Thursday, May 11, 2006
From the recycled email department
Re: Probability of Genius?
Date: 23/12/2003 6:54 pm
From: Peter Turland
To: CHORA@liverpool.ac.uk
Reply to: Chora List
On Sunday 21 Dec 2003 9:49 pm, you wrote:
> I am not so sure that it is at all weird, Peter. Erasmus Darwin, Goethe,
> Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, and Herder all developed fairly sophisticated
> theories of evolution of a pretty similar nature between 1794-5, and
> Lamarck was only about five years behind; and while Goethe and Herder often
> discussed these matters together the work was otherwise quite independent.
> I was under the impression that there was a consensus about the dueness of
> an idea. Rod
Hello Rod,
Maybe my use of the term weird, gave the wrong impression. I did not mean
weird in terms of wrong, I meant weird in terms of evidence of something
strange, something unexplained. Something about human history that human
beings have not put into any kind of context yet.
Apart from subjective Epicurean notions of sensation seeking, oral
gratification, sexual gratification, status seeking, desires of wanting to
leave ones mark on history, many people believe that life is fundamentally
meaningless. I think that this belief is held because of the assumption that
life is somehow human, as though human life were a superset of life, not a
subset of life, an easy mistake to make. Possibly the same kind of mistake
as thinking the sun goes around the earth. Or thinking the world was in ones
head, instead of the other way around.
It is the nature of our history that intrigues me, especially when it
sometimes looks as if it were in a sense directed. The reason I do not think
there will be found any evidence for life on Mars, is there does not appear
to be a biosphere on Mars. How do we separate our existence as a species on
Earth from the existence of the biosphere?
Rock isotope evidence suggests that the early atmosphere on Earth had no
oxygen, fossil evidence suggests the oxygen was put there by bacteria. The
Earth has been shaped by life. Our closest neighbours Mars and Venus show no
evidence of biological processes. I think this is because of the quite narrow
range of the boiling/freezing points of water and this is without mentioning
Lyle Watson's lottery theory for life's creation.
I first came across the "Gaia" hypothesis from James Lovelock and I was
hooked. The idea that the whole Earth as one dynamic living entity, in tandem
with the unpredictable dynamism exhibited by the sun.
It is evident that little progress has been made, as to a clear idea what
consciousness actually is. Yes people rush around in their white coats, stop
watches in hand, measuring IQ, as though IQ and 'time' were somehow
synonymous. When we look at the apparent cleverness of life in its broad band
ability to survive in an enormous variety of environments, bacteria have been
found miles up in the air, and miles down under the surface of the earth.
The earth is exploding with life and excepting human consciousness, none of
it conscious according to many human pundits. I think that view is ridiculous
only caused by tunnel vision. What do we know of consciousness? What about a
far slower kind of consciousness, one that operates on a scale of months not
milliseconds.
We are surrounded by billions of bacteria, we would describe them as being
separate bacteria, we do not know they are *separate*, we just assume they
are. They might all link together in ways we do not understand. We might be
living in a conscious soup. Until we can define 'consciousness' we cannot
catagorise what is, and what is not, conscious. I would suggest the lack of
AI success would infer that, because we do not understand consciousness, we
are unable to reproduce it, except by traditional methods.
ho ho
Peter.
--
http://dollyknot.com
Messages to the list will be archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.html
Date: 23/12/2003 6:54 pm
From: Peter Turland
To: CHORA@liverpool.ac.uk
Reply to: Chora List
On Sunday 21 Dec 2003 9:49 pm, you wrote:
> I am not so sure that it is at all weird, Peter. Erasmus Darwin, Goethe,
> Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, and Herder all developed fairly sophisticated
> theories of evolution of a pretty similar nature between 1794-5, and
> Lamarck was only about five years behind; and while Goethe and Herder often
> discussed these matters together the work was otherwise quite independent.
> I was under the impression that there was a consensus about the dueness of
> an idea. Rod
Hello Rod,
Maybe my use of the term weird, gave the wrong impression. I did not mean
weird in terms of wrong, I meant weird in terms of evidence of something
strange, something unexplained. Something about human history that human
beings have not put into any kind of context yet.
Apart from subjective Epicurean notions of sensation seeking, oral
gratification, sexual gratification, status seeking, desires of wanting to
leave ones mark on history, many people believe that life is fundamentally
meaningless. I think that this belief is held because of the assumption that
life is somehow human, as though human life were a superset of life, not a
subset of life, an easy mistake to make. Possibly the same kind of mistake
as thinking the sun goes around the earth. Or thinking the world was in ones
head, instead of the other way around.
It is the nature of our history that intrigues me, especially when it
sometimes looks as if it were in a sense directed. The reason I do not think
there will be found any evidence for life on Mars, is there does not appear
to be a biosphere on Mars. How do we separate our existence as a species on
Earth from the existence of the biosphere?
Rock isotope evidence suggests that the early atmosphere on Earth had no
oxygen, fossil evidence suggests the oxygen was put there by bacteria. The
Earth has been shaped by life. Our closest neighbours Mars and Venus show no
evidence of biological processes. I think this is because of the quite narrow
range of the boiling/freezing points of water and this is without mentioning
Lyle Watson's lottery theory for life's creation.
I first came across the "Gaia" hypothesis from James Lovelock and I was
hooked. The idea that the whole Earth as one dynamic living entity, in tandem
with the unpredictable dynamism exhibited by the sun.
It is evident that little progress has been made, as to a clear idea what
consciousness actually is. Yes people rush around in their white coats, stop
watches in hand, measuring IQ, as though IQ and 'time' were somehow
synonymous. When we look at the apparent cleverness of life in its broad band
ability to survive in an enormous variety of environments, bacteria have been
found miles up in the air, and miles down under the surface of the earth.
The earth is exploding with life and excepting human consciousness, none of
it conscious according to many human pundits. I think that view is ridiculous
only caused by tunnel vision. What do we know of consciousness? What about a
far slower kind of consciousness, one that operates on a scale of months not
milliseconds.
We are surrounded by billions of bacteria, we would describe them as being
separate bacteria, we do not know they are *separate*, we just assume they
are. They might all link together in ways we do not understand. We might be
living in a conscious soup. Until we can define 'consciousness' we cannot
catagorise what is, and what is not, conscious. I would suggest the lack of
AI success would infer that, because we do not understand consciousness, we
are unable to reproduce it, except by traditional methods.
ho ho
Peter.
--
http://dollyknot.com
Messages to the list will be archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.html
