4-dimensional Imagination

The mathematics for 4 dimensional geometry are very well understood, and modern computing power is more than sufficient to simulate the multitudes of operations one could perform on virtually any 4 dimensional configuration.
It's a given that machines currently don't posess what anyone would truly consider an 'imagination', but for argument sake let's consider one that does. Could such a machine simulate a 4 dimensional environment, or at least be presented with one (this environment could even be something as trivial as a singular structure), and truly be able to visualise it, just as you can imagine an apple in your mind right now? 
Using the apple as our prime example, could this machine effortlessly and intuitively rotate a 4 dimensional apple about in its 'mind' and understand its form as easily as you see the 3 dimensional apple? And here I don't mean a 3 dimensional projection of a 4 dimensional shape, I mean actually comprehend some 4th dimension. For example we can simulate 3 dimensional space easily enough and create an interface for people to perform 3d work on a computer (albeit the interface is n-1 dimensions, so we have a 2d screen, 2-ish-d visual system, etc), but if we needn't present the output spatial coordinates to a screen per se, what's to say a sufficiently intelligent and aware machine couldn't comprehend and intuit greater dimensions?
To my mind I don't know of any limitations on this as a possibility (I would love to know more, or otherwise!). The greatest stumbling blocks in this scenario may be understanding descriptions given by the machine and/or proving that whatever the machine is telling us is indeed qualitatively different than number crunching only (which many mathematicians and programs already do with ease, with the aside that mathematicians also gain an intuition of what they are doing, the closest I think the raw human mind can get to 4d vision). With that being said, taking a slightly different approach, what about creating a system that could be connected with a person's brain directly? For that period of connection would they then be able to see 4d space in their mind (this reminds me of an experiment where colour blind monkeys were given the ability to see colour)? And in either case is there some limit to the number of dimensions?
I know this is all questions and no answers, but I simply find the idea fascinating and wanted to lay out some of the pressing questions that had come to me. If anyone reads this constructive feedback of all sorts is appreciated! More thought experiments to follow!

Nose Speelunkers!

Just a quick spout off: Earl and Frank are just two working class dudes. Each day the walk through the desolate farm fields leading to the mine where they work. They labour day in, day out for gold. Nose gold. They may be just two normal guys but they live and work on, and in the face of a teenage boy! The farm fields outside the mine are actually the relatively hairless upper lip, where farmers struggle to make a living harvesting hair, and only dream of the bounty in the pits. Blaming runoff (snot) from the nose mine, this makes the trek to and from work for Earl and Frank less than pleasant, and once inside the mines, things get crazy. Earl and Frank, just trying to extract those sweet, precious green blobs, encounter all kinds of madness! From pirate ships infested with ghosts, to floods, alien beings, and princesses! God forbid they anger the terrifying dragon though (finger)! Swinging across sinuses and diving between nostrils, they're just trying to make a living! For stylistic purposes, I always thought it would be funny to have the boys face real, and just animate the characters onto him, using various close ups, etc...

Using Gravitational Waves as Navigational Tools

With the recent and exciting detection of gravitational waves it seems a whole new era of cosmological observation could be upon us. However, using some forward thinking, what other ways could gravitational waves, and technology based on them, be harnessed?
I had difficulty in finding links to this but I remember years ago reading about how Polynesian's could use differences in ocean waves to determine directions to land and navigate in the open ocean. Imagine then at some future point we could use gravitational wave detectors aboard spacecraft as something akin to a deep space gas (a deep space positioning system or dsps)? Using signals generated by large astronomical bodies one could use their relative strength and direction to determine where in space they were. Going one step further if predictive computer models are used to determine movements of these bodies and changes to them through time, one could also potentially not just pinpoint where in the universe they were, but when! As to practical applicability I can't comment as I don't know how small such devices could be made and still retain the necessary sensitivity. A fun thought experiment nonetheless though!

A Discussion on the Ethics of Experimenting on a Synthesised Human Intelligence

An article in Scientific American I read a few years back recently popped back into my head. I apologise as the full article is not available, but what is visible gives enough context for our purposes. The potential dilemma emerges when we imagine if it is ethically sound to experiment on a simulated human intelligence (SHI). It's been discussed that as these SHIs become a more accurate facsimile to the physical thing they will become excellent tools for modelling, and potentially curing many mental disorders and ailments. Is it ok to give this potentially conscious entity schizophrenia? Huntington's disease? There are two approached we can take. Utilitarian, or deontological. The utilitarian approach would be that the benefits gained from discoveries regarding brain function would outweigh the potential suffering the SHI may endure. The deontological stance would argue that it is always bad to actively cause suffering to another conscious being. Utilitarianisms offer is quite attractive, but I wonder if logically it's a slippery slope to arguing for experimentation on actual humans. The thought seems ridiculous but do we not devalue the ideas of sentience and sapience if we experiment on a potentially conscious being without it's consent or control? Why is alright to do so on an SHI and not a child? Or someone with a mental handicap? Indeed, the gut reaction is that the SHI is somehow less real than physical human, or lacks true consciousness so somehow it isn't the same. Unfortunately there are no grounds to support this. At it's very base even the utilitarian calculation would render unwieldy results. In one scenario, if the SHI must undergo multiple thousands of runs to obtain a proper data set, it's total suffering would weigh heavily against the benefits gained. Considering the above, the deontological route appears the most reasonable course of action. It is essentially already practiced as society generally recognises that unnecessary harm and distress, as well as unconsenting experimentation on any person is not acceptable, even with the potential of great advances by doing so. It would be prudent to hold the same true for an SHI. If the facsimile is true enough we must assume the SHI has the potential to be as conscious as you or me, and therefore, protected by human rights. In conclusion, an SHI should be treated as no different than a living breathing person. Safe under the same rights guaranteed to it's creators.

A Future Machine Since the Dawn of Time

   Imagine if you will, that some form of advanced civilisation is not only able to travel through time, but also build through the expanse of time as easily as we can now build through the volume of space. If the structure were simply an observer or device used for observation, it could view all events just as a satellite can view the Earth's surface. One of the things I find most fascinating about such a structure/machine is that it could be built at any point in time, and once constructed, could potentially instantaneously exist at all points in time!


   For example, say the discovery on how to make such a miraculous thing doesn't come into existence for another ten thousand years. For the sake of having some sort of a system/visualisation let's say that the device is grown like tendrils through what you could analogise as temporal space. Once it had grown across all of this temporal expanse, from any given point in time if you could see it, it would look like it had always existed, despite not actually being built and spread until a much later "relative point" in time (relative in the sense that from the devices perspective everything is atemporal, there is no past, present, or future. All of time is laid out like a map before it).


   Just a fascinating idea I wanted to share for today!

Living in a Post Automation World: A Nietzchean/Utilitarian Reanalysis

It's been a while since my last post! School became rather heavy and I needed to prioritise. I am back now and hopefully with a vengeance!

   As of late I've been listening to a very entertaining, engaging, and insightful philosophy podcast called The Partially Examined Life

   For anyone interested in philosophy of all sorts from any educational background I would highly recommend it.

   As someone myself with no formal philosophy background (simply interested in ideas and ponderings of all sorts) I would like to comment on one of my previous posts, namely as the title of this post suggests "Living in a Post Automation World". This is spurred by my listening to the brief analysis of Nietzche's works. I would like to stress that I am eager to hear any and all comments relating to this as I am certainly no expert, and I look forward to hearing what you may think.

   To briefly review, I asserted in the relevant post that automation is expanding rapidly in both scope and ubiquity. Although this increases overall productivity worldwide, it currently has a displacing effect on the human workforce by and large, which in the long run potentially undermines peoples capacity to purchase produced goods (if they are unable to find employment). My solution in a nutshell was to allow workers directly displaced by the purchase of a given machine to then be allowed to purchase a share of that machine's productivity, thereby allowing displaced workers to collect a portion of that machines financial productivity, while also contributing to the purchase and maintenance of that machine. In the long term this could lead to a society where most people would collect wages from machine productivity without ever having to actually work (Please read "Living in a Post Automation World" to get the full idea if you haven't already).

   I would now like to introduce some Nietzchean concepts to elucidate the benefits of my position, but in a materialistic, and perhaps counterintuitevly, a utilitarian position.

   Nietzche talks about the shift from a "Master Morality" to a "Slave Morality". Master morality is such that the powerful, strong, and noble exert their will on the weak ("slaves") to promote and realise their goals, and ultimately what is good for them (specifically the individual). The slave however, is a reactionary force. The slave is interested in creating a system opposed to the master's. One based more on communal equality, and sacrificing oneself to the benefit of their peers. As Nietzche alludes, the dynamic of the slave morality unchecked has the potential to stifle greatness. One's personal aspirations must be second to that of the whole.

   According to Nietzche, we currently live in a world dominated by the slave morality (Judeo-Christian moral system). I would have to say though that simply put it would be unacceptable to enter into a master system in the traditional sense nowadays as exploiting weaker people for one's personal self expression is beyond unethical. Where this plays into a world of pure automation though is that with machines performing labour on people's behalf, essentially fulfilling the "slave" portion of the equation, it would free up more time for the pursuits that people truly wish to develop. This would lead to more great achievements as people would now have the time to create works that were not permitted before due to the excessive time and energy drain of labourious tasks. Indeed, there may even be a large portion of the population that choses not to pursue any significant development. Those that are motivated to though would be unhindered to perform great feats, at the benefit of society as a whole, enriching humanity. Every person would be in a position to live the "master" life at his or her discretion, without the exploitation of other people. In this sense we can truly achieve a balance in the master-slave dynamic. Utility is maximised for all, along with freedom of self expression.

   Another important point I would like to briefly express is that Nietzche describes society as only as good as the amount of "parasites" it can accommodate. In an automated society, the amount of "parasites" that could be accommodated is only limited by the productivity of the machines, accessibility to said productivity, and resources. All three of which are completely under humanity's control. Machine productivity can be varied according to society's needs, accessibility would need to be publicly checked to ensure that all have their basic needs appropriately met, and resources are subject to human ingenuity in gaining them.

   In closing, there are points that Nietzche makes that I find distasteful (particularly his views on democracy), and this is simply my interpretation of a small set of Nietzche's philosophy as applied to my particular ideas. I do however think that we are in a position to realise a society in which people are free to achieve their goals and greatness, while still maintaining the good of the whole.

I encourage analysis of your own below! Thanks for reading!

Living in the Post Automation World

   With the rate of automation soaring, many jobs typically performed by humans are being rendered obsolete in favour of machines. With no sign of alleviating, although production is increasing dramatically, unemployment rates are steadily rising. This leads to a conundrum. Machine production is faster, more precise, and capable of great volume at little cost. By eliminating the need for human labour though we are cutting many people's abilities to actually consume certain goods, and on an emotional level, robbing people of their ability to pursue meaning and happiness in their lives through some form of financial stability, and performance of meaningful work.

   My proposed solution to this, would be to allow employees to invest in the automation of their work. For example, if Company A plans to replace five thousand workers with a series of ten machines, those who stand to lose their employment at Company A should have the opportunity to buy in to these machines. They could purchase a percentage of that machine's cost, and be entitled to a percentage of that machine's productivity based on how much they invested. Being an investor though they would also be responsible for maintenance costs based on their ownership percentage. Companies would most likely need to cap the sellable percentage of a machine so as not to sell off all of it's productivity, and also to accommodate the number of potential buyers (for example as above, if five thousand people stand to lose, and up to fifty percent of each of the ten machines can be purchased, it all needs to be broken up so that each person has an opportunity to buy in. If not all the possible "shares" are bought, then there could be a second round of buy in by those who choose to, or have the money to buy more).

   This not only helps the company by offsetting potential machine costs from purchasing to maintenance, but the employees who buy in would still receive a monthly cheque based on their buy in amount and the productivity of that given machine. On a more global level, humanity would literally be investing in the future. The raw cost of a new machine would be shared among employees and company, as well as the ability to enjoy the fruits of it's labour. With steady investment in the latest, best performing machines, I believe we would see a dramatic rise in both productivity and efficiency of these machines. In doing this, we leave the opportunity open for people to make an income, but not necessarily require constant employment. People could then develop their hobbies, live their lives, and yet still keep the consumer market running.

   To keep income flowing for a family indefinitely, perhaps the shares purchased could be passed from one generation to the next. Once automation has reached a sufficiently high level where finding employment at a basic level of any sort becomes exceedingly difficult, perhaps companies could still hold interview processes for potential human "employees". For example, say McDonalds replaced all it's service staff with machines. As a young person with no income, I could apply for a "job" with them. If I would be someone they would have hired when they still had positions for human service workers, I would then be given the opportunity to buy a very small parentage of productivity (akin to a minimum wage type scenario).

   Automation is the way of the future, there is no sign of it stopping. To continue to improve the standard of living and adapt to the changes we are creating, this seems a necessary step so that humanity can enjoy the best of both worlds. Automation without the inability of man to benefit from such.

A Groovatron Named Paul: Part 1

   I'm Paul, your typical junior high student. I don't mean to brag but I've got some serious hall-cred, I'm the trendiest trendsetter, and nothing beats playing on my phone whilst sitting near my weirdo best friend Arthur, who, by the way, tries far too hard to be a robot. Sometimes he even thinks he is. I'm positive I've caught him taking notes in binary. I'm all he's got though, and boy is he lucky to have such a cool friend like me.

   Life was as smooth as streaming a youtube video advert free on kicked up wifi. Nice. As with any good story though, there must be a reality tearing, punch to the face it's so true realisation. It was the seventh of may, a beautiful... I was adopted. Sorry, That's the important part. I, Paul, had been adopted at a young age. I could't believe it. My mother and father were bewildered I had never caught on. They said it was "quite obvious" and found my melodramatic reaction somewhat confusing. They tried so hard to explain everything away "We're human, and… you are clearly a robot. Groovatron 2000 model to be more precise. It says so on the lower edge of your torso chassis!"

 Whatever. All these years I though I was just born with a sweet tatt. The ladies love a sweet tatt. But apparently the story of how I ended up where I am now is that some robocouple ordered me off of Ebay, but could't pay the shipping. I was sent back to the warehouse where there was some minor damage inflicted upon my groove modulator not covered by warranty. You know what else isn't covered by warranty? My GREAT sense of humour. In any case my price was slashed and I was gobbled up by my now Mum and Dad (I guess there was some truth to the story that babies are brought home by the FedEx guy). They unpacked me mint from the box, which only served to increase my value thank you, and I've been chillin mother flippin villain ever since.

   Until now that is.

   After this whole "We've only loved you for the past fifteen years because we got you for three easy instalments of $29.99" crap (my words, not theirs), I decided I needed a change. I promptly got on the first ride out of town and headed into the big city to find myself. Of course I didn't go alone. My bromo sapien Arthur was eager for an adventure. As fast as I could say "let's go" I got an enthusiastic "affirmative". And so we were off like the most hip bandits you can imagine. The beginning of great things lie ahead of us. The GREATEST things…

Societal Benefits of Extended Lifespan

   When the topic of extended lifespan comes up, many times the focus is on the negative impacts such a change would bring. Things like competition for already scarce resources, overpopulation, and an accumulation of power in the older, more powerful generations are some of the fodder used to justify that such a change towards indefinite lifespan would be less than savoury, especially for the masses. I would like to focus on the benefits such a change could bring, as well as adaptive behaviours that could come along with it. As an aside, when I say "extended lifespan" I mean extended in the healthful sense, wherein decrepitude is either put off or eliminated.

   To start, lifespan has already increased dramatically since prehistory, and particularly so in recent modern times. Some may argue that developments in medicine and sanitation are the key source of this increase, but I would say it's a positive feedback loop. As these developments allowed us to live longer, people had more time to put their minds to creating more beneficial technologies, which in turn allowed for a longer lifespan, etc. And the benefits have trickled down, I may add, at a faster and faster rate. Although the rich do benefit by affording themselves the very best there is to offer, many of us still have access to wonderful technologies. Within a few short years what was once only available to the rich soon becomes a staple of the average consumer. A greater increase in lifespan could be an enhancement on this process.

   Looking towards the future, a society that has already achieved life extending technologies will have some key beneficial changes. For one, with an extended lifespan people would feel less inclined to have children. Although many still most probably would, they may not consider it until they are very old in our current terms, perhaps only a couple per century. Such a slow in birth rates would lead to a much more manageable human population growth and allow responses to things like overpopulation to be dealt with well in advance. The "stretching" as it could be said, of a person accomplishing typical life goals (having children, buying a house, starting a career, etc.) could be beneficial to the education system as well. If a person has exponentially more time to spend learning, and trying new things, who knows what kind of innovations could follow, along with a more educated society in general. Just as an extended childhood has been advantageous for humans relative to other animals, an extended "childhood" relative to our current notions could hold unseen benefits.

   A society with a longer lifespan is also more likely to take proactive measures against future threats. Our current society is more reactive because many of the threats we are dealing with will not much affect our lives, or at least not for many years to come. If you knew for example, that the worst possible effects of climate change would have a direct impact on your life though, you would be much more willing to take action now. Although at it's base it seems selfish, this very behaviour could save humanity as a whole by allowing us the opportunity to think ahead and actually take measures in advance of serious catastrophes.

   It's always good to weigh the pros and cons of a new technology, and the promise and peril it brings with it. Our ability though to deal with the consequences of many technologies is enhanced by lifespan increases, not detracted from.

Peter Burns & the Jelly

 PB&J is the story of one young Peter Burns. Peter Burns, all of twelve years old, goes for a pleasant ocean swim one day with his close friends. Whilst partaking in frolics and the delights of the magnificent sea, a jellyfish did undulate his way, as they are wont to do. Neither grasped the consequences of this chance meeting. Just as they engaged in a caustic handshake of sorts the two were freaky fridayed by some errant wifi waves seeking a home.
 Peter Burns, once average boy, is now a genius among his new Jellyfish brethren, while the former jelly inhabitant struggles to control even the most basic functions of it's new found body. As Peter Burns now finds himself with all the time in the world, he reflects on his life, deep meaningful questions of existence, and continually invents and tests harebrained ways to attempt retrieving his body! Meanwhile, his friends do they're best to minimise the multiple ways the Jelly ignorantly threatens Peter Burns' social life and physical well being.

Ecology of Ideas

 We are currently living in a time that is unprecedented in the creation, sharing, and access to ideas. New ideas are constantly being produced by both individuals and groups alike. Some serve a purpose, others are dreams or fantasies, many are retoolings of old ideas in a fresh way, and more still are created just for the sake of existing. To me, I feel the era we are going through can be likened to a "Cambrian Explosion" of ideas. During the Cambrian Explosion in Earth's history life erupted into an unimaginable number of complex creatures which, over time and refining laid the foundation for the major domains and kingdoms of life, as well as early structures of modern ecosystems.
  This is directly relatable to the current trend we're seeing in the proliferation and rapid evolution of ideas right now. We've crossed a threshold wherein the complexity and diversity of ideas has increased dramatically along with their sheer volume. I would say we are in the process of creating an ecosystem where ideas compete for resources such as popularity, and create dynamic systems by interacting much like actual life forms. It will be interesting to see what the future holds. Will the growth go on unchecked? Or, will certain strings of ideas prove to dominate the landscape creating an interdependent system just like modern ecosystems found in nature?

Grounds for the Equivalence of Nothing and Something

Recent exploration both virtual and mental has left me pondering relationships between the idea of nothing, and something. Nothing tends to be a bit of a loaded term in and of itself. It can be used to describe the lack of a specific something, a vacuum (which in almost all cases is not a complete lack of everything), the absolute absence of everything, and can even become a thing itself (as in a hole). I would like to attempt at describing a connection between the definition of nothing as an absolute absence of anything, its vacuum definition, and the existence of a something (be it an entire universe, a single photon, or anything else you could imagine). To my mind, it is not inconceivable that there are many ways to have both nothing and something at the same time, and is in fact, the likeliest scenario. By this, I mean that it is much more likely to have a collection of things that together sum to nothing, rather than just a pure and eternal nothingness.

Using numbers as an example, there is only one number that defines absolute nothingness, and as you've already guessed it's zero. Out of the infinite scheme of numbers there is only one zero, and yet, there is an infinite number of other ways to get zero.

1+(-1)=0

(-1)+3+(-2)=0

3*(-3)+9=0

You get the idea...

You can have as many somethings as you want, and they will sum to a perfect nothing as long as there is enough of a counter something. Something and counter something need not necessarily even exist at the same time, as long as the average is equivalent to nothing having existed. You could have:

At T1 Nothing

At T2 Something

At T3 Nothing

At T4 Counter Something

This is very simplified and need not be so black and white, but it gets the point across. You could even get the same result by removing both T1, and T3.

In conclusion, I'm stating that it's much more natural that the world exists in the delicate and ambiguous state of being both something and absolutely nothing at the same time because there are many more ways for it to do so, and is therefore much easier than maintaining, or even attaining to begin with, a perfect state of absolute nothingness.

A something from nothing isn't so improbable. It's probably the status quo.

Television Analogy of the Mind

As you may have seen in prior posts, I'm firmly rooted in a physicalist, reductionist view on things. When it comes to consciousness, or the workings of a mind in general (not just human), I see it's source as a collection of immensely intricate interactions among neurones, brain chemicals, external (environmental and experiential), and internal (amount of sleep, what you ate, levels of various hormones, etc.) states.
A useful if not overly simplistic analogy I have come up with to describe my view of apparent conscious behaviour I call the TV Analogy. I liken the pixels of a TV screen to the firing of neurones, and the input cable as external stimuli. As the TV receives information from the input cable, the state of it's pixels is changed thereby creating an overall change in what appears on the TV from the point of an outside observer. As this continually happens, we are given the illusion of motion and 'livelihood' to what is displayed.
I find this mirrors well (again, enormously oversimplified), with the action of the brain and its effect on apparent behaviour. As new external stimuli is received, the state of the brain is changed at the neuronal level, thereby changing the internal mental state and behaviour of the being. The sensory nerves and organs of the body act like the input cable, and the neurones and ultimate behaviour that they cause, can be equated with the TV display.

Bird Watching: A Guide to Geordie Girls

I occasionally watch the show 'Geordie Shore' with my girlfriend. If you haven't seen it it's Jersey Shore for the British. At times much of what they say is fairly unintelligible because of heavy slang and accent. What really got me thinking is their slang for girls. When they go out on the town for a night of binge drinking, vaguely rhythmic moving, and drama inducing belligerence, the main goal of the 'Lads' is always to 'pull birds'. At first I thought that it wasn't so different to being called 'chicks'. I was clearly overlooking the chance for something far greater though. There is a plethora of books on the market today that are on ridiculous subject matter but very entertaining, and excellent novelty items. So, I thought to myself, why not a book with the clever title 'Bird Watching: A Guide to Geordie Girls'. All it would be is a collection of pictures of Newcastle and Tyneside women enjoying the night life, their signatures, and maybe a blurb about what they enjoy best about the local nightlife. Throw in a couple glamour shots at some notable locations and you've got yourself a book! I'd love to hear people's reactions to this, especially as a UK or particularly a Geordie native if you happen across this.

Happy Pi Day!

It's that mathematical time of year yet again! 3.14.13 (We'll be slightly more accurate in 2015). To celebrate, here is a delicious video of the guys at Numberphile calculating Pi using only real pies! And a corny joke... Pi r not squared, Pie are round! lolololol yeah....

Perdurantism

About a year back I was daydreaming and began pondering identity. Looking back at the person I was as a child, or even as a teenager relative to who I am now, I can surely say that although I retain some behavioural traits I am overall a different person. I started framing the question to myself from the perspective of an animated character. In classical animation, a character is drawn and redrawn multiple times per second to give the illusion of motion. Putting myself in the animated character's shoes, I then imagined each new frame (drawing of the character at a different location in time) as a new identity, or a related but new conscious entity. From each frame's perspective, it is, has always been, and always will be the being inhabiting it's particular physical form. The reason it should believe this is because it has access to information from the past that has all happened revolving around the body's location in space, and it currently inhabits that same form. Just as each animated character at each frame in time believes it has always inhabited the body it calls home, for the simple reason that it has access to information from that body's past, so too do people. As I was saying before, I'm not the same person I was as a young child. I believe the physical state of the brain that made up that conscious identity no longer exists and is therefore, dead. I only believe that that identity was me because I can remember events that happened to it, from it's perspective in space. The same will be true in the future. The man i am now will slowly fade into the man I will become and what I am today will cease to exist. But whatever comes next will have all the knowledge available to it, and inhabit the same point in space as I once did, and thus will believe that it and I are the same thing. The view I'm taking as I later found out, is a sub-group of Perdurntism known as Exdurantism (Stage Theorists). Exdurantism claims that things exist only in temporally discrete parts. A quick quote from wikipedia to clarify

Stage theorists take you to be identical with a particular temporal part at any given time. So, in a manner of speaking, a subject only exists for an instantaneous period of time. However there are other temporal parts at other times which that subject is related to in a certain way (Sider talks of 'modal counterpart relations', whilst Hawley talks of 'non-Humean relations') such that when someone says that they were a child, or that they will be an elderly person, these things are true, because they bear a special "identity-like" relation to a temporal part that is a child (that exists in the past) or a temporal part that is an elderly person(that exists in the future). Stage theorists are sometimes called 'exdurantists'.

This seemed to be a particularly hard post to articulate, but I hope I have gotten across the gist of the idea I'm trying to portray.

Colour Perception II

The notion that we all see the colours in the same way seems obvious. What i perceive as green is identical to what you perceive as green. But how can we know for sure? An interesting video that discusses this topic can be located below by vsauce on youtube. To perhaps shed light on the subject, I suggest an experiment. My hypothesis is that colour vision evolved to help our ancestors identify food primarily. If this is the case, then the colours as we perceive them should be optimised to making things like fruit stand out against foliage or other various environments. To start, we could have our control image be a normal picture with unchanged colours be presented to a series of subjects. They would then have to identify as many potential food sources as possible. Next, the image could be adjusted so that all colours are rotated by the same amount around the colour wheel in the same direction by x, preserving the relative locations of each colour to each other colour contained in the image. This would be repeated multiple times and various subjects would repeatedly attempt to identify potential food sources. I believe the results would show that the optimum capability for finding food would hover very near the colours as they appear in the control image. The conclusion that could be drawn is that evolution has whittled down those who did not sense colour in the way the majority does because it is not as effective. This could be backed up by brain scans of people who would be shown colours in an MRI machine. If the scans matched significantly, it would show the same perceptual process is being undertaken by each individual. In summary, the reason my red is the same as your red, as well as our greens and all others being the same is because this maximises contrast between food and non-food, whereas people who aren't able to perceive colour like you or me where less effective at finding the necessary food. Vsauce Colour Perception Video

Mary's Room Part I

"Mary's Room" is a thought experiment designed to show the limitations of physicalism and the inability of any theory based on physicalism to adequately describe subjective experiences known as qualia. The experiment goes as follows: A woman named Mary is locked in a completely monochromatic room where anything visible to her is only visible in black and white. She spends her entire life studying optics and electromagnetic theory until she knows all there is to know about light. The argument then is, if she knows all there is to know about light, does she know what the colour red looks like? If she knows all there is to know about light, then surely she should not be shocked when she is released from her room into the full colour world the physicalist argument would espouse. But what Frank Jackson put forward (the man who conceived the experiment) is that despite all her hard work learning about every aspect there is to know about light, no matter how much factual knowledge she accumulates, she cannot capture what it is to experience the colour red, and should therefore be in awe at seeing it for the first time. In summary, no matter how much she learns she can never factually know the sensation of redness, or any number of subjective experiences, and thus physicalism is incomplete. My rebuttal of this view is as follows: Although she has learned as much as she can about light, one crucial piece is missing, and that is a complete knowledge of neuroscience. Lets instead imagine that we give Mary a little bit more time in her tucked away room before we release her and she teaches herself all about neuroscience as well. She learns that as light enters the eye it elicits various nerve impulses depending on a variety of factors. In our case we'll focus solely on colour perception. Mary finds that when the wavelength of light commonly referred to as red is detected, it sparks action in a set of particular neurones. Mary proceeds to build a device capable of stimulating those neurones in her own brain and for the first time beholds the colour red! Mary concludes then that "redness" can be identified as a collection of information that when processed by the brain in sum leads to the sensation of red. The Mary's Room argument in an attempt to show the incompleteness of physicalism, I believe demonstrates that it itself is not complete because it leaves out the very crucial physical process that the observer herself must complete to fulfill the experience. Thus the experience itself remains firmly within the physical realm.

Beyond Science

There are many ways people try to divine the "truth" from the world. This will open a can of worms but the scientific method seems to take the cake in the dishing out of accurate facts. What I'm interested in briefly talking about though is what the dichotomy between acceptable methods before science, and then after it's actualisation were, and inevitably how that may reflect on the future. It can be argued that the elements of what would eventually become the scientific method existed prior to their collection and labelling as a whole as science. Apart though, the array of philosophies weren't nearly as effective as they are used in tandem (falsifiability, empiricism, objectivity, etc.). Nobody anticipated the future existence of the scientific method. There wasn't a person saying, "wouldn't it be great if we had science, and this is how it should work". It's creation in itself was a process spanning many years and careers. Now comes the thought experiment. Is science as good a method as we can get? Or could a superior system yet be in the making? Ironically it will probably be science itself that leads us to it. I invite any readers to throw down some ideas in the comment section on ways that you think could improve any piece of the scientific method, or perhaps augment it to improve any of it's aspects. In this case we are all just speculating and no better off than my hypothetical dreamer from earlier on. But I find it fascinating to imagine the possibility of something just as revolutionary as the scientific method was in it's time, happening again in the future, and how it would expand the horizons on the limits of knowledge and what is knowable. This discussion is also in no way meant to knock science in anyway. I have the utmost respect for it and all of the amazing knowledge and advancement it has brought humanity. I realise I haven't added much to the conversation. This is an area I haven't really explored. I'm more looking to incite brainstorming, or even just spark an interesting idea.

Deer John

Deer John is a very odd, original, and awesome idea my friend Pelle and I came up with as we are wont to do. The story centres around a man named John Doe who lives in a small city in England. He works an average life and spends the average amount of time one spends at the local pub when having no significant personal relationships. He spends so much time in fact at the pub that he even receives his mail there. His mother was gunned down when he was young lad, and he therefore keeps her mounted head upon the wall in his very small flat. Sadly, he never met his father. I should mention he has the head of a deer. And his mother was a deer. He still never knew his dad though. Deer John thusly chronicles the sad and at times lonely life of John Doe, and his office associates Thom Perlapin, Fleure Blackguard, and the beautiful and much out of his league, supervisor Brenda Faline. As John begins to delve into his foggy past, things grow very strange indeed. With all signs pointing towards a very important figure in John's life, and the very company he works for...