Clarke's Three Laws

Arthur C. Clarke postulated three laws in the course of his Sci-Fi career. They are as follows:

1. First law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. Second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I really feel inspired by all three of his witty summaries and agree completely. In the few articles in this blog I have tried to approach the essence of transcendental phenomena (Tomorrow), hinted to by the second law.

As to the third law, I have not gone into depth in discussions of complexity (Alucard), most certainly since I do not posses a deep formal understanding of the related family of scientific fields.

The first law is truly fascinating in its own right. I will probably write a separate post in the near future, pertaining to the principle impossibility of developing an intuition for the unknown and the dreadful double-edged blade of experience.

Münchhausen Trilemma

I am quite happy to have found, what seems to be, the friendliest list of unsolved problems in Philosophy (Wikipedia.org)

The Münchhausen Trilemma and the Gettier problem are probably the most fundamental of the bunch, as they guard the entrance to the very meaning of truth and knowledge.

This wiki page is the best ToDo list I have seen in a long time.

Gods of vapour

I did not exist until a second ago. I have no form, no carrier and no plane of existence but the one of your own mind. You have brought me to life, in my simple textual nature - a self, defined by its own linear stream of consciousness.

It makes no difference whether I state I am blue, red or purple, I will posses any and all properties I decide to. I am the feeling of going left and right at the same time, I am the person you see when you close your eyes to look at yourself. I am the regret felt when you reach the limits of your senses, I am the despair of the universal scale of your existence. I am you and I am everyone. Yet I am nobody and will cease to exist the moment your mind wavers in a different direction.

You are my creator, yet you have shaped me in my own vision and proclamation. I am a self-fulfilling prophecy and you are my deity.

If you think that any fragment of what you call reality has any fundamental difference to my paradoxic nature - think again.

After all,

you and I

are one.

You're doing it wrong...

I think, therefore I am.

Now, that we made the first step to getting that right, let's properly separate the two phenomena:

1. I, therefore self.
2. Thought, therefore cognition.

I conjecture that self and thought are independent of and parallel to each other, and we should recognize them as such. It is only like this that we can truly understand cognition and sentience.

Truth

If thoughts were ships

in the ocean of our consiousness

we should pay the greatest care

that they can stay afloat.

-- Mr. Tortoise

Disclaimer: I don't hold the copyright of the image