[ExI] Anti-transhumanist crap on Kuro5hin and related.

[Jef Allbright]

I would nominate this for most profound post of the month, if we
actually had such a prize.

- Jef

On 11/11/07, scerir <scerir at libero.it> wrote:
> Giovanni ha scritto:
> I think it is kind of silly to try to "explain"
> evolution in terms of "chance". Chance is a code-word
> for our ignorance. Saying that evolution is driven
> by probabilistic events is not really an explanation
> of anything. It just shows we don't understand what
> really goes on and we recur to statistical arguments
> as the best possible way to model what we don't
> fully understand.
>
> #
>
> This reminds me of J. Steinbeck.
> "Non-teleological thinking concerns itself
> primarily not with what should be, or could be,
> or might be, but rather with what actually 'is'
> .... attempting at most to answer the already
> sufficiently difficult questions 'what' or 'how',
> instead of 'why' ... In the non-teleological sense
> there can be no 'answer'. There can be only pictures
> which become larger and more significant as one's
> horizon increases."
>
> Aristotle wrote about 'hylomorphism' (from hule = stuff,
> and morphe = form, information). I do not know if Aristotle
> thought that forms-informations were the 'evolutive'
> part of the stuff. But it seems possible to me.
>
> It is interesting to point out that a sort of 'hylomorphism'
> is, more or less, evident in fragments of modern science.
>
> In example, there is a difference between physical 'states'
> and the (limited) information carried by these 'states'.
> http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0212084
> http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/zeilinger/foundations.pdf
> http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/links/newscientist/bit.html
>
> See also Wheeler's 'participatory universe'.
> 'All things physical are information - theoretic in origin
> and this is a participatory universe...  Observer participancy
> gives rise to information; and information gives rise to physics.'
> http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/321/wheeler.pdf
> http://forizslaszlo.com/tudomany/wheeler_law_without_law.pdf
>
> Not to mention here Jurgen
> http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/
> and Max
> http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646
>
> Back to the bio? See this interesting entry
> http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=287
> about deoxyribononapproximability :-)
>
> s.
>
> "The only laws of matter are those
> which our minds must fabricate,
> and the only laws of mind
> are fabricated for it by matter."
> -James Clerk Maxwell
>
>
>
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