What is life?

[Dilip Panjwani]

I do not believe that Time can theoretically be traced backwards forever, I believe that it had a beginning, and that it could come to an end. I believe that what 'big banged' into existence was One mind, and that this has happened once, inexplicably.

And you also believe that this One Mind is not loving and all-benevolent, but far from it, given all what happens in the Universe? (just curious, given what I think you have written in the past...)

[Brad Thomson]

And you also believe that this One Mind is not loving and all-benevolent, but far from it, given all what happens in the Universe? (just curious, given what I think you have written in the past...)

Yes, Nature is brutal and savage, this is obvious. The Problem of Evil refutes the possibility of a loving, merciful God. But I do think that Nature will be erotic to us to the extent that we are loving to each other, to the animals and to Nature Her/Himself. We have the power to take Nature by the hand, to speak metaphorically, and teach/guide Her/Him to become a loving God. This is why we exist. There are no guarantees like religions mistakenly suggest. This is the terrible danger of religion, it makes people think God will save us if we follow certain rules. Therefore religious people do not think the onus is on us and do nothing. Religion is the worst thing that has ever happened to mankind, it can only lead to our destruction, never to salvation.

[Pargat Perrer]

Originally posted by Pargat Perrer

Yet if we bang our head hard enough against a car windshield, the windshield breaks and so does our head, and indeed our life may end in that instant.

That conclusion is drawn by the neuronal framework in our brains...

And the conclusion turns out to be correct ... at least as far as life in our physical universe is concerned.

AI, apparently devoid of consciousness, would also lead to exactly the same conclusions.

Yet all the predictions are that AI will NOT be devoid of consciousness!

I'm really not clear what point(s) you are trying to make. You say there are no particles, only energy, and that conclusions about particles (such as the hardness of a car windshield) are drawn by our brains' neuronal framework, implying that our brains are incorrect. Then what are we to conclude about the fact that hitting our head against a car windshield hard enough will actually kill us?

[Dilip Panjwani]

[I]Originally posted by Pargat Perrer


I'm really not clear what point(s) you are trying to make. You say there are no particles, only energy, and that conclusions about particles (such as the hardness of a car windshield) are drawn by our brains' neuronal framework, implying that our brains are incorrect. Then what are we to conclude about the fact that hitting our head against a car windshield hard enough will actually kill us?

The neuronal network of our brains, and AI, cannot 'visualize' the car windshield (only our consciousness can), but do know that hitting our head against it could actually kill us, given the 'information' they have access to, and that information currently likely includes both being particulate in nature. The reality though is that even though both the windshield and our head are configurations of electron and quark waves, banging one against the other will still change the configuration of the waves of the energies involved.... this is not something that cannot be understood by the neural networks or AI (to reach the conclusion of not wanting to bang our head against the windshield), but because of most current scientific literature calling it particles, they reach the correct conclusions even while relying on 'misinformation'. The point is that the distortion created by our consciousness is not necessary for us to survive better.

[Pargat Perrer]

The neuronal network of our brains, and AI, cannot 'visualize' the car windshield (only our consciousness can), but do know that hitting our head against it could actually kill us, given the 'information' they have access to, and that information currently likely includes both being particulate in nature. The reality though is that even though both the windshield and our head are configurations of electron and quark waves, banging one against the other will still change the configuration of the waves of the energies involved.... this is not something that cannot be understood by the neural networks or AI (to reach the conclusion of not wanting to bang our head against the windshield), but because of most current scientific literature calling it particles, they reach the correct conclusions even while relying on 'misinformation'. The point is that the distortion created by our consciousness is not necessary for us to survive better.

I had to read this several times to get the gist of it....

You seem to be saying that our consciousness uses "misinformation" about particulate nature of objects in our physical universe to allow us to learn the proper behaviour to survive (don't hit your head against hard objects). But then you add that the "real" wave nature of physical objects (if our consciousness could only skip over and ignore the misinformation on particulate nature) would give our consciousness the same conclusions. And thus we would survive just as well.

Ok, you can believe that if you must. I consider it a far-fetched notion, maybe possible but massively unlikely.

I was trying to think of an analogy .... here's one:

The world is really grayscale only, and if our consciousness could only ignore the properties of color that it puts into our brains, we would survive just as well as we would by accepting the colors we seem to observe. Therefore you would believe there are no actual colors. And your reason for not believing in colors is because you don't want to believe that there could be a creator who would bless us with the ability to see the world in color, and instead there is no creator and the "pleasure" we get from color is not a gift from a creator, but is an illusion ("misinformation").

(In case it's not clear, the reason I have summarized your hypothetical "not believing in color" the way I did is because of your reactions to Brad's post # 32 "The astounding order of the universe leads me to conclude the existence of intelligent design rather than blind natural laws.").

[Neil Frarey]

The neuronal network of our brains, and AI, cannot 'visualize' the car windshield (only our consciousness can), but do know that hitting our head against it could actually kill us, given the 'information' they have access to, and that information currently likely includes both being particulate in nature. The reality though is that even though both the windshield and our head are configurations of electron and quark waves, banging one against the other will still change the configuration of the waves of the energies involved.... this is not something that cannot be understood by the neural networks or AI (to reach the conclusion of not wanting to bang our head against the windshield), but because of most current scientific literature calling it particles, they reach the correct conclusions even while relying on 'misinformation'. The point is that the distortion created by our consciousness is not necessary for us to survive better.

V4 shut down!

[Fred Henderson]

With AI, man is creating a new co-species.

Bob A

More likely the communist Chinese government is using genetic engineering and cloning to create a line of super-grandmasters.

edit: Not saying that's a bad thing. LOL

[Pargat Perrer]

More likely the communist Chinese government is using genetic engineering and cloning to create a line of super-grandmasters.

edit: Not saying that's a bad thing. LOL

That opens up a very interesting possibility. Let's say China or Japan creates a robot that looks very human and that is claimed to be sentient and self-aware. It can sit at a chessboard and play chess, moving the pieces and writing down moves and pressing the clock. Let's say this robot has the hardware to run the AlphaZero chess engine.

This robot would then be eligible to join FIDE and enter human tournaments?

If yes, then this robot would very quickly obliterate all human opponents and ascend to the World Champion status. And that would likely mark the end of professional chess, unless there is a "Human World Chess Champion" title to play for.