Also a BBC TV programme from my youth called ‘Runaround’. :)

For example, Consciousness moves based on knowledge, at least in part, so every experiment must take into account the the knowledge brought into it of previous experiments.

Found an article related to this. check it out:
The “wisdom of the crowd” has become a bit of a pop cliché, but it’s backed up by real-world evidence. When groups of people are asked to provide estimates of obscure information, the median value of their answers will often be remarkably close to the right one, even though many of their answers are laughably wrong. But crowds rarely act in the absence of social influences, and some researchers in Zurich have now shown that providing individuals information about what their fellow crowd-members are thinking is enough to wipe out the crowd’s wisdom.

Your last point is important too. Scientific method itself falls into this category. All observations are subjective, but experiments are still repeatable. Having said that, doing good science requires the observer to set their mind in an appropriately receptive state…

As for “people think differently post internet” yeah, definitely. I’ve got a post on that coming up soon, actually (another “God Emperor of Dune” thing). Not sure if it’s a good thing, though not sure if its quite as bad as the quote points it out to be either.

And that quote is AWESOME. Thanks for that. I really really like that, I think it points out why science has such a hard time figuring out the whole “consciousness” thing. There’s too much qualitative change going on there for the scientific model to be applicable without a vastly different understand of how things work and how experiments can be undertaken.

For example, Consciousness moves based on knowledge, at least in part, so every experiment must take into account the the knowledge brought into it of previous experiments.

Another example, scientists pride themselves on the objective non-emotionalness of experiments. But what about when the emotions and feelings of the scientist HAVE to be taken into account in order for all the data to be covered. Particularly the “qualitative data”, you know?

“As Thom points out, all science is based upon an implicit assumption of structural stability. Two experiments will never yield exactly the same quantitative results, because experimental conditions cannot be duplicated precisely, and external disturbances cannot be completely eliminated. It is not surprising if a second experiment produces measurements a little greater or less, graphic curves a little steeper or shallower, than the first. But if the curve bends down instead of up, if the liquid that froze in the first experiment boils in the second, something is seriously wrong. Science is possible only if observations and results are /qualitatively/ repeatable.”

- Woodcock & Davis, ‘Catastrophe Theory’, Penguin 1978, p.18

That just blows me away, seriously.

Ah, well, this is pre-internet stuff. But I’ll see what I can do…

http://lagrange.physics.drexel.edu/flash/zcm/

Reminds me somewhat of the I Ching, with the limited number of possible responses/changes.

I wonder if there’s some sort of “golden quality” that we could train ourselves in, to ensure a “better” or even just “good” response on a more regular basis. Like in that “my yoke is light” conversation we were having elsewhere (which I’d somehow missed until now).

Anyway, feel free to leave some links (if you get put in the spam box, let me know and I’ll dig it out). This feels like one of those things that got put away in favor of a new toy, and never really explored properly.

Historically it’s fascinating as it’s what we had /immediately before/ Chaos Theory blew it out of the water. And a guy called Zeeman caused a huge controversy by applying it simplistically to almost all human behaviour. It survives in ‘serious’ maths only in a niche, as the best description of what happens when light rays are brought to a focus by a lens.

I’ll dig out some quotes from the book.

I am in Portland, but now I can head down to visit the family in Salinas/Monterey much more easily. And I know what you mean about the wilderness. The Monterey Bay is really excellent, and Portland’s kind of got a similar thing going on with forests. The wilderness + city is where its at!

Speedbird, more info on this catastrophe theory, please! Sounds interesting.

Frank Tipler? No. But I’ve heard talk of some of his things.

Currently I’m being absolutely astounded by an old book (1978) on something called ‘catastrophe theory’.

As for being downloaded into information, I am gradually coming to the conclusion that the much vaunted ‘singularity’ actually happened in about 1986 and that we are in fact living in it. Like being inside the event horizon of a big black hole but not knowing it.

To me that Huge deep bay is a wilderness. So its like living in a beautiful city (not far from Santa Cruz or even San Francisco) on the edge of a huge wilderness, which is always the balance I look for in a place to live. I need culture plus wildness. Totally isolated from art, culture and community is no fun, nor is an urban jungle.

Plus I love the ocean!

I think a move to Monterey is a great idea, we could actually meet up in person when I come to town. I never realized how beautiful the Monterey area is until I moved away for 10 years. I am newly in love with it again, sea mammals and all. :)

BTW, I want to move my wife and i to Monterey. I miss seeing big marine mammals everyday!

Or maybe that’s the opposite of intelligence: the trick of the brain is to allow complex quantum superpositions to last longer without resolution. Quantum computing of a sort.

That’s an intriguing thought. It would make sense that a brain that could observe and collapse superpositions could also stretch them out. Sounds painful though. :)

Seems like if the universe were infinite we’d always be in the center wouldn’t we?

Yeah, I would think so, and even if it was “infinite but bounded” Like on a globe where you can travel forever on it, but not off of it. not counting for spacetravel, of course. Anyway, it works like that because space time is curved, ever-so-slightly, so we can travel forever and eventually reach right back where we started.

Though I’m with Ted, I’d rather deal with what’s here on Earth for now. Space travel is important, but not if we can’t do a better job here first.

Yup :)

> being translated into pure information

Probably already happened. Or is happening all the time… :)

Its cool to think about but outerspace seems so far away! Plus if I go into criogenic sleep all my friends and relatives will be dead when I wake up. I would rather rediscover things about Earth that have been overlooked or forgotten.

But I hold out hope that maybe some really quick way to travel through space will be discovered in my lifetime, like for example being trnslated into pure information and then reconstituted someplace else.

Fourteen billion lightyears to the edge, or something like that. Or possibly the edge is the centre, the Big Bang… I’m not sure. Finite but unbounded, or something. Or didn’t Einstein say that the distance between here and everywhere we see is actually zero? Fook, cosmology’s confusing.

Copenhagen is probably twaddle as originally formulated; entanglement makes things much more interesting. Spin it the other way: what if whatever can cause a quantum ‘observation’ (it doesn’t take a Ph.D., as Bell famously wrote) is ‘intelligent’? Intelligence pervades the Universe. Or maybe that’s the opposite of intelligence: the trick of the brain is to allow complex quantum superpositions to last longer without resolution. Quantum computing of a sort.

I like the puddle, not heard that before. Of course it’s a thread of both Christian (and Darwinian!) belief that the world is indeed perfectly shaped to accommodate us…

The only really interesting bit of the anthropic principle is that is really does look like we’re at the centre of the Universe these days. Not the solar system, but definitely the Universe…!