ChaoBell here!

[ChaoBell]

Got started in Chaos magick way back, developed my own path. Most rational science mathy approach to magick. I dig through all the wisdom traditions looking for material but I’m pretty secular. Loving the depth of conversations I see here!

 

[Arvensis]

Got started in Chaos magick way back, developed my own path. Most rational science mathy approach to magick. I dig through all the wisdom traditions looking for material but I’m pretty secular. Loving the depth of conversations I see here!

Hello fellow newbie Chaote!

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Got started in Chaos magick way back, developed my own path. Most rational science mathy approach to magick. I dig through all the wisdom traditions looking for material but I’m pretty secular. Loving the depth of conversations I see here!

Welcome! I've spent a while working on a scientific explanation of magic - "engineering of coincidence" or "being lucky on purpose" that you might be interested in

The Engineering of Coincidence: a scientific explanation of magic

What is magic? We all know that magic exists, but can it ever be explained? Over thirty years ago, I set out to answer these questions, and to look for a truly scientific explanation of magic. Now, I'm not bright enough to invent new physics, or dumb enough to try and pick loopholes in the...

wizardforums.com

 

[hollowglasd]

welcome

 

[Lord Talve]

Welcome

 

[Lurker]

Welcome aboard!

 

[ChaoBell]

Welcome! I've spent a while working on a scientific explanation of magic - "engineering of coincidence" or "being lucky on purpose" that you might be interested in

The Engineering of Coincidence: a scientific explanation of magic

What is magic? We all know that magic exists, but can it ever be explained? Over thirty years ago, I set out to answer these questions, and to look for a truly scientific explanation of magic. Now, I'm not bright enough to invent new physics, or dumb enough to try and pick loopholes in the...

wizardforums.com

Looks interesting! We may have some enlightening perspectives to share. My academic study was in computer science and AI, and we’re really at a remarkable point with it due to recent breakthroughs. (attention/transformers) But “engineering coincidence” is literally the most succinct two word description of how AI works! The coincidental events are the firings of synthetic neurons, the mechanisms of the coincidences are the learned weights, both excitory and inhibitory which make one fire (or not fire) based another firing, and the engineering process happens through error propagation, (back prop) where “neurons that fire together” are made to “wire together” (for coincidence) based on a Heuristic from the old work of Neurologist Donald Webb. And now, it’s even more advanced and refined than that, this attention/Mahayana thing, very universal with people observing the universe itself acts like a great mind in many ways! So your ideas are panning out in fields I don’t see mentioned in your book contents.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Looks interesting! We may have some enlightening perspectives to share. My academic study was in computer science and AI, and we’re really at a remarkable point with it due to recent breakthroughs. (attention/transformers) But “engineering coincidence” is literally the most succinct two word description of how AI works! The coincidental events are the firings of synthetic neurons, the mechanisms of the coincidences are the learned weights, both excitory and inhibitory which make one fire (or not fire) based another firing, and the engineering process happens through error propagation, (back prop) where “neurons that fire together” are made to “wire together” (for coincidence) based on a Heuristic from the old work of Neurologist Donald Webb. And now, it’s even more advanced and refined than that, this attention/Mahayana thing, very universal with people observing the universe itself acts like a great mind in many ways! So your ideas are panning out in fields I don’t see mentioned in your book contents.

Well, I must admit I never heard any description of AI like that before. My understanding is that Gen AI is deterministic, even if it's too involved for us to understand directly. I mean unless you're talking about 'coincidence' as the technical engineering term, which I'm not. I also studied computer science, and I work for a database company, now branching out into what in the old days would be called machine learning.

I'm not really a fan of any panpsychism or 'universal consciousness' - my take on it, is that if consciousness is what you're using to explore the universe, you shouldn't be surprised if you start seeing it everywhere, like the man who goes to the doctor complaining that he hurts all over. Doctor says "show me" and the guy starts poking himself, going "it hurts here... and here... and here... and here... and here..." Doctor stops him and says "you've broken your finger."

In that way, I can understand that if you are immersed in a particular field, you'll start seeing connections to it everywhere.

My ideas aren't popular with scientists or magicians; I work with magic, but don't believe that anything is supernatural - just natural things that we can't yet explain.

 

[ChaoBell]

I’m just talking about coincidence simply as “the temporal property of two things happening at the same time”. In the case of a neural network that classifies images, the “bird” output neuron fires when a picture of a bird is fed in, so the two events coincide.

In the case of a mind, maybe the smell of french fries is remembered when you see them. In the case of the universe, maybe you get the offer when you’re confident you will (?)

But yeah, we all have our own lenses that come with our path. I’m MASSIVELY into panpsychism, or rather the idea that the fundamentals of reality are the fundamentals of thought, so that’s a difference with us. But one thing we share is the idea that none of it is supernatural, we just have a limited idea of what nature is about at this point!