[ExI] Minds, Personalities, and Love

[Mike Dougherty]

On 6/26/07, Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:
> Sorry for this being so drawn out, but you know how it goes between
> us.  I'm going in this direction only far enough to test whether you
> and I both agree that the person's state is entirely determined in
> physical terms, nothing essentially mystical in the background.  I
> think this is a safe bet, but want to confirm agreement on this before
> proceeding to ask a question assessing how our understanding might
> differ.

I wonder how you define "mystical"

(From Wikipedia) The Lorenz Attractor: "From a technical standpoint,
the system is nonlinear, three-dimensional and deterministic"  It
models "chaotic flow"

Suppose two people are represented as the fixed points, and the third
point (the one which traces the graph) is their mutual
understanding/awareness of each other over time.  That either (person)
is ever able to appreciate the graph at all is [imo] approaching as
much description of "mystical" as any other use of the word.

Of course the most concrete idea here is that of the Lorenz Attractor.
 My concept of it is probably different than yours (the reader) as
much as either of us has a different appreciation than the author(s)
of that Wikipedia page.  If after those differences are resolved, the
point I attempted to make may be nearly lost due to so much context
dependency on my own POV.

I will agree with what I thought your direction was - that objectively
isolating the starting conditions and exposure to physical processes
can lead to a deterministic prediction of state.  Is that objective
isolation computationally feasible (or possible?) in as many
dimensions as human interaction occurs?  (if one were to constrain the
dimensions to be computable, would the model be an accurate enough
approximation of reality?)

"hmm..."