unreality

I'd like to make the case that we have free will Whoa, whoa, before you freak out, obviously we're made up of subatomic particles moving on quantum probability waves bla bla bla. Life is full of chaos and randomness but based on the current scenario as well. A mix of determinism with a lot of randomism and wacky quantumstuffism lol. BUT do atoms know that your essay is due on Friday? Do electrons in a quantum leap as energy is dispatched from one neuron to the next over the synapse know that they are signaling a message that will cause a burst of fear in your mind toward a savage bear that's running toward you? Does each individual neuron of your brain have consciousness? No, No, No. Clearly our consciousness, intelligence, self-awareness and decision-making abilities are an emergent behavior, that is they are complex patterns based on simple rules. From the wikipedia article: Life is a major source of complexity, and evolution is the major principle or driving force behind life. In this view, evolution is the main reason for the growth of complexity in the natural world. If we speak of the emergence of complex living beings and life-forms, we refer therefore to processes of sudden changes in evolution. Flocking is a well-known behaviour in many animal species from swarming locusts to fish and birds. Emergent structures are a common strategy found in many animal groups: colonies of ants, mounds built by termites, swarms of bees, shoals/schools of fish, flocks of birds, and herds/packs of mammals. An example to consider in detail is an ant colony. The queen does not give direct orders and does not tell the ants what to do. Instead, each ant reacts to stimuli in the form of chemical scent from larvae, other ants, intruders, food and build up of waste, and leaves behind a chemical trail, which, in turn, provides a stimulus to other ants. Here each ant is an autonomous unit that reacts depending only on its local environment and the genetically encoded rules for its variety of ant. Despite the lack of centralized decision making, ant colonies exhibit complex behavior and have even been able to demonstrate the ability to solve geometric problems. For example, colonies routinely find the maximum distance from all colony entrances to dispose of dead bodies. A broader example of emergent properties in biology is the combination of individual atoms to form molecules such as polypeptide chains, which in turn fold and refold to form proteins. These proteins, assuming their functional status from their spatial conformation, interact together to achieve higher biological functions and eventually create - organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, organisms. Cascade phenotype reactions, as detailed in Chaos theory, may arise from individual genes mutating respective positioning.[4] In turn, all the biological communities in the world form the biosphere, where its human participants form societies, and the complex interactions of meta-social systems such as the stock market. The ant colony bit again: An example to consider in detail is an ant colony. The queen does not give direct orders and does not tell the ants what to do. Instead, each ant reacts to stimuli in the form of chemical scent from larvae, other ants, intruders, food and build up of waste, and leaves behind a chemical trail, which, in turn, provides a stimulus to other ants. Here each ant is an autonomous unit that reacts depending only on its local environment and the genetically encoded rules for its variety of ant. Despite the lack of centralized decision making, ant colonies exhibit complex behavior and have even been able to demonstrate the ability to solve geometric problems. For example, colonies routinely find the maximum distance from all colony entrances to dispose of dead bodies. I read an article about swarm behavior (such as ants and bees) in National Geographic once too, it's highly interesting. We don't need a centralized "soul" to form our intelligence.... each of our neurons is like an autonomous ant, following instructions coded in it by evolution... but together, the ants form a complex system that exerts intelligence, problem solving, war strategy, food-finding techniques, situation awareness and more And there aren't BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of ants in an ant colony, thousands certainly, but not billions, and it still shows this complex behavior. But there ARE billions and billions of neurons in our brain. Think of how much more complex that is! Still that does not imply free will, but I'm getting closer to my point. Yes this is going somewhere Anyway, what I'm saying is that higher concepts can be built up on lesser things, like a pyramid. Each ant has no clue about the bigger problems of the colony, yet the colony takes care of the problems. It's a decentralized nervous system, like our brain. "The problems" are not known by any one ant, yet they ARE known by the colony as a whole. They are abstract concepts, not existing in the physical world, but they exist on a higher level than the atoms themselves. Let me explain... I'm not getting all mystic-soul-whatever on you, and this isn't "theoretical". I'm making fact-grounded statements here, so bear with me Anyway, this idea can be matched better to the human brain. Say your homework is due Friday, and it's late Thursday night. You haven't done any of your essay and you're starting to get sleepy. The stress is ramping up. See this neuron? (Imagine it ;D) It's releasing hormones across a synapse, causing stress. Does it know this? No! It's just a neuron. Just an ant, going about its business. But YOU know, and YOU feel stress. Your mind, as a whole, knows that your homework is due tomorrow, yet NONE of the neurons do. What I'm saying is, just like an ant colony, lots of 0's are added together to get 1. That's a simplified analogy, and obviously that's impossible regarding the mathematical "0" and "1", but I think you get my point ... which is that abstract concepts are built upon lesser systems, where the lesser systems may not know about the abstract concepts. Facts, so far ;D But what does this have to do with free will? Before that, I just want to continue on the ant-colony tangent for a little bit. I'm not saying that I know what would happen if ant colonies increased their numbers to BILLIONS upon BILLIONS per colony. Clearly some crazily awesome stuff would happen lol. I don't know if it would become conscious, though I would think so (in a differentish way than OUR human consciousness), hell it's possible that ant colonies with their limited sizes are already vaguely conscious, but nowhere close to apes and humans. Ant colonies don't exactly benefit evolutionarily from higher thinking - mostly from rapid problem solving and whatnot, which they are good at. Anyway, back to free will. I'm saying that our minds work on a higher level than the atoms that make it up, and again I need to remind that I'm not getting wishy-washy-illogical-soul-etc on you, but that this is valid By higher level, I don't mean on some other plane of existence, I mean that they are emergent systems of complex behavior that develop, represent and influence abstract concepts which are inexistent to the things that make them up (ants, neurons, whatever - ultimately it comes down to particles and electrons and energy and stuff). And it's from here that I get theoretical. All the above is fact, at least I hope/think so. If you have a logical problem with anything I've said above, please state it, because I'm pretty sure it's 100% sound. But from this point on, I'm being purely hypothetical: I'm saying free will is definitely possible if you look at it from this angle. We are made up of particles at the basic level, but on top of that larger systems are built, then larger, then larger, finally cells, etc. As an emergent behavior, our minds deal with abstract concepts that do not exist to the things that make us up, so in a way we operate on a different level. It's pretty confusing, and I recommend re-reading the paragraph 3 above this one, as it has my thesis in it, basically From here you can interpret it how you want, but from my own observations of life (we seem to be able to control our own actions, after all), this is looking pretty good to me ;D Wow, that was a lot, thanks for reading!!!

17 hours

Basically, I'm making good progress on creating an emulator program that simulates the VNA and runs the programs against each other It's hard to work with strings (ie, characters in quotes like "bob") in HyperCard, but otherwise it's perfect for the job And unless you have HyperCard on an old iMac, you can't run the emulator, is what it boils down to

Do you have an old 8.x.something iMac that can run HyperCard? Lol my programming options are a bit scant right now, so I'm using the old bucket of wrenches in my room that serves as a computer, with the only programming thing I can do on it at this point - HyperCard. But HyperCard works fine... the only problem is that there is next to none string manipulation. No substring function, no left or right functions, no findsubstring, etc. You have to do it all with manual loops using chunk syntax like "character of" and "line of", etc. Aaaanyway, I've made great progress (I started yesterday and did a bit today), I reckon that tomorrow if I put my mind to it I can finish it But my export options are kind of lacking, unless you can run the old HyperCard (not the new OSX "Revolution" version or whatever it's called). Don't worry, I'll make sure it works perfectly before plugging our programs in and stuff

Good one It has to do a lot with logarithmic/equiangular spirals, right?

see post 10 of this topic

hahahaha @ all of those Especially the murders one and the sneaky dog one, hehe

waiting on slick, then you can post the most updated map/roster, right? How much time is left?

Well 8 or 9 people, doesn't matter. I'll start the game when I get on tomorrow after school... that should be in about 18 hours, so anyone else that wants to join has 18 hours

either, doesn't matter ;D Unfortunately my emulator isn't done yet, I may finish it tomorrow, not sure. We can wait for that if you want, cuz it's kind of hard to do by hand

Itachi, I never said you were thoughtless I just wanted your opinion on the matter And to say everything environmentalists do is silly/detrimental is a pretty wide statement. I care about the environment, and just cuz "species go extinct" is no excuse to not try and prevent that from happening. When our societies die, we don't leave behind our political systems - we leave behind our Earth (yes I just made that up. Like I said, modern Ben Franklin ;D I'm signing autographs tomorrow, be there )

When should we start? I'm thinking after we get 9 or 10, but I'm flexible, it depends on what you guys want ;D

hey, this reminds me of a game I made yesterday

Yeah, we only see cross-sections. Vision of Beings, Regardless of Depth Perception: 1d beings see a dot in front of them (0d) 2d beings see a 1d line in front of them (1d) 3d beings see a 2d plane in front of them (2d) 4-dimensional beings (if you say time=4d, then I mean 5d here) would SEE in three dimensions. While we, as 3d beings, see a plane in front of us (with depth perception to distinguish 3d objects, though basically we see 2d and our brain does the rest), 4d beings would see every 3d side of something, and then their brains would put together a 4d image from the 3d

Spell Order: Vacuums take effect first, THEN Magnetic Surge is counted and added to the 25% for Flummox, THEN Flummoxes take effect, THEN normal spells, THEN Spells of Choice (other than Magnetic Surge), THEN Coup de Grace spells

What Azure_Knight and Octopuppy is basically the point I've been trying to make My argument is that there is no 2d world, and there is no 5d world. We live in the universe, and so that's what it is. Even a sheet of paper is millions of molecules thick, as AK said. Thus my assertion that, not just because we aren't the overseers of a 2d world, there are no 'hyperbeing' overseers of OUR world ;D

I sent in my moves yesterday, right?

Duel Master: Unreality 1) Frost 2) Frozen in Fire 3) CL 4) PG 5) GC 6) Panther 7) Dragonjest22 8) foolonthehill 9) awesome turnout so far! Anyone else? Come ye, come all ;D

Yesterday I started working on a VNA emulator where I can just enter the programs, the VNA size and the max program length and it generates the VNA and then I can press a button to do a round (once I finish that I'll do one that repeats rounds until the game is over)

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Watched the video, interesting...

hehe our current roster: Duel Master: Unreality 1) Frost 2) Frozen in Fire 3) CL 4) PG 5) c'mon, sign up, you know you want to And the earlier you do, the more effective your Flummox and Vacuums are of course ;D

epic On Topic: aside from theoretical hyperspace shapes (tesseracts, hyperspheres, etc), I think it's not a well-backed statement to say that if there's higher dimensions, there are "higher dimensional beings" looking down on us. If that was so, why aren't we the overlookers of a 2d world? If this universe had 31 dimensions, we would be 31st dimensional beings (3 of space, 1 of time, 29 quantum dimensions or something lol) since we are part of the universe