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.