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An interesting article from NPR.
Call it the ponderous effect of the holidays, but today I'd like to share some reflections on our search for meaning. Humans are limited beings. We are also creative and innovative, and by the diligent application of reason and, in different but complementary ways, by exercising our artistic expression, we manage to amplify our understanding of the world and of ourselves. One place where the sciences and the arts come together is to function as exploratory tools for extending our worldview, probing the unknown. As a result of our excursions, we often land in unexpected corners of reality. A theorem and a poem are meditations on the possible, be it the very concrete or the fictional. Our imagination uses all the resources it has to give meaning to existence. Maybe that's why the theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote that "Man is his most vexing problem." Our philosophies, our sciences and religions are attempts to comprehend who we are in spite of our shortsightedness, of the limited ways that we see and understand what's going on. In this search, it's no surprise that religious belief works as a compass to so many people. How to explain the origin of the universe? Or of life? Or why life ends? How to explain why we have minds capable of reflecting about these kinds of complex questions? Or how the brain, taken as a bunch of neurons and synapses, manages to engender us with a sense of self? Of course, these questions are now part of cutting-edge scientific research. We live in a peculiar time, when what once was the province of religion is now part of science's daily goings-on. We still can't answer these questions. So they keep haunting and inspiring us, which is a good thing. One of our big dilemmas is, perhaps, the angst that comes from our ability to contemplate the nature of the divine while knowing that we will never become divine. We can easily imagine perfection, the absence of pain, immortality. But excluding musings in fiction and expectations in faith, we can't transcend our material reality, our spatial and time boundaries. Or can we? Considering that modern science has been around for only some 400 years (if we count its beginnings from the time of Kepler and Galileo), and realizing how much we have accomplished in such a short time, imagine what we could do in another 1,000 years? Or 10,000 years if, of course, we don't self-destruct before then? We can already manipulate genes, creating new foods and creatures, and cure a whole new spectrum of illnesses. Extrapolating the current pace of technological advance to the future, some futurists are convinced that within a few decades we will get to such a deep stage of hybridization with machines that we will not be able to pull apart from them anymore. (Try being without your cell phone or computer for a week, for example.) If these predictions come through, and it seems to me that they already are, soon we will be a new species, beyond human. Imagine, then, that in some corner of the galaxy, other intelligent creatures also discovered some version of science. But they did so, say, a million years before us, which, in cosmic time, is not much. These creatures would now be machine-hybrids, completely different from what they once were. As Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," a theme myself and co-blogger Adam have been focusing on these past few weeks. Perhaps "they" are only information, free-floating in coded energy fields spread across space. Perhaps they have, much beyond anything we can presently contemplate, the power to create life, choosing its properties at will. They could, for example, have created us, or some of our ancestors, as part of an experiment in their version of evolutionary genetics, or as a test bed in a study of the relation between intelligence and morality. They could, perhaps, be observing us, as we observe animals in a zoo or a laboratory. These entities, immaterial but living as self-sustaining bundles of information, could have been our creators. Would they be gods, even if not supernatural
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[last edit 11/29/2012 3:06 AM by MonkeyPunchBaby - edited 1 times]
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In my opinion, yes. Any terrestrial god you put your faith in is going to let you down at some point. Sort of like how I liked KublaKhan, until the whole cat sex fiasco was uncovered.
Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing. | |
This sounds very much like the Q Continuum.
Buildings have two natural enemies- water, and bears. | |
I think we'll end up being our own gods. Maybe that's the point. God being us. http://en.wikipedi...ki/Kardashev_scale
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If we're experiments, it's much more likely that we are virtual and our universe doesn't really exist, which would actually explain just about everything.
mutantMandias may cause dizziness, sexual nightmares, and sleep crime. ++++ mutantMandias has to return some videotapes ++++ Do not taunt mutantMandias mutantMandias is something more than human, more than a computer. mutantMandias is a murderously intelligent, sensually self-programmed, non-being | |
Posted by MutantMandias If we're experiments, it's much more likely that we are virtual and our universe doesn't really exist, which would actually explain just about everything.
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There is the idea that our reality is actually just a hologram.
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Well, hologram is a little specific to our understanding of reality, which is, by definition, almost certainly an inaccurate analysis.
mutantMandias may cause dizziness, sexual nightmares, and sleep crime. ++++ mutantMandias has to return some videotapes ++++ Do not taunt mutantMandias mutantMandias is something more than human, more than a computer. mutantMandias is a murderously intelligent, sensually self-programmed, non-being | |
I just saw this documentary last night called "The Matrix" about that. I think it was by PBS. Blew my mind.
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But seriously, quantum mechanics? Come on. Discreet levels of energy? Bullshit. We're clearly living in a digital approximation of some unknown analog reality.
mutantMandias may cause dizziness, sexual nightmares, and sleep crime. ++++ mutantMandias has to return some videotapes ++++ Do not taunt mutantMandias mutantMandias is something more than human, more than a computer. mutantMandias is a murderously intelligent, sensually self-programmed, non-being | |
Posted by HarvestmanMan In my opinion, yes. Any terrestrial god you put your faith in is going to let you down at some point. Sort of like how I liked KublaKhan, until the whole cat sex fiasco was uncovered.
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Alleged, motherfucker. My lawyers will be in touch.
"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible." --Don DeLillo PICS | |
Posted by KublaKhan
Alleged, motherfucker. My lawyers will be in touch.
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I'm sorry. The alleged cat sex fiasco. I'll direct them to the Cat Fancy board, so they can judge your...obsession.
Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing. | |
The Cat Fancy board is off topic. Further discussion of the Cat Fancy board will result in immediate banning.
[last edit 12/5/2012 2:58 PM by MutantMandias - edited 1 times]
mutantMandias may cause dizziness, sexual nightmares, and sleep crime. ++++ mutantMandias has to return some videotapes ++++ Do not taunt mutantMandias mutantMandias is something more than human, more than a computer. mutantMandias is a murderously intelligent, sensually self-programmed, non-being | |
Uh-oh.
Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing. |
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