Dr. Donald Hoffman, Materialism’s Final Death Blow? |436|

Ha ha - I put the word correct in quotes because if we assume Darwinism the whole thing is running blind - as you know - so it is only our viewpoint that makes it correct - hence the quotes. Yes you can reasonably say that RM+NS is looking for anything useful, but the problem is that it looks as though useful proteins are an incredibly small subset of all random proteins.

How about getting some other types of designers into your head? After all, a designer that tools up a predator/prey pair of organisms in a sort of arms race, is unlikely to worry too much about how we use our genitals - LOL! The most you might expect, is a designer that wants us to use our genitals in a loving sort of way.

I think Behe's results imply that the designer is still active, because otherwise organisms would be running down because of mutations, so I like to think that trainee designers may be allowed to have a go at tweaking the genomes of various organisms - sort of like chemistry practical classes! I definitely think there were/are multiple designers involved. Of course the DI may not want to emphasis that idea.

Another thought is to imagine the designers working rather like remote viewers. They would view the outcome of various possible changes, and see the end result (remember the hints that time may be different in non-material realms). This might enable them to bypass all the messy chemistry involved in evaluating changes. Such a process might not be 100 million miles removed from the concept behind quantum computing.

David

I enjoy some of the cute ideas you have about designers and it’s fun to speculate.

I’m not sure you’re right about Behe and ongoing ‘magic’ in biology; It is impossible to demonstrate and he seems happiest retreating to OOL arguments. He (like Hoffman) appears to be swayed by the very strong lines of evidence and experimental data pointing to ‘natural’ evolution.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creationism/#HisCre

In his major work, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe suggests that everything might have been done long ago and then left to its own devices. ‘The irreducibly complex biochemical systems that I have discussed… did not have to be produced recently. It is entirely possible, based simply on an examination of the systems themselves, that they were designed billions of years ago and that they have been passed down to the present by the normal processes of cellular reproduction’ (Behe 1996, 227–8).
 
The way I see it, all 3 models (Kastrup's, Hoffman's and Campbell's) are just that: models. Each is a descriptive means of trying to explain reality; and each has its strengths and weaknesses. What each is trying to explain using different metaphors (because in the end, that's what they are) is the same thing. Despite the different approaches/lexicons they employ, I sense a fair degree of consilience -- not least that the world as our perceptions present it to us isn't reality as it intrinsically is.
yeah but doesn't it feel a bit like "shut up and calculate"/"backdoor materialism." I mean, I think hoffman is brilliant in so many ways... and deeply spiritual in so many ways too... and I also agree with rich grego about the "precise nature of mathematics" not being a port in the storm.

Campbell says (in the Batgap video I posted) in so many words that he doesn't make the mistake of confusing his model with reality; he knows it's a model, and says that we're all perfectly free to come up with our own models.
I wish I had the interview I did with tom campbell... it was a technical mess up on my end that cause me to lose it... but from what I remember he wasn't super welcoming to me poking holes in his model :)

What is Campbell's simulation simulating?
ok, but doesn't that suggest that the greater reality is somehow an expression of this reality... maybe that's a simulation... and maybe that's a simulation of that simulation... turtles all the way down :)
 
consciousness is fundamental... turtle free :)

I do believe consciousness to be fundemanfal, but to be fair I suppose you COULD then ask where consciousness comes from. Is that another turtle? I guess it depends on how you look at it. Ultimately, I think the answer HAS to be the we have a wildly incomplete understanding of time and cause and effect. And that the turtle concept itself is probably a terribly inaccurate metaphor. It does drive one crazy thinking about it. But clearly we lack the mental capacity to understand how something couldn’t have a cause.
 
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I do believe consciousness to be fundemanfal, but to be fair I suppose you COULD then ask where consciousness comes from. Is that another turtle? I guess it depends on how you look at it. Ultimately, I think the answer HAS to be the we have a wildly incomplete understanding of time and cause and effect. And that the turtle concept itself is probably a terribly inaccurate metaphor. It does drive one crazy thinking about it. But clearly we lack the mental capacity to understand how something couldn’t have a cause.
just playing around here... But I think question is in a diff category. the simulation theory folks are leaning on our current understanding of computer-generated simulation. this kind of model assumes a certain level of understanding of the constituent elements are being modeled / simulated. "consciousness is fundamental" kinda transcends that.
 
just playing around here... But I think question is in a diff category. the simulation theory folks are leaning on our current understanding of computer-generated simulation. this kind of model assumes a certain level of understanding of the constituent elements are being modeled / simulated. "consciousness is fundamental" kinda transcends that.
What about hierarchy?
 
yeah but doesn't it feel a bit like "shut up and calculate"/"backdoor materialism." I mean, I think hoffman is brilliant in so many ways... and deeply spiritual in so many ways too... and I also agree with rich grego about the "precise nature of mathematics" not being a port in the storm.


I wish I had the interview I did with tom campbell... it was a technical mess up on my end that cause me to lose it... but from what I remember he wasn't super welcoming to me poking holes in his model :)


ok, but doesn't that suggest that the greater reality is somehow an expression of this reality... maybe that's a simulation... and maybe that's a simulation of that simulation... turtles all the way down :)

Like I said, Campbell's, Hoffman's, and Kastrup's theories are all models of reality, and as you hint in a later posting, most people model based on their current understanding of pre-existing models. The way people habitually try to make sense of the world can't help but lead to endless turtles. I think that language's deeply embedded idea of material cause and effect is the source of this. Nothing can be without material cause, eveything being mediated by object interaction. Why? because we perceive a world apparently made up of objects and they seem to interact. Where we can see no visible contact, we even invent quasi-objectified invisible forces and fields.

If materialistic science has taught us anything, it is that having this model of reality, useful as it sometimes is, leads to infinite regression. We are unable to imagine anything happening without a material cause, so there's always a step further than what we've so far reduced reality to.

If consciousness is considered as the final cause of everything, one can turn the usual mode of thinking upside down. Nothing happens because of interaction of objects; no, it's rather that everything that happens appears to perception as interaction. We can to some extent manipulate aspects of the world by accepting that perception as reality, and that's what appears to many to be the proof of the pudding: "look, by doing such-and-such, by causing this object to interact with that one, this is what happens, and I predicted that, hence my premise must be true."

The key idea is that we are at the mercy of appearances. Everything appears to be the result of interaction, but this makes the tail wag the dog. Things like intentionality become incidental; but the world is such that we can apply our intentions to it -- and why shouldn't we? We each possess a moiety of universal consciousness, the ultimate intentional source of all.

Campbell, Hoffman and Kastrup, in order to communicate, have to use ordinary language, which is saturated with the idea of material causation - with thingness. This applies even to mathematics, the abstract yet manipulable symbolism of which points indirectly to things. But in the case of these three people, I suspect they have some kind of inner appreciation or inkling of actual reality that exists apart from their models.

If Campbell argued with you about his model, it may not have been because he thinks it is the way things actually are, but more because he wanted to make sure that you at least understood it in its own terms -- after all, he's gone to great lengths to try to make it self-consistent. I suspect he knows well enough that in the end it's just a metaphor, but because it's couched in scientific terms, it's bound to appear like many other scientific theories. Same with Hoffman, really, because he's taking things even further into abstract symbolism using mathematics.

Kastrup's model relies possibly the least on science and mathematics; he seems to me to use more common-language metaphors, but even those can't guarantee to shake off the inbuilt taint of material causation, and prevent the reader from taking them too literally.
 
leads to infinite regression.
nice! reminds me of:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid: Douglas R ...


If Campbell argued with you about his model, it may not have been because he thinks it is the way things actually are, but more because he wanted to make sure that you at least understood it in its own terms --
he got tweaked because I pushed him on the idea that he's calculated the level of resolution of the simulation to be 60 frames per second. this seems like a classic example of backdoor materialism :-)
 
he got tweaked because I pushed him on the idea that he's calculated the level of resolution of the simulation to be 60 frames per second. this seems like a classic example of backdoor materialism :)

I got him miffed by saying that I didn’t find his work ‘spiritual’ enough.

I’m not even sure what I meant. He replied saying “I can’t have read much of his stuff”, which was factually incorrect. ;)
 
he got tweaked because I pushed him on the idea that he's calculated the level of resolution of the simulation to be 60 frames per second. this seems like a classic example of backdoor materialism :)

How can a resolution be expressed in terms of frames per second? Also, I may be being naïve, but 60 fps as I understand it couldn't possibly be the frame rate of any putative simulation, because we can make moving pictures many more fps faster than that and still not observe any interruption in the flow of what we're filming. Are you absolutely sure he said that? Is it possible you misinterpreted him? Or am I not understanding you?
 
How can a resolution be expressed in terms of frames per second? Also, I may be being naïve, but 60 fps as I understand it couldn't possibly be the frame rate of any putative simulation, because we can make moving pictures many more fps faster than that and still not observe any interruption in the flow of what we're filming. Are you absolutely sure he said that? Is it possible you misinterpreted him? Or am I not understanding you?
It was in some material he had written awhile back and I brought it up as an example of where that kind of thinking can go. as I remember he didn't degrade very gracefully :)

this isn't it, but gives the flavor:
https://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10274
 
thx... new to me... great analogy.



but isn't tom campbell stuck in the same box/paradox that hoffman is... i.e. simulation of what? mathematical model of what?

That's true enough but we aren't able to be precise enough to label this situation a paradox, I think. And then of course all paradoxes are typically like this: we get better data, better engineering tools and the paradox resolves itself.

That won't be forthcoming in this "new world". There is no 'there' there no matter what side you are on alex.

That being said, why not make some predictions BEFORE the soul keyboard is switched on and its revelations broadcasted on NBC news?

(Also, one small aside, given this is about perception -- I really cannot find a good explanation of Hoffman's use of mirrors and perception, do you have any quick links I could read?)
 
I want to add to the discussion the notion that this world may be basically a prison.

What Hoffman is describing is entirely consistent with a kind of encryption scheme.

But, isn't consciousness being 'material' a misnomer? Sure, from inside the system. My guess now is that even God isn't even God. Its foundationally suspect if the system we are surrounded by is not innately true or real.

Here I compare the AGI containtment strategy to what may be true in the so called 'new age' philosophy:


"Attempts to box an AGI may add some degree of safety to the development of a friendly artificial intelligence (FAI). A number of strategies for keeping an AGI in its box are discussed in Thinking inside the box and Leakproofing the Singularity. Among them are:

  • Physically isolating the AGI and permitting it zero control of any machinery
  • Limiting the AGI’s outputs and inputs with regards to humans
  • Programming the AGI with deliberately convoluted logic or homomorphically encrypting portions of it
  • Periodic resets of the AGI's memory
  • A virtual world between the real world and the AI, where its unfriendly intentions would be first revealed
  • Motivational control using a variety of techniques"
My Commentary:

1. In this world we are certainly quite isolated, a feature of being physical is that we cannot directly access another's consciousness easily. We also have no access to anything but this illusion. No one brings backs trinckets from heaven. But heaven brings us trinkets! (apports).
2. In this scenario, our contact with 'the other side' to whomever is there (aliens, angels, god) is extremely small in terms of what we remember or can access
3. This seems to be consistent in concept to an encryption system, something that is consistent with the world not being literally true but an illusion.
4. being born or reborn
5. complete access to our thought by higher authorities (dead ancestors, angels, whatever). There is many, many correspondences here and for the other numbers, but its so obvious I haven't typed it all out.

If in doubt, just ask. I can type for a few hours...

6. oh boy...bodies can be lit on fire here...what else?
 
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· Think about a cell in your body – it is a living conscious being:

o Cells eat, metabolize, excrete, reproduce, ...

o Cells perceive atoms and function based upon the atomic scale.

o Cells have will and intent.

· Think about yourself as an organism:

o You have never sensed, tasted, or smelled an atom.

o All of our sensory information is based upon feeling collective sets of cells.

o Our Organ systems are sets of cells functioning in balance.

o Generations of Cells come and go during an organism’s lifetime.

o Taste of Vanilla? The experience of a thought is so much ore than a tiny electric flash in gray matter.

o We have will and intent.

· Think about the Earth as a living conscious being:

o Earth’s ‘organ’ systems are of Organisms (such as Animals O2 to CO2 and plants CO2 to O2).

o Generations of Organisms come and go in a planet’s lifetime providing balances.

o We are incapable of knowing the Earth's consciousness experience of a lightning flash in the gray matter of the clouds.

o Note: Stones are the bones of the Earth, collections of atoms like teeth enamel.

o The Earth is in a balanced relationship with the Living Sun and other planets.

· Think about the Milky Way:

o Generations of Astronomical beings come and go during the lifetime of the Milky Way.

o Testable Hypothesis: There will be ‘organ’ systems exchanging energy and materials to balance the system.

o There will be powerful energy bursts scattered around the Galaxy.

Levels of Life
 
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