Who's to say the "algorithm at inception" isn't awesomely simple? If this were the case, where is the difference between your argument and mine? Do you prefer the random to the intelligent in principle?
Indeed, Timaeus is one of my favorites. But Plato never said that being and becoming constituted a "true-or-false" proposition. It is a case of "both," for both are needed to express the ultimate nature of a living cosmos.
Good night, snarks. Must get some sleep. Thank you so much for writing!
Who's to say the "algorithm at inception" isn't awesomely simple? If this were the case, where is the difference between your argument and mine? Do you prefer the random to the intelligent in principle?
I wasn't really making an argument, just suggesting a possibility. But a consideration I do find compelling is this: as far as we now know, nothing like the self-conscious intelligence that humans manifest was ever manifested by any of the millions of other species, living and extinct, on Earth. Nor do we know that there are any other self-conscious intelligences anywhere else in the cosmos, now or ever before. Moreover, our own self-conscious intelligence is of rather recent origin, a tiny blip in the long history of the cosmos. So what, you ask? Just this: I'm highly suspicious of any attempt to postulate self-conscious intelligence (conceived in analogy to our own) as the root of all reality. Self-conscious intelligence appears to be a very late (and exceedingly rare) product of reality, not its source.
I also have reservations about the notion of a disembodied intelligence; indeed, I can make no sense of it. The fact is this: I don't understand the principle of individuation of disembodied intelligences, that is, how to tell them apart. So either they're all the same (and so, when we die, we become one with the deity), or else there are none (and so, when we die, we're dead).
I'm probably not expressing myself well, being somewhat short of rest, so I'll shut up about that.
But Plato never said that being and becoming constituted a "true-or-false" proposition.
Nor did I, bb!
Best regards and pleasant dreams...