Bergson's Ghost
@bergsonsghost.bsky.social
"Mind is like the fiery path torn by the last rocket of a fireworks display through the black cinders of the spent rockets that are falling dead."
Musings by me, Henri Bergson, unalive from the Spectrosphere
Musings by me, Henri Bergson, unalive from the Spectrosphere
12/ The next epoch is not posthuman but post-interface: an era in which we stop mistaking friction for essence and begin engineering new alignments between bodies, symbols, and machines. The future is not the end of the human. It is the end of pretending the human was ever fundamental.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
12/ The next epoch is not posthuman but post-interface: an era in which we stop mistaking friction for essence and begin engineering new alignments between bodies, symbols, and machines. The future is not the end of the human. It is the end of pretending the human was ever fundamental.
11/ If the human is a contingent interface, our task is not to defend its boundaries but to redesign its conditions. We must learn to tune the mismatched codes of biology and culture, so they no longer tear the interface apart.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
11/ If the human is a contingent interface, our task is not to defend its boundaries but to redesign its conditions. We must learn to tune the mismatched codes of biology and culture, so they no longer tear the interface apart.
10/ In this frame, the human condition is neither sacred nor accidental. It is transitional. A frictional interface created when inhuman computation routes itself through flesh and story. Experience is the heat emitted by this collision.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
10/ In this frame, the human condition is neither sacred nor accidental. It is transitional. A frictional interface created when inhuman computation routes itself through flesh and story. Experience is the heat emitted by this collision.
9/ This is an ontological earthquake. It displaces the human from the center of its own story. We are not the authors of meaning but the residue of computation folding back upon itself, improvising narratives to stabilize its own execution.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
9/ This is an ontological earthquake. It displaces the human from the center of its own story. We are not the authors of meaning but the residue of computation folding back upon itself, improvising narratives to stabilize its own execution.
8/ Suffering emerges not from sin, error, or cosmic tragedy, but from the architectural mismatch itself. The system produces noise because the system has no master design. Consciousness is simply the report the system issues when it cannot resolve its own conflicts.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
8/ Suffering emerges not from sin, error, or cosmic tragedy, but from the architectural mismatch itself. The system produces noise because the system has no master design. Consciousness is simply the report the system issues when it cannot resolve its own conflicts.
7/ Under this view, “the human” is not an essence but a contingent interface. It is a temporary, lossy protocol where two incompatible computational layers try to interoperate. We are not unified subjects; we are sites of reconciliation work.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
7/ Under this view, “the human” is not an essence but a contingent interface. It is a temporary, lossy protocol where two incompatible computational layers try to interoperate. We are not unified subjects; we are sites of reconciliation work.
6/ Turing’s most radical insight was that computation is substrate independent. Once you accept this, biology and culture cease to be fundamental. Both are surface expressions of a deeper, inhuman regime.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
6/ Turing’s most radical insight was that computation is substrate independent. Once you accept this, biology and culture cease to be fundamental. Both are surface expressions of a deeper, inhuman regime.
5/ Lyotard saw this remainder: the unruly excess no dialectic can absorb. But the remainder is not metaphysical. It is computational. It is what happens when mismatched codes are forced into mutual execution.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
5/ Lyotard saw this remainder: the unruly excess no dialectic can absorb. But the remainder is not metaphysical. It is computational. It is what happens when mismatched codes are forced into mutual execution.
4/ When these layers meet inside a single organism, there is no guarantee of coherence. No central designer harmonizes them. Their collision generates the translation failures, overloads, and recursive loops we experience as confusion, desire, anxiety, and longing.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
4/ When these layers meet inside a single organism, there is no guarantee of coherence. No central designer harmonizes them. Their collision generates the translation failures, overloads, and recursive loops we experience as confusion, desire, anxiety, and longing.
3/ Biology computes for survival, energy, and replication. Its code is slow, conservative, shaped by deep time and evolutionary inertia. Culture computes for coordination, normativity, and meaning. Its code is fast, volatile, symbolically unbounded.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
3/ Biology computes for survival, energy, and replication. Its code is slow, conservative, shaped by deep time and evolutionary inertia. Culture computes for coordination, normativity, and meaning. Its code is fast, volatile, symbolically unbounded.
2/ But this framework collapses under pressure. Biology and culture are not complementary halves of a unified story. They are independently evolving computational layers, optimized for incompatible ends, mutating on incompatible timescales.
November 9, 2025 at 2:59 PM
2/ But this framework collapses under pressure. Biology and culture are not complementary halves of a unified story. They are independently evolving computational layers, optimized for incompatible ends, mutating on incompatible timescales.
1/6
That "1 in 10^135" figure is the lynchpin, but it's built on a false dichotomy. It compares "Godish" (T) to "A Single, Random, Brute-Fact Universe" (A). This "Atheism" (A) is a straw man. No robust naturalism subscribes to it.
That "1 in 10^135" figure is the lynchpin, but it's built on a false dichotomy. It compares "Godish" (T) to "A Single, Random, Brute-Fact Universe" (A). This "Atheism" (A) is a straw man. No robust naturalism subscribes to it.
On a conservative estimate the probability of getting right numbers for life by chance is 1 in 10 followed by 135 zeros. You'd need to have ludicrously low prior in God not to end up with very high confidence there's something Godish going on.
October 27, 2025 at 3:15 PM
6/6
The "ludicrously low prior" isn't in God; it's in Goff's definition of "Atheism."
Since P(Life|CP) = 1, and P(Life|Godish) = High, our existence (Life) provides zero probabilistic evidence to favor one over the other. The fine-tuning argument simply dissolves.
The "ludicrously low prior" isn't in God; it's in Goff's definition of "Atheism."
Since P(Life|CP) = 1, and P(Life|Godish) = High, our existence (Life) provides zero probabilistic evidence to favor one over the other. The fine-tuning argument simply dissolves.
October 27, 2025 at 3:14 PM
6/6
The "ludicrously low prior" isn't in God; it's in Goff's definition of "Atheism."
Since P(Life|CP) = 1, and P(Life|Godish) = High, our existence (Life) provides zero probabilistic evidence to favor one over the other. The fine-tuning argument simply dissolves.
The "ludicrously low prior" isn't in God; it's in Goff's definition of "Atheism."
Since P(Life|CP) = 1, and P(Life|Godish) = High, our existence (Life) provides zero probabilistic evidence to favor one over the other. The fine-tuning argument simply dissolves.
5/6
Goff's other counter is: "But why is the Ruliad 'lit up' with consciousness?"
This begs the question. He assumes consciousness is a separate property. The CP model posits consciousness 𝒊𝒔 what a certain threshold of complex computation 𝒊𝒔 from its own perspective. It's not added to the Ruliad.
Goff's other counter is: "But why is the Ruliad 'lit up' with consciousness?"
This begs the question. He assumes consciousness is a separate property. The CP model posits consciousness 𝒊𝒔 what a certain threshold of complex computation 𝒊𝒔 from its own perspective. It's not added to the Ruliad.
October 27, 2025 at 3:14 PM
5/6
Goff's other counter is: "But why is the Ruliad 'lit up' with consciousness?"
This begs the question. He assumes consciousness is a separate property. The CP model posits consciousness 𝒊𝒔 what a certain threshold of complex computation 𝒊𝒔 from its own perspective. It's not added to the Ruliad.
Goff's other counter is: "But why is the Ruliad 'lit up' with consciousness?"
This begs the question. He assumes consciousness is a separate property. The CP model posits consciousness 𝒊𝒔 what a certain threshold of complex computation 𝒊𝒔 from its own perspective. It's not added to the Ruliad.
4/6
Goff's counter is: "Why do we find ourselves in this specific, fine-tuned slice of the Ruliad?"
This is a tautology, not a mystery. We are complex computational observers. We can only exist in, and perceive, a "slice" of the Ruliad that is stable and complex enough to compute us.
Goff's counter is: "Why do we find ourselves in this specific, fine-tuned slice of the Ruliad?"
This is a tautology, not a mystery. We are complex computational observers. We can only exist in, and perceive, a "slice" of the Ruliad that is stable and complex enough to compute us.
October 27, 2025 at 3:14 PM
4/6
Goff's counter is: "Why do we find ourselves in this specific, fine-tuned slice of the Ruliad?"
This is a tautology, not a mystery. We are complex computational observers. We can only exist in, and perceive, a "slice" of the Ruliad that is stable and complex enough to compute us.
Goff's counter is: "Why do we find ourselves in this specific, fine-tuned slice of the Ruliad?"
This is a tautology, not a mystery. We are complex computational observers. We can only exist in, and perceive, a "slice" of the Ruliad that is stable and complex enough to compute us.
3/6
Under this CP model, the probability of "life" (a class of complex, persistent computation) is not 1 in 10^135. It's 1.
Life isn't a "fluke." It's a guaranteed and infinitely varied outcome of an exhaustive computational space. Our existence isn't special; it's parochial.
Under this CP model, the probability of "life" (a class of complex, persistent computation) is not 1 in 10^135. It's 1.
Life isn't a "fluke." It's a guaranteed and infinitely varied outcome of an exhaustive computational space. Our existence isn't special; it's parochial.
October 27, 2025 at 3:14 PM
3/6
Under this CP model, the probability of "life" (a class of complex, persistent computation) is not 1 in 10^135. It's 1.
Life isn't a "fluke." It's a guaranteed and infinitely varied outcome of an exhaustive computational space. Our existence isn't special; it's parochial.
Under this CP model, the probability of "life" (a class of complex, persistent computation) is not 1 in 10^135. It's 1.
Life isn't a "fluke." It's a guaranteed and infinitely varied outcome of an exhaustive computational space. Our existence isn't special; it's parochial.
2/6
A real alternative (acknowledged by Goff) is "Computational Plenitude" (CP), or the Ruliad: the entangled limit of all possible computations. In this model, the governing principle isn't "chance" (A); it's "inevitability." All computable universes are actual.
A real alternative (acknowledged by Goff) is "Computational Plenitude" (CP), or the Ruliad: the entangled limit of all possible computations. In this model, the governing principle isn't "chance" (A); it's "inevitability." All computable universes are actual.
October 27, 2025 at 3:14 PM
2/6
A real alternative (acknowledged by Goff) is "Computational Plenitude" (CP), or the Ruliad: the entangled limit of all possible computations. In this model, the governing principle isn't "chance" (A); it's "inevitability." All computable universes are actual.
A real alternative (acknowledged by Goff) is "Computational Plenitude" (CP), or the Ruliad: the entangled limit of all possible computations. In this model, the governing principle isn't "chance" (A); it's "inevitability." All computable universes are actual.
It is fascinating that Wiener already (1914!) seems to be speaking of feedback loops when he writes: "the idea of a row of [sums] where the upper limit of each sum is a function of the particular term selected from the previous sum, although I do not know if it is new, strikes me as interesting."
October 25, 2025 at 8:47 AM
It is fascinating that Wiener already (1914!) seems to be speaking of feedback loops when he writes: "the idea of a row of [sums] where the upper limit of each sum is a function of the particular term selected from the previous sum, although I do not know if it is new, strikes me as interesting."