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The Egg (2009)

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Re: The Egg (2009)

#131
post #37
post #18

Another good short story similar to this is Asimov's "The Last Question." http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm

And "The Last Answer", which ironically ends with a question while "The Last Question" ends with an answer. And a bunch of others that aren't quite similar except that they're short, provocative scifi. Here's my list of favorites: * Ted Chiang - Understand - http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm * Ted Chiang - Exhalation - http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Te... * Ted Chiang - Hell I…

I just read "Hell is the Absence of God". I just can't understand or relate at all to the "slave morality", as Nietzsche might put it, of that story, or wrap my head around why people choose to worship a creature roughly equivalent to the one imprisoned at the center of the galaxy in Star Trek V.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#132

On HN, we want to hack the way our systems work. We want to see through the obscurity and complexities advanced systems have brought along and find the most elegant and quickest way to challenge and control them. Why can we not look at hacking religion? Why can we not hack philosophy? I like this story, but more than that I like the fact that it has reached page 1 on HN. I think many people here are not looking for s…

"Why can we not look at hacking religion"

I'm in the camp of people that considers religion a hack already - a psychological manipulation of emotions and thoughts to bring about a particular state of being and behaviour. In many cases it's a beneficial symbiosis - and in others a spiritually parasitical one - between the 'host' religion and the 'client' believer.

So what does it mean to 'hack' region? To further twist it to your own purposes? That's been happening for millennia - large organisations have been honing their practises, others are constantly 'disrupting' it with alternatives.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#134

Of all the religious, non religious, philosophical, etc. texts I've ever read. This is the one I most hope is true.

Me too (us too?) but I guiltily admit it's partly because I'd like to experience being Genghis Khan.

But then again you'd have to experience being Paris Hilton as well.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#135
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The beauty of the world and the morality of what happens in it are utterly orthogonal. You're conflating those things He's right to conflate these things. Suffering is not beautiful.

Suffering is not beautiful. Suffering is. Accept. Beauty is. Accept. not Beauty also is. Accept.

[deleted]

Re: The Egg (2009)

#136
post #44

That model seems ineffective. While it operates in parallel, spawns a plethora of threads and does, I imagine, aim to end in eventual consistency, it also seems to lack any form of shared state. If I was me I would make sure I overlap myself on each new instance and not deal with that restart time. I'd also suggest picking a different tool rather than the current one... I think I might be using LISP (Lost In Self Pro…

>“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

Perhaps the restart time is necessary to update the shared state. Take the mind out of the universe, review its acquired experiences and integrate them into the combined soul, then reboot the mind and send it on its way.

Odd that he should be conscious for this part though. I suppose the afterlife state is equivalent to dreaming: the brain has to review and absorb the day's memories, and semi-conscious hallucinations are an interesting side-effect.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#137
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your decisions are being made > before your are consciousnessly aware of them Yes, I'm aware of these studies. But they make the mistake of presupposing materialist reductionism a priori, as if it were actually true. Those who assume materialist reductionism have an entire set of questions they are incapable of answering, such as: 1) How can teleology arise from non-teleology? 2) Whence consciousness? 3) How can so…

1) Show teleology is more than a human construction to explain the purposes we ourselves invented 2) Emergent behavior in the brain 3) Big bang Treating these questions as unanswerable assumes a very weak form of materialism.

> Show teleology is more than a human construction > to explain the purposes we ourselves invented

Your question itself is enough evidence that humans didn't invent teleology, but merely recognized its existence. You are asking for a reason why. You are asking a teleological question.

Two year old children do the same thing, constantly. They ask why.

It is natural to ask why.

It is very unnatural to deny the naturalness of asking why, or to try to suppress it, as if the desire to understand why didn't exist in all of us.

Indeed, the answer to the "why" question is one of the four causes Aristotle says we must explain to understand what a thing is. We must understand the why behind it. That is the final cause, or the purpose for the thing.

What you cannot answer is this: How can final cause -- purpose or motivating reason for something -- arise out of nothing? Indeed, the intelligent person recognizes that such an idea is non-sense, and rejects it out of hand.

You get purpose, or reason for being, from a priori purpose or reason. I work in order to have money. I want money in order to buy food and shelter. I want food and shelter to continue to survive. And so on.

You never get purpose, or reason for being, from nothing.

You think by asking me to show that teleology is more than a human construction, that you will bolster your evidence for reductive materialism -- especially if I can't provide an answer that meets your satisfaction. But in so doing, you are demonstrating teleology. You have a goal. You are driving towards that goal. And your goal is self-contradictory. Your goal is to establish that teleology is somehow not Real, not inherent in the universe, and not inherent in us. But goal-based action is what teleology is all about. So you are engaging in the very behavior you are seeking to prove doesn't exist, except as a figment of our imagination.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#138
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. I am the eggman, they are the eggmen. I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob. Lennon

Re: The Egg (2009)

#139
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm Buddhist, but I've found a lot of wisdom in and no small amount of inner peace through the Buddha's teachings. Play with words enough, and you can claim the world is a beautiful place. Except, it isn't. It's worse than you can possibly imagine. The beauty of the world and the morality of what happens in it are utterly orthogonal. You're conflating those things in a w…

> The beauty of the world and the morality of what happens in it are utterly orthogonal. You're conflating those things He's right to conflate these things. Suffering is not beautiful.

And Buddhists don't think it is, in the sense that you mean beautiful. They think that it is unavoidable. And they (also) think you can learn to avoid it.

I don't agree with the ur-parent that Buddhism thinks that if you can clear away the illusions of everyday life that you will see beauty. I think it believes that if you clear away the illusions, then you will see clearly, and that this is something worth doing because it will end your suffering, no matter who you are and what is happening to you.

But it's also believed by most Buddhists that this rarely happens, that it takes many many lifetimes for it to happen to anyone. So they also believe that helping reduce the suffering of all other sentient beings is one of their missions.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#140
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Show teleology is more than a human construction to explain the purposes we ourselves invented 2) Emergent behavior in the brain 3) Big bang Treating these questions as unanswerable assumes a very weak form of materialism.

> Show teleology is more than a human construction > to explain the purposes we ourselves invented Your question itself is enough evidence that humans didn't invent teleology, but merely recognized its existence. You are asking for a reason why . You are asking a teleological question. Two year old children do the same thing, constantly. They ask why. It is natural to ask why. It is very unnatural to deny the natural…

What you cannot answer is this: How can final cause -- purpose or motivating reason for something -- arise out of nothing? Indeed, the intelligent person recognizes that such an idea is non-sense, and rejects it out of hand.

I can indeed answer this, and I will. Also, it strikes me as bad form to imply that someone who disagrees with you is unintelligent because they do not reject the ideas you want them to reject.

Now to my answer: purpose arises from lack of purpose because purpose itself is merely emergent behavior in the neurons of our brains, arising from the laws of physics.

You get purpose, or reason for being, from a priori purpose or reason. I work in order to have money. I want money in order to buy food and shelter. I want food and shelter to continue to survive. And so on.

You never get purpose, or reason for being, from nothing.

You still have to show that purpose, itself, exists in any form other than a chemical arrangement in our brains. For that matter, you have to define the "nothing" from which purpose is supposed not to have originated, before I can agree that, indeed, that sort of "nothing" is incapable of creating "purpose", or even agree that such a definition of "nothing" is tenable.

But in so doing, you are demonstrating teleology. You have a goal.

I may have a goal behind this comment, but behind that goal is an emergent phenomenon of the laws of physics, and as such, my "goal" is not incompatible with my claimed nonexistence of teleology.

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