Bob Rambles about Camus, Consciousness and Cause (and Effect)

 Managing real-time applications is one of the greatest of computing challenges, both in coding and in implementation.  The ultimate real-time application would be consciousness (distinguished from "intelligence" which is a series of parlor tricks).  As usual, I am too harsh since the quality of consciousness, and even any resulting wisdom, arises out of the various faculties that comprise those very parlor tricks.  All of my understanding of consciousness is shaped by my understanding of computers and my observation that there is so much of it that I can not observe.

Camus suggests that the resolution of the question of the purpose of life (with that ultimate resolution of suicide) is an ongoing problem of consciousness, with the resolution lying at hand while varying the answers from moment to moment throughout our lives.  The decision not to kill oneself is a matter of policy that might (along with fear and the perception of the finality of nothingness) carry one over a few rough spots - perhaps only to be overridden by an especially fraught or meaningful moment.

Out of my current (dilettante as usual) reading of Camus: I see that he distinguishes between truth and meaning.  As a side note: I once postulated that "meaning is a relationship between ontology and truth".  I now realize that is the ideal rather than what we see in the beliefs of the people around us.  I also subscribe to the idea that there is an identity between Truth and Beauty (as in that moment of consciousness captured in the poem by Emily Dickinson: "I died for beauty".   Regardless, Camus suggests that we spend our lives in the search for meaning.  Certainly that is true for me, with the qualification that for me truth is the higher goal, whatever that means.  In it most fundamental sense it means that I say more than I should say in the service of truth.  It also means that I may die for the truth.

There is a classic computer science exercise where the student is asked to program a robot to brush its teeth.  It is an essay question where one must not leave out any detail in the description of the process.  I will not entangle myself in this tar baby.  Instead, I will propose a similar exercise where the student is asked to layout the basic assumptions associated with the search for meaning in Camus' absurd universe.  As a clue I am going to suggest that a belief in "cause and effect" is a prerequisite if meaning is not to become a totally random construct without any basis in observation, received reality, or established wisdom.  

I am entertaining the idea that quantum entanglement is just another way of saying there is a cause and effect relationship between two entities.  That opens up a whole universe of possible ways for there to be a cause and effect relationship between two entities, a man and a woman for instance.  Now we can approach the discussion of some of the crazier concepts such as autopoiesis and structural coupling as yammered about by Maturana and Varela.  After all, people talk the way birds sing - for the sheer joy of it.

The Two Seas

We simultaneously dwell in two worlds: the world of the objective and the world of the subjective.  Existentialism is the philosophy that analyzes (or experiences) the tension between these worlds.  One could call it being objective about being subjective.  Or is it the subjectivity of objectivity?

Each world believes that it alone is the true world, spinning off a series of rationales that obscure the true relationship between the worlds, whatever that is.  Each world views the other as an attached appendage, a minor portion of its own reality - a lopsided connection.  All objective reality is viewed through the lens of someone's subjective reality, rendering objective reality as an unattainable fantasy.  Likewise all subjective experience is objectively viewed as circumstantial, falling short of what is objectively true.  That is just two ways of saying the same thing.

The lovers yearn each for the other.  Only "wine" can unite them.  Is that love or hope or faith, or is it the intoxicant that overrides the laws of physics and reveals that the fundamental particle of truth is identical to the fundamental particle of beauty?  That would embody the confluence of the two seas.

Resonance

I am reading an article on the "quantamagazine.org" website about Craig Callendar, a philosopher of science (a nerd) at UCSD.  Actually it is not really about Professor Callendar.  It is about the validity of the analogy (identity?) between thermodynamics and the equations describing black holes.  I have read the article but really I am looking at the pictures and reminiscing about my youth on the beaches by UCSD.  There is another such professor in Hawaii.  Perhaps it is a generational thing.  They both seem to be past the age for really creative thinking, on a surfboard or not.  Note that it is easier for me to read Callender than Lisi but the end result is about the same.  I just don't have the math background or even (possibly) the intellectual insight to handle it.

It is in the nature of a pattern that it never happens alone.  It repeats and the pattern of that repetition takes everything to a new level.  The abstractions are endless.  Patterns are the grist for the mill of the mind.  They are the basis for communication. They are the basis for all understanding of the world around us.  They are the basis of all interest and amusement.

One "pattern" characterizes levels of understanding: data, information, knowledge, wisdom.  I find that to be superficial.  So long as it remains in the file cabinet or the database it is worthless.  It has to erupt into a mind and resonate with reality before it takes on significance - before it has meaning.

Long years operating within a commercial bureaucracy has filled my mind with memes and buzzwords.  I use them as crutches as I make my way through the world. 

Memories as Immortality

For some reason, people (some people) want to be remembered by others after they die.  I have even heard it mentioned as a form of immortality.  I do not personally see things that way.  I see my existence as an ongoing process, an experience of pleasure or pain, of growth or decline.  Bare memories do not compare - especially the memories of other people.

My views call into question any concept of immortality.  What is immortal exists forever but my own identity changes subtly day by day.  There comes a day when I am no longer the same person by any definition.  Any meaningful definition of life after death would involve a changing and growing persona.

I recall that at one time (as a child living in Hawaii)  I decided to maintain continuity with my past.  How would I know now that I have accomplished that goal?  By examining my life and my memories and trying to assess how much has been lost and how the remainder might still sustain a continuity of identity?  I know by comparing what I remember with what my brother remembers just how much has been lost.  And every night I go to sleep.  I descend into a sleep beyond dreams and then rise back up through those mind-altering dreams and resurrect myself to some kind of facsimile of myself.  There is a discontinuity.

Likewise there was discontinuity when I went into surgery, descending into dreamless sleep.  Specifically, something is taken from my body during surgery.  I wonder if there is any form of immortality that would not involve discontinuities?  The one point of continuity might have been my body, and that one point is fragile.  The horizon is already visible.

I do not enjoy all of my memories.  My mind is a mine field.  I would not regret laying down some of that burden.  The contradiction is that while there is still life there is only the possibility of laying aside the unpleasantness.  At the same time that possibility will also surely rip away much of what I value.  Each of my memories that is laid aside diminishes me until my identity is altogether gone.  Never mind any irrelevant and questionable memory of someone else.

Ethics? What are ethics?

A lot has been written about ethics, starting with the ten commandments.  Sometimes it all seems very simple and certainly if everyone just observed only the most fundamental (ten commandments type) ethics life would be much easier for those who actually possess something of worth.

This blog entry is inspired by my recent reading of a Wired article about Cliff Stoll, the author of The Cuckoo's Egg.  It is especially inspired by Cliff Stoll's climactic anger at the hacker for not finding a better way to leverage his talents...for not joining the rest of us in making a better world.  State funded hackers are another matter but they will not go away so long as there are leaders of countries that believe war is profitable.

Still, there are a lot of private citizens who feel that they are entitled to take whatever items come their way that seem unguarded or lost.  The city of Maple Valley is not known for its crime, yet any bicycle left lying on a lawn or driveway is liable to disappear.  Others prowl neighborhoods in the wee hours looking for cars that have been left unlocked.  A car recently circumnavigated a house in my neighborhood in order to steal gas and diesel from some cans in the back yard.

Sometimes these people have guns, yet do not seem to understand the consequences of firing them.

Unarmed, the penalties are light.  They get misdemeanor criminal records.  When caught they are released by the next day.  It's fun.  There is a certain thrill.

I have been a part of an Eden-like beginning in more than one online technology and it is a reality that there is always someone more than willing to ruin it.  It is the first echo of early success.  As a species we have not gotten very far.  At least forty percent of us are more than mildly ethically defective.

Seen simplistically it is a predictable pattern, often observed, discussed, and analyzed.

There are paradoxes.  Corruption has been with us, institutionalized even, since the dawn of complex society.  It is an unproved hypothesis of mine that it was the Protestant Reformation that winched up social ethics an ever so small amount and allowed the widespread adoption of Capitalism.  Everyone  needs to understand that capitalism cannot survive, much less prosper, without fiduciaries.

Reputation is everything, and the Internet has a way of magnifying personal characteristics such as reputation. 

Wisdom

This is my second attempt at an entry with this name.  This time it is merely a placeholder for some things that I do not want to forget.  A note to myself.

Neil DeGrass Tyson Master Class

Ursula LeGuin, On Being a Poor Substitute for a Man  (humor, sort of)

From this we know that "wisdom" is (in this day and age) all around us.  Never mind that it must be consumed and digested before it is useful.  It may be that what you consume and digest is less important than the sheer quantity of what you consume and digest.  We all have roughly the same "word width" and "band width" (really?) so the quantity of input is all about the same.  What does that mean?

Perhaps it is really about the tuning of the process so that the instantaneous reaction approximates the eventual result of long digestion.  Time and Space, you know.

Certainty

I have more or less decided that anything I write should be a narrative from my personal experience rather than some kind of philosophical exposition.  We will see how that goes because I still need to link this discussion of dogma to one or more of my numerous memories.  There are benefits to being somewhat old, especially when the mind continues to be active and inquisitive.  My heart overflows.

When I was growing up I found myself straddling two different worlds, as embodied by my perception of the difference between my mother and my father.  I have always found it interesting how often couples have compatible zodiac signs, which I think now is likely to be related to the way that the signs of the zodiac are structured.  But that analysis is for another time when I have run out of all other topics to discuss.  My mother was a Gemini and my father is a Leo - compatible signs that may not say anything about how they aligned with each other.

It is in the nature of a mother to have a warm supportive relationship with her children, just as it is in the nature of a father to have expectations and ambitions for his children.  That was how I saw things then.  Since then, my parental perceptions have been confused and washed away in the flood of reality, both by seeing the full arc of the story for my parents and also by the personal experience of being a parent.  Regardless, when I was leaving high school to go to college I was caught up in the romance of the polarity I saw between my parents: the workings of the spirit versus the unyielding edifice of logic and science.  I was actively seeking a synthesis.

Scientific certainty has an unsatisfactory definition: a probability of 95%.  There is a lot of necessary discussion and qualification around that definition.  The point is that science is always acutely aware of the margin of uncertainty - the margin of error. 

In recent years I sometimes have structured "visions".  They are always clearly marked as such in my mind.  I do not confuse my visions with actual reality any more than I confuse my dreams with reality (except in the moments before dawn).  I have often woken up to great relief with the realization that the evaporating dream never happened and never could happen.  The struggle is real.  There has been plenty of events in my life that I regret.  Still, I seem to have escaped the worst consequences - as much as anything due to aggressive persistence  or maybe merely passive endurance.

I have arrived at this point in my life horribly mutilated: physically, mentally, and spiritually.  Two days ago I found an avocado in the refrigerator in a similar condition yet when I cut it open the flesh was green and unblemished.  If only all avocados could age so well.  If only it might turn out that I have aged equally as well - all set to be turned into a delectable guacamole for the benefit of all people everywhere.  To erase all suffering.

The Pieta captures a mother's pain, just as depictions of Christ on the Cross capture unimaginable personal pain.  I have a wide streak of graveyard humor yet I do not whistle as I pass these images.  They superimpose themselves on various moments in my life.  I see them when I read about the life of Darwin, who was possibly the original prototype for the "absent-minded professor".  I have visions of Dr. Darwin holding his daughter Annie's body in his arms when the "Water Cure" failed to help her.  Some think that she died of TB (the cause of 25% of all deaths at that time). Meanwhile, the crucifix is a graphic depiction of one aspect of the process of Natural Selection, one recognition of humanity submitting to the will of God yet triumphing over decay and death.

This synthesis is real.  The experience is real but it is not science with its requirement for a (qualified) 95% or better certainty.  This is where religion and science can never agree.  We can all agree on the basic condition of this vale of tears based on our individual direct experience.  Science, however, will always consider that the experience is "all in our heads".  Jesus on the cross, Mary on the cross, Darwin on the cross, parents on the cross, lovers on the cross...  By contrast science does draw back a corner of the curtain.  It does allow us to see an unfolding cosmic pattern that is not entirely of this world.