[Arm-netbook] Totally derailed topic

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 7:23 PM, Bill Kontos <vkontogpls at gmail.com> wrote:

> Exactly this. I always prefer to do something by choice. Being manipulated
> is the one thing that I hate the most in life. But this takes time, and I
> have come to a very similar conclusion to this society you are talking
> about, that following 95% of the Christian ethics is a good idea because it
> makes for the most benefit for the society as a total.

 f***'n-A :)

> But I find having to
> believe that god exists and he will punish me for not following these ethics
> in order to be able follow them utterly pointless.

 yyeah no i can definitely say that (in an indirect and
complex-to-explain way) i'm what some people would define as "a
christian" and (again in an indirect and
comprehensive-and-complex-to-explain way) also definitely believe in
what some people would define as "god", the "personal punishment"
thing which characterised much of the past two thousand years is a
total fucking load of horse-shit, plain and simple.

 change of direction-of-topic (slightly): there's an insight that
occurred to me after entering an essay contest about whether
intelligence is an emergent property or not.  i basically said "yes it
is", and then began describing how.

 if you take the classic "maxwell's demon" but modify it so that:

 * the demon can move at a rate that's proportional to its size
 * its survival is dependent on "eating" the gas at a rate again
that's proportional to its size
 * the "gas" is initially uniformly and infinitely distributed
throughout the demon's "universe"
 * there are lots of "demons" that have to compete for their "food" (gas).
 * the "gas" can, in large enough concentrations, be toxic.
 * the distribution of the "gas" can locally change (like high and low
pressures on a planet's weather)

now run that as a universe for a bit.  what you find is that there
will be emergent intelligent behaviour - entropy *will* be beaten -
*not* because it was *deliberately designed in* but because of the
*evolutionary process*.

to whit: any of the demons that do *not* evolve to have intelligent
behaviour will *die* - plain and simple.

one very important thing which emerges from this is that entropy gets
beaten in the medium known as "gas" because the demons will end up
collaborating to *REMOVE* (reduce) the concentration of gas from their
environment.

the next logical step in the chain was to analyse this emergent
evolutionary process "in general", and to conclude that the
intelligence is *NOT* a "birthright of humanity" as humans like to
arrogantly believe, but is instead an *inherent property of the
underlying fabric of the universe itself*.

*intelligence* is an inherent property of the fabric of the universe,
and we (and all intelligent beings) simply "borrow" that capacity by
being *in* the universe.  which is something that never really
occurred to me before and i find to be utterly, utterly cool.

now, if you want to throw "god" in there in some fashion that's
entirely up to you, but in doing so it really doesn't have very much
to do with the logic or the conclusion.

l.