Re: The Emptiness of Theology

From: N:dlzc D:aol T:com \(dlzc\) (net_at_nospam.com)
Date: 08/16/04 

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 21:17:40 -0700

Dear Dale Trynor:

"Dale Trynor" <dalet@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote in message
news:IJVTc.95720$Np3.4609618@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
> N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc) wrote:
> > Dear Dale Trynor:
> >
> > "Dale Trynor" <dalet@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote in message
> > news:D6STc.95614$Np3.4601281@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
> >
> >>Robert J. Kolker wrote:
> >
> > ...
> >
> >>>Is your mind in your head? Is it in your spleen? Is it in your body?
> >>
> >>Dale Trynor wrote:
> >>The most logical guess is that its in the brain of course, asking where
> >>exactly and it might not even turn out to work that way.
> >>
> >>Long ago I came to the conclusion that it's most reasonable that it
> >>takes many souls to make up a mind and one finds reason to speculate
> >>that the mind uses some property of them as part and parcel of how a
> >>mind actually works.
> >
> >
> > Marvin Minsky, "The Society of the Mind"...
> Dale Trynor wrote;
> I didn't know that thanks. Did have Roger Penrows book someplace, only
> read some of it. Noted he didn't think computers would ever become
> Consciousness and that irritated me a bit. What wise person would ever
> say never especially since never is a really really long time and when
> they do make such claims written in stone they always seam to end up
> wrong. I wouldn't have minded so much if he just said computers as they
> are now as I might reluctantly agree with a touch of uncertainty.

Civilization has to stay at a certain level long enough for the computer to
develop sentience. In some sense Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was about
life brought into the lifeless. And it was *nothing* like the movies of
the 1900s. I was thrilled to see the depiction of Frakenstein's monster in
the movie "Van Helsing", as it was more true to Mary Shelley's intent.

> >>I am probably out of date on this but remember reading that the parts
of
> >>the brain where we experience images appears to be completely separate
> >>from areas where we experience sound and it was a mystery at the time
on
> >>why we seam to experience both phenomena at the same time. Perhaps soul
> >>quanta ( forgive my thinking I am making up terminology )have an
> >>essential behavior to enable this apparent sharing the experiences so
> >>that this is all possible and essential to its dezine.
> >>Unfortunately this is all mysticism now but one finds no reason to
> >>assume it will never become science when one figures out what the
> >>questions are and then dreams up the experiments to actually try.
> >
> >
> > Finding the areas of the brain excited by external stimuli, then
finding
> > the areas of the brain excited to cause action in the body, will not
find
> > the soul.
>
> It hopefully could lead to clues that would give one more ideas for
> theorys that might be testable. But I still think that using the whole
> human brain is overkill. I am willing to bet that if one were to
> understand everything about a parrots brain one would know everything
> one needed. Its quite possible that even insects might provide enough
> info and they are commonly not even considered to have brains alto honey
> bees and earth worms have a bit of one I have read. If they experience
> color for example its likely to be with the same process.

What you could call a soul cannot be constrained to "meat", so it cannot be
found in meat, and cannot be located activating meat. Indications are that
we are transcendent.

> > We are or are not more than the "meat", and experiment cannot do
> > more than investigate the meat.
>
> You may indeed be right however given a creative mind and some good
> information one never knows what theorys might develop and if they are
> good then it can in turn lead to some decent experiment.

"Do not seek him without." The crib does not contain the Creator.

> [snip]
>
> >>under 7 megabytes when its converted to bytes of 8 bits each.
> >>
> >>Somehow I cant see any way one could have an AI program of only 7
> >>megabytes to develop the whole range of flexibilitys of a human mind.
> >
> >
> > It should be able to be done with "analog" devices, and with much fewer
> > elements than 7 meg.
>
> Thats an interesting possibility what makes you think this. Are you
> talking about neural nets. Besides what I dont remember now I am really
> behind on this subject.

Neural nets might achieve the results desired. But there is a lot of
machinery built ino the brain, that is more specialized.

> >>AI would require far to large of a file size and so tax any sort of
> >>reasonably sized DNA for any sort of AI that could work with the
> >>flexibility of a mind. So the dezine of a mind is in part due to the
> >>ease of natures preference in repeating the same complexity over and
> >>over again and allowing adaption to take care of the rest of the
> >>complexity . Consciousness might be the result of these factors and
> >>might even apply for the simplistic insects.
> >>
> >>I have often emphasized that knowledge of a question is knowledge.
> >>Knowledge of an original question is original knowledge.
> >>For when trying to advance science, it helps to know what the questions
> >
> > are.
> >
> > Are you trying to say that the "soul", or your "self" is an emergent
> > behavior?

> Dale Trynor wrote:
> I have the impression that the abstract and that is a bit depending on
> the degree, ability to understand the self, the future and to put it
> into words might be considered emergent. I doubt if insects have much
> awareness of anything more than color and if the food smells good etc.
>
> There is one thing I do really puzzle over and thats got to do with how
> long might the half life residence time ( more made up terminology )
> i.e., how long might a soul quanta reside within a mind on average.
> We have no real idea if its a lifetime, years, or even just minutes and
> how would you know if only the mind itself has all of the memorys that
> tell us how long we are who we are and we cannot if its a lie.

No reason that it has to be any finite time at all for a given "spark".
For the most part, a lot of people are "running on automatic" now...

> Who is to say if the mind might be no more than a wet sponge in an ocean
> of moist air and then trying to guess at the resident times of its
> individual water molecules. We just dont know and can only assume.
> I dont even know if it would be a good thing to know if one cant do
> anything about it.

Would it matter if you could change nothing? Do you ever rent movies, and
watch them? Don't you enjoy the stories, even watch some of them over and
over? I feel like everything in our world are "facets" of a higher
existence. The concepts of recording history, a play, movies, automobiles,
even games are grey illusions of what brought us here.

> I am fairly sure that future technology might be able to find a way of
> controlled reincarnation if one could find a way to contain all of ones
> soul quanta. It may be necessary for experience to remain in effect for
> this containment to work however its doubtful if one would require
> thinking or anything even mildly complex. Its quite possible that one
> might be experiencing for example the color green and thats would be all
> thats required for containment.

No machine can touch what animates you. Reincarnation is milk from dead
cows. (Think about it... there is a joke in there.)

David A. Smith

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