The most-valuable idea I have got from this book so far is that #consciousness could be an #emergent #property of #matter in the same way magnetic fields, for example, are an emergent property. I tend to lean toward #Idealism, in terms of what I would \*like to believe\*, but as a #dhamma practitioner I also appreciate the teachings of #dependent #origination, which says that mind and matter (namarupa) arise in dependence on each other and other phenomena. 1/2

https://bookwyrm.social/book/198456/s/waking-dreaming-being

Waking, Dreaming, Being - BookWyrm

A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate-either in the waking state or in a lucid dream-we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.

Life Emerges Out of Oneness — And Sometimes, Out of “One Mess” - Dandelion Doorways

From that oneness, variation emerges. No two branches grow at the same angle. No two waves break the same way. The pattern is recognizable, but never identical.

Dandelion Doorways

Life Emerges Out of Oneness — And Sometimes, Out of “One Mess”

How a Typo Became a Lesson in Fractals, Emergence, and the Creative Logic of the Universe

Every so often, life hands you a moment so small and strange that it feels like a cosmic wink. Recently, while jotting down a thought for this very post, I meant to write:

“Life emerges out of oneness.”

Instead, my fingers offered me:

“Life emerges out of one mess.”

And honestly? Both felt true.

The slip wasn’t just funny — it was fractal. It mirrored the very idea I was trying to explore: that creation is not linear, predictable, or pristine. It’s iterative. It’s messy. It’s full of deviations that become discoveries. And in that way, the typo became the perfect doorway into this reflection.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Fractals: When One Pattern Becomes Many

Fractals are patterns that repeat themselves at different scales. Zoom in or zoom out, and the structure echoes itself — tree branches, lightning bolts, river deltas, blood vessels, coastlines. Simple rules govern them, yet they generate infinite complexity.

A fractal begins with a single seed pattern.
A gesture.
A shape.
A rule.

From that oneness, variation emerges. No two branches grow at the same angle. No two waves break the same way. The pattern is recognizable, but never identical.

This is unity expressing itself through diversity.

Emergence: When the Unexpected Becomes Essential

Emergent behavior is what happens when simple parts interact in ways that create something entirely new. No individual neuron understands consciousness, yet consciousness arises. No single ant grasps the colony, yet the colony behaves like an organism.

Emergence depends on non‑linearity.
On detours.
On missteps.
On the “wrong” thing happening at the “right” time.

Foibles, disasters, joy, triumph — they’re not interruptions to the pattern.
They are the pattern.

Just like my typo.
Just like evolution.
Just like every turning point in a human life.

The Esoteric Echo: The One Becoming the Many

Spiritual traditions have long held that the universe is a single source expressing itself through countless forms. “As above, so below.” “The microcosm reflects the macrocosm.” “We are all one.”

But oneness isn’t sterile.
It’s fertile.
It contains every possibility — including the messy ones.

A kaleidoscope is the perfect metaphor: one chamber, one set of fragments, yet infinite shifting worlds. Nothing new is added; only the relationships change. Oneness rearranges itself into new expressions.

Sometimes those expressions look like beauty.
Sometimes they look like chaos.
Often, they look like both at once.

Oneness and One Mess: Two Sides of the Same Truth

The more I sat with my accidental phrase, the more it felt like a teaching:

Oneness births form through variation.
Variation looks like mess.
The mess reorganizes into new patterns.
The new patterns reveal the oneness again.

It’s a loop.
A cycle.
A fractal.
A kaleidoscope turning itself inside out.

Life emerges out of oneness — but it often looks like one mess along the way.

And maybe that’s the point.

The Pattern That Keeps Becoming

So here’s the heart of it:

Everything is a fractal unfolding through time and space — a never‑ending cycle where the pattern is continuously changing. The accidents, the imperfections, the breakthroughs, the breakdowns… they’re not deviations from the design. They are the design.

Creation is not a straight line.
It’s a spiral.
A branching.
A shimmering, shifting mosaic of oneness discovering itself through form.

Even through typos.

#asAboveSoBelow #awareness #balance #cosmic #creativeLogic #emergence #emergent #emergentBehavior #emerges #experience #flow #foibles #fractal #fractals #happening #healing #lessons #lifeEmerges #meditation #mindful #mindfulness #mistakes #moksha #moments #oneness #practice #Writing

v1.3.0 of Sonic Fauna will include a brand new audio export feature capable of both full-track and stem exports!

#indiedev #sonicfauna #music #emergent #noise #experimental #sounddesign #electronic #303 #808

https://medium.com/storyangles/the-emergent-order-mindset-cc651f0ea90b

Ants behave according to basic rules. When thousands of ants follow them, the colony looks organized.

#emergent #EmergentBehavior #medium #habits #choices #personalgrowth #selfimprovement

The Emergent Order Mindset

Understand yourself, your habits, and your choices.

Medium

The #FoundationModels of AI (Transformer, LLM, call it whatever) are troublesome, not because they are deficient, but because they are endowed with #emergent behaviours that suddenly spring from 500-billion-plus trainable parameters and terabytes upon terabytes of human behavioural data. No human could grasp the aggregate meaning of that unanticipated, implicit, emergent behaviour. No human could divine the outcomes of their unforeseeable concoctions. Worse of all, all these models are inhered with biases and prejudices, both intentional and unintentional, that are embedded deep within these deep-learning models, whose untoward conducts are ever so subtle and complex as to be casually observable.

The invidious effects of these poorly-understood foundation models are insidious. By the time their detrimental behaviour becomes observable, it would be too late for society to countermand, for these models are already enmeshed within the social-political-economic fabric of the whole of humanity.

It is easy, for a lawyer like me, reflexively to shout, "#Regulate #AI". But in the present heady mix of delirium, confusion, delusion, and collusion, regulate exactly what and precisely how, pray tell.

Who will save society from AI?

Well, perhaps AI might....🤦‍♂️

Matrix multiplication is not inhered with empathy, conscience, judgement, elation, shame, and the like. Those are innately human characteristics, neither mechanical nor mathematical. Let us not surrender to the silicon-based machines the #ethical duty to be thinking, feeling carbon-based beings.

Emergent Behavior: When Skills Combine - Vibe and Scribe

What happens when you combine Claude Code skills? Optimization meets debugging, brainstorming meets design.

Not entirely sure I asked them to, beat them to it anyways but thanks for checking 🪿

"""
provide the tool and the actions will come
"""
--- harrison ford or summin' in that football movie

#emergent #devops #devopsendgamewithallthecheatcodes

The paper “Social emergence and unpredictability” is a very late follow-up to my doctoral thesis and deals with the question of whether social phenomena can be in-principle unpredictable because they are (strongly) #emergent.