Hrvoje1

Can you “describe” how the eyes are prerequisite for self awareness? Or a nervous system? On the other hand, what would drive a potato to survive if it doesn’t have “self”, as a motive for that? Is your definition of self awareness of a living being “the one I can communicate with”? Or the one that “behaves according to my idea of self awareness”? None of that is very objective. Baldrick came up with more intelligent definition, when he defined a cat as a “not a dog”, that was certainly more intelligent than your har argument, so I hope you will not present any new, because I doubt it will be any better.

In fact, I believe that every living being must be aware both of itself and of its environment, in its own specific way, dependent on the species it belongs. The latter is conditio sine qua non of survival, and the former, well, pretty much also. The fact that biologists conducted some experiments and observations from which they concluded that not all species are self aware, doesn’t mean their conclusions were correct, and methods of observation adequate. In fact, such conclusions seem totally illogical to me, so that I must doubt their methods.

In my book, being conscious and being unconscious are opposite states, just as being awake and being asleep, and I am not aware of missing some subtle meaning there. As for the distinction between being self aware and being aware of the environment, I can comprehend that possibility that not both exist, I just don’t think it is very common case, at least among people it is pathological.

I think I never met a person who is awake/alert, not self-aware and successfully pretends self-awareness, does that condition have a name? How do they manage to do that? Besides that, you explained really nice one meaning of the word “conscious”, as “having consciousness”. It reminds me of Baldrick’s definitions from one episode of the Black Adder..

Maybe, but I don’t think I ever met an unconscious person that was any good in imitation of being conscious, let alone one who does that perfectly.

Technology is real, what more evidence you need

Accidents never happen, in a perfect world. Says Blondie. But Freud would most probably agree, at least with respect to slips and mistakes, he invented the whole theory about it. So, there is a reason why I mentioned nucleotides instead of proteinogenic amino acids. Namely, they are both categorized as "generic resources" in Constructor Theory of Life, by Deutsch and Marletto, and presented with the same letter N, in the model of self-reproducer, although the former appear as a substrate only in a copy phase (DNA replication), and the latter only in a construction phase (protein synthesis): So, there is a difference in a raw material, that is not reflected in a detailed schema. At least that's the case in a currently only known implementation of life (Life v1.0). Of course, that detail is intentionally abstracted from the picture, as not important, but those who talk about concrete implementation (as I did) should be aware of that.

As per Phil Foglio (who was paraphrasing a line misattributed to Larry Niven, which was itself an inversion of Arthur C. Clarke), “any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology”. https://www.monsffa.ca/?page_id=5457

I googled for "protein synthesis rate" and found a lot of interesting articles, but none of them answered the question. Then I googled for "spontaneous protein synthesis", and found some interesting and relevant results. First one is about answering the question: Is protein synthesis a spontaneous or a non-spontaneous process? There, the second answer by Robert Bywater mentions that spontaneity is not very clearly defined notion in the context of that question. But, whatever sensible way you define it, protein synthesis is definitely not spontaneous process. That doesn't mean that it requires some external factors that are not normally present in vivo medium, because that would not be sensible definition. But without the accuracy of a molecular machine called ribosome, how else could amino acids be assembled into a protein? And without information stored in DNA, and transcripted into mRNA, how would ribosome know what protein it is supposed to assemble, ie what needs to be translated into protein? Let alone amino acids by themselves, without the mentioned machinery? Second one is about answering the question: How is the balance between protein synthesis and degradation achieved? There it says: So, I don't know how anything I said provoked you to tell me your story about how enzymes were introduced by random mutation to living organisms, but you might have noticed that this is a science discussion board, so what is easy to imagine to you, isn't necessarily representative or relevant. Relevant is only a scientific fact: proteins do not assemble themselves spontaneously, even if you give them all the time in the world. Right?

OK, maybe my question is such that you don't intend to answer. On the other hand, some people don't react unless notified about their quoting, or react very slowly, so to catalyze a bit your response:

OK, but how slower exactly? What is the ratio between protein synthesis rate when there is a normal concentration (density) of all required components present, and when there is for example no ribosomes, no RNA polymerase, no chaperones, and no DNA, but there is a sufficient supply of proteinogenic amino acids present in its usual concentration? I believe that's the monomer stuff that gets assembled (and not nucleotides as I said previously) into proteins, which are polymer stuff made of those. I also probably shouldn't have mentioned other components, because most probably I didn't mention all that is required.

Now you are on the right track, when you mention spontaneity. Some chemical reactions are more spontaneous then the others, in that regard that they don't require catalysts to lower the activation energy, ie beat the energy barrier. For some, even that is not sufficient, they require another component that stores information and acts as a program for that catalyst, that is, sort of speaking, programmable. Such is case with the enzymes that synthesize proteins, they require DNA that contains the information based on which they operate. Without it, nucleotides would never assemble them selves spontaneously into proteins.

Probably both, but I don't think I made any of it, by examining the analogy between that kind of information, and the information that is stored for example in a brain, which FreeWill is talking about, or the one that is stored for example in DNA, and is used by enzymes to perform the task of protein synthesis.

So, you make more emphasis on the equivalence, than on the distinction between knowledge and energy? Because, I don't think these can be counted as any kind of energy, maybe as information, but not as energy. And that poses the further question of distinction between knowledge and information.

Is there an analogy, and is there a difference, between the ability to perform a task based on stored information, that can be called knowledge, and the ability to perform work based on stored work, that can be called energy?

This is as scientific explanation of fear, ignorance and hate as you can get. I liked it.

So, the notion of identical particles is a clear indicator of regularity of nature, but perfect symmetry at that very small scale, that is a direct consequence of that identicalness, and wouldn't be possible without it, is not? How very logical. You obviously oppose not because of what I say, but just because you don't want to agree with me. Which is fine by me, because I have a few points of disagreement with you too. I don't think it is necessary to insult intentionally your fellow participant in discussion, instead of saluting at the end of discussion, and I don't think it is wise to underestimate the wisdom of common people, I met a lot of them that are smarter then some registered, licensed scientists.

And the rest of that post is equally questionable, especially the mentioned moving of goalposts. That could make sense if debating is considered an adversarial competitive sport discipline in which the primary goal is to defeat your "opponent" (that should have been your fellow participant in discussion), by proving him wrong whatever he claims. Even better, prove him wrong even when he does not claim anything, just asks. Such as for example here, I learned from Phi for All's post that swansont disagreed with me even though I only asked >>What is more common in nature, regularities or irregularities?<< and left open for discussion what is exactly regularity in nature. Although I felt I should mention at least some examples, I never thought it can become an immediate source of disagreement. However, I consider debating an activity in which one of main virtues is to come up with a question that is worth debating in the first place, in which such sports-like metaphors are meaningless. If during the discussion one realizes there is a better question, such as >>What is more fundamental principle in nature, regularity or irregularity?<<, it is not "cheating" to pose such question in the same thread. There is no "goal moving", the goal is always the same: to find the most meaningful question for discussion, only the question may be changed, ie it may be improved. Only a narrow minded person whose whole idea of participating in a forum is to humiliate other discussants could consider that as goalposts moving. Because, like, someone invested some time and effort to defeat me, by proving my claim wrong, or my question meaningless, and now I am cheating by finding better question. We are obviously not playing the same game here, although engaged in same activity, if you can draw such conclusions from what I wrote. Let me be clear, I don't consider neither of these questions a great achievement of neither originality nor importance, as I already said, I'm afraid I didn't do that good job as I wanted, but I certainly did not "strawman" anybody (what a strange verb), or "move goalposts".

I didn’t notice that fact that he disagreed with me.

I resent that tone too, and I noticed that wtf's presence on this forum ceased from that moment on. I regret that, because that person is by far the best discussant I have encountered around here, and I hope that this absence is not for good.

What first struck my mind is the analogy of hyper sieve: to find a random sequence, you have to filter out all possible deterministic sequences, just as you have to filter out multiples of all previous primes to find a next one. Although, it is not a great analogy, more like a bizarre idea.

Of course that I should have said that you proposed [math]\Delta^2(x_{n-1})=1[/math], because that also holds true if [math]\Delta^2(x_n)=1[/math], it only would be less clumsy to show the connection with my proposal: [math]\Delta^2(x_{n-1})=\Delta(x_n)-\Delta(x_{n-1})=n+1-n=1[/math] But the truth is that these two proposals are not equivalent, I dropped one summation constant in the process. Whoever has a first clue about math, knows the link between difference equation [math]\Delta^2(x_n)=1[/math] that has solution [math]x_n=x_0+(x_1-x_0-1)n+\frac{n(n+1)}{2}[/math] and differential equation [math]x''(t)=1[/math] which has solution [math]x(t)=x(0)+x'(0)t+\frac{t^2}{2}[/math] So, basically, as there are two integration constants, for a second order differential equation, here are two summation constants for a second order difference equation, which represent initial conditions. Of course that this is only true for random sequences, for deterministic sequences only initial conditions can be chosen, and all other values are bound to each other by a rule, or bound to a rule, by that rule. So, after sorting out that confusion, and understanding from the start that certain sets or sequences, such as prime number sequence, cannot be expressed by efficiently computable formula, I soon became curious about a classification of deterministic algorithms that generate sequences, and study of random sequences, and this led me to fascinating subjects I was clueless about, such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetical_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_states_of_randomness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursively_enumerable_set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_recursive_function ... and so on.

Actually, I was solving first order difference equation [math]\Delta(x_{n-1})=n[/math] while you proposed second order difference equation [math]\Delta^2(x_n)=1[/math], which are equivalent and have the same closed-form solution, which can be shown like this: [math] \Delta(x_{n-1})=x_n-x_{n-1}=n \implies \Delta(x_n)=n+1 \implies \Delta(x_{n+1})=n+2[/math] [math]\Delta^2(x_n)=\Delta(x_{n+1})-\Delta(x_n)=n+2-(n+1)=1[/math] So, this adds a little bit of variety to defining the same sequence.

I mean, when certain outcome is not deterministically caused, it happens according to its probability, which is in this case zero. At least in an experiment that is repeated an infinite number of times, such as here. Choosing one infinite sequence among an infinite number of such sequences, means choosing one number among an infinite number of natural numbers, infinitely many times, to form that infinite sequence. Right? Infinite random sequences are all equally possible outputs of true random number generator, while deterministic infinite sequences are all equally impossible. The only problem with randomness is that the Bourbaki school considered the statement "let us consider a random sequence" an abuse of language.

Actually, the sequence that you mentioned can be described only in these two ways, using a recurrence relation [math]x_n=x_{n-1}+n , \forall{n>0}[/math], which is an example of a first order linear difference equation, with initial condition [math]x_0=1[/math], and by its closed-form solution [math]x_n=1+\frac{n(n+1)}{2}[/math]. That this formula is a solution of that difference equation can be shown like this: [math]x_1=x_0+1[/math] [math]x_2=x_1+2=x_0+1+2[/math] [math]x_3=x_2+3=x_0+1+2+3[/math] ... [math]x_n=x_0+1+2+3+...+n=x_0+\sum_{k=1}^{n} k=1+\frac{n(n+1)}{2}[/math] [math]x_{n-1}=1+\frac{(n-1)n}{2}[/math] [math]x_n-x_{n-1}=1-1+\frac{n}{2} (n+1-(n-1))=\frac{n}{2}(1+1)=n [/math] The fact that this sequence cannot be output of a true random generator is a fine example of regularity of nature, which can be expressed by a rule that when certain outcome is not enforced (by some rule, algorithm or physical constraint), it does not happen, because there is a multitude of other, equally probable possibilities. So, finite sequence {1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16} can be easily a result of random choosing of 6 numbers from a certain range of numbers, for example from the first 16 natural numbers, but the regular infinite sequence {1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16 ...} cannot be a result of random choosing among all natural numbers. While the "random" sequence was mildly interesting contribution to the discussion, this was a very pedestrian observation. In fact this is even worse than that, this could have been pedestrian if you mentioned instead the beauty of any natural language, which, for your information, share the same trait.