We don't walk in front of buses

[Fred56]

"The lives of the slaves", said the Captain, "are of no value."

"They are not slaves."

"As I count, they are slaves, and worthless."

"As I count, they are men and women, and must survive..."

"That is a lie you tell me. A foolish lie. You are helpless here in space..." (1)

 

Ain' no thang

 

We think it's easy, and we think it's hard. But it isn't isn't and it isn't is. It doesn't matter what we believe or if we believe the wrong thing. We don't have to believe anything. Because we are compelled.

 

Authority is a channel that allows the messages to arrive from the potentiality. You know, the infinite one.

 

The quantum superposition of harmonic function, a resonance, or sounding of a note. Reality.

Because the world turns, we turn with it. We step and plod, leap and stumble, bound by our own chains of logic.

Are we some kind of chaotic attractor or singularity in the complex plane? A pole or zero in the transfer function? What is whizzing around the accelerator ring of power?

Where is the complex surface? What is its topology? Is the universe just around the next corner?

 

(1) The Lifeship --Harry Harrison and Gordon R. Dickson

[Pangloss]

I don't understand this post. What are you trying to say?

[Fred56]

Can you be a tad more specific, do you not understand any of it, or just bits of it, or none of it at all? Have you read any SF, or do you understand Quantum Darwinism? How about the concept of a ship with a captain who thinks humans are their slaves, and therefore expendable, which is drifting through the void (no bells ringing at all?)...

Does the title make any sense, maybe?

 

un extrait montage plus par le livre 'The Lifeship':

 

"Human," she said at last, "we permit you to travel aboard our holy ships because you have no ships of your own worth the counting, and because it is a step upon the Way to assist others, even though they will never know the meaning of Perfection. You are only that which we carry of our own choice. You will not speak to me of destinations. Nor are you aboard this lifeship in such mode as I would prefer," she said. "The number is not optimum."

 

Giles stared at her.

 

"I don't understand." he said.

 

"The number," repeated the Captain "is not optimum for Perfection. It would be more optimal if you were one less. Perhaps you will reduce your number by one individual." She pointed to the converter in the back of the lifeship. "The converter could use the additional raw material."

 

Giles stiffened.

 

"You mean murder an arbite, just to suit your idea of Perfection?" he snapped.

 

"Why not?" The dark, round eyes stared unblinkingly at him. "You use them as slaves, but here in this small ship you have no need for so many slaves. What is one of them compared to the good will of myselves, who hold survival of all of you in my hands? Why concern yourself for any of them?"

...

 

"Put me in the converter, if you think you can, Rayumung. but lay one finger on any of these and I swear to you that this lifeship will reach no destination at all, and you will die in dishonor, if I have to take the hull apart with my bare hands!"

 

The Captain loomed over him. A rare tone of emotion crept into her voice.

 

"Do you really think you could match yourself against me, human?"

 

(yup, the Captain's a she, une femme alors!; actuellement les 'femmes et hommes')

[insane_alien]

and the point of this is... ?

 

and wrt the title, sometimes people do walk infront of buses. i seen it today in glasgow.

[Fred56]

Right, this person who walked in front of a bus: was it deliberate or accidental? If accidental, my implication stands up (we don't choose to do something like that), if deliberate, then there was something 'wrong' with the usual preservation 'mechanism', or the apparent choice made is explained (usually) by some aberrant mental state...

As for the point: I see a parallel between some of the writing in the SF title as germane to the human condition -drifting through a hostile universe with some alien Captain in control... (but what you want to interpret from all this is of course, your prerogative, you might decide it's complete rubbish; but as we all know, there's really no such thing)

 

The last paragraphs in my OP rabbit on about what we (lifeforms) might be, and reflects my thinking on how Life exploits the flow of energy via 'structure' and internal organisation, like something riding on a surface, or 'held up' by the tension on that surface, or riding a wave until it 'collapses' (on some metaphorical beach). I have described it (in this forum) as a player on its own stage, for example; which didn't seem to haul in any objections (or any responses, but never mind).

 

P.S. I deliberately tried to make it as obscure as I could, without going off the wall altogether.

P.P.S. In which case I s'pose I should admit to at least a subconscious ploy to see if anyone else could 'see' anything...

[Fred56]

Play it again, Sam

Life is cursive: it egresses or excurs and incurs or ingresses constantly.

 

All life observes its environment. It is 'obliged' to do this. It requires a 'store' of energy, and has learned how to meet this requirement in gradual steps, that have given it an ability to aggregate and communicate better with other lifeforms, and eventually develop, via this more efficient storage, better communicating lifeforms (with each other, and with the environment). Life observes. This is an active, and ongoing process.

Information, in the form of photons of EMR, chemicals, electric potential (in special cases, or certain specialised agents within cellular processes that have co-opted certain metals such as Fe, and Co, co-enzymes that transfer charge), is collected, or received -in the case of prokaryotes via channels or pores (or simple gaps) in their outer wall, or sheath, that contains their substance (prevents it dissipating) and protects it. Each of these agents or channels is like a commuter, which transfers energy along a chain. It is this process of transferring energy which is responsible for Life's ability to sustain itself.

 

Life only samples the constant 'flow' of mass/energy and it then uses these samples to 'remember' or map its environment. In eukaryotes, there is more structure, and more 'sophisticated' transport systems (proteins embedded in cell walls). Also, these more developed cells have learned how to live as a single community, an evolutionary step which has led to collections of differentiated cells becoming more dependent on the collective behaviour of all the others.

 

The photon (light) is a message we get from the quantum world, which we convert into information in our brains.

 

Chemical reactions are responsible for the ongoing processes that sustain Life, but these are mediated by agents, which act as catalysts. These are made of the same stuff, of course, that makes up much of the rest of us: protein, a product of a cell's apparatus, ribosomes within each cell where the DNA code is translated from amino acids and becomes protein; life is its own structure.

 

Each of our different cells is mostly water, or actually something a lot more like seawater. It's an organised or structured sum of parts, all co-operating in a complex pattern, which is self-regulating, but also almost totally dependent on its environment, and thus all the other cells, i.e. the entire multicellular form: our body. We can lose bits of it, but some are just too "well-integrated": a car won't start without a functional distributor of electric charge, or current, to each cylinder in the proper order. It just doesn't happen; a faulty mechanism works very inefficiently. It doesn't travel well without tyres, either.

 

 

We know that mass and energy are both conserved (throughout the universe, presumably). We know that 'charged' mass emits photons, little packets of energy that convey information into our biochemical, thermodynamic brains. What is meant by information, regarding what is known about a system, classical or otherwise, and what's the difference between ontology and epistemology?

 

Information which is spoken about some external system as being ontogenic, or ontic (i.e. observation is because of the systems character), and information which is projected (at it), as epistemogenic, or epistemic, since it comes from within us...

 

Are both projections, axiomatic in that neither is 'available' ontically or epistemically, without an observer and an observed?

 

'Something' which is supposed to be some unbound property which is modified by 'reality' in a process resembling a telic response. Consider the dualism of measurement (observer/observed) an axiom of this 'reality', duality: "Reality", is the "problem".

 

Language is information and all observers must use some internal language regardless of the size of their 'brain' or their place in the evolutionary scheme. All observers must posses a "phenomenological syntax" to be able to explain the world to themselves.

 

We describe the "language" of external reality (Nature) as its 'obvious' properties (regular recurring events, etc.).

 

We reveal the cosmos as self-sustaining, self-organised and evolving toward some 'intelligent' (us) end.

 

It's a challenge, that an organism must meet at all costs...

 

Evolution's matriculation

Life, (all forms of life), is the derivative of the evolutionary function. Each organism has only the evolved set of "properties" of life (its phenotype), to "deal with" the current (instantaneous) conditions, to face the challenges of finding a source of food, and being able to exploit it. To take the necessary risks of choosing: to expend energy chasing something, or conserve energy and wait for it to come to you.

 

All organisms are an integral of this same function. Life "presents itself to" the surface it creates (cell walls, etc), between the world's flow (source) of energy, and it's dissipation (entropy) by clinging to the surface tension it creates on that surface. The function is complex. Life is a supervention of its own ergodic space.

 

What does the evolutionary function look like? A complex or complected/symplected 'curve' or topology? Where are the vectors 'measured'? Is the entropy commuted by quantum chaos?