Calen Must make a Choice
For the good of mankind and as the inevitable
requirement of reality
The following was composed on Zoji.com in a fit of Pique. By me. For
posterity. Posterity being a 'friend' of mine. I use quotes because if
I continue to repost this everywhere on the internet in a methodical
fashion, he'll probably stop being my friend.
Special bonus: His response and my response to his response at the
bottom!
Ha! What bullshit
Another place to write anything that pops into my tiny little mind?
Amazing!
Ok fine. Here's a nugget for you
Heisenbergs uncertainty principle applies completely to any set of
nodes in a system which are receiving minimum level behavioral input.
In quantum physics this amounts to packets of energy impacting a
particle (or other packets of energy).
This means
When people (nodes in a social system) recieve information which they
do not come upon in the course of their own behavior, the following
things are true
You cannot observe the interaction of information by any means (in this
case because the only tool which can measure this system is
information, the act of explaining, so to speak, the exchange, would
constitute new information, and would not represent the interaction.
Calen will probably try to argue this. Then I would patiently sit there
and explain it to him several times until I A) got bored or B) said
something silly to end the conversation, so, Calen, lets assume you're
convinced and move on).
The more information which interacts with the target the A) more you
know about it B) more disrupted the object is from its 'natural' state.
The most elegant similarity to draw is with the double slit-experiment
in which the wave-like behavior of particles gated through two slits in
a surface interposed between an emitter and a measurement device (which
is also a surface--how exiciting!) turns linear when the particles are
measured at any stage in their journey after their emittance. The more
information given to a person linearizes their behavior, and diminishes
their natural tendency. Calen will split hairs on this point and Dan
will help. The only way to overcome this is to gloss over their
objections with reassurances like 'of course' and 'yes such a good
point you make, me-oh-my, I like pie'.
You can only know individual facts about a person perfectly (in theory)
and you cannot know more than one thing at once absolutely. At the
level of quanta this is position and acceleration, but a human being
has probably several more things to measure (teehee stupid humans) so I
propose that the number of factors being measured simultaneously
affects this accuracy. Dan can come of with some sort of X over E to
the X or natural log of X times X squared expression for this. But the
point is you know less and change more the more information you input.
For some reason Calen is willing to 'buy this'. Like I give a shit.
Finally you can never measure the disposition of a group at a level any
smaller than a single person. This may seem trivial, but is potentially
important in identifying the number of individuals present in a single
instance. A measureable result of somekind, and I mean this is in a
BROAD sense, doesn't indicate simultanaity. Dan says something
pertinent but annoying, since it interrupts my stride. I kinda forget
the next thing I was going to say and conversation drifts on. Later it
comes to me but fewer people are interested. Still, I continue just to
be sure I'm making sense to myself.
The point comes out that, considering that it is the information age,
and that the availability of unrequested information is so large,
behavior has become linear. In sub-cases this is obvious. People in
urban areas tend to have greater freedom because the quantity of
received information turns it into static--the act of analyzing
i...actually let me put this in first. Free will does not exist in some
kind of pure happy sense that some jackass UW professor wants to think
it does. If you had a computer larger than the universe running the
solution to all the movements of the atoms in this universe, everything
predicted would be true--so fuck you and your fucking free will, but
here's the thing, we don't care about this example because it is
stupid, or, to nail it down with terminology, it is insignificant.
Significance is the matter which defines an interaction in a given
plane. I should qualify that.
In quantum physics its impossible to measure things smaller than a
quanta. Anything which is an exchange of energy 1 quanta or larger is
significant--in that plane of existence. We don't know what happens
inside electrons, or packets of energy, for that matter, and it is
reasonable to assume that it is not significant.
This factor of a quanta might seem special, in that it's part of a
physical 'law' or pattern, but it's best thought of as arbitrary. Why
this much and not more or less? Who knows? And who cares. For the
purposes of anything larger than a quanta, a quanta is significant. The
difference between microscopic and macroscopic is similar. If you can't
see it without help, it's microscopic. What's the measurement? The
distance between rods and cones in your eyes, or whatever else. It is
not significant visually, and only visually. It may be significant in
other ways, but, when it comes to significance, scope is all important.
So some other possible scopes (or planes, as I introduced them) would
be the cellular scope--anything large enough to interact with a
cell--presumably some minimum level of atoms and molecules in a clump.
A cell in an organism. This may initially seem like I'm wrong, since
substances smaller than a cell can affect an organism, but the point is
they are not significant until they affect a cell. If you are immune
(for instance) to a poison or some viral agent, then it is not
significant to the organism. In a way think of it this way: a virus has
to highjack a cell before it matters to the organism. Merely floating
around it's like a dead spaceship in some movie about aliens that eat
peoples' faces--if no stupid people get on board, it just drifts
forever--hinting at a possible summer blockbuster. I digress.
You can talk about the neural scale--significance being measured in
neural activity, or the social scale--anything marked as an individual.
So we get back to free will.
Anyway, the question of whether a giant parallel uniiverse of predicted
behavior affects the significance of your free will boils down to this,
your behavior is significant as 'free' when it is predictable by
something larger than one (1) standard universe (as we know it {tm}).
So anyway, you're free, except when we can predit what you do. Adding
information to you makes you predictable, thereby, or in addition, or
whatever, reducing your free will. However, when there's a morass of
crap that has no significant localized source or pattern (not a
'measurement', to return to the quantum concept), that is, something
resembling the natural state, you are once again free. Or freer. You
know, whatever. You're always going to get your free will in gasps and
spurts because once your mind analyzes something it becomes input, and
input affects your output (isn't this fun?). In a certain sense your
unique movement come down to your choice of analyses. What do you
analyze more or less?
For example. A certain couple, I'm not going to name names, are
avoiding analyzing a certain 'situation' or 'question' or shall we say
'life choice involving each other in a church', in order to avoid the
inevitable decision they know they must make when they finish analyzing
the question. One of these people has probably analyzed the question
and produced the inevitable behavior, but that behavior requires
reciprocation to complete. One of these people is also at least partly
asian.
moving on.
So we have a conundrum. The more input you give, up to the limit of
processing an individual has, the more you control them (control being
a relative term. I can hit balls around a pool table--doesn't mean I
sink anything... ever..).
What this means, however, is that systems concepts of significance are
tightly bound together throughout systems, and probably universally
applied to all groups. One obvious outcome of this is that, in order
for computers to start thinking for themselves, you need to hit them
with more information than they can process (a lot more, simulating a
natural environment of a thinking computer) and then waiting. Also they
need to be able to select what they analyze.
Also it means that the statement 'people who judge something before
they hear the issue are bad' is bullshit nonsense, because when you
present 'the issue' whatever the fuck that may be, you are destroying
someone's ability to think for themselves. The only way for that person
to engage that information with a modicum of free will is to ignore you
completely and put a meaningless summary of your statement on a
back-burner in their head so that they can choose to analyze it or not
at a later time. In a certain sense a zealot is acting with more
freedom than a moderate, though, in many cases, a moderate is picking
and choosing what to analyze from a larger pool of possible actions,
which is more freedom. So... what do we come up with?!
"There's always someone who wants to shit on the apple pie. Well, you
just met the apple pie that knows how to shit back..." --Club Dread
(from teh guys who made supertroopers)
actually that's not relevant.
Calen, make a decision already.
Calen
Why bother ragging
on my life decisions if you already no (sic) what the result is going
to be? January 21, 2005
(Fri), 11:16 AM
Cosmic_muffet
Dude
I have no idea. I'm just trying to scientifically prove that you *have*
to make a decision, not what it will be necessarily.
January 21, 2005 (Fri),
3:59 PM