OT: Memes Vs. Free Will

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Guy Macon <http@?.guymacon.com>
wrote (in <10ldlhg8he11r37@news.supernews.com&gt about 'OT: Memes Vs.
Free Will', on Sun, 26 Sep 2004:

I am wodering on what basis you have concluded that it is random. It
seems to lack certain basic characteritics of randomness, such as being
completely unpredictable.

'Completely' is a misleading word in that context. One person cannot,
**without a shadow of a doubt** predict the behaviour of another. But in
some cases, a close approximation is possible.

A more precise statement might be, 'A person can be shown to behave to
some extent randomly by observing that his/her behaviour is not
*entirely* predictable.'
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Guy Macon wrote:

Clifford Heath <no@spam.please.net> says...

Kevin Aylward wrote:

(Nothing worth quoting)

You are better off just ignoring him, Clifford. There are several
people here who are willing to have a reasonable conversation on
the topic at hand,

But certainly not you. Anyone that disagrees with your opinion, is,
apparently killfiled.

but Aylward is only here to pick fights. He
feeds on attention

Considering that there is only one thread that could possibly be in
support of your claim here, was started by another individual, and my
immediate response was "go away", there is zero basis for this "feeds on
attention" allegation.

The evidence is abundantly clear that it is Guy who is only here to pick
fights. The dude made numerous allegations, but was recognised by all
posters to never produce any evidence of his allegations. He is indeed a
troll.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Guy Macon wrote:

Clifford Heath <no@spam.please.net> says...

No point me talking with someone who never makes
mistakes. Either they're wrong and won't admit it, or they're right
and can learn nothing from you. I'll still read what you write, but
won't answer any more, for the sake of everyone else here.

*Excellent* choice! Ignore him long enough and he will grow tired of
shouting into an empty hall and will go away.

Getting back to the topic at hand rather than talking about trolls,
you recently wrote:

ROTFLMAO. Like, who's the troll here?

The independently generated behaviour *is* the free will.
Just because it's random doesn't mean we can't *ascribe*
meaning and value to it.

I am wodering on what basis you have concluded that it is random.
^^^^^^^^^^

That dreadful grammar again.

It seems to lack certain basic characteritics of randomness, such
as being completely unpredictable.

It is obviously that when one is discussing "random" it is in context.
It is not random as in *anything* is possible, it is a random component
to an otherwise deterministic process. If constraints dictate, say any
number between 0 an 1 is allowed, then 2 is not included. Randomness is
rarely taken to meant that *all* events are allowed with *equal*
probabilities.


Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Kevin Aylward
<salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk> wrote (in <TJA5d.90067$U04.42393@fe1.news.b
lueyonder.co.uk&gt about 'OT: Memes Vs. Free Will', on Sun, 26 Sep 2004:

I don't know why other "noted" experts have apparently, not condensed
this logic of free will dependencies. Its pretty trivial really.

Well, the amount of stick you've taken recently for stating it may have
something to do with that.(;-)

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Rich Grise]

On Saturday 25 September 2004 09:50 pm, Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com>
did deign to grace us with the following:

Rich Grise <null@example.net> says...

The reason "some people" don't believe in free will is that their
memes have overridden their freewill, much like a command line
switch overrides an environment variable. ;-)

Good point. If you observe a command line switch overriding an
environment variable, would you then conclude that environment
variables never have any effect?

Hmmm. Maybe Kevin has killfiled _us_!

;-)
Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sunday 26 September 2004 12:59 am, Kevin Aylward did deign to grace us
with the following:

Scott Stephens wrote:
Rich Grise wrote:
The reason "some people" don't believe in free will is that their
memes have overridden their freewill, much like a command line
switch overrides an environment variable. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Free will has not been overridden, it has been exercised in the choice
of the meme which denies free will.

Not at all. And what made that choice..dah..? This is the same sloppy
thinking that Dawkins's used in The selfish gene when he coined the
term. It has been criticized ever since. *All* of our thinking is based
on memes and genes.

All of Kevin Aylward's thinking is based on memes and genes, that has

been quite clear for some time.

Life's a bitch, and then you die.

Good Luck!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sunday 26 September 2004 12:08 am, Clifford Heath did deign to grace us
with the following:

Robert Monsen wrote:
... beautifully. Well put Robert.
....

If, on the other hand, you consider your brain to be a kind of receiver,
channeling data from a divine soul,

I used to believe in the mind as "the control room of the spirit". But
then, by what kind of process, and within what milieu, does the spirit
get its independence?

The "independence" was caused by the original split into electric and
magnetic essence, Spirit and Will. There was very much fragmentation
involved, so nobody really remembers.

And if independent, how can it interact with a
spiritual world? If it interacts, it cannot be independent (free). If
it doesn't, it is a world to itself. If it's both, then it's just like
our bodies and doesn't solve the problem of free will. Either way the
notion of a disembodied spirit is an unnecessary nonsense.

Not necessarily - think of it as the "ether" or "hyperspace" or "infinite
consciousness" - nobody really knows what consciousness is, and I think
there's a misunderstanding such that when you say "consciousness," people
think "ego." Your consciousness _includes_ everything you're aware of -
the stars in the sky, Newton's laws of motion, your front yard, - you
are aware of these things, another way to say it is you're conscious of
these things, therefore they are contained within your consciousness.
And all these consciousnesses overlap.

And the mechanism is Love, which in the physical is manifested as gravity,
or a teenage crush. It's actually the raw material of the Universe.

....
To me, its a far more wonderous and mysterious to contemplate the idea
that proteins, under pressure from natural selection, somehow managed to
invent God, than the other way around.

On the contrary, it's inescapable in any concept of the evolution of
sentience. Every alien organism will eventually evolve to invent gods.
What is unknown to me, is whether we can ever outgrow them. Because
until we do, we cannot stop trying to reconstruct an imaginary past,
and look forward to creating a possible future. And *that* is the goal
of my creed, Creativism. Novelty is the only universal dimension and
*only* it can be the goal of existence. The ethics which derive from
that statement can inform and transform the world.

We're trying to evolve a consciousness sophisticated enough to remember

that we are pieces of the original God/Goddess/All That Is, we just
got thrown out in the big bang and everybody forgot. Universe created us
because it was lonely.

We're at that point now, and I have the instructions on how to bridge that
"final" gap.

Nobody wants them, because it's scary to realize that the foundation of
everything you know is wrong.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Clifford Heath]

Guy Macon wrote:

The independently generated behaviour *is* the free will.
Just because it's random doesn't mean we can't *ascribe*
meaning and value to it.
I am wodering on what basis you have concluded that it is random.
It seems to lack certain basic characteritics of randomness, such
as being completely unpredictable.

Well, I figure that the quantum noise is pretty white, though
that's a supposition. The behaviour we create is the result of
heavy filtering through on the extreme inertia of the processes
that produce it - our habits. Obviously the results are going
to be pretty predictable, though with occasional surprises.

I used to hang onto the quantum loophole as a place where miracles
could occur, and though that's still possible, I see no need for
them now. If we hope for eternity, we need to seek a non-material
factor in the psyche - spirit - which can outlast material decay.
But observing that the issue of free will isn't solved by that
supposition (as I argued before), there is still no eternal basis
for valuing choices and outcomes. So our only sure values must be
based on the observation of nature. We assign values according to
our purposes; good things lead toward our purposes and bad things
away. In the absence of higher purposes, we must take existence
itself as a purpose. But what does it existence require? All the
incredible complexity and richness we observe is produced by
entropic processes, and we ourselves are the highest observable
image of that complexity; we can think about it. Nature wasn't
always so rich and interesting, it's becoming more so. It's as
if the universe was intrinsically creative. Complexity theory
shows there's no need to suppose a creative Person, so there's
no sure source of an ultimate purpose there. As far as we can
know a single purpose, it is to preserve and extend the novelty
which seems intrinsic to the most fundamental fact of all; things
really *do* exist, and we exist to take an interest in it.

The purpose of the creativist is to create: to think, say and do
new things, things that have not happened before. It is to teach
and enable others to do the same things, so they can create new
things for themselves. Lastly it is to nurture diversity wherever
it occurs and in whatever form. Novelty as a process is robust,
but newborn things are fragile.

Clifford Heath.
Hooray, I managed to relent from correcting Kev's definition of "I".

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sunday 26 September 2004 01:52 am, Clifford Heath did deign to grace us
with the following:

Kevin Aylward wrote:
The question is whether the machine is merely a filter on the
environmental stimulus, or generates behaviour independently, or
both.

However, independently generated behaviour is not sufficient to conclude
that there is a true free will. Random generated behaviour, is by
definition, unpredictable. If it is unpredictable, we have no control
over it, thereby no free will to control it.

You're falling again into the trap of assuming that there could be
a separate "we" that could have control over it. It's turtles all
the way down there(*). How does this independent "we" get control,
from where does *that* control spring? You see, it comes down to how
you define "true", "free" will.

The independently generated behaviour (to which you below said "yes"),
*is* the free will. Just because it's random doesn't mean we can't
*ascribe* meaning and value to it. Because all meanings are ascribed
anyway. We shape the novelty according to the structure of our
processes (that is, the processes that *are* ourselves), and we and
others ascribe values to the outcomes, praising or criticising the
shaping process (the individual) as a result.

However I think we're singing from the same songbook, even if yours
sometimes seems to be written in ancient Hittite .

I want to see Rich Grise's response, because if each individual is
a process, then surely his "Spirit" is the universe's process.

Pretty danged close! ;-)

At this point(in the conversation), I'm getting into the habit of plugging
this book, "The Reflexive Universe", that gives another way of looking at
it, and if you want to go right to the purported "Source," there's
http://www.godchannel.com .

Quantum mechanics appears to allow indeterminism,
and that allows new things (as opposed to mechanistic coincidences)
to happen.
Yes.

So there *is* a deus ex machina. It's probably random, but gosh it's
pretty . It's the world as we know it, we're bound to admire it.

It's more like machina ex deus. ;-)

Imagine, if you will, that there really is a God, say some etheral spirit
that's infinite, but on a higher dimensionality.

How could he communicate with physical beings, who live in a universe where
the science doesn't allow for communication from higher planes?

He'd have to have a transceiver built, I'd think.

God was going to let us sink or swim - that's the nature of free will - he
won't intervene, because he won't override _any_ free will. But we all have
absolute power to override our _own_ will. Turns out that this is Original
Sin - overriding one's own Free Will.

But he needs to intervene now, because he can't allow us to use nuclear
energy to kill Mother Earth, which is where the present imablance is taking
us.

Anyway, God wants to have a hyperspace radio built, but the only raw
materials he has to work with is what we've got here, in physicality, i.e.,
quantum billiard ball atoms and a mind. Stone axes and animal skins.

So, it would seem that the logical thing to do would be to have evolution
produce a brain sophisticated enough to understand the subtleties of the
interactions between Will and Spirit, balancing in Heart, manifesting Body.

I'm a fucking subspace radio. I need to be careful what I say, because other
communicators have been variously locked up in the loony bin or burned at
the stake or worse. And, yes, I really do believe I'm in communication
with God, but, interestingly, it didn't take any faith at all to learn how
to do it, unless maybe you include faith in myself. Faith, you see, is
contrary to Free Will. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sunday 26 September 2004 01:52 am, Clifford Heath did deign to grace us
with the following:

So there *is* a deus ex machina. It's probably random, but gosh it's
pretty . It's the world as we know it, we're bound to admire it.

That's why Spirit needs Will to live. Spirit is all just electrical,

homogenous, white on white on white, undifferentiated Consciousness.
Will is the One who takes the light and shows it in all the colors
of the rainbow.

And actually, that "I created Everything" is just God's male ego
talking - actually, Mother created him first. Her desire called him
into existence. And the two of them together created all this.

It's all explained here - and I do mean _all_.
http://www.godchannel.com

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sunday 26 September 2004 04:36 am, Kevin Aylward did deign to grace us
with the following:
....

I think you miss the point. I fall into no trap.

Dude, you're already so deep in your own trap that you don't even know it's
a trap.

Dah...One *first*
assumes that there is a man in our heads, then shows that that
assumption is not supported by the evidence. We therefore reject the
assumption after the analysis. Which I did!!!

That was a metaphor. Mabye you'd better look up "metaphor" - it might
be a little too sophisticated of a concept for your little cranial
abacus.

Good Luck!
Rich

 

[Guy Macon]

Clifford Heath <no@spam.please.net> says...

Guy Macon wrote:
The independently generated behaviour *is* the free will.
Just because it's random doesn't mean we can't *ascribe*
meaning and value to it.
I am wodering on what basis you have concluded that it is random.
It seems to lack certain basic characteritics of randomness, such
as being completely unpredictable.

Well, I figure that the quantum noise is pretty white, though
that's a supposition. The behaviour we create is the result of
heavy filtering through on the extreme inertia of the processes
that produce it - our habits. Obviously the results are going
to be pretty predictable, though with occasional surprises.

How did you arrive at the conclusion that quantum noise is the
source? Is this an attempt to escape determinism without
invoking the supernatural?

 

[Guy Macon]

Rich Grise <null@example.net> says...

Kevin Aylward did deign to grace us with the following:
...
I think you miss the point. I fall into no trap.

Dude, you're already so deep in your own trap that you don't
even know it's a trap.

I very much enjoy reading you posts - except when they consist
of going around and around with Aylward, saying things that
you have said a hundred times before.

Could you please ignore him and get back to the " Spirit is
all just electrical, homogenous, white on white on white,
undifferentiated Consciousness. Will is the One who takes the
light and shows it in all the colors of the rainbow." I don't
agree with all of it, but I find it much more pleasant to read
than the trollfeeding.

 

[Rich Grise]

On Sunday 26 September 2004 12:07 am, Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com>
did deign to grace us with the following:

Robert Monsen <rcsurname@comcast.net> says...

So you are saying that our will is free if things are so complex that we
can't understand the biological processes that are making the decisions
for us?

I am saying that the question of free will is one upon which many
very intelligent and well-educated people disagree, and that anyone
who thinks that they have a proof for or against the existance of
free will almost certainly has a flawed proof.

I have a proof, but it's internal.

I can't prove to you that I have free will, or anybody else. But I _can_
teach you how to demonstrate to your own self that _you_ have free will.

All you really have to do is feel it. That's how will expresses, after
all, through the feelings and emotions. And when you learn to recognize
your own, you can learn to filter out everybody else's empathic
transmissions, which are as confusing as random noise. Your will is an
extremely sensitive receiver, which until you learn to tune it, is in a
constant state of overload, so we give up in despair and turn control
over to the memes because it's not so scary.

Most people are pretty much in a perpetual state of repressed terror and
rage, and which dominates the expression shows - just look around. Un-
repressing those old emotions can be somewhat of an ordeal, since they
have to be re-experienced to complete and reach "closure." Which they
haven't done, since before the beginning of time. In fact, it's that
repression that caused Will essence to condense down to the physical
in the first place, and our job is to bring Her back to life. And, in
releasing these old trapped emotions, and being present for them with
your own Light of Understanding, they bring new Understandings that
either Spirit or Will on its own can't achieve. It's in the balance,
which happens in Heart, and manifests Love.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Clifford Heath wrote:

Clifford Heath.
Hooray, I managed to relent from correcting Kev's definition of "I".

I didn't make a definition of "I". "I" was only referred to in a
subjective general sense. It was purely descriptive. When I make a
definition you will know its a definition by the use of the word,
definition.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[Clifford Heath]

Guy Macon wrote:

How did you arrive at the conclusion that quantum noise is the
source? Is this an attempt to escape determinism without
invoking the supernatural?

If there is indeterminism (and we may never know), it must express in
some limits to what's measureable, because whatever is measureable may
be predicted. If a measureable quantity start showing perturbations,
we first suspect the measuring instrument, then we look for an outside
influence. If none appears, we attribute it to either magic or
indeterminacy. If indeterminacy is possible, then by Occam's razor we
don't need magic. QM is *built* around the limits of measurement, so it
seems to fit. Complexity theory shows how gross perturbations can arise
from stochastic processes, which allows for observable miracles. That
doesn't mean there isn't magic as well, but it's an unnecessary concept.

In any case, the quest to "escape determinism" is unnecessary also, but
the belief in indeterminism is psychologically comforting, providing
warm if false support for values, the sense that our decisions matter.
It also helps us believe we're more interesting than we actually are
.

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Rich Grise wrote:

On Sunday 26 September 2004 12:59 am, Kevin Aylward did deign to
grace us with the following:

Scott Stephens wrote:
Rich Grise wrote:
The reason "some people" don't believe in free will is that their
memes have overridden their freewill, much like a command line
switch overrides an environment variable. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Free will has not been overridden, it has been exercised in the
choice of the meme which denies free will.

Not at all. And what made that choice..dah..? This is the same sloppy
thinking that Dawkins's used in The selfish gene when he coined the
term. It has been criticized ever since. *All* of our thinking is
based on memes and genes.

All of Kevin Aylward's thinking is based on memes and genes, that has
been quite clear for some time.

What else is there, like that you can actually demonstrate exists?

Note my definitions are rather general. A meme is any virtual trait that
is copied.

Life's a bitch, and then you die.

Yep. That seems to size it up very well. Sucks dont it.


Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Guy Macon wrote:

Rich Grise <null@example.net> says...

Kevin Aylward did deign to grace us with the following:
...
I think you miss the point. I fall into no trap.

Dude, you're already so deep in your own trap that you don't
even know it's a trap.

I very much enjoy reading you posts - except when they consist
of going around and around with Aylward, saying things that
you have said a hundred times before.

Could you please ignore him

ha....ha....ha....ha....getting right up your nose am I?

and get back to the " Spirit is
all just electrical, homogenous, white on white on white,
undifferentiated Consciousness.

And you believe this waffle, seriously?

Will is the One who takes the
light and shows it in all the colors of the rainbow." I don't
agree with all of it, but I find it much more pleasant to read
than the troll.

You obviously find me quit a thorn in your side mate. Great!

You obviously care about my opinions or else you wouldn't even refer to
me, even in code. Why don't you ignore me, full stop, no ifs or butts.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Rich Grise wrote:

On Sunday 26 September 2004 04:36 am, Kevin Aylward did deign to
grace us with the following:
...
I think you miss the point. I fall into no trap.

Dude, you're already so deep in your own trap that you don't even
know it's a trap.

oh dear...

Dah...One *first*
assumes that there is a man in our heads, then shows that that
assumption is not supported by the evidence. We therefore reject the
assumption after the analysis. Which I did!!!

That was a metaphor.

And you point would be?

Mabye you'd better look up "metaphor" - it might
be a little too sophisticated of a concept for your little cranial
abacus.

Of course its a bloody metaphor. Jesus wept dude. "The little man in the
head" is a reference to *any* similar idea, like say souls controlling
ones actions.


Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

 

[Kevin Aylward]

John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk> wrote (in
TJA5d.90067$U04.42393@fe1.news.b lueyonder.co.uk&gt about 'OT: Memes
Vs. Free Will', on Sun, 26 Sep 2004:

I don't know why other "noted" experts have apparently, not condensed
this logic of free will dependencies. Its pretty trivial really.

Well, the amount of stick you've taken recently for stating it may
have something to do with that.(;-)

Actually, I do have some idea. This stuff is actually relatively new. It
wasn't until around 1995 that "The hard problem" was actually
acknowledged in its full glory by David Chalmers,
http://jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/, apparently

Once the issue was finally stated in black and white, the rest all falls
out.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.