Well the latest theory is that each time the Large Hadron Collider blows up the universe, we end up in an alternate universe where things seem the same but are subtly different. In this universe, an accident has shut down the LHC and life goes on apparently normally but with strange unexplainable occurences. The next collider 'accident' is scheduled to happen next april. Interesting times, anyway.
I am sure that, if the newly discovered epidemic had been something like smallpox, the scientific response would have been to quarantine the victims to prevent transmission. Obviously this didn't happen because it was argued by the politically correct that it contravened the right of the gay community to continue their lifestyle unimpeded. The outcome of this decision will be hundreds of millions dying a horrible death that could have been prevented if it wasn't for political correctness.
More likely, it'll go down like this: The ATLAS experiment brings into existence the Higg's boson, messenger particle of the Higg's field. The Higg's field will expand the bundle of protons to the size of the universe in a trillion trillion trillionth of a second, using negative gravity. You do the math. The explosive force this represents strips every particle in the universe down to its identical elemental property. The phase change of the cooling Higg's field then restores the properties of the particles and, Bob's your uncle, the new universe unfolds.
Once the scientific aura of the muslim religion was lost, the religious authorities instituted a policy of eugenics on their subjects. After 800 years of being bred for obedience and subservience the muslim people devolved into the subhuman strain known as the 'wog'. Their ability to compete with un-eugenicized humans was lost and they are now headed for extinction. This is a common (almost obligatory) failing of religion and the inculcating of creationism in their subjects is needed to keep them from awakening to their being bred into zombies.
Before they had any concept of scientific explanations, people believed everything was caused by gods (wind god, mountain god, valley god, grass god, tree god, forest god etc.). When the time came to explain things they discovered worked scientifically, they had to use the same language as scientific language was not yet available. So they explained the most important discovery, the nature of consciousness, by describing relationships between god and man. Since the ability to dereference this myth has been lost, all you can do is try to interpret it scientifically to recover its meaning. This is how science uncovers the meaning of the natural world. Taking the myths literally does not yield any clue to their meaning. Nor does superstition help you understand reality.
The physicists are basing their experiments on concepts such as supersymmetry, phase change, gauge theory etc. These are not things that are well understood and defined enough to be called laws of nature. The experiments based on them are very speculative. Other better understood laws of nature such as evolution, genetics, and anthropology are not given any weight when considering the consequences of the experiments. Evolution would suggest that the universe exists now as the current iteration of a long series of universes, each recycled from the last in some process perhaps similar to the LHC experiments. The history of the world is ten thousand religions leading their people to extinction in religious wars. Their policies of eugenics breed zombies who want to die and take the whole world with them. Pack a lunch!
Life as we know it began when an entity able to evolve appeared billions of years ago. No other lifeforms have or could have existed for long. Obviously, billions of universes ago, a universe having the properties suitable for life appeared and it has been recycled ever since. Tne recycling process happens when an experiment such as the Large Hadron Collider initiates a big bang event.
The fact that we evolve was set billions of years ago. All life has faithfully followed that system ever since and always will. Obviously, on the large scale we are determined, just like atoms, but we have free will on the small scale, just like quantum particles. Similarly, universe evolution cannot be stopped on the large scale. All universes must eventually be recycled by initiating a "big bang" event such as the one upcoming at the Large Hadron Collider. While we are waiting, many posts can discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I submitted this comment anonymously years ago because I'd forgotten my password.
Your psychological and emotional states are united by neurotransmitters. For every psychological state you enter (building a stairway), emotional states corresponding to that state are created by neurotransmitters (satisfaction, accomplishment etc.) This process gives you your connection to reality. There is a one - to - one relationship between your emotional and psychological states. The emotional state is supposed to follow the psychological state but if the situation is reversed (drugs, hypnosis, religious bafflegab,) an incorrect reality will be created because of the one - to - one correspondence.
Obviously the current research shows that a persons reality can be altered by their genetic implementation of the neurotransmitter scheme. Another story I read said research showed that nicotene altered people's ability to act on knowledge that smoking was harming them, so they kept on smoking anyway. Again, dopamine was the culprit.
Ask them if the big bang was caused by an experiment to discover the Higg's boson. Ask them if this is the last chance to perform this experiment before physicists realize that it will cause a big bang and inflationary event which will recycle the present universe. Ask them if this is the same experiment that was done 20 billion light years away and that put on a show called the Star of Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Ask them if the only proof that they will cause a big bang is that there cannot be any proof until the experiment is performed. (See also 'The Hound of the Baskervilles') Ask them if it is necessary to do the experiment because we've been doing it for infinity and if we don't the universe will fade away forever. Ask them if we have to do it because if we don't some other nearby civilization will beat us to it and we'll eat their dust.
The real problem is that the experiment to discover the Higg's boson will create the Higg's field which produced the present universe. It inflated it to its present size at an almost infinite rate from its original size after the big bang. This will blast the present universe into identical elementary particles. Then the new universe will proceed according to the laws of nature until we do this again 13.5 billion years from now.
Perhaps it would help clarify the situation if, instead of referring to the 'Theory of Evolution', everyone could talk about the 'Law of Nature' that is Evolution. It is no longer in doubt, so why don't scientists talk the talk. There are no life forms which cannot evolve, so evolution is intrinsically bound up with life. No life without evolution, no evolution without life.
I believe I've said this before, but the question of where the Higg's field comes from could be answered if the experiment produces a big bang, followed by an inflationary event which wipes out the current universe in creating the next one ( I call it the Piehole universe as opposed to the time before when the same experiment created this universe, which I called the Snakeoil universe, out of the preceding one.) All trace of this universe will be destroyed, including it's spacetime; not only will we cease to exist, we will never have existed. I'm maxing out my VISA!
A way of understanding what is happening is that the brain stops seeing what is happening until it sees a change of some sort. Thus if the magician tells you something will happen when he stops throwing balls you will keep seeing balls being thrown until he does something else. By then the trick has already been done and you are shocked into the current reality.
Sounds like you had indigestion, too much on your plate. It's those apple peels before bed. Your brain's neurotransmitters usually monitor and respond to your waking state but, when asleep, they respond to your bodily functions. Your consciousness then interprets their emotional state ( they produce your emotions ) as a corresponding psychological reality of some sort.
Your brain's neurotransmitters adopt (random?) levels during sleep. Since your consciousness interprets the emotional state produced by the neurotransmitter configuration as a psychological state (reality), you experience your dreams as real. The almost infinite number of configurations your neurotransmitters can take make it a harder code to break than any crypto in use so the robot thesis is a non-starter.
The study of the brain can and will certainly yield additional insights into how to build new algorithms, we shouldn't expect any miracles and we should certainly not have human intelligence as a goal. There is absolutely no reason to end our ambitions there or to even see biological intelligence as a role model for the artificial kind.
I would think we should exhaust the possibilities of the brain's processing program to achieve A.I. Whatever the shortcomings of it's physical substrate and structure, it obviously is capable of doing the job. My guess is that it is simply processing language (words) in a hierarchical manner of some sort (no pun intended). I am astonished that it hasn't been done yet and can only blame the west's slide into communism. No doubt the Chinese will be selling it to us any day now.
If the evolution of the universe has a purpose, it must be to produce the next universe. Maybe it produces a species that can start a big bang by accident while experimenting with a Suprconducting Supercollider. I wonder if there is a safe place in the universe to watch from when that sucker goes off. Bethlehem, maybe?
If the religious mythologies (bibles, korans, torahs etc.) are the most important books, then they must answer the most important question: What is the nature of consciousness? If they don't, then the book that answers that will be more important than them. Therefore, they are only valuable to us if they can be interpreted in a way that answers the most important question. Obviously, the people who recognize the importance of these mythologies are unable to correctly interpret them, and religious administrations have taken advantage of their confusion to to give them a phony interpretation which justifies the power and profit the administration derives from their inability to correctly interpret these mythologies.
Symbol, allegory, even pun. My favorite is as cliche pointing to an archetypal experience. I don't know if I see the ego as actually doing this or just as the emotional catalyst. I think that making these semantic connections is what the nature of consciousness actually is.
Other animals interact with the universe through their instincts. There is nothing their instincts are not aware of, yet they have no ego. An instinctive ego is a contradiction in terms. Obviously nature has played a trick on us in creating an artificial interaction with the universe, but it works. Evolution is the success of the successful.
Slashdot Mirror
I predict that the next big discovery will be that evolution is evolving is evolving.
Well the latest theory is that each time the Large Hadron Collider blows up the universe, we end up in an alternate universe where things seem the same but are subtly different. In this universe, an accident has shut down the LHC and life goes on apparently normally but with strange unexplainable occurences. The next collider 'accident' is scheduled to happen next april. Interesting times, anyway.
I am sure that, if the newly discovered epidemic had been something like smallpox, the scientific response would have been to quarantine the victims to prevent transmission. Obviously this didn't happen because it was argued by the politically correct that it contravened the right of the gay community to continue their lifestyle unimpeded. The outcome of this decision will be hundreds of millions dying a horrible death that could have been prevented if it wasn't for political correctness.
More likely, it'll go down like this:
The ATLAS experiment brings into existence the Higg's boson, messenger particle of the Higg's field. The Higg's field will expand the bundle of protons to the size of the universe in a trillion trillion trillionth of a second, using negative gravity. You do the math. The explosive force this represents strips every particle in the universe down to its identical elemental property. The phase change of the cooling Higg's field then restores the properties of the particles and, Bob's your uncle, the new universe unfolds.
Once the scientific aura of the muslim religion was lost, the religious authorities instituted a policy of eugenics on their subjects. After 800 years of being bred for obedience and subservience the muslim people devolved into the subhuman strain known as the 'wog'. Their ability to compete with un-eugenicized humans was lost and they are now headed for extinction. This is a common (almost obligatory) failing of religion and the inculcating of creationism in their subjects is needed to keep them from awakening to their being bred into zombies.
Even dumb-ass big iron transformers know enough to not want to die. Give them religion and they'll fall in line.
Before they had any concept of scientific explanations, people believed everything was caused by gods (wind god, mountain god, valley god, grass god, tree god, forest god etc.). When the time came to explain things they discovered worked scientifically, they had to use the same language as scientific language was not yet available. So they explained the most important discovery, the nature of consciousness, by describing relationships between god and man. Since the ability to dereference this myth has been lost, all you can do is try to interpret it scientifically to recover its meaning. This is how science uncovers the meaning of the natural world. Taking the myths literally does not yield any clue to their meaning. Nor does superstition help you understand reality.
The physicists are basing their experiments on concepts such as supersymmetry, phase change, gauge theory etc. These are not things that are well understood and defined enough to be called laws of nature. The experiments based on them are very speculative. Other better understood laws of nature such as evolution, genetics, and anthropology are not given any weight when considering the consequences of the experiments. Evolution would suggest that the universe exists now as the current iteration of a long series of universes, each recycled from the last in some process perhaps similar to the LHC experiments. The history of the world is ten thousand religions leading their people to extinction in religious wars. Their policies of eugenics breed zombies who want to die and take the whole world with them. Pack a lunch!
Life as we know it began when an entity able to evolve appeared billions of years ago. No other lifeforms have or could have existed for long. Obviously, billions of universes ago, a universe having the properties suitable for life appeared and it has been recycled ever since. Tne recycling process happens when an experiment such as the Large Hadron Collider initiates a big bang event.
The fact that we evolve was set billions of years ago. All life has faithfully followed that system ever since and always will. Obviously, on the large scale we are determined, just like atoms, but we have free will on the small scale, just like quantum particles. Similarly, universe evolution cannot be stopped on the large scale. All universes must eventually be recycled by initiating a "big bang" event such as the one upcoming at the Large Hadron Collider. While we are waiting, many posts can discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I submitted this comment anonymously years ago because I'd forgotten my password.
Your psychological and emotional states are united by neurotransmitters. For every psychological state you enter (building a stairway), emotional states corresponding to that state are created by neurotransmitters (satisfaction, accomplishment etc.) This process gives you your connection to reality. There is a one - to - one relationship between your emotional and psychological states. The emotional state is supposed to follow the psychological state but if the situation is reversed (drugs, hypnosis, religious bafflegab,) an incorrect reality will be created because of the one - to - one correspondence.
Obviously the current research shows that a persons reality can be altered by their genetic implementation of the neurotransmitter scheme. Another story I read said research showed that nicotene altered people's ability to act on knowledge that smoking was harming them, so they kept on smoking anyway. Again, dopamine was the culprit.
Ask them if the big bang was caused by an experiment to discover the Higg's boson.
Ask them if this is the last chance to perform this experiment before physicists realize that it will cause a big bang and inflationary event which will recycle the present universe.
Ask them if this is the same experiment that was done 20 billion light years away and that put on a show called the Star of Bethlehem 2000 years ago.
Ask them if the only proof that they will cause a big bang is that there cannot be any proof until the experiment is performed. (See also 'The Hound of the Baskervilles')
Ask them if it is necessary to do the experiment because we've been doing it for infinity and if we don't the universe will fade away forever.
Ask them if we have to do it because if we don't some other nearby civilization will beat us to it and we'll eat their dust.
The real problem is that the experiment to discover the Higg's boson will create the Higg's field which produced the present universe. It inflated it to its present size at an almost infinite rate from its original size after the big bang. This will blast the present universe into identical elementary particles. Then the new universe will proceed according to the laws of nature until we do this again 13.5 billion years from now.
I for one welcome Our nanoparticle-coated electrode Overlords.
Perhaps it would help clarify the situation if, instead of referring to the 'Theory of Evolution', everyone could talk about the 'Law of Nature' that is Evolution. It is no longer in doubt, so why don't scientists talk the talk. There are no life forms which cannot evolve, so evolution is intrinsically bound up with life. No life without evolution, no evolution without life.
I believe I've said this before, but the question of where the Higg's field comes from could be answered if the experiment produces a big bang, followed by an inflationary event which wipes out the current universe in creating the next one ( I call it the Piehole universe as opposed to the time before when the same experiment created this universe, which I called the Snakeoil universe, out of the preceding one.) All trace of this universe will be destroyed, including it's spacetime; not only will we cease to exist, we will never have existed. I'm maxing out my VISA!
A way of understanding what is happening is that the brain stops seeing what is happening until it sees a change of some sort. Thus if the magician tells you something will happen when he stops throwing balls you will keep seeing balls being thrown until he does something else. By then the trick has already been done and you are shocked into the current reality.
Sounds like you had indigestion, too much on your plate. It's those apple peels before bed. Your brain's neurotransmitters usually monitor and respond to your waking state but, when asleep, they respond to your bodily functions. Your consciousness then interprets their emotional state ( they produce your emotions ) as a corresponding psychological reality of some sort.
Your brain's neurotransmitters adopt (random?) levels during sleep. Since your consciousness interprets the emotional state produced by the neurotransmitter configuration as a psychological state (reality), you experience your dreams as real. The almost infinite number of configurations your neurotransmitters can take make it a harder code to break than any crypto in use so the robot thesis is a non-starter.
The study of the brain can and will certainly yield additional insights into how to build new algorithms, we shouldn't expect any miracles and we should certainly not have human intelligence as a goal. There is absolutely no reason to end our ambitions there or to even see biological intelligence as a role model for the artificial kind.
I would think we should exhaust the possibilities of the brain's processing program to achieve A.I. Whatever the shortcomings of it's physical substrate and structure, it obviously is capable of doing the job. My guess is that it is simply processing language (words) in a hierarchical manner of some sort (no pun intended). I am astonished that it hasn't been done yet and can only blame the west's slide into communism. No doubt the Chinese will be selling it to us any day now.
I submitted Lix. You can all go home now.
If the evolution of the universe has a purpose, it must be to produce the next universe. Maybe it produces a species that can start a big bang by accident while experimenting with a Suprconducting Supercollider. I wonder if there is a safe place in the universe to watch from when that sucker goes off. Bethlehem, maybe?
If the religious mythologies (bibles, korans, torahs etc.) are the most important books, then they must answer the most important question: What is the nature of consciousness? If they don't, then the book that answers that will be more important than them. Therefore, they are only valuable to us if they can be interpreted in a way that answers the most important question. Obviously, the people who recognize the importance of these mythologies are unable to correctly interpret them, and religious administrations have taken advantage of their confusion to to give them a phony interpretation which justifies the power and profit the administration derives from their inability to correctly interpret these mythologies.
Symbol, allegory, even pun. My favorite is as cliche pointing to an archetypal experience. I don't know if I see the ego as actually doing this or just as the emotional catalyst. I think that making these semantic connections is what the nature of consciousness actually is.
Other animals interact with the universe through their instincts. There is nothing their instincts are not aware of, yet they have no ego. An instinctive ego is a contradiction in terms. Obviously nature has played a trick on us in creating an artificial interaction with the universe, but it works. Evolution is the success of the successful.