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mycelia:
the big bit of the mushroom, the bit underground that sends out the spore spreading bits.
it's fibrous and network-y.
one mycelium can be acres wide and contain more nodes than a human brain.
(re: emergence)

really interesting stuff guys. will read up more into those links when i've got the time

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

has there been a film along those lines? remember hearing a tune (can't for the life of me remember what) where there's a vocal sample about a race of super-beings coming back to earth, and i'm sure it was something like the Oankali

that super-beings interfered with our development as a species and may one day return is a myth fairly wide-spread, culturally.
enochian angels, dogon fish-folk, etc.
more recently the legend of the thetan is an amusing variant.

i would dispute that a computer could ever work like a human brain.

there are too many level our brain work on.

how can you programme feelings, likes/dislikes, abstract thought?
and to a greater extent, without a complete understading of how our brains work (which are still very far from) you cannot recreate exactly.


on the point of another civilisation or us already in such a simulation it brings no serious questions, life is life, i can consider who I am, that is as real as I need to be, simulation or not.


tbh, as far as a theory goes it can't be disproved, so scientifically it can stand as a truth.

perhaps this theory (cybernetic simulation) is what Bruce Springsteen meant when he said we were "Born to Run."










chortle.

eLBe wrote:i would dispute that a computer could ever work like a human brain.

there are too many level our brain work on.

how can you programme feelings, likes/dislikes, abstract thought?
and to a greater extent, without a complete understading of how our brains work (which are still very far from) you cannot recreate exactly.

on the point of another civilisation or us already in such a simulation it brings no serious questions, life is life, i can consider who I am, that is as real as I need to be, simulation or not.

tbh, as far as a theory goes it can't be disproved, so scientifically it can stand as a truth.

it's true that we can't do this but that doesn't prove or disprove that a more advanced civilisation can't. for all we know they have completely mapped the minutiae of the human brain so that they can programme exactly how we would think based merely on the biology of the human brain (which i'm sure is slightly different for each human being, or individual in a computer programme, meaning that due to biological/programming differences each person would think in a different way)

but as you said, ultimately it makes no difference if our reality is real or imagined and i doubt there is either any way to prove either way, or attempt to break out of it. in our lifetimes at least...

yep.

and at the same time the queen could be part of a lizard syndicate dictating all happenings on the earth, can you prove otherwise?







i say we disect her and find out

only one logical conclusion:
kill yourself immediately.

but that just brings up even more theoreticals. don't even want to get onto what happens next.

on the other hand:
a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.

eLBe wrote:but that just brings up even more theoreticals. don't even want to get onto what happens next.

all depends on the purpose of the simulation.

Bedward wrote:on the other hand:
a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.

would it though? how much are the various senses connected? would the aesthetic beauty of a rose and it's romantic connotations (especially in literature etc) affect how you smell it?

badger wrote:

Bedward wrote:on the other hand:
a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.

would it though? how much are the various senses connected? would the aesthetic beauty of a rose and it's romantic connotations (especially in literature etc) affect how you smell it?

I'm sure it would have the same smell, but the other connotations would likely make you precevance (is that even a word?) of said smell less sweet if it was called somethiing like the dead badger bloom?

badger wrote:

Bedward wrote:on the other hand:
a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.

would it though? how much are the various senses connected? would the aesthetic beauty of a rose and it's romantic connotations (especially in literature etc) affect how you smell it?

Indeed. Its like an expensive bottle of wine in that respect. Before you taste it, the price and the age will be in the back of your mind so its bound to influence your judgement.

Really good thread this

Tomity wrote:Indeed. Its like an expensive bottle of wine in that respect. Before you taste it, the price and the age will be in the back of your mind so its bound to influence your judgement.

Really good thread this

that's what i was getting at

yeah really good thread. took me fucking ages reading through it all this morning but so glad i did

I'm not too sure if I believe it though. There is no way at present we can determine if its truth so is there a point outside of discussion actively trying to see if it is so? If someone can come up with a way of testing it then that would be cool.

Its not the same thing as disproving organised religion, which is easy in my mind (I think this was touched on during the discussion?). Historically one of the first religions was Taoism, which believed that god was everything, something that if you apply to modern physics we now know to be true. So the idea of god has been corrupted and so has no legitimate standing imo.

well that's the point of philosophy isn't it really? very little of it can either be proved or disproved. that doesn't stop it being interesting and intellectually stimulating though

Tomity wrote:Historically one of the first religions was Taoism, which believed that god was everything, something that if you apply to modern physics we now know to be true. So the idea of god has been corrupted and so has no legitimate standing imo.

that's pretty much my religious/spiritual/whatever beliefs. i definitely think there's some kind of higher ordering force because as parson said before the world is so minutely and intricately balanced that it's unlikely to have come about from chance. unless as some philosophers have said there's an infinite number of universe and ours just happens to be the one in which all the variables are right for life to be able to exist

do the digs dug?

eLBe wrote:
precevance (is that even a word?)

Yes thats a perfectly cromulant word.

Tomity wrote:I'm not too sure if I believe it though. There is no way at present we can determine if its truth so is there a point outside of discussion actively trying to see if it is so? If someone can come up with a way of testing it then that would be cool.

Its not the same thing as disproving organised religion, which is easy in my mind (I think this was touched on during the discussion?). Historically one of the first religions was Taoism, which believed that god was everything, something that if you apply to modern physics we now know to be true. So the idea of god has been corrupted and so has no legitimate standing imo.

I like Tao's definition- If you think you know what it is, then it isn't that.