I know everyone here is smart. You'd have to be to have the amount of creativity displayed in music here...

But I thought I'd start a thread on random philosophy and science thoughts...I'd like to keep it in theoretical, maybe what you'd call 'pot philosphy', those times when you're high (or maybe drunk for some people or even just in moment of silence for others).

I'd like to start with a copy/pasta email I wrote to my girlfriend (we have discussions like this randomly, usually when one of us has been nurturing an internal thought long enough) about what I think could be an inevitable failure of humans.....and suggestion for scientific disciplines that should maybe work closer together to figure out a way to correct this flaw or at least give us badass new technology to play with before we go.

Feel free to make posts as long as you want, add to what others have said or simply post a brand new 'high theory'.

I'll start (please excuse my addressing specifically my girlfriend, this was an email):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You and I are both well aware (I wouldn't say well informed because I think the details we're both foggy on but the main idea is the gold here) of evolution and how it works, natural selection, etc. And I'm fairly certain you saw the same documentaries I have that talk about the earth's 'first try at animals' concerning those weird plant-like creatures that aren't plants but have similar shape to them, etc. They had some crazy name I forget (you probably remember it cause you're all smart n shit) but essentially, it was this fractal non-plant eating machine that was too good at eating and not good enough at moving to where food is and it ate itself extinct, essentially...at least, that's what scientists have deemed is the case based on surviving evidence. But that's not really important.

And this was the first attempt, that we know of, of organisms..uh...organizing (that cannot be coincidence in language there!) into creatures. THey're literally unclassifiable by the way we classify life today, but it was life, and it was fractal, like plants. I'm not sure if you know what fractals are, but it's essentially a methodology of math and imagery where you can create a never ending 'universe' within an equation if you graphically map it according to some simple rules. You've likely seen fractal imagery before, and I vaguely remember showing you a fractal zoomer I had on my computer.

Keep in mind, I suck at math. I understand vaguely mathmatical concepts, but I couldn't hope to explain exactly what each part in that machine is made of and what it's purpose is and how it ties with all the other parts, but ultimately, fractals are a way to show infinite detail, which is the main point here. In a fractal, no matter how far into one you go, the level of detail you can observe never changes, only the arrangement. This is the basis for how computer models are made for, say, generating trees in a videogame environment. With some minor fractal math, you start off with a tree trunk, fractal splint it off to branches, fractal split them again, ext a couple of times then throw a leaf on now and then and terminate that splint...and there's rules to how the splits occur, but if you look at trees they all appear roughly the same if you were to look at them floating in mid air without any leaves...a thick branch which splinters off into a zillion branches in each direction (or sometimes a tree will split while it's growing, so it's trunks are already 'fractalized' if you will). I'm not even at the programming part of this yet...holy shit this is going to be long winded....

Okay, so we have this concept of fractals, the fact that early on in earth life, non-plant beings attempted to form fractally, but it didn't work for what we call ANIMALS, or rather how I'll be speaking of them here: "Creatures that move to eat", which technically goes outside what we call animals as there are fungi that move towards food (and scientists are equally baffled as to what to call them other than their own classification). So those slime molds aside (and random other little guys like Venus Fly Traps and such) generally need to do something you and I love to do: EAT.

So this naturally lead into more mobile forms, and funnily enough if you think about it, maybe these forms evolved BECAUSE those fractal animals were so good at eating...they were trying to get away! Again, it's irrelevant and just more side speculating in this huge speculative email/thoughttrainthingy. The form that became dominant for it's ability to never go hungry? Binary symmetry.

BUT, we need to shift gears for a sec let's go ahead and move that pot of spaghetti continue to boil, but let's move it to the back of the stove and start browning some meat for our thought spaghetti. Just don't forget it's there.

Now, we come to humans (I know, we kinda jumped, but we'll be jumping around a tad, so get your acme springs shoes on and make sure you don't put them on underneath an overhanging cliff edge, or else you'll smash your head when you try to jump).

In modern times, it's very observable to see dichotomy of thought, the idea that most everything is a left/right issue in politics, that things are either right or wrong, etc. Essentially, most arguments are made and won when they can be boiled down to a simple binary problem for someone to make an internal decision about. In politics, it's highly effective for riling up a political party's base. It's generally a case of "US vs. THEM" which is in itself a dichotomy and quite the most generalized one, isn't it? It's literally you are in one group and 7 billion people are in the other group. Seems silly doesn't it? This idea of one of two things, 50%, etc. binary, is likely something you could find examples for in terms of persecution of peoples, wars, etc...but like, layers and layers of dichotomous decisions being made, one on to of each other.

Even when it comes to things we can't control or explain, we tend to create binary existences for these things. Emotions are a good example of this I think because I know the first thing that comes to mind when I say "What's the opposite of happy?" you say "Being on the Vinson"...or something another. But we both know, that's a euphamism for sad. Also, obviously, the concept of yin and yang, apparently a very old one, shows that we've thought about consciously as a species dichotomies for centuries.

but where is this going? I think it's time to put this meat we just browned aside now and here's the tough part, I think...but I'll try to explain. I know you have issues with computers and such, but don't worry, I will not be getting technical because I don't even get how it works completely, but whatevs...

Switching over to programming (you might be seeing where I"m going with this, but if you don't, don't worry, there IS a point)now, and completely unrelated, there's a programming methodology that we humans also use but so often that we're not really thinking about the concept, we just autonomously DO this methodology. It's known as IF-THEN. THEN 'a condition' occurs or is met, THEN do an action. IF my balls itch, THEN give Christine a smooch. Obviously that's not a logical action for balls itching, but you get the idea that it's essentially a yes/no question. So another way we could define that in a program is to do something called 'set a flag'.

In programming, flags refer to conditions. So if you were to put this into real life, every decision you make is the result of flags. I'm sure you've heard me say or someone else or thought or said it to someone else, "I should've seen the red flags". Basically, in programming, that sentence would be "Check flags 1-5. If *any* of them are raised then go do this thing". And the flags can be, in real life examples, things such as:

RAINING? YES/NO
HOT WEATHER? YES/NO
CLEAN CLOTHES? YES/NO
SHAVED BALLS? YES/NO

So these are flags that are completely irrellevant to, say, playing a videogame. I can play a videogame while it's raining, in hot weather, without clean clothes and with balls so hair that I have to tie it off in pigtails to deal with it. Nevertheless, those flags exist and you and I are aware that these flags will become important in a decision at some later time. Ultimately, though, it's simply a collection of flag checking with instructions on what to do in those situations and from a macro stand point, that's all programming is. I know you're aware of this, but I think it's important that I brought it up in this fashion.

You could go further and get down to the fact that computers completely operate in a digital/binary form. As you likely forgot from your Unicorn shitting a rainbow days in A-School, ultimately, all electronics deal in on/off. Or what we call yes/no. Simple stuff.

Now we've got some of the ingredients simmering and it's time to combine them but we'll start backwards from programming now. I hope this works, forgive me if it doesn't. Yes, this has been the culmination of several weeks of stoned thought walking places and what not.

Back at the programming...There's a specific type of programming called Object ORiented Programming which sought to 'imitate life' so to speak in that it tried to create a programming abstraction by way of comparison to real things you interact with in life, such as a stapler. In other words, imagine, say, some code exists in programming that when you type 'z' the message 'Fuck Zombies' appears. In 'conditional programming', or our IF THEN scenarios, we would say "IF z is typed, display "FUCK ZOMBIES". However, object oriented programming deals with 'messages'. So essentially a yes/no is carried inherently with a message.

What this means is...in real life, kicking a stapler across the room does not lead to you actually using a staple as it should be. It requires you to have some paper or thin objects that can fit into the mouth and you push down and if there's staples left, one is deposited through whatever you shoved in there for it to staple. So in programming terms, we have the object, the stapler. And we have a message, which is our interaction and the conditionals surrounding that action. When it's done, in programming terms the stapler continues to be a stapler and now you have a NEW MESSAGE, if you will, a new flag called 'stapled papers'.

What this allows for programmers to do in certain languages (and this is fascinating in and of itself and I could talk about computer history at length in terms of software design) such as LISP and SMALLTALK (the latter, which I'm utterly fascinated by. the first...not so much). So basically what these languages are is like...imagine going into a room with no laws at all...no laws of gravity, no laws of light, physics, nothing is in there, but you the ability to construct a world in there by doing a simple thing that you cannot do in real life (well most of us): You take bits of atoms out of the wall, recombine them and almost like alchemy, you have brand new things.

Amazing, really. If your'e into that.

It's necessary to elaborate further as this is the first actual main point towards my main idea. In this 'room' that we have, we're formless, so we CAN go and take these atoms and play with them and eventually, we get a set of molecules. Now in programming, we're talking about things like...using the properties of addition to define multiplication, so that large addition becomes easier to manage. That would be combining, I suppose, two 'addition atoms' in our room or something. I hope this makes sense, it sounds silly writing it...lol. From multiplication, we can get division and from addition we can also get subtraction if we add negative numbers together. Fun, eh?

The idea is that within the construct, the construct becomes more and more complex by combining elements construct itself, duplicating it and recombining it to automate the most basic functions it has and a specific order that results with what the programmer wanted in the first place. If I want to solve a trig problem, I need a huge amount of all those little math atoms combined in to lots of various molecules (objects!) in order to have a way to feed in my message, have the object process it and give me my new message.

In essence, that's about the best example of object oriented programming. It's almost literally a layered construction of very simple things arranged in very complex ways. And what happens in programming is that everything is an object, even messages, really. You can take a message and create a new object out of it in programming, but that's not the point here, it's really the fundamentals of programming where you need a framework, a construct to operate within and if you have that (the construct itself is made of physical objects by the way, those electronics still doing the same old 'on/off').

And here we are back to dichotomy of thought and evolution...

The mere fact that nearly all mobile life on earth (the branch that's responsible for us coming into existence) is binary had me thinking one day (yes, FINALLY we're getting to the point!) that evolution is to blame for how we view the world and interact with each other. We as a species, as LIFE may not really have any clear understanding of exactly what possibilities of thought can actually exist. Why? So here's where we go into philisophy and theory and basically junk science talk, courtesy of yours truly.

Okay, rewind, back to those early life forms, those single sells trying to arrange themselves...remember, fractal geometry and imagery was original designed to try and mathematically define plants. All plant life is fractal. You don't really see any bushes or trees that are symetrical. We see them fairly close to being symetrical, from far away, with our eyes squinting, but ultimately, they're fractal. Animal life is too, to an extent. For instance if we consider our torso to be a trunk, legs and arms are the first branches, fingers and toes are the next fractal layer of detail, etc. But the body really isn't the center of operations, it's the head, which doesn't have an equal at the eother end (we don't have another head...well...guys do, I guess...lulzluzlulz...i'm so horny, baby...) so really we're binary symmetrical in cell arrangement.

Back to evolution's beginning of life on earth, specically animal life (which we are concerned with), we see dichotomy of physical form and dichotomy of even thinking. But you and I wouldnt call it thinking just like you wouldn't say a computer thinks.

With such very early life, one could likely safely assume that the earliest creatures in the ocean cruising for something to munch on operated on a program that likely would look like this:

IF ENEMY IS NEAR THEN ESCAPE
IF FOOD IS SEEN THEN MOVE TOWARDS FOOD
IF NEAR FOOD THEN EAT
IF OBJECT IS NOT FOOD OR ENEMY THEN IGNORE

And this is at early stages, so the cell structures are, like...idk, maybe 100 cells complicated at this point.

So each successive critter that got more and more complex from reproduction also passed this programming to survive. Dodge enemies, eat food.

As other life also gained intelligence (the face that decisions are made could be argued for against whether that itself is the very definition of intelligence...a rock cannot make a decision whereas an aomeba makes hundreds of decisions in a minute) then the programming became more complex to ask more questions...such as:

IF FLOWER IS A ROSE THEN DO NOT TOUCH (file under pain, annoyance)
IF BERRY IS WHITE THEN DO NOT EAT (poiston)

So all of these decisions and decision making concepts are all built on the simple yes/no flags, conditionals and built up so that one dichotomy is actually comprised of hundreds of other dichotomies, but they're all sort of subsurface. Even in programming, once you get the fundamentals down (say for instance, a driver to get your computer to display a picture), the programmer doesn't give a fuck how it works, they just want to know 'is it working? Is it fast enough for my needs?" and then they begin making new dichotomies based on those that allow images to be displayed...in other words, it might be like this to a programmer:

IF USER PUSHES Z THEN DISPLAY "ZOMBIES SUCK"

That's a simple program, but 'display zombies suck' harkens back to hundreds and millions of man hours of trial and error and research and testing and all this shit, so by the time a new programmer does the classic 'Hello, World!' exercise, they're not starting at the computer equivalent of 'biological ooze' from which life sprung forth. They're starting at...idk, in some cases with Ancient Rome. Others prefer to start in the age of the dinosaurs and rewrite a completely new paradigm, but the truth remains that all of that work is based on the fact that their construct is still comprised of dichotomies stacked over and over and over....

But here's the kicker...that fundamental programming basis LEAD to fractals..we didn't program with fractals THEN decide that binary was better...we used binary to describe fractals..the exact opposite.

Finally, we arrive at my conclusion and questions:

Years and years of evolution that resulted in survival were likely based on simple binary decision making and that form of action has been taken to the point where we have humans that think and do and build things and even can extrude from themselves what could very well be the basis for all intelligence and put it into a box and make it do things...but the because it's a self-programming environment that appears to disable itself once it becomes sufficiently populated with flags to look for, it has a very unpredictable effect now...which is...

People can believe untrue things.

To be fair, a computer can too.

If you program a computer to think "A coke can is blue", to the computer, that's fucking true because you control that universe, and so the computer now associates the color blue with cocacola. You told it to believe that and it had nothing else to use to verify this, so it must be true.

Now, humans won't fall for that...and really a lot of animals don't necessarily fall for that. Too many people exist around the world who know what color a coke can REALLY is...

However, we as humans do believe a LOT of things that are simply not true and I propose that it a fundamental flaw in our thought process being completely binary in nature, down to the lowest essence, the programming baggage, if you will, from the when the construct which created the simulation (if you will) first started assembling what would be message sending and receiving between atoms and molecules and cells and what not. I think it could be why religion still exists, why people cannot handle nuance, why numbers can be ignored and people take a belief contrary to the evidence...because early programming, likely before our time, is broken.

That's not to say it cannot be worked with, or anything. Obviously the fact that I'm writing this ridiculously length email is proof of that. HOwever, there's still flaws and I think what needs to happen and what would benefit both fields immensely in terms of solving problems all over the place...COmputer Engineers and Evolutionary Biologists should really get together and learn from each other about how nature solves problems and how programmers solve problems and figure out where each one succeeds and the other doesn't since they appear, from my vantage point, to have the same basis of existence...the binary decision.

However, having thought about all of this, I must say...it doesn't make me hate willfully ignorant people any less.

Do computer engineers write poetry?

I Ching is based on binaries, but is a system that by its very name (the Book of Changes) recognises that everything in the universe is involved in a process of becoming something else. Definitions, vocabulary, allows us to latch our thoughts onto something and discuss but it is the space between words that 'meaning' comes into being.

Poetry (and maybe indeed all human language) is the (most-likely insurmountable) obstacle to Artificial Intelligence. But we'll see.

Hope this shows that my question wasn't a random drive-by...

I don´t quite understand how you arrive at the conclusions you do.
Why does our thinking/nature/etc being binary mean it is therefore somehow broken?

this might miss your point, but i got sidetrack by this many ideas and impressions this brings to mind. (very inspiring post) to me it feels like worth mentioning that the fractal idea can be used on anything. In your case, your using the computer model as a way to "describe/define" things, so more people can relate to that and are able to grasp it.to me the important thing is that everything is fractal, so you can literally describe/define everything with everything. so everything has to come together (alchemie) again. not just computer engineers and evolutionary biologists. this sequencial processing (thought) to me is a result of a dominant left brain hemisphere, whole society is based on that...

@ Eksotik to me it would be broken because left brain thinking will get you stuck in loops as will right brain thinking, using both in harmony will always bring up "new" solutions you never would´ve thought about. this is the way i can relate to that.

One thing I notice writing code on computers, is how it makes you think like a computer after a while,I'm not very philosophical or a computer genius. However It makes you think a bit more 'logical' and solve common problems easily and do other basic life tasks more easily. Ie , organize things in cupboards,and clean up the house or get chores done quicker.I'm not a good programmer tho just a coder so i have a different mind set about it.The most complex situation I would arrive at is subtractive logic and maybe simple variables. This logical thinking also makes me very frustrated with 'dumb' people. Alot of them are cruel and non-understanding without realizing it. It gives me the impression they have little to no self discipline, no ambition, and usually can not handle a random situation or challenge smoothly. We still must appreciate 'dumb' people and sometimes wish I was dumb yet could be considered socially dumb. Computers were not programmed to love so having love for computers or code doesn’t make sense. I think it should be a tool like any other tool, a jack hammer, army tank or programmable coffee maker. just a sudo high theory. :p

that said,cofee is a hell of a drug. & I'm sure ill love my MPC 2K XL more than any woman has ever loved me.

hahaha

Oh man I hate to be that TLDL guy but TLDL

Nah, made it a few paragraphs in with proper reading & skimmed over a bunch of the rest. Interesting angles in there, so I know I'm gonna come back when it's not in the early AM & finish it.

First impressions from that are:
- You missed Mandelbrot, the dude that came up with the idea of fractals by looking at repetition in nature.
- Check out Conway's Game of Life. For those that don't know it, it's a simple mathematical way of imposing rules of life/death on a grid. It's really cool to watch in action, even if you don't get the rules.
- There's a real problem using maths to explain life at anything higher than a chemical level. Sure there's parralels to binary & boollean with the way DNA bases are structured (adenine to thymine, cytosine to guanine), but that's approaching the topic on a really simple level. Put 4 acids in the right order and you get life capable of self-awareness? Easier said than done.
- Left-right brain thinking is a deeply flawed concept. It was debunked in the 1920s but sticks around because we love looking to personality traits to explain neurology. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that getting it in the wrong order? The brain dictates behaviour after all.
- What sounds smart when we're smashed sounds obvious when we're sober.
- Life's never simple enough to explain in dot points.

True. Isnt that somewhat part of a concept? As soon as you create one your gonna loose some levels of truth, but it could be used in the right way anyway because it points something out, like a pattern. But maybe i should have mentioned that i was rather speaking in a highly simplified way and that im aware of the fact that things are much more complicated based on how deeply im willing to look into them. Language itself is flawed, isn´t it?

However, if i got you right, then you where refering to "quality" here. Your right i could get into much more, how should i call it "sophisticated" ideas, but that isnt necesseary when its not about what i would like to point out. What i like to point out is simple, i like to keep it that way.


True


True&False

I will go and check Conways Game of Life now...

and props to Mandelbrot

Wow, lots of responses...

Let's see if I can clear some stuff up, even if it's just to get shot down by higher reasoning.

@lif - One could say that poetry can be made in any language as it's defined as artful arrangement of language. Computer programming has must stricter syntax to conform to...meaning I could use words in a programming language to write a haiku, but it wouldn't run...however to get a program that reads like a poem and can compile and run would definitely be really cool, especially if pre-run code is written well and the code that runs does something cool...I wonder if any hardcore programmers would be up for that creative challenge...I suppose too you could consider stuff coming out of the DemoScene (realtime computer art demonstrations) as computer poetry...it's art created by speaking in computer language.


(getting high to answer the rest of these questions).

@Eksotik - The idea was that we tend to think of things in black and white rather than nuance as a whole, which is broken in my view because of the level of intricacy in nearly every decision you make. So when making a large macro decision like, 'should this country bomb that country', it's inevitably a 50/50 decision without results being something you could necessarily justify in the same process, which we repeatedly figure out after every war...it's always, 'oh, there were 100 other factors which we didn't count on'...and then to deal with that, they make more binary decisions...The idea is that I think we're incapable of making any other kind of decision...and if we could think in 3's at the very least, deep down inside, would we make the same decisions we have? I am inclined in my humble, no education of the subject, to think yes. I do not have an opinion on if it would actually be BETTER, though...so I want to make that clear.

@Sensel Am - I don't necessarily think it's left/right brain thinking but rather how many layers deep do you nest your yes/no conditions and you'll see the results...I tend to think that the more you take into consideration (add conditionals to meet) your idea/solution is more creative and the less conditionals, you get a less elegant solution because you take less into account. As well, creativity comes not from answering questions in some case but in asking new questions that don't have an easy yes/no answer and requires, again, lots of other conditional yes/no flags be set before the question can be tackled...so in my opinion, this adds complexity to thought, but it's still building yes/no's again. In terms of fractal thinking, I"m not even sure how it would be done or how to recognize it...like I said, the simple fact that emotion overrides logical conclusion based on evidence means there's something still going on in the yes/no paradigm that's not right. I also have theories on why emotions came into existence that are slightly different than evolutionary biology explanation which is based on survival (and makes 100% sense)...but that's for a different post.

@LO - You talk about an interesting thing which comes down to the same questions I have...but you ask them in different way I think. I saw this yesterday that made me think differently about computing. It's a mechanical computer made of gears that works in fractions to calculate cosmic events. Here's the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism . Far from binary computing...it's complete arbitrary numbers based on gear rotations!


@Unfolding - I did mention mandelbrodt but not by name.
Conways game of life is such an interesting toy...I've actually been pretty into Powder Toy, which features a mini-game of life as an element of the worlds you can build. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it...it's just a 2d particle simulation. People have arranged the particles to make tetris, others have made theoretical nuclear reactors, etc...it's interesting stuff.
In terms of using math to explain the world, are you speaking of finding the string theory?
And yes, I'm well aware of smashed/not smashed thinking...I thought of all that while smashed, then thought about it sober and wrote that sober...lol...I think? haha
And yes, I firmly believe we are not equipped to understand the universe yet...and when we do, there's probably another universe completely different to learn after that...

Can't swallow this trite. What a tool I am. That little chapter on "women" almost made me puke bro.

Seriously, there isn't a shred of higher thought exhibited in this link you posted. Got an issue? We got you a convenient answer... don't buy it? You're just branewashed, mmmwuahahhahhahhh

I'm sure everyone knows this guy...here's an interesting interview with him...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwqF5z7F_D0