Comments on: Mind = Computation + Memory. Genii loci.

By: Chris Wren

Chris Wren — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 06:48:27 +0000

Would the RAM souls necessarily be competitive though? Couldn’t more than one compute the same natural phenomena from unique perspectives, or filtered through their own personal agendas? With a falling leaf for example, there are almost limitless permutations in the twists and turns it can potentially take as it falls to the ground. Maybe each permutation is “habitable” as a computational space.

By: Steve H

Steve H — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 16:47:47 +0000

On panpsychism, Phil Farmer once wrote a book called A BARNSTORMER IN OZ, on the premise that Dorothy’s son enters Oz by airplane (the dimensional gate is high in the air) and his adult eye sees a grimmer and more frightening place. The book was a bit of a bore, sorry PJF, but his maguffin was energy creatures that bind to any handy organized nervous system and cling as long as there is electrical activity. This results in mice or birds or cowardly lions with human-level intelligence, stored in an external but invisible energy field; at death, it loses coherence and fades as well. Great idea, and if he hadn’t been so set on using Oz as well he might have made it crackle. But I think he’s on to something in that an existing nervous system, even a mouse’s, might be more attractive to wandering RAM. What would a free-range RAM want from a waterfall? or a fire? Heinlein’s computer ‘Mike’ used to number all his data items, randomly match two and look for correlations when he was bored. Maybe the randomness of fire or water or gravel is music to them, or relief from a ‘golden man’ level of prediction that brings acute boredom.
Or maybe a living creature is too evanescent, and they’d prefer the waterfall….

By: [emt]

[emt] — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 08:09:14 +0000

May I assume you’re familiar with the art of Andy Goldsworthy?
I always admired it just as visual objects, but after watching a video of it being made, I got a different sense of its meaning, and I feel you two might have a lot to say to each other.
They’re always dismantled by the forces of nature over a period of time but I would not say they are destroyed.
It’s almost like he’s making seed-crystals for the butterfly effect. In a symbolic, magical way ( but also in a very literal way too ! ) encrypting his sculptures into the timestream of the whole planet…?
(Or not.)