Perceptive Differences… “Who Is Right???”
May 25, 2010
I’ve spoken about perceptive differences before… Who is ultimately right or wrong in any given situation? Is everything really just paradoxical? Where everything, if viewed selfishly, leads to a contradiction OR a situation which defies intuition when viewed solely from our own subjective point of view? Perhaps if we viewed all things objectively enough – by placing ourselves in each other’s shoes on a regular basis – then we might be able to understand one another better.
So is the subjective perception emanating from our “self” the real culprit that needs to be overcome? If we see things happen one way… Could they really have happened another way too??? Isn’t everything we see shaded through the coloured glasses of our own experiences??? Aren’t we all viewing the world via our own schemas; via our own memetic conditioning??? Thus is not everything relative to how the viewer perceives any given circumstance??? Would we not be better off letting go of egocentric modes of understanding??? And, thus, respect what others see as their own truth?
I won’t say anymore for the moment… Other than this is something we should all understand for ourselves… Understand on a deep, deep level. Especially before we decided to disagree with someone else over some trivial aspect of our lives in any future circumstance… I, for one, have many things to learn here.
To help us all on our way with this… I recommend viewing this short two minute video below. Who is ultimately right? The man on the train… ? Or the man on the platform… ? Or are they both right within their own ‘frames’ of reference???
To learn more about Albert Einstein, please click here.
Or to understanding more about varied perceptive stances, please read the first chapter of Bertrand Russell’s “The Problems Of Philosophy,” by clicking here.
The Mysterious Tao
May 24, 2010
The Tao produces all things and nourishes them;
it produces them and does not claim them as its own;
it does all, and yet does not boast of it;
it presides over all, and does not control them.
This is what is called “the mysterious Quality” of the Tao.by Lao Tzu
Craig Venter Unveils “Synthetic Life”
May 23, 2010
The time has arrived… Synthetic life is no longer science fiction. It is now a ‘reality’ here on Earth… And man is its creator. In many ways this is an interesting piece of the puzzle as to how life arose here on Earth. But as we have seen in previous blogs here, it’s not that impossible to understand that self-similar patterns will end up repeating themselves i.e. man – having evolved from the primordial soup of chemicals, cells and organisms – is now trying to understand where his present ciurcumstance sprung from. While we can now play the role of a ‘creator’ – in the very modest sense of the word – we should also be wary of what this means in the greater scheme of things i.e. we are perhaps not as special as we might think AND what could this mean for future Life here on Earth!?
While I am sure many will jump on the band wagon about how this might possibly be introducing a new threat to Life, here on Earth, and so might even spell the end of our species too, by introducing a genetic machine capable of out performing the present Earth life-forms… A ‘theme’ from sci-fi movies of late… We shouldn’t be negligent that it might be able to help us with our own naive modes of living i.e. the devastation that we are all presently causing to this delicate ecosystem due to the corporate and mass consuming desire of our sensitive memetic and mental dispositions… But then again, we are at present living in an age of great denial. Even so, bearing all this in mind, the order within the chaotic flow of this Earth’s delicate and intricate ecosystem is way too hard to predict what it might yield in the near, let alone distant, future. No doubt this might spell the end for us… But then again, on our present route of habitation, are we not definitely spelling the end for ourselves soon enough?
Personally I welcome this discovery with open arms. And while I will treat it with an equal measure of caution, I will also be inclined to weigh up the positive aspects of what this new ‘technology’ might mean for mankind. After all, if it does nothing more than to show mankind just how easily reproducible Life surely is, and thus shows us that we are not really that special in the greater scheme of things – as we sometimes like to think we are… OR even if it forces many religious doctrines to understand that it does not take a ‘God’ or ‘Creator’ to implement Life as we know it, the effects of this invention will no doubt be far reaching to those of us who manage to hear about it.
My own goal, here within this blog, is to show those of us who are interested enough that Life is really nothing more than a pattern of molecules self-assimilating and self-replicating into ever advancing designs for functionality. The ultimate goal of evolution is empty of all meaning. The only meaning it has, is the meaning that we give to it. And this meaning is, at best, shaped by our present memetic drives and social circumstances i.e. in London society of medieval times the plague – a.k.a. The Black Death – that spread through London was falsely accredited to cats and dogs. Thus over 200,000 cats and 40,000 dogs were culled. This, no doubt, only served to exacerbate the problem, as the real culprit – namely the rat – now had even fewer predators to keep them in check and thus the fleas that lived on the rats, and the disease itself, spread like wild fire. The specific reason behind the culling of the dogs and cats during the plague of 1665 is still uncertain. But rumour had spread and, at best, we can be certain the Londoners made their decision based on what they believed to be true at the time.
When we look at Life today… We have some idea as to what its essence is derived from. Back in medieval times, God certainly would have figured somewhere in the spirit and soul what Life is. Today, science has shown us that Life is nothing more than a process of highly complex chemical interactions which occur within bodies of organic structures. These bodies, with their ability to understand and modify their behavioural patterns, have – along the way – attained many delusions, mainly via modes of self-realisation and self-importance. And this means that, on the whole, Life is liable to act from this place of delusion – which is centered on attachment to the idea of self – rather than from a place of compassion and non-attachment. If it wasn’t for the delusion, then all those cats and dogs would have been spared during the London plague of 1665.
Saying that… The key to our existence, and to evolution on the whole, is not to get too bogged down in the finer details of what our existence means… Rather it is to remove this self-desiring attachment and open our hearts and minds up to the world around us through a process of developing compassion through a keen understanding about all living beings here on Earth, noting, seeing and understanding how interconnected we all really are to one another.
If we reflect honestly enough with ourselves and others, we will hopefully arrive at similar understandings to one another… None of us own this experience that we call Life. Life is a natural pattern of unfolding that chemicals do when given half the chance, regardless of what solar-system they arise in. And We i.e. all Life, are nothing more than a result of this pattern. Call it “God,” call it “Nature,” call it what-ever you want… The patterns are there – they have been there forever – and nothing is certain within them, mainly as they are so sensitive to initial conditions. This is the way with nonlinear dynamical systems. Why talk about “what-ifs” when we understand so little about the system itself? Just as with all nonlinear systems, our lives are full of uncertainties, and we can never make any prediction with absolute certainty and keep an honest mind. In my humble opinion, this technology that Venter has created is nothing more than the fractal essence of our Life’s system recreating – or rather, reiterating – itself into ever more defined and refined aspects of understanding itself. Once we understand this pattern better, I believe we can begin to make moral decisions based on an interconnected understanding. This understanding – while it will only be the best possible mode of understanding for the present moment – will still afford us great insight into what we are… And, thus, give us all a better realisation as to how we should live and behave i.e. without over consuming the Earth’s resources, not polluting and producing beyond levels of what the environment might be able to handle, to limit our population growth to prevent over consumption, to understand our instinctual drives and, thus, to notice what we are doing to the planet that we call “home,” etc… I believe Venter’s work is part of developing this understanding further.
So, with that out of the way, let’s look at what Venter once was planning to set out to do…
And after all that Venter and his team have now arrived here…
Craig Venter Unveils “Synthetic Life”
Craig Venter and team make a historic announcement: they’ve created the first fully functioning, reproducing cell controlled by synthetic DNA. He explains how they did it and why the achievement marks the beginning of a new era for science.
More about Craig Venter:
Craig Venter, the man who led the private effort to sequence the human genome, is hard at work now on even more potentially world-changing projects.
First, there’s his mission aboard the Sorcerer II, a 92-foot yacht, which, in 2006, finished its voyage around the globe to sample, catalouge and decode the genes of the ocean’s unknown microorganisms. Quite a task, when you consider that there are tens of millions of microbes in a single drop of sea water. Then there’s the J. Craig Venter Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to researching genomics and exploring its societal implications.
In 2005, Venter founded Synthetic Genomics, a private company with a provocative mission: to engineer new life forms. Its goal is to design, synthesize and assemble synthetic microorganisms that will produce alternative fuels, such as ethanol or hydrogen. He was on Time magzine’s 2007 list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
In early 2008, scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they had manufactured the entire genome of a bacterium by painstakingly stitching together its chemical components. By sequencing a genome, scientists can begin to custom-design bootable organisms, creating biological robots that can produce from scratch chemicals humans can use, such as biofuel. And in 2010, they announced, they had created “synthetic life” — DNA created digitally, inserted into a living bacterium, and remaining alive.
To find out more about Craig Venter and his institute dedicated to understanding the social impact of his scientific work, please click here.
Or to read more about this discovery and what it might mean in the eyes of the media, please click here to read this ‘modest’ Guardian review… And/or click here to read this BBC review.
I have already written several blogs about Life… You know, the scientific aspects of Life… Trying to understand it all a bit better… Asking really ‘silly’ questions about things like “When Does Life Really Become Life?” Or “What Is Life?” All the way through to “Just How Did Life Seed Here On Earth?” Thrown in with clangers like “Might We Be Able To Create Life In The Laboratory To Recreate Those Initial Conditions That Gave Rise To Life As We Know It Here On Earth?” And, would you believe, I even thought I could attempt to discuss “What This Experience Of Being Alive Really Is And How It Came About!” Wow… What delusions of grandure, eh? Lock me up and throw away the key…
Anyway… Would you believe, after all that, I’m back at this door again??? Trying to understand whether it’s as obvious as it seems… As obvious as it feels, even… That Life naturally happens, whether you want to believe it or not, independently and regardless of any divine creator or omnipotent god that we care to imagine. This time someone else has opened the doorway to another side – and another aspect – of this reality that we think we understand so well… They’ve prised it open just that little bit further than before… Just ever-so-slightly more… And with that, what we can now see shinning back through that widening crack, would you believe… Is that it seems self-replicating chemicals can evolve into lifelike ecosystems!?!? Similar to those found here on Earth!?!?
So… Along with the fractal geometry that lies hidden within the heart of our cellular make up… And what with all the other properties of the universal star stuff of atoms… Which are like Lego building blocks… Isn’t that almost enough to allow us to begin to see past the delusions of the yester-year? Can’t we just accept that life is a natural aspect of universal unfolding? That we all come from natural cosmic phenomena? And one day we will all go back there…
Well… I certainly can’t tell you what to think. So I’ll just have to let you decide for yourselves on that one…
But first, before you make up your mind, just have a “butchers-hook” at this…
Self-Replicating Chemicals Evolve Into Lifelike Ecosystem
Life makes more of itself.
And now so can a set of custom-designed chemicals. Chemists have shown that a group of synthetic enzymes replicated, competed and evolved much like a natural ecosystem, but without life or cells.
“So long as you provide the building blocks and the starter seed, it goes forever,” said Gerald Joyce, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute and co-author of the paper published Thursday in Science. “It is immortalized molecular information.”
Joyce’s chemicals are technically hacked RNA enzymes, much like the ones we have in our bodies, but they don’t behave anything like those in living creatures. But, these synthetic RNA replicators do provide a model for evolution — and shed light on one step in the development of early living systems from on a lifeless globe.
Scientists believe that early life on Earth was much more primitive than what we see around us today. It probably didn’t use DNA like our cells do. This theory of the origin of life is called the RNA World hypothesis, and it posits that life began using RNA both to store information, like DNA does now, and as a catalyst allowing the molecules to reproduce. To try to understand what this life might have looked like, researchers are trying to build models for early life forms and in the process, they are discovering entirely new lifelike behavior that nonetheless isn’t life, at least as we know it.
As Joyce put it, “This is more of a Life 2.0 thing.”
The researchers began with pairs of enzymes they’ve been tweaking and designing for the past eight years. Each member of the pairs can only reproduce with the help of the other member.
“We have two enzymes, a plus and a minus,” Joyce explains. “The plus assembles the pieces to make the minus enzyme, and the minus enzyme assembles the pieces to draw the plus. It’s kind of like biology, where there is a DNA strand with plus and minus strands.”
From there, Joyce and his graduate student Tracey Lincoln, added the enzymes into a soup of building blocks, strings of nucleic bases that can be assembled into RNA, DNA or larger strings, and tweaked them to find pairs of enzymes that would reproduce. One day, some of the enzymes “went critical” and produced more RNA enzymes than the researchers had put in.
It was an important day, but Joyce and Lincoln wanted more. They wanted to create an entire population of enzymes that could replicate, compete and evolve, which is exactly what they did.
“To put it in info speak, we have a channel of 30 bit capacity for transferring information,” Joyce said. “We can configure those bits in different ways and make a variety of different replicators. And then have them compete with each other.”
But it wasn’t just a bunch of scientist-designed enzymes competing, like a miniature molecular BattleBots sequence. As soon as the replicators got into the broth, they began to change.
“Most of the time they breed true, but sometimes there is a bit flip — a mutation — and it’s a different replicator,” explained Joyce.
Most of these mutations went away quickly, but — sound familiar? — some of the changes ended up being advantageous to the chemicals in replicating better. After 77 doublings of the chemicals, astounding changes had occurred in the molecular broth.
“All the original replicators went extinct and it was the new recombinants that took over,” said Joyce. “There wasn’t one winner. There was a whole cloud of winners, but there were three mutants that arose that pretty much dominated the population.”
It turned out that while the scientist-designed enzymes were great at reproducing without competition, when you put them in the big soup mix, a new set of mutants emerged that were better at replicating within the system. It almost worked like an ecosystem, but with just straight chemistry.
“This is indeed interesting work,” said Jeffrey Bada, a chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was not involved with the work. It shows that RNA molecules “could have carried out their replication in the total absence” of the more sophisticated biological machinery that life now possesses.
“This is a nice example of the robustness of the RNA world hypothesis,” he said. However, “it still leaves the problem of how RNA first came about. Some type of self-replicating molecule likely proceeded RNA and what this was is the big unknown at this point.”
I mean… Seriously… Throw in a bit of self-similarity, along with many, many, many lashings – so many that it might well ‘seem’ to boarder with infinity – of complexity, and can we surely not begin to see obvious parallels between how human life arose on Earth from the “primordial soup” and those three “clouds of winners” that arose from the broth of enzymes? Aren’t these really just similar phenomena unfolding across vastly different scales of both size and time? A vast ocean of atomic interactions that occur upon the closed ecosystem that we call Earth vs. another closed ecosystem of much smaller proportions i.e. the very humble sterile laboratory flask? Are these not self-similar patterns… Patterns that elude toward a subtle and intrinsic ideal of temporal universal unfolding?
Dare I say it… Could we even begin to call this phenomenon “GOD“!? Well… If you want to equate the Mandelbrot set, via modes of analogy, to the thumb print of God, primarily because we observe these fractal like patterns almost everywhere within nature… And, thus, we begin to use them to describe God as Spinoza did i.e. “God, or Nature” as an ‘unknowable’ and ‘unfathomable’ reality of the whole of existence/creation, then I just might possibly begin to agree with you.
To find out where I sourced this article from, please click here.
And to read more about Professor Gerald Joyce, please click here.
OR to read more about the amazing research being done at the Scripps Research Institute, please click here.
This is a neat and brief post. It gets to the point… And just leaves enough to think about. So none of my usual ranting or raving here. “Phew!” I hear you say. And all I’m gonna say is that… A recent mathematical analysis says that Life, as we know it, is written into the laws of reality.
Will Humans and Extraterrestrial Life Share DNA Roots?
A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality. DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids – the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can.
For those unfamiliar with thermodynamics, it’s the Big Brother of all energy equations and science itself. You can apply quantum mechanics at certain scales, and Newtonian mechanics work at the right speeds, but if Thermodynamics says something then everyone listens. An energy analysis by Ralph Pudritz, a theoretical astrophysicist and director of the Origins Institute at McMaster University shows that the first ten amino acids are likely to form at relatively low temperatures and pressures, and the calculated odds of formation match the concentrations of these life-chemicals found in meteorite samples.
They also match those in simulations of early Earth, and most critically, those simulations were performed by other people. The implications are staggering: good news for anyone worried about how we’re alone, and bad news for anyone who demands some kind of “Designer” to put life together – it seems that physics can assemble the organic jigsaw all by itself, thank you very much, and has probably done so throughout space since the beginning of everything.
The study indicates that you don’t need a miracle to arrive at the chemical cocktail for early life, just a decently large asteroid with the right components. That’s all. The entire universe could be stuffed with life, from the earliest prebiotic protein-a-likes to fully DNAed descendants. The path from one to the other is long, but we’ve had thirteen and a half billion years so far and it’s happened at least once.
The other ten amino acids aren’t as easy to form, but they’ll still turn up – and the process of “stepwise evolution” means that once the simpler systems work, they can grab the rarer “epic drops” of more sophisticated chemicals as they occur – kind of a World of Lifecraft except you literally get a life when you play. And once even the most sophisticated structure is part of a replicating organism, there’s plenty to go round.
Early Earth was covered with carbonaceous material from meteorites and comets that provided the raw materials from which first life emerged. In his new book, The Eerie Silence, astrophysicist Paul Davies of Arizona State University suggests that the original cells would have been able to pick and choose from the early Earth’s organic cocktail. To the best of our knowledge, he writes, “the twenty-one chosen by known life do not constitute a unique set; other choices could have been made, and maybe were made if life started elsewhere many times.”
Posted by Luke McKinney with Casey Kazan
To find out where I sourced this article from, please click here.
To read more about this from Wired Magazine, please click here.
Or to find out more about the scientific paper which both these articles were inspire by i.e. ‘“A thermodynamic basis for prebiotic amino acid synthesis and the nature of the first genetic code.” By Paul G. Higgs, Ralph E. Pudritz. arXiv, April 6, 2009.,’ then please click here.
A really interesting book just hit my table… Literally. “SLAP!!!” it went about ten minutes ago, as someone I know popped his head around the corner, raving like a madman that he’s just read something incredible. So, a few minutes later, here I am writing this blog… Because if my friend’s description of it is anything to go by, I’m going to launch into it in a moment and possibly find a first hand scientific description/analogy of what consciousness is and how enlightenment provides clarity over the muddled Western habit of mind.
To be fair… I am a bit reserved… And a tad skeptical. But, who wouldn’t be. It’s a bit like being presented with a series of photographs of a cup, and then the person who gave the photos to you suddenly tells you that they are of THE Holy Grail itself… The original, one and only, Holy Grail! Yeap… That’s definitely what it feels like…
Saying that… I trust my friend. Mainly because whenever he’s brought an idea, book, film, article, etc… to my attention in the past, he’s always been pretty spot on with regards to describing it’s content… And very rarely does he bring things to my attention. So I am pretty sure there’s something here. Thus I present the book in question, without having read it (!?!?), in order that I may bring it to your own attention.
Aldous Huxley called humankind’s basic trend toward spiritual growth the “perennial philosophy.” In the view of James Austin, the trend implies a “perennial psychophysiology”—because awakening, or enlightenment, occurs only when the human brain undergoes substantial changes. What are the peak experiences of enlightenment? How could these states profoundly enhance, and yet simplify, the workings of the brain? Zen and the Brain presents the latest evidence.
In this book Zen Buddhism becomes the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness. In order to understand which brain mechanisms produce Zen states, one needs some understanding of the anatomy, physiology, and chemistry of the brain. Austin, both a neurologist and a Zen practitioner, interweaves the most recent brain research with the personal narrative of his Zen experiences. The science is both inclusive and rigorous; the Zen sections are clear and evocative. Along the way, Austin examines such topics as similar states in other disciplines and religions, sleep and dreams, mental illness, consciousness-altering drugs, and the social consequences of the advanced stage of ongoing enlightenment.
A bit about James H. Austin M.D.:
ames H. Austin is Clinical Professor of Neurology, University of Missouri Health Science Center, and Emeritus Professor of Neurology, University of Colorado Health Science Center. Austin is the author of his well known book Zen and the Brain, which aims to establish links between the neurological workings of the human brain and meditation. Austin has recently written a sequel to it, Zen-Brain Reflections, published in February, 2006. He was student of the late Rinzai roshi Kobori Nanrei Sohaku.
Austin is also a practicing Zen Buddhist. After a number of years of Zen meditation, Austin claims to have spontaneously experienced what Zen practice calls “enlightenment” on a subway platform in London. The chief characteristic of his experience seems to be a loss of the sense of “self” which is central to human identity, and a corresponding feeling of union with the outer world. Austin speculates as to what might be going on in the brain when the “self” module goes offline, and also discusses the seeing timelessness of the experience in the context of the brain’s internal clock mechanisms. In Austin’s own words:
“It strikes unexpectedly at 9 am on the surface platform of the London subway system. (Due to a mistake)… I wind up at a station where I have never been before… The view is the dingy interior of the station, some grimy buildings, a bit of open sky. Instantly the entire view acquires three qualities: Absolute Reality, Intrinsic Rightness, Ultimate Reflection. With no transition, it is all complete… Yes, there is the paradox of this extraordinary viewing. But there is no viewer. The scene is utterly empty, stripped of every last extension of an I-Me-Mine (his name for ego-self). Vanished in one split second is the familiar sensation that this person is viewing a city scene. The new viewing proceeds impersonally, not pausing to register the paradox that there is no human subject “doing” it. Three insights penetrate the experient, each conveying Total Understanding at depths far beyond simple knowledge: This is the eternal state of affairs. There is nothing more to do. There is nothing whatever to fear.”
Austin claims that the experience represented ‘objective reality’ in that his subjective self did not exist to form biased interpretations. Thus he claims that there is little conflict between Zen Buddhism and scientific rigor.
To order this book from Amazon, please click here.
OR to search through some of it online, please click here.
Analogy As The Core Of Cognition
May 2, 2010
Language… Meaning… Understanding… It’s all about higher concepts ‘globing’ together to create the aspects of cognition, via modes of analogy, that we all use in our everyday lives to impart meaning to, and thus construct, the world that we ‘know’ around us.
Here in this talk, Hofstadter pertinently demonstrates his encyclopaedic knowledge about the development of human language and how the meaning behind words manifest, as concepts develop from their base level ideas, for example “ball,” into higher levels of complexity, as new words are developed to further complement and describe these basic parental precepts – perhaps stemming from new inventions which are driven by new discoveries, from both the empirical and non empirical fields of cognition – into aspects of “roll,” “wheel,” “car,” “moving,” “hovercraft,” “floating,” “flying,” etc… In this endless game of semantic development and lexical evolution, we begin to glimpse at the inherent emptiness behind the words we all so readily use in our lives, and, thus, see how they are really nothing more than eloquent “grunts” that contain mental images of meaning that allow us Human Ape men/women to understand one another and get our ‘points’ across to each other.
In many ways this is a good point of entry for us to see and to begin to understand how words and their meanings come about… From there we can then see that mental categories begin to shape the axiomatic world in which we live. Once we can understand this, we might have a better chance to really grasp the fundamental aspects that lie behind both the Buddhist idea of “Emptiness” and Kurt Gödel’s “Incompleteness Theorems.” *
Interestingly enough… As Hofstadter discusses “word blends” and “phrase blends,” I think we can begin to see a pertinent analogy between feedback loops of all sorts i.e. language here randomly mutates into simple amalgamations of “originality,” much like “video feedback loops” create modified patterns of slightly iterated imprints of what was only just on the visual screen.
Regarding language… This evolution and development of lexical complexity stems from seemingly random conjoining of phonemes, subtle phonetic variances and little – or even crass – syntactical errors, which mostly stem from when two ideas intermingle within the mind of the speaker and are thus ejected into the conversation stream without too much consideration. This process allows a rich source of new etymological meanings to flourish and develop within – initially – small social circles of friends/colleges… Or if particularly ‘catchy,’ they might then spread across wider groups as successful “memes” via infectious minds through any form/medium of social communicability.
In many ways it is this type of evolutionary self-similarity that keeps language alive and “thinking” on its toes – always forcing it to move forwards into new realms of functionality to suite the current semantic landscapes of our ever-changing, ever-evolving social networks and scientific/technological habits. Within these linguistic and memetic structures we may even find multidimensional configurations where complex patterns modulate old ideas into modern modes of ever more complex types of understanding… Old frameworks of thinking are slowly battered into new designs, and then the two co-exist in a sort of symbiosis with one another. And ever iterating forms of lingual cunningness flow from out lips… Just as the Mandelbrot set increases in complexity the further we zoom into its boundary, so language seems to increase in complexity the further We – as human beings – progress in developing ideas, our knowledge database, our inventions and with new observations… In many way these two particular types of pattern i.e. aural language and visual fractals, run parallel to one another in similar veins of iterative novelty. One is mimicking the other… Except it is not an “exact” replica… It is merely uses the same iterative mathematical ideas to regenerate and reorganise itself with.
Here Hofstadter describes a process where two ideas are torn apart and allowed to intermingle in the speaker’s own fractal mind, thus recombining/assimilating into an endless array of sometimes intentional, but probably mostly unintentional, hip analogies. Analogies are all about self-similarity. Hence, in my mind I become some strange feedback loop, reiterating what I have already heard and seen in my life thus far, remixing, recombining and experimenting with neoteric verbal adage to describe new modicums and meanderings concerning my experiential existence… And thus, through my will alone, my “I” become a Möbius strip of etymological and memetic reform, playing with all of you – my iterated equals – in evolution and natural selection’s ancient game.
To find out more about Douglas Hofstadter, please click here.
* This exposé about the illusion of self and the delusion of most types of knowledge – in the light of the Buddhist precept of “Emptiness” and Kurt Gödel’s “Incompleteness Theorems” – is coming in a future blog…
