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 TODAY
Battletoad
Registered: 09/25/03
Posts: 10,218
Loc: Metropolis City, USA
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 Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions  [Re: Swami]
#2297928 - 02/03/04 03:41 PM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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record players were replaced by 4-tracks were replaced by cassettes were replaced by CDs which are currently being replaced by mp3s. this system of change in music recording and playback must be comparative to your analogy of life because you did compare the two. certainly this phenomena factors into the equation but where and how does it fit into the human condition?
i do like your thinking though swami. i found it interesting...i like your analogy.
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ca'rouse (k-rouz)
intr.v.
To engage in boisterous, drunken merrymaking.
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muhurgle
Turtles all theway down
Registered: 10/29/03
Posts: 299
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: Swami]
#2298005 - 02/03/04 03:59 PM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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What about the obvious answer? There is no spirit, there is no essential 'Al'. There is no difference between living matter and dead matter.
If you really want a definition of life, you've got to be pragmatic about it, and there are different definitions for different needs.
Can anybody show me what the essential difference is between me and an animal? An animal and a bacteria? A bacteria and a virus? A virus and a replicating crystal? Sure, there are superficial differences, but where is the lifeforce, or the spirit, or whatever?
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"To make this mundane world sublime
Take half a gram of phanerothyme."
Aldous Huxley
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Sclorch
Clyster
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: Swami]
#2299194 - 02/03/04 11:17 PM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Swami said:
Not sure that I can rephrase it, but I will try. Al appears to be an emergent property of a biological system. For religious and legal leaders, people have been trying to determine when a soul entered Al, who / which is actually a property of a process. My contention is this question cannot be answered because it really does not make sense.
I know all anaologies are weak, but let's try why anyway for the purpose of clarification / discussion. For the holidays, I baked some yummy cookies. A cookie is actually also a process (I will define an object as a time snapshot of process; a process frozen, if you will.)
Note: these are not really steps, but also a continuum. Step are merely a linguistic tool for ease of discussion, but are frequently mistaken for discrete processes.
1. I bought the ingredients. Is my bag full of sugar, flour, chips, etc. a cookie?
2. I mixed the ingredients. Is my bowl full of mixed sugar, flour, chips, etc. a cookie?
3. I dab the dough on a cookie sheet. Are my separated blobs of dough now cookies?
4. I put the cookie sheet in the oven. Are they now cookies? How about at 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes? When I take them out? When they cool down?
5. Maybe they aren't cookies until I taste one.
At what exact point in time does the cookie "spirit" enter this process? Slice this entire process into nanoseconds and point to the nanosecond that goop turned into cookie. It cannot be done. When does the process become an object or is the entire question seemingly linguistically logical, but philosophically meaningless?
Note to potential respondents: While I do not recommend illegal activity, you made need to smoke a phatty before tackling this. 
That's pretty much it for me. *passes to the right*
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Note: In desperate need of a cure...
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Anonymous
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: Sclorch]
#2299711 - 02/04/04 05:39 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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- Post History Deleted Upon User's Request -
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raytrace
Stranger
Registered: 01/15/02
Posts: 720
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: infidelGOD]
#2299726 - 02/04/04 06:05 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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you know, we're living in the Information Age, everything can and HAS been reduced to zeros and ones. sorry.
I feel sorry too. It is sad indeed to learn that you can be reduced to zeros and ones. Me and a couple of others, certainly cannot, so everything is not really the appropriate word to use there.
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raytrace
Stranger
Registered: 01/15/02
Posts: 720
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: infidelGOD]
#2299750 - 02/04/04 06:31 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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there is an immaterial aspect to music as well, when taken as a whole, but still, it's made up of individual notes, and those notes can further be reduced to nothing more than zeros and ones.
actually it is not correct to say that any natural sound can be reduced to zeros and ones. it can only be approximated this way.
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Anonymous
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: raytrace]
#2299767 - 02/04/04 06:46 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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- Post History Deleted Upon User's Request -
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infidelGOD
illusion
Registered: 04/18/02
Posts: 3,040
Loc: there
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: raytrace]
#2299840 - 02/04/04 07:53 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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so everything is not really the appropriate word to use there.
you're right. I should have said everything that can be known...
I clicked on that link..
tell me, how did that information travel from you to me?
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infidelGOD
illusion
Registered: 04/18/02
Posts: 3,040
Loc: there
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: raytrace]
#2299848 - 02/04/04 07:58 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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actually it is not correct to say that any natural sound can be reduced to zeros and ones. it can only be approximated this way.
theoretically, all sound can be reduced to zeros and ones.
we run into the limitations of human hearing LONG before we run into the limitations of digital sound reproduction. even at 44khz/16bit most people can't tell the difference between real sound and reproduced sound.
what is sound?
...
you're right that analog can't be digitized with 100% accuracy.
but theoretically it can. it's just a matter of resolution and storage.
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raytrace
Stranger
Registered: 01/15/02
Posts: 720
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: infidelGOD]
#2299900 - 02/04/04 08:20 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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tell me, how did that information travel from you to me?
it has been transformed into a series of 0s and 1s if this is where you want to get to.
we run into the limitations of human hearing LONG before we run into the limitations of digital sound reproduction. even at 44khz/16bit most people can't tell the difference between real sound and reproduced sound.
I guess this is true, yet only up to a certain degree. The human brain is quite flexible, it is adaptive. You can train your brain to recognize natural sounds by comparing them with sounds of lower resolution. Once you've learnt to clearly differentiate between them, you can increase the resolution of the artificial sounds to a higher level. By continuously repeating this process you may realize that your audio capability may be ever increasing.
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raytrace
Stranger
Registered: 01/15/02
Posts: 720
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: infidelGOD]
#2299905 - 02/04/04 08:22 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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but theoretically it can. it's just a matter of resolution and storage.
why does it have to be theoretically like that? If the universe has a finite resolution I guess I need a proof of that.
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infidelGOD
illusion
Registered: 04/18/02
Posts: 3,040
Loc: there
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: raytrace]
#2299913 - 02/04/04 08:25 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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see that's the thing.
if the universe has infinite resolution, then it also has infinite storage capacity! 
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raytrace
Stranger
Registered: 01/15/02
Posts: 720
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: infidelGOD]
#2299918 - 02/04/04 08:28 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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yet, every attempt to capture a physical phenomenon with a series of 1s and 0s will only be an approximation, cause there will always be an even deeper level.
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infidelGOD
illusion
Registered: 04/18/02
Posts: 3,040
Loc: there
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: raytrace]
#2299922 - 02/04/04 08:31 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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that's why I said theoretically. it's an approximation because of limited resolution and storage capacity, NOT because it's physically impossible.
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CJay
Dark Stranger
Registered: 02/02/04
Posts: 931
Loc: Riding a bassline
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 Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: psyka]
#2299938 - 02/04/04 08:38 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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I think swami may be putting this kind of neatly. Defining things in terms of moments does seem like a silly definition of a soul which is more fluid and changable and indefinable then a material object.
However I do believe the majority of thinking and behaviour is simply the result of chemical processes/combinations. Yet I believe those processes and combinations which manifest as behaviour etc are equally manifestations of the soul represented in material reality. i.e. To the scientist they may appear as random and soulless, but to me they are deliberate and charged with deep meaning drawn across time and here represented by the soul in this level of reality.
Alan Stone hits the nail on the head for me with:
Would you agree the duality between body and soul is fictive, that both are one?"
Things are not truly divided - and all are one. Monkey vocal chords and the average monkey brain have difficulty with that.
We are living in the soul, material things are part of the soul, and the ego is the soul too. The soul is exploring itself. Having a laugh it would seem.
I'm new here and I don't know what I'm talking about, but I love to speculate. The vastness of the imagination excites and enthralls me, and I believe if it can be imagined it is somehow real in some dimension. well I can't put it in English very well, but the patterns and images in my brain somehow fuse, and yet have separate identities too. It's amazing!
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raytrace
Stranger
Registered: 01/15/02
Posts: 720
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: infidelGOD]
#2299950 - 02/04/04 08:43 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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well, yes alright, it is physically possible, in fact the universe is doing this all the time (but that does not mean we can artificially reproduce it - capture it in its entirety).
my point was that you cannot claim that a natural sound can be reduced to a train of 1 and 0. and this applies to what we perceive through all our senses.
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 fireworks_god
Sexy.Butt.McDanger
Registered: 03/12/02
Posts: 24,855
Loc: Pandurn
Last seen: 1 year, 7 months
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: Swami]
#2299960 - 02/04/04 08:47 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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You know, Swami, your cookie analogy seems to really back up a lot of what Ped says and that really makes sense to me, and I find this intriguing in the extreme.
Its obvious that there isn't any moment that the cookie becomes a cookie, and that there is no time that it is actually a cookie. Like you said, it is all a process, everything is changing, once this "cookie" is injested and it breaks down in my digestive system, is it still a cookie then? 
Maybe our way of perceiving "reality" is causing so many problems of perspective because it isn't looking at life from the right angle? Life is basically an extremely complex flow of energy... in this vein of flow that we are in, at this perspective, things appear so stable and evolved, so set in stone, but there is no permanent form..... the concept is more of an image type thing.....
Whoa, I started conceptualizing something else there. Um.. what's this thread about? 
If this is a debate over when the soul enters the human, or whatever, or if that is the example being used to carry that concept, well, it doesn't work like that. I see the energy that sustains life as being the soul... all is life and has always had soul.
Peace.
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If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
  
 
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CJay
Dark Stranger
Registered: 02/02/04
Posts: 931
Loc: Riding a bassline
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: raytrace]
#2299973 - 02/04/04 08:53 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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Well if you were 'god' and you had a super-super-digitiser you may be able to produce sounds so accurately comoposed of 1's and 0's that it is actually the real thing. Reality is patterned, even what we percieve as analog, is it really analog or 'super-super' (god)digital format?
Even when one rips a leaf that has fallen in autumn, even tho the human mind can't see an obvious pattern, the edge of the rip follows molecular boundries and hence a pattern.
Perhaps the soul is made of 1's and 0's with an extra dimensional aspect (1squared and 0squared - somehow, in (at this point) some humanly indefinable way??).......?????????
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infidelGOD
illusion
Registered: 04/18/02
Posts: 3,040
Loc: there
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: raytrace]
#2299979 - 02/04/04 08:54 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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well there's really no way to know for certain.
we could all be living in a computer simulation right now and all natural sounds are already being reproduced using zeros and ones. there's no way to know...
and btw, there are "practical" limits to resolution, like planck's length. sure, there can be something smaller... but it's all guesswork at that level. I would guess that the universe does indeed have infinite resolution, so it would be impossible to reduce the whole universe to zeros and ones, but I'm pretty sure that the sum of human knowledge and experience (i.e. things that can be known) can be reduced in that way. the fact that we're having this conversation, discussing such vague, immaterial concepts in a digital medium should tell you something.
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raytrace
Stranger
Registered: 01/15/02
Posts: 720
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Re: Illogical & Unanswerable Questions [Re: infidelGOD]
#2300084 - 02/04/04 09:51 AM (20 years, 7 months ago) |
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(I am addressing also CJay in the second quote)
well there's really no way to know for certain
that's why I want to keep the possibilities of what I am and what the universe is: open
we could all be living in a computer simulation right now and all natural sounds are already being reproduced using zeros and ones.
I am well passed the simulation thing, it?s just a trend. As you said we live in the information age, people are too excited with computers and they push it too far. But, I think that?s all
I'm pretty sure that the sum of human knowledge and experience (i.e. things that can be known) can be reduced in that way
This is probably a temporary limit (like a local maximum) for the depiction of human knowledge. However, I think experience is well beyond 1s and 0s, I think it is beyond information itself.
the fact that we're having this conversation, discussing such vague, immaterial concepts in a digital medium should tell you something
it tells me that it is a relatively effective means of communication, with the potential to get a lot better. You can pass lots of descriptions and approximations (in a rather awkward way as it is right now), but not the real thing.
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