Great Essay Luke! Did you save the full extended version?

I have (through less mathematical means) put a lot of thought behind existence, religion, consciousness, etc. and I have come to very similar conclusions. One thought I have recently come to is that in a sense every form of life is simply a vessel for energy to inhabit, your essay has led me to believe that is is more than just life forms, but matter itself is all essentially in the same process, "preserve existence and be part of something larger."

If "Creative intelligence" exists in everything, could it be that "background radiation" from the Big Bang that permeates the entire universe is actually the stream of energy that connects to all matter on some level and drives us as life forms to continue the never ending process of change?

could that also be what so many religions have deemed "God"?

Great read! Thanks for sharing!!

-TheMikMc

    thanks james. look forward to seeing your essay when it's available.

    i was being deliberate in emphasising a perspective where intelligent life simply "borrows" the core fundamental properties of our universe (its capacity for creative intelligence). not least because i find it so incredibly empowering, to think that there could exist or be brought into existence other forms of intelligent life.

    i do have to point out that it takes an extreme lack of ego - or detachment from self - to even be able to *contemplate* the thought that we simply "borrow" the universe's substrate for supporting intellect. it's a little... unnerving :)

    unfortunately i had to cut the (angry rant) bits which help illustrate the point more clearly (50% of he original essay had to be draconianlly removed), where i lay in to the whole concept of "intellectual property" - as an ethical software libre developer the arrogance with which WIPO has permitted intelligence to LITERALLY be enslaved has me REALLY angry. i left the refeerences in: you can see the link to Dr Stallman's essays but you can also find his (dry, logical) essays online by searching "rms intellectual property" or "stallman IPO".

    i quite deliberately and very pointedly avoided mentioning religion in this essay. i also did not wish to specifically make mention of "god", although many people would say that it is the next logical step to begin to assimilate many of the words and phrases used under the umbrella word "god". the problem that i have with that step is that it is one that has been so over-used by those people who lack information, insight and logical reasoning as a way to "excuse everything" that i chose *not* to go down that route and risk people saying, "but... but... you just went directly to saying it's god at the end of the rainbow!"

    :)

    "we are intelligent because the universe of which we are an integral part is capable of *supporting* intelligence"....

    yyyeah, i would agree with that :) it changes the perspective of the intelligent being to being *inside* the "set of intelligence" rather than being the perspecctive of "outside objective observer" from which i make the point that you noted... but both perspectives i would say are perfectly valid.

    regarding individuals / conglomerates... i agree it is important to make the distinction (and to recognise the hierarchy which allows an individual to be a conglomeration of different types of something-or-other).

    thank you so much for replying, james

    hi mike thank you for the encouraging words, yes i did, it may be found at http://vixra.org/author/Luke_Kenneth_Casson_Leighton

    "every form of life is simply a vessel for energy to inhabit... matter included"

    hmm, that would indeed seem to be the next logical step, wouldn't it? :)

    "if creative intelligence exists in everything"

    ah *no*. i take the perspective that it's no so much *in* everything as it is an all-present universal emergent property. drop a series of hydrogen atoms distributed *uniformly* throughout a universe, sit back for a few billion years and you *will* find that stars, planets and life *has* formed, somewhere, beginning first by the hydrogen coalescing into stars and going "blam".

    "could it be that background radiation is the energy connecting all matter"?

    you may be fascinated to know that, by accident after looking at a paper which said that the number of hydrogen atoms per cubic metre distributed throughout deep space is somewhere averaging around 7, i ran that through a series of arbitrary number experiments and startlingly came up with a tentative link to the *inverse cube* of avogadro's constant.

    now, what that tells us is that, at the chemical level, if we *could* have assumed a uniform (random, chaotic) distribution throughout the universe of all atoms, the presence of "coalesced" matter (in the form of stars and planets) - the process by which that occurs - would indeed cause deep space to be void of that same matter but, crucially, we would *expect* there to be some form of inverse correlation between avogadro's constant where matter has been "subtracted" from deep space. which i find absolutely fascinating.

    now, coming back to your point: "background radiation" is the level *below* atoms (it's the straight-line equivalent of the looped-on-itself photon), so yes! i *would* expect the background radiation to show up, somehow (in an inverse relation), in our everyday existence. i have no idea how though :)

    "could that be what so many religions have deemed 'God'"?

    yyyeeesss... but don't tell anyone i admitted that in public. personally i much prefer the daoist perspective which is that, exactly as you concluded above, *everything* is energy and thus everything is connected. in both a fantastically simple (fractally elegant) but ultimately overwhelmingly comprehensive manner. the other thing which i think you will love and genuinely appreciate is that our DNA (thanks to its recursive and compact expression) has a link in every part of our body to *every other* part of our bodies.

    thank you mik.

    ah! just occurred to me james. i know why i find it important to separate humans from the intelligent framework that the universe provides: if we do not do so it becomes that much harder to imagine the perspective from which *other beings* - or other objects - may also borrow the exact same fabric / property of the universe.

    it is most unfortunate that i had to drastically cut the length of the essay by a whopping 50% because examples which illustrated this point (more to the point, showed the *dangers* of believing that intelligence is permitted to us separate and distinct from the rest of the universe) were included in the original.

    Hi Luke,

    You talk about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi identifying the difference between the DNA of an acorn and the DNA of an oak tree being time. You say in other words there is no difference. You have incorrectly interpreted the not incorrect answer given. As it is known that there are changes to DNA over time, damage from radioactivity and free-radicals, transcription errors, virus insertions, epigenetic changes to DNA folding affecting gene expression and telomere shortening. All material changes in structure.

    You then seem to jump from talking about a conversation about oak trees' DNA to;" Thus we start to get some hints that if a human is intelligent then so is the DNA that they were born with." It doesn't follow, it's as if some chunk of argument is missing. And you have provided a fallacy of division, it shouldn't be concluded that the characteristics of the whole automatically apply to the parts. You have used the argument that a human's DNA is intelligent because the human being is intelligent but then you extend intelligence to all DNA just because it is DNA.

    Most scientists don't think junk DNA is useless. It was once thought to be but now there seems to be evidence that it may have regulatory functions. Some at least thought to be involved with the very early stages development, so not expressed later in life. There seems to be evidence of a whole extra layer of regulation due to non-coding RNAs (transcribed from non -coding DNA) including those involved in spermatogenesis. The "non- coding" DNA regions aren't random but highly conserved, indicating that they have some importance, preventing the evolution of organisms that have lost or had changes to those regions. In comparison to what they seem to do a random number generator would be junk.

    Jumping to near the end - Your "Ultimately". I think there is introduction of false equivalence when inanimate mindless creation is called 'creative intelligence', then presumed as the source of human intelligence which is an entirely different kettle of fish. The word "intelligence "is the same but in the former it is an unnecessary misleading appendage and in the second an emergence from very high levels of organization of matter sustaining specialized functions.

    I'm sorry if that is too much criticism. I enjoyed reading your essay, it is a very interesting presentation. I have now watched a video interview with Dr.Hankey talking about his physics education and yoga and Ayurveda, as I had never heard of him before

      hi georgina, many thanks for the comments - all appreciated.

      "You talk about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi identifying the difference between the DNA of an acorn and the DNA of an oak tree being time."

      yes, in order to keep it simple-sounding. you are correct inasmuch as the *correct* way to put it would be, "the set of all possible permutations of DNA that may be positively identified as belonging to the family tree of an oak tree, the set of all possible seeds which may be positively identified as acorns, and the set of all possible trees that may be positively idenfied as belonging to the family of oak trees" however much of the point and attention of most readers would, i feel, be lost in the process.

      "It doesn't follow, it's as if some chunk of argument is missing."

      yes. i already had to cut the essay drastically down. you do however pick up on a very important point:

      "You have used the argument that a human's DNA is intelligent because the human being is intelligent but then you extend intelligence to all DNA just because it is DNA."

      ah. right. ok. i saw just i think it was today or yesterday where someone had encoded some ridiculous amounts of information (12 petabytes potentially in a single gram) into DNA. it included a short video, a book, and other things, along with some CRC checksums. they then waited 2 weeks for a company to make it for them, then used polymerase reading (or whatever) and were surprised to find that the *full* data set was correctly encoded.

      could it be said that such a data set is "intelligent"? no it could not. it's just a data store.

      so logically we may conclude that *ONLY* those sets of DNA which have utilised evolution to refine themselves into self-replicating, self-replicated organisms, may be said to *be* intelligent, being as they are only indistinguishable from the actual organisms themselves through the application, process and progression of the phenomenon known as "Time".

      which hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out, so i am most grateful.

      "The "non- coding" DNA regions aren't random but highly conserved, indicating that they have some importance, preventing the evolution of organisms that have lost or had changes to those regions."

      oo! oo, that's even *more* interesting than the supposition that had occurred to me. that function which you describe is *directly* equivalent to a CRC (checksum) algorithm. in other words it's a safety check. if the DNA is sufficiently badly damaged such that certain sequences have not survived, it is automatically rejected. i wonder if there's an algorithmic encoding that recognises the individual contributions from each parent? that *would* be fascinating.

      "I think there is introduction of false equivalence when inanimate mindless creation is called 'creative intelligence', then presumed as the source of human intelligence"

      .... you've lost me a little, here. bear in mind also that i had to cut out a hell of a lot. perhaps it would help if i re-introduced the augmentation to the maxwell's demon which i had to cut out.

      let's change the circumstances under which the demon operates, by making its very survival critically dependent on its continued intake of "gas". let's also make it possible for the demon to move the entire box, and for the box size to grow as the demon sees fit, but also that, correspondingly, the amount of energy required to move the box increases proportionately with size of the box. also let us make the "maintenance" of the fabric of the box result in increased consumption of "gas".

      now, beginning from a uniform distribution of gas throughout the universe, in full-on "entropic chaos" mode, our demon (or evolved variants of the same) quickly have to develop hunter-gatherer "survival" techniques and potentially even collaboration techniques in order to secure sources of "gas". over-farming of gas would result in starvation.

      *even at this simple level*, the demon (or demons) are *required* to exhibit what we would term "intelligent" - or self-organised - behaviour, taking into account their environment and awareness of each other.

      it *really is* that simple. once you have *anything* that starts to alter the balance away from "chaos", it is *required* that intelligent behaviour emerges in order to cope. it's a bit like (or exactly like, depending on scale/scope) the way that raindrops coalesce together to form larger ones under surface tension.

      so no i *fundamentally disagree* that the word "intelligence" is an "appendage" even when applied to what could otherwise rather unfairly be termed "mindless" behaviour. wherever there is nature, if we use the term "mindless" then, far from there *being* no intelligence at whatever level we are observing, it may instead be said that we have entirely *missed the scale/scope* on which intelligence is operating.

      "I have now watched a video interview with Dr.Hankey talking about his physics education and yoga and Ayurveda, as I had never heard of him before"

      ah! fascinating to note that such things can be found. i did note that his wikipedia page is an "orphan" (no other pages link to it). he is certainly aware of david chalmers (director for centre of consciousness) and also fqxi's scientific director, max tegmark. certainly it is an extremely small but growing community that is beginning to understand and feel comfortable discussing consciousness. dr hankey was... extremely lucky to have had direct access to maharishi mahesh yogi back in the 1970s.

      anyway. thank you so much for the encouragement to think, georgina :)

      Hi Luke

      Good effort which also gives me the opportunity to play the devil's advocate for a while. I will try avoiding all such emphatic terms like "interesting" or worse, "fascinating" that have recently being called to attention as being entirely devoid of meaning (S. L Garfinkel, "whatever you do, dont call this an interesting idea", aeon e-magazine) It is yet intriguing that starting from questions pertaining to this old philosophical problem of mind vs matter, which in modern parlance became mind out of the 'mindless', being that a 'law' or otherwise, ends up with a call to 'self-censorship'.

      This is the only thing I found a bit troubling as it is in the contradictions and the mystery that the spirit finds reason to sprout, at least according to Hegel. And why, this Maharishi inspired harmonious holistic understanding still leaves unanswered a very well known from antiquity old problem, the (in)famous "problem of evil". There is perhaps an intimate relationship with the doubt finally relieved near the end of the last section. I don't think we are indeed in a position to understand consciousness as yet, but this of course does not exclude the possibility of certain almost-perfect imitations and that I can find perfectly possible as I have myself put some effort into the same

      direction some time ago. But now I am facing an ethical conundrum for how would I censor my self at the time that I may just start learning something really interesting and/or meaningful/profound?

      Then again, it might be that the original question that led us here was ill posed. It was never about 'mind' out of 'mindless'. Maybe it was just bad reductionism or an inability to grasp life as the powerset of all eventualities. This all reminds me of another excerpt from Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals", thε famous 'Bird of Prey', considered by

      some tο be deep for showing us the perils coming out of grammatical mistakes. As they say, "...what is the lightning if not the flash?"

      So yes, yours was an excellent, provoking exercise in deepening our doubts, disputes and sharpening our blades against such challenges which I can find pleasant for my taste.

      Your ol' 'Piratenwissenschaftler' friend - with an appropriate tribute (you tube: two hornpipes).

      Keep the good work

        I am interested to see the similarities between Luke's train of thought and reading that I have been doing recently concerning the nature of the Christian concept of the Trinity, particularly focussing on the work of Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. He and his colleagues promulgate the idea that Trinity is as much part of creation's 'sacred dance' as are electrons or universes. I quote here from his recent writing:

        Inner and Outer Worlds Converge

        Everything came forth from the divine dance that is the Trinity. Our new appreciation of Trinity is giving us a new grounding for interfaith understanding. It's giving us a marvelous new basis for appreciating how this mystery is embedded as the code, not just in our religious constructs, but also in everything that exists. Creation bears a "family resemblance" to the Creator.

        If there is only one creator God, and if there is one core pattern to this God, then we can expect to find that pattern everywhere else too. One reason so many theologians are interested in Trinity right now is that the scientific understanding of everything from atoms to galaxies to organisms is affirming our Trinitarian intuitions. We can now use the old Trinitarian language with a whole new level of appreciation.

        The deepest intuition of our poets, mystics, and Holy Writ are aligning with findings on the leading edges of science and empirical discovery. When inner and outer worlds converge like this, something beautiful is afoot--the reversal of a centuries-long lovers' quarrel between science and spirituality, mind and heart.

        Atomic scientists looking through microscopes and astrophysicists looking through telescopes are seeing a similarity of pattern: everything is in relationship with everything else. Scientists and contemplatives alike are confirming that the foundational nature of reality is relational, and everything is indeed a holon, a part that replicates and mimics the whole.

        References:

        Adapted from Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 69; and

        The Divine Dance: Exploring the Mystery of Trinity, disc 1 (CAC: 2004), CD, MP3 download.

          Dear Luke,

          Universe is an i-Sphere and we humans are capable of interpreting it as 4 dimensional dual torus inside a 3-Sphere, which consists of Riemann 2-sphere as Soul as depicted in S=BM^2 diagram in the attached doc. Soul is the simplest of the complex manifolds with in the 3-sphere, Mind and Body constitute the remaining complexity. Soul, Mind and Body are in a toroidal flux in human beings, exactly at the center of the 3-sphere one can experience the unity of the trinity and that is the now moment we experience. As there are 4 dimensions required for a 3-sphere, the regular 3 dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time, it is obvious that the 2-sphere (Riemann sphere) of consciousness with in us is with out the time dimension and hence the saying "eternal soul". Poincare` conjecture implies that consciousness is homeomorphic (same or similar) in all beings manifested in all dimensions of the universe, as i have shown that Riemann sphere can serve as the fundamental unit of consciousness.

          Love,

          i.Attachment #1: 3_zero__i__infinity.docx

            Luke, thank you for your reply. Re. the acorn I was thinking about the acorn/tree DNA of the individual but you are right that there is a lot of variation among the population of individuals.

            I see clearly now the the difference between 'intelligence' as used in general parlance; to describe an entity that has characteristics such as reasoning, comprehension, ability to learn and more, compared to your use of the word as a synonym for 'self organisation' applicable to processes and inanimate matter. Clearly they are very different meanings of the word intelligent. I agree that the higher mental function intelligence requires the organisation of matter that can be reduced to individual particles. I think it is misleading to put the word intelligent on the organizing which happens via mindless physics and chemistry. Self organisation is not a standard definition of 'intelligent'. No problem with 'creative self organisation' as a description though.

            I like that you have thought about the question and how it can or can't be answered, and how it might be usefully modified.

            Kind regards Georgina

            Dear Geraldine Ewan,

            what you wrote about Trinity is very interesting to me. I do not know to work you cited, but will take a closer look - if available in germany. If you are interested in some thoughts on trinities in the physical world, please see my comment to Steve Dufourny at my essay page (Feb. 16, 2017 @ 17:09 GMT).

            Thanks for your comment and the citation! And if you want to read something about the problem of evil, please read my comment to Theophanes Eleftheriou Raptis, right above of your comment here.

            Dear Theophanes Eleftheriou Raptis,

            i think you are right here. If one believes in a personal God and not just in a first source, this problem - the problem of evil - has to be answered.

            Fist possibility: Its all a game, a kind of tour of souls away from their creator - to experience how it feels to be separated from God. Then we did choose all the evil by ourselves. Being separated from the realm of God does mean to be separated from his/her values and properties. This would explain the lack of such properties in our world.

            Second possibility: Souls have been entrapped to be separated from God (in christian theology this was due to Lucifer who entrapped a huge part of souls in the heavens). Since every soul is made like the father (in some aspects), it is eternal and has free will (can choose).

            In both cases the evil is not due to God, but due to the decisions of the souls. Personally i believe in Jesus Christ, i do not go to Church, i do not read the bible, but believe that Jesus lived, died and was resurrected from the dead. I am finished with all the esoteric nonsense i read and heard over the years. This stuff does not safe a single soul, neither here on earth from its problems, nor in the world after. It is just a kind of seducement, mixed with some real metaphysical experiences, a mix of lies with some truth to think one is just like God.

            thanks theo :) yeah the unabridged version makes it clearer why i have a problem with the idea of scientists being able to understand consciousness sufficiently as to be able to implement it to bring about machine-conscious beings (... and then torture them). the lack of understanding *is* precisely why humanity would consider it perfectly ok to do that.

            if we were not at a critical juncture where the power and money of one person could have such a dramatic impact on our ecosystem, in effect become a surgeon operating *on themselves* with neither knowledge or anaesthetic, risking killing us all in the process, i would not have written the conclusion that i had, because there would be no need.

            much as i would *like* to get involved in the development of machine consciousness.

            interestingly, that same high-level powerful group that has got together to collaborate to create Arrogantly-Artificial-Intelligence has *just* funded a think-tank on how humanity should cope if all goes to hell in a handbasket.

            utterly cool, sridattadev, and beautiful to know that you are gaining such insights. perhaps an additional insight for you:

            if we may define a soul as being simply a MASSIVELY high order solution (and i really do mean exceptionally high) of Laplace's Y(theta, phi) spherical functions, our soul *may* develop without a body, but, like the surgeon that may need to operate on itself, it is necessary to maintain self-coherence - a coherent E.M. field - *at the same time*. this of necessity limits both the rate (and type) of self-development that may occur.

            a body therefore provides an anchor for the E.M.-field-that-is-the-soul whilst allowing and supporting *cognitive dissonance* and subsequent fragmentation of the laplace solutions. in other words, the soul's attachment to the body *may* allow it to support states that would otherwise causes its complete collapse and fragmentation if it was not so attached. thus, birth (and life) provides the (risky!) opportunity for fast-track development.

            cool, huh? :)

            "Scientists and contemplatives alike are confirming that the foundational nature of reality is relational, and everything is indeed a holon, a part that replicates and mimics the whole."

            ... after all, that would be the simplest, most efficient and most elegant way for things to end up - or more to the point "emerge". thank you.

            Dear Luke,

            You are absolutely right and we concur fully, Soul can exist independently on it's own. Consciousness or Soul is fundamental and can further manifest Mind and Body if it chooses to. In a simple geometric evolution, a 2-Sphere (Soul) comes first and then evolves to a 3-sphere (Soul, Mind and Body). Also please see There are no goals as such it's all play.

            Love,

            i.

            This is a very pleasant essay to read. I resonate with the idea that consciousness is defined as a "Critical Instability Point." This matches with my conclusion that the laws of physics are a collective behavior at a critical point of universality. Consciousness only exists when connected with this through senses. That's my view. It's good to see that people are keeping the TM movement going.

              thanks philip. so... extending what you say, logically (regarding consciousness): to *deny* the evidence of one's senses - or mind - would be the beginning of pathological states. we cannot *possibly* say that we are moving towards a goal, with aims or intent, if we seek at the same time to *deliberately* refuse to acknowledge certain input or conclusions. how could we? under such circumstance the adjustments needed to create the required corrective feedback cannot possibly be successful.

              regarding TM: i feel that it's... kinda... well, it was one of the pioneers of what's now become much more prevalent, so now kinda "blends into in the background noise". but, more than that: you never *needed* to "support" the TM "movement", you just needed to do it :)