Commentary of an article of Discovery News

Commentary to this:

Sry for English not being my native language, but

I also think some psychic powers are real, but I think that author of this article has not been in touch with most writings about psychic powers. I try to fill the gap.

First - most psychic powers are tightly connected with our subconscious minds and larger networks of consciousness; effects of psychic powers are not the kinds of things you can produce at any given moment with 100% certainty, but they rather occur seemingly randomly - even to psychic herself.

This has a strong support from literature:

- In Christianity, visions are thought to be given by God - you can be a saint, a person with opened eyes, however we could call it, but it's basically a God's decision, when to give some hint to you. Hints, anyway, can be very direct and without doubt. It's simple to see, after reading some literature, that both Buddhist and Christian events are the same - just, Buddhists wont talk about God, but they say that it's indescribable, what one would see after enlightenment.

- In Buddhism like zen-buddhism it's well known that you can meditate as much as you will, but both satoris and enlightenments occur at random time, being not under your control. Common form is satoris, which mostly reveal some hidden things about nature, your life or anything, which you can then use. The life as such enlightened person is not a kind of life, where you use your powers randomly at will - rather the situations of synchronicity happen in their own logic (or illogic) and you can gather some data from those.

This is clear that some psychic powers become relatively consistent over time - just to disappear whenever you do the wrong move. An area of mind, which is responsible for psychic powers, is not having the same everyday logic with our conscious ego - it's leading our powers with it's own logic and only way to "control" it for ego is to get in tune with it; this means rather following. Notably, this higher self can not be seduced with money or even strong pain to carrier - psychic feels it's as working in good of her and others, but it's still not at all willing to give psychic anything she might want; even not the millions discussed in this article.

The system itself, which is able to use a service from psychics, must be spiritual and non-rational (open and not sticking to human rules) enough to be able to cooperate with such powers. It's thankfully where business of today is heading - more openness, more openness to new and different ideas etc. Spiritual powers are having so completely out-of-box manner of logic that whenever some human being is using her ego in repressive ways [repressive to that part of mind] it simply wont work; whenever she is forced to act so, she can simply loose that power. Those powers, basically, are non-human enough to just make some potential criminal to change mind.

Article here is kind of materialistic spiritualism - that okay, lets guess that it exists, but then it must exist in the same way as any other thing, like creating bread. Anyway, it's rather working like an inspiration - inspiration will come and give you some new data at random moments, not at will, even if it can be trained very much and indeed differs in amounts for different people. Inspiration is even very similar to phenomena of psychic seeing; it might be in middle point between rational thinking and psychic seeing. It often involves getting a bit more data than you would hope from just a random creative fantasy, which utilizes known facts.

I personally have had many periods of mind-reading as one would call it. I have been able to understand very deep thoughts of people with no words - much more than 95% of people can do. Anyway, that does not make it clear that I would instantly recognize all non-terrorists from some crowd of people; it rather means that in case of deep and spiritual importance of some variable of some people for me, I am able to clearly see the value of that variable. For example if I have not only will and motive, but also some kind of spiritual mission [coming from nowhere - say, God or subconscious or some kind of human instinct] about some specific thing, I can have a lot of information not consciously collected with my senses, which is surprisingly exact. And that's all - this is not a case, where some company would buy some random clairvoyance service from me and I could be able to have better results than a randomly-chosen empathic person.

We must accept, as sensitives or creative people, that art and magic is not under human control, but it comes from parts of us we neither know or control much. As more powerful the magic as less it's coming from human ego-will ..even tarot cards, which we clearly not control at all, could be an obvious example if they work - the chance or force, which makes correct card appear for person using them, would make incorrect cards appear as well, very easily. And, especially, person in trance is totally out of her everyday order - be that wish, will, motive for riches or any other thing, events in trance are totally uncontrollable. Also, some people have those visions in dreams - yes, you can read things out from scenarios of dreams, but even all the world's money could not make you decide, about what you will dream tomorrow. Most of those sensitives will tell you about a few things they happen to see about you, if they are not charlatans - and this, again, is uncontrolled. I personally sometimes see some things about people - say, few times per year -, but with such powers I clearly would not qualify me to have a full-time work in some government agency, it rather allows me to sometimes tell people about some sign or danger I see.

So, the article here is totally childish - it's funny how it could be published in scientific newspaper if it does not take trivial facts known from ages-old traditions into account, but rather sees sensitiveness as something, which must work exactly like all those things, which can be easily proven by science. Clairvoyance is not science and probably will never be one. It's a different realm with it's own rules of game and unless you accept those rules you have wasted all money spent to trying to make it usable. The intelligence, which obviously must be behind such events - and it's not located inside one human, also obviously - simply must be clever enough to find it's own ways and not care about some trivial human logic and social system ..it's simply more intelligent network of living mind than any kind of rationalized system could ever be. It's collective unconsciousness of humankind - and even deeper -, thus an utilization of it must engage the diplomacy of such kind, which would guarantee harmonious activity with that power itself. We might not call it God - which I personally won't do for several reasons -, but inside hypothesis of it's intelligence we can't deny that it must be ultimately intelligent, all-considering force, which is not located in brain of one human being. Churches and shamanic rituals in their bestare examples of what that organization able to hire sensitives would actually look like - it's, as a whole organization, mutually cooperating with all kinds of underlying sources of psychic powers, so that it would integrate it and into it, not merely buy some partial service and trying to use it as a gearwheel of some system designed by materialistic philosophy. Spiritual and religious realms of information are intelligent in themselves and must be regarded as such. And this, clearly, also shows that this article with it's thesis and conclusion, is a junk. In case you want to regard to some tradition of spirituality, you must clearly target it's whole picture and not do the common mistake - materialists somehow feel that this non-controllability of psychic forces is just meant as a tool of seduction, therefore deliberately ignoring this aspect of literature and trying to create some simplified picture and seek for impossible kind of psychics, who are not bound to basic laws of spirituality - saying that only this would be a real proof and the real theory is not falsifiable. If a hypothesis is not (easily?) falsifiable, you still can not replace it with some other hypothesis, which is, and direct all your critics to this imaginable hypothesis - in name of an original hypothesis.

Thus, I would expect an author of such an article to actually understand both topics involved - homeland security and ages-old traditions, which have descriptions of some psychic powers as components of their theories about life. And, indeed, I expect reviewers to check it's accuracy against some traditions of ESP, religion or trans-personal psychology and then clearly say, which ones are meant. Afaik this article does not actually touch any strong and long-lived theory about such phenomena.

Leon Maurer

Not to forget someone with a truly rich life story:
http://leonmaurer.info/resume.html

And great view of it:
http://knol.google.com/k/how-it-all-began

Evolution is local?

This is a post of mine to a very nice newsgroup I will probably write about soon as I collect my thoughts about it ;)

I have, mostly in Estonian, written about the same things a lot of time ago, but as my ability to express and clarify has grown considerably, I write again :) BTW. thanks to Ben Tilly, whose post about relations between physical equilibrums and status quos, especially the part of physical equilibrums, written as post in his blog, made me considerably more confident in those ideas - before that I mostly thought about crystal growth etc. and probably added some missing pieces of puzzle to me, but definitely is worth mentioning as a thoughtline, which could have eventually lead to something very similar to what is expressed here. I mean, I am not sure if it contained the degree of "logical mysticism" my posts often contain, but I think it would have contained some conclusions about evolution. Given that he has time and will to ponder more on those topics :) So, he should be credited for confidence I show here (and I have started to hide confidence in many cases as I am sometimes proven to be wrong and it's a shame to have had confidence in such cases) as I am really confident in those things right now. His blog, by the way, contains many good insights, especially for scientifically-minded person.


And I also credit many other people for trying to prove me wrong - this has helped me to find out what I lack in assumptions. It has especially led me to word my claims in acceptable form (this is why I do not link to my years-old text trying to prove things about evolution, but being formed as ..ok, I do not tell, what:) - but you can Google it. I only claim that given how most people understand it, it's wrong; I personally understand it as proving the same thing I show here, but in more local context - some people pointed out that some parts of this old proof only hold in case the Universe as we know it is the only one and the laws as we know them universal).


This, by the way, is first time I have confidence to write also about my thoughtline about how causal laws change - this is an idea from early childhood, but back then I did not have evidence. Now I have mathematical proof for myself. I mean, laws wont change in themselves, but for observer - yes.

And the post itself:

After a while of thinking about evolution, I have got two *rules* of it:
1. It uses all means to achieve more fit [fit = synergy/dominance optimum].
2. It uses all means to boost itself.

The first rule explained:

Feedback of evolution is holistic. It does not depend on any specific parameter, but only on outcome of the whole. This means that all means possible are taken into consideration. It means, say, that in case random mutations give us 3 possible proteins of which one has a side-result that it makes an animal little bit more alert in case of process on whatever effect, which is accompanied with danger, then this life form will have some advantage. I mean - evolution uses _all means possible_. In case some food contains whatever random molecule, which reacts to whatever quantum, string, gravity or lightwave effect A in such way that the reaction triggers whatever neurons are able to register, animals eating that food will be able to subconsciously react to that A [as nerves learn]. This happens also in situations, where there is some radiation producing that kind of change or whatever. All things are taken into account, all changes in environment producing new possibilities will make choices; if it's so that when there is sunstorm, it's possible to register something, which otherwise can not be registered, we can be simply sure that all sunstorms of history have chosen the life forms, who will somehow use that possibility. If there are quantum effects, then this is plain nonsense to even consider the possibility that life forms simply ignore them. We are a _process_ two trillion years old - each of our cells is two trillion years old. It has, in two trillion years, divided probably hundreds of trillions of times, exchanged genetical and other information with others, gone through many successful mutations between every two divisions and in process of them. It has eated other cellular and other organisms, viruses and parts of them, always making the right choice and going into synergy with whatever was able to form a synergy - joined in addition to division. It's _one_ cell so old, not many cells with short lifespan. Some cells die, but cells alive have lived that long. Some separated parts of them have died, but not the wholes. And died cells have left proteins, DNA parts and other stuff to others.

But that's not the whole story. Before they became cells, they had gone through many trillions more years of evolution. Each part of cells, each part of atom, has gone into many different patterns, started to vibrate in many different rates, which have propagated just like life does. Each pattern able to stay has stayed, many patterns not able to stay have changed. Whatever we consist of, it has gone through evolution a lot longer than this cell - the way particles act today, the metainformation surrounding them, has always been evolving. It's intelligent. Water is intelligent - it becomes ice and back to water, but keeps some overall structure; there were elements before, which could not go through changes of environment, but they are gone. Those patterns are more complex than just the pattern of one element going through some complex cycle - they involve rain, clouds, oceans and much more, but they are evolved and that's a fact. Every system consisting of parts, which can be more or less intelligent in terms of stability, dominance and synergy, will go through evolution long before anything like life will evolve. This is not just empiric fact, but it's a mathematical fact - patterns, which are unable to propagate; states of matter, which do not have some chain of potential random changes leading back to something with similar properties; structures, which do not produce supportive effects on all fit structures-patterns around them; all that will be gone. And this, mathematically, will not maybe, but certainly produce complex networks of interdependences between all aspects possibly thinkable when knowing everything about matter. In whatever paradigm we could use to explain things, if it involves some basic rules about time and causality and a few other things, evolution does happen in that paradigm. This gives, logically, the solution that whatever we could find out from physics, will be already taken into consideration by our cellular evolution, if it has any reasonably strong effects upon what's going on here on Earth. And it guarantees that whatever stable properties needed by subatomic particles to remain stable in whatever conditions in very large part of space around us are needed, almost all or all particles on earth will have those properties. This is madness to think that the matter we consist of and it's structures thereof are not able to show some degree of intelligence and reaction to conditions so old as those measured by quantum physics. This also makes me think that as well as there are some unstable molecular structures extremely rare at earth, there are many quantum patterns so unstable that they will possibly never be registered by physics; there are potentially many other subatomic patterns having just the right degree of danger upon current equilibrium that patterns still resonating in our universe have developed such structures that we could not reproduce such patterns with _any_ physical device we could possibly build, given that the building process uses only the patterns available and reachable to us and we have only the patterns currently in effect as reality of potential to produce them. Laws of nature do change in such ways that what is nonsynergetic with what is stable, will not just be gone, but will be impossible after some time has passed.

The second rule explained:

The second rule is about intelligence of development patterns themselves. If we look our cells as something so old, not as something, which appear and disappear all the time, we can see that intelligence of them, in fact, must involve the intelligence needed to not only reproduce organisms and act as organisms, but only to reproduce more efficient and fit organisms over time and to intelligently respond to new needs of environment. Most of us will lose it's molecular structure for some time after each cycle, but some parts of us will hopefully live forever (or until they have gone through so many learning-steps/mutations that they are unrecognizable). I hope that matter in my cells will form new organisms and not become a part of some electronic device or nuclear bomb (anyway, if it does, those might be good experiences just growing it stronger and more intelligent).

Cells have mechanisms to repair DNA, change DNA and change their resistance to mutation.

I seriously think that we should, in our thinking, reposition us in relation to environment.


-------------------------------
Some related references:




http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/12/fruit-fly-evolution.html
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090111-creating-life.html

Anna-Carin Karlsson, S Kerje, L Andersson and Per Jensen, Genotype at the PMEL17 locus affects social and explorative behaviour in chickens, BRITISH POULTRY SCIENCE, 2010, (51), 2, 170-177.

Mind is a brain?

For a moment, let's look this at materialist viewpoint.

Assumption: mind is in brain.
Assumption: mind is separate from environment.

Brain, to exist, needs environment support.
- Brain would be destroyed instantly, if there would be unsupporting environment.
- If we can build an artificial environment, it must have properties of natural environment, thus it must be prostheses of it in the same way we can have heart prostheses.
- Biological reactions of brain, to make sense, must thus be in connection with _correct_ environmental reactions.

Thus, assumptions that mind is brain and mind is separate from environment contain contradiction.

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The case is somewhat related to following observations:
- We can not find strict definition to separate some object from environment in such way that we could tell about every electron if it's part of an object or part of an environment using the same definition on both.
- This is easier to see if we physically connect (put very near to each other) two objects and say that there should be such definition of borders that this is the same for both objects and for every electron, we must be able to say if it's part of one or another.
- We run into more complexities, anyway, if we want such distinction to make sense.
- Any kind of processes in brain are directly dependent on many processes in environment.

-------------

As those run into contradiction, there comes another logic:
- Assume that mind is brain.
- Thus, environment is a part of mind.

-------------

For non-materialist viewpoint, the logic to connect environment and brain is different, but if environment is part of a mind, then it becomes nonsense to say that mind gets information from environment only through "five senses".

Doing any kind of brain research assuming that it's separate entity does not, thus, research the whole physical object. It researches logic of a part of it, taking a supporting environment as granted - change environment and none of this logic applies anymore.

This becomes more clear through the following:
- We can actually get proteins from air or through skin [and we can not exactly say, when it enters our body.
- All activities of our brain are directly related to the structure of electromagnetic and other fields around us - this is very easy to show that reactions of neurons without those fields do not support life.
- To say that we can not directly sense those fields in any way is to say that we could not sense if activity of our neurons is going to end through death if those change into non-life-supporting condition.

Or, in short: there is no such system as "brain" to be looked in isolation in case we want to explain anything with brain. Many other processes are _part of_ reactions in brain and thus, if mind is reactions in brain, mind must be bigger than brain. Many other fields are part of structure of brain and if mind is brain, those fields should be removed from it, which is physically impossible.

-------------

Mind is not brain.

World is alive

So, I try to put it into English what I think about life and mistakenness of current canonical paradigm about a life. There are several points, where the current paradigm is simply wrong. I have made some notices about it before, also, but I try to make a few things clear.
So, what is a "Newtonian" belief system about consciousness (by the way, Newton himself was the opposite of Newtonian in those matters, but some points he made clear have led to this illusion).

I added an outline to end of the text to make points clearer.

There is such "law": The world in mechanical device, where no other qualities except the causality of events exist. Physics have no other essence. Kant told that there is no way to know thing-in-itself and many believe this elitary lie.

So. Logically - there is no way to know thing-in-itself. There is no way to experience it. There is no way, specifically, to say anything about anything except the causal qualities of nature. This is physicalism. There is logic, but there is also a set of hidden beliefs or prejudices in that - lets be exact, those are not things science has found out. Those are first axioms taken from air to set up the first axiomatic system of science itself. They are also, logically - by deduction from themselves - not falsifiable. As they are taken not falsifiable and they are defined to be simple. This is a complex philosophical question if they are simple or not - simplicity has it's subjective aspect -, but we don't have to struggle with this question; what should be our prime interest is if they are correct or wrong, not if they are simple or complex.

So, as we see - there are several basic points, which allow us to logically deduct that any statement about any thing-in-itself is impossible, thus science can't state anything about things-in-themselves and thus, scientifically, there simply is no thing-in-itself. It can't be in any scientific theory and it's not falsifiable, thus it does not exist.

Ok, this is a theoretical ground to what we call empiricism, physicalism or whatever similar - the mechanic world view.

Now, to go further - as there is no thing-in-itself (although logically it must be exist - it must be exist and we must be unaware of it), there are no emotions, no matter and nothing exept the causality of things.

In this scheme, many scientists have had a strong pressure to explain somehow, how we feel. The "solution" they have found - that the mind, emotion and thought is actually a complex mathematical system. This means - by building a computer program complex enough, we can create real mind feeling as real feelings as we do. Thus, by simply writing those formulas to paper as a routine job - lets imagine a generations of scientists, who are doing routine calculations with paper and pencil without even knowing what they do, the calculations are about movement of particles in human body. This, by the "mathematical complexity theory of mind" as I might call it, will generate some feeling - say, pain - over time in this entity existing only on paper.

From this solution we could imply that there is necessary and sufficient conditions for mathematical calculation, which effectively generates a feeling. I mean - if I do some specific calculation on paper, this, in effect, will produce something, which has all the same qualities with some human feeling or subset of it. I think that this claim is absurd if we don't have any mathematical concepts to actually prove any feeling - I can't prove that some calculation is a feeling. In addition I think that this makes the world no simpler - this might be, in first sight, a very simple theory to explain all complexities away from mystery of life, but it actually produces a lot more and seems, in more profound analysis, simply an absurd. I know no physical means to differentiate a calculation from another - for example, our calculations could be carried out by people, who don't know even the meaning of those numbers (this adds a lot of conditions - for example we must be sure that any other interpretation of numbers and symbols, which gives the same results, is effectively taken as the same condition). One would say that it has something to do with reacting in real world - but what is the fundamental difference between intelligent reactions and reactions, which have been determined by someone, who knew all events in advance? Or - some mathematical process in virtual world, in this case, would be less alive than the same process in real world.

We also do not have just a fantasy about the experiences - like feelings -, since fantasy is experience itself.

Now, lets go to other side. Bertrant Russel in his introduction to philosophy states something, what has been a common knowledge and certain fact over the history of philosophy - only thing, which we can really know existing for sure is our experience. Schopenhauer in his "World as Will and Idea" has gone further and tries to make it clear, what the thing-in-itself actually is - impossible for Kant.

So, where was Kant wrong? What we can imply from him being wrong?

Kant was wrong in one thing - we actually know, what we feel, and we have all means to reflectively make really sure that we do. We do have an experience about the world. And, in addition - this fact about our knowledge of this fact effectively disproves not only this "innocent" belief that we have no feelings or that things-in-themselves are impossible to describe (as they have no causal effect), but it has a wide variety of implications.

1. First implication - we actually can speak about things-in-themselves

This has more implications. If we can know and speak about things-in-themselves, then their connection with reality - connection of our experiences - must not only exist, but it must be perfectly synchronized with causal connections on very fundamental level. I mean, there must be harmonious causality between we feeling something and we expressing that feeling - we can actually express that the feeling is there. Feeling has a means to be expressed in causal world - thus, the connection between feeling and causal world must be meaningful.

Physical events and their corresponding emotions haven't, thus, just a random connection - otherwise the Kantian belief would be true. Emotions have a real connection - lets call it harmony - with actual causal events. And that solution will break most of philosophy about human mind or the relation between consciousness and reality.

2. Second implication - Our will must have actually real effect on world

Our will has an effect over our hands, our thoughts and our feelings. This effect is such that when we deeply will something, then the felt meaning of this will is exactly what is going to happen. Will and experience are in harmony. And that makes the will be a fundamental force, giving, for example, right to Schopenhauer. By the way, those effects must exist on quantum level, also, so the task set by "quantum mysticians" is thus philosophically substantiated even if different theories of them can't possibly be all true.

3. How the fundamental connection of experience and reality must develop.

There are actually only two reasonable possibilities - that the connection is given or that the connection has strong evolutionary advantage.

First hypotheses states that wherever the physical conditions for having an experience of will are satisfied, also the physical conditions of having some force moving things to willed direction must be satisfied.

Second hypotheses states that bodies, which have the conditions stated in first hypotheses met, will have some evolutionary advantage - more energy, more flexibility, ability to get some information from some source of creativity or some other complex set of qualities necessary to achieve evolutionary advantage. This cosmic principle must work at least here on earth, but it seems to be a kind of principle, which will be in effect in the whole universe if it is in effect on earth.

I think that the reality is in between those two hypotheses - some mixture of them.

4. How it relates to science of physics

At first - physics must evolve into new level of alchemistry on the spiral of knowledge (but lets hope it's not a simple spiral). We need new age of alchemistry - alchemistry tries to connect what is called soul with what is called matter.

How this new alchemistry differs from physics?

In physics, the main task is to find simpler algorithms to explain more things. The exact language and symbolics of those algorithms is a free play. The fundamental target is to explain everything as one field and the ways we split things into different fields do not matter.

In this new alchemistry, the coal is wholly different. At first - one general field is not axiomatically preferred. In case it turns our that the cognitive experience is put together from things with very different qualities, the barriers of fields run from those quality differences. The symbolism and language is set up in such way that we could actually understand the real cognitive processes going on in each case - for example, we could prove from such physics that some bacterian is or is not aware in some specific way; we could understand from physics of alien if they are conscious or not. Even if that alien does not have a nervous system similar to us.

And I see a lot of problems here - and, isn't the problems signs of a large body of undone work? Large body of undone work should have a big positive meaning; maybe the technology is not the only area to invest into right now. Maybe we have a science, where we could make new discoveries as fast as new fundamental discoveries of physics were done a century ago. It could produce new geniuses, new jobs and new business niches. A lot of positive.  Outline  I give you an outline to make understanding more exact and checking simpler.

1. Kant told us that we can't possibly be sure in any thing-in-itself.
2. Currently, this idea is developed into those axioms, widespread version of materialism:
1. Measurement process with five senses or a device will measure the effects, not a thing.
2. Everything we can measure is instant effects of the cause (shortly, cause) and other effects of this measured event (shortly, effect).
3. Thus, no scientific theory can contain anything about things-in-themselves. Thus, we can't say anything about things-in-themselves.
4. Thus, things-in-themselves do not exist. (which has minor logical conflict with the fact that they must exist)
3. This kind of materialism is no way scientific theory in itself, because:
1. This is an axiomatic system of modern science - a starting point. Before creators of this paradigm we hardly see anything as "science" in modern sense.
2. This paradigm itself is non-falsifiable.
3. As it's non-falsifiable and considered simple, it is the kind of thing where one can say "prove the opposite".
4. The problem with it's non-falsifiability, where it conflicts with Poppers definition of science, is that it's non-falsifiable based on prime axioms of science, namely itself. It's a kind of theorem, which renders itself effectively non-falsifiable forever. One can't possibly disprove it. Thus it's pseudoscience.
4. As a direct implication, as cause and effect are mathematical (they are mathematical theories), the mind must be mathematical complex. This is commonly believed among scientists, who believe in kantian claim about things-in-themselves.
5. Proving that this claim is weak or contains a contradiction is also a proof that materialism as we know it - starting from kantian belief - is false. Thus, it disproves materialism.
6. With self-reflection we can know something about mind - namely that it has some qualities. My hope is that we can take this fact as granted in world-view of big percentage of scientists. We have experiences and those experiences are what they are. They exist.
7. A try to explain this fact about experiences is a theory of mind as mathematical system. This would have implications:
1. There is necessary and sufficient mathematical condition, which is identical with feeling.
2. This condition can be modeled on computer - as with artifical intelligence - and the computer can be created from any material or working logic, this makes no difference. Thus, paper, pencil and hand-made calculations give us a sufficiently advanced computer to have all those effects.
3. Given that point, thousand mathematicians knowing the calculation rules and calculating movements of quanta in human being and sharing some necessary information about forces between quanta calculated by them, would produce somewhere some very real human feeling, like pain.
4. This claim is absurd.
5. As the symbols might have different meanings, always having some functions, which leave results impact (calculation results are the same, what we could get without changing the meanings of symbols), those mathematical rules can not be precise.
6. Thus, as there are always ways to interpret anything distributed over space in such way, that the interpretation gives us a pattern of emotion, the claim is absurd.
7. We could defend it by stating that this thing must be in intelligent reaction in real world - anyway, if we knew events in advance, even a gramophone could be intelligent.
8. The latter would also mean that mathematical process in virtual reality would be not considered alive even if the machine executing it in real world would be.
9. This is in no way simple explanation to anything. The hypotheses of mathematical condition.
10. Thus, as the hypotheses is direct implication of Kantian belief, Kantian belief becomes unbelievable.
8. If feelings were math construct, we should have some mathematical notions and tools to prove some formula having a specific feeling. We don't. This claim that this is possible has no ground.
9. By the way, experiences are not "just a fantasy", because fantasy is experience in itself.
10. Bertrand Russel has stated in introduction of philosophy that all we know for sure is existence of experience. A good scientific theory should take this claim as granted - anyone can check it.
11. Schopenhauer has given in his "world as will and idea" a plausible solution about things-in-themselves. Proven, I think, but in very complex way and a lot of hidden premises. Obfuscation must be removed.
12. Claim that feelings are not mathematical construct will imply that they are physical construct (not claiming anything about the nature of this physical construct - I am not, specifically, stating that soul is or is not material).
13. This means, there are physical conditions sufficient and necessary to have a feeling.
14. As we can show feelings and talk about feelings, we must state an opposite of Kants claim, which implies that we could not - things-in-themselves are expressable.
15. Thus, things-in-themselves have meaningful connection with causal events. And this has implications.
16. We can use our will to change reality in ways we want. As will must be physical reality and this has effect, it implies:
1. First possibility - the connection is given.
2. Second possibility - the connection has evolutionary advantage.
17. Those latter claims show the direct effects of understanding this simple thing - that feelings are material - as having serious consequences to our science and it's measurements, which is not only a "theoretical question". The philosophical ground helps in many ways to reconstruct our paradigm.

About the future of Universe

The following was written as a reply to another person in Google Buzz. As it's not in my Google Buzz account, but still interesting, I put it here.

This is a nice posting and I will (almost) definitely read those books when my financial situation gets good again (I have taken a challenge to once again join my income and primary interests, but it's quite hard right now as my interests have grown into something completely odd - I think that being a programmer-VJ would join them, but it doesn't earn me money yet, so I am doing 10% of time small web projects and 90% of time working on finding the right track).

Anyway, about this physics and fantasy part here ...my relation to physics is that I like paradigms and metaphysics and all that philosophical background, but I'm not developing so fast in math part of it. I try to get the whole picture, where physics is informationally a very small part - this is not a human capability to directly understand anything about, say, human motivation or climate with just physics. And, what is my prime interest - none of experience (as Russell calls it) can be explained by physics, because it's axiomatically outside the range of it - it's not so obvious, because we clearly have those correlations and actual unity of those two, but those correlations are outside physics and not a part of it; alchemistry was the last science, which tried to take it as a whole - so I am waiting the modern alchemistry, which should join those two again. Join them so that I can say that some setting of particles is nessecary and enough to have, say, an experience of yellow.

So I am highly interested in alchemistry, mystics and areas of psychology, which research the laws of experience - and because of the correlations with physics, those laws have to be as strict and clear as physics itself - or as random. But anyway, we are not much nearer to particles of mind than we were at 19th century - so my interest of alchemistry, which did it's best as long as it lived.

But now, from my viewpoint it's natural to think that technology of future will not be inside those borders by which we would identify "technology" now - current technology, in my understanding, is mostly taking some natural materials, which happen to have strong similarity to some mathematical concepts - like that they do AND with electron input-output or that they convert electron into light - and ignore the rest. The rest is every other thing, which happens in the process - like the "AND" piece will radiate something, maybe make some sound or vibration, it will also have a magnetic field and other properties. Things done by evolution are, related to that quantity - having one or more properties - having a quality instead - they have a balanced set of properties, where each paradigm and each side-effect is taken into consideration as much as possible. This makes a major difference between those two - and, in humans, all interactions of experience are also taken into account. The reality happens to be made in such way that what we experience as "will" and which, from that viewpoint, consists in being will as thing-in-itself (Schopenhauer has, in that point, succeeded Kant, who told that there is no thing-in-itself possibly findable - and Kant is, sadly, the primary building block of the philosophy behind physics, but the philosophy itself has evolved rapidly after him; Descartes is not much more than Kant - it's more like simplified Kant with a gun and strong military experience raging against evil church;)). So, the reality has the property experienced as will, which has tendency to be connected with actual future events (at least some results of evolution suggest that) - this is my own mindplay, but as in Ben's example, there might be some philosopher, who has actually studied that idea without being so known. There are also some other kinds of experiences, which have some relation to will - in general, they evolve into feeling better and feeling better is somehow related to other feelings as fundamentally as will is related to future events. Also, there is rapidly changing environment, which measures things by their creativity and consciousness - at least any complex structure can't survive without those.

Thus, I am nearly sure that the actual future is God becoming conscious of itself (as some mystics suggest, once again, without the logic given here) - if we call Universe a pantheist God, it's not being so conscious right now (otherwise we would experience that consciousness more clearly if it did go through everything), but as bacterians evolve, they make animals; as animals evolve, they make herds; as herds evolve, they become more conscious and if conscious forms of matter are more capable and survive with higher probability, then eventually everything will become conscious. Of course, if it will not explode, collapse or freeze ;) And when everything will become conscious, it will also start communicate in better and better ways. And when it does, it will look like a bunch of amoebas joining into a human being - a collective consciousness. It will become more effective, more intelligent and more conscious in rapidly growing speed.

And, the matter I am made from - my actual soul, because an experience can't end, it will just change it's forms because everything I am made from will stay even after I die and if it has an experience, this experience might pause - for as long as long this matter is in unconscious state -, but it will continue. Until it becomes a conscious part of what becomes a God - a conscious Universe.

And I think that technology is just a tool to make some of this evolution faster and simpler to us, humans, and allow us to do some leak and maybe propagate the consciousness to other parts of Universe.

Marketing as freelancer

In this post, I will consider several problems related to selling your skills (programming) with reasonable price. How to strategically sell your skills in such way that you won't mess up the market, but still evolve in reasonable speed.

For programmer, there are the following considerations:

In software world, working with more complex problems:

1. Is more interesting.
2. Lets you develop more.
3. Adds more value to your portfolio.

So, all programmers are interested in working on more complex projects. Work providers can utilize this fact to get things cheaper.


There are also the following considerations:

• As more complex the problem, as less people able to solve it. Thus, price for solving more complex problems should be higher.
  
• You often don't find job providers able to pay for solving more complex problems. Thus, if someone able to pay for less complex job wants something more complex, they would hope to get it for price of less complex problems.
• Getting prize up for more complex problems makes more people wan't to learn solving those, thus it's for general good.
  

So, a programmer:

• Should want to get hands on solving more complex problems to get all kinds of personal gains for that.
• Should want to not solve more complex problems with price of less complex problems.

Now, you have a problem - you don't want to mess up the market (be it local or global market), but you want to develop and prove your skills in solving more complex problems. You are annoyed doing some simple and boring routine work, but you also don't want to give away your really valuable ideas and knowledge (collected over time) for that price to those job providers. It seems like a trap, which it is - but, bad solution is better than no solution.


For job providers, also the following is true:

• Less experienced programmers fall to that trap easily.
• Less experienced programmers fail more complex projects often and the general prize, thus, with risk included, is high - you will need more experienced programmers on that project.
• More experienced programmers generally have thought about the problem and worked out some solutions.

This also shows that less experienced programmer, who works with higher risk, should make their prices smaller so that risk is included - if risk is 50%, it would be good to make your price at least 50% smaller, which might already be the price of less complex problem you are easily ready to solve.


Anyway, the topic should be analyzed in written form and I haven't seen neutral analysis of it around in places easily findable for me. So, I try to do it here.


Now, you want:

• To sell your assets.
• To get their true price.

You should not know your price or sell yourself. You should know the price of your work and sell your work. Price, happily, does not come from complexity or skills.

Price comes from the following factors, at least:

• How many people are able to achieve the results - this, actually, is the measure of how much homework they have done. How much they have been able to allocate their time to learn new skills; how much work they have done to develop those skills in real experience (this means often choosing less guaranteed jobs with higher risks, living less stable life to get more opportunities). If all people are able to achieve the results, the skill is not worth much; if many people are able to achieve the results, this skill is worth much.
  
• How hard it is to achieve the results and how talented one must be for that - this has something to do with genetics, but also with determination and some kind of self-discipline, this ability grows in experience, but not so much with theoretic reading and discussions (anyway, it can't grow much without being backed up by theoretic reading and discussions).
• How much client gains from those results. As more the client gains, as bigger the prize.
• How much general public gains from those results. As more they gain, as smaller the prize, because general public is not often going to pay - this is more like a cooperative effort.

The last fact, surprisingly, can be used to find a good solution.


As an experience and for leaving positive trace, one can work hard on GNU projects. Be selective.

• Choose the projects, which can be used for general good and not for general bad; also choose projects, which are highly needed for general good, even if they can not be used for general bad.
• Choose the projects, which give advantage to people, who are working on projects, which provide general good. Warren Buffet has suggested to buy small pieces of companies as if you buyed the whole company - good investment comes from such thinking, also the experience could be used later if you actually do. So, choose projects having that kind of thinking like if you was leading the whole world - think through complex strategies, buy your small piece of projects, which are needed to fulfill those strategies. If you are right, there are many like you.
• Choose the projects you are able to finish. No-one blames if you don't, so take a reasonable risks to keep yourself on (your) cutting edge - anyway, you and the world get the most experience and other results from projects, which are carried through to the end.
• Do not create things, which don't yield so much general good and which you could sell with reasonable prize, should you get the opportunity unless they are really needed. Do not blow up the market. You need the market and you don't have that much really valuable ideas.

This is for your free time.



Now, how to create those dumb and boring projects really fruitful for you if you are not selling valuable things under market prize?

• Do not try to make them more complex for yourself - you take unreasonable risk, lower your prize and leave really bad trace if you fail. Find the effective strategy.
• You are not selling complex solutions, but you can do really good job on managing and planning. Managing and planning is needed anywhere - use those opportunities to grow your managing and planning skills. Optimize the process and find ways to do those things faster. Keep the resulting methodologies to yourself unless you are paid for them - or open them for general public. In case you develop a powerful engine actually doing your job, don't give it away as bonus; in case you get better, just tell that you could become a good leader in that field for now.
  
• Even if your prize per unit is market prize, your real price can grow as you advance.

Anyway, if you are doing boring routine work - which is not anymore so boring and routine, as you can see -, keep the free time needed to find more interesting problems. You are not so needed there - anyone could do your job.


There is additional problem:

• Many job providers are not going to pay more for faster working. They want to control you - to not pay you so much that you would become free and go away. They think that you can live if you can buy food and pay for your department.
  

This is not easy to resolve without finding providers, who can. You might not find them so easily. Consider also than as you get better, market average gets also better - your new strategies might simply keep you as average or a bit over average even if you work twice as fast as in previous year. Many job providers also pay to beginners a bit more than they deserve, hoping to get this money back when they get faster. You could think that you deserve more than you actually do.

So, some possible solution: as you get faster, spend more time in getting more faster and better. Make your work broader and go to tasks, which you can't do so fast, so that no-one will notice. You always need to get as much as you put in, minus the money you pay to your job providers for some excellent work on finding new tasks, utilizing your skills where someone really needs them and handling all kinds of problems for you. As long as you are not so good in that part, you should be conscious that if they work out how to use your skills in real world so that they are really needed and fit somewhere well, they are doing a lot of the real engineering. So, if someone gets really rich with energy they got from your potatoes, they have done most job of finding their place. If you grow potatoes because you like growing potatoes, you are working for yourself and not for common good. Otherwise, you should consider getting some skills of managing and analysis as well.


How to calculate the prize:

• Consider the speed of finishing goals. Try to find out average market prize plus average speed of others doing that work. Doing it twice as fast should give you twice as much money.
• Consider, what people gain from that kind of job - not what your client will get, but what some average customer needing such kind of work would get for it. Otherwise, anyone could simply lie you that they get less than they actually do - this makes your price smaller if you can't think along to make your customer really win as much as possible from your work. Anyway, consider that working along if you do is a job and has a price, you spend some additional hours on it. If this job is more valuable in theory - even if it's not creating that value in that specific case -, it sets some minimum price.
  
• Consider the overhead resulting from you needing to teach client the necessary skills, finding the solutions and handling some hard character buying from you. This needs your time and resources - thus, consider getting some money from consultations in that case. I think that it makes several times of difference in actual speed if your client can't get along. Consider that you might lack the communication skills - maybe you, as a programmer, haven't understood how important those are? You are selling the time of creating contract, creating some demo or prototype, managing the client - if they wont pay for that, they are likely not going to pay at all. If you don't ask money for that, they are wasting those resources of you.
  
• Consider, how much people are able to do your job; how long it would take to learn it for them (how big percentage they have of necessary skills and how good learners they are). This will also set the minimum prize (or maximum) in case that work is needed.
  
• Consider, what you get to your skillset - in case you have some goals about which tasks you should able to carry through in future, how much the new experience adds to those skills. This won't change prize so much, it changes how much you should want that job.
• Consider the general good or bad your client is going to produce with your project. In case they create some new problems to your environment, it has a prize - in case your work plays a key role in that, they have to pay you for solving those problems. You can donate somewhere etc. In case they solve some problems, you can pay them. You should give some competitive advantage to clients working for general good - they should, in fact, take the whole market (not your client alone, but all companies of that kind). Once again, think about the world, your country and your friends a bit like if they were your project - you are a co-owner of that all and you can use some simple means to keep it all on good track. For your own good.
  
• Consider the prize of source code - that has a prize, your work without source code costs less. Consider the prize of you co-owning the results, in case you have something to do with resulting code, you can invest a bit yourself. Consider if your client is licenced to sell your code to others and if you are.
  
• Consider the general good your client is willing to give you. Are they restricting you in any way? Restricting you has a prize. Are they giving you some good in addition to money? That good also has a prize and you should be willing to pay for it.
• How big is the risk? What is the risk that you can't finish in-time? This changes both prize and your willingness to take the project; make a client aware of any possible risk factor.
  

I have also read about prize calculation formulae, which takes into account, how much it would cost to combine the same thing from cheapest existing products and buying from cheapest competitors. You should not consider the competitors, who haven't enough time to take the job or who are too hard to find or relyable.