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Xezlec Profile
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Registered: 09-2007
Posts: 9
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Hi!


Hi everyone. I usually don't stay too long at any one forum, but I'm here for a little while at least, having just witnessed the awesome spectacle that was this show.

I'm a professional computer programmer and amateur sci-fi fan in Austin, TX. I know a lot about a lot of sciency stuff, having spent probably too many of my college days studying subjects not really on-topic for my degree (which was electrical and computer engineering). So, I guess, perfect recipe for a typical TLR fan. :-)

Pretty amazing that there's a thread here with posts by the writers themselves! emoticon

I tend to prefer supernatural to pseudoscientific explanations for The Event, because I have a hard time making myself believe that any logical physical principles would have effects that are so neatly organized (i.e. these effects have the same concept of what is an "object" that we do, and they seem to "know" when an object is being "used" in the sense that humans are accustomed to).

Also, I have to admit that as an atheist I'm in love with the irreverent idea that God just "broke" or "died" in room 10 of a seedy motel. LOL! Chintzy third-world manufacturing...
9/15/2007, 11:46 pm Link to this post Send Email to Xezlec   Send PM to Xezlec
 
Spikosauropod Profile
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The Prophet & Moderator

Registered: 06-2007
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Re: Hi!


Hi Xezlec!

Paul…we need another nickname here. How about “X”? I think we need to have someone called X! Well, in any case, you seem like a good member.

I am of the opinion that the supernatural and the scientific can be the same thing. You should read a book called The Holographic Universe. You will think this book is pseudoscientific, but it shows how the supernatural and the scientific can be one thing. I am somewhat religions, so that may influence my perspective. My own TOE is a bit more complicated, but it could actually encompass the circumstances of TLR.
9/16/2007, 3:51 am Link to this post Send Email to Spikosauropod   Send PM to Spikosauropod
 
paulv70 Profile
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Registered: 03-2005
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Re: Hi!


Xezlec are you a Doctor or Professor by any chance? Dr. or Professor X would make a pretty cool nickname for you.

In any case, welcome. We have a pretty diverse group here of highly intelligent people and I think you're insights will spark some very interesting conversations for however long you decide to stay.


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9/16/2007, 8:05 am Link to this post Send Email to paulv70   Send PM to paulv70 Yahoo
 
Xezlec Profile
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Registered: 09-2007
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Re: Hi!


No, I'm not a professor. I was unable to survive grad school.

I can't imagine any physical theory that would treat things like "turning", "tapping", and "opening a door with" as fundamentally describable physical processes, or that would neatly parse out all the matter in a room into named, identifiable "objects" with distinct properties, but if you've got one I'd love to hear it.

In any case I usually define the boundary between normal and paranormal exactly there, at the point where detail-based reason breaks down. Magic is based on symbolism and metaphor, whereas natural phenomena boil down to values of fundamental quantities. And I agree this conversation should make a pretty good thread :-)
9/16/2007, 10:45 am Link to this post Send Email to Xezlec   Send PM to Xezlec
 
paulv70 Profile
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Re: Hi!


I'm thinking this case falls into the category of existing beyond our dimension where normal rules of nature, physics, etc. do not apply and therefore the rules would be beyond our understanding.

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9/16/2007, 11:33 am Link to this post Send Email to paulv70   Send PM to paulv70 Yahoo
 
Chucklbunny Profile
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Registered: 06-2007
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Re: Hi!


Welcome Xezlec !
           I am glad you found us and welcome to the best cabal there is ! You will find this place is a great resource for any and all info about Objetcs and The Lost Room !!


Chucklbunny emoticon

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9/16/2007, 1:46 pm Link to this post Send Email to Chucklbunny   Send PM to Chucklbunny Blog
 
Xezlec Profile
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Re: Hi!


quote:

Chucklbunny wrote:

Welcome Xezlec !



Thank you emoticon

Regarding the other conversation... I wasn't trying to imply that the rules in this case would be the same laws of nature we're familiar with. I was just saying that the laws in play here seem to fit the general category of supernatural laws (as I'm defining it, anyway) better than the category of physical laws of some sort.

Doors are a creation of humans, and have a "meaning" only to us. I have a hard time believing that the very human-specific concept of "a door" has any significance to any fundamental physical laws, no matter how different those laws may be from the ones we're familiar with. The universe doesn't know that doors are symbolic of "gateways" in our culture, and therefore that they should be the exact location of some kind of portal, and should be activated by the (also human-specific) concept of a key.

In stories about magic, though, the magic always acts according to principles of meaning and symbolism in the culture where that magic exists (because magic is somehow related to the minds and experiences of the people involved in it). Wizards who live in teepees would use a flap as a magic gateway, whereas wizards in our culture would use a door. So to me it just makes more sense if it's some kind of magic. It just seems to fit better.

So I still prefer the God theory emoticon
9/16/2007, 8:01 pm Link to this post Send Email to Xezlec   Send PM to Xezlec
 
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Re: Hi!


The basic principle of my model is that the universe is not law based as depicted by most modern physics. Instead, it is logic and information based. The logic of the universe is manifested by a kind of organic neural net. This neural net functions by forming DNA-like templates.

When the universe first formed, it “discovered” by accident the structure of our known particles, and formed templates for those particles. These templates can reproduce and continue to form the particles they were modeled after. In this way it is similar to the behavior of DNA. I have even explored the possibility that the strings of M-Theory are actually the basis of these templates. The big bang and the continued expansion of the universe is actually the continued progress of these templates.

However, these templates are not limited to simple structures like particles. They can also be modeled after more complicated things. When a bird discovers how to get milk out of a bottle in Europe by pecking off the cap, a template for this behavior forms and birds all over the world benefit. Suddenly birds everywhere are able to get milk out of bottles by pecking off the caps. When a delicate experiment finally succeeds, a template is formed for this behavior and suddenly the experiment works for everyone everywhere.

This template forming property can be dangerous. There is always the possibility that the neural net will malfunction and start forming templates that facilitate odd behavior. Consciousness is one example of this odd behavior. However, we are comfortable with consciousness and consider it aesthetic. Other less desirable things could happen. A template for some aspect of intelligence could form and attach itself to something like scissors or a watch box.

When someone has a paranormal experience, this could be the result of a template that has formed around certain patterns of history or human interaction. That part is a bit difficult to explain and I will leave it for later. One key is that these templates are time and space independent. They do not exist in our time and space but sort of drift around it.

Since I believe in God, this behavior also explains why God cannot interfere too much with our affairs. If he did, the universe would form templates for the interfering behavior. It would adapt, in a sense, and the result would be sort of like cancer. These unprecedented templates would replicate and spread until the whole universe “woke up”. As a result, the universe would be reabsorbed into God and, in the process, annihilate all of us.

quote:

Doors are a creation of humans, and have a "meaning" only to us. I have a hard time believing that the very human-specific concept of "a door" has any significance to any fundamental physical laws, no matter how different those laws may be from the ones we're familiar with.



Since my theory does not distinguish between patterns of behavior, patterns of structure, and patterns of meaning, it is entirely possible that the “idea” of a door and the physical structure of a door could be merged. The template could match the mental recognition of a door to the physical structure of a door just as easily as it matches one physical door to another. If you think about it, this aspect is not entirely unfamiliar. Humans can hear or read a description of a door and go out and find the actual door. The link between the abstract and the physical has definitely been achieved. My model merely expands the possibility of those links.

Pretty insane huh! If I explain my theory completely it sounds too much like theology, so I will leave it at that until you have a chance to absorb it. However, if you want to see a completely insane and much more germane theory of the objects and the event, look here. I’m omnipsychotic.

Also, Frankie has generated a model of the event and the objects that successfully explains them without anything supernatural at all. He uses a computer model. His computer model could also account for what appears to be supernatural. FRANKIE MODEL


Last edited by Spikosauropod, 9/17/2007, 1:28 am
9/16/2007, 10:31 pm Link to this post Send Email to Spikosauropod   Send PM to Spikosauropod
 
Xezlec Profile
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Re: Hi!


Sorry, I don't see it. You are saying that when a "delicate experiment" "succeeds", it somehow biases the behavior of the universe in the future in such a way as to dramatically increase the "resemblance" of the results of "some future events" to the way that event played out. Right?

My problem is that I don't see any definitions of the terms I've enclosed in quotes above. I don't see how "a bird pecking at a bottlecap" is any different from "a rock cooling in the sun" or "four particles in different substances miles apart from one another moving in some directions". What constitutes an experiment? And "success" in this definition seems to just mean "some result that makes some organism 'happy'", which again doesn't seem useful as a definition.

The definition of resemblance seems just to be resemblance to a human observer. And the choice of which future events are going to be considered to represent some past "experiment" (and thus their "result" made to "resemble" it) also seems arbitrary.

Due to the above-mentioned arbitrariness, vagueness, and possibly anthropocentrism, your theory as stated actually sounds like a spirituality/mysticism, not a physical theory.

That's not a criticism. Just a disagreement over what category of thought this belongs to.
9/20/2007, 12:19 am Link to this post Send Email to Xezlec   Send PM to Xezlec
 
Spikosauropod Profile
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The Prophet & Moderator

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Re: Hi!


Your objections are all justified. I was only laying out a vague outline of my idea. Any specifics will obviously require a lot of explanation.

The question of whether semantic meaning and syntactical structure can be correlated in some way is very old and hotly debated. One of the biggest problems facing philosophy, especially regarding the nature of consciousness, is how a purely physical representation is somehow translated into an experience. For example, the color blue can be represented on a computer with a series of magnetically charged storage units, and that series of storage unites can be translated into certain wavelengths of light that are transmitted by a monitor. The representation of the color in our iris and our brain is not qualitatively different. The problem arises when we attempt to explain the “experience” of the color blue that somehow arises. A series of numerical bits is one thing, the experience of the color blue is quite another. It would be pointless to attempt to resolve this issue here. Highly trained exceptional minds have fought over it without any apparent resolution in books and papers that fill entire libraries. I refer you to this web site.

Online Papers on Consciousness

However, the possibility remains that there is some mechanism that is able to transform syntactical structure into semantic meaning. Somehow the bits in the computer’s memory turn into the “blue” that we experience. Since absolutely no one has a working model of consciousness (Like John Searle, I consider Dennett’s theory to be nothing more than an intellectual pathology), the biggest problem is what the physical representation of information is apparently correlated with. We can measure the bits of data on the computer, but we cannot measure conscious experience because we have absolutely no idea what it is.

However, if we make the assumption that consciousness is something—whatever it may be—there is the possibility that the meaning that apparently exists in consciousness can be translated into syntactical structure and vice versa. The “templates” I refer to have a good precedent in a transformation matrix. It can be demonstrated that transformation matrices exist for a great number of surprising transformations, but the best example is the matrix that transforms a linear coordinate system into a circular coordinate system. For purely aesthetic reasons, I like to think of the meaning we experience in our conscious mind as the circular coordinate system and the physical representation of information as the rectangular. If an object like the template I am describing exists, then it will be able to translate the experience of the color blue into the encoded information of the color blue and vice versa.

Now, here is the real implication. An object like a door existing in space can be represented as information. It is a small philosophical jump to the conclusion that the actual door is in fact information. Since the structure I am describing can translate the conscious idea of a door into the information that represents a door, it should just as easily be able to translate the conscious idea of a door into a physical door. Now, turning that translation of information into a specific action on the door is merely a matter of mechanics.

The template I am describing, therefore, is able to literally translate meaning into structure. However, the real implication of this is that there is actually no difference between meaning and structure. The idea of a door and a physical door are merely transformations between two ways of representing the information.

The basis of my theory is that what appears to be physical reality is generated by this kind of template. There are templates that transform the pattern of one particle structure into the production of another. There are templates that transform one birds experience into the actions of another, and there are templates that, at least in the TLR universe, translate the idea of a rotating object into an actual rotating object. If you assume that mechanics is determinate, as was supposed in Newton’s time, the idea of a template that transforms one physical event into another would be absurd. There would be no “wiggle room” so to speak. However, it can be fairly easily demonstrated that mechanics is not determinate. There is wiggle room. I am arguing, therefore, that these templates effectively skew the so-called probability in quantum mechanics. In other words, electrons appear to jump around at random, but my templates force them to “cheat”. In effect, they stack the deck. Going back to the example of the delicate experiment, these templates skew the behavior of the experimenter and skew the initial conditions in the experiment so that the results are more likely to be like the prior results.

OK, you may take a stab at this now. I don’t expect to convince you all at once.
9/20/2007, 2:16 am Link to this post Send Email to Spikosauropod   Send PM to Spikosauropod
 


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