cereal induced BIP thought

[Mangrove]

this is just a scribble. it occured to me over breakfast and i wanted to post it so i don't forget later. i may revisit this at dinner time and think it's stupid.

it starts with:

a) a belief is just a thought you keep having.

it's a favorite phrase for me. one of the notions we've arrived from BIP is the above.

another thing we've derived from this (and the PD) is that no beliefs are 'true' with a big T. what can have been saying is that, while no belief is 'truer' than any other, some beliefs are more effective than others, depending on context.

if a belief isn't truer or falser than any other (yes, i love grammar too), then does this put all beliefs on equal footing?

if so, does this mean BIP is a 'democratization of consciousness'?

hypothetically speaking, in an election (i can hear TGRR laughing already) a person is meant to vote for the person they believe represents their views and is someone who will execute those views most effectively.

maybe our beliefs are like political candidates? sometimes we choose the candidate after a lot of deliberation. sometimes we simply vote for the team our parents did. sometimes the candidate seems really strong & wholesome, but is actually a festering cesspool of corruption. sometimes the candidate who didn't have the right TV charisma was actually the most astute thinker.

or something like that. gotta go and see my accountant.

[Cramulus]

Interesting thoughts. Douglas Hofstadter wrote a good column once called "who shoves whom around in the careenium". If I recall correctly it was about just that - the idea that all our personal thoughts are kind of like little intelligences. And they have a certain degree of natural selection that goes on before they manifest. The article was written as a socratic dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise, who Hofstadter envisioned as elements of his personality.

Also as I recall, the point of the article was about how thoughts might occur and evolve in a very deterministic way. Consciousness, Hofstadter argued, arises from this high degree of complexity. Lots of different Me's all vying to be on top.

Being an AI researcher he really wanted to understand the mechanics of how thoughts become real. I think its cool to envision all the different people on this board discussing the BIP as similar to these little mental modules, disagreeing and producing synergy and creativity from recombonation. We collectively have an intelligence, voice, tone, recurring thoughts, etc, which is composed of numerous individuals all blending in enormous complexity, producing an intelligence which is somewhat external to each of us.

[rygD]

Mang,  I am not sure I am clearly understanding what you mean.  Is it something like each possible belief that an individual would allow themself to choose for a specific incident/item/whatever are chosen based on what they feel to be the correct or best choice, even if only for the current situation?  I somewhat agree with what I think you were getting at, but what I understand it as boils down to "you believe what you believe based on what you believe".

What kind of cereal was it.  This could be the source of the problems (now I seem to recall an article talking about Ninja Turtles and cereal for some reason, featuring a picture of Genesse P-Orridge eating some cereal...maybe I need to go dig through my books and find it)?  Also, did you mention this to your accountant, and get feedback there?

[Triple Zero]

the biggest problem i have with this idea is the democracy bit

putting all ideas on equal footing doesn't mean democratisation, it doesn't mean the majority vote belief wins

in a similar way that evolution is not "survival of the majority vote", but "survival of the fittest", meaning "that which works"
(or to speak with Douglas Adams, the Tautology: "that which survives, survives")

get off from the democracy idea. it's a very good way of reaching consensus in a smallish group of persons, but that's pretty much all it works really good for.
which is why nature doesn't use democracy. it's way too rigid for large groups. an example was, trying to reach consensus in a simulated network environment using only local rules, everybody agreeing the majority vote of their neighbours often did not reach consensus but only large neighourhoods of competing values, only once they used the local rule "majority vote with small amount of noise", the entire network quickly converged to the actual majority value.
it's all in the maths, and pure democracy makes you stuck

sorry for only taking a very small piece of your idea and ranting about that, btw

[LMNO]

I like where you're going with this, Mang.

However, I think there are indeed beliefs that seem to be more true than others.  Belief in a round earth, or that an open flame will burn you, for example.

In that case both the amount of truth and it's effectiveness are linked, of course.  But those are rather more "real world" cases, with experimental and observable effects.  Once you start going more "meta" I think your proposition becomes more accurate.

I also like the democracy bit, because you're not tying it to Ideal Democracy, you're tying it to the current political climate in the US, which seems to be based upon propoganda and bias rather than on the merits of each candidate.  In the same way, many beliefs are established not on what is most effective, but rather on what is packaged the best.

[AFK]

I have to say this really rang true for me.  I think the political analogy is fitting because beliefs and/or religion can tend to work the same way.  Of course, you don't have to wait until you are 18 to have a belief.  But I think the examples you give are quite pertinent.  And I think LMNO raises a good point too.  The sort of, "scientific" beliefs may be a place where you can get "truer" beliefs than others.  Of course, there is always the temporal quotient.  It is truer now, but will it always be?  Anyway, I'm just blathering here so I shall stop.  Good show.  I think this merits some further exploration. 

[Triple Zero]

I also like the democracy bit, because you're not tying it to Ideal Democracy, you're tying it to the current political climate in the US, which seems to be based upon propoganda and bias rather than on the merits of each candidate.  In the same way, many beliefs are established not on what is most effective, but rather on what is packaged the best.

heh, well if you turn it that way, i suppose it is indeed similar.

*reading back Mang's OP*

hm, it seems i sort of completely glossed over this bit

maybe our beliefs are like political candidates? sometimes we choose the candidate after a lot of deliberation. sometimes we simply vote for the team our parents did. sometimes the candidate seems really strong & wholesome, but is actually a festering cesspool of corruption. sometimes the candidate who didn't have the right TV charisma was actually the most astute thinker.

which sort of completely addresses the points i made in my previous post

does this mean that as soon as we figure out a good rule-of-thumb (not going to hope for an actual solution, not realistic)  for one, we can also do better at the other!

[Mangrove]

thanks for the feedback guys.

as the title suggests, i was quite literally munching away on breakfast and the phrase 'democratization of consciousness' popped into my head. i wanted to scribble it down before i forgot and figured the internet was a good a place as any.

prof cram - the hofstadter reference was interesting. my dad had godel/escher/bach and i tried reading it as a pretentious pseudo-intellectual teen (what's changed now that i'm in my 30s??). i really must get that for myself and start over. i noticed that he has a new book out that talks about what you mentioned in your post. think there might be much grooviness awaiting for me when i delve into his works.

000 - you clearly can't raise enough campaign funds to stop me!!  [kidding].

more seriously though, i was running with the sound of the phrase, more than it's content. i liked how it sounded, wrote it down an figured that i would ponder it's meanings (if any) at a later time. if you think that 'democratization' could be substituted for a better word, then i'm open to suggestions.

lmno - i guess you're right, this should probably be kept more in the meta category. with that said though, i'm curious about the 'effectiveness of belief vs context' idea. a second concept that i was thinking of over the weekend but didn't write down was the 'reverse barstool'.  what happens if someone spends most of their life as an agnostic or atheist and then, (for whatever reason) undergoes a huge turning around in their consciousness and becomes a staunch catholic for example? for them, their new world view will have struck and affected them as deeply as someone who experienced the reverse (eg: a staunch catholic who leaves the church after suddenly realizing it was all a lot of hooey). the newly converted to a particular mode of thinking will believe that it is more effective than their old paradigm and will of necessity find ways to prove it's effectiveness. (law of 5s again?)

i'm thinking the barstool as a sudden shift in thinking/consciousness/belief etc works in more than one direction. a new convert will maintain that their new beliefs make them more enlightened than their own ones, even if their friends think they've lapsed into superstition.

but yes - sometimes the beliefs we acquire are because they came in the best packaging.

rygd - the cereal is 'vive' by kashi and contains little probiotic yogurty things.

rwhn - scientific beliefs change. for ages scientists proposed the notion of 'ether' throughout the universe. the michaelson/morley experiment nixed that idea. they felt that if there was a medium throughout space, it'd create friction when light travelled through it. because they found no friction they concluded that the 'ether' was a bust. but now an idea similar to 'ether' is back in play for some researchers who are contemplating things like 'quantum fluids' that are frictionless. obviously the 'ether' is dead, but the 'zero point' or 'higgs field' is not yet. it's not 'ether' in the way people thought before, but it is not disimilar. who the hell knows what they'll say 100 years from now? there may be a model of the cosmos that has expanded so dramatically from current understanding, there will be people chuckling to themselves in 2107:

"higgs bosons??? can you believe we even thought that might be real LOLOLOL1111!!?"

[Triple Zero]

about douglas hofstadter--i haven't read his other works, but i've read here and there that G,E,B. is kinda his masterwork, and the others, while probably still good aren't nearly the mindfuck GEB is.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

about douglas hofstadter--i haven't read his other works, but i've read here and there that G,E,B. is kinda his masterwork, and the others, while probably still good aren't nearly the mindfuck GEB is.

He has a new one: "I am a Strange Loop," that looks good.

[Cramulus]

I'd recommend Metamagical Themas. It's a collection of all the columns he wrote for Scientific American. It's nice because they're somewhat bite-sized. He talks about all sorts of cool stuff from fonts and rubiks cubes to mechanizing creativity and whether or not cooperation is logical.

The other book of his that I own is Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, (think I might be getting the title wrong) which is mostly about the math behind logic and artificial intelligence. It's interesting, sure, but it's kinda dense for casual bedtime reading. I haven't quite been able to finish it.

[Mangrove]

about douglas hofstadter--i haven't read his other works, but i've read here and there that G,E,B. is kinda his masterwork, and the others, while probably still good aren't nearly the mindfuck GEB is.

He has a new one: "I am a Strange Loop," that looks good.

i wonder if that's the book i picked up in B&N the other day? should've written the title down.

[P3nT4gR4m]

about douglas hofstadter--i haven't read his other works, but i've read here and there that G,E,B. is kinda his masterwork, and the others, while probably still good aren't nearly the mindfuck GEB is.

He has a new one: "I am a Strange Loop," that looks good.

Dude - your new avi is the ultimate in wickedsick!

[Triple Zero]

ok--sounds like i gotta check out more hofstadter then.

i can't get through GEB for the second read anyway. i already know most of the stuff that's in there by heart (heyyy fundamental information science), just want to get to the Goedel proof bit again, see if it's the same mindfuck as last time.

(probably not, in a similar fashion as how the Illuminatus was "just funny" second time around)

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

about douglas hofstadter--i haven't read his other works, but i've read here and there that G,E,B. is kinda his masterwork, and the others, while probably still good aren't nearly the mindfuck GEB is.

He has a new one: "I am a Strange Loop," that looks good.

Dude - your new avi is the ultimate in wickedsick!