| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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yo! you are the MAN, man. rtc, where are your balls? ha!! that's right. they're in agent d's mouth!! no, wait. i meant that the other way around. their balls in d's mouth. wait, no. d's balls in their mouth. it's true. word. |
we will have your cheerful waiting for you yes |
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what are you doing, dave? |
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what are you doing, dave? |
shivering. |
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they still got am radio? thought that went out with the war start a leetle fire, dave, that's all ...uh. nevermind. |
gnight, heather and co. |
what are you motherfuckers doing up at 3:40 am? don't you people have jobs? |
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The point in regard to mathematical thinking, which motivates our model, is the following. Consider first of all what the brain does in visual perception. Here the primary information from the visual receptors goes through various levels of processing until it ends up as a high-level representation of the content of the visual field. It is not unreasonable to identify mathematics as a similar process, except that higher levels of abstraction are involved in this case. With the visual case, the mechanics are straightforward: the visual field typically contains for example edges, for which abstraction a dedicated neural system has evolved, related to our ability to perceive edges. It is hard to see why we should have such ready access to higher mathematical abstractions having little connection with experience. One resolution of the problem would be for mathematical concepts to be in some way 'in the physics', rather than being emergent properties of brains. In case it is felt that such a drastic solution is not necessary to explain our ready access to mathematical ideas, and that neural networks can provide an adequate explanation, a stronger argument for the existence of some kind of Platonic realm can be made on the basis of the aesthetic aspect of music. So far, in shifting the locus of mathematical thinking (and music?) to another realm, we have only replaced one mystery by another. But why should such a realm exist at all? The explanation we provide is of a biological character, taking account of the fact that information processing is an essential component of biological functioning, but with only very specific informational processes having a life-supportive character. While it is commonly taken that the informational processes involved are mediated by ordinary physical means, it is not a logical necessity that this should be the case. Some informational processes in an organism are specialised to the nature and circumstances of the organism concerned, but some have a more abstract and universal character, and so could be mediated by a quite different system with which individual organisms would interact. Next we observe that a form of proto-life, defined as fluctuation patterns surviving longer than typical patterns do, can be hypothesised as occurring at the Planck scale, evolution of such life being expected to involve evolution of the accompanying informational systems also. We get to the proposed model by supposing that the ordinary physical component and the informational component can evolve separately. and that the informational component can even survive the creation and destruction of individual universes, remaining as an ever-present background with which new universes, Planck scale fluctuations and more developed life forms can all beneficially interact. Assuming an indefinitely extended time scale, the most persistent part of the informational background can evolve indefinitely, so that its dynamics might come to include features corresponding to mathematical concepts and operations as well. This idea can be fruitfully connected with anthropic ideas, particularly taking the point of view of Susskind, who explains the way our universe seems to be mysteriously fine tuned to develop in such a way that life is possible in terms of it being only one of a vast number of coexisting universes, a small proportion of which have such a property, one of which we find ourselves occupying. Our speculations can be seen as the application of a similar idea to the informational aspect of life. While Susskind treats life as a passive occupant of whatever universe can permit it to develop, our proposals see life in a more general light, able to shape its environment in a partnership with it, in a manner analogous to the proposals of Lovelock (the Gaia hypothesis, for which there is now considerable supportive evidence), to the effect that life may be able to interact cooperatively with its environment, discovering how to operate upon it to its best advantage. |
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There ought to be cheerful for me if I blew up RTC Industries .Ha Ha Ha Ha . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By dave. on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 01:27 am: roflmao! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By J on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 01:50 am: Agent D,I clearly feel your pain,but you can go to prison for that,let's try to think of some way to fuck with them,that can't hurt you.Get my drift? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Agent D on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 02:27 am: J, If i have a issue about my problem with rtc, then i need to say some words of my thought. OK? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By dave. on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:16 am: yer preachin to the choir, brotherman. check you out! even j got yer back. yo! you are the MAN, man. rtc, where are your balls? ha!! that's right. they're in agent d's mouth!! no, wait. i meant that the other way around. their balls in d's mouth. wait, no. d's balls in their mouth. it's true. word. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By heather on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:37 am: blew them up we will have your cheerful waiting for you yes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By dave. on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:40 am: what are you doing, heather? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By heather on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:42 am: sittin here, talking to some friends, waiting for tomorrow what are you doing, dave? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By dave. on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:44 am: you talk to friends whilst checking the boards? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By heather on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:46 am: sure! what are you doing, dave? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By dave. on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:53 am: refreshin my browser. listening to am radio. shivering. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By J on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:54 am: I just thought we could come up with some kind of creative mind fuck to the RTC that couldn't be tracked back to you Agent D,but now I don't care.Do what you like. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By heather on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:57 am: jjj they still got am radio? thought that went out with the war start a leetle fire, dave, that's all ...uh. nevermind. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By dave. on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 04:07 am: it's frickin cold. my nipples are erect. gnight, heather and co. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By patrick on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 01:10 pm: is agent D Herbert Kornfield in cognito? what are you motherfuckers doing up at 3:40 am? don't you people have jobs? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By SuzyCue on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 02:31 pm: Apperently they don't.......it's the middle of the noon so...don't you have a job? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By J on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 12:50 am: It was only 1:40 here Arizona time,and I was working.Working on getting hammered,and I did a wonderful job of it,I'm good like that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Me fromhere on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 02:24 am: what the hell is this -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By dave. on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 02:32 am: A separate mental reality. A key assumption we make is one which, while it has no clear connections with experimental physics, does make contact with a position that was advocated by mathematicians such as Gödel. This is the idea that some aspects of mentality involve a realm of reality largely, but not completely, disconnected from the phenomena manifested in conventional physics. The idea of a disconnected realm does have precedents, for example in the way two of the fundamental forces (the strong and weak forces) play no role in large areas of physics and chemistry, whilst in other contexts they have a very important part to play. Next note that string theory, involving as it does spaces having more dimensions than the usual three, and also a non-unique vacuum state, a very large number of such states), is consistent with there being such a 'separate realm', in a way that the Standard Model, with its unique vacuum state contained within a limited number of spatial dimensions, did not. The point in regard to mathematical thinking, which motivates our model, is the following. Consider first of all what the brain does in visual perception. Here the primary information from the visual receptors goes through various levels of processing until it ends up as a high-level representation of the content of the visual field. It is not unreasonable to identify mathematics as a similar process, except that higher levels of abstraction are involved in this case. With the visual case, the mechanics are straightforward: the visual field typically contains for example edges, for which abstraction a dedicated neural system has evolved, related to our ability to perceive edges. It is hard to see why we should have such ready access to higher mathematical abstractions having little connection with experience. One resolution of the problem would be for mathematical concepts to be in some way 'in the physics', rather than being emergent properties of brains. In case it is felt that such a drastic solution is not necessary to explain our ready access to mathematical ideas, and that neural networks can provide an adequate explanation, a stronger argument for the existence of some kind of Platonic realm can be made on the basis of the aesthetic aspect of music. So far, in shifting the locus of mathematical thinking (and music?) to another realm, we have only replaced one mystery by another. But why should such a realm exist at all? The explanation we provide is of a biological character, taking account of the fact that information processing is an essential component of biological functioning, but with only very specific informational processes having a life-supportive character. While it is commonly taken that the informational processes involved are mediated by ordinary physical means, it is not a logical necessity that this should be the case. Some informational processes in an organism are specialised to the nature and circumstances of the organism concerned, but some have a more abstract and universal character, and so could be mediated by a quite different system with which individual organisms would interact. Next we observe that a form of proto-life, defined as fluctuation patterns surviving longer than typical patterns do, can be hypothesised as occurring at the Planck scale, evolution of such life being expected to involve evolution of the accompanying informational systems also. We get to the proposed model by supposing that the ordinary physical component and the informational component can evolve separately. and that the informational component can even survive the creation and destruction of individual universes, remaining as an ever-present background with which new universes, Planck scale fluctuations and more developed life forms can all beneficially interact. Assuming an indefinitely extended time scale, the most persistent part of the informational background can evolve indefinitely, so that its dynamics might come to include features corresponding to mathematical concepts and operations as well. This idea can be fruitfully connected with anthropic ideas, particularly taking the point of view of Susskind, who explains the way our universe seems to be mysteriously fine tuned to develop in such a way that life is possible in terms of it being only one of a vast number of coexisting universes, a small proportion of which have such a property, one of which we find ourselves occupying. Our speculations can be seen as the application of a similar idea to the informational aspect of life. While Susskind treats life as a passive occupant of whatever universe can permit it to develop, our proposals see life in a more general light, able to shape its environment in a partnership with it, in a manner analogous to the proposals of Lovelock (the Gaia hypothesis, for which there is now considerable supportive evidence), to the effect that life may be able to interact cooperatively with its environment, discovering how to operate upon it to its best advantage. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By heathre on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 03:31 am: i do not have a job -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By dave. on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 03:52 am: jobs are overrated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By J on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 04:51 am: Cheers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By TBone on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 06:11 pm: I have a job and I got paid to read dave's answer to "what the hell is this" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By kazu on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 06:18 pm: I'm going to work it into my dissertation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By J on Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - 02:13 am: I had an on the job injury the other night,I was working hard,and really tanked,then when I got up to go pass out,I tripped on the phone cord and almost broke my left index finger,but I can move it so it must be just a sprain.It hurts though. |
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cheerful dr pepper made good go fun! bwa hahahah! agents commence action plan code xq342! loL! ROFLMAO!!!1!1!1!!!111!1!!!!! |