Glen said:
...
...
So another form of Dave's argument, still metaphysical, is this
Smolin-esque (or even Schrödinger-esque ala negentropy?) concept that
our objective(s) is tightly coupled pockets of deep computation. And
*that*, given that our brains are fantastic computers, gives some
weight to the idea that deep and broad introspection gets one closer
to God, closer to the objective, closer to the real occult Purpose
behind it all in much the same way as studying quantum mechanics and
quantum computation.
My argument *against* that is that even if tightly coupled (coherent)
pockets of computation are a crucial element, so is the interstitial
space *between* the tight pockets ... like black holes orbiting each
other or somesuch. It's not merely the individual pocket/computer
that's interesting, it's the formation, dissolution, and interaction
of the pockets that's more interesting. Actually, then, the *void* is
more interesting than the non-void.
The first paragraph references my current interest in not strict
*computation* but something notionally larger/subsuming of computation
and that is *consciousness* (without trying to define the latter further
for the moment, just asserting that it is a proper superset of the
former). This makes it more, not less metaphysical of course.
Depending on the author/source, life, mind, consciousness (in the
animist/panpsychist/pan-consciousnes conceptions) seems to fit well
complementary to your use of "computation". As presented a few dozen
posts back, my current fascination is along the arc of Deacon's
Homeo/Morpho/Teleo Dynamics formulation around these
problems/considerations. I did get one off-list response to that which
suggests that some here are familiar/interested in this perspective...
my breath is 'bated.
I think that the point you make about the voids might be another way of
describing the power-law/fractal distribution of structure across scale,
not privileging any particular scale of "tightly coupled (coherent)
pockets of *utation"? Or maybe I am getting this wrong/clumsy also.
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