Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Diaphysics Reviewed

Diaphyiscs has its first review. Go read it.

8 comments:

Todd Camplin said...

Congrads, and right before you book launch, what timing! You should check out Amazon, he copied his blog review to Amazon Customer Review.

Troy Camplin said...

Can't beat it. I hope a few more people who read the book will review it.

Todd Camplin said...

You should have people write reviews at your book launch party. Aug 1st.

Troy Camplin said...

Only works if they read it.

Internet John said...

I just finished it yesterday and I'm still processing. Good read, though. Probably the most exciting book of its type I've read since Nonzero. Too bad I'm gonna miss the book launch party.

Internet John said...

There are at least a dozen questions in the 46 pages of notes I took, but a couple come to mind immediately, mostly from the last bit of the book.

"Linear human thinking" vs. "nonlinear" metahuman thinking: isn't human thinking nonlinear in the first place? Don't we understand the present based on the past, and store present experiences as past memories in order to plan for the future? Isn't narrative's basic structure a nonlinear feedback loop?

(I think) I understand that you explain "metahuman" as an onto-epistemological category, but do you think you may have come down a little heavy on the ontological side? While reading your last chapter I was reminded of Ken Wilbur's boast that "not even the Dali Lahma can maintain nondual awareness in his sleep." Doesn't one find insight in the strangest places, and don't we just as often lose it at the most inopportune times? Likewise, while I think I agree with you that "fear drops away" on the second tier in an existential sense, wouldn't the metahuman suffer more, e.g. Christ on the cross, Wotan hanging upside down on the tree of life, etc.? And doesn't everyone down here in the dust fear disorientation, pain and death, at least in a local, immediate sense?

Finally (for now), while I understand emergent order in a basic economic sense, I kept wondering about the tendency of systems organized from the bottom up to generate their own top-down controls, i.e. brains and central nervous systems, elected representatives, etc. Maybe that's a semantic issue, since "control" implies a second system computing the output of the first system, and that's exactly what you meant. But when I was reading the page about redundancy vs. efficiency and bottom up vs. top down, I thought that your argument was weighted heavily in favour of the latter, even though the elegance and austerity can be just as beautiful as the baroque, and efficiency is as important for information transfer as redundancy.

Like I said, I'm still processing. It was a fantastic book, and while I was reading it I found myself thinking variously, "Why didn't I think of that?", "That's just what I was thinking!", "I'm not sure I agree", "Huh?" and "WTF?" I'll try to organize my thoughts into something more systematic and useful and get a review up on Amazon, but I'm still trying to write this goddamn paper on Space, Time and Narrative, so it might take a while.

In any event, congratulations on a fine book. If I were rich, I'd be throwing money at you to continue your research.

John said...

(I don't mean to imply that a metahuman is a god, but rather that the metahuman might take a cue or two from the suffering gods).

Troy Camplin said...

When I was talking about "thinking," I was talking about the way we tend to consciously order the world. Naturally, our brains actually process things in a nonlinear fashion. And narrative belies our attempts to linearize. But think of how we try to structure things -- humans tend to simplify and linearize as much as possible. Metahuman thinking, on the other hand, sees the entire world as a complex whole, in nonlinear feedback loops, as a network with emergent properties. Even if humans agree that some processes may be like this, they also insist that there are some processes that are top-down only.

I come down a little heavy on the ontological side precisely because Graves-Beck-Cowan see it as merely epistemological. They admit that new areas of the brain come "online," but they do not take into consideration that the brain's architecture itself is altered -- that the neural connections complexify.

Complex systems are both very robust and very delicate. One simply cannot tell what it can take, and what will disrupt it. So, yes, it is possible for the metahuman thinker to slip into the human, for insight to come and go in the strangest ways, for thinking to complexify suddenly, and break down without our understanding why or how. Also, suffering and fear are not the same thing. To live a more complex life, to understand as the metahuman can, and not be able to explain himself because no human can understand what he has to say -- this is suffering, indeed. To know what is causing the suffering in the world among the 1st Tier thinkers and to not be able to get them to understand what it is, because they have to think like you to understand it -- this is suffering. To have such love for all in its true complexity, to see the world as wholly holy, and not be able to explain it, to be constantly misunderstood -- this is, indeed, suffering. The metahuman does suffer more, but it is a suffering of excessive love and understanding and a desire for that love and understanding to reach out to everyone. Jesus and Wotan are great examples -- and, as Fred Turner has pointed out, wouldn't the results of future evolution seem like gods to those of the past? Perhaps not just to those from the past, if I am right. But what the metahuman does not do is fear -- especially disorientation, pain, and death. One suffers them, but does not fear them.

I may have to go look, but I'm pretty sure I actually came down in favor of redundancy. Efficiency has its place -- in simple manufactured goods -- but that's no way to organize an economy. The socialist tendency toward efficiency is one of its major problems, after all, as it, ironically, creates inefficiency. The single payer health insurance system gets rid of redundancy (of many private insurance companies offering many different plans), but as a result, you get . . . well, you of all people know what it gets you.

I"m glad you enjoyed the book. If you happen across any rich people, you might think about dropping that suggestion their way. :-)