Thursday, November 6, 2014

Disembodied Ideations

I have not figured yet how to best introduce this post's topic. (Perchance it is because I am too unliberated and feel myself trapped in the reality dimension.)

Numerous voices out there seem to proclaim that "ideas" spontaneously come into being from a mere coalescence of other ideas and all are divorced from physical essence, physical reality and the rules of physics.

Take for example a book by Steven Johnson "How we got to now, Six innovations ...". In the linked-to Book TV video he proclaims that problems get solved once we have the right "constellation of ideas" coalescing on what the problem is (what the "next" is) and then the rest (the innovation) is inevitable (see 48:50/55:26 of the video) once this right set of "ideas" come into the mix --see 40:00/55:26 of the video, in the Q&A section. Is that right? Is it merely "ideas" divorced from brick and mortar reality that are needed for "innovation"? Should we get rid of patents as Mr. Johnson suggests in his Q&A session so that ideas become "free" to be spread and to be built upon? (See also, "Information Wants to Be Free" in Economy of Ideas)

Some proponents of this concept of disembodied and free floating ideas perhaps have experienced "out of body" existence where they feel themselves freed and floating apart from their mortal anchor.
Maybe they have come to conclude that "mind" is separate from body and that "ideas" alone is all it takes to get to the "next" great thing? Frankly I don't know. But if that is how they "feel" about the workings of the universe then they are greatly deluded. There is no such thing as a "free" floating idea. There are no free lunches in this universe. Maybe in another one. Not in this one.

Let's start with a simple "scientific" experiment.
Clamp your fingers shut tight on your nose (step 1)
Shut up your mouth and keep it that way (step 2)
Start thinking of some free floating "ideas" (step 3)
Measure on a clock how long you can sustain this free lunch idea generating process (step 4)

You gave up. Right?
That is because the universe abhors free lunches.
At the very minimum you need a thing called "energy" to have ideas.
In truth you need and use much more than that to have and generate ideas.
The experimental proof here is that your "mind" is not divorced from your physical body and your lungs had better be supplying not-free oxygen to your brain if you want to keep the idea factory going.

Where will this road of inquiry into disembodied ideation lead when done?
To Alice of course.
To the "abstract ideas" aspect of Alice v. CLS and to the astral projectionists who provide Alice's notion of disembodied and "abstract" ideation.

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