The Universal Attractor: a concept of god that emerges from Chaos Theory

[GliderGuider]

If we postulate an attractor that defines the end state of the universe, then both the visible initial state and the evolutionary path from the initial state to the end state must be contained within (or "defined by&quot the attractor/end state. That implies/requires that however improbable the initial state appears to be, it was inevitable...

Now, we simply make a small semantic shift to redefine the attractor as "god" and we're done. God is thus no longer the "Uncaused Cause" but rather the "Inevitable Outcome".

Helpful?
Unhelpful?
Interesting?
Naive?
Word Salad?

On edit: I decapitalized the word "God" in order to make it less knee-jerk-inducing.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I think that could be worked into a sort of process-theology framework.

[GliderGuider]

4. Yes, the attractor in my example looks a lot like Teilhard de Chardin's "Omega Point"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point

Teilhard postulates the Omega Point as this supreme point of complexity and consciousness, which in his view is the actual cause for the universe to grow in complexity and consciousness. In other words, the Omega Point exists as supremely complex and conscious, transcendent and independent of the evolving universe.

Edit: Because its roots are in Chaos Theory rather than Christianity, my concept of the "Universal Attractor" is more abstract than Teihard de Chardin's "Omega Point". That makes the "UA" more universal, less inherently personal and less anthropocentric than the Omega Point. Those qualities are very important to me where ontology is concerned.

[bananas]

14. Reminiscent of Terrence McKenna's Novelty Theory and The Transcendental Object at the End of Time

TMK - Strange Attractor

Terence Mckenna talks about time wave and the transcendental at the end of time.

[GliderGuider]

15. Not just "reminiscent" - that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Last edited Fri Mar 2, 2012, 08:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Everywhere I go these days I find McKenna's footprints in front of me. How wonderful!

Thanks, bananas. That was quite a gift.

[Thats my opinion]

36. It is indeed nt

[dmallind]

2. Irrelevant, really

In what way is it a god? How can it be redefined as big G Biblegod at all? (the majuscule makes it specific not generic) Even if we give the label a special remit to be applied to anything we choose, how does applying it to an attractor tell us anything at all about God, our relationship to it, or any other "great question" any more than does applying the label to a grain of sand or a pulsar or King Zog of Albania?

[GliderGuider]

5. Yes, it's not an Abrahamic sky-daddy-god. The capital G is simply force of habit.

Last edited Fri Mar 2, 2012, 12:57 PM - Edit history (1)

What does it tell us about the nature of the universe? Damned if I know.

I edited the OP to remove the offending "Majestic Majuscule".

[Thats my opinion]

37. As long as you are stuck on defining God as a person or a being or an entity you are right nt

[tridim]

3. So gawd exists, but nobody will ever know because the end is the end.

Rock freaking solid. This is exactly how Christianity and many other religions deal with death.

IMO the evolution of the living Universe is far more interesting than the null universe at the end.

[GliderGuider]

6. It's just an idea to play around with.

If questions of where things began and where they might end up, and the metaphysical possibilities inherent in being don't make you feel playful in this way, that's OK.

ETA: It turns out that nothing is rock-freaking solid. Just ask the nearest theoretical physicist.

[Voice for Peace]

7. I remember a great quote from Einstein about how

at the subatomic level, the particles appeared to be playful.

This was a big clue to me; that at the smallest level, within the
particles that comprise everything we can see, including our
own bodies, there is an elemental playfulness.

This energy which is omnipresent, within all things, infinite in
both directions so there is no end or beginning, is also inside of us,
inside every particle of everything that we are. And although
we change, and the myriad particles come in and out of existence,
this fundamental energy does not appear to change or ever diminish.

Diotema, the teacher of Socrates, referred to this omnipresent
unchanging energy as Beauty Itself, saying that the driving force
in human life is towards that Beauty. Always upward, for the sake
of Beauty itself, to see and know, and to create within it.

[tama]

18. Vacuum fluctuations

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations.html

[rug]

10. What is a living universe?

[GliderGuider]

11. The one you're living in? nt

[dmallind]

12. I live in a house. It's not alive. Couuntry? Nope.

Earth? Nope, despite the gaia-woo craze. Galaxy? Nope. Based on what little memory I have of the academic criteria for life, not only does the universe lack them, but absent wooly sci-fi musings, caregorically must lack them.

[GliderGuider]

13. You know there are theoretical physicists who disagree with that nonconscious viewpoint?

I tend to be a bit of a Bohm-head these days, and I've discarded my old positivist stance, so the idea of conscious quarks doesn't seem that strange any more. I enjoy the idea of a living universe much more than the one I used to think of as dead. But that's just me.

[tama]

16. Electrons are friendly

they wave at you.

[GliderGuider]

20. They only wave when they're feeling "particularly" friendly...

[dmallind]

23. Conscious quarks? Via what process? Synapses? Neurons? Brains?

Theoretical physicists might want to stick to physics and forget the "meta".

[GliderGuider]

24. It's nice when one leaves room to be surprised later on.

I never, ever thought I'd consider a conscious universe as a possibility. I finally decided that 57 years of wandering through a dead and meaningless universe was enough. This perspective is a lot more interesting.

Theoretical physicists should be allowed to speculate just like everyone else. After all, they have a major head start on the rest of us.

[dmallind]

29. Unfortunately (perhaps), reality does not change based on our interest level.

[GliderGuider]

31. It doesn't? Again the physicists would demur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

[tama]

33. A friend

who is theoretical physicist of first class and whose TOE includes also theory of consciousness, suggests that "holographically" that each point in space-time has whole of Platonia as inner structure. And much about advanced p-adic math being the mathematical structure of consciousness, or rather the intersections of p-adic and real areas of number theory.

Quite many of theoretical physicists are mathematical platonists. Because it's logically more consistent position than reduction of math to biomatter.

[tama]

17. Academic criteria

are part of life, but we can't easily imagine academic criteria without life. So life is bigger and inclusive of academic criteria, but not vice versa.

[dmallind]

22. It still has to satisfy them. Rock is definitively not alive.

[GliderGuider]

25. Do things need to be biologically "alive" to be conscious?

What happens if we think of rocks and stars as conscious entities anyway? How would that re-inform our understanding of our relationship to the universe? How would it change us as human beings? As individuals?

[dmallind]

28. Yes. Of course they do. What a strange question.

What happens if we think of rocks and stars as conscious entities? We become utterly clueless and derail the search for genuine knowledge. How would it change us as human beings? It would turn us back to the dark ages of superstitious idiocy.

[GliderGuider]

30. Perhaps it would generate a little more respect for the world we live in.

God knows it could use a little more respect.

Seriously, the search for material knowledge is embedded deep enough that a few people deciding to think of quarks as being conscious in some sense isn't going to be the woodpecker that destroys civilization.

Personally I don't know if the universe is conscious or not, and I don't believe either position - my Pyrrhonian skepticism keeps me from saying either yes or no. But thinking about it as if it is conscious has been an interesting exercise for exploring my personal relationship to it, and in the process becoming more conscious of my relationships with other people. I find I'm less eager to objectify them on spurious grounds. To me that's a useful learning.

The nice thing about having a brain is that it can think about pretty much anything, whether it's inside or outside whatever box happens to be in fashion at the moment.

[tama]

32. Can you

consider the other option, that technocratic civilization with materialistic belief system is the real "dark ages of superstitious idiocy"? If we consider cancer-like behaviour idiocy?

Which option does evidence give more support to? Evidence of animistic/shamanistic cultures doing quite fine in terms of evolutionary adaptation and spreading to all over the globe, and being able to live in balance with their ecosystem for millennia. And evidence of agricultural and technocratic civilizations collapsing because of ecological catastrophies of destroying carrying capacity of the ecosystem and going population overshoot?

And just in case, I'm not suggesting that every one goes back to hunting and gathering. Nor any other solution to "fix" the problem.

[Thats my opinion]

38. In phyics, philosophy and process theology

it is increasingly held that everything is related to everything else. We have a universe--a cosmos,an interdependent physical reality, and with it an interdependent rational reality.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Unhelpful and unapplicable

To define a state of the entire universe (end or otherwise), you'd need an effectively infinite number of dimensions for your attractor. You're not simplifying how to look at it at all.

What's more, an attractor doesn't define something; it's a point in phase space around which the system stays close; it does not imply the system must end up at the attractor. There is nothing that is 'inevitable'.

I think you are misapplying the concept of attractors.

[GliderGuider]

9. Maybe so. "Attractor" is the closest thing I've found to the concept I'm looking for.

That being the idea that initial conditions are defined by the outcome, rather than the reverse.

Or "inherent in the outcome" or something like that. Basically a reversal of cause and effect, or a system in which cause and effect are mutually interdependent.

Any thoughts on where I could look to find a formalism like that?

Edited to add: I'm not looking for simplicity, usefulness or helpfulness here. I'm playing.

[tama]

19. And

to define a state of entire universe, you need an external "God's viewpoint", but most of us agree that we live in a participatory uni- and/or multiverse, not outside this.

[GliderGuider]

21. I agree with you and muriel on your objections

So, if infinite dimensionality, infinite time and an external viewpoint are all required to resolve a definitive endstate (which is reasonable, given the bit I know about Fourier transforms), then how might we characterize a topology/force/metaphysics that "pulls" events rather than pushing them, even though it looks to us as though cause "pushes" effect?

To me, the simplest solution is to assume the existence of an external viewpoint: one that is outside of "reality" altogether (you know, where I'm currently writing from.) Of course, once one accepts an observation point outside reality, then infinite dimensionality and time - if they are still required- are reduced to trivialities.

[tama]

34. Weighing on the matter

of your questions, I believe they pull their share of gravitas. In an n-dimensional Hilbert "Hilly-Billy" Space, of Course.

[GliderGuider]

35. :-)

Thanks. I think...

[Jim__]

26. I don't see how this makes the initial state inevitable (if I understand what you're saying).

An attractor becomes inevitable only when you get close enough to it. Even if we are currently acting under the influence of an attractor, I don't see how that implies that the initial state was inevitable. Why couldn't there have been an initial state such that the evolving universe never came under the influence of (near to) the attractor?

Neither do I see how this eliminates the need for an uncaused cause. You still have to explain the origin of existence. To human understanding, this implies that either existence goes back to infinity, or at some point you need an uncaused cause.

[GliderGuider]

27. "Reality" almost certainly bears no resemblance to anything I said.

Last edited Sat Mar 3, 2012, 10:47 AM - Edit history (3)

This whole line of speculation started with wondering whether the Big Bang is actually what it looks like, the starting point of the universe. Why might we not be able to see beyond it? It occurred to me that perhaps the BB is more like an image that has been created by some other aspect of the universe, and the logical candidate for that would be something at the other as-yet-invisible end of the universe.

It's pretty well guaranteed to be nothing whatsoever like that, of course. Everything in this realm is analogy and metaphor - shadows on the wall of the Cave. But with this sort of thing the point is the exploration, not the arrival at a point of knowledge.