More on muses and memes...
I continue my digression on the meta-musical...
I've even got an information-theory based paradigm that encompasses notions of reincarnation -- however, when I try to lay it out for a lot of folks, it generally seems to prove pretty unsatisfying for those who vest themselves in what I might presume to call illusions of ego, identity and unitary consciousness.
Still... I think I could preach a good case to the choir.
One thing that I think is interesting is that, possibly because I probably seem to many on some level to have a pretty, let's say, flavorful sense of self/identity, when I come out and talk about what I describe as the illusion of unitary consciousness/self/identity, it seems on some level to them like some form of contradiction.
But that's a misunderstanting of my position seemingly born of lack of full understanding of it. For me, the myth of my identity is as as real as anything else. And as imaginary.
You know, Plato had his cave. Each generation and culture has its own set of analogical tools. Today, some of us find it worthwhile or at least amusing to put metaphysical/ontological considerations into an info theory context. But, I gotta tell you, it works for me...
My own ideas about an information theory-based model for reincarnation start looking a lot like the web concept of data persistence -- but they started long before I'd ever heard the term or even used a computer except via a job stack of punch cards.
It was actually trying to draw a set of behaviors out of stacks of anecdotal reports of shade (ghost) phenomena. To me the classic characteristics of such reportage -- a somewhat indistinct, seemingly 3 dimensional apparition, reported by multiple, independent observers to be performing, typically, the same actions over and over made me think of one then, still relatively novel thing: holograms.
As I learned a little more about holograms, I tried to imagine how a human or animal (I've seen what appeared to be a human shade as a child and have, on at least one occasion, and several possibles, seen what appeared to be animal apparitions) might leave some sort of imprint on its physical surroundings.
That one will have to keep on waiting, I guess, but when I began dealing with computers and really thinking about information in its many aspects, it wasn't much of a jump to apply the notion as sort of information holograms... multiple fragments of often redundant information which interact to create a sort of memetic matrix.
It's usually a struggle laying it out to most folks but I was able to get it across to a fellow database programmer friend of mine (a seriously religious Christian who reads a lot of sci-fi, mind you, so not exactly someone unaccustomed to operating on multiple levels at once) in just a few minutes the other night.
I've even got an information-theory based paradigm that encompasses notions of reincarnation -- however, when I try to lay it out for a lot of folks, it generally seems to prove pretty unsatisfying for those who vest themselves in what I might presume to call illusions of ego, identity and unitary consciousness.
Still... I think I could preach a good case to the choir.
One thing that I think is interesting is that, possibly because I probably seem to many on some level to have a pretty, let's say, flavorful sense of self/identity, when I come out and talk about what I describe as the illusion of unitary consciousness/self/identity, it seems on some level to them like some form of contradiction.
But that's a misunderstanting of my position seemingly born of lack of full understanding of it. For me, the myth of my identity is as as real as anything else. And as imaginary.
You know, Plato had his cave. Each generation and culture has its own set of analogical tools. Today, some of us find it worthwhile or at least amusing to put metaphysical/ontological considerations into an info theory context. But, I gotta tell you, it works for me...
My own ideas about an information theory-based model for reincarnation start looking a lot like the web concept of data persistence -- but they started long before I'd ever heard the term or even used a computer except via a job stack of punch cards.
It was actually trying to draw a set of behaviors out of stacks of anecdotal reports of shade (ghost) phenomena. To me the classic characteristics of such reportage -- a somewhat indistinct, seemingly 3 dimensional apparition, reported by multiple, independent observers to be performing, typically, the same actions over and over made me think of one then, still relatively novel thing: holograms.
As I learned a little more about holograms, I tried to imagine how a human or animal (I've seen what appeared to be a human shade as a child and have, on at least one occasion, and several possibles, seen what appeared to be animal apparitions) might leave some sort of imprint on its physical surroundings.
That one will have to keep on waiting, I guess, but when I began dealing with computers and really thinking about information in its many aspects, it wasn't much of a jump to apply the notion as sort of information holograms... multiple fragments of often redundant information which interact to create a sort of memetic matrix.
It's usually a struggle laying it out to most folks but I was able to get it across to a fellow database programmer friend of mine (a seriously religious Christian who reads a lot of sci-fi, mind you, so not exactly someone unaccustomed to operating on multiple levels at once) in just a few minutes the other night.
posted by TK Major at
2:08 PM
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