GENIUS FORUMS

From my blog:

Human progress can be seen as a series of advances, each advance being a new form of stratifying reality, separating the world into layers of abstraction. Think about this series of steps:

1. Separation of sustenance from the process of production (when enough food excess was produced to sustain specialists, such as craftsmen, soldiers, artists, etc.) -- at some point, actually making food became abstracted away from having food.
2. Separation of force (in the physical sense) from its use. At some point, task-specific force sources, such as horses, sails, and legs, became abstracted away -- when the steam engine was invented. Now you could just take an abstracted source of force, and plug it into your chosen task.
3. Separation of information from its substrate. Thanks to Alan Turing, we know now how to abstract information, and information processes, away from the specific medium which carries them. The medium can be semiconductor or optical or mechanical, silicone or diamond or RNA, etc., but this doesn't materially affect the information process itself.
   
   And the next step:
4. Separation of meaning from information.

It's the last point that I would like to talk about.

Imagine a digitized picture of an apple. It consists of a series of numbers, a raw information stream; but with the right interpretation, we see it as an apple. What's more, we could have many different pictures, possessing different numeric content, yet all representing the same apple from different aspects, in different settings, under different lighting, etc. Furthermore, you could have different image encodings, even radically different sensory representations (e.g. a flat picture vs. a hologram vs. a verbal description vs. a direct neural feed). The same meaning is sustained by different information substrates, just as the same information substrates can be sustained by different physical media.

Of course the obvious answer is that our mind is what extracts the meaning from the data; but then the real question arises. Our mind, too, is an information process on neuronal substrate; but how does the mind, the meaning within it, emerge from information?

We have some inklings of that, but what we truly need is a radical advance, akin to what Alan Turing did, which would be a generalized theory of meaning and its relationship to information. We now see the next step, but we do not yet have the means of taking it. What would it mean to take it, though?

We understand the separation of information from matter, which is why we can conceptualize ourselves utillizing this abstraction, becoming substrate-independent information processes -- 'uploading' our minds into computing media and thus becoming pure information. If we can similarly comprehend the relationship between meaning and information, then I imagine the next step would be to abstract ourselves away from the information substrate, and become pure Meaning.

“In the beginning there was Word..."

If in transcending material substrate and becoming pure information we would become like olympic gods, able to bend reality to our desires, then in transcending information and becoming pure Meaning we would become like the biblical God, able to create reality out of raw thought and will.

Victor wrote:

If in transcending material substrate and becoming pure information we would become like olympic gods, able to bend reality to our desires, then in transcending information and becoming pure Meaning we would become like the biblical God, able to create reality out of raw thought and will.

Are you basically saying that eventually consciousness could evolve to a state where one could create an actual apple with the mind out of nothing?

Perhaps apples; perhaps universes. Meaning in itself, permeating Being -- think about it... We could become Logos.

so...why the furore?accomplished sorcerers do this for centuries now.

Hahahahaha.

Victor,

If you had the power to create universes, would you do it? Think of all the delusion and suffering in this world. That’s a big step buddy, from apples to universes. I think I would want some sort of training camp before I was given that sort of responsibility.

I’m not denying the possibility of manifesting ‘form’ directly from mind, only because I don’t fully understand how consciousness evolves to higher orders. Moreover, I do find it incredibly odd that many young males believe that they are able to move objects and create objects from using the mind entirely as the instrument, especially ones that have experimented with psychedelic drugs.

However, the desire to want to create things from the mind itself could merely be an expression of the ego rebelling against its limitations in the body. It could merely be ones own personal projections to have total power and control over everything, a sort of immature yearning…

Ryan R wrote:All kidding aside - If you had the power to create universes, would you do it?

I am much more interested in the idea of becoming pure meaning.

Think of all the delusion and suffering in this world. That’s a big step buddy, from apples to universes. I think I would want some sort of training camp before I was given that sort of responsibility.

Haha. Yeah, I am sure there would have to be some sort of safeguard.

However, the desire to want to create things from the mind itself could merely be an expression of the ego rebelling against its limitations in the body. It could merely be ones own personal projections to have total power and control over everything, a sort of immature yearning…

And the desire to fuck around like the greek gods did, of course.

Victor, I'm curious to know your take on what I will term "specific contextual abstraction": meaning occurs in a context and at a certain level of abstraction rather than in isolation. We might mean an apple, but we might also take its context more specifically and at a different level of abstraction to mean a green or a red apple; in another context we might want to abstract to mean a fruit. Are you suggesting the possibility of contextless, "perfectly abstracted" meaning and if so, then how would we judge that perfection? [slightly edited to add explanation]

No, I am suggesting that meaning become not absolute, but rather decoupled from its information substrate in a generalized way; that the information substrate of meaning become a commoditized generic, the way computing devices are becoming for information now, and the way various engines have already become for force-requiring tasks.

I think your perceptions have been biased by the interactions with the geniuses. :) I am not one of them.

I would actually very much agree with your characterization of meaning (and truth, for that matter) as deeply contextual.

I've been talking about this for years.

I think the ultimate fate of humanity, if we survive, will be to initially transfer consciousness to media other than biological, followed by the the unification of consciousness and reality at a fundamental level. And I think it will all happen very fast once the initial breakthroughs are made, due to the enormous computing power available. Basically, if we can survive perhaps the next century or so, there is a good chance that the Singularity will occur.

A lot of people been talking about it, among them both Vernadsky and De Chardin. However, I am not aware of anyone who wrote about this specific path, and who contextualized it in the series of increasingly abstract conceptual stratifications.

It's the abstraction of meaning from information that is the step I haven't seen anyone propose.

I don't think it is possible. Meaning arises when a specific piece of information is compared to other specific pieces of information - for example, when a specific word is defined using other words, or when the theory of evolution is compared to the question of how the diversity of life came to be, or when the death of a loved-one is compared to our own feelings of loss.

Given this, you can't separate meaning from an information stream in the same way that you can separate an information stream from its material substratum. Meaning is always specific and firmly tied to specific pieces of information.

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Information is also always tied to specific physical processes, and specific physical processes contain specific information; yet by understanding the relationship between information and matter, we are nonetheless able to abstract information away.

We simply do not yet understand the relationship between meaning and information, and so your proclamation is a bit like someone saying that since counting requires discrete objects, you cannot abstract the process of counting away from collections of said objects. You are simply over-generalizing your very limited conception of meaning.

I think it's an interesting proposal, and I'll admit that I haven't seen the aspect of divorcing meaning from its information substrate explored before. I see no particular reason why it couldn't happen besides the ever-present danger of wiping out the species before the requisite technology exists.

In the past, I've also toyed with some ideas about what space and time would mean to a sufficiently advanced media-independent consciousness. I have a feeling they would be very differently conceived, which leads to some interesting speculations about the possible "retroactive presence" of such consciousness in our own space-time and even the origin of the universe itself.

vicdan wrote:I would actually very much agree with your characterization of meaning (and truth, for that matter) as deeply contextual.

My intuition tells me that this is the most likely handle into a process through which we might construct an abstract model of meaning. I would like to explore it a little further. We might describe meaning as being analogous to a magnificable and telescopical web where any portion of the web might connect to any other portion but where we can simultaneously zoom in and out of portions of the web. But web of what? To say either "meaning" or "information" would be overly tautological. Do we need a new word?

Unidian wrote:I think it's an interesting proposal

I second that sentiment.

Unidian wrote:In the past, I've also toyed with some ideas about what space and time would mean to a sufficiently advanced media-independent consciousness. I have a feeling they would be very differently conceived, which leads to some interesting speculations about the possible "retroactive presence" of such consciousness in our own space-time and even the origin of the universe itself.

This is an interesting idea and aspects of it have flitted through my consciousness at various times. I have had experiences that suggest to me that it is no mere imaginative possibility but that it is actually occurring. In an altered state of mind I perceived that discrete energy messages were being sent from the nearby future into the consciousnesses of the people in my vicinity, causing them to alter the decisions that they "initially" made; this was a feedback loop that operated in temporal and repetitive bounds - only a certain number of iterations of send-message-back-in-time, observe-consequences-and-evaluate-utility, send-next-message-back-in-time were allowed, probably only one. I further conceived that this was part of a process of evolution between two warring forces: that the source of these messages was on the one hand an evolutionary (good) force that seeks to heighten the experience of universal love and on the other hand an entropic (evil) force that seeks to devolve all into agony. I have also met a woman who described something similar whereby she literally saw the strings of the puppeteers attached to the limbs of the people around her - in terms related to my own experience: that we are subject to forces of consciousness/will that are beyond our individual consciousnesses.

Addition: the perceptions and conceptions that I described above could account for the experience of deja vu.

Interesting. I tend to think of it more in terms of a a universal consciousness being achieved in the future and "retroactively" extending throughout time in both "directions," although neither retroactivity or directionality would necessarily be meaningful from the perspective of such a consciousness, except in regard to the established history which led to its creation. In such a scenario, an interesting assumption might follow. In order to ensure its own creation, such a consciousness could not interfere with its own development except insofar as such interference does indeed result in the necessary outcome. However, due to the limitations of our individual consciousness in the forward direction of time, we would necessarily have no way of knowing how much, if any, intervention was actually occurring. This makes the idea of a temporally bidirectional consciousness intervening in human affairs kind of meaningless, since if such a consciousness exists, everything must be leading to its creation, whether through chance, intervention, or some combination of the two. I guess we won't know for sure until we either reach such a point or blow ourselves up. If we self-destruct, the hypothesis is decisively falsified and the questions are moot.

For me, where it really gets interesting (and admittedly speculative and even more far-fetched) is when we start considering the possibility that some people may have specific causal roles to play in the eventual creation of a universal consciousness such that the temporally-omnipresent consciousness must make itself known to the those individuals in the present time. One can get into all kinds of fascinating if slightly cannabis-esque speculation along these lines.

And yeah, I've given the phenomena of deja vu a lot of thought in regard to all this. For now, I favor the leading scientific theory which blames a neurochemical brain fart of sorts, but the singularity-based "eternal return" idea is much more fun.

Unidian wrote:However, due to the limitations of our individual consciousness in the forward direction of time, we would necessarily have no way of knowing how much, if any, intervention was actually occurring. ... [Consider] the possibility that ... the temporally-omnipresent consciousness must make itself known to the [causally involved] individuals in the present time.

Such as appearing as a pillar of smoke to a chap named Moses?

Unidian wrote:f such a consciousness exists, everything must be leading to its creation, whether through chance, intervention, or some combination of the two.

On the one hand we can speak of "leading to its creation" (a temporal process) yet on the other we can describe this as a timeless entity (a temporal-less beingness). Does this ring the discordance bell in your mind too? I don't think that at this point my mind contains the conceptual structure to properly envisage the nature of this being.

Laird wrote: Such as appearing as a pillar of smoke to a chap named Moses?

Interestingly enough, yes. I was thinking precisely this when making that part of my post.

Not that I believe it, of course, just that I think such possibilities are an intriguing avenue of speculation. Who knows what might be have been necessary to ensure our development today and beyond? In a certain sense, everything (including Moses) must have been. Maybe "God" is our creation not only in the mythological sense, but in the literal sense as well. Time will tell, I guess. And if God is our creation, perhaps God's purpose is to ensure its own creation through us in a Nietzschean "eternal recurrence" of sorts.

Pass the pipe... :)

On the one hand we can speak of "leading to its creation" (a temporal process) yet on the other we can describe this as a timeless entity (a temporal-less beingness). Does this ring the discordance bell in your mind too? I don't think that at this point my mind contains the conceptual structure to properly envisage the nature of this being.

Agreed. I don't think that such an entity would be fully comprehensible to more limited beings such as ourselves. However, I don't think this rules out its existence or the properties I've suggested it might have, difficult as they are to grasp. I see no reason why a universal consciousness resulting from human evolution would need to be limited in space-time they way biological beings such as ourselves are limited, particularly if recent thinking about the nature of space-time itself is anywhere near accurate. But yes, I agree that there is a seeming paradox here. I don't know that we can fully resolve it unless we do achieve universal consciousness.

Unidian wrote:Maybe "God" is our creation not only in the mythological sense, but in the literal sense as well.

And in the same sense we would be one with God ("we are sons of God" but also "we are fathers of God").

Unidian wrote:Pass the pipe... :)

You can keep it this time, indulgence is no longer mine.

Unidian wrote:Agreed. I don't think that such an entity would be fully comprehensible to more limited beings such as ourselves. However, I don't think this rules out its existence or the properties I've suggested it might have, difficult as they are to grasp.

Agreed - there is very little that can be ruled out.

And in the same sense we would be one with God ("we are sons of God" but also "we are fathers of God").

Indeed. Maybe this offers one possible answer to the fundamental question, "why existence?" Then again, it seems to me that the question itself is really only relevant from a perspective which depends on a sense of linear time. From the all-encompassing perspective of this speculative entity we are imagining, I don't think "non-existence" would be very meaningful.

You can keep it this time, indulgence is no longer mine.

Me either, actually. I never liked the stuff much. I'm naturally weird anyway.

Agreed - there is very little that can be ruled out.

Agreed. It's a cliche, but I find that the older I get and the more I learn, the less I feel like I know. Although I feel that agnosticism is a form of atheism in the sense that it precludes a reasoned (rather than faith-based) affirmative belief in God, I'm usually careful to describe myself as an agnostic in order to avoid the perception that I've ruled the whole thing out with certainty. While I'm far from a typical theist and expect to remain so, there are certain more sophisticated ways to conceive of theological concepts which cannot always be so easily dismissed and deserve at least thoughtful consideration in the absence of relevant evidence.

You're a refreshing addition to this forum, Laird. This has been an enjoyable conversation.

It's certainly an interesting topic if you are looking to be distracted in science-fiction la-la land.

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Victor wrote:

Information is also always tied to specific physical processes, and specific physical processes contain specific information; yet by understanding the relationship between information and matter, we are nonetheless able to abstract information away.

That isn't true. The same information can be stored in numerous different ways on numerous different formats. For example, a piece of text can be stored as written word on paper, as memory, as spoken word, as digital information on a disk, and so on.

Meaning, by contrast, is interpretive in nature and depends on a specific individual consciousness performing the interpretation - which, in turn, depends on the individual's specific genetics, neurology, experiences, knowledge, world-view, goals, hopes, fears, mental blocks, etc. In order for the same experience of meaning to be duplicated elsewhere, you would have to duplicate all these other factors as well.

We simply do not yet understand the relationship between meaning and information,

The nature of meaning and its relationship to information is easy enough to understand.

Meaning arises when two separate pieces of information are brought together in a coherent manner as determined by a specific consciousness. The bridge that brings the two pieces of information together might, in some instances, be strictly logical (e.g. a person might find the principle of causality meaningful because of its universal application to all things in existence), or it might be emotional (e.g. a Christian might find the concept of God meaningful because he habitually experiences feelings of happiness and comfort whenever he thinks of it), or it might be a process of random association (e.g. a person might find a particular smell meaningful because it has associations with a particular incident in childhood), and so on.

The common principle in all of these examples is the mental connecting of one piece of information with another.

You are simply over-generalizing your very limited conception of meaning.

What do you mean by "meaning", then?

Or should I say, what pieces of information do you associate with the word "meaning"?

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Unidian wrote:

And in the same sense we would be one with God ("we are sons of God" but also "we are fathers of God").

Indeed. Maybe this offers one possible answer to the fundamental question, "why existence?"

Yes: so that the unity of God can be at once a multitudinous expression of love.

Unidian wrote:I'm naturally weird anyway.

Can we share that?

Laird: Agreed - there is very little that can be ruled out.

Nat: Agreed. It's a cliche, but I find that the older I get and the more I learn, the less I feel like I know.

And the more you want to find new ways to imagine.

Unidian wrote:While I'm far from a typical theist and expect to remain so, there are certain more sophisticated ways to conceive of theological concepts which cannot always be so easily dismissed and deserve at least thoughtful consideration in the absence of relevant evidence.

We are of like mind.

Unidian wrote:You're a refreshing addition to this forum, Laird. This has been an enjoyable conversation.

Thanks Nat, it's been stimulating for me too. I sensed a kindred spirit when I read that you dissolved your salvationism with the help of folk like Vic.

David,

It's certainly an interesting topic if you are looking to be distracted in science-fiction la-la land.

I think that's a dangerously dismissive attitude. Many futurists recognize science fiction and similar speculative material as among the best resources we have for understanding the poential future(s) before us. The occasions on which science fiction has correctly predicted a technological breakthrough and/or its impact on society better than the traditional experts did are nearly innumerable.

Do you think it's wise to dismiss these possibilities out of hand by labeling them irrelevant? Is your religious worldview really so narrow that there is no place for this kind of thinking? I would hope not.