you know the game of life the cellular automaton
right so you've got this grid and and this world has only has three rules it's very simple and each each little cell goes on or off based on these rules about what's around them that's it so the interesting thing is that if you run this kind of system and you sort of step back as a human observer you find all kinds of interesting patterns you find large scale patterns so there's things called gliders that zip around and there's all this kind of stuff it's amazing right if you actually run these very simple rules they give you all of this this very complex behavior so just think about this you you could be a reductionist about it and you could say look I don't believe in gliders there aren't any gliders all there is are individual cells and there are only three rules and the cells are on and off that's it I'm a micro reductionist the whole thing is deterministic these rules are totally deterministic I'm a micro reductionist all that exists are these these rules and these individual cells it's not that you're factually wrong because if you wanted to zoom in in that way anything that can be done in the universe you could look at it that way you could zoom in and see oh it's just these little individual cells turning on and off according to these local rules but here's what you're missing if you don't believe in gliders then what you're never going to do is this thing that for example somebody did by using the gliders as signals they built a Turing machine a computer inside this world you would never have built that if you didn't believe that these larger scale patterns exist if you insist on focusing on the micro level view you can explain things that somebody else has produced but you're not going to produce any new things and so this I think is the problem with laplace's demon the real problem I mean of course it's impossible for many reasons but let's just imagine if laplace's demon was real and that he could actually predict where every particle was going to go he could always tell you what a system is going to do that someone has prepared so that's true and he could sort of track it forward but he would never make one because all microstates are equivalent to him if you don't believe in large scale you know these these these large-scale levels all the microstates are identical to you so no outcome is preferred to any outcome you to any other outcome you cannot build anything you cannot invent anything you couldn't play a game of chess because every um distribution of molecules to you is the same as any other distribution of molecules because you don't believe in chess pieces you don't believe in in dominating the center of the board or whatever you know you do when you play chess none of those things exist to you so you couldn't do any of those things you don't know what your next move you know in Life or in chess or anything else is going to be because you don't believe in these higher level uh in these higher levels so so to me what's really critical about all of this is that you can always choose the micro lens if you want but my question is where does that get you what does it let you do that other lessons an lenses don't and what does it preclude you from that another lens would have helped you with.
Why are you standing on hot coals? So called civil society is hostile to every form of life. It's not just genocidal, it's geocidal....
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