Well, then...

[silveradept]

I've managed to work something else out of my brain. It's probably going up to my webspace, but I thought I'd let you guys have some whacks at it to see if it were worth anything. Comments appreciated.
----------------------------------

Don't eat hot dog buns on Fridays. Forget about voting - it's useless anyway. Spraypaint toy soldiers in hidden places of your municipality. ITHFP - beware of pranks. And one last thing:

Break all of the rules at least once, including this one.

Quick - what did your brain do right there? Was there an initial moment of confusion, or did you just keep reading? If you kept reading, go back and think about that last statement. Try to work it out logically. I'll wait.
.
..
...
....
All set? Good. How many loops did you go through before you stopped? Not too many, I would assume. You recognized that it was a paradox and promptly ignored the statement as unworkable. For a moment, though, you were vulnerable to a memetic infection. Let me try again.

If a tree falls into the sun and there is nothing there to hear it, does it make a sound when it meets its fiery doom?

Hopefully you laughed there. That would make me feel better. But whether you laughed or not, work it out. And while you're at it, tell me this: Who are you? No, really. I don't want your name, your position, any of your hundred thousand relationships to other people, animals, plants, religions, ideologies, political machinations, deeds, philosophies, or any of that other stuff. Who are you?
.
..
...
Not so easy, this time, is it? Generally, there are two reactions to this question. The first is a brush-off, like the paradox above. It stems from a confidence that there is some unique part of you that you can point to and say, "This is me." Force that confidence to prove itself. Make absolutely sure it's not a connection to something else, however slight. You - waving you hand, what is it?....A soul? Didn't I just say NO CONNECTIONS? No, it doesn't count because the concept of soul is a meme linked to some religions. It's a connection. In that same way, thought requires "mind". But the concept of "mind" requires thought. You won't get anywhere in that loop.

About the only thing that might be able to answer that question is this - the mutations of DNA that make some parts of your genetic sequence totally different from any other person on the planet. That's it. And since you're comparing yourself more than six billion other people, the probability of you having something unique is very slim, indeed.

So what now? All the things that you think are yours have been dictated to you by outside forces. You're a number to the government, to advertisers, to capitalism. Your philosophy of life has been shaped by external factors - your parents, books, teachers, people around you, impersonal forces like "logic" and "reason". You are no more unique than anything else. Isn't that even the tiniest bit scary? You've been a victim of the greatest illusion in history - the illusion that you decide your own fate, when the truth is you probably haven't had much of a hand in it.

So how do you combat this menace? Start by making your own decisions. Make some Chaos - stop being so goddamn serious. Make yourself laugh. No, better yet, make someone else laugh. Don't eat hot dog buns on Friday. Break out of the prison of your mind. Fall in love. Learn Linux. Salute your boss with a Turkey Curse. Make it your firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs. And remember, break all of the rules at least once, including this one.

And that second reaction I was talking about? Generally, it's enlightenment of some sort, enough to get someone started on the path. Time's wasting, get going wasting time!
-------------------------------------------------------------

Comments

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

Some theorising follows, take seriously or not, assume to be gibberish. Or not...

Assume for the moment that our universe is real, that our minds share mutually isomorphic perceptions of a concrete reality. If so, we are entities within a chaotic, emergent system and therefore any modification of the system, no matter how small, may have vast consiquences as the system progresses (a well established behaviour of chaotic systems: minute changes in initial conditions produce vastly divergent outcomes). The burning of a tree in a star (something we take as given as happening from your entry) may make a minute change in the distribution of radiation from the surface, almost unmeasurably change the chemical composition of the star. That change in radiation may slightly modify the solar wind, strengthening it in one point or lessening it in another. Then if the star passes by a cloud of dust the change in the solar wind may be just enough to start pushing the dust particles enough to begin the long process or stellar system formation. Or it may prevent it. Yes, lots of ifs, maybes, but impossible? Chaos allows this to happen. And what we may not be able to measure now (although there's no reason why sufficiently advanced technology could not do it), who knows what it will do a million, a billion or more, years form now? Maybe the universe just has a very long delay in its perception? :)

On the other hand, what if the universe we percieve as reality is not real, if our physical bodies are floating in goop hooked up to a simulation or maybe we are all just simulations running inside a giant computer? If we can still assume a simulated tree hit a simulated star... well, it depends what shortcuts the programmer used. It could be that nothing else happened in the simulation other than the removal of a tree object, it may not have even really hit the star. But even this, while it may not impinge on the reality we know, go up a level: now electrons have been reconfigured in the simulator, numbers have changed, even if it's only one number in a sea of them. There has still been an effect, we can not tell and probably never could tell (if I ever worked on a simulation complex enough to simulate our reality, it would check for and prevent attempts to see outside the system) but in the level above us - up one rung in Jacob's ladder to use an appropriate metaphor - there has been a change. Our reality may not know it, but the universe (which will contain our reality) has been changed, something will have noticed.

Of course, all this breaks down if you remove the requirement for an objective reality. Then things start geting seriously mind-bending...

[silveradept]

Understandable. Something like that might work, if we have an objective reality. Who knew that my attempt to pervert the koan for a laugh would end up with someone taking me seriously?

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

Serious? Nah, not nearly enough 10 letter words in there for me to have been being serious. Perhaps. :)

[silveradept]

True in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense, or something like that, right?