jtm@syteka.UUCP (Jim McCrae) (10/11/84)
In all these recent ravings on free will, mind vs. matter, et ceterah, et ceterah, I see an implicit belief in the world "out there" as distinct from the world "in here". Where has anyone gotten the idea that there is anything but "mind"? What evidence is there of an object of conscious- ness distinct from consciousness itself? Excuse plesae, but the computer analogy is a little lame, no? Hardware, software, single user spiritual beings, multitasking multi-cpu brains in sterile space-time? Barf. There's really no reason to come up with all this stuff, except to sell books, methinks. It's all right here, it's all just what it looks like, we can pick it up and think about it and that's all that matters. Take us observers out of the picture and you got no picture jack. We'll keep making more powerful microscopes and in the process reveal just what it looks like to look into a more powerful microscope. We'll take radio wave snapshots of deep space and get to see what it looks like to look at snapshots we've taken of deep space with radio telescopes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-science or lo-tech - hi-tech's been very good to me - but the big questions in life, like "what the falk's going on here?!?!" are probably intrinsically unanswerable. What we've got is what we've got, and all we can do is use it for better or for worse. And write books about it I suppose. Jim McCrae ...!hplabs!sytek!jtm