Truth Nodes

Truth is sacrosanct to the human character. The only way we can build a philosophical construct of our identity is through cornerstones of truth, upon which we build more complex structures of truth for the purposes of explaining our reality. We all share one, indivisible truth - the acceptance of our unique perception. Everyone inately understands that the person watching the movie screen of our life is a unique individual, and something that we alone possess. But we also understand that everyone else out there is witness to their own showing, their own unique perception of the events unfolding in their life. Well we may not awknowledge it, at a fundamental level we all understand that our own reality is ours, and ours alone.

The problem lies in reconciling diametrically opposed truths. There are easy examples of this, say one person may believe devoutly in the existence of god, and one may not. These are irreconcilable, as they're both taken on faith of their own character, and would destroy any truth structures that have been built on top. So how do you tell which perception is right?

Truth is not a democracy. The majority is not always right, as has been seen countless times in the study of science. Once an idea becomes entrenched in a society, it takes a monumental effort to prove it otherwise, as the opposing perception of truth has such momentum within the people which form that societal group. At the same time, one cannot be so plastic as to attach equal importance to each new fad idea that comes along, for it may not be grounded in truth, as much as the person promoting it may wish and believe it to be so.

This is the delicate balance, between falsehoods and truth, that we all wage in our day to day lives. It seems that few of us have the wherewithal to examine our beliefs logically, and change them accordingly and without bias towards that truth that is more truthy than the rest.

Mon, Dec 17, 2007  Permanent link

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In search of the Noosphere

A typical human brain has about 100 billion neurons, and each on average has about seven thousand synapses connecting to other neurons. The neurons receive impulses, and upon reaching a threshold level of synaptic activity, will pass on an impulse to other neurons along it's path. Our consciousness stems from the collective organization of the neurons in our brain; specifically from it's incredible complexity. The more complex a brain, the higher the level of conciousness of the organism.

The structure that is interesting here is that of a message passing node connected to many other message passing nodes. In computer science, this construct is a neural network, and can be used for (relatively) simple behavioural training, like pattern recognition. We have only been able to create networks that are orders of magnitude less complex then our human brains, as we do not yet have the computational resources. However, already this model of consciousness has proven useful at certain tasks, which hints that in the future, neural networks will be a powerful tool at our disposal.

So if the model of a node, multiply connected to many other nodes, passing messages and changing internal states, allows for the emergence of rudimentary consciousness, can it be brought into the macro world of human civilization? Can we substitute the simple neuron with a human, the synapse with a relationship, the impulse with a meme, the state with memory, the human consciousness with global consciousness? I believe it can, and it's called the Noosphere.

Tue, Dec 11, 2007  Permanent link

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