[Callan S.]

Not necessarily supporting Royce's contention but for the uninformed:

McKenna's Theory of Novelty basically predicts that history happens in oscillations of novelty, which repeat the novel spikes of human history in intensifying and less intermittent moments until finally we reach a point where it's all novelty, all the time (that we supposedly passed now as late in his life McKenna attempted to bind his theory to the 2012 evolved consciousness hype).

Novelty, for those who don't know, has nothing to do with books, though novels can be novel: novelty is new, original, or unique, and in McKenna's mind, each instance of novelty surpassed the last as something which has truly never happened before (even in Omniversal repetition).

Like the Dunyain - always new.

Seems a failure point to me - to destroy our capacity to predict is basically destroying our main skill. Rendering us back to moment to moment animal reactionism.

[Madness]

Actually, McKenna used (semi-)complex algorithms and the I Ching (specifically the King Wen Sequence) to derive Timewave Zero Theory.

McKenna died in 2000 and was predicting all kinds of novel peaks after his death.

[Royce]

If the accelerated pace of tech and scientific progress continues(and maybe speeds up more and more?) I think we will push for more
and more novelty, and what that leads to, no one knows.

I think it is hard to predict what humans have in store in years to come. Annihilation?, VR?, cyborgs maybe?

That we constantly push for novelty, is in my mind hard to argue against.

[Madness]

Cyborgs definitely.

We'll do pretty much anything to save our lives. Brain implants, pacemakers, dialysis, oxygen tanks, artificial organs; not to mention, any tool or art, which changes our neural signatures - for instance, if an individual uses a walking stick for the blind, it takes about ten minutes to show up obviously on brain imaging instruments.

As for the rest, who knows... Another thread perhaps .

Curiosity seems to be a quintessentially human quality. Novelty would be inevitable.

[Royce]

As for the rest, who knows... Another thread perhaps .

Sounds like a good idea:)  The "what comes after novelty" thread:)

We can make that happen.

[sologdin]

does eternal recurrence count as an "idea"?

[Madness]

Like in the Platonic sense, solo?

[sciborg2]

I think it's an interesting idea. Not much more than that.

I'm also a believer in Block Universe Theory. I think everything was always going to happen and already has happened. That doesn't necessarily mean that we have no free will (though I kind of doubt we do). But I do think that reality/existence/the uni and/or omniverse is timeless. It is One Eternal Thing. It always has been, always was, and always will be. It also has infinite variation...because the concept of Infinity exists, it means Infinity does exist. Thus, reality and its variations (the Omniverse).

I recall reading of a way this allows for free will - I may have mentioned it to you. All the Many Worlds Universes have been produced as part of the Block Multiverse, their future and past extant.

All consciousness does is move like a train through the universes based on our choices, experiencing events that are waiting for it. So the only thing really subject to linear time is consciousness.

[Callan S.]

Infinite variation sounds as horrific, terrorfying and disgusting as one might think it angelic.

Infinite variation would sure lead to some quite amazing hells on earth.

[sciborg2]

Infinite variation sounds as horrific, terrorfying and disgusting as one might think it angelic.

Infinite variation would sure lead to some quite amazing hells on earth.

The infinite variation, presumably a result of Many Worlds, seems odd under any naturalism that accepts all human action can ultimately be determined by the movement of elementary particles/waves.

As I recall the example of this absurdity was a concert in which the performer does something ridiculous (masturbating, break dancing, etc) but no one in the audience reacts negatively. In fact there would have to be a world where the audience acts as if the performer actually played the piece?

Or can we rule out absurd worlds somehow?

[Francis Buck]

Infinite variation sounds as horrific, terrorfying and disgusting as one might think it angelic.

Infinite variation would sure lead to some quite amazing hells on earth.

The infinite variation, presumably a result of Many Worlds, seems odd under any naturalism that accepts all human action can ultimately be determined by the movement of elementary particles/waves.

Why? The oddness only occurs when we try to place our own frame-of-reference on the subject, just as what happened with Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Old World, the Solar System, the Milky Way, etc. We have a tendency to sell reality short so that it fits into our realm of relative comfort. History has continuously shown us that this isn't true, and if anything, the nature of reality is far broader than we natively anticipate. It's always bigger, more complicated, and more humbling.

[Callan S.]

Fair point, Sci. Is water going to occasionaly flow uphill?

One of my pet fiction ideas is parrallel worlds but not an infinite amount but a number of them and it varies - sometimes the paraellel worlds merge averaging out the difference between the two (this was going to be the reason for spontanious combustion sometimes - sometimes someone is dead in one world, so when they merge with one where they live - poof!). And sometimes they split, becoming a copy but with a change in it. I had the idea for villains who wanted to merge them all into one, one set way for everything to exist ever, no variance - just one world.

Oh, and it was going to have a 'magic' system that relied on remerging worlds just locally as was convenient to the desired effect - what to burn an area? Merg part of the world with a world that is on fire in that area. Clearly such magic is not 'on demand' as you need the right event occuring elsewhere - but I think that'd lead to interesting literary effects and a story would benefit from it (even as it does not easily benefit a character in the story!).

[sciborg2]

Fair point, Sci. Is water going to occasionaly flow uphill?

I don't think so, because that would break other laws. I suppose the marco-level wiring of neurons might preclude absurd worlds, merely allowing for the thought of such bizarre activity to enter the mind but not actually altering the wiring of the brain.

I suppose once we get to a world that has concert halls, the state of the brain makes conception of such absurdity possible without actually allowing for such actions?

Why? The oddness only occurs when we try to place our own frame-of-reference on the subject, just as what happened with Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Old World, the Solar System, the Milky Way, etc. We have a tendency to sell reality short so that it fits into our realm of relative comfort. History has continuously shown us that this isn't true, and if anything, the nature of reality is far broader than we natively anticipate. It's always bigger, more complicated, and more humbling.

Well, to be clear I'm not 100% sure these absurd worlds have to exist. I'd assume evolution might rule out some of this kind of thing?

But assuming that there must be absurd events in some worlds, there would also be worlds where the absurdity is only noticed (or is observed) by a few people.

I recall a story based around the King in Yellow, the Lovecraftian play that drives people mad. Imagine a mundane version of such a thing, where part of the cast murders another part of the cast.

Imagine a world where only half the audience in each subsequent viewing of the event cares that this happened. It would appear to be supernatural but was in fact just a matter of being in the "wrong" world.

[Kellais]

Oh my...you guys/gals... my head hurts from reading this. This forum has so many mindboggling topics and discussions. And most of the time i can't even begin to formulate answers to questions posed by you...it's kind of frustrating. Maybe i'm just too dumb for this forum after all.

Anyway...

My contribution to this thread is most likely also not very helpful. But i do have to say that Nietsche might have been a brilliant thinker...but i still do not buy this theory. For one, the mathematical argument is not wrong but i guess it does not support his apocalyptic conclusion 100%.
Auriga is right that if you accept A) and B) the probability that our exact timeline will repeat itself is 1, but i don't think it means that it will repeat itself everytime. So you might have a timeline where we will "go through the motions" again, but not all the time and in every "turn of the wheel", so to speak. So thereofre i guess you can look forward to other "play-outs" of our universe and maybe even your life 

[sciborg2]

Maybe i'm just too dumb for this forum after all.

I doubt that very much. Just as an observation -> To even try and engage with these topics requires a certain mental fortitude and ability.

It's not even arrogant, just the way things are. Most minds will retreat from this kind of dialogue.

And then there are bastards like me who just jump in. (I've never read Nieztche...shhhhhhhhhhh!  )