What Of Your Essence?

Hi gib

Sorry about the late response. You said to me “Well, if I’ve got you right, the esoteric part would be the special mathematical notation you would use to represent: C depends on B which depends on O. I wonder what symbolism that is.” You do have one side of the equation correct - the other side is more about an unexpressed meaning within the words - a hidden meaning if you will. There is notation that we could use but I think one would be better off inventing a special notation for it that helped to make it clearer.

WendyDarling picked up on what I was meaning - I was guessing she would have before I posted - I also made the contingency for anyone who did not understand clearly what I was saying. I have discovered that one can communicate outside of rationality quite well and still understand perfectly well what the other person is saying when they are doing the same - I have also discovered that emotional communication can give more meaning to some things - in this case it was not really either of those - it was more like my username - I encoded some meaning and WendyDarling was able to decode it - I am guessing there are many other ways to get a point across too.

It really is quite a lot to process since these days we tend to try and remain logical - I think we would lose quite a large part of our history if we let logic do all the talking. O, B and C do indeed build on top of each other - you are correct.

I totally agree with what you are saying here. In the case of spirituality it is a matter of personal choice. I feel that science never offered any logical conclusions on many things - I do love my science but I choose not to rely on it for my spirituality. Other people have helped me with spiritual meaning and hopefully I have helped them too.

When I do my science, I make sure to apply the philosophy to it accordingly - science to me is without spirit.

I was only being figurative that is why I started with “I could also say that change does not require time” note the word “could”. I agree with everything you have said here with the exception of one thing - strangely I find my self almost agreeing however and that is “At the end of the day, I think time and change are synonymous.” and I would have to say, not exactly but close enough is good enough - you are being rational again gib.

:smiley:

On being rational . . .

I know gib - I am sorry if I am a little less strict and rigorous with my words than I should be - I find it difficult to express some things that I do not have tangible evidence for and yet I am still drawn to those things - someone accused me of throwing a wrench in the works - never my intention but often happens with me.

No - lol - I like to compliment somebody if they deserve it. I promise I will not go too far over the top though - and I hope you will forgive me if on the rare occasion that I may go against the grain of that promise. You were the first person here to be openly friendly to me and that I will never forget. You deserve the kind words and I appreciate you not applying too much pressure on me - sometimes I cave in a little with too much pressure - I am only human.

I nearly pissed myself when I read this - I see you still have a great sense of humor - I had a good laugh. Aside from the content I find funny, I totally agree with everything you have written here. Poetry is indeed a good example of a form of communication that conveys both ideas and emotion.

One or two. I think the post has its own essence locked in by time and I think that I have given it some of my own essence as anyone else would in their own posts.

What ever I meant is now lost in the sands of time . . . nah, I am not being totally serious here. I hope it meant something and I hope it has some essence - giving my post something conceptual is perhaps something I might have failed at to a degree - I am sure you will agree however that it is most certainly an encode_decode post.

:laughing:

Hey encode,

Let’s see if I can brush off my memories of what we were talking about. :wink:

Well, I think we can get away with ordinary logician’s conditional. If C depends on B and B depends on O, then we’re saying: if C then B, and if B then O… which is: C → B, and B → O. Of course, that doesn’t capture everything you might have wanted to say, does it?

I think we sometimes think of the human brain too much like a computer. We design computers on purpose to be totally logical. We want them to be consistent and accurate. We don’t want them to sometimes make mistakes or come up with their own opinions.

We have to remember that our brains evolved through a process of natural selection, it wasn’t designed on purpose. We get things right and we think rationally only to the extent sufficient to get us by. It’s amazing how often we make leaps of logic and lucky guesses. We infer so much by instinct. For example, I’m preparing a barbecue, I ask a friend: can you go out and get burgers? I don’t need to specify that I mean buy burgers from the grocery store, not kill a cow and gut the meat out of him. How is it that the brain automatically knows the right interpretation? It’s just conditioned to make these leaps, and good thing because usually it gets it right. And you’re right about the emotional readings in the things we say–not to mention tone and special accents that fluctuate in our speech, and inferring meaning based on context, and a whole list of other things. Sometimes this is way more efficient than having to deduce everything logically, for if the chances that we’d get it right with a bit of implicit guesswork are high enough, we could save a lot of time and mental energy that would otherwise be used to do a full logical deduction.

I try not to make my spirituality depend on science or conflict with science. My spirituality essentially says that the physical universe that science studies is a material representation of God’s mind. This allows science to uncover anything, and I’m still able to say: well, that is a representation of something in God’s mind. It doesn’t matter what science discovers, or what we read in our science textbooks. I also don’t speculate much on what particular experiences or thoughts (I should say “thoughts” in quotes) go on in God’s mind, which means I don’t put any demands on how such experiences or thoughts must be physically represented, so again, science could uncover anything.

The only area of science that comes into conflict with my spirituality is quantum mechanics–having to do with non-determinism–but even there, a minor tweak to my theory fixes that.

No need to apologize. I was saying that poetry and metaphor, though requiring a bit more penetrating insight to get, also delivers a bigger punch when it succeeds. Sometimes we need to be strict and rigorous when communicating, but sometimes it’s worth using poetry and metaphor.

Hopefully not the last.

:laughing: Sure, I guess you have to decode your own posts sometimes. That happens to me a lot. I don’t think a person’s words ever lack meaning. Obviously, when we speak, we have something in mind which we’re trying to convey. Sometimes we lose that meaning, we forget or our brains can’t quite capture it as it once could, but it’s very rarely the case that we intentionally decide to utter a bunch of babble.

I guess I “love to be in love,” like Augustine said of himself.

encode_decode,

Loonies?

Are they those who need to be put away for their our safety and our own?

Aside from that, we keep ourselves in check. We regulate our own behavior.

Most of us like to be in love. It’s part of our psyches. We just need to choose carefully who or what that is…whether it is a person or nature or the universe or an algorism.
We need to choose carefully what our passions are.

If the lefties, the loonies, have their way the government will regulate our behaviors down to our very thoughts.

gib,

Name a way in which our origin and our past is capable of changing.

Become an inauthentic being, a liberal leftie, to destroy history and rewrite it, erase our past and the origins of our identities.

Erm, okay Gib…it’s your turn. :evilfun:

Wendy, if that was in response to my post, that is not what I had in mind.

I know, but I’m on a roll with the liberal lefties who are in my sights. If Aaron doesn’t answer your showdown challenge, I’ll defend the aliens (for additional practice).

Erm, okay Wendy… my turn for what?

It’s your turn to answer questions directed at you. :evilfun: :laughing:

Now who is the teacher, Wendy? :stuck_out_tongue:

^ This question, huh Wendy? I didn’t see this at first.

Okay, well my point was that our origin and past don’t change, but I suppose if time travel were possible, you could go back and erase your birth from ever taking place getting yourself stuck in a grandfather paradox. But then again, if Doc Brown from Back to the Future is right, this would only result time fissioning onto a separate branch. You’d still be stuck in a grandfather paradox (Marty’s very existence being in jeopardy), but your original origins would still be pinned down to its original position in the grand blueprints of time and space.

Or how 'bout this: if all reality is subjective, then all you’d have to do is erase your memories of your origins and replace them with alternate memories. But subjectively speaking, you wouldn’t look back on this as a change, you’d just forget your original origins ever happened and only remember your replacement origins which would not have changed according to your subjective point of view. Then, on the other hand, from the point of view of someone else who remembers your original origins, they would think you’ve just deluded yourself, and according to them too (from their subjective point of view), your original origins never changed, you’ve just convinced yourself that they have.

^ That’s all I’ve got for now. Maybe I’ll post some more later if I think of anything.

You are getting slightly warmer, slightly, gib. :evilfun:

Sounds like you know the hot spot, Arc. Why don’t you share your thoughts? :wink:

No, why make it so easy for you. Figure it out. You are a bit closer but you haven’t eaten the hot tamale yet.
lol

Oh, you tough cookie you!

More like a hard nut to crack. I have been told this very often especially by men.
Perhaps I have yet to meet my squirrel. :evilfun:

Well, in any case, I seriously can’t think of any other way of altering your origins than time travel. I mean, what’s in the past is in the past.

But this thread is about one’s essence, which is a little different from one’s origins, so if you’re asking how does one change one’s essence, you’re asking how does one redefine one’s self. ← I’ll meditate over that one and get back to you. :-k