Rudy Rucker's new book comes out this fall.
An excerpt:
"When I open my heart to universal automatism, I can see that it's not as far-fetched as it sounds. The key fact is that, far from being dry and dull, computations can generate physical, biological, and psychological phenomena of great beauty. Maybe a weird explanation is better than no explanation at all. Might it be that, by analyzing the notion of computation, I can finally understand what it means to be conscious? I'm prepared to follow the argument wherever it goes. If it turns out that universal automatism is right, and I really am a computation, then at least I'll know a little more about what kind of computation."
6 comments:
I am, therefore I think?
When I open my heart to universal automatism....
This strikes me as a strange way of putting it. Isn't this the kind of thing people usually say when they "come to Jesus"? Frankly, it sounds to me like "universal automatism" is being substituted here for God. Which is OK, as long as we can see that that's what's going on.
Rucker definitely has a cyber-spiritual edge to his musings on the nature of "life, the universe, and everything." I suspect his use of the term "open my heart" is meant to convey an intuitive, subjective knowing sort of like "grokking." It's one thing to think the universe is a computation; it's another to actually *live* that concept.
So yeah, razorsmile, you may be right. Descartes started with "I think therefore I am" and "proved" the existence of God. RR is starting out with the God-equivalent of "universal automatism" and proving the existence of himself! (Sounds like, anyway.) From which it follows that he thinks.
Mac -- I like the term "cyber-spiritual," which I think definitely describes a current movement, especially among those of us who are pretty much wedded to our computers. (For one thing, this approach seems to be behind movies like "The Matrix.") One thing I really fail to understand, though (and the reason I made the comment in the first place after mulling it over for several days) is how a basically mechanistic perspective can arrive at spirituality. To me, the mechanistic side of human thought seems grossly at odds (and out of tune) with the intuitive side. But maybe it's an attempt to synthesize left-brain and right-brain approaches starting with the left-brain?
"But maybe it's an attempt to synthesize left-brain and right-brain approaches starting with the left-brain?"
That seems to be basically it, along with the assumption that blind mechanics can produce "gnarly" (Rucker's term) emergent phenomena that are inherently unpredictable and thus in some respects as unknowable as the more old-fashioned notion of the "soul."
There's more good stuff at http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog