Science Fiction and Fantasy

Science fiction and fantasy are intriguing, but more so is the reaction toward and admiration of it. Unfortunately I’m not really a big reader (at all), but I’ve been looking for books or stories of the introspective sort - science fiction that is not built upon the fantasy of what is not there but on the convoluted perception of the reality that is already there.

There are so many stories of time travel, alternate universes, stories of the dead, stories of the extraterrestrial, stories of superpowers and things of all sorts that are not believed to exist in ordinary realities. People seem to be so drawn to this - fantasy, they call it - science fiction fantasy because it seems to be to some extent scientifically possible, but nonetheless does not “exist” so to stay under ordinary circumstances, and so it exists only as “fiction”. But why? Why are they so drawn to these fictional descriptions that are built upon their concrete perception of reality and so in turn aren’t really alternate realities at all? Why it is that they become so fascinated by things that are no different than their already concrete perceptions of the universe, so different but superficially - their idea of an “extraterrestrial being”, beings, whatever of similar nature - but what they build hardly ever if at all exceeds their perception of what consists of their possible reality. Why have they not explored the infinite loop of their own “ordinary” reality from there built true psychological thrillers? (Their thrillers seem to be limited to ideas of serial killers of convoluted identity and murders, deaths, of some sort, but only superficially). 

Will someone please introduce me to any book, story, writing, fictional perception of any sort that is not just another superficial manipulation of superficial perception? I am really tired of ideas of “aliens” that are basically no different from humans and “time travel” that bares no allusion to the mystery of reality whatsoever. Where are the right places to search? Are people’s imaginations really this confined?

Vis Imaginativa

Science - what ever happened to the experimentation of mind and reality through first-person exploration with the power of imagination? Where is the hope in an all-objective method when reality can only be perceived subjectively?

Chronicles of Life and Death

Following the previous commentary on “death is the only certainty”, the following chronicles -

People fear death. Why? People die. But do they?

Yes, I understand the sadness, aloneness that is perceived from the prospect of “death” with respect to “leaving this world”, but is that really why people are so death-aversive? Is it the fear of unknown? But what about for people who have already decided what to believe in with certainty? Can they still not be quite sure? Or is it the fear of uncertainty itself? Or rather, not really a fear, but simply an uneasiness caused by uncertainty? But uncertainty isn’t all bad either, in fact it’s the best thing ever sometimes, but of course that all depends, because it is not the uncertainty itself that causes any reaction but rather the all the infinite number of unfalsifiable theories that one could create, the perception, experience, and subjective value of each of them that cause the reactions. Here are just a few, stemming from our familiar friends, life and death:

People fear death. But what they do not realize is that they assume that they are alive. Not only do they assume that they are alive, but also that everyone else around them that “looks” alive is alive, that everyone who looks alive has never died, that they themselves have never died, and that you can only die once in a single lifetime. They no nothing about death, and consequentially nothing about being alive. They know nothing about anything, including the fact that they know nothing (which is the problem). They completely unknowingly make assumptions, millions of them without ever realizing that they are assumptions. These assumptions make them feel safe and secure as if they “knew” what was going on, what went on, and what would perhaps happen, and even if they did wonder once in a long while whether they were actually “alive”, they associate “probability” with it as if they understood anything about causality, induction, or being the cat inside Schrödinger’s box. 

Well scratch all of that. This is your reality (and just one of the many many infinite infinite sets) - fascinatingly, terrifyingly, and unfalsifiably so:

1. You are not alive. You are dead. You cannot die because you are already dead. You could “die” as many times as you wanted, but you could never cease to exist. You never remember exactly what it is like to die, but every instant in time you are constantly dying and continuing to exist, in which case it would be completely meaningless to call yourself either “dead” or “alive”. No matter how much you want to or don’t want to cease to exist, you cannot because once you exist, you exist, and for all you know, was there ever a beginning? Would there ever be an end? In this universe of yours, other people die and cease to exist, in your universe, but what about you? A state that you are not in remains and can only remain in a state of uncertainty until you reach that state - but then there would remain infinite uncertainties for all the other states as well.

2. You can and do remember every single time you’ve ever died - so many so many times, but each time you still continue to exist. No one else outside of yourself will never know that you “died” except for you. The difference from the first universe is that you believe that you “remember each time what it was like to die” that is, when you ask yourself “how did I die the last time I died?” then your mind would generate an answer that the inhabitant of Universe 1 would call “just your imagination” but you, the inhabitant of Universe 2 would call “what actually happened” because you further drop the assumption that “things that randomly pop into your mind have no actual meaning and/or could not have actually happened” i.e. “what” exactly causes those “thoughts” that follow sequentially, randomly, at will or not at will?

3. All of the above in Universe 2, but now sometimes you are dead, and sometimes you are alive, you just don’t know when. You could define being dead as being in a universe perceived to be exactly the same as though you were alive, but everyone that you see in the dead universe would also be dead and experience universes of type 2. You’d never know when you were dead or when you were alive since they would be perceived to be exactly the same, and you could also never cease to exist.

4. Same as Universe 3, except when you ask yourself whether you are “dead”, you can decide to believe that the answer did not pop out randomly (or it did) but whatever you happen to believe in that moment (whether or not by “choice”) is what would be your state of being dead or alive.

(Now, the question of whether you would continue to be “alive” or “dead” in the additional universes of other people generated while you “died” of course remains uncertain and has, for all purposes, nothing to do with the state of yourself in your own universe. But that’s already assuming 1) that universes of different people exist completely separately as infinite sets freely generated and destroyed and 2) other people’s universes even exist at all. In other words, if you want to go about experiencing “dying” infinite times just because you happen to believe you won’t cease to exist, you still need to take into account the uncertainties associated with those possibly existing universes of other people if you care about the emotional impact of your “death” on others - well, unless you are able to invariably believe that they don’t and will never exist.)

As you can see, with each addition level of abstraction, a.k.a. killing of concrete assumptions, the prospect of asking additional questions and answering of unfalsifiable possibilities becomes increasingly ”meaningless”, since the bottom line would simply be that the state of anything could at most be completely dependent on “what you happened to believe in the moment”. So I suppose most people, even if they were in the habit of questioning everything, would stick to believing the assumptions that “made the most sense”. But for me? How could I possibly have the slightest clue what that meant if my only infinite set of uncertainly experienced subjective universes were my own? Or are they?

Uncertainty is the Only Certainty (Death is NOT)

I saw a picture of this flying public artwork thing by Sebastian Errazuriz, and it intrigued me a little - it seemed to carry a lot of conceptual significance. (I’ve been questioning the significance and interpretation of conceptual art and design more and more ever since the time I approached that fashion designer guy to tell him how intrigued I was by his geometrically complex constructions, only to awkwardly find that he had no idea what hyperbolic geometry was and that his inspiration came purely from what he thought to be visually interesting, but this is different.) This flying all-caps sentence was extremely interesting to me not for the content itself, but the extent of further inquisition it raises - “death is the only certainty” - is it really now?

What I mean is not that there could be other certainties in life, but seriously, how could anyone ever assert that “death” is a certainty if no living person has any idea what death even is? I’ve come to realize that whenever anyone speaks any sentence, my mind immediately asks a million why’s and why not’s so quickly that it escapes my conscious awareness, but the most important ones pop out to my attention. This one especially. “Death is the only certainty” - forget the “in life” part, that makes it even more incredibly nonsensical, but sometimes I simply do not understand how people could completely overlook so, so many questions out there, making billions of assumptions every nanosecond of their lives without ever.. wondering - it’s absolutely incredible.

I have no idea how people, especially philosophers and other people doomed with a bunch of “knowledge”, just go around making these statements, statements of all different kinds, all consisting of words and concepts, concepts that they have absolutely no understanding that they have no understanding of, as if they had the slightest clue what they were actually talking about - this is just bizarre. But forget whether the people will ever have any hope of understanding. What I’m interested in is the curiosity of the statement and why/how it could possibly seem like a “true” statement to anyone.

“Death is the only certainty.” Rule #1: If you’re making a statement of any sort that you believe to have any relevance to anything at all, you have to understand what the words mean. Rule #2: Words about fundamental things have little meaning if any at all simply because by nature you have no idea what anything means, especially not if you want to put it in words. (Well, of course these rules have no meaning either, but the point is that I am frequently really bothered by the seemingly extreme ignorance of educated grown-up people, and I would like to point them out just in case.) So anyways, “death” - what in the world is “death”? Forget death, you want to say that it’s the state of ceasing to be alive? Well what in the world is “being alive”? What is the state of being “alive”? What does it mean to say that I am “alive” if I have no idea what it means to be “dead”?

Now, there is a very big difference between what it means to “be dead” versus the action of “dying”. The flying sentence seems to be talking about the latter. So we as “living” people have plenty of knowledge of what it means to die, perhaps physically, perhaps spiritually perhaps both, but not only do we know nothing about what happens after the act of dying, but there is in fact *no* possible way of knowing unless you are already in the state of being “dead”, and I mean exactly that. There are a series of infinite issues concerned with the state of “being dead” that basically reduce to 1) the act of other people dying outside of yourself has absolutely nothing to do with what it means to either “die” or “be dead” yourself 2) the act of “dying” as far as the word seems to be concerned, is the transition from being “alive” to being “dead”, but how on earth can we possibly begin to understand what it means to “die” if we have no idea what “alive” and “dead” are, i.e. 3) “I am alive” is an assumption - how in the world would I know if I’m “alive” if I have no idea what it means to be “dead”, in other words it’s just as meaningful to say “I’m dead” as it is to say “I’m alive”.

If you think about it, it could get as complicated, confusing, nonsensical, and completely meaningless as you want, but really all this is really doing is just creating another infinite set of unfalsifiable models of existence/reality/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. That’s the fun in these sentences that concern the fundamental nature of reality (which is really completely meaningless because it is all meaningful and vice versa). 

So start from the sentence “death is the only certainty in life” - bull shit!!! (But the most meaningful bull shit ever because it is completely meaningless, obviously, which is a good thing.) Everybody is going to die - false - but not true either, just unknown, uncertain, and completely meaningless. People “die” (or seem to anyways) outside of yourself, but just like anything else, that’s go absolutely nothing to do with dying with respect to myself. And now let me just create a few more fascinatingly magnificently terrifying and amazing theories of “life” - I could write a mansion full of books on this - novels, fiction, but not really, or not at all. Actually I’ll just write another post devoted to that.

Point being, “death is the only certainty in life” - what in the universe!?!?

"Death is the Only Uncertainty in Life"

Computers & Aliens: The Abstract (as opposed to the concrete)

Continuing on the topic of placebo universe, i.e. why is the placebo necessary/why can’t you just believe without believing in something? Basically, it’s a concrete vs. abstract concept. Concrete (or supposedly concerte) concepts are a lot narrower than abstract concepts, which is also why abstract models become what I would call “higher level” on the hierarchy - because they encompass more by becoming looser.

What is a concept? How do you define any concept? When you give (or attempt to give) something a “definition” or “meaning”, it becomes more concrete, i.e. you seem to have a better “grasp” of what something is.. but really? Sometimes the opposite happens, and you realize how absurd it is to attempt to define anything at all, and you’re then left only with abstract uncertain unfalsifiable ideas. Ok sure, but then why do most human beings seem more accustomed to concrete concepts even though there’s no real “meaning” in that? Why is concrete preferable and more statistically apparent in thought patterns than abstract? Or what I mean is, why do the things that constantly swirl my mind hardly ever (if not never) stir any attention at all in the vast majority of other people in the universe? Is it because they’re not “real” people?!

I’d like to bring the topic to the human discussion of “mind”: What is mind? What is an intelligent being? What is having consciousness? In particular, computers and aliens: Can a computer have a mind/be consciously aware? Does intelligence exist outside of earth? These are all questions that human beings LOVE to ask, and seem to gain much pleasure from attempting to answer, but from my perspective, it’s absolutely absurd!!!!

Humans talk about minds and intelligence as if they had the slightest clue what “mind” and “intelligence” even are (just like they talking about what God is or isn’t). They invent definitions for what they think “are” mind/intelligence, which are clearly nothing more than “definitions” and then they have a battle of definitions and languages that touches on absolutely nothing beyond language and conclusions that have nothing to do with minds and intelligence at all. Actually that’s even the better type. Most people don’t even seem to think that far, that is, they don’t even attempt to concrete-ify the already abstractly existing ideas of mind/intelligence, but jump directly to the assumption that mind/intelligence is and can only be what we as humans “know” as mind/intelligence even though they clearly have no clue that they know nothing about what mind/intelligence is.

I’m really tired of people going after computers/robots and aliens having “human consciousness”. You “people” find it so difficult to form an abstraction of the concept of mind that you don’t even realize that you’re still caught up in the human bubble of experience that’s got nothing to do with what conscious awareness even means. Stop trying aliens out there that will comprehend in the exact same way that human beings do, because if they do, then they’re not even extraterrestrial intelligence anymore, they’re just human beings! And stop asking whether computers can be intelligent, whether they have the capacity to experience things the way humans do - if they could really do all of that then they’d be “human beings”, not “computers” and that’s got absolutely nothing to do with whether they’re consciously aware either!

Please, people - actually know what you’re talking about (i.e. know that you know absolutely nothing about anything at all) before you go of explaining things as if you had a clue what an explanation even is. Oh the trouble/joys of incomprehension of (human) comprehension.

The Placebo Universe

What is the universe? What is God? Do I believe in God? Do I believe in the universe? Do I believe in the power of my mind? Do I believe in belief?

In particular, do I believe in God? People ask this question as if they had the slightest clue what “God” is. People affirm as if they knew everything about what “God” is, and people deny as though they knew everything that “God” isn’t. I ask you, what is God? It is a word, no more, no less, but a word that has the potential to install belief in one’s mind like no other. What is strange is not the fact that people believe in or don’t believe in it, but rather the way they seem to “know” what they are or aren’t talking about.

What do I believe in then? I believe in the complete power of belief itself, and I believe that it has nothing at all to do what what anyone happens to believe in, but only everything to do with the act of believing. Human beings - they are indeed very peculiar. They seem to have so many different belief - they believe in so many different types of things - they agree and disagree on what they believe in, but they forget the one thing that gives their belief the power it has, that they simply believe [in something], be it “God”, nirvana, science, whatever.

Ok what’s the point? I’ll get there. Recently I found a group of meditation practicers and have been exploring the depths of consciousness myself. It’s been quite impressively rewarding, but I was somewhat surprised to find that the members of my group seemed to hold a firm belief that I didn’t - that is, the belief in the guidance of “Shifu”, the leader of a certain sect of Buddhism. Now that I’ve thought about it, I have absolutely nothing against it, but in the moment I was quite shocked at their seemingly unanimous belief that “without the guidance of Shifu, one could never attain the level of transcendance ultimately attainable”. I was confused because I thought Buddhism (as far as my knowledge of it) was all about the belief that anyone has the power to reach Nirvana, and that it is not in fact almost impossibly difficult to reach, but rather exceedingly simple since you reach it once you realize that it’s always been there. In short, I had no idea why this Shifu character was at all necessary, and why the others would not believe in the power within themselves as their source of transcendance.

But the answer is immediately apparent in the question (as always). Most human beings just seem to be used to believing in things outside of themselves. But this in turn has absolutely nothing to with the cause or source of power or ability. It is no more relevant to attribute the ability to transcend conscious experience to the self than it is to something outside of the self because it it not the object of the belief that matters. It is the act of believing. It is simply a statistical fact that most people find it easier to believe in something outside of themselves (rather than believe in themselves) and therefore carry that belief, and statistics remain no more than statistics. It’s got nothing to do with what you might call “truth”.

Perhaps the way I type this with such assertion is absurd because I type it as if it were the truth of the truth, as though there was a way to know what that even means, but it’s not. I do not propose it to be the truth, it’s simply a higher level model that has wider explanatory power than it’s narrower sub-counter parts. In other words: If you believe that God (exterior) is what’s all powerful, then your model (i.e. narrower model) does not explain why/how those who do not believe in God (exterior) are able to attain their wishes and vice versa for God (interior, i.e. yourself). But if the model (i.e. higher level wider model) simply says that the act of believing, but not the object, is the source of the power, then it does not contradict/exclude any data (since believers of everything are included).

So then the question is not why people need to believe in Shifu (the exterior) rather than believe in the power within themselves (since neither is relevant), but rather, why they need to believe in anything at all. Well, then ask what does it mean to “believe” without “believing in something”? How does that even begin to make sense? But it’s not a matter of making sense or not, that’s just the way human beings are used to the concept of “believing” whatever that means. 

And finally, what is God? What is the universe? What is consciousness? What is any object of any belief? IT IS A PLACEBO! It’s a purposeless place holder that exists to complete the concept of “belief” and carry out the power of “belief” without actively serving any “cause”. Quite simply put: Someone has a headache. You give him placebo pill, and his headache goes away. It’s not that the placebo was not the cause of the relief but that it wasn’t what was necessary. What was necessary was the belief, and only the belief, in the placebo.

The Inverted Spectrum Problem of Language

And finally, this - probably one of the most powerful of all realizations - I’ve been debating quite some time whether to document this one at all since the very documentation of it would be completely ironic.

Language is a tool of communication. Language is a bunch of words organized in meaningful patterns. How do we learn language naturally? By hearing it and then utilizing it once we infer the meaning, over and over again. But the point is, when you learn your native language, you learn the meaning of a word by inferring it. The majority if not all words are learned by inferring the meaning through the context, hardly ever if not never through a given “definition”. In other words, there is no “definition” to any word or concept, but only the word itself. Words and the combination of them are then used to communicate as though they replaced the actual meaning of anything at all - as if an explanation through language is the equivalent of a “meaning”. 

But what is “meaning”? It seems as though you could give that question an answer, as if meaning had the same meaning to each and every person even though you have no way of possibly getting into another person’s mind and perceiving the meaning of meaning through their conscious perception (and even if you did, how would you know? since you would have given up your own conscious perception and forgotten completely that you aren’t actually that other person). Point being, meaning is a completely subjective experience of a word. Not just the meaning of “meaning”, but the meaning of any word at all.

Yes, you could attempt to give a definition to any word and ignorantly believe that you just proved that you agree on the meaning of that word with other people after checking that your definitions indeed match, but what in the world has that got to do with anything at all!! The definition is still a definition made of words, and how in the world am I supposed to know whether you comprehend that strand of words the same way I do? More straightforwardly, my red is red, you agree that red is red, but I have no possible way of knowing what “red” actually looks like to you. Same with any word, hence the “inverted spectrum problem of language”.

Anyways, that’s all trivial understanding, the point is - the conflict caused through disagreement in belief - how does this make any sense at all? How could you even infer that someone has a belief contrary to yours when you don’t even know how that person comprehends the words he/she is speaking to you to convey his/her beliefs? For example, a reasonable number of people seem to dislike the way some religious people attempt to spread their beliefs. They dislike it because the religious people tend to explain their beliefs as though they were the one and only true “truth” even though there is clearly no way of knowing what truth even means when you’re inside the box. Well then the problem is, however, that it is not that religious person who is making you comprehend his/her words the way you are, it is you who is comprehending the words.

So take the sentence “if you don’t believe in god, you won’t go to heaven” if you disagree or if you agree with it, what are you actually agreeing with? Do you actually think that you agree with the idea, the belief that someone else has attempted to implant in your mind? Or course not! The only thing you ever comprehend from that sentence is what your mind comprehends for itself, it’s got not the slightest thing to do with what the person who said it “meant” at all. What does the word “god” entail? What does the word “heaven” entail? What if you happened to disagree with religious people on what “god” and “heaven” meant even though you agree or disagree with that sentence? You can’t know anyways, so how could it possibly matter?

Too often religious believers will tell you that you must have faith in order to experience the extraordinary. They will describe the supernatural spiritual awakening that they’ve experienced, and their indescribable encounter with god. Atheists will immediately combat the idea, dismissing it as ludicrous because it does not survive the scientific method - which advocates the “objective” perspective in everything. But what you don’t realize is that the religious believer says you need to experience it for yourself. They do everything they can to describe /their/ experiences, and what /they/ think that you should experience or believe - yes, but using what? WORDS! How on earth would they know how you happen to comprehend/believe the words they spoke to you, and how on earth would you know what they comprehend/believe compared to what you think they comprehend/believe from their words?

Doesn’t anyone actually realize that we live in a world of unfalsifiable assumptions? The finger that points to the moon is not the moon. What is the moon? Something that’s not the finger pointing at it. It’s completely ridiculous that there are so many disagreements, conflicts, fights, wars, over whose finger is actually the moon. Actually, it’s absolutely insane. I don’t understand any of this. Humans are such bizarre creatures, sometimes I believe that they’re not real at all - they’ve got no consciousness. Well, maybe it is like that then, is it not? The only people who are actually conscious are the ones who understand that all that could possibly be understood is that there can be no understanding at all. How strange - I wonder how I ever got to this universe to start with..

Time Without Human Perception

Continuing the topic of - what the heck is spatial position when your eyes are closed - - what the heck is the passage of time when you have no perception?!

How do you know that time is passing by? The second hand on the clock moves. Stuff moves. There are sounds. There are actions. Okay so what about when you close your eyes and eliminate all sound - well yeah of course you know that time is still passing my because you perceive your thoughts - thoughts moving by, thoughts. But what about when you eliminate all thoughts and simply sit only as the observer? How do you know that time is passing by? What does it then mean for time to pass by? If there is no sight, so sound, no thought, what is left to perceive? Do you then perceive nothing? Does time then stop existing?

Well first of all why should we assume that there is nothing to observe without sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, thought, feeling? Is that really all that we perceive? What about the perception of time? What about the perception of space? What does that mean? Is the perception of space and time only a by product of our perception through other senses? What becomes of - what are - space and time when you’ve got no normal perceptions left to observe the universe with? 

Does time stop? Is that what they call being entirely “in the present” when you lose all sense of passage of time? Is it then not only a metaphorical portrayal of the moment, but instead a literal one? And when the normal way of perceiving is non-existent, wouldn’t it be absurd to suppose that the rest of the universe does not exist? Or would it be absurd to suppose that it did? Does the universe exist independently of my perception? Or rather, does it exist independently of my conscious perception? Well the answer to the latter is most certainly uncertain and unfalsifiable, but the answer to the first one - as long as I am still consciously aware, then I obviously still observe something, and that something is the universe, so the universe still exists, but in a way that is entirely different from what we “assumed” it to be under our normal way of perceiving.

How many times do I have to repeat the phrase, the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon (it’s just a finger pointing). Your perception, your description, your model of the universe is not the universe, but it is all that your universe will ever be - what you believe it to be, that it is. But the question is, how do you escape perception and perceive the universe? That’s the universe I attempt to explore a little further every day, every hour, every minute.

The Universe Without Eyes

Anyways, what I wanted to wrote down was this:

1) When you close your eyes, how is it that you know where the different parts of your body are? When you close your eyes, you still feel your fingers, your hands, arms, body, legs, feet, yes. But more importantly, you still feel their relative position to each other - why/how? Is it only because you remember where your hand goes and where your foot goes, etc.? Well that sounds absurd does it not? Yes, you feel them, most certainly, but HOW do you feel RELATIVE POSITION? How do I know that when I close my eyes, my feel aren’t positioned above my head? How do I know that my hands aren’t 5 kilometers away even though I can feel them exactly as they were when I had my eyes open and saw them half a meter away from my eyes?

2) How is living in a 3D world relevant at all once you close your eyes? What does position mean when your eyes are closed? Distance, direction, dimension, how do I know that there are 3 dimensions when my eyes are closed? Well, I don’t, obviously. But then how to I begin to comprehend anything in 3 dimensions with a relative position to be when my eyes are closed? Yes, perhaps I’ve only seen things in 3 dimensions when my eyes are open, and therefore I only have experience of perception in 3D in “real vision”, but how has this got anything to do with the way I perceive anything when my eyes are closed? 

I’ll attempt to document the ideas I got from these questions later, but the bottom line is, how the hell do you even start comprehending anything in the normal human perspective when you haven’t got any eyes? What in the world is the universe even when you don’t have to see it through “eyes”?

Severe Lack of Dimension in Language

Haven’t posted in a really long time, partly because there are so many ideas that keep on popping up in my mind that I literally can’t afford the time to document all of them (especially because it’s a lot more time consuming to attempt to document them using words). Usually they pop out within a matter of seconds - the idea - but to document them is a whole different task, an act of translation, even, or more like a mapping. Language is so limited, I’m almost certain all it could ever do is provide a mapping - a 3D cube onto a 2D piece of paper - you lose one dimension, but you get the gist of the idea, although what you get is most certainly not a cube, but some random 2D arrangement of lines. Language is like the paper, except it’s not just one dimension lower than the actual idea that attempts to be portrayed, it’s i don’t even know how many dimensions lower. It’s just incredibly limiting, and most of the time I find it bewildering to even think that it’s at all possible to convey anything meaningful using language.

Language is a tool of communication - its primary purpose - but it is most certainly not the most ideal tool for communication. At times I wondered why I should even attempt to convey these ideas using language at all, but I suppose if the primary purpose of these posts is to document my ideas before they risk disappearing, then the inverted spectrum of language problem doesn’t really since I’m only trying to communicate with myself? Although if I were to forget completely the original idea one day and then re-read this post, that would be a different story. But I’d like to believe that that won’t ever happen because I like to believe that it’s indeed not possible to forget anything at all, and therefore I won’t. 

Opposites and Field

What is the difference between presence and absence if there is no definite way of defining the properties of the background? On a separate note, the naming of a charge as positive or negative is completely arbitrary, and there is no inherent absence or presence of “charge” in that sense just because the electron has been arbitrarily decided to carry a “negative” charge. Both positive and negative charge carriers carry charge, they just happen to be opposite charges (whatever that means) and cancel each other out when present in equal quantities. Same goes for particles and anti-particles, they’re the exact same thing except in the presence of equal quantities of both, there are no particles. Ok, that’s just for things that have an exact opposite, but that’s not really what the question is asking at all - what about things that don’t have opposites, where the only contrast is the absence of that thing?

What the hell am I talking about? Well, photons, for example, have no anti-particle. The presence of photons indicates the presence of light in an otherwise photon-less background (which is defined as a non-photon saturated.. “space”, I guess). In a dark room I see a beam of light, but what is the difference between seeing a beam of light in a dark room and seeing a dark line in an otherwise light (i.e. photon) saturated room? Seems like a pretty stupid question - obviously in one room there are more particles present (and at the opposite locations) than the other, but what if you just change your definitions such that “particle” actually means “absence of background (i.e., empty space?)” and “background” to mean “absence of particle” (assuming that the background in the second room is completely saturated by photons, which I don’t really know what that means, but anyhow..)?

What about just talking about the universe of a perceiver? So, when you walk into a room with a fan on and you stay there sufficiently long and then you turn the fan off, then suddenly you “hear” silence, which really just means all of a sudden you realize that you were actually in a room where the background was filled with sound waves, and then you sensed the absence of sound waves. When you turn the fan back on, you then hear the fan because the background was the absence (rather than) presence of sound waves. In other words, unless there is a disturbance to the state of the room, you would never know what was present or what was absent, and once there is, it’s only a matter of definition of whether hearing things is a matter of “hearing” or “not hearing”. That is, if we’re only concerned about how things are perceived (which is all we could ever be concerned about anyways), then there should be no difference between saying “when I hear people talk I’m hearing sounds” vs “when I hear people talk I’m hearing silence” depending on your definition of sound and silence. 

So whatever, what relevance does that have to anything at all? Is the background in the above image actually black or white? Keyword being “actually”. This is a trick question, but not really, it’s just a stupid question because what do you mean by “actually”? The question assumes that there exists independently (of perception) an “actual” universe where there are definite truths (which may or may not be true) but in any case is completely meaningless to argue since you CAN’T know the answer. Usually however, there is either more “presence” or more “absence”, and the one of which there is more we call “background”. (So in this case, I guess most people should think the background is white. But again, this is a rather meaningless distinction - black board, white board, who cares? as long as you can read the words.)

So what’s the point? Indeed, what IS the point? Is the presence of meaning only meaningful if we assume an entire universe of meaningless background or is the absence of meaning the only actual meaning that is present in the universe where every infinitesimally small occurrence is incredibly meaningful? More simply put, what does “meaning” mean? Do I really care? Reader - do you feel the official feeling of “trippiness”? Or should I say, the lack thereof, assuming that there is no real reason why some experiences of perception should be categorized as “trippier” just because the other experiences were experienced more regularly? Does anyone know why people are so distinctively unphased by the “usual” when there is clearly just as much of a reason to feel bewildered by what you usually experience as there is to what isn’t usually experienced? Naturally, the subsequent discussion would be of “what does it really mean to be good or bad”, but I leave that to the future and proceed to -

The Higgs field. Standard Model says that this is what gives particles their mass - the “presence” of a ubiquitous field. But if a field is everywhere, what’s the difference between being there and not being there? Seems like a stupid question - charges behave differently in the presence of an electric field - but then what’s the point of supposing the “presence” (i.e., existence, but I don’t know what existence means, we’ll skip that for now) of a “field”. Well, I suppose a field is (obviously) just another mathematical construct, an “interpretation” of “what is there” but then again “what is there” is/can only be what you define (and furthermore believe) to be there, right? What do I know? I need a better understanding of field (theories).

Turning a sphere inside out

Math is weird. How do you even begin to imagine how entire universes of concepts are translated into weird manipulations of.. variables? It’s kind of like language, it’s a miracle that language could convey anything at all. In fact it doesn’t, does it? But people (well, most people at least) seem to even “think” in language. No wonder no one ever came up with anything terribly insightful. Well, even if they did, they’d have no way of communicating it, would they? Well that’s a relief.

Dumbledore actually said something reasonably meaningful

“Of course it’s all in your head, but why should that mean it’s not real?”

And then say ok, define “real”. And it loses its meaning completely once again. But who cares about meaning or meaninglessness?

Theory as Art and as Escape (1)

Sometimes people don’t seem to understand why/how there is so much for me to think about. It’s like, once you’ve drawn a conclusion - which I seem to have (i.e., there is no objective truth in anything at all, and reality IS exactly what you perceive through belief subjectively) - what’s the point of continuing with all this theorizing of reality? What’s the point of theory if it’s just that? Where does it ever get you?

Well, I think I have two answers to these questions that aren’t really related: 1. It’s not as if I’m after some sort of answer (as I’ve mentioned over and over again), I just like becoming immersed in the process of it, thought. The product is always secondary if of any importance at all. It’s like art. 2. It’s not as if I can’t see reality in the “normal” not bewildered state that most people seem to see it, it’s kind of like a search for any possible reason at all to live in a reality, to morph my reality to something that is completely detached from “ordinary unquestioning perception”. It’s like a vessel, like an escape. From whatever reasons, I cannot stay put in “reality”.

I will elaborate:

1. I think I have come to believe that philosophy in the academic sense is terribly boring and rather meaningless. I cannot read “philosophy”* even though I guess you would classify what I write as philosophy wouldn’t you? Maybe I should just give it a different name. I’ll just call it theory. Theorizing. I am a theorist. That is what I’ll say I do.

I would like to speak of philosophy as a medium and compare it with a set of watercolors. Academic philosophy is like when you focus on all the techniques of painting and try to figure out and argue which techniques are better and which will allow you to paint the best picture of the universe and such. Theorizing (what I’m calling it) would be like just painting freely and losing it and not caring, just going with it for the sake of it just because the process is so incredibly captivating, and then ending up with some sort of picture of the universe that happens to be amazing anyways. Yes, you see the clear bias from my words, but I’m not arguing that academic philosophy is objectively meaningless. I don’t want to argue or “prove” anything. That has no point to me. It’s just my view on art. I do not think the former use of watercolors is what art is, and to me theory is an art where the medium is reality itself.

I think a great many people paint for the sake of perfection of skill and satisfaction in the production of a precise painting, but I don’t think that is what artists do. It seems strange to go and ask an experienced artist “Why do you paint?” “What is the point of continuing with painting if you already have such skill and have decided which techniques are your preferred?” “Where does painting ever get you?” So why should you ask me the same questions when reality is my set of paints? Don’t you understand the point of painting at all? Haven’t you ever painted anything yourself? Do you not know/can you not relate to what it feels like to paint?

I fear I have already presented myself as a terrible romanticist, but it pains me to think about how much the world (of artists) is missing out on the unbelievably extraordinary medium of reality. Talk of creativity - paints, pencils, music, words, whatever, those are just media, as is reality. But what is reality? With what could you possibly create with more freedom, more space for vision, more enchantment, wonder, than with the manipulation of reality itself?! How could anyone not realize!?

And then you would probably say, “What do you mean “manipulation” of reality? You can’t just change reality the way you create whatever you want on paper when you paint with watercolors.” But you would be missing the point! You can manipulate reality though! That’s what you do all the time! And I am NOT talking about it as if it were some sort of figurative thing. It is absolutely LITERAL!!*** (also see: reality the strange loop) You change reality into exactly what you (at the present moment) believe it is**. That is your creation. It is your work of art, just like everything else.

And how could I not be constantly addicted to this most inordinately immense field of freely floating imagination? Where would you possibly find more room for imagination than in the state of reality itself? This is infuriating! It’s like the most enjoyably possible explosion of my brain and my mind. It’s like, “Ughhhhhhhhhh, I can’t! All I can do is stare..”

But anyhow, this is why I don’t especially enjoy reading academic philosophy, academic “reality”. It’s like painters and painters painting so many paintings and for the primary purpose of presenting their painting as THE painting of the universe. That is absurd. It’s a painting. We enjoy its distinct aesthetic profoundly, but not nearly its attempt at persuasion. There is no “best” painting. The act of “comparison” based on subjective perceptions is bizarre. There are only paintings, all marvelous, magnificent, magical, each and every single one. That is why you keep on looking, living more paintings. Why would you just stop at one?

//Part 2 to be continued…//

*Most if not all of it angers/infuriates me. I cannot handle the restricted/narrow-mindedness of it. Can’t you at least leave your human mind behind first before you start floating in theory?

**This is why the inverted spectrum applied to perception of present moment time create a whole convoluted “mess” of overlapping realities assuming that other minds do exist, and other “realities” of all different natures would exist at the same instances in time (in space?). How? What?

***But of course - this is my universe, and this is what I believe. (And yes, of course it’s circular? What isn’t? What’s wrong with circularity? What’s not wrong about being non-circular?)

Questions with Answers

I think I’ve got it! People - people only seem to like to ask questions that have answers. They care about the “answers” that they believe to be the answers (but which are not actually answers since there can be no answers anyways, but they don’t realize).

They don’t really care about the questions, they just want the answers, something to stick with, something to stay grounded to. How could they possibly care about the questions that have no answers.. That’s absolutely bizarre!

The only questions that matter are the ones with no answers, but that’s all questions, since there are no answers, but no one realizes that there are no answers (except for some people, or maybe actually all people, but I wouldn’t know since I could never know - I just know what things “seem” like), and everyone only cares about “answers”. But the questions are so much more important.. The questions.. What is a question?

What is a question…

Speed of Thought Transportation and Eating

The previous couple posts were pretty disorganized, but basically the main idea is this - How (HOW!) do people go about their everyday lives without constantly being bewildered by the state of anything at all?

So when I start talking to any given person at any given time, I have a million things to start questioning, such as whether or not you exist, whether or not you actually have consciousness, etc., but in particular I was thinking about the question, if I assume that you have consciousness and do actually exist, how do I know that you are currently perceiving the present moment that I perceive as we continue with our exchange of words?

When I ask you a question, and I get a response, I am assuming that it is because you at this instant understand what I told you and you are attempting to communicate your thoughts to me. Yes, it is already a huge leap to assume that you even understand anything at all, but how could I possibly assume on top of that that you are in fact comprehending at this very instant? Furthermore, how do I know that I am comprehending and reacting to what I think you have just said at this very instant I am perceiving and not that this has already all happened to you in some other distant point in time, but I am only currently perceiving it in my instantaneous “present moment”?

It’s easy to make a physical comparison with the speed of light and how it takes information from the sun about 8 minutes to reach the earth, and so at the instant that humans on earth can receive and information at their “present” is has already happened on the sun. But that’s just a physical comparison. I’m not saying that there has to be some sort of physical medium for thoughts to be transported from mind to mind or anything like that, it’s just that, how can I assume?

Well, as with any question that I ever linger upon, that’s just the question. It’s absolutely no surprise, in fact it’s the only thing that’s ever expected (although I should never assume always). “How can I assume?” You can’t. It’s that simple, you just can’t assume (or not assume, or assume to not assume, or whatever). That’s all there is to anything, really. How much easier could it get? So I just go ahead and make as many hypothetical theoretically possible and unfalsifiable universe models in my head as I please.

But why? Is everyone’s question. “Why? What’s the point?” Well, “why not” is always the response, but that’s not really a response is it? But isn’t it? Why not? Because isn’t it in human nature to attempt to understand what you don’t already think you do? Well, maybe that’s the problem. Most people in the world think they understand everything that goes on in their everyday life, which is absolutely absurd! They start eating, put food into their mouths, chew, maybe comment how good or bad it tastes, and swallow! And they just swallow! Without ever being bewildered by the thought of what it means to eat, to taste, to feel hungry at all. They know the experience, but they’ve never understood it or ever seen the need to “understand” it at all!

What in the world does it mean to be hungry? What do you mean “am I hungry”? I don’t even know what it means to exist, how could I even begin to attempt to swallow a mouth full of food without becoming completely overwhelmed in attempt to understand what it even means to be hungry?!

And then they’ll probably combat me with the practically appropriate response “why does it matter?” “What difference does it make?” “Why should I care?” “What good would it do me to know what it means to be hungry? It is an absurd question to start with.” Well, I don’t know. I just don’t understand how this question could possibly not be of importance, and that’s when I stop talking. Change the topic. You wouldn’t understand. You’ve lived in your experiences of the universe for too long, haven’t you? But haven’t I? Why haven’t I become brainwashed yet like all the other grown-ups, and even children in the world?

Or better yet, I just wouldn’t ask you what it means to be hungry before we begin a meal. I don’t think you would understand. People don’t really understand because they think they do. The people who think they understand everything must know the least.. Or never mind it’s probably more like a Gaussian distribution for some reason. (Like with people who don’t actually know that they know nothing, like rocks and stuff, and people who know they know nothing on opposite ends of the spectrum, and people who think they know mostly everything but know actually nothing and don’t know they know nothing in the middle where the peak is.) People are just strange.

Inverted Spectrum II - Time

So back the the problem: Inverted spectrum does not just apply to colors. It applies to all perceptions, including the perception of space, time, and consciousness itself (well, yeah). I focus on the idea of the inverted spectrum problem as applied to the perception of time.

So just because I am perceiving the present moment instantaneously at this exact moment, how do I know that you or anyone in the world is also perceiving the same exact “present moment” at this point in time. You would always agree with me on “what is red” and likewise, you would certainly agree with me that “now” is now, but does that even have any meaning at all? So at this present moment - say 11:42:37:09 AM (UTC+8), Wednesday, August 22nd - that I am experiencing as the present moment, how do I know that you’re also perceiving this exact moment at the time that I’m perceiving it? Why should our times be synced? Why shouldn’t they?

(Of course this goes into a bunch of complicated problems such as whether time even exists at all, whether other people’s minds exist at all, etc. And also, there’s always the “I have no reason to assume why not” argument (that infuriates me, because please - actually listen to my argument. I never said I was arguing that we should assume that we all perceive different times or different colors or whatever. All I’m saying is that you can’t know if we do or don’t. I never said we had to choose a side. In fact I explicitly argue that neither side can be right/true. The nature of subjectivity.) But let’s just disregard that. I am only thinking about this problem because it brings me pleasure to be puzzled by it, and we’ll see what happens from there.)

So at any rate, if you didn’t perceive the present at the same present moments as me, does that imply an argument on the side that the mind is a separate entity from the body? Does it matter? How does this affect free will and causality? Do all conscious beings need to perceive the present in the same frame of present in order for free will to exist? Well, for “free will” as we know it, that seems to be the case, but already we have a million other problems because of our ill definition of “free will” - yet another definition. Free will is just a definition of something. It’s a human invented concept, just like logic and all other things.. 

Well, just because we invented a definition for the term “free will” does not necessarily imply that something such as what we define as “free will” does not exist in the universe, but that somehow seems unlikely because don’t all definitions have to be consistent, and if any description is internally consistent, does that not imply that it cannot be a complete definition? So point being, definitions are completely useless, meaningless, and irrelevant. Ok, let’s throw away the problem of “free will” and just theoretically suppose what it would be like in a universe where conscious perceivers perceived present moments at different present frames.

So like most other theoretical universes (where I can be sure of no nature of other people’s conscious perceptions) that I’ve thrown myself into, this one also seems quite lonely if I suppose that I’m the only person in the whole entire universe who is perceiving this present moment at the present moment.. What happened/happens to everyone else? That leaves room to suppose that I could indeed be everyone and everything in the whole entire universe, and there is no such thing as separate, different people with different conscious minds, because as “you” are reading this post in your present moment, that may not be my present moment or anyone else’s present moment at all. And so if there is no reason why any present moments should overlap at all, there is no reason why I can’t believe that at some point in time, I could experience every single present moment of every single conscious being in the universe. When “you” are reading this post, that is actually “me” just in a different location in space time and consciousness and reality.. But it’s still in the same universe. You can’t get out of the universe.

Yes, but again that’s just a theoretical universe, and I have absolutely no grounds to either believe or not believe the truth in it. There can be no arguments to prove or disprove a theoretical universe, so in the end it is a choice, isn’t it? The universe exists in the exact way I choose to believe.

Inverted Spectrum I (Rant)

A number of thoughts I haven’t really bothered putting in words, but I’ll start with this one: The inverted spectrum problem does not just apply to colors. It applies to everything, making it a lot “scarier” (i.e. detached from reality, or trippier, I like to say).

First, I would like to rant about something to get it out of my head: Like 20 years ago, I thought about the inverted spectrum problem a lot, which at the time of course I did not know existed as a generally known philosophical problem. It was just something that I thought about a lot because I couldn’t find an answer to it. I thought of it as the “problem of colors”, and it bothered me that I had absolutely no way of knowing whether the color “red” I perceived was the same “red” as understood to any other person in the world at all, or if my “red” were their “turquoise” or what. We would always agree on what were red, but I would never know whether the same red apple that anyone else saw would still look red to me if I looked at it through their eyes. I thought it was a problem regarding the nature of eyes rather than the nature of the mind.

One day I finally asked my mom how I could ever know if my red were the same as hers or anyone else’s, and she explained to me the scientific functioning of eyeballs. I then threw away my color question as irrelevant until it was finally introduced to me again as the “inverted spectrum problem” in a college lecture. This disturbs me a lot. I wish I had kept on thinking about it back then. I felt like the idea was stolen from my head when I saw it presented on the giant powerpoint screen in lecture. I feel that way a lot when I tell people about some of the things I think about, and then they respond with “Oh, that’s like [insert philosopher’s name], and [blah blah blah insert random history of philosophy knowledge]”. This irritates me a lot because most of the time when I’m describing some sort of theoretical thing I’ve been thinking about and people don’t “recognize” it, then they don’t really react or just think it’s completely irrelevant, and when they do, they start talking about blah philosopher, and it’s as if an idea had no relevance unless it were part of some greater sea of documented knowledge, some “knowledge”. I don’t care! 

I don’t read philosophy! It’s irrelevant! I think it. I don’t read it!

People need to stop saying things like “you know so much philosophy” because there is nothing to “know”. It is not knowledge, it’s just a bunch of thoughts, it’s like saying “you know so much art”. WTF are you talking about? I can’t “know” art. I make art, I don’t “know” art, unless you’re talking about art history that’s different. Or I need to just change my definition of philosophy (but DEFINITIONS ARE IRRELEVANT) or just not care! Ughh!

Anyhow, point being I hate it when I realize that some really cool thought I’ve been thinking about is actually some really big philosophical problem that tons of philosophers have been writing about, and all of a sudden it’s a big deal for people just because Plato or Descartes or whoever famous philosopher has thought about it, then it’s a super big deal. That’s retarded! Most if not ALL of these problems can easily be thought of by ANYONE who has the ability to think at all.

Just because some people put it in writing does not make it somehow more epic of a philosophical problem, and I hate those philosophers who get to “possess” those ideas that they happened to write about, like Descartes, what was so special about him? Any 3-year-old has probably sat down to question everything and stumbled upon the same questions (btw, Descartes’ argument is really stupid), but some grown-ups dismissed them as irrelevant just because grown-ups have lived in their perceptions of “reality” for too long, and they’ve lost the ability to even think at all, and then the 3-year-olds stop thinking about it.

End of story, moving on. Just needed to convey that that’s really sad. And this makes me really angry. But why do/should I care? Stupid grown-ups, don’t know a thing. I hate talking to grown ups, especially the ones who have a lot of “knowledge”.

Cat

There is as much uncertainty about the cat inside the box from the outside of the box as there is uncertainty about everything outside the box from the cat’s perspective inside the box, i.e., complete uncertainty. We are the cat.

Fractals

I think that fractals are the coolest and/or only thing(s) in the universe. They’re so cool and weird… I want the ability to see fractals everywhere, recursion, that stuff, but the weird part is that we’re (“we”) already experiencing fractals everywhere, aren’t we? Well, I shouldn’t talk about reality as if it existed as just one single thing for “us”. I mean “my” universe and reality in which I already know that everything’s just going to exist the way I believe it to because I believe that if I believe a belief then it is reality, these circular things..

But if it’s always going to be this conclusion anyways, why do I even bother to think about it? I guess it’s just fun to get lost. I don’t care about answers. I only seek them for the sake of not being able to find them. Please, the last thing I want is an answer. All I want to do is keep on thinking.

(Side note: I think I should probably do a fractal inspired collection for my next project.)

How does a relativistic particle perceive a non-relativistic particle?

I would just like to point out again (to myself) that velocity is just a unitless number, since time carries the same units as distance in 4-dimensional spacetime, and the speed of light  just a conversion factor of seconds into meters, both of which are arbitrary units.

So what implications does this have to the question “what is a universe with only spacetime and photons”? In an exclusively radiation filled universe, can space and/or time exist? If so, how? Can/does empty space exist in between the photons? How can a photon exist as a (point) particle when it exists everywhere along its path simultaneously (i.e., what does it really mean to exist as a particle and a wave simultaneously)?

So I think I concluded that time only exists for non-relativistic particles and therefore does not exist for relativistic particles in the previous spacetime post so it makes no sense to talk about motion or moving for a universe with only photons since that entails rates of distance per unit time. Or rather, all motion in whatever universe is just a ratio in the photon’s perspective. We non-relativistic particles perceive relativistic particles as “moving” but they perceive us as “ratios”. What does that mean? What does it mean to “perceive something as a ratio”? I think that the photon (or neutrino or whatever) would be just as clueless about what velocity means as we are about what this ratio thing means..

Well, Einstein asks “what happens when we catch up with a beam of light” but what he really asks is “what happens to the perception of a non-relativistic particle when it reaches the same velocity as a relativistic particle”. What happens to the second half of the question “what happens to the perception of a relativistic particle when a non-relativistic particle suddenly acquires the same distance/time ratio as the relativistic particle”? Wasn’t that part of the deal too since in relativity everything is relative and so you shouldn’t just be questioning things from the absolute perspective of a non-relativistic particle? Did that second question get answered along the way/was I just not paying attention??? Uh…?

Why can’t you just try and see what you’re not used to? Why are people so amazed by things that they don’t ordinarily experience when what they ordinarily experience is already infinitely out of the ordinary for anything that does not experience what we ordinarily experience? Does it really have to take a non-human to realize how infinitely bizarre the human reality already is?

It’s pouring cats and dogs outside right at this moment!! (Oh, and you there - don’t you know that you DON’T need drugs to realize this? It’s your thoughts that bring you there, not those chemicals! Chemicals are just part of your thoughts. It’s all circular. Psychedelia is not an exclusive property.)

The Secret Life of Plants

This book of artwork by Anselm Kiefer reminded me of some things. Whenever people ask the question “can _____ have consciousness”, they never actually ask that question. What they are asking is “can _____ have “human” consciousness” - this has absolutely nothing to do with the former question. It’s an absurd generalization to assume (or classify, rather) that “all forms of consciousness” must exhibit behavior or experiences such as “thought”, “emotions”, and “senses”. These are things that humans perceive through human consciousness. Just because something “thinks” differently from what we are used to calling (or experiencing) as “thought” does not (ABSOLUTELY not) mean that _____ does not “think”.

The whole AI debate is no more than a grossly exaggerated grand argument of DEFINITION, nothing else. I hate it when this happens, and the debaters never realize that they’re getting nowhere besides disagreeing on their definitions of “consciousness”. No matter how specific, how elaborate, how clever you think your definition is, it is a “definition”. It’s got nothing to do, nothing at all to do with anything at all. Absurd, just stop. I don’t attempt to undermine anyone’s definition of anything. What good would that do anyone, and what understanding would I ever gain by merely creating definitions and more and more that contradict each other? Why did philosophy have to evolve into this kind of “stuff”..

How can space or time exist without physical objects and vice versa?

Space and time are the same - I don’t understand how they could exist without physical objects, just like physical objects could never exist without space and time. But we always talk about space and time as if they came before physical objects, how do we know that it wasn’t because of physical objects that space and time existed. But of course that’s a rather pointless question because it’s presupposing the existence of time for there to be an order to things, or it could just be asking the question, is time necessary for causality? Can causality exist independent of time? Association can, but can order? Order exists in space, but space and time are basically the same type of thing, they’re both media, for storage of information.. And I begin to be reminded that this must all just be a problem with the limitations of language to explain the concept that we already understand, have always held, in our way of experiencing or perceiving, but that cannot be conveyed through thought in the form of language. Or “thought” is only language, a product that “happens” but is not caused? At least not by intention. But arguing about all this is meaningless because of the nature of “truths” anyways, so just leave that.

Back to the problem - How can time exist without physical objects? I seem to have defined* “time” as the order of events happening between physical particles**. I said, if there are no events, how can there be time, how would we know if there were time, and more importantly, what difference would it make if there were or weren’t time if there were no events to happen anyways? And how could there be an event without a physical particle? Well, a physicist would say, that’s silly! Light exists, and light is not a physical particle. It could well be a particle, but it is not physical, and it takes “time” for a photon t travel from a point in space to another point. But that’s silly too! The time it takes for light to travel from one point depends on the reference frame of the observer, the motion, the relative velocity of the observer in the reference frame, but if no physical particles existed to be a observer in a reference frame, then how would we know how much “time” it takes for a light beam to travel from one point in space to another point in space?

Is saying that other photons exist in other reference frames to observe other traveling photons stupid? Time does not exist in the reference frame of a photon. For a photon there is no such thing as time, no such thing as velocity, no such thing as motion. But then what is a world completely devoid of physical particles but filled with empty space and photons? Does it even make sense to suppose the existence of empty space when the only existing particles are non-physical (by virtue of the same argument of time)? We, as perceivers only used to experiencing and perceiving a universe with both physical and non-physical matter could imagine a universe filled with empty space and photons, with photons moving from point to point at different “times” some before, some after, and at first sight it seems perfectly sensical, but immediately on second thought, how could this possibly be?

How could photon 1 start traveling from point A “before” photon 2 starts traveling from point A if time flowed for neither of them? Or imagining of that scenario requires us to “be there” to observe it, even if it is only a scenario in our heads, but by being there, we are the physical particles there to “observe” the photons. Photons cannot be observers because the act of observation seems to require “time” or at least anything that we, as human perceivers, could possibly imagine. But then isn’t it pointless to “think about” the non-existence of physical matter anyways? Since you would never be able to imagine it because the very act of imagining it, perceiving it, trying to perceive it at all creates its existence.. Just like everything else.. But what if it’s completely “internal”? Having nothing to do with the physical world, but only with what “goes on” in the mind?

What is an event in the mind? It requires no physical objects at all! It requires no “real” physical objects, but then are we saying that just because a physical object that exists purely in the mind if not “physical” at all simply because it is not “real”? It seems that everything and anything “real” has the exact same properties as everything and anything “imaginary” except that one is real and the other is imaginary; one exists in the “real world”, and one exists in the “mind”. So I don’t think that just because an imagined physical object is not real, it is not physical, so to say. And so we are going in circles once again, trying to “imagine” the unimaginable but circularly causing the imaginable just because we are “imagining” the unimaginable, which is not being “imagined”.. I think that the conclusion always gets to the same basic point - that creation creates itself, everything and anything creates itself and itself and itself, and back the the problem of zeros and ones and ones only creating ones and zeros only being zeros all over again. Everything is so unimaginably “simple”. “Simple”.

*Not a good thing. I use the term “define” loosely here. I don’t want to give anything a definite definition.

**By “physical particle” I really just mean non-relativistic. I’m not really sure what being a “physical” particle would entail anyways (as opposed to an “imaginary” particle?) not sure why I just completely forgot about the term “non-relativistic”. Sorry.

One and Zero

What is the nature of numbers? What do numbers mean? How can numbers exist? How can anything besides the number one exist? Everything is a multiple of one thing, but slicing one thing in half gives you two, two of one, and there is always still a one, nothing else but “two” ones, not a “two”, but “two” “ones”. One has a fundamentally different property than two, three, or so one. Anything above “one” is only an invented “concept”. One is the only thing that exists, and multiplying it or dividing it only gives you more of “one” but nothing else.

But you cannot do anything without something to start with, that is, only ones can come out of ones, and only zeros can come out of zeros, but what does it mean to multiply or divide anything by a zero? The difference between a zero and a one is that one exists, and one does not exist at all. One signifies everything and anything, and zero signifies nothing at all. So are zero and one the only things that exist objectively? Must they be objective? But how could zero and one be subjective? How could existing and not existing be subjective? 

(And then a strange feeling of existence like computers, everything as computers, and codes, patterns as everything.)

Muse

We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves.

Many Moons

Timaeus

Post Demon Attack v.1

Don’t know how these photos got lost in my previous posts. This is when we died after being surrounded by demons after turning the headlights of the car off for about 2 seconds in pitch black darkness in some scary woods at 5am-ish. This was the first place we went to after we died.

Q&A

Q: I thought the idea of reality conforming to (or perhaps being created as a result of) one’s thoughts especially interesting, though I don’t like the phrase “time-dependent.” To me, “time,” as the word is typically used, means a measurement of change. (One second is determined by a particular unit of change in the physical world.) This would imply that reality changes as a result of thought changing, which is sort of what you’ve described but not quite. I think a better word to use would be “moment,” such that reality is “moment-dependent.” In this case, reality would simply conform to whatever the thought is, and not the difference between thoughts. Both interesting ideas, but I think the latter is actually a more accurate, valuable description of your perspective. I say this because, as you have contemplated, our conception of reality may be different now than at any time before or after now, emphasizing the importance of the individual moment.

A: I think this is coming down to more of an argument of definition/choice of word than meaning. When I say time, I’m talking about an instant in time, not an increment of time. Of course this is all idealized, and I don’t know if it even makes sense to talk about “instants of time”, but I think what you are getting at by “moment-dependent” is exactly the what I mean by “time-dependent”, unless you don’t mean “instant in time” by “moment”. i.e., if “r(t)” is a time-dependent function that outputs the state of reality at time “t”, the “t” we are looking at is a number, not a difference between numbers, and I think calling it “moment” could raise more confusion in definition because it is not as commonly used a word as say “time”.

On second thought, I think a more appropriate way of putting it is just “thought-dependent” reality, in which each thought may or may not have anything to do with time at all. Time may or may not exist, each thought may or may not exist in a distinct instant of time, and so forth. All we’re assuming is that different thoughts exists, which give rise to different realities, so there - thought-dependent reality!

Q&A

Q: Why do I think probability is irrelevant when it comes to things like the existence of God and other peoples’ consciousness? Why is this talk of “likelihood” or “probability” meaningless, and why should I not be justified to say that it is more likely that individual consciousness of others exist than to say that God exists from an “evidential” standpoint?

A: So there are two things we need to get straight* here: probability and evidence. First of all, what is the probability of something? It is the number of a certain type of outcome divided by the number of all possible outcomes. What does it mean to talk about the probability of God existing? I would say it’s the number of possible models of the universe where a god exists divided by the number of total possible models of the universe. As for “models of the universe”, of course there are unfalsifiable ones as well as falsifiable ones - both of which there are an infinite number of. We disregard the falsifiable ones because they must all be false if they are falsifiable** and look at the unfalsifiable ones. Because there are an infinite number of possible unfalsifiable models for universes in which God either exists or doesn’t, it doesn’t seem to make sense to talk about probabilities with regard to this question. Same reasoning for the existence of other peoples’ consciousness.

Ok, now you’re going to say that there is evidence for the existence of others’ consciousness, and there is no apparent evidence for God’s existence. What do you mean by evidence? Is there really any evidence from which we can infer directly the existence of others’ consciousness or God? Behavior does not count! Sure, you can try and make an indirect inference, but you have to realize that you will never be able to find any sort of direct evidence for the existence of others’ consciousness unless you are that person (which defeats the point anyways). And then you might say that at least there’s indirect evidence of the existence of others’ consciousness, but there is none for the existence of God. And again, what are you counting as “evidence”? (Also see the real vs. imaginary people post.) Also more importantly, any talk of evidence vs. no evidence regards models that are falsifiable, and by virtue of the incompleteness theorem***, we already said that any sort of falsifiable model cannot be a complete model that describes the universe if we are describing it as an inhabitant inside the universe, so it’s unclear whether there is even a point in discussing “evidence”.

*I am always hesitant to bring in “definitions” because they mess things up a lot and turn things into war of words rather than meaning, as you know.

** Think about it. You can’t describe anything in its entirety from the inside (which is where we’re at, in the universe). i.e., incompleteness theorem.

*** The incompleteness theorem is indeed a wonderful thing, but we cannot forget that the validity of it as applied toward consciousness and/or the universe is entirely dependent on whether consciousness and/or the universe can be described as a formal system. The incompleteness theorem is a mathematical theory, and there is no reason why we should simply assume that anything can be described as a formal system.

construction

Random Thought

Incomprehension is incomprehensible once you comprehend.

Understandings, Arguments, and Have Some Respect (for your own brain)

I think there are many similarities between astral projection and lucid dreaming. For one, what you practice and build on is very similar - the ability to remember and recall your experience in dreaming or in OBE’s. I’m still in training for astral projection, so I wouldn’t be a very good judge about this, but as of now I feel as though OBE’s could be a subtype of lucid dreaming, considering that you can basically do whatever you want in lucid dreams.

It’s still frustrating to see how many people react negatively with ridicule towards things like astral projection, or more general things like ESP, but not so much, let’s say, empathy or dreaming. I have a problem when people openly criticize things blindly thinking that they know what they’re talking about when they really have no clue. I have no problem if people choose not to believe in something, choose not to pursue something, but I cannot stand when people do not respect something only because they do not understand. 

Yes, it is very dangerous to mention things like ESP in “academia” because you risk seeming like a fool while people condemn you with the “that’s not scientific” are you kidding, in your face. This is very sad. First of all, I already mentioned the whole theoretical models view of the universe from a limited perspective from consciousness, which classifies science as a model, just like religion or any other “model” of the universe (i.e. objective truth is an absurd thing). Secondly, sure I get it you’re a scientist (or whatever), I am too, but can you at least make your argument in such a way that shows your through understanding of the subject, and then make a good argument based on scientific views?

In some ways it is unfortunate that ESP has gained popularity through pop culture views of it, associating it with a number of things that it really has nothing to do with. One thing that people argue it the irrational in people who believe that they have “special powers”. Where on earth does it say that ESP is “special” powers? If you talked to anyone who has developed their abilities in any way at all, no one is going to tell you that these are rare gifts that only they have that no one else does. It’s really more like we all have the ability, it’s part of the way we are. But how much of that ability we can use is dependent on practice. Kind of like drawing - anyone can do it and improve with practice, some people may have a natural flair, but that doesn’t make it “supernatural” (in an eerie way as commonly perceived, that it).

And just saying, I would love to have a debate with you about the validity of psychic abilities, but please, please make sure you actually know what you’re talking about, okay? I’m sure if someone tried to argue against science without knowing what they’re talking about, you’d feel reasonably frustrated as well - especially when they’re talking to you like they know it all and you’re the lunatic. Give your mind another chance, will you? Why is it so hard for people to not take things at face value?

***And finally, closing words that may or may not seem obnoxious: I speak of your need to “understand” things, to try and perceive things differently outside of your own ways of perception in order to see more, but at the same time I have no understanding of what it’s like to “not” understand, do I? So I’m just as blind as you are when I’m frustrated that you don’t understand, and perhaps I shouldn’t judge you so much by virtue of my own argument. Like I said, incomprehension is incomprehensible once you comprehend - just like anything else in the universe, isn’t it? Funny.

Time Dependent Existence?

Is my existence time dependent even when I think I’m alive?

Reality, the Strange Loop

Today I was thinking about the possibilities of demons again, but Sandy reminded me that I shouldn’t start believing in demons if I haven’t already been believing in them. This is very true, and although this has always been my take on reality - that what you believe in is what reality becomes, and that there is no objective “truth” - it is nonetheless still difficult to appreciate at times after being conditioned (somehow? by what?) to believe certain things about reality for so long.

Well, for some reason I have been conditioned to have faith in the idea that people who I observe outside of my consciousness also have consciousness despite the complete lack of direct evidence. Why is this so? Why was I not conditioned to believe from the very beginning that no one else had a consciousness, and that my mind was the only thing that has ever existed - in which case, the former would seem extremely absurd (in contrast to the absurdity currently perceived in the latter).

Well, for one thing, I have constantly been approaching these thoughts in a “trying to figure out” kind of way, which is ironic because the act of “figuring out” pre-supposes that there is an objective truth without the necessity of one. I haven’t really stopped to suppose that the universe and reality may be a “morphing” thing, that is, it changes instantaneously with whatever I happen to come to believe at the moment.

I’ve run into this thought before, at which point, terrified to be “God”, I stopped, but it seems to make a lot of sense as I think about it now, even though it may not be the most “ideal” and/or “comforting” possibility, but those things are arbitrarily emotional anyways, so I should disregard. But that thought I have is this: For every instant that I believe or have ever believed that people outside of my mind actually exist (i.e., they have their own conscious minds), then they do. But as soon as I go back to supposing that they don’t exist, then they don’t. And the universe is basically only this weird ever changing thing that morphs into whatever I believe at the moment, because beliefs are not consistent all the time, and neither is reality. That is what is implied by the belief that “reality becomes whatever I come to believe” - it is a time dependent belief in the sense that my beliefs change with time.

And as you see, this belief clearly only seems to make sense in a very circular way, because that belief cannot always be true, otherwise it would constitute as an “objective truth” which violates its own statement. So that belief must not always be true, but only when the perceiver perceives that belief to be “true” but again true in a time dependent sense, or rather, a belief/consciousness dependent sense - that truths, just like realities, universes, and consciousnesses are amorphous and self-dependent in a circular way. This does not exclude the possibility of other realities, universes, and consciousnesses existing independently with different principles outside of any given reality, universe, or consciousness, but it also doesn’t prove it.

Hmm… I think this bemused euphoric sensation that I derive from running into more and more questions and questions and answerless questions about reality is what “people” would generally call “trippy”. Why does it have to be a drug-related sensation (not that there is anything wrong with drugs)? Shouldn’t this be a pretty regularly experienced normal feeling that people get on a day-to-day basis if they’re at all capable of thought? I don’t understand how people could just ignore these things and “live”, but I guess that’s an irrelevant question because at the moment I don’t believe that any of them really exist.

Mind and Matter by Erwin Schrödinger

I like it when theoretical physicists start realizing things about reality and consciousness beyond what is immediately materialistically apparent. (Well, philosophical realization in physics? It’s inevitable, obviously, unless you’re just like, dumb or something.) I don’t like it when physicists become obsessed with the “power and beauty” of science so much so that they think science is the best thing that ever existed - those, the tard kind.

Mind and Matter by Erwin Schrödinger

Einstein Quote

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."

Real and Imaginary People

Just because something is imaginary does not mean that it does not exist. It would seem absurd to say that thoughts do not exist even though we clearly experience them. Perhaps more surprisingly however, just because something is real does not mean that it exists either.*

People, grown-ups in particular, have lived in and experienced reality the way they have for so long that they forget, or don’t even understand how to question and interpret through questioning what they experience anymore. General consensus of belief makes this even more difficult.

Let’s say the people who we perceive in real life every day - friends, family, strangers on the street - we can all agree that they are “real”, that is, they “exist”. And now lets say I decide to create certain “imaginary” people in my mind, that I know are not “real”, but that I know exist because I can think about them. In both cases, I can attempt to communicate my thoughts with them and also receive responses, but in the real case, I hear a response concretely through sound waves, through my ears, and in the imaginary case, I hear a response through the form of “my thoughts”.

“My thoughts”. What does this mean? Yes, any lay person could simply dismiss all of this as ridiculous because I have obviously “made up” in my mind all of the responses from my imaginary people that I have created, and they are not the ones that are communicating with me; I am communicating with myself, they don’t exist. Sure, but what really is a “thought”? Yes, I perceive it through my head. Yes, it seems so be associated with intention, and I seem to be the underlying reason why they are appearing, but how do I know that? I perceive them, but how do I know that I’m not also just perceiving intention as well? That there is actually no underlying causal relationship between what I perceive as “intention” and what I perceive as a “thought”? So there is indeed no way of knowing whether these responses that I get from my imaginary people are from the imaginary people who do exist, or I “made them up”.

Now, there is a more fundamental difference between real and imaginary people that does not have to do with whether I can physically perceive them and their behavior or form of communication, and that is their own underlying intentions and thoughts. We perceive the behavior of real people, but we do not perceive their thoughts. We believe we may know what their thoughts and intentions are, but we do not and cannot perceive that.

But - it seems like we do and can perceive the thoughts and intensions of our imaginary people. We perceive their consciousness directly from the inside as if it were part of our own. It most certainly “exists” - we may not know how exactly it exists, but we know it does because we can directly perceive it, rather than just infer it. Well, shouldn’t this make the consciousness of imaginary people be more “real” than “real” people? And yet not at all - this is exactly what makes them imaginary. That is, you can only be “real” when you don’t directly perceive it. And when you do directly perceive it, you somehow… are no longer “real”.

So, which do I choose to be the “real”? Which one is really the “imaginary”? Obviously there is no answer because there is no “truth”, there is just what I believe in - again and again it’s the same answer, it’s so obvious, just because of the nature of unfalsifiable things… But how am I supposed to know what to believe? Well, I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t know, again. I’d be worried if I knew, wouldn’t I? Yes, Indeed.

It is 5:08 am again, and I can never find myself living in the reality that “everyone else” does.

*We could go into the definition of existence and raise books and books of arguments, but they would only be arguments based on definition and language, devoid of actual meaning, so I don’t want to go into that.