computer designed readings

[octaviane]

Helo,

I was wondering - what do you think of computer designed readings? Do you think they are as valid as if you throw the coins by yourself?

 

[Trojina]

Helo,

I was wondering - what do you think of computer designed readings? Do you think they are as valid as if you throw the coins by yourself?

lots of people ask this question. The answer is people are divided in their opinions. To me a computer generated reading has no validity at all but some people use them all the time so you have to make your own mind up.

 

[my_key]

I'd agree with trojan, you have to make your own mind up. What feels right for you. For me it's important to be part of the process. Clicking a mouse button feels too minimalist. Throwing some coins or rattling a few marbles is much more intimate. I've not tried the yarrow stalks but I guess that is the ultimate intimate.

 

[fkegan]

There isn't much of a logical explanation to which technique generates a closer relationship to the Yi Oracle spirit. The issue in computer generated Yi oracles has much more to do with the programming used to determine the result. A program that uses a pseudo-random mathematical algorithm has problems-- it will often give the same sequence of number answers if started up and run various times. OTOH, a program that accesses a computer counter or timer that runs through tens of thousands of digits each second, stopping to select its answer from the exact time that YOU click your mouse is as pure and accurate an invocation of the personal relationship to the Yi oracle as any other.

In general, the vital issue in Yi oracles is your need to have a clear and understandable answer to your question, the rest as they say is commentary. Another question is the text stored in the computer to interpret the oracles generated. Some store a database of text quotes, some invent their own text to go along with their own oracle casting programs.

My own work, back in the pre-history of personal computers (before Windows, etc) was based first on my structural analysis of the Yi Oracle, storing keywords and slogans for each of the line places, line pairs, trigrams generated from their Yang and Yin lines with a database of hexagram names.

Since computers are algebra based devices, and algebra is fundamentally occult since it deals with the manipulation of "unknowns" to find symbolic answers to personal questions simple computer programming can generate amazing human results. An input variable that takes alphabet strings allows the computer to address each querent by name. A psychology professor friend of mine whose first experience of computers was my Yi oracle program found the result much like a live therapy session with a human.

Of course, if you are just using the computer to generate Yi hexagram numbers, to be interpreted other ways, everything depends upon its random number generation programming.

Frank

 

[heylise]

Since computers are algebra based devices, and algebra is fundamentally occult since it deals with the manipulation of "unknowns" to find symbolic answers to personal questions simple computer programming can generate amazing human results.

interesting!!
Chris Lofting has an ‘I Ching Oracle’ on his website which works very good, but as far as I could judge it, most of all for practical tangible questions. How to make a business thrive, or how to organize it, how to make a certain decision, things like that.

He answers to the parameters you give yourself, the answers to questions which guide you to a certain hexagram.

I guess your oracle does (did) something very similar. Answering to “alphabet strings”, so in essence answering to the words of the question. And then you get a very human-like conversation. Because that is what humans do, or at least are expected to do.

There is another way to answer though. Casting coins (or counting yarrow) answers along other channels, maybe like universe which created this world by a tiny difference between the probability for matter and antimatter. ‘Something’ very subtle makes a coin fall this way, or that way. In a computer you only need a random generator for 0 and 1, and then for every throw give 3 of those, then you imitate what happens in reality with throwing coins (I think - with my very limited knowledge of how those things work).

There was a very elegant online ‘oracle’ some time ago, where three coins tumbled and then fell down one by one, giving a line together. Forgot the name. There was a lot of discussion here in Clarity, because he had made the young lines changing and the old ones static. Apart from that it was the best online oracle I ever came across. Would love to have it on my website!

I always go online, simply because I (personally) get more meaningful answers than by throwing the coins myself. Maybe the computer is more subtle in its balance between 1 and 0 than my hands and the tangible coins.

LiSe

 

[meng]

I usually use 3 quarters in a tumbling clothes dryer. The loud rattling wakes up the dragons.

I'm convinced that any random system can be just as effective as any other random system. I believe that any one of us could create a working oracle, using whatever symbolic assignments you chose for it. It isn't the oracle, it's what draws out the particulars into the contextual field. This is not observable through classical physics, but it is observable through experience.

I'm convinced that quantum physics comes as close as anything, thus far, to explaining what actually goes on through "random" selection in oracle consultation. But if you try to apply classical physics or science, it falls apart. That's why it's so difficult to come up with a logical explanation without getting into abstractions and symbolism. The movement from pure abstraction to specific context - or from wave to particles - is what's going on, I believe. And any method in which the brain can cognize will work.

A couple of related links for those not yet familiar with the ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(physics)

 

[justjoolz]

The real question is what influences random events?

If random or 'quantum uncertainty' did not exist we would live in a predetermined universe.
Goodbye Freewill....

If you don't believe that then what influences 'random' events?

Have a look at here: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
I've just been introduced to this site and find it truly fascinating.

Yours Randomly

JustJoolz

 

[frank_r]

Computers have cristals and can send and recieve electromagnatic waves. So this critals can also recieve, hold and send feelings, emotios and thoughts. In a way these cristals are living.

I once read in a book about quantumfysics and the soul a interview with the Dalai Lama.
He said, I translate from Dutch: " It is not possible that new knowledge originates without relation with a used to be continuum. I can not rule out the possiblility that, when all external conditions and karmick actions are present, a stream of consiousness is entering a computer.
Yes, so be it (Dalai Lama is laughing), it is possible that a scientist, who is working his whole life with computers, in the next life, will be born in a computer(laughing). This machine, who is half human, half machine, is then reincarnated.

A mind boggling thought isn't it? That's why you can talk to your computer. Mine is answering back sometimes. Especially when I ask him a question with the proper program.

Frank

 

[fkegan]

interesting!!
Chris Lofting has an ‘I Ching Oracle’ on his website which works very good, but as far as I could judge it, most of all for practical tangible questions. How to make a business thrive, or how to organize it, how to make a certain decision, things like that.

He answers to the parameters you give yourself, the answers to questions which guide you to a certain hexagram.

I guess your oracle does (did) something very similar. Answering to “alphabet strings”, so in essence answering to the words of the question. And then you get a very human-like conversation. Because that is what humans do, or at least are expected to do.

There is another way to answer though. Casting coins (or counting yarrow) answers along other channels, maybe like universe which created this world by a tiny difference between the probability for matter and antimatter. ‘Something’ very subtle makes a coin fall this way, or that way. In a computer you only need a random generator for 0 and 1, and then for every throw give 3 of those, then you imitate what happens in reality with throwing coins (I think - with my very limited knowledge of how those things work).

There was a very elegant online ‘oracle’ some time ago, where three coins tumbled and then fell down one by one, giving a line together. Forgot the name. There was a lot of discussion here in Clarity, because he had made the young lines changing and the old ones static. Apart from that it was the best online oracle I ever came across. Would love to have it on my website!

I always go online, simply because I (personally) get more meaningful answers than by throwing the coins myself. Maybe the computer is more subtle in its balance between 1 and 0 than my hands and the tangible coins.

LiSe

Hi LiSe,
The proper punctuation for my difficult sentence you quoted is:
Since computers are algebra based devices (and algebra is fundamentally occult since it deals with the manipulation of "unknowns"), to find symbolic answers to personal questions simple computer programming can generate amazing human results.
My apologies for not taking the several paragraphs required to explain the background to that sentence. One can write a computer program to output:
Hi, [Name$]. The answer to your personal issue-- [question$] is: [Hex1$] >>[Hex2$]

Which will give each person their personalized I Ching reading. In my program, back in the day of 64k RAM, I used keywords based upon the structure of the hexagram to give extremely personal insights through very simple BASIC programming.

In light of my experience, I explored Lufting site and was puzzled when it gave for the causal answer the same result as the resultant and not the nuclear hexagram. Seems his many influences packed into his programming he left out the traditional stuff.

In the fundamental equations of probability or randomness there used to be a factor of 1/Sqrt(N-1) which helps when dealing with the usual very large size of the total sample N. It also notes that for a unique event such as a personal oracle where N=1 the probability is undefined. Randomness has no place in Oracle considerations.

More later.

Frank

 

[Trojina]

Can computer generated readings be trusted to be random ? I read somewhere here by someone who seemed to know, i can't remember who, fairly technical reasons why some programmes were not random but skewed in favour of certain outcomes. I don't know enough about it to know if thats correct or not. However its no great difficulty to throw coins and i like the time it takes, computer readings feel too quick, and i like the physical connection with the reading.

 

[fkegan]

Computers have cristals and can send and recieve electromagnatic waves. So this critals can also recieve, hold and send feelings, emotios and thoughts. In a way these cristals are living.

I once read in a book about quantumfysics and the soul a interview with the Dalai Lama.
He said, I translate from Dutch: " It is not possible that new knowledge originates without relation with a used to be continuum. I can not rule out the possiblility that, when all external conditions and karmick actions are present, a stream of consiousness is entering a computer.
Yes, so be it (Dalai Lama is laughing), it is possible that a scientist, who is working his whole life with computers, in the next life, will be born in a computer(laughing). This machine, who is half human, half machine, is then reincarnated.

A mind boggling thought isn't it? That's why you can talk to your computer. Mine is answering back sometimes. Especially when I ask him a question with the proper program.

Frank

Hi Frank r,
When I was researching my thesis in Chemistry and Other Religions, I came across a text in the library upon ancient Indian metaphysics which noted the essence of existence being vibrations and other notions found also in Quantum theory. I suspect the interview with the Dalai Lama you quote is based in traditional Indian Buddhist views.

The 20th century Quantum physics is based upon similar insights, I suspect the similarity between the Taiji and sine wave dynamics is the connecting point. And of course the fundamental reality that traditional Western physics by the 1890's ceased to explain experimental data and no one could imagine a totally new insight. So the data was mined for equations and then theory developed to fit the equations, using the original data to be its objective empirical verification.

Hi Trojan,

Can computer generated readings be trusted to be random ?

What does random mean to you that you suspect it would be a good thing in an oracle?

In terms of traditional physics, all that can be said of something alleged to be random is that it is impossible to explain the algorithm that generated it. This of course makes a problem for computer programming. There are two ways to get a computer result.

First, a mathematical process generally called pseudo-random since it attempts to calculate an exact result that will act as though random.

The second is to use some physical process such as an internal computer clock whizzing through tens of thousands of digits every second. With that technique, then when you click the mouse or key, the clock stops at one value and its numbers can be used to get a result as random as flipping coins.

As a bit of philosophical logic, there is no operational means (or scientific answer) to show any difference between 'random' and 'Divinely Ordered'. All that can be shown is that a specific result is due to some algorithm or not.

Hi justjoolz,

The real question is what influences random events?

If random or 'quantum uncertainty' did not exist we would live in a predetermined universe.
Goodbye Freewill....

If you don't believe that then what influences 'random' events?

You have neatly summarized the view of late 19th century physics. The question boils down to whether the universe just happens or it is determined in each detail by some Cosmic oversight. The other perspective is that events follow from prior events, that is neither predetermined nor random though heavily influence by prior momentum and new forces coming to bear.

Personally, I prefer a variant of Einstein's lament that he could not believe God plays dice with the Universe. I have found casting dice a quite powerful oracle. Einstein was a nineteenth century Newtonian who offered the early 20th century a way to keep Newton's equations by relinquishing the notions of Time, Space, Objectivity, and the like.

In terms of the later Big Bang Theory, everything in the universe is tumbling out through space like a pair of dice cast across the craps table. Throwing dice (or coins) is the way to get a handle or measurement of the current state of that momentum and thus it is the way to know not what is random, but what is exactly the state of the universe here and now.

Good luck to us all in these strange and changing times.

Frank

 

[Trojina]

Hi Trojan,


What does random mean to you that you suspect it would be a good thing in an oracle?



Frank

Random means to me an open field, an allowance for the significant and specific to come through without hindrance. An oracle need the random to speak through. You are confusing the randomness of method of consulting with randomness in answer from an oracle. Of course the whole point of the oracles answer is that it is not random, however it needs the clear open space of the random to speak through.

 

[fkegan]

Random means to me an open field, an allowance for the significant and specific to come through without hindrance. An oracle need the random to speak through. You are confusing the randomness of method of consulting with randomness in answer from an oracle. Of course the whole point of the oracles answer is that it is not random, however it needs the clear open space of the random to speak through.

Hi Trojan,
Your identification of random with an open field (hex 9 BTW) explains a lot. I am not clear who is confusing random method with unique personal result. I have known folks who believed that only random techniques were able to bypass personal prejudice and allow Cosmic forces to answer.

My own experience is that humans can't be random and the only important limitation is that you don't try to specifically determine the outcome--fixing a certain hexagram or line value you wish the oracle might be. Consider thinking of two natural numbers 1 to 64. If you can see the numbers appear in your mind they will most likely make a good oracle--only if you recognize the hexagram and react to your feelings about having that hexagram for an oracle are you in trouble. I had the experience of asking a scientist for 2 natural numbers, he claimed he just replied with two small square numbers. However, they formed a precise and most revealing oracle of who he was and the fundamental issues of his life.

Frank

 

[meng]

I think it's a fair question to ask: is anything random?

We just can't help but to put ourselves in the middle of things, so the reading is interpreted as being: what's this mean to me? As Frank said, humans are incapable of randomness, so we rely on other, more stable classical laws, such as gravity or natural [coincidental] selection. But is that random?. Are the way things naturally fall random? Depends how we see it. Every drop of rain knows where to fall.

We are masters at seeing what we need to see, or what we want to see, or what we fear to see ("That which I have feared most has come upon me." Job), in whatever we are presented with. I'm not saying any answer would suffice, but that the one we are presented with is what we were expecting; not initially, but once we process it, we will confirm that, yes, that was the right answer, the one I need, if not the one I want, because that's the way the Dao rained.

 

[fkegan]

Oracle casting and Big Bang Theory gravity...

Hi Meng,
Gravity in terms of rain falling is any interesting allusion for a Yi oracle, especially in light of the first set of 10 hexagrams and the water cycle. You raise the issue of what is gravity and what is random which are intertwined for me.

The traditional view is that gravity causes objects to fall. However, with the Big Bang theory, the entire universe is expanding from a unique explosion with gravity being the blast wave. Gravity thus is not measured by the trivial detail of the plumb bob, but the intriguing timing analysis of throwing dice or casting coins--and thus oracle casting has absolutely nothing random about it. It is the exact measurement of timing through gravity.

Frank

 

[DayKnight]

Divination from the Heart of Matter

For those who are interested in consulting the Yi through a truly random method, try out the request page at the Hotbits website: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/

There, genuinely random numbers are generated by radioactive decay.

The methodology is simple. When you get to the site, scroll down and click on “Legacy Insecure Server HotBits Request,” which will take you to a page where you can generate any specified number of random bytes (maximum 2048). Type into the number box 18. Then, select “C language constant declaration (sample)” and click on the “Get HotBits” button.

When the bytes appear, copy and paste them to a worksheet, divide them into six groups of three. From these six groups, six hexagram lines emerge by correlating odd numbers with yin, even with yang (or vice versa, just be consistent). Groups of three odd numbers or three even numbers represent changing lines.

So, for example, I inquired of the Yi, “What results if I share with the I Ching Community this systematic approach to exploiting radiation for consulting the Book of Changes?” and I received this sequence of eighteen random bytes: 80, 102, 217, 99, 115, 87, 54, 13, 181, 117, 118, 253, 95, 192, 109, 38, 223, 193 -- which separate into six groups of three: 80, 102, 217,/ 99, 115, 87,/ 54, 13, 181,/ 117, 118, 253,/ 95, 192, 109,/ 38, 223, 193.

Reading left to right, with the intent of generating a hexagram from bottom to top, one gets a bottom line of 80, 102, 217, which is two evens number and one odd. Since I’ve already agreed with myself that even numbers = 2 and odd = 3, the bottom line = 7, which correlates to a yang (or unbroken) line. The second line, 99, 115, 87 has three odd numbers (3 + 3 + 3), which results in 9, a moving yang line. The third line, 54, 13, 181, has two odd numbers and one even, giving a total of 8, a yin line.

Continuing in this way, the sequence produces a hexagram with these lines from bottom to top: 7, 9, 8, 8, 8, 8 -- yielding the trigram Lake below the trigram Earth: hexagram 19, with the second line moving, which transforms hexagram 19 into hexagram 24.

Consulting the Yi for the significance of hexagram 19 (Lin: To Arrive, To Approach), the second moving line tells us, “xian lin” (all arrive) – “ji” (good fortune) – “wu bu li” (without doubt advantageous). The resulting hexagram 24, (Fu: Return), symbolizes the movement of the Dao.

Thus encouraged to go ahead, I offer this use of radioactive decay as a possible way of divining from the very heart of matter.

 

[fkegan]

Hi Radix,
Your method shows all the complexity and objectification expected of a science-based assault upon the "random." It becomes less necessary once one realizes the term "random" arose from the interaction of "modern scientists" with their mentors the Medieval Scholastic monks and both of them used the term to refer to God without mentioning the name of the Divine as forbidden in the Ten Commandments (and considered a bone of contention between the monks and their later more purist "scientists" all of course still cloistered academics though neither all that celibate).

In terms of the method itself, which you call "Divination from the Heart of Matter" which would follow from the insight of Father Teilhard of last century, that the seat of the soul of matter is the heart of the atom. Thus you would be getting the Yi oracle divination from the inner feelings of radioactive atoms in their decay, which may or may not be a perspective useful to answering YOUR personal questions.

There is a simpler technique to obtain both a personal answer of your own as well as a computerized random result for Yi oracles. All computers have internal clock or counting routines that whiz through many tens of thousands of digit each second. A programmed routine which waits for a keyboard stroke or click, all the time whirring through its digits, and upon that user input fixes one reading of its timing routine that can then be either called 6 times for 6 lines or twice for two hexagrams or once for an oracle hexagram with 4 possible number values for the 4 possible line values (yang, yin, moving yang, moving yin).

This retains the source of the oracle details as under the control and deliberate action of the querent while using the powerful speed of the computer to obliterate any personal bias in the casting.

In terms of the specific Yi oracle you cast of hex 19 line 2, the Sabian Symbol for the corresponding degree of the Zodiac reads: "In the depths of the woods is an abandoned farm; in the deserted house a fireplace blazes merrily and mysteriously." Which could be interpreted as an image of the absence of human presence in this technique with its fireplace of atomic radiation giving the image of a blazing fire in the hearth.


Frank

 

[DayKnight]

Majestic Mystery

Thanks, Frank, for your salient and erudite remarks on utilizing true random numbers for purposes of divination.

I very much appreciate what you have to say about the correlation of the truly random with the Unnamable Divine. Closer to home than the Medieval Scholastics are the three great thinkers of the 20th century who definitively identified the empirical boundaries of the known and who thus established, each in their respective fields, that reality is ultimately unknowable: Werner Heisenberg in physics with the uncertainty principle, Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems in mathematics, and Ludwig Wittgenstein who recognized the strict limits of language and philosophy.

Here in the 21st century, standing on the shoulders of those giants and knowing that we cannot know reality in an empirical way, we come up against what C. G. Jung declares in the foreword to the Richard Wilhelm translation of the Yi Jing: “The axioms of causality are being shaken to their foundations: we know now that what we term natural laws are merely statistical truths … [and what we see] at work in the I Ching seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events.”

My point is that, if we are going to relate to unknowable reality (the unconscious, as Jung refers to it) using chance (which, of course, is the very nature of divination), why not go whole hog and employ true random numbers? It is surprising how difficult it is to produce genuinely random numbers, and one can read about that online. The method I am suggesting is authentic.

I should quickly clarify that I do not believe that divination necessitates the use of true random numbers. Divination, as you point out in your reply to Trojan, simply requires the querent’s receptivity to the oracle -- that is, to the innate wisdom of the unconscious. One can just follow one’s intuition in reading the Yi Jing by visualizing numbers as you say or by throwing yarrow stalks and coins or counting cracks in a tortoise shell and get personal results as meaningful as any obtained with true random numbers.

So, the technique that you recommend for using a computer’s internal clock, though it generates pseudo-random numbers, is surely just as useful as the methodology I have outlined. Applying true random numbers is but one (extremely effective) way of acknowledging the majestic mystery of chance and divination.

I must, however, take exception to the way you typify generating true random numbers from the weak force (radioactive decay) as “oracle divination from the inner feelings of radioactive atoms in their decay.” I think I must be misunderstanding you, because I am certain we agree that atoms do not have feelings. The “heart” of matter to which I refer is the Unknowable: that fact of physics is what makes the system I am proposing so impelling.

You might be mistaken about the Sabian symbol you associate with 19.2. Checking LiSe’s website, I notice that 19.2 is matched with Gemini 17, which reads: “The head of a robust youth changes into that of a mature thinker.” Now, there is an image full of human presence -- puer to senex -- and rather encouraging for sharing this approach to the Yi Jing with others, yes?

 

[meng]

I am certain we agree that atoms do not have feelings.

I'm curious how you have determined this.

 

[Sparhawk]

You might be mistaken about the Sabian symbol you associate with 19.2. Checking LiSe’s website, I notice that 19.2 is matched with Gemini 17, which reads: “The head of a robust youth changes into that of a mature thinker.” Now, there is an image full of human presence -- puer to senex -- and rather encouraging for sharing this approach to the Yi Jing with others, yes?

You may not want to go there...

As for random numbers, I remember reading a very interesting article, years ago, in Wired Magazine. I just searched for it and is below (click on the text):

[FONT=verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Computers make lousy RNGs. A digital device can be programmed to scramble the bits of a number in such a way that the result appears to be unrelated to previously generated numbers. But computers are, by design, deterministic; they merely follow set procedures. Start a new process from the same place, and a pattern emerges. Such systems are often referred to as pseudo-random number generators. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif]RNGs attempt to get around this shortcoming by generating seeds from a number of seemingly unpredictable sources. However, the fact that these seed sources usually aren't random means the system is still more vulnerable to attack than a random source. In the late 1990s, security experts discovered that Netscape's RNG seed was derived from just three quantities: the time of day, the process ID, and the parent process ID. An adversary could predict those values and apply a common algorithm to compute the exact seed generated. A better approach is to include a wholly unpredictable source of entropy as part of the hardware, the way Intel has done with its 800-series chips. A built-in RNG samples thermal noise given off by resistors. Radio-active elements also make great sources of entropy, since - by the laws of quantum mechanics - the rate at which radioactive sources decay is completely unpredictable. [/FONT]
​

LavaRND has that nostalgic feeling that's been missing in the Matrix...

BTW, we are lumped ATOMS.

 

[DayKnight]

Individuality

I'm curious how you have determined this.

Well, Meng, I’m defining “feelings” as emotional and moral sensitivity. The behavior of atoms is extremely predictable and has yet to display affective or moralistic behavior. That cannot be said of organisms. In this regard, isn’t it fascinating how all electrons, protons and neutrons (the constituents of atoms) are exactly the same and perfectly interchangeable, lacking all individualistic attributes. At what point do the assemblages of atoms into molecules and molecules into living systems begin to display traits of uniqueness? Certainly not at the atomic level, even given the variety of electron states available to any specific atom.

 

[fkegan]

Hi Radix,
No, I was not making remarks about "true" random numbers at all. My remarks dealt with the need for divination to be based in human action, which is only psuedo-random to those who denigrate the human and idolize the mechanical.

I prefer to deal with the actual, original source of things, not the most recent fads like the folks you cite starting with Heisenberg. I have my own opinions of Jung who was an observer of "Oriental" ways but did not believe they were truly relevant to Europeans. And there is nothing chance about the I Ching. The original probability equations have a factor which becomes undefined for unique events.

Physics and statistics are matters of medieval religious dogma including especially now in the 21st century when even the insights of the first years of the 20th century are treated as magical truth. Since the time the British took Science vs. Religion to mean British Anglican University notions vs. Continental Catholic dogma it has no longer been possible for science types to notice their implicit religious dogmatism.

You may wish to check your Heisenberg and Plank when you make statements about the nature of atoms or the electrons, protons, etc. It is not that they are truly all the same, just that we are incapable of seeing their differences--at that level or at that distance from our size, there is an uncertainty we can not resolve.

You like your method, believe it authentic since it fits your expectations....De Gustibus or each to their own.

Personally, I believe that divination has nothing to do with chance, the unconscious or any of that other claptrap. I believe it has to do with timing and what one is doing is taking a reading of the timing state at some moment of the Big Bang gravity. A concept still not understood in either Newton or Einstein since they continued to think of a static terra firma although they knew the Earth moved and for Einstein that the Universe expanded. Truly re-adjusting to an exploding Universe is apparently yet in the future for physics.

I must agree with Meng, how do you know that atoms have no feelings, there are two equivalent views, one that humans have feelings and atoms are just dumb matter. The other that atoms have feelings and humans as complex aggregates of those atoms are capable of being conscious of those feelings. Again, a notion that requires Big Bang timing-gravity understanding not yet taught in science class of official texts in the library.

You might be mistaken about the Sabian symbol you associate with 19.2. Checking LiSe’s website,

I agree with Luis, this was a mistake on your part. LiSe has a correlation of Sabian Symbols to I Ching lines based upon her personal artistic views. The correspondence of the System of the I Ching with the Zodiac degrees is my work which no one appreciates as much as I do.

As you note in your comments, her images are often personally pleasing, though they do not lend themselves to the understanding of the structural depth of meaning involved. Some folks rely upon the Chinese text and its detailed translation from various sources, texts and centuries. Some folks rely upon their personal associations to the words or images that they find attractive.

The choice of poetic imagery is a personal subjective matter that does not relate to objective notions like 'true randomness'. Suffice it to say, I am familiar with your premises and sources and I disagree with them all totally for technical and academic reasons you seem to lack the background to understand. Different folks enjoy different strokes and in the great diversity of things we are all equal.

Assuming that what you believe is the sole "truth" and any other view is only what fits neatly into whatever slots in your belief system is convenient for you, tends to come across as insulting to others. We are each responsible for attending to the limits and errors of our own beliefs and belief systems.

Good Luck with your atomic decay random number generation scheme.

Frank

 

[meng]

Well, Meng, I’m defining “feelings” as emotional and moral sensitivity. The behavior of atoms is extremely predictable and has yet to display affective or moralistic behavior. That cannot be said of organisms. In this regard, isn’t it fascinating how all electrons, protons and neutrons (the constituents of atoms) are exactly the same and perfectly interchangeable, lacking all individualistic attributes. At what point do the assemblages of atoms into molecules and molecules into living systems begin to display traits of uniqueness? Certainly not at the atomic level, even given the variety of electron states available to any specific atom.

It seems a large leap for something to qualify as experiencing feeling, to possessing "emotional and moral sensitivity". I imagine that a mouse feels rather terrified in the clutch of a cat's claws, without experiencing any sense of morality.

I guess a similar question might be: Do atoms possess memory? Would that memory also be required to be entangled in morality, before it can be said to memorize?

 

[meng]

Just a comment on the authenticity of LiSe's work. She readily agrees, that extensions of her Yi Jing translation (chakras, Sabian symbols, etc) are for curious and possibly whimsical comparisons.

That said, during all of our YiJing conversations (literally a thousand hours or so), at no time during those conversations has she demonstrated anything but seriousness and conviction, regarding her Yijing translation. It is anything but whimsically intended. She takes the subject of accurate Yijing translation very seriously. Her poetic license is expressed, of course, in her commentaries; though even there she attempts to stay close to the essential expressed meanings, as she understands it.

But in regard to Sabian comparisons and such, yes, that is my impression also.

 

[DayKnight]

True

Gosh, Frank, I seem to have annoyed. I think we are in agreement, though, that reality itself is empirically unknowable -- that is, that science does not have all the answers and never will. Perhaps atoms do have feelings! If so, they are pretty darn good at keeping their feelings to themselves.

“True random numbers” is a mathematical description, and “true” in this context is not intended to signify “truth.” I regret that you interpret my narrative as insulting. I never meant to disparage any other belief system or opinion about divination.

I believe you are right in decrying the enormous credence our age imparts to science. We tend to underestimate the Darwinian forces that shaped us, and we often forget that the world we perceive is purely a construct of our biology and its limits. The reality we know does not exist except in our heads.

As for my apparently lacking the background and ability to understand the technical and academic issues impinging this discussion -- that is an extravagant assumption, isn’t it? Even so, I can’t hold that against you, because we are indeed embedded in visible mystery, and who really has the background or ability to comprehend fully the emotive poetic logic of divination? That is why we are gathered here as a community -- to enhance each other’s understanding of the irrational power and penetrating inspiration of the Yi Jing.

 

[heylise]

Every combination of Sabian Symbols and Yi is personal, because there is no rule anywhere how they should be combined. It is possible to do that in a thorough way, or it is possible to use your imagination to combine them.

I followed the first method, found similarities, saw what made sense and what didn’t. My first combination used midwinter as starting point, but then the combinations simply did not make sense. So I went on searching. When I used spring equinox as starting point, suddenly there were meaningful combinations.

There is something Yi and Sabian have in common, but it is much deeper down than the Sabian images themselves. There are patterns of cycles, and both Yi and Sabian are an expression of that, but that does not mean they correlate line after line, day after day. My way is just one of many possibilities.

My way is not the truth. “My truth” versus “your truth”, or rather “My THE Truth” versus the rest of the world... When truth has a possessive pronoun attached to it, it is not interesting anymore. Can even get harmful.

LiSe

 

[sasha]

I remember reading several articles in which it was speculated that human made systems cannot be truly random, and the more random we make it means just that it needs more time to loop. This was off course concerning encryption but it should be the same.

The arguments used are now lost to me, and much of it was a bit over my head, but I also remember them talking about basing encryption on the movements of a lava lamp...

 

[fkegan]

Hi Radix,
It is only your lack of introspection about your science beliefs and lack of objective understanding of either the Yi or divination which is annoying. However, that is your personal issue... so be it.

The question of what is random or how did Rand come to publish a book of officially random numbers for folks to quote is its own philosophical curiosity. The notion that divination being related to randomness is a separate question--does divination involve random numbers or unique numbers? The unique is excluded from science since it can only empirically observe results that can be repeated by any and every observer.

Einstein was notable in the first decade of the 20th century for his work preserving the special place of Newton's equations as "Laws of Physics" at the minor cost of eliminating time and space as independent concepts. After that his work suffered as his celebrity soared. His worst failing was dismissing dice as random instead of realizing they were the great scientific instrument from the work of Pythagoras.

Darwin is also now more celebrity than than scientist. He was a dishonest writer, being trained as an Anglican minister he knew he had to throw in the appearance of a sense of progress to keep his theory of the Origin of Species within the Anglican doctrine of Evolution used to explain why Queen Victoria did not live like King Solomon.

Natural selection is just simple logic: More offspring are born than can find food to live long enough to have their own offspring. Therefore, those who do have the traits that continue through millions of years. Human perception of reality has little to do with evolution or natural selection--it is the result of social selection or in Darwin's phrase sexual selection since human ancestors conquered their niche, no longer being influenced by natural selection long before the Great Leap Forward of the development of language, imagination, etc. Humans enjoy narrative and self-serving stories and have the ability to control their niche such that they can do so, at least until their preferences send them over the cliff like the saber-toothed tiger, but that shouldn't be for at least another few decades.

Hi LiSe,
Good to see your Sabian Symbols section back up on your website. The astrological zodiac is based upon the vernal equinox, that is why Aries starts there. The Yi is based upon the King Wen Sequence which is philosophical rather than calendar based. However there is, as you note, an apparent universal cyclic symbolism that underlies both the Zodiac and the Yi.

You have chosen to relate the Yi lines and the Sabian Symbols in terms of the words and imagery. I found my correspondence through the systems analysis based upon the Pythagorean eidos represented on the dice cube.

The notion that there even could be a correlation of Yi lines and Zodiac degrees requires the belief that there is a system of cyclic description underlying both astrology and the Yi. The Zodiac is a circle relating to the observed celestial patterns of the seasons. The Yi has basic connections to notions of the Taiji and the sine wave patterns of Yang/Yin dynamic. So the leap isn't that far, but other alternatives are also possible.

My work on the analysis of the King Wen Sequence in terms of sets of 10 with the last four hexagrams left over is totally separate from the circle of the 60 hexagrams from 3 to 62. However, the Yi seems to do well in all contexts. The question of what is individual subjective and what is somehow objective or valid is always, all ways and forever a question tormenting anyone involved with either artistic, scientific or philosophical pursuits.

Frank

 

[DayKnight]

Please, Frank, share with us how you have ascertained my lack of introspection about science as well as my lack of objective understanding of the Yi and divination. This ability of yours to draw such comprehensive conclusions on the basis of what I have posted I’m sure will prove elucidating.

 

[DayKnight]

Random Numbers from the Sky

For those who might be interested in consulting the Yi with true random numbers but who may be uneasy about using true random numbers generated by radioactive decay (at HotBits) , go to http://www.random.org/integers/

There, true random numbers are generated from noise in the upper atmosphere. On the page marked “The Integers” fill in the four open fields as follows:

Generate 18 random integers (maximum 10,000).

Each integer should have a value between [blank] and [blank].

Here, I usually insert 0 in the first field and 10,000 in the second (alluding to the “10,000 things” of the manifest world mentioned in the Dao De Jing), but you can put in any wide range of numbers.

Format in 6 columns.

Then, hit “Get Numbers” and you’ll receive a display like this one when I asked “What results by sharing this technique for consulting the Yi Jing with the IC Community?”

2017 98 6304 5597 3849 2546
6781 4045 312 5391 4692 145
691 6867 8381 7196 7149 8984

[The columns appear more distinct at the website! ]

Each column represents a line, where odd and even numbers represent 3 and 2 and add up to determine yin, yang and moving lines. Reading left to right creates a hexagram from bottom to top. In this case: 9 – 8 – 7 – 8 – 8 – 7 = hexagram 22, first line moving, becomes hexagram 52.

What results? “Decorate his toes. Set aside the carriage and go on foot.” Certainly, getting down to earth. Seems apt, especially if one considers the sky from an allegorical perspective as the ‘carriage of time’ (“time’s wing’d chariot” so to speak) with the sun and the moon for wheels. Here’s a technique for bringing the energy of the sky (whose noise is produced by the sun and cosmic rays of outer space) down to earth and putting it to practical use through our consultations of the Yi.