Why are we here?

First topic message reminder :

(This topic is a continuation of Personalism 102).

Why is there something rather than nothing?  

Looking at it statistically, the likelihood of nothing is minuscule compared likelihood of anything.  

However, from the perspective of modern cosmology, the Anthropic Principle tells that universes with observers are extremely rare.

But, by whose say so, can an unobservable universe be said to exist?  

A related question is what constitutes an observer?

What if any role might sapience play in the act of observation?
………  


But this first post is a header post…….. so I will continue in the following post…….



(cont………)

Yes, Mr J,

Do let’s pivot.

But, first things first.  

I’m hopeful that you may be the first sane and relatively innocent person to have made it through the gauntlet….. to the inner sanctum.  

I was beginning to worry that you’d never make it.

This is how Ron may have felt when Smitty finally showed up at his doorstep……. just at the end of the Cold War…… if your memory goes back that far.

And then I’ve been hanging out on the internet 🛜 ever since.

Only crazy and/or angry people have shown up.  

My kingdom for a normal conversation……..!

So, yes, you came to the right place…….. I’m an eighty year old…… going on five…… being in cold storage for that long……

All the while being coddled by Ron …… who has strict protocols about what we may and may not discuss.

So, ok, back to our putative 5 year old…….

By the way, my two granddaughters are ~5, and they didn’t come via the stork, or maybe they did, depending on your POV.  

The hardest part of the Best Possible World is to have some idea of the Anthropic Principle and the Mind-brain problem.

If you can get that far, then the less you know the better off you are.  

What I’ll do here is give you my yet to be scheduled tasseography presentation.

This was to be given to Adrien Chauvet, 2,3&4, 3’s assistant, and maybe a couple of others, mostly via zoom.  
………..


At what age could a child comprehend the Anthropic Principle or the mind-brain problem?  

They would need to have some concept of the laws of gravity and electromagnetism……… this would be difficult, prior to high school.  

But this is in regard to children who have been brought up with a modern mindset.  

In a post Disclosure world, children would not have to be re-educated.

And what might an educational system even look like, post Disclosure?  

But right now, I’m just holding out hope for a non apocalyptic encounter with the Eschaton…….. where we could begin opening portals without precipitating social chaos.  

This is where I am in conflict with my goddaughter.  

In other words, you have posed a very hypothetical question.

I think we should get back to the Tasseography scenario……

What I am in the process of thinking through is the practicality of some internet forum becoming a 24/7 Tasseography meeting ground.

This is what I have been aiming for since I first got on the internet, back in the eighties……. on the Compuserve UFO forum.  

My earliest postings are still extant I believe……… the links should still exist on OMF…….. if I can find them……..
……….


My earliest post on OMF goes back to 2012, I believe, and may be found in one of the archives listed at the top of this page.

Before that, I was on bestpossibleworld.com.  It was a non interactive site.  

Posts and links there go back into the late 1990’s, I believe, with some going back to the ‘80’s.  I have no idea what, if any, of the Compuserve UFO forum has been preserved.  

So much for history.



(cont…….)

Mr J seems to have left the scene temporarily.

So let’s try to rephrase his question…….

We want to focus on connecting with a neophyte……. someone who has not yet been ground down by modernism.  

But this is what I’ve been practicing on for the last 40+ years.  

I had to struggle for five years with Newtonian objectivity…… after my encounter with Sophia in 1977.  

My thinking is that it may not be advantageous to try to short circuit Isaac.

We do have to force our way through all of his force fields.

But there is only one field that counts, and that is his absolutism.

A lot of smart folks think that Einstein was able to do this with his Relativity, but actually, historically, he only made things worse…… by enabling the Big Bang .  

The Big Bang then tied in very nicely with Darwinism.

Relativity raises the question of the observer.

But poor Albert was seriously bent out of shape when the Quantum came along……. and raised the observer problem to a whole new level.

Since that time, the quantum physicists have been able to do nothing more than to shut up and calculate.

Physics and philosophy had to go their separate ways.

Well, but far too many philosophers allowed themselves to be dragged down in the undertow of Absolutism.

Ha…… think of that undertow as the undertow of the Titanic…..

Many of the passengers who managed to get off the ship, were not able to get far enough away to avoid being sucked down into the abyss.

Many of those who did manage to get far enough away…… they froze to death waiting for the Carpathian.



(cont……….)

Dan and his friends are…weird.

Did the theory of Relativity actually make things worse for Relationalism?  

My contention is that it was a great distraction for philosophers.

It did put an end to the absolutism of Newtonian space…… and time as well……

However, General Relativity put a seal on the absolutism of cosmology.  

The trade off was a definite win for the absolutism that modernism now affords to Science.

There was a residual observer problem, but Darwinism took care of that.

The seal on Modernism was completed with the Atom Bomb…. where we have E = MC^2.

The Bomb was what drove me into physics.

The Bomb definitely had an eschatological dimension.

Physics had definitively placed the bookends on human existence.

If one was serious about any existential question, one first had to grapple with physics.

I did, but it was leading us nowhere……. besides further into Absolutism.

Retrospectively, we can wonder about the morality of the physicists.

They invent the bomb, but refuse to grapple with the eschatology of it.



(cont…….)

Well, no one pays me, I pay myself.

I don’t give two bunny farts about RP.

Don’t take any of this too seriously, none of us is getting out of here alive.

That brings a smile to my black bunny face.

Ok, Bunny boy,

You can stop right there……..

In the absence of Mr J, you are now my five year old……

In contrast, chick is the six year old.  

In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed person will be king.  

I, however, know that you like nothing more than to pretend to be blind.  

And, guess what, you idiot……… 99.9% of those other folks out there that you love to call muppets are mostly just like you…….. pretending to be blind.  

For instance, I know for a fact that you believe in neither Darwin nor the Big Bang ……. but you also try to cover that over.

Also you put on that you care nothing about death.

Well, goody for you……. what a brave man you are!  

I’m reasonably aware that that is also a coverup.

You just don’t know what to do about it, so, like most of us, you follow one segment of the crowd, or another.  

And for anyone who comes along speaking otherwise, your self respect demands that you put them in their place……. which is your place.

Like any good soldier, anyone who sticks their head above the parapet, you shoot at it, with all your vim and vigor.  

You have been helpful in keeping away the day trippers.  

Thank you, but, now you have outlived that bit of your usefulness.

I know that you’re a smart guy who happens to know that scientific materialism or philosophical Naturalism is false……. along with aspects of most traditional spiritual pursuits.

I’m saying that this is not only something worth caring about, but that we have responsibility to find and participate in a solution to our modern malaise.

A starting point would be with the question of our human potential.

Is there any good reason to deny our own potential, or the potential of our fellow beings?

Continuing in our denial mode is unhelpful……. to the point of being criminal.  

If you wish to stick around, and I hope you do, that is assignment, Mr Bunny.  
…………..


Well, wait……..

Mr Bunny is evidently angered by my association with 2.

I can understand that, but I continue to say that I have little or no choice in the matter.

Is there any question about two having the highest known level of official responsibility with regard to the phenomenology issue…… anywhere?

You and I may not like his (seldom) professed politics, but isn’t that mostly irrelevant to the metaphysical issues at hand?
…………


Anyway, back to metaphysical business…….

Well, back to my former mentors who bask in the former glory of nuclear physics, while pressing forward with academic business as usual…….. which mostly entails the denial of any metaphysical dimension……. often claiming that they only progress toward a comprehensive explanation of the world…… no paradigm shifts on their watch……… thank you very much!

There is one very big skeleton in that closet……. the Anthropic Principle.  

I was there, virtually at ground zero, at what turned out to have been the emergence of the AP.

Sixty years later, I’m still angry about the fact that not a word was uttered, in the two years of the colloquia I was attending in graduate school.

Yes, it is still considered to be a major professional embarrassment.

Shut up and calculate…… continues to be the completely dominant regimen……. to the point that physics is loosing what little social relevance it ever had.  

With physics as the crowning example, mathematics is increasingly being imposed on virtually every other academic discipline.  

No point to curse the darkness………
……….


Back to kindergarten…….

Yes, physics in particular…… science in general…… is very reluctant to give up the death grip that it has on the atomic arena.

Personhood continues to suffer in the shadow of that neglect.

But there I go again…….. cursing the darkness.  

And what is three threatening to do?

Blast us with the light of a hundred thousand Suns….. before turning off the only Sun.

three is not talking to me, so my only access is through two…… who is paid to talk to me.  

two could easily arrange for me to talk to RP…….. but he has also gone quiet.

Yes, there is surely a conspiracy of silence, hereabouts.



(cont……….)

When three was five, she separated from the hive. Or that separation was just a bit of hopeful jive. Now the hive has come alive, and all that old jive has taken a crash dive. The Chick has hatched before the hive. His blog is not just a bunch of jive. To the correct door at the proper time he must strive.

Well, RP might be showing a slight bit of potential here, but he does have the dates wrong.  

The separation date was about as near to zero as you can get.

Five was the White House rendezvous.

As far as having the chick jumping through the right hoop….. that was already thirty some years ago when he showed up at two’s door .  

But as far as potential is concerned, there is only one potential that counts…….. and that is the human potential…… even Scott Jones figured that one out, and that was rather before RP’s time.

And there’s only one thing about our potential that you need to understand……. our potential has no limit.

Even Taylor Swift has figured this out.  

The Israelis have been trying to figure this out…… and they’re just slightly behind the time.
………


About the Universe…….. the Universe is a piece of cake…… and the Multiverse is just so much BS.  

We’ve got bigger hills to climb……. but there’s only One hill that matters……. and we’re already halfway there.  

And, sub specie aeternitatis, Pratityasamutpada, we never even left.

Our destiny was fait accompli…… from day one.  

Would a five year old be able to understand this?  

We know one who did….. and you have her number.

Anything more we need to know?  

Ok…….. love has no limit.

And we just did five pages in five paragraphs.

And by my count……. there are really only four (4) words that count.  

And, by the way, Scott Jones, rather appropriately, in this context, is Chickadee.

After the Earthquake, Fire and Wind…….

Suffer the children……..
……..
………….


Get this……..

naturalism, in philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation.  

hmmm……..

The naturalists have no clothes…….. and as long as they keep their clothes off, they’ll be fine!  

As soon as they put on a uniform…….. it’s time to be on your guard .  

The jguy showed us that all we have to do is act naturally.  

It’s taken only about a couple of millennia to pick up on this message.

And I ask you, what could be more natural?  

And, as three told me, it’s all about our entanglements.  

Those are our only garments that amount to a hill of beans 🫘.  

But, wait, what was that last sentence?

The JWST and the LHC are the most unnatural contrivances anyone could possibly conceive.  

If we want to go natural…….. we’d better put a natural limit on our unnatural contrivances.  

And all those entanglements…….. not to worry.  

They’ll just come naturally!  

Look, sports fans……. there’s nothing wrong with the JWST or the LHC, etc………

We just need to understand that they have their own entanglements…… and they don’t have to be ours.  

I did everything I could to entangle myself in those scientific investigations…….. and I survived to tell the tale.  

Scientific investigations are a portal……. unfortunately, most folks don’t make it out to the other side.  

When I realized there was another side……. that’s when I began to flex my wings…….. boots 🥾 on the ground, and wings 🪽 in the air.  

So much for philosophical Naturalism………

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

……….


The founding purpose of Naturalism was for philosophy to align itself as closely with science as possible.  

Perhaps this would be best defined as excluding the Supernatural.  

In other words, the scientific method should be used, inclusively but not exclusively, to investigate the human spirit, for instance.  

Well, ok, is sapience natural or not?  

Is morality natural or not?  

G.E. Moore’s well-known “open question” argument [1903] is designed to show that moral facts cannot possibly be identical to natural facts.  

Is naturalism going to be quite that short lived?  

So hang on……..

If all physical effects are due to a limited range of physically-grounded natural causes, and if moral facts lie outside this range, then it follow that moral facts can never make any difference to what happens in the physical world (Harman 1986).

Yeah, but………

If moral facts cannot influence the physical world, then it is hard to see how we can have any knowledge of them.

(cont………)

Dan

You clearly missed the point of the question and did not answer it properly.

So allow me to rephrase.

Simplify the Best Possible World hypothesis in a way that a Kindergartener might understand it.

Preferably in a paragraph or less.



[a lot of your forum posts on the old omf are preserved btw they're right under your nose if you care to look.]

Mr J,

I do attempt to be polite with my guests, here at OMF.  

But, if you pester me, I am liable to become less polite.  

Off the top, your question is a dumb one, on several levels.

Mind you, I’m not saying that you are dumb…….. I’m merely suggesting that your question seems to be coming from a dumb place.  

Basically, your question has hypotheticals piled on hypotheticals.

So, we have to get back to basics……..

First, Mr J, be aware of your surroundings…….

We are both on thread that is posing the question……. Why are we here?

But, previous threads were titled……. Best possible world.  

I prefer the present title.  

And, yes, the question in this title is much more apropos of ‘our’ hypothetical five year old.  

A five year old should be at the age of ‘why?’.

Why is the grass green, and where did I come from, Mommy?

A mother could lie and say that the child was brought by a stork.

She could tell a lesser lie, and say that the child came from her mommy’s belly.

She could tell an even lesser lie, and say that the daddy had something to do with it.  

After that……… things get more complicated.  

But, see, Mr J, I’m gonna be really smart about this……… I’m going to throw the question back at you…….. Where did you come from, and why are you here?

My point is that neither of us know…….. but here we are…… you and me, together……. and we’re trying to make the best of our situation.  

That’s what I would attempt to explain to the child.  

But you’re not a child, and, particularly, you are not my child……. so I have no idea if we are in this together.  

So, let me remind you why I am here……..

I am here because I have come to the conclusion that nobody has the answer to our most basic question……..

…… as asked, notably by Paul Gauguin……. Who are we?  From whence do we come……. and whither do we go?  

This is a bit of a tricky question.

Allow me then to revert to the original question, as posed in the title to this thread.  

A very stupid, even hideous, answer was given in the Source, where most of our questions are supposed to be answered.  

I’m referring to the Source of the Prophetic Tradition…… the Old Testament, in particular……. as known to the Christians.  

Here’s the given answer……… shut up and multiply.  

The jguy came along and told us that we are here because of love.  

That was a vastly better answer.  

And then he vastly outdid himself……..

He says, in effect, that love is only a partial answer.  

The fuller answer will be revealed to us in due course, when we are ready to hear it.  

I’m here to tell you……. ready or not, here comes the Truth.

I can tell you this with considerable assurance…….

I can tell you, with considerable assurance, that the Truth is within each and every one of us.

I’m here simply to help prime our Truth pumps.

I’m coming not as a messenger of the Truth.  

I’ve come here as the spirit of the Truth.  

And, more particularly, I’m here to awaken that Spirit, which resides in each and every one of us.  
…………


Ok, my first response to Mr J, this morning, was hardly ideal, and not even the best possible.  

In point of fact, I can hardly remember anyone here asking even a relatively straightforward question.  

I was shocked!  

In the process of recovering my senses, I realized that Mr J had sent me through a portal……. presumably unwittingly, on his part……..  so I now have a better idea of what a portal is.  

What is a portal?

It is, most basically, and most simply, a gestalt switch……. it is like being born again, let’s say.

And this little interaction sheds more light on my interaction with two and three.  

Three claims to have led to portals, but I have refused to enter.

There are two parts to that sentence…… the claim and the alleged refusal.  I don’t know that either part is true.

What I am fairly sure of is that I probably wouldn’t have been here to receive J’s prodding, if it were not for my prior interactions and proddings from two and three.  

This is a team effort.  

The phenomenon of the jguy was also a team effort.

Unfortunately, most of the j-team would have none of it.  

Well, we have to be careful here…… every word counts.

A signal ingredient of the BPWH is that there is no such thing as misfortune.  

There is a reason for everything……. for every damn little annoying detail…….. such as for Mr J’s ‘dumb’ question.  

Now, just right now, I better understand the reason for my seemingly abortive trip to Iceland .  

It was a set up……. the entire abortion of it.  

It may well be that two and three are just a setup…….. the best possible setup for the best possible revelation.  

And now, maybe, we’re seeing it.  

And I’ll tell where is going to be the ground zero of this revelation.  

The ground zero is going to be the Wikipedia……. and/or the SEP.  

The SEP is academically sacrosanct.  

The Wikipedia……… not so much.

What I propose is that ‘we’ make a move on Wikipedia……. particularly on the entry labeled Naturalism…… which I haven’t even looked at, yet.  

We will attempt to use the Wikipedia entry in order to critique the SEP entry……… which is pretentious out of all proportion……. pretentious with its academic professionalism.  
……….


The issue before us is whether we are here by accident…….. and that we have even become interlopers on Nature.  

This is a double whammy being perpetrated on us through academia, most of which is government supported.

Donald Trump is trying to exploit this issue politically……. by siding with the Christian nationalists……. despite it’s being very obvious that he is no part of being Christian…….. nor are any of the billionaires who love to throw money at him.  

This is exactly what Putin is doing in putting a halt to the expansion of capitalism in Europe.

These political developments underscore the urgency of putting an end to the rise of secularism……. ie Naturalism.  

On the other hand, we have three threatening to open the portals in a precipitous fashion.  

To placate chick , two is allowing me to make a presentation remotely to the Tasseography group.

Well, Ron, this is much too little……. much too late.  

Are two and three using up their welcome?

They have been very helpful, but they are not watching the clock.  

The time is running out for all of us.  

Would attacking the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy be the best use of our increasingly precious time?

It would be a lot quicker if the Princess would open up about the opening, but I would have to persuade the Footman.  

The problem is that putting the portal phenomenon out in front is liable to be counterproductive.  

The whole point is that God’s Truth is within…….. it is not out there, somewhere.  

Wonderful, but where are my collaborators?

Will I have to take on the academic establishment single handedly?

Is this supposed to be a rematch of David and Goliath?

Are the anonymous visitors here, and you know who you are……….. are you going to be placing bets on the side?

I guess it’s time for me to contrast the Wikipedia article with the SEP article.



(cont……..)

I am acutely aware of my surroundings.

Do not threaten me, old man.

You have not conducted yourself in a way that conforms to the word polite over these recent years.

If you cannot explain your philosophy in a simple and coherent way to a person who is totally ignorant of it then you do not have a philosophy or a "hypothesis".

Try again.

Fair enough……..

Our hypothetical is no longer a five year old, but the graduate of a secular college……. going about his or her business.  

We meet up in a coffee house.  

So, what do I do for a living?

Well, I work with the CIA…….. mind you, I work with them……. not for them.  

Ok……. so what do you do WITH the CIA?  

I participate in their Endtimes project.  

Is it a big project?  

There’s only one other person, I know of……. let’s call him two.  

And he’s only part time.  His full time job is assassinations……. and I have some reason to lend some credibility to that assertion.

So, ok, we have a government project that consists of an assassin and an amateur philosopher.

Isn’t that an unusual setting for doing philosophy?

True, but the point is that these are unusual times……. as some of us have noted.

For instance, my philosophy deals with eschatology.

I’m not the only eschatologist, but I’m the only known one working WITH the government.

Ok, but so what?

Well, my eschatology derives from the philosophy of personalism.



(cont…….)

Why would assassinations be a full time job? That seems like an "on call" job rather than full time. Endtimes sounds more grandiose than assassinations. It it the assassination to end all assassinations.

Fair enough………

In the best possible world, assassinations make sense only under the regime of the Katechon.  

We could even speculate that his main job is to eliminate my competition…….. so as to keep things nice and personal.  

You may have noticed that there have been no (other) wannabes, within the sound of our voices.

Isn’t it a bit unfair for a philosopher to go around eliminating other potential philosophers?

For instance, the jguy never had that problem.  

Well, but do recall that the jguy emerged amongst the Chosen.  

I had no such luck .

I had to take advantage of two to eliminate the unchosen.

I know, being a prophet can be a dirty job……. but someone……

Ok, yes, tongue in cheek……. but the best possible world is also, necessarily, red in tooth and claw.  

Why all the blood 🩸?

That’s not such an easy question to answer.  

But, first, how did we get from personalism to the best possible world?  

That is an easier question to answer.  

Yes, in the first instance, we like to think of ourselves as the children of  our Godfather, and not just as somebody’s spawn.  

Or, a personal world is necessarily personal…… ie., finite and self-contained.  

Wonderful……..  but what about the Father?  

Somehow, we’re gonna have to bring the old man down to size…….. aren’t we?

I’m thinking that this could be a two step process…….

We bring the old guy down here……. and then we bring ourselves up there……… Incarnation followed by Rapture, in other words.  

Hey, no problemo!

We’re already most of the way there…….. Rapture being facilitated by the 10^5 portals.

And, then, on the other side, instead of the associative Disorder…… we have a love feast……. Agape/Apocatastasis……. as we welcome each other back Home .  

Have we left anything out?  

Is everyone still with us?  

So, and…….. what we see is what we get!

Not only do we see the philosophy…….. we get to see how it is being implemented.  

We end up with egg …….. in our beer ………. !  

And I did leave something out………. besides Agape and Apocatastasis, we also have Pratītyasamutpāda……… smitty does love those long words.  

About all that blood 🩸……… it’s just about metabolism……. which is love on Earth…….. hey, we do love to eat, don’t we?  

So there you have it…….. co-Creation……. without the Creator.  

It’s a bootstrap operation……. just ask Geoffrey Chew…… and the cosmic bootstrap just works off of Pratītyasamutpāda!

We are getting this mother whittled down to size, aren’t we?  

Did I forget the Logos Spermatikos…….. I hope not!  

And, if we don’t want to wait around for three to open the portals, we can just amble on over to Wikipedia, and start a conversation between the Naturalists and the Personalists.

Hey, between chick and his goddaughter ……. it’s just love and kisses .  



(cont………)

We will end when we end.

Dan can’t have much time left, then thankfully all the Boomers will leave and we will do our best to clean up their awful ignorant mess.

Narcissistic monsters.

Chaos has its place, as we do.

When one gets a feel for the big swells and waves life isn’t so clueless, but still, we don’t know anything really or why we really do what we do.

We thank the deplorables for their deplorable service.

Make the most of the time you have.

Find the pearl and never let go.

Dream the dream of gods.

The end.

Well, Bunny Boy,

Would you rather go out with metaphysical bang, or a nuclear whimper ?

Life will continue as long as it can.

Stop messing with it.

It takes care of itself.

Just go with the flow and enjoy.

Bunny Boy is naturalist…….. he goes with the flow.  

That’s ok , if you’re just paddling your canoe to the sea.  

Some of us see our personhood as having an unlimited potential.  

Becoming one with the One is……. just a bit too much for our furry friends.  

Let’s keep our feet firmly planted on the Earth.  

Blue sky dreams are not for us.    

I would definitely agree…….. .    

However, Mr Bunny sees humanity as destined for the nuclear waste heap.

He could care less.

But then what does he make of our personhood?

Is that just a flash in the night……. atoms swerving in the Abyss?



(cont………)

Self reliant naturalist with a helluva lot of help.

Subjective consciousness is not the main character here.

We can relax.

I’m not driving this car.

Weird to watch it drive itself.

So, Mr Bunny,

How do we know that this is not a Dream?  

Have you been able to dream up a better dream?

If we are in the midst of a cosmic accident, from whence comes all your ‘help’?

Why are you so fortunate?  

But ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.  

Basically, you suggest that our minds are mainly just a burden.

We must use whatever techniques we can to quiet our minds.  

What about science and technology?  You have lived very comfortably off of science and technology.  

Where did science come?

Is it just another accident?

Then chick comes along and somehow manages to disturb your peace and quiet.  

I guess you want me to apologize.  

But I did not come to you.  

You keep coming to OMF out of your own free will.  

Ah, yes, you are afraid that, in cahoots with the CIA, I am trying to start a cult……. for some ungodly purpose.  

And what about the jguy……. where does he fit into your rogues gallery?  

On your estimation, we should have stayed in our caves until Hell froze over……. or we would all be better off, to never have existed.  

Life is an absurdity in a meaningless universe.  

How does your outlook differ from that?  

This is what most of your fellow mystics believe……. we just want to go back to sleep……. in Nirvana.  
………


I’m under the impression that Nothingness is the only thing that can’t exist.  

The only real phenomenon is the observed phenomenon.  

Before anything, there must be an observer.  

Could not an accidental observer simply will itself back out of existence?

I would go back to Geoffrey Chew and the cosmic bootstrap……. and Pratītyasamutpāda.  

And this bootstrap must include an observer……. and not just any old observer.  

There would have to be a minimal observer.  

Ok, but this minimal observer can’t just arise in a vacuum?

Even in a vacuum there are liable to quantum fluctuations.

The spontaneous fluctuations tend to be loops.

Doug Hofstadter has suggested that we have ‘strange loops’ of a logical sort.

These loops would necessarily include an observer…… and their original purpose was to explain the emergence of consciousness.

Ok, so what is our minimal strange loop…….. and we are back to the minimal observer.

Sure, there could be random phenomena witnessed by random observers…….. fluctuations in the abyss……. flashes in the night.



(cont………)

Chick's ship is about to come in. Time for Chick to take it for a spin. The world is round, or so they say,
it would be a shame if he sailed away. For he has earned the right to a Tasseography.

The poor Princess……..

Once the chick gets a grip, he is hard to shake off.  

I am working up a Tasseography presentation, right here.

What we see is what we get.  

We may rest assured that two and three have my phone number…….. by the way it is fourfourthree sevenninenine 7201.

Poor chick, he has to sit 24/7 by a silent phone.  
…………


So, what is the minimal loop, necessarily including the minimal observer?  

This is the trickiest part of the whole BPWH.  

The minimal observer can’t just be sentient.  

It would have to have a minimal sapience, with a minimal memory.  

Ok, that’s the easy part.  

It gets tricky when you bring in Pratītyasamutpāda.  

This primordial observer would be something like a turtle , packing its own shell.  

If we think of the turtle as a Creator, it would have to pack its own Creation…….. just for instance!  

And this is not happening in space and time.  

This is happening sub specie aeternitatis.  

And you can be sure that the Logos Spermatikos is lurking nearby.

What more can any mortal say?

Athena springs fully formed from the head of Zeus.  

Yes, a very significant aspect of our strange cosmic loop is its proclivity toward a dissociative disorder.  

This Disorder is brought on by the immersion of our primordial creature……. in its very own isolation tank…… kind of like the proverbial brain 🧠 in a vat.  

Basically, it hallucinates its own imaginary playmates.  

As a bootstrap operation the playmates hallucinate each other, as well.  

Ok, sure, it’s a cosmic circle jerk……

In there, somewhere, some proto Gottfried dreams up the BPWH.  

The rest is history……. more or less.



(cont…….)

From learning about the Anthropic Principle in 1975, it took me five years of struggling with conventional cosmology, before I finally realized that I could and should cast it aside.  

In the midst of that struggle was my encounter with Sophia, in 1977.  

three has stated that she was on the other end of that encounter.  

The dream encounter with Sophia was followed, within a few hours by my waking encounter with John 16.12ff.

Something about that combination…….. motivated me to go big on the metaphysics.  

I was opened somehow to the possibility of a paradigm shift.

The paradigm shift arrived as a personal gestalt switch, when I had my close encounter with Kit Williams’ Masquerade, in ~1981.

In the meantime, the rest of the physics and philosophy communities have been moving in this same direction, but at a glacial pace.  

And, at the same time, we have the global situation deteriorating…… along several dimensions……. while two and three are threatening to open the portals……… imminently and precipitously.

And Adrien Chauvet has subsumed my philosophical role……. although I may be vouchsafed a guest appearance before the Tasseography group.  

But I’m reluctant to jump into a group setting, without preliminary, individual discussions.  

It could much too easily turn into an ambush…… which I have already experienced, thereabouts.  

three has not gotten over the Patagonia incident.  
………..


We are simply not getting to a paradigm shift by logical induction.  

In the case of the Copernican revolution, we had the moons of Jupiter to lead the way.

three has not volunteered to open a portal for inspection……. it may not even be possible for her to do that.  

All we can do for now is to exercise our powers of deduction.  

Even that much requires a leap of faith.

So…… from whence do we start deducing?  

Do we have to go all the back to the One?  

I see no alternative.

Ok…… so what is the One?

The One is the primal observer.  

It is what most folks think of as the Creator……. if they are of that persuasion.  

But I’m not going to be able to start from there, given our modern context.  

A modern might think of a quantum observer.  
………….


So how do we get from a photographic plate……. to God?

We don’t.

Physicists have done their very best to eliminate the human observer from the observation process.  

Nowadays, most observations are automated……. yes, they rely almost entirely on instruments.  

The human has been cut out of the equation……. allegedly.  

Who needs Schrödinger’s cat ‍?

Ok, they’ve cut the cat out, as well.  

We are left with black boxes.  

So…….. it’s fast forward to….. shut up and calculate.  

And we have the whole modern world to prove the effectiveness of this arrangement……. we’ve cut out the cat and the person.  

So who’s complaining?  
………….


Well, ok……… I’m going to have to complain…… starting with this article……… https://www.templeton.org/grant/physics-of-the-observer-2  ……. Physics of the observer……. Spurring new discussion on the crucial — and crucially overlooked — role of the observer in physical systems, from quarks to the cosmos.

But it doesn’t seem to have spurred any discussion.  

What I see missing from the discussion of the observer problem is any mention of the possible issue of sentience vs sapience.

It was von Neumann who stipulated that consciousness must be involved.

Wheeler spoke of the Participatory Universe, with the implication that the participators in question were human. His student, Frank Tipler, with his final Anthropic Principle, was making a similar implication…… but I’m not recalling that any particular reasons were spelled out.

I’m suggesting our sapience is equivalent to our having a pipeline or portal into the cosmic intelligence, as well as into an Akashic Record.



(cont………)

Don't scuttle your boat to an old smelly goat. Don't go down from above for an old bunny love. You are the captain with your one working eye. Set sail in the morning but don't say goodbye. When the tea is poured you will know what to say. You master the small world, while the Others go astray.

Thank you, RP,

I was moving in that direction when my editing vanished into the ether……

I have to be diligent about not trying to post more than a few sentences at once…….
…………..


In short, I was pointing to the observer/measurement problems….. both of which have proven intractable.  

The solution I’m suggesting is fall back on Relationalism……. where there exist neither subjects nor objects……. nor isolated persons, for that matter.  

In short, reality is necessarily a social construct.  

But even that is an oversimplification.  

A few months ago, I was saying that this is the best possible world.  

But then I began realizing that this didn’t make sense, because there can be no such thing as a second best world.  

Let’s put that thought aside……..

Let’s go back to Relationalism and social constructs.

There can be no individual persons or objects.  

Nothing can exist in isolation.  

But can a society exist in isolation?

I don’t think so.  

Only one world can exist, and that world must be totally complete….. whatever that means.  

Nothing of significance can be left out.  

But, on the other hand, that one complete world must be personal…… it must be quantitatively finite……. everything has to be squeezed into that one arena.

Now, this brings us back to the bootstrap model with Geoffrey Chew.  

Our only possible world will have to be self constructing and self contained.  

The notion of codependent arising, Pratītyasamutpāda, will be important.  
…………


Pratītyasamutpāda is very important in the vicinity of the Alpha and Omega.

What’s the opposite of Dissociative Identity Disorder?

It looks like we’re about to find out.



(cont……..)