User:Rodasmith/test1

	Seattle meetup 6	view talk edit
	Date: April 8 and April 18, 2009
	Place: UW Seattle campus
	Seattle meetup 5 occurred June 19, 2008

Rodasmith is the Wikipedia screen name used by a collection of emergent properties that constitute a human, unsurprisingly named Rod A. Smith. Those properties currently include 58 kg of mass (distributed along 1.7 meters), a software developer occupation, an aversion for harmful memes like some religions, and an affinity for gay culture and for useful memes like editing Wikipedia.

Patterns

Our separation 15 billion years ago was just what we needed. It cooled us off enough to let patterns stick together (like hydrogen) and explode, yielding more patterns (like amino acids). Of particular interest was one that copied itself a couple of times.

The ensuing chain of near self replication continued enough to settle into many emergent attractors. Some influenced morphology and simple behavior. One produced a neocortex, so that part of the field could model other parts of the field. Some attractors even created will, allowing part of the field to modify the field with purpose.

Like you (the pattern reading this sentence), Rod (the one that wrote this sentence) also came from a variation of that nearly self-copying pattern. Like everything you see, dream, or otherwise experience, we are changing configurations of "the universe", or "spacetime", or simply "the field".

Some of Rod's favorite attractors create subjunctive thought, allowing you, Rod, and other parts of the field to choose how to modify the field itself. For instance, Rod would rather be talking directly with you than writing a third-person description of himself. Since he cannot have you visit him right now, he'll settle for shifting to the first person, hopefully giving this monologue a friendlier feel.

It strikes me as incredibly beautiful to know that our deliberate actions are the universe consciously modifying itself.

First Person

If you like reading binary numbers in scientific notation, you'll be happy to learn that the specific template of genetic code that formed me first existed about $1.1111\times 10^{11101}$ seconds ago. Well, actually that's only accurate for you if your velocity has been similar to the earth's for the better part of the last $2.2\times 10^{200}$ seconds (expressed in a ternary format for those of you who like the digit "2"). If, however, your velocity differed significantly, please adjust my estimate to match your clock.

Despite what you may think from reading the above paragraph, I also speak English. The above translated from Geek to English says that I am 32 years old. You are about to suspect, and rightfully so, that I usually eat and sleep in an apartment in Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington.

More about me, including fascinating tales of self reference and mixes of reductionism and holism, will come later, provided I can coax my right brain to speak clearly enough.

Until then, peace.

--Rod