core dump

Creation, life, god, chaos et al

This is a mind-state dump attempting to record my current thoughts regarding geek.neo's blog on fnuckle under the "philosophy" setion.

The creation bit follows loosely the structure that I used to describe this to Gnome over the weekend.

First off, the concept of "othering" certain of our faculties in order to comprehend them is time-honoured, particularly in buddhism, although it is not explicit. These days a psychologist would probably parcel it off as dissociative personality disorder, which it really isn't.

The "othering" of the metaphysical is an interesting habit of mankind. Personally I wouldn't use "othering" to describe what I understand this phenomenon to be, as othering to me means an imposed distinction on a set that could (should?) otherwise be treated homogeneously. Whereas the matter/mind/spirit connection is not necessarily a continuum as evidenced by the ability to exist without connecting to that spark.

Now onto creation:

In the beginning...

Before I go any further, I think it prudent to mention that due to the simple rule-based (even fractal) nature of the universe, microcosm inevitably reflects macrocosm and so this, my view, is presented from a universe-centric standpoint, whereas this site takes an earth-centric standpoint and geek.neo took a mind-centric standpoint. Personally I believe that it is by investigating the very big and the very small that we can come to a better understanding of the essence of the middle-size.

... the universe was formless. And void. And boring. Well, to start before that, in verse one...

Incidentally, for a good online biblical resource, check out blueletterbible.org, then don't forget the Ocean Research Library.

So, hopefully you have turned to genesis in either of these, because it will form my roadmap, this being an attempt to reconcile my atheist world view with my theist world view. (dissociative personality disorder again)

... god created "the heavens" and "the earth" ...
"the heavens" — shamayim
1) heaven, heavens, sky
a) visible heavens, sky
1) as abode of the stars
2) as the visible universe, the sky, atmosphere, etc
b) Heaven (as the abode of God)

"the earth" — erets
land, earth
best defined as that which is not shamayim, or otherwise the whole of the earth

So, we have the first action in the creation of the universe being the creation of not X (X') and X. X' is the abode of god, and X is the abode of man or to be more precise all things material. (X+X'=S, where S is the undifferentiated non-existence that was the state before verse 1:1)

— my definition gets a little blurred as to where to put "space" but I'll ramble on a bit and maybe clear my own mind up a bit —

I believe X is energy (the physical energy that gets bound up into atoms and particles etc.) and X' is found in that which is not physical energy. So, simply, X' is the meta-physical, this works with the exception of "space" (which we have so much of) which should become clearer soon.

To digress slightly, if you have ever seen one of those string-art thingys where there are a bunch of nails with strings interwoven between them, this is an image I sometimes use to ponder the nature of the relationship between points of matter and the X'.

So, we have the heavens (X') and the earth (X). Yay!

But the earth is formless and void and boring. That is because it is just an amorphous blob of energy, viewed in the stasis of the first moment. At this point,
"darkness [was] upon the face of the deep."
So now, we have the primary differentiation having occurred, we have a Space-Time-Energy continuum (X) which is currently just a load of energy. Not even quantised into photons yet.

"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
God, the great organising principle that unites the hearts of men, binds all together and pretty much created everything was moving on this interface between X and X'. (It is interesting to note here that waters has been exchanged for earth, an indication that an attempt at allusion is being made using a limited vocabulary)

So, what is the first action of the unifying principle that is God?
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness."

"A crash of drums! A flash of light!" — we have photons.

Boom! The simplest quantification of energy, bunching up a local field of energy into a single particle, moving, as is innate in the structure of the STEC at their speed of natural EM resonance through the space which was created as a concomitant event. All spong'ing into being around the same time in a gigantic photonic cataclysmic event that would make lightening and supernovas blush in insignificance.

Light, and darkness. Quaint, isn't it.
"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night."
Okay, day and night if you will.

"And the evening and the morning were the first day."
Following the divine example, I will leave this for now and go home for the evening. More to follow in the morning.

posted by The Elusive Phycon @ 7:43 pm 0 comments

Jabber/Interworlds

This is pretty much dominating my free thought cycles at the moment. Basically an extension of the jabber IM system to include virtual and real "worlds". The simplest examples are the interconnection of MU*'s and the facilitation of inter-world trade. This trade is of the type discussed in the "walrus" article on Castranova's work.

The key behind the interworlds concept is the fact that the protocols over which the interworlds communicate need not be interworld aware.

Poppin' pillz

The ID token (which I call a pill, visualised like one of the powerups in Arkanoid, Revenge of Doh; this allows the user to take the pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes :-) ) is a central concept. It operates similarly to kerberos in terms of trust relationships, but in many ways is very different.

So how does she work?

An example is in order. First the analog side:
I meet someone in the street (a world-space), they have no idea who I am, we have a conversation about quantum computing and then part ways without exchanging id info. He will then be able to recognise me by my face. (local world ID token)

I now know him by face and add think of him as "The quantum computing guy". (This is a one-entry meta contact with friendly name "The quantum computing guy")

The next time I am on the same street, I recognise the person and go talk to him. This works fine as long as the person's face doesn't change. (If it does change they are most likely not wanting to be recognised anyways.)

Enter the interworld

Now the person and I wish to take the relationship to another world-space, by exchanging phone numbers. I take his cell-phone number and missed call him, we have now authenticated our phone numbers and can recognise each other in the GSM world-space based our phone numbers. (world ID tokens, or pills)

Now I add the phone number to my knowledge of "the quantum computing guy", although our lacking social skills have meant we still haven't exchanged names. (phone number added to meta-contact)

Pillbox organisation

I then get a phone-call, and it is from "the quantum computing guy". (I have caller ID of course) I answer my phone, "This is Paul speaking." He says, "Hello Paul, this is Bob." I will then add the name "Bob" to "the quantum computing guy" (So now my meta-contact contains: Bob, the quantum computing guy, facial signature, cell-phone number)

I then set "Bob" as the primary id, as I feel Bob is a better ID. If bob wasn't unique, I could either create a composite ID or add another free-form ID string (which can include other ID's) that I feel is unique.

Trusted Authentication

Now it turns out that Bob is wanting to leave his job and I need a new quantum computing guy, so we discuss the prospects of employment. He tells me he went to the University de Computing a la Tiny (UCT) which is a world leader in small things, particularly quantum computing. He gives me their address and I walk over there, I look at his ID card clipped to his belt and add his staff number to my store. I then stop by reception and ask them about staffmember X1A3FF they tell me that he is a professor in quantum computing, has been there for 10 years and lives in room 314. I have now authenticated his UCT ID and store that info against his name. (I add the authenticated UCT pill to his meta-contact box)

This all translates quite nicely into my Interworlds structure which I will elaborate later.

See also:

• Conversation with Nurm

posted by The Elusive Phycon @ 12:15 pm 0 comments