A revolutionary OS/Programming Idea

[Lynn H. Maxson]

John Newman writes:
"Lynn, the whole notion of QM is based on the "quantum"
of energy.  That means a finite amount of energy and
matter."

I don't want to see us talking by each other.  I'm not 
concerned about the amount of energy and matter, two sides 
of the same coin, in the universe.  Mathematically it can't be 
infinite.  So finite remains the "other" choice.  However, 
neither affects that all "quanta" is in motion and that what 
distinguishes their effect at one level where our vision makes 
distinctions disappears at a lower level.  The universe remains 
a seamless whole in which the boundaries of the parts, the 
quanta if you will, become indistinct.

In short our language breaks up that which is unbroken.  We 
live in a world of processes, not one process of processes, and 
of objects, one of separation and not of connection, one of 
thingness and not of densities in motion.  We create the 
concept of time which doesn't even exist in the universe.  We 
create events, separate instances, where no such separation 
occurs.

It's little wonder that after much of a lifetime spent with 
misleading maps that some find solace in zen buddhism where 
they place great emphasis on getting language out of the way 
between you and the universe to where you can come to 
feeling the "oneness" that actually exists.

This is no anti-science statement on my part.  I'm a firm 
believer in the scientific method and the transformation of 
fact into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom.  As a side 
note I did locate the other book by E. F. Schumacher.  It's "A 
Guide for the Perplexed".  You may not consider yourself 
among that group, but I do think you might find it interesting.

We invented logic.  Reality has no need for it.  Reality in fact 
has no need for a word expressing it.  That's a human need, a 
human interpretation, the naming of a perceived phenomenon.  
We have means based on all our senses to express our 
interpretation, spoken language, mathematical language, 
music, art.  But they are never the phenomenon and never 
more than some abstraction of it.  That means something is 
always left out.

Sentience, intelligence, reasoning, thinking, and evolution are 
our interpretations, our abstractions from reality.  We have a 
history of false interpretations, of words outliving their lies.  It 
means that we have to always remember that something is 
never what we say it is: the word is not the thing.  That 
doesn't reduce our reliance on words and what we can 
achieve with their use.  It simply means that we continue to 
exercise caution when dealing with any abstraction, 
recognizing it as such that something is always left out.

Personally I don't think we can emulate a single neuron in 
software.  We haven't done it yet even though we picked that 
name for what we did emulate in software.  We did the same 
for different collections which we call neural nets.  As near as 
I can tell from everything I have read the neuron operates 
more as a catalyst, a passive agent in the process.  The active 
agents are the interconnections and the motions, the flow 
that occurs.  Patterns occur due to near simultaneous 
densities, occurrences, of motions whose order and frequency 
of repetition, enforcement of pattern remain random when 
undirected.  Somehow, through a mechanism we don't 
understand even though we invent names for it, we can 
impose "sense" and "purposefulness" on it.

So we have a phenomenon which allows us to create a 
language but have no means in language to create the 
phenomenon.  Herein lies a difference in our "thinking" in 
terms of absolutes.  Our language, any of our sense-based 
languages, allows us to, in fact forces us to decompose a 
phenomenon.  That leads us to believe that all phenomenon 
are decomposable into finite units subject to serialization in an 
instruction set.  We've done it successfully in so many areas 
that by induction we believe we can do in all areas.  We do 
not accept that phenomenon exist that cannot persist 
throughout a process of decomposition.  Therein you and I 
disagree.

So we have not emulated a neuron.  I'm not confident that we 
can even come close.  But given that we can reach that 
so-called point of "indistinguishableness", we have to move on 
to emulate the dynamics of the connections.  Once there then 
the dynamics of the densities of the dynamic fuzziness of the 
motions occurring through the interconnections.

I've only suggested so far that at least one demonstration of 
adaptive behavior has occurred through goal-oriented 
(homeostasis) organization of an interconnection of "same" 
components without the need for programming.  If you don't 
have the need for programming, you don't have the need for 
an instruction set.  If you don't have an instruction set, then 
you have no limitations on the development of different 
instruction sets: the different sense-based forms of 
expression.

That admits to a possibility, not a certainty, that a 
phenomenon, that which produces a result, may have a 
"character", an "attribute", or a "being" that never transfers 
into a result.  That means that no result or any combination 
thereof can reproduce the phenomenon.

Thus short of actual replication of the brain and nervous 
system through biological means we will not achieve either.  
The fact is that we don't like to make investments, in this 
instance a truly huge investment in money, time, and effort, 
with high risks, i.e. indeterminism (or if you like "free 
will"<g>).  We can get more for our money, more reliably and 
cheaply, through sexual intercourse and a relatively short 
wait.<g>