Bert G. J. Frederiks
The Time MachinePrototype of a Conscious Machine
Prototype of a Conscious Machine
Prototype of a Conscious Machine
Prologue
I began writing this work around 1987, but I trained for it form childhood on. Many, many excuses to all people whose lives I have bothered with it, through impatience, lack of time, lack of attention, lack of understanding, and my sometimes muddled thoughts.
My thank goes to the people who kept believing in me.
April 10, 2001, Bert Frederiks
2021 – second edition
In 2021 I wrote second book (hopefully published finally in 2024) which I am about to publish. In it I refer to this old book. Since I know this old book is rather difficult to read – my fault – I decided to edit it for errors and readability. I also added a few comments and footnotes to mark differences with my current thoughts, but not too many – it does not necessarily contain my current views. This is a work in progress. Feel free to ask questions!
The conscious machinery itself is, in principle, rather simple. I changed a few things in my new book, but the principles remain largely the same. What is complex in this old book is how I try to prove that it indeed has consciousness. What makes it even more complex is that one runs into all kinds of references and self-references when speaking and thinking about speaking, thinking and consciousness. So the interesting problem is language and thinking. If you like reading Charles Sanders Peirce or Ludwig Wittgenstein, then you may like reading this.
A further complicating factor is that I felt I needed new terminology. New terminology is largely made using metaphors. While you are building the new words you cannot use them yet, and you cannot explain why you need them. In physics the same has happened with words like “mass” and “energy.”
In physics we have relativity-theory and quantum-mechanics, being two principles, or as I call them in this book: interpretations, of reality. A different view or interpretation shows and explains different aspects of reality. In this book I introduce numerous interpretations.
In my new book I found a completely different solution to my language and interpretation ‘problem.’ You can read some about this at https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/dy69c and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icheatmasstransfer.2024.107516. I hardly speak about systems or interpretations anymore, and I do not need to muddle over words over words. By showing how one ‘universe’ emerges in another ‘universe,’ each of these universes becomes real. But that is my new book. In this book I try to solve things through thinking in systems and interpretations.
This book is probably still not as readable as it could be. If I get some feed-back I am happy to go over it again.
2021-2024, Bert Frederiks