virus: just to clarify

psypher (overload@fastmail.ca)
Fri, 14 May 1999 22:53:48 -0400 (EDT)

...so there I was on my walk to wirk earlier today.

[and this misspelling is deliberate - 'wirk' being that which I do against my will to keep myself fed and sheltered as opposed to 'work' which is the deliberate and intentional application of my skills and aptitudes to the world, for which nobody is willing to pay me any money]

...anyways, there I am, trundling along recalling the assertion made
by somebody that I don't think the universe has properties. Close, but no [metaphorical] cigar.

...the universe very definitely has properties, it has every
conceivable property, and probably some that we can't conceive of, all at once, everywhere. What the universe lacks are PARTICULAR
properties or PRIORITIZED properties. The universe is zero sum - perfect balance.

...so we can sit around debating the truth value of the definition of
a circle all we like, and we can talk about sets, subsets and contexts til the [metaphorical] cows come home, but it doesn't alter the [imho] fundamental fact that any symbolic communication we engage in is a base-level dissection of the universe into component parts, which do not add up to the whole from which we took them.

...Any theorems we put forth about aspects of the universe
[eg. blue=475nm] or the ways in which those factors relate [eg. the ratio embodied in pi] all the way on up to the grandest cosmological statements about the event-stream since Planck time are particular patterns picked out from the undifferentiated flux. Our process of consciousness creates the shape of the manifold in which our particular nodes are enveloped. They may be grand and complex, they may be far-reaching and delicate - but they're by no means necessary or universal.

...Heisenberg tells us that knowledge of the contents of some sets
precludes knowledge of the contents of others. Shroedinger tells us that once some factors are set, others become necessary. Goedel [sp?] tells us that any model is necessarily incomplete. Einstein tells us that perspective matters.

...I don't know that anyone else [metaphorically]here will get it but
I'll try an example. Anybody with speakers should go to

http://alien8recordings.com/cgialien
8recordings/Web_store/web_store.cgi?artist=Merzbow&&cart_id=82291 9.14129

and hit the realstream link for "Akasha Gulva". Merzbow [Masami Akita] is a Japanese noise sculptor, the content is pretty much white noise - full spectrum soundscapes. Within each piece many relations of contents are possible, none are necessary, all are real.

...Same thing with the universe, all possible relations of all
possible permutations of all possible qualities are present - chaos, the sum of all possible orders. Our position has given us a particular, internally consistent perspective - reality - in which certain relations are necessary. This is not a priviledged position in the big system though.
...these relations have deep significance, being not only necessary
for the postulates we construct and/or the experiences we have, but for our very existence as stable structures in the manifold.

Everything is changing all the time.

Nothing ever happened, nothing ever will.

...those statements are not mutually contradictory, they just refer
to different levels of the system. From a perspective [like ours] embedded in time, everything is flux. But time is a positiondependent quality of the universe. From a different perspective time does not posess any of the qualities we perceive, it's a field, like gravity [which is an analogous phenomenon on a lesser level, closer to the heart of the metaphorical onion as it were]. That's why linear time isn't strictly necessary to relativity physics.

...caveat: all of this is presented as a series of definite
statements. I once had a philosophy professor who told me "I'm absolutely confident of my entire system of belief in sum, however, I'm simultaneously absolutely sure that one or more of my component axioms is incorrect' [or words to that effect]. So while I'm quite sure I'm right, somewhere, I'm probably wrong.

...anyone willing to hook me up with somebody who will teach me the
math to describe the stuff in my head more clearly is welcome to do so.

-psypher



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