It's been tried. I remember inventing a year ago a new term: "TT" to
describe the consistency of Reality, David is talking about. When I look
back I am amazed how much we are going in circles (maybe it's time to get
out...). Here is my post on Thu, 31 Oct 1996 18:40:17 -0800:
===========
Let me call it "TT" and let me define what I mean.
(3) TT
TT is the property of objective reality which drives the evolution.
So far, TT was "blindly" driving the evolution of life and it drove it to
a point where we were created: creatures who are capable of understanding,
learning and using TT. Very clumsy at first, but watch out... There are
already enough people who understand enough TT on Earth to take the
evolution in their hands, then pass it peacefully to computers. As
Richard Dawkins suggests, life may have started from duplication of
defects in crystals: it started from Silicone, to switch to Carbon, to go
back to Silicone: when computers will take over the evolution project
(that's another "Computers, Our Children" thread).
This is the current picture: we have some billions of people on Earth and
lots of unsolved problems. Most of the people have no clue about the
power of TT. They don't know about TT, they don't understand TT. It's
still a little like in ancient Egypt: only the priests would know TT,
although today it is not a deep secret any more, or is it?
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Thu, 07 Nov 1996 23:18:48 -0800
We have agreed that Objective Reality has this
property of incredible consistency: pi is always 3.14... , OR "always gives
off photons in the same way, and always has the same magnetic field,
and always exhibits the same time dependent behaviour, no
matter what the observer is."
So far, we have agreed to call it TT or "universal homologous form a la
Wittengenstein". OK.
Life on Earth has developed as an interesting consequence of TT.
The judge who "decides" who is "the fittest" is very consistent. It makes
evolution possible. It also makes this world predictable, and knowable.
At least this is the materialistic point of view. The only other possible
point of view I can see is that OR is not consistent, that pi is sometimes
3.14... and sometimes it is not (I am not talking about accuracy nor
precision), that the photons behave in an unpredictable way, etc...
I believe -- and it all comes down to what each one of us believes -- that
the world *is* consistent and predictable. That we *can* know it better
and better. As one person said (the quiz on who it was is still on):
"Whatever we hold precious, we cannot protect it from our curiosity,
because being who we are, one of the things we deem precious is the truth.
Our love of truth is surely a central element in the meaning we find in
our lives."
It is the truth mentioned in the above quotation I used to call "Absolute
Truth" to stress how precious it was. I agree, this may not be the best
term for it. As "universal homologous form a la Wittengenstein" sounds
not as simple as TT, I will take the liberty to call it TT.
Regards, Tadeusz (Tad) Niwinski from planet TeTa
tad@teta.ai http://www.teta.ai (604) 985-4159