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>Walker discussing "life" as what emerges from a dense information well This is still a language thing. Nothing new is uncovered here. All Walker did is imbue

>Walker discussing "life" as what emerges from a dense information well This is still a language thing. Nothing new is uncovered here. All Walker did is imbue complexity onto a vocabulary word. No new information was introduced. The profoundness is an illusion.

patcon 6y ago
I'm grateful for the reply :) I respectfully disagree. You have me asking myself why though. I'm thinking about this quote by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life."[1] I'm also thinking about Copernicus and how people were actually modelling planetary motion in workable ways before him, though perhaps with a few more variables. Lastly, I'm thinking of "Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything", by Graham Harman. I don't subscribe to it fully, but it raises a case for how a truly explanatory theory of our universe MUST encompass fiction and metaphor and language as "real". So if true, then physics must have explanatory power over what happens in language. So I really don't vibe with the downplay of "just a language spin for the same thing", because new terms/framings are crucial to the ecology of science/tech/progress. Discovering "a language thing" is sometimes no less a discovery than finding a new sub-species of toad. The toad is just an instantiation of information in a different substrate, if you get my drift :) a dense network of biochemical interactions vs a distributed network of neural interactions. The universe doesn't care that we find one substrate more intuitive and innate (language). The objective universe "sees" each as a manifestation of novel information that self-reinforces and persists its structure through time Thanks for giving me the opportunity to work through this thought :) Disclosure: My background is not just tech, but biochemistry: the nitty gritty chemical mechanics of life. I'm wondering if this gives me different context on how important Imari's discovery of these new framings and models. [1]: http://www.jonkolko.com/writingSimplicityComplexity.php#breadcrumbNav:~:text=%22For%20the%20simplicity%20that%20lies%20this,complexity%2C%20I%20would%20give%20my%20life.%22 http://www.jonkolko.com/writingSimplicityComplexity.php#brea...
- neonological 6y ago
  >So I really don't vibe with the downplay of "just a language spin for the same thing", because new terms/framings are crucial to the ecology of science/tech/progress. Discovering "a language thing" is sometimes no less a discovery than finding a new sub-species of toad. The toad is just an instantiation of information in a different substrate, if you get my drift This sentence is in itself wordplay. You are aware of the differences between the toad and the toad subspecies. To imbue both with a different word is a separate thing disconnected from the actual differences. Words that encompass categories may help us humans understand things, but these are just tools for us to understand certain things, they do not change reality itself. In fact words can create illusions of categories that don't exist from certain perspectives. For example what does it mean to be "American." It's a complex word with a complex category but largely pointless in the grand universal scheme of things. The category only exists because humans formed out pure chance a country called America out of all the possible countries and empires that could have existed. I'm saying consciousness is the same thing. It's as arbitrary as asking what it means to be American. Now it may not feel this way but humans are born with large consistent biases that are very hard to remove. Almost all cultures believe in the concept of gods even though scientifically the concept is arbitrary. My claim is that consciousness is a similar thing. It is an illusion. You do not actually know what the word consciousness means. You just know when something belongs in the consciousness category and when it does not. Much of the question is to find out what the algorithm is actually doing in your head. I think this endeavor is pointless because the algorithm is arbitrary. Whether you consider an ant to be consciousness or not based off certain qualities is uninteresting and arbitrary.

patcon 6y ago

I'm grateful for the reply :) I respectfully disagree. You have me asking myself why though. I'm thinking about this quote by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life."[1] I'm also thinking about Copernicus and how people were actually modelling planetary motion in workable ways before him, though perhaps with a few more variables. Lastly, I'm thinking of "Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything", by Graham Harman. I don't subscribe to it fully, but it raises a case for how a truly explanatory theory of our universe MUST encompass fiction and metaphor and language as "real". So if true, then physics must have explanatory power over what happens in language. So I really don't vibe with the downplay of "just a language spin for the same thing", because new terms/framings are crucial to the ecology of science/tech/progress. Discovering "a language thing" is sometimes no less a discovery than finding a new sub-species of toad. The toad is just an instantiation of information in a different substrate, if you get my drift :) a dense network of biochemical interactions vs a distributed network of neural interactions. The universe doesn't care that we find one substrate more intuitive and innate (language). The objective universe "sees" each as a manifestation of novel information that self-reinforces and persists its structure through time Thanks for giving me the opportunity to work through this thought :) Disclosure: My background is not just tech, but biochemistry: the nitty gritty chemical mechanics of life. I'm wondering if this gives me different context on how important Imari's discovery of these new framings and models. [1]: http://www.jonkolko.com/writingSimplicityComplexity.php#breadcrumbNav:~:text=%22For%20the%20simplicity%20that%20lies%20this,complexity%2C%20I%20would%20give%20my%20life.%22 http://www.jonkolko.com/writingSimplicityComplexity.php#brea...

neonological 6y ago
>So I really don't vibe with the downplay of "just a language spin for the same thing", because new terms/framings are crucial to the ecology of science/tech/progress. Discovering "a language thing" is sometimes no less a discovery than finding a new sub-species of toad. The toad is just an instantiation of information in a different substrate, if you get my drift This sentence is in itself wordplay. You are aware of the differences between the toad and the toad subspecies. To imbue both with a different word is a separate thing disconnected from the actual differences. Words that encompass categories may help us humans understand things, but these are just tools for us to understand certain things, they do not change reality itself. In fact words can create illusions of categories that don't exist from certain perspectives. For example what does it mean to be "American." It's a complex word with a complex category but largely pointless in the grand universal scheme of things. The category only exists because humans formed out pure chance a country called America out of all the possible countries and empires that could have existed. I'm saying consciousness is the same thing. It's as arbitrary as asking what it means to be American. Now it may not feel this way but humans are born with large consistent biases that are very hard to remove. Almost all cultures believe in the concept of gods even though scientifically the concept is arbitrary. My claim is that consciousness is a similar thing. It is an illusion. You do not actually know what the word consciousness means. You just know when something belongs in the consciousness category and when it does not. Much of the question is to find out what the algorithm is actually doing in your head. I think this endeavor is pointless because the algorithm is arbitrary. Whether you consider an ant to be consciousness or not based off certain qualities is uninteresting and arbitrary.