"...precious little distinguished the neurochemical profile of love from that of obsessive-compulsive disorder."
"Everything you live, everything you see and touch and hear and taste, everything you think, belongs to this little slice of mush, this little wedge in your brain called the thalamocortical system. The neural processing that makes these experiences possible__we're talking about the most complicated machinery in the known universe __is uttterly invisible. This expansive, far-reaching experience of yours is nothing more than a mote, an inexplicable glow, hurtling through some impossible black. You're steering through a dream..."
"Consciousness is an end-user... Out of all the information our brains crunch every second, only a tiny sliver makes it conscious experience--less than a millionth, by some estimates."
Aren't you just loving the novel of consciousness trend and the proximity it underlines between real and surreal?
Showing posts with label novel of consciousness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel of consciousness. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Powers, Rucker, Gaarder, Sawyer, Griffith, Doctorow
Life versus simulated life rights? (ROLLBACK, Sawyer)
"How programmed are we?" (GENEROSITY, Powers)
Can a/the Maker be created or destroyed considering Higgs boson, the latest in a long list of names for God?
Opt out of procreation to eliminate aggression or individual psychological variation versus hive mind in moral instruction (ROLLBACK, Sawyer)
"Causal stories for a causal universe" (MAKERS, Doctorow)
John G. Cramer: Transactional Interpretation, or TI (FLASHFORWARD, Sawyer)
Planck length applied to time (ROLLBACK, Sawyer)
Aleph-null: First level of infinity (HYLOZOIC, Rucker)
Runaway branching feedback, i.e., everything caused by everything else (GENEROSITY, Powers)
"Causality run amok." (MAKERS, Doctorow)
Block universe = NOW = Illusion(FLASHFORWARD, Sawyer)
Mirror neurons: Hunches, intuition, adviser, interpreter (ALWAYS, Griffith)
Without conscious beings anywhere, does reality break down, all possibilities exist in a shimmering whiteness as in the Copenhagen interpretation?(FLASHFORWARD, Sawyer)
Physical nature of the universe: external material for its own self-awareness (ORANGE GIRL, Gaarder)
Quantum physics = "By-product of the level of resolution of our simulated world" (ROLLBACK, Sawyer)
Mirror neurons re-create experience of others inside ourselves...our own cortex/body. (ALWAYS, Griffith)
"Will and words make a difference." (GENEROSITY, Powers)
Evolution favors the pessimistic aggressor. (ibid)
Tulpa, lazy eight & think infinite thoughts (HYLOZOIC, Rucker)
New Work: Authors of our own destiny (MAKERS, Doctorow)
Information at speed of light while meaning at speed of dark (GENEROSITY, Powers)
Chaos Theory (small changes have big effects over time) versus Block Universe (timelessly existing four dimensional world)(FLASHFORWARD, Sawyer)
"The secret of all imagination is theft." "The secret of survival is forgetting."(GENEROSITY, Powers)
"Threatening images get our attention faster, and we have to work harder to look away." (ibid)
Sweeping and tagging with the unconscious to envision prioritizing the gestalt for later analysis by the conscious mind. "Panic is a system conflict" between conscious and unconscious mind, much like a robot trying to compute a human saying 'I always lie'. Aligning the conscious and unconscious mind engenders power and awareness of intention of the other reveals opportune moment for action. Apologies, explanations and/or threats equals TMI. Information is currency, power, a tool. Love = loss of autonomy. We tend to believe what is convenient and ignore the rest. (ALWAYS, Griffith)
1.base 2.torque 3.movement on the out breath; rest on the in breath 4. Speed>weight 5. Don't stop at the surface. 6. Range 7. Repeatable & sustainable action preferred
"How programmed are we?" (GENEROSITY, Powers)
Can a/the Maker be created or destroyed considering Higgs boson, the latest in a long list of names for God?
Opt out of procreation to eliminate aggression or individual psychological variation versus hive mind in moral instruction (ROLLBACK, Sawyer)
"Causal stories for a causal universe" (MAKERS, Doctorow)
John G. Cramer: Transactional Interpretation, or TI (FLASHFORWARD, Sawyer)
Planck length applied to time (ROLLBACK, Sawyer)
Aleph-null: First level of infinity (HYLOZOIC, Rucker)
Runaway branching feedback, i.e., everything caused by everything else (GENEROSITY, Powers)
"Causality run amok." (MAKERS, Doctorow)
Block universe = NOW = Illusion(FLASHFORWARD, Sawyer)
Mirror neurons: Hunches, intuition, adviser, interpreter (ALWAYS, Griffith)
Without conscious beings anywhere, does reality break down, all possibilities exist in a shimmering whiteness as in the Copenhagen interpretation?(FLASHFORWARD, Sawyer)
Physical nature of the universe: external material for its own self-awareness (ORANGE GIRL, Gaarder)
Quantum physics = "By-product of the level of resolution of our simulated world" (ROLLBACK, Sawyer)
Mirror neurons re-create experience of others inside ourselves...our own cortex/body. (ALWAYS, Griffith)
"Will and words make a difference." (GENEROSITY, Powers)
Evolution favors the pessimistic aggressor. (ibid)
Tulpa, lazy eight & think infinite thoughts (HYLOZOIC, Rucker)
New Work: Authors of our own destiny (MAKERS, Doctorow)
Information at speed of light while meaning at speed of dark (GENEROSITY, Powers)
Chaos Theory (small changes have big effects over time) versus Block Universe (timelessly existing four dimensional world)(FLASHFORWARD, Sawyer)
"The secret of all imagination is theft." "The secret of survival is forgetting."(GENEROSITY, Powers)
"Threatening images get our attention faster, and we have to work harder to look away." (ibid)
Sweeping and tagging with the unconscious to envision prioritizing the gestalt for later analysis by the conscious mind. "Panic is a system conflict" between conscious and unconscious mind, much like a robot trying to compute a human saying 'I always lie'. Aligning the conscious and unconscious mind engenders power and awareness of intention of the other reveals opportune moment for action. Apologies, explanations and/or threats equals TMI. Information is currency, power, a tool. Love = loss of autonomy. We tend to believe what is convenient and ignore the rest. (ALWAYS, Griffith)
1.base 2.torque 3.movement on the out breath; rest on the in breath 4. Speed>weight 5. Don't stop at the surface. 6. Range 7. Repeatable & sustainable action preferred
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Flash Forward's author SAWYER
The 09 fall tv line up includes Robert J. Sawyer's Flash Forward.
Who knew? Probably most people won't ever.
Sawyer's examination of consciousness, relativity and an infinitely self-aware universe poses a simple analogy, "...time is like a bunch of motion-picture frames stacked up, and 'now' is the currently illuminated frame."
A few things to look up in Wikipedia to enhance your viewing and/or reading pleasure:
Many-worlds interpretation MWI or block-universe concept (no point in time is any more important than any other), transactional interpretation TI.
Tipler The Physics of Immortality
The butterfly flaps in China and a hurricane forms off the coast of Africa:
"In chaos theory small changes have big effects over time."
Higgs boson
And the proverbial tree falling in the forest:
"Without any conscious beings anywhere, reality breaks down."
"The strong anthropic principle said the universe needed to give rise to life and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics said it requires qualified observers, given what was now known about the interaction of neutrinos and consciousness, the solar-neutrino problem seemed to be evidence that the universe was indeed taking pains to foster the existence of such observers.
Who knew? Probably most people won't ever.
Sawyer's examination of consciousness, relativity and an infinitely self-aware universe poses a simple analogy, "...time is like a bunch of motion-picture frames stacked up, and 'now' is the currently illuminated frame."
A few things to look up in Wikipedia to enhance your viewing and/or reading pleasure:
Many-worlds interpretation MWI or block-universe concept (no point in time is any more important than any other), transactional interpretation TI.
Tipler The Physics of Immortality
The butterfly flaps in China and a hurricane forms off the coast of Africa:
"In chaos theory small changes have big effects over time."
Higgs boson
And the proverbial tree falling in the forest:
"Without any conscious beings anywhere, reality breaks down."
"The strong anthropic principle said the universe needed to give rise to life and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics said it requires qualified observers, given what was now known about the interaction of neutrinos and consciousness, the solar-neutrino problem seemed to be evidence that the universe was indeed taking pains to foster the existence of such observers.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sawyer's WWW:Wake
From the first mention of Julian Jaynes Bicameral Mind, it was a kind of "he had me at 'hello'" kind of reading.
The young protagonist asks in the paragraph immediately preceeding the mention, "And who decides what to leave in and what to leave out?" An interesting query to be followed by an helicoid reference to a study of human consciousness.
Caitlin reads Homer noting he, like she, is blind. Iliad and Odyssey not withstanding, Sawyer's brief reference to the importance of self-reflective thought as mirrored in western literature's two early representatives, speaks to the layering of ideas that makes Wake worth more than a cursory read.
Autism, Helen Keller, AI, and "I know I exist...because you exist" becomes Sawyer's invitation to participate in the ongoing philosophical question of Being aka ontology.
As Caitlin learns to apply her experiential awareness to its corresponding words, Sawyer works very hard to repeat his theme in different ways to present thoughts and ideas difficult to communicate because the thoughts and ideas themselves and words used to discuss them are the subject of discussion. To think in terms of colors as "flavors of light" requires a combination of sensory understanding and logical reasoning and gives us "insight" into the mechanisms involved in processing reality.
Hameroff, Penrose, cytoskeletons, microtubules, tubulin dimer, cellular automata: this is the reason I read sci fi. Shannon entropy, Zipf plots, Doug Lenat, synsets on WordNet and information theory: this is why I love cyberpunk.
The young protagonist asks in the paragraph immediately preceeding the mention, "And who decides what to leave in and what to leave out?" An interesting query to be followed by an helicoid reference to a study of human consciousness.
Caitlin reads Homer noting he, like she, is blind. Iliad and Odyssey not withstanding, Sawyer's brief reference to the importance of self-reflective thought as mirrored in western literature's two early representatives, speaks to the layering of ideas that makes Wake worth more than a cursory read.
Autism, Helen Keller, AI, and "I know I exist...because you exist" becomes Sawyer's invitation to participate in the ongoing philosophical question of Being aka ontology.
As Caitlin learns to apply her experiential awareness to its corresponding words, Sawyer works very hard to repeat his theme in different ways to present thoughts and ideas difficult to communicate because the thoughts and ideas themselves and words used to discuss them are the subject of discussion. To think in terms of colors as "flavors of light" requires a combination of sensory understanding and logical reasoning and gives us "insight" into the mechanisms involved in processing reality.
Hameroff, Penrose, cytoskeletons, microtubules, tubulin dimer, cellular automata: this is the reason I read sci fi. Shannon entropy, Zipf plots, Doug Lenat, synsets on WordNet and information theory: this is why I love cyberpunk.
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