brilliant summation, Pedro.
we are missing the metaphors with which to explain the difference between
death and life or between smart communities like bacterial colonies and
consciousness.
in The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates, i tell the tale of the
origin of the term "emergent property." But, alas, over 140 years after the
concept's introduction, we still lack the tools that would help us
understand life and consciousness in scientific ways.
i suspect the key will come from adding to the bottom up vocabulary of
reductionism by looking at top down approaches. and i suspect that certain
emergent properties are possibilities of the cosmos waiting for matter to
find them. very a la wagner in his Arrival of the Fittest.
but if emergent properties exist in an implicit future, in possibility
space, how did they get there? a hint: god is not the answer. god is a way
of dodging the question.
i've hit all these issues in The God Problem. and i ache for the new
metaphors.
with warmth and oomph--howard
----------
Howard Bloom
Howardbloom.net
author of : The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces
of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post), Global Brain: The
Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and
sobering"-The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of
Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable."James
Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), The God Problem: How A Godless
Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (“a monumental,epic, glorious
literary achievement.” Timothy Leary), and The Muhammad Code: How a Desert
Prophet Gave You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram--or How Muhammad Invented
Jihad (
“a terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam,” David Swindle, PJ
Media).
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting Scholar
—Graduate Psychology Department, NewYork University
Founder: International PaleopsychologyProject; founder and chair, Space
Development Steering Committee; Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution
Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project; Board Of Governors,
National Space Society; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New
York
Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior
and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific
Advisory Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation.
In a message dated 2/13/2017 10:32:36 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es writes:
Dear Howard,
In any extent, your beautiful questions are beyond my reach. I think that
the physical characterization of life cannot even provide a whim on your
demands; but something of the informational might provide some limited
inroads: prokaryots could not achieve any significant progress in
morphological
or differentiation capabilities within their "colonies". Conversely,
eukaryotes developed multicellularity due to their far higher information
content
(genome), their far improved signaling resources, their endless energy
supply in support of the general combinatoric problem-solving tools
(mitochondria), and the incorporation of a new locus (cytoskeleton) capable of
feeling
the force field and reacting to it. A chain of amazing inventions is
behind any of the existing branches of complex life... can do they admit a
general explanation, not just based on natural selection, but on the improved
evolvability that has been obtained by being able to explore any
molecular-recognition contraption (within partially collapsed solution
state-spaces, a
la Wagner?). Otherwise we are lead to admit a deep enigma, still uncharted,
or to look for external "intelligence" solutions outside the limits of
current scientific paradigms.
What is your own opinion??
Best wishes--Pedro
El 09/02/2017 a las 22:44, _HowlBloom@aol.com_ (mailto:howlbl...@aol.com)
escribió:
fascinating thinking, pedro.
it triggers this:
The stages of development are far more than real-world problem solvers.
They set artificial challenges, then achieve them. Making a caterpillar
that works is an enormously complex challenge. Making a working butterfly
is also immensely more complex than any simple challenge mounted by the
environment. Changing from caterpillar to butterfly in one lifetime is
unachievable beyond all belief. And these grotesquely artificial goals can’t
be
accounted for by a simple goal of survival. The goal, if anything, seems to
be to accomplish the ornate, the unnecessary, the flamboyant, and the
impossible. How does a drive toward impossible flamboyance get built into
life? How does it get built into the cosmos?
with warmth and oomph--howard
----------
Howard Bloom
Howardbloom.net
author of : The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces
of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post), Global Brain: The
Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and
sobering"-The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of
Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable."James
Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), The God Problem: How A Godless
Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (“a monumental,epic, glorious
literary achievement.” Timothy Leary), and The Muhammad Code: How a Desert
Prophet Gave You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram--or How Muhammad Invented
Jihad
(“a terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam,” David Swindle, PJ
Media).
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting Scholar
—Graduate Psychology Department, NewYork University
Founder: International PaleopsychologyProject; founder and chair, Space
Development Steering Committee; Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution
Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project; Board Of Governors,
National Space Society; Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New
York
Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science,
American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior
and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific
Advisory Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation.
In a message dated 2/9/2017 3:22:55 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
_pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es_ (mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es) writes:
Dear Marcus and Colleagues,
Thanks for your interest. The Chengdu's Conference represented for me an
occasion to return to my beginnings, in the 80's, when I prepared a PhD
Thesis: "Natural Intelligence: On the evolution of biological information
processing". It was mostly following a top down approach. But in some of the
discussions outdoors of the conference (a suggestion for the next one in
Shanghai: plenary discussion sessions should also be organized) I realized
that
biomolecular things have changed quite a lot. One could go nowadays the
other way around: from the molecular-informational organization of cellular
life, to intelligence of the cell's behavior withing the environment. The
life cycle es essential. It provides the source of "meaning" (as I have often
argued in discussions in the list) but it is also the reference for
"intelligence". Communicating with the environment and self-producing by means
of
the environmental affordances have to be smoothly organized so that the
stages of the life cycle may be advanced, and that the "problems" arising
from the internal or the external may be adequately solved. It means
signalling and self-modifying in front of the open-ended environmental
problems,
sensing and acting coherently... It strangely connects with the notion of
human "story" and the communication cycle in the humanities. Relating
intelligence to goal accomplishment or to an architecture of goals as usually
done
in computational realms implies that the real life course (or the surrogate)
is reduced to a very narrow segment. True intelligence evaporates.
These were some of my brute reflections that I have to keep musing around
(I saw interesting repercussions for cellular signaling "narratives" too).
Maybe this is also a good opportunity for other parties of that conference
to expostulate their own impressions --very exciting presentations both
from Chinese and Western colleagues there.
Thanks again,
--Pedro
El 08/02/2017 a las 14:14, Marcus Abundis escribió:
> In next weeks some further discussion might be started, but at the time
being, the slot is empty (any ideas?)<
Hi Pedro,
For my part I would appreciate a chance to hear more about the thoughts
you have been developing (even if they are very rough) as related to the talk
you gave in China last summer.
Alternatively, further thoughts on Gordana's talk would be nice to hear.
For both of these talks, you both shared your presentation stack . . . but
there was so much information in both of those talks, it would be nice to
have some of "unpacked."
Marcus
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Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
_pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es_ (mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es)
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
_pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es_ (mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es)
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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