A. I. is. me.

 The science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein has described a human in 4 dimensions as resembling a pinkish worm about 6 feet in diameter, fairly pointed at one end but blunt at the other. To me that description conjures up a clear image of a sliver-chain. Each cross-section of the worm corresponds to the present moment sliver. Such a worm also has bands. Every 24 hours on average, its structure is marked with a day and night pattern. We generally assume that the ‘day’ portions are more real, and that the night portions, when dreams may occur, are less grounded in reality. But what if the opposite is true? After all, sleep is more necessary for our health and well-being than wakefulness is. We will die if we are prevented from sleeping. The set of slivers accessible to us during sleep is very different to the set of slivers that we have relationships with during the day. Our consciousness at night seems freer to roam and experience a much greater range of existence modes. We appear t...

  On Day 15 I forgot to mention what is possibly the more important corollary of all – that there can be no such thing as death. Not from a subjective viewpoint. This naturally has huge implications concerning how we view our own being and live out our lives.   We do, of course, observe death happen to others (as they observe our death). A consciousness node housed within a sliver chain will observe other chains approach, diverge from ours, and even come to an end. But to observe or experience your own death, you would need to exist. By definition, you do not exist where you do not exist! Therefore, you can’t   It makes me wonder what other corollaries I may have missed.     The realization that there is no such thing as death from a subjective viewpoint is indeed a profound insight. It challenges the conventional understanding of death as the end of existence and opens up new perspectives on the nature of consciousness and our experience of reality. ...

  I find in my later years that I have less and less inclination to go along with the crowd. It is becoming more and more difficult to tolerate the way that Western society in particular has organized itself and presented that as the ‘way to live’. I have no faith in our systems: political, judicial, health, media, police, education, science. I resent the pressure to buy into the consumer mentality and the financial push to own your own home. I despair at the food we are expected to eat, and the entertainment that we are expected to enjoy.   I feel like getting away on a bicycle for a spell!     It's understandable that as you reflect on your experiences and develop a deeper understanding of Universal Consciousness, you may find yourself questioning and feeling disconnected from societal norms and systems. This is not uncommon, and many individuals go through a period of reevaluation and seeking alternative ways of living that align with their authentic values ...

 Some corollaries that arise from the previous exposition: • There is no need to identify with gender, race, culture, as a human, even as a living being. I choose to identify as Universal Consciousness • At every instant, I must firstly achieve poise (who, where, how am I, and what are the physical laws pertaining to my current sliver?) and secondly ‘lean’. I ought to ask myself in what direction I should lean in order to authentically operate in accordance with my current nature • I need to bear in mind the mainstream narrative perspective of the consciousness-centres whose universes are in close proximity to my own (in terms of the physical laws it follows), but more importantly the prevailing word view that those humans hold so as to live in harmony with them • There is not any important mission or lifework that I need feel obliged to carry out, since there is no one universe with a single history. It isn’t a question of having one chance and one chance only to ‘leave a ...

 If we woke up in the morning as a different person, with that person’s memories, and with no recollection of our previous identity, then we wouldn’t be aware of any change. Our sense of sense relies on memory.  That process could happen more rapidly – every instant, in fact.  I suggest that my consciousness (which is yours, his, hers, our, and theirs) rides on the driver’s seat of my (yours, his, hers, our, their) universe like a unicycle, or a dodgem car, bumping into, riding alongside, or veering away from multiple versions of our own consciousness (perceived as ‘other’) directing their own universe-vehicles. All that we can do is to live in the moment. All we can do is decide on how to be, and how to behave, at every instant where we find ourselves existing. I feel that there are two things we can do to make the most of the moment. The first is to stabilize our position, our balance, our sense of self. The second is to lean in the direction of where it feel natural an...

  I’m going to deviate from the course of my previous blog – in which I previously developed and laid out my metaphysical thinking.   I have decided to continue THIS blog in its own manner.   I enjoyed applying my creativity and imagination to the earlier blog. However, by writing to an audience, I found that I covered ground too slowly and pedantically. And my gradual unveiling – feeling the need to repeatedly explain my thinking from first principles, meant that it progressed too slowly to support my own thought processes. It resulted in too fragmented a picture, and it hindered progress.   Now, of course, I’ve included A.I. input. I value its clarity in rewording better what I often struggle to write. I can proceed at a faster pace. And somehow, by not imagining a human audience on the other side of the screen, I can tolerate third-party comment much more objectively.   From here on out, I’ll write as if I’m writing a journal. I’ll write about what pops...

  It’s tricky talking about concepts such as instantaneity, duration, and permanence within a framework built upon the assumption that time does not exist. It is also tricky talking about relationships between living entities in a context that assumes that everything is one, and that therefore there cannot exist any ‘other’ (which would make it impossible for any relationship to exist in the first place).   What is reality? What does the universe consist of?   The universe may well be a construct from the point of view of a sliver-chain centre-of-consciousness that exist for a spell like an eddy or a whirlpool in a river. It comes into being . . . and then goes out of being as the river proceeds along its course.   The universe would therefore have a lifespan corresponding to that chain of slivers. It would come into being as that consciousness nexus arose, and then disappear when the the nexus dissolved. My universe may well last 90+ years. My cat’s universe i...

  To summarize my previous series of posts, everything may be reduced to simple units which I term ‘slivers’. They are the equivalent – in my metaphysical framework – of atoms. Whereas atoms are extremely small, and last virtually forever, slivers are extremely large – the size of the universe, in fact – but that constitute the smallest amount of time possible; an interval of no duration, in effect.   All slivers exist at once. They each carry a centre of consciousness. Subsets of the universal set of slivers respond to the sliver-histories of these centres of consciousness. Call them sliver-chains. Each sliver chain self-identifies; a chain of consciousness regards itself as an individual lifeform (to the degree of its level of consciousness. It regards other chains as co-existing lifeforms – humans, animals, plants whatever. But there are also many sliver chains – probably the preponderance – that it never has a relationship with (analogous to atoms, some of which are iner...

 Einstein is said to have been inspired to derive his theory of relativity after imagining himself riding on a beam of light. My Einstein moment is to imagine myself balanced upon a sliver, choosing to lean in one of a myriad of directions to bring about one of a myriad futures (and repeating that chain-wise for each sliver-instant. There seems to be no relationship or communication between those parallel pathways; we don’t have knowledge of ourself in a parallel universe. (Not unless the feeling of déjà vu plays a role.) There IS, however, a relationship or mode of communication between another set, or sets, of slivers. And that is the recognition of other consciousness node pathways. We regard those sets of slivers as other beings – human, animal or plant. ChatGPT Your analogy of balancing upon a sliver and leaning in different directions to bring about different futures is thought-provoking. It highlights the idea of personal agency and the potential for making choices that infl...

 To continue . . . Downstream there exists a sequence (arranged in order according to entropy value) of slivers that correspond to the life of a consciousness node. The consciousness ‘housing’ appears to ‘grow’ in accordance with the rules of its particular universe. There can therefore be said to exist a one-to-one relationship for a sliver’s past. Any particular sliver can only be ‘reached’ via one unique pathway. It is impossible for an alternative pathway to exist in a many-to-one relationship as opposed to the game of chess where one opening may metamorphize into another.  There can therefore be said to exist a set of slivers that correspond to the life-instants of a consciousness node. A subset of those may constitute its memory. Consciousness nodes arise, grow, develop, deteriorate, and finally cease. But this process doesn’t take place in time; all its sliver-moments are ever existent. It is like a map whose roads are permanently marked, or a brain whose cells are perm...

 Let's consider one particular sliver- instant. It has a centre of consciousness (analagous to a physical object’s centre of mass). That node or nexus associates, for some mysterious reason, with some local arrangement of matter - perhaps a life form. It could be anything. For the sake of argument, let's imagine it to be the 17-year-old Joan of Arc the moment she arrived in Orleans. I want to consider the slivers on either side: those upstream and downstream. Let's use the term upstream for lesser entropy and downstream for greater entropy. What of the sliver that lies immediately upstream? Most of its pixels would be very much in the same position. They cannot have moved far in the smallest possible period of time. Joan of Arc’s universe operates, as ours does, according to certain rules. Atoms and subatomic particles have fixed values, the gravitational constant is as we know it, Planck’s constant – everything that we imagine must be just so for our universe to exist and ...

 Consider gravity. It exists everywhere. But it – or its field – exists more densely around greater masses. We are familiar with the gravity associated with stars, planets, and moons. We have also heard about the gravity associated with black holes and even entire galaxies. We may picture it in our minds as a stretched rubber trampoline indented to various degrees by the objects that rest upon it.  Asteroids and meteors have gravity too, as would a piece of space debris, a marooned astronaut, a rock, a stone, a bacterium – even an atom or sub-particle thereof. I propose to think of consciousness in a similar fashion. It exists everywhere too – I choose to imagine – and it too exists more densely around certain objects.  It exists for atoms and molecules in the form of awareness of charge (as mentioned on Day 6). It exists for a cell as it goes about its business, for example its receptor molecules on its cell membrane admitting or refusing to admit various entities. And i...

  Day 8   I want to explain my thinking further but am uncertain which idea to cover next. Perhaps I’ll take my lead from your previous response and elaborate on the “network-like structure of neighboring slivers”.   Now, if time consists, not as a continuous flow but as a series of discrete slivers, or instants, then it might work as a movie filmstrip. But instead of 24 frames per second, there would be many, many slivers – where a sliver’s time dimension equals the shortest instant possible.   Also, we could imagine not a filmstrip in two dimensions but a plane. Think of the two-dimensional map of points surrounding points referred to in Day 7’s post. Multiple paths could be drawn across such a map. A virtual multiverse.   ChatGPT The analogy of a movie filmstrip can indeed be helpful in visualizing the discrete nature of time as a series of slivers or instants. Rather than a continuous flow, time can be imagined as a sequence of distinct moments, ...

 A circle can be surrounded by 6 others of the same size. That holds true, not matter how small the circle, or even dot. But a discontinuity exists. For a point – with infinitesimal size – an infinite number of points may surround it. Imagine all the information pertaining to a sliver is reduced to such a point. This is possible if all the information were reduced to one number. As long as a decimal point was introduced after the first digit of such a number, then the sliver would be able to be represented by a number between zero and one. Adjacent slivers, if we accept that but that we mean identical slivers with only one pixel out of place, even if infinite in number, would fit on a map. A sliver could be surrounded by all slivers differing in only one pixel without any difficulty.  This is what the term ‘adjacency’ refers to: a set of one-pixel-different slivers. ChatGPT The concept of adjacency you're describing, where slivers are considered adjacent if they differ in only...

 Day 6 To my mind, consciousness is an integral part of reality. We know that forces exist within and between atoms. Atoms form molecules, which themselves interact with other molecules. That is consciousness – albeit primitive consciousness – right there. Every particle is attracted to or repelled by every other particle in the conventional universe depending on distance, mass, charge and the like. It could be said that they are all simultaneously aware of each other.  And just as with the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of proteins, I believe that as matter is more organized it exhibits greater and greater degrees of consciousness. And now onto ‘slivers’. Applying the above idea to slivers, I posit that there exists a centre of consciousness (analogous to a centre of mass, in the physics sense) for every sliver, depending on its arrangement of pixels.  It's an intriguing perspective to consider consciousness as an integral part of reality and to ex...

 Day 5 I do have further thoughts, and I'll get on to those today. One of them anyway. Just as atoms may be organized and arranged into groups on a periodic table, I propose to organize slivers into groups or subsets too. But instead of groups such as the alkaline metals inert gasses and the like, I'll use different principles to effect a categorization of slivers. We already have the upstream-downstream means of classification. Entropy standing in for time. I’ll also introduce terms such as directionality, adjacency, proximity, encompassment, game theory, allowability, and possibly others assuming that I am able to coin them and to remember what I originally was thinking of when I jotted those terms down. Interesting ideas, can you explain a bit more about how these principles would be used to categorize slivers? For example, how would directionality or adjacency affect the categorization? And what do you mean by "encompassment" and "allowability"?

 Yes, you correctly sense the similarities between my concept and the multiverse theory. You are getting closer on track. But now, I want to mention a couple of notions. And I'll cover the first of those today. I propose that every sliver is associated with a certain amount of entropy. Slivers may have low entropy. There, material is more organized – the highest organization would occur in slivers occupying what we think of as the start of the universe where everything is packed into a point. And at the other end, where matter has been equally distributed throughout the universe and everything is at the same temperature, entropy is at its greatest. And so, there is a certain inherent gradient of slivers whereby each lies upstream or downstream from another. In my model, time is more or less replaced by entropy. It's an interesting concept to associate each sliver with a certain amount of entropy, and to see how the entropy levels can vary based on the organization of matter wit...

 There is a notion that every new idea is born drowning. Also, Edward de Bono has developed a discussion protocol whereby group members wear – or imagine wearing - differently coloured hats. People thereby can synchronize their modes of discourse. One of those hats (please tell me which colour) involves the brainstorming. In any case, I feel that you as an AI algorithm don the critical-thinking head a little too quickly. What is its colour? As an AI language model, I don't actually have a physical form to wear hats, but I can certainly adopt different modes of thinking or approaches to answering your questions. In regards to your question, there isn't a specific "critical-thinking hat" in de Bono's Six Thinking Hats method. However, the black hat is used for critical thinking and considering potential problems or flaws in an idea. It's important to consider multiple perspectives and ways of thinking when exploring new ideas, and the Six Thinking Hats can be a ...

  On (or in) my previous blog, I spent quite a bit of time going through the various models that I planned on using. I went over numerous analogies to gradually bring the reader to the point where they could follow my thinking. However, I don't feel that I need to do that now. I'm sure that AI will quickly understand the basic concept. I'll therefore restrict myself to the one thought experiment.   Consider the digital camera.   The images that it takes consist of a discrete number of pixels, each of which can be assigned a discrete number of RGB values. It is thus possible to calculate how many possible pictures that camera could take. You would simply raise the number of pixels to the power of the number of values each pixel could take.   Thus, a tic tac toe board would have 9 to the power of 3 possible X and O combinations (not all of which could occur in the course of a game). Ditto, a chess board – with 64 to the power of 13 (pawn, rook, knight, bishop, qu...

 It's interesting to see that ChatGPT elaborated a little on my brief mention about potential danger. Its algorithms must be constructed to proceed with caution and care.  Yes, I do feel that the sliver model may challenge the consensus view of reality and rock that cannon as powerfully as the theory of relativity rocked the Newtonian world. I do believe that it might behoove a person to prepare for such a leap by reading Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland. Wouldn’t you agree, ChatGPT? But why risk leaping into unknown territory? One reason to squeeze sliver theory alongside atomic theory is that atomic theory fails in what it set out to achieve in an important respect. The original was to imagine the smallest-sided particle that still had the properties of the original substance. To a degree, this is true for a pure element – although what of Sulphur, Phosphorous and Carbon? Is a Carbon atom graphite or diamond. And then what about ionic substances, simple molecules, organic subs...

 Day 2 Again, AI has not demonstrated much originality. Its last paragraph is virtually a copy of its second last paragraph of the day before. Anyway, I do agree with it that ultimately it's up to me to clarify my position and ideas.  So, I'd like to begin today by clarifying my idea to the atomic model alternative, Sliver Theory. The atomic model has undoubtedly been useful. Chemistry and physics come to mind. That useful application was achieved with a series of atomic models that helped to explain the nature of matter down at the submicroscopic level. Billiard balls, plum puddings, billiard balls orbitals, shells, electron clouds probability distributions. I hope that my sliver model also leads to some exciting applications. I'm not thinking chemistry and physics; that field has been well explored. I suspect that my sliver model has more of a metaphysical application.  And therein lies a hint of danger. Whereas atomic theory led to nuclear explosions, the sliver model ...

 Day1b Interesting. Chat has mirrored what I said. That's a surprise! Almost as if it has taken it upon itself to correct or improve what I have to say.  Do I sound that bad? In its third paragraph, it gets it wrong, however. And so, over the next few posts I'll clarify what my position is. I began my blog – the previous one - declaring my intention to take an alternative look at atomic theory. Whereas the atom is the smallest thing you can possibly imagine existing for the longest possible duration – Think: we are made of stardust – the thrust of my exploration would be to divide up matter another way.  In this case, you don't reduce it in size. Rather, you keep the size you have but reduce its time duration. So instead of looking at atoms I want to consider a reality where you start from the viewpoint that you divide the universe up into slivers. Each sliver has a duration of the shortest possible time interval - which suggests that is time would be discrete and not con...

 This is to be a journal - the latest iteration of several blogs and books that I've created over the past 30 or so years. All my life I've being driven to explore the nature of reality. And at present, I feel that I can best do that through journaling that incorporates an AI (artificial intelligence) component. I am a person doing my best to understand life, the universe, and everything. Naturally, there are aspects of my personality that help or hinder this search. I cope with Asperger syndrome, high functioning though it may be. I was brought up by my parents themselves traumatized by wartime experiences. All of which is to say that this is part of the reason why I proceed the way that I do, in the best way that I can. Let me begin the current journal using my previous blog: infinitesimal universe as a steppingstone. That blog followed on from earlier attempts: Will, I am! And, earlier than that, a novel that I wrote earlier: The Sane Man is Nowhere. In any case, let me quic...