[FutureBuddha (Hunches II)] Further Hunches

[Jundo]

Hi Kokuu,

Here is the elephant in the room that I feel you miss.

You are correct in all regards: That the universe happened, and happened to have the conditions for life in general, for some planet or countless planets conducive to complex life spread through the cosmos (although, apparently, with a lot more space and planets in between not conducive to complex life), that some intelligent life may have appeared here and there ... All that is not very surprising, given that it is just the playing out of natural processes and chance. There is some intelligent life here and there in a vast universe, and maybe some of it is even Kokuu-ish now and then, when conditions for that happen to come together. It is just the elephant on the savannah. (Of course, the fact that there is such a universe at all, and such physical processes, to allow all that is itself pretty amazing, but let us take it all for granted and with a yawn.)

My argument hinges on something different:

Even yawning at the fact that there is some intelligent, sentient and self-reflective life somewhere, the fact that the question is being posed and reflected on by ... not just somebody somewhere, even by some Kokuu-ish Kokuu somewhere ... but you, yourself, here, now, in the one place and time you seemingly needed to be in order to do that (as opposed to some other guy or creature doing so somewhere else) ... ... All that is an especially strange phenomenon given that even ONE missed factor in 13.8 Billion years seemingly should have precluded such event. Granted, any creature reflecting on the chain of events to its birth would feel equally but (here is the kicker) they are not, and seemingly SHOULD NOT be you given all it apparently took for you to be doing so amid the specific conditions to let you do so, the product of precisely right events through the aeons. That is the elephant in Times Square. Seemingly, for one missed turn, the elephant should not be in Times Square at all, or if there is an elephant in Times Square, it should not be you.

I think that you are misusing the Zen teachings that "each creature and thing" is sacred, special and the endpoint of a long chain of fantastic events. This is true. But they are not you and, seemingly (as we understand the seeming pachinco machine of our universe) seemingly should not include you at all (or, better said, the odds of it including you are infinitesimal, so infinitesimal that we had best consider a more likely set up.)

To return to our elephant, a wandering herd of elephants, wandering here and there could have, purely by chance, wandered onto a drifting log or gotten caught in a tornado or stumbled into an airplane cargo hold with no special assistance, landed at JFK and one member (and, further, not just any member of the herd, but specifically, elephant you) may have wandered over to Times Square on its own. It is perfectly possible, and violates no natural laws. However, it seems much more likely that the elephant had a little help somewhere for there to be an elephant standing in Times Square, on top of which, said elephant is not just an elephant let alone a hippo, but elephant you.

Likewise, in an infinite universe, there may be countless elephant-identical species and countless duplicates of Times Square. But they are not the one Times Square we are concerned with, namely, the one in the New York City on our planet, the only one we have here where we are. And those other elephants are not you, the one Kokuu elephant you should be concerned with. Yes, somebody else somewhere may be feeling how amazing it is that they exist, but the odds of such a somebody somewhere being you are ... ridiculously unlikely, i.e., every single right outcome, without a miss through every crossroads in every moment through billions of years unlikely.

You are stubborn if you refuse to consider the existence of a possible mechanism which shortened the odds or assisted the outcome.

I think you are like the blindman who, feeling parts of the elephant, misses the whole.

Gassho, J

stlah

[Kokuu]

If suddenly an elephant appears in the middle of Times Square, it seems that your attitude would be that an elephant has to be some place, so it might as well be there. After all, elephants wander and migrate here and there, it must simply have wandered over from Africa. That is also a perfectly natural explanation, fully in keeping with all known laws of the universe. However, instead, most scientists and other rational people would set to looking for the reasons by which the unlikely event happened, for example, that someone loaded it on a truck and left it there as a prank.

Not at all. Clearly an elephant in Times Square would need an explanation.

Can you explain what aspect of current existence would equate to an elephant in Times Square so I might be able to see better what you are pointing to?

Looking backwards we see that everything has to be just like it is in order to get here. But is here an elephant in Times Square, or is it more like an elephant in the savannah, a natural outcome of evolution that could easily have ended up another way?

Even with an elephant in the savannah it is fascinating to understand the precise causes and conditions over billions of years that ended up with it being there.

The idea that everything is designed just perfectly so we can be and a slight change in the laws of physics would not allow it is called the 'fine tuning' argument. You can argue for or against it, and there are, I believe, physicists and philosophers on both sides. This is a neat summary (which you may already have read) of the arguments for and against:https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/

However, in Zen terms, should we ignore the fact that we, and each and every creature and thing may be the unlikely product of a series of stochastic events? I don't think so. Each should be celebrated and venerated for its unique position at the end of a long chain of causality that has brought us to now.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

[Jundo]

Hi Kokuu,

I think that you have blinders on.

If suddenly an elephant appears in the middle of Times Square, it seems that your attitude would be that an elephant has to be some place, so it might as well be there. After all, elephants wander and migrate here and there, it must simply have wandered over from Africa. That is also a perfectly natural explanation, fully in keeping with all known laws of the universe. However, instead, most scientists and other rational people would set to looking for the reasons by which the unlikely event happened, for example, that someone loaded it on a truck and left it there as a prank.

If someone wins in a casino, time and time again, for 13.8 billion years of rolls and card hands, you could say that the winner is just very very lucky. After all, for any lottery, somebody can win, no matter how unlikely. Or, one might suspect that, perchance, the cards are loaded. After all, anyone can have a lucky night, but 13.8 billion years of lucky night is qualitatively different. We are not the winners of a single lottery, but an incredible series of lotteries after lotteries, each and all we had to win without a miss. To deny the possibility of loaded dice and weighted wheels is simply naive (and I would love to get you in a good poker game with my shady deck of cards.)

Our existence has predictive power, to wit, if there is some as yet unknown event or property of the universe that was necessary to have happened with very specific conditions, or within very narrow parameters, were our birth to be possible, then we can predict ... and it will be demonstrated ... that just such an event with those specific conditions, and such property of the universe with those very narrow parameters did exist or occur in just such way. It might be that the event or property could have been countless other ways, but still, it will be found to be the one and precise way we selfishly need.

There is a reason that the elephant is in Times Square, and it is not merely that it wandered here and there from Africa and just ended up there.

Gassho, Jundo

stlah

[Kokuu]

I am not saying that evolution, and good old Darwin, are wrong. Not at all, the evidence is too strong, the process visible before our eyes. But might the theory be a little bit incomplete? Might there be something more to the game

I think that to show that the theory was incomplete, you would have to show that there is something that evolution cannot explain. At present I do not see that.

What evidence is there that we move towards certain directions that is unexplained by evolution by natural selection (which is inherently messy but looks directional when viewd backwards) and random chance?

I really like your writing above, Jundo, as it points to the unlikelihood of each of us being here, as well as the existence of giraffes in their exact form, and a number of other things. That really can lead to a sense of gratitude and wonder, but I am not sure it needs to invoke directionality beyond evolution + chance.

As a Zen approach, mostly it is good to rest in the mystery of all, and not need to explain it. However, as a scientist, I do not currently see that there are broad patterns in the world's biology that are unexplainable.

Would it even be possible to design an experiment to show that we move preferentially towards some outcomes rather than others? I suspect not because we would need a number of Earths to study and currently (as far as I know), we have n=1 for this study which is somewhat suboptimal. It would be possible to do with simulations, but the problem with those is that the mechanisms would involve coding what we already know. That does sometimes throw up interesting results, however, showing that certain outcomes do happen without being programmed, and trajectories tend in certain directions that might not appear obvious. That might, in real life, look like having direction without it actually being required.

One thing we learn in science is the tendency of human brains to want to form patterns and find meaning, even where there is none. This is something we see during sitting, as our mind creates a narrative on top of what is essentially sense data, and it is especially keen on making the 'I' important. That does not mean that there isn't a pattern or meaning, but we have to be careful that it really is there and not what statisticians call a type I error (false positive).

Anyway, huge apologies for length.

Gassho
Dr Kokuu
-sattoday/kah-

[Jundo]

So, what's my point? Erm...well, events that seem unlikely, impossible, or miraculous, must inevitably occur throughout life, the universe, and everything as a matter of course (and in the course of matter). Whatever the exact temperature of a room is at a given moment, it's a value that has probability zero of occurring in the exact sense.

The universe, if vast or infinite, may have passed through or reached permutations of "Joe Soothfast" any number of times, in any number of places. But you are not just any old "Joe Soothfast" somewhere, at some time, but this very specific self-experiencing "Joe Soothfast" in this place and point in time. We can ask why the universe needed any "Joe Soothfast" at all, even one. But, that said, if the universe had created some "Joe Soothfast" across the Galaxy, or some million years ago, or any other time and place but the one where you find yourself now, then in such case, seemingly, it would not do you (the one "Joe Soothfast" you should be concerned about) even a lick of good. Would any old "Joe Soothfast" actually be this here you too (an intriguing notion in its own right), or just your twin (thus doing you no good)?

This is the Joe Soothfast, in this place and moment, that this Joe Soothfast should find puzzling.

Gassho, J

stlah

[Soothfast]

Heady stuff. Yes indeed.

I'll say this: the probability that the temperature in a room will be exactly 25 degree Celsius is: zero.

Because "exactly 25" is a miracle: 25.0000000000000000000...

A perfect, infinite streak of zeros. Thus is the weirdness of continuous probability distributions.

However, if the room is heated from 24 degrees to 26, one of two miracles must have occurred: either the room was, for an instant, exactly 25 degrees; or the temperature "skipped" 25 somehow.

We live in a quantized universe, though, wherein physical states cannot necessarily attain every real-number value or even every real-number value in some bounded interval of real numbers. So one could find flaws in my room temperature scenario. And things get messy: a room is big, and cannot be expected to have the same temperature everywhere. Heat rises, right?

So, what's my point? Erm...well, events that seem unlikely, impossible, or miraculous, must inevitably occur throughout life, the universe, and everything as a matter of course (and in the course of matter). Whatever the exact temperature of a room is at a given moment, it's a value that has probability zero of occurring in the exact sense.

I've always been a champion of anthropic principles of all stripes.

That's not to say there isn't something mysterious underlying reality as we perceive it. Reality is big enough to accommodate both universes with gods and universes without gods (any "simulations" out there I include in the former category).

Anyway, I find all these speculations concerning the true nature of reality and what it means for us to be "us" fascinating, and as the years go by I'm always tweaking my viewpoints.

Yes, I need to get my profile set up, but this post is also a test to see that things are working.

Joe

st

[Jundo]

Anyway, if you guys like these "further hunches," you should move on to the "even further hunches!" ...

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?21684-FutureBuddha-%2844%29-Even-Further-Hunches

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Oh, you're so wrong, Roshi. I saw it in a cinema in NYC when it was released, and it was a masterpiece.

Oh, I know. As I said, I was too young. I will rewatch the whole 15.5 hours.

By the way, was there not a remake? I guess I should stick with Fassbinder.

In fact, if there is a universal film director, I think it is more Fellini, the Fellini of La Strada. Or maybe a spaghetti western by Sergio Leone.

Gassho, Jundo

[Ryumon]

I remember sitting in a cinema for the 15 hour film (booked into an art theatre as a binge marathon.) Like the universe, it seemed to go on for billions of years, had characters coming in and out, a complicated and tangled plot with no clear direction or ending in sight ...

... all of which opinion, I not admit, was due not to the film, but to my being too young, too uneducated about its origins and too uncultured in my taste and sensibilities to appreciate it ...

... also perhaps like our human experience of the universe now!

Yes, maybe the universe has been made as a mini-series by a German avant-garde director, and we just cannot appreciate it yet. That would explain a lot.

Gassho, J

stlah

Oh, you're so wrong, Roshi. I saw it in a cinema in NYC when it was released, and it was a masterpiece. I attended an intimate presentation the previous evening with two of the actors, Gunther Lamprecht, who played the lead character Franz Biberkopf, and Hanna Schygulla. 22-year old me was so excited to be in the presence of Hanna Schygulla...

I've since seen it as intended - as a TV series in multiple sittings - and it's still a masterpiece.

I looked it up in the NYT. This article presages today's TV with the type of long-form series that are now the norm:

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/10/arts/film-view-is-berlin-alexanderplatz-a-vision-of-the-movies-future.html?searchResultPosition=4

You don't have to blame capitalism to realize that films of this mind-bending length are impractical as theatrical ventures, but there is the possibility that in the not too distant future the home video market will make them seem a little less mad than they do today. A new kind of narrative cinema may be at hand. If that is true, then "Berlin Alexanderplatz" is its seminal work.

Gassho,

Ryūmon (Kirk)

sat

[Jundo]

Berlin Alexanderplatz

I remember sitting in a cinema for the 15 hour film (booked into an art theatre as a binge marathon.) Like the universe, it seemed to go on for billions of years, had characters coming in and out, a complicated and tangled plot with no clear direction or ending in sight ...

... all of which opinion, I not admit, was due not to the film, but to my being too young, too uneducated about its origins and too uncultured in my taste and sensibilities to appreciate it ...

... also perhaps like our human experience of the universe now!

Yes, maybe the universe has been made as a mini-series by a German avant-garde director, and we just cannot appreciate it yet. That would explain a lot.

Gassho, J

stlah

[Ryumon]

Or that those, steering the simulation will immediately remove the one, figuring it out, from it. Until they, themself find out they are trapped in one.
And all this for a marketing company, trying to eliminate the need for opinion polls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacron-3

Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

Not only have I never heard of that novel, but I had never heard of the Fassbinder adaptation of it. Since it was made for TV, it probably didn’t circulate in cinemas at all. (Though Berlin Alexanderplatz was also made for TV, and was shown in cinemas.) i’ll have to try to find this.

Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat

[Kotei]

Perhaps the best argument against the simulation hypothesis is that the simulation would be programmed so no one or nothing in the simulation could figure it out.

Or that those, steering the simulation will immediately remove the one, figuring it out, from it. Until they, themself find out they are trapped in one.
And all this for a marketing company, trying to eliminate the need for opinion polls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacron-3

Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

[Jundo]

But we don't know that a dream is a dream, at least while we're dreaming.

Gassho,

Ryūmon (Kirk)

sat

There is lucid dreaming where one recognizes that they are in a dream. Again, not saying that applies here, just pointing out an exception.

Gassho J
Stlah

[Ryumon]

Unless it is either a mathematically imperfect simulation, or the game was to figure it out, or figuring it out is not harmful to the simulation. For example, we know that movies are movies, and video games are video games, yet we still enjoy them.

But we don't know that a dream is a dream, at least while we're dreaming.

Gassho,

Ryūmon (Kirk)

sat

[Jundo]

Perhaps the best argument against the simulation hypothesis is that the simulation would be programmed so no one or nothing in the simulation could figure it out.

Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat

Unless it is either a mathematically imperfect simulation, or the game was to figure it out, or figuring it out is not harmful to the simulation. For example, we know that movies are movies, and video games are video games, yet we still enjoy them.

I am not saying that the foregoing is the actual situation, but merely offering a challenge to the conclusiveness of your assertion.

Gassho, J

stlah