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2006 : WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA? [1]

In the News [ 26 ] [2]
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Contributors [ 119 ] [3]   |   View All Responses [ 119 ] [4]
[5]
Michael Nesmith [5]
Existence is Non-Time, Non-Sequential, and Non-Objective
Existence is Non-Time, Non-Sequential, and Non-Objective

Not a dangerous idea per se but like a razor sharp tool in unskilled hands it can inflect unintended damage.

Non-Time drives forward the notion the past does not create the present. This would of course render evolutionary theory a local-system, near-field process that was non-causative (i.e. effect).

Non-Sequential reverberates through the Turing machine and computation, and points to simultaneity. It redefines language and cognition.

Non-Objective establishes a continuum not to be confused with solipsism. As Schrödinger puts it when discussing the "time-hallowed discrimination between subject and object" — "the world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist". This continuum has large implications for the empirical data set, as it introduces factual infinity into the data plane.

These three notions, Non-Time, Non-sequence, and Non-Object have been peeking like diamonds through the dust of empiricism, philosophy, and the sciences for centuries. Quantum mechanics, including Deutsch's parallel universes and the massive parallelism of quantum computing, is our brightest star — an unimaginably tall peak on our fitness landscape.

They bring us to a threshold over which empiricism has yet to travel, through which philosophy must reconstruct the very idea of ideas, and beyond which stretches the now familiar "uncharted territories" of all great adventures.

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Links:
[1] https://www.edge.org/annual-question/what-is-your-dangerous-idea
[2] https://www.edge.org/inthenews/what-is-your-dangerous-idea
[3] https://www.edge.org/contributors/what-is-your-dangerous-idea
[4] https://www.edge.org/responses/what-is-your-dangerous-idea
[5] https://www.edge.org/memberbio/michael_nesmith