tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10124451623397435102024-03-23T03:16:31.209-07:00american earthling • gary e. davis • berkeleygary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-60634446767902632432024-03-22T14:18:00.000-07:002024-03-22T17:09:12.515-07:00Is the Singularity nearer?<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr><br>
“Human-level” “understanding” is not merely a range from “content generation to reasoning” (which <a href="https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-agi-singularity-in-2027-artificial-super-intelligence-sooner-than-we-think-ben-goertzel">A.I. pioneers misconceive</a>). That is, human understanding is not merely cognitive, because intentionality and identification with <i>preferred</i> value (feeling) are integral to any human conception of interested action.
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Modeling <i>human</i> mind in a distributed fashion implies the open, emergent character of human ecologies which we commonly identify as our humanity, which is evolving in specifically human ways, i.e., relative to values which encourage better humanity generally. We must preserve that. <a href="https://www.opte.org/the-internet">No computational architecture</a> could be interested in <i>human</i> values, except inasmuch as it is unable to behave contrary to essential human parameters, i.e., ultimate values embodied by humans across generations. That flourishing across generations, relative to the essential interests of being human, cannot be algorithm-ized.
<br><br>
Therefore, it’s vital that the human-AI interface not be “designed to have access to and rewrite its own code,” such that technophiles pretend that AGI “can introspect its own mind” in any humanly valuable sense.
<br><br>
Inasmuch as such design is feasible—a bootstrapping, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_incompleteness_theorems">Gödelian</a> impos-<br>
sibility, perhaps—then there must be effective regulatory articulation which ensures that such designing is not available for cloud-connected coding.
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</font>
<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-21660898369836127042023-06-26T12:58:00.027-07:002023-11-09T13:49:41.646-08:00prospecting gods<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr><br>
The following is from an email to a well-known scholar of Heidegger’s thinking, which I now realize could be a preface for earlier postings here, given that people face blog listings in reverse chronological order.<blockquote>
Astrobiology is realizing more and more (not less and less) that life begins easily, and our solar system is relatively young. Intelligent life becomes recursively evolutionary because that's what Our post-natural "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300125941/">second-nature</a>" (Nobelist Gerald Edelman) intelligence does; and it has been there (somewhere) for thousands of millennia. Humans became minimally technical 50 millennia ago, technological merely one millennium ago, hyper-tech 0.05 millennium ago, i.e., middle of the last century. Earthly capability a millennium forward is inconceivable. A thousand millennia: a planetary Singularity that became post-biological long ago?
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Already in our evolving (merely two decades after discovering that there are <i>any</i> exoplanets), scientists can discern prospects of life on other planets just by analysis of chemical spectra of exo-planetary atmospheres. So, what have planets millions of years older known about Earth for how long?
<br><br>
Thus, scientific trends suggest that there <i>are</i> relative gods awaiting further evolving of Our planet.
<br><br>
I wager that We are not "Alone" (a rather trite theme by now); and that intelligence far beyond ours tends to stand back from intervening in habitats owned by other forms of life, which we increasingly prove plausible by our own tendencies toward greater conservationism (wildlife preservation)—even shown by our appreciating of child-<br>
hood as such (a 19th century “discovery”; that is: no longer regarding children as primarily unformed little adults); and appreciating child-centered parenting, which leads to student-centered teaching.
<br><br>
The great challenge, though, will be to preserve the integrity of Our Earthanity—to so love Our humanity that we insist on shallow Contact with more-advanced forms of intelligence, for the sake of the integrity of <i>Our</i> evolving, <i>not</i> supplication to inevitable gods (like religious hope for a centripetal Rapture).
<br><br>
Astrobiologist <a href="https://www.livescience.com/alien-mothership-lurking-in-our-solar-system-could-be-watching-us-with-tiny-probes-pentagon-official-suggests">Avi Loeb at Harvard</a> speculated recently that there may be a "mothership" parked outside our solar system sending robotic probes around Earth, which could explain the large number of UAPs [unidentifiable anomalous phenomena] which NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense can't explain. <i>Why</i> not?
</blockquote>
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</font>
<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-12653079383598958702023-04-14T21:43:00.011-07:002023-04-15T16:09:15.105-07:00night note<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr><br>
An accident of nature put Stephen Hawking into a life of perpetual contemplation (given the cottage industry of supports that kept him productive).
<br><br>
High capability for reverie can be a rapturous way of life (if one can afford it).
<br><br>
Perhaps reveries of leading minds in mathematics are anticipating Absolute Others, millions of years of evolution beyond us.
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I expressed something similar to a philosopher of science today:<blockquote>
Just after emailing you about [a textual question], I recalled a recent article, relevant to a <a href="https://twitter.com/GEDavisBerkeley/status/1637575714735276032">new Hawking book</a>—but probably you've already read about a mathematical approach to particle physics whose “alien math” seems to <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/alien-calculus-could-save-particle-physics-from-infinities-20230406/">decrease doubts about infinities</a>. I'm not a mathematician, so that article is maybe as complex as I can weather.
<br><br>
However, the idea of alien math is intriguing. Lee Smolin, years ago, in <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141018356/">The Trouble with Physics</a></i>, mused that humans haven't evolved far enough to discover the math which can deal satisfactorily with such "things" as quantum gravity.
<br><br>
Given a high probability of intelligent life on other planets which happen to be millions of years older than our relatively young solar system, there <i>would</i> be literally alien math.
<br><br>
Hawking's holographicality is (I surmise) the ostensible mode of the holological phenomenality of intelligibility which is entirely mathematical. (That's not a nominalist <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/">stance about mathematics</a>, nor exactly realist, in a normal sense.)
<br><br>
I like Smolin’s notion of “quantum foam,” which evinces—from which "emerges"—space-time as such, and intelligence lives in the phenomenality of what's "real."
<br><br>
How that quantum foam "is" faces us as <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/96115main_Full_m.jpg">the COBE image</a>. <br>
I like to think that the especially-blue area there is bumping against another universe.
<br><br>
cheers,
<br><br>
Gary</blockquote>
He didn’t reply. I guess I was too exotic.
<br><br>
But a conceptuality of “Truth” and “Realism” can be a cosmic thing.<br>
(I’m presently prospecting an elaborate interplay of the two concepts<br>
for a fundamental sense of conceptuality.)
<br><br>
That “can be” is partly why the James Webb telescope, arming astrobiological questing, wagers that Our planetary <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mathesis">mathesis</a> of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/anthropic-principle">Anthropic</a> cosmos isn’t wondering Alone—though reverie about It All can easily be wandering alone.
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<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-45739797528200632552022-01-18T21:46:00.022-08:002022-01-18T22:26:15.667-08:00memo to the unresponsive gods<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr><br>
As You stay silent to We Earthans, I assume You can understand Us—so, me here speaking, writing as one of Us among You, uncomprehending how being among You goes.
<br><br>
Given Your silence, We here can only believe that intelligibility in itself comprehends Itself no better than We’re doing—or evolving to do, as if we’re the first form of life in the region to possibly understand being<br>
a form of life in the region evolving to express intelligibility in Itself.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
We’re the first ones who learn why vast intelligibility stays away? You: <br>
master teachers letting newbies learn their own way to the peaks<br>
without self-harm (not <i>forever</i> Sisyphean): It’s about <i>achieving</i><br>
the heights, <i>gaining</i> the capability to comprehend.
<br><br>
You stay silent while We children of the galactic region find Our own way into readiness for Your presence.
<br><br>
So, either We’re the first to say <i>anything</i>: that there is whatever; or<br>
We’re not ready for You because we’re still evolving intelligibility enough to avoid blinding supplication.
<br><br>
Meanwhile, You patiently witness our plays of Time learning how<br>
to conceive well enough.
<br><br>
We Earthlings don’t know what You are, but Our astroscience implies more and more that <a href="http://meti.org">You are There</a>.
<br><br><br>
</font>
<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-38403839066105254092021-11-26T21:38:00.009-08:002024-03-22T14:37:22.752-07:00universe unrevealed<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr><br>
PBS <i>Nova</i> has finished broadcasting its new 5-episode series titled “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/nova-universe-revealed/">Universe Revealed</a>,” which uses superb graphics to convey for a general audience how recent astrophysical strides in revealing the universe through satellite telescopes leave us ultimately facing wondrous mystery. Much of it involves young astrophysicists enthusiastically talking to the camera about recent discoveries—which is really inspiring. It complements the video animations well.
<br><br>
The last word, literally, of the last episode is by young Grant Tremblay, stationed at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics. I was so intrigued by what he said that I sent him an email today, which I’ll share here.
<br><br>
He noted, “We are going to be but a sentence in the Book of the Universe. And so, I think it’s incumbent upon us to write the best possible sentence that we can. I cannot wait for what is to come.”
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
I’m adding some [bracketed explanation] and links here for references that he would easily recognize.<blockquote>
Hi, Grant,
<br><br>
As a philosophical writer, I have to admire the old trope of the book—the book of life, the book of the universe. But the ultimate point of being—
<br><br>
Well, I confess: The ending of every episode of the <i>Nova</i> series frightened me. Though there wasn’t much knowledge in the beautifully-made series that was news to me, the videographer’s beauty of it all meshed with a sense of terror that sometimes overcomes me out “under” (?) the stars on a relatively non-light-polluted Berkeley night. So few stars appearing—relatively even for the folks <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/star-trekking-chile-astronomy-180955798/">atop the Chilean Andes</a> [See photo < 2 >] (or wherever) seeing an expanse of “our” galaxy. So many strands in the cosmic sponge of galaxies, etc, etc., etc. The <a href="https://dev.sdss.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/orangepie.jpg">Sloan Digital Sky Survey</a> is really creepy.
<br><br><!--more-->
Notwithstanding that Kimberly Arcand [in the last episode, too] got it right with her trope of [our solar system being] an atom [in a drop of water] in trillions of oceans, the <i>existential</i> message is that we’re on our own to make the best of our intelligence as lastingly as possible, but with no ultimate part in the purposeless universe. (A Lee Smolin may trope a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195126645/">life of the cosmos</a>,” and minds will trope that the universe is “evolving,” but these are sentences of a relatively primitive form of being. Smolin prospects that “We” haven't evolved to be able to <i>conceive</i> the math necessary for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/061891868X/">fairly modeling quantum gravity</a>—or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465094546/">quantum foam</a>, whatever.) [Smolin prospects that space-time is an <i>emergent</i> property of “quantum loop” strings</a> of quamtum foam forming “empty” space-time.]
<br><br>
You know, very many privileged persons on Earth have so much trouble finding reason to live that they leave life. Thankfully, I've never been ultimately pessimistic, but I've lost loved ones by their own hand. (Then, there are all the famined persons who are doing whatever it takes to stay alive—Ethiopia, now, for example.)
<br><br>
You may have heard about “questions of being” in philosophy, which ultimately face the frightening fact <i>that</i> there is <i>anything</i> at all. <i>Given</i> some kind of “Presence” causing quantum fluctuations <i>prior</i> to the inflation of space-time [a main theme of that last episode on the Big Bang] “into” that Presence, which no intelligence of some galaxy in “the” universe [among other universes?], billions of years older than us can ever know [because we are bound by space-time <i>within this</i> “version” {?} of physics—the prospected, questionable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle">Anthropic principle</a>], one rightly wonders <i>why</i> some of us inquire so exuberantly.
<br><br>
You and your cohorts in “pure” science are the exemplars of what intelligence in this galaxy singularly (so far) is: loving “to find out,” as [major theoretical physicist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465023959/">Richard] Feynman</a> titled some essays.
<br><br>
But you expressed the best of it: In a sense, it's the art of it, making the venture as beautiful—as elegant—as we can.
<br><br>
That goes for our little lives: loving a path, making beauty, moving on for more.
<br><br>
I wonder about the inevitably older intelligences in our galaxy who stay <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199646309/">Silent</a>.
<br><br>
A gardener doesn't want to interrupt the growing. Witnessing the beauty of innocence in children playing.
<br><br>
The great novelist Nabokov loved to chase butterflies, exuberant about finding a new species.
<br><br>
Fun! That's the ultimacy of being.
<br><br>
Gary<br>
</blockquote>
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</font>
<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-10369471241901160582021-07-19T22:25:00.002-07:002021-08-27T22:32:41.157-07:00being in The Dark<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr><br>
Whatever the shape “<a href="https://www.livescience.com/universe-three-dimensional-donut.html">our universe</a>” (<i>our</i>?) is—<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle">Klein bottle</a>, say?—
its expansion isn’t happening in 4-d (space-time). It’s happening in greater dimensionality, which We’ll never know, never comprehend.
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Like a balloon inflating in 3-space over time is an expanding 2-space surface through 4-d space-time (perpendicular to the 2-d balloon surface), the <i>surface</i> of the Klein bottle trope is 4-d space-time itself expanding in greater dimensionality (incomprehensibly), perpendicular to space-time, as if “The” Universe is emergent cold clearing in quantum foam (among other Universes?).
<br><br>
Ultimately, We’ll never know why there’s <i>any</i>thing rather than <i>no</i> Universe—a fate we share with flowers.
<br><br>
But they’re never chilled to their heart that “I” is.
<br><br>
Meanwhile <i>We</i>, like honeybees, design Our scale of appreciation—<i>yet</i>, We want vastly more than any other form of Earthan life: evolving
reason to live, evolving appreciability.
<br><br>
</font>
<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-82983931038991424662021-03-22T11:52:00.015-07:002023-01-29T15:17:10.424-08:00The Earthan Being evolves.<hr />
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><br />
The Internet is an electronic organism. Seeing an animation of its actual evolution (2003 to 2021) astounds me (link upcoming).
<br /><br />
Beginning around 2003, the actual structure of the Internet at various days was computed, graphically transposed (for each computation), then merged this year into a time series which shows an electronic organism growing:
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.opte.org"><font color="#c60">the body of <b>Earthan intelligence</b> evolving</font></a>. (Click “Learn More” to see the animation.)
<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>
You can see, then, what I meant by “recursive” in my description of<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151540091626175&set=pb.692136174.-2207520000.1463349061.&type=3&theater">the static 2003 version</a> years ago.
<br /><br />
The late-stage colors indicate continental domains: <br /><ul>
<li>blue: North America</li>
<li>green: Europe</li>
<li>violet: Latin America</li>
<li>burgandy: Asia Pacific</li>
<li>orange: Africa</li>
<li>white: backbone (<a href="https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/atlantic-crossing-1-ac-1">highly connected networks</a>)</li>
</ul>
As you can see, the center of the Internet (the most concentrated netweaving), from which all else tends to connect, is Euro-northAmerican, so to speak—or north Atlantic, containing the backbone.
<br /><br />
You can see the complexity of the Internet as a couple of static images<br />
at the end of the sequence of 9 on the <i>Time Magazine</i> site, which zooms into the South Korean segment at images 7-9. Swipe rightward (or click) at the bottom of the image at the <a href="https://time.com/3952373/internet-opte-project/">top of the article</a> to go to those images.
<br /><br />
The Internet is the unfathomably complex electronic mind of<br />
our species, ever evolving.
<br /><br />
Last here—but by no means least—is a stunning graphic about all<br />
the “<a href="https://sky.rogue.space">stuff in space</a>” that’s orbiting Earth (debris, as well as satellites).<br />
At finer grain level there (“+”, as with Google Maps), the orbits will show, and the continents show. The Earth can be turned by clicking on the image, and dragging your cursor.<br />
the image.
<br /><br />
Is it any wonder that Absolute Others Out There may stay Silent?—stunned?: “The being’s evolution is accelerating.”
<br /><br />
Or perhaps, We’re the First in Our galaxy, destined to Silently watch Absolute Others learn to do the same.
</span>
<br /><br /><br />
<hr />gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-22315096826964357212020-09-12T12:14:00.004-07:002020-09-12T12:18:00.883-07:00notes to the great silence<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr /><br />
An ensouled singularity divines conceivability, <a href="https://cohering.net/lst/soSi12.html" target="_blank"><u>anticipating</u></a><br />
unborn songs.
<br /><br />
</font>
<hr />gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-90329959351777910482020-03-13T22:15:00.001-07:002024-03-22T14:40:25.780-07:00for astro-science funding—then beyond<hr />
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><br />
The following is a letter I sent today to David Overbye, the lead science writer at the <i>NYTimes</i>, in light of his article today, “<a href="https://nyti.ms/3aPzOkz"><u>American Astronomy’s Future Goes on Trial in Washington</u></a>.” I’m posting this copy because it’s fun creative writing (below the “• • •” separation point in the letter), after a short wish that he do his best to inspire funding (text above the “• • •” point).
<br /><br />
I’m commonly amazed that I often change my attitude toward emails that I’ve sent, several hours after sending them, and that happened today. Blog posting allows for revision that sent letters don’t allow, of course, which can cause unprovoked embarrassment, and did earlier today.
<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>
For this posting, I’m inserting indicators of what’s a reference to the article’s discussion which might be obscure for a reader here who hasn’t read the long article (which gets somewhat tedious in detail). But I’m not explaining those references, since that’s not necessary for the creative writing; and I have a link to the article above.
<br /><br />
After the letter, I’m adding some further discussion, relative to numerical points that I’m inserting into this posting of the letter (e.g., “…[ <b>1</b> ].”) Those numbered points aren’t footnotes, exactly, but reference points for the short comments after the letter, which becomes prospectively imaginative.
<br /><br />
<i>Sunday, Mar. 15</i>: I received a warm-hearted reply. But I’m still embarrassed that I actually sent this:
<br /><br /><hr />
<blockquote>
Friday, March 13<br />
To: David Overbye<br />
re: “American Astronomy's Future...”
<br />
<hr />
<br />
Dear Mr. Overbye,
<br />
<br />
You've devoted your writing life to the intrinsic value of cosmic science, so I imagine that you're better positioned than the astronomers themselves to articulate an inspiring narrative vision that can sway U.S. funders to do their part to support long-term thinking for astro-scientific investment.
<br />
<br />
I wish you would write a few articles that could really help Congresspersons justify to their constituents the funding that astronomers need. What Congress needs is ways to inspire public support.
<br />
<br />
I suppose that the most dramatic instance of this is what's been happening in Hawaii <span style="font-size: x-small;">[article points]</span>, which is allegorical for a Republican Senate that has trouble funding anything not recognizable as immanent threat (easy to justify for re-election).
<br />
<br />
Apparently, the rhetoric of rationalization by astronomers <span style="font-size: x-small;">[article points]</span> is in terms of competing with the Europeans, which may be a prudent tactic: appealing to nationalist desire to not be Left Behind. But the reality of science—you know better than I—is a Singular Planetary Community.
<br />
<br />
So, I hope that your experience can serve inspiration of funding.
<br />
<center>
• • •</center>
<br />
The rest of this is creative indulgence. You're better positioned to appeal to Congressional funders than I am. But I enjoy creative writing:
<br />
<br />
Metaphorically, the higher that one's position of view is, the farther one's vision, such that long-sighted thinking <i>is superior</i> to short-sighted thinking [ <b>1</b> ], but that's anathema to short-sighted thinking (and to rightist anti-elitism, as well as to nativist provincialism).
<br />
<br />
In particular, “native” Hawaiian culture is relatively <i>very recent</i> on that colonization of flora and fauna (favored by volcanic emergence from the sea) by Polynesians whose monarchies later exploited its subjects in collusion with predatory, seafaring Western colonialists [ <b>2</b> ]. Hawaiians are part of Polynesian <i>humanity</i> that <i>designated</i> its sacred heights there, and those heights have demonstrably welcomed scientific humanity as guests, <i>because</i> no gods have prevented astronomical research on Mauna Kea [ <b>3</b> ]. Inasmuch as there are “gods” there, locals can recognize that they are <i>affirmed</i> by understanding how science serves those gods. And native Hawaiians are free to appreciate sacredness as having many identifiable locations.
<br />
<br />
I humorously think that maybe the rhetoric of justification to Republicans in Congress ought to be in terms of furthering appreciation of God's Creation because it's (allegedly) our God's desire that we are to know Him (which is to know Ourselves ultimately).
<br />
<br />
That's a joke, but not by much: The folklore of gods, which led to the folklore of monotheism in the West, has always been about our “God” wanting His creatures to know Him. I'm not religious by any means; I'm philological about “God” (that's philo<i>logical</i>, not philo<i>sophical</i>—another story [ <b>4</b> ]). But it's obvious that astronomer Tommasu Treu's questions <span style="font-size: x-small;">[article point]</span> belong together for a religious mind: We are <i>not</i> ”Alone” and They <i>likely</i> know <i>as</i> much <i>more</i> about the universe (about “God”) beyond us, analogously <i>as</i> quantum cosmologists know beyond Andean campesinos (who have an interesting cosmology, by the way: very ecological!) [ <b>5</b> ]—or beyond Hawaiian natives, who are creatures of the same gods that welcome astronomy in their heights. (That "<i>likely</i>" results from knowing, as We <i>do</i>, <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-03-blocks-life-earth-thought-billion-year-old.html"><u>how easily life may emerge</u></a> [ <b>6</b> ] on a waterworld planet; and that there are countless star systems in our galaxy that are millions of years beyond us [ <b>7</b> ].)
<br />
<br />
So, how can science show natives (and Republicans) how We are all one humanity reaching to know the awaiting gods? How can Americans feel good about buying into supporting the future of humanity?
<br />
<br />
For fun, I love thinking of science as acting for the sake of all planetary intelligence facing the prospect of eventually—and inevitably—<i>joining with</i> disclosed exoplanetary intelligence to advance the quality of being in this corner of Our galaxy. That's Our ultimate fate: to make being as good as possible in this reach of Our galaxy, which will merge with Andromeda, mergently speeding away from other galaxies.
<br />
<br />
That's the reality, such that it is fate that human fidelity to gods will have to reconcile with the gods’ desire that humanity know its reality.
<br />
<br />
The ultimacy of being is to make the journey of appreciation as good as possible, just like a given life that will die finds ultimate meaning in its ongoing, ever growing potential for a higher quality of life, that is intrinsic to being, in face of the fact that this pale blue dot is all the heaven there is. We are the shepherds of Earth’s version of intelligence in Our galaxy. The nature of intelligence is to advance itself [ <b>8</b> ].
<br />
<br />
The point of “what the universe is made of” <span style="font-size: x-small;">[article point]</span> is emergent intelligence, which “gods” mirror figuratively. Humanity is the Earthly version of something manifold in Our galaxy. Astro-science (astrobiology, astronomy, astrophysics) is like one provincial culture realizing that a foreign culture is, at heart, another version of “Our” same humanity, such that one's conception of being is enriched [ <b>9</b> ]. To know multi-culturality is, at heart, to better know our shared humanity. To learn the cosmos is to learn where We already always are: being an instance of intelligence in a galaxy [ <b>10</b> ].
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Human life is intrinsically about paying forward for our heirs’ quality of being. Theologians proffer that this is God's design: The “life of the universe” (Lee Smolin [ <b>11</b> ]) is “alive”: <i>evolving</i>; and that evolving is—poetically figured—our “God” showing Itself relative to Our ability so far to appreciate the evolving, which <i>is to be appreciated</i>. That is our “God’s” desire: to appreciate most intelligently.
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Thanks for reading,
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Gary<br />
Berkeley, CA subscriber
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Many years ago, physical theorist Lee Smolin [11] wrote a book titled <i>The Life of the Universe</i>, which argued that the notion of evolving pertains to the universe itself, within which intelligence emerges (proven by the fact that <i>we</i> are here [10]).
<br /><br />
There may be multiple universes, but <i>this</i> one works by the same physics throughout, while recent science has determined that life begins easily in the right conditions. Research reported this past week [6] merely adds to such realization by certifying that not only does life begin easily (shown my much other research), but began more recently on Earth (hundreds of millions of years more recently) than previously believed by the best science.
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In our galaxy, there are countless planetary systems, many that are millions of years older than our sun [7] (maybe a billion years older), emergent from the same physics.
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Our evolution has given way to intelligence which is advancing exponentially. Electricity systems are merely 12-15 decades old, commercial computing 7 decades old. Yet that led to the public Internet merely 2.5 decades ago. And now, manifold senses of “artificial intelligence” implement science fiction ideas that idealize post-humanity. Soon, we will be able to discern which of the thousands of exoplanets that we’re discovering have probable life, just from spectral analysis of their light.
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What’s to be for us, thousands of years from now—a million years? And They, who are millions of years beyond us already? You think They don’t know we’re here, because S.E.T.I. gets Silence? [8]
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Suppose that you are called upon to explain to curious orangutans how your smartphone “communicates” (as if the phone itself does it)? You would decline to respond to their curiosity.
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And suppose such a god replied. Would humanity become wholly oriented to what Contact could disclose? Would religions lose all ability to keep social order oriented? Would opportunistic competition between nations seeking greater Contact go to war like animals fighting over a singularly grand food source?
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If a god appeared, would you be ecstatic over the fact; or terrified of why It arrived?
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If the gods are real, but wholly non-reflections of human idealization, would you want their presence?
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Saying that I'm “philological about ‘God’” [4] is shorthand for my anthropological interest in evolution of intelligence. Our premodern cultural evolution created gods as aspirational idealizations (and ethical lights—and explanatory consolations, etc.), much of which remains institutionally necessary for social stability and long-term sustainability [5]—yet also for honoring ancestral tradition, as if a culture originates from its ancestry like seeds evincing fruit trees.
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The situation of Hawaiian nativism is typical: aversively awed by the mysterious, monstrous telescopes that have been “received” on the mountain [3]. A folklore of cultural purity is belied by the reality of its suppressed history [2], which is the reality of its legacy of Polynesian humanity which is part of the legacy of Asian humanity, which is part of the 200,000 year diasporas out of Africa and around the planet, back and forth for tens of millennia, that resulted in “brothers” facing natives [9] with too much too soon.
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Yet, just as cultural pluralism reveals a shared humanity, astroscientific adventure will reveal a shared intelligibility of being.
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<hr />gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-58800477104867413832019-10-19T12:34:00.000-07:002019-10-23T19:39:38.778-07:00now here this<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr><br>
I'm not giving attention to this blog lately, but this will eventually be<br>
a major aspect of my online writing.
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The Plan is that my constellation of online projects will all eventually lead into a musing of my being ultimately in <i>the condition of everyone</i>: a short life in an ordinary galaxy speeding away from all other galaxies (though our Milky Way will fuse with Andromeda in a few billion years) in this universe that’s evidently expanding infinitely from a Big Bang that happened inexplicably from Nowhere.
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There <i><b>is</b></i> that in this. And We will never know why.
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“...<i>this</i> universe...”? <i>A</i> universe among others? (Is the especially blue area of the COBE image [<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/96115main_Full_m.jpg">near the center</a>] another universe bumping this one?)
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“...<i>our</i> Milky Way...”? <b>Our</b> Milky Way?
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Hello, Silence, my old friend.
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...text...text...text.
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<i>So</i> what? We create good reason
<br>to flourish, evolving<br>
by design<br>
<i>of<br>
Our<br>
own</i>.
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I love being—despite <a href="https://cohering.net/re/011kasop.html#nasa">ultimate mystery echoing</a> in quantum foam.
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<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-25823053306443143962019-07-29T20:15:00.001-07:002021-03-22T12:07:55.582-07:00transcendental techno-Earthanity<hr />
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><br />
This posting has been revised in light of the astounding recent animation of the evolution of the Internet, and a new version posted:
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“<a href="https://american-earthling.blogspot.com/2021/03/being.html"><b>The Earthan Being evolves</b></a>.”
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<hr />gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1012445162339743510.post-85014168113908495812019-07-13T00:57:00.001-07:002019-10-19T18:45:57.128-07:00a brief mediation in light of a fossilized skulland a recent family photo<font color="#0e0b6b"><hr><br>
Dear man of the moon,
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The summer fog over the S.F. Bay isn’t so low tonight that I can’t see<br>
the emerald city across the way. High up, your three-quarter face emerges and wanes in the wind.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
Anthropologists have recently gained confidence that <i>Homo sapiens</i> was living in the to-be-Greek islands <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/apidima-greek-skull-oldest-human-fossil-outside-africa/593563/">~200,000 years ago</a>, witnessing you, the same moon.“Modern” humans didn’t leave Africa merely ~50,000 years ago. Diasporas went every which-a-way for unrecorded hundreds of millennia: All around the Mediterranean, Europe, Central Asia, South and East Asia, back to Africa, and out again, over and over... We might as well say that globalization and hybridization is intrinsic to our being, under the same rising and setting moon, emerging and waning witness.
<br><br>Folk tales of civilization beginning in Ur or the Nile Valley are lore that certified to oral cultures a nebulously Deep Timedness of the gods that was wholly beyond human comprehension, though witnessed by you, like an eternity seeing all Time.
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When the Bronze Age brought a cornucopia of Mediterranean civilization, We—They—of merely 0.03 million years ago had been <i>lucid</i> for 0.2 million years, as a genus traceable back nearly <i>4 million years</i>—“under” your unchanging rise and wane.
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We really don’t know what They did before lush southern regions of the Mediterranean turned to desert. Yet, tens upon tens of centuries passed before the Bronze Age triumphed, then waned, and a half millennium would pass before re-consolidation in the islands would lead to the golden age of classical Greece—as if the fable of Atlantis was an allegory of folk remembrance across so many undocumented generations: “Once upon a time, there was a great civilization <i>of</i> the sea, but it came to pass that they sank, while we are still here.”
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A millennium would pass between the waning of Rome and rise of European modernity. Rising and waning, rising and waning, we then “<a href="http://pbsinternational.org/programs/chasing-the-moon/">chased the moon</a>” like a vast tribe certifying the new Atlantis against the people of the Steppes.
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We found you, Mr. Moon, to be “magnificent desolution” (Buzz Aldrin), then lost interest, except casually, now fifty years after that “one small step for man,“ July 20.
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Yet, now, opportunists imagine chances for mining and tourism!—if we can figure out some laws to protect legacy already there and property to be privatized.
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An Apollo 16 drifter left a color photo of his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/science/moon-apollo-11-archaeology-preservation.html">family on gray dust</a>, as if to show exobiological visitors what we were—or to leave a portent of your fate, Mr. Moon: to be domesticated, colonized (like every continent that humans could reach), then to be a way station on the way to terraforming Mars or visiting Europa.
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There’s no destiny. We rise, we wane. We envision, we witness, come what may. Hot Earth may enforce new waning, but Its life continues anyway, “what<i>ever</i>,“ as eternally as your witness.
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No gods will arrive to prevent Us from waning in so much domestication.
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Absolute Others may arrive from another star, some day, possibly to find only a planet of magnificent fossils and hints of departures that left for somewhere else, in the face of too much desert, as if we turned Heaven into magnificent desolation.
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<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.com