Broad discussion topic : what is your reaction to this
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A few months ago, I made a post on a similar topic. I think it fits nicely with the video so I’ll paste it below:
The Game of Life through Math
Mathematician John Conway constructed a model of the universe that not only could simulate all of existence, but also simulate a computer simulating all of existence. It can simulate a single quark gluon or atom, or an entire multiverse. As above, so below
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
The Game of Life through Physical Reality and the Feedback Mechanism
Douglas Hofstadter wrote two amazing books which he says “ are a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
The way he answers this question is nothing short of revelatory. I would be unable to do it justice in anything less than directly transcribing those two books, but alas word limits and human imperfection limit me to just stealing more from Wikipedia:
What may seem like the random motion of senseless chemicals in space, with enough distance and perspective may resemble the chemical exchange of our synapses, a fungal network, or the structure of the universe itself. As above, so below.
The Game of Life through “Fiction”
Now I know people here can have harsh opinions on modern fiction and the transition from narrative to propaganda. However, what I see as one of the most important abilities for a human to have is the ability to see the truth in fiction. Joseph Campbell (expanding on the works of Jung mainly) best described this process through the language of symbolism and archetype. The same patterns and plays that dominate our subconscious dominate our waking reality or at least our interpretations there of. As above, so below.
Short 1
These are the rules of a game. Let it be played upon an infinite two-dimensional grid of flowers.
Rule One. A living flower with less than two living neighbors is cut off. It dies.
Rule Two. A living flower with two or three living neighbors is connected. It lives.
Rule Three. A living flower with more than three living neighbors is starved and overcrowded. It dies.
Rule Four. A dead flower with exactly three living neighbors is reborn. It springs back to life.
The only play permitted in the game is the arrangement of the initial flowers.
This game fascinates kings. This game occupies the very emperors of thought. Though it has only four rules, and the board is a flat featureless grid, in it you will find changeless blocks, stoic as iron, and beacons and whirling pulsars, as well as gliders that soar out to infinity, and patterns that lay eggs and spawn other patterns, and living cells that replicate themselves wholly. In it, you may construct a universal computer with the power to simulate, very slowly, any other computer imaginable and thus simulate whole realities, including nested copies of the flower game itself. And the game is undecidable. No one can predict exactly how the game will play out except by playing it.
And yet this game is nothing compared to the game played by the gardener and the winnower. It resembles that game as a seed does a flower—no, as a seed resembles the star that fed the flower and all the life that made it.
In their game, the gardener and the winnower discovered shapes of possibility. They foresaw bodies and civilizations, minds and cognitions, qualia and suffering. They learned the rules that governed which patterns would flourish in the game, and which would dwindle.
They learned those rules, because they were those rules.
And in time the gardener became vexed.
Short 2
From the Journals of Toland, the Shattered
I drive myself to the edge of madness trying to explain the truth.
It's so simple. Elegant like a knife point. It explains - this is not hyperbole, this is the farthest thing from exaggeration - EVERYTHING.
But you lay it out and they stare at you like you've just been exhaling dust. Maybe they're missing some underlying scaffold of truth. Maybe they are all propped on a bed of lies that must be burned away.
Why does anything exist?
No no no no no don't reach for that word. There's no 'reason'. That's teleology and teleology will stitch your eyelids shut.
Why do we have atoms? Because atomic matter is more stable than the primordial broth. Atoms defeated the broth. That was the first war. There were two ways to be and one of them won. And everything that came next was made of atoms.
Atoms made stars. Stars made galaxies. Worlds simmered down to rock and acid and in those smoking primal seas the first living molecule learned to copy itself. All of this happened by the one law, the blind law, which exists without mind or meaning. It's the simplest law but it has no worshippers here (out there, though, out there - !)
HOW DO I EXPLAIN IT it's so simple WHY DON'T YOU SEE
Imagine three great nations under three great queens. The first queen writes a great book of law and her rule is just. The second queen builds a high tower and her people climb it to see the stars. The third queen raises an army and conquers everything.
The future belongs to one of these queens. Her rule is harshest and her people are unhappy. But she rules.
This explains everything, understand? This is why the universe is the way it is, and not some other way. Existence is a game that everything plays, and some strategies are winners: the ability to exist, to shape existence, to remake it so that your descendants - molecules or stars or people or ideas - will flourish, and others will find no ground to grow.
And as the universe ticks on towards the close, the great players will face each other. In the next round there will be three queens and all of them will have armies, and now it will be a battle of swords - until one discovers the cannon, or the plague, or the killing word.
Everything is becoming more ruthless and in the end only the most ruthless will remain (LOOK UP AT THE SKY) and they will hunt the territories of the night and extinguish the first glint of competition before it can even understand what it faces or why it has transgressed. This is the shape of victory: to rule the universe so absolutely that nothing will ever exist except by your consent. This is the queen at the end of time, whose sovereignty is eternal because no other sovereign can defeat it. And there is no reason for it, no more than there was reason for the victory of the atom. It is simply the winning play.
Of course, it might be that there was another country, with other queens, and in this country they sat down together and made one law and one tower and one army to guard their borders. This is the dream of small minds: a gentle place ringed in spears.
But I do not think those spears will hold against the queen of the country of armies. And that is all that will matter in the end.
Animate (anima, air, breath, soul) implies flow animating form.
Being aka existence; animation implies form within flow.
Matter (materia; Heb. to measure) implies form measured within flow.
Inanimate (destitute of animation)...how does form within flow perceive other form as being destitute of animation; when perception represents communication between flow and form?
What we are perceiving are the consequences of actions set into motion; we perceive the symptoms of motion; while being deceived to ignore the motion causing the symptoms. The motion we are causing represents a transmutation within the momentum of the real motion aka form reacting to each other within flow.
Do you see a delineation (in terms of “life” or “animate”) between, say, a single celled organism which propels itself with a flagella versus something like a wind up toy?
Interesting point regarding “materia”, I would wonder, what does the preffix “ge” mean in hebrew, such that we get “gematria”, itself highly related to numbers as symbolic representation of logic.
Do you refer to us ignoring nature (the agent) for the distractions offered to us, or do you refer to our ignoring reality (the stage, as opposed to the agent) by fixating on fiction?
Single represents ONE (form) ignoring ALL (flow); Cell represents ONE within ALL, Organ represents ALL within ONE; -ism represents ONE suggesting another ONE to ignore ALL.
When we use words like these (single celled organism); our parasites perceive them as feedback loops of our ignorance. They perceive instantly communication without comprehension aka a rhetorical impotence (from lack of potential/comprehension) feedback loop. It shows them that our actions are harmless; because we act upon ignorance.
Energy propels itself into flow (motion); which then winds up form (momentum). Form afterwards acts within the barriers of flow by choice of action to sustain the temporary form within flow.
Energy holds the design (delineation) for ALL (flow) and each ONE (form) within. Flow communicates; form represents.
Gematria (gematriya; geometria) stands for geo (land aka form) and metric (measure aka flow) if you imply motion. Both form and flow represent materia; material; matter; measure of energy.
They apply numerical value to the consequences of flow upon form to measure the odds of growth/loss for windows of opportunity to act upon, while all suggested languages for the rest represent suggested ignorance towards flow. I still have to figure out if the numerical values are in adherence with flow; calculated to the ignorance of form; or both simultaneously?
The distraction suggested to us represents the pull of flow upon form (temptation). The parasites merely industrialized suggestion of temptation by simultaneously corrupting comprehension so that we ignore the flow causing the temptations. Most of us can't explain the difference between need and want without contradicting themselves. They're deceived to think in want/not want; while ignoring need.
The fixation on fiction represents the consequences of consenting by free will of choice to ignorance towards self sustenance of form within flow. This causes the corruption of comprehending being form within flow; hence believing fiction; while ignoring reality.
Agent and Stage...A'GENT, noun - "an active power or cause". STAGE, noun - "representative aka reactive power". So action causes reaction. Also, notice that P'ASSIVE, adjective [Latin passivus, from passus, patior, to suffer.] represents the struggle for self sustenance as the reactive power (form) within the active power (flow).
Ignorance is both choice within form (ONE); as well as loss within flow (ALL) and ONEs choice within to ignore ALL is what causes the corruption of comprehending the multilayered coexistence. ONE needs self discernment to comprehend that flow defines growth and loss for form within, and that form as reaction to flow represents "responsibility" as form within flow; hence the need for free will of choice.
Temptation is always offered; but ignoring responsibility over balance of choice, exponentially corrupts us to fixate on what's tempting us; hence the parasitical merchants dealing with suggested temptations.