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May 15th, 2009 by Sean Non-existent Existence

A brief update: Thank you to everyone who has e-mailed me concerning the call for volunteers. We’re working on getting something going, so stay tuned. With that said…

A lot of what I think about is abstract and without evidence. Forgive me if this is yet another post that indulges my hypothetical self.

I’ve been thinking about life after death, along with emergence, and the problems of Atheism. I had a thought: what if emergent properties, which don’t exist in their own right, actually do exist?

Let me give you an example. Suppose you take a rubik’s cube, and mix it up. After about a hundred random spins, it’s reached the maximum “mix” - you could mix it more, but it doesn’t really add complexity. In this mixed up state, there exists a certain sequence of moves that will solve it in the least amount of steps. Perhaps you are only 15 spins away from the solution. The problem is that you don’t know what those 15 spins are. The point is that those 15 spins exist.

In order to find those 15 spins, you would have to do quite a bit of calculation. It’s not a simple problem. A brute force strategy (where you try every possible combination) might take you a couple thousand years on a modern computer. Of course, at the end of that 5,000 year period, you would be certain the final solution is the fastest possible sequence… you’ve tried every possibility! (There are smarter ways to go about solving this problem, but we’ll save that for another day :-P)

When you hold a mixed up rubik’s cube in your hand, a fastest solution does exist. Not in reality, though… you can’t grab it. It’s a numbers game. It exists as a concept, independent of reality. If we imploded the universe, the mathematical concept still exists. There may not be any minds around to understand the concept, but it still exists, as a mathematical truth.

…Now for the real question:

Can a mathematical concept be conscious?

It doesn’t really make sense, at first. Math is abstract. Consciousness is an emergent property of organized brain cells (right?). Math exists in the sense that the idea exists in our head… but it doesn’t exist like a rock does. Math is intangible - not physical. Immortal. No beginning or end.

Let’s take it from another angle: We know that consciousness exists, because we are conscious, and we exist. So there must be a mathematical model for consciousness. Even if you believe in a magical unexplainable soul, you still have to recognize that we can do some cool neural-net stuff with artificial intelligence, and it’s only a matter of time before we make a computer program smart enough to simulate more advanced forms of awareness. The math is there.

The mathematical concept of consciousness exists. The numbers, and their movement, exist as a concept. If the universe implodes, the concept still exists… it isn’t dependent on physical reality. It’s a self-contained, independent, idea. That idea can be implemented in carbon-based lifeforms, or electrical circuitry of a computer, or rocks in sand, or any Turing-complete system.

So am I this immortal concept? Is reality?

8-|

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

### 16 Responses to “Non-existent Existence”

1. Sothilde Says:
   May 17th, 2009 at 6:43 am

   “Consciousness is an emergent property of organized brain cells (right?)”

   Why do people keep making this assumption? It only limits one’s possible scope of tought about reality.

   The answer usually is that people don’t realise this is only an assumption. You can only see the true nature of reality if you stop making these kind of assumptions about how reality works.

2. Raathuus Says:
   May 17th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

   “You can only see the true nature of reality if you stop making these kind of assumptions about how reality works.”
   -Sothilde

   But are we able to see the true nature of reality? Are our minds capable of comprehending such a thing? Something to to think about (on a subject that is potentially unthinkable).

   When one tries to think about everything, they are limited by themselves. Imagine the universe as your computer. A lot of things are going on within it, most of which you can’t see. Your monitor is how you perceive everything. Without the monitor, you can’t tell what’s going on. With it, you can only see what it outputs, not what’s truly going on.

   I think that some things in the universe are unthinkable based on what we can perceive. Imagine if we couldn’t see color. Now imagine YOU could. How would you explain it to everyone else?

   Thinking about how unthinkable these things are, I just start thinking about how delicious these barbecue potato chips I’m eating are :).

3. Psikillion Says:
   May 19th, 2009 at 9:26 am

   @ Sothilde

   “You can only see the true nature of reality if you stop making these kind of assumptions about how reality works.”

   I personally think that if you stop making assumptions about how reality works then you see reality in an unbiased way, not its true nature. Knowing everything that happens in reality is beyond our reach because it is so vast and our views of it are growing.

   If you actually meant unbiased, then you could have written it a little better.

   Stupid English language!

   @ Raathuus

   Good metaphor.

   In regards to explaining the color to the color blind, I would not be able to if I was restricted on sight. However I can still describe the emotional appeal of the color to such people.

   Let’s say that I am with such a person, and he (or she if it really matters to you) asks me what color of shirt I am wearing. I am currently wearing a bright orange t-shirt, but I cannot explain what it looks because the person is color blind. What I do know is that whenever I look at anything bright orange it stands out or shocks me. With this knowledge I can say to the color blind person that I am wearing a t-shirt that stands out like a man suddenly shouting in a quiet place. (I would normally say library but I can never be sure the person knows what a library is)

   My cat and I like barbecue potato chips too.

4. mrj Says:
   May 19th, 2009 at 6:51 pm

   Must we always use our minds to try and understand? We go down a road and turn in many directions based on that road, assuming all other roads are a branch off of such.

   Why not drive in the other direction?

5. Mr. Tallyman Says:
   May 26th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

   I believe in the laws of nature.. the infinite ratio of the spiral, and the infinite mass of space..

   If you cut something in half, you will still always have half no matter how many times you slice it.. this would mean that it is possible for infinite smallness. But what does this mean, and what is infinity?

   Infinite smallness means that even the smallest particles have an infinite mass.

   and what is infinity? 8.. the symbol for infinity..

   It ends where it starts.

   The rules for studying the cosmos, does not apply on a quantum level, because the infinity is just too big for us to capture right now. But, I think as soon as you break a particle down enough, you would find a whole universe inside an atom, and vice versa.. it ends where it begins, and keeps going to infinity..

   8X8 = 64 = the number of divided cells in an embryo before any recognizable features show up..

   The laws of nature are just so.. law of gravity, law of electromagnetic currency, quantum theory, and cosmo theory, are all perfect.. if the big bang created it all, that would be like an explosion that sent a sliver of wood flying outwards, into a perfect stand still, straight up, on end for a billion years.

   So if the laws are perfect, then the universe is as well..

   and if the nature of life depends on the golden ratio.. then the nature of life is infinite as well.

   you are the evolution of the universe which is exploring itself.. it is a self replicating pattern.

6. AngelsFall Says:
   May 31st, 2009 at 10:55 pm

   that last post kinda went everywhere tallyman >_>

   there is a limit on smallness, or there is a posited limit on smallness, the Planck scale.

   “space” is not infinite mass.

   ok now i’m going off-topic as well

7. AngelsFall Says:
   May 31st, 2009 at 10:57 pm

   that doesn’t make any sense, i just typed this whole long argument to Sean’s post and little 4-line mess up there is all that posted…

   lemme try this again. forgive me if this ends up being a fragment because i’m not gonna clutter this blog with a triple-post if this doesn’t work >_>

   @Sean: personally i don’t believe the mathematical concept exists outside of the human mind, which created the math. the objects that there is a ratio between exist, but we are the only ones who can attach the extra “4:3″ or whatever to it.
   there may be a mathematical model for consciousness, but the math itself isn’t the consciousness, just as you can paint an intricate painting of a tree yet it is not the tree [problems with converting 3D to 2D aside].

   i dunno if consciousness is an emergent property of our brains, so i won’t touch that part of your post.

   anyway:
   a concept doesn’t still exist if the universe implodes because a human mind created the concept. in a randomized Rubik’s cube, there is a shortest/fastest route to solving the cube, which is mathematically sound and well-tested… but this is a concept humans have created.

   “Perhaps you are only 15 spins away from the solution. The problem is that you don’t know what those 15 spins are. The point is that those 15 spins exist.”

   there is a concept that humans have created that deals with the fastest method to get the unorganized Rubik’s Cube into the “solved” state. in our minds, the concept exists. as a related concept, we recognize that if we make a certain sequence of 15 spins, we will “solve” the cube. the 15 steps themselves don’t exist outside of our minds, they are possible actions that we could take that we are turning over in our heads.

   in conclusion: my argument is that i don’t think the emergent properties exist if they aren’t conscious. consciousness may be an emergent property, and certain mathematical properties may be as well, but i don’t think they’re conscious.

   all pure-blooded Chinese men are Asian, but not all pure-blooded Asian men are Chinese.

   or at least, that’s my interpretation =D

   random: i used to dabble in speedsolving myself =D

8. Mr. Tallyman Says:
   June 1st, 2009 at 4:13 pm

   Ok.. “space is not infinite mass”

   Then what do you suppose is outside the universe?

   I asked myself if infinity could exist a long time ago.. and I found an infinity that did exist!!

   Microphone feedback!

   The mathematical equation for this phenomenon is a ‘recurrence relation’ sequence, just like the Fibonacci numbers. How interesting.. out of this formula, we see a balanced system of growth throughout nature.. (phi ratio) and from it, we can produce the Mandelbrot set, which gives us a glimpse at nasty infinity which we call ‘fractals’.

   This is not too off topic if you use your creativity.. we are discussing existence, after all..

9. AngelsFall Says:
   June 2nd, 2009 at 3:21 am

   i’m not saying space isn’t infinite [though that is arguable], i’m just saying you’re using the word “mass” inappropriately here xP

   the Mandelbrot and Julia sets are fascinating, but i’m not a math person, so i’ll leave that alone for now xP

10. Sean Says:
    June 14th, 2009 at 8:44 am

    According to modern science, space is definitely NOT infinite. It is expanding at the speed of light. This is where the theory of the big bang comes from - science measures how big the universe is, how fast it’s expanding, and then does the math in reverse to get the age of the universe.

    So you can’t go “outside” of the universe, because that would mean you are traveling faster than the speed of light, which would require an infinite amount of energy (because you have mass).

    @AngelsFall: Humans didn’t create math. Math is a system that exists outside of the human mind, that humans have discovered. This sounds a bit weird, but it’s true. This is why math is called the “universal language”, because any intelligent animal can discover math just like we did.

11. Mr. Tallyman Says:
    June 15th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

    I have heard that the universe is speeding up.. care to explain this? ‘Cause there’s nothing faster than the speed of light, right?

    The chaos theory is the plague of modern science..

    It takes us further away from a unified field theory where science and nature are balanced.

    Infinite energy to travel the speed of light?

    Are you thinking fossil fuels? Yet another plague of modern ’science’..

    I believe that if you were frictionless (in space) you could use a giant reflector to help hitch hike off of the suns photons, propelling you to light speed requiring no amount of energy.

12. Mr. Tallyman Says:
    June 15th, 2009 at 3:18 pm

    Besides, what would the universe be expanding into?

13. Mr. Tallyman Says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 12:20 am

    The universe is expanding into itself? Nice one..

    Like, what does this even mean? (that the universe is on the other side of the universe???)

    I think this is some way of getting around the issue.. new galaxies would tell me that the so called “big bang” is occuring all the time, out into forever.. science is just too crabby to admit that forever exists.

    Lets take some calculations, and translate them into concepts, shall we? (I believe that psycology means as much to numbers as numbers do to anything else.. yeah.) Lets take a non ending equation like 0.999 with a line overtop and put that in perspective with distance from point A to point B.. If you were traveling .999 (line overtop) kilometers an hour, would you be going anywhere? Youd never get there, so it would be pointless to try. But this is where it gets weird. I think that patterns emerge out of this infinity.. the pointless game of wasting time in infinity.

    Posting discussion..

14. Sean Says:
    June 20th, 2009 at 5:26 am

    Sorry, it looks like I was wrong about the expansion of the universe… I’ve google’d it, and it’s a common misconception that it’s expanding at the speed of light. The correct answer is explained nicely here:

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071002065002AAEoO37

    Here’s a good answer as to why you can’t travel at the speed of light:

    http://physics.suite101.com/article.cfm/traveling_at_the_speed_of_light

    .999 with a line over top is actually equal to 1:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999…

    Even so, if you’re moving .9 (without line) km/hr, you are still moving. It would take you about 4 seconds to move a meter:

    http://www37.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=.9+km%2Fhr

    I think infinity and emergence is an interesting discussion, but I also think a lot of your concepts are based on flawed math/science.

15. Mr. Tallyman Says:
    June 20th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    I am enjoying this convo as well..

    In my head, I conceptualized traveling 0.9 as almost moving foward, but rather moving backward..

    I will continue the discussion @ fundamental infinity.

16. Mr. Tallyman Says:
    July 8th, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    “According to modern science, space is definitely NOT infinite.” - Sean

    “No one knows if the universe is infinitely large, or even if ours is the only universe that exists.” - NASA

    http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/5-8/features/F_How_Big_is_Our_Universe.html

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