Acatalepsia and Ataraxia

Acatalepsia and Ataraxia

Pyrrho

(thoughts from Chapter 6: The Sheep Who Became A Goat, Rational Mysticism)

This chapter uses "randomness" as a proof. It also uses other proofs, just as unprovable as "randomness" but I'll just concentrate on "randomness". It is good to be skeptical, but that skepticism must be applied to all things, and not only to one in favor of another. One must also be skeptical of science.

After all, as I have mentioned before, pi is an abomination of the mind that does not exist. But there are many more things in science that do not exist. In fact, the entire science of geometry does not exist. We have found that there are no such things in nature as a line or a plane. Everything is fractal, and therefore neither a line nor a plane -- but something inbetween. Without lines and planes there are no geometric shapes, only fractal shapes. No Geometry . . . how random is that!?

Don't believe me, read for yourself: Fractal Dimension

Enough of that. Let's talk about randomness.

"When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable." -- John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences

Or, as I say:

"1% is 100% when it happens."

Randomness. What is it? Is it compartmentable? Can it be segregated? Is it distinct, one random bit from another random bit? How infinitesimal is randomness? How huge is randomness? How ordinary is randomness? How extra-ordinary is randomness? Is there no connection anywhere, at any level, between one random bit and another random bit? Is every new second of time a bit of randomness never before seen in exactly that manifestation? How does one calculate randomness? If a thing has a 50% chance of happening -- how is that calculated? Forget coins, what about real life?

A baseball batter with a career of 20 years comes to the plate. Over those 20 years he has gotten a hit 30% of the time (he has a career batting average of .300). Does he have a 30% chance to get a hit? Does he have a 50% chance to get a hit? Does he have some other chance to get a hit? Or is it random -- without any reference at all to anything that has come before or will come after? No connections? None? A totally random chance to get a hit every at bat? Even the tiniest, teeniest bit of a connection utterly dissipates randomness.

Any player of baseball will tell you that each at bat in the player's career is connected in the mind of the batter to the moment at hand, and has an influence over the outcome of the present moment. Further still, each and every previous moment of the pitcher's career is connected in the pitcher's mind to the present moment. And the runner at first base, as well as the first baseman and all the fielders, and the umpires, and the coaches, and the trainers and general managers . . . and on and on. There is a complex web of intricate and ethereal connections that is so interwoven the pattern is hard to see -- and we call that randomness. The present moment is not, nor is it ever, distinct and wholly separate from every other moment. There is no such thing as a random moment, nor is there anything that exists that is random.

Go ahead, name me a random creature. A creature that exists randomly, a creature without any predecessors. Too difficult? OK, how about a random word. Tell me a random word, any word, a word not connected to any other words through thought or utterance or ink, a word that is a thought in and of itself and has random definitions each time it randomly appears in random conversations with random people on a random world in a random universe.

Randominity demands randomness at every level or it is not random. Can there be such a thing as a random anything? Or is randomness just another pipe dream like circles, triangles and squares?

Absurd? Yes. OK, how about flipping a coin? Can a coin flip be random? Or is it influenced by the muscles of the hand that flips it and the molecules of air that surround it? Make a machine to flip the coin, and the machine will wear out a little with every flip thus creating a building influence from the first flip to the last flip -- none being random.

Computers? Random number generating programs? Don't wear out, simply electrons . . . Funny thing, that. Computers cannot generate random numbers. There is always a pattern. A repeatable pattern. Programs that generate random numbers all fudge it, trying for enough of a complicated pattern that it appears random -- but it never is. Computers, those things that think in either-or, on or off, zero or one . . . those things that are utterly without deception, they say randomness is simply impossible.

If a moment cannot be random, what then can we say about randomness? How can randomness exist when there is no environment for it to survive within?

I found the skepticism of this chapter misplaced, vindictive, childish, and not at all random. Skeptics assert nothing, announcing only opinion. The protagonists in this chapter are not skeptics, they are zealots of cause.

Personal Thoughts and Reflection on an Interesting Oxymoron

This reading sparked a lot of thoughts and questions for me. Almost too many to address here, but I will touch on what I can share and explain the best.

The title of this reading struck me funny because it was titled “Rational Mysticism”. This sounds like a giant oxymoron to me. How can you give rational parameters to something as un-rational as mysticism? The first part of the reading that dealt with physics and mysticism I did mostly enjoy though. How do two particles that are distanced from one another exert subtle influences on each other? It’s a mind bender, and I find the idea fascinating. With the Quantum nonlocality idea being related to interconnectivity, I partially agreed and partially disagreed. I do think things are interconnected, but not because two particles show me this. Among many other reasons, I mostly believe all things to be connected because we are all composed of the same building blocks, atoms. Each person and thing is made up of atoms, and when we die and our atoms will eventually disassociate and go on to assemble other people and things. The atoms that make me up now were once part of another person, a tree, and a variety of other organisms. I like to think that this is the way we are interconnected.

When reading this I thought of a very basic and fundamental question. This also happens to be the first question most children ask , “Why?” This stems from the basic human need to understand. Humans have always tried to understand what and who we are, and the basic purpose as to why we are here. As humans we wonder at our beginnings and need to know we each have a purpose of some sort. Religion tries to answer this question through principles and teachings. Science tries to answer aspects of these questions through research and experiments. Even now, no one truly knows and our questions have mostly gone unanswered. Humans have always tried to understand these basic questions, and have attempted to answer them through science and religion. Whether you accept the answers given or not is personal choice. I personally think that in order to answer these questions we must each embark on a deeply personal journey and that the answers to these questions are at the end. Along the way we will find ideas that partially answer these questions for us but we will always change and question what we have learned. This is a life long pursuit, but it is necessary in order to sift through the fact and fiction and come to our own personal conclusion.

Relating back to science and mysticism, or science and religion this is how I personally approach this idea. Science is/can be absolute and can/does give answers, but for myself, I can not let it answer all my questions. Some questions are deeply personal and I must delve deep within myself to find an answer that I can agree with. Smith was “annoyed” with science because people let it answer all their questions. This I feel could be related to how some people will let religion answer all their questions. No one is better than the other because they are both allowing their free will of opinion and the potential for truly personal understanding to be removed. These people are quitting their personal journey before they even begin it by accepting the ideas given to them and not questioning the validity of it for themselves.

Over all, I enjoyed this reading. I found Smith to be a little too back and forth on some of his ideas though. I liked that he tried to gain understanding from a wide variety of religions and tried for his own mystical experiences. But he seemed to contradict himself at times. I felt that he enjoyed the different religions and their teachings, but the deeply personal enthogenic trips he experienced were how he personally linked to those religions. Because the journey to enlightenment must be very personal his “mystical” experiences make sense. An enthogenic experience is known to be greatly personal on an emotional and mental level, so I see how this made his journey to enlightenment so much stronger. He went inside himself and through those experiences was able to evaluate his personal understandings and relate what he found to his life. I don’t believe this to be a mystical experience, but more of a mental one. He was able to connect with himself and his ideals on a higher plain and relate this to his journey.

Chapter 1, Rational Mysticism

Rational mysticism.
I'm sorry, but I have to laugh a happy laugh at that joke. "Rational Mysticism" implies that regular mysticism is irrational, or that there is a regular, a rational and an irrational. Mysticism is not irrational. It is simply not rational. And yet, the paradox is that being not rational it is entirely rational -- and this is the point the author misses, because the experience is the thing.

Without the experience of the paradox of the not-rational becoming rational yet remaining not-rational, there is no hope of understanding what cannot be expressed.

Rationality depends upon expression. If it cannot be expressed it is not rational. Yet, by its very nature the ineffableness of paradox depends upon its inexpressibility. Herein lies the rub.

The goal of Aristotlian scientism is to define all things. That which cannot be defined does not exist. Therefore paradox does not exist.

Yet paradox most certainly exists.

Paradox is the point where the Specific connects to the All and comes out the Opposite. Sorta like a black hole, if it helps to use an example of something we don't understand to understand something we cannot express . . . and it does, doesn't it?

Again, I have to laugh because this is how it all goes when trying to define the stuff that Aristotle and his followers call "metaphysics". Aristotle didn't know what to do with it, and neither does scientism -- and yet, isn't the ultimate nature of reality exactly what scientism is supposedly attempting to discover? Yet, the paradox here is that in seeking to define the undefinable scientism is, in actuality, making reality seem differently mysterious than the mysteriousness it inherently has.

Mysteriousness, after all, is simply in the mind of the interpreter. Nothing is inherently mysterious, yet everything is mysterious in its very existence.

And so it goes.

Experience is the thing. Let go of scientism. Do not interpret what you experience. Be the experience. Mysterious Understanding is only possible through unthought experience. What is unthought naturally cannot be spoken for there are no words for not-thought.

But it can be experienced.

Now . . . if you 'get it' but you can't explain it, then you are experiencing the not-rational rational paradox.

Go ahead. Speak it if you can. Aren't the thoughts almost formed in your mind? Thoughts that are becoming words but never stop becoming words and so are never words. It is just like pi. Pi never stops going endlessly in its numerical spiral. Yet it is not like pi at all because pi does not exist, and yet this experience certainly does exist.

Yes, pi does not exist. There is no such thing in the universe as a naturally perfect circle. All such circular things are simply truncated spirals. And yet, cannot scientism construct a perfect circle? Has not scientism decreed that by using pi one can create a perfect circle? And yet, how does one use pi, exactly, when it never stops becoming itself. Any formula that uses pi never stops becoming a formula, so never becomes formula, and is not a formula.

And yet, it is a formula.

But pi is the opposite of not-thought, and so is not like not-thought at all.

Yet it is.

Even though science has thought an unthinkable thing in its perfect circle, a thing that does not exist, scientism has not thought not-thought.

Scientism creates what is not, yet claims to only discover what is. Scientism does exactly what it says metaphysics does -- imagine things that don't exist.

Like a perfect circle.

(Go ahead, laugh! It's really a fractal!)

Y'see, it's ALL like this. I love it!

This is fun, and yet I am being completely, philosophically serious!

OK, that is the end of my post, but it is also the beginning of a thought.
The thought continues to become a thought.

What Is, What Is Not . . . and What Is Becoming. The philosophies of Dualism fail us here, as does the tactic of killing the messenger. Horgan attacks the messengers in every case, and finds them human. That they are human means they have foibles. Scientifically, that means each person is an uncontrolled experiment, and that their reports of their personal experiences are unverifiable by any known means.

What else could be expected?

One must experience the experience in order to determine the veracity of the reports. Once the experience is known, the reason for discrepancies are known -- and therefore they are no longer discrepancies, at all . . . and yet, they are. It cannot be explained. It must be experienced. Reality is a deeply personal experience.

Reality is not a shared illusion, and yet, it is the true shared illusion.

Rational? Not rational? Depends on your experience. It is both, and neither. Laugh!

It is.

Horgan's problem is that he wants to be told the answer before he knows the answer. Before he finds out what the nature of reality is, he wants to make sure he can handle it -- that he isn't frightened to death, or worse, driven mad.

Sorry, no promises there except to say that the sanity it bestows is identical to insanity, but it is not insanity. It is welcome and it is fulfilling. It is wonderful and it is mysterious. It is everything and it is nothing.

Nothing.

No thing at all. Zero. Infinite zero.

There are some promises, however, such as they are: once known it can never be forgotten, nor can it be communicated. There's no going back because "back" never was, but always is, yet hasn't become. Have fun there (the Here that is Not-Here, but Is Here), and remember to laugh!

Paradox.

Beautiful!

By the way, Horgan touches fractals when he describes the theory of emanationism, and he wanders oblivious to the fractals in his relating of psychedelic experiences. One of the secrets of reality is fractal. The Mongols knew that secret.

Happy Valentine's Day!