MadPole
Vault
For your delectation,
below part three of my correspondence
with the insane philosopher who is the only
mortal who actually knows the truth.
Typical MadPole
quote:
"60% of You is water.
So who the hell am I talking to, You or water
?"
MadPole:
You have noticed that some people seem to have
constant troubles with their computers when
others don't. There are people who have problems
with every car they buy. And there are those
who buy a car for ?200 and it lasts 10 years.
Electrons have something to do with that. And
love as well. If we agree that brain is made
of electrons which have tendency to disappear
and appear somewhere else then our brain affects
the whole universe because our electrons keep
popping out in some unknown to us places. If
we agree that electrons transmit waves and that
the thinking process is just a huge electron
party then obviously anything we think is going
to have SOME MINIMAL effect on everything else.
Love is a thought, thought creates electrons,
electrons carry waves, waves get everywhere....
that's all I am saying !
Funny thing now: my spiritual experience is
splitting into even smaller chunks of time now,
I went downstairs to get a beer and had to crawl
back upstairs on my knees !
How could I even think of going to work tomorrow?!
NO BLOODY WAY - I am working from home! What
I was saying was that our brain registers every
millisecond of EVERYTHING - bones being squeezed,
skin dropping off, some terrible fights going
on every day in our body.... loads of things....
My today's experience [
MadPole
narrowly avoided broken leg in an accident]
forced my brain to shed this information with
me because it had to...
It was like a manager who never wants to tell
people what's going on but one day shit hits
the fun and he has to....People who are told
gain an insight to much bigger picture and suddenly
understand a lot of unrelated things and on
and on and on..... I thank for this experience
and it is really funny and nice thanking this
guy for nearly breaking my leg because he is
quite open minded so he just laughs at the whole
paradox and stills thinks guilty of course.
Processes happening in my bones are absolute
and mirror impression of management in A company......So
knowing one allows me to know another .......F**king
amazing! Get to know your manager by having
you bones crashed! That's my point.
eadon:
If your body processes reflected those of company
managers, you wouldn't survive another millisecond.
You obviously vastly underestimate the miracle
that is our physiology and biology or vastly
overestimate the ability of company managers.
Micro$oft are a successful company. Would you
trust corporate managers to maintain and upgrade
your vital organs? "This body has performed
an illegal operation and will be shut down.
OK. Cancel."
I imagine that when your leg was in danger of
getting crushed, your oldest, most primitive
areas of the brain, which evolved for self-preservation,
lit up. You had access, for a brief time, to
the most basal parts of your mind. Or at least
the parts the subconscious told your conscious
about. I think the conscious mind is just the
subconscious playing tricks on us. Trying to
understand the subconscious is like trying to
understand how a TV works by watching a Tom
and Jerry cartoon, fun, but not easy.
MadPole:
I bloody tell You what happened! My brain was
getting constant flow of information what was
happening. It knew about EVERY cell being squeezed
[when leg was nearly broken] It did not give
me this information - because it usually doesn't.
There is too much of this rubbish. But my brain
, with all those neutron connections, run some
simulation programs. My brain worked out that
according to the EVOLUTION of the current situation,
according to the way the things are progressing
at the moment, my bone will be broken in few
milliseconds. My brain worked out the future,
decided that it has to warm me about it and
made all this information accessible to me so
I don't waste time thinking and analysing. That's
why it was a spiritual experience. Because I
was given an access to the hub - to the part
of the system only administrators are allowed
to see. I was allowed to see the bigger picture.
eadon:
Funny you should say that. I was reading an
article this morning about the brain. It builds
a virtual reality model of the body, because
getting feedback from the real body is too slow.
It simulates movements in the brain, carries
them out, gets the feedback and then compares
the feedback with what it expected. Even more
interesting is that it filters out the sensory
perceptions generated by its own movements.
The tactile feeling of walking is almost zero
and yet the tiny spider crawling up your leg
would cause a huge sense of touch response.
When you say you saw the hub, my theory is you
probably saw the hub like we can see the centre
of the galaxy with binoculars on a cloudy day.
Using your conscious mind to probe the workings
of the inner mind is like working out the architecture
of a Pentium chip by playing Quake II on it.
MadPole:
I am having day off sick today because of my
leg! And I've got a wee hung-over from slightly
overdosing on one of the oldest painkillers
known to a man. It is all about levels of indirection.
It is all about the wholeness being more than
its parts. It is all about any "organisation"
"knowing" about itself although I have to admit
I don't have a clue what "knowing" would mean
in this case. Toilet paper KNOWS it is made
of paper. It knows about trees and wood industry.
It knows physics, it can calculate very well
when it is supposed to break, tear. But the
word "know" is a problem here. Similarly brain
is made of electrons. Therefore it has all the
knowledge embedded and available. But it IS
NOT human "knowing" That's what I find difficult
to communicate.
Is it possible to talk about certain knowledge
that lies outside human logic when I am bloody
human after all? Am I trying to jump the barrier
which is impossible to jump because this barrier
is in fact me ? Am I trying to take my insides
out and pretend that they are "outsides" ?
eadon:
Interesting concept: you talk about the idea
that things 'know' about themselves. I think
that complete self-knowledge is impossible.
A system must be more complex than the knowledge
it contains. So if the knowledge is about itself
and it must be more complex than its knowledge,
then its self-knowledge must be incomplete.
A computer program must be more complex than
its internal representation of its own properties.
I suspect that the brain knows virtually nothing
about itself. There is no evolutionary reason
why it should, methinks. It tries to learn about
itself but ultimately both language, mathematics
and our own brain is incapable of dealing comprehensively
with a system containing 100 billion neurones
interconnected with ten trillion connections.
Even if we could simulate the brain on a hypothetical
computer, the Computer program would be as intractable
as the brain itself. And I suspect that consciousness
and other mysteries are side effects of this
awesome complexity. We can never understand
them or our selves fully unless we understand
the complex systems, which we will never be
able to do.
All we can do is make vague speculations and
approximations, like the Ancient Greeks musing
about the nature of the stars in the sky. Your
quest for self-knowledge is doomed to fail.
Any self-knowledge is speculation, and history
has shown that speculation is more often proven
incredibly wrong than correct. The Ancient Greeks
did not imagine that the stars are balls of
gas undergoing constant nuclear fusion. Only
experiments and mathematics can reveal what
is true. Speculation relies on fantasy, or common
sense. Neither of these was good enough for
the thinkers to derive quantum mechanics or
relativity. Therefore thinking about reality
is interesting but futile without science. Spiritualism
is a waste of time, it never derived quantum
mechanics or anything that is useful. It might
make you feel good, but then again so does self
delusion and drugs. Religion and spiritual types
were not good at figuring out what we now know
about the cosmos or subatomic world - or the
brain! All they can do is be fooled into thinking
they know the answers but they don't. If they
did, all religions and new-age fads would be
the same.
MadPole:
We seem to have a problem with the word "know"
and I am not surprised. Perhaps we are trying
to cram too many things into one poor word?
Meditation: Imagine being able to "tune" to
those atoms which are buzzing in your brain.
Imagine being able to "experience" them. This
has got nothing to do with the "knowledge" as
we know it! It is like listening to music, to
rhythm. You are enthusiast of classical music
- think what it perhaps does to You ?! Why do
You like it? What does it do? There are no facts,
there are no statements. There is only vibration.
There is only rhythm. Sequences and patterns
which keep evolving and mixing and interacting
with each other. This is the music of the evolution.
This is DNA code represented in its vibrational,
evolutionary form. This is not "consciousness
level". This is not even "subconsciousness level".
This is "vibrational level" - not even assembler
but more the language of the building blocks
- the chips themselves. They are humming and
vibrating on a very simple level but the combinations
and interactions of those vibrations creates
complex things.
You have convinced me that organisation knows
about itself AND MORE - but the word "know"
is what is problematic here. Water knows so
much about being a water that it can hardly
escape it. It knows how it should behave - it
knows when to freeze and when to evaporate.
Very reliable thing - water - never fails to
do what expected from it. But water is also
a Hydrogen and Oxygen. They are separate things,
with their own lives and priorities. They "know"
how to behave themselves. They "know" nothing
about water.
Unexpected summary - Musicians can capture the
"rhythm of life". Painters can paint it. Filmmakers
can film it. And now programmers want to program
it. Funnily enough, for me computers started
from... drumming machines! My first computer
interest was in drumming machines....And thanks
to You I realised why! It wasn't about drumming
machines - it was just a fact that computers
still weren't around so drumming machine was
a computer for me! I remember that I was not
that interested in music - I was interested
in programming it!
DNA is nothing else but complex sequence of
very simple rhythms/combinations. Science is
a replacement for knowing reality. Science tries
to fill the gaps in our "direct understanding".
Scientists don't need theories to understand
DNA - its building blocks are very simple. They
need computer powerful enough to work out the
sequence - sequence is where the "knowledge"
is.
I rest my case here and I am going to the doctors
tomorrow! My leg is in a poor state and thanks
to that I learnt something new and obvious:
sitting on the chair is very hard on one's legs!
Here is a wonderful example of what I am talking
about: it took me 36 years of my life to discover
such a simple truth! A lot of people think that
the main purpose of sitting down is to give
one's legs a bit of rest...and I know now this
is total...rubbish! I spent 36 years trying
to understand the Universe, maths and physics
which use a lot of pulleys (I failed miserably
on that front). And I don't even understand
my own legs! Terrible, innit ?!
eadon:
a few grams of matter contains an Avogadro's
constant of atoms (about 100000000000000000000000).
Are you trying to say that we can be aware of
all of them and all their electrons, quarks,
gluons, neutrons, protons and pions? Each of
these is doing countless trillions of things
a second. There is a bit more info in there
than there is in a piece of music. Arguably.
There is no such thing as self knowledge at
all scales, methinks, by any definition of know.
Besides quantum mechanics puts strict physical
restrictions on self-knowledge, as you know.
So does chaos theory. When you talk about water
behaving as water you are talking about chemistry
and molecular physics. Physics is the knowledge
you are discussing? Complex behaviour from simple
laws?
DNA sequence is only half the story. The algorithm
of DNA depends on environment, or it will not
run. DNA is clever. It programs very little
but achieves an amazing amount by interacting
with its cellular environment. M$ in reverse.
It relies on emergent behaviour for its best
tricks, not algorithms as we think of them.
On the subject of your injured leg, understanding
pulleys is easy. Understanding legs is hard.
Hope the doc doesn't pronounce gangrene and
lop them off!
MadPole:
Doc confirmed what my leg told me! I didn't
even have to go for some stupid X-ray at the
other end of town!
Of course, of course we can be aware of them
(atoms?). We ARE them! But absolutely spot on
point - not by any definition of awareness we
... know! Physics IS EXACTLY what I am trying
to avoid discussing! Water knew how to be a
water before physics were even invented...before
humans were invented come to it! Water is a
wonderful media to communicate what I am trying
to communicate. On many, many different levels
(and it is "levels", not physics I am talking
about, levels of indirection). All religions
used water for infinitive number of points they
tried to prove so I won't say anything new.
The journey of water is amazing thing. The word
water is amazing word. There is atom of water.
Water. There is drop of water. Water. There
is ocean. Water. There is human being. Water.
In each case water preserves its qualities but
becomes something else at the same time. Collective
consciousness perhaps ? Ocean is one entity.
Ocean is not collection of drops of water, is
it ? 60% of You is water. So who the hell am
I talking to, You or water ?
You are the DIRECT result of all the things
that happened. This is your absolute "knowledge".
You can deny it - but you can't escape it. You
are the DIRECT result of everything that happened.
And everything that WILL happen will be the
DIRECT result of what happened already. Or continuation
rather to be more precise and language is failing
us here again.... The world today is a DIRECT
result of your actions. Every movement you made
affected and changed it forever. The world would
be totally different place if you weren't here.
The only problem is.... that nobody would have
noticed! But is it really a good excuse ?
MadPole:
My [ex] manager doesn't have time to tell me
what he wants me to do because he is making
me productive by playing with numbers in his
spreadsheets. I have come up with plan of things
to do and he plainly rejected them at the same
time not specifying what it is he wants me to
do instead. So I am back to fiddling my toes...
(surely not "fiddling"?!) and in a bit of shell-shock.
Catch-22 in a full glory.
1999
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