Hello everyone!

I came across a section in MBT that re-triggered my interest in a fundamental question which I have been pondering for quite a while now:

p. 201:



p. 197



If inanimate matter - such as a rock, dust etc. reverts to the next available lower state of energy: How does it become 'living matter' - in other words: in MBT how does the beginning of life in PMR happen? As it is a VR I would assume that it ought to be programmed - at least on a fundamental level. I can not see how life spontaneously 'evolves' out of matter - since it violates basic principles of the PMR rule set - such as the second law of thermodynamics.

I have - since a teenager [far away from having being influenced by either creationists or intelligent design proponents] had great trouble accepting this fundamentally illogical assumption at the base of the theory of biological evolution or at least an actually necessary subset of it: abiogenesis. I can accept - that once there are living entities these entities evolve and might even generate other branches of entities - but first there either has to be a transition from inanimate matter to living entities or a fundamental program within a VR that creates these beings - either right from the beginning of the VR or at a given time within it. The first is not logical. The latter far more appealing to a logically working mind. At least mine. ;) And since the base of living entities in any way is consciousness I would wonder how consciousness would 'want' to 'evoke' itself into inanimate matter miraculously creating 'first cells' and what have you - rather than 'inhabiting', tuning into or using whatever life-forms are available at a given time to make experiences in order to evolve.

Maybe someone is willing to elaborate upon this. That at least would be very helpful for me in terms of gaining a more workable perspective of MBT. [Or maybe elaborating on this is unnecessary since TC might write about that in later sections of MBT...]

Thank you very much!

_________________
"Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world."

- Dao de jing, 1.

As far as how evolution progressed as it appears within the PMR VR, MBT says nothing about it that science does not discover except that it is and always has been a VR. Also that this VR is generated as probability based calculations by The Big Computer. MBT is not a theory of PMR based science. Science has recently found amino acids that are part of DNA in meteorites coming to earth. Chemicals combined and further combined and eventually all the elaboration of genetically regulated life developed, starting in the tide pools and oceans of earth. Somewhere, whether in situ or coming from space with meteorite material, those precursors to dna developed as well as all the chemicals required for life to form.

We just say that all of that existed in a computer as probabilities of development until a point where a life form was reached that effectively had a decision space and for which choices could be made by an IUOC which started to receive the data stream representing that life form and its environment. The IUOC received the data stream over the RWW and returned its choices back over the RWW to direct the activities of that life form, to be the 'mind', however primitive, of that life form making the available decisions of the decision space of that life form. The life form as a physical body and its experience and interactions here in PMR is simulated by that data stream. What exists as the base reality is the IUOC as its mind, its decision maker. This applies to all life forms with consciousness as they developed up the scale. It parallels the concept of your mind existing within your brain here in PMR.

If you think about the details, your brain is isolated by digital (neuronal) data channels from the action part where sense organs and nerves that generate internal sensations provide the data stream that goes to your brain. Under this PMR based model, somewhere and somehow unknown, your consciousness arises within your brain to experience the outside world and make the choices that determine your action simulated within that simulated outside world. A VR functions in exactly the same way but the simulation is never anything more than a simulation within every conscious entities mind existing as an IUOC on the RWW. The IUOC exists within Consciousness Space or the Larger Consciousness System. Look on the Wiki for the MBT Model. It will explain the development of everything from the Void of ancient mysticism and metaphysics. It is also there in Tom's books but mixed in with much explanation for those with no background to make things clear otherwise.

Here is the link to the Wiki referred to above. http://wiki.my-big-toe.com/index.php/In ... _MBT_Model

Ted

Thank you very much for your answer, Ted.

I will think about what you wrote and when I feel that I have sufficiently contemplated the idea I will write a reply.

_________________
"Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world."

- Dao de jing, 1.

Nemo,

I think you will gain a broader perspective on how this could work once you get to the point in MBT where Tom talks about "AI Guy".

Tom shows how we humans could create another type of sentient being (i.e. life) that exists to make choices within PMR, through our computer technology. We call it Artificial Intelligence (and so does Tom for our convenience) but you'll see that there's nothing really artificial about it.

He will show that all you really need is the right ingredients/properties (memory, processing, self-modifiable, input, and goals... from what I remember) to come together in a physical construct within a virtual reality and consciousness will develop and evolve by making choices within the decision space made available by that physical construct and that consciousness' own limitations. Whether the ingredients come together in a primordial soup in an ocean or on a silicon chip, it does not matter. The "physical ingredients of life" are probably beyond our wildest imagination in other realities with different rule-sets.

The inanimate physical matter evolving towards lower energy states allows for these inanimate physical ingredients to mix and match, move around, change states, alter properties, etc. according to the rule-set. It stirs the pot and creates the potential for the right ingredients to come together.

Here's another viewpoint:

The Larger Consciousness System (AUM, All That Is, whatever) wanted to "create" the rule-sets for various PMRs like ours to have the potential for developing rich interaction for AUM's constituent Individuated Units of Consciousness. It probably tried LOTS of different "ideas" or possibilities, keeping the ones that worked, and getting rid of the ones that didn't. That is also evolution at work - and yet it was also intelligently designed (programmed) at the same time.

It is not a coincidence that our PMR developed life, and yet at the same time from a different viewpoint, it is a coincidence. I hope that helps a bit.

_________________
Mike

Speaking of AI Guy....

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/ ... rroll-text

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/ ... hotography

Nemo,

Read anything you can find on emergent systems. Read Doug Hofstadtter's book, "I am a Strange Loop". Those two puzzle pieces will help putting that together.

Montana

To be clear about those two puzzle pieces ...
Both maintain that consciousness is phenomena of matter rather than, MBT, which maintains matter is a phenomena of consciousness, so to speak.

The reference I added above to the Wiki writeup of Tom's Model includes in the sequence early on in the pages a reference to a web site about cellular automata that includes discussions of emergent complexity and self organization of systems which I believe is what Montana and RBM referred to. I plan to add further such references but have not done so yet. Keep in mind that these are functions associated with pure mathematics, not restricted to material systems. I gave the reference in the Wiki discussion of Tom's Model of CS as our reality because they explain a lot about how the reality cells of Tom's model had the tendency to develop as Tom describes. In our discussions between us, clearly Tom was discussing the same thing in MBT but subsumed it all under the heading of his use of the Evolutionary principle. When Tom talks about evolution he means a great deal more than what a PMR biologist means about what happens in a tide pool or in some other larger ecology. A wider scope to the application of the word and much behavior which arises within systems that can be and has been discussed under pure mathematics related to the emergent complexity of large systems. While this goes back some time in reference to cellular automata, which are a perfect model for the CS as reality cells interacting, much of this later information has only come out in the past decade, mostly after Tom wrote MBT. I wouldn't know about it at all except I have been interested in cellular automata ever since John Conway wrote about his Game of Life back when I was in high school. I even programmed a very limited version of The Game of Life on one of the early TRS 80 computers from radio shack, back when you had 64K of memory as a big system in an 8 bit Z80 processor based machine with 40 characters as I remember across the screen of the display which was characters only. It has always been important to me, even though I am not a mathematician, probably as a 'nudge' from the CS.

Ted

It's funny, I wrote an implementation of the "Game of the Life" in a 2nd level computer science course. It's pretty common to do now. :)

_________________
Mike

Theres a good article in this weeks New Scientist on how it began with RNA
This explains probably the best theory on how simple molecules started the process off. Cant get to the link . Maybe someone can help ?

_________________
Andy Wright

Nemo,

Your query is one that has exercised me too. The 'integration' of two apparent datasets - one of a consciousness unit, and one of a sufficiently-evolved (including, potentially, artificial) virtual structure in the PMR VR, is difficult to grasp as a process. That part of the MBT book was the one which caused me the most problems conceptually. The whole process has ramifications across many aspects of PMR science, too, in my view. As such, I thought it would make an informative subject for a video question to Tom, and both he, and Keith and Donna of MBT Events, kindly agreed. Tom has had a busy schedule recently, but I think his filmed reply to my clip will help greatly to clarify this issue, at least as far as PMR language can allow.

Arthur

_________________
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Both (incorrectly, IMO), conclude that consciousness is a result of matter and form. When consciousness "incarnates" in one of the worlds where form exists, it does so by inhabiting some form (there may be exceptions) and forms evolve over time: Crystals, viruses, bacteria, plants, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, humans. They can become enormously sophisticated and complex ... and these can be modeled by the processes of emergence, and strange loops.

I'm not at all saying that they have to be modeled that. It works for me, and both those ideas (emergence and strange loops) are profound, 'deep' ideas that anyone would do well to have in his NPMR bank account.

-JMO,

Montana

Montana,

One would do even better to understand the details of Tom's analysis and Model of the Consciousness System. Emergence is exhibited there in how the randomness that starts from the Void state can be considered as developing into AUO. This is detailed on the Wiki. Emergence or Emergent Complexity is employed there as the basis for this development. None of us were there to observe so we can only speculate but the very type of behavior observed here in PMR science and pure mathematics can be anticipated to have existed there as the base Consciousness Space, Tom's reality cells with their perturbed and unperturbed states and interactions together, are the very concept of a cellular automaton within which emergent behavior has been observed here in PMR as studied in pure mathematics.

I will have to think further about the concept of a strange loop in this relation. It has been decades since I read Godel, Escher, Bach and I have no idea where my copy is now. Perhaps in a box in my apartment and perhaps lost. I think that it may be akin to a metareality which is explained on the Wiki as being the basis for free will coming into existence as the basis and necessary ingredient for the development of Consciousness. I need more details than I can get from Wikipedia about strange loops. A metareality is something which exists outside of the base energy level of the cellular automaton of Consciousness Space. AUO as it exists as the interconnected communications over what will become the RWW between what will become the major components of AUO's functioning and eventually 'us' as IUOCs. At the level of the reality cells of CS, everything proceeds in lock step deterministic procedure from state to state at the fantastically high rate, from our viewpoint, of reality cells interaction.

The metareality is this communication between the components, the data processing centers, that make up AUO in their communication with each other, exchanging what becomes more and more complex information as Consciousness develops within AUO. This metareality may constitute a strange loop in Hofstadter's terms but I am not yet sure for lack of clear remembrance or present information as to his thoughts and explanations. The free will arises as while the base reality which energizes all of this development of AUO proceeds deterministically, the isolated islands of complexity, the data processing centers, which will become us as IUOCs, independently, i. e. with free will, process their incoming data and put out their output data independently of each other. It is the interaction and developed processing over vast time that eventually develops consciousness starting from the simple process of pattern matching as each 'processing center' recognizes data it wants in the passing stream and sends off the data it generates based upon this input.

All of this is explained on the Wiki now but without the explanations and alternate expositions that Tom originally put into it from his feedback process with his first readers to put in all that they demanded to make the very complex subject intelligible. When (and if) you read and understand it, you will see the difference. To understand it you will have to have some knowledge of cellular automata, emergence and more but until you do, you will not really understand Tom except in simplified metaphors of language.

Ted

I think this page may contribute something to this conversation.
http://www.biocentricity.net/#matter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO4IDDyjUaQ

Jeff,

This is another approach to explaining PMR from within PMR and with PMR concepts. MBT views this reality of PMR as only a sub set of the whole of reality as CS and the myriad of VRs that are created to provide developmental playgrounds for us as IUOCs to develop and thus to advance the QoC and other purposes of AUM of which we are integral parts. They are dealing with what is on this side of a curtain, just as so many others have done and continue to do. This is as opposed to Tom's vision and Model of reality which shows how what is on the other side of the curtain developed, exists and creates what is on this side of the curtain.

Ted