From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jul 23 2003 - 20:21:05 MDT
Alex writes
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> >I have long predicted that ultimately there will be only
> >two things to do: mathematics and gratification research.
> >
> ...What's the difference? : )
Hey you, this is a *serious* subject! We are talking no
less than about how creatures will spend all of infinity!
8^D
Now, I myself happen to want to know EVERYTHING about
chemistry, exactly how to calculate the entropy content
of *any* given crystalline form, want to know EVERYTHING
about Ramsey numbers, prime pairs, and (Spike save me)
want to know (I confess) everything about Mersenne primes
and exactly why the Lucas test works, how the Roman forum
was laid out with respect to the rest of the ancient city,
and so on and on and on.
Why? Why you ask? I can only say that it is because at
the current moment my brain is working well, and I am
capable of deriving vast satisfaction from understanding.
"To delight in understanding" is the operant phrase.
Next week, the chemicals in my brain may not be so fortuitously
composed, and alas, (as happens too frequently) I shall be cast
downward into a pit of despair in which all life seems meaningless.
But even so (I will *never* forget) that is a lie, and where there
is energy and intelligence, there can be happiness---it's only
a matter of obtaining the right configurations.
Meanwhile, I want to know EVERYTHING, and cannot imagine any of
our intellectual descendants being satisfied with anything less.
Compared to them, I'll wager, my most extreme lusts for
understanding are paltry indeed. That's why they'll take over
the universe, and almost desperately make copies of themselves
and coerce all matter to support calculation---and MORE than
mere calculation: wonderful wonderful wonderful experience.
Okay:
> ...What's the difference? : )
Here are the differences, and there are many more than the
paltry few listed here:
1. Mathematics is the final frontier of knowledge, the
only thing about which we know contains endless vistas
of new information.
2. Gratification research is (or will be) an ongoing
engineering and architecture problem: how may we
as matter experience a maximum of gratification---
that is, joy, fulfillment, ecstasy, happiness,
satisfaction, gratification of every kind, and
contentment.
3. The search for mathematical truth is at least as old
as ancient Egypt. But so far as I know, the field of
*gratification research*, or at least the term, was
only coined by me about 1990. David Pearce's masterful
essay "The Hedonistic Imperative", although a deep and
difficult read, articulates to a fantastic degree what
many others of us only have vaguely felt. One must
realize that next to cryonics, www.hedweb.com is the
most revolutionary and salutary movement ever.
So your quip "What's the difference?", while it may convey
accurately the fleeting (or hopefully persistent) enthusiasms
of the true math freak, they defiantly are not the same thing! ;-)
Lee
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