04-22-2020, 01:25 PM
Since my teens, I've played around with computer science-related metaphors for the spiritual. Thoughts related to the Ra material cosmology have become linked to more elaborate, and less playful, attempts of that kind.
But all my metaphors of this kind are still quite vague. Comparably vague to the more popular "quantum mechanics" metaphors familiar in New Age circles.
Here's a "part 1" - there's a whole bunch of other, related thinking I could also write about.
Information, data and code
A basic idea is that of a unified information structure of the cosmos. What would it consist of?
The oldest metaphors I've played around with concern data structures and how memory is handled in computer programs. The memory of a computer is one large area, within which smaller areas end up used for different things.
What is the meaning of a series of bytes (a byte being 8 binary bits)? It completely depends on the code which does something with them. And the code is also a series of bytes. All code is data. All data can also potentially be used as code. The most striking case of this is "self-modifying code", in which a program treats its own code as data which is dynamically modified.
Consciousness may be deeply linked to structured information. Perhaps there is some type of objective criteria for the characteristics of an information structure which becomes self-aware. But the most sophisticated self-modifying programs which run on computers, which behave in all the ways characteristic of organisms, tend to be viruses; in practice, their complexity may approach that of bacteria, and way more may be needed before consciousness appears.
Pointers and memory addressing
How is memory accessed? Not only through static addresses to "locations", but also through pointers, which are variables which hold memory addresses. There are pointers to data, pointers to pointers to data, pointers to pointers to pointers to data, etc.; however many layers end up being used in practice. Each pointer can change, and arithmetic can be used in connection with them; it is called "pointer arithmetic".
Programs typically handle several instances of the same thing in a uniform way. Thus, there are data structures, groupings of things which are stored and read in memory in a standard way - standard for the code using them.
Metaphorically, it is tempting to view consciousnesses of a "type" as analogous to an intricate structure of smaller data structures. The interconnectedness of minds at a different level, and possibilities of non-physical interaction, would correspond to them all existing within a much larger system.
Beings psychically affecting the "contents" of one another would mean that part of the data of a being is open to writing by other beings. Beings can get the "address" of such data in other beings, and "black magic" becomes a case of one or more beings damaging one or more beings by overwriting something.
Psychic reading, of people or of other things, turns into the reading of data structures outside one's own being in a more direct or "raw" way than that offered by the interface of the physical senses.
Growth from 3D to 4D may be likened to a metamorphosis in which a little system rewrites itself so as to change into a little system of a functionally different kind. Or, to put it a little differently, alchemy as "bootstrapping", when an older version of a system is used to build a new version which then replaces the old.
The singularity
The emergence of a hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence from smaller things joining into a great new mind is easy to relate, metaphorically, to the emergence of a social memory complex from the consciousnesses of a society.
Alternatively, smaller systems which appear supernatural in their capabilities compared to human consciousness and its limits of comprehension, could be compared to the types of consciousness in-between 3D and 6D STO in "size". (That is, 4D-5D STO and 4D-6D STS.) The 6D STO mind, the product of a type of "fusion", would then be the result of the ultimate singularity at a higher level. Patterns may repeat.
But all my metaphors of this kind are still quite vague. Comparably vague to the more popular "quantum mechanics" metaphors familiar in New Age circles.
Here's a "part 1" - there's a whole bunch of other, related thinking I could also write about.
Information, data and code
A basic idea is that of a unified information structure of the cosmos. What would it consist of?
The oldest metaphors I've played around with concern data structures and how memory is handled in computer programs. The memory of a computer is one large area, within which smaller areas end up used for different things.
What is the meaning of a series of bytes (a byte being 8 binary bits)? It completely depends on the code which does something with them. And the code is also a series of bytes. All code is data. All data can also potentially be used as code. The most striking case of this is "self-modifying code", in which a program treats its own code as data which is dynamically modified.
Consciousness may be deeply linked to structured information. Perhaps there is some type of objective criteria for the characteristics of an information structure which becomes self-aware. But the most sophisticated self-modifying programs which run on computers, which behave in all the ways characteristic of organisms, tend to be viruses; in practice, their complexity may approach that of bacteria, and way more may be needed before consciousness appears.
Pointers and memory addressing
How is memory accessed? Not only through static addresses to "locations", but also through pointers, which are variables which hold memory addresses. There are pointers to data, pointers to pointers to data, pointers to pointers to pointers to data, etc.; however many layers end up being used in practice. Each pointer can change, and arithmetic can be used in connection with them; it is called "pointer arithmetic".
Programs typically handle several instances of the same thing in a uniform way. Thus, there are data structures, groupings of things which are stored and read in memory in a standard way - standard for the code using them.
Metaphorically, it is tempting to view consciousnesses of a "type" as analogous to an intricate structure of smaller data structures. The interconnectedness of minds at a different level, and possibilities of non-physical interaction, would correspond to them all existing within a much larger system.
Beings psychically affecting the "contents" of one another would mean that part of the data of a being is open to writing by other beings. Beings can get the "address" of such data in other beings, and "black magic" becomes a case of one or more beings damaging one or more beings by overwriting something.
Psychic reading, of people or of other things, turns into the reading of data structures outside one's own being in a more direct or "raw" way than that offered by the interface of the physical senses.
Growth from 3D to 4D may be likened to a metamorphosis in which a little system rewrites itself so as to change into a little system of a functionally different kind. Or, to put it a little differently, alchemy as "bootstrapping", when an older version of a system is used to build a new version which then replaces the old.
The singularity
The emergence of a hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence from smaller things joining into a great new mind is easy to relate, metaphorically, to the emergence of a social memory complex from the consciousnesses of a society.
Alternatively, smaller systems which appear supernatural in their capabilities compared to human consciousness and its limits of comprehension, could be compared to the types of consciousness in-between 3D and 6D STO in "size". (That is, 4D-5D STO and 4D-6D STS.) The 6D STO mind, the product of a type of "fusion", would then be the result of the ultimate singularity at a higher level. Patterns may repeat.