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coincidence in a realm of infinite variation just feels like a last ditch effort to hang on to some obsolete ways of thinking

i don't believe in coincidence. everything has form and purpose.

i'm not saying i believe our existence is down to coincidence. but playing devil's advocate, there is no real proof one way or the other. personally i would like to believe that there is a purpose to the universe - even one that is beyond our current capacity for comprehension - and that we are here with free will to choose to contribute, or not. But that could also seem arrogant and places alot of emphasis on our importance, when really i feel it's far more likely we are utterly insignificant in the universe.

it only places emphasis on our importance if you limit your understanding of purpose to the human perspective

ok.. i'm genuinely intrigued by what you believe that purpose is man. in our current form, we aren't doing too well with managing ourselves as a species, with one little planet. Maybe i have a negative outlook, but what's to say that we aren't just an evolutionary abortion waiting to happen?

we might be an abortion. abortions are things that happen.

everyone picks and chooses what documents they believe in and which ones are credible, etc.

i believe the disclosure project is one of the most credible things we have access to. its a collective of 400+ highly credible individuals who have decided to rebel against babylon and tell the people everything they know that they aren't sposed to be sharing.

the disclosure project tells us that they've got 57 cataloged species of extra-terrestrials. many so humanoid that they are impossible to differentiate from us with the naked eye.

there are evolutionary explanations for all of this. panspermia is something even carl sagan could jive with. he said there was so much shit flying around in frozen comets that its in fact very likely that comets are seeding planets in every galaxy.

i'm as sure as you that there's extra-terrestrial life out there, it would be a staggering statistical anomaly if that weren't the case.. i'm not convinced that we are all of one origin though - is that what you're sayin? I think the universe has capacity for more variety than that. With that in mind and lookin at the topic at hand here, our perspective is just one aspect of a potentially infinite kaliedoscope of perspectives.. and i'm no closer to seeing a purpose?

On a tangent tho, have you read the xenogenesis novels by Octavia E Butler? I think you may like them. Just found out that she died in 2006

reading up on edgar cayce and gnosticism, i came across an idea that struck a chord with me.

they basically believe that God is inherently fertile. and therefore overflows into the universe as the universe. as souls that are trying to make their way make to God. each incarnation in this arena allows us the opportunity to get closer to home.

Ikarai wrote:i'm as sure as you that there's extra-terrestrial life out there, it would be a staggering statistical anomaly if that weren't the case.. i'm not convinced that we are all of one origin though - is that what you're sayin? I think the universe has capacity for more variety than that. With that in mind and lookin at the topic at hand here, our perspective is just one aspect of a potentially infinite kaliedoscope of perspectives.. and i'm no closer to seeing a purpose?

purpose is more difficult to understand than form though. everything has a shape. on every level of the fractals of existence, there is a form. if there seems to be chaos, you just need to back up some more.

On a tangent tho, have you read the xenogenesis novels by Octavia E Butler? I think you may like them. Just found out that she died in 2006

never heard of it or her.

i pulled this sample of Will Oldham from the film Old Joy and used it in my tune Above the Trees:

sometimes things look like they don't have any order and then from a different level you realize that it does have order.

its like climbing a mountain.

look around you see trees and rocks and bushes pressing around you
and then you get above the treeline, you see everything you just went through and it all like comes together

you see that it has a shape after all

sometimes it takes a long time to get high enough to see it but its there

it's too late for me to concentrate properly man, and i'm meant to be workin but i will look up some of the stuff from your last few posts tomorrow. cheers for an interesting discussion tho.

and if you get time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_Bu ... .27s_Brood

word i'll look into her ;]

RickyRicardo wrote:

ikeaboy wrote: I read it all, its interesting but I for one can not take the above for granted. The idea of uploadeing the human mind always seemed like a techno-fetishists fantasy of escaping death. Also I can't see self awareness as an epiphenomenon of squishy, biological matter or C++. I can see parallels with the minds functions and computers, but why even have self awareness?

I've looked at the dilemma of consciousness not as something that exists in spite of our biological complexities, but *because* of it. If we accept that our consciousness isn't greater than the sum of it's parts (our brain matter), then there as some level of complexity within the composition of our brain that allows consciousness to come about. In other disciplines, this is called "emergence" theory....where many, many, many simple actions (such as neurons firing off in your head) combine to create more and more complex patterns and systems. In this view, what we call "consciousness" is the abstracted way of referring to all that underlying complexity.

So when we bring computers into the mix then the only limits, really, are how much complexity can be modeled. And if we can hypothetically match the complexity of the human mind, then why wouldn't consciousness emerge in the same fashion?

Hi Ricky. This still has the assumtion(or Theory) that conscious emerges as a result of something possessing incredibly high processing power, I don't see how that follows as I still think consciousness isn't nessecary for a hugely complex artifical intelligence to be effective, you could even argue that self consciousness makes an intelligence less effective. Its difficult to discuss as nobody knows the actual nature of consciouness and their seems to be clear divisions of opinion when it comes to best guesses. I think myself that people who are comfortable with understandings that are based in concrete terms even if they don't fully understand them, its enough somebody acceptable to them does, tend to think in terms of epiphenomenom and emergance theory. Where as the mystery lovers who are comfortable and even romantic about the ineffable and incomplete see reality as something which emerged from the mind and not the other way around. The second point of view is also the rebel position as it flies in the face of apparant fact, it also ties neatly in with altered state experiences. No experiences can truely confirm or deny the truth of the matter as you could always be derranged, it seems to be a case of trying them on to see which has the best fit. I'm not holding out for a post mortem reveal either.

Sorry about shabby spelling

Parson wrote:and my point is that we can apparently move the pixels by will alone

LOLS!

cmon... no matter how retarded.. you gotta appreciate the effort parson

yeah parson, I SHOULD BE IN BED YOU KNOW

Parson wrote: panspermia is something even carl sagan could jive with. he said there was so much shit flying around in frozen comets that its in fact very likely that comets are seeding planets in every galaxy.

Mushrooms apparantly are a candidate for this sort of thing.

Hey
no aspersions on mushies.
My Queen
is fungal.


God save our fungal queen!