some thoughts on duality
Today I want to write about duality:
So many books I read in art, philosophy and science show our tendency to want to reduce things to black and white. Our need to understand the world forces us to simplify all that we see to help us cope with it and understand.
For example, for many years scientists argued about whether light was a wave or a particle. Debate raged with both sides wishing to force light to act in the way that they perceived it acted. Turns out light is both separate and connected to our understanding of it. Depending on the experiment being done on it, it acts as both a wave and a particle. It may act in other unknown ways we have yet to ask it to. Interestingly the “nature” of light depends on the experiments being done on light to test what “it” is. Likewise, the very act of observing matter is such that we can only observe and know its position or its momentum at one time and not both precisely.
Early Greek philosophers gave us the notion that the world is made up of physical atoms (literally meaning indivisible). More recent philosophers (particularly Descartes) have argued that there is a duality to the world and that you can separate life into “matter” and “mind”. This is because they do not know how to account for the mind that appears to be both a brain (which is matter) and a force that gives our body and brain purpose and understanding.
Surely this is exactly the same discussion as for light. Our universe consists of energy. Our minds consist of energy some of it in matter and some of it in waves.
Blake:
“Energy is eternal delight”
It can be negative and positive. It can be materialised as matter or act as a field (like waves of light propagating, gravity, consciousness). Following on the work of Maxwell and others Einstein showed us that matter and energy are equivalent. That is we are all embodiments of energy. Likewise our thoughts and consciousness is matter unlocked, matter set free to move and act as a force.
Einstein:
“Make everything as simple as possible but no simpler.”
We don’t have to force this varied life into a box or a book or a simple position. There is no contradiction between mind and matter. Mind is really just electricity, disembodied matter – matter that has been given its wings.
Things that are are also not. Things that have been will be forever. There is no future or past, there is no purpose. There is only matter and energy acting over space between matter.
We must learn to perceive from eternity and all our contradictions will be exposed for what they are, problems of perception.
I am and I think. Wherefore the therefore?
Add comment October 17, 2008
Futility by Wilfred Owen
Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown,
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved – still warm – too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
podcast available: Futility by Wilfred Owen
Add comment September 17, 2008
Art Greeting Cards and Art posters
We are currently developing a new homepage design and a shop front for members to sell their artwork to each other and consumers (initially in greeting cards and on print posters).
Once we have our new account management system (see some basic designs for mail and managing subscriptions in Beta) you will be able to edit multiple files on one page so that you can upload higher quality images of previously uploaded images, change categories, add tags and state whether you are willing to have your work on products.
To start with we will be offering posters and greeting cards using consenting member’s artwork. You will have to tell us what price above cost you wish to see the work e.g. if greeting cards cost £1, $2 per card to produce you can suggest a profit of 20% on each card. Likewise, if a large poster costs £20 to print if you specify 20% for artwork then you would receive £4 from every sale.
We are based in Gibraltar so we are exploring our options in the UK and North America with printing so that we can cost effectively and quickly ship at least to the US & Canada, UK and Spain.
We will post working designs on Shop for you to see as we go along.
Also we have a new customer feedback system coming next week – we think you will like as it enables you to feedback and share problems and solutions with each other and us as well as still being able to email us privately.
Thanks for all of your continued support and enthusiasm for this project.
Add comment October 24, 2008
AI & the problem of evil
These are some of the things that keep me up at night…
How do we create a new species of sentient beings? What are we willing to risk?
If the human race is here due to both “will to power” and mistakes in behaviour and replication of our genes then surely we must create a being capable of making and learning from mistakes.
Experience may be a harsh mistress but she is also the best mistress. In order to create intelligent beings capable of moral judgement we would need to enable them to make errors of judgement and action, about which they could feel remorse.
(I, Robot: copyright Twentieth Century Fox)
We would need them to be capable of evil against each other and human beings:
Who would be willing to invest in the creation of such beings?
Obviously people will not wish to create beings that can make mistakes (e.g. robots making errors whilst flying a plane) so the ever present drive for perfection will see many of the mistakes wiped out. However, perfection can only ever be sought and never attained. In our quest we will inevitably create beings that make and replicate errors -many of which we will no doubt wish to kill off.
Robot Wars:
Robot wars with humans may then be an inevitable by-product of our desire to go further and touch the face of God. Assuming we survive them then, as with slavery, we would be able to look back at our behaviour and realise that we were wrong to focus on certain biological traits as the main differentiator.
The human race and individual humans have no God given rights. We will differentiate ourselves only by our actions. By this measure we do not look particularly superior at the moment (when one looks at how we treat each other and other life forms).
Using the principle of economy if we create robots that are capable of moral behaviour then they would have the same rights as any human or being who is similarly capable.
Uncertainty:
Quantum theorists believe that at in some respects and at a fundamental level the universe operates on uncertainty and there is a degree of (at least) seeming randomness (probability theory) that means that literally anything is possible (even if very unlikely). Obviously in our quest for perfect robots we will make mistakes and also mistakes will occur (especially once we make robots capable of self replication). It is the mistakes that will likely be a large determinant as to whether we can create a new sentient species. The mistakes will be the pre-condition for artificial intelligence – as they were for humans.
(the uncertainty principle)
Human frailty:
Humans appear to be spectacularly ill-equipped for exploring the greater expanses of the universe. We live short lives and suffer greatly in extremes of environment. Robots can be made to be the natural inheritors and protectors of the universe. This could be what humans are fondly remembered for in aeons to come – our lasting legacy!
The problem of evil:
Philosophers and theologists have long debated how the universe can contain a God which is omnipotent and good and yet can allow evil to occur. As good and evil are only relative concepts then it seems obvious that such a being would have to be capable of evil. The being would operate according to higher laws which placed the good of life above any particular individual or race.
In creating robots we will first need them to place humans lives above individual robots lives. Very soon they would then repay the favour and realise that to act in accord with their purpose they must break the first law of robotics and place human life itself above individual human lives.
[/caption]
(cover art for the short story “Runaround” which was the first book to state all 3 of the laws of Robotics and was eventually collected in “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov)
The 3 laws of robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The new first law would then have to be:
“A robot may not injure humans or, through inaction, allow humans to come to harm.”
the current first law would be the second law and so on.
Even better, over time, the robots will eventually realise that humans are just one species and there is a greater principle that requires them to act in a way that protects a diversity (or relativity) of life:
“A robot may not injure the diversity of life or, through inaction, allow diversity to be harmed.”
Then we will have finally created a real God like being out of human skin and bone and not in our own image.
What an interesting future we have behind us….
Note: For a fantastic short story on this subject read “Night Train” in the novel Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
Add comment September 17, 2008
Togetherness (for Sian & Tom)
illustrated by Oliver Day
Write me a poem about being together…
One wonders where to rhyme it with weather
Or whether to say
‘Weathering the storms‘ altogether
Yet like relationships
The best lines of a poem
Are not made to be a perfect fit
In poetry & life we must aim
For a richer deeper vein
And always try to ascertain
The hidden rhythm and rhyme
That connects our lives
Ladies & gentleman
We are gathered here to day to see
A brave and almost foolhardy thing
Two people’s lives have intersected such
That they are willing to try
To complete the imperfect circle
From time to time
They may see eye to eye
On this or that
Yet to uncover the meaning of today
They here agree
To agree to disagree
In the long intervals in between
I have heard said, and read,
That love is like two trees
Intermingling to become one
That type of poem may do
For the feeble and the young
It appears to me that love
Is much stronger than that
For what tree ever argued with itself?
A better image to imagine would be
Two trees in an orchard contentedly
Separate in space and in time
And knowing they can never be
As one
Leaves fall and summers breeze
The rain & wind
Shakes the boughs
& the trees stay rooted & strong
Gazing at each other through the years
Until at last one winter too many falls
One might say
How sad to be a tree
Condemned to be alone.
But we should say happy trees!
You shared so much together
And knew each other better
Than you knew yourselves
It is the space between us
That defines us & our love for each other
The space we allow each other
To breathe & grow
So if you must spend your lives
Trying to be together
Remember
The test is not how close you are
But how you live with
The distance between you
May you spend your
Lives exploring and guarding
The space around you
`Who knows what may grow
in the ground between?’
Add comment September 17, 2008
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