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Current Essay Contest
Contest Partner: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Fund.
Previous Contests
Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability Essay Contest
December 24, 2019 - April 24, 2020
Contest Partners: Fetzer Franklin Fund, and The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation
read/discuss • winners
What Is “Fundamental”
October 28, 2017 to January 22, 2018
Sponsored by the Fetzer Franklin Fund and The Peter & Patricia Gruber Foundation
read/discuss • winners
Wandering Towards a Goal
How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?
December 2, 2016 to March 3, 2017
Contest Partner: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Fund.
read/discuss • winners
Trick or Truth: The Mysterious Connection Between Physics and Mathematics
Contest Partners: Nanotronics Imaging, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, and The John Templeton Foundation
Media Partner: Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
How Should Humanity Steer the Future?
January 9, 2014 - August 31, 2014
Contest Partners: Jaan Tallinn, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, The John Templeton Foundation, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
It From Bit or Bit From It
March 25 - June 28, 2013
Contest Partners: The Gruber Foundation, J. Templeton Foundation, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
Questioning the Foundations
Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?
May 24 - August 31, 2012
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, SubMeta, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
Is Reality Digital or Analog?
November 2010 - February 2011
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
What's Ultimately Possible in Physics?
May - October 2009
Contest Partners: Astrid and Bruce McWilliams
read/discuss • winners
The Nature of Time
August - December 2008
read/discuss • winners
Current Essay Contest
Contest Partner: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Fund.
Previous Contests
Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability Essay Contest
December 24, 2019 - April 24, 2020
Contest Partners: Fetzer Franklin Fund, and The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation
read/discuss • winners
What Is “Fundamental”
October 28, 2017 to January 22, 2018
Sponsored by the Fetzer Franklin Fund and The Peter & Patricia Gruber Foundation
read/discuss • winners
Wandering Towards a Goal
How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?
December 2, 2016 to March 3, 2017
Contest Partner: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Fund.
read/discuss • winners
Trick or Truth: The Mysterious Connection Between Physics and Mathematics
Contest Partners: Nanotronics Imaging, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, and The John Templeton Foundation
Media Partner: Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
How Should Humanity Steer the Future?
January 9, 2014 - August 31, 2014
Contest Partners: Jaan Tallinn, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, The John Templeton Foundation, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
It From Bit or Bit From It
March 25 - June 28, 2013
Contest Partners: The Gruber Foundation, J. Templeton Foundation, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
Questioning the Foundations
Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?
May 24 - August 31, 2012
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, SubMeta, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
Is Reality Digital or Analog?
November 2010 - February 2011
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
What's Ultimately Possible in Physics?
May - October 2009
Contest Partners: Astrid and Bruce McWilliams
read/discuss • winners
The Nature of Time
August - December 2008
read/discuss • winners
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RECENT POSTS IN THIS TOPIC
Dizhechko Semyonovich: on 4/7/17 at 2:54am UTC, wrote Dear Sirs! Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of...
Yehuda Atai: on 3/28/17 at 16:31pm UTC, wrote Hi Alexi Your essay and the way you think out of the box amaze me. You...
Bayarsaikhan Choisuren: on 3/26/17 at 0:55am UTC, wrote Dear Alexi Parizeau, “IN SEARCH OF PURPOSE TOOLS FOR THE STUDY OF...
David Pinyana: on 3/21/17 at 22:54pm UTC, wrote Why are we here? What’s our purpose? We are here simply because the...
Joe Fisher: on 3/18/17 at 15:42pm UTC, wrote Dear Alexi Parizeau, Please excuse me for I have no intention of...
Satyavarapu Gupta: on 3/17/17 at 23:29pm UTC, wrote Nice essay Parizeau, Good method … “III. A GENERAL PROCEDURE FOR...
Dizhechko Semyonovich: on 3/15/17 at 16:38pm UTC, wrote Dear, Алекси Parizeau. I inform all the participants that use the...
Héctor Gianni: on 3/14/17 at 19:22pm UTC, wrote Dear Alexi Parizeau I invite you and every physicist to read my work...
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Steve Agnew: "A new model will be useful if and only if it can explain something that the..." in Is Causality Fundamental?
Steve Dufourny: "Hello , dear Jason, your general analysis is interesting, that implies a..." in Is Causality Fundamental?
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Dizhechko Semyonovich: on 4/7/17 at 2:54am UTC, wrote Dear Sirs! Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of...
Yehuda Atai: on 3/28/17 at 16:31pm UTC, wrote Hi Alexi Your essay and the way you think out of the box amaze me. You...
Bayarsaikhan Choisuren: on 3/26/17 at 0:55am UTC, wrote Dear Alexi Parizeau, “IN SEARCH OF PURPOSE TOOLS FOR THE STUDY OF...
David Pinyana: on 3/21/17 at 22:54pm UTC, wrote Why are we here? What’s our purpose? We are here simply because the...
Joe Fisher: on 3/18/17 at 15:42pm UTC, wrote Dear Alexi Parizeau, Please excuse me for I have no intention of...
Satyavarapu Gupta: on 3/17/17 at 23:29pm UTC, wrote Nice essay Parizeau, Good method … “III. A GENERAL PROCEDURE FOR...
Dizhechko Semyonovich: on 3/15/17 at 16:38pm UTC, wrote Dear, Алекси Parizeau. I inform all the participants that use the...
Héctor Gianni: on 3/14/17 at 19:22pm UTC, wrote Dear Alexi Parizeau I invite you and every physicist to read my work...
RECENT FORUM POSTS
PRASAD DIVATE: "Respected sir, I have suggestions for next essay topic 1: consciousness..." in Undecidability,...
Steve Dufourny: "What I find relevant in all humility is that in my model of Spherisation..." in AI, Consciousness,...
PRASAD DIVATE: "Respected Professor Penrose sir, I always read your works and am greatly..." in AI, Consciousness,...
Steve Agnew: "A new model will be useful if and only if it can explain something that the..." in Is Causality Fundamental?
Steve Dufourny: "Hello , dear Jason, your general analysis is interesting, that implies a..." in Is Causality Fundamental?
Steve Dufourny: "I have remarked in all humility that if we want to unify this GR and this..." in Alternative Models of...
Steve Dufourny: "here is my intuitive equation about this matter non baryonic encoded also..." in Alternative Models of...
Steve Dufourny: "Hello Mr Snowdon, it is well said what you tell, I agree that this time is..." in The Nature of Time
RECENT ARTICLES
click titles to read articles
Lockdown Lab Life
Grounded physicists are exploring the use of online and virtual-reality conferencing, and AI-controlled experiments, to maintain social distancing. Post-pandemic, these positive innovations could make science more accessible and environmentally-friendly.
Is Causality Fundamental?
Untangling how the human perception of cause-and-effect might arise from quantum physics, may help us understand the limits and the potential of AI.
Building Agency in the Biology Lab
Physicists are using optogenetics techniques to make a rudimentary agent, from cellular components, which can convert measurements into actions using light.
Think Quantum to Build Better AI
Investigating how quantum memory storage could aid machine learning and how quantum interactions with the environment may have played a role in evolution.
Outside the Box
A proposed quantum set-up that could predict your game-playing strategy resurrects Newcomb’s classic quiz show paradox.
FQXi FORUM
August 12, 2020
CATEGORY:
Wandering Towards a Goal Essay Contest (2016-2017)
[back]
TOPIC: In Search of Purpose by Alexi Parizeau [refresh]
TOPIC: In Search of Purpose by Alexi Parizeau [refresh]
Essay Abstract
Why are we here? What’s our purpose? These are questions perhaps as old as humanity. And yet no lasting answer has emerged to satisfy our curiosity. Some have argued that before we can hope to answer such probing questions, we must first know exactly what we’re inquiring about. For instance, surely the question of “life’s meaning” demands we first know what “life” and “meaning” are. But what if this wasn’t so? What if the question of “life’s meaning” isn’t so much about life and meaning as it is about the systems that can understand the intention of this question? If so, then I ask, what are those systems and how do we study them? Before trying to answer this question, I suggest taking a step back, since hard problems can sometimes be solved by using new theoretical tools. In particular, there seems to be some utility in first examining two elementary concepts in mathematics: ‘nothingness’ and ‘being undefined’. By applying these concepts in the context of meta-mathematics, we can produce a meta-mathematical formulation of the empty set. This then helps to illuminate a simple procedure for detecting rules in recurrent systems. And with this procedure, we can define a function for measuring ‘critical explainability’ and then use it to show that a system is only a rational and reflexive semantic agent when it grows in critical explainability. I then posit that we are such agents and we have this characteristic. If true, this may be an answer to the question of life’s meaning.
Author Bio
Alexi Parizeau is currently a student at Goldsmiths, University of London. His current research interests include the foundations of knowledge, ethics, and the search for a rigorous characterization of sapience.
Download Essay PDF File
Why are we here? What’s our purpose? These are questions perhaps as old as humanity. And yet no lasting answer has emerged to satisfy our curiosity. Some have argued that before we can hope to answer such probing questions, we must first know exactly what we’re inquiring about. For instance, surely the question of “life’s meaning” demands we first know what “life” and “meaning” are. But what if this wasn’t so? What if the question of “life’s meaning” isn’t so much about life and meaning as it is about the systems that can understand the intention of this question? If so, then I ask, what are those systems and how do we study them? Before trying to answer this question, I suggest taking a step back, since hard problems can sometimes be solved by using new theoretical tools. In particular, there seems to be some utility in first examining two elementary concepts in mathematics: ‘nothingness’ and ‘being undefined’. By applying these concepts in the context of meta-mathematics, we can produce a meta-mathematical formulation of the empty set. This then helps to illuminate a simple procedure for detecting rules in recurrent systems. And with this procedure, we can define a function for measuring ‘critical explainability’ and then use it to show that a system is only a rational and reflexive semantic agent when it grows in critical explainability. I then posit that we are such agents and we have this characteristic. If true, this may be an answer to the question of life’s meaning.
Author Bio
Alexi Parizeau is currently a student at Goldsmiths, University of London. His current research interests include the foundations of knowledge, ethics, and the search for a rigorous characterization of sapience.
Download Essay PDF File
Dear Alexi Parizeau
I invite you and every physicist to read my work “TIME ORIGIN,DEFINITION AND EMPIRICAL MEANING FOR PHYSICISTS, Héctor Daniel Gianni ,I’m not a physicist.
How people interested in “Time” could feel about related things to the subject.
1) Intellectuals interested in Time issues usually have a nice and creative wander for the unknown.
2) They...
view entire post
I invite you and every physicist to read my work “TIME ORIGIN,DEFINITION AND EMPIRICAL MEANING FOR PHYSICISTS, Héctor Daniel Gianni ,I’m not a physicist.
How people interested in “Time” could feel about related things to the subject.
1) Intellectuals interested in Time issues usually have a nice and creative wander for the unknown.
2) They...
view entire post
Dear, Алекси Parizeau.
I inform all the participants that use the electronic translator, therefore, my essay is written badly. I participate in the contest to familiarize English-speaking scientists with New Cartesian Physic, the basis of which the principle of identity of space and matter. Combining space and matter into a single essence, the New Cartesian Physic is able to...
view entire post
I inform all the participants that use the electronic translator, therefore, my essay is written badly. I participate in the contest to familiarize English-speaking scientists with New Cartesian Physic, the basis of which the principle of identity of space and matter. Combining space and matter into a single essence, the New Cartesian Physic is able to...
view entire post
Nice essay Parizeau,
Good method … “III. A GENERAL PROCEDURE FOR DETECTING RULES IN RECURRENT SYSTEMS
To see how metamathematical empty sets might be useful to the study of intelligent systems, I
suggest applying it in a procedure for probing unknown, interactive or only partially observable
axiomatic systems, which we can refer to as ‘black...
view entire post
Good method … “III. A GENERAL PROCEDURE FOR DETECTING RULES IN RECURRENT SYSTEMS
To see how metamathematical empty sets might be useful to the study of intelligent systems, I
suggest applying it in a procedure for probing unknown, interactive or only partially observable
axiomatic systems, which we can refer to as ‘black...
view entire post
Dear Alexi Parizeau,
Please excuse me for I have no intention of disparaging in any way any part of your essay.
I merely wish to point out that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate.
Only nature could produce a reality so simple, a single cell amoeba could deal with it.
The real Universe must consist only of one unified visible infinite physical surface occurring in one infinite dimension, that am always illuminated by infinite non-surface light.
A more detailed explanation of natural reality can be found in my essay, SCORE ONE FOR SIMPLICITY. I do hope that you will read my essay and perhaps comment on its merit.
Joe Fisher, Realist
report post as inappropriate
Please excuse me for I have no intention of disparaging in any way any part of your essay.
I merely wish to point out that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate.
Only nature could produce a reality so simple, a single cell amoeba could deal with it.
The real Universe must consist only of one unified visible infinite physical surface occurring in one infinite dimension, that am always illuminated by infinite non-surface light.
A more detailed explanation of natural reality can be found in my essay, SCORE ONE FOR SIMPLICITY. I do hope that you will read my essay and perhaps comment on its merit.
Joe Fisher, Realist
Why are we here? What’s our purpose?
We are here simply because the "SYSTEM UNIVERSE" allows it, and there is no any purpose on it.
I do not think we are so important as to give another answer.
report post as inappropriate
We are here simply because the "SYSTEM UNIVERSE" allows it, and there is no any purpose on it.
I do not think we are so important as to give another answer.
Dear Alexi Parizeau,
“IN SEARCH OF PURPOSE TOOLS FOR THE STUDY OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS THAT STUDY INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS ALEXI PARIZEAU*, GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON”
I have read some essays including your essay in the Contest.
I like this phrase in your essay-
We’ve now completed the task of defining our tools. Let’s now use them to express a necessary characteristic of intelligent systems that study themselves. We’ll then return to the perennial question of “Why are we here?” and see if this characteristic might provide us with a novel answer. To start, let’s have
report post as inappropriate
“IN SEARCH OF PURPOSE TOOLS FOR THE STUDY OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS THAT STUDY INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS ALEXI PARIZEAU*, GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON”
I have read some essays including your essay in the Contest.
I like this phrase in your essay-
We’ve now completed the task of defining our tools. Let’s now use them to express a necessary characteristic of intelligent systems that study themselves. We’ll then return to the perennial question of “Why are we here?” and see if this characteristic might provide us with a novel answer. To start, let’s have
Hi Alexi
Your essay and the way you think out of the box amaze me. You call for a challenge. Your meditation into the space, you're zooming into the nano is great. Your idea infect leads to the development of a new mathematical formulation that are the base of a new discovered substrata of natural language.
A great approach you take in your essay and I tend to agree with you. In my essay I show that We have a sub strata of natural language of maintaining the unique self organization, the phenomenon, from the sub particle (waive) to life forms and other forms like energy=mater, from quarks (1 in the power of -24 Has been proved) to stars and galaxies and vis versa within the nano level of 1 in the power of -34 (hasn't been proved). All this in a universe of finitude phenomenon to endless phenomena.
In my essay I show first, the way we ratifying continuously our concreteness as self organization also we change all the time while keeping our perception as unique self. As Socrates, as Alexi etc. And second, I show that it is all in the qualities of the movement attributes. It is all ontological and subjective and that is it's/our eminent beauty.
I wonder about your feedback on my essay : "we are together, therefore I am", and maybe you will find a way to define in a mathematical way, a model the language of the Attributes of the Movement-phenomenon.
with great expectation
Yehuda Atai
report post as inappropriate
Your essay and the way you think out of the box amaze me. You call for a challenge. Your meditation into the space, you're zooming into the nano is great. Your idea infect leads to the development of a new mathematical formulation that are the base of a new discovered substrata of natural language.
A great approach you take in your essay and I tend to agree with you. In my essay I show that We have a sub strata of natural language of maintaining the unique self organization, the phenomenon, from the sub particle (waive) to life forms and other forms like energy=mater, from quarks (1 in the power of -24 Has been proved) to stars and galaxies and vis versa within the nano level of 1 in the power of -34 (hasn't been proved). All this in a universe of finitude phenomenon to endless phenomena.
In my essay I show first, the way we ratifying continuously our concreteness as self organization also we change all the time while keeping our perception as unique self. As Socrates, as Alexi etc. And second, I show that it is all in the qualities of the movement attributes. It is all ontological and subjective and that is it's/our eminent beauty.
I wonder about your feedback on my essay : "we are together, therefore I am", and maybe you will find a way to define in a mathematical way, a model the language of the Attributes of the Movement-phenomenon.
with great expectation
Yehuda Atai
Dear Sirs!
Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of Newton returned as the New Cartesian Physic and promises to be a theory of everything. To tell you this good news I use spam.
New Cartesian Physic based on the identity of space and matter. It showed that the formula of mass-energy equivalence comes from the pressure of the Universe, the flow of force which on the corpuscle is equal to the product of Planck's constant to the speed of light.
New Cartesian Physic has great potential for understanding the world. To show it, I ventured to give "materialistic explanations of the paranormal and supernatural" is the title of my essay.
Visit my essay, you will find there the New Cartesian Physic and make a short entry: "I believe that space is a matter" I will answer you in return. Can put me 1.
Sincerely,
Dizhechko Boris
report post as inappropriate
Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of Newton returned as the New Cartesian Physic and promises to be a theory of everything. To tell you this good news I use spam.
New Cartesian Physic based on the identity of space and matter. It showed that the formula of mass-energy equivalence comes from the pressure of the Universe, the flow of force which on the corpuscle is equal to the product of Planck's constant to the speed of light.
New Cartesian Physic has great potential for understanding the world. To show it, I ventured to give "materialistic explanations of the paranormal and supernatural" is the title of my essay.
Visit my essay, you will find there the New Cartesian Physic and make a short entry: "I believe that space is a matter" I will answer you in return. Can put me 1.
Sincerely,
Dizhechko Boris
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