Why Do We Exist?

On Apr 29, 1:56*am, "Jonathan" wrote:
"Chazwin" wrote in message

...

Why do we exist?
Philosophy is good at identifying stupid questions.
If you think you might have asked one, consider if there might
actually be no answer to that question.

I refuse to accept that notion.
I want to know why, and I want a science that can answer it.

What leads you to think there is a why?

'How' goes to the process itself, 'why' goes to ...how... the
process began. Has it occured to you those two might
have the same answer?

Has it occured to you those two might not? Once again what make you
think that there is a why?

The only reason our science today
refuses to ask why, is because they haven't yet figured
out how.

Science is a tool. It is method of reasoning intended to provide the
best anwer to How. It is, therefore, not concerned with Why. To
describe this a failing is the same category error that would blame a
hammer for being unable to drive in a Philips head screw.

So why ask the harder question first, they might logically respond?

Why do you think that Why is harder?

The reason why science today can't anwer either question
is easy to see. By necessity science took the path of
reducing to the smallest parts as a means of finding
universal law. If we could just find the 'ultimate component'
or force etc. that is common to all, we could then understand how
everything works. But oh no... the Uncertainty Principle
and the Butterfly Effect....means we can't extrapolate from
the smallest to the whole. Even a delicate breeze would
introduce so much error, compounding with every random
interaction, that the output bears no resemblance at all to the
input. *So many parts, so many random interactions
and the Second Law, how could order/life possibly sustain
itself in such a reductionist view? How could anything at
all have a future with is pre-determined? How could the
universe have any other inherent direction except for
random at best? Or a cold dark death?

If the answer for 'how' is to be * w e * j u s t * g o t * l u c k y
what does that say about why?

That maybe there isn't a Why.

What reducing to parts....objective methods... miss is that when
you take a system apart, the emergent properties vanish.

A market force, what is it?

They are self correcting internal feedback loops of some kind
or another. And what do they do? They tend to take the system
towards efficiency, stability and creativity.

Stability and Creativity are not commonly discussed in economics.

They give ....the whole
a direction. Emergent system properties give the whole a probable
final state,

As do the laws of thermodynamics.

which is to find the best practical solution.

What makes you think that?

Emergent system properties determine the future and final
state. They give the whole a non random path and a
pre-determined future of settling on the best solution.

Darwinian evolution is much the same. The system is given a
direction from the internal self tuning abilities.


No, here you are quite wrong and have possibly be confused by
traditional depictions of an evolutionary process as a tree. Darwinian
evolution comprises of a series of trials and errors and has not
particular direction. Darwin did not elevate any of the species of
Finch found on the Galapagos above any of the others. There was no
Platonic Finch. He noted instead that the different conditions on each
island lead to Finches of a paticular phenotype being better adapted
to survive on that island.

These self tuning abilities derive from the critical interaction of
multiple components. The term 'critical' or criticality is essential
to this idea. Which like water held at that delicate range where
it's just about to boil, criticality is where a system is about to
undergo a fundamental change in state. The point where neither
driving force is dominant, but both at once. As in neither
the rule of law or freedom dominating, but held at the threshold
between the two.


Law and Freedom have little to do with specific heat.

Or perhaps call it this, self tuning begins with the highly random
interaction of equally weighted components.

So now picture this. The Second Law has done its job.

What makes you think that it has a job? This is begging the question
to an extreme extent.

And we have some system completely randomized.
And along comes some random distubance from outside.
What happens? We've gone from a system with exactly
zero (random) order, to a system with a ....non-zero level
of order.

Do you imagine that there is only one arrangement of matter for "zero
(random) order!?

Order has increased. And from a purely random
event within a totally disordered system. And in fact it's been
shown that the non zero order being created is cyclic in
character.

Question being begged again and if you do intend to rely on your
second point tha a citation would be in order.

So, can you see where this is going?

Unfortunately I can. You mistake emotivism for logic and I can't be
bothered anymore. Good bye!
[snip]

JFWR

On Apr 26, 1:33*pm, 23vl wrote:

: Somebody please add "no jesus/allah/buddah/scientology/etc
: junkies allowed" to the name of the newsgroup please.

"The fire of genius can never be contained with either a
monolithic capital or insularized bureaucracy, just like
wilderness nimrods can't play favorites with the God
who created it."

- me

PLONK

"htn963" wrote in message
...



No, that's not what she said. She only said that perceiving one such
mundane object is to yearn for its ideal.


You're not reading here carefully enough. She brings up theme of the
limitations of reductionist methods several times.

Why Emily Dickinson Would Not Smile For the Camera
by David Graham

"This is a slippery assumption. First, as modern physicists
have informed us, the experimenter inevitably becomes a
part of the experiment. There is no such thing as objectively
presenting data without in fact altering that data in the process,
however minutely. Heisenberg was not thinking of Candid
Camera when he formulated his Principle of Indeterminacy,
but the idea has become a workable metaphor for a
common-sense truth: to observe is to participate."

'In the dawning days of photography, Emily Dickinson wrote
a poem which bears on this problem:"

"Perception of an object costs
Precise the Object's loss-
Perception in itself a Gain
Replying to its Price-
The Object Absolute-is nought-
Perception sets it fair
And then upbraids a Perfectness
That situates so far-
http://www.eclectica.org/v9n3/graham_david.html






As she said, in this blistering commentary below on the modern
scientific method, we need to figure this stuff out for ourselves.
Not rely on the 'Great Minds' of modern science. As reducing
to parts (alone) brings only an endless sequence of questions
with no end. 'T was best imperfect," As a result, no answers, no
meaning without a merger with the subjective 'sciences'.


" Their height in heaven comforts not,
Their glory nought to me;


Who are 'they'? She makes it clear
below she's talking about the greats
of modern science.


'T was best imperfect, as it was;
I 'm finite, I can't see.

The house of supposition,
The glimmering frontier


The 'house of suppostion' and 'glimmering frontier'
are clear references to the scientific community.
No interpretation needed.



That skirts the acres of perhaps,
To me shows insecure.

The wealth I had contented me;
If 't was a meaner size,
Then I had counted it until
It pleased my narrow eyes

Better than larger values,
However true their show;

However accurate their equations....


This timid life of evidence

Who lives a 'life of evidence'?
A scientist, no interpretation needed.

Keeps pleading, "I don't know."

Reducing to part details, or accuracy, provides an
inversely proportional ability to understand reality

As Einstein said...also so well.

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they
are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not
refer to reality."

As Emily says, closer to nature is not the way, but
an abstract approach can only provide the answers
to fundamental questions.


"But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.

To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get."



No, she only meant that what little is known within an individual's
purview has more comfort and value than everything else outside it, no
matter how vast. There are limits on how you can interpret poetry.


The words are quite often plainly written. Has it occured to you
each and every one has to taken literally ,or accurately read.


Dickinson, gifted as she was, was a recluse not in touch with the
outer world,


I agree, but that isn't always a negative for someone that
deals in the abstract understanding of Nature. As she
said, a recluse might see what others miss.

The Missing All prevented me
From missing minor things.
If nothing larger than a World's
Departure from a hinge,
Or Sun's extinction be observed, 5
'T was not so large that I
Could lift my forehead from my work
For curiosity.



As she said Nature isn't understood by looking at it's details,
but from it's abstract properties.

NATURE is what we see,
The Hill, the Afternoon-
Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee,
Nay-Nature is Heaven.

Nature is what we hear, 5
The Bobolink, the Sea-
Thunder, the Cricket-
Nay,-Nature is Harmony.

Nature is what we know
But have no art to say, 10
So impotent our wisdom is
To Her simplicity.




so she is likely not your best muse for the ideal
scientific method. Whitman (albeit a much lesser poet) might be.


On the contrary, My hobby is complexity science, which is what
chaos theory is called now, and it uses a holistic frame of reference
she clearly refers to in the above poems. But the mathematics comes
in the form of attractors. Static, dynamic and chaotic attractors.
Which are three different types of system behaviors.
Analogous to solid, liquid and gas. In the abstract these three
realms of behavior are also classical motion, fluid motion and
quantum motion. Or....simple....cyclical.....statistical.

Or as Emily says above.....simplicty....harmony and heaven.





--
Ht

"JFW Richards" wrote in message
...
On Apr 29, 1:56 am, "Jonathan" wrote:
"Chazwin" wrote in message



Darwinian evolution is much the same. The system is given a
direction from the internal self tuning abilities.


No, here you are quite wrong and have possibly be confused by
traditional depictions of an evolutionary process as a tree. Darwinian
evolution comprises of a series of trials and errors and has not
particular direction.

You're not up on the latest math. The fairly recent field of
random boolean networks is all about how random interactions
lead to cyclic behavior. I certainly agree that evolution
is chock full of random events. It's easy to assume a process dominated
by random interactions wouldn't have a direction. But it's been
shown that the more complex a process, the more direction a
system has, the more it hill climbs.

The relationship between destruction and creation are only
recently becoming clearer. If the Second Law has managed
to totally randomize a system, so it has no order at all. Then
any random disturbance of that zero order system must
produce a non-zero level of order....increased order.
And in fact it's cyclic order which emerges from a sufficiently
complex system. The new science of self organization, because
of the above relationship, is also sometimes called the Fourth Law
of Thermodynamics.
http://www.calresco.org/sos/sosfaq.htm









Darwin did not elevate any of the species of
Finch found on the Galapagos above any of the others. There was no
Platonic Finch. He noted instead that the different conditions on each
island lead to Finches of a paticular phenotype being better adapted
to survive on that island.

These self tuning abilities derive from the critical interaction of
multiple components. The term 'critical' or criticality is essential
to this idea. Which like water held at that delicate range where
it's just about to boil, criticality is where a system is about to
undergo a fundamental change in state. The point where neither
driving force is dominant, but both at once. As in neither
the rule of law or freedom dominating, but held at the threshold
between the two.


Law and Freedom have little to do with specific heat.

Or perhaps call it this, self tuning begins with the highly random
interaction of equally weighted components.

So now picture this. The Second Law has done its job.

What makes you think that it has a job? This is begging the question
to an extreme extent.

And we have some system completely randomized.
And along comes some random distubance from outside.
What happens? We've gone from a system with exactly
zero (random) order, to a system with a ....non-zero level
of order.

Do you imagine that there is only one arrangement of matter for "zero
(random) order!?

Order has increased. And from a purely random
event within a totally disordered system. And in fact it's been
shown that the non zero order being created is cyclic in
character.

Question being begged again and if you do intend to rely on your
second point tha a citation would be in order.

So, can you see where this is going?

Unfortunately I can. You mistake emotivism for logic and I can't be
bothered anymore. Good bye!
[snip]

JFWR