Stephen Hawking, and Pi Day

I wish that I'd had the opportunity to share with Stephen Hawking the evolutionary theological theory of Pandeism -- a theological model which proposes that the Creator wholly became the Creation at the outset, and all of its physical laws, so that all that is discovered by science is not in contradiction with religion, but explains the mechanisms by which our Creator was able to bring forth our Universe as we observe it. Pandeism fully accounts, and I would love to think that Hawking would find it to be an elegant and parsimonious solution, even if not one he would have personally believed.


But I do think it is perhaps telling that Hawking died on a day which happens to be of significance to Pandeists and mathematicians alike -- March 14 (3.14....), Pi Day. May the Universe bless us all on this day.

Is Intelligence an Algorithm?

I've recently read Is Intelligence an Algorithm? by Antonin Tuynman -- an excellent book with many pandeistic overtones.

Tuynman brings two gifts to bear on this topic -- a creative mind capable of making insightful connections, and a facility with communicative language with which to explain these connections in the most fluid of terms. Combining these, this book does an outstanding job of introducing ideas like the progression of complexity through stages both observed and rationally projected to come in the future, of the cognitive processes which arise during these steps, and of the reasoning processes which arise from these cognitive processes. Notably, the idea of the fundamental physics of our Universe inevitably bringing forth these levels of complexity (and perhaps being intended to do so) is a key thought in Pandeism. 

He dives therefrom into straightening out dizzying further implications of how these might manifest in the coming technology of artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness (especially in a potential quantum computing environment). Throughout, the book ties together the ideas of a world class selection of theorists on the grounds of reality and consciousness, and rises up to be much greater than the sum of its parts.