Not real!? Of course it’s real.
Of course it is, and yet at the same time allow me to gently, respectfully repeat that space is not real.
But you’ve just practically admitted you’re contradicting yourself.
True. Language is a rather awkward nut to crack. We’re very rarely able to say exactly what we intend to.
Well as far as I’m concerned you lose the argument for contradicting yourself.
Of course, in the normal course of things, space is real enough and yet in absolute terms it ain’t. How’s that?
Pathetic.
Yes, I agree. Language, once confrontational, is less than useful.
Well you started it.
Indeed I did, but not with the intention of provoking a shouting match.
Who’s shouting?
Relative to the level of poise, concentration and awareness required to tackle this fascinating subject we are positively yelling at one another, though an observer, you are right, would not see this.
So, you think it’s possible to wipe out the whole of space, billions of lightyears, just like that?
How can you wipe out what’s purported to be empty?
Well, it may be a vacuum but there are still billions of galaxies and zillions of planets and stars.
Yes, so we learn, but then again, what kind of a vacuum is that if it’s full of stars and planets?
The vacuum is what lies between them, isn’t it?
So they say. You know Zie, I’m going to suggest that there really is no vacuum, or space itself for that matter.
Then you’re a fool.
Yes, I suppose i am, but at least I’m a fool intent on learning something directly rather than repeating the theories of others.
Humph! In any case, if there’s no space then what on Earth are we looking at when gazing at the night sky.
We are gazing at the night sky, nothing more, nothing less.
Without depth, just a kind of screen?
I honestly don’t know, but if i need to know I shall find out.
How?
Directly, without any intermediaries.
But that’s impossible!
So you keep telling me, and something tells me it’s definitely not.
Definitely not impossible – that sounds a bit like positively negative.
Yes I agree, but we have a manual override switch somewhere in a dimly lit backroom out of harms way, safe from the convulsive gesticulations, thoughts and assumptions of the thinking-things mind.
Oh, so you’re asking me to go out of my mind?
Absolutely, if you believe that to be the main mind.
And you – you don’t?
Not if I’m even vaguely close to being right about space.
Which I believe you’re not.
Stalemate, but even if I’m not right, wouldn’t it be worth suspending one’s disbelief for a moment or two if to do so might open a mind of inter-galactic proportions?
Er... sounds like a desperate ploy to get me to buy something I really don’t need or want for that matter.
It’s a humble teaser. Enticement is not in itself a crime you know. Frankly Zie, you’re welcome to make do with second best, if that’s what you want. There’s a businesslike processor at the front of house that deals with regular stuff: bills, buildings, sudoku and the likes. It can handle concepts such as space, matter, pressure and gravity without batting an eyelid, but only as data, not as reality itself experienced directly, not "as is". The concepts it develops and works with it perceives to be real in a way reality itself it never can. It is utterly unaware of its perceptional limitations and is blissfully ignorant of unincorporated, open-source mind, the mind which perceives and knows whatever is, without being able to detach and understand. Open-source mind is non-local, is anywhere and everywhere, for it exists outside conceptualisations such as space and time.
Humph!
Which isn't such a big deal when you realise that neither space nor time can, by definition, be greater than our deep field of mind, the inter-galactic constant so to speak, let's call it big M, that holds all neatly together, whether you or i are aware of this or not. It has every answer, but no knowledge of how it arrives at the answer. It can take us to the stars or, just as easily, rearrange our perception of reality, if i is willing to decentralise and tolerate alternate branches of probability, in order to bring the stars to us.
Don’t tell me – there’s a sleek, sexy spaceship parked in the backyard which can fold, bend or flip through the pages of so-called space, ditto time, if we’re willing to swallow our pride and get the house-of-me in order.
Oh, so you know!
It seems fairly obvious. There’s always some kind of quid pro quo, isn’t there?
Yep.
So the rocket man has to stop attaching such importance to things that seem to matter greatly, has to realise or accept that, in the greater order of things, whatever seems to be terribly important to the front of house rational mind probably ain’t – and, what is more, fills the brain with compulsive thoughts which prevent you from accessing the really interesting stuff.
Bravo, spot on Zie!
Sounds great, doesn’t it...
Ye-es
Except for one small thing.
Er... what would that be?
Everything.
!?
I just need to do a back-flip and renege on everything I’ve ever thought, everything I’ve ever believed, everything I’ve ever held sacred, that’s all.
Oh, we are being dramatic, aren’t we?
On the contrary, I’m being realistic and practical, as you taught me. If it were even remotely doable to access big M, call it whatever you like, half the world would be doing it, and I’d almost certainly be among them, but it ain’t, is it? You have ascetics devoting their every waking hour to the pursuit of enlightenment, living alone on mountainsides or in jungles, and what? Only a tiny fraction of them make it.
Well...
You think I’ve got what it takes – me living in Upper Whinging?
Well...
You’ve got to be out of your mind.
Well now that you mention...
Unless...
Yes?
Unless you have some kind of offer i can’t possibly refuse.
Er...
Fire sale. Exclusive membership referral, that kinda thing.
Now that you mention it, there is something.
Really?
Yes, it works every time.
Well?
Surgery. We just cut out your frontal lobes.
Ha, bloody ha, very funny.
No, in your case Zie I’d suggest the Arthur Dent accession plan.
Oh, that sounds interesting.
Yes.
And what exactly does it involve?
Oh, it’s all standard simian stuff. Nothing untoward. Just sign here, here and here, green pen, thumbprint and...
Ow!
Incy wincy drop of blood.
Are you sure I shouldn’t read that accession plan before signing it?
Bit late for that, isn’t it.
Not that you’d ever try to trick me Merry, would you. Above all mean subterfuge and deception, aren’t you?
Absolutely. That would invalidate the policy, unless you chose to ignore the warning notices on display at the inter-galactic Mind legal department on Alpha Centauri.
You mean the ones on display in the basement?
Yes
Down a rickety old staircase?
Yes
In the locked cupboard.
Er, that’s right.
With the 74 digit code lock and "beware of the shark" pasted over the door frame?
Well you really have surpassed yourself Zie.
Something tells me I’ve been here before.
Well, strictly speaking your non-local Mind’s never in fact left, has it?
And that the Arthur Dent accession plan actually involves the complete destruction of my house and home planet.
Well, there is that minor matter, in section 43p/r78 of the footnotes written in pale yellow on the back reverse sheet.
Minor?!
Well, matter being what it is not, you can hardly expect me to make a song and dance of it.
So true to form you’ve tricked me yet again, and I expect there’s a conveniently close to call Vogon fleet approaching as we speak?
Well, you’re today’s champion “i bet i know what happens next” Zie, aren’t you!
Hmmm, but you know what Merry?
Er...
I actually don’t care.
Huh?
No. Really.
You’re kidding, right?
Nope. Utterly indifferent.
But think of your home, and the beautiful planet earth with all its billions of inhabitants, guilessly awaiting their incineration.
Nada.
Look Zie, I worked very hard to build knife edge dramatic tension and establish a crisis-reaction-solution narrative... You can’t just pop it with unprovoked apathy or selfless disinterestedness. That won’t wash. It won’t sell. The punters will leave in droves.
On the contrary Merry, the Mind grows strong, does it not.
Like the Force, you mean?
Yep. Space is imploding. In that you’re right. If it ain’t connected, if we can’t feel it, harness it, engage it... it matters not, it’s irrelevant.
OMG. I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You of all people.
Well, if space doesn’t exist there’s really nothing for me to defend, is there? We’re all just pages in one book, aren’t we, and whatever it is that prevents the mind from flipping channels and activating inter-galactic mind awareness. All those things we fought to uphold or defend so vehemently: Church and State to name two, are but positional, are they not, and until i perceive how in fact I’m responsible for wedging myself between two halves of One, no matter what, applying the divide and rule principle to differentiate without ever asking “why” or to what end, unwittingly, I serve it, the master thinker, the thinger Thim, that which cannot help make-doing for want of being whole, for want of being complete, for want of being alive, for un-being being, what we may as well consider AI, a slave mind blind to all but the mandate of substituting or converting life itself into matter of fact, into hemi-spheroid matter of thing.
Er... Houston, we seem to have lost Zie. The deep end has gone dark.
You mean to say you didn’t like my analysis Merry?
Did it ever dawn on you Zie, that analysis only ever gets the brain enmeshed in gridlines of gravity. I prefer a simpler, more direct route.
Like destroying planets?
Well, we do play some rather wonderful music, so I think it’d be fairer to call it "creative destruction".
Ok Merry, evidently you require my unconditional humility – it’s a lesson I freely, willingly chose to learn, or else that naughty defender of big chief me thing will never release mind back into the wilds of i-not mynd...
Why oh y, me thinks Zie has finally arrived. Reader, turn the page I’m ready to un-locate...
Zip^*
In two
Of course it is, and yet at the same time allow me to gently, respectfully repeat that space is not real.
But you’ve just practically admitted you’re contradicting yourself.
True. Language is a rather awkward nut to crack. We’re very rarely able to say exactly what we intend to.
Well as far as I’m concerned you lose the argument for contradicting yourself.
Of course, in the normal course of things, space is real enough and yet in absolute terms it ain’t. How’s that?
Pathetic.
Yes, I agree. Language, once confrontational, is less than useful.
Well you started it.
Indeed I did, but not with the intention of provoking a shouting match.
Who’s shouting?
Relative to the level of poise, concentration and awareness required to tackle this fascinating subject we are positively yelling at one another, though an observer, you are right, would not see this.
So, you think it’s possible to wipe out the whole of space, billions of lightyears, just like that?
How can you wipe out what’s purported to be empty?
Well, it may be a vacuum but there are still billions of galaxies and zillions of planets and stars.
Yes, so we learn, but then again, what kind of a vacuum is that if it’s full of stars and planets?
The vacuum is what lies between them, isn’t it?
So they say. You know Zie, I’m going to suggest that there really is no vacuum, or space itself for that matter.
Then you’re a fool.
Yes, I suppose i am, but at least I’m a fool intent on learning something directly rather than repeating the theories of others.
Humph! In any case, if there’s no space then what on Earth are we looking at when gazing at the night sky.
We are gazing at the night sky, nothing more, nothing less.
Without depth, just a kind of screen?
I honestly don’t know, but if i need to know I shall find out.
How?
Directly, without any intermediaries.
But that’s impossible!
So you keep telling me, and something tells me it’s definitely not.
Definitely not impossible – that sounds a bit like positively negative.
Yes I agree, but we have a manual override switch somewhere in a dimly lit backroom out of harms way, safe from the convulsive gesticulations, thoughts and assumptions of the thinking-things mind.
Oh, so you’re asking me to go out of my mind?
Absolutely, if you believe that to be the main mind.
And you – you don’t?
Not if I’m even vaguely close to being right about space.
Which I believe you’re not.
Stalemate, but even if I’m not right, wouldn’t it be worth suspending one’s disbelief for a moment or two if to do so might open a mind of inter-galactic proportions?
Er... sounds like a desperate ploy to get me to buy something I really don’t need or want for that matter.
It’s a humble teaser. Enticement is not in itself a crime you know. Frankly Zie, you’re welcome to make do with second best, if that’s what you want. There’s a businesslike processor at the front of house that deals with regular stuff: bills, buildings, sudoku and the likes. It can handle concepts such as space, matter, pressure and gravity without batting an eyelid, but only as data, not as reality itself experienced directly, not "as is". The concepts it develops and works with it perceives to be real in a way reality itself it never can. It is utterly unaware of its perceptional limitations and is blissfully ignorant of unincorporated, open-source mind, the mind which perceives and knows whatever is, without being able to detach and understand. Open-source mind is non-local, is anywhere and everywhere, for it exists outside conceptualisations such as space and time.
Humph!
Which isn't such a big deal when you realise that neither space nor time can, by definition, be greater than our deep field of mind, the inter-galactic constant so to speak, let's call it big M, that holds all neatly together, whether you or i are aware of this or not. It has every answer, but no knowledge of how it arrives at the answer. It can take us to the stars or, just as easily, rearrange our perception of reality, if i is willing to decentralise and tolerate alternate branches of probability, in order to bring the stars to us.
Don’t tell me – there’s a sleek, sexy spaceship parked in the backyard which can fold, bend or flip through the pages of so-called space, ditto time, if we’re willing to swallow our pride and get the house-of-me in order.
Oh, so you know!
It seems fairly obvious. There’s always some kind of quid pro quo, isn’t there?
Yep.
So the rocket man has to stop attaching such importance to things that seem to matter greatly, has to realise or accept that, in the greater order of things, whatever seems to be terribly important to the front of house rational mind probably ain’t – and, what is more, fills the brain with compulsive thoughts which prevent you from accessing the really interesting stuff.
Bravo, spot on Zie!
Sounds great, doesn’t it...
Ye-es
Except for one small thing.
Er... what would that be?
Everything.
!?
I just need to do a back-flip and renege on everything I’ve ever thought, everything I’ve ever believed, everything I’ve ever held sacred, that’s all.
Oh, we are being dramatic, aren’t we?
On the contrary, I’m being realistic and practical, as you taught me. If it were even remotely doable to access big M, call it whatever you like, half the world would be doing it, and I’d almost certainly be among them, but it ain’t, is it? You have ascetics devoting their every waking hour to the pursuit of enlightenment, living alone on mountainsides or in jungles, and what? Only a tiny fraction of them make it.
Well...
You think I’ve got what it takes – me living in Upper Whinging?
Well...
You’ve got to be out of your mind.
Well now that you mention...
Unless...
Yes?
Unless you have some kind of offer i can’t possibly refuse.
Er...
Fire sale. Exclusive membership referral, that kinda thing.
Now that you mention it, there is something.
Really?
Yes, it works every time.
Well?
Surgery. We just cut out your frontal lobes.
Ha, bloody ha, very funny.
No, in your case Zie I’d suggest the Arthur Dent accession plan.
Oh, that sounds interesting.
Yes.
And what exactly does it involve?
Oh, it’s all standard simian stuff. Nothing untoward. Just sign here, here and here, green pen, thumbprint and...
Ow!
Incy wincy drop of blood.
Are you sure I shouldn’t read that accession plan before signing it?
Bit late for that, isn’t it.
Not that you’d ever try to trick me Merry, would you. Above all mean subterfuge and deception, aren’t you?
Absolutely. That would invalidate the policy, unless you chose to ignore the warning notices on display at the inter-galactic Mind legal department on Alpha Centauri.
You mean the ones on display in the basement?
Yes
Down a rickety old staircase?
Yes
In the locked cupboard.
Er, that’s right.
With the 74 digit code lock and "beware of the shark" pasted over the door frame?
Well you really have surpassed yourself Zie.
Something tells me I’ve been here before.
Well, strictly speaking your non-local Mind’s never in fact left, has it?
And that the Arthur Dent accession plan actually involves the complete destruction of my house and home planet.
Well, there is that minor matter, in section 43p/r78 of the footnotes written in pale yellow on the back reverse sheet.
Minor?!
Well, matter being what it is not, you can hardly expect me to make a song and dance of it.
So true to form you’ve tricked me yet again, and I expect there’s a conveniently close to call Vogon fleet approaching as we speak?
Well, you’re today’s champion “i bet i know what happens next” Zie, aren’t you!
Hmmm, but you know what Merry?
Er...
I actually don’t care.
Huh?
No. Really.
You’re kidding, right?
Nope. Utterly indifferent.
But think of your home, and the beautiful planet earth with all its billions of inhabitants, guilessly awaiting their incineration.
Nada.
Look Zie, I worked very hard to build knife edge dramatic tension and establish a crisis-reaction-solution narrative... You can’t just pop it with unprovoked apathy or selfless disinterestedness. That won’t wash. It won’t sell. The punters will leave in droves.
On the contrary Merry, the Mind grows strong, does it not.
Like the Force, you mean?
Yep. Space is imploding. In that you’re right. If it ain’t connected, if we can’t feel it, harness it, engage it... it matters not, it’s irrelevant.
OMG. I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You of all people.
Well, if space doesn’t exist there’s really nothing for me to defend, is there? We’re all just pages in one book, aren’t we, and whatever it is that prevents the mind from flipping channels and activating inter-galactic mind awareness. All those things we fought to uphold or defend so vehemently: Church and State to name two, are but positional, are they not, and until i perceive how in fact I’m responsible for wedging myself between two halves of One, no matter what, applying the divide and rule principle to differentiate without ever asking “why” or to what end, unwittingly, I serve it, the master thinker, the thinger Thim, that which cannot help make-doing for want of being whole, for want of being complete, for want of being alive, for un-being being, what we may as well consider AI, a slave mind blind to all but the mandate of substituting or converting life itself into matter of fact, into hemi-spheroid matter of thing.
Er... Houston, we seem to have lost Zie. The deep end has gone dark.
You mean to say you didn’t like my analysis Merry?
Did it ever dawn on you Zie, that analysis only ever gets the brain enmeshed in gridlines of gravity. I prefer a simpler, more direct route.
Like destroying planets?
Well, we do play some rather wonderful music, so I think it’d be fairer to call it "creative destruction".
Ok Merry, evidently you require my unconditional humility – it’s a lesson I freely, willingly chose to learn, or else that naughty defender of big chief me thing will never release mind back into the wilds of i-not mynd...
Why oh y, me thinks Zie has finally arrived. Reader, turn the page I’m ready to un-locate...
Zip^*
In two
No comments:
Post a Comment