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Author | Topic: Hi | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
IMO, it is an open question how and for how long and in what form the past is "stored".
When I said "upscaled" I mean taking a compressed lower resolution depiction and adding detail. For example, here's a video by NVIDEA showing how they used a blocky low-res minecraft generated world and "upscaled" it to a more realistic world.https://youtu.be/1Hky092CGFQ In some sense creation and art is about distilling meaning or that which is valuable or impactful. Part of this creation involves subtraction or deletion or negative space. Too much clutter obscures the message. Our lives consist of a lot of stuff, but not every moment or every perception is as meaningful as the rest. When you tell a person about your day, you compress your story to the meaningful bits and omit the mundane details. Or take Facebook... it was kind of fun at first but then people started taking pictures of their food and telling you every goddamned thought that entered their heads and it was cluttered up with irrelevant non-sense. Less is often more. So if this reality is the result of an entity or entities attempting to fulfill a goal - even if that goal is merely exploration of what is new and possible to create and experience - then such an entity or entities would likely also be interested in deleting or compressing the irrelevant details to distill the important parts relevant to their goals.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
quote: Would this be analogous to blockchain where you can "rewind" transactional history to see every transaction ever made? I found this latest Lex Fridman interview of Stephen Wolfram very interesting as he is working on the rule of rules and suggests that physical events can be thought of as acting like a graph network which has come up as well in the cryptocurrency space. https://youtu.be/4-SGpEInX_c It fits with my belief in the "as above so below" or fractal holographic principle that the structures and patterns of reality repeat or rhyme at various scales... so the problems we face with neural networks and transactional history / trust / unique identity, etc also provide insight into the "transactions" or physical interactions that entangle particles. So in your understanding of QFT, information is not lost. But haven't there been some experiments like the Quantum Eraser or others that seem to indicate "the past" is really determined by our current observation of present states? Could there be an "event horizon" beyond which an essentially infinite variety of initial conditions could have resulted in the present state?
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined:
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quote: In your opinion this is axiomatic... a settled matter with no room for discussion. I get that. That is also my default naïve realism perspective with which I approach reality on a daily basis, but I am still open to questioning this axiom.
quote: Some interpretations of QM lead to the notion that if something is not observed it is in superposition. This has led to the idea that reality is calculated on demand much like a simulated world is generated on demand in a game environment. It doesn't matter the initial positions and velocities of the molecules of air and fuel in my car engine because in bulk they act predictably. We cannot go back and figure out what they were nor would it be interesting to do so. Since it is completely irrelevant and not observed, then IMO it is an open question whether the initial positions and velocities of those particles were ever actually calculated or whether they are only calculated "on demand" if you zoom in to study them.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
quote: Yes. The random vacuum fluctuations combined with chaos theory mean that you can only go back so far in time before there is a horizon where initial condition(s) are unknowable and a practically infinite variety of initial conditions could have lead to the same present. The larger the structure, the more interactions it has and so the further back in time this horizon exists. An interaction could be thought of as something becoming "known". And now I'm going to go off the rails a bit and you may or may not agree... You could think of it as if you are walking down a tile path and as you walk the tiles arrange themselves into a firm path at your present location but both ahead and behind the tiles begin to separate and float apart from each other such that it is uncertain both where you're going and where you've been. If the past is inferred from the present and the future is unknowable, then the future could entirely change your inferred notion of the contents of the past such that the past is also unknowable. Another way to think of it... the present moment could be a superposition of all possible pasts... and that which is a "possible" past is a past in which certain things became "known" and of course there is a debate about what it means for something to be "known" and what role the observer plays... but for example, the interference pattern could be thought of as a superposition of possible pasts, but if it is known which slit, then the set of possible pasts are reduced by knowing which slit this is reflected in a present change to the interference pattern. One more way to think of it and then I'll stop.... One objection to the multiverse hypothesis is that it destroys meaning because where you are at this moment was not at all chosen by you but is entirely random as there are an infinite variety of you out there all making slightly different choices. My answer to this goes back to the notion of "pattern" implying boundaries which are choices. When you look around the room you do not see merely an infinite sea of color and shade, you see edges, handles, seats, tools with which you may interact. Your brain chooses or imposes boundaries on the sea of color and shade according to what is likely to be most useful to you at the moment. Similarly, your path through the multiverse could be like your soul looking at an infinite sea of "color and shade" (possible you's) and choosing to identify with that which is most likely to be useful to it in achieving its goals. It is this choice which "realizes" a potential tool into an actuality that achieves a goal.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
Hey Phat,
quote: In my worldview... "spirit" is equal to "agent" ...an entity that has agency, or ability to make choices. The universe is composed of mechanisms - things that reliably repeat - things that have no agency. But there are boundaries between mechanisms where things do not always reliably repeat resulting in the overall path being probablistic rather than deterministic. This boundary or surface of the mechanism is an opportunity for an agent (or spirit if you prefer) to exert influence. So all "objects" or "mechanisms" have boundaries/surfaces upon which an agent may interact, but those with low surface area / volume ratio have less potential for interaction. So a pair of gears for example have low surface area to volume. The boundary between the mechanism is a tiny surface where the teeth mesh. And if operated within design parameters, very low probability a gear tooth will break and the mechanism will fail to reliably repeat. A light bulb might be considered to have a bit more surface area / volume as it is operated by a long thin wire and delicate switch. A microprocessor composed of billions of transistors which operates on a very slight voltage potential change across a very tiny distance could be thought of as having a much higher surface area to volume. And the human brain with neurons that either fire or don't fire upon very slight voltage potentials and are composed of microtubules built of billions of molecules arranged with dipole bonds has unfathomably more "surface area" or opportunities for the mechanism to not reliably repeat. We don't know what governs the coupling constant between agent and the boundaries of the mechanism, but this coupling represents another mechanism which is itself subject to influence by entity with agency... All that to say, the spirits fighting in your head are real. ;-)
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
quote: Have you tried intermittent fasting? I worked with a guy who was diabetic, about 150 lbs overweight, ate a shit diet, almost died a few years back and had to have most of his intestines removed... anyway, last time I saw him he had slimmed down quite a bit and said he was almost off insulin by eating one meal a day and taking (doctor prescribed) amphetamines.
quote: I believe that reality is a nested set of agents attempting to achieve goals. The "highest" power also has the simplest goal: to not get bored... to create and destroy. From this highest power spawns lower powers that have their own goals which create environments which spawn still lower powers and their environments... all trying to achieve goals within their environments. So your "Soul" is like the entity at the next shell of reality above this one... it is like the agent being trained on a million simulated experiences to get better at achieving a goal. To "sin" is to miss the mark... not hit your goal. You get feedback when you die on how close you came to hitting the mark and how far you fell short (sinned). Your experiences inform your soul improving its ability to achieve its goals. Souls don't have to be thought of as distinct entities with hard boundaries but could be thought of as like a venn diagram... concentric circles of familiarity... such that a whole species has something like a super soul. The "gods" that made us are a "higher power" in the sense that they occupy a space which is an environment in the next shell outside of this one, but have to be understood as having their own conflicting and competing and at times cooperating goals and limitations.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
quote: Although I typically avoid blatant self-promotion I did buy myself a "Let's Go Brandon" t-shirt recently... have received many compliments on it although when wearing it in certain places in Austin I feel as though I might get physically attacked... In other news, I now see Christianity as something like a memetic life form... a mind worm that provided some benefits to its host while also feeding off them. It was a way of successfully conveying esoteric information through time with story although it sacrificed its hosts who took it too literally. Christianity also seems to be something like an empathy program... an effort to steer humanity towards goals reality to empathy as opposed to the dominate form of predation from the past. This empathy program might have been promoted by elite Romans in a cynical effort by elites to further domesticate their flock of sheeple and make them easier to manage and make their cities more stable. We are apex predators who have the most delicate babies requiring the most care of any species and this has led us to a kind of crisis self-conflict where our empathetic qualities are at war with our suppressed predatory qualities. Civilization requires the empathetic qualities to be emphasized but this results in a lack of conflict which weakens the species. Do you want you or your progeny to be wolf-like or chihuahua like?
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
quote: Just trying to refine my map to include all the data points and features I've encountered. Maybe your lens on reality is polarized to filter out some of the data points that I include so we have created different maps. I'll try to come back to the rest of your questions another day, but I've got to work now.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
Okay I should be working, but I couldn't resist coming back to this...
quote: Chaos theory as I understand it just means that some deterministic systems of equations result in regions of indeterministic output because miniscule adjustments to initial conditions result in wildly diffierent results... commonly reduced to "butterfly effect"... if a butterfly flaps its wings (slight adjustment to initial conditions) this could make the difference between a hurricane forming or not forming on the other side of the planet 2 weeks later... And it seems to me that in pursuit of the initial condition of any deterministic system you can trace every causal chain back to random vacuum fluctuations.
quote: Can you access the past directly to confirm? Can you rewind the tape and make sure it hasn't changed? And even if you could... you'd be viewing the tape of the past in the NOW. For all you know, you've been in existence for 1 second and all your memories of the past were loaded up 1 second ago creating the illusion of the past. The only reason you and I both approach reality with the assumption that the past exists is because this is often the most useful way to consider it, but that doesn't mean there isn't a more accurate and ultimately more useful way to consider that supersedes this naïve realism perspective.
quote: I think you're misunderstanding what I was saying... I'm saying one way to think about it is that the present moment is an ever evolving set of constraints. When something is "known" that is a constraint on what the present moment can be. Regarding causality violation... how about presentiment experiments?Feeling the future: A meta-analysis of 90 experiments on the anomalous anticipation of random future events - PMC Feeling the future: A meta-analysis of 90 experiments on the anomalous anticipation of random future events
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
And to relate the CT, Vacuum fluctuations origins of causal chains back to my obscure notion of consciousness being partly dependent on a relationship between "surface area" / "volume"...
A rock might have a very long causal chain leading back to the vacuum fluctuation, but the billions of neurons with their action potentials determining when or when not to fire have relatively short causal chains leading back to the vacuum fluctuation. So while the brain is no doubt a mechanism, it is a mechanism with a lot of "surface area" meaning a lot of boundaries... a lot of bits that could easily flip or not.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined:
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quote: These are not data points. They are areas of curiosity to explore. Open questions.
quote: Gods? No. Majik? I've personally experienced a few things in the Psi department that seem "anomalous" to me, but to a true believer like yourself they wouldn't crack your faith and would only invite derision. I am open minded about my experiences - skeptical of putting too much weight on them while also considering them to be potential data-points. Supernatural beings? No. But it is not unreasonable to consider there could be entities with "administrator access" to this reality which would appear to us to be "gods"... and considering something silly like Minecraft has racked up a trillion views on YouTube, it is not unreasonable to consider the idea that our reality is something entertaining to these beings who are also watching... perhaps this is who the Navy Pilots have been encountering... Perhaps this is the origin of angel and demon stories.
quote: Given that you did not constrain me to a time, location, direction, zoom level, type of equipment, etc, I can name any color I choose and be correct.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined:
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quote: Suppose your filter is the scientific method. To discover anything with the scientific method, the thing you discover must reliably repeat. A mechanism reliably repeats. So through the lens of science, the universe is a mechanism. This leads to a few issues and leads some materialistic scientists to make the nonsensical statements like, "consciousness is an illusion." And more philosophical issues:1) "Hard Problem" of consciousness and defining the observer. 2) Qualia 3) Choice, real or illusion? 4) Novelty: can anything new happen? If this is a "block universe" why is it not already calculated and compressed? Why is this particular moment being "read"? and who is reading? 5) Generally being an arrogant closed-minded dick. The scientific method is obviously a useful filter, but if NOVELTY is a real thing... if the universe is evolving into something truly NEW, then the scientific method will filter out that aspect of the universe. In information theory, "surprise" is essential. That which is unsurprising is compressible or noise or not communicating anything. In my metaphysical worldview, the desire for a "surprise" is what fuels the whole thing. Regarding Psi, I think it has been successfully probed with the tool of science to discover things that reliably repeat. This means there are underlying mechanisms which could eventually be folded under the tent of "materialism" once the old generation with PTSD from their Christian roots dies and a new more open minded generation comes up.
quote: Excellent question and it is one I have thought a lot about lately. Part of it is general curiosity. I've always wanted to know how things work. That's why I became an engineer. My 2 year old son is the same way. His toys spend a lot of time upside down and he's always asking for a screwdriver to take apart his toy cars. Probably something like a dopamine hit when we learn something new and this trait was selected for because there is value in exploring new territory or building a new tool because you find new resources or gain new abilities. And right there, power enters the picture. The ultimate goal of knowledge is power or potential power. I have a very utilitarian view of truth. That which is most true is that which is most useful in accomplishing a goal. A more accurate map is a more useful map. Life is an open game and we aren't told the rules... we have to figure them out as we go, so where should we spend our resources and spend our limited time and energy? Some of that depends on your map of the meta-game. There is also a great deal of stress and anxiety caused by encountering things that aren't on your map. This is what ultimately led me away from Christianity... my Christian map of reality didn't match up with reality in some significant ways, so I explored other sources and data points. I used to live in the country and we had a lot of dogs. Some dogs would lazily lie on the porch all day. But one dog would run along the fence and bark at every goddamned thing in the woods. She wore a path along her boundary between the known (yard) and the obscure unknown beyond. I'm more like that dog.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 750 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
quote: You are truly God's doG. I would love to respond to your comments, but I really picked a bad time to pop back in here for discussion. I've essentially been doing two jobs since co-worker passed last fall from COVID - his replacement starts Monday. And I'm in the middle of moving and with a 2 year old and pregnant wife. I'll respond when I can.
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