You're right, it was negligent of me to state the distro gets no play while neglecting to provide any info. There's a newsforge article that covers the basics in short order.
My post was a spur of the moment, rah, rah, me too, sort of thing, as, coincidently, I just installed ubuntu last night.
Just to see, I installed ubuntu 5.04 (I'm waiting for delivery of 5.10) on a new kit I built. On a Ausus A8V mobo (S939) w/ K8T800 pro VIA chipset and Athlon 3500+ and a cheap Radeon 9250 the install went flawlessly.
The box is earmarked for Scientific Linux (which doesn't seem to get any play time on/.), but, again, ubuntu installed flawlessly and boots much faster than my multimedia/web WinXP intel box, which takes a loooooooong time.
What you see is not always what you get, because what you see depends on a framework built by experience that stands ready to interpret the raw information - as a flower or a hammer or a face.
In light of the above, reading A Rimbaud is illuminating. Rimbaud forced himself to see what he thought of as his poetic vision. He would stare mercilessly into a pool until he saw a fabled city. William Blake is another who willed visions. Rimbaud gave up poetry at a very early age and turned to gun running, but also later spoke of science as the only worthwhile pursuit.
My newest DYI project is an EEG machine to compliment my interest in neurobiology and slow wave sleep. For those who want an in to hypnosis, biofeedback and sleep "EEG.pl is an open repository for software, publications and datasets related to the analysis of brain potentials: electroencephalogram (EEG), local field potentials (LFPs) and event related potentials (ERP)"
In the Declaration of Independence (shown below) that Thomas Jefferson drafted, he wrote:
We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Franklin argued successfully for substituting "self-evident" for sacred and undeniable." It was a significant and fortuitous change. Jefferson's wording implied a divine origin for men's rights. Franklin used a term from science and based the rights on reason. All men, he implied, could investigate and prove the proposition. Franklin made natural rights sacred because they were true, while in Jefferson's version they were true because they were sacred.
As an outsider watching from the far north, I've always thought Franklin's substitution of truths as self evident relfected the ideas put forth by Euclid. Jefferson OTOH towed the line from Aristotle. The early chrisitian church fathers adopted the ideas of Aristotle. Aritotle's ideas on teleology inform the christian ideas of intelligent design. These same ideas were first succinctly put forth in 'The Great Chain of Being'...'the historian of ideas Arthur Lovejoythere thus resulted a...'
"conception of the plan and structure of the world which, through the Middle Ages and down to the late eighteenth century...most educated men were to accept without question - the conception of the universe as a "Great Chain of Being", composed of an immense, or...infinite, number of links ranging in hierarchical order from the meagerest kind of existents...through "every possible" grade up to the ens perfectissumu"'
Religion is an evolutionary adaptations' ploy wherein if you want to get along you go along, and, as the better fit suggests the better ploy, the benefits are seen as the blessings of god. Any adaptation is necessarily more good or more bad and thus morality is born. It amounts to a patriarchical ploy (a pick up line) that says I'm a big man in the community and made in the image of the biggest man in the universe, won't you come home with me and let me impregnate you, please I really gotta spread my seed, my god says I'm gonnna have children greater than all the sands on the beach.
Why should I care what some shut-in, diabetic piggy thinks?
As your question is self referential and you've posted it, I'm going to assume you're unable to come up with an answer.
Given the prejudiced nature in which you've framed the question, I'm inclined to suggest ignorance on your part as the most immediate and telling answer.
would anyone here really chose cybersex over sex in person?
For fun I would..., with a twist. Consider the possibility of all the male geeks who masturbate having a method for home storage of their sperm, (they might want to store some off site for redundancy). Maybe at the time they're alone in their mom's basement jerking off to porn their chances of finding a mate are slim, but who's to say in time they might become highly sought after and their late adolescent and early adult sperm might be preferable to that culled late in life.
From a woman's point of view it might be preferable to be able to surf the net looking for a sperm donor more suited to her needs than might be available in her immediate vacinity.
An artifical womb might be far off but surrogate mothers are a reality today and thus women could (and do) sell their eggs to males wanting to procreate from a selection of women far greater than available to them in their various nearby meat circles.
Perhaps sooner than the development of an artificial womb we might manage having our young carried to term in other mammals. I wouldn't mind one of my offspring being carried to term by a Cetacean. The intrauterine experience of an ocean voyaging surrogate mother might make for some positive attributes.
Not to take away from the guys accomplishments but will a time come when we all but do away with the need to press the flesh?
Why do we need to gather and mingle in the face of the web, the very essence of which is near instantaneous communication at a distance. This reminds me of those who need to print out hard copies of material in order to study it properly.
Do we gain or lose signal to noise when we gather to celebrate our heroes?
I keep a few fundamental books at hand's reach but other than those and the turn over of new material taken out from a library, I'm much more comfortable and able to take from an e format than from dead tree material, and, I can learn more from another at a distance than when merged in a touchy feely mind meld.
I own somewhere over 40 dark blue, cotton t-shirts, yes each and every one dark blue. I own a couple of dozen black cotton nylon mix cargo pants. Add in an untold number of black soxs and shorts and you have the sum total of my wardrobe.
I never have to worry about what matches what. Laundry is a snap, no whites with colours mix ups.
I've been dressing in this gear for a couple of years and everyone is now OK with it. Intrestingly I can almost grade the reactions by degree of intelligence/education. Professionals don't seem to care, especially in the health care professions.
As an added bonus I get to seriously grate people who can't see past whatever tribal dress code is forced on them.
I've not had a printer of any kind online at home since 2000, and, I've had no need of one. In the 80's, once a year, a big PC mag edition of new printers would come out all shinny and new, but, really, today I don't see the need for a printer at home. The cost of ink alone makes it more cost effective to have photos done at a shop and there's the added benefit of top of the line tech.
There was a divide in the late 90's when older users felt the need to print out material in order to study it. Remember the huge dead tree weight that came in the form of manuals in the 80/90s? My dad couldn't properly study new material unless he first printed it out.
Personally I think printers at home are pretty much an extravagance.
Most geeks must have good memories. The amount of info that has to be assimilated and managed is, to say the least, considerable. It follows most geeks would be able to retain a storyline and much attendant material from watching a movie once or maybe twice.
What makes owning this set of dvds and, presumably, rewatching the material worthwhile?
The only movies I've watched repeatedly are Casablanca, Apocalypse Now and to a lesser extent Alien and Blade Runner, but I've no idea why I can watch Casablanca and Apocalpse Now over and over. I know the material very nearly by heart, but have no idea what the mechanism is that hooks me in.
In terms of the hardware... " NASA scientists have begun to computerize human, silent reading using nerve signals in the throat that control speech." Subvocal speech reading systems offer the added bonus of now having to listen to the mundane trivia being broadcast from the cubicle next to yours.
A massively delusional choice is to sincerely believe you are surrounded by overwhelming numbers of insane, hyper-agressive gorrillas, and then try to make it a fight!
You might ask yourself why you had to shout and couch my remarks in terms of making a fight?
I've only just begun to play with the idea of religion as a mental illness. The recent moves on the part of Intelligent Design advocates caused me to consider a range of responses. I've read Freud advocated approaching religion as a mental illness so I asked myself what characteristics would induce a psychosis along the lines of religious belief, most especially, the Judaic-Christian belief system. My initial sketch is set out in my recent journal entry, the sketch is very tentative and perhaps not worth reading at this point but feel free to read and have a laugh or pick it apart.
Given your response to my post I'd be sincerely interested in your response.
I never heard about that and I live in Vancouver. Can you provide a reference?
Apologies for the tardy reply; apparently I needed a long sleep.
I can tell you the incident was reported by the media. I'm unsure as to the timeframe, and, on second thought, it may have happened in the 90's.
The incident took place on West Broadway. I seem to remember that it was near the Mercedes-Benz dealership but this may be wrong. My then girlfriend worked at the dealership and had a condo on upper Granville so I may be mixing things up.
By re-enforcing hierarchical organization, religion clearly contributed to the early development of civilization and modern society. We almost certainly wouldn't be enjoying the benefits of that civilization without it. While the formation of religious identity may now be a hindrance given the highly effective methods of killing we've developed in the last couple of centuries, for prior millenia the religious meme would have helped social groups stay together in spite of centrifugal social pressures for mutual protection against both four-legged and two-legged predators.
There's also indications that religious ritual and spiritual experiences are beneficial for health, possibly through the release of beta-endorphins that act as a moderator on the immune and digestive systems.
I've only just begun to play with the idea of religion as a mental illness. The recent moves on the part of Intelligent Design advocates caused me to consider a range of responses. I've read Freud advocated approaching religion as a mental illness so I asked myself what characteristics would induce a psychosis along the lines of religious belief, most especially, the Judaic-Christian belief system. My initial sketch is set out in my recent journal entry, the sketch is very tentative and perhaps not worth reading at this point but feel free to read and have a laugh or pick it apart.
Is HIRA intended as wordplay on HERA, the wife of Zeus and Queen of the Olympian deities? I ran a quick search and found no such suggestion. Hera is an ancient mother goddess worshipped as the source of life. She is an aspect of the White Goddess whose three representations are a young mother (colour blue), a warring matriarch (colour red), a death hag (colour black).
Great droll sense of humour, yet very likely accurate.
I see religion as a mental illness with a genetic predisposition.
There are a few telling traits. Grandiose beliefs like being the Chosen of the Creator of the Universe is akin to statements common to schizophrenics. A delusional experience like hearing the voice of God is also common to schizophrenics.
The adherence by Christians to the status quo ante of the biblical story in terms of the Garden of Eden is, I think, a tribal trait mirrored in the dominance of alpha males. God the Father, a male entity, creates man then from man's rib creates (wo)man, the (fe)male is to subjugate herself to the male as the weaker sex. This amounts to the wet dream of every male, that (wo)men should subject themselves to their will, accept their sexual advances and bear their young. That this is everywhere in nature and to be seen on any street corner is harlariously funny in terms of the somber, strict believes fostered by conservative, religious males.
"Xenophanes (born around 570 BCE) cautioned us about our readiness to construe divine matters on anthropomorphic models:
'The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. And if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint and produce works of art as human beings do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make them in the image of their several kinds.'"
Arguing a case of religion as a mental illness in the face of the obvious genetic drive of males to reproduce is perhaps a stretch, but then I speak in terms of testosterone posioning and viewing the effects of a natural hormone as a posion is awkward. Still it's instructive to view any biological excess as a poison. Not long ago on a main throughfare in Vancouver, a very manly man hopped up on testosterone accosted his lover and her new boyfriend. The manly man had a 357 magnum tucked into his waistband. As he approached the pair he tugged on the revolver, it caught on his belt, he attempted to wrench the gun free, it discharged and he completely emasculated himself. The most dramatic cure of testosterone poisoning I've read and instructive of nature's ways.
Vacca is latin for cow. The milkmaidens who had contracted cow pox were found to be more immune to small pox. The first 'vaccine' amounted to guesstimating the number and severity of scratches to hatch onto someone's arm then scabs from cowpox were rubbed into the wounds.This took place in England.
Initially few took up the practise. Interesting many clergymen dennounced the vaccine practise as sin. The clergy believed smallpox was god's design and all, even the children, who died of smallpox were decreed by god to so die. What finally turned the tide some years later was the adoption of the vaccine practise by a high ranking member of the British aristocracy. She (her name and title don't immediately come to mind) had her children vaccinated. The strong british caste system was momentum enough to swing favour toward vaccination.
...so maybe all you need to do is grab the brain of someone recently diseased and slice layer by layer from front to back and scan it with an electron microscope. That should give you a pretty good map. From simulating small parts of the map at a time you should be able to learn a lot. At least enough to provide it with input and output for a virtual environment.
The above recalled Rudy Rucker's early, first(?) novel Software. The plot carries your idea along the following lines:
"Cobb Anderson created the "boppers," sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers--and eventually every human--into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren't too keen on the idea, and a full-scale robot revolt is underway on the moon (where the boppers live). Meanwhile, bopper Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by letting a big bopper slice up his brain and tape his "software." It seems like a good idea to Cobb."
Rucker's background gave him more insight into the idea of mapping consciousness than "Dixie Flatline's construct" William Gibson came up with.
The ideas propagated in epistemology, (as it refers to the theory of knowledge not the methodology of science), have eaten up big chunks of my time since my mid teens. Presently I'm trying to come a working definition of information, more so in the context of entropy and negentropy, as it applies to life. The going has been slow. Recently I've read through quite a bit of Complexity theory (Santa Fe Institute, S. Kaufman et al) and am poking around at ideas of memory and attractor basins. The same old story the more I learn, the less I know. We, as sentient beings, seem to need to relate through stories and broad context. Factor in Antonio Damasio's work on the importance of emotion in knowing and decision making, and, the idea of modelling consciousness becomes, to me, presently impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
My post was a spur of the moment, rah, rah, me too, sort of thing, as, coincidently, I just installed ubuntu last night.
cheers
The box is earmarked for Scientific Linux (which doesn't seem to get any play time on /.), but, again, ubuntu installed flawlessly and boots much faster than my multimedia/web WinXP intel box, which takes a loooooooong time.
In light of the above, reading A Rimbaud is illuminating. Rimbaud forced himself to see what he thought of as his poetic vision. He would stare mercilessly into a pool until he saw a fabled city. William Blake is another who willed visions. Rimbaud gave up poetry at a very early age and turned to gun running, but also later spoke of science as the only worthwhile pursuit.
My newest DYI project is an EEG machine to compliment my interest in neurobiology and slow wave sleep. For those who want an in to hypnosis, biofeedback and sleep "EEG.pl is an open repository for software, publications and datasets related to the analysis of brain potentials: electroencephalogram (EEG), local field potentials (LFPs) and event related potentials (ERP)"
In the Declaration of Independence (shown below) that Thomas Jefferson drafted, he wrote:
We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Franklin argued successfully for substituting "self-evident" for sacred and undeniable." It was a significant and fortuitous change. Jefferson's wording implied a divine origin for men's rights. Franklin used a term from science and based the rights on reason. All men, he implied, could investigate and prove the proposition. Franklin made natural rights sacred because they were true, while in Jefferson's version they were true because they were sacred.
As an outsider watching from the far north, I've always thought Franklin's substitution of truths as self evident relfected the ideas put forth by Euclid. Jefferson OTOH towed the line from Aristotle. The early chrisitian church fathers adopted the ideas of Aristotle. Aritotle's ideas on teleology inform the christian ideas of intelligent design. These same ideas were first succinctly put forth in 'The Great Chain of Being'...'the historian of ideas Arthur Lovejoythere thus resulted a...'
"conception of the plan and structure of the world which, through the Middle Ages and down to the late eighteenth century...most educated men were to accept without question - the conception of the universe as a "Great Chain of Being", composed of an immense, or...infinite, number of links ranging in hierarchical order from the meagerest kind of existents...through "every possible" grade up to the ens perfectissumu"'
Religion is an evolutionary adaptations' ploy wherein if you want to get along you go along, and, as the better fit suggests the better ploy, the benefits are seen as the blessings of god. Any adaptation is necessarily more good or more bad and thus morality is born. It amounts to a patriarchical ploy (a pick up line) that says I'm a big man in the community and made in the image of the biggest man in the universe, won't you come home with me and let me impregnate you, please I really gotta spread my seed, my god says I'm gonnna have children greater than all the sands on the beach.
E. Abbot's Flatland
Not my bailiwick, but isn't ITRON meant to be the best embedded systems OS?
As your question is self referential and you've posted it, I'm going to assume you're unable to come up with an answer.
Given the prejudiced nature in which you've framed the question, I'm inclined to suggest ignorance on your part as the most immediate and telling answer.
Hope this helps you out.
cheers
For fun I would..., with a twist. Consider the possibility of all the male geeks who masturbate having a method for home storage of their sperm, (they might want to store some off site for redundancy). Maybe at the time they're alone in their mom's basement jerking off to porn their chances of finding a mate are slim, but who's to say in time they might become highly sought after and their late adolescent and early adult sperm might be preferable to that culled late in life.
From a woman's point of view it might be preferable to be able to surf the net looking for a sperm donor more suited to her needs than might be available in her immediate vacinity.
An artifical womb might be far off but surrogate mothers are a reality today and thus women could (and do) sell their eggs to males wanting to procreate from a selection of women far greater than available to them in their various nearby meat circles.
Perhaps sooner than the development of an artificial womb we might manage having our young carried to term in other mammals. I wouldn't mind one of my offspring being carried to term by a Cetacean. The intrauterine experience of an ocean voyaging surrogate mother might make for some positive attributes.
Not to take away from the guys accomplishments but will a time come when we all but do away with the need to press the flesh?
Why do we need to gather and mingle in the face of the web, the very essence of which is near instantaneous communication at a distance. This reminds me of those who need to print out hard copies of material in order to study it properly.
Do we gain or lose signal to noise when we gather to celebrate our heroes?
I keep a few fundamental books at hand's reach but other than those and the turn over of new material taken out from a library, I'm much more comfortable and able to take from an e format than from dead tree material, and, I can learn more from another at a distance than when merged in a touchy feely mind meld.
I never have to worry about what matches what. Laundry is a snap, no whites with colours mix ups.
I've been dressing in this gear for a couple of years and everyone is now OK with it. Intrestingly I can almost grade the reactions by degree of intelligence/education. Professionals don't seem to care, especially in the health care professions.
As an added bonus I get to seriously grate people who can't see past whatever tribal dress code is forced on them.
Maybe the intent was different. Joyce said of Finnegans Wake, "It took me 17 years to write it. It can take you 17 years to read it."
*ahem*, we prefer to think of ourselves as your Altered State. re: See our lax recreational drug laws.
Thanking you in advance for making all future references to Canada as the U.S.of A. Altered State.
There was a divide in the late 90's when older users felt the need to print out material in order to study it. Remember the huge dead tree weight that came in the form of manuals in the 80/90s? My dad couldn't properly study new material unless he first printed it out.
Personally I think printers at home are pretty much an extravagance.
if you throw a boomerang and it doesn't come back,
what do you call it?
.
.
.
a stick
I love that joke. Ya, I know, I need help :-)
What makes owning this set of dvds and, presumably, rewatching the material worthwhile?
The only movies I've watched repeatedly are Casablanca, Apocalypse Now and to a lesser extent Alien and Blade Runner, but I've no idea why I can watch Casablanca and Apocalpse Now over and over. I know the material very nearly by heart, but have no idea what the mechanism is that hooks me in.
Seriously fucked
What sickens me is your sickness is going to seep into Canada. I'll fight this one tooth and nail.
Really, at the risk of being redundant you are deeply badly fucked.
M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!
Hey there, hi there, ho there, you're as welcome as can be.
M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!
Mickey Mouse! (Donald Duck!) Mickey Mouse! (Donald Duck!)
Forever let us hold his banner high, high, HIGH, HIGH!!
Come along and sing the song and join the jamboree.
M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!
In terms of the hardware... " NASA scientists have begun to computerize human, silent reading using nerve signals in the throat that control speech." Subvocal speech reading systems offer the added bonus of now having to listen to the mundane trivia being broadcast from the cubicle next to yours.
You might ask yourself why you had to shout and couch my remarks in terms of making a fight?
I've only just begun to play with the idea of religion as a mental illness. The recent moves on the part of Intelligent Design advocates caused me to consider a range of responses. I've read Freud advocated approaching religion as a mental illness so I asked myself what characteristics would induce a psychosis along the lines of religious belief, most especially, the Judaic-Christian belief system. My initial sketch is set out in my recent journal entry, the sketch is very tentative and perhaps not worth reading at this point but feel free to read and have a laugh or pick it apart.
Given your response to my post I'd be sincerely interested in your response.
cheers
Apologies for the tardy reply; apparently I needed a long sleep.
I can tell you the incident was reported by the media. I'm unsure as to the timeframe, and, on second thought, it may have happened in the 90's.
The incident took place on West Broadway. I seem to remember that it was near the Mercedes-Benz dealership but this may be wrong. My then girlfriend worked at the dealership and had a condo on upper Granville so I may be mixing things up.
By re-enforcing hierarchical organization, religion clearly contributed to the early development of civilization and modern society. We almost certainly wouldn't be enjoying the benefits of that civilization without it. While the formation of religious identity may now be a hindrance given the highly effective methods of killing we've developed in the last couple of centuries, for prior millenia the religious meme would have helped social groups stay together in spite of centrifugal social pressures for mutual protection against both four-legged and two-legged predators.
There's also indications that religious ritual and spiritual experiences are beneficial for health, possibly through the release of beta-endorphins that act as a moderator on the immune and digestive systems.
I've only just begun to play with the idea of religion as a mental illness. The recent moves on the part of Intelligent Design advocates caused me to consider a range of responses. I've read Freud advocated approaching religion as a mental illness so I asked myself what characteristics would induce a psychosis along the lines of religious belief, most especially, the Judaic-Christian belief system. My initial sketch is set out in my recent journal entry, the sketch is very tentative and perhaps not worth reading at this point but feel free to read and have a laugh or pick it apart.
cheers
Is HIRA intended as wordplay on HERA, the wife of Zeus and Queen of the Olympian deities? I ran a quick search and found no such suggestion. Hera is an ancient mother goddess worshipped as the source of life. She is an aspect of the White Goddess whose three representations are a young mother (colour blue), a warring matriarch (colour red), a death hag (colour black).
I see religion as a mental illness with a genetic predisposition.
There are a few telling traits. Grandiose beliefs like being the Chosen of the Creator of the Universe is akin to statements common to schizophrenics. A delusional experience like hearing the voice of God is also common to schizophrenics.
The adherence by Christians to the status quo ante of the biblical story in terms of the Garden of Eden is, I think, a tribal trait mirrored in the dominance of alpha males. God the Father, a male entity, creates man then from man's rib creates (wo)man, the (fe)male is to subjugate herself to the male as the weaker sex. This amounts to the wet dream of every male, that (wo)men should subject themselves to their will, accept their sexual advances and bear their young. That this is everywhere in nature and to be seen on any street corner is harlariously funny in terms of the somber, strict believes fostered by conservative, religious males.
"Xenophanes (born around 570 BCE) cautioned us about our readiness to construe divine matters on anthropomorphic models:
'The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. And if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint and produce works of art as human beings do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make them in the image of their several kinds.'"
Arguing a case of religion as a mental illness in the face of the obvious genetic drive of males to reproduce is perhaps a stretch, but then I speak in terms of testosterone posioning and viewing the effects of a natural hormone as a posion is awkward. Still it's instructive to view any biological excess as a poison. Not long ago on a main throughfare in Vancouver, a very manly man hopped up on testosterone accosted his lover and her new boyfriend. The manly man had a 357 magnum tucked into his waistband. As he approached the pair he tugged on the revolver, it caught on his belt, he attempted to wrench the gun free, it discharged and he completely emasculated himself. The most dramatic cure of testosterone poisoning I've read and instructive of nature's ways.
Initially few took up the practise. Interesting many clergymen dennounced the vaccine practise as sin. The clergy believed smallpox was god's design and all, even the children, who died of smallpox were decreed by god to so die. What finally turned the tide some years later was the adoption of the vaccine practise by a high ranking member of the British aristocracy. She (her name and title don't immediately come to mind) had her children vaccinated. The strong british caste system was momentum enough to swing favour toward vaccination.
The above recalled Rudy Rucker's early, first(?) novel Software. The plot carries your idea along the following lines:
"Cobb Anderson created the "boppers," sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers--and eventually every human--into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren't too keen on the idea, and a full-scale robot revolt is underway on the moon (where the boppers live). Meanwhile, bopper Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by letting a big bopper slice up his brain and tape his "software." It seems like a good idea to Cobb."
Rucker's background gave him more insight into the idea of mapping consciousness than "Dixie Flatline's construct" William Gibson came up with.
The ideas propagated in epistemology, (as it refers to the theory of knowledge not the methodology of science), have eaten up big chunks of my time since my mid teens. Presently I'm trying to come a working definition of information, more so in the context of entropy and negentropy, as it applies to life. The going has been slow. Recently I've read through quite a bit of Complexity theory (Santa Fe Institute, S. Kaufman et al) and am poking around at ideas of memory and attractor basins. The same old story the more I learn, the less I know. We, as sentient beings, seem to need to relate through stories and broad context. Factor in Antonio Damasio's work on the importance of emotion in knowing and decision making, and, the idea of modelling consciousness becomes, to me, presently impossible.
cheers, thanks for the input.
Here's a quick rundown on the numbers. Brain Computing