Or why can’t you have a worldview that computes the best answer to any given “what should I do” question, to arbitrary but not infinite precision?
I am not talking about any ‘good enough’ answer. Whatever you deem ‘good enough’ to some arbitrary precision.
I am talking about the correct answer every time. This is not a matter of sufficient compute. Because if the answer comes even a fraction of a second AFTER, it is already too late. The answer has to be immediate. To get an answer that is immediate, that means it took zero amount of time, no compute is involved.
Is it something that your reader should be able to infer from this post, or from their own experience of life (assuming they’re paying attention?)
Not unless they are Awakened. But my intended audience is that which does not currently walk a spiritual path.
Is this something that you think you know mainly because of your personal experience with pervious worldviews failing you? Some other way?
A mix of my own practice, experience, training, insight, and teachings I’ve received from someone who knows.
Merely having worldviews failing you is not sufficient to understand what I am saying. You also have to have found a relative solution to the problem. But if you are sick of worldviews failing you or of failing to live according to truth, then I am claiming there’s a solution to that.
I am not talking about any ‘good enough’ answer. Whatever you deem ‘good enough’ to some arbitrary precision.
I am talking about the correct answer every time. This is not a matter of sufficient compute. Because if the answer comes even a fraction of a second AFTER, it is already too late. The answer has to be immediate. To get an answer that is immediate, that means it took zero amount of time, no compute is involved.
That sounds like either a nonsensical or a fundamentally impossible constraint to me.
Max human reaction times (for something like responding to a visual cue by pressing a button) are about 150-200 milliseconds. Just the input side, for a signal to travel from the retina, down the optic nerve, through the brain to the visual cortex takes 50-80 milliseconds.
By the time your sensory cortices receive (not even process, just receive) the raw sense data, you’re already a fraction of a second out of sync with reality.
Possibly you’re not concerned with the delay between an external event occurring, and when the brain parses it into a subjective experience, only the delay between the moment of subjective experience[1] and one’s response to it? But the same basic issue applies at every step. It takes time for the visual cortex to do image recognition. It takes time to pass info to the motor cortex. It takes time for the motor cortex to send signals to the muscles. It takes times for the muscles to contract.
No response can be immediate in a physical universe with (in the most extreme case), a lightspeed limit. Insofar as a response is triggered by some event, some time will pass between the event and the response.
Or to put it another way, the only way for a reaction to a situation to not involve any computation, is for the response to be completely static and unvarying, which is to say not even slightly responsive to the details of the situation. A rock that has “don’t worry, be happy” painted on it can give a perfect truly instantaneous response, if “a rock that says ‘don’t worry, be happy’” is the perfect response to every possible situation.
Am I being blockheaded here, and missing the point?
Do you mean something different than I do by “instantaneous”? Or are you putting forward that something about worldviews sometimes relies on faster than light signaling? Or is your point that immediate responses are impossible.
Notably my understanding is that there isn’t a moment of subjective experience, for all it seems like sense data coheres into a single unified experience. Rather, there are a bunch of not-quite consistent pseudo-impressions that don’t all take place at a exactly the same moment, but the differences between those are papered over. (You can do various experiments that mess with that papering over process, and get confused, mixed, subjective experience of events happening in sequence.)
are you putting forward that something about worldviews sometimes relies on faster than light signaling?
OK this is getting close. I am saying worldviews CANNOT EVER be fast enough, and that’s why the goal is to drop all worldviews to get “fast enough”. Which the very idea of “fast enough” is in itself ‘wrong’ because it’s conceptual / limited / false. This is my worst-best attempt to point to a thing, but I am trying to be as literal as possible, not poetic.
No response can be immediate in a physical universe
Yeah, we’re including ‘physical universe’ as a ‘worldview’. If you hold onto a physical universe, you’re already stuck in a worldview, and that’s not going to be fast enough.
The point is to get out of this mental, patterned, limited ideation. It’s “blockheaded”, as you put. All ideas. All ways of looking. All frameworks and methodologies and sense-making. All of it goes. Including consciousness, perception.
When all of it goes, then you don’t need ‘response times’ or ‘sense data’ or ‘brain activity’ or ‘neurons firing’ or ‘speed of light’ or whatever. All of that can still ‘operate’ as normal, without a problem.
We’re getting to the end of where thinking or talking about it is going to help.
We’re getting to the end of where thinking or talking about it is going to help.
Ok, well maybe it doesn’t make sense to answer this question then, but...
Why is it such a crucial desiderata to have (apparently literally) instantaneous responsiveness? What’s insufficient about a 200 millisecond delay?
So far “this isn’t instantaneous [in a way that my current worldview suggests is literally, fundamentally, impossible]”, isn’t a very compelling reason for me to try do a different thing that I’m already doing.
I am not talking about any ‘good enough’ answer. Whatever you deem ‘good enough’ to some arbitrary precision.
I am talking about the correct answer every time. This is not a matter of sufficient compute. Because if the answer comes even a fraction of a second AFTER, it is already too late. The answer has to be immediate. To get an answer that is immediate, that means it took zero amount of time, no compute is involved.
Not unless they are Awakened. But my intended audience is that which does not currently walk a spiritual path.
A mix of my own practice, experience, training, insight, and teachings I’ve received from someone who knows.
Merely having worldviews failing you is not sufficient to understand what I am saying. You also have to have found a relative solution to the problem. But if you are sick of worldviews failing you or of failing to live according to truth, then I am claiming there’s a solution to that.
That sounds like either a nonsensical or a fundamentally impossible constraint to me.
Max human reaction times (for something like responding to a visual cue by pressing a button) are about 150-200 milliseconds. Just the input side, for a signal to travel from the retina, down the optic nerve, through the brain to the visual cortex takes 50-80 milliseconds.
By the time your sensory cortices receive (not even process, just receive) the raw sense data, you’re already a fraction of a second out of sync with reality.
Possibly you’re not concerned with the delay between an external event occurring, and when the brain parses it into a subjective experience, only the delay between the moment of subjective experience[1] and one’s response to it? But the same basic issue applies at every step. It takes time for the visual cortex to do image recognition. It takes time to pass info to the motor cortex. It takes time for the motor cortex to send signals to the muscles. It takes times for the muscles to contract.
No response can be immediate in a physical universe with (in the most extreme case), a lightspeed limit. Insofar as a response is triggered by some event, some time will pass between the event and the response.
Or to put it another way, the only way for a reaction to a situation to not involve any computation, is for the response to be completely static and unvarying, which is to say not even slightly responsive to the details of the situation. A rock that has “don’t worry, be happy” painted on it can give a perfect truly instantaneous response, if “a rock that says ‘don’t worry, be happy’” is the perfect response to every possible situation.
Am I being blockheaded here, and missing the point?
Do you mean something different than I do by “instantaneous”? Or are you putting forward that something about worldviews sometimes relies on faster than light signaling? Or is your point that immediate responses are impossible.
Notably my understanding is that there isn’t a moment of subjective experience, for all it seems like sense data coheres into a single unified experience. Rather, there are a bunch of not-quite consistent pseudo-impressions that don’t all take place at a exactly the same moment, but the differences between those are papered over. (You can do various experiments that mess with that papering over process, and get confused, mixed, subjective experience of events happening in sequence.)
OK this is getting close. I am saying worldviews CANNOT EVER be fast enough, and that’s why the goal is to drop all worldviews to get “fast enough”. Which the very idea of “fast enough” is in itself ‘wrong’ because it’s conceptual / limited / false. This is my worst-best attempt to point to a thing, but I am trying to be as literal as possible, not poetic.
Yeah, we’re including ‘physical universe’ as a ‘worldview’. If you hold onto a physical universe, you’re already stuck in a worldview, and that’s not going to be fast enough.
The point is to get out of this mental, patterned, limited ideation. It’s “blockheaded”, as you put. All ideas. All ways of looking. All frameworks and methodologies and sense-making. All of it goes. Including consciousness, perception.
When all of it goes, then you don’t need ‘response times’ or ‘sense data’ or ‘brain activity’ or ‘neurons firing’ or ‘speed of light’ or whatever. All of that can still ‘operate’ as normal, without a problem.
We’re getting to the end of where thinking or talking about it is going to help.
Ok, well maybe it doesn’t make sense to answer this question then, but...
Why is it such a crucial desiderata to have (apparently literally) instantaneous responsiveness? What’s insufficient about a 200 millisecond delay?
So far “this isn’t instantaneous [in a way that my current worldview suggests is literally, fundamentally, impossible]”, isn’t a very compelling reason for me to try do a different thing that I’m already doing.
It seems like an irrelevant desiderata rather than a reason to Halt, Melt, and Catch Fire.