Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (66163)	11/10/2002 3:20:38 AM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 82486

I don't believe I have encountered the two hypotheses you name, at least not that I recognize the names. Could you synopsize or provide links? Thanks. The only thought here that I feel confident to ... not challenge so much as qualify ... is in re "in the world of physics there is only entropy". I would qualify this by saying "in the world of physics as of 1930" because after that we began to get glimpses of other organizing principles, like quantum uncertainty (which shattered the deterministic cosmology) and more recently chaos theory (which expanded the weird but compelling math of the un-deterministic to large systems). The nice thing about physics is that it is not a fixed target: the theories and relationships that frame its house are open to review within the boundaries of the scientific method. Such review has caused fundamental shifts in physics as a model of "real-world" processes. Usually what precipitates such a review is someone making a startling observation (thus supplying the machinery of scientific method with a new, meaningful premise) or somebody being smart or lucky or inspired enough to arrange existing data in a way that makes that model-changing premise precipitate out for all to see. From this I suggest that physics as of 1930 or 2002 is still a very, very young endeavor. Humans have formulated, communicated and recorded abstract ideas for only five thousand years. (They probably have done two of those three for much longer, but all three are required to begin and maintain what we think of as "history".) I wonder what physics will look like in another five thousand years. I would imagine that organizing principles other than entropy, chaos and quantum fuzziness will emerge. And here I inject my own subjective faith: I believe that these organizing principles won't require the positing of a self-aware something impelling the aggregation of potentially meaningful elements (a lovely phrase, if I may say so!). You mention Logos and several other cultural analogs. Of these the Tao interests me the most. My understanding of such things is tangential at best, but somewhere I accreted the impression that the Tao was different from all the usual creator/arbiter divine principles. What makes the Tao special is that it did not have to be conscious - it was simply the "instruction set" or set of basic principles and relationships that govern all that is real. If this conceit of mine is at all on target, what I find attractive about Tao is that one can touch the Tao and thereby be granted a full-scale mystical experience, and yet the Tao is not possessed of self-awareness or will. Imo this is a very neat way to have one's cake and eat it too, and I personally (at this time!) subscribe to such a worldview. It allows me to at once embrace the ineffable beauty of Mystery and maintain my belief that the soul is ultimately biochemistry in motion (and thus - physics). My presence online has become sporadic at best ... if I do not respond for weeks or months, [the fact of my unresponse] says or implies nothing about message or messenger. cheers LRR