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A new form of Science

martin

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I'm not very familiar with Wolfram's work but I know that he is by many perceived as a crank (for a definition of this term look here)

What do you think Yly, is there anything worthwhile there or is his work mostly hot air?
 

martin

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One (very
happy.gif
) critical reviewer writes about "A New Kind of Science":

"Let me try to sum up. On the one hand, we have a large number of true but commonplace ideas, especially about how simple rules can lead to complex outcomes, and about the virtues of toy models. On the other hand, we have a large mass of dubious speculations (many of them also unoriginal). We have, finally, a single new result of mathematical importance, which is not actually the author's. Everything is presented as the inspired fruit of a lonely genius, delivering startling insights in isolation from a blinkered and philistine scientific community. We have been this way before."

The complete article is here
 
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bruce

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here?s another to peruse, that a friend forwarded to me:

Can?t say for sure, but it seems like these folks jump through an awful lot of hoops to arrive at what is and has been a given for thousands, possibly millions of years among even primitive tribes. Then there?s the academic language, which creates the illusion of something new and hard to understand, while it?s merely salad dressing.

Imo, this entire paper could be summed up in hexagram 60.

I suppose the up-side is that, at least they?re looking at what others see.
 

lightofdarkness

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Bruce,

? 60 ? hmm... - I think 60 covers the setting of standards, the imposition of limitations to get around issues of over-diversity, over-labelling.

ICPLus page for 60:

----------------------
60 Limitation
Standardising, Reasoning
In a context of self-reflection we utilise control.

"CHIEH : seperate and distinguish, as well as join different things; express thought through speech; joint, section, chapter, interval, unit of time; regulations, limit; zodiacal sign; lit:nodes on bamboo shoots" ERANOS p630



Image :
"[With self-reflection comes overcoming(Control) : Standardizing] One uses analysis to create standards and the right words in following one's path."

Class: Integrating

Commentary :
Cooperative format : In hexagram 60, self imposed limits are useful for development. they enable one to set reachable goals and to stretch the limits as well as set up standards by which one can compare progress. This form of discipline helps avoid possible obstruction and oppression. These limits are set from within (56,60) not from without (38,39). In the image, just as measurement standards are a form of limitation but beneficial, so is determining a 'best course' as one develops one's path.

These standardization processes imply the concept of staying and reasoning things out; to seperate and distinguish.

-----------------
As such Wolfram is attempting to impose a new 'filter', a new 'paradigm' as a standard.

The trigrams read from bottom to top as "with self-reflection comes control" - self-reflection covers (a) the literal sense of a 'copy' or 'same image' and (b) the figurative sense of thinking things out (being reflective)

In Lake there is also the sense of 'self-promotion' that comes with Wolfram's perspective.

60 shares structural space with 61 where in the latter there is a focus on particular limiting (hard exterior, soft interior and so a yielding, a sense of empathy and so resonance present - IOW a sense of 'sameness' as is also covered in 60 through the focus on setting standards (i.e. common weights and measures etc)

We can get a more general identification looking at the infrastructure of 60 that is described by analogy to 59 and so a generic focus on issues of dispelling of illusions. 'lifting the fog' etc.

The infrastructure of 61 is described by analogy to 29 with a focus on issues of containment/control.

I think you may need to switch to (a) the fire based hexagrams where the focus is on some ideology (and so 36 comes to mind in the context of covering one's light as there are no 'likeminded' around - this would relate to the criticism the material has received) and (b) the water based hexagrams where the focus on issues of rejection and so containment/control issues where what is being presented is not current dogma etc.

The realm of fire-based hexagrams covers the psychic realm of organisers/planners/strategists etc and so general grouping of some perspective involving ideology and issues of acceptance (and so includes issues of water and rejection etc)

All of that said, Wolfram seems to interpret himself more working out of the realm of thunder (and the material is promoted as a 'new paradigm' and so would come out of thunder if so). The overall perspective is of a realm of problem solvers (thunder+fire) - his main contribution to things being the production and marketing of the "Mathematica" software.

Im my own reading of "A New Kind of Science" I got bored and so did not complete it. It sits on the shelf and maybe sometime I will re-read it or try and continue where I left off - but the overall reaction to it appears to be more along the fire-based hexagram dimension of 36-13 - IOW focused on issues of 'likeminded' individuals requiring its acceptance.

Since Fire falls into the problem-solvers realm, and that temperament is represented in the US by only 12% of the population, so 88% are NOT 'likeminded'!

We can get close with those personas described by fire-topped hexagrams in other octets. IOW someone of a hex 35 nature may 'get it' etc.

Chris.
 

martin

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Interesting article, Bruce. Although the authors use academic language they are at least "looking at what others see", as you say.
They have probably seen a lot themselves but try do adapt to their for the most part blind academic readers.
happy.gif


"In similar spirit, we also reject the popular presumption that all modes of human information processing are completely executed within the physiological brain, and that all experiential sensations are epiphenomena of the biophysical and biochemical states thereof.
Rather,we shall regard the brain as a neurologically localized utility that serves a much more extended ?mind,? or ?psyche? or ?consciousness? that far transcends the brain in its capacity, range, endurance, and subtlety of operation, and that is far more sophisticated than a mere antenna for information acquisition, or a silo for its storage."

Right, that begins to sounds a bit more like how things really are.
 

lightofdarkness

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Martin, what I see in your comments and the prose of the article is a need for 'instant' gratification!

No one, until now through IDM, has grasped the full properties of recursion and the XOR dynamics. Those properties change the boundaries of what we imagine we have been dealing with re information processing so writting-off the brain etc as done by the article (and you for that matter) is extremely premature.

Such statements as:

"we shall regard the brain as a neurologically localized utility that serves a much more extended ?mind,? or ?psyche? or ?consciousness?"


show a perspective bordering on creationism/intelligent-design where there is no need at all for such a perspective. When the FULL methodology of brain dynamics is understood and that STILL does not cover things THEN we can start to consider alternatives - but the XOR material alone shows that up till now we have only been scratching the surface of neurological dynamics.

Chris.
 

martin

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You explore one perspective, Chris, the writers of that article explore another.
They feel that they are on the right track, so do you.
If either of you sought instant gratification you both would eat icecream all day instead of going through all the trouble of trying to explain your views to others who generally refuse to listen.
I suppose ..

So what's your point?
happy.gif
 

lightofdarkness

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whats my point? you demonstrated it by your curt tone ;-)

I dont need the 'god hypothesis' or some close model to cover ICPlus, recursion, XOR etc etc The people who wrote the article are ignorant of such dynamics and so seek to find some solution to their problems in their life time - IOW seek instant gratification.

I do not expect the IDM material to be recognised for what it is 'instantly' since it has to deal with current dogma and that takes a while - past my life time, but there is enough value in IDM for it to continue past my life time and grow - 23/43 dynamic - prune/seed, prune/seed etc etc

Chris.
 

martin

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Well, I guess I was a bit curt ;), but I really don't see any instant gratification here.
If I remember correctly the authors of the article mention that they have already a few decades of research behind them.
And it is not to be expected that the problems related to their perspective will be solved in their lifetime.
What they offer is in fact a kind of research program and it may take centuries to carry it out. If - and that is another difficulty - other scientists are willing to do the research.

Certain subjects and ideas have become more or less taboo in science. Mostly for external historical reasons (the struggle with the catholic church and so on) and not because they are intrinsically "unscientific".
From a science viewpoint there is in principle nothing wrong with the idea that consciousness exists independent of brains. It can be refined and researched like any other. But it has rarely happened and the lack of development of such ideas then becomes an extra reason to ban them, because, crude as they are, they seem unscientific. Vicious circle.

So, it is not as easy as it may seem to you.
That is also true for more personal explorations of "other" perspectives. Merely believing something is one thing, verifying it with a critical (in fact scientific) mind is another.
It is far from easy.
 

lightofdarkness

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How was it that I got bored with the book? because I was already aware of Wolfram's work with cellular automata and his 256 rules etc etc In fact there is a paper on my website written by a retired Prof., of Computer Science focusing on the dynamics of rule 129 (he and I spent some time together in Washington DC back in 2000 discussing IDM in this context) The page is:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/stegan.html

This was all prior to Wolfram's book coming out and I at least was 'dissapointed' by the work (as in 'bored' - nothing 'new' to me)

The IDM work brings to our attention properties of recursion not identified before. Even though elements of Wolfram's work focuses on recursion etc he has failed to come up with what I have done where I focus on what the neurology does and the qualities we use as a species to communicate (and so label for communication).

The COMPLEXITY involved in XOR dynamics is stunning but most important of all, it is easily demonstrated a la a focus on specialisations such as IC, emotions, MBTI, or even qualities of mathematics. NONE of this has been done in current academia (and Wolfram is trained in that environment and so limited by it).

An aspect of Wolfram's work is on POTENTIALS and that is shared with the IDM focus on recursion of dichotomies - IOW such a perspective as 'wave/particle duality' is guaranteed when experiments are created using recursion of dichotomies WITHOUT understanding what is going on (and so consequences in interpretations etc - see such pages as:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/species.html )

This also gets into sensory systems where 'random noise' is allowed in to a 'meaning space' and in that process the Sierpinski gasket is created as a 'template' for informtion processing (where the binomial theorm is a refinement of the template pattern and so we see the IC encoded into the pattern in that the recursion of yin/yang reflects the properties of the binomial theorem of (A+B)^n.

See comments re IC and maths in:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/icmaths.html


Chris.
 

lightofdarkness

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BTW the triangular shapes etc in the article link of Yly are 'Sierpinksi gaskets' expressed in 2D. REFINE these and out will pop such perspectives as Pascal's triangle etc showing a CORE focus on the BOUNDING of noise as done by sensory systems.

Note that recursion of a dichotomy has (a) a start, and (b) no end. BUT with each iteration comes a BOUNDED set of categories orthogonal to the direction of recursuion and we use these to communicate - we see the roots of language here and that includes the I Ching.

(For more on Wolfram et all see anything (google) on "Artificial Life")

Chris.
 
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bruce

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God hypothesis, no-god hypothesis? I like the ice cream hypothesis better.
 

martin

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Health warning:
Eating ice cream is bad for your recursion!
 
B

bruce

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ALL food groups fit at ANY given moment and so ALTERNATIVES to ice cream likewise pose DICHOTOMIES of good AND bad.
 

martin

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Maybe we could ask god to make his chris a little bit more flexible then? A software update perhaps?

I see now that this version of the program chris (it's version 9.31d, I believe, a version that only runs on brains that are completely recursive) has recently also put a certain program mr. wolfram on the ever growing list of programs that don't "get" it.

I estimate that by now about 99.9999999 % of programmable humanity - past and present - is on that list.
Or to be more precise: every program except program chris.

And what is it that they don't get?

What they don't get is that if you study an airplane you should limit yourself to the wheels.
If you do that you will be able to fully explain why and how the thing flies. Promise!

What about the engines then and the wings?
No, no, no, don't look at them! Instant gratification! Beware!
You don't need to know anything about wings and engines to understand that plane!
Only the wheels! Nothing but the wheels!

Sad to say, but me thinks that chris version 9.31d has a serious bug.
May the god that it doesn't need save its soul in which it doesn't believe!
Amen!
 

lightofdarkness

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Martin (meow) - "I estimate that by now about 99.9999999 % of programmable humanity - past and present - is on that list."

You have over-estimated, trying to get that instant gratification again! ;-)

The number is 99% - the INTP persona represents 1% of the population. Thats why it takes time for the ideas ec to 'spread' since the paradigms that come out of the persona are innovative whereas most others just produce material that is adaptive - fit within the current context/dogma. IOW innovation can elicit resistance due to the amount of change involved - the re-configuring of belief systems etc can be severe for some and so these sorts of innovations are often more 'next generation' in focus.

The IDM/ICPlus material is innovative, pardigm-shifting. As such it retains aspects of the 'old' that are of value, are 'real', but replaces those aspects that were 'imaginative'. This is dialectical negation - we keep the 'good' bits. The other form of negation is analytical where we totally replace the past, 'born again' etc etc Nature, in the long run, favours the dialectical form.

Analytical negation is common in language development where, given the chance, each generation would create their own language. With education there are still 'creole' aspects of a generation's language but the education allows for dialectical negation.

As for Wolfram, there is no direct link in ANY of Wolfram's material to the everyday as shown in the IDM material. That is due to his failure to properly analyse the properties and methods of brain dynamics and sensory dynamics such as synesthesia etc.

For ICPlus the issues are in what it finds given the neurosciences compared to what the traditionalists believe they are dealing with.

The only 'spiritual' aspects come from us as a species as we mix the real with the imagined as consciousness attempts to interpret reality. PRIOR to being able to see 'inside' our imagination flowed 'freely' - as in child-mindedness. Time to grow up. (JC commented on needing the mind of a child to enter the kingdom of 'God' but then used-car salemen also like that mind-set - belief in magic, dont ask 'serious' questions requiring 'serious', empirical research supported, answers etc etc etc)

Chris.
 

martin

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So these other programs don't get it because they are not INTP? Or because it is so new? Meow!
happy.gif


I think there is more going on here. Such as the claim of a "paradigm shift" when IDM only follows the traditional scientific program of trying to reduce mind to physiology, chemistry, genes, neurology and so on.
Nothing wrong with that program as such, see how far you can get with it, but it has an incredible long grey beard, isn't it? What's new?

And what is new about the belief that mind IS indeed reducable to chemistry, neurology, and so on? And about behaving as if this is a fact instead of just a belief?
Go back to the year AD 1850 and you will find many scientists who had that same belief and tried to sell it as a fact.

Again, nothing wrong with that old science program as such, but I suggest that it is time to grow up (!) and stop confusing beliefs, convictions and working hypotheses with certainties.
What we have found so far are (sometimes strong) correlations between mind and physical factors. Fine, excellent, but correlation doesnt imply causation, as any undergraduate student in science knows or at least should know. The jump to "mind is nothing but .." is nowadays still as premature as it was in 1850.

And while we continue in the old way, why not also look at alternative ideas about mind and research them seriously?
It's not either or. We can do both.
 

martin

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Just debugging the prophet a bit, Bruce
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void

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<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

Again nothing wrong with that old science programme as such, but I suggest that it is time to grow up (!) and stop confusing beliefs, convictions and working hypotheses as if they were
certainties<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

lol.gif
Great stuff Martin and it so needed saying.
 

lightofdarkness

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Martin, I think you are confusing ontology with epistemology. This confusion is understandable given that the IDM material covers the point of transition from the methodology in deriving meaning (epistemological) to the assertion of meaning (ontological - the realm of 'is-ness')

What IDM identifies is the source of all ontologies in the form of a template of qualities used to communicate meaning where those qualities are artifacts of the methodology (and so the realm of the epistemological) in processing sensory information. IOW we focus on the beginnings of language as qualities rather than words representing qualities (IOW our sense of wholes, parts, statics, dynamics are sourced at the neurological and seed the categorical/conceptual and up to the levels of metaphor creation and analogy making. This feed is unconscious such that our consciousness deals with expressions etc and is unaware of the seeding that allows us to say things without conscious awareness of exactly what is going to be said unless we repress the spontinaity - whereupon our speech becomes 'laboured')

Given the IDM template material and the identification of properties of self-referencing not covered before in the current dogma, so all past specialist perspectives are under review.

For example, given the XOR material coming out of recursion, so it applies to, for example, RNA/DNA dynamics in that the codons come out of the recursion of purines/pyramidines (this being the reason why we can map the IC to DNA codons etc - the method is the constant and this has not been identified before outside of my work.) This application changes our understanding of information processing in general and as such introduces a new paradigm re understanding/interpreting reality.

All of the past "IC & DNA" texts try to interpret the relationships as something 'magical' etc where there is no magic at all, just confusion about different expressions of a methodology; no one has looked BEHIND the expressions and into the methodology of expression regardless of context.

ANY specialisations derived from self-referencing can be of the real or the imagined or some hybrid form but they are all metaphors for what the neurology deals with - patterns of differentiating/integrating (specialised in neurosciences to the WHAT/WHERE dichotomy)

It is this common ground that allows to make maps that resonate with 'meaning' even if imagined since the methodology of the imagined 'reflects' the methodology of the real.

Thus when you focus on 'alternative' ideas etc you are in fact focusing on alternative EXPRESSIONS of the ONE METHODOLOGY. (as I have said before, using the IC as a reference, each hexagram serves as a descriptor of reality such that all hexagrams represent the whole of reality. Our consciousness has a real problem in dealing with this whole 'immediately' - we have to use piecemeal methods (scientific investigastions) to get the 'idea' - and so map out the regular network that seeds all of our small world networks. Thus you 'alternative ideas' are all covered in the IDM material but not expressed in the terms of those alternatives - I dont write prose from the position of an identity-seeker, their EXPRESSIONS are not the same as those of a problem-solver but what those expressions represent ARE the same.

As IDM shows, it can map IC to Astrology to categories of emotions to categories of personalities to categories of the types of numbers we use in mathematics. IOW we span astrological ideas, I ching ideas, persona ideas, emotion ideas, mathematical ideas. We cannot escape any of this since the IDM template identifies the core source of analogies/metaphors used across the species.

Every sentence you write, in any language, is made-up of qualities derived from the self-referencing of the noun/verb dichotomy (and the symbolisms in Mathematics have the same root in that noun/verb is a specialist dichotomy representing differentiating/integrating)

IOW all ideas will be expressed in the same general manner of describing object/relationships dynamics. You cannot escape this; all you can do is re-label patterns of the dynamics to create some specialist language to describe some specialist context.

In the dealings with so-called paradox we see our consciousness create the paradox through not understanding the XOR/AND dynamics that our brains use in processing information (and so we include the specialist dichotomy in information processing of bandwidth/time issues)

We can experience this dynamic - see the images in http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/paradox.html

Due to the 'hard coding' of differentiating/integrating, anything outside of that hard-coding will be interpreted from WITHIN that hard-coding. This will elicit uncertainty in identification, our brains will 'oscillate' across the set of possible hard-coded meanings, unable to settle on one (and this oscillation can span milliseconds or millenia) - the oscillation reflects the brain's working with the bandwidth/time dichotomy, relabelled as NOW/PAST-FUTURE dichotomy where what cannot be identified NOW is surrended to PAST-FUTURE to try and resolve the problem. This dynamic makes us driven to 'argue' as we try and resolve A/NOT-A issues when dealing with reality (and that includes the subjective reality of others)

Given understanding of the XOR/AND dynamic, and so again the differentiating/integrating dichotomy, so such specialisation as quantum mechanics etc are no longer 'strange' or 'paradoxical'. One just needs to understand the epistemology of our meaning-derivation and compensate for the asymmetry present.

The IDM material brings out in the IC relationships not covered before (or if so only vaguely, as intuitions of 'something more' etc) and in doing so changes the perspective of the IC, takes it way beyond its traditional position and in so doing validates it as something useful for the species, not just for those interested in 'esoterica'.


Chris.
 

jte

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Um, Chris -

"The only 'spiritual' aspects come from us as a species as we mix the real with the imagined as consciousness attempts to interpret reality. "

Kind of close-minded to assume/assert that all spirituality comes from this one source, no? That there is no *possibility* of it being something else? Didn't you write in a post recently that (in your opinion) science left open the door to there being more to religion/spirituality than this?

- Jeff
 

lightofdarkness

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Jeff - consider this from my previous post:

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

Due to the 'hard coding' of differentiating/integrating, anything outside of that hard-coding will be interpreted from WITHIN that hard-coding. This will elicit uncertainty in identification, our brains will 'oscillate' across the set of possible hard-coded meanings, unable to settle on one (and this oscillation can span milliseconds or millenia) - the oscillation reflects the brain's working with the bandwidth/time dichotomy, relabelled as NOW/PAST-FUTURE dichotomy where what cannot be identified NOW is surrended to PAST-FUTURE to try and resolve the problem. This dynamic makes us driven to 'argue' as we try and resolve A/NOT-A issues when dealing with reality (and that includes the subjective reality of others)<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

Then consider this (where anthropomorphism is a methodology we use to interpet the unknown):

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/angels.html

also read the text of the paradox page link I provided earlier.

Then go through such texts as Tippler's "The Physics of Immortality" which works off there being no 'god' etc in the past but the development of consciousness can make one!

In addition focus on issues of 'purity' and resonance that allow for interpretations of the 'spiritual' given the data from such studies as those on identical twins seperated at birth - gets into one 'thing' being in two places at the one time ( and so gets around the Pauli Exclusion Principle of not allowing two in the one quantum state)

THESE areas get into 'spirituality' etc but not as something 'out there', more so something derived from us - in that derivation is 'wave mechanics' activities (resonance etc) all of which still falls within the bounds of Science (and so such notions as a 'collective unconscious' are possible but we need more work - but this is still all 'us' - IOW there is no NEED for considering an external source at this time ;-))

Chris.
 

matt

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Chris, you say there is no need to consider an external source at this time, but when I consider the true 'universals' of life or indeed the IC, then isnt it best to consider both the internal and external? Because are they not the same thing in essence?
And the 'collective unconscious' no longer applies only to human consciousness, it applies to all matter in the universe, hence my mentioning quantum nonlocality earlier on.

I'm a little puzzled you havent extended your ICPlus to encompass quantum nonloaclity. Because if you think about it, your XOR method is very much like 'entanglement' in quantum physics. And then by making this correlation, it goes further to say that reality is NOT based on human consciousness, but rather human consciousness is just a part of a bigger whole.
 

jte

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Hmmm. Chris, much as I appreciate you trying to meet me halfway here I'm somewhat at a loss. I hardly understand what you are trying to say in the excerpt. Even if I did I doubt I would have the background info to be able form a well-reasoned opinion about whether I agree or not.

I didn't have much luck with the other link, either, nor with the paradox paper, although I understood your discussion of the brain attempting to make sense of a more complex reality than it is built to interpret in the discussion of visual paradoxes.

I don't really have sufficient free time on my hands to read the Tippler book either, I'm sorry to say.

I do understand your summary paragraph at the end of your post. So, yes, when you explain a bit more about your views, it appears you are somewhat more open minded than your earlier post seemed to indicate.

I suppose if there were irrefutable, replicable evidence of an external God you'd accept that too, correct?

- Jeff
 

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