JemIsExcitement

I beg your pardon if what I say is innapropriate or just a stupid subject to start a new thread over, but it's my first post. I started looking around, and this section immediately appealed to me, so I decided to throw something out there. If anything I say has a strong foundation for being scientifically innacurate, feel free to correct me. Please, bear with me.

'Nothing' is a man-made concept; as far as we can understand, nowhere does there exist a devoid, a lack of, or nothing. If there was even a square inch of 'nothing', I would imagine it would immediately be filled by 'something', like a bubble of air underwater popping. The reason we can see is because the particles that make up matter move about, and that movement creates heat, and heat creates light. That movement requires energy. The screen you're looking at now, yourself, and everything inbetween and far-off are all made up of energy. It may be significantly different, but it's all energy. Not to say that things we cannot understand simpy don't exist; don't get me wrong. But as far as our conception of 'The Universe' goes, yes, everything you or me can comprehend is essentially the same.

Of course, it's very depressing to imagine that you play just as insignificant a role as the weeds you can't get rid of in your back yard, or the rock that you stubbed your toe on yesterday. And it only makes sense that we, in our desperate attempts to feel justified in continuing to reproduce and create, invented a reason that we should be here. That reason, in our culture, is an almost Multi-Personality syndrome version of ourselves - A man who knows everything, understands everything, and is all powerful. He is wise, without fault, and has some enormous plan for us all. In other words, a 'perfect' version of ourselves. In the Bible, god strictly forbids Adam from eating from the tree of knowledge, because he knew that if he had, there would be nothing to seperate the two. Science is the search to understand, it's not all wires and buttons. And if all were understood, all could be altered.

'Living' things, of course, don't at all seem as insignificant as something like a cloud or the dirt we stand on. And an entity with a brain is significantly different from something without, or so it would seem. A blade of grass is only green because it just happened that way. 99.9% of all life that has ever been on earth is now gone - and the life that is still here is only here by mere chance. Life is simply a necessary part of a working equilibrium of chemical reactions occuring on our planet. The reason life exists here is because it was a byproduct of those combustible energies influcing one another. The green pigment in a blade of grass allows it to absorb vital energy from the sun, and it grows because, like I said, that energy simply cannot just dissapear. It has to go towards something. A blade of grass doesn't think for this reason - a blade of grass doesn't need to think.

An animal is kind of like an organic robot, in the sense that it does not reason why it does what it does, it merely has a standard protocol that it carries out without question. This is called instinct. A computer takes in information from the outside world, computes it, and puts out the programmed result. An animal does the same thing. It may as well be just as inanimate as the dirt we stand on; it only owns a brain because its part in the ecosystem is to digest air and food. But, it's different with humans - we have the same instinctive drives, the blind will to do this or accomplish that, but the difference is that we have the free will to take that burning desire any which way we please. We didn't inadvertently, blindly following our instincts, create the automobile. It was a concious effort, it was an idea that someone had because thier instincts told them that a tool was necessary. It was the free will that acted as the hands to the lump of clay, and molded the desire into something tangible.

I think of human beings as almost the 'brain cells' of the universe, because we house this unexplainable understanding. We embody free will and creative thought, and constantly attempt to understand so that we may bend the laws of space and time to become something more of a paradise, and it's intentional. In other words - if we are just as much part of the universe as anything else in the universe, save for the fact that we can choose to alter it, it may mean that we are the embodiment of the Universe beginning to understand itself. The more knowledge we attain, the more we can change, and all the while are inseperable from this web of everything. When a human reaches full adulthood, thier braincells cease to grow. From then on, if any die, they'll never grow back. And if we are in fact the braincells of the Universe, then once we reach a point at which it's no longer necessary to reproduce, in a sloppy attempt at randomly generating another being suitable for the enviornment, it will be because we understand so much.

In other words: At that point of understanding, the attainment of the goal of immortality, that will mean that the Universe is in full maturity. It's not to say that humans will inevitably control the universe, in fact, I mean quiet the opposite. It is merely our function as these braincells to attain and comprehend knowledge, just as the cells in your body could never understand thier own function... But if they did, they'd do a pretty damn good job, wouldn't they? If we continue to strive to acheive greatness and to become one with our surroundings, then eventually, we will reach such a singularity that we will be nothing but knowledge and understanding applied to the Universe itself - meaning that the Universe, having reached full comprehension, will become a God of everything that exists - itself.

Of course I'm not really being all that serious, it's just a funny concept I thought I'd throw out there. My apologies if it was a long boring read.

MexicanOnABike

that was pretty interesting. nice concept.

asaris

1. Read Hegel.

2. The problem with this is that you assume some sort of network among seperate human consciousnesses. Firstly, there is no evidence of this sort of thing. Secondly, we ARE seperable from this 'web of everything'. If we weren't, we wouldn't be the individual human beings we obviously are.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

JemIsExcitement

"If we weren't, we wouldn't be the individual human beings we obviously are."

Ah, but that's what I was trying to get at with the whole concept of animals being like organic robots. Like I said - animals only move because it's thier niche to do so on this planet. Trees don't move because trees don't need to move. If you said that trees were obviously different, of course you'd be right for a dozen reasons. But it's still inseperable from the 'web of everything'... Imagine a glass of murkey grey water, grey in color because six different colors of paint were mixed in together. Every element from every color still exists - it doesn't "become" grey, it just coincides with the other colors and the molecules become so close together that the overload of color blends to create one single color. I could reference choas theory, but I don't trust my knowledge. It's like when in crappy sci-fi movies they talk about travelling to different dimensions; a dimension is merely a side to something. A box has six dimensions. You can easily isolate just one side, but then it's just a shape, no longer a box. And, if the sides had any variation, it wouldn't be a box either. They all have to be the exact same length width and thickness, but they all play their integral roles as 'sides of a box'. There's one north and it's opposite to the south, and there's a higher one and a lower one, and the east and west, but they're the same. I was trying to emphasis that humans are the same, with a different 'dimension' to them.

And I didn't assume that there was a network; save for the fact that we do move about and we do communicate and share knowledge and teachings. The fact that you have yourself read something that I, someone you've never had the pleasure to meet, have conjoured up shows at least a little. Maybe now there isn't a singularity of human thought, but that doesn't mean there never will be.

By the way, I noticed the Nietzche quote. I was once told that the things I said reminded my friends and family of his philosphies, so I looked him up, and it was the funniest thing I've heard in a while. In books like "Nietzche in 90 minutes" they dumb it down so much that you could pinpoint where he went crazy, because it lists his philosophies as "Will to power, Reoccuring lifespan, and The Superman!"

anyways. yes I will definitely take your advice and look up this Hegel.

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The world can be a great place sometimes. It's too bad I don't live there.

Mantus

JemIsExcitement,

An intresing metaphor. I would go further though. I would say that sooner or later we can become God. We would grow as a race until we conquered planets, solar sytems, galaxies. Eventaully we would attain higher and higher levels of consciousness though tampering with out minds. Perhaps we would even die out and be replaced without our own creations. In the end, these beings will attain omniscience and omnipotence and unite the cosomos as one conscious entity. Thus the universe itself gives birth to a God.


Now these thoughs are always fun to ponder; something to occupy your mind with.


We are on a communicaton network rightnow.

If you were to be seperated from the universe you would die. You can seperate yourself from a part of it. Much like you can remove a brain cell from you head and keep it alive. Technically it's no differnt in a lab then when it was in your brain but it's nolonger part of the cognitive process inside your head.

asaris

I'm sorry I was a bit imprecise. What I meant to say was that we are not parts of the universe. This is not the same thing as saying we are not part of the universe. Even if we are not separable from the universe in fact, we are separable in thought. I can think about an individual human being without thinking about anything other than him or her, and I can say true things about that human being without necessarily referencing anything else that's in the universe.

But perhaps we mean different things by the word 'universe'? I'm meaning something along the lines of the background to what there is, so that we're not even part of the universe, but 'in' it. Perhaps you mean something like 'everything there is'. Even that can be understood in two ways. If you mean the set of all that there is, I'm not sure it even makes sense to ascribe even potential consciousness to something that's a mathematical construct. If you mean the contents of the set of all that there is, I'm not sure it makes sense to ascribe any unity to such a diversity of concepts.

And yes, Mantus, we're on a communication network right now. That's not what I meant. Jem's idea requires, not merely mediated communication of consciousness (through speech or text), but unmediated communication of consciousness.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Yakk

I disagree.

Human beings are smarter than animals. But a huge amount of it is a matter of degree, not kind.

False.

Even if your previous false statement was true, analogy only stretches so far.

Organic life behaves the way it does for many accidental reasons, not all of which we understand. Analogizing an organism with the universe and a cell of that organism with an organism in the universe is a huge massive stretch.

To a limited and innacurate extent, yes you can.

The same is true of an electron. You can speak about that electron without talking about the rest of the universe. To a certain limited and innacurate extent.

In reality, that electron is interacting with the universe, and the more detail and accuracy you want to talk about that electron the more you have to speak abou the universe to describe it.

Are you proposing some kind of duality -- that people have both a "mind/spirit" and a "body/form" that are seperate?

What evidence is there that you can seperate "the universe" from it's contents? Can you seperate the "pile of pebbles" from the "pebbles" that make up the pile? Can you have a "pile of pebbles" without any "pebbles" in it?

Sets are as much mathematical as they are logical. If I formally defined a machine that was capable of emulating a human brain, would that formal definition be "conscious"? I don't see why not.

The universe, physically, is pretty damn uniform, as far as we can see. It could be possible that the universe could become "aware" -- I mean, mankind is a collection of "independant" "cells", which contain multiple chemicals and processes, but together seem to form something that sure looks intelligent.

Human consciousnesses are networked. It is called "speech". Speech and other communication mechanisms are much higher bandwidth than neuron-neuron communication within the brain.

If you build a computer by having 5 year old children follow simple rules, and that computer successfully multiplies two 6 digit numbers, the "computer" formed by the children has properties and abilities that the children themselves lack.

A larger scale version of this could be possible. You can see things sort of like this in large-scale human organizations and markets -- or the like.

Forming an intelligent being whose "cells" are independant, intelligent, human beings isn't something I expect to happen spontaniously. But, as far as I can tell there is nothing fundamental that prevents it.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

Mantus

Yakk pointed out everything I wanted to say. Thanks man

I would just like to state that is still consider this a metaphor. A quick sketch to put such phenomenon into perspective.

zeitgeist1

I believe that the first law of thermodynamics says just this, the question is how do you define singularity in terms of "what" exists everywhere. Your metaphor relies on a notion that is so purely empirical that it may miss some possible concepts. Hegel would be a good read on this topic, but i would state away from his existentialism. Some of the contemporary metephysicians could help also, Chamlers comes to mind first. From a modern philosophical perspective, you may want to read the meditations by Descartes and maybe some of Kant's metaphyscis as well. Interesting concept.