, but I don't want to spoil it. Who knows, I might write it someday).


I like it. A pretty dark concept. Much heavier in tone than what I used to use. For a long time I had character cut themselves and bleed into the Time Reactor drive. Sci-fantasy crossover stuff. This way whatever magic the character did would effect the ship. Character does magic shield spell, ship gets a magic shield. Character gets mini-sized, ship gets small. Character bi-locates, ship bi-locates.

But it started getting ridiculous, I was depending on it too much. Started become a running joke with the rest of the crew. Character had bandages up both arms, looked pale and sickly. Those scenes all ended up on the cutting-room floor during a big overhaul edit, to the disappointment of some of the more twisted characters in my crew.

Anyway, how on Earth do you plan on rebooting the universe? Have you seen the size of the thing?


Not sure how it works. But Anndemonium, our new AI global control system, says it's do-able. Something about logarithmic prime algorithms, special relativity, Bell's theorem, recursive sigils.. I don't know. I just press the button when the status bar is full and the bell chimes.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby chump » Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:39 pm



from the interview, regarding AI:

Joe Rogan: We’re fueling this thing, and it’s constantly around us all the time. t doesn’t seem possible that people are going to pump the brakes. It doesn’t seem possible that, at this stage where we’re constantly expecting a newer cell phone, the latest Tesla updates, the newest MacBook Pro, everything has to be newer and better, and that’s going to lead to some… incredible point, and it seems like it is built into us. It almost seems like it’s an instinct, that we’re working towards this, that we like it - and it’s our job, just like the ants build the anthill, it’s our job somehow to fuel this.

Elon Musk: Yes… uh, I made this ? some years ago, but it feels like we are the biological boot-loader for AI, effectively. We are building progressively greater intelligence, and the percentage of intelligence that is not human is increasing, and eventually we will represent a very small percentage of intelligence… But, the AI isn’t formed, strangely, by the human limbic system, but is, to a large part, id launched.

Rogan: How so?

Musk: Well, you mentioned all those things that are sort of primal drives… uh, all the things that we like, and hate, and fear. They’re all there - on the internet. They’re a projection of our limbic system… It’s true.

Rogan: (laughing) You know, it makes sense … When you think of corporations, or human beings communicating online through a social media are some sort of an organism…, it’s a cyborg. A combination. A combination of electronics and biology.

Musk: The success of these online systems is a function of how much limbic resonance they’re able to achieve with people. The more limbic resonance, the more engagement...


———————


CNN tech -Weed, whiskey, Tesla and a flamethrower: Elon Musk meets Joe Rogan

There was whiskey, a joint, a Samurai sword and long conversations about artificial intelligence and the end of the universe

[…]

Artificial intelligence: 'If you can't beat it, join it’

Musk said his efforts to merge the human brain with machines are making progress.

His venture Neuralink will have "something interesting" to announce in a few months that will be "an order of magnitude" ahead of what people currently think is possible, he said.

Neuralink aims to link humans to computers without a physical connection by implanting tiny electrodes into the brain.

[… con’d]
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:25 pm

Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 4:17 pm

I'm going to pull a classic JackRiddler, and repost a rant I did on the Free Revolutionary Art thread. Because I think it provides contrast to the Rogan/Musk interview. I feel that it's important for people to keep thinking, hopefully they're reminded by this that there are other ways of looking at technology besides the mainstream pop view.

--

I like the idea that tech, or Technik, when mismanaged, explodes into war. Clever upturning of the technocratic tea table. I know words like 'bourgeois' and 'proletariat' are conceptual trigger words loaded with baggage for most people. But we all know what they mean. Who is who. We all know who we are, and which side we throw our lots in with, deep down. Quoting Esther Leslie:

"The annihilating coincidence of Technik and war is articulated inside a theory of the interplay between technological forces and socio-political forces. This is most clearly expounded on the opening page of 'Theorien des deutschen Faschismus'. [Benjamin's] 'sober' analysis of technological dynamic encourages continued insistence on an imminent worldwide conflagration, due to (mis)alignments in the relationship between forces and relations of production, that are part of a social inability to administer Technik.

Technical resources, sources of energy, have been so intensified and yet are not 'adequately' directed into the conduct of private or social lives, because of structures of ownership that affect the particular articulation of the political-moral and the technological. There is a gaping discrepancy between the vast potential uses of Technik to the benefit of the proletariat and a lack of 'moral elucidation', which is a consequence of the bourgeois organization of production and politics.

...For Benjamin, this descrepancy between productive and political realms compels technological forces to find another outlet in war, or, as he expresses it, to 'still push to justify themselves'. Technology erupts into war, finding no other place to expend its energies. Benjamin's Technik possesses a certain natural disposability or normativity. Technik is endowed with a peculiar subjective autonomy. The term adaquat implies a notion of essential predetermination of the technical resources: technology's dynamic is an unfolding energy that will out. Technology's energetic overspill is a by-product of capitalist economic competition and overproduction of surplus value. The surplus value produced in capitalism cannot be profitably realized within the system and must erupt violently as weaponry deployed by the imperialists. This situation allows capital and the state to become sole and guaranteed consumers of their own military productions, as well as to conquer new markets."

Neat way of looking at it. I like where the idea goes, too. The 'Technological essence.' I've always found the 'will AI become conscious one day?' debate to be one for people who are thoroughly, hopelessly confused as to what consciousness is. But this I like, playing with the idea that technology already has a soul. Here's Esther:

"Benjamin's report on Technik suggests a necessary realization of technological essence, and provides therefore evidence of a tendency towards a technologism that assigns historical determinacy to technology. The purpose proper to Technik is only realized when Technik is taken up into political discussion, in a most literal sense. For Technik to be taken up into the political or moral realm and to be effective there must be a subject and it must have a voice. Likewise, in an instance of reciprocity, Benjamin maintains that technology, which has forged the apocalyptic visage of nature and silenced it, was the force that could have given nature a voice.

The economic nature of bourgeois society impels the cleavage between the mental and the technical, signifying the exclusion of 'the technical thought from the right to participation in social ordering'. War has become vicious against populations because technology has not been consulted."

Fun, right? "War is a terrible opportunity for technology to make known its demands."

And my favorite quote, "each coming war is the slave revolt of Technik."

---

So, "Post-war experience is shaped by the continued mismanagement of Technik."

However, "It is also the experience of the end of the bourgeois humanist subject and the beginning of a possible new collective humanity. The loss of experience [in the spectacle panopticon] (as it was previously known) might be the inauguration of a new form of experience that may be deeper, more complex or simply different."

Turn the technological tables on them. Find your soul. Then technology's soul will be your natural ally.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby chump » Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:51 pm

Technik Greed Survival Fear?
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 9:44 pm

chump » Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:51 pm wrote:Technik Greed Survival Fear?


All I can say is how it works for me. When fear arises, I turn it into excitement. I can't speak for anyone else.
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby chump » Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:26 pm

Technik Greed Survival Fear Excitement...


… nihilism being the boring alternative, evil and good are necessary opposites powering the world in which we live. So, casting their shadow in Plato’s Cave, neo-cons (for instance) were readily willing to wreck reality - manufacturing murder and mayhem and annihilating the nothingness of peace and prosperity, to reap the rewards of their crooked campaigns and exploit the experience for themselves! The more egregious their evil, the greater their gain - of ill gotten goods, so the World’ll be better for mad-hatters who matter…

(… and probably badder for madder had-ers!)
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:48 pm

So what's up, chump? Do you agree that nihilism is the only alternative?
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Re: Questioning Consciousness

Postby chump » Tue Sep 11, 2018 10:34 pm

No.


I was going to leave that question symbolically hanging with no response… because saying nothing sometime seems better than saying something I’m sorry for later…


Let me re-iterate a little ditty the (literally) alliterate idiot related already:



“Living beings resist the zero state so they can experience enjoyment out of what is essentially nothingness…”



… What're the odds of being born to began with?

Seeing as how my Mom and Dad decided to marry after so many miles when I seemingly started as a single silly spermatozoa, one amidst millions - maybe trillions, to successfully seed a single ovum - on the only planet - in an infinity of empty - capable of populating this perilous plight...


0 - 1. On - off. Dark - Light. In - Out. Cold - Hot. Pain - Pleasure. Boy - Girl. Friend - Foe. Good - Evil. As above - So below… Seems to me, mathematically metastasizing, this is where matters began and end…



In my li’l wonderful world, my notion of nihilism was nothingness; or the original state of our universe from which everything we see has possibly evolved. I was also equating nihilism to boredom - boredom being the probable reason life is striving to endure. In this existence, a privileged few people are bred from birth to imbibe the best of this wonderful world, and they can buy anything, or anybody, do what they want and never be punished, go anywhere around the world - or maybe the universe - and they often get bored and want even more; and then there are those who are constantly creating an all-consuming competition. Morals are learned through millennia of experience. Religion was invented to control populations; inspiring people to murder and mutilate entire civilizations, ruining the environment and pushing the envelope of our very existence - to win some war and get what they want - perhaps out of fear that their precious prestige with a privileged few will be lost forever, and for fear of the boredom they might endure otherwise.


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