How important is the very simple to better understand oneself?
… by understanding oneself more realistically, one perceives life a bit more objectively, empowering wiser (constructive) decisions, and so on ?
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You get my vote. Evolutionary theory definitely helps you understand why you may feel the way you do. write4u has taken evolution to a very deep level. I have some ideas on how to connect it back to everyday life but that is not for this thread. It is up to him to “connect” with his audience however he feels like.
What I was trying to get at is that how we “feel” and or are able to create meaning in life is in a way the only thing that is important at the individual level. The problem is as you suggest that we may need to know ourselves to achieve that goal. But there is a complication we live in an artificial eusociality called civilization. You are not going to being feeling good about yourself for long if everyone around you is miserable or if you are alone. Then there are all the physical requirements like food, water, energy, peace. Science has been very useful for the physical requirements but the personal side such as psychology etc. are still barely sciences. The question that is raised is how does quantum mechanics help you know yourself?
You know I was going to go down the Gaia route but thought better of it. It just muddies the waters. The idea that everything is interconnected white4u has already covered.
I really wish you would stop being so succinct and tells what you think.
I think the only answer to that question is pseudo science
Try this.
Reality is the unfolding of “sets” (mathematical patterns) via differential equations
Any dynamical condition is a result of a set of differential equations (mathematical patterns), such as the wave function, where a storm is the result of air moving from a high pressure area to a low pressure area.
The biological condition of survival involves the use of finding solutions to differential equations. Biology has dubbed this as an inherent, mathematical ability as “natural problem solving”
In the Arts, comedy and tragedy, the greater the difference from the “expected norm” , the greater the emotional impact.
The “humorous punchline” of a humorous story is a total juxtaposition to the expected result.
The “tragic moral message” experienced from war and violence is in total juxtaposition to that of experiencing peace and harmony.
Witness the result of natural selection for beneficial problem solving traits, in what for its size must be one of the most sophisticated killing machine in nature.
3D vision!
I have a lot of interest in science, but I don’t use math to do it and when in school, I took a biology class in which I was not forced to dissect. Never dissected anything and don’t plan on ever doing it. In fact, I love science, have a degree in Psychology, I just don’t do any of the maths.
BTW, when one has any form of dyslexia, I have dyscalculia, there are always work arounds, but yes, in college I did take Algebra and Stats in order to graduate, BUT I took Algebra 4 times until they said, “She needs to be tested.” One test I was glad to take. They gave me a tutor, taught me how to deal with my form of dyslexia, which they didn’t notice in the 60s and 70s like they do today, so I was very late in trying to overcome it. Bang my head multiple times and while I made As in my Psych major, I got a good solid passing D in Algebra and Stats, which with how hard I worked for it, I am proud of, despite banging head and getting frustrated and crap. I’m not ashamed of the D, because I busted my butt for that D. I made As in history, Chemistry (yes, Chemistry. Fractions are easy, always have been easy, but not other maths. Don’t know why and can’t tell you why I find Fractions easy and not regular math. Guess it’s that line. Who knows) However, I assure, there is a work around for Science, in which you don’t have to use math.
Thank you. It says I have to have a reply of at least 20 words so here you go.
I’m not a fan of the Gaia thing myself. Chaos theory covers the topic well enough for me. On the other hand who knows. I’m sure that there are aspect of reality that we haven’t discovered that relate to interconnectedness.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Your experience is interesting and I will store it away for future reference.
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Well that peaked my interest. I have always suspected that the way distance is mechanically measured by triangulation didn’t correlate with the way we detect distance. Here is a paper that presents a theory for an alternative explanation.
It also helps to explain why the little critter is better at it than we are. Movement provides a simpler “rivalry eradication” computation.
I’m not saying that it is a better theory or not but it certainly is not as simple as the mechanical explanation implies.
This little story is something of an IQ test. I really had to struggle to get a handle on what they were talking about. As usual I had to have a new theory that fills in the unspoken parts.
Amen. Reminds me of one of my little mantras:
Life means as much, or as little, as you want it to.
I don’t it can. Even though god only knows how millions are being made trying to apply stuff that belong to the Planck scale into our Macroscopic world. Even though we are learning more about that world of the tiniest of tiny and that does give incredible insights in the molecular machinery.
Are you familiar with Denis Noble
He’ll blow your mind, if you are really for it. The molecular roots of Free Will.
But I digress, that’s going to need its own thread.
That bit of intellectual entertainment for the self-satisfied is not going to help anyone’s search for fundamental truths.
That’s because too much woo has been injected into it. The fact remains that this planet is an organism on many different levels. Along with being a battery, if you really get into the chemistry of this system.
Are you familiar with the evolution of minerals, and how geology and biology are intimately bound up in the formation and nurturing of life. Everything influences everything else (to a greater or lesser extent) isn’t a jingle, it’s real chemical physical reality. Are you familiar with the turn over of your cells and the material flows through your body as time races by.
We can’t understand an organism without understanding the environment it exists within. That’s a fundamental biological fact of life. We are witnessing what ignoring the myriad of balances that make our existence possible, we are super charging our atmosphere and ocean and everything will be changing radically, it’s begun and momentum is simply increasing, that’s to our collective disregard for fasting the facts of life and instead living within this philosophical matrix of self-obsessed and self-serving thinking that most aren’t even aware of.
and so on and so forth, gotta run.
good night.
Guess I’m tryin to say perhaps we need to work harder to fact physical reality and get a sober understanding of Earth as an organism whatever you want to call her, and our pageant of evolution, and learn to look at both sides of the coin of Godly powers that has so intoxicated humanity.
We are after all, the product of Earth’s processes.
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I come form the perspective that “something must have a value for it to be meaningful” in any respect.
And with “meaningful” I mean “causal to a result”.
This is why in nature there is nothing that has no value of some kind.
If something has no value it does not, cannot have a meaningful existence.
Thus the Fibonacci Sequence begins with a “meaningless” zero.
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, …
From Bing’s Copilot.
- Purpose and Meaning:
- From a scientific standpoint, the universe consists of matter and energy, devoid of inherent meaning. However, when life evolved on our planet, purpose and meaning emerged from organisms’ rudimentary goals to survive and reproduce2.
- Humans, in particular, have evolved to be highly purpose-driven. Our sense of purpose is not necessarily derived from the universe having a purpose; rather, it arises from our individual and collective experiences and aspirations3.
In summary, while the universe itself may lack inherent value or purpose, our human experience and consciousness imbue it with significance. Whether everything has intrinsic value remains a philosophical and scientific puzzle that continues to captivate thinkers across disciplines.
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I like the way this AI thinks…
I will watch the video.
I like the way this AI thinks
I’m afraid I do also, I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing.
Did you read the paper I linked to?
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Outstanding article… this requires some serious study.
I see a role for “differential equations” in this scenario.
Yes. I expected anyone seeing that response would know that. And if they didn’t, any search on what that movie is would tell you it’s pseudo science. And that’s the only answer to the question of what knowledge of quantum physics can tell us about knowing ourselves.
I might not be getting this because I just learned about Weismann and I’m not sure what Noble’s distinction is between stochastic methods and whatever it is he is talking about. I think I watched the discussion with him and Dawkins, and I don’t remember being impressed by Noble. I’m not jumping to conclusions, but I have a question, actually he calls it the “big question”.
At 15:50 he talks about selfishness, and says, “Genes can’t be responsible for my selfishness, I’m responsible for my selfishness”. Then, “The organism is the source of the interpretation. Now the big question is how do you explain that without recreating a duality?” How do you avoid Descartes mistake?
Does he ever answer that?
There isn’t an external force, and we don’t feel like we are mechanisms. That’s something that needs a resolution. Where does creativity come from? We don’t need God-like activation. He says the organism can use the chance events that occur in its molecular mechanism. (17:30). Seems to me, right there, he smuggled in dualism. He has given “the organism” a property without saying how it got that property. He referred to epigenetics and RNA communication earlier, but I’m not getting a connection to this broad statement of what “the organism” is doing.
He follows with “what do you want to keep, what do you want to reject, it’s simple”. What “you” is he talking about? The 17:55 question is a good one. He answers it by saying you can “harness chance”, and that Einstein and Beethoven found the chance within themselves. Then a strawman about how we aren’t computers, then slides into saying AI will do something and his own fictional story of what a robot would think about itself. Either he has a lot more to say, or he lacks focus. He mentions his datasets, so obviously he does have more. I can’t tell what will come of that though.
I was unaware of Noble but remember I offered you the same explanation. Randomness as the key to intelligence. To me it seems obvious.
Darwin did not explain random events that allow for physical evolution. No explanation was actually necessary. The alternative was that the changes were by design > god. You can see the same intuition in science fiction writers when they propose some random change in a computer system that will make AI “conscious”. The only question is how random does it have to be. Does it require Quantum uncertainty? So yes Quantum physics may tell us something about ourselves and we may see it in Quantum computing. white4u has already gone there but I’m reluctant to take that leap because it doesn’t seem to me that it requires a “true” form of randomness. And honestly as I said randomness does not require an explanation to make the point.
In a way the link between the physical and the metaphysical is how you maintain reproductive fidelity while allowing for change. The way that top down and bottom up “design” compliment each other. You are very good at maintaining reproductive fidelity in the metaphysical by requiring proof. A kind of top down process. It’s why I keep referring to Wolfram. How do we harness bottom up design to harness the power of evolution?
I don’t see how you ever get an explanation of randomness. It could be that it is an absolute abstraction like zero. As I said earlier a stand in for ignorance. Looking for a proof in this case is like trying to prove that zero exists, or god if you like. It really isn’t necessary or useful.
The implications for neuro science are significant. The question of how an organism with a brain the size of a pin point makes “intelligent” choices. Here if (the author is right, a big question), how 3d vision is accomplished illustrates how the need for “mechanistic” precision is eliminated. Evolution always works by the close enough method. We see it as increased complexity but in reality it is a simplification of the problem. The problem being the need for reproductive fidelity in a world of random events.
The reason you and I are in such agreement I believe is because the mechanistic explanation seem inadequate.