Showing posts with label cultures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cultures. Show all posts

1/15/25

Unscientific Generalities on the Etiology of Religion

 I am very cool on archetypes of collective subconsciousness such as Jung developed as a theory. The concept of projections is equally dubious today. As applied to God it conflates history at a massive scale positing a common cause for events and ideas that are mostly lost from history. One tribe may have had a different reason for beginning an idea than another. In the case of Abraham, that wasn't a collective experience. It was an individual, personal encounter. David Rosenberg wrote a biography for Abraham that is a very interesting read.

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/502016.Abraham

The Tower was one of Jung’s archetypes as well as a novel by Stephen King. People today ought to be able to sort out their ideas about reality and know what they think about particular aspects of it. There is a tendency toward postulating a common explanation without much basis for a panoply of events that are selected and lumped together. Conscious ideas about reality differ from those of the subconscious and tend to arise from experience and education.  There is a field of study called the history of ideas. Generally they require pretty good support for the origin of ideas in order not to be myths themselves.

Consider the Japanese Shinto religion for example. Where did the idea of Tori-spirit gates arise? I don’t know. Here is a good mythical account though that differs from some sort of common human projection…

A warlord made an heroic last stand in the gate of a wooden fortress on fire. His clan saw his dedication to defeating the overwhelming power of the enemy, yet at last, overcome by wounds he fell to his knees and was then beheaded. His forces were being driven back at the sight of their fallen leader. Just then a great eagle descended from the sky amidst the battle landing atop the gate and the warriors of the fallen hero knew the spirit of the warlord had returned. They rallied and drove back the enemy to the sea. Thereafter the spirit gate was recognized as a place where the spirits of the dead returned to help those still living in the world.

Pagan religion may have each had a different origin. In some cases kings simply declared themselves to be a god. Jews, Christians and Muslims share a common origin of their faith through Abraham and successors that wasn’t a projection of consciousness comparable to the origin of polytheists and numerous other belief systems. It is easy to construct a generality as an explanation for the unknown, yet unscientific.

1/13/25

The Universe Isn't Made of Algorithms


Algorithms occur in an incomplete paradigm where a sum or answer is wanted. Much of the Universe may be in a Algorithms are structures; structures used to process information or data points presented within someone’s lexicon universe. Like D9 caterpillars AI can push a lot of stuff. Is the Universe made of algorithms? No. 

Algorithms exists in the universe though, in some way.
I like the new structure associahedrons used for calculating particle interaction. Quantum entanglement that occurs possibly even at billions of light years distance isn’t likely to perform algorithms, unless a designer made it so, instead there should a direct relationship. rather than a calculating continuum although change seems perpetual from a human perspective.

There are responsive structures in the Universe at some scale greater than the four dimensions of space-time. I don’t believe that is machine learning or deep learning or neural network algorithmic structures.
https://youtu.be/UhG56kltfP4?feature=shared

1/12/25

Fate or Joss

I tend to think of fate as joss. That is whatever occurs happens. My regard is to consider it a post hoc description of what happened.

The Chinese derived joss from a Portuguese term for God. In the Chinese culture it can mean fate or luck.

So I regard fate as a kind of gestalt or complete complex of compresence. A scene such as that in 1812 where Napoleon views a corpse resplendent in an officers uniform on a battlefield and declares “voila, a splendid death!”. That is joss or fate.

Yet as a Christian I believe God has an intention for the world. Details are beyond my pay grade.

Cultures Have Restricted Knowledge in the Past

It would be fun to say that each culture assigns the number of liters individuals and classes may have of knowledge when reaching adulthood, though I won't.

Cultures plainly have in the past set limits. Slaves often were banned from learning math or being literate. Conservatives were censored  for using language leftists didn't like on social media, women were banned from getting driver's licenses in Saudi Arabia etc.

Pragmatist Truth Parameters

A Pragmatist Truth paradigm seems to be somewhat of a verficationist paradigm. Socrates said that true belief and knowledge are equivalent. Truth values are found with verification and usefulness of something asserted as fact. That is not the same as saying that such a thing as truth-in-itself exists as a realist entity. Instead it is a neo-realist description.

If one says that AX is Z, and then tests the proposition finding that AX necessitates Z commutatively, and Z works in algorithms just like AX then it is true to say that AX and Z are equivalent.
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1/10/25

Nature Gets Rid of "Things That Do Not Work"?

Nihilism only takes the broken and 'non-working'? Things that exist necessarily work, even corruption? Forever evolving is a natural selection removing just things that don't work from existence? Plate tectonics is getting rid of the Pacific Ocean because it doesn't work and expanding the Atlantic because it does?

The Twin Towers didn't work so nature removed them? Cities destroyed in war didn't work? Peace doesn't work so wars end the terrible decay. Planets shattered by asteroid collisions didn't work, and stars that blast as supernovas just cleanse a galactic parsec of things that don't work? At least Pacific Palisades homes burned in the wildfires were known not to have worked? 

Destruction is recognized by some as creative cleansing. At Auschwitz the gas chambers were for those that did not work as well? German guards walked in under the sign that said 'Work makes you free'. They saw improvement in destroying things that do not work as if they were abortionists ridding the world of fetuses that do not work.

So many things exist and change form, like mountains that became beach sand. Every change and process of being is part of a continuum. Humans alone can choose to work against entropy and for a time prevent destruction. 'Do not go gently into that good night  Rage against the dying of the light' (Dylan Thomas).

Was Hegel Correct in Saying Philosophy Isn't Suitable for the Mob?

Social media has brought everyone the opportunity to believe they are an intellectual or that the common opinion is philosophically interest...