Thank you everybody for your feedback, it's extremely helpful. I can't fully engage with comments right now, as my father has died suddenly and unexpectedly, and I need to write a eulogy, pack, fly to Ireland for the funeral, etc. But I do hugely appreciate the feedback, and will try to reply to everyone on my return.
(He was a terrific guy, a great dad, and I miss him. You will get an idea of how much he was loved from the condolences below his death notice. If any of you knew him – I know some of you did – feel free to leave your own memories of him there.)
Gorgeous! Thanks for teaching me about the proton. Holy shit.
The paragraph about the anthropic principal lost me a little.
I didn’t understand why the universe would possibly select for intelligent beings until you got to the part about us maybe making our own black holes as energy sources someday. I’ve read a little bit about such possible future technologies on the Centauri Dreams blog, but other people probably aren’t familiar at all. I imagine you’ll cover that more in future chapters? But when you first get into the stacked evolution, with us at the pinnacle, making AI, it felt unjustified. I had a feeling of “wait, aren’t we just talking about tuning parameters for black hole production? What’s that have to do with AI? Isn’t this a bit of a minefield to wade into in the middle of what had been a pretty straightforward argument?”
I think this one represents an improvement over your last, although they do tread similar theme-space (at least in my immediate recall without checking). Still, the arguments and positioning feel more developed here, and done so in fewer words.
I do think there could be some more ruthless editorial polishing to reduce quantity further - but I'm in large agreement with the viability of the core hypothesis here.
What you are suggesting is plausible as far as it goes... which is to the evolution of 'forms'. You make the leap from 'forms' to 'thinking feeling beings'... though there is nothing at all in science that demonstrates such a leap.
Science is simply a process through which the rules of the apparent world are made explicit.
The most rigorous theories use mathematics to model the form of theoretical objects (quantum field, sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, proteins, cells… all the way up to stars, black holes, galaxies, clusters, and the background radiation), and their theoretical properties (mass, charge, spin, etc), along with specified theoretical constants (Fine-structure Constant, etc), as well as theoretical laws (Conservation of Momentum, etc) that together describe their theoretical behavior.
There is usually a long chain of mathematics (including the maths embedded in the apparent devices used in any experiment, as well as those used to display the results) that links the theoretical behaviour to the observations.
A theory is held to be valid when the theoretical behaviour of the theoretical objects reliably (though not necessarily perfectly) maps or predicts the observed behaviour of observed objects.
That is all.
No science can ever say anything about the ‘true nature’ of apparent things, nor of this Consciousness in which and to which all theories and observations appear.
Not can it ever say anything about ‘meaning’, or the ‘lived experience’. What it is to experience a dawn over the desert, or the thrill and terror of battle to the death, or the hug of a child, or an argument with the boss, or the disgust at a rotting pile of garbage, or the strains of a Mozart symphony or the heady beats of an African drum… or anything else about what it is to experience ‘life’.
Your story is an elegant theory concerning the apparent evolution of forms, and is certainly worth telling...
However, no theory can capture anything of reality... no matter how elegant :0
I feel like I barely understood this enough to read it all but the evolutionary nature of the cosmos and us being the pinnacle of conscious evolution does have a nice ring to it. What does it mean for us being some of the most consciously developed creatures in the universe? I would say it burdens us with a responsibility at the very least. Is AI the next iteration or just a tool to further advance our consciousness?
PS If anyone who knew my father wants to attend his funeral, the details are here.
https://rip.ie/death-notice/richard-dick-gough-tipperary-nenagh-547893
Thank you everybody for your feedback, it's extremely helpful. I can't fully engage with comments right now, as my father has died suddenly and unexpectedly, and I need to write a eulogy, pack, fly to Ireland for the funeral, etc. But I do hugely appreciate the feedback, and will try to reply to everyone on my return.
(He was a terrific guy, a great dad, and I miss him. You will get an idea of how much he was loved from the condolences below his death notice. If any of you knew him – I know some of you did – feel free to leave your own memories of him there.)
https://rip.ie/death-notice/condolences/richard-dick-gough-tipperary-nenagh-547893?page=1&records=60&sortFields=a.createdAt&sortDirection=DESC
Gorgeous! Thanks for teaching me about the proton. Holy shit.
The paragraph about the anthropic principal lost me a little.
I didn’t understand why the universe would possibly select for intelligent beings until you got to the part about us maybe making our own black holes as energy sources someday. I’ve read a little bit about such possible future technologies on the Centauri Dreams blog, but other people probably aren’t familiar at all. I imagine you’ll cover that more in future chapters? But when you first get into the stacked evolution, with us at the pinnacle, making AI, it felt unjustified. I had a feeling of “wait, aren’t we just talking about tuning parameters for black hole production? What’s that have to do with AI? Isn’t this a bit of a minefield to wade into in the middle of what had been a pretty straightforward argument?”
Love love love the ending.
I think this one represents an improvement over your last, although they do tread similar theme-space (at least in my immediate recall without checking). Still, the arguments and positioning feel more developed here, and done so in fewer words.
I do think there could be some more ruthless editorial polishing to reduce quantity further - but I'm in large agreement with the viability of the core hypothesis here.
What you are suggesting is plausible as far as it goes... which is to the evolution of 'forms'. You make the leap from 'forms' to 'thinking feeling beings'... though there is nothing at all in science that demonstrates such a leap.
Science is simply a process through which the rules of the apparent world are made explicit.
The most rigorous theories use mathematics to model the form of theoretical objects (quantum field, sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, proteins, cells… all the way up to stars, black holes, galaxies, clusters, and the background radiation), and their theoretical properties (mass, charge, spin, etc), along with specified theoretical constants (Fine-structure Constant, etc), as well as theoretical laws (Conservation of Momentum, etc) that together describe their theoretical behavior.
There is usually a long chain of mathematics (including the maths embedded in the apparent devices used in any experiment, as well as those used to display the results) that links the theoretical behaviour to the observations.
A theory is held to be valid when the theoretical behaviour of the theoretical objects reliably (though not necessarily perfectly) maps or predicts the observed behaviour of observed objects.
That is all.
No science can ever say anything about the ‘true nature’ of apparent things, nor of this Consciousness in which and to which all theories and observations appear.
Not can it ever say anything about ‘meaning’, or the ‘lived experience’. What it is to experience a dawn over the desert, or the thrill and terror of battle to the death, or the hug of a child, or an argument with the boss, or the disgust at a rotting pile of garbage, or the strains of a Mozart symphony or the heady beats of an African drum… or anything else about what it is to experience ‘life’.
Your story is an elegant theory concerning the apparent evolution of forms, and is certainly worth telling...
However, no theory can capture anything of reality... no matter how elegant :0
I feel like I barely understood this enough to read it all but the evolutionary nature of the cosmos and us being the pinnacle of conscious evolution does have a nice ring to it. What does it mean for us being some of the most consciously developed creatures in the universe? I would say it burdens us with a responsibility at the very least. Is AI the next iteration or just a tool to further advance our consciousness?