(no subject)

What a pleasant day yesterday! Not only was it payday, it was mild and not too humid, I was able to avoid most of the worst traffic in the commute, and I got to spend a pleasant evening with friends old and new.

I picked up a bottle of Chartreuse. Not sure yet exactly what it's for. We'll see.

Went to the Livejournal Meetup. There I got to see:

alobar: Good to see you again, as always. Happy birthday!

21yo_curmudgeon: Good to finally meet you in the flesh. We've communicated over this thing for, what, six months now?

Welcome to the fold:

xochizlan: A right sick bastard who's acquaintance I think will please me greatly. :)

partyrunes: Who stepped in and covered the round of carbombs I offered to buy the late group. Though Don and I met at the last LJ meetup, we finally got a chance to talk more this time.

skyana: Who I've known for a while through other circles. It's always good to link up with RL friends and acquaintances through LJ.

evil_kc: I wish I'd gotten more of a chance to talk with you. Perhaps at the next meetup.

Now, did anyone catch the screenname of the boy in the dress? ;->

Edit: Many new people have added me recently, and so if there are specific topics of interest to you I've bookmarked a lot of my past entries on many topics here:
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=sophiaserpentia
Just in case any of you are interested.

Bubbles, or cosmemes revisited

Today I find really abstract thoughts bubbling around in my head. Actually that sentence contains a pun that will be revealed as I write this.

I consider engaging in this kind of cosmological thought a "guilty pleasure," because I know ultimately that answers to these questions are elusive. The more we humans try to examine nature and reality and try to pin it down to a definite set of rules or principles, the more we wind up chasing our own tails in the process.

Anyway I revisited this post I did a while back on the idea of the "cosmeme" and combined it with this post from around the same time which suggests that all of the universe is localized, special-case-scenario. IOW "laws of nature" are only generalizations resulting from human observation.

It's difficult to get my mind around this idea that even things such as the speed of light and other "firm" aspects of reality can be local or special-case. Yet, recent observations seem to suggest this is possible.

Now, suppose the universe is made of cosmemes big and small, stuck together like soap bubbles. Changes propagate "down the line;" changes within one cosmeme ripple out into the ones just around it. Similarly, harmonic equilibriums are found and maintained -- the so-called "laws of nature" -- as cosmemes evolve perpetually more refined answers to the problem of existence (how to avoid oblivion).

Wait, the cosmemes evolve the solutions locally and then ripple them out? It is beginning to appear increasingly that nature is self-organizing. Things know how to organize themselves into patterns of increasing complexity and do so all the time (we call it turbulence).

If I am right (a big if, of course), the only thing we need to understand is the cosmeme. Once we understand the cosmeme, understanding of everything else should fall into place.

Edit: So has Stephen Wolfram answered this question already?