This has been a long time coming. First with the idea that truth is an opinion, which many of you are familiar with my thoughts on this. Then thinking about the way the human mind works, I have come to a simple, yet cohesive conclusion. We are all trapped in a cell.

Your mind, and my mind, has us trapped. Not physically, however psychologically of course. We are trapped in a perception. A view of the world. One which has been shaped since childhood. And this shaping of our perception has us trapped in a cell no less real than bars in a prison.

No single view can be correct. For there is no absolute knowledge. Their is only our interpretation. So no matter how right we may think we are, there is really just our perception of that right. Stranger still is that we need these bars, this cell, for without it we are lost.

It sets limits, imposes boundaries, helps us to interpret the world around us. However, sometimes, these interpretations are not helpful, they are in fact, limiting.

This is what I want to talk about. Limitations imposed on us, which we are not even aware of, which we may have had all our lives. Things running in the background controlling everything we do, think and feel, without even necessarily being aware of it.

I bet you dont like the idea of that. I remember once I think it was president Kennedy who asked his chief scientist, why scientists can observe the same thing and come up with vastly different explanations. To which the scientist replied, "because they observe it with different assumptions". Quite simply, one has different beliefs and background then another, and perceives and interprets the same phenomenon, differently.

I have much more on this, but I will have to get to it later because I am tired.

Yes, but some understandings are better than others, aren't they? And given that a person's understanding evolves, let us hope it evolves toward the better one.

Many years ago, when he was in prison, Timothy Leary said that the only true prisons were in the mind.

That sounds a lot like Plato's story about caves and shadows; how human beings are trapped in caves and can only see the "shadows" of the truth because our perception limits us.

How negative, especially when you have the potential to redefine and reintegrate at will.

Any new experience will change your view on life.

Most philosophers seem to be working with the implicit 'belief' that truth is possible and singular- that we can somehow achieve the TRUE PERSPECTIVE. Is this a product of reason or rationality? Can we arrive at facts that are beyond anyone's personal perspective?

I am under the distinct impression that information is encoded in every form of matter throughout the universe. It seems that this information can be 'decoded' and perhaps the facts and truth of existence be understood.

Our perceptions may always to a certain extent limit us due to our finitude. All knowledge appears interconnected and until we know absolutely everything, we may really never comprehend any particular thing and how it relates to the whole.

its all the damn interpretations that make up the entire one truth....you won't know it all, but you can learn more and more exponentially if everybody applied that reasoning

All of the perspectives and interpretations that exist whether we are talking about human thoughts and ideas or other species', would somehow have to be incorporated into the one truth (if it in fact exists).

maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't care about what I can't prove yet...I care that there's something awesome being missed in that aim: when every perspective meets a new one, new opportunity is created that would've never existed before introduction....and new opportunity is AWESOME

OP's thoughts also strike at the question of free will. When we take into consideration genetic factors, the environment of our birth and maturation, and neurological considerations such as brain chemistry and the general make-up of our brains- what room is left for free will?

there is an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 2....everything is relative....but one can only exist within the range of their creation and can therefore have ignorance in bliss.

Then one can say: what about being born rich or poor. There can be differences in starting points, but the options are there to equalize, or to even choose a different set of parameters.

recognition of not knowing is perhaps one of Socrates' greatest insights- to realize how truly limited our knowledge is

Yea I think you can evolve towards more healthy and perhaps useful understandings. Science for example, is more useful in terms of getting us new technologies, and religion is more useful in providing emotional comfort.

However, I think it is dangerous to fall into the trap that one perspective is absolute. I am getting through a book "Vital Lies, Simple Truths" which has some interesting perspectives on this. Much of it is about how selective we are in our awareness, we only see what we want to see. We only hear what we want to hear, everyone has selective hearing.

I think this may be the reason why science is constantly replacing old theories with new ones. We create theories based off of modern thought about how the world should work and then look for evidence of it. How the evidence is interpreted is very open.

A core idea of this is that 'meaning' in and of itself does not exist. You cannot trip over meaning while walking down the sidewalk. It is a mental construct. While it is very useful, its a important component to understanding how we create our reality.

It is meaning where things can get crossed and bars can be built. We create illogical constructs or simply false realities and become deeper and deeper entrenched into the world of meaning in the mind. While without meaning we would be screwed, I think its important to never be too attached to any one thing or idea.

I believe if we can become more aware of how we create our realities and perspectives, we can then use this to build healthier and more useful ones.

I think the core reason why science has been so powerful and advances so fast is because it is so much more realistic about how these things work.

Ironically this is the same implicit 'belief' that drives truthers in general, whether it's religious, moral absolutes, conspiracy theorist, etc. I'm a strict reductionist, yet I find this dichotomy between singular truth and perspectival truth to be a false dichotomy. Consider a very simple physical example: State [x]: Asteroid A hit asteroid B. State [y]: Asteroid B hit asteroid A. States [x] and [y] are not dichotomous truths. Rejecting the truth of a perspective that differs from your own is tantamount to a rejection of your own truth. Which is tantamount to a claim that no truth exist at all, which is false. Truth [x] is an isomorph of truth [y], and visa versa. We cannot 'choose' our own truth, we can only choose isomorphs of a truth. Even our notion of the shape of the room you are in is predicated on a singular isomorphic truth of what space is, but does not make the truth any less valid. If there is one truth that needs to be learned, that is "beyond anyone's personal perspective", is that the perception that isomorphic truths are dichotomous is false. Neither does it give license to claim that you can simply 'choose' any arbitrary truth that suits you. Asteroids A and B do indeed interact regardless of perspective.

This begs the question of what "information" is and what it means to be "encoded". Consider Shannon Information: If I encoded my response here as pure Shannon Information, it would be a much smaller but purely random string, provided you had the means to retrieve the meaning. The irony here is that a purely random string by definition doesn't contain information. Some would argue that, since it was constructed based on the information I wanted to convey, it's not 'truly' random. Yet I can begin with any purely random string, not based on any particular information, and define rules to decode 'any' information of that size that I choose it to mean. The Universe does not encode information as such, it merely "is", like the random string. Only not quiet that random, but remember the definition of Shannon Information. It is us who define "encoding" and call this encoding "information". This distinction is made all the more complex by the fact that we don't don't fully understand the structure of the qualia map we use to perceive meaning in human terms.

When we talk about what information we can decode from the Universe set theory is useful to illustrate the issues. A tornado is a separate set of the atmosphere, but the set of atmosphere fully contains the tornado. Suppose for simplicity we take a 'toy' set of all information to be simply 3 items {A,B,C}. Now to fully comprehend all definable information we have to understand not only {A,B,C}, but also {A}, {B}, {C}, {A,B}, {A,C}, {B,C} and their isomorphs {B,A}, {C,A}, {C,B}, {A,C,B}, {B,A,C}, {C,A,B}, {B,C,A}, {C,B,A}. Now imagine trying to figure out all the ways the dots on your computer screen can be defined. We need the concept of information to perceive an understanding. Yet the Universe needs no such understanding, it merely 'is' and does accordingly. Our perception of "oneness" is born in the seamless field of possible definitions and divisions we can 'by definition' attach to what is.

Yes, all of our knowledge is interconnected by a seamless state of the whole that does not depend on meaning. I disagree that we must know every possible connection definable to comprehend any particular thing. That our comprehension is an isomorph of other ways to define connections in no way invalidates those connections. Yet the connections is in us, not the dots we are connecting. I can experience this "oneness" phenomena anytime at the drop of a hat. It's nothing more than feeding a continuous field of perceptual meaning into a single perceptual qualia. Yet it's an illusion of sorts in the same way the contextual meaning of forms in our visual qualia is an illusion. Neither is the illusion aspect any indication that the perceived qualia is an invalid definition of the situation. Unless of course some extension of that meaning is used to make further claims, like denying the truth of an isomorph of the same truth.

I am enjoying your posts wan.

I am familiar with Shannon's contributions to information theory and have been intrigued with questions pertaining to information generally- especially as they relate to the structure and function of natural organisms. I see codes of information underlying and permeating reality. Similar to genetic codes, I feel that there is code embedded in all forms of energy including the energy behind the big bang. There seems to be a way of interpreting and reading the code in both matter and energy that supersedes individual perspectives. Reading the genetic code of a human being, for example, is not merely a matter of individual perspective. The code can be properly read or improperly read (and of course variations in between). The proper reading is true and the improper is false. But where did the information come from? Is there an unprogrammed programmer to borrow from Aristotle? Is there an intelligence anywhere in the universe that understands all the code?

In the rich tapestry of code spread wide across the universe, we can understand and know tiny bits of code here and there and this may make knowing possible to a limited degree, but I sense that there may be a deeper level of code that subsumes and incorporates all finite manifestations. True and ultimate knowing would require apprehension of the full complexity of the universe from the smallest details to the largest expanses. I consider the possibility of such understanding informational content that must be apprehended by an informational processor of some kind- whether it be a whole brain or single cell.

Code:
In a very fundamental sense "code" is not a set of instructions. Rather it is a set of conditions or state A that evolves to state B, A-->B. We don't instruct state A how to evolve to state B, we only know that it does, so we call A-->B an instruction for A to evolve to B. Computer code consist of a wide variety of mechanistic states with a known evolution A-->B. We then label complex groups of these states with labels we call instructions. Also the result A-->B is perspective independent. Yet by the definitions we attach to the labels A-->B can represent the result for many different unrelated programs. Thus A-->B has a perspective dependent meaning in the resulting outcome.

Perspective Independence:
Modern physics attempts to avoid perspective dependence by defining laws in terms of symmetries, called background independence. A very brilliant woman named Emmy Noether proved a theorem called Noether's theorem which provides the backbone of the connection between symmetries and conservation laws. This is what wiki says about Background independence:
So physics does in fact recognize the value of perspective Independence. Yet it's also recognized that this is a aesthetic choice rather than a 'truth' that supersedes the truth of a given perspective. Consider this from the same wiki article:

This is what I mean when I say you can't claim truth [A] while rejecting truth isomorph [A]. But yes, there are ways of stating truth while avoiding perspective dependence. Unfortunately popular science authors can't really convey these facts about physics very well. What they do instead is describe meta-theory, which is not the theory as readers tend to think, but a theory of the theory. Our innate sense of the 'qualia of meaning' hinges not on theory, but on meta-theory. We simply don't have a 'unique' meta-theory that allows us a qualia that is perspective independence. Without such a meta-theory we can't say with any certainty that it is possible, and much of the meta-issues discussed questions what about our sense of qualia might be wrong. However, the actual theory of QM is not so much a physical theory as a theory of information. So be patient .

Information and Energy:
Fundamentally information and energy is the same thing. Yet information is also defined by what we know about the system and not necessarily everything that is. Consider why it is that air leaks out of your car tire when you poke a hole in it. You can say it's because the pressure (energy) in the tire is higher than outside pressure, which is true. But there's another equally valid truth that doesn't include energy or pressure. Since the air molecules in the tire is closer together than the air molecules outside the tire it is simply more likely for air inside the tire to find a way out than for outside air to find a way in. There is nothing in the laws of physics that says outside air cannot enter a pressurized tire with a hole in it. The laws of physics only says that it is *extremely* unlikely, and the more packed the air is the more unlikely it is to happen. With just the right positions and momentum of the gas it would indeed happen. Thus gas laws, like most of our physical laws, do not say what can't happen. Rather they say what is so unlikely to happen that we can forget ever seeing an exception in a trillion trillion years, and we define these expected results A-->B as forces and laws. Now if we try to take the classical picture too literally in QM we get into some serious empirical trouble, but they are analogous in many ways. The odds still determines expected values in QM.

Me to, in ways that most definitely goes beyond the finite. Not so much a code but a source upon which code is defined. But be patient, that goes well beyond what I can defend here.

This I disagree to the extent I explained in my previous post, but that also depends on the how you define "know".

The "Cell" as you have described the trap of perspective is anything but in my view. Consider what is required to define free will if we actually live in a physical cause and effect Universe. It would have to be predicated on choices of perspective that are physically isomorphic to opposing perspectives. Perspectives that lack a physical determinate outside of yourself violates no law to choose. We are limited by realities beyond any forces capacity to choose, but the one reprieve we may have you called a "Cell". When in a room full of people what defines your interaction with them? It's defined by what you accept as real about what's going on in that room. Which then defines what you get out of that interaction. How long would a friend that is your enemy stay your friend? When you accept a person as your enemy what enemy powers have you provided that person? What about the person for whom the cops are enemies, and steps on the gas when the blue lights come on, or pulls a gun? The coolest part is you don't have to understand how to accomplish what you are after. The physical outcome will simply fit the definition of the situation, whether others agree with that definition or not. It's a power beyond measure, and there's no supernatural nonphysical BS about it. Unless you squander it by selling yourself the supernatural BS, because all things are bound by the physical truth. So I like my "Cell" and I'm not giving it up.

GodConsciousness, you asked specifically about where the genetic code came from. In my section about code in general I failed to make the connection explicit. As I already pointed out code is not so much an instruction, but a prior knowledge that A evolves to B grouped in ways we call instructions or code, even though we don't actually have any say in how A-->B. It just is. The genetic code is essentially works the same way. But this really doesn't go far enough to understand why the genetic code has such a higher level structure, rather than simply the underlying chemistry.

Well in a sense it is just the underlying chemistry at work. To explain how higher level "codes" can spontaneously form consider one of my favorite, a tornado. To learn the rules of how a tornado reacts we can treat it as a separate entity from the air it's in, which it is not. Then all the high and pressure systems, temperature variations, and objects in the environment that exist independents of the tornado define how the tornado is going to evolve. In this picture the tornado becomes a unit of code, like a nucleotide in the gene sequence. Thus in some sense any emergent structure that emerges from a large number elements can be defined as a unit of code. Like bricks used to build a house. The genetic code becomes the standard code for life because it is the largest unit which (almost) fully defines the variation needed to define the difference between one individual and another, and any other species. Epigenetics actually allows some difference even with exactly the same genetic code.

It is a universal feature that all emergent elements can themselves be treated as individual code blocks, like legos. Even when we look deeper and realize that different lego blocks are made of the same plastic. If it weren't for the universal feature of emergent structures, science really would have to know everything before we could know anything. So far the deeper we look and learn about substructure the fewer base parts we need to understand in principle all the structure above it. It remains to be seen were this will eventually lead. But due to the above hierarchical structure infinities may not even prove to be an insurmountable impediment .

The genetic codes of natural organisms certainly determine to a large extent what that organism will eventually become- an acorn becomes an oak tree and a tadpole becomes a frog. The information for the instructions of biological development are encoded in each of these structures. My hunch is that a similar informational code may be embedded in the universe as a whole. Whatever may have occured at the big bang or prior, the information and code was present and provided the basis for the universe's proliferation. Obviously, energy was crucial to the process, but it was a certain kind of energy configured in a precise way that enabled the universe to expand. We may not scientifically ever be able to figure out where the instructions and code came from (or at least perhaps anytime soon). Its hard to imagine, however, that such information spontaneously emerged out of a pure vacuum. Yet, despite a certain degree of determinism inherent in the codes of life, matter, and the universe; there still seems to be room for variation, evolutionary natural selection, and real freedom on the part of organisms to volitionally direct the course of their lives.

In a very real way it most certainly is. The thing is that as we move down through the emergent levels of structure the "code" gets simpler, making it even harder to intuitively understand how it "codes" such complex behavior with such simplistic base "code". Yet every step we learn shows just that, there is no complex behavior parts in the underlying parts. Yet we still manage to learn how to recover much of the complex rules from simpler rule sets that don't contain them. Just like the way we call computer languages instructions even though at the basic level we don't instruct anything, we simply know what it's going to do.

The "code" was most certainly present. Just not likely to be very complex code viewed from the right perspective.

In most college courses one of the exercises often done is to calculate the odds that the air in the room will by chance all converge on just one side of the room. There is no physical law that says it can't happen, just such extreme odds against it as to be ridiculous. Yet with infinite time it would happen, and this would be followed by expansion back into the vacuum it created. There's an argument called "Boltzmann brain" against this for the Big Bang. I'm not going into details of the problem with the Boltzmann brain argument, nor why I don't consider the random event argument a good explaination. It wouldn't suit anybodies interest to publish original research of this nature here. The point is that any condensed cofiguration leads to expansion, and density is a relative concept wrt inflation.

Hopefully sooner than later. At some level there must either be an existential element that simply always has and will exist, or it's turtles all the way down through infinity. Those two views may not even be at odds with each other. Although I don't suscribe to such a view, extra spatial dimensions are certainly even possible. So to be completely intellectually honest, we might not ever figure out the base of the code. This will not prevent us from expanding what we do understand though. But I'll wager we will .


Yes, but we also know that a "pure vacuum" is not exactly empty. It is empty by definition, but empty does not mean it's "nothing". Sub-Plank physics is not something that the standard model is equiped to say anything about. Presently EPR and issues involving how real a physical quantity is confounds theoretical issues, or how such things would fit into a model in which they were emergent. The standard approach to getting a ToE is to try and find a way to shove the mathematics of Qm and GR together. It's not working too well.

Wrt emergence watch the spontaneous organization that emerges from flocks of birds and schools of fish, or the metronome in this video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steven_strogatz_on_sync.html
We know the rules to this organization and can even faithfully model it on a computer with just those simplistic rules. Yet at the moment we are stuck on how to describe these emergent patterns mathematically, even though the computer models prove those simple rules fully define it. Ever studied ant colonies, and how they get things done with no leaders, central control, or even instructions? Here's one species where we have good data on how it's done:
http://blog.ted.com/2008/01/deborah_gordon.php
Don't expect the base rule set to automatically make sense of the high level world you experience without great effort. You have to follow the emergent properties from one level to the next and the next and so on till it starts making sense to the things you are more familiar with. Emergent properties can also be created by emergent properties in a hierarchy. Even our notion of "energy" is much like the notion of "instruction" I described about "code". At some level these notions are backwards, you can't apply emergent concepts to the rules of the things that created those same emergent properties.


I've already described what I thought about how volition could be allowed through variations of definitions that don't have physical determinates outside our choices. A question remains about physical determinates within us that leads to our choices. Certainly there are many forms of addictive behavior that is more than a little difficult to deal with. Yet our drives are not entirely stable from one moment to the next, our behavior is often stochastic. Yet frown and see how long you can stay happy, or smile and see how long you can stay mad. Due to the stochastic aspects of our drives, we can push our own states in certain directions with time and effort. Even if the drive for that state is swamped by more powerful drives most of the time early on. Most of us simply depends on outside forces, social or otherwise, to shape our dispositions. Yet, much like a learning neural net that starts out as inexperienced as a baby, we can push it directions we choose. So long as we don't get hung up on the idea that our past is who we are. The choice simply has to be there, however small our drive to exercise it. We grow what we exercise.

This does not mean that many of our choices are not biologically constrained. But where do you draw the line. I'm not so silly as to claim gays need cured, rather they should be respected if they show respect. Just like you can choose isomorphic definitions of the physical world and still be subject to the physical constraints of the same, the same symmetry exist in our biology and the choice constraints that entails.

My apologies GodConsciousness, I was referencing you while speaking of what maximus242 wrote wrt the "cell". The content of what I wished to convey nonetheless remains as is. My opinion is also a mere possibility, not a statement of fact.

Is "wan" an acronym or a name?

From Dictionary.com:

wan, adjective, wan·ner, wan·nest, verb, wanned, wan·ning.
–adjective
1.of an unnatural or sickly pallor; pallid; lacking color: His wan face suddenly flushed.
2.showing or suggesting ill health, fatigue, unhappiness, etc.: a wan look; a wan smile.
3.lacking in forcefulness, competence, or effectiveness: their wan attempts to organize the alumni.

Could also be an asian name?

Don't even have to click a link, just read the first link that comes up: wan

i like it

Thank goodness for that. Now I can put aside those bad thoughts I had on possible abbreviations. It's all the bankers' fault - at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it!

So it is an acronym.

How sad you feel trapped maximus.

Awww. You care!!! How nice.

I've annoyd you, havn't I... I'm Glad

Ahwww.. I thought we were having fun.

So you enjoy annoying people. Always or just recently?

Is that what you've come here to do?

doesnt this qualify as trolling? you can both stop now and pm each other if you want to have a little spat dont do it on the forum