I finally realized who Johnny reminds me of.

Chris Langan, For those who don't know, he's a pseudo-intellectual with pretend knowledge of every subject, a claimed super high IQ and very good at spewing the exact same type of word salad nonsense Johnny does.

(May 18, 2025 at 12:49 pm)Nay_Sayer Wrote: I finally realized who Johnny reminds me of.

Chris Langan, For those who don't know, he's a pseudo-intellectual with pretend knowledge of every subject, a claimed super high IQ and very good at spewing the exact same type of word salad nonsense Johnny does.

Is that Bel's real name?????  

(May 18, 2025 at 12:37 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 17, 2025 at 10:26 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: The question that needs to be asked is if information follows the same laws as the physical world and if there are any additional rules that might change the behaviours. A computer is pretty inert until it's fed just the right pattern of information. If we view the mind similarly, then it's reaction to external information might not be expected to conform to physical laws.

I like that you bring up information, because I do lean heavily in the direction of informational realism. I view all reality as fundamentally informational, so that things like matter arise from informational structures and informational states.

So if I were to give a rough description of how I interpret reality, I would argue it goes something like this:

1. Information is the foundation.
2. Integrated information creates consciousness.
3. Consciousness abstracts or instantiates the physical world from information.

That works reasonably well for the perceptory reality that exists inside of our heads. The information still needs somewhere to live, a physical medium. 

think that humans may represent a very strange case where the information in our heads has hijacked the system that was originally built by the information in our DNA. Four billion years of replication and evolution just to get it all smashed by some meme complex with delusions of grandeur.

(May 18, 2025 at 11:48 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You'll find it very easy for me to believe that evolutionary biology determined the nature of our consciousness as the function or range of biological machinery.  If our brains can make it, though, it stands to reason that any comparable structure could as well, whether it's of biological or evolutionary origin or not.

Yes, that is one possibility. My own opinion is that you can't have consciousness without an evolved self, and you can't have an evolved self without life.

I talked with one scientist (an atheist) who believed that our consciousness is our self. I had to disagree with him, since I think the self is much older evolutionarily. Self-seeking (surviving, thriving, propagating) is essential to life in any form, conscious or not. Consciousness is simply another evolved means to the same ends.

What seems like consciousness in machines is more like performing certain programmed functions whether they serve any particular self-interests or not. The self-interests which may be programmed into them are optional and not essential.

There's probably not as much daylight between our views as the language we use to express them would suggest. More so between our views and Johns, but still not as much as christianese might suggest.

Imagine god (or us) as step 3 is a functional description of the creative act. Likely, still ridiculous, but it does explain the rationalizations thusfar as parts in a web of belief in ways that these many pages of disposable objections and botched tqs do not, and cannot. None of that is operative in this disagreement. John believes what he does because he believes -this stuff-.. (and not, for example, because he really doesn;t know what the word propganda means or really doesn't believe there's such a thing as christian propaganda distinct for "any advertisement for any ideology"... if he didn't believe this stuff he may still believe other christian stuff but not the christian stuff he specifically believes and implicitly premises his views upon...certainly not for the litany of fallen soldiers thusfar. It's a psychological protection mechanism...and John, being a trained pro, knows this...or, you know...should.

To wit, Johns free will can be free even in a sea of unfreedom and even if it's products look like that sea because, fundamentally, consciousness is the prime mover. Whether that's god consciousness, or our own. Mechanics are a sideshow. Instantiation is meaningless. Evolutionary biology is irrelevant. Consciousness does the physical, and not the other way around, and so the physical is not the truthmaker in a (or any) given scenario. What makes it "free" is precisely that consciousness is doing it. Not any disparity in process or disparity in fact. The so-called physical rules are just whatever a consciousness determined. Long story short, he doesn't have a problem with determinism, he just thinks ghosts are the determinor, rather than prior (physical) circumstances and events.

He's a lying piece of shit, sure...but for whatever that's worth, he thinks being genuine about this nonsense would seem worse than just telling his ridiculous truths.

(May 18, 2025 at 2:22 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: The information still needs somewhere to live, a physical medium. 

I think most people would agree with this. But, at least conceptually, I don't see how anything could be or exist without information. A simple stone, by its very existence, is rich with information that defines what it is and what it isn't, almost inseparably so. To be is to have information. When physicists study matter and energy what they seem to be doing is observing, or even extracting, their information content. When people talk about the laws of physics (not in the descriptive sense) they are talking about the underlying rules of the universe; if those rules are anything, they have to be information.

If we conflate information and states sure....but the history of just this one rock shows that things can exist in states for quite some time before they ever qualify as information. There was less computation going on 70 years ago than today, and even less 7 billion. The rules are interactions between states. Not the willing of ghosts. This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about when I mention the secularization and indoctrination of contemporary believers - things which are better explained by their place in time and geography than in it's descriptive accuracy in some or any exterior world. Dial the clock back and everything was clocks. Today it's quantum computing.

(May 18, 2025 at 7:14 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: He's a lying piece of shit, sure...but for whatever that's worth, he thinks being genuine about this nonsense would seem worse than just telling his ridiculous truths.

I had to remove my "like" because you added this insult after the fact.

I am no mind-reader and have explored similar beliefs myself.  There are reasons why they are incorrect IMO, and research to support those reasons, but all of that takes time to learn.

Many people do live in their imaginations, or speculations if you prefer.

That's okay. I'm also not a mind reader. John sometimes drops this stuff and edits it out. Huh John? Personally, I'm far more accepting of weird, and even wrong, beliefs than I am of endless posturing and disingenuity. Half of my family is born again and the other half is pagan, after all. I'm used to whacky shit.

(May 18, 2025 at 7:49 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 18, 2025 at 2:22 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: The information still needs somewhere to live, a physical medium. 

I think most people would agree with this. But, at least conceptually, I don't see how anything could be or exist without information. A simple stone, by its very existence, is rich with information that defines what it is and what it isn't, almost inseparably so. To be is to have information. When physicists study matter and energy what they seem to be doing is observing, or even extracting, their information content. When people talk about the laws of physics (not in the descriptive sense) they are talking about the underlying rules of the universe; if those rules are anything, they have to be information.

I think that you hit it there. The information that is contained within the rock is the rock. Neither the rock nor the information about its long and tawdry history can be separated one from the other without both of them becoming something else. It's probably only with the advent of sentients that the information is able to finally get out and stretch its legs. Prior to that, it was stuck in that rock for all of time, fixed to its medium like a fly in amber.