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<DIV>I've looked at George's site and, yes, he and you and I should
talk. We are following entwined trains of thought. But our central
team in my opinion remains you and me. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A Russian trip, alas, will be rough because I have no funding for
the trip and no way to pursue funding that I can think of.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But here's my current view on what George, you, and I are trying to
achieve. The math and the metaphors we are using are provisional.
They're the best we have for now. If we have to use three metaphors
simultaneously to get the feel for something as simple as light, so be it.
If we have to use 20 metaphors to understand a cell, then let us use them
all.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Someday the metaphor will arrive that will encompass all the metaphors and
math we use, and it will encompass all of them in a single vision. But our
metaphors, our visions, depend on two things:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>1) Metaphor depends on our technology. Computer metaphors were
impossible until 1950. Now they are ordinary. Mandelbrot could not have
worked out his fractals without the computers he had access to as an academic
outcast, an employee of IBM in the 1970s. But thanks to those computers,
George, you, and I now have fractals and strange attractors.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2) Metaphor depends on our understanding of ourselves, our cosmos, and our
biology. Metaphor begets metaphor. New machines give us new
visions of the "mechanisms" of things. New mechanisms give us new world
views. Those new world-pictures give us new metaphors.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Right now I'm absorbed in the calculations made by our muscles with
every step we take to keep us upright, defying gravity, and to move us another
step forward without breaking our toes and the bones of our feet. I
suspect that these analog calculations can provide us with new understandings,
new math, and new metaphors. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Lawrence Berger, the sculptor, and I are working on this. He is
working on it with his hands, by sculpting me in the process of thinking.
I am working on it with my mind, trying to grasp the nature of thought and
all that it has achieved with my limited computer, poetry,
art, religion, and math metaphors.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But, Pavel, I know as sure as sure can be that if we do not annihilate
ourselves or drive ourselves into a new dark age, 200 years from now new
metaphors will flow that will paste all of our scattered insights into a single
ball and give new generations new tools to rebel and chafe against, new tools
from which to build the basic steps to yet more metaphors.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 12pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-hyphenate: none; tab-stops: -.5in"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; LETTER-SPACING: -0.15pt">This is
Edward Witten, a professor of physics at The Institute for Advanced Studies in
Princeton, NJ, who has been called by the Scientific American, 'Probably the
smartest man in the world.'<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Witten
made the following comments while being interviewed for STEPHEN HAWKING'S
UNIVERSE "On the Dark Side" episode which aired on PBS
11/03/97:<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 12pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-hyphenate: none; tab-stops: -.5in"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; LETTER-SPACING: -0.15pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; LETTER-SPACING: -0.15pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">"String
Theory, as developed by the mid-eighties, was characterized by the fact that
there were five theories we knew about.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>And that raised a rather curious question, that was always a little bit
embarrassing.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>If one of those
theories describes our universe, then who lives in the other four
universes?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We've come to understand
that those five theories we've been studying are all parts of a bigger
picture.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In the last couple of
years the picture has really changed to something which is called Duality.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Duality, is a relationship between two
different theories which isn't obvious.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>If it's obvious you don't dignify it by the name duality.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So, we have different pictures and it's
not that one is correct and the other isn't correct; one of them is more useful
for answering one set of questions, the other is more useful in other sets of
questions.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And the power of theory
comes largely from understanding that these different points of view which sound
like they're about different universes actually work together in describing one
model.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So, those theories turn out
to all be one, so it's a big conceptual upheaval to understand that there's only
one theory, which is uncanny in nature."</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; LETTER-SPACING: -0.15pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; LETTER-SPACING: -0.15pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">In
the bonds--Howard</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; LETTER-SPACING: -0.15pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 5/18/2005 12:44:13 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
kurakin1970@yandex.ru writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>>
<BR>> <BR>>In a message dated 5/16/2005 12:43:51 A.M. Pacific Standard
Time, <BR>>kurakin1970@yandex.ru
writes:<BR>><BR>>www.neuroquantology.com/<BR>><BR>><BR>>it look
very interesting. I'd suspect that we have the seeds of some joint
<BR>>pieces for them in our correspondence. What do you
think?<BR>> <BR>>You know that I'm a quantum skeptic. I believe
that our math is primitive. <BR>>The best math we've been able
to conceive to get a handle on quantum <BR>>particles is
probabilistic. Which means it's cloudy. It's filled with
multiple <BR>>choices. But that's the problem of our math, not
of the cosmos. With more <BR>>precise math I think we could
make more precise predictions.<BR>> <BR>>And with far more
flexible math, we could model large-scale things like
<BR>>bio-molecules, big ones, genomes, proteins and their
interactions. With a really <BR>>robust and mature math we
could model thought and brains. But that math is <BR>>many
centuries and many perceptual breakthroughs away.<BR><BR><BR>Maybe yes and
maybe no. Roger Penrose discusses in his "New Emperor's Mind" that some
physical processes can in in principle be out of possibilities of mathematics
to describe them. All that concerns such un-computibility is of special
interest for George. Now he interested in DNA
computions:<BR><BR>http://www.keldysh.ru/departments/dpt_17/gmalin/pr.files/frame.htm<BR><BR>These
slides are in Russian but images speak themselves.<BR><BR>I hope that if You
come to join me at QI-2005 at Zelenograd, we discuss this vast. And coffee,
lots of coffee at nights.<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>>As mathematicians, we are
still in the early stone age.<BR>> <BR>>But what I've said above has a
kink I've hidden from view. It implies that <BR>>there's a math
that would model the cosmos in a totally deterministic way.
<BR>>And life is not deterministic. We DO have free will.
Free will means <BR>>multiple choices, doesn't it? And multiple
choices are what the Copenhagen School's <BR>>probabilistic equations
are all about?<BR>> <BR>>How could the concept of free will be right and
the assumptions behind the <BR>>equations of Quantum Mechanics be
wrong? Good question. Yet I'm certain that <BR>>we do
have free will. And I'm certain that our current quantum concepts
are <BR>>based on the primitive metaphors underlying our existing
forms of math. <BR>>Which means there are other metaphors ahead of us
that will make for a more <BR>>robust math and that will square free
will with determinism in some radically new <BR>>way.<BR>>
<BR>> <BR>><BR>>Now the question is, what could those new metaphors
be?<BR>><BR>> <BR>>I, by the way, have a theory about how free will
works in the brain.<BR>> <BR>>Does this sound like something we could
propose as a paper and something <BR>>that we could carry across the
finish line by using the technique you've <BR>>invented for
interlacing and taming the force of our two minds? The
kurakin-bloom <BR>>email conversation technique?<BR>>
<BR>>Onward--Howard<BR>> <BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate
Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution
Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango
Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New
Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology
Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of
Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>